#i still feel like no one actually cares about my stuff

[sleep-nurse]

how it feels right now

[furbyfubar]

I'm a game designer. Admittedly mainly on a hobby basis as I have a real job. People are still often surprised when I, a real actual human, respond to e-mails and random Discord messages about my games.

Like, come on? It's like being surprised fanfic writers like comments on their fics! Talking to about the games and puzzles I've made with people who've played them and obviously care about them is awesome!

Sure, game devs of AAA games or devs of indie games that have found a huge number of players are likely less likely to have time for all that personal replies to players contacting them. But that's for mainstream stuff. But the weird indie games? Those are typically made by one or maybe two people who almost have to have strong feelings and opinions about their games; otherwise they wouldn't have gone through all the steps of making it exist!

But yeah, the same is likely true for academics writing papers on incredibly narrow subjects, curators who've spent months putting together some niche exhibition for a museum, or most people who's spent lots of time and effort into putting something slightly strange or highly specific into the world, regardless of if that's what they do for a living full time, it's their hobby, or it falls somewhere in between.

Send the e-mail!

[keferon]

Chapter 2 of Blurr storyline >:D

“Actually” says Swerve ”I'm an alien.”

“Heh” giggles Blurr ”sorry, my head is all cloudy, I thought you said you were an alien.”

Part one

Holy shit I actually managed to finish it…..Oh. My god.

Under the cut⤵️

Is it stupid to miss someone who doesn't even exist?

Probably yes, but hey, Swerve already has several degrees, might as well get another one. A degree in Stupidity or something. Who cares?

For the first few days after waking up from his coma, he feels like he's going crazy. Everybody has realistic dreams, right? The ones where you can scrutinize every angle, memorize every face and smell and sound. The ones that make you lie still for a while after waking up, grasping at every thing you can. Trying to memorize everyone you meet, imprint them in your head.

Because apart from your mind, they don't exist anywhere else. So that's your only way to keep them.

It never works. Obviously. Details slip away. Impressions fade. Just a couple days, and you won't be able to recall anything but the main events from memory.

Wait, hell, not days. Cycles.

His life is a weird, pathetic, fantastical circus. Earth term. Heh. There are no circuses on Cybertron, haha!

But Swerve remembers. And the word circus, and the smell of asphalt, and rains that were made of water not acid. Remembers the English language. Can speak it fluently, even if you wake him up in the middle of the night.

Remembers his work schedule and remembers which company makes the best details. And Tailgate with his bright blue uniform and Wheeljack with his endless experiments and Swindle with his expensive coat and of course...yeah, no, don't think of Blurr, don't think of Blurr, don't. Don't.

He'd heard about it. Read about it, too. Mechs waking up from comas and doing wild things. Some forgot how to speak at all, some gained a new skill, some lived a whole life while they slept.

Articles tell Swerve, don't worry, what you've experienced isn't unique. The doctor tells Swerve that the same thing has happened to others before you, it will be okay, it will pass.

Swerve isn't sure he wants it to pass.

He's been in a coma for who knows how long. The medic said it was caused by an internal trauma that decided to suddenly get worse. One minute he's recharging , the next he's gone. Internal injuries are insidious.

So it turns out. One day he just disappeared from the world because he was busy slowly dying in his room and no one noticed until a thief tried to sneak in. The only one who came to him was a Mech who wanted to steal his stuff. Huh.

That feels revolting. Swerve liked to think he had enough friends. Or at least enough good connections. Enough those who should have noticed his absence, right?

Apparently not. His shifts at work were reassigned, his contacts never texted him first, his...

His small persona wasn't important enough for anyone to notice his disappearance.

Would his human coworkers notice? Would Tailgate have noticed? Or Jazz? Swindle?

Jazz would have noticed, he was always surprisingly attentive when it came to his friends. And he was friends with just about everybody.

Swindle would probably get upset about the money he'd lost.

It's amazing how much his brain-- wait, no, his processor. How much his processor could create to entertain him. It's a more elaborate world than the most complex series Swerve has ever known. And that scrap had forty-six seasons and fifteen encyclopedias!

People, Earth, a bunch of new languages and rules and all for the sake of the end being like, OOPS! ...it was all a dream. Hilarious. Worst plot twist ever. Swerve hates it when stories go in this direction even more than when they kill off their characters.

In his humble opinion, death is better than the revelation that none of the experiences made sense or had any value. In terms of writing scripts obviously. Haha.

He's busy roaming haphazardly through his own memory. He's looking, comparing, trying to find inconsistencies or things that don't make sense. All the stuff that usually gives away the fact that what happened was a dream.

Most of his memories are occupied by--No. Frag.

Don't think about Blurr, don't think about Blurr, don't think..

He's thinking about Blurr. A lot.

Blurr occupies a surprisingly important role in his comatose dreams.

In the time he spent just looking at him, you could hand-build an entire Mech. Maybe even three. Swerve remembers picking up every bit of merch he could reach with his paycheck. Watching hundreds of videos and buying every new themed drink even if it was a flavor he didn't like.

Then spent a surprising amount of time resenting Blurr for not living up to his fantasies.

Blurr's behavior hadn't helped either, of course, but now, looking back at the past himself Swerve thinks that.. Oh wow. You weren't just annoyed at him. You blamed him for ruining your beautiful fantasy. You were having so much fun entertaining yourself with thoughts of this marvelous image, and he came along and corrupted it. Poisoned the well you drank joy from.

But that's not quite true, Swerve thinks.

Blurr was more complicated than that. But exactly how, he'll never know. All he has are his memories, and those memories are cut short at the most interesting point.

Swerve knows this plot twist. The asshole character that no one loves at the last second turns out to not be what everyone thought, but it's too late.

Oh no, he's not an evil jerk, he's actually traumatized. Oh no, he wasn't bad, he was actually secretly helping everyone. You thought he was awful? Well now you're going to feel awful reading fanfics.

Serevus Spayne didn't actually betray the main character's dad, no no, he was in love with him! Bam. Drama.

Swerve isn't a big fan of this stuff. He likes his characters developed properly. But he can't deny the appeal of a character leaving behind a bunch of questions you thought you knew the answer to.

Uggh.

The doctor was wrong. These thoughts don't go away. These memories don't dull.

Swerve just boils in them, constantly getting stuck in his own head. Sometimes he puts English words into his speech and everyone looks at him strangely. Sometimes he reflexively says some inside joke and no one gets it and he's left standing there with an awkward smile. Because. Guys, you don't understand, if my coworkers were here they'd think it's hilarious. I promise, in my fantasy world, it's funny.

When he gets a job on one of the Autobot ships, he accepts it thinking it might be a good distraction from his thoughts.

When he happens to see Prowl with a tiny human on his shoulder in the corridor of that ship, he thinks he's lost his mind.

The whole thing. The whole load-bearing structure on which his picture of the world has been held suddenly gives a lurch. Living your life in a super realistic dream is wild, but meeting a character from your dream in real life??

Freaking cursed.

Jazz looks puzzled by his reaction, but all Swerve can think about are two things.

One, if Jazz is here, does that mean everything else was real, too???

Two - holy shit, Jazz is tiny.

It never occurred to him. But he didn't really know what size humans were. Well, sure, he could measure it in numbers. But he was among humans himself. And about the same size. He was generally even shorter than most of them.

If Jazz is so small, he can't imagine how tiny Tailgate would be. Or--

He can feel his spark freeze. In fact, he can almost hear the sound of a string breaking in his processor. Does that mean Blurr is real too? Real and just as tiny and currently dead? Because Swerve was there but was too convinced it was all just a dream to help?

He's going to get sick.

He needs to talk to Jazz right now.

____________

Swerve taps his fingers nervously on the countertop. Come on. You're good at talking. Talking is your greatest skill. All you have to do is tell someone else about your comatose hallucinations and hope they don't think you're crazy.

They're sitting at a table at the bar. More specifically Swerve and Prowl are sitting at the table, and Jazz is sitting right on the table. (God he's so small).

“So uh. I got injured a while back and...uh...well, it got worse, turned out important systems were affected and I kind of. I was in a coma. For a really long time.”

Jazz frowns

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”

He speaks in a mildly wonky Common, Swerve notes to himself. He waves his servo a little too cheerfully in response.

“'Ay it's no big deal really. I saw a whole other world while I was asleep and like. See, I thought it was just my fantasies, but it seemed very real and...”

Swerve mentally crosses his fingers.

“And it was about this planet called Earth and about people who were building their own inanimate huge robots to fight huge aliens and their boss wanted to launch Mechs into space, so he picked the best of the pilots named Jazz and sent him on this test mission and...”

Jazz looks at him with huge eyes before switching to English in surprise.

“Mech, what the hell?”

“...And we lost him...” finishes Swerve with a sad smile.

Before thinking for a bit, and adding.

“I'm going to show you a trick I can do.”

And then projects his holoform onto the table in front of him.

This. It's weird. Not in a way that would tilt it in the direction of unnatural. More like walking around in his comfy indoor pajamas right in the middle of the street. Being human is familiar to him, but being human amongst huge Cybertronians? Strange. And a little creepy.

Prowl looks confused.

Jazz looks absolutely frantic.

“SWERVE????”

Swerve doesn't even manage to respond, only to smile in relief before Jazz rakes him into his arms. In his holoform, Jazz feels right again. He's taller than Swerve and oh boy, he's alive and unharmed. To think everyone thought he was dead, staying up nights trying to find what was left of him, and he was on the other side of the universe the whole time?

Swerve chuckles into Jazz's shoulder. Then picks him up and spins him around a couple times just because he needs something to get his energy out. Man, it's nice to hug people. Warm and soft, eight out of ten.

Jazz pulls away but still stays standing very close. Swerve can literally see the happy stars in his eyes.

“Dude, I'm not complaining but what...how???? You just kinda..."

Swerve laughs and twitches his eyebrows playfully.

“I still speak English, you don't have to torture yourself with Common.”

“Oh thank fuck.” Jazz throws his hands up dramatically “you're my favorite person right now.”

There is a polite click of the vocalizer resetting above their heads.

“I” Prowl says “very glad you two are happy but I'd like some explanation”

Swerve presses his head into his shoulders guiltily. Prowl has the unique ability to always sound like you've done something wrong in front of him.

Although Jazz doesn't seem to feel the same way?

“Short version - I sleepwalked my holoform to another planet.”

He pauses dramatically.

“The long version is...”

Jazz raises his hand

“What's a holoform?”

Swerve sighs.

“It's a holographic avatar that I can project using a holomatter generator. Sort of like a remote controlled game character.”

Jazz whistles impressed. And then immediately turns back to Prowl

“Have you been able to do that all this time too?“

Prowl hums

“I can create an avatar, but it takes a lot of practice to make it at least believable. And to fully perceive the world through it takes even more. It's a whole new technology. What Swerve does is essentially an art form. Sophisticated and impressively detailed may I add.”

Swerve shrugs shyly. He's still using the holoform to stand on the table next to Jazz. Looking up to speak to Prowl isn't exactly comfortable, but Jazz definitely looks like he's been missing the human presence. Swerve isn't human, but he might as well be.

“Thank you. Yes! Uh. Anyway, it seems while I was in a coma my processor projected my avatar onto Earth and I...let's just say I lived there for a while.”

Jazz laughs

“Dude. So you're telling me you were basically sleepwalking the whole time?”

“ I was.”

Prowl frowns.

“But the range limit of the holomatter generator is only four hundred miles...”

“.... I had a lot of practice...”

Jazz claps his hands.

“You learned a whole other language! Got an ID!. You had a job!!!”

“I got carried away,” Swerve admits.

Jazz scratches the back of his head, still looking very amused

“How many degrees did you get? Haha wait no, I have a better question, did you pass your driver's license?”

“Two. And I failed my driver's exam.”

“Dude you are literally a car without a driver's license!” collapses Jazz on the table with laughter.

Swerve blows the hair out of his face

“Says you who retook the physical several times. You couldn't pass the "being human" exam.”

Jazz just wheezes incoherently in response. Prowl looks alarmed.

“Don't worry, that's him getting excited. So...where have I been...”

Swerve nervously shoves his hands into his pockets

“...Do either of you two know where Earth is?”

Prowl twitches his door wings

“No. Since Jazz was teleported we don't have much clues.”

Swerve grimaces. Scrap. Of course nothing's going to be that easy. He's also been, like,....teleported.

He stands there for a couple minutes and just feels fifteen different emotions rise up in his head at once. A crooked, unsteady smile creeps across his face.

He's thinking.

Oh hell, yeah! I knew it wasn't a dream!

Then he remembers the mess he left behind.

Oh, no, it wasn't a dream.

Jazz puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Swer... Swerve? Dude, are you okay?”

“Ah frag..” Swerve says weakly ”it wasn't a dream.”

Jazz looks...puzzled.

“Is that bad?”

Swerve remembers his friends. Remembers the Mecha program. Remembers fire and smoke and screams and rumbling and crackling flames. Ashes flying through the air and the smell of burnt wires. He remembers blood and debris and...

“It's...complicated.”

This wasn't just a stupid plot twist he'd dreamed up because he'd watched too many shows. This wasn't a hallucination or a disembodied fantasy that just happened to linger in his head. This was real. His friends exist out there somewhere. His work and his collections and his little apartment...

And Blurr. Was real. Or still is? Swerve doesn't know. Blurr wasn't a product of his imagination. He was real and what he did was real and Swerve left him there alone, bleeding and trapped in rubble and tiny and...

Hahahahah oh fUCK.

He doesn't like this plot. It's too much. Too much to handle, too complicated, too ambiguous.

It's also probably too late.

But he can't leave it like this, right? Blurr went into the damn burning building just because of the possibility that there might be someone alive in there.

And Swerve doesn't even have to go through the flames. He has to look. He has to try at least.

Jazz glares at him with a worried look on his face

“ That expression you have...”

Swerve puts the smile back on his face.

“I need to get to Earth.”

___________________

Swerve is not an idiot.

Or maybe more accurately an idiot, but with several degrees.

He's well aware that finding Earth in space with only a description of it is impossible. Which leaves him with two options.

Ask the Quintessons. Or look for it himself.

The first sounds like death. The second like coma. Swerve has exquisite enough taste to know which is better.

He just needs to do some preliminary reserch.....

Jazz, now back inside his Mech looks doubtful.

“You're not going to die suddenly and for no reason, are you?”

Swerve laughs.

“Pfffff what, no of course not, would I kill myself hah. No no, look I'll just put myself in stasis for a bit. Send myself to Earth. And try to figure out where it is from there. Get the coordinates. If I'm lucky, I can see what Space Bridge the local Quintessons use. All you'll have to do is wake me up after a while.”

“It's not harmful?”

Swerve makes an uncertain gesture with his hand...servo.

“If I have enough fuel. And an additional connection to an external generator.”

Jazz tilts his head

“ Why are you so eager to get to Earth? Don't get me wrong, I miss it too and want to go back, but.”

Swerve bites his knuckles.

“ I have some unfinished business?”

“Pshhhh you sound like a ghost.”

Swerve only laughs in response.

_______________

Concentration is tricky.

Swerve tries to think about Earth. And not to think about the fact that he doesn't know where it is. If he's already been there once, he might as well go there again yes? In theory? Perhaps?

Except for the possibility that his sleepwalking just takes him to random planets. That would be very inconvenient. It would be a whole new level of lost

Shit. No. Earth. Think Earth.

