#i always drew this definition of adulthood from the fact that I had to be the responsible person in the room a lot when I was a kid

[senzasord]

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[cosmiischillin]

Twilight Town: The Frankenstein Twins

Sometimes I got to remember Frank and Len have been and always will be my favorites of the show and I think they’re the most popular aside from Misery and Ruby. I even drew a sketch of them from memory and now Twilight Town exists.

And since I have grouped both twins together. It’s gonna be a long one for the monster analysis. Especially since they’re based on a monster with a LOT of lore and background so let’s get started now

Why is the design part so damn long??

I always saw the twins with two different styles, especially in the Rock aesthetics. Frank would be the 50s-70s style of rock. The checkerboard and pomp hair definitely played a part there. It’s why he got jackets and more biker/greaser type style (growing up my mom used to do a happy Days musical). Len is the punk era of rock. Messy hair, flames, and just extra edge. His fashion was experimental and less clean as his brother. Aside from that I gave them different instruments. Frank has “Devil’s trophy” a golden bass and Len has “Tombstone” a tombstone styled guitar.

So when I was making the twins. The original concept had them still conjoined in adulthood. In fact most of my early sketches had them like that. They could only split apart with magic. I even had a storyline that they asked Jackie to do that and they would live non-conjoined for 24 hours. In the end, the decision would be that they would split as adults via surgery.

The choice of making them separate was the multiple struggles that would come once they’re adults. Relationships would be complicated, one sibling would have different ones compared to the other, and ultimately, they couldn’t blend in pretending to be a costume which I already made a post about, almost getting killed by humans.

The Modern Prometheus

I think I got the idea that Frank and Len were Frankenstein monsters from talking with my friend who is also the co-creator for ENAF. Honestly there was a lot of details that would work for that concept. Frankenstein’s monster sometimes gets his names shortened to be just Frank or Frankie, different illterations had him green (on rare cases blue), and even the visibility of stitches (which took me 13 years to see). So once I had them be the sons of Frankenstein’s monster (which is actually Frank 1) and Bride of Frankenstein (who is named Eliza) I did as much research and story writing about the whole family as I could. It’s why they have white hair streaks, hate fire, covered in stitchesand are affected by electricity. They get shocked and burned just as much as misery sometimes lol.

With the idea that they can eat humans is simply the fact that they’re undead monsters, almost in similarity to zombies. They’re far more intelligent and controlling than them since they have active non decaying brains and creations are different. The two have a rule with Ruby that they can only kill and eat humans who harm or attack them so they don’t just go by eating them all the time.

Background and Origins

There was a man named Victor Frankenstein. He lived nearby a monster sanction. Rather than react in fear, he was friendly to them which led to his exile from humanity. With no family to have, he created two monsters via science, Frank and Eliza Frankenstein. The couple were happy with Victor, even taking up careers in music becoming popular musicians with Victor’s support. (Oh and I have designed both parents. *yay*)

At some point, Eliza had twins who were unfortunately born stillborn due to lack of vital body functions. Since this would be likely the only chance the monsters could reproduce, Victor sewn the twins together and reanimated them back to life. The twins would be named Frank and Len and would live most of their childhood with their family before moving to Twilight Town as teenagers with a growing band.

When they were 18, they decided to undergo a procedure done by Victor that would give them two complete bodies by using their dna to replicate their bodies. After that they were no longer conjoined but no matter it, they still prefer to be close.

Next Up: Polyphemus

[atlafan]

Jordan, ik you probably don’t want to have a whole conversation about this but I recently watched Drew Gooden’s video on the live action atla series (it just affirmed that I definitely don’t want to watch it lol) but it did inspire me to do a rewatch of the original and ughhhhhh it’s so incredible😭😭 all the little characterization details are SO rewarding and so good. Zuko’s small acts of kindness, even early on in book 1, just show that he’s always been Ursa’s son and help set up his arc for the rest of the show. Going after the captured Iroh instead of tracking the Gaang in Winter Solstice. Saving his crew in The Storm. It just shows you that at his core he believes in doing the right thing, and that’s a huge part of why his overall arc pays off so well. It’s the same with all of them—seeing Sokka put on his war paint and his battle regalia (in ep 2 or 3 I think) to confront Zuko in the village…it shows you that he takes such pride in the responsibility of being a leader and a warrior, especially in his dad’s absence. Yet when he gets to Kyoshi, we see the humbled side of him, and that he’s devoted to learning and respectful of the masters in their craft (whether it’s the Kyoshi warriors or Piandao or even the mechanist) and wants to learn what they have to teach him. Even Jet, who is always a very complicated character for me, is so compelling and so real. He’s suffered horribly and unfortunately has let that radicalize him. Tbh it reminds me of when anti war groups in the 60s would bomb places and things like that…the mission is “peace” but you’ve let your mission turn you into a violent radical who doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong anymore. I KNOW I don’t have to tell you lol but all the little details of this show, from design to writing to performances, are just incredibleeee and I’m so happy it exists.

GISICKAKAAK what a fun message to wake up to!

Yes I am simply pretending the new series doesn’t exist because I know it’ll just piss me off if I watch it. And I know myself well enough to know I am just not mature enough to separate the original from the new, so yeah I won’t be watching and I doubt I ever will. The one thing I am mature about is that I don’t “hate watch” things anymore lmao

I think this is why zuko is like my favorite character. I feel like he was the first character I was ever like “no, that’s actually my son” when I got older. He is so fucking complicated and so not at all what you think he’s going to be. He’s not just the antagonist, he’s Aang’s foil. They parallel each other in so many different ways. There’s a scene in book 3 where Aang literally says, “I need my honor back”, and it cross fades from one side of his face to the other side of zuko’s!!

All of the characters have incredible arcs. They all learn something about themselves, and they actually use that to grow and get better. Remember, these are literally children who were thrusted into adulthood, forced to grow up way too early. Katara is a nagging mother, but she also remembers how to be a kid and have fun and laugh. Sokka is a sexier idiot, but what teenage boy isn’t? He unlearns so much behavior, and even though he still feels like he’s the leader of the group, and in so many ways he is, he learns that it’s okay to let someone else take the lead, that he doesn’t always have to be right or in charge. Toph learns that she’s loveable for who she is, blindness and shoeless and a badass.

Aang and Zuko obviously have the most difficult arcs. Aang has to come to terms with the fact that he ran away, and a mass genocide of his people ensued. But if he hadn’t left, he would have died along with the rest of them. Like it or not, it was fate that he froze himself. And most avatars get told who they are at 16 and are given all the time in the world to learn the other elements. Aang was 12…and then had to learn the other elements in less than a year. I would argue that he didn’t necessarily master all the elements in that year. I think he learned enough about each to get by, and I’d like to think he took some time afterwards to really master them. He still relied on his air bending a lot. Whereas if we look at Korra, she did a lot of fire bending even though water was her natural element.

And my baby zuko…I could go on for days about him. My tortured emo son. He overcame so much. He cried, he learned to laugh again, he learned how to be young again. He hated being in the slums of ba sing se, but he also went on dates and got closer with his uncle like he never had been. He was such a sweet little boy. The storm always makes me cry. Zuko alone always makes me cry.

I could go on! I always wanna talk about avatar so never be afraid to come to my inbox about it!

[writingsbychlo]

put her together again (02)

word count; 6241

summary; mitch realises just how literal your instructions an be taken, and teh extent of your trauma, before helping you get over a major breakthrough.

notes; pretty major stuff in this part, so I hope you like reading it as much as I liked writing about it. I know we’re moving quiet fast through the time spaces right now, but that’s kinda’ just the way it has to go.

warnings; reference to abuse, reference to brainwashing, reference to injury.

Following a rocky introduction to his life, the ripples you caused seemed to smooth out fairly easily after that. Mitch found himself acting less and less like you were a baby in need of protection, and instead, you had become more like a simple accessory to his life. You reminded him of a cat, you didn’t really talk to him, but you simply coexisted, moving around the shared space and living together without ever having to talk.

You no longer sat in silence and sulked in your room, though, because he’d managed to coax you out. Simple tasks and basic chores meant you were pulling your weight around the house, and he definitely notice that you’d occasionally things would be in slightly different places, objects cleaned an inspected while he wasn’t looking, as you learned your whereabouts. Books to read, paper and pencils to draw with, anything he could think of to try and get a little information of you, because talking never worked.

It wasn’t for a lack of trying, this wasn’t exactly his ideal assignment, a year out of action as he babysat a moody assassin wasn’t something he thought he’d be spending his life doing, and so he was determined to try and make breakthroughs with you and learn as much about you as he possibly could, because the sooner you started talking and making progress, the sooner you’d be off of his hands. He just had to ensure you were stable and functional enough to undergo whatever therapy and rigorous interviewing it was that Irene had lined up for you.

You’d had a few conversations with him, which were mostly one-sided as he spoke and you stared at him with that same blank look, and over what had been almost a month now, Mitch had flittered through a range of emotion. Confusion, concern, anger, irritation, helplessness, and now back to confusion. This confusion, however, was mixed with some form of sadness and pity for you, the broken-toy vibe that you gave off made him permanently feel depressed and exhausted himself, and he was grateful for the reprieve when you seemed to perk up - even just a little bit - while reading of drawing.

The books were mostly just everything that he had around at the time, and you must’ve read everything on his shelves at least twice right now, even the ones written in Arabic that he’d forgotten he’d ever owned, which had lead to an interesting discovery that you apparently knew five languages fluently, and had a reasonable understanding of a further three. You were still icy and cold with him, and so he gave up on trying to ask you what the drawings meant, encouraging you to just draw whatever came to your mind when you picked up a pencil, most of your doodles and scribbles meaning nothing to him, but he faxed copies of them all over to Irene, and saved them in a folder when you were done with them.

The most startling thing he had learned, though, was just how young you’d been when you were taken.

A simple series of questions he’d asked you one day over dinner, stemming from his desperate attempt to find out more about you at the beginning o week two, an answer that had shaken him to his very core and sent his insides twisting in disgust and sadness for you, and his appetite had quickly drained after hearing your response. All he had asked was how old you were, how long you’d been doing this, and you had seemed entirely unaffected when you’d answered.

“Unit eight has been active for twenty years, six months and eight days - and has been in service for eleven years, three months and seventeen days.”

He remembered Irene saying that the agents were taken young, but that was younger than anybody could even remember, your life was based entirely on the way you’d been raised, on being grown and shaped into a weapon for a company that would use you until you died. You had no childhood, no young adulthood, you had nothing but the memories of a cell and an abuser, and even he had a childhood he could look back on before his own parents had passed away.

You weren’t a puzzle, you were like a broken glass, shattered on the floor and chipped, but it was his job to put you back together again. You’d never be whole, never the way you were before, you’d be splintered and cracked, but you’d no longer be shattered, and he was determined to achieve that for you.

Setting your mind up to do something productive seemed to be the best way to make progress with you, and he began to notice a steady pattern of what made you seem like you were on the verge of a breakthrough, and what made you seem like you were closing back in on yourself.

When you used shades of blue in your artwork, you seemed to be denoting happier scenes, things like snow and food, or simple sketches of what you were seeing around his home, and Mitch had decided that blue must be your favourite colour, even if you didn’t know it yourself, because you gravitated towards blue things. You liked to sit at the end of the couch with the blue cushion, and you favourite the deep navy hoodie he’d given to you, and the blue body wash in the bathroom seemed to be used up far more quickly than the yellow or red one, even though it had no scent other than sea salt, and the other two had a fruit essence that he’d originally thought you’d enjoy upon purchase.

Reds and purples seemed to donate darker times, the tips of the pencils often broken and in need of sharpening, and he had to buy those far more often than any others, because you pressed down harder into the paper, scribbling aggressively as you drew cages and corridors, until dark images with barely any white paper left revealed were created, and these must’ve been colours associated with things that hurt you in the past. Blue brought you calmness and serenity, and even made you more open to answering his questions or listening to him talk at dinner, but red and purples made your mood turn sour, and on those nights a palpable tension shrouding in darkness would often hang over the room.

You liked it when you were able to read sci-fi books, he’d noticed because his one copy of that genre on the bookshelf had never been put back after it had been picked up, always seeming to follow you around the house, even if you were on other books at the time. Mitch figured you liked to escape into another world, that you just wanted to get away from the life that you actually lived to find a better one, and he wasn’t entirely sure he blamed you. He was taking notes, jotting it down, the way you favoured certain things over another, and the way you scowled when he turned the vacuum on, but liked to sit in the laundry room when the washer was on, even though it was a little broken and rattled. The clock that clicked loudly with every second that passed was something he often found you sitting near on the bad days, your fingers twitching in time with the clicks, and he’d be damned if he said he didn’t find it at least the littlest bit endearing that you were able to search and find comfort in somewhere that was probably unfamiliar and rather scary to you.

The weeks passed on and on, your walls crumbling bit by bit as you seemed to grow more comfortable around him, choosing to sit with him on the couch when you ate dinner in the living room instead of at the table, and you had even begun to mimic some of his actions, taking on basic responsibilities around the house. You washed up, and unpacked the shopping when he brought things back, and he knew you tidied your room, because while you kept the door shut to him, he would occasionally catch a glimpse inside, and it was always spotless.

Luckily for Mitch, he’d managed to wrangle himself a few moments free at the end of each week. He set you off with a few hours worth of tasks each Friday, before slipping out to the coffee shop to get himself a well deserved hot drink and moment of quiet, before doing stopping by at the gym, and then going on to do some shopping. 

From midday until five PM every Friday afternoon, Mitch got a little bit of freedom to himself, but as of two days ago, that had gone too, Irene telling him he was to come in and start giving her actual reports on how you were doing. 

He wasn’t ready for the earlier rise this morning, and apparently, it had been a bad day. You’d spent the night screaming as you dreamt until the early hours, and so he’d only had a few moments of sleep, barely scraping himself out of bed in the morning. You’d been a challenge, to say the least, unwilling to leave your room after the awful dreams you’d had, until he’d shouted at you to come out and eat, a thing he was feeling guilty for now as you’d trudged from the room with your head hung low, and refused to meet his eye as he rushed around to get ready. 

He felt guilty about a lot of things that had happened this morning, the most important of which being the fact that he had completely forgotten to go through the list of tasks with you, which he had spent an hour and a half making for you last night as he sat in the home office, his face popped up on his hand as he leaned over the desk and started at the sheet of paper, while trying to think of ways to help you without seeming like he was taking advantage of you to do household jobs, or patronising you by treating you like an incompetent child. He had rushed out before giving you the list, the paper sitting on his desk still, the office in which you never entered, the door closed from his exit last night, and he was genuinely convened that he would come home and find you still sitting at the kitchen table, legs numb and body aching from holding yourself upright for almost five hours, a dish still sitting in front of you and hours wasted once again. 

He had realised this about thirty minutes into a meeting with Irene, one that had gone on for a further two hours, and then Stan had caught him in the corridor to discuss the upkeep on his training, before demanding a sparring session, which had taken up another hour of his time, and despite how much he knew he needed to get home to you, the two of you were rapidly running out of food, and so he was certain he needed to make at least a bare minimum shopping trip. 

And so over four hours later, with shopping bags in hand a twisting feeling in his gut, Mitch was trudging his way back up the stairs to his apartment and rifling through his pockets to find his keys, only to remember after five whole minutes, that they were clasped between his teeth. It had been a long fuckin’ day.

Muscles aching, stomach rumbling, and silence meeting him when he opened the door, Mitch let out a deep sigh as he saw you. 

It was out of relief, his lips flicking up at the sides as he realised at least one thing had gone right today. Your hair was still a little wet and your clothes were changed, clearly, you had showered, and you were peering at him over the edge of your book, face stoic and blank as you looked at him, and he kicked the door shut, moving around the room to place the bags down on the kitchen counter.

Your pencil set was out on the coffee table too, a new drawing facing upwards, this one decorated with splotches of greens and blues, a house in the foreground and a sunny day, signs along the road and toys in the garden, and it was possibly the most detailed drawing you’d done yet, similar to the line sketch you’d done a few weeks ago, the comparison in his mind flashing up as a green flag. 

“I was worried that you’d stay in that chair all day, I’m glad to see that you haven’t.”

It had almost seemed like you’d shrugged, closing the book you were reading and sitting up to look at him over the edge of the couch as he put away all the food and supplies he’d bought for you both. “Based on previous assignments, it was logical that the handler would be satisfied with the unit’s task choices.”

He stilled, mulling it all over in his mind. 

On the one hand, he was incredibly happy to see that you were gaining your ability to come up with ideas for yourself, even if you were doing it to please other people. It was the first time you’d gained a little individuality, choosing what you wanted to do from a list of ‘approved’ tasks, and just like that, he realised you’d made a pretty impressive breakthrough.

On the other hand, though, you saw him as your new handler, and that made him feel like yous aw him as a possible threat and someone who might hurt you, and he certainly never wanted you to feel like that. He wanted you to be safe with him, he wanted you to trust him and open up, not see him as someone who’d hurt you.

He finished tidying away, leaving out some pasta and basic ingredients for mac and cheese on the counter, and you were still sitting on the couch, watching him move around and waiting to be told what to do now that he was back. 

“I think we should have a schedule, y’know? We can make a routine, then you don’t have to wait for me to tell you what to do.”

“Differing to the current routine?”

If he wasn’t mistaken, there was almost a hint of judgement and sass in your voice, spoken to him like he was just supposed to know that, and he placed his hands flat on the counter, raising his brows at you. “We already have a routine?”

