#i didn’t end up using like any of the reference images i originally picked out except for one so that made things take longer

[getosugurusbangs]

chu!

[rukbat3]

Babylon 5 Rewatch - Chrysalis

This is a post I originally wrote several years ago for Mark Oshiro’s Mark Watches blog. I don’t really plan to edit them before posting, so there may be some references that don’t make sense. If you see words that look like gibberish, they are actually rot13, which was our way of discussing spoilers. There are plugins you can install to decode the text (Cryptext is the one I use), or you can copy/paste to rot13.com, or just ignore it.

“Nothing’s the same anymore.”

Truer words have rarely been spoken. Naq Fvapynve qbrfa'g rira xabj gur unys bs vg! This is one of my favorite season finales ever, along with The West Wing season 1 and Veronica Mars season 1. (Hmm, I’m sensing a theme.) However, the first time I watched the show, I didn’t even get to see it! This was one of the episodes we managed to fail to record! Whoops! (We also missed the next one.) As you may imagine, I was quite confused when I picked back up with episode 202! Still, when I finally managed to see this episode, I loved it, even though I sort of already knew what happened in it. But this also means that this is one of my most anticipated Mark episodes, so I can finally see what it’s like to watch the episode unspoiled!

Even though I think this episode is pretty much perfect, it does contain a couple of annoying tropes which are there solely to move the plot in the direction JMS wanted it to go. The first is at the very beginning of the episode, when Garibaldi’s informant plays the pronoun game with his dying words, “They’re going to kill him.” Thanks for nothing, dying informant guy! Maybe try to be more specific when you know you may have limited time to convey your crucial information? (This does lead to a nice, subtle moment a few scenes later when Sinclair asks Garibaldi who “they’re” going to kill, and Garibaldi responds, “That’s what I’m gonna find out,” and then the scene cuts to a news report showing the image of Earthforce One, but it’s still an annoying bit of contrivance.)

The other is, of course, later in the episode after Garibaldi has indeed found out who they’re going to kill, and instead of telling Sinclair immediately, he makes the baffling choice that this is news he has to share in person. On top of the fact that Garibaldi should know better than to tempt fate like this—even if he thinks no one knows what he has discovered, anything could happen to him on route and the intelligence would be lost again—I don’t understand what he thinks the danger is in sharing the news over the link. Even if they are overheard, where is the downside in more people being informed faster? So yeah, this makes me sigh a bit.

However, those minor quibbles fade when we get to the scene which is the real meat of this subplot—after Garibaldi has been shot and has managed to gasp out to Sinclair the words which Petrov should have said from the beginning: “They’re going to kill the President,” Sinclair desperately tries to get the message to someone—anyone—who can prevent the oncoming tragedy. Even though I have seen this episode numerous times, and knew what the outcome would be even the first time I saw it, this scene in C&C has me on the edge of my seat and breathing hard every single time! And when we actually see Earthforce One exploding, I cry. Every time. I view this shot as being one of the most iconic images of the whole series.

But the episode doesn’t end there, and we move into something perhaps even more depressing, in a subtler way, than the assassination itself. We learn that Sinclair’s report, when he is finally able to make it, isn’t believed. The explosion is being written off as an accident, and Sinclair is essentially told not to make waves. We don’t know yet whether this is a deliberate cover-up or just willful ignorance on the part of the Senator giving Sinclair his orders, but either way, it seems that nothing will be done to search for the perpetrators any further. And Garibaldi’s aide has managed to cut off any leads Sinclair might be able to follow on B5 itself.

[whole series] Gubfr bs hf jub unir frra gur frevrf orsber pna gryy gung vaqrrq, gur pbire-hc vf nyernql va shyy fjvat. Pynex unf boivbhfyl cynaarq jryy sbe guvf zbzrag naq unf uvf fhccbegref nyernql va cynpr.

[same] Naq gurer'f nabgure terng, fhogyr zbzrag va gur arjf oebnqpnfg ng gur raq, jurer jr urne gung Cerfvqrag Pynex, va uvf vanhtheny nqqerff, fnvq gung gurl arrq gb urny, naq gung ur jbhyq "ortva ol sbphfvat zber ba gur arrqf bs bhe bja crbcyr." Vg'f n yvar gung fbhaqf gbgnyyl vaabphbhf ng svefg tynapr, whfg n cbyvgvpny cyngvghqr, ohg vg raqf hc orpbzvat gur whfgvsvpngvba ng gur urneg bs fb znal bs gur rivy guvatf gung uvf nqzvavfgengvba raqf hc qbvat bire gur arkg frireny lrnef.

One last little thing about this subplot: [season 2] V ernyyl yvxr gung gur yhexre thl jvgu gur zrzbenoyr snpr fubjf hc ntnva, naq gheaf bhg gb or n gryrcngu uvqvat sebz gur Cfv Pbecf. Vg'f yvxr n yvggyr Rnfgre rtt!

Moving on to what Londo and G’Kar are up to in this episode, tensions between the Narn and the Centauri are ramping up, and the moral complexities of the situation are increasingly on display. The Narn, who were once enslaved by the Centauri, should be the sympathetic parties in this conflict, but their imperialistic behavior, and G’Kar’s belligerent gloating, makes it very hard to like them—but that still doesn’t mean they deserve what happens to them at the end of the episode. Whereas you can see Londo being backed into a corner by G’Kar’s bullying and his dissatisfaction with his government’s refusal to act, but still. Even though he doesn’t personally give the order to destroy that Narn outpost, he should know that there are consequences to making a deal with the devil. And there have been too many warning signs for him not to realize that is exactly what he is doing.

After Londo finds out exactly what he has set into motion, nygubhtu rira ur qbrfa'g ernyvmr gur shyy fpbcr bs vg ng guvf cbvag, he is appalled. “You killed 10,000 Narns!” he almost shouts, so that Morden has to shush him. And in that moment, he really is horrified. But Morden’s response, “I didn’t think you cared,” sets him back on his heels. You can see the conflict play out on his face. Of course he cares! This isn’t what he intended at all! But why should he care? They’re Narns, after all, and he hates Narns. Everyone will see this as a great Centauri victory, and that is what Londo wanted all along. He has a moment here where he could go either way, and he is still conflicted as Morden leaves—but he doesn’t condemn Morden’s tactics entirely, and he doesn’t reject the possibility of future help either. V guvax vg vf guvf zbzrag, naq abg gur bar rneyvre jura ur svefg nfxf sbe Zbeqra'f uryc, gung ernyyl qrsvarf Ybaqb'f shgher cngu.

Side note: Londo’s meetings with Mr. Morden take place in the hydroponics garden that runs through the center line of the station. How much do I love this worldbuilding detail? I love it a lot.

Secondary side note: Londo and Vir trying to puzzle out what Earth expression Londo is thinking of: funniest part of the episode, Y/Y?

And then there’s Delenn. What’s going on with her?!? She’s been planning something for a while—we first saw her starting to work on that geometrical structure thing in “Signs and Portents,” and Alisa Beldon in “Legacies” read the word “chrysalis” in her mind. And the other Grey Council member gave her the triluminary in “Babylon Squared,” although it was unclear if he knew why she wanted it. But until now, we had no idea these things all went together, and we certainly didn’t know that the one in the chrysalis would be Delenn! So it seems that she must be changing into something, but what? Does she even know? Lennier seems worried. Should we be? Tune in next week to find out! ;)

Finally, Catherine Sakai is back! I always love seeing her; I really think the actress brings something special to the role. [whole series] Vg'f ernyyl gbb onq gung guvf vf gur ynfg gvzr jr trg gb frr ure, nygubhtu pbafvqrevat gung vs WZF unq orra noyr gb ubyq gb uvf bevtvany cyna, fur jnf nobhg gb trg xvyyrq ba n fheirl zvffvba gb M'un'qhz, vg'f cebonoyl sbe gur orfg, naq V pna whfg nqq vg gb zl yvfg bs Ernfbaf gb Or Tengrshy sbe O5 Cybg Punatrf. Ng yrnfg guvf jnl fur trgf gb yvir ba va gur obbxf! (Naq fcrnxvat bs gur obbxf, jr ernyyl arrq gb trg Znex gb ernq Gb Qernz va gur Pvgl bs Fbeebjf bapr ur'f ernpurq n cbvag jura vg'f abg fcbvyrel.)

Favorite scene: Sinclair delivering the Most Romantic Proposal ever. :-P LOL, he’s so awkward, I love it. And you can see the exact moment Catherine catches on and then waits for him to finish stumbling through his speech with the most adorable smirk on her face! We haven’t seen much of the two of them together, but I love them so much. <3

[fourth-dimensional-thinker]

The “Time Is a Flat Circle” Mega-Post

I’d like to start by saying I really don’t know how other people read fan-fiction. I, personally, tend to just be a one-and-done kind of person. Unless I forgot what happened, I don’t constantly go back and re-read chapters of a multi-chapter work whenever it gets updated. I also don’t know how every fic writer works. I know some people plan meticulously and others will just add chapters on a whim.

I am a thorough planner (mostly).

Time Is a Flat Circle took me months to write, but also weeks to plan. It was made with the intent to be re-read. I wanted there to be a different experience for when you re-read it after you learn the information revealed at the end.

So, I made a very, very long guide to all those details to look out for if you ever want to re-read it.

Foreshadowing of the time loop

1) The photograph of Marty with Copernicus

This scene from Chapter 19:

The teenager reaches out and the terrier lets himself be scooped up off the ground. Copernicus licks Marty as thanks for lifting him. Marty grins broadly from the canine’s affection and moves to find a high surface to deposit Doctor Brown's dog. Just as he turns around, the flashbulb blinds him. He blinks once, twice, and then places Copernicus back on the floor so he can rub his eyes.

“That’s going to come out really blurry,” he tells the doctor.

“I’d still like to keep it; something to remember you by.”

was foreshadowed in Chapter 2:

“We’re debating if this guy looks like you.”

Marty squints at the black and white photo that he’s holding. The image shows an older teenage boy holding a dog in his arms. The picture appears to be taken in a moment in time where the boy was fidgeting around with energetic joy instead of being in a ready pose. His face is left blurry, but from what can be made out, his features aren’t too distinct from Marty’s.

“Kinda,” he tries to say nonchalantly. Marty puts it back on the shelf and walks away from it; the photograph unsettles him deeply.

2) The family portrait in Doc’s home

This scene from Chapter 13:

He also notices how, in all the portraits and photographs in the home, Erhardt Brown’s face shows up in none of them. If the judge originally appeared in any pictures, his face was cut out or painted over– and using his first impression of the man, Marty doesn’t hold the vandalism against Doctor Brown.

was foreshadowed in Chapter 2:

Marty stares at a family portrait while the other boys move on to the next room. In this photo, there are three bodies: a father’s, a mother’s, and their child’s. However, only two pairs of eyes look back at him; the father’s face has been completely painted over in the portrait.

3) The initial pain from flux capacitors

This comment from Chapter 2:

“You’re not going to want to be awake for this process, my boy,” Doctor Brown explains as he picks up Marty’s unconscious body, “it’s going to hurt tremendously.”

becomes relevant again in Chapter 17:

Marty almost gasps once the bandages fully come off; there are Y-shaped scars rooted in both of Doctor Brown’s palms.

“You have them too…”

“Yes, and I cannot express how painful they are,” he rasps. “Please tell me–don’t actually– that you weren’t conscious when you were given these.”

4) Doc and Lorraine’s phone conversation

This bit of conversation between them in Chapter 3:

Lorraine seethes. “You're beyond delusional if you think scarring my child was anything but an attack.”

“Those are a gift,” he claims. “It pains me that you think I would hurt your son, Lorraine. Don't you remember all those years ago when–?”

“I didn't know what you were back then.”

...is a reference to Doc’s meeting with Lorraine and baby Marty in all of Chapter 21.

5) The wooden horse that Marty gifts Doc

This scene in Chapter 8:

“And– oh! I also wanted to give you something too.” Marty rustles through his bag.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I saw it in a store.”

Marty offers the horse carving towards his [Emmett’s] free hand.

and this scene from Chapter 10:

Marty spots the horse carving posing proudly on the credenza. The wooden animal has been coated in dark paint with an even darker mane, tail, and hooves. The eyes are detailed with the illusion of having life.

“You painted it,” Marty notes once Emmett has cautiously brought himself next to him. “It's a nice job– really nice.”

were foreshadowed in Chapter 4:

Across town, the mad scientist puts back a small carving of a horse on his bookshelf. The little wooden figure is decades old, but has an incredible sentimental value that makes the Hope Diamond look worthless.

6) The little canary nickname

This scene in Chapter 16 (which also titled “Canary”!):

“I can make jokes, too, little canary.” [Doctor Brown says]

Marty pauses for a moment. The smile fades.

“That’s an, um, interesting thing to call someone.”

was foreshadowed in Chapter 5:

“If you try to come near me again, I’ll hang up and call the cops on you,” Marty threatens.

“This town’s law enforcement community won’t be helping you, little canary,” he says matter-of-factly. “They’re too inept to do anything but distribute parking tickets at this point.”

7) The title

I think it speaks for itself.

Hints that Doc has not turned good

1) The investigation team

When Needles mentions the rumor of the four murders that Doc is supposedly responsible for in Chapter 2:

Needles grabs his arm before Marty can fully make it out the door. “So soon? We’re in the home of a man who killed at least four people. We have an inspection to finish.”

it’s a reference to the investigation team in Chapters 24 & 25:

What was just described to the teen was the investigation team of 1978, a staple of his childhood stories. Albert Wickham was a senior police officer with over twenty years on the job under his belt. Nicole “Nicky” Newton was a budding librarian and the youngest of the bunch. Nathan Baran and Caroline Snider were both staff at the local newspaper. No one from Marty’s time has seen them in years.

2) The glass of water chapter

As we have established in Chapter 25:

“Don’t move,” he [Doc] orders. “This is the danger of quickly changing the temperature of a room.”

Emmett steadies his hands, takes a quick breath, and yanks away the heat of his kitchen.

A harsh wave of cold knocks into both of them. A faint crack is heard before the glass violently shatters asunder. Shards of ice and glass whizz in all directions. The broken pieces rain down on the floor and table top with a twinkling clatter. Underneath the table, they stay safe from the precipitation of ice and glass.

They don’t leave the shelter of the table long after the last shard landed.

“Woah,” Marty gasps. The exclamation leaves his mouth as a puff of vapor.

“When water freezes, it crystallizes, causing it to expand and break its container. What we can do with our power can match the abilities of a freezer more than tenfold,” the doctor says as they emerge from the table. “Do you understand why I don’t want it to leave our hands, Marty?”

But, before that, when Doc is meeting with the investigation team, we see them all close to some sort of glass container that’s filled with water:

Snider is huddled by the windows, next to the small collection of limp yellow plants that sit in overwatered glass vases. Newton and Baran stand on guard at either side of a long side table. The only object on the table is a large glass fish tank that houses no aquatic life.

[...]

Wickham then returns to his original spot with a full glass in his hands.

And then the meeting ends on this sentence:

Emmett smiles coolly. “Now that we’re all here,” he says, fidgeting with the hem of one of his gloves, “I believe your explanation is due…”

3) The guppies

As an extension of the glass of water scene, one of the investigation team member’s guppies ends up in Doc’s house after his meeting:

He turns towards Baran. “You own a fish tank with no fish,” the scientist observes. When the other man silently stares him down, Emmett defends, “I’m only trying to make small talk, Mr. Baran.”

“I’m cleaning the tank later,” Baran gruffly answers. “The fish are in another container in the kitchen.”

“Are they difficult to care for?”

“Guppies? No.”

[...]

“Hey, when did you get fish, Doctor Brown?” “Last night,” he shouts back, “I was inspired by the meeting to take them in.”

4) Adelina, Doc and Sara’s pet cat

Adelina is a symbol of the future Doc in 1940. They share white hair, a deep interest in Marty, and a “love language” that comes off as disturbing to Marty.

As seen in Chapter 10 & 11:

Adelina strolls in. Marty glances down at her and she returns it with a deep, interested stare.

[...]

Across the room, Adelina is resting, coiled up near the fireplace. The glow of the hearth dyes her long white fur to a golden orange. She peers pointedly at him again with her big and inquisitive eyes. Marty turns on his back to look at the pale ceiling instead; their cat’s potent stare bothers him.

[...]

“What the hell?!” he shrieks, recoiling on the sofa.

Emmett comes back over and glances down at the tiny corpse. “Oh, Adelina’s already leaving you gifts.”

Still tightly curled on the couch, Marty asks incredulously: “That's a gift?”

“Yes, I know it can seem cruel, but it’s her way of showing affection.”

[...]

When he steps out of the bathroom, Marty almost steps on Adelina. The white-haired feline is sitting right in front of the doorframe, looking up at him with hopeful eyes. She trots after him when he passes by her and goes to the kitchen.

[...]

Adelina leaps onto his lap in a fluffy blur. Marty lifts his hands up slightly in a half-surrendered gesture to avoid touching her. The teenager has never been a cat person; he’s heard tales of horror from his aunt about what obnoxious menaces they can be and has witnessed the proof of her clawed forearms. Adelina decides to curl up on him, a white ball with hair held up with static electricity.

5) The painting scene in Chapter 22

So, in this chapter, pretty much everything related to painting is representative of either Doc or Marty’s emotions. I’m not going to talk about everything, since it would involve copying and pasting almost half of the chapter in here. But, one of the ways of showing that Doc hasn’t changed is with deserts. They’re used to show his inner personality, with both of them considered to be dangerous and hostile to life. Doc finds beauty and application in deserts while Marty is weary of them:

“So, why deserts?” Marty asks.

“They’re common settings for Westerns– excuse me.”

“Yeah, but some of them don’t have any horses or people in them,” the teen notes, then quickly moves aside to let Doctor Brown have access to a cabinet.

“I’ve also learned to appreciate the hidden beauty of the environment itself. Most of what lives in the desert comes out at night: jackrabbits, tortoises, toads, owls–”

“–coyotes, mountain lions, scorpions.”

“Yes, all native fauna of that habitat. Many people see the deserts as a harsh, barren landscape– would you fill up those two jars with water?–but underneath all of the thorns and storms is its rich life.”

“Most people would still die in them.”

Doctor Brown gives him an amused look. “That’s a likely fate to the inexperienced wanderer. However, I’ve read stories, tales of adventures, where someone determined enough uses his will and wits to make it through the night– especially at the skepticism of others.” He rolls out a long, thin sheet of paper over the table before turning back to Marty. “Could you see yourself surviving in the desert?”

The other one is color symbolism. The most prominent one for Doc is using red for his hidden anger. Him using that color shows up after Marty talks about his not-so-good relationship with his family:

“It’s just– it’s just that we– we fight sometimes and don’t really get along a lot of times. I don’t hate my family, Doctor Brown, but…” he [Marty] confesses, “...it'd be nice to get away from home every now and then…”

Marty glances over the scientist’s canvas. An aggravated, angry, bull-enraging color is dominating the canvas.

“You’re using an awful lot of red,” he comments.

[...]

He checks on Doctor Brown’s progress. The outraged red color had been masked well and blended into the other hues in with his horizon.

And just to hammer things home, Doc ends the chapter with this line:

“[Do] Whatever the hell you want; it’s art. You could make it complete nonsense or plan something so intricately complicated that people can’t see the hidden messages right under their noses.”

Misc things I just wanted to point out

1) In Chapter 21, when Doc tells Lorraine:

“I remember almost every conversation I’ve had. I can recall things back from when I was twenty-nine, twenty, seventeen, you name it.”

those are all the previous ages he was when Marty visited him in 1937, 1940, and 1949. I used 1920 as Doc’s birth year for this fic

2) This line from Chapter 4:

Despite his best efforts at cramming, Marty can’t distinguish a secant from a cosecant or remember which president was blamed for the Great Depression or draw a force diagram or remember the prefixes for scientific units or conjugate irregular verbs in Spanish or remember what polysyndeton is.

is an example of polysyndeton.

3) This minor mentioned character from Chapter 1:

When he [Marty] joins The Pinheads, he hears about Doctor Brown again. He's sitting in the bed of a pickup truck with his bandmates and Donnie, their drummer's older cousin and acting roadie.

is an oc I made for a writing request.

Other fun facts

I rewrote Chapter 5 & 6 each three times

Older versions of this fic had chapters were Marty went to 1941, 1953, 1960, and 1969

Marty breaking into Doc’s house, the flux capacitor scars + taking in outside energy, and the glass of water scene are the only elements that have survived since draft one

That being said, I had started working on the glass of water chapter months before it was published

I have even older concepts of a darker Doc before I came to the version of him in Time Is a Flat Circle

In the older versions, Doc is still affectionate and protective of Marty in his own unhinged way... but was also just straight up murdering people on behalf of his best friend

After that, I added a “no killing rule” to him and ended up liking that twisted version of him better

I also wrote a snippet of a “sequel” fic while I was still writing “Time Is a Flat Circle”. It involves... a grave misuse of spiders...

