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muppetminge · 3 months

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i don't as such care much for the concept of pride month, but since i happen to not have much going in june i will take this as an excuse to watch a bunch a lesbian films. in theory, this could be 30 - in practice, it almost definitely won't be. i will 100 % get bored and stop at some point. anyway i want to find like actually good lesbian movies - which might be an oxymoron, but anyway - this means i'll only be watching woman-directed movies, preferably lesbian-directed but i'm aware i probably won't get to be that picky </3.

movies watched:

1. The Watermelon Woman (1996), dir. Cheryl Dunye. "all you do since you don't have a girlfriend is watch those boring old films" well, screw you too, tam. so happy to start off the month with something that's actually good. thank you cheryl <3 speaking of, this woman is so fucking hot it's bullshit. also i do need her earrings like asap but that's another topic. forever saddened by the death of video stores... where am i supposed to go to meet hot lesbians now? netflix? it's bullshit, man.

I don't think there's any part of this I don't find incredibly compelling. It's really funny, and just generally so charming and, well, human. the narrative of building your own history really resonates, and honestly cheryl gets it across incredibly.

2. Pariah (2011), dir. Dee Ress. i didn't vibe with this one as much, but i guess that's my own fault considering i knew very well going into this that i don't particularly like coming-of-age movies. the soundtrack hit most of the time, even if the soundscape in general was a bit flat for my taste. it's a very dark movie. like, physically. i couldn't see shit half the time. also not really a fan of the camerawork throughout most of it. it's a nice-looking film if it's your kind of taste - unfortunately i am too kitsch to really appreciate it :/ i thought scene near the end with lee and her dad on the roof was really nice. also found kim wayans' character really compelling

3. La Belle Saison (2015), dir. Catherine Corsini. not projecting but also delphine i feel you so hard. is this representation because if so i don't mind it... (except the part where you're actually getting some but whatever). desperately making me feel like i should wear more tank tops. anyway delphine was really in a headlock with every single one of her principles toward the end huh. i get the dilemma though her riding tractors is basically public service (to Me because it's incredibly hot). i'm not even gonna be an ass about it like i genuinely just really liked this.

4. But I'm a Cheerleader (1999), dir. Jaime Babbit. "1-2-3-4, inverts we won't be no more!" obviously i've watched this a million times before. did take this as an excuse to watch the extended edition and like just saying ms babbit if you want to extend even more you're more than welcome to it <3 gonna be careful about mentioning natasha here because i love her and chances are i won't be able to shut up again but gd people really do underestimate how fucking funny she is… i've personal beef with clea for having basically the same haircut i had for a long while and making it look so much better. only realized on this watch that melanie lynskey's playing hilary. incredible. anyway i genuinely don't know what more anyone could possibly want in a movie. it's so hot. like all movies should look like this - let those colors pop for a change! one of the best soundtracks of the last thirty years and i'm so serious about that.

i think this was probably the first genuinely good lesbian movie i saw as a teenager desperately searching for something to relate to. it still grips me from the very first scene even now. i do think the stars aligned to make this work. it's so funny and it's such a great satire.

5. リズと青い鳥 / Liz and the Blue Bird (2018), dir. Naoko Yamada. shit, dude. first of all this is so so pretty. it makes me insane how much care and effort they'll put into like a background shot of a shelf or something... and all the watercolor... gorgeous. like just the opening shot with all flowers and the colors that are just popping right out at you... in general just really effective visual communication, especially on rewatches i'd imagine (after having seen the final hug scene). i remember when i went to high school one of my classmates was so incredibly musically talented it was genuinely a bit infuriating and i was so shocked she didn't go on to study music 'cause i would have if i'd been able to get in lmao. anyway this was really sweet. the last third is so incredible. when they finally play it, damn... genuinely like goosebumps. and then it somehow kept going? i feel like it's still settling while i'm writing this but i feel like i'm probably going to watch again at some point.

6. I Can't Think Straight (2008), dir. Shamim Sarif. (quote?) cut to waters novel. cut to k.d. lang cd. one wonders. this having a lower average than imagine me & you if anything really shows that reviews are bullshit. loved the music. loved lisa ray's character being half a second from jumping leyla at all times. loved zina; wish she'd had more scenes. loved leyla's dad being an insurance salesman; life insurance even. sells itself. when the ladies finally did jump each other it was with zero hesitation and i fuck with that so hard. this movie is so funny i don't care. bonus the ladies are very very hot. you can't fault a movie from 2008 for being incredibly 2008. here's to leyla for one day achieving the honor of being tala's fifth fiance(e). truly gettin' it all.

7. Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (2019), dir. Céline Sciamma. writing this on the eighth with an officially broken streak :( it Will happen again. this is indeed the first time i've watched this because i am to my core a contrarian bitch and seeing everyone freak out about this did Not make me want to watch it. now i have, and like... it's alright, yeah. didn't love love it. it's probably too long for what it's got going on. i loved héloïse; she was great. there's some really powerful scenes in here, the bonfire scene especially. i really liked how blue the ocean was; i hate this tendency of (especially) period pieces washing out everything to a ridiculous degree. i know some people are like insane about this movie and i'm happy for them but i can't relate unfortunately.

i did think briefly at the start that it was gonna be about croquis, and i really wish it had been, ngl.

8. Carmen y Lola (2018), dir. Arantxa Echevarría. 'ya te he olvidado' yeah babe sure looks it. had a certain interest in this going into it for very elaborate personal reasons. it's a lot better than the synopsis makes it sound. lola searching 'lesbianas madrid' like i feel you girl, been there!!! speaking of i was def convinced lola was a lesbian which feels like so rare in such a 'mainstream' movie lmao so well done. very believable. and like my girl was so so persistent you gotta give her that like she really went for it. can't blame her i'd be so into carmen too so like. her voice made me wanna die. so hot. (sí también es que el acento madrileño me pone un poquito pero,,,,). it really went insane at the end like damn. i was not expecting the ending tho like i really thought carmen was gonna be annoying about it. do i even have to save that i really liked this? because surprisingly i really really did. i can't help but feel it's getting rewatched a ton some time lmaooo.

9. 漂浪青春 / Drifting Flowers (2008), dir. Zero Chou. can't believe someone in the reviews of this stole my joke three years ago. speaking of reviews don't look at them because of course people have to be so so annoying about this. as usual. anyway. i was so drawn in by this you wouldn't belive!! i don't even know what to say... this is for all us if these walls could talk babes btw. loved the scene where one of the characters blatantly walked by posters and posters of one of chou's other movies. show off.

diego!!! <3<3<3 every single character is lovely but diego made me wanna *** ngl. it did hit very close to home, thanks for asking. realised in her part that i probably chose the wrong day to watch this but that's on me lmao. this would have broken me if i had watched it as a teenager lowkey. does it come across in this that i really like interconnecting vignettes? because i do, and this is really well-executed. hope you'll watch it and also that you'll find less spotty subtitles than i did if you do lmao.

it's a very genuine movie; i don't mean that in a condescending way, because it's also very much a well-made movie, but it's a movie that so clearly has a lot to say, and i appreciated all of it. perhaps this is also why i was so surprised at the reviews, because it really resonated with me. i know i've already pointed out diego a lot, but all three parts were incredible and they really held each other up. i don't think any of them would feel as complete without the other parts. in an odd way it stands like a shining light in the darkness.

10. Addicted to Fresno (2015), dir. Jaime Babbit. "(lesbians are poor. ..)" confirmed babbit apologist sorry :/ anyway i'm not gonna compare this to cheerleader i wouldn't want to try to follow that either. it's a fun movie! i laughed a ton. my lyonne obsession is well-documented so i'm not even gonna touch on that lmao. that being said martha is exactly the kind of lesbian i want to see more of (no projection here. obviously). i'm bound to be all over anything with these themes; lo and behold indeed i was. i stand by this being really well-executed, y'all just didn't get what she was trying to do <3 you could argue some tonal difficulties, but honestly i'm not going to. it worked. it's a bit quiet, but i can see that adding to the whole point of being stuck. some surprise appearances to delight

11. Saving Face (2004), dir. Alice Wu. first of all gd will's mom has got it going on. anyway i wanted a fun romcom and i got a fun romcom so i'm not complaining! i will say that i think this is the genre at its best. like romcoms often risk coming across as a bit clinical i feel, a bit empty, but this is just so warm. i adored hwei-lan (not just because she's hot but let me reiterate that she's so unbelievably hot; i get that boy so much, i really do), she's so funny. i love circular storytelling, and i think the end was done really well. the scene after that during the credits is exactly how i want my movies to end actually, i want my face to hurt smiling. don't you? wil is an absolutely idiot. i cannot blame her for a single thing. also i get you babe, i can't stand for dancers either. i feel like this is close to being one of most just plain fun movies i've watched so far.

12. Kyss mig (2011), dir. Alexandra-Therese Keining. gd i so want all my lesbian movies to start with a straight sex scene, don't you? coming to you with the exact opposite mood of that from yesterday. everyone in this is horrible. mia and frida's relationship is not believable at all to me sorry. i barely believe that these two even like each other if i'm being honest. it's not the first movie here where the romance comes a bit from nowhere (namely portrait, which made up for it with some level of charm, and belle saison, which i just liked enough otherwise to excuse it) but here i'm definitely gonna blame it for it because it's got nothing else going on, either. to be entirely fair, it was very optimistic going into this with my dislike of 'scandi dramas', especially of the swedish variety, but fuuuuck, i was so bored i'm sorry. it's soooo slow. i actually quite liked elin but she was there for like five seconds - and good for her, because damn you deserve better babe... both of the main women kind of suck lmao but at least frida sucks in a fun way most of the time, so she's excused. i don't know if i'm supposed to feel bad for tim (probably! knowing the genre, knowing swedes, knowing movies), but he's such an asshole. i genuinely think mia should have killed him. i can't blame mia for sucking; her dad's a major asshole, i'm sure she's had it rough. i'm sure if you like this sort of movies it's alright. it's not badly made by any account, i just really didn't like it. it has its audience. definitely a new low so far. the one good thing about this was that it really made me appreciate being a lesbian; those scenes with mia and tim genuinely looked like my personal hell. if i was mia i'd jump the first girl who looked at me too, ngl. the ending did make up for a few things, all things considered. i watched a not insignificant part of this without subtitles (because they would not workkkk) and i'm so brave for that tbh

13. Kokon (2020), dir. Leonie Krippendorff. proof that i should probably do more research before watching stuff (never going to happen though; no fun) because i did not realise this would be this much of a coming-of-age story. like literally hitting all the points. anyway it didn't do much for me. i really don't want to be mean here because it's obviously a very well-made film, and i get the intention, but... i was so fucking bored you would not believe. like i was less actively annoyed by this than kyss mig, but way more bored. it's not a very long movie, but it sure feels like it! anyway, if you're watching for the rep, you can skip this one; it's not really the main part of the movie, which is fine - comparatively, pariah had much more of a lesbian focus. this one really is just coming-of-age. something something you know you're in berlin when the whitest girl you've ever seen is swearing on the qur'an. i'm so glad i'm not a teenager - and what a joy to be getting further and further away every day <33

14. Desert Hearts (1985), dir. Donna Deitch. first of all the soundtracks is lovely (and it's a well-documented fact that mona will forgive everything for a good soundtrack). second of all i want to watch this again. like, immediately, right now. i'm gonna watch this so much i fear it's not even funny. ignore the 80s hair; we're in the 50s. one of the better romances yet. the lesbian-english teacher hypothesis proving true time and time again... incredible. cay is so funny. like the way the camera pans over to her in the bed in the hotel room scene... cinema! i was fucking done lmao. it's all just very lovely.

15. Go Fish (1994), dir. Rose Troche. well, we had to go here at some point. it's a very jazzy movie; take that however you wish. i have my criticisms, but also you can't blame a 90s movie for being too 90s (which in truth is what a lot of it boils down to). max' narrations were without a doubt my favorite part, the start especially so. there's more lesbians in one 80 minute movie than i've even crossed paths with, ever. cutting your fingernails before a date counts as foreplay in my book.

16. Joven y alocada (2012), dir. Marialy Rivas. i just know the progressive profesoras are going wild over this. huge respect to chileans for seeing a word and deciding fuck that shit and dropping half of it. top five accent ngl. also polola... also credit for starting a movie in the most uncomfortable way possible. anyway i am so not the target audience for this it's not even funny. it's well-composed, the style is great, entirely well-done, did not care for it. i only finished because i couldn't get the last-moment replacement to work and i didn't have time to watch anything else lmao. i have a lot of respect for rivas (hence me watching this) but... yeah. also really getting confirmed that i am very fine with lesbian sex scenes but straight sex scenes are horrrrrible.. nice reminder of the lesbianism i guess! i will be singing yo no te pido la luuuuna the rest of the night though. non voglio mica la luna...

17. Les Rendez-vous d'Anna (1978), dir. Chantal Akerman. an excuse to cross some akerman off my watchlist? you could call it that. i have a ton of respect for her. she's a very interesting person, i think. an interesting movie, too, all things considered. i'm very much drawn to the fastpaced and erratic truth be told, which this is like the polar opposite of, but it's got its point. i really liked the part with her mother. that was probably the high point of this. i didn't really care for either of the guys, like, at all, but it is what it is. still gathering my thoughts, i feel. not sure i'm entirely in the right space to really appreciate this.

18. Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same (2011), dir. Madeleine Olnek. "...I did wonder about the gills". oh, this is how you make a movie. (was smiling and/or laughing from beginning to end). question: can this be replicated in real life. like can i just go find the nearest hot stationery clerk or how does this work.

19. Mädchen in Uniform (1931), dir. Leontine Sagan. all impact aside, this is a lot more fun than i'd thought. obviously i've been putting this off for a while now considering i hadn't seen it til now, but i really did enjoy it. i feel like it's rare seeing girls just having fun like this. as a young girl i was very into this old book series (incidentally from my mother's childhood) about some girls at a boarding school; entirely irrelevant to every and anything here, but watching this gave me the same vibe throughout much of it.

20. سكر بنات / Caramel (2007), dir. Nadine Labaki. absolutely adore this one description i found that says rima is struggling with her attraction to women - lmao where?? the most she struggles in this movie is the coerced leg wax lmao. otherwise it's basically all very sensual hair washing, gd bless. she's also very hot btw i do need to mention that. i see you all going crazy over labaki and you're not wrong but gd man... anyway, sensual hairwashing aside, the straight girls are alright too. seriously, this is actually very good. even though rima's the lesbian the most homoerotic part of this is layale very aggresively waxing of her lover's wife.

21. Een vrouw als Eva (1979), dir. Nouchka van Brakel. after a hundred minutes still not convinced this is a real language. anyway, i don't even know what to say. fuck, dude. gd. you could argue dated, but fuck it's rare to see a movie like this treat its lesbian protagonist with this much sympathy, even today. there's a lot to say, but in my mind this is what i keep coming back to. it's in the little things. at no point does this feel perfomative to me, either. a few asides: the beginning of this movie was very extremely effective at showing how utterly miserable eve was lmao. ad is a giant asshole; eve not slapping him is a testament to this poor woman's patience.

22. 蝴蝶 / Butterfly (2004), dir. Mak Yan-Yan. between the marianne faithful, patti smith and janis joplin i can't be entirely sure jin's place isn't actually mine also fuck josie ho is gorgeous. i almost didn't watch this (length) but gdddd i'm so glad i did. it took a bit for me to get into, but by the time it ended i had to just sit for a moment. it's breathtaking, honestly. i don't know what it is - maybe it's the timelessness? the way everything weaves in and out of each other constantly, like it's all happening at the same time. i don't know. it's so gorgeous, though.

23. Viola di mare (2009), dir. Donatella Maiorca. ah, sicilia, amore mio <3 anyway what the fuck. i think that's my main impression for the moment. gd. supposedly based of a real story, i really do think it's told well for the most part. i mean, gd, it would have been so easy to focus on all the surrounding, but the love really is palpable i gotta be honest. making me sigh and swoon over here... if more people were like angela, like first of all that would rule, but also lesbian movies would be sooo short. she's damn persistent lmao love her <3 definitely worth watching, but like do not read up on a single thing beforehand.

24. The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995), dir. Maria Maggenti. "Is this another one?" sometimes you really just do wanna watch two girls having fun. american high schools in media always throws me a bit because i genuinely can't tell how much is artistic exaggeration and how much is just you guys living like that. seems sick. if i still went to the hairdresser i'd show her a picture of randy in this. not getting over vicky's husband getting physical with a literal seventeen year old lmaoo go home dude! it's all very cute, genuinely. by my count this brings the jopling counter up to three. bonus for the bratmobile.

25. I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987), dir. Patricia Rozema. i'm really glad this is the one i'm the ending this on. gddddddddd i loved this so much. to quote polly herself: it's so... nice! oh, polly... <3 seeing a quirky weird girl represented so well is like seeing a shooting star.

all in all: this has been... really fun, actually. i don't know that i was counting on that. i did not in fact get bored and stop. i'm willing to concede that the amount of actually, genuinely good lesbian movies might in fact be a positive integer after all. definitely a much more fun way to spend pride month than engaging in nonsensical discourse. happy july! <3

#mona mona mona #had to rewrite parts of this so many times before discovering tumblr won't let me make a '</3' in a draft post love this website #the first broken streak was in fact mean girls so arguably it wasn't broken at all. lesbian janis truther. lesbian regina truther.#(lesbian karen truther bc i love ms seyfried....)#now on to sloth month where i'll be do absolutely fuck all <3 #you'll all be hearing back from me in time for wrath month ig #mona was in fact going to edit this monster of a post (spoiler alert: she did not. she tried and somehow made it longer. she gave up.)#lesbian media #lesbian #lesbian film #it's not even pride here yet btw lmao

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chicgeekgirl89 · 1 year

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Chapter 3: Yachtie with a Body

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“So?” Nancy plops down next to T.K. on the deck, a bowl of something in one hand, a fork in the other. “What’s the deal with the new chef?”

T.K. groans. “What are you talking about?”

He’d come up to the bow of the boat to hide for a few minutes. They’re three days into this charter and the guests are being chaperoned on a shore excursion by Marjan and Paul, which means the rest of them are finally getting a little bit of a break. There are more bathrooms to be cleaned and the laundry has never looked worse, but T.K. had been enjoying a few minutes of peace and quiet before his boss found him.

“I mean what’s he like? He seems super nice. Like amazingly nice. He made me this.” She holds out the bowl of mango for T.K. to see. “Like I just walked through the galley and he asked me if I wanted mango and when I said yes he cut some up for me. There’s homemade coconut cream on here dude. Pearce would have murdered you with his eyes if you’d even thought about wanting mango in his presence.”

T.K. rolls his eyes because he doesn’t have any fond memories of their time together. He’d spent more of it with Pearce than most because they’d been cabin mates and if he never hears another rant about the importance of wiping down the shower after each and every use, it will be too soon.

“I think he’s nice,” T.K. tells her, leaning over and stealing a piece of fruit from her bowl. “At least, he seems to be. He hasn’t yelled at me about using the bathroom in the middle of the night like Pearce did.”

Nancy shakes her head. “That man. Only Pearce could believe it was possible to hear nature’s call and tell it to wait until a more sensible six am. Do you think he even has a soul? Or is it just like, a shriveled up little prune kind of thing?”

“He probably returned it to sender because it wasn’t up to code,” T.K. tells her, stealing another bite. The coconut cream is amazing.

“So definitely a step up in both the roommate and chef departments,” Nancy says. “Good pick Iris.”

It’s the truth. Carlos is a major step up. T.K. has noticed the little ways in which Carlos goes out of his way to keep morale high for the crew. There have been homemade chocolate chip cookies, still warm from the oven, tortillas and guac, brownies, he’d even made arroz con pollo the other day when Mateo mentioned missing his abuela’s cooking. He’s going above and beyond not just for the guests, but for the crew too. It’s incredibly sweet.

“Do you—“ T.K.’s question is interrupted by the sound of a loud splash that catches both of their attention. “Are the guests back?” T.K. asks, an icy bolt of panic going down his spine as he check to makes sure his radio is turned up and that he hasn’t missed anything.

“No they’re not supposed to be back for like another two hours,” Nancy says, standing up and looking over port the side. “The tender is still gone.”

T.K. pushes to his feet and jogs the few feet over to starboard. There’s nothing in the water on that side either. “Judd or Mateo doing something with the water toys?” T.K. asks.

“Mateo’s in his bunk and Judd was up on the bridge with Tommy when I came out here,” Nancy says.

They’re both walking now, eyes on either side of the boat as they move from the bow toward the stern. When they finally reach the back of the boat they stop dead in their tracks.

New chef Carlos Reyes is hoisting himself out of the cerulean waters of the Caribbean and onto the Nautibuoy platforms that extend off the boat’s stern. Time feels like it’s slowing and T.K.’s eyes go wide as he watches Carlos stand up, water cascading down over toned biceps and abs, his perfectly crafted thighs clad in only a dark pair of swim trunks that cling to him and leave very little to the imagination.

“Holy shit,” Nancy whispers next to him, her tone appropriately reverential for what they’re witnessing. “New chef is a yachtie with a body.”

