#i love using other people as soundboards for ideas so if you feel the same way then totally hmu

[noonaishere]

Music of the Heart [J.YH] - eighty-six | hack behavior

You couldn’t pay attention to what you were doing. 

Part of you was completely distracted by the idea that Yunho was busy with a fucking sting operation, of all fucking things. If y/n got him hurt or killed, you’d never forgive her. It’d mean you’d have to get a new editor, and that’d suck because she was a really good editor, but you’d cut ties with her on principle. And then you’d help Yunho sue her.

Despite your being distracted, whenever you did try to concentrate on something, you found yourself feeling… bored? Maybe it was because the distraction was so much more exciting than work but, whatever the reason, you couldn’t help it.

You had come to work that morning hoping to get a lot done: you had maybe half a list of songs for your lessons with Yujin but you wanted it to be killer; Hongjoong wanted ideas from you for Ans:wer’s comeback album, the song they were recording was going to be a one-off single for their re-debut and they’d need a full album of songs to record soon; you knew Maddox was around somewhere and probably needed something…

Yet somehow, somehow, you couldn’t get anything done. And it was because you knew your former best friend/for a while sworn enemy/now current friend was out, helping with a homemade sting operation, of all fucking things.

You deeply questioned her judgment, his judgment, and your judgment on continuing to know both of them.

You sighed and slapped your cheeks a couple times, hoping it would wake your brain up from the thing you weren’t supposed to be thinking about so you could concentrate on the things you should be thinking about. You inhaled and exhaled purposefully, attempting to center yourself. No more distractions; you were going to get something done.

“T/n?”

You looked up. Hongjoong was in the studio doorway, face contemplative. 

“Yeah?”

“Could you maybe help me with something?”

There were papers everywhere. The tables had been flipped over and everything on it on the floor, broken instruments, soundboards, and monitors, the chairs looked like they had been thrown into the wall, and there was a thin coating of dust on everything because the room had been left like this for months.

The first thing the two of you did was right the table, and Hongjoong knelt down to inspect the computer tower, the monitor beside it with a spidery crack through the screen, the second monitor with a gouge in it. He sighed.

You turned and got to picking up papers off the floor - sheet music, lyric sheets, pages of notes - you stacked them together so they could all be organized… or thrown out.

“So… is anyone going to tell me what happened with this guy?”

You heard Hongjoong shift but he stayed quiet. You went back to cleaning. He put the computer tower and monitors on the table and righted a chair and sat down.

“It’s my fault.”

You turned.

“We were friends and we used to, you know, challenge each other musically. We’d ask questions back and forth about how we thought a song should sound, what genre we should use for a concept, that kind of thing. One day I asked if he wanted to write about more.”

“‘More’?”

He sighed. “When we write popular music, we write the most relatable things a person could feel or desire, you know? Love, lust, heartbreak. You could call them ‘the big three,’ most songs revolve around them in some way or another, most people experience them so they make the most money.”

You nodded.

“Obviously I don’t have too much of a problem with this, it’s my job and all, but I had been doing HALA - making art - since I was a teenager, and I wondered if he felt the same.”

You watched him as he searched his memories for a moment.

“One day I asked him if he wanted to branch out, write about some other emotion or want or… anything, really. And he blew up at me.”

“Wow.”

“One minute we were having a nice conversation-- about Ans:wer, actually and what direction their next album should go in, and the next thing he was screaming at me. About how I didn’t understand him, or his art, or art in general, or anything… and he’d never yelled at me before, we’d never gotten into a fight, even, but suddenly he was screaming at me. Then he left and came here and trashed the whole room - Maddox came in and tried to stop him, and he hit him - and then he left before we could call security.”

Your eyes widened. “He hit Maddox?”

He nodded.

“Holy shit. What’d you do?”

“I was… flabbergasted? I feel like I’ve never used that word before. Dumbfounded? I was at a loss for words. All I could do was sit there and wonder, like, what the fuck did I do that was so wrong? Why did he get so mad? I guess we were really only work friends, but why did he get so mad instead of calmly defending his position like he normally did every other time we talked about music? Like, why… why?”

You righted a second chair and sat next to him.

“I just couldn’t understand why he became so… enraged. And so suddenly. I tried to call him afterwards. Yeah, I was stunned and maybe a little scared of him because of what happened, but I wanted to talk it through and see what was wrong, and I wanted him to apologize to Maddox… but he had already blocked me.”

He took his phone out and pressed the number for a contact that was named ‘Z---’ to keep it at the bottom of the contacts list. The phone rang for a moment before rejecting. He stared at the contact for a few moments.

“I called him at least three times a week for a month, and then less the month after… I can take a hint, I just didn’t know why he wanted me to take a hint, you know? And we had so many things we needed to work on…”

You nodded.

“It was like… all of my work life was wrapped in this person because we worked together so well, and all of a sudden it was gone in an instant, and I still don’t know what I did wrong.”

You nodded again. He clicked on the contact and the drop down fanned out the option to call or text the person. He looked at it for a couple seconds and shut the screen off and put it away. The two of you sat in silence for a few moments and he sighed.

“There was a drama I was watching…” you started, “It was a long time ago so I don’t remember the name, but there was a husband and wife in it. And one day the husband said something to the wife, and she yelled at him, which would have seemed odd, because everything seemed fine, but then the show went through all these little moments of like… she was changing as a person and he wasn’t. So when he said whatever it was to her: he, a person who had stagnated, was saying it to a person who was growing, and so she didn’t feel like he knew her anymore.”

“So--” Hongjoong avoided saying the ex-producer’s name “...so he grew?”

“Well… it’s not a one-to-one comparison. I think that, if you asked him about music and he was suddenly opposed to questioning it at all, maybe he’s the one who stagnated.”

He thought for a moment and frowned. 

“Or maybe he had changed his mind on something and didn’t tell you. It probably wasn’t sudden - one or both of you were changing the whole time - you just didn’t know from a lack of communication. You still thought he was still the kind of person you could have honest conversations about what’s working or not working in a song and…” you shrugged, “maybe he just wasn’t that person anymore.”

Hongjoong sighed deeply. His eyes downcast, his attention was taken by a broken mixing board nearby. He picked it up, turning it over to survey the damage done to it. He stared at it for a second, expression blank, but you could tell his brain was working overtime as his grip on the mixing board tightened. He inhaled a shaky breath, seeming to force himself to breathe in until it steadied.

“...Fuck…” he breathed out.

He blinked, he shook his head, you weren’t sure if you should ask what he was thinking.

“I…” he volunteered. “I’m playing the last two years we knew each other over in my head and, like, thinking about it like that… A lot of things are starting to make sense now.”

You leaned back against the table and watched him as he worked through his thoughts.

“When we first started working together, he made sure to explain that we had to do everything in service of the music… nothing else mattered as long as we were creating art and that the art was honest.”

You watched him.

“...He got an offer from another company; way more money with way less work. He didn’t take it, he said, because he was so sure that he was creating art here…”

“Did he come to regret the decision, maybe?”

He nodded slowly. “One day we had a small argument-- more like a heated debate. I didn’t pay it too much mind at the time but he had said something like… ‘Why are we doing so much for a rookie group?’ or something like that. Then I thought he mumbled something about ‘I should have taken the money,’ but he stormed out of the room before I could ask and he didn’t come back until the next day.”

“Wow…”

He nodded again, eyes on the floor.

“Sounds like a hack.”

He burst out laughing, the surprise making him spit by accident. Fortunately it didn’t hit you.

You raised an eyebrow. “Nice job.”

He leaned back in the chair, laughing, and waved your comment away. “Why do you say that?”

You shrugged. “It sounds like he didn’t take the other job at first because he felt the art was more important, and then decided he really wanted the money later. Did he need it?”

He wiped the tears from his eyes and calmed himself. “I don’t know. We weren’t very close outside of work but I was under the impression he was fairly well off. He was older than me by about ten years and had been working here about that long.”

You nodded. “Then maybe he wanted the status that the money or the name of the other company could bring.”

“...Maybe.”

“And, if you’re willing to make things just for the money,” you shrugged, “you’re a hack.

He laughed again, quieter this time, and leaned back in the chair with a pleased sigh. “Does that make me ‘not a hack’? Since I’d never do that?”

You smiled. “Of course.”

He looked down at the broken mixing board for a moment, smiling.

“Though--” you checked the door to make sure no one was walking around outside “I don’t really think HALA could become a hack.”

“I’m glad to know you have such faith in me.”

You nodded. “Like yeah, you make pop music most of the time, but you still have your own stuff that you get to explore other options with. We live in a capitalist hellscape where art is a commodity and unless we all decide to go to the salt mines instead, this is kind of our only option to make money as creative people.”

He exhaled a laugh.

“And hey, if you start exhibiting hack behavior, I’ll let you know.”

He smiled at you. “Thanks.”

You smiled back. “I’m really glad you told me about all this. It seemed like it was weighing on you.” “Yeah. I guess it was.”

You nodded. 

He put the broken board on the table and clapped his hands on his thighs, standing. “Well, let’s get this room cleaned up so you can have your own studio.”

“I’m getting this room?” 

The size of the room was fairly large, you supposed it was because the previous owner was so important. But you weren’t sure you deserved something like this so early.

“Of course.”

“But… it’s almost the size of the recording studio.”

“My and Maddox’s private studios are the same size.”

“Really? Well, I’ve never seen your rooms. When he and I visited the other producers, a lot of them had smaller studios.”

“That’s because a lot of them have less stuff and don’t need the space, or they make music for groups at other companies as well.”

“Is--”

He turned to you.

“Are they being punished?”

“What--” he laughed loudly. “No, they’re not being punished. They also have space at the companies they produce for, so it’s like half of this size room is here and half is at the other company.”

“Oh.”

“And a lot of people like smaller rooms, you know. Sound proofing is much easier to put up in a room with less wall space.”

“Then why are these rooms so big? This one, and yours and Maddox’s?”

“We’re lead producers and we only produce for Wonderland.”

You nodded. “Oh…”

He looked at you for a second. “What?”

“I don’t have that much stuff to fill it with though.”

He chuckled. “Well, once we get rid of all this broken shit,” he kicked at the broken computer tower, “get you some new mixing boards, get you a new desktop-- you can bring your bass in here, get some other instruments--”

“I do have a few at home.”

He smiled. “See? You’ll have tons of things.”

You thought about it. A room filled with instruments and mixers and computers with various production programs. What a dream.

“What?” Hongjoong asked as he picked up another mixing board that had something sticky poured into it, from his reaction. “Ugh, is this cola?”

You chuckled. 

He smelled it, grimaced, and put it on the table. “I’m surprised there’s no ants. What were you thinking about?”

“Oh… I was imagining the room looking like a working producer’s room.”

He put his hands on his hips and looked at you.

You nodded.

He nodded.

You nodded again.

He laughed. “Why are you nodding?”

“It looks pretty cool. In my head I mean. Obviously not… at the moment. But it’s cool to think that the dream is coming together.”

“You wanted to be a producer?”

“When I was younger? Nah, I wanted to be in a band and tour and shit. But honestly… When I first got into making mashups, I was just doing it for fun. Just to play around with sounds and I thought it’d make me a little bit of Youtube income on the side-- not enough to live on but enough to have a little extra money each month while I looked for a band or a job or whatever...”

He nodded.

“I never thought it’d blow up like it did… and I never thought I’d be standing here, in a room that’s going to be mine in the near future, working with you and Maddox, and heading my own projects in the future.”

He smiled. “Sometimes luck can account for a lot.”

You nodded. “I should send Mingi a fruit basket or something for telling me about the audition.”

He laughed.

“Though, maybe helping to set him up with Dei was enough.”

He laughed again. “Yeah, that seems like a pretty big favor to me. He might owe you back instead, if they get married.”

You exhaled a laugh as you picked up some more papers to add to the pile you had accumulated and tossed them on top.

“I think-- you can throw all that out.”

“Huh?”

“Those are all his. If he wants no trace of him being here, then that’s what he’ll have. Put it in the garbage.”

You shuffled it all together and picked it up, righting the garbage bin with your foot and dropping it all in. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’m not going to suggest we continue the music of someone who thought money was more important than art, and who’d lash out at everyone. Fuck him.”

Your eyes widened and your eyebrows shot up.

“What?”

“I’ve… never heard you say something like that before.”

“Well… it’s just us. And, you know, if he hated me, I have no reason to forgive him… and forget yelling at me, he hit Maddox and Maddox has never done anything wrong in his life. So… yeah. Fuck him.”

“Fuck ‘em.”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

He sighed and shook his head, a sort of resetting of his feelings; the sigh was for the past and the shake was to get rid of it since you both had the future to worry about. To look forward to. Though, you did file it away in the back of your brain that - were you to ever, somehow meet that guy - you would loudly give him a piece of your mind for hurting your favorite Goldfish Boy. Such things are not to be borne. Not when you can get in his face about it instead. He better hope he never runs into you.

“Anyway, this is going to be your room, once we clean it up. I’ll help you get a new computer and I’ll help you pick out new soundboards and mixing boards and shit. You can buy some more instruments…”

You nodded as you looked at the stuff you still had to clean. You supposed that IT would go over the computers just to make sure no company secrets were on them before they were disposed of.

“T/n?”

You looked at him. “Yeah?”

“I’m really glad you auditioned. I… I’m really glad you’re here. I know we started off on the wrong foot, and that was all my fault, but… I’m glad we’re going to be working together.”

His words surprised you.

He looked at you, no expectation of your answer, just an honest confession.

You nodded. “I’m glad I’m here too.”

  previous | main cast | masterlist | next

a/n: You know what that is? *opens hand like a flower* Growth.

Send an ask or leave a comment if you want to be added to the tag list! 🎵 Any comments, reblogs, or asks are appreciated! I love talking with you guys and seeing what you’re saying about the chapters, it keeps me going 🥰

@luvvvx • @iamthehotdemon • @hrts4hanniehae • @rachs-words • @stayatinykatsy • @anythingrelatingtojinyoung​

[mdhwrites]

what are your thoughts on luz insisting on calling philip 'belos'? as a trans person it felt like a weird decision cause he specifically asked to be called philip. what makes it worse is he is depicted as an evil monster/irredeemable for being so "two-faced" which is not great when he says something that most definitely does not sound cis

i'm inclined to believe this wasn't intentional malice on the part of the show writers cause honestly they probably forgot he said that or just didn't put too much thought into the dialogue when they were writing it. regardless it still came off as slightly irritating to me. i like ur takes so im curious what u think

So first I just want to throw out that despite the fact that I'm pushing myself more and more to be inclusive, transgender identity and characters is one of those things I'm not comfortable doing myself. I still argue with myself about a joke with Daina in Rich Witch that has spoiler explanations/justifications. It's not because I'm anti-trans either. Trans rights are human rights. Period. But like… There's a reason Juro Rigged Pets, literally started the day I chose to stop watching TOH or close to that, is a converted fic because I want to use the community as a soundboard for not fucking up with my first enby character because Luz is non-binary in that one.

And if you're going "Wait, why are you okay with writing sapphics then?" Well, my personal reasoning is that I see love as love and that that emotion is fairly universal, even if the expression is going to change due to gender. There is still an emotional in for me to write them, I've been exposed to a LOT more sapphic emotions and talking than I have anything about trans identity and in general I just like writing and hanging out with girls more. Not even from a "Hurr hurr, I'm a straight white dude" perspective but more from a "I like that these people seem to be capable of being more mature, emotional and honest than a lot of the guys my age seem to be." I literally spent lunch most of the time in High School with only girls around me. I just don't know if I have a comfortable, emotional in when it comes to gender identity. While identity is universal, questioning one's gender and how people treat you about it is not. It's just not the same from my perception as a feeling like love. Is that maybe small minded me? Maybe. I don't know. Sometimes I feel like the best I can do in a situation is admit my own ignorance and hope I learn to do better in the future. My ears are always open though to try and learn and understand better.

I say all of this because… Well I don't think I have a lot to say about your ask. I mostly agree. It's not meant to have any active malice to it even if it's a dick move by Luz. If we're charitable, it's meant to be reinforcing the point Luz makes in that scene about Belos wanting to be called a human name when he has clearly thrown away his humanity for his goals.

Which… I don't like in general. Yes, he is monstrous and has magic but it's really the only time they make the case and Belos still identifies as human more than he identifies as magical. If they were willing to interrogate it more, it'd be a cool recognition of the use of religion and the like to say you have noble goals while being the literal worst person ever but it's much more about Belos being a literal monster than his inner monstrosity in that moment. Like so much with Belos, it's an interesting idea obviously on the writer's mind but not done anything with because they won't dedicate the effort to it.

If we take it less charitably and look at Luz's character as a whole… Why should Luz care about other people's identities? Her claims of caring about other weirdos and the like never come out to anything. I've talked about before how Yesterday's Lie plus the pilot kind of implies that Luz actively chose never to make friends with nerds because they weren't special enough. That Willow and Gus only meet her requirements because they have magic.

Luz doesn't see Belos as meeting those requirements so why would she care about basic rights such as being given the name you desire? I think this is too mean of a take. I don't know if I personally agree with it but it is the unintentional effect that one can take from it just like how you feel awkward about the dead name being used at all when a preference is shown.

It's like if someone calls me Mikey. I don't like it. Someone pointed out to me that it's like a dog's name when I was a kid and ever since I've HATED being called that. Mike is fine but don't call me Mikey. If someone does, I know they don't give a shit about me and so I shouldn't give a shit about them and we better split our separate ways. Same goes for the assholes who have befriended my brother and called me shit like Chris 2 or Chris' Brother. Alright asshole, I see how little I matter so I'm just going to go now.

Hell, I gained a little bit of an identity issue with my brother when we were both in JROTC because a lot of people go by last names in that program. You have a twin, you end up getting called the same thing. Equated to each other. Etc. like that. Fun times.

But like Luz disrespecting Belos, I didn't take it as disrespectful until people started thinking I could be my brother's wrangler or that I should be matching my brother's athletic accomplishments. And that's what I feel about with Luz denying Belos the courtesy. It's kept at just the functional level of "You're the villain and this is the name you used to rise to power so I will not let you forget that," then seeming to be active malice about a person's identity and how they wish to be called.

Could it have been cut to be more comfortable to those who care deeply about dead names, identity, etc. like that? Yes. Could I imagine people with those same issues also overlooking it because at worst it's a microaggression as presented and the show is at least mostly respectful to people's identities? Also yes. So I don't really know which way to lean on it.

I wish I did. I wish I felt more comfortable with the subject. Frankly I'm paranoid about my personal stories here to give context to my perspective on these matters still being tasteless. I try not to let stuff like this stop me from giving my thoughts but…

Well, I want to be respectful. Maybe even more respectful than Luz is to others, depending on how you want to turn the globe of her character. Edit: I do want to mention that I actually have a fanfic where Luz is non-binary. I'm actually proud of how much that story will theoretically touch on identity and change frankly. At the time I also thought I had a Discord who would help me make sure to do it right/convinced me to give it a shot and didn't realize that enby people are considered on the trans spectrum. It's called Joro Rigged Pets. Like Crises Girlfriends, I plan to convert it someday after I finish it first as fanfiction. I'd love all of yours thoughts and feelings on how I'm doing it because like I said: I do try to be respectful. ========

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead, If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

[gone-series-orchid]

which book do you think is the worst/could have been written better? I re-read Lies a little while ago and. Wow. Definitely could have used some work.

that's a good question! honestly, it's been so long since i last reread the books (blasphemy, i know) that i have trouble really remembering any big structural or story-related problems that occurred in any of them. they're all kind of shaggy except for the first book, which i think was the most focused and straightforward of the series.

if i had to pick one, i guess i'd pick fear? not because of anything in particular, but for its lack of memorability. i hardly remember anything of note that happened in fear despite it being the penultimate book of the series, the big build-up to light's endgame, but i hardly remember it aside from a few choice scenes/characters. i think the subplot with cigar happens in fear? and howard dies? i like cigar. and howard's death should have even a bigger deal! orc's whole thing with going to kill drake as revenge for his best friend's murder is so compelling, a great subplot, but i remember it kind of fizzling out. in fact, maybe my perception of fear's as being forgettable is directly due to astrid and orc receding in prominence during it. orc's arc is more or less finished, so that makes sense, but astrid's return to society after living out in the wild felt anticlimactic and manufactured. michael grant had to get back to the status quo, i guess, and have astrid be sam's helpmate and soundboard. which is fine, i guess, but astrid deserved better than being shuttled back into being basically sam's girlfriend (now with less jesus!) just felt like a disappointment. it doesn't help that i'm completely uninterested in sam and astrid as a couple. idk, maybe that has something to do with it? i'm hopelessly biased in this case, lol. so i don't think fear is necessarily a bad book, but it's just kinda meh. too little orc, too little astrid.

that's interesting that you thought lies was the worst! i think a lot of fans see it the same way. i remember, years ago now, rereading lies as an older teenager/young adult (god i don't even remember lol) after first reading it at the age of 13. i disliked it when i was younger, finding it boring, but as an older reader, i found it a lot more interesting. i think the ideas present in lies are really cool; zeroing in on the interpersonal conflicts and political strife of the fayz rather than focusing so heavily on the gaiaphage felt really refreshing. the human crew are cool villains--they're lame, they're bigoted, but they're pathetic in a very human way. i get the sense that mg doesn't particularly like zil, whereas he clearly loves caine and drake (based on their treatment in the books' narratives). that's a good thing! i just wish the human crew's bigotry had soaked into the fayz' social fabric a little more.

maybe i'm conflating the events of hunger and plague with lies, though. i probably am, oops. but i remember enjoying lies because it gives astrid her time to shine--and i love that, honestly i do. that might be my big achilles' heel in this case, lol.

feel free to critique lies more in my inbox, though! i love reading other people's criticisms, especially about gone's female characters and especially astrid. she was done so dirty in the last few books 😭

thank you for the ask! feel free to send more, if you'd like!

[mobiused]

I want to do a deep dive into loona lore. as someone who hasn't gotten super into it before how should i go about this?

oh hell. a lot of my friends ask me this and it always pains me to give an answer. i really would NOT recommend watching other theorists on YouTube (to start with), as what happens then is you'll inprint on their theories, and then become closeminded to other alternatives, or fixated on one theme or narrative. to me, it's really important that everyone comes up with their own conclusions as opposed to copying someone else. you won't get a cohesive understanding if you just parrot someone else's interpretation.

what i personally would recommend is marathonning all the loona music videos (& teasers if you want). when marathonning, try and keep 3 questions in your thoughts, for every scene. this will probably take a while.

