#i will say the framing for these is kinda off especially for the latter two

[j4yb-rd]

i know nobody was asking for these, but here are the screenshots i took for the backgrounds of my website! might upload more in the future :)

[sillyromance]

🩸👀🤖

Good day/night, Void-Draws!

🩸- reformation:

My attitude to this phenomenon is quite positive. I see reformation vore as a perfect way to relax and to make a "reboot" of all my systems - it's like to get born once again for a prey. Also, a pred doesn't need to concentrate on holding back digestion - everything goes as it should, the pred has a chance to absorb nutrients they require while knowing that their small friend won't feel hurt. Now the prey is painlessly passing away, but tomorrow they will be alive and sound asleep right beside their big pal. Also, it's just quite pleasant for both sides: the pred feels as their stomach softens, gets squishy and round, faintly gurgling as it happily works on a large "meal", and extra heaviness goes away, beings replaced by warmth and faint laziness; the prey enjoys tickling all around their body, fuzzily noticing while dozing off as their solid form melts into hot liquid...

Of course, some might say that acid can burn even when it's followed by reformation. Then I'd say I'm OK with that too. However, in such case, I'm thinking about an accident when no one of the involved haven't known that digestion without death is possible. For example, the prey gives up their life to help the pred survive, or the pred is forced to eat the prey (these two could be caught by their enemies and such procedure would be the most violent way to torture them), both being absolutely sure it's the end; however, next day the prey, safe and sound, wakes up beside their partner. This situation is great for a good angsty scenario with a sweet ending.

👀 - appearance:

Well, personally, I pay very much attention on it. I like male and non-binary preds who are usually humanoids; they are tall (way taller than a prey, sometimes literally giants), slim enough, though kinda bulky (I'm not a fan of skinny preds, but there may be some exceptions) and, definitely, quite strong. Coming to details, I like when a pred has a thick neck - then it's so easy to imagine sliding down their throat - and a wide torso. Also I have understood quite quickly that I have to like a person's face to consider them a pred; so, if describing, I often choose middle-aged, a bit severe/round-faced people/humanoids who have warm wide smile and wise, piercing eyes. Bonus points if a pred has a cool outfit (suits, armour, uniform). The only thing I can't accept in a potential pred is a beard, although I'm OK with moustaches. Combining all mentioned together, I think, the perfect preds for me are: Drift (TF RID), Fritz Howard (The Closer/Major Crimes), Darth Vader (Star Wars) - I know little about the last fictional universe but I have always been interested in one of its main antagonists.

As for preys, I often see them as miniature beings of all genders. Nevertheless, if I was a pred, I would choose a cute tiny elegant girl with big sparkling eyes, health blush on pretty cheeks and a funny pinned-up nose. So, the best prey for me is my own OC - Sacura.

🤖 - robot preds/preys:

Oh! These ones are my beloved! I don't see robots as preys though - well, it can happen if both parties are machines; so, this answer is going to be about robot preds only...

Recently I have discovered transformers; consequently, ma-a-any of them have became my sincere predcrushes. And generally, I'm really really into robotic vore. Robots can control all the processes going in their bodies, so they are perfect for every possible scenarios from safe to fatal; they can have lights built in the walls of their internal organs which can help a prey to relax inside (especially, if the latter is afraid of darkness); robots are surely able to regulate their body temperature and liquids circulation, this way, such preds' stomachs can be as warm and dry as their preys want! Robots are a pure treasure for protective vore enjoyers - their metal armour successfully shield everything behind it including little life curled up inside the tough frame. So, as you can see, there are endless reasons why robots should be used as preds more often!

Moreover... There is something magnificent in a situation when a person discovers soft and vulnerable spots of a creature which, at the first glance, seems to be nothing but roughness itself. This contrast makes my nerves tingle a little because it's way harder to be gentle and careful with your friend when you're made of hard materials.

[luphorics]

Hi! First i want to say that i love your art and your ocs and i wanted to ask something about Gale if you don't mind. In the info you said they were being framed for deaths especially surrounding umbrella, would Gale have had ties to umbrella then? Would they have met Luis Serra, and how would their relationship have been? Would they have met other characters from the organization? Sorry if i asked too much questions i just love RE ocs, specially if they had a past with umbrella

HELLOO ANON ;0; thank you so much!! hearing that put a huge smile on my face hehe :3

aahh, Gale is an oc that i haven't talked about in forever, but i was super excited when concepting them at the time. this is gonna be a bit of a read, so i'll be talking about everything that i can under that "read more" section!! :3

so Gale themselves weren't directly associated with Umbrella, but they do have ties in the sense that three relatives have worked as scientists forbthem. One of these relatives was Gale's aunt (Dr. Elois Dimaaya), and the other two were more of older cousins. Their works were well-recognized and Gale's aunt in particular has worked with Luis.