T.K. can’t speak and wouldn’t know what to say if he could. Carlos pushes his sopping wet curls back out of his face and then he looks up and spots them, giving them a friendly wave as he reaches for a towel that’s hanging over the railing.

They both manage to wave back despite their surprise. “Okay,” Nancy says, her voice low, a smile plastered on her face as her hand continues to wave back and forth. “Somebody’s gotta hit that. And it should probably be you.”

“Me?!” T.K. stops waving and turns to her in shock. “Why me?”

“Are you saying you’re not interested?”

“No I—“ Oh god, he’s going to embarrass himself. “Why would you immediately jump to me? He’s Iris’ ex.”

“Which is exactly why it has to be you,” Nancy says pragmatically. “Judd’s got Grace back home, Captain’s got her preacher man on shore, Marjan needs somebody within her faith and culture, Paul is seeing Asha, Iris doesn’t want him anymore, so that leaves you.”

“Or you, or Mateo,” T.K. points out.

“Mateo and I have a thing,” she says.

Wow she is really full of surprises today. “You. And Mateo. Have a thing,” T.K. repeats.

She waves a hand. “It’s casual.”

He tries to wrap his mind around that and decides he’d rather not. “He dated Iris. Which makes him straight.”

Nancy looks at him, offended. “Bisexual people exist.”

“Fine. Okay, yes, they do, but I would never date someone Iris dated. It wouldn’t be cool.”

“Did you ask her if it would be cool?”

“Why would I ask her that?!”

Nancy shrugs. “Because he’s hot. And you clearly like him. You’re basically drooling dude.”

T.K. instinctively wipes at his mouth with his hand and glares at her when he doesn’t find anything. “He’s my roommate. And Iris’ ex. And probably straight. Any one of those things is enough of a reason for me to leave him alone.”

She makes a face. “What is the point of yachting if not to make stupid sexual decisions? I’m making some. And it’s a lot of fun.”

“I really don’t want to hear anymore thank you,” T.K. says. He’s pretty open about sex, but he doesn’t want to know what his boss and Mateo are doing with each other below deck.

“Just saying, it wouldn’t hurt either one of you to have a little fun. And if the Iris thing bothers you, then just ask her. You know she’ll tell it to you straight.” She pats him on the shoulder. “Also, did I mention you’re on carpet spot duty this afternoon?”

“Noooooo,” T.K. moans.

“The guests were drinking a lot of red wine last night. Make sure you get them all out!” Nancy sing songs as she heads back inside.

T.K. hangs his head and then slowly follows her. He makes a quick stop by his cabin to grab his phone and his earbuds (at least he can have Harry Styles for company as he scrubs) and nearly runs into Carlos. “Oh sorry,” he says.

“No problem,” Carlos says back.

He’s thrown a button-up on, thank god, so T.K. isn’t face to face with his incredible pecs, but he can still smell the saltwater on his skin, in his hair. “How was your swim?” T.K. asks.

“Great,” Carlos says. “I just needed to cool off for a few minutes and Captain said it was all right.”

“Yeah Tommy’s good like that,” T.K. says.

“Right, Tommy,” Carlos says sheepishly. “I forget you guys are kind of informal.”

“We’re a family,” T.K. says. “That’s why she was such a good fit when she came on as captain. It might not work on all boats, but it does on ours.”

Carlos snorts. “It definitely wouldn’t have worked on my last boat.”

There’s something bitter in his words even though he says them lightly and T.K. feels a flash of anger at whoever made him feel bad enough to put that tone in his voice. “Your last boat was tough?” he asks.

“You could say that.”

“Is that why you came here?” T.K. asks.

“I came because Iris called,” Carlos says and the mention of her name, of their relationship, sends a stab of pain through T.K. “But yes, also to get away.”

“Do you…want to talk about it?” T.K. offers.

Carlos shrugs. “I’m fine. I survived. We’ve all been on bad boats before.”

“Well we’re all glad you’re here,” T.K. tells him.

“I heard Pearce was…quite a guy to work with,” Carlos says, flashing him a grin that says the crew has definitely been telling tales of some of Pearce’s more infamous moments.

“Yeah you’re definitely an upgrade,” T.K. says, then winces at the blatant horniness of that statement.

“An upgrade huh?” Carlos’ smile changes, drops into something lazy and sensual. The way he leans on one arm against the top bunk feels flirty.

T.K. loves flirting. He loves flirting so. freaking. much. So it takes a lot of effort for him to wrench himself out of charm mode and back into boat colleague mode. “Honestly anyone would have been an upgrade from Pearce,” he says. “Did I tell you he used to time me in the bathroom? If I took more than five minutes in the morning he’d start to bang on the door and tell me to get out.”

“Yikes,” Carlos says, unbuttoning his shirt and slipping it off and, oh god, the abs are back and T.K. feels like he needs to avert his gaze, like he’s a gentleman from a Jane Austen novel trying to protect someone’s modesty. Which is ridiculous. Because he’s seen hundreds of naked chests before in all different contexts. But this chest, these abs…something about them calls to him.

“Sorry, he sounds like a nightmare,” Carlos says as he pulls on a white undershirt, effectively bringing T.K.’s lustful thoughts to an end.

“Nightmare is definitely the word,” T.K. agrees. “Ask Nancy about the pineapple disaster of week three. She still has the scars.”

He chuckles and T.K. feels a thrill at being able to affect him like that. “I will definitely ask,” Carlos says.

“Hey, T.K.!” Iris comes bopping down the hallway, slightly breathless. “Oh, hey Carlos,” she says when she spots him through the open door. She looks back and forth between them. “Am I interrupting something?”

“No.”

“Nope.”

They both speak a little too quickly, as if there’s something to hide, even though there’s not. They’re standing here with the door open, not sneaking around.

So why does T.K. feel guilty anyway?

Her eyes narrow suspiciously, but she doesn’t press it. “I can’t find those little disco balls we used a couple weeks ago. The rainbow colored ones.”

“I put them in the cabinet in the dining room,” T.K. says.

“You did not.”

He sighs. “Yes I did!”

It takes some searching but they find the missing disco balls (it turns out he did put them in the dining room cabinet, but Mateo took them back out again for some game they were playing with the guests). Then it’s onto red wine stain purgatory, armed only with a spray bottle of club soda, a white rag, and determination. By the time he’s done the carpet looks like it’s never seen a drop of wine in its life, and T.K.’s back and arms are sore.

He hauls himself to his feet and trudges to the galley to return the salt he’d borrowed in case the club soda wasn’t enough. Carlos is chopping up veggies for the crew dinner, several filets of salmon set to the side. He looks up when T.K. comes in and frowns. “You look like you just fell off a bucking bronco.”

“I’m banning red wine from the boat,” T.K. tells him, setting the salt shaker down onto the prep counter. “White wine only. No sangria. No merlot. Clear liquids and nothing else.”

“Good luck with that,” Carlos says, going back to his chopping.

“Thanks for the sympathy,” T.K. says sarcastically. “You have no idea the agony of scrubbing out carpet stains. Over and over and over. It never ends. It’s like some kind of polyester Groundhog Day nightmare. And definitely not my preferred way to get rug burn.”

Carlos bites his lip in amusement. “I didn’t know there was a good way to get rug burn.”

T.K. scoffs. “Then you’ve clearly never had sex with me.”

The words are out before he can stop them, a flirty reflex that he can’t contain. It often gets him what he wants, but right now he’d like to melt through the floor.

Carlos sets his knife down again, something shifting in his eyes. “Is that something you’re offering?”

It’s light, but there’s an undertone. Something more serious, something that makes T.K. want to go over there and show him exactly how much he’d like to offer sex.

“Carlos, Carlos, Nancy,” the radio squawks, breaking the moment.

Carlos picks it up. “This is Carlos.”

“The guests are heading back. If you could get their snicky snack ready that would be fabulous darling.”

“No problem.”

T.K. flees. It’s cowardly, it’s stupid, it’s extremely not cool, but he runs back to their shared cabin and locks the door behind him. He leans against it and exhales. Who the fuck does he think he is? It is not appropriate to proposition your cabin-mate-who-has-dated-your-co-worker for sex. It’s just not.

He lets his head thunk back against the door. What is he going to do?

#Tarlos #911 Lone Star #Come Sail Away #Yachting AU

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bop-culture · 2 years

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“You do not have to be good”: A Consideration of Sugar Ray’s “Fly”

When we were toddlers, my twin sister and I would climb to the top of our dad’s busted-ass recliner, frantically doggy-paddle our hands in the air, and participate in a shared delusion that we could fly. We’d plan our flights in advance, through places as exotic as the woods in our backyard and the church nursery, and report back to each other on the ground to verify the truth of our ability. It is remarkable how the human brain can adapt to survive harm: now that I am far removed from the fearful, angry house we lived in, it seems obvious that our pretending was a four-year-old’s magical form of dissociation.

We lost our aerial gifts around the time we began Kindergarten in 1997. That same year, Sugar Ray had their first hit with “Fly.” It was undoubtedly a staple of the boombox radio at our local pool in the summers, but lay dormant in my subconscious for decades until a recent vivid dream in which I argued its greatness in a perplexing attempt to impress a crush. It is a well-known schtick of mine to passionately defend pieces of pop culture deemed low-brow (see: Mariah Carey’s Glitter, the Real Housewives franchise, the Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack) but the question of “Fly” followed into my waking hours: could it, in fact, be a good song?

“Fly” and its accompanying music video are a free-association exercise in musical trends of the late nineties and early aughts. The song starts with a simple, repetitive bass riff (The Breeders). The band has a DJ (Incubus). Jamaican dancehall legend Super Cat makes a baffling yet compelling guest appearance (Shaggy). The music video features an extended bit of lead singer Mark McGrath traversing the walls and ceiling of a small room (Jamiroquai). Band members wear flashy pants and have an obscene amount of gelled hair and carefully trimmed goatees (Smash Mouth). But despite being endlessly referential (or in some cases, prescient), the overall effect is both like every local garage band and like nothing else in pop radio.

For all his outward appearances of douchebaggery, lead singer Mark McGrath contains multitudes. According to genius.com, “Fly’s” opening lyric, “All around the world/statues crumble for me” could be an allusion to Shelley’s “Ozymandius.” This is perhaps a generous reading, but it nonetheless warms my heart to consider the possibility that a man who has said that he got into music to pick up chicks has a healthy respect for English Romantic poetry. (He also has a healthy respect for matriarchy. The lyrics frequently reference moms, and the moving conclusion of the “Fly” video sees the members of Sugar Ray exit a car to meet their assembled mothers.)

Sugar Ray, a band whose oeuvre includes a 2009 album entitled Music for Cougars, has never taken themselves too seriously. They’re a bunch of dudes who got a record deal at a time when a bar cover band with two songs could get a record deal. In a world of self-important songwriters, there’s something to be said for music that doesn’t try too hard. The vocals are out of tune, the iconic guitar riff seems to be composed specifically to sound kind of shitty, the production veers abruptly into disjointed segments (Synthesizers! Spoken word! Compressed drum tracks!) with little cohesive vision. It’s sloppy, it’s human, it’s charmingly approachable. Life doesn’t always have to be profound- wouldn’t that be exhausting?

McGrath has explained in interviews that the line “25 years old/ my mother god rest her soul” is a reference to the iconic Gilbert O’Sullivan single “Alone Again, Naturally,” widely regarded to be the most depressing pop song ever recorded. (Cass Elliot’s version is sublime, by the way.) “Fly” is about nothing, but it’s also about death! (“No one really knows/the starting or the end.”) There’s something beautifully democratic about a mediocre band vibing to what is essentially the dirtbag interpretation of a gospel standard. In the end, it doesn’t matter if “Fly” passes any test of musical quality. An attempt to evaluate its merit misses the point. Love cannot be earned: put your arms around me, baby.

#Sugar Ray #music criticism #personal essay #lovable dirtbags

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thezanyarthropleura · 2 years

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The Not-March Ones (1 of 5)

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, or so I’ve heard, and what better way to celebrate than with the Gamera film about a monster crocodile(?) that shoots rainbows? Enjoy this, the first of the reviews for the five Gamera films not released in the month of March.

Gamera vs. Barugon actually was released on the 17th of the month, just in April of 1966, so its actual 57-year anniversary is next month. It’s the second film in the Showa era, and the only Showa film not directed by Noriaki Yuasa. It’s also one of the scant few mainline Showa films (i.e. the seven original Daiei films produced from 1965-1971) to have a female protagonist of any real plot importance, so let’s talk about her—

…Wait wait wait wait wait, hold up, her name’s Karen? All this time and I’ve never picked up on that? She doesn’t even get a last name? A classic Japanese kaiju film and I have to talk about a character who’s just named Karen? *sighs* Fine, here we go…

Karen, a woman living in 1966 blackface New Guinea, who positively radiates step on me energy in every scene she’s in and may or may not be a vampire, joins the film relatively early on and is easily distinguished among the islanders by her seductive death glare and lack of racist makeup. She tells the three treasure hunters not to go into the cursed cave, but when they, of course, do it anyway only for one of their number to betray the other two, she helps nurse the surviving man back to health. She then agrees to accompany him back to Japan to help track down his attempted killer and retrieve the stolen giant monster egg.

She fills a stereotype fairly common for women in these films, an island native who serves as an exposition character, but she has a far more commanding, rational presence than most examples. Throughout the film, she relays the legends told in her village about how they’ve defeated the enemy monster, Barugon, in the past, which get put to use as the standard slew of soldiers and scientists work on various (ultimately ineffective) plans to stop the one that’s now hatched from the stolen egg and has been set loose on Japan.

There’s a background romance arc between her and the redeemed treasure hunt survivor, which like most relationships in these kinds of films, is conveyed more subtly than overtly. I’ll admit it’s kind of cute at points, especially in a scene cut out of one, and possibly both of the English dubs, in which Karen expresses her frustration and distress at being taken less seriously by the military than the 10-year-old boys in the other movies. The hero is slow and careful in offering her comfort, which she takes to like a lifeline, then boldly and firmly defends her expertise on the problem to all the old men in the room. I don’t really like het romance in my movies but this one doesn’t bother me too much.

Also, the scene where she rushes to drink the blood from his bleeding injury after a fight with the villain is… weird, and kinky, but is presented entirely as a sweet and genuine act of affection. The technicality of her drinking blood feels like it definitely has some unfortunate, probably racist connotations, but the film seems to see it as a positive way to acknowledge the different culture she was raised in while establishing her feelings of love and care.

Unfortunately, despite looking like she could carry all the human fights in this film by herself, Karen is relegated to the stereotypical “breaks one bottle over the bad guy’s head while the man does the actual fighting.” It’s a scene in blatant contrast to how her character is presented otherwise, to the point of being completely ridiculous when she just… stands there confusedly in an extended wide shot while the two dudes are beating the shit out of each other. She does look a bit like she’s looking on in disbelief and silently judging them, so there’s at least that.

For comedy’s sake I’ll also mention that one guy on the boat trip back from New Guinea, who keeps unknowingly complicating the villain’s plan to pretend he went to the island to exhume a relative’s bones by latching onto him as a fellow war orphan and making grand, genuine gestures of respect and comradery for the made-up relative – up to and including saving the fake bones as the ship is sinking and finding the villain afterward to return them. You can’t help but feel a little bad for him when the villain brushes off his sympathies and finally yells the truth at him in frustration.

Barugon himself is probably the closest thing to a crocodile/alligator kaiju ever depicted in a classic kaiju movie. He doesn’t exactly look it when he’s walking around like a cross between a lizard and a dog, but the resemblance really shows in the fight scenes, whenever his huge jaws are opening and snapping shut next to Gamera’s much smaller head. Unfortunately, there aren’t many fight scenes. The first one is a bit longer than you think it is if you’ve only watched the MST3K cut, but still consists mostly of the two monsters sizing each other up with few actual hits exchanged. The ending fight at least has the good heroic vibes going for it, as it’s the first time Gamera is shown to hunt down and kill a monster that threatens humans where it can’t be explained away as being done for personal gain.

The warnings here will mostly concern the death toll, which I believe is the second-highest of any Gamera film in terms of major characters. First, we have the third member of the treasure hunting expedition, who is left to die from a fatal scorpion sting moments after mentioning he has a wife. Then, the two human fight scenes of the film concern the main character and his brother, both individually confronting the villain because they believe he’s killed the other brother. Only one of them ends up being right, and the other is tragically killed before he can learn the lead brother survived the attempt on his life (thus leading into the second fight). Also, the brother who dies is disabled and uses a crutch, and both he and his wife are left either beaten to death or to the point of immobility while their home is destroyed from Barugon’s attack on the city. You know, in case you were still convinced there was a chance for this film to have a good look after the New Guinea scene. Aside from that, a closeup of Barugon’s tongue when it captures and draws in the villain may be a mildly uncomfortable visual.

Yes, when all is said and done, the villain is eaten by Barugon, after a long spree of murder and world-endangerment done all for the sake of greed. He specifically dies thwarting a plan that almost manages to kill Barugon, stealing Karen’s diamond right before it can be used to lure Barugon to drown in the depths of the lake and instead, getting it swallowed along with himself. When I bring up this film’s and Gamera vs. Gyaos’s similarities to Ishiro Honda films, it’s these larger moral themes that complete the comparison – just about all the evil of this film, including Barugon being set loose in the first place, is squarely the fault of the villain’s greed and disregard for others. And all the while, through his actions, the heroes continue to suffer and have their efforts undone, ultimately requiring an unforeseen assist from Gamera to save the day (after the most long, grueling, drawn-out, preemptive literal justification for Gamera’s title of “the last hope” that’s ever been put to cinema).

Does this film have flaws? Yes. Is it generally considered the absolute best the Gamera Showa series has to offer? Also yes. Is it my favorite Gamera Showa series film? Definitely not, but it’s one of very few that I appreciate for its themes and characters instead of lmao look Gamera’s doing gymnastics! Still, it remains to be seen whether that will give this film an edge over several close competitors in the middle-tier bracket.

Enjoy this movie with skittles and grape Kool-aid.

#gamera #gamera vs barugon #barugon #karen gamera #i guess that's her last name now #gamera march #a lesbian reviews all the gamera movies

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hotcoffeetransformation · 3 years

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Jason swore loudly and had to resist the urge to throw his controller down, pissed that he kept dying cause of the game's stupid glitches (Also known as own mistakes). Still, he regained his composure, and smiled before saying

"Alright chat, we're gonna finish up this one and then we're gonna move on to another game. There should be a poll on top for what we do next"

Jason was a moderately successfully game streamer, averaging about 200 to 300 viewers a night, entirely based on his wit and skill. He knew for sure that they weren't coming for his looks, given his weedy, thin frame, overly pimpled face and large, nerdy glasses. Still, it was enough for him, and he was happy with the progress that he'd made.

As Jason got himself set up for the next game, he heard a shocking sound from above him. The victory theme from one of his favorite JRPGs was blaring through the speakers, and he came up, staring at the screen in shock. He knew what that sound meant. That meant someone had tipped him one thousand dollars, completely out of nowhere.

He looked in shock at the notification on the stream, seeing that it was from someone named JockBro69, with the simple message "Can't wait to get to know you better, cutie~"

Jason was completely stunned. Not only had someone actually redeemed the donation goal that he set as a joke (That being that whoever was stupid enough to tip 1000 dollars got to have a 15 minute private chat with him), it was also someone that he'd never seen in his chat before.

Thoroughly weirded out, but knowing that he had to honor his commitment, he sent the guy a quick private message.

"Dude, I don't know how to thank you enough! Guess I'll see ya pretty soon!"

With that, he sent the man his private zoom link, and said goodbye to the chat, who were still going wild over this turn of events, before pausing,the stream and hopping over to discord for the call.

Not two seconds after his stream stopped, he got a requested video call on discord from the guy, and he opened it up, giving a second for the video to load, but when it did, he was completely dumbfounded again. He was expecting the mysterious donator to be some fat, sweaty silicon valley nerd with too much and money on his hands, but instead what met him was possibly the hottest man he's ever seen, standing up and looking down at his webcam with a friendly expression.

"Fuck, bro! Its so good to finally fucking meet you, I've been such a big fan for a long time, and this is a really big deal for me~

The man had a deep, rumbling, pleasant voice, that shot straight down Jacob's spine and left him feeling strangely... inadequate. Like the fact that his voice wasn't as smooth or melodic as this guy's was his fault, and he should be ashamed of that fact. Still, this guy was pretty pleasant to look at, Jason had to admit. He wasn't gay, definitely not, but he could acknowledge when another guy simply looked good.

Jason scratched the back of his neck awkwardly, not entirely sure of what he should do or say. Still, this guy spent 1000 dollars on this meeting, so he had to try anyway.

"So, umm.... I see your username is jockbro69... What's your actual name thought? I don't think I've ever seen you in chat before..."

The other man actually laughed at this, before looking confused and saying

"What are you talking about bro? Its me, Ethan! I'm in your chat all the time! Man, I guess what they say about playing games so much is true, huh?"

At this statement, Jason actually went pale with shock. THIS was Ethan? This was the guy who's username used to be runningLink? Who was an active fan of the zelda series, constantly begged Jason to play them, and bemoaned the fact that no would date him? It just didn't seem right...

Still, Jason, ever the semi professional, continued on, pretending that he wasn't shocked at the news.

