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i-will-physically-fight-you · 3 years ago

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Gibbous Chapter 9

Chapter Title: The Thought of Fresh Meat Is Making Me Ill

Summary: It was October. A month full of cheer for the macabre. A month where humans gleefully wore the skins of those they saw as monsters. A month that Virgil generally enjoyed. It was the one month out of the year where he felt the most alive. Yet somehow, for this year’s October, he felt dead inside. Like his body had turned into the rotting corpse of a zombie and his soul was somehow still trapped inside.

Pairings: platonic lamp & platonic sleepxiety

Chapter Word-Count: 5503

Warnings: Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Anxiety, Depression, Paranoia, Arguing, Disassociation, Sensory Overload (Yeah this one isn't gonna be a particularly happy one, Virgil Is Spiraling Mentally Big Time)

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Surprise b*tch, bet you thought you saw the last of me! I'm back for my yearly update--this chapter is dedicated to all the lovely comments people have left on previous chapter! Also!! I rewrote a significant amount of Crescent Chapter 3 and added onto Gibbous Chapter 5, the latter you might want to reread as it adds a bit to the opening scene of this chapter.

Chapter title taken from "I know I'm a Wolf" from the Young Heretics!

In books, there was always a perfect, logical sense of progression. Stories were generally told in a three-act structure. The setup, the midpoint and the resolution. The beginning of a story established the protagonist to the reader. It gave you details about their personality, their way of living, their wants and desires. Then the protagonist found themselves upended by an inciting incident.

Something that caused their way of living to never again be the same. Tension grew and grew as they sought to come about a way to continue living. Until it reached a climax, one where after which, they either thrived or withered away. In which case, the story ended as the protagonist returned to a new sense of normalcy.

One that would last until the next inciting incident came along to shake up their world once again.

Once one found this pattern, it was hard to ever see stories the same way again. There were certain things to always expect—things you could decipher before the story’s end. Real life, however, wasn’t quite like that.

Or at least this was what Logan had come to find. Sure, in many ways events in life played out like stories. There was an inciting incident, something that arose tension as one sought to solve the dilemma. It just wasn’t as neatly bound together like a story or even a math equation. Life was messy, complicated—it threw in plot twists or details that critics would claim lazy and unbelievable.

Logan was harshly reminded of this in the case of one Virgil Raine. He couldn’t understand—he was doing everything right, remaining patient and giving Virgil a chance to open up to Logan on his own time. Yet the human shied further and further away, all development he made since working at the library immediately erased. Virgil even shut out all notions of spending time outside work without explanation. It’d been weeks at this point with no result despite the attempts of Logan, Patton and even Remy, who was arguably the closet with Virgil.

Perhaps this was something that should be expected. Virgil rarely spoke about his past, but what little he shared, he had to fend mostly for his own from a young age. Whoever hurt Virgil caused him to believe again he couldn't rely on anyone but himself.

Logan was not a particularly violent person. He'd been ignorantly cruel once upon a time, yes, but even back then he wasn't one to have the urge to kill people. The wolfish part of him begged to differ, as always. His instincts howled at him to find that person and tear them limb to limb. Better yet, they demanded he snatch Virgil away and bring him against his will to the pack, to safety. As much as Logan wanted this, logically he knew Virgil might never fully trust Patton or himself ever again despite their good intentions. Illogically, he couldn’t bring himself to do the one thing he swore he’d never do again, even if it was for Virgil's safety.

He pondered this, sitting in front of a mountain of paperwork. It was late, too late for him to still be at the library. He couldn’t bring himself to move from his desk, not until he figured something out. He gnashed sharpened teeth in agitation, gripping his hair with claw-like fingernails. It didn't help that normally this time of the month, his cognitive thinking skills were usually in a different state of being. If he wasn't careful, the cleaning staff might find a wolf rampant in the library the next morning.

His phone rang just then, some meme-related ringtone Roman picked out that he’d found funny. Logan snatched it up and answered it.

“Patton, listen, I will be home soon I am just finishing up—”

“I’m not Patton,” The person on the other line cut in, “It’s me, Remy.”

“Oh,” Logan cleared his throat, thrown off by this revelation, “is something the matter?”

“Yeah, something’s the matter alright,” Remy said, his voice hoarse, “I fucked up big time with Virgil.”

It was October. A month full of cheer for the macabre. A month where humans gleefully wore the skins of those they saw as monsters. A month that Virgil generally enjoyed. It was the one month out of the year where he felt the most alive. Yet somehow, for this year’s October, he felt dead inside. Like his body had turned into the rotting corpse of a zombie and his soul was somehow still trapped inside.

He supposed it had something to do with how September slipped from his fingers much in the way that his phone slipped from Jerad’s fingers. Falling all the way down, down, down, breaking upon the asphalt below into a million tiny pieces. Tried as he might, the memory haunted him in the waking world as well as his dreams.

Only, in his dreams, sometimes it was him that fell to the ground. Like a shoddy version of Humpty Dumpty. Remy, Patton and Logan would try to fix him to no avail. They’d always leave, scoffing that it wasn’t worth it. He couldn’t cry or reach out towards them, begging for them to return. He could only lay there, broken and bleeding, watching as they abandoned him. Sometimes Roman showed up to gloat, mocking him for thinking they ever cared for him.

The worst thing about it? He knew it was going to happen in real life. It was only a matter of time. Even Jerad knew this.

“C’mon, you really want to hang out with them and not me, your friend?” Jerad scoffed, “what have they done for you? Have they helped out you when you couldn’t pay rent? Replaced your shitty phone for the best smartphone out there?”

“Well no but—”

“Face it, V-Man, they’re using you. They set you up with a new job, making you beholden to them and it’s sickening! They don’t actually care about you. Once they’ve had their fun jerking you around, they’ll just throw you out with the garbage. And I don’t want you coming to me, bawling like a baby, when it happens!”

As much as Jerad was a jerk, Virgil knew deep down he was right. He’d been so ecstatic at their displays of friendship, he didn’t even stop to consider it was all a façade. Maybe they themselves thought it was real, that they actually cared for him. But eventually they’ll realize the truth. That he’s a loser and nothing more.

Or maybe they already knew the truth and were merely toying with him. Virgil was just a human, mortal through and through. Remy, Patton and Logan were all near-immortal, unkillable save a well-placed piece of silver and a stake of wood in Remy’s case. At least with Jerad, he was honest. He knew Virgil was a loser and made it clear he only hung out with Virgil because it was better than nothing.

Jerad had been nice to Virgil lately—or nice as Jerad could be at least. He’d insisted on occasionally giving Virgil rides to and from work. An offer Virgil couldn’t refuse—no matter how hard his heart thudded against his chest with Jerad’s sharp swerves and his blaring car radio. He taken to asking about Virgil’s day even, asking where he’d been and what he’d been doing. He even took Virgil out to bars and clubs in an attempt to get him to loosen up.

Virgil wanted to tell him he’d rather set himself on fire than willingly enter a noisy nightclub. However every time his lips went to form those words, he found himself saying yes always. So that was how he found himself dissociating in a noisy nightclub, holding onto a pink-colored alcoholic beverage he faked taking a sip from.

A hand knocked jokingly against his forehead. “Yo, Virgin!”

Virgil blinked, his gaze blearily onto Jerad. It was hard to concentrate with all the flashing lights and loud music. He wanted to crawl underneath his beloved purple fleece blanket in his dark, silent bedroom and never leave. But he couldn’t leave just yet. Jerad had been nice to take him along to the club. If he’d asked leave now, he’d get upset. He knew eventually Jerad would get upset at him for something, but he preferred to delay that as long as possible.

“Yeah?” Virgil mumbled, curling his fingers tighter around the alcoholic drink that had been hoisted upon him. Jerad knew he didn’t like alcohol—it was something he ridiculed Virgil about constantly. He always insisted on Virgil drinking, saying he’d stop being a pussy and man up eventually about it.

“Are you high or something? You looked like you were seeing into the third dimension or something.”

Virgil shrugged. Jerad laughed at that, patting him on the back. Virgil tensed from each thud of Jerad’s hand, but he did not flinch or move away. It was a friendly gesture on Jerad’s part. If he wanted to really hurt Virgil, he would’ve put more force behind it.

“Probably not! You’re too much of an anxious wimp,” Jerad said, downing the contents of his drink, “but let me know if you ever get man enough to try it—your good friend Jerad has connections.”

“Okay.” Virgil said, his voice sounding far off in the distance to his own ears.

Jerad laughed again, and then started rambling about something probably among the lines of his most recent hookup, his parents being jerks for not giving him a new sports car or the latest college professor he deemed a complete idiot. Virgil stared at him, nodding all the right moments yet barely processed any of the words being directed his way.

Even with lungs filled with air and a warm beating heart, Virgil felt nothing. He was nothing. A worthless sentient waste of space. Like an ugly mutt nobody wanted that should be euthanized to end its miserable existence.

His phone—the replacement one Jerad gave him—vibrated in his pocket. A text, no doubt from one of the others. The fourth one this night. Virgil’s hand twitched, refraining from looking at it in the presence of Jerad. Virgil didn’t feel like losing a second phone within a month of the first.

“Um, hey,” Virgil interrupted, wincing, “I gotta go use the bathroom, is that alright?”

“’Is that alright?’” Jerad mimicked in a high pitch tone, “Dude, is this elementary school or something? You want a hall pass? Me to hold your hand the whole way there?”

Virgil stared at him.

Jerad rolled his eyes, “Go ahead, whatever. I don’t care if you take a dump, just be quick with it.”

“Thanks.” Virgil bit out, running off before Jerad could change his mind.

He twisted and pivoted around the crowd of sweaty, glistening bodies wearing skimpy clothing. The bright neon lights and loud music warped around him like something out of a nightmare. Eventually he made it to the restrooms and locked himself in the nearest stall. The pulse of his heart roaring in his ears, he drew the phone of his pocket.

Four New Text Notifications from Patton

Patton: [Image of a black cat that looked approximately a year old. It appeared to be nestled close to Patton’s chest, staring up at the camera in wide-eyed stare.]

Patton: Look at what I found on my evening walk! Isn’t she the cutest??

Patton: I’m trying to convince Logan to let me keep her. Maybe you can come visit tomorrow and meet her??

Patton: It’s ok if not! I know you’ve been busy and I want to let you know I’m here for you, you can come to me about anything okay?

Virgil’s vision blurred a bit. He didn’t understand it. Why hadn’t Patton given up already? It’s been weeks since he’s sent Patton a text. He’d been terrified, too, really. And in the few times he ran into Patton at the library, he made excuses and scurried the other way.

Logan was at least kind enough to exchange a few pleasantries and keep their verbal interactions work-oriented. And Remy? They still delved deep into discussions about their taste in music but there was an awkward unspoken agreement not to bring up what happened that one morning. Virgil also shied from hanging outside of work, hoping Remy would eventually forget about him. It seemed to be working; Remy hadn’t offered to hang out in about a week or so.

But Patton? Patton seemed determined to stay in contact with Virgil, sending his dumb silly memes and cute animal videos. He sent good morning and good night texts, while making sure Virgil knew he could respond to them on his own time. On one hand, it made sense—this was the same Patton who saved a complete stranger’s life for literally no reason. On the other hand, he wished Patton would give up. It would made things easier, make it hurt less for everyone.

His phone buzzed with a new text notification.

Jerad: Dude, did you fall in or something?

Virgil swallowed, wiping away any stupid tears running down his face. As he typed a response to Jerad with shaky hands, the bathroom door slammed open, banging against the wall. He almost dropped his phone in the process, silently cursing at how close he’d been to breaking yet another phone.

Several loud booming voices filled the bathroom, peppered with obnoxious laughter every half second. Virgil shut his eyes, resisting the urge to cover his ears also in the process. The noise was too much. It was too much in the club outside, but all those voices echoing off the small crammed walls of the bathroom made Virgil want to scream.

The door creaked open yet again, the voices venturing away from Virgil. Good, they were leaving so Virgil could finally self-destruct in peace. Or so he thought, as a set of footsteps stopped abruptly, wavering. The club music blasted from the doorway, drowning out whatever discussion took place.

Then the door swung shut, the roaring club music muted once more. Virgil waited, breath catching in his throat as the single set of footsteps took a couple strides towards him. Oh god, this was how he was going to die, wasn’t he? This was probably some serial killer with an obsession of killing people in night club restrooms.

This was, of course, the moment his phone started vibrating in his hand. A call. Someone was calling him in the final moments of his life. Virgil looked down at the caller id; Remy. His heartrate spiked, dancing so painfully close to what a heart attack must feel like. Why was Remy calling him? Was he at last going to tell him he was done with Virgil forever?

Virgil almost wanted to ignore the call. But then he glanced at the black boots hovering near his stall and gave it a second thought. If this was going to be how his life ended, it’d probably be best to say goodbye to someone at least. Sucking a breath in, he pressed the green phone icon and held the phone to his ears.

“Hi?” He whispered.

“Hey Virgil,” Remy said, echoing oddly in Virgil’s ears, “what are you up to tonight?”

Virgil glanced down at the black boots menacingly close to his stall, “Umm, I’m just home, chilling.”

“That’s a lie, Hon. I know you’re hiding in a stall of this bathroom.”

“W-what are you talking about?” Virgil couldn’t breathe.

Remy sighed, sounding so similar to the person outside the stall, “Please, let’s talk face to face, alright?”

This was some sort of trick to lure him out of the stall, wasn’t it? Still, with the hand not clutching tightly to his phone, he reached out and unlatched the stall door.

Remy stood there, expression hidden under his black shades. His hair was slicked back with gel, shimmering with a glitter of some sort. He wore his iconic black leather jacket with a black crop top underneath. His whole outfit was black, in fact, down to his ripped jeans and the ankle-length boots. Virgil had seen him wear something similar before to a college event he’d taken Virgil to.

“W-what are you doing here?” Virgil demanded.

“I could ask you the same,” Remy responded, eyebrows raised above his shades, “this isn’t your scene, Virge. What are you doing here?”

“I’m not answering unless you answer.” Virgil said, trying to ignore how much he sounded like a toddler.

“A few of my homies from the art program wanted to celebrate the end of mid-terms. This is the night club most of the college body hangs at.” Remy crossed his arms.

“And how did you know I was in here?”

“A few keen observations,” Remy mustered a thin smile. He tapped his nose for emphasis before drawing his finger close to his lips. Virgil’s eyes widened in understanding. Vampire senses, then. “But mostly, I’d recognize those faded converse of yours anywhere.”

“O-oh.”

“I answered your question, now it’s your turn, Virge.”

“I…” Virgil said, the rest of his words strangled in his throat. His phone buzzed in his hand; another impatient text from Jerad no doubt. He didn’t bother to look at it, choosing to focus on taking a breath in rather than going unconscious from a lack of oxygen.

He could tell Remy the truth. That he’d gone with Jerad—his roommate whom he used to complain to Remy about all the time. But then Remy would ask why he was with Jerad and then—well. Then Virgil would have tell him what happened the time he found him the night his phone broke and well, Virgil wasn’t ready for that. He couldn’t tell Remy about his humiliating mistake.

“I…went here to have a good time completely by myself.” Virgil withheld himself from wincing because wow that didn’t sound weird or suspicious in the slightest, “So you can go catch up with your friends or whatever, I’m good hanging out right here.”

“Right here, in the restroom?”

“Yeah.”

