#i never stopped following the fandom i never turned off my notifications from media i never stopped looking up what they're up to each day

[kismetconstellations]

Is it weird of me to say that I was checking my notifications throughout the day, eagerly awaiting your response?

I always enjoy your opinions, meta, and analyses concerning Shiro, because your love for him is so very apparent, and I feel that you understand the ableism surrounding the horrendous writing and narrative decisions in regards to his character in ways that other fans typically and unfortunately do not.

(To my eternal aggravation.)

What earned my ire, I guess you could say, is the original author's complete lack of understanding of why, at least for me, personally, Keith killing Sendak feels like a slap in the face.

Reason Number One: Shiro and Sendak very much have personal history. The meta author points out that Shiro growls a pointed, furious, "You", at Haggar upon seeing her face to face for the first time since his escape, while completely ignoring that Shiro's immediate, instinctive response to seeing Sendak approach him is to begin backing away out of fear before uttering Sendak's name like a vile curse.

Almost like it hit him, just then, that he's dealt with Sendak one-on-one previously, and there are deep-seated feelings attached to that encounter.

In contrast, he doesn't hesitate in the slightest before lunging for Haggar and Zarkon, even when he has no armor to protect him.

A person does not instinctively recoil from or all-but snarl the name of someone they only ever saw over a video feed and had no prior face-to-face interaction with.

Sendak has enough knowledge (just typing that makes me want to throw up in my mouth) of Shiro's body to both recognize that it's been modified by Haggar's Druids, and taunt him about having been subjected to their experiments.

When Sendak facilitates communication between Shiro and Pidge to try to manipulate Pidge into surrendering, he condescendingly refers to Shiro as her "leader", like the idea of Shiro being in a position of leadership is amusing to him. Shiro practically spits at him, "What do you want?", prompting Sendak to reply, tone almost playful, "Your friend wanted to hear from you." This is followed by Sendak torturing Shiro via physically grabbing him with his massive hand while looming behind him with a sadistic grin on his face.

As of writing this, I have not seen Sendak's appearances in any episodes outside of Seasons One and Seven, so it's possible that I'm missing information that contradicts this next argument. Going purely off of what I am privy to, Sendak's interactions with the other Paladins have no similar sense of purposefully targeted degradation, uncomfortable familiarity, or Sendak deriving a sick, twisted delight from getting under their skin.

For Sendak, Shiro is something to toy with.

Keith and the other Paladins are nuisances to be done away with.

A person would have to be willfully obtuse to not notice the difference.

And, this is a heck of a lot of seething hatred on Shiro's part for someone who, according to this author, has no real significance to his (appallingly mishandled) character arc:

Keith, on the other hand, as you said, has no personal ties to Sendak whatsoever. Sendak is merely another evil Galra who needs to be stopped. He's never tortured Keith, or mocked him for having abandonment issues and being a half-breed (to my knowledge. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong), specifically weaponizing his trauma, fears, and insecurities against him. Because he has no personal knowledge of Keith's trauma, fears, and insecurities, and no personal vested interest in having or incentive to have that knowledge. Because Keith is, as previously stated, nothing to him but a nameless, inconsequential pest.

I couldn't care less about fandom comparisons to Avatar: The Last Airbender. Lauren Montgomery also worked on Young Justice, specifically on an episode involving a clone-turned-sleeper-agent plot, and I never see anyone bring that up. Unless an outside piece of media is stated or shown to be an influence, what matters is what happens in the series I'm watching, and, in that series, it is undeniable that Sendak is associated with and a direct cause of Shiro's trauma. Anyone who insists otherwise is ignoring or outright disregarding the evidence staring them directly in the face.

Reason Number Two: Shiro is deliberately made to mirror Sendak over and over again, but not in the way this author describes. The intentional mirroring has nothing to do with Shiro realizing that he can beat Sendak with the power of teamwork, or learning to rely on others (something he never does, as he internalizes everything and is never given even a semblance of a proper support system, due to the writers hating him), or Shiro and Sendak being "evenly matched" in combat until an outside force intervenes to tip the scales one way or the other.

A concept, by the way, that is laughably, patently false.

It's the fact that a disabled man has his bodily autonomy violated to make him resemble the monster who tortured him, and is heavily implied to have raped him.

That this disabled man is then outfitted with a new prosthetic that seems to have been cruelly modeled after his abuser's,

under the guise of it being some sort of cool "upgrade" that revitalizes him and imbues him with a newfound sense of purpose,

only for it to amount to absolutely nothing because he's still unable to defeat his abuser with it. Making the light-dark mirroring entirely pointless.

Shiro has to be rescued by his able-bodied replacement, who drops out of the sky and effortlessly takes Sendak out in one fell swoop.

As a Shiro/Keith shipper, I would have loved to have seen Shiro and Keith work together to take Sendak out had Voltron Leader Keith had to be involved in a direct confrontation with the creepy bastard at all. Your alternate suggestions, particularly Keith passing the Black Paladin Bayard on to Shiro, which Shiro fought so hard to obtain only to die without ever getting to use, are superb and infinitely superior to what we got in canon.

Because what we got is an infuriating and insulting mess of ableism and ageism, and the beginning of the purposeful nerfing of Shiro that would continue into Season Eight. Reducing him from a brutally efficient and agile hand-to-hand combatant,

to a hands-off Captain and Admiral who spends thirteen episodes almost exclusively confined to his ship, and, despite having an arm that was built to double as a projectile, has to whip out a gun to defend himself.

Once again, someone like this meta author, who can't see any issue with that, or how Keith fully usurping Shiro's former role as The Chosen One (to the extent of getting to kill Shiro's personal tormentor while Shiro lies beaten and helpless on the ground, awaiting his second death) ties directly into Shiro being sidelined and increasingly portrayed as "old" and "weak", fundamentally misunderstands why every narrative misstep with Shiro is gallingly offensive, and a profound mistreatment of a character who deserved so much more.

I'd say you have a fairly solid understanding of Voltron: Legendary Defender despite not watching it in six years! Should you ever choose to revisit it, which I strongly advise against for the sake of your sanity, this website is my go-to. The episode quality isn't as high definition as what Netflix has to offer, but it more than suffices for editing purposes, references, and basic viewing.

Your vocabulary is also just fine, and perfectly communicates your points. You have nothing to apologize for.

Thank you, as always, for taking the time out of your day to interact with me. Like I said, I look forward to reading every opinion you have on this awful, awful show, and every response you give to my opinions, interpretations, and scathing critiques. ❤

@sockdooe, Opinions on this?

[seijch]

ANNOUNCEMENT: NOT A HELLO, BUT NOT A GOODBYE EITHER

omg hi ... im like . ashamed to come back after saying brief hiatus in october and then disappearing off the face of the earth til FEBRUARY but under the cut i will be explaining myself and the following, if youre interested (and a tl;dr at the very bottom if you don’t wanna scroll thru this obnoxiously long post):

the reason(s) i was gone for so long

what i was doing during that time (its just a personal account yall can scroll past this idrc)

the status of those um . halloween requests

the future of this account

i. so . Hiatus .

i know. i know . i probably mentioned it when i made the announcement post, but my mental health likes to go on one of those rides. yknow the ones where you go like up rlly fast then down maybe and then up then DOWN .... its like that. i needed a break and every time i wanted to come back or thought about it, something would happen and i would get stuck in my own head.

a big reason for getting stuck in my head was (and i hate to admit this ... i hate to admit that i have Insecurities On The Internet) my feelings of inadequacy regarding my writing. i love to plot fics, i love concepts and characters and making little headcanons but i dont ... know if i love writing rn. and i thought for the longest time that like . whatever ill just push thru it its fine ill be fine but it kinda wasnt lmao you can kinda see it in my halloween reqs and what become of them when i get to that but i began to feel like nothing i had put out or would put out would hold up prose wise (and normally i dont feel like this im much more “idc its my life im living it” but thats not a rant for tumblr LMAO). i still feel like that -- like im better as a reader than a writer. but . You Know :-)

tl;dr: mental state go brrrrr

ii. anywhere here’s wonderwall

when i left, i was in a steadily decreasing mental and emotional state, made worse by a situation at work that really was a case of petty jealousy on my end and rlly isnt very consequential now despite how much pain and resentment it gave me when it Was a problem so i wont get into it. the tl;dr of november and december was me using work as an crutch and distraction -- i know my job, i do it well, it helped me not think about my responsibilities and obligations and inadequacies. of course, as the holiday season grew busier n busier i was scheduled so often that i moved 88 or so miles (according to my apple watch, which i ONLY wear at work since im never anywhere else outside my house) and fell into a cycle of showering n sleeping at my house before going back the next day. (theres definitely something to be said abt capitalism and “grind culture” here but once again its not the time or place snsjkdfds)

at the turn of the new year, i happened to remember a birthday card i hadnt filed away for safekeeping from a friend of mine that id been horribly out of touch with til that point. i started crying because i realized how out of touch id been in general up until that point. the month of january was great for me: i was focused, happy, and in a much better place than i had been before. the end of it brought me down focus wise and im hoping that enough time away from my distractions will refocus me bc i ... need it LMAO and though ive burned out from that level of productivity and gotten distracted again im ... trying to stay positive which i think is the most i can do 😁👍🏼

media wise, i got real into stardew valley (but burned out bc i played it extensively as a way to wind down after work), the pokemon platinum romhack renegade platinum (still havent finished it bc of school n i played it w the intent to see if i could nuzlocke it ... bitch its so hard but its so fun bc of it), briefly assassins creed: odyssey (im one of those ppl who completes an entire region before i move to the next so you can tell i burned out of that one + wouldnt have the time to properly devote to it even if i didnt), got back into genshin impact after pulling for xiao (after not touching it for like . months), and danganronpa. yes . danganronpa 😐 i Know. i stopped playing it after the second trial of the first game bc i was so hurt by the outcome and picked it up in late january only to get sucked in (thank god i had the foresight to buy the second and third games during the steam winter sale). rn im at the start of chapter 4 if anyone wants to come in my asks and um . talk to me abt danganronpa

tl;dr: I’m Into Danganronpa Now

iii. you realize halloween was three months ago right

i mentioned this in the first section, but i love to plot things. every request is plotted or at least has a solid foundation. i had fun detailing what concept i wanted to go with considering what i was given, and there were some bangers i might touch up in the future. but heres whats going to happen to the requests themselves:

there are two finished requests. one will be posted tomorrow and the other will be touched up (just bc i finished it doesnt mean its good 🧍‍♂️) and scheduled for next saturday. as for the ones i never got around to ...

i will not be finishing those requests. i hate to be That Person, but i feel like we all expected this 🧍‍♂️ what i will do is post all of my notes for each request in batches -- requests that have an @ to go with them will be mentioned in the post proper, but anon asks will be pictured. (there are some asks that came from blogs who are now deactivated but i wrote down all the prompts and remember most of those askers so ill cross that bridge when i get there) there will most likely be an excerpt or two simply bc i think i mightve written a few plot points or interactions in the form of bullet points. i rlly am sorry about doing this but i remember looking at my notion doc with all the prompts and feeling ... like i wasnt measuring up n it wasnt just to myself or to some intangible concept of “other” id constructed but it was instead to those who requested n actually WANTED to see and hear and read my writing and i ...... im gonna admit thats another big reason i avoided this site.

regardless, youll definitely get what i have (and likely more than just my bullet points and illegible handwriting).

tl;dr: im sorry. what i have in terms of plot, concept, and interaction for every request will be posted, but i cant say ill ever complete them and mean it.

iv. so what now?

well i mean . im not entirely sure how sold i am on haikyuu in the content creation department (as a creator n to a lesser extent, as a consumer). as mentioned previously, its no longer my primary focus. it doesnt mean im not into haikyuu anymore; i have a lot of love for those boys but i cant rlly say im even caught up w recent fandom activity and also havent even finished s4 pt2 LMAO thats on my to do list

and despite all that, i still want to share my plots n concepts and snippets and maybe even fics. it wont happen anytime soon. it might not even happen. but i mean . its better than me saying i wont write ever again shjdkfs but either way ill probably use this blog as a personal blog w the occasional ask game for dialogue prompts (those are always so fun i love making up aus to fit like . the most mundane prompts)

as for my works (past and any potential future), ive opened an ao3 acc here n ill be editing n possibly expanding on my old works to post there. tumblr, to me, is The x reader hub, but i figure more x reader fics on ao3 is never a bad thing.

ill be deleting/posting drafted posts to the queue since they were all meant to be queued anyway as well as (sorry again 🧍‍♂️) deleting or answering asks in the inbox. (moots if you get a notif from me saying i rbed your post from months ago ... mind your business) im very hard to get ahold of and its ... a problem. expect an overhaul of the nav n shit to reflect my new direction n also because i feel like i cant tell if my passion for carrd is shared by the majority HSDKLFS maybe its better to read my info in a normal post ykwim .......

and of course . if youve read all this n decided im no longer worth the follow, i sure as hell cant stop you. thank you for wanting to, at some point, hear what i have to say -- it means more than you think.

tl;dr: writing will be edited and reposted to ao3, this blog will be a personal blog with a hint of writing (sometimes)

the tl;dr to end all tl;drs:

im back! i wont be as active as i used to due to a lessened interest in haikyuu in general, but i have an ao3 acc now where all my past work will be edited, possibly expanded, and reposted. any future work will also find itself there. my halloween requests will be posted in batches as incomplete concepts, plots, and snippets of scenes; i wont be promising to finish any of them.

there are still fic concepts im attached to and want to finish, but i cant promise any more writing on my end. this blog will be a personal blog with maybe writing, not a writing blog with my personal thoughts all over it.

regardless if you stick around or not, its been crazy sexy cool (equal emphasis) being on haikyuu tumblr even tho i wasnt around for long ... even tho its not my main focus anymore, im still excited to see what the future might hold 🤝

love, ari 💌

[carryonmywaywardwriters]

One Day At A Time - Jensen x Reader

A/N: Part Three! If you’d like to be tagged, please sent an ask or message. As always, feedback is incredible. And, I hope you all enjoy <3

PSA: I am NOT a minor friendly blog. If you are below 18, please come back when you’re older. I don’t want to lose my blog because you were too eager to grow up. If I discover you, I WILL block.

Series Masterlist

Warnings: Widower!Jensen. Grieving process. Age Gap. Character pregnancy. Unrequited feelings. Online personality problems. Guilt. I believe that is all.

Word Count: Roughly 2,700

“Hi, there,” The woman giggled into the mic as Jensen played up the flirty eyebrow bounce and cheesy smile that would be cast over Tumblr within twenty four hours.

He was finished after that final panel, for the trip. Nothing sounded better than a hot shower and catching some sleep. His mind was still reeling from the news he'd been given that morning, but he couldn't focus on that. So, he buried himself behind that charming persona he'd created.

“Dude, leave her alone...she wants me,” Jared smoothed his thick, long, chestnut locks in a way that caused thirsty cries from all around. He cackled as his friend mock frowned his way; unimpressed at the turn of attention. Earning the familiar high pitched laugh from the crowd in front of them.

It was easy to play into their hands. To take the nerves that came with being shy and put it towards acting like a dork with his best friend. He appreciated the disguise more than he'd ever say. Letting it mask the worry and fear he could feel churning inside of him when it was too quiet for long.

“Actually, my question is for Jensen-”

“Ha!” The mentioned man in question leaned forward at the barked utterance, pretending to gloat. Smugly bouncing his brows at Padalecki.

With a deep, regretful sigh, the taller of the two settled back in his chair; wrapping his arms around the back of it as he sat in reverse, “Okay, I guess.” The over dramatically stated words were coupled with a theatrical sulk that drew forth more giggles.

“I was wondering if Y/N and the kids are enjoying the trip to San Diego,” It was no secret that his family had been flocked around him. Until now, that is. The way he paused at that had every eye present turning towards him.

“Uh, actually...” He forced his lips to stay upright. “They're back home, right now.” Concerned 'awes' filled the air. “No, no. It's okay. They're living it up.” Jared turned his gaze back to the man he'd been brothers with for almost two decades. Not buying into the idea that he was really alright with it. “Last time I checked, they were having some kinda dance party. Again.” The way he clenched his teeth relaxed the fans a bit. An over emphasized grimace always seemed to break the mood. “It was wild. There was pink everywhere and a herd of little girls shouting to music.”

“Odette was leading the charge on the one I got,” The taller man joined in, having received his own recording. “Kicked Zeppelin over to my place for an old fashioned dinosaur night with the boys.” More awes filled the air.

“Y/N sent you something? I thought you two still weren't talking after you tried to drown her?” His brow crooked, finding something he could latch onto. Knowing that his friend had delivered that ammo on purpose. He really did love the moose.

“I can explain!” Jared held up his hand towards the 'ooohs,' and then stopped. “No... no, I can't.” His head dipped in false shame, earning another set of rambunctious chuckles.

“I can.” Jensen easily took over. Turning to better face the crowd now that he'd successfully maneuvered around the original question. “This guy tortures my nanny. She's like the female version of Misha to Jared. It's endless.” The mentioned man's lips screwed up as he nodded proudly, accepting the label that was thrown onto you. “So, we were at a cookout over at his place. I'm flipping burgers and relaxing with a beer. You know...like a normal person.” His words only made his friend shrug. Zero shame in sight. “Next thing I know? She's screeching as he full on tosses her into the pool.”

“She called me old!” The roar that followed was deafening. “See? They get it!” He beamed at the response only serving to make Jensen over-exaggerate the roll of his green eyes. “And, it worked. What did she say after?”

“You're a child.” The admission was straightforward.

“Meaning that I'm young, and that she was wrong.” A round of applause made him get to his feet, and bow as the widower shook his head in mock shame. Cracking his own grin.

The mic was lifted back to Jensen's lips, “Dude...you started a war because she told the truth?” He knew what had been said, but the crowd was eating it up. Keeping him safe for a little while longer.

“That hurts...” A pat to the heart was thrown in. “That hurts me right there.”

“The kids all joined in. It was chaos.” Ackles explained the previous comment to the women, with a few men scattered here and there. “My kids and Y/N versus his herd and him. We needed an ark to get to the tables. They soaked everything.” His hand panned across the people in front of him, emphasizing how far the damage had spread. “Everything. Gen thought they were going to kill each other.” Jared cackled. Remembering the look on his wife's face. “Y'all know how we had to stop pranking each other, right? 'Cause it was so deadly? That's what they should be doing. Instead, she's become this...epic battle partner. I'm thinking they'll start the next apocalypse before this is over.” A proud nod confirmed it. Jared wouldn't give in until the world ended. Or, he had to go back to work. Whichever happened first.

“Do you prank Y/N?” Someone shouted, catching his attention.

“Do I... Do I prank her? Are you kidding? Do I look stupid?” More laughs filled the air as he shuddered something fierce. “Misha? Absolutely. He doesn't fight back.” His fingers tacked off each point. “He doesn't live in my house. Doesn't hang out with my kids. I like not having to worry about her sicking my spawn on me in retaliation. They'd do it in a heart beat, too.” And most importantly, it kept the professional barriers somewhat in place. “Yeah, no, Y/N and I don't....we're not...” Weren't anything other than co-parents, employer and employee, and almost friends in an odd sort of way. How's that for complicated?

“As fun as I am,” Jared finished, saving him, again. Hoping that the fans wouldn't take that last statement as he had started to. He covered his own look of interest before diving back into the panel. “Now, that we went way off topic....who's next?”

–

“How did the 'mom' thing even start?” You asked in confusion, scrolling through your Instagram notifications. Your feet thrown over the back of the couch as you sprawled. Making yourself quite at home in the Ackles house. The selfie you'd posted while cleaning the damage the girls had caused was packed.

Not that you weren't used to it by that stage. The moment Danneel had tagged you in a post, it had been over. You'd been stalked and fawned over by some. When she passed? You'd been flocked for updates about the Ackles family.

It had taken a year for you to gather the courage to begin posting again. Once you did? The fandom clung to you for offering small pieces of what life was like inside the Ackles' household. Needing to have that sense of closeness to the supernatural family, still, even with a member gone.

The simple image of you with Oscar resting his head on your lap as you sorted the makeup away had garnered the usual 'queen', 'mom', and 'I love yous' mixed with the occasional trash talker. Once Jensen had commented saying he wanted his dog back when he got home? It had grown worse. When you told him that he'd have to fight you for the golden doodle? The post had blown up. The fans demanding to know if you and him had something going on.

Apparently his panel had only cemented the idea, somehow. You hadn't watched it. Leaving you to only wonder what he'd said to garner that response. Sure it had simply been taken out of context.

You scrolled on, determined to find some answers. A few flicks of your fingers and fate intervened. The phone slipped to your face. Making you wince all the while. As if life had directly told you that social media was bad for your health.

