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shysneeze · 4 years ago

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Colour Me Surprised | George Weasley x F!Reader

Description : the reader and George are perfect for one another, which complicates things when fates is telling them otherwise

soulmate au in which you only see colour when you meet your soulmate - from this request

Warnings: kinda angsty, arguments (if I’ve missed anything please tell me so I can add it)

Taglist:

general taglist: @accioweaslcy

george taglist: @amourtentiaa , @omghufflepuff , @daisyyy2516 , @i-padfootblack-things , @imtooanonymousforyou

(this is the form for anyone wanting to join :))

“Leave me alone, George!”

The intensity of (Y/N)’s voice sends several younger pupils scattering from the common room before the door has even swung shut behind her and a second voice joins her, just as full of the same sharp anger.

Stumbling in behind her, George reaches for her, fingers curling around her wrist before she can storm up to her dorm. (Y/N) pulls from his grasp with a huffed breath, though his touch has left that warm buzz on her skin as it’s prone to do.

“Please,” He pants, “Let me talk-“

“No, George,” She seethes, “What are you going to say that can justify setting off a portable swamp underneath my date's chair!?”

He grimaces.

“It was only a small one?”

“George!”

Even as the remaining pupils scatter from the common room, no one can blame them. It’s cruel in a way really, that the world should throw together two people so perfect for one another, and allow fate to tell them otherwise.

Although, perhaps the whole theory of soulmates is cruel by itself.

It’s fine when you’re a child, when seeing the world in shades of black and white is normal. When you’re so young, colour is just one of the unsolved mysteries brought by youth, like where the moon goes in the morning or why the clouds seem to be in such a hurry to pass us by.

It’s growing older that brings that itch, that thirst for colour, the desire to know the different shades of the sky and the pigments of petals so warmly spoken of in stories.

Colour comes with soulmates, it’s the rule of life… but life has never been rumoured to be fair.

While a large portion of wizards and witches meet their soulmates when they start Hogwarts, and upon doing so are thrown into a world colour, no longer strangers to the warm oranges of sunshine and the cool greens of the leaves on the trees, many aren’t quite so lucky.

It can take years, lifetimes for the truly unlucky, to meet, the person the universe has tied your soul to, the perfect match, the missing piece of an incomplete heart. It’s what anyone might look at George Weasley and (Y/N) (Y/L/N) and see… a perfect pair.

In fact it was Fred who first believed so. So excited to introduce them back in third year, so convinced by ‘twin’s instinct’ of their destiny for one another that he practically dragged George to her, only to be sorely disappointed when their faces never brightened with the joy of seeing colour for the first time.

It’s left them with only friendship, one strained by the desire for more. Years of getting to know each other, of the quirks and habits so perfect for one another’s, has only added to the frustration of being destined for other people.

“It was an accident!”

He falters under her warning gaze.

“Well, kind of- I was planning to prank him anyway.” He admits, “ I’m very sorry it interfered with your date.”

She wishes he were lying, it might make it easier to be this angry at him for it. Though from years of friendship, of wishing for more, she’s able to pick out every edge to his voice and there's no lift in his tone where there would be with a lie.

“I mean I did help you dodge a bullet.”

Like that, the anger is again justified.

“Oh come on, everyone knows about Liam, (Y/N),” He argues, “He’s a player and you deserve better.”

“That’s my decision to make!”

He falters, nodding reluctantly.

“I know and I’m sorry but-“ He sighs, “He’s not your soulmate.”

Neither are you

It sits there on her tongue like fire, held back as not to burn him, and most likely, herself, with its truth.

“I know that,” (Y/N) spits weakly, her resolve to be angry crumbling with the newly returned pain in her chest, longing she assumes. “That doesn’t mean I can’t date. Who knows when I’ll meet my soulmate? Is it so bad to want to be loved in the meantime?”

You are.

It’s written all over his face and her heart twists with it. Every fibre of her being wants to love him, in fact she’s already sure she does, but to be with him now will only hurt more when, inevitably, he leaves for somebody else, the person who brings colours to his eyes.

“Don’t say it.”

It comes out pleading, her eyes scrunched and lips beginning to wobble in the anticipation of tears. Eyes shut though, she can still hear the way his breath hitches.

“Clearly you already know.”

One last spark of anger ignites in her chest, though as the words tumble out she’s not sure it’s at him as much as it is at fate, whatever cruel, twisted thing put him in her life, taunting her with something that can never be hers.

“I know!” She seethes, eyes opening only to frown, “Everything tells me it’s you. Every bit of me wants it to be you and yet every time i look at you all I see is grey and it hurts!”

When she meets his gaze, her tight knit frown is mimicked with the same frustration as her own.

But his eyes.

His eyes aren’t the same as she’s always seen them, bursting with a colour she doesn’t know, but warm, like the feeling of the sun on her skin on a late summer afternoon and they’re glittered by speckles of something else that she craves the name of.

His hair is bright and vibrant and just a shade darker than the millions of freckles that dot his cheeks, that hide in his dimples and the crease between his brow that is slowly easing in surprise.

“You’re beautiful...”

Something warm floods his pale cheeks and he hears her breath hitch at the sight. She’s not sure how she’s lived her whole life deprived of something as wonderful as this.

“We’re soulmates.”

“Colour me surprised.”

A second passes for him to grow sheepish under her disapproving gaze.

“Too soon?”

“Yep.”

“I knew it,” He says quietly, as if saying then any louder will take away their truth and fling them back into the dull world they were in only moments ago. “I just knew it,”

Yet she can’t find the same joy he has, held back only by the question of why, why now of all times? This isn’t their first meeting, this isn’t how it works.

“I can practically hear your brain working on overdrive.”

“I don’t understand,” She begins to frown again, “I’ve known you for so long- soulmates are supposed to see colour the first time they meet and we- we met years ago.”

“I know.”

“I guess you hear of g-glitches sometimes...” (Y/N) begins to ramble, finger pulling nervously at her sleeves, “It’s rare but-“

“It doesn’t matter,” George blurts softly, warm hand pulling her own from her sleeves and clasping it reassuringly, “We’re soulmates, (Y/N).”

“We are,”

The strange knot that has been tying itself in her chest with worry begins to come loose, eyes finding his again, those little specks of colour swimming in warmth. Then, his hair, his beautiful bright hair.

“Are you going to stop staring at my hair long enough to let me kiss you?”

“I don’t know, George,” Her lips twitched into a teasing smile, “It’s so bright-“

The rest of her sentence lodges itself in her throat with his face suddenly inches from her own. His breath tingles her lips and she feels herself gulping.

“I’m sure I can admire it more later...”

His lips meet hers with that same buzz left by his touch and she finds herself wondering momentarily if it’s a soulmate thing, though kissing him soon replaces all other thoughts.

It’s perfect, and somehow having missed out on this is worse than ever having missed out on colours. In fact, she’s sure she’d sooner give up colour all over again for the promise of getting to kiss him.

As he pulls back though with his cheeks awash with that bright blush, warm where her fingers have lifted to cup his cheeks subconsciously as they kissed, she’s glad she doesn’t have to.

#george weasley x reader #george weasley soulmate au #george weasley imagine #george weasley imagines #george x reader #george imagines #soulmate au #george weasley fluff #george weasley angst

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sketch--booked · 4 years ago

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I wanna complain about how the ninja treated Zane in the first few episodes real quick. Specifically in Home. Since I have some beef with the ninja.

So remember that one time Zane froze the entire monastery without effort? Yeah, that was kinda cool,

Now I begin to get angry, You’ve been warned--

And the ninja, understandably, were upset and I can get that.

But then you see how they all kinda just--- treated him really badly all the time. I get it,, he’s got weird traits and does very “Zane” things (being unfazed to be in the bathroom with somebody, legitimately not understanding comedy and laughing at odd things, at least Nya and Jay weren’t watching a horror or slasher movie, and his famous sitting-in-the-fridge scene) but like--

They really gonna do this??

Laugh at the guy for what he wears and throw around the food he made for them? Even Wu, may I add.

Can I also call attention to Jay, who throws something at Zane.

AND LOOK AT HIM--

That is not a face of comfort? By any means?? Zane shows a very little range of emotion, in the early seasons especially. But when Jay throws his own food at him, he frowns. THAT’S EMOTION,, HE’S NOT HAPPY,,, THIS ISN’T A JOKE NOR IS IT FUNNY TO HIM.

And they just--Don’t even do a double-take.

I’m bewildered at just how horribly they treat him, in this scene specifically. Not one of them, NOT EVEN WU, takes a second to think about how Zane might feel in this moment??? IN FACT, If you listen carefully, you can hear Nya and Jay belittling him.

“He looks so cute in his apron!” and “Look at his face!”

THEY ACKNOWLEDGE THEY’RE BEING CRUEL LIKE WTF THIS MAKES ME SO MAD--I HOPE THEY WENT TO BED STARVING.

So after this god awful display of friendship that makes me want to slap all the other ninja, we get the infamous Falcon scene.

Zane has his general neutral kinda-angy-lookin’ expression. So we can’t really tell what he’s feeling in this moment, but it’s his actions that follow that say everything.

He sees the falcon and is intrigued by it and actually smiles. Which is good! That’s emotion! Well done, Zane, you’re learning!

NOW IT’S THIS BIT---IS WHERE I GET REAL JUST---HHHHHMMM It’s in this moment, I wonder if Zane knows what a toxic friendship isghghgh I jest--

Zane is smiling when he sees the falcon fly off. He likes the bird but he lets it leave.

But then---

Zane takes one brief look back to the sound of his friends and without a second doubt he BOOKS IT--

So from initially seeing this, you get the instant feeling that he would prefer to follow a mysterious bird into possible danger, than go back to his friends who are still laughing in the distance. He obviously was going to return back to them, they tease his lack of returning later in the episode WHICH I HOPE TO GET TO. But that does say enough about his actual feelings towards the rest.

Strange, possibly evil bird---or my friends who’re probably going to continue to laugh at me.

It’s a nobrainer that he’d follow the bird??

He’s not truly upset at them, I don’t even think that Zane has the capability to really be angry ngl,, but he still chose the bird over his “family” and that’s what makes me so angry at the ninja.

And to those who say “He’s not upset at the ninja, he’s just curious and the fact that he essentially ran away from them, doesn’t mean he dislikes them” I say,,, That is fair. And I will, for the sake of not looking like a dick, argue for that.

It’s clear that Zane likes to know stuff. In the beginning, he’s been the smart one. Even in this episode Kai says “We like the guy, he’s really smart..” then complains about him being weird. And later down the line he’s shown an interest in learning, being the only one in season 11 to actually read about the desert of doom and the Mechanic himself saying he’s an inquisitive nindroid in season 12.

So it’s understandable if Zane was simply sating his curiosity. But how can you tell me that the previous event was not a deciding factor in choosing the bird instead..

I would now like to jump forward to when the ninja are at Lloyd’s tree-house (Can I point out that the first place the falcon took zane, was a tree-house. And the last was a tree house?? Anybody? okay just me--).

And when they ask him how he found it; he tells them it’s because it danced. Jay then jokingly asks if it was a coo-coo bird, promoting everyone to--

IF YOU GUESSED “laugh at him” YOU’D BE CORRECT, HOW DID YOU GUESS???

When he does his info dump thing they don’t even bother, they just shrug in unison--which ngl I do find funny ghghgh

Now that’s where you’d think the Zane bullying stops right?

NOPE,, TIME TO BURN DOWN THE MONASTERY (this is a cool shot btw)

This is a good shot too, because it sets up that Zane will be a focus, and you can already assume it’s because, in some essence, this is Zane’s fault.

But then they go all out on him. They straight up tell him this was his fault, that he shouldn’t have followed the bird, he shouldn’t have been curious or try to help, that everything they had here is gone, and yell at him to his face “A teaching moment? What’s wrong with you? Don’t you get it? Everything is gone!” and it’s because of him.

In this moment they are taking out every frustration they had with him. They’re taking out every moment he’s gone into his own world and making their lives harder and that their home is gone because of him.

This is one of the very first, and very few times all the ninja have pitted against just one of their team. And it hurts. Because Zane’s reaction to this, his response to being treated horribly, having his food thrown at him like he didn’t spend likely hours making and planing it, like he doesn’t do the chores they probably wont do (taking out the rubbish earlier in the episode), is to go back to them like he wasn’t hurt by this at all.

And y’know what could’ve solved this entire thing? What could’ve prevented the exclusion and the explosion that is their friendship. Communication. On both sides, neither of them communicated with each other. The ninja didn’t openly express their feelings towards Zane TO Zane, only Wu and probably Nya. And Zane never expressed anything, ever, like--literally nothing. His moment of most emotion is in episode 7 dammit.

And I just--This is an issue that’s followed through even to the new seasons. Honest to god some of the only times I can recall him actually expressing how he feels about something, is with Pixal, and when Kai persuades him to break his morals and cheat in the slug race. God please help me find more examples because I cannot remember anything else (I’m ignoring Decoded for the time being since the last episode of that was almost entirely “Zane therapy time”)

Imma end it here because my rant juices have stopped flowing and I haven’t slept in many many long hours and I really would like to collapse right about now.

So i’m not saying Zane has it worst, he probably doesn’t,, but what I’m saying is that Zane had a tough time in the beginning especially. After Kai became properly a part of the group, it was Zane that they outcasted. And because they wouldn’t actually talk to him about what they all thought. They didn’t take the time to understand him and only realized they missed him and how badly they’d been treating him when he was gone.

In the start, they were bad friends, they were horrible in fact. Zane tried, or didn’t. Where he didn’t understand people or social cues, he understood being kind and doing the right thing.

The ninja did however work from this. As of this episode, they tone down the mistreatment and make a bigger effort to get the guy. And it’s all explained and finished in episode 7.

Overall, I really like this episode! I think the characters were great! I think the humor was great! I think the progression was great! I dunno why some o’ yall think I don’t like something because I hate it. I can hate-love something, and you’ll find there are a lot of things I hate-love in ninjago.

#this got real long real fast--#ngl this was just going to be me remembering the icy training area #but then i got distracted by how they treated him #and then it turned into a rant #probably a stupid--likely biased--rant but whatever-I haven't slept well in days i'm tired dammit #ninjago zane #ninjago #sketch rants about something #that's what i'm calling it now #can you see now why zane is my favorite? i like unpicking his character #he's fun

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awoogayanderes · 3 years ago

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CHAPTER ONE - NEW PARTNER

➪ word count: 1,216 words

➪ summary: detective zeke banks and you, detective Y/N L/N have always been a powerful duo. after a gone wrong mission with zeke, the chief decided that it’s time for you and zeke to act like team players and add one more detective to your team.

➪ other notes: this fan fiction will be told from your POV (unless stated otherwise)

"Are you sure you don't need me to help you, Zeke," I asked Zeke again. "Nah Y/N, just stay here, we can handle it on our own," he replied exiting the office with me following him. "You better not mess this up Zeke, you know how angry the boss can be," I softly chuckled. "Don't tell her Y/N, we'll be heroes with your brains and my plan," he said getting into his car.

He lowered the window to talk to me a bit more. I slightly crouched to be face to face with him, slinging my arms over the lowered window. "Are we still hanging out with Boz tomorrow," I asked with a playful smile. "Duh Y/N," he responded with a sarcastic tone. "Did he have a day off today, I haven't seen him all day," I tilted my head. "Most likely, he never misses work," Zeke rubbed his eyebrows. I made an 'mhm' noise before backing off the car.

I went back into the station and settled down. Later I finished all of my paperwork so I decided to go out and get coffee. Instead of taking my car, I decided to walk. I didn't know when Zeke was coming back so I decided to just drink my coffee in the cafe. Even though I wanted to be a detective my whole life, I didn't realize how hard and tiring it would be.

But people need their justice. Whether it be domestic abuse or murder. Then again, my brother is the one who encouraged me to do this job. Ah yes, he always wanted me to do the same thing as him. Just as I was about to exit the cafe I saw a ton of cop cars dash down the streets. Oh crap. What happened this time? I tried my best to get to the station as fast as I could. I immediately started to get worried for Zeke.

Did something happen to him? Oh god, please don't let that possibility happen. As I finally arrived, I rushed in and saw Zeke in Angie's office. The words were muffled but they were screaming at each other. As I got closer to Angie's office, she saw me. She then pointed at her door as a way to tell me to come in. I stepped into the office. "Y/N, why the hell didn't you tell me about this operation?!" She yelled at me.