Of course, already having three relatives who work for this corporation easily sets Gale on a path of blood. This is especially considering that Gale was pretty close to them to a considerable degree as family members

In the lore I have down so far, there have been rumors that the cousins were collectively working against Umbrella in secret—which is eventually proven true after they both suddenly drop off Umbrella's radar. One of the cousins sought refuge in the house of Gale's father, only for the latter to discover that he was infected with an unnamed virus and was gradually mutating. The two fought to the death with no fruition, as they both ended up dying. In that same week, Gale was apprehended one night by the other already-mutated cousin, also forcing them to defend themselves once she had lost all her humanity. Gale, however, managed to gain the upper hand and kill their cousin—but this news quickly reaches Umbrella associates.

The only remaining relative was Elois, but she had mysteriously resigned from Umbrella months prior to the cousins' mutations. Her whereabouts remain unknown afterwards. Without any trace of Elois for Umbrella to find and pull her into questioning, they sought out to apprehend her niece, Gale, into questioning—especially after Umbrella learned that they had killed one of their cousins, and the other was also killed by their father. This prompts Gale to go into hiding after being ambushed by Umbrella's security services, thus changing the trajectory of their life.

To make matters more serious, Umbrella eventually fabricated a story that framed Gale as responsible for the deaths of their cousins. Along with the security service on their head, Umbrella hoped this tactic would somehow drive their aunt of the shadows.

Anyhow, between the events of RE2 and a personal arc of theirs that takes place after RE5, they're kinda working alongside a secret organization of vigilantes with an agenda against bio-terrorism. So, unfortunately they aren't present in RE4 and therefore has never met Luis Serra. However, I did headcanon that Luis has mentioned some things about Elois Dimaaya and Gale's cousins to Leon, which implies they were collaborating colleagues at a point back at Umbrella. Eventually, when Leon does encounter Gale after RE4, he shares to them what he learned about their relatives from Luis's perspective.

While I can't fully say for sure how Gale would've hypothetically interacted with Luis had they met, I feel like they would have similar sentiments in terms of how they view Umbrella. And I can see that Gale would've asked him a lot about their relatives if they discovered he once used to work for Umbrella and all that.

But yeah, as far as it goes, Gale hasn't really met any other characters from Umbrella since they're also working against them akchajcj. They are pretty familiar with a lot of the other characters such as Leon, Ada, the Redfield Siblings, etc. because they've encountered these guys at least more than once during their stint as a vigilante ;0;

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Law Abiding Citizen (Gray, 2009)

After watching White House Down and London Has Fallen recently, I was hankering to see President Jamie Foxx and his number one bodyguard and best friend Gerard Butler reunited in some implausible thriller shenanigans. Or that’s how my brain worked. Never mind that those are actually different movies which respectively star only one of them. But I’d like to think during production they bonded over their mutual love of Air Force One, the OG presidential Die Hard clone, and decided to go off and make competing versions. For my money, Foxx made the much better movie, but for actual money, as in the box office, Butler’s series won out.

Anyway, times definitely have changed because I remember seeing the trailer for this and hearing Butler say “Release me…or I’ll kill everyone!” (or something to that effect) and thinking it was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard, and as a result ruled out watching this movie. (I remember my friends going to see this, I don’t remember if I deliberately opted out or if I happened to be busy.) Of course, at the time, I hadn’t the greatest opinion of Butler as an actor, having hated 300. Now, almost a decade and a half later, and having done a total one-eighty on him after seeing Den of Thieves (“Oh fuck, gimme the Pepto!”), if I heard him say that line in a trailer now, I would likely be there Day…. Maybe not Day 1, because I don’t like crowds, but definitely within the first two weeks. Definitely sooner than I tried to see Plane, which ended up being pulled from wide release much earlier than I expected and as such remains unseen by me.