What's he even gonna do when he gets there? How far away is it? Swerve is very talented with his holomatter generator, but if it's really far away... maybe he should reset some settings.

He mentally starts going through his options. Does he need tangibility? Probably not. Come to think of it, it would only make him more vulnerable and take a lot of energy. Yeah, the tangibility has to go. What else? Touch, too. Sight and hearing should stay, that's not even a question, but colors and textures are not really necessary.

The amount of detail and picture quality can be reduced as well. His holoform will become colorless and grainy and will probably ripple with static, but he'll survive it.

After he finishes making changes to his holoform he thinks about his old stuff left in his house. Then about the posters. Then reminds himself that he needs to focus on the goal or he'll never find Blurr and...oh FUCK his phone! Where was his phone when he disappeared? Was it found?? There were so many personal things on that phone, he's hoping the phone was burned under the rubble. Either that or the arriving investigators will find his browser history and he'll go into another coma from pure embarrassment.

He blinks dazedly when he realizes he has loads of rocks in front of his eyes. Oh..Did he screw up? Did he end up on the wrong planet? Is it a cave or--

Then he notices the odd shape of the “rocks” and. Oh, no. It's not a cave. It's charred concrete debris.

This is the place where he was last.

He hastily looks around. Anxiety creeps up the back of his neck, makes him feel like something slippery and cold is crawling over his skin. There is nothing but ruins all around.

Blurr is not here. The place where his Mech was lying is empty.

Which means he was at least found and dragged out. Dead or alive.

Swerve's bites his knuckles. Okay.

All right.

He's got things to do.

_______________

He's trying to stay out of sight. Which isn't hard, considering he's just a hologram. At first, he just sneaks around in the quiet areas. Then proceeds to do a facepalm and start teleporting. Think, Swerve. Did you read all those comic books for nothing? Superheroes who couldn't really use their superpowers creatively always annoyed him. And he does, in fact, have a superpower. Gotta get creative, right?

He stops and looks at himself again. His holoform is going static and is a dull white color. He thinks for a bit, and then shrinks himself. Thinks some more, and makes himself almost transparent. There's no way he could pass as a normal human right now, so he'd better just do his best to avoid being seen by anyone.

He looks around thoughtfully. Hmm. Even if he's going to be absolutely tiny, he needs to make sure no one sees him, otherwise the whole base will think the Quintessons are now spying on them through holograms or something.

Breaking the rules feels...it's exciting.

All his ..human life here he hadn't thought about it, but if he threw away the rules he was used to about what people could or couldn't do...

He looks up in a sudden rush of sly genius. All people look under their feet when they walk, but how many look up? And how many of them notice the barely visible tiny holoform hiding just behind the blinding lamps?

The answer is probably none.

Swerve projects himself onto the ceiling and mentally pats himself on the shoulder for his impressive intellectual accomplishments. A creativity degree should definitely be a thing.

A degree in spying on the Quintessons' ships wouldn't hurt him either.

Fortunately sneaking onto their ship turns out not to be that difficult. Swerve makes himself absurdly tiny and hides in the darkest corners that no one would ever think to look into. Why hasn't anyone thought of using holoforms for spying before? Could he be the first to think of it? He doesn't know, but he mentally decides to patent the idea.

Finding the Space Bridge is surprisingly easy. The local Quintesson fleet is clearly used to being the dominant force in space. And that's generally logical. Even if humanity collects a mountain of money from somewhere to throw a dozen Mechs into space - there will be thousands of monsters waiting for them. In such a situation, you don't have to hide, the guards are enough.

Well done, well done, don't hide, Swerve thinks, copying the coordinates and address of the space bridge to himself. You have absolutely nothing to fear here, he thinks, so stay where you are and don't move. Please and thank you.

Once the coordinates are obtained, he... has some freedom to explore. And he uses it for probably the most boring-sounding thing in the world. He returns to his usual workplace.

It’s simple. As damning as the Mecha program was, Swerve loved his job in it. He loved his position in the assembly shop. And he missed his friends.

He quickly teleports through several rooms, continuing to hide close to the lamps. Tailgate is here. Alive and unharmed. Wheeljack is too, though his face has some scars added to it. It's great to see them again, even if he can't talk to them right now. No one will probably react well to a grainy unexplainable hologram. He's just glad to know they're okay and honestly, the last thing he needs is paranoid Onslaught installing extra signal jammers.

It takes time to find Blurr. Partly because Swerve is terrified of what he might find if he started looking. So he goes to check the death lists first, and only after flipping through and re-reading them three times does he finally exhale in relief.

Blurr's name isn't there.

So his smug, shiny ass must be around here somewhere.

He checks the hangar. Flips through the Mech launch logs and feels an uncomfortable knot begin to form in his chest. Blurr's Mech has never been repaired or launched even once since the incident. Its plating has been replaced with new, well polished, and put in a prominent place where anyone who wants to can take a picture of it. But all the internal systems are destroyed. This machine hasn't been used for anything other than being a beautiful exhibit.

That's...something's wrong.

He checks offices and schedules as well as eavesdropping on a few conversations and ends up secretly following Swindle, who is arguing loudly with someone on the phone. He says something about deals and how he doesn't need anyone meddling in his business. Then he talks about how he's got everything under control and the person on the phone is “a dumbass who's making drama out of nothing” and that “he doesn't need anyone's handouts". Then he sighs and says, “you know how celebs are. Dumb and dramatic. You can't take their words literally.”

Then drops the call and for a couple seconds looks like he's just had a large bill taken right out of his hand. Curses again, but in a quieter voice. Leafs through his contacts and stops at the one signed 'free ice'.

“Blurr? Where are you? Wha...ah, no wait. No, the advertising agency called. No, liste...Can you shut up for one second?Where are you?

Uh-huh....... Uh-huh.Okay.

Give me half an hour...okay, yeah.”

This is it, Swerve thinks.

He shrinks himself further and teleports under the collar of Swindle's coat.

He wants to take a look. Just. Just a peek. Make sure everything's all right. Then he can go about his original mission in peace. He watches Swindle get in his car and drive off somewhere. Swerve doesn't recognize this part of town. The houses here are much nicer than where he lived. The streets are cleaner.

He tucks himself further under the coat collar. He's not going to be a stalker or anything, but he's worried and he doesn't have time to wait for Blurr himself to show up for work. Just one little look and that's it.

Swindle's car stops outside a beautiful, shiny hospital. Swerve nervously tries to bite his knuckles, but remembers he's disabled touch in his holoform. Shit? Shit.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shi

Blurr looks like a mangled corpse.

Okay, not really. His left side that faces the door to the hospital room looks like a mangled corpse and that's the first thing that catches Swerve's eye when he's inside.

Blurr is pale and thin and his hands are covered in bandages. The left side of his face has been turned into an absolute ugly nightmare. A piece of his ear is missing. In the place of the left eye is a creepy empty hole.

Suddenly Swerve realizes why Blurr didn't show up for work. You can't even show him to his coworkers like that, not just to the public.

Blurr turns his head and the spell breaks. His lips stretch into a cocky smile.

“'Got bored without me Swindle?”

Swindle doesn't show the slightest emotion at the gruesome sight. He casually pulls a chair over to the hospital bed and sits down.

“Shockwave is trying to sneak a new project into the program. And he's slowly swaying investors to his side, using you as an excuse. Tells everyone you're a poor martyr he can save if only he's given the green light from above.”

Blurr wrinkles his nose.

“Not that he's wrong. The doctors say I need to pick a new career because with this...” he jerks his head to the left implying his damaged half, ” neither racing nor piloting is an option for me anymore. I'm out of your project.”

Then he stops talking for a few seconds and raises an eyebrow curiously.

“You wouldn't have come here in person just to say that. Why are you really here?”

Swindle adjusts his glasses

“Have I ever told you why I made the contract with you?”

“Because you like money” Blurr says without hesitation.

Swindle lets out a quiet chuckle.

“Fair point. But money wasn't my only priority.”

He pauses for a second. Gets up. Draws the curtains in the room. Checks to make sure no one is outside the door.

Goes back to his seat.

“You didn't see what the Mecha project was like before. Brutality and absolute disregard for human rights multiplied by a thousand. People were desperate and no one cared to maintain any decency.”

He raises his hand when Blurr rushes to say something.

“No no, listen to me. If you think things are bad now, you're right. But it used to be much. Much, much worse.”

Swindle sighs and adjusts his glasses again

“Vortex was taken as a boy. He wasn't even out of high school when they shoved him into the lab. Me and Onslaught were pulled right out of the college exams. The others were no better, although they were usually a little older. My point is that it was allowed. It's what the superiors could do and no one told them no.”

Blurr tilts his head and gets a little all turned around to see Swindle better with his right eye.

“But you... found a way to change that, didn't you?

Swindle rubs the bridge of his nose

“I have no power over my own superiors. But Onslaught and I have come up with a plan. Look. I'll put it in simple terms for you. Above me is my boss, and above him is another boss, and so on but at the very end of that chain are people from the government. The investors. So we figured out a way to cut through the chain of command and influence them directly. Make them worry about us. It's a kind of social shield. Onslaught is a genius.”

Blurr blinks.

“Why are you telling me all this.”

Swindle takes off his hat and just. Crumples it in his hands. The back of his head shows numerous scars and the glint of tiny metal implants barely visible behind his hair.

“You're that shield right now, Blurr. You can't leave.”

Blurr's eye widens

“Is that why you insisted on ‘befriending’ me with all those bullshitters?”

“I needed to make sure that in their minds we weren't just a military unit. To keep them thinking that we're as human as they are. So I gave Project Mecha a face.” He tugs on the hat again, “Your face.”

Blurr runs his fingers through his hair

“Shockwave can't do whatever he wants cause...because of me his efforts would risk going public and people wouldn't like it and it would ruin the reputation of our investors-and-they'd-cut-off-his-funding.”

Swindle puts his hat back on.

“Exactly.’ That's why he's being so persistent right now. He knows you're vulnerable and he wants to capitalize on the opportunity. Make you part of his new project and tell the world about it. Make publicity his weapon, too.”

The lamp above them flickers faintly. Blurr takes a breath. Long and tired and exhausted and. a bit doomed.

Swindle puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Please. Don't leave. At least not now. And don't let Shockwave get to you. That would open the way for him to get to the rest of the pilots you represent.”

They just. Sit in silence for a while. Blurr quickly taps a finger on his knee. A rapid tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

Swindle moves his hand away and gets up from his chair.

“There's a press conference coming up. I need you to be there. I've told everyone who needs to know that the problem is exaggerated and you're fine but they need to see you.”

Blurr smiles sourly.

“My lawyer is going to charge you such a handsome sum for that stunt.”

Swindle laughs, but his cardboard advertising smile doesn't reach his eyes.

“We’ll see about that. Seriously though. I need you there.”

Blurr bites his lip.

“I..don’t know...”

Swerve...doesn't know what to think of that.

Blurr shows up for the press conference. Late, but he makes it. Just as Shockwave is presenting his new project in his amazingly well-pitched voice. Blurr swings the door open and waltzes lazily inside, skillfully pretending not to notice the many cameras and eyes instantly directed at him.

Swerve, whose memory is still fresh thinks for a second that no, no this can't be the same person. Past Blurr looked like a wreck. Past Blurr was tense and tired and hunched over. Present Blurr couldn't look more alive. His shoulders are squared proudly, there's that cheerful springiness and grace in his stride. He moves with ease and confidence. Smoothly.

The left side of his face is neatly covered with fresh white bandages. Carefully, without leaving the even the slightest gap through which his injury could be seen. His hands are hidden under a fancy jacket. He smiles wide and bright and squints playfully toward the table.

The very embodiment of nonchalance. The few pilots sitting in the audience roll their eyes.

Swindle breathes out a barely perceptible sigh of relief. Swerve, once again using Swindle's collar as a tactical cover, can't help but let out a silent triumphant laugh. Maybe slightly more nervous than he is supposed to be.

Blurr sends Swindle a sly, sharp smile and even knowing it wasn't meant for him, Swerve feels his cheeks heat up.

Ah, damn it.

Swerve breaks the rules. He tells himself that peeking is fraught with consequences when it comes to military organizations, but he can't stop himself from being curious. And from worry, too.

And now that he knows where to look, he sees things he'd rather not see.

Blurr ... is crumbling.

Swerve doesn't know all the details and consequences, but that incident did leave a mark.

But every time Swindle calls him and says “I need you at some place in two hours” he gets up and assembles himself into a human being. Like a goddamn puzzle. Tapes and covers the burned half of his face. Covers up the bruises and hides the stitches. Fixes his hair and sets off on shaky legs to pretend he's fine.

He smiles so bright and carefree, laughs so sweet and beautiful that no one would ever think that even standing up sometimes hurts.

And continues to act like a jerk of course.

The only difference is that this time Swerve mentally gives him the presumption of innocence before he starts judging.

Blurr does a lot of things that seem rude. He also does a lot of things that are actually rude and figuring them out without resorting to alien superpowers would be nearly impossible.

When the pilots see Blurr sitting right on the table while negotiating with investors, they roll their eyes and make comments about his terrible manners. Or when he stops showing up for even the most basic, rudimentary training.

Or when he develops that stupid habit of leaning his elbows on people standing next to him.

It's the model behavior of a rich, spoiled brat.

It's also an inconspicuous way to stay upright.

Employees say “that dumbass has never heard of personal space.”

Investors say, “I think he likes me.”

Blurr leans on Swindle's shoulder and through a charming smile says “Don't move or I'm gonna fall.”

Swindle also keeping up the smile discreetly holds him back, pretending it's a friendly half hug.

Swerve feels like yelling at both of them, but he's not sure what for exactly. For one thing, Blurr in his condition is very VERY VERY contraindicated to even get out of bed, let alone participate in social activities.

On the other hand, without Blurr, everything is going down the pit.

Without Blurr, all the government sees are dry reports and spreadsheets. Without him, all the high command has is numbers and a sense of impunity. Swerve is sickened by how easily people tend to forget that numbers represent other people.

Most pilots are able to draw a parallel between deteriorating working conditions and Blurr's sudden fondness for staying home instead of working. But they think the rich jerk got scared and ran away. Considering the way Blurr has always behaved at work - Swerve can't even judge them too much for it. They assume Shockwave getting more freedom is the cause of Blurr's absence, not the result.

Blurr's influence only becomes noticeable when it slowly starts to fade away. It's like switching from expensive tea to a cheaper one. The awful flavor only becomes noticeable in contrast.

Blurr doesn't lead the development of new technologies or go out to fight in the field. He doesn't make plans and reports, he doesn't participate in drills, he doesn't cover anyone's back in battle.

But he's the one who puts his hand on the government's shoulders when they're about to sign the next piece of paper. He's the one they have to look in the eye before they have a pen in their hands and a document authorizing Shockwave to stick more needles in people's brains.

It makes a difference. Small one. But still.

It turns a disembodied imaginary “combat units” into a tangible person.

From “do you want to accelerate the combat training of new soldiers” to “are you willing to tell the living, breathing guy standing in front of you that shoving poison under his skin is an idea you approve of.”

More importantly (And Swerve actually admires Swindle for this) Will you be able to explain anything to your families later on, when this same guy is on TV all over the country saying that's what you did to him?

