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himadrics · 1 year

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મુસ્કાન [Muskan]

(My Feminist Commentary Part - 5/5)

I was fourteen when my school had put a ban on boys and girls' playing together during the PT class. "We all like playing ખોખો [Khokho] (a national game). We are all peers. So why can't we all play together? Our school authorities are being orthodox. It is ridiculous!" I complained to my father. "You think of boys as your peers?" he asked with a smile. "Obviously! Will you come to the school to protest against the ban?" I asked. "Learn to protest on your own." he replied. After pausing for a second, he added

"It is good that you think of them as your peers. Keep up that attitude. But they might not necessarily think of you in the same way!"

Time and again, I am reminded of my father's words when the men around me crack sexist jokes, eve-tease, belittle, and catcall me because I happen to be a woman. I wish we had an option to unsubscribe from such nonsensical things that come as a part of the deal of being a woman!

Women’s condition has been improving with every generation in my family. And I have a comfortable baseline to inherit from my mother. I am also quite ambitious to make a big leap and push the baseline much further. And I have found a nice hack to do that! Instead of starting from my mother’s condition, I start from my father’s condition. Because I believe that my father has the highest amount of privilege, and he enjoys the highest amount of freedom in my family.

On a typical evening after work, one can find my father sprawling on the sofa in the living room, wearing a baniyan (one type of undershirt) and half pants, farting-burping-itching as he pleases, sipping some tea, reading the newspaper, criticizing the government and the younger generation, and enthusiastically expressing his opinions on anything and everything.

If you tell him that “You are showing too much skin”, you will either receive a hostile “How much I cover or show is none of your business” or a friendly debate on “Clothes are just a social construct :p” depending on his mood. If you tell him that “You are too opinionated!”, then he will laugh and say “Obviously!”. And if you give him unsolicited advice on how he should live his life, he will outright ask you, “What is wrong with you?” and show you the way out.

Unlike my mother, my father is quite protective of his personal space. He is definitely not brainwashed by the idea of service and being the primary caregiver of the family. If you expect him to do the dishes, then he will expect you to do the cooking in return.

So unless my period cramps remind me of my gender and my age, I like to go about my day-to-day personal business with a sense of entitlement to the world like my father. In the remaining part of this commentary, I analyze various events from my life in a chronological order that demonstrate my social conditioning, and whether it helped me or not in developing this sense of entitlement.

Let’s start with Cricket!

When I was in the elementary school, I spent most of the evenings playing street cricket with my friends. I was not particularly good at the game but I had a real bat ;). Given that my friends' other option was to play with a washing paddle, they tolerated my bad game.

Our best player was Chhaya (yes, she and my mother have the same name!), a girl who lived across the street. She was an all rounder. It was quite difficult to take her wicket when she was batting. So she would easily score more than 50 runs every time. She could easily take wickets of others when she was bowling. She could run very fast. And she never dropped catches. So obviously, she made a great fielder as well. It was hard to beat her in most of the other outdoor games as well. So let's note that from the age of five to twelve, the best player in my neighborhood was a girl.

Mummy, what is a “rape”?

I had a habit of reading the local newspaper when I was in the elementary school. One day, a strange looking word appeared in the headline. The word was “rape”, and the headline was “A five year old girl got raped”. The town was shook by the news. And my mother had to explain to me what is a rape.

A lot of things changed after that incident. I was given a new set of rules to stay safe. 1. Prefer to play in open places like street or the front-yard. 2. Never go inside a friend’s house if his/her mother is not present at home. 3. When playing indoors, always stay in a room where the mother or the grandmother is present. 4. Narrate the entire day to mom over dinner every evening.

Once I got flashed by a priest, and once a male neighbor tried to lock me in a room. I was able to report both the incidents to my parents. So let's note that I knew what was a rape, and I was taught how to stay safe when I was in the elementary school.

The washing machine

While I was not doing my homework, or playing in the street with my friends, or reading some children's book/magazine, I used to tail my mother around the house annoying her with my endless list of questions and stories about the day. All such memories include my mother doing chores in addition to entertaining me. And being the daughter in the house, it was obvious for me to join her in doing the chores.

I was little and not of much help. But I had learned that laundry in particular can be quite tiring by watching my mother do it on every single day. We did not have a washing machine so she used to wash the clothes of the entire family by hand. Washing of bed-sheets, blankets and sweaters required additional help from my father if he happened to be around or by the women in the neighborhood.

The day my mother could finally buy a washing machine was very special. She had been saving for it for months and I still remember the joy on her face when she did the first load of laundry in that machine. So I also learned that a washing machine is a quite important gadget for a woman.

A woman can run a school!

The principal of my elementary school was a woman. She did not just run the school, but she also owned it! So she was the highest authority and her word was the command. She was very punctual and quite strict.

She had an office with a big desk and a nice chair. Most of the times, she kept her office’s door open while working. So I could often see her signing on some files and conducting meetings during the recess. Except for this school, all the other academic institutions where I have studied were led by men.

કરિયાવર [Kariyavar]

(Wedding gifts for the bride from her family)

There was a house behind the school building, and we could see what is going on inside the house from the balcony of our classroom (yes, the classrooms had a balcony!).

When I was in the sixth grade, I saw a display of shiny new utensils, furniture, clothes, jewellery etc. in the front-yard of that house. The girl who lived there was getting married, and the things on display was her કરિયાવર.

I returned home with many questions for my mother that day. I started with the most important one, “When I get married, what are you going to give me in કરિયાવર?”. “Your master’s degree certificate!” she replied with a smile.

I was a bit disappointed because instead of giving me shiny things, my mother was going to make me spend ten more years in school! So let's note that the eleven year old me fancied those shiny things, and she was not thrilled about spending so many years in school.

A girl must speak

In addition to written exams, the school also took oral exams. There was a girl in my class who never spoke much. And for some reason that puzzles me till date, she refused to speak at all during the oral exams.

The teacher called her mother in order to force the girl to speak during the exam, but the girl continued refusing to speak. So the mother asked the teacher to slap the girl in order to make her speak.

First slap, she still didn’t speak. Second slap, she started crying but still didn’t speak. The mother and the teacher gave up after six slaps. The girl failed the exam and returned home with her mother for more beating. So let’s note that I might have made an extra effort at being good at speaking out of fear of getting slapped.

Sex education

In the same year, our science textbook had a chapter on the human reproduction system. However, our science teacher, a young man in his 20s, was too shy to teach that chapter to a class of six graders. When parents protested about his initial plan to skip the chapter entirely, he took help from a woman teacher.

It was a co-ed school, but for this particular lesson, boys and girls were taken to separate rooms. The male teacher delivered the lesson to the boys, and the female teacher delivered the lesson to the girls. Since I saw the teachers being shy and uncomfortable about the lesson, I also felt shy and uncomfortable. Probably the entire class felt that way and we all just wanted the whole thing to end. No one asked questions, and there was no discussion during this lesson.

However, at home, my mother explained the entire chapter to me, and I could ask her all my questions. Moreover, my father brought a medical encyclopedia, and sat down with me to read everything about the reproduction system. So, let’s note that though the school did not do a great job on the topic, my parents compensated for it. However, things like safe sex practices, consent and how to use a condom were never taught to me in schools or at home.

Periods, Religion & Superstition

During this time of my life, all my friends came from religious Hindu families. It is a common practice for Hindu women to not engage in any religious rituals during her periods. We all were told to follow this by our families. And as a result, we all refrained from participating in any kind of religious activities and entering temples when we were on our periods.

Whether we used sanitary napkins or not depended on if our families could afford sanitary napkins for their daughters. One friend of mine came from a poor family in a small village. She was not able to afford sanitary napkins and she always used a cloth. Another friend of mine, who could afford the sanitary napkins, still chose not to use them because of superstition. She was told by her mother that if an insect or a snake crawls over a woman’s menstrual blood, then the woman goes to hell. So my friend was afraid of using sanitary napkins as insects might crawl on her used sanitary napkins in the trash.

For those of us who used sanitary napkins, our options were quite limited. We had to choose from a less than six products. Tampons and menstrual cups were not available in the city. Most of us did not buy sanitary napkins on our own, and relied on our mothers to buy them for us.

Menstruation awareness

My family moved out of the town so I could attend the high-school in the city. One day a few women from an NGO visited my high-school to spread awareness about menstruation. Boys were sent home early that day and the girls were gathered in a room. The session was conducted behind closed windows and closed doors in secrecy.

Sanitary napkins were distributed at the end of the session. Most of the girls refused to take them. The ones who could not refuse, threw the napkins away before going home. So let’s note that even in the high-school, boys were excluded from the session on menstruation, and the girls were too shy to bring home sanitary napkins.

Buying sanitary napkins

We were on a school trip when one of my friends got her first period. The high-school staff with us did not carry sanitary napkins, and we also couldn’t find any sanitary napkins at the place of our visit. So I had to go to a medical store and buy some sanitary napkins for my friend. Another friend of mine joined me in this adventure for moral support. However, upon reaching the store, she bailed out on me because she felt too shy to talk to the male shopkeeper. She even refused to enter the store with me and stood far away pretending to not know me.

I went inside the store alone. “Give me some sanitary pads.” I asked the shopkeeper. He gave me a packet, I gave him the money and I left the counter. "Don't you need a black polythene bag to wrap it?” he called me back. “Why would I need it?” I asked a dumb question. “Because people always wrap it like that!” he looked uncomfortable. “Fine! Wrap it then.” I surrendered.

The friend who had got her period was hiding inside a toilet the whole time. We delivered the packet to her. “No one saw you bringing this, right? Especially the boys?.” was her first question. She was relieved to discover that the packet was wrapped in black polythene and no one else knew that she had got her period. Let's note here that this was the only time I bought sanitary napkins on my own until starting college.

Women on the Dojo

There was a karate Dojo in our new neighborhood in the city, and my brother wanted to join it. I was sent to the Dojo primarily to keep him company, and I was not thrilled about it. However, joining the Dojo added a lot of value to my teenage years. It was a traditional Dojo with well-experienced instructors who made us train rigorously. Just like cricket, I was not particularly good at Karate either. But nevertheless, I ended up reaping the physical and mental health benefits of being a Karateka who trained a couple of days in a week.

The women I got to train with at the Dojo provided me with the examples that I missed in my family. No women in my family could spare the time to do some sports on a regular basis. I trained at the same Dojo with those women for about ten years. Some of them were university students when I joined the Dojo. I got to see them graduate, start working, get married, have children etc., while still managing to continue their training. Some of these women even inspired their husbands and children to join Karate. So I even got to train with such Karate families! If it weren’t for these women, it would be hard for me to believe that a woman would find the time to do some sports despite being married and having children.

Domo arigato gozaimasu Sensei

My Sensei took a personal interest in the development of every student on the Dojo. He soon noticed that my height was increasing fine but I was not gaining much weight. So one day he talked to me about it.

“I hope you are not falling for the zero figure nonsense that is going around.” he started. How many Rotis do you eat? Lentils? Vegetables? Fruits? Dry fruits? Milk? How much do you sleep? Do you feel fresh when you wake up? How energetic do you feel during the day? How often do you fall sick? He had a long list of questions.

Upon listening to my answers and finding them more or less satisfactory, he said, “Don’t pay attention to the nonsense you find in newspapers, magazines or TV. Girls of your age are not supposed to care about petty things like body weight. You are a martial artist, you should be caring about improving your technique and self-discipline, building strength and immunity, and staying fit and energetic. Do you understand?”. “Oss, Sensei!” I replied.

Nisha

I was assigned the official responsibility of cleaning the house just before starting the high-school. This included dusting the furniture, sweeping + moping the floor and cleaning the toilets on a day to day basis. So I used to spend an hour cleaning everyday!

When I reached the 10th grade, an important school year, my family decided to hire help to take care of the cleaning, so I can spend more time studying instead. The lady who started working at our home also brought her daughter, Nisha, who helped her in the cleaning. Nisha and I were of the same age and it was an important school year for the both of us. I often offered her to study with me while her mother was cleaning, but Nisha never accepted the offer and always chose to help her mother.

It is important to note that my family was supportive of my education and protective of my time during this particular school year. I was sent to one of the best schools in the city and also to some extra classes. I was encouraged to spend most of my remaining time at home studying. So it is no wonder that I was able to get a good score.

On the other hand, Nisha could study only during the school hours. Her family was poor and cleaning houses was their primary source of income. Nisha contributed to chores at her own house and then she also helped her mother in cleaning other people's houses. At the end of the year, Nisha also took the same exam as me, but it is simply unfair to compare her score with mine.

We both were fifteen. I came from a Brahmin family and Nisha came from an OBC family. My mother had a master's degree, and her mother had not even finished high-school. While it was obvious for me to be ambitious and aspire to become an engineer, it was unclear if Nisha would even attend a college. While I agree that our reservation system needs a revamp, but it is also important to note that the reservation system would have helped Nisha to get into a good college despite her low score. A score that decides our admission in universities without considering our backgrounds, struggles or privileges.

Red nail polish

If you want to study engineering in India, you spend most of your time during the last two years of your high-school studying Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. It was a regular school day and I happened to have painted my nails Red. As usual I was trying extra-hard to pay attention to the Chemistry lecture (I dreaded Chemistry). I was seated on the first bench and the teacher was using my open copy of the textbook to refer to. I was holding the textbook so he noticed my nail.

“Why have you applied such nail-polish? It is so distracting!” he exclaimed in the middle of the lecture. I immediately hid my hands, and I spent the rest of the lecture feeling embarrassed. I also failed to concentrate on what he was teaching after that. The important thing to note here is that a man in his 30s was distracted by the nail polish on a teenager’s hands. Moreover, he felt the need to interrupt the entire class to tell her about it!

The swimming pool

During the time between the end of high-school and beginning of the university, my father declared that I must go and learn how to swim. So my cousin and I enrolled at the public swimming pool. There was only one woman swimming instructor and she was available for only one hour during the day. So women of the city could access the public swimming pool only during that one hour. However, men could go to the pool during the entire day except for one hour reserved for women. Men and women were not allowed to use the pool at the same time.

Before starting to take swimming lessons, I was used to wearing clothes that fully covered my legs. So it had never even occurred to me that the hair on my legs is something to be concerned about. I was having a decent amount of fun on my first day at the swimming pool until a stranger came to tell me that I should be concerned about the hair on my legs. She said, “They look bad, you should get rid of them if you are coming to the pool!”. My cousin and I had plans to watch a movie the next day, but instead we spent most of our time getting rid of the hair on our legs. So let's note here that it was not any woman from our own family who made us start removing hair from our legs, but it was a kind lady on the swimming pool who took care of it.

Half pants

By the time I entered the college, I had adapted a regime for removing body hair (and I was not enjoying it). In addition to my short swimming costume, now I had also started wearing half-pants during the summer.

My university did not impose any dress-code, so it came to me as a big surprise when a male professor spent good five minutes during his lecture to exclaim about my wearing half-pants and commenting on my legs. Once I was also interrupted while writing an important end-semester exam on a hot summer day, because another male professor found my wearing half-pants inappropriate. Their sense of authority to tell an adult woman how to dress was quite remarkable!

One more rape

They were six and it was a teenager this time. The incident happened not too far from my home and the girl was almost my age. The case was reported in the police station close to the apartment where I lived. Entire neighborhood had gathered in the streets, balconies and terraces to watch the police punish the rapists. One could feel the rage on people’s faces.

I stood on the terrace and watched as one of those faces. The police kept charging the rapists with Lathis. First round, Second round, ... and then I was no longer in a mental state to count. I saw the rapists screaming, crying and begging for mercy. I also noticed tears flowing down from my eyes.

I don’t exactly know why I was crying. Maybe the whole things was just too traumatizing to watch, or maybe I was thinking about the girl who had got raped, or maybe I was thinking about the fact that given the proximity of the place of the incident and the age of the girl, it could have been me instead of her. Let's note that the city never stayed the same for me since that day. From being a careless teenager, I became a woman who started feeling concerned about her safety.

The driving test

My family did not own a car. Upon turning eighteen, my mother taught me to drive her gear-less scooter, and my father taught me to drive his motorcycle with gears. After a couple of lessons, I applied for a driving license of two-wheeler with gears so I can drive both the vehicles available at home.

“You must be mistaken. Women can’t apply for this category.” said the man at the RTO counter. “What do you mean by women can’t?” I exclaimed. “I mean, women generally don’t. Do you even know how to ride a motorcycle?” he seemed annoyed. “How about we see that at the time of the driving test?” I was also annoyed. “Fine! We will see!” he told me with a smirk. That smirk made me angry.

When I entered the track with my father’s motorcycle for the driving test, I heard someone shouting, “Hey! Come see! A girl is giving a driving test for the motorcycle!”. There were already about 50 people near the track and many more gathered to see this spectacle. It would have been so cool if I could tell you that I showed them all what a great motorcyclist I was! But instead, I was just an eighteen year old who had taken just a couple of lessons with her father. So yes, I failed that test :p. And yes, the crowd dutifully mocked me.

After my flop show, my father found me trying to hold back my tears. “Do you want to cry? It is okay if you want to!” he said with a sympathetic smile. And like most such occasions, I decided that I was not going to cry, but I was going to get some ice-cream instead. So we got some ice-cream and we kept practicing until I got my license.

The girl on a motorcycle

I needed a personal vehicle for going to my college. I wanted to get a motorcycle because 1. Riding a motorcycle is way more fun than riding boring gear-less scooters, 2. Motorcycles give much better mileage than gear-less scooters. and 3. The price of the motorcycle was a bit less than the price of the scooter. My mother’s scooter could barely run for 25 km in 1 liter of petrol, while my father’s motorcycle could easily run up to 50 km in the same amount of petrol. I wanted to save on petrol so I could afford to watch a movie without asking for extra pocket money (in order to avoid a long lecture from my father about how TV and Cinema is an utter waste of time and money for a student).

Despite all my protests, my mother got me a scooter instead of a motorcycle. Just like high-school, she wanted to protect me from unwanted extra-attention a girl gets for riding a motorcycle on Indian roads. I still managed to ride my father’s motorcycle quite often. And I also often got harassed on the roads because I happened to be a woman riding a motorcycle. I now prefer to ride bicycles and use public transport, but it is important to note that riding a motorcycle was quite stressful for me because of my gender.

The lousy student representative

Our college had a gender cell which had appointed student representatives. The purpose of having such a body was to provide a safe environment to report and seek help against gender based discrimination and sexual assaults. The student representatives were supposed to be approachable and proactive in taking actions in such matters. However, our student representative (i.e. I) was lousy at doing her (my) job.

There was one serious incident of sexual abuse involving a student happened outside the campus. But the student refused to talk to me about the incident, and refused to seek help from the gender cell. One of my close friends got molested near the campus. She confided about the incident to me, but she also refused to report it to the gender cell. Another friend of mine was stalked by a male student for a long time inside as well as outside the campus, but she also never filled an official complaint.

Yes, as per the university guidelines, our college had a gender cell. And yes, I failed to do my part in making it functional. In fact, the only thing I managed to do was to organize a self-defense workshop and to start a Karate Dojo in the women’s hostel. I wish that I knew better, and I had more courage to somehow persuade those women to report those incidents. Let's note here that I understood it very well during my first few years at the university that such incidents happen with women more often than you realize, and women often don’t report it.

What becomes of women engineers after graduation?

On most days, I did not face much discrimination at my college. Most of the students genuinely wanted to learn and most of the professors genuinely wanted to teach. There were approximately 40 women in my batch, and we all graduated with a bachelor’s degree in engineering with a major in Computer Science. Ours was a new and developing college, so the exposure and opportunities available for these women were not even remotely comparable to that of women graduating from elite engineering schools like IITs.

As the time of graduation approached, I discovered that most of the women in my batch were open to the idea that their families are soon going to find suitable matches for them, and they might get married by the next one or two years. Most of us wanted to work and we actively searched for jobs. However, many were unwilling to move to a different city or a different state to find work. There were not enough technical jobs available in the city, so as a result, many of my us did not land a technical job despite graduating with an engineering degree. Most of us were unaware about the remote job market.

One of my best friends got married before even graduating and she deliberately chose to become a homemaker. Another girl from my batch was forced by her family to discontinue her studies and she had to leave the program. Only a few of us actively searched for a master’s program, and in the end, less than five of us enrolled for a master’s degree.