You fixed him with a look that he couldn't quite decipher, before getting up and walking past him, disappearing into your room for only a moment, before re-emerging, a sheet of paper clasped in your hands. 

Handwritten in the pencils you had scattered around, a pang shot through his chest as he got a glimpse of your writing, something that was unique to you, and so, in turn, felt so personal and special in a way that he couldn't quite place, but deeply appreciated. Taking a seat at the table, you pushed it towards him, head bowed down to look at the slightly stained wood, and he didn’t like standing above you, forcing you to see him as a superior, so he sat down opposite you.

Picking it up, his eyes scanned along it, taking in each and every note you had written, timeframes jotted down alongside tasks and notes, and a lot of things suddenly began to come to light about the way you acted, and when you wouldn't inevitably emerge from your bedroom, before retreating back into it. You stuck to this timetable like your life depended on it, and he was certain that at a time it had, but not anymore, and so making a routine wasn’t the direction to go in. He didn’t need to reinforce that behaviour, he needed to break you out of it. 

Your entire life up until now had been based on punishments and time frames, and so what you needed were reward and spontaneity, to show you that you still had an entire life to live, if you could just let him free you from the box you’d been forced into. Mealtimes, work out schedules, study breaks, there was no free time, your day was filled with waiting on handler tasks and basic upkeep from the moment you got up to the moment you went to bed, and he shook his head in distaste, turning it back to you.

“Do you want to go for a walk? It’s a little late, but it’s not too cold tonight.”

“Exercise is scheduled between 10 AM and 3 PM every day.” He felt his head tip to the side a little as he studied you, licking over his lower lip and bringing it to sit clenched between his teeth as he nodded. 

“I saw that, but I was thinking we could make an exception.”

“Is this an assignment?” You were pulling the paper closer to yourself, but looking up at him now, meeting his eye as you waited for an answer. 

“No, it’s not an assignment, it’s fun.”

“Fun?” You echoed him, and he grinned a little as he watched you, and there was no doubt that there was judgement in your tone this time, a slight underlay of confused mocking, and while it wasn’t quite the emotions he wanted you t greet him with, it was more than the monotone and clipped sentences that he’d been awarded so far.

“Okay, so that’s a no on the walk then, but we will come back to that.” You raised a single brow at him, and the entirety of his bad day seemed to pale into insignificance as the first semblance of a personality from you dripped in, and it turns out, you were rather sassy. “You did good today, and everyone loves pasta, so how about you let me set us off some mac and cheese, and then we can rework this routine a bit, okay?”

“Command understood.”

You sat back in the chair, giving him a curt nod and crossing your arms over your chest as you waited.  “Not a command, okay? Just a suggestion, something to be done, but I’m not commanding you.”

Your mouth opened, before you paused for a second, and he watched carefully, before you swallowed, bringing your gaze up to his own boldly. “Understood.”

“Progress.”

That statement was more for himself than for you, and he pulled out an oven dish and the jar of sauce he had, beginning to measure up pasta quantities as he prepared the meal for you both to share. During that time, he’d heard you get up, anew piece of paper being fetched and your pencil case, bringing them both back to your seat and spilling the wooden sticks out over the surface. 

He had watched on in interest as he poured you both a glass of water while you arranged the colours to your liking, perfect rows in colour order, and you seemed satisfied with your job, folding your hands into your lap as you waited on him to join you. Pulling out a chair beside you instead of opposite you, your body stiffened slightly beside his own, but you didn’t flinch away or move, and so he decided to take that as a good sign. The original schedule sat by it for comparison, one you’d work through every day, and he hovered his hands over the lines of pencils, waiting for your approval on the act, and you offered him a curt nod to allow him to pick one up. 

The first action he took was to write times along the side, knowing that he couldn't snap you out of it too much, he didn’t want to startle you or make you panic and curl back in n yourself, not when you were taking so many steps forward now, and so he wrote the times from morning to evening all the way along the side, and drew lines to match each one, before picking up two new colours of pencils. 

“I’ll be green, and you’ll be blue, okay?”

You nodded, leaning in a little as you watched him transfer some of the events and items across onto the new sheet, using the blue pencil first as you changed some things around. Breakfast was at ten o’clock instead of eight, and you would only work out for one hour a day instead of a killer five hours every day. Dinner would be at five, and you had no commitments after that, but you had household jobs scheduled at four just before you ate. 

Then, he moved onto himself, adding in green in the filler hours, such as his office work and his own workout, and he made a mental note to show you his home gym, so that you didn’t feel like you had to be locked away in your room. He also put in the time for showers and personal grooming, which was optional depending on the day, before he let out a proud sound, and presented it to you for approval. 

“There are empty spaces. Units must not be left without tasks.”

“You won’t be left without things to do.” He turned, tapping the tip of your nose with a pencil and your face screwed up at the ticklish touch, before resetting to the blank expression he was oh-so-familiar with. “Those are called free time, or downtime. Time to relax, and do whatever you want to do. Like read, or draw, or whatever.”

You only nodded, seeming suspicious of the idea, but you didn’t argue and so he was happy with that, because he had the chance to help you discover who you wanted to be, and who you were when you weren’t under anybody’s control except your own. 

“How about we say that once a week, we’ll go for a walk after dark? Just around the block, but it’ll do you good to get some fresh air.” You gave him your confirmation, and he felt like tonight you’d taken more steps in the last hour that you had in the previous six weeks of living together. Pushing his chair back, you flinched a little at the wood on the tiles, and with a mumbled apology under his breath, before he was rearranging the things pinned up on the fridge to make space for the sheet. “How about we keep this out here, where we can both see it, yeah?”

Your response game after a moment’s deliberation, but you were tucking your hands into the sleeves of the sweater in a way that made you look adorable as you let a little of you defences down again, seemingly without realising you’d done it, using his clothing like a suit of armour as you shielded yourself within them; “That would be acceptable.”

“Great. Now, it’s pasta time.” 

You didn’t fight him on that, but he did hear you sniff the air as he opened the oven, and Mitch smirked to himself as he pulled the tray out and up onto the surface, bubbling cheese sauce and steaming pasta, and he fished around for two dishes and a serving spoon with which to sort the meal with. 

Grabbing at forks and covering up the leftovers but leaving it out in case you wanted more, he placed the dish down before you, taking a seat beside you and while you didn’t say the words ‘thank you’, he saw what was most definitely a grateful look in your eyes, and he ducked his head, stirring his food around and stabbing at his pasta, shoving hot food into his mouth. He was slightly startled, to say the least, when you started a conversation, never having optionally chosen to be the first to talk before, and he looked up at you expectantly as soon as he heard your intake of breath;

“What are the recommended ‘free time’ activities?”

The routine seemed to work for you, it opened you up a little more to him and made it easier for the two of you to bond, but he quickly realised that having you sound when you had no idea what to do was slightly less functional. 

You now seemed to follow him around like a lost puppy, and you still didn’t talk as much, so he didn’t mind having you around, but he felt sorry for you. You would sit and just keep him company silently as he did his office work, for hours at a time, or slink away to workout and take a shower before returning. Every book he had was now rearranged on the shelves, and you were running out of paper, beginning to sketch the same things over and over again because you had nothing else to do, and he quickly realised that his apartment was nowhere near as entertaining as he thought it was. 

Sometimes, the two of you would watch a movie in the evening, but the television gave you headaches after too long, not that you ever voiced the pain but he could tell from the way you’d squint and rub at your eyes, getting a little cranky before going to bed and rubbing your temples. That meant you still needed an adjustment period to screens, not to mention that you had no idea how to operate much technology, and so he was left to occupy you with more basic forms of entertainment. 

Your personality had been developing, though, coming through in dribs and drabs. You had favourites in the books now, a stack that you would go back over every day, whereas certain genres had been delegated back to the shoves to never again be touched, and he flicked through them one day before you got up, smiling to himself a little at the idea that science-fiction and fantasy were your favourites.

Following that discovery, he’d got a library card, making room on one of his Friday afternoons out to go to the building and browse the aisles, checking out ten new books following those genres to surprise you with, and you’d all but bounced in your spot as you stood before him, eyes wide and slightly sparkling as he handed them over to you. That day you did thank him, looking him in the eye as you said those words, and the locked eyes felt almost too intense for him to handle, you didn’t shy away or duck your head in respect of authority when he didn’t turn away either, heat crawling along his cheeks before you’d chosen to look down at the new books he’d given you. 

He found in meals that you would eat anything you were given, despite his insistence that if you particularly liked something or didn’t like something, then you should speak up so he knew what to get, but you ate anything he gave you. 

He picked up on the fact that you ate chicken at twice the speed you ate lamb, and that you’d had seconds of the beef stew and mashed potato he’d made one night, and you always pushed broccoli onto a fork with other food to eat it, but were happy to eat carrots and peas without having to accompany them with something else. Cheesecake was nice for dessert, but only if it had the lemon swirls, not the strawberry ones, and you preferred brownies to cookies. 

Despite all his studying of you, he knew you were studying and learning him just as much in response. When he did the laundry, you’d fold it so he didn’t have to, and when he was cooking, you’d set the table. He’d watched you go around the entire apartment with a fine-tooth comb one day, checking everything and learning their places, memorising where it would all go and the positioning of things, finally accepting the environment as your own. You knew which side of the table he liked to sit on and which was his favourite chair, never sitting in it or disturbing his routine, and you’d grown to knocking on the office door before entering to sit with him quietly instead of just barging in and starling him if the world had slipped away around him as he drowned in mission reports and debriefing statements. 

It was odd, to learn someone so well, to become so in tune with another person when they hardly spoke to you, and to know someone so well when they barely knew themselves. It was hard to talk to you, you didn’t even know your name, but he knew of your childhood trauma at the hands of kidnappers, and you lived with him but couldn't remember your own house while growing up. Having another person in his life was something that Mitch had expected to hate, but as the ‘end of your third-month’ marker of slightly uneasy but otherwise reasonably acceptable cohabitation came around, he found that he rather enjoyed having your presence. 

The large space felt more welcoming now, and knowing he had someone to come home to and sit with as he ate his meals or watched his movies made the long days feel a little shorter, and the stressful workload feel a little more bearable, even if it was only a temporary fixture, but Mitch was making the most of it while it lasted.

“I’m home!” Mitch had to resist the urge to add the word ‘honey’ onto the beginning there, his eyes rolling at himself as he grinned at the joke in his mind, waiting expectantly with the bags at the door as he tried to kick off his shoes, but you didn’t come to greet him.

Lately, he’d been able to trust you alone enough to go out more, and so he was given a little more freedom, the alone time seeming to give you a chance to develop your own mind a little more too, making more and more little breakthroughs each day. You normally came to find him after he arrived home, padding through the house to greet him at the door, even if you didn’t say anything, you’d offer him a nod of the head and take some of the bags from his hands if he had any.

You didn't come to find him though, concern and fear racing through his veins as he listened to the eerie silence in the house, and he left the bags abandoned on the kitchen table as he checked through the house, ensuring security and safety. He found you in your bed, curled up under your covers with the blanket lifted over your head, despite the fact that the chart you’d made to give you a routine stated that you’d be reading one of the more informative books you owned right now.

He knocked on the door, your body not moving out from under the blanket, but you shuffled a little, and he chuckled, making his way across the room. Peeling the blanket back from over your head, the teasing smile on his face dropping as he took in red puffy eyes and wet cheeks, a distressed look on your face as you curled into your pillow a little more, backing away from him across the bed as your body closed in on yourself.

“What happened?”

You didn't reply, barely moving, and he settled down on the floor, kneeling before you as his knees brushed the carpet, placing his forearms flat on the edge of the mattress and balancing his chin on top of them. You peeked up at him a little, and his heart broke a little bit as you brought up one sweater covered hand to wipe at your face. It was the first real emotion he’d seen from you, he expected things like a smile or an angry outburst, but he’d never expected to see tears, and right now you looked like you were walking the line between distressed and utterly terrified.

“Wanna’ tell me what’s wrong?”

You took a deep breath, sniffling a little before pushing yourself to sit up, smoothing your hair back out of your face and crossing your legs, trying to gain a little bit of composure again, before taking a deep and raspy breath, coughing to clear your throat before you spoke. “Unit eight has another title.”

His brows furrowed, your voice barely above a whisper and cracking at the end, and he echoed the words back to you in confusion. “Another title?”

“(Y/N).”

He mulled the name over a little, letting it rattle around inside his head before realising exactly what it meant, and he felt his own face light up as you continued to stare at him with a cross of horror and despair. “That’s amazing! Why do you look so sad? That’s your name.”

You just played with your hands in your lap, taking your gaze away from his as your head dropped down, and he let out a low sigh. Lifting his body up from the floor, he was soon to find his seat on the mattress instead, back pressing to the wall as he sat beside you, keeping his gaze fixed on you.

“Can I call you that? (Y/N)?”

“It would be acceptable.” The words were hardly audible, but you were at least accepting your name now, and he was psyched just to have something to refer to you as, because up until now, it had been extremely difficult just to get your attention.

He never wanted to call you ‘unit eight’ and he didn’t want to startle you by touching you out of the blue, knowing that you were still jumpy and stiff even when he just got a little too close without warning, but this was major progress. Your arm brushed against his as you shuffled, and you moved in a little closer to him, not quite leaning your head on his shoulder but your cheek brushed the curve of his arm, seeking out comfort as you cleared your skin of tears, and he remained still, allowing you to do so.

He knew it would take you a while to actually settle into the name, to get used to hearing it and remembering that it was you, in order to reply to the name and become familiar with it. He dared to reach out a hand, placing it over your clothed knee and squeezing comfortingly as you settled into the realisation that you weren't just a unit, you were a person with a name, and he couldn't really imagine how you were feeling, but he could empathise.

“Well, for the record, I think it’s a lovely name, and I think it suits you.”

“Thank you.”

He nodded his head, tipping it to the side to rest on your own, and he could feel the slight tension of your body, freezing up for a moment, before you accepted the physical touch, and it was all symbols of how well you were settling into your new life.  “How about we make some dinner? Do you want to come and cook with me? I bet you’re starving, right now. You made a pretty big breakthrough.”

You merely nodded, letting him guide you up from the bed slowly as you stretched out muscles and joints that must've been locked up for a while. He waited as you straightened out the sheets, wandering away to the kitchen to give you that moment of space, and you joined him only a few minutes later, opening up the fridge and having a look through, before pulling out a packet of chicken breasts and looking up at him hopefully.

“Chicken and potatoes? I have that broccoli you like.”

“That would be nice.”

The two of you worked in harmony, side by side as he stood over the hob, creating a seasoning for the chicken and frying it up, and you expertly chopped potatoes and vegetables with a kind of precision and speed that he knew was a skill gained from your years in captivity, but it was still incredible to watch, dicing everything up small and making it look so easy. You had ended up choosing mashed potatoes over boiled, and he worked carefully to ensure there were no lumps and that it was smooth, while you set the table, and he plates up two dishes of hot and delicious food for you both, humming to a song under his breath.

You had poured drinks, laying them out too, before going to take a stand beside him, staring at both of the plates, and leaning in a little as he practically watched the cogs work in your mind, and he waited patiently, brows raised, for whatever it was you were thinking about and trying to work out how to say. “Is this one.. um, this one is mine?”

He paused, lifted up the spoon he’s dished out the mash with to lick it clean, but couldn't help the large grin that plastered across his face. Mine.

Your name made you acknowledge yourself as something other than another person’s plaything and machine, and he nodded, letting out a breathy laugh as you claimed something as your own, as a person capable of having possessions.

“Yeah. Yeah, that one is yours.”

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

Fantasies, dreams and desires, ideas of normalcy and fears of difference. A slightly queer reading of 15x14

Mrs Butters is a delightful character who is built to parallel so many things in the show. She occupies perfectly the semantic sphere that the narrative has crafted around Dean’s desires; also, you know, cake.

We could talk for days about the significance of food and drink in Supernatural. One of the biggest themes that run through the entire show is hunger (or thirst) and food is very often a symbol for an emotional need of sorts. Supernatural draws a lot folklore, and human stories have always used symbologies that put together food, desire, love, sex, family, goodness and darkness and all those human experiences.

We have discussed the shit out of every instance of food in the show, analyzed parallels to other stories and fairytales, scrutinized queer-codings and subtexts, got called nasty names by impolite people accusing us of saying that a slice of baked good means Dean likes sitting on dicks. So, yeah, I’m not gonna start explaining everything from the beginning. Let’s jump to the parallels.

- The comfort food. Motherhood, hugs, and the past that can never return: the ideal of childhood and the 50s fantasy

We’ve already talked about how Mrs Butters functions as a parallel to Mary and a symbol of the ideal motherhood that both Mary and Dean struggled with. In Dark Side Of The Moon, we see a memory from Dean’s childhood, where we learn that Mary would cut off the crusts off his sandwiches. Mrs Butters also says that she cut the crusts off, establishing a direct parallel to Dean’s ideal of childhood and child-parent relationship. Or, we should say, as both Mary’s and Dean’s ideals of a child-parent relationship, because we know that Mary set up her life with John and the kids as an elaborate “scene” according to her idea-slash-fantasy of the perfect safe life.