“Honey,” Remy said, his voice washed with some emotion Virgil couldn’t identify, “Let’s ditch this shithole and go somewhere else.”

“W-what—but your friends—” Virgil stammered.

“—will be fine without me. N-G-L they’ll probably too trying to give themselves alcohol poison even realize I’m gone,” Remy shrugged his shoulders, “besides, you don’t seem as gucci as you say you are in here and it’s been a while since we really hung out hung out, y’know?”

Virgil stubbornly directed his gaze away from Remy, jaw tightening. It had to be okay, didn’t it? Jerad was most likely to get too drunk to even coherent colors, let alone that Virgil slipped off without him. Maybe he wouldn’t be mad. Maybe he wouldn’t fly into a rage and come close to hanging him off a balcony. Besides Remy would be even more suspicious if he said no.

Virgil sighed, holding the home button on the phone until it shut off completely. That way he wouldn’t have to deal with Jerad calling him, demanding to know where he’d disappear off to, despite ditching Virgil all the time without warning.

“Alright, fine.”

Remy smiled, his teeth looking a little too sharp for Virgil’s liking. Wordlessly he turned aside and reached for the bathroom door.

Virgil swallowed, shoving the phone in his pocket to be forgotten about. Tried as he might, he still flinched as lively blare of the club’s music and flashing lights greeted him with full force. He froze, cowering before the threshold of the door. A hand landed on his shoulder, soft and gentle.

“Virgil?” Remy asked, his brows furrowing together.

Molten lava settled in the pit of Virgil’s stomach—pity. That was the expression on Remy’s face he couldn’t identify at first. He didn’t want pity; Virgil knew what pity meant. He didn’t want pity of any kind, it reminded him too much of the foster parents that looked at him like he was some feral dog that could be whipped into obedience. And sure, Remy had never hurt him but it didn’t mean Virgil forgotten about that morning spent at Remy’s dorm a month back.

Eyes lit up with a burning, controlled fire. Words hissed through a clenching jaw, “Tell me their name and I’ll beat them up for you.”

If Remy was willing to hurt who he deemed as threats to Virgil, who’s to say he wouldn’t be willing to hurt Virgil? To reprimand Virgil, to let him know how much of an idiot he was being? It sounded absurd, even now, because he’d known Remy for almost a year. Remy had plenty opportunities up to now to do something and hadn’t. Yet he was a vampire; years were nothing to him. He had plenty of time to wait for Virgil to slip up in some way and make his irritation known.

And Virgil knew by now to expect the other shoe to drop in a relationship—it was why he distanced himself, isolated himself to solely to work and his cramped little room at the apartment. He was foolish to believe Remy, Patton and Logan were different. Logan and Patton especially—what was he thinking? Patton saved him, sure, but Logan had been hellbent on locking him in their basement for the eternity of time. Why had ever he allowed himself to accept their apologies, to believe something was going right in his life for once?

“I’m fine.” Virgil snarled, shoving himself forward. It was like marching into a warzone, the music assaulted his ears and rattled uncomfortably against his chest cavity. He grimaced, keeping his eyes towards the floor, away from the flashing lights. He stopped a bit before the ocean of bodies that stood between them and the entrance.

He knew if he looked up, he could make out the back of Jerad’s shirt from his spot at the bar. Stupid, this was so stupid. Why had he allowed himself to get talk into this by Remy? There was no doubt in his mind that Jerad would catch him trying to leave and rightfully demand why he was ditching him for Remy. It was a shit thing to do, after all.

Friends don’t ditch one another without explanation. Jerad left him, sure, but he always had an explanation after the fact. Virgil didn’t think Jerad would like his explanation very much. Especially when it involved Remy, one of the people Jerad had been trying to warn him about.

A hand gracefully looped itself around one of his own, tugging him off to the side rather than through the crowd. Virgil looked to see Remy guiding them towards a set of doors, ones clearly marked for employees only.

“Remy—”

“Shhh, this is a faster way outta here, trust me.” He said, flashing a smile. Perhaps it was meant to be comforting but for Virgil it only caused his stomach to churn.

Right before they made it to the doors, an employee materialized in front of them. “Excuse me, sirs, you’re not allowed back here—”

“Cindy, gurl, remember me, Lansing? Worked here last summer? Do you remember, yeah?” Remy lowered his shades to take a look at her. Virgil peered behind him, unable to view Remy’s face. He could see Cindy’s face, however. Her face pinched up in confusion, frowning, before abruptly smoothening out with a wide grin stretched from ear-to-ear. She looked right at Remy, her gaze shifting entirely off of Virgil as if he no longer existed.

“Lansing, oh! Oh yes, I remember.” Cindy said, with a high-pitched laugh. Virgil shrunk further back into Remy’s shadow, squeezing Remy’s hand tightly. Something was wrong and he didn’t like it. Remy never mentioned working as a bartender—and that wasn’t quite something Remy would be quiet about. Virgil could just picture the outrageous bartending stories he’d have if that was the case.

Remy laughed along with her, light and airy.

“Good, then can ya do a fellow former co-bartender a favor and let us slip through, just this once?”

“Gurl, of course, just if you caught don’t let Gregory know I was the one that let you pass.” She leaned in conspiratorially, face twitching a bit.

“Oh don’t worry, you won’t see us again, in fact forget that you even saw us. I’d love to stay and catch up, but I bet you have things to do.”

She laughed again at that. “Yes, of course. It was nice seeing you, Lansing, but I have to go.”

Cindy hurried off, quickly dissipating through the crowd. Virgil blinked; what the fuck? What the fuck was that—

He didn’t even have time to process the encounter before Remy led them into the dimly lit back hallway of the nightclub. Whether it was a faster way out of the nightclub was debatable. For all his talk about previously working there, Remy seemed just as lost as Virgil in the winding hallway. He led them one direction, only to immediately pivot down the other way.

Remy wasn’t talking. Remy was always talking endlessly, as if speaking was as vital as oxygen to him. He was terrible at whispering too—something Logan would get on him about at the library. That was why he was usually stuck on front desk duty to speak with patrons, helping out at events or doing organizational work in the back office. For Remy to be this silent, like the brooding calm before a storm, well. Virgil’s lungs wanted to seize up right then and there.

Eventually, they made to a door that opened out to an alleyway, right where the night club kept its dumpster. The moon gleamed from her perch in the sky, nearly full but not quite. Like a cookie with a bite taken out of it. Virgil knew there was terms for the different phases of the moon. His mother loved taking him out to see the night sky. She’d point out the constellations and tell him what phase the moon that night was.

He wished he could remember, for her sake, what they were. Considering he knew actual werewolves, you’d think he pay better attention to it. But it was a topic Virgil never felt brave enough to venture and one that neither Patton nor Logan opened up much on their own about.

He stared at the moon, transfixed, that he almost forgotten the reason he was outside in the first place. Not until Remy murmured something before attempting to lead him off somewhere. The gaping dread from moments prior seized hold of him once more.

“No!” Virgil snapped, yanking his hand out of Remy’s grip. He stumbled backwards a few steps, slamming himself into a wall of the building in the process.

“Virgil?” Remy asked, frowning as he took a step forward.

“What the hell was that back there?”

“What do you mean—”

“Don’t act stupid!” Virgil demanded, taking a shaky breath, “That lady—Cindy—you did something, I—I don’t know, she was acting weird! And—and you were acting weird! So I’m asking again; What. The Hell. Was. That?”

Remy stared at him, his breath hitching, “Virgil, I was just trying to get you to a quiet place ASAP before you—”

“You’re still not answering the question.” Virgil cut in, his intestines tightening themselves into knots over it. Because maybe this was just a classic case of Virgil paranoia striking again. Maybe he really was driving himself into a panic attack over nothing. Maybe he was accusing Remy unjustly.

Yet, if that was the case why would Remy flinch if Virgil struck him physically with his words?

“Virgil,” Remy said slowly, “I need you not to panic and hear me out, ok?”

Virgil’s heartrate accelerated. Not panic, not panic?! What did Remy expect but for him to panic at those words?

“Okay.” Virgil said, definitely panicking.

“What have you’ve heard about vamps?”

“That they—you drink blood. And your reflection doesn’t show up in mirrors—and—and if you get bitten by a vampire, you’ll either turn into one or get mind controlled.”

“All technically true, well I mean—there’s a fuck-ton more to the turning process than that—” Remy cut himself off, “That’s beside the point. The point is, what you call mind-control, we call ‘enthralling.’ Enthralling is…”

“Is what?”

“Enthralling is, well. It’s a form of hypnosis. Anyone enthralled by a vampire is mostly aware of it and the least likely they are to follow a vampire’s suggestions, the more likely they are to fight against the hypnosis. And it can be activated through eye-contact which is what I did to Cindy.”

Virgil couldn’t breathe. Suddenly pieces were slotted together in mind, forming a picture Virgil never wanted to envision. That faint but visceral memory of Remy with red eyes, the natural charisma Remy held with anyone he met, how Remy managed to steal confidential information from Virgil’s employee file in the back office of Kirby’s Burgers—all of it. He thought Remy, out of anybody, was safe. Past his sassy, laidback exterior, Remy was honest, willing to speak his mind about anything and everything.

If Remy enthralled a complete stranger without blinking an eye—who’s to say he wasn’t above doing it to Virgil? Who’s to say he hadn’t enthralled Virgil into being his friend? Who’s to say Virgil wasn’t an oblivious mouse in a game of cat and mouse? Oh gods, this had just confirmed all of Virgil’s worst fears and more.

“Virgil—” Remy said, reaching out, his eyes hidden beneath his shades. He continued speaking, a mumble jumbo string of excuses probably. Virgil couldn’t stand to stay around and listen to it.

“Stop—just don’t—” Virgil stuttered, taking one step and then another towards the open sidewalk. What was just a few steps then became a few hundred until he found himself leaning against the door to the apartment, hands shaking to slot the key to unlock it.

A few more steps he was inside, the usual musty smell an unexpected comfort. He sat on the couch, seconds stretching into eternity. He half-expected Remy to have chased after him, demanding Virgil to listen, why couldn’t you just listen, you’re so stupid no wonder you’re pathetic—

Virgil blinked a few times, his eyes burning with some sort of irritation. For some reason, Remy let him go. He couldn’t decide if that was a good or bad thing. His head ached and so did his ears for some reason.

Jerad entered the apartment a few millennia later. Virgil froze at the rattling doorknob, his hand clutching onto his phone in his pocket.

“There you are, you fucker!” Jerad drawled, stumbling over in a drunken stupor. His hand moved towards Virgil, but not with a closed fist. Instead he patted him on the back like earlier, “I can’t believe you did it! You finally got the balls to go and hook up with somebody! I guess I can’t call you Virgin, now huh?”

“Uh-huh,” Virgil murmured, not correcting him on that assumption. He sat there, a bit of tension draining from him. Jerad wasn’t mad for abandoning him. Jerad was still a jerk, but at least Virgil mostly knew what to expect of him. It wasn’t ideal, but that was life. It was better to deal with the devil you knew, then the devil you didn’t know. Virgil was stupid to have ever thought otherwise.

“My parents are being such dicks at the moment,” Jerad said, precipitously changing topics as per usual of him, “sometimes I wish I didn’t have to wait until they were dead to take my inheritance and do what I want to do, y’know?”

Virgil didn’t really know. Did his parents leave him money? They had to have had some sort of savings stashed away. A life insurance of some sort, right? It wasn’t like they were poor. He never thought about inquiring into that. Jerad accidentally slapped Virgil across the arm with a huge hand gesture, still ranting about something. Maybe it wasn’t an accidental hit.

Virgil didn’t know. His tether on reality felt weak, like a balloon close to floating away into the stratosphere. He almost wished he could float away, but the weight in his chest said otherwise. Jerad passed out not long after his rant, slumped half on the floor and half on the sofa. Virgil took this opportunity to slip into the comfort of his bedroom and turn on his cellphone once more.

Seventeen new text notifications and five missed calls from Jerad greeted him, along with one new text notification from Logan. He clicked on Logan’s and his conversation, staring at Logan’s text at the bottom of it.

Logan: Virgil, Remy wanted me to inform you that he is taking a leave of absence from work. Please let me know if you need to take a leave of absence as well or need to confide in somebody as a friend, Patton or I would be happy to listen.

Virgil stared at it some more. Then he tapped out a short response, set the phone on the stool that was his makeshift nightstand and collapsed headfirst into his mattress.

Virgil: K thanks, I’m fine

A/N: Hope everyone is doing well, if you enjoyed the chapter please consider leaving a comment--it's completely free and helps me out as a fanfic writer a ton! I'm technically not in the Sanders Sides fandom anymore, but I still have a lotta fondness for this fic and I will finish it, even if takes me ten years to do so :') -Kat

#sanders sides #virgil sanders #logan sanders #remy sanders #kat writes #werewolf au #long post

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havethetimeofyourstyles · 4 years ago

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in which Harry visits for the summer and secrets come out.

hi loves! here is my fic for the Summer Fic Challenge hosted by @helladirections !!

enjoy 7.4k words of fluff, tad bit of angst, and smut of friends to lovers bestfriend!harry

prompts: summer job & summer photoshoot

also feedback is always appreciated! please reblog if you like it! I’d love to know what you think <3

.・。.・゜

Sun.

The heat that hit your face when you exited your vehicle was hot and bright. Slightest bit of sweat had made its appearance through your pores, and the brightest star radiating off your body made you relive the memories of what’s to come. The familiar exhilarating rush through your veins became present as you met with the sun. The sun had reminded you of the comfort and the fun you’ve had when you met with it. The comfort and fun you’ve had, and you’re going to have, with a specific person. Your favorite person.

The favorite memories that you always go back to when you’re sitting in peace, reminiscing on life itself, had always been on the dirt while the sun was hitting your back, and you and your favorite person would talk and laugh. You would throw water at him when he would tease you or make a stupid joke that would sometimes be funny (you wouldn’t admit that to him). Those memories had kept you the safest and you felt the need to always go back to them, so you won’t forget them. Forget him.

It was always a yearly occurrence to have these memories. For the past three years, you’ve had the most fondest memories of him and your adventure together, making your life brighter. Brighter than the sun.

It wasn’t until you met him that your heart started racing and your heart grew bigger. Your heart grew for the past 365 days for the past three years, and would shrink as sadness and bittersweet goodbyes would fill your mind. It was the only time in your life where you actually counted down the days until you saw the sun again. Until your life was brighter again--brighter than the sun.

“Well, well. If it it’s who I think it is,” his bright smile had taken you out of your trance.

If it isn’t the person I’ve been waiting to see for the past year.

Harry. Harry Styles. Harry Edward Styles. Harry ‘Sun’ Styles.

Your heart grew fonder and a smile of your own took place on your face as you watched him fast walk towards you, almost to the point of running. Your smile grew wider and bigger the seconds the distance between you two were nonexistent, and you were finally in his arms. You felt your feet leave the ground while he picked you up to spin you around, tight arms around your waist and tight arms around his neck.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he said into your neck. You felt his breath against your skin, goosebumps present on your arms, despite the hot day.

You don’t reply nor speak because of the bit of fear in you and the overwhelming feeling you have from seeing him again—finally seeing him again. You just kept your head buried in his neck as your arms were tight around him that you’re worried you might be squeezing him too hard, but you got your answer by his arms hugging you just as tight.

He set you down on your two feet, but doesn’t let go of you. The warmth he radiated from his body is enough to keep you happy if you were to travel to the coldest area in the world with him. His body would make the room warmer when he steps into it, even on the hottest day, like today. But it makes you happy, safe, warm, bright. Brighter than the sun.