"Well, thanks for supporting me so much! Seriously, this means a lot to me... Ummm... so I guess tell me some of your favorite things about the channel then!"

The man laughed again, the sound coming out in a slow, dumb chuckle, before saying

"What's my favorite thing? Do I even have to say, bro? Its the amazing piece of eye candy I'm looking at right now. You're super hot, bro~"

At this, Jason was shocked, but he chuckled awkwardly while blushing, and said

"Really? I don't think I've ever heard a single person say that before. I guess I consider myself slightly below average..."

The guy looked confused at that, before pressing on

"Really, bro? You look super hot to me, you got those bright, blinding blue eyes that you can just get lost in~"

At this point, Jason knew the man was just messing with him. His eyes have always, and will always be a dark, muddy brown, hidden behind his massive frames. Jason was about to respond, when Ethan continued

"Yeah, and you got that super stylish haircut too, really makes you look super masculine~"

Now Jason was REALLY confused. The guy was right, he did always get complements on his eyes, the bright, shocking blue visible and striking even through his huge glasses. But his hair was always a long, unkempt greasy mess.

"Ethan, are you sure you're okay, you're not just seeing things? Cause I don't know what you're talking about"

Ethan ignored the comment, just continuing to press on

"And you've got that hot, manly face, with your strong jaw and amazing profile"

Jason was confused again. Sure, his stylish haircut did help him look much better, but his face had always been pretty androgynous, with hints of baby fat still present in his cheeks. Again, before he could interrupt, Ethan continued,

"And you've got that smooth smooth skin, that hot stubble, that sexy smirk of yours. You're the full package bro~"

Jason laughed at this. Ethan was clearly being way too complementary. Sure his face had a great shape to it, with strong cheekbones and a square jaw, but his skin was still acne marked as hell, his smile was crooked and awkward, and he'd never been able to grow any facial hair, no matter how much he tried.

"I really have no idea what you're talking about Ethan. Sure I've got some good features, but the overall package isn't much to write home about~"

Ethan smirked again, his eyes lighting up with humor, as if he knew something I didn't.

"Nah, bro, you're underselling yourself. Plus, you've got that body~"

"What about my body? I think its pretty average, though I guess I'm a bit on the skinny side..."

Jason looked down at himself, trying to contemplate what Ethan meant. Sure, he'd been blessed with an attractive, manly face, but it didn't change the fact that his body was still below average at best.

"Again, bro! Putting yourself down. You really think those massive logs you have for arms are below average?"

Jason looked down at his skinny arms, and said

"More like logs than twigs man, seriously."

"And what about your legs? You've spent so long working on em, you've got thighs and glutes to kill for~"

Jason laughed again

"I dunno man! Most people say the exact opposite. They say I spend too much time on arms and not enough on my torso and legs. What can I say though? I love having big, beefy arms."

"Of course you do, bro? Who wouldn't? Especially when right in between em, you got your big, pillowy chest, your sexy abs, and your super toned back~"

Jason was seriously starting to wonder if Ethan was on something. Anyone could clearly see from first glance that Jason's body was badly proportioned, his arms and legs being massive from months to years of work, while he neglected his back, pecs and ab muscles. Still, he thought he looked pretty alright honestly.

"And I especially love how you're not only super sexy, you know it and flaunt it~ I don't think I've ever seen you once wear a shirt. The most you'll wear is a necklace, and even then, not like that covers anything, bro~ Only makes you look sexier"

Now here Jason had to disagree. He knew that he had cultivated and developed an amazing body over his years of going to the gym, but that was all for his own personal satisfaction. He never flaunted it unnecessarily, especially not during a stream.

"And I love the fact that you're such a fucking bro, bro. Every other word out of your mouth is bro and dude, you can't go even five minutes without flexing and thinking of fucking, or going to the gym, or hanging out with your other hot bros. We all know that your brain is basically only good for working out and looking hot. No smart's up there. And you've got your deep, sexy voice, too. Makes it even hotter that you're a gay bro, just like me"

Jason HAD to laugh at that. What the guy was saying was just so ridiculous.

"What the hell are you talking about? Look, I know that I like to show off my sexy body a lot, but that doesn't mean I'm some kind of dumb jock. And I'm definitely straight, dude. Don't know why you'd think I'm gay"

Ethan pressed on, completely unabashed by Jason's last comments.

"But you know the best fucking part, bro? Its that power of yours. The fact that any weak ass nerd who looks at you and your huge fucking muscles grows into a hot, dumb bro like us within seconds~"

Jason was busy flexing, staring at his own bicep in awe, as if he was shocked by him impressive he was. He looked up at Ethan blearily, saying

"Sorry, bro, what'd you say? I guess I got a bit fucking distracted. Huhuhu. But who could blame me~"

"Nah, it was nothing bro. You don't need to worry about it. Now should head back to the stream?"

Jason gasped in excitement, having forgotten entirely about the fact that there was a whole stream audience full of lame ass nerds, just ready for him to make as sexy as he and Ethan were.

"You got it bro~ This is gonna be so fucking hot~"

Jason left the call, going back to the stream and restarting, glad to see that a full 300 people were still watching, even through the extended break. The second he turned his camera on, he could see that people were confused for some reason, saying a stranger broke into his house. How stupid could these people be? How did they not recognize him? Still, not like it would matter for long...

"Hey bros! How're we all fucking doing? Welcomes to today's stream..."

He trailed off, looking blankly at the camera, before saying

"You know what? Fuck video games! Who needs them when you can do this~"

And as his pecs bounced and bounced hypnotically, the chat slowly transitioned from messages like "What the fuck is happening?" or "Who is this dumb jock?" to "Fuck, bro! Your pecs look so fucking hot today!" and "Huhuhu, I love making my pecs bounce like Jace's~"

And so the stream continued, Jace showing everyone all the amazing things his body could do, while anyone that was watching, whether they wanted to or not, began to copy him exactly. And as the stream went on, the viewer count rose, and rose, and rose...

#musclegrowth #straight to gay #jockification #himbo tf #jock #muscle

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makeste · 3 years

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BnHA Chapter 316: We've Had One, Yes, But What About Second Explosion

Previously on BnHA: Deku was all “[powers up like whoa because it’s time to end the fight]”, and he saved Overhaul from getting not-shot, and then smashed up Nagant’s arm with the power of his new rechargeable super knees. Nagant was all “yoooo this kid is crazy strong whaaaat, it’s like he’s some kind of protagonist or something.” Deku was all “I AM A PROTAGONIST, ACTUALLY, DO YOU WANT TO JOIN FORCES AND FIGHT BAD GUYS WITH ME?” Nagant was all “ah shit why the hell no -- ” and then AFO was all “SURPRISE” and everyone was all “?!?!?!” and AFO was all “TIME TO EXPLODE NOW” and made Nagant explode because he’s an absolute fucking dick. And then Hawks showed up, because Horikoshi just wanted to stuff as many plot points as humanly possible into a single chapter I guess.

Today on BnHA: Hawks is all “good job giving motivational shounen redemption speeches Deku but I’ll take it from here” and screams very earnestly right in Nagant’s face until she finally wakes up. Nagant is all “oh hey it’s my successor, you seem surprisingly unfucked-up from your own HPSC tenure, how did you manage that?” Hawks is all “fandom is going to love hearing this one, but basically it’s because I’m very upbeat and also I had the world’s best role model Endeavor to look up to,” and I swear this man stirs the pot on purpose, but damn it I still love him so damn much. Overhaul is all “HELLO AGAIN, JUST A REMINDER THAT, THE BOSS!!” and Deku is all “MAYBE TAKE TWO SECONDS TO REFLECT ON HOW YOU TORTURED A LITTLE GIRL,” which, thank you, lol. Nagant is all “btw AFO’s hiding in a house in the woods”, and so Deku and the gang go to the house in the woods. Video recording!AFO is all “hi I’m AFO welcome to Jackass” and blows up the house. Sometimes I wonder if this manga is just a weird dream.

I am once again reading the Bean version because I think it was actually the best out of all three translations last week. and that is surprisingly including Viz’s. “faux” is not nearly as entertaining as “knockoff”, and also I have literally no idea why Caleb thought Deku was saying the Third’s lines lol

oh hey, Endeavor’s here too! not that you’d ever be able to tell from this first panel lmao

glad you received All Might’s call, mysterious unidentified glowing smudge

oh snap he says he’s weaker in the rain. is that why AFO told Nagant to attack then?? except that as we discussed the other day, I believe that AFO fully intended for Nagant to lose the fight, so him giving her info that would give her an advantage doesn’t really fit in with that. maybe he wanted Deku to be separated from Endeavor and the rest for maximum angst, though

btw Deku’s eyes are unsurprisingly back to the new normal here

alas, the angst continues. I say, pretending like I’m not totally eating it up each and every week and writing essay after essay about it lol

anyway so apparently Hawks can’t actually fly lmao. he was just yeeting himself with style

for some reason this is the funniest fucking thing I’ve ever seen omfg. wave to Hawks, kids! say “bye, Hawks!”

j/k of course Deku is catching them. -- except???

wow so he was just running on fumes there at the end. well, good to know there is actually a limit to his shenanigans, particularly regarding this new “knockoff” 100% OFA. it will definitely not alleviate any of the discourse, but it’s good for my own peace of mind because it’s solid confirmation that he still needs his pals in order to win this thing

anyway, but on to the rest of this conversation, which is basically Deku deducing what we all deduced last week -- AFO implanted some sort of trap into Nagant when he gave her Air Walk. though I’d still like to get the actual details from AFO and/or Horikoshi, because this was particularly wild even by quirk standards lol

omgggggg

she still has a face after all!! so it’s confirmed, Horikoshi has no idea what “blowing up” actually means. we might have guessed, based on what happened to Toga in the MVA arc, and also based on everything Katsuki does ever, but shhh

so now Hawks is all “NAGANT PLEASE WAKE UP, IF I SHOUT MY NAME AT YOU WILL THAT DO THE TRICK”

this is actually kind of touching though because even though we all know (or most of us acknowledge at any rate) that Hawks is a pretty caring person, it’s rare to see him actually panic over someone’s welfare like this

oh shit Horikoshi is really doubling down on it

I wonder how much Hawks knew about what really happened between Nagant and the HPSC. regardless, he probably sees her as a kindred spirit of sorts, and I’m more than happy for Deku to pass the redemption torch onto him now that he’s on the scene. like no offense Deku but they actually know each other and stuff lol

DAMMIT NAGANT CAN’T YOU SEE HOW LOUD HE IS YELLING

apparently being freed from his HPSC shackles has finally given Hawks the space to embrace his own inner shounen protagonist. is there anything more shounen than trying to motivationally scream someone awake when they’re lying in your arms inches from death?? 100% guaranteed to work

!!! IS THIS NAGANT’S POV OMG

SO SHE IS ALIVE. THANK GOD. Horikoshi doesn’t want to meet with my emotional distress lawyer today after all

love how she’s all “just gonna stir up the weekly Hawks Discourse pot here by implying that he probably committed a lot of Atrocities just like I did, so now people can get all hopped up about that, even though there’s no evidence he’s ever killed anyone aside from that one horrible ‘damned-if-you-do...’ situation with Twice.” no one asked for your provocative speculation young lady!! trust me Nagant, our rabbles don’t need the rousing lol

but nice save there with the “so how are your eyes so untainted” well you see it’s because even when he was following the HPSC’s orders he always went to great lengths never to go against his own moral compass. which just to be clear was incredibly difficult, and led to a ton of pain and suffering on his part, because the life of a spy is basically just one impossible situation after another. but in spite of that he never stopped trying to do his best to help people. I don’t really know where this tangent came from or is leading to, lol, but anyway p.s.a. I love Hawks a lot and he’s a good kid dammit

oh shit??!?

how is the League always able to swing all these fancy forest mansions. where do they find them. how many do they have

so Deku’s dropping them -- very roughly, not sure if he was reacting to finally getting AFO’s location, or if his energy really is giving out -- and now Nagant’s saying that AFO hired other villains as well. well of course he did. gotta keep chipping away at OFA’s ninth successor little by little

now Nagant is asking Hawks how he’s able to keep making “that” face. I assume she’s again talking about the fact that he somehow didn’t let the HPSC wear down his spirit

oh my god???

thanks for stuffing this chapter to the brim with good nutritional Hawks Feels, Horikoshi. what a good. he just keeps on trudging forward undeterred no matter what bullshit comes his way. what a steadfast little guy. I WILL PROTECT YOU FROM DISCOURSE MY SWEET SUNSHINE

lmaoooo

“SPOTTED THIS DUDE JUST CHILLING OUT THERE ON THE ROOF WITH NO ARMS, SEEMED PRETTY SUS” good job Endeavor

anyway so you don’t really need me to tell you that Overhaul is immediately starting in with the “BUT THE BOSS WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE ME TO THE BOSS YOU PROMISED YOU WOULD TAKE ME TO THE BOSS” stuff again. but I will go ahead and tell you anyway. so yeah. he’s doing that

OMG YOU GUYS LOOK AT DEKU’S “of all the fucking assholes to just randomly drop in on my life once again why did it have to be you” FACE THOUGH, OMG

fun fact, if you go back to chapters 124 through 160, there was an entire story arc where Overhaul imprisoned and tortured a little girl. yeah, I know!! suuuuuuuuper evil. anyways just an interesting little anecdote for you all that’s somewhat relevant to the current situation

OMG, YES. FUCK YES, DEKU

THEN WHAT ABOUT SPARING ONE FOR HER!!! YES!!! EXACTLY!!! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, SOMEONE GETS IT

HERE’S THE PANEL OF DEKU SAYING THE EXACT SAME THING I’M SAYING LOL

(ETA: so apparently there’s some discourse about this because some people are interpreting this as Deku saying “you should apologize to Eri”, which would obviously be a terrible idea even if Overhaul actually wanted to do that, because Eri shouldn’t ever have to see him again. however I just want to point out that there is a HUGE difference between saying “it would be nice if you could direct that feeling of regret/being sorry towards Eri as well”, vs saying “you should also apologize to her.” all Deku is doing is rightfully pointing out that Overhaul has hurt way more people than just his boss, and if he really is remorseful, then he should extend those feelings of remorse to Eri and the rest as well. it’s not a directive to take any specific action, and I’m 1000% sure no one at U.A. would let Overhaul within 100 miles of Eri ever again.

tl;dr “try feeling remorse sometime” =/= “do you want me to fly you over to U.A. right now to surprise the little girl you traumatized”, lol.)

[slings an arm around Deku’s shoulders] you’re a good kid. I like you. I don’t know if I tell you that enough, but it’s true

meanwhile here is Overhaul’s “spare... a thought... for Eri...???????” face sigh

the struggle is real y’all

(ETA: and that’s... the last we ever saw of Overhaul, I guess? well all right then. I assume Deku will make good on his promise, so we know he’ll get that little bit of closure before going back to jail or whatever, and I confess I’m more than fine with leaving the rest of it open-ended, especially given his character’s history. I think this was pretty generous all things considered.)

lmao holy shit

All Might what did you do to those tiki torch guys?? did you thrash them. did you give ‘em those hands. did you deliver their own asses to them complete with a sticker reminding them Amazon Prime Day is on June 21. we missed out goddammit

so Endeavor, who wasn’t the one he was asking, is telling him that they captured (well let’s be real, Deku captured, give the credit where it’s due) Nagant and Overhaul. and so I guess they’re going to take Nagant to the ER now

fire is no one’s weakness

-- oh my GOD I scrolled down and audibly gasped

[is politely but firmly approached and asked to remove my arm from Deku’s shoulder by the physical manifestation of all this Dekuangst] “we’re sorry, he’s not allowed to have visitors right now” oh shit, my bad. [goes to stand behind a police barricade]

lmao what. did you run out of room on the previous page

what an exaggerated fade to black lmao

-- AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I actually can’t see what he’s reacting to so maybe I’m just seriously jumping the gun here lol, but THE HELL WITH IT. the next panel appears to be a cut to Haibori Forest, so I’m just gonna go ahead and declare that Deku ran off on his own all wounded to go have more Dekuangst, just like I manifested. now go call Katsuki goddammit

[scrolls three more inches down] oh

yeah so like I said, Deku is walking very slowly a few feet in front of Endeavor, who’s telling him to wait up. yep. we’ve all gotta be so careful to not just jump to conclusions. I know we’re excited but still

anyway, so! welcome back to Mt. Lady and Kamui Woods (ARE YOU GUYS DATING) and Edgeshot! have fun walking into this obvious trap lol

dammit Deku why are you so determined to tempt fate

[monkey puppet meme faces]

OH MY GOD THIS IS PURE GRADE-A CHEESY COMIC BOOK VILLAIN 101 SHIT AND I’M HERE FOR IT

that’s such a weird way of clapping who claps like that

unlike certain other people who shan’t be named, AFO doesn’t feel the need to inexplicably take his shirt off when recording sinister villain monologues. I think we’re all pretty grateful for that

high fives to everyone who called it!! yep yep

anyway so this whole scene has major booby-trap vibes, which I’m enjoying immensely even though I don’t think anything is really going to come of it lol. probably just another long-winded AFO Speech. but wouldn’t it be funny if like the ceiling started lowering down to try and squish Deku afterwards lol

(ETA: well the explosion was still pretty funny too ngl.)

ffff

[“Dekuangst is the trap” intensifies]

anyway so yeah. he’s just hitting up all of his usual villain talking points. we get it, you’re so smart and you see right through the thin veneers of society and people who don’t conform are left to fend for themselves and labeled as villains and history is written by the victors, and blah blah blah dude are you just jumping randomly from one soundbyte to another lol. literally what are you talking about. what does this have to do with you blowing up Nagant

-- holy shit??

[”Dekuangst is the trap” intensifies MORE?????]

LOL WHAT

BRO. WHAT IS WITH YOU. DON’T YOU KNOW HOW TO LAY ANY OTHER KIND OF FUCKING TRAP GOOD LORD

“YOU’RE NEXT” THE CALLBACK?? THE PARALLELS?? THOUGH WHEN ALL MIGHT POINTED HE MADE IT LOOK WAY COOLER. AFO’S POINTING JUST LOOKS LIKE SMOKEY THE BEAR

HAS ANYONE CHECKED IN ON KAMUI WOODS I HEAR HE IS WEAK TO FIRE?? THE ONLY ONE WHO IS, APPARENTLY

r.i.p. to this particular forest mansion. don’t worry they have a ton of backups

remember last week when I said maybe AFO thinks explosions are gauche. well never mind. he fucking loves explosions

anyway so that’s the end of BnHA, everyone. hope you enjoyed. it was a good ride while it lasted. see you all, good luck in your travels

#bnha 316 #hawks #takami keigo #lady nagant #midoriya izuku #all for one #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #manifesting 317 opening with a slightly modified version of my previous fantasy scenario lmao #'WHADDYA MEAN THEY BLEW UP THE NERD'#that's *his* job #sorry lol I kid I kid

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mizunetzu · 4 years

Note

Heyo!! Can I request a Kuroo x male reader, where yn goes to give him a love letter one day, but he sees him with his new girlfriend??? And he’s like-sad and he tears up the note and he moves on??? But then one day kuroo asks to talk to him, and he confesses to reader, but since reader already moved on he doesn’t accept??? Angsty ending if you will 💔💔💔 thank you, Mr. Mizunetzu !!

Hi paola ily paola hee hee

——————

Kuroo x reader - you did once...

⚠️Warnings - Kuroo gets a gf, angst, not so much of a good ending?

Pronouns- male, he/him

You can find part two here!

——————

“(Y/n), can I talk to you real quick?”

(Y/n) looked up from adjusting his loose kneepad, and wiped a bead of sweat rolling off his face. He turned his head to his teammates still on their diving punishment, and looked back at Kuroo. They just lost to another school again, but he got his punishment done rather early. “Mm? Okay..?”

He rose to his feet, following Kuroo out the gym door. The walk to a secluded place far, far away from the main gym was silent and awkward, not to mention suspicious. If Kuroo wasn’t one of his good friends, he would’ve thought he was about to be kidnapped. Or murdered.

Eventually, they stopped where the fenced pathway met the grass. Kuroo stopped ominously, further proving (Y/n’s) ‘serial killer’ theory. He turned around, facing (Y/n), and leaned on the railing.

(Y/n) stiffly held his hands behind his back. “So...” he rocked on his heels, trying to seem as casual as possible. “...what did you...need...?”

He was met with no response. Kuroo, instead, gripped the railing tighter, his knuckles turning a pale white. His eyes were downcast and he was sweating like crazy. He looked like he’d seen a ghost.

(Y/n) stepped forward and crouched down, so he could see Kuroos face behind the mop that was his hair. He rested his palms on his knees, trying to decide what to say.

“...I...think your hair looks nice...today...”

If it’s one thing he hates, it’s awkward silence. Not to mention the suspense of waiting on someone to say someone possibly life changing. I mean, why else should he drag him out miles away from the gym during training camp?

“Uh-If we don’t hurry up, we’re gonna miss our next match-“

“I need to get something off my chest.”