A campus with gender equality

I moved to my state’s capital city to pursue a master’s degree. I got to live as a campus resident on the beautiful green campus with peacocks and other majestic birds. I had joined this new university during one of its most important feminist movements. The women students were protesting for equality in the rules for the campus residents.

The university offered separate on-campus residences for men and women. While the men enjoyed a 24-hour access to the campus and its various amenities, the women were forced to return to their residence by midnight. So the women were protesting for an equal right to 24-hour access to the entire campus. I remember signing a petition during the very first week of my arrival. The protests had been going on for a while and the women finally won.

I remember attending the warden’s declaration, and the claps, cheers, hugs and tears that followed after that. Though I was new and I had missed most parts of the protest, I was glad to be present in that amphitheater that evening. It was the first and the only equality that I got to experience without fighting for it personally.

For the first time in my life, I was able to step out of my room without checking what time it was, without worrying about if I was wearing enough clothes, and without worrying about my safety (It was a non-public campus with big enough security staff). I could go for a walk at 2 AM in the night and meditate under a tree at 4 AM in the morning. It made me realize how much of my headspace was freed by not having to constantly worry about my safety. Let's note that I got to experience how right it feels to be treated as an equal on that campus.

Filter out the misogyny

While my sense of entitlement to gender equality was getting consolidated on the university campus, life also kept giving me reality checks about omnipresent misogyny from time to time. This helped me in developing the survival skill of filtering out the misogyny from the opportunities to learn.

Once I shared a car ride with an uncle of mine. We were going somewhere in his car and he was driving. It was a long ride and at some point he started recounting a story of him motivating a cousin of mine to work hard. "So I told him, you must work hard, specially when you are young." said my uncle. "Hmm" I nodded thinking that it was indeed some good advice. "If you don't work hard, then others would get ahead of you, even the women! Then you will have no choice but to work under a woman. So you better work hard". It was no longer good advice and I wondered what was he trying to imply by telling me this story! Obviously I felt offended and I even briefly considered abandoning the ride.

But then I had to remind myself that he had also taught me import things about personal finance (that I was not learning at school, or at home, or from friends) during the same ride. And if I stayed in the car, then I could finish listening to the audio book on finance that we were listening together. So continued my free ride and extracted some more personal finance wisdom from him by asking many questions.

But wait, Isn't it possible that he was not really teaching, but rather just mansplaining? Well, as long as I am learning something important, I don't care! When someone explains something to me that I really want to learn, I am willing to put up with their condescending tone. Does my willingness to learn from a misogynist (instead of cancelling him) makes me a bad feminist? It is debatable!

Lake Geneva

My mother took her first ever vacation this summer. We spent a lazy afternoon reading some poems and playing with the water and pebbles at the lake Geneva. There were many Swiss women around us, some were bathing in the sun, some were reading, some were sipping wine, and some were swimming. Most of them were bare-chested. It felt surreal.

There is a pond just 10 minutes of walking distance from our home in my hometown. And there is a beach just 40 minutes from our home in the city. My parents often took us there. My father and my brother would always get bare-chested before jumping in the water. My mother and I would always have all our clothes on.

It is nice that at least some parts of the world have made enough progress so that all members of a family can enjoy a swim bare-chested regardless of their gender. And I hope someday (maybe in the next 100 years?) the families of my town and my city also get to enjoy a swim like that.

Mr. know-all

We then went to visit CERN, which is located not too far from the lake Geneva. We signed up for a guided tour and I was delighted to find out that our tour guide was a young researcher working on one of the experiments at CERN. She was also a woman of color.

We were joined by a white man in his 60s, who introduced himself as a well-known chemist working at a well-known place. He also claimed to know a lot of things about particle physics. During the entire tour he tried really hard to show that he knows more than our tour guide. He interrupted her on every possible occasion. Once he even quizzed her in order to test her knowledge (despite knowing that she had a PhD).

It was quite interesting to see how our tour guide handled this gentleman. She saw no signs of frustration (maybe she was used to encountering such know-alls). She neither avoided his interruptions not entertained them. She just kept on doing her job of explaining about various experiments to the group. At some moment during the tour, she, my mother and I had an exchange of smiles mixed with some eye-rolling for the gentleman acknowledging that we all know what he is trying to do, and we all also know that she has got this.

Conclusion

I am twenty-seven years old while writing this commentary. And I like to believe that I have succeeded in developing the entitlement to being treated as an equal to men. And unlike my mother, my ambitions extend far beyond my role within my family.

My mother provided me with a great example to start with. I also grew up watching a woman MLA in my city, a woman chief minister in my state and a woman president in my country. Now I am seeing one more woman president in India. And the Indian economy is soaring under the leadership of a woman finance minister.

The headmaster of my elementary school was a woman. The head of the computer engineering department in my college was a woman. The commissioner for higher education in my state was also a woman. When I went to work in a software company, I worked under a woman manager with a team which had as many women engineers as men. I then went on to do a PhD under the guidance of a woman adviser, who is also the head of our research group.

The particular piece of software that I happen to be curious about (the Linux kernel) surely has a reputation of not having many women contributors. But then I also see carefully designed and well-executed programs (like Outreachy) to welcome new women contributors. At some conferences I happen to be the only woman in the room, but then I also see women delivering keynotes and presenting talks in the same conferences.

Recently, I have been living in Paris and traveling across Europe. So in addition to Indian women, I am also getting to know women from different countries and cultures. For the first time in my life, I am able to test my ideas far away from my home and my usual social circle in an international environment. So I am now motivated to study feminism with a global perspective with the spirit of a scholar.

I am engaging in more conversations, I am listening more, and I am paying more attention to the lives of women around me. I am also reading more, and lately, I have been motivated to write. My own feminist ideas are still evolving with time. I hope to keep writing similar commentaries after every two decades of my life in order to capture the evolution of myself as a woman. In the meantime, following my mother's footsteps, I am trying to write some fiction. So I can take creative liberty in telling the stories of the women around me.

I no longer have even the slightest amount of self-doubt that I can not do or achieve something because of my gender. I also reject the idea that I need to work harder or more just because I am a woman. When it comes to my personal relationships with the opposite gender, I refuse to take on their care-taker’s role. In conversations with the opposite gender, I know that it matters that I assert myself, I say what I have got to say, and I express my opinions as freely as they do, because women are conditioned to not behave in this way. When it comes to carnal relationships, I feel entitled to my orgasms. And when it comes to domestic partnerships, I refuse to do more than my 50% .

On most days, and as long as it is not impacting me personally, I let the eve-teasing and sexist jokes slide. When I get catcalled on the streets, I take a deep breath and I keep on walking. I am not on a mission to fix everyone and everything. I don’t preach to people that they should be a feminist. Many people in my social circle are misogynists and I patiently put up with them from time to time.

Feminism is a relatively new ideology for humanity. And I understand that it will take a long time for every women in the world to achieve the same amount of equality as that of the Swiss women on the lake Geneva. Some parts of the world are still practicing female genital mutilation, some parts of the world are denying women from their right to education, their right to work, and their right to drive. So we have a long way to go.

From the constitutional point of view, Indian women are in a relatively better position. An Indian woman has a right to education, a right to vote, a right to drive, a right to work, a right to equal pay, a right to engage in consensual sex, a right to get contraceptives, a right to abortion, a right to own businesses and properties, and a right to inherit from their parents. We have laws in place to protect women against dowry, domestic violence and rapes. We have policies in place like free education, free textbooks, free nutrition supplements and and free contraception for women. A new law also brings equality between men and women in minimum age for marriage. Many government schemes are in place to empower women in various fields like science and technology, agriculture and entrepreneurship. However, the Indian society still promotes ages old discriminatory traditions and expectations from women.

I believe that I am an equal and therefore I am. And it is a relief that my country's constitution and policy makers share this belief. But I also understand that many people in our society don't share this belief. And in that case, I don't share my life with them. Sometimes it comes at the cost of calling off a wedding and losing some friendships. But at the end of the day, it ensures that I don't get reduced to my gender by people whom I call mine.

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rggie · 2 years

Text

second-years as school crushes

characters: azul, ruggie, riddle, silver

summary: as title states, the boys as school/college crushes… inspired by some real crushes i’ve had

cw: gn!reader, sfw, fluff, unedited. modern!au. 1k+ words

azul ashengrotto

the academic rival. he always had to have the higher grade, even if it was by a single percent. you got 98% on your last exam? you can’t celebrate, because azul got 100%

your teachers are always poking fun at your academic rivalry. they ship you. “stop flirting!” “we aren’t sir, this is simply a heated argument between intellectuals!!!!”

the whole class know about it too. the incessant comments after either of you raise a hand, the shared looks across the classroom...everyone rolls their eyes when you’re against each other in a debate because it’s likely the lesson will go overtime.

it irritates you how you cannot best him in anything, and how he still flashes you that same annoyingly charming smile each time you clash. you’re just waiting for the moment where you finally outclass him… and you do. except it doesn’t feel as rewarding you hoped it would feel.

you’re both in different gym / p.e classes, but your teachers decide it’d be a fun activity to get both groups together for a game of cricket.

strangely, azul was quiet. he didn’t greet with you a snide remark. he didn’t spare you a single glance. instead, he stayed huddled in the corner of the field, scratching at his arm anxiously. you can’t help but wonder what’s wrong. not that you’re worrying about him

after a failed attempt of bargaining with a stubborn teammate, azul had to bat. you were pitching, so you were against each other as usual.

you’ve never seen someone fail at hitting so badly. everyone is laughing and the gymbros are yelling at him to run, so he does, but it’s honestly more like stumbling, and oh. he’s running in the wrong direction. towards you.

his cheeks are flushed beet red (due to embarrassment or breathlessness, you didn’t know) he doesn’t ever meet your eyes properly again. he stops teasing you, too.

is it wrong that you miss it?

ruggie bucchi

food hogger. this guy always, without fail has some sort of food on him. you see him in the morning? toast in his mouth. midday? two donuts. even in class, he’s snacking, not even trying to hide how obvious it is with the loud smack of his lips and happy hums right in your ear.

it’s worse because he sits right next to you, and he doesn’t even offer to share. this boy is greedy, teasing you and taunting you by waving a chocolate bar in your face only to open it and plop it into his own mouth with a cackle.

at lunchtime, you’ll see him skipping the line using the excuse that he’s friends with some popular third-year. you’ll be seconds away from getting the last cookie and all of a sudden ruggie swoops in, claiming that this friend of his wants it. (if that was true, why did you see him eating it minutes later?)

as annoying as he is though, sometimes—and only sometimes!—he’s alright. when there’s days you’re feeling down, or when you don’t do well on a test, you’ll find a snack in your seat. the same treat you know he buys. it’s a silent way of comforting you without outwardly saying it. he likes you because you don’t snitch on him, and you like him because he’s funny, despite his loud chewing.

sadly, he’s just too busy for anything real to develop. you don’t know what he does in his free time, but he’s always running around. you suppose it’s none of your business, and before you can ask anyway, you’re assigned a new seat-mate.

riddle rosehearts

goodie-two-shoes. you’ve never seen someone who’s as much as a stickler for the rules as he is.

now you’re not necessarily a bad student, but this guy makes you feel as though you are. if you’re chewing gum in class, beware. don’t let riddle catch you otherwise you’re taking a trip to the trash can before he can raise his hand and tell on you.

he’s not only a snitch, but also thinks he’s right all the time. you feel a headache coming on with all his yammering.

he reminds the teachers about homework, even when he knows you haven’t done it. and then blames it on your incapability to manage time well.

the one time he forgets his homework, you almost want to tell on him, but he looks so pitiful you can’t. he’s on the verge of tears, talking about ‘handing himself in’ as though he were a criminal. you sigh and tell him he can copy.

at first, he refuses, but as the day drawls on he finds you at lunch and sits next to you for your answers. everyone is surprised at his actions, and he seems surprised at himself too, a constant pink tint all over his cheeks. you have to actually teach him how to copy properly: “no, don’t copy this word for word. and yes, i promise this is correct.”

you can tell how guilty he feels and reassure him that it seriously isn’t the end of the world. the next morning, you find your favourite drink on your table. his behaviour becomes more mellow with you after that. he scolds you lightly, tutting quietly when having to fix your collar. he’s almost sweet—

but he’s still a snitch.

silver

you’re certain he could sleep anywhere.

the first time you met, he was in a deep slumber, lightly snoring with his head planted in a study guide. afraid he’d get caught, you start placing a book in front of him to cover the fact he’s sleeping from the teacher. it ends up becoming part of your routine.

you’re not sure he even notices you’ve been doing it, but you don’t mind. silver is super sweet, always collecting worksheets for you and putting it on your desk, saving you the trip, or offering you snacks in class when you’re hungry. he smells of comforter and fresh laundry—honestly, his presence alone makes you feel lethargic yourself.

you muster up enough courage up to ask if he’s getting enough sleep. you’d be more than happy to help him out, recommending coffee or melatonin gummies, but he tells you it’s just something he’s always dealt with, that frustratingly will not go away.

you now try to make sure he doesn’t fall asleep in class, conversing with him more or poking him gently with your pen. for that he’s grateful, being sure to return the gesture when you’re tired. (but if you’re super exhausted, he’ll let you sleep, making sure you’re as comfortable as you can be.)

some mornings, he even buys you a warm drink alongside his coffee… well, it wouldn’t be for you if silver had remembered to give it to the person he had intended it for, the name malleus draconia scrawled across the cup, printed very clearly.

you have no idea who malleus draconia is, but you hope he doesn’t mind you stealing his latte & his silver-haired friend for a while.

#silver x reader #twisted wonderland #twst #silver twst #riddle rosehearts #riddle rosehearts x reader #twst fic #twst hcs #azul ashengrotto #azul ashengrotto x reader #ruggie bucchi #ruggie bucchi x reader #🐾・/ rggie twst

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denkamis · 4 years

Note

hi!! could i get double chocolate and cherry with kaminari, shinsou and midoriya please?❤️

idk if i did this right so im sorry if i didnt!

to anon: hey anon, no worries! you did it perfectly :)) aww i love the characters you chose for this prompt, this is adorable. enjoy some fluffy times with these sleep deprived boys from a very sleep deprived writer <3

warnings: none! just some swearing and some bad sleeping habits lmao. reader is gn!

prompt: denki kaminari, hitoshi shinsou, izuku midoriya scenarios + “it’s okay, i couldn’t sleep anyways.”

denki kaminari

denki stays up late playing osu and minecraft

what can i say, he’s just a gamer man

so he’s honestly pretty reliable when it comes to you knocking on his door at late hours of the night

always the biggest cuddle bug, really happy that you go to him first out of everyone

literally drops everything for you hehe

lots of sleepy kisses too

“fuck! goddammit,” denki grumbled, shaking out his wrist as he had just failed the six star version of the intro of blend-s on osu. he had gotten rather addicted to the circle clicking game. this further resulted in denki staying up late on school nights, despite kirishima’s warnings of him potentially falling asleep in class the next day. it was fine, he could always borrow notes from you or jirou anyways!

as he went to restart the map again, a soft knock came at the door to his dorm room. spinning off his computer room chair, he prepared himself to be lectured by aizawa for the fifth time this week about breaking curfew. “aizawa-sensei, i know that i’ve been loud lately but i swear this time it won’t happen- y/n?” he stopped mid-sentence as he saw you standing on the other side of the door. “what are you doing up so late?”

you shook your head, immediately hugging his torso instead. you were clearly a bit distraught about something, but denki wasn’t a mind reader. he figured that from the way you were clinging onto him, it must have been a bad dream of some kind. “hey, hey, easy there! nearly knocked me over, huh,” denki laughed lightly, pressing a soft kiss to the side of your head before closing the door behind you. you clung onto him, face buried in the crook of his neck. it made a small blush dust across his cheeks, a warm feeling spreading through his arms as he held you close. “i hope i’m not bothering you,” you mumbled, to which denki hummed. “you never bother me, babe. it’s okay, i couldn’t really sleep anyways.”

the two of you stayed like that for a long while, denki swaying the two of you back and forth. you could feel gentle lips peppering the crown of your head with kisses. as your heart rate slowed, denki piped up. “wanna stay here for the night? my bed’s missing out on some action! and by some action, i mean sleep. i really can’t sleep.”

you snorted at his words, your eyes flicking up to his goofy yet endearing smile, his eyes bright yet a bit tired from late night gaming. he poked his tongue out at you, making you roll your eyes with a tiny smile of your own gracing your features.

“how could i say no to that?”

hitoshi shinsou

we already know he’s up at these unholy hours

not for any particular reason, just because he can’t really sleep

quite the insomniac that one

and the fact that he can’t sleep properly or well unless you’re with him

you smell like lavender in the morning too bc he puts it in his pillow to help him sleep, thank you

shinsou lay awake in bed, eyes trained on the ceiling as he waited for himself to fall asleep. it was no secret that he barely got any rest, so it was simply easier to just sit and wait until his body exhausted itself to the point where he simply fell asleep. staying as still as he could, he kept counting the amount of times he breathed in and out. it made him acutely aware of his surroundings. the crickets outside his room, the way the moonlight streamed through his blinds, the miscellaneous creaking sounds of the dorms. yeah, he definitely wasn’t sleeping tonight.

he didn’t flinch as the door to his room opened, blinking slowly as his eyes adjusted to the light spilling into his room along with a new figure. “y/n?” he asked, not bothering to sit up. “hey, are you up? sorry toshi, i couldn’t sleep,” you explained softly, allowing the door to close behind you as you tiptoed across his dorm room. his hair was sprawled across his pillow, deep violet locks hiding his hands situated behind his head comfortably. it showed off his arms that were built from training for when, not if, he ever got into the hero course.

a lazy smile crossed his lips at your words, his heartstrings being played by you so seamlessly. “it’s okay, i couldn’t sleep anyways,” he replied with a tilt of his head towards you. he moved over a bit in his bed as to give you space to lay down next to him. you crawled beneath his comforters, inhaling the scent of lavender as you did. apparently shinsou had said that the smell helped him fall asleep easier. strong arms wrapped around your waist, encasing you in a protective embrace as your head rested comfortably against his chest. the comforter was thrown over the two of you. you felt so much safer already.

his large hands were placed on your lower back, his thumbs drawing lazy circles on your skin as his breathing began to relax noticeably. hiding your smile, you cuddled closer to him. to this day, you had never seen shinsou fall asleep so quickly since that night.

izuku midoriya

baby is up studying for a test that’s in like 2 weeks

either that or he’s on an all might video spree on youtube and no that is not the first time this has happened, it is certainly not the last

he has so many stuffed animals in his room probably, like he just has them stuffed in his closet

the all might plushies stay on the bed tho

his cuddles are unmatched tho, change my mind

izuku was pacing around his room, vocabulary words spinning about his mind as he counted them on his fingers. he was mumbling definitions to himself, going over all of them in his head before referencing his notebook to make sure nothing went wrong. amidst his ramblings, a knock at the door made him jump to attention. “come in?” he called out, watching intently as he saw you come into view. his face showed relief, grateful to know it wasn’t aizawa or kacchan complaining about his incessant pacing.

“would it be alright if i sleep here tonight? i’m worrying about my grades and stuff again,” you rubbed the back of your neck with a small smile, trying to play off your question as relaxed as you could. it wasn’t exactly a secret that you had a crush on the boy in front of you. he was kind and humble, wanting to help as many people as he could despite all the circumstances that had the world against him. it was admirable. even now, he looked so concerned from the clear lack of sleep you’ve been getting these past few days. “of course you can sleep here. ah, wait! i have to, ah,” he stumbled over his words as you looked to the bed to see not one, not even two, but four all might stuffed toys on his bed.

“oh.”

midoriya’s face erupted with crimson, shoving the plushies into his closet as he sputtered out various excuses as to why they were there in the first place. when he turned back to you, you were giggling. not at him, but because of the entire situation in general. “you’re adorable, izu,” you told him gently. a light feeling bloomed in his chest upon seeing the smile you held for him. you looked so undeniably beautiful to him, the way your hair was a bit messy and how you stood in your pyjamas. while others, including yourself, would find that you looked completely normal, midoriya loved seeing you be so casual, so comfortable around him.