1. what is this scene showing me? what am i looking at? (in a say what you see way; digipedi is very good with visual metaphors - an example off the top of my head is chuu literally orbiting yves in heart attack)

2. combining the lyrics and imagery, what message are they trying to convey? what happens? what's the plot? try summing it up in 1 sentence

3. where and how does this link to other parts of the holistic story? when i was first learning, i watched all the mvs on shuffle, so i could make links between mvs easier

i think actually articulating these answers, as in writing them down would be really helpful. hopefully this should increase your understanding. of course, once you've developed the foundations of your understanding, then feel free to check out other theories. but when doing so, i'd advise instead of blindly accepting them as truth, to check it against your own interpretation.

does this align with how i've personally understood the loonaverse? or does it contradict core themes already established (hi high & why not are about unity and community, the girls are clearly happy to see each other, yet there are theories about the girls being determined to kill one another..?), or feel like a stretch (theories with next to no evidence to back the claims up), or is based off misinformation? (olivia killed vivi theory is based off people thinking they saw a wolf kill a deer in egoist, when in actuality, it's a shot of a metal staircase)

a lot of theories are fantastic, but a lot are also very misguided, and come from a place of "this is what i WANT the lore to be" and retrofitting information to suit their own narrative. if you feel that a theory gels with your interpretation then great, add it to your web of understanding. otherwise, don't feel bad about disregarding it. feel confident about your own interpretation and try not to worry about general opinion or whether you're "right" or not. as loona said, there's no answer - just watch it.

sidenote; i think... i kind of want to start a lore starterpack now, where i can collate all the extra information like cinema theory, instagram captions, mv descriptions and press releases just so people don't have to go hunting for it and its in one easily accessible place. because when you start the lore late it's easy to have missed obscure stuff from 2016/17 like when jaden jeong got mad that nobody got a reference to an anime and just posted it on his IG 😭 stuff like that, id want to collate.

[honeytea8]

✨✨La Squadra Boyfriend Headcanons✨✨

[Alexa, play Boyfriend by Big Time Rush]

Guys, I spend an ungodly amount of time thinking about La Squadra, so here are some bf headcanons for the sexiest group of assassins in Naples. No one asked but I am bringing it straight to your dash anyway! (under the cut for length lmao)

I’m going to start with Prosciutto, who has recently fallen on my radar pretty heavy! 

He’s a good and decent boyfriend, if not a busy one. Not that he doesn’t care about the relationship, but most of his energy was going to Passione things before you waltzed in and so he’ll struggle a bit between his work responsibilities and maintaining his relationship with you, but only in the beginning. 

If you are also a part of Passione, it’s a hell of a lot easier to manage. 

I see Prosciutto as the gift-giving type: lingerie, sweets, perfume, designers, etc. His salary isn’t the best, but he manages it as well as he can just to accommodate you! 

I just can’t get the idea out of my head that Pro was raised by a strict mama, that’s why he can be a bit of a stickler sometimes. He’ll catch you still lounging in bed at nine am, and be like “Why are you still in bed? Get dressed, we’re going out.” Dude!

I’m sorry to say, but Prosciutto is absolutely the ‘lecturing’ type. (He lectured someone in nearly every scene in the anime, Formaggio once and Pesci numerously and Bucci too) 

He will lecture you when you make mistakes, especially because as his s/o, he has high expectations for you and believes you’re capable of so much more. It’s never, ever out of hate. He loves you, and that’s why he chides you a bit lol. 

This does not negate the fact that he doesn't mind when you lean on him for support. He likes when you count on him, because he always comes through especially for you!

Depending on whether you’re in the mafia or not, I totally see him sparring with you, or working out with you in an effort to make you tough. Prosciutto wants you to be able to defend yourself, just in case. If you complain, he’ll tell you, “Better safe than sorry, tesoro”.

Prosciutto will respect you, period.

A good listener, goddamn! He’s up there with Risotto when it comes to who listens to their s/o more! If you have an issue, he’ll hear you out and offer advice if you want it. If you give him advice, he’ll take it into serious consideration. He’s honestly a good partner, can’t stress that enough.

Finally, sex with Pro is an entire event. Romantic dinner, candles lit, wine, the whole nine yards before he gives you nine inches of something else :) (I’m kidding!! Lmao, kinda). 

But as I said, Prosciutto is quite deliberate, and a bit of a perfectionist. He knows what to do and how to do it, you can trust him.

Ghiaccio is next only because he’s my favorite. 

The ice gremlin is probably the most interesting (and hilarious) boyfriend out of the bunch (I say this with only a tidbit of bias). He isn’t funny himself, but funny shit just happens to him. 

Because of this, he will use you as a soundboard when everyone else refuses to listen to him. He’s got a lot to say, so be prepared for his TEDtalks. LMAO!

It will take some perception on your part to notice when he actually expects a response from you, and other times he’s just ranting to get his point out. 

He will correct your grammar when you text, but barely notices when he makes a similar mistake (his brain moves in mph). Please use the proper names like Venezia, Italia, Roma and Napoli when talking to this man; save yourself from the headache.

When it comes to dates, please have mercy on him, he’s a textbook over-thinker! You’ll just have to plan something simple at home for you both to enjoy. 

He isn’t incapable of planning dates, but he’ll want everything to be so absolutely perfect for his s/o and will throw a fit when it ultimately isn’t. 

Contrary to popular belief, I think that Ghiaccio is a pretty attentive partner. He’s super intelligent and I think a part of it stems from his innate ability to read people (I’m referencing the part in the anime where he deduced what Giorno and Mista had come to look for, while going off very little information). 

The more time he spends with you, the better he gets at it. 

His form of affection will be shown through the amount of time you both spend together. When it comes to sex or anything related to that, be gentle and slow as Ghiaccio will likely be a flustered mess. 

As he becomes more comfortable and confident, he will be bolder and just ask out right if you’ll suck him off tonight or not. The man appreciates directness, so don’t bother being coy. “You want me to give you head? Cool, lay down a towel or something.” is what he’ll probably say.

Very practical 👌🏾👌🏾

Melone, good lord, he’s kind of perfect. 

A bit of a doting boyfriend here and there—very much concerned about your health. Expect him to ask if you’ve eaten, or taken your multivitamin. How are your bowel movements?  LMAO

It can become a bit much, but he really genuinely cares. He’s not asking to be intrusive or nasty! If he was, you’d know. 🤣

But I seriously consider Melone to be the one (at least among La Squadra) who is way, way invested in his relationships. He will know every little detail about you; will ask you lots of questions and expects you to ask him just as many. 

This may be annoying to some, but this dude will definitely bring up your horoscope in an argument. He’ll be like “I honestly can’t fathom why you’re being this way, though it’s to be expected from a libra.” 

Peg this bitch so he can shut up.  

Melone is also touchy as hell, but not in a clingy way. He loves touching, and just to tag onto the headcanon about his partial blindness, I want to say that he’s so touchy because that’s how he ‘sees’ you best.

Just know that half the time, he isn’t touching you to be lecherous, even if he genuinely does like the feel of your skin under his fingertips. Melone will even encourage you to touch him back. 

Rub his thigh or back and he’ll be simping.

He is obsessed with your legs, and will paint your toes if you let him. 

LOVES PDA! Melone will also tongue-kiss you in public if you let him!

Notice how I keep saying ‘if you let him’. Give him an inch and he’ll press you for a mile, so if there are boundaries you would like to establish, please do, cuz he sure as hell won’t, just saying!

When it comes to sex, Melone is a dick and coochie sensei. Oral is his favorite thing to do, probably enjoys giving more than receiving to be honest. I’d say he’s pretty much mastered sex for what it is. 

That being said, if he’s ever talking out of his neck, just invite him to put his mouth to better use. He’ll even thank you for your gracious request.

Formaggio is next 💀 

According to my JoJo compatriots from discord, he’s like the Optimus Prime of fuckboi’s so let’s ride that wave for a bit! LMAO

I hope it doesn’t come as a surprise that Formaggio is pretty shameless. He will send you a dick pic on Sunday morning before church and have the audacity to say “Just wanted to bless you real quick”. 

@autumn-kouhai mentioned him giving his s/o sickly sweet pet names and I just have to agree. 

Expect to be hit upside the head with: baby-boo, sugar plum, honey bunches, sweetums. I can imagine them becoming really ridiculous too like “the last piece of red velvet cake” or “cheddar bae biscuits from Red Lobster”

His catch phrase is “Got nudes?”

Send them, and he won’t be afraid to reply with something equally sexy. 

Be warned though, he will stockpile whatever you send him and then be careless with his phone. If you don’t mind Illuso’s snoopy ass seeing your nudes then by all means, have at it. Otherwise, send them through snapchat, so they disappear later. 

As far as La Squadra boyfriends go, he’s the most fun! Y’all don’t even go anywhere because man’s is broke. BUT, Formaggio knows how to have a good time without any need to spend money (my kind of dude tbh) you guys just crank up the tunes, dance, and get lit until the neighbors complain. 

Formi is also the CEO of jokes/memes, and will have you in absolute tears almost always! I literally tell my friends that funny guys are so dangerous, don’t sleep on them! They will make you laugh until your panties drop, it’s magic, I swear. Formaggio has that same energy. 

No matter how bad of a day his s/o is having, rest assured, he will draw the biggest laugh out of you.

Besides his fuckboi tendencies, his most redeeming quality is the fact that he’s super cool and fun to hang with. You’ll literally have a good time, always, because his energy is right! Very good vibes around this man, I swear! It’ll be exactly like dating your best friend, because essentially, he will be your bestie.

Formi has many moments of tenderness that aren’t sexually charged too—moments where the jokes stop and he’ll just rub your back or feet, this is usually when you aren’t feeling well and need some quiet. 

However, Formaggio won’t let you mope all day, he’ll pull out the big guns and call you his “sweetie baby” and when you try to resist he’ll say “What, I’m just tryna show you some love.”

He’s a good dude lmao I’d date a guy like him irl 😭

Pesci stans wya??! Let’s get into this baby boy. 

Pesci is boyfriend material, idgaf what anyone says. 

He is pretty much the least problematic to be with among all of La Squadra, even more so than Risotto (don’t argue with me). 

Pesci is hyper aware of your likes and dislikes and will literally go out of his way to make sure that you’re well and okay. 

Arguments are basically nonexistent and if they occur it ain’t coming from his side. 

I also think that Pesci has a lot of empathy, so when you’re going through something, he’s right there in the thick of it with you. If you’ve seen that meme that goes ‘when my gf is on her period it’s UterUS’ lmao that’s Pesci’s energy 100%. 

Sometimes, he’s more of a lover and not a fight, that is perfectly okay!

However, if someone tries up his s/o, say farewell to Mr. Niceguy. He will defend your honor to his dying breath. And with you in his corner, trust me, he’s not going down. 

A romantic at heart, Pesci will plan little date trips like picnics in the park or boat trips to Capri, actually, I’d like to point out that he excels in the art of date planning. If you’re the adventurous type, he’ll plan outings where you both will be more active, like biking through the city or renting a mop-ed and going sight-seeing. 

Because Pesci has a sensitive stomach, he’s very much considerate of what you both put in your bodies. If you have dietary restrictions or allergies, this guy knows all about it and will cater to you perfectly. 

A true gentleman through and through, he will never force himself on you, ever. In fact, he really doesn’t like engaging in anything sexual when you’re drunk or high, sorry if you’re into that! 

Pesci is the kind of guy who keeps up with your favorite shows.

If ya’ll have similar taste in media or literature, he will immerse himself in it so that he can relate to you all the more.

If there’s anyone who will entertain anime-related discourse, no matter how nonsensical, it’s Pesci. And he isn’t just putting up with it, he’s actively engaging in the conversation so you are always heard and validated. 

He’s an A+ boyfriend, that’s all I gotta say! Haters can stay mad :)

Goddamn Illuso... idk man.

I really feel like you have to have thick/tough skin to handle this guy, for various reasons. 

The first being that Illuso can be a bit mean at first. He’ll push your buttons on purpose just to see what’ll make you tick. Will tease the living heck out of you, always, kind of a bully lmao but not to the extreme, it’s just his brand of humor—and the thing is, he won’t be mad when you dish it right back, so it’s cool. 

Secondly, Illuso has big dick energy!! 

I mean rightfully so, because he is indeed packing! But my word, he ain’t humble about it at all! 

He is not above making jokes about ‘splitting you in half’. In fact all of his jokes have hidden, dirty undertones! 

His affection is shown through speech mostly. Illuso will drop subtle innuendos and provocations, half to see you flustered and half because he wants you to know how much he wants you. 

Illuso isn’t incredibly vocal about his feelings outside of ‘I’m tryna hit that thang’ but you won’t doubt that he loves you because Illuso doesn’t waste his own time. 

If he’s spending his time with you, you can rest assured that it’s because he wants to. 

Illuso is a voyeur and you’ll just have to understand/accept that and move on. 

He loves watching you and will even creep over to your place through the mirror world just to hang or watch you do chores. Loves to surprise you and give you jump scares lmao it’ll make you a tad paranoid but it’s also fun. 

Illuso is prone to random bouts of sweetness; it’s very sporadic, very touch-and-go. 

One day, you’ll wake up to chocolates on your dresser or new shoes, lingerie, or makeup if you wear it. I imagine that if you’re low on funds, he will even help you buy your groceries that week. 

It’ll surprise the hell out of you, but that’s just how Illuso is. He enjoys keeping you on your toes! 

He’s prideful and smug as hell, so he will definitely expect a thank you, because even if he does it out of the kindness in his heart, he also wants to hear that you appreciate him

Same goes for the bedroom scene. Illuso loves making you vocal, it’s his favorite thing in the world, so he’ll make a game out of doing the things that get the biggest reaction out of you. Like I said, it's that big dick energy at work here, smh.

Sorbet and Gelato in a polyamorous relationship with you? Let’s get it! 

We don’t get anything substantial about these two except that Sorbet follows the money, so these are all personal headcanons for how I see and write them. 

Here’s the juice: when it comes to you as their s/o, these two are possessive as hell. You are theirs and that’s that on that! 😭 Don’t ask questions, just go with it.

Sorbet is the chill one of the duo. He can be a bit smug at times, but he’s mostly a laid back dude who doesn’t get bothered by much.

When it comes to you, Sorbet likes to spend quality time with you more than anything, and will ask you to cook for him at your place so he ain’t gotta spend money. Oh? Did I not mention that I kinda think of him as a cheapskate? Lmao cuz I do.

Sorbet will come by your place just to steal your coupons from the mail then head out; you’re not using ‘em so why should he let them go to waste?

Gelato is the complete opposite; personality wise, I headcanon him as a mix between Melone and Formaggio lmao

But it’s not as crazy as it sounds, he’s cute and outspoken like Melone, while maintaining a free-spirit like Formaggio. One quality that I like is that he’s quite devoted to you and Sorbet. If anyone crosses either of you, goodluck to them!

I like to think Gelato’s also just really boujee and high maintenance. He loves to pamper and be pampered. You and him tag-team Sorbet’s wallet and go on spa dates together at his expense (not that he ever really stood a chance)

While Sorbet is cool with just being in the same room as you, Gelato loves hugging/cuddling with you and Sorbet—will definitely fight for the middle spot between the two of you on the couch during movie nights.

He baby, so let him have it lol

In the bedroom, I would salute anyone with the guts to take the two of them on. They both lay down that work, period. 

Sorbet gets his kicks from teasing and edging you (his sadistic side comes out a bit), while Gelato loves when you give him extra TLC. To put it short, they know how to take care of you, so there are no issues there. 

Last but not least, Mr. Risotto Nero himself.

Man, idc on the lowest of keys, he seems a little bit like a grandpa to me

The type to sit at home and do crosswords, has a bird feeder in his yard and plays old Italian hits while washing the dishes. It’s very domestic 💀 (I find it cute, whatever!)

As a boyfriend, I can’t imagine him suddenly being spontaneous or outgoing unless you drag him out of his home/comfort zone.

Be patient with Mr. Nero, and he can come to surprise you

After a while, it won’t be just you dragging him out and about; one day he’ll ask you to come over and you’ll be greeted with a nice, traditional, homemade meal

Pay attention and you will notice him watching your face to see if you like his cooking 🥺

After seeing his fight with Doppio, I must admit that Risotto is very, very observant, almost scarily so.

I can totally picture him pointing out random things about his s/o that even they don’t know

One night, Risotto may come up to you and say “I talked to your neighbor about the dog, they’ll keep it inside now.” And you’re just staring like 😳 how did he know the barking was keeping you up at night????

He’s sweet, and will take good care of you as a boyfriend should.

Very good listener, won’t talk as much but will hang on to your every word, I promise. He could even recite it to you verbatim.

He’s a big dude, that ain’t news, so expect to be swallowed up in hugs and sometimes even picked up (as a tall girl myself, I simp!!!)

Gives A1 piggyback rides, lol

ALSO RISOTTO IS HUMBLE ASF!

Big dick energy, but on low volume 👏🏾 after all, he doesn’t need to do much talking, because a night with him is more than enough!

Listen babe, you better stretch, do some squats, and prep in whatever way you can before Mr. Nero gives you that work. 🤐

Lowkey a freak, but it’s well hidden behind his ‘quiet giant’ exterior

So, who are y'all dating? Personally, I’m going for Formaggio and Pesci hehe

[some-dr-writings]

v3 girls x SHSL Toy Maker

Kaede Akamatsu:

·       Your girlfriend loved your toys. She’d always gush over them and would so happily watch as you worked away on any project without a care in the world. Her favorites though were the wooden ones, just seeing how you chiseled, sanded and worked with the wood was just so interesting to her.

·       Obviously, you gave her a toy piano for her birthday once, and it immediately was her most cherished possession. It was tiny, just big enough to be played with one hand, so Kaede took it wherever she went, keeping it close as a reminder of you and her most favorite thing in the world. It actually took her quite a bit of time to get used to it, but once she had mastered it, she’d play it whenever she wanted should there not be a piano around.

·       “Hey, how’s my pianist do- oh?” As you entered the dressing room you found Kaede playing you little toy piano. “Ah, Y/N! I thought no one aside from the performers were allowed backstage.” “Yeah… but who ever said I wouldn’t break the rules. I just had to come see you before the recital!” You eagerly sat beside her, just needing to get closer to that entrancing smile. “Getting in some extra practice before the big performance?” “Actually, no.” “Hmm?” She sheepishly laughed, holding your little piano close. “Just calming my nerves. Since I thought I couldn’t have you by my side, I started playing your piano. It’s helped a lot.” It became a tradition for Kaede to play you piano before any performance. It was able to calm her no matter what song she played on it.

·       Whenever it was out of tune, even just a little she’d immediately take it to you for repairs. It was usually a quick fix, but she still loved watching you work away on repairing it.

·       You also began making little music boxes for yourself. Though not pianos, you placed in Kaede’s favorite songs and before going to sleep, would wind one and have it play should the pair of you be apart. Sometime you’d even send her one so she’d know you were thinking of her.

    Kirumi Tojo:

·       Like for everyone else, she wanted to be our maid and assist you in whatever way she could and help you become even greater than you already were. “Oh, uh… Sorry, but I don’t need anything. I won’t want much either. I’ve heard how people you work for become amazing and stuff, but… I’m happy with my simply life. I don’t want it to get any greater than this. Honestly, only reason I came to Hope’s Peak is so I’d have an excuse to make more toys without my guardians telling me to study more. I’d be happy to be your friend though! Are there any toys you liked as a kid, I know I could make a nice one for you!” On occasion you’d amuse Kirumi and accept her assistance, but for the most part you’d simply decline and ask if you could make anything for her.

·       Kirumi truly just enjoyed helping others, there was nothing else she wanted so it seemed no toy would be of satisfaction to her, only after getting together did you finally come up with something. “A doll?” “Yeah! If somehow you can’t find anything to do for anyone, you can serve the doll. Its pockets are filled with requests for you to do for it, and if this doesn’t feel like real requests to do for you, I request that you care for the doll when you have nothing else to take care of!” “I will do my utmost to fulfill your wish.” You didn’t think Kirumi would actually play with the doll, but the smile on her face at finally receiving a request from you was enough to make you know it was worth it.

·       Surprisingly on occasion you would see Kirumi entertaining the doll, whether it be it be having tea parties, or one of the many other requests you had written down. You eventually found out that no matter where Kirumi went, she took the doll with her in case she had a moment of free time she could dedicate to it. You were her partner after all, though she did so for everyone, for you especially she wanted to complete your requests to the best of her abilities. And thought it never came up in conversation, she always had it around because she liked having something you had placed so much time and effort into just for her nearby.

   Himiko Yumeno:

·       Both being entertainers of sorts you both immediately clicked, you both loved making others smile and bringing joy to them through your work.

·       Not only did you and Himiko become romantic partners but business partners as well, you making and selling various toys based off of Himiko, her magic, and of her ‘familiar’ as well. They were a big hit with both children and adults. Sometimes you and Himiko would have long discussions bouncing ideas off one another about what toys to make next. An action figure? A wand? Perhaps some stuffies or a magic broom stick? On occasion one of you would start to go more abstract like suggest something like a pinball machine or soundboard, maybe even a skateboard. Sometimes it became a sort of competition for who could come up with the most outlandish, yet realistic and feasible items to make and sell.

·       Often you’d spend your time whittling away making toys for Himiko, she rather enjoyed them, no matter what they may be. She also liked watching you make them. You were so skilled with those fingers and many other things like woodworking, sewing, painting, and other such things. Sometimes she’d toy with the idea of you being her assistant.

·       You always had Himiko test your toys to make sure they worked properly if they were more electronic in nature or some such.

·       You both liked doing whatever you could to support one another through your own pursuits, you were simply great partners for one another.

   Maki Harukawa:

·       Being with you always felt… nostalgic to her, especially when you made toys for younger children. How you were so tender, kind, and respectful to them, you reminded her of how many of the older kids at the orphanage acted when they weren’t tired and annoyed at having to be babysitters all the time.

·       You had taken to making and donating toys to orphanages, mostly to the one Maki was from though. You were only one person so you couldn’t make many too quickly, but what you did make was durable and could last for several generations while still being fun and not needing too much maintenance.

