#i gave myself emotions

[buwheal]

OH!!!!! HAVE YOU CHECKED THE CYBER CAFÉ DUMPSTER by any chance? there HAS to be some leftover cake there!!!! i heard there was an event recently!!

[vamptits]

hey listen to this normal track

[littleplantfreak]

'When', not 'if'

("I'm not a romantic" I cry and scream before dropping the most sickening thing i've written to date. Blame @stunie because i did tell her i would write the most ume thing ever and maybe this is it. The title in my docs for it is 'Fucking disgusting' but i figured i better not title it that here because I'd be seeing it in my notifs lmaoo)

SFW/no cw unless you hate fluff

When you wake up from your nap, one of your slippers is gone, and there's a blanket on you that wasn't there prior. Looking at the clock, it's been about an hour since everyone had left your apartment once your birthday party ended. The day as a whole had been chaotic, your boyfriend shoving you out the door with a note to go see Kotoha.

The note took you farther than that, though, as it seemed Umemiya created a whole scavenger hunt for your birthday that had you running into all of your friends, having dessert at your favorite cafe, and eventually ending up at your shared apartment to find that all that time spent around town was a distraction so that he could set up the space for your party. After it had ended, you were banished to the couch because princesses aren't allowed to help clean up their own birthday parties, which had you huffing and falling face down into the chicken shaped pillow affectionately called Mr.Clucky.

It was a product of your boyfriend's endless cycle of hobbies when he took up sewing. A little lopsided and overfilled with stuffing, you complained to and into Mr.Clucky with your face pressed into him. Apparently, he was soft enough to fall asleep on because before you knew it, you had been drooling on him the entire hour. Prying yourself off the couch took more effort than was almost worth it before your eyes fell on the reason you were so tired to begin with.

Hajime smiles and hums looking at your bleary eyes. "Good morning sunshine, I was just about to take you to bed," he says, folding a dish towel over a chair. You toss off the blanket and grab on the slipper that fell under the living room table before padding up to him. Dipping your hands under both of his arms to lock them together behind him, now your face is in his chest instead of the chicken, which is entirely preferred.

"Don't wanna go to bed just yet," you muffle, sinking even deeper into him when both of his arms wrap around you in support. He smells like dish soap and birthday cake, and you turn your head to hear the heartbeat in his chest.

"What do you wanna do lovey? You know I'd give you the world if you asked," you can hear the rumble of his voice in his chest with your pressed ear. He's cheesy, but half asleep, you feel just as much, if not cheesier.

"I have the world if I have you, they're one in the same. So just you is more than fine." Your eyes are closed, but you feel him shiver a little. "I wanna dance with you, though," you say, voice still soft and kinda raspy from sleep.

"Dunno if I can top what you just said even when I propose," he chokes out a laugh, or at least you think it's one. He shifts his hold a bit and starts leading you both in a lazy sway that starts near the toaster and ends next to the potted plant at the back door before starting over.

"When? Not if?" You tease him, a hand going to scratch the nape of his neck lightly.

"I'll never meet another you, so I'm pretty set on When."

"I'll say yes." Because you will. You can't imagine a life where you wouldn't.

"And I'll still cry when you do." You can tell he's crying now because it comes out shaky and his hold tightens a bit, before you lean back, stopping your impromptu waltz. Both of your hands come up to cup his face and look at his teary grey eyes before cooing at him.

"You big baby! Save those tears for When please. You'll be congested and sniffley all night if you don't stop." You start cleaning off his face with your sleeve, but he stops one of your hands and starts peppering your palm and wrist with small kisses. "I think I'm ready for bed now. Princess's orders," you say, dragging him towards your bedroom. You'll have to figure out tomorrow just how soon When is going to be, but for now you can hear the slow thumps of Hajime's steps as he follows behind you, squeezing your connected hand. It's not pressing in the least, you think, because it feels like there will be plenty of tomorrows too.

-----

When you wake up in the morning, it takes you an hour to realize Hajime had put the ring on your finger while you were asleep.

It takes you five minutes to run through town in your pajamas, barefoot to find and full on tackle him in front of the place he was about to get your breakfast in.

And it takes about two minutes of unintelligible blubbering on both your parts before anyone understands what is going on.

No one timed it, but if they did, it would've taken less than ten minutes for the whole town to find out via texts, calls, and yells down the streets and through windows that you're engaged.

[astralhope]

Utopia protecting and worrying about Astral

[flyinghome-againstthewind]

seven sentence sunday

Tagged by my beloved @walkinginland, thank you! 💜 I promise we are getting there for Seaside, I have almost 7k words written, but I was in NY for comic con and then I got sick, so I just haven't had a lot of opportunity or inspiration to work on it. Getting close though!

With a strangled sigh, Claire glanced around the parlor instead of attempting conversation. Her eyes fell to a framed photograph on the end table nearest her and she reached for it. “Is this Jamie?” she asked softly without looking away from it. “Aye, and our older brother Willie.”  The beaming faces in the photograph were still young boys, but Claire could see the recognizable tilt of Jamie’s head and the sweetness of his smile in that younger face as he gazed up at his older brother.  “He worshiped Willie growing up.”  Claire didn’t miss the fondness that had seeped into Jenny’s tone. She caught the other woman’s gaze and smiled. “And you did, too.”  Jenny’s gaze dropped to the baby, feigning distraction, and swallowed thickly.

no-pressure tagging my darlings @forgetmenotsassenach17 and @frasers-of-my-heart and anyone else who has something to share!