"Well you wouldn't have allowed it in the first place," I said trying to stand my ground. "Couldn't you at least had someone help you," she asked with a softer tone. "Oh yeah, because everybody wants to work with us," I said pointing to the nosy detectives outside the window in her office.

As I said that I flipped them off. "She has a point Cap, there's no one in this force we can fu**ing trust," Zeke backed me up. Zeke and Angie continued arguing, but after a while, I stopped paying attention. That is until she said something that made my eyes widen. "You two are now going to be team players, I'm assigning you to a new partner," "What?!" Zeke and I exclaimed. I groaned in frustration. "Jennie send Schenk in," Angie called out.

"Do I look like a fu**ing Jamaican nanny," Zeke asked while pacing. "Do I smell like jerk sauce and baby wipes, no!" Zeke exclaimed. I would've laughed at the comment if we weren't in this situation. "We're not going to babysit some fu**ing rook," He continued to argue. "Yes you are," Angie replied. "Just because your dad was Chief fu**ing Marcus Banks doesn't mean you get out of this s*it," she pointed to Zeke.

"And just because your brother was the best detective in this goddamn city doesn't mean you get an excuse," she faced me. Of course, she brought up my brother. "Stop making this out of our family okay," I replied. They continued to argue and I started to pay attention to something else. Though some words that I heard were 'dirty cop,' '12 years ago,' and 'shut up.' Just as I was about to step in, somebody knocked and entered the office.

Was he the newbie? I looked at Zeke with a face of frustration and he returned the look. "You wanted to see me, Captain," the guy said. "Yeah come in," Angie replied as the guy closed the door. "Zeke, Y/N, I want you to meet Detective in training, William Schenk, he was the top of his academy so don't screw this up," she sighed. "Zeke and Y/N are going to break you in, show you the ropes," Angie continued as Zeke gave Schenk wide eyes of frustration.

"Detective Banks, detective L/N, it's good to-," the guy said. Before he could continue the sentence I scoffed and pushed past him. Zeke followed behind me. as I was about to sit at my desk I saw a dead rat in a trap on Zeke's desk. I looked at it with disgust before Zeke shoved it off into his trashcan along with the mug he used to do so. "So uh, how do you both take coffee in the morning," Schenk asked awkwardly. "Alone," Zeke and I replied.

The guy quietly said "Okay," When we were all sitting down at our desks, I saw Schenk looking at me. "What," I asked annoyed. "No nothing, just thinking," he responded. "Yeah well try thinking without looking at me," I said annoyed. "Hey I know, I wouldn't want to be stuck with some random kid either," Schenk said. I frowned, "I'm most likely younger than you,"

Zeke dryly laughed at my joke before talking to Schenk, "You don't want to be our partner," I nodded. "You don't know that," Schenk said smiling softly. "Your dad is the reason for all of this, he's why I wanted to do this in the first place," he said while pointing at the picture behind me. "And I'm not him, prepare to be underwhelmed," Zeke said.

Schenk turned to face me, "Your brother was also a very important detective wasn't he?" He questioned. I hesitantly nodded before returning to my computer. "Don't tell me he's also your inspiration," I sighed. "No not really, he's just a great person to admire," he said. "Banks, Schenk, and L/N, some homeless guy got hit by the 3 train, you're up," Angie said to us.

Zeke looked at us with a smirk. I smiled as well, content that we had a case to investigate. We started heading towards Zeke's car. "This is you," Schenk said. Zeke just looked at him with an expression that read 'duh.' I got in the backseat wanting to be at least somewhat polite. "Beats the squad car," he wasn't wrong. Maybe this guy isn't so bad after all.

#william schenk #spiral: from the book of saw #william schenk x reader #spiral 2021 #sincerely terra #written by terra

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amazingphanisnotonfire-imagines · 4 years ago

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Riverdale//what are friends for?

Request: Riverdale imagine the reader has an older brother who is a northsider to his core and wants his sister to date his friend but she knows his true colors and it won't do well and the reader hates her older brother and the core 4 watch what happens and stuff and the reader tells them about the hardships at home and w/ her brother who she's afraid of.

hey! so trigger warning: men being verbally abusive and just plain rude. please don’t read if this will upset or trigger you. the last thing i want for you is to be sad. other than that, i really hope you like this!

You feel like you can finally breathe again when the bell rings above your head. After an excruciating 7 minutes and 32 seconds of being stuck in a car with the older brother from hell, the two of you can finally go your separate ways and pretend the other doesn’t exist for a few hours.

And even though you know that in three hours you’ll have to get back in the car and suffer through another 7 minutes and 32 seconds until you can go to your room under the pretences of doing homework/studying, the anxiety still picks away at you. It still remains, it’s just buried under the excitement at seeing your friends.

It’s not like Oscar is the devil incarnate, he’s just the devil’s second in command. He some sort of Northside monster, a mascot for all things privilege and pettiness stuffed inside a rich boy suit.

He insults and teases and makes fun of anyone he deems lesser than him, which is basically anyone...including the people he calls his friends. Really they’re just people he hangs around with to boost his ego and make him feel better about whatever is going on inside his own head.

Oscar practically shoves past you as soon as you step foot in the diner, a bright smile already lighting up his expression when he see’s the majority of his friends sitting in the corner, and you’re left standing by the door searching for your own friends.

To your misfortune, it seems like you’re the first one to turn up so you send a quick text to them all to let you know that you’re here before sitting down in the opposite corner.

The world passes slowly outside, people leave and enter the restaurant and you sit and play with the napkins put down by the waitress while you wait for someone to arrive. You’re halfway through your third paper napkin airplane when somebody does sit down opposite you, only it’s not who you hoped it would be and your face falls when you make eye contact with them.

“Peter.” You mumble and try to focus on folding the wings.

“Y/n.” He replies, a smile evident in his tone and you can feel his eyes looking you up and down. It makes your blood run cold and you’re not even looking at him, just the thought of him looking at you like that makes your skin crawl. “You’re not sat in here all by yourself are you?” He asks, his tone sickly sweet and you pull a face before looking at him, trying your best to seem unfazed by his presence.

In reality, Peter is the worst person in the world. He insults, he fights and he schemes. And he always takes the wrap for it, even if it was Oscar who came up with it in the first place. However, because Peter does all of this for Oscar, and because your brother likes to have friends that act more like pets, he thinks that Peter can do no wrong.

And the past two months he’s been pestering you to accept Peter’s offer to go out with him, despite trying to tell him how much you actually hate him. He may seem innocent and sweet when others are around, but when it’s just the two of you he says stuff like this.

“Because I can always keep you company...if you know what I mean.” He says and reaches out towards you. You watch his hand slowly come towards you and you sit up a bit straighter so he can’t reach. His confidence flickers as he look from you to his outstretched hand before he drops it on the table and his horrible smile comes back. “Oh, I get it. You’re playing hard to get. I like that in a woman. It’s no fun if they give it up easily.” He grins and you have to refrain yourself from rolling your eyes again.

A pit opens up in your stomach and the more he smiles the more it grows. You feel more like you’re hunted than talked to and you really wish that someone would show up soon so it gives him an excuse to leave.

Today however, fate doesn’t seem to be on your side. Because somebody does turn up, it’s just the last person you want.

“Oscar!” Peter smiles and the two of them fist bump. Peter’s whole demeanour changes when your brother turns up and you watch the walls come up. The smirk is replaced with a smile and he moves his hands away from you.

Oscar looks between the two of you and knowing smile appears on his face.

“I’m not interrupting anything am I?”

“Well actuall-”

“No.” You interrupt. “We were just talking. But now that you’re here I’m sure you all want to hang out. So goodbye Peter.” You say through gritted teeth and force a smile. Peter pouts and Oscar shakes his head at you.

“You know, you could do a lot worse than Peter.” He says while Peter smirks behind him. “You should give him a chance.”

“I’d rather stick two pencils up my nose and then smash my head against this table.” You reply with a sarcastic smile and Oscar rolls his eyes.

“You’re gonna die alone with that attitude.” He says before walking away.

“That’s better than spending a lifetime with him.” You reply and stare straight at Peter. His face reddens and his cheeks puff out a little while he tries to figure out a response, but you’ve already unlocked your phone and started texting again.

“You know one day you’re going to realise what you’re missing out on and then you’re gonna beg me to take you out because you’ve realised you’re nothing but a sad little woman who nobody loves.” He seethes, his face inches away from yours and his face reddens with each word.

His breath makes you feel sick and you bite your lip to stop yourself from saying or doing anything. Just look straight forward and he’ll leave soon. His floppy blonde hair pokes at your forehead making it itch and you wonder if maybe there’s something in the industrial strength gel he uses that you’re allergic to.

“Hey Peter.” Veronica greets cheerily and he quickly turns around, the familiar fake smile coming back. She looks at you and then him before sighing and saying “Remember, I dated you and we all know she wouldn’t be missing out on much.”

Your jaw drops a little and you have to stifle a laugh as Veronica waves him back to his table, his feet stomping against the linoleum.

“Is he always like that?” Archie watches him walk away before asking you, his tone filled with concern and you feel yourself shrink under the pressure. Betty and Veronica send him a look before sitting down. Betty opposite you and Veronica beside. She wraps her arms around you, pulling you into a hug and the smell of expensive perfume floods your senses.

You know that they’re looking at each other, none of which know what to say or do. They may be able to solve crimes and take down criminals, but when it comes to real life stuff like this, they’re next to useless.

So they do what they do best, or at least Jughead does.

“I’ll go get us some milkshakes, Y/n do you want your favourite?” He asks and you nod quickly. You sniffle and take a deep breath, you’re not going to let Oscar or Peter or any other stupid boy make you cry.

Jughead nods and as you lift your head you watch him quickly walk away, he sends a glare in the direction of your brother and his friends and a small smile twitches at your lips.

Jughead Jones has never once been threatening, at least not to you, but you’re glad he’s making an effort. And you’re glad he offered to get the drinks instead of staying and saying something awkward. You love Jughead, but he isn’t the best at comforting people.

Archie pulls a chair up, already accepting the fact that it’s his turn to sit at the end of the table...again, but today he doesn’t seem to mind. He’s too focused on you and trying to make you feel better. Even if he just gets a small smile from you, that’ll be enough and then he won’t have to kick Oscar, Peter or anyone else’s ass...right now.

Oscar laughs loudly from his table on the other side of the diner and Betty rolls her eyes before looking at you and her expression softens as she reaches over the table to hold your hand.

“Y/n?” She asks and you force yourself to look at her. The tear in the leather seats isn’t the most interesting thing to look at usually, but when you’re avoiding talking about something, it becomes the most fascinating thing in the world. “What was all that about?” She adds and her and Veronica share an unsure look.

“It was nothing.” You shrug and try to force a smile. Archie knows it’s not real, they all do and even Jughead looks sad when he sits back down, carefully placing the milkshakes down. “Oscar has just got it into his head that me and Peter would be a great couple. I dunno, I guess he thinks Peter’s like the perfect Northsider or something like that. A part of me thinks he just does it to annoy me because he only ever brings it up when Peter’s around. But Peter’s been around an awful lot lately so I’ve never heard the end of it, plus he’s a total dick. He’s rude, mean and stuck up, only whenever Oscar’s around he acts like he’s god’s gift. But I can’t say that to Oscar because if I speak ill of anyone he considers a friend, he goes crazy. He shouts and screams and calls me names and I guess I’m just scared of them. Both of them really.” You rant, letting out a deep breath at the end and the four of them stare at you wide eyed. “Sorry, I’ve been keeping that in for a while.” You add and force an awkward smile.

“Shit Y/n.” Betty sighs. “We’re sorry.” She adds and squeezes your hand.

“Yeah.” Jughead adds. “What can we do to help?” He asks and you look at him surprised.

“I-er. I don’t know.”

“Well then we’ll figure it out together.” Veronica smiles and hugs you again.

“Yeah.” Archie nods and leans over the table to grab your free hand. “What are friends for?”

support my writing! if you want!

#riverdale #riverdale imagine #archie andrews #veronica lodge #jughead jones #betty cooper #archie andrews imagine #veronica lodge imagine #jughead jones imagine #betty cooper imagine #trigger warning abuse #trigger warning #tw #tw:abuse

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sanstropfremir · 4 years ago

Text

the hotly anticipated kingdom episode 7 review is here!!

this episode was a lot less spectacle-y than the last one (the last episode with stages, i mean), and i think that was a good choice for all the groups on the whole to tone it down on the run up to the finale, because at the rate everyone was headed there would be no room to go any higher. i'm very glad that there was actually a collab stage and not just a song swap, especially because it gives a chance for the boys to work together and make friends when they otherwise arent going to be able to interact much. love love love to see them making friends and having fun doing these stages!

i'm not really sure why mnet didnt put the vocal stage this episode, because what on earth else are they going to put in the next episode with it??? i know it's a content stretch but still, it seems like a weird choice to me. anyways, there’s four stages for me to talk about this time and i'm going to try to not ramble out of control, but we’ll see. i did enjoy watching all of these, but we’ve all got favourites and i'm going to rank by which group i liked better out of the two for each stage, and then i put a few conclusions at the end. strap in folks this is another long one.

rap stages

skz + btob + atz

i was actually really surprised at how much i liked this stage. i would not classify myself as a rap fan and believe it or not i actually do not place a lot of importance on lyrics when enjoying music. although i have very high lyric retention and comprehension, i focus more on the sound than the literal words, so a fair amount of rap is swing-and-a-miss in my personal listening. plus when you add a language barrier on top of that, a lot of the nuance and technical skill of it just flies over my head. so i really dont have much to say about the sonic elements this time around, sorry. also.....i know i joked that nobody from the kingdom staff is reading my reviews.....but is someone from the kingdom staff reading my reviews????? i specifically mentioned that i think skz should do an art themed stage and then we got one????? i know i manifested the punk ateez stage but did i manifest this also??? am i just that powerful???

costume

obviously these are pretty basic rap/hiphop stage looks, but the white was a really good choice for visibility’s sake, and also thematically: it reflects the colours in the lighting really well.

i am DYING to know who the designer of minhyuks jacket is. if somebody knows please tell me i love it so much. it looks like some of the recent belted jackets that dior was putting out, but the drawing on the front armscythe piece reminds me of the superm/kim junggi collab for tiger inside. say whatever you want about superm, but you cannot deny that that is not some of the coolest merch on the kpop scene.

loved the traditional korean elements that came through in addition to the western references: the screens, hongjoong’s fan, minhyuk’s big fuckoff brush, the masks, and the sleeves on the dancers at minhyuk’s bit. those are a costume feature from a style of korean traditional masked dance called bongsan talchum. the masks themselves are versions of hahoetal masks, which are used in a very specific archetypal ritual dance in andong. i think these are imae masks, who is the servant/fool archetype that mocks the nobleman and the scholar. i suspect that was a deliberate choice, but i can only speculate.

another point about the masks which is not relevant but maybe a fun fact for people who don’t know. i actually thought at first that they were western theatre half masks, which are a very old style of mask that, like with hahoetal masks, represent a number of archetypes/stock characters. maskwork is a very common training practice in theatre schools, because it teaches body language and control, because half your face is covered and you cannot speak in your own voice (sometimes you cannot speak at all, this is one of the rules of full mask). the tradition of usings masks to portray emotion goes all the way back to the ancient greek chorus, but more commonly people in the west sometimes know it from the italian commedia dell’arte, of which you will have definitely seen some of the character archetypes before. i just find it neat that the same types of art pop up in different places seemingly independently of each other. humans are cool.

set

not much to say here, it's pretty bare with just some propwork. thought the screen use was fun and they used it smartly in a couple of transitions.

thought changbin’s bit of ‘interrupting’ the artists was cute and fun. there’s obviously a picasso reference there, and the four technicolour paintings are a reference to andy warhol’s pop art silkscreen portraits, most famously of marilyn monroe, but he also did many other celebrities in the 70s and 80s.

lighting

i LOVED this lighting. super bright and fun, lots of use of colour, obviously. the projections were there to enhance the visuals and weren’t distracting in any way. i thought the transition to black and white/ink with minhyuk was smart and had good contrast, it gave a strong rhythm to build back up to for the climax.

sound

bang chan’s ‘spelling colour with a u’ bit had me SCREAMING with laughter. we spell colour with a u normally bang chan, the americans are the ones that are wrong.