There have been two fronts here all this time, Swerve realizes.

While the pilots were protecting people from monsters wearing teeth and armor, Blurr was protecting the pilots themselves from monsters wearing ties and lab coats.

After another conference, Shockwave stops Blurr in the hallway.

“Good show.”

Blurr laughs. Soundly and proudly.

“Thanks darling~ Sorry I interrupted you. Your speech sounded like something important, but I don't really know much about nerd stuff.”

Swerve, hiding on the ceiling again, snorts.

Shockwave doesn't move. Doesn't give any indication at all if he's offended or upset or whatever.

“It must have been hard getting here with your injuries.”

Blurr shrugs and lazily turns his head around distracted.

“It's just a few bruises here and there. Not the end of the world.”

Shockwave nods slowly. His voice and posture and all, Swerve thinks, looking very uncomfortable.

“Of course it isn't. But hardly good for your career.”

Blurr freezes.

No, Swerve thinks. Shit. No, don't listen to him, don't listen to him, don't listen to him, don't

“Your brilliant achievements have always been a source of admiration to me” continues Shockwave “it would be a pity to lose them.”

Blurr makes an indifferent face and tucks his hands into his pockets.

“Like I said. Not the end of the world.”

Swerve imagines choking Shockwave. Dropping a lamp on his head. Maybe jumping on top of him himself. Shut up, he thinks. Shut up, shut up, stop fucking talking.

Shockwave with a nice, slow gesture pulls out a notebook from somewhere and flips a couple pages.

“Multiple burns, cracked ribs, poisoning from carbon monoxide and combustion products of toxic chemicals...”

Blurr visibly shivers and looks away.

“...loss of vision on one side...” Shockwave continues reading, ”and partial hearing loss. Finally, the impact of neural link malfunctions. And this, if I'm not mistaken, is on top of the already existing memory problems?”

Shockwave takes a step closer. Not fast enough to make it look threatening, but enough to hover.

“It may not be the end of the world, but it is the end of you.”

He writes a set of numbers on the same page, tears it off, and hands it to Blurr.

“You are broken. I can fix you.”

Blurr frowns, but takes the piece of paper.

“That fixing would involve giving you consent to mess around with my head, wouldn't it? It's brave of you to think I'd go for that.”

Shockwave tucks the notepad into his pocket.

“I can assure you, neither I nor anyone else is interested in your brain. I just want to give you back what you're truly valued for.”

Blurr flinches.

“I don't need your help.”

“ If you say so,” Shockwave agrees easily. Nods, slowly and smoothly. Then starts to walk away “But you do need your fame.”

...

“By the way, you might want to wipe the blood off.”

Blurr waits until Shockwave's back disappears around the corner, then quickly pulls a tissue from his pocket and brings it up to his nose.

____________________________

Swerve wakes up looking up at the ceiling of his room. The high, metal ceiling, of a metal room on a metal spaceship.

Holy shit...

Jazz pokes him gently on the forearm

“Are you alive? You've been gone for like quite a while...Did it work?”

“Hey Jazz” frowns Swerve “what do you know about Blurr?”

Jazz laughs

“What are you fanboying over him again? Still??? Dude's smug and arrogant. Good boss though. I was hired to perform at his parties before I became a pilot.”

Swerve sits up and rubs the back of his head.

“Ah...”

“So it worked?”

“Wha...ah! Yes! Yes, it worked! I managed to get the number and codes from the space bridge the Quints used on you. We just need to find another space bridge and we'll have a pretty much direct route to Earth...well. Or rather, to the Quint ship that's located near Earth. You get the idea.”

Jazz rubs his hands together happily.

“I'll take it.”

Swerve jumps to the floor and heads to grab an energon cube. Man, these holoform exercises are burning energy like crazy.

He stares at his metal hands like an idiot for a couple minutes. Just...Contemplates how non-human they are.

He has eight fingers again instead of the human ten. Huh.

Prowl downloads the information he's gotten and immediately runs off to plan a route to the nearest working space bridge and for a while Swerve is just.

Left to himself.

He tries not to think about Blurr. What would he even say to him? Hey, look, I'm sorry I accidentally set you up, see, I'm actually an alien who was sleepwalking and thought you were fictional, surely this won't affect our non-existent strictly professional working relationship? Nah, screw that. If he's going to sound crazy, he needs to at least come up with a good presentation for his insanity.

....

Is it weird to think humans are beautiful if you're not human? If you're kind of human, but only in your soul and only half human?

He looks at Jazz and Prowl.

“You two get along really well.”

Jazz chuckles, sitting on Prowl's shoulder.

“Right now, yes. But we got on each other's nerves quite a bit when we first met.”

Swerve looks up at Jazz's chattering legs from his height and thinks. This is working somehow.

On the other hand, Jazz is the exception rather than the rule. He's friendly with everyone, he's easy to get along with, he's the soul of any company and most importantly, he was a little too much into robots before he discovered they could be alive. If anyone could find common ground with the Cybertronians, it would definitely be Jazz.

_____________________

”Are you a ghost?”

Swerve shrieks in fear and gets covered in static. He hadn't planned on talking. He hadn't planned on being noticed at all. Blurr was supposed to be asleep! And Swerve just wanted to close the curtains and leave, because there's some noisy party going on outside and bright illuminations are very bad for a patient already suffering from neural connection withdrawal.

He freezes in place like that dude from Jurassic Park. Like if he's still enough, he won't be noticed. Oh, or was that from another movie?

“I'm just uh” he awkwardly reaches up and closes the curtains “Lights. Bad for...you...now.”

Blurr chuckles. It sounds suspiciously joyful. His whole posture and facial expression. He looks very relaxed for someone who had a ghost materialize into the room out of thin air.

Swerve traces the line of the IV with his gaze in concentration. Oops, that looks like painkillers.

“Yes I am. Uh. A ghost watching the curtains. And now the curtains are fine, so I guess I'd better go?”

Blurr snorts and squints amusedly.

“You can walk through walls?”

“Uh, I can teleport into the next room?”

He backs up his words by making himself disappear and reappear in another corner of the room.

“Cool!” says Blurr cheerfully.

Swerve is involuntarily infected by his mood and makes a couple dramatic bows as if he were some kind of magician.

“ Show me more?”

“Hehehe okay eh” Swerve spreads his arms like he's presenting something and then makes himself the size of a soda bottle and teleports to the edge of Blurr's bed “Ta daaaa~”

“Wooooo look at you, you're like an action figure~”

Blurr immediately makes an attempt to touch him, but fails to reach and drops his hand back on the blanket.

Swerve chuckles and steps closer. It's funny to see the usually incredibly agile Blurr struggling with something so simple and ridiculous.

“They really drugged you huh?”

“It's not the drugs” snorts Blurr ”...it's my eye.”

He raises his hand once more and hesitantly pulls it towards Swerve until it bumps into his hair

“... depths Per…percen.. ah, shit. I can't tell how far away things are.”

Swerve just. Lets Blurr fidget at himself, while starting to feel really bad at the same time.

"If you can't tell how far things are, how are you going to drive?

Race???”

He must have a plan right? Something? Let’s-prove-Shockwave-wrong tactic???

Blurr drops his hands back on the blanket and snorts

“I won't.”

He freezes when the all too close fireworks rumble outside the window. Then points to his head.

“With this. I can't drive, I can barely walk at all, and I look like horror movie material. Pathetic heeh.”

Swerve sits down quietly cross-legged on the blanket.

“Well...at least you're alive....”

Blurr shakes his head.

“If I had died, it would have been epic. You know? Dharm...dramatic! It would be big news and everyone would be talking about what a hero I was or...or something...”

“...”

“Swindle would be so angry, but he'd figure out a way to make money out of it. He'd make a commercial about how people should be heroes. I'd be remn..remembered for being cool and brave and stuff.”

Fireworks can be heard from the street again. Swerve notices that there is a thin slit between the closed curtains through which a slim, flickering strip of multicolored light streams into the room.

Blurr frowns and leans back against the pillow, looking up at the ceiling.

“I've turned into a boring wreck. My records will be beaten, my career forgotten , and all the guys from work will remember me as a brat. In a--in a--in a way, it's worse than death. Shockwave's right.”

Swerve isn't sure what exactly would be an acceptable gesture of comfort, so he kind of just. Places his hand on the blanket covering Blurr's lap.

“Hey, don't say that. I think what you're doing is great.”

“Liar” smiles Blurr crookedly ”You hated me. I saw your posters collection.”

Oh shit. The ones he ripped off the walls and destroyed in a fit of fan frustration? He didn't even hide them, just shoved them in the back corner. Aw, man...

Swerve folds his arms awkwardly across his chest.

“I can be mad at you and think you're cool at the same time. I'm a multitasker.”

“You're a very specific kind of ghost.” says Blurr. Then, apparently inspired by the painkillers, decides to drop the conversational equivalent of an atomic bomb on Swerve's head “You died because of me?”

Swerve stiffens.

“I...Wwhat?”

“You know.” he makes a gesture with his hand that's ..unclear what it's supposed to mean. “You were working there with everyone else, and then there was that fire and I was sure I saw you down there under the rubble.”

He's silent for a couple seconds before he hesitantly continues

“And then no one could find you so most assumed you either burned or ran away. And now you're here with all your weird ghost stuff, so you must be dead.”

Swerve has.No idea what to think about it. And what to say? He's been so busy blaming himself for Blurr getting hurt that it hasn't occurred to him to think about what it looks like from Blurr's own perspective.

“Actually” says Swerve ”I'm an alien.”

“Heh” giggles Blurr ”sorry, my head’s all cloudy, I thought you said you were an alien.”

Swerve wants to run around and bang his head against the wall.

Instead, he gets up from the hospital bed. Carefully.

“You're high. I'm not going to explain things to you while you're high, you won't understand or remember them. Go back to sleep. It's the middle of the night.”

“You'll tell me later?”

Swerve hums quietly and pulls the curtains all the way closed.

“If future, sober Blurr would want my company.”

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

Jazz looks at him. Very intensely.

“Are you going to tell me who this mystery person you keep coming back to Earth for?”

Swerve snorts.

“What makes you think it's anyone in particular?”

“You're right, you're right~” raises his hands in surrender Jazz “So are you going to tell your friend the whole thing?”

Swerve crosses his ..metal arms over his metal chest.

“Is it that big of a deal? He thinks I'm a ghost or something.”

Being a ghost...somehow better, he thinks. If you're a ghost, it kind of automatically implies you're human. Or was a human.

“Sooner or later, he'll put the facts together~” says Jazz in a chant.

Swerve laughs.

“That's unlikely. He's got a pretty bad memory.”

_______________

His plans to stay out of anyone's sight combust with a dramatic pop the next time he projects himself to Earth. He doesn't plan to interfere, he doesn't even plan to linger. He just wants to see what's going on.

He actually just quietly sneaks into the hospital to make sure nothing's happened to Blurr since last time, but when he finally finds him then...oh shit, is that Pharma in the same room with him??? This can't be good.

They don't speak, but Pharma has clearly locked his eyes on Blurr and starts making his way towards him with the relentlessness of a industrial metal press.

Swerve does some rough math in his head. If he briefly gives his holoform back its detail and voice, will that be enough to fry his processor? He's not sure.

Pharma gives a believable impression of a shark getting close. The staff, as if sensing something untoward is about to happen, leaves the room in a hurry.

Blurr looks indifferent, but Swerve's attention is drawn to the way he squints tensely. Man, the lamps are too bright in here.

Pharma smiles sweetly and reaches out for a handshake

“Mind some company?”

Swerve's mental processes fly out the window. Oh no no. Not Pharma. Not in his fucking fanfic. He quickly changes his work clothes into a slightly more business-like looking shirt. Thinks for just a moment and adds a cap to his head to blend in more strongly with the attendants and hide his face to an extent. And then projects himself around the nearest unoccupied corner and runs out of behind it looking as anxious as he feels.

“Blurr!!! Sir, there you are!!! I've been looking everywhere for you!”

Pharma wants to say something, but Swerve doesn't even let him start. He stands in front of Blurr separating him and Farma expressively waves his hands trying to keep his head down.

“The guys you were talking about didn't bring the new hydraulics! It's a disaster, we'll have to use the one on the old models!”

Blurr, to his surprise, backs up his act almost instantly

“Really? But I thought there was nothing to take from the old models?”

“That's exactly the point! I got the paperwork this morning and...oh those assholes are going to screw it up if you don't step in as soon as possible!”

Pharma tilts his head

“Can it wait? We were actually talking here!”

Oh no, thinks Swerve I'll show you who's talking.

“Sir, no offense but this is a matter of extreme urgency. Are you implying that the safety of your patients is not important?”

“What do you mea...”

“Old faulty hydraulics, that's what you want?” raises an eyebrow in horror Blurr.

“No I'm just...”

“I had a better opinion of you, to be honest.”

“I...” opens his mouth Pharma “...WHAT...?”

Swerve shakes his head.

“And I thought his profession was to help people, can you imagine?”

“Wh..”

Blurr rolls his eye.

“Any idiot can get an important position these days.”

“Wait..”

“Tell me about it. Especially doctors.”

Pharma looks like he's about to start pulling the hair out of his head.

“Can at least one of you shut up??”

Swerve adjusts his cap in a businesslike manner

“Sir, I understand you're a bit detached from reality spending so much time in your department, but you need to take better care of your reputation.”

He raises his eyebrows knowingly

“Wouldn't want the rumors about you to turn out to be true. You know what I mean?”

Pharma doesn't even answer anymore. Pharma just looks like a discarded fish.

“…..Wha....there's rumors?”

“Of course” shrugs Swerve ”Ask Norman, he usually knows everything about everyone. And about your interesting tricks with safety, too.”

He leans in conspiratorially, effectively pulling all of Farma's attention to himself

“So if I were you, I'd stay out of any more things you don't understand.”

Pharma wants to say something. Swerve can tell by the look in his eyes. Pharma tries to come up with a witty and context-appropriate response, but this whole conversation has no more context than a typical episode of Teletubbies.

“Where does this Norman guy work?” finally finds the ground beneath his feet Pharma

Swerve shrugs.

“Block C, if he hasn't been transferred yet. He's already been fined several times for spreading harmful information you know? The guy can't keep a secret.”

Pharma throws his hands up angrily and storms away. Probably looking for context. Or revenge.

A quiet cough sounds behind Swerve's back.

“So. Should I be worried about Norman's health?”

Swerve feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up and slowly turns to face Blurr while still looking somewhere on the floor.

“Uh...only if you're concerned about the fate of fictional characters. I made up Norman's wife, she'll be upset if he gets fired for gossiping.”

Blurr chuckles. Then goes silent. Then, after a couple seconds, starts laughing again. That's a good look for him, Swerve thinks. It's not like Blurr's usual velvet-smooth laugh that he uses at social events. It's more like a quick, jerky giggle, and in Swerve's subjective opinion, it's pretty damn cute. He can't help but grin.

Blurr snorts one last time, cutting off the laughter.

Then he reaches out his hand to him.

Swerve reaches back, expecting a handshake, but Blurr ignores his hand and instead goes for his cap and lifts it by the brim.

Swerve, not expecting this, freezes with his hand outstretched.

Blurr freezes as well, still holding his cap in his hand and looking...like he's rethinking his life. A little.

Ugh, and how to explain it all to him....