[fortes-fortuna-iogurtum]

I've been reading Exodus lately and I've just gotten to the portions where God gives the first commands to the people via Moses (twice), and then goes on to give detailed instructions about the tabernacle and how it should be built, and I'm just... we think art is unimportant?? we think things only mean as much as their functionality?? we so easily fall into the trap of believing that beauty means nothing, that it's cheap and only worth whatever mindless distraction it brings, that it's barely more than a cheap sensual thrill, that buildings should just be practical and plain and cheap, that everything should be functional but ultimately disposable, that paintings and dresses and mugs and curtains and carpets are just pretty but have no real value, that beauty is fleeting and vain and therefore shouldn't be thought about too much, if even looked for at all... we fall into these traps so easily, and we forget that there are chapters upon chapters of painstakingly detailed plans to build one portable worship tent, and those plans have been handed down through thousands of years of human history, because beauty and art and skill in craft is important

[joshuamj]

She just wanted a friend :(

[panharmonium]

Man, these past few days...so many thoughts. About my life then, my life now. What I missed. Thoughts about what I'll never have. And what I want to have.

[almayver]

I went to switch tabs and got hit by this

What a fucking expression to pause on. Pond what the fuck man, there was no need

[dizzybizz]

im so

im so .. insane about him right now

I LOVE HIS BIG PEEPERS . HIS BIG PEEPERS WHEN HES SO DEEP IN THE ZONE !!! ITS ALMOST EERIE LIKE AUHGDJJFGGH

look at him hugging his bag. look at his sproing.

i love!!!!! when his eye goes

BOKUTO YOU WILL ALWAYS BE FAMOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[quinloki]

Can’t help falling in love with you by Elvis Presley with Marco and his s/o who dies of old age

It’s the song they got married to and the song they die to :)

-💧

You end this ask with a smile you villain! Demon!

T-T no that’s so sad 😭 oh man especially in an AU where Marco does t die he just bursts into flames and he’s twenty or ten or whatever but he’s reborn and gods and seas how does he get rid of this curse?

(I see it being a one-time effect of the fruit personally, not true immortality, but unsettlingly close.)

Ahhhhh gag! (I mean GAH! Not gag- stupid phone)

You know what, NO.

No, I’m not leaving it as that kind of sorrow today. TAKE THIS AND LIKE IT.

You’d been teased, at first, the difference in age between you and Marco, but you didn’t care. As months and years had passed, as your twenties and his forties had turned into your fifties and his seventies, it mattered not one whit.

He’s lived a hard life, and the phoenix fruit takes it toll on his stamina. He may be only 70, which is by no means young, but he’s honestly closer to 90 with how often he’d pushed beyond his means. The whole island mourns when he dies.

And is flabbergasted when his body catches fire on its own, bursting into the most beautiful flames you’ve ever seen. From under the pile of ash a young man stands up, Marco no more than 30.

He’s a bit confused himself, but trial and error finds you a young version of himself without a drop of Devil fruit power within him. He can swim, but no longer can he soar.

Marco is elated! You dance, make love, live a quiet life on the quiet island as you had been for years.

And you grow old. Together. Again.

Fifty becomes sixty, becomes seventy. You miss his flames from time to time, but your fifty year old husband has more pep in his step and draw hot baths for you, brings you tea. You’re nearly eighty, maybe a little older, when the end draws near for you.

He’s over sixty, by true rights over a century, and he sits with you with a warm smile, the edges drawn only a little in sorrow. You’ve had more decades of time together than you ever believed possible.

And you’ll die before him. As everyone else has.

He regretted not being able to outlive you, after carrying that burden for so many others, but that was, perhaps the last gift his Zoan fruit gave him. Being able to keep you comfortable, safe, and loved for all the days of your life.

Being able to protect you from the solitude that would have followed. His pretty bird, after all, should never have to sing such a sorrowful song.

He will bury you, but his broken heart, and his extra years, will not carry him much further. A year later the village buried him beside you, grave set at the foot of the great mountain.

The giant Phoenix carved into the rock, looking over the valley and to the sea beyond, that glints teal and gold in the right light, from rocks heavy with veins of pyrite and pale blue quartz - stones precious in a way, but not worth the effort to mine into the mountain - watches over the village ever after.

Sometimes the air and wind hit the shore and crags in a way that the sweet trill of music, some birds that are only heard and never seen, and dances along the valley. Old locals call it the guardian’s song, and younger villagers tell of a sweet romantic tale, how hearing the song with your sweetheart will ensure a long life together.