staging

i don’t really have a whole lot to say here, it was pretty straightforward and fun. like i’ve said in previous reviews, i wish they were more conscious of the steadicam direction and would stop showing extended bits of the production crew. at least everyone was wearing full blacks this time.

fun use of the upward angle combined with the groundwork/leg choreo during hongjoong’s verse, that was a highlight for me.

sf9 + tbz + ikon

nothing against this stage, the other one just hit harder for me. bobby is the best rapper on the show and he really carried this stage with his charisma. he’s a fun performer to watch and he knows how to command a space. i'm sure there’s technical notes that people have about the raps themselves, but i'm here looking at visuals as a priority, which i'm sure you’ve all grasped at this point.

costume

these were clearly extensions of these idol’s personal styles, with is a perfectly fine choice, especially for a rap stage where the emphasis is more on authorship. LOVED bobby’s 11yro girl at recess look.

amusing that both rap stages involved paint in some way? loved the backup dancers shooting supersoakers filled with paint at them, but i wish i knew the reason for it? i'm glad i saw this stage first because i would have been underwhelmed by the paint throwing if i had seen this after rainbow bonanza.

set

almost no set at all here, just a few props. i'm not judging as harshly on lack of set this round because these stages are meant to be more about skill than anything else.

lighting

i loved the projections, i thought they were unobtrusive and i admit, i LOVE outer space themed anything.

i liked that they did more concert lighting and had no projections in the first half to put more focus on the performers, it really highlighted the fact that this stage was about them, and not about anything extraneous.

sound

it was indeed a song.

staging

i do wish there had been a bit more control of the space, because it did look very empty at some parts and they could have staved that off by keeping tighter camera shots. this stage is so fucking big, holy shit.

they really brought their onstage chemistry and they looked like they were having a blast, which FINALLY!!

i actually really liked hwiyoung’s opening, i think there was a lot of potential there for some sharp contrast work that i wish had been played through a little more, especially with the cool white light overtop the black costumes. it actually reminded me a bit of the intro in the music video from a rapper i do actually listen to, bewhy’s gottasadae.

glad to see some more use of camera effects with the black and white, but why did they do it over the paint throwing? it just made the trajectory of the paint invisible because there was no colour contrast.

performance stages

sf9 + tbz + ikon

ok obviously im gonna have a lot more to say about the performance stages, nobody is surprised there. this one was the better constructed of the two and my personal pick for better stage, but i actually liked watching the both of them equally.

costume

king shit, literally. we love contemporary hanbok in this house. there was good colour and style distinction between the three of them without clashing.

costume change was fun and neatly blocked, it's pretty common to see backup dancers and chorus hiding quickchanges but i liked how this was a more unusual formation.

taeyang rocking the organza skirt and the big purple eyeshadow, thank you for keeping it cunty as always.

i really liked juyeon’s underlayer look. finally we get a good tbz costume look thats thematically relevant!

set

like all the stages this round, pretty minimal. the setting was almost entirely established through the costumes and the projections, which is some really good designwork. it's pretty much just the litters (the lifted chairs they entered on), and some smaller props. they managed to not make the stage feel empty because there was a lot of projection visuals to compensate, which is difficult to do without being overbearing, but i think they mostly pulled it off.

i originally thought it was gonna be weird to try and mesh the traditional korean architectural aesthetic with the weird mnet deco, but i ended up not noticing it as much as i thought i would.

lighting

like i just said, projections very well done and do a fantastic job of conveying setting without being overly distracting. like with the atz/skz/btob rap stage there’s a really broad range of colour use here that they offset by brightening and properly fill lighting the faces so you can actually see what’s happening.

the use of the strobing lasers and more concert style lighting fit really well with the change in the music from traditional instrument sounds to electronica and the more hiphop/isolated movements.

sound

i liked it well enough! i think it had a good arc that we can see echoed through the rest of the piece, like previously stated in the lighting and movement style.

staging

like i mentioned with the quickchange, there was some really interesting formations using the backup dancers here, especially as a lead toward/away from the camera

having the three of them enter on litters; again, literal king shit, love to see it.

this has a pretty clear narrative that doesnt really need an external explanation, which is good. i have to assume that the burning of the paper with 妃 (concubine) is intended to be a gesture of ‘burning’ the love out of their hearts, but that was the only thing i'm still confused on. this may very well turn out to be a reference to a specific story that i just have no idea what it is, but we’ll see once the subs are out!

i loved juyeons solo bit with the alcohol drinking and the table flip, that was the choreographic highlight for me. i just really wish he would use the other muscles in his face more often. we know youre pretty, you dont have to blue steel your way through all your performances!! take a page out of donghyuk’s book and make some ugly faces, it's good for you!!

i though taeyang’s swordwork was fine, but since i do actually have a decade of sword training i'm very judgemental. it's not bad, he obviously has practiced with the weapon and he knows how to control it, but he doesn’t have the same understanding as someone who has trained with a sword as a weapon and not just as a prop. if we hadn’t seen another stage with swordwork in it i probably wouldn’t have brought this up (that's a lie, i still would have brought it up, i have a third dan), but you can really see the difference between how minhyuk moves with his sword and how taeyang moves. a lot of this has to do with the proper weighting of the blade, which i mention briefly in my second episode review in btob’s section (and also this ask here, where i talk about properly weighted weapons in relation to the gun choreo in sf9’s and ateez’s previous stages); minhyuk is likely using a ‘real’ sword (it’s blunted but still made using proper methods and materials), and taeyang is using a cheaper-made replica (unless you’re doing full contact striking a LOT there’s no way a properly made blade breaks like that. also you would never tape it together hello??? respect the blade). if you know what you’re looking for, you can tell from the movements themselves when someone has training. minhyuk did a load of real training for a film where he was a swordsman, and you can tell; the sword is an extension of his arm, all the movements lead with the tip of the blade first, because that’s your first, your fastest, and your most dangerous point. you do 90% of your cutting with the first eight inches of blade, but it takes a lot of specific training to get your hands and arms to a place where that kind of movement is possible. taeyang’s movements are driven from his hands, which is unsurprising, because that’s where he’s used to his extensions stopping. the tip follows rather than leads. wow this got insanely sidetracked i hope you liked this crash course on swordwork.

this is pretty much what i expected to see from this unit. these three groups all have standout soloists, so i wasn’t surprised to see these three boys as the picks. juyeon and taeyang especially, theyre both from groups that are more likely to do experimental stages and choreography that highlights them as soloists and skilled dancers.

skz + btob + atz

this was a letdown from ateez’s last two stages, because they knocked those out of the park, but it's only fair that they have a bit of a fall. that being said, i did really enjoy watching this for its sheer ridiculousness; i’m forgiving the wolf concept this time because well, it’s wolf. you can't cover wolf and not do a wolf concept, that’s against the law. also, like i’ve said before, i'm all for dark concepts IF you give them thematic weight. is it on the nose? yes. is it thematically relevant? also yes. is it dumb? also also yes, but that’s never stopped a single kpop group in the history of ever.

costume

friendship restored with ateez stylists, rivalry started with skz stylists. the fur shoulder fluffs??? stupid and i love them. perfect in every way. however i keep seeing the same fucking costumes on the skz boys and i will come directly for the stylists at jype if they dont get their shit together. be! more! creative!!!

i really really wish they had gone more 2013 kpop with it, we need more of that ugly ridiculous styling. peniel was actually pretty close, with the overly long tunic and those yellow lenses. very vixx on and on (yes i know they were vampires from outer space, let me live)

i actually thought the wolf gloves were fun? the small bits of uv paint actually worked instead of looking out of place, and i'm glad they put them on wooyoung because the uglier an outfit, the better he pulls it off.

set

same dice, just the long table and the camo net at the beginning, which i thought was unnecessary. the table was useful for levels though, so happy to see they utilized that.

lighting

there is so much happening all the time. lots of lasers. it's definitely aiming for camp territory, and i dont actually hate it as much as i did on my first watch. it actually wasn’t as dark as i thought either, because its mostly lit with blue and amber. but it doesn’t really have that great of an arc and its not really that good on the whole.

the projections are a bit much for me, but that’s only when i'm actually looking at them. true to form, i didn’t even notice the excess of red slashes until like my fourth rewatch because i was too busy watching the performers.

sound

rookie exo my beloved. the original wolf goes so hard for absolutely no reason, so i’m not knocking this stage for being ridiculous. in fact it should have been more ridiculous. i think they did a fine job updating the song for a.....less 2013 sound.

i like that they didn’t bother to live sing the stage even though they recorded vocals for it, it gave them all a chance to actually focus on just the dance.

that being said, i am kind of missing all the adlibs from the original. but even though there’s some strong vocalists in this unit, they aren’t made of the same stuff as baekhyun, luhan, chen, AND d.o.

i literally just realized that peniel had already debuted when this song came out AND is technically exo’s senior because btob debuted like two weeks before exo officially did.....oh no

staging

choreographically this feels a lot more like the skz stages that we’ve seen rather than the ateez ones, so i'm curious as to who the choreographer was.

the tricking was definitely more ridiculous in this one, but i can't really say any of it was there for no reason because it all had elements of fighting in it. the scale of the tricks was quite large though and not very well blended with the rest of the choreo, which ending up making them look awkward. i thought it was a nice detail that they shone a green toplight on the dancers that made up the cliff wooyoung climbed up so that it looked like there was grass on it. cute.

the blocking is lacking a lot of fluidity, and i think that’s partially the scale of the tricking and also the editing, because this editing is TERRIBLE. there’s so much cutting, why is there so much cutting!! haven’t we already learned that longtakes are the best for this???

there’s a lot of stuff here that had good potential but could have been pushed a little farther. i feel like i say this for every mediocre stage, but what can i say, i'm good at constructive criticism.

they should have given more showcase to the tree and the scratching arms; it's the most iconic move!! i also wish they had kept some kind of iteration of the different unit ‘leaping’ in over the exiting one, i always thought that part of the original choreo was really fun and did a lot for establishing them as wolves.

i LOVED peniel entering with all those backup dancers in chains, thats some fucking iconic shit. very ‘im the alpha wolf,’ which is valid because he’s like at LEAST five years older than everyone else on the stage. i wish that instead of being the backup dancers it was the actual members, because THAT would have been an image. theyre all wearing harnesses and collars anyways, just clip em in! he’d be like one of those dogwalkers!

me last week: specifically talking about how krump is an uncommon style in kpop and it's very hard to get right kingdom, throwing the manifesting dodgeball at me for the third time: here would you like a KRUMP SOLO?

if you didnt believe me before that krump is hard to get right, i sure hope you do now. peniel did fine, but you can see how easily you can veer off into looking ridiculous.

some conclusions

i mentioned this really briefly in an ask i got earlier today, but i do think it's important to establish that the two performance units are doing two different types of performances. i can understand why people are underwhelmed by the atz/skz/btob stage and wanted it to be less of a traditional kpop dance stage and more like the experimental stages we’ve been seeing for the last few weeks. and i agree! i think they could have done more with it. but i also think that this kind of stage was a good choice for this particular subunit. unlike with the sf9/tbz/ikon unit, there are not really any standout technical soloists in ateez or skz. ateez has, in my opinion, the highest ratio of dancers with actual stage presence of any of the 4th gen groups ive seen. they’re at a solid 75% for any given performance, and occasionally they can bump that higher depending on the stage. that high of a stat is rare. it's extremely rare for a group to have all its members have good stage presence (i can think of like, maybe two or three?), and to get over 50% is pretty damn impressive. but ateez’s strength isn’t in how good they individually are as dancers, but it's in how well they work together. there’s a reason why they put FIVE of them in the performance unit. one of the first things i said about ateez to hanya is ‘i love wooyoung but he doesn’t stand out when he's not centre.’ which is for good reason!! he’s not supposed to! they all willingly give up centre and take it back when they need to, because they have that charisma. there’s a very cohesive push and pull to watching ateez that speaks to their strengths as performers. dancing in a group where you are all meant to be equal is a very different skill than just being a talented soloist. you have to understand what to prioritize in a different way. taemin dances differently with shinee that he does in his solo career, especially since they’ve been back. he understands when to step back; more often than not i find key to be the standout dancer in shinee choreo.

this is a very long winded way of saying that wolf was a good choice for them even though the stage didn’t turn out as well as it could have. also the fact that they made a cohesive performance at all, with a week of rehearsal and while working with essentially strangers is a feat and speaks to all of their skill at their job. performing in a group is a huge part of kpop, and they did call this the performance stage, and not the dance stage.

i'm not entirely sure on what the breakdown is on why each of the subunits were formed. i know the team sizes are extremely uneven, with sf9/tbz/ikon clocking in at 26 people and atz/skz/btob clocking in at 17 (i'm not counting changsub because he's not there and probably has a scheduling conflict), which is like, a whole extra group of difference. but atz/skz/btob utilizing their whole groups for each of the units (5/3/1 for performance, 1/3/1 for rap, and 1/1/1 for vocal, for 7/7/3 total), verses sf9/tbz/ikon only bringing out six people for these two stages and then six for the vocal stage is......weird? that's over half of their group number that’s not performing. i do think the groups brought out their standout performers and made smart choices with the stages but the balance still strikes me as odd. i do wish tbz had actually done some group choreo because they are very strong group performers and it would have been fun to watch.

ateez really played the long game here, good job boys. teaming up with the group who gets the highest fan votes AND the group with the strongest technical skills? i see you.

i think this is probably too wild of an assumption and is only based on circumstantial evidence but.....i think hongjoong might actually have a lot more creative sway than i previously thought. all the stages he’s been a part of have been very well designed, and i know he provided suggestions for the two ateez stages prior to this... i’m probably thinking too much.

ok you know what i know there were some other points in my brain somewhere but this is already 4000 words so i’m going to stop. if i remember anything else its probably gonna end up in the answer to some of the asks i’m inevitably going to get because i think my opinions on these ones are a little bit more controversial, whoops!

not entirely sure if ill do an extensive review for next week’s stage, because i'm not really a ballad fan and i dont really do vocal reviews, but i could do a quick one. i guess it also depends on what else they put in the episode. we’ll see!!

#kingdom #kingdom review #ateez #btob #stray kids #the boyz #sf9 #kpop analysis #if you read this i hope you like fun facts about theatre and swords!#despite having never seen me hanya managed to clock that hongjoong and i are extremely similar #so that might be why ive jumped to this nonsensical conclusion #also tbh i do have an opinion on why the unit breakdowns are like that but its mean so i will keep it to myself #ok im done now #i patiently await my asks #text #lol forgot to tag #ikon

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wontshutup · 4 years ago

Text

Chapter 1 (Time)

Intro Chapter 2

Some notes:

It is messy messy heh.

It is long..I think

It contains season 2 spoilers

The reader is gender neutral.

Sorry If you don't like black coffee. It's for narrative purposes I swear, just bear with me.

You gazed out your window. The sun was rising, clouds clearing the sky, allowing it's light to have a better view of the outside. Soon enough the entire place would be beaming with life, people coming and going. It was warm in contrast to the past couple of days,perfect to go out for a little trip of your area, something to ease your mind and that was just what you were looking for.

Specially after another sleepless night, another nightmare, a haunting memory.

Shaking the feeling from the uncomfortable night you had, you changed out of your sweat damped pajamas. You were quick to be ready, something you picked up from your previous job, never getting out of schedule was crucial and efficiency was key for everything, no detours or anything of sorts, and so you were impeccably dressed and out of the house in less than ten minutes.

The warmth of the sun on your face relaxed your muscles, letting go of a frown you didn't even notice you had been wearing.

Even if the day had just started, even if you were safe, even if everything had stopped, dread was a feeling that accompanied every morning, every step you took, it was the small pleasures like these the ones that helped, they brought you a slight sense of peace. With the warm feeling, you made your way to get breakfast in your favorite café around the area. But there was a feeling, impossible to ignore, that something would happen today.

************************************************************************

The morning light hit the scribbled surface of the desk Five had now used to keep on tracing the equations that long ago didn't fit in the piece of paper anymore.

He was by now, hunched at the side of the desk, legs crossed, writing in the side of one of the desk's drawers. To the slight change of light Five sucked in a breath. He had expected to have at least a minimal idea of how to proceed before dawn, where to go to, and if necessary, who to kill, besides, he would do it anytime if that ensured his family's safety.

"Hmm...Morning ol' man" Klaus's voice stopped him from falling deeper into his negative thoughts.

"Morning Klaus" He answered with a sigh. He turned his gaze towards his brother, deep dark circles under his puffy eyes. "Ooohoh, you look like shit, did you even sleep at all?" Klaus brought up trying his hardest not to break down again, forcing out a sour smirk.