I got into my feelings around torture in American movies a little in my review of London Has Fallen. It’s very much part of this movie’s fabric, but I give the movie an ounce of credit that it tries to frame it as a point of contention, even if it’s nowhere near smart enough to air these arguments out intelligently. The movie opens with Butler’s family being horrifically raped and killed (and not quite in that order, for added pungency). So he decides to get his revenge through his genius for elaborate traps and torture, meting out particularly agonizing deaths for the perps within the first act before moving on to the other members of the judicial system who failed him. And to the movie’s credit, even though it very much cheers him on for torturing and killing the murderers, it does halfassedly concede that a) him doing so makes him the bad guy and b) such vigilantism is more than likely to spill over to undeserving targets. The torture element suggests a clear Saw influence (the version I saw at least cut away during the most gruesome parts, although a supposedly more graphic version exists), but there’s also the mayor suggesting they shuffle him off to Guantanamo Bay or something along those lines, and the fact that he mails video footage of his acts to the hero’s family, that suggests a movie, however awkwardly, trying to position itself as a comment or symptom of the times.

So that stuff is sort of interesting to wrangle with, but most of the fun comes here from Foxx and Butler going head to head in a series of bozo mindgames, where the latter especially makes a lot of statements about the nature of justice pitched at a level that Really Makes U Think. Butler has a way of imbuing total seriousness and contempt into utterly ludicrous dialogue that goes a long way here. “This is Von Clausevitz shit. Total fucking war.” There are some decent supporting performances, like Colm Meaney doing his usual asshole shtick, and Leslie Bibb as a colleague of Foxx’s you know the filmmakers originally wanted him to hook up with before realizing that wouldn’t work with his family man character, but they still have some good chemistry. And while this is very much indebted to Saw stylistically, unlike that movie it actually looks kinda good, with a gloomy, grey, grungy, concrete brutalist look that provides some moments of unexpected artfulness, like the cuts between a school recital and an execution, or the way the flames frame a certain character.

[llyfrenfys]

Curious about the phrasing 'would affect Welsh culture' - in what way are you discussing this with your friend? It could mean a lot of things to very different people. (Saying all of this as a former user of the Welsh course on Duolingo btw).

E.g. 'negatively affects Welsh culture' is not the same as 'negatively affects the Welsh language' (which is still a dicey framing imo).

'Negatively affects Welsh culture' (as is written) could be interpreted by some as 'people who learn solely and only on duolingo without any other resources have problems grasping certain forms and constructions (not adequately explained in the app) which can make communication with other/native speakers difficult' OR, it could be interpreted as 'The duolingo course produces Welsh speakers who use too much slang and dilute the language/dialects'.

I've seen both takes and while both have much more nuance, one of these viewpoints is a bit more politically charged than the other (the latter viewpoint tends to be said alongside things like 'licio is an English borrowing into Welsh and it's new/ruining Welsh - even though licio as a word is actually a borrowing hundreds of years old at this point (c. 1609 according to Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru).

There are issues with the Duolingo course for sure and the plan to pause editing the course and leaving it as-is isn't ideal (since the app in general is so buggy). One of the biggest issues I'd say is that because the chats and grammar notes on Duolingo have been scrapped/severely reduced, learners on Duolingo are left in the dark on a lot of topics, including:

Regional forms - (I'm in the Duolingo Welsh learners group on Facebook and there are lots of confused learners asking if words are regional variations (i.e. North/South) or not because of the limitations of the app. Practically, there can't be separate North and South Welsh versions of the course on Duolingo the same way there can't be 3 different versions of the Irish course on Duolingo for its main 3 dialects (Connacht, Ulster and Munster). The course is (as close as is possible) a 50/50 split between North and South Welsh constructions, despite those who thoroughly believe it's somehow 'biased' against their specific dialect, it is as even as can be for an app not designed for two dialects in a single language.

Grammar (especially mutations) - Many people also get tripped up here since suddenly words are 'changing' and they don't know why since the course doesn't explain it well enough. Other issues are the syntax (Welsh is Verb-Subject-Object / VSO) and the gender of words.

Audio - I usually don't have headphones around and skip most audio questions, but I've heard from a lot of other people the audio isn't the best quality and leads to ambiguity (e.g. discerning the difference between 'cau' and 'cae' with poor audio is tricky).

Technical problems - The app is also very glitchy which doesn't help! The fear is that if development is paused on the Welsh course, all the present glitches and bugs will be left unsolved on the app.

Now, these are all ways that Duolingo may have a negative impact on the *language* but this says nothing about culture. Language isn't the same thing as culture (rather, it is a constituent part of it) so the poll phrasing is a little vague. You *could* argue that a poorly-maintained Welsh course on Duolingo could harm the language by being off-putting to new learners, but again this says nothing re: culture.