With a sigh, you tossed your phone to the couch. Trying to not let the extreme Danneel and Jensen fans get under your skin. Too many 'you'll never be her' comments filled your mind. More than enough 'stop trying to take her place' had you questioning where you stood. You were doing everything you could to get what was needed done while not dancing on your deceased friend's toes.

Did the world really not understand? Were you really any better off than they suggested? The small crush said you weren't.

“No idea,” Genevieve stated seriously, walking towards the grey couch you were occupying with a pile of healthy snacks loaded up. Pulling you from the internal struggle. She'd been extra conscious of what she was putting into her body since she'd discovered the newest pregnancy. “I just kinda...roll with it.”

She and the kiddos were bunking with you. Tag teaming was so much simpler when the baby exhaustion hit. And it gave the both of you some grownup time together when the men were away.

“It's so strange,” You picked up one of the grapes with your fingers before plopping it in your mouth. Giving up on trying to understand the fact that you'd become an icon of sorts- and the ramifications- for simply nannying some, albeit great, kids.

At your friend's next words, you choked, “So...what's the deal with you and Jensen?”

“It's the same as its always been,” Came the broken words as you got back a hold of yourself. Brushing it off. “Why?”

“Just curious,” That wasn't it. The cool, actress's poker face she wore said as much. But, you were too sensitive to call her out on it, just then. Luckily, she changed gears. “I can't believe that this is it...The last season is being filmed this year.”

The CW had finally pulled the plug on the Winchesters once it had hit adulthood. The boys had found out in a meeting that morning. They'd known it was coming. Had even agreed to it. And yet? Hearing the finality of it? Was another nail in the coffin.

“Eighteen seasons...It's crazy.” Your hand ran through your hair as you looked at the old episode on screen. Sister Jo stood off against Michael!Dean. The tension in the scene was palpable. It didn't hurt to watch it, anymore. Instead, you focused on the fact that she'd been doing what she loved with the man she'd been head over heels for. “How's Jared holding up?”

“He's zeroed in on the kids. Telling himself that it's going to be good for us in the end.” Her hand rubbed over her still flat stomach. “But, he's definitely feeling it. He's been Sam for so long... Saying goodbye is hard.”

“That it is,” You agreed, frowning at the screen. Wondering how Jensen was taking the day.

He hadn't said a thing to you when he'd checked in. Simply had asked for an update on the household before he crashed. Dean had become his crutch. Without the Winchester in his life, you weren't quite sure what he'd do with himself.

Ackles had a passion for directing and acting. There was no doubt about it. But, Supernatural had become everything when his life had turned upside down. It had given him the consistency he'd needed to get through. And while things had been okay for a time? It would be just another major thing he was losing.

Your socked foot rubbed over the soft fur of Icarus. The cockapoo was up there in age. He'd been diagnosed with congestive heart failure at sixteen years old. The white, fifteen pounds of floof didn't let it deter him, though. A couple of pills a day kept him comfortable and loved for as long as he could be. But, it had gotten under Jensen's skin, too.

It made your stomach churn to think about how fast the negative could pile up on already weakened shoulders. And yet, he wanted you to step back. Having time away from him had cleared your head. Allowed you to see his side of things. Maybe it was time to give him some room to breathe. To let him process everything on his own. After all, you were just the nanny...

–

“Dad!” Three voices shouted in unison when the door opened. Ditching their place at the table as Jensen stumbled in with a wide smile on his face. Each kid got a big hug, and a kiss on the cheek.

When they tried to talk over each other, he slowed them down, gently with a, “One at a time.” And, miraculously? It worked. He was informed of everything he'd already had reported to him. Only this time? In child perspective. Which made it dramatic. Completely over the top. Just the way he liked it.

A nod your way was all you received as you slipped past the scene; lifting his bag for him so that no one tripped over it. Including the bumbling dog that was trying to get a kiss in, himself. Oscar had missed his human while he'd been gone.

The dog had been with Danneel's brother during her last pregnancy. She'd been too sick to handle the energetic buffoon while Jensen had been away, filming the show. Gino had fallen in love with the pup. Keeping him...until he thought Jensen needed him more. Returning him back to the Ackles' home solemnly. Oscar had, once again, latched back onto the head of the house with a fierce loyalty that most wouldn't expect from a fluffed up mixed breed. The affection was mutual. Jensen's hand stilled the squirming beast with a simple pet to the top of his curled head as you left the chaos.

Jensen's room was clean. A feat that wouldn't last long once he started unpacking. Bed made up, clothes lined nice and neat, with just a hint of his cologne still lingering in the air from before he'd left. You dropped the duffle on the mattress and turned away. Only to catch sight of the image beside his pillow. It held the dogs, his wife, and the kids all surrounding him. Everything he loved in one picture. His family.

Slowly, you slid the door shut and returned back to the reunion, “Dinner's ready if you're hungry.” You smiled softly at the way he ensured each kid knew that they were loved before climbing back up to his feet. Lumbering after you to get the food while it was still hot.

“Spaghetti,” The actor rumbled in excitement, sniffing the air as he approached the table. His lips smacked hungrily. He was a sucker for a pasta with a good meat sauce. “The wardrobe ladies are gonna be mad at me, later, but I'm piling it up.” He hadn't exaggerated. The flight had left him hungry. “God, this is good.” Came the Dean-like groan as he chowed down. Forgetting that he didn't have to eat like a man who had lived off of nothing more than pizza and beer.

“Dad!” The tiny, disapproving tone left J.J with ease. “You're not supposed to talk with your mouth full.”

He gulped down the food, and smiled sheepishly, “Sorry, J-bird.”

“It's okay. Just try to remember,” The words were so Danneel that you couldn't help but to smile gently at them. She was going to be trouble as she continued to age. But, you had faith she'd be pretty great in the end. Hell, they all would if the night was any indication.

If he was upset about the show ending, he didn't show it. Even after the kids retired for the night and he helped clean up, he didn't say a word. The only thing you got was a pat on the back and a low “goodnight” that made your skin prickle before you returned your own.

Part Four

ODAAT: @winchester-ofthe-lord​​ @smoothdogsgirl​ @ima-be-a-mongoose​ @briagallen​

Dean/Jensen: @akshi8278​​ @screechingartisancashbailiff​​

Forever: @dean-winchesters-bacon​​ @supernaturalginger​​ @lilulo-12​​​ @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce​​ @malfoysqueen14​​​  @michealneedssomemilk

[ohemgeeitscoley]

Signed, Sealed, Delivered (1/5)

Fandom: Star Wars

Pairing: Rey/Ben Solo (Reylo)

Note: Written for the Movie Exchange. This was a blast to participate in, and I’m so excited to share it!

Biggest thank you and love to @andyouweremine​ and @storiesofimagination​ and @notababoonbrandishingastick​ for reading along and cheering me on and pointing out the ways to make the story better. You guys make writing fun and I love you.

Read below or on AO3

This is not where Ben wanted to be in life. When he was a child imagining his future being a 28 year old assistant for a giant dick was not even remotely on the list of possibilities. 

But here he is spending his Friday night standing outside of a building with an annoying bouncer reminding him that the doorway was for members only.

The fucking doorway.

Ben could be a member if he wanted. If he wasn't too stubborn to touch his inheritance. But he wanted to make it in life on his own merits and not because of old money and his family's name.

Nights like tonight make it hard to remember any of it matters.

His mom has been on him more the last few months. He's been Snoke's assistant for two years. The last assistant had only had the job for a year before Snoke got him set up as a VP for a large hedge fund. 

Ben's been wasting his time getting Snoke food and encouraging him through drinking green juice for two years with nothing to show for it.

He knows he should take his mom up on her offer. Hell, he could call his uncle and get a position at his company and really no one would blink. 

But it matters to him. He doesn't want to rely on nepotism and to be in a position he hasn't earned.

He has an MBA. He didn't think it would be this hard.

Ben sighs, shoving one hand into his pant pocket and scrolls through the messages on his phone.

Most are from his mom. Reminding him that he is supposed to go home this weekend for a family dinner. As if he is going to have time for that. There are a few from Poe talking about a new guy he met at the bar and some random items Ben assumes are groceries Poe wants him to pick up whenever he heads home.

It's almost midnight and he's been standing on a sidewalk for 45 minutes. 

His boss finally walks out of the building and he's already harping at Ben about different things and Ben is having a hard time caring and paying attention. Snoke stops next to Ben, adjusting his tie, before running his hands through his slightly turning silver brown hair. 

“Alright,” Snoke says, unscrewing the lid from one of those God awful green juices he keeps buying, “do your thing.”

Ben responds immediately, listing off the first few better tasting foods that come to his mind. Snoke downs the drink and tosses him the bottle, like he has anywhere to throw it away, and heads toward the car that is waiting for them.

“So I’ll see you tomorrow then?” Ben asks, opening the door to the car.

“What?” Snoke asks, narrowing his eyes as he glances up from his phone to Ben. “What do you mean tomorrow? You’re going back to the office.”

No, Ben thinks, resisting the urge to grit his teeth. “Right. Of course I am,” he gets out, following Snoke into the car. “Do you want me to order dinner? Since we’re going back to the office?”

Snoke looks at Ben like he’s growing a second head. “I just drank my juice. You just saw me drink my juice.”

Ben did just see him drink his juice. Just like Ben has seen him drink several juices and then act affronted that Ben didn’t order him lunch or dinner twenty minutes later when he realizes he’s still hungry.

The car pulls away from the sidewalk and merges into traffic. It’s going to be a long night.

***

Rey loves her job. Really. She does. Being the assistant for Amilyn Holdo is an honor and a privilege. Amilyn is a force to be reckoned with and there is so much for Rey to learn from her. Not to mention the exposure. Rey is working in one of the best digital media firms in New York. Outside of Amilyn, Rey is surrounded by some of the best writers, editors, and photographers. She’s lucky to have the job. She knows how lucky she is.

However. It is almost midnight on a Friday and she’s been in the office since 6:45 and all she wants to do is go back to her apartment, curl into her bed, and watch a stupid movie and fall asleep. But Amilyn is still in her office on the phone and Rey knows that she can’t leave before Amilyn. It was never a spoken rule, that Rey needs to be the first one to arrive and the last one to leave. But that was because it didn’t need to be said out loud. It was expected.

Rey’s phone buzzes against her desk. Glancing down at the lit up screen, Rey scrunches her nose at the text notification from Kaydel. It’s text number twelve for the night. She was supposed to meet up with Kaydel and Rose for drinks after work. Rey hates that she has been such an absentee friend, but Amilyn had been throwing herself even more into work the last few months and Rey’s social life had all but vanished since then.

Amilyn’s door opens and she throws Rey a fitness watch.

“I need that up to at least 10,000 steps before I leave,” she says, already walking back into her office. “My trainer can’t think that I’m slacking off in between sessions. And order me dinner from that one place.”

Amilyn’s door closes before she’s done talking, her voice muffled. But Rey knows what she says and she knows the place that Amilyn is vaguely referring to because she is a good assistant.

No. She is a great assistant.

Rey opens up the restaurant's website and places Amilyn’s dinner order. Rey’s stomach growls, she isn’t quite sure when she ate last. Amilyn had needed her to take notes during her lunch meeting and Rey didn’t have a chance to eat afterward. Rey glares down at her belly for betraying her and adds dinner for her to the order before sending it out.

Her email pings with the confirmation of her order. The estimated time of arrival is 45 minutes.

45 minutes for two sandwiches at almost midnight seems ridiculous.

Rey calls the restaurant and bickers with them until they concede that the food can be delivered in 30 minutes.

Sliding Amilyn’s watch on her wrist, Rey stands up and stretches her arms before beginning to pace around the office. 

***

"What do you mean you can't take a credit card?" Rey's eyes widen as she starts going through her wallet even though she knows she does not have enough cash to cover the food. She's not sure she has any cash at all. 

Rey is sweaty and gross from trying to get the fitness watch up to 10,000 steps in 30 minutes. Rey had only managed about 4,000 and she feels like her lungs and legs are going to be burning for days. She still had another 3,000 to go.

"We're cash only on deliveries now," the delivery driver answers and he looks like he's contemplating getting ready to take the food and leave.

But Rey needs that food. She can't let her boss down at almost midnight when she said she was going down to the lobby to get her dinner.

"I have… I have Venmo? CashApp? I'll download any app you have actually." Rey offers, pulling out a checkbook. "What about a check?"

The guy rolls his eyes. "You think if we aren't taking cards, we are going to take checks?"

"It's not 1990, so the fact that you guys are refusing to take digital currency led me to believe you were stuck in the past." Rey huffs in annoyance, her brain spiraling trying to come up with another plan.

Rey hears the elevator ding behind her, but she's too distracted by the problem in front of her to pay much attention. 

"I can offer a contract for a small piece of my soul?" Rey jokingly offers. 

"Do you have the $32.50 or not?" He asks, clearly not impressed. 

"Yes, I do have the $32.50," Rey argues, "in any form of currency available to me that is not actually cash in my hand. Which was also nowhere on your website. This seems like a scam. Are you trying to pocket the cash?"

"I don't need this shit," he starts to put the bag away when--

"I have cash," a deep voice says from behind Rey. "I can pay."

Rey turns around quickly and looks at the man walking toward them. 

He's… large. In a fairly tall, very wide kind of way. His face is all sharp angles and his hair is long and dark… and it looks really soft. 

He's vaguely familiar looking. Rey assumes he works in the building too and that she's probably seen him at some point. She's surprised she doesn't remember him though, because he is extremely attractive. 

"You don't have--" Rey starts, before realizing the hot stranger is handing delivery driver money and grabbing the bag and he is stealing her dinner. "Excuse me, that is my dinner. Fuck. That is my boss's dinner."

The delivery driver leaves with a slight flick of his fingers to the other man before walking away.

"I paid for it," the food thief shrugs, "So it's my boss's dinner now."

"No, no, no, no, no," Rey breaths, her mind spinning to come up with a plan as she followed the man toward the elevator. "There's two dinners in there. One for me and one for my boss. I need my boss's dinner. I cannot get fired."

Something near sympathy seems to pass over his face. He pauses, his grip on the bag loosening. 

"And it's about to be my boss's dinner because I cannot get fired."

"Listen," Rey begins, chewing on her bottom lip. "What's your name?"

"Ben," he responds. "And I really need to get back to work."

"So do I, Ben," Rey holds on to the vowel in his name for a few seconds. "But I cannot go back without food. Spare a dinner. Does your boss really need both?"

"What did you get?" Ben asks, but he's already opening the bag before Rey can answer.

He pulls out the first box and hands it to Rey before he grabs the second box and let's the bag fall to the ground. 

Rey opens her box first.  It's Amilyn's steak sandwich with blue cheese crumbles and a lettuce wrap instead of a bun. There's a side of pita chips and hummus.

That means Ben has Rey's pulled pork sandwich, with the caramelized onions and perfectly toasted brioche bun. Not to mention the apple slaw and sweet potato fries. 

Rey's mouth waters and her stomach betrays her and rumbles. Her cheeks redden with embarrassment.  

"This is my boss's," Rey holds up the container in her hand. "Yours gets to enjoy mine."

"It's a pulled pork sandwich," he states as if the sandwich is personally offending him.  

"It's an amazing pulled pork sandwich," Rey shakes her head in disbelief. "Does your boss have something against good food?"

"Good?" Ben looks at the sandwich again. "This is a basic sandwich at best. Pork and onions? Sweet potato fries? I'll be the one getting fired if I bring him this. He is a man of refined taste."

"I can fix this." Rey drops to her knees, setting down the steak sandwich and holding out her hand for the container from Ben.

He looks amused when he hands her the box. Rey ignores it and goes to work.

She pulls the top bun off the pulled pork sandwich, trying not to inhale the delicious scent wafting from the box. She takes a handful of bleu cheese crumbles from the other sandwich and sprinkles them over the sandwich. Then she grabs a fork out of the bag and strategically places about a quarter of the apple slaw on top of the onions.  

She then gathers the rest of the apple slaw and puts them in her boss's container, followed by the sweet potato fries. The hummus and pita chips fit perfectly in the box next to the remastered sandwich. 

"There we go," Rey puts the bun back on top of the sandwich and closes the lid to the boxes. She stands slowly, holding out one box for Ben. "Viola, a culinary masterpiece."

"I don't know about that." He gives the container a quizzical look. "But you owe me at least $22 for this."

"What?" Rey scoffs. "That's more than my sandwich was to begin with and you took most of the toppings."

He shrugs. "I saved your ass. There's a tax for that."

"You're a monster," Rey glares at him. "But fine, deal. I'll bring it to you tomorrow, Ben."

"Perfect,  I'm on the 22nd floor…" he stops, tilting his head. "I don't know your name."

"Rey," she answers, a smug smile overtaking her face. "I'm on the 23rd floor."

He isn't impressed. Or if he is, he hides it well. The arrogance that rolls off of him is off putting. He walks away to the elevator, pressing the up arrow. "I expect you'll be there no later than 7. I have a life."

"Right," Rey snorts, picking up the bag he left behind on the floor. There was a wrapped pickle inside. Score. "Says the assistant getting his boss dinner at midnight. You'll get it when you get it."

Rey hits the button for the other elevator across the hall. She does not want to be in an elevator with him. 

The doors open for both elevators at the same time. Rey walks into hers first, turning around to see him step. 

"You'll be there by 7, or the interest will double," Ben chuckles.

Rey's mouth falls open. "Interest!" She exclaims, but the elevator door is already closing. "You never said anything about interest you ass--"

The door shuts.

"Asshole," Rey finishes in the elevator. "Absolute asshole."

Rey pouts as she takes a bite into the pickle. Interest. What kind of person charges interest on essentially stolen food.

She's still lost in her thoughts when the elevator opens and [boss] steps in.

"I'm going home," she says, pressing the button for the main floor. 

Rey barely has time to get out of the elevator before the door starts to close.

"I'll be in by 7 tomorrow," she adds just before the doors finally close.

Rey closes her eyes. "Here's your $30 sandwich that I just spent 40 minutes to get for you," Rey says to the vacant office. "And maybe tomorrow I'll pitch my idea about the positive effects of team sports for foster children and other disenfranchised  youth."

The majority of the lights are dimmed, leaving the normally colorful and bright walls dark and shadowy. Rey heads toward her desk, unwrapping the sandwich and taking a bite.

She presses the button on the side of her desk to raise it up so she can stand while she finishes eating. Glancing at the time, Rey groans. 12:17. 

By the time she finishes responding to all of Amilyn''s invites, it'll be 1. After the subway ride to her apartment and some much needed unwind time, Rey will be lucky to get three hours of sleep before she has to be back at the office. 

Her skin practically vibrates at the amount of caffeine she is going to need to order in the morning. And she's going to have to stop by an ATM to pull out cash.

Maybe even a bank. 

Because she is only giving Ben $22. Not a penny more.

***

The article Rey is reading when Kaydel and Rose come stumbling into the apartment has her close to tears. She wipes at her eyes quickly as Kaydel throws herself down onto the chair across from Rey. 

“Rey!” Kaydel shouts holding her arms up in a v above her head. “We missed you. You didn’t even respond to the last few messages I sent.”

“I know.” Rey grimaces. “I couldn’t get out of work. Amilyn had meeting after meeting.”

“It’s okay,” Kaydel smiles brightly at Rey. “I love you anyway.”

The best part of being best friends with Kaydel is that Rey knows without a doubt that Kaydel absolutely means everything she is saying. Kaydel doesn’t mince words. She doesn’t hide from the hard or uncomfortable things. She plows forward until the matter is addressed and resolved. And then she moves on.

“Well hopefully you can join us next time,” Rose offers, sitting on the arm rest of the chair next to Kaydel. “I need someone to try to help me keep up with her.”

Rey laughs, her eyes crinkling in the corners as she shakes her head. “We all know I cannot keep up with her.”

“Please,” Kaydel huffs. “No one can keep up with me. I am an unstoppable machine.”

“You need water,” Rose says, leaning over to kiss Kaydel’s cheek. “I’m going to get you water.”

Kaydel watches Rose as she gets up and walks into the kitchen. Rey hates the tiny bit of jealousy that fills her stomach. Kaydel’s whole face is lit up, her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are soft and warm and full of love. 

Rey wants that. 

She just doesn’t have time for that. 

Relationships had never been something Rey was particularly good at. In high school, she wasn’t secure enough at home to have time for dating. Planning on whether or not she could go on a date seemed trivial when she had to worry about whether or not she was going to have to switch foster homes if she didn’t prove her worth or caused any problems.

Then in college, Rey had been so focused on keeping her scholarships and her grades, she just didn’t have time. The fact that she had been assigned to be Kaydel’s roommate had been one of her only saving graces for socialization. 