This sight brought a bitter feeling to Five's chest. "Well, one could say the same about you." he answered with a thin-lipped smile.

"Well that... didn't hurt me at all..." he looked past him to the numerical carvings covering the desk. "Got anything yet?"

"Well... I got a couple of options, leads mostly, here and there" He lied and it seemed to work as Klaus straightened a little, a glimpse of hope visible in his eyes. "But staying in bed all day won't get us to any, you know that" he continued raising his voice a little, putting back his usual strong façade.

"Ow c'mon old man!...I know you are right, still..." grunted Klaus, but got up, dragging his feet out of the room. "Seems like we are the only ones awake. I'll put some coffee" he declared and with that disappeared through the door.

"I could really use some of that" Five muttered to himself. Leaning back, he really needed a break, that was what he needed, then again, he didn't knew better for 45 years.

As soon as he said that, Klaus popped his head inside the room, Five turned to look at him, already knowing what he would say.

"There isn't any coffee" Five declared tiredly, to which Klaus nodded saddly.

"Yeah...But fear not, I saw a small café down the street on our way here, bet it is already open."He said, as if trying to cheer Five up...also himself. "Lemme just...-he sighed- I am going to fix this mess of a face, you should do that too" and with that, he made his way out of the room.

***********************************************************************

The ringing of the doorbell announced your entrance to the place, the smell of freshly brewed coffee flooding your senses as you inhaled deep perceiving a tinge of....sugar glaze? Whatever it was, it was sweet, painting a soft smile on your features This is going to be a good day.

"Y/N!" Greeted one of the new baristas, he was a very bright person, he had been here for about a week but he already learned your name "The usual right?" This made you smile wider, he hadn't even been taking any orders the previous days and he already knew your order? "Yes please" you said while reaching for your wallet. "Mmmm, Would you please remind me what the usual is?" He said slightly embarrassed.With the wallet in hand, you raised your face, a laugh scaping your lips in return. Slipping the exact amount of money you were paying, you slid it across the counter, getting a tad closer to him, as he reached for it and half-whispered your order to him. "An individual berry pie and a strong, black coffee".

"Black? As in bitter black coffee?" He asked, eyebrows raised.

"Yeah, I like it better that way" You simply answered.

"Oook then" he said with, lightly denying with his head in disbelief. He then recomposed himself with a sense of determination. "An individual berry pie and a strong, black coffee it is!" that was a little unnecessary but, his vitality was captivating in a way, you missed being like that, mentally that is. "Want me to take it to your table lovely?" oh now he was being cocky, you just smiled at it.

"Someone's making up for tips aren't they?"You told him lightly.

"Well, a little extra cash never hurt nobody." He said, brushing off the comment. "So, should I?"

"Yes, please" and with that, you left the counter. You wondered, if he actually knew you, if he would be as chatty as he just had.

*************************************************************************************

The place wasn't very far but it felt miles away, the silence between the brothers making the walk heavy.

Five just kept on thinking on ways to get them back, or out of this, to just fix it all, in a way to keep them all safe. He hoped Klaus had bought the story of him having some answers, he needed them to trust him, if they didn't that would most definitely play against them. He had already known the consequences of having his family in disagreement or scattered, he, THEY, couldn't afford to get into a confrontation between them.

His mind just didn't seem to stop for a second, he knew the laws of time well enough and everything around him, in this precise timeline, bound him to fail every time. He didn't want to rush to conclusions but at this point, he was convinced they needed a miracle. HE needed a miracle.

The ringing of the entrance bell got him out of his thoughts, eyes shutting up, examining the place. He inhaled deeply, the scent of coffee bringing him a very slight sense of comfort. Maybe things weren't that bad, are they? They are until proven otherwise. He shouldn't let his guard down.

"Ok now, let's see what we'll have...I am taking hummm the french grilled cheese and a cappuccino...and you?" Klaus examined the menu in front of them as they got in the line."Let me guess, a black coffee. I don't know what's with you man, maybe add a little bit of sweetness sometimes, your bitter soul could use some"

Five scoffed. "The thing here Klaus is that black coffee allows it to be served and consumed fast, simple, no need to make a fuss out of a simple cup of coffee. Some things serve their purpose just as they are" he eyed his brother "but that's something you are too young to understand."

"An individual berry pie and a strong black coffee it is!" the barista said in an unnecessarily loud tone, causing Five to scrunch his nose.

"Well seems they are. Are you really suggesting people who like black coffee are old? I think you people are just bitter.. " Klaus told his brother while signaling to the teenager who was now making their way towards a table.

Now, in any situation, Five would've simply ignored it, he knew he had better things to pay attention to than just a mere teenager, however, they seemed oddly familiar.

They carried themselves in a way that was way beyond their years, their appearance was one of a simple young person, just about their late teens, somebody who would naturally be beaming with life, but their body language, their eyes, they suggested as if they had gone through an exhausting life, a long life. Those eyes, he had seen them countless times. Where?

As they made their way towards the counter, he didn't tear his gaze from the teenager, scrutinizing their figure, their every move, the way they scanned the book before them, their hands went up to their scalp and tore lightly at their hair constantly, nervously.

******************************************************************************************

"Hey kid."

"Don't" they said in a warning tone, their eyes never leaving the envelope before them.

"Just stop that already, the hair pulling, it's making me anxious" he declared visibly irritated, or was it bothered?

"Making YOU anxious? I am making the great Five anxious?" they retorted mocklingly followed by a snicker. Their perfect young skin wrinkling at it's corners, and in contrast, wise eyes looked at him. "Well then I shall not bother you anymore Old man"

******************************************************************************************* Then it clicked.

"Hey, you've been staring awful long towards them, you look like a creep. An old creep" Klaus noted. Before turning towards the cashier. "Hey! so, I will take.......

With a quick step, Five made his way towards the teenager, heart pounding in his ears. If it is who he thought it was there might just be a way to set things on the right track.

His miracle. He prayed they were.

*****************************************************************************************

As you waited for your order at a small table you took out a book you have been carrying around, when opening the page you left on. You leaned in on the book, trying to concentrate in the narrative, noting every single little detail that had been written differently from the original. Not long ago, you were able to find a couple of differences here and there on some books, movies, plays, and numerous pieces of media that had been made after 1963 till now, pieces you knew very well, changed, even in the slightest details, from the ones you had seen previously. A word, a dot, a whole different scene in some. You knew that something had gone down, that explained the fact the entire world was still standing April the 3rd, 2019, yet, you didn't know how much and if for better or worse, you had decided to keep away from whatever had caused it. It wasn't your business, not anymore.

You had been so deep in thought, eyes scanning the pages so quickly you weren't even actually aware of the plot, anxiety once again filling your body, slowly opaquing the brightness in which your day had started. And just like the previous night, your figure started curling into itself. Shoulders rose hovering over the table, your shadow darkening the page, you started pulling at your hair for some sense of reality, this had always been of help to that throughout your life. It had been pointed out to you, you needed to stop, yet it kept you steady, anchored.

"Y/N?" A young voice interrupted your train of thought, thankfully. Shutting your book you raised your gaze to be met by a young man, a teenager, around your physical appearance, the smell of coffee mixed with the aura of desperation he carried and wild green eyes piercing right into yours. Those eyes. The familiarity of it all was unsettling, Commission? after working such a long time for them you knew not to trust easily.

"Who's asking?" you answered with a calm tone, showing no intimidation. Your hand discreetly taking hold of the butter knife in front of you.

"Of course you wouldn't recognize me" He muttered, rolling his eyes. Meaning exactly what? "If you had, you wouldn't even think about trying that" he said eyeing the knife. This made you tighten your grip on it, whoever he was, he meant no good. But you let him speak anyway. He straightened himself, adjusting his blazer as if to look taller.

" Alright kid" he sighed out, reading your reaction. You pursed your lips in distaste for the word that was used towards you, you narrowed your eyes at him, taking notice of his expression, his tone, he said "kid" as if he knew it would tick you off. He looked at you intently, giving you enough time to recall him. You dug through your memory, something you tried to avoid for a long time. You thought about getting up and away from him, you didn't need this, not now, not ever again, but you just sat there, holding his gaze. You scanned his features, eyes landing on a very characteristic trait, a dimple. Very familiar. No, it couldn't be.

Then you were back at his eyes, tired, old but young, almost like yours...as if looking in a mirror. So familiar.

You hadn't even noticed you had been holding your breath, the silence getting longer. You sigh, releasing a bit of tension and unwrapping the knife. You reminded yourself there was no reason to fear, not anymore, you had made it clear to everyone back there, even yourself, that you didn't care, you didn't deserve the trouble.

He noticed you let go of the knife, and his expression softened a little. A contrast to his previously imposing posture, but he didn't actually relax. Instead, he seemed eager to approach you. He proceeded with a friendlier tone as if testing if your action was a sign for him to proceed or you to leave.

"Used to work for the Commission, Five"

Hey, So, chapter 1 is here. Hope you liked it and that it made sense somehow?

About the black coffee, Sorry hehe. It is bitter I know but bear with me.

Also, I am trying to make this gender neutral, if by ANY chance I mispronounced your pronouns I apologize, I will keep an eye better for that.

- Milo

#tua #the umbrella academy #tua x reader #five hargreeves x reader #number five x reader #five x reader #five hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #tua spoilers

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cake-writes · 5 years ago

Text

Ruse (Part Two)

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Story Warnings: Bodyguard!AU (except it’s not actually an AU because Bucky’s still an Avenger), Reader’s a loveable idiot, Fluff, Humour, Slow Burn, Angst, Violence, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (Bucky), Eventual 18+

Word Count: 1749

Summary: Natasha ropes you into her plan to help Bucky's mental state: temporarily relieving him from his avenging duties to be your bodyguard. There’s no threat, of course, and it’s a terrible idea – but it just might work.

Part One / Master List

A little after ten a.m., there’s a knock on the door.

You and Natasha have been on the sofa all morning watching some trashy daytime soap opera. There’s not much else to do, and it’s not like you can go anywhere if you’re a target. That’s why she stayed the night, too – you’re in need of protection, now. A real damsel in distress.

Yeah, right.

Unfortunately, you’re not allowed near the door.

“Gotta check who it is and evaluate the risks,” she cheekily rubs it in as she walks over to find out who’s waiting on the other side.

What a brat.

When you shoot her a look to convey as much, she snorts. “You’d better get used to it, because this is your life now.”

And then you groan, because you know she’s right. What the hell did she talk you into?

Laughing, she pulls open the door, and the decorative pillow you’ve just thrown at her sails right out into the hallway. You’ve got impeccable aim, really, but it’s Natasha so of course she’s moved out of the way. Didn’t even have to look to know you were trying to bean her in the head.

It may not have hit her, but it did hit somebody.

“Oh my god—” You jump up from the sofa and, rushing over, you add, “Shit, I’m so sorry!”

You’ve just decked Bucky Barnes with a throw pillow. What the fuck.

At least it wasn’t in the face, and he caught it easily – leather-gloved fingers dig into plush cotton and velour and you realize, then, that of all the pillows you could have thrown, you picked the stupidest one.

It’s a cupcake. A big pink cupcake.

You’re a baker, but still. You threw a pillow at The Winter Soldier. A cupcake pillow.

What the actual fuck.

Pretty blue eyes meet yours for a moment, briefly, before gives Natasha a look that says in no uncertain terms that he knows it was her fault. “What did you say to her?”

Natasha just deadpans, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

You huff a little under your breath, and she uses her elbow to jab you in the ribs.

His brows raise in amusement – or maybe it’s suspicion. Either way it has you sweating bullets.

“Please come in,” you somehow manage, and when you step aside to let him in, you shoot Natasha another dirty look that makes her cough back a laugh. “I’m really sorry, Mr. Barnes. I don’t usually throw things at people.”

“Bucky,” he tells you with a smile, offering you your pillow. “And don’t worry. Something tells me it’s not your fault.”

Only with him standing right in front of you do you realize how tall he is. And how built. He’s thick and muscular and holy hell, he could absolutely break you in the best of ways.

Jesus Christ.

You swallow thickly and take the pillow from him, but it does nothing to distract you from how attractive he is. Those clear blue eyes crinkle so beautifully when he smiles; not to mention the stubble on his chiselled jaw, or the messy bun that has loose strands of brown hair framing his face so perfectly.

“Thanks,” is all you can think to say.

How in the ever-loving fuck were you supposed to keep it together with him around? You can’t even string a sentence together now that you’ve had a good and proper look at him.

And that’s on your six-month dry spell.

“I know I already gave you a run-down on the phone,” Natasha pipes up, startling you out of your thoughts, “but is there anything else you need before I go?”

She’s talking to Bucky, not you, so you flop back down on the sofa and try to focus back on the TV. Unsuccessfully, of course. There’s no way you’ll be able to focus with him here.

“I think I’ve got it,” he responds, eyes sweeping across the apartment. “Entry points?”

“Nine. Three windows in here, two in each bedroom, and one in the bathroom.”

“Fire exit?”

“Off the master bedroom.”

“Thought so.” He doesn’t sound too pleased, and you sneak a glance over at him out of curiosity. When Natasha catches you and slyly arches a brow, you immediately whip your head back to face the TV. Fuck. “I’ll have a look. Thanks, Nat.”

She nods and takes a few steps over to the sofa to catch your attention. Predictably, when you look up at her, she gives you a knowing smirk. “Stay safe, okay? You’re in good hands.”

Another wink, and you know, then, that this was intentional.

God damn it.

“I’ll be fine, Nat,” you play along, but you don’t believe it anymore. There aren’t any risks to your health, of course – it’s all a ruse, but there is a risk that you’re going to make a complete ass of yourself. Bucky Barnes is too damn attractive for his own good, and what’s worse is that Natasha knew this would happen. “Go on, get out of here. Traitor.”

If you’re not mistaken, you might have heard Bucky stifle a laugh.

She just gives you both an innocent little wave, and then she’s off, shutting the door behind her with a near-silent click.

Now you’re stuck with him. All alone. Just the two of you.

Now what?

“Should I, uh,” you stammer awkwardly, peering over to find him standing next to your kitchen table, duffel on the floor, and you rephrase, “I should give you a tour, right? I mean, you are my guest... Right?”

Bucky laughs more audibly this time, and man, if you don’t love the sound. “Do whatever makes you feel comfortable. I’m sure this isn’t how you wanted to spend your weekend.”

Ha. If only he knew otherwise.

So you hop up from the sofa to give him a grand tour of your apartment, heart hammering in your chest. “I should say the same to you! No fun plans?”

“Not unless you think paperwork is fun,” he teases. “You’re actually doing me a favour.”

You like the sound of that.

It’s an exaggerated show of your digs, because you’re nervous and he’s him and you’re two seconds away from shoving your foot in your mouth – but somehow, you manage.

The living room is easy, and the kitchen. It’s got an open floor plan, after all, and he already saw it when he came in. After that, you take him down the hallway, where on the left is the too-small bathroom. It only fits one person at a time, and barely even that.

Across from the bathroom is your spare room, and that’s where you take him next. It’s not like you have guests very often, so you’ve turned it into an office. Running your own bakery requires a fair amount of administrative work, and you need the extra space for that.

“Sorry,” you say sheepishly, and Bucky gives you a confused look.

“Why are you sorry?”

“My spare room doesn’t have a bed.”

It’s evident, now, that he’s going to have to sleep on the sofa, but he just shrugs.

“You don’t have to apologize,” he tells you. “I’m here to keep you safe. Don’t need a bed for that.”

Of course, he’s welcome to share yours, but you don’t mention that.

Then the two of you are off to the final destination: your room, which makes you even more nervous until Bucky pauses for a moment to inspect the window leading out to the fire escape.

“What’s going on here?” he asks, and you stop cold.

“Well, uh…” Shit, you’re gonna look like an idiot. “Someone broke in right before I moved in, and my landlord never had it fixed so I nailed it shut.”

Bucky sighs. “That’s not safe. What’ll you do if there’s a fire?”

“Break the window?” you offer unhelpfully. “That’s why I keep a hammer in here.”

To prove your point, you nod at the dresser, where, sure enough, you’ve got a hammer sitting next to your jewellery. His eyes follow to where you’ve indicated, and when he sees the hammer, you can very clearly spot the growing disapproval on his face.

Yep, Bucky Barnes thinks you’re an idiot. Fantastic.