(Y/n’s) throat closed up. It was simple. The secluded area, Kuroo flushed face, fiddling and chipping the rust off the railing. He didn’t know how he didn’t see it before. He’s been in this situation plenty of times, with girls he can’t even remember the face of. But oh how much he’d love to be in this situation a few months ago.

————

‘Just do it. just do it. God, just do it. Worse comes to worse, he’s straight. It’s not like he’s the type of person to de-friend someone because they like them!’

(Y/n) gripped the white envelope behind his back harshly, crinkling it on the corners. It had a red, heart shaped sticker on the seal flap, with the words ‘To Tetsu’ written in dark pink across the back.

Both Karasuno and Nekoma were bidding their new friends goodbye, all scattered across the parking lot of Karasuno. (Y/n) paced around awkwardly, looking for Kuroo’s familiar mop of black, messy hair. He was nervous, to say the least. Very nervous.

“Ne, Kenma,” (Y/n) placed a sweaty palm on Kenmas handheld game, pushing it down lightly and forcing him to look up.

“Mm.”

“Have...have you seen Tetsurou? I need to give him something.”

Kenma hummed in acknowledgment, and nudged his head to the side. Sure enough, Kuroo was there, off in the distance and talking to someone he couldn’t make out. His back was facing towards them, and his hand was on his hip. (Y/n’s) heart pounded even more.

“Th..an..k...y-you...” (Y/n) gave a lopsided, very stressed out smile, and limped his way over to Kuroo. Kenmas eyes were drawn to the extremely obvious love-letter being wrinkled by (Y/n’s) sweaty hands. He pursed his lips.

He then looked up to the petite girl chatting with Kuroo. It wasn’t visible in (Y/n’s) line of sight, but it was to Kenma. He almost felt kind of bad.

(Y/n) stopped dead behind Kuroo, his eyes fixated on the ground as he ran through his memorized confession for the millionth time that day. He tapped on his shoulder, keeping the letter flush against his back with his other hand.

Kuroo turned around, and that was when his eyes landed on the brown-haired girl wearing an obviously oversized Nekoma jacket. From context of the scene, (Y/n) supposed it was Kuroo’s. He gripped the letter tighter.

The girl walked forward and extended her hand out. Her bubbly aura practically suffocated (Y/n). “Hi! You must be ‘(Y/n)’. Tetsu was just talking about you! You two are like—buddy buddies right?”

‘Tetsu.’ That was (Y/n’s) nickname for him. Only he got to call him ‘Tetsu’...and who gave her the right to call him by his first name?

(Y/n) glanced at Kuroo. Kuroo shoved his hands into his pocket and grinned. It wasn’t his usual shit-eater smirk, rather a genuine, lovesick dopey smile. A smile (Y/n’s) never seen before, not directed at him at least. It was a sight he wanted to burn into his mind, but at the same time, he wanted to slap that smile right off his face.

“(Y/n), this is Yumi-chan. She’s our new manager.”

Kuroo stepped behind Yumimite, and draped his arms around her dainty shoulders.

“She’s also my new girlfriend~”

“Oh-hush it, you!” Yumimite turned around and berated Kuroo with small punches, earning a playful chuckled from the Kuroo. (Y/n’s) grip on the wrinkled letter loosened.

“...ahaha! Congrats..! When...when did you two get together?” If (Y/n) was good at anything, he was good at pretending to be interested in something. Maybe he should’ve joined the drama club instead of the volleyball club.

“Mm. We got together just last week. She gave me a love letter.” Kuroo patted the girl on her head, ruffling her neat brown hair and making her blush red. It looked like it felt nice. He wondered how it would feel to have Kuroo’s undivided attention, to be pat on the head like a blushing schoolgirl. To be a small, pretty girl next to Kuroo, to have the ability to call him ‘his’. All his nervousness simmered away, replaced by a strange ache of numb.

“Well, that’s awesome dude! Honestly, I don’t know how you managed to snag a girlfriend before me...” (Y/n) slouched dramatically, quickly hooking the letter in the waistband of his volleyball shorts and tugging his shirt over it. “Especially such a cutie like her! I’m (L/n), by the way...”

Kuroo chuckled, slinging an arm around Yumimite. “Don’t go flirting with my girl now. You have plenty of girls practically throwing their panties at you.”

‘Yeah...but I’m gay, Tetsurou. For you no doubt! I-I love you-!’

(Y/n) almost wanted to yell that out. And he almost did. But he chose instead to keep silent and laugh in response.

(Y/n) bowed slightly. “Anyway, it was nice meeting you. I just wanted to say hi to Tets-uh, Kuroo...”

Kuroo tilted his head at the use of his last name, but brushed it off when Yumi hooked her arm in his. The couple bid their goodbyes, as they turned around and walked off. (Y/n) followed suite, turning around robotically and marching off.

Once he was a good enough distance away, he stopped behind a trash can and fished the letter out from his sweaty back.

He watched as the big pink words ‘To Tetsu’ bled and distort with every falling teardrop rolling down his cheeks. The water expanded and smudged the ink lighter and lighter until the words were practically indecipherable. You couldn’t tell it was a love letter anymore. Especially because (Y/n) ripped and trashed it up til it was a pile of pink and white paper shreds.

He tossed the stray flakes of soggy paper into the trash bin, watching as it fluttered and twirled tauntingly down the trash can. He quietly scrubbed at his red hot face, probably soaking his shirt with his salty tears. He rested his hands on the edges of the bin.

“Okay...” (Y/n) stretched up, spitting onto the concrete. “I...wonder...if my favorite ramen place is open...”

Strangely he didn’t feel devastated, or heartbroken at all. He just felt sort of numb. He didn’t feel the need to blast heartbreak music and cry out on his bed for hours on end. In fact, he was glad. Albeit a bit raw, and maybe a bit tired, but glad.

He got closure for the confusing feelings bubbling down his throat ever since he’d met Kuroo Tetsurou. He got his answer, and even if it wasn’t the preferred one, it was something.

The recovery process was easier than most people would think. It only took a couple long days to get him back to his prime condition. It was a given, since (Y/n) had so much other things to be worrying about. Midterms, volleyball practice, his friends. It’s a given that he would move on the things that was no longer on his priority list.

And Kuroo Tetsurou was no exception.

——

It was kind of pathetic to see such a high strung man like Kuroo so shaky and nervous. Though, he felt the same way three months ago, spending the whole golden week perfecting a letter he never got to read. What a hypocrite he was.

(Y/n) cleared his throat. “So...what did you wanna say?”

“I-just,” Kuroo swallowed thickly. “Ah-I...give me a second...”

“Okay, take you time, Kuroo~” he stood back up to his full height, and leaned on the rail across from him. It was obvious they weren’t gonna get anywhere. “So...hows ‘Yumi-chan’ doing?”

“Ah. We broke up. She’s gay. She has a girlfriend now.”

“Aw, I’m sorry. Though, good for her for snagging a girlfriend. No offense.” Kuroo mumbled out a ‘none taken.’ (Y/n) continued.

“Was that what you wanted to talk about? Her breaking up with you?”

“No! Actually, I broke up with her first. And it was...it was kinda mutual.” Kuroo sharply inhaled. “But it does have something to do with what I need to tell you.”

How could he be more obvious. (Y/n) forced a smile. It felt mandatory now. “Really? That’s interesting. Do tell.”

‘Please...Please don’t say it.’

“I broke up with her...because I had these...feelings.”

‘Please don’t say it. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to read it. I don’t want to know it.’

“And you know how she’s gay? Well, I think I am too.”

‘No shit Sherlock. I don’t wanna hear it. You’ve been fiddling around with your hands like a schoolgirl. Stop it, so we can just be friends like we used to be. Don’t make it awkward. Don’t make me hear it. Please.’

“And...well...”

‘Don’t make me look at your crestfallen face when I say no. It’s too much for even me to handle. I don’t want to see that.’

(Y/n) knitted his eyes shut. A fierce shudder threatened to rattle him and cover Kuroo’s mouth, but he kept still, as difficult as it was. He braced for impact.

“I think I’m in love with you.”

There it was.

(Y/n) pursed his lips and let his smile finally drop. Kuroo looked up from his trained gaze on the ground, only to be met with (Y/n’s) pitiful expression. (Y/n) never saw his face go from hopeful and love struck to devastated and heartbroken so fast.

(Y/n) cleared his throat. He was going to lay him down gently if it was the last thing he did. “...uh.”

He never said it’d be easy, though.

“If it makes you feel better...I did like you once, Tetsurou.” He only used his full first name during important situations, as he switched to using his last name instead of his first a long time ago. A lump grew in Kuroo’s throat.

Kuroo jabbed at his chest exasperatedly. “T-then what’s the problem?! We both-“

“The problem is I don’t love you. Not anymore.” Kuroo fell silent. He was so prepared to do anything it took to win over (Y/n), but after standing in front of him now, it was clear. Watching as he looked down at him with a pitying expression that made his brain go numb. He would get no where if he tried.

“...a-anymore? You liked me before? When!? Why didn’t I know?!” Kuroo grasped fistfuls of his black hair, a cold sweat condensing on his forehead. He was so animatedly desperate it was kind of sad.

“Not too long ago. Though, you kept me waiting since forever. And I thought I could wait forever.” A sorry chuckle emitted from (Y/n’s) lips. “I watched you go though girlfriend after girlfriend, Tetsurou. You even introduced me to Yumimite when I was going to confess to you. How do you think that felt? Even I got tired of waiting.”

“You...you were...” Kuroo had never felt so helpless. (Y/n) shrugged.

“I would give you the love letter I wrote for you that day, but it’s in a trash can somewhere. Ripped to shreds. And I don’t remember the words I wrote. I’m sorry, Tetsurou.” (Y/n) sighed and patted Kuroo on the head.

“You missed your chance...”

Kuroo’s eyes stung, threatening to unleash hell, but he promised himself he wouldn’t cry. No matter what. Instead, he rubbed the back of his neck and stood back up.

“I never stood a chance, did i?” Kuroo chuckled. It was a sad chuckle, one that made (Y/n) want to cry aswell.

“That’s the sad part.” (Y/n) pressed his lips into a fine line, turning it into a smile conotated with pity.

“You did once.”

——————

Go sit there and stare at the wall in silence as you feel bad for Kuroo getting rejected by you. Go on, stare. Maybe then I’ll consider a part 2 (and if people comment or reblog asking for a part 2, hee hee.)

#kuroo tetsuro imagine #haikyuu kuroo tetsuro #kuroo tetsuro x reader #hq kuroo #haikyuu kuroo #kuroo angst #kuroo x male reader #hq x y/n #hq x male reader #haikyuu x male reader #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x y/n #haikyuu boys #haikyuu angst

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urmindisastreamofcolors · 3 years

Text

Greta Van Fleet One Shots: How You Meet

T/W: Mentions of a car wreck

Josh:

It was an unexpected turn of events, but Josh liked to refer to it as universal intervention. Every morning you walked ten minutes down the street to your favorite coffee shop to get something heavily caffeinated before holing yourself up in your art studio for the rest of the day. This morning activity had gone past routine a long time ago and had quickly become ritual. You had found out that walk was a great way for you to start your day for sculpting with clay.

One rainy fall morning right before Halloween, you were surprised to see four young guys milling around the coffee shop seeming to enjoy the atmosphere while they discussed various pieces of art from local artists lining the walls. A few of the pieces of photography were yours from when you visited the Grand Canyon a couple summers ago, but since then, your attention had been focused on pottery.

After a steaming latte was firmly secured in your hand and a hefty tip left for the baristas, you began to make your way back to the door as you planned out your day mentally. Before you could grab the door handle, one of the shorter guys from the group with curly hair quickly held the door for you with a breathtaking smile. You hadn’t been into photography in years, but you would’ve died on the spot to have captured that grin on camera.

You offered your thanks quickly as you your face was suddenly on fire. He had to of known you were staring, but what you didn’t know was the he had been staring since you entered the coffee shop.

“Hey! Wait! What’s your name,” the young man called after you as you stepped outside onto the sidewalk. The morning light made him squint his deep brown eyes as he stared at you, waiting on an answer.

“I’m y/n,” you answered shyly as you pushed a stray piece of hair out of your face and nearly slapped yourself when you realized you totally forgot to ask his. Before you could open your mouth, he had already beat you the punch and leaned back against the building with his arms crossed and a confident grin on his face.

“So, y/n....do you come here often?”

Danny:

The music was so loud that you were sure your head would burst. You could feel the beat of the music in your the center of your chest as you sipped on your drink. Your friend, y/f/n, was friends with a drummer for a pretty famous band and they extended an invitation to their house party to kick off their new album release. While you though Greta Van Fleet was a weird name for a rock n’ roll band, you did like their music.

Bob Seger blared through the house as you continued the search for your friend. The body heat from the crowd was coming off in waves and making you feel dizzy. You were just ready to leave, but you couldn’t leave your friend behind. A tap on your shoulder had you turning quickly coming face to face with a tall guy with long black hair who offered you a friendly smile.

“Hey! I’m Danny. I’m friend’s with y/f/n too! She’s been looking all over for you,” he yelled over the music as he pointed in the direction of your friend who was jumping up and down trying to get your attention. You and Danny laughed as some random guy with long hair and a pink shirt started doing the same thing to make fun of her.

“That’s Sam. He’s my best friend. It’s getting to be a bit much in here, so we’re all going to step out for a few minutes if you would like to join. Unfortunately, I don’t know everyone here tonight and I don’t want to leave you by yourself,” Danny yelled over the music with a kind look on his face.

“Yeah! That would be great! I was actually getting a bit overwhelmed, so I’m glad you’re here dude,” you shouted back as you placed your hand in the crook of his offered elbow. As you two made your way to the edge of the room where your friends were waiting, people stumbled over each other to get your way and were yelling and patting Danny on the back. A sudden realization ran through body as you felt your eyes widen at the idea that this was the Danny from Greta Van Fleet.

Sam:

You and Ronnie had been best friends for as long as you two could remember which meant her brothers annoyed you as much as they did her. Throughout your high school years, you honestly didn’t have a crush on any of them but found their friendship to be as irreplaceable as Ronnie’s.

Once they made their big debut, you didn’t see them often and you and Ronnie both attended different colleges. In fact, you had a once in a lifetime opportunity to study abroad and couldn’t pass it up.The miles between you and Ronnie didn’t matter and you talked every single day and normally face-timed too. Any updates on the boys came from her or Karen. You did miss hanging out in the garage on the weekends and playing pranks, but as the days turned into years, you didn’t think much more of it.

Finally, you were able to go home for a much needed visit after your year abroad and apparently, Ronnie and the boys would be home at the same time too. Quickly, you all made plans to hang out at the first possible moment and you were jittery with excitement on your flight back to US.

After taking a couple days to catch up on some much needed rest, you were finally able to go hang out at the Kiszka house. When you got there, you didn’t even knock on the door and waltzed straight into the living room like you had always done. Ronnie and the boys were sprawled all over the furniture with the exception of Danny who always preferred the floor. Hearing your entrance, Ronnie let out a scream as she lept over the back of the couch and literally sent you sprawling to the ground with her on top of you.

“Okay-Ronnie-Ronnie! Let go of my neck! I can’t breathe,” you croaked out as the only Kiszka girl finally loosened her death grip and helped you up. All the boys got up next to give you a quick hug, but you noticed one missing.

“Where’s Sammy,” you asked as your heard his feet hitting the steps on his way down. With a huge grin, he made his way over to get a hug, but you felt yourself swallow quickly as you willed yourself not to blush. Little Sammy had apparently grown up on tour and Sam was the one approaching you with his arms outstretched. Giving you a tight squeeze, you could smell his shampoo from his long hair and willed your heart to slow down.

You had never had a crush on any of Ronnie’s brothers, but that had quickly changed in less than a minute.

Jake:

The radio was still playing as you hung upside down in your car. Your seat belt was the only thing holding you in place. You could taste the blood in your mouth and salty tears and blood ran into your hairline. Adrenaline was pumping through your veins as you scanned your surroundings and tried to remember how you ended up in the current situation, but nothing immediately came to mind which made you cry harder. You were sobbing when you could hear voices drifting through the shattered windshield.

Despite the pain in your ribs and the tightness of the seat belt, you let out a blood curdling screech that ended in hiccups and sobs. A few moments later, you heard hurried footsteps and gravel crunching..

“Josh! Call 911!”

“Damn! How are we going to get her out? Should we move her?”

“I don’t know! Did anyone get that license plate? She was ran off the road!”

The voices blurred together and your eyes felt heavy. They began to flutter shut when a guy with long hair and a worried expression stuck his head in your car from the busted passenger side window.

“Hey! Stay awake! I know you’re tired, but you have to stay awake. What’s your name,” he asked gently as he wiggled into the car and grabbed on of your hands. The calluses were a drastic difference to your soft palms and he absentmindedly ran his thumb over the back of your hand.

“Y/n. It’s y/n,” you stuttered out.

“It’s nice to meet you. Help’s on the way, okay? I’m Jacob, but I go by Jake. I wish we had met in better circumstances, but you have super pretty eyes,” he said with a soft smile.

“I’m scared, Jake,” you said as a new flood of tears ran into your hairline.

“I know. I’m going to stay right here. You’re not alone. I promise,” Jake said with sincerity as he continued to comfort you.

On the verge of bleeding out, you honestly were wondering if he wasn’t your guardian angel.

#greta van fleet #greta van fleet oneshots #jake kiszka #josh kiszka #sam kiszka #danny wagner #howyoumeetoneshot #gvf #josh gvf #jake gvf #sammy kiszka #sammy gvf #danny gvf

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captainsimagines · 3 years

Text

traitor

Summary: It was only one night, no strings attached, just two friends working through their grief together. Steve went to live his life with Peggy and within two weeks of returning, he peacefully passed. Unimaginable things happen everyday, jokes have negative consequences, and protection doesn’t always protect from the possibility… the possibility of carrying a child. He would have stayed if he knew, everyone agrees with this, so why is the world calling Steve Rogers a traitor?

One-Shot (with a happy ending)

Pairing(s): Avengers x Fem Reader; brief Steve Rogers x Fem Reader

Warnings: Unexpected pregnancy; serious talks about abortion; brief mention of suicide (if you squint); mentions of Endgame deaths; strong language; minor descriptions of actual birth; ANGST but with a happy ending! This is purely fanfiction.

Word Count: 6,600+

A/N: So, Olivia Rodrigo’s album just came out and dude, jfc every song is magical. like... wtf. This is essentially a ‘song fanfic’, but ehhhh not quite. The lyrics don’t match the fanfic lmao but the melody does??? idk this is a shit ton of angst, be warned. It was from a request I got a while back, so this is kind of a request fanfic.

Up until the moment Steve pressed his soft lips to yours, you were certain you had never experienced such a wonderful sensation of magic. You had been witness to actual magic, to beings from other worlds, and yet Steve’s gentle touch was enough to erase any other image, to completely overpower your senses, a kind of magic that dug deep into the trenches of your heart and settled in its new home.

No, you and Steve were not a couple. There were some flirty remarks over the years, some fantasies that lay dormant, but there was never the craving to actually act upon them. But when half the world disappeared and the remaining Avengers came up with a plan five years later, the loss of a teammate prompted the sudden push of two touch-starved individuals. The rest of the team had gone to sulk in their own corners of the compound, some hard at work at constructing the final piece to the puzzle, and you and Steve ventured off to the kitchen. Two cups of tea each, silent but heavy tears mixing in with the sugar and milk.

You were the first to break, shoulders crumbling and knees rocking under your weight. You fell to the floor, sobs and hiccups forming into a full-blown attack, your hands scratching at your neck. Steve fell beside you, pulling you into his chest and rocking you back and forth. He cried too, the final words of his best friend ringing in his ears like a dreaded song on repeat. See you in a minute. See you in a minute. See you in a minute.

Time was irrelevant, you had enough of counting time, estimating it, time-traveling through it. If you could sit there all night, all week, another five years huddled close to Steve Rogers, then so be it.

‘I can’t believe she’s gone,’ you had sobbed.

‘I can’t believe it either. I can’t,’ he had cried back.

You had simply lifted your head and turned his face toward yours, searching his eyes for any hesitation before you had leaned in first. He had returned the intimate gesture almost immediately, gripping you tightly. Tears dripped in between your moving lips, sobs caught inside breathy moans, grips becoming tighter and tighter as each of you shared your first time together. No other partner up until that point had ever pulled such a pained but grateful cry from your throat, no other human being had ever made you feel so safe and peaceful.

The final battle was over, you had lost yet another teammate, but the world had a chance to start over. And Steve had pulled you aside a few days before he returned the stones, letting you know that he wasn’t coming back the same man. He had been so scared of telling you, of possibly betraying you, but when your palms cupped his cheeks and you gave him a kiss on the lips with a soft whisper of ‘Be with her. Cherish her. Be happy. We’ll meet again’, his worries instantly shattered. He could only rapidly nod his head, grabbing your hands that were soaked in his tears, and kissing them until he said his final goodbyes.

And he returned such a different man, but with a smile you had never quite seen before. Yes, he was older and you only had a few seconds to actually process that, but he was happy. He had been happy. He finally lived the life he deserved.

Sitting in that pew two weeks later, both sad and happy tears streaming down your face, you felt at peace for the first time in a long time. You simply gripped Wanda’s hand as they carried the casket down the aisle, a sad melody drowning the church.