A full, planned out sequel is still in the imagination phase. I currently have nothing actually written down yet

[eldritch-muppetshow]

alright here’s my thought process for why he needed a redesign

tbh there was a lot about his old design that just wasn’t working for me anymore? the “monochrome with blue/green accents” idea seemed like a good one at the time, but i felt like he relied too much on the onceler’s visual motifs and not enough on spamton. he didn’t look unhinged enough in my opinion

i’ve been trying to make my spamton (and by extension, any deltarune character) fankids look more like darkners! to me, that means simpler designs/color palettes with stronger shape language and distinctive design elements (or at least that seems to be deltarune’s design philosophy for darkners from what i’ve observed).

i tried to make him look like an exaggerated caricature of the onceler: glasses taking up half his head, face-splitting toothy smile, oversized gloves that cover most of his arms (and look way too big for him), jacket that gives the illusion of his body being more proportional than it actually is. i also wanted to parody a lot of the design tropes that constitute the popular image of a tumblr sexyman: he’s tall and thin, but his limbs are way too long compared to his body. he’s a perpetual smiler, but it’s unsettlingly wide (and his teeth look really grimy).

the color scheme was a nightmare to figure out tbh. i wanted it to be closer to spamton, but i couldn’t find a way to make it work without it looking super gaudy (and what made it even more frustrating is that spamton and the onceler do have a few colors in common, so it wasn’t like i had to make up a completely new palette for swindler). ultimately i just kinda gave up and leaned more into the onceler side of his heritage for his palette, though the light turquoise is color-picked straight from spamton neo.

i left his glasses as they are as an homage to his original design. i was a little worried they’d distract from his palette too much given that the yellow-green/blue don’t show up anywhere else on the design, but from what i can tell? a character’s eyes are one of the times you can break the “use as few unique colors as possible for more cohesive designs” rule because it draws attention to their face (and the blue + green don’t clash with the rest of the palette in my opinion). it’s also a reference to the ending of rtvs’ spamton sweepstakes stream, and i didn’t want to lose that reference.

i wanted to add more references to spamton neo’s wings, but i couldn’t figure out how to pull it off without distracting from the silhouette of his upper half tbh? i’m still kinda mixed on this, since it means the wing motif on his coattails doesn’t show up anywhere else in his design (though you could read it as being like a peacock’s tail feathers?)

swind-ler got a redesign bc i decided he needed to be more fucked up looking. will add my thought process in a rb

[fozmeadows]

race & culture in fandom

For the past decade, English language fanwriting culture post the days of LiveJournal and Strikethrough has been hugely shaped by a handful of megafandoms that exploded across AO3 and tumblr – I’m talking Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Dr Who, the MCU, Harry Potter, Star Wars, BBC Sherlock – which have all been overwhelmingly white. I don’t mean in terms of the fans themselves, although whiteness also figures prominently in said fandoms: I mean that the source materials themselves feature very few POC, and the ones who are there tended to be done dirty by the creators.

Periodically, this has led POC in fandom to point out, extremely reasonably, that even where non-white characters do get central roles in various media properties, they’re often overlooked by fandom at large, such that the popular focus stays primarily on the white characters. Sometimes this happened (it was argued) because the POC characters were secondary to begin with and as such attracted less fan devotion (although this has never stopped fandoms from picking a random white gremlin from the background cast and elevating them to the status of Fave); at other times, however, there has been a clear trend of sidelining POC leads in favour of white alternatives (as per Finn, Poe and Rose Tico being edged out in Star Wars shipping by Hux, Kylo and Rey). I mention this, not to demonize individuals whose preferred ships happen to involve white characters, but to point out the collective impact these trends can have on POC in fandom spaces: it’s not bad to ship what you ship, but that doesn’t mean there’s no utility in analysing what’s popular and why through a racial lens.

All this being so, it feels increasingly salient that fanwriting culture as exists right now developed under the influence and in the shadow of these white-dominated fandoms – specifically, the taboo against criticizing or critiquing fics for any reason. Certainly, there’s a hell of a lot of value to Don’t Like, Don’t Read as a general policy, especially when it comes to the darker, kinkier side of ficwriting, and whether the context is professional or recreational, offering someone direct, unsolicited feedback on their writing style is a dick move. But on the flipside, the anti-criticism culture in fanwriting has consistently worked against fans of colour who speak out about racist tropes, fan ignorance and hurtful portrayals of living cultures. Voicing anything negative about works created for free is seen as violating a core rule of ficwriting culture – but as that culture has been foundationally shaped by white fandoms, white characters and, overwhelmingly, white ideas about what’s allowed and what isn’t, we ought to consider that all critical contexts are not created equal.

Right now, the rise of C-drama (and K-drama, and J-drama) fandoms is seeing a surge of white creators – myself included – writing fics for fandoms in which no white people exist, and where the cultural context which informs the canon is different to western norms. Which isn’t to say that no popular fandoms focused on POC have existed before now – K-pop RPF and anime fandoms, for example, have been big for a while. But with the success of The Untamed, more western fans are investing in stories whose plots, references, characterization and settings are so fundamentally rooted in real Chinese history and living Chinese culture that it’s not really possible to write around it. And yet, inevitably, too many in fandom are trying to do just that, treating respect for Chinese culture or an attempt to understand it as optional extras – because surely, fandom shouldn’t feel like work. If you’re writing something for free, on your own time, for your own pleasure, why should anyone else get to demand that you research the subject matter first?

Because it matters, is the short answer. Because race and culture are not made-up things like lightsabers and werewolves that you can alter, mock or misunderstand without the risk of hurting or marginalizing actual real people �� and because, quite frankly, we already know that fandom is capable of drawing lines in the sand where it chooses. When Brony culture first reared its head (hah), the online fandom for My Little Pony – which, like the other fandoms we’re discussing here, is overwhelmingly female – was initially welcoming. It felt like progress, that so many straight men could identify with such a feminine show; a potential sign that maybe, we were finally leaving the era of mainstream hypermasculine fandom bullshit behind, at least in this one arena. And then, in pretty much the blink of an eye, things got overwhelmingly bad. Artists drawing hardcorn porn didn’t tag their works as adult, leading to those images flooding the public search results for a children’s show. Women were edged out of their own spaces. Bronies got aggressive, posting harsh, ugly criticism of artists whose gijinka interpretations of the Mane Six as humans were deemed insufficiently fuckable.

The resulting fandom conflict was deeply unpleasant, but in the end, the verdict was laid down loud and clear: if you cannot comport yourself like a decent fucking person – if your base mode of engagement within a fandom is to coopt it from the original audience and declare it newly cool only because you’re into it now; if you do not, at the very least, attempt to understand and respect the original context so as to engage appropriately (in this case, by acknowledging that the media you’re consuming was foundational to many women who were there before you and is still consumed by minors, and tagging your goddamn porn) – then the rest of fandom will treat you like a social biohazard, and rightly so.

Here’s the thing, fellow white people: when it comes to C-drama fandoms and other non-white, non-western properties? We are the Bronies.

Not, I hasten to add, in terms of toxic fuckery – though if we don’t get our collective shit together, I’m not taking that darkest timeline off the table. What I mean is that, by virtue of the whiteminding which, both consciously and unconsciously, has shaped current fan culture, particularly in terms of ficwriting conventions, we’re collectively acting as though we’re the primary audience for narratives that weren’t actually made with us in mind, being hostile dicks to Chinese and Chinese diaspora fans when they take the time to point out what we’re getting wrong. We’re bristling because we’ve conceived of ficwriting as a place wherein No Criticism Occurs without questioning how this culture, while valuable in some respects, also serves to uphold, excuse and perpetuate microaggresions and other forms of racism, lashing out or falling back on passive aggression when POC, quite understandably, talk about how they’re sick and tired of our bullshit.

An analogy: one of the most helpful and important tags on AO3 is the one for homophobia, not just because it allows readers to brace for or opt out of reading content they might find distressing, but because it lets the reader know that the writer knows what homophobia is, and is employing it deliberately. When this concept is tagged, I – like many others – often feel more able to read about it than I do when it crops up in untagged works of commercial fiction, film or TV, because I don’t have to worry that the author thinks what they’re depicting is okay. I can say definitively, “yes, the author knows this is messed up, but has elected to tell a messed up story, a fact that will be obvious to anyone who reads this,” instead of worrying that someone will see a fucked up story blind and think “oh, I guess that’s fine.” The contextual framing matters, is the point – which is why it’s so jarring and unpleasant on those rare occasions when I do stumble on a fic whose author has legitimately mistaken homophobic microaggressions for cute banter. This is why, in a ficwriting culture that otherwise aggressively dislikes criticism, the request to tag for a certain thing – while still sometimes fraught – is generally permitted: it helps everyone to have a good time and to curate their fan experience appropriately.

But when white and/or western fans fail to educate ourselves about race, culture and the history of other countries and proceed to deploy that ignorance in our writing, we’re not tagging for racism as a thing we’ve explored deliberately; we’re just being ignorant at best and hateful at worst, which means fans of colour don’t know to avoid or brace for the content of those works until they get hit in the face with microaggresions and/or outright racism. Instead, the burden is placed on them to navigate a minefield not of their creation: which fans can be trusted to write respectfully? Who, if they make an error, will listen and apologise if the error is explained? Who, if lived experience, personal translations or cultural insights are shared, can be counted on to acknowledge those contributions rather than taking sole credit? Too often, fans of colour are being made to feel like guests in their own house, while white fans act like a tone-policing HOA.

Point being: fandom and ficwriting cultures as they currently exist badly need to confront the implicit acceptance of racism and cultural bias that underlies a lot of community rules about engagement and criticism, and that needs to start with white and western fans. We don’t want to be the new Bronies, guys. We need to do better.  

[fizzyxcustard]

Covert Eyes (13)

Prologue| Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6| Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12

Fandom: Spooks

Pairings: Lucas North x OC (Amy Holland)

Warnings: Stalking behaviour, anxiety, language, sexual references, smut, angst, heartbreak.

Summary: Lucas takes notice of a young woman, Amy, but his obsession and want to get to know her begin to spiral out of control. Lucas and Amy’s domestic bliss hits a plateau, but then plummets back when someone from Lucas’ past decides to crash the party. 

Official soundtrack list:  here

Comments/Notes: If you wish to be tagged in any of my tag lists for fics or characters, please let me know, and stipulate what you want to be tagged in. The above image was located on Pinterest, with no link back to the original source. 

I also wanted to stipulate, and I don’t mean to be rude, but if you ask to be on my tag list and never interact (even if just a ‘like’ on the chapters I post) then I will remove you after a few weeks. Please try and show some kind of engagement, or ask to be taken off my list if you’re no longer interested.

And a quick comment on the timeline of this fic. The character of Sarah has been brought back just to add some spice and drama, and obviously, Ros is still on the team. I'm messing with plots and timelines. Now, onto the fic. :)

Lucas tried his damned hardest for the next week to track down the bitch that had blown apart his relationship with Amy. Sarah Caulfield was alive. How, he didn’t quite know. The last time he had seen her and she was lying in a hospital bed with a bullet in her forehead. This bitch had ways and means of covering her tracks and making events look like an accident. She could easily pull the wool over anyone’s eyes and use smoke and mirrors to meet her own ends. The bitch would pay. One way or another. 

Work was the biggest struggle. Operations were underway, both out in the field and desk based. He was shit at both. All he could do was fuel his anger into finding Sarah, and then mope on Facebook, watching Amy’s movements. But she was quiet still. Lucas hadn’t dared go back to their café; it would have torn him apart all over again seeing her. Instead, he watched from a distance. Online. Conducting his own personal surveillance on her flat from across the street. She always looked down-beaten. This sudden ending of their relationship was obviously breaking her too. 

Sarah had covered her tracks well. And after exactly seven days of being without Amy, Lucas picked up his phone and called her. He held a bottle of lager in his hand in his feeble attempts to use alcohol as a way of soothing his pain. It just made it worse. 

Her soft voice came down the phoneline and wrapped around him like a warm blanket of love. “Lucas, please…” 

“I just needed to hear you,” he begged. “I miss you.” 

She sniffed. Her voice quivered. “I…can’t….please don’t make this any harder…than it has to be.” 

“The truth is, Aim, I thought Sarah was dead,” Lucas admitted. “I did, or at least thought I did, love her at some point. She must have faked her death somehow. I’m telling you the truth. Please believe me, Aim. Please. I can’t keep doing this.” Lucas burst into tears. “I…have no idea what her game is. I just know that I love you more than anything….and it’s killing me being apart from you. Can I come and see you?” 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Amy sobbed. “Everything is still too painful, and we’ll do things in the moment…” 

“That’s all our relationship ever was!” Lucas exclaimed. “Was acting in the moment. It’s why we were so good together. Please, let me come and see you. I won’t stay long.” 

Amy sighed. Her sigh rolled down the phoneline, again, wrapping around Lucas. “Not long, please.” 

Lucas literally sprinted down the street and was at Amy’s door within ten minutes of their phone call ending. And as he finally saw her in person, he couldn’t help but feel the tears begin to well in his eyes again. He lifted his hand, his unconscious mind pushing him to cup her cheek, but his rational thought stopped him. 

Amy stepped aside and let him in. A rolling wave of love and need crashed over her, and she suddenly felt weak. She looked up at him, those steel blue eyes full of tears. His brow was furrowed in sorrow and regret. Surely, she thought, if their relationship had all been a complete scam, there was no way he would react like this. No actor had the talent to convey the sheer agony on Lucas’ face. 

Both of them remained locked in place, their gazes glued to each other. Amy could feel her breathing speed up, and Lucas’ gaze seemed to be growing more intense. Lucas stepped towards her, closing the gap between them. He was still looking down at her, and then she reached out, placing the palm of her hand on his chest. Lucas closed his eyes and kissed her head, inhaling the sweet scent of her vanilla shampoo. 

“How can this not be real?” she whispered. Her green gaze lifted from his chest and she looked at him. The electricity between them both was like intense static. It was as if the atmosphere was building, like when a thunderstorm brewed. Power becoming tangible in the air. 

“You make me the happiest I’ve ever been, so when you told me to go and be happy, I knew there was only one way that I’d ever feel that.” 

Amy closed her eyes at the sound of his voice. Deep and baritone. It wrapped around her like silk, suspending her in a cocoon of arousal. Next to his eyes, Lucas’ voice had been one of the first things that she had immediately recognised she was attracted to. It never failed to have this effect on her: weaken her defences, rendering it all to a pile of ash. 

“Being with you was the only time the nightmares stopped,” Lucas said, his voice soft.

“You followed me again, didn’t you? While we were apart,” Amy asked. 

“I needed to know that you were okay,” Lucas replied. 

“Please, you need to stop this. Promise me now, no matter what happens that you’ll stop keep following me. It’s not normal,” Amy exclaimed. She backed off from him, turning to the side. She sighed and then looked back up at him. “I told you that I’m not strong enough to deal with this, Lucas. I’m under constant surveillance no matter which way I turn. If I’m with you, then she’s watching me. If I’m not with you, then you’re watching me.” 

Lucas stepped closer. “Please,” he began to beg. “Don’t spoil this moment.” 

“No,” Amy demanded, her back straightening. “Stop following me. Don’t try and distract the conversation away from what needs to be said. What you’re doing is stalking.” 

“I’m protecting you…” 

“No, you’re not. You’re watching me and following me to satisfy your own needs. It’s nothing to do with protecting me.” 

“What about Jonathan? All I’ve done is protect you.” Lucas’ eyes were now wide with anger, the sadness having seeped out of their blue depths very quickly, leaving a darkness in its wake. 

“Why did I have to be drawn into all this?” Amy hissed. She threw her head back and looked up at the ceiling for a couple of seconds. “I want something normal, not to be watched constantly. I want to know that my boyfriend won’t be taking his life into his own hands every time he walks out of the front door and goes to work.” 

“You’re asking me to quit?”

“No, because I know how much your job means to you. I accepted it as part of you, and I’ve tried so hard. What we have is not normal, Lucas. You’d be a liar to even state otherwise.” 

“Does every relationship have to be normal? As long as there’s love, does it matter?”

Amy looked at him and inwardly asked herself if she could forgive his behaviour. She had already forgiven him once for lying about his true profession and for admitting to following her. But the stalking had happened again. Would it ever stop? “Promise me something right now.” 

“Yeah…” he said softly. 

“Promise me that you will stop following me, both physically and online. It’s worrying me,” Amy admitted. “I need time to comprehend all this, and if I find that you’ve been following me again, then I want nothing more to do with you. That will be it for us, in any sense. And I will go to the police.” 

Amy sighed again and looked away, feeling incredible guilt rise in her gut. She was keeping this man on edge, when all he wanted was to be back with her. The whole issue of Sarah making her believe the relationship was a scam seemed to have burned away now; seeing Lucas’ reaction had sealed it in her mind that he was being honest. Surely no one could be that good an actor. Could some of the greats like Robert De Niro have pulled that off in a believable performance? 

The two of them sat down at Amy’s kitchen table and let silence fall upon them for the first minute. 

Lucas watched her. 

Amy noticed his hand seemed to be edging closer to hers, and the self-control just to stop herself jumping into his arms was torture. “What if Sarah visits me again? Is she just a scorned lover of yours?” Amy asked, finally opening the silence and locking her gaze back with Lucas’. 

“I honestly have no idea what her game is. I believed she was dead and moved on; maybe she hasn’t. Or she’s trying to pull me back into some game of hers. I don’t care about her. She can’t hurt you.” 

“Oh, she can fake her death and track me down, but can’t hurt me? Lucas I believe that anything is possible after what you’ve told me. Don’t underestimate her. You knew her better than me. Surely she’s got associates.” 

“There’s no way she would have gone back to working with the CIA after we uncovered the fact she killed her boss.”

“And you still slept with this woman even after she’d murdered her boss?” 

Lucas swallowed hard and looked at Amy. “Look, we do stupid things when we love someone. I was also trying to get intel out of her. Can we not talk about her any more, please?” 

The emotions surging around Amy’s whole body were causing a bout of nausea to set in. Tension was sitting in her temples, and she felt like dropping into her bed for an eternity, with no one to bother her or hurt her again. She got up from the table and walked to the window, looking out at the pinks and oranges that were glowing in the sky as the sun set. Amy crossed her arms and closed her eyes for a second, taking a deep breath to try and stop her whole being from going into a meltdown. In her mind she prayed for some kind of peace. 

“What are you thinking about?” Lucas asked softly. 

“Are you going to try and stalk my thoughts, too?” Amy scoffed. Tears fell down her cheeks again as the pain became too much to bear anymore. 

Lucas got up from his seat and approached her, taking her into his arms. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “For everything I’ve put you through.” 

“It’s okay…please,” Amy said, pulling out of Lucas’ embrace to dry her tears with her hand. 

“No, it’s not okay. What do I need to do?” 

The desperation in Lucas’ voice made the guilt rise even higher in Amy’s chest. “I…I know that you want me to throw my arms around you and tell you that everything is fine and we’ll be together forever, but I can’t do that. I know what it’s like to be at that end of a break up, and all you want is for the person to take you back. I get it. But try and understand how I’m feeling, Lucas. What’s done is done in regards to you not telling me about your job in the beginning. That’s water under the bridge as far as I’m concerned. But the baggage with Sarah that you’re bringing into any kind of relationship, and the stalking behaviour. What am I supposed to do? You want me to lie down and just take it all? Be a doormat to all the of shit that comes with your job, and be at the centre of your surveillance.” 

“Aim, I already promised I wouldn’t do it again. I know what I was doing was wrong,” Lucas hissed. Frustration was pouring out of his tone now. 

“Okay, we’re still left with Sarah. She’s an ex-CIA agent. This woman is bound to have her ways and means. If she sees that we’re back together, she’s going to hound me again. For whatever reason that she wants us apart, she’s got a lot more resources than the average woman. What if she’s got an alias and that’s the reason you can’t find her? Was Sarah even her name to begin with?” 

Lucas couldn’t help but smile. “You’d be perfect working with us.” 

“Hardly,” Amy scoffed, her sarcasm escaping again. “I think I’ve had enough of the security services, thanks.” 

“And you don’t think you’re strong?”

“I’m not.” 

“Hmmm,” Lucas began, a smirk plastered on his face. “Right, you argue with me and tell me all the reasons that we shouldn’t be together, even though you’ve stated to me multiple times that you’ve never truly been in love before meeting me. Your ex, a guy who you claimed was just like your best friend, was someone who you fought to stay with. You were scared of being single, being alone. Yet here you are, ready to see me disappear, a man who you say you love, and all for the sake of principle. You’ve got the guts to stand up against what you believe, whereas before you didn’t.” 

Amy couldn’t help but chuckle wryly. “What the hell are you? Sigmund Freud?” 

“No, I’m just saying what I see. You’re stronger than you think, Aim.” 

With a sigh, Amy began to speak. It took every ounce of the minuscule drops of strength inside her to be assertive and not let her emotions drown her in love. “Please, can we just take this slow? There’s a lot that I need to get straight in my head before we do anything else.”

“What are you saying?” 

“Can we just stay friends for now?” 

Lucas sighed and averted his gaze to the floor. 

“I know it’s not what you want to hear. And this is your chance to walk away now if you don’t want that.” 

“I can’t walk away…” Lucas said softly, his voice breaking. “I…I need you in my life. And if it means that we just remain friends, then I can handle that. It’s going to hurt, but I’m willing to do it for you.” 

***

Follow Forever tag list: @i-did-not-mean-to @lathalea @xxbyimm @knitastically @linasofia @middleearthpixie @guardianofrivendell @lilacpulse @meganlpie @spidergirla5 @asgardianhobbit98 @sketch-and-write-lover @rachel1959 @msjava1972

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[shurisneakers]

harmless (ix)

Summary: Bucky volunteers to go stop a small time villain, but nothing can prepare him for what exactly he has to deal with. (Bucky x villain!reader, drabble series)

Warnings: cursing, sex jokes, frustrated bucky, dramatic reader, anxiety

Word count: 3.9k

A/N: a lot of requests came in last week, so cool and thank you for sending them in!! i’ll try my best to write them if they weren’t originally what i had planned for this series bc they’re so cute kfjdghdf. also hey shoutout to @i-reblog-fics-i-like​ for suggesting the backstory thing! 

here’s my ko-fi if you’d like to support my writing <333

Additional Scene   || Previous Part  || Series Masterlist

Hot single in your area! 😈  Find your solemate! 

Somehow it bypasses Bucky’s spam folder and is in his primary email. SHIELD tech is too advanced to let fake mails like this reach him and this doesn’t make sense. Unless it was one of the stupid dating websites he signed up for.

Leaving aside the obvious typo in the subject, he clicks on it, hoping it doesn’t unleash a virus onto his computer. 

He’s instead greeted with a poorly Photoshopped picture of you at a bar with a martini in your hand. He doesn’t have to look too hard to see that the martini is, in fact, an emoji. Off to a terrible start already. 

Right beside it is an even worse image, an imitation of an early Internet chat box.

Harbinger of Doom just sent you a message! 

Come to the empty lot near lair. Bring goggles. 😩💦

Decline/Accept

He wants to strangle you. 

______

“Why did you curse my eyes so early in the morning?” He spots you at the top of the lair, speaking loudly so that it hopefully reached you. 

“What?” you yell back down instead. “If you’re saying something, I can’t hear you.”

He rolls his eyes. He pulls his phone from his pocket and presses on your contact. 

He watches the look of confusion morph into one of slight surprise when you reach into your pocket and pull out your call.

“Don’t ever send an image like that to me again,” he says directly.