“you’re sure i’m not interrupting you, though?”

midoriya returned your smile with his own, stepping forward to intertwined his scarred fingers with your delicate ones. “it’s okay,” he murmured softly, holding your hand as if you were the most precious thing in the world to him, “i couldn’t really sleep anyways.”

all works © denkamis 2021.

tags:

@meilbox @honeykami @httpfirx @strawberrysalwa @hey-i-really-miss-you @smexy-goose @satis-kei

want to be on the taglist? see this post!

#bnha x reader #mha x reader #bnha scenarios #mha scenarios #denki kaminari x reader #denki x reader #hitoshi shinsou x reader #hitoshi shinso x reader #shinsou x reader #shinso x reader #izuku midoriya x reader #midoriya x reader #bnha drabble #mha drabble #denkamis.scenarios #denkamis.requests

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hee4won · 4 years

Text

hate(d) | nishimura riki x reader

requested by @onionhaseyeo i’m so sorry if this isn’t what you wanted but for some reason i got super excited

a/n: this is my first time writing a fic(?) i guess it could be considered.. i just had an idea i liked for the request and it felt more like a fic than a headcanon :] i hope it’s not too bad !

word count: 2.1k

warnings: probably some grammatical errors, other than that none. (lowercase intended)

tags: e2l, slight angst, slight fluff

you hate nishimura riki. when you tell others how you feel about him they always have the same unoriginal response, “hate is such a strong word.” and that, is exactly why you chose it.

now, in order to really understand why your hatred runs so deep, let’s get into the Three W’s! WHY do you hate him so much? he stole your best friend, she ended up developing feelings for him and ghosting you, she moved away, he never apologized for it. WHEN did you realize nishimura riki was the worst thing to ever happen to you? 7th grade, it’s always 7th grade. WHERE did the beginning of the end commence? the cafeteria, your friend decided to spill her guts out in front of the whole lunch table, only to be humiliated not long after.

there you sat, glaring at the back of riki’s head. anyone from a mile away could sense your distaste when it came to him. truth be told, no one could understand why, and you never cared to explain. you figured the situation between the two of you or - just you and an unknowing boy - was personal and should be kept private. you were really good at keeping it a secret too, so good that riki himself couldn’t pinpoint the issue you had with him.

for the most part you did your best to avoid him, whether it be physically or when he was brought up in conversation between classmates. ni-ki, as people on good terms with him would address him, was a really friendly student. he didn’t pick fights, kept his teasing to a minimum, and somehow got good grades despite sleeping in and skipping classes.

going to school knowing his sweet, smiling face would be one of the first things you would see in the morning was what kept you in bed during first period. just the idea of him was revolting, and you simply weren’t strong enough to hold your ground right after waking up.

that was until your first period teacher emailed you letting you know a group project was coming up and it counted as 60% of your overall grade. all you could do was send a friendly reply, close the laptop, and scream into your pillow. you were going to be seeing nishimura riki for the first time in almost a month. which you considered to be the best month of your life.

you were alert all morning, barely getting any sleep the night before from how nervous you were. it actually wasn’t as bad as you thought. you were late, which meant everyone already picked who they were going to group with. and, to your luck, riki was nowhere to be foun-

*bump*

“oh my gosh, i am so sorry. . . y/n?” sigh, of course it had to be him. you flashed a limp smile and hurried over to an empty seat. you noticed his hand go forward then drop down to his side, almost like he was trying to bring you back. “oh! ni-ki,” even the teacher knows his nickname? how wonderful. “what perfect timing, you and y/n will be partners for the project, i’ll send the rubric out this afternoon. class dismissed!”

your legs were like jelly, since when did you become this way? sure, you hate him but. . . not being able to move? it was different, it was new. riki noticed the look of confusion on your face and cautiously made his way over to you once all the other students cleared the classroom. “hey, y/n. i haven’t seen you in a while, have you been doing alright?” why on earth was he concerned about you? so shameless.

“yeah, i’m fine, thanks,” you glared at him while standing up and purposefully bumping into his shoulder. bad move. your knees gave out right then, luckily, riki held onto you before you could hit the cold floor. you sighed in defeat, today just wasn’t your day, and mister nishimura just wasn’t the person you wanted to be this close to.

“do you need something? or is there another reason you won’t let go of my arm,” every word had a hint of poison mixed in it. riki muttered a small apology and quickly released you. “i just wanted to let you know that we can work on the project at my place, only if you want,” he gave a boxy closed-mouth smile, almost as if he was trying to act cute. disgusting.

“whatever, give me your address and i’ll come by at 4.” and with that, you two went your separate ways.

after school

as you made your way to riki’s house, you were running over every possible scenario that could occur. you wanted to avoid arguing, only because you took your grades very seriously. but does he? you couldn’t help but feel nervous and slightly jittery as you got closer to his front steps. oh! the door is open. but. . . no riki?

you called out for him a couple times until hearing laughter and the crunching of chips coming down from the second floor. of course, he’s playing the game. trudging up the stairs you wiped off your sweaty palms, mentally preparing yourself before inviting yourself into his room.

“sunghoon, shut up! it’s not even like that, you’re so weird,” he was so loud. “jake, you too! as if you haven’t been trying to swoon that girl in your third period for the past two months now. haha!” well, boys will be boys.

you open the door and riki notices immediately. he throws his headset and controller down to the floor. “y/n, you scared me,” he was almost out of breath. “oh my bad, i called out for you but you didn’t hear me so. . .” you fiddled with your fingers awkwardly. riki muttered a quick, “it’s okay” and gestured for you to take a seat on his bed.

picking up his headset, he told the cheeky upper-class boys that he would talk to them later. grabbing his supplies and computer, he took a seat next to you. you shifted away from him a little, not comfortable with the closeness between the two of you. he didn’t seem to notice, that or he just didn’t care.

“okay, so, have you already looked over the rubric?” crickets. “helloo, earth to y/n! have you checked the rubric yet?” “OH! yes, i have, ha,” you gave a quick reply, trying to pretend the awkward moment of you staring at him never happened.

ha? are you insane? you were nervous yes, and you thought it was because of the bad terms you two were on but. . . this nervousness felt a bit different.

“i also wrote up a quick outline during lunch,” you took the paper out of your bag and moved to hand it to him. “ooh nice, you’re such a scholar,” you gave him a lighthearted “shut up” before looking back at your laptop.

did he feel that? your fingers touched. they did touch, right? you can’t be imagining all of this. Y/N. WHAT ARE YOU DOING? YOU HATE HIM, REMEMBER?

“uh, y/n? why do you look like you’ve been holding in a wet fart for the past three minutes?” he was being playful while also holding genuine concern because of your recent actions. your jaw drops, you were always bad at keeping a poker face. but you knew you had to go back to your cold state, there was no way you were going to finish the project by gawking at him. he has such pretty lips by the way, how did you not notice sooner?

it had been a few hours since you guys started working on the project. you checked the time, 8:00 pm. “hey, riki,” you began with a small yawn. “y/n, you know you can call me ni-ki, right? that’s what all my friends call me,” his eyes suddenly widened noticing your discomfort. “wait, i mean. . . only if you want to!”

you cleared your throat and just asked for the bathroom. once inside and closing the door behind you, you felt the need to cry. sob, even. what is going on? why do you feel so bad for being around him? are you a traitor? is it wrong to be laughing and giggling like the two of you are besties?

you turned the water on, hoping it would drown out the sound of your muffled cries. unfortunately, you have some awfully loud sniffles. riki came running to where you were and knocked on the door. he spoke softly, “y/n? are you okay? can i come in?” what was the point in saying no? it is his house, and maybe if you told him. . . you’d feel better.

as you opened the door and looked up at him, the look of worry on his face made your heart ache. gosh, why do you care about him so much? he looked at your tear stained face and slowly reached out his hand, giving you a look that pleaded for your approval. you pass a small nod, and almost sank into the warmth of his hand on your cheek. he pulled you in for a hug as you cried for a little while longer. “do you wanna talk about it?”

here it was, here was the chance to let him know what you’ve been wanting to since 7th grade. you took a moment to steady your breathing and gather courage to look him in the eyes. you told him everything, from the beginning of 7th grade, to the day it all happened, all the way to where the two of you stood now.

he just sat there, probably trying to process everything you had randomly dumped on him. you were about to apologize and pack your things, but for some odd reason, he smiled? “ni-ki? what’s so funny? i was being serious,” his smile only grew bigger, “no i know, i just find it so funny how you had so much agaisnt me meanwhile i just wanted you to like me.”

he?? wanted you to like him??? hmmm. “what do you mean. . . wanted me to like you?” you were really curious, “i’ve had a crush on you since 7th grade, that’s why i rejected your friend later on. i never knew it would hurt you in the process, and for that i am sorry. very sorry.” you let out a small chuckle, “it’s not your fault, really. now that i’m older i think i was only mad that you two didn’t end up together because i liked you too. i just couldn’t live with myself for liking the same boy my best friend liked. it’s stupid, i know.”

riki reached out for your hand, which you obviously let him have. “you’re a good friend.” he flashed you a sweet and caring smile. you let out a sigh of relief, it felt like a weight had been lifted off your shoulders. all this time you had been pushing for yourself to hate him, while it was all just a plot to get rid of your feelings for him. crazy.

it was 11:00 pm.

you and riki had already finished the project and were laying on his floor. the both of you just staring at the ceiling and stealing glances at each other. what lovesick little kids.

after noticing the time, you hopped up and told him you really needed to go. he gave you a small pout with puppy eyes trying to get you to stay, and of course, it was hard but you’d rather leave now and see him later than get grounded and not see him for another month. “i can just text you, don’t make that face.”

he escorted you down the stairs, both of you moving discreetly, careful not to wake the boy’s parents. he opened the door for you and you turned around, gazing at him. “what are you thinking?” he asked with a tired smile on his face and small pieces of fluffy hair sticking up in every direction. you gave a shy smile and pecked his lips. he was very surprised, but also very happy.

“nothing.” you said, holding a cheeky grin in an attempt to hide your shyness. “wow, just to think that you hate my guts,” riki poked fun at you.

“hm, hate is such a strong word.”

“what would you call it then?”

“i would say. . . i hate(d) you. past tense.”

the two of you just laughed, both of you yawning shortly after.

“goodnight, mr. ni-ki.”

“goodnight, y/n.”

and with that, the two of you went your separate ways. but this time, with mutual feelings.

oh and btw, the project got you guys an A+ ;).

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officialgritty · 4 years

Text

How I Would Humble NHL Players

An essay written by bigboigritty.

I would humble hockey players the only way I know how to, by sending them to Australia. Let’s suppose that they have decided to hold the All Star game over here (forget about it’s usual date) (forget that some players I have listed below might not be invited) (and while you're at it, please forget that Australia’s rinks are Not Good).

I think that they would suffer but in an entertaining way so it’s fine.

First of all, their biggest concern is getting sunburnt. It would effect all of their dumb asses but I’m particularly worried about Pierre-Luc Dubois and Mitch Marner. Boys are practically translucent. Vince Dunn would be fine, he’d probably wear a shirt most of the time which is a very smart decision.

You may wonder why I didn’t mention Nolan Patrick because I am a certified slut for him, well I don't think he would have a problem. He would spend most of the time inside and when he joins the others, I think his Virgo ass would reapply sunscreen. Maybe he would burn slightly but I don't think it'd be enough to make him uncomfortable.

Another thing that I think they will gain from this experience is a higher pain tolerance. Now you’re probably thinking, “Zoe they are NHL players so they can handle pain.” Wrong.

Real pain is running barefoot on cement at theme parks while you race to get to the next ride. Also getting into the car and having to avoid touching every piece of metal to not get branded like a cow. Or better yet, when the heat gets so bad that there’s a black out because everyone has their air conditioning turned on.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that other countries have scary animals but I would pay to see them panic over ours. Crocodiles here can grow up to 5.2 metres / 17 feet. We have a box jellyfish season where it’s advised to avoid swimming or wear wetsuits for coverage. Funnel web spiders can survive underwater for hours by trapping air bubbles around their skin. We have several of the worlds deadliest snakes present across the country.

Listen, I don't want anyone to get injured but the constant fear that they would have when doing anything would be enough to make me happy.

My biggest question is who would survive in the shady areas, who would survive the eshays?

Under no circumstances can you look them in the eyes or cross their path. They are not to be feared individually but in groups caution is advised. I think the players would attempt to assert dominance and that is simply not an option. You are better off to ignore the eshay.

Nolan would have no issues here if im being honest. He is big and I don't think they’d find it worth it to fuck with him. But you know who they would target? Matthew Tkachuk. “Where are you going pretty boy?” “Oi braa did we hurt your feelings ya pussy cunt?” They would make fun of his hair in particular.

Travis Konecny would be an eshay. I don't think I need to make further comment. (So would Louis Tomlinson but I am not a 1D account and I will continue to repeat that until it’s true.)

I would also give them a few iconic tasks to get the true Australian experience. Activities for the ‘vacation’ include triathlon events, beach flags, bush walking and climbing the harbour bridge. They could attend a cricket match but they tend to like golf so unfortunately they would probably enjoy this :(

AFL is an extremely popular sport here and I think they would loose their shit when they learn the rules of this game. No protective equipment is used other than mouthguards, that's it. That’s all you get. And jumping onto other players for leverage is encouraged. I would thoroughly enjoy the fights that would break out because of this.

Another task would be to use a map to make their way to a servo for a slurpee. The catch is that they will be required to pass through multiple alleyways. Also, the season is Spring, it’s swooping season mother fuckers. Let’s see how brave you are when birds chase you down the block. Personally I don’t think any of them would pass this test, maybe McDavid because the birds may not be able to detect a heartbeat.

Australian food would disgust them, I just know it. Things that they would need to try are a Bunnings sausage sanga, fairy bread, lamingtons, baked beans on toast, Milo and Vegemite. Because I’m me I would give them no butter with their Vegemite.

An after thought I had was money so I’m editing this to include it. Everything here is EXPENSIVE so they would need to learn how to budget. Upon doing research, Canadians would be fine but the Americans will be mad.

1000 CAD = 1019 AUD

1000 USD = 1297 AUD

Another after thought was the fact that they won’t be able to drive (or at least drive well) here. We drive on the left and not the right, same goes for walking paths too. I can sense a lot of them bumping into people.

Where I think players would live based on vibes alone:

Carter Hart and Vince Dunn: North Shore Beaches, NSW. Daddy’s money. Carter probably did Nippers whereas Vince was a skater boy.

Travis Konecny: Darwin, NT. Would 100% live there and enjoy it. He would try to conduct crocodile tours but gets assigned to feeding the baby crocs and doing shows for little kids.

Tyson Barrie: Perisher, NSW. One of the only ski resorts we have to offer, major friendly mountain man energy.

Nolan Patrick: Byron Bay, NSW. @antoineroussel enlightened me, steering away from my original thought of Katoomba, NSW. Byron Bay is a magnet for hippies and links rainforest to the ocean. Chris Hemsworth and his family also live there.

William Nylander: Perth, WA. I don’t know much about Perth other than they wouldn’t shut up about partying while the other states had to quarantine. For some reason, I also associate Perth with Tik Tok.

Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid: Melbourne CBD, VIC. These two would live in the same apartment building in the city, Connor one level above Sidney. It’s the most boring looking block of them all and Crosby would send in complaints to the landlord about McDavid pacing during the night.

Tyler Seguin: Surfers Paradise, QLD. Party central, not many people are actually from this area and he would be sure to tell absolutely everyone that he was. I also think he would get a Meter Maid tattoo, specifically on his leg. Has definitely slept on the beach before because he couldn’t find his way home.

Jamie Benn: Hobart, TAS. Tasmania is usually forgotten about. Another one with mountain man energy except he is more creepy than friendly.

Mitch Marner: Fitzroy, VIC. @antoineroussel is responsible for this one too. Hipster central, makes you question how the hell someone so young can have so much money. Would chug $45 wine and not blink an eye.

(honourable mentions include = Sammy Blais: Hobart, Tas. Once again no comment on Tasmania. TJ Oshie: Cairns, QLD. Would do reef tours. Haydn Fleury: Western Sydney, NSW. Haydn would 100% own a ute or a white holden commodore and you can’t tell me otherwise. Roman Josi: Adelaide, SA. Small town history teacher vibes.)

I have attached a handy map for those who may need it.

In conclusion, the NHL should send their players over here to teach them some manners and while they’re at it, management should bring themselves too. Nolan Patrick could pass as an Australian if he built up a tan. (So does Nylander in this picture but we won’t talk about that.) Come over anytime baby, I’m free.

Glossary

Servo - A service station, also known as a petrol or gas station. Example: 7/11

Theme park - An amusement park. Can be said in reference to both normal parks and water parks and usually means those in QLD. Example: Six Flags

Swooping season - August to October in Australia. When birds attack and chase humans and / or pets for getting close to their babies. Magpies are notoriously bad for this.

Bunnings sausage sanga - A cheap feed / meal found at the front of a hardware and gardening store called Bunnings. Made up of white bread, sausage, onion and your choice of sauce.

Fairy bread - White bread with margarine and topped with 100s and 1000s / sprinkles.

Meter Maids - Women who work along the beach dressed in gold bikinis. They top up parking meters to save tourists from getting fined and will often stop for photos.

Nippers - Surf lifesaving programs carried out for children between 5 and 14.

Ute - A pick up truck.

Eshay - A person who partakes in drug use, graffiti, listens to EDM and targets victims in groups. Below is the typical style of an eshay.

Tagging a few friends so this doesn’t completely flop but feel free to ignore if it isn't your thing. I won’t be offended lmao

@scheifefe @ifiwasshawnmendesidslapmyself @d00dlebob @bowenbyram @kempe @prettyboyroope @quintonsbyfield @travisgermy @pitoftrash @kspitehockey @ballsakic @canadianheaters @bricksatlandyswindow @powerblais @brokeninsidebutnobodyknows @jamiedrysdales

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crystal-moon-101 · 3 years

Photo

Managed to do another redesign with rewrite notes, this time my second favourite character in Ben 10, Azmuth The First Thinker. And just like Ben, he's canon self is such a mess that I wish to fix in my own way. The other Galvans in this picture are his family, with his father from the movie "Destroy All Aliens", his nephews mentioned by DJW, and their mother who is Azmuth's twin sister. So let me get into the notes and rewrite ideas of mine!

-Retaliator-

Yes, I am aware that this is most likely not his name, but I could not be bothered to make up my own at this point, and I also find it funny to have a Galvan dad called this, so I'm sticking with it. So Retaliator is the father of both Azmuth and Divi, a very humble and calm old galvan, who has seen a lot through his years, now retired and mostly just trying to keep the family together through small things.

Retaliator has the rare gene of having aqua/turquoise eyes, a recessive trait in galvans, similar to human with the red hair gene.

Retaliator looks younger than he should be, and that's because he is, in a way. You see, right before Azmuth vanished to start working on the watch, Retaliator fell ill to an disease with no known cure, and this caused the family to...kind of break down. A lot had happen up to this point (Things that will be noted throughout this), and none of them wanted things to end like this. So Azmuth did something he know he shouldn't have, as such a thing takes so much time and resource, and generally frowned upon, and ended up creating a new young clone body for his father's brains to be transferred too. By the time Retaliator woke up from surgery, his son was already gone, off in hiding. It this was event that really made Retaliator realize he may not have been the best father for a long time...

While he is retired now, Retaliator use to do work based around energy stuff.

Since he's family's back together, he likes to host game or movie nights, or even little dinners and get togethers.

He adores his grandsons, and loves to share stories from his past to them, and he's one of the few people they calm down around.

He will admit that he did...go a bit wild when he thought Azmuth died, fighting Ben in the Galvanic Mechamorph suit, but him and Ben have since made up, and the old galvan likes talking to the young lad often.

He has most defiantly embarrassed both of his kids by showing off baby photos of them.

He met his wife through work, like most galvans, with her being a much higher up worker. Surprisingly, despite their statuses, it was his wife who asked him out first, having found him very charming.

Retaliator can never thank Ben enough for convincing his son to come home, and despite their bickering, he enjoys seeing Azmuth's bond with Ben, as the two have a way of balancing each other out.

While he may be in a younger body, his mind is certainly still that of an old galvan, and can often act like his body is older than it really is due to the mental age of his brain.