The first round of sickness hit you the day of the funeral, but you obviously didn’t think much of it. It was the fits of sadness and grief, the hot coil in the middle of your stomach, you thought. It had to be. It wasn’t until your breakfast was regurgitated into your toilet only a few minutes after enjoying it that you were suddenly worried.

You sneaked to some liquor store a subway ride away, careful of not leaving a trail. This was embarrassing, it was insane, it couldn’t possibly be real. You gave the cashier your money and ran to the stall provided, peeing on the stick the best you could before placing it on the dirty sink in the corner. You patted your hands on your thighs repeatedly, careful to not touch any other thing in a goddamn liquor store bathroom.

‘Friday?’ your voice was so defeated, tears already stinging your eyes.

Your little bluetooth sprang to life, ‘Yes, Y/N?’

Your bottom lip was trembling wildly, hands now shaking. ‘Can you stay active with me while I read the results? I can’t… I can’t be alone right now.’

‘Yes, Y/N. Anything you need, I’m here.’ You sobbed openly, thanking her under your breath. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to contact anybody else?’

‘I can’t face them. I can’t face them if it’s positive, Friday.’

‘Okay, it’s alright,’ her voice was so delicate, so quiet and reassuring. ‘Just keep talking to me, Y/N. I think the results should be ready now.’

You inched closer to the test. ‘I’m scared, Friday.’

‘I know,’ Friday sighed, ‘But you will get through this. No matter the result.’

Grabbing the small device from the sink, you swallowed so much saliva that it actually hurt. The plus sign was so clear, so evident in its visibility, and your ears only registered the loud cries escaping your painful lungs because Friday was practically yelling in your ear.

‘Please, calm down Y/N! Your heart rate is too fast-” she was stuttering, an AI was stuttering. ‘I’m calling for help. You need someone to be here with you. I’m sorry.’

It took ten minutes. Ten minutes of banging outside the bathroom door from the cashier, ten minutes of blurry vision and a strep throat. Sam broke through the door as quickly as he could, eyes flying around the small bathroom until he saw you huddled in the corner, a pregnancy test clutched in your small hand. He crouched down beside you, hands extended but not exactly touching you, and eyes trying to lock with yours.

‘Y/N, Y/N?’

Just the sound of his voice, the voice of someone who didn’t need this added pain in their lives, it was just too much. Another weight added to your shoulders.

‘I don’t know why,’ you choked out, ‘I’m so sorry.’

Sam’s face contorted into a pained expression, eyes brimmed with salty tears. ‘What are you talking about? No one is blaming you for anything. You’re safe, I’m here.’

You shook your head violently, ‘I didn’t mean to.’

But as quickly as those words left your mouth, the pounding in your head had become too unbearable. You collapsed into Sam’s arms.

You woke to a single doctor who was monitoring your vitals. She was just sitting beside your bed, clicking random buttons on the screen in front of her. You whimpered slightly, the bright lights temporarily blinding you. The doctor quickly stopped what she was doing and removed the tube from your nose, allowing you to breathe on your own. You ignored the weird scratch that caused, and asked her the question you needed to have answered by a true medical professional - not a liquor store device.

She confirmed what you already knew. There were no ‘congratulations’ or even ‘I’m sorry’s’, just the fact that you were pregnant and it was very early on. There were still options for you, it was healthy so far, you were healthy so far-

Wait, options?

The team were all huddled outside, nerves all over the place. They didn’t know what was going on. Sam knew but it wasn’t his information to pass on. It wasn’t until Bucky’s angry demeanor actually turned violent, a hole forming through the hospital wall. You were all on a private floor, completely displaced from the reality down on other levels, so any freak-outs were only slightly justified. Slightly.

‘Sam, you gotta tell us. I made a promise to Steve, Sam! I promised to take care of her!’

Bucky’s words gripped Sam’s heart in a metaphorical vice. ‘She’s gotta tell you guys, man. It’s not my place.’

You had curled in on yourself, the doctor’s words echoing louder and louder.

‘Abortion is an option. At this rate, it would be quick and safe. I can promise you that. It’s your choice.’

You wanted to die. You wanted the world to swallow you up and bury you alive. You wanted to disappear. If you had died in the snap, this wouldn’t have happened. It wouldn’t have happened.

The ride back to the compound was a quiet one, with Sam driving you and the radio on low volume.

‘Are you going to tell them?’

You bit your lip, ‘The doctor said I had options.’

Sam’s breath hitched and he tried to mask it, but you had heard it. You felt guilty, disgusting, like you betrayed Steve and the rest of the team. They had just lost him, you had just lost him, and you were carrying his child. And if Steve would have known, he would have wanted it. He would have encouraged you to have it, he would have been so happy, he would have been such a great fa-

‘The choice is yours, Y/N.’ He glanced over at you, ‘Can you at least tell me who the father is?’

The wrecked sobs were like second nature now, choking you with their strength. ‘I’m so sorry!’

Sam pulled to the side of the road and quickly took off his seatbelt, sliding over in the connected front seats to pull you into his chest. ‘Shh, hey. We are not going to be mad at you. Everything’s going to be okay. It may not seem like it now but-’

‘Sam!’ you cried, clutching his shirt in a tight fist. ‘I swear it was an accident! Steve didn’t know! He didn’t know, I swear he didn’t know!’

Sam’s mouth dropped open, an almost embarrassing noise of surprise sounding from the depths of his soul. He ran his hands through your hair, eyes rapidly searching for a single viewpoint. But he couldn’t focus on any one thing, not when you were shuddering against him and apologizing nonstop.

Steve didn’t know.

The team had reacted in a similar manner. They so desperately wanted to wish you a congratulations, it was the norm for this kind of thing. Especially with such a rough few years - bringing life into this world could be considered an ultimate blessing. But this was Steve’s child, his baby, his only baby in this timeline. It was a part of him, something he had unknowingly left behind.

The team took a few days. The pain of losing Natasha, of losing Steve, of losing Tony. The gift of life. It was just too much.

And you found yourself in front of Wanda’s bedroom door, hands clutching your night robe closed and knees wobbly. She brought you tea, she laid underneath the covers with you, she spooned you until you stopped crying.

‘We weren’t together.’

‘You weren’t?’

You sat up, muscles straining due to your thousandth crying session that week. ‘No, it was one time. It was a mutual thing. We just… felt safe. And we made love.’

Wanda shut her eyes briefly, only to open them for two parallel tears to slip. ‘That sounds beautiful.’

‘We used protection. It really was an accident.’

Wanda interrupted, ‘No, don’t try and justify yourself. It happened. It’s done.’

You whimpered, reaching out to grab her hands. ‘I feel so guilty for even talking to you. I don’t know how you did it. I’m so selfish to be pouring all this on you-’

‘Hey, hey,’ she whispered, ‘But I am the only one who can truly understand. I have lost more in my lifetime than anybody ever should. But I am going to help you get through this, Y/N.’

You pulled her into a hug, ‘I missed you so much. I’m so sorry, but I can’t do this.’

Wanda slowly pulled away, eyes cloudy and touch of red twinge flying in her irises. ‘Alright. I won’t leave your side. No matter what you decide.’

The chair was cold, the room was cold, no matter how inviting the hospital tried to make this room. It was decorated in the most neutral colors, so delicate in its designs, pamphlets and books scattered on every available surface. It was made to make the pregnant person feel secure, to feel comfortable in the hands of their doctor, but it just made you sick.

And when the doctor asked if you would like an ultrasound first, that it wasn’t actually necessary for you to view it, you found yourself saying yes. You were at six weeks, it would be there. Wanda clenched her eyes shut, because even if you were strong enough to do that, she wasn’t. But she was here to hold your hand. She would hold your hand no matter what.

It was the size of a grain of rice. That fuzzy, white figure off a little to the right of your uterus was the size of a grain. A literal grain of rice. The monitor shifted and the doctor cleared their throat, the slimy device absentmindedly being circled around your lower abdomen.

‘Oh my god,’ you whispered, eyes locked on the place the doctor had their finger. Wanda brought her hand up to her mouth and looked away.

That’s when you heard it.

The steady rhythm of a strong heartbeat.

Your chest started heaving, tears staining your cheeks as you listened to the beautiful sound.

‘I’m so sorry,’ the doctor mumbled, ready to pull the monitor’s plug to end the live video but you gripped their arm before they could.

‘No, no!’ you yelped, the heartbeat still sounding, so early in its actual life that this was for sure Steve’s child.

You turned to Wanda, face contorting into one of agonizing regret. ‘I can’t do this. I can’t do this to Steve.’

Wanda gulped and took in a ragged breath, ‘Y/N, Steve’s not here.’

‘No,’ you whined, head turning back to look at the monitor. The monitor with yours and Steve’s child on it. ‘This is the only real part of him we have left, right?’

Wanda opened her mouth but shut it again, unable to formulate a proper response.

‘This is Steve’s child,’ you stated, sucking in a breath through your sobs. ‘This is my child.’

The team was alerted of your decision the minute you walked into the common room. They had known what you left for, dread itching in their souls and morals twisting greedily, but they hadn’t stopped you. They couldn’t do that to you.

‘Hi,’ you mumbled, placing your things on the counter. Everyone kept their heads down, lumps growing in their throats as each second passed. ‘I’m okay.’

Clint was the first one to speak. ‘Did everything go well? Did they hurt you?’

You smiled with your teeth for the first time in weeks, ‘No, they didn’t hurt me. They didn’t even touch me.’

For a few seconds, no one caught on to your words. But Bucky was the first to register them, to etch them deeply into his brain, to stand from his seat and walk to you cautiously. ‘You decided-?’

You smiled wide now, happy tears falling over your strained cheeks. ‘I’m having a baby.’

The team erupted, cries and cheers deafening you. Bucky stumbled over and hugged you close, arms wrapped over your shoulders and face buried in your neck. He had to bend his knees to keep that position. He weeped into your shoulder and thanked you repeatedly, his own body rumbling with broken sobs. You held him close, fingers digging into his shirt and the skin of his back.

‘We promise, Y/N,’ Sam said off to the side, waiting for his turn to hug you. ‘We promise to take care of you and this baby.’

A few more long-awaited congratulations were shared. ‘Guess I’m on desk duty for the next nine months, huh?’

Bucky held you tighter.

The first four months were certainly eventful. Wanda insisted on taking pictures of you every few weeks. She had you model with a nice tight shirt to show off your growing stomach, different props in your arms as the weeks passed on. Flowers, sporting equipment, random Avengers inventions, signs that read the number of weeks you were at. You even did couple shoots, with your teammates posing behind you with their hands on your stomach and an equally bright smile.

She had them printed out and framed, the compound common rooms now littered with random photos of you and your growing child. It was like a timeline, a museum considering you would catch someone inspecting the photographs. This time it was Scott, casually eating his cereal and balancing it in his hand as he walked the hallway. He had this silly smile on his face the whole time, milk dripping from his bottom lip. In his photo, he was posed behind you with a giant smile, back arched and head thrown back while you were trying your best to arch your back as well. And then he saw you watching him, eyes falling from your face to your stomach, and that silly smile growing wider.

Happy insisted on doing yoga with you every other morning, his chosen playlists actually Tony’s. Half expecting the songs to only emit the essence of rock and roll, you were surprised when the playlist only contained acoustics. Happy winked at you, ‘He was a man of taste, Y/N. He, too, had those sad driving songs.’

Peter was hesitant to visit at first. He was still mourning Tony, as you all were, and seeing everyone again was certainly a hard thing to do. But he managed, and the moment he saw you there, trying to balance a plastic bottle on your tiny stomach, he burst into a fit of giggles.

‘Oh, oh! I almost got it!’ you encouraged yourself, stomach not yet protruded enough to quite get it.

Peter rushed over and caught the bottle as it slipped, ‘You’ll get there. How do you feel?’

You grinned at the kid, ‘Like I’m pregnant.’

Peter chuckled, ‘I wouldn’t know, so.’

‘It’s weird,’ you admitted, turning back to your abandoned bowl of fruit. You popped a piece of pineapple in your mouth, ‘But I just remind myself that they’re gonna be an angel when they come out.’

‘All slimy and angelic.’

You swatted at Peter, ‘They’re healthy. That’s all that matters.’

Peter placed his hand on your stomach, half-expecting something to happen. ‘I can’t believe you’re having his baby.’

You bit your lip, willing yourself not to cry. Steve should be here experiencing this. ‘Me neither.’

The next month had come so quickly. Your friends - your family - made sure to keep you occupied. Whether it was to shop, to nap together, to eat together, to exercise together, anything, they were by your side. It was so overwhelming at times, but not wanting to scare anyone, you took time for yourself whenever you could. You’d settle in your room, in a nearby cafe, in Natasha’s room, and just sit and breathe. With one hand on your stomach, you couldn’t possibly fathom the luck on your side. It always tore your heart in two when you realized Steve would never meet his child, absolutely mutilated it. But the realization that this child was going to have such a massive family, your family, uncles and aunts who would die for the kid - that realization was sometimes too much.

The thunder from outside startled everyone. The quiet night everyone was having was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a certain god, hair now cut and beard trimmed, running into the common area. He was practically hyperventilating, his quick pace halting as he scanned the room. ‘Is it true?’

‘You got my message?’ Wanda asked, shutting off the water from the sink.

‘I’m sorry, I was away. I just got the message and-’

Thor lay his eyes on you, your obvious stomach, and he started crying softly. ‘It’s true?’

You smiled at him, opening your arms for an embrace. But Thor fell to his knees in front of you, forehead resting on your stomach. ‘This is a miracle.’

‘It really is,’ you laughed, wiping away a few stray tears. ‘The condom broke.’

Laughter sounded almost instantly.

Thor looked up at you, eyes red and eyebrows furrowed. ‘He didn’t know?’

You shook your head, ‘No, Steve didn’t know. I promise.’

Thor nodded, believing you. He stood slowly, encasing you in a tight squeeze. He hadn’t changed much since you last saw him, but he did seem to be drinking less. ‘After so much loss, the Heaven’s send us a gift from a beloved friend.’

Bucky seemed to be the happiest. Although he shared your beliefs that Steve should be here to experience this, to cherish this, to be the father he had deserved to be, Bucky couldn’t help but feel grateful that you decided to keep the baby. He knew he needed to stop relying on Steve to fix his mind, this he had to do on his own, but the bundle of joy inside of you just added to his undying love for his best friend. This was a piece of him, a true half of Steve’s heart that would soon be breathing air and opening its eyes.

He was currently laying beside you, just woken up from a nap and lazily drawing circles over your clothed tummy. You were still asleep, deep breaths a little ragged since you were twisted slightly to your side. You had given up trying to sleep on your back nowadays.

‘Hey there,’ Bucky whispered, a funny smile forming on his face because he can’t believe he’s talking to your literal stomach. ‘You know you’re a miracle, right?’

There was no response, obviously. But Bucky just positioned himself to lean on his elbow, temple resting in the palm of his hand. ‘We’re going to love you so much. Steve would have loved you so much.’

He placed his metal hand on your stomach, careful not to apply so much pressure. He was hesitant though, the metal hand now from Wakanda but still something he didn’t entirely trust. Still, he rubbed smooth circles on your side. ‘I already love you so much.’

Kick.

Bucky widened his eyes, a hitch in his breath. Was that real?

‘Did you just respond to me?’ Bucky asked, a little laugh escaping his lips. ‘Should I say it again?’

Nothing happened for a long while. He switched hands, rubbing a little deeper now. It was a free massage for you, anyway.

Bucky bit his lip and looked up at your face, still peacefully dreaming. He leaned closer to your stomach and repeated his earlier confession. ‘I love you.’

Kick.

Bucky shot up from his spot on the bed and covered his mouth, a loud laugh accidentally escaping and startling you awake.

‘W-What?’

‘They kicked! They kicked!’

‘Seriously?’

Bucky was shooting through the stars, because even though it was a long shot, he felt like somehow Steve was telling him he loved him back.

Sam’s leg bounced madly as he watched the doctor slick up the generator. You repeatedly tried to calm him, tell him that it would be quick and simple, and there was nothing to be worried about.

You were six months now. Belly now protruding to the point where you could only see the tips of your toes when you glanced downward, and the baby was positioned farther into your back. If anything, you were having a giant freaking baby. He was a product of a super soldier.

You remembered having that scary conversation with the doctors, your whole family beside you as they heard and relayed the information.

‘Your baby is perfectly healthy. The serum isn’t affecting it. His lungs are forming less quickly than the other organs but there’s no serious worry.’

Bucky had literally cackled at that, confusing everyone in the room. ‘Steve and his shit lungs.’

But now you were finding out the sex. Only one person was allowed in the room this time, and Sam had literally begged you with his eyes to choose him.

‘Are you two ready?’

You each nodded at the doctor, waiting for the monitor to spring to life. After a few seconds, the heartbeat was detected. You gripped Sam’s hand in yours, a quiet ‘thank god’ passing through his lips.

Then the giant image of a literal baby appeared on the screen. It was so surreal. It resembled a quick sketch, like one Steve would have casually drew, and you couldn’t help but imagine him drawing that very image from memory.

‘Y/N, I-’ Sam cleared his throat, smiling at you.

‘Would you like to know the sex of the baby?’

‘Yes, please,’ you answered, gripping Sam’s hand harder.

The doctor moved the generator a few times more, hitting the spacebar on the computer to capture the image. ‘Congratulations, you’re having a boy.’

You shuttered a tiny laugh as Sam flew out of his seat, arms extended upward for a moment before he brought his hands down to kiss them over and over.

‘I’ll print this out for you,’ the doctor smiled, leaving you and Sam to celebrate.

Everyone had gathered later that night to find out the news. You had printed enough copies for everyone who wanted one. Bets were placed, a multitude of gifts already mounted in online shopping carts.

‘Don’t keep us waiting!’ Rhodey shouted, champagne bottle at the ready and propped up on his thigh for when you made your announcement.

Sam was standing beside you, a massive grin plastered on his face. You rolled your eyes at him and urged him on, telling him that you were fine with him saying it. Sam didn’t need to be told twice.

‘It’s a boy!’

Pop! Drinks were poured and hugs were shared, with even Friday coming over the monitor to congratulate you.

Even in the midst of all the excitement, you felt a little empty. But you enjoyed your pre-baby shower, happy that everything was so unbelievably working out.

It was midnight when you alerted Friday to call Happy to your room. You needed a ride.

Happy was slightly irritated at being woken up, but once you told him where you were heading, he obliged. The ride was silent, comfortable, with Happy glancing at you once in a while to make sure you were okay.

You walked across the grass slowly, hands resting on your stomach and just a little waddle in your walk. You flashed your phone light over the headstones even though the headstone you were looking for was in a secluded area. Happy trailed you, keeping a respectable distance.

You stopped in front of the small building, the fence somewhat blocking your path. But there was no security around, and even if you were caught on camera, your face let everyone know who you were and your connection to Steve. You had no worries.

You broke the lock easily and opened the door. It was almost entirely marble, a good deal of Steve’s actual aesthetic. So simple, not overly patriotic, and secluded. He had refused to be buried in Arlington.

You sat on the bench provided, the three names in front of you standing out like they were begging to be read out loud. So you complied.

‘Sarah,’ you muttered, smiling as the name rolled off your tongue. ‘Thank you for sending everyone a literal angel.’

You muttered his father’s name as well, but felt no personal connection to it. You spent at least ten minutes building up the courage to utter his name, to say his name in front of him again. He was buried right underneath your feet, his name the only thing for you to see.

‘Steve,’ you sighed and rubbed your stomach. ‘Steve.’

You sobbed silently and watched as the tears fell on top of your resting hands. ‘I don’t regret it.’

You were met with silence. ‘I don’t regret any of it. God knows why he did this. But you lived your life, and I just can’t believe I have to bring life into this world without you here.’

‘It’s a boy, Steve. A lovely little boy.’

You brought your hand up to your mouth to bite the side of it, throat clenching. ‘Everyone is so happy. I am, too. I promise you.’

You lowered your hand back to your stomach. ‘I just wish that you could feel that happiness.’

The moonlight moved slightly, shining on his name brighter now. ‘He’ll know about you, don’t worry about that.’ You laughed.

You didn’t want to keep Happy waiting. You stood from the bench slowly, feet sore. You walked closer to him, wishing you could easily bend down and give him a kiss. But you physically couldn’t right now, so you blew him one instead. ‘Thank you.’

Somehow the rumor got out that an Avenger was pregnant. And when Wanda was seen outside without a large stomach, all fingers were pointed at you.

The news went ballistic, most positive and raving, while others pondered just who had gotten you pregnant. You had been seen with everyone in paparazzi photos, so no actual conclusion had been made.

Until a picture of you at Steve’s gravesite was leaked.

It was constant bombardment, timelines were stitched together, magazines and their headlines were having a field day. Rhodey had tried to cancel these news stories, to threaten lawsuits, but to no avail. The world was now cursing Steve’s name - ‘how dare he leave her while pregnant?’, ‘how could he leave her pregnant and for another woman?’, ‘did he even know?’

The team had done everything in their power to try and clear yours and Steve’s name, but no one was having it. Steve’s love story was now tarnished, with many calling him a traitor and a deadbeat. It was no use.