[rxttenfish]

Asking because I’m extremely curious about this, how did MonProm’s writing get different over time? I remember you saying that the lore and characters feel different, and that it's missing sincere character interactions, too. I know almost nothing about the lore and I’ve only seen a few people mention the characters, so I’d be interested in a rundown of what aspects you think got worse in the series

I wouldn’t mind a very long response since I’m not that active in the fandom, I need to catch up on what happened

sorry for taking so long to answer this! i kinda waffled on it for a long bit, mainly because i started doubting myself again, and whether or not this was me simply overreacting or being tinted by nostalgia or simply being extremely picky and choosy in what i like (the last of which is true, i seldom get into fandoms at all for this reason and stay away from most popular media, but i wasn't sure if it applied here). i've posted about it already, but i'm in the middle of a psychotic episode where i can't feel a lot of pleasure to begin with + most things i do experience ending up solidly in the "very bad" category, so as you can imagine, i really didn't want to mislead and check that i was actually in objective reality.

as it is, this is also when a lot more screenshots started to be posted in the monster prom tag, and that helped me bridge the gap back into returning to the games themselves and feel like i was making a more accurate judgement. if you're one of those people who have been posting screenshots, i sincerely thank you, and i appreciated seeing you in the tag greatly.

for those not in the know — i've been in the monster prom fandom since it first released, prior to even the first additional ending to be added (the "Punch the sun" ending, and i recall the minor fandom drama that happened at that time due to it). my impression of monster prom is very much influenced by this, as what got me into the first game was the fact that the characters genuinely seemed to care for each other and were friends with each other (not merely tolerating each other's presences nor dressing it up, they sincerely thought of each other as friends and were open about that fact), on top of the wide variety of small details and statements that, if taken at face value, could create compounding complexity in the lives of each and every character and had wider implications for their lives.

no, they were not necessarily explored nor even necessarily "real", with so many conflicting events and statements, but i liked this too, because it meant a wider flexibility in what you could imagine, helping to create a more tailored experience for everyone who thought about these characters. this was what i liked about the early fandom too. what was baseline "canon" was so vague and minimal that you could have wildly different interpretations of the same characters' histories and relationships with each other. you would have radically different perspectives on what the world itself looked like, what it was like, that there wasn't really any wrong answers so long as their personalities remained the same. this is where you got the old headcanon of polly and liam being childhood friends who knew each other as humans, or that the world of monster prom was post-apocalypse where humanity itself had gone extinct or only existed in tiny pockets, or my personal headcanon that both monster and human society existed right next to each other and had minimal crossover for petty cultural reasons. this was also prior zoe-as-ro, and there were wildly different interpretations of zoe's personality, with most going for a far more disquieting creepy-cute than the deep nerd we got.

this is why you get stuff like the timeloop theory, where everyone is repeating the same weeks leading up to prom over and over, and are perhaps vaguely aware of it but broadly unconcerned. this is also why it felt like the joke that, the characters were still in high school but were all fully legal adults with most in their 20's, best landed, because it was absurd and strange and didn't quite make sense, but the world itself was inherently absurd and semi-malleable to begin with. realistically, i felt like everyone understood it was making fun of the trope of having adults play teenagers in american sitcoms and wildly casting outside the age range, but for more in-universe explanations it wasn't any different from the way that you would have a large, dramatic ending in which everything changed, but then you'd restart and everyone would be right back at the beginning with nothing different, or even having conflicting events in the same run. it was a dream-logic that fit with the tropes and, thus, diagetically made sense.

to be clear, i don't mind canon having a set, well, canon on which it refers back to itself. i don't mind expanding that or including more things which are set in stone. but there was a perceivable shift in how the games handled this over time, becoming a lot more... bitter, it felt, towards all of these different branching ideas and concepts that, yeah, the people making them knew wouldn't necessarily be "canon" because "canon" already liked to contradict itself so much. most people weren't even sold on any one idea, and there was a much greater sense of enjoying and appreciating all the varying ideas people would come up with even if you personally didn't share them. making the characters be out of character was the real crime, because then it didn't diagetically make sense in the same way, didn't wholly fit.

(again, this is not to say fanon didn't happen and characters weren't smoothed down into a simplified personality that fit these varying fan-interpretations instead of the game itself. certainly damien love/lust was just as bad as it had ever been, and everyone loved to mangle his character into a more stereotypical "bad boy with a heart of hold" all the time. but it certainly felt less set-in-stone about it than it does now, with any deviation from the norm being considered strange and odd and even broadly shunned from the wider fandom.)

all of this is setup for establishing what the writing, lore, and characters felt like in the earlier days. the characters were the strongest part, with their relationships to each other being equally as important. the lore played it fast and loose and was far less interested in setting anything in concrete because that wasn't the important part. the lore wasn't the important part, which was what made it all the more intoxicating to think about, all the more fun to play with.

montrip is easily the biggest offender when it comes to setting everything in all-or-nothing terms and demanding absolutism from the world. broadly i blame the hitchhiker conversations for the worst of it, but i think ultimately the way they handled the entire premise of the game is where this problem stems from. it's not really an exploration in the same sense that you might explore the first game, discovering different perspectives and different people with different relationships to each other. it's an exploration in the sense of a sequel that over-explains the monster, that takes the most boring option out of all those that were possible and floating around and settles on something that was blatant, obvious, typically rejected not because of how novel it is but how trite and par for the course it is in the rest of the genre.

yeah, okay. humans know nothing about monsters and there's a "monster dimension" that exists separately from the human dimension. there's no crossover between the two of them. of course there's a big grand-scale fight between the eldritch powers that zoe used to be a part of, from which not only are slayers the main organization against them, but also the merkingdom has some horse in this race too. it's an urge to make things so universal in explaining them, in revealing connecting threads which unite everything that's ever happened in here, that makes the worldbuilding and lore immediately much more boring than it ever was before.