Now, she has her job. She can’t even make it to drinks with two of her best friends. She eats dinner after midnight. 

Dating just isn’t something that is going to fit in her life any time soon.

“You should go to sleep,” Kaydel points out. The concern in her voice becomes apparent as she continues. “You look exhausted. When are you going in tomorrow?”

“6:30?” Rey debates out loud, tilting her head side-to-side as she thinks. “Maybe 7. I need to stop at an ATM, or maybe an actual bank, and I’ll still need to get Amilyn’s coffee and bagel.”

“Why do you need to go to a bank?” Kaydel asks, curling up her lips. “I can’t even think of the last time I went to a bank.”

“I need $22. Exactly.” Rey answers, shrugging. “It’s a… long story and we definitely do not have time for it tonight.”

“Tomorrow then,” Kaydel demands, her eyes narrow and Rey knows that she means business. “Dinner. Even if it’s a late dinner. You can catch me up.”

Rey nods giving Kaydel a tight smile. “Sounds perfect.”

Kaydel returns Rey’s smile before standing up and walking toward the kitchen. Rey leans her head back against the couch, sighing as she closes her laptop. The list of things Rey knows that Amilyn is going to want her to do tomorrow is daunting. Kaydal may have said that it could be a late dinner, but for Kaydel that was 7, maybe 8, not 11 or 12. 

Maybe Rey will be able to sneak off for a little bit though. Grabbing her phone and laptop, Rey heads toward her bedroom, debating going through Amilyn’s calendar to see if she can move anything around to guarantee her an hour or so around dinner to be free.

That’s when she hears Kaydal scream. 

Rey quickly tosses her phone and laptop on her bed before running toward Kaydel’s room. Flinging the door open, Rey’s heart feels like it’s about to beat out of her chest. “What the hell--”

The question dies on Rey’s lips when her brain connects what is happening. Rose is still on one knee and Rey’s not sure she’s ever seen someone look so happy. Until she looks at Kaydel, who is holding her left hand over her heart.

They are getting engaged.

“I said no,” Kaydel blurts, but the smile and happiness in her voice give her away. “I’m just kidding. I said yes. Of course I said yes.”

“You guys are getting married?” Rey asks in a breath. She’s not shocked by the news. Rose and Kaydel have been together for two years and they were both crazy about the other. But it still is forcing Rey to imagine what life is going to be like when Kaydel is Rose’s wife and not her best friend and roommate.

Which is selfish and wrong and Rey knows that, but despite a lot of counseling, Rey is terrified of being left alone again.

She pushes those thoughts to the side. 

Rose and Kaydel are going to get married. Her best friend. She’s going to be happy for them. She is happy for them.

Kaydel walks over to her, holding out the ring. It’s gorgeous and fits Kaydel’s personality perfectly with the medium-sized, princess cut diamond and the white gold color. It’s sharp and fierce.

“I’m so happy for you, Kay,” Rey whispers, pulling her into her arms. “I’m so, so happy for you.”

***

Ben walks into his apartment quietly, careful not to wake Poe up. It's already… fuck it's past two. He undoes his tie before sliding his suit jacket off and beginning to undo his pants to kick them off while he makes his way to the fridge. 

The fridge light is bright in the otherwise dark room. There isn't a lot in the fridge, Ben understands now why Poe was sending him a grocery list worth of texts. 

He grabs a beer, twisting the lid off and tossing the lid in the trash.

"Hey," Poe says, scaring the fuck out of Ben. 

"Shit!" Ben exclaims, slamming the fridge shut. "Jesus, Poe. Make some noise next time."

“I said hey,” Poe laughs. “I don’t know how much more noise you need me to make.”

“What are you even doing up?” Ben grabs two beers from the fridge and walks over to the living room, sitting on the couch across from Poe.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Poe says with a shrug, taking the beer Ben is holding out. “You’re home late.”

“Yeah. Snoke needed me to start on his kid’s science project.”

Poe stares at Ben before shaking his head. “You need to quit your job man.”

“It’s not that bad,” Ben winces at how defensive he sounds. “It’ll be worth it in the end.”

“You’ve been saying that for a while.”

Poe isn’t necessarily wrong. When Ben first took the job with Snoke he imagined that it would only be for six months, maybe a year. 

“Yeah, Ben finally says, nodding in agreement. “I have. The job has its perks though, so I’ll probably stay until something better comes along.”

Poe sighs. “Perks? Like what, working on a twelve year old’s science project until two in the morning?”

“I also made a guy cry for not being able to get a stain out of one of his shirts today,” Ben smiles. “Really helps make me feel good inside.”

“Find a new job,” Poe says, standing up from the chair. “One that doesn’t involve working until 2 am, doing a kid’s homework, and making someone else cry in the same day.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Ben twists his fingers around the bottle in his hand. “We’ll see.”

***

Rey looks down at her phone to check the time. 10:37. She missed dinner with Kaydel and Rose. Not that either of them were surprised when she told them that she hadn’t been able to move enough things around to make it. Rey hates how predictable and unreliable she has become to her friends.

It will eventually be worth it. At least, she hopes that it will be worth it.

She has exactly $22 on her. All in quarters. It might be a little dramatic, but Rey feels justified every time she thinks of the way Ben had mentioned adding interest on to the amount.

Rey sees Ben as soon as she steps off the elevator. He has bright markers covering his desk and a giant poster board in front of him. Logically, she knows that he is probably working on his boss’s kid’s homework, and she is grateful at that moment that Amilyn doesn’t have kids and that those kinds of tasks aren’t even on Rey’s radar.

That doesn’t stop her from teasing him as she walks up to him.

“Making electricity out of lemons?” Rey asks, leaning over the desk a bit to get a look at what he is writing. “How original. I’m sure you’ll get first place with an idea like that.”

Ben turns his head to the slide and glares at her. “You’re late.”

“I was busy.”

“You’ll have to give me a minute to calculate the interest for your… what three hour delay.”

Rey rolls her eyes, reaching into her bag to pull out the bag of coins. Ben stares at the bag for a moment, before looking back at her. Rey smiles, carefully stacking up the quarters until there are twenty two even piles covering his desk.  “$22 exactly. You’ll have to sue me for the interest.”

“Quarters?” Ben looks down at the coins on his desk again. His face is annoyingly void of any outrage or shock, but his voice sounds lower than it had been before. “I should sue you for being a nuisance.”

“You didn’t state any terms as to the payment method beyond cash.” Rey’s smile grows as she watches him begin to slide the coins into a drawer. 

“I suppose I made a mistake not clarifying that by cash I meant dollar bills,” Ben admits. “But I also mentioned interest and you had no problem ignoring that, so I’m sure you’d have ignored that part too.”

“Probably,” Rey agrees. “Consider it your good luck that I didn’t have enough pennies to make it work that way.”

“Oh and I’m supposed to believe you had 88 quarters just lying around your place?” Ben finishes clearing off the quarters from his desk and closes the drawer. 

“No, I only had two dollars worth of quarters that I could find. I went to the bank for the other twenty.”

“Of course you did.” Ben laughs, shaking his head. “Next time I’ll be more specific.

Rey drops the empty bag into the garbage can next to her feet. “What makes you think there’ll be a next time?”

“Just a feeling.” Ben turns around in his chair, opening a cabinet door on the desk that ran along the wall behind him. He pulls out a bottle of alcohol. “Drink?”

“I’m still working.”

“It’s past ten,” Ben points out, setting the bottle on his desk. “Have anything better to do right now anyway?”

Rey doesn’t. She really doesn’t. Amilyn is going to be on this phone call for at least another hour and then she will either go home or start reviewing some of the submissions that have been stacking up in her email.

One drink really wouldn’t hurt. Ben’s smiling at her and it’s a little unfair that someone as annoying and frustrating as he has been is also very attractive at the same time.

“I guess not,” Rey says, sitting down in the chair on the other side of Ben’s desk. “But just one drink.”

***

Ben doesn’t say anything as Rey reaches for the bottle, pouring what he is pretty sure is her third drink into her cup. It’s well after midnight at this point, and neither Snoke or Rey’s boss had called for them or needed anything.

It’s nice, talking to Rey. She’s cute and passionate when she talks about her job. Her face is a little flushed from the alcohol. Ben can’t quite remember the last time he just talked to someone that he wasn’t related to or wasn’t Poe.

“Anyways, that’s what I want to do,” Rey continues, and Ben tries to remember what she had been talking about before he got lost in his own thoughts. “I want to write articles that matter. The ones that people read and are inspired to do something because of it.”

“Have you submitted any articles to your boss?” Ben asks.

“No,” Rey holds onto the vowel for a few seconds and shakes her head. “I haven’t, God, I haven’t actually written anything since I graduated. I never have time. Amilyn’s schedule isn’t very forgiving. When I’m not working, I normally just want to sleep. Or to have a conversation with someone who can’t just tell me what to do and expect me to do it. I don’t even know what it is like to have a social life anymore. I think this is the longest conversation I’ve had in months.”

“Same,” Ben gives her a small smile. “I was just thinking that. My days and nights consist of making Snoke’s life easier and doing what he wants. It doesn’t even feel like my life anymore.”

“I can’t believe I’m about to admit this,” Rey squints her eyes at Ben, as if she’s sizing him up. She takes another drink from her cup. “Sometimes I wish Amilyn had a… fuck, I wish she had a life. A boyfriend? More family events or friend events to attend? But she has been avoiding them for reasons I’m not going to even get into, but God, I just imagine all of the things I could do if she were busy doing things that aren’t work.”

“You could go on a date,” Ben responds, tipping his cup toward her.

“A date,” Rey huffs, shaking her head. “I can’t even think of the last time I went on a date. I can’t even make dinner with my roommate to celebrate her engagement.”

Rey looks down at her cup, watching the liquid move around as she swirled the glass. “Engagement,” Rey repeats, eyes wide. “I have no idea what I’m going to do to be able to make it to all of the events. I don’t think Amilyn is going to care that I have an engagement party to go to if it doesn’t fit into her schedule.”

“Snoke is the same way,” Ben taps a finger on the desk. “I missed my parents 30th anniversary a few months ago. I asked for it off and everything. I was almost out the door when Snoke grabbed me and said he needed an analysis on some new proposal he received and his normal analyst wasn’t answering his phone, and he told me to do it.”

“I get it,” Rey nods. “It sucks, but I get it.”

“You’d think we’d be able to do something about it,” Ben points out, his eyebrows knitting while he thinks. “I have access to basically Snoke’s entire life. I’m assuming it’s the same with you and Amilyn?” He pauses and waits for Rey’s response, she nods and he continues. “So in theory we should be able to coordinate their schedules to give us a break?”

Rey tilts her head to the side as she ponders what Ben is saying. “I mean, you’re right. In theory that would work. But I have to be available for all things scheduled that are work related, and Amilyn doesn’t have much of a personal life these days.”

Rey sits up straighter, her eyes widening slightly, a devious smile pulling at her lips. “Ben. The answer is so obvious.”

“The answer?” Ben asks with a small chuckle. 

“To our problem,” Rey says as if it’s obvious. “We Cyrano them. It’s perfect. We know everything about them. We know their schedules, their favorite foods and restaurants. We know what drives them crazy and irritates them. We can do this. And then when they are with each other… we can be free, Ben.”

“I’m not sure I’m really following you here.”

“We set them up.” Rey rolls her eyes. “It’s the perfect plan.”

“You’re drunk,” Ben points out, nodding his head down to the mostly empty bottle between them. “That would never work.”

“You’re wrong,” Rey says with a pointed nod. “But even if you are right, which you are not, because you are wrong, what’s the harm in trying?”

Ben doesn’t say anything for a few minutes. He finishes his drink, setting his empty glass next to Rey’s. 

“Maybe,” Ben concedes, “What’s your plan exactly? I don’t know that Snoke and Amilyn have ever even met and they’ve worked in the same building for years.”

“Leave it to me,” Rey’s grin is big and wide. “I’ll come up with something.”

“I’m not saying I’m agreeing to do this,” Ben clarifies, watching as Rey stands up and stretches, her shirt pulling up slightly as she raised her arms. 

“I know,” Rey says, grabbing her bag. “But you will. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Rey places her hand on his shoulder and squeezes it gently before she walks past him and then she’s gone. 

Ben opens the drawer that they shoved the change into and he smiles to himself. He’s not quite sure what he’s getting himself into, but he does know that if Rey really does come up with an idea to set their bosses up, which is probably a really terrible idea, he’s not sure he’s going to be able to tell her no. 

***

Rey brings Ben coffee the next morning. She assumes he likes it black with too much sweetener, and when he smiles after his first drink Rey feels a little smug for being able to figure it out. 

“Let’s go for a walk.” Rey says, grabbing his free hand and tugging on it. “I have a plan.”

Ben let’s her pull at his hand and stands up from his desk. “I only have twenty minutes before Snoke’s meeting ends.”

“Perfect.” Rey drops his hand, blushing slightly as she walks in front of him toward the elevator. “Just enough time to get some steps added to Amilyn’s watch and to fill you in on my absolute amazing plan that you are definitely going to be impressed by and will agree to.”

Ben laughs, smiling as he gets into the elevator and stands next to Rey. “We’ll see.”

The sun is bright and the air is already warm when they step outside. Rey has to walk a little bit faster than normal to keep up with Ben’s long strides. 

“So, tell me about this plan that is apparently so wonderful that you’re absolutely sure I’ll agree to it.”

“Okay, so it’s the same plan as last night,” Rey admits, taking a drink of her tea. “But I’ve thought about it more and I know that we can do this.”

Ben sighs, shaking his head. “I don’t know, Rey. We can’t just magically make our bosses like each other.”

“Sure we can,” Rey argues. “We get them to meet. Then we listen to them and their cues and go from there. That’s the beauty of this, Ben, we will know if things are going a little wrong and can adjust the plan accordingly.”

Ben stops walking and looks down at her. “You really think this will work?”

“I do.”

“How do you propose we get them to meet?” Ben shakes his head as he asks the question and Rey can see the lingering doubt on his face.

“I… I haven’t quite figured that part out yet,” Rey responds, quickly holding her hand up as Ben opens his mouth, she assumes to argue with her. “But I’ve seen a lot of romantic comedies and I can figure this out. Just give me a minute.”

They start walking again, back toward the building. Rey finishes her tea and tosses it into a garbage can. 

“I’ve got it!” Rey exclaims, as they step into the elevator. “We just need to get them in a small space, stuck for a few minutes, so that they have to talk to one another.”

“And how do you think we will pull that off?” 

Rey shakes her head, glaring at him. “Why do I have to figure out all the details?”

“This is your crazy plan,” Ben points out, pressing the button for his floor, and then Rey’s. “I’m not even sure I’m fully on board.”

“You are,” Rey smiles. “So, help with some of the details already. Are there any rooms that lock from the outside? Maybe we can ask maintenance? Do you think they’d think that was weird?”

Ben laughs, tipping his head back against the elevator wall. 

“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath. “I hate that I have an idea. The elevator. If we can get them both in the elevator, we can get Creepy Threepio to stop it.”

“Creepy Threepio?” Rey asks, scrunching her nose up. “Who is Creepy Threepio?”

“He works in maintenance,” Ben laughs. “He’s, well, he’s a bit creepy. But I think he’d do it. I’ll ask him today and let you know what he says.”

“What did I tell you?” Rey beams at him as the doors to the elevator open. “You’re totally on board.”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Ben pinches the bridge of his nose. “But I’m willing to give it a shot.” 

Ben steps out of the elevator while holding his hand out to stop the doors from closing. “Hand me your phone so I can give you my number.”

Rey pulls her phone from her back jean pocket and unlocks it before handing it over to him. She watches as he puts in his number and hands the phone back to her.

“I’ll text you the details later,” he says, dropping his arm and the doors start to close. “I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this.”

The doors close and Rey grins sliding her phone back into her jeans. She can’t believe he agreed either.

[citrineghost]

A Letter to WordPress

Dear WordPress,

Tumblr has been around for a good while now and many of us have been here since the beginning (or close to it). It’s become something of a comfort and a home base for many. You can understand then why it’s so terrifying and tension-setting when a new owner comes around.

This website has been through a lot of changes, very few of them good in recent years. I want to open up a dialogue from the user base about our feelings and desires surrounding this site, because to so many of us, not only its design and function, but its success and future are a big deal.

Obviously not all of the things I list below will be universal opinions, but I’ll try to outline some of the things I’ve seen the majority of users want. I’ll also throw in some things that are more personal, because I can’t claim to know everything the rest of the users want, but I can tell you where I see obvious problems.

First and foremost, here’s an obvious one. You can’t really go anywhere on Tumblr without knowing: we want the bots and the nazis gone. We need some kind of captcha system for every time someone wants to include a hyperlink in a post or response. Until the staff count gets higher, I would honestly suggest closing down the report system for everything but bots, nazis, and death threats/suicide bait.

Make NSFW content welcome again. Outside of porn bots, the pervasiveness of NSFW content is slim to none. As long as minors and those with ‘NSFW’ blacklisted aren’t seeing the NSFW content, there’s nothing wrong with it being here. A large number of the people posting NSFW content on here are artists who use this content to make a living on commissions. The ban has done nothing but make valuable members of the Tumblr community leave and take their art elsewhere. The focus should be cracking down on anyone who isn’t properly tagging NSFW content with ‘NSFW’. If the focus is put on that, the problem with NSFW content will be null.

Please keep Tumblr unintegrated with other social media. Most users will agree, the anonymity is such a huge part of what draws us to Tumblr. Other people only know what we tell them and it’s very appealing for our real life accounts (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc.) to be completely separate. When users want to share links to other accounts, they can do so easily with links on their blogs.

Replace ads with either, better, more sensible ads or members content. A large part of the ads on Tumblr make absolutely zero sense just by looking at them. Not to mention, they’re all completely unfit for the user base. I’ve seen weight-loss ads (harmful to the many people on the site recovering from eating disorders) and ads for products most people wouldn’t need or want until their forties. Most of the user base is 13-35, if I had to guess. I can tell you right now, you would make more money and the user base would be much happier if ads were removed in favor of members content. Adding a paid membership that allows users to gain access to new features (rather than restricting what’s already here) would be a huge boost in morale and company income. Use that income to improve the site. Don’t get comfortable making more than the bare minimum in profit until the website is functioning reasonably well. Hint: it’s not right now.

Keep the base functions of Tumblr. Don’t try and get radical, hoping big changes will excite the community. They won’t. We’re creatures of habit and we just want memes, fandom, and relatable nonsense. Keep reblogging, replies, customizable blogs, tags, and likes functionally the same.

Be receptive to bug reports and post change logs so that the community knows that they’re being addressed and fixed.

These are the obvious pleas of the community. Please keep in mind that the heart of Tumblr is in its users and if you ostracize us, there will be nothing left. We love this website and we want to see it thrive as much as anyone. We just don’t want to sacrifice the spirit of the community in the process.

Read more under the cut if you want to see some more of my own personal suggestions. I’d love for other users to sound off in the replies with whether they agree with any of the pleas or suggestions and also give their own!

Okay, so, here are some personal opinions that are by no means the voice of the community. I think they’re pretty sensible, but what do I know?

Change back the color. I hate this saturated navy color and I’m pretty sure a lot of others do too. I’m part of the disabled community and I know and have seen people saying that these extremely contrasted colors that were added are making their Tumblr experience worse. It gives people headaches due to light sensitivity and, frankly, it’s ugly. If you’d like to cater to those who are visually impaired/colorblind, that’s fantastic! Do so with an account setting that turns on higher contrast mode or adds patterns to things to make them distinguishable.

Add an option to blog suggestions and posts that have shown up on your dash from followed tags that says “Stop Suggesting This.” I’ve been suggested a number of blogs that I’m not interested in following. I don’t want to block the user, but I do want some different suggestions and for those blogs to stop showing up in suggestions. I’m also tired of seeing the same post twenty times from a tag I follow. There is currently an option that says “This particular posts sucks.” While I think that was a great attempt at catering to the community, I don’t want to use it because my intuition says that there’s a negative connotation. Does me saying the post sucks make it show up less for other people? Does it lose popularity? I can’t tell. The only thing I know is that I don’t want to say that a good post sucks just to make it quit showing up on my dash.

Implement some of the features that XKit uses. I would bet at least a quarter, if not more, of Tumblr users use XKit to make using Tumblr less painful. That shouldn’t be the case. Tumblr should have these functionality options available in dashboard settings.

A very hot take here that many might disagree with: Make notes viewable more like mobile has them. As it is, it’s hard to tell which ones I’ve seen on desktop. It can be tricky on mobile too, honestly, but it’s easier than on desktop. I would also heavily suggest making the unseen notifications darker so that they stand out and making a button to indicate that you’ve seen them.