Finally, on the 'non-Welsh people learning' thing- this could get real dicey really fast (for more in-depth discussion on this topic please see this other post by me). But none- literally no harm will come to the Welsh language by having 'non-Welsh' people learn it. Many Welsh speakers live in Patagonia, Argentina for instance and this has had a positive effect on the language, if anything (Argentinian Welsh speakers invented the modern Welsh counting system). To insinuate Welsh is closed to outsiders is complete tosh and kinda smacks of applying the wrong sort of language activism onto Welsh in ways which I may elaborate on later.

But anyway, tldr: this is a nuanced topic and the poll may not produce any meaningful answer without adding in that nuance.

Dear Welsh people!

How do you feel about non-Welsh people learning Welsh (on Duolingo specifically)? I'm discussing this issue with a friend who's also not Welsh (we're just curious), so I would like to know your opinion on it.

[butterflydm]

wot reread: overall view from LoC through KoD

spoilers through knife of dreams

Fav arcs:

Rand dealing with LTT. This is kinda The Big Arc for Rand in the Jordan-penned books and it is also the arc that lands the best... when it actually gets screen-time. We see his growing worry over how clear LTT’s voice is becoming, his worry that LTT might seize saidin from him. It’s a rollercoaster a lot of the time, though mostly he’s going down and down, but it’s intense and dramatic. And it feels like we really effectively build up to the scene in KoD where “Lews Therin” does seize control for a while. Main problem with this storyline is simply that Rand gets minimized as a character in the last few books (though not as much as Nynaeve does), so we don’t see enough of this on-screen.

Egwene becoming a Real Amyrlin and not just a figurehead. The most significant difference between Rand and Egwene’s leadership arcs, I would say, is that Rand is thrown in the deep end and has to learn ‘on the job’ while Egwene gets extensive (albeit unorthodox) training before she gets put into her leadership position. But her storyline throughout these books stays interesting all the way through.

Black Ajah Hunters; take two! Elaida accidentally starts off one of the best subplots in this second half of the series. I LOVE the Black Ajah Hunters subplot. Seaine and Pevara, especially, are both great characters and it has a lot of interesting twists and turns. In a set of books where I felt like most plotlines were being stretched out too much or shouldn’t exist at all, I would have been fine with more Black Ajah Hunters! scenes.

Elayne and Aviendha’s journey to becoming first-sisters. I am absolutely on the Avilayne train for the show, but I do also love pretty much everything about their relationship in the books. This relationship has a depth and a complexity to it that the VAST majority of the romantic relationships only WISH they had (and is more romantic too). If the first five books kinda centered around Mat x Rand as the central relationship I cared about, the latter five Jordan books center around Elayne x Aviendha for me.

Elayne dealing with politics in Andor. Genuinely enjoyed so much of this! Politics & intrigue. Sieges. Plots and treachery. It was such a breath of fresh air in the last two books, especially. I was always relieved when I got to an Elayne chapter.

Least fav arcs (or themes):

Perrin and the Shaido. Perrin’s whole meandering plotline is a mess. The Shaido should NOT have been an issue after Dumai’s Well, period. They were absolutely played out at that point and it was kinda ridiculous that they apparently managed to survive yet another complete bloodbath of a battle that they were the losers of, after already going through that once with the Battle of Cairhien. And then Perrin deciding to partner with... the Seanchan? Instead of getting back into contact with Rand’s forces? You accomplished your mission, Perrin! Masema is Right There. You and Rand don’t have to play at being enemies any more! This is all a result of there just not being Enough Plot for Perrin, I’d say. I think it was @essie007 who suggested we should give Perrin the Seanchan plot with Tuon, while Mat goes back to Caemlyn and actually gets to be the General for the Forces of Light for a worthwhile period of time. Since Perrin ends up slogging through a Seanchan plot anyway, consolidate and give us only ONE Seanchan team-up plotline in this section of the books.

Mat and Tylin. Poorly framed. Turning rape into comedy is always a bad choice, and I don’t care if Jordan’s intention was to go “look at the role reversal” because way too much of the world doesn’t care about women being sexually assaulted either, so it unfortunately doesn’t even make an effective point about how reversing the ‘typical’ genders can flip PoV. That it ends with Mat deciding that actually it was All Okay and He’ll Genuinely Miss Her is... particularly awful and has been used by so many people to say it actually wasn’t sexual assault at all.