and it didn't have to be this way! nothing in the first game contradicts any of this too explicitly (see the above, the first game loves to contradict itself), and i would even be happy if this was basically canon but never stated or confirmed to be the big overarching everything going on underneath it all. i believe you should probably know these things about any world that you create and have them in the back of your mind. the difference is that you can know these things and keep them in mind, even focusing on things where its very relevant, and still not reveal them. this is why you have lore bibles, after all. every horror writer knows exactly how their monster works and the full underlying reason for everything that happens, but that doesn't mean the audience will see it or possess this same information too, and leaving it intentionally obscure will make far better stories.

which, this is bad enough, but it wouldn't be the breaking point for me if this was all there was.

but the worst thing of all has to be the slow decay of the very same characters that sold me on this world, this lore, this game in the first place. monster prom is nothing without the characters in it. it's a dating sim, it has nothing but characters to get you to play, and liking these characters are the entire reason anyone would pick up monster prom in the first place.

and the first game pulls this off extremely well. it's all in the tagline: be your worst self. they are, indeed, all terrible people. yes, even that character that you just thought of right now. they all have points in the game where they commit atrocities, where they kill or hurt people, where they do inexcusable things that could not be ignored in a more serious setting.

but that's the point. i think there's something very powerful in creating a character who not only do you love and love their personality and the way they interact with the world, but who also are inapologetically terrible, and to have the humor and the charisma be so good that you don't get bogged down in the "this is awful". likewise, it never feels the urge to really go out of its way to justify what's going on. this is not to say theres no discussion of if someone "deserved it", but usually there's still the sense that the joke is on them, that this is still an extreme reaction specifically for comedy and not necessarily something that can be justified. you can have damien set leonard on fire and have it feel earned, without prompting the needed reaction of what it's actually like to watch someone burn to death.

this is what sets the prank masterz ending apart from the rest of the game, and really establishes it as the first real "bad ending". because nothing that you do or happens in the prank masterz ending is any different from anything else that happens in any other run. you summon evil beings from other dimensions as a throwaway gag on how visiting one location raises your stats. you kill other people and damn them to terrible fates. you watch as body horror happens. the only difference is that, in the prank masterz ending, the laugh track doesn't play.

the rest of the game and the writing echoes this philosophy, this careful interplay of tropes that keeps everything tongue in cheek and yet sincere enough to make sure emotional beats still land when they're needed. the characters feel true to themselves and their own emotions, even when the world is extreme and excessive, when everything else runs on comedy logic.

this is also what i noticed failing first as time went on.

like i said, fanon has always existed and there's always been very specific ideas as to what characters are like in the same way fanon always flattens down characters into the same tropes over and over. scott is stupid and innocent and doesn't know what sex is. damien is violent and hot and too cool for anyone else. miranda is the idiot girl character. repeat over and over and over until you get sick of it.

but it's been an issue as time has crept on that canon has started to approach fanon and began to merge with it. now, scott is so innocent that he can't even curse. polly starts being mean to her friends and saying things that would be very hurtful to hear. the merkingdom isn't really super evil and fucked up, it's just miranda that's like that. they become simpler, easier to digest, streamlined for social media posts and mass-sharing. they become less and less subversions of existing tropes and moreso just another example of them, something else to add to the collection, not their own individual stories.

even further from this, what more complex traits they had are now stated and not shown. polly is stated to be smart and clever in a way that her party girl persona doesn't imply and to be sincerely rather down to earth with the people she cares about, but we seldom ever see this anymore unless its the game specifically trying to make a point about it, in which case it won't let her do anything that implies cleverness and moreso will just outline it in the narration. vera is stated to care for people in a very genuine and heartfelt way, but seldom will get a chance to do so, and every opportunity for her to do so to their faces is missed while she will just outright state it later. it does not feel consistent, it does not feel like any of these are intended reads of their actions. it feels like the devs have something they want to do but no idea on how to actually do so. and forget it if you want these traits to manifest in small ways that show up in unrelated moments and scenes.

the dialogue becomes harder and harder to tell between each speaker, if you are just looking at what's said and not at the pictures attached to it. the characters' distinct voices have been eroded away, so that they speak more and more like each other, relaying the same terms and ideas in the same words. perspective becomes a suggestion, instead of a must.

this is something that started back in monster camp too, as all of the endings in that game felt ultimately the same as every other ending. it's very hard to place or define the full reason why, why there feels like there's no emotional stakes nor investment, why everything feels moreso like selecting different coats of paint and trying to find all the different ending pictures rather than being interested in exploring the characters as characters.

stranger yet, the series that started with the tagline of "be your worst self" has experienced a kind of... softening, for lack of a better word? what i mentioned about being able to handle the balance between terrible people who do terrible things and the light tone of the game starts to change, as abruptly the same characters who were down with violent murder in the first game start to lose their nerve, acting more and more on more typical morality. it's one of those things that feels like it's starting to damage the tone, as abruptly it's not as absurd as it used to be, demands less suspension of disbelief which could buffer and support the rest of the setting on it. there's even a part in one of the endings in montrip which involves current-polly and current-scott looking back on their monprom selves and reacting in horror at how violent and careless their pranks are, in a way that fundamentally felt like it was undercutting and disparaging all the things that felt fun and made monprom what it was.

which is odd, really, because more and more i feel like the characters in these games like each other less and less. the friendships and genuine enjoyment of each others company that brought me to this game in the first place has gone. now they don't mention each other as much, don't care for each other's feelings and reactions as much, aren't as willing to support each other. they are more and more found on their own, relied on their own, seem to seek out contact and interaction with their own friends less and less. it feels like they're all separating out into their own worlds, but also feels like they wouldn't willingly want to interact with each other if they weren't already forced together by some other outside contrivance.