“Any other surprises I need to know about?”

He’s just going to find out anyway, so you opt for honesty, which may or may not be the best idea.

“The bathroom window doesn’t lock either, but we’re five stories up so that’s not a problem, right?”

Bucky doesn’t answer; instead, he frowns, and you can’t help but laugh nervously.

“Oh, and one of the burners on my stove doesn’t work right. I taped over it so it wouldn’t leak gas, you know, just in case.”

That’s when he lets out a long, slow breath. Oh, yeah, he’s annoyed for sure – even you can tell as much. “If there’s anything else, you need to tell me. I can’t do my job properly if you’ve done other things like this,” he taps on the window pane, “that I don’t know about.”

Other things. He’s too nice to say stupid things.

You nod.

“Alright. I’m going to check the entry points to make sure they work—” cue a pointed look in your direction that makes you look away in embarrassment, “and that they lock.”

“Thank you.” You swallow your pride and say again, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just be more careful.”

There’s a certain bite to his tone that cuts deep, and you anxiously chew your lip, eyes downcast. He’s right. You really should have pushed harder to get things fixed. Why hadn’t you?

Then he swears low under his breath and gently places his hand on your shoulder, and you force yourself to look back up at him.

When he speaks again, his voice is softer than before. “Sorry. That wasn’t fair. It’s not your fault, I just...” There’s a pause, during which he lets you go and you very much miss the feeling of his large, warm hand against your skin. “I just don’t want to see a pretty girl like you getting hurt because of something like this. Let me take care of it, okay?”

“O–Okay,” you stammer. Did he just—?

And then he’s out of your room and out of your hair, and you can breathe again. Just for a moment. Just long enough to realize that Bucky Barnes told you you’re pretty. Even if it was just in passing.

Part Three

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes

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spookybreadstick · 4 years ago

Text

Body Types of the Pastas

I will not be including Sally on this list, she is a child!! She has the body of a child, and that’s all you need to know. I will also not be including Slender on this list because we all know what kind of body he has (he’s a skinny legend!!) it’s literally a part of his name. Also, I might add, these are my versions of the characters and their body types do not reflect on the body types of any actors who may have portrayed them. These are just how I imagine them.

TW TW TW: Body Image Issues

Please do not read if you are struggling and believe you will be triggered by mentions of weight and different body types. This is largely positive (in my opinion), but I don’t want to trigger anybody, since there is mentions of negative relationships with food and poor body image. This is not meant to be “body-checking” or harmful for readers. It’s just a little post (I think it may even help some to be kinder with their own bodies and self-image), but just read at your own discretion, I suppose.

IMPORTANT NOTE: We do not body shame on this blog!! This is written entirely with love and appreciation for all bodies!

Also, mild NSFW warning I guess? (Nothing major, just a little, if you can call it that). For future reference, this: 💛 is the emoji that marks anything a lil spicy, but not what I would call true NSFW.

💛🤎💛🤎💛🤎

Skinny Legends (I couldn’t think of an appropriate adjective to go with it lmao)

Bloody Painter

Perfectly Petite

BEN

Lusciously Lean

Toby

Liu

Majestically Mid-Sized

Nina

Puppeteer

Jane

Marvelously Muscular

Clockwork

Jeff

Beautifully Buff

Hoodie

Pleasantly Plus-Sized

Masky

🍬 LJ is just built like that. He’s long, lanky, and skinny. No matter how many sweets he eats, his stomach remains flat. Don’t make fun of him for it (since he was sort of modeled after a doll in Isaac’s mind, LJ sometimes thinks that he’s missing some stuffing and there is something wrong with him because of that).

🎨 Helen is naturally thin, but there’s also other factors to blame. When he was growing up, his parents pushed on him the idea that being ‘skinny’ was everything for a girl (remember, they raised him as a girl until he was a young teen). They also would withhold food as a punishment for any ‘misbehaving’ that they saw. Nowadays, Helen doesn’t have much of an appetite, probably as a result of not eating enough in childhood. Helen will also forget to eat since he is so wrapped up in his art. He doesn’t mind being called skinny, that’s his body type after all, but please don’t point out his eating habits. He’ll get annoyed very easily. A much better way to go about it would be, if you see he’s too busy to eat, fix him a sandwich or something and bring it to him. You have to phrase it carefully, like, “I was hungry and made some sandwiches, so here’s one for you, too. Fuel for the artist, right?” And he’ll be more likely to accept and eat it.

🎮 BEN is, as much as he denies it, petite. He’s short and he has a small frame. There’s a little bit of squish to his tummy (it’s absolutely adorable 🥰) but he hides it (it wasn’t there originally, and it’s an accumulation of him eating all sorts of junk food in his afterlife. It doesn’t really affect him usually, but after he’s been doing it for years...) Please don’t point it out, he tries to forget that it exists and it bothers him.

🪓 Toby is lean cuisine. He’s kind of short for a guy, and that adds to his leanness. He has trouble remembering to eat and has trouble taking proper care of his body, so he is malnourished. He gets insecure about his body, so don’t say anything about it. Toby would love it if somebody cared enough to make sure that he’s eating regularly and getting proper nutrition. He is just a boy in need of some nourishing food and good lovin’! 🥰

🧣 Liu is also lean. Whenever he’s nervous or stressed, he forgets to eat. Whenever he wants to “punish” himself for whatever reason, he withholds food. He’s been doing better with this, but it was a habit he’s had since he was young, so that contributed to his smaller build. He doesn’t mind at all if you say he’s lean (he’d actually take it as quite the compliment). What he needs though, is somebody who cares enough to help him break the negative habits.

💄 Nina’s body type is hard to place, since she’s on the slim side but also not quite lean? She’s honestly really in between the lean and mid-size categories. Nina’s had some body image issues in the past, but she tries hard to keep it wholesome and positive with her self image though. She’s really got a great figure though! She’s got a small waist, probably about B-cup breasts, nice hips, and a nearly flat stomach (but not quite! She has that lil pooch thing that’s supposed to be where your uterus is?) Nina’s so pretty, honestly 😍

🧵 Puppeteer’s body type is the epitome of “average.” It’s smack dab in the middle of body types. There’s nothing particular special about it, and he’s on the slimmer side but not skinny skinny. He’s got depth and he’s also the taller side.

🖤 Jane’s got an amazing figure! She goes through periods of time where she’s a bit insecure but she’s got no reason to be! She looks great! She’s curvy (doesn’t have a flat tummy!) and it looks amazing on her. She’s got a killer ass (we love a thicc queen) and her breasts are def C cup (maybe even D cup). Jane’s got those curves in all the right places, and she looks like a goth Aphrodite when she’s in her element 🤩

⏰ Clockwork is a baddie! She has a toned stomach and not much of a chest, to be honest. She is quite muscular-looking for a girl, and she’s proud of that. And, it looks great on her!

🔪 Jeff is pretty muscular. He’s got that height going for him, and he enjoys a good workout so there’s some good muscles as well. He has a toned stomach and a bit of visible biceps when he flexes. This body type is something he had to work for though, his natural body type is a slim mid-size.

❓Hoodie is a buff king! He’s tall as well, with a toned stomach and abs. His natural body type is actually just slightly muscular, but he built himself up to be B U F F.

🤍 EJ is a big, buff boi. Before the transformation, he was actually lean. But now? He’s part demon, of course he’s going to be large and strong. He has abs now, and visible muscles hiding underneath his clothes. He has a habit of shrinking into himself though. He’s never liked his body much, and he’s insecure in his new form. Help him see that he is handsome and great just the way he is!

🎭 Masky is, admittedly, a bit chunky. He’s hella strong though, and could def beat your ass easily in any kind of competition. He gets very defensive if anyone brings it up in a negative light, or when there’s lots of people around, due to the fact that he was very insecure as a teen. If it’s brought up when it’s a one-on-one convo or if it’s gently mentioned, he’ll probably say “yeah, I’ve got kind of a dad bod thing going on, I guess,” and try to quickly change the subject. Poor boy eats when he’s stressed and then is guilty about it afterwards. He needs somebody to tell him that his body is beautiful, and then help him take care of it. He could use some love, and some reassurance of his beauty (chubby boys are so cute and wonderful and just 🥵). Please be gentle with his heart and help him raise his self-esteem <3

I thought of the song S.L.U.T. by Bea Miller when I wrote this. You should listen to it, it’s good for self-esteem!! :)

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youllneverknowrac · 5 years ago

Text

Oscar Diaz-Momma Bear Pt.2

For @princesshenney

“Please don’t go out too far!” You yell from where you laid in a plastic lounge chair, under the large umbrella Oscar set up for you, your four month old Alexander asleep on your chest. The four eldest Diaz men/boys all shouting back in understanding as they race towards the water.

“I stay here.” Your almost three year old Angel says, sitting a few feet away from you in a small and round blow up kiddie pool that was barley filled up with ocean water, a few toys floating around him,”Right mommy?”

“Right. You stay with mommy and little brother.” You smile, taking turns glancing in between him and Oscar with the boys. You lay Alex down on the chair next to you, on top of a extra towel so you can sit up and stretch your limbs out. Being cut short when a slightly wet Angel climbs into your lap with his hair tie in hand.

“It fall out.” He points to his head, causing you to giggle as you take it from him and tie his curly hair back out of his face,”Tank you.” He says and stands up in between your legs, his small hands crushing your cheeks together before giving you a small kiss on your lips,”I go play now.” He tells you, jumping down into the sand and hopping back into the pool.

You smile at him and look over at a now awake Alexander who was busy trying to put his whole fist in his mouth, looking absolutely adorable in his full body swimsuit. He was the only Diaz baby that did not look like the rest of his brothers. Where as they all looked like mini versions of Oscar, Alexander had your features and was not born with a full head of curly hair. You couldn’t help but be a bit more overjoyed when he was born, because after four previous births you finally had a twin of your own. Oscar not being able to make the joke that he made the kids by himself anymore,”What are you doing?” You ask him in a silly baby voice as you pick him up and cradle him in your arms,”Get that hand out of your mouth, you get it out.” You tell him and gently pull it out for him, replacing it with a pacifier after digging for one in the diaper bag.

“Hey! No throw!” You hear Angel shout after a loud splash came from his pool, a football now in his hands as he tosses it out. A guy probably a few years younger than you running over, apologies spewing from his mouth.

“I’m so sorry little guy.” He says out of breath as he kneels down to pick up the ball, patting Angel’s hair apologetically.

“Please.” The toddler says and holds his hands up in defense,”Please no touch.”

His actions cause the both of you to laugh, apologizing again before he looks over at you. Taking in your navy blue bikini that was peeking out under your white mesh cover dress,”I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to almost hit your little brother.” He says and smiles, waving his fingers in front of Alex’s face,”He’s cute...sibling sort of day huh?” He asks sweetly, the glint in his eyes telling you that he knew damn well they weren’t your brothers. Just wanting a reason to chat you up.

“Not my siblings, but something tells me you already knew that.” You respond, pushing the sunglasses off of your face and to the top of your head in one motion,”Just be careful where you throw that thing, lot’s of kids around here. Just be glad you didn’t actually hit my son because then this conversation wouldn’t be so nice.”

“You’re so right and again I’m sorry for that.” He says and makes himself comfortable as he sits on the end of your lounge chair, blocking your view from the beach,”I’m going to put this away and never throw it again, bad football.”

You force a laugh and nod, not responding as Angel stands up and starts to point to the ocean,”It’s Car-car!(Carlos) I go play with him?” He asks before looking over at the man and doing the famous Oscar look of distaste.

“Okay, run straight to them.” You say when you peek over the guys shoulder, making out Carlos and Junior sitting on the sand. Oscar probably still in the water with Anthony.

“Okay mommy!” He yells before his little legs take off, not relaxing back against the lounge chair until you see him reach his older brothers.

“Oh you have more?” He says stunned, glancing over his shoulder.

“Mhm. Five boys, started really young.” You tell him nonchalantly, thinking back to how you were a scared and pregnant 15 year old. 18 years ago seeming more like a lifetime.

“Wow five?” He chokes,”You don’t look like you have five kids.”

“Um thanks? I guess.” Never knowing what to say when people tell you that, Alexander still sitting happily in your arms.

“I don’t mean no offense but I don’t see a man around...so maybe I can get your number. We can chill sometime or something.” He says, your fuse finally being cut short.

“Look, if it wasn’t obvious enough I’m not looking for anybody to chill with. I have five kids and not to mention a husband.” You snap, unknown to you that Angel went and told his brothers about the strange man,”So if you could please get off my chair and leave me alone that would be amazing.”

“Husband? I don’t see a ring and if that’s the case why even let the conversation go this far.” He smirks and reaches out to place his hand on your lower leg.

“Don’t touch me when I’m holding my baby! Are you insane? What do you not get? Go away.” You gasp as you kick his hand away and stand up. Everything else after that happening quickly. One second the guy sitting there normally and the next he’s eating dirt as your oldest son Junior comes running up from behind and delivers a rough shove to his back.

“Aye cabrón (dumb ass), don’t ever touch my mom again.” He says, kicking his foot out to drench the man in more dirt.

“Oh my god Junior, no.” You say and come around to stand next to him as the guy gets up and wipes his face clean.

“What the fuck is your problem? You little shit.” He snaps and before you can defend your son, Oscar shows up with the rest of the kids in tow. Anthony holding both his little brother’s hands as they stand behind Junior now. Your husband wasting no time in asking questions and getting in between them, invading the guys personal space.

“Aye, you talking to my son? This boy right here?” Oscar asks him in a dangerous tone as he lowers his body to be eye level with him, their noses barley missing each other. Not seeing this side of him in a long time...his Spooky side. Something he left behind when you guys moved out of the streets of Freeridge, when you became pregnant with Anthony.

“I am and what? Did you not see your son just assault me?” The guys says, taking a step back. Oscar taking a step forward with no fear in his eyes.

“Nah, I don’t think I did.” He lies, him and the guy going back and forth now. The tension only growing worse.

“Take him.” You say urgently and hand the baby over to Junior, instantly grabbing a hold of Oscar’s arm. Carlos and Anthony beginning to shout in favor of their dad, Angel joining in confusingly but not caring as he copied them.

“Stop and sit down, right now!” You tell them, their mouths closing instantly as they sit down crossed legged in the sand.

“Fuck that! He grabbed you mom.” Junior says in protest as he lays his little brother down where you had him previously,”I seen him.”

“You touched our mom?!” Anthony and Carlos say angrily.

Oscar cocks his head to the side at this information, not knowing that this was the reason behind Junior’s push,”You touched my wife? I oughta kill you.” He tells him, not raising his voice so the younger kids couldn’t hear. Oscar kicking his leg under the guy’s, causing him to fall to the ground once more.

The man, who’s name you still don’t know, gulps slightly and takes a look at a certain tattoo on Oscar’s face,”Woah man, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean no harm. Please, just let me walk away right now. I’ll go, you win.” He scrambles as he tries to get back up.

Oscar chuckles darkly, his thumb and pointer finger wiping his nose as he stands back to his normal height,”First apologize to my wife for touching her, then apologize to my boy for disrespecting him, then go apologize to my kids for making their daddy get upset. Then you can go.” Oscar demands, the guy nodding quickly as he mumbles an apology to everybody in that order. Leaving his football on the ground as he sprints away.

“Are you two crazy? You can’t gang up on somebody in public like that. That’s not how you handle things.” You lecture and take a deep breath before instantly pulling both of them into a hug, just relieved that nothing actually happened. The other boys joining as you feel your lower half being embraced as well.

“Are you okay mommy?” Carlos asks, his voice muffled since he had his face pressed into your leg.

“I’m fine baby, are you all okay?” You ask, looking over each one of your boys, not waiting their days to be ruined. They each give you a nod except for Angel who thought this would be the perfect time to give a PSA.

“No talk to stranger. Strangers is bad, daddy and us hurt strangers for mommy.” He says, causing everybody to bust out laughing, the atmosphere at a calm once again.

“Come on let’s head back out.” Junior offers to his brothers, figuring you would want to talk to Oscar alone. The boy’s all cheer in agreement, all of them walking together to the water once again. Leaving you with just your husband and the baby who was oblivious to anything that just happened.

“You’re not mad at me right?” Oscar asks as he grabs a hold of your waist,”I didn’t mean to get so mad, I just seen him snap on Junior and reacted. Then when I found out he grabbed you I said things I know I shouldn’t have. I just seen red, that’s it.”

