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basicallywhiterice · 4 years ago

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moonlight (xu minghao)

Genre: Fluff, one scene with angst, college!au, graduation!au, established relationship, moving in together

Summary: Your relationship with Minghao, told through phone calls

Word count: 2k

Warnings: One cuss word I think

a/n: This is lowkey the foil to sunny but the plots are completely unrelated. Happy Minghao day y’all

D-17.

You wake up to a phone call from Minghao.

“Good morning!” he chirps. You respond with a noncommittal grunt. “Aw, baby. Rise and shine!”

“Five more minutes,” you yawn, turning over in your bed.

“C’mon, chop-chop. Get your exams over with! Get that bread, get that head, then leave.”

You still want to go back to sleep, but Minghao’s ridiculousness makes you open your eyes. “You want me to get that head? When you’re a hundred miles away?” Static. “That’s what I thought,” you grin, closing your eyes as another yawn escapes your mouth.

“Hey hey hey, don’t fall asleep on me again. You got this. Turn your camera on!”

“Why?”

“So I can see your beautiful face,” he sing-songs. A grin spreads across your face almost involuntarily—after three years of dating Minghao, simple statements like these never fail to make you happy. It’s because of how genuine he is, you think. He means it from the bottom of his heart. “Plus, you’ll have a harder time falling asleep again.”

“If you insist.” You sit up, turn your camera on, and prop your phone up on your blankets. Minghao pops up on screen a few moments later. “Hey.”

The call freezes for a second, displaying a pixelated jumble of his smiling face, before it resumes to show him blowing a kiss at you. “Hey.”

You blow one back, feeling the sleepiness leave your body. “Mm. Last day of exams. Can’t wait to get this shit over with.”

“That’s the spirit!” His grin is contagious, and you can’t help but break into a smile yourself.

“Thank you for cheering me up, Minghao. You just helped me start my day right.” Minghao’s the more laid-back person in your relationship, but he has no problem being your personal hypeman. He’s good at it, too—he never fails to brighten your day.

“Thank you for overcoming your sleepiness for me, baby.”

“Mhm, just for you. I think I’m gonna take a quick shower before I finish my exams.”

“Can I join?”

“Minghao!” You burst out laughing. Minghao grins.

“Hey, at least you’re fully awake now, right?”

“Oh my god, you dork. Anyways, what are you doing today?”

He explains some of his new designs and marvels at the amount of creative freedom his upcoming project has. Before you know it, it’s 8:28 and Minghao has to leave to catch the metro. You say your goodbyes like normal.

“I love you, Minghao.”

“I love you, y/n.”

You pause before you hit the ‘end call’ button. “I’ll see you soon.”

D-13.

Sometimes, you wonder if suffering through two years of graduate school was worth it.

Then, you remember the job offer you landed a few months ago, and the long hours seem like a small price to pay. Getting a job in New York City is no small task, and your learning through your graduate program certainly helped.

Plus, listening to Minghao get excited about how you’re finally moving in makes the process sound more than worth it, no matter how long it took.

“—so I asked my boss for the afternoon off to pick you up, and she said yes! And I was super happy, and she was super happy that I was happy, you know? She also suggested getting flowers—do you want flowers? I told her you don’t like flowers because they’re impractical, but I can get you a bouquet if you want, if you’ve changed your mind. Or I could get a flowerpot for our apartment. Or do you want a succulent for our apartment? They’re cute—”

“Minghao, calm down. Take a deep breath.” You wait until you hear his exaggerated huffing and puffing, and you smile. Minghao talks a mile a minute when he gets excited, but you love it. “Great. I’d love to get a plant for our apartment. I’m bringing my cactus with me, so we could draw cute faces on the flowerpots and have them be friends.”

“Didn’t you already draw something on your cactus’ pot, though?”

“Yeah, but there’s plenty of space to add on. Wait, let me show you.” You stand, padding toward your window and throwing open the curtains. Outside, the faint streaks of sunset paint the sky, illuminated by the fading glow of daylight. You grab your cactus from the window sill and walk back to your desk, holding it up to your phone.

“Oh, I like all the doodles,” Minghao remarks as you turn your plant this way and that. When you show him the back, where you’ve painted a crescent moon, his eyes soften. “You painted a moon on there.”

When Minghao graduated and left for New York, he promised that he’d always be there for you in spirit. After all, he had said, when you could look up to the same moon he saw, it was almost like he was there with you. “Whenever it’s cloudy at night or when there’s a new moon and I can’t see the moon, I just look at this instead,” you admit, running your finger over the paint.

“God, I’m so in love with you.”

“I know,” you smile softly, looking back up at your phone screen. “That’s exactly how I feel about you.”

“I know.”

Minghao stays on the phone with you for ten more minutes before he hangs up to go grocery shopping.

“I’ll see you soon, Minghao,” you say before you end the call.

Outside, the moon hasn’t risen yet, the sky an inky black. Tonight, though, you don’t need to watch the moon to deal with missing Minghao. Tonight, you sit back, content with waiting thirteen more days to see him.

D-10.

“I’m always so worried that this might be the last time I see my friends,” you whisper into the silence. It’s nearing midnight, but your mind is racing. You just got back from a long dinner with your friends and classmates, which was a fun affair, but now existential dread is creeping up on you.

“I felt the same way when I first graduated,” Minghao admits. You’re Facetiming him again, but your phone lays flat on your bed as you shuffle around, trying to drink in all the details of your room before you have to leave. “I still worry that I’ll never see some of them again. But they’re always one text away, and I make time to see everyone important to me.”

“Yeah. True.” You sigh. “Still, though. I’m gonna miss everyone. I miss you too, you know, even though I’ll be in New York soon.”

“I know. I miss you every day.”

You fall back onto your bed, grabbing your phone and holding it above your face. “I don’t… I don’t want to suffer through missing my friends while knowing that we probably won’t live in the same city again, you know? Missing you is slightly more bearable because I know we’ll end up in the same place, but there’s no guarantee for everyone else.”

“Yeah, and it sucks. But you’ll still be in touch with them, and you’ll make new friends.”

“Yeah.”

In the middle of the night, after you hang up and you’re all alone, you gaze up at the moon for strength.

D-5.

After walking across the stage and throwing your graduation cap in the air, you’re finally free from school. You don’t have much time to talk to Minghao—your day is packed with ceremonies and parties—but he’s just as excited as you are.

“Two years and I’m done!” you half-shout over the chattering in the background.

“I’m so proud of you, baby. Show me your graduation cap!”

You pluck it off your head and hold it in front of you with one hand, rotating it this way and that like a steering wheel. “It’s about the same as the undergraduate cap. I did get this hood, though. It almost feels like a cape.”

“You could be a superhero that has caffeine for blood, or something, and your kryptonite could be history tests.”

“God, don’t remind me of those. I’m free now, remember?”

You talk for a few more minutes before your friends remind you of the graduation party at 4 pm, and you have to hang up to get ready. Before you hang up, Minghao bombards you with reminders of how proud he is, before you finally have to go.

“I’ll see you soon,” he says.

D-1.

“Really? You’re still doing last-minute packing?” Minghao asks as you throw some shoes into your suitcase.

“Shh, I blame you for distracting me with late-night calls.”

“You find me to be distracting?”

You roll your eyes, ducking down to grab your folded towels and plop them on your bed. “Mhm, always have. Don’t get cocky, though.”

He’s smirking when you look back to the phone screen.

“Minghao! I just said not to get cocky.”

“C’mon, let me have this moment.”

You sigh dramatically, glancing around your nearly-empty room and making a mental checklist of things to pack in the morning. “You’ll get to the airport at 2 tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah. Terminal C, right?”

“Right. Can’t wait to C you then.” He groans, and you can’t help but prolong the joke. “Get it? C you?”

“I feel so bad for your roommates. I bet you tortured them with constant bad puns during exam season.”

“No comment.”

At 8:21, your roommate Jieqiong starts the last movie night you’ll share together, and you bid Minghao goodbye. Still, you find comfort in the fact that this is the last goodnight you’ll send over Facetime for a long time.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Minghao,” you say, blowing him a kiss.

“See you tomorrow.”

D-Day.

“I just got done picking up my suitcases,” you say, slipping an earbud into your right ear as you drop your phone in your pocket. As you grab the handles of your luggage, you scan the baggage claim area for an exit and start walking toward the sliding doors at the end of the row of conveyors.

“Awesome, I just saw some people walk out,” Minghao says. “I’m here waiting.”

Suddenly, you feel very small as the gravity of the situation weighs on you. Minghao is behind those doors, waiting. You’re about to start a new life together, staying in the same city for the first time in two years. “What if I can’t find you?” you all but whisper, halting your footsteps.

“Then we’ll just keep looking for each other. Take your time, baby.”

“I—yeah, okay.” You will your legs to move again. “Will you stay on the call with me?”

“Of course.”

“Okay.” A comfortable silence falls as you pass the exit checkpoint, stepping out of the sliding doors to the pickup area. “Okay, I just walked outside and—”

And then your gaze falls on a certain young man wearing a top in your favorite shade of light blue. What catches your attention is the poster he’s holding, with ‘my moon’ written on it in loopy handwriting and a cartoon moon doodled next to it.

Your face nearly splits open from how wide your smile is.

“I see you.”

Day 1.

You wake up with your face pressed into Minghao’s chest.

“Good morning,” you whisper. “Are you awake?”

Minghao groans. “Five more minutes,” he mutters. “What time is it?”

You glance around the room until you find his clock on his bedside table. “9:45. We have lots of time before we have to meet my parents for lunch.”

“Mm. Good.” He wraps an arm around your waist. “I’m glad you’re here, sleepyhead.”

You scoot closer. “You’re the one asking for more sleep, mister.”

“You’re the one who’s warm and soft and cuddly. I love you, y/n.”

Closing your eyes, you nuzzle your head into his chest and relax into his embrace. “I love you, Minghao.”

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riisinaakka-draws · 4 years ago

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part 2/6

2nd part of my old Black Sails scraps and doodles from 2016–2021. Not in any particular order.

This time the drawings are short comics that were abandoned for a reason or another, mostly because I lost the interest or felt like there was too much to redraw compared to the satisfaction of finishing something else more interesting. There’s also some talk about rigid mindset and how overthinking can lead to stagnation.

Contains early silverflint moments, specks of dust, rackham's glasses are found, jealous-Billy spying, desk-Flint gets caught, "squint-squint", a quiet moment and its bird dilemma etc.

And please do not steal and repost elsewhere. But if you do get inspired, feel free to make your own interpretations!

Long-ish post under the cut!

“What are you thinking about?”

“Specks of dust.”

“Liar.”

The idea was to show how much they and their relationship had changed. This was around 2016 when the season 3 began and I was still re-learning to draw with a tablet. Another art from the same time period (and idea) is this art: The Dynamic Duet.

And for some reason I was really stuck up thinking that I’d have to first do the sketch, then the clean line art, then planes underneath, then shadows etc. and I have always struggled with that kind of approach! Mainly because I hate doing clean line work, lol. And I was a fool for trying to start with a white canvas! It’s so much harder to find values and plan things, or at least in my opinion..

“Rackham’s glasses are found”

To celebrate their new pirate alliance, they share the four lenses of Rackham’s sunglasses as they were also found at the time (because I wanted it to resurface and they could be made into jewellery you know...). This was right after the episode where Anne fights and hurts her hands (here wearing protecting mittens from Max even though she’s not trusted at the moment). Uh, this doesn’t spark joy interest me much and it’s quite stiff and would recuire a lot of redrawing faces, so - discarded!

I somewhat like the idea still (them having something to share, although it’s on Jack’s detriment). I tried to find a stylished comical easier doodlier? way to draw them and draw clean lines etc, but it just wasn’t for me. Also here too, the background is blank and too bright. Later I started to think things as scenes and draw everything at the same time instead of adding the bg later or trying to show everything (and everyone) at the same time.

Here’s also Billy in the same story:

He’s spying on them and since it’s so bright he’s wearing his diy “sunglasses” and being envious to the others. *cough* uhhh...Idk? Also people were shipping Ben Gunn (and cheese) with Billy, so that bled into this too... Charles’ spirit is riding the “big white bird” that was mentioned in Teach’ story and in this case it’s a pelican.

As you can see, I also wasn’t using the brushes that I use nowadays. A hard (or soft) round brushes with no change in opacity just aren’t for me. For example, in traditional art, I struggle with markers and copics, but really enjoy charcoals and watercolours. I prefer ragged edges, layering and thus blending things into each other (and leaving the viewer to fill in the gaps) instead of having stark or definite things. I also struggle with vector drawings, although I have decided to finally start learning to use them...somedayyyy.

Also, I wasn’t paying attention to anatomy, like, at all LMAO. I was just so happy to be able to put something on the canvas.

This is one of my first ink drawings, but I cannot find the original anymore. Again, I like the idea, but not how things look art-wise. And I was so adamant, that I have to get everything right in the traditional drawing and not fix anything later on on photoshop because then it would be cheating. And thus, I was never able to move on or finish this properly the way I liked it (idiot).

BUT! It was a good practise to just draw and test things on paper and gain confidense on drawing things in overall (as I was still getting back into art). To get over the fear of blank paper you know, and try to find my style whatever it would start to form into.

Oh, yeah, Desk Flint.

Desk Flint was a thing for a while (still is, lol). Another drawing from that time is this Slingshot Pirate (2016). And Desk Flint keeps repeating in many later works too. The point is mainly “Flint sitting behind his desk and people interrupt him and I don’t have to draw him fully”

Well, anyway... moving on.

Here’s a plan that has been stuck for years. It’s name is “Squint-squint.” Left is the sketch (with another sketch underneath because the expressions were clearer in the old one). On the right is the continued piece with colour scheme but I cropped the eyes panel and faces out (it was so ugly for some reason) but if I ever continue/finish this, it will be redrawn there in the middle.)

Left. “On that moment their eyes were literally open(ed).”

Right. “After squinting on the shore for days, they had actually forgotten how pretty the other idiot’s eyes were.”

I still like it, quite a lot, but my perfectionist ass only sees too much “boring” things to draw and get right, so it hasn’t been a priority for a long time and other works have kept me occupied and more interested in them.

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

“Quiet Moment.” 2018 (a wordless comic happening after the events of Charles Town)

I’m going to explain after these pictures, but see how big the difference is when you start to look at references and plan things together (the space, “camera” movement, background etc). I also started to colour with coarser brushes:

I drew this around early 2018. A lot of improvement! Still quite a lot of negative space (empty white backgrounds), but it fits this work. A few things tell where we are (the ship’s cabin and the balcony). Changing distances and how things are cropped/framed make things more moving and focused (and less to draw, lol). Colours and brush strokes are softer, more layered and so on.

But guess why it’s still a wip!

I couldn’t decide what bird is flying over there.

Yeap! At first it was an albatross (doesn’t go to Bahamas?). Then a seagull (but which seagull? there’s so many subspecies! Is the ship at sea or at the harbour? what birds are there on the open water/ close to the shore?? oh noo...) So, yeah, wayyyy too much over-thinking.

At some point I ended up with white-tailed-tropic-bird which was a plus! because it sounds like the bosun’s whistle, but at that point I was so tangled and frustrated and still had so much to finish with this that I left it be. Also Flint’s face looks different in every frame so I would’ve had to change some parts, lol. And then I forgot it for a couple of years! And then I had learned to draw a bit differently and again saw too much things to do, so it’s quite hard to take on this again, especially when there are so many other interesting wips waiting...

But I still really like the feeling of it! And the colour scheme. So I might just limit the things I’m allowed to fix and then post it as it own someday. I mean, it’s 90% finished, but the last reach just feels like miles.

And that’s what usually happens with my wips. They reach a certain point and it suddenly becomes really hard to finish or get back into.

But every time I learn things and then use the information in another work! :D

Final note for this post (altough this has been said hundreds of times): use references and look how things go and try to see the structure and form beneath things. And think where it is happening and how the light and surroundings affects the characters and/or spaces. And maybe think what you’re trying to convey with the art, what idea? what emotions? what purpose? or like, what are you trying to learn with the piece? and so on...

Thanks for checking this out, I hope you had fun <3

#black sails doodle #long post #but not as long as the future ones heh #tag for Block Spoils doodles #<- if you want to black list these

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imagineclaireandjamie · 4 years ago

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Shielded: Chapter Six; Spring Watch.

Anonymous said to imagineclaireandjamie:

A hard man is good to find. [Mae West]

Jamie woke with a start, the alarm blaring in the background.

The dream had been intense and had left him panting, a sheen of sweat on his skin as he pushed the duvet aside and stood. As always it was light outside, the sunrise half blinding him as the blasts of orange and red permeated the old curtains. Washing the night from his skin, he plunged himself beneath the pounding rivulets of water coming from his power shower, his body temperature receding slightly as the morning wore on.

Fortunately Claire wouldn’t be awake yet and he could slip from the house almost unnoticed. He needed to get a good day of work done, and to forget the memory of his dream before he faced her again. The mere thought brought colour to his cheeks, the heat in his belly reminding him of how incredibly realistic it had been.

Delicate pink skin appeared without his permission and once more he could feel the remnants of it haunting him as he slid his wellies on and closed the door softly behind him. Working in a daze, he prepared his cows for milking, the heat of the morning fading slightly as the clouds rolled in. The animals barely paid him any mind, going about their own business as he fed, watered and tended to them.

She hadn’t snuck into his bed, as she had in his dreams, but she had infiltrated his thoughts and no matter how hard he tried, sporadic jolts of her came unbidden throughout the day as he worked.

She’s married, he told himself, although the argument felt pretty weak in his own mind. In the abstract she was, he could tell that she still thought herself that way despite starting her new life. Without knowing it, she often rubbed her wedding ring finger - though the ring had long since been removed. It was obvious she was struggling with the transition and who could blame her, it had only been a couple of weeks. She was still hesitating on her name whenever he spoke it out loud to her, the subtle twitch betraying her.

But she was beginning to thaw, the shocked reaction he received when he spoke to her growing less and less as time went on (which, secretly, made him smile).

The baby lambs were out in force as he pulled the sandwich from his rucksack - one Claire had made him the night before. He smiled to himself as he perched on the fence, watching his first time mums as they paraded their babies around the perimeter of the field. Food somehow tasted better when someone else had made it for him, the slight differences in style allowing him a great enough change in routine to be noticeable.

She, it seemed, had a penchant for adding multiple salad products on her ham sandwich. Whereas Jamie was always in a rush at 4am, trying to collect his thermos as well as various food items to keep him going for the day, usually he would just throw slices of meat on top of bread without much thought. Lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber and *butter*, however, made all the difference. He even had potato salad on the side and a bag of what looked like homemade crisps.

Before Claire had arrived, John had given Jamie a very brief update as to her situation. Knowing a limited amount, he gauged that the difficulties she’d encountered recently hadn’t really set in yet and, instead, she was going through some sort of nesting, using her time at Lallybroch to cook and clean, ensuring that her mind is actively kept away from thinking about much at all.

His mind needed something similar as the image of her pottering about in his kitchen whilst he was away brought to the fore those visions that had him startled awake this morning before his alarm had even a chance to ring and he shook the picture of her bare skin from his thoughts, turning back to his task list.

The orphaned lambs were thriving now. Most had been ‘adopted’ by other nursing mothers but he still had two rogue ewes who were waiting for collection - Rupert, his nearest (mostly by proximity but also by friendship) neighbour had offered to take them for him but had yet been unable to drive over to collect them. In lieu of this, Jamie had been spending time hand feeding them every day though he worried each time he left them that he might return to something unmentionable.

Luckily, they’d survived another night in the small outhouse and he crawled in between them, the straw poking and prodding him as he settled with the warm milk bottle. The first, the largest of the two, squirmed in excitement, rushing to plonk herself by his side and suckle noisily at the teet.

“Easy now, lass, there’s enough for the both of you.” He soothed, watching as she butted the bottle, falling to her knees as she fed. Sheep were notoriously terrible pets, losing their fear of humans when in contact for too long and he had worried this close contact wouldn’t be good for the ewes, but watching the smaller of the pair sit helplessly in the corner made him think of Claire.

An idea came to him all of a sudden as he moved towards the lone female. He could, if he wanted, take the lamb home that evening and leave her in Claire’s care. Not only would it give the poor wee thing a greater chance, it might give her something else to turn her attention to in the day. There was a large chance he’d lose this one if he didn’t do something drastic.

-- --- --

An odd feeling settled in her stomach from the moment she woke up. Though she couldn’t put her finger on what the issue was, she felt a strange atmosphere hovering around her. Her skin prickled as she got out of the shower and she immediately felt as though there was something she should be remembering but couldn’t quite hold onto the memory.

She’d heard Jamie leave this morning, which was odd in itself. Usually she was fast asleep at dawn, not waking until much later when the house was quiet and she was alone. But she’d been woken this morning by some forgotten thought or dream that she couldn’t picture from the second she’d opened her eyes.

After barely speaking for two weeks, the weekend had been a welcome change.