if anything, i'd compare it to every other dating sim out there, where you, the player, are the most important person in these characters' lives, and they only feel ambivalent or antagonistic towards every other character. which, again, is not why i picked up monster prom or why i liked it so much in the first place.

and it's because of this that it feels like the current state of the series has to focus on its increasingly weak worldbuilding and lore, trying to form a more serious foundation without character relationships being so tightly bound together, without the characters themselves being more developed and rich, without an aspect of absurd humor to rely on.

more and more i've noticed monprom has to rely on referencing other series to make itself funny and create humor, which, again, it's always done. it was just easier to ignore back then, if you didn't know what was being referenced, because there was always more going on in the exact same scene to bolster it and give context clues as to the setup and punchline at play. it feels like the current games are much more dependent on you knowing pop culture references in order to have any fun with it, and i'm someone who, again, is very picky in what i like or what i'll seek out. i'm not interested in a stream of references about other things that i would much rather be doing than playing through a game that feels like it hates that i like it at all, when i could, again, just be engaging with the thing that takes itself seriously and knows what it wants.

[tenowls]

if you get really good... i promise you... somebody even better will come and find you.

redraw of some of THE panels of all time

[valaruakars]

We Have Chemistry (Together)

A bonus chapter/prequel oneshot for Let's Get Physical

Gen || Jayce & Viktor || 3.7k || Modern/College AU || Ao3 Link Tags: Baby frat boy Jayce, developing friendships, misunderstandings, emotional hurt/comfort (shitty), hazing, underage drinking (for us USAmericans), alternating POV, no Beef!Reader today sorry babes

Help is high on the list of what people typically want from Viktor. Usually in class. Sometimes in the elevator beforehand or in the hallway after, or following a light tap on the shoulder in the library. All academic help, strictly speaking. But this wasn't about their lab report.

Sweaty palms, shaky hands—he’s got one shot at this. One phone call. He knows the landline and his mom’s cell by heart, but he can’t call her. Can’t let her see him like this. Can’t think of who the hell else to call—who even memorizes phone numbers anymore?—so maybe he’d better get comfortable with sleeping upright and a permanent wedgie. There are worse things, like the disappointed purse of her lips; the way she sighs and bows her head and makes him wonder if it’s his fault her hair’s already shot through with gray.

Except.

Area code, same as the rest. Dorm number. Cait’s birthday.

He types it out. It looks as familiar on the screen now as the first time he saw that string of numbers, when the coincidences jumped out at him as the patterns in numbers always do. Enough to make an impression, apparently. Just like the person it belongs to.

Who, in all likelihood, won’t be thrilled about this.

But he decides then and there that he’s just desperate enough for normal underwear and his too-firm twin XL bed—and, fuck, there’s a quiz in materials performance first thing in the morning so he really needs the sleep—to hit call.

It rings three times. He feels a hot surge of nausea two in, the rising urge to puke into his purple foam hat. It’s bitter in his throat like those IPAs he didn’t want to drink in the first place, but he’s never been great with peer pressure.

And on the fourth, above the rustling:

“Hello?”

He sounds annoyed.

He usually sounds annoyed, but sometimes Jayce wonders if it’s all in his head, because Viktor’s voice softens when he explains the equations to the girl that sits next to him and snaps her gum too loud and misses every other class. He’s heard it gently ask the professor for a letter of recommendation in the hall after lecture, and lilt into the phone—in what? Russian?—on the bench outside before it. It’s only when Viktor’s talking to him, which is already rare, does it get quick and terse.

But maybe he hears it wrong half the time because there’s part of him that’s been intimidated since day one. That first day of class, when he’d taken the last seat at the front and stuck his hand out to the guy beside him. He was nervous. It felt like the right thing to do. But those egg-yolk eyes had ticked curtly from Jayce’s hand to the professor he’d just introduced himself to, with a detour to his crooked pink bow tie. Maybe it was a little much with the blazer and ironed slacks in sweltering August. And in hindsight, yeah, maybe shaking the professor’s hand and explaining how this class fit into his three year plan was definitely too much, but Jesus fucking Christ *was it also too much to just come out and call him egotistical *for it.

Without even shaking his hand! Who does that?

Really, he’s just trying to make this feel like a good idea. It’s not.

It’s also too late to back out. “Hey—Hi, yeah, it’s Jayce… Your lab partner. From chemistry?” He’s already started running his mouth.

“Ah. I realize.”

He wrings the hat in his lap. The iron-on stars are starting to peel off. Glitter flakes cling in the creases of his wet palms. It’s delusional, isn’t it, to imagine that Viktor doesn’t hate him.

Only with a deep breath can he get himself to say, “I know it’s late…”

“It is.”

“But I really need your help.”

—

Help is high on the list of what people typically want from Viktor.

It’s what he’s good for—all those questions along the lines of, ‘Did you do the homework?’ which means, ‘Can I copy it?’ (No.) Or, ‘Do you know what he’s talking about?’ which means, ‘Can you explain it like I’m five?’ (Yes, but try to keep up.) *Sometimes it’s, *‘Have you taken any of Heimer’s classes?’ which either means, ‘Can you give me the study guides?’ (There aren’t any.) or ‘Can you tutor me, but we somehow hook up and never speak of it again?’ (Depends.)