“If that one image is too much for you, how will we ever make our sex tape?”

His mouth opens and shuts like goddamn fish.

He can hear your laughter even without the phone.

“First of all- stop laughing- first of all, a sex tape is never going to happen. Second of all, I have a debriefing to go to, we need to make this quick.”

He holds up a finger when he sees you begin to say something. By the look of trouble painted all over your face, he knows it’s going to be a dumb innuendo. 

“Thirdly, why are you standing there?”

“I watched The Last Airbender,” you say once your cackling dies down.

“I like that show.” He did. Peter sometimes watched it when he came over and Bucky more often than not joined in.

“I know, you told me.”

Oh. 

“Okay, what now?” 

“Put your goggles on.” You take one step towards the ledge. 

“What are you doing?” The goggles don’t do anything to shield him from the sun, considering that they’re not tinted. Maybe he could invest in those.

You send him a smile, taking a step further. His walk towards the building turns into a jog, then a sprint when you’re basically standing on the edge.

You spread your arms out like Jesus Christ himself before flinging yourself off the building. His stomach drops.

His phone falls to the ground, discarded to the side as he sprints to break your landing. 

It never comes. 

Instead, a gust of wind smacks him in the face, forcing him a few steps backwards. 

“I am now an air bender.” your eyes shone. “Kind of.”

Just like that, the show was ruined.

He wipes the dust on from his glasses that he now understands why you made him wear. Considerate, for a person who nearly just gave him a heart attack. 

“Why.” It’s not even a question, just a statement. 

“You know how the Tower has a giant ‘A’ on the side?” 

He stares at you. 

“I‘m gonna spray paint ‘asshole’ on the side of it.”

Pepper would not like that. 

“That’s not even evil.”

“Yeah, but it’d annoy your super friends,” You do a flip midair, testing out the repulsors that were tied around your palms, “and I’m the voice of the people.”

You’re too high for him to reach. He doesn’t have his tools, or anything useful on him considering that he never had to use them before. He couldn’t even launch himself at you from the side of the building because you’d just move out of the way. He could jump really high but it would just have the same consequence.

He could talk and keep you distracted but that worked once, it wouldn’t again. At least not for long. 

Fuck, he really had only one option. 

He leaves you to do your somersaults and turns, walking over to where he dropped his phone. It’s an upgrade from the brick he was using a while ago, but not a high end Stark model. A smartphone, but barely.

He sighs, punching in the number and holding it up to his ear.

“Who are you calling?” you yell from above him. 

“Go back to your shitty aerobics,” he yells back.

You pause for a second. “Was that a fucking pun, James Bar-”

The dial tone ends when someone picks up. He diverts his attention back to the call.

“Hey man, I-

“No.”

“You didn’t even let me finish.”

“It’s probably something stupid,” Sam doesn’t even sound annoyed, just uninterested.

“I need your wings.”

“I was right. Bye.”

It was a long shot anyway.

“Fuckin’ hold on a second.” He sees you disintegrate a concrete block by having it drop from the air. “You come here and fix this, then. She’s air bending now.”

“...like Avatar?” Sam unsurprisingly got the reference. 

Peter’s interests were usually shared by everyone in the Tower, just because they had to compensate for the teasing he had to endure. It led to a lot of geeky documentaries and occasional musicals. Bucky wouldn’t be caught dead humming songs from Thoroughly Modern Millie under his breath. 

“Yeah.”

“You want me to come and fight your girlfriend,” he says slowly. 

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Bucky urges, “and yes, I need help. Can’t exactly reach her when she’s twenty feet above me.”

“We have a briefing in 30 minutes. Why did you even go there today?”

He doesn’t know how to answer that. Just looks up at you smacking one of the repulsors against your thigh when it sputters for a second. It’s tradition. 

“Well?” Bucky ignores his question.

“Fine,” Sam’s voice is distant for a second as he agrees. “Clint’s asking if he can come too.”

“Fuck no.” One of them was more than enough and Sam was way better at negotiation. 

He hears a faint profanity from who he assumed was Clint before the call cuts.

He takes a seat on the ground and waits.

“You’re not going to make any effort to stop me?” You have your arms pressed to your side, palms pointed downwards to keep you afloat.

 “I could just throw things at you again.” He makes a mention towards the small pebbles.

“I will fuck you up if you even try,” you warn. He lifts his arms in surrender. “So that’s it. You’re just going to sit there.”

“To be honest, I couldn’t care less if you painted the building,” he says with the least amount of interest he could muster, not that that was very hard.

“Do you not like your team?” 

“I do.” He isn’t lying. “But they’re little shits.”

“I can draw a couple of dicks on their window, no problem,” you say offhandedly.

He looks up at you through his fingers. “That won’t be required.”

Although it was appreciated. 

“Cool, so then I’m gonna go.” You make a mention of the utility belt on your waist. He looks at the many spray cans that decorate it. 

“What colour are you going with?” he interrupts quickly. Fuckin’ Sam. What was the point of wings if he couldn’t get here in 2 minutes?

“Red, probably.” You look down. “I got purple and white just in case.”

“Building’s dark, red is good.”

“You really don’t care, do you?” You lower yourself down to the ground, a few feet ahead of him. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” For fucks’ sake, Sam. “You really don’t like superheroes, do you?”

“I don’t have anything against them.”

“Then why do you do this every week?”

This was wading into personal territory and he did not like it. 

“Well.” Your eyebrows knit together. “Because I want to. It’s fun.”

“No other reason?”

“Do I need to have another reason?” You push your palm downwards, sending you back up into the air. “Can’t I just be evil because I want to?”

“Sure,” he says. He’s heard worse reasons. “Why not?”

“Besides, if you think I don’t like superheroes then you should meet Jake.”

“Who’s Jake?” He hadn’t ever heard you mention him before because he’d remember if you had.

“My roommate.” 

“I didn’t see him when I came over.”

“That’s because we’re not conjoined at the hip.” It takes you a second to stabilise. “Besides, he grabbed the water while I got the bracelet but he refused to come say hi.”

Bucky looked down at his wrist. It was still there. He found himself fidgeting with it more often than not.

“He hates superheroes?”

“He has a valid reason.” Your eyes widen in worry when your head suddenly dips. 

“What is it?” He knows the height at which you’re at isn’t very dangerous but if need be, he’s close by. 

“Come find out.” Your eyes shone mischievously. “But yeah, no reason for me to be evil.”

“Not even a tragic backstory?” 

“None. But if you want it, I can give you one, Barnes.” You test the waters, seeing how long you can lie horizontally. “Can’t promise you’ll like it though.”

“Try me.” He has time to kill. He’s a good listener.

“Well, it all started with my family- a troop of gorillas.” You flip over to lie on your back. “They practically raised me, they did. Until my gorilla mother died and I was all but consumed by grief and-”

“Your mother was a gorilla?” He entertains the notion. 

“Or was it my father?” you ask thoughtfully. “I don’t know, I don’t remember. Anyway, I met a-”

“Just to clarify, none of this is real, right?” he interjects. 

You stare at him. He stares at you.

“Bucky, that’s the plot of Tarzan,” you say slowly, “or at least whatever I remember of it... which I’m beginning to realise isn’t much.”

“Just clarifying.” He leans back again.

“Anyway so then when my mother, the deer-”

“Gorilla.”

“Whatever. Was killed, I escaped to some place-”

“Where?”

“Somewhere. And I stayed with these seven men-”

“Why seven?” He actually remembers watching this movie with his sister when it came out. An early memory, a bit faded. He remembers how long he saved up for the ticket.

“Because character development. And then I realised the reason my life was so weird was because there was a rat controlling me by pulling on my hair-”

“What the fuc-”

“If you ask any more questions, I’m going to stop.”

Bucky blinks at you. “So that’s your backstory.” 

“Raw and uncut, baby.”

“Just to get this straight, your mother, the gorilla deer-”

“Witch.”

“Huh?”

“She was a witch who stole my hair.”

“Wha-”

He’s interrupted by the giant shadow cast by something that flies overhead. 

Fucking finally. 

He doesn’t even have to look up. Sam does a small glide to the ground, landing gracefully beside him.

Bucky finds you speechless but straightened up from your earlier posture.

“Buck,” Sam greets him.

“Sam,” he says in return, getting up from his place. 

A grin spreads across your face. “Mr. Sam Wilson. No way.”

“You’re Y/N, I’m assuming?” Sam offers, posture relaxed. He clearly wasn’t here to fight. 

“The one and only.” You tear your eyes away from Sam to glare at Bucky. “Barnes, if you had told me we were expecting guests, I would have dressed better.”

Bucky furrows his eyebrows in suspicion at you. You’d dress up for Sam. 

You dressed up like a suburban tourist dad for him. He was feeling the offence incoming. 

“Can’t count on him to be useful in any situation.” Alright, he did not call Sam just to have the both of you team up against him. 

“Normally I’d agree with you but he did just invite you here, so...” you trail off, looking at Sam expectantly. 

What the shit.

Sam smirks. Bucky switches rapidly back and forth between the both of you.

“I see why Buck keeps coming back every week.” It doesn’t take long for him to catch on, enlisting a feeling of triumph from you. 

“I can’t see why he doesn’t just stay at home everyday if this is the view.” You gesture to him.

This is not what Bucky wanted.

“Okay,” Bucky interrupts, “what is going on here?”

“Pure chemistry, I’d say.” You’re half tempted to bite your lip to seal the deal.

“I agree.” Sam just nods, completely and utterly serious. 

You think that you’ll give him a gift basket just for playing along despite meeting you for the first time at that moment. 

“Get a room.” Bucky rolls his eyes.

“Maybe we will.” You tap your finger against your lip in thought. “How do you feel about Indian food, Sam?”

“Very positively.” 

Bucky grits his teeth. “If you’re not planning to spray paint the Tower, can you just hand over the repulsers so we can go home for the day?”

You let out a small tsk in disapproval. “See what I have to deal with?”

“Can’t imagine how you do it every weekend,” Sam says dryly, not wasting a second in replying. 

“Hello?” Bucky waves his arm around. “She’s the villain here.”

“Your face is the villain here.” You tear your eyes away from Sam only to glare at him. “He won’t even wear a cape. Why am I the only one who brings their A-Game every week?”

“Sam just get the damn-”

“You should wear a cape, man.” Bucky’s absolutely sure that even Sam knows it’s a ridiculous idea.

“I’m not wearing a fuckin’ cape,” he grumbles. 

“What are your thoughts on swords, then?” Your finger finds a place under your chin in deep contemplation. “You’d look great with a sword.”

Bucky buries his face in his palms. “Sam, for the love of God.” 

“Okay, alright.” Sam finally gives in with a small chuckle. He runs a few steps to get a small head start before launching himself into the air, whizzing past your levitating figure. He does a neat little flip midair before matching your height.

Showoff.

“How difficult are you gonna make this, Wilson?” you ask, a smirk on your face.

“Jesus Christ.” Bucky exhales, looking at the both of you through his goggles. 

“What’s your play here?” Sam calls out loudly.

“Was gonna spray paint ‘asshole’ on the side of the Tower.”

“After the��‘A’?”

“After the ‘A’,” you confirm. 

“Now that’s too small,” Sam tutted. “You gotta think bigger. Paint the whole Tower.” 

“Sam!” Bucky looks horrified. 

“Hmm.” You look like you’re considering it. “Don’t have enough paint for that though.”

“You’re an evil genius, right?” Sam casts a small glance at Bucky. “At least that’s what he tells me.”

“You talk about me?” You grin at the disgruntled man on the ground. 

“I don’t,” he mutters, shaking his head. A lie.

“Yeah, so build something,” Sam points out. “Get some more paint. I’ll even tell you the best vantage points to spill it.”

“No, he won’t,” Bucky shouts from below. 

“He’s just cranky because he didn’t get his prune juice this morning, ignore him,” Sam dismisses him.

Prune juice? He was a young 100, not ancient. 

“What’s your favourite colour, Falcon?”

“I like red.”

As annoyed as Bucky is right now, he stores that away in his memory for later. He also knows Sam loves seafood and a good pair of shoes. 

“A couple of gallons of red paint it is, then.” You lower yourself to the ground, Sam slowly follows suit until he lands beside Bucky.

“You know we can’t let you go without taking those, right?” Bucky tilts his head towards your invention.

You narrow your eyes at him. He doesn’t budge.

“I’ll tell ya what,” Sam pipes in instead. “I’ll keep them until you finish getting the paint and once you’re done, we’ll make an evening out of vandalising the Tower.” 

Bucky may not enjoy his company all that much but he admires Sam’s diplomacy. Of course, you would never make it this easy while reasoning with him.

“That a promise, Mr. Wilson?” You raise your eyebrow at him questioningly but are already in the process of removing the things from your hand. 

“Wouldn’t ever lie to you, doll.” He holds up his hand in a mock swear.

You walk towards Bucky and him, rotating your wrists to get rid of the soreness. “Bold claim for a man who met me ten minutes ago.”

“Feels like it’s been longer.” He sends you a wink and you can’t stop the laugh the escapes from you finally. 

Bucky holds his hand out for the gadgets. You shrink away from him with a click of your tongue.

“Technically, he takes this round.” You send a nod towards Sam, dropping off the repulsors into his hand. “So he gets it.”

Bucky rolls his eyes.

“You gonna keep ‘em safe?�� you ask Sam, this time a little more earnestly. 

“Guard it with my life,” he says seriously, pressing his lips together in a line to avoid smiling. 

“You’re both ridiculous,” Bucky cuts in.

“You’re going to be late.” Sam tucks the devices into his pocket safely. “You know how Steve gets when people walk in on his speeches. Do you even have a ride?”

“Got the motorcycle.” 

“See you there.” Sam nods. 

“Save me a place,” Bucky says to him.

“No.” He doesn’t even hesitate. “Y/N. It was a pleasure.”

“Still holding you to that evening, Sam.” You send him a smile.

“I’m countin’ on it.” He gives you a small three finger salute before taking off, leaving you staring after his retracting figure. 

When the dust settles, Bucky awkwardly clears his throat. “Right. So that was that.”

“Dude,” you let out an exhale. “he’s so hot.”

He murmurs something unintelligible. It vaguely sounds like a series of threats but mostly a list of complaints.

“Don’t you have a meeting to get to?” You turn your attention back to him.

“Yeah.”

“Aren’t you going to be late?” You glance at the clock on your phone.

“I’ll just tell them I was on a mission.” Well, sort of. “Besides, what are they gonna do? Kick me out?”

“Fair enough.” You shrug. “Have a safe ride back.”

From what he knows of you and Sam, the both of you were kidding around. But he could never be too sure. He can’t even ask if you were serious about the entire thing because it’s none of his business. 

Were the implications of having his mortal nemesis and other mortal nemesis date important enough to overrule that? 

“Are you planning to skip your meeting, or?” you ask when he remains freezes in his spot, eyes glazed over like he’s thinking about something. “Because if you are, I know this great Thai place-”

“Don’t do that again,” he says instead, shaking his head to jolt him out of his thoughts. 

“What?”

“Flinging yourself off roofs like that.”

“Why?” Because it scared the hell out of him, for one.

“Just don’t.”

“Oh please, like you’ve never done dangerous shit like that before.” You narrow your eyes at him, reading his face. “Are you telling me you care about me?”

“No.” His nose twitches. “Just don’t throw yourself off buildings when I’m around.”

“What about when you’re not?”

“As long as I’m not there to witness it.” He shrugs, spinning on his heel to leave. Technically he preferred if you didn’t do things like that at all. 

“Fine. I’ll just have my clone try out all the dangerous stuff for me.”

 He stops in his tracks. “You have a clone?”

“Well,” You squint, “no. But I’m working on it.”

He scoffs, shaking his head. “Bye Y/N.”

“You know, it sounds an awful lot like you’re saying we’re friends.” Your whole demeanour changes and he already knows what’s coming.

“I never said that,” he argues vehemently. “All I said was that I can’t have your murder on my hands.”

“Thus implying that we’re friends. In a fucked up, enemies kind of way.” You positively beam at him. “Aw, Barnes, that’s adorable.”

Adorable? Adorable?

“I hate you.”

“I love you, too, bestie,” you gush, dumb grin on your face. “I’ll make us friendship rings next time. What are your thoughts on matching tattoos?”

He wants to cry. 

______

By the time Sam walks into the meeting room, the session’s already begun. He shoots an apologetic look to a monologuing Steve before taking his place at the nearest chair available. 

Something sharp pokes his thigh. His wings are off and in the backpack beside him, but then he remembers your little inventions that were still in his pocket.

He tries not to make much of a noise while he pulls them out, giving them a look over to make sure they’re not broken.

“Watcha got there, Big Bird?” Tony asks lowly from beside him.

“Something that Barnes’ enemy made.” Sam holds it up slightly. 

“The one he’s been rendezvousing around town with every weekend?” 

“That’s her.” He’s about to put it in his backpack when Tony stops him.

“Pass that here for a second.” He recognises it immediately for what it is, interest piqued. 

Sam hands one of them over while he puts the other back in the bag. It’s a metallic circle, not bigger than Tony’s palm, with a thick leather strap to tie it around your palm.

“She made this?” 

“Why don’t you ask him?” Sam mentions towards Bucky who silently slips into the conference room, standing in the corner near the potted plant since there were no more chairs left.

“The balance has gotta be off on this thing,” he mutters to himself, wholly ignoring the brooding man standing in the corner like a Christmas tree.

“She seemed to be manoeuvring it fine,” Sam catches the eye of a lower ranking agent who makes the mistake of glaring at him for talking while the meeting was going on. A few seconds later the agent hastily looks away and doesn’t turn around for the rest of the hour. 

“Could be better.” He uses a much more intricate model for his suits, although this isn’t even half-bad for a homemade version. “Do you know how long she took to make this?”

“Buck says she comes up with a new one every week, so I’m guessing that long.” 

It had a few glitches but it was incredibly refined for a week’s worth of work.

“Interesting.” He gives it a quick overlook before handing it back to Sam who drops it into the bag.

He casts a swift glance at Bucky, noting how he wasn’t even paying attention to the meeting but rather to whatever he had tied around his metal wrist, fidgeting with it with his thumb. 

Tony has an idea. 

And that was generally bad news.

Next part

[from-the-clouds]

Kiss Me More (Part IIII) - Zemo/Reader

Masterlist | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | 

Summary: Reader ponders the decision they made after meeting Zemo in Riga. Series now complete!

Words: 5.2k

Warnings: Kissing, marijuana & alcohol abuse, heavy angst & depression, small reference to suicide, implied casual sex, yearning

A/N (also check out A/N at end when finished reading): This is it, everyone! I was going to end this completely differently originally, but after some thinking --  and some light peer pressure from ya’ll, I did something a little different. I did fight with this part the most out of all of them, so I hope it’s still good. Please enjoy. And thank you for all the love on this series, it’s been so fun to write! Also I was listening to this song while writing this.

---

The incessant buzz of her alarm clock jolted her out of her dreamless sleep. Fumbling in the dark, she slapped the top of it, hitting the snooze button and looking at the interface with bleary eyes. 

4:00 A.M. It stared, indifferent, back at her tired face. 

She groaned, squeezing her eyes shut and lamenting, bargaining, half expecting the clock to turn back time when she opened her eyes again. Unfortunately, it did not. With a huff, she threw back the covers and stretched, disturbing the orange cat that slept in the empty spot next to her where her husband used to lay. 

Snorting, the cat lifted its head to look at her as she climbed out of bed before curling back up in a ball where her feet had been. 

“Don’t mind me, just getting ready for work so I can feed us,” she said, grumpily, then in a moment of repentance, affectionately scratching her behind the ears. 

She had always been a night owl, so she didn’t think it would be possible to ever get used to waking this early. No human was meant to function at this time. It was the one part of the job she hated most. The rest of it was manageable, though it was still work. 

Setting about her morning routine, she showered, made coffee, and donned her uniform. Eating a day-old bagel and nursing her coffee on her tiny balcony, she looked out over the darkened horizon. It was far too early to even enjoy a sunrise. 

There was a saying, time heals all wounds. After her husband died, she’d heard it a lot. It was a saying she had come to find true. But it’d been well over a year since she’d left Helmut, alone in that swanky hotel room, and it still hurt like it was yesterday. 

“I understand,” he’d murmured, and she felt the ghost of his kiss on her forehead, arms around her waist, even now. She shivered, not from the chill of the morning air.

She’d left her old life behind, all of it. Sam and Bucky, too, about a month after their time in Riga. She couldn’t look them in the eyes after what she’d done.

But, she was proud of what they’d accomplished. They’d defeated the Flag Smashers. Bucky seemed happier, more at peace. Sam had accepted his role as the new Captain America. John Walker seemed to have faded into irrelevancy. All the loose ends had been tied up in a pretty little bow.

Except for hers.

Which is why she moved, sold all the stuff in her tiny NYC apartment, and packed her car full with what she couldn’t bear to part with, some photos and momentos from a different lifetime. Her car didn’t stop until she hit the Atlantic Ocean, on an island just south of Charleston. All but undiscovered by tourists, the residents in the sleepy beach town kept to themselves, and she could go about her life in peace, undisturbed. 

She couldn’t just run away from her problems, that was why she’d left Zemo. It seemed counterintuitive, but in her mind, it made sense. The problems would catch up to her, like they always had. The dissatisfaction she had with her life, with herself, was always going to return. And she knew she had to be alone to deal to face it head on. Like a wounded animal, crawling into the woods, there were only two ways things could end here; either she’d heal and come out stronger, or eventually she’d die. And so far, the healing part wasn’t going great. 

Each day was a matter of convincing herself that she’d made the right choice. Especially now, as her eyes burned, fighting to stay open against the inviting embrace of sleep. 

Despite it being dark outside, the bakery was bustling already when she walked in the service entrance. It smelled amazing, as always. Sweet and warm, a cacophony of aromas, baking bread, fresh coffee, sugar.

She set about the usual preparations to open up, packaging orders for the regulars, sweeping the floor, wiping down countertops. Once the place was open, she didn’t have to work the register, as she prepared batches of dough in the back for proofing, to be baked the next day. 