Mat and Tuon. The Joy Of Talking Yourself Into Being In Love With a Slaver. Will always hate that Mat was given this as his endgame pairing. He deserved so much better. I could pick a random character from the books out of a hat and they would probably be a better match for him and a happier ending. Ugh. Featuring such hits as: a. Consent King Mat no longer cares about consent and thinks that Tuon is ‘more beautiful than ever’ when she is actively enslaving people; b. Tuon turning genuine gifts from Mat into ways to hurt innocent people because she is a trashfire of a person; c. Mat putting in 110% effort while Tuon passively accepts it as her due because she’s the One Real Human In The World (the only person who can never be non-person’d, from her PoV). I think more than Tuon herself (who had the potential to be interesting), I really despise what this relationship turns Mat into. Which is a common problem with Jordan’s romances! Same thing happens with Faile and Perrin. Their relationship turns Perrin into such an annoying person. (#AreTheStraightsOK?)

The ‘Actually, Slavery Isn’t So Bad And Makes Life Better For Everyone Else’ Seanchan-related narrative arguments that we start to see, especially in CoT & KoD. This is the point in the books, I guess, where Jordan wanted to start making it clear that We Are Going To Ally With The Slavers (since Rand wasn’t able to drive them away in TPoD) and so he needs to buff and shine them up to attempt to make this entire concept less vomit-inducing. And I guess this also kinda goes along with the increasing vibe in the series that Love and Prophecy are both also kinds of leashes/servitudes and that it is Right and Good to submit yourself to this kind of slavery (plus we also keep having Bad Women Who Deserve To Be Slaves due likely to Jordan’s own Can’t Kill A Woman issue, and it all leaves a very bad taste in my mouth).

Rituals involving women Must Contain Nudity. *frustrated sigh*

The ‘love triangle’ between Perrin-Faile-Berelain aka a supposedly saavy ruler spends... 6 books (?!?) desperately chasing after a married man who is desperately in love with his wife and was never going to ‘pick’ her in a million years. So pointless! So annoying!

Min Completely Changes Herself For A Man, all while protesting that she hates women who do that sort of thing. She goes from someone who seems confident in herself and personality to someone who has molded herself to most closely fit Rand’s desires as best she can determine them without ever actually having a conversation about it at any point. It’s especially sad because... Rand liked Actual!Min fine? She didn’t need to completely change herself for him. When we find out in Winter’s Heart that her hair isn’t naturally curly and she’s been curling it daily ‘for him’ ever since she showed up in Caemlyn... and there isn’t a single mention of her hair when it isn’t in ringlets, which means that she’s doing that literally no matter what other important things might be happening because Glamming It Up For Her Man is her Most Important Job.

Women Deserve Fates Worse Than Death (because it’s so terrible to get them killed!). The double-standard around how female villains are treated vs how male villains are treated is GLARING in this set of books.

Top 12 characters (in alphabetical order because I can’t pick):

I added extra because two of them are conditional and so only half-count.

Aviendha -- we finally get some Aviendha PoVs and they are absolute gold, every single one. We get to see her being thoughtful and adapting to new situations and being sweet and emotional and honest, but also have that ruthless core still.

Berelain (Lord of Chaos/pre-Perrin chasing) -- she’s such a competent ruler! And she flat-out borders on being adorable when she’s interacting with the Aiel. And then... the one-sided Triangle of Doom happens. It’s such a bizarre and useless thing to do with her character. It never adds anything of value. It feels like it was there as excuse for Berelain to tag along with Perrin but she already had a POLITICAL reason for that. But I love Good Proxy Ruler Berelain and her dynamic with the Aiel. TBH, a Good Ending for Berelain would have been to get married to one of the Aiel clan chiefs. I think it would have made everyone happy. Sorilea would have been happy to matchmake for her.

Egwene -- I like Egwene a lot better once she stops lying to the Wise Ones and starts lying to the Aes Sedai, lol. Mostly because at that point she’s doing political maneuvering, rather than lying to people who have been nothing but helpful and kind to her and have considered her essentially family. But once she gets to Salidar, she feels like an underdog who is working her way to success by gaming the system to her advantage. The Aes Sedai deserved to be lied to, basically. And she is probably the best part of KoD, though Elayne comes close.

Elayne -- love seeing her get super-excited about creating ter’angreal in LoC. she gets a lot of growth in re-thinking her assumptions about Mat in ACoS. It’s just a shame all that growth gets cut off at the knees when Mat gets spliced into the Seanchan storyline. And I liked her politics in Andor arc. She grows into herself as a queen and an Aes Sedai. Love how her relationship with Aviendha develops.