That’s usually in class. Sometimes in the elevator beforehand, or in the hallway after, or following a light tap on the shoulder in the library. All academic help, strictly speaking.

But this wasn’t about their lab report.

If anything, it should’ve been about their lab report. Because what else could Jayce Talis—who moved seats after the first day of class and made a face like a whipped animal when they were partnered for lab work last week, who pledged a fraternity (abhorrent) and has his pick of pretty friends—possibly want from him?

It feels as though he blinks and thirty five minutes of his life have just dissolved* since he hung up the call, so lost in theoreticals of *why *and *me that curiosity itself must’ve found his pants and his wallet and led him here by the hand. Rumpled, but fully clothed. This is novel and extremely necessary considering he’s standing in a squat, brutalist building at the front desk of campus security.

All because Jayce asked, ‘Can you come pick me up?’

And Viktor simply agreed.

There’s no bail, no paperwork, no real formality here. The only requirement to walk Jayce out is to be over the age of eighteen, and he clears that easily enough. The state ID he hands though the sliding glass window of reception says as much, but he still has to remind the campus cop who flips it over three times like there’s something confusing about it that it’s just as legitimate as a driver’s license, thank you.

“Time to go, Talis,” the man bellows, snapping Viktor’s ID onto the counter with thick fingers and no further acknowledgement. As he pockets it, a metal chair scrapes across the linoleum somewhere out of frame, behind a door with a decades old pin-punch lock.

“You’re a lucky one, kid,” the officer chuckles, deep and phlegmy with the sound of black lung. “If I hadn’t laughed so hard you’d be at county intake right now.”

“Do I… Um, do I need to sign something?” Jayce asks. His voice is world-weary more than ass-kissing.

“You want this on record?”

“No, sir.”

“Then there’s the exit.”

By that point, Viktor’s already tapping his way to it. Jayce will follow, and with his long legged stride, he will catch up easily. Probably to thank him with that performative politeness that drives him to say ma’am or sir *or to *shake the hands of strangers, and then they’ll go their separate ways after has Viktor served his purpose. Like whatever this was never happened.

Behind him, a hydraulic arm shrieks, the intake door claps shut, and Jayce whispers an apology to no one for rattling the lobby’s musty silence as Viktor pushes outside. The tepid night air rushing against his face, and because he’s not rude, he holds the door open for Jayce.

But Viktor gets stuck. Or maybe stunned. Perhaps it’s flummoxed, or even transfixed. There’s no one perfect word to describe why he’s stopped, blocking the door and staring, which is rude, but happens to him with enough regularity that he’s owed a pass or five, and he’s using one now.

He blinks.

Blinks again.

Once more, and yes, Jayce is still standing in the doorway clutching a cheap wizard hat in his hand and a child sized blanket around his body. It strains around the bulk of his arms, stretching, cracking the gold vinyl stars. It matches the purple beneath his eyes, complements the tawny red his face is turning, and does not, in fact, reach low enough to cover his too small speedo.

Or the knee high boots.

A cape, Viktor realizes. Not that he’s just eyed Jayce from top to bottom with enough scrutiny to notice that he’s unnaturally hairless and his thighs are ribbed with stretch marks, or that his own face is set in a hard frown like this is all somehow unsavory. (It’s… not. Definitely not.) No, Viktor simply notices that the starry patterned blanket has a collar, which makes it a cape.

And despite this revelation, the fact that Jayce is mostly naked remains unchanged.

‘Why’ is on the tip of his tongue. It usually is; its natural habitat is in his mouth. But Jayce’s eyes flit from Viktor’s down to his pointy toed boots, then back up again, and he preemptively explains, bitterly, “Nothing in the lost and found fit.” Which actually explains nothing.

Viktor nods as though he understands (he doesn’t), and forces himself to just start walking.

Jayce tails him down the sidewalk in uncomfortable silence. It’s when they pass the parking lot that Jayce picks up the pace, falling into stride side by side. The pieces fall into place too—late night, terrible costume, and now, the acerbic smell of stale beer wafting off him. Frat party.

It’s worse on Jayce’s breath. “So…” A tight, tried sort of impatience undercuts his attempt to sound casual. It’s familiar. Understandable, too, after sitting through a scared straight experience on a weeknight. “Where’d you park?” Jayce asks.

Lack of a car notwithstanding, the implication he’d ever be swindled out of eight hundred dollars a semester to park on campus is a joke. Not a laughable one. “I took the bus,” he flatly answers.

“Oh.”

For a moment, Viktor can ignore the palpable disappointment—that he is disappointing. He can even empathize with the situation. Riding public transit dressed like that isn’t exactly ideal. But then Jayce asks, “They run this late?”

“The city ones do.”

And then Jayce says, “It’s just… I don’t have any money.”

“They’re free to students.”

And then Jayce mutters, “Uh, cool. Good to know,” because he doesn’t have to know, has never had to know. And suddenly Viktor doesn’t feel so bad for him anymore, that he gets to learn tonight that need-based scholarships don’t buy cars or taxis, and that sometimes it’s slightly inconvenient when you fuck up. Perhaps that should be more obvious to someone who just lucked out with a slap on the wrist for flagrant underage drinking.

Except they stop and Jayce takes one look at the bus stop bench; notices—what is hopefully just—dried, congealed soda spilled across one side. He asks, “Do you want to sit?” because he’s ignorant, yes, but not the worst to ever live.