-Azmuth-

Ahhhh, dear old Azmuth, how I love your character concept, and yet get so frustrated with your actual canon self...There is a lot I have changed in terms of his placement and behavior on the show, and while I can't note all of them down there, the major theme behind them is that he is not a complete jerk in them. Don't get me wrong, Azmuth would still have flaws and issues with his off-standing nature, but he would act in a way that feels more natural, showing his growth and change while mentoring Ben. He genuinely wants to help and is a good person, it's just...he still has a lot to work through. In terms of his slight redesign, I'll like to mention that if you look closely, his outfit is a mixture of his first original outside, crossed with his UAF outfit.

I did mention that I couldn't note all changes of him in series plots, since most boil down to be him being nicer and more realistic, but I will note one change because it's big enough to mention. For the Diagon/Forever Knight Arc, Azmuth did not create Ascalon, because I while I get he's smart and created things like the Omnitrix, I don't think he should be such a big source of dangerous artifacts in the series so often, especially ones that cause trouble. So instead, Ascalon was a weapon crafted in Ledgerdomain, to help fight Diagon who orientated there, and at the time had been trying to conquer earth, and Zenith leaving Azmuth happened because of miscommunication and issues between them instead.

That being said, Azmuth does get involved in the Ultimate Alien Diagon arc when Ben himself calls Azmuth over, needing his help knowing he can better understand Ascalon, and eventually entrusted Azmuth and the Galvans to keep it and the trapped Diagon safe.

Azmuth and his sister had a very rebellious phase as teenagers/young adults, this being the age that Azmuth said he was a lot like Ben, though admittedly, Azmuth was slightly more of an ass than Ben ever was. They were going through a tough time, and Azmuth reacted negatively too it all. Funnily enough, the one thing that seems to make him doo a 180 degrees in personality was his massive swooning crush over Zenith.

He won't ever admit out loud, but he does find Ben's trait of nicknaming his aliens kind of funny...

He shares a mentoring role towards Ben with Grandpa Max and Tetrax, with Max handling the more emotional and human side of Ben's problems, Tetrax handling the physical training and teachings, and Azmuth handling the more logical steps and hard truth Ben needs to hear. He's one of the few people to give Ben the smack of reality he needs from time to time.

That being said, Ben is also one of the few people able to handle Azmuth right back, and give him needed talkings to when the man is losing himself to a bad habit.

Mostly due to the fact that Tennysons seem to have a habit of making people very close to them like family, E.g with Ben seeing Kevin and Rook like brother figures at times, there seems to be subtle hints between Azmuth and Ben that there might be parent and child like moments between them, though both would deny it if brought up.

It doesn't help that Azmuth ends up taking it upon himself on making sure Ben is healthy and happy, based on scans from the Omnitrix he reads daily. Of course, he'll just say he doesn't want the boy he entrusted his watch with to die in a stupid way, but people close to either of them know that Azmuth really does care deep down.

He has said both "I'm too old for this" and "I'm too young for this" many times.

Azmuth has admitted that he's nervous around the Omnitrix, and doesn't like putting it on. He's not good at handling the idea of becoming something he's not...

The Malware arc for Azmuth was...a lot more complicated than canon. Azmuth really did try to fix Malware, but for some reason he couldn't, and it scared him that one, this might be the first problem he can't find a solution too, and second, he just came back from hiding and had been wanting to make changes in his life, so to fail and hurt someone already? He didn't know what to think. It didn't help when Malware started refusing his help and ended up endangering the lives of others, including galvans and Azmuth's own family. And despite it all, Azmuth kept trying over and over again to let him help Malware, but the villain always refused, until Azmuth eventually had to accept that he couldn't do anything. When Malware was finally killed, Azmuth went quiet for a good while, and needed time to recover from his mistake.

Due to some past issues, Azmuth mostly refers to his father by his real name, and only calls him dad or father during emotional or quiet moments.

Whenever they're hanging out, Ben likes to bring him and Azmuth cricket smoothies to drink together.

Despite how they seem to bicker often, Myaxx and him play off each other rather well, able to dry wit each other every day.

Azmuth and Albedo's relationship is also very complicated. Before Azmuth returned, Albedo was an outstanding Galvan and protégé, being praised every single day. This, unfortunately, made Albedo develop a prideful nature and his close minded views on the galaxy, as he rarely was ever put down or critiqued. His ego also got a bit of a boost when the great Azmuth took notice of him, and made him his assistant, and while he loved it at first, some issues started to arise when Azmuth wasn't like the other Galvans who praised Albedo to no end. That isn't to say Azmuth never complimented him and liked his work, but he was an honest man who knew no one was perfect, and especially wasn't going to worship someone, knowing what kind of ego that could make in someone. It doesn't help that Albedo just can't understand what Azmuth sees in Ben, and how the two bond, despite Ben's young careless nature, and being human. It ends up making Albedo want a lot more from Azmuth, the man he looks up too, and when he's denied that he eventually turns his back on the First Thinker. Azmuth can only hope that being able to turn into other aliens, and being stuck as human, will teach Albedo that Galvans, including himself, aren't what make the galaxy function.

Azmuth is typically one of the must unfazed people you'll ever meet.

Given most Galvans have an issue of seeing themselves as the top race, Azmuth is kind of fond of Blukic and Driba for being very open and helpful to outsiders, and was even the one to suggest them to join the Plumbers.

Zenith and Azmuth too meet up again eventually, and while they don't get back together, they do make amends.

Azmuth was fairly small for a Galvan for a long time, until he finally hit his growth spurt late into his teen years, something his sister use to tease him over.

Greymatter's DNA mostly comes from Azmuth, meaning Ben actually looks like a Azmuth when he was young, his family having made comments about Ben being his "Clone".

-Divi-

Here we have the twin sister of Azmuth, Divi. A dry wit, no nonsense, sarcastic and feisty single mother of her three chaotic sons. Unlike Azmuth's father and nephews, she was something I had to completely make up from the spot, since Azmuth was said to have nephews, that meant he had to have a sibling, so it was fun to create someone with an interesting dynamic with Azmuth. She is, after all, one of the few people to exhibit some of those petty family squabbles out of him. So I hope you enjoy her and her sons.

As mentioned before, Azmuth and her went through rebellious phases after some downfall in their family life, with Divi jumping around jobs and never settling for one, and even dating another Galvan that neither Azmuth or Retaliator approved off. When Azmuth first left Galvan Prime to go into hiding, Divi and her boyfriend had still been dating. However, when he finally came home, he found the boyfriend to be gone, and Divi now a single mother to three sons. Azmuth never got a clear story what happened to the boyfriend, but he knows that the break up was nasty, and that the boyfriend isn't on Galvan Prime anymore.

Sometime after Divi had her children, she eventually settled for a job in the nursery/incubation centre on Galvan Prime, looking after eggs and newly hatched tadpoles before they go home with their parents.

Divi is quite a blunt and honest woman, who has no time for dragging things on, and while she may sound harsh, she ends up just wanting the best for people. In fact her open nature of speech is how she gets people to listen and see reason.

Her and Azmuth had a...bit of a dysfunctional relationship growing up. Azmuth was actually a slow learning when he was young, and Divi had a habit of picking on him. They did eventually mallow out, until tragedy struck their family and they entered their rebel phases, and the bickering and arguing come from both sides. They have made up since Azmuth returned, but the two have their squabbles here and there, but they're mostly just playful banter or family habits.

Her and Myaxx get along quite well, and the two like hanging out with each other.

She's also fond of Ben since meeting him, and the two like chatting whenever he plays with her sons, he's even babysat for her a few times.

She has no interest in dating again anytime soon, and is proud to be a single mother.

She's the one who points out Azmuth and Ben's family like roles to each other often, mostly due to the fact that she understands what a paternal feeling is like, and because she's blunt about it.

She got her wisdom feet first out of her and Azmuth growing up.

While Azmuth was off in hiding, Divi reconnected with his father when looking after to him after surgery. So, unlike Azmuth, she mostly just calls him father and dad.

-Trapez, Cieven & Aegls-

The three mischievous nephews, sons and grandsons of the family. Left to right, Trapez, Cieven & Aegls, who are the triplets of Divi. The three are like glue, and are often playing or up to little tricks, creating chaos around Galvan Prime. While they mostly look the same and are all tricksters, they do have personality differences. Trapez is the best when it comes to emotions and the phycology behind it, something most Galvans struggle with, and can come across as the kindest of the three. Cieven has a lot of traits from Divi and Azmuth, being fairly intelligent and wanting to be a lot like his uncle someday, though does have some of their sarcastic nature as well. Aegls is the most energetic of the three, hype up often and quick with crafting and thinking of ideas. When you combine all three together, you get a force of endless chaos.

Their mother has been honest to them about who their father is, and why he isn't around, but the three have grown up fine without him, and will forever be grateful for the work their mother put into caring for them.

They were born while Azmuth was away, and so have been building up hype about their missing uncle for most of their lives, enough so that when Azmuth did come back, they all tackled hugged him while he was still understanding the idea that he was now in fact an uncle.

They love Ben and the Omnitrix, roping Ben into some of their pranks and shenanigans, and while Ben mostly tries to stare them into the right direction, he can't help himself half the time and joins in on the chaos, much to Azmuth and Divi's dismay.

They do become a part of my Ben 10 Next Gen Series, given Galvans take forever to age, and will finally be young tweens when the Next Gen takes place.

The three each have different dream jobs for the future. Trapez wants to be a psychiatrist or doctor, Cieven wants to be an inventor, and Aegls was to deal with energy based matters like his grandfather once did.

Never give these kids sugar or coffee, it will end badly.

The three...had a bad encounter with Malware during his rampage, and for a while were scared around Galvanic Mechamorphs...They get over it eventually, but Malware does haunt them for a long while.

They once picked up some colourful language from Azmuth and Myaxx when overhearing them once. You can imagine how Divi took that.

-The First Thinker Family-

The traumatic event that struck the family was in fact the death of Azmuth and Divi's mother, who was killed by someone who was after Galvan Tech. The family fell apart after that, with Retaliator falling into a deep depression and being distant from his kids, and Azmuth and Divi going wild in their teen/young adult years to distract themselves from the grief. They've all come together now and have been taking the proper sets to honor her memory, and become a family again.

While no one has outright said it, Ben has kind of become part of this little family in a few ways, and after a while Azmuth stops being survived when the boy shows up for family dinners or game nights.

They all live on Galvan Prime, though Retaliator is known to take trips here and there around the galaxy, wanting to see more of it during his retirement.

On the outside, many Galvans treat the family as there wise people, who have sage advice. And while that isn't wrong, once you get to know them they're a very chaotic family...

#Hope you enjoy what I've done with Azmuth's character and his family #I just really want to get across how I think he should have gone #Ben 10 #ben 10 omniverse #ben 10 ultimate alien #ben 10 alien force #Azmuth #Ben 10 Azmuth #Ben 10 OCs #Ben 10 Destroy All Aliens #My art #Ben 10 Rewrite #ben 10 redesign

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l4verq · 3 years

Text

remnants (3) | r.d

ransom drysdale x reader

in which you have to protect ransom drysdale because he has the same face as steve rogers, your ex who’s gone back to peggy.

warnings : mentions of panic attacks

lmk if you wanna be added to the taglist 💗

ʀᴇᴍɴᴀɴᴛꜱ

*not my gif*

“rock, paper, scissors, shoot!”

your eyes frantically looks around the outstretched hands, each holding up a rock.

bucky yells a cry of victory while you groan, glaring at your hands holding up ‘scissors’.

ransom rolls his eyes, “you guys hate me that bad?”

upon arriving to the hydra base after a long, long road trip, ransom grumbling about the music, sam screaming about how marvin gaye remains superior, you just couldn’t seem to catch a break.

because of course, you’d lose in this stupid game of rock, paper and scissors and of course, be forced to stay back with ransom in the car while sam and bucky scoped out the base for “any traps”.

“alright, we’ll be back in a few,” sam puts on his goggles, “but if we’re not-.”

“then we run.” ransom interrupts, pointing at you and him.

you have to bite back a smile seeing sam’s unamused face.

“then we go see if anything’s wrong.” you correct ransom, giving him a look.

“actually, no. he’s right, just run.” bucky ponders over it.

ransom scoffs under his breath and looks at you.

you’re smiling sof-

wait, were you actually smiling? at what that shaggy dude just said or more precisely, repeated?

“we’re obviously not running. it was a joke.” ransom clarifies, glancing over at bucky.

bucky’s vibranium arm locks in place, returning ransom’s stare, air getting unnecessarily tense.

they just look dumb, atleast to you.

sam claps his hand, “ok, so no one’s running. let’s go.”

he deploys red wing, the scarlet gadget humming off into the sky.

bucky gives you a nod, trailing behind sam, headed towards the entry door.

an awkward silence ensues, crickets violently chirping in the moonlit night.

“how’s your hand?” ransom clears his throat, adjusting his stance.

he’d been meaning to ask since yesterday but he just.. couldn’t.

“been better.” you flare your sore hands in front of you, tilting your head.

even though there weren’t any external wounds, you knew all of the damage was inside, lurking behind layers of flesh.

“so, you really did break your hands to get out of the chains?” he questions, eyebrow quirked.

“if you put it like that, i sound crazy.” you cross your arms, leaning against the car next to him.

he chuckles, a loud - almost obnoxious - sound that startles you a little.

steve never laughed like that, even when he did, it always felt like he was holding back, had his guard up.

“y/n, do you copy?” sam’s voice crackles in your ear, courtesy of the ear comm.

ransom springs to his feet, hand on his ear.

he’d asked for an ear comm as well to which everyone respectfully declined.

but after two hours of whines and grumbles about why he wants one, bucky practically flung that flesh coloured, pea sized gadget at him.

“we’re here.” he barks a little too loud.

“yea, we can hear you.” bucky mutters, annoyance laced in every word.

“you can speak normally.” you inform ransom, who flashes a thumbs up with a “got it.”

“there doesn’t seem to be mu-.”

static takes over, cutting sam off, you and ransom both flinching at the sudden blare in your ears.

you immediately cock your gun, reach into the car to pull out a flashlight and hand it to ransom.

“stay behind me.” you order, “we’re going through the back.”

“is there even one?”

“let’s find out.” you grab a flashlight as well.

you’re light on your feet, with careful, calculated steps.

ransom.. you couldn’t exactly blame him, he’s just a normal guy.

a normal guy who’s made it his goal to step on every single fallen leaf, producing this god awful crunching sound in the dead of the night.

“a little quieter?”

he starts tip-toeing, stumbling around.

you walk round the building, well what’s left of it.

it’s in bad shape, the entire building, hanging on by decaying bricks covered in mold.

it looks like it might’ve been around 3-4 stories high but it’s impossible to know now.

“there it is.” you whisper, flashlight pointed towards a door labelled EXIT.

on closer inspection, the knob is broken, only a hole where it used to be.

the hinges creak as you push the door open with ease, uncertain how the door didn’t fall right off because it was barely holding on.

gun in hand, flashlight on top, left foot forward, supporting your dominant one, just like you’ve been trained.

“this is how people die in movies.” ransom whispers, peeking inside the dark room.

you glare back at him, shushing him.

he clamps his forefinger and thumb together, dragging it along his lips, pretends to lock it and hands you the key.

“just search for a switch.” you mutter, looking straight infront again.

you aim your flashlight around, taking small steps inside.

clang.

you damn near jump out of your skin, finger already curled around the trigger, ready to pull when you whip around.

“sorry.” ransom mumbles, hands trailing around the wall, looking for a switch.

“i nearly shot you!” you whisper yell, lowering your gun.

the light flickers on, your eyes nearly blinded by it.

you look around, vision slowly adapting to the lit up room.

it’s a workstation with sewing machines?

the red, white and blue bits of cloth catch your eyes as you inch neare-

thud.

“y/n!” ransom shouts, but it’s distant.

too distant.

“yea, i’m here! i fell.,” you groan in pain, “somewhere. be car-.”

thud.

“fucking hell.” ransom curses, rubbing his shoulder, writhing in pain on the ground.

you’d be screaming at his stupid ass if only you weren’t doing the same, all feelings in your left leg lost.

“didn’t you see me fall?” you grit your teeth, clutching your leg.

he moans, slowly rolling over to his face.

“great! we’re both stuck here.”

you crane your neck to look up at the crack of light at the top, maybe a good four stories from where you’re sitting?

it was a miracle neither of you plunged to your death.

your hands fumble around the cold ground, feeling for your gun when you hear it.

a low, gentle whirring but it’s definitely not red wing this time.

you frantically scramble to your feet, left leg screaming in anguish even at the slightest pressure.

your hands reach out and this time they land on something hard.

something cold, much like the ground itself with ridged lines and creases.

it’s the wall.

but you could’ve sworn it wasn’t there before...

“the walls, they’re caving in.” you breathe out, instinctively backing away.

the familiar dread building up in your heart seemed to dull whatever pain resided in your leg.

“hey! get up.” you hop towards him but he brushes you off with a wave of his hand, still squirming in pain.

the whirring stops abruptly, along with the walls.

“bucky? sam? can you hear me?!” you yell into the ear comm, only to hear distorted sounds.

your eyes are adjusted enough to see the space between the two walls has decreased significantly.

ransom pushes his body off the ground with his shaky arms, slowly getting on his feet.

“am i crazy or did the wall move?” he breathes out, touching it.

“yea,” you exhale, closing your eyes shut, “yea, it did.”

“y/n!”

your ears perk up at the familiar voice.

“down here!” you yell, not sure if your voice can even be heard from where you are.

then like music to your ears, a familiar scarlet buzzes towards you two.

“sam!” you wave your hands at red wing hovering over you two.

his voice crackles “we’re trying to shut the whole place down, we’ll get you out.”

“the walls-.”

the whirring starts again as if reminded about what it needs to do.

red wing bumps against the contracting walls, falling into a heap of metal next to your feet.

you limp closer and closer to ransom, the wall centimetres away from your back, both of you realising the only way to have more space.

he pulls you into his chest, his good shoulder around you.

tears well up at your eyes, the crippling feeling sneaking in again.

these endurance tests are meant to help you get over your fears and phobias.

steve’d lied.

the endurance tests didn’t work.

because you were struggling to breathe, air hitched in your throat.

“it stopped, the walls.” ransom can barely move his body around, back hitting a hard boundary whenever he tries to.

balled up fists hanging desperately onto his clothes, you’re sobbing now, a hysterical mess.

the air only seemed to thin out more and more, your lungs straining for oxygen.

he watches in horror, the tiny space filled with your desperate gasps and whimpers.

you’re having a panic atta-

think, ransom.

what calms you down?

“you know, sometimes i look up at the stars at night when i can’t sleep.” he blubbers out, heart racing.

anything to just get you to stop trembling like that.

“i just lay in my bed - i have this window on my ceiling - and i look up at it.”

he’s unsure as he continues.

“reminds me of the glow in the dark stickers i had back in fourth grade.”

and of his fleeting childhood.

“did you have those? the $1 a pack with all the crazy fonts?” he whispers in your ear, tapping your back for an answer.

you manage a small nod, biting down your quivering lip.

who didn’t have those ugly stickers that seemed to fall off the very day you put them up.

“take a deep breath, can you do that for me?” he cooes, wincing when he brings his other shoulder around you.

he’s pretty sure it’s broken.

“c'mon, i’ll do it with you,” he pats your back, signalling you to inhale.

so you do.

you focus on the pace of his chest rising up and down steadily, willing yourself to do the same.

it was kind of working? whatever he was doing.

with those arms around you, whispers of sweet nothings in your ears, mediating your breathing.

until the whirring started again.

a/n : ohshsjsnssjsteysys pt 3 finally uppp :)))

tags : @readermia @inmate-marmalade @randomsevans @xoxabs88xox @thebadassbitchqueen @mypalbuck @natrushman3000 @townwitchbitch

#ransom drysdale #ransom x y/n #ransom x you #ransom x reader #ransom thrombey #ransom thrombey x reader #knives out #mcu #sam wilson #bucky barnes #ransom fanfiction #ransom thrombey imagine #remnants

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luxaofhesperides · 3 years

Text

these lingering remains

@tucweek DAY TWO: SACRIFICE

also on ao3

. . .