Elaida --  okay, hear me out, lol. After being reminded in LoC that she’s been tainted by Aridhol, her story is actually both fascinating and tragic! She’s early books Mat, only she doesn’t have anyone who cares for her enough as a person to see her becoming a paranoid monster and fight to find a way to heal and save her from it. Also, while Elaida is becoming more and more egotistical and paranoid, so is Rand, so she actually provides a compelling counterpoint to Rand’s descent. She parallels Rand, but a different part of Rand than Egwene does.

Loial -- he’s a tertiary character and always been sent off somewhere out of the main plot but he’s an enjoyable stand-out, whether he’s feverishly taking notes about whatever it is that Rand’s is doing or putting a long handle on his axe to help out or finally getting married.

Mat (pre-Tuon) -- Mat in Lord of Chaos: S-tier. Amazing. Wonderful PoV. Love him to pieces. Peak of his development. Flawed but always interesting. He’s funny in an oblivious PoV way, we get to see some very nice leader of the Band of the Red Hand stuff from him. It really does suck that this dynamic almost immediately got taken away? He gets the BotRH at the end of TFOH and then the very next book, he loses them when he goes to Ebou Dar and doesn’t reunite with them until KoD. It really does feel like Mat HAD an arc as Rand’s general and then Jordan remembered about the prophecy and he was abruptly sliced away from that plotline so that he could be spliced into the Seanchan plotline instead (he doesn’t even get to finish out the plan that he made about Sammael!) where he is slowly ground down to a shell of his previous self and it is heartbreaking. He goes from flying Rand’s banner and risking his life to free slaves (LoC-WH!Mat) to giving a slaver gifts and pandering to her whims in hopes that she’ll fall in love with him so that his marriage isn’t a total hellscape (that marriage is gonna be a TOTAL hellscape; she does not respect him as a person)... in less than two months! A character assassination arc that pretends to be an ‘arranged marriage’ romance.

Nynaeve -- my darling angel, our lovely rage healer. She grows so much in this second half of the series! Love that she was able to break her block and get her man. She helps Rand cleanse saidin as well, which is epic. She kinda drops off the map after that, with the exception of a great set of scenes with Lan & his people, which is unfortunate. We needed more Nynaeve!

Rand -- All three of the main male characters get put through negative character arcs in these six books but Rand’s feels the most purposeful so it doesn’t bother me like Mat and Perrin’s do. The actual progression of his ‘relationship’ with Lews Therin I like. The increasing amounts of paranoia, reckless, etc. is very concerning but makes sense. His relationship with Min mostly feels like it undermines his story, though, rather than adding to it.

Seaine -- our first of the Black Ajah Hunters that Elaida semi-accidentally sets up and I love her to pieces. Her love for her dead family and for kitties and that she has friends outside her Ajah! She kinda gets less and less important as the Black Ajah Hunters storyline goes on, but I do love her.

Sulin -- (Lord of Chaos) We have her struggle to try to protect Rand without setting off his overprotectiveness alarm, her willingly incurring toh to do her best to ensure that he’s guarded appropriately. Her servant arc and then dropping it, again, for Rand’s sake. Claiming Rand as her first-brother! It kinda sucks that she gets sent away from him in ACoS. imo this was done because No One But Min is allowed to be affectionate towards Rand now that she’s got him on the hook, so Sulin got sent away so that MIN and only Min could play caretaker.

Verin -- Always fascinating. A ruthless pragmatist in many ways, she’s also subtle enough to avoid detection. I feel like she would have made a much better post-Moiraine mentor for Rand than Cadsuane and even more complicated.

And just a quick shout out to Selende and Merana for being excellent tertiary characters. And while I hate the Shaido sideplot, I like Faile & her companions inside it -- I just think they deserved a better plot. Galad gives SUCH a strong performance in the prologue of KoD that I have to add him too. Ituralde is also a good tertiary character, as well as Bashere. I also enjoy pretty much the full set of Black Ajah Hunters, not just Seaine.

Fav scenes (roughly in chronological order):

Bashere dealing with one of Rand’s fits of cold rage, early on in Lord of Chaos. It’s an impressive scene for Bashere and shows why he is a good fit for working under Rand, who does have certain issues that he literally can’t control.

Literally every time the Maidens fuss over Rand in Lord of Chaos.

Rand with the Two Rivers’ girls in Caemlyn! It ends sadly, but the early part of it is fairly cute and sweet and Rand enjoys himself even with the guilt he’s feeling.

Elayne and her joy about creating ter’angreal. She likes it and she’s so good at it.