Conversation had not been forced or odd, Jamie had allowed her time for quiet reflection and had seemed really quite pleased with her suggestions for the upcycling of his old furniture.

She felt useful, finally. A feeling she hadn’t had in some time.

Putting herself to work, she opted for cleaning downstairs for the best part of the morning. There was still a lot of dust residue from the sanding epic they’d had on Saturday, even spending most of Sunday dusting and hoovering hadn’t removed it all, so she pulled the dyson from under the stairs and tried to be as thorough as she could be.

Like cooking, she had never considered herself to be fluent in the art of housewifery. Before...when she had been able, her time had been dedicated to studying. There had been a cleaner for such tasks and, even afterwards, she hadn’t *needed* to be useful in that way. Here, though, there was nobody else to clean, do the dishes or cook and she found that losing herself to each task kept her mind (and body) active.

Sitting with the remnants of her crisps, she decided that was the dish she’d been most proud of since her introduction to the kitchen. She found herself thinking of Jamie and hoped that he was enjoying them too.

Their food deliveries now consisted of a greater variety of produce and she’d been able to add some colour to his lunch - which she had been making every evening and putting into the fridge for him to take when he left in the mornings.

She felt pleased as well as shocked at how easily she had moulded to fit her new life here.

Happy with her efforts, she turned her attention to the bookshelves in the back living room. There were titles dating back hundreds of years. Thick leather covers with yellowed pages sat proudly amongst the newer softback novels. She could tell which books had been read just by glancing at the spines, though there had been fingerprints in the thin layer of dust that had been there only hours before.

They were categorised, it seemed, by the surname of the author, carefully and methodically organised so that each time a new title had been purchased, it had been added in the right spot though there wasn’t room for many more.

His taste was eclectic, from non-fiction books on farming, agriculture, holistic medicines and horticulture to the classics (neatly bound with multiple editions ordered together, oldest first) including Jane Austin, Victor Hugo, Descartes, Melville and Hemingway. Jumbled in were some biographies but she’d assumed those belonged to either his parents or sister as none had been touched for some time.

Her fingers ran over the spines, stopping to hover over the drawing and painting books she’d first read when learning to doodle on the post-it notes in the first few weeks. She didn’t stop until she reached a relatively new title that she hadn’t noticed before. There was ruffling on the edge, a clear sign of frequent use, and some damage to the corners. Pulling it from the shelves, she settled into the comfy armchair, her cup of tea now cool enough to drink, and began to read.

It was modern, eloquently written with intricate plot weaving from the moment she turned the first page. The front cover clearly denoted that of a romance but there was intrigue and art as well as carefully homegrown characters. Before she’d had time to digest the prose, the front door opened and closed and she blinked. The clock on the desk ticked loudly and she noticed that hours had passed without her knowing.

Placing the book back on the shelf, she decided to leave it where it was for the time being and come back for it before bed. Though the visuals she’d imagined for herself stayed with her as she stretched and went in search of Jamie.

A loud noise caught her attention and she burst out laughing as she walked into the kitchen to find him wrestling with a small lamb.

“A new friend?” She said, her shock fading quickly.

“Ah; lass, I need ye!” His words were breathless, his cheeks a vibrant pink from the exertion of keeping the lamb from darting off and wrecking the joint. “I have a challenge for you, if you’re up for it!?”

#anonymous #;mod mbd #shielded #Jamie X Claire

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maybankiara · 5 years ago

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BORROWED TIME (1/2)

pairing: JJ Maybank x Girlfriend!Reader

summary: JJ’s girlfriend tells him she loves him, and it’s the one thing he’s not ready to hear.

word count: 3k

warning: negative self-image on jj’s part; implications of anxiety issues and trauma from his upbringing

additional: this is basically 90% angst with some fluff thrown into the mix, it’s based on i love you by billie eilish as if the song were from jj’s perspective, hence the fic is from jj’s perspective, too. it’s a part one out of two.

masterlist

tag list

written for an anon

part two

JJ Maybank is a lonely boy. He is hurting more often than he isn’t, and most of it doesn’t even come in the shape of jabs that turn him into a canvas of red, purple, and yellow. It’s words, often, leaving his skin unscathed but his mind cut deeply, little by little.

He wonders, sometimes, if some of what is said about him is true. He wonders if he truly is the person his father sees him to be – drunken thoughts are meant to be sober thoughts, and what’s that other than honest truth? The words might hurt, and JJ might be able to shove them underneath the rug in his chest, but sometimes it’s not his dad who says them.

Sometimes it’s John B, when he makes a joke about JJ ending up like Luke. The Pogues laugh, because what they know of his father is only that he’s a criminal.

They don’t know he makes JJ’s life a living hell. He doesn’t want them to; he doesn’t want their pity.

It’s the times like these when he turns to the one person who looks at him like she sees him for who he’s trying to be, not who he is.

‘What?’ Y/N asks, grinning over her knee.

‘Nothing,’ mumbles JJ.

‘You’re staring.’

‘Admiring.’

Y/N rolls her eyes, going back to the textbook in her lap. She’s sitting in her chair, one of her knees pulled to her chest with an arm around it, and the other one resting on the seat with the textbook on top of it, her fingers flicking through its pages, or jotting thoughts into the notebook on her desk.

She’s not used to compliments, at least not from JJ. He’s not a very vocal person when it comes to expressing his feelings in an honest, joke-free manner, and it was something they had to work through. Now, JJ makes a point of telling her what’s on his mind, even if it’s simply how he can’t take his eyes off of her, or how he can’t believe she’s with him.

Most of the time, she thinks it’s a joke.

Most of the time, JJ understands the trends of people having had enough of him, seeing whatever it is his father sees in him, and he’s just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

JJ is sprawled across her bed, keeping her company as she studies. He’s in his usual attire, cargo shorts and a sleeveless top, lying in his usual spot. Lately, since she started prepping for her exams, he’s been spending more time here. It’s quiet in a way his house isn’t – people fill nearly every corner of the small space with their trinkets, but it’s never imposing. It’s all smiles, warm beverages and snacks, Y/N’s mom checking up on the two of them, her dad inviting them for dinner.

It’s quiet in a way where people who live together understand the others’ need to be alone.

‘JJ,’ he hears her voice, soft through the sleepiness. ‘You good?’

He nods. ‘How’s studying going?’

Y/N sighs pointedly, draping her arms over the back of her chair. ‘I’m done. I’m too tired to do any more today.’

‘How much have you done?’

‘Seven chapters, I think.’ She flicks through her notebook, and it brings warmth to his heart, because he knows her. ‘Seven, yeah.’

‘Then you can do one more.’

‘I’m tired,’ she complains.

JJ props himself up on his elbows, shuffling backwards until he’s pressed against the headboard, grinning at his girlfriend. ‘Just start it. You’ll have less to do tomorrow.’

She gives him a look that he’s seen enough times to know that she’s given in, because he’s right. Not only will she have less to do tomorrow, but she’s also not tired to the point where she can’t study anymore. If she were, she wouldn’t have gone through her notebook to check how much she’s done.

‘Fine. But I’m getting the cuddles.’

JJ grins, wide and bright and honest. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

Y/N goes back to studying and JJ goes back to thinking, under the pretence of being on social media. Her shoulders are hunched over the book again and the desk lamp isn’t providing her with enough light, but she’d rather hurt her eyesight than to replace that particular lamp.

He knows everything about her. He knows how to tell when she’s too tired to study, what lamps she likes, how she likes her tea, how she breathes in each stage of falling asleep. He knows when they’re lying on the bed and her fingers trace the outline of his jaw, she’s falling in and out of sleep, happy to have him by her side. When her hands are on his chest, or his abs, and she’s doodling shapes on his skin, she wants more to just cuddle.

He knows how to read her mood based on the way she flicks her hair. He knows how her day’s been based on the eagerness of the kiss she gives him.

JJ Maybank is a perceptive boy, and he’s made it his mission to care for her to the best of his abilities.

He watches her stretch, arms above her head as she gives him a slight smile. She tucks her hair behind her ears, as some of it has escaped the braid she’d put it in.

Eventually, she’ll be good without him. He doesn’t know when it’s going to happen—when she’s going to realise that she’s better off without him—but he revels in the now.

Fifteen minutes later, the textbook is closed with a thud. A groan follows right after. Y/N gets up from the chair and JJ has about a second’s notice before she throws herself onto the bed, nesting her head into his chest.

‘I’m done with this shit,’ she murmurs. He feels her voice against his skin even through the fabric; it’s enough to send shivers down his spine.

‘Then rest,’ he says. ‘We’ll go get some snacks afterwards, watch a movie.’

Y/N nods, and he already feels her dozing off.

JJ closes his eyes, wishing he could relax like she did. He takes one of her hands into his, rubbing soothing circles into her palm. His other hand is lost in her hair, massaging the scalp in slow, circular motions, the way he knows puts her to sleep with ease.

The problem with moments like these is that they’re too perfect. It’s like film, for him, showing the memories of things he’s about to lose.

this is what you can’t have, the quiet voice in the back of his mind says, the one that sounds like Luke Maybank. you could never earn something like this.

It’s called borrowed time.

She stirs against him, waking up. JJ pulls her closer into his chest and tries to forget the words his dad yelled at him this morning. He fixates on Y/N as if she’s the only thing that matters right now, and in a way, she is.

JJ breathes heavily, but she doesn’t notice. Her lips move and she mutters something he doesn’t understand, and he doesn’t think about it. His hand leaves her hair and slips underneath the back of her shirt instead, tracing circles on her bare skin.

He’ll hold her close as long as she lets him.

Some time later, she stirs again. He sees her wake, slowly and in a daze. His face is the first thing her eyes search for; he sees the sleep still in them, the tiredness from studying. He places a kiss on her forehead, as soft as he can.

‘Morning, sleeping beauty,’ he says, even though it’s nearly midnight. ‘You ready to get some snacks?’

She closes her eyes with a shake of head. Her fingers trail to his jaw and she’s tracing it again, fingers light as feathers. ‘I think I’d rather stay in bed.’

‘Want me to get them?’

‘No.’

‘Movie?’

‘I’m too tired,’ she says, and JJ can tell it’s the truth.

He places a kiss to her hair. It’s not the end of the night just yet – he knows that because she’s always the first one to say they’re going to bed. Her parents are okay with him staying over because they know how they feel about one another, and they trust them to be responsible enough. A deeper side of him suspects it might be because they have a hunch of what’s waiting for him at home, but he doesn’t dwell on it.

Moonlight is shining through the window, into the room. It’s soft and ethereal, just like every moment he’s with her.

Her laptop is still playing some music, he notices, low in the background. It’s too quiet for him to be able to tell what it is, but the sensible notes are soothing enough.

Y/N isn’t asleep. Her fingers are still beneath his chin and her heart is beating against his own, irregular. JJ wonders how many of these moments he’s got left.

He takes hold of her hand and brings it to his lips, kissing it softly.

She whispers his name as if it were a secret.

He holds her fingers to his lips, brushing them with his eyes now closed.

‘I love you,’ she says, softly.

JJ doesn’t move. Y/N doesn’t move either, and he somehow manages to register that she said those words half-asleep, and hasn’t probably even registered what she’s done.

She falls asleep and he becomes wide awake. His lips are still brushing against her fingers, his hot breath fanning the knuckles. His eyes sting and he feels his nose is about to become runny, his heart is speeding up and body growing hot, but he doesn’t move.

If he moves, the moment is over, and he has to deal with it.

JJ doesn’t want to deal with it.

He knows she didn’t mean it, because she couldn’t have – he’s not the person she sees him as. He’s not as kind, or as determined, or as self-sufficient; he’s not as ready to open up as she is. It’s been long time coming, the moment where he finally admits that she deserves better than a boy who can’t even admit to his girlfriend how shitty his life is.

Now that it’s here, JJ knows that as soon as either of them moves, things will have change.

This isn’t—

fuck, he thinks, and that’s about the only coherent thought he can form.

no, comes next, and it’s far more persistent than any other. It keeps repeating until it’s the only sound he can hear, and he lets go off Y/N’s hand. He pushes her off, gently enough for it not to be rude, but pointedly enough for it to be odd.

She rubs her eyes, looking at him as if she’s just woken up.

maybe she has, he thinks. maybe she doesn’t even know she said it.

‘JJ?’

He swallows and it’s hard, and he presses his back against the headboard, both of his hands in his hair. Words escape him – he can’t think.

Y/N’s now in front of him, with her hands steadying him on his knees. He looks through her, recalling every single thing about himself he’s never told her.

how can she love someone she doesn’t even know?

He clears his throat, swallowing the emotions threatening to overflow. ‘You— Why did you say that.’

‘Oh.’ Her voice is inaudible and it’s the shape of her lips telling JJ she said anything at all – her eyes fall to her lap and her face loses colour, all in once.

The music has stopped playing. JJ wishes there was something else other than this deafening silence.

i should say i’m sorry, crosses his mind, but he can’t bring himself to do it.

am i sorry?

‘I’m sorry if it’s too soon,’ says Y/N, unable to meet his eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘Yeah,’ he cuts her off. ‘You didn’t mean it.’

‘No, JJ—’

‘It’s alright.’

Y/N’s lips part, but no sound comes out. She’s staring at him with his face unreadable – or maybe JJ is refusing to understand whatever she’s feeling. If he tells her she didn’t mean it, that she lied, that he doesn’t need to face what happened—

‘I meant it,’ she says.

JJ shakes his head. His hands push hers off of his knees and his body stiffens when she flinches at the roughness of his action. He pushes himself halfway off the bed, not looking at her anymore.

He can’t. Not with the look in her eyes – not after she flinched at what he’d done. Not after what he’d done.

‘You don’t love me,’ he tells her. ‘It’s a lie.’

you and i are no different, son. look at her face – she’s afraid of you. you can’t blame it on me, too. this is all you.

‘I don’t know what’s gotten into you, JJ. I know I might’ve said it too soon, but this – this isn’t you.’

Her fingers are on his shoulders, rubbing them, as they’ve done countless times before. JJ resists the instinct to lean his head to the side, let his cheek rest against the back of her hand, because this is over now.

you are going to hurt her.

His eyes flutter and tears threaten to fall, but he doesn’t let them. He shakes her hands off her shoulders. He wants to turn around, to look at her, to take her face in his hands and tell her everything’s going to be okay, but he’s not a liar.

So he doesn’t.

‘You don’t love me,’ he repeats, instead. ‘You can’t.’

‘JJ—’

‘You have no idea who I am.’ His eyes are fixed on the window and the silver light shining through it – if he so much as moves his head an inch to her, he’ll fall apart. The words are coming through gritted teeth. ‘I’m not the kind person you see me as. I’m not that good. I’m my father’s son and that’s the one thing you refuse to see – and you can’t love me if you don’t see me for who I am.’

JJ spins his head to face her, and it’s so fast that she flinches, again. He doesn’t look at her so much as he looks through her – his body is cold and head filled with the noise of his blood boiling.

‘The person you think you love doesn’t exist, Y/N. He never did. You can’t live in the fairytale.’

A few moments pass in silence and it takes him a little too long to realise it isn’t a silence, at all. Y/N is breathing quietly, sniffling between every other breath or so. When he finally looks at her, she’s trembling; blood has left her face and she looks a little sick, a little faint. Her cheeks are glistening on the moonlight and the patches under her eyes red, even if her eyes are closed.

She doesn’t say anything. Her soft cries are all that fills out the room, and JJ is starting to feel their weight on his own chest.

‘I’m—’ sorry, he thinks, but he doesn’t say it.

i’m my father’s son, he recalls himself saying. Now, the words make his stomach twist in knots, and he understands why it felt wrong when she said it.

‘There’s shit about me you don’t know,’ he forces himself to say. His fingers are balled up in fists because if they weren’t, he’d reach out and hold her until she stopped crying. ‘Bad shit. Shit you wouldn’t want to deal with.’

He expects her to say something, but she doesn’t.

Y/N doesn’t hide her crying and somehow it hurts more than if she did. is this what i deserve?

‘I should go,’ he says.

She nods, and it’s the first reaction she gives him. ‘I think so, too.’

They don’t say goodbye. He picks up his things and it’s quiet; she doesn’t even so much as glance at him. Her cries are quiet but they’re persistent, and he can’t help but hate himself for doing this to her.

JJ parts his lips and he feels the words on his tongue, but he thinks of her face when he pushed her away, and nothing comes out.

His hand is on the doorknob when he hears her chuckle drily. It makes her sound almost broken, and he freezes in the spot.

‘You’re an idiot, JJ, if you think I’d be in love with someone I don’t know,’ she tells him. Her voice is hoarse and hurting, but strong, still. ‘I know about your dad. I know about your criminal record. You’re not as good at hiding shit as you think you are, you know.’

A cold shiver runs through his body. His mind falls blank, too, and his hand falls from the doorknob. He wants to turn around, to look at her, but he can’t.

It’ll break him.

Even if there are tears already streaming down his face, it’ll shatter him.

She chuckles again and his knees buckle as he leans his forehead against the wooden door. ‘I guess I’m the idiot, then,’ she says, ‘for choosing to see the best in the person I love.’

JJ presses his fist against the wood until it starts to hurt. His teeth are clenched, but a sob still escapes him.

‘Y/N…’ he begins, but no words follow.

i fucked up.

He sighs. His hand grabs the doorknob again.

but it’s for the best.

‘I think you’ve said enough,’ she tells him.

JJ grits his teeth and pushes himself through the door, and then through the hallway, and then through the main door, until he’s out, in the fresh air, and he lets out a shaky sob as he holds his hand to his mouth, muffling it.

His chest is hurting and his head is hurting and his cheeks are hurting and he feels the need to hit something, anything, because his hands feel like they’re on fire and he’s angry at the world and he’s just—

He falls to the ground, holding his knees to his chest, with only the moon to shine some light. His eyes look up to the bright spot in the sky, feeling the heartbreak as if it were an itch across his whole body – her face flashes before his eyes, her smile, then her flinching away from him, then her tear-stained cheeks, and he can no longer hold himself together.

what have i done?

★

part two

★

tagging. @jjtheangel @teenwaywardasgardian @thelocalpogue @jjmaybanky @sacredto @chasefreakinstokes @shawnssongs @drewstarkey @thatsme-johnbookerroutledge @outrbank @yourlocalauthor @justawilddreamerchild @activist-af @mynamewontwork13 @sunwardsss @storiesbymads @koufaxx @drewstarkeyobx

#outer banks #obx #jj maybank #jj maybank x reader #jj maybank imagine #outer banks imagine #obx imagine #outer banks fic #obx fic #my fic #my imagines #f: obx #c: jj

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eury--dice · 4 years ago

Text

glitter and tree branches

happy (belated) holidehs, @singtomeinstead! thank you so much for your wonderful prompts and your even more wonderful dedication to this beautiful @sincerely-us gift exchange. hope your 2021 is off to a good start <3

(ao3 link in the notes!)

It all starts in Ellison Park.

Maybe that is the one thing, across any universe, that stays the same - that cannot change. No matter how you slice their story, it all starts in Ellison Park. Whether that beginning is a fall from a tree, a single form illuminated against the endless expanse of pink morning sky, or -

This.

It all starts in Ellison Park, 2006, when four families tangentially decide a trip to the park is the perfect spring activity, bundle up their five-year-olds and head off.

The Murphy’s arrive early. Larry guides the car over gravel until stopping, Connor and Zoe’s cheers from the backseat audible to everyone outside. Larry and Cynthia share a tight grin over their excitement, eyes pulled taut from lack of sleep.

“Ice cream!” Zoe shouts, eyes catching on the closed Dell’s lemonade cart just outside the gate. Connor is already chanting “le-mon-ade,” albeit much quieter than his sister. Cynthia raises a hand to massage over her eyes.

“It’s 11 am,” Larry points out. “No ice cream yet, sweetheart.”

“No!” They wail in perfect synchrony, only to promptly forget about sweets as soon as they’re unbuckled from the car and tearing off to the park. Cynthia sighs, gesturing for Larry to follow them while she gets what they need for the day.

Six-year-old Evan Hansen is decidedly a morning person. He has been a morning person since the day of his birth, and he will be one for the rest of his life. So while kids his age nod off against their parent’s shoulders on park benches and in their booster seats, he presses his nose against the window of the car and lets his breath fog it up even though he knows his father will scold him for the messiness later. As soon as they step into the park Evan’s vision tunnels into everything around him, sheer joy taking over as he pulls his hand from his mother’s and takes off towards the nearest tree.

“Evan!” she yelps, momentarily distracted from her argument with Mark. Since Evan normally never darts away from her, she’s caught off guard by his sudden energy, her heart rate skyrocketing with Mark’s words intangible in her ears. But Evan pays her no heed; he just runs, his parent’s arguing fading into the background for the first time he can remember. He stops at one of the trees, laying a palm against it and closing his eyes. Through his fingertips, it’s like he is rooted to the ground; like he himself is steady, consistent, and ready to provide comfort.

Heidi stops in her tracks once she can see that he’s safe, turning to Mark with an “are you seeing this?” expression, but he staunchly refuses to return her gaze.