Keep the dash, messages, notes, and profile as separate processes similar to how mobile has it. The trek all the way down the damn dashboard is a long one. I want to be able to see notes and messages in full size without losing my dash progress. When I switch back I want to be right where I was. I understand if this one isn’t possible or practical. It was just something I like about mobile over desktop but I’m aware that they’re two different beasts with different capabilities.

As far as the aforementioned members features, I do have some ideas, but I can’t guarantee they’re the best the user base has to offer. I’m sure others could think of better. Anyway, some things I’ve thought of are groups/clubs, digital currency, and separate dashboards. So, as it stands, You can have multiple blogs on one account. People can follow them separately. That’s fantastic. What would also be nice though, is being allowed to make separate dashboards. This would probably take up another chunk of server space, so I understand if it isn’t feasible right now, but I would jot it down. The ability to separate shitposts, aesthetic imagery, fandom content, and NSFW would be amazing. If you follow a huge number of blogs, like me, you could even make a friends dash so that you don’t miss your friends’ posts. It would just be a matter of allowing people to add and name their new dashboards. Then, when they go to follow people, it prompts them to choose what dash their content goes to. You could even simplify it by making the follow button default to the main dash, but adding a little dropdown arrow beside it. You could then choose which dash to add them to from a list. Below are some bad paint-drawn concept drawings.

Anyway, I hope this has all been helpful in some way. I’m fairly certain that WordPress will never actually read this, but it was cathartic to write and I hope it will be cathartic for someone else to read.

Sincerely, birb-ghost

[cosmiclatte28]

Been Through

For my fellow Aeris family, this piece is written for you. I finally let go the great thanks I want to tell to every EXO-L out there 💕💕

For non-aeris.. feel free to read too! I am just spilling my bottled emotion about this wonderful fandom.

BEEN THROUGH (lyrics are translated to english, feel free to listen to it as you read through my piece) (/▽＼)

here we go <3

I’ll get used to it, like catching a cold again The ash gray light pushes through and endlessly passes by But still

You sigh in heavy relief as your body finally descend on the thin mattress in your small shared room. Resting your head for a moment, closing your eyes and letting go all the burden today has given to you, you try your best to find the small peaceful moment you missed. Life has never been easy after leaving your motherland to travel through pacific oceans to land on the land of opportunity. School was fine, but the culture shock and home sick were challenging.

I must get through it Cuz it’ll pass, it’ll pass Just need a moment Cuz it’ll pass, it’ll pass Cuz it’ll pass, already

Your phone buzzed, the notification flashes with a short message

“Have you eaten dinner yet?” this time from your closest family member.

You typed a quick “yes”, while holding back the grumbling sound from your stomach. Your meal plan was still loaded, you’re just tired to bring your body for a meal.

In the grey sky, there is a brighter light

Behind the dark clouds, there is a dazzling light

You glance to the bedside beside yours, your room mate has not come back yet. Night class or maybe in the library, that’s what you thought.

Your eyes close one more time, letting go off the pain, grief, and stress away. Next month will be your mid term weeks. Your brain tries its best to not think of any responsibilities not to mention tasks and home works. You’re dying to have a good rest.

Your phone lights up one more time, this time along with the annoying buzz of an alarm. You bring your phone to your face and turn the reminder off.

“Greet your friends on Instagram and update your tumblr. Check along wattpad for any requests.”

A small smile appears from your lips. The bulking notifications from your fandom families, are waiting for you impatiently. You recollect yourself, energy, and mood. Chugging down a bottle of water, your fingers slowly scroll through today’s waiting replies.

You shine like the stars You light up my heart At the end of today’s hardships Brightly shine on me

You started off a blog and an account for fun, for your fandom purposes, and for an escape. Since then, you slowly make new friends, listen to their stories, and you even pour your imagination over fanfictions where you don’t mind if anyone read it. From light conversations, to deep talks, you learn how diverse and wonderful your new friends are. Soon friends turn into families, and families help you cope up with life.

Aside your parents and siblings, your fandom friends you made over the internet are the sources of energies you needed. They are your mood boosters; they are the reason you keep going on.

In a blink of an eye, your hands are dancing over the comment sections, replying and trolling people. You find back the fire in your soul and the laugh in your lips. Though everyone came from different part of the globe, with awful time difference, and various culture, you relate with them and vice versa.

Snap out of it, get up and brush it off Pain is just a passing storm to me I must get through it all Cuz it’ll pass, it’ll pass Just need a moment Cuz it’ll pass, it’ll pass Cuz it’ll pass, already

One talk about hurdles of taking pre-med, another casual talk to comfort a friend losing a bet, another deep quick talk to those afraid coming out in their true colors. Within one hour, you’ve felt your life change. You realize everyone has their battle; everyone has their own challenges.

The alarm went off one more time, and you sadly have to stop the social media time and stick your nose to some pages or review a module and two.

In the grey sky, there is a brighter light Behind the dark clouds, there is a dazzling light You shine like the stars You light up my heart At the end of today’s hardships Brightly shine on me This isn’t the end Better days will come At the end of that day You’ll shine on me like this

Your wallpaper flash the picture of nine men standing over a big stage, surrounding them are thousands of silver lights. The silver ocean, the one ocean you want to be a part of and drown yourself in. You cheer yourself up. Til the day you can be a part of that silver ocean, chanting fan chants in unison, seeing your role models eye to eye, and hugging those families standing on your side with the light sticks, you won’t give up.

The sun is behind the clouds that cover the light Without change, you shine on me forever The quiet air, the warm wind They’re all there, always in the same place In the gray sky, there is a brighter light Behind the dark clouds, there is a dazzling light

Those nine men had a rough journey to climb the mountain where they’re now standing on. If they can do it, you have no reason to stop your steps. They took one step at a time, looking into our eyes when they think of stopping. And with that one glance, they saw the silver ocean, and they fight back the urge to quit.

If they do that for you, why can’t you do that for them?

You shine like the stars You light up my heart At the end of today’s hardships Brightly shine on me

EXO keep climbing the painful mountain climb, with Aeris supporting them from behind. Now why don’t you do the same?

You always motivate yourself by picturing a similar scene. You’re climbing your own mountain, and if you take a small look over your shoulder, you can see the lights in their nine pairs of eyes holding back tears as they feel very proud to have a fan… a baby… a child… or a friend like you. They are proud for every milestone their supporters achieve, even more than proud when they discover you can keep going on… thanks to their effort to stick together for Aeris.

Until the day we can stand side by side with our idols, heads held up high, smiling through the worth it blood and scars, and hands over one another shoulders: congratulating each other for not stopping for making it to the top… let us all stay and support each other forever. Even when we reach that highest point of our life one day, please remember the smiles and chants this fandom and EXO had given to you. Please remember the tears, the laugh, and the smile.

If one day we lost our way, look around and follow the silver ocean. If Peter Pan guides you back with the second star to the right, then EXO and Aeris will guide you back with our one and only silver ocean.

Brightly shine on me

To you, reading this… keep on going. I know you can finish it and I believe in you. All that’s left is to believe in yourself the same way EXO believes in us. We’re family here, brothers and sisters, together in this one big family called Aeris, let me tell you I am always here to discuss or listen to your pains or love story or any dry jokes. I am here, if you need a motivation, a listener, and a friend. I am here and I am staying til the end.

The end

[xsparklingravenx]

the broken mirror

Title: the broken mirror

Fandom: Persona 5 Royal

Characters: Goro Akechi, Akira Kurusu

Rating: T

Word Count: 5,582

Summary: “Get to the point, Akira,” Akechi said, his name dripping from his mouth like poison. “We both know that you didn’t blow up my phone with notifications for a simple outing.”

“No, I didn’t,” Akira replied, so slow to speak. It reminded him a little of himself, selecting words for the best possible outcome, wearing a thousand different masks to hide his true self. “But what I want to discuss, it’s not something we should do over text. Or phone.”

Major spoilers for the entirety of the third semester. Akechi and Akira, and the truth of the world through one set of eyes.

AO3

The first time Akechi’s phone rang that evening, he ignored it.

It buzzed through the wood on the table, shifting as it vibrated and lit up, casting a light on the cracked ceiling of his shitty rented apartment. The pi-pi-pi noise of its incessant ringtone made him wrinkle his nose in disgust, but it was an easy thing to forget. The laptop in front of him, containing all his notes on their current situation, commandeered the majority of his attention.

Reality was a mess. He was back from the dead through unknown means. A paltry conversation with a paltry human being was the last thing on his mind.

The second time his phone rang, he spared a careless glance its way. Careless, because he knew who was calling, and careless, because he knew it would destroy any of his focus. There was only one person who had his number who would actively call him, and unsurprisingly, it was his name that had flashed up.

KURUSU AKIRA.

Akechi stared at the phone until it stopped ringing again, the screen fading back to its usual, factory-set background image. Most other teenagers his age had images set there. Takamaki, he knew, had a picture of herself and that girl who had been involved in the Kamoshida case. Sakura had a group shot of the entire cast of Featherman R. Even Akira himself had a photo set there, a ridiculous picture of Morgana gorging himself on the largest plate of fatty tuna that Akechi had ever seen in all eighteen years of his life.

In the silence he tapped away at his keyboard, connecting theories and cross-checking intel. Takuto Maruki’s name was scattered about like a constellation across his document. As his phone screen switched off, he was left mostly in the darkness, only the light of his laptop screen left to illuminate the room.

The third time his phone rang, he blocked the number.

It was an easy thing to do. He reached over, unlocked the screen, and with a few taps Akira Kurusu was barred from contacting him. It wasn’t the first time he’d done it, and it wouldn’t be the last. Sometimes, when he left too many messages on read in the Phantom Thieves’ group chat, the members would individually leak into his private messages. Never Sakura or Okumura, but sometimes Takamaki, or Yoshizawa, and always, always Akira.

It went in cycles. They’d contact him and he’d block them. Then he’d require them, and he’d unblock them, enter their group chat, and lurk in the shadows. They were not friends. They were not even teammates. They were colleagues at best, their relationship one based out of a mutual need to solve their current predicament, and nothing more.

That meant he didn’t need unnecessary distractions.

He returned to his work. Websites, tabs. The Phan-site’s question was stark against his backlit screen. WOULD YOU JOIN THE PHANTOM THIEVES?

He scoffed, scrolled down, and then slammed his laptop lid shut. In the darkness, he grabbed his phone, unlocking the screen again to stare at Akira’s name.

“Who’s more pathetic?” he asked. “You for continuing this ridiculous charade, or me for letting you?”

No answer, because Akira wasn’t a mind reader, as much as he seemed like one.

No answer, because Akechi had blocked his number.

No answer, because Akechi didn’t want to give him the opportunity to give one anyway.

 --

 Akechi didn’t have fond memories. Tolerable memories, yes, but fond memories pushed it. Fond memories suggested that he’d formed an attachment to them, which was an impossibility. He made sure to keep a healthy distance away from anything that might have tampered with his mission, or, anything that might have twisted his view of the world. He achieved that through cool detachment, masked by his cheery, ace-detective persona, his flawless disguise.

One of those tolerable memories happened to involve Akira Kurusu and a jazz bar, the songstress’s dulcet tones melting into the air as they both tended to their non-alcoholic beverages of choice. Akechi’s was sweet. It wasn’t that he favoured that particular taste over anything else on the menu, but multiple people at school had mentioned the flavour. He jumped on the trend like he did all others; quickly, and without thinking.

“Is it good?” Akira said. “Your drink, I mean.”

“I can certainly see why it’s popular,” Akechi lied. “All these flavours, exploding on my tongue…truly, a delectable experience. I suppose that’s what is needed to appeal to the masses, though. Something that is universal, that can be really enjoyed.”

“You’re funny, you know,” Akira said, swishing the little cocktail umbrella that the waiter had put in his drink. He had that smirk on his face, the one that screamed that he was trouble. Hell in a handbasket. A devil wearing human skin.

“Oh? Certainly the people who chat about me online seem to think so.”

“No, not like that.” Akira leant back in his chair, sipping his drink slowly, savouring each drop. “It’s the way you use words. You fire them off like they’re infinite ammo in a video game.”

It was easy to figure out a response for something like that. Inwardly, Akechi thought that Akira was a fool. Outwardly, he grinned, several blocks of laughter falling from his lips. To the trained ear, it might have sounded artificial, but Akechi could blame that on the TV studios, on the fact that he needed that laugh to appeal to the millions who watched him from afar. “Are you trying to tell me that I’m babbling, Kurusu-kun?”

Akira watched him over the top of that tiny umbrella, the low-light of the jazz bar reflected off his glasses. Fake, of course, much like his honest high-schooler act, but then, who was Akechi to judge based on appearances? “No, I’m just saying that maybe you could do with being more honest.”

It was more difficult to formulate a response for a statement like that. In the half-second he had to think one up, Akechi ran through a thousand potential reactions. More laughter? Stare in shock? A question in response? A joking answer? There was no way that Akira could know the truth behind him, behind his actions or his words or his façade. There was no need to be worried, but selecting the perfect comeback was vital. He needed to keep him in his pocket, or everything would be over.

In the end, joking answer won out. With a grin, Akechi said, “Why, I don’t know what you mean. What would make you think I’m lying?”

“Just something I was thinking,” Akira said, giving the most subtle of shrugs. “All those words just makes what you’re saying difficult to follow, like you’re diverting. That, and you’re wrinkling your nose every time you take a sip. If you hate it that much, don’t drink it.”

Akechi put the glass down, his own paper umbrella bobbing in the liquid. Hate was too strong a word for such an innocuous thing. Hate was a word reserved for Shido, for the foster families who had made his life living hell, for the people who dared try and stand in his way as he did all he could to make his world manifest.

Hatred was what he felt towards Akira Kurusu. The drink? That had done nothing wrong other than being a little off for his tastes. Akira? Oh. He’d done everything.

“It would be a waste,” Akechi said. “And I’m certain that there must be something to like about it. My classmates often speak of this flavour.”

Akira laughed then, a genuine brand unlike Akechi’s bootlegged version. “And if your classmates said that the fall from Skytree was amazing, would you still take the leap?”

Akechi nearly scowled then, only just covering it up at the last moment. “Are you suggesting that I’d endanger my own life for the whims of others? I’m afraid not, Kurusu-kun. Still, what a drastic change in conversation, all over a simple drink. Tell me then, is yours any better?”

Leaning close, Akira offered his drink to Akechi, pressing the glass into his gloved hand as he snatched the sweet drink off the table. It was a simple exchange, one beverage for another, and yet Akira remained close. “Try it for yourself.”

He downed the rest of Akechi’s drink in one go. All of that sickly-sweet fizz, gone in a moment. Akechi looked at the drink he’d been handed, the one he hadn’t chosen for himself, and simply shook his head in an exasperated show. “Well, I never have been one to turn down a challenge.”

Putting the glass to his lips, he tipped his head back. The fruity mix washed away the saccharine flavour of what he’d had before, a refreshing, yet unexpected taste. When he was finished, he put the glass down on the table, meeting Akira’s expectant gaze.

“So,” Akira said. “What did you think of that one?”

Akechi leant his elbow on the table and rested his head in his hand. With his left hand, he plucked the umbrella from the now-empty glass, regarding it with disinterest as he said, “It was good.”

He couldn’t see Akira past his focus on the tiny, paper accessory. That meant he definitely didn’t see the self-assured smirk on his face.

 --

 It took him half an hour to unblock the number. Half an hour of opening and closing the lid of his laptop. Half an hour of getting up to check the window and then sitting back down. Half an hour of locking and unlocking his phone, checking social media idly instead of doing the work he knew should be taking priority.

It took another fifteen minutes for the first text to show up.

KURUSU AKIRA                9:33

Have you unblocked me yet?

Perceptive, but not a mind reader, Akechi reminded himself. He sat at the table, staring at the screen a while before finally resigning himself to a begrudging answer.

AKECHI GORO                 9:37

I’d congratulate you on your clever insight, but we both know that’s bullshit. Regrettably, you’re just good at figuring out patterns. What were you doing for the last half hour? Sending that text every time I crossed your mind?

He set the phone on the table and tried to ignore it. There was no immediate reply. Back when he’d been a part of the Phantom Thieves the first time, there were often long swaths of time before anyone would get back to him when he offered up information in the group chat. Now he knew that they likely had a second one to scheme against him, to laugh at how he was such a fool for falling into their well laid trap. It wasn’t something that stung. He’d been the one who had set out to betray them, after all.

When his phone vibrated again, he sighed. There was Akira’s name once again, because he didn’t know how to leave things well alone. A blight on the background-less screen that Akechi was so used to.

KURUSU AKIRA                9:38

Something like that.

His responses were always infuriatingly short. It wasn’t something he reserved for Akechi, he seemingly treated everyone that way, group chat or not. Akechi deliberated on whether or not to send a follow-up, which turned out to be a mistake. In the time he spent trying to figure out what on earth to say, his phone started ringing again, buzzing through the wood.

He hit the busy button immediately.

AKECHI GORO                 9:40

I’m not picking up. Stop wasting your time.

Responding to him was defeating the point entirely, but Akechi was already a lost cause in that regard. He chuckled, low and bitter, his right hand brushing through his hair to grip at it as he leant over the phone, the little bubble indicating that Akira was typing popping up instantly. It felt like a game. An illicit game that he should have had no interest in playing.

KURUSU AKIRA             9:41

So you want to talk over text only?

AKECHI GORO               9:41

I’d rather not speak to you at all.

KURUSU AKIRA             9:42

Says the one who came to me when the world went to hell.

Akechi’s fingers ghosted over the keyboard, but he didn’t actually type anything. He wanted to snap at Akira, to tell him that he'd gone to him because he was the only one who’d retained his sanity. He didn’t, because raging at someone didn’t have quite the same effect when it was done via toneless messaging.

His fingers itched for his sword. How he wanted to call upon Loki and fight like a beast in the confines of the Meta-verse. He’d spent years venting that way. Blood spilled in his quest to feel like a human being, only it never worked. He only ever felt like more of a monster, a monster he enjoyed being.

The phone buzzed again. Akechi gazed at the message with resentment gnawing in his gut, at himself, at Akira, he wasn’t entirely sure. Discerning his true feelings wasn’t as easy as it used to be. Once, it had been clear-cut. Once, it had been the world against him, and there had only been one way to survive that; detach, shut-down, hate everything.

Morgana, in his whiny little voice, played on repeat in his ears. You don’t really hate Joker, do you?

He switched screens, finger hovering over the block button again. In the end, he switched back, the message still on the screen, plain-as-day.

KURUSU AKIRA             9:45

This is because of what happened today, isn’t it?

 --

 In movies, in shows, in fiction, the heroic sacrifice was big. It was showy. In the old reruns of Featherman, often out of order, it still managed to be righteous, to be tragic, to be justified.

For Goro Akechi, it was lonely.

Back to the wall, the one he’d just dropped to stop the Phantom Thieves getting in his way. Shadows and his own cognitive puppet ready to rip him apart, just before him. His own darkened garb a shroud around him, not a shield anymore, but just a shame. A testament to his true, undesirable self.

A toast, to Masayoshi Shido for having a child every bit as ugly as him. Both of them, murderers. Both of them, scum of the earth. Shido might have put the gun in Akechi’s hand, but Akechi had done the deeds. He’d been used, but oh, hadn’t he put himself in that position?

The truth was so; in those final moments, he wondered if he’d been wrong. To decry the Phantom Thieves for believing so strongly in their bonds, to turn on them as savagely as he had. All along, Akechi had hid his jealousy and envy of Akira behind sugared smiles and soft words. He was everything he wanted to be. He had everything he’d ever wanted.

Taking the bullet for them, letting them run, it was no selfless act. It was one last ditch attempt to be the hero in a story that he’d chosen to play the villain in, and even then, karma had to be a bitch about it. What was supposed to be a magnificent death in a blaze of glory was instead a lonely, bitter end for the ace-detective who had given his all to revenge.

(It was not, and never had been for Akira. Morgana’s words rang hollow. Crow and Joker, Akechi and Akira, they were each other’s antithesis, that was how it was supposed to be. To give his life for his after everything would have been laughable.)

Or at least, that was what he remembered. When he came to, it was Christmas Eve and Shido had been taken down. Sae Nijima was talking about getting Akira to turn himself in across the street, and Akechi, with no memory of how he’d gotten there or how he’d even survived the cruise ship, had marched straight over and taken the metaphorical bullet for him a second time.

It was what he thought about all those nights later, after he’d sought out Akira and Maruki had taken Yoshizawa hostage. As he laid in bed, phone on his pillow at his side, he knew it was that which had tipped him off that something was wrong.