Rand at the school in Cairhien! Love love love! Everything about this scene is magic and I hope we get Rand’s Schools in the show.

Egwene and Rand refuse to help each other in LoC. A sad scene but it works really well as two PoVs clashing and they both make perfect sense to themselves but are completely coming across the wrong way to the other person.

Mat dealing with the Aiel attack on the BotRH.

Rand figures out that IF THEY WERE FARMERS, he and Elayne wouldn’t be considered related at all. lol

Berelain takes tea with the Wise Ones. Even in Egwene’s negatively-biased PoV, Berelain comes off so well here and her relationships with the Aiel Wise Ones are beautiful.

Sulin being done with her toh because she needs to save Rand.

Perrin calling on the wolves to come help save Rand.

Rand removes the Cairhienin crown from Colavaere’s head using the One Power.

Elayne stands up against the Salidar embassy and re-affirms that she IS Aes Sedai and they will stop treating her as if she is still Accepted.

Nynaeve breaking through her block & being reunited with Lan. (if we take out the Jordan-obligatory Romantic Violence)

Elayne takes the Aes Sedai to go meet the Kin and they learn how old Reanne is (much older than any Aes Sedai).

Elaida accidentally putting the first ball in motion for the creation of the Black Ajah Hunters in the White Tower.

Seaine immediately disobeying Elaida’s order for secrecy and bringing her old friend Pevara into what she has decided MUST be a hunt for the Black Ajah.

Mat’s fight in the warehouse in the Rahad, trying to avenge Elayne (he thinks she’s dead at that point).

Though I HATE that Mat isn’t there to finish out the plan against Sammael, when we actually see Rand’s side of it unfold, it’s very cool and clever. First in Illian and then in Shadar Logoth.

Rand meeting Moridin in Shadar Logoth and their streams crossing!

Rand getting the crown of swords. I love how it marries the kindness that we remember from Rand in earlier books to the arrogance that he’s developed in the time since then, and the ominous warning note that the book ends on.

Elayne unweaving her Gateway and the aftermath of it, the moment she realizes when she wants Aviendha for her first-sister.

Egwene takes control during the meeting to declare war on Elaida.

The Black Ajah Hunters find one of the Black Ajah!

Elayne and Aviendha become first-sisters. 💕💕💕💕

Elayne and Aviendha finally getting to see Rand again; it’s been a million years (we’ll ignore how quickly he dips on them, just for the moment).

In the middle of his own escape plans, Mat frees the captive Windfinder and shows her how to free the others.

The cleansing of saidin is pretty epic.

Elayne and Aviendha reacting to the huge usage of saidar that makes the cleansing.

Egwene declares that they can open negotiations with the White Tower... with their terms being Elaida surrendering completely, resigning, and going into exile.

The lesser consensus of the rebel White Tower stands to send an ambassy to the Black Tower to open negotiations for an alliance.

Aviendha has a careful conversation with Egwene in TAR, where she doesn’t disclose any of Rand’s secrets.

Egwene takes over Bode’s place in the plan to create the blockade in the harbor of Tar Valon.

Having learned that Morgase was abused and imprisoned by Valda, Galad challenges him to trial by combat and defeats him, taking control of the Whitecloaks.

Egwene is taken inside the Tower as a captive, but realizes this gives her a chance to bring her battle inside the Tower itself.

Ituralde vs the Seanchan. 💕

“Will he ride alone?” 💕

Lews Therin grabs saidin and fights against Shadowspawn, introducing Rand and Logain to Blossoms of Fire, Deathgates, and Arrows of Fire. Rand struggles to get LTT to release the Power afterwards.

Elayne gets rescued by Birgitte and immediately realizes she has an opportunity to move forward and secure the throne of Andor.

Thoughts on canon Romances so far:

For the Rand romances: Whenever Rand and Elayne think about each other, I am Struck Dead by Romance. When they finally get to interact in a scene again, it is Amazing, and Elayne is the key element to making the poly relationship feel poly and not like a harem. Sadly, they have far too little screentime, once again. Poor Aviendha is also avoided by Rand during this latter set of books, despite how much he likes her. The main romance to feature for Rand in this arc is, of course, Rand and Min. Oh, boy.

First, gotta say, such a strange narrative choice for Jordan to focus on how Rand loves Elayne and Aviendha too much to subject them to his dangerous presence, and then have him drag Min around everywhere with him like a backpack after TPoD. It’s especially weird because, as the ONLY non-channeler in this set of relationships, Min is actually way more vulnerable than either Elayne or Aviendha and much more likely to have been accidentally killed. Min is constantly put into dangerous situations as a result of standing next to Rand. I mean, I assume the reason for this is that Min has already done everything for the narrative that she’s required to do, so she literally has nothing better to do with her time than be Rand’s accessory, but it does stand out.