She strugged with that, because her ideal life could never match with reality - she had loose ends from hunting to deal with, she at some level liked having those loose ends to deal with because as much as she hated the hunting life and craved for safety and “normalcy” that was still something she was in her element doing, probably more than the perfect housewife role. Of course when she came back she attempted to recreate the scene but quickly discovered that it was impossible and dropped all attempts to do so, embracing the opposite, or at least what she perceived as the opposite (having a pretty dualistic view of hunting life-domestic life where they cannot be reconciled).

Dean, on the other hand, started out with a similar dualistic view, figuring that he’d always belong to the hunting world and could never have the domestic, “normal” thing at all, embracing his “freakness” as opposed to the concept of normalcy represented by civilians, by the middle class, by the suburbs, by the apple pie, white fence life (insert heavy queer subtext here). And yet there was always an ambiguity with him (again, he’s never one-or-the-other, he’s always both), because, while on the surface he embraces this rebellious, devil-may-care persona, that’s not quite what he is as a full individual. He grew up essentially a housewife from a very early age, has a very caregiving personality, and thrives in taking care of others.

Dean is both Mrs Butters and Mary, where the difference between him and Mary is that Mary couldn’t (didn’t have the time, support, resources?) reconcile parts of her that Dean instead was able to (and in fact recently helped her with: before dying, she’d reached a pretty healthy balance of living her own life as a hunter and having a warm relationship with her sons, at least as healthy as it can get in that kind of circumstances).

Another important parallel to Dark Side Of The Moon, borrowed by Scoobynatural, is the nightgown that feels like being wrapped in hugs: we are reminded of Dean’s “I wuv hugz” from when he was a kid, a symbol for his early life of affection and safety that he lost with his mother. Childhood hugs, comfort food, loving gestures like cutting off the crusts are all symbols of a past that cannot return.

On a level, from a “coming-of-age story” perspective, childhood, with its innocence and perception that adults will always keep us safe, is obviously something that everyone needs to accept as something that belongs to the past and cannot return, to embrace instead the responsibilities and risks of adulthood in a healthy way. In a sense, Dean needs to go through all these steps - acknowledging that his mother was a flawed person, that in fact both of his parents were flawed people who made mistakes but he can forgive them for his own sake in order to be able to let go of trauma and carry on... - to become a healthy adult able to be a good parent to his own child.

(There’s also the cholesterol thing - Mrs Butters chastizes Dean for his diet, but we know that there’s a depth to Dean’s diet, not only his extreme appreciation of food due to experiencing food scarcity and insecurity as a child, but also the memory of his mother’s comfort food, such as the “Winchester surprise”, a monstrosity of meat and cheese. While the “meat man” persona would appear on the surface as a sterotypical masculinity thing, it has layers, in a typical Dean fashion... not coincidentally, in the latest episode he calls himself the meat man while wearing an apron that we’re told he’s very fond of, painting him, again, in a mixture of different meanings, masculinity and femininity, fatherhood and motherhood, devil-may-care attitude and caregiver attitude.)

On another level, a more political level, there’s the 50s fantasy element. We all know the significance of the idealization of the post-war period as the “good ol’ times” in American culture, and it’s an ideal that Mary definitely drew from when she built her perfect life with her family. Mrs Butters represents this in a very literal way, being literally from 1958 when she “froze” herself, and acts as a very stereotyped governess for a bunch of men that feel like they are above housework, what is considered women’s work. Dean initially comments “how progressive”, knowing exactly how bullshit these conversative ideals are, but then appreciates the comforts of the perfect caretaker.

In fact, Dean’s “giving in” to the comforts of a governess makes me think of that famous feminist manifesto “I want a wife” by Judy Syfers... because housework is very much Dean’s work in the bunker. It’s interesting that Mrs Butters immediately comments negatively on the cleanness of the bunker and their clothes: we know that Dean cleans and washes, and, while it’s likely that he cannot keep everything super perfect like a governess would because he’s busy doing many other things, it’s a way Mrs Butters uses to establish roles that she knows and is comfortable with. She is used to being the one who does “feminine” work while the Men of Letters have absolutely zero skills in that regard, and doesn’t really even stop to question if that’s the case with the men in front of her.

Anyway, let’s go back to the 50s fantasy. The show has repeatedly made commentaries on the vacuity of it. Peace Of Mind is the most obvious instance, but there’s plenty of subtext in the show that deals with that typically American aspect. Just like the childhood aspect, the narrative tells us that the “good ol’ times” are also an idealized thing that cannot return (if it ever existed, because Dean’s childhood was built on a fantasy, and the “good ol’ times” are also a fantasy, because the real 50s were horrible for anyone who didn’t swim in privilege). Mrs Butters cannot stay, the 50s fantasy-slash-childhood fantasy cannot last, and Dean embraces his role as an adult-slash-modern housemaker. Blah blah gender, blah blah cake. (Yeah, sorry, but you can fill in the blanks.)

- The contaminated drink. Poison and weakness from the forbidden sexual desire to the forbidden family domesticity

Aaaand now the second branch of parallels that Mrs Butters pinged on my radar, which sends us in an even more queer-subtext-heavy territory. We’re going to talk about the smoothies and the tomato juice. Yes, I know, the smoothies are given to Jack, not Dean, but symbolically Dean and Jack share the same semantic area; both are given a magically conjured drink, and both end up locked away waiting to be killed. For this analysis, they basically overlap.

Let’s start with the tomato juice. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that Dean is given something that visually reminds of the blood the vampires drink. The tomato juice is a stand-in for blood, and blood in relation to vampirism has a long history of subtext in the show that connects to sexuality, sex, sexual fears and contamination. While vampires are not necessarily always invested of those meanings every single time they appear in the three-hundred-whatever episodes of the show, their main symbology is connected to sex and sexual fears, as vampires do in modern western literature, after all.

You’re probably going to think, wait, what? What has Mrs Butters got to do with sexual fears? Yeah, I know, it sounds weird, but hear me out.

The tomato juice - a stand-in for blood, with a vampire reference - parallels Mrs Butters (who represents trauma, remember) to 6x05 Live Free Or TwiHard. Sexual assault, blood, contamination via the poisoning liquid.

Next to the tomato juice there’s the smoothie. It’s a poison in disguise, a contaminated drink that makes Jack weak. We have, in fact, a pattern of Dean being given contaminated drinks that place him under another’s power. Not just the vampire’s blood, but also Jeremy from 3x10 Dream A Little Dream Of Me, who offers Dean a beer through which he connects him to his dreams. There’s Nick the siren from 4x14 Sex And Violence, who contaminates Dean through the flask. The venom in the siren’s saliva parallels straight to the gorgon Noah in 14x14 Ouroboros, and I don’t have to start explaining what all those things represent, right? (I have written posts about these things, it would be nice if tumblr didn’t suck and showed them to me when I go look for them.)

(Oh, there’s also Crowley’s human blood addiction, which is not, as one might expect, a parallel to Sam’s demon blood addition, but Dean’s First Blade/Mark Of Cain issue, and the First Blade/Mark Of Cain arc is all imbued by the queer subtext of the Dean-Crowley-Castiel triangle.)

Basically, Mrs Butters is inserted in a history of queer subtext, although it appears as obvious that Mrs Butters hardly represents homosexual desire, unless we go a pretty stretchy route of her occupying Cas’ space in the Dean-Sam-Cas-Jack family (I mean, that’s true, but it’s not simply that). It is also true that Mrs Butters represents Cuthbert Sinclair, and here the radar pings, because Cuthbert Sinclair is totally inside the pattern! He wanted to make Dean part of his collection just like the vampire in 6x05 wanted to make Dean part of his pack, with supernatural means of exorting control over Dean and heavy heavy rapey tones. (I know we don’t like to talk about this, but the show does play with incest subtext, John mirrors are often rapey.)

So, we have all this semantic area of poison, weakness and submission to external control painted in overtones of sexual assault and sexual fears especially in relation to homosexual desire. (I am NOT linking homosexual desire to sexual assult, nor the show is, it’s a wide and volatile semantic area where the common denominator is fear, fear of being hurt FOR being different sexually, it’s about vulnerability because of being different. It’s a horror narrative, guys, remember, queer fear is a recurrent theme in the genre. Dracula was about the horror of what happened to Oscar Wilde, we’re running in circles.)

Now, what kind of fear is explored in 15x14? Well, the episode is about the fear of losing family. The plot is about Dean’s feelings towards Jack after he killed Mary. Dean doesn’t know it yet, but he’s going to lose Cas soon also because of Jack. Mary and Cas are both very noisy absences in the episode, and we know that Dean is going to suffer something horrific again that will shatter his family again. This goes past the fears regarding forbidden sexual desire: we’re in the territory of forbidden familial desire, so to speak, Dean’s craving for a domestic peace with his family.

Jack is both the culmination of Dean’s process of family-building, as the son figure of the family, and the element of destruction of that family-building. Not a coincidence Jack’s birthday was referenced, as Jack’s birth coincided with Cas’ death and Mary’s supposed death or at least separation. Now Jack has supposedly killed Mary (or is it a inter-universe separation again? @drsilverfish​’s theory always pops up, and we keep getting reminded of other universes - the telescope is broken...) and we know that Cas’ ultimate death hangs above us.

We’re always running in a spiral, Dean’s relationship with Mary, Dean’s relationship with Cas, Dean’s relationship with motherhood and gender roles, Dean’s relationship with sexuality. There’s a big picture of mirrors in the semantic area of fantasies, idealizations, desires and dreams. I hope I managed to make this post make sense, but I’m always open to requests of clarification or elaboration. Thanks for reading!

[ghostiewriter]

I know you're beta-ing my fic (love ya) but couldn't resist. Number 25 or 26 for the drabble challenge please 🙏

Ngl I really like this one!! Also it’s unedited so beware 💀and if you guys haven’t checked out Alex’s stuff, you should!! It’s amazing!😉

Word Count: 1.7K

Prompts: “Aren’t you supposed to be the adult?” // “I’m stuck! Help me!”

Motherhood was never a route Kiara saw herself going down.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be a mother, it was just that with all her dreams and ambitions and goals for the future…it just happened to clash with what she knew she definitely wanted. But that’s how these things always go, doesn’t it? Just when you least expecting it, shit hit the fan and you’re left scrambling around as you try and wrap your head around everything. That’s what happened with Kiara and motherhood. She wasn’t expecting it, it wasn’t planned. But she also wasn’t as opposed to the concept like her younger self was.

Kiara was fourteen when she decided she wanted to travel the world, to see new places and experience new cultures and open her eyes to a world beyond the small island she grew up on. And she did just that, lucky to enough have someone to share the experiences with. With the money they gained from the treasure, JJ and Kie had enough money to go wherever they wanted (after Pope made sure they kept some in the bank so they wouldn’t be idiots and spend it all, well to make sure JJ didn’t). But it was great, it was everything Kiara could’ve wished for her future, for their future.

Except on one of those breaks between adventures, Kiara found herself thrown into the deep-end of adulthood and she was lucky enough to have someone as supportive as JJ by her side.

And that, my friends, is how James Maybank was brought into the world.

Kiara had never seen herself being a mother until the second she held her son in her hands. Tears in her eyes and a wide smile on her face as she looked at the little human she and JJ created was enough for Kiara to realise that having a child didn’t change any of her plans. She and JJ would still travel and have their adventures, they would just have an extra little explorer with them.

James Maybank was the perfect mix of his parents. In terms of looks, he was truly a kid that drew attention to himself. Tousled brown hair that was an exact copy of his mother’s, with little strands of dirty blonde running through his little curls. His skin was tanned and sun-kissed, a warm golden-bronze so fitting for a summer baby. But his eyes—it was his eyes that caught people’s attention. Bright blue just like his father. It was a shock to both parties when they saw those little blue eyes of his. At first, the doctor told them it was common for new-born babies to have blue eyes and their natural eye colour will develop over the next few weeks. Except James’s eyes remained blue—vibrant and captivating and complementing his tanned skin so well and framed so neatly by the little round-rim glasses he wore. Like mentioned before, he was the perfect mix of JJ and Kiara: his eyes and her hair, his nose and her lips, his bone structure but her cheekbones. The perfect product of JJ Maybank and Kiara Carrera.

However, despite the physical similarities she shared with her son, his personality was driven straight from the chaos of his father. Wild and rambunctious and energetic. He always kept the couple on their toes: JJ’s scheming skills and Kie’s intelligence was a dangerous combination that James just so happened to have. A little troublemaker even at the ripe age of three.

It’s usually why Kiara avoids leaving the two of them alone together for long periods of time, because who knows what nonsense they would get up to.

And of course, Kiara’s point was proved once again.

It was a hot summer day when JJ suggested they head over to the mainland for a wee day trip, just have a little family day before the big Pogue family trip next week to California. Most of the summer had been spent with the other pogues—not that she minded—and James being coddled by her parents, so Kie was all up for them to spend some time as just the three of them. It was the ideal day: walking around the mainland boutiques, grabbed some ice cream and walked along the beach as they ate it, all before heading towards the little play area that was on the pier that James had been eyeing all day.

They had put all their stuff down at a small café table where Kie was able to grab a seat outside. There was the perfect view of the play area from here. But before she could head over with James, JJ was pushing her down in a seat, telling her to relax and assuring her that he could watch over James while she had a coffee or something. So like the fool she was, she went ahead with JJ’s plan (as though their teenage shenanigans hadn’t taught her that JJ’s plans were always the worst).

However, things were going fairly smoothly. Kie was able to order a tea for herself and indulge in a book she had just bought that day. She was able to relax in the sunshine and enjoy a few moments of piece without her favourite hectic boys. Well, only for a short amount of time before a distressed James came running up to her.

“Mama! Mama!” He was panting and huffing, exhausted from how far he ran on his little legs. His fists gripped the hem of her shirt, tugging on it to gain her attention. And when Kie placed her drink and book down, she noticed how dishevelled his appearance was.

“What’s up, bub?” She asked as she gently fixed his askew glasses so they rested comfortably on his nose. However, before she could even attempt to fix his hair, James was grabbing her hands and attempting to tug her up.

“C’mon!” He whined and Kiara only laughed a little as she finally stood up. In an instant, he began to drag her towards the play area where she assumed that he had built some sandcastle in the sand pit he wanted to show her or even show her some neat trick he learnt on the jungle gym.

But it’s safe to say that she wasn’t expecting to see the sight in front of her.

She pressed her lips together, trying to stop herself from bursting into laughter. “JJ?”

“Kiara!” JJ’s head snapped up, looking relieved to see her. “I’m stuck! Help me!”

JJ Maybank: surfing legend, notorious troublemaker, a little schemer since he learnt how to walk. JJ Maybank: the boy that became the biggest pain in the ass to the OBX police force since they were probably first formed. JJ Maybank: the boy that shocked everyone and became a better man than anyone with his last name ever could.

And now he was JJ Maybank: the 26 year old moron who was currently stuck in a children’s jungle gym. It looked like one of those tunnels that kids climbed through to get from one side of the climbing frame to the other. Except instead of being able to crawl through completely, JJ had his head sticking out whilst everything below his shoulders was stuck in the tunnel.

“Oh, baby, this has gotta be a new record for stupid things you’ve done.” Kiara commented, hand over her mouth but he could tell by the shaking in her shoulders that she was laughing.

“Is Dada gonna be okay?” James spoke up, tugging on Kie’s hand he hadn’t let go of as he glanced between his parents. In an instant, Kie’s expression softened up.

“He’s gonna be fine, bub,” She assured him with a smile as she kneeled down to his height. “No need to be worried, in fact, you should be laughing!” She told him.

“Kiara!”

“Oh.” James muttered, turning to look at his father with his head tilted before he burst into a fit of giggles.

“Great,” JJ muttered bitterly as he stared at the ground. “Now ever my own son is laughing at me!”

“Oh, c’mon, it’s funny!” Kiara countered, arms wrapped around James with her head resting on his shoulder as they both snickered at JJ’s current predicament.

“Just help me get out!” He whined out. “I really need to pee.”

Eventually, Kiara headed back to the table at the café to grab her phone. After taking enough photos for her own amusement later, she called the local authorities that sent a team out to help break JJ out of the jungle gym. It took a total of two hours, by which the time JJ was finally free from his entrapment, the family had to head back to the island if they wanted to catch the last ferry.

“I can’t believe you.” Kie murmured as she leaned against JJ, the young boy fast asleep on their laps as they headed back to the mainland. They spoke in quiet whispers, letting James get the rest he deserved after such an eventful day.

“It wasn’t my fault!” He hissed quietly, looking down at James and gently pushing some hair out of his face. “It was his idea.” He added with a childish pout.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the adult?” She countered, a small smirk tugging on her lips.

“He’s a troublemaker, I’m telling you. Flashes you some puppy dog eyes and suddenly you’re crawling through some hellhole that is designed for Oompa Loompas.” He muttered, narrowing his eyes at the sleeping child. “He’s like an evil little mastermind.”

“Just like his father then.” Kiara commented, only causing JJ to look at her with a shocked expression. “Oh don’t look at me like that! You know I’m right, Jay. You were probably worse than him!”

JJ’s eyes widened slightly before he nodded. “Yeah, no fair enough.” He murmured with a nod before he grinned down at his son. “Ah, I feel like such a proud father knowing he is going to be such a charmer when he’s older.” Kie let out a scoff as she lightly elbowed him, but they both had massive smiles on their faces.

“Let’s just hope he doesn’t take years to finally make a move like his father.” Kie commented.