He still dreams about falling. The nightmares linger, even now, years after everything. He wakes up most nights with his heart in his throat, free-falling to his death and no one is there to grab his hand. It’s terrible; it’s the only thing he has left of Ares.

The feeling of falling, the feeling of being caught, of trusting his bond to be there. The feeling of holding Ares’ claw in his hand, first to save him, then to die with him.

Gregor is used to living off of four hours of sleep a night. It’s not difficult when he doesn’t go to school; his many, many scars would bring up too many questions, so his parents homeschool him while Lizzie and Boots live normal lives.

Sometimes he wishes he could talk about it-- the Underland, a taboo topic in the household. But no one would really understand him if he said he wants to go back. The Underland is the place that took their father away, held him captive and tortured by gnawers, the place that brought a plague to his mother, the place that drew his anxious sister into a war, the place that nearly killed Boots time and time again.

It’s the place that destroyed him in so many ways; body, mind, and soul.

It’s the place that killed his bond.

But it’s also the place that gave him the people who changed his life: Luxa, Hazard, Vikus, Mareth. Even Ripred, as horrible as he is.

Gregor misses them everyday, feels their absence like a wound; always present, always hurting.

He knows no one else will understand his connection to the Underland, so he keeps quiet, keeps waking up shaking, and doesn’t say a thing.

Virginia is never quiet in the summer. Cicadas cry every second of the day, birds chirp endlessly while the sun is up, and crickets fill the night air with sound. After spending most of his life in New York City, living on a farm in a small town feels like living in another world. Everything is different: the people, the sights, even the air itself moves differently.

Gregor tries his best not to leave the house. For a few months, his mother tries to get him to go to town with her to help with shopping, but pulling up his sleeve to show her his multitude of scars quickly put a stop to that. His body is a map of his time in the Underland, and invites too many questions. His mother, refusing to acknowledge the Underland, always turns away from his scars and keeps quiet.

His father spends some nights with him, when nightmares wake them both. There’s no saxophone to play anymore, not with his father’s damaged hands, but they sit together outside to look at the stars. Looking up helps distract them from their time below ground.

Gregor wonders what Luxa would say, if she saw the stars.

Lizzie remembers too much; her anxiety keeps the memories well kept in her mind. She freezes when she hears anything resembling rats running, keeps to open spaces, doesn’t solve code breakers anymore. She’s the only one who talks about the Underland with him. She speaks of the people, of Ripred, of baby nibblers. She asks about Ares and Luxa and Vikus, and she doesn’t look away from his scars.

There’s still much he refuses to tell her; how ready he was to die when the Bane’s claws ripped into Ares, how he never thought he’d survive this long. He doesn’t speak of the war, or any other time he’s nearly died. Some things are better left unsaid.

And Boots. Boots was so young, could only properly say his name after everything was over. Sometimes she sings the bathing song, or babbles something in the crawler’s language. Sometimes she asks about fliers, or asks to see Hazard. Each time, everyone freezes, unsure of what to tell her.

His mother decides to let Boots live a normal life and instructs everyone to tell her it was a game she made up. The Underland isn’t real, it was just her imagination.

And Gregor, carrying the burden of loving a land he can’t return to, obeys.

“Gregor, didn’t we see these before?” Boots asks, holding up a book about frogs in the Amazon. Poisonous frogs, all brightly colored. Gregor stares at the illustrations, remembering the desperate search for Starshade and the fear that consumed him when he saw Boots sitting amidst a swarm of frogs.

He swallows, trying to speak around the sudden dryness of his throat. “See them where?”

“Before we moved here! We saw them, right?”

“Yeah, once. At the zoo. They were having an exhibit about the Amazon rainforest.”

Boots frowns, squinting down at the page as if she’s trying to find a reason to say he’s wrong. But after five years, Boots doesn’t remember much about the Underland at all. Lying is easy, when the truth can’t be remembered.

Please don’t keep asking, Gregor pleads internally. There’s not much else he can say. It’s lucky enough that Boots never asks about his scars; to her, he’s always had them. Why wouldn’t he have scars?

“What about bats?” Boots asks next, “Did we see bats too?”

Gregor’s breath catches in his throat, choking him for a moment. If she remembered Ares… If she remembered any of them....

Lizzie walks into the living room, immediately catching sight of them. He doesn’t know what he looks like, but it must be bad enough for Lizzie to immediately come over and get Boots’ attention away from him.

“What’s that?” she peers at the book Boots is holding.

“A book about frogs!” Boots holds it up for Lizzie to take, quickly forgetting her question. “We saw them at the zoo before we moved!”

Lizzie glances at him, and Gregor nods. “I didn’t go to the zoo with you that day. Do you remember a lot about the frogs?”

“No! I just remember them jumping.”

“Frogs do tend to jump.”

“What about bats? Do bats in zoos jump?” Lizzie looks at Gregor again, eyes wide, as Boots asks turns her interrogation onto Lizzie.

“No, bats fly. Gregor, mom wanted you to help her in the kitchen.”

Taking the exit gratefully, Gregor quickly makes his escape, leaving Lizzie to field Boots’ curiosity. He feels almost sick from the conversation; Boots was always with him in the Underland, she’s the only one who traveled through the Underland with him, and she barely remembers any of it. Instead of the jungle, or Regalia, or the Waterway, it’s a zoo, an amusement park, a river that she thinks she went to.

He’s the only remnant of the Underland left now. No one else in his family experienced it as he did, as a part of Regalia instead of an unlucky Overlander who got caught by gnawers.

“Mom,” he whispers when he enters the kitchen, and his mother immediately drops the vegetables she was cutting to guide him to the kitchen table and sit him down.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, a hand brushing over his forehead.

“Boots,” he says, “She remembered the frogs we saw in the jungle. Down there. I told her we went to a zoo and saw them. But she remembered the frogs and… the bats.”

His mother presses her hands down against he shoulders, grounding him. “It’s for the best. She should live a normal life. She’s the only one who can. I know it’s hard for you, but there’s nothing else we can do.”

He knows she’s right. If Boots remembered too much, too clearly, she’d tell all her classmates and teachers about it. It would invite questions they can’t answers, bring back painful memories that they’re all trying so hard to move past. But Gregor can’t forget or move on; the Underland changed him too much, engraved itself into his body over and over again. He will never live a normal life, not after being the subject of a prophecy and turned into a child warrior, not after nearly losing both his parents and having to shoulder the responsibility of keeping his family alive when he was just an 12 year old kid who wanted to look after his baby sister.

But she’s right; Boots is young enough that the Underland is like a long dream to her. She can live a life without it. She’s the only one who can.

He remembers how happy Hazard was to play with someone closer to his age, someone who loved languages and other creatures like he did.

He bites his tongue, and keeps lying.

The Underland isn’t real, it was just a game. All the animals we saw were from the zoo. Be good, Boots, and go play with your friends. Stay away from grates and manholes. Be good, Boots, be normal.

Gregor wakes up shaking, his hand achingly empty. The phantom feeling of Ares’ claw remains. In the morning, he lies to Boots and says he was up late reading and that’s why he’s so tired.

He stays home and misses the comforting dark of the Underland. He clicks his tongue in a dark bathroom, and imagines that he’s back down there and just outside the hall, Luxa waits for him. His clicks his tongue, and all that comes back is the faint outline of a mirror which only holds his reflection.

No one speaks of the Underland.

They move on, and leave him behind.

#tuc week #the underland chronicles #underland chronicles fandom week #tuc #fic #my writing #i have more to say abt this in the notes on ao3 (hint hint)

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lizbotw · 4 years

Text

SEVEN MINUTES IN HELL: BAKUGOU’S ROUTE - DIADEM

YOU’VE CHOSEN A WINDING PATH: TURN BACK NOW (MASTERLIST)

pairing: bakugou x reader

summary: An attempt to blow off steam is your saving grace in the forest.

a/n: second route of my halloween collab with our favorite explosive boy and the prompt “firework’s lightshow” ♡ also, the title is a specific type of firework in case you were wondering! i think they might be my favorite kind actually lmao, they’re super pretty if you look at the differences between the different fireworks patterns!

warning: very mildly spicy in one part

word count: 3.9k

You could practically feel the impatience rolling off of him in waves from next to you. Outwardly, he was the picture of calm—or at least as calm as you could seem with your arms folded across your chest and your face set in a scowl. He was thinking and you could tell because his eyes weren’t fully focused on the spot on the floor he was supposedly glaring at.

It was hard to be sure in the dim light, but you knew that look anywhere.

It was clear he wanted to do something. The obvious choice when you had been trying to figure out how to get out of here had been to have him either go blasting off above the trees to find the way back to U.A.—if it was even close enough to see—or to set off a signal in hopes of someone catching sight of it. Then, of course, there was the issue of visibility that had put a halt in all plans of escape.

Yet there was still that small voice of reason within everyone’s head though that perhaps you were being overly cautious—Bakugou could still technically do it. You were hero course students, among the best of the best, a little rain and lack of sunlight shouldn’t stop you.

While Todoroki was good for the survival aspect, especially when it came to staying warm during the frigid night, Bakugou seemed like the key to the way out. It felt like everyone was expecting him to do something, just volunteer already—or, at least, you were pretty sure that’s what he felt like. The truth was, no one was expecting anything from him. The plan had been set to simply try to find a way out in the morning. Things would be better then and you knew all of you would have reacted the same way he did and held back a little from immediately rushing out to look for help in conditions like this.

Plus, you were pretty sure they felt it too. A weird tugging in your bones—you don’t know how but you just knew it had something to do with the forest not mixing well with your quirks. You could feel it.

You knew Todoroki and Iida had amazing stamina, honing their quirks from a young age in top hero families, but it seemed that even they had to take more frequent breaks than usual when they had been using their powers earlier. Kaminari’s attempt at sending out a signal had fizzled out and he was reluctant to try charging your phones, stopping every so often to take a deep breath.

All of them must’ve felt it, even if no one said anything. It was like the forest was trying to keep you here.

The feeling was so strong that it was the only thing that could keep someone like Bakugou from pushing past the cautious side of things and actually saying fuck it, he was going to do whatever he wanted. He was still tense though, feeling like he should do something (you could tell). He was the best and he was going to be your way out of here in his mind.

You noticed the way his fingers were digging into his forearms where they gripped and you felt terrible all over again.

You tentatively reached over, about to lay a hand on his arm. “Hey-”

“(Y/N)! Truth or dare?” Kaminari’s voice sliced through the air and you stiffened, quickly drawing your hand back and pushing it into your lap. You could feel the other’s eyes on you even though you were staring straight ahead at Kaminari, chest hot at the sudden choice to begin the game with you.

“Um…”

Bakugou shifted next to you, not really readjusting his position, but seeming like he just wanted to move. “This is stupid…”

“Yeah, you said that before, Bakugou. Lighten up a little, will you?” Kaminari was grinning, tone teasing, and it seemed that it was only you that had noticed Bakgou’s ansty nature. Maybe staying in a random cabin wasn’t the best idea. You started to feel a little trapped too and the onsets of a possible headache pounded in your skull. This all felt weird.

“How the fuck can I lighten up when we don’t know even know when we’ll get out of here?” You expected him to yell it, emotional and scoffing at how stupid the rest of you were being to be fine with sitting around—but that was the opposite of what happened. In fact, you would’ve preferred that to the alternative. Instead, his voice was flat, his brows still furrowed as his eyes seemed to take a special interest in tracing over the ridges in the floor. He refused to look at anyone and he seemed strained.

“Bakugou, come on, man. We’ll get out of this fine. Just give it a few more hours.” You weren’t sure if Kaminari was getting what Bakugou was feeling the same way you did, but he did seem to be choosing his words a little more carefully. That is until— “It’s almost like you want to get dared.” The light laugh that followed had your heart clenching because Kaminari why.

Bakugou finally looked up, staring Kaminari dead on. “Fine. I’ll play.”

That almost halted his laughter, turning it uneasy. “It’s not really your turn yet-”

“I said I’ll play.”

Kaminari seemed unsure now.

You bumped your arm with Bakugou’s and whispered, out of the side of your mouth, “Calm down.” He grunted in reply but made no other indication he was going to listen to you.

It seemed like Kaminari, after a brief second of back and forth with himself, had mustered up the courage to actually agree with Bakugou’s request. “Truth or dare?”

“Dare.”

No one said anything for a moment and the crackling of the fire was the only noise.

Then, Kaminari released the tense breath you had all been holding. “I don’t know what’s with you, but you’re giving me a weird look—and not the standard I’m-going-to-kill-you one either.” The others were silent, although it looked like Midoriya wanted to say something with how he was leaning slightly forward, biting at his lip like he was forcing the words back down. Kamianri continued, trying to lighten the strange mood that had settled over all of you, “I dare you to chill out. Seriously, we’re going to be fine. Ha, didn’t know you were that worried about me, dude.”

The cheeky comment was apparently the wrong thing to say because before you knew it, Bakugou had risen to his feet beside you. “Okay.” And then he made for the door, opening and slamming it shut behind him. Everyone was left blinking at where he had just stood.

It happened so fast you weren’t sure if it had been real, although the sudden coldness at your side gave you the answer to that question.

“Are we still going to play?” Jirou broke the silence. No one was sure if they should go after him or give him a moment to clear his head.

“Um…,” Kaminari was dumbfounded for a moment as his eyes kept going back and forth between the spot where Bakugou had sat and the door he had just left through, “Yeah… sure… who wants to go next?”

“It was (Y/N)’s turn,” Jirou supplied helpfully, leaning back to rest on her hand. Were they just trying to pretend that nothing had happened? Being here sure was starting to make everyone act different.

“Right. (Y/N)-”

You cut him off. “I dare myself to go check up on him. Be right back.” You scrambled to your feet and within a few heavy steps you were pushing open the door and stepping out into the cool night air, surely leaving the group to lament the loss of yet another player.

You hugged your arms around you as the door swung shut and the glow of the fire was left long behind you—if you thought it had been bad inside, out here was freezing. “Bakugou?” He was nowhere in sight, although you knew he couldn’t have gotten far.

You took a quick glance around the edges of the cabin, covered in moss from years of disuse (you would have expected a lot more though if this had been truly been abandoned… you pushed the thought out of your mind), looking to see if he’d turned a corner. Unlikely. There was no way he wanted to be near here right now.

Then that leaves… your gaze slowly shifted to it. The forest. Of course he would.

You toyed with the idea in your mind for a bit, wondering if you should just call it quits and head back inside.

...fine, you would just briefly check and if you couldn’t find him, you’ll turn back right away to avoid getting lost. He probably had some grand secret hiding place if he wasn’t there anyway. Without thinking, you walked forward and beyond the trees, not seeing any point in hesitating.

Cautious to watch your step, you began to pick your way through the area, each hum of nature, hoot of a faroff owl, and chirp of a cricket making your heart race. It didn’t take long for you to see a flash of movement up ahead—you had been right, he’d come to the riskiest place to be alone right now.

Your steps picked up in speed as you rushed after him, closing the distance easily. “Where the hell are you going?” you hissed, “There’s a reason we’re all staying inside.”

He didn’t answer, but you hurried to catch up and fell into pace next to him, trying to search for any signs of his thoughts on his face. The moonlight coming through the branches wasn’t much help and everything was shrouded in shadows.

“Bakugou.” No answer. “Bakugou.”

“Where does it look like I’m going?”

You didn’t expect the sudden response and faltered momentarily in your steps before you quickly recovered. “What?”

“Where does it look like I’m going?”

“I don’t know! Maybe somewhere you shouldn’t be?”

“I’m getting us out of here.”

“Yeah, in the morning.”

“No, now.”

“Bakugou, you’re impossible.”

“You’re one to talk.”

This time you actually stopped walking and although he continued for a few more steps, he eventually stopped as well, a few paces in front and his back to you.

“What do you mean?” Your voice sounded small.

“What? You’re the same way when we’re at U.A.”

“I don’t-”

“The sports festival?”

“Well-”

“How many times did I have to stop you before you hurt yourself?”

You bit your tongue when he turned to face you now. You could say the same about what you did for him.

The moonlight barely reached this part of the forest, although you knew what he probably looked like right now—you knew his facial expressions, his hard stares, the way he twisted his mouth for brief flashes when he tried to hold in emotions.

Bakugou rubbed at the back of his neck before he came back to stand next to you wordlessly, passing through a patch of moonlight before pausing in the darkness with you. You were about to say something when he reached a hand up to flick at your shoulder.

“Wha-”

“Leaf.”

Right. You were in a forest. “Thanks.”

“Mhm.”

You stared at each other for a while and suddenly it felt like all the fall layers you had on were too much—who was messing with the thermostat in this forest? Not necessarily because of him (although, maybe he was a factor... who knows?), just… in general. You wanted to go home.

“You still got first.” The dark shadows made it difficult to see his face and you shifted to get a better look at him, accidentally bumping into the tree behind you. You reached a hand behind you to steady yourself against the trunk. “At the sports festival I mean,” you quickly added for clarification, “even though you kept trying to babysit me.”

“I did.”

There was the unspoken agreement to drop the matter—you knew he was still bitter over what felt like a false win to him.

“I’ll get first now too,” he said quietly and you knew what he meant. He was still set on finding the way out. Your hand darted out automatically, grabbing his arm before he could try to go off on his own again.

He tried to shake off your hold but when you held fast, he gave up relatively quickly, twisting his wrist around to grip your arm as well. It was mutual now. Always something equal between you two.

“Why the fuck do you keep stopping me? Don’t you want to get out of here?”

“Not if it means we get lost in the middle of the night.”

“Don’t you have your phone?”

You tapped against your pocket to feel if the device was there. Empty—you’d left it with Kaminari to charge. Not that there was any reception out here anyway. “No. Do you have yours?”

“No. I was going to say we could use the flashlight and then it wouldn’t be as bad.”

You fully leaned back against the trunk of the tree now, not caring if it ruined your jacket, your legs tired from standing up already. You were still holding onto each other’s arms and his grip was starting to hurt a little bit. Bastard. You tightened yours to make it even again. “You could just use your quirk, you know.”

You felt his fingers flex against your arm at the idea and even with the minimal light you could tell he was pressing his lips into a thin line. “You feel it too, don’t you?”

Of course you knew what he meant—the weird quirk suppressing feeling. “Yeah.”

Bakugou grumbled, no longer studying your face, but now observing his free hand, as if that would reveal some sort of secret. “I can’t do anything like this. For fuck’s sake, I fucking hate it-” In response to his anger, a few sparks flared up his palm, although you could see what he meant—they were dull, as though something was actively putting them out.

In the brief light, you could see his eyes dart to you as if he wanted to make the most of the illumination as well and take in what you looked like. You could see where the cold had nipped at his skin, and the way his expression was slightly less tense now that it was just the two of you and—

And then it was dark again and you were all but left with only his silhouette. It felt darker now that you had experienced that brief taste of light and you considered asking him to do it again.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Bakuogu suddenly asked and you were caught off guard.

“Like what? You can’t even see me.”

“I saw you just now though. You’re making that face.”

“What face?”

“That face you’re always making at me during times like this and-” He cut himself off and shook his head, knowing this was going nowhere, although you had a feeling you knew what he meant. He had been giving you the same look as well—one that was indescribable. “Nevermind.” He was back to looking at his hand, flexing his fingers—the dark shapes twisted in front of you as you watched him, not able to make out the details of the lines on his fingers or the area where his sleeve met his wrist.

“What’s wrong?” You knew he was thinking about earlier when all seven of you had tried to come up with a plan to find a way out, but you still felt the need to ask.

“I would’ve done something—”

“I know you would’ve.”

You felt his harsh glare on you even if you couldn’t see it. “Will you let me finish a sentence for once, for fuck’s sake?”

You held up your hand in surrender, smiling—even if he couldn’t see you—at how easy it was to rile him up. He studied your darkened form as if making sure you were truly going to be quiet before he continued.

“I was going to do something—I would’ve—but my hands were feeling weird and I knew I couldn’t make a proper explosion.”

You nodded—you felt the same way with your quirk—and then remembered he couldn’t really see you and stopped.

“I didn’t want to be in the middle of doing whatever and suddenly my power supply cuts out. Don’t need anyone seeing that shit.”

“Bakugou, it’s fine.”