Jared Kleinman is distinctly not a morning person, much to his friend’s dismay. Their parents always joked about it when they were little more than babies sharing naps in the Kleinman’s living room; Evan fussing at the first sign of light while Jared took more than a fair bit of commotion to so much as stir. So the Kleinman’s amble into the park a little after the Hansen’s, a still sleepy Jared leaning between his moms like a tiny labored soldier. He perks up on hearing Heidi’s voice, attuned to trouble as always, but his mom tightens her grip on his shoulder before he can run forward.

“Plenty of time for that,” she said in an undertone. “I don’t want you bonking your head because you’re sleepy.”

“I won’t,” Jared insists, offended at the mere notion he could mess something up.

His mother studies his eyes for a moment before relenting. “All right. Go see your friend.”

Jared takes off at once, a direct beeline to Evan - so direct that he doesn’t see the child-shaped obstacle in his path, immediately bonking heads and falling back onto his butt on the pavement, two glasses clattering noises filling his ears. “Oh my god,” he hears his other mom groan.

“You should be more careful,” a voice says, little-kid saccharine but mature beyond its years. “You’re Jared, right?”

“Alana! Are you okay?” a man calls at the same time Jared’s mom calls, “I told you!”

Jared hadn’t expected to see Alana Beck from his kindergarten class there, but he did all the same.

“Are you okay?” She says before he can respond. “My head hurts a bit. Does yours?”

“Uh, yeah,” Jared says. “A bit.” He reaches blindly for the first pair of glasses he can vaguely see, but when he puts them on his vision explodes and contorts.

“Are these yours?” they say at the same time, so Jared guesses she must have picked up his. They swap, and Jared frowns at a long scratch in his right lense before putting them back on.

“That’s why you need to look where you’re going,” Alana says, noting his frown. “My grandma says people get hurt when they’re not aware of their surroundings.”

“I guess.” Jared feels a little stunned into silence, even as their parents come over to check them. But finally, he manages to say “Do you want to come play with me and Evan?”

Alana scrunches up her nose, her glasses following. “Evan Hansen?”

“Yeah.”

She thinks on it for a moment, then throws a look to someone who must be her younger sister. “Okay,” she says, and that’s that.

The three unite by Evan’s tree, though Evan is a squirrel so he climbs nearly all the way up while Jared and Alana watch. Alana talks enough for all three of them, jabbering on about her family and what she misses from school now that they’re older, and that seems to ease Evan’s discomfort around a new person. He’s content to climb while they carry the conversation.

All three of their heads turn at the sound of a sudden splash followed by the shouts of two dismayed children. Jared laughs reflexively at the sight of horror on their nearly-identical faces, freckles elongated with their widening mouths. Evan drops down nimbly from the tree almost at once.

“Dad!” the boy calls, hands flying to his short curls to tug, and after a moment they recognize him as another classmate - Connor Murphy, in a different section, known to dominate the monkey bars at recess. “Why’d you throw it in the lake?”

“Emergency landing,” a man with graying hair replies, a little ways off from where Evan’s parents had settled. “Sorry, Con.”

While a few of their parents chuckle, neither of the kids appears sated; in fact, both look close to tears. The three by the tree exchange a look.

“Should we?” Alana says, and Evan nods, Jared already setting off towards the lake.

“What was it?” he asks loudly, once they near the two who lean over the surface of the lake longingly.

Zoe, who he only knew through Connor’s sharing time about his family, shot him a watery glare. “A airplane,” she bites out.

“An airplane,” Alana corrects, though she quiets when she’s on the receiving end of Zoe’s glare.

“We don’t have an airplane,” Evan says, looking between Alana and Jared for confirmation. “But, um…you can play with us?”

The two stare at each other for a beat, still working back tears, before they sigh.

“Not even one airplane?” Connor asks.

“Not even one.”

“My sister might have one,” Alana puts in. “I can ask?”

Connor eyes them warily for a beat before sighing again. “Fine. Zoe?”

“I guess so,” she says, voice small.

Friends acquired…apparently.

***

Most of the time, Zoe wishes she and Connor are real twins.

They feel enough like it - given that they almost always just played with each other - and even looked enough like it, if random people in the supermarket’s judgment could be trusted. People sometimes said they were Irish twins, which Zoe never quite understood, even after Cynthia sat her on the couch and explained the concept to her. Being Irish twins is fine and all, even though only their dad was even a little Irish (thanks, Murphy surname). But it isn’t as good as being a real twin, sharing the birthday she so desperately wants, sharing the grade above her own.

Instead, she’s stuck, out of the loop and behind. Alana comes over in the lunchroom on the days where she can, seemingly only willing to break the rules that keep her separated from everyone else due to grade. Zoe gets quite used to the sight of Alana beelining across the cafeteria, her star-patterned lunchbox unzipped and held to her chest as she weaves around students and faculty alike with a grace that Zoe assumes comes from dance. And she gets used to Alana parking herself right across from her, unzipping a small ziplock bag of baby carrots around the surprised looks of elementary school underclassmen, and saying something along the lines of “did Mrs. Gould teach you about magnets today?” And Zoe takes the offered baby carrot, puts away the felt-tip pen she’s been doodling with, and smiles.

She drags the other three over one day, though Connor’s lips set in annoyance over having to babysit his little sister and Evan’s set in something that looks closer to anxiety, casting anxious glances over to the faculty presiding over the lunchroom. Jared simply throws her an amused smile, squeezing between her and her friend from class and cutting Zoe off with a loud “Howdy!” before she can apologize for his behavior. Evan takes the unoccupied space on her right, his fingers messing with the clasp of his lunchbox. His eyes jump across the faculty members even as Alana and Connor sit across from her. She’s so used to seeing both of them across from her that it takes a moment for her to remember how different they usually are. Alana only ever looks like this, separated by a grainy plastic table and fluorescent lights, but normally she sees Connor under their warm kitchen lights and the honey-colored wood of their kitchen table.

“You don’t have to come over here,” she says quietly, words muffled into the collar of her sweater.

Alana just smiles and launches their normal lunch routine, this time with the added chatter from Connor and Jared, before Evan’s face shifts and Zoe lifts her eyes to see a faculty member appear just behind Alana.

“Aren’t you all at the wrong table?” They say, and the five scatter as quickly as they can, hoping to avoid docked recess as punishment. On the playground, Evan bites the corner of his nail nervously and Connor refuses to look in Zoe’s direction, staring instead towards the faculty hovering by the fences.

So much for trying to spend time together.

Out of school, though - out of school is equal for everyone, regardless of grade. No time to share, no privacy for their conversations, no good locations for their games.

“We should have a secret hiding spot,” Alana declares later that same day. Even from her position hunched under the bunk bed she shares with her younger sister, her voice carries such a sure tone that no one could even disagree.

“Should we all join you?” Jared quips. Connor responds by smacking him lightly on the shoulder.

“Not in my house,” Alana says, and for some reason, Zoe expects an eye roll or something of the sort, but she’s Alana so of course there’s only confidence and surety. “Do you really want my dads hearing everything?”

“We don’t have secrets,” Evan points out from his spot on the floor between Jared and Zoe. His sleeve brushes against Zoe’s when he fidgets, his hands moving his shoulders.

“We could,” Jared says. “How else are we going to steal all the Jell-O from the cafeteria?”

“I think you’re the only person who actually likes that Jell-o,” Zoe says, before immediately regretting it. The words slip through her teeth, liketh thad dell-o, rounded and off compared to all of her friends. Evan’s arm brushes against hers again.

“Of all the criminal plots, Jared,” Connor agrees.

“It’s gross,” Evan adds in an undertone, and Zoe is pretty sure she’s the only one who can hear it.

“But it would be a secret!”

“We’re not going to do that,” Alana says; words getting caught in a sigh. “But wouldn’t it be nice to talk without-”

As if on queue, her younger sister bursts into the room, catapulting herself onto the top bunk with a frightening speed. Evan falls into Jared as she hurtles over them, and Connor jumps practically a foot in the air.

With a comical precision, almost like something actually out of a comic in the paper that Larry loved to hand them on Sunday’s so they could “learn to read a newspaper,” they turn to look at Alana.

“Like I said,” she says, assuming her teacher voice.

“…Well, where?” Jared finally replies. “Our houses don’t work too well.”

“Outside?” Evan suggests hopefully. “Maybe the park?”

“It’s too cold, and our parents can’t always drive us there,” Alana says. “But maybe…hm…

At once, Connor and Zoe’s heads swivel towards each other.

“We have a place,” Connor says slowly, reading understanding on Zoe’s face. “Or…we will.”

Larry has passions that ebb and flow just like Cynthia, and for once Zoe is certain she and her brother are thinking of the same thing; the influx of wood he’d been purchasing recently, the power tools they heard whenever he was off work, the constant questions over whether they wanted to help.

A week later, the five stand in the Murphy’s backyard. Cynthia and Larry observe at a distance, their faces careful as they watch the kid’s reactions but obvious joy in the lines of Larry’s tiny smile.

“Oh my God,” Jared breathes. “Is it real?”

“No, dummy,” Connor says, voice filled with a pompousness that Zoe hates. “We bought a treehouse decal and spent all night getting it up there just to play tricks on you.”

“Don’t be mean, Connor,” Zoe says with the snobbiness she knows he hates. He sticks his tongue out at her in return.

Evan steps forward first, laying his palm against the tree trunk and staring up with a reverence Zoe never expected. He smiles gently, the light brushing his cheeks like burnished bronze, and Zoe looks away with a smile similar to her father’s.

“Well, let’s go,” Connor says, and Evan must take his words as invitation, because he forgoes the ladder and chooses instead to scale the tree limbs until worming his way in through the “window” of the treehouse. Zoe heard something like a fond laugh behind her, most likely her mother’s doing, before she raced off to the tree herself. She did opt for the ladder, however. Connor follows Evan’s dramatics, and Alana and Jared are close on Zoe’s heels.

“Woah,” she hears Alana breathe, and, well. Woah was right.

The treehouse isn’t very large, but to a bunch of elementary students it certainly feels like it. The smell of fresh pine assaults her nose, dust still floating around and tickling her eyelashes. The late fall light streams in through the slats and windows, leaving a gold-washed tint around the treehouse and all of her friends.

Connor wanders over to a small platform, and she follows, letting her other friends scatter about the room, chattering idly about the treehouse. Zoe leans her head on Connor’s shoulder, but just as she does Connor nudges Zoe with his elbow. Uncaring to her yelp, he asks “Do you have the thread in your room?”

“Thread?” She repeats, as it takes her brain a moment to catch up. “Ohh. Yeah. I think so.”

“Want to go grab it?”

“Why?”

He motions to his wrist and then to the group as a whole.

“Whyyyy me?” She says, the y drawing out into a whine in a true younger sibling move.

All the same, she’s on her way back up the treehouse with a tub of bracelet thread tucked under her arm five minutes later. Maneuvering up the ladder with it tucked under her arm proved to be a bit of a challenge, but nothing Zoe Murphy can’t handle. She does throw it through the window before her, though, which (by Connor’s horrified yelp) isn’t the brightest move. When she reenters, Connor is already gathering up thread and shaking dust out of it.

“Oh, yes,” Jared says, surging forward and grabbing a green and purple thread from Connor’s hands. He sits heavily on the ground, immediately beginning a complicated braid without any prompting. He looks up at their surprised faces a moment later. “What? I learned at camp this summer.”

“Did you learn, Evan?” Alana asks, likely remembering they went to the same camp.

Evan looks away, one hand reaching to pick at an imperfection in the wooden wall. He shrugs. “‘M not very good,” he says, and Zoe can’t help but remember the snatches of conversation she remembers overhearing accidentally from her parents - she had to drive down and couldn’t handle it and maybe talking to the school counselor came to mind.

She crosses to him without thinking, grabbing his hand. “I’ll teach you,” she blurts without thinking. Connor hands her her favorite colors without prompting, and Zoe begins a tri-color braid that’s probably more complicated than Evan needs, but he catches on easily enough after a few minutes, twisting the blue and purple and pink together into something beautiful.

They pass their first hours in the treehouse like that, singularly focused like only little kids can be, and when Zoe’s parents bring up pizza and Sprite they pause only to admire their fine work. Several bracelets adorn each of their wrists, each twisted by someone else and infused with why Jared jokingly called the power of love. And the sun sets on them all together, smearing grease across their faces and throwing loose bits of thread across their haven in the sky, and Zoe smiles.

***

It was nearing dinnertime, far too cold and far too quiet to be in a treehouse.

Connor and Zoe took to hanging around the treehouse even when their friends weren’t there, much preferring it to their former hiding places within the house. As the winter wore on and the days grew shorter, so did Murphy tempers, and cabin fever mixed in only made enclosed spaces more liable to combust. So, with the treehouse available, Zoe tended to grab Connor and the ukelele she’d just begun learning to play and sneaking out the sliding door into their backyard. That particular evening, the layer of fluffy snow that had just fallen masked their escape and allowed them entrance to the treehouse and cushioned any residual noise left from the kitchen. They still were bundled up, however, their parkas and hats pulled tight. Both had forgone gloves, however; Zoe felt her fingers stiffen and slip on her ukelele strings, while Connor seemed unperturbed by the cold while he sketched in his brand-new sketchbook. Save for her muffled ukelele noises and the faint rustling of small creatures in the snow and Connor’s pencil etching against paper, all was still.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to bring string instruments into the cold,” Connor said, breaking the silence. Zoe responded by strumming an e minor chord more aggressively.

They fell back into their rhythm, and Connor started to hum along to her strumming just as the pinks and purples broke through gray winter sky.

“We have a project,” a voice declared. startling both of them out of their individual reveries. Alana’s head popped up in the treehouse window, a giant pom-pom hat perched precariously over the intricate braided bun Zoe could remember seeing at school that day.

“Jesus Christ, Alana,” Connor said, sounding very much like a kid who was trying his hardest to get a handle on cussing and sounding cool. “How did you get here?”

Alana blinked, righting the large box she held in her hands. “Your parents said you were here.”

Connor stilled abruptly, while Zoe’s foot started bouncing. “You talked to them?”

“Yeah,” she said, and as if she knew their next question - likely because she did, from years of experience - “They seemed like they were calming down.”

“Good,” Zoe said quietly.

Impervious to the Murphy siblings’ shifted expressions, Alana dropped the metal box to the floor and followed it, dropping to the frosty pine boards like there was nothing else she’d rather do. “Anyway, we’re making a time capsule!”

“We are?” Zoe said, feeling amusement creeping into the edges of her voice.

“Yes. You’ll thank me in ten years.”

Zoe and Connor shared a look. Connor cut off the awkward silence that suddenly descended. “The ground is frozen. How are we going to bury it?”

Alana grinned over the lid. “My dads were talking about the thaw later this week.”

“No snow?” added a new voice. Evan popped up barely a moment later, likely having taken a wild path up the tree rather than using the ladder like anyone else, even when ice coated to every nook and cranny of the bark. “Already?”

“Apparently,” Zoe replied.

“Won’t it get all covered in mud?” Jared added, and Zoe spun her head around to look at Alana, fixing her with a sharp look.

“Did you invite everyone over to our house?”

Alana shrugged. “This is important. And there isn’t that much mud if you dig deep enough, Jared.”

“Again - why?” Connor interrupted.

“Because she says so, and it’s a kick-ass idea,” Jared said.

“Didn’t expect you to latch onto sentimentality, Kleinman,” Zoe muttered, startling a laugh out of him.

Alana pulled a binder free from the backpack she’d slung to the ground. “C’mon - what do you want to add?”

“Cheerios,” Jared said at once, earning a scowl out of Alana.

“If you’re not going to take this seriously, Jared-”

“He’ll shut up,” Evan rushed to cut him off. “So not food items?”

“More sentimental, I think,” Connor said.

“Exactly.”

Under Alana’s direction, they did just that. After a successful thaw later in the week Zoe took a shovel from the garage and helped them dig and re-bury dirt in the Murphy’s backyard, marked by a small stake Connor painted with acrylics from their mom’s craft supply.

“Now we wait,” Alana said.

***

Somewhere along the line, things get… tense.

Zoe reads the self-help books and watches the videos her teachers play on VHS tapes during their “health” classes. They all describe the same thing, a switch flipping with no warning once elementary school draws to a close and sixth grade begins. Admittedly, she watches them a year later than everyone else, forever cursed to be a year behind. But she knows it’s coming all the same - fault lines crackling out through the earth and darting between their feet, setting them all adrift on different paths, thunder drowning out their words where there used to be laughter.

Nothing could have prepared her for the actual occurrence, though.

The treehouse really is their de facto hangout spot, given the Murphy’s lasé-faire attitude towards where their children were and the complete privacy it afforded. With their newly-acquired Jazz Band extracurricular, Zoe and Jared always arrive late, normally to the sight of Evan and Alana reading and Connor drawing or some other combination of their group’s preferred activities. But when they climb the ladder to the treehouse that day, the air is…stilted, like Zoe has grown to expect inside the house. That kind of expectant anger, like you know something is going to go wrong but aren’t sure what it is yet.

Evan sits, his eyes darting between Alana and Connor and over to Jared and Zoe as they walk in like he can sense a disaster brewing. Jared flounces over to Connor, sprawling, earning himself a glare.

“Can I help you, Kleinman?”

He nods to the sketchbook in Connor’s hands. “Might want to clean up those lines.”

It only gets worse from there - cutting barbs thrown this way and that, all ready to strike and hit. Nothing too bad, at least not until Connor says get the fuck out of my house and Jared says at least I have other people who will take me and Alana says honestly can’t you two even try to act mature and Zoe hears herself say at least we’re not miserable all the time before she realizes that’s - patently false. And one by one, they storm away, hopping down with practiced agility they no longer have reason to use.

And there Zoe sits. Shutting down, like she always does.

***

Connor felt like he was suffocating.

Everything was aggressively there-every word spoken grating his ears, every shadow a little too dark and every light a little too bright, every glance so heavy it weighed on his chest. He felt uneven and on edge, like one loud noise would send him spiraling off of a cliff and bursting into tears.

“Zoe,” he’d said, coming up behind her as she stood at the counter. Maybe if he’d looked he would have seen how her shoulders tensed as soon as she heard his voice. Maybe if he’d listened he would’ve heard how Zoe’s breath hitched and how she quickly ran a hand over her face. Maybe if he’d paid attention he would’ve noticed how her hands clenched around her mug and she steeled herself. Maybe the glint of pain and fear and loneliness nestled deep within her eyes before she put her shields up as she turned around would’ve stood out to him. But he couldn’t even handle analyzing himself, and there was no hope for understanding Zoe.

“What?” She said, and even in his funk he noticed how her words appeared differently than normal. Maybe, if he’d taken a moment to think, he would have identified the source-fatigue, cutting through each letter. There was none of the venom they’d grown used to hurling at each other and pretending it didn’t burn once it touched skin. She sounded tired.

He rubbed the edge of his sweatshirt sleeve with us thumb, trying to pull an excuse out of nowhere. In reality, he just needed something to anchor him to Earth, but he couldn’t say that to her. “Could you paint my nails?” He bit out, risking cutting his gaze up to her face. Her eyes had widened slightly since he last looked at her, eyebrows lifted silently with them. She pulled her bottom lip between her front teeth, and she looked down and away, foot tapping some unfamiliar rhythm against the tiled floor. Silence hung between them, dark and heavy, nearly drowning out the tap tap taptap tap of her foot. He looked back up towards her, not quite meeting her eyes, perhaps a bit more expectancy in his gaze than he would have liked.

She shook her head slightly, ring finger tapping against the side of her mug. “Why?” She said, almost too quietly for him to hear.

“Why am I asking…?”

“Yeah,” She said, same fatigue in her voice. “Why are you asking me? When this is the first time you’ve talked to me in…what, four months without being forced to?”

Connor shrugged a little, taken aback by this reaction. A soft, incredulous laugh built in Zoe’s throat.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered, voice choked. “I don’t understand. You’ve broken down my door twice. I’m the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. Why would you want me to…”

“I don’t know,” Connor said, voice uneven. Zoe shook her head again.

She stared evenly at him, and maybe if he’d been paying better attention he would have noticed the thin sheen of tears in her eyes as he raised his eyes to meet hers. “What color?”

“What?”

“Nail polish. If I painted your nails. What color would it be?”

Connor resumed rubbing his sleeve. “Black.”

She bit her lip again, the edges of her mouth curling into a bitter smile, words sounding just as bitter. “Damn. I’m out of black.”

The edge of Connor’s mouth twitched even as he felt something sink inside of him. “I see,” he said, a touch harder than the previous words had been.

Zoe shrugged, hand still wrapped around her mug, as she pushed her hip against the side of the counter to launch herself away from it. “That’s that, I guess.”

“I guess so,” Connor responded, voice hollow.

Maybe, if he’d looked up instead of locking his gaze on the floor, he’d have seen the tense hold of Zoe’s shoulders, the moment of faltering before she continued walking.

“I guess so,” she repeated faintly, all edges gone form her voice and tiredness abundant.