“Oh, wow, really? That’s the game you’re playing?” He retorted. “You literally made up a whole rule that stopped me from making a move.”

“Should’ve read between the lines.” She said with an innocent shrug. But then she turned to him and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “But I’m glad you finally did make a move.”

JJ grinned at her before he looked down at James, who was still fast asleep with small snores escaping his lips.

“Yeah, me too.”

[bhaleesi]

Im so glad you liked my art! But I had very little material to work out their exact form of relationship. At first I had imagined Selene to be the dignified one, aka the 'One who keeps others in Line' but a rereading of the crypt scene with Selene goading Arion on showed that clearly wasnt the case🤣. Arion, the clown can't take that role so I was sure it had to be our Ayden. I drew Ayden with a prim and proper attire (with no wrinkles in sight), the disciplined one of the group.

But what kind of relationship did Ayden and Selene exactly have (Is Aylene a good couple name🤔)? That was something I kept pondering on. Selene wouldn't have taking Ayden's constant hogging of all her work and she has quite a strong personality. But I cant imagine these people not constantly clashing. Selene would have been the free one with the children whereas Ayden the responsible parent. And what kind of mom was Selene to the twins?

Arion and Persephone seem pretty cool compared to the clashing couple above!

[P.S- Can I know more abt Aylene's wedding ceremony? I wanna draw them! (If you don't mind that is)]

"At first I had imagined Selene to be the dignified one" I snorted at this because Selene most definitely was *not* the dignified one of the group. None of them were quite "dignified" until adulthood, but I'd say the best match for that description would've been Ayden. A summary of their dynamic is:

Selene wants to do something wild and crazy

Arion supports her, the two of them cackling as they plan their latest scheme

Depending on the scheme, Ayden will either cautiously join in (while keeping an eye out for trouble) or will be like "nooo stop".

If Ayden says no, Selene and Arion will do it anyway and Ayden will get them out of trouble once they get caught 🤣

An example is from when they were in their mid-teens in Briar. Lady Fiona isn't a big fan of animals, but Selene found and secretly kept a cat in Briarlight. Selene and Arion would take turns hiding it in their rooms and feeding it so that Fiona wouldn't find it. Ayden also fed it, but he was a lot less enthused and was stressed every time it was his "turn" to dodge Fiona.

But then the cat would purr and he'd forgive Selene and Arion for dragging him into the mess

Aylene is such a pretty couple name! Honestly even as a proper name it's really lovely

I might jot it down and give it to a character one day...

Now I'm wondering what Quill and Ayden would be. Qayden? Aydill?? Quillden?? Not as pretty as Aylene, that's for sure

But what kind of relationship did Ayden and Selene exactly have (Is Aylene a good couple name🤔)? That was something I kept pondering on. Selene wouldn't have taking Ayden's constant hogging of all her work and she has quite a strong personality. But I cant imagine these people not constantly clashing.

You're on the right track with your analysis! They had a great relationship overall, and loved each other very much. They were on the same wavelength politically, since they grew up around each other. When Selene was first crowned, however, she was not a fan of the more ... tedious parts of ruling. That left Ayden free to hog her share while Selene contributed to the war effort.

“Selene was the fighter between us, the one better at inspiring the troops. She always said that,” Ayden’s voice rose, “a ruler is needed on the battlefield, and it should be me. The queen has more freedom than the king does on a chessboard.” He returned to his normal tones. “I know for a fact that she simply did not want to do paperwork.” (From the chapter West of West)

This arrangement works out great for both of them, because Ayden is free to be the micromanaging workaholic that he is and Selene isn't weighed down by things she dislikes. Periodically they'd switch - with Ayden being on the battlefield and Selene sitting the throne - but for the most part they kept to their niches. Selene didn't ignore her duties - she just wasn't at her happiest when dealing with them. So Selene wouldn't have complained if Ayden took over a boring meeting or two.

Towards the last years of her life, Selene takes a more active interest in the throne. This immediately causes her to clash with Ayden, who has repeatedly demonstrated that he doesn't share power very well. Plus, Selene started favoring a less aggressive approach to the war, putting her in opposition to Ayden. Thus they clash, Selene leaves to end the war herself, and ... yeah :(

Selene would have been the free one with the children whereas Ayden the responsible parent. And what kind of mom was Selene to the twins?

It's like you're reading my mind because the next chapter of AWAS will focus on that exact question!

Selene was the more relaxed parent between her and Ayden. Ayden isn't particularly strict himself, but being Sovereign didn't allow him to be as close to them as he would've liked just because he would've been so busy when they were young. While Ayden would be stuck in meetings all week, Selene would hang out with the twins, build a swing for Esme, play piano with Lucien, take them out on the river, etc.

I also feel like Selene might've had a slightly deeper bond with Lucien. Being Crown Prince isn't a role that Lucien is fond of, and sometimes wishes he wasn't. Selene would've understand that reluctance a lot better than Ayden, so she'd put a lot of energy into helping Lucien grow at his own pace and finding his feet with all the expectations people put on him. Whereas Esme is a bit of a social prodigy and so would've preferred to be with Ayden. Esme is also pretty adventurous and mischievous, so for sure Selene would've encouraged that aspect of her daughter.

Arion and Persephone seem pretty cool compared to the clashing couple above!

Arion and Persephone are a fun couple to write whenever they're in a scene together! It makes me happy just how much Arion loves his wife 🤣 It's also part of the reason why Arion wants to take a step back from being Suzerain and focus more on Briar~

[P.S- Can I know more abt Aylene's wedding ceremony? I wanna draw them! (If you don't mind that is)]

Sure! If someone is willing to use their time to create art based on my content, I’ll always be thrilled ��️♥️

Ayden and Selene's wedding was fairly simple, as far as royal weddings can go. Ayden's father would have died not long beforehand, so the mood was generally somber. The war was at an all-time high, so it wouldn't have been a good look to be spending lavish amounts of money when the crown loyalists were technically losing. On top of that, Ayden's advisors would've cared more about Ayden having heirs and the wedding was just a step they had to take so the whole thing would've been organized quickly.

That being said, the style of the wedding would've been overall Eurydicean, not Briarean. Ayden and Selene spent more time outside of Ancient, so the Ironhillers would've partially viewed them as foreign. In order to settle into life in the capital must faster, they would've followed Ancienti customs. So the wedding would've been more Western in its inspiration, with a bit of Briarean influence as a nod to their former home.

The left image is a colorized picture of Tsarina Alexandra of Russia from 1908, to give you an idea of what Selene might’ve worn. The right is Tsar Nicholas II, her husband. Ayden and Selene got married in the equivalent of the 1900s, so you can play around with any particular designs from around that era!

[linkfms]

☠️    *   what  is  up,  party  people  !    i’m  jojo  (  she/her  ),  23,  and  in  the  pst  timezone.    it’s  been  a  while  since  i’ve  been  in  a  group  so...  pls  bear  with  me.    anyway,  under  the  cut  you’ll  find  more  info  on  resident  emo  boy:  link  !   i’m  so  excited  to  write  with  u  all,  and,  if  u  ever  want  to  plot  give  this  a  lil’  like  or  send  an  im  over  @  yea right#4256  !

lincoln  “link”  seong  was  spotted  in  the  fashion  district  adorning  prada  combat  boots,  with  some  airpod  pros  on.    they’re  most  likely  listening  to  when  you  were  young  by  the  killers.   you  may  know  them  as  @hyperlink  or  as  that   jeon  jungkook  lookalike.    their  twenty - fourth  birthday  just  passed.    while  living  in   tribeca,   they’ve  gained  a  bit  of  a  reputation.    they’re  known  to  be  erratic  but  on  the  other  hand   vehement.    wonder  if  they’ll  be  the  next  person  to  hit  the  headlines.   (  cis male  &   he/him  )

↳     THE  BASICS:    STATISTICS.

full  name:   seong  hyunjae  (  성  현재  )    /    lincoln  seong.

nickname:  link,  and  will  probably  only  answer  to  link  !

age  &  date  of  birth:   24  &  november  21,  1996.

hometown:   born  in  busan,  south  korea,  but  moved  to  jefferson,  connecticut  in  2006.

current  location:   tribeca,  new  york.

education:  completed  high  school  and  attempted  first  semester  of  university,  but  decided  to  pursue  music  instead.

occupation:   drummer  for  indie/alternative  rock  band,  my  time  (  sound  is  similar  to  bands  like  the  killers,  the  1975,  and  paramore  ).   also  is  an  affiliate  with  an  esports  organization  !   doesn’t  play  competitively,  but  streams  and  creates  content  for  them  weekly.

sexual  orientation:   pansexual  &  panromantic.

gender  &  pronouns:   cisgender  male  &  he/him  pronouns.

↳     THE  BACKGROUND:   BIOGRAPHY.  (   tw:  mentions  of  alcoholism  &  abuse  )

seong  hyunjae  (  later  given  the  english  name  lincoln  seong...  thanks  linkin  park  !   )   was  born  in  the  heart  of  busan,  south  korea.    his  parents  married  at  the  age  of  21,  due  to  the  cultural  expectations  of  having  a  child  born  out  of  wedlock.    while  things  seemed  to  be  smooth  sailing  for  a  while,   the  couple  realized  the  real  struggles  of  adulthood.   financial  issues  came  into  play.   stress  from  working  multiple  jobs  every  single  day  took  a  toll  on  their  mental  health,  as  well  as  their  relationship  with  each  other.   link’s  mother  began  to  develop  an  alcohol  addiction,  and  her  abusive  behavior  came  following  after.   their  home  was  falling  apart,  with  four-year-old  link  falling  asleep  to  muffled  screaming  and  glass  being  thrown  on  the  next  room  over.   his  father  was  able  to  withstand  it  for  a  while,  but  he  drew  the  line  after  coming  home  from  work  to  see  large  cuts  on  the  side  of  his  son’s  thigh,  and  a  bruise  forming  across  his  cheek.   that  was  when  he  knew  his  wife  was  dangerous.    so,  one  night  when  lincoln’s  mother  as  at  work,  he  packed  his  belongings,  grabbed  link,  and  left  without  looking  back.

for  a  while,  it  was  just  the  two  of  them.    they  found  ways  to  make  it  work,  and  despite  the  fact  that  it  was  a  constant  struggle,  his  father  never  wanted  link  to  lose  his  childhood.    in  fact,  his  father  gave  him  everything  he  could  give   —   but  most  importantly,  as  cheesy  as  it  sounds,  his  unconditional  love  and  support.    as  someone  who  lost  his  own  parents  young,  he  made  sure  that  link  would  never  feel  like  he’s  being  deprived of  that,  ever.   they  created  this  tight-knight  bond  because  of  that,  which  can’t  ever  be  broken.   and  now,  link’s  fondest  memories  always  involved  spending  time  with  his  father.    one  favorite  memory  of  his  involved  morning  jam  sessions  after  breakfast.    link’s  father  was  previously  a  lead  guitarist  in  a  garage  band  with  a  few  of  his  high  school  friends,  so  while  he  was  playing  riffs  on  his  electric  guitar,  eight-year-old  link  would  be  banging  the  coffee  table  with  plastic  straws.   

when  link  was  about  ten,  he  and  his  father  sold  all  of  their  belongings  and  moved  all  the  way  to  jefferson,  connecticut  for  a  job  offer  that  he  couldn’t  refuse.   fast  forward  a  few  years,  and  he’s  a  teenager  in  high  school.    growing  up  link  was  more  of  an  introvert,  and  would  spend  his  time  in  the  computer  lab  playing  video  games  or  browsing  in  online  forums.   he  was  a  regular  in  this  my  chemical  romance  forum  (  under  the  username  @hyperlink  ),  and  made  a  lot  of  his  lifelong  friends  over  there.    one  of  his  online  friends  jokingly  suggested  one  afternoon  that  they  should  start  a  band  over  their  nightly  skype  call,  and  while  it  was  initially  shrugged  off  as  dream  more  than  an  arm’s  reach  away,  my  time  was  born.    link  had  to  endlessly  plead  his  father  to  buy  him  a  secondhand  drum  kit  off  of  craigslist  for  christmas.   but  once  he  found  it  under  their  tree  that  year,  it  sparked  this  drive  in  him  to  learn  and  practice  nonstop. 

their  first  official  band  practice  happened  a  day  after  link’s  high  school  graduation  (  which  was  also  the  first  time  everyone  saw  each  other  in  person  !   ),  and  they  spent  that  entire  summer  making  music.   at  first,  link  only  thought  of  it  as  a  hobby...  since,  he  was  attending  his  first  year  of  university  that  fall.   but  after  playing  their  first  few  shows  and  making  all  these  memories,   he  couldn’t  keep  the  band  in  the  backburner.   he  dropped  out  not  too  long  after  to  pursue  his  music  career  full-time.   moved  out,  spent  the  next  few  months  working  long  shifts  at  the  local  amusement  park,  and  shared  one  two-bedroom  apartment  with  his  bandmates.    one  of  their  songs  went  viral  one  crazy  night,   and  the  next  thing  they  knew,  they  were  being  signed  into  a  record  label.   now  ?   they’re  one  of  the  biggest  alternative/indie  rock  bands  out  there  with  multiple  platinum  records,  sold  out  world  tours,  and  millions  of streams  each  year.   their  time  finally  came.

↳     THE  INSIDE  LOOK:    PERSONALITY.

link  definitely...  gets  babied  a  lot   (  by  his  bandmates  and  his  fans  ),   and  he  uses  that  to  his  advantage  :]   because  of  that  he  gets  away  with   a  lot  of  things,  but  it’s  usually  with  things  that  are  small  like  eating  the  last  slice  of  pizza  and  it  would  be  justified  with  “  no  he  is  a  growing  BOY  he  NEEDS  it  !  ”

that  being  said,  he  eats  nonstop.   the  guy  carries  a  sandwich  bag  full  of  cheerios  wherever  he  goes.   his  friends  know  that  if  they  can’t  finish  eating  something,  they  can  always  donate  it  to  link  for  a  good  cause.

when  my  chemical  romance  announced  their  reunion  tour  in  2019,  he  threw  his  phone  across  the  room  and  cried.   my  chemical  romance  (  with  green  day  and  linkin  park  as  a  close  second  !  )   are  his  all-time  favorite  bands,  and  a  lot  of  my  time’s  sound  is  heavily  inspired  by  them.

when  i  tell  u  that  this  man  is  so  chill,  i  mean  it.   like  things  could  LITERALLY  be  on  fire  and  he’d  be  like   “  just  throw  some  water  on  it  it’ll  be  fine  😎  ” ...  he’s  not  the  type  to  worry  about  things,  and  is  more  of  a  go  with  the  flow  type  of  person.   he  doesn’t  even  need  to  be  zooted  to  be  like  this.   KJFGDG

being  in  the  band  and  a  part  of  the  entertainment  industry  caused  a  small  shift  in  his  personality.   maybe  he  just  blossomed  ?   who  knows  !   but  because  he’s  been  exposed  to  the  rockstar  life,   he  was  able  to  open  up  more.   he’s  always  seeking  thrills,  big  or  small,  and  won’t  have  the  time  to  think  about  the  consequences  for  his  actions.  

because  the  my  chemical  romance  forum  that  was  once  his  second  home  shut  down,   he’s  since  moved  on  to  reddit.   social  media  isn’t  really  his  thing  (  and  his  fans  always  get  mad  at  him  for  posting  a  selfie  once  a  month  then  dipping  ),  but  catch  him  on  subreddits  making  comments  or  starting  fights  for  the  sheer  entertainment  of  proving  someone  wrong. 

this  might  sound  bad  but...  he  still  can’t  wrap  his  head  around  the  fact  that  he  isn’t  ?   financially  struggling  anymore  ?   even  if  he’s  already  bought  a  house  and  two  luxury  cars  for  his  dad,  he  still  gets  ticked  off  if  he  sees  something  small  like  an  APPLE   that  is  marked  a  dollar  and  a  few  cents  over  the  usual.   he  catches  himself  using  things  until  they’re  ABSOLUTELY  worn  out,  and  still  leeches  off  of  his  bandmates/friends  when  he  can.  <3   also,  if  something  is  broken,  he’ll  be  the  type  to  figure  it  out  and  fix  it  himself.

people...  don’t  exactly  remember  the  last  time  he’s  slept.   it  could  be  the  insomnia   (   it’s  definitely  insomnia,  thx  childhood   trauma  !   )  but  it’s  almost  gotten  to  the  point  where  he’s  afraid  to  fall  asleep  on  his  own.   he’ll  always  try  to  find  ways  to  sleep  in  someone’s  company,  even  if  it’s  just  him  crashing  on  a  couch  while  someone  is  watching  tv  right  there.   if  he’s  alone  though,  he’ll  always  try  to  find  ways  to  distract  himself  like  stream  for  10  hours  straight.

speaking  of  trauma...  he’s  also  scared  of  relationships.  after  witnessing  the  way  his  mother  treated  his  father,  he’s  cautious  of  history  repeating  itself...  but  with  him.  so  whenever  he  catches  himself  even  falling  for  just  a  little,  he  dips.

his  life  revolves  around  the  4  m’s:   marvel  movies,  minecraft,  music,  and  my  chemical  romance.   that’s  it.

a  link  😏   to  his  pinterest  !   also,  i  don’t  have  any  wcs,  but  if  we  plot,  i  promise  i’ll  use  my  big  brain  to  brainstorm  something  with  u.  <3

[despairforme]

🍇 🥝 🍓 (we’re gonna make Nnoitra hungry with all these food emojis 😆)

    MEME ; 𝐅𝐑𝐔𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐒 ♡ 𝐒𝐘𝐌𝐁𝐎𝐋 𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐄 ( accepting! ) 🍇 - how would my muse describe their childhood? how much has it impacted the person they are now, or will become as an adult? around what age did they or will they start to mature,  and why? do they wish to go back to their days as a child, or have they embraced adulthood? 🥝 - does my muse have any ‘ unusual ’ habits, interests,  and  /  or talents? do they hide it, or are they proud of it? 🍓 - how is my muse typically seen by others? does it ring true to who they really are? does their reputation matter to them?