“I’m not mad papi. I was just more scared, I didn’t want you or Junior to get in trouble because of me. And it didn’t help to have the kids cheering in the background like some sort of entourage.”

Oscar couldn’t help but laugh at that,”Yeah, they watch too much tv. I’ll talk to them later that it’s not okay to encourage a fight, no matter if I would have won anyway if it came down to it.” He adds smugly

“You sure about that? You’re not the same guy you were back in freeridge.” You tease and poke his soft belly,”You got a little dad bod going on now papi. I think I even see a gray hair.”

“Shut up.” Oscar laughs and pulls you firmly against him,”You love all of it.”

You smile and nod in agreement, standing up on your tippy toes to plant a kiss on his lips,”I do.” You mumble against them,”Now it’s your turn to sit with the baby so I can go into the water.”

“Fine.” Oscar says as he pulls away, sitting in your spot and grabbing Alexander, laying him in between his legs.

“Don’t let the sun hit him too much.” You remind him as you pull off the white cover up and toss it onto one of the many bags that you had packed.

“I know, I’ve only done this four other times.” Oscar chuckles causing you to playfully roll your eyes.

“Shhh.” You hush him, putting your glasses down as well before running off to join the rest of your so called cubs. No doubt in your mind that the same fire you had for protecting them, is the same one they had for you. This being proved true as they all went on defense mode when a guy even walked to close to you.

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adiwriting · 4 years ago

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Sunday Mornings 7/?

Notes: Hope you guys are still enjoying this thing 7 weeks in! If there’s every any domestic Sunday morning bliss you want to see, hit me up! We’ve got plenty of time left in hiatus for requests.

Week 7:

Michael wakes up to the sound of his phone going off and he reaches out quickly to silence it before it wakes Alex up, too. Unfortunately, in his rush to silence his phone, it also ends the incoming call. He pulls the phone to his face to see what on Earth had somebody calling him so early in the morning that even Alex isn’t awake yet.

The missed call is from Liz and that’s when Michael notices that he has 4 text messages from her.

Liz (4:05am): Are you awake? I need you to come get me.

Liz (4:10am): I get that you’re sleeping, but my towing options are slim and all involve me calling either a misogynistic pig or a racist one.

Liz (4:20am): I’m gonna get murdered out here.

Liz (4:25am): Please don’t make me call Max for help, I’m not ready to see him yet.

Michael immediately calls Liz back and she picks up on the first ring.

“I thought you were in California,” he whispers, trying not to wake Alex. As carefully as he can, he crawls out of bed and grabs the first pair of pants that he can find and throws them on.

“I was, I’m back,” she answers. “Or… almost back. My car broke down just outside of San Patricio.”

“Damn.”

He instantly knows what she means now about being scared to call anyone else. The guy that runs San Patricio’s sole shop is such a notorious racist that even those who grew up in Roswell know not to ever call him. And the only other shop in Roswell besides Michael’s is run by a family of sexist pigs who are currently in the middle of a harassment lawsuit.

“See, I’m going to end up in some creepy House of Wax museum if you don’t come,” she whines and he chuckles softly.

“You are not, I’m coming to get you,” he says.

He grabs a shirt from the dresser and steps out into the hall.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“Ping me your location,” he says, moving to grab a pair of sneakers from the entryway. “It’ll take me a bit. I’ve gotta drive out to get a tow truck before I can come to you. Are you okay? Do you want me to stay on the line?”

Michael hears her sigh of relief and knows in his heart that this is the right thing to do, even if the idea of leaving Alex naked in bed on a Sunday is the last thing he truly wants to do.

“You don’t need to,” she tries to say, but Michael doesn’t buy it. She sounds nervous, even though she’s the toughest, most self-sufficient woman he’s ever met.

“Give me a minute, I’m just going to tell Alex where I’m going,” he says.

He doesn’t bother hanging up the phone, but pulls it away from his ear. When he turns back to the hallway, Alex is already standing in it, leaning against the wall. He’s got his crutch in one hand and is rubbing his eyes with the other. He’s in nothing but a pair of boxers, looking adorably confused and groggy.

“Where are you going?” Alex complains, reaching out his hand to try and get Michael to come back to bed. It’s tempting, and Michael wants to, but he can’t.

“Liz needs my help,” he explains, gesturing towards the phone in his hand.

Alex blinks a few times and his body tenses as he becomes more alert.

“I thought she was still in California.”

“She’s back. And I’ve gotta go get her. She’s on the side of the road, I can’t just leave her there.”

“Did she say what was wrong?” Alex asks. “Why is she back? Did something happen? What about her research?”

“It’s too early for so many questions,” he complains.

“Sorry. What’s wrong?” he asks.

Michael just shrugs. “She just said that her car broke down.”

Alex nods and moves into the living room to grab a pair of sweatpants and t-shirt that had been left on the floor last night in their haste to undress each other.

“What are you doing?” Michael asks, confused as he watches Alex sit down on the couch and start to dress himself.

“Going with you,” he says, looking at Michael like he’s lost his mind.

“But it’s Sunday,” he argues. “You’re supposed to stay in bed all day.”

“No, it’s Sunday, I’m supposed to be with you all day,” Alex counters

“Smooth, Manes. Real smooth.” Michael smiles uncontrollably. He should protest. Let Alex go back to bed and assure him that he’ll be back in time for breakfast, but he doesn’t.

Alex moves back into the bedroom and comes out holding his prosthesis, his liner and sock tucked under his arm. He moves towards the door. Michael gives him a curious look.

“I’ll put it on in the car,” Alex explains.

He sets the prosthesis down so that he can slip his shoe on. Once he’s done, he rubs his face one more time and runs his hands through his hair, making it stand on end even worse than before. He looks utterly adorable and Michael is going to make sure he knows it, just as soon as they get back home from picking Liz up. Because no matter what Alex might say, Sundays are most certainly for staying in bed all day…

“We’re just giving her a tow, right?”

“Right,” Michael assures him, grabbing the keys from the hook. He helps Alex back up and takes the prosthesis from him so he can navigate better. Then, he opens the front door and follows Alex out, locking the door behind him.

“Did you ping your location yet?” Michael brings the phone back up to his ear to ask.

“You sneaky little brats,” Liz says, sounding shocked. “You got together and neither of you told me?!”

Michael is confused for a moment before he remembers that Liz is on social media even less than he is. Meaning, she’s not on it at all. So she has no way of knowing that Alex is his boyfriend now. The few times they’ve talked since she’s been gone, they’ve stuck strictly to science related topics. He hadn’t thought to tell her, and clearly, neither had Alex.

“Uh, yeah?” he says, unsure how to read her reaction. Alex is one of her best friends and Michael likes to think that Liz and he are friendly enough, but maybe she’ll be mad about the Maria of it all?

“How long has this been going on?” she asks. Michael glances at Alex who takes the phone away from his ear and puts it on speaker.

“How long has it been official or how long has it been going on?” Alex asks as Michael waits for Alex to get his seatbelt buckled before turning the truck on and pulling out of the drive.

“Both. Obviously,” she says.

“We got back together seven weeks and three days ago,” Alex says, causing Michael to do a double take.

“You counted?” he whispers. Alex shrugs.

“Nerd,” he teases, fondly. Alex just winks at him.

He sets the phone between then and starts the process of putting on his leg.

“We’ve been on and off since right before graduation,” Alex explains.

“Maria told me that Michael was your museum guy but I didn’t know it was ever more than that night… wow.” Michael hears Liz whistle then rattle off something in Spanish and it’s far too early to try and translate.

“Is she pinging us her location?” Michael asks.

“Tell Michael that I’m trying but it won’t locate me. I barely have enough bars for this phone call to go through,” she explains.

“And you all gave me a hard time when I suggested we all get chipped,” Alex says, giving Michael a look that has him rolling his eyes.

“Because I’m not a lost puppy,” he grumbles. “Just help her figure out where she is,” he adds, effectively ending the discussion before they can get into that argument again.

He zones out as Alex takes the lead on walking her through looking for mile markers to help them figure out her exact location. Which is good, because by the time they finish with that, they are at the junkyard and Michael is rushing into the office to grab the keys to the tow.

“GPS is saying we’ll be there in 40 minutes, so you know that means Michael will get us there in 30,” Alex says, as they both climb into the tow truck.

“Perfect, plenty of time for you to give me the gossip,” she says and Michael groans.

“It’s too early for this, Ortecho,” he complains.

“You’ve been banging my best friend for years and I didn’t know,” she argues and then her tone completely changes to one of concern when she says, “Did Maria know?”

Alex grows visibility tense at the mention of Maria. While they are all working on being friends, there’s still a ways to go before things are 100% again, and Michael is well aware that there’s more that happened with Maria and Alex’s friendship than he’s entirely aware of.

“Bring up Max, that’ll shut her up,” Michael says.

It’s not too early for Michael to translate the next thing that Liz says. He’s had all the Spanish curse words memorized since he was a kid.

“I’m trying to be supportive here, you don’t have to be an ass,” she says.

“Starting with congratulations and avoiding talk of exes is usually a good place to start,” Michael counters, refusing to feel bad.

“Of course. I’m sorry guys,” she says, honestly sounding it. “I’m just surprised. Of course I’m happy for you both. So long as you’re both happy.”

Michael looks over at Alex, who reaches out for his hand and smiles softly before saying, “Immensely.”

Fuck. Michael loves Alex so much. He wants to wax poetically about it for hours, but he’ll save it for when Liz isn’t on the other end of the line… But when they get home, Michael is going to have some serious words with him.

Alex licks his lips and Michael has to let go of his hand and look at the road if he wants to avoid crashing. He shakes his head, forcing himself to focus.

“For the record, Ortecho,” Michael says. “Alex and I haven’t been banging for years. We make love.”

That earns him an amused chuckle from Alex and a shocked one from Liz.

“¡Ay! Mikey! Okay,” she says. “I didn’t realize.”

“Well now you do,” he says.

He’s not really sure why it even matters. It never has before. For the past twelve years, he’s kept his relationship with Alex between he and Alex, and yet… It matters. It’s like Alex said last week, it’s annoying that people just assume their relationship couldn’t possibly be deeper than a consistent hookup. Like the fact that they are two men makes their love story somehow less than.

“Well, I won’t push anymore,” she says. “Clearly it’s a sensitive subject. But just so we’re clear, whenever either of you are ready, I’d love to hear your story. You both deserve the world and if you found that in each other, then that’s wonderful.”

“For somebody who doesn’t believe in romance or love, you seem to have no problem wishing it for others,” Alex says, an unspoken question lingering in the air.

Liz sighs. “Yeah, well… It’s not that I don’t believe in love. It’s just that my love stripped me of my agency and then didn’t fight for me. So… Max can screw himself.”

“Liz,” Michael says seriously, cutting off whatever sympathy Alex is clearly getting ready to respond with. “Take it from somebody who gets it more than you’ll ever know. The people you love will hurt you. They’ll make decisions without you that impact your life. It sucks. It hurts. But it doesn’t hurt more than being alone. Forgive him.”

“But—”

“No,” he cuts her off, before she can give an excuse. “Forgive him.”

“He hasn’t even apologized,” she says. “He didn’t come after me. He just let me go.”

“And you left,” he says, not unkindly, but he’s also not about to let her change the narrative. Michael did that too many times and it got him nowhere. He loves Max and… yeah, he won’t ever admit it to her, but he loves Liz too. So he won’t let her make the same mistakes he did.

“Michael is right,” Alex cuts in. “Max has his own list of ways you wronged him too. And if you both let it, that list will keep you apart for years. It’s not worth it. Not when you really love somebody.”

Alex unbuckles his seatbelt to slide over in the truck, so he’s right next to Michael and can lean his head on his shoulder. Michael wraps his arm around Alex and holds him close.

Liz is silent on the other end, and that’s fine. Alex and Michael give her the time and space she needs to take in what they’ve just said.

Alex reaches up to thread his fingers through the hand that’s holding him close. Michael places a kiss to the top of his head.

“I love you,” he whispers. “Thank you for always coming home.”

“Thank you for giving me a home to always come back to,” Alex whispers back.

It takes them another hour and a half to get Liz’s car to the junkyard where Michael promises he’ll fix it tomorrow, even though it’s his day off. Then Liz refuses to take no for an answer, insisting on cooking them breakfast as a thank you. They get stuck at the Crashdown for a while, catching up with Rosa, Arturo, and Liz. By the time they are finally back home, it’s just after 11, and yet, it doesn’t take hardly any convincing to get Alex to climb back into bed with him so that Michael can make good on the promise he made to himself this morning. He spends the next several hours making sure Alex feels fucking worshiped like the vision he is.

Tagged: @callieramics @redstalkingdeath

As always if anyone wants to be tagged, let me know!

#roswell nm #roswell new mexico #Malex fic #malex #fic: sunday mornings #alex manes #michael guerin #liz ortecho #fluff #domestic bliss

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thekillerssluts · 4 years ago

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My Relationship to Performance Has Changed

A great rock-and-roll show means openness, confrontation, and a kind of danger, and those ideas right now feel too heavy to lift.

Last October, before the second pandemic wave took off in New York City, I had one last band practice in my backyard in South Brooklyn. Five of us were working on songs from my new solo record. Normally we’d play in the basement, but it’s pretty low-ceilinged, and we��d read Zeynep Tufekci’s recent Atlantic article on viral spread, so we were all hyper-focused on air circulation. My bandmate Sara had contracted COVID-19—and recovered—in March, but the rest of us had no immunity. Besides, we suspected that we were in for a long winter and might as well hang out outdoors.

It was warm in the sun. After hauling the drums, keyboards, keyboard stands, guitars, and amps outside and plugging everything in, I hadn’t wanted to bother setting up microphones, so we had to play softly to hear ourselves harmonize. When we paused for lunch, someone leaned out of a fourth-story window in the apartment building next door and yelled: “Are you done or are you just taking a break? I have things to do, but I really miss live music!” “Me too, man!” I called back. “Should be just a break.”

Six months and a difficult winter later, the break is ending. I’m seeing more and more Instagram posts for shows that aren’t just wishful thinking. Low-capacity indoor shows are popping up in New York. Outdoor—maybe even full-capacity indoor—concerts are coming this summer. Am I ready to play? Ask me every other day and the answer changes. I’m torn. I’m desperate for sound engineers to get back behind the board and bartenders to start earning tips. I want venues to thrive again, both as places for art in neighborhoods and for the sake of the network that keeps music culture alive in America. I want my booking agent to feel excited again; he loves music so much. And I want musicians to make a living. So many people have been so screwed by the past year. I guess I just want everyone to get paid.

But the actual performance; the rebuilding of the sonic cathedral, as Dave Grohl wrote last spring; communally reaching for rock-and-roll transcendance? I’m not there yet. I’m not concerned that I’ll get sick. I received my second vaccine shot at the end of March and am ready to high-five strangers on the subway. My hesitance has an element of crowd-shyness, which we’ll all get over. But in my own performance, I don’t know how to meet this moment. A great rock-and-roll show means openness, confrontation, and a kind of danger, and those ideas right now feel too heavy to lift.

I used to think of performance in purely aesthetic terms. In the movie La Strada, a clown wearing angel wings does a high-wire act across a crowded piazza. For his finale, he brings out a table on the wire and, while balancing, tries to sit and eat a full plate of spaghetti. The heroine of the movie watches him with an almost religious ecstasy. When I first started performing, I strove for transcendence and stupidity, high concept and low art. My focus was on keeping myself in the air.

When my band Arcade Fire was playing mostly to people who hadn’t heard us before, we felt that the best way to get them to open up was to blow the windows and doors out. At an early show in Lawrence, Kansas, my brother, Win, bashed Styrofoam tiles out of the venue’s ceiling with his mic stand. We pushed as hard for an audience of six people (two of them my parents) upstairs at AS220 in Providence, Rhode Island, as we did in front of tens of thousands in the desert at our first Coachella show (during which I accidentally cut Win’s guitar cable in half by repeatedly smashing a cymbal into the ground).