The two of you eventually let go of each other, and Harry placed his hands on both sides of your face, smiling down at you. You wrapped your hand around his wrist, needing to hold onto him. Your smile matched his, seeming that it’ll never fall.

“What, not gonna say anything?” He teased, a smirk creeping up to his face, but truthfully, he’s missed your voice so much. The smirk could easily hide his blush because of how much he’s missed you. Calls on the phone don’t do your voice justice. The soft and delicate sound is music to his ears, and he’s deprived from hearing it in person.

“I’ve missed you too, Harry.”

Flower.

Oh, how he’s missed you so entirely much that it makes his heart physically hurt. His chest would always sink every time he had to see you leave, but your smile made it easier to come back.

He couldn’t help but just stare at you. Your beauty had caught his eye the first time he laid them on you, and he still thinks you’re the most beautiful person he’s ever seen. And your beauty outside worked well with your heart. The two were a perfect match: a gorgeous person outside and a beautiful soul inside.

It was like you were too good to be true. He couldn’t believe it, really. Harry sometimes had a hard time comprehending that you were real, like he was afraid to touch you because you would vanish like a ghost or his arm would go through your body like a pond. But you were very much alive and real; a few yells of his name that would snap him out of his thoughts definitely proved that you were a real human being.

But everytime he sees you, especially when it’s been a whole year, it feels like the first time he ever laid eyes on you. He was starstruck, to say the least. His memory of your beauty never faded away, but seeing you in the flesh was a whole different feeling. And that was the feeling he would always hold onto.

Flower. His flower. His bright and blooming flower.

“How are you?” You asked shyly, the words coming out softly.

“Hey, it’s just me. No need to get all nervous on me,” he said as he noticed your nervousness.

“You’re right. But how are you anyways?” Your posture was loose and you seemed a tad bit relaxed, which he’s glad for.

“I’m good. Flight was okay, kinda tired, considering I came here straight to the airport.”

“Harry! I thought you were going to your hotel first?” You had known this because of the phone call that took place before his flight. He wanted to hear your voice before not hearing it or communicating with you for practically a whole day, and he knew he would be deprived from it.

“I was, but I kind of...forgot to book a room,” his words came out mumbled.

“What? How did you forget? You were talking about it a week before your flight.”

“Because…I was hoping to stay with you,” Harry said with a hopeful smile. “You know, there,” he pointed to the small house next to the field. You stayed at the little house every summer just so it would save you time from driving back and forth almost everyday.

“You want to stay with me? But why?” You were confused, your brows furrowed. Harry could’ve asked you in the first place if you could stay with him, but you didn’t understand why he said he booked a hotel in the first place.

“Please! It’ll be fun! Just you and me. And I’m only here for a month, so please?” He put on his best pout face, and you looked at him strangely. You knew you were going to say yes, but you always wanted to poke fun at him.

“There’s only one bed,” you tested.

“I’ll take the couch.” In reality, he really hoped you would ask him to sleep next to you sometime in the next few days, but he didn’t want to mention it.

“And the space is pretty small…”

“Small spaces are no problem.”

“The couch is not that comfy…”

“Then I’ll sleep next to you.” When he didn’t want to mention it, he meant it, but it accidentally slipped out of his mouth.

And in your head, you hoped he hadn’t been joking. You really hoped that he was being serious. The thought of waking up next to him every morning sounded like a dream to you. Sun shining through your curtains while your sun was waking up from his slumber. It was a dream you wanted to become reality.

“Okay, you can stay. You know I wasn’t going to say no to you, right?” He placed an arm around your shoulder as he grabbed his bag from the floor, both of you walking towards the house.

“I know. Wanted to see what kind of excuses you were going to make up. Can’t wait for this summer, flower.”

.・。.・゜

The morning was ahead of you as the California sun was once again shining down on them on a hot, summer day.

Yours and Harry’s evening was filled with eating dinner and catching up. Although you two had talked and texted almost everyday, the sound of each other’s voice brought a warm and safe feeling. Hearing each other talk about things you two already know didn’t bother either of you.

You had seen Harry in the flesh, talk about his new hobbies, updates on his new apartment, and school. And you sat there with a smile on your face, immensely happy to have your sun back.

To your disappointment, Harry had slept on the couch like he said, but you held back a frown on your face and respected his decision.

Now, it was Harry’s first full day and was immediately going to be placed to work with no complaints.

It was a summer job that you both had been grateful to have. Your grandmother had started a sunflower field for tourists and locals, and it’s been growing and blooming ever since you were younger. She had proposed the idea of you helping her work when you were sixteen, claiming that she was getting quite old and her back was hurting when she would stay in a crouched position for long periods of time, so you decided to help her from now on.

Harry had stumbled on the field by accident. He was in California for the month one summer, spending it with his friend when he was 19 years old. You had been helping your grandmother for two years already when you met him, and he literally stumbled through the field, falling to the ground and staining his clothes with soil and dirt. You had scolded him, asking if he was drunk and to not get too close to the sunflowers, afraid he might collapse on them and crush the tall flowers. And he left after that.

He came back the next day, apologizing for making such a scene and almost ruining your field, and asked if there was anything he could do to help. He asked with a look of guilt, and so you made him take out weeds, you pulled from the ground, out to the trash. Harry had hung out for a while until he left, but what surprised you was that he came back the day after, and the day after, and the day after. He was at the field almost every single day during his vacation, so you asked if he’d like to work during the summer and he excitedly said yes.

Although planting the sunflower seeds takes place months before you open the field to the public, Harry comes to work a month during the summer to smooth out the dirt after everyone has left and the field closes.

You and Harry have been coworkers and best friends for three years. He was 22 and finished with uni, and has his bachelor’s in sociology, and starting his new job as a social worker when he gets back to the U.K after his summer vacation in California. Harry had always found a way to visit you during the summer, considering it is also his summer job to work alongside you at the fields.

You were proud of him. So proud of your best friend that he really inspires you to do better for yourself, for others, and for him.

It wasn’t an obvious fact that you’ve taken a liking--or loving-- to Harry. How could you not? You two talk everyday and he visits you during the summer. You felt a bit selfish for not going out to England to visit him because you had to take care of your grandmother since no one else is able to, and you didn’t want to leave her alone all by herself. But Harry brushed it off and said it was completely fine, although he misses you.

The not so little crush on Harry had started to develop throughout the years, and you haven’t yet said anything to him, knowing that it’ll break your heart if the feeling weren’t mutual.

But planted seeds and smoothing out the dirt was so much better than not having him at all.

“Hey! Get out of your thoughts will you? I’m practically doing all the work here,” he said, teasing you as he digs a small dent into the dirt and places the seeds in them.

“Oh, sorry. Not like you planted this entire field yourself for the past four months,” you teased back, rolling your eyes as you crouched down and helped him plant.

There was a comfortable silence that fell between you two, planting and sweating as the sun hit your necks. You loved being able to be silent with him. With being miles apart, it was never awkward for you two.

“So, are you dating anyone at the moment?” Harry suddenly asked, breaking the silence. Your heart drops a little and you hold your breath as the question was unexpected. You’ve never really talked about your love life with him because of the fact that you’ve never had one--a serious one, and also the fact that you’ve been in love with your best friend for years. But Harry has talked about two girls to you, and it made your heart sink a little deeper.

“No. No one at the moment,” you replied.

“Anyone that has caught your eye?”

Yeah, you. “Nope,” you said, shaking your head.

“Oh. Okay,” he said as that ends the conversation. His answer had been so weird and confusing that he would’ve usually pressed you on the subject. “How many rows are we doing?”

“Hmm. Probably 4 more?” The four more rows you two had to do was going to take a while considering the field ran out pretty far.

Two weeks were spent planting, watering, and making sure the sunflowers grew perfectly. The field opened that weekend Harry had arrived and you were excited to see people smile at the flowers that grew so proud and tall.

There were a good amount of people everyday visiting the field, and that made you happy: people appreciated beautiful sunflowers that took hours and days to grow. It was like they were appreciating the hard work in a way.

The sky was still slightly light out, turning into a cotton candy dream; and the weather had cooled just a bit. The field closed a bit earlier on weekdays than it did on the weekends. The time spent when the field closes to when it gets dark out, is due to smoothing out the dirt in every row. Making sure there are no footprints or holes people made from walking, so it’ll be smooth and fresh for the next group of people for the next day. You and Harry took turns smoothing it out during the day every hour, and it kept you busy for the most part along with supervising the premises.

“Do you want to do something fun? I’m already done with my half of the field,” Harry asked.

“Sure. I have about two more rows left until I’m done. But what did you have in mind?” You responded as you continue your work.

“Well, I brought my camera, so I was wondering if you wanted to have a little photoshoot? Before the sun goes down?” He asked more softly.

“Yeah, I’m up for it,” you said with a smile. You’ve always let him test shots on you before he went off and took pictures of nature.

It took no more than 20 minutes until you were done, and you washed up and walked out back to the house to change into a much cleaner and nicer clothes before you met Harry back outside.

You were wearing a long white dress that flowed just above your ankles. It wasn’t tight fitting since it’s hot out, and you generally preferred flowy dresses.

Harry was against the tree, looking into the lens as he adjusted the lighting and focus. He hadn’t realized you were in front of him until you physically got in his shot right when he clicked, and you smiled.

“Hi.”

Harry slowly placed the camera down, taking in your presence. He’s seen you in dresses plenty of times and always thought you were gorgeous, but there was something about the way she looked that made his heart flutter a little extra.

“Hi. You look, um, you look… fuck, uh. You look pretty!” His cheeks had slightly reddened from the embarrassment of trying to get his words out. Never in his life had a girl made him speechless, but it was no surprise to him because it was you.

“Thank you.” A blush creeped your cheeks, and you were nervous as well. You didn’t want to look too over the top when he’s only going to take at least five pictures of you, but you wanted to look nice. And that made you feel entirely better.

“Do you want to stand in front of the flowers? I can re-smooth out the dirt when we're done.” You only nodded as you two walked to the field.

Once you stood in front of the sunflowers, you put a hand on your hip and tilted your head to the side slightly, giving him a cute pose as he took a couple of shots, bending slightly to get a good angle.

After a few seconds, he stopped and looked down at the pictures, and you took that as your cue to start walking back to the house.

“Hey, hey. Where are you going?”

“I just thought we were done. I know you want to take some pictures of the field and stuff,” you say shyly. You were never one to be shy around him, but your feelings for him had taken over, making you flustered.

“Oh, I figured I could take some more pictures of you, if you’d like? Didn’t mean I wanted to take pictures of the field when I asked for a photo shoot,” he says with a soft smile.

“Oh…okay.” You walk back to the area you were standing in, making sure that your white dress isn’t touching the dirt.

“Just go for it,” he tells you.

You let loose and started to pose. You gave him various poses, looking into the camera and smiling sweetly or giving him a more serious but natural and sultry look. The wind had started to naturally move your dress, so went with the flow and continued to move so he could get some candid shots of you; playing with your hair, playing with your dress, and looking to the sides. He changed up his angles as well, adjusting to the light so the sun hits your face or going against the sun to give the picture a more dim feeling.

“There you go, flower. Look over your shoulder again,” he instructed you, and you oblige. “Yeah, just like that.” His voice was low and raspy, and you wanted to hear that for the rest of your life.

Harry couldn’t deny the beating of his heart, and how it pounded a little harder every time he clicked to take your photo. You were a natural in front of the camera, and he couldn’t stop clicking. Your beauty was enticing every time you gave him that sweet look.

“So fucking beautiful,” he said softly, but it was loud enough that you heard him. It had taken you a little off guard, smiling at his compliment. It was the soft small, and you weren’t even looking at the camera anymore, but the person behind it. The one who had captured your heart on camera and in his hands. at the camera anymore, but the person behind it. The one who had captured your heart on camera and in his hands. Click.

The next twenty minutes were spent taking pictures. You had run through the field as Harry got shots of your back as your hair flowed. He also got some as you running towards him with a big and playful smile that would be engraved in his head forever.

It was T-minus three days till Harry’s departure, and it was getting harder and harder every time he had to pack up and leave again.

You had told him that he didn’t have to work anymore, but he told you that he didn’t mind and continued working. You were walking back and forth at the ends of the rows, making sure no one was making a fuss or getting hurt, and everyone was relatively respecting the field.

You got to the last row, and what you had seen had made your eyes burn. Your brows furrowed with anger, but your heart hurt with pain. Harry was in the middle of the row, taking pictures of a girl, and you could hear her laughing and practically flirting with him.

A bystander would call it petty, but that was your Harry and jealousy boiled in your blood. He was supposed to be smoothing the dirt, and instead he’s taking pictures of a gorgeous girl that Harry probably found intriguing. As you walked towards them, you saw the rake standing under his arm as her phone was in his hands, snapping away.

The closer you got, you heard Harry’s voice, “Nice.”

“Does it look good when I do this?” The girl had said, and bent one leg up and threw her arm in the air, smiling.

“Sure,” he said. He hadn’t noticed you walk over to them until he felt you yank the rake from his hold and walking passed them, opposite of where you came from, and continued the work he was supposed to do. “Okay, here you go. I took a few,” Harry said startled, giving the girl’s phone back.

“Wait, let’s look at them. I don’t even know if I’ll like them,” you heard her say, and you rolled your eyes, wondering where her groups of friends that she came with went. But continued to rake, going further and further from them so you can’t hear them anymore.

“Uh, sorry. I have to get back to work,” he tried walking away, but she caught him again.

“Oh, wait! I was wondering if you wanted to go out sometime?” She asked hopefully.

“Thank you, but I’m not interested. I hope you have a lovely rest of your day,” he said quickly and ran off towards you.

You heard his footsteps pad against the dirt, and you turned around, finding him running towards you. “Leave me alone.”

“Flower, please-” it was already too late as you were handing him the rake and you were already walking away, leaving a defeated Harry.

The next day was awkward and silent. You had given Harry the silent treatment up until closing when you told him that it was time to clean, handing him a rake.

Harry had been so off the entire day, and you barely said any words to him. He hated it. He hated you being angry at him, and he wanted to fix it.

He found you sitting on the picnic table that’s in front of the house. You looked freshly washed up, different clothes and hair damp. You had this look on your face that looked so frustrated, but your eyes looked sad, and it pained him that he was the one who caused this.

“Flower,” he said as he walked up to you. You looked at him but didn't say anything. He stood in front of you as your legs swung off the table. “I’m sorry. Please, forgive me. I know I was supposed to be doing work, but that girl just asked me to take pictures of her. Please, don’t be sad. I hate that I made you feel like this.”

“Harry,” you started, and Harry slightly cringed as you didn’t call him by his nickname. “It’s not your fault. I realized how dumb I looked and I shouldn’t be mad at you. It’s just that when I saw you taking pictures of her, I thought of how when we did our photo shoot and how it meant nothing to you. It’s stupid, but that’s how I felt at the time.”

“No, no,” he walked a little closer, now in between your legs. “Our photo shoot meant everything to me. You were—are so beautiful. And those pictures mean everything to me. I literally couldn’t stop taking pictures of you until you told me to stop because you were tired,” he said softly, and you nodded.

“I’m sorry for acting like this. I had no right to be jealous.”

“It’s okay. And don’t invalidate your feelings, okay? I understand why you felt like that. I would’ve acted worse if I saw you with some guy,” he confessed, and you looked at him. Does he feel the same?