“It’s not because I know you wanted to catch the rerun of that dumb old Halloween movie on T.V. tonight.”

“Do you mean-”

“I don’t care about the name so don’t tell me.”

Typical, Bakugou. The thought had you grinning as you pulled on his arm to tug him closer to you because you were suddenly feeling cold again. He was fluid with your movement as he stepped closer like you wanted. “I didn’t think you’d remember.”

You just knew he was rolling his eyes. “Of course I remember. You wouldn’t shut up about it for the past week.”

“Yeah, but still. That’s cute.”

“That’s what?”

“Cute.”

He didn’t immediately shut it down and after mulling it over, seemed to accept the term. His head dropped down to rest on your shoulder now and you let him, supporting the pressing weight as you readjusted yourself against the tree trunk.

“I guess,” he breathed out.

“You’re always cute.”

“Okay, I fucking get it, can you shut up now?” You felt his scowl against the part just below your shoulder where his mouth was almost brushing against due to the angle.

“Okay, okay, but get off. You’re tickling me.” You were laughing at the feeling of him talking against your shoulder now and lifted it up to your ear as you tried to pull away. He relented, straightening up a little, but not moving completely away yet, and as you slid back into place, comfortable against the trunk, you realized he was but a hair’s breadth away. There was a small bit of moonlight that came in from between the branches of the tree and positioned like this he fell right into its path. Only half of his face was lit up, but it was enough to see the crimson iries that bored into your own.

“I’ll watch it with you when we get back,” he whispered.

“The movie?”

“Yeah. I checked in case we didn’t have time to watch it today—didn’t fucking think we’d be bsuy doing this though—and they’re showing it again tomorrow. Halloween night.”

“That sounds good.” You breathed in. “Make me popcorn?”

“You fucking bet.”

Neither of you could think of anything to say, but you lean forward to playfully bump your nose against his. His eyes closed at the action and there was an irregular thumping in your heart when he started to tilt his head. Steeling yourself, you let your eyes fall shut too, anticipating the warmth.

That is, until a loud crackle rang out through the forest and you harshly pulled back from each other in surprise, startled. You hit your head against the trunk behind you and brought up a hand to run at the sore spot. Bakugou had released your arm in his haste and you could still feel the imprint of his bruising grip (your own grip had been loosened on his arm when you’d gotten distracted by the proximity before, so when he pulled away you easily let go).

“What was that?” Your voice was hoarse and you cleared your throat, eyes darting around the area.

“I don’t know…” You saw him looking down at his hands now, remembering that he was almost entirely defenseless like this. If it was something objectively “bad,” you would for sure be in big trouble. It didn’t look like he was worried about himself though—more so about protecting you (as strange as it seemed) even though you’d proven yourself to be more than capable of taking care of yourself on countless occasions (then again, that had been before whatever quirk zapping magic had descended upon your group).

You rested a hand on his arm. “Maybe we’ll find someone if we follow it.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever-” Another faint crackle rang out and above the trees there was a flash of light—someone was definitely here.

You looked at him now with the same I-told-you-so tilt of your head and raise of your eyebrows you knew he hated and you knew he could picture you doing it as clear as day even if he couldn’t see anything.

“Fucking fine, let’s just go already.”

It didn’t take the two of you long to get closer to the source of the noise since every few seconds it sounded again, and the colorful lights in the night sky were enough to keep drawing your attention in the right direction. Bakugou kept stopping to make sure you were following him and keeping up, but whenever you waved him off because you were fine, he would just grumble and pretend like he hadn’t been looking behind him for your sake at all.

Within a few minutes you emerged onto a cliffside, the area clear. In the distance below it, you could make out what looked to be glimmering city lights (which was alarming enough) and as you walked closer to the edge—

“Is that-”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Not far away from the cliff, U.A. towered from its place atop the hill it always sat upon—the campus illuminated as part of the ongoing holiday celebrations. You could see now that fireworks were being set off from there. You had been this close all along.

You were caught up in admiring the display—and slowly lowered yourself to sit at the edge of the cliff, legs dangling over the edge, eyes on the bursting lights—until you remembered the past few hours and what this meant. You quickly moved to scramble to your feet— “Bakugou, have to tell the others-” —but found a weight pushing you back down into place.

Bakugou sat down next to you with a thump on the hard packed ground, swinging his legs over the edge of the cliff to mimic your position.

“Bakugou?”

“We’ll tell them later,” he mumbled, wrapping an arm around your shoulders and pulling you against him. You thought about protesting but then— “Ten minutes. Give me ten minutes.” You couldn't tell what he was thinking and his voice concealed it well, although you understood the implications of his words.

“Okay.” And then you were quiet, settling against him as another string of fireworks went off—U.A.’s annual week-long Halloween light show—brilliant variant colors that twisted into various shapes lighting up the night sky against the sparkling stars, moonlight bright now when paired with the hustle and bustle of Musutafu down below. It was still chilly, but you felt strangely warm now and… free? You realized the weight of the forest was gone. In its place you felt a comforting pressure—warm and spreading through your body, and as you sat there and listened to Bakugou’s beating heart, you decided you had an inkling of what it might be.

YOU’VE REACHED THE END OF THE PATH: RETURN TO THE CABIN

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nothingunrealistic · 3 years

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review roundup: billions 6x08 “the big ugly”

an episode with a compelling taylor plotline! but at what cost!

New York Times: ‘Billions’ Season 6, Episode 8 Recap: Games Over

“What’s the only thing worse than not getting what you want?” Chuck Rhoades asks.

“Getting what you want but having it ripped from your hands,” replies his lieutenant, Dave Mahar.

Chuck laughs. “It’s like I hired my own twin.”

these are the opening lines of this recap. we’ll get back to this later.

Wendy has seemed a little lost this season, as the end of her personal and professional relationship with Bobby Axelrod left her at loose ends, narratively speaking; I’m hoping that watching her dreams once again go up in smoke at Chuck’s hands will bring renewed fire to the character.

going by the press photos, episode summaries, and 6x09 trailer, i wouldn’t expect wendy to get up to much of anything until 6x10. (of course, it could be that she’s quite active in 6x09 and whatever she’s doing is too huge a spoiler to even glimpse.) taylor seems to have usurped her role as the third lead, which i won’t complain about!

Taylor Mason is also back-footed in this episode, but deliberately so. When Prince directs his employees to free up capital in order to pursue big new plays, Taylor feels squeezed out by the hot shot new recruit Philip, who has out wunderkinded the firm’s former wunderkind. So Taylor goes all in on a — you’ll pardon the pun — fly-by-night hypersonic airline start-up that promises to get players and fans to the Games in record time.

WHY TRY? I KNOW WHY! THIS FEELING INSIDE ME SAYS IT’S TIME I WAS GONE! CLEAR HEAD NEW LIFE AHEAD! IT’S TIME I WAS KING NOW NOT JUST ONE MORE PAWN! FLY BY NIGHT AWAY FROM HERE! CHANGE MY LIFE AGAIN! FLY BY NIGHT GOODBYE MY DEAR! MY SHIP ISN’T COMING AND I JUST CAN’T PRETEND!

in other news: weird to describe the company as “hypersonic” when that’s the company’s name. it’s not wrong, but it’s confusing. (also i’m confiscating the word “wunderkind” from sean. enough already!)

But Taylor’s Jiminy Cricket, Rian, smells a rat. When she warns Taylor that it’s too big a play, she is summarily rebuffed.

i’m also confiscating the phrase “Jiminy Cricket” from sean with reference to rian. she wasn’t even the voice of ethics or morality here, she was the voice of “please don’t throw away money on a bad play just because you want to win a slapfight with a guy who insists he’s not even fighting you.”

And here comes the part where Wags — that’s right, Wags — winds up being the voice of reason.

we can’t believe it either, sean!

Wags’s advice to Rian: Go to Taylor and speak up about her findings regarding the airline, which reveal that its science is entirely bogus, even dangerous. Rian’s advice to Wags: Don’t keep secrets from the woman you love, and divest yourself of the secret suite.

appreciating the paraphrasing of rian’s advice, in conjunction with the phrasing of the story she told to back it up, that suggests she kept secrets from a woman she loved. she never said otherwise!

Rian saves Taylor’s bacon — the cratering of New York City’s Olympic bid provides the perfect cover for divesting, and Philip even helps — while Wags earns major Brownie points in his relationship. You’re left wondering why more characters on “Billions” don’t simply cooperate. Can’t we all be gold medalists in this game we call life?

you sound like prince! (not derogatory, necessarily. he did insist back in 6x03 that he prefers to collaborate when he can rather than going straight to competition.)

“This doesn’t have to be a competition,” Philip tells Taylor at the tail end of a lengthy metaphor involving Evel Knievel’s ill-fated attempt to jump the Snake River Canyon. This is the kind of thing people who do believe it has to be a competition say to people they think they’re beating.

what did you just say, man? (i for one genuinely believe philip didn’t have Beat Taylor At Their Own Game as a goal here. not in the short term, anyway.)

When dealing with the Olympics honcho Katerina Brett (Jennifer Roszell), Chuck embarks on a lengthy analogy involving “high-grading” bears, which before hibernation eat only the choicest parts of the salmon they catch, leaving the rest to rot. To Chuck, billionaires like Prince are the bears, and we civilians are the salmon. I’m not quite sure what that makes Chuck.

we were just discussing the baffling nature of this analogy yesterday! why are billionaires inherently different from ordinary citizens? doesn’t that undermine the point that they don’t deserve the outsized power and influence they have? why is it normal and in line with nature for them to devour citizens up to a point, as it is with bears and salmon, and only unnatural when they get picky about it? if society is the river, doesn’t that mean billionaires exist outside of society except when they’re hungry? what is chuck in this analogy?

This episode leans hard on Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’s “Empire State of Mind,” first for Mike and, later, for Chuck — the sound of winning (or at least thinking so) in New York City.

you can’t just say this without mentioning that prince referenced it in 6x04! (incidentally, 6x04 and 6x08 are the two episodes of this season written by brian koppelman & david levien & lio sigerson. keeping the setup and payoff in-house.)

Vulture: Billions Recap: American Dream

A recap for “The Big Ugly” almost feels redundant considering Chuck Rhoades and Dave Mahar sum up the episode themselves:

Chuck: “What’s the only thing worse than not getting what you want?” Dave: “Getting something that you want and then having it ripped from your hands.”

these are the opening lines of this recap. it’s like vulture hired sean’s own twin! (and the chuck & prince plotline this episode did almost feel redundant with the trailer, especially these lines, giving away that chuck would manage to pull the olympic bid from prince, and with my total lack of interest in how exactly he’d manage that.)

Yep, Mike Prince’s American Dream of presiding over the first-ever New York City Olympics was snatched away tonight, with Chuck orchestrating one single, brutal betrayal. This was one scheme where I was heavily leaning toward Team Chuck because Prince’s pretentious behavior as some newly anointed Olympics god was really getting on my nerves. That and it was immensely satisfying to watch Andy bail on her controlling husband the second the Games relocated to Los Angeles.

get his ass!

The first hint that Prince cared less about New York hosting the Games and more about putting himself on a pedestal was the revelation that he was training to do the original Olympic Marathon route — solo.

that wasn’t the first hint. not even close. the first hint was half a season ago.

Meanwhile, there’s an interesting storyline building between Taylor and MPC’s new golden boy, Philip, with Rian taking a central role as the voice of reason. Taylor is building a relationship with the CEO of a new high-tech passenger airline called “Hypersonic,” and they want to secure it as the official airline of the Olympics. Prince tries passing it off to Philip, much to Taylor’s chagrin. Philip, taking the “keep your enemies closer” approach, declines Prince’s command.

again, i don’t think philip considers taylor an enemy or even a rival at this point. he’s taking the “don’t jump to making enemies of anyone and everyone who isn’t giving you exactly what you want” approach. (whereas taylor is taking the inverse approach of “jump to making an enemy of the guy who gave you what you wanted if you think he shouldn’t even have had it to give to you.”)

But considering Taylor is already operating from a disadvantage, with Prince clearly preferring Philip over them and their season-long drive to score big wins no matter the cost, it doesn’t take much to predict this Hypersonic deal is headed for disaster.

yeah, you really only needed to read the episode summary for that.

Following one meeting with its CEO, Taylor is all in on making Hypersonic the official Olympics airline. Rian, however, tells them to slow their roll because she can’t verify Hypersonic’s tech claims. Once again, Taylor refuses to listen to the facts, caring for nothing except beating Philip and coming out on top. Not helping matters is Philip, who echoes Rian’s concerns and warns Taylor that they will hurt everyone at the company if this deal fails.

what else is philip supposed to do? pull some reverse psychology maneuver on taylor to make them think they’d be beating him by dropping hypersonic? drag wendy away from the crucial task of doodling hearts all over megan rapinoe’s headshots so she can tell taylor they’re acting like axe and need to cut it out?

Speaking of Rian, she and Wags get to share a fun little subplot that’s a huge break from the rest of the heavy narrative.

🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃

Wags is understanding but firmly tells Rian she must have the courage to tell Taylor the deal is toxic.

*violin riff*

Back at the Taylor Mason Carbon offices, Rian confronts Taylor and holds firm with them about Hypersonic. She shows Taylor the evidence proving that Hypersonic’s current tech and aviation physiology causes pulmonary hypertension and embolisms. In short, investing in the company is a death sentence for MPC.

Then, a miracle happens.

oh we love an artfully placed paragraph break!

Wags and Scooter crash Prince’s pre-lovemaking sesh with Andy to turn on the news, where Dave is presiding over a press conference: The New York AG’s office is officially accusing Prince and his Olympic bid team of bribery.

i never want to read the phrase “pre-lovemaking sesh” again. sorry for making you all read it twice in a row.

Taylor and Rian, on the other hand, could not be more thrilled. Now Mase Carb can withdraw from the Hypersonic deal because it’s no longer the official airline of the Olympics. Philip, however, is also privy to the truth, and while he offers himself as an extra pair of hands — unloading shares, getting coffee, I’m not so sure Taylor and Rian should trust him.

[always sunny theme] Taylor Teams Up With Philip

(also: if only there were some other mase carb employee taylor could have called in as an extra pair of hands to help with dumping hypersonic. too bad rian’s their only named employee and they have no choice but to accept philip’s assistance. so sad!)

In typical Billions fashion, no one really “won” this time around.

i was about to say “untrue! philip won!”, but his big win on self-driving cars depended on the olympics happening in nyc, so he might be losing on that front. guess we’ll see.

Condola Rashad’s absence in this episode is a curiosity. Was Kate Sacker ostensibly getting started on her congressional campaign, as promised by Mike Prince once they won the Olympic bid? Now that New York has lost the Games, what happens with that subplot?

important questions! she’ll be in 6x09, unless the promo photos are lying to us again, so we should find out. i’d guess she’s part of prince’s brain trust and helping hatch a plan to turn the tables.

Entertainment Weekly: Billions recap: Prince's beloved Olympics bid goes up in smoke

Billions isn't exactly the most subtle show on TV. In fact, that's why I, and many of us, love it so much. What Billions understands is that you can get a lot of mileage out of quick dialogue, high drama, and more than a few scenery-chewing performances, even if you're getting a lot of the same plot mechanics from one episode to the next.

kyle didn’t get the memo for how everyone was opening their recaps this week!

In essence, Chuck is pretty sure Prince managed to snag the games through some illegal bribing, but he can't prove it.

as opposed to that legal bribing we all love so much.

While the people at Michael Prince Capital are focused on the games — Wendy (Maggie Siff) is working with soccer star Megan Rapinoe to get an "Athlete Performance" program off the ground, and Taylor (Asia Kate Dillon) is taking a massive position in an airline company in an attempt to one-up Phillip, securing them as an official sponsor before, later in the episode, things go south — Chuck is working his usual magic.

not how you spell philip’s name! there should only be one L, so you’d better go ahead and take the other one.

It's interesting that the show ditches the Olympics bid so quickly after building up to the decisive moment in last week's episode. It doesn't feel like we have much time to sit with Prince getting what he wants only to have it pulled away.

that’s how billions usually goes, though — a plot introduced early on gets wrapped up midseason, and the rest of the season goes off in a different direction. see: chuck’s prosecution of axe in season 1; axe’s investment in sandicot and attempt to hire wendy back in season 2; the ice juice case in season 3; taylor’s project with douglas in season 4; axe’s attempt to secure a federal bank charter in season 5.

Losing the bid actually works out for Taylor, who got in over their head with the Hypersonic position and nearly lost the company a lot of money. Now they can dump the shares at a much smaller loss and not incur the wrath of Prince.

this description of taylor’s investment in hypersonic weirdly writes around the actual problem with hypersonic — it’s not just that they got in over their head, it’s that the company’s product is dangerous!

Prince has been winning all season long. He had to lose at some point. That time has come, and I'm very curious to see how this changes the character and what it might mean for the rest of the season.

you know what they say! the loser now will be later to win! for the times they are a-changin’!

#billions #6x08 #review roundup #postscript: none of these recaps mentioned the b&w photos of chuck mingling with constituents. we all just decided to ignore that

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missorgana · 3 years

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invisible string

pairing: scott mccall/isaac lahey, background kira yukimura/malia tate and lydia martin/stiles stilinski

fandom: teen wolf

rating: mature

word count: 8924

warning: swearing, alcohol, past child abuse, minor character death, referenced homophobia

summary: When your soulmate gets a tattoo, the same one appears on your skin. And Scott McCall fears that they don't have one. (soulmates au, nonbinary Scott, they/them pronouns)

(hello my loves, i’ve been working on this project for @augustwritingchallenge for ages and it’s finally done! i missed scisaac and self projected on scott so yeah. thank you to my beloved Kaz for beta-reading, you’re life saver!!! i hope you all like this <3)

read on ao3

Scott McCall doesn’t have a soulmate.

They talk about it on television, in school, on the playground, in the supermarket. Scott hears their mom talk about it, and their classmates, and their teachers.

This is why they ask their mom late at night before they go to bed, at eleven years old. “How will I know who my soulmate is, mom?”

Their mother looked confused, but with her soft, familiar smile. They love her smile.

“Didn’t your teacher tell you, sweetheart?” she asks, and Scott has to concentrate, think back to every class and every word and every question. They bite their lip as they think, and their mom laughs in fondness, ruffles their hair. They push her hand away, even though it’s not that annoying, really.

“She said you get drawings on your body…” they begin, but frowns at themself, “But I don’t understand how. Will my soulmate’s name be in the drawings?”

Scott likes drawing, a lot. They don’t really understand how drawings would show them who their soulmate is, though, unless it’s their face.

Their mother chuckles again, but sits quiet for a minute. Scooby-Doo is still running on low volume on the TV, and the crickets have begun to chirp outside the window. And it’s windy, but Scott isn’t cold.

“They’re called tattoos,” she tells them, resting her head on top of their own as she hugs them, “I mean, it’s just something that happens. Your soulmate’s drawings, when they get them, you get them, too.”

Scott’s eyes widen, “Oh. Did they see what Stiles doodled on my hand in class today?”

Their mom plants a kiss on their hair before pulling away. Her eyes get all crinkled when she smiles so big, it’s very pretty. “I think so, yes.”

They chew their lip in some sort of contemplation, if they understood what that meant, yet. They can leave messages for their soulmate, then. They like that. But…

“When can I meet them?”

Scott’s mother sighs quietly, but doesn’t look angry or sad or disappointed, just tired. She turns off the TV and starts clearing up the coffee table while she replies, “Somehow you find them. Everyone finds theirs differently, different times. Their drawings tell a lot about them.”

They don’t like that answer that much. Ugh. They huff impatiently, “But I want to meet them! Now!”

And, of course, their mom is already picking them up, carrying them upstairs while chuckling quietly. The house seems bigger without their dad here. And more peaceful.

They like it much better like this. Hopefully it stays this way. Just Scott and their mom, they don’t need anyone else, they can’t even bring themself to care about where their dad might be or might be doing.

Okay, they need Stiles, though. His dad is nice, too.

“You’ll meet them, Scott,” their mother says while tucking them, “I promise you will, one day. But you have to be patient.”

They hate waiting. But their mom knows everything, she knows all the little beautiful things about the world, so Scott knows she’s right. Patience.

“Okay. Pinky promise?” they ask.