·       You also gave Maki toys on occasion and would play with them with her. Since she had to spend most of her childhood training you wanted to give her a little something to let her indulge in just being carefree for a time. She cherished these gifts and moments almost more than anything else. Being with you was always just so nice and peaceful.

·       You taught Maki a few things like how to sew. It took a long time, there were many failed attempts and bleeding fingers, but she eventually got the hang of it. She’d sometimes help you with your projects or even repair some of the kids’ clothes, it started with simple things like you asking her to connect two basic pieces or her adding a patch to some pants, eventually though she was able to do more complicated things. She made a doll for you and a few for the kids. In return for all that you had taught her, Maki would teach you self-defense. Though unlikely it was not impossible for a person to attack you one day so she wanted you to be safe. In her line of work, she couldn’t be attached to anyone, but now you and Kaito and Shuichi and others were in your life, she had connections to people she wanted to be around, so even if it wasn’t much, even if it wasn’t enough to save you should you become an assassin’s target, you could at least not be too troubled by our average crook.

·       You were her irreplaceable partner, she adored you, and for as long as she could, she’d keep you as close as she could, just making little toys with you.

   Tenko Chabashira:

·       She adored everything you made, gushing over how adorable it all was. And she showed every last toy off, much to your embarrassment at times. She was rather loud with her affection, making it so that the whole world knew. Even complete strangers would know the pair of you were partners and that according to your girlfriend, you made the best toys the world had ever known.

·       Often Tenko would drag Himiko into testing your latest creations in order to make sure they worked correctly.

·       Tenko insisted that you teach her how to make toys and she teach you Neo Akkido. She’d say that learning her form of Akkido would help you be a better toy maker, and her learning how to make toys would help her improve her Neo Akkido.  You had no idea how in the world this could work, but just about any excuse to spend more time with your girlfriend was a good excuse in your book, so you eagerly agreed…

·       The training was much more than you expected. She didn’t teach you anything and just went straight to fighting you full force, and you just had to make up your own form to keep up and avoid getting too injured, but you did learn how to fight so her training did work.

·       You were much more gentle when it came to teaching her though her energy and enthusiasm could cause problems at times like accidentally knocking over items and the like. At least it was still fun.

·       Being together could be rather chaotic at times, but it was well worth it.

   Tsumugi Shirogane:

·       Your friendship began with a bet and through it a more romantic relationship bloomed. Tsumugi was showing off a very expensive, limited edition figure she had just gotten in the mail. “Wait, how expensive? But it’s so cheap! You should get your money back, or at least at a discounted price.” Obviously, this comment ticked off the girl, and a bet was made, if you could make a figure of the same character of higher quality that could simultaneously be less expensive from the cost of materials, you prove your point, if not you’d have to apologize to Tsumugi.

·       Not only did you win the bet, Tsumugi absolutely loving your figure, but you had also accidentally won her heart in the process.

·       Tsumugi still bought merchandise of her favorite anime and you always made such things for her despite that, though she did teach you why the official merchandise was so important to her. Often you’d end up analyzing the items whether they still be in the package or not, differing what it’s true price would be without the brand association. If it didn’t match you’d make your own version for Tsumugi which happened more often than not, but the few times you deemed the product worth the price it was a pleasant surprise.

·       Being deft at sewing and many other skills you often assisted Tsumugi in making her cosplays! She even convinced you to indulge in her passion as well. You much preferred making them, and seeing others wear them, but play-acting as the characters could be fun.

·       Sometimes when Tsumugi was at cons or other such similar events, she’d send you toy she found that you might like or might inspire your work. She’d also send you materials for your work, maybe even have you keep some for her own work.

·       Sometimes you’d watch whatever anime Tsumugi was most recently obsessed with when she was away. It was something to remind you of her in particularly lonely moments. Tsumugi would do something similar, play with the toys you had given her.

·       Though things could be rocky on occasion, you were able to work things out and you couldn’t want for another partner.

   Angie Yonaga:

·       “Oh my, how divine! I’m sure Atua has blessed you for such wondrous art!”

·       Angie completely adored and whole heartedly loved your toys, always calling them your art. Whenever she found you working, she always left you be as to not distract you, knowing she’d want you to do the same if she were working on her art. She’d even go out of her way to get more materials for you if she had noticed if you were starting to run low or if you were using one particular material a lot for a time. If any of your tools broke or needed repair, she already knew just the place to get another one of high quality.

·       As one ‘blessed by Atua’ you were the only person she allowed to be in the same room with her as she worked, as long as you were working as well. This was for two reasons, one, to not distract her and two, so that Atua may take possession of you too and help make your creations even more wonderful!

·       Though she never needed inspiration, because she had Atua, she would go walking around town with you to do whatever, giving you a new change of pace, which would hopefully help you get out of your rut and be filled with new creativity to create more!

·       Even with her colorful background, she understood you more than most others ever could when it came to your work. She would do anything to assist you, because aside from her god, you were the person she loved most.

   Miu Iruma:

·       “Hey, you’re the toy maker, right?” “Yes?” “You can make adult toys, right?” “What do you take me for!?... Of course I can!” “Oh ho ho, This’ll be fun!”

·       Miu was certainly an interesting client turned partner. Whatever you made, she wanted to add improvements to it, no matter how off the wall it may be. She was in inventor after all so tinkering with toys likely just came naturally to her.

·       What you did find surprising though is that she never wanted you to make anything sexual for her. She never admitted it directly, but she always just wanted normal toys. Model train sets, bouncy balls, remote control cars, simple things like those. Often, she’d end up ‘enhancing’ them in her own way, yet still, she wouldn’t ask for anything else. For as lewd and crude as she could be there was something about her that was also young at heart in a way, in fact that could be why she was so loud and overconfident much of the time. But then you’d remember that you’re teenagers and you were sounding like an older person with this line of thinking and would stop yourself.

·       Miu would insist on working in her lab so she could make tweaks to your designs as you were making them. Things usually got out of hand like making a toy robot that could turn into a cannon and shoot fireworks, or it’d have rocket fists powerful enough to knock out a full grown, healthy adult. Not long after making such items Kokichi would pop up, asking to borrow your toys, and who were you to deny him, toys were meant to be played with, and inevitably not long later you’d hear of Kokichi’s latest prank involving whatever toy Kokichi had borrowed from you and Miu, often getting a laugh out of her.

·       Things usually got out of hand rather quickly when you were with one another, but it was a fun, calm sort of chaos

[takadanobaba]

Takahashi Minato’s Birthday PriZoom 8/21/2021

TABETAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII~!

Reminder that PriZooms are accessible to everyone regardless of region!! If you’re interested in attending, please go and support King of Prism!!! 

I’ve written a guide for participating in PriZooms   👉 here 👈 !

This time I went for the showings with just the Masashi Igarashi talk show bonuses, so the second and third showing (SSS part 2 and Best Ten’s Over the Rainbow route)!

MINATO’S PRIZOOM WAS THE LOUDEST I’VE EVER HEARD SOUNDBOARD HELL!! IT WAS SO FUN!!! There were a lot of people attending too!! I’m so glad!! Especially since Masashi Igarashi (the voice actor of Minato) was there as a guest star and he deserves all the support he gets!!

For reference, I went back and checked my recordings to collect the participant numbers for every prizoom I’ve attended so far:

86 in Jin’s text-only

30 in Rei’s text-only

142 in Minato’s regular cheering for the 3rd showing

105 in Minato’s text-only for the 4th showing,154 in cheering according to Luna! *EDIT: It ended up being over 160?*

You can really hear the difference! Rei’s prizoom was fun but definitely not as wild as Jin’s and Minato’s. I’d say that even though Minato’s cheering was more full-sounding, Jin’s birthday is still my favorite event because there were more participants going all-out with their camera/screens to show their love (almost every Jin fan went text-only). Also Jin’s prizoom holds a special place in my heart since Jin already does and it was my first prizoom, I don’t think anything will top Jin’s for me (though Joji’s is next month...... so.....)  Seems like there’s a pretty even spread of participants between both rooms?

It also seems like the same soundboard link is used for not only all of the showings, but shared between both cheering and text-only rooms? Nice to know that if I choose cheering then I won’t miss out on the soundboard activity!

The screening of SSS part 2 was also my first time trying out a regular cheering room, it seems like soundboard hell is becoming the main cheering style there too? WHICH IS GREAT FOR ME because I was worried about being annoying as one of the few soundboard spammers....... There were only about a handful of people on mic (special thanks to Luna and everyone tried to do regular cheering!! it seems like it’d be difficult with everyone using the soundboard haha)

The cheering for Kakeru’s episode is relatively tame and mostly consists of going “そうだ ！ そうだ！/ RIGHT! RIGHT!” and “そうなことないよ！/ That’s not true!” when there’s arguments about business and stuff. Wh.... who was the other person shouting “大好き” at Sanada..........wwhy......

The cheering for Joji’s episode is CRAZY.... pretty much the whole episode is basically inaudible because everyone’s just going KIIIITAAAAAA and KAKKOIIIIIIIII over EVERYTHING. Which is understandable because Joji’s episode has a lot going on and is the best episode of anything ever. I might be a bit biased. Anyways I love rewatching Joji’s episode even more now (THAT MEANS A LOT... JOJI’S EPISODE MEANS A LITTLE TOO MUCH TO ME.... longest I’ve gone without revisiting it is a week). It also had the most regular cheering out of every episode in part 2 which is cool! There wasn’t much since the cheering was mostly soundboard hell but hearing the “Joji! Joji!” cheers in Joker Kiss was just really nice.... it’s just like in the recording of Shiny Rose Stars/the sss stageplay!! There’s no soundboard substitute for that so the voice cheers had a chance to really shine. The “Joji! Joji!” cheers for that part makes the song so much more emotional to me (especially since Joji’s name has so much significance to him.....he’d appreciate the affirmation a lot;;;;.....okay I’m getting sidetracked so I’m just gonna shut up now and wait to gush about Joji’s episode on the right birthday) SO YEAH I LIKED THE CHEERING ROOM JUST BECAUSE OF THAT PART!!! I’m actually going to die from joy at Joji’s prizoom next month.

Minato’s episode mostly consisted of spamming “食べたーい！/ I wanna eat it!” whenever food showed up, that happened for everything though (like the ramen in Joji’s episode), but Minato’s episode was more food-centric so there were more opportunities. “TABETAIIIIIIII” isn’t usually used that much (m... much less for the Shin/Louis kisses...??)! I guess everyone tried to use it as much as possible in celebration of Minato, seeing as he is the food character and all? Really cool!

I was in the text-only room for the 4th showing so it was strictly soundboard hell for Best 10. Its cheering is great as expected! Just a whole showing dedicated to the YO button. For the language lessons part everyone just spams YO along with the karaoke-cues since nobody can actually voice along! I LOVE IT

It’s fun getting an idea of who’s a regular prizoom attender! Notable participants for me this event were Luna and the Kouji cosplayer preparing food the whole time??

Bonuses:

These took SO LONG to process because they’re over 20 minutes long each. And youtube just hates me so it kept messing up the blur so I had to keep going back to set them again and wait for that to process and repeat. I wanted to post this as soon as possible!! but youtube wouldn’t let me. Anyways!!!!!!!!!!!

The bonuses were supposed to be 10 minutes but Masashi Igarashi just had so much fun interacting with the participants and gushing about kinpri aaa.... HE’S JUST SO HAPPY TO BE MINATO;;;;;;;;;............... I like Minato just because of him. I hope my super simple and also in English text contributions made him feel appreciated ;; 

(Also that was the most I’ve ever seen people use the actual text function......... c... can we do that more.... kinda awkward calling it the text-only room when it’s really just soundboard-only....)

First bonus is here!

Second bonus is here!

I actually messed up recording Minato’s birthday letter so I wont be posting that, but thankfully Luna had it screenshotted and plans to translate it so it’s not lost forever ^^;;; 

You can read Luna’s translation of the bonus PrismChat and letter here!

Anyways, reminder that Luna and I aren’t exactly the most reliable source of prizoom coverage (seeing as we skip showings + just have mishaps when it comes to archiving), so if there’s a screening you want to attend, please go and see it yourself! I wrote a guide to help with buying tickets and everything!! It’s also just more fun experiencing the event firsthand than just through tumblr posts!!

And with that....... I wait for Joji’s prizoom.......

[minyoonmeme]

Normalcy of the Pretty Posse

Chapter 4

Word count: 3232

Pairing: Jeongguk x reader, ??? x reader

Description: Stupid Jeongguk and his cute sweaters and pretty posse of hyungs

Genre/Warnings: Min Yoongi is not very good at meeting people, but Park Jimin is. 

Tag List: @luvtaeha @holaaaf 

Previous Next

masterlist

“Do you know what’s going on?” 

“Nope.”

Jeongguk and Hoseok whispered to one another huddled over a family size bag of chips, crumbs falling each time they shifted. Their eyes danced between (Y/N) to Yoongi while they mindlessly shoveled chips into their mouths. Yoongi had let Jeongguk and (Y/N) into the studio twenty minutes ago and beyond introductions not much had happened. Hoseok almost pouts from disappointment. Where's the flare? The dramatics? Why hasn’t Yoongi pissed himself yet from nervousness? 

“Are you love birds gonna stand outside holding hands or are you gonna come in before you waste time?” Hoseok’s grip on the door was light as he narrowed his stance and let the two past him. “Hi (Y/N), you look cute today. Jeongguk you look cute too, I guess.” Hoseok smiled to himself as (Y/N) skirted past him with an embarrassed smile. Jeongguk followed suit with a wave to Yoongi, who was too occupied trying to make himself look busy, and a pinch to Hoseok’s arm for the added embarrassment. 

“You speak Korean right?”

“Hyung!” Yoongi barely spared Jeongguk a glance as he glanced toward (Y/N) from his seat. Yoongi noted that she was a small thing with her head barely past Jeongguk’s shoulder. Her head bobbed up and down before she fell into a bow. 

“Hello, My name is (Y/N). I’m a commercial music and production major at KNU. It’s nice to meet you, please take care of me.”

Yoongi blinked a few times and shook his nearly empty coffee before responding. “So.. do you speak Korean or..?”

“Hyung, she just spoke Korean!”

“Jeongguk-ah, you and I both know she could have prepared that.”

“She goes to a Korean university in the middle of Seoul, I highly doubt that.”

Yoongi gave a small shrug before reaching his hand out. “You shake hands where you’re from right? I’m Min Yoongi. It's nice to meet  you.”

Hoseok was loving every second as he watched from the couch. 

“Should we say something?” Jeongguk watched as (Y/N) tapped her fingers against the table. Jeongguk recognized a few familiar hand positions from the few piano lessons Yoongi had reluctantly given him his sophomore year. 

“I don’t know. I’m kind of intimidated right now. Hyung looks like he wants to jump out a window or run out the door any minute now.” Jeongukk shrugged and leaned closer to Hoseok crumbling the chips between them in the process. 

“It would be great if we could hear what they were listening to instead of listening to each other finish an entire bag of chips. Did you know you eat with your mouth open? Fucking heathen, I didn’t raise you this way.” Jeongguk smacked his greasy crump covered hand across Hoseok’s shoulder for that. Hoseok just whines and rubs at the spot tenderly. 

Yoongi and (Y/N) sat adjacent to one another as Yoongi’s soundboard desk shuffling through the drive she had brought. Yoongi had asked (correction: forced) Hoseok to wheel in another chair for (Y/N) to sit in while they listened, but her feet barely reached the floor as she swung them back and forth with nerves. Jeongguk was sure she was overwhelmed as Yoongi usually chose to sit in silence while he listened to tracks and Yoongi’s silence was nothing short of intense. A plain matte black pair, a pair Yoongi had pulled out from a random drawer, sat on top of her head just slightly too big. Jeongguk had never seen the pair before and felt a small flutter on his stomach at the thought that Yoongi had bought a new pair for her to use. He knew Yoongi tended to shy away from leading or teaching, but felt grateful his hyung was willing to even try. The flutter had nothing to do with the fact that he thought she looked cute as the headphones slipped around repeatedly off of her head. Nope, none at all.

“How many songs has it been? Like 6? My back is starting to hurt from this couch. Hyung should really get another one.” 

“It’s uncomfortable for a reason, you brat. How long are you trespassers going to keep talking?” Jeongguk and Hoseok jumped up, effectively smacking their heads against one another at the sudden voice. Both met Yoongi’s stare as he looked over his left shoulder, one ear free from his headphones.

“Sorry, Hyung we’ll stay quiet.” Hoseok nodded along with Jeongguk’s words, even going so far as to mime zipping his lips closed and tossing a key over his shoulder. 

Yoongi rose his eyebrows up before lifting his headphones off of his head with a deep breath. (Y/N) followed suit, although slightly more hesitantly. “You guys can leave, actually.” 

Jeongguk’s eyes darted over to (Y/N) as he watched her body freeze. The hand that had been tapping chords onto the table unplugged her headphones before stiffly beginning to neatly wrap the cord. He wished he knew what was going on in her head as he watched her eyes dart back and forth along the floor. His hand itches to stop her small trembles as she reached to pull out the usb drive. 

“Yoongi-hyung don’t you think you’re being too harsh. It’s only been like twenty minutes...”

Yoongi threw a confused look at Hoseok before spinning his chair fully to face the couch behind him. “I kick you guys out of my studio like twice a week, this is nothing new. Now out.” Yoongi emphasized the “now” with a flick of his chin towards the door before turning back to his monitors. He hadn’t even acknowledged (Y/N). 

Hoseok loved his friend, he did, but watching Jeongguk beat himself for bringing (Y/N) here made his skin boil. A look at (Y/N) left him even more mad. Her shoulders were squared inward as she shoved her things into her bag as quickly and quietly as possible. They weren’t close in any way, but Hoseok had grown up with a sister and hated seeing anyone, especially girls, cry.  

“Fine. we’re leaving you hermit. Don’t think we won’t be having a talk about this later when you get home.” Hoseok heaved Jeongguk up from the couch by his elbow and did the same for (Y/N). Their eyes met and Hoseok mentally cursed in his head for Yoongi’s asshole tendencies. He knew Yoongi wasn’t an actual asshole, nor was he intending to be mean, but this just is how Yoongi was. ‘All think, few words' is how Hoseok described Yoongi’s communication style or lack thereof. Yoongi could feel a million things and somehow sum it up in twenty offensive words or less. Looking at her again Hoseok leaned down and whispered, “Let’s get some ice cream, yeah? My treat!” His heart eased little when a small smile and a squeeze to his hand on her elbow were returned. 

“Where are you going?” Yoongi looked up from his now blank monitor confused and blinked in (Y/N)’s direction. All think, few words indeed.

Jeongukk, Hoseok, and (Y/N) looked between each other. Jeongguk had his head wrapped around the door’s handle ready to storm out toddler style while Hoseok’s hand slid from her elbow to her wrist. 

(Y/N) shook a little while she stuttered, “I thought that you-- I mean you said to--” 

“I thought you said you could speak Korean?”

“I can! I’m-uh just confused, I think. You said to get out?”

Yoongi met her eyes for a few seconds before furrowing at the ground. “I meant them. Why would I kick you out? That’s dumb.” 

(Y/N)’s hand swung to Hoseok's wrapped around her elbow and threw him a brief bright smile. Hoseok, confused but slowly understanding the situation, smiled back just as big and gave their hands a small shake in victory. Another crisis avoided, he supposed.

“You’re right, I’m sorry for misunderstanding Yoongi-shii! Where were we? Let me get my hard drive back out!” 

Yoongi handed her a reconnected pair of headphones, keeping his hand out for the usb drive she had taken back. Her hands left hoseok as she excitedly ruffled through her bag. The usb fell onto the open palm before her as she threw the headphones over her ears. She made sure to throw a smile and thumbs up to Jeongguk still standing by the door. Crisis very much so avoided, actually.

Hoseok patted (Y/N)’s head before grabbing Jeongguk’s elbow in tow. “We should probably get out before Yoongi-hyung starts throwing pens at us. I think he started sharpening them down after Jin-hyung took an HDMI cord.” 

Jeongguk opened his mouth to reject Hoseok’s idea, but was interrupted by (Y/N) spinning her chair away from the soundboard to face him halfway. “I’ll text you when I’m done and let you know how it went okay?” Jeongguk nodded, mouth a little too dry from the smile lingering on her lips, and tried to return it. “Bye Hoseok-shii, we can get ice cream later maybe? Bye Jeonggukk-oppa!” 

Hoseok kept his giggles in as he dragged a flustered Jeongguk out the door. 

_______________________________________________________________________

God he was intimidating…

Yoongi had chosen to forgo any excessive speaking and instead settled for minimal verbal explanations with lots of subtle grunts and pointing. It worked for a bit as Yoongi pulled up the tracks of my songs in a much more advanced version of Logic Pro than I owned. College budgets don’t really allow for excessive spending these days, ya know? 

“Uh Yoongi-shii, I really appreciate everything we’ve done today, but I have no idea what you’re saying right now.” Yoongi, I had noticed, tended to mumble and despite having spoken for Korean for a couple of years now satoori and mumbled things tended to make understanding someone very difficult. 

Yoongi looked at me sideways and blinked before taking a deep breath. He had looked more sure of himself when Hoseok and Jeongguk were here, so I chose not to mention how his shoulders seemed to move inward as he inched to face me. “You distorted this sample right?” I nodded in response. “Right, well I was just wondering why you added so much reverb if you’d already added distortion. It throws the whole thing off after the second verse, no flow really. You should probably scrap it and start over.” 

“Oh uh, I mean you’re right actually. It’s kind of an overkill. You’re very honest, Yoongi-shii.” 

I watched as Yoongi finished off the last of his now mostly water iced coffee with a nod. “You could say that.”

“In that case, I’ll be honest too. I think you’re being a little picky because you don’t know what you’re doing or what to do with me, specifically.” 

Yoongi narrowed his eyes and leaned backward in his chair, the joints squeaking slightly as he did so. So much for a cool guy move. “Picky? Did you expect me to graze over your mediocrity? I’m a professional kid, we don’t take mediocrity in the big world and Daddy’s money isn’t gonna get you far.” Yoongi whipped his hands on his pants as he clicked around. 

My arms tingled as a heaviness settled in my chest, something akin to disappointment and failure making a home. “Daddy’s money? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Yoongi turned and refused to look at me any longer. “It means I can smell the money rolling off of you and I don’t think working in a cafe can get you the program needed to mix music like this.” 