“Okay. Are we good now, sun?” He nodded, and you smiled.

“Do you know why I call you flower?” He suddenly asks.

“It’s because you say I’m pretty.”

Countless number of times, Harry had never failed to remind you just how beautiful you are. It was a boost to your self-esteem, and you really appreciated it. The compliment always made you blush, rose tiny cheeks made its appearance when the words came out of his mouth.

“Well, that is true. But the other reason I call you flower is because you need to be treated properly. Like people can’t go without watering the flower because they’ll be left to wilt, and flowers don’t deserve that. They deserve to be shown off because they’re so beautiful—you deserve that. You deserve to be watered. You deserve to be graced by the sun.”

Your mouth had dropped slightly, finally understanding in depth why he called you that pet name. Once he was done speaking, you felt your body fill with love and want. You felt special—beautiful.

“There’s only a few people who I want to take care of, and one of them is you. I want you to have a beautiful and bright life under the sun.”

You. You’re the sun. You’re my sun. I want to be under you.

Your breath hitches and your anxiety rises. The erratic heartbeat pounding through your chest, enough that it runs through your ears as you start speaking without thought.

“Do you know why I call you sun?”

“No, you’ve actually never told me. Figured it was because I call you flower, and you know, we work on a sunflower field,” he added a chuckle after.

“That is partially true, but it’s because you’re bright. Your smile and personality is bright that you could walk anywhere and just light up the room, the world. You really did make my life less boring, and more exciting and fun. And I know we only see each other a month a year, it’s all the texts and calls that make me excited to get up in the morning,” you said as you stared so deeply in his eyes, telling him every word that you’ve been wanting to tell him aside from the three words that are hanging off your tongue so carelessly.

“You really mean that?” He asked as if he’s looking for some reassurance, but you’re glad to give it to him.

Even if he’s the bright sun in your life, the sun eventually sets, turning the sky into a dark starry night that sometimes feels like he’s down and in a dark place sometimes.

“I mean every word,” you said as you nodded your head. Harry smiled softly, looking down as he tried to hide his blush, but you see so clearly through him. “There’s something that I would like to confess.” Your mouth confessed for itself as there was no thought process in what you were about to say. Harry’s head lifted and his attention is now on yours again, waiting for what he thinks he’s been meaning to have the guts to say for a very long time.

“Okay…” he encouraged you to go on.

“I probably should have told this sooner, but I get so nervous and chicken out everytime I try to. I also didn’t want to lose you as my best friend either because that’ll absolutely crush me because you’re the best thing to ever happen to me, and I cherish our friendship so much and practically kiss the ground you walk on. But I didn’t want you to lose what we have because I’ve known you for so long and didn’t want you to see me differently-”

“Flower! Come out with it already,” he chuckled and you took a deep breath from your rambling.

“Okay, so…”

“So…” he said with a cheeky smile, and for a minute you think that he knows but just wants you to confess it for yourself so he can laugh in your face and tell you that he doesn’t feel the same way.

“I’ve been crushing on you for quite some time.” And with that, your secret was out, and you had this boost of confidence to tell him how you really felt. “Hell, it’s not even a crush. Practically in love with you. I have been for forever. Ever since you came back the next day and helped me out with the field after you almost destroyed it,” you said with a chuckle, trying to cover the sound of your beating heart that you’re sure he could hear.

“You’re serious?” Harry couldn’t believe the words that fell out of your mouth. He was so happy to finally hear the words, and the doubts and thoughts in his head had vanished once you told him you love him.

“As serious as this sunflower field.”

And he knew you were very serious.

Harry leans in towards you, closing the proximity of your faces, but still too far for your lips to touch.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” You asked, hoping you would hear the same thing he did. He chuckles at your impatience.

“I love you too. Ever since I met you. You were the one I fell in love with. Practically stole my heart when you looked at me in the eyes and yelled at me to leave,” he told you softly, being delicate with his words as if he’s handing over his heart and giving you permission to take care of it. And you would, with every bone in your body, you would take care of his precious heart forever.

“Harry…” Your eyes were stinging with tears from how happy you are to hear that he loves you just as much. You placed your forehead against his, wanting to feel his lips against yours.

“My flower. Can I kiss you, please?” He asked as if he read your mind. You nodded, adding a soft ‘please’ at the end, and he captured your lips with his.

The feeling of his molding with yours made your heartbeat a little faster than normal and your head dizzy. You were drowning in his love as your tongues touched and caressed against each other as your arms began tightening around one another, wanting to become close as possible.

“Take me inside, please,” you said as you pulled away from him. He nodded, practically dragging you towards the house you two shared for the past three weeks.

Once you two are inside, Harry wasted no time in meeting his lips with yours. The tug of your hairs to his hair made him moan in your mouth, and you stuck your tongue in his mouth, meeting his own. Harry’s hands roam all over your body, increasing your arousal. You eventually felt his hands on the back of your thighs, urging you to jump so you do; arms around his neck as you pull him closer. He carried you so effortlessly to the bedroom without his lips leaving yours, but instead deepening the kiss.

Harry gently laid you down on the bed, putting his weight on you as your legs don’t unwrap around his waist.

“Can I take this off?” You felt his hands roam against your ass, and you nodded softly before you felt his hands grab the hem of your flowy shorts, pulling them down slowly and revealing your panties. You lift your t-shirt over your head and you lay half naked under him, the sun.

You hadn’t anticipated Harry undressing you, so your choice of panties that day were quite unattractive as they weren’t anything exciting. And you also decided to not wear a bra because of the hot day out, you needed your breasts to breath.

“Sorry. If I had known we’d be doing this, I would’ve worn something sexier,” you shyly said.

“Hey, I don’t care about that. You look absolutely beautiful. Love every single inch of you.” He leaned in to kiss your neck and down to your chest, sucking and nipping at your tits. He kissed your soft stomach leading to the top of your underwear, looking up at you in case you had changed your mind.

You moaned, feeling impatient with how slow he’s going. “Please. Take it off.”

He finally took off your cotton panties, slowly kissing the newly exposed skin as he takes them off. “Fuck, you’re such a sight. So damn beautiful.” You smiled and giggled, feeling warm from his stare and compliments. There was a moment of panic because you had forgotten to shave as little hairs on your pubic bone started growing back, but the look on Harry’s face like he’s about to devour you had washed away the panic because he simply does not care about that.

“Can I taste you? Please?” He asked, his tone coming out needy. You moaned out a ‘yes’ before Harry kneeled on the floor and kissed your inner thighs, close to what you really want your mouth on, but so far away. He sucked lightly on your thighs, leaving love bites on the place for his eyes only.

You bucked your hips a little as he does so, wanting your mouth on him already, and Harry can sense and feel you getting impatient, so he finally licks up a stripe from bottom to top. He sucked your clit as he got to the top before doing it over again. He then started licking your sensitive button relentlessly, making you even wetter than you were before, Harry heard you whine above him, arms spread out, practically a moaning mess on the sheets.

“Fuck, flower taste so good, my flower.” You were ready to cum any second at that point. You grab onto his curly locks, and he groaned against you.

He takes his thumb, swiping and rubbing your clit before sticking his tongue in your pussy, licking up your juices. Your legs spread further apart for him as your head is thrown back into the mattress.

“Oh my…fuck,” you screamed out. You were so close, and wanting to be there already as your hips started to buck, grinding slightly against him as Harry flattened out his tongue for you. “Yes, baby.”

After a few more bucks, Harry held down your thighs in order for you to stop moving as he continued to sucks and lick your clit again. One hand reaches up to your tits, squeezing and holding them as he plays with your nipples, and on the other hand, he takes two fingers and plunges them into you, thrusting them in and out of you.

You were louder than before, practically on the edge of your pleasure. Harry fingered you faster, and you let go. A wave of erotic foreplay hit you and you were at your high. You were on the highest cloud, floating but also coming down.

Harry cleaned you up with his tongue before kissing his way back up to your lips. You let out a string of ‘mmm’s’ from coming down from your high and being out of breath. As Harry kissed you, you reached between you, and fondled his prominent cock.

With the heels of your feet, you managed to push down his boxers, his cock springing up from the release of the restraint. You took a hold of him, pumping your hand and he moans into your mouth.

“Wanna taste you,” you said between kisses.

“Later, baby. Want to be inside you already.”

“But…”

“We have plenty of time for you to suck me off later, but need to feel you right now,” he said and you huffed, but nodded your head.

He got off of you and sat against the headboard, and you crawled to straddle him. After a few reassuring kisses, you grabbed his cock and lined him up to your wet pussy, sinking down on him. Moans and sighs of reliefs escape both of your mouths, finally feeling each other.

The stretch you felt is amazing, nothing you’ve ever felt before. You’ve only had sex about twice in your life, Harry is around the same number, and nothing compares to this. The closeness and connection you both have emotionally is all the much better than meeting some random person and having sex with them. It’s something you both wouldn’t trade for the world.

“Fuck, you’re so tight, flower,” he groaned out, and you started to sway and grind your hips slowly.

“You’re so big. So big, sun. Shit,” you replied back to him as your head is thrown back and you start to ride him a little faster,

His hands find your hips, guiding you and squeezing the flesh in his big hands. Since you’re above him, your chest is face level with his, so he starts to kiss your chest softly, proclaiming and complimenting you on how good you are for him.

“Just like that, baby. Doing so well for me. No one can make me feel as good as you do.” He sucked on the skin beside your breasts.

“No one can. Never gonna feel like this with anyone. Don’t want to feel like this with anyone,” you moaned out from the feeling between your legs and the feeling of his lips on your skin.

Your pace had become faster and rougher, grinding your clit against his pelvic bone, giving you such stimulation along with the feel of Harry’s nails softly dragging against your back. Harry then picked you up slightly, laying you down on your back.

“That’s right. Gonna be mine forever right baby?” He looked up at you with puppy eyes and you looked up at him.

In his words there was a hint of dominance, needing to be rough and possessive, but in his eyes, there was still the need for reassurance and love that only you would provide for him.

You placed your hands on both sides of his face, kissing his lips and continuing to thrust inside of you. “I’m yours. Forever.”

He smiled at that, kissing you again. “I love you.”

Your smile matched his. “I love you. So much.”

You and Harry were both on edge, sure that you two are prolonging your orgasm just so the feeling doesn’t go away. But you realized that you have a lifetime with him to do this again and again and again. And the feeling of you two connected will always be there.

“Harry, let go.”

“You first, baby. You almost there?” You nodded your head, his pelvis hitting your clit, making the stimulation stronger.

“So good, baby. You’re so fucking good,” you screamed out as your second orgasm takes over and you threw your head back.

He continued to move your hips, and he comes right inside of you, groaning out into your shoulder.

Your chests were heaving up and down as hot breath came out of both of your mouths while you two lay on the bed chest to chest. Your head was on his shoulder, kissing his skin lightly as he does the same.

After a few minutes of catching your breath, he lifted his head, smiling at you. He had a dazed smile on his face when your eyes met his, and he kissed your forehead.

“Can’t believe you’re mine now. My fucking best friend. My flower. She’s mine,” he said, couldn’t even believe the events that had just happened.

“I’m yours,” you reassured him.

“And I’m yours as well,” he said back.

He moved off of you and cuddled up to your side. Both of you fully naked with no cover. Just two people in love, enjoying the sight and comfort you both bring to each other. It was a moment like this where you had wished you would get this everyday. With Harry being yours now, you didn’t know where that led you two distance wise.

“Hey, what’s the frown for?” Harry asked, noticing your mood change and your body tensing.

You propped your elbow up and rested on your hand. “What’s gonna happen now?”

“What do you mean, flower?” He tucked in the piece of hair that has flown onto your face.

“You’re leaving in a few days,” you said with a frown. The thought of him leaving again after what had just happened made your heart sink. “And we only see each other a month out of the year, and that’s too long. You’re going to start work soon, so I doubt you’d get any vacation time. And you know I can’t leave.”

“Stop. I think we’ll be okay,” Harry said calmly—too calmly for your liking. He would usually match your energy and mood to understand you or you wouldn’t be alone in how you’re feeling, but he’s not doing it this time, leaving you confused.

“What makes you think that?”

“Because…I was initially supposed to work in the U.K, but the company I applied for is branching out to…here.” Your eyes widened. “So, I asked nicely if there was a possibility that I could be placed to work here, and surprisingly they said yes.”

You sat up completely, but stayed silent, waiting for him to say he’s just joking, but he doesn’t. He just looks at you, also waiting for you to say something back to him. Your brows raised and your head bowed a little, urging him to continue. But there was nothing more to say from him. He had already said it all, and he felt fucking amazing. Harry’s shoulders and body language had visibly relaxed when his second to last secret swirled through the air, mixing with the aroma of your love for one another.

“You’re not joking,” you said. Harry just shook his head with a small smile, wanting to beam at you, but waiting for your smile to break through. “Like, you wouldn’t do that--joke with me about that, right?” You asked, the thought hadn’t processed yet as it was still at the stage of just hearing the words.

“Wouldn’t ever joke about that. I’m serious. I’m moving here, for good,” he leaned towards you, placing his hand on your bare hip, caressing your soft skin.

“Harry…” Tears had formed in your eyes as your mouth and eyes widened.

“Hey, neighbor,” he giggled, and placed his forehead on your collar bones, face in your chest. You hugged his head, pulling at his hair causing him to groan softly and placing kisses to your skin. “I’ve got an apartment in your building.”

“You what?!” You pulled his face back to meet with yours.

“Yeah. Floor 3, apartment number 3F.”

When he said those words, your tears made its way down your face and you let out a soft sob. You were crying with how happy you are. The overwhelming happiness you felt that your sun will always be with you; on the same side of the world, the time zone, and three doors down. Happiness is practically oozing out of you, and your heart feels like it’s going to burst.

It was the moment you’ve been anticipating for years. With a long distance friendship, it was hard enough to deal with having your best friend in a whole different country. But you both made time to talk to one another, even if it was only for a little bit. And after you two had made love, you were worried that you weren’t going to see him again for another year, but the effort and thought that he put you into consideration to move away from his home to be close to you, made you love him even more.

And you knew that things would turn out great.

feedback is appreciate here! <3

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repentantsky · 4 years ago

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5 Companies That Have Too Much Hype Around Them

Look, we all love our favorite games with a passion, and to an extent that’s fine, but when that passion becomes obsession and that obsession becomes forgetting our own moral compass for the sake of entertainment, it does feel like it’s gone too far. It’s one thing to love what a company releases, it’s completely another to ignore every problem they’ve ever had. Not all of the companies on this list have done horribly un-ethical things, but they’ve at least been anti-consumer, and the fact that people don’t question that enough has led to them sometimes, making horrible mistakes. I am RepentantSky, I love making lists that trash on things that are popular, and these are 5 companies, that have too much hype around them.