     Time for a trip down memory lane, huh? Alright. From time to time, he would think about his childhood. Not with fondness, but not with sadness either. Nnoitra hadn’t had a terrible childhood, or at least he didn’t think so. He had lived alone with his mother, who was a Christian. She had worked very hard in order to provide for the two of them. Nnoitra had only later learned that one of the reasons why she had had to work so hard was because she was saving up money for his education.

     ❝ My childhood was alright. ❞ Nnoitra stated with a small shrug. He wasn’t going to bitch about the fact that his mother had never loved him, or that he hadn’t had any friends growing up. He wasn’t going to complain about how POOR they had been, and that he had never gotten any cool birthday presents or whatever. Nah. And WHY wasn’t he going to complain? Because it was his own fault. All his life, Nnoitra had been treated a certain way. By strangers, by classmates... By his mother. Because he was a BAD person. He was born bad, and he would die bad. There was something wrong with him. Something fundamentally missing in the core of his soul. THAT was why his mother had never loved him. It was why he acted the way he did, which caused people to dislike and hate him - and fear him. Nnoitra didn’t blame his mother for not loving him. How COULD she? How could anyone? He was pretty sure that, no matter what, he would’ve been the same person he was today. This wasn’t something he had become. It was something he had been from the very first time he drew breath on this earth. A BAD PERSON. Everything that he had done was because of who he was. Every bad thing that had happened to him had happened because he deserved it.

      ❝ I grew up with my mom. She was a real hard workin’ woman. ‘N she always prayed ‘fer me. ❞ There was a small smile on his face now. Humorous, because he thought it pretty sad that she had prayed for him. AS IF there would ever be any way to fix his soul.  ❝ ‘N sometimes she’s take me ‘ta church with her. ❞ Which he had both hated and loved. He had hated it because what the priest said always made him feel bad, but he had loved it because it made him feel like she wanted to spend time with her.  ❝ Dunno how much my childhood impacted my life. ❞ Another shrug. He wondered --- If he had been loved and cherished in his home, would he have run away like he did? Maybe not. But, again, it wasn’t HER fault. It was his. For being a person who it was impossible to love. Even for a mother. ❝ I guess I grew up pretty fast. ❞ Though he wouldn’t say he matured very fast. He’d admit to still being pretty childish, even if he was WAY into his 20s by now. ❝ I lived on my own when I was a teen, so ‘daz why. Had ‘ta learn how ‘ta get shit done. ❞ ‘ On his own ‘... Yeah, no. Back then, he had lived together with Grimmjow, more or less. The two of them homeless kids. Until Nnoitra had RUINED everything.  ❝ Definitely don’t wanna go back. I don’t wanna deal with goin’ ‘ta school one more time. I hated that shit. ❞

     Moving onto the kiwi questions - ❝ Dunno wha’ ya mean with unusual. ❞ Anything could be unusual after all. Nnoitra did have a few habits, but were they unusual? He doubted it. Didn’t everyone have quirks? He didn’t think his interests could be described as uncommon either. He liked watching youtube videos or going for walks or having a snack. He was a simple guy. As for TALENTS? He actually was a pretty good dancer. He’d used to dance more when he was younger and went to clubs just to take his mind off shit. He had found that when there was loud music and he was just dancing, it was impossible to feel depressed. He didn’t do it anymore though, since Grimmjow didn’t like crowded places or loud noises. Oh yeah, and he too had developed a paranoia for being in crowded places.. He always thought someone was going to stab him. He also had a pretty good singing voice, or so he had been told anyway. He did --- DID actually sing on stage on very are occasions together with a friend he had made, who was really into music. Her name was Chiyo, and she was the tiniest person ever. He kinda liked performing on stage. At least he liked getting positive feedback and applause. Then, there was his fighting. He loved that shit more than anything, and he DID have a talent for it. He supposed being good at fighting was an unusual talent, but for him it wasn’t unusual. It was something he had been good at his whole life. His strength and his combat abilities defined him. ❝ I guess ‘da weirdest thing is that I like eatin’ bugs. Everyone thinks ‘daz disgustin’, but ‘daz ‘cause they ain’t never tried it. ❞ His love for eating insects was probably the weirdest interest that he had, and certainly the only thing he could come up with. ❝ I ain’t really got many talents, ‘n those that I do have I don’t hide. ❞ He didn’t hide that he was good at singing and dancing, it was just that he hardly ever felt like doing either one.

     He arrived at the final part of the questions, and just gestured with both thumbs at himself, as if the way people saw him was obvious. Wasn’t it though?  ❝ What’cha see ‘s what ya get. I’m an asshole, ‘n I look like one too. ❞ Yeah, it was true. He LOOKED like a bad person - and so he was. There were some things about Nnoitra that did make people misjudge him though. Like how some people thought he was weak just because he was skinny. Or they thought he was straight because of the way he carried himself ( Nnoitra was thankful for this ). People were intimidated by him and rightly so. Nnoitra was used to being judged for being ugly and stupid and mean, and it didn’t bother him. As long as people didn’t think him WEAK. Well --- He didn’t like being treated as if he was stupid but whatever.  ❝ My reputation does matter ‘ta me, ‘cause I want everyone ‘ta know I’m fuckin’ strong as hell. ❞ Nnoitra actually HAD a bit of a reputation among a certain demographic. The types of people who hung out in the environment around Hueco Mudno, the club where Nnoitra worked - they knew about him. A seven feet tall guy with one eye who would straight out DESTROY anyone who tried to fight him? It was easy to get a reputation that way. Nnoitra had made lots of both admirers and enemies through his job. There were actually a lot of people who came to see him fight, and who were cheering for him. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t like that. 

[lovemesomesurveys]

[yourheaventonight]

Where have you been all my life? I’ve always been right here.

Can you recite the Greek alphabet backwards? Nope. Or at all.

What social networks are you a part of? Like every main one.

Which of your fields of interest are you a total expert on? I’m not a total expert on anything.

What is one thing you will never understand? Why I’m like this.

Do you blog? This is it.

What was the last movie you watched? Godzilla vs Kong.

^Would you recommend it? Yeah, I enjoyed it. Admittedly, I was mainly interesting for Alexander Skarsgard, but I did think the movie was good.

With whom did you share your last awkward moment? My life is an awkward moment.

When was the last time you got all dolled up? It’s been yearsss.

Gimme yer best shot and insult me. Go ahead. Uh, no.

What do you think makes a person attractive? Physical attributes, certainly, but personality traits and who they are as a person makes a person attractive to me as well. Even more so.

Out of everyone you know, who has the worst taste in music? I don’t think anyone I know has bad taste in music, I share a lot of the same music taste.

^How about the best? ^^^

Can guys REALLY pull off skinny jeans? They can wear whatever they want.

What is one thing you missed out on that you wish you hadn't? I missed out on a lot of my 20s I feel like, it feels like a complete blur. I don’t know what happened to them. And now I’m in my 30s and I feel like I’m missing out on those, too. Just life, in general for the past several years. Everyone around is me is doing things and living life and I’m just wasting away.

What was the last thing/place you decorated? My room for Christmas.

Have you just recently started listening to any new bands? No. It’s been a long time since I’ve discovered any new bands.

How many windows/tabs are open on your computer right now? Two windows, 7 tabs.

Would you rather date someone really skinny or really overweight? I want to date someone based on other things. 

Let me in on a little secret of yours. Nah.

What is one habit you had as a child? Nail biting/picking. 

^Do you still have that habit today? Sigh, yes.

Is there someone you wish you were closer with? Yes.

^What's stopping you from being closer with them? I’ve been so distant and withdrawn from everyone.

Besides air, what was the last thing you inhaled? The scent of my ramen earlier.

Which point in life do you think is hardest? (i.e. childhood, adulthood...) For me it’s been the past few years.

How was life going for you, say, six months ago? Not well.

^Is that the same as today, or have things changed? Things have changed, but not in a good way.

Who was the last person to make you frown? It’s been things I’m struggling with doing that, not a person.

^Was anyone able to turn that frown upside-down? No.

What was the last non-papery substance you drew on? I have no idea.

What is one thing you wish you had the courage to do? Get certain things checked out and taken care of that I’ve put off for too long.

Which is bigger: Your iTunes library or your CD collection? My iTunes collection was definitely better. I haven’t used iTunes since like 2012, though, and I don’t have any CDs anymore.

What is your one true weakness? I’m just weak.

When is the last time you had hot chocolate? It’s been a couple years.

Composition notebooks or spiral notebooks? Why? Spiral. I just like them better.

What is the most bizarre compliment you've ever received? That I looked pretty for someone with polio. I don’t have polio, but they assumed I did just because I’m in a wheelchair. Also, what does that even mean? “For someone with polio.” Wtf?

Do you identify more with guys or girls? I think I relate more to girls.

When someone you know is sad, how do you go about cheering them up? I kinda suck at that and don’t know what to do or say.

Has someone ever accused you of not being creative enough? I say that about myself. I lack creativity or any artistic ability. 

Starbucks coffee or Dunkin Donuts coffee? I’ve only had Dunkin’s coffee a few times, but I’ve had Starbucks countless times and I do like it, so I’ll go with that. I do wish I had a Dunkin where I live cause apart from the donuts, I’ve heard they do have good brewed coffee.

Do you crack under peer pressure? Yepppp. And it doesn’t take much.

What do you think deserves more attention than it already gets? Hmm.

What song never fails to get stuck in your head? Songs I hear in commercials.

Who is your favorite vocalist? Why? Chester Bennington is one. His voice was incredible.

What is your most overused emoticon? This one: 😬 Do you ever name objects? (i.e. mp3 players, guitars, cars, etc.) Nah.

When was the last time you had a bagel? Hm. It’s been awhile, actually. I don’t even remember. Can you lick your own elbow? No.

What time during the day/night is your mind most active? At night when I’m up alone.

What color ink does your favorite pen have? I have a nice set of colorful pens that I really like.

What was the last thing you licked? My lips.

Who was the last person in your bed besides yourself? Just me. Can you touch your tongue to your nose? No.

What flavor mouthwash do you use? I don’t. Mouthwash irritates my mouth.

What tends to distract you most? I just find myself zoning out a lot. Like, someone will be talking to me and I feel myself getting overwhelmed quite easily and drift out and it doesn’t mean they’re boring or talking about heavy things (sometimes they are). I get like sensory overload. Or I’ll just be sitting in bed and zone out.

Is the perfect man or woman a myth? Yes. No one is perfect.

How do you feel about Bob Marley? I like a couple songs.

What's your favorite fairy tale? I liked reading or listening to all of them when I was growing up. <<<

Do you know who Tom Jones is? Yes.

Tell me one fact you know about horses (without using Google). They have manes.

When was the last time you had to walk up or down stairs? Well, never since I’m in a wheelchair.

Tell me one unique quality about your own handwriting. My handwriting is shit.

What daily chore do you secretly enjoy? I don’t enjoy any type of cleaning.

Has a child ever asked you a question you found difficult to answer? Definitely. Kids ask a lot of questions about everything and anything.

Name five books you've read in the past year. I’ve read a ton more than that, but I’ll give you the latest 5: Cold Highway, Cold Threat, Cold Hunt, Cold Truth, and To Die For.  You can probably tell the first 4 are by the same author, Mary Stone. The last one is by Willow Rose.

^Are any of those books your favorite? I’ve enjoyed ‘em all. I’ve read a lot of books from both authors.

Are you a person that enjoys re-reading books? I don’t re-read books, actually. 

Which hobby is the lamest: stamp collecting or spoon collecting? I wouldn’t call either of them lame just cause it might not be something I’m personally interested in. Those bring some people joy.

What do you daydream about most often? My mind wanders off to random stuff, stuff I’m dealing with, stuff I’m anxious and stressed out about, etc.

Why is your favorite band your favorite band? I’ve listened to them since middle school, so we have a lot of history. I really just connect and relate to their lyrics and I love their music.

Do you have a favorite talk show host? Nah.

What do you wish you could afford at the moment? A beach home with my own private beach area. 

What is the most unusual color you've ever painted your nails? I can’t think of any “unusual” colors that I’ve painted them. 

Which sounds the most refreshing: a hot shower or a cold one? I always take hot showers.

Have you ever made your own soap? No.

What's your favorite popsicle flavor? Not a popsicle fan.

Can you sleep with socks on? Yeah, I always have socks on.

When was the last time you were pissed beyond belief and why? I’ve been frustrated and pissed with some things I’ve been dealing with lately. 

Name a band with the word 'red' in their title. Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Do you have a favorite candle brand? I’m not a candle person. I just go for the room sprays.

How many years until you turn 38? 6. D:

What is your opinion on taxidermy? I find it super creepy and weird.

Would you ever want to own a body part in a jar? Uh, no.

What is the worst thing you have ever done to your own hair? Let it get really knotted up. :/

What do you think makes you a good girlfriend or boyfriend? Nothing.

What qualities of yours do you think could potentially harm a relationship? I’m a total mess, I wouldn’t make a good girlfriend. 

How often do you indulge in a favorite food from your childhood? I eat ramen regularly.

Have any of your childhood habits carried over into adolescence/adulthood? My damn nail picking habit. 

What is the nicest thing you've done for someone else in the past 24 hours? Nothing.

What sort of conditions do you require in order for you to fall asleep? It needs to be cool and I have to have the TV on.

What is the first band that comes to mind when I say 'dark'? Uhhh.

Do you have a favorite punk band? Green Day.

As far as relationships go, what are your biggest deal-breakers? Abuse and cheating. <<<

Be honest: do looks really matter to you? They’re like a bonus to me. <<<

Congratulations! Someone sent you flowers! What kind do you hope they are? I’m not picky, just a pretty assortment perhaps would be nice.

What type of underwear do you personally prefer to wear? Hipsters.

What is the grossest chore you've ever been assigned? Nothing gross.

What band (BESIDES IRON MAIDEN) comes to mind when I say 'iron'? I got nothin. 

Have you ever done something simply because you were of age? I had to go out and buy alcohol the day I turned 21.

Do you think it's worth it to tell someone you had feelings for them when you don't have them anymore? Wait, tell them I used to have feelings for them but don’t anymore? If I don’t anymore then why tell them about when I used to? Unless of course we were in a relationship and I no longer felt that way.

What color shirts do you tend to buy most often? Black.

Have you ever done something you once thought you'd be too chicken to do? Yeah.

Where would you rather go: Portland, Oregon or Portland, Maine? Portland, Oregon.

Name a band that begins with the letter Y. Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Tell me about someone who has made a huge impact in your life. My mom most definitely has.

What can I usually find you doing at 4pm on a weekday? At that time any day I’m likely still sleeping.

What's a food you love but don't get to eat very often? I only eat the same few foods, so I eat them quite often. Like, I eat Wingstop 3-4 times a week...

Do you dot your lowercase i's? Yes.

What's the first song on your iPod/mp3 player that comes up under P? I use Spotify on my phone for music, but anyway nah I don’t feel like doing that. 

Do the words 'Amon' and 'Amarth' mean anything to you? No.

What's your favorite mythical being? I don’t really have a favorite.

Don't you hate surveys that end abruptly? As long as the question itself isn’t cut off, which I’ve seen, or it’s a numbered one and a question is completely missing then I don’t care.

Let's end this survey with a smile; tell me something funny. I’m not in a good mood to think of something funny right now.

[cloverrover]

Lace Teeth

So far warning y’all, it’s been some time since I wrote anything for fun and not for school. Last time I actually wrote anything I submitted a formal essay in a 400 level class that still had the phrase “before shit hit the fan” in it…… so yeah lol there’s that. But this is part of @tilltheendwilliwrite 7.7K Follower (Covid Sucks) Celebration. This one feels more like an angst/fluff type so. It also barely gets done in the timeframe so pls forgive grammar, English (while it’s my first language) ain’t my strong suit lol

Also I’m posting the link to the dress that I found and just freaking needed to include but pretend it’s black and red not black and white lol. https://www.jovani.com/evening-dresses/black-sheer-skirt-embellished-jovani-dress-65381 

And the shoes http://us.christianlouboutin.com/us_en/shop/women/goya-ruban-alta.html lols I’m crying that these shoes are over $1k

***

Teeth. Thirty two by the time you’ve reached adulthood. Those damn pearly whites that drew you in since the very beginning. First it was the smile, then it was the hair, then it was the eyes. Then it was him. That goddamn soldier turned assassin who defied all odds of even living. 

Was his life hell before? For fucking sure. Was it hell after he met you? Bucky seems to think so, but in the best way, so he always claims. One of the first things he noticed was the fact that you’d been able to get jump on him during training one day, something that doesn’t usually happen. 