Connor squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them, she was completely gone from the kitchen. He gazed around for a moment, letting the view of the kitchen wash around him.

Oh, how the mighty fall.

***

Zoe is desperately glad she and Connor are only Irish twins.

Distance - distance is what she needs more than ever. She’d hated it, that chasm between her and everyone else, but of course she couldn’t have known just how wide that chasm could get. Would get, with time and urging and their circle falling apart under the right amount of pressure.

The right amount of pressure, she thinks, poised to flee on her kitchen chair, leg bouncing and heart coiled, for Connor to come home. He does, of course, sullen and tired, but in front of her eyes all the same. It’s only been a year since they reached critical mass in the treehouse, but the shift in all of them came quickly and without mercy. Alana buries herself in more work than Zoe had ever thought possible, always hurrying away whenever Zoe tries to get a word in edgewise. Jared just darts his eyes around like a caged animal, calculations churning behind his eyes as though searching for his best way forward. Evan she still sees somewhat regularly, making sure that her parents still drive him home and letting him crash on their couch when Heidi works too late, but she’s seen him retreat into himself too often to think he’s okay. And Connor…

“What are you doing up?” he whispers, the sound traveling across their kitchen table.

“Waiting for you,” she responds in a similar hiss, snapping her laptop shut.

“You should’ve just gone to bed, Mom’s gonna be pissed if she sees the li-”

“When she sees her son walk through the door at-” she lifts her phone dramatically, searching for the little time symbol. “1:12 in the morning?”

“Well she won’t see it if you just go to sleep-”

“What are you even doing?” she says in a normal tone, though she recoils and presses a hand over her mouth when Connor’s eyes widen in warning. She and Connor freeze with their hands stifling their breathing, trying to hear any shifts from their parents upstairs with their identical eyes wide. After a beat of nothing but the house shifting in the wind, she lowers her hands, swiping up her laptop with the one closest to the table. “You don’t need to be out this late, Con.”

His eyes flash over to her, then back up to the ceiling. “You don’t need to stay up for me.”

“Oh, sure, I’ll just stop worrying, I’ll just go to bed and dream sweet dreams when you’re doing hell knows what-”

“I didn’t ask you to fucking worry about me!” He cuts out. “I don’t need your pity, Zoe!”

She balts, shakes her head, feels her braids sliding against the material of her jazz band sweatshirt. “Pity?” she repeats.

Connor holds his jaw, looking away.

“Pity,” she says, then laughs a single time, too loud, but she’s past the point of caring. “I don’t know where you got pity from in the last fourteen years, Connor, but none of it is coming from me, that’s for sure.” She brushed past him. “Fine. You don’t deserve my worry anyway. I’ll tell mom in the morning if you’re so insistent.”

Connor’s footsteps hurry after her, until his fingers wrap around her wrist. She jerks it away as soon as he makes contact, “Don’t. Please.”

“You want me to stop worrying?” she says lowly, dangerously. “Fine. Then I’ll make sure you can’t do anything that worries me. See how you fucking like that.”

It was like a switch flipped in Connor, like as soon as their group fell apart so did he, growing more liable to shut down and ramp up at once. But he just leaves her grasping at straws always, never able to say anything right.

Middle school bleeds into high school, the chasm and pressure growing between them, small disagreements exploding into screams and something valuable shattering. Doors they’d never closed before close with racorous clangs, and Zoe grows tired of sleeping outside of them and waiting for him to open them up.

You don’t need to worry about me, he’d said, and she can’t ever stop, really, but she can ignore him until the worry clawed at her a little less urgently.

Try as she might, she couldn’t just forget all those years, especially when she saw reminders of them all around school - flashes of Jared’s shirts, an edge of Alana’s backpack, a flicker of Evan’s eyes. She still goes to the treehouse, sometimes, but mostly she keeps to her room, her guitar, the things she knows.

Her phone buzzes one night, and when she sees Evan Hansen flash across her screen she picks it up without a moment’s thought.

“Hello?”

“Zoe?” Evan says, voice breathy in her ear.

There’s a beat. “Yeah,” she finally says. “You okay?”

“I’m - yeah, um, I’m fine, it’s all - uh, my mom is pulling a night shift.”

“Oh?” She says, barely a hum.

“Yeah. She - look, this is, um, really dumb, I know, but can I - can I stay at yours? Tonight? I know it’s been, um, less than ideal, I can just-”

“Yeah,” she says, again without thinking. She squeezes her eyes shut, forces enthusiasm into her voice. “Yeah. ‘Course, Ev. I’ll - you need me to pick you up?”

“What? Um - no, I’m - I’m at the park, actually, walking is…fine.”

Her eyebrows pull closer together. “It’s late.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine. Really.”

Ten minutes later, Evan is on their front porch. Cynthia greets him with a warm smile, and Zoe leans against the doorway of the guest room while he sets himself up.

“Are you okay, Evan?” She hears herself ask.

His head jerks up quickly, locking eyes with her. “I-I’m fine.”

Zoe shakes her head, letting out a but of air through her nose. “What’s up, then?”

His hands still over his backpack, and he looks just past her head to the hallway. “I couldn’t be alone in that house.”

She hesitates for a moment, nods, looks to the corner of the room. “I get it.”

“Do you?”

Her eyes snap back over to him. “What?”

“Do you - have you been alone, Zoe, through all of this?”

She snorts. “Good as.”

“But never actually-”

“Loneliness isn’t always distance,” she spits out. “But if it was you’d be all set, given how much you run away from all of us.”

Time slows to a crawl; Evan lets his hands fall to his sides, eyes wide and searching on hers.

“I’m,” she begins, the word getting stuck in her throat. She looks towards her feet. “I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head, but before he can say anything she says “I’ll drive you in tomorrow” and is gone, set off down the hallway.

The next morning she gets to her car early, knowing, somehow, he’ll climb in with enough time to get there. And he does so wordlessly.

Somewhere, on the way to school, he murmurs, “I’m sorry for pulling away.”

She taps her index finger against the wheel, looking out towards the road rather than him. The scene is desolate, still early-morning and deserted with the yellowing pools of light from streetlights that have yet to switch off. “Yeah, me too.”

Every day, he swings by her house - a long walk, making his day longer, but he’s always been an early bird - to get a ride to school. Connor joins them occasionally, but mostly he arrives by his own means that Zoe isn’t too interested in learning. He talks to Jared, little by little, and she sees Connor and Alana in the library and Jared and Alana with their heads bowed together at lunch. She finds a picture of them in the treehouse and texts it to them as a group, and things feel a little closer to okay.

After high school, things start to calm down, like an inflamed cut that needs to be soothed. She and Connor stand in each other’s doorways until they have the courage to walk inside, and their newly-reinstated group chat keeps a steady flow of bad memes and musical theater jokes. It’s easier to breathe when she’s at school, easier to move and be. She’s used to being alone in a house full of people; being alone in a city of lonely people is close enough that the transition is almost nothing.

She misses everyone, though. Evan texts her pictures of the trees back home and around the community college, and Connor snaps Jared and Alana when they’re around. She’s the only one who left, this time around. Removed by physical distance rather than a measly year.

She gets home for winter break halfway through December, and an unusually warm one at that. Connor follows her up to her room, watching her unpack likely half in an attempt to give her some privacy from their parents.

“You seen Evan yet?” He asks at some point, once he’s grown bored of watching her fold clothes.

“No, not yet,” she replies with saccharine sweetness.

“You should,” he mocks in a similar tone of voice.

“I will.”

Their ridiculous miming comes to a halt when she withdraws a rattling bag from her backpack and throws it onto her bed. Connor dives forward, grabbing at it. “Is this-did you just throw nail polish?” He demands.

She looks him dead in the eye and does the same with her other bag.

“Dishonor on you,” he mutters, already unzipping it and rifliging through the colors with a clink each time. “Want me to do your nails? They’re looking…” he trails off, eyes dipping to her unpainted and bitten nails, worn down by her guitar strings.

“I could say the same to you,” she says. “Stones and glass houses, dear brother.”

“Point taken.”

They take the time to paint each other’s nails after dinner, sitting on their living room couch. Connor opts for a dark blue instead of his gala black, and chooses gold glitter for the upcoming holidays for Zoe.

“Please don’t get nail polish on the couch, Zoe,” her mother says as she passes by to go to the kitchen, and she and Connor lock eyes. He rolls his; she smiles tightly.

“You’d think she say it to me, given that I live here,” Connor whispers.

Her phone bzzs in her pocket, and instinctively she reaches for it, noting the way the golden glitter glints against the denim of her jeans.

Evan Hansen: gonna leave mom’s for a walk, you tied up?

She feels the corners of her lips twitch involuntarily. Yes, please. Ready in 10?

“I’m gonna take a walk,” she announces loudly enough her parents should be able to hear it from the next room. “It’s just Evan,” she adds in an undertone to Connor. “Want to come along?”

“Nope. Have fun, though, I guess.”

“So enthusiastic.”

Evan is waiting outside, bundled up in a scarf and parka. His eyes pinch at the edges like they always do when he’s tired; she surges forward and slides her arms around his neck, colliding with him softly so he lets out an oomph. She feels a kiss pressed to the top of her head a moment later.

“Hey,” she says, muffled into his coat. “You’re overdressed.”

“You’re underdressed.”

“Fleece is never wrong.”

“…I suppose you’re right?” And then, with some trepidation, “oh no. Not again.”

“I’m always right,” she says lightly, throwing him a smile so he knows it’s a joke. She reaches for his hand, tugging him forward lightly. “Heidi‘s doing well?”

“Well as always, yeah. Your family?”

“All…fine,” she says. “Just, y’know…stressed.”

“Mhm,” Evan hums, and she can tell he’s trying to say something, so she just squeezes his hand lightly and falls silent.

“Dad wanted me to go h–to Colorado,” Evan blurts. “For Christmas.”

She pauses a little at that, tugging his hand closer. “Oh?”

“Yeah.” He swallows gently, watching the sky with a ferocity she can barely remember him having. She sees the stars shine in his deep brown eyes, though they seem a little too starry to be reflection alone. He blinks rapidly. “Mom encouraged me,” he adds, “but I–Zoe, I couldn’t.”

“I don’t blame you,” she says, letting out a jet of breath. “I wouldn’t be able to either.” She lets her eyes drift upward and pulls him a little bit closer to her, wrapping her free hand around his arm. “Can’t,” she amends, all breath.

“He still doesn’t care,” Evan says, almost to himself. “He knows what I fucking celebrate, and he still doesn’t–care.”

“Yeah, well, he’s a dick,” Zoe says before immediately wishing she could take it back. That kind of bluntness helps her and Connor, but never Evan.

But Evan surprises her all the same. “You’re not wrong.”

A laugh bursts from her chest, and after a moment Evan joins her, albeit hesitantly. “Like I said,” she repeats, “never am.”

Evan’s ghand remains chilly in hers, despite his best attempts to keep warm with his jacket; she brings his hand over to hold it in both of hers, wincing a little as his cold fingers meet hers.

“How are you so cold all the time?” she murmurs, massaging over his knuckles with one hand.

“How is it for you?” He asks suddenly, his brain taking him in a whole new direction. Zoe isn’t phased by the topic change.

“It’s…like it always is,” she admits, her voice low. She pulls Evan’s hands closer to her heart, trying to convince herself it’s just to warm him up. “Better with Con, I guess. But it’s still…” she swallows roughly. “I feel like I can’t…breathe, sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Evan says quietly. “It can be hard.” He frees his hand, only to wrap it around her shoulders. She steals his other hand as soon as they get situated in a good walking pace.

Almost nothing about Evan is calm, but he’s calming all the same. He’s all Zoe can think of as they turn in front of Ellison State Park.

Evan stills, and Zoe keeps walking forward for a moment, accidentally tugging at their conjoined hands. She looks back at him immediately, tone filling with concern. “Everything okay?”

“Is that…” he mutters, before surging forward and pulling her rather than the other way around. “Alana! Jared!” He calls, uncharacteristically loud. And sure enough, in the distance, she can see Alana and Jared leaned over something just inside the bronzed gates of Ellison Park.

“Evan!” Jared calls, only to immediately get shushed by an old couple taking a walk around the park.

They hurry across the street, waving wildly to the single car that seems perplexed by their crossing, and Alana passes something to Jared before pulling them both into a too-tight hug that reminds Zoe of her mother.

When they pull away, she ruffles Zoe’s hair like she’s a little kid again. “There’s our city girl.”

“You should’ve joined me!” Zoe protests, already moving over to Jared to hug him.

Jared looks like he might shy away for a second, but he relents only a second later, a hug almost as tight as Alana’s. Zoe’s pulled away by a pressure at her leg, something soft poking through the tears and a panting noise. When she looks down, the downy face of a dog stares back up at her, tail wagging and tongue hanging out. Without thinking, she drops to the ground, offering him a hand as she balances on one knee. He nearly knocks her over a moment later when he bounds forward to lick her cheek and request pets. She looks back up at the obvious joy on Alana’s face.

“You adopted a dog??” She asks, remembering the powerpoint Alana made in middle school trying to convince her parents.

“Yes! We just got him this weekend and he’s already the best boy.”

The golden glint of a collar tag catches her eye. “Archibald? Well, aren’t you just a joy, Archie!”

“He doesn’t like Archie” Alana says a bit curtly, mid-coaxing the dog back towards her. She flips a few braids that had escaped her ponytail over her shoulder just in time for the dog to make a grab for them. She grins down at him before looking back up towards Zoe. “Is Connor around? I haven’t seen him in a bit.”

“Yeah,” Zoe says. “Here, I can…” She pulls out her phone to tell Connor to join them, making a silly face when the dog makes a u-turn to lick her cheek.

Connor Murphy: are you and hansen bein gross

Zoe: alana and jared are here dork

Connor: with archibald?

Zoe: how. how did you know this

Connor: lana and i have a snap streak of 150k. keep up

Zoe: side note do you know why she named her dog after an elderly british man

Zoe: and won’t let me call him archie

Connor: says archie’s a dumb name and she “thinks its refined”

Zoe: lmao k

“Connor should be by soon,” she relays, smiling back down at the dog. He takes a particular liking to her; she can’t quite get used to it. “You’re a good baby, aren’t you?”

Something occurs to her all of the sudden, and she pulls her phone back out.

Zoe: WAIT are you still by the house

Connor: just leaving why

Zoe: …yknow that old time capsule?

Connor: are you going to ask me to dig it up in mid december while you’re hanging out with our old friends so i can bring it to the park

Zoe: yes

Connor: you were put on this earth to test me

Connor: be there in 15

“He’s bringing something,” she adds, and ignores their curious looks in favor of the dog.

When Connor’s shape finally appears, it’s carrying a bag rather than a box. “It was shot,” he explains in an undertone once he gets close enough for Zoe to hear. He reaches out a hand and lands a spare pat to Archibald’s head. “Had to improvise.”

“Hey, Connor!” Alana says, almost too cheery. Connor raises a hand, plopping the bag in the middle of their circle but out of Archibald’s reach.

“We don’t want your weird sex stuff, Connor,” Jared says, and Zoe shoots him a glare.

“It’s the time capsule, actually, but thanks for the input,” Connor says before Zoe can speak.

A beat passes, no noise but Archibald’s panting.

“Oh,” Alana says after a moment. “Your parents let you keep that?”

“They didn’t know,” Zoe and Connor deadpan at the same time. Jared stifles something that sounds like a cough but is probably closer to a laugh.

Zoe looks at Evan and reaches out to lace their fingers together again. He looks around the group, studying each person’s face. “Should we…”

Jared reaches forward and overturns the bag.

Glitter is the first thing Zoe sees; she hears Evan hiss “shit” as it explodes everywhere over the grass. It’s green, which makes that portion of grass look unnaturally healthy and shiny. Jared looks up; some had reached his glasses lenses, as he was the one to set the glitter loose.

“Alright,” he says. “Who put the glitter in?”

Alana grimaces and holds Archibald back from the pile of glitter. “I’m pretty sure that was you, Jared.”

“…Oh.”

Zoe leans forward, picking through the cacophony of items and silently handing them out. A few purple, pink, and blue friendship bracelets find their way throughout the group, and Connor even puts one on to a joke from Zoe about stealing the bi colors. Jared reclaims a few of the Connor has to make a quick grab for a few sheets of paper in the wind that turn out to be filled with his sketches. Zoe picks up a purple ukulele pick, feeling it slide between her calloused fingertips. She hands Evan an outdated pamphlet from Ellison State Park about their rangers program to Jared’s exclamation of “That’s what you put in??” and throws a few ballet ribbons and a small journal in Alana’s direction.

Jared’s makes her pause, and he takes advantage of the lull to surge forward and snatch the object from her hands. The silicone abides easily. “So that’s where I put my iPod!”

“Why did we let you do this?” Zoe says. “Why did your parents?”

“I’m gonna be honest,” Jared admits, examining it for quality. He looks up and around their assembled group. “I forgot about it immediately after burying it.”

Alana laughs first, and then she sets everyone else off, a group of college-age kids giggling over a pile of glitter and their childhood treasures in the park where everything began. Evan falls into Zoe’s side, unable to curb his laughter; she buries her own in the top of his head, his curls tickling her cheeks and making her laughs worse. And as they get dirty looks from everyone around them, the night only feels like another beginning.

#sincerely us #deh #dear evan hansen #bandtrees #evan hansen #zoe murphy #alana beck #connor murphy #jared kleinman #mine #deh fanfic

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riarushi · 5 years ago

Text

nct as cousins.

❥ genre- serious crack, fluff ❥ word count- 1.7k

Alternatively titled “NCT at Family Gatherings”. I think the universe wanted me to write this? Thank you to markleeholdingthings on Instagram for helping me out! (We made the most basic family dynamic on the planet.) ~Ness

➵

Taeil

Talks to the adults and enjoys it.

Some of the babies originally thought he was their uncle.

Not necessarily close with any of his cousins except the older ones that took care of him growing up.

The younger ones aren’t too familiar with him since he doesn’t talk to them, but he likes to give them little trinkets when he sees them.

Will offer to supervise the kiddos if they want to go outside.

Has a music degree (big no no in this stereotypical family) and works in music production.

Johnny

The cousin that’s stuck in college, everyone loves him but the adults don’t think he is a good life example to the youngsters.

Second favourite of the adults (because the favourite has a degree and a job).

Likes talking w his fellow millennials while sipping his wine

He likes to give advice to high school cousins.

The baby cousins fear him :( He smiles at them lots and gets them the best presents to make up for it.

Is probably still in college because he doesn’t want to join the adult table.

Taeyong

Taeyong likes the babies.

He’ll sit them on his lap while he talks to the adults, making sure to play with them a bit so they don’t get bored.

If they do anyway, he’ll get up and carry them back to the rest of the cousins, chatting with them for a while.

The adults think he would make a great father. (Some of the nosy aunts and uncles like asking about his love life lmao)

He treats the cousins around his age or older with respect.

Overall everyone likes him because he’s happy to talk and easy to get along with.

Yuta

A social genius, he tailors his approach perfectly for every generation.

Has to greet every single child at the reunion before doing anything else.

Every moment you look at him, there’s a different youngster in his arms and he’s high-fiving a different high schooler.

Well-mannered with the adults and friendly with cousins of all ages.

The high school-aged cousins love that he doesn’t treat them like angsty teenagers and he’s become a favourite among them.

Not jobless, to the relief of the parents.

Kun

Kun is the favourite, the cousin everyone gets compared to.

He’s always busy working so he’s usually late to family gatherings.

Is basically whisked away by the adults immediately to talk about adult things.

He asks high school cousins “How’s school?”. Chill with them because he saw them grow up.

Has a huge soft spot for the baby cousins.

He’ll be in the middle of a conversation and drop everything when they tug on his sleeve.

Doyoung

Quiet, he does and talks about anything but only when he’s prompted.

He’s as successful as Kun, but not as sociable.

Sits beside his parents most of the night and minds his own business.

Doyoung’s awful at supervision.

He just sits there and watches the kids make chaos.

His relatives get shocked when they see him outside of gatherings acting casually with his coworkers/friends.

Ten

He just got out of college but decided to take a year break before looking for a job.

Is a kid favourite.

Even though he’s one of the older cousins, he’s the most “hip with the kids”.

Teaches them how to cheat on tests and in general, be an awful student.

Ten does not enjoy the adult table.

All the parents think he’s talented and has a lot of potential but will he!! Stop ruining their children’s minds!!!!!

He only gets friendly with the older cousins when he’s wine drunk.

Has never met the baby cousins. (The adults are sheltering them from the chaos that is Ten at family gatherings.)

Jaehyun

Jaehyun starts off by greeting the adults and being the sweetheart he is.

The adults always want to know about his love life because “Our nephew is very handsome, no?”

Hangs out with the older cousins later, drinking beer and chatting away like best friends.

He enjoys watching them fight with each other.

Probably the youngest at his table, gets teased quite a bit. (”Yoooooo, Yoonoh’s growing up!”)

The younger kids aren’t really familiar with him.

Winwin

The favourite among the youngest cousins.