“Uh...you...uh...probably don't remember me. I...it's...”

Blurr shifts his gaze from Swerve to the cap in his hand. Then back to Swerve.

“You're real???”

Swerve awkwardly waves his hands in front of him

“Ah not.., not really. Do you know why Pharma was looking for you in the first place? He doesn't work with patients anymore, he's been reassigned to the research department, right?”

Blurr shrugs.

“Last time I saw him, he said I might have implant rejection in the third ..uh..what? stage? or something? I think he's trying to get me in for a checkup.”

Swerve twitches.

“Third??? How are you still standing???”

He then quickly reaches up with both hands to Blurr's head and tilts it so he can see his face better. Using one thumb, he pulls his lower eyelid slightly and mentally catalogs. Temperature normal, pupil normal, eyes are steady, no darkening or trace of blood on the eyelid. Implants? He puts both palms up and gently feels the places behind Blurr's ears. No signs of rejection or malfunction.

“No no no” sighs Swerve ”You're fine, it's only stage two. I mean, second sucks too, migraines and all, but you just need to rest and no bright lights and...” he finally notices his hands are still on Blurr's head and pulls them back as fast as if he's been burned ”I MEAN I'm uh...sorry, I didn't mean to, I...”

Blurr laughs quietly.

“I'm glad you're back.”

_____________________

He wakes up in his quarters and can feel his face burning.

When he goes out to get the energon, Jazz throws him a look.

“Is something wrong? You're all kinda...shaky.”

“Hhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuu” imitates signs of life Swerve “Say, doesn't it bother you that Prowl isn't human?”

Jazz smiles

“ Oh, I went crazy when I found out. But we figured it out.”

“Like...on a scale from ‘bad grade in school’ to ‘an asteroid is coming to Earth’ how crazy was it?”

“Worried about what your human friends will think?”

Swerve swings back and forth on his heels

“Pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff. Whatnooooo, no of course not. I'd be worried if I planned on telling them at all.”

Jazz frowns

“No offense, but keeping secrets isn't your strong suit.”

“Haha” Swerve waves his servo “ Watch me.”

[mecachrome]

#i wish it weren't taboo to talk about how 814 are literally just an audhd couple... could discuss this for days. does anyone want to

actually yes i would like nothing more this is lowkey all i think about sometimes

HLSDKFHLH i was about to publish my own post but now i feel enabled to write a Longer Response 🧡 thank u guys

2 me 814 is Girl who is so classically adhd it's comical (overt hyperfixations + poor executive function + basically arfid + time blindness) coexists beautifully with Misunderstood autistic girl (too straightforward for other people + pretended to be a car as a child + sensory issues through the roof + consciously masking in every interview) while everyone loses their minds because they should Hate Each Other and be at each other's throats??! and yet they don't because their neurodivergent swag transcends petty team politics 💗

like honestly i think they interact easily because they're both weird & particular in their own ways but their priorities are ultimately the same so why would any of that matter you know? and they try to accommodate each other when they're able to even if it's little things like oscar not eating salmon around lando anymore lol 😭 (i say this as audhd guy with extreme sensory issues and many other Problems and Issues... that is in fact romanze to me. also little stuff like the No Name Drop? moment because yes it's small in the grand scheme of things but to me it's special because it's like... THEIR inside joke and oscar is proving he does enjoy it and cares about maintaining it :') and then when lando was feeling down post-race in brazil he pulled out landinho all on his own <3)

like this is so random but i was just rewatching the logan sexed bit earlier and it's so funny how oscar is just like ??? WHAT. and somewhat annoyed at being grilled about it because in his head he's thinking "it's literally just a show title why are you Willfully Misunderstanding me idg why that's so funny to you are you 5." but with lando there's so much less... idk laughing At each other as if there's some big joke one person is missing out on and more just giggling together because oscar thinks every little thing lando says is funny and because they're equally charmed by each other's particularities. like oscar doesn't mind that lando is super fidgety and respects that he has Depths (saying that lando is a mix of sarcastic/dry, excitable, and serious) while lando has joked that oscar is somewhat robotic before but obviously still revels in wheedling genuine reactions out of him :') like you can see from how they get caught up in their little world while in parc fermé or doing their f1 media duties that they're capable of just focusing on Each Other without a care in the world for other people and they aren't talking just to have content for the cameras...

and like again the whole point of f1 is that it's a media circuit that needs overextended drama to survive as a consumable product but in the end neither of them care to sustain these artificial demands because it's just antithetical to their personalities and how their brains operate... their job is literally just car 🏎

also another thing is how people talk about 814 always twinning but what adds even more dimension to it is basically oscar admitting and being conscious of his mirroring lando's expressions 😭 and the fact that he's always choosing him for interview questions/copying his answers during games! like i think it's sooo compelling that oscar unintentionally latched onto lando as a young teenager in the uk and never really strayed from that because you have a very expressive, larger-than-life lando who is prone to being misrepresented because people don't really understand the manifestation of adhd and then level-headed oscar who is also poorly read because he doesn't express himself "conventionally" taking one look at lando and being like Hmmm yes. i'll mold myself after that. and lando being so happy and open to that dynamic 🧡 does it not move u

[harrywavycurly]

Sarah I just really would love some Harry fluff of any kind I’m not picky I’m just needy😩

Hiii babes!!! Ask and you shall receive! It’s holiday themed fluff if that’s okay? This is honestly just the first thing that popped into my mind so I hope you like this short little blurb!💖

Summary: You and Harry have some last minute gifts to wrap✨

“Did you wrap this gift in the dark?” Harry lets out a huff as he looks up from his current position on the floor of the master bedroom near his side of the bed where he’s surrounded by things still needing to be wrapped as well as a small pile of things he’s done wrapping or placing in gift bags. When he looks up he finds you sitting on the floor near your side of the bed holding something he wrapped last night in a hurry, needing to get it done before you got home. “Why is there so much tape? And is that a-”

“I beg your pardon? That’s a perfect wrapping job considering who the gift is for.” He says in his own defense making you raise a brow as you look at the tag on the poorly wrapped box. He nervously chews on his bottom lip as he waits for your reaction once he sees your eyes scan the name on the tag.

“Harry we said no more gifts for her.” You say with a sigh as you look at the pile of wrapped presents that are along the wall your bedroom door is on. “She’s going to need a second playroom for all this stuff.” Harry follows your gaze and smiles at the thought of your little girl’s face as she opens all her gifts.

“That’s the last thing.” He promises with a smile making you roll your eyes because you heard him say the same thing just last week and yet here you are with another gift in your hands for the two year old little girl who’s currently asleep down the hall. “Besides half of those are clothes so they’ll just go in her closet.” He justifies with a shrug before reaching over to the pile of unwrapped gifts so he can grab one, gently placing it on top of the red and white polka dotted wrapping paper he’s using at the moment.

“Are you wrapping your own gift?” You ask as you slide Harry’s sadly wrapped box towards the wall so it can join the others that are ready to be placed under the tree in the living room.

“My own-oh is this for me?” He holds up the mug that’s in the middle of his wrapping paper and turns it around so he can read what it says but before he can actually get a good look he feels something hit his forehead and land in his lap. “Did you just throw a bow at me?”

“You were about to look at your gift what else was I supposed to do from all the way over here?” Harry lets out a laugh as he picks the bow up and tosses it back over to your side of the room making you giggle when he misses you completely and it lands a good foot away from you. “Be a good husband and bring it to me please? So I can wrap it for you.” You poke out your bottom lip in a playful pout as you look at him from across the room.

Harry looks at you as you wiggle around on the floor with your pillow so you can put it behind your back once you get close enough to the footboard of the bed so you can lean against it. You let out a deep sigh of relief and he can’t help the grin that takes over when he sees you place a hand on your fully formed bump, having hit the “due any day” mark a few days ago he knows getting comfortable is often times a struggle. He gets up after grabbing the mug, making sure he doesn’t look at what it says and after a few careful steps he’s standing next to you.

“The pout wasn’t necessary love.” He teases as you reach up and grab the mug from his hands and place it in the gift bag that’s between your spread legs. You smile when you look up and see he’s still looking down at you, he places a hand on top of the bed so he can lean down and place a quick kiss to your lips. “I love you.” He mumbles against your lips before giving them one last peck.

“I love you too.” He smiles as he stands up and turns to go back to his designated wrapping spot. “But if you get her one more gift I’m telling your mom how you really felt about her fruitcake.” You threaten making Harry chuckle as he shakes his head at your choice of a threat.

“Fine fine no more gifts for her.” You narrow your eyes as he sits down and grabs a pack of customized golf balls to wrap for Niall. He can feel your eyes on him as the corners of his mouth twitch as he fights off a smirk. “But I may have a few more things for him in this pile.” He explains as he tosses a quick look over his shoulder to the pile of gifts he has left in need of wrapping, his eyes landing on a little pair of sneakers he got that might or might not match a pair he has in his own closet.

“You think he’ll show up in time for Christmas? Or will he wait for New Year’s Eve?” You ask as you rub your stomach with one hand and place some tissue paper into the bag with Harry’s mug in it, smiling when you remember that it says “Daddy is a state of mind” in bright pink font, having been obsessed with that quote ever since you heard Pedro Pascal say it during an interview and figuring it fit Harry’s personality perfectly.

“Oh he’s going to make quite the entrance so I’m betting on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.” He answers as he begins to wrap Niall’s gift with some green and white paper.

“He’s going to make an entrance huh? Wonder who he gets that from.” You joke making Harry shoot you a playful glare before both of you go back to wrapping gifts, trying to finish most of it so the next few days you can relax and enjoy the holiday festivities as well as the final days of the Styles household being a little family of three before your son decides to make his arrival.

[boysbeware2]

all the old tptm girl journal entries w the new (if anyone wants to see them again and compare them)

please proceed with caution as many of these could be upsetting to read

disposable girl (jordyn)

(old)

i cant fucking stand this. i try so goddamn hard to make friends, to be attractive to people, to be even somewhat appealing to them etc etc. it never works. i thought it would get better the older i get. thats what i was told. guess what! i was fucking lied to!!! im alwasy left out of EVERYTHING i never get invited to shit and my own friends ignore me all the time. everyone looks at me weird. i cant go in public anymore im so fucking terrified of everyone. nobody fuckinf wants me, man. im so close to doing something stupid i feel so gross and ugly and dumb i should actually just die id be doing everyone a favor LOL

(new)

man, i havent been on here in forever. the internet is kind of dumb. what is there to say? my friend group celebrated our outpatient graduation anniversary the other day, that was pretty nice. we’re all trying to figure out housing stuff, nora’s been helping with that. freyja + mayra + kairi found a place already (how are they so responsible??) and the rest of us are trying to find places near them so we can visit more often. i never expected to have such a big group of friends. if you told me 2 years ago that i’d be living like this, i wouldn’t believe you. it’s still surreal to me. i’m not sure what i did to deserve them. same goes for my girlfriends. i don’t wanna say who just yet, we’re still figuring things out, but i’m just so thankful for them. i feel so lucky to have a second chance at life. i really didn’t believe people when they said it would get better, and then it did. how funny…..

irreverent girl (kairi)

(old)

I do not want God to see me anymore. I do not want anymore eyes on me. This is near unbearable. I have no one to turn to. My mother is in the church. Many of my friends are in the church. They would tell me to find hope through Christ. They would tell me to pray to Him. They would tell me that He will save me. He must not remember He made me, and if He does, He simply does not care. I know this is unbecoming of me, and I don't mean to be dramatic. I am simply depressed, nervous, and I cannot tell what's real and what isn't anymore. I know I'm supposed to hear God speaking to me, but I do not, and I am tired of straining my ears. I just want to see a doctor. I want some kind of tangible solution. I do not want to pray anymore. Praying hurts. I only do it when I am afraid, but I am afraid much of the time. I don't want to be unheard anymore. I do not want to hold out hope for someone who does not act like they're there. I am hurting. I am hurting. I am hurting. Belief is hurting me. The idea of God is hurting me. I need an out. I am hurting.

(new)

When I have a job and money and I can move away from my shitty Mormon parents

splitter girl (tahira)

(old)

theres something so broken in me thats beyond saving. so i dont know why i keep trying to be saved. i meant to kill myself when i was 18. i didnt. all ive wanted to do lately is kill someone or something. i havent. im too much of a pussy to plan anything concrete, no matter how much i hate everyone around me. no matter how much i get off to videos of people dying or how much i love cutting myself i cant actually take action against other people. i am fucking purposeless. i was born from evil and i will always be evil and i cant even live up to that. i hate myself i hate myself i HATE myself and the universe hates me too. i dont know what to fucking do at this point. i talked to one of my friends about wantingto die and they said smthn about hospitalizing myself. maybe. i dunno. i dont know what else there is for me/. my eyes are fucking burning from lookign at my computer for so long adn not getting any goddamn sleep. i am not a good person. i dont think i can be helped but i just dont wanna fucking keep goign to school and being around people and pretending like everything is norma;l. i cant keep doing it. what the fuck is wrong with me whagt happened. why cant i be loved or feel love for other people when did something change in me that switched the aggression and affection parts of my brain. im hyperventilating ill be back. maybe

(new)

getting myself onigiri from this one good boba place 2nite bc im 8 months clean…… its the little things~ ^^

fainéant girl (freyja)

(old)

i know i dont hate being disabled... i just hate being disabled in a society that makes existing difficult... but sometimes i really just dont want to be disabled anymore. i dont want my family to lecture me about how i could be helping out more, or how i should get a job. i dont want teachers to keep asking me whats wrong or the fuckin uni counselor to try to get me hospitalized. i dont want to be in so much pain anymore, to feel so exhausted that i cant even do so much as prepare food for myself, let alone do anything meaningful or fulfilling. its not fair. i shouldnt have to stay inside and sit in the dark all day,. i should be able to have friends. to talk to people and to go out with them and to feel like i am alive. its lonely and traumatic to suffer through this and on top of that no one around me understands, and they never fully will. i am tired of trying to justify my existence to everyone, to explain the pain that i am in and why i shouldnt have to experience it. i know the problem isnt me. i know i live in a world that isnt built for me. but if the world cant change then sometimes i truly feel that i should just stop living in it. my lifespan is already shorter than everyone else's anyways. what difference does it make

(new)

my qpps didnt seem to appreciate me playing Alien Kids Alien Rap for them. Do they even love me

caliber girl (nora)

(old)

唉～It is 3 AM and I should go to sleep but I can’t. I have a work zoom meeting early in the morning and I gotta hit the gym also because I haven’t done leg day in like… weeks. Oh well, it doesn’t even matter. My value is depleting but I don’t think I care anymore. The turnaround date for my code is also in a couple of days and I haven’t made any progress. I keep getting the same error and I’m too tired to figure out what’s wrong. I might get fired at this rate LOL(笑). If that happens, I think I’ll just consider ending it all. Not that anybody will miss me. God I sound so weak and pathetic right now. When did it get like this. How did it get like this. I’m sure I’ll be fine. I’ve been through worse before and this is nothing. Ugh, why is it so hard to breathe? My chest hurts and I feel like something is wrong but I don’t know how to make it go away. Should I call someone about this? No. No one is awake or around to help. I’ll be fine. I’ll just sleep it off. Shake it off… shake it off…

(new)

My Tamagotchi beeped during a meeting fml

chocolate box girl (morgan)