Viktor says, “No, thank you,” knowing what Jayce doesn’t: the bus schedule, and that up and down in short order won’t feel particularly good.

When it grinds to a halt at the curb two minutes later, Jayce pulls his student ID out of his boot and soldiers onboard with his head down. He collapses full bodied onto the seats running parallel down the center aisle the same way he'd collapsed on the bench outside: hunched over with his face in his hands. Luckily, people are sparse at this hour, and there is nobody sitting across from them. Unluckily, someone in the back laughs openly.

With so much space, Viktor leaves an open seat between them. It feels right. But in the awful fluorescence before the lights wink out, Jayce’s skin looks waxy and his shoulders rise and fall with the deep, intentional breaths, and Viktor is struck by how alone he is—how strange it is that he’s alone in this. Where are the drunk friends that should’ve been picked up with him, or the cavalry that should’ve pulled up in a dirty Jeep with Greek letters on the bumper to save him?

He sits up as the dark bus drives on, soberly tucking his cape and forearms over his stomach, and Viktor snatches his eyes away. It doesn’t add up—not really. Jayce* does not particularly like him*, and Jayce has other friends.

He should probably ask which dorm is Jayce’s or if he knows what stop to get off at, but he knows the right question now. “May I ask—?” Viktor tries.

Only to be shot down with a clipped, “No,” which is strange to be on the other side of, but he’ll learn nothing from it.

Viktor nods and sits back quietly, the plexiglass window cool against his skull. The vibrations ghost shifting patterns behind his eyes. The silence is filled with the rumble of the engine accelerating, and the time with drafting a polite, impersonal email in his head to request they not be partnered together in the future.

At the next stop, two people get off, and when the bus drives on the silence is different. It lacks the subtle undertone of whispers and snickering, of other passengers entirely. Viktor opens his eyes to find there’s no one else left but the driver with her headphones in.

“Okay, fine,” Jayce suddenly sighs, like he’s been holding his breath the whole time. “Ask.”

They don’t look at each other. Viktor watches the traffic light ahead tick to green out of the corner of his eye. “Why did you call me?”

Jayce leans back and groans, pained, into his hands. “No, about the outfit. You’re supposed to ask about the outfit, or the night, or how I got caught.” He pulls the tiny cape tightly around himself again. It doesn’t contain how badly he smells of pore-distilled alcohol and nervous sweat. “Any of those.”

He considers, briefly. “Explain the night, then.”

“I went to this pledge party…”

“On a Wednesday?” admonishes Viktor, who is known to stay out at the library until they banish him at close and sleeps the minimal amount to function most days of the week; who smokes and drinks and fucks enough for at least two frat boys, just in a wholly different context. Who is, sometimes, kind of a hypocrite.

“It’s Thursday now,” Jayce corrects as if it matters, stalling for seconds. “It was mandatory, okay?” He’s embarrassed, shrinking in his seat. “They had us drink, then confiscated our phones and gave us these costumes. I was supposed to do magic—” which explains the conical wizard hat, ”—but I wasn’t doing a good enough job, so I had to go out onto campus on a special errand,” he accentuates with limp, one handed air quotes, “to, uh, get something.”

“Is that not considered, eh…?” Viktor forgets the word. It doesn’t have much of a place in his vocabulary; was never really relevant during freshman year orientation.

“Yeah, it’s hazing, but it’s not a big deal,” Jayce snaps, filling it in defensively. He deflates just as quickly, resigning to his lot. “It’s just something that happens.”

But Viktor shrugs, “I see no benefit to the situation.” That’s putting it mildly. He’d rather amputate his own leg than be humiliated and told what to do. “Quit.”

This is, apparently, an offensive suggestion. “It’s—No, it’s about the connections.” Jayce is resolute. “Networking. Knowing the right people who can probably get me in the door at the places I want to be one day.”

One word stands out: “Probably?”

“It’s not exactly guaranteed, but if it means the odds are better…”Jayce is less resolute. Like he’s trying to convince himself, confidence in his own choices waxing and waning fretfully.

“And,” asks Viktor, “you think this is worth it?”

“I don’t know,” Jayce whispers in a small, scratchy, tired voice. He knows what this means. The heinous costume; risking his academic career; having to embarrass himself in front of a classmate he hardly knows or cares about. “I just… I thought it would make it easier to make friends, but I don’t want the whole *parties and drinking and girls and ‘haha, isn’t it funny I failed that test?’ *experience.” For a moment he looks like he wants to put his face into the hat in his lap and scream. Instead, he pinches his eyes shut. “They pushed me harder than anyone else tonight, because they know I don’t belong. My grades just bring up their stupid academic average.”

Viktor doesn’t know what to say. It’s not uncommon, this helpless sensation of floundering when confided in, when faced with the enormity of things outside his ability to change or control. He didn’t know what to say when the girl he was tutoring last year told him she lost her scholarship, or when he caught Heimerdinger’s last TA sitting shell shocked on the bathroom floor after finding out their partner cheated. He didn’t know what to say when his mother told him babička wanted to go home home to die (she’s fine, just dramatic and bitter about getting old), or when she saw him changing his shirt while they were packing up the apartment and cried for how she failed him (she didn’t).