My chest felt heavier than before as I geared myself up to respond. “You’re right. That was expensive and maybe I do come from money, but that song was made in 2014 and I’ll have you know that I’ve been living on my own in Korea since I was fucking shipped off in 2015. I didn’t come here to get profiled Yoongi-shii, I came here because I thought you were a professional who knew how to scroll and find my recent tracks.” Fuck Min Yoongi if he thinks he can walk all over me.

Yoongi clenched his jaw with a slight tilt of his head to the side before visibly gulping down whatever was in his throat. His free hand meanwhile gripped the mouse and clicked into another folder. _______________________________________________________________________

To: JJK-Oppa 

Heading home now Yoongi-shii is weird and mean 

From: JJK-Oppa

How was it? I’m sorry about earlier by the way. Yoongi-Hyung isn't the best at expressing himself or talking really

To: JJK-Oppa

I figured as much, he seems harmless though just a little idk??? So much attitude in a tiny body Don’t tell him I said he’s tiny oh god I already kinda sorta maybe went off on him

From: JJk-Oppa

Secrets safe with me :) Why did you go off on him???  I’ll beat him up for you >:)

To: JJK-Oppa

Jeongguk-oppa, I don’t think you could hurt a fly but thank you <3 Do you think Hoseok-shi would still get me ice cream? I’ll give you all the juicy details later

From: JJK-Oppa

Hyung said he’s always down for ice cream We can pick you up..?

To: JJK-Oppa

Say less <3 

______________________________________________________________________

“(Y/N)! Over here!” My head flew right as I looked in the direction of the voice. Jeongguk stood half in the back door of a black SUV. I threw a hand up and waved back noticing he had changed from a casual oversized sweater and jeans to a matching baggy grey sweatsuit. 

“Hi Jeongguk-oppa, it’s nice to see you again.” I gave a small bow of my head before ducking beneath his arm holding the door open and sliding in. I released a happy sigh when I felt the heat coming from the vents. “Hi again Hoseok-shii, thank you for picking me up.” 

Hoseok and scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Back it up women, what’s this “Hoseok-shii” business all about? You call Jeongguk Oppa and not me? You’re soon to be dance captain too?”

I smiled and leaned forward to place my cheek against the side of his seat. My eyes fluttered and smiled up at him. “Would you like you to call you oppa hoseok-shii?” Hoseok turned to face me and pinched my other cheek with a scrunch of his nose

“You brat, it’s Hobi-Oppa now okay? You’re gonna be trouble. I can tell already.” I rolled my eyes and pulled his hand from my cheek before slumping back. “This is Jimin, by the way. He wormed his way into the car before we could stop him, so I apologize for anything he does beforehand. He is also trouble.” 

Jimin, for what it's worth, only smiled and turned from the passenger seat to smile at me as I buckled my seatbelt next Jeongguk. “I heard there would be free ice cream and gossip about Yoongi-hyung, so I had to come.” His eyes melted into crescents as his smile grew in a way that I can only describe as heart clenchingly cute. God dammit another member Jeongguk’s posse.

“It’s nice to meet you Jimin-shii. Free ice cream is the best kind of ice cream, so I don’t blame you for tagging along.” 

Jimin studied me for a few minutes with a small smile before Hoseok yelled at him for not wearing his seatbelt. 

“You think I want your dead body on my hands if we get into an accident? I’m all up for living on the edge Jimin, but please put your seatbelt on so Jin-hyung doesn’t have a heart attack, please.” 

“I’m too cute to be a corpse.” 

“I hate to break it to you, but being cute doesn’t constitute not dying Jimin.”

“God clearly has his favorites, look at me! I’ll be fine.”

“Do not tempt me into killing you with this car to prove you wrong. I’ll do it. (Y/N) tell him I’ll do it.” 

“(Y/N) sweetie, you stay out of this okay? Just sit there and hold Jeonggukie’s hand while Hobi-hyung and I sort this out.”

Jeongguk, most likely used to this kind of conversation, was glancing out the window in thought as a nudged him. Though the flush on his cheeks that matched mine told me that he was still listening. “Is this normal for you guys?”

“Hm? Oh you mean Hobi and Jimin hyung? Yeah, all of my hyungs bicker like old married couples. Says is what they get for raising me.” 

Before I could respond, Jimin was tapping my knee closest to him with a pout. “Ya! Weren’t you listening? (Y/N), you’ll call me Oppa right? Hobi-hyung and Jeonggukie aren't the only ones, right?” Hoseok and Jeongguk both scoffed from their seats.

My eyes widened as I gave a quick glance to Jeongguk only to receive a shrug in response. Just great, thanks for the help. “Uh yeah Jimin-shii, I guess I’ll call you oppa one day.” 

“One day?” Jimin scoffed and pinched my knee. “You call me Jimin-oppa right now, young lady. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing each other more often. Us cute people have to stick together against people like Hobi-hyung.” The hand that pinched my knee returned and gave it a few pats. My mouth hung open slightly before I nodded and fought off a few giggles as a response. 

Things settled down for a few minutes before Jugguk shifted in his seat away from me slightly. His head was no longer facing the window, but now towards his lap as he flipped his phone between his hands. I was happy to see him not ripping at his fraying sweater sleeves, but curious as to what was causing the furrow between his brows. The atmosphere was light as Jimina and Hoseok continued to bicker about ice cream shops, so his look only made me worry. I snuck a glance at the two up front and decided texting was probably better than announcing any worries out loud. Jeongguk seemed like the private type anyways.

To: JJK-Oppa

Everything okay?

Jeongguk blinked as his phone lit up with my text message. He read it before furrowing his eyebrows deeper at the screen. I motioned for him to text me back with a pout. 

From: JJK-Oppa

Why are you are texting me

To: JJK-Oppa

Do you not want me to text you? :( 

Jeongguk looks at the screen with wide eyes before shaking his head no at me. It’s dark but I can still see the pink dusting across his skin nonetheless. Cute.

To: JJK-Oppa

I’m kidding, but really what’s up? 

Jeongguk goes to type again, but freezes his fingers a couple of times before typing and erasing a few times. Trying not to overwhelm him and give him some peace, I look away to listen to Hoseok and Jimin talking about which chores are overdue at their place. A chime of my phone brings my attention back to my phone.

From: JJK-Oppa

It’s nothing

To: JJK-Oppa

It’s okay. Sprinkles make everything better :)

Jeongguk’s small giggle eases the worry in my chest and any residual hurt lingering from my meeting with Yoongi as his eyes crease at the ends. It’s then that I suddenly remember why Jeongguk and his friends were so well known around campus. He’s so pretty. I hear Hoseok and Jimin cackling from the front and give my chest a few pats as it races. Correction: they’re all pretty.

[A/N: Hello~ I feel very ehh about this one, but honestly props to me for putting this out despite working two jobs, being a full time student, AND being major depresso espresso lately. Let me know what you guys think!]

[regrettablewritings]

Can I please request B, F, and O for Benoit Blanc? I’m simping for this gentleman sleuth so hard.

I’m surprised you didn’t put DNUT just for the sake of reference 😂  Stuff is below the cut!

B = Baby (Do they want a family? Why/Why not?): While he isn’t against the idea to the point of fighting it, Benoit doesn’t strike me as someone actively looking to start a family, either. At least, not in the most traditional sense of what a family could be. He knows he’s not ancient, but he’s certainly not the very picture of youth, either. There’s plenty of things he’s not afraid to do in fear of appearing odd, but he can’t help but wonder if, perhaps, becoming a father at his age would appear peculiar.

Technically speaking, there’s nothing wrong with it, of course: He’s sure enough men his age have become fathers, and he knows plenty celebrities had at much older stages of life. But no matter what The New Yorker may think, Benoit knows he’s not exactly a celebrity; becoming a father at his age might appear less glamorous. And as flattering as the theory might be, he’s not so sure he’d be comfortable with the world knowing his virility in practice.

But, of course, things don’t always go the way we plan for them to. Just because he’s not actively looking to grow the family doesn’t mean it won’t somehow happen. It’ll catch him by surprise, no doubt, especially given how he’s so used to being able to predict things by calculation and logic, but it’s nothing he’s necessarily going to fight, either. If the great Benoit Blanc is to become a father to an actual baby instead of just a fur baby, then he’s going to accept that position with pride and zeal. (And much confusion, but that’s nothing a lot of research and a handful of classes and Youtube tutorials couldn’t fix.)

Benoit knows the impact a loving parent can have on a child, and he wants to assure any progeny of his is granted that chance. He won’t be a perfect father, he knows that, but he most certainly would want to make an effort to be one that they wouldn’t hate. He’s encountered way too many patricide cases to go lax on it all.

More to the point, however, he’s honestly just content with his family as it currently appears to be. He may come from more traditional and decidedly old-fashion means, but this doesn’t exclude the sleuth from possessing an open-mindedness toward the ever-changing image of what a family could be decreed and recognized to be. And sometimes, a family is just a peacockish gentleman with a thick drawl, his more grounded and snarky partner, and their handsome pet cat who is either plotting their deaths or actually enjoys it when they sing show tunes to him.

There are times when he looks back on his life so far and feels ribbons of regret, however. How might things have turned out if he’d settled down before? Would things have been better? Worse? More or less the same?

Well, whatever the case, he doesn’t intend to dwell on it too often or for too long; you’re here now, and if that’s all there was meant to be, then he’d take it without a moment’s hesitation.

F = Feelings (When did they know they were in love?):

He’s not sure, if truth be told. There wasn’t really a precise moment or even necessarily one singular action that offered him any confirmation. The sting of Cupid’s arrow never actually radiated through him, so much as the realization flitted into his mind as a random memory might. It was simply a matter of fact to him one day: He absolutely adored you.

Part of him wanted to go into detective mode, to use that brain of his and search for a specific date that might have triggered the sensation, or to pester Elliot and Marta by using them as soundboards for his monologues and conclusion. Benoit Blanc is a self-aware man, he’s too old to be caught off guard by his own feelings like a schoolboy. But thankfully for all, he stops himself from doing so when he considers the stance that perhaps the feelings had already been present for months now, that there wasn’t any suddenness to the realization. A sense of jamais vu, but of the emotion. Jamais réalisé. Still, the ever-inquisitive spirit in him thirsted for an answer. He tried to satiate it.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that unlike most, you appeared to enjoy his monologuing. Most people would normally just sit there, the only feedback offered being blank expressions or ones that displayed how thrown off they were about his strange analogies. You, on the other hand, were always listening even when your eyes weren’t directly on him or if you appeared to be busy with something else. Sometimes, if you deemed it necessary, you would even throw in your own input. When he joked about how invested you were, you reasoned that you tended to do the same when you infodumped.

Going off that, he liked when you infodumped: Your entire person would gain a sprightliness to it, particularly in your eyes. The detective truly believed in the value of all sorts of knowledge, and he genuinely did appreciate whatever you had to offer, even when it only appeared to be trivia. The only downside to this was that you almost always would catch yourself and, casting your sights elsewhere, all that vibrancy from before would snuff out like a light. It would darn near break his heart to hear you apologize for “babbling on about such silly things.” He would always insist that it was quite alright, that you needn’t apologize, but you always assumed deep down that he was simply being courteous as all others in his position would be. The truth always was that he was being genuine, you deserved that much.

Maybe he thought you deserved that much because you were relatively patient with him. He didn’t think of himself as a nuisance but Benoit knew that to many, he was more of an acquired taste. He always tried to be polite and considerate but sometimes, his more abrasive traits would come to the foreground, especially when he was on the case. But you never seemed to get especially testy with him as Elliot would. If anything, you were quick to put him in his place with a gently-worded but sternly-spoken reminder that he needed to mind himself.

“The truth can only soothe you so much when you got a foot up your ass,” as you put it once. It got a smile out of him. Of course, he always knew you had some kind of wit about you; one that, while a bit more blunt than his, never failed to make him laugh yet force him to acknowledge the truth. He might’ve been known for his rich vocabulary, but he couldn’t help but admire your own, more direct means of getting the point across. He knew damn well that you understood everything he said, and sometimes he questioned if maybe your responses to him were so straightforward as a means of taunting him over his perceived verboseness.

Even if this were true, he found himself amused every time you opened your mouth. In fact, you were quickly becoming his favorite person to speak to. And he even dared to consider the possibility that, based on how you lit up every time he came to the office, perhaps the same could be said on your part . . .

Well, whatever the case, Benoit never got as far as he’d wanted to whenever he pondered the cause of his feelings for you. Much to his dismay, every effort was thwarted by himself: Every time he came to a theory, he would quickly become sidetracked by other thoughts of you. Eventually he became distracted to the point where every consideration he made could be counted on to be accompanied by some appraisal of your character. In short, he was simultaneously coming up fruitless and fruitful.

But then maybe those were the answers he was looking for. Of course, they weren’t in the usual format he was familiar with but he supposed it was for the best: Feelings weren’t the same breed of mystery as, say, a murder investigation. He didn’t count it as a failure on his part, however (given that Benoit Blanc wasn’t one to quit). No, he decided that perhaps it might’ve been better to keep his work and his play separate. He’d spent enough of his life revolved around solving mysteries, after all; this one, he concluded, was best enjoyed just being experienced as it was.

O = Orange (What colour reminds them of their other half?):

It’s hard for you to choose, really: Benoit is a rather colorful man, after all, with his bright blue eyes and lack of fear regarding certain male accessories. But you do tend to veer towards shades of green. Specifically, peacock green because not only does he own a suit of similar shading, but also because frankly, due to his dandy-like nature, you couldn’t help but compare him to a peacock in your head. Sure, he lacked the arrogance associated with the bird, but what else could you compare a man with an assortment of floral ties and pretty-patterned pocket squares to?

Similarly, Benoit associates you with the color cranberry because of something in your wardrobe: Specifically, the red cardigan you were wearing the day you both met. Admittedly, he’s a twinge embarrassed that he couldn’t associate you with something more overtly romantic: He remembers that you like pink Starbursts but still give him half of yours; he remembers how you argue that black Converses are “the only valid converses” next to glittery ones; and he has no choice but to remember that godawful brown scarf you refuse to discard because “it’s still a good scarf and you’d already had it for this long.”

But you don’t mind. In fact, you’re elated and nearly swept off your feet at the fact: He remembers all the little things from the moment you two became acquainted, even though at the time he was under no awareness or intention that you would become so important to him. You know that, technically, it’s a part of his job to just commit things to detail, but you’ve seen this man forget website passwords and his own keys. Yet, if anyone were to demand that he recall three things from that fateful day, he would immediately recite about how you had a frog Beanie Baby resting on your computer monitor; that you were stabbing your Chinese takeout lunch with one hand and typing up a report with the other; and that you were wearing a cranberry-colored cardigan.

Sometimes, the first two bits were swapped with different things he remembered (all being true), but the one consistent memory that he would always bring up with be the cranberry cardigan. And frankly, you're satisfied with that bit alone.

Thanks for your patience!

[ourimpavidheroine]

I’ve gotta say, I’m really enjoying these stories. Also, your late father sounds like an amazing man. I can really see the inspiration for LoLo come out in your mentions of him.

When my mother got pregnant with me - a planned pregnancy, they were young when they married but I was born 16 months later - my father knew from the get-go that he wanted a girl.

This was (and, I am sad to say, still is) an unusual thing for a father to wish for. Most fathers wish for a son. My Dad, however, was raised by a drunken, abusive, narcissistic man and he was afraid that if he had a son he’d just turn into his father. He thought a daughter would help him break that cycle of abuse. 

When I was born he told the nurse who brought me out to him in the waiting room that I was an angel, and Angel was the nickname that he alone called me.

He and I were very, very close, something that made my mother and younger brother jealous. (I didn’t really see or understand that until after he died when I was 26.)  There was nothing whatsoever or remotely sexual about it, which is what people usually assume when a father and daughter are very close. As my girlhood best friend said to me a few months ago, my father thought the sun rose and set on me, thought that I was his fairy princess. All of my odd, Autistic/ADHD weirdness was something he loved. I always knew he loved me not just despite my weirdness but because of it. (Something that my late wife did as well.)

My father was a brilliant man. He graduated high school at 15 and went into university to study architecture. Academically he handled it, but he was way too young to handle the social aspects as well as the responsibility of it and so he dropped out a year later. Things were apparently hellish with my grandfather and my Dad enlisted in the Army on his 18th birthday. This was 1965 and the US started sending soldiers to Vietnam. Not my Dad, though. He took some tests the military gave him and after boot camp spent his entire three years on a Nike missle base in the middle of Milwaukee, working on one of those huge old mainframe computers (you know, the kind with punch cards). I’m guessing they didn’t send the really smart ones off to be killed.

He taught himself how to be an architect through reading books at the library, including textbooks that he would sit and read at UC Berkeley’s library, even though he wasn’t a student there any longer. Then, after he had learned that, he read through engineering and physics textbooks. Then he read through every single book he could find that taught him how to actually build the structures he had learned to draw. He was completely self-taught, and the man not only designed and built complicated, Broadway-worthy theater sets he also designed and built houses from the ground up. He wanted to build a rock retaining wall at our house (which was located at the base of a hill and was on an incline) and so he went to the library and got a book about how Romans built walls and spent three years going to the local river to source variously-sized river rocks to build that retaining wall, which he did completely without any kind of mortar, just balancing the rocks perfectly. It’s still standing, 40 years later.

He always worked at very menial jobs - he was a line cook, a stocker in a supermarket produce department, an RV park manager, etc. He was terrible with money, didn’t understand it at all. We lived right on top of the poverty line. He had zero executive functioning and that caused a lot of problems for all of us and meant a lot of broken promises, too.

I am completely sure that like me, like both of his grandchildren, he had Autism and ADHD. Not diagnosed of course, they weren’t in those days, But he had them nevertheless.

He was a voracious reader and introduced me to sci fi and fantasy. On my eighth birthday he gave me his copies of The Lord of the Rings and had me read them. (This was 1977, trust me when I tell you those books were not a household name at that point.)  He’d wake me up at 3:30 am and we’d go fishing together, him with a thermos of black coffee, me with a bottle of orange juice and a box of Entenmann’s mixed donuts and we’d sit there in happy silence together, fishing and enjoying each other’s company. He was a wonderful storyteller and only once did he get angry with me. He never laid a hand on me or my brother but the one time he got angry with me he slapped me across the face and then the both of us cried.

He taught me many useful skills, like how to jimmy locks and how to walk through people unseen and how to learn on my own how to do things and how to make the world’s best pie. He always told me that I could absolutely anything I put my mind to. When I asked him once if that meant I could be a father - I was joking - he looked me straight in the eye and asked me if I actually wanted to be a father. When I told him no he responded that he had said if I had put my mind to it, and he wasn’t vouching for anything I pulled when I didn’t care.

He also told me that I was the strongest person he’d ever met and when I scoffed at that he shook his head and said, “Angel, most people see you and they have no idea at all what’s inside of you and what you are capable of. There is nothing in this life you won’t overcome. Someday, when we’re both dead, you come find me and tell me I’m wrong.” (So far, he has not been wrong.)

He was a functioning drunk; he only drank after 8 at night, however. Just enough to make sure he’d not be hungover in the morning. He was a night person and all his life only needed about 4 hours of sleep to be completely rested.

He loved movies but he hated to go alone and usually took me. Not all of these movies were appropriate for kids my age but there it was. When I was eleven he took me with him to see The Elephant Man and I broke down completely, devastated and sobbing, horrified at how cruel people were to the lead character, just because he was different. After the movie we sat in the car and he held me until I was done crying and when I was all done he told me to never forget how the movie had made me feel and to remember that no matter how different people were from me they were all human and deserved kindness, compassion and understanding. This was a lesson I have tried very hard to live throughout my life. He took people at face value, and that included everyone. I don’t think he was particularly woke based on 2021 sentiments but he tried very hard to treat people equally and that included queer people during the AIDS crisis, too.

He was a feminist and believed women should be equal to men. He walked the walk, too: he cooked, he cleaned, he changed diapers, etc. And by that I mean he did them as par for the course, as part of his daily life. He did not rely on my mother’s emotional labor to remind him to do shit. He just did it because things needed doing and he was a grownass man, not a man-child. He did not consider caring for his children as babysitting, either.

He liked to sing. My mother and brother have opera-quality singing voices - for real, both of them are quite gifted - but his wasn’t like that, it was just a perfectly ordinary, passable baritone, just like mine is a perfectly ordinary, passable alto. He sang and he whistled when he was happy and I do the same. He used to make up funny little songs and rhymes on the spot, he had a gift for improvisation that way. I wish I had inherited that but alas! No.

Even when he was a boy all of the neighborhood kids would come to him with broken toys to be fixed. He quite genuinely liked kids and even teenagers and spent a lot of time working with the local high school drama department, building the sets, working as the stage manager and setting up and working the lights and soundboard (he taught himself to do that as well) and even directing some of the plays when the drama teacher was out on maternity leave. To this day I still get contacted by people who were in school with me or my brother who tell me what an influence my father was on them, the special things he did for them to make sure they knew he was paying attention and cared. One guy a couple of years ago contacted me on Facebook and told me that he got into some trouble after high school, even got imprisoned for a few months. My father visited him in prison and afterwards took him to AA with him, became his sponsor, helped keep on the straight and narrow. He named his oldest son after my father, in fact. I hear a lot of those stories.

He loved books and he loved music and he taught me to love those things as well. He fell in love with my mother when he was seventeen and married her five years later and came to regret it - like his father, his wife was an abusive, narcissistic person. He stayed with her, though, until my second year of university, when he abruptly walked out on her, went to AA and quit drinking. I asked him about it later; he told me that he had wanted to leave her for years but knew that if he did he’d never see me or my younger brother again. The courts in those days automatically gave kids to the mother and my mother was an accomplished liar and would have told the courts anything and they would have believed her. Once I was out of the house and secure, then he was done. (The fact that my brother was only fifteen and left to fend for himself with my mother was...not good. Not good at all. My father was not perfect and he was not a saint and that was a mistake that still has repercussions today.) He did not do enough to protect me from my mother while I was growing up, however. He regretted it, he told me later. I understand now that he was constantly walking a knife’s edge, trying to keep her satisfied enough so she wouldn’t try to take me away from him, but it took therapy long after he died for me to really understand that.