(old)

i thought i was doing better but i cant stop thinking about them. their touch, their interests, their smile, everything. the worst part is that i miss them, after all of what they've done to me. i was 13. i dont even feel justified calling it rape since our relationship was so muddy... they never yelled at me or was angry at me, they just got so sad when i tried to speak my mind, and got all my friends to hate me when we finally broke up. i never said no so i feel like im insulting actual survivors by feeling violated. i wasnt even trying to get into a relationship with them, it just happened... i feel like everyone around me wants me in the same way they did, even though im an adult now and i dont even try to make myself appealing. i wish i could trust people not to take advantage of me, and i feel disgusting and selfish for feeling like everyone has ulterior motives of getting me to fall in love with them, or worse. that's so self centered of me. i dont know how long i can keep doing this

(new)

girl help i cant stop looking at anime figures on japan yahoo auctions !!!!!

taxidermy girl (mayra)

(old)

I don't remember ever not having a sex drive, is that normal ? I was born and then it was all downhill from there, something happened to me sexually i think, I don't know what happened, because I don't remember much, but something happened and I was beaten for it and yelled at and my mother hated me, and now I am an adult and I try to have sex, and I'm not there mentally, even if my body is participating, I feel like I am in the past again, being beaten and yelled at . I want to keep trying, I want to have fun, to feel safe in someone else's arms, to reach the heights of pleasure, but my mind scares me so much, I haven't been able to eat anything today because I feel so horrified by my body . If I was good I would have been born as a nonsexual being, no parts, no desires, no instincts, a blank slate, too empty to be enjoyed . Do you know what it feels like, to have your mother tell you people want to sexually abuse you when you are a child, and then to be made fun of by your peers for being so ugly, to have your middle school and high school classmates joke about how much they don't want to have sex with you ? I am illicit and undesirable at the same time, I am everyone's last option, I am nothing and still too much, rotting deer meat on the side of the road . I wish I had been born as something beautiful and pure, I wish I could start over, that whatever that initial sin was had never been committed .. I want to start over

(new)

Went to a kink event the other night and everyone was so nice … The low lights were fucking with my vision so one of the hosts helped me navigate the place . I ❤️ you random disabled ally with a pup mask on

chemical girl (joy)

(old)

LMAOOOOO im too angry and miserable to be around. i think i just need to give up at this point because theres clearly like. something broken inside me that cant be fixed. that has 2 be it because i try to talk and i just sound cold, i try to make a joke and it comes out overly edgy and unfunny, i try to be like everyone else but its too much. i cant even be a collection of the positive traits i see in others, i try to replicate it and it comes out warped and wrong. im either fucking enraged or in abject misery or way too happy and nobody can keep up with me. the thing is i dont even blame them. i wouldnt want to be around me either. do u know what thats like? being someone you wouldnt want to know? i keep hoping that one day ill wake up and suddenly be normal, the mood swings will be gone and everyone will like me and i wont do stupid shit that pisses them off. but i know that day isnt coming. theres no hope for me and i want to say sorry to everyone who has ever had the misfortune of knowing me but i know it wouldnt do anything. theres nothing i could ever do to make myself right

(new)

i need to convince my gf to take me to Round One again soon

refraction girl (nataana)

(old)

i don't want to do this anymore. i'm going somewhere better

(new)

talked with my psych and i’ll be starting TMS soon, it’s some thing where they put magnets to ur brain and it’s supposed to treat depression.. trying to temper my expectations bc i’ve tried so many treatments that just do nothing for me, but i’d be lying if i said my hopes weren’t riding on this. i want to confidently say i’m glad to be alive. i feel like i’m getting closer to that

nurse parallel/machine girl (xiomara)

(old)

I am so excited... Tomorrow my experimental outpatient treatment plan begins!!! I'm beyond delighted. I have complicated feelings about my DID being in remission, but it's nice to feel stable enough to be in charge of something this big, and to not have terrible gaps in my memory anymore. I still don't remember everything that happened to me, but maybe I don't need to. At this stage of my life, I feel content. I can confidently say everything was worth it. I want to help others feel that way, too. I think I can.

(new)

I’m meeting up with a new friend tomorrow… I feel nervous, but it’s a good nervousness, I think!

[gatorbites-imagines]

on my hands and knees begging for a victor creed/sabertooth fic. one of the finest mutants in the comics and he gets so little attention

Victor Creed x male reader

Headcanons

Love this fellow… big fan of cats… Heres just some all over the place relationship headcanons :3c

The silly… the very very deadly silly. He really has you going “what murderrrrr, he’s the best guy around???” because he’s actually nice to you. Or well, as nice as Victor can be.

You obviously know all the shit he’s done and that Victor is very much a hater down to the very bone, its very obvious. But you love him anyways. And how can you not, hes very handsome and warm.

Victor is not the most verbal when it comes to his feelings for you, like, at all. He has only said I love you on very rare occasions, and that’s when he or you are near death, or if you guys are getting married.

He shows his care and love in other ways, like beating up anyone who looks at you wrong. Or bringing you dead stuff, like some kind of big cat.

Speaking of cats. Victor purrs, because I said so. He also likes to lay and laze in the sun and will drag you along to lay against his chest as he just basks in it, rumbling deep in his chest and snoring.

Victor can sleep 16 hours a day like a cat, something you always joke about when you catch him. Logically you know it’s because he gets less sleep than he should and needs to catch up, but teasing him is just very fun.

Victor is a very gruff and mean guy in every way, hes a huge dick to say the least. Even to you, in the beginning. And the beginning of your relationship was a lot of arguing or tension. You honestly have no idea how you guys really started dating.

A lot of the issues stem from Victor just leaving whenever he wants for however long without telling you or keeping you in the loop. Theres also the issue that he just doesn’t communicate anything that might be wrong, instead just letting it fester.

But with a lot of work, you two figure it out. Sure, he still runs off to throw down with Wolverine on the semi-regular, but he gives you a timeframe he will be home, and actually looks sorry when he doesn’t make it.

At times when you are extra angry you’ll make him sleep on the couch or in the guest room, and Victor will stand at the foot of your bed, holding his blanket and looking so sad and pathetic. This should be impossible for a guy like him, but somehow, he does it.

Speaking of cuddling, I think Victor thought he wouldn’t like doing it. but then he realized how good it felt when you scratched your nails across his chest or through his hair, and that he could actually purr, since he first started purring with you.

If you are a mutant, then you have lunch or dinners with some of the x-men, if you aren’t a member. Victor gets dragged along, and he and Logan have to behave for the day. At least Victor bakes a great pie for these luncheons.

You make sure to reward him for behaving, as well as Victor is able, when you guys get home. How that reward goes depends on the day ;)

[velvetvexations]

"Women do traditionally feminine stuff because they are afraid of the men in their lives." Hilarious, because for me growing up all of the worst misogyny I faced was at the hands of other women, usually family and friends, and whenever I caved into the pressure to do feminine things I didn't want to it was specifically because I was seeking the approval of other women. None of the men in my life have ever forced femininity on me the way the cis women have. The people who made fun of me for dressing "badly" and not shaving and spread rumors I was secretly a boy were all girls. I kept trying to get into makeup, not because I wanted boys to think I was cute(all the guys who've shown interest in me have actually liked me just fine the way I am), but because I wanted the women around me to see me as one of them and I never felt like I was.

Even when women aren't pressuring me to do girly things I still feel the pressure because I'm the only woman I know who doesn't and it makes me feel like a freak. I don't care what the men around me think, a guy getting weird about my not shaving or wearing makeup would be instantly disqualified from my dating pool without a second thought, being raised a feminist very quickly inoculated me against giving a shit what men think, but the women? My whole life I have been trying so hard to be one of them and it's still hard work to ignore the annoying internalized patriarchal cisheteronormative bullshit in my head making me think I need to be more like them and less like me. And I genuinely don't know if there will ever come a day when I can hang out in a group of women and not feel like an imposter just waiting to be discovered and killed.

And I know that my experiences aren't universal any more than the person who originally said that's are, but like. It's just wild to me that trans people especially will chalk all of the pressure to conform to gender roles up to shitty men and completely ignore how heavily the patriarchy incentivizes women to not only violently police each other's femininity but also destroy ourselves seeking the approval of the very women who are violently policing our femininity.

EXACTLY.

I love cis women who our allies with all my heart and soul, but we need to stop being desperate for their approval. The cis women who DO care about us would be the first to admit they as a category need to do a lot better, so why do we pussyfoot around them being just as horrible to us as cis men can be?

With trans women it feels like we're just trying to link arms under the exact same oppressive patriarchy because it feels like that's what being a woman is, haha yeah, men hate us, I mean they hate us in different ways and you hate us too but what matters above all else is that we're the exact same thing right? Oh, sorry, like seventy percent of you don't believe that and are violently disgusted by the thought of coming anywhere near me? But I also fear men!

And trans men...

"Women are soooo scared of me, yeah you better cover your drink around trans men too, I mean not that I would do anything personally, but I could, because I'm a man, and that means I could oppress and hurt you, theoretically!"

Listen, bro, most cis women aren't scared of you, they're laughing at you, and frankly so am I, not because it's impossible for a trans man to be a person who's intimidating, but because you're so needy for validation that you've developed a patriarchy fetish you can't turn off.

None of this is to say we should ignore the crimes of cis men or that cis women aren't also another marginalized class, and again, I love cis women who're trans allies, they're amazing, wonderful people and I would never want to leave them behind or seem ungrateful.

[boringsickness]

One thing I can't get out of my mind is Bernard knowing how to play a piano.

His parents always tried to be accepted by a lot of upper classes so they insisted that playing one of those instruments was an absolute requirement. Bernard was forced to learn from age 4 to age 16 where he actually started to ribelle more with his parents.

Even if he doesn't play anymore, he does have the skills still; he even liked it, if only his parents were less oppressive about the topic and perfection and whatever else they wanted from him.

So, one of the first times Bernard was invited to the manor he felt overwhelmed. He was being introduced as Tim's official boyfriend and was about to meet the whole family, he needed to excuse himself for a moment before actually being ready to sit properly down for dinner.

He stumbled into the piano by coincidence and felt the pull towards it. He looked around, making sure not to attract too much attention, before crossing the room and pressing on the keys absently.

He almost forgot what it was like playing it; it always made him feel calm, making all the other things quiet down as if they were listening to the song, too.

Closing his eyes, he played one of his favourite songs by heart. Fingers moving flawlessly, almost as if they were a simple tool to the music itself. He let out a soft breath, head swinging softly.

He didn't even notice the feet stepping inside the room or his own boyfriend leaning on the side of the instrument, a deeply enamoured expression on.

He opened his eyes once the song was finished and took a step back, startled.

"Tim?" But he heard a clap too and turned toward the sound, red colouring his cheeks.

"Mr. Wayne," he cleared his throat, uncomfortable "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to stumble here or play. I felt its call? Which is weird, I understand, but I was really nervous and when I'm nervous I say a lot of stuff and my mouth doesn't stop moving."

He closed it, aware of the sudden yap session. He put his head down, stealing a glance to the side where his boyfriend was still looking all mushy at him.

"no need, Bernard. You're very talented."

And Bernard didn't particularly care to member the rest of the night expect, maybe, to the kiss he and Tim shared in that room. Tim leaning on the piano, Bernard fingers stopping at the end of the song and face tilted up from his spot on the chair.

The notes still vibrating and dispensing in the room, the clear and pure love wrapping around them like a bubble .

[thus-wrote-mrs-zeppeli]

Hello! I have a request. Can I have some head canons about how La Squadra would react if you were disrespected by someone? Let’s say their s/o (preferably female) works at a cafe or restaurant and a rude customer throws the money at her, completely expecting her to pick up the bill from the floor (yes, that is a real experience I’ve had, unfortunately).

How would they react? What would they do afterwards or say?

Would really, REALLY appreciate it. Honestly, I wish someone had stood up for me back then.

Author’s note: Hey hey~

Thanks for the request~

Sorry no one stood up for you, what happened to human decency?

And I can totally relate, the entitlement of people is insane. Two days in to my very first job as a cashier I had a customer say some really atrociously awful things to me and I just took it because I didn’t know what else to do and afterwards my managers told me I should’ve called them wow. Like my manager literally wouldn’t repeat what the customer had said because it was so abhorrently inappropriate and disgusting.

So yeah. Respect employees, we’re all human beings here it’s literally so easy to Not be insanely rude.

Interestingly enough I actually had some thoughts on this written in my personal La Squadra notes, particularly in regard to Prosciutto since he gives me lots of thoughts about stuff similar to that, cool that I get to address that heh.

-La Squadra x female reader: When someone disrespects you

Content, PLZ READ: female reader who works as a waitress, discussion of unhealthy and toxic masculinity paired with sexism (Prosciutto), La Squadra is a group of (mostly) pretty aggressive men who act on that feeling so. Some canon compliant aggression, threats, violence and blood. They’re a group of assassins so Lots of Bad men doing bad things. Melone’s slightly perverse tendencies

Various scenarios involving rude customers, including the example in the ask.

Established relationship: dating/married depending on the character

Ok while writing this it’s finally really hitting me how bizarre it’d be to be a non stand user witnessing or experiencing a stand attack-

Reader is aware of stands and that her La Squadra man is a member of the Mafia

And attempts at Italian hopefully it’s correct but if not please lemme know!

Micro fics style

-Formaggio: Out of all the members of La Squadra he’s noticeably much more chill and relaxed than the others. But he’s still a proud member of the Italian Mafia. And you’re his girl. He’s no knight in shining armor or Prince Charming for you, he won’t intervene when there’s an occasional irritable customer giving you a bit of a hard time. He knows you can take care of yourself.

However, if some entitled customer has the audacity to go too far and say or do something Really disrespectful while he’s around, I think he has a preference for good old-fashioned humiliation, and only results to intimidation if they decide they wanna keep making a fool of themselves.

He plays it up like: “ooh, hey, if you wanted that pretty lady’s attention there are much better ways to get it, buddy.”

You don’t have to add anything. You resume work quietly, but keep your eyes and ears focused on him, in case he decided to get carried away.

After a little bit of back and forth with him using his usual coolness and charisma, the offender gets increasingly frustrated and flustered.

When your boyfriend’s finally had enough of this stupid game he stands up from his table. His playfully mocking expression remains, but his smirk shifts ever so slightly into something more sinister. “If you want we could just take this outside,” he says it so casually, with the tone of a man who wasn’t going to hold back if it actually did escalate into a fight. He was not bluffing at all either.

At full height and with the clear confidence that he was absolutely gonna win the fight, the rude customer wisely decides Formaggio was Not someone he wanted to mess with and awkwardly leaves the restaurant, Formaggio loudly exclaiming taunts as the guy skittered away with his tail between his legs.

He seems awfully pleased with himself after “defending your honor” like that. You let him enjoy that feeling, because honestly that was pretty well done and it didn’t get too ugly. He has some nerve expecting a bunch of praise from you for that though.

-Illuso: Someone saying or doing something rude to you is like insulting him as well. And his stand is uniquely qualified for an entertaining punishment against some arrogant idiot giving you a difficult time.

Illuso doesn’t say anything, but when you look over at him while some jerk is screaming his head off at you like it’s your fault his food took five minutes longer than usual to arrive, you see that he’s pretending to fix up his appearance in a fancy compact mirror you had gifted him on your one year anniversary.