His version of sacrifice meant that he was destined to be lonely, forgotten, discarded. And yet, in turning himself into Sae, he’d found a sense of satisfaction, like finally, finally, he’d done something right.

He’d turned himself in not for his own sick sense of righteousness, but he’d done it for Akira—and there was no way that life would be so kind as to grant him the opportunity to save him. Not in a way that would save them both.

--

His phone was ringing again.

The ringtone was an annoyance, something he needed to change before it grated too badly on his nerves and he threw the entire thing at the wall. Akira’s name flashed up once more like a curse. The block button was nearby. A single tap of it, and he could open his laptop and stare at the Phan-site’s question for another twenty minutes instead of working.

He answered the call.

“I didn’t expect you to pick up,” came Akira’s voice, crystal clear on the other end.

“Yeah, well,” Akechi said. “I didn’t expect you to try calling again. You’re a fool, Joker. It’s quite tiring.”

No energy to it. He didn’t have much to inject in his voice anymore, not unless they were in the midst of fighting Shadows, anyway. That kind of mania he couldn’t hope to reclaim in his day-to-day. There wasn’t any point in it anyway.

He heard Morgana’s voice in the background, asking if Akira was talking to Akechi, asking after him like he was part of their ridiculous little team, like his well-being mattered. Akira’s voice broke away from the receiver for a moment as he answered the first question, and then came close instead of answering the second.

“Don’t call me that when we’re not on a mission,” Akira said. Akechi laughed humourlessly. “We’re not Joker and Crow when we’re here.”

“Would you prefer Kurusu-kun then? Or, perhaps Akira, seeing as we’re on such amicable terms now? Why, I’ll even let you refer to me as my given name, if that’s what you wish.”

“Akechi—” Akira cut himself off, and Akechi felt him wince down the line. “Call me whatever you want, as long as it isn’t Joker.”

“The same to you,” Akechi replied, drumming his fingers against the table. It felt so real beneath his touch. Or was it that he felt real against it? “Come now, Akira. You didn’t call me up to make small talk. Get to the point.”

A hesitant moment. How odd. Akira wasn’t the type to think twice. “Are you free tonight?”

He had a date with the Phan-site, but that wasn’t going all that well. Lots of staring on his end, and no answers for it when it asked him questions. His document on Maruki was a lost cause. “That depends on what you’re about to ask me.”

“Penguin Sniper. There’s a billiards table with our name on it.”

His offer sounded too good to be true. There was a moment when he wondered, maybe it is. Maruki was offering them the world on a silver platter. But no. It wasn’t perfect just yet. There were still flaws in Akira’s reality, still flaws in his own. Akira hadn’t called him up with billiards in mind. There was something going unspoken in this simple back and forth.

“Get to the point, Akira,” Akechi said, his name dripping from his mouth like poison. “We both know that you didn’t blow up my phone with notifications for a simple outing.”

“No, I didn’t,” Akira replied, so slow to speak. It reminded him a little of himself, selecting words for the best possible outcome, wearing a thousand different masks to hide his true self. “But what I want to discuss, it’s not something we should do over text. Or phone.”

Akechi should have left the number blocked. He should never have turned to Akira for help. He should have died in the halls of the cruise ship, lonely and forgotten.

Gritting his teeth, he said, “You just don’t know when to give up, do you?”

“I can be there in half an hour. What about you?”

Back to the wall, only this time, it was Akira instead of the Shadows. There was a certain species of delight to be had in this game of cat and mouse. He could escape. He could run. All it would take would be a single tap of a button. End the call. Move on.

“I’ll be there,” Akechi said. “Don’t make me regret this, Akira.”

--

 Tokyo felt distinctly unreal as he travelled through it. It was like he was passing through a bubble, everything distorted and swimmy, a film over Shibuya and the people within it. His head had felt much the same lately, his emotions filtered through that lens, Akira through that odd sheen.

The trains were bustling, yet not packed. Akechi tucked himself into the corner, arms crossed tight against his chest, and switched stations whenever needed. When the announcer’s voice rang out, telling the passengers that they’d arrived in Kichijoji, he got off and prayed he wouldn’t run into Akira until they’d both arrived at Penguin Sniper.

Fate was not so kind. As he headed up the steps and got his phone out to pass through the barriers, he saw a familiar head of black hair waiting on the other side, head dipped down towards his bag. No doubt speaking with Morgana. Of course the cat would be here, he never went more than three feet away from him.

Akechi considered turning around and just heading home. Akira lifted his head and locked eyes with him, and Akechi slammed his phone down harder than necessary on the barrier. There was a cut on his cheek, easily mistaken for a small nick, not quite healed even after all the spells his teammates had poured into him. Earlier, it had been a gash that had exposed the cheekbone.

The gate popped open with a ping.

Akira didn’t approach him. No, he kept his distance, but he didn’t look away. Akechi took his time approaching, arms crossed back against his chest, his teeth grinding together. He felt very much like a puppet on strings being marched to certain death, only death looked a lot like Akira Kurusu and his gleaming glasses.

“You actually came,” Akira said.

“I told you I’d be here.”

“We thought you might have just said that to get us off your back.” Akira led him out of the station. As soon as they were out in the night air, Morgana hopped out of the bag, stretching himself out. Akira said, “You’re heading off?”

“Yeah, just make sure you’re back before too late! And you,” Morgana steeled Akechi with those bright blue eyes of his, giving his tail an indignant shake. “You better not try anything. You hear me!”

“Your request has been duly noted.” Akechi said. He watched as the cat disappeared into the night. “Well, now we’re alone, you may as well say your piece. Though I don’t understand why I had to come all the way out here to hear it.”

“No, not yet.” Akira pushed his glasses up his nose and turned. “Penguin Sniper, like I said. I wasn’t joking about the billiards table.”

Akechi grimaced. Penguin Sniper was filled with tolerable memories, as was the majority of the joints here, but that made it all the worse. Beating Akira, being beaten by Akira, touches stolen here and there, a trading of drinks, a duel not quite to the death, an exchange of gloves—the last time they’d played nice before Akechi had betrayed them all, stormed into his interrogation room, and pressed the muzzle of a gun to Akira’s head.

Twisted by the thought of revenge, distorted by his hatred for his dear rival, Akechi had not regretted pulling that trigger. He hadn’t even hesitated. All that mattered was Shido’s downfall, and Akira’s blood was to paint the path that Akechi needed to take to get there.

What was one more death when Akechi’s hands were already so dirty? What was one more death when it was the only person Akechi had ever given a damn about other than Shido? It might have been hate, but hate was just a simple way to describe someone that appealed to your emotions in some form. Positive or not, Akira did just that.

Still, he followed Akira up the stairs to Penguin Sniper, and he didn’t fight back when Akira handed over the 800¥ fee to access the tables. In the end they stood at either end of the table, pool cues in hand, the balls all lined up perfectly, ready to be struck.

“Should I go first?” Akira said.

“Be my guest,” Akechi said. “I didn’t want to play anyway.”

Akira’s grip tightened on the cue. He leant over the table, the curve of his body a perfect silhouette, and Akechi hated himself a little more than Akira for thinking that.

A sharp strike against the ball. They struck one another and scattered across the table, a veritable destruction, and behind Akechi’s eyes, a memory flitted. Earlier that day, Shadows on every side, an ambush they’d been sloppy in the face of. Joker’s Wild Card failing him in the worst way possible, leaving him open to a weakness that he’d not accounted for when taking on that particular Persona. A strike of thunder sending him down like a house of cards in the wind.

“Something on your mind?” Akira said.

Akechi scowled. “Not in the slightest.”

“Same way you like sweet drinks, yeah?”

He could have snapped the pool cue in two. He restrained himself, barely. “If you want to talk about honesty, Akira, how about you start? Take off those glasses and look at me. No more masks, no more distractions. Me and you. Here. Now.”

Akira reached up and removed them. He was sharper without them, blazing, unmasked and brutal edged. His lips quirked upwards, the tiny cut pulling at the movement, and a single word came to mind. Trickster.

“I’m putting my cards on the table,” Akira said. “Your turn, Goro.”

Oh, how sick Akechi was, for his stomach to flip at his name on Akira’s lips. He leant over the table himself, picking the angle, striking the ball once more. Joker had gotten to his feet, swaying. The Shadow had swung its scythe and there wasn’t time to dodge it. Oracle screamed his name from her safe space within Al Azif, and Akechi, despite all his frenzy in a fight, couldn’t get there fast enough to stop it.

The ball hit the others. The Phantom Thieves lost themselves in the blood, panic running through their collective veins as the scythe struck more than once. Skull’s Persona rising above on its ship, Fox’s throwing ice while Queen and Mona’s tore through one healing spell after another. Fire blazed through the ice as Panther charged up, gunfire as Noir held off the ones fast approaching. Violet threw out spell after spell, bless magic crashing down through the Palace, and Akechi felt it sear his skin, felt Loki react.

Akira regarded the scattered balls. Akechi had downed a couple. “Your move, Akira.”

“Earlier,” Akira said. “What happened?”

It still hadn’t been enough. Surrounded as they were, even all those spells couldn’t get them the upper hand, and the one with the scythe was laughing, swinging its weapon like a toy. It was the kind of fight that Akechi lived for. It was the kind of fight Akechi would die for. Joker was on the floor, bleeding despite the magic that was being desperately thrown his way. He could see the flash of white at his cheek through all the red. His shirt was drenched with blood where it had gouged into his chest.

It wasn’t excitement. It wasn’t fun. Anger had flooded him, rage and fury and the desire to kill. That wasn’t unusual. His way of fighting scared the others, the way he took joy in spilling the blood of Shadows disturbed them, but in that moment, it had been different. It wasn’t his spells he called upon in that moment, even as Loki manifested above him.

“I got angry,” Akechi told him, putting the cue down.

His power had taken hundreds of lives, directly, indirectly. Never had it been used to save someone. His own ragged voice had screamed for Loki above the din of the Phantom Thieves’ panicked battle, and without a word, Loki changed his heart for him. Turning himself psychotic, it was a small price to pay. He tore through the scythe-wielding Shadow with a deranged cackle, throwing himself into the firing line of not only their enemies, but their allies also.

Fire and ice, lightning and wind, psychokinetics and nukes. All of it he took in his stride as he slashed and tore and cut, bladed edge erasing Shadows the second it touched them. For Joker? Loki laughed. Akechi laughed. What a joke. What a joke.

So lost in the rage, he took the blows like they were penance. They were not his friends, they were Joker’s friends. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt.

Violet screamed, “Crow!”

He ran into the bless spell before he realised what he’d done. The blow of light struck him to the core, making even Loki screech. The world blacked out as the force of it took all of his energy, shaking up his ribcage and his lungs. He went down in an instant, all of the rage swept out of him in one moment.

It only made sense. Life wasn’t kind. There was no way for him to save Joker.

“That was more than anger,” Akira said, stalking across the floor towards him. The billiards had been a ploy, Akechi realised, just a catalyst. “You’re still lying to me.”

“Not lying,” Akechi said. “Do you hear any unnecessary words? Am I talking you in circles, Akira?”

Akira grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket. “You blocked my number, and yet here you are.”

Akechi had awoken in a safe room, sat against the wall with the Panther’s face peering curiously down at him. He looked up at her, watching her expression morph into shock. “You’re awake! Yeesh, you moron! Do you know what you did?”

He pressed a hand to his mask as he cackled. It was a low, broken sound. “Is he dead?” he asked.

“Do I look dead to you?”

Akechi looked up. Joker stood over him with his hands in his pockets, his mouth turned downwards, his gaze icy behind his mask. His cheek was still bleeding a fraction.

“You’re a fine looking ghost, Joker.”

Akira was a different creature in Joker’s skin. He moved like a cat, his emotions more pronounced. It wouldn’t have been incorrect to call the expression coating his face a type of fury with how his lips peeled back. “So are you. Why did you do that?”

For you, Akechi didn’t say. “Because I wanted to run wild.”

Akira said now, “I know that it was a lie, in the Palace.”

Nobody interrupted them. To the rest of Penguin Sniper, they may as well have not existed. Akira’s hands tightened in Akechi’s coat, their distorted reality theirs and theirs alone.

“Tell me something, Akira,” Akechi whispered. “What is it you truly wanted from the world? A companion who would play detective with you? Someone who would play hot-and-cold in this thing we call a friendship? Did you want someone who would give their life for you time and time again?”

“No—” Akira began.

“Someone who would deny it, because you don’t want to admit you’re that selfish?” Akechi grabbed Akira’s jacket in turn. “You have so many friends. So many talented, incredible friends. And yet here I am, back from the dead, not a memory of how I survived in sight.”

Akira, for once, had nothing to say, and Akechi, who was doubting his own memories, who was doubting his own feelings, who was doubting his own actions, knew he’d struck gold.

Wakaba Isshiki, Kunikazu Okumura, Makoto Nijima’s father. Was it any surprise he doubted his own existence too?

Reality pulsed and squirmed beneath them, a broken mirror of an existence, reflecting their cognition the way they wanted to see it. Akechi pulled Akira close, a brush of lips. Love and hate, two sides of the same coin, just like they were. It was what Akira had wanted all along. Maybe it had been what Akechi had wanted at some point, when he’d been real.

“I refuse to be a slave to a false world,” Akechi whispered in his ear. “I hope you feel the same, Akira.”

“I know,” Akira replied. “But, when all this is over, I just—you don’t have to leave. You can stay with us.”

Akechi laughed, genuine—or fake, depending on the perspective. Maruki really did have the right idea. Trap someone in despair and they’d do anything to escape. Trap them in their happiness, and they were putty to be played with, never wanting to leave.

“Tell me that again when we’re done,” Akechi said, picking up the pool cue. “Then we’ll see.”

[omg-baeyoung-baeran]

Marked with the Kiss of Death: Chapter One (A Mystic Messenger AU Fanfiction)

Archive on Our Own Link

YT Trailer

Genre: Crime, Action,Thriller, Romance, Comedy, Drama

Pairings: Saeran/MC 2, 707/MC 5; more to come

Summary:

Would you rather be famous but live with a criminal?

"I swear he finds me anywhere I go! I see his white hair in all---"

The feeling of freezing arms snaking around her waist gave her sudden reconsiderations of her life decisions.

"It's just how it is, Princess."

Or would you rather hide from a criminal and live as a beggar?

"Sorry, I don't have coins," he muttered as he ran his hand through his unruly red hair.

His boyish charm has sufficed her eyes, but not enough to please her stomach.

"Big bills are fine."

He never knew beggars can be so picky.

o-o-o-o

 Every waking minute, she wondered…  just what the hell is wrong with him?

  “Yes, princess—”

  “I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again—my bodyguard is broken.”

 o-o-o-o-o

 Ayu clipped two braided blonde locks in a half ponytail. Although she preferred a full braid, her chin-length hair forbade her to do so. She sometimes wished she had not cut her hair, but the barrage of compliments from her social media had tickled her narcissistic side.

 It took merely a week before she eventually grew bored with the limited variety of styles she could do.

 “Pink or nude? Red is good too, though?” Ayu shook her head. “No, that’s trying too hard.”

 Looking into the mirror, she pictured two versions of herself, one sporting a pink shade, the other with a nude shade. At first, it was a simple dilemma that boiled down to three choices—  would she go for a feminine, striking, or a subtle kind of beauty?  With the striking red out of the picture, her options narrowed down to a subtle nude or a feminine pink.

 Eventually, she set down the other two tubes, settling for feminine, “Pink it is.”

 Twisting the cap open, she looked at the mirror and swiped the applicator on her lips. She smacked her lips twice to even the colour out. Once she was done, she placed it back in the tube and twisted it close.

 For her most dreaded part—contact lenses. As the fanmeet fiasco happened fairly recently, she was yet to get used to poking her eyes.

  ��I just got your messages~!’

 Ayu switched off the alarm notification and checked the time— 2:00 P.M.

  There was no time for contact lenses. 

 “Guess I’ll go nerdy.”

 o-o-o-o

  When she says her heart almost leaped out of her chest, of course, it was an   exaggeration...

  ...but there was no denying that he scared the living daylights out of her.

 “Do I know you?”

 There was no knock on the door; not even a text message—as she opened the door, she found herself face-to-face with astranger in a black suit, waiting in the front door.

 “Sorry I’m late,” he bowed. “I was told a princess needed a bodyguard?”

  ‘Princess? Bodyguard?’

 Frowning, Ayu eyed him up and down; he was of average height—with her stopping just below his ear—and had white hair with its tips a faded red. Despite the white hair, he did not seem old—he looked to be in his early 20s, in fact. Just like her.

  Was it too late to take out her pepper spray? He might attack her anytime.

 “Bodyguard?” she scrunched her brows.  No one informed her about a new bodyguard.  “How would I know if you’re telling the truth? Do you have any proof to validate your claims?”

 “Yes,” he fished through his pocket and pulled out a phone. He quickly tapped his fingers on the screen, then handed it to her. “You can call your dad.”

 Though suspicious, she took the phone from his hand.

 His contacts book had only one contact in it— Big Boss.

 Her lip curled into a sneer at the name, ‘Big Boss? Cringey.’

 She pressed the ‘Call’ button and held the phone against her ear. Two rings later, the other line picked up.

  “Ray? You called?”

  Sure enough, it was her father’s familiar deep voice. And he knew Ray… So Ray was not a random die-hard fan trying to get close to her.

 “Dad?”

  “Oh, princess, it’s you. I see Ray has arrived.”

 “What’s this about a bodyguard? What about Mister Park?”

  “Ah, about that… I replaced him. I figured Ray would handle the job better.”

  So he was still hung up about the fanmeet incident! Granted, it only happened three weeks ago but...

 “Dad! I swear he did nothing wrong! It happened so fast; no one could have foreseen it!”

  “Still, it was his job to act fast.”

 Ayu let all her stress out with a sigh. As his only daughter, her father cared for her too much that it bordered on overprotectiveness.

  Scratch that; it was not borderline—he certainly was overprotective.

 “Okay, Dad. I’ll call you later. I have to go.”

 After saying their goodbyes, Ayu tapped ‘End Call’ before handing it back to Ray.

 “So…,” she crossed her arms,  “you’re Ray?”

 He took the phone from her, then nodded with a polite close-mouthed smile that screamed forced. Being in the showbiz industry had exposed her to such smiles that she was no stranger to it.

  After all, she herself was an expert at that sort of smile.

 “Just Ray.”

 Uncrossing her arms, she nodded. “Well, at least you’re on time. I’m going to have lunch with my friend. Do you know where Chamwon Restaurant is?”

 “No, but I can use Noogle Maps.”

 “Alright,” she nodded and walked past him. “Let’s go, then.”

 o-o-o-o

 “Zen-oppa!” Ayu excitedly waved, bouncing on her heels.

 A handsome long-haired albino turned his head to her direction, “Ayu!” He waved back, motioning them to come over.

 “Hey,” she tapped Ray’s shoulder, then whispered, “Does my hair look good?” 

 “Of course, Princess,” Ray vigorously nodded. “You’d still look good even without it!”

  ‘Is complimenting me also part of his job description? Dad really did things overboard.’

 Though weirded out, she led him to their reserved spot, with Ray following exactly five steps away.

 Multiple eyes followed their move, but no one dared to get close. With the peaceful atmosphere and customers minding their own businesses, she could not help but feel that their lunch would go smoothly.

 “I’m sorry! Did you wait long?”

 Zen shook his head. “No! Come on, let’s order.”

 Pulling their chairs back, they were about to take their seats...

 Ayu paused, wearing a look of plain confusion on her face. Zen, too, had an identical expression on his face.

  Source of confusion: her new bodyguard.

 It must have been a strange sight: three adults, pausing mid-sit with their asses hovering over their chairs.

  His first day working for her and he was not doing a good first impression.

  ‘What does he want?’  Standing straight, Ayu held Ray’s arm and pulled him up. “Zen-oppa, will you excuse us for a moment?”

 “Um, sure,” Zen said, confused, but sat down anyway.

 “You can order now! We’ll be back reeeaal quick!” She faced Ray and released his arm, cocking her head to the side and motioning him to come with her.

 He nodded, following Ayu as she led him further from the table. With Zen out of earshot and taking a menu from a waitress,  Ayu placed a hand on Ray’s shoulder and pushed it down, making him bend to her height, and whispered, “Okay, I know Dad told you to be this overprotective, but I promise to give you a bonus payment later—just please! Sit somewhere else!”

 Ayu made sure her smile did not falter. Personal space in public places was a luxury celebrities like her could not afford. A headline of  "Idol caught mistreating her bodyguard?!"   would prove detrimental to her image… especially in Zen’s presence.

 Ray whispered back, “A bonus payment is hard to enjoy when I'm missing my head.”