His special interest was model railroading and he built these amazing, intricate landscapes, all by hand and by scratch. The man took latex molds off the sides of rocks to build mountains with and built buildings out of tiny pieces of wood and such. I spent many hours with him as he built, listening to music and reading or just laying there, thinking my thinks, or sometimes chattering nonstop to him.

He called me, every single Friday night, right after the X-Files ended, right after the child’s voice said “I made this.” My phone would ring and we’d chat for hours, talking about the show (we both loved it) and whatever else. He lived about 5 hours away from me at the time and we did talk at other times during the week but that was our standard date. He died in the middle of Season 2 and to this very goddamn fucking day whenever I hear that “I made this” I wait for my phone to ring. And I cry every single time because he will never call me again.

I absolutely think that meeting my late wife via the X-Files was my father, watching out for me. When my twins were newborn and pretty much all I did 24x7 was breastfeed them I re-watched the entirety of X-Files on the DVDs I had and I’d talk to my father in my head, telling him about his grandchildren.

He’d always buy the new Stephen King books in hardcover and read them and then give them to me to keep. He especially loved the Dark Tower series but I haven’t finished the ones that were published after he died. I bought them myself but they are still sitting on my bookshelf, unread. I just can’t.

He died in the hospital after being in a coma for a week. The ICU nurses were very kind and showed me how I could turn off the life support machine if I wanted to and told me that I could be in there with him as long as I needed. They very considerately closed all of the curtains and closed the door to the room. I was alone with him in there and I turned off the machine and I held his hand and I sang to him as he died. I didn’t want him to be alone. 

He was right. I was strong enough to do that. It hurt, though. It still hurts.

He’s buried in California with a free military headstone because my comfortably upper middle class grandfather refused to shell out for a headstone and I was flat broke. Many years later I had a regular stone engraved with the words, “Go then, there are other worlds than these” and I placed it at our summer cottage here in Finland for him. I like to think that he and my late wife are keeping company. They never met here, but they would have liked each other very much, that I do know.

[jinstronaut]

do you sometimes think like... i don't know how to explain ;-; every day i think about my past and how i'm living right now, and it just gets clearer and clearer that i won't be proud of who i am today in the future, just as i'm ashamed and regretful of who i used to be. it feels like i'm getting much more far away from who i wanna become, not the opposite :( i see the boys' story and they were following their dreams at such a young age, all of them, even jin who's the oldest, they were always working hard. i know i shouldn't compare myself to them, i should use their support as a help for my own path, but i feel strenghtless. i ended high school at the beginning of this year and i haven't entered uni (i really have no idea of what i want), which means 2022 will be another year of studying hard for me, and honestly i don't think i will be able to survive this. i used to be good at studies when i was younger, but even this part of myself fade away. now this is the hardest thing to me. it's the first time in my whole life in which i can't see or believe in a future for me. .. you probably will desagree, but when i think rationally about this i feel very realist, not negative :( i wish i could find a job so i'd feel less like a burden and more like a person worth of something more, i guess. sorry, i've talked about this so many times with my closest friend and my cousin, but i feel like they're tired of this same thing over and over and i don't blame them. you seem like a cool person so i sent this, if you decide not to answer it, i'll understand ❤💓💓

hi sweetie nonnie 🥺 first of all thank you for trusting me with this and opening up to me!!! i hope i can be a good soundboard for you during what's obviously a rough time right now 😞

firstly, i want to make something really clear to you: you don't need to know what you want to do. there's always such a weird societal pressure that once you've graduated high school, you need to have your life figured out, and that's just not true!! i know it's a lot easier said than done, getting into that sort of mindset where you can just exist and be okay with that, but i really want you to know that it's okay that you're not sure what you want to do. if you want to go to university, then go for it! don't pressure yourself to fall into a certain routine -- the best part about college is the amount of classes you can take in a variety of different subjects. you could find something you really love to do, or you could realize that maybe it's not what you want it to be. both are super valid and it's a good reminder to keep in your back pocket when your brain tells you that you're not doing enough ♥

i also know it's really hard to not compare yourselves to others, especially success stories like bts. they're all incredible and work really hard for what they have and what they've gotten, but their path doesn't always equal your path, you know? you can still work hard and apply yourself to whatever you want in the moment and it'll be successful. it's not about measuring things in terms of huge achievements, sometimes it's about celebrating the little things you manage to do on a daily basis. like taking a shower, for instance, or getting out of bed a little earlier than usual, or applying to some jobs even if it's tough. take that into consideration, and truly give yourself some credit where it's due in terms of the things you do every single day -- it's not about being the best and being the biggest, it's just about being yourself!!

i also also think you need to give yourself a little bit of a break :( we've lost nearly two years to a worldwide pandemic that's certainly shaken the foundation of everyone's lives. the world was in lockdown for nearly a year, and some places are still in lockdown. some places are trying to pretend that covid doesn't even exist, and the state of the world has been incredibly volatile since march 2020, maybe even before that. it's all right that you haven't managed to do something like get a job -- the job market is really rough right now, considering how little people are willing to pay others to essentially risk their lives every day. it's all right to take a break and still try to ensure that your safety is coming first. being healthy is much more important than being put in an uncomfortable position by capitalism. one of the most important life lessons you can learn is putting your own self worth over a paycheck.

a little insight into me, for example: i'm the same age as jin, 29, and just recently do i feel like i'm finally on the right path. literally, this revelation started in may. may!!! that's only 3? 4? months of me feeling like maybe i have my life together, and i'm 29!! life is wild in the sense that things are always changing and moving and evolving. i've changed passions so many times, been at extremely low lows and incredibly high highs, but it's a constant work to feel like i'm a good version of myself, someone that past emmeline would be happy to know. if i can instill any wisdom into you from what i've learned over the past decade, it's that you don't always need to have all the answers. it's extremely valid to feel a little panicked and down -- like i said, the world is a hard place right now -- but what comes first is you.

maybe try some new hobbies! do something that you know you love a little more often every day, just to ensure that you're feeling happy. if your hobbies no longer excite you, don't be afraid to try something new! i know it's scary, but the first step is having the confidence to admit that you need help.

i hope this soothes you a little bit, nonnie :( i don't know if this makes sense in one whole go, but when i read your message i felt really touched, and i saw a lot of my younger self in your worries. i want to let you know how valid your feelings are, while reassuring you that things can change and get better when you least expect it. i'm here for you!!! and i'm sending you all the positivity that i can 💕💕💕

[make-me-imagine]

Hi! I’d like to request a ship, from Star Trek AOS & from Marvel, both with men. I’m a student, and I take that pretty seriously, I plan on going to graduate school. Honestly, I really enjoy researching and learning new things & getting high marks is very satisfying. In my spare time, I like to read (usually romance novels), listen to music (usually mistaking or taylor swift), or play trivia games with my younger siblings. ✨🤍

tumblr keeps saying something is going wrong with my ask, idk, i am SO sorry if you get multiples of this. I really do Not mean to spam.

Hey! Don’t worry, these are the only ones I got, no repeats! I hope you like them :)

Star Trek AOS: 

I ship you with Leonard Mccoy

I chose Leonard because I think he would be very appreciative of your love of academics as well as your family-oriented personality. I think your personalities would mold well together as you are both ambiverts. I almost chose Spock to be your match, but I think Leonard would be a better match. 

How you met + his first impression of you: 

It was your first day on Enterprise and you had to report to the medical bay for an exam. 

Leonard ended up being the doctor to do it, so that was how you met. 

He usually does not pay too much mind to those who come in and out of the med-bay

But you caught his eye with your smile and politeness.

He could tell you were a bit shy, but warmed up to him when he was polite in return. 

He thought you were interesting and was hopeful that he would see you around the ship. 

How he describes you to his friends/family: 

He would often boast to people about how smart you are.

Granted, most people in starfleet are intelligent, but he made a point to express how different you were to others. 

That you learned not because you had to, but because you wanted to and were passionate about it. 

Leonard would often mention your siblings too, and how you are around them.

This is because he loves how much you care about them and thinks it is a prominent part of who you are, so he wants other to know it as well. 

Your Best Friend: 

I think you would be best-friends with Sulu.

You two would get along really well. He can be an extrovert at times, but much prefers smaller gatherings and being with a few people at a time. You would bond over this, but would also be good at bringing out the more extroverted sides of each other, allowing you to have fun with others and each-other. 

(Other ship under cut) 

Marvel: 

I actually ship you with Tony. 

At first glance, your personalities are quite different, but I think you would influence each other in good ways. Tony would help you grow out of your comfort zone without forcing you, and you would bring out a more domestic side to him. This is because he sees how you are with your siblings, and it makes him feel soft for you, and he loves how kind and generous you are, Though he does not quite agree with your music taste. Don’t bring up the time you caught him singing along to Love Story. 

How you met + his first impression of you: 

You worked with SHIELD and ended up helping him with a project he needed help with. 

He didn’t notice you until you piped in while he was thinking out loud. 

You corrected a simply mistake he brushed over and he was almost surprised by it. 

He could see that you were more passionate about your work than the others which made him like you even more.

After taking a good look at you he began bouncing ideas off of you and using you as a soundboard. 

After working with you he found a fondness for you and offered you a job. 

You refused, but he liked you enough to seek you out to help him with new projects, so it was like you worked with him anyways. 

How he describes you to friends/family: 

He is the type to not go into too much detail.

He would briefly describe your looks and height, using the word “cute” a few times. 

When he begins describing your personality he goes into a bit more detail “Smart”, “passionate”, “has siblings, they’re alright.” 

Sometimes he describes you as “his better half”. 

So people tend to never know what to expect when they meet you, which to Tony is good. He likes people forming their own opinions of you, because they are great 10/10 times. 

Best-Friend: 

Rhodey. Even though Rhodey is also Tony’s best-friend, I think he would be yours as well. You three get along great, and Rhodey acts like a big brother to you. He often tells Tony that you are his favorite, which Tony is always offended by, though at the same time, he gets it. Your his favorite too. And god forbid Tony ever hurt your feelings or make you mad because Rhodey will be the first to offer to kick his ass. 

xx

[cuthian]

Unfinished Business

Hi everyone!

Welcome to this little prequel to Becoming a Memory, Becoming a Treasure.

In this, we'll see how Alex and Reggie ended up messing around for so long, why they kept messing around and how they dealt with the changes in their lives as they happened.

Thanks to everyone on the JatP discord server for being my soundboard when I needed one ;)

I have NO clue how long it'll take me to write the second part of this, and I sincerely apologise if it takes me a few weeks - it very well might, since Uni is kicking my butt.

Love Annaelle

Unfinished Business

“You and I will Always Be Unfinished Business.”

— unknown author

PART ONE

DECEMBER 1991

ALEX

See, Alex… Alex was fine with the breakup.

He was. It’d been his idea too—he and Luke were much better off as friends, as bandmates, than they were as boyfriends—but… well, Alex had been in love with Luke, brief as it might’ve been, and he found it harder than he had thought he would to see Luke flirting with someone else.

“Hey,” Reggie said, popping up beside him with two bottles of soda in his hand, watching Alex twirl his sticks restlessly between his fingers. “You okay?”

He handed one of the bottles he was holding to Alex and it wasn’t until Alex had taken a few sips that he realized Reggie had somehow conned him out of his drumsticks, which had now taken up residence in Reggie’s back pocket. “I’m fine,” he said belatedly, but even he could tell that it was unconvincing at best, and Reggie frowned at him.

“You don’t have to lie to me,” Reggie told him, eyes wide and his expression sincere. “Can’t be easy, what with Luke…” he glanced over his shoulder to their best friend, who seemed to be doing his best to get intimately acquainted with the girl’s tonsils.

“Just,” Reggie sighed. “If you need something, I’m here, okay?” He looked to the side, where Bobby was trying—and failing—to impress the bartender, probably to score a beer of some kind. “Bobby too.”

“Yeah,” Alex sighed, sagging back against the stage. “Just… I don’t want this to affect us. The band. I agreed with the breakup, I still agree with it, I just…” he shrugged helplessly and Reggie nudged their shoulders together lightly, and brief as the contact was, it did make him feel better.

“People say it takes a while to get over your first girlfriend,” Reggie said sympathetically. “I’m sure that’s true for boyfriends too. But I’m sure there’ll be others.” He grinned bright and happy and Alex was kind of helpless to smile back. “You’re awesome, bro. Everyone else’s gonna see that too.”

Alex’s cheeks flushed, but he smiled too.

“Thanks, Reg.” He leaned sideways a little to press their shoulders together. “You’re a good friend.”

“Always the tone of surprise,” Reggie chuckled, but he smiled too.  

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

MARCH 1992

Alex sat cross-legged on Reggie’s bed, flipping through one of his comic books as Reggie tried to convince his six-year-old sister to get dressed for her ballet class.

“Mags,” Reggie pleaded, “Come on, you love dancing.”

“I don’t wanna go,” Maggie whined, flopping onto the floor dramatically, kicking her legs out so Reggie couldn’t drag her leotard up her legs anyway, and Alex couldn’t help but smile at the scene.

They’d come over to Reggie’s house to do homework, because ever since he’d come out to his parents, they’d been weird about him having friends over, and as soon as they’d walked in the door, Reggie’s mom—her pupils dilated so much that it couldn’t be healthy—had shoved Maggie at them, telling Reggie to keep her occupied until she was picked up for ballet class.

Alex didn’t mind.

He loved hanging out with Reggie’s baby sister—they all did, even Bobby, though he sometimes grumped about it—and even their homework deadline didn’t really bother him enough to be resentful about it. Reggie, however, seemed a lot more put out by it than he usually was and that, combined with his squirrely, snappish behavior the rest of the week  made Alex sure that there was something bothering his friend, and he planned on finding out what it was.

Originally, Luke was supposed to be here too, because no one was as good at wheedling stuff out of Reggie as Luke was, but his parents had grounded him after staying out past his curfew with his newest girlfriend—Alex vaguely wondered how long this one would stick around.

“Okay,” he sighed when Maggie full-on wailed as Reggie wrestled her into her leotards. “Okay, let’s try this a different way.”

He got up from the bed and kneeled on the floor in front of Maggie. “Hey kid,” he said, shooting a wink at Reggie, “Why don’t you wanna go to ballet?” He pouted and said, “If you don’t go, who’s gonna teach me all the dances?”

Maggie stopped kicking her legs and looked at Alex with wide, teary green eyes that were just like Reggie’s. “You’re gonna dance too?”

“Well,” Alex said conspiratorially, leaning towards her a little, pretending to keep Reggie out, even though he knew Reggie could still hear them perfectly well, “I would love to learn how to dance, but I’m not allowed to go to the classes anymore, ‘cause I’m too big.”

Maggie gasped theatrically, and Alex made sure to keep his expression solemn as he nodded. “So,” he said. “If you can go to the class and then teach me all the moves, I’ll be able to dance with you.”

Maggie nodded at him with wide eyes. “Okay, Alex!”

She then turned to her brother again and said, “Reggie, you have to do my hair!”

Reggie exhaled shakily but smiled at her anyway. “Yeah, okay, Mags. Go get your brush.”

Maggie ran from the room, chattering at a loud volume about all the things she was going to teach Alex as soon as she came home from class. Alex leaned back on his heels and looked at Reggie, who was still staring out into the hallway. “Are you okay?” Alex asked quietly, resting his hand on Reggie’s shoulder.

Reggie looked back at him, eyes wide, and Alex could see him considering to lie.

“You can tell me anything,” he said immediately. “Now, or later, or in three weeks or a year. Anything.”

Alarmingly, Reggie’s eyes became glassy with unshed tears for a second before he blinked hard and swallowed. “Yeah, okay.” He turned away from Alex, and all Alex wanted to do was hug his friend to make whatever was bothering him go away. “Can we talk about it later?” he then asked hoarsely, still not quite looking at Alex. “When Maggie’s—”

“Yeah, of course,” Alex nodded, just as Maggie skidded back into the room clutching her sparkly blue hairbrush and glittery butterfly scrunchies.

They spent the next half hour trying to get Maggie’s hair into a knot-free, neat bun that had an appropriate number of butterflies—apparently, the correct number of butterflies was all of them—before the doorbell rang and Maggie ran downstairs with her bag slung around her shoulder, screaming goodbye at them and reminding Alex she would be teaching him the moves she learned today before the door slammed shut behind her.

Four minutes later, Reggie’s mom shouted, “I’m going out. There’s money on the counter for pizza. Make sure to give your sister some,” and the door slammed shut again.

Alex looked at Reggie in concern, because as soon as the door slammed shut, he seemed to shrink in on himself, and Jesus—Alex really wanted to know what was going on. “Reg,” he tried, but Reggie just shook his head and got to his feet, starting to get his school books from his backpack without looking at Alex, and he was worried now.

“Reggie,” he sighed, getting to his feet slowly. Reggie stayed at his desk, but he’d stopped moving, and when Alex brushed his hand against his arm, he exhaled in a shuddering gasp.

“What if I like boys too?” Reggie suddenly blurted, turning to look at Alex with wide, terrified eyes. “I’m not gay—I’m not, because I love girls, but I—” he looked around a little wildly and shrugged helplessly, “There’s—I—sometimes I look at Lu—at guys and I wonder what it’d be like to—”

Alex stared at Reggie, mouth hanging open just a little, because he wasn’t—he wasn’t sure what to say.

“I don’t know if I want to kiss another guy,” Reggie said desperately, “But then sometimes it’s all I can think about, but then I still can’t stop staring at the cheerleaders, or I still get blown away when Claire Johnson wears those really short shorts, you know, so it’s not—I don’t think I’m gay.” He looked up at Alex with a pleading expression and said, “How did you know?”

Alex heaved a sigh, running his hand through his hair as he sat down on Reggie’s bed heavily. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I guess… the same way you knew that you liked girls.”

“But I don’t know that anymore,” Reggie cried, throwing up his hands before he collapsed on the bed beside Alex. “How do you even know you wanna kiss a guy?”

Alex couldn’t quite take his eyes off of him, couldn’t focus really, and—

And later, Alex wouldn’t be able to justify, even to himself, what made him say it, but the words that came out of his mouth were, “I don’t know. Just kiss me, see how that feels.”

Reggie’s eyes snapped open and his jaw dropped, and Alex’s cheeks abruptly flushed.

“I mean, you don’t—” he stuttered.

“No, okay,” Reggie blurted, sitting up so abruptly he nearly smashed his face into Alex’s. They stared at each other, and Alex suddenly felt like the biggest asshole ever, because was this—was he taking advantage of Reggie? Alex had never really questioned his sexuality because he’d always kind of known that he liked boys a lot more than he liked girls.

He’d thought that maybe there was something wrong with him for a little while, but he’d never doubted.

“Reg,” he whispered, “You don’t have to—”

“I want to,” Reggie cut him off, leaning in so close Alex could feel the heat radiating from the other boy’s skin, his eyes fastened on Alex’s lips.

“Okay,” Alex breathed, and Reggie’s slim, strong fingers curled in the fabric of Alex’s shirt, drawing him closer so they shared a single breath before Reggie’s lips brushed across his.

Alex held his breath for a long, drawn-out moment before he remembered that he should probably kiss Reggie back, that that was actually what Reggie had asked for. It was… it was a really simple, almost sweet kiss—their lips pressed together chastely and Reggie's lips were really soft and tasted like the apple he’d eaten earlier, and Alex kind of wanted to press harder, hold him tighter, but he didn’t dare to because he didn’t know what Reggie needed or even wanted—or even if that were something Alex himself wanted.

They kissed chastely for an indeterminable time, before Reggie leant back, smiling lightly.

“So,” Alex choked, cheeks burning with heat when Reggie chuckled. “Boys too?”

Reggie nodded and smiled a bright smile. “Definitely boys too.”

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

MAY 1992

Alex had grown used to, over the years, leaving his bedroom window open just a crack so either or both of his best friends could crawl in after intense fights with their parents. There was a conveniently placed tree just outside his window that both Luke and Reggie had utilized several times to climb up into Alex’s room when they just needed to get away for a little while.

He’d woken up to find one or both of them in his room—even in his bed—dozens of times over the years and he was so used to it that he barely even stirred anymore when he heard someone crawl into the window, tiptoe into the room and drop a backpack.

There was a sudden thump and a muffled curse, and Alex, his eyes still mostly shut, raised his head from his pillow just enough to slur, “Mrgi?”

“Yeah,” Reggie whispered back, “Go back to sleep, it’s just me.”

“Mmkay,” Alex hummed and let Reggie shove him over a little so he could fit into the bed with him, settling against his best friend more comfortably.

He fell asleep again immediately.

When he woke up the next morning, Reggie was still there and they were lying very nearly nose to nose, sharing Alex’s single pillow—and with how often his friends crashed with him, he really should get another pillow. Because they were lying so close together, it took Alex a minute to notice the discoloration around Reggie’s eye and the faint trace of blood in one of his nostrils.

“Reggie,” he whispered, devastated to see him hurt like this again, reaching out to touch the bruised skin lightly, but Reggie caught his hand before he could make contact.

“It was my fault,” Reggie choked. “I got in their way. I should’ve stayed out of it.”

Alex dropped his hand, resting it on Reggie’s bicep instead, rubbing his thumb across the soft skin there. “It’s never your fault, Reg,” he said sternly. “It’s on them, not on you.”

Reggie looked away. “Maybe.”

Alex’s heart twisted painfully and he hated seeing his friend like this. He’d always hated seeing Reggie—sweet, cheerful, bubbly Reggie, who somehow always managed to make Alex and the others’ bad days better just by being there—so put down by the shitty stuff that his parents did.

He hated it more when Reggie showed up with bruises.

It happened rarely—very rarely—but it had happened before.

“You deserve so much better,” Alex told Reggie quietly. “I’m gonna keep telling you that until you believe me. And Luke and Bobby too.”

Reggie looked back at him and smiled weakly, and it felt like the most natural thing he’d ever done to bridge that tiny gap between them and press his lips to Reggie’s. He felt, rather than heard, Reggie’s surprised little inhale before the other boy relaxed and kissed back, shuffling just that little bit closer and resting his hand on Alex’s cheek.

“Okay?” Alex whispered when they broke apart to breathe.

Reggie looked at him, green eyes wide and surprised, and then smiled, slowly. “Yeah. Okay.” He was quiet for a second and then said, “I mean, it was way better last time, without the morning breath—” and then laughed hysterically as Alex hit him in the face with the pillow.

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

MAY to NOVEMBER 1992

See, the thing… the thing was that it kind of kept happening.