She hugs them again, for good measure. “Pinky promise.”

Scott has to be satisfied with the answer. But although their mother turns off the lights and leaves the door to their room just slightly ajar, they hide under their duvet with the sketchpad she gave them for their birthday last year.

Maybe this soulmate thing is like… a string. A string connecting them and whoever’s made for them, even though they’re miles away, at the other end of the world, even. They can’t see it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. Like air.

They like that. An invisible string.

Scott draws two hands, connected by the string tied on their pinky fingers. They use the gold pen for the string.

Lately, the thought of their soulmate has moved to the back of Scott’s mind.

It rests there, because after months of worrying and thinking and crying and what they now recognize as gender dysphoria , Scott is about to tell their best friend that they’re nonbinary. They’re so fucking scared, they almost want to cry again.

They’ve already told their mom, which took them a month alone to decide on. Because what if she suddenly saw them differently? What if she didn’t love them anymore? What if she kicked them out?

It’s always been her and them, against the world. That couldn’t change.

And luckily, thank the stars and heavens above, it didn’t, and Scott’s never been so relieved in their life. They didn’t expect her to be close-minded or bigoted, they’ve always thought the highest of her, but the possibility, the fear still nagged there. They were so fucking glad to put it to rest, finally.

So here Scott is, in their bedroom on a late Wednesday afternoon, waiting for Stiles to finish his homework before he comes over to play video games, as they always do, twice a week, even though their parents eagerly want them to wait for the weekend.

Scott’s heart feels like it’ll jump out of their chest at any second.

They finally know who they are. They only assume the last puzzle piece of their whole self, of their soul to be completed by their soulmate, but the sense of peace they felt when they finally thought… this is who I am. This is who I’m meant to be .

What if Stiles doesn’t understand? No, what if he doesn’t accept them for who they are? What if his love is conditional? Fuck . Scott almost wants to scream.

Their heart is still clawing its way out of their chest when their best friend finally knocks on their window and lets himself in, a huge grin plastered on his face and carrying his own selection of games for them to compare with their own.

Stiles is always so happy. Well, not always, but he’s the rock Scott so desperately needs right now, like he’s been so many times before, and like they’ve been for him. They’ve drawn him many times before, and he always says he likes the drawings. And they let him doodle on their arm and hand when he’s anxious, because somehow they both find comfort in this.

They know the two of them aren’t soulmates, they think of each other as family rather than romantically, but they’re still meant for each other, they think. They hope. Stiles knows them better than anyone else, even their mother.

“You ready, Scotty?” he asks, chipper as ever, already turning on the playstation, and the nickname calms their ever painful heartbeat, just a little.

Here goes nothing.

“Yeah, uhm… Stiles?” they speak around the lump in their throat, “Can- can we talk first?”

Their best friend looks up at them from the floor, a slightly confused look on his face, but the smile intact. He returns to seat himself on the couch, not grabbing the remote. That makes Scott smile.

“Of course, Scotty. Is something wrong?”

“No. Yes. Uh, no. Shit, sorry-” they’re already stumbling over the words, fuck, but Stiles puts a hand on their shoulder, tentatively, but his precense calm and assuring.

“Don’t apologise!” his smile is crooked, and he crosses his legs before continuing, “You know you can tell me anything, right? I mean, take your time!”

Scott nods. They take a deep breath, the seconds ticking by. Closes their eyes together just for a moment. Opens again.

“Stiles, I…” they’re trying, calming their heartbeat with breathing in through their nose and out through their mouth, like their mom taught them. You can do this. “Please don’t freak out. I’m still me, like… I don’t wanna lose you.”

Their best friend frowns. “You’re not gonna lose me, Scotty.”

Scott gulps, nods. They’re trying. Really trying. “I’m nonbinary.”

They keep their eyes squeezed shut when they say it. It’s out there now. They don’t want to see his face change, if his reaction is bad, but they have to. They have to look. A beat passes. And Scott opens their eyes to find their best friend looking at them, smiling so hard his dimples are visible and nose scrunches up.

Oh, my god. That’s good, right?

“That’s great!” Stiles almost shouts, practically jumping in his seat. He does realise his volume, though, particularly since Scott’s mom is sleeping before her night shift. He clears his throat, “Scotty, oh my god. Sorry, I got excited. Thank you for telling me.”

Scott could almost fucking cry, again. But it’s happy tears this time, the nerves vanishing ever so slowly.

“You’re not… upset?”

Their best friend almost looks offended at the question, “Why in the world would I be upset?”

Scott bites their lip. God, they love Stiles so much, “I don’t know, uhm. I was scared you wouldn’t wanna be friends with me anymore. Because I’m not a boy.”

The brunette next to them goes all soft and gooey in his eyes, Scott would know that look anywhere. He also looks like he wants to jump them with hugs, but holding himself back, “Scotty, we’re ride or die, remember? I love you. You’re my best friend and that won’t change. What kind of asshole would I be to leave you like that?”

Scott laughs, Stiles is urging to hug them they can tell, like an oversized puppy.

And they’re speaking around the newly formed tears now, “I love you, Stiles. Like, so much. Thank you.”

Their best friend is grinning like an idiot. “What pronouns do you want to go by? Oh, and should I call you something else- like, not Scott?”

“I still like Scott,” they tell him, not bothering to cover the crying, because whatever. They’ve cried in front of each other plenty, “I’d like they/them pronouns, though, I think.”

Stiles nods eagerly, “Got it!” Then, “Can I hug you now?”

Scott rolls their eyes. Of course. “Yeah, come on.”

Their best friend practically tackles them in the hug, but it’s so bloody welcome, and so warm. Thank God they’re already sitting down.

“I want to be a tattoo artist,” Scott tells their friends at lunch, career day still settled in their mind from weeks ago, and the arguments roaming in their head on how to convince their mom to let them go for their first tattoo next month. It’s for their birthday.

Feels natural when they’ve always been fascinated by art as much as them. The galleries their mother took them to, they’re endlessly grateful for that, honestly.

And art summer school, and art elective, one thing leads to another. And tattooing is just art with skin as a canvas, they can’t stop thinking about it. Little works of art on your body, to carry around with you every day. It feels so special and with so much meaning - or with no meaning, they’re just as fun.

Stiles already knows - of course he does - and he’s excited about it, still, while Allison smiles as sweetly as ever, Malia’s eyes widen and she’s already convincing Scott to make her first one, and Isaac… is smirking?

It’s shy, but it’s there, they’re sure of it.

He was transferred to their high school six months ago, and frankly fits perfectly into their group, Scott thinks, even though their best friend doesn’t exactly get along with him. They’re idiots, but oh well, their idiots.

Isaac was nervous at first, they could tell. But when Scott gave him a smile in class, he gave one back, tentative, hesitant, but it couldn’t be mistaken. And once they started talking to him, questioning the red haired boy about games and lacrosse and his schedule, he opened up, slowly and surely.

Even though Scott did much of the talking at first, Isaac didn’t seem to mind. They apologised, knowing how fast and excited they can be, much like Stiles, but he still accepted the offer of having lunch with the gang, and he’s witty, and smart, and a good listener. Well, Stiles disagrees, but you know. They bicker just for the hell of it, at this point.

The two girls missing from the table quickly join them and Kira’s eager to catch up, “What are we talking about?”

Scott likes Kira, a lot. Maybe… maybe she’s their soulmate. God, they don’t know.

Her smile is very pretty, she knows so much cool stuff about astrology and is like, easily the best player on the lacrosse team, by a mile. Jackson’s always on her ass because he’s a douche, and definitely power-hungry after being named the new captain, but Kira rolls her eyes at him and brushes him off like it’s nothing. Scott admires her.

The two of them can talk for hours about music and other shit that Stiles only rolls his eyes a little bit at, but even though he calls them nerds, he also joins them way too often and unashamedly.

And he’s just acting uninterested to seem cool in front of Lydia, usually.

But at the same time, Isaac’s smile is also very pretty, and his jokes are the best. He always laughs at Scott’s jokes, too, which they really like. He keeps whispering sarcastic comments in their ear during class and rolls his eyes when the teachers aren’t looking, which makes Scott laugh.

And he’s an expert at texting in secret, always sending them pictures he took over the weekend of graffiti tags around town and puppies on the train and bumblebees, all because those reminded him of them.

Isaac’s nose gets all scrunched up when he laughs and his eyes squeeze shut.

The boy also loves zombie movies, which is a huge plus in their book, and wears big floppy sweaters that are excellent for hugs. Isaac is already a really good hugger, he’s always… warm and soft and safe.

Maybe he’s their soulmate. Stiles would be so upset if that were true, ha.

Scott’s listened to their mother, though, they know patience is a virtue, and maybe neither of them are their soulmate. None of them have found their soulmate yet, anyway, so they shouldn’t stress, right now, they should just look forward to the future.

“Scott’s gonna give me my first tattoo!” Malia exclaims excitedly, Lydia only seeming mildly surprised, “Right, Scott?”

They laugh, they love the brunette’s undying loyalty and curiosity a lot, “I gotta practice first, but yeah, of course.”

“You’ll get us all tattoos, right?” Allison winks at them, “We can be your guinea pigs.”

Lydia chimes in, “Not gonna happen.”

“Oh, come on Lydia!” Stiles gasps, “Don’t you trust my best friend?”

He’s so giving her heart eyes, right now. Scott’s used to it by now, and it’s adorable, only slightly annoying, given that his plan of asking her out has yet to be set in motion. They wonder if the redhead has noticed.

Lydia sends a crooked smile in their direction after flipping their best friend off, “I’ll trust them when they’re trained. No offense, babe.”

They shake their head, patting Stiles’ back. Love the defense of their honor, even when unneeded. “I feel the same way, Lyds.”

The support is unwavering and overwhelming with all of them, even Lydia. The most surprising and pleasant thing of the day, though, is when Isaac purses his lips as they walk to P.E., then smiles at Scott in a way they know is only meant for them, “You can practice on me, even though I’ll probably faint from the needle. Maybe I could get a turtle.”

Scott can’t hide their grin, “I like that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

When Scott gets their first tattoo, Stiles holds their hand - before he faints, that is. He recovered quickly, it was endearing, really. They felt fine however; maybe the excitement filled up too much of their being to be worried about the pain.

Thankfully their mother approved of the tattoo and what they wanted to do with their art. She’d always been supportive, but, you know… sometimes, they worry too much. About everything.

She liked the drawing they chose, too.

Two rings around their bicep, simple black lines, but it meant a lot to them, and far, far from the last. It’s like them and their mother, they think: constant orbit with each other. She’s always protected them. They always want to protect her. Stiles called them a big old sap for it, and he’s right.

Scott planned it on their birthday, making sure to have the whole gang out for the fair, and roller skates, and showing off their tattoo with buckets of pride.

And if their stomach soared a little whenever a certain tall red haired boy smiled at them, that’s for themself to deal with. They think their best friend might be getting suspicious, given the half fond, half intensely weird looks he’s given them lately, when the whole group’s gotten together, but never said anything.

God knows if they knew what they would do about it. Scott doesn’t understand it, but… Isaac looking at them just feels right. It’s probably a little dangerous crushing on one of your close friends. Especially when you don’t know if they’re your soulmate, or who they are at all.

But apparently the universe finds it appropriate to sort this maybe or maybe not issue for them, after the fall break, when Scott finds Isaac’s seat strangely empty, and suddenly, the teacher’s shocking them to their core when she lets the class know the red haired boy’s been pulled out of the school and his family’s relocating.

In Paris. What… what the hell?

Scott doesn’t understand it. They can’t.

Isaac hasn’t said anything about this, they don’t remember, neither to them alone or to the whole group. Even Stiles looks at them with wide eyes, and Allison’s frowning from the back row.

The whole week the group doesn’t quite… work. They try to process it. Fuck. It just feels weird, unreal, not real at all.

Why would the boy just leave like that, unannounced? They would’ve hoped he would say goodbye. Scott doesn’t find themself wishing for an explanation, they just wanted to say goodbye. And ask if they did something wrong. Anything.

But the gang tries, of course, the routine returns piece by piece, even though Stiles and Lydia still argue about their possible theories on why Isaac left.

Scott just feels so, so guilty, for absolutely no reason. He seemed different after their birthday, somehow, which they’re only just thinking about now. Maybe they’re making it up, to rationalize it, somehow. They’ve got no fucking idea.

He didn’t come to school for a few days after their birthday party, that is, but… he was sick, he said. Just a fever. It was fine, he said.

Scott should get out of their own head. And Stiles says he’s the overthinker of the two.

And while their little world seems to circulate, still, Scott just feels numb, until three weeks later. Until their mother drops down on the couch while they’re watching reruns of Jeopardy and suddenly Scott has tears trickling down their cheeks, without even realising it.

Their mom seems just as confused, and upset, as themself, but she wraps her arms around them without even asking, of course she does. She tries to protect them.

But there’s nothing to protect them from, really. Just sadness. And a broken heart, maybe, one that they’re not even sure how to mend.

God, they wish Isaac was here. Guess he’s not their soulmate, after all.

Kira’s the first one of the group to find their soulmate. Actually, Kira and Malia, because it turns out they’re meant for each other.

It makes sense immediately to Scott, knowing of the brunette’s crush on the other girl, one she’s made vocal to them and Stiles since sophomore year. Wide eyes, making excuses for Kira to help her with her homework, grabbing extra dessert for her. Scott’s been rooting for them ever since they realised.

It’s just before senior year; where Malia proudly shows off the rubber duck tattoo Scott gave her on her ankle, after much discussion of how it should look.

“Like a rubber duck,” she told them, “But you know, with legs. Like a real duck. But not real.”

Scott had furrowed their brows while trying to follow, “Like a cartoon?”

And since she nodded, absolutely ecstatic, they got to work. They were so lucky to find an internship, and a mentor, and their mother looked so proud, almost near the verge of tears. She’s so dramatic sometimes, they love her for that.

Malia was a bit squeamish at first, which Scott doesn’t blame her for in any way, obviously. The ankle is a brave place for the first one, they’ll admit, but their friend insisted relentlessly, and they had to give in.

She put on a brave face soon enough, and took Stiles’ hand as much as she refused and called him a dick. And it turned out cool as hell!

Scott concentrates, hard, as they practice, and they’re still getting used to skin as opposed to paper. Softer, and they have to reangle their hands from time to time, even though they’re still stuck on smaller pieces for now.

They’ve been chewing their lip so much in concentration that it started bleeding once, a reminder to work off that habit. Maybe they should get Stiles to call them out on it. Like, do an eagle scream, or something, as he does whenever he wants to get their attention already.

Speaking of their best friend, he’s gotten a little better with it already, not afraid to look at the process now.

“It’s fascinating, I’ll admit,” he tells them on yet another one of their traditional game nights, “But way, way too painful, Scotty. How do you put yourself through several of them?”

Their own first was on the arm, of course, which isn’t too bad, and they kept the second one on their arm as well; Kermit the Frog. It’s funny. They like the Muppets. Sue them. Stiles loved it, too, so they’ve already got approval. Lydia definitely loves it, too, despite her initial skepticism.

But as Malia lifts her foot to show everyone on the bleachers, tradition as they wait for Kira to get off lacrosse practice, the very same girl nearly chokes on her water, prompting concerned looks from everyone, until Kira sits down and reveals her own ankle. The duck.

Needless to say, Malia becomes a blushing mess.

Kira, however, doesn’t look surprised at all. “I knew it was you!”

“Y-you did?” the girl stammers out, her foot still hanging in the air, probably out of sheer shock.

The dark haired girl giggles, wiping the sweat off of her forehead, before crossing her legs. She looks near bliss, Scott thinks. They’ve never seen an expression like that before. It makes them crave meeting their own even more.

The group stays in a strange, light, peaceful sort of silence until the coach calls Kira back, Malia’s face practically looking like a tomato at that point. Stiles is laughing hysterically at her, leaning on Scott’s shoulder, and she punches him several times until he hides behind them, almost using them as a shield. Almost, because Malia would never hit Scott, obviously, that’s reserved for the boy cowering behind them.

Their friends are such idiots.

The brunette freezes on the spot when her soulmate gets up, planting a kiss on her forehead before running off, saluting the group.

“We’ll meet at the ice cream stand!” she yells. Scott salutes back. Malia waves awkwardly.

“You okay, Mal?” they gotta ask, to reassure themself she hasn’t mentally shut off.

“Oh my god,” she squeaks, “Oh, yeah. Yeah!”

Stiles laughs even louder than before. Allison joins him. Malia may chase them both across the field, until the coach has to break them up, and now, the girl easily jumps into her soulmate’s embrace for protection.

Lydia shakes her head at it all. All in all an outstanding day for them, Scott thinks.

Straight out of graduation, tearful goodbyes to their friends even though they’ll see each other the week after, Scott’s got so far they’re taking clients. Their boss is proud of their progress, and they were a nervous wreck before the evaluation, but God, they feel a little proud of themself, too.

Of course, this means their friends are eager for them to practice on them and save money.

Kira’s the first in line; she wants the solar system, on a line down her spine. Scott isn’t surprised when she eagerly tells them about the planet symbolism, and she intensely stares at them drawing up the design, Malia sharing the excitement.

It’s her second, actually, the first being the one she got last year, in honor of her mom. She also seemed profusely apologetic for not going to Scott for her first, which they found adorable.

And yeah, they have to break it up in two sessions with a large piece like this, luckily the both of them are staying in town.

When Kira sees the finished result, she almost cried, they swear. “The colors are amazing, oh my God,” she tells them, already spinning around excitedly and hugging them tightly, “Thank you babeeeee. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Scott always finds themself giggling along with the girls, it’s only natural, “Don’t mention it.”

The two of them gasp, as shocked as in a Greek tragedy. “Keep mentioning it, dummy.” she tells them, and Malia adds, “You gotta book me for next week. I want a wolf!”

Allison’s the farthest away from the group, three states over; of course, they keep the promise of monthly reunions, more than once a month, even, which makes Scott feel impossibly warm every time. They still kind of wish Isaac was there. Damn.

It’s in April when Allison brings them a drawing she wants tattooed on her forearm. A portrait of a woman, with a bow and arrow, a stag at her side, and the moon looming over them both. It’s gorgeous.

“Obviously you’re a better artist than me, but this is my general idea,” she says sheepishly, as they hand her her bubble tea, “It’s Artemis.”

Greek goddess of animals and nature, that childhood obsession with mythology wasn’t for nothing. Allison’s been doing archery since she was thirteen, so it practically screams her. Scott gets seriously nervous about it, to be honest, like anxiously sweating kind of nervous, but luckily, she loves it. Thank God. They’re always scared to fuck up, especially on their friends.

But it’s way, way easier now, like they could do it asleep.

And that’s sort of put to the test, actually, because Stiles and themself decide to get drunk off their asses one Friday night, it’s been ages. And fuck it, they’re allowed to have fun. And enjoy cheap, horribly tasting beer at that.

Once they get home to Scott’s flat (taking the subway of course, even though their best friend had to be dragged away from his truck, they really dodged a bullet there, Jesus), Stiles gets to that point of his drunkenness where he starts getting philosophical and a little sad.

“What if I never meet them, Scotty,” he whines, in reference to his soulmate, that is. Scott themself gets extremely jumpy and bubbly under the influence, without failure, but they still know that frustration all too well.

“You will, honey,” they tell him.

“You promise?!”

“Prooooomise.”

They both contemplate his soulmate’s tattoos for a while. A flock of birds on his ribcage, a Sylvia Plath quote by his shoulder, a tree with its roots circling his wrist.

Neither of them has anyone they know in mind, but anything is possible! Scott still hasn’t spotted any of their soulmate’s tattoos. They’ve been thinking about it for some time now, and well. It’s disappointing, but they have plenty of time. They’ll get plenty more tattoos themself to their already growing sleeve, so they try not to worry about it too much.

Their best friend suggests they play Mario Kart, which can only end in disaster, but then, “You should tattoo my ass, Scotty.”

Scott blinks twice, the statement shocking their drunk brain just a bit, “What?

“My ass!” he exclaims, now happier than ever, yearning for his soulmate forgotten in a split second, “Babe, pleaseee. Wait. Wait, wait, draw Harrison Ford.”

They can’t even process the request before their best friend pulls a headshot of said actor up, and starts clearing the sofa, “Indiana Jones is his best role, like… like… yeah.”