Before, she’d been a terrible cook, but she’d grown comfortable in the kitchen after learning to bake. There was something satisfying about working with her hands, at this point she’d memorized all the recipes and the work became second nature to her. Now, she always had fresh bread and pastries in her kitchen, although they were the slightly disformed, ones the shop owners deemed too ugly for the glass display cases. Daylight was cherished, even if she barely saw it inside the shop. Because while she was awake, busy with work, her thoughts remained pleasant.

At night it was the hardest. Things got quiet, lonely. When she got home, she poured herself a drink. Cheap whiskey, the kind that came in a plastic bottle and burned on it’s way down. She had never been much of a drinker before, she was now. Her thoughts were more manageable after a drink. Especially because she was usually thinking of Helmut. 

It was often that she wondered what he may be doing, and those thoughts usually ended with the image of him lying in the sun, poolside, on some island in the Pacific Ocean, drinking expensive champagne with a supermodel. It wasn’t a particularly comforting thought to her, and yet she was plagued by some variation of it every night. 

Sometimes, she’d humor herself, and imagine what they might be doing had she decided to stay with him. Unfortunately, thinking of that was more upsetting. She wanted it, selfishly, though she wasn’t willing to admit it.

When she was younger, it had been so easy to block out the pain, to just press forward, no matter what. Much to her dismay, it didn’t get easier as she got older. Years of watching those she loved in pain, years of being in pain had taken a toll on her resilience. She wasn’t the strong woman she once was, she was weak.

That night, one drink had turned into two, into three. Wallowing in her own self-pity had become second-nature, she felt like Hamlet, lamenting her circumstances, a constant turmoil monologuing in her brain. But this night felt particularly worse, for some reason. 

For the record, she had been doing better. But she was all-too-familiar with how grief worked, pulling her back down the dark side of the mountain, where she was forced to fight her demons over and over again. At some point, they were going to win.

It was a funny thing. Despite the loss of her husband, who she had loved dearly, his death had been easier to accept. Final. She couldn’t bring him back. Helmut on the other hand, was still out there, an open wound that could never fully heal.

Before she knew it, she was four drinks in, at her bedside table, fumbling through the bottom drawer, until she found what she was looking for.

Back on her couch, she stared at the card in her hand, the hastily written phone number on it, an international line. Helmut had given it to her, the day she left, stuck it in her purse while she wasn’t looking. She didn’t discover it until she had returned home.

It had been months since she last did this, pulled the card out of its hidden place in her drawer, placed it on the coffee table in front of her next to her phone, and considered dialing it. It had been a frequent occurrence when she first moved here, when she couldn’t find a job and spent most of her mornings either hungover, or stumbling home from rendezvous with men whose names she wouldn’t remember, and she wouldn’t care to, because there was only one man she really wanted. She could only hope he’d be as close as one call away. But she never called. 

I mean really, he’d probably moved on by this point. If she was going to call, she should have done it months ago, when there was more of a chance that he’d give a fuck. 

She considered this a setback. But she’d made her way halfway through the cheap bottle of whiskey, it was the drunkest she’d been in ages and she was curious. She didn’t know whose number it was, who’d be on the other end of the line, and never knew why Helmut would want her to have it to begin with.  

At this point, she wasn’t capable of good decision making. In general, it hadn’t always been her strong suit. So why did doing the right thing matter now? It didn’t, she decided. 

Taking a swig of whiskey straight from the bottle, she ensured she wouldn’t remember what happened next, at least not clearly. 

The phone rang twice before someone picked up. “Hello?” she didn’t recognize the sound of the man on the other end of the line immediately, so she didn’t answer. All she had wanted to do was maybe hear Helmut’s voice, he didn’t even need to know it was her that was calling. 

“Hello?” the man repeated, and she realized it wasn’t completely unfamiliar. The grandfatherly, comforting tone wasn’t her former lover, but someone close to him. And she supposed that wasn’t terrible.

“Is this Oeznik?” she asked. 

“It is,” he said after some hesitation. “May I ask who’s speaking?”

Truthfully, she was shocked she’d allowed herself to go this far. This was a bad idea. If she stopped now she could get off without doing any real damage. But just as she was about to hang up, she heard her name, muffled, on the other end of the line. 

“H-How do you know it’s me?” She raised the phone back to her ear. 

“I thought you sounded familiar,” Oeznik chuckled, low and soft. “Helmut told me you might call.”

“He did?” she squeaked. “Yes, although it was awhile ago. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I uh….I….well….” she managed. “I guess I just….I guess I wanted to see how he was doing.”  Her words flowed together like the liquor she was drinking, she knew she sounded drunk.

“Good, since we last spoke,” he said. “I don’t hear from him much these days...maybe every couple months. As you might imagine, he’s trying to keep a low profile for the time being.”

She nodded. Perhaps Zemo was as lonely as she was, hidden away in some cabin in the middle of nowhere. Though she had to imagine it looked much nicer than her current place, and maybe he had better company than a portly orange cat that begrudgingly liked him. “I understand.”

“How have you been?” he asked.

It sounded stupid, but she realized it was the first time someone had asked her that. Sincerely. Checked up on her. Even if she was the one who had dialed the number in the first place.

“I’m good,” her voice cracked. “Just keeping busy.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “Helmut always had such nice things to say about you.”

“Really?” she couldn’t stop herself. 

“Of course, would you like me to let him know you called?” 

“No, no...I wouldn’t want to bother him,” she choked on her words, something catching in her throat.

“Are you sure you’re alright, dear?”

“I’m okay, I just….” she felt tears prick at the back of her eyes, lowering her voice, since she didn’t think her normal register would come out as anything other than a whine. “I think I made a horrible mistake.”

“What’s the matter? What did you do?”

She shook her head, shaking the tears loose and now they were lining her lashes, threatening to spill over. However, she managed to make the next words she spoke come out clearly. “Nothing, I just...it’s really stupid, I really shouldn’t have called.”

He sighed on the other end of the line, and she felt like, despite her attempt at staying calm, he could still see that she wasn’t somehow. “It seemed Helmut was awfully sweet on you,” Oeznik’s words next came hesitantly, calculated. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but he told me if you ever called, to help you with whatever you might need, no matter the ask.”

Oh God, what had she done? A sob left her, one she couldn’t control, and she clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle any more. Her tears were flowing freely now, tracking down her cheeks and along her chin. She wiped at them clumsily, clearing her throat. 

“That’s very kind of him, but you can’t help me. I’m so sorry to bother you, please just forget I even called,” she forced a smile on her face so that hopefully he could hear it. “Goodbye.”

She hung up, horrified, and within seconds had deleted the call log from her phone. She’d been thoughtful enough not to memorize the number, and the lighter she used whenever she smoked sat in front of her. Without a second though, she burned the card, watching the paper blacken and disintegrate, until it was all but a pile of soot on her Wal-Mart coffee table. It was a fair punishment, and ensured she’d never get the chance to embarrass herself like that again. 

And then she cried, sobbed into a pillow next to her, until her tears ran dry and she wore herself out, falling asleep on the couch alone. When she’d wake the next morning, the only evidence of her actions would be a throbbing headache and a dead phone. 

She wouldn’t remember the call.

----

Life went on, as it always did. It had been about a month, and since that night she grew more indifferent, remembered how to ignore heartbreak. For now, she was stuck in her purgatory, waking up before the sun and falling asleep before it set, smoking joints, drinking cheap liquor, and going on the occasional date with people who she didn’t really like, tourists who would leave after a week and wanted temporary company. 

Despite everything, she partly believed things were getting better. Maybe they weren’t, but the possibility that someday they would seemed feasible. And that was enough, for now. 

On her days off, she’d walk to the beach and lay on a blanket, reading a book until the sun dipped below the horizon and lit up the sky in hues of pinks and purples. She found a record player at an antique store and began collecting vinyls, listening to obscure artists whose albums she found in the $1 bin. It wasn’t so bad. Life wasn’t so bad. 

She took a shower after work. Tomorrow was her off day, and she wasn’t sure what she had planned besides maybe watching a movie and getting stoned. Maybe she’d try going to the beach. The weather was getting warmer, and she could even go swimming if the water wasn’t too cold. 

Exhausted from her day of work, she laid down in her bed, still in her robe, her hair wrapped in a towel around her head. The sun was setting outside, the windchimes she’d hung outside slowly clanging together, birds singing in the warm spring air. Her cat hopped on the bed, offered an affectionate trill and curled up at her side, purring, in a rare display of affection. A cool breeze drifted through the open window. And for the first time in over a year, she felt content. Closing her eyes, she savored the moment, committed it to memory, so she could recall it the next time she was drunk-crying in front of her TV. 

She fell asleep slowly, so slowly that when she woke, startled by something in her kitchen clattering to the floor, it felt like she hadn’t even been sleeping at all. The clock next to her red 11:31 p.m. and it was pitch dark outside, the cool breeze from before had grown stronger and her bedroom curtains were billowing, wind whistling loudly through the apartment. Her cat had left her side, and she frowned, shivering in the sudden cold.

Pulling the towel off her head, she made her way over to the window with the intention to close it, sleepily, lazily, until she heard something else. A creak in the floorboard. A heavy footstep in her kitchen. That wasn’t just her cat. 

Some kind of muscle memory was ignited then, an ancient instinct that called to her from a different lifetime. Darting across the room, the gun she kept was in her hand, stealthily pulled from its hiding spot beneath her mattress. Truth be told, she never thought she would’ve needed it. Anyone looking for her would be smart enough to kill her in her sleep, not be so foolish as to wake her first with their heavy footsteps. 

A dark silhouette stalked through her kitchen, moving slowly. It was a man, she assumed, based on his broader figure, and lack of coordination. In her experience, women were often stealthier without trying. He took another step, the floor creaking below him, shuffling on bargain linoleum. 

Staying low, she crept forward, ducking stealthily behind furniture, avoiding the spots on the floor she knew made noise. It didn’t appear the intruder had a weapon, in fact, it seemed he was bumbling about, searching for something. A burglar, and a bad one at that. An island full of vacation homes owned by rich doctors and they thought they’d find valuables in her shitty apartment?

It wasn’t until she was standing directly behind him, gun aimed at his head, that she finally spoke up. 

“I believe you’ve come to the wrong place,” she said flatly. “Whatever you’re looking for, it’d be in your best interest to leave empty-handed.”

Her eyes were still adjusting to the dark, but the intruder froze, arms slowly raising in defeat, empty-handed, as he turned around to face her. In the dingy room, she couldn’t make out any of his features, could only see that he was clad in all black.

“Unfortunately, liebling, that wasn’t my intention.” 

She would’ve recognized that voice anywhere, though the endearment he’d used was enough to clue her in. Hitting the lightswitch with her free hand, she was face to face with the man she’d spent the past year trying to purge from her memory, Helmut Zemo. 

Her gut twisted, her mind raced, but the only thing currently bubbling up, over the surface of every other emotion was the pure, seething rage left behind in the wake of fearing for her life.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she stepped towards him, gun still raised, fuming. 

“Hey, hey!” he staggered backwards, hands raised, eyes averted. 

“I thought you were a fucking robber!” she hissed. “I thought you were here to kill me!”

“Lower your voice,” he scolded. “You’re going to wake your neighbors.”

Taking a deep breath, she realized she still had her gun trained on him and she lowered it, clicking the safety and discarding the weapon on the countertop. “What the fuck?” she asked. “What the hell is wrong with you? What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I didn’t know you had such a mouth on you,” he smirked, but she wasn’t finished, and she glowered at him. 

“You broke into my apartment!” she growled.

“I had to be sure I was in the right place.”

“Yeah? You couldn’t have knocked first?”

He nodded, eyes trailing down to her hands, which were trembling, she hadn’t even realized. He seemed to understand what he’d done then, and she flexed her fingers, eyes locking with his. “I suppose...you may be right,” he said, surrendering.

She felt the rage subsiding as she took in his appearance. He looked not so different from the last time she’d seen him, except a fair amount of stubble covered his jawline in a short beard. He was still devastatingly handsome. Zemo’s dark eyes, filled with longing, drank her in, tilting his head as his gaze shifted to her lips. It was like she could read his mind, she knew what he wanted, what he was thinking. And her body was going to betray her if he kept it up.

Despite everything, she was still upset. Upset and embarrassed, as the light was doing an unflattering expose of her tiny, cluttered apartment, full of mismatched furniture and water-damaged wallpaper that her landlord refused to replace. It probably gave the prison cells that Helmut had spent years in a run for their money, and was in stark contrast to every other aspect of his life.

“What’s this?” he asked, gesturing to the empty liquor bottles on her countertop, stowed in her trash can. “Have you been drinking?”

“Not tonight,” she quipped, on guard. Had to be. As much as some old instinct told her to throw herself into his arms, press her lips to the underside of his jaw, and let him envelope her in the comfort of his embrace, she knew she couldn’t.

“Hmm,” he brushed past her, frowning, looking disappointed, as he made his way to her living room. 

“How did you find me?” she asked, eyeing him wearily.

“I’m a wanted man, I trace every call that comes into my estate,” he said over his shoulder. 

Helmut was taking inventory of the cramped space, staring at the photos she’d hung in a collage on the wall behind her couch, with a few watercolors painted by her late husband. One in particular, that he was focused on now, was from her wedding. Of all the memories she chose to hang, this one was her fondest, her former partner was all dark curly hair falling into deep blue eyes, and she was the portrait of a blushing bride, wearing a dopey love-drunk smile, gazing at him, ignoring the camera. 

“You looked so beautiful on your wedding day,” he said, turning over his shoulder to look at her. He was so out of place here, standing in her living room, for a moment she thought he might be a hallucination, some physical manifestation of the heartbreak she’d experienced. “Although that doesn’t surprise me.”

She flushed, suddenly self-conscious in her thin black robe and still-damp hair. It occurred to her that she wasn’t looking her best, which made this whole situation that much more disconcerting. However, the compliment disarmed her slightly, and the anger she felt began to dissipate, slowly. She was going to offer him something to drink until her cat, who had been absent through the chaos, suddenly jumped up on the back of the couch and promptly hissed at him in an attempt to defend her territory.

“Pumpkin, be nice,” she said, although it was mostly to placate Helmut. Pumpkin never listened to her. 

Helmut let her sniff his hand, and she was stunned when the cat rubbed her face against it. Of course, Pumpkin would like him of all people. That made sense. Then again, she supposed it made them not so different. He turned away to look at the rest of the room. “I see you haven’t kicked that bad habit you told me about,” he gestured at the ashtray full of roaches on the coffee table. 

“Did you just come to my place to insult me?” she asked, putting her hands on her lips and feigning confidence. She could’ve rolled over and cried and told him how much she missed him, how many nights she’d spent crying over him, and while all of it was true, she felt indignation was the better option for her self-preservation.

“That’s a good question,” Helmut turned to face her now, hands in the pockets of the leather jacket he was wearing. Completely inappropriate for the weather here, but he didn’t seem to notice, or care. “Why do you think I’m here?” he asked.

She shrugged, feigning indifference. “I don’t know, but you shouldn’t be.”

He snorted, his frustration evident, and she saw a glimpse of the man that so many feared, the side that had earned him his dangerous reputation, that had him locked away in a high-security prison for nearly a decade. “I didn’t come all this way for nothing, draga, we’re going to have it out.”

“Fine,” she said, lacing as much venom as she could into her words to prepare herself. “Then get on with it.”

He stared her down, and the expression her wore startled her, something sparkled in his eyes, mischief, relief maybe? It was insulting. Like he didn’t take her seriously. But there was something else there, too, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, but it was wiped from his visage before it registered.

The tension in the room dissipated slightly when Zemo sat on the arm of the worn couch she’d bought from a yard sale, and she winced. ���I spoke to Oeznik the other day,” he said flatly, snorting, eyes focused on a stain on one of the rugs she owned. “He told me he had the pleasure of speaking to a friend of mine about a month ago.”

Frowning, she tilted her head, her eyes meeting Helmut’s. Something in her brain sparked a memory she’d once dismissed as a dream after a particularly bad night of drinking.

“He was concerned, you see, because this friend didn’t seem to be in the best state of mind,” Helmut rose from the arm of the couch, stalking forward slowly, and she couldn’t move backwards, not even if she wanted to, as he could pin her easily against the front door. His voice grew louder, faster as he went on. “He said she was crying, slurring her words, he told me he thought maybe she might be-” Helmut cut himself off abruptly and closed his eyes, clenching one of his fists, a look of distress on his face as he took in a terse breath. “I won’t finish that thought, but you’re a smart girl, you can imagine what I’m getting at.”

Swallowing hard, the phone call came back to her in pieces, the tears, sobbing on the phone to a man she hardly knew. It was the night she finally admitted to herself she’d made a mistake, even though she’d already known it, deep down when she left him in the hotel room. 

“Please forgive me for breaking in tonight,” Helmut said. “But I couldn’t bear the thought of you not answering the door, I needed to see with my own eyes that you were okay.”

Exhaling through her nose, she looked at the floor. “It’s not like that. I had too much to drink.” she said, keeping her voice as steady as possible. “It was just a bad night.”

“Then tell me, what was the horrible mistake you made?” he asked, stepping closer. He was close to her, now. So close. And his proximity made everything more difficult.

God, if only she could remember exactly what she’d said, the only thing that came to her were the emotions, desperation, sadness, grief. It was all too much, and he was threatening to bring them all back to destroy her again. 

“I shouldn’t have called,” she said, shaking her head. “And I’m sorry. What do you want me to say? What do you want from me?”

“What do I want from you?” He asked, tilting his head, his eyebrows pulling together. “Do you have any idea how worried I was? How hard it was to sit on a plane when all I wanted to do was be here? With you?” His hand rose to cup her cheek, stopping just short of her face when she flinched away from his touch.

“Please stop,” she managed, the burn of tears behind her eyes almost menacing. The last thing she needed was to cry in front of him. “You’re undoing everything.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked. 

“You’re….you’re here,” she murmured weakly, wetness seeping, glossing over her pupils. “I only have so much capacity for pain right now, if you touch me now, you’ll ruin everything.”

No one ever had this kind of hold on her, she’d never bent her rules to appease anyone else, and she’d gone toe to toe with super soldiers. He was just a man, and yet, he terrified her. 

“You really want me to leave?”

She couldn’t answer, but one tear escaped, sliding down her cheekbone, and she sniffled. 

“I’m not the one who did this to you,” his thumb, swiped along her face gently, wiping it away. He’d touched her, just barely, and she was reeling. 

“I know,” she stuttered, gasping. “I know it was me, but I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“You are so stubborn.” His expression softened as he looked upon her, his thumb tracing underneath her jaw, tilting her head upwards to look at him. Malleable, she obliged. “I’ve thought about you everyday since the night we spent together. You’ve plagued me. That can’t be a coincidence. Are you really happier this way? You must be honest with me.”

She shook her head, blinking out fresh tears. “No, I’m not. I just thought...by the time I realized I made the wrong choice, you’d have moved on. People like us don’t get to be happy.”

“Says who?”

How could she refuse him anymore? This would continue to go on until she gave in. And from the beginning, she wanted to give in. There was no use in fighting the inevitable. The small point of contact -- his hand on her chin -- radiated impressive warmth, and she could feel every part of herself being attracted to him, quelling some ache deep within her. 

Reaching up, she clutched at Helmut���s palm, which didn’t last long, because he pulled her into his arms, nestling her head underneath his chin. She melted into his embrace, finding solace in the warmth of his solid frame. 

“Come home with me,” he coaxed softly. 

“I will,” she murmured, surrendering to the comfort of his presence. “But you have to let me bring Pumpkin.”

He chuckled, warm and amiable, the vibration of his chest echoing in her own. “Of course, you’ll bring Pumpkin,” he murmured into her hair. Oh, how she had missed hearing him laugh. They could’ve stayed that way for hours, and she would’ve been content, but he pulled away, hands on either side of her face as he studied her.

Unable to hold back any longer, she leaned in to kiss him. It was chaste at first, all the memories of her last night with him came flooding back quickly when he parted his lips to deepen the kiss, but she didn’t want that quite yet, just needed a moment to process this. The simple comfort of being held by him, kissed by him, was more than enough for now. He’d been waiting for this, she could assume in the way that he responded, pulling her impossibly close so she was engulfed in him.

Her stomach flipped, a warmth blossoming in her chest as he pulled away, their foreheads touching. “Oh, I missed you,” she sighed, shivering as his beard tickled her neck, his mouth on her sensitive skin.

“And I, you,” he murmured. His eyes studied her, carefully, up close, and for the first time since meeting him, she really let him see her, teary-eyed and vulnerable.

She would never let him go again. 

---

A/N: So here we are! I know it’s been a ride, but I’m really excited for these two. However, I don’t feel like I’m done writing for Zemo yet. If ya’ll have any headcanons, thoughts, questions, requests, etc, feel free to drop them in my ask box or shoot me a DM. I’d love to talk more about him. I also would be down to write more oneshots based around this series, because I am sort of like….okay, they obviously have a connection, but they don’t know that much about each other, and I may or may not have a light future already mapped out for them. I might do an epilogue at some point even. But if you have anything you’d like to add, let me know!

Taglist: @juice-1981  @sapphiredreamer26  @tatooineisdry  @marvelsvision @spookycereal-s @trelaney @fireghost-x @booksarekindaneat  @thunderingbats  @felicityofbakerstreet @takacsgram @mischiefmanaged71 @fanfictionedagain @merelyhooper @gyllord @mundaytuesday @friday18eo  @lovegood7553  @adara-wolfhart @a-djarin @farawaywasteland @sky-writes-stuff @fuckinglittlekitten @katyasrussianaccent @agent-jbarnes  @neoarchipelago @pattispunk @kpopnena @purebloodwitch @spookyconsultingcriminal @msmarvelwrites @professorrw @lazyradeecal @captainrexstan @notyourfuckingbusinesss @felicityofbakerstreet @unlikekiana @maeday-18 @friendly-letters @fandom-lover-4 @meefal @queenfairyfangirl @gogomonbebelf @scullys-alienpussy @the-multiverse-approach @sky-writes-stuff @safiakillspop @eggofhumiliation @originalcollectorsaladsstuff @archangelproperty @friday18eo @jayden-rose-leon @actuallyanita @mayhemmachine @kermuddgen @zadiewrites @pach-inks @theokatz @reichelhache @autumnsoidier @mischief-siriusly-managed @danaaeaa @joey-motorola @singlemomslayer @stevesbestgirl @dinna-fashh @popriskra @xaanyhs @adorable-punk-superheroes​

[rumblelibrary]

Have you ever thought about writing a continuation to Unofficial Meeting? I'm dying to know whether Laszlo earns the reader's forgiveness and if she accepts his proposal or not. Have a good day! 😚

Undisclosed Meeting [Dr Laszlo Kreizler x Fem!Reader]

Word count: 2k

Warnings: Laszlo self deprecating himself hard

A/N: how could I give up a chance to make my boy Laszlo happy? Thank you so much for requesting it, it really made me happy to have an old story requested. Here is the original story

“Are you even listening to me?”