They didn’t talk about it much – if at all – but Alex still kept finding himself secreted away in a corner, kissing the living daylights out of Reggie, or dancing up against the other boy after one of their gigs, or holding hands as they walked home or spooning when Reggie inevitably ran to his house during his parents’ intense arguments.

And the thing was… the thing was that it was nothing like what he’d had with Luke.

With Luke, he’d had butterflies in his stomach every time he looked at him, his insides turning into warm mush when they kissed and his cheeks heating in a blush whenever Luke held his hand and aimed that thousand-megawatt-smile at him.

He’d been proper in love with Luke.

Whatever it was that he and Reggie were doing, it didn’t feel like that.

It wasn’t any less meaningful because of that though.

Alex loved Reggie, as much as he’d ever loved Luke, but he was not in love with him – Reggie was his best friend and one of the most important people in his life, and no matter how much they fooled around, he didn’t think that could ever change.

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

JANUARY 1993

“I’m not in love with you,” Reggie told him dryly one afternoon when Luke was out on a date and Bobby went to work a shift at a nearby coffee bar, and he and Alex were alone in the studio. Alex, who had actually been enjoying just hanging out with his best friend without having much to do, looked up at Reggie, who’d been messing with his guitar, with a frown.

“I—” he blinked. “I know? I’m not in love with you either.”

Reggie’s expression cleared, and he grinned widely. “Oh, good. That would’ve been weird.”

Alex snorted a laugh. “Really? We’ve been messing around for months, but me being in love with you would’ve been the weird part?”

Reggie wrinkled his nose and shrugged dramatically. “Well, I mean, it took you and Luke forever to act normal around each other again after you dated and I don’t want that to happen to us, you know.” He plucked at the strings of his bass restlessly, pouting just a tiny bit.

Alex smiled tightly and looked down.

He couldn’t deny he had worried about that too the first time Reggie had kissed him, or the first time he’d kissed Reggie, or the time after that, when it’d become clear that this was something they did now.

“I guess,” Alex sighed, “we’ll just have to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Reggie nodded vigorously and then carefully settled down his guitar before he moved over to Alex and straddled him. Alex, who hadn’t quite been expecting this, stared at him, his hands settling on Reggie’s waist automatically. “I,” Reggie said with a smug grin, “am gonna kiss you again.”

“Uh,” Alex tried, but before he could say anything, Reggie did exactly that. Alex gasped, because he really hadn’texpected this, but he didn’t resist as Reggie kissed him hungrily, deeply, their lips sliding together wetly before Alex remembered he could be an active participant and took control of the kiss, licking his way into Reggie’s mouth and—oh.

Sometimes he forgot why he and Reggie kept messing around.

Sometimes he forgot that they were great at this.

His hands and arms moved of their own accord, an arm slipping around Reggie’s waist, the other boy’s fingers tangling in his hair to keep him in place.

Kissing Reggie always kind of felt like an electric shock, like trying to contain a livewire, Alex’s skin burning and tingling where Reggie touched him, and a burning throb ignited somewhere deep in his stomach. He kissed Reggie back fiercely, sloppily even, but with everything he had, and anchored his fingers in his best friend’s belt loops as he held on for dear life.

Reggie groaned quietly against his lips, a deep, wanton sound that made something deep inside Alex’s stomach clench. It felt like a slow fire burning its way through his veins; as though Reggie had lit a fire somewhere deep inside of him that no one but him would be able to quench or satisfy.

And right then, Alex didn’t care anymore that Luke or Bobby could walk in on them, that they’d have to explain something they couldn’t even really explain to themselves—

But then Reggie moved again, tilting his head a little, and his tongue slid against Alex’s again—and it was too much, Alex couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think—he jerked his head back, gasping for breath as Reggie stared at him, his lips wet and a little swollen. “I don’t—” Alex choked, “I mean—I couldn’t breathe—”

“Oh,” Reggie said, and then, “Should we stop?”

Alex panted heavily, fingers clenching in Reggie’s shirt. “No,” he heard himself say. “No, I don’t want to stop.” Reggie grinned, delighted, and leaned in to kiss him again—a short, hard kiss—before he pulled back again and said, “Take off your shirt and lie down. I wanna try something.”

Alex flushed crimson. “Reg,” he choked, but Reggie shook his head and got to his feet.

“Nuh-uh,” he smirked. “Don’t protest. If I do this right, you’re gonna love it.”

Alex went to protest again, unsure of what Reggie had in mind, unsure if they should be doing this in the studio at all, but then Reggie kissed him again, and shit—

Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to take a few risks every now and then.

When the kiss broke, Alex inhaled sharply and let Reggie divest him of his shirt and push him down onto his back, Reggie’s hands skimming down his chest, fingers slipping teasingly underneath the waistband of his pants. “See,” Reggie muttered, pressing a kiss to the underside of his jaw, then his neck, and then his chest, “Luke talks a lot when he’s drunk. About girls, about kissing, about sex—”

Alex groaned when Reggie scraped his teeth on the sensitive skin just above his belly button.

“—and sometimes,” Reggie chuckled, “he talks about you. And now… Now I kind of wanna know—” he edged Alex’s underwear down just a little, “—if it really is that much fun.” He glanced up at Alex from beneath his eyelashes and Christ, he was gonna kill him—

And then Reggie ducked down and took Alex in his mouth and Alex’s brain kind of fizzed out for a while.

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

MARCH 1993

Playing a book club had been Luke’s idea.

It had not been his best, but it certainly wasn’t his worst idea either. The group of fifteen women and a few men, all their parents’ age, had been enthusiastic about the songs to the point that all four of them had wondered what kind of book club they’d wandered into, and they seemed pretty set on feeding them so much food they could roll out of the door.

Alex had been herded over to one of the armchairs once they’d finished their set, a plate filled with snacks pressed into his hands and Luke sitting on the armrest beside him, both of them staring, bemused, at Reggie.

Reggie, who had walked to the kitchen to get a glass of water and walked back out with a girl their own age, flirting like his life depended on it—that in itself wasn’t so very unusual, but the thing was… the thing was that it was working. The girl, a pretty blonde with a bright grin and a Queen t-shirt, was hanging off his every word, and Alex was…

Alex was baffled.

She kept laughing at whatever Reggie said to her, putting her hand on his arm and flipping her hair over her shoulder and—and—

Reggie was not that funny.

He was an idiot and an amazing friend and a great songwriter—even if all he wrote were country songs—and a pretty damn good kisser, but—

But he was hardly ever funny on purpose.

“You’re seeing this, right?” Luke asked, sounding as baffled as Alex felt. “I’m not dreaming?”

Alex raised an eyebrow at his best friend and ex-boyfriend and snorted, “You dream about Reggie trying to pick up girls?”

Luke snorted a laugh and slapped at his shoulder before stuffing another cupcake in his mouth and leaning back to watch Reggie’s attempt at picking up a girl. Alex was… Alex was pretty sure he was supposed to feel jealous or annoyed or hurt or something—things one usually felt when watching the person they were intimately involved with flirt with someone else—but all he could think about was that he hoped it worked out for Reggie.

He looked for a few more minutes before he let Luke drag him into a conversation about their setlist and a song they’d been working on together. Luke was trying to convince Alex to take lead vocals on at least one verse, but Alex wasn’t thatconfident about his voice—not compared to Luke’s anyway.

Still, he let Luke chatter at him about it—maybe it would be cool to do lead vocals.

Reggie looked breathless and giddy by the time he collapsed on the other armrest of Alex’s chair, cheeks flushed and his hair messy. Alex and Luke turned to him as one, and Alex didn’t need to look over his shoulder to know that Luke would be smirking at Reggie with the exact same expression that Alex wore too. “You having fun?” Luke drawled, one hand on Alex’s shoulder as he leaned towards Reggie.

Reggie grinned and shrugged. “Hey, I can’t help being this irresistible.”

Alex snorted in disbelief, and Reggie’s mouth dropped open in exaggerated indignation. Before any of them could say anything though, Bobby appeared from wherever he’d been hiding, coming up behind Reggie and slinging an arm around his shoulder—Reggie nearly toppled over into Alex’s lap—crowing, “Holy shit, man. How’d you manage to land the hottest girl here?”

Reggie blushed and looked down, bashful all of a sudden, but when he looked up, he met Alex’s eye right on to offer him a small, apologetic smile, and…

And that was that.

Alex found he didn’t mind.

Much.

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

LATE AUGUST 1993

“I had sex with someone at Bible Camp,” Alex blurted without thinking, cutting across Luke’s story abruptly. They were in the studio, laying back on the shitty little bed they’d put together in the loft, in case Luke or Reggie or even Alex wanted to spend the night there, and Luke had been trying to tell him what he’d missed in the three weeks he’d been at camp, but Alex had been holding this in for what felt like weeks—though it had only been four days—and he needed to say it.

Luke looked at him with a stricken, astonished expression, and Alex swallowed thickly.

“I slept with someone at Bible Camp,” he repeated, slower and calmer, although his voice wavered just a little and tears burned in his eyes. He looked up at the ceiling, resolute in his decision not to look at Luke, because he wasn’t sure if he could keep talking if he’d look at him. “We’d been flirting since the first day, and I liked him, and he was such a good kisser and—”

The words felt like they were being torn from his lips rather than a voluntary admission, and he curled in on himself automatically, pressing his hand against his breastbone hard, wishing the physical discomfort of the gesture would be enough to make him forget.

It was naturally, not, as he had known it wouldn’t be.

“My parents signed me up for ‘specialized’ group activities this summer,” he continued resentfully. “Which was really just a very fancy way of saying they signed me up for conversion therapy, and—and he… I just—” Alex exhaled shakily and pressed his knuckles against his eyes until he saw little bursts of light erupting behind his closed eyelids.

His head felt heavy and his mind was tired and worn and he just wanted to sleep, but also he needed to get this off his chest and—

Suddenly Luke was kneeling upright beside him, one of his hands on Alex’s shoulder and the other on his thigh. “Start from the beginning,” Luke ordered him gently.

So Alex did.

“I guess I wanted to get back at them,” he admitted. “And I liked him and he liked me. So we just… I just…” he thumped his head back against the mattress. “I don’t even know why I’m upset—it was… it was fine, we had fun, and then we home and—”

“Alex,” Luke whispered, before dragging his fingers through Alex’s hair soothingly.  

Alex let out a shaky breath at the touch, rolling his head just a little to the left so his temple rested against Luke’s knee. They’d been so very careful around each other for years, since their break up, and Alex hadn’t realized how much he missed the affectionate touches.Physical touch had always been a sure-fire way to ground and steady him when he felt untethered and unstable and he’d just… he’d just missed the casual affection from Luke.

He squeezed his fingers when Luke slipped his between his own and rested their hands against his chest. He stared ahead blankly as he tried to form some semblance of coherent thought. He felt lighter, oddly, after getting it off his chest, but the knot in the pit of his stomach had not lessened at all, sitting uncomfortably, making his gut churn uneasily.

“I don’t know why I’m upset,” he repeated quietly, shamefully, because he’d… he’d wanted everything that they’d done and he’d enjoyed it too, but…

But…  

Luke tugged on his hair softly and smiled before replying, “You’re allowed to be upset when your first time doesn’t go the way you always thought it would.”

Alex looked up at Luke and swallowed thickly. “I guess,” he whispered, “I guess I still thought… after everything, I still thought it’d be you. And then it wasn’t.” Luke let out a small, hurt sound, and Alex shook his head immediately. “No, don’t, I—I’m not pining over you, I’m not in love with you… anymore. I guess I just… never adjusted that expectation.”

It was true—he’d realised he was over Luke quite a while ago. It’d taken him a while to get used to that revelation too, and even longer to decide whether he hated being over Luke more than he had hated having a broken heart.

“I’m sorry,” Luke said, even though there wasn’t anything he should be sorry for.

“Don’t be,” Alex told him seriously. “I got over you a long time ago. Maybe I should’ve waited for someone else, you know? Or maybe it’s just my brain trying to overcomplicate matters because I didn’t stop to think once while we—”

Luke smirked, and Alex felt his cheeks flush crimson. “I’m gonna stop talking now,” he groaned as Luke laughed, reaching out to slap at Luke’s knee reproachfully, but all Luke did was chuckle and flop down beside—and half on top of—him again.

They sat in silence for a while longer, piled together in one big tangle of limbs, passing a bottle of soda back and forth as they stared at the ceiling, Luke humming under his breath quietly.

Alex was just about nodding off, head lolling onto Luke’s shoulder, when the door suddenly slammed open, and they both jumped, limbs flailing as they nearly tumbled off of the loft. “What the hell, bro?” Luke bellowed as he untangled himself from Alex, glaring at the figure that had appeared in the door and was now looking up at them with wide eyes and parted lips and—

Oh. Reggie.

Reggie looked terrible.

His hair was soaked with—with—

Alex couldn’t tell what it was, but it looked far from pleasant, and his eyes were rimmed with red and he was far paler than healthy.

“Reg?”

Luke was already scurrying down the ladder, and Alex followed immediately. Reggie had been doing pretty good, these past few months, ever since he’d met Ella—the girl he’d met at the book club gig—and started dating her. Even his parents’ constant fighting hadn’t seemed to bother him as much.

“Hey, Reggie,” Alex said, as soon as they reached Reggie, who was still standing in the doorway, almost like he hadn’t really registered they were talking to him. “what happened?”

Reggie’s eyes flitted from him to Luke and back again, and he was wearing an unreadable expression that was wholly unlike him, and Alex had no idea what to make of it. “I—,” Reggie finally said, voice even and void of emotions, “I told Ella that I—that I like boys too. She broke up with me.”

There was a short, painfully awkward silence, in which Luke looked stunned and Alex tried to think of something to say before Luke cleared his throat loudly and said, “Well, that’s her loss, bro.”

Reggie looked up at him with teary eyes. “She threw her milkshake at me. And she said—she said that I couldn’t like both, so that I—obviously I was gay and I shouldn’t have led her on.” He looked on the verge of tears as he said, “I didn’t mean to—I didn’t think I was, I swear.”

And Alex hadn’t had any particular feeling towards Ella before, but he hated her now, and he could tell Luke felt the same.

“Shit, Reg,” Alex said. “You know you didn’t. It doesn’t work like that.”

“Yeah, bro,” Luke piped in, reaching out to grab Reggie’s shoulder to shake him gently. “I like both too, remember?” He shot Reggie one of those warm, gorgeous smiles that Alex had once fallen in love with, that still made him feel better when they were directed at him—and that surely had the same effect on Reggie, who was smiling weakly now.

“She still broke up with me,” he murmured dejectedly.

Alex didn’t have the heart to say anything sarcastic this time and just slung an arm around Reggie, hauling him in for a tight hug, because he could tell that what Reggie needed was someone to show him he was still wanted. “She doesn’t know what she’s missing out on,” he whispered as Reggie’s arms slowly came up to hug him back, and Luke pressed close on Reggie’s other side.

“We love you, Reg,” Luke said firmly.

He propped his chin up on Reggie’s shoulder and shot Alex a small smile that Alex returned wryly.

They’d be okay.

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

OCTOBER 1993 (WEDNESDAY)

“I don’t think he’s doing okay,” Alex told Luke in an undertone, glancing over at Reggie, who was talking to their English teacher with an apologetic grimace—he’d forgotten his essay at home in his rush to get to school in time. In fact, he’d only been on time at all this week because Alex had managed to get a secondhand car a few weeks ago and had been picking him up every morning.

“Yeah,” Luke sighed, glancing over at their friend too. “Yeah, I don’t think he is either.”

Since his breakup with Ella a month and a half ago, Reggie had been more subdued in everything they did—he’d stopped slipping his country songs into Luke’s notebook, he hadn’t brought Maggie over to their rehearsals in nearly three weeks and he hadn’t climbed into Luke or Alex’s window in over a month. He looked constantly exhausted and Alex was sure that if he, Luke and Bobby hadn’t taken to buying double lunches and prodding Reggie into having their leftovers, he wouldn’t have eaten anything at school either.

Bobby, who’d been listening quietly, added, “Not much we can do though, is there?”

“I might be able to,” Alex said slowly, turning to look at his other two friends slowly. “My parents are going to the Hamptons for a week starting Friday. Since I’m no longer welcome,” he spat the word resentfully, still pissed at his parents and extended family for being such bigoted assholes, “I’ll have the house to myself. Maybe we can all hole up there for a few days. Get Reggie out of his parents’ house for a while. He can even bring Maggie, we’ve got the spare room.”

“That’s a great idea,” Luke crowed happily, grabbing at his shoulder and shaking him. “It can be like a band retreat!”

Bobby sighed, and Alex wanted to frown at him even before the other boy said, “I don’t wanna spoil things, guys, but there’s no way my parents are gonna be cool with me spending an entire school week with my bandmates. Plus I got three shifts this week, and Luke… I thought you were trying to patch things up with your parents. How’re they gonna take you running off for a whole week?”

Luke sighed heavily and Alex frowned.

“Well, what if you guys come over starting Friday night?” Alex suggested, because he still wanted to get Reggie away from his parents—away from the constant fighting. “We can just do the weekend.”

“That works,” Bobby shrugged.

Luke was biting his lower lip and frowning, but he nodded eventually. “Yeah, I can probably swing that.” He glanced over at Reggie and offered, “Do you want me to convince him?”

Alex shook his head. “Nah, we’ve got social studies together later. I’ll talk to him then.”

Luke nodded and reluctantly retreated to his seat when the teacher finally managed to shake Reggie, who drooped back to his seat with hunched shoulders, and Christ, Alex just wanted to hug him.

He turned his attention to their teacher though, resolving to corner Reggie and talk to him later.

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

OCTOBER 1993 (FRIDAY)

In the end, Reggie had barely required any convincing at all.

That in itself told Alex that the fighting at Reggie’s parents’ place had to be extremely bad. When he asked about Maggie, Reggie revealed that Maggie had been spending the night with different friends each time because Reggie had called up their parents to tell them their mother was sick and they didn’t want to risk Maggie catching it.

Alex hated that Reggie needed to take on that kind of responsibility but found it admirable too.

Eventually, Alex bade his parents goodbye on Friday evening, ignoring just how coolly they treated them, and waited for Reggie and the others to show up. While they wouldn’t be staying the whole weekend—or the rest of the week—like Reggie, Luke and Bobby had both admitted they could use some quality band time that wasn’t spent rehearsing, and had convinced their parents to let them spend Friday and Saturday together.

Reggie showed up exactly twenty-three minutes after Alex’s parents left, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder and the bags under his eyes darker and more pronounced than they’d been the previous day, but grinning so brightly that Alex couldn’t help but smile back at him.

“Hey,” he said, stepping back to let Reggie in.

“Hi,” Reggie said, still smiling brightly, waiting until Alex had shut the front door before he walked right up to Alex, dropping his bag unceremonious to the floor and curling his hand around the back of Alex’s neck. Alex barely had a chance to blink before Reggie leaned up onto his toes just a little and kissed him soundly on the lips.

They hadn’t done this in months, not since before Reggie and Ella had started dating, but it was still so very easy to kiss Reggie back and sink into it. He curled his fingers in Reggie’s hair and let Reggie tug him closer by his belt loops until they were pressed together entirely.

Slowly, somewhat reluctantly, he leaned back, although Reggie kept his fingers hooked in his belt loops so Alex couldn’t retreat very far. Reggie looked up at him, green eyes wide, and swallowed thickly. “Okay?” he whispered softly, hopefully.

Alex looked at him intently, tried to think rationally about this, because while they’d done this before dozens of times, Reggie clearly wasn’t doing okay, and Alex didn’t want Reggie to end up doing anything he’d regret later on.

There was, however, no regret anywhere in Reggie’s expression and… and they were eighteen years old, Reggie was his own person, and Alex trusted him.

He trusted him to set his boundaries.

“Yeah,” he said quietly, leaning their foreheads together. “Okay.”

--------

OCTOBER 1993 (SUNDAY)

It’d been nearly three a.m. by the time Luke and Bobby had gone home the previous night and almost four a.m. by the time he and Reggie had stopped talking—and kissing, there had been kissing too—long enough to go to bed themselves.

Unfortunately, Alex’s brain was programmed so that he woke up around eight a.m. at the latest, no matter how late it’d been when he went to sleep, and so here he was.

He guzzled down his coffee, leaning heavily on the counter as he tried to boot up his brain enough to decide what to have for breakfast. It was way more difficult than it reasonably should be.

“You look like you’re thinking way too hard for this time of morning.”

Alex looked up from his cup to find Reggie leaning against the low wall separating the kitchen from the living room in his pajamas, his hair spiked up in gravity defying angles, but the bags under his eyes less pronounced than they’d been on Friday already.

“I was trying to figure out breakfast,” Alex croaked, straightening up a little more.

Reggie yawned and padded into the kitchen, settling on one of the high chairs at the island, blinking lazily. “Are there cornflakes?” He asked.

Alex yawned too. “Probably,” he shrugged, turning to open one of the cupboards, staring into it for a beat too long before he located the box of Coco Puffs. When he turned back, triumphant, the box in his hand, Reggie’s expression had gone from sleepy and barely focused to contemplative and serious, and Alex was so unused to seeing such seriousness on Reggie that he immediately went on alert, nearly dropping the box.

“Reg? You okay?”

Reggie nodded slowly, leaning his chin on his hand as he stared at Alex. “I wanna have sex with you,” he said casually, and Alex did drop the box of cereal then.

“Shit,” Alex breathed, looking down at the mess on the floor before looking back up at Reggie with wide eyes, cheeks burning with what he was sure was a very dark blush, desperately trying to decide which minor disaster to deal with first. The Coco Puffs crunched slightly under his heel when he moved though, and he heaved a sigh before turning to retrieve the dustpan from the cupboard under the sink.

By the time he’d turned back, Reggie had picked up the box of Coco Puffs and was trying—and failing—to contain the spread of Coco Puffs throughout the kitchen.

“You know you can say ‘no’, right?” Reggie said timidly when Alex started sweeping up the spilled cornflakes, looking shyly up at Alex through his eyelashes. “I won’t be mad or anything, I know it’s—” he fell silent and the knot in Alex’s stomach eased off a little.

“Reg,” he sighed, setting down the dustpan and reaching out to rest his hand on Reggie’s arm. “I just—I was surprised. And… you’ve always said you only wanted to sleep with someone when they meant something to you. I don’t want you to do anything you regret.” He swallowed thickly and looked away. “Take it from someone who should’ve waited a little longer.”