At a certain point, as people got to know our music, my relationship to performance changed. The energy from the crowd was greater than anything coming from the giant speaker stacks. The audience wasn’t a challenge to overcome, or an opponent to conquer. We became a team. Not in an abstract, lovey way but how a sports team operates—pushing one another to do better, sometimes failing, sometimes frustrating one another, sometimes just joking around.The high-wire act of live performance—Will the music come together?—was still there. I’ve even sometimes tried to make the metaphor real, climbing arena scaffolding with a drumstick in my teeth and a drum strapped over my shoulder to play 30 feet in the air. Some of our crew members hate it—“Will! You have children now!”—but climbing up there doesn’t actually feel that dangerous, and a little nervousness is good. I’m reaching for primate simplicity and catharsis: The crowd needs tension to experience release.But now I have no desire to make tension. I want people to feel safe and comfortable, and I wonder whether creating a feeling of danger and openness is antithetical to that. I know that cultivating a perception of safety and actually making people safe are different. On tour, in a big venue, every night our management and local security have a briefing. It’s partly to set a vibe—People are here for music. Everybody be chill. If some teenager sneaks into a closer section, please let them. But the briefing is also serious—where the medics are located, what the escape routes are. Most of the time, these safety measures are invisible. I worry that post-pandemic precautions, as welcome and necessary as they are, will be depressingly visible. Some elements, such as temperature checks, will be inane. Some, such as requiring vaccination, will be important. Regardless, they will also set a tone—not You are entering a place for music, but You are entering a secure location. Dancing is hard when you’re looking at your feet; singing is hard when you’re thinking about everybody else’s breath. I bet the crowd could get over this. I’m not confident I could. With limited capacities and tight procedures, I worry that the stage will feel like the VIP section of the VIP room at a members-only club. Sterile, lonely, all of us chillingly aware that we are part of a ticketed event.

I have another concern that’s hard to shake. After this pandemic year, I’m more aware of the responsibility I have not only to the people who buy tickets, but to the driver making deliveries to the show and to the family of the woman working arena concessions, people who really don’t care about what I’m doing onstage. Vaccination numbers will grow, and the pandemic will end, God willing. I’m not worried about the spread of the coronavirus in particular. But these links of responsibility remain. The analytical part of my brain turns off when touring starts. Before scrambling back to normalcy, I want to make sure that this sense of connection becomes embedded in how I think. I would really love to just be a musician—but I’m also an employer and a player in an industry that has chewed up and spit out plenty of people, especially in this past year.

My hesitations are all about shows, though, not music. Over the past year, I’ve rarely played music with others—a few practices and filmed performances; work on the new Arcade Fire record in November; a handful of Zooms with bandmates to help a school’s PTA fundraiser or support a candidate in the city-comptroller race. But in all of those instances, I’ve experienced an ease, a rightness to the communication—not through the screen with whoever was listening, necessarily, but the people I was playing with. That connection felt restorative, like having a night of deep sleep that repairs parts of yourself you don’t know how to access.

I know people are ready for live music, ready to forget themselves in a wash of sound, ready to loudly talk with their friends over the song they don’t like that much. And so, for heaven’s sake, go to Neumos in Seattle when shows come back. Go to the Hideout in Chicago. See your favorite band, or somebody new. Plenty of artists don’t share my nervousness. I don’t want to add worry to the world; I’m just figuring out my new relationship to performance.

The magnolias are out in New York, and some of the apple trees are blossoming. Temperatures are creeping past 60. The vaccines keep rolling out. The future seems more possible. If I miss an emotion from live shows, it’s not any moment of transcendence. I miss the time just after, when, dazed and excited, you still feel the reach of some universal gesture, but the only thing concrete is the people around you.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/world-changed-what-makes-live-show-successful-didnt-arcade-fire/618625/

#Arcade Fire #will butler

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thegryffindorprincess · 4 years ago

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Twin Size Mattress//Draco Malfoy x Reader

She hopes I'm cursed forever to Sleep on a twin-sized mattress In somebody's attic or basement my whole life Never graduating up in size to add another And my nightmares will have nightmares every night Oh, every night, every night

A/N: Based off of ‘Twin Size Mattress’ by The Front Bottoms. So this song is one of my absolute favourites and I think it’s so sad dude. However I thought this would make such a beautifully sad draco x reader. Just to let you know: requests are open, I have a new Draco series coming & a Lucius imagine out super soon! Anyway enjoy!

Set: Golden Trio era into Post War

Word Count:1,989

Warnings: honestly so much sadness bro

This is for the lions living in the wiry broke down frames Of my friends bodies When the flood water comes, it ain't gonna be clear It's gonna look like mud

But I will help you swim I will help you swim I'm gonna help you swim

To Draco, she was a roaring lion with a mane of perfect hair and a will stronger than anybody else’s. He’d noticed her long before she’d noticed him. He watched her as she got weaker throughout the years, the darker the wizarding world got. She was a muggle born, so he guessed this was a hell worse than she’d ever expected to experience. Y/N’s body became weaker over time and the lion like prowess stopped as Draco looked after her from afar. She stayed too close to Hermione for him to ever speak to her. But he wanted to. He got to one night, when he was taking a late night stroll around the grounds to clear his mind in his fifth year. Dumbledores army had just arrived back to the castle, Harry had met Voldermort again, this time at the Ministry and everyone was scared. That’s when he saw her standing on the edge of the Black Lake, swaying on her heels. He’d approached quietly, playing with his hair as he came closer. When she saw him she flashed him a gentle smile. Draco finally plucked up the courage to stand next to her. He flicked his wand so that a gentle, silver glow lit the river bank. Y/N looked up at him through her thick eyelashes.

“Are you scared Draco?” She asked gently. They’d never spoken, but she laid her head on his shoulder then as if they’d been friends for years. He raised his hand to her head and gently played with Y/N’s hair, thinking of an answer.

“I’ll protect you.” Was all he said as they stood there together in peace. “I will protect you with everything I have.” She shuffled closer to him then.

“The floodwaters coming Draco...” She huffed as she looked at the water in front of them. He took her further into his arms and kissed her forehead.

“I will help you swim.”

This is for the snakes and the people they bite For the friends I've made, for the sleepless nights For the warning signs I've completely ignored There's an amount to take, reasons to take more

They’d decided to be together after that night, in a secretive way, but still devoted. He’d snuck out of the manor at least three times a week so she could show him muggle London in the summer holidays. Draco adored the time he spent with her, but in the back of his mind he knew it was coming to an end. You see, unlike Y/N, a beautiful lioness, Draco was a snake. In the recent months, things were becoming darker. Instead of running away though, he was losing any shred of bravery he had left. He was friends with all the wrong people. Back at Hogwarts, he sat at the Slytherin house table, the dark mark he’d acquired burning under neath his robes, he looked over to her. Drowning out the conversations of his friends about mud bloods, he watched Y/N laugh with Harry, Ron and Hermione as they sat huddled together and it stung. Why couldn’t he be like them?

Draco cuddled her to him as they lay in bed, thoughts of what he had to do swirling through his head. Y/N was peacefully asleep, while he lay wide awake. He was wearing long sleeved pyjamas even in the heat as he couldn’t let her see what he’d done. As he lay looking down at the girl, he thought about all the warning signs at home he’d ignored, he should’ve prepared for this war, got away, joined the order, moved as far away as possible. That was all just dreams now. His mistakes were piling up on top of each other and he couldn’t take anymore. Draco kissed her head as he jumped out of bed, sliding out of the room silently, praising merlin that his girl was a heavy sleeper. He made his way out into the corridor towards the room of requirement.

It's no big surprise you turned out this way When they close their eyes and prayed you would change And they cut your hair, and sent you away You stopped by my house the night you escaped With tears in my eyes, I begged you to stay You said, "Hey man, I love you, but no fucking way!"

Y/N awoke to screaming in the halls. She slipped unnoticeably out of the Slytherin common room, getting lost in the crowds. Hermione appeared then next to her, concern spread across her features. She pulled Y/N with her as they jogged out into the courtyard. Hermione and her pushed to the front. There lay Dumbledore, dead. Harry was bent over his body sobbing, his shoulders heaving as he held his hand. The school raised their wands to the sky, Draco was no where to be seen. People began to leave then, one by one going back to their common rooms, until the four of them were left.

“This was Draco.” Harry spat. Y/N looked at him in slight shock, struggling to regain composure. “He let them in. He’s one of them. He has the mark. Snape had to kill Dumbledore to save Draco. This is his fault.” Rage began to sore through Y/N’s body. She briefly dropped to the ground to give Harry a hug, before getting up and leaving the three be. She ran, as fast as her legs would carry her, up to the Owlery tower. She stood on the edge for ages, bent over in agony. She never thought she could hate him, but he’d proved her wrong. Y/N was knocked out of her thoughts by a familiar hand on her shoulder. Draco smiled down at her, tears brimming in his eyes. She simply shrugged him off.

“Show me it.” She demanded, crossing her arms and standing opposite. He looked at her wide eyed. “Show me it, now.” Draco took a deep breathe and began to roll up his sleeve, showing her the mark that adorned his pale flesh. She scowled at it. “It’s no big surprise you turned out this way, really.” She whispered at nobody in particular. Draco stayed silent, pulling down his sleeve again, hiding the mark once more. “I just prayed you would change sides.” Y/N looked at him now. He guiltily stared at his feet. “Did you escape?” She asked gently, watching how he nodded so slowly it felt like it might of not happened. “Are you going to fight against the school?” She asked, her tone emotionless. He nodded again, looking up at her with big, sensitive eyes. Y/N glared at him, and turned on her heal to walk away. Draco, with tears in his eyes went to chase her.

“Stay?” He begged, droplets of water rolling down his cheeks. Y/N turned to him, placed a gentle kiss on his cheek and shook her head.

“Hey man, I love you.” Draco looked up a little eagerly, but was met with her pained face walking away from him once more. “But no fucking way.” She spat.

This is for the lake that me and my friends swim in Naked and dumb on a drunken night But it should've felt good, but I can hear the Jaws theme song On repeat in the back of my mind

The war was over. The right side had won. Draco’s family had all charges against them dropped. He should be happy, he thought to himself as he stood by the side of the large river in front of him, Blaise and Pansy splashing eachother already swimming. Draco stripped from his clothes and dived into the cold water. He felt alive for the first time in a few years. The group swam together, laughing, all of them naked. The water felt so relaxing over his skin as he sunk deeper into the river. But still, in the back of his mind he knew something was still wrong. It was on repeat, the sense of loneliness, which he tried to push away. That was the moment he decided to start to drink. Everyday. To feel alive again.

Make sure you kiss your knuckles before you punch me in the face There are lessons to be learned Consequences for all the stupid things I say And it is no big surprise you turned out this way The spark in your eyes, The look on your face I will not be late

He’d passed out again. It was only three pm, but he was laid on his sofa in his flat, eyes closed. They fluttered open at the sound of ringing. Draco flung his arm to reach for his phone. The number was unknown. He groaned, before swiping and answering.

“Who is this?” He snapped down the line.

“Jesus Draco,” A familiar voice spoke, “kiss your knuckles before you punch me in the face.” The sentenced ended with a slight tone of amusement. Draco’s heart began to flutter as he realised it was Y/N.

“Lesson learnt.” He groaned. “I’ll take the consequences for all the stupid things I say.” She laughed gently.

“Are you drunk?” She asked quietly. Draco nervously paused.

“Yeah...” Draco whispered. Y/N sighed.

“It’s no big surprise you turned out this way.” The words stung as Draco remembered the last time she’d used them. “Anyway, do you want to see me? It would be nice to see you. I’ve missed the sparks in your eyes and the look on your face when you see me.” Draco swallowed loudly.

“Please,” He sighed, “I will not be late.”

I wanna contribute to the chaos I don't wanna watch and then complain 'Cause I am through finding blame That is the decision that I have made

Draco staggered into the bar. He knew he’d fucked up before he’d seen the disappointment painted on her face. His breath stank of fire whiskey, his clothes were dirty and he could barely walk. He sat down opposite her, and she simply blankly stared back. He’d gotten nervous. He’d contributed to the chaos in his brain by poisoning himself. He didn’t want to watch himself be lonely just to complain.

“Am I to blame for this then?” Y/N spat at him as he swayed in his seat. She looked beautiful Draco thought, absolutely radiant. Draco simply shrugged as she asked. They sat in silence for a while, taking eachother in.

“I’m about to be made homeless.” Draco said, with a slight laugh to his tone. He decided to laugh so he didn’t cry. She just stared back at him.

“I’m going.” She announced breaking the silence. “I’m not letting you ruin my life again, i’ve decided.” And Y/N left Draco sitting alone.

Draco laid on the mattress on Blaise’s floor. He stared at the ceiling as his girlfriend Astoria laid next to him asleep. He wondered what Y/N was thinking about. Probably the fact he deserved this. To not have a permanent home. He clung to himself. He didn’t want to sleep. Draco knew when he did his nightmares would get worse. His nightmares had become so violent, he thought his own nightmares were having nightmares. And that’s where he’d stay. On his twin sized mattress he used to share with her, just now without her warmth. And that was how it would be. Every night of his life.

#draco #draco malfoy #draco x reader #draco x reader fluff #draco x reader angst #draco x reader sad #draco malfoy x reader #draco malfoy x reader fluff #draco malfoy x reader angst #draco sad #draco fluff #draco angst #draco fanfiction #frontbottoms #songprompt

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omgrachwrites · 4 years ago

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Tell a Tale of You and Me - Chapter Seven

Pairing: Sirius Black x Reader

Summary: You knew that making a bet with Sirius Black was like making a deal with the devil but you just couldn’t help yourself. You had never been a heavenly woman.

Warnings: fluff, angst, pining, Sirius being oblivious

Words: 2233

A/N: This is a little bit of a filler chapter, it sheds some light on what happened in fourth year and how Y/N became a badass! I hope you guys enjoy, please let me know what you think and let me know if you would like to be tagged! I love you all very much! xxx

Chapter Seven

Three years previously

Wincing, you massaged your aching hand before you moved your quill down your piece of parchment, tapping the point of the eagle owl feather against your chin as you thought what to write next. You were writing an essay for History of Magic which was definitely the most boring subject at Hogwarts and the mention of all the blood always made you feel squeamish.

You jerked your head up when you heard footsteps approaching your desk and you sincerely hoped that it wasn’t the Slytherin girl from the other day. You smiled in relief as you saw that it was Remus. Though, you were still a little nervous around him, obviously you knew him but you didn’t really hang round with him. It was mainly because he hung around with Sirius and every time you spoke to Sirius you stuttered and blood always rushed to your cheeks. You were so hopeless around Sirius but you couldn’t help it, he was just so handsome. But, he barely thought of you as a friend.

Remus was really nice though, “hi Y/N, can I sit down?” he smiled, sitting down when you nodded, “doing homework?” he asked with a teasing grin that made you flush.

“Yeah,” you whispered, you didn’t want to get yelled at by Madam Pince, “it’s for History of Magic so it’s a wonder that I’m not asleep,” you giggled and Remus nodded understandingly.

“Oh yeah, I can imagine, it should be an interesting subject but Professor Binns has an extraordinary talent of making it so boring,” he chuckled and you noticed that he looked tired, he was ill about once every month, “do you mind if I study with you?” he asked kindly as he pulled some parchment out of his bag.

You nodded, “of course I don’t mind but thank you for asking,” you answered meekly.

To tell the truth, you didn’t actually study together, instead you both did your homework in silence, only really talking when it was necessary but you liked being in his company. At one point, you passed him your inkwell because he had run out of ink and he touched your arm ever so gently, his eyebrows knitted together as he saw the bruises that littered your arm.

“What happened Y/N?”

Biting your lip, you shook the sleeves of your robes over your hands, “I bumped into one of the Slytherin prefects and she decided to hex me. I’m not very good at standing up for myself,” you wished that you could be braver but you just couldn’t. You hoped that he wouldn’t laugh at you.

Instead he sighed, his soft hazel eyes full of sympathy, you hated it when people looked at you like that, “Y/N,” he trailed off, frowning as he looked over your shoulder.

You turned around to see what had grabbed his attention. It was Narcissa Black, a beautiful but cold girl; she was also Sirius’ cousin. Her friend Morgana was at her side and she was also very pretty. They were probably two of the most popular girls in your year and they were smirking at you. Well, Narcissa was smirking at you, Morgana looked rather bored.

“Y/L/N,” Narcissa smirked before her cold ice blue eyes flicked over to Remus, “scram Lupin, I need to have a girl talk with Y/N.”

Remus opened his mouth to argue, promptly shutting it when somebody called his name from the doorway, “god Moony, you’re always in the library!” you recognised that loud teasing voice, your heart recognised it. Casually, you looked over at Sirius and froze in place, he was so breathtakingly beautiful, “hi Y/N,” he grinned. It felt like all the air had been stolen from your lungs as he carelessly raked a hand through his messy hair.