Violet inquired as you blinked surprised and taken aback. She invited you over for an afternoon tea, but your mind kept wondering off to what happened between you and Laszlo. You haven’t seen him in over a month and to be honest you missed him. The first few days you were firm on your choice, he upset you and your family, he crossed your boundaries mindlessly.

But then you realised how he meant to ask your hand to your father, how he never meant for you to be hurting, he just wanted to make it official.

Your grandmother tried to talk you out of your anger but she didn’t managed to, it was over anyway. You upset each other, you closed that chapter.

If you have feelings for him that chapter is not closed, your grandmother told you but you tried to ignore it. You haven’t seen him in so long, not even at some event or where you’d usually expect him to be. He kept sending you flowers to you until the end of the previous month. That silly man, always hating to leave things halfway done.

“I am, I am just a bit tired” you said as she waved her hand 

“nonsense ” she said offering you to try some sweets while she stood up to call her maid and gather what she meant to show you “I’ll show you now the latest Paris fashion and you’ll have to wake up” 

She was your friend, she was sweet and she knew you were on a rough patch now and she did all in her power t keep you distracted.

“Charles stop it”

John’s voice rang through you ears as you stood up to see what was going on from the window facing the luscious back garden of the Moore residence. Little Charles was the spit image of his parents and an adventurer at heart, you could tell from the way he kept his father busy running after him.

You smiled as John gave up opening his arms in defeat.

“What I have to do?” He groaned making you chuckle as for a moment it looked like he was asking to God, but when you noticed that he was in fact talking to Dr Kreizler who was sitting on a bench. You codlin’t help but rest your eyes on him, he looked pale, tired like he wasn’t sleeping. He was like this during investigations but as far as you knew there was no one at the moment.

“Wat you have to do John? Let the boy be” he said as a tired smile crept onto his lips.

“Yes, he will break his skull in a second”

Laszlo shook his head looking at him “If you prevent him from doing anything he won’t never learn” he said as he spoke matter of factly but that tiredness in his voice was evident. You wondered what kept him up.

You wondered if t was your fault.

But then you saw the sweet look he had for the child as he picked a ball that was hiding behind his back to give it to him to play with.

He was so good with kids, it was incredible.

You knew it was his job, but the tenderness he showed with them was something you felt on your own skin as you used to be allowed to be part of that special round of people that got to see him being sweet.

You moved away from the window just in time for Violet to come back, her maids holding onto over twenty new items of clothing.

“V” you said to her as the use of that little nickname sparked already her attention “I have to ask you a favour”

It was dead in the evening when Laszlo got asked from Violet to meet a friend of hers with a child with various problems.

The symptoms she described didn’t really add up, they should be excluding each other. But no matter what he decided to go there. 

He usually was very firm about his privacy and the times he could meet or not patients, even though the secrecy of the hour would be typical of a wealthy family trying to hide some kind of a problem they judge as shameful, he also came to a point where work was all he got.

He missed you, everything reminded him of you. He hoped to see, he would be a liar if he didn’t admit to have handed a dollar or two to your maid to at least know how are you.

He didn’t mean to stalk you, he just wanted you happy and once more he was acting behind your back. But your maid told him you were fine and doing your business, so he stopped inquiring. He didn’t deserve you in the first place anyway, but how things ended really pained him, he really thought to be doing right and he really wanted to have a future with you, to have many what John has.

But what nonsense thinking about it now that it is all gone and by his own hand, he had nobody to blame but himself.

As he arrived to the building he got inside surprised not to find anyone at service but only an open door.

The instinct would have told him to go away, but he was reckless by now, he already lost what he cared the most.

Walking inside the candlelit hallway he was surprised to get to a large living room only to find you there.

The truth was that he stopped on his track to admire you. You were amazing, he adored you in any possible shape and form, everything from your clothing to your composure screamed for his eyes to be fixated onto you.

He took that moment to look at you, take in your image, last time you two spoke you were so upset and he didn’t want that to be the last image he had of you.

“I am more discreet than you when I have to do things in secret” you said and he smiled lightly

“You’re”

His admission, the tiredness of his look just paining you.

“Is this a house of your family?”

“Yes, it is my aunt’s but she is on some cruise with her husband”

He nodded quietly as he looked around moving closer to you, the candles around you making him feel like the moment was set in another time.

“You didn’t have to make an appointment to meet me”

“Well, I asked a friend for a favour, I could have paid Stevie to drive you here anyway” you answered, basically hinting him that your maid didn’t keep his little inquiring a secret between the two of you.

He nodded gulping down, he felt like he was naked in front of you, defenceless and anything you could attack him with would really hurt. 

“I though that after our last conversation we needed to speak alone and in a neutral ground, I attacked you and I know I moved past my means”

“Just like I did inquiring about your life without permission” he concluded for you, he kept thinking about that day over and over, he couldn’t take it out of his mind and he even thought it would be easy only because so many people hated him already, button you. He wished you’d never be one of them.

“Miss Y/L/N” the fact he used your last name showing how he was trying to prove you some respect, not using your first name like you’re somehow close, mostly because he doubts you’d wish him close at any time.

“All I have ever wanted was to be worth of you”

His words trembling, like snakes sliding onto your skin.

He opened his mouth to say something and he closed it as he stared somewhere away from you, he shook his head slowly. The pain visible through him.

“I am a despicable failure as a human being, I know it” he said as he rose his hand to invite your silence “I have spent my life trying to find a common language  to get through people, studying them ,making sure to be able to read human behaviour to allow myself the freedom of interaction. I am not a natural like John, I can’t just go on a group and charm my way through it and I knew, I knew from the moment you allowed me to be close to you that I would ruin it because I am such social wreck, because I can’t control myself or I can’t not follow the rules that I have been told are the right path to follow”

He let out a shaky breath as he looked down and then up at you, he was trying to hold back tears but the truth was that he cried for losing you, He cried for nights and days.

“I apologise once more, I wanted to do you right and I just overstepped you. I always admired you for your being independent and clever and I reduced you to an object with my insensitive behaviour. I always make myself strong from talking my way through people and I blindsided you when words were the most needed”

You looked at him as maybe for the first time he really throw away the mask, he really let himself speak up.

“I valued what you did for me” you blinked at him surprised, your head slightly falling on side to observe him.

He was going down the self deprecating himself hill, you could almost count how much time there was between him going down onto his arm topic. You know that was always his undisclosed weakness, how he hated it and saw himself as unlovable because imperfect.

“It is yes”

He looked at you with a frown not seeing what you mean.

“My answer for your question”

He frowned even more, what question? You could hear it resonate into his mind as he didn’t ask you anything, he came to you to apologise and…

And then he got it.

His eyes widened as he opened his mouth only to close it again.

No, he was probably misunderstanding, once more reading badly the situation.

You picked your left glove slowly taking it off to show him you were wearing his ring on your hand.

He stared at you, his hand hesitantly moving to pick yours bringing it up to his lips and resting a kiss over it, his hand holding yours as he stared up at you.

His wet eyes now unmistakable from cha closeness, the signs of his lack of sleep visible.

“In a marriage there shouldn’t be secrets, I tried to avoid something shameful for me when you allowed me to see every part of you” you admitted as you weren’t free from blame, you referred to pretend something wasn’t there rather than facing it.

He stared at you with shaky breath, as he licked his lips trying to find words.

“I love you Laszlo, I really want to be your wife”

His jaw trembled as the happiness rushed over him like electricity, his hand bringing yours over his heart beating so fast and hard that he felt it could explode.

“I love you Y/N” he whispered as you caressed his cheek with your right hand as he leaned down, still not daring to believe what was happening.

So you just did it, you leaned in closing the space between the two of you with a kiss.

The times were changed.

Women could accept wedding proposals without their father’s approval, men could cry for love and love words were made of truths and exposed weaknesses and not by the words of dusty poets. And with such strong ideals you could only imagine your life as set up for a greater kind of happiness with him.

Tagged @cazzyimagines @lieutenantn @handmaiden-of-mischief @thesunflowersutra @zemomybeloved @fictionlandslanddreams@charistory @greeneyedblondie44 @apparrio @hb8301 @whatawildone @rhymerhymerhyme  @thehuiabird @lilith-blackrose @unbeatablecurlgirl @obsidianlaszlo @alindeluce @zemosimp05 @baronesszemo-blackwood @nocapesdahling @everythingbeginsineternity-blog

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Learn to Fly

CW: Self-loathing, some internalized victim-blaming, references to parental death and grief, VERY vague reference to past noncon once or twice

Note: I made a decision to switch a little of the timeline around, so Laken and Chris’s breakup at this point happens after the original conversations about the Speak Out Arc start happening but before the Olympics themselves. I’m folding this bit into the larger Speak Out Arc.

Follows Time Apart and It Doesn’t Work As Well As You’d Hoped

-

He curls up on the couch in the coffeeshop, sipping something warm he barely tastes. It might have coffee in it - he feels a little drowsy, and that usually happens when there’s just a little caffeine.

Maybe that’s just because he hasn’t slept since Jake was hurt, not really. And he’s slept even less since... since he and Laken broke up.

Outside, there's unseasonable heavy rain. The clouds are low and heavy, a deep gunmetal gray that blocks out the light and has the streetlights on at 9:30 in the morning. The raindrops seem less to fall than to slam into the ground with terrible violence. 

The baristas talk in low voices about how grateful they are for the rain, burying the wildfires outside the city in a deluge the heat can’t overcome. Chris likes the rain, too, if only because it reflects the inside of him, suggests that the world can tell he is a storm within himself and reflects it to him.

He takes another sip.

He hasn’t showered in three days. His hair is dulled with it, like a penny left too long in the dirt.  He’s dressed himself like he used to, back before when he was still learning he was a person and not a pet - in one of Jake’s hooded sweatshirts over his compression shirt, so oversized on him it’s nearly a tunic, and a pair of mesh basketball shorts. His knees still look knobby, he thinks.

He can see the ghosts of the bruises there that used to never quite heal before his Sir sent him to his knees and made new ones to lay over them. He can see a couple of scars, some from training when the baton would crack into the backs of his legs and send him dropping like a stone, some from gymnastics, some from just being a kid.

Chris’s eyes lower, to look at his own hands holding his coffee cup. He put star stickers on his nails last night, and a few of them have already peeled off. Those that remain glitter, just a little. 

Something about the sight of it - the memory of when he put star stickers on Laken’s cheekbones at a concert until they sparkled under the starlight, laughing, a blur of bright eyes and dark hair - makes his throat nearly close, sends a new rush of tears to burn hot behind his eyes.

He has to close them to hold them back.

“You’ve had a hard time of late, have you, then?”

The voice is a rumble, cracked with decades of cigarettes and too much liquor, but Chris remembers it, anyway. At least, he remembers it now.

He turns to look up at the old man, in his shirt and slacks, a bit bent with age. There’s a merry twinkle in his slightly rheumy eyes, though, that shows that a young man is still there, under an old man’s experiences. There’s a slight smile on his face, warm and welcoming. 

Chris swallows, struggling to find the words. They flit away from him, he has to chase them down, but eventually he manages to clear his throat and says, “I, I, um. I know you. You, you, you knew my dad.”

“I did, at that. Worked with him for years.” The old man settles onto the other end of the couch, giving Chris plenty of space, a nice wide berth for safety. “What’s got you looking like a television commercial for depression, hm, Tristan?”

No one calls him that. 

Chris feels his heart twist, a little. 

By the time they saw the meteor, Tris, it was already too late for anything but a blink or two. When it touched down into land, it was so big the end of it was still in space. Can you imagine anything so big? Can you?

No, Dad.

 The earthquakes alone would have been immense thousands of miles away. Imagine, you’re eating leaves, living your life, and you see a shadow - and then in an instant, the world is shaking and you’re breathing glass. How does life go on after that?

I, I, I don’t know, um, um... how how does it?

It just does. That’s what’s amazing, Tris. It just goes on.

“Nothing. I, I, I broke up with my, my partner is all.”

“Hm, that nice young person who comes with you to the shops?” The old man nods, slowly. He’s got his own cup of coffee, plain black, steaming gently into the air-conditioning. Outside, the rain creates a curtain that walls them off from everything else. Chris can’t even see all the way across the street. He can barely see a woman with an umbrella racing from her car into the nail salon place off to the side. 

“Yeah, them. I’m, um. It wasn’t anything they they they did.”

It’s something I did.

It’s something I am.

It’s something I’ll never stop being.

“Well, breakups do happen now and again. Usually the one who does the leaving isn’t the one who does the moping about and staring at rain, though.”

“I didn’t want to.” Chris sits back, keeping his coffee cup in one hand. The other drops to his stomach, to tap, soothing his nerves at being so close to a man he knows and doesn’t-know. His memories are there, fuzzy and hazy from being overwritten by fear and pain, but they’re there. He knows this man, Mr. Malley, who would watch him sometimes when his parents went out, or when his father needed to stop by work.

The memories are there, but they still hurt. 

His head starts to throb, a pulsing pain behind his temples. 

“I didn’t-... I, I love them, I d-didn’t want to.”

“Well, now, that’s a conundrum, isn’t it? Are you moving, then, Tristan?”

It hurts to hear his name, but it hurts in a way that feels good. He was that person, too, before he was Chris. He hums, low under his breath. “No. I, I, I just… you know, um, I’m just. I’m… hard. Difficult. To, to, to, to be with, to, um, to-... there’s a bunch wrong with-... with me.”

“You sound like your dad.” Mr. Malley laughs, a deep chuckle that rumbles more in his chest than out of his throat. “You know that? You sound just like him.”

Chris ignores the pain in his head and he turns, now, to look fully at Mr. Malley, blinking rapidly. “My, my, my dad?”

“Yep. Paul was a good man, and a good dad, but before he was that he was a scared boy with a baby on the way and a plan that might not work.” Mr. Malley sighs. “A scared boy who’d always had it a little rough, trying to make the world work for him when it did nothing but work against him. You were always his spitting image. He’d probably be tickled to see you still are.”

There is a sense, in Chris’s mind, of a blurry man with short red hair, sitting near him but not quite touching him, speaking with animation about how there are dinosaurs that lived closer to human beings than they did to other dinosaurs.

He remembers a man whose eyes sparkled with animated focus when he talked about the world millions of years ago, who loved him by sharing the information he held within his own mind.

He and his dad had understood each other, in ways that no one else did but his mother, and Chris was beginning to see that it had been her determination to know him that had fueled his mother’s actions, her endless support. The same way Jake and Nat were determined, and stubborn, and kept trying even when they got it wrong. 

Everyone gets it wrong sometimes, but that doesn’t… that doesn’t mean they aren’t trying. 

Maybe he got it wrong.

“He never broke up with your mom, but oh, he thought about it. You know, when he came to work with us, he had a plan. But plans… they have a way of going off the road and into a ditch. He worried he couldn’t make it work, he worried that it would be too hard for Ronnie to be with him and have a child, too.”

Ronnie.

Chris’s throat closes up, and he closes his eyes. 

All right, Tris, I got you these so the noise won’t bother you so much. We’re going to have a good day at the parade, okay?

“Her family never liked him, for one. That’s a rough spot to be in, I think.” Mr. Malley is quiet for a moment, sipping his coffee and watching the rain fall. “Ronnie didn’t see it that way, of course. That woman was a freight train and God help anyone who got in the way. My late wife, God rest her soul, helped Ronnie with some things when her own family wouldn’t. She’d come over big as a house, eyes sparkling. You were a kicker, she used to say, kept her up all hours of the night. Just a girl, still, your mom, but she had a steel spine and she wasn’t going to live any life but the one she wanted. But your dad… he worried, that it would be too hard on her.”

“Having, um, having me would?”

“No. Having him. Paul was a smart man, you know. He knew his job would be trouble. He gave her chance after chance to go, if she wanted. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? She didn’t.”

Chris looks at his phone, lying on the little table in front of the couch. There’s some text messages he hasn’t looked at. Couple of voicemails he hasn’t listened to. 

“Maybe he, he, he didn’t want to keep hurting her,” Chris whispers. 

“Hurt’s a part of living, lad, take it from someone who’s given out his fair share of it and more.” Mr. Malley hums. Outside, a car pulls up, almost bumping the curb. “Perhaps you’re meant to separate from your young partner, Tristan, perhaps not. It’s like I told your dad, way back in the Stone Age. You choose if you love someone, to be sure, but they choose if they love you back. You can’t decide that for them.”

“But, but I’m-... but, but I’ve been… what I am, it’s-”

“I know what you’ve been made to do,” Mr. Malley says gently. “You don’t have to explain, lad. We knew.”

Chris’s lips tremble. He doesn’t want his coffee any longer. He sets it down next to his phone, on the little table. The baristas talk quietly about a date that one went on the night before, there’s a low sound of machinery. It all filters into Chris’s mind, a cacophony of sound he picks apart or doesn’t. Right now it’s hard for him to think around all the sound, but he tries. “Then, then, then why… if you knew, um, why… didn’t you-”

He can’t finish the question. 

Why didn’t you save me from it?

“We couldn’t. It’s shite, is what it is, but we couldn’t. And by the time we could, you were with that nice young man who you live with now. I’m sorry for the time you lost, Tristan, and sorrier still I can’t give it back to you somehow. You’re your dad’s child through and through, but you’ve got your mother in you, too. You know what Ronnie did when there was something she couldn’t get through?”

Chris turns to look at this man, who knew his mother and father in ways he never could have. He swallows. “What?”

“She went over it. Or around it. Or blew it to smithereens and went through the wreckage. Whatever it took. They tried to kick you out of school when you were a wean, she fought them ‘til they realized they’d never win against her. They tried to tell her you wouldn’t read, she told them to go, well, to go sit on a thing or two and not to tell her what her boy could or couldn’t do.”

Chris thinks of Nat sitting next to him on the floor, patiently encouraging him to keep trying to turn the letters into words, despite his headaches, his tears, his certainty he’d never get reading back.

You will, Chris. I know you will. Just keep fighting for it. They won’t take anything from you forever, I won’t let them and you won’t let them either.

Don’t let them keep you from yourself.

“They told her she’d never have a happy life, having a wee one so young, but she built that happy life anyway with her own two hands and dared anyone to try and knock it down.”

“Someone… some, someone did, though.” The gunshots, his mother’s eyes going dull and blank, her whispered I love you so much, Tris…

“Sure. Yes.” Mr. Malley’s expression goes serious, and sad. “But it took breaking into her house at midnight and bullets to stop her. You’ve got plenty of your mom in you, lad. Plenty of your dad, too, he was always a stubborn git himself. Do you love this person you’ve broken up with? Hm?”

“Yes.” The answer comes without hesitation, even though his voice shakes and his heart races. “I, I, I do. That’s, that’s why I don’t want to-to keep hurting them by, by, by by being messed up from what, um, from what happened to me, I don’t… I don’t want to keep h-hurting them-”

“Let them decide how they feel about that,” Mr. Malley says, voice gentle and low. “Plenty of people are hurt and find their way forward together after.”

Jake and Kauri, laughing in the kitchen as Jake spins Kauri around in a circle, dips him backwards, presses a kiss to his nose that has him giggling. 

Antoni at the stove, sighing but with a smile on his face, watching them. Being pulled into the hug not quite against his will, all three of them laughing then. Kauri bright and sparkling, Jake a deeper harmony, Antoni soft and genuine. 

“Maybe it won’t last, maybe it will - but don’t let a hard past keep you from the people who love you. I’ve seen many ruined by believing you may only be loved if you’ve no pain inside you. We’ve all got pain, lad. Carrying it together’s a sight easier than trying to go it alone.”

From the car parked right outside, an elderly man unfolds himself, opening an umbrella to shield from the driving rain. Mr. Malley looks up and smiles. “Ah, right on time, must be ten sharp. That’ll be Cilly. D’you remember Cilly, lad?”

Chris looks as the man shuffles his way inside, pushing open the door. The little bell over the top jingles and the baristas cut off their conversation, standing up straight to call out a familiar greeting to a regular customer. 

He squints.

“Not… not very well,” He confesses, a little ashamed.

“Ah, well, that’s not a problem. He and I’ve known each other a long time. I was an angry man for a while after my wife died, you know. Seemed a crime that I should outlive her, when Christa deserved to live to a hundred and six if she so wished. Cilly helped me carry that anger when I needed to be angry, and he helped me put it down later on.” 

He gives a wave to the man - to Cilly - who looks at Chris and then back to Mr. Malley with clear surprise, then heads towards the counter to make his own order. 

“Be angry, Tristan,” Mr. Malley says, a little heavily, leaning over to him on the leg as he pushes himself, with a grunt of effort to his feet. “You may need your anger, in the days ahead. But if you’ve a love to help you carry it, who wants to help you carry it and who will be angry right there with you, and you love them back… well… don’t let the wickedness of others keep you from the happiness you could have. You’ll be a poorer person for it.”

Mr. Malley walks away without another word, leaving Chris by himself again on the couch, tapping at his stomach, thinking. He keeps looking at his phone, thinking about all the texts he hasn’t read, the way he’s refused to call them back when Laken kept trying to reach him.

He leans over to reach out.

He stops, hand hovering just above the plastic with its colorful case, the sensory sticker on the back of it that Laken had bought him. 

What happened after all the dinosaurs died, Tristan?

I, I, I don’t know, Dad.

Trick question, buddy. They didn’t. Paul’s eyes, bright and vibrant, gesturing to a bird in a tree nearby. Nothing stays the same and lives forever except alligators and sharks.

Right because, because they’re perfect.

Exactly. Dinosaurs died, sure, but they didn’t die, too. They just changed to suit the world after the one they knew how to live in was gone. Imagine, Tris. 

Imagine what?