  ‘You coward. Can you even call yourself a bodyguard?’

 “You don’t have to worry. Just enjoy your date—”

 “Shh! It’s not a date!” Blood rising to her face, she darted her head side-to-side, then sighed in relief.  So far, no one noticed.

 The showbiz industry was an unforgiving one—she was basically  “owned”  by her fans. Being in a relationship was seen as something of a betrayal to them. Even being seen with Zen was a surprising sight, and rumours about their “dating scandal” used to pop up.

 It had caused an uproar within the fandom so as a result, she always assured her fans that they were just friends.

  Unfortunately.

 The explanation seemed to satisfy them, as hanging out with Zen was not much of a shock anymore.

 “And don’t mind me. I promise you’ll forget I even exist! Trust me," he beamed at her with an innocent smile on his lips.

 "Does this face look like it trusts you?" she hissed back in a harsh whisper.

 Ray studied her face, and for a moment,  he thought he was looking at something utterly hideou—

   "Yes," he answered briefly.

 “Fine,” she sighed. “Let’s go back. Oppa must be hungry.”

 Heading back to the table, Ayu took slow strides to calm her nerves, gazing longer at Zen who was intently reading the menu, unaware of the attention she was giving him. Even from afar, Zen gave off an aura of unrivaled beauty and charm. Hell, even the way he flipped pages stirred in her tingles of teenage giddiness.

  How anyone could look perfect just by doing nothing was something Ayu once thought impossible. But the first time she laid eyes on him, she realized just how closed-off her world had been.

 She was not alone in thinking that; almost everyone in the room had their eyes fixated at Zen, and not just because he was a famous celebrity.

 The closer they got to their table, the more the surroundings blurred for her, and the more focused Zen’s beauty became. Ayu somewhat hated the paparazzi, for despite how perfect Zen looked in every angle, they lacked the skill to capture the breathtaking beauty he possessed. A disgrace to photographers around the world, was what they were to her.

 At least the paparazzi's incompetence worked in her favour, for she was one of the lucky few able to admire his beauty in the flesh

 “Sorry about that,” Ayu spoke as she reached their table.

 “It’s fine.” Zen handed her the other menu.

 “I haven’t introduced you guys to each other. By the way, this is my new bodyguard, Ray! He replaced Mr. Park just a while ago.”

 “It’s fine! So, are you ready to or… der?” Zen’s voice faltered at the end.

 Confused, Ayu followed his line of vision and frowned.  She was willing to give him a second chance since not everyone should be judged by their first impression but this…

 Ray, arms crossed over his chest, stayed rooted by Ayu’s right.

 “Oh,” Zen was the first to regain his senses, “don’t you want to join Dongwon? You might feel out of place.” he pointed to a nearby table where a tall, bald man sat, reading a menu.

 “It’s fine. Just enjoy your meal, Sir.”

 “But—”

 “Ah, don’t mind him,” Ayu dismissively waved her hand.  They were just wasting their time. Smiling through gritted teeth, she gave Ray’s arm a squeeze. “Ray here! He’s just really,” she squeezed it tighter, “reeeaaally… passionate about his job.”

 Ray pulled his arm out of her grasp, “Ahaha! You overestimate me, Princess!” He said, sporting a big smile on his face, intensifying in Ayu an urge to rip it off of his face.

 “Ooh, 'Princess' ?” Zen said with a playful quirk of his brow.

 “Ah! That’s what he used to call his bosses! It kinda just… stuck to him! Old habits die hard, you know?”

  ‘How dare Ray embarrass me in front of Zen?! What if he found it cringy?’

 “If you say so, Princess!” Zen teased. For some reason,  "Princess"  sounded far better coming from his lips. As usual, Zen will always be the exception. “Well then, at least take a seat,” he requested and gestured to the chair beside Ayu.

 Ray shook his head. “Oh no. I’ll stay here.”

 “You’ll,” Ayu choked out her next word, “what?”

 “You know, I need to act fast if something happens to you,” he said matter-of-factly.

 She did not know what potential her father saw in Ray; all she could see was Ray teetering on the fine line between caution and paranoia.

 “Ah, you don’t have to!” She forced a smile, shaking her head. Surely, not even he was dense enough to miss her straightforward message.

  ‘Seriously. You. Don’t. Have. To.’ 

 “Oh, what’s wrong?”

 Dongwon walked over to their table, then slightly bowed. He stood by Zen’s side, mirroring Ray’s position.

 “Oh, um, want to sit with us?” Zen offered, albeit confused.

 To Ayu’s dismay, Dongwon shook his head.  Things seemed to be going in a direction that strayed from her original vision.

 “Hmm, I see?” Zen said. “We’ll order takeout for you after, how does that sound?”

 The two bodyguards nodded, mumbling their thanks.

 “Okay! Now that that’s settled… Ayu, is there anything you want?”

 Humming to herself, Ayu flipped a page and shrugged, “I’m not sure. Whatever you think is good.”

 “Okay! I’ll just order the usual then.” Zen raised his arm, catching not only a nearby waitress’ attention but the other customers' as well.

 They must have wondered if their presence was an elaborate endorsement; after all, having two celebrities hanging out in basically any place—from five-star restaurants to junkyards—was bound to bring attention.

 The waitress that came over was a young woman, possibly around 18 to 19, with a name tag that says "Jihyo".

 “Yes?”

 For a second, Ayu was unable to suppress the frown from showing. Once she noticed, she quickly replaced it with a smile.

  ‘Who the hell does this girl think she is?’

 Being in the entertainment industry made it easy to discern that type of voice—one she heard a lot from girls;  it was the voice that made her want to slice her ears off.

 Ayu looked in disgust, as the waitress swayed her body side-to-side, bouncing on the balls of her feet and looking at Zen with an awestruck expression.

  ‘Please mess up our order.’

 “We’ll have Set C….” Zen showed her the menu, pointing at their order.

 The way the Jihyo girl’s face got closer to Zen’s triggered within her an urge to….

 Jihyo scribbled their order on her notepad, particularly slow for a two-word order.

  ‘Hurry up.’

 Once she was done, she bowed and left the table. Ayu’s murderous thoughts were finally put at ease.

 “So… about your role!”

 Zen’s face lit up. “I’m glad you asked!”

 “What’s your role?”

 “Okay, so it’s a murder mystery show. Basically, my character is a lawyer prodigy. Something happened in his past that made him into who he is, which I won’t say because it’s a spoiler. So anyway—”

 Not once did she chime in or cut his words off, only nodding every so often. The combination of Zen’s perfectly-sculpted features, enchanting red eyes, melodic voice, and passion for acting never failed to capture her in a trance.

 “I’m sure you’ll do a good job!” Ayu gushed. “Can’t wait to watch it!”

 Zen chuckled, “When I first heard the summary, I thought it might be something you’d like.”

 “You thought so?”

 “Here’s your order.”

 To her relief, a different waiter came with their order. After turning the grill on, he set down two trays of raw meat and plates of side dishes—kimchi, fish cakes, japchae, steamed eggs, and baby potatoes. 

 “Order’s complete. Enjoy your meal." The waiter dipped his head, and left.

 o-o-o-o

  ‘Discomfort by proxy’—did such a term exist? If so, that was the perfect way to describe what Ray currently felt, what with all those stares directed at the two celebrities.  How could anyone get used to this? It was hard enough to eat with just one person staring, but more than one? He might as well be a zoo animal, then.

 Glancing to his left, Ray spotted a group of high school-aged boys five tables away, two of them holding menus in front of their faces, trying to catch a peek of his oblivious boss. Today was a lucky day for those boys, as their idol crush was too busy making disgusting googly eyes at Zen to notice them.

 “You mentioned you wanted to try acting, right?” Zen asked.

 “Oh… yeah. I just wanted to try it out like once, but I’m not really actively looking,” Ayu shrugged.

 “Hmm, if you want, the director told me he has a friend who’ll be directing a film! And she’s looking for actresses who can star in her movie.”

 “Ooh! What’s it about?”

 “Not sure yet. I’ll ask him.”

 “Tell me, okay?!”

 With another glance to the left, Ray saw that those boys now had phones discreetly peeking out from their menus. 

 Ray rolled his eyes. Seriously, who were they fooling? 

 He shifted to the left, blocking Ayu from their view. Though faced away from them, he could hear them whining how perfect the photo would have been were it not for  “that photobombing tofu”.

 He suppressed a snort, ‘Tofu? That’s the best you can do?’

 As derogatory as it sounded, it did not bother him at all. After all, pale skin such as his own was sought after.

 “So Sienna—”

 The brief frown that rose from Ayu’s face did not go unnoticed to Ray’s eyes.

  Sienna Park, the visual, center and lead vocalist of the girl group his boss’ daughter was from—Dandelion; also considered the second-most popular member after Ayu.

 Zen, however, was unaware of the sour change of mood, for her face reverted back to its over-the-top cheerfulness in an instant.

  ‘Well, idols have to keep up a facade…’

 It jarred Ray as to how she could switch from sweet to murderous with ease.

  Click!

 Ayu’s head instinctively snapped up. “Oppa!” She squealed.

  ‘Oppa,’  Ray almost sniggered at that.  ‘Do girls actually think they look cute saying that?’

 “Hmm, what caption should I put?” Zen sang teasingly.

 “Delete that!” She threatened with wide eyes, only for her growing grin to render her threats futile, as though she enjoyed being teased by him.

  ‘Get a room…’

 “Why not? It looks cute! See?”

 Zen held his phone in front of her, which showed a candid shot of her, mouth slightly open, in the middle of talking and flipping over a piece of beef.

 “Cute?” A dust of pink slowly spread on her cheeks as she turned her head away.

 “Yeah. I rarely see you with your glasses on. It always looks so new to me.”

 “Oh… Maybe I should’ve worn my contact lenses instead,” she pouted, before adding a new set of strips to the grill.

 “Nah, that’s not what I meant. I think you look cute with your glasses.”

 Her hold on the tong loosened.

  Shing!

 “Ah!” She exclaimed, recoiling as the meat sizzled and spattered oil droplets on her.

 Zen took the tong from her, taking over. “Do you disagree that much?” He chuckled at her flustered face.

 “O-Oppa! You’re such a joker!” She sheepishly laughed. Without the tong to keep her occupied, she fanned her reddened face with both hands.

 Ray wanted to throw up all over their fishcakes.  It was hard to stand there with a straight face.

 Before he could actually throw up, Ray stopped listening in on their conversation. It’s not like there was anything interesting to take from it.

 As for her father, he could finally sleep at night without worrying about Zen stealing his only princess away.  From the looks of it, his paranoia was baseless, as it was all unrequited on Ayu's part.

 With a father like that, he pitied any guy unfortunate enough to catch Ayu’s fancy.

 “Ooh, I think this is done,” Zen said, switching the grill stove off. One by one, he took each slice and placed them on another plate.

 “Hmm!” Ayu gushed as she inhaled the barbecues’ mouth-watering aroma. “This looks so good!”

 “Eat up,” Zen said, handing her a pair of metal chopsticks.

 “Yes! Thank you for the food!”

 She waited until Zen took the first bite. “Is it good?”

 “Yep!”

 Using his own chopsticks, he pinched a chunk of rice, adding a small slice of pork along with it. With a palm below to catch any falling grain, Zen brought it closer to Ayu’s mouth. “Say ‘aah’!” 

  ‘What do you think you two are doing?’

 They were famous celebrities; would it kill them to be more careful? Surely, this would cause a dating scandal.

  And a scolding from Big Boss as well.

 Just in time, he could already see someone pulling out a phone from two tables away.

 Eyes closed, Ayu leaned forward and opened her mouth, “Aaaahh.”

  ‘You’re not helping matters at all, dummy.’

 Ray moved to her left side, just before she took a bite, hiding her from the photographer’s view before giving the camera a “little” smile— an apology for ruining what should have been a perfect shot.

 But his apology seemed unwanted, as they scowled both at their phone screens and him.

 “Is it good?”

 “Mm-hmm!” Ayu nodded, simpering, and seemingly disconnected from the real world.

 “I’m glad you liked it,” Zen nodded, before facing Ray. “Mister Ray, you really don’t want to sit?”

 “It’s fine,” he shook his head with a forced smile. “I’m not hungry anyway.”

 “Hmm, I see—”

  Bzzt! Bzzt!

 “Oh, just a moment,” Zen said, glancing at his vibrating phone, then at Ayu. “Sorry. Can I take this call? It’s a bit urgent.” 

 “Sure! Take your time!” She nodded.

 “I’ll be quick!” Zen held the phone near his ear, speaking in a hushed tone as he headed to the bathroom.

 With Zen away to take the call, the whole table was quiet. Ayu continued eating without him.

  This was bad. The absence of a tall and handsome guy like Zen to be intimidated by made it easier for average no-name guys to try their luck.

 Not even 10 seconds after Zen left, a young man, holding a journal and pen, was heading towards their table.

  How foolish. Ray may not be as tall or breathtakingly handsome as Zen, but it didn’t matter. Now that he was paid to be stuck by Ayu’s side, the chances of ever coming near her were close to nil.

  The date had numbed his mind so much, he might as well amuse himself.

 Taking advantage of Ayu’s absentmindedness, Ray sidled to her left, placing a hand behind her and resting it over the chair’s rail.

 Ray’s protective stance prompted the young boy to stop in his tracks, looking as though he was having second thoughts.

 He flashed the young man a cheeky smile that was in no way welcoming. 

 Put off by the hostility emanating from his smile, the boy’s conflicting thoughts were put to rest, and he finally backed out.

 With his intimidation a success, he straightened his posture.

 “Okay, done!”

  Her rat-tailed friend finally arrived.

  Zen announced, then pulled his chair back and sat. “Did you wait long?”

 “Nope, not at all!”

 “Soooo… how’s this charity thing of yours doing? Something… F.A? ” Ayu questioned with a slight tilt of her head.

 “RFA? It’s doing well! Hmm, we still don’t have a set date for the next party, though.”

 “Oh, I see,” she nodded.

 “I’ll send you and the girls an invitation once our party coordinator decides on the date.”

 A split-second pout crossed her face but was immediately replaced with a full grin.

 “Yay!” Ayu clapped. “What will the party theme be?”

 “Umm…”

 Their heads turned at the stranger’s sudden arrival.

 “O-oppa…”

  ‘Oppa? The princess wouldn’t like that.’ 

 The barely noticeable twitch in her eye was enough proof.

 A slightly chubby girl approached their table, accompanied by another girl who looked the same age as she did.

 “Go on,” said the other girl, giving her friend a light push towards Zen.

 “Yes?” Zen flashed her a polite smile.

 “U-um…”

 “She wants an autograph!” The friend said, sipping from her mug and positioning herself near Ayu.

 “I-I…!”

 “Oh, sure!” Zen said, easing her nerves. “No problem at all!”

 Etched on his boss’ face was an uncomfortably wide smile that failed to reach her eyes. 

 “R-really?!” The girl smiled, handing to him a DVD case of  Tei’s Tea Leaf, the film that skyrocketed his fame, making him a beloved household name.

 Smiling, Zen took it, “Mm-hmm!”  He stretched a palm out to his bodyguard, who then placed a black marker pen on it. Uncapping it, he asked, “What’s your name?”

 “Y-Yoori!” The girl blushed, leaning closer to Zen.

 Hidden underneath the table was Ayu’s tightly-clenched fist, nails digging in her palms sure to leave a crescent-shaped mark. 

 “Okay! Yoori, ” Zen mumbled as he wrote his message. “May you always be happy and healthy. Make sure to always eat your meals…”

 Face still close to Zen, she snuck a glance at her friend, mouthing something before giving a slight nod.

  Something seemed off. 

 Ray jolted his head to his left.  Something was definitely off. No one, not even Zen’s bodyguard, paid attention to the mug in the girl’s hand, hovering above Ayu’s head, and slowly tilting downwards.

 Quickly shifting to the side, he reached out to grab the girl’s wrist.

 “Ow! W-what the?!”

 “Ray?!” Ayu abruptly stood, widening her eyes at him. “What are you doing?! Let her go!”

 She reached a hand out to pull Ray away from the girl, but was too slow to stop…

 the tea…

 from spilling…

 on…

 Zen.

  Splash!

“Ah!” Zen stood, hair dripping wet and clothes stained with black tea, squeezing the liquid from the drenched part of his shirt.

 Ayu snapped her head towards Ray, “What did you just do?!”

  She had on her face an absolute look of disgust.

 “Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry! He didn’t mean it!" She panicked. "What to do, what to do…?” Ayu grabbed a fistful of tissues and dabbed them on his damp shirt.

 “This has gotten… a bit out of hand,” Zen lightly chuckled, rubbing his nape. “Take out?”

  o-o-o-o

  “I forget this usually happens when you’re famous.” Zen joked once they reached their car.

 “Same.…”

 For the first time since meeting Zen, his humour was lost on her. She’s always laughed even at his unfunniest jokes, but now...  How could she laugh when the day she’s been looking forward to the most turned into such a wreck?

 “It’s weird. You know, I sometimes invite Sienna here—”

  ‘Sienna this, Sienna that.’  That cursed name always brought out a frown on her face.

 “—but this never really happened.” Zen scratched his head and chuckled. “You be careful, okay?” He held the door open for Ayu, handing her the take-out bag and waved. “Make sure Mr. Ray doesn’t skip a meal!”

 With zero enthusiasm, she nodded, forcing out a smile that failed to reach her eyes. “Sure!”

 The windows rolled up, and they sped off. Ray did not turn the radio on this time and simply drove in silence, occasionally glancing at her from the rear-view mirror.

  As for Ayu, she was too busy cooking up a plan on how to get away with murder.

 o-o-o-o

 Ayu slammed the door open, hitting the wall with much force, and stomped her way in. 

 Following exactly 5 steps behind was Ray, carrying a box package under his arm and staying silent all throughout.

 Coming to an abrupt halt, Ayu kicked her wedges off of her feet and flung them to opposite directions. 

“I hate her. I hate her. I hate that… UGH!”  She tightened the grip on her handbag’s strap, knuckles turning white and fingernails digging into her palms. The temper she kept contained the whole car ride was now bubbling beyond her control.

 Skipping the mandatory 5-second countdown, she snapped her head at Ray and snarled, “YOU!” 

Stomping her way towards him, Ayu jabbed a finger on his chest. “First day working and this is what you do?! Why did you have to mess this up? What right did you have to ruin everything? Everything was going well until you decided to literally spill the tea on Oppa!”

 Ray said nothing, simply watching her seethe with anger.

 “AND. THAT. SIENNA. He had barbecue with Sienna before… me? Huh?”

 Ayu grabbed fistfuls of her hair, yanking it at its roots. A glimpse of Sienna eating and laughing with Zen flashed in her mind—fleeting, but enough to fuel her rage.

 Taking deep breaths, she paced back and forth around the living room. With gritted teeth, she let out a soft scream, controlled and barely a scream at first, gradually rising to a crescendo.

  And thus came the apocalypse.

“AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!”

 She picked up a throw pillow from her couch and hurled it towards Ray, who barely avoided getting hit. “AAAAAAAHHHHH! I CAN'T EVEN!”

 Nothing was safe in her presence. Any object unfortunate enough to be within arm’s reach was practically Sienna and Ray in her eyes.

 She grabbed three more pillows, hurling them one by one in every direction. “AAAAAHHHHH! CURSE! EVERYTHING!”

 Even her Louis Vuitton handbag was not spared from the madness. She unzipped it with much force, almost detaching its zipper, and dumped all of its contents on the ground. 

She picked up her first victim—a pressed powder around ₩78,000—and threw it across the room, letting out a long, ear-piercing battle cry. Not even the slightest hint of regret crossed her mind as it collided against the wall, dropping to the floor with a loud crack. Her ₩78,000 pressed powder was now barely worth a cent.

 Her second victim—a flower vase she received from a fan two Christmases ago—met the same fate as the first. Who cares if it was a gift? Who cares if they were expensive? She. Wanted. Everything. Destroyed.

 Imagining the scattered ceramic shards as Sienna’s face was doing nothing to curb her bloodlust. Driven by the memory of their disastrous date, she picked them all up, not caring about the wound or even worse, the infection she could get.

  It’s fine as long as they die before she does.

 “AAAAAAAAHHH!”

 From the corner of her eye, Ray was darting his head side to side.. The chaos unfolding before him went beyond his control.

 It was not enough. Thrashing the whole living room was not bringing any satisfaction at all!  

  If laws did not exist, she would have killed those two already!

 Lastly, she caught sight of her phone, grabbing it and dialing the only person she knew would understand her.

 At the first ring, the other line picked up.