He didn’t quite dare to look back up at his best friend, instead busying himself with collecting the final stray Coco Puffs and dropping them onto the dustpan.

“Alex,” Reggie whispered, nudging his fingers against Alex’s jaw until he had to look up. Reggie’s expression was devastatingly earnest and somewhat baffled. “Alex, you’re one of the most important people in my life,” Reggie said seriously. “You’re my best friend. I trust you. You’re never not going to mean something to me. How could I ever regret that?”

And Alex… Alex couldn’t say no to that—but he couldn’t just say yes either.

He got to his feet and emptied the dustpan in the trash before he turned back to Reggie. “It’s not,” he started slowly, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned back against the kitchen island, facing Reggie, “that I don’t want to. But… Reg, I want you to be sure.”

Reggie bit down on his lip and purposefully walked up to Alex, taking his face in his hands and pressing their lips together firmly. Alex melted a little, because Reggie was good at this and he could feel Reggie smile against his lips as he wrapped his arms around Alex’s neck. “Just turn off your brain for once,” Reggie told him in a low voice as soon as he’d leaned back, eyes dark and heavy lidded. “If I don’t want to, I’ll tell you.”

“Yeah,” Alex breathed. “Yeah, okay.”

Reggie grinned and then kissed him again, rougher and more passionate and Alex sank into it, because this was… God, being with Reggie was so easy. The next time Reggie pulled away, they were both breathing hard, and Reggie’s fingers were clenched in his hair and Alex was grasping at the back of Reggie’s shirt. “Yeah?” Reggie asked again.

“Yeah,” Alex breathed, a smile spreading across his face. “Yeah.”

And Reggie laughed, relieved and happy, before he leaned in and kissed him again.

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

“Is it go—”

Alex groaned loudly and dropped his head forward to rest against Reggie’s shoulder.

“Reg,” he sighed, “I swear to God, if your next words were going to be ‘is it gonna fit’, I will stop and I will kick you.”

Reggie cackled, a high-pitched sound that abruptly turned into a moan when Alex scraped his teeth over his collarbone in retaliation.

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

After, when they were breathless and sweaty, both of them on their backs in Alex’s bed, one of Reggie’s legs slung across Alex’s, the sheets tangled around their feet and their clothes scattered randomly on the floor between the kitchen and Alex’s bedroom, Reggie turned his head towards Alex with a smug, satisfied grin and said, “I told you that this was a great idea.”

Alex chuckled breathlessly and threw a hand up over his head, shaking his head in exasperation.

He was vaguely surprised, actually, that the sense of dread that he’d felt when he’d slept with Mike at Bible Camp wasn’t making an appearance now, but then… it made sense too. It was like Reggie had said earlier—they were such important people in each other’s lives, there was no way Alex would look back on this and regret sharing it with Reggie.

“Yeah,” he finally admitted. “You have your moments.”

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

FEBRUARY 1994

Luke sat on the couch, playing a lighthearted, easy tune on his guitar as Alex let Maggie guide him around by the hand. She’d been showing him the steps to all the dances she’d learned in her dance classes enthusiastically, as she had been doing for years—it’d become a tradition, by now, for Reggie to pick up Maggie on Wednesday after dance classes and bring her over to the studio, where Alex would entertain her by letting her teach him the ballet moves she was taught.

Luke and Reggie usually ended up playing songs for them, and Bobby would either sulk about band time being spent with Reggie’s little sister or join them and make up songs for Maggie.

Today, Bobby had to work until five though, and Reggie was napping up on the loft, because when he’d turned up with Maggie he’d looked so tired Alex and Luke were both worried he was gonna fall asleep where he stood. They’d ganged up on him and bullied him into taking a nap, and had resolved to keep Maggie occupied for as long as Reggie needed to catch up on some sleep.

He hadn’t been spending nights with Luke or Alex as often anymore, had cited the need to be home to take care of Maggie as the reason why, but Alex suspected that something else was going on too.

He’d tried to ask Reggie about it when they were alone too, however rare those moments were, but Reggie had become increasingly good at diverting Alex’s attention—and Alex wanted to believe that Reggie would come to him or Luke or even Bobby if something was really wrong.

“Alex,” Maggie tugged on his shirt and frowned at him reproachfully. “You’re not paying attention.”

“Yeah, Alex,” Luke chuckled from his spot on the couch. “Pay attention.”

Alex flipped him off before turning back to Maggie, who was pouting at him. “I’m sorry, Mags,” he said sincerely. “What was the next move?”

“A pirouette,” Maggie insisted, pushing at his hip. “You’ve already done that one.”

“Of course I have,” Alex grinned, straightening up and spinning in a circle. “Like that, Lady Margaret?” He asked teasingly, winking at her as Luke laughed.

Maggie wrinkled her nose. “My name’s Maggie, Alex. And you were doing it wrong,” she said bossily, shoving at him lightly. Alex grinned, but let Maggie move him around as she liked, twirling and turning at her command as Luke laughed and tugged on his guitar strings to produce one of the many songs he and Reggie had written for Maggie over the years.

When Maggie had tired herself out, she flopped dramatically on the couch beside Luke and demanded he show her how to play the guitar. She’d already had drumming lessons with Alex last week—while she was definitely enthusiastic, all they’d really accomplished was teaching her how to be very loud—and she seemed determined to learn every instrument the boys knew.

Luke only grinned before moving the guitar over onto Maggie’s lap and carefully positioning her hands on the chords as he explained how to pluck the strings and how to move her fingers.

Alex couldn’t help but smile at the sight—they did look adorable, Luke with a wide grin and Maggie with a tiny furrow in her brow as she looked down at her hands—before he checked his watch. He glanced up to the loft, where he assumed Reggie was still passed out cold, and then back down at his watch.

He didn’t think Reggie’s parents would even notice if either of their kids didn’t show up, but he didn’t want Reggie to get in trouble for keeping Maggie out too late either.

When he looked up again, Luke caught his eye and Alex could tell the same thought had occurred to Luke. He helped Maggie settle comfortably on the couch with the guitar before he got up and approached Alex. “Do we wake him up?” he said in a low voice, glancing up at the loft.

Alex heaved a sigh. “I really don’t want to.” He glanced towards Maggie, who was still happily plucking on the guitar strings, before returning his gaze to Luke. “You’ve noticed, right? He’s been off, lately. I thought it was getting better, but—”

“Yeah,” Luke sighed. “Yeah, I noticed.” He crossed his arms over his chest and chewed on his lower lip. “He won’t talk to me either, it’s driving me nuts.” He glanced back up at the loft, then at Maggie and then finally back at Alex. “I can walk Maggie home. Can you stay here with him? My mom’s been on my case about school and staying out, I can’t—”

“Yeah,” Alex nodded. “Yeah, no worries, I’ll stick around.”

Luke smiled tightly and clasped his shoulder before he turned back to Maggie and hustled her into packing up her things into the sparkling purple and blue backpack they’d all gotten her for her last birthday. When Luke had wrangled her into putting her shoes and coat back on, she ran over to Alex and threw her arms around his torso.

“Bye Alex,” she squeaked, and Alex couldn’t help but grin.

God, he loves this kid.

“Bye Mags,” he grinned, running a hand through her hair soothingly. “See you next week, ‘kay?”

“Yes,” Maggie said cheerfully. “I’ll have new steps to teach you.” She squeezed her arms around him one more time before she let go and turned to Luke, grabbing the guitarist’s hand. Luke grinned at her before he looked back at Alex, raising his eyebrows in silent question.

You got this?

Alex nodded lightly. He knew Luke didn’t know just how close he and Reggie were, he knew that they probably should’ve told him about whatever the hell it was that they were doing a long time ago, but… but it’d been going on for so long that it felt weirder to bring it up now than to not say anything.

Luke exhaled and then smiled. “Okay,” he said. “okay, let’s go, squirt.”

Alex grinned at him and Maggie as they walked out, closing the door behind them. He waited for their voices to fade away before he sighed, kicked off his shoes and climbed up to the loft.

Reggie was sprawled out on his stomach in the middle of the bed they’d built themselves with a multitude of pillows and blankets and a shitty little mattress, face buried in his pillow and the blankets wrapped around his legs. He was snoring lightly, and Alex couldn’t help but smile at the sight of his best friend sleeping soundly for the first time in God knew how long.

He climbed into the bed too, laying back against one of the pillows next to Reggie and closed his eyes.  

Reggie wasn’t the only one dealing with a… tense situation at home. Alex knew his parents were waiting for an opportunity to kick him out, waiting for a reason they could do so without embarrassing themselves in front of their church friends, because God forbid it became common knowledge that they had a gay son.

He expected he had a few more months at most—they’d likely expect him out as soon as he had his high school diploma in hand.

He didn’t really mind.

He was tired of pretending to be someone he wasn’t.

It took him a few moments to realize that Reggie had stopped snoring and another second to notice that the other boy was stirring beside him. “Hey,” he said quietly when Reggie’s eyes—barely visible behind his messy hair—blinked open slowly.

“Hi,” Reggie breathed. “Where’s Maggie?”

“Luke walked her home,” Alex explained, rolling onto his side so he was facing Reggie. “We didn’t wanna wake you up. You looked like you needed the rest.”

Reggie blinked again and then whispered, “Thanks.”

They lay in silence for a little longer before Reggie huffed and rolled onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. The conflicted, confused expression had returned as soon as he woke up properly, and Alex hated seeing the expression on Reggie’s face.

“Reg,” he sighed. “What’s going on? Are your parents—”

“No,” Reggie shook his head. “No, not… not more than usual.”

Alex frowned and reached out to rest his hand on Reggie’s arm gently. “Then what is it? We can all tell something’s bothering you, Reggie. We wanna help.”

Reggie snorted a derisive laugh, a sound entirely unlike him, and shook off Alex’s hand. “Not with this you don’t. You especially, Alex, trust me.” Alex blinked at him in shock for a second before he sat up, eyeing Reggie contemplatively.

“Reg, come on,” he cajoled. “You know there isn’t anything you can do that’d push me away.”

Reggie shook his head again. “You say that now.”

“And I mean it,” Alex insisted. “Reggie—”

“I’m in love with Luke.”

Reggie sat up abruptly, looking wild and upset as he said it, and something in Alex’s chest twisted painfully. He wasn’t sure if it was because Reggie just confessed to being in love with the only person Alex had ever been in love with or because he’d been hoping, somewhere deep down, that Reggie would’ve said “I’m in love with you,” instead.

He wasn’t even sure if that’s what he wanted.

But.

But.

It would’ve been easier, wouldn’t it, if they’d just be in love with each other?

Why couldn’t things just be easy, for once?

When he looked back at Reggie, the other boy was staring at him with wide, watery green eyes, and it didn’t matter how Alex felt about this. “Reg,” he sighed. “I’m not gonna hate you for falling in love with Luke.” He managed a smile and admitted, “Out of everyone, I absolutely understand how easy it is to fall in love with that dumbass.”

Reggie exhaled shakily, relieved, and then threw himself in Alex’s arms.

Alex folded his arms around him and held on tight—he wasn’t sure what to say to make Reggie feel better about this, because while he had experience in getting over Luke, he wasn’t sure if that’s what Reggie wanted at all, or if he’d try to talk to Luke about it.

Either way, Alex was going to make sure he was there for Reggie.

Whatever he needed.

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

I also sketched Alex and Reggie kissing (the first time after Reggie and Ella break up). Check it out here.

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

READ IT HERE:

Start from the beginning:

Becoming a Memory, Becoming a Treasure:

(1)  (2)  (3)  (4)  (5)  (6)

Unfinished Business:

(1) (2)

Or read it HERE (BaMBaT) or HERE (UB) on AO3 :D

[kindapinkskies]

living daydream || h.s.

im baaaaack! this is so short but it’s something and i hope you like it. she has been stuck in my head for five days and this has been in my head also. how is everyone? are we good? how’s fine line? let’s talk about the masterpiece. 

you should probably listen to she while you read

i love you already

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He sees her at the end of the bar with the room dowsed in a deep red. The light gives her face a sultry look, shadows hiding half of her face. They hold eye contact for a moment too long, both captivated by the others eyes and he should be scared. Scared that he’ll be recognized but he finds himself calm, for the first time all day. He’s utterly entranced by her, the way her hair falls over her shoulders, the way her body is relaxed (even in the uncomfortable looking clothes), the way her lips move as she talks to a friend all while holding eye contact with him. 

He’s afraid to blink, afraid that the ethereal being at the end of the bar will disappear if he does. 

And when he does blink, she does disappear. 

His head whips around in all directions, in too fast of a movement to be natural, but he can’t spot her. The person she was talking to is still there, where she should be, but they look like they’ve been alone all night. Like they were never even talking to her, like she wasn’t just there. He swivels around in his chair, trying to catch sight of her moving through the crowd, through the mass of bodies moving around in the deep red light to a guitar solo from a Pink Floyd song. He comes up empty. So, in return he empties the glass he’s holding in one gulp. 

Time goes by almost in a haze and his mind is spinning. It also seems like the red light gets even darker but that just might be the copious amounts of alcohol running through his system. The music doesn’t really change, different guitar solos fill up the area and the crowd of people dancing don’t move too far from hip sways that are a little too dirty for such music. 

There’s a hand on his shoulder some time later and he whips around so fast, hoping for it to be her, only to come face to face with the last person he really wants to see right now. Of course he’d be found here, should’ve known that someone so close to him would find him. He just wanted to get away, away from work. 

“Harry, lets go.” Mitch is stern with his words, a deep frown set on his face.

But Harry doesn’t want to go anywhere.

“No,” he protests, instead focusing on Mitches hair, on how it has gotten long again and how it sways around his shoulders in slow motion. 

Mitch steps between his knees, “You’ll be spotted here if you get messy. You get messy.”

He blinks. Blinks again. Blinks one more time. Tried to get the haze to go away but then, just over Mitches shoulder, she comes into view again. Her top has lost a few buttons and it seems like her skirt has gotten shorter. Her arms are above her head, as she runs her hands through her hair before dragging them down the front of her body. He watches as her hips move in perfect tune to the bass drum and run of the guitar. He follows her every move and when they make eye contact again, Harry can’t help but shamelessly stare. 

He isn’t sure how she doesn’t have the attention of every single person in this bar. He’s shocked that he’s the only one that seems to notice her. 

He stands up, effectively pushing Mitch back, under some sort of trance as if her eyes were calling him to her. But, Mitch places a hand to his chest and that makes Harry break his attention for a split second and he hates himself for it because when he looks back up, she’s gone. 

The spot she was once in, filled by some middle aged man. 

Like she was never even there. 

Maybe it is time to go. 

+

She won’t leave him alone. Not physically but mentally. It’s been thirteen days since the night of the bar but she’s still there. She haunts him almost and he’s not even positive that she’s real. One moment she was there but then she wasn’t and Harry’s not too sure if he’s just created this perfect human being in his head or not. 

He closes his eyes and she’s the first thing he sees. The red behind his eyelids gives the perfect shade of red, right where she belongs. In that perfect red light, it compliments her skin, her body, the way she moves. He has no idea who she is or where she’s at but she’s always there, in his head. Where his mind spins at the thought of her. 

He swears he sees her one morning though, when he’s taking a friends kid to school in the morning. Swears that she’s dropping a young girl off to the same teacher he’s about to speak with but he’s not close enough to truly tell if it’s her. But then he feels it is because there’s a tug on his hand as he’s being pulled across the street and he looks away for a second before looking back and she’s gone. 

Just like in the bar. 

+

“I’m going on a trip.” She says to him one day. 

She’s sitting in his office, the makeshift one he’s created, in the studio. The small corner of the room where he goes when he wants to focus a little bit more without any distractions. She doesn’t seem to get that though. She follows him anywhere. 

He blinks at her, his vision a little hazy as he focuses on her. “Where are you going?”

He doesn’t know her name, doesn’t know where she’s at most of the time. She just shows up. Shows up most of the time when he wants to be alone. She’s there so he won’t feel so lonely. 

She only shrugs and when he blinks at her again, she’s gone. 

She’s gone when the current producer he’s working with walks up to him with a coffee in his hand, placing it on the table next to Harry. He leaves him alone after that but he can hear him in the room, messing around with the soundboard. He’s not alone anymore. 

She doesn’t come back. 

“Harry, man, are you alright?” The worry is clear in Mitches voice. “You’ve been distracted.”

He blinks at Mitch, focuses on him actually being right in front of him and it takes a few seconds for his words to register in his mind. He finally mutters out a “Yeah, I’m good,” before turning back to the paper in his hands. 

His brows furrow at the words written on the page. He doesn’t remember writing them. 

I’m going on a trip. 

Where are you going?

+

The room is a deep red again, darker than the last time but that makes it only that much better. This time it’s in his room though. The music is still the same, quieter, but it’s still the same just like the red light. 

He’s seemingly in a trance once more, his eyes stuck on hers before they move down her body. She’s straddling his waist, her body positioned just right on his hips as he leans against the headboard. His hand move up her sides, tracing the lace of her black bra. His fingertips move over the fabric carefully, like if he were to press any harder it would rip. It won’t and he knows that but that doesn’t stop him. He just takes it all in, takes in the way the fabric is a stark contrast to the red glow of her skin. 

She’s bends down and her hair cascades around them both as she presses her lips to the base of his throat, just under his chin. His breath catches in his throat and his hands grip her hips a little too tight. She moves up the side of his neck, her lips leaving behind marks of red and purple and he can’t find it in him to stop her. Not when this is all he’s wanted since he saw her at the bar all those weeks ago. Not when she’s normally just something that might be in his memory. She’s here. And she’s in his bed. 

“How was your trip?” 

He’s not too sure when it happened but eventually she’s the one laying down and he’s the one above her. He’s listening to her sharp intakes of air, the curse words tumbling from her lips, the soft moans, the sound of her lips as they come in contact with his skin. He’s basking in the feel of her all around him, as close as he can get. The feeling of her nails moving across his shoulder, her leg around his hip with her heel digging into his lower back, her hand tugging harshly in his hair. He stores every touch; every pull, every movement, every kiss into his memory. He wants to be able to live this moment over again, even when it’s over. 

“I’m going on another one.” 

She falls asleep right there. Right there in his bed. And he can’t help but think that this is the longest he’s ever seen her, ever been with her. She’s still just as ethereal as the first time he saw her and he has a hard time believing that she’s real. That she’s not just in his head. 

He goes to the bathroom and when he comes back she’s gone. The only thing placed on the bed is his song book that he doesn’t even remember using. 

The room isn’t even red anymore. 

But the words on the page are written in red. 

How was your trip?

I’m going on another one. 

+

“I swear she’s real.” Harry defends one afternoon when Mitch doesn’t particularly believe him. They were talking about that night in the bar. The night he met her. 

Met is used very loose though. 

“Harry, you don’t even know who she is.”

“Sure I do.” Harry scoffs. “Her favorite color is red.”

Mitch doesn’t look convinced and Harry isn’t even convinced himself. He’s not sure what’s real and what’s not anymore. Any time she’s around, it feels so real. He feels her touches and can her hear voice so clear that she has to be real. She can’t just be someone he sees when he’s feeling like it. 

But he can’t be sure because she lives in his daydreams, too. She’s the first person to pop up whenever he closes his eyes, whenever his mind wanders a bit too far away from his current state of mind. Her smile, the slope of her nose, the light in her eyes. It’s always right there whenever he only thinks about it. She’s just there. 

But as soon as his attention breaks. She’s gone. 

+

He sees her again. This time the bar is a deep orange color, making it look like the room is slightly on fire. The music is still the same but this time it’s a live band playing the guitar runs and the bass drums. It makes everything feel more. She’s at the end of the bar again, looking at him, smirking at him, as if taunting him. He’s already four drinks down and the room is spinning about but he can see her perfectly clear. Just like he always can. 

He stands up when she does. 

Walks the same direction she does. 

Subconsciously sways the way she does. 

His steps stumble a bit but he follows her anyway. 

He runs a hand through his hair when she turns a corner but he makes sure to not break his attention. He doesn’t want her to disappear. 

Her hand wraps around his bicep and he staggers into a wall when she pushes him up against it. She covers his body with her own in seconds and she runs a hand down his chest. Her fingers trailing over the skin there, dipping underneath the fabric of his unbuttoned shirt. His knees falter slightly but she just smiles at him before she places a kiss to the base of his throat. 

“I missed you.”

He goes along with her movements, basking in the feeling she gives him. The mesmerizing feeling of her. 

“Yeah?” 

Someone calls his name though and his attention breaks. 

She’s gone. 

He stares at the wall across from him for a few moments and his attention focuses on someone’s handwriting there. 

I missed you.

Yeah?

+

He sees her back at the bar while he’s talking to the old man next to him. 

“She’s a real looker,” he says and it makes Harry follow the mans finger. He nearly falls off his chair when he sees her. 

He looks at the man again and when he looks back she’s still there. His attention broke and she’s still there. He just nods his head at the man before getting up, this time his walk more stable. More in control of himself, almost like this is real and not some sort of daydream. 

“Hey, it’s good to see you again.” He says as soon as he gets to her. 

She looks up at his and confusion paints itself on her face. Her brows are furrowed and her lips are pursed slightly. 

“I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

Harry’s knees give out and he has to catch himself against the bar so he doesn’t tumble to the ground. She doesn't even know him? How could that be? He looks around for a second and the room is just dim, like a normal bar, the fire orange color gone. He didn’t even notice. 

He realizes that everything isn’t hazy, his mind isn’t even spinning like it normally is when she’s around. 

“Oh uh, I’m sorry I must’ve mistaken you for someone else.”

Harry’s heart leaps into his throat when she places a sympathetic hand to his bicep. She smiles sweetly at him before turning away from him. 

He stands there, dumbfounded, for a few minutes. Her touch lingering on his arm. The very real touch. The touch that feels so familiar. The touch he’s felt before. 

He closes his eyes and he sees her, sees the red, feels the touches and he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t even know who she is. 

She only lives in daydreams with him. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

my master list is in my bio

please feed my narcissism 

[takadanobaba]

Jin Norizuki’s Birthday PriZoom 7/18/2021

Oh the things I do for Jin Norizuki

That was SUCH an experience. I had a lot of fun!! 