They get excited to see him every time he arrives at family gatherings.

Participates in their games (They like making him count for hide and seek.) and sits with them while eating.

He spends very small amounts of time with the adults, quickly answering any questions they have about his life.

The older cousins think he’s cute :(

After the little ones go home, he watches whatever drinking game his generation has gotten into.

Jungwoo

Jungwoo is a free soul.

He’s just there to entertain himself, watching whatever cartoon the little ones are watching.

When they turn around and see a grown man on the couch, they’re a bit startled.

The adults think he enjoys taking care of the kids, but no. The boy is there to watch Tom and Jerry for his own enjoyment.

Nobody remembers that he’s an engineering student, one moment he’s watching Blue’s Clues and the next he’s leaving to finish an assignment for class.

The high schoolers try to ask him for advice, but he just says “I literally don’t know what I’m doing.”

Lucas

This boy walks into every family gathering dressed like he’s gonna be on a runway.

Enjoys talking to the high schoolers about how their school’s changed since he graduated.

Other than them, he joins any conversation on invite.

The youngsters climb him like he’s a playground item.

There’s just kids hanging off him while he laughs at some joke his uncle made.

Sometimes, they shout “Big brother Yukhei!” into his ear and he just pats their head silently before continuing on with his business.

Mark

Follows his parents around.

He’s wrapped up in his own thoughts instead of whatever his mom is talking about with his relatives.

I’m kinda hungry, should I grab that cookie? I’m gonna grab that cookie.

At some point, his parents get fed up with him “acting like an eight year old,” so he gets sent to play with his fellow cousins.

Asks for the WiFi password and then sits on the couch all night scrolling through his phone.

He doesn’t talk to his cousins because he never knew how to.

Xiaojun

A sweetheart with the most patience.

Same question from every single adult about school? No problem, he’ll answer it as many times as he needs to.

The youngsters like to pull pranks on him because they know he won’t scold them afterwards.

“Did we get you good, Dejun-ge?” “Yeah, I almost had a heart attack, haha.”

Helps the babies get food.

Just has a great family bond with everyone.

Hendery

Hendery likes to look for the older cousins that take care of him, initiating conversation.

If they’re busy or stop talking to him, he goes to the crowd of younger cousins on the couch and chills with his phone.

Occasionally, he’ll show them all some memes he has.

“Haha, guys look at this one.”

Mimics the children screaming in the background to get some chuckles from them, too.

The adults don’t think much of him, he’s a chill kid doing his thing.

Renjun

He’s quiet and polite for the most part, especially towards the adults.

With his cousins, he jumps in to say one-line roasts about people mentioned in conversation and then goes back to being silent.

They might say something like “My school friends are so weird!” and Renjun simply replies with “Makes sense why you’re friends, then.”

One of the baby cousins likes to hug his leg, and he smooths their hair or holds their cheek absentmindedly.

An art major, but the adults aren’t worried since he’s smart.

When alone in a room, he’s doodling on some scrap paper he found.

Jeno

Close with the cousins around his age.

Has a group chat with them and texts them to come to the living room.

When they arrive he just goes “Wanna play Spaceteam?”

He plays party games with them for the rest of the night.

If the other cousins want to join in, he’ll teach them how to play.

The adults don’t think much of him, they usually just ask how he is and he replies with “Good!” and a smile.

Haechan

Haechan is The Annoying Cousin™.

He comes off as very cold and bitchy usually.

At family gatherings, he participates in games and gets overly competitive.

WILL cheat or flip the table, causes all the chaos.

The parents aren’t a fan of him, the kids either love him or hate him.

Older cousins think he’s entertaining lmao

Jaemin

Normal until some random kid screams his name.

From then on he is in full kindergarten teacher mode.

Brings an entire crowd of noisy toddlers to the tables and everyone is just in shock.

His older cousins know he’ll come around and chat with them once the kids go home, so they save him a bottle when he gets there.

The adults have a good image of him: handsome, smart, charming. They think he’ll get married early.

It’s a celebration if his mom announces he’s seeing someone.

Yangyang

Starts heated debates among his cousins.

If he’s in the zone and an older cousin tries to put an educational twist on the argument, he’ll start bullying them out of the room.

“From what I learnt in college--” “THIS IS A DEBATE AMONGST THE YOUTH.”

Two seconds later, he’s back to being friendly and cheery, talking casually and normally.

The adults don’t believe their children when they tell them what happened upstairs with Yangyang.

They think he’s the sweetest kid of the bunch.

Chenle

Chenle is just comfortable and gets absorbed in the atmosphere.

“Chenle, go play with your cousins.” “Hey guys! My mom said to play with you”.

All his cousins get along with him.

He thinks the baby cousins are cute and will baby them.

Lets them sit on his lap while he plays card games. (Probably lets them choose cards for him sometimes, too.)

Youngest of his generation, everyone loves him to pieces.

Jisung

He does not want to be at the family gatherings.

Awkwardly trails his parents because he doesn’t know what to do.

Has to be pushed towards the food by relatives and just goes “Oh. Um, okay.”

The older cousins ruffle his hair and ask him, “Aye, Jisung! How’s school?” “I-It’s good...”

The younger ones do not find him approachable.

Asks his parents when they’re going home as soon as 9 PM hits.

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amusedyan · 5 years ago

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Mamma Mia

“Are you going to invite your dad?” You look up from the drafted seating chart and the list that’s being compiled. The table is littered with post-it’s and address books, sheets of paper and pencils, even the odd photograph.

Aya, your soon-to-be sister-in-law, examines a photo- one of you and your mother on the front porch. You know that photo, your mother had just bought the house that you would grow up in, and she looks so happy, holding you on her hip.

“I don’t know.” You admit, wanting to drop the subject.

“It’s not every day your daughter gets married,” Aya grins, “you can’t tell me you don’t want to get walked down the aisle by your father.”

And it’s ridiculous, you’re a grown woman now, not a little girl hunched over her desk on Father’s Day, burning with envy as your classmates complain or chat about their other parent.

“I would if I had one.” You finally say, and thankfully that shuts Aya up.

-x-

Once the thought is planted, though, it doesn’t go away.

What would it be like to have a father to walk you down the aisle and give you away?

You turn over in your bed and close your eyes.

You’ve wanted a father before, of course. What little girl doesn’t?

Family is your mother- only your mother.

When you were a little girl, and you came home from school and asked “where is my Daddy?” your mother had faltered and said, ashamed, “you don’t have one”.

When you got older, your mother had said she’d been young and in over her head.

Your mom has never not been enough of a parent- and you feel guilty even now for wanting this one thing.

But you burn with that want.

-x-

You feel ashamed, going through your mother’s things in the attic. You have a spare key of course, and you know your mother’s schedule- she likes routine, and Tuesdays are her grocery days. There’s boxes of things up here- old clothes, photo albums, holiday decorations, furniture. In the back, under a sheet, next to the box of old china, though, is what you’re looking for.

Your mother is a journaler. She always has been- “I need to keep my thoughts straight,” she’d explained once. If there’s any clue to your father, it’ll be in her old journals. So you do the math and take the small stack of dusty volumes and leave, locking the door behind you.

Your heart pounds like you’re guilty, because you are, you’re a thief, you broke your mother’s trust and you did something horrible. You feel so guilty, in fact, that you can’t actually bring yourself to read the thing for a week. It just burns a hole in your vision wherever you put it, drawing your gaze to it like a magnet no matter where you put it. So you stow it away in a drawer for that week. When you finally get the nerve to read it, it takes time.

Your mother’s thoughts are personal and warm- she has doodles on the pages, and smudges of ink, or places where the pencil wore away and you have to take your time sussing out the words. You’re terrified that maybe this was all for nothing. Maybe there isn’t a name here, even, and you’ll just have to deal with that.

X/X/XX

I met the sweetest guy today! His name is Oboro, and he has such a nice smile, you wouldn’t believe it. I saw him walk into the store and my heart just jumped! I was trying not to be creepy about it, he’s so pretty, I just wanted to look at him, you know?

But then he came up to me and asked me on a date!

I can’t believe it- it was so easy to talk to him, this is going to be amazing!

Oboro? You jot down the name. It’s still a few months from when you could have reasonably been conceived, but it’s still a name.

X/Y/XX

Oboro took me out for dinner on the water. He’s such a nice guy, he let me talk and didn’t interrupt, didn’t act obnoxious at all! I had such a good time with him, and he wants to go out again!

Mom kept up with that, along with some doodles- unfortunately your Mom isn’t a very good artist, so it’s not very helpful.

After a few pages though, you frown.

X/YY/XX

Oboro introduced me to a couple of his friends today- Hizashi and Shouta. They’re an odd pair. I really wish he’d warned me that I’d be meeting them instead of just springing it on me on date night.

It was a little weird. Apparently they just got back into town, so I offered to leave so they could catch up, but they all wanted to hang out. So they joined us on the date. I mean, they’re nice, but yeah. Awkward. Hizashi is a bit like Oboro, cheerful, I mean. He doesn’t light me up the way Oboro does. Aizawa’s the odd one out, very quiet.

Hm.

You take a break after that, getting up to stretch and rest your eyes. You text your fiancée, eye the journal and your laptop. First names aren’t enough to conduct a search, you reason.

Then you sit back down.

More dates between the four of them.

Eventually Mom had warmed up to Shouta and Hizashi. They started hanging out casually, after assuring Oboro that it ‘wasn’t like that’. Apparently her boyfriend had laughed and kissed her silly, and told her ‘I know’.

But as the light faded and night encroached, the diary entries started changing. Instead of laughing accounts about her friends and boyfriend, they became jotted notes using, you assumed, surnames.

Aizawa picked me up from work.

Shirakumo was waiting for me at home.

Yamada offered to grocery shop for me.

Car stopped working. Shirakumo picked me up.

Date was crashed. Shirakumo was overjoyed.

Then there were missing entries. Nothing. For weeks.

One more, then the journal was over.

I’m leaving. I can’t take it anymore.

So…

It…it had to be one of them, didn’t it?

You closed the journal and turned to your laptop, your heart pounding.

Things were weird. So weird. What the hell had happened between the four of them? Had the relationship turned toxic? Had Mom fallen out of love? You wanted to ask her, but you were afraid of the fight.

First off, you googled Oboro Shirakumo. Mom referenced Shirakumo as the one she actually dated, so logically speaking, that had to be it, right?

Your first link was an article about an accident.

Young CEO critically injured in mugging, left in coma.

Oboro Shirakumo, founder of company Cloudbreakers was attacked last Friday evening on his way home from work. The attackers hit Shirakumo over the back of the head with what authorities believe is a pipe. The attack has left Shirakumo in the hospital with extensive brain damage, though doctors are noncommittal if the patient will wake up from his coma.

“In a time of grief such as this,” co founder of Cloudbreakers Shouta Aizawa commented on Sunday morning, “we, as a company, can only come together and hope for the best. Our hopes and prayers are with Shirakumo.”

Shirakumo still hadn’t woken up yet, and it had been years, and while that was tragic, that really answered a big question.

Shouta Aizawa.

So that just left Hizashi Yamada.

Their actual residence was harder to find- but you found articles about the historic houses that they’d bought, and from there you were able to just google that address.

But what do you say?

“Hi, I’m getting married and I think one of you might be my dad? Did you sleep with my mom? Or is Oboro Shirakumo just my dad?”

Worth a shot, right?

-X-

The letters were identical, except for who they were addressed to.

They were fairly formal, introducing yourself, explaining the circumstances, and, obviously your mother’s name- along with formal apologies for Shirakumo’s current state, and apologies about the circumstances and possible misunderstanding.

You sent them off two days later.

-x-

Your phone was ringing.

“Hold on babe, I have to take this,” you apologized, kissing your fiancée on the cheek. The sweetheart that he was, he just grinned and told you to take your time.

You excused yourself from the dining room and answered.

“Hey mom-”

“What did you do???”

You jumped at the volume, in the background there was something banging.

“Is someone at the door-”

“Did you write them?” Your mother demanded, still screaming. It was so loud, was she in danger?

“Mom what’s going on? What is that?”

“You called them- they found me, why? Why would you- AAAAAGUH!” You flinched as she started screaming. “GET OUT! LEAVE ME ALONE- JUST-”

“MOM?” People were staring, but you felt cold all over. Was she getting murdered? Do you stay on the line or call 911?

“You bitch! You think you can just do what you did? Hide like this?”

“GO! YOU NEED TO HIDE- DON’T LET THEM FIND YOU-”

The phone went dead.

#bnha #boku no hero academia #mha #my hero academia #shouta aizawa #eraserhead #yamada hizashi #present mic #shirakumo oboro #yandere #yandere bnha #yandere boku no hero academia #yandere mha #yandere my hero academia #yandere shouta aizawa #yandere eraserhead #yandere yamada hizashi #yandere present mic #yandere shirakumo oboro

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fimawari · 5 years ago

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Thoughts on the comic and Skully's Identity. [Slight Spoiler Warning? Not really any plot spoilers just details and characters.]

So a lot of people accept that Jay is probably Skully, either surviving or something else. However there's also speculation that it could be Alex, Jessica, or even Seth Wilson, a few thinking about Tim. (Though I would rule him out as the artist drew what he looked like in the Comic on another post) So I raked out every detail I can. Of course it can all just be a stylistic choice but whatever - make of it what you will.

It could just be some new random asshole, but It's a given they know Jessica, so it is very likely to be Jay. He presumed she was gone, unless he watched the last Entry. That would also explain "It's you" sort of "oh shit" moment. Jay was also set on looking for Jessica, so if he did survive, you could assume that would still be one of his motives. Tim wouldn't likely have that "it's you" moment because he knows Jessica is alive. Alex might have that reaction though. I believe he presumed that she was gone.

It also takes two things from Brian and Tim. The hoodie and the plastic mask. So this person has likely seen both of them and came to imitate their appearance.

Coat Buttons

The Jacket appears to have snap on metal buttons. It's typical for this style of jacket (similar to a utility jacket, which would be useful and warm to run all over the goddamn woods at night) to have the buttons placed on top of the left side for a men's jacket. (Of course it could just be any person in a men's styled jacket, but still.)

I picked this out because it's paid attention to very carefully as a detail. Of course that's good for continuity, but I know for filming Marble Hornets they were very careful with detail and hinting at things.

2. Height

They're only seen crouching up to a door with Jessica on the other side, but if they both stood straight, they'd come to be about the same height, which was true for Jay and Jessica in the series.

3. You are broken but you CAN be fixed

This is what the masked figure says to Jessica. Similar to ToTheArks video saying Alex was broken, but couldn't be fixed. That might line up with Jay's motives because he continued to think he could solve the situation. It could be argued he also believed Alex could be saved from the Operator. It it were Alex, it could be his own changed perspective in whatever "form" this is now. That would be quite interesting to see why he would go from wanting to destroy the tapes to actively giving someone the tapes.

4. Not a point but something I noticed.

On the Rosswood bulletin, there is a blurry poster that looks like it could be a "Missing" sign. Who for - I don't know, but it does kind of appear they have glasses, so it could be Alex? This could also just be meaningless background illustration.

In the same frame, Adam also talks about people getting lost in the woods and says, "The Majority of them were recovered safely but," and he stops. That's a pretty cliffhanger "but" there Adam.

Closer inspection of the Rosswood Map shows Rosswood Rd, mentioned in the series, and was supposed to be the road off the usual parking lot they stopped in when meeting up, and an X location to hard to read atm, but it is off the beaten path.

5. In a silly doodle drawing in the comic files, I did notice this poster with a skull on it. It may just be nothing but could also be implying that whoever is in the skull mask died and came back.

Also I appreciate that the soda is Conk.

6. It's Fall about 10 years later after the first incidents in Rosswood began, in the timeline 2019 ish, but that is apparent from the trees outside and the time the comic was created at.

7. Jessica has a "Sarah" in her phone. Could he literally the millions of Sarah's but I'll point it out anyway. But more interesting barely covered is Tim's contact.

8. I was thinking about why their seems to be Blue Lenses in Skully's mask, they're even visible from a distance. Now this is really digging at the bottom of barrel but when Jessica grabs the pipe to defend herself, it's highlighted by red for emphasis. Red and Blue have often been a scheme for duelity and such.

This repeats again in the second title page:

A lot could be discerned from it. Maybe she is Skully, like a second half of her, as one of her nightmares is fighting against herself. May also not mean that and be another symbol of duelity, red vs blue.

I don't think the blue is styling choice because you can quite clearly see eyes in Masky's drawing. I believe there is definitely something covering their eyes - like lenses. Their "fashion choices" are also leaning towards the expensive side I noticed. Unless they just stole it went to a goodwill and got lucky. A utility jacket like that would cost somewhere beyond a $100 unless you're lucky. I'd pay to see a cryptid running around in Gucci in butt-fuck-nowhere Alabama in the middle of the night. Or who knows maybe Alex got some prescription lenses put in that shit.

9. Do I even have to explain the symbolism of a Jay.

10. I can say with good certainty this probably symbolises Jessica's memory of Alex.

11. Some damning evidence, whoever is in the mask has access to the original entry files, not just downloaded YouTube stuff. Jay, Tim, Totheark would likely have access to that. Alex was pretty dead-set on having all the traces deleted, I'd doubt he'd have them all uploaded to a computer.

12. No idea what this might represent besides some metaphor for life being a merry go round, but in the postcard Skully is chilling on a horse lmao. "Stuck in a loop of unhappiness." Ring a bell?

13. Can't attach another photo but the abandoned house Jessica goes to has "Bones" written on it, much like the Hospital did. In the original series they said that graffiti was just there, so maybe they decided to work with it? Who knows maybe it's some kind of new group? Maybe ToTheArk vs "Bones?" You CAN'T be fixed vs You CAN be fixed.

14. I also can't speculate what it exactly means, but it's obvious Skully can talk, not seen previously with the others. Whether out of an inability or just not wanting to. Could be argued it's a person behind the mask by choice, not volition. We also don't really know if Brian chose his path or became that. But he became a masked cryptid after supposedly "dying". We also never see people "die" just assume they have died or are dead and they disappear. Tim implies that it's just feeding off them, physically or mentally. They always die off camera or get fucked off somewhere by the egg head. They appear dead afterwords, with Jay and Brian, but still missing. All of their bodies were taken by the monster and are god knows where in some seperate dimension. This is borderline r/im14andthisisdeep but what is "death" in this series. Does it mean gone permanently or just "gone" ... For an unknown amount of time. People die, but do they stay that way? Or do they die ... In one sense, but not the other, Losing something of themselves from before, and becoming something new. That would awfully explain Brian's behavior after Alex "killed" him. It's also implied there are others apart of ToTheArk that were never shown in the series, suspected to be other members of the original cast who maybe had "died" and come back as someone else. Something broken.

Tim seems to be an outlier. It's presumed he has avoided death, and essentially kept his mentality. But still slips into another form out of his control, usually in response to the monster or the hooded man being near and stealing his pills and shit. Is he between death? Is that why doucheslender follows him? "The one that got away." Istg I don't take drugs.

That was Michael from Vsauce thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

#Marble Hornets #mh skully #mh jessica #mh tim wright #mh jay merrick #mh alex #Mh theories #idk what else #marble hornets comic #pulling shit out of my ass #updated #fima

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virryth · 5 years ago

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Uber Ride --a Sicheng friend to lover AU

1.4k+ | Fluff | Gender-neutral reader, college au, friend to lover au, mentions of alcohol

Summary: Dong Sicheng considers himself the character that blends into the background, until you prove him wrong.

“What do you mean you’re going home? It’s only 2am!”

You shake your head at the friend who’s pulling you back into the neon-lit bar. If this was a usual Friday night, you'd agree and stay till dawn, but today has been such a rough day that you‘re ready to hit the bed mid-party.

You wave goodbye to your sulking friends as you catch the uber number plate that’s pulling up to the sidewalk. Perhaps because it‘s starting to rain that you hurriedly climb into the passenger seat and not the back seat as you usually would.

The drive is slow, and the rain quickly pours into a storm as you close your arms around yourself.

“I can turn down the AC if it’s too cold.”

For the first time since greeting your driver, you turn towards him. He looks vaguely familiar. The sharp jawline and voice are unfamiliar, but the way his hat sits on his head give you a major sense of deja vu.

“Thanks,” you smile, texting your friend that you scored a cute uber driver to ease their whinings.

He nods as you turn back towards the front, a thought occurs to you as you peer at your phone for the driver’s name. “Sicheng” rings a bell, a couple bells actually, and you were beginning to wonder if he’s actually in one of your classes.

Sicheng doesn’t expect you to ask. Unlike you, he’s not the cheerful student who greets their friends with a smile to class. He keeps to himself mostly, with just a friend or two to share notes, and only participates in class if the syllabus requires. There’s no way you would recognize someone who blends into the background as he does.

“Thanks for the ride!”

Sicheng nods and stays until you get inside the apartment and close the door before driving away. He’ll probably never talk to you again, but it was nice to know you were as pretty and friendly as Renjun had praised.