While you had gotten the same training as Natasha, your introduction to the Red Room was just after she had managed to get out completely. You had only heard stories of the infamous Black Widow, before your training managed to put you on par to her. While you never quite lived up to her, you’d managed to get pretty damn close. Then shit happened, and here you were. Same path as Natasha, working for the Avengers, kicking ass, and occasionally a tooth every now and then. 

Refocusing on the task at hand, you shake your head to bring yourself back into the present. A gala hosted by some Russian mafia dude who’s name you couldn’t remember for the life of you. No one knew yet that you had changed sides; no one on the bad side at least. They just thought you had died in some freak riding accident (somehow the Red Room let you retain your love of horses). So imagine every single person from your past flocking towards you once they recognized you. 

Bucky didn’t like that you refused to go in without a disguise. You argued that no one knew your change of heart yet, so why disguise yourself? You’d be able to gather more information as yourself then as someone else. He tried to argue, go above your head, anything to get someone to force you to wear a mask. The second he faced you though, you had become a completely different person. Yes you still wore your face, but he’d never seen you dressed to the nines before. Hair up in what he’d heard you call a crown braid with little jewels scattered, with makeup that made it seem like you were hiding a secret. Something akin to a black and red bedazzled bodysuit, sat beneath black tulle further accented with red, leaving very little to the imagination. There only being barely enough tulle in the back to slightly obscure your ass from the world. Something Bucky didn’t realize until you were already walking towards the Quinn jet. Only to be hit with the feeling of wedding fever. A thing Bucky never thought he’d feel, especially since y’all hadn’t been dating all that often. 

Now that you were in a room, wearing a dress that did very little to cover the assets you have, you could feel in your bones that you were definitely in for it tonight once this mission had been over. You saw the look in Bucky’s eyes when he saw you. He knew you could easily hold your own, fancy dress and heels or sweats and slippers. Didn’t make the desire to protect you any less though. 

Thinking back to the gala, you couldn’t help yourself but imagine Bucky in a tuxedo, hair slicked back, some bomb ass cologne, and an attitude to make you forget how sweet he actually is. Absolutely dirty when he fights, but the sweetest creature behind closed doors. A thought you pushed to the back of your head while putting your head on a swivel. You may be Red Room trained and know most of the people here, but it didn’t mean you’d leave yourself completely unguarded. 

“Babe you know everyone can see your ass right?” 

Shaking your head, you refuse to dignify the comment with a reply, knowing it would only make the end of the night worse. Sashaying to the bar and ordering a rum neat, because ordering whiskey or scotch is too easy, you take in a look around the room. Nothing particularly standing out to you, you sip and stroll; occasionally listening in on conversations that were best left for closed doors. But the men didn’t care, and the women pretended not to hear anything. Gotta love the Russian mob. 

“So far there’s nothing of interest y’all. No mention of anything any slightly related to Hydra. Just a bunch of drugs and weapons sales.” 

“Something will come up, just stay a little longer, flirt a bit, gather some intel?”

“If you flirt I swear to God.”

“Tony, we all know that if I start flirting, Manchurian Candidate over there is going to storm in, then we’d have to send a clean up crew in.”

“Oi. No need to call me out like that.” 

“Babe, I love you, but we all know that’s true.” You tell him with a smile in your tone. 

The night drags on while you’re doing your best to shutdown some rather vulgar attempts at ‘showing you a good time’ that came with arriving alone. Some were decent enough to give in to a dance now and then, but most were deterred once you gave them the look. The look that said “Don’t fuck with me at all.” 

Bucky called it the Nordstrom look. Something he heard your mom say while on the phone with her. All you knew was that you had the same look a relative of your grandmother had and her maiden name was Nordstrom. Thus ‘The Nordstrom Look’. 

But eventually the night dragged to an end, and you were able to make your way back to the tower. Sans any information you thought would be actually valuable, though Tony and Fury disagreed. Once the debrief was over, you were finally able to go back to your floor to take off everything. While you were definitely more of a ‘bruh girl,’ you still enjoyed the occasional Cinderella moment dressing up. But damn were those heels killing you, despite your love for Louboutin’s. Tony damn near killed you when he got the bill for not only the dress, but for the shoes as well. 

How were you supposed to know they would cost $1,195? Before shipping. When you feigned shock to Tony, all he could do was glare at you while muttering under his breath how women became when it came to shoes. 

But you continued you way to your bedroom when a brick wall pinned you to the door of your room. 

“Can I help you Buck?”

“Doll you can help me a whole bunch.” He tells you, leaving a trail of wet kisses up and down your neck before looking up at you. 

“Hi.” All you can do now is whisper. Not that your nervous, but in the way of when exhaustion hits you. And while you were definitely in the mood to fool around, really you just wanted to take a bubble bath and burrito yourself while watching Love, Death, & Robots. Something that freaked Bucky out the first time he watched it with you. 

“Hi yourself doll.” And he smiles. Showing those damn teeth that dug you in all those years ago. Them damn pearly whites that you can’t get enough of seeing. But you wouldn’t have it any other way. Not while he’s smiling at you like you hung the moon for him and him only. And you realized right then and there, there wouldn’t be another set of teeth you’d want to be looking at when it came with a smile. No other pearly whites that could get you worked up as quick and easy as his. 

Bucky had you in the palm of his hand with that first damn smile, and you wouldn’t want it any other way. 

[riverboundao3ff]

Riverbound, Chapter 17

All in all, Lanque’s a whole lot calmer about the whole thing than you thought he’d be, which makes you feel better about going to him right away instead of Daraya. Of course you love Daraya, but knowing the kid she’d probably run off to start a fight with Bronya, Lynera, and any other poor bastard who gets in her way.

“I want to believe Bronya’s doing this because she thinks she’s in the right, but I just can’t… augh! I just… can’t believe she’d ask me to do something like that.” You conclude your messy rant by flopping down on the carpet. There’s a dull ache in your skull from either exhaustion or anxiety, possibly both.

Lanque’s looking down at you from the loveseat in the corner like the universe’s most judgemental therapist, sprawled across the whole thing with his gangly self. “You haven’t known her nearly as long as I have. You heard me say once that she’s the craziest bitch in the whole cloister. I meant it.”

You want to argue with him; Bronya isn’t crazy, just a control freak, but that’s gonna have to be a discussion for another time. “You’re not surprised at all by this? Not even a little?”

“Not surprised. Just… disappointed.”

“What, does she make you to sleep at certain times and check your palmhusk, too?” you joke.

“Not anymore, she doesn’t. She learned her lesson after I filled my whole camera roll with the spiciest nudes you can imagine.”

You try not to imagine anything of the sort and fail miserably. Your last brain cell hangs on for dear life. “So, uh… w-what should I tell her the next time we go out?”

“Tell her that I’ve been taking Daraya to a slam poetry club. We’ve actually done poetry in the past, so it’s not like you’ll be lying,” he says with a smirk. “You should come sometime. Talk to people about all sorts of controversial alien opinions. Maybe throw in some rhymes while you’re at it.”

“Alright,” you agree.

“... Darling?”

“Yes, babe?”

“Don’t breathe a word of this to Daraya. She’s stressed out enough as it is.”

“Of course not.”

“Good.”

:::

The next night you spend with Polypa, vandalizing stuff with the Heiress’s face on it and even setting a billboard on fire. It’s a lot of fun, but between vandalizations you can’t stop yourself from thinking about the girl herself. From what you can tell she’d be around seventeen in human years, which meant she’d soon have to challenge the Empress, as all the Heiresses before her did.

Some teenagers like to play video games, some like to sing or dance or do sports; you even know a few who live all by themselves on an island in the middle of the ocean who can shoot guns better than most military personnel. But not Trizza Tethis. No, she’ll be off to duel for the throne… and her life.

In your hearts of hearts you know that Tethis is a monster. There’s no doubt about it. But that doesn’t change the fact that she’s still just a kid, a kid who is going to be murdered soon for the crime of reaching adulthood.

It makes your heart hurt just thinking about that, and all of the other girls that came before her, and if this rebellion goes to shit all the girls who will come after her.

“Hey, Polypa?” you ask.

“Yeah?” She’s hanging upside-down on some broken piping while spraying THE REVOLUTION IS HERE on the side of a post office. You’re being a good moirail and keeping watch for anybody who might see her, even though it’s dark out and you can’t see much past the street lights lining the sidewalk. For some reason she refuses to tell you, she’s been in a mood ever since she came back from Tegiri’s, but you’re patient. You can wait for her.

“Do you ever wonder if Trizza might have been a good person if Alternia wasn’t the way it is?”

Polypa stops what she’s doing and stares down at you. “Honestly? I don’t really care how she might have turned out if things were different. All the things I’ve seen her do, the shit I’ve heard her say on social media… I just can’t bring myself to believe anything other than she’s one of the most horrible Heiresses Alternia’s ever had and that she deserves to die. Slowly and painfully, that is. And then she deserves to be forgotten.”

“That’s fair,” you tell her. “I dunno, I just kept thinking about how she’s supposed to go off and duel the Empress soon, and that she’s definitely not gonna win, because none of the fuschias who went up against her ever did.”

“... Does that make you sad?”

“It makes me sad that a kid is going to die, yes.”

She huffs. “Save your sympathy. She doesn’t deserve it.”

“Can trolls control who they sympathize with?”

“Of course we can. Can’t humans?”

You laugh. “No. Or at least I can’t. Empathy’s a blessing and a curse.”

Polypa chucks her spray-paint can into the nearby dumpster. “Empathy? Isn’t that like, feeling what other people are feeling? I thought that was just a myth.”

“Some humans can feel the emotions of others. I’ve always been able to.”

“That sucks.”

“Again, it’s a blessing and a curse.”

Polypa shudders, flips upright, and then drops down to the concrete. “If you say so. C’mon, let’s scram.”

You scram, or at least you try to before somebody bumps into you hard enough to nearly knock you over.

“Watch it!” Polypa hisses from somewhere behind you.

You look up at a boft looking (buff plus soft) rustblood guy, who flinches back when he accidentally looks you in the eye. “Sorry! Sorry. Bye.”

He shuffles off down the street, shoulders hunched in like he’s trying to make himself as small as possible even though he’s easily the biggest rust you’ve ever seen. Huh.

“Well, that was weird,” you say, and then you feel something crinkle in the hood of your jacket. Cautiously, you reach up and grab it, hoping that he didn’t just put a bomb on you or something. You aren’t that worried about dying, because you know your immortal ass is coming right on back, but if Polypa’s in the blast zone--

“It’s a piece of paper,” she says.

“Oh, yay. I thought it might be a bomb.”

“Definitely not a bomb.”

The paper’s been folded several times, so you smooth it out and read the letters that have been cut out and glued out in a note, like some kind of Nancy Drew shit.

“What the…” You read the message, and then you read it again, once, twice, thrice, four times before Polypa starts swatting at you and grabbing for the paper. You hand it over and stare out across the street.

You are not alone. Tomorrow at midnight.

“I’m texting the others,” Polypa mutters, shoving the paper into her pocket and whipping out her palmhusk.

“There’s more of us,” you whisper. “That’s what it means, right? We’re not the only faction out there fighting for-!”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, let’s not believe anything that some stranger wrote down on a piece of paper and shoved into your hoodie--”

“But he came to me, Polypa--”

“Hey!”

Both of you turn around to see some cerulean girl you don’t know storming across the street to you. “The fuck you think you gutterbloods are doing, huh?”

“The revolution is here, bitch,” you tell her, and you grab Polypa’s sleeve and zap away.

Polypa does not hesitate to smack you upside the head the second you two appear on the roof of some building downtown. “The hell was that? She just saw an alien and an oliveblood teleport out of an alley with fresh graffiti on the post office!”

“Who’s gonna believe her?” you snort.

“She’s a cerulean, she’ll make somebody believe her.”

“Dude. Chill. We still have time before things get crazy.”

“Apparently not! Tomorrow at midnight--”

“I know! Isn’t it great? What if it’s like, a big post on Chittr, or a public service announcement from God knows where saying that it’s time for bigots to start shitting their pants, because the revolution is here and it is sexy!”

“Augh!” Polypa throws up her hands. You start to get a little concerned. “Aren’t you scared? Like, at all? We could all die tomorrow and you’re just… totally fine! You disappear for half a sweep and come back ready to lead a revolution!”

Alright, it’s time to bring out the big guns. Slowly, so she has time to pull away if she wants, you step forward and reach up to caress her cheek.

The effect is instantaneous. She visibly loosens up from horns to toes, leaning forward into the contact with a low chirrup rising up from deep in her throat. If you were a troll, that sound would have probably made you pale-horny to the max, but you’re human so all you do is just stand up on your tippy-toes to press your foreheads together. You imagine pulling away all of her fear and stress and releasing it into the open sky, never to be seen again.

“We’re not going to die,” you tell her. “We’re just not. And if we were, I’d tell you, because dying isn’t that bad. Doesn’t even hurt, really.”

“... You’ve been dead before?”

“Yeah. Feels like the best fucking nap you’ve ever taken.”

She snorts hard enough for you to feel her breath across your face. “Only you would say something like that and be completely unbothered.”

“That’s just how it be sometimes,” you say, because joking about your trauma and having anxiety are basically your only two personality traits nowadays.

“I’ll write that down for the pile,” she says, because she’s always been able to see right through you, even when you can’t see yourself. “Which we’re going back to an abandoned apartment building to do once I yeet this glass bottle into that window over there.”

She picks up the broken glass bottle at your feet and proceeds to do just that. It sails through the air with all the majesty of an eagle and crashes through somebody’s office window. You know enough about troll romance by now to be a little scandalized by how forward she’s being, but you both know it’s out of necessity. Troll language is far from just verbal-- it’s flattened ears or bared fangs or dilated pupils. It’s hissing and chirping and growling and all sorts of sounds you don’t even know the names for, and you can’t even hear most of them because they’re either too low or too high a pitch for your human ears to catch.

“Hot damn, wildcat. You gonna take me out to dinner before you throw me down on somebody’s abandoned loungeplank?” you tease. Her face lights up in green, and you grin in satisfaction as she splutters something about saving it for the respiteblock.

You’re about to cook up something truly slutty to say when her palmhusk vibrates. Polypa reads it and snorts. “Aaaannnddd Daraya is losing her mind, Tagora says it’s a trap, Tyzias wants to know what the rustblood looked like, Stelsa is in agreement with Tagora, Lanque is asking how the hell it could be a trap when the rustblood didn’t even ask you to meet him anywhere, and Mallek is telling everybody to shut up so he can take a nap. Konyyl and Azdaja haven’t responded yet. I bet they’re making out in a back alley somewhere. Oh, Tagora is telling Lanque to shut his Troll Twilight-looking ass up before he fines him for wasting the rebellion’s time… and Tyzias just sent a bunch of hysterical laughing emojis.”

“I love my friends,” you say.

“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself.”

“I’m gonna get Mallek to hack the server so whenever people start arguing over stupid stuff a bot starts spamming the chat with gifs of fighting purrbeasts.”

“Do group chats have servers?”

“I have no idea. Come on, I’m fucking freezing up here.”

:::

Your memories of growing up on Earth are fuzzy at best. You have no idea if it’s from Scratch, or Ultimate Dirk, or hell, maybe it’s just regular old brain damage, but one of the few things you can vividly remember is when your grandma died.

You can’t remember her name, but you can easily recall her eternally-smiling face, that smile that always reached her eyes-- hazel, like yours. She’s the one who taught you how to braid your hair, wing your eyeliner, ask out a crush. She also taught you how to take down a grown man with nothing but your fists and a pocketknife. Old age hadn’t ever been a problem for your grandma. Or at least, that’s what it felt like.

The morning your uncle found in her lifeless in bed hadn’t felt any different than all of the mornings before. You just woke up and started to get ready for school, and then your mom… yeah, it was your mom who picked up the phone. She didn’t cry, but your uncle did.

It was a heart attack.

Your mom told you that you didn’t have to go to school, but you were still pretty young, and it still felt like every other morning before so you went to school.

You’re not sure why you’re remembering this when you first smell the smoke, or see the burning buildings from the roof of the abandoned apartment building you and Polypa crashed in. Maybe it’s because it still feels like every other night before this one.

Something deep in you that’s been irreversibly interwoven with time and space begins to tingle. This is a turning point in history, you just know it.

Polypa’s shaking her head like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. “It’s a riot. A riot. In Thrashthrust. We really aren’t…”

“Alone,” you finish with a smile so big it hurts your face.

“... Do you think this is really the right thing to do?”

“A wise man from my planet once said that riots are the language of the unheard.” You turn to her and take her hands in your own. “So let’s make them hear us.”

You’re not sure what you were expecting when you drop yourself and Polypa into downtown Thrashthrust, but you definitely weren’t expecting to almost get run over by Konyyl and Azdaja, both panting, sweaty, and smelling faintly of smoke.

Konyyl yelps and jumps about a foot in the air. “WHAT the-- oh, hi, guys. You didn’t scare me, I just… yeah.”

“Dude, what is all this? This is incredible!” you crow.

An explosion rocks the ground, followed by a giant plume of fire that shoots up into the sky just one street over. Azdaja whoops in delight, and Konyyl cheers even louder as a piece of flaming metal you think used to be a scuttlebuggy sails through the air and takes out a convenience store. Normally, something like that would have worried you, but seeing as the store’s already nearly burnt to the ground you think everybody’s already gotten out.

Not to be outdone, Azdaja telekinetically grabs on to a fallen lamppost and hurls that bad boy through the grocery store across the street.