You struggled to climb the stairs, inwardly cursing the staff for not installing a ramp instead. The flashes were blinding, the lights were hot, and the various microphones placed on the stand were comical.

Everyone hushed, looks of sympathy and pity slapping you in the face.

‘I know what you’re all thinking and what you’ve all been saying,’ you started, eyes wandering to the far corner of the room where your team were huddled. ‘But I need to clear a few things up.’

‘Steve didn’t know.’

The crowd erupted, questions flying at you like fast bullets. They were silenced after a few moments. ‘We shared a moment with each other before we brought everyone back. I didn’t know I was pregnant until after his funeral.’

The crowd murmured amongst each other. ‘He told me he was planning to stay in another timeline. To live his life. I encouraged him. He did not leave me alone and pregnant. He truly didn’t know.’

You finished, they didn’t deserve a deeper explanation. You ignored their calls for questions, some even trying to crowd you at the doors. But you pushed through them, cradling your stomach with a newfound sense of pride.

It was time.

You sat up in your bed and quickly wiped away the hard crusts from the corners of your eyes. You sat there for a few seconds before you felt another harsh twinge. ‘A-ah!’

You didn’t know why you paused, legs now thrown over the side of the bed. They felt like menstrual cramps, it could be false labor. You let out a heavy breath and pushed yourself up, legs wobbly. But the moment you did, it was like something snapped. Your legs were wet and a tiny puddle had started forming on the floor.

‘Friday!’

The lights in your room turned on immediately, ‘Y/N, is it time?’

You moaned at the uncomfortable cramping, ‘Yeah, I think it is.’

‘I’m waking and alerting the team right now, Y/N. Sit back down, please.’

You listened to Friday, sitting at the edge of your bed for a few moments before you realized you had to pack a bag. You shuffled across your room and grabbed the duffel bag Scott had left for you a few days ago. You packed a pair of socks, sweats, underwear, vaseline and your toothbrush, hairbrush, and phone. You zipped your bag just in time for both Bucky and Sam to throw open your door, Sam struggling to put his shoes on and Bucky slipping on a jacket inside-out.

‘Y/N, is it really time? Are you ready? Are you okay?’

You ignored the cramping in your back and laughed at them, ‘Yes! My water broke, I’m in pain, it’s time.’

With both Sam and Bucky at your sides, they held onto you as you all stumbled down the hallway. Thor was already waiting with the elevator open, the biggest smile on his aging face.

‘Wanda and Bruce are preparing the room. Scott already called the doctor. Clint’s in route,’ Bucky reassured. The three men huddled into the elevator with you, all instructing you to breathe and to squeeze them if you needed to.

But even though you were in pain, albeit not as extreme as it was going to inevitably get, you were so incredibly happy. They were all so loud, so chaotic, and you were as calm as a cucumber.

The elevator dinged. ‘Good luck, Y/N,’ you heard Friday call after you. You pinched your eyes closed, the thought that Friday was ultimately a part of Tony’s consciousness - Tony was wishing you good luck.

The pressure in your hips was starting to build and you didn’t know how long this would actually take. Some people had quick births, some people lay in labor for hours, some for a day. But it seemed like this was going to be pretty quick, because your next scream was completely involuntarily.

Bucky winced, leading you to the bed Wanda had just lay sheets on. ‘You’re doing great, Y/N. Absolutely perfect.’

You laughed at Bucky and gripped his hand in silent thanks before slipping into the bed and trying to get comfortable. Before you could truly feel like you made it, like the first hard step was done, you sat up quickly.

‘Wait, wait! Nat’s sweater! I was gonna wear Nat’s sweater!’

Thor was already out the door, ‘I’ll get it! Don’t worry!’

You smiled at the ceiling, beads of sweat now rolling down your forehead. ‘Oh, this hurts!’

It was an hour. Once you shimmied into Natasha’s purple knitted sweater, you lay there trying to control your breathing. Everyone had piled into the room one right after the other. The room was big enough, spacious enough for even Bruce to roam freely. Although you were in an immense amount of pain, you still focused on your team.

Scott was on his third cup of coffee, sipping excitedly as he conversed with the others. Bruce was constantly checking your vitals and wanting everything the doctor was saying repeated. Wanda was beside you, a hand gripping yours and the other running ice chips along your lips. Bucky was on your other bedside wearing one of Steve’s sweatshirts because it still smelled like him. His logic was that if he was wearing something of Steve’s the first moment he held your baby, then the first thing he smelled would be the remnants of his father.

And Thor was practically speechless, silent in his own little corner and feeling like the god’s really did bless everyone in this room after such turmoil.

Clint arrived with Peter trailing behind him just when the doctor instructed you sit up - you were at ten centimeters.

‘You gotta push, Y/N! You gotta push when the doctor says push!’

You yelled until your lungs gave out, head almost rolling back but Sam held it in his palm. ‘C’mon, Y/N! You’re doing great!’

You usually had perfect pitch when you sang, never faltering when it was time to hit a high note. But your voice was cracking at the most unusual times, throat rubbed raw as you felt your hips splinter open.

‘He’s crowning!’

Wanda traded places with Sam real quick, deciding that she wanted to see the baby when he was finally out. Bucky had a death grip on your hand, tears flowing freely and a smile to match Thor’s.

‘Push, Y/N! Push!’

‘I’m-I’m! I’m sorry! I can’t!’

The doctor was working her hands around the head, trying to ease the baby out easier. ‘Trust me, Y/N. One more big push and the shoulders will be out. That’s the hardest part.’

The doctor’s words were starting to drown out, and your head lolled back again. You felt tiny smacks on your cheeks, ‘C’mon, Y/N. You can do this. Everyone believes in you. You’re so goddamn strong, Y/N!’

That was Bucky’s voice. Bucky.

You opened your eyes, delirious for a second. ‘Steve?’

Bucky whimpered and nodded, bringing your hand up to his lips and pressing kisses all over. ‘He’s here. I feel him, Y/N. You can do this.’

And you could feel him. You could see your family but you could feel him. It was so light, like a gentle whisk across the cheek, a promise that this truly was a miracle.

You screamed as you pushed under doctor’s orders, feeling numb and abused but satisfied. His shoulders slipped out and along with them came his arms and torso, legs and all ten toes. The doctor caught him quickly, lifting him up vertically to let you see him. He was already crying.

‘He’s here!’

You sobbed and smiled widely, laughter rattling your chest as the team bombarded you with quick hugs. Sam remained at your side, his eyes motioning for Bucky to go see the baby.

‘Who’s cutting the cord?’

You looked around the room but you knew. You answered the doctor’s question. ‘Bucky.’

Bucky was truly confused. Not because of your decision, but because he couldn’t possibly be worthy of this. His hands, those hands that had killed so many people involuntarily, had almost killed Steve, those hands were now gripping a pair of medical scissors to cut the symbolization of new life entering the world. He turned to you for permission one last time, before he gripped the cord in his hand and cut where the doctor pointed.

His shoulders felt a million times lighter. Like he was set free all over again.

They cleaned the baby up quickly and swaddled him. The doctor placed him in your arms, all warm and utterly safe, to look back up at you with the same blue eyes as his father.

You sobbed happily, brushing your fingers delicately along his pink cheek. ‘Hi. Hi there.’

He was no longer crying, just staring up in pure astonishment at the various faces staring back at him.

‘Y/N, he’s beautiful,’ Clint said, tissue already in hand.

‘I can’t believe you’re here,’ you spoke softly.

‘Do we have a name?’

It was like everyone said it in unison. ‘Steve.’

You snuggled into the bed and Natasha’s sweater, somewhat aware of the doctor still fixing you up down there. You would try feeding later, but for now your newborn needed to be passed around the group and be awed at.

You carefully guided him to Bucky, holding his head gently in your palm. Bucky took him, arms instinctively curling in the correct position. Once Bucky had him in his arms, it was like everything that happened in the world was worth it. Absolutely everything.

Bucky watched in fascination as the baby curled deeper in his chest, little fist clutching Steve’s sweatshirt. He took the sweetest little intake of air…

xxMoni

#steve rogers x reader #avengers x reader #angst fanfic #happy ending #avengers x you #captainsimagines #platonic relationships #pregnancy fanfic #marvel fanfiction #by Moni #one shot #avengers oneshot #trigger warnings listed

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storiesforallfandoms · 4 years

Text

baby sister ~ mark;midsommar

word count: 1929

request?: yes!

“Mark from Midsommar imagine about Christan's sister crushing on Mark and when Mark finds out they start dating. And Christian finds them making out and gets all pissed and tries to fight Mark but reader yells at Christian to stop.”

description: in which he’s very protective over his baby sister, and now his best friend is dating her

pairing: mark x female!reader

warnings: swearing

masterlist

There were so many words that could describe my brother. Asshole was definitely the most accurate one. Protective was the second most accurate way to describe him.

I was the family baby, and when mine and Christian’s dad left, Christian took it upon himself to be the man of the house. This included being the one to try and scare away my boyfriends. Well...try and usually succeeded. It was becoming impossible to date unless I did it secretly.

Which was what I was doing with Christian’s best friend, Mark.

From the moment we met, I knew I was head over heels for Mark. Of course, trying to act on that under Christian’s watchful eye was basically impossible. Until Mark initiated a particularly steamy make out session while Christian wasn’t home.

“We can keep this a secret,” he assured me. “I don’t bring girls around anyways, and the guys don’t ask about that shit.”

“Secret romance is incredibly sexy,” I noted. Mark smiled and kissed me again.

Ever since then, we had secretly been in a relationship. No one knew, not even Dani who was my closest friend. I trusted her to keep the secret from anyone else, but Dani told Christian everything. She couldn’t lie to him, he knew her too well to fall for her lies. I knew giving her this secret would be a massive burden on her, and I couldn’t do that to her.

The secret rendezvous were hard sometimes, especially since Christian and Mark were living together. On the occasions where Christian would go over to Dani’s, and Josh would be out wherever for the night, I would go over with Mark for a few hours. But spending the night was a big risk. It was hard to know when Christian would come home, and the last thing either of us needed was for him to catch me in Mark’s bed.

I walked through the front door of the guy’s apartment and immediately called out, “Hey fuckers!”

“Hey baby sis,” came Christian’s voice in response. “You caught me at a sort of bad time, I’m about to go to Dani’s for a while.”

I gave him a worried look. “What? Why? Are you and the guys okay?”

“Oh yeah, nothing bad happened. She’s just having a rough time and I want to be there for her,” he responded. “You’re free to hang here if you want, but Mark will be the only one here. Josh is out of town with his parents for a while.”

I tried not to let the smirk I was feeling inside show. “Oh, well if it’s just Mark I’ll probably leave.”

“I don’t blame you. The guy is kind of boring.”

If I didn’t know that Christian’s way of showing affection was by insulting someone I probably would’ve been offended.

He brushed past me and said goodbye, promising to hang out with me again after he spent some time with Dani. I pretended to be following him out to my car and waited until he was far enough away that he wouldn’t see me turn around and run back into the house.

I knew Mark was home. His car was in the driveway and his bedroom door was closed, something he always did when he was home and wanted some privacy. I ran straight to his room and threw the door open. His eyes widened as I dove onto the bed and immediately cuddled into his side.

“Is Christian gone already?” he asked.

I popped my head up to look at him in shock. “You knew?! And you didn’t tell me?!”

“I didn’t get the chance! He literally just told me when he walked in like an hour ago. I didn’t think he was leaving so soon.”

I rolled my eyes and kissed his cheek before settling my head into his neck. “So, how long is he gone for?”

“All weekend,” he responded. “Won’t be back till after class on Monday he said, and even then he may be gone for a little bit with Dani.”

“So,” I said, “are we having our first sleepover or not?”

Mark chuckled and kissed my forehead. “I would love for you to stay over. But do you want to go home and get your clothes?”

“Why would I want to do that when I have your clothes here?”

Mark gave me an amused look before rolling us over to get on top of me and begin to tickle me.

The first night I got to spend with Mark was fantastic. We spent so many hours just cuddling and talking, and of course countless hours having sex without worrying about anyone catching us. The first morning together, I woke up to find myself alone in bed, but with the smell of breakfast drifting in from the kitchen.

I got up and pulled on one of Mark’s shirts and ventured out into the kitchen, not worried about anyone catching me for once. Mark was stood next to the stove in just a pair of sweatpants, his back turned to me. I walked up behind him and wrapped my arms around his naked torso.

“Good morning,” I said, kissing his cheek. “What are you making?”

“Just some bacon and eggs,” he responded. “I wanted to bring you breakfast in bed.”

“You know I don’t sleep in enough for that to be possible, and I don’t like laying in bed for too long.”

Mark turned his head to meet my lips with his. “How did we end up together? We’re such different people.”

“Opposites attract baby.”

Mark smiled and turned to face me. In one quick motion, he lifted me onto the counter and stood between my legs. I giggled and kissed him deeply, holding his face in my hands as a way to keep him from pulling away.

We were so lost in one another that we didn’t notice the door opening, or the sound of a bag hitting the floor, until the voice that both of us dreaded to hear.

“What the fuck?!”

Mark jumped away from me in time to see Christian charging at him, murder present in his eyes. Mark quickly jumped out of the way and extended an arm to keep Christian at an arm’s length away.

“What the fuck were you doing to my sister?!” Christian snapped.

“Chill dude, we were just kissing!” Mark responded.

“Why was she kissing you?! Why is she here in just one of your shirts?!”

“Calm down, Christian,” I tried, pushing myself off of the counter to cover myself as much as I possibly could. “I stayed over the night.”

“But why?! And why with him?!”

He tried to lunge at Mark again, but this time I took hold of his arm and yanked him back. “Christian, fucking stop!”

“What has he said or done to make you want to kiss him and to stay the night with him?” Christian demanded. “What the fuck has he done to you?”

“Christian, shut the fuck up!” I felt myself shaking in rage and I just wanted to punch my older brother until he was unconscious. I guess we were more similar than I ever cared to admit.

My outburst surprised both my brother and my boyfriend. They both went silent, and for a moment Christian wasn’t even trying to kill Mark anymore.

“You’re so fucking controlling!” I said, airing out all the anger I had built up inside of me for so long. “I get that you want to be dad, I get that you’re trying to be ‘the man’, but holy fuck! I’m a fucking adult! I can date who I want, I can kiss who I want, I can fuck who I want! I don’t need you getting angry and intimidating every guy I date, Christian. I can’t be single forever you know.”

Christian glared at Mark once more before turning to face me. “I know that, (Y/N), but I don’t want anyone to hurt you.”

“Do you know how much more it hurts when guys either ghost me or straight up tell me to my face that they’re too scared of you to date me?” I questioned. “Do you know how many guys told me that I wasn’t worth the hassle you gave them? I was hurt more by your protectiveness than I ever was by any guy.”

I saw a look pass over Christian’s face. I couldn’t tell exactly what it meant, but I knew there was a lot of information running through his head at that moment, a lot of things he had to process.

“And I know you don’t want me dating your best friend,” I continued before he could say anything else. “I know it’s like a violation of friend code or whatever the fuck guys have going on, and it’s weird and awkward. But I really do love Mark, and I know he loves me, too. You know Mark better than any guy I’ve ever tried to date, can you seriously look me in the eyes and tell me he’s not a good fit for me?”

Christian looked over at Mark once more before turning back to me. “He is a fuckface.”

I giggled. “Yeah, I know that. But he’s a good fuckface.”

“One of the better ones,” Christian agreed. “I’m sorry, (Y/N). I just...I thought that’s how I was supposed to act, you know?”

“I know, mom never told you any different. I think she just liked you trying to be the man of the house all the time because it meant she didn’t have to take up any extra responsibilities.”

Christian pulled me into a hug, something I don’t think he had ever done before. It was quite a shock to both me and to Mark.

“You can date whoever you want,” he said. “I promise I won’t kill...well I promise I won’t kill any other guy you may date. I have no promises about Mark.”

“I’ll take that,” I told him. “And I’m sorry you had to find out like...this.”

Christian looked between us, trying not to look at the parts that weren’t clothed I could tell. “Yeah...not the best way, but I’ll bleach my eyes when I get back to Dani’s.”

We all laughed as Christian went to get whatever he had come home for and left again, saying goodbye and apologizing once more before closing the door behind him.

“That went well,” I commented. I looked over to see Mark smiling at me. “What?”

“Did you mean what you said? That you love me?”

I felt my face heat up in embarrassment. In the heat of the moment, I let the big L word slip. Mark and I hadn’t said it to one another yet. We had only started dating mere months ago.

“I think so,” I admitted. “I feel things for you that I’ve never felt for anyone before. I...I think I do love you. Is that...is that weird to say?”

Mark wrapped his arms around me and hugged me tightly. “Not at all. I think I love you, too.”

I smiled up at him and placed a gentle kiss against his lips.

“Don’t forget breakfast,” I whispered in his ear, nibbling on it gently before pulling away.

It took a moment for the lust to wash away after my small act for Mark to realize that breakfast was still on the pan cooking. I giggled as he quickly went to turn the stove off and check to make sure the food was still edible.

#mark #mark imagine #mark x reader #will poulter #will poulter imagine #will poulter x reader #midsommar #midsommar imagine #imagine #one shot #request #fanfiction #fandom #fanfic

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peachycheol · 4 years

Text

| reliable |

© banner credit: thank you to the love of my life @suhdreams for making this banner for me 🥺💘 ➸ summary: when people say ‘not all men’, they’re actually right. kim mingyu, your best friend, would never disappoint you. especially not in the bedroom. ➸ genre: pwp 😌 ➸ pairing: best friend!mingyu x reader ➸ warning: dirty talk, slight dumbification, heavy petting, unprotected sex (pls use protection irl), cream pie, oral (fem. receiving), cum eating, overstimulation, multiple orgasms, yn is really horny? ➸ w.c: 3.2k ➸ tags: you can all thank @risquewonu for this <333

➸ author’s note: ahh, i’m sorry this took me so long! i didn’t mean to write this much, but what the smuth wants, the smuth gets. also, i want to thank you all for 100 followers! i’ll make a separate post to properly thank you all, but i am!!! baffled!!! i really appreciate the support ;u; love you guys!

If there are two things in this world that you are absolutely certain of, they are: 1) Men ain’t shit, and 2) with the exception of Kim Mingyu. Knowing this information doesn’t really benefit you in any way. You still go out on Tinder dates that leave you high and dry 15 minutes after taking you home. And Kim Mingyu is still your very platonic best friend, who seems to be reliable in every single way except perhaps in the one way you need most desperately.

But for all you know, he could be just like every other male in bed. He couldn’t be unbelievably handsome, the most thoughtful, caring person you know, and a sex god; it just wouldn’t be fair! No, it is much easier to convince yourself that Mingyu’s perfection only extended to being a best friend, if only for your peace of mind. Otherwise, you’d have to live with the possibility that the only person who can give you sweet release is the only one you’re technically not supposed to fuck.

For reasons that seem to become annoyingly hazy every time you lie down next to him on his bed, just as you are at this moment.

The two of you often end nights out like this, scrolling through one another’s TikTok’s until the wee hours of the morning, laughing loudly until his neighbors threaten to file a noise complaint. As someone who has claimed him as your best friend for three years, you know you’re supposed to be used to the smell of the musky cologne that clings onto his sheets and the feeling of his warm body as he leans closer to show you his For You Page. But lately, it seems harder and harder to fight off the warmth that pulses straight to your core whenever he does anything as simple as laugh, making you shiver when his breath tickles the side of your neck.

God, you just really need to get laid properly. You lick your dry lips and try to remind yourself that you have no idea if Mingyu would even be able to satisfy you. Though you do have to admit you couldn’t imagine any situation where the boy isn’t overly generous and eager to please-- No! Just watch the damn TikToks!

“Hey, you good?” Mingyu suddenly asks, nudging your side. “Why aren’t you laughing? ‘His package needs to come in the fe-mail’! That one’s gold!”

You let out a snort. Leave it to Mingyu to bring you back to reality with one line. Even when you don’t say a word, he knows exactly what you need in a moment, which in this case is a reminder that he’s your very dorky friend. “Shut up, that’s so stupid,” you say, but you can’t help but laugh along with him when it replays.

“Aha, you laughed though.” Satisfied with your response he scrolls down to a video of a girl smiling suggestively into the camera. She points to the caption that says ‘If all the boys that made me cum were in my room with me right now, I would…’ Suddenly, the camera pans and she looks at the screen tiredly. The caption now read as ‘Be alone. Men are trash’.

At this, you bust out with a howl of laughter, clutching at your stomach. It was kind of sad, but it was good to know you weren’t alone in this world. All the while, Mingyu stares at you with an eyebrow raised. Once you calm down, you meet his amused gaze. “What are you looking at?”

“You thought it was that funny, huh? It’s not even that accurate,” he says teasingly.

You roll your eyes. “Um, yeah it is. I’ve never met a man who could make me cum, and clearly many other people can relate. This video has 1.4k likes!”

Mingyu quickly puts his phone down and pouts. “Nu uh! Not all guys are that incompetent!”

“Men are such babies,” you sigh. “They are that incompetent! You know how many dates I went to last semester, right? Not one of them made me cum!”