The next time he sees you, you’re sitting three rows ahead in Introduction to Film, and your hair is pulled up in a bun as you scribble doodles on your yellow sunflower notebook.

It’s been a habit of his to just watch you, not in a creepy way but in an inquisitive way, much like the way one would observe a small passing squirrel on campus. He finds you to be the perfect distraction from the boring powerpoint slides the professor always pulls up when they start class. He likes to just watch your reactions, whether it be from a comedic example of the topic you’re discussing, or at a particular jump scare in the horror special. You’re probably the most expressive person he knows, and he’s friends with Ten and Johnny from acting class.

So imagine his surprise when he gets to class the week after to find you looking for him.

“Sicheng, right?” you ask, and he can’t believe you’re smiling at him.

“Uh, yeah,” he mutters, unsure of what to say.

“I knew I recognized you from one of my classes! My brother, Renjun, told me about his friend and I didn’t think it was you!”

Some way or other, you’ve made your way into his usual row and flop yourself next to him. It was strange, last week you probably didn’t know he existed, but today you’re smiling and talking to him as if he’s your friend.

They’re just being friendly.

Except it doesn’t end there. Suddenly you’re inviting him to get coffee before class, to study in the student union, and to drive into town with you on a Tuesday night for dinner.

It’s strange, he has no problem saying no to his friends. He declined Jaehyun’s invite to his party, Doyoung’s invite to study, and even Lucas and Kun’s invite to movie night, yet he can’t find it in himself to decline your invite to do possibly anything.

There’s something in the way your smiles seem to be reserved just for him that makes him unable to say no, but he dismisses the thought as quickly as it has occurred. There’s just no way.

“Do you think they’re just stringing me along?” Sicheng asks his friends on a rare day when they’re able to hang out with him. The question has been on his mind for some times and he was beginning to think he’s fine not ever knowing the answer.

“I mean,” Ten chimes in, “you are the little brother slash baby type everyone wants to take care of.”

“How dare you say that to the baby?” Doyoung scolds and, if anything, makes it worse.

“Sicheng, you know about them for some time right?” Jaehyun asks, “they’re popular and has lots of friends, but they still chooses to hang out with you. I’m sure that has to count for something.”

Sicheng doesn’t get to find out what Jaehyun meant until the night of Johnny’s end of year party. You’re there with a few of your friends and he can’t help but look for you in the corner of his eyes, always following you throughout the party. Bad habit really doesn’t change easily, but thanks to this Sicheng is able to find you when you suddenly disappear.

“What do you mean you have someone you like?”

Sicheng stays hidden by the door, just within earshot when he spots you and someone else chatting outside.

“It means I don’t like you, now let go of me before I yell out.” You huff, there’s no fear in your voice, just conviction and an unfamiliar firmness Sicheng has never heard from you. After all, you’ve always been soft-spoken with him.

Sicheng hasn’t thought of that before, the fact that you might have someone you like. It’s a somewhat unsettling thought, the idea mulls in his brain for a good five minutes before he concludes that he’s had too much champagne. It must be where this weird heartburn feeling comes from.

“Sicheng?”

Crap.

“Hey,” he tries to sound like he hasn’t been eavesdropping this whole time, but from the look on your face, he has failed. “What are you doing out here?”

“Just getting some air,” you reply as another smile blooms over your features, your cheeks tinted pink from the alcohol.

“It’s cold, you should get inside quickly.”

“Okay,” you laugh, “you’re so cute, worrying about me.”

Out of habit, you reach up to fix the hair fallen over Sicheng’s eyes. It’s not as if this was the first time you’ve done this, in fact, you’ve been taking care of him by the little gestures, almost as someone would to a little brother.

Darn it, Ten.

Sicheng silently curses his friend for putting that idea into his head. But what if you really think of him that way? What if he’s just a brother to you? After all, Renjun is proof that you would know how to take care of a younger brother.

Might as well get this over with before I overthink into the clouds.

“Hey,” he starts, hands on your shoulders to steady himself more than to steady you. The warmth you radiate from his hands makes him even more nervous. “What do you think of me?”

You tilt your head to the side, the alcohol buzzing before your eyes, and blink.

Once.

Twice.

Sicheng is sure by the third time that he would have his answer, but instead, you counter with a small smile, “what do you think of me, Sicheng?”

Perhaps it was the night air being too cold, or the party too loud, heck, Sicheng even blames it on Ten for wandering around his mind, yelling baby brother over and over, that he never saw what comes next.

Sicheng doesn’t know how or when he’s developed these feelings. Maybe it was when you laughed at his jokes over dinner on that Tuesday night, when your eyes twinkled in admiration over the short film he'd made for class the previous semester, when you smiled so indiscriminately and brilliantly at him the day after the uber ride, or the many hours he spent just looking at you from afar. He realized that you’ve always looked at him with all of your attention and affection, and never once did you treat him like he blends in with the background.

Whatever it may be, the moment he presses his lips on yours, he knows this feels right.

Bonus.

Ten later asks you about when you knew you had feelings for Sicheng, you simply replied that you were already enamored the first night he picked you up in the uber ride. Definitely not in a little brother kind of way, and not in the background character kind of way either.

To you, he has and will always be the main character.

-V

Read more NCT au here

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trulycertain · 5 years ago

Note

Just wanted to weigh in (belatedly) on your DA2 pt and say I started in the same boat. Played immediately after DA:O (like, 3 days?) and felt like it was trying too hard to be what O had achieved. Not as funny or compelling. But, like everyone else has said- it really is more relationship driven, and if you try to appreciate it as Origins, it really does feel lacking, doesn’t it? Love everything you’re sharing to this point on character analysis and broader POV on familial expectation 1/?

Oh, and also, my first pt I completely skipped Fenris, too. I was aiming to get enough gold to go on the expedition and by the time his quest came around I was like, “Nah, I’m good. I don’t need to go do this umpteenth side job.” See ya! And thus had a gap in my loading party screen the whole game XDDDD. Feel free to take a phone pic of your Hawke and share it with us if you’d like :D Also you should definitely consider doing some DA2 art :D

Thank you! I’m so glad you’re liking the rambling. It’s been an interesting experiment.

Oh, you too had the Mysterious Gap? *laugh* I did a lot of squinting and head-tilting my first playthrough, wondering if it was just my imagination or weird design.

I would definitely say that trying to make it fit my image of Origins meant it was doomed for me. It has its own charms, narrative and mechanics-wise. I will always be fond of it for introducing melee-mages as a thing.

One of the things I really enjoy in DA2 that isn’t explored nearly as much in Origins or Inquisition is how the companions in DA2 have been through A Lot, and the narrative is often quite unflinching about that. Trauma isn’t just portrayed as an angsty backstory you can infodump about and then go back to laughing with friends. Sure, they go for drinks and they make roots and they’re all badasses and a lot of them have a great sense of humour, but... they’re all bitter, and most importantly, they’re all allowed to be, which is not something I see in this genre much. (I need to make a separate post about that sometime.) They’re... difficult, at times, and obviously in pain, and not condemned for that.

I’d also forgotten how much I loved Anders - I really do, and this is going to hurt, and I’m still angry about how fandom treated Jennifer Hepler. I like healers and hurting, sarcastic characters (who knew?). And blonds. *cough* Do I think some of the mental illness metaphor is a tad heavyhanded and tasteless? Oh, fuck yes, that’s never been something I was comfortable with. Do I like him as a character? Yes.

Oh, also Fenris is not the way I thought he’d be at all, and he’s a lot more fun than I expected. I didn’t expect to like him, but I wanted to keep an open mind, and I’m warming fast. (And Emery’s voicing decisions with him are not what I expected, either. I really like that the guy who’s usually hired as muscle and spent years as a bodyguard has fancy enunciation, clearly got sick of hiding his intelligence when he was captive and refuses to do it anymore, and chooses his words so carefully. And then comes out with some of the most ridiculous jokes, even moreso than Anders - still utterly deadpan. “Smell the oppression,” dear god, man. Also that his voice is about six foot four and he’s about five-ten.)

Also, finally getting to high approval with Isabela and Fenris and taking them around has been delightful. I absolutely understand why some people find their banters uncomfortable, and I might yet run into something that changes my mind - Isabela is unrepentantly pervy about some of the most inappropriate things - but it’s shown that she’ll back off if she’s asked to - see Varric’s objectification banter - and he seems to find her lack of pity refreshing and enjoyable. I love how she can almost always make him laugh, and how much they genuinely seem to enjoy each other’s company. Neither of them wants to be pitied for the pain in their pasts, and they both value freedom in very different ways. She’s also one of the few companions who he actually reaches out to, when he gets prickly. When they’re talking about the issue of mage freedom, she says, quite earnestly, “Let’s not fight,” and it’s him who makes a tentative quip about her guessing the colour of his underwear again and lets her change the subject. It’s an unusual, weirdly sweet moment. Despite making some decisions that may be selfish, Isabela is one of the most matter-of-factly kind, conciliatory companions in DA2, and that is an unexpected delight. And he’s one of the few companions who pays that back in spades (other than Varric and sometimes Anders).

On the other hand, I don’t miss the grimdarkness. You’re right, DA2 is less funny than DAO - and that’s because it’s less often allowed to be. They definitely had a tone they were going for, and sometimes that falls into Narm Charm with just how grim it is. Sometimes it feels like companions’ anger with each other is a tad arbitrary and inserted for the sake of Conflict(TM). And also, while I know for a fact he can do serious, stoic writing very well, there’s something tragic about having David Gaider in your team and not letting him go full-snark with his characters, even if he was head writer and I’m sure that was his tonal choice. I miss the “snarky and sometimes prickly but so often compassionate and rarely intentionally cruel unless you poke ’em” feel he brings that’s one of my favourite things about Dragon Age (Zevran, Alistair, Cassandra, Dorian). Sheryl Chee is pretty great at that, too. Inquisition, I felt, got the balance about perfect, and was noticeably lighter and sweeter than Origins or, especially, 2.

And I would rather not have more quests with murdered women as a background narrative event. (At least in The Witcher, which is not immune to this, it became a full-on investigation and examination of the tropes rather than just a mood-setter that would be something to beat the protag round the head with later.)

It was a great delight to me when I was wandering round the Deep Roads, ominous music and all, and got the Varric and Fenris, “What do you do in that big mansion all day?” / “I dance” banter. Because God, I needed that. (One of my favourite moments in Origins was exploring the seemingly endless, dark Deep Roads, and getting into a chat with Leliana about silk shoes by accident. That was when it truly felt like she and my Warden were friends.) I feel like Inquisition has a better balance that way; it has so many wonderful, absolutely brutal moments (I still find the “sometimes love isn’t enough” banter bloody hard to listen to), and so many wonderful palate-cleansers (arse-arrows).

This is actually one of the few games my mid-good PC can run! Pre-2013 there’s a half-decent chance. I doubt I could run Inquisition well. So here’s some Guin:

Kirkwall: A Summary.

And yes, I may... already be doodling. *cough*

#tru plays dragon age 2 #asks #me #replies #guin hawke #gerundsandcoffee

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elizabeth-234 · 5 years ago

Text

The Supplejack

Previous Chapter Nine: Progress

Summary: Peter Parker has been alone his whole freshman year but finds hope when Stark Industries announces a science competition. The prize? An internship with Tony Stark.

Chapter Ten: Fast-forward

Beginning of February

“I think we might be able to start the full-scale model soon.”

Peter looked up from his phone, which he was reading his notes he doodled in class off of. Mr. Stark offered multiple times to get him a new phone but he preferred the simplicity of this. When he told Mr. Stark it was easier to use the man acted all offended under his smile. Teasing Peter about his inability to figure out a simple phone when they were working on building a full-scale code and model of tech for cars. It was also easier to understand his thoughts written down. While they didn’t look particularly neat on the page it made more sense to him. Mr. Stark seemed to understand that.

He snapped his jaw shut when he realized it was hanging wide open.

“Really?” He said, dropping his eyes back down ignoring the sinking feel in his chest.

Mr. Stark chuckled and went back to scanning the algorithms.

“We can get a full team in here to work on it. Whatever we need.”

A whole team? Someone to take over what they were doing? Peter flinched.

Their work had come so far. From car models went from mere imaginations, to metal models, and back to hologram full scale models. Their protocol were written in C++ after debating between the Python coding.

Peter found the time… soothing to his mind. Sometimes coming in late at night to work by himself even if Mr. Stark wasn’t there. Friday always let him in with a kind word.

He remembered the first couple of times they worked together Mr. Stark would get into a kind of trance, rock music blaring in the background. While Peter liked the music – he made his own playlist to all the songs they listened to – his head rang after an hour or so.

His expression must have revealed more than he wanted to because without comment the next time Peter arrived the music was quieter.

It was little things like that and the temperature which had Peter settling into their work focusing more on Mr. Stark and less on Tony Stark.

With summer coming up in less months than he thought Peter was sure their time would be cut short.

What he wanted to do was ask the man himself. To beg him to continue working through the summer and next year and the next even if it meant bringing in fifty other people to work on it. He wanted to finish their project, to see their models turn into something real. Something that could help people. The selfish part of his brain suggested that what he really wanted was to continue working with Mr. Stark even if it didn’t end up helping anyone.

Instead what Peter did was stay silent and hum slightly to the music nothing about his appearance gave his thoughts away besides the fists he made every so often looking at Mr. Stark working.

Would he even want to continue working with Peter?

End of February

Julia sat next time him while the subway rumbled forward. He kept his legs folded in front of him, fingers grasping backpack which rested on his knees in order to take up less space.

They already passed his stop but he stayed on like he always did riding with Julia.

“Do you really think the permission will go through?” She asked quietly. Julia had fidgeted today in the lab. Her eyes scanned the paperwork over and over making sure they filled out every form correctly. Their whole team practically had their proposal memorized with the amount of times they’d reworked it.

“I’m sure they will.” He said but continued when her expression didn’t change. “It was really good, Julia. You did a great job.”

Peter stared at the glass window on the other side of the subway. Their reflections looked back and he saw her head duck down.

The subway came to a stop and she stood to leave. She ran her hand through her hair and looked at him.

“Thanks for riding the rest of the way with me. Text me when you get home?” Her tone was quiet and it was Peter’s turn to drop his head. “You’re a great friend, Peter.”

He mumbled something and she smiled over her shoulder walking onto the platform. The doors closed behind her but he didn’t lift his head.

Peter switched trains but couldn’t stop the smile from coming over his face.

She thought they were friends.

Beginning of March

“Kid… Peter?”

He blinked. Mr. Stark’s hand landed on his shoulder. His muscles tensed under the sudden intrusion but Mr. Stark’s eyes never left his face. Slowly, he squeezed, calming Peter’s pulse, and stepped back.

Mr. Stark ran his hand through his hair.

“Time for food.” He said and waited for Peter to put all his notes away.

“I can just go home, Mr. Stark. It’s no problem.”

The man chuckled and Peter flushed knowing he said that every time.

“I already ordered your favorite from that Korean place down the street.”

Peter stopped walking before hurrying to catch up. They settled around the table piled with way more boxes of food they could ever finish. Sure enough a container of Bibimbap with all tofu, no eggs, and spicy sauce was waiting for him.

Mr. Stark began telling him some gossip he’d heard around the office.

“And how do you know about poor Mr. Singer?” He said, scrapping the crispy rice off of the bottom of the takeout box.

The man didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed when he spoke. “Oh, I just happened to be walking by when his wife came storming in.”

Peter snorted. “Friday told you. Didn’t you, Friday?” He asked over Mr. Stark’s copious denials.

“That is correct, Peter.” He smiled upward at Friday and failed to notice the soft look Mr. Stark was giving him.

“You caught me, kid.”

End of March

It would have been easier to accept if the letters were stamped permanently in red across the whole paper. It would have made since in a way – been final. Instead they received a formal reply. One with fancy wording and apologies that had the vague pretense of sounding sincere and apologetic.

This made the news so much worse.

Their proposal had been rejected or as the letter said: “at this time we are not allowing student groups access to our facilities.”

Julia’s face crumpled while Frank swore. Monica began typing frantically but through it all Peter just sat there.

What would they do now?

Beginning of April

“You still have a lot of time to make yourself be what you want. There’s still a lot of good in the world."

They were watching The Outsiders while he waited. Peter had read it the year before in English but had missed the movie day because he had been sick.

The rain pelted down against the glass windows. Thunder and lightning battled in the sky only an arm’s length away from where they sat. He’d watched many storms pass through from his fire escape but here, this high up, Peter felt like he was inside it. Every clap of noise sent a pulse into his bloodstream pumping the blood through his veins. It didn’t key him up like it did in the apartment. The sounds were loud enough to sooth his racing thoughts enough so he could focus on the movie playing in the background and the soft sounds of response Mr. Stark was making to the movie. He felt safe there in the storm.

Of course, Peter had put up a mild protest. He’d been fine to go home, he told Mr. Stark. But the man took one look outside and suggested the movie. Food was involved, too.

It took Peter exactly thirty-two seconds to decide he could wait for the rain to pass.

An hour later, laden with stir-fry and popcorn Peter was boneless on the couch. He smiled as Mr. Stark leaned forward, his eyes focused on the screen. It was the man’s first time watching it as well and though Peter knew the ending, it didn’t stop his enjoyment.

He yawned and sank deeper into the cushions.

The day had seemed unending and filled with busywork assignments. Things that weren’t teaching him anything but would take all night to do. Ned was gone so he spent all lunch listening to Mike debate the pros of anarchy with everyone at the table. He stared at MJ until she caught him and he ran away to the library. It wasn’t until he got to the lab that he had a moment to breath.

Something touched his shoulder and then with more force he was pulled away from the couch.

The sound of the credits rolled. He didn’t realize his eyes had shut.

Peter could hear Mr. Stark’s voice whispering something and a feminine answer but his eyes stayed closed, blessedly on the brink of sleep.

His head was against a hard surface, a chest, and Peter was lulled deeper by the heartbeat within. A hand brushed back his hair after he was placed on something soft and he could swear the voice said something important but Peter was too asleep to make sense of it.

Ned leaned across the lunch table. His hands bordered their lunchboxes in a protective frame as Peter relayed the news from his meeting the previous week.

“I just feel so bad for those Frank and Monica. I mean they’re graduating and everything. This was their final hurrah.” He said, nibbling on a carrot.

“Dude, that sucks. What are you going to do?”

Peter nodded at the question. As it was they weren’t sure.

The prototype of the machine was necessary for them to see before they could come up with a model for themselves. He had thought about going to Mr. Stark and asking him for advice, but he decided not to in the end. It was an unfair advantage that the other teams couldn’t use. If no one else could go to the owner of Stark Industries for help, why should he?

Peter was also proud of the work they accomplished so far. Sometimes he forgot how young they all were, given the amount and quality of work they completed.

The whole experience had changed him more than that though and he was loathe to sit there and do nothing.

“I don’t know, Ned. We’ll figure something out though.”

He could only hope.

“Look, Peter. Mr. Stark will understand if you can’t make it today.” May spoke with an edge to her voice. “I forbid you from going.”

“May, I have to go. This is important.”

“Peter, you’re sick. It’s okay.”

He coughed into his elbow, sniffling and meagerly taking a tissue May was holding out to him with pouting lips.

Peter whispered something to her. Something he was too afraid to think but needed to say.

“What sweetheart?” She said and even though he was sick and had a fever May sat on the edge of his bed.

“It’s just,” he licked his chapped lips. “What if he finds someone else to help out?”

He thought of the team Mr. Stark mentioned before. Peter looked away from the piercing glance. His fingers fidgeted with the blanket wrapped around him.

“Peter, he would never do that. You know he wouldn’t.”

She said it with such conviction but his stomach sank. Did he know that?

May kept talking, running a reassuring thumb over his knuckles but Peter was too wrapped up in his thoughts. He went through cataloging every interaction and every word spoken between them.

Peter thought of the way Mr. Stark smiled when he came into the lab and how he would always check the temperature to make sure it was warm enough. The man practically bought the whole menu at a restaurant when Peter stayed for food and it was getting more common for him to stay after a work day. Sometimes they would watch a movie but most times he would just work on homework as Mr. Stark continued with business. But were those concrete signs? It certainly didn’t mean he would abstain from finding a replacement if the work needed to be done. Peter sighed into his hoodie, wincing at the way his stomach was cramping.

It was with the image of Frank helping Mr. Stark in the lab that Peter made his decision.

He realized May had left when she popped her head back into the room.

“Stay home, Peter. Okay? I’m sorry I have to go to work.”

His cough wracked his chest but he managed to tell her he loved her. She gave him one last searching look before she left for work.

After he heard the door shut with limbs groaning Peter got out of bed. He toggled back and forth as the blood ran to his head but with careful steps made it out of his room. His hand swept across the length of the highest cabinet and found the last packet of powdered vitamin C before mixing it in his water bottle.

There was sweat seeping into his sweatshirt and on his forehead by the time he made it to the subway platform and he shivered into it. His breath shuddered when he finally sank down into one of the empty seats, making sure to touch as little as possible. He kept his hoodie up and took small sips of the vitamin infused water, praying for an instant cure.