“Show-off,” Konyyl scoffs.

“Where’s the main protest?” you ask.

“Like, a couple of blocks back that way. Some bronzeblood is leading the charge. Absolute mad lad,” she says, grinning. “I think a few more people you know might be there.”

That’s all the convincing you need to grab Polypa’s hand and take off running. You can hear the roar of a crowd chanting something.

“What are they saying?” you ask Polypa.

“Be silent no longer, when we’re together, we’re stronger,” she replied, glancing back at you with a twinkle in her eye. “I kinda like it.”

“Me too!”

The both of you turn the corner at the end of Hookedclaw street and find yourself face-to-face with a sizable crowd of about one hundred trolls. They’re all looking up to a pair of trolls standing on an upturned scuttlebuggy-- a bronzeblood, like Konyyl said, and the same big rustblood guy who you ran into last night.

You gape in shock. “Holy shit!”

The bronzeblood boy is yelling something, so you press closer into the crowd to hear what he’s saying. Most of the trolls here seem to be lowbloods, so when they see you and Polypa, an oliveblood, they gladly make room for you to join.

“... for what? A social construction that keeps us divided, because those who sit on thrones marked with the blood of our people know how strong we are together! They know that we’d be able to take control of our own destinies, and that terrifies them!” He pauses to take a short breath. “For fuck’s sake, I just want a world where I can walk down the street without worrying about getting killed! Is the bar really that damn low? Think about that, all of you!”

Another wave of cheering echoes through the streets, and you join in without hesitation.

“This guy’s spitting straight facts,” Polypa admits, looking impressed.

“He’s got balls, all right,” you agree. “That rustblood guy look familiar to you?”

She ribs you. “Yeah, yeah, you were right. I admit it.”

You turn your attention back to the boys, but they’re looking over the heads of the protestors at something behind you. A soft wave of hisses rise into the air as you turn to see a trio of purples stalking towards everybody, clubs dragging behind them with the awful scrape of steel against concrete. They’re twice the size of Polypa, except the giant fucker in the middle, who you think might be just a little bit shorter than Chahut.

“That’s a pretty sermon there, bronze brother,” he calls with a voice that crackles like burning wood. “Pretty for a load of treasonous fuckin’ shit.”

“Can’t be shittier than whatever they’re cooking up in that drug-hole church of yours,” the bronzeblood fires back with a smirk.

Even the rustblood standing next to him sucks in a sharp breath as the clown regards him with no trace of emotion. Polypa grabs your hand, and you squeeze it tight.

“You’ve got a big-ass mouth for a critter the size of my motherfuckin’ left toe,” the clown on the big guy’s right says.

“And you’ve got a big-ass forehead for a bastard with such a tiny skull.”

Somebody lets out a loud snort. It might have been you.

The feeble tendrils of bravery holding everybody together begin to unravel as the purplebloods begin to approach once more. You instinctively back up and pull your jacket hood over your head.

“Get ready,” Polypa growls.

But before the clowns have the chance to attack or use their chucklevoodoos, or before the lowbloods gather their courage enough to storm the intruders, a deafening CRACK splits the air like a thunderclap.

The clown to the far left drops like a rock, and standing over him, bat raised, is Elwurd.

She’s wearing a mask to conceal her face, of course, but you’d recognize that crest of blue hair anywhere. Beside her is Remele with her oversized mallet-club thing, and bringing up the rear with shining dual blades is none other than Ardata Carmia.

“Am I fucking dreaming,” you ask nobody in particular, and then all hell breaks loose.

The cerulean girls lunge for the two purplebloods that are still on their feet. The bronzeblood screams for everybody to scatter just as drones begin to swoop down from the sky, opening fire on the trolls below. Half a dozen kids drop dead on the spot.

You and Polypa duck into the nearest alleyway just in time before bullet holes pepper the pavement. Behind you, Elwurd roars something that sounds like “Duck!” before another explosion blows out all the windows. You yelp and cover your head as glass showers down on you like rainfall.

“Zap us out of here!” Polypa yells.

“No, wait! We have to go help the girls!”

“I’m not going back out there and neither are you!”

You glance back just in time to see Ardata drop to her knees, holding her bloody arm. She’s shrieking in terror as a drone advances on her, culling fork glinting bone-white in the darkness. Remele and Elwurd are too busy getting their asses kicked by the last living clown to help.

In that moment you can’t remember her as the bloodthirsty murderer who tortured you in her basement. All you can think of is the time she broke down in your arms, overcome with guilt at the monster she’d become in the name of being accepted by highblood society. A monster who’d traumatized you, and then became your friend.

You’re moving through space and time before your brain can catch up to what you’re doing. Ardata is cold and hard when you tackle her out of the way of the drone. The two of you tumble across the street together as the culling fork hits the spot where Ardata just was with a SHUNK. Even with adrenaline racing through your system the sound chills you to the core.

Remembering what Dirk taught you about hand-to-hand combat with a larger opponent, you grab one of her knives and zap right over to the clown, getting right up in his business before burying the blade into an eye socket.

Unsurprisingly, he drops a squirming Remele and covers his face with a scream so horrible you almost pee your pants. Ardata’s wailing your name from the sidewalk like a terrified child. You want to yell at her to shut up and run before the drones spotted her again, but you never get the chance. One moment you’re twisting a knife into a purpleblood’s skull, the next you’re flying through the air like a ragdoll before a pair of strong arms wrap around you. You and your rescuer land hard on the street with matching grunts of pain.

You look up into Elwurd’s bewildered face and burst out laughing. “Hi!”

“What the--”

“Time to go!” Remele yanks the both of you up by your scruffs like a pair of naughty cats. “Ardata, stop screaming like a wiggler and get your arse over here now!”

“My arm!” Ardata screeches. “I’ll be scarred for life!”

“No, you won’t, idiot, not when you hit your adult molt-!”

You zap the three of them out of there and into the alley, grab Polypa on your way, and then get the hell out of dodge.

The five of you end up in the back of a Troll Dennys, because of course you do. Polypa falls on you, knocking you to the ground, and then she yowls in anger when Elwurd lands on her legs, only for Ardata and Remele to hit the concrete ass-first. Remele accidentally kicks you in the stomach. Ardata falls back against a dumpster and hits her head on the metal with a BANG.

Everybody stares at each other for a long moment with varying degrees and expressions of utter shock. Polypa glares at you, and you just know you’re in for a long discussion about putting your own safety first in dangerous situations, or something like that.

You decide to break the ice first. “Anybody want pancakes?”

[terry-perry]

Preyed Upon pt. 3

As always, (majority of) OCs were created by @ladyfluff​. Give her a follow if you haven’t already.

Also as always, enjoy the read!

They didn’t know what their next move could be after they left Raymond’s place, and all remained silent as they went back to Y/N’s apartment with more than millions of thoughts swimming in each of their heads. Once they got there, they each went about the place like mindless drones, still not one of them saying a word. With Peter being the most active on autopilot, he scurried over to the kitchen and looked through the fridge and cupboards. Luckily he was able to find some things to help keep him occupied for the time being.

Cooking had always been a way for him to cope with tension-filled situations since it was something that kept him busy and his mind at ease. Which was why not long after, when the place began to produce a sweet smelling aroma from the desserts being made, he had a moment where he was feeling a form of contentment. That was until reality came back in the form of Adam.

“What are you doing?” He had asked, looking around the kitchen and witnessing the various ingredients and plates of snacks already made.

“Thought I’d make a little something for Ian,” Peter said. “I’m sure he hasn’t eaten anything since...all this.”

“It looks like a bakery in here, Peter,”

“Well maybe he’s one of those zombies that stress eats!”

Peter let out a sudden, irritated huff and put down the mixing bowl he had been stirring on the counter. It was harsher than intended, with some of the batter jumping out. The two stood there in awkward silence after his outburst, waiting for one of them to at least remotely address the situation they were in.

“Where’s Eve?” Peter asked.

“In the bedroom, having a bit of a row with Ava,”

“What are they arguing about?”

“Eve’s trying to push her into trying to remember whatever can be useful in finding Y/N. While also chastising her over her taste in men,” Adam explained, a ghost of an amused smirk appearing. “Where’s Rowan?”

“In one of the other rooms, talking to a neighbor of ours that’s watching over the pups while we’re gone,”

Neither had asked about the whereabouts of Ian, having seen him go straight up to the roof while mumbling about having a smoke. So seeing no other way to beat around the bush, the younger brother had decided to express what had been on his mind for some time now. 

“Do you remember the first person from our past life that we saw die?” He inquired, almost expecting Adam to not answer. “After we’d been around for a good while?”

“Henry,” Adam responded with.

Peter confirmed with a quiet nod. Their parents had died long before their brother did, but they didn’t include them since they each passed away about five years or so after the three siblings were turned. Although they didn’t attend either of their funerals, it wouldn’t have raised too much suspicion if they had. With Henry, however, it was already a good 40+ years when they caught wind of his nearing death and decided to pay him a visit. Funny enough, it was Y/N that had insisted on going to see him.

“He was just a senile old man on his deathbed,” Peter recalled, sounding so far away. “Didn’t even bat an eye to us looking the way we did.”

He gave a bitter and tight-lipped smile as he remembered the final moments they each shared with their late brother; taking a withered hand and smiling down at him on the raised bed. He had managed to raise his tired eyes that could only widen slightly from seeing his estranged siblings.

“Sweet sister, you’ve grown to be quite the beauty,” he had expressed in a croaking version of his younger voice.

“Adam, you’re due for a shave...Ah, little Peter...I use that term ironically now,”

They had let him spew out tales from their childhood and young adulthood. Peter shook his head a bit when remembering the way Henry had babbled in an almost child-like way, giving his spin on the way he tormented the family growing up. He had always been the one that was more of a bully with the way he “playfully” picked on everyone.

“He was such an asshole,” Peter remarked. “Probably the biggest one when we were kids. But I was still sad to see him go.”

Adam heard the sadness in his voice. He knew he didn’t like to talk about their past lives very often since there weren’t much fond memories to look back on. So it was rare for them to talk about the family that had been dead and gone for centuries now.

“Y/N has always been the good one,” Peter went on to say, appearing to be quite spaced out. “Since the day she was born, she had been so sweet. I don’t know where she could’ve gotten it from. The rest of us  were full of such meanness and resentment.”

“You, at least, had a reason to be bitter,” Adam brought up lamely.

But he was able to see what he meant. Y/N was always someone with a kind heart; an open-minded free spirit that always had at least an ounce of empathy for people. It didn’t matter who you were, she would do what she could to understand you and the things you did. It’s why even when they struggled with seeing eye-to-eye about certain things, they always had been able to confide in her when it came to their deepest emotional thoughts. Whether it be Peter talking to her about his sexuality for the first time, or her helping Adam be momentarily distracted from his darkening thoughts, she was always the light of the family.

“I just keep thinking,” Peter suddenly choked out. “What’s going to happen if we can’t...how we’d react if she-”

“Oi, don’t think something like that for even a second! We’re not going to let that bastard get the best of us.”

“Adam, face facts! He’s got her locked up somewhere and is most likely torturing her every time one toe is out of place. He’s already winning!”

“He isn’t winning!” Adam argued, his voice rising. “The only way he will is if we continue with all this negative thinking. And since that’s coming from me, that should tell you plenty about how much you need to lighten the fuck up.”

The tension grew after that outburst, as though that were possible. Anyone else would’ve been shocked or hurt by the way his stoic demeanor broke so harshly, but Peter only rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“I just don’t see how we’ll be able to get her back,”

“There might be a way,” Eve called out.

They turned and found her standing in front of them with a sulking Ava by her side. 

“Ava has something she needs to say,”

“If it’s an apology, I’m not really in the mood for it,” Adam grumbled. Peter just resumed stirring his mix. It’s not that they blamed her for this situation, but they’d be lying if they said that they weren’t more than a little upset with her for bringing Raymond back into their lives. Despite multiple warnings to do otherwise.

“I don’t know where Raymond’s keeping Y/N,” Ava started with. “But I know someone that might,”

That drew their attention back.

----

Everyone had gathered into the living room to hear what Ava had to say.

“A couple days ago before this all happened, Raymond had gone to see Victor,”

“Victor?” Adam inquired. “Are you sure?”

“The guy’s been living in the same place in Brooklyn for over 70 years. I’m sure. I don’t know what he asked from him since I was left in the car while he went inside, but I’m certain whatever it was helped with getting Y/N to wherever she is now.”

“Wait, who’s Victor?” Ian asked.

“He’s someone like us that has been known to get things,” Peter told him. “There’s hardly anything he can’t get his hands on. Especially for the right price.” He threw a question of his own to the rest of the group. “But you don’t suppose he’d actually do business with Raymond, do you?”  

“Only if he wasn’t told everything,” Adam stated. “You know Victor, he doesn’t ask a lot of questions if you flash enough cash his way to keep his mouth shut. He probably doesn’t even know about Y/N.”

“Most likely not. He wouldn’t have sold anything to the asshole if he did.”

“So what now?” Rowan asked next. “Do we just go over to Victor’s and ask him what he may or may not know?”

“It’s better than doing nothing,” Adam reasoned. “If anything, we can go over and see what he has in stock that might help somehow.”

He took a glance at the window, estimating how much was left of the night. “I’ll go there myself, but the rest of you should get some sleep,”

“No, I’m going too,” Peter claimed.

“Are you sure?”

He stepped over to him, a sheepish smile forming on his face. “You were right before. We’re not going to let him get the best of us. We’re going to get her back.”

Adam didn’t say anything except nod in agreement. But then he was spun around by Eve who gave him a worried expression.

“Adam-”

“There’s no sense in all of us going,” he interrupted her with his explanation while giving pleading eyes of his own. “I don’t know what kind of information will be handed to us, or what situation we’ll be landing ourselves in. But I’ll contact you as  soon as I can. Just stay here, please?”

“The things I do for you,” she uttered in return. They then shared a good, loving kiss.

“Hopefully we’ll be back in a night or so,” Peter meanwhile assured his own love. “And if things go well, Y/N will be with us too.”

“I’ll try my best to not worry,” Rowan could only half-joke about that. “And I’ll keep you updated about the babies while you’re away.”

“Thank you,”

“I’m going too,” Ian piped up, getting up from the couch.

“Ian, it’s probably best that you stay here-”

“Yeah, no offense Adam, but I wasn’t asking permission,”

That definitely caught everyone off guard.

“Look, I know you guys are way smarter and stronger than I am -- and there’s still a lot I don’t know about your kind -- but I can still be useful. I want to be, anyway. Because she’s my girl, I want to do what I can to save her.” 

 Adam peered over to Peter who just shrugged and gave him a look that said it was his call. He went back to look at Ian.

“All right, but stay close. I’m sure Victor will be able to supply you with a gun, if needed. You ever use one?”

“Does a paintball gun count?”

“Sure,” Peter answered him with that same weak smile on his face. “We should probably get going before it gets light out.” He returned to Rowan and shared a few more parting words.

Ian stood off to the side as he watched Adam and Peter share goodbyes with their partners. He did his best to ignore the twinge in his heart that came from doing so while also doing what he could to avoid the wandering thought of how he should’ve done better in savoring the last moment he shared with Y/N...

----

Y/N ran her fingers through Ian’s hair while his face stayed hidden in her neck. With his weight on her, she could easily feel his thundering heart as he continued to catch his breath. She started giggling when he lightly rubbed his nose against her cheek. She had no choice but to turn and share several lazy kisses with him. They broke apart eventually, going on to look at each other with hooded eyes and sated smiles.

“That was amazing,” he whispered, still a little out of breath.

“You always say that,” she teased, sliding her arms further down to hug him closer to her.

“That’s because it’s always amazing,”

He gave her one more kiss then rolled off her to go on his side of the bed. They had spent majority of that night between the sheets, only taking breaks every so often to wash themselves off, share a smoke, cuddle or let him recharge with some food. They made love through the dark hours until the transition of the first morning lights when slept it all off.

Had he known that that would’ve possibly been the last time, he would’ve made more of an effort to memorize her movement, the noises she made. He would’ve stayed up a little longer to watch the peaceful way she slept, the cute way her face would subtly twitch from the dreams she had. Had he known what was to come, he would’ve tried harder to keep them in bed. 

----

Adam glanced up towards the rearview mirror and caught sight of Ian in the backseat, still lost in thought since leaving the apartment. Did he even realize they had left? When he turned to look at Peter in the passenger seat, he saw that he was checking on him too. They shared a look with each other afterwards, seeming to be thinking the same thing.

It was usually smarter for their kind to not get too close to many people, safer. But the ones they did have in their lives were always going to be the ones they stayed loyal to and kept safe. The brothers might’ve failed in keeping Y/N away from Raymond’s clutches, but they were going to do everything in their power to get her back. And they were also going to do what they could to make sure Ian was well taken care of. They knew she would’ve done the same if it was Eve or Rowan in his position.

So they made a silent agreement on the way that no matter what happened, he would be protected and come back in one piece.

[cas-kingdom]

She’s a Lady

A/N: Because you all love the sister!Shelby fics. <3 (Yes, the title is a Tom Jones song!)

Find the OC version of this fic here.

Title: She’s a Lady

Summary: You want to cut your hair, but Tommy won’t let you.

Words: 1919

“Can I cut my hair?”