 “Yes—”

 “FIRE HIM! FIRE! HIM! I WANT ANOTHER BODYGUARD! IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE MR. PARK! ANYONE BUT THIS PIECE OF TRASH! THROW HIM AWAAAAAAAAAAY! AAAAAAHHH!” She screeched at the top of her lungs.

  “P-princess, calm down! What’s wrong?”

 “MY BODYGUARD IS BROKEN!”

  “What?”

 “RAY! HE… RAY! HE RUINED EVERYTHING! I’LL NEVER GET THIS CHANCE AGAIN AND HE–HE! UUUUUGGGGH!” She repeatedly stomped her feet.

  “Deep breaths, Princess, deep breaths. What did he do?”

 “RAY! HE SPILLED—"

 Then followed a string of curses befitting a sailor. If her words could be censored, it would merely be a continuous, uninterrupted beeping noise.

 “Give Ray the phone. I’ll speak to him.”

 “FIRE HIM, OKAY?”

 Ayu tapped the loudspeaker button, stomping towards Ray, who was standing still, carrying a box package under his arm.

 She shoved the phone on Ray’s free hand. “You’re screwed.”

 Ray held the speaker near his mouth. “Yes, boss?”

 She crossed her arms and loudly tapped her foot. If looks could kill, Ray would have been shish-kebab by now. To be more precise, he had already been impaled by her death glares immediately as they stepped out of the restaurant.

 “What just happened? I don’t understand what she’s saying. She said you spilled a girl on her tea? And someone’s shirt was drenched with this Zen? What? W-what does that mean?”

 “Ah. That.”

  “So you really did something?”

 “Yes, but not in the way she makes it out to be.”

 Ayu uncrossed her arms and stomped her foot. “JUST GET TO THE FREAKING POINT ALREADY!” 

 “I’m not done talking,” Ray coldly snapped.

 She gaped at him in a scandalized manner.  ‘How dare you?’

 “And she’s right… somewhat.”

 Irritated, she huffed a few stray hair strands away from her face,   ‘Somewhat my ass.’

 “I did spill the tea on Mr. Zen but I was only trying to stop the girl’s friend from spilling the tea on your daughter.”

 At Ray’s words, the frown on Ayu’s face slowly faded and was soon replaced by confusion.  The tea was meant for her?

 Stills of that unfortunate incident flashed in her mind—malicious intent hiding behind a useless piece of trash’s youthful smile, aiming a water gun at Ayu’s eyes, hellbent on blinding her with whatever unholy mixture she had concocted.

 If Ray had been with her back then… would he have prevented it? She watched the conversation between her father and her bodyguard, a somber look marring her face.

  “What? Why would they do that?”

 “Simply put, they dislike Ayu..”

  “This is unbelievable! How could anyone dislike my Ayu?”

 “Heh, I wonder how as well,” he sneered as he sent a sidelong glance her way.

 Ayu’s spirits sank lower. All this time, she was lashing out at someone who... did not deserve it?

 Having tea spilled on her was not nearly as dangerous as the time she nearly went blind. Unlike then, the one from the barbecue place was merely an expression of hate rather than a desire to harm, but still….

  “Tell me their names! I’ll make sure—”

 “Stop!” Ayu marched towards Ray, snatching the phone from his hand. “No need! Goodbye, Dad!”

  “Princess—!”

 She ended it before he could say another word. She knew it was rude, but she did not care anymore. He’d forgive her anyway.

 She looked around her, at the mess...

  'Mess' was an understatement; it was a trainwreck brought about by her rampage— the aftermath of a friendly date gone horribly wrong.

 With the anger ebbing away, only silence was left between the two.

 “Are you being honest with me right now?”

 “Yes.”

 “You know I could fire you anytime, right?”

 “Yes.”

 Blue eyes scrutinized his mint ones, intently searching for the slightest hint of a lie… at least something to justify her outburst...

 However, Ray held his ground, staring her down with the same intensity as her. He looked as though he was challenging her, disregarding the fact that he was still working under her…

  ...as if he thought they were equals.

 “Are we clear? Can I go now?”

 She was the first to break eye contact. “Do… Do what you want,” she said, casting her gaze on the ground.

 He bowed, carrying the box package under his arm, then left.

 o-o-o-o

  He had seen better content from Nat Geo Wild.

 Ray rolled his eyes and scoffed. Handling his boss’ daughter’s tantrums was not part of his job description; last time he checked, he was a bodyguard, not a babysitter.

 Her shrill voice was grating to the ears. He knew how much her father doted on her. Judging from his boss’ stories about her, he expected a spoiled princess wannabe…

  ...not the batshit crazy woman package that came with it.

 He was expecting at least a "thank you" from her, even when his effort deserved nothing short of a bow of gratitude. Were it not for him, those dirtbag fans of hers would have flooded in, asking for autographs and ruining her date. She should have been thankful that he was considerate enough to help her enjoy her date in peace.

                     | From: Big Boss

                    |You did a good job today. Keep it up. Be ready by midnight sharp tomorrow.

 Ray shot a glance at the box package under his bed.  Another one? He’d have to be extra careful around Ayu, then.

 “Tsk, tsk… useless brat….”

  ‘Condoms exist to prevent the birth of such abomination.’

 o-o-o-o

 As Ray stepped foot in the dining area, he was greeted by the smell of bacon and butter.

 Ayu, who was seated at the other end of the table, glanced up at him. Upon meeting his eyes, she hung her head down, playing with the ends of her hair instead.

 Across from her, at the spot he usually sat on, was an untouched plate of five greasy bacon strips and scrambled eggs. Beside it was a plate of pancakes stacked atop each other, drizzled with syrup and topped with slowly melting butter.

  Bzz!

 A fly flew past him, then landed atop a strip of bacon.

  Ayu waved it away, but it was a stubborn one, moving on to another strip instead. “TCH!” She shooed it again, and the fly eventually gave up and went away.

 “You should’ve eaten it sooner if you didn’t want flies getting to it.”

 “I don’t eat these stuff.”

 “Why is it here, then? Is Boss coming over?”

 “No.”

 “Ah. How about that pretty boy?”

 “I don’t invite men to my house. And Zen is too much of a gentleman for that.”

 “Ah. Your frie—”

 “AH!” Ayu slammed her hands on the table. Testing her patience first thing in the morning was not good for anyone’s health. “JUST EAT ALREADY FOR GOODNESS—!” She stopped herself before she could continue further. Closing her eyes and taking a sharp inhale, she composed herself. 

 “Eat it now if you don’t want it to go cold,” she said in a somber tone.

 This brought about a scowl to Ray’s face.  Was it that hard to say sorry?  She was in the wrong, yet she still held her pride.

  He figured her father had probably instilled in her mind how she never needed to apologize.

 “Tough luck, then, Princess.” Ray reached for an apple in the fruit bowl, then bit into it.

 She felt annoyed at how the seconds ticked at an unbearably slow pace, and his loud munches only worsened it.  Was it that hard to eat? If it was a matter of taste, there was nothing to worry about. She can cook if that’s what he was worried about.

 After what felt like an eternity, Ray swallowed. “I don’t eat those kinds of food too.”

 He stood up and headed straight to the door, leaving her sulking.

  ‘Go choke on your pride and bacon. See if I care.’

[early-sxnsets]

No Wait Unblock Me

Archive Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18215168/chapters/43133210

Chapter 2/10 of It’s A Handheld Disaster

Word Count: 1580

Chapter Summary: Simon and Baz finally get to "mutuals" status.

BAZ

For the third time today, I see a similar notification slide through my drop down.

bi-sammy sent you a picture

Part of me initially wants to sigh, roll my eyes, and swipe it away, because apparently part of me wishes to be alone for the rest of my life. Thankfully, the reasonable, tiny sliver of my mind makes sure I don’t make such a mistake.

Given the situation, one would think we’d parted ways. He makes a post, we stop the argument, all is fair in fandom and war. Except, now I believe Snow has grown under an impression that after one exchange, it qualifies us for somewhat of a friendship, and therefore reason to send me memes. Don’t get me wrong, memes are a fantastic waste of time and barely a waste of energy, but it’s strange that he’s not fucking off like most people.

Maybe I’m used to others being scared of me.

Maybe I’m used to others following my tactics of scaring them away.

Whatever I’ve done hasn’t worked, since this arse is immune to my attempts at coldness and mild animosity. I’m starting to suspect there’s something genuinely wrong with him, like he doesn’t get enough love and attention.

Guess that makes two of us.

I guess I somewhat crave this friendship. I’ll speak the truth to that and say yes, I smile when his memes pop up. They’re almost always fandom, and definitely made on Photoshop. This one, I see as I tap and let it load, is the crudely drawn Kirby graphic shoving burgers into his mouth, but over Kirby is photoshopped a picture of Huxley’s face and the burgers are Sam's ass.

It’s all poorly done and, sadly, extremely endearing.

My thumbs hover over my keyboard, cheeks creasing as I stare down at the picture. I lay back against my pillows, the curtains drawn and my hair pulled out of my face. It’s quite lonely; my life’s a sterile mixture of quarantined education and age old settled dust in my ancient room. It’s nice to have his somewhat obnoxious messages pop onto my screen, but it feels so odd. So foreign, and barely understood.

I want to understand.

gaystrell: why are you still messaging me?

I get an answer not even a minute later.

bi-sammy: do you want me to stop?

I don’t even hesitate to send out a reply, feeling a steadily growing lump in my throat, choking me mindless.

gaystrell: no.

bi-sammy: then why did you ask?

gaystrell: i just

gaystrell: don’t get it

bi-sammy: get what?

gaystrell: why you’d want to talk to me

bi-sammy: because youre cool

gaystrell: vexing me won’t get you “street cred”, if that’s what you’re after

bi-sammy: shit no wait that’s not what i meant

bi-sammy: dont block me fukc wait

bi-sammy: id just meant that you wrote all that shit and i thought it was really cool and

bi-sammy: i dont know

bi-sammy: i thought we could be friends since you did all that

bi-sammy: ill stop if you want me to

gaystrell: calm down you’re clogging my notifs

gaystrell: do that again and i /will/ block you

gaystrell: but………. if you actually do want to be friends i suppose i’m willing to give forth a little attention

bi-sammy: im osrry i dont speak posh cunt

gaystrell: too bad, blocked

bi-sammy: no wait unblock me

gaystrell: fine last chance

bi-sammy: bitch

gaystrell: b l o c k e d

bi-sammy: no but,,,,,,, i do want to be friends

I’m smiling like a fucking loon, scrolling through our brief exchange. It’s strange. Most people aren’t upfront about wanting to talk, or wanting someone to talk with. Wanting a friend, even. I have the people follow me and ask me questions, and of that only a small handful of those who actually interact eith me (and even in that, we usually only speak to give each other a helping hand).

And despite that, here’s someone who wants to try.

I suck my lower lip into my mouth, trying to think of my course of actions.

There’s a simple one I can take now (and probably should’ve taken as an initiative). I click his icon, and click “Follow” on his page.

It doesn’t take very long before I get a notification come through, starting that he mentioned me in a post.

It isn’t very long, but it gets its point across in the best way possible. It’s just a mobile screenshot, reading “gaystrell started following bi-sammy” with a quick caption.

god himself entered the groupchat. how do i block him?

SIMON

I wonder what it’d be like to see me in the moment. It’s a real shame Penn wasn’t around to capture it, since I’m in the middle of French class, but I must’ve smiled so stupidly that it caught the attention of the professor. He gave me a stern look until I set down my mobile.

The moment he turned away, I opened it back up and grinned.

At first, I didn’t believe what I was seeing. Him. Following me.

Us. Mutuals. Mutuals.

Of course I had to screenshot and post as a brag (barely humble, more metaphorically sucking my own knob for all my followers to see). Nobody really cares, as expected.

Well, nobody except the single message from none other than Mr. Bitch.

gaystrell: blocked. unfollowed. reported. waste of space.

My smile creases back my cheeks as they flush pink. I send back a quick message before turning my mobile over, foot tapping double the speed of the analogue on the wall.

bi-sammy: ;)

BAZ

He winked. Interesting.

I’m out of breath.

Fuck?

I lay my phone flat away from me, face down as I squint at my wall. I should respond in a composed fashion. I have to be clever, and not one-upping him is never an option. After all, does this qualify as flirting? Friendly banter? What am I doing with this random fucking bloke that I don’t even have a face to put to?

He’s my age. Roughly. Yes?

I check his tumblr again, as if I hadn’t just read his bio earlier.

simon // he/him // 17 // hold my fucking hand (please)

Maybe he’s just straight and I’m misreading it. Yes. Probably. Aren’t most people straight? Is that still a fact? (I highly doubt it, given how boring that must be.) But he winked at me. Somewhat prompted, I’ll give him that, but it was still a fucking wink.

I wink in texts to Dev and Niall too, though, but that’s different, isn’t it? I’d never snog either of them (especially fucking Dev), but hey. If unfaced internet boy asked for a snog, would I?

I’m too wrapped up and starved for human interaction to properly deal with this.

gaystrell: i will carry on with my threats, snow

There it is. Perfectly biting, while not being entirely rejecting. Maybe I’m better at this than I thought.

Or, perhaps, I’m worse, because even an hour and a half after sending the text, he’s silent.

I remind myself every few minutes that he most likely attends an actual school and has classes, but it makes my chest ache in the most unfair way every time my mobile tempts me with an unrelated notification.

I work myself to the point of moping down in the kitchen, slumping against the fridge whilst watching Vera make tea. She’s relatively silent, knowing better than anybody to leave me to sulk.

“You’re a drama queen,” she tuts, looking over me. Granted, I dress like a slob and borderline haunt this godforsaken mansion, but I feel as though that makes me entitled to being the way I am.

“I’m lonely,” I sigh, head resting against the fridge. It hums beside me, the chromed metal cooling my cheek. “Am I not granted a dramatic spell every now and then?”

“Not unprovoked.”

I set a hand against the handle, then let it drop. I’m not hungry. “What if it was provoked?”

“Is it?”

Instinctively, I pull out my phone and click it on. Nothing. “Perhaps.”

Vera frowns at me, walking over and setting a hand on my arm. “What’s wrong? Are you feeling okay?”

My eyes slowly roll as I push myself off the appliance, standing upright. “Physically, yes. Don’t fuss. It’s just… online shit.”

“You spend too much time on the phone,” she sighs, letting go and going back to the tea as she fixes me a mug. “Don’t you think you’d be happier to disconnect from social media for a day or two? Go on a walk, see nature?”

I snort, looking outside. “And what? Trip and bust open my knee? That’d wind me back up in care for at least a few days.”

“You act like you’re made of paper and glass.” She offers over my mug, letting my fingers wind around the handle before she shakes her head.

“I might as well be,” I huff down before thanking her and blowing on my tea.

Once I leave back up to my room, I realise it's somehow more depressing in here over the kitchen with Vera’s disapproval of technology rantings. At least she’s some sort of company.

As I’m sipping my tea, I go back to scrolling on my laptop as a notif pops up, jarring me with the sound but letting me breathe again.

bi-sammy: why do you know my last name smh

I exhale slowly, smiling to myself.

gaystrell: you commented on my google doc, you idiot

[little-miss-sunshines-blog1]

An ex-Larrie Testimonial

I am an ex-Larrie.

So there it is. Interestingly, the walls didn’t come crashing down, the earth didn’t stop turning, and the seas didn’t turn to dust. I’m still sitting here, in front of my laptop screen, with no visible change to world around me. Well then.

It has taken over a year for me to fully transition to where I am now and to feel comfortable enough to share some of that journey. So, here goes.

Recently I have been speaking with others in the fandom about why it can be challenging for people to walk away even when they want to, and it has been fascinating. Ultimately, what I’ve found is that many Larries stay because they don’t want to lose their “community” and for those that are particularly heavily immersed in Larriedom, the leap from Larrie to ex-Larrie can be significant. Being a Larrie can impact your day-to-day life in varying ways, and in many cases, you may not even realise how deep it runs until you start the process of moving away from that environment.

There’s little value in going into the what/when/where/why scenarios that influenced my own decision to become an ex-Larrie. There was no epiphany moment and nothing I can point others to that fully explains why. The reality is that it was a series of small things that accumulated over time and being in the right headspace to look at things with a critical eye, being ready to be honest with myself, and a preparedness to admit that I had been wrong.

Perhaps this testimonial will resonate with others who are wavering, perhaps it will provide some level of comfort in knowing that what you’re feeling isn’t unique, and that maybe you’re not alone. If it serves no other purpose than that, then putting it out there will have been worthwhile.

So why does it feel so difficult to leave?

Community: A sense of community is something that most people inherently seek out, whether in real life, or in their online life. At times, being a Larrie can seem comforting and reassuring. It can feel safe and welcoming. Feeling that you are part of something bigger; part of a “team” standing side-by-side and fighting for those that you believe can’t fight for themselves can be a powerful thing. But as you start to question the validity of these beliefs, the reality of what it could mean to leave that world behind can start to settle uncomfortably.

Friends: Being a Larrie enables you to form bonds with other like-minded individuals. These friendships form fast and firm, irrespective of physical location; drawn together online and fighting the good fight in the trenches against the boys’ “teams”, the media at large, and any other person or organisation that is being focused on at that time. But what happens when you’re no longer embroiled in this imagined battle? The basis for these friendships will no longer exist and, with such opposing viewpoints, they may end.

Entertainment: As a Larrie, there is always something with which to occupy your time; whether scrolling through your timeline on various social media platforms, reblogging cute gifs or manips, chatting to your Larrie friends, catching-up on the latest drama or following along as some old conspiracy theory is dredged up and rehashed. There appears to be an almost limitless supply of things to keep you entertained. It’s easy for people to say “well, find another hobby then, study something, read a book etc”, but that kind of paradigm shift takes time and can seem overwhelming.

Online Imprint: Once you make the decision that you want to separate yourself from Larriedom, what then? If you’ve cultivated an online presence predicated on the belief that Larry is real it might be everywhere, in every corner of your online imprint. Unless you’ve been very careful, you may have also shared pieces of who you are in real life, forever linking you to this world. You can lessen the impact but can it truly be eradicated? Screen shots, as they say, are forever.

In Real Life: What happens if you’ve made your Larrie beliefs public to your friends/family/co-workers in real life? It can be a very reasonable concern for some people and you may be worried how you’re going to extract yourself from this without suffering from some level of embarrassment.

What are some of the personal impacts of being a Larrie?

Time: Time and what you do with it is an interesting concept regardless of whether you have too much or not enough. When I turned my back on being a Larrie I was suddenly presented with an abundance of time. It was a genuine shock to discover exactly how much of my precious time I had been devoting to keeping abreast of the minute-by-minute “updates”.

FOMO: There is a disturbing sense of needing to ensure you are constantly wired-in to what is happening in Larriedom. This need can become consuming. It’s unhealthy. It’s distracting. It’s disturbing.

Music: Music has always been a big part of my life. Being part of a fandom for members of a band obviously means that music is a huge part of that experience. But being a Larrie also means that many of those songs have taken on specific meanings. I hope over time this will change and I can once again appreciate these songs for what they are.

Relationships: As a Larrie, you can find yourself closing off a big part of who you are and what you spend your time doing from those around you in real life. After all, who would understand? It can limit your ability to make new connections because you feel the need to hide this part of yourself. Whether through embarrassment (which should in reality be a massive red flag in and of itself), an unwillingness to share your online persona, or the fear of being stigmatized.

Stress: Experiencing an unpleasant physical reaction when you see an alert pop on your phone for someone’s Instagram or Twitter is not healthy. Being afraid to open that notification because you’re worried you’ll see something that doesn’t fit your Larry construct is not normal. Having to steel yourself in preparation, and then force your eyes to open and actually look at your phone screen is concerning.

Goalposts: You set yourself arbitrary deadlines for things to happen. “If “it” hasn’t happened by x date then I’ll leave”, you say. But then it doesn’t happen, so you move the goalposts for some seemingly plausible and justifiable reason. You reset your expectations, but that niggling feeling telling you something is inherently wrong gets louder each time.

Exhaustion: You wait and wait, believing that one day it will all be worth it and Larry will be “free”. They’ll strut the red carpet of some movie premiere or awards show hand-in-hand. They’ll be lauded in publications as the power couple of a generation. They’ll do interviews with Ellen and Oprah and grace the pages of fashion magazines. Except they won’t. Because this isn’t a fantasy. It’s hard to live off tiny pieces of contrived “proof” waiting for something that will never, ever happen.

Disappointment: Being a Larrie can be a constant, soul-crushing disappointment. You latch onto every tenuous link about a t-shirt someone wears or the colors in the background of an Instagram video or the lyrics of a song or a follow on Twitter and, along with your Larrie counterparts, proclaim them to be secret coded messages. You cling to every shred of hope and over-analyze every minuscule detail. But there’s never anything concrete, because of course, there can’t be.