Scott laughs long and hard, this is insane. Of course, their judgement is clouded by the alcohol, right now, so what the fuck, why not.

This is why Stiles ends up lying on his stomach with his jeans halfway down, Scott sitting by his feet, the light of the iPhone glaring both their eyes at 4am.

“Ow!” he yells, like, thirty times, each time they have to laugh and then shush him, because they really can’t deal with noise complaints as sleep deprived as they are right now.

“Stop moving!” they tell him.

“But I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

Stiles drags out the two-letter word to the greatest extent, “Nooooo.”

“Yes,” they laugh again, “I believe in you.”

“Love you, Scotty,” their best friend proclaims, still yelling a bit, but finally lying relatively still.

Scott rolls their eyes, “Love you too, idiot. Won’t be long now.”

“Make sure you capture his eyes right, babe! It’s extremely important!”

“I know, I know.”

To Scott’s great surprise, the tattoo turns out incredibly detailed.

In fact, it might be some of their best work yet. They’re not quite sure if they should be proud that they can work while intoxicated, or ashamed that their best work is, well… when they’re not sober.

Stiles laughs for almost two hours straight, then gushes over it.

“I’m sorry, man,” they had to say, “It was stupid.”

“Are you fucking kidding?” he tells them from where he’s admiring his own ass in the mirror, “This is incredible. Holy fuck. You captured his DILF-yness perfectly.”

Scott rubs their eyes, they have slept till 2pm, and the sunlight still isn’t doing wonders for them, “His what?”

Their best friend returns to their bed and burrows his face in the pillow. “He’s a DILF! Dad I’d like to fuck!”

That’s definitely an explanation that wakes Scott right up. They’ve never heard of that acronym, but fair enough. They’re also rather speechless, which the boy next to them senses, when Stiles looks up and shakes his head, “Scotty, Scotty. Aren’t you lucky you have such an insightful best friend as myself?”

The morning ends in a pillow fight, naturally.

It’s no more than a day after their night out that Scott finally, finally convinces Stiles to call Lydia and ask her on a date.

He’s sworn to his ten-year plan for ages now, with little to no action on his part, so this is major progress. Their best friend spills all his worries to them, but honestly? Scott isn’t all that worried.

They can’t say for sure what the outcome will be, but judging by Stiles’ retellings of the late night text conversations and smiles the red haired girl shoots in the boy’s direction when she probably didn’t realise people were looking, Scott’s got some sort of feeling that their friend might feel the same.

Okay, they haven’t talked to Lydia about it, admittedly. They swore secrecy to their best friend, and they intend to keep that promise.

But Scott recognizes that gleam in her eyes. It’s much like Malia’s looking at her soulmate, they think. Or maybe they’re completely in the wrong. They probably shouldn’t doubt it, or Stiles will only doubt himself more.

“She’s way out of my league, Scotty!” he exclaims for the fifth time on their FaceTime, as he’s listed pros and cons to the proposition.

They smile at the boy on their phone screen, trying to look as assuring as possible, “Lydia’s awesome, I know. But you shouldn’t put yourself down as much as you do, you know that, right?”

Stiles huffs, “I know.”

“You do?”

“I do!” he almost whines.

Scott nods, “Alright. Babe, the worst thing that could happen is that she says no. You won’t know unless you try.”

“But what if it ruins everything?” their best friend worries again, “Maybe she won’t… want to be friends, then. I don’t wanna upset her-”

“Stiles,” they feel the need to interrupt, readjusting themself on the couch, “She likes you, I know it, even if it’s just as friends. If she says no, then you’ll know and you can get over her. I don’t think she’d cut you off completely. She cares about you.”

Stiles sighs, deeply and dramatically, but the look on his face tells Scott that he knows they’re right.

“If you say so.”

And not even an hour later, their best friend calls them up again, flimsy camera and nearly screaming, because Lydia Martin said yes. Stiles looked like he was near tears.

Later that night, Lydia texted them, asking if he would find a picnic in the park too boring for a first date - clearly, she was nervous, and Scott’s never seen, or heard her nervous before. They think the two of them will be just fine.

Granted, neither of them know who their soulmates are, but when they’ve liked each other for as long as they have, to hell with it, right?

Scott spends the night and next morning thinking about it. Less about their friends, who already arranged the date today, as much as they’re excited for them. They just… now there’s two couples in their friend group. They’re so happy for their friends, they really are, but this soulmate thing is looking a bit frustrating, sometimes.

When Allison came out to the group as aromantic and asexual in the beginning of junior year (and after Scott hugged their friend so she nearly feel over on the grass, the nerves disappearing from her laugh much the same way that they had felt when they came out to Stiles, and the rest of the group) Malia blurted out a question, “Do you have any soulmate tattoos?”

“Mal!” Lydia gave her a pointed look, but the dark haired girl chuckled.

“It’s fine,” she told her best friend, and all of them, “I don’t. Either the universe knows what’s up and hasn’t given me one, or whoever it is just doesn’t have tattoos. Fucked if I know how it all works.”

Scott hates the fact that it created a nagging little thought in the back of their mind. It’s still tiny, but still living there, showing its ugly head late at night when their anxiety gets at them.

Maybe they don’t have a soulmate at all.

Shit.

Fuck.

What if?

They don’t have much time to worry about it that evening, though, when some stubborn knocks sound on their door, and they open it up to reveal Lydia and Stiles. They’re holding hands, Scott can’t help but grin.

Stiles has much the same expression on his face. Lydia looks a bit furious.

“Did you tattoo Harrison Ford on his ass?” she asks, voice impatient.

Their eyes widen, and look back and forth between them, but their best friend just looks lovestruck and a little confused.

“You showed her?” they ask, and the redhead sighs, “No. I’m asking because I have a picture of Harrison Ford on my ass.”

The shock takes the both of them aback.

Lydia’s upset about the tattoo, not them being soulmates, thank God, because Scott was rooting for them a lot. She rolls her eyes hard as they explain their drunken mishap, crossing her arms, but they’d know the fond smile anywhere. She doesn’t hide it anymore.

“Sorry,” Stiles says over and over.

Needless to say, the boy freezes on the spot when Lydia rises and shuts him up with a kiss, “You’re an idiot, you know.”

He nods eagerly, “I know.”

“Yet I love you,” she states, and Stiles looks like he’s about to faint.

“You-you do?!”

Lydia looks content, and takes his hand again. She also ruffles Scott’s hair with her other hand, commending them for bringing them together, evidently, “Obviously.”

It’s the first day of December, a little after midnight, that Scott comes to a conclusion.

They’ve been lying awake in bed for two hours now, tossing and turning, and since they can’t sleep their brain starts going into overdrive.

The group is gonna have a get together before they return home to their mom. Stiles constantly gushes about Lydia, of course. Kira called them on Malia’s birthday and confessed that she’s thinking about proposing to her girlfriend on New Year’s Eve.

They… are happy for them. So very much. They’re not lying in any way.

But why the fuck do they feel so lonely?

They’ve been paying more attention to their skin, desperately keeping their eyes out for tattoos that aren’t their own. Maybe they could’ve missed if it blended into their now fully closed sleeve. Or… or maybe it’s in a place they didn’t think of before.

But days have been going on and on, and Scott has been counting every single one of their pieces, and every single one they recognize.

The lavenders and forget-me-nots, the Millennium Falcon, the pac-man, their mother’s favorite song, the idiot #2 tramp stamp that matches Stiles’ idiot #1 .

Nothing unfamiliar, nothing’s out of place.

This is why the thing that’s been worrying them sick ever since that day their tall, red haired friend had mysteriously dropped out, and almost vanished into thin air, finally sneaks out of its hiding place and hits them with full force.

It must be the only liable explanation.

Scott probably won’t get any sleep tonight. Scott’s also pretty sure they don’t have a soulmate.

They’ve been living with the fact that they don’t have a soulmate for, hm, well - almost two years now. And it’s fine, really. They’re slowly getting used to it, anyway.

Scott told their mother after Christmas when they realised, and she almost worries out of her skin, but they were a bit too embarrassed to cry in front of her then. Hopeless romantic and all.

Stiles also reacted to the conclusion by cuddling them for a whole weekend, letting them win every video game they played and buying them so many snacks it’s shocking neither of them passed out from that heavy of an amount of sugar.

All their friends shared their frustration, and sadness, in their own way, and so they never felt alone about it. Always and endlessly supported. They love them so much.

But yeah, they just had to carry on with life. What else is there to do?

And although they still think about it in both good and bad moments, they’ve distanced themself just a little bit from it all, worrying just an inch less, working hard and spending time with their best friend and gang whenever possible.

It’s getting easier, more peaceful.

Scott’s set up an Instagram dedicated to their portfolio, and clearly their friends got the word spread back to Beacon Hills, and around it. And lots of other places. Kira and Malia became their unofficial promoters last summer, when the couple went on a road trip around Europe, to celebrate the engagement.

The wedding is this summer, also, which Scott cannot possibly contain their excitement about. They love those girls.

Their best friend is joint best man, of course, Allison joint maid of honor, and the reception playlist is already piled upon with Dolly Parton and Megan Thee Stallion. They love their friends’ music taste, for real.

So all in all, they’re doing pretty great. Well, February is filled with a bit too much of the Valentine’s Day ads and hype for their taste, but they’ll come to not mind it eventually. Hopefully.

And right now, Scott’s headed for the tattoo parlor (they got a permanent position, holy fuck) to draw up some designs and check out the bookings for next week. It’s a quiet afternoon, after the weekly morning call with their mother, and the group chat is ever so chaotic as always.

They’ve already got, like, sixty missed messages since they left the flat, Jesus.

And so they’re stood on the train station, train arriving in five minutes, checks their phone and then-

Then. Holy fuck.

Is this real life?

Are they imagining things?

Or is it… is it him?

On the opposite side of the tracks, Scott spots a tall figure, with curly red hair and dressed in a green turtleneck and black jeans. They must be confusing them.

Except the person turns around, and, oh my God.

It’s Isaac. It’s Isaac Lahey.

And Scott doesn’t know what to fucking do, except their jaw drops like an idiot, staring until the boy-uh, man on the other side widens his blue eyes, looking directly into their own brown. This is real.

About twenty agonizing seconds pass by as they both process what’s happening before the redhead waves, a small, hesitant one. So naturally, Scott waves back.

That’s that. Then Isaac points in the direction of the exits. They nod immediately.

He leaves. They leave. Oh God, oh god, oh god.

When Scott ascends the stairs out onto the bustling streets, it seems like they’ve been waiting forever. Their brain is such a drama queen.

And there the red headed man stands- he’s tall, still, half a head taller than them. When he spots them going in his direction, a smile forms on his lips, and it’s soft and shy and all too familiar.

This could easily have Scott in tears, but they hold it in.

When they’re finally face to face with their old friend, they can’t help returning the smile. Isaac keeps moving his gaze from their eyes to the ground, back and ground, like he’s scared to look at them too long. Scott swallows around the lump in their throat, unsure of what to do.

They never, ever, in a million years expected this to happen. They never thought they would see him again. Yet, here he is.

Scott clears their throat in an attempt to sound cool and collected, although they fail horrendously, “Hey.”

“Hi,” the taller man answers.

Well, that’s a start, right?

Yet again they’re processing, thinking, they can almost see the cogs in Isaac’s brain turning, until their mouth decides to speak before their brain can decide on the words, “Can I buy you a coffee?”

Thank their lucky stars, Isaac nods instantly.

And it’s when they’ve gone to the nearest café, Scott nursing a café latte while Isaac settles with his iced coffee, that they start talking. And talking. And talking.

The conversation flows immediately, and so easily, almost like they were never apart.

It’s surprising, yet safe. Scott has to ask what they could only wonder about all these years.

“Why did you… why did you leave?” they get out, before they can lose their courage. And when their old friend’s mouth twists into a frown, and his eyes fill with something like a pained memory instead of nostalgia, they instantly regret the question.

Isaac speaks before they can apologise, though, “I’m sorry.”

“I was about to say the same, I didn’t mean to-”

“Scott, no,” he interrupts, with a small sigh, “I want to tell you. It’s, uhm… maybe it’s easier if I show you.”

They find themself furrowing their brows in confusion, “Show me?”

The man nods and takes a sip from his coffee before he rolls up the sleeve of his hoodie. And then… there’s a Kermit, there, on his wrist. The lavender branches travelling up his arm, right up to the two black bands, encircling his bicep.

Scott feels like the world is moving in slow-motion. It’s just Isaac, in front of them. And he’s got all their tattoos.

They realise they’ve been quiet when the man in front of him starts looking worried, and so they say the first thing they can think of, “You’re my soulmate?”

He nods again.

Scott has a soulmate. They’ve got a soulmate and… he’s right in front of them.

The boy they’ve been harboring feelings for since they first became friends. The tall, clumsy stranger who’s overly critical of zombie lore and talked in his sleep whenever he stayed over at their house, and… the boy who hugged them in the queue to the go-karts, just because he could.

Holy shit.

Scott doesn’t even realise the tears falling from their eyes before Isaac’s confusion intensifies, and they try to wipe at their cheek, a little embarrassed. But fuck that. “Sorry. Oh my God. Isaac, I thought- I thought I didn’t have one. Shit, I was terrified. I never got any tattoos… that weren’t my own.”

And so, the redhead’s smile starts getting a little teary as well. He chuckles, his voice breaks, but he looks so happy. They’ve missed that smile beyond belief.

“Yeah, uh,” he clears his throat, “Still not good with needles.”

They smile at each other in the silence for a moment. Scott doesn’t want to keep questioning if Isaac doesn’t want to tell them, so they just… look at him for a moment. He still is just as pretty as last time they saw him, but he’s grown his hair a bit longer, his arms more defined, he’s wearing tighter jeans than he used to.

The bustle of the other residents and the baristas busy behind the counter goes on for a beat, before Isaac speaks again, “I didn’t leave by choice. I-I would’ve said goodbye. If it was my decision.” Scott nods. They know.

“It’s my dad,” the redhead continues, “Uhm… ever since my mom died, he… became violent. He beat me. And when he didn’t, he, uh, locked me in the basement. Those were my sick days.”

The man in front of him winces, wipes at his eye in defiance and Scott does, too.

Fuck. Fuck . And they never fucking knew.

“Isaac… I’m so, so sorry. Fuck,” they feel they still have tears threatening their way, and they don’t know how to stop them, struggling with their words. “I should’ve been there for you, I should-”

“Don’t,” he tells them, “You didn’t know, Scott. None of you knew.”

“But I should’ve known-”

“It’s not your fault. Please believe me when I say that.”

They nod again. Isaac still has that timid smile on his face, as teary as it is, as their smile probably is as well. The thought of their friend being abused, and… going through it alone , not being able to reach out for help, that no one fucking stepped in, it pains Scott in an unspeakable way, right now.

The redhead swallows before speaking again, “After your birthday, after your tattoo, well, I got it as well. And it didn’t take long for him to piece together that it was you. He monitored my phone. And he was a fucking bigot, so his reaction wasn’t exactly positive.”

Scott feels the urge to hold Isaac’s hand, and in fact, before their brain can stop it their hand already touches his on the table.

When they realise, they take it back, “Sorry, I didn’t-”, but Isaac grabs their hand back again, his lying on top of their own. He sniffles, wipes at his eyes again, but the warmth radiating from him is immediate.

“So he forced me to France, cut me off from everyone, and we stayed there, and I cried myself to sleep every night,” he tells, his frown deepening, “Until Camden was discharged.”

His older brother, Scott remembers. He signed up for the army.

“He lived with us for three days before my dad threw a glass at me over the dinner table, right in front of him. My brother knocked him out on the spot. We got the hell out of there.”

Isaac smiles again, breathing a little easier. Scott feels the same.

“I’m glad,” they say and squeezes his hand. Their heart flutters when their friend squeezes it back.

“So…” Isaac starts again, a sigh escaping his lips, “Now I’m here. That was two years ago, and, uh, yeah. We roamed around for a while, too scared he’d try to find us. Camden got us a place out of town, though, it’s too… loud in here sometimes.”

He runs his free hand through his curls and takes another sip of the coffee. Scott’s practically forgotten about their drink by now, it must be cold.

“And a therapist,” the redhead says, “I got a therapist. I need one.”

His smile grows, little by little. It’s still the shy one, just like Scott remembers, screwed up by tears and the rain. He looks happy in their company. They hope so, at least. They hope he’ll be okay, that he gets to be happier. They want him to be happy.

“I’m so happy you’re out of there, I…” their voice breaks halfway, and they both chuckle at it, “I worried myself sick about where you were. I just want you to be okay.”

Isaac bites his lip in the smile, “I will be.”

“Good.” A thought hits Scott, though, “Your dad, he doesn’t know you’re back, right? If that fucker finds you-” “He’s dead.”

“Oh.”

Isaac nods, “Neighbours in Paris called my brother about four months ago. It feels morbid to say, but honestly… Camden bought champagne.”

“I would’ve done the same,” Scott says, with zero hesitation. The redhead’s peacefulness has an effect on them, like a warm embrace. However, when a customer in the queue yells at the barista, Isaac flinches, and they’re just about ready to take him by the hand and get out.

They’re still wondering about their friend’s feelings towards them, because… they’re soulmates. But people don’t always stay together. People don’t always get together.

Scott knows they’re just as much in love with Isaac as they were back then. It’s come back in full force, and the longer they look at the man, it just makes them want to wake up to the sight of him, every single morning. Listen to him rant about zombies for two hours straight and eat McDonalds at 3am and kiss in front of Stiles until he tells them to get a room.

Their best friend probably already knows about their feelings towards the red haired man. They never told him, but he’s scarily knowledgeable sometimes.

“Isaac,” they start, trying to figure out how to ask, Isaac still grazing their hand with his thumb, “About the tattoos. I’m in love with you. I hope that’s not too blunt, but… I’ve liked you since we met, I think. If you don’t feel the same, I understand-”

“I love you,” he states, immediately, and surely. He squeezes their hand again as both their smiles almost turn to grins, “Sorry. I could yell it at the top of my lungs, if you want. Soulmate.”

This might just be the best day of their fucking life.

“Want to get out of here, soulmate?”

In the little parlour at the corner, the gang’s all crowded up, even though the shop’s supposed to be closed. They closed two hours ago.

Yet, Scott’s friends have formed a small circle around the chair, where their soulmate’s taken his shirt off to allow them to tattoo his collarbone. Masterpiece , the piece says, but it’s mirrored, so he’ll be able to read whenever he looks in the mirror.

Isaac’s facetiming his brother, too, who’s already given Scott the big brother talk; secretly, he loves them, the redhead told them so.

“You ready?” they ask him, planting a kiss on their soulmate’s hand, and he nods.

“Ready.”

“Tell me if you need a break, okay?”

“I will, baby,” he says with a chuckle, but Scott needs to be sure.

“Seriously, whenever-”

“I know,” Isaac laughs, and kisses their cheek, which never fails to make them blush, despite the many, many kisses they’ve had until now. In all places. And more than kisses. Their soulmate is the most incredible person they know (sorry, Stiles), and they just want to keep learning, discovering everything about him.

He still talks in his sleep. He found a much better therapist than the first one, and he has fewer nightmares now. Sometimes he wants to talk about them, sometimes he just wants Scott to hold him. He likes to be the big spoon. He hates the smell of coffee and eats excessive amounts of bacon. He likes to wake Scott by tracing their tattoos with his hands in the morning, and if that doesn’t work, he’ll steal the comforter and jump in the bed. He’s still such a nerd.

Every moment with him is unbelievably peaceful.

Their soulmate takes a deep breath, nods and so Scott gets started on the tattoo.

“Want me to hold your hand?” Stiles asks with a laugh, but they’re pretty sure the offer is genuine. Those two have been taking a liking to each other, after all, no matter how much they deny it.

“Absolutely not,” Isaac fires back, and the brunette gasps, making their soulmate smirk, “Lydia can hold it.”

She does, no matter how grumpy her soulmate looks. Malia’s nearly on the floor laughing.

This is safe. This is home. They’re all soulmates in a way, meant to be tied together, no matter where in the world they might be. And they’re so bloody happy to have him, and them, in their life.

Scott McCall has a soulmate.

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