Friday greeted him when he got into the elevator but he didn’t lift his head up to the lights like he normally would. They burned his eyes.

“Hey, Friday.” He said rubbing his hand along his chest to stop a cough. Even to his own ears his voice sounded tired.

“Are you alright, Peter?” Friday said, softer than normal.

“I’m fine, just a cough.”

Friday said nothing but the elevators opened.

The room was void of people and Peter sat down with a heavy breath. He crossed his arms on the table in front of him. Thankfully Friday must have forgotten to put the lights on so it was dark in the room.

Every minute he sat there, Peter shrunk down until his head came to rest on his arms. Wet coughs racked his chest and he shivered again. It was cold in the room but he didn’t want to bother Friday. The curt tone he used earlier with Friday sent a guilty tendril tightening along his spine.

The doors swept open and bursting into the room with wide eyes was Mr. Stark. Peter tried to smile but from the furrow in the man’s mouth, it wasn’t as reassuring as he meant it to be.

“Kid, what’s wrong? You okay?”

Peter sat up trying to relax the ache in his muscles. He flinched back when rough hands touched his cheek before moving to rest against his forehead.

He felt silly to realize Mr. Stark had moved across the room and was now kneeling beside him. Peter concentrated on the small lines forming lightly in the corner of his eyes. For a moment he imaged being younger and being sick at home, but instead of Ben kneeling in front of him it was Mr. Stark making sure he was okay.

With a shake of Peter’s head Mr. Stark removed his hands and walked away. His voice rung out as he barked orders to Friday and then he was on the phone.

Peter gripped the edges of the counter, tears blurring in his eyes. How could he even think that? The betrayal of his thoughts sent a tear over the edge and down his hot cheek. Worse than that though was the longing he’d felt – still felt - when Mr. Stark looked at him with such concern.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t his to want.

Mr. Stark came back and led Peter into the elevator. His tone was quiet, soothing, and Peter weakly followed him after brushing his tear away. Friday chimed in to give reports on his temperature. His brain felt fuzzy.

There was an arm, guiding him, warm across his back.

“Come on, Kid.”  

They arrived into a bedroom and dimly Peter realized this is where he fell asleep the previous month. He stopped short at the door.

“Peter?” The man spoke softly and the back of Peter’s throat itched.

“But… we have the meeting. We were going to work on …” His brain failed him at the end.

“Hey, kid. You’re in no position to be working. Hell, you’re burning up.”

He sent Peter to the bed and disappeared into the bathroom.

Peter sat at the very end of the mattress, his butt halfway off the edge. It wasn’t his bedroom, just one for guests. There was nothing in there that was his, but Peter noticed that the lamp was where he moved it before when he tried to get some reading in the morning when was there.

He moved closer to the headboard, eyes on the light in the bathroom, and switched it on.

Peter could still convince Mr. Stark they could work today. It would be fine. Mr. Stark wouldn’t have replaced him then as long as he remained useful.

“The work will still be there later.” Mr. Stark said emerging from the bathroom as if he read Peter’s thoughts. “Drink this while you take this.” He gestured to the water and Tylenol in his hand.

Peter’s protest died on his tongue and Mr. Stark spoke again.

“I’m not in any hurry to finish the project. As long as you get better.”

He blanched at the implication of the words.

There was no anger in the man’s face. Something uncurled in his chest when all he saw was concern. Ben used to wear that face well.

Peter’s eyes dragged on his cheek. Another cough stormed through his chest.

“I’ll go fill this up again. There’s sweatpants and t-shirts in the dresser.”

Peter stood up, feeling red on his cheeks. There were clothes there?

He browsed the drawers looking at the various t-shirts - all avengers themed. Quickly he got into sweatpants and sweatshirt glancing at the door back and forth.

With a speed he used when changing after gym class he shucked his shirt and pants off and into his chosen clothes, grey sweats and Stark Industries shirt. His hand brushed over the ironman one but he couldn’t quite make himself put it in.

He settled on the bed again just before there was a knock on the door. Dizziness wavered through him and Peter grasped the bedside table for support.

Mr. Stark came in carrying the glass. The covers were pushed back and Peter found himself lying down. The man hovered for a moment, his hand came up from his side reaching out before dropping back.

“Get some rest, Kid. Friday will be here if you need anything and I will just be in the living room outside.”

Peter’s eyes closed of their own accord and he nodded. Footsteps swept across the room but before the door could close Peter thanked Mr. Stark, wishing he had the right to say more.

“Of course, Peter.” Peter’s throat went tight. The door shut and Peter spun around. He didn’t want to look at the lights shining through the cracks in the door.

Of course, he said like he would look after Peter. As he would have if Peter’s mind conjured up sound for his imagination. Like he cared.

The knot loosened in his throat and Peter locked the guilt away for a moment, instead basking in the knowing someone was waiting up in case he needed them right outside this room that wasn’t technically his.

He reached up, adjusting the pillow under his head and closed his eyes.

Middle of April

Peter’s stomach protested as the smell of leftovers wafted from the lid he opened. The nausea from being sick still lingered and Peter found his appetite was suffering because of it.

The cafeteria, loud as ever, raged around him. He pushed the container of food away with a grimace.

Something nudged him from the side and he saw Ned’s profile looking straight ahead. He shrugged and went back to staring at his lunch. Ned’s elbow dug into his upper arm and Peter looked over while rubbing the spot of impact. Narrowly dodging another nudge, he got the hint and followed the boy’s gaze.

Peter blinked at the figure coming forward.

Flash waded through the crowds and tables. His gaze was fixed forward and now that they weren’t precisely enemies Peter let himself feel intrigued by how people just seemed to get out of Flash’s way.

He wondered why Ned was so interested in Flash until the boy in questions eyes moved and landed on Peter.

He was making his way in their direction.

Peter knew from the previous eight months how rare this was and his stomach cramped in response. His eyes flounced back to the Tupperware.

“I wonder where he’s off to,” Ned said.

Peter watched Ned in his observations not wanting to be caught blatantly staring at Flash himself. Despite the itching feeling crawling through his limbs Peter smiled at his friend and the way he moved forward so Flash’s view of Peter would be limited.

Under his lashes he looked up to see Flash continued the straight path to them. Peter held his breath and watched his legs, which seemed much safer than his face.

Flash continued forward until he was a table away. Peter finally looked up at a sound from Ned and met his eyes. The boy stared straight at him and Peter forced himself to maintain contact. Flash glanced toward the doors and back at Peter, his brow quirked when Peter’s face remained in ignorance. He did it again before veering off toward the exit.

The doors closed behind him blocking Peter’s curious gaze, food dilemma forgotten.

Should he follow?

Ned began talking about how weird Flash had been lately and Peter nodded along. His hands twisted in his lap, bouncing in time to the rise and fall of his foot against the ground.

Without breaking eye contact with the door, he stood up, murmuring something to Ned whose eyes flickered to the door. Ned nodded without missing a beat.

As Peter was passing toward the door he briefly reached out to touch Ned on the shoulder before hurrying away. Ned was such a good person…. A good friend.

Backpack slung over his shoulder Peter followed the path his eyes traced before and saw Flash leaning against the lockers down the hallway from the cafeteria.

“Flash. Hey.” He said trying to keep the weary tone out of his voice. They’d seen each other off and on at their time at the Tower but hadn’t seen much of each other at school. In fact, the last time they talked was when Peter had a meltdown in front of him, which was slightly awkward to realize how Peter yelled at him before. Not that he didn’t deserve it.

The boy’s arms were crossed in front of him. Peter could see his shoulder’s tensing and he held his body still. Peter forced his hands to stop fidgeting by shoving them in his pockets. A blush worked its way onto his cheeks when neither of them spoke. Was he wrong? Was he supposed to follow Flash?

“So, I hear you need a connection at Oscorp?” Flash said uncrossing his arms and casually raising his eyebrow at Peter.

His jaw dropped. This was not what he expected.

“Uh… How did you hear that?” He said trying to find a semblance of rational thought.

Flash had the decency to look embarrassed but he answered anyway, if a little cautiously. “That Mike kid is loud as shit. Anyway, do you?”

“Why?”

Flash sighed and crossed his arms again.

“Listen, I’m trying to be... decent. My dad has connections there and I could see if something could come of it.”

“Why?”

Was that all he could say?

“Is that all you can say?” Flash snapped.

Peter shut his mouth and thought about the options. He could lie. Say that they didn’t need this. Then he wouldn’t need to repay Flash for anything. But the image of Julia’s clenched hands and the hours they spent working came to mind. And he decided he didn’t care if he was put in Flash’s debt or that he didn’t know the motivations behind this act of supposed kindness.

Plus, Flash proved changed – sort of – mostly. If he wanted help, well, Peter wasn’t going to say no.

“Yeah, Flash. We do need help, if you’re willing to offer it.”

They nodded at one another before walking down the hallway too close to be considered friends but too far away for anyone to perceive them as enemies.

“Sorry, Monica couldn’t make it today but she said as long as we take notes it should be fine.”

Flash stood shuffling on the balls of his feet in the doorway. Julia and Frank were clearing off a spot for him to sit at the table while Peter motioned him forward.

Frank clapped Flash on the back in greeting and welcomed him.

“Thanks man. This is going to be a great help.”

When Flash sat down, moving his backpack to rest against the leg of the table, everyone stared at him. It was the first time after their sandwich fiasco that Peter had seen him look so embarrassed and out of place. He withheld a smile.

Flash got straight down to business, explain the security and how his father got them a tour and question time with the person in charge of the prototype. Julia’s hand flew over the paper trying to write every word he spoke. Without breaking his speech Flash slight a typed-out sheet of all the information. Her hand shook slightly and thought she thanked him, Peter noticed she didn’t look him in the eye.

The meeting passed quick and Peter was pleased with how much Flash got along with everyone. He and Frank spent a bunch of time talking about sports and the playoffs. After some cajoling he even got Julia to talk about their new kittens at home. In turn, Flash smiled as she told him how BOGO would steal all of Free’s food.

Flash smiled at the story. A real, teeth-baring smile.

Peter was used to things happening slowly in his life.

It took him almost half a school year to decide to participate in the S.T.A.R.K competition. Days avoiding the sign in sheet until finally he took the plunge. Months after dreading nearly everything he settled into a routine. He was opening up to the people around him.

He thought back to how scary it was considering Ned’s offer to sit with him at lunch. It was weeks until he was able to go more than once a week. He even went over to Ned’s house over break.

But all these things took time and much thinking on Peter’s part. He weighed the consequences of everything before stepping forward and rarely out of his comfort zone. That was safe. That was good.

Things happening quickly were never good in Peter’s opinion. Ben’s funeral came and went so fast. The whole thing sped up like someone was pressing fast-forward. Though he was careful and took his time letting Sam into his life; it took but a second for her to break his heart.

That’s why when Flash sat at their lunch table at the end of the week, Peter’s stomach turned sour. He knew to expect the worse. He foresaw the worst. But there was nothing he could do or say in the moment.

Ned, after a moment of scrutiny, looked between Flash and Peter, then stuck out his hand for the two of them to shake, forever reminding Peter how forgiving Ned was.

How many second chances had Ned given him?

Just like that Flash began to eat lunch with them sometimes. Not every day, but throughout the week he would stop by and join an argument between Mike and Midge before wandering off again. Somedays he would even find Peter in the library when the cafeteria was too much for him to get through.

Flash was quieter than Ned. He would hold himself still, aware of his space at any given time and there was still tension between them sometimes. But it was nice all the same.

Peter didn’t find it so strange that Flash and him became friends so quick this time.

End of April

Peter looked around the lab. Scattered on the tables were scraps of paper, all smudged with crunched writing, and metal shavings discarded from the models they had built. His backpack was folded over itself on the floor by the door on top of which his jacket was crumpled.

Mr. Stark stood beside him and if Peter turned his shoulders slightly to the left he could see the slight furrow in his brow. How his hand would come up and rest under his chin while his finger traced his goatee every five minutes or so.

It was his thinking face, Peter knew.

Months of working together and Peter’s steady heartbeat was proof he was relaxed. Content.

He didn’t think about the fact this would all be ending come summer. And he absolutely ignored the itch in the back of his throat thinking about the possibility of never seeing Mr. Stark again.

“I’m still thinking we are going to totally have to overhaul the thrust mechanisms on this side, Mr. Stark. It’s working now, but barely, and it could be so much better.” He said breaking the silence.

Mr. Stark’s eyebrows rose in response but he didn’t say anything. His eyes stayed trained on the new schematics displayed in front of him. He grumbled something under his breath and Peter cracked a smile knowing he was right.

The lab settled under the silence again. Peter moved around to Mr. Stark’s other side and grabbed a Stark pad off the table. Easily Mr. Stark stepped to the side to accommodate his reach and giving Peter enough room to work at the table.

Peter yawned as he opened the door to the apartment. He grabbed a box of Chex mix and sank into the couch. His phone vibrated again and shoving his hand into the box checked his messages. The group chat between everyone went off with a near consistency putting his flip phone into overdrive.

There had been time of the subway to look at it but he ended up falling asleep, waking only to find drool gathering on his sleeve where his head rested and to hear he missed one his stop.

Even though he was barely awake now, Peter considered the walk home beneficial. The moon hung in the middle of the sky decorated by a vague face and stars all around.

It let him think, at least.

His third handful came away as the rest, only the little breadsticks and the occasional rye chip. May must have eaten her way through the bag first. He set it aside feeling a cramping in his stomach. Maybe he was still sick.

He yawned again and sank further into the couch knowing he should go to bed, but his bones felt too brittle to get up.

Everything was coming to a head soon. Midterms, Mr. Stark and their work, and the tour were compounding at an exponential rate.

It was all amazing. Peter knew he was so lucky and at times thought he dreamed it all.

But it was sometimes too much.

He wasn’t used to having so many people in his life or having to check his phone throughout the day to see who was texting him.

Who would have thought at the beginning of the year Ned and Flash would send each other memes? Or that Julia would come out and lead one of their group meetings?

Peter smiled remembering how Monica’s jaw dropped when Julia, gently, corrected her on some of the analytics. Or how she gave everyone in their group, Flash included, a newer version of the pen that landed her in the internship program.

He felt so full of life, something he’d never thought possible for someone like him.

And right now, it hurt that all he wanted to do was curl up and sleep for the weekend. He wondered what would happen if he told them. If he just needed some time to disconnect for a bit.

He knew he couldn’t do that though. They would be fine without him, they would move on and continue texting minus his phone number, and Peter wasn’t ready to get rid of them so soon. They deserved someone who was normal, who could sit in the cafeteria for the whole week without feeling bone tired, or someone who could be fully present without worry about sneezing the wrong way.

Peter would get through it and soak everything up. Every laugh, and debate at lunch. Flash’s and his new acquaintanceship. And especially any time Mr. Stark was willing to work together. He could push through it for now.

It would be fine.

He groaned against the couch pillow thinking about everything he had to do and after looking at the calendar on the way he realized something.

It was only a week until they would tour Oscorp.

It's always one step forward and two steps back for our Peter isn't it?

a/n: Hi sweet friends. I hope you are all doing well and you and your loved ones are staying safe. This semester has been crazy, as things get in real life. My classes have been moved online so I can finally start writing again which makes me so happy. I also just wanted to say thank you for continuing to read this story. Every comment and kudos make my week so bright.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Taglist: @verdonafrost @demi-starzak @whatisthou

Next Chapter Eleven: Welcome to Oscorp

#Ironman fanfiction #MCU #pre-powers #spiderman fanfiction #Shy peter parker #the supplejack #my writing #ao3 fic #tony stark #ned leeds #Flash Thompson #marvel fanfiction #Peter parker #writing

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tisthenightofthewitch · 6 years ago

Text

How Ghost became the face of the new generation of heavy metal

Pressure. Controversy. An army of haters. It seems like nothing can throw Ghost off-course. How Ghost's mastermind Tobias Forge took on the world… and won

Paris, tell me… did that make your asses wobble?” It sure as hell isn’t “Scream for me, Hammersmith!” but somehow, inexplicably, this flirty, moustached, makeup-splattered dandy wiggling about in a tux and leather gloves has 9,000 people in the palm of his hand like he’s Bruce Dickinson in ’86. Hammer is at hallmark gig venue Le Zenith in France’s capital city, witnessing Ghost deliver their latest sermon.

The City Of Love might be frozen solid on this chilly February evening, but the unstoppable Swedes are heating things up in style – fire, steam cannons, confetti, a dazzling light show and enough costume changes to make Lady Gaga dizzy are just some of the ingredients reaffirming their status as one of metal’s premier attractions in 2019.

It all makes a two-hour set fly by in no time, guided masterfully by that aforementioned, ’tache-donning Daddy. Cardinal Copia, Ghost’s Master Of Ceremonies, raised a few confused eyebrows when he was unveiled this time last year, breaking an eight-year streak of Papa Emerituses who’d fronted Ghost since its inception. But he’s since become the beating heart of a band that have continued to evolve, grow and adapt beyond all expectations.

He’s also a world away from the blue-eyed, slick-black-haired, quiet and thoughtful man we spent time with two hours earlier, dressed in jeans and a hoodie, decidedly sans-moustache and doing much less wiggling.

When Hammer last spoke to Tobias Forge, he’d recently (some may say forcefully) been outed as Ghost’s resident mastermind – its very own Wizard Of Oz, working behind the scenes and behind the mask to help orchestrate one of the most unlikely success stories of recent times.

We are creating a dynasty.

Soon after our last conversation, Ghost dropped their latest album, Prequelle – an instant classic stacked with playful menace and 80s-tinged pop-rock bangers – and have pretty much been on the road ever since.

“Hey, if you wanna rock, you gotta rock,” shrugs Tobias of his relentless schedule. “It takes a lot of effort, a lot of cogwheels spinning and turning, to make all this work.” He’s not kidding.

A weary roadie will later inform us that it takes almost four hours to pack up Ghost’s monstrous set each night – a towering, multi-platformed, chapel-esque set-up that recalls the kind of backdrops Maiden have made home for decades. “But, once you’ve got that whole machine rolling, you don’t wanna stop,” Tobias adds. “At some point, we will have to wind down a bit, but we’re not there yet.

If you wanna be comparative, look at all the big bands; even though they made it in a different time, statistically it takes five records, about 10 years, to go from nothing to something to something great.”

And that, right there, sums up Tobias Forge. The reason Ghost have been such a triumph isn’t because of great songs, a good live show and a savvy gimmick – metal history is littered with bands that never made it despite boasting all those things.

The difference is that Tobias is the man with the plan. He may not be the tortured artiste or swaggering hellraiser that rock’n’roll loves to stick on a pedestal, but he’s a leader: a brand ambassador with a calculating mind and a shrewd business acumen who knows exactly what needs to be done to immortalise Ghost’s legacy.

He’s playing the game, and he’s winning. And if you look hard enough, the seeds for it all were being sown right at the very start.

“You can find all the details in my record collection,” he says with a knowing smirk – and he’s not wrong. Before Cardinal Copia, there were Papa Emeritus I, II and III – a line of frontmen that not only enabled Ghost to set up a deep-running narrative, but change up the formula and the image for every album cycle. Sound familiar? It should – it’s what rock’n’roll superstars have been doing for decades.

"I’ve always been a big fan of Kiss,” he continues. “Most Kiss fans can tell the era [of the band] by the photo, what they’re wearing. You can say, ‘That is ’75, that is ’76, it’s in the spring, it’s in the fall, it’s Rock And Roll Over, it’s Destroyer.’ So I figured that in order for this band to age, we need to create dynasties.

"And that way, there’ll also be nostalgia. Because I come from a heavy metal background, I know how important nostalgia is, and the attention span nowadays is so short, so you need to create it quickly. You need people to be able to say, ‘I was there when this part happened.’ That’s why it was always Papa Emeritus I, right from the start.”

It’s a meticulous level of forward-thinking that has come up trumps, but amazingly, you’d have been hard-pushed to find anyone who’d have backed Tobias to carve such a path 10 years ago.

Before 2010, it was with respected Swedish death metallers Repugnant that the Linköping native had had his most ‘success’, his love of rock’s theatrical side flirted with via a splash of corpsepaint and a drop of fake blood here and there.

A spate of EPs and splits and one well-received album, 2006’s Epitome Of Darkness, ensured a small part in heavy metal folklore was guaranteed, but it was what happened next that changed everything.

Channelling his love of catchy NWOBHM mainstays like Angel Witch and Demon, Tobias wrote what would become Stand By Him – an irrepressible schlock-rock anthem a world away from the guttural noise of Epitome…

He called up former Repugnant bandmate Gustaf Lindström to help record it, and more songs quickly followed in the same, earwormy vein – “I’ve always liked the NWOBHM bands that had melody and pop sensibility,” he says today.

But there was still something missing. The songs Tobias was now writing were following a formula that had been laid down since the 70s. It needed something different. Something fun. Something… metal.

Deciding that this new project should carry an image that’d bring it a world away from its influences – a band that, in Tobias’s words, should “sound like Angel Witch but look like Death SS,” he began doodling some ideas. One scribble stuck – the image of a Pope-like character, plastered in ghoulish corpsepaint. Papa Emeritus was born.