Imagine the world destroyed and in darkness, buried in ash. Everything you know is gone, ruined, wrecked beyond repair. And imagine… imagine that you learn to eat seeds and little mice instead of big animals and leaves. Imagine you become smaller and smaller. Imagine that your arms turn to wings, that your bones hollow out to carry you higher above the piles of ash that turn to grass and to life again.

What? I, I, I don’t, um, I don’t understand-... Dad, um, I don’t, I don’t... know what you mean.

Right, sorry. Just... imagine you’re a dinosaur.

He’d laughed. Okay.

Now imagine your dinosaur family is gone, and you have to become something else. What do you become? Being a dinosaur means dying, right?

Um. Right.

So imagine that you look at death and say, no thanks. No, you’re not going to be over. This isn’t it for you. Even a meteor the size of the entire sky can’t end you. Instead of dying out, no, you look at history, at geological time, and you say…

Paul had trailed off.

Say what? What, what do I say?

Don’t tell your mom but-... you look at the end of the world and you say... fuck this, I’m going to learn to fly.

Chris picks up his phone, finds Laken’s name and photo in his contacts. It’s a photo of the two of them together, Chris and Laken smiling and laughing as he smears whipped cream on their nose and they smear a cross of fluffy white into his forehead. 

He dials.

They pick up on the third ring.

“Chris? Oh my God, Chris, are you okay? Are you-... are you okay, baby?” Their voice shakes, and he closes his eyes. 

This time, he lets the tears slip out and run down his face. “H-Hey, Laken, um, I, I, I-... I’m… I wondered if you, um, if you could, uh… are you busy?”

“Am I-... Chris, where are you?”

“The, um, the coffeeshop-”

“I’m on my way. Don’t you dare fucking move.”

At their usual table, at their usual time, Cilly and Sean Malley start to talk amicably about the week ahead. But he keeps an eye on Paul’s boy, where he speaks a few sentences and then hangs up the phone, looking out the window at the rain.

It’s twenty minutes before a new car pulls up outside, and umbrella-less, the partner Sean has seen with Tristan before comes racing inside, a blur of black clothes and black hair and brown skin. Paul’s boy stands, and his partner throws themself at him so hard the two of them fall backwards onto the couch.

They start laughing, and shortly after to cry. 

Their hands come up to either side of Tristan’s face, and they lean forward to kiss the scar on his forehead. He can’t hear what they say to each other, but he doesn’t need to. 

Ronnie, he thinks, would like this spitfire person that Paul’s boy is so in love with. 

That’s one wrong put right, at least for the moment.

One more to go.

Sean smiles and sips his cooling coffee.

-

@burtlederp @finder-of-rings @endless-whump @astrobly @newandfiguringitout @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @downriver914 @whumptywhumpdump @whumpiary @orchidscript @nonsensical-whump @outofangband @eatyourdamnpears

Just Go On from Kimmy Schmidt

[airborneice]

I'm very new to digital art and was wondering what sort of process/brushes you use for your Hilda art? I absolutely love your trolls and centaur designs ❤️

aw that’s very kind, thank you!! tbh my art approach is kind of all over the place but I’ll do my best to answer!

first off, I draw in photoshop and use mainly these two brushes -

the 1st is pretty much the standard PS brush and the HB one is what I used for most of the trolls/centaur stuff! generally I pick one of these brushes and use it for both lineart and putting in colour/shadows. (to be honest photoshop somehow got the settings on the HB brush messed up a lil while ago which is why I use it for lineart less now, but it’s still nice for doing shadows bc it has a really pretty soft edge :) )

as for art process, I’ll try to explain with the hilda little mermaid drawing I did recently - explanation thingy under the cut!

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so with most of my art I usually start out sketching it on paper first and then move the sketch to my computer - since you’re new to digital you might find it easier to start that way, it helps make things less complicated bc you already have something to start from

so for the drawing in question I started with this which is. A Mess

everything is all over the place and yasha from crit role is hanging out in the middle of it but this is the type of thing I start with! first with the lil thumbnail sketch up in the corner, and then doing the characters in more detail separately (if I know I’m gonna end up moving something to digital I’ll just draw the characters anywhere I can fit them on the page, bc I can worry about fitting them together properly later)

u can honestly skip the thumbnail sketch if u want, but for bigger drawings I find it useful to have something rough to refer back to, so I don’t forget what I’m aiming for overall when I start getting into the details

anyway then I move the paper sketch to digital and arrange things properly and add anything I’ve missed, and depending on how messy it is I do another slightly cleaner sketch overtop -

I’ve learned the hard way that fixing things at the lineart stage is a lot more hassle so I try to make sure everything’s looking as it should in the cleaner sketch - david’s initial sketch looked mostly fine to me so I only redid a couple things and added some details, while I changed a lot of kaisa til I was happier with the pose. I knew the salt lion was gonna end up being mostly hidden so I didn’t worry about refining it

SO next I make a new layer and start drawing the clean lineart over the sketch. I like using coloured lineart these days, so I pick a colour to sketch and do lineart in - literally any colour except black, since photoshop lets you change the hue later (you can go to Image -> Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation and change things as much as you like). I did all the lineart for the characters here in purple, like the sketch, and I made sure to keep all the lineart for different characters separate so I could mess with it individually later. I’ve got a bit of what kaisa’s lineart folder looks like below, and you definitely don’t have to put Everything on a new layer like I did, but I usually keep the eyes, brows and little details like the fin lines and scales separate bc they’re the things I’ll most likely want to adjust later

once I’ve got the lineart done in that one colour, I’ll use the Adjustments-> Hue/Saturation slider to change some parts of it (this is where having things on different layers comes in) to blend in or stand out more, so by the end it looks like it does below. I made some swatches so you can see which parts I changed from the main outline colour:

so I kept the original purple for most of it, but I changed the salt lion’s lines to blue, and kaisa’s scales to a light grey so they’d blend in more, and made her eyebrows much darker so they’d stand out from her hair. (I usually do this step after I’ve started colouring them in, bc it’s easier to see what’s working then and what isn’t, I’m just showing it here so you can see it in isolation). also, I’ll usually set the whole lineart folder to ‘multiply’ so it blends in with the colour layer even more

(tbh you don’t have to do it as complicated as this, everyone has their own approach depending on what they’re going for and it might take some trial/error before you find what works best for you. I just do this bc I’m used to it and don’t mind the extra hassle. pretty colours go brrr :) )

for colouring in, I use the lasso tool to trace over areas of the drawing and the paint bucket to fill them in. I usually put every different coloured area on a new layer so it’s easier to go back and change something if I decide I don’t like the colour. so everything is built up over a number of layers, and I can use the airbrush tool to soften the edges of some areas (like david’s arm fins). for the parts with gradients like their tails, I put down a flat colour layer (like the orange for david), select that area and then make a new layer and put the gradient on with a big airbrush tool. also for stuff from hilda I usually colour-pick straight from a screenshot of the show with the eye-dropper tool, it’s much faster than guessing them

so then we have the flat colours done, and I can show you why I like doing coloured lineart even though it takes longer bc

here’s the lineart all in black vs the final result with the colours. like…it’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with the all black one, but having the colours really helps soften things imo!

I didn’t really do much by shading for this one but to go over it real quick -

if I was just drawing a character on a white background I wouldn’t bother with this step, but here I know this scene is taking place in the dark & underwater, so I selected the characters, made a new layer and filled in a dark green colour overtop on a low opacity & set to Multiply, so the characters get this slight green tinge and look more like they’re in the setting (I did the same with the salt lion but I’m gonna just focus on these two for now)

for the actual shadows I got the same green colour, and on another multiply layer blocked it in, and just played around with the opacity til it looked about right

honestly not my best job at shading lol but it helps give it some depth and put them in the scene! if I hide the colours and lines for a sec you can see that literally all I’ve added over the original colours is this:

and if I add the basic colours of the background in, you can see how much it helps compared to the flat colours I started with -

they look so much more like they’re in the scene!

anddd after doing the same thing to the salt lion (which is just the same shading process but more layers and darker) and adding the rest of the background that’s it!!

don’t worry they’ll be fine lol

anyway sorry this got so long, I hope it helps!! I’m not the best at explaining myself so if anything I said here doesn’t make sense then feel free to ask :)

[gb-patch]

Ask Answers: July 10th

I really let asks get away from me lately. I was super focused on working on that Patreon Moment. With that done I can finally think about doing other things, so here’s a new collection of answers!

Thank you for sending in questions everyone ^^.

For the new Patreon moment, will you be able to reference it in step 4? Or just like a tiny nod to it if you pick certain choices?

There won’t be. I’m sorry if you were hoping for that! The Patreon moment is meant to be entirely optional, it’s not something that gets you extra content in the main game.

Is the new CG artist the main one now? :0 I’ve noticed theres been a difference in the art style recently. Is the old CG artist still going to make art for the game? :0

The original artist still makes CGs for the game sometimes, but he mainly focuses on character sprites.

Are you going to put the NSFW our life moment on a website other than patreon? I would love to get it but I can't use patreon atm.

I don’t know. I'm afraid we can't release the Patreon Moment on a normal game storefront because we can't mix 18+ content with our family friendly game. If there's some other place similar to Patreon where it's not the normal type of full-scale public content releases we'd consider using that, but I’m not sure if there is another site that’s better than Patreon in that regard. I'm sorry.

Out of curiosity, in all of your games so far, which characters in each were the most fun to write? They obviously don't have to be your favorite characters!

Buffalo Seer in AFA, really everyone in XOD/XOBD is pretty equally entertaining to write, The Guide in LoV, and Cove in OL!

idk if you accept "personal" questions, but is there anything you've been watching/ listening to lately

Mostly, I’ve been watching/listening to Authortube videos as of late! It’s people who talk generally about the process of how books become traditionally published and/or share their own experience as they attempt to be published. I don’t have an interest in writing normal text based books, but it’s really interesting to hear about that world. I’m listening to a video about royalties right now as I answer these asks.

Will one of the desserts we get to pick be fudge? That'd be such a cute reference! 

Haha, yeah, it should. Unless I completely blank on it and forget when trying to include the various referential food options.

I don't know if this has been asked previously but what would be the approximate heights for the presets MC can choose from Step 2 ~ 4? Are there any measurement you had in mind? Sorry if I didn't make myself clear kk I've been struggling with my English lately 💀 

I don’t know, ahah. I didn’t have any numbers in mind for that. So it’s whatever you imagine it is!

I noticed a bug with the Patreon moment when it comes to what your character wears. When Jamie and Cove are kissing while my character only had dresses selected, I had both the option to remove the dress or to remove the shirt... Picking one of the options to interact with Cove, after he removed his shirt, it had Jamie remove their shirt followed by ther pants despite only having dresses picked. 

Thank you for reporting ^^

I keep refreshing steam to see when the new doc for xobd will be released. I noticed you haven't posted anything about it in quite some time. Would it be possible to ask about a timeline/potential date? (If it's even this year—) I know you and your team are probably working super hard, I'm just super curious! ~Thank you!~ 

There are more stories done, I just haven’t gotten around to publicly releasing them. Hopefully I will have a chance to spend the time on that sooner rather than later!

hello!! i’m not sure if it’s an update but i’ve just replayed our life and at the end i can’t propose to cove anymore? :(( i’ve actually tried playing twice but the options are not there anymore, did you guys remove the options? i’m sorry if you’ve answered this before!! thank you and have a good one :) 

I’m afraid things haven’t been changed or removed, so I think you might’ve accidentally picked the wrong things somewhere along the way and locked yourself out of being able to propose by mistake. Sometimes you meant to say you want to get married but instead you mis-click and have it so the MC isn’t thinking about marriage or something. All I can suggest is starting from the beginning of Step 3 and making sure to follow the steps listed in the FAQ. I’m sorry for that.

Did yall remove some of the options for when youre making out with Cove in the charity moment? I could've sworn you could grab his bonkadonk and its not there anymore 

This is the same situation as the above. We didn’t remove things and you’re not wrong that there are sometimes those options. But there are various choices you have to make to get those options and it sounds like you accidentally missed something. If your relationship isn’t long-term, you can’t do it for example.

HI IM SO EXCITED I CAN FINALLY GET THE STEP 3 DLC 

Thank you for getting it!

Is Shiloh super totally straight bc I’m very gay and a huge Shiloh fan, would my man make an exception?😩

Sadly, he is one of our super straight characters. I’m sorry.

Hi, I have a very dumb question. In Step 2 does Cove not wanna share his drink with us at the mall (or rather why he stops drinking it) because it's an indirect kiss? Or is it like ...weird to him to share? Because if I remember right he eats off our spoon in the birthday scene right? 

Yeah, he’s awkward about it because he likes the MC and it feels very personal to share a straw with his crush.

Hi! If you don't mind me asking, who is the artist for OL2? Their style is so pretty! 

Thank you for saying so! This is her Twitter- https://twitter.com/redridingheart

Do Beginnings & Always and Now & Forever exist in the same universe? 

Yep! XOXO Droplets also exists in the same universe. It’s one big GB Patch world, haha.

Do Pran's parents regret the way they raised him? Do they feel ashamed of it?

No. They’re the type of people best cut out because they’re not gonna change. Which is why Pran does go very limited contact when he’s an adult.

Hi! I just wrapped up my second playthrough of Our Life, and I absolutely adore it, but I had a question. I went to the gallery and found I was missing 2 CGS (specifically Step 1-3 and 2-3) and I had no clue where they would've shown up. Which moments are those found in? 

You get it by telling Cove about his dad offering you money to be his friend in Step 1 and Step 2. You can’t get both in one playthrough, since you can only tell Cove the truth once. I’m really glad you liked it!

Hi hi! Please, how tall is Baxter and Derek? Love the game so much and I can't wait to see more! 

I don’t know, aha. I think Baxter was around 5′10 and Derek was like 5′8/5′9, maybe. I really am not one who has specific heights for things in mind.

is adult cove a bottom, top, or switch? 

A switch, though would choose the top if he had to pick.

I was wondering if there is a way to transfer save data? Even if through the game files. I wanted to be able to transfer my save data from my desktop over to my laptop so that I could continue playing right where I left off from but I'm not entirely sure how to go about that. 

If you save the save folder/persistent data of the game from your desktop and put it into the game folder on your other device, that could work.

Hi! Is it possible for us to know the date when our life: now and forever comes out on steam? Sorry if you've mentioned it before but I haven't seen it and I'm looking foward to that happening and just wanted to know :) 

It’s gonna be a long time, I’m afraid. There’s no estimate right now.

I started playing Our Life with my sister a while ago, and I think you guys should know that we discovered your secret. >:)

L from death note and Cove are clearly the same person, and this whole game is just an origin story!!

I’ve never seen that show so I’m sorry to say I don’t understand the connection/reference you’re trying to make. I’m pretty out of the loop when it comes to media. I don’t watch movies or TV.

Will OL2 have options for disabled MCs?

I understand if it's too complicated, just curious

Unfortunately, it’s not really something we have a plan for. We couldn’t finish the game if we tried to include every disability and have it be meaningful. It’d just be too much content to create. But if we decide to only include a few, how would we choose which disabilities get to be represented and which are left out? I don’t know. It’ll probably have to be something we don’t include as an option again, sadly. I’m sorry.

playing our life > anything else 

Haha, I’m glad you’re enjoying it.

Honestly, I would like to thank Our Life for helping me come to terms with my sexuality. Before, I never would've actually thought that it was possible to like boys romantically and still be asexual. Almost all of the BL visual novels I've read had unskippable sexual content in them and it honestly just didn't click with what I feel. I'm glad I found Our Life. I love the game, the developers, and this fandom so much. Now, I can safely come out as homoromantic AND asexual (at least anonymously here anyway; my parents are still huge homophobes 😂). 

Aw, it’s great to hear you felt comfortable being yourself in the game! That’s wonderful. I’m really sorry about your parents, though.

Will the demo for OL2 be on android? Really not sure if I could wait any longer than I have to aha 

Yeah, it’ll be available for Android once we eventually release a demo!

Do all these reveals perhaps mean development is progressing ahead of schedule? Please let that be the case I'm already obsessed with Qiu 

No, sorry, aha. Art comes along much faster than script/programming-work for us. It’s gonna be a long time before the game is a finished thing you can actually play. But at least we can look at the beautiful images.

Hey! First of all I wanna say I reallllllyyyyy loooovvveeee Our Life and XOXO Droplets! I have over 300 hours of playtime on Our Life… Anyways, I was just wondering, are the Derek and Baxter DLCs going to come out at the same time? If not, which one do you plan to release first? :3 

They will come out separately and Derek will be first! Glad you like the game.

I keep replaying Our Life to get every possible iteration and I am loving it <3 I was wondering if Cove gets locked out of his confession because MC was talking to Lee, would it be possible to confess to him in step 4? 

Yeah, you can avoid the confession in Step 3 and then get it in Step 4.

Hi, my Cove wears bracelets through step 2 and 3 but I still don't get an option to give him a bracelet? I didn't even know that was possible until I seen someone else ask about it lol 

Hm, did you use the Cove creator? Maybe there’s a bug where using the creator to add bracelets doesn’t fulfill the requirement to give Cove a bracelet in Step 3.

Wait, I'm dense, when does Baxter appear in step 2? Is it from big park firework? I feel so bad since i really love Baxter and waiting to buy his dlc. 

It’s in the Soiree Moment. You have to be just friends with Cove, indifferent, or crushing but not ask Cove to the dance at all. Then while there you can find someone new to dance with. But if you bring Cove to the dance while crushing, the MC won’t wanna dance with anyone else so you can’t get the scene.

In step 2 when we go to the soiree I made my mc go alone and baxter chooses the mc to dance, i'm curious, why did he pick the mc? sorry if this has been asked before! 

Because the MC looked to be around his age, seemed to also be searching for a partner, and had nice legs. A perfect option for him.

I read some of the FAQs, and I saw that we could tell Baxter about the condo that he rented there was previously the mean old grandparents. how do we get the mc to tell him that? 

It happens in the DLC Moment “Late Shift”. If you don’t have a job you instead get a longer scene with Baxter.

I don’t know if you’ve addressed this or not, but are you planning on paying voice actors for our life: now and forever? 

Yeah, we pay our VAs in all our projects.

hey can i ask how you did the moments thing in ol? im trying to get into making visual novels and while im VERY sure its out of my comfort zone and all that atm i kinda wanna know just for the future, bc im p sure it would work well for something i wanna do :O but its also fine if you cant say for other reasons :> 

I’m afraid I’m not sure what you mean. Are you asking how we programmed the screen or something script related? Adding Moments like that is pretty straightforward, though. You just have buttons that open to different labels and then the scripts are essentially individual short stories/vignettes. Good luck with your VN!

Since Autumn becomes gender fluid later in the game, will there be a character who remains as he/him to romance in game? 

OL1 has the he/him LIs, OL2 is all about other genders.

I don't want to impose on your creative plans, but a parrot could possibly make a good pet in an OL-type game? They're pretty long-lived and likely to still be thriving by the end even if the MC got them back in step 1. 

I do appreciate the suggestion, but I’m afraid it’s not likely going to happen. I understand there are technically some animals that could theoretically live long enough to last the whole game that or we could have the MC only get a pet after some years have already passed. But the many things that would have to be considered/accommodated for makes it just something we probably can’t manage adding. I’m sorry.

As time passes will we be able to see Qiu and Tamarack's other stage arts as well?

They are both so cute i can't wait to be friends with them!

Yeah, we’ll show content from other Steps in the future. It’ll be a little while from now, though.

Can you date Cove and still have your family comfort you in the car?

You can’t get Cove’s Step 3 confession scene if you have the family comfort you in the car. But that’s not the only way to date him. You can get together with him earlier in the game or later on in Step 4.

Is Mc always going to be the one walking down the aisle or could Cove do it? Also could you choose to have one of your moms walk you? 

No. Cove wouldn’t want to walk down the aisle like that and the MC automatically respects that. And the MC also gets to have their preferences respected, so it’s up to you whether they want to do an aisle walk or not. You also can pick who, if anyone, walks with you.

Once step 4 is out, will you be able to go the whole game on crush/love without either of you confessing? 

Yes, as long as you tell the game you don’t want to progress the relationship. Even in Step 4 it won’t force you to officially get together.

Howdy, so in Step 4, there will be any Romance with Derek that is not part of any dlc? 

He’s only a friend unless you get his romance story.

Will the step 4 in OL2 be one big step or are you considering moments? 

Step 4 is just an epilogue in both games.

hi kind of a weird question but!! we know tht cliff doesn't start dating again but. wht abt flings? like does he ever do 1 night stands or anything? thank u!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Nope. Cliff has a very small interest in sex. If he’s not in a real relationship with a partner he’s crazy about it simply isn’t something he feels a need for, so one night stands wouldn’t even cross his mind.

sorry if you've already answered this, but i was wondering if there were plans for there to be bonus love interests in OL2 like how we have derek and baxter in OL1.

Maybe! There are side characters who could be given romance stories, but whether or not it will happen depends on funding and how long everything else takes to finish.

I don't know if i'm allowed to ask about ol2 here yet, if not u can ignore this or answer it later. My question is can you date one of them and be good friends with the other? I don't want to be strangers with the other bcs i love them both a lot :<

Yes you can!

what patreon level do i have to be to unlock the nsfw moment? im on the $5 one right now, will that give me access to the moment, or just access to the moment progress? 

That’ll give you access! Tier 2 and anything higher allows the player to download it.

[maxwell-grant]

You have done an (excelent) post on how to reinvent Batman as a Pulp Hero. Do you think you could do one to Superman as well? Or do you think it is impossible to do this with the progenitor of the Super Hero genre without transforming him in a totaly diferent character?

Well, you saying it as impossible only makes it seem ever more tempting of a challenge, but yes, it is a bit harder. I'm gonna link my Batman post here as a reference point.

Partially because Batman's a franchise I've thought extensively about for a long time in regards to what I like about it or how I'd like to approach if given the opportunity, which is not something I can really say for Superman until more recently the Big Blue to start orbiting my brain. I don't have years worth of redesigns or fan concepts saved on my galleries and files to comb through to pick and choose here, and my experience with Superman as a character is considerably different, in some aspects more deeply personal, and not really something I'd like to go into in this blog, at least not now.