He does know that saying I’m sorry never feels right. That it’s empty, and nobody really feels better hearing it. But Jayce is smart and attractive and also, perhaps, just dramatic too. He belongs somewhere, even if he hasn’t found that place yet. “How valuable could these, eh, connections with stupid people be, hm?”

“I mean,” Jayce mutters, “it’s not that they’re stupid—”

“Don’t argue. I’m aware of nepotism and how it functions,” Viktor huffs, tempered by Jayce’s soft laugh of the same quality. “There are always other avenues to get what or where you want. Find them. Your time is better spent than,” he gestures broadly, “on this.”

“Yeah…” Jayce nods. It’s a kinder resignation this time. The troubled creases in his face start to ease away. “Okay.”

Cars pass. Silence settles, strange in that it’s easy. Or, it starts to. But Jayce takes a breath. Hesitates. Takes another one that turns into, “There was no one I could call.” He crosses his legs. Uncrosses them again. Can’t get comfortable with himself or the admission:* *“Not because they took my phone, there just isn’t anyone else.”

“Your friends?”

“Still in high school, and she’s not even old enough to drive yet.” He finds himself on the receiving end of a curious stare, and gets the why of it wrong. “It’s not like that, I swear,” he cringes. “She’s a lesbian, Viktor.” Which is all fine and good, but has nothing to do with why Jayce is speaking in singular. He asked about the plural.

“Your roommate?” he tries.

“Dropped out two weeks ago, and please don’t suggest my mom next.” Jayce rolls his eyes, and they don’t find their way back. He stares off, down at the floor, canting his head away. There’s glitter in his hair. “Trust me on this. It’s not like I wanted someone who hates me but has an oddly memorable phone number to be my one phone call tonight.”

He would’ve been allowed multiple phone calls is the first thing that Viktor thinks. The second: “I don’t dislike you.”

Another eye roll. “You gave me a look.”

“I look at plenty of people,” Viktor hand waves.

“No, a look,” he insists. “It was this ‘if we were in a Russian prison right now, I would shank you’ kind of look.” Viktor narrows his eyes, so he specifies, “When we got assigned in lab?”

“Why,” Viktor asks slowly, “is the prison Russian in this scenario?”

“Because you’re—”

“No. Do not finish that sentence.” Wildly rude and too common of an assumption, but, “In the spirit of forgiveness, I will let that slide,” he holds up a slender finger, “once.” Jayce mouths sorry as Viktor considers the sort of look his face is being accused of. “I…” But he only remembers reading the clear disappointment on Jayce’s. “Was probably thinking about something at the time,” Viktor shrugs.

“How much you wish I’d switch majors?”

“Mm, no. It was the end of class, so probably how much homework I could accomplish before work study, or how late to my next class I could reasonably be if I showed up with coffee from the dining hall.”

“Yeah, but…” He pivots in his seat. His thighs squeak on the plastic. “But you still called me egotistical on the first day of class!”

Yes, when Jayce made a painful show of ingratiating himself to the professor before class. Jayce throws that in his face like some sort of gotcha; in reality, it ranks one of his top ten social failures. “It was a question.” He was simply asking if, in hindsight, the action could be misconstrued as egotistical. “Not a criticism.”

But Jayce scoffs, “How was I supposed to think that when you wouldn’t even shake my hand?”

“It was stuck.” Viktor lifts up his right hand. Empty, but the cane still comes with it, dangling where it’s looped around his wrist. “You took yours away before I could get it out of the strap.”

“But I didn’t know yet that you—” Jayce scrubs his hand down his face, quiet until he whispers a revelatory, “Fuck.” Then a slightly hysterical, breathy, “Fuck,” and he’s smiling, gap-toothed and too brilliant for the lateness of hour.

“Eh, still a weird thing to do, though,” Viktor shrugs. He’s smiling a little too. It’s a private, wry thing. It’s a start.

And by the time they finish, on the other side of campus, on a sidewalk, at a bus stop much like the one they came from, things are very different.

For instance, Jayce has put the horrible wizard hat on. Ironically, of course.

They meander past the library, its windows tall and dark, cutting across the quad in front of it toward the residence halls. “What was your special errand, anyhow?” Viktor asks. “You never said. I’m curious.”

“Yeah, well, I’m trying to forget the horrors. Y’know, of getting caught trying to break into a building with my entire ass out,” he says sheepishly, catching the hat as it starts to slip. It’s not his entire ass. Only about eighty five percent. “I had to borrow something.”

There’s a word he’s avoiding. “What, exactly, were you trying to steal?”

“Borrow,” Jayce counters. “There’s this paperweight in Heimer’s office. Looks kind of like chalcedony, but it does have these faint striations, so I think it might be agate—

“I’m familiar.”

“Anyways, that. I was supposed to get that. Probably because it was impossible.”

“Mm, no, not impossible,” Viktor hums. “You should’ve called me sooner,” he says, dragging a carabiner from his pocket, stripped of paint and utterly ancient. When he holds it up, the street lights catch on tens of little metal teeth. “I have the key.”

[atsukunaritai]

「つうか、みっちゃんが一番好きだ。」

「俺が死ぬまで一番。」

— Actually, you're number one for me, Micchan.

— You're number one until the day I die.

永遠の昨日　第３・８話　　　　　　　|　　　　　　　Eternal Yesterday ep. 3&8

[rubberduckyrye]

Okay yeah hey kids remember to take your meds every day I'm fucking miserable rn and idk if I can take my meds until 8 hours from now so yeeeey...