I was 29 years old. I wasn't going to get another chance at this.

“And as soon as it was confirmed that he’s gonna be a Pope… well, when a Pope dies, you have a new one!” adds Tobias with a laugh. Soon after Papa I came the idea for the Nameless Ghouls – masked, anonymous backing musicians that’d add to the band’s hokey mystique.

By 2009, the project had an image, some songs and a name: Ghost. But it’d be a little while before things started to move forwards, and Tobias’s grand plan would take shape.

Between 2008 and 2009, there were maybe 20 people who knew about Ghost,” says Tobias, who ended up fronting the band through default after unsuccessfully offering the gig to a variety of names from around the metal scene.

“The guys in In Solitude, the guys in Tribulation, the guys in Watain… they were the only people who knew about it! But I knew at that point that it was gonna have the ability to turn heads, because it made everyone [excited].

"Repugnant were popular, but nothing I had ever done had had such an immediate impact on people. They were all like, ‘Ghost! I wanna hear more!’ I knew that there was gonna be some sort of buzz.”

A “buzz” is an understatement. When Ghost’s first songs were finally made public – on MySpace, no less – things began to move very, very quickly. Metal messageboards were set ablaze with excitement and offers came flooding in.

“I was quickly in touch with Will from Rise Above,” notes Tobias now, and he would eventually accept a deal with Lee Dorrian’s much-respected label. An album, Opus Eponymous, was recorded, and the metal underground waited with baited breath for its new favourite band to deliver on the hype. And yet, even at this stage, Tobias wasn’t totally certain just how far things would go.

“Originally, I thought that Ghost was gonna become more like a theatre/installation sort of band, like Sunn O))),” he reveals. “We would play Roadburn, arthouse concerts, five dates at the London Scala, that sort of thing.”

So a kind of ‘event’ band. You’d show up to play special shows and residencies.

“Exactly,” he confirms. “I never thought we would be the band that would play metal festivals, play in daylight, play with other bands.”

But then more offers started steaming in. Suddenly Ghost – with not so much as a gig to their name – were being asked to go on tours, play festivals and do interviews. For Tobias, there was a straight decision to be made: keep this project as a ‘cult attraction’, stay within the underground and become everyone’s favourite ‘Oh, you wouldn’t have heard of them’ reference point, or take a leap into the unknown and reach for greatness.

For a man that had spent years keeping a lid on his grand ambitions, now was the time to sink or swim. And, really, there was only ever going to be one option.

“I wasn’t gonna get another chance,” he states flatly. “I was already 29 years old at the time, so it was like, ‘This is the train and it’s leaving now.’ You can choose to stay, and sit there and fucking wonder all your life, or you can get on.”

Tobias got on the train, and it hasn’t stopped rolling. Opus Eponymous was released on October 18, 2010, and within three years intimate club shows became packed-out academy shows in front of 5,000 people, and soon after that the band could be seen supporting everyone from Metallica to Foo Fighters to Iron Maiden.

They won a Grammy for Cirice (and have been nominated for two more); they’ve been championed by everyone from James Hetfield to Phil Anselmo; their merch has become obscenely big business, t-shirts selling out in no time at gigs (including the show Hammer attends tonight) and the Ghost IP being plastered across everything from baubles to butt plugs to custom plague masks.

Tobias has manoeuvred that quick sketch of a spooky lad in a Pope hat into a machine Gene Simmons would be proud of, all underpinned by a storyline that has fans salivating as they wait for the next chapter to be revealed.

And if there was any doubt that this is still very much Tobias’s baby, you need only look at the casualty list littered with names that have crossed him. There are the disgruntled ex-bandmates who attempted to bring a lawsuit against Tobias in 2017 after claiming they were denied their rightful share of the Ghost pot.

The lawsuit was thrown out in October last year, his former colleagues ordered to pay Tobias’s legal costs (around $145,000, if you’re counting). There was also the Sister Imperator incident, where the elderly Ghost matriarch and star of their ongoing vignette series had to be swiftly recast after a mysterious falling out.

“All of a sudden, you’ve an actress who decides to start making fucking trouble and makes herself unemployable,” Tobias says. “Well, then you have to do what they do in any soap opera… a car accident.” That’s not allegorical, by the way.

Tobias literally had a new vignette made revealing that the Sister was in a car wreck and needed reconstructive surgery. The new actress was brought in so smoothly that many Ghost fans assumed it was the same person with a different haircut. How’s that for efficient?

“That’s how you solve things,” the frontman shrugs. “But that was not planned at first, because we’d been working with the same actress for three years, and then all of a sudden, things fell apart. But, you have to roll with the punch, you have to bite your finger, and come up with another plan… car accident. Boom.”

That Tobias won’t be moved on what actually happened between he and the original actress is understandable – after all, this is a man that spent years holding his cards close to his chest.

That this all managed to play out under the noses of one of modern metal’s most fanatical fanbases, however, is pretty damn impressive. Basically: don’t cross the boss.

While Tobias’s masterplan may seem iron-clad, he will at least admit that there is room for fine-tweaking along the way. He recently revealed that Cardinal Copia’s character could stick around for another five years and multiple albums – a first for Ghost, who have thus far changed up their protagonist for every record.

“That’s just because of the potential of him being a ‘Pope’ or a Papa Emeritus IV,” he explains, before adding: “If he becomes a Papa Emeritus.”

So there could be multiple endings planned for Cardi C?

“Absolutely. All of this is an organic movement, and that is one of the biggest paradoxes for me, as a control freak. To be part of this living world, I can’t control everything. I can control a lot, and I can influence a lot, but I can’t control it [all]. And coming to terms with those things and accepting that is a big struggle for me.”

He’ll also admit that being the mastermind behind a machine as big and ever-evolving as Ghost has had a serious impact on his personal life. Being a part of a successful band is one thing, but having that success rest almost entirely on your shoulders is something altogether different.

“It’s very hard to do this without any casualties,” he muses. “It takes a toll on your surroundings, your crew, your parents, your children… I have two kids, 10 years old. They were toddlers when this whole thing started. My family’s had to endure a lot for this to happen.”

He’s also had to face up to the reality that being in a big rock band means you’re going to attract the attention of

a fair few haters – and Ghost have an army of them. Check out Hammer’s Facebook page to see the dizzying levels of vitriol that a post about Ghost will attract. Recurring issues seem to be accusations of selling out, anger at Tobias’s treatment of his former bandmates and, most commonly, whether Ghost belong in our world at all (and to be fair, you’d be hard-pushed to describe Prequelle as a true heavy metal record by any standards).

“I’ve noticed it,” says Tobias. “I noticed it in the beginning. I think that it’s the same old discussion. ‘Is Ghost a metal band?’ ‘Are we a clone of Mercyful Fate?’ It’s the same old thing. But now these people are saying the new record is not as good because it’s not as much of a clone of Mercyful Fate! OK…”

Why do you think Ghost wind people up so much?

“Because we are ever-present, all the time. We are being shoved into people’s faces, and we’re rubbing it in. They wouldn’t talk about us had we not been successful. Does it worry me? Not really. If they’re talking shit about me, that’s one thing, especially if it’s someone that I know. That can hurt me deeply. When you’re at the beginning of your career, especially nowadays, you spend a lot of time surveying what’s going on, because you need to feed off anything that’s happening to the band. So I noticed there was a lot of ‘controversy’, a lot of mixed opinions. It’s surprising they don’t understand that the more they talk about us, the more traffic there is about our band. More than we would have had had they not spoken!”

Once again, it’s there: the unnerving feeling that Tobias is metal’s modern-day puppet master, pulling the strings above a performance that we all continue to play our parts in. Whether it’s the media, his fans, his critics or the few who have attempted to foil him, everything only ever seems to play into his hands, and the Ghost train rolls on.

“A few months ago, based on metadata alone, a website made a list

of the biggest bands in metal,” Tobias reveals as a PR informs us our time together is up. “We were number four! Right up there. And that’s thanks to these people that keep on fucking hating. So I have nothing but great feelings for them.”

He makes to leave before adding: “That’s how all these bands made their careers. You think Lars would shy away every time people would talk shit about Metallica? Fuck. That.”

Hated, adored but never ignored. This summer, Ghost will play in front of stadium crowds with Metallica once again – something Tobias calls a “PR exercise” – before more global dates and, eventually, a new album that’ll reveal the next chapter of his grand plan. You can imagine that people will have plenty to say about it. And you can imagine that Tobias Forge is going to relish every second.

ALL RIGHTS OWNED BY METAL HAMMER

#The Band Ghost #Ghost Band #Cardinal Copia #Nameless Ghouls #Tobias Forge

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blurry-fics · 5 years ago

Text

Chapter Six

Prove Me Wrong | Series Masterlist

Warnings: None

Word Count: 2578

Author’s Note: I accidentally went a little overboard when writing this chapter, as you can probably tell by the word count. I had a lot of ideas I wanted to include! Anyway, I hope you enjoy the chapter :)

I pulled my song folder out of my bag and set it on the table between Josh and I. He placed a hand on it and slid it towards him before slowly pulling out all the new sheets. The half-crumpled pages that Y/N had rescued from the recycling bin were still in there.

“Why are these so crumpled?” he asked as he pulled them out.

I smiled, “Long story.”

Josh simply nodded and began to flip through the pages. A smile flickered across his face now and again.

“This is looking really good, Tyler. There’s definitely a solid foundation for some new songs in this one.”

I grabbed the pages from him and flipped through until I found the one I was looking for. It was easy to tell apart from the others because of the little sun doodles that I had added in the corner.

“What do you think of this?” I asked, handing the single piece of paper back to him. “I think it would be good for an album closer, don’t you think?”

Josh read over the page a couple times. He rubbed his hand along his jaw as he did so, something he only did when he was really thinking about something. Slowly, he began to nod.

“Yeah, for sure.”

“Great. What do you say we run through some of the old stuff? Then we can work on writing.”

“Let’s do it.”

While Josh got up and began to mess with his drums, I neatly organized the papers and put them back into the folder. Years of watching Y/N meticulously organize her school supplies had rubbed off on me, especially when it came to something as important as my music.

“Alright, I’m ready,” Josh said. He was tapping out a rhythm on his drums that I didn’t recognize.

“Oh, I like that. Don’t forget that,” I said, pointing to him.

Josh looked down at his hands, as if he hadn’t even realized that he had been playing. He looked a little more focused as he ran through it a couple more times.

“Ok, it’s in here,” he laughed, tapping a drumstick to his forehead.

I sat down at the piano and took a moment to play some random melodies and get comfortable with the keys before we actually started to play. It was a habit that I had quickly developed after learning to play the keyboard in high school. For some reason, I was convinced it helped me play better.

“Where should we start?” Josh asked.

“Well, should we run through the whole thing? Or just practice some of the rougher songs?”

“How about we start at the top and see how we feel?” he suggested.

“Perfect.”

* * *

Josh and I, after deciding to practice the album in its entirety, figured it was best to take a break once we got through about half of the songs. Both of us were starving and starting to get irritable with one another, which was never a good combination.

“Let’s order some food before we end up tearing each other’s heads off,” Josh laughed.

“Agreed,” I said, already reaching for my phone. To my surprise, there was a text from Y/N.

Y/N: I need your help. It’s important.

I answered instantly.

Tyler: What’s up?

My head was full of possibilities about what she could need help with, but I couldn’t really do anything until she told me what was going on. Josh noticed my concerned look.

“Everything ok?”

“Yeah, just a friend of mine said she needed help and I’m waiting to figure out what it is.”

“Y/N?”

My mouth curved up into a half-smile, “Yeah.”

“Shocking. Anyway, what are you in the mood for?”

“Pizza is easy and cheap.”

“And they deliver,” Josh chimed in.

“Then let’s do pizza.”

“Pepperoni?”

“No, no. Get Hawaiian.”

Josh’s nose wrinkled immediately, “There’s no way we’re getting pineapple on pizza.”

“Why not? It’s good!”

“No. It’s disgusting.”

“Come on, Josh! Y/N and I always get a Hawaiian pizza.”

“Of course you found a way to bring her into this,” Josh smiled.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You just talk about Y/N a lot,” Josh shrugged. “That’s all.”

“Right.”

Right.

“What if we just get half and half? Then you get your disgusting pizza and I get my delicious pepperoni.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” I nodded.

“Ok, I’ll go call it in.”

Josh grabbed his phone and walked into the other room, already dialing the pizza place. I, on the other hand, had a text from Y/N to attend to.

Y/N: Carter and I are having a debate: are carts or bikes better in Mario Kart?

I laughed and shook my head. Of course she just needed help settling a debate between her and Carter. The two of them were always debating some random topic or another.

Tyler: Bikes, all the way. They take up less space and are just better all around.

Y/N: THANK YOU! Carter has been going on and on about how much better carts are because they get knocked around less easily, but there’s no way that that single benefit outweighs all the benefits of a bike. Wait until he hears the opinion of our resident Mario Kart expert :)

Y/N’s text reminded me of all the weekends we had spent holed up in her den, having Mario Kart tournaments with her brother and eating whatever snacks we could find in their pantry. We hadn’t been able to do that much since I joined the band and Y/N went off to college, there just wasn’t time.

“Pizza should be here in twenty minutes,” Josh announced as he walked back into the room.

“Awesome.”

“You look happy.”

“Yeah, just-,” I waved my phone in the air for emphasis.

“Of course,” he grinned. “Did you figure out what she needed help with?”

“Yeah, there was just a debate she needed to settle with her brother. Nothing serious.”

“That’s good. Wouldn’t want you having to leave in the middle of practice.”

“You know that music is super important to me and I would only leave if the emergency was even more important than this.”

“I don’t know,” Josh laughed a little. “Y/N seems pretty important to you.”

“She’s just a friend.”

“Just a friend?”

I rolled my shoulders, “Yeah.”

“If you say so. I might go after her if you don’t.”

I laughed, but my body still tensed up at the mere thought of Y/N and Josh together.

No. Stop. Tyler.

“I think I’m going to try and work out some new melodies on the piano,” I said, excusing myself from the conversation. “Let me know when pizza gets here.”

I grabbed my folder as I brushed past Josh towards my piano. All of the anger was probably just hunger talking, so some time playing music would help calm me back down. What I had said was true: Y/N was just my friend. Josh wanting to go after her was me being protective. That was all.

Twenty minutes later, Josh walked over and set the pizza box on top of the piano. It smelled amazing and my stomach rumbled in response.

“How much do I owe you?” I asked as I grabbed a slice.

“$6.50.”

With my free hand, I pulled out my wallet and gave Josh the change for the pizza.

“Feel better now that you have food?” he smiled.

“Yeah, sorry for earlier.”

“It’s fine. It’s warm in here, we’re starving, and I was trying to get information out of you. It wasn’t really a winning combination.”

I laughed, “Definitely not.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was another text from Y/N, this time a picture of her brother flipping off the camera while still playing video games with his free hand.

Y/N: He’s pouting because he was proven wrong and I beat him and his stupid cart while I was on a bike three times in a row

Tyler: Nice one, Y/N

Josh was watching me as I texted Y/N, but he didn’t make a comment about her this time. I simply raised my eyebrows at him and took another bite of pizza.

“So, I had this idea for the next album…” he started.

* * *

“Same time tomorrow?” Josh asked as I dropped him off.

“Yeah, I’ll pick you up at two.”

“Sounds great. Thanks for giving me a ride.”

“No problem.”

He grabbed his bag from where it had been sitting at his feet and shut the passenger door behind him. Once he had made it around the car and onto the sidewalk, I took off for my apartment. It was a fairly long drive home - twenty minutes, if I was lucky and traffic wasn’t bad - but I didn’t really mind. I liked having the time to think.

As I drove, I wondered what Y/N was up to. It had been a few days since I had last seen her, mostly because she was busy with projects and papers, and I was starting to miss her. In the spur of the moment, I pulled up against the curb and grabbed my phone.

She picked up quickly, “What do you want?”

“Hello to you too,” I laughed.

“Sorry, I made Carter pause Mario Kart and he’s getting impatient.”

“Yeah! Hurry up, Joseph!” Carter called in the background.

“That’s actually what I called about.”

“Mario Kart?” she asked.

“Yeah. I just got done with band practice and after you texted about the debate, it made me think about the tournaments we used to have when we were younger.”

“Are you asking what I think you’re asking?” she asked. The excitement was evident in her voice.

“Mario Kart tournament?”

“Yes! Get your butt over here!”

“Alright,” I laughed. “I just left Josh’s so it will be awhile, but I’ll be over as soon as I can.”

“I can’t wait to crush both of you at Mario Kart,” Carter added.

“Shut up, Car, I’ve beat you like every time.”

“I’ll see you soon,” I said.

“Ok, drive safe!”

“Bye.”

I tossed my phone back down and pulled away from the curb, already planning what strategy I was going to use.

* * *

“Again?” Y/N whined as I crossed the finish line in first place, yet again.

“You invited me over here!” I shrugged.

Carter leaned forward and snatched up the bag of Doritos that I had sitting by my leg.

“You don’t deserve these anymore,” he huffed.

“I bet it’s the Doritos making him win!” Y/N chimed in.

“Or the Oreos.” I gestured to the half-empty packet of Oreos by my knee.

“Whatever it is, you’re going to lose.”

Carter started up the next set of races and I took a moment to shake out my wrist. We had been playing for close to two hours now and keeping track of who had the most wins. I had about eight wins under my belt, but Y/N wasn’t too far behind. As for Carter, well, he had seen better Mario Kart days.

I was nearing the end of the third lap when Y/N leaned over and pushed me towards the floor. It threw me off just enough to make me lose focus for a second and allow her to pass me.

“Hey!” I said, “That’s cheating!”

“Not cheating,” she argued, still making sure to gently elbow my right arm. “Just a distraction.”

I managed to catch the wind from the back of her bike and race past her. The finish line was in sight, just ahead of me.

“Ty!” she screeched. “How in the world?”

“Talent.”

Just as I was about to finish the race, a red shell came rushing towards me and stopped my just shy of the finish line. Y/N zipped past me before I could recover, earning her the spot of first place.

“Yes!” she said, shooting up to a standing position. “I won the first race!”

“By cheating!”

“It was not cheating!”

“Was too!”

“You’re just jealous.”

“I’m not jealous.”

She looked so cute as she began to dance around the room in her oversized sweatshirt. In one dramatic motion, she grabbed a blanket and pulled it around her shoulders like a cape.

“I’m the queen of Mario Kart!” she announced.

“Y/N, you won one race. Tyler is still way ahead of you,” Carter said.

“Shh, peasant,” she held a hand out to him. “Your queen is celebrating.”

Carter and I shared a look as she continued to parade around the room. Eventually, she grew tired of the performance and took a seat back next to me on the floor, a little closer than she had been before.

“You still have three more races to win if you even want a chance at beating me,” I smiled.

“I’ll do it, just you watch.”

“And no more cheating.”

“No promises.”

We finished the next three races, most of which went by without incident. Although Y/N didn’t do anything drastic to aid her wins, she did manage to elbow me here and there. It’s not like she needed to, her arm simply brushing against mine now and again while she played was enough of a distraction.

“Ok, let’s find out who won and then I need to get home,” I said.

Carter grabbed the piece of paper that we had been scorekeeping on.

“With nine wins, our first place champion is…” Carter looked at the two of us. ”That’s your cue to drumroll,” he added with a whisper.

Y/N and I both drummed against our legs, creating a very quiet drumroll.

“Tyler Joseph!”

I stood up and did my own little happy dance around the room.

“But that’s not all!” Carter said. “Also with nine wins, making them tied for first place with Joseph, is…”

Another quiet drumroll.

“Y/F/N Y/L/N!”

“Yes!” Y/N cheered, immediately jumping to a standing position. “Ha! Take that, Tyler!”

I reached out to shake her hand, “Congratulations, Y/N.”

She shook my hand for a brief moment before grabbing her blanket cape from earlier. This time, she draped it around both of our shoulders. With one arm around my waist, she began to parade both of us around the room.

“Bow down, Car! Your brand new bike-using Mario Kart champions have arrived.”

“I’m not worthy,” he said sarcastically.

Y/N laughed and stopped leading me around the room, although she kept an arm wrapped around my waist. I knew I needed to leave, but she…

Nope. Not happening.

“I should go,” I said, already beginning to peel the blanket away.

Y/N’s arm dropped away and went to grab the loose end of the blanket that I had let fall. She pulled it up over her shoulder and wrapped it tightly around her so that it no longer looked quite like a cape.

“It’s late,” she nodded. Her mouth curled up into a slight smile. “Thanks for coming over, Ty. This was fun.”

“Agreed,” I said, returning her smile. “I’ll see you guys soon enough.”

“Later, Joseph,” Carter added.

Y/N waved to me before I left the room and headed down the stairs. I could already hear the two of them starting a debate about something new as I opened the front door. It had been a good day, that was for sure.

There was just a lot for me to think about.

Taglist

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