Regret: Moving on means acknowledging you were wrong, that this thing that you’ve ardently supported is a falsehood, a fantasy, and so removed from reality that it can be slightly mortifying to admit. From my perspective, I acknowledge and regret many things from my time as a Larrie and I am sorry that I perpetuated and publicized these untruths.

It’s been nearly 18 months since I started this process, from the very first time doubts started to creep into the back recesses of my mind. My journey has been long and the road has been bumpy at times, but I’m here now as a testament to the success that process can be.

I am happier, I am enjoying my fandom experience far more than I ever did as a Larrie, and my real life has changed for the better. I have made new fandom friendships by seeking out like-minded individuals and whilst that was hard at the beginning, as with most things in life, it just took time, patience, and perseverance.

If you read this and identify with any of what I’ve said, I would encourage you to reflect on whether it may also be time for you to leave Larriedom behind. Reach out to others who have gone through similar journeys or send me a message, I’ll always be happy to talk and provide you with any support I can.

At the end of the day, the more people that make the move in a considered and positive way, the softer the landing will be for those that follow.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope that it can, even in some small way, help others to make the break.

[demyrie]

Prompt: All Might is deaged to his prime at about 30. Aizawa doesn’t need this reminder of his sexual awakening. All Might is intrigued by the scruffy looking teacher that’s avoiding/ignoring him. (YES I WANT SEXY TIMES BRING IT ON)

Thanks honeybun!! I didn’t make it to sexy times but HERE’S TO THE NEW YEAR!! Thank you for hanging out with me guys!! Your comments and excitement give me life, and also y’all are funny and cute and I’m super grateful to be in this cuddly old man fandom

===

Red (Prompt: De-aged All Might and hopelessly crushing Aizawa who is NOT DOING THIS THANK YOU)

===

An unfortunate fact: Aizawa Shoutablushed a lot when he was a kid.

Correction, he blushed a shit-ton andit was somehow naturally wired into his body as a defense mechanism.He was awkward to a fault, especially into his teens at UA, andanything he cared about elicited the same whiplash of reaction: thewanting and the fear of wanting, which hardened to a protectivescorn. The worst part was, even as he had erected a vast andwell-oiled mental mechanism to shutter his feeble nerves and be thepicture of standoffish arrogance in the face of slander and bullying,Aizawa’s body reliably sent gallons of blood rushing to his cheeksand the end result just made him look stupid.

And mostly, that’s what it was: lookingstupid. He got over it.

As his will to demonstrate how verylittle he cared ebbed with the passing years, and in keeping with thelimited fucks he had at his disposal once he started teaching, by thetime it was the winter of his Xth year at UA, homeroom teacher to1-A, Aizawa hadn’t blushed in years. Then he did.

And as with most things, it would havebeen unpleasant but normal and completely non-world-ending if Hizashihadn’t been nearby when it happened.

“So!”

“So,” Aizawa repeated tiredly,keeping his eyes on the sidewalk in front of him, as he walked. Asthey walked, he corrected himself, like he needed to. It was agrand effort to ignore his very peculiar companion, whom he wasleading around backstreets of the neighborhood to avoid being spottedby a passerby and unleashing pandemonium.

No one could see what had happened.That was Nedzu’s strict order and Aizawa never betrayed the Principalfor a variety of reasons, the predominant one being that their rodentoverlord was right 99.9% of the time. The homeroom teacher comfortedhimself that the media would be busy enough with the scene they leftbehind downtown, and so plunged deeper into the old-fashioned maze ofalleyways that made up the residential area around UA.

The two men walked mostly in silence,their booted feet crunching through the flakey, brittle layer of snowalready coating the street as the white tidbits tumbled down fasterand faster from the flat grey sky. Maybe it was his imagination, butAizawa swore he could feel shockwaves from every step of the manbehind him. It was as if the very snow moved differently as it fellaround him, giving him a wide berth or just melting in thesupernatural heat radiating from his herculean body.

It wasn’t usual, to get to see thepowerful, illustrious All Might moving at anything less than lightspeed. It was even odder to see him outshining the very snow in hisphysical prime, a fresh-faced and relentlessly grinning late-twentiesmountain of muscle pacing behind a haggard-looking man dressed inblack and trying very, very hard to politely get his attention.

“So, we don’t know each other,” AllMight ventured at length, timid but maybe the third iteration of thequestion since they started their trek. Aizawa told himself to beunderstanding – Yagi’s mind was likely in disarray after the attackand the man already behaved like a needy canine on the best days, sothis nagging made an unpleasant kind of sense – and closed hisburning eyes, too tired to roll them.

“Not really,” he murmured, too lowto hear. Behind him, All Might made a perplexed noise, and Aizawacould almost see him put a hand to his clean-shaven, perfectlychiseled chin. But he wasn’t going to look, no. Under nocircumstances.

“I could swear I do. Know you, thatis, although I don’t know from where. It’s odd, this whole … thing.Peculiar. I swear just yesterday I was in the country…” Thehorrendously young hero trailed off, then cleared his throat. “IsYakushima still, um, there?”

“Yakushima still stands. This isn’tsome apocalyptic future.”

“Oh, good,”All Might said with a gusty sigh, then prodded a little further asthey scaled a narrow staircase, his deep voice pleasant and oh-socharming. “Have you ever been to see the Yakushima cedars? They’requite beautiful in the winter, covered in snow. Just like now.”

“You were hit with a de-aging Quirkwith a memory component,” Aizawa continued in low, grinding tones,like he hadn’t heard. “That’s as much as we know until we cancontain the attacker. The experts Nedzu spoke to said it wouldprobably be a day a year until you’re back to normal.”

“Oh! That’s hardly anything!” theyoung hero exclaimed with relish, then his voice dropped. “I think.H-how old am I? Now? If I could ask?”

“No idea,” Aizawa said honestly,huddling down deeper into the coils of his capture weapon as theyturned the corner, pausing to scan for civilians. “My guess is thevillain intended to revert you to a child-like form in order tooverpower you, but their attack didn’t fully land.”

“Thanks to you, I’m told!”

“Mm,” he said, disinterested. Hefelt the energy of the man behind him finally, finally flag. He senta small, bitter prayer up to a god he didn’t really believe in.

And that was all, for a while, becauseit had to be. Aizawa walked a little faster, less concerned withreaching their destination than putting a little more distancebetween himself and the stupidly beautiful, perfect specimen of a manfollowing him with unflinching trust and far too many personalquestions.

This was not a good situation forAizawa. At all.

This was actually much more thanleading a (technically injured) ally away from the scene of a battleand into safe custody, because Aizawa really, really didn’t need theholy grail of protective masculinity and his violent gay awakeningincarnate standing there and making curious, flirtatious eyes at himevery time they stopped for a cross-walk signal. Especially when heand the actual Yagi, the troublesome scarecrow of a man he had toldnot to go running off to a random PIN notification from downtown whenthere were a whole squad of responders available to deal with it,were barely on speaking terms.

Yagi had not listened and Aizawa hadbeen forced to follow and deal with the aftermath. All Might, now atwenty-something demi-god, was also the only one of the bunch fromthe melee who had escaped the particular villain’s Quirk with theirlanguage skills intact, so Aizawa mollified himself that he wasn’tcarrying an eerily grinning toddler back to UA. Although, with asbaffled and helpless as young, amnesiac All Might currently was, itwasn’t hard to imagine.

“You look cold,” the idiotcommented as they passed another open restaurant door and Aizawainstinctively paused a minute by the heat streaming out. Pricked, thehomeroom teacher kept moving.

“I’m not,” Aizawa lied, even as hisstiff fingers were shoved in his armpits. He had run out without ajacket to respond to the situation at Nedzu’s request and the fastestway to travel was via his capture weapon, which left him wind-raw andchilled to his bones in this weather. He was fucking miserable andhad been for half an hour.

“You should walk closer to me. Idon’t mind,” All Might added earnestly, giving a short, sunny laughand, god forbid, walking a little faster. Drawing a little closer, tomake his point. “People tell me I’m like a portable heater! It’s areal help in mountain rescues. Do you go to the mountains at all?”

Rather than simply refusing him like anadult male, or telling him off like he would one of his kids, Aizawahissed at All Might.

He did. He hissed, like a corneredanimal. It started as a snort but then his teeth just locked in thecold and he hissed and just kept walking, and that’s when the pricklestarted in his cheeks. Spreading. Reddening. Engulfing.

“Did you just …” All Mightuttered faintly, stunned.

Aizawa was almost running now, like anidiot, although the hero’s long, liquid strides hardly registered thedifference in pace.

“Hurry up,” he grit out, nearlyrunning blind for all the snow clotting his eyelashes. “We’realmost to the meeting point.”

“If you’re willing to be carried for a second, I could, ah, jump us there –”

“I said, move. With yourfeet.”

God, what was he even fucking saying?

When they arrived in the designatedcourtyard, All Might’s famous persistence made one last appearance,apparently just for reputation’s sake. As Aizawa took shelterunderneath an awning, trying not to shiver too obviously as theywaited for their UA contact to meet them, All Might came to a haltbeside him. It was a respectable distance, he would grant the manthat, but Aizawa made the mistake of reflexively glancing up: meetinghis eyes, All Might grinned down at him as if from out of a magazinespread fifteen years ago, golden and handsome and utterly,breathtakingly shy.

For that moment, he was fourteen again,trying to parse the hot, squirming sensation rising in his belly ashe looked at a luxurious full-page magazine spread of a recliningshirtless hero who, logically, should have just inspired his heroicvalues. Aizawa gulped, one breath away from panicking.

“I really appreciate you helping mein that fight, even if I can’t remember it. It’s been quite a day,but I wanted to say … thank you.”

“Yeah,” he said, just to stop him,but it didn’t work.

“And just because we don’t know eachother doesn’t mean we … ah, can’t,” All Might said quietly, oneenormous hand to his neck. His breath plumed out of his chappedmouth, somehow majestic, and Aizawa’s poor frozen body shook just imagining howdeliciously warm his lips would be. “I don’t really know where Iam, or what’s going on, but … I know that I’d like to see youagain. Is that … okay?”

His brain, Aizawa’s entire fuckingbrain, had to reboot. If he wasn’t bright, scalding red before, hewas now, and he was also not doing this.

“If you’re at UA for now, I’ll bearound,” Aizawa muttered once he unstuck his throat, staying firmlybehind the curtain of his snow-crusted hair so this young paragon ofsex appeal couldn’t see his miserable flush. Suffering, dying withravenous resurrected teenaged lust, he added mentally, everytime you turn the corner.

He would most certainly be taking hisfive years of stored-up vacation days this week, and every week afteruntil Yagi, scarecrow Yagi, was back and no longer quite the assaulton his libido. He wasn’t bad, but mostly he wasn’t this. Thiswas awful.

The two heroes stood silently togetherunder the awning and, to all extents, that was it. Aizawa had madeit: he’d managed it and pulled it off, not giving his surrealchildhood crush the barest of hints that such a violent attractioneven existed, boiling underneath his skin. He could even blame anyredness on the snow.

“Hey, hey, hey! What’s the news,dudes? Nedzu said we’ve got a situation on our paws, here!”

Enter: Yamada “Present Fuckhead Mic”Hizashi, perpetual fretter, professional life-ruiner,somehow-still-best-friend.

“Ahhh! Shouta what the hell, did youforget your hat again? It’s snowing!”

It was half situational anxiety andhalf muscle memory that Aizawa stiffened on the spot as Hizashi ranup to them, already scolding him about his winter wear or lackthereof. After a bit of digging in his saddle bag, his best friendunearthed a hat and immediately shoved it on his head. In winter,Hizashi always carried a hat for the very rare circumstance that itwas cold enough to merit messing up his hair, and possibly becauseShouta never carried one. It was like together, they made onefunctional, fully-dressed adult.

That would have been fine, well withinthe kinds of abuse Aizawa was accustomed to, if his friend hadn’ttugged the hat down over his eyes like a jackass and smashed hisburning cheeks in his hands and just kept going.

“Look at you, you’re all red!Christmas red! Yannoe, I keep telling you but with your blood type,you really shouldn’t –“

He growled, tried to shove him off, butthen his best friend’s eyes focused like lime-green scanners,dangerously sharp behind his glasses and for just a second Aizawaremembered that he wasn’t actually a dumbass.

“Wait just a minute.”

“Hizashi,” he hissed,growl-screamed, little more than a desperate gurgle in his throat.

“Are you blushing? Holy smokes,you’re blushing!” he crowed, letting him to only to punch him onthe arm and grin in his face. “You never blush! You see someonecute on the way back, or what? You cruisin’ on the job, yascalliwag?”

“Fucking – Hi-za-shi!”

It was only then, with Aizawaphysically paralyzed by the sheer amount of blood in his face andstaring knives through the so-called hero, that Hizashi actuallyglimpsed beyond the man he’d dedicated his life to humiliating andsaw.

“Oh my god,” Hizashi said, agape.“We do have a situation.”

“It seems we do,” came the chucklefrom behind him.

Steeling himself, blood sitting heavyin his neck and cheeks, Aizawa turned to see the Symbol of Peacestanding tall behind them … looking not at the loud, awfulnewcomer, but square at Aizawa with a knowing glint in his eye and aroguish grin. That kind of look that said someone knew they were hot.Very hot, and it made a kind of sense to Aizawa’s broken,blood-deprived brain: the heat coming off his sculpted, latex-slickedbody was so intense, it felt like spring just standing next to him.

As he watched, All Might reached up andbrushed a fuzzy layer of snow from his stupid hair, making sure togratuitously flex his bicep on the way up and cock his hip like aporn star.

Aizawa gulped audibly. He was utterlyfucked. And that was before Nedzu appointed him as All Might’sofficial nanny for the next two weeks and the de-aging didn’t exactlygo to plan.

[weekendsinmaine]

Somehow my short break from blogging turned into a year and a half long hiatus, with a few occasional feeble posts to make me feel like I was somehow still engaged. I kept up a little better with my social media accounts and still spent a lot of time thinking about my blog but just didn’t get around to posting that much.

Maybe that’s the natural ebb and flow of a hobby blog. I don’t know. This is my first blog. I can’t feign that life was too busy. My empty nest meant I did have excess time to devote to my blog, but I found other things to fill the time instead. There were a few major life events during my break including the loss of my mother and a change of jobs. The first certainly a large stressor, the latter more of a minor transitional period.

In the end, I don’t think it was any specific incident just a temporary loss of interest.

To celebrate my return to blogging, I thought I’d dust off a post I drafted a long time ago and share some random facts about me as a way to reintroduce myself.

Ten random facts about me:

My favorite food is lobster. I’m a true Maine girl! Spoiler alert, it’s likely not the last time you’ll hear about lobster during this A to Z Challenge.

I collect mini-mates and even have a hand painted set depicting the cast of Firefly. My husband once told me that shopping for me was like shopping for a ten year old boy.

I celebrated my last milestone birthday with a trip to Machu Picchu, which had always been my top bucket list travel destination. It did not disappoint.

My childhood dog won a blue ribbon for best trick at our local dog show. He could balance an empty soda can on his nose, flip it in the air and then catch it in his mouth.

Each Christmas I create a geek inspired gingerbread house. I’ve made the Tardis from Doctor Who and the Enterprise from Star Trek.

My first car was a Volkswagen Cabriolet. Sadly, it was totaled in a fender bender a few years after I bought it. I replaced it with a  Volkswagon Fox. The Cabriolet was cooler.

I have never ridden a horse. A high school boyfriend was going to take me horseback riding once, but for reasons I’ve long since forgotten we never made it.

It’s A Wonderful Life is my favorite movie. My husband can recite almost all of the lines. It’s one of the reasons I fell in love with him.

My favorite TV show is Supernatural. I’ve been watching it since it debuted fifteen years ago. Sam and Dean are my boys. My friend and I went to a Supernatural Convention in Las Vegas a few years ago. We enjoyed it so much that we spent more time than we had planned there.

I still have all the negatives from every picture I have ever taken. Even in our digital world, I can’t bring myself to throw them away.

I also was nominated for a blogging award a few years ago, although unfortunately I wasn’t able to accept because I had stopped blogging at the time. I thought it might be fun to go back and answer the questions that had been posed to me.

The blogger who nominated me is someone I discovered during my first A to Z challenge, Sara Writes: The Crazy Life of a Silly Little Sister. Her site is playful, bright and full of personality. Her A to Z challenges in the past have been fun and full of amazing baked creations. I usually finish reading her posts with a sweet craving.  Her theme this year is a Potterific A to Z. Harry Potter is one of my favorite fandoms. I’m looking forward to reading her posts. Be sure to visit her blog!

While I wasn’t able to participate previously, below are my answers to her original questions.

What is your favorite part about yourself?

One of my posts from my previous A to Z Challenge was on Anna Kendrick’s book “scrappy little nobody“. I used a quote in that post,

“I gave up on being Nice. I started putting more value on other qualities instead: passion, bravery, intelligence, practicality, humor, patience, fairness, sensitivity. Those last three might seem like they are covered by “nice,” but make no mistake, they are not.”

I think in the past I might have described myself as nice, but Anna’s quote really resonated and I’d have to go with passion. I am passionate about many things including hobbies, travel, friends, family…. the list goes on.  It’s probably why I chose the word bliss this year!

If you could be any character in a book, which book and character would you pick and why?

I would be Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice. She is confident, intelligent and fun. While she certainly makes some mistakes along the way, she has a joy for life and is unwilling to compromise for anything less than love. It doesn’t hurt that she ends up with Mr. Darcy either.

Road trip or fly the distance? Explain.

Fly the distance whenever possible. I do not enjoy long road trips. When we were dating, my husband and I drove from Quebec City, Quebec to Saint John, New Brunswick. Once we arrived in Saint John, my husband wanted to drive up to see the tide change in the Bay of Fundy. I flipped out. The thought of spending even one more minute in a car pushed me over the edge. We finished that trip by driving down to Bar Harbor, where we got engaged, so other than the endless car ride it’s a happy memory.

We also rectified the situation this summer by taking a vacation up to the Bay of Fundy, so he has now officially seen the tides change. We realized on our trip this summer that we were only 30 minutes away from some of the best Bay of Fundy tides during that earlier vacation, but since it was before cell phones and GPS, we never knew.

If you could keep a fantasy creature (from books or movies) as a pet which fantasy creature would you like to have?

Scooby Doo. I know he’s a dog and not technically a fantasy creature but he does talk. It would be nice to know what my dog was thinking. Maybe Scooby could play interpreter.

Imagine you can only take one more trip – where would you want to go?

Does an around the world trip count? I actually can’t image only one more trip because travel is such a big thing for me. If I had to pick one, I guess backpacking through Europe. And by backpacking, I mean staying in nice hotels and taking ubers.

How did you end up as a blogger? How did your awesome blog come into existence?

I have always been an informal story teller and memory keeper. I have many scrapbooks and photo albums. I am the family’s visual historian. I feel like blogging is the next step in memory keeping for me. It is also a way to be creative not only with the writing but the website design too.

If you were given the chance to remove any one evil from this world which one would it be?

Killing.

Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or neither one? Why?

Harry Potter. While both are beautifully created worlds, I am smitten with with wizarding world.  My new puppy is named Neville. He’s a rescue pup so no fancy names needed for his papers, but if we did one it would be Neville Longbottom, a True Gryffindor. Next to the main three, he is my favorite character.

What’s the most important life lesson you’ve learnt so far?

Resiliency. You can’t let roadblocks and setbacks stop you from moving forward. I drive my girls crazy because I’ve stressed the importance of grit to them so much that it’s now a major source of irritation for them. Oops.

Which activity or interest are you most passionate about in life?

I have many, many passions but if I had to pick one, I would go with travel and seeing new things both near and far.

Below is my own question that I will be answering for each of my A to Z posts this month.

Why does blogging bring me bliss? I enjoy the creative challenge and opportunity to improve my writing. I love to learn and expand my skills. Blogging helps me be more thoughtful and reflective about activities and other aspects of my life that I am documenting. I’m a memory keeper at heart and my blog is an extension of memory keeping. When I read old posts, it brings me back to that particular adventure or moment in time. 

Are you a blogger? What do you enjoy most about blogging?

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  I’m participating in a Blogging A-Z Challenge for April 2020. I will be posting new content every day this month except most Sundays. Each post is associated with a letter of the alphabet, starting with A and ending with Z. My theme for the challenge is Bliss. To read more of my A to Z posts from this year, click HERE.

My latest blog post... #AtoZChallenge | B is for Blogging and getting personal for my grand return. Somehow my short break from blogging turned into a year and a half long hiatus, with a few occasional feeble posts to make me feel like I was somehow still engaged.