5. Nintendo

Already I can hear people getting angry, and in a way I get it. Nintendo is for many people the place where they either begin to play games, or the place they go to keep on playing them when everything else let’s them down, and of course, they put an end to the flipping video game crash of 1983, and no one else will ever be able to claim that from them. That’s all wonderful, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be critical of them. I’ve talked about a number of things they’ve done wrong before, so let me quickly run down the list of some of their anti-consumer practices. They, charge too much for remasters and ports, they don’t drop prices in games, they used to charge for fixing Joy-Cons and now completely deny it’s a problem for legal reasons, despite everyone pretty much having experienced drift, they haven’t been good at getting stock for their items in at least 20 years, and oh yeah, they sell all the content for a remake for $115 on the 3DS, the system and the fans that helped them get by while the Wii U was massively underperforming, all while handing owners of the, at the time, unproven Switch, free content. Nintendo has a tendency to still think like a toy company, and they even used that idea to present the Nintendo Entertainment System as a toy instead of a console when they first game to the West with it, but they aren’t a toy company, their a gaming company that also sells toys, just like everyone else. I get they’ve done amazing things, I own over 150 physical handheld games from them, and a ton of digital games besides, but when they start charging twice what they are worth for SD cards, while releasing games that absolutely won’t fit on the limited space of the Switch, and they simply don’t care when costumers complain, it’s time to at least question their motives.

4. Bethesda

Boy I used to really rip on this company back when I posted lists on Facebook, but I haven’t done it in a while, so let’s do it again. Bethesda has absolutely spent at least the last 10 years lying to people, Todd Howard, has become famous for it, but I think I might have been the only person who wasn’t shocked when Fallout 76 was the disaster that it was. There were so many things wrong with that game, that I don’t even have time to go over every little thing, but lying, you know the thing that will get another company on this list very soon, was a big thing they did with the game. They promised at one point that they weren’t ever going to charge for items in the game that gave in-game benefits, and they did, allowing ammo and other items to be bought with real money for a time, they promised new, specialized servers if you paid for a yearly service that was way too expensive, and that wasn’t true because people found proof of things missing from what would have been a freshly made, private server, and there’s no excuse for that, games in early access do that correctly, and they aren’t, at least supposedly, even finished yet. I wish I could say that’s all they’ve done, but they also bullied an indie developer over their game Prey, a game they may have bullied the original developer for so they could get cheaper, but we’ll never know because they refused to comment on that when asked, they also refused to update their outdated game engine for years, which caused something they spent over a decade fixing, games releasing with glitches, some of them game breaking. Yet somehow, they have such a fan base that those who love their games will claim the glitches are just part of the charm. That kind of fierce loyalty led to Fallout 76, and even though we make jokes about it even now, the horse DLC from way back in the day, was an indication of everything they’ve done, including trying to charge for mods made for free, meant to be consumed for free, twice. Bethesda is a bad company and they do not care.

3. Activision/Blizzard

You know one of the worst things Nintendo does that I didn’t really mention directly in the first entry, is limit the amount of time a product is available, instead of just letting it be there for consumption as long as it’s selling (that was what the toy company reference was about if it wasn’t clear). However, Activision/Blizzard are the Kings of doing this, as they not only limited things while they were in control of Destiny 2 to the point where you pretty much had to use real money to get everything, and never mind everything else they did to it, because we’d be here all day going through it all, but they also don’t support games as a service titles long enough for dedicated fans. Crash Team Racing Nitro fueled, is a prime example of this. People weren’t done with that game, and when fans thought for even a split second that an update was going to come to fix an issue, their hype (mine to) was so explosive, it was almost like we were getting a new game, but then nothing happened, because they didn’t care. A lot of companies that do yearly release titles as a service have this problem and nothing exemplified that more for Activision, than Skylanders, a series originally made off the back of Spyro, who didn’t even wait for a year to release new games, as technically between October 21st and November 20th of the year the first game came out, they released three of them, and I’m not even kidding. Two of them, were mobile games! You might have thought I was going to go after Call of Duty, for this, but that horse has been beaten to ground, somehow, more than Skylanders was. They also, for whatever reason, released each expansion on different generations console generations, at different months throughout Fall, like somehow the season of Fall, they needed a release every month, if not two, and so off they went. I didn’t even get into Blizzard, but all I need to say is “Blitzchung” and all the memories will likely come flooding back. There’s also the fact that in two separate years, after gaining massive profits, they dropped hundreds of employees, and hired more than they’d let go, but I guess that doesn’t really matter to some of you, because when they did it this year, with so little warning, most employees found out via the news articles about it, but we all made such a little stink this time around, it didn’t create any media buzz, so I guess that doesn’t matter, you’d all rather play flipping World of Warcraft, like better MMO’s don’t exist.

2. CD Projekt Red

I know this one comes off a little more fresh in the mind, and they technically only lied about one game, but man, what a series of lies it was. Also, let’s be honest, one major game, does not a great developer always make. CDPR’s previous two Witcher games did exactly what the author of the books thought they would, and that was almost nothing in terms of making a serious impact, and the reason is, they are kind of bad. They aren’t the worst games out there, but there is a good reason why The Witcher 1 and 2 haven’t been ported and/or remastered, despite how important they are to the story of Witcher 3, and that’s because they both suck. Cyperpunk 2077, was in a lot of ways, them just going back to being the developer they were before, the BIG ONE happened. They lied about nearly everything in regards to the game, including how the main platforms where consumers were going to buy it, were actually running well. I made those references to Witcher 1 and 2 for a reason, although if I’m being honest, they actually look better than Cyberpunk did on day 0, and that’s completely unacceptable. The budget for CDPR was basically nothing for Witcher 1 and 2 combined to what Cyberpunk got, but they were so focused on the PC versions because PC ran the game better, somehow (like maybe because they didn’t try with consoles) and they missed glitches that were so bad, the game felt like it was still in beta, if not alpha upon release. The fact that they’ve only released eleven games in twenty-three years, and only two of them didn’t have The Witcher on them, should have told us all we need to know, and yet the game, even after returns, which was another massive screw-job that led to Cyberpunk being removed from the PlayStation store, still sold Sixteen million units, all because of hype, and because apparently, some people don’t care if they’re lied to. Do you want to know what the other game they released is besides a Witcher title? It was flipping Saints Row 2, a fun game, but also one that’s too goofy for it’s own good, and yet suddenly makes Cyberpunk’s release, make sense, because it was all a massive joke, and a parody of good, well running, open world games. CDPR needs to seriously do something, anything different, and never release a game in this poor of a state ever again.

1. Ubisoft

I put Ubisoft at number one for a damn good reason, and that reason is, that everyone seems to hate the company, but loves their games, and I don’t know why. They haven’t been the overall worst company on this list, although they are pretty bad, but the major problem they have, and have had for at least a decade is that none of their games have any identity, they are literally all the same game, with different coats of paint. Sure, an occasional gem sneaks through like Assassin’s Creed IV, but all of the rest of their games have the same visual style (although ACII does seem to be the base for which they create their art let’s be honest), the shooting mechanics they have in all the games that have guns, all feel exactly the same, which is something even Call of Duty manages to avoid most years (guess I took a shot at them anyways) and yet somehow, someway, I keep seeing people getting excited for their releases, and it doesn’t make any sense. Sure, they throw a celebrity actor in from time to time, and the artistic style they use does look pretty cool, but everything is always the same with them, every single time, no matter what it is, and they still keep making money. It doesn’t really make sense either, because a lot of developers do make games that are very similar feeling, see the Life is Strange team or much as well all loved them, Telltale Games, but at least those titles told extremely interesting stories, and developed their mechanics at least a little, which is something most companies do just on principal, but not Ubisoft. They throw out a few Tom Clancy games every time they talk about what their releasing, the Trials and AC games are still mostly a yearly experience, and I’ll say it again, their entire list of releases since at least 2013, the year the previous generation kicked off, have pretty much all been the same. It would be nice if they made more games like Child of Light, but despite the fact that their games will likely never be as popular as Call of Duty, they keep churning out same-y shooters hoping that one day, maybe just one day, they’ll create their own CoD, and it’s just not gonna happen. The saddest part of all is that when they announce something different, something fans have wanted for years, we get The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake, which was literally delayed because fans said they wouldn’t buy it unless some actual effort was put into making it, why is this company so popular that it can keep doing this, someone please explain it to me.

And that’s my list, can you think of any other companies that are too hyped? Let me know in the notes below, hit me up with a follow if you like my content, and give me a reblog, I’d really appreciate it. Have a wonderful life!

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spnirwin · 5 years ago

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Nobody Fights Alone - Part 1

Pairing: Eddie Diaz x Reader

Word Count: 1,717

Warnings: Mentions of cancer

A/N: We present to you the first installment in our angsty Eddie mini series! With bonus twin!Buck...just saying. This is a collaborative effort between myself and @anotherspnfanfic. If you want to see updates on your dash, throw us both a follow 😉 Let us know what you think!

You were standing in the kitchen washing the breakfast dishes as Eddie buzzed around you. He was shoving the things he would need for his shift at the 118 into his duffel bag. Everything seemed to be scattered in every corner of your shared apartment.

“So, do you have anything planned for today?” he asked, pausing to glance up at you.

“Not really,” you shrugged. “I might be grabbing lunch with Kelly but that’s it.”

“You should take some time to do something nice for yourself then. You've seemed a bit down lately and you’re always working so hard taking care of things around here. You deserve it.”

“Oh, my god, you sound like Evan,” you said, rolling your eyes. “He’s always saying I give too much, that I don’t take enough time for myself.”

“He’s right,” Eddie chuckled. “As your twin, he knows you better than anyone so you should probably listen to him. And me, because I know what I’m talking about, too,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

You smiled and shook your head at him in response. Eddie left the room, presumably to try and figure out what was taking Christopher so long to get ready for school. As soon as he disappeared from sight, the smile dropped straight off of your face. You would be doing something for yourself today, but it was neither fun nor enjoyable. In fact, it was absolutely petrifying.

A few minutes later Eddie reentered the room, Christopher in tow. “Go ahead and grab your backpack, buddy. We gotta go,” Eddie said as he walked over to you.

Your hands were stuck in the soapy, water filled sink when he approached you from the side. He rested one hand on your hip and looked at you earnestly.

“Seriously, please take some time for yourself today. Even if it’s just to walk down the street and grab a coffee.”

“I will,” you said, nodding in agreement. He smiled and pressed a quick kiss to your lips, satisfied with your response.

Christopher had finished getting his things for school and was now waiting patiently for his dad. Eddie gave your hip a quick squeeze before crossing the apartment, grabbing his duffle, and meeting Christopher at the door.

“Love you!” they both called out as they opened the door and stepped through.

“Love you, too,” you called back, the door slamming shut behind them with an eerie finality.

—

You looked around the doctor’s office, your leg bouncing up and down uncontrollably. To say you were nervous was an understatement. This was your second appointment this week. You had gone in for your yearly check-up, and while performing your routine breast exam the doctor had found a lump. Breast cancer was rare in women your age, but not an impossibility.

The door in front of you opened and a nurse stepped through, calling your name. You stood and followed her through the door and back to an exam room. Your nerves were skyrocketing when the doctor finally came and got you for your mammogram. When it was over, she returned you to the exam room where you waited again, this time for the results.

The waiting was the hardest part. You had waited three days between appointments, one hour in the waiting room, and now twenty minutes for your exam results. This was potentially just the beginning of the waiting, and it was already excruciating.

The doctor entered the room with a grim look on her face. She hadn’t liked what she had seen on the mammogram and wanted to do a biopsy. You would need to make an appointment with a specialist in a different part of the practice for a later date, but she wanted you to begin preparing now. Your head spun as you listened to her describe the procedure. It was pretty non-invasive, just a needle removing some cells that would be sent off to a lab and tested. You would be able to go home immediately after with slight swelling and minimal pain. The results would come back four days later. You could make your appointment with the secretary on the way out.

You walked back down the hallway toward the waiting room in a daze, unsure of how to process the information that had just been thrown at you. The doctor had insisted that there was nothing to worry about yet, but that did nothing to stop the influx of emotions that were currently coursing through your body. You stopped briefly at the front desk and made your next appointment for six days from the current one. Your motions were zombie-like as you exited the doctor’s office and headed home.

—

You awoke the next morning feeling unsteady. You were having trouble processing. So you decided to pretend like everything was fine.

This is exactly what you were doing when Eddie arrived home from his shift. He walked through the door and found you sitting at the kitchen table, joking with Christopher over chocolate chip pancakes.

“Hey guys.” He walked over the table, stopping to ruffle Christopher’s hair and press a kiss to the top of your head. You put some pancakes onto his plate as he slid into his chair.

“You have about five minutes until we have to leave for school,” you said to Christopher. He nodded in response before turning and starting to chatter at Eddie.

While they talked, you pushed your pancake pieces around on your plate, not at all interested in actually eating them. You were so interested in looking down at your plate that you didn’t notice the small glances Eddie was shooting your way.

“Alright, kiddo,” you said a few short minutes later. “Time to go.”

Christopher nodded, clearly disappointed, but stood anyway and walked to the counter to get his lunch.

“I’ll clean this up,” Eddie said, gesturing to the breakfast remnants in front of you.

“Thanks,” you said. You moved to get up and follow Christopher but Eddie’s hand on your arm stopped you.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just didn’t sleep well last night.” You shot him a small smile and stood up. Eddie’s eyes tracked your back the entire way as you walked toward the front door.

He sighed as it opened up and closed behind you. The smile that you had attempted to give him hadn’t reached your eyes. Something was wrong.

—

You ran circles around Eddie for the next six days. Every time he questioned your mood you managed to skirt around it or give some half baked excuse as to why you were acting that way. You knew he was hurt by your behavior, but you didn’t want to tell him anything until you had definitive answers. That way he didn’t have to share in as much of the waiting. It would be easier for him. You didn’t want him to worry if it turned out to be nothing.

You sent him off to his shift with a bright smile on the morning of your biopsy appointment. As you drove to the doctor’s office, you couldn’t help but feel guilty. He deserved better than what you were currently giving him, but at the moment it was all you could manage.

As soon as you arrived at the doctor’s office, you were whisked away for your biopsy. The procedure was relatively quick with minimal pain. You were slightly tender and swollen, but it wasn’t anything noticeable that would impact the rest of your day. Now, it was time for more waiting.

You were driving home when your phone rang. When you answered you were slightly surprised to hear Athena’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Hey girl, you up to anything pressing right now?” she asked.

You considered her question carefully before responding. “No, I’m just heading home.”

“Well you better turn that car around and head this way. I’m at the station making lunch and I would love it if you would join. I could use some help in the kitchen and I know a couple boys that would love to see you.”

It was an invitation you couldn’t deny. If you did, you knew she would say something to Eddie or Buck and then they would definitely know something was wrong.

“I’ll be right over!” You brightened your voice and it rose an octave.

As you hung up the phone and turned your car around in the direction of the station, you wondered when your life had suddenly become such a lie.

—

You wandered across the apparatus floor on auto-pilot. All you could think about was the test results you were waiting for.

As you approached the stairs, Buck came up behind you and wrapped his arms around your middle. You startled at the touch and let out a surprised gasp.

He released you instantly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He smiled, apologetically. “What are you doing here?”

You ran your palm across your forehead as you organized your thoughts. “Uh, lunch. Athena called and told me she was cooking for you guys today.”

“Awesome. I think it’s going to be a little while before it’s ready, but she’s upstairs. Eddie was over rolling hoses last I saw him.” He pointed towards the side of the truck as he explained.

“Okay,” you said, turning to head up the stairs.

Buck placed a hand on your shoulder to keep you from turning away. “Are you alright? You seem distracted.”

You plastered a smile on as you nodded. “Yeah. It’s just been a long morning.”

You could see that he didn’t quite believe you but he let it go, for now. You continued up to greet Athena and thank her for the invite.

Eddie walked up next to Buck as you cleared the top step. Buck looked over at him before he looked back up. “Does she seem off to you?”