Main takeaway is that I am now acutely aware of when to YO in a song

(Okay so this is my first time attending a prizoom (or even any kinpri screening outside of Luna’s sss rabbit sessions!) so this is all entirely new to me and I can’t really compare it to much, but I figured that it’d be good to write up a report of sorts to fill in for Luna in a way!)

The prizooms are also accessible to everyone and don’t require any Japanese info confirmation!! If you’re interested in attending please go and support kinpri!!!

(Note: I think about Jin wayyyy too much and interpret them as nonbinary, so I use they/them pronouns for Jin. It’s just automatic for me at this point and feels weird otherwise haha so I’ll be doing that in this)

Jin is my all time favorite character and love of my life who I’m extremely delusional about so when a prizoom was announced for their birthday I went INSANE because I didn’t expect Jin’s birthday to be acknowledged AT ALL given how they’re usually excluded/treated like a side character (+ kinpri’s been putting out little to no content lately anyways....haha....). I was waiting in anticipation ever since it was announced (around June 6th) and even put in a time-off request for my work the day of its announcement just so I could attend!!!! ........ You can imagine my frustration at kinpri waiting until the very last minute to put out details about Jin’s prizoom ^^;

💙 💙 💙 💙 💙 💙 

Also!! I’m a complete ~ foreigner ~ and managed to get tickets perfectly fine with my American credit card (and putting in some very obviously Not-An-Actual-Resident-Of-Japan address info...)! So if anyone’s curious about attending a prizoom but worried about region-locking, it’s possible! Very possible! If you’re interested in it, please go! You don’t need to have a Japanese phone number/credit card/address/etc. to purchase PriZoom tickets on RakutenTicket! It’s such an experience! If you need any help buying tickets then I’d be more than happy to assist!! Please support the PriZoom screenings and help increase the demand for more kinpri content!!!!!!!!!!!! I will personally become a living prizoom advertisement

(Also if any kinpri staff find this: I’m sorry for not respecting rules this time but I just wanted to provide a detailed account of the prizoom event and encourage participation for other foreign fans! I won’t do this again!!!)

💙 💙 💙 💙 💙 💙 

I only attended the first and third showings (consisting of the first movie and Over the Sunshine!) because I wanted to see the new/not currently archived content (the second/pride the hero showing’s bonus was just Jin’s birthday video by Joji which I already revisit little too much ahaha). I also went to the chat-only rooms because I wasn’t very confident that I wouldn’t be awkward with my nonexistent cheering experience and intent to just observe what its like (despite knowing that the cheering rooms are more fun based on what Luna said haha). That, and I was planning on using the EXTREMELY OBNOXIOUS soundboard of ABSOLUTE CHAOS for everything since I have issues with voice dysphoria and figured it’d be good to stick to the room with that normalized as the one and only cheering method so participating would be a little less annoying to others, since we’d all have the same idea ^^;

I’m more active on twitter and follow/am mutuals with pretty much anybody who likes Jin enough to post about them, so it was cool seeing almost everyone there! At least half of them tweeted about this being their first prizoom haha. Jin’s birthday was also promoted as a good introduction to prizooms since the first showing was set at a price point of 718 yen instead of the usual 1,760 yen? So, lots of first timers attending! I guess most people had the same thought process as me about the whole insecure-about-not-being-used-to-proper-cheering/using-their-mic thing? Because most of my twitter following ended up in the chat-only rooms with me! Fun!

Also interesting how most people chose the male voice option for the cheering soundboard feature since there’s actually only 2 men who love Jin like that (I’m included in that number!!) in the Jin-obsessed twitter circle. I guess it was because it sounds kinda Joji-ish? and therefore fitting for an event dedicated to Jin! What with them being meant for each other and all.... Plus being Joji is just a fun way to play off having issues about using your own voice (I... project onto Joji a lot.)

👆 👆 👆

Okay I actually typed up all of the above during the second showing (since I wasn’t occupied attending that one) and everyone had the same train of thought and was definitely being Joji. You know that one “song” in Over the Sunshine- Glorious Schwarz- consisting of Joji just going wild infodumping for 3.5 minutes? Yeah EVERYONE who selected the male voice option was spamming 「おれもー！」/ “ME TOO!!!” during that (including me!). So it was like:

“I weighed 4646 grams at birth! ☆” 

“MMMMEMEEMEMMT MEE ME MEEE EMME ME   ME TOO M M ME TOO”

SO OBNOXIOUS. I LOVE IT. EVERYONE SHARING THE SAME BRAINCELL. THE JOJI BRAINCELL.

💙

The highlight of the prizoom  (in my opinion) was when some guy repeatedly hit よっ！/ YO! to the music in the first movie, which then led to everyone having a collective ~ Realization ~ 

After that happened, everybody joined in and started YO!-ing along in the other lives. Beautiful.

(Blurred recording of Dramatic Love and Showcase Night just so YO!u can see what I mean.)

(I only did those two to test screen recording after failing to archive the first Jin bonus while using the soundboard feature in the first showing, initially I didn’t intend to record anything but the bonuses and will not be doing that anymore. If you attend, don’t be like me or worse!!!! Please!! I’ll delete these if needed/after a few weeks. Also just wanted to mention that Koi no Royal Straight Flush is up there in Kinpri’s Most YO!-able songs)

I love this soundboard feature. Sounds like hell. Prizooms are truely a new form of art because of it. Amazing how cheering screenings have evolved over a pandemic. Music feels empty to me without the YO!s now. After this I ended up listening to the entire kinpri discography so I could determine the YO!ability of each song. Not sure if every prizoom is like that? But I really want to go to more showings just for the community experience! I’m morbidly curious as to how many people would try to YO! to Platonic Sword. I considered going to Rei’s because they’re showing Shiny Rose Stars, but I probably won’t though since money and sleep are things (They really should make tickets no more than 1,000 yen.... they’re zoom meetings with audio problems....THE AUDIO ISSUES ARE FUN THOUGH! YOU CAN SPAM “GANBATTE” WITH EVERYONE!!) Plus while I do like every kinpri character, none of the street boys are really my favorites and going to every showing regardless of character would be a lot. I assumed that I was only going to try attending Joji’s until they announced that they were gonna do something for Jin!! So if you want to see what it’s like PLEASE get tickets and experience it for yourself!! It’s so much more fun participating !!!! Relying on 1-2 people to post event summaries isn’t exactly consistent coverage of every prizoom either!

\ よっ！/      \ よっ！/      \ よっ！/

So much of this is a community experience that you just have to see for yourself! It’s really cool seeing people go all out for their favorites and just going wild. Notable participants include:

- Two separate people just working out the entire time (one of them doing “Prism Exercise” meaning very high effort full-body cheering and dancing? It was really impressive seeing them go all-out for such a long time!)

- Two (2!) Ai cosplayers!!! One attending the prizoom with a Jin cosplayer!!

- The lady who cosplayed Jin in their cute green pre-retirement prism star outfit WITH A HUGE JIN PUPPET IN THE SAME STYLE AS THE SHUFFLE PUPPETS IN THE STAGEPLAY!!!

- That one person who just had a Minato fish head on the entire time (?!)

- A Victoria cosplayer who showed off a really nice!! drawing of Jin they did during the participant showcase at the end of the screenings

- The person with a REALLY CUTE!!!!! homemade Jin plushie!!

- Two people who attended with 3D/vtuber style models of the Go Go Glorious! (YMT29 subunit) members: Noel Tokyo and Mikado Shibuya (who also had a model of Ai!)

- A really cute Joji vtuber model!

💙 💙 💙 💙 💙 💙

The bonuses were Jin’s birthday video from 2016 and a birthday message of sorts from Jin!

I actually didn’t manage to properly archive the first one as intended because things went horribly wrong so I ended up with nothing but just a terrible (said affectionately) little recording of the soundboard I linked earlier. But whatever I shouldn’t be doing that anyways. Hopefully kinpri includes that and the other prizoom bonuses in something later.... the thought of any content being stuck as lost media terrifies me. I don’t have a good enough memory or a high enough Japanese proficiency level to type it out but it wasn’t particularly analyzable or anything (telling that to myself to make me feel better about losing it). Just the usual Jin being dramatic and going on an evil monologue. Jin being evil ASMR. I lovingly burned another one of Jin’s evil laughs into my mind too so there’s that.

For the 3rd showing bonus however I did not fail though it’s arguably the less interesting bonus of the two since it’s unvoiced. I really love Jin’s voice. Big sexy. Actual dialogue is pretty similar to each other from what I’ve gathered (ending with one of Jin’s cute little アーーーッハッハッハッ！！！！！’s (the text effect for the unvoiced bonus was an appreciated detail!). 

(I’m not very confident in my ability to provide a good translation so I’ll just not embarrass myself)

“ AAAaAAaHAHAAHAAa ~ ! ! ! ! ! ! ! “

💙

Yes Jin I’ll support you in the future-!!! ヾ(>▽ <、 )

I’ll never not be obsessed but it’d still be nice to have more substantial content to gush about and do that with.... Kinpri come back and release an anime continuation.... give me the Jin plot development....kinpri come back my happiness is a little too reliant on you

After the showings you get an email asking for feedback which is cool! I’ve been waiting to complain about how 法月 is written as Noriduki instead of Norizuki for the longest time but I never had a chance until now haha. Makes it so painful for me to buy Jin merch. Also begged for an anime continuation. I wonder how much they take into account feedback? I guess I’ll see when/if they start writing Jin’s name how it’s supposed to be.

ANYWAYS

IF YOU WANT TO GO TO A PRIZOOM, DO IT!

Prism shows really are best experienced with a community!!! If you like kinpri it’s a GREAT OPPORTUNITY to experience what a cheering screening is like with the Japanese fanbase from the comfort of your very own home which is most likely nowhere near Japan!! Everyone should experience prism shows!!!! I have no regrets and I’m still so hyped from the prism sparkle!!!

ANYBODY CAN ATTEND AND BUY TICKETS EVEN WITHOUT JAPANESE INFORMATION!!!

 \\   GLORIOUS SCHWARZ!   //

[boogiewrites]

Reports & Repertoire 17: Resentment & Return

Characters: Eddie Brock x Venom x Candace Miller (OFC)

Summary:  Candy tries to find her way about the world after being roofied and hushed by the media. Eddie is hit with a strong dose of karma, and it's two against one.

Warnings/Tags: Angst. Talk of past trauma and drugging. Revenge plots. Violence and threats.

Click on my icon then go to Mobile Masterlist in my bio for my other works and chapters. 

On the navy comforter of her queen size bed, sat in the middle of her minimalist white and grey room, Candy sits with her best friend Steph who is currently threatening her if she blinks one more time.

“You act like you’ve never put on eyeliner before.” Steph remarks with her judgment not hidden in her tone or expression.

“It’s different when other people are doing it!” She whines. “The makeup artist at work doesn’t do it as hard as you.” She mutters. “She’s also a lot nicer.” She shoots an accusatory brow her way.

“Well she’s getting paid isn’t she?” Steph smirks.

“Fair point.” Candy responds without nodding her head. “But you love me so you should be nice to me. I’m about to go do some important stuff I need support.” She reaches out and grabs at Steph’s unoccupied hand desperately as she bites her tongue and titters.

“Yeah, that’s what you got Eddie for now.” She snarks and shakes her head. “Speaking of, what does he think about all this?”

“He’s as pissed as I am so he’s down. He’s my backup.” She answers with a sultry lilt.

“I’m sure you are backing it up on that beefy, award-winning journalist.” She teases with a fanciful swipe of her hand. “Tell me. When you two have sex do you both have a press conference afterward to discuss the transaction?” Her face remains without a hint of sarcasm as was her skill set.

“As a matter of fact we do. It’s very productive.” She retorts with sassy. “The copy is good to keep and read later alone.” She grins.

“You fuckin’ nerds.” Steph mumbles and shakes her head. Steph was more skilled when it came to makeup than Candy. So for this undercover mission to the rich tech club where the drugging happened, she was helping her not look like herself.

After the initial turn down of her idea to expose the apparently rampant problem she’d been a victim of, she does what few journalists choose to do and gives away her story to someone else. There was a smaller female journalist who did some excellent work at a small newspaper locally. Candy offered her help to give her some footage, evidence and lend the story and support to the endeavor.

The night for the first recon mission was finally upon them. Eddie sits nervously in the modern and cozy living room, knee bouncing and knuckles white with worry. Venom tries to console him, assuring him they would never let anything happen to Candy. Eddie knows, finding his counterparts attempts at comfort to be failing. Putting his favorite person in danger wasn’t really something he could be talked into being excited about. Not a worst-case scenario by far, but a loudly nagging issue, was having to sit and listen to the men hit on Candy all night and that alone was raising his blood pressure.

Candy had pulled out all the stops when it came to mission from the glasses that had a camera inside and nail polish that reacted to Rohypnol, or Roofies. She had to specially ask for the kick starter to be sent to her before the release with the promise of free advertising after the fact to get it. She reveals her disguise, exiting from her bedroom, Venom slithering around the back of the couch to see her before Eddie. She was in something that looked entirely unlike her. A short and tight black dress, a push-up bra with chicken cutlets and enough makeup to give her flashbacks to middle school cheer competitions.

“How do I look?” she asks with a scrunch of her nose.  It’s usual button shape now straight with the help of Steph’s contouring.

“Not like you.” Eddie remarks with an approving nod.

“A big titty goth girlfriend.” Venom says with no humor or irony and the girls begin to laugh. “Why is this funny? This is what Eddie says. Why are you embarrassed Eddie? Large mammary glands and gothic styling are wonderful things in a girlfriend. She wears black. Like me.” he grins as Edie blushes.

“It’s a...an old internet thing, dude just… don’t go around talking about titties so freely. It’s rude.”

“I did not mean to offend… thought it was a compliment.”

“Good use of slang there, hun.” Candy praises his efforts. “I appreciate both of your thinking I have big tits though. It’s just the bra.” she laughs and shakes as Venom’s grin grows wider.

“Calm down.” Eddie groans.

“We are calm,” he says retracting himself back to Eddie’s shoulder. “Are you ready? We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

“Let’s check the camera first.” Candy says with a clear enthusiasm Eddie did not share.

They run the tests and she learns how to direct her gaze most efficiently. They’d gone over the plan a dozen times. Arrive alone, sit and be bait while Venom lurked on the roof and kept a lookout for her and her victim. They left the house separately, both in taxis that picked them up at places other than her house. She arrived as planned and sat, and waited.

For a girl that looked like her, in a bar like that, it didn’t take long once it was established she was alone. No one recognized her, but she didn’t expect them to, Steph’s contouring really was a miracle worker. She played fun and easy, and it took a few guys, but late enough in the night she finally caught one as she played drunk on top of everything else. She didn’t see the guys who had drugged her before, which was a letdown but anyone who would do this deserved it right?

She talked him up, a trust fund baby who, with his father's money, had a tech start-up. It took no effort on her part to get him talking about his genius and how HE would run Tesla if he had the chance. There were a lot of “Oh my god that’s CRAZY!” and “That’s SOOOO smart.”’s from her but he was so caught up in hearing himself he didn’t notice the soundboard answers as they came from her like a kid hitting buttons on a customized keyboard. With the mere suggestion of her excusing herself and asking him to get her another drink, he was antsy to put his own plan into action. On return, she tested it while distracting him with her chest. A task that proved almost too easy. She fake drank for a while before claiming to feel sleepy and wanting to “get this show on the road” before it got too late.

With a short walk, not even a few blocks down, she knew her alien accomplice was close, slinking in the darkness of the rooftops. The disguised Candy pulls the unsuspecting predator out of the street lamp lit sidewalk and into the dank shadows of the greasy alleyway.

“I  just can’t wait.” she giggles “I don’t want to chance my roommate being in and I want you all to myself.” she coos with a bop of her manicured finger to his nose.

“I mean, your roommate can join in too if she wants.” he offers with a smug smirk.

“Well, the problem is my roommates a dude.” She answers with an upward inflection.

“Ah, red flag much?” he laughs.

“No. He’s my boyfriend… and inhabited by a symbiote.” Her delivery goes flat, sober eyes meet the pursuer turned victim.

“What the fuck? You goth girls are fuckin’ crazy, man. Not even the drugs could come up that shit.” he shakes his head, still laughing.

“No. Really. He’s huge and dangerous and doesn’t like you. You’re a piece of shit who tries to drug women to sleep with them because you're a pathetic excuse for a human who can’t get laid on his own.”

“Wait, what?” he stutters, suddenly standing up straight as Venom drops from the rooftop behind her in an impressive slinking mass. She has to admit, the look of horror on his face did things to her. The sheer terror that only being faced with death could give a dense, self-worshiping asshole like him.

“We’re going to eat you. First that big head of yours...then slurp up your organs like fava beans and then drink your adrenaline glands like a nice  chianti.” His dagger teeth drip with drool, proof of his hunger and intention.

Candy beams with pride for the completion of their plan, stepping back and chuckling quietly at the reference Venom made. The guy doesn’t even have time to scream. There’s not a drop of blood or splatter left of him to find. It’s like it never happened at all.

Candy is left with a deeply satisfied, albeit disturbingly good feeling in her gut. “I’ll see you later, babe.” she whispers and just as quiet as they’d came, they fled.

This continued for a few weeks, the footage of the drugging is stored on an external harddrive Candy kept in her safe. Eddie thought it’d only happen once. But it happened again, twice, three times more before there were articles about mysterious disappearances of the young rich elite in town. Was it the work of the Illuminati some articles asked? She read them with her coffee every Tuesday and smiled knowingly. It pleased Venom. Finally, a human that understood him and his need to kill to eat and protect this planet and its people. But Eddie was more worried than relieved at this point.

—- “You made us stop hunting when we got too much media attention. And now you want to go out and do it again?” Candy could hear the concern for her in Eddie's voice but her own was too strong to heed his warning.

“I wanna find the guy that originally did it to me, Eddie.” Her eyes give away the hurt that’s been fueling her anger as her hands move animatedly while she argues her point. “These are awful people, same as who you get rid of, there’s no reason not to give it one more shot.”

Eddie sighs and puts his hands on his hips, feeling as if he was talking to his old self. “Candy, I don’t want a fight alright? I get why you’re upset and I’d be upset too!” His voice inflected hugger pitched with feeling, “Hell, I AM upset! I get it. I do but ya know you can’t keep pushing it. Your luck will run out… like mine did. You’ll push it just one step too far because of your pride and then boom, it all falls apart.”

“Am I supposed to just let it go what they did to me? To the countless other girls they’ve done it too?” He saw the tears she fought back and his heart hurt for her. He suddenly understood everyone that had tried to warn him of the same thing in the past. It was weird karma to witness.

He sighs and gives her sad and tired eyes, much like the ones she was giving him. “You aren’t… losing by moving on ya know. You can’t win them all, just believe me, babe, please. I’ve BEEN where you are alright? I GET it! I swear I do but you can't fix every wrong out there. You just can’t… I’m sorry.”

“I’m going out tonight. And you’re going to be there. That... I hesitate to call him a person but that asshole will be there who did this to me. I just know it. Let me do it just one more time and I’ll stop okay? Please Eddie?”

He groans and feels Venom wants to give his two cents. He was on Candy's side. But of course, he was, he didn’t grasp the situation fully because he couldn’t, he was damn near indestructible right now and one more buffet of bad guys seemed like it had no downsides when you took into account it meant making Candy happy. And they both wanted that, so desperately. She’d been so much happier since they’d started this after the funk she denied she’d fallen into after the roofie.

“Fine.” He says with more anger. “But just one more time Candy I swear to god, this is the last time I’m helping you do this.” He wags his finger and she doesn’t care. She doesn’t notice. She’d already gotten her way.

—— She had her ritual now she liked to do, the getting ready and primping. The adrenaline rush was enough to get anyone hooked on the feeling. Perhaps it was what made her go against sound advice. Perhaps it was the lack of justice for herself, feeling like a martyr to take on people who seemed untouchable. It was the origin story she’d dreamed of since she was young. A woman wronged, going against the bad guys for the ultimate revenge and winning against the odds. It was everything she’d wanted. And she foolishly thought she could have it.

She was right about one thing. The guy that drugged her was there that night. She and Venom only used this convenient coincidence to shut Eddie up. “It’s a sign!” They’d hissed together.

“It’s a bad idea.” was Eddies defeated reply.

Candy enjoys this one a little too much, a little too true-crime podcast subject for Eddie's liking.

She leads him to the alley with her curves and promises. Her heels giving her no trouble but her wobbly ankles playing like they did all the same to the target.

“You believe in karma?” She proposes, lips so close she could taste the alcohol in the air on his breath.

“Nah, you get what you work for. You gotta step on some toes sometimes to prove you’re the best. If you lose you didn’t try hard enough.” He cockily answered. Something he’d probably picked up from the few interactions he had with him billionaire father growing up. His trust fund was a shield against his own evil deeds.

“That’s a shame. Because I do.” She sighs.

“I don’t think we have to match up on our philosophy 101 ideas, babe.” He chuckles. “Don’t have to have anything in common at all to do what I wanna do to you.” His hands lead to her hips and next thing he knows there’s a knife pressed into his neck. This was new. This wasn’t part of the plan.

Eddie's heartbeat picks up as he sees through Venom's eyes what’s happening. She was in too deep and she was only going to dig herself deeper.

“I’m glad we have one thing in common for what I’m going to do to you.” She snarls, taking her wig and glasses off.

“What the…?!” He says with no fear and only surprise. “Wait aren’t you? Holy shit you again?” He laughs. “So you’re the one doing this little vigilante justice thing. How cute.”

“Cute? You were going to rape me and my friend you fucking disgusting, baby dicked piece of shit.”

“They're onto you sweetie.” He grins. “You can do whatever you want to me but you think killing the brightest minds in the world was a smart idea? Like no one would come looking? You really are stupid.”

“You can call me whatever you want because you’ll be dead and I’ll be able to breathe a little easier knowing one less asshole like you is in this world.”

“Do what you want little girl, but I’m gonna put up a fight you can’t win.” He smirks.

“Doubtful.” Is Venom's response as he appears looking over Candy in the dim and dank alley.

“Good riddance.” She says angrily, putting her wig back on. She continues to mutter curses and name call while her eyes well up with a long-held release that was a long time coming.

“Are you-“

“I’m FINE.” She snaps and wipes at a falling tear. Venom recoils noticeably. “I’ll... see you later.” She rushes out before stomping off.

“Eddie?”

“I know man. She’s just… going through a lot.”

“We are worried.”

“Yeah. We are.”

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

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