You can tell immediately he’s actually angling it at the guy screaming at you so he can activate Man in the Mirror. You inwardly groan because honestly you welcome your husband’s interference, but it will be difficult to explain a man magically disappearing in the middle of a restaurant, especially while he’s causing such a scene with that excessive screeching.

All of a sudden…silence. Such a sudden silence that the sound of Illuso clasping his mirror shut is audible to you from where you’re standing. Of course all the customers were looking at that guy who was freaking out at you. And he literally vanished before their eyes. So you do the only thing you can think of and spread your arms in an exaggerated manner and go: “Ta-DAAAH~” like the supernatural disappearance was just a magic trick.

In a rather weak attempt to sell it, Illuso starts slowly clapping for you and commenting: “molto bene~”. You can’t muster an annoyed glare at him; the slight smile tugging at your lips gave you away. A few customers join him in clapping, a bit confused, but honesty just glad that the yelling has stopped.

Illuso’s version of torment is to leave the guy completely alone in the mirror world. Confusion combined with isolation is a cruel combination, and given his captor was Illuso who was absolutely bound to prolong the punishment because of his sadistic tendencies, you almost feel sorry for the guy.

“Make sure you let him go by this evening,” you remind him before you get back to work.

“Let who go, dearie?” he says, his acting pathetically bad.

Sigh. So he was going to play it that way…

“I’m serious,” you grumble.

“Me too.”

You meet his eyes at that remark, and his smug smirk tells you he wants to see if you’ll keep nagging him about it.

When you don’t indulge him he’ll get bored and let the guy go. Hopefully that brat learned a lesson. And if not, at least he has a story literally no one will believe.

-Prosciutto: Despite not being a very nice man to you, he’s got that ridiculous belief that only he’s allowed to be harsh to you. It’s “tough love” when he’s hyper critical of you or snaps at you for something small, but if anyone else does it to an excessive degree then it’s apparently unacceptable, rude behavior. Really it’s just his pride as a man and unhealthy view of masculinity that causes him to freak out when you’re disrespected. He’s your fiancé…By his logic, you need him to protect you, and it’s his job as a man to do so.

He’s a big hypocrite.

But at least he stands up for you.

You could usually feel Prosciutto watching when a customer started to get a little ornery with you. He wouldn’t always step in, unless something he deemed entirely disrespectful was said or done; he does think dealing with irritable people is okay for you until they get carried away.

It looked like he wasn’t going to intervene this time over the dirtbag being extraordinarily picky and fussy with you, just because he liked bossing essential workers around apparently. Prosciutto was listening, as usual, but didn’t seem too concerned, drinking his coffee disinterestedly. Until the customer decided to toss a crumpled up napkin at you when you turned around.

Ohhh boy, you didn’t even have to LOOK to know the coffee mug getting slammed down on a table was Prosciutto.

You debate what you should do. He strides past you, and you opt to just…hold still and listen for a moment. Pretend you don’t know him, and let him do whatever it is he’s about to do (though you have a pretty good guess what it is).

Despite all the tough talk he was doing before, that customer couldn’t hide the slight panic in his voice at Proscuitto’s sudden approach.

Unlike a lot of Passione members who preferred to hide their affiliation to the mafia, Prosciutto wasn’t nearly as subtle with that tailored suit, open shirt and the demeanor of a man who’s killed before and will kill again.

“Hey who the hell do you think you are?! Stay away from m-” the jerk’s nervous ranting is cut off by Prosciutto dragging him to his feet by the collar of his shirt.

“You dropped something,” Prosciutto says in that certain tone you’ve grown all too familiar with. He uses it often when he’s pissed off or teaching a lesson or both at the same time.

Before the man can even squeak out the beginnings of some sort of excuse or counter he’s gagging, and you turn around to stop Prosciutto from straight up choking the guy by shoving the same napkin he tossed at you down his throat, speaking about how disgustingly disrespectful it was to throw anything at a woman.

“Hey, I think he gets it,” you cut in.

You wonder if he’s actually gonna listen to you this time. For a moment it seems like he might ignore you and continue the lesson. But he decides you may have a point and that he’s not worth the trouble. Though it doesn’t stop him from roughly shoving the guy to the ground when he lets go of his shirt.

“Make sure you add an apology when you pay the check,” he says to the sniveling man on the floor desperately telling himself not to make a run for it like a coward now that Prosciutto’s back was turned.

You don’t know whether to smile or roll your eyes, knowing all your fiancé meant was that he better leave you a generous tip as compensation for such disrespectful behavior.

“Go smoke outside,” is all you say to him when you see Prosciutto reach for the pack of cigarettes in his jacket. He smoked when he was especially irritated; so he went through a lot of cigarettes. He waves his hand dismissively at you, but obeys and goes outside. Though he stays close to the entrance. He’s making it clear he’s not leaving til you’re getting paid well for all that trouble.

The guy ended up practically handing his wallet to you.

Prosciutto internally checks off his: do one good thing for his fiancée today mission.

-Pesci: He’s not the most confrontational of La Squadra, and there’s no love lost between the murderous members of the team beyond a mild respect for each other’s strength (and that’s only sometimes) but he’s more than familiar with how most of the other assassins handle disrespect or things they don’t like in public with violence and aggression (hard glares at Ghiaccio and Prosciutto in particular). And that usually results in them getting asked to leave the premises, how embarrassing-

He doesn’t want to embarrass you either when a particularly volatile customer started screaming at you and freaking out for no valid reason. But he can’t just sit there and let you take that kind of abuse either.

He tries to excuse you from the situation by calling you over to his table like he was a customer and it was something urgent. And well…it might just escalate the irritation of that insufferable jerk screaming at you but…

You go to Pesci anyways, opting to just ignore the jerk, pretending to be busy dealing with some made up issue Pesci was improvising.

To your surprise it actually kinda worked. The guy was steaming for a bit and yelling at you from his table but. You just ignored him. And if anything actually happened Pesci was 100% capable of handling it if he had to. He didn’t usually try to start fights, but if pushed he could absolutely finish them.

“Do you usually get customers like that?” Pesci asks with genuine concern in his voice once the guy finally gets mad enough to leave (without paying but that was a problem for later).

“Well…” more often than someone who doesn’t work in food service would think…

“Sometimes,” you admit vaguely, not wanting to worry him but not wanting to lie either.

He thinks you should find some different job, not that he’s actually in a position to suggest that given he’s literally a La Squadra assassin. And you’ve heard from the few times you’ve met with his coworkers that the money they make in the business of murder is minuscule all things considered. Honestly he should get a new job too. One that didn’t rely on the occasional commission and splitting a check with eight other people.

You both know it’s not that easy to just Find a new job. And he doesn’t think it’s a great idea to suggest you get more involved in Passione for quick but dirty money…sigh…no easy solution…

-Melone: Your boyfriend was the least confrontational man in La Squadra.

Usually you encourage him to not visit you at work…because he always stares at you in such a manner that your coworkers or customers sometimes warn you about a creep in the corner booth who’s been watching you for a while.

As someone who’s used to being yelled at (though only because he’s the one being a FREAK so it doesn’t Really count) he’s sure you can handle the occasional ornery customer who decided to raise their voice at you. He usually intervened only if you directly requested it, because more often than not you got annoyed at him for worming his way into your other problems. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t notice when he’s typing on his laptop at the restaurant you work at and someone starts destructively causing a scene all because you brought them the wrong brand of soda by accident. It’s been a long day, you’re tired, you’re working the evening shift and the restaurant’s about to close. So you don’t bother to try and appease this guy, you know he’ll just complain and give you a hard time no matter what you do. And he apparently took your: “I’m sorry, let me grab you the right one,” as disingenuous and insulting, because you didn’t call him “Sir”. You really don’t feel like dealing with this, and you’re about to just let it go until he has the audacity to knock the soda off the table and onto the floor, staining the floor and even getting soda all over your shoes.

God…just to humiliate you over something small-you find yourself quietly staring at the floor for a moment, trying to register what you should even do…bend over right now to try to salvage your shoes before the soda dried? You had napkins in your pocket. But then the damn customer won…

And you know Melone was watching everything. He’s so invested that he’s stopped typing.

Melone’s no gentleman, and has no shame, but he can’t just let someone get away completely with disrespecting his girlfriend…especially given he had bought those cute shoes for you!

You can only mumble Melone’s name quietly when he approaches the situation, his demeanor energized despite how late it was. You weren’t gonna deny him stepping in but saying his name was a warning not to be too weird.

He clicks his tongue, making a point to not even look at the jerky customer, like he wasn’t there, and focuses all his attention on you.

“You know those shoes weren’t cheap, tesoro mio,” he chides playfully, immediately plucking off some napkins from the customer’s table and kneeling in front of you so he can wipe your shoes clean himself.

You bite your lip. It might seem gentlemanly to onlookers, but you knew he was also using the opportunity to get close to your legs in public. But he manages to behave himself, even putting a few napkins over the spill on the floor once he’s done with your shoes.

When he finally stands back up, he makes a point of leaning very close with an especially devious look on his face.

“What a shame,” he says in a strangely exaggerated tone. “I think I’ll have to buy you a new pair of shoes…”

You just give him a confused look after reminding him you’re on the clock when he leans in for a kiss.

Then he wanders off. But at least he distracted the customer enough to dampen the worst of the disrespectful behavior.

You finish your shift. Melone was waiting for you outside with his motorcycle, as he’s your ride back to your shared apartment.

He looks especially pleased with himself.

“What’d you do this time?” you sigh and yawn, too tired to feel especially concerned with whatever he might’ve done.

“Your next pair of shoes is going to be Especially nice…I’ll even get you a pretty dress to go with them~” he licks his lips.

Under the dim light of the street lamp, you finally notice the wallet that he’s holding up. It isn’t his.

His little kneeling act by the table with the rude customer apparently had many purposes…your boyfriend really was quite a sly opportunist…

“Melone…” you were gonna chide him gently for taking the guy’s Entire wallet but…it was too late to start arguing with him, given he was your ride home. And you didn’t care too much about it in the first place, especially right now.

-Ghiaccio: Everything ticks him off so when you’re working you don’t mind if he doesn’t bother to stop by and say hi even when he’s in the area. He tends to get worked up about something minuscule even during quick visits. And your restaurant is quite popular with tourists, who he has a borderline obsessive type of hatred for. Yeah. You were okay with him NOT visiting you while you were working because inevitably one day he was gonna cause quite a scene-

You feel a very ironic cold shiver down your spine when you catch sight of a familiar red Mazda Miata going way too fast in the parking lot looking for a space to park.

“Dios mio…I don’t need this today…” you mumble to yourself, not realizing a particularly entitled customer was watching you act distracted for a moment by looking at a car from the window.

When you get to his table, you don’t really know what he’s yapping about when he says waitresses these days are SO ditzy and aren’t properly trained. You’re not listening too hard because you’re watching Ghiaccio walk past the window on his way into the restaurant. He gives you an acknowledging glance when he spots you, and it pisses off the customer even more because now he’s complaining about how completely unprofessional it was that you invited your boyfriend into the restaurant while you were working. You have no idea where this guy is even getting all these assumptions, or what was even so terribly wrong with the scenario he’s making up, so you don’t pay it much attention and just brush it off as the customer’s eccentric personality trait.

Until he says that if you were going to be disrespectful by inviting your boyfriend to work, you might as well look busy.

What a freaking idiot, waiting for Ghiaccio to walk in to the restaurant before literally throwing the money for his meal at you, completely expecting you to pick up all the bills.

Ghiaccio doesn’t even need to know the context to react (though it’s probably for the best he didn’t hear what started it because it’d just piss him off even more).

“Hey, hey, hey…” Ghiaccio’s voice from the entrance can be heard from half way inside the restaurant. “If you meant to give the money to her, it’d be MUCH more efficient for both of you if you just HANDED it to her, you freaking moron-“

Oh God, here we go…Ghiaccio wasn’t screaming quite at full volume as he speed walked to where you were standing, his hands twitching slightly, either oblivious or simply ignoring all the customers exchanging nervous glances as they watched him. He has to be literally the WORST AND the EASIEST member of his entire team to piss off…and when he got like this he sometimes didn’t even listen to you.

The customer glares at him, and dares to open his mouth to respond, but Ghiaccio’s rant wasn’t over and it just pisses him off even more to see the guy had the audacity to try and interrupt him.

“Ghia, hey-”

Yeah he was definitely not gonna listen to your attempt to calm him down. You wonder if he even heard you because he grabbed the guy by the back of the head while you were talking.

“IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY DAMN SENSE WHEN I THINK ABOUT IT! I MEAN, WHAT THE HELL IS THE POINT OF THROWING MONEY ALL OVER THE GROUND?! YOU JUST GET OFF WATCHING HER WASTE A BUNCH OF TIME PICKING THAT ALL UP?!”

Was he…more pissed about the illogical nature of the behavior or the fact that you were being disrespected…?…It’s kinda hard to tell…this ornery yapper on even more ornery yapper violence was Quite a scene this early in the morning…

“DON’T YOU HAVE A LIFE, IDIOT? OR DID YOU GO OUT JUST TO KILL TIME BY POINTLESSLY INCONVENIENCING A WAITRESS?! YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE BUT SHE’S GOT AN ACTUAL JOB TO DO AND DOESN’T HAVE TIME TO PLAY 52 CARD PICKUP WITH ENTITLED JERKS LIKE YOU!”

It doesn’t even cross your mind that most people would be mortified to watch their boyfriend completely lose it like this in public, you’re so used to it at this point; you’re thinking about how it’s a bit hypocritical of him given how you’ve witnessed him Also going off on a poor server for nothing.

“GHIACCIO!” you finally make yourself shout, reaching out and grabbing the wrist of the arm he was using to hold the panicking rude customer by the back of the head.

You know Ghiaccio. He was about to slam that man’s head on the table.

“WHAT?!” he snaps, but when he whips his head, you can tell the raging blizzard of his soul wavered just a bit when he looked at you.

“Don’t…you’ll break the table, they’re flimsy…”

His physical strength always astounded you, given he wasn’t particularly large, and he wasn’t even resisting your hand on his wrist but you could still feel the power in his arm. “You already made your point…” you whisper, worried about getting in trouble for the scene he was causing.

“BUT-“

“Thank you, it’s okay…”

He REALLY has to debate it, but reluctantly releases the man with an irritated huff and an audible growl. Such a lucky guy…you were one of the few people who could get Ghiaccio to think before taking something too far.

“Is your shift almost over?” he asks, clearly still incredibly irritated, tapping his foot rapidly against the ground.

“About fifteen minutes to go.” You glance at the trembling rude customer, gazing wide eyed and flinching every time Ghiaccio moved in any way.

He checks his watch and the customer climbs further into the booth out of fear of the simple gesture, but Ghiaccio is forcing himself not to pay him any mind.

“I’ll wait for you in the car then.”

“Alright.”

As long as he left the restaurant…

Now everyone knew he was definitely with you in some capacity…damn.

He sends a pointed glare to a couple of the customers on the way out. A “gentle reminder” to keep manners in mind.

And when you give the rude customer one last look, you see he’s on the ground picking up the money he had tossed at you.

He’s trembling a bit. Probably from fear of Ghiaccio changing his mind and coming back to actually break his face. But he’s probably a bit cold too, just from coming into physical contact with Ghiaccio could leave anyone with a chill if he partly activated his stand while touching someone.