As for Min, her thought before she sees Rand again (in Chapter 41 of LoC) kinda sums it all up on her side of things: you’ll be whatever you think he wants you to be.

Aviendha and Elayne are both very much still essentially the same person with or without Rand in their lives -- they love him but they do not shape their identities around him. Min embroiders her clothes when she’s never done it before and grows her hair out and curls it into ringlets down to her shoulders and wears heeled boots that make her wobble and that she hates, and sits on his lap and simpers and flirts even though she’s harshly judged other women for doing the same. Out of the three women in Rand’s life, Min is the only one who ‘changes herself for a man’. She shapes her entire identity around being of service to Rand and being mildly sassy as she does it doesn’t change that fact. It would probably bother me a lot less if Elayne x Rand and Aviendha x Rand were also being given screentime at the same time, but when Min x Rand is the ONLY pairing that gets actual attention, I notice all the things I dislike about it more.

Related: Min is bad for Rand’s mental health and well-being, actually, imo. My evidence consists of a few main points - viewings she has that are bad for him, and her inability to keep secrets about him while being able to keep secrets from him.

Her viewing that “Aes Sedai will hurt you” ends up being part of what makes Rand run headlong into Elaida’s embassy and The Box.

Her viewing that “Cadsuane needs to teach Rand a lesson” actually hinders a potential Rand & Cadsuane partnership because Rand isn’t actually honestly responding to what Cadsuane is doing; he’s responding to Min’s viewing, which means that Cadsuane uses ineffective and counterproductive means for a long time.

Her viewing that Elza will “serve Rand” “in her own way” does not age well in the long run. And that’s a weird viewing, too, because Min DOESN’T have a viewing at first but desperately WANTS a viewing and then all of a sudden a viewing appears that is exactly what she wanted it to be.

Her viewing that Alivia will ‘help Rand die’ seems to feed into Rand’s death wish. And then she’s an asshole to Alivia for no good reason.

She spills all of Rand’s Box trauma about Aes Sedai to Cadsuane, Cadsuane’s two Aes Sedai minions, and Caraline Damodred and Lord Darlin. She does not tell Rand that she’s breached his privacy.

She initially hides from him the fact that she’s had (what she believes is) a failed set of viewings, which means that he views her viewings as Absolutely Certain. Given Rand’s dependency on prophecies at this point, I absolutely believe having an ‘in-house’ fortune teller is a bad thing for him. (she does tell him sometime between CoT and KoD but it’s clear that Rand’s belief in her viewings has solidified by this time, even when she WANTS him to doubt her now)

She almost immediately also tells Cadsuane that she’s bonded to Rand, continuing her saga of “can only keep a secret from Rand, but never on Rand’s behalf”. And she ALSO tells Cadsuane that she told Rand that he needs Cadsuane, so she very much is giving Cadsuane every possible advantage over Rand that she can, despite this being AFTER she was disturbed by Cadsuane saying she would only hurt Rand “as much as she needed to”. She appears to like and trust Cadsuane much more than she trusts and likes her romantic partner.

In their brief scene together in CoT, she appears to be trying to stoke Rand’s paranoia higher by telling him that her viewing of Logain having an aura of glory might mean that he’ll try to displace Rand as the Dragon Reborn. She had that viewing of Logain back in TFoH, I believe, and there’s never been anything in it to indicate danger to Rand. But in KoD, Rand uses this viewing as part of his justification for not trusting Logain’s warnings about Taim subverting the Black Tower against him, which leads to Taim’s control over the Black Tower remaining unchecked.

Rand didn’t want her to come along to meet with (fake) Tuon, but she manipulated him to make a promise to her during sex, and then she refused to stay with the rest of the group (like he asked) and came up next to him instead, so that he essentially had to choose between protecting always-helpless Min (and losing his hand) or letting her get killed. Min is relatively helpless, an absolute damsel-in-distress compared to Rand’s other love interests. It really was inevitable that she would end up being used by the narrative like a damsel-in-distress if she kept insisting on going with Rand to all his most dangerous locations. It’s only surprising that it didn’t happen sooner, tbh.

Also, how strangely convenient it is that Min ‘which one of us will he REALLY marry’ Farshaw “doesn’t remember” her