Eddie frowned. “Yeah, she’s been off all week. She didn’t even come say hi to me just now. Did she say anything to you about something going on?”

Buck shook his head. “No, just said it’s been a long morning.”

Eddie sighed as he headed over towards the weight room, deciding to give you some space until lunch was ready.

—

#eddie diaz #eddie diaz x reader #eddie diaz fanfic #eddie diaz fanfiction #eddie diaz oneshot #eddie diaz drabble #evan buckley #evan buckley fanfic #evan buckley fanfiction #evan buckley oneshot #evan buckley drabble #evan buckley x reader #9-1-1 #9-1-1 fanfic #9-1-1 fanfiction #9-1-1 oneshot #9-1-1 drabble #shannon writes

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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The Three Caballeros Ride Again Review!: And Ladies (Ride of the Three Caballeros)

Saludos Amigos! I’m back with yet another comics review! And we’re back on The Ride of the Three Cablleros! Thanks again to WeirdKev27 for commissioning this retrospective. It’s going to get pricey and I greatly appreciate it. PREVIOUSLY ON RIDE OF THE THREE CABLLEROS

In short.. a bunch of short segments of varying quality, a very thirsty Donald hitting on ladies, the first appearance of Panchito and some very good music. A fun time was had by all. Along with a LOT OF drugs by the Disney Animators. The film wasn’t a huge success, but out of the 6 package films, it was a fan faviorite alongside the Mr. Toad and Ichabod movie, and thus was rereleased quite a bit, as well as being one of the first of this era to end up on VHS due to it’s cult popularity. As for Panchito and Jose they’d get plenty of success overseas, with both getting solo series in their respective home countries, Jose himself having just resumed having comics again this year, and being rightfully massive characters. But despite being a hit with fans across the world.. in the US... they were pretty much shoved in the Disney Vault for a few decades. Jose would show up on the Wonderful World of Disney, in it’s various forms, three times after the Three Caballeros while Panchito just vanished aside from reuses of the Three Caballeros footage. Their careers in the US just sorta vanished for a few decades. But as suddenly as they vanished, our boys returned triumphantly. Naturally being the most used out of the duo, Jose would show up for the first time in decades during Mickey Mouseworks, a show full of new late 90′s produced Mickey Mouse shorts, all but two of which would end up being recycled for the much more popular and well loved House of Mouse, which would feature the triumphant return of the Cabs to animation after so long away. We’ll get to that next time, as just a year before the Cabs had already reunited in the pages of Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories in one of Don Rosa’s best loved tales. The Ride of The Three Caballeros was something Don Rosa had wanted to do since he got the job writing Duck Comics in the first place. As he explained in the back of the complete library edition named after this tale, Uncle Keno isn’t the biggest fan of the Donald Theatrical shorts. Having experienced the Carl Barks comics first, and having built his career around them later, he just wasn’t a fan of the goofier, angrier, less nuanced theatrical short Donald, often feeling like he was an entirely different character from the one he loved. And.. honestly he’s not wrong. Both were built for entirely different kinds of comedy: While both did slapstick, Slapstick, along with standard comedy shenanigans, was the main weapon in Shorts Donald’s comedic arsenal. Barksian Donald, while not immune to slapstick, was more like a well built sitcom character: Multi layered, sympathetic when he needs to be, but still having tons of faults to be exploited for laughs and to play off other characters. As a result while I like Donald in the shorts I do prefer Barks version of him, and the shorts Barks did are usually the best of both worlds, combining Donald’s everyman schtick with his slapstick schtick. Of course later cartoons would pick one or the other or combine both, but I do get his point and at the time he wrote this story the only cartoon show starring Donald was.. Quack Pack.. which I can only imagine his reaction to seeing that train wreck.

But as you can probably guess there was one exception and it was The Three Caballeros. Don genuinely enjoys the beautiful music and the wonderful chemistry the three have. So after a trip to Mexico gave him the perfect setting and the fire in his belly to finally do it, he finally wrote the story. And since they weren’t Barksian characters and hadn’t had any other apperances in decade, Don also took a dive into their comics. Since Jose was more of a fancifial freeloader in his comics, Don decided to ignore this characterization and go with his own based on the film: A latin playboy and lounge singer. And i’m okay with him doing that, as unlike say with Marvel and DC when they destroy a character, Disney characters are both more fluid continuity wise and his is still rooted in a version of the character, and he’s fully accepting and apologetic that some fans hate him for this. Also for some damn reason they redesigned Jose at some point in his Brazil to look like this:

This is far from the dumbest comic book costume change i’ve seen, but it’s certainly one of the most lame, as his original outfit is dapper, stylish and fits the Brazilian version of him well. And it’s not like you CAN’T update the classic Disney characters with modern appearances. Quack Pack, which has somehow come up twice in this review, did so great with Donald and Daisy, giving them new clothes and a haircut in Daisy’s case but both still look great. Same with Goofy for Goof Troop who just wore a dad sweater and bow tie, which puts him in the small but significant club of “Bow Tie Wearing Characters who have defined my life” with Opus the Penguin and the 11th Doctor. You can update a classic character’s’s appearance without coming off like...

Which given Jose’s outfit there is horrifyingly similar, says something. Anyways, Rosa had more use for Panchito’s stories, which had him as a cowboy protecting small towns with the help of his trusty steed Senor Martinez. Rosa loved both aspects and thus used them here, with Martinez getting a makeover to fit Rosa’s style better. Rosa is also the one to popularize Panchito’s last name, having found it on a scrap of research, not realizing the character’s last name was not at all widespread and thus giving him a canon one that has stuck to this day, and sighing in relief when he finally got conformation from another fan this name was indeed something Disney had used after loosing his research scrap. So with the two boys characters set, a plot set up and a whole sequence planned we’ll talk about on the way “The Three Caballeros Ride Again!” was born. How good is it? Well join me under the cut and i’ll tell you.

We open in Mexico, specifically near the Barranca Del Cobre, aka The “Copper Canyon” of the Sierra Madre, a natural land formation simlar to the Grand Canyon that Don Rosa saw during his trip and thought would make a great setting. While larger than the Grand Canyon, Rosa figures in his notes it simply isn’t as popular because it’s more isolated than the Grand Canyon and that, combined with it having trees inside distracting from it’s rugged beauty, makes it much harder to build a tourist industry around. The four are headed to El Divisadero, because this comic is determined to kill me with it’s difficult to spell names apparently, where Huey, Dewey or Louie spouts off for no particular reason about the currently being built Chihuahua El Pacifico Railway. Seriously the boys might as well be the security guard from Wayne’s World in this comic, their role for most of their brief page time is just to set up stuff for later. I mean i’m fine with setting up your setting but there are better ways than just spouting off tons of exposition apropos of nothing.

Donald has driven the boys here for a Woodchuck Jamboree. I did actually look into Jamborees, as before this it only had ever come up in one of my favorite movies of all time, Moonrise Kingdom, and mentioned occasionally in the Ducktales Reboot. Jamboree was first used for a worldwide scouting Jamboree but has gone on to mean a huge gathering of scouts, with the Boy Scouts of America having one every four years, so odds are it’s just a big yearly or quarter yearly thing for the woodchucks. Still it would be nice to see a big gathering like this in the series, especially since several of our cast are involved in them, including the possible power trio of Huey, Violet and Boyd, and Della and Launchpad could easily be slotted into the plot as seen in this season’s premiere.. as could Dewey and Louie if they really want to since according to Frank their members.. they just aren’t nearly as invested as their brother, and thus don’t do Woodchuck stuff unless he drags them into it, as seen with “Day of the Only Child” in the series itself. It does make sense: Dewey doesn’t have the survival instinct or patience for camping, and Louie hates effort, the out doors, and doing things for anything but profit. Scouting is all of that. So the boys have driven all this way for the Mexican Jamboree, as they’ve been carefully raising their tarantula Tara, and the Tarantula Breeding Badge is only given out in Mexico, which is plausible: Different branches of a worldwide organization would have different awards and what not in different countries. And Tarantula’s are also native to mexico so that makes sense.. and I want you to apricate that I’m afraid of spiders, not cartoony ones, for instance, this is adorable.

Galvantula4Life. But real life ones or realistic looking ones? Yeah no fuck that. So I had to go to the Wikipedia entry and see several horrifying looking sizeable spiders for this one tiny fact. Your welcome. Tara ends up on Donald’s face with the boys assuming Donald is sad to see her go instead of you know FUCKING TERRIFIED A GIANT SPIDER IS ON HIS FACE. This gag does not work.. but probably because as I said i’m afraid of spiders and this is my nightmare, you little sociopaths.

The boys however worry about what Donald will do for the weekend as they prepare to board the bus to the Jamboree... why it’s meeting in an out of the way town like this I have no idea, but i’d guess plot convince. They realize he has no friends, which Donald shrugs off, and they REALLY shouldn’t say to his face, but ruminate on it once he leaves to do whatever after vaguely talking about friends he had in the past.

I like this scene even though it annoys me a bit: Ilike it because it does set up how Donald really DOSEN’T have any friends in the comics. It’s part of WHY Rosa was drawn to the Cabs: Their one of the few equal relationships donald’s ever had, people who treat him as a partner, in both sense probably, a friend, a true amigo. As the boys point out Scrooge is a monster to him in the comics, paying him 30 cents an hour which I actually put into an inflation calculator to get an accurate read on how little that was by 2020 standards.. and it’s 3 dollars an hour. Hence why I call him a monster, why that bit hasn’t aged well, and why Rosa REALLY, REALLY should’ve retired it. It dosen’t help reading that knowing Disney largely treated Rosa the same way is cringe inducing at best, if not for any fault of his own. It being cringe inducing for an employer horribly mistreating and underpaying his employees though is his fault, he’s a grown ass man, even in the 90′s this had to be a problem, be better.

And yes i’m being hard on Don Rosa but just like with the comics thing, I simply expect better from the man given just how much respect I have for the guy. His art is gorgeous, his research is immaculate, his knowledge of old films is wonderful and his love for them so infectious i’m tempted to seek the ones he’s mentioned in notes out. He’s a truly wonderful guy and one of my faviorite comic writers.. but I have to treat him fairly like I do ANY of my idols. Just to prove that, I love Grant Morrison, especially his run on New X-Men, but a lot of it hasn’t aged well including some of the language and the entire subplot with Emma manipulating Scott into having an affair when he wasn’t in the best mental place and she knew that and was acting as his therapist, and treating that as a regular affair REALLY doesn’t play well nor should it have. I love Al Ewing, with all my heart and soul, but his run on Ultimates, while having some great worldbuilding and a spectacular cast, ultimately wasn’t very good after the first arc. Not terrible but not good. John Aliison, of Scary Go Round and Giant Days fame, while impressive has had plenty of stories I just didn’t like for various reasons and will probably get into some day and some parts of his stories haven’t aged well. It’s the hard but necessary part of being a critic: You have to be objective and see all the parts of a creator’s creation, not just the ones you like and call them out when they screw up. To me being a fan isn’t about just blindly loving something, it’s about knowing WHY you love it and being willing to call out faults while still thoroughly enjoying the work. There’s a fine line between being blindly loyal to someone, which has created Zach Snyder's awful cult of personality that I hate so much, and being an overly critical shithead and I hope I’m straddling that line.

Back on the scene after that filibuster they point out Gladstone, who himself is a monster to me for how he doesn’t lift a finger to help his nephews or cousin, and constnatly flaunts his luck to Donald, and is a bit more than teasing especially since he tried to, you know, steal your house once boys. That’s canon.. that’s a barks story so it’s canon here. You.. You remember that right? He tried to steal your house. And we will be getting to that one next month, just you wait. Finally the Daisy part that annoys me slightly. The boys being sexist.. was sadly the style at the time this story is set, the 1950′s, and thus plays better for me than it does in Ducktales, as their just little boys and don’t know better. Them assuming Girlfriends aren’t like having friends, while accurate though does bother me a bit, but only because the way this story treats Donald’s relationship is PRETTTTTYYYY bad and this sets that up. But we’ll get to that. Thankfully this foreshadowing of terrors to come is quickly forgotten as we get a GENUINELY great two panels of Donald lamenting his lack of friends. It just works really well, selling his loneliness and how isolated he truly feels without any, which while I have friends I can relate to as I only really hang out with on regularly.

This is what I was talking about. While I will point out Rosa’s flaws.. their truly outweighed but his artistic mastery. In just three panels he really has a truly emotional and heartrending scene, and just that one close up among them is all we need to get the true depths of Donald’s loneliness. I can be hard on the guy, but it’s because he’s one of the best there is, best there was, and best there ever will be and thus I hold him to a high standard. But with that we transition to...

Or rather first his boss at the hotel, whose pissed his headliner has skipped out on him again to woo a lady, and while he plans to fire the guy, only isn’t throttling him because he figures one of his “Senorita’s” boyfriends will do that for him. And while I do like Jose as a playboy i’m not really fond of him trying to have sex with someone in a relationship, as it puts both him and the person he’s having an affair with in a really bad light. It does fit the character, I just don’t have to like it. As for this particular Senorita, it turns out her boyfriend is a notorious Bandito and is thankfully out of town. So yes, Jose is essentially acting out Come A Little Bit Closer by Jay and the Americans.

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Naturally just like the song, said Bad Man returns, Alfonso “Gold Hat” Bedoya, a machete wielding baddie who while understandably pissed about another man making time with his girlfriend, is less understandably about to murder Jose. Though unlike the song, Alfonso’s Lady, rather than help Jose, encourages her boyfriend to murder him and clearly has a fetish for cheating on her boyfriend with various men and watching as he kills him which.. Jesus. This is why while I don’t LIKE the idea of Jose hitting on women in a relationship it does work here, as he’s still not nearly as bad as either of these two, so it evens out. Jose escapes with his umbrella but crashes.. right into the back of Donald’s car. Rosa, Alfonso’s lady, encourages him to murder both of them for funsies, and being a brutal thug, Alfonso obliges and shoots at the car. And since, to quote the duck himself, Donald doesn’t like being killed “Even a little”, he books it out of there.

Alfonso doesn’t peruse them though. He’s on the trail of a treasure hunter who has a map to the lost town of Tayopa, which contains untold silver, but before he can do that he has important buisness to get to.

I fucking love that gag and that Rosa snuck more adult gags in there knowing plenty of Duck Fans, such as myself, are grown men, women and others who can handle this sort of thing, while still slippnig it past the kids.

Donald, once the fear’s worn off a bit, starts to wonder WHY he’s running when he’s not the one who pissed off the guy, and ignores Jose’s good point about the fact Alfonso really dosen’t seem like a guy who sees nuance.. until Donald sees a wanted poster for Alphonoso and keeps driving. He eventually gets far enough away to feel safe.. and confront the guy who got him into this mess.

Now kiss. While sadly, they do not, we do get a lovely warm reunion between old pals. Rosa keeps their past vauge as, correctly, he pointed out in his authors notes that the Cabs movie really had no plot, accurate, so instead just vaguely alluded to Donald having known the two in his pre-daisy and boys past and likely had similar adventures to the movie, but adapted more for Rosa’s barksian universe. Jose explains he often finds himself cash poor and thus hits the road to drum up some money, and Mexico is a great place for that as it has plenty of tourist money.

Though as Jose talks about their past we get the most uncomfortable running gag of the story.