Tommy rose an eyebrow from where he was sat behind his desk, reading a book during a rare moment of peace. You’d traipsed into his office a little after he’d began to read and unceremoniously dumped yourself in the chair opposite him. He hadn’t paid it much mind; Arthur and John were out on business, Michael was busy in the accountant’s office, Polly was shopping for new shoes with Finn, and Ada wasn’t due back from London for another two weeks. It was simply to be expected that you’d eventually grow bored with whatever you were doing and seek out your only free sibling.

He hadn’t said anything when you’d sat yourself sideways in his chair, instead simply pushing a book he’d thought you’d possibly be able to entertain yourself with for the next hour or so over to your side of the desk. Nevertheless, apparently a book was not enough to alleviate your boredom… which he couldn’t quite understand, seeing as he hadn’t seen you lay your eyes on it once.

“What do you mean?” he answered, spinning slightly on his chair but not lifting his eyes from the page he was currently absorbed in. Books were a relief, he found, in his line of work. There weren’t many days he got off, but during the ones he did he was almost always found nose-deep in a story. He’d hoped at least one of his siblings would follow after him in that – namely you – but was deeply disappointed to find that they all would rather do something else. You seemed to like painting, though, and he figured that was close enough. At least someone in the Shelby family had a possible future that wasn’t to do with the company.

“My hair. Can I cut it?”

“You’ve just had it cut.”

Tommy couldn’t see, but he would have bet his entire business on the idea that you’d rolled your eyes at that statement. “I know that,” you said. “But that was a trim, Tom.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “Why do you want another haircut?”

“Because I want it shorter.”

The man reached over to sip at his glass of whiskey. “How short?”

“Like… like Ada’s!”

The whiskey made a splash as Tommy coughed and the liquid came right out of his mouth again. He glanced up, feeling the burn in his throat, and rose both eyebrows. “Ada’s?” He coughed again and shook his head. “No, not that short.”

You frowned. “Why not? I like it.”

“Yeah, well.” Your brother cleared his throat. “I don’t.” He rested his eyes on your beautiful, long hair, falling about your shoulders like wild waves. Why you wanted it cut, he had no idea. Having short hair nowadays was a sign of maturity and adulthood. Finn had gotten his obligatory Blinders haircut when he’d turned sixteen, and though he had no problem with that, it was only because the boy was exactly that. A boy. You, on the other hand, were a girl – his girl, more specifically, and he had a distinct feeling that you would be getting the cut Ada, Lizzie, and all other girls in Birmingham above the age of eighteen had at a much later date, if he and his brothers had anything to say about it.

Tommy had learnt to braid in that hair, and he’d put one in every morning whenever Polly wasn’t around to plait you a better one. He’d spent countless smiles on watching John playfully tug on your long locks whenever he passed by, and he’d even helped wash out flour and egg and whatever else he’d caught you and Finn throwing at each other that one awful time… and he knew Arthur would be greatly upset by the massive loss of hair he’d have available for him to run his fingers through the next time the Shelbys had a quiet night together and you routinely made your way to your eldest brother’s lap.

A hair cut would most definitely affect your brothers more than it would affect you yourself, no doubt about it.

“You can’t control how I look!” you said indignantly, crossing your arms over your chest. He noticed you weren’t looking at him, though, something you did if ever you believed you may have crossed a line with something you’d said.

Of course, you hadn’t. Fortunately for you, Tommy understood your – in his opinion, appalling – want to cut your hair; you lived in a world where children did not have the ability to stay children for too long. It was natural for you to feel the need to grow up, and though cutting your hair seemed a strange way to grow up, it was, in actuality, what you’d be doing. As soon as he allowed you to cut it, many more things regarding adulthood would follow, and in no time at all you would no longer be the little girl your brothers would have you stay forever, if they had their say in it.

He sighed, marking his page with a bookmark and placing it back on his desk. “I’m not having you walking around Birmingham with short hair.”

“Why not?”

“Because all the men will think you’re a woman, and you’re not.” He rose an eyebrow, reaching for a cigarette and lighting it.

“I am!” You spun your legs around and sat up straight in the chair, giving your brother a look as he drew the cigarette up to his mouth and puffed. His eyes locked onto yours, sending a clear message without him even having to open his mouth, and you sighed, leaning back against your seat. “Almost.”

Tommy chuckled. “Wait until you are. Then we’ll talk about it again.”

It was silent for a moment, with you thinking to yourself and Tommy puffing at his cigarette. He had half a mind to pick his book back up, but those thoughts diminished as soon as you spoke yet again. “Ada said I’d suit short hair. So did Lizzie.” Your voice was quiet, and he wasn’t totally sure of the reason behind that, but he sighed nevertheless and answered.

“Of course they did. But they don’t know much about what it feels like to be an older brother, believe it or not.” He gave you a soft smile, hoping you weren’t going to go off on a tangent with this and take it all the wrong way. Of course you’d suit short hair. You’d suit anything. You were a pretty little girl who took after your mother in every way possible, and Tommy knew that, when the day did come that you deemed yourself old enough to make your own decisions based on your hair, you would look no less or more beautiful than you did with it long. Nevertheless, his point still stood. Short hair was a symbol of everything he did not want you to be at this point in time, and it almost pained him to know that you probably only wanted it so you could feel more of an adult. “This is a man’s world, Y/N,” he continued, “and we’re just lucky enough to have women in it. The moment you cut your hair to Ada’s length, you’re not a kid anymore.”

You nodded slowly, making a face. “So… you don’t want me to cut my hair…?”

“I’d rather you not, yeah.”

“… because you want me to stay a kid?”

Tommy smiled, shaking his head. He leaned forward in his chair and rested his elbows on the desk, looking straight at you. “For as long as possible.”

You knew he was giving you that look to try and make you happier about the situation; he wasn’t ignorant to the fact that it wasn’t always easy to be the odd one out. Every day, you were around women with short hair, and you simply wanted to be like them. Seeing as it was definitely one of those rare moments in which Tommy was actually smiling, you gave him one in return. “Fine,” you said, “but the moment John tugs on it again I’m grabbing a knife and cutting it all off.”

The man chuckled and took another puff of his cigarette. “Yeah, and I’ll have you wearing a wig until you’re thirty.”

“Sixteen, Tom! Finn got his when he turned sixteen!”

“Finn got some hair cut off the sides and layered up a bit on top. It doesn’t look any different to how it used to.”

“It looks nice!”

“Yours looks nice, Y/N. You’ve got beautiful hair. Don’t wish it all away.” He rose an eyebrow and you heaved a sigh. Truthfully, you did love your hair, but every woman you saw out on the streets had theirs cut into short little bobs. They framed their faces perfectly and there hadn’t been a single lady you’d seen, yet, that didn’t suit the look. You hardly doubted you’d be that one. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready for my baby sister to cut all her lovely hair off, okay?” He narrowed his eyes at your lack of response. “Okay?”

“Yes, yes, Thomas. Fine.” You rolled your eyes and crossed your arms over your chest, and your brother couldn’t help but see the image of another reason he could not quite imagine you with a mature haircut like the ladies’ of Birmingham. You weren’t there, yet, on the development side of things, and he hated the fact that fifteen-year-olds – both girls and boys – like you were forced to act more and more like the grown ups they weren’t these days. He’d be damned if he took away those last few years of freedom and innocence from you before you turned into a young woman. 

“And I’m telling Ada that, too, in case you want to go up to her and say that Tommy’s told you it’s fine to get your hair cut so can she arrange an appointment to do so, please.”

You scoffed and rolled your eyes. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“’Course not.” Your brother shook his head, reaching for his glass of whiskey and draining the last few drops before glancing up as the door opened and John walked in. He rose an eyebrow. “Don’t we knock anymore, John boy?”

John gave the older man a look. “Seriously?”

“No. What’s wrong?”

“Trouble down at the Cut. Someone pushed Isaiah in the water and now they’re all arguing. Won’t listen to me so I said I’d get you down.” You could clearly tell he was trying hard not to laugh at the situation as he leaned casually on the back of your chair, attempting to maintain a serious facial expression while he looked at his older brother.

You snorted. “Should’ve pushed you in the water while they had a chance.”

John made a face and reached down, grabbing a few locks of your hair and pulling. Your head jerked to the side. “Ow!”

“Yeah, that’ll make you think twice, you little shit,” the man said with a grin. Nevertheless, you didn’t turn to him, instead sending a pointed look at Tommy. He sent one straight back in return, but John could easily decipher it to be one of warning. Before he could ask any kind of question, you shot up from your chair and ran straight towards the door.

“Fuck!” Tommy leapt out of his own seat, whacking his brother ‘round the head as he passed, before following straight after you. “Don’t you dare, Y/N!”

“Michael! I need that knife you were using earlier!”

Peaky Masterpost

[forasecondtherewedwon]

Alright on Paper Pairing: Peter Parker x Michelle Jones (Spideychelle) Rating: T (for now) Word count: 1699 Chapter: 1/?

Spideychelle Week Day 4: Fake Dating

Summary: Reading the newspaper has taught MJ a lot about the Avengers' relationships. Doesn't mean she wants to be in one.

Or, MJ fake-dates Spider-Man, but won't commit because she has a crush on Peter Parker.

MJ reads the paper.

Oh, what, she’s supposed to be above reading the paper because print is dead and the internet offers both more news (stories and outlets) and faster access to it? Tough. She still reads it because her dad still gets it. He’s had a subscription since he graduated college and thought reading the Times―tucking it under his arm and flipping through the pages while he rode the subway―was a more accurate measure of adulthood than owning a car. (They still don’t have a car, by the way. MJ is never going to learn to drive. Ugh.)

The appeal that drew her to it, at the age of four, was the occasional editorial cartoon, utterly beyond her comprehension. These days, she’s a little more interested in the articles on domestic politics, but hey, people are allowed to evolve.

So if you’re her, you’re MJ, you’re living in New York and you’re paying attention, you’re going to notice the Avengers. Notice shit like violent attacks and streets covered in rubble―although, that’s basically the city at rush hour during construction season. She’s noticing other things though, Avengers voicing opinions, reviving a feeling of civic interest, pride, and responsibility. She’s noticing the tide turning; citizens less interested in blaming superheroes for unscheduled demolition in Manhattan and more interested in who does Hawkeye’s tattooing or which karaoke bar Thor can most likely be found at on a Friday night.

And the Avengers’ relationships. New Yorkers are feeding on (super-)human interest stories with their faces so close to the pages they just about rub all the ink off with their noses.

It’s a terrible thing to know this, to be as observant as MJ is, tracking these changing attitudes and becoming an accidental expert on the path to good PR for the biologically, magically, genetically, or otherwise enhanced. Reading the paper is what gets her in trouble―sooner, rather than later―when Spider-Man starts hanging around.

Technically, he’s always hanging (that web shit is strong stuff, by the looks of it), and he’s always around. MJ figured out ages ago that Queens is his home base. Still, their borough’s just big enough and just crowded enough that she’d never encountered him in person until a few months ago. Now she sees him all. The. Time. He says coincidence, she says to-mah-to, and it really is him saying that because they’re officially on speaking terms. It’s an improvement to their interactions, mutually decided upon after Spider-Man scared the bejesus out of her when she was standing on her apartment’s balcony one day, glanced over the edge, and saw him crawling up the wall.

The deal became that if he was going to drop by, he better be obvious about it. This led to a routine MJ is loath to describe with the word ‘charming,’ but which may or may not involve her going out to the balcony or chilling by the open window of her bedroom on Saturday mornings, after her parents have left to run errands, and offering Spider-Man a glass of orange juice while they chat and she shares her paper with him. He likes the arts section. She likes watching him read it, sticking to the wall outside her window, the posters for whatever’s in theatres appearing upside down.

He joked one time about them catching a Saturday matinee together. She’s pretty sure he was joking.

The deal evolves as the weeks go by. MJ’s apartment is less of a rest stop between crime-fighting gigs and more of a superhero counselling centre with only one client. Not that Spider-Man is looking to her, a high school student, to mend whatever trauma led to him donning a formfitting red costume and babysitting an entire city, but she’s sure giving him a lot of advice lately.

It’s just… life stuff, really, and MJ doesn’t know where he sees authority when he looks at her, yawning in her jammies as she passes his juice through the open window, but he seems to listen. Maybe her dad was right about the paper; it’s possible that reading it makes her appear wise.

But it makes her act like a damn idiot in a crisis.

She’s heading to a guidance appointment one Wednesday (it’s junior year and MJ is getting some assistance with scouting out colleges) and the halls are empty; she was given permission to leave class five minutes early. When she turns the corner towards the guidance room, there’s Spider-Man. Just standing there. Middle of the hallway. MJ drops a textbook and it strikes the ground with a deafening slap.

This is her comfortable weekend companion, the hero of Queens. She adjusted to understanding that Spider-Man can be both, but there doesn’t seem to be any room in her mind for him to also exist midmorning at Midtown Tech.

He’s staring back at her (she can tell―the aperture of the white eyes on his mask has expanded in shock), arms held away from his body sort of comically, and MJ’s trying to recall if she’s ever seen him upright before when the jarring old-school bell rings and students flood from the door of every classroom.

Spider-Man bounds towards her, grabs her book from the floor, pushes it to her chest until she grips it, and says, “I know what to do.”

Everyone’s starting to make sounds of surprise, recognizing the Avenger in their midst, but even though MJ knows Spider-Man is kind of a hero of the people, he’s not acknowledging them at all. In fact, he’s wrapping his arms around her, and her eyes―boy oh boy―are wide. There’s just one thing on her mind besides what his suit feels like against the backs of her hands…

She’s praying that Peter isn’t seeing this.

“I’ll swing by your apartment later,” Spider-Man promises, speaking quietly near her ear.

He puts another little squeeze into the hug before stepping back. Reeling, MJ watches him give their audience a polite wave as he walks backwards in the direction of the nearest exit.

“Sorry, guys,” he tells the gathered crowd. “Uh, duty calls. I just wanted to stop by and see my girlfriend.”

Heads are swivelling to stare at MJ even before she drops the book for the second time.

\\\

“How?” she demands of him that evening, pacing tightly on the balcony while her parents laugh along to a sitcom in the living room. “How could that be you ‘knowing what to do’?!”

“I was doing what you said,” Spider-Man says defensively. He’s pacing too, along the balcony’s two-inch-wide railing. (She’s too mad to be worried.)

“Excuse me? We’re putting this on me? When was I an active part of that plan, while I was holding that stupid textbook or while my arms were pinned because you were hugging me? I’d really like to know.”

“W-well, it’s what you said about public perception of the Avengers.”

“Specifics!”

“Like Iron Man,” he argues, lowering his voice after how she snapped. “People like hearing about him and Pepper Potts.”

“And have you always modeled yourself after Tony Stark, or is this sudden, public relationship announcement your first foray?”

They stare at each other for a minute, Spider-Man balancing and MJ looking up at him―which is kind of weird after they hugged today and she realized he’s shorter than she is. She sighs, regretting her harsh words.

“I’m sorry,” she offers. “I know what you did was thoughtless―”

“Well―”

“―ill-advised―”

“Literally your advice.”

“―and, frankly, moronic―”

“Hey.”

“―but I get it, you panicked―”

“I had it under control.”

“―so I forgive you.”

“Oh. Well, thanks.”

“Now, come down here so I don’t have to keep resisting the urge to shove you off that railing.”

Once Spider-Man flips down (she’s already forgiven him―what, does he think he’s getting bonus points for landing the dismount?), MJ crosses her arms and gives that red mask of his a stern look.

“Still not thrilled, huh?”

“Good guess,” she says dryly.

“I might be missing something here, but… why? I mean, I didn’t think I did anything to embarrass you. Did I hurt you somehow?”

MJ shrugs and stares at her slippers.

“People saw.”

There’s a pause.

“…We already knew that.” His tone is almost clueless enough to make her apprehensive that this is the guy she and the rest of Queens have protecting them.

“I don’t know if… if a certain person saw.”

She’s blushing hard to admit even this much of a crush and she’d be mortified if she wasn’t making her confession to this socially illiterate superhero.

“Boyfriend?” Spider-Man asks. MJ glances up to see him leaning extremely un-casually against the wall, arms folded a little less tensely than hers.

“You sound skeptical,” she accuses.

“You’ve never mentioned him.”

MJ glares for a few seconds before backing down.

“No, he’s not my boyfriend. And you didn’t know that either because we only ever talk about you.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Spider-Man immediately offers, like he’s trying to even things up.

Groaning, she lets her shoulders slump.

“You do now.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s pretty unlikely that nobody took a picture.”

“Safe to assume the students of a school called Midtown Tech are tech-savvy enough to work a cellphone camera. By the way,” MJ adds, narrowing her eyes at him, “why were you there?”

“Oh, um, gas leak in one of the Chemistry labs. They dispatch the fire department for that kind of thing and I hate for emergency services to get tied up if I can fix it myself.”

“Huh. I had no idea gas leaks were in your repertoire. Thought muggers and bicycle thieves were more your beat.”

She’s teasing him pretty lightly considering he definitely just lied to her. It’s fine, she’ll wait to crack him until he’s forgotten all about visiting her school.

Spider-Man swings his arms nervously.

“If it’s a community problem, I’m on it. I’m just a friendly―”

“―neighbourhood Spider-Man,” MJ finishes. “Yeah, I’ve heard the tagline. And you’re also my fake boyfriend until we figure out a way for you to tactfully dump me.”

He takes an excited step towards her.

“I know wha―”

She cuts him off with a swiftly raised hand.

“Don’t even say it.”