Your face flushed as you nodded at him and turned to Remus who had been watching you with worried eyes, “I’ll be fine Remus,” you mumbled, “you can go.” Remus sighed as he gave you a quick hug, glared at the Slytherin girls as he caught up with his friends. You chewed your lip nervously as Narcissa and Morgana sat opposite you.

“Tough break about what happened between you and Rosier’s girlfriend, I was sorry to hear about it,” Narcissa started, though she didn’t look sorry as malice sparkled in her eyes, “I know that you’ve got a crush on my cousin Sirius, it’s revolting the way you look at him. A blind man could see it.”

You sighed, feeling your body go hot at the mention of his name and you knew that there was no point in trying to deny it, “yeah, and so have many other people. Have you had this conversation with all of them?” you asked, your tone was a little snarky and Narcissa obviously heard it because her eyes flashed dangerously.

“Actually, we don’t,” Morgan drawled as she inspected her nails, not even looking up at you, “because Sirius doesn’t fancy them. He fancies you.”

Your mind went blank at Morgana’s words, you didn’t know Sirius all that well but you were sure that you would know if he fancied you. Your heart soared happily for a split second, just a split second before it plummeted down to your gut as you started to question Morgana’s words, “he can get anyone he wants, and he does. He’s not shy about people he fancies either. How would you know if he fancies me anyway? You don’t really talk to him, do you?”

Narcissa sighed as she rolled her eyes, it looked as though she thought of the whole thing as tiresome, “I overheard him telling James, and besides you’re rather pretty,” she shrugged.

“Why would you tip me off about this whole thing?” you muttered, you just didn’t know why two Slytherin girls, who weren’t very nice would tip you off about Sirius.

“Because it’s like I said, its revolting seeing you pine for him so just tell him how you feel already, because he feels the same,” she smirked, “see you, Y/L/N. Good luck,” she almost floated away.

Something just didn’t add up about the fact that Narcissa had been rather pleasant to you, she had something of a reputation but finally, you decided that you didn’t care. You dawdled in the corridor, trying to take as much time as possible, nerves and excitement swarmed in your stomach and mixed together to create the most wonderful feeling. It felt like you could do anything, it felt like you could walk on air. Though, you felt like this was all too good to be true.

100% of the time you would stutter and deny it when you were paid a compliment, but you were very pretty, even if you didn’t think so, everybody else thought so. Everybody who knew you had a crush on Sirius – and mostly everyone knew, you were so obvious – all thought that you deserved better.

With a slightly manic grin on your face, you climbed through the portrait hole, ready to confess your feelings. When you walked into the common room, your stomach filled with anxiety, you wanted those wonderful butterflies back, and you felt sick. Lily looked at you with wide green eyes and Remus chewed his lip, his eyes on the floor. Trying to hold your tears back, you glanced away from your friends, looking at the scene that was unfolding before you.

Sirius was very passionately snogging some random girl, right in the middle of the common room, on your favourite armchair, “Sirius,” you muttered, though you didn’t mean for his name to escape your mouth.

To your horror, the beautiful boy heard you and pulled away from the girl with a horrible sucking sound. Sirius grinned at you while the girl rolled her eyes and shot you a venomous glare, “how are you love?” he asked and you wished that he wasn’t so handsome.

You wished that you could just turn your feelings off but you knew that you weren’t the only girl who had had their heart broken by him. You supposed that he was making fun of you when he had told James that he had feelings for you.

“How could you?” you whimpered, pretty much running out of the common room, not caring that quite a lot of people saw you. You ignored Alice and Lily’s call of your name. You had never known such pain in all your fourteen years of life, why would he do this?

Because you had just run out of the common room, you obviously couldn’t hear the conversation that was going on inside it, “Merlin, she is so weird,” the girl giggled before leaning in to kiss Sirius again.

His eyes flashed angrily as he backed away from her, “you need to leave. Right now,” the girl scoffed at his demand, “no, I mean it. Y/N is not weird, she’s wonderful, and she’s my friend.”

----------------------------------------------

Sirius rounded the corner at high speed, ignoring the amused flirtatious glances he was receiving as he ran a hand through his tangled hair; he’d fool around with someone later on. Remus panted as he almost had to jog to keep up with his best friend.

“Merlin, Sirius. Would you slow down? I know that you want to ask Lily about Y/N, but come on!” he grumbled and Sirius shot a smirk at him over his shoulder.

“C’mon on Moons, you’re not getting old on me are you?” finally, Sirius spotted Lily walking down the hallway with Alice, James was walking on the other side of Lily, looking at her adoringly, she looked very bored. Peter was at an extra study session because he was failing Potions, “Evans! Oi, Evans!” the pretty redhead looked up and rolled her eyes.

“What the hell do you want Sirius? Get lost by the way Potter,” she raised an eyebrow while Alice sighed. Sirius chuckled as James winked at him and he walked over to join Sirius and Remus.

“Is Y/N okay? I hardly see her anymore!” they weren’t very good friends but Sirius still missed her.

Lily sighed, “she’s fine, she’s just studying really hard. But I’ll tell her that you were asking after her,” she made to walk off but Sirius stopped her.

“Please, Lily. The only time I ever see her anymore is either in class or at mealtimes and even then she won’t speak to me. And, in the evenings she’s already up in the dormitories,” he gnawed at his lip, feeling guilty. He hoped that he hadn’t done anything to hurt her feelings; Y/N was really sweet.

Lily smirked at him but her green eyes looked angry as they flashed at him, “wow, you’re actually concerned about someone other than yourself, has hell frozen over? Maybe she just doesn’t like you, can’t say that I blame her. Catch you never,” she strode back down the hallway, arm in arm with Alice.

James sighed wistfully as he looked at her retreating back, “she’s so wonderful. How I wish she was mine.”

Sirius scowled at both Lily’s words and his best friends reaction to them, “c’mon Remus, James we have a free period, hopefully she’ll be in the common room,” Sirius climbed the staircase, taking two steps at a time.

“No, I don’t think that’s such a good idea, really Sirius. Maybe we should just leave her be,” Remus tried to reason with him and James agreed.

“He’s right Pads, if she’s not talking to you it must be for a reason,” James sighed, hurrying to keep up.

“And, I’m going to find out what that reason is,” he dismissed his friends words; he had to know what was going on with her and apologise if he needed to.

When the three boys entered the common room, they discovered that Y/N was sitting by the fire, engrossed on the book she was reading. Sirius cleared his throat, ruffling his hair nervously as Y/N looked up, politely startled. Her pretty eyes lingered on Sirius for a second before she looked at Remus and James, her face breaking out into a warm smile. There was no trace of the usual nervousness in her smile.

“Hi boys,” her voice was a little louder than usual and as she closed her book and stood up, it seemed like she was standing taller.

“Uh, hi. We just wanted to check in on you, we have hardly seen you in ages, Y/N,” Sirius started.

She shrugged, “I’ve just been studying, I want to have a future after Hogwarts you know,” she smirked.

Sirius was so confused; she wasn’t acting like her usual self, “are you okay? You’re not acting at all like yourself,” Remus sounded just as confused as Sirius felt.

“Oh don’t mind them Y/N,” James smirked, “I like you like this, no offense.”

“None taken James,” she winked at him before looking at Remus again, “I’ve grown up quite quickly in the past couple of months, I hated being meek and obedient, it didn’t feel like me,” she strolled over to Remus and kissed his cheek, “thanks for checking on me though,” she smiled at James, ruffling his hair. She hardly spared a glance at Sirius. Remus’ cheeks flushed as he looked at his best friend.

By the look of it, he didn’t understand what was going on any more than Sirius did. James just looked like he was having a great time.

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@approved-by-dentists @thefuturelawyer @a-miserable-hufflepunk @firelordmillie @seriouslysiriuss @sleep-i-ness @play-morezeppelin @pregnant-piggy @sleepingalaska @smiithys @blisfvll @rexorangecouny

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dany-is-my-queen · 4 years ago

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Born To Be Yours | Part IV

Sansa Stark x Fem! Baratheon! Reader (Daenerys Targaryen x Fem! Baratheon! Reader)

Season 1-8

Word Count: 1,696

Pt.1 Pt.2 Pt.3 Pt.5 Pt.6 Pt.7 Pt.8 Pt.9

“Has he done this before?” Ned asked, referring to Cersei’s wounded cheek.

“My brother would have killed him.” She answered.

”Your brother or your lover?”

“Jaime and I shared a womb. We came into this world together, we belong together. Do you love your children?”

“With all my heart.”

“No more than I love mine.” She confidently said.

“And they are all Jaime’s, except for Y/N.”

“The hair gives her away. I used to have resentment against her. Being the only creation that we brought to the world. Y/N was the only time we really gave it a try. A man who didn’t give a fuck for me. He never loved me but he loves her.” The Lannister woman held a neutral tone.

“When the King returns I will tell him the truth. You must be gone by then. Take the rest of your children and go.”

“You should have climbed those steps. When you play the game of thrones you win or you die. There is no middle ground.” Lord Eddard Stark discovered the secret Lord Arryn died for. It wasn’t his territory anymore.

“I should have spent more time with you. Show you how to be a man. You can learn a big deal from Y/N. I was never meant to be a father. Everyone out!” Cersei looked suspiciously at Ned, Joffrey left the room retaining the tears, not processing what was happening.

“Except you, thanks the gods for blessing me with a daughter like you.” You held his hand tightening the grip. “The girl, Daenerys. You and Ned were right. Varys, Littlefinger, my brother. worthless. No one would tell me no but the two of you. You are much alike. So honorable. She changed my mind. Let her live. Stop it if it’s not too late.”

“We will.”

“And my son, help him. Make him better than me. Help your brother. He’s not ready. Give him your council to make wise choices.” You nodded sobbing.

“I shall always remember this strength you gave.”

“It comes from yourself. Now give me a moment with this fool. And Y/N, don’t be scared even in the face of danger.”

“His grace has had a change of heart concerning Daenerys Targaryen. Princess Y/N convinced him. Whatever arrangements you made, unmade them. At once.” Your father’s best friend declared.

“I’m afraid those birds have flown. The girl is likely dead by now.” You scowled.

“But if it’s not the case stop sending sell swords or assassins to do the job. Also if it’s possible send other birds to abort the mission. That’s a command, Lord Varys.”

“Yes, my princess.” This Targaryen girl will survive.

You once more found little Arya with his dancing teacher, you approached while she was off guard earning a slight hit on your arm.

“I didn’t see you there.” The small one exclaimed.

“We don’t need eyes to see what’s around us, boy.” Syrio reminded her.

“I’m sorry about your father, Y/N.” You sat on the stairs. “I miss Robb, Bran, Rickon and Jon so much. Unlike Sansa, I prefer the North.”

“I met Jon. He seemed to be a good brother, better than Joffrey that’s for sure.”

“He gave me a sword. I named it Needle. I don’t have it here, I’ll show it to you tomorrow.”

“I can’t wait.” You smiled.

“Do you have any bastard siblings?”

“Plenty of them. But it is highly unlikely we’ll ever meet.” You squinted, thinking about the possibility.

“Wish I had a sister like you, mine hates me.”

“I don’t think you hate each other. You just have different opinions, different preferences. You share more than blood. I see a lot of potencial in you. You cannot use someone else’s fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.” She closed her eyes and proceeded with her classes.

This was crazy. Your mother locked you in your room. The King was dead. Everything was out of place.

“What‘s going on? Why you locked me up?” You shouted to Cersei. She frantically sighed.

“It was a precaution. We don’t know where your loyalty stands, Y/N. Your brother is the King now. Your friend’s father conspired to dethrone him and seize it from himself.”

“That’s insanity...-“

“The little bird was on her room. I haven’t seen the other.” Sandor entered with the redhead.

“Where’s Lady Arya?”

“We have guards looking for her. She won’t be able to hide forever.”

“Princess, what’s happening?” She anxiously asked. After your mother explained what her lord father allegedly did, she made her write a message to his older brother Robb, asking him to come to King’s Landing and swear fealty to Joffrey. You also learned from Lord Baelish that Renly and Loras flee the city before they took the Lord of Winterfell as a prisoner.

“My father would never do that! He is not a traitor” She spat once you two were alone.

“I know, my lady. It must be a misunderstanding.” You said trying to calm her nerves.

“Where do they took him?”

“To the dungeons, I suppose. Things are going to clarify.” The pretty little dove was completely bewildered, same as you.

That very night you went undercover to see the alleged offender.

“Lord Eddard. I brought you some water. Are you okay?” Holding a torchlight, you removed your hood kneeling to give him the canteen.

“Thanks for visiting me. I’m worried about my daughters. You know where they are?”

“We haven’t found Arya, we‘re still on the search. Sansa is alright, she’s under custody. I will protect her.”

“Thank you, Y/N.”

“Treason, my lord? I don’t think that makes sense. Why would you say my brother is not the rightful heir?” You raised an eyebrow.

“You are a clever young princess, I’m surprised you haven’t noticed yet.”

“About what?”

“I didn't know if it was appropriate to tell you.” He took another big gulp. “You are the only highborn child Robert had. Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella are your uncle Jaime’s bastards. Your mother confessed it to me the other day. They tried to kill Bran cause he saw them. Don’t say a word, not even mention it or you might face the same fate. Though you are the princess is better to be careful with your family.” He was speaking the truth. Deep down you’ve always suspected it, however it was hard to assimilate.

“Y-yes, I won’t say anything to anyone.” You promised. “If you bend the knee and say he is the one true heir to the crown, you might live.”

“Nothing haunts us like the things we don’t say. You have a gentle heart, don’t let the wrong people take advantage of it.” The late hand cautioned.

You were in the Thorne Room. Your mother called Ser Barristan, he stepped forward facing the new King. A huge crowd was there. You stood beside the Stark girl.

“You served the Realm good and faithfully. Every man and woman in the seven kingdoms owns you thanks. But it is time to put aside your armor and your sword. It is time to rest and look with pride at your many years of service.” The lioness said.

“Your Grace, the king's guards is a sworn brotherhood. Only death realizes us for our sacred trust.” He replied.

“You let my father died. You are too old to protect anybody.” The boy on the throne yelled.

“The council has determined Ser Jaime Lannister as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.” Jaime wasn’t even here, that was stupid.

“A man who profane his blade against the king he swore to defend.”

“Careful, Ser.”

“I am a knight. I shall die a knight! Here boy, melted it out and add it to the others.” He threw his sword and left the room.

“If anyone else has other matters to set before his grace, let him speak now or go ford and told his silence.” The northerner squeezed your hand before speaking.

“Your grace.”

“Lady Sansa of the House Stark.”

“Do you have some business with the king and the council, Sansa?”

“I do. As it pleases your grace I ask mercy for my father. Lord Eddard Stark who was hand of the King.”

“Treason is...-“ Pycelle interrupted her.

“Let her speak. I want to hear what she says.” Joffrey declared.

“Thank you, your grace.” You didn’t peel away your glance off her.

“Do you deny your father’s crime?” Baelish inquired.

“No, my lords, I know he must be punished. All I ask is mercy. I know my lord father must regret what he did. He was king Robert's friend and he loved him. You all know he loved him. He never wanted to be hand until the king asked him. They must have lied to him. Lord Renly or Lord Stannis or somebody. They must have lied!” He was clearly nervous, how could she not be? You wanted to intervene and help but you remained silence, it wasn’t the place.

“He said I wasn’t the king. Why would he say that?”

“He was badly hurt. Maester Pycelle was giving him milk of the poppy. He wasn’t himself otherwise he never would have said it.”

“A child’s faith... such sweet innocence. And yet they say wisdom often comes from the mouths of babes.” Lord Varys commented.

“Treason is treason!” The old maester repeated.

“Anything else?”

“If you still have any affection in your heart for me, please do me this kindness your grace.” She pleaded.

“Your sweet words have moved me. But your father needs to confess and say that I am the king or there will be no mercy for him.”

“He will.” You hope so too.

“Mother, please.” She walked passed ignoring you.

“There’s nothing I can do.”

“You are Queen Regent. You know the consequences.”

“Joffrey, have mercy. If you order to have his head you’ll bring war here. The North will fight you. Thousands and thousands of innocent people will die. You can prevent it.”

“You won’t tell me what to do, little sister.” He immediately dismissed you.

#sansa stark x reader #sansa x fem baratheon reader #game of thrones fic #got #baratheon reader #house baratheon

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