Part of the reason why it's harder is also because Batman and Superman have very different relationships with their pulp inspirations. Batman was, ostensibly, a pulp character adapted to comics, a dime-a-dozen Shadow knock-off who picked up and played up diverging traits from other characters and gradually ran with them to gradually forge a unique identity. Superman right from the start was rooted in a much stronger conceptual underpinning: the Sci-Fi Superman and Alien Menace who, instead of being a tragic monster or a tyrannical villain, becomes a costumed adventurer and social crusader. Even the name Super-Man was taken from an early story of Siegel and Shuster about a telepathic villain who ends the story lamenting that he should have used his powers for the good of mankind instead of selfishness. I hesitate to call what Siegel and Shuster were doing “subversive” because that term's picked up a real negative connotation, and it's not like Siegel and Shuster were out to upend their influences (they were pulp aficionados themselves), but rather putting a more positive, new spin on them.

Which is why it also becomes a bit harder to do what I did with Batman and align Superman with some of his pulp-esque inspirations, like John Carter, Flash Gordon or Hugo Danner, without just making it "Superman but he's John Carter", "Superman but it's Flash Gordon", and "Iron Munro / Superman but everything sucks" respectively. It's harder to create a character that wouldn't feel reduntant and derivative at best, and actively contradictory to Superman at worst.

I guess if I had to come up with a "Pulp Hero Superman" take I liked, well first of all I'd have to take steps to distance it from the likes of Tom Strong or Al Ewing's Doc Thunder, those two are as good as it gets in regards to Pulp Supermen. I stipulated for Batman a "No Guns, No Murder, No Service" policy partially to distance my takes on Batman from all the "Pulp Batmen" that just add guns and murder and take Batman back to the barest of basics. Likewise, I'm adding a "No Depowered Science Hero" rule here, which means it's a take that's likely going to veer off a lot more into fantasy and probably enough tampering with Clark's character that it does risk becoming a different character.

Frankly I don't think I'm gonna succeed at doing these without just making it a new character entirely, because with Batman you can get away with just upending the character's aesthetic and setting and even origin and still keep it recognizably Bruce Wayne (in fact Batman does that all the time), which isn't really the case with Superman, who needs those to remain recognizably Superman as he goes through internal changes and character shifts. I guess what I'm gonna do here is more taking the building blocks of Superman/Clark Kent and see a couple new ways I can rearrange them to create a Pulp Superman

Perhaps something we can do is to scale back or recontextualize the "superhero" parts without diminishing Superman's role as a superpowered fantasy character.

One way we can start is by picking on that connection between Superman and the sci-fi supermen/alien monsters of pulps I mentioned earlier and play it up further, to create a Superman who's deeply, deeply alien in a way that no mild-mannered disguise or colorful outfit can really disguise, something so dramatically powerful and alien, that instead you could get tales about the kinds of ensuing changes and ripple effects this has on the world upon the The Super-Man's arrival. And for that I'm gonna have to quote @davidmann95's concept for Joshua Viers' absolutely stunning Superman redesign on the left side of the image above

The red, the goldish-orange and white, the alienness, the angelic, sculpted feeling, the halo, that innocently curious expression: it’s genuinely beautiful. Superman as a redeeming science-angel from beyond our understanding, as much past the uncanny valley of limited human comprehension as a Lovecraftian monster but tuned to the opposite key - you could spend an endless procession of human lifetimes trying and failing to understand this being, but all you’ll ever know for sure is that it is beyond you, and it knows you, and it loves you.

Superdoomsday from Earth 45, healed and transformed into the savior it was originally envisioned as? Some descendant of his, or a future of the man himself? An alien who picked up on a broadcast of Superman from Earth, and so inspired reshaped itself in his image to spread his ‘gospel’ to the stars?

Alternatively, to come back to Earth a little, many, many pulp characters and series were built off the antics and personalities of real people, celebrities getting their own magazines or serials or fictionalized takes on them, so perhaps one way to make a "pulp" take on Superman would be to emphasize a bit more of Superman's real-world roots, trends that inspired his creation directly or indirectly at the time. The Jewish strongman Sigmund Breibart and Shuster's interest in fitness culture, Harold Lloyd's comic persona, the rising "strongman" film genre in the early 20th century, actors Clark Gable and Kent Taylor that supposedly named his secret identity, Clark Kent being a socially-awkward journalist based of Siegel's own school experiences.

Maybe one start to an authentic Pulp Superman, who would still be Superman, would be to just ask the question "What if Superman was a real person and/or a celebrity, and they started making pulp magazines and serials dedicated to him? What would those look like?". You wouldn't even have to restrict it to just a story set in the 1930s, in fact you could even play around with the rise of new mediums over the decades.

This third one is a little closer to some plans I have for my own take on a Superman character, not necessarily what I would do with Superman proper but one of my ideas for a Superman analogue. Superman's a character I'll always associate strongly with childhood and childhood fantasy, and to tap into that I would emphasize the other end of the fiction that influenced Siegel and Shuster: comic strips, in their case specifically Little Nemo and Popeye.

In my case I would bring additional influences from some of the comic strips I personally grew up reading like Monica's Gang and Calvin and Hobbes, and I already talked a bit about Captain Fray in terms of how he’s a Superman character despite being a villain. I guess you could call this one "What if Superman was a public domain comic strip character, stripped of the importance of being the founding figure of a super popular genre or extended universe, and also was kind of ugly?".

He's not "Sloth from the Goonies" ugly, I swear I didn't actually have Sloth in mind when typing out this idea, I've never watched that film nor did I know until now that he actually spends the film in a Superman shirt. That's not really what I'm going for. Visually I was thinking of modeling my take on Superman heavily after Hugo from Street Fighter and his inspiration Andre the Giant, to really emphasize the “circus strongman / freak wrestler” aspect of Superman’s inspiration, particularly in regards to how Hugo’s SFIII version strikes a really great balance in making Hugo ugly and both comedic and fearsome in battle, as well as lovable and even a little dopey (without being outright stupid, like his IV self) in his victory animations and endings.

He's still Superman, he still goes on fantastical adventures to help people, he's still a deeply loving and compassionate soul whose face beams with joy and affection and who's got wonderful eyes and a great smile. It's just that this smile has a couple of mismatched stick-out teeth or some missing ones, and he's got a crooked smile some people take as smug or malicious, he’s got a strongman’s gut instead of a bodybuilder’s abs, his nose is a little busted (maybe he’s had too many crash landings), and his hair is a little wild or greasy, and he doesn't exactly have very good people skills because of how others usually react to him and, y'know, he doesn't get the kind of publicity Superman would get despite doing ostensibly the same things. He’s not deformed, he’s incredibly intelligent and capable, but in comparison to how superheroes are usually allowed to look, he might as well be Bizarro in the public eye.

It becomes a running gag that people tend to assume some nearby fireman or cop was the one who rescued the hundred orphans out of a burning building single-handedly, meanwhile he's getting accosted off-panel by police officers who think he set the building on fire, or think they can bully this weird man dressed funny. He goes to rescue old people in peril and occasionally they yell at him that they don't have any money. He doesn't get asked to lead superhero meetings or teams even though many in the community advocate for just how much he does for the world, he gets censored out of tv broadcasts or group shots (even his face is sometimes pixelated when they do show him), people invite him on talk shows and don't really let him talk or assume they got the wrong guy. He goes to rescue a woman dangling off a building, and then he gets attacked by like three different superhero teams who assume he must have kidnapped the poor damsel. He was the first superhero, he is the strongest of them all still, but he never really gets credit for it, it nor does he even want to. None of this at all stops him or deters him, except for some occasionally funny reactions.

This never really changes for him, he doesn't really earn people's approval nor does he have to, instead the stories, outside of the gags and adventures you’d expect from a comic strip, veer more towards others learning to be less judgmental and him learning ways to better approach people. He isn't any lesser than Superman just because he doesn't look like most people would want him to look and he doesn't have to look like Superman. Really I think we could use more superheroes that don’t look all so uniformly pretty.

Again, probably not a take that would work for Clark proper, but it’s one way I would take a shot at doing Superman with my own

I have other stuff in the works for this character but I'd like to keep them to better work on them for now, but yeah, these are three of my shots at developing a Pulp Superman.

Alternatively here's a fourth idea that's more pulp than all of these: Join up Nicholas Cage with Panos Cosmatos again, or whatever weird indie director he decides to pair up with next, and let them do whatever the hell they want with Superman. Give us Mandy Superman. Superman vs The Color Out of Space. Superman vs Five Nights at Freddy's. Superman’s quest to find THE LAST PIG OF KRYPTON. Anything goes.

[bokutoslittlebird]

Your Place

Akaashi x sister!reader

Author’s Note : This was originally gonna just be a short drabble but like.. I’ve thought of this before. So I changed it into a full fledged fic; Fukurōdani has a girls’ volleyball club ; Love hotels in Japan are pretty popular, especially in Tokyo, and happen to have kiosks to keep up the anonymity, while also offering options of staying overnight or for a few hours (generally 2-4). The rooms offer lots of options, including room service (including food and toys), such as jacuzzi, showers, massage chairs, King-sized bed, as well as a box of free condoms ; okay I don’t know if a butt plug can actually plug up a vagina and if it is even safe (it should be) so don’t take my words as fact! Please!

Warnings : Incest, noncon/dubcon, gaslighting, naïve and innocent reader, manipulation, alcohol, underaged drinking [legal age in Japan is 20], love hotels, Keiji wants lil sis to be his housewife, mating press, pussyjob, orgasm denial, overstimulation, sex toys [butt/anal plug, egg vibrator, hitachi wand vibrator], lots of Nii-sans used, breeding kink, no actual pregnancy (yet), fingering (f. receiving)

The roars of the crowd enters your ears as the ball bounces against the floor of the large stadium, the opposing players diving to receive the ball only to fail. Your team screams and cheers, everyone running to envelope the ace of your team, Akari, as she hugs everyone back. Screaming hurts your ears, yet you’re still doing it. Adrenaline rushes through you as the announcer claims your team with the victory and the announcement that you’ll be moving onto the next round, the finals of Nationals.

Your team lines up, shaking hands with the opposing team as congrats is shared between members. Once that is done, you all face the seats on both sides, bowing and thanking them for cheering you all on. When your eyes look into the stadium seats, they immediately catch the lidded eyes of Keiji, his hands clasped together as he smiles. The simple motion has your chest puffing with pride, tears sliding down your cheeks as you know you made him proud. With your position on the team, he’s the one who trained you to be the best setter the Fukurōdani girls’ volleyball club has ever had these last three years.

Once the moment is over, everyone is back at the hotel room and either on their laptops, phones, television, or asleep. When you exit the bathroom, your hair has been brushed and styled with a nice dress, accompanying the leggings and boots Keiji gifted you to wear. Akari whistles, her arm over your shoulder as she talks to you.

“Who you lookin’ so good for?” She pries, eyes tracing the lip gloss you put on.

“My brother. He requested me to wear something nice. He’s taking me to dinner,” a bit of heat is in your voice as you say that. Keiji’s always pampering you, he loves seeing you dolled up. It’s been like that since you were playing dress-up when he was 10 and you were 5. Akari’s gaze takes on a confused look, pursed lips as she processes your words.

“He’s always taking you somewhere nice after a good game, it feels like. Why don’t you ever invite us?” She finally says. Your head snaps up, looking in the mirror at yourself compared to Akari who is also looking at your face and outfit. It wasn’t glamorous in your eyes, but it suddenly dawns on you that it’s more than a brother should expect. The twist in your gut is ignored, your head shaking as you clear your head.

“He doesn’t know any of you guys. Plus, he’s an alumni. He’s always at our games,” your response isn’t what she was expecting, you’re sure of it. But the truth is, you don’t know why Keiji takes you out to nice restaurants or just on nice walks after games. It’s the few times he has off, always requesting off to be with you, cheering you on, his full support as your brother. Occasionally, he even brings along Bokuto, his best friend, who always congratulates you and asks to have you visit his own team someday. It’s a request that you always turn down, Keiji’s eyes taking on a dark glint that sends shivers down your spine at just the mere memory of them.

Akari leaves you alone after that, your time to get ready slowly coming to an end as your phone rings. It’s Keiji, of course, asking if you’re ready yet. “Almost, nii-san! I just need to get my coat and then I’ll head down.”

He’s at the lobby of the hotel, lounging in a chair as he swipes on his phone. He’s dressed as nicely as you are, black slacks with a nice white dress shirt, all under a large coat to keep out the cold. You bounce up to him, excited for the dinner. “You look beautiful, [Y/N],”

“Thank you! You know me so well, so it’s really all your doing,” you giggle, linking your hand in his offered elbow. It felt so right, being beside as you had been these past few years. Walking towards the restaurant, you didn’t even feel the ache in your ankles and balls of your feet from the heels nor the unmistakeable tension between the two of you. It just felt familiar and right to be in this position, sitting across from Keiji as he lets you gush about all the stuff going through your head during the match or even when you happened to be getting ready for the dinner. A shadow seems to settle over his face as you refer to it as such, just a dinner. You almost referred to it as a date, but quickly corrected yourself.

Tension hangs between you two, you having to force it away by breaking the silence Keiji brings. He’s usually much more talkative, praising you as he talks about what you did right and correcting you on things you did wrong, but never criticizing you too hard. Dinner ends, with Keiji paying the full bill without ever letting you know, saying that he simply cannot let a woman pay, regardless of situation. The champagne and wine he let you have a taste of lingers in your mouth, a burn in your throat from the bitter taste of alcohol. It’s not enough to get you drunk, but you do find yourself clinging to Keiji tighter, feet unstable and legs unreliable as he brings you back to the hotel.

He stops and even in your bubbly and hazy state, you can tell the hotel isn’t the same. “Come on, you need to rest,” he says, lips next to you ear as he ushers you inside. Upon entering the room, the lobby, you know it’s not the same. You panic, the alcohol making you less restrained in your actions as you go to tug on Keiji’s arm.

“Nii—”

“Ah, ah, Keiji, dear. Until we get back to your room,”

His usage of ‘your room’ has your nerves calming down, even as he uses his card to pay the kiosk and tap on the screen, buying something. A metal jingle comes from the bottom of the electronic, Keiji picking up the key to a room. Urging you along, you follow him to the elevator. The lack of people seems to enter your mind, confusing you as you glance around the spotlessly clean black elevator. A small voice enters your mind, telling you that the hotel’s elevators are supposed to be silver, shimmering in the light that shines down.

Keiji has to practically drag you into a room, the door shutting and clicking behind you as it locks. The room is spacious, a large tub in the corner of the room as the king-sized bed offers comfort and relaxation. Yet, you falter— unmoving, your voice seems to barely get out as you question your brother. “Where... where are we?”

“My room for the night, dear. You’re drunk, you need to rest,” his comforting words have you slowly shuffling towards the bed. The chair beside the bed seems too fancy for something in a normal hotel room, more adrenaline entering your veins as you panic from unfamiliarity.

“Nii-san, I don’t like this. Take me back to my room. Akari and Hana and-��

“Shut up, you little slut,” the venom in his words has you squeaking, your much smaller frame easily being pinned to the bed by Keiji’s much broader frame. “I’ve been generous this entire evening and all you’ve blabbered about is your team and your friends. What about me, huh? You haven’t even asked how I was doing the entire date,”

“Nii-san, stop!”

“Do I not hold the most importance in your life anymore? You used to be all over me, my sweet little sister that absolutely enjoyed being around me. Now you’re prancing around as if you have not a care in the world. That boy from the boys’ volleyball club seemed awfully close for comfort, don’t you think?”

“He-,” you once more falter, the brief images from after the game when the captain of the boys’ team congratulated all of you on the win. He wasn’t close to you, you were sure of it, but why would Keiji have been there? “He’s barely a friend, nii-san,”

“Not only that, but you always have that giggle and tendency to twirl your hair as you talk to Bokuto-san, your body moving closer to him as he would walk beside you. You barely acknowledge my existence anymore. Do you know how that makes me feel?”

“I’m sorry,” the tears spill down your cheeks, a hiccup as he continues to say mean things. “I’m sorry,”

“You’ll be graduating soon and then you’re going to live with me. You’re going to live with me and be my little housewife. I’m going to make you completely mine, inside and out,” his breath is hot as it fans over your face, his grip strong as he continues to squeeze and hold your face. You’re unable to do anything, the fear from his words and actions has you frozen beneath him. As his words settle in, ice crawls through your veins as you realize your gut feeling, the tension between you two, everything you ignored for the past hour and a half had a reason for being there. His entire plan was to bring you here, but you’re unable to do much of anything against him — he’s always been stronger than you. When you were young, it was comforting, his arms holding you after a nightmare or even when your first friend moved to America, but now it just served to bring more tears to you eyes, your body forced to let him do what he wants to you.

Keiji’s quick to undress you, your coat being shed as he pushes your fancy dress up, the leggings, shoes, and panties being pulled off and left to fall on the floor. Tears continue to fall, chest heaving as you’re powerless to do anything. Even if you could find the energy to move and attempt get him off of you, it wouldn’t bring anything to fruition. “You’re so dry, are you not enjoying this?”

“No, nii-san. I’m not,” you’re honest with him, yet he doesn’t stop. Sitting back on his heels, he lets his eyes trail over your form. Before a thought can enter your mind to move, he’s pushing his weight on top of you as he grabs something the table beside him, a long metal rod emerging from the miniature dresser. He keeps you pinned, moving the rubber head down to your clit, pressing a button as it begins to vibrate. “Ah! Nii-san,” your muddled voice comes out, the sensation sending an unfamiliar tingling up your spine.

“It feels good, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, I’m going to make you feel even better. All you gotta do is relax, pretty girl,”

“I’m- I’m still- y-your—” your words die on your tongue, your gut twisting into a knot as the sensation turns pleasurable. You’ve never touched yourself, always being told by Keiji that only bad girls touched themselves, that whores and sluts did. Keiji-nii doesn’t like those kinds of girls, so you never dared to go against his wishes.

“Of course you are, baby. You’ll always be my pretty girl, even if I have to remind you exactly where you belong. I’ll remind you of your place,” his words stop there, but in your head his words continue. Silently, the words of ‘if you’ll let me’ enter, an unspoken question that asks for your consent. Yet, you don’t give him anything else. Your moans and mewls are all he gets, a hand grasping at the unbuttoned dress shirt still on him. A small smile paints along his lips, your vision going black as you roll your eyes. Before the knot can release, the vibrations are removed from your clit and you whine, aftershocks coursing through you.

Keiji’s voice is barely a whisper, under his breath, “I’ll give you something much better, don’t worry.” The vibrator is forgotten and discarded, his hands fumbling with his slacks as he pulls them down, along with the dark grey underwear. His cock springs free, hard and thick and long, you unconsciously scoot away as he strokes himself. “Don’t move away,”

“But it’s scary, nii-san,” you whimper, arms close to your chest as your head bumps against the headboard. He doesn’t say anything, using his hand to rub his cock’s tip against your folds. Contrary to earlier, you’re dripping wet as the wet smacks of his appendage against your skin has you clenching around nothing, more juices dripping out. Moving his hips back and forth, he adds another sensation on your clit as he thrusts in between your folds. His tip catches onto the hood of your folds, brushing against the overly sensitive nerves as you whine and mewl at each move he makes.

“You’re so nice and slick for me, it won’t hurt. It just seems scary, look,” he forces you to do just that, hand gripping your hair as he forces you to look at his cock. The underside of it is glistening with your slick, absolutely dripping with you as it slides down to his base and over his balls. “It’s just in your mind, it won’t hurt. Don’t you trust me?”

“But nii-san, I don’t want this,” it’s not what he wants to hear, you’re sure of it. Yet he says nothing. A sigh finally breaks the silent tension as he rubs his finger against your cunt, two fingers slipping in until they can’t anymore. You’re tight, you know you are, clenching around only two of his fingers.

“If you didn’t want this, you would still be dry. You wouldn’t be squeezing my fingers so snugly. This is your body saying it wants this, don’t you remember what I said?”

Of course you don’t, he says a lot to you, so you shake your head. Another sigh.

“You need to listen to your body. It knows you better than you know yourself. I know you better than you do, you know,” his words ring true, his fingers continuing to pump themselves into you as he talks. Eventually, the feeling is no longer unfamiliar, the sensation pleasing as you moan. He smiles at that, leaning to press a kiss to your forehead as his fingers retract themselves. Using the slick on them, he rubs them against his cock to use as lube.

Pushing his tip into you is scary, but it’s not painful. As he sinks further into you, it becomes much more painful. The room must be soundproof, since Keiji keeps pushing in without trying to make you stop your screaming. He does, however, lean down to press his lips to your tear-stained cheeks as you squeeze him. He groans, his hips rutting against you. “You’re fine, stop screaming. Stop being so pathetic,”

His harsh words have your screams silencing, tears and sniffles as your walls flutter around him. It still hurts, it burns, it stings, it’s more painful than anything you’ve ever dealt with before. Before you can manage to get adjusted, Keiji is pushing your legs up to your chest, somehow making himself feel deeper than he actually is. The feeling of being crushed is back once more, his hips rearing back only to come back down against your skin. The scream from your throat is more of a moan, nails digging into the back of Keiji’s neck and teasing the small hairs as he pistons his cock into your cunt.

It’s a tight fit, the way you’re sucking him in and squeezing him with every thrust. Keiji’s balls slap against your slick ass, cunt squelching with each pump of his cock into you as more juices are forced out. His own moans and grunts of pleasure are drowning in the wave of mewls, squeals, and moans spilling from your lips. The feeling from before is back, the knot in your tummy as he rubs his cock against the inside of your walls and instead of being denied once more, the knot finally snaps as you cream all around his cock, accompanying a squeal of his name.

“That’s it, pretty girl. Cum on my cock, let me know how good you feel,” he chuckles, picking up his pace as you continue to suck him in. A garbled call of ‘nii-san!’ leaves your lips, the sensation of his heavy balls slapping against you and his thick cock against your fluttering walls has you creaming around him once more. A sound akin to a growl comes from his throat, leaning even further forwards as he gets himself as deep as he can go, the hair at the base of his cock rutting against your sensitive clit. “I’m going to fill you with my seed and you’re going to have my babies, okay?”