While Donald’s paranoia here is played for laughs.. it just.. isn’t all that funny that Donald’s relationship with Daisy in the Rosa canon is apparently sooooo deeply unhealthy that just HEARING about him having a romantic past before him, as Rosa confirmed this was pre-daisy in his notes, causes Donald to panic and worry she actually somehow heard this. It just isn’t funny.. it speaks of MASSIVE relationship issues and some form of domestic abuse on Rosa!Daisy’s part. It’s stuff like this why there’s only a handful of Donsy relationships I like: Her treating him like shit is reduced to a punchline, instead of being used for character growth. It’s also why I’m deeply dreading covering “Legend of the Three Cablleros” at the end of this retrospective. I just don’t like when Disney media treats Daisy expecting too much of Donald or being hyper jealous of him as hilarious and while I take this more as the story not ageing well rather than barks fault, as since then Domestic Abuse against Males has become a more widely known and talked about issue, it still doesn’t’t make it plesant. It just makes this not entirely his fault. Just like it’s not Stan Lee’s fault this panel is both deeply hilarious and uses a now kinda racist term.

I named an entire youtube channel after that.. we all have our regrets. I also bring it up since currently Harry’s become terrifying villain Kindred... and thus the current big bad of an entire Spider-Man run and the being hopefully bringing one more day into the light and hopefully leading to it’s undoing.. once had a goofy mustache he genuinely referred to a “Fu Manchu Face Fuzz” that for all we know he regrew under the mask.

Donald fondly remembers the old days of being a badass adventuring team and decides, screw it, let’s go show that Gold Hatted Paloka whose boss.. but being Donald ends up driving them into The Copper Canyon instead. Our heroes end up lost in the canyon and , fitting for Donald get shot at. I can only imagine his thoughts right now.

Their mysterious attacker threatens them.. before revealing himself to be Panchito, whose glad to see his friends having mistook them for Alfonso. Turns out HE’S the mysterious treasure hunter Alfonoso was after, to no one’s surprise. We get another deeply unfunny “Daisy’s only a thousand miles away gag” as the boys reminisce and get introduced to Panchito’s horse, Senior Martniez. He also tells the boy about his map.. but how he’s hit a snag as the lost town where the silver, from a silver mine.. is now buried under pounds of volcanic rock, a volcano having erupted. This is artistic license as Don Rosa admits there aren’t any known volcano’s in Mexico, but that they also still haven’t found that missing town, so this was his explanation. All is not lost as Donald’s globetrotting with Scrooge meant he knows his history.. and thus spots an old mission which, at the time, were used by preists as cover for secret mines. Donald naturally bungles his way in and we get the much better running gag of the Cabs thinking Donald did something amazing when he really just wondered into slapstick. They end up down the shaft, with Jose deciding Donald can’t do all the work, and finding a secret entrance under a sanctum sanctorum.. a religious thing I have no idea what it ii s but is clearly where Dr. Strange got the name. Regardless they find some old kegs filled with pure silver. As Panchito puts it:

And he did ideed. In a nice moment that shows off his character, Panchito has no hesitation for sharing the wealth: He wouldn’t of got this far without his friends, and he wont get the Silver cashed in without their help. He also fires off his guns in celebration.. forgetting their in a cave, a gag I genuinely like.

After some off screen loading and hoisting, the boys are slowly on their way out of the canyon, with Donald’s Car and Senor Martinez pulling the cart with the silver together. With some downtime the three talk about what they’ll spend the money on.

About what you’d expect. A big beautiful music venue

For Jose, and a nice ranch to retire at for Panchito. Both despite being wondering souls would love a simple place to call home, in their own personal styles. While they are BIG goals, their also likeable and understandable ones: Jose just wants to stop having to do all these tours and carouse and party and perform at home. Be his own boss, and live his own dreams instead of working for whoever will put up for him. Panchito just wants to retire from being a wondering hero to a peaceful life of farming, an honest reward he well earned. And Donald?

This is easily one of my faviorite moment’s of Rosa’s, one that really cuts to comic donald’s character: Sure he can be lazy, a trickster, hot tempered, and overconfident.. it’s why we love him.. but at the end of the day he genuinely loves those boys and their his first prority and I can see why the reboot took that trait and made it his defining one. They may annoy and frustrate them and he may pull a switch on them, 50′s after all.. but he loves his boys and knows they’ll do great one day and despite his spendthrift ways when given big money.. their all he can think about. Sure Donald probably has his own personal dreams, but instead of going big and retiring he’d probably just take only a small sliver of that money to open a humble hot dog stand or something, so he could have something of his own to provide them, while still giving most of the money to their college. Scrooge is who we all want to be.. Donald is who we are at our core: Flawed people who just want to do our best. It’s why I love the guy so much. The boys rest in the small town of El Divisadero, which like the town we started in is a real place, though both are much smaller, even as of 2000 when Rosa made his visit, so he had to embelish slightly. THey stop at a local watering hole only to find Alphonso. While Jose is naturally worried, Gold Hat has moved on to Panchito and wants to know why he’s here. However Donald thinking quickly says he’s part of their nightclub act, and we get a rousing version of the three cablleros, which when reading this I synched up to the song. I won’t put it here, as it’s too big for tumblr and it really works more as a whole, but needless to say, it’s the highlight of the comic. While Rosa did have doubts about putting a musical number in a comic, and it’s often trickey, he makes it work with the energy, vibrance and number of gags, that compensate for the music not being there. There’s tons of great gags, from Donald getting thrown out window, to the stone faced crowd who only cheers when Alphonso ends the number by whacking the three with one of their own guitars. Alphonso quickly realizes what’s goin on, finds the silver, and then hyjacks the train. The boys take off after him in the car, as Donald triumphantly states “The Three Cablleros Ride Again!”. The three head after Alphonzo, who finds them when trying to release the other cars to increase speed, and then shoots at them. It seems hopeless... until donald gets launched into the air, into a cactus then back into Alphonzo knocking his guns out in a great bit of slapstick. The Conductor, likely not knowing about the others or not carring, detaches the cars though, so our heroes and villian are now sent rocketing through the world’s most dangerous railway. Which, as you’d probably already figured out, is very real and what inspirited rosa to use this setting and thus indeed wind through dangerous mountainsides and over thin cliffs like a real life Donkey Kong Country level. Eduardo still has his machete though and easily beats Jose’s umbrella, but some more Donald slapstick and him apologizing to daisy about the senioritis as he wishes her goodbye seriously GET SOME COUPLE’S COUNSELING IF THAT EXISTS IN THE 50′S. It puls his sombrero down over his head, and with jose’s umbrella top landing on it, carries him off where he ends up in a lazy asshole sheirff’s jail for a gag. The boys however continue going back.. and the railway is unfinished at this time in history and while they save the silver, their fucked. But Donald has a plan, running to the back of the cars to get his car, and while it has trouble starting, Panchito throws some chilie’s in the tank to get it moving again. The boys find the silver.. but when one barrel spills they find out it’s not actual liquid silver.. but quicksilver, which was used for silver refinment. So while i’ts shiny, and toxic so of course Jose sticks his hand in before knowing what it is, it’s worthless. Probably. The boys.. all have a nice laugh over it. I love this moment. Sure the boys lost their dreams.. but like Scrooge, the three belivie theirs always another rainbow. What matters is the journey they had and the reunion that restored their friendship. Donald also muses the boys are smart enough to get their own scholarships anyway, so it’s no big loss.. but he does have to get back to Disvadero as the jamboree ends tonight and Jose agrees as he now needs a job again. The owner balks, understandably since Jose missed a performance to get laid and then disappeared overnight.. but the Hotel Owner is visiting so as long as he can provide a big act he’s good, and while Jose is worried as he already gave them his best, the boys naturally pitch in to be the cablleros once more. After all

So we close on Huey, Dewey and Louie returning, still worrying about donald, when they find him on stage. We then end on a truly heartwarming and great last few panels.

Final Thoughts: What else can I say? This story is beautifully drawn, as usual for Rosa, well paced, fun and really fleshes the Cabs out from the movie. It has a warm, fun adventurous tone and it’s nice to see Donald in the lead since Rosa usually did Scrooge stories and thus Donald was the justifiably surly sidekick instead of the main man> here he’s in the spotlight and gets to show just what he’s made of, while still being the hilarious mess we all know and love. The story honors the original film well, while forging it’s own path and is beautifully built into history. My only real complaints are the nephews being annoying, Alphonso’s somewhat overwrought accent, and of course the daisy gags.. but it’s all HEAVILY outweighed by one of Rosa’s finest hours and easy enough to ignore. Check this out if you can. It’s a classic for a reason.

If you liked this review, you can commission your own by messaging me on here or at my discord technicolormuk#655 for five dollars a comic story or animation episode. Whenever the ride resumes next, we’ll coming on down to the house of mouse to see the boys return to the screen. In the meantime keep an eye on this space for regular Ducktales reviews every Monday, including once this run ends as I intend to start playing catchup, loud house reviews whenever, my tom retrospective that’s returning soon, and my retrospective on the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, with chapter 2 of that also coming soon. Until then, there’s always another rainbow.

#the three caballeros #jose carioca #panchito pistoles #donald duck #don rosa #ride of the three caballeros #the three caballeros ride again #huey duck #dewey duck #louie duck #daisy duck #mexico #comics #reviews #elmo keep

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rachel-matteo-merlin-recs · 3 years ago

Text

Canon Era - Single Fic Arcs

Rheged

Author: McShame

Description:

Post S5 (AU): canon to the end of S4 & part of the way through S5.

Gwen and Arthur have been married for several years, Merlin’s magic has been revealed and Arthur has now reached a kind of cold peace with it. Then a delegation arrives from a kingdom based on magic, and suddenly Destiny is starkly and ruthlessly thrust to the fore. The question is should - can - it be avoided?

Word Count: 124,383

Completed: Yes

Comment(s):

Definitely might want to pay attention to the tags on this one; one scene can be interpreted both as dubious consent (but more like a I want this, but I can’t do this type of situation), as well as mentions of infidelity and attempted suicide by magic because Merlin just doesn’t want to deal with the fallout and aftermath of his and Arthur’s actions and the consequences it has on their relationships with Gwen and Gwaine. But if you can handle the rough spots, this fic is truly spectacular.

Whispering Your Name

Author: CaffeinatedFlumadiddle

Description:

A different take on the dorocha. Instead of them being faceless screams that attack you, they are actually figures of the dead. Merlin doesn’t quite realize how much death affected him until him and the knights go to close the veil.

Word Count: 22,517

Completed: Yes

Comment(s):

One of my absolute favorite fics of all time. It also has a bit of Uther redemption in it and Lancelot lives! It also has one of my favorite interactions in a fanfiction:

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Arthur growled, throwing up his hands. “That thing murdered my people and you allowed it to live--”

“You murdered my people and I allowed you to live,” Merlin said sharply. Gwaine felt his eyes widen. Bold words. Part of him wanted to ‘ooh’ at it but knew it would lead to a very bad outcome.

Dower the Stars

Author: RurouniHime

Description:

During a time of great prosperity in Albion, the Druids offer Emrys a precious gift. Arthur is not amused.

Word Count: 40,654

Completed: Yes

Comment(s):

A super fun but also very romantic fic. Druids far and wide come in and kiss Merlin, hoping that their magic will react a certain way with Merlin’s and he’ll bond with one of them. Merlin however decides to throw a wrench in his plan when he chooses to bond with Arthur instead after almost losing him.

Overstepping

Author: Masked_Mayhem

Description:

Merlin knew he was pushing his limits, that he was millimetres away from overstepping the invisible line that Arthur had wordlessly set and the warlock had been careful not to cross, but he was never one to listen to the rules that were set for him. Especially not when he was afraid.

Agravaine had managed to weasel his way into his king’s mind and ingrain doubts in the people he loved, the people that loved him...doubts that only took place and bloomed as the traitor lied and deceived and planted things against them. He had gotten rid of Gwen easily enough, and had almost gotten rid of Gaius. Merlin was afraid. Were a few words and items all it would take for Arthur to turn against him too?

Word Count: 51,915

Completed: Yes

Comment(s):

Merlin steps over a line and Arthur punishes him for it. Later, when Merlin was right, Arthur regrets his decision and saves him. Romance blooms between the two, but a wrench gets thrown in along the way with the reveal of Merlin’s magic and deeds in Arthur’s name. There is a lot of angst, but I like to feel as if it’s a happy ending for the two.

Springes to Catch Woodcocks

Author: myashke

Description:

When Arthur pushes Merlin away to protect him, what lengths will Merlin go to remain in his life

Word Count: 83,292

Completed: No

Comment(s):

Unfortunately the only negative that this fic has going for it is that it doesn’t seem as if it’ll ever be finished. There are 7 chapters and they were last updated in December of 2011. Still worth the read.

Two Souls

Author: Naelyn

Description:

A few days after Camlann, Merlin and Morgana find themselves imprisoned in the same place, and forced to spend their days together. Basically, this is just a pretext for non-stop Merlin and Morgana interaction once the Emrys reveal has been made.

“I’ve gone soft over the day, you know. A few months ago, I would have killed you where you stood.”

“A few months ago, you did try to kill me where I stood,” Merlin reminded her, and she could hear the smirk in his tone.

Word Count: 11,417

Completed: Yes

Comment(s):

One of the only fics on this list that won’t be specifically a Merthur fic; but it still isn’t Mergana either. The idea is that after the revelation at Camlann, one can assume that Arthur lived and that Morgana wasn’t killed; that Merlin had been banished or sent away for the lies he told and somehow was subsequently captured.

What starts out as a hostile interactions between Merlin and Morgana leads to understanding and apologies that lead on a path to healing. The end is left open ended, it’s implied that they are sent to their deaths in another kingdom without hope of being rescued, but you can use your imagination to decide if you wanted them to have a happier ending.

The Patter of Tiny Feet on Cold Stone Floors

Author: TheAvalonian

Description:

When Guinevere finds that she is unable to bear Arthur a child, Merlin offers her the perfect solution: an ancient spell which can create new life out of love, if that love is pure and powerful enough. But after the ritual, it becomes increasingly obvious that while Gwen has indeed become pregnant, the child she carries might not have been created from the love between Arthur and his wife - but rather from the love between Arthur and his Court Sorcerer.

Word Count: 79,131

Completed: Yes

Comment(s):

Merlin and Arthur have a baby! But it’s not an mpreg fic. Guinevere discovers that Arthur and Merlin are more tied together than she and Arthur are - and while that is difficult for her to come to terms with, she concedes that Arthur has the chance that she never had with Lancelot and doesn’t want to stand in the way. Queue of course evil plotting on behalf of Morgana and a kidnapping of the queen and princess - who happens to have shown gifts of her own - and it’s a rollercoaster of a tale that leaves you wanting more.

Metamorphose

Author: clotpolesonly

Description:

When Merlin falls into bed with Arthur, he doesn’t expect to wake up alone. He doesn’t expect Arthur to give him the cold shoulder either, but there is something else he expects even less which forces him out of the kingdom for over a year.

He returns to find a traitor in the court, an army on the way, and a love he’d thought all but lost waiting for him with open arms.

Word Count: 33,753

Completed: Yes

Comment(s):

I don’t usually enjoy mpreg fics because they don’t make sense to me from a biological stand point and usually get explained away as “because reasons”. This fic is an exception, it does a good job of explaining why it is that Merlin might wound up in his situation and it deals with difficult question about how to handle the knowledge and who to share it with.