You really needed to have a chat with him about his temper but as the previously inconsiderate customer blubbers out apologies and begs you to protect him from your scary boyfriend while shoving the money (and a generous tip) directly into your hands you hesitantly decide today is not the day.

-Risotto Nero: He doesn’t go out in public often, but minus the whole “leader of an assassination division in the mafia with a truly frightening appearance” he’s a pretty normal guy. Keeps to himself and stoic, but he can hold a conversation. You’re fine with him not visiting you at work often, you get that he’s super busy, but when he does stop by you’re glad to see him (and he doesn’t cause any scenes. Bonus points for Risotto).

It was a slow morning for you, and he had finished an early morning mission earlier than he had expected. He even checked to make sure the diner you worked at wasn’t busy before he decided to stop in and see you.

Your face lights up when you see him, running over to him and giving him a quick hug, and bringing him a small cup of coffee on the house, allowing yourself a brief moment of respite to speak with your boyfriend. It wasn’t busy yet…there were only two other customers, but it was just your luck that one of them woke up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to come over and give you a hard time for taking a moment to spend with Risotto.

“Does your boss pay you to flirt with customers?”

You can’t even believe someone really came over just to say that to you. You weren’t even sitting down to talk to Risotto, and it’s not like you were being loud or obnoxious or anything.

“She’s doing her job,” Risotto points out with that signature stoic nature. The guy seems slightly put off by Risotto’s unique appearance, but was apparently in a bad enough mood to not back down so easily.

“If she was doing her job she’d be bringing me a refill and not wasting her time chatting with a guy she already served,” he points out indignantly. What an insane level of entitlement…Risotto seemed to think the same thing, though he wasn’t a fan of escalating things.

But this guy…he had some audacity talking to you like that.

Risotto puts his hands on the table, and stands up slowly, deliberately, to his full height, tilting his head slightly to better look the smaller man in the eyes.

“She’s just being polite,” Risotto corrects the man. His voice is still calm, but his speaking speed is Slightly slower. Paired with him purposefully emphasizing his full height, the warning that he wasn’t going to stay civil for much longer was clear.

The unwanted visitor inwardly debates for a moment, visibly shaken from Risotto’s intimidation but absolutely too embarrassed to just back off now.

He foolishly decides to keep going.

“She-” he’s cut off by an almost explosive gush of blood coming out of his own nose. You gasp at the suddenness, but instantly realize what’s happening. He slams his hand over his nose, the blood not stopping that easily, almost immediately leaking through his fingers.

“Oh…” Risotto remarks with obviously fake concern, leaning in as if he were examining the “mysterious” nosebleed. “You’d better take care of that before you get blood all over the place…” he states the obvious with complete unconcern.

It was admittedly a bit funny to watch that jerk sprint to the restroom clutching his bloody nose.

There is a minuscule tug to the edges of Risotto’s lips.

“Risotto! Sudden unexplainable nosebleeds aren’t funny at all,” you chide, despite not feeling an ounce of pity. It’s not like Risotto was trying to kill that guy, if he was he would be bleeding out on the ground right now. The goal was just to embarrass him a bit, and he definitely succeeded.

“I think that was just a suitable divine punishment,” Risotto replies with a shrug, as if his stand, Metallica, had nothing to do with it. It’s subtle but…you can tell he’s irritated someone really had that kind of nerve to bother you for no reason. But you won’t let it ruin his whole day, reminding him that you got off work early today and you’ve been really excited to finally have some free time to spend with him.

Author’s closing note: I hope this could bring you some entertainment~it was enjoyable to write and consider how a few of them could use their stands to mess with people but wow I was being sent back to my first job on occasion with some of these customer characters, sheesh-

[purble-turble]

actually, you know what would be interesting and funny you brought up the whole rebounding thing but like... what if that situation happens completely by the others (including Redson and his echo chamber friends) jumping to conclusions and planting that seed of an idea in the two heads. Mk is naturally very affectionate, physical touch is a big part of his love language. he grew up alongside mei who was just as physical and no one actually encouraged them not to be. snuggling/hugging/kissing(like quick head and cheek pecks) your homies is very normalized. he's also dealing with family and friend issues because things are really tense and he's feeling everything at a 10 right know. its not just Red he can't talk too, he can even talk to Mei as comfortably and maybe lately feels like she avoiding him in favor of prioritizing Red.

Nezha. that boy is just starved of affection both verbal and physical. period. yeah its a bit overwhelming and confusing for him at first but after he gets used to mk's love language it's like 'Oh, hey this is really nice...huh...can i do this too?' and the answer was yes of course! he slowly starts implementing little touches here and there, initiating the hugs. it's still a bit awkward for him so he ends up utilizing other forms of love language, but the effort is there and mk is ecstatic. but it starts to make the other side-eye the situation. everyone (especially tang) was on board at first cause like....its a legendary celestial warrior, he's shown to be reliable and mature and so on. surly this could only be a good influence for mk. and yeah at first they only see good things, mk seems to get a little better over time, he's even getting extra exercise training like meditation, yoga/Tai chi. stuff that is supposed to support mental and physical wellness so of course Nezha must be good! Pigsy is the first to notice that maybe there starting to get a little too close, starts drawing parallels to how mk acted with Red. he brings it up with the others. tang isn't bothered and mei isn't either at first but now that idea is in her head, and it grows over time and now shes getting suspisiou as pigsy. and maybe a little pissed. nezha and mk of course havn'ty actually thought of each other like that, there just friends for god sake! he hasn't done anything with nezha that hes already done with mei. but mk gets confronted eventually and of course, tells Nezha after the fact. they both agree everyone's being ridiculous, they are just really close friends! but internally there both secretly like '....but what if?....' Red's group of friends are just shit starters, gold medalists when it comes to jumping to conclusions, especially regarding mk. they see monkey boy chatting up and getting close with another prince and run wild with ideas they of course share with Red. they see them being physically affectionate or hear something even vaguely suggestive they are not gonna look or ask for context. hell you can give them the full context they still cherry-pick it apart like the Christian bible. anything to make Mk look as horrible as they believe he is.

Yooooo I am vibrating in my seat right now i fuckin loooove this!! 💖

You’re so right about MK’s fam thinking that Nezha will be a good influence on him at the start of things.. they have no idea that Nezha approves of the attempted sacrifice MK made at the pillar. I mean, it’s a sore spot for all of them, so it’s likely just not brought up in casual settings. The first time they catch a glimpse of it is probably a tense moment where someone tried to point out to MK that he was taking on too much again and exhausting himself.. but instead of getting a bit sheepish saying he’ll take better care of himself like he might have done before, he stands firm and is like ‘No, I can handle this! These are my problems and I’m going to handle them.’ And Nezha is spotted in the background with a lil smile and an agreeing nod and… ok. That’s weird.

As for the romantic aspect of it, them being a little oblivious about their budding romantic feelings at first and having to have it pointed out by the others how close they’ve gotten is sooooo good! I’m always a sucker for oblivious MK, but I can fully see Nezha being exactly like that too.

Mei for sure shares with Prince Red that she thinks MK has gotten weirdly close to Nezha lately.. and Red has already noticed that MK has been coming by to try to win him back less and less… could it be he’s really been replaced that easily? It’s… kind of hard to think MK would move on so quickly, especially because he is probably still struggling with it. Maybe he even goes to check it out for himself and spots MK and Nezha out together on a stroll. And look, MK is holding hands with the lotus prince and… oh. kisses his cheek… that’s… pretty hard to not interpret as romantic.

Even if Red knows MK and a little niggling doubt in the back of his mind can be like ‘well, he’s like that with Mei too so maybe???’ If he’s already primed to be looking for it by Mei (and also his own already hurt feelings) then this would be pretty clear confirmation of his fear that MK has moved on and is romantically involved with Nezha now. Also yeah it for sure doesn’t help that all Prince Red’s friends are gonna add fuel to this fire once he tells them about it, just like you said. They never thought MK was good enough for Red, so why would they put it past him to move on from him really fast too?

Haha, anyway, once MK’s fam start asking more pointed questions about their relationship, MK and Nezha might even have a frank discussion about it. They’re more open with each other than they are with anybody else, after all, since there’s no fear of judgement or moralizing from sharing how they actually feel. In any case, even if they can’t manage to have the straight up discussion, the displays of affection definitely get more frequent on both ends and things progress that way regardless~

[mwahbabe]

drop more loser!Chloe content and my life is urs

loser!chloe headcanons

tags: fluff, gf!chloe, switch!chloe, nsfw, cunnilingus(r! recieving) (c!recieving) strap on sex, (r!recieving) (c! recieving) scissoring/tribbing, perv!chloe.

a/n: you got it baybee!! omg i need her so bad it’s not a joke nomo😩

✦ loser! chloe who was so scared to hold your hand when you first started dating, doing that pinky thing, inching it closer to yours while you were sitting together or would brush her hand against yours while you’re walking together.

✦ then hesitantly takes your hand and acts nonchalant until seeing your sweet smile and she gives you a goofy grin.

✦ when you started getting closer and more comfortable around each other she just spoils you.

✦ is such a sweet girl.

✦ we’ve seen how she is with those she cares about and trusts

✦ acts like the badass tough punk lesbian but when seeing a hot chic can’t even form a sentence.

✦ once before she met you ofc when a tatted up girl at a concert wearing little to nothing came to ask her where the bathroom was she was standing there with this dumb look on her face before pointing in the direction of it and then proceeded to walk into someone when she turned back around😭😭

✦ still has her “gee wizz that’s my girlfriend? awesome!” moments when she sees you. especially when you’re undressing or getting ready.

✦ sends you stupid memes while you’re in class/at work

✦ like the ones that are so random and unfunny to the point they are funny😭 and the “feeling sad rn send boob pics” ones.

✦ and she sends you stuff that she thinks you will find funny.

✦ was a weird kid in middle school.

✦ argues with little kids on minecraft servers.

✦ golden retriever gf. she will do anything for you and whenever. oh your dvd players broken? all of a sudden she’s a handywoman. you need a specific snack at 3am when it’s raining? she’s getting in the car.

✦ soooo puppy coded. just- look at her. puppy eyed masc.

✦ the type to burn a cd for you with songs that remind her of you.

✦ has tried to pierce herself but couldn’t handle the pain.

✦ 100% tried to act tough during her tattoo but whimpered the whole time.

✦ definitely watched those creepypasta internet videos when she was 13-14 and max got scared while she pretended they didn’t scare her but couldn’t sleep for weeks.

✦ was secretly a fan of monster high even if she had barbie dolls growing up. thought they were all hot. and def had a crush on clawdeen. cuz she’s a lesbian in love with her bsf? lol get it?

✦ her instagram is probably so empty except for a profile picture of a dumb shark meme she just hasn’t bothered changing. and maybe posts once a month and somehow has lots of followers.

✦ definately loves sharks because they’re “badass and eat people”

✦ but it’s so fitting because they’re actually so misunderstood and seen as mean and aggressive but are mostly just sea puppies

nsfw

✦ loser!chloe who absolutely begs to eat you out. she loves it. will have her face buried between your thighs for hours.

“please babe… c’mon just one more? please?”

✦ gets so carried away she forgets you’re overstimulated, she just enjoys eating your pussy so much.

✦ even came in her pants from your sounds and the taste of you alone.

✦ loves when you ride her face. she doesn’t care if she can’t breathe. just sit on it. breathing is overrated anyway.

✦ loser!chloe who cums too fast during tribbing and has to pull away and eat your pussy a little before putting your leg back over her shoulder so she won’t cum before you.

✦ such a loser she steals stuff of yours, like bracelets, lipgloss, hair ties, …your panties from the laundry hamper.

✦ sniffs them while her fingers are pumping in and out of her cunt that’s embarrassingly soaked. her eyes rolling back as her cunt clamps down on her fingers smelling the fabric before putting it back acting like nothing happened.

✦ SERVICE TOP!!!

✦ loves making you feel good. it’s her purpose. her job. and she’s damn good at it. round after round of turning you into a mess gives her a sense of pride and like she’s doing right and making the love of her life feel good and satisfied.

✦ gets off on you getting off.

✦ if you’re a pillow princess she love love loves you.

✦ lay there and look pretty with your legs spread or over her shoulders orr on your stomach face down ass up while her strap is buried in you? absofuckinglutely.

✦ this girl is a whimperer. idc. she has pretty moans and gets embarrassed by it especially how she moans like she’s the one being pleasured when fucking you.

✦ loserrrr chloe who has wet dreams about you while you’re sleeping next to her and has to rub one out and muffle her moans and whimpers to not wake you.

✦ if you’re more of a dominant person she also loves you.

✦ sub chloe is so needy and such a brat<3

✦ when you eat her out she’s a mess. trying to conceal her moans letting out grunts and covering her mouth until she gets close and these pretty whines and groans come from her as she cums all over your face.

✦ when you first use the strap on her, she gets so flustered at how slutty she sounds as the toy slides in and out of her and the angle you’re fucking her in making her lose her mind.

✦ then will deny anything she said or how she sounded if you bring it up.

“shut up! you’re such an ass.”