“No, nii-san, I don’t want that!” You cries are ignored, your body continuing to clamp around his cock as he shoots his load into you. The feeling of being full and so warm inside has your eyes rolling, drool spilling from your open mouth as you gush around him, clear liquid splashing against his abdomen.

Once the high has passed, he removes his cock from you, keeping you in that position. You don’t dare speak, unsure you’ll be able to as your throat burns from all the screaming and cries. A metal object briefly enters your vision, the object being inserted into your pussy that drips with your brother’s seed, milky white and thick.

“If you keep it all inside, I’ll give you another treat, okay? You wanna be a good girl for me, don’t you?” He doesn’t wait for a response, but he does take out another object. “You need to keep having an orgasm, I’ll make sure you feel real good, okay?” A medium-sized egg-shaped object enters your ass, another stinging pain from the insertion. Another round of vibrations start, your legs shaking as you mewl, head thrown back as you feel another orgasm quickly coming on. “You’ll be a good little housewife for me, won’t you? Swollen with my child and your pussy will be all for me, you know this, don’t you?”

Of course you do, regardless whether your mind agrees with you or not. He’s your nii-san and he knows best.

[kyotakumrau]

GIGS No519 Interview 京 [Voice]

GIGS 2021 JUN released on April 27th (interview itself was done on April 6th)

The last solo interview is with Kyo. In the previous interviews, all band members from the music instrument squad all mentioned ‘simple’ in reference to Oboro. Yet how did he perceive the song and what feelings were put into the lyrics? Let’s discuss it thoroughly.

The most important thing is that I want to be able to let out honestly what I want express, what I see, what I felt or thought that one moment.

text: Yukinobu Hasegawa photos: Reishi Eguma translation: kyotaku (pls let me know if you see any mistakes!)

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――It shows in the footage enclosed in the deluxe and first press editions of ‘Oboro’ that the songwriting for the new album started quite some time ago.

京   I was probably working on various things without thinking about a single, so I don’t really remember when was it. I’m working on songs aaaaaaaall the time (laughing). I don’t really grasp when each song was done or which one will become a single, so honestly speaking I don’t really know.

――You’re also doing sukekiyo. I have many chances to speak with sukekiyo members and they were surprised that ‘Kyo will be sending new songs ideas or melody anytime’ (laughing). Is your pace of coming up with ideas as high with DIR EN GREY?

京   On the contrary, I’m not saying much in case of DIR EN GREY. Just about ‘I’m looking forward to it’. I’m not writing songs, so upon listening to the demo of the song sent by other members I just give them my opinion like ‘how about we change it a bit like this?’ or ‘this way is good’.

――At the time you started writing songs did you already have an idea what you wanted for the next album?

京   I didn’t. Not at all, I felt I could read this and that about the album from the direction we were going from the atmosphere of the songs the members brought in earlier. In our case we often don’t have talks like ‘let’s make an album like this’. So, on the contrary I usually don’t say much about things like album image, I think we can make more irregular thing if I keep a flat position.

――So even you are looking forward to what kind of response you will have when listening to the song’s demo?

京   I am.

――Because of the spread of COVID-19 it’s hard to move around now, so how do you get input for the music, art and so on?

京   Nah, I don’t really do anything. If you ask about input... the most I do is watching various news.

――Do you feel that the things happening around you and around the world are something that drive you when you’re expressing yourself?

京   I’m sure they do. What I think when I see and feel various things, how I communicate that, it’s about that.

――The single ‘Ochita koto no aru sora’ you released last year had a digital release only thus there were no lyrics included, but fans listened to the song many times to try to understand the lyrics. As a result, I think they realized that it’s a song with a dreadful/intense message. Because lyrics include a such date as ‘㋇㏥・August the 6th’ among other things, there was a reaction also from fans around the world.

京   Frankly, I don’t check fans reactions. I don’t know what people will think after listening, but I don’t want to talk about the atomic bomb. In the end, the fighting continues, the same things keep happening again and again...like that. I think there are many issues, but there’s no right answer to them, it’s all just collisions of what we ourselves think is right and just. That’s why you can’t say that something is bad as a rule. It’s just one way of thinking, there are many ways we can look at things. For example, currently during the pandemic holding a concert is the right thing to do or not, won’t the answer and the way of thinking be different for every person? Now more than ever we got a situation when it’s very difficult to say ‘this is the way’. It’s the way I feel now seeing various things.

――Because of COVID-19 there’s a lot of hate crime against Asians in the US. It’s a crime, but the people who commit it may see it as an act of justice.

京   That’s true. There are also many other issues like the gender discrimination, in all of them Japan is seen as lagging behind. It can’t be simply denied because the situation now and in the past is different, depending on the country or culture the way people feel or think is also different. It’s a difficult issue, isn’t it?

――I think you write many lyrics that make us think about that. There’s not only grieving in ‘Ochita koto no aru sora’, there’s a positive message at the end. That really resonated with me. Do you feel like the way you express and communicate things has changed?

京   No, I don’t think anything changed.

――I’d like to talk about ‘Oboro’ now, it seems like it was a pick out of few songs. What was your impression when you listened to the original song?

京   It was like all demos felt more like the album songs than a single. It’s normal as we originally didn’t start working on them thinking about creating a single, most of the songs were intended for the album and we decided to finish one as a single. Recently we had many up-tempo singles, so I thought it would be a good idea to release a ballad, not as epic as previous ones, but a ballad that could be included on the album.

――What kind of response did you have when you listened to the original song for the first time? Talking about the lyrics, I thought that because of the pandemic it became difficult to move around, and the thoughts have turned inwards. You told me [at t an interview] some years ago that you had some traumatic events, I thought [lyrics] relate to them.

京   In terms of the worldwiev and lyrics, recently there were no lyrics directed at one person, a lot of them had a message from a very broad perspective, that’s why first thing I wanted to do was to have a narrower worldview. So when I listened to the original song and the scene emerged [in my mind], the past songs videos are very broad. This isn’t a continuation but it was a start for me to want to put something like that together. It’s not about my own trauma, it’s a narrow worldview inside a big worldview. And without using grotesque expressions, I wanted to depict various feelings like love or hatred, and wrote lyrics with that in mind.

――The past songs you mentioned were also songs that had music videos made for them at the time. I was actually watching the video and having a flashback. The pain and agony of a woman, and I dare say her feelings about her aborted baby. That’s what gives a shape [to the new song]. At the moment is your expression or the direction of what you want to bring up in your lyrics changing?

京   I don’t mean it like we all should try being positive (thinking about the future) together, but as one should think about various things, I always want to write about what we think is the right path or what is just. But as I said before, what is right varies per person. It’s something I want to write about on the next album in the future.

――In other words, like stabbing/piercing each person’s feelings?

京   Well, yes. I think I’ve been thinking like that since the last album The Insulated World, but this time I’d like to go further into that direction... I mean it’s not like I have something precise I want to convey or I want to bring up this and that. The most important thing is that I want to be able to let out honestly what I want express, what I see, what I feel or think that very moment.

――As your age and work experience accumulate, I think people’s ideas and thinking will also change. What can you think of [that has changed] in the last few years?

京   Nothing (laughing). It’s not something you know about yourself. On the contrary I want to stay without changing. To change because the world is becoming a certain way is really not like me, I was always my own type of person, so I want to continue as I am. This is something I’m saying all the time, but I hate fixed ideas, I want to be always free to express myself. But there’s not much freedom in the world nowadays. Besides the problem with COVID-19, many countries have civil wars. That’s where we learn the importance of freedom again, and I also wondered if having a lot of freedom is not justice. When you start thinking like that it messes with your head, but I want to be free just in the world of expression. I feel like this is a one right no one can take away from me.

I think the most negative thing, for fans, for the band and for me, is not being able to show our real selves at the concerts.

――Are you taking that stance now as well when you’re writing for an album?

京   Nah, I haven’t written anything yet. We’re in the early stage of pre-production, so it’s not the point where I write lyrics yet. The songs are still in the middle of being changed, so it’s like I want to see more of them. Also, most songs don’t have a melody decided for them. And what I feel and think, what I want to express, things inside of me are changing every day. I want to be able to pack as current me as possible into [the lyrics], and to put into lyrics as recent images from the songs as possible, so I haven’t decided on them yet.

――Did you write the lyrics for ‘Oboro’ just before song-writing time as well?

京   Yeah. After the length/scale of the song is mostly decided in pre-production next is a step when I’m inserting temporary lyrics and then start recording.

――You have a [recording] vocal booth at home, so did you record ‘Oboro’ deciding the vocal direction by yourself?

京   If it was different, I probably wouldn’t be singing. I don’t want to go to a studio outside (laughing).

――Do you sing creating an environment for the song’s world like getting your room all dark when recording?

京   Nah, I’m a person who doesn’t do things like that, I can do it anywhere as long as I have a vocal booth. Just, I sing when I want to sing. When using a studio from what time and until what time is decided, engineers have their schedules, so even if I’m not happy with something and want to rerecord it, it takes time to get ‘let’s listen to it’ or ‘I’m gonna organize data’. And sometimes that timing doesn’t match my own rhythm. And, there are times when I want to sing soon after waking up or want to sing when I’m anguished not being able to sleep. I value this kind of speed so I can’t record outside my house anymore.

――In ‘Oboro’, even the trembling of your throat when your voice comes out got recorded, which helps the listener to get into the song even more. What were you looking for in terms of singing?

京   It’s a bit old-fashioned, isn’t it? In the past I was singing with my emotions so my mannerism/habits would really come out hard. After that I tried to get rid of them as much as possible, and as much as possible tried singing putting emphasis on the pitch and timing. For example, when the timing of each sound in first A melody and second A melody didn’t match perfectly, I would be unhappy, but now I just sing naturally so the timing can be a bit off. I deliberately sing with the feelings that were matching the flow of the song, so I don’t record with the intention of singing perfectly.

――You absolutely prioritise the emotions?

京   That’s right. But in case of ‘Oboro’, the lyrics don’t have a worldview where the emotions get stirred up to just burst out. They are hidden inside, I thought it would be interesting to sing in a restrained way without exploding. With that point, I recorded the song with the emphasis on the flow of the song. And I think I will keep that point the same when recording the album.

――There was a time when you were thinking like drawing a blueprint with many different voice tones and the arrangement of the choruses, it was interesting for you to play tricks with them, right?

京   There was a time when I pulled that out as a part of me, but now I want to pull other parts out. Increasing the things I can pull out, if I think the approach you just described is good, I just have to drag it all out. When I listen to the album as a whole, if I think there’s not enough appeal, I’d try a more gimmicky approach. In the end I won’t be satisfied with myself. I want to keep searching for more and more new ways, not only sing the way I’ve sung before.

――You had this kind of attitude from the start. As a coupling song for the single you have a customary self-remake song. This time it’s ‘TDFF’, to listen to the original song from the past again... ah, you don’t do it. I’m shaking my head for jumping into your answer (laughing).

京   I just briefly look at the old lyrics and decide I want to keep this part, I don’t need this part and so on. To some extend in myself I’ll just extract some part and from there extend the image and add things to it.

――Is it like breathing new life into a song?

京   Nah, it’s just the 2021 version. If we redid it now it’d look like this. We wanted to keep as many good parts as possible, but there were also parts where we felt ‘here it’d have been better to go with this’, so they got changed in the current version.

――By changing the song to a newest version can you see your attitude towards the singing or your thoughts?

京   I’m always putting in the things I’m feeling at that time, so I think to an extend I can see it. But it was originally a simple song, so it was easy.  

――It was also recorded in your vocal booth at your home, right? I think I’d actually like to have a peek at you singing to see what’s it like (laughing).

京   Ah, it’s a really simple booth about the size of the phone booth. There’s a small thing working as a desk and I put my computer there, singing while sitting down and using a hand-held mic. I don’t want to use a recording standard stand mic. I want to sing as much as possible the same way I sing at concerts. But there’s no space for me to stand up so I sing sitting down (laughing). But in my case, it doesn’t matter if I’m singing standing or sitting down or sleeping (laughing).

――It doesn’t really affect your concentration.

京   I usually can finish recording one song in less than 2 hours, so I think anyone can concentrate for about 2 hours (laughing).

――The 3rd song on the single is a live track. How do you feel about performing without the audience?

京   Honestly speaking the songs that require a response [from the fans] were a bit tiring, but there was no change with the songs focusing on the worldview or the songs that just explode. Doing it naturally is about doing it naturally. I haven’t listened to that live track yet, but yeah.

――But yeah (laughing). Did you choose the song that got the most votes?

京   Nah, I’m okay with any live track. Like ‘please choose whichever you want’, I leave it to the other members or the people in the company. Concert is a raw thing (=unedited, live), I had many live tracks in the past where my voice was all messed up or where I was singing cleanly. That’s why now I don’t have anything that would make me go ‘wait, this is a bit...’. I think the me from that time is packed there so anything is fine.

――You’re soon going to have a first in a while concert with the audience on May the 6th. I think you might answer ‘not at all’, but how are you approaching it?

京   Today I was at the concert film screening event in Osaka, and we talked there about the concert. And I said there that because it’s still a month away I don’t think about it (laughing). Listen, if you were told you will be having this and that for dinner in a month, you would listen with only half an ear being ‘yeah got it’ (=you’d forget it next moment) (laughing). I start thinking about it about a week before the concert. I’m not the type of person to go ‘I’ll do my best!’, I’ll just let out my honest feelings at the time.

――During the time when you didn’t have the type of space or time that is a performance with the audience, were there any moments when you started wondering ‘what are concerts?’ and so on?

京   No, there weren’t. There were moments when I felt like I’d like to do a show, but I didn’t really think about things like ‘why are we doing concerts?’ or ‘what are concerts for me?’. It’s not like all my music activities stopped, so I didn’t have a moment to think that deeply about it. If anything, rather than us I think it’s the fans who were thinking about it.

――Because for many people concerts are something they live for. Kyo, you’re looking healthy.

京   There were times when it was very hard for me mentally, I don’t know what was the reason. Now... I’m trying not to think too much about unnecessary things. I’m trying to only think about what’s in front of me or about things I’m able to do now, I’m trying not to push myself too much. I’m trying to accept myself as I naturally am. But even then, there are still things that keep piling up, making me worry endlessly. I wish I would be able to let them erupt at concerts. I think the most negative thing, for fans, for the band and for me, is not being able to show our real selves at the concerts.

[remuscore]

Slumber Party

Original idea from here

Summary: Janus doesn’t cuddle. Well, maybe a little...

Warnings: None. Maybe some suggestive stuff, but it’s Remus so.

Taglist: @hannahdra-ws @royalty-of-all-things-snuggly

Janus was invited to movie night with the light sides again. He was thrilled of course. The third movie night he’s been invited to with everyone and Thomas. 

Well, almost everyone. 

Remus still wasn’t getting invited.

Janus always missed Remus during these nights. No one made dark jokes, no one picked movies that made Janus jump and grimace, no one wrapped him in their arms around him and kept him comfortably warm against an uncomfortably naked body. 

However, they have tried their best. 

Not naked thankfully, but Patton sure did try bringing him into the big, movie night, cuddle pile they have. Janus just sat by the end of the couch as everyone sat together, even Logan participated in the big cuddle pile by sitting beside Virgil on the end. 

But this time, Janus decided it would be different. He’ll be bringing Remus with. 

When he told his plan to his beloved little monster his plan, he was singing with excitement. Literally. He sang a whole little ditty about how excited he was. 

“Do you think they’ll let me pick the movie? Have they let you pick a movie yet?” Remus stumbled out of his room the night of the event wearing nothing but the boxers he agreed to wear for tonight. Janus waited for him by the stairwell with his own silky pajamas on. 

“Roman wasn’t going to let me pick the movie, but Patton forced him to after he stole my hat when they watched Frozen,” Janus said. He smiled when he saw the large stuffed Cthulhu Remus was currently hugging against his chest. “I’m sure they’ll play your movie if you asked.”

Remus snorted at the mere idea and shoved Janus towards the door. Janus smirked, though he was awfully nervous about bringing Remus along. He didn’t wish for any of the sides to exclude him again or— heaven forbid— distrust him again because he wanted to bring his beloved friend (and family, night he add) along. 

As he and Remus arrived, the mood considerably dampened. Patton even let out a little “oh my goodness” at the sight of the infamous duke. Janus paid no mind to them as he took his usual spot at the end and Remus happily sat at his side. 

They all waited in some… expected silence that both Janus and Remus reveled in. Janus more than Remus, really. As much as Remus loved making them squirm, he wasn’t the biggest fan of silence. 

“Remus…” Patton was the first to say anything. He laughed nervously. “Uh, hi there… sorry I wasn’t aware you were coming—”

“Yeah, why is the skunk head here!?” Roman shouted, a whine carrying in his voice that made Remus giggle.

“Why not!” He retorted. Roman glared at him and pointed to all of him.

“And not respecting our rules!”

“Or himself.” Virgil muttered. Janus rolled his eyes. They’ve all seen Remus naked before, it wasn’t like there was anything new beside a few scars.

“And where in the name Poseidon, did he get that /adorable/ plushie of the Gods!?” Remus hugged his Cthulhu tighter at the mention of him. 

“I got that for him,” Janus said, pointedly ignoring Roman’s original question. He challenged him to say otherwise with a look. Judging by Roman’s sputtering and pouting, he had won. “What are we watching tonight, hm?”

“Well, we were just about to vote—”

“Cinderella! Cinderella!” Remus shouted, practically vibrating in his seat and startling Logan into shutting up and moving closer to Patton. Remus didn’t seem to care though. “I want to watch Cinderella! Please, please, please!”

“Cinderella?” Patton and Roman sounded surprised by the plea, pleasantly and utterly confused respectfully. 

“It’s his favorite.” Virgil sighed, rubbing his forehead. Remus has bugged them all about why Cinderella is his favorite many times before. 

“Especially the live action one.” Janus added, watching with guarded fondness as Remus bounced and clapped his hands, nodding enthusiastically with excitement. 

“Well… that sounds like a perfectly… reasonable movie to watch?” Patton ended his sentence like a question, looking at the others around him for any reason not to do it. Roman still shook his head and frowned deeply. He pointed at Remus again.

“I don’t trust his excitement,” he announced. “He’s going to try and ruin this movie for us, I know it.”

“Please, Roman, when has Remus ever ruined anything?” Janus says as innocently as he could, bringing a wine glass that he had just summoned up to his lips. 

“Oh, oh!” Remus wiggles in his seat, excitedly slapping Janus’ knee. “What about that time I ruined Christmas for—”

“Let’s start the movie, shall we?” Janus interrupted Remus quickly. He cleared his throat and waved for the tv to turn on to the movie they had all— in theory— agreed upon. Remus was quickly distracted with a squeal as the classic Disney theme started playing. 

They’ve all settled now that the movie started. There was the added unease as they continued to glance apprehensively in their direction. Janus continued to sip on his wine as Remus’ eyes stayed intently on the screen. 

“So— if I may ask—” Logan started, keeping his eyes on the screen as well as everyone else as he talked. “Why is this your favorite movie, Remus? It seems uncharacteristic.”

“Cinderella is about being hated by her only family left and unable to leave her confinement, forced to act a certain way because of her step-mother’s favoritism,” Remus explained without a thought on if his honesty would make the others uncomfortable, and it certainly did. “Also in the original story, birds scratch out the step-families eyes as karma for being so cruel and I always thought that was neat.”

They all shuffled farther away.

As the movie continued and Janus got steadily tipsier, they’ve started to relax and enjoy the movie. Remus and Janus have started to lean against each other, Remus’ chin on his shoulder and Janus’ head against his. It was always better to drink a little when watching a movie with Remus, makes all the shouting in his ear easier to deal with and all his jokes and facts a little funnier. However, because of the wine, his guard was down around the others and he actually moved to sit on Remus’ lap without thinking about his image, settling Cthulhu in his own lap while Remus wrapped his arms around him. 

He didn’t even remember they were still there until Patton had spoken up about it. 

“I figured you didn’t like hugs, Janus?” He said, startling Janus out of his relaxed state. He tried putting his guard up again, but it was hard when he was a little drunk and also Remus was so warm and comfortable. 

“Doesn’t like hugs? Ha!” Remus let out a loud, incredibly false laugh that made Janus smile and duck his head at the sound. “DJ Anus here loves hugs! Especially when he’s hammered! He’s extra affectionate when drunk, huh sexy?”

Remus squeezes him closer as he teases him and Janus rolls his eyes. He couldn’t help his smile though as he leaned into the touch. He holds up his glass. 

“I’m not hammered, as you say,” he turned his head to look at Remus, nose brushing against his cheek. “I’m… just a little buzzed. Totally different.”

Remus giggled and rocked them back, pulled Janus completely on his lap. Janus looked like a little child as Remus curled around him like a protective shield, Cthulhu abandoned beside them. 

“This is weird…” Virgil muttered, looking mildly uncomfortable with the public affection. “I don’t remember you two being so… close.”

“You never came to our movie nights.”

“Because you made us watch The Purge and then terrorized us for months about it after.”

“Eh, that movie was shit anyways,” Janus waved him off, eyes back on the movie. Cinderella had just found out about the ball. It was only a matter of time before Remus noticed and made any jokes about it, Janus needed to focus on not snorting at any of them to make sure he still had some dignity left after tonight. “Seriously, there are millions of things you can do during these crime free days instead of wearing a mask and murdering innocents.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Remus said. Virgil made a face. 

“I’m still reeling at the fact that anyone would willingly be that close to Remus,” Roman’s expression was sour as he watched them spoon out of the corner of his eye. “Are you not worried he might get too excited like this?”

“Oh, it’s happened before, but it’s nothing to worry about,” Janus clarifies, though he did feel a sting of annoyance at Roman’s disapproval. “And for your information, Remus is a fantastic cuddler. He only smells a little putrid and you get used to it.” 

Remus giggles and hugs Janus tighter for a moment, the deceitful side practically drowning in his arms. He let out an excited shout and pointed wildly at the screen, leaning over Janus. 

“Oh! Oh! This is my favorite scene!” He shouted, referring to Cinderella being trapped in her attic and the added backstory to the step-mother. 

With the distraction in place, they all settled in and watched the end of the movie. Janus thought this night was rather successful. He might think differently tomorrow when he wasn’t drunk, but he did get to spend at least one of these movie nights safe and warm in his favorite side’s arms.