Flowers in the Wind

Author: the_seaworthy_muffin

Description:

A thousand and five-hundred years ago, Arthur Pendragon is sent to the god Emrys as Camelot’s yearly tribute. He comes to befriend the god, and as the prince continues to spend time on the god’s island, something more seems to blossom between them. But then the Lady Morgana goes missing, and Arthur betrays Emrys to his father in a moment of misguided trust. Emrys’ island burns, the heart-broken god refusing to fight for his life. In dying, he puts a terrible curse upon the prince: to live forever, and never forget.

A millennium and a half has passed. Arthur is being slowly torn apart from the inside-out, memories of the past an ever-growing weight in his chest. When he finally finds Emrys again, he is elated - he’s ready to beg, weep, anything, if only he can find blissful forgetfulness. But while the god’s power has not faded, his memories have, and he lives his life as young artist Merlin Emrys, believing himself to be a simple man with interesting gifts. And Arthur’s hopes are dashed. But there is one last way: Arthur can try, and make Merlin remember again.

Word Count: 67,366

Completed: No - but it is being continuously updated

Comment(s):

This is a truly spectacular work of fiction and I almost didn’t give it a chance. I am so glad that I did. Honestly, this is now one of my favorite authors on AO3.

Peace, Plum, Pear

Author: sweetestdrain

Description:

How in his tenth year of rule King Arthur chose a man to take the role of Court’s Magician, and how Arthur made his decision.

Word Count: 13,700

Completed: Yes

Comment(s):

Merlin fled the kingdom after Uther found out about his magic, and now it’s been ten years since the old king’s death and Arthur’s ascension to the throne, and yet Merlin is still nowhere to be found.

Arthur gives in and holds trials for the new Court Sorcerer and in walks in an old man named Myrddin Wyllt. But, there’s more than meets the eye to this strange and mysterious magician.

Deluge

Author: Suaine

Description:

In the aftermath of Merlin’s battle against Nimueh, the rain seems a minor complication, perhaps even a cleansing influence. When the rain doesn’t stop, Camelot is pushed to the brink once more. This time, Arthur may be in over his head.

Contains: a lot of wet boys in emotional scenes, Arthur knowing more than he lets on, Merlin being an idiot, both of them being a bit stupidly heroic, telepathic chess, rain (lots of), war, making out against a tree, coincidental druids, co-opted history, co-opted myths, magic, coming of age (metaphorically), and more magically annoying yet surprisingly un-floody water than you can shake a stick at.

Word Count: 50,565

Completed: Yes

Comment(s):

Beautifully written fic, truly a great addition to the fandom.

Idiosyncratic Romance

Author: F0rcryinoutloud

Description:

“And what about your destiny?” Gaius asked softly. “Merlin, you know Arthur needs you - whether he realizes it or not. You won’t have to hide from him forever.”

Word Count: 13,942

Completed: Yes

Comment(s):

Beauty in the Ashes of our Lives

Author: Fulgance

Description:

After Merlin is executed for Uther’s murder, Arthur’s world falls apart.

Word Count: 21,599

Completed: Yes

Comment(s):

Arthur makes a huge mistake when he executes Merlin following the reveal of his magic.

Tiercel

Author: waldorph

Description:

Arthur is constantly at war.

Word Count: 6,571

Completed: Yes

Comment(s):

This is a wonderful magic reveal fic where Merlin goes out and discovers more about magic while still taking care of Arthur and protecting him; Arthur is constantly at war because Uther has decided he wants to take over and unite Albion.

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anxious-logic · 4 years ago

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A Package of Love

@tsshipmonth2020

Day 20: You can send one item to your soulmate every year.

Ship: Royality (Roman/Patton)

Warnings: I can’t think of any, let me know if I should add something.

Word count: 1000

Summary: When Patton opens his soulmate’s present for the year, it’s more than just the normal yearly update on what his soulmate’s been up to.

Patton squealed as he saw the box in front of his door. It was from his soulmate, Roman – he’d been expecting something from him soon, but he wasn’t sure exactly when it would come. It was a little earlier than normal – perhaps Roman had moved, and was closer to Patton than before, so the mail got there quicker?

Patton carefully picked up the package. It wasn’t super heavy, but it wasn’t very light either. He grunted a little as he picked it up to bring it into his room. He lived alone right now, but opening the gift from his soulmate seemed like something to be done in private.

He set the package down on his bed, the brown of the box contrasting with the pale blue of his quilt. He grabbed the scissors from where they were sitting on his dresser – don’t ask him why, he doesn’t know how they got there – and ripped through the packing tape, careful to avoid stabbing the contents inside.

As he peeked in the box, he thought about all of the items he’d received previously. When they were very young, their parents sent photos of the two of them and small drawings or art crafts that they had done at school. When they had gotten older, and able to understand the concept of soulmates a little more, they’d begun to send each other short letters – updates about what had happened over the year, maybe teeth fell out or they’d gotten a new pet.

As they’d gotten even older, Roman usually thought of some clever way to get around the “one item” rule. Sometimes Patton received a stuffed animal, full of not only stuffing but also pictures and mementos from his soulmate’s life; sometimes it was a custom Playbill, filled with information about important events and people that had entered Roman’s life over the last year.

Patton had done his best to reciprocate, filling notebooks with close-to-daily entries about what was happening or binders with little reminders of his life. He couldn’t help but feel a little insecure about his presents – Roman always seemed to send things that were so much more interesting, so much more informative than what Patton could think of. And then there was everything that Roman did – he was in theatre, getting better and better roles in plays and musicals alike every year. He also was involved in fencing, something that Patton had always wanted to try, but it just seemed like a lot of time commitment that he didn’t really have. He was an incredible writer, too – he’d sent some of what he’d written to Patton, a combination of stories, poems, and essays, and they absolutely transported Patton to the worlds that he’d created, making him lose track of time until the writing ended.

On the other hand, Patton was just… normal. He did some volunteering at the animal shelter every so often, but he had to be careful lest he set off an allergic reaction because of the cats. He liked helping the younger kiddos at school, but he didn’t always have as much time to do that as he liked. He wasn’t a star student; he wasn’t particularly stand-out in any way.

He was just… Patton.

He shook himself out of his thoughts as he looked down at the package on his bed. It was wrapped up in protective air packets to keep it from getting squished, but from what Patton could tell it looked pretty big. As he unwrapped the air packets, he tried to guess what it might be. It seemed maybe like a book?

He gasped as the wrapping fell to the floor. It was a huge binder, almost more of a scrapbook, with little pieces of paper and photos sticking out of every side.

As Patton slowly turned the pages, taking in the information written in his soulmate’s handwriting, he realized that Roman hadn’t only sent the usual yearly update. This seemed to be the usual information on what his year had been like and what he had done, but after that was finished, it seemed to have switched to… almost a reaction reel of Patton’s presents.

A baby picture almost identical to Patton’s, but with Roman in a dress whereas Patton was in a tuxedo-printed onesie. Don’t like the dress, but the rest of it matches perfectly! Was written as a caption underneath the pictures. Little stickers, stuck all over the letters that Patton had written Roman as a child; exclamation points, hearts, sad faces, happy faces all covered the letters relaying Patton’s life. Little notes saying “I’m proud of you!!” or “That sounds like so much fun, I wish I could have been there!” were placed beneath pictures of Patton with pets at the animal shelter or with his family on a road trip. More pictures showing the similarities of the two of them as kids – Roman’s transition with T, Patton’s slow, awkward puberty. Their first pets. Their first lost tooth. Their elementary school graduation. Their prom pictures. Their high school graduation.

Patton couldn’t stop smiling as he went through all of the pictures. He giggled at Roman’s teasing comments about both of their fashion senses in middle school, laughed out loud when he came to pictures of both of them with the silliest looks on their faces. He quieted when he saw both of them at funerals, for their grandparents or great-grandparents. He beamed at Roman’s praises of his descriptions.

Finally, when he got to the last page, he gasped. An address was written on the page, accented with marker and stickers. A phone number was written underneath it in calligraphy.

If you’re interested, was written, less fancy than the rest of the book.

Patton scooped up his phone, keying in the number and address under a contact labeled “Roman (soulmate)”. He opened a new text, pausing as he thought of what the perfect phrase would be to introduce himself to Roman for the first time.

Hi, this is Patton.

#ts roman #ts patton #royality #ts fanfiction #Soulmate September #i can write sometimes

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purplesurveys · 4 years ago

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1096

survey by doedear

When you get an account for something, what's the first username you try? It depends on what I’m signing up for. For social media and informal sites I use the same username I’ve been using for like a decade now just because it makes it easier for me to remember; for more professional websites I use my first name, my middle initial, and my surname.

What do you think might be someone else's first impression of you? The most common impression is quiet and aloof, which I’m honestly fine with.

Is texting having a negative or a positive effect for social relationships? I appreciate that it makes staying connected with my loved ones a lot easier, but I disagree with how it’ll sometimes be used to deal with situations that are ideally handled by person, like breakups or serious arguments. In other words it can definitely have both; it depends on how it’s used.

Would you be okay with a friend wanting to date one of your exes? I might have a personal problem with it, but it’s not like I would do anything to prevent it from happening. I would not be in the place to do so. I will probably distance myself from that friend though, just so that I don’t have to get updated on what’s going on between them.

Have you ever been addicted to something other than a drug? No.

Have you ever been addicted to a drug? Nope.

Do you like macadamia nut cookies? Sure, though I really ever only eat one kind; Starbucks has a dark chocolate macadamia cookie that I like to get from time to time.

What kind of accent do people typically have where you're from? Philippine English, which I’d say sounds a bit similar to American English, excep for the small differences here and there of our differences in pronunciation.

Bruno Mars - fail or win? He’s a win for me. When it comes to Top 40/pop music, he has always been one of my honest favorites. Have kind of a crush on him too lol, so there’s that.

Can you sleep without a fan on? During this time of the year, yes. It doesn’t last that long since Philippines was never meant to be a cold country, though.

Does history interest you at all? It really does; I can watch, read, and go to museums about it all day if I could. It was also my favorite class and it was the subject I could rely on to have good grades in and pull my average up, hahaha.

What's something you wish you could do-over? As much as possible I don’t really think of this as I don’t see the point in focusing on situations that are already done and over with. But if I had no choice, I’d pick the time I was a college freshman and make myself less-breakdown-y and less-depression-y.

How many times a day do you apply deoderant? Once, at the start of the day.

Have you ever tried any drugs? Other than caffeine, no.

What caused the most intense physical pain you've ever felt? The time I accidentally ripped my earring off and permanently disfigured my piercing. Also, when I touched a plugged-in clothing iron thinking it wouldn’t be hot enough.

Do you like those Sperry Top-Sider shoes? They’re actually pleasant to look at, yes. I’d buy a pair for myself.

Can you wear shoes like that without getting blisters on your ankles? When I’ve worn them like 5 times already, yeah. I always get blisters with newly-bought pairs, though.

Would you agree that dark chocolate tastes like rotten chocolate? Uh, no? That’s some poorly-made dark chocolate you have.

Do you touch your lips when you're nervous? I have other habits.

Do you think you can read other people's body language well? Yeah. This is on surveys a lot...

Are you a good driver? I’mmmmmm honestly a little reckless because my temper is shortest when on the road lol. But since I’ve driven the longest out of all my friends and have grown used to parking in tricky spots, changing lanes, overtaking, etc., they all still prefer to ride with me.

Did you pass your driver's test the first time you took it? Yes. I think he passed me out of sympathy though (because I did terrible and we both knew it), because failing me would’ve taken so much more time on my end and theirs. And in the Philippines, getting things over with matters more than quality control haha.

Would you rather be involved in a watergun or a paintball gun war? At this point maybe a paintball gun war, since I’ve been to many water gun fights before.

Is your hair in layers or is it all the same length? It’s the same length. I haven’t had it layered since the 5th grade.

Is there anyone who you're afraid to be in a car with, if they're driving? A friend who’s new to driving, like Jo or Angela.

What's a quick fix for a bad hair day? I just dab my hair with some water at the sink; it’s usually able to do the trick and make me look prepared when I’m unable to take a full shower.

Do you enjoy flying or do you get scared? The idea of accidents and crashes scare me, of course, but I try not to let it ruin my experience of flying and traveling.

Be honest. Do you like making other people feel jealous? Sometimes but it has waned more as I’ve gotten older. It has just started to mean less and less through the years and as my priorities change.

Have you ever purposely made someone of the opposite sex jealous? No. When it came to Mike, I didn’t really flaunt my relationship since I felt bad for him.

Are you addicted to shopping? Nope, but I can definitely see myself being if I ever decide to make it a weekly habit.

Do you always wear mascara and eyeliner? I never wear either.

Do you have any huge hoodies lined with snuggly fur on the inside? No, and I can tell you that is uncommon to see here because that sounds insanely warm to wear.

Is there anything you do, kind of habitually, that's completely mindless but helps you think? I don’t think so. I’m not sure I understood the question, either...

Do you like headphones or ear-buds more? Earbuds. Headphones undeniably have better quality, but they’re bulky.

What's your favorite winter sport? I don’t watch or play any.

What's something you're very good at? Meeting deadlines. I never miss one.

Where do you spend the majority of your summer? At home? ...Where else am I supposed to spend it in? Haha.

Who do you usually spend the most of your summer with? My family. I don’t have any yearly practices set every summer.

How old were you and where did you go on your first real date? I was 16; it was a quaint, Italian-American restaurant in Greenbelt.

Have you ever had a bonfire on the beach at night? I don’t think so. I would love that experience.

Do you like sour gummy worms? Yeah. I like the more gelatinous kind than the gummy candies with sour powder on them, though.

Have you ever helped a complete stranger with anything? I’m sure I have, but nothing super specific is coming to mind at the moment...just little things like holding the door open for someone carrying a heavy bag, cleaning up the plates and utensils on my table so that the server won’t have to do much work, teaching a stranger the COVID safety protocols before entering an establishment if they look confused, etc.

Would you pick up a hitchhiker if they seemed harmless? Probably not.

When playing a sport, are you more focused on winning or having fun? Winning, which I know doesn’t make me the best person to play with so I prefer to watch by the sidelines anyway. I do have fun playing table tennis though :)

Who's the last person who gave you a piggy back ride? Gabie.

Who's the last person that you gave a piggy back ride? I’m lighter than everyone else I know so I’ve never given one.

Rock, paper, or scissors? I switch it up every time.

Would you be bothered if your boyfriend liked to bite you? No. I liked lightly biting my ex as a show of affection and just to get her attention whenever I wanted to be playful.

Are you any good at dancing? No. I’m good at memorizing routines, but could never do them on my own.

Even if you aren't, do you like to dance? Only by myself.

What makes you feel the most 'alive'? New places and new experiences.

Whose conversations do you appreciate the most? Angela and Hans.

Is there anyone's advice you value enough to take against your own judgment? Gabie. At least in the past.

How often do you get the opportunity to be completely alone? Very seldom, which is why I try to give it to myself every weekend as a reward.

Do you like being alone or does it drive you crazy? I appreciate if I’ve been around people for too long, but I also shouldn’t have too much of it.

Do you have a trampoline? No.

Do you get nervous when driving in convertibles, knowing that if you flipped, you'd be screwed? I’ve never had this concern because I’ve never driven in one.

What's your favorite Pixar movie? Toy Story, of course.

Are you capable of successfully lying to someone you love? I guess, but I’ll hate doing it.

Who do you adore? Angela’s mom.

#survey #surveys

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