“Okay, I told you before you even went on those dates that those guys weren’t worth your time.” Mingyu waves his hand dismissively. “For your information, I have made sure that all the ladies that I’ve taken to the bedroom had at least one orgasm. At least!”

“Mingyu, sweetie,” you coo, patting his cheek as if to comfort him. “They were all faking it, because they didn’t want to hurt your feelings.” Right? They all had to have faked it. You try to tell yourself this, try to reign in the last bit of sanity you have before your mind wanders off to anywhere inappropriate.

Your best friend now props himself up so that you could properly see the smirk plastered across his annoyingly chiseled features. “You’re so sure, huh? I bet I could make you cum multiple times. Easily.”

Your mouth falls open in shock. It isn’t uncommon for the two of you to taunt each other like this, but you have also never been in such a vulnerable mood. It’s the type of mood that has your heart racing impossibly fast, the type of mood that has your panties pathetically damp from just one sentence. You blink, trying to regain as much composure as you can. You know it’s too late, though; your imagination is already flashing through scenes of your deepest desires, all being fulfilled by the man in front of you. But Mingyu is only joking, so you do what you can to continue playing along and pretend like you don’t want him to just fuck you into the mattress until you were drooling into his sheets.

“I-I seriously doubt that!” you say, but there is no conviction in your voice. Clearing your throat, you try adding, “Dude, I’ve literally seen you fall down a flight of stairs when you were sober. And we were going up. Kinda hard to imagine that you’ll know how to fuck me to an orgasm when you can’t even walk right.”

Now you’re just lying through your teeth, but you want to hold off the inevitable moment that Mingyu discovers your apparent arousal for as long as possible. The last thing you need right now is for him to laugh in your face.

Mingyu chuckles, then suddenly shifts so that his arms are placed on either side of your head, trapping you underneath him. To his surprise, you do nothing to push him off like you usually do at this point. Still, he doesn’t plan on being the first to back off, so he continues his little game, intent on winning. “See, this is why you can’t find a guy who can satisfy you. You clearly don’t know what to look for.” He leans down until the tip of his nose grazes yours. For good measure, he drops his voice an octave and says, “You’ll be the one who can’t walk right when I’m done with you.”

Perplexingly, his shameless flirting doesn’t make you move as he predicted. Nor does it make you look annoyed. Instead, you look up at him with eyes that are unmistakably glazed over with something he didn’t quite expect to see: pure lust. It immediately sends a rush of blood down to his cock. He blinks. Oh. So this is where the night is going. He only falters for a moment, but he soon flashes a breathtaking smile down at you, his eyes glinting mischievously.

It isn’t like he’s never thought about it before; he had just assumed that once you started calling him your best friend, you were also lowkey telling him that sex was off the table. And it wasn’t like he minded, because he definitely liked being by your side knowing it was fully okay to be himself since you were obligated to love him regardless. Plus there was just something about you that made him want to take care of you and if being your best friend was the only way he could do it, then that had been fine by him. But now that he knows that he can take care of you in another way, in the way that he sometimes found himself yearning for on lonely nights, he is all too eager to break free of the unspoken boundaries between the two of you.

“And what am I looking for?” you whisper.

“It seems like you’re looking for me, baby,” he responds softly, before pressing a kiss where your jaw meets your neck. He slowly drags his lips down the side of your neck, and revels in how it already has you pressing your legs together. “Damn, you weren’t kidding when you said those guys didn’t make you cum, huh? Is that why you’re already so fucking worked up? You want to cum that badly?”

You nod wordlessly, not quite ready for Mingyu to hear the desperate whine that would surely leave your lips as he continues pressing wet kisses along your skin. You opt to simply thread your fingers in his hair and tug hard enough to show your impatience. It seems to trigger something in him; all in an instant, your best friend’s soft lips clash against your own, his tongue easily sliding into your mouth, all the while while his hand reaches down to grab one of your thighs. He squeezes it teasingly before pushing it outwards, which causes the mini skirt you’re wearing to bunch up around your waist, revealing your panties and how they cling to your pussy like a second skin.

“M-mingyu!” you squeak into his lips when you feel his fingers tentatively rub small circles into the wet spot. He nips at your lip harshly as he starts to rub more deliberately, the flimsy fabric of your underwear creating a delicious friction against your clit. “H-hah! Yes, o-oh my god!”

“Fuck, you’re already so wet for me, baby girl,” he chuckles, but he knows he isn’t one to talk while his cock is half hard just from hearing the way you moan his name. “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of you. You’re not leaving this room until your little pussy cums nice and hard on my cock.”

“Ngh!-- yes p-please! Please, Mingyu,” you beg mindlessly. Your eyebrows are scrunched together in concentration. Despite your best friend’s promises, you are still hesitant to hold out any hope for anything more than what you’re accustomed to, so you try to take as much as you can while it lasts. However, in your lustful daze, you had forgotten that if Kim Mingyu is anything, he is a man of his word.

You let out a high-pitched moan when his fingers suddenly grind harsh circles into your clit, more surprised than anything else that he even knew where to find it. “But first,” he says, licking his lips, “you’re going to be a good girl and cum just like this. Right into your filthy little panties. Can you do that for me, baby?”

He takes your drawn out whine as a response, and continues to rub relentlessly over your hardened clit until your legs begin to shake. That’s when he shoves the soaked material of your underwear to the side and pinches the bud. Hard.

He rolls your clit between the pads of his fingertips over and over, sending jolts of electric pleasure all the way to your toes. It causes them to curl, all the while you feel the heat simmering in your lower abdomen finally coil tighter and tighter. “Fuckfuckfuck,” you chant, the words coming out slurred like you’re a teenager who’s gotten drunk from one sip of champagne. “M-mingyu-- mmh! I t-think I’m going to--!”

A loud cry leaves your lips the moment the coil snaps, and you nearly tear up from how much better it feels to finally cum on someone else’s fingers, especially Mingyu’s long, thick digits. He soothingly slides them through your drenched folds, mesmerized by how much wetness now covered his hand. “That’s it, baby,” he encourages. Once your body slumps back into the mattress, he brings his fingers up to see how they glisten in the light. “We’ve barely even started and look at what the mess you’ve already made. You must have been waiting so long for me to fuck you, huh?”

Not even your post-orgasm buzz can keep you from getting irked by Mingyu’s cockiness, which is why you reach your own hand down to squeeze his cock through his jeans. “Seems like I’m not the only one who’s been waiting for this,” you say with a sly grin of your own. He watches you, jaw clenched, as you swiftly pop the button of his pants open and slip your fingers past the waistband of his underwear to take hold of his fully hardened member.

It feels warm and heavy in your palm, which can barely wrap around the girth. You bite your lip, your pussy greedily clenching around nothing at the thought of how good it would stretch you out.

“I should have known you’d be a fucking tease,” Mingyu rasps. His hips buck into your hand involuntarily, and his smile returns when he notices how the movement makes you whimper in anticipation.

There is a beat of silence when you and Mingyu meet eyes before the both of you begin undressing each other as fast as you can, haphazardly tugging off both your shirts, his pants, and your pesky undergarments. Once he’s tossed aside your soiled panties, he immediately presses your thighs apart to get a full view of your sopping cunt. “So pretty,” he mumbles to himself, spreading the lips apart with his fingers. His member throbs at the sight, the tip leaking precum when he sees how your pussy clenches in anticipation. “I bet it’s going to look even prettier when it’s taking my fat cock, don’t you think?”

The two of you watch in awe as Mingyu starts to sink into your entrance, a garbled moan leaving your lips when the tip alone already has you feeling so full. “Mingyu, h-how is-- ooh!-- your d-dick soo-- f-fucking big? A-Ah!” It takes a good while for you to finish your sentence as each of Mingyu’s shallow thrusts leave you gasping for air. By the time he bottoms out, the both of you are panting hard, both engrossed by how snugly his cock fits in your walls.

“Shit, if I had known you’d be this tight, I would have fucked you sooner,” Mingyu groans. He slowly drags his member out of you, letting you feel every inch of him before he surges forward into a feverish pace that already has his bed frame creaking loudly. He is definitely getting a noise complaint from his grumpy neighbors tonight. But seeing you underneath him like this, lips parted and legs spread, definitely makes it difficult to care about anything other than the desire to hear more of your needy cries. “Does it feel good, baby girl? Do you like how my cock fills your little pussy?”

“It fuh--!--ngh, feels s-soo good,” Having already came once, your sensitivity is on overload, and each rough thrust of Mingyu’s hips, each crude slap of his skin against yours, is enough to drive you closer and closer to delirium. “Mmh-- please, Mingyu! F-fuck me so deep!”

“Anything for my little cockslut.” He moves quickly to kneel between your legs, hooking his arms underneath your knees to keep them open as he continues to pound into you. The new position instantly makes you keen loudly, eyes rolling to the back of your head when you feel his member brush against your cervix.

“Fuuuuck,” you sob and clutch at the sheets. His grip on your legs tightens and he angles his hips so that he hits that spot every time, rendering you completely incoherent. You want to beg him to fuck you like this forever, to tell him you’d do anything to feel his cock fuck you open every night, but you can only babble, unable to comprehend anything that isn’t the insatiable thirst burning within you.

“Damn baby, did I fuck you stupid?” Seeing you so drunk on his cock, he wonders how anyone could ever fuck you without wanting to see you cum over and over again. His hair falls over his eyes as he fucks up into you with renewed vigor, his hot skin covered in a light sheen of sweat. He grits his teeth when he feels how tightly your walls grip onto him.“Shit-- you must want me to make you cum again, baby girl. Your little pussy just keeps sucking me in.”

“H-hah, y-yes! Yes, please god, Mingyu, I want to c-cum again. P-please let me cum,” you beg, practically writhing as you pathetically attempt to meet his thrusts. Without any hesitation, Mingyu brings down his thumb and presses it into your swollen clit, causing your body to seize up suddenly. “A-Aah Mingyu! I’m--!” The intensity of your orgasm has your back arching off the mattress, head thrown back in a silent scream. Wave after wave of pleasure continuously washes over you, seemingly unending, unlike any orgasm you ever thought possible.

“That’s right baby girl, get my cock nice and wet,” Mingyu growls. He fucks you through your release as he sloppily chases his own, not too far behind with how your walls are pulsing around him. He makes sure his cock is deep inside you and stills his hips when fills you with his hot cum. “Fuck, this pussy was fucking made for me.”

Just as you think you’ve finally come down from your high, he pulls out of you and he shifts to lower himself to place his mouth on your spent pussy. “M-mingyu!”

You squirm and half-heartedly try to shove his head away, far too sensitive to have his tongue licking into your leaking entrance, but Mingyu is persistent. He pushes your legs to your chest to keep you from squeezing them close, and hums when he tastes the hot mixture of your and his own cum on his lips. The way he slurps and sucks at your folds is absolutely sinful as he eats you out like you’re the most delectable treat. It almost hurts to feel so much ecstasy at once, but it still leaves you mewling for more, unable to get enough of the boy.

Your third orgasm ripples over you when he suddenly scrapes his teeth over your abused clit, and you feel a tear slide down your cheek as you weakly shake against his mouth.

Mingyu is smiling when he pulls away, looking slightly ridiculous with how his lips still glisten with cum. You tiredly slump back into his pillows, eyes already drooping close. “What is it?”

“I told you I could do it~” he says proudly. He goes to grab some tissues from the bedside table so that he could start cleaning you up, giggling all the while. It really is unfair how he could look so cute moments after railing you into another dimension.

You groan. You’re never going to hear the end of this.

#seventeen smut #mingyu smut #seventeen scenarios #mingyu scenarios #mingyu fanfic #svt smut #m:kmg #l:os #g:pwp #listen tumblr it would be fantastic if this worked in the tags the first time #pretty pls

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five-rivers · 3 years

Note

Is there any way we could possibly convince you to write more of the Eldritch!Danny au? As it's own phanfic? This, of course, would only be done once you are under considerably less stress, and can comfortably put the effort into that, if there ever could be such a time whilst writing Mortified and Stars Aligned. It could even wait until one or both of those has reached a point that you deem them Completed™. I'm just immediately part of Sam's Cult XD

It’s been a bit, and this is kind of random, but...

Clockwork’s avatar pressed the food to Danny’s lips, and he bit down, hard. Juices dribbled down his chin as the food squirmed. He moaned in something like relief as the pressure in the venom sacs in the roof of his mouth lessened. He ate.

He kept Dreaming of himself with fangs and venom. Did that mean something?

A cold pressure under his chin forced him to look up. Clockwork’s avatar inserted another piece of food into Danny’s mouth.

Of course, it means something, it said. You are such a generous soul that you must give of yourself before you can even do something as basic and vital as eat.

Something about that didn’t sound right, but Danny wasn’t in a position to argue, not when he found himself so hungry.

Clockwork’s avatar fussed over him, feeding him more and more, past the point of mere satiation to the point where he felt bloated and slug-like. He wanted to curl up and sleep real sleep. The image of a caterpillar who, having gorged itself, began to form a cocoon, flittered across his mind.

You are a long way from metamorphosis yet, dear one, said Clockwork’s avatar. Come. I have something for you.

Danny followed the tug of the chained collar around his neck, blinking blearily, his footsteps just a little unsteady.

The careful direction of the chain led him to a small table cluttered with trinkets. Clockwork’s avatar leaned down to press its cheek against the crown of Danny’s head. Its cloak fell to either side of Danny, cutting off his field of view to the left and right, leaving him with only the table and the wall behind it.

A gift, said Clockwork’s avatar.

“Why?” asked Danny. It felt odd to speak here, and much more so in English, but he was still learning how to use his True Voice.

I wanted to give you something myself, before we celebrate your birthday.

“My birthday is ages away,” said Danny.

From some perspectives, perhaps. But we missed so many of yours. We must make them up before the next one.

There was something ominous there, but Danny just leaned into the avatar’s touch, unwilling to devote himself to interpreting omens.

Pick one, said Clockwork’s avatar, pick wisely. Gifts received in the Dream become part of you.

Danny nodded and opened his eyes (when had he closed them?) to look at the trinkets—no, the gifts—again. Gifts that, like all good gifts, came with strings attached.

There was something off about that thought.

But it didn’t matter. It wasn’t as if he could refuse a gift.

He reached out.

He picked the beaded pectoral necklace. Mostly because he was curious to see how it went on, what with the collar around his neck and all. Yes, this was the Dream, and multiple things could exist in the same place at the same time, but usually there was an… internal consistency, of sorts.

It turned out the answer was that the necklace merged with the bottom edge of the collar, which felt weird, but it was fine, because both were manifestations of Clockwork’s Love.

The unfamiliar weight of it hung strangely off his shoulders, especially given the counterweight that hung down his back, and forced him to alter his posture. He stood straight and… Well. Not tall. But to his full height.

Clockwork’s ticking sounded pleased. An echo of something where Danny’s heart once was agreed with that assessment.

When he left the Dream and went on with his life, it seemed as if not much had changed, except—

He felt more confident. More coordinated. He didn’t stutter as much. People listened to him more.

Even Sam and Tucker remarked on it.

Only a few days later, Clockwork called him back, reeling him into the deep Dream by the chain attached to his collar. He had another gift for Danny. A bracelet. Its weight joined that of the necklace.

Since you seemed to enjoy this so much, said the avatar, running its fingers over the faience beads.

And so it went.

Every few days, Clockwork would call him back and give him some new little adornment. A ring. A jeweled comb. An anklet. A brooch. A belt. Each gift seemed to smooth away some almost imperceptible flaw in his waking self, seemed to draw more eyes to him, more attention, more praise. People who would never give him the time of day before actually sought out his company.

He wondered. Each thing he was given was a display of wealth. Did that come across, somehow? Or was it simply gravity, the mass of his presence pulling in their regard?

The improvements weren’t just in his human life. The others were easier to fight, to distract and ward away. Their blows did not hurt nearly as much, nor did their ‘appearances’ distress him as much as they once had.

He noticed, too, the weight of what he wore in the Dream. Each ring, each bauble, made it easier for him to sink into the depths, made it harder for him to reach the surface.

Sometimes, after a return, he would like on the floor in his room, panting.

But he was growing stronger, too, and he hoped—

It didn’t matter what he’d hoped.

He could no longer reach the waking world. He tried seven times before the chain, vibrating with amusement, pulled him back to Clockwork.

We must celebrate, said Clockwork’s avatar, pulling a sort of woven metal sleeve over Danny’s right hand. It hooked neatly onto the rings on each of his fingers.

“Why?” asked Danny, barely holding himself back from falling to pieces. He had a responsibility to Amity Park. Not to mention, he wanted to live there with his friends and family.

Because it is a wonderful milestone, that you are too powerful to reach that place on your own. The avatar placed a crown of knotted metal on Danny’s head. This is what a cult is for, my little gem. To pull you up.

“What if…” said Danny, “I get too… heavy to be pulled up?”

Another milestone.

Except, no, Danny’s hand still hovered over the table, undecided. He let it fall back to his side and blinked, shaking his head to clear it of the vision that had just overtaken him.

Did it show what would be, what might have been? Or merely a possibility?

Reality splintered.

He put his hand down on a stack of folded white cloth, jostling the bells sewn to the hems. He didn’t actually know what it was, but it seemed harmless, and the fabric was soft.

It turned out that the cloth was a set of folded veils. The bells were weights, to make them hang properly.

Clockwork’s avatar helped him put them on in front of a mirror, since Danny had never worn anything like them before. The cloth was thin, diaphanous gauze. Where the veils touched the clothing he was already wearing, it whispered away, like it never was. In some places, mostly on his shoulders and back, for some reason, the veils merged smoothly, seamlessly, with his skin. It was an odd sensation, made more so by the fact that his nerve endings seemed to extend partway into the cloth.

Although, that might not be by design, but because Danny expected it. This was the Dream, after all.

Once all the veils were in place, the only pieces of his body exposed were his hands and bare feet. It was strange, looking at himself in the mirror through the sheer veils over his face and head. He almost looked like a ghost.

It was… it was kind of embarrassing, being dressed like this. The veils were the only things he was wearing, and even with all their frothy layers, he could make out the silhouette of his body beneath them.

He spun in place, just enough to hear the bells ring with high, clear tones. Like this, the subtle embroidery on the veils looked like feathers.

When he woke again, normal clothes felt rough and coarse against his skin in comparison. He gritted his teeth and bore it. He couldn’t very well walk to school in the nude.

“Did something happen last night?” asked Sam, surveying Danny up and down.

“Um,” said Danny, “yes, but why?”

“You look…”

“Mysterious,” said Tucker.

“Ethereal,” decided Sam. “But also…” She hummed. “Untouchable, maybe? I don’t know.”

Danny explained what had happened.

It was in the course of just messing around that they found another effect.

“Dude,” said Tucker, as Danny sat on his shoulders, “did you lose weight or something?”

“No?” said Danny, turning away from his sticky-note masterpiece on the classroom ceiling. “At least, I don’t think so.”

“You just seem a lot lighter than the last time we did this.”

They weighed him later, at Sam’s house. He was.

The next time he visited the dream, there were changes. One, the sensation in the cloth had extended. He could feel almost all the way to the ends of some of the shorter veils. Two, his form beneath the veils was less distinct. Softer. When he put his hand underneath them to check, his body felt softer, too. Three, he was glowing.

Of course, said Clockwork’s avatar, stroking its cold hand down his back in a way that made all of his new nerve endings overload. As the illusion fades, the truth may shine.

It did not elaborate, no matter how Danny pressed him. It did, however, pet him until he was left as little more than a pleasantly chirping puddle of veils and feathers on Clockwork’s floor.

He did not note the significance of the feathers until his next visit to the Dream, whereupon some of his veils had become wings, bells still attached and ringing with every motion. He spread them out and flew.

Flying was even better than he had imagined. Never before had he known such joy.

The changes continued, the form he wore in the waking world becoming progressively more and more alien to him, more grating and uncomfortable.

“That only makes sense,” said Sam. “You’re more than us. Being constrained like this can’t be good for you.”

Tucker nodded in agreement. “I mean, look at all of this.”

Danny looked around the cafeteria, catching several worshipful gazes.

“You don’t belong in a cage like this.”

“I want to be able to help,” said Danny. It had become easier, in some ways. It was as hard as ever to fight the others, but human aggression stopped dead in Danny’s presence.

“You’ll still be able to,” said Sam. “But Tucker’s right, you should be trapped here. You should in a high place… on a pedestal. Somewhere to give us hope. Somewhere we can look up to.”

He stood in front of Clockwork’s mirror again. There was a suggestion of a human body beneath the wings, but nothing more than that. Soon, even that would be gone.

Even as he thought it, he let his wings shift, forming a more spherical shape. The light at his center became blindingly bright, but Danny could still see the chains of Love attached to it that kept him grounded.

One of those chains pulled taught as Clockwork summoned him, not even bothering with the avatar this time. This time, Danny would be able to talk to Clockwork directly, and it would be fine, because Danny had shed that illusion of humanity and become more like Clockwork.

He entered Clockwork’s direct presence and—

Danny reeled as the vision simply stopped being something his mind could interpret. He felt a part of what he called his sanity crumble.

Perhaps… Perhaps not that one. Instead…

He chose the featureless white mask, lifting it with both hands. It was surprisingly heavy.