✦ yea her loser ass loves you<33

[in-a-bucket]

Project Eden's Garden CH 1 thoughts

hey so this probably isn't gonna be coherent at all cause i just finished the chapter and it took my like 12 hours to finish it so i have not slept but i just need to get my thoughts out lol

uh anyway major spoilers for the whole chapter you have been warned

so for the chapter as a whole i had a great time playing it! you can really see all the love and care put into this project. that being said, this chapter was CARRIED by it's deadly life/trial section, at least in my opinion. the daily life wasn't like terrible by any means it just didn't feel like a whole lot happened? the days felt really short, like the day you explore the new area is literally, wake up, meet in the dining hall briefly, explore the new area, and then go to bed. i was like ????? how is the day already done what. and then when the motive was introduced it was a bit lackluster, the concept was really cool with the pictures and the vague messages for the blackmail, but then we barely find out what anyone's information and the few people we do find out isn't super bad (expect for wolfgang kind of, maybe?), hell damon is not once concerned about the motive and none of the other characters seem all that concerned about it either which i think kinda brings the tension and stakes down. it's pretty evident when you find out the killer's motive as nothing to do with the blackmail and they weren't even concerned over their own blackmail so they have to create an entirely separate motive with the whole traitor perk thing, and it's not like that came out of thin air cause you're told about the secret prize from the get go i just don't get why they didn't use the motive they already made instead of revealing it all at the end of the trial from tozu.

ok whoops getting kind of off topic there but yeah daily life, it just felt like there could have been more, maybe it just has to do with the kind of guy damon is, but it kind of felt like we were dragging our feet from time to time idk maybe im just insane.

as for deadly life, holy shit they made some ballsy decisions here. can't really say whether they were good ones yet or not since we still have 5(?) more chapters but i have to respect the devs for who the first victim and killer ended up being (i'll get to them later). i remember thinking (man this is a pretty long investigation lol), although it probably didn't help that it took me forever to find the blood in the hallway i was genuinely so confused as to what i was missing I went back into all of the storage closets and like triple checked i had exgauhsted all dialogue, and then i was trying the move my mouse all over the place to see if there was anything else to search and then i finally found it.

the trial was so fucking fun, as devastated as i was due to who the victim was it was a ton of fun figuring out the crime and i genuinelly thought it was gonna be diana and i was gonna be done with the trial in about 2 hours and only to hit and intermission and realize i hadn't used like half my evidence yet. the mechanism of the crime was really cool too and i had a lot of fun solving it, even if i did start to lose the plot when it came to the stuff of the cord and the vent but that might've just been me being tired. I will say i did not enjoy the bullet hell argument whatever it's called at the very end, the artwork was really cool but it took me FOREVER to beat it, and myabe that's just cause i'm bad at video games but ti was so frustrating getting to stage 3 multiple times then loosing all of my health and having the start all over again. i think it would have been better if you run of of health you have to start from the beginning of whatever stage you died on but hey maybe i just suck at the game idk.

okay now on to some more character specific stuff, first of all WOLFGANG AKIRE YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU GAHHHH

ugh i'll admit it, i'm actually devastated he died first like seriously thank god the trial was as good as it was cause i might have stopped playing if it wasn't lol. in all seriousness though i was so excited for how he'd handle someone killing and all of the reprecussions with that only for him to die first lol. i really hope that this isn't the last we get to hear about him though, like i hope he's not just like a passing thought in ch 2 and then never mentioned again kind of a thing like hopefully he'll be plot relevant in the future or something idk i just want more wolfgang he's my fav BRING HIM BACKKKK. maybe we'll get to learn more about him through grace cause i'm now like 99% sure they knew each other before this whole mess lmao i mean come on grace wanted to be roomies with him and she was so fucking devastated by him dying and didn't want people poking around his room like come on.

and just everything you find out about his situation in the trial is just devastating oh my godddd. i was really worried they were gonna pull the whole "omg guys wolfgang was killed in self-defense and he was actually terrible this whole time and you all should have believed me(damon) cause i was right all along memememememe" and they didn't thank god. just that whole scene where diana reveals their confrontation was just so good like that is one of my top fangan scenes of all time now. just all the stuff he was saying revealing stuff about his character that might NEVER BE ELABORATED ON CAUSE HES FUCKING DEAD NOW WTFFFF WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS. and the voice acting was fucking incredible holy shit NAD THE FUCKING SPRITE WORK OH MY GOD THAT SHIT WAS AMAZING. the sprites for wolfgang and eva (i'll get to her later) were so fucking good i mean just look at this shit

LIKE THIS IS DEVESTATING TO ME LIKE HOLY FUCK BRO I NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON IN UR HEAD AND NOW I NEVER WILL CAUSE UR DEAD UGHHHHHH

it's really funny cause i actually ended up doing all of his FTEs not knowing he was gonna die

now let's talk about eva cause holy fuck girl. i remember after the prologue she was one of my least favorite characters, cause it felt like her whole personality was "ooooo look at how mysterious and cool I am ooooooooo", but then you get the reveal that she lied about being the ultimate liar and you get her normal talent and she actually shows an actual personality and is a video game nerd i was like "omg yes i'm loving the p:eg team's take on this!" and she was moving up my character tier list ranking very quickly, and then she was revealed as the killer and she tried to pin everything on damon and then her reasons for killing wolfgang in the first place and she went right back down to the bottom LMAO. not because i thought she had bad writing or something but at the end of the day her motivations for taking the perk were pretty selfish and while i agree that wolfgang shouldn't have been trying to isolate her like that she kind of put a target on herself for no reason by lying about her talent like girl what did you think was going to happen lol. also her execution was fucking brutal, it looked incredible but damn was it brutal, she didn't need to go out like that omg.

as for some other characters, always gonna love my girls grace and cassidy they were a delight as always and i look forward to seeing more of them, diana went up on my tier list and i'm looking forward to seeing where her character goes from here, i'm also really loving jean a lot but he feels a little too helpful so i fear he might die next chapter lol.

i feel like there's more i have to say but im so tried lol so yeah have whatever this is lol. overall i had a great time playing and everyone did an amazing job working on it (even if i am really upset you killed my fav), i look forward to whatever the next chapter brings!

[mayonesamitch]

Lets yap about Geode and why it's practically canon!

Contains spoilers

Okay I've been wanting to write this for a while but never had time to. However, winter break just started! I should be working on some unfinished school work but I don't care about school. So here it goes! This is basically why Geode (Cole x Geo) is canon/will be canon.

So first, I wanted to talk about how Cole never really had an actual love interest up until now. Sure, in season 3, there was the stupid love triangle thing with him, Jay, and Nya, but it was confirmed by the writers that Cole never really had feelings for Nya and was just confused by the attention she gave to him. I'd also like to assume that P.I.X.A.L's perfect match detector thing also threw him off. (I'm just gonna call her Pixal for the remainder of this, yes she'll be mentioned again)

He also never had much of a romantic relationship with Vania. Sure, they were close and had a great friendship together, but that's where it ends, just a friendship. They never really did anything more. And when it comes to Ninjago, they make the love interest very obvious.

The writers are also very aware that they haven't given Cole a love interest. They make subtle jokes about it, like in this scene. While the ninja are hanging out with their significant other (expect for Lloyd who had a love interest but uh... we saw what happened the Harumi...) except for Cole. He's instead looking at the cake that the woman is holding up. The writers of the show also have said that his love interest is cake as a joke, so they're aware that they haven't given him a love interest yet.

They also once posted this on the Lego.com website as a poll. This might be far fetched but to me it implies that there might be someone else in the future that will be Cole's lover. I know that it says girlfriend but it doesn't mean that the someone Cole is yet to meet can't be a guy. Maybe Cole is a bisexual too we can't take that completely off the table either.

Now, let's talk about the actual ship of Geo × Cole. Geo is not as social as the other and is more timid. He keeps more to himself. However, with Cole, he's an open book. He raised a whole family with him. They're also rather close. Cole has never been that close to anyone other than the other ninja, and even so, it still took him a while to get used to them. So him being so close to Geo as fast as he did is quite attached to Geo. And if that isn't gay then I don't know what it is.

Now this is the part where I talk about my personal favorite and probably one of the most canon ships ever in Ninjago, PixZane. (Pixal x Zane, told you I was gonna mention Pixal again 😉) It is very obvious that they love each other and is canon that they're dating. So, why did I mention them? Well, they never explicitly say, "We're dating." Instead they say that they're "compatible." Zane also says that she has "Half of my (his) heart" Which all of those are all just says of saying that they're in love and dating. Also they both have a strong attachment together. I mean, Zane is desperate for Pixal in Dragons Rising, and in the comic, Zane's Pixal Project, he's so desperate for her and is willing is sacrifice himself for her. In fact, Pixal only says, "I love you." In Crystalized. Took them only 8 years to finally hear something less nindroid-y but that just proves my point more. Yeah, with all of that plus the stuff I didn't mention, they're dating at least.

So why did I mention all of this? Well, a common rule for story writing is, "Show, don't tell." Very common in real life to, like phrases like, "Your actions speak more that your words." So they would apply that rule to a ship like Geode. I mean, the hints are very loud, yet sneaky in a way. Enough for me to apply the gay label but not enough for someone to say it's 100% without a doubt canon.

I'd also like to say that the writers of the show hype up and imply this ship more than a little. One of the writers of Ninjago posted this on his Instagram. The writer is also gay so that's some extra points. (I got it from here.) Also I just realized that the little effect thing around their hands make a heart, so I'll add that to the evidence list. Also this clip, Doc Wyatt seems to support the ship. So I'm pretty sure the writers are planning something big for them, maybe... a kiss? Who knows?

Now, in the end, it is a gay ship, so they have to be much more vivid about it or else the show could get banned in certain places around the world if they do make it canon. However, other cartoons do have canon LGBTQ+ representation that's more prominent. (Ex. The Loud House - Clyde's dads (Howard and Harold McBride) + Luna is a bisexual, Adventure Time - Princess Bubblegum and Marceline) Plus, there is some LGBTQ+ throughout the show which I talk about more here. (Shameless plugging XD) So it wouldn't be out of character for Ninjago add a gay ship in the series. Not only will it give them more open doors since it shows how they're willing to add queer relationships into the show, so they might add some more queer relationships. It would also make Cole the first canon LGBTQ+ ninja of the main 6.

Okay, well I think that's about all I have to say about the most gay characters in Ninjago. Also thank you for all the likes + reblogs on my queer Ninjago post, I like yapping about this show clearly, especially the queer part cause I'm part of the LGBTQ+ community so I might as well spread my pride. I literally love Geode so much please make it canon in my life.

Anyways, I hope everyone enjoys their winter break, gets lots of presents this year for Christmas, and stay up for New Years. Make sure to stay healthy and have lots of fun with family and friends.

[ilovegeorgie]

don’t bother me

george harrison x reader

genre: confort

warnings: none !

summary: a lazy day with george

a/n: i personally need more geo content

the sky seemed heavy while she stirred in bed, her limbs aching from exhaustion quite unexplainable. it wasn’t just the physical one, it was the kind of tired that consumed your soul, making even getting out of bed feel impossible.

george layed beside her, propped up on one elbow, his soft brown eyes watching her closely. he’d noticed the way her shoulders had drooped the night before, how her laughter didn’t come as easily, how quiet she had been.

“you all right, love?” he asked gently, his voice still thick with sleep.

she turned herself to face him, her lips curving into a faint smile.

“i’m just tired,” she murmured. “not even sure why, i just don’t feel like doing anything today.. or maybe ever.”

george reached out, brushing a strand of hair away from her face.

“then don’t,” he said simply, "just fot today" his hand lingering on her cheek, “we don’t have to go anywhere or do anything. we can just stay here.”

she sighed, a wave of relief washing over her at his words.

“you really mean it?” she asked. george’s lips twitched into a small smile, and he leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead.

“course i do. we’ll stay right here. just you and me.”

george brought tea and toast to bed, balancing the tray carefully. they both sat cross-legged on the bed, crumbs scattering across the blankets as they shared bites and talked about everything and nothing. she leaned back against the headboard and george nestled beside her, pulling the blanket up over both of them. she then rested her head on his shoulder, her eyes fluttering shut as his fingers traced lazy patterns on her arm.

“you know,” he said after a while, his voice soft, “you don’t always have to keep going and doing stuff all day, you know? it’s all right to take a day off, to stop and breathe.”

she tilted her head up to look at him, her eyes glassy with unshed tears.

“i know but i just… feel like i should be doing more, like maybe if i actually did something could take advantage of my life and do something with it,” she admitted. “like i’m wasting time if i stop.”

george frowned slightly, his fingers pausing their motion.

“darling,” he said softly, his voice steady and full of care. “you’re not wasting anything. everyone gets tired, and everyone needs a break sometimes. you’ve been doing so much lately. it’s all right to let yourself rest.”

she blinked up at him, her heart swelling at the sincerity in his gaze, a tear slipping down her cheek.

george caught it with his thumb, brushing it away gently before leaning in to press a kiss to the corner of her eye.

“i know you, and i know you need this. so, no more worrying about what you "should" be doing, yeah? today’s just about us.” he said with a small chuckle.

she nodded, her hand reaching up to rest over his.

“georgie, i don’t deserve you,” she said, her voice breaking slightly.

george shook his head, smiling softly.

“i’m the lucky one.”

as the day wore on, they stayed snuggled in the warmth of their bed while she rested her head on his chest.

“you feeling a bit better now, love?” he asked, his lips brushing against her hair.

she nodded, snuggling into him.

“much,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest. “i just needed you.”

george tightened his arms around her, resting his chin on the top of her head.

“well, lucky for you, i’m not planning on going anywhere,”

[mlobsters]

probably a weird thing to ask you but you seem to have watched a lot of those panels. why do you think they keep doing those cons. outside i guess of the money. i'm asking as someone who hasn't seen their panels at all. maybe one day i will. but like, i think, what do you think j2 (and the rest of the cast presumably) get out of it.

thank you again for this ask, i am very happy to have an excuse to talk about this! i have not been in this fandom very long (about 2 years now) and i mostly just make stuff so i think i still have a slightly outsider perspective, so i suppose take all this with that in mind. :)

straight away, for sure the financial aspect is gonna be part of it - and i imagine especially so for the cast that participates that had smaller roles. but that aside, i don't genuinely believe that the main cast would continue to do these for so long unless they enjoyed it and got something positive out of it, especially being that they are actively working on other projects too. they actually talked about this, in a way, at this most recent con (nashcon 2024) so i'm going to include some of that - and a bit jared talked about the connections fans have made (chicon 2023). for reasons stated below*, i'm sure there are a bunch of examples of times they've talked about these things i'm not aware of, because i haven't read or watched that much panel content. but here's a small sampling.

jared and jensen main pain, nashcon 2024 question: what has it been like to watch the entire fandom change and grow over these last many years, and people who have been at these conventions change and grow?

jared and jensen gold panel chicon 2023 question: what's your favorite fan interaction over the years?

to go along with this, i think it's part and parcel to the topic; i really do believe they truly are invested and care about their characters and the story. the way they've talked about the revival/season 16/whatever you call it, they're all in to go back to it. jared even mentioned at one point if they had shorter seasons (which they asked for repeatedly), they might still be making the show. i don't have concrete examples i can point to in panels, but i think if you do watch them talk about their characters much, there's a lot of thoughtfulness and care there.

Would you be open to returning to Sam Winchester? I feel like there are more stories for that character and, with The Winchesters done, it's a weird time to be a Supernatural fan with no new Supernatural on television for the first time in almost 20 years. It is weird, right? It's weird for you to say that and weird for me to realize it. The simple answer to your question is 100%. I will play Sam Winchester again. Jensen will play Dean Winchester again. It's more of a timing and availability thing. In hindsight, Jensen and I have always said "always," if we ever have the option. I think in the last two or three seasons of Supernatural, when we realized somebody might want more, we said "2025. In 2020, we're ending this. Let's get together in five years and see what Sam and Dean are up to." I'm going to see him in a few weeks to talk to him about it again. We've talked about it a few times. He and I are both champing at the bit to see what these boys have been up to and what else good they can do in this world or the next. I'm excited about it. My only contingency about it is, with Jensen and I being so protective of the show and the characters, the story has to be absolutely right. I don't just put on flannel and big coat, get in an Impala and say "Dean!" That won't work for Jared. It needs to have a purpose, as Sam and Dean always did.

via cbr, walker season 4 interview with jared

and i think they just have fun! they've developed a relationship with fandom that works for them in this format and they get to play around on stage with their friends and entertain people that love them. at the end of the day, it is a job for them, and they are putting on a performance; but i wouldn't be so cynical to think they aren't being somewhat genuine within that framework.

jared and jensen dccon 2023 main panel question: How long have you guys been friends?

and not to be totally j2 brained, but when you have a connection with someone like this, maybe it also isn't such a hardship to keep working together

*i actually haven't actually watched many panels! but fortunately for me (us), i have seen a lot of gifs and transcriptions. i have a hard time with the video format for reasons. when i decide to make gifs, it's often because i saw a quote or snippet somewhere and i go looking for the conversation to get a clip of, and sometimes might bump into something else that grabs me while i'm there. fortunately, a lot of the videos on youtube have at least autogenerated captions so i can scroll through the transcript there/search for keywords, etc. @eisforeidolon transcribes selections of questions from cons periodically, which i'm forever grateful for. a not insignificant chunk of my panel related show/cast trivia has been gleaned from those.