Clockwork’s avatar reached out, the sleeves of its robes whispering past Danny’s ears. Let me help you put that on, it said. It took the mask and flipped it over, brushing the broad, white satin ribbon out of the way with its thumbs.

Before Danny could think to protest, before he could decide if he wanted to protest, the mask was pressed against his face.

The soft inner lining fit perfectly snug against his features. Perfectly enough that it forced his eyelids and lips closed. The bottom edge of the mask cupped his jaw, preventing him from opening his mouth.

He could not see, with the mask on. Somehow, this surprised him. Part of him had expected to supernaturally be able to see through the mask.

This was inconvenient. On the other hand, not being forced to see the Dream and its denizens could be a boon in and of itself.

Clockwork’s avatar finished tying the ribbon. When you wear this, only those who know you will know you. And only those who you keep in place of your may have their knowledge progress.

Danny tested his ability to speak, first with human words and then with his True Voice. The best he could manage was a sort of hum.

I know you best of all. One cannot progress past completion. Remember, those who Love you will understand you, even without words. You will be allowed to remove the mask if it pleases you.

Danny nodded to show he understood, the weight of the mask making the motion more energetic than usual.

It took Danny time to learn how to navigate the Dream blind. The Dream was, well, Dream. It did not follow the usual rules of object permanence. Things Danny could not directly perceive existed only at the whims of others. While he was with Clockwork, he could have faith that things would stay mostly stable, but once he left, his world shrunk to echoes and what lay against his skin.

But when he did finally make it home and opened his eyes, he was able to fully understand what the mask gave him.

He could not see the nightmares and madness lurking just under reality. His sight was human. He turned to his mirror and saw not a monster, but simply his physical body.

He found himself weeping in relief. It had been so hard. Even if it was an illusion bought by ignorance, for the first time in far too long, he felt safe, no longer exposed.

Whether or not it pleased him, he might never take the mask off.

He walked to Jazz’s room to tell her the good news, only to discover he could not speak.

After some experimentation, Danny and Jazz determined that, when he wore the mask, his speech was as constrained in the real world as it was in the Dream. If he wanted to talk, he had to slip into the Dream to take it off.

It was inconvenient, but still. A perfectly hidden identity and relief from seeing were more than worth inconvenience.

With the mask on, he almost felt human again.

Before the school day began, he paused in the bathroom and braced himself. He had gotten away with being quiet at home, but at school, teachers would require him to answer questions.

He stepped into the Dream and reached up to untie the knot at the back of his head. It would not come loose. Danny pulled harder.

If it pleased him.

Well, it didn’t please him to be exposed in school. Beyond that… Danny suspected that Clockwork also had a hand in when he was allowed to remove the mask.

A few weeks later, the school psychiatrist diagnosed him with selective mutism.

“It almost makes sense,” claimed Tucker, gesturing at Danny’s ceiling, “if you think of it like a parent keeping their kid safe on the internet. Like, you don’t want their identity exposed, so you keep them from giving away personal information or talking to strangers.”

“That,” said Sam, poking Danny’s cheek, “or he wants your cute little face all to himself. What do you even look like in the Dream?”

“Like me,” said Danny. He raised a hand to touch his face. “I don’t know what I look like with the mask on.” The words came surprisingly easily. Before the mask, he’d worried that he’d eventually be unable to speak English, what with how difficult it was becoming to translate his thoughts to sounds.

Later that day, there was an incident. Danny couldn’t help. He couldn’t see.

(It was, however, very clear that the others could see him.)

(He couldn’t help but feel guilty.)

That night, Clockwork pulled him into the Dream.

There is someone I want you to meet, said Clockwork’s avatar as its fingers untied the mask.

“Who?” asked Danny as the mask came away. He nearly forgot his question as he once again took in Clockwork’s appearance. He had forgotten how beautiful it was here. Tears rolled down his face.

Your brother, said the avatar, gently leading Danny forward. I think you will get along. You both like masks.

It took a few minutes for Danny to distinguish this new presence from Clockwork’s, but once he did, the name came easily to his mind. This was Nocturne, the Dream Eater.

“Why is your mask different from mine?” asked Danny, because he couldn’t make a good first impression to save his life.

The mouth and eyes on Nocturne’s mask turned upward in humor. It plucked Danny’s mask from the hands of Clockwork’s avatar, and, to Danny’s simultaneous horror and delight, Danny discovered that he could feel Nocturne’s claws on the mask as if they were on his face instead.

That is because it is your face, said Nocturne, the one you show the world. Why wouldn’t you feel it when it is touched? When it is damaged? Nocturne ran his fingers down across the space where eye holes would have been in an ordinary mask, and Danny found himself forced to blink. For the other, it is because you are a child. I see and speak for myself. A child sees the world through their parent’s eyes. A child has no voice, but their parent speaks for them.

“Will it change when I get older?” asked Danny.

Nocturne laughed. You will not grow older. He moved forward suddenly, pressing the mask to Danny’s face, and putting one of his other hands against the back of Danny’s head. You will always be the youngest of us. The most… Human.

Is something wrong? asked Clockwork’s avatar.

“No,” said Danny, quickly. “It’s just hard to decide.”

You could have them all, it said, if it is so difficult.

Danny shook his head. “No, I just need more time.”

Maybe if Danny were human, this would be about getting the best deal, choosing the gift with the lowest price, but he wasn’t, and it wasn’t. This was about choosing the price he wanted to pay.

It surprised him, how much he wanted to pay some of them.

The set of bracelets clinked merrily when Danny touched them. They were four bands, each about two inches wide and a couple millimeters thick. The metal they were made of was smooth on the outside, but on the insides, they had the same fractal patterns as the collar.

The manacles are a good choice, said Clockwork’s avatar, approvingly.

Manacles.

Not bracelets.

Unfortunately, he didn’t think he was allowed to change his mind.

The manacles went around his wrists and ankles, each one closing with a snap. When they shut, the metal they were made of swirled, the hinges and seams disappearing to present a flawless surface and the overall shape shifting so the inside laid flush against his skin.

As soon as he closed the last one, and it finished altering itself, Danny felt a sharp pain through the center of his wrists and ankles, followed by a radiating numbness, as if a rod had been driven through each manacle, through each wrist and ankle, stopping only when it hit the other side. But the numbness soon faded, and as he flexed his hands and feet, he didn’t feel anything like that.

Still. The message was clear. The metal bands were not coming off.

Clockwork’s avatar took one of Danny’s hands, and examined the band. The metal, which had warmed against Danny’s skin, turned frigid under the avatar’s touch. For a moment, Danny’s vision blurred, and he saw a multitude of delicate chains leading from the manacle in every direction, connecting it to Clockwork, the other manacles, the collar around his neck and who knew what else. His vision cleared. A few long, silent minutes later, the avatar released him.

They were made with much skill. I hope you find them useful.

Danny nodded.

The manacles weren’t visible in the waking world, but Danny imagined he still felt them. Especially when he was doing things with his hands or feet.

‘Made with skill,’ indeed.

Lots of skills. Skills like drawing, writing, dancing, sign language. He didn’t trip or stumble any more but moved smoothly. It was interesting. It didn’t feel like the skills belonged to someone else. They were his, now, wherever they had originally come from. He knew how to do each thing he was doing, and he did them intentionally.

Still, his art (which he had always considered at least decent) was now scary good. He’d also outplayed Ember on the piano a few days back, breaking her hold on the people who had been listening. She’d been… rather upset about that.

It was worth it.

The string attached to the gift didn’t make itself known for a while. One day, while he was drawing, his wrists burned cold, and he found himself drawing something more than what he’d originally intended. The general subject was the same, but the skill put into it, the effort, was far, far greater. He’d meant to doodle a little, maybe for ten or so minutes before he went to bed.

Instead, it was hours later and if it wasn’t on the back of his French homework the drawing could have been hung in a museum.

It would have been the easiest thing in the world to imagine that he was being puppetted, controlled, that the manacles made him into a marionette, but that wasn’t what it felt like. Instead, it felt as if something had flipped a switch inside him.

He understood, then. The manacles granted him skills, but he couldn’t always decide when to use them. Or how much.

It wasn’t the last time it happened. He’d suddenly be seized with the urge to do something. Make use of some skill. And whatever he did when those urges settled over him was inhumanly good. Dangerously good. As in, attracting the wrong kind of attention good.

Those men in suits had been there for him, and he was quite certain that, if he had been perceptible to people foreign to Amity Park, they would have tried to take him. Tried, being the operative word.

More importantly, the mural he’d been compelled to paint on the side of the supermarket last night seemed to be attracting a following. He’d attempted to keep elements of the others out of it, but he knew they somehow slipped through, slipped past his attention, and into his art.

Sam and Tucker thought it was fine, though. He was inclined to trust them.

He was glad that the manacles did not seem to infer any violent or deadly skills. He wasn’t what he would do if they did and the urge to act turned into an urge to harm.

The manacles turned cold.

Perhaps he’d bake a cake. Something for Sam and Tucker, as a thanks for putting up with him.

Danny slumped against Clockwork’s avatar, who held him without complaint. These visions were mentally draining. They would be, what with containing weeks compressed into seconds.

Were they seconds?

The picture frame caught Danny’s eye. It was a picture of him, as an infant, being held by Clockwork’s avatar, the great expanse of Clockwork himself in the background. Danny wasn’t quite sure he knew the picture was of himself. Really, he’d been a generic-looking baby. But he did know.

He took the picture.

Nothing happened. He went home, woke up, and went about his normal life. On occasion, he would look at the picture when he dropped into the Dream. It warmed something in him.

It took him a month to realize he was aging backwards.

To be fair, no one else seemed to notice, either, even though the change was much more rapid than normal forward aging. Danny suspected they were being blocked from noticing.

No, that wasn’t quite right. They treated the age he appeared as the normal state of things, but they also treated him as if he were his apparent. Something which had bothered him all last week, even if he didn’t realize why it was happening.

It made it slightly more embarrassing that he himself had only noticed when he’d gone to retrieve a cup from the top shelf in the cabinet and couldn’t because he was too short.

Sam, Tucker, and Jazz were confused when he brought it up to them. They seemed to be under the impression that he’d always been a few years younger than Sam and Tucker. That he’d been skipped forward a few years to be in the same class as them. Danny had let the subject drop. He had no idea how to even begin fixing this. If it even could be fixed.

Every day, as he got younger and younger, he also seemed to attract more and more attention. Positive attention. People would smile at him, tell him he was cute, give him presents out of nowhere. Danny couldn’t say he hated it.

Until he got small enough for people to carry around. Which they did. Frequently. Without asking for permission. Even this wasn’t so much of a problem.

Until the cult.

Until the knife.

Until the sacrifice.

(And Clockwork was so thrilled to be able to raise him from infancy.)

He hadn’t decided yet.

How could he decide? They were amazing gifts. Terrifying gifts. Gifts he could not refuse. Gifts he didn’t want to refuse, at least on some level.

But this wasn’t about what he wanted. It was about what he could live with.

The pectoral gave him power and the respect of his peers but took away his ability to use those things in the defense of Amity. Although being powerful in the Dream was an idea that tickled at the shadows in Danny’s mind.

The veils gave him something he always wanted – flight – but at the cost of his humanity and individuality.

The mask would protect him, let him hide and return to a mostly ordinary life, but he would lose the chance to face his new existence on his own terms as well as some of his autonomy. Not to mention, his ability to actually help his people.

The manacles gave him skills he’d enjoy, but also made him a hazard for others.

The picture frame… Something twinged inside Danny’s chest… The picture frame gave him a new life with Clockwork, from the very beginning. But he’d lose everything else and kickstart an unmanageable cult.

He couldn’t give up his friends, his family, his human life. He couldn’t give up his ability to protect Amity. Perhaps all those things would fade from importance in his mind as he became more and more other, but for now they were razor sharp. That made his choice clear.

“The manacles,” he mumbled to Clockwork’s avatar. He could work around the drawbacks (even if part of him resisted the notion that the drawbacks were drawbacks).

The avatar stroked Danny’s hair. An excellent choice.

“How,” said Danny, trying to recollect his thoughts, “how do they work?”

Danny’s eyes fluttered as he saw the chains on the manacles again. The way they felt on his skin was just like what he remembered.

Skills that go unused are lost in the Dream. These find them and bring them to you, bind them to you, so they are never lost again. Clockwork’s avatar plucked one of the chains. It felt as if someone had traced their fingers possessively up one of his arms. Although some of the chains have other functions. It nuzzled Danny as something deep below in Clockwork’s depths began to chime. One can never be too connected to those they Love.

Danny woke in his bed and moaned. His pillow was wet with drool. Evidently, he had left his body behind this time. That happened, on occasion, when he went to the Dream. He was never sure how he felt about it.

He raised his hands up above his head. As expected, the manacles were not visible, but he did feel more… connected to the world around him. Being connected was good. It meant that what happened before wouldn’t happen again. It meant that he wouldn’t be lost.

He lowered his hands, clasping them over where his heart would have, should have been.

The connections, though, were mostly to Clockwork, who was as inhuman as any of the others Danny protected Amity Park from. Should that bother him? He thought of what Nocturne had said in the other timeline, the one where he had chosen the mask. He’d known, already, that as much as Clockwork protected him, he also kept him in a state where he needed that protection. Wasn’t it natural? Wasn’t it the desire to keep Loved ones close?

His breath hitched as he briefly felt the soothing mental weight of Clockwork’s Love increase.

It was fine, wasn’t it?

#danny phantom #eldritch abomination au #ask #answer #loved

160 notes · View notes

stylesnews · 4 years

Link

“Feeling good in my skin/ I just keep on dancing,” Harry Styles sings in his latest single, “Treat People With Kindness.” And in the song’s exuberant music video -- which has garnered 17 million YouTube views and counting since its debut on New Year’s Day -- he does just that: Wearing a sequined jacket and bow tie, he chassés, spins and flutters jazz hands like an MGM musical star (with a little help from his equally debonair partner, Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge).

Styles shot the video in early 2019 after several weeks of training with choreographer Paul Roberts, a collaborator since his One Direction days. “I think somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew this could be something special,” says Roberts, a veteran stage director and choreographer who’s worked on videos and tours for the likes of Sam Smith, Katy Perry, Diana Ross, and the Spice Girls (their Spiceworld stadium tour).

Watching the explosive fan reaction to Styles’s little known dance talents -- including from the Spice Girls, who've “sent lovely messages" about the video -- Roberts says it seems like "Treat People With Kindness" arrived at the precise right moment. “Most people’s comments are, ‘I’ve not felt that happy for three and a half minutes in a long time,’ or ‘I smiled from ear to ear the whole way through.’ It’s a positive light.”

He spoke to Billboard about Styles’ intensive training process -- and why he wouldn’t be surprised to see him dancing onstage again.

There’s been one pretty overwhelming reaction to this video: “This is the guy who was in the group that insisted they couldn’t dance?!” Did you expect this kind of reaction to Harry dancing? I’ve been with Harry for 10 years: I was with the One Direction boys from the beginning the whole way through their career before they took the hiatus, and they always made a very conscious decision that they didn’t want choreography as part of their brand -- but they did want a kind of disheveled organization in order to allow the cameras and the lighting to stand a chance in terms of presenting them in the best manner possible.

What was very evident to me was that all five of them, and then it obviously became four, they’ve all got their own magic. The only time I’ve experienced that was when I worked with the Spice Girls. I always knew that they had special skills aside from what they were in One Direction, whether it was movement, songwriting, being able to handle the business side of things. For such young lads they were very astute and very decisive. So, getting together with Harry -- he’s a bit of an alchemist, is Harry. Everything he turns his hand to turns to gold. Where did the initial dance-centric concept come from? Harry and the directors, Ben and Gabe [Turner], sent me a video link to the Nicholas Brothers scene from Stormy Weather and Harry asked me, "How long do you think it would take to dance like this?" I was like, "OK, are you being serious?" "Yeah, I’m being serious."

That is probably one of the most standout dance sequences ever captured on film -- so I knew we were aiming high. I said, "Why don’t we go into a studio and let’s workshop some choreography, some moves, some short sequences, and see what your ability is, see how we can tailor this to make you look the best you can possibly look." Obviously it would take some investment in terms of rehearsal and commitment, I told him it would be mentally and physically exhausting, but I thought, "My God yeah, let’s do it; this will be an adventure."

How long did the whole process take? We started in mid-January 2019, and we rehearsed and workshopped for about four to five weeks before the shoot, every day. Both Harry and Phoebe had other things going on, so, for instance, Phoebe was working on the new Bond movie in Canada, so I sent my assistant to Canada to work with her. I stayed in the U.K. with Harry, and then we went to L.A. where Harry shot two more videos, for “Watermelon Sugar” and “Falling.”

At the end of the “Watermelon Sugar” shoot, he wrapped, got in his car, came to the dance studio and we rehearsed into the night. Knowing how short a time you sometimes get with artists even for really big performances, I thought the rehearsals would dilute and we’d lose momentum, but both Phoebe and Harry were so committed.

What was the process in the studio like with Harry? We didn’t even use his [vocal] track to begin with -- we used different big band songs, some contemporary alternative music. It was just about finding his [movement] language first and foremost. Then we developed the choreography and sent it to the directors, who gave us feedback. We enhanced the work a bit more, and then once we had some really solid sequences, Ben and Gabe storyboarded the scenes against the timeline of the music.

At this point Harry and Phoebe were still working separately, and then we joined forces in London, where we really started to refine these sequences of choreography we’d developed, trying to find the finesse and the style, almost making sense of the movement for them so they felt they had a dancer’s way of working the movement through the body. You’ve worked with a wide variety of artists, many of whom aren’t dancers first. How do you find, as you put it, the “language” of movement that makes sense for each of them as individuals?

I think the general answer is really communicating -- listening and understanding what the artist’s desire is. And also collaborating, so you don’t get too lost in yourself as a choreographer. What looks good on you might not transcend to the artist, or even necessarily the dancers.

With Harry, what was important within the language of the choreography was that it felt joyful and had personality. Him and Phoebe, with the work she’s done with Fleabag, you associate them and what they do with a sense of style, a real confidence, but at the heart of it it’s entertainment. And with the amount of time and budget we had, which was such a luxury in this day and age, we wanted to do something that pushed both of them out of their comfort zones. We tried to make it as athletic as possible but without compromising them as artists and becoming too comedic. We wanted it to be a bit quaint and cute in places, but we definitely didn’t want it to be thought of as nonsensical or silly.

Harry’s movement in the video is so crisp and precise, even his hands and arm extension look very dancerly. Did that come through a lot of specific work with you? As a songwriter and artist, for Harry it’s about detail, about pushing yourself to be the best. He’s always got questions: "Why are we doing that? Should we be doing this?" We got to a point during the rehearsal period where I brought in a ballet teacher, really to just get Harry and Phoebe to open themselves up from behind their shoulder blades, have an idea of extension, the lines that extend from your center all the way to the tip of your finger. I’d be saying, “Your arms Harry, your arm line!” Asking him to push his shoulders down, lift his carriage up, extend through his breast. And when he hit those lines, he’d be like, “Oh yeah, that feels different.” It’s funny: We spent a couple days apart -- he had to go off and do a gig somewhere -- and I was like, “I hope you’re rehearsing when you’ve got some downtime, dude!” And he sent me a picture in the gym with his arms in the most beautiful balletic arm line! I was like, "Yes, by George, you’ve got it!" Besides the Nicholas Brothers, did you have any particular dance references in mind for the feel of the choreography? I just delved into the MGM archives. Obviously [Fred] Astaire and [Gene] Kelly, the two greats -- especially with Astaire, we loved how sometimes it seems so effortless yet a bit throwaway, not totally totally perfect always. We enjoyed the moments from him of “I’ll just do a bit of this,” “I’ll just walk off camera left,” the dropping in and out of movement. We loved the duet “Moses Supposes” from Singin’ in the Rain, for Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor -- we loved the camaraderie between them, which felt a bit goofball at times, and just that wry smile, the look to the left, knowing your partner is there and has got your back. It feels fizzy, it feels joyful.

And yes, there was a massive core of MGM-ism, but at the same time an absolute huge dollop of Harry-and-Phoebe-ism. It was important to us to feel a bit more contemporary, so again we stay true to Harry and Phoebe as artists. Has Harry indicated any interest in dancing more going forward?

We had a conversation back at the end of the summer about how much we enjoyed the process, and I know he was doing another project where choreography was involved, so we were just talking about it and how he felt. Coming from where he came from to what he was about to do, he felt he could be pushed even further. I don’t know if he got the bug, or if it’s just the way he is as a person, very inquisitive and wanting to keep elevating himself. There’s now been some talk on social media that it can’t be long before Harry does Broadway. What do you think?

I mean, I think with Harry Styles, anything is possible, is it not? I mean, I’m sure because he’s tasted the dance, he’ll inject that along the line in his career. It won’t necessarily be out-and-out dancing, but I guess it’s a bit like Bowie used to do, isn’t it? It’s the showmanship and presentation of the performance. Who knows? He’s just so open-minded and open-hearted — and because he’s so open it allows the universe to come back at him and he’s able to do anything he sets his mind to.

#harry styles #jan21 #paul roberts #billboard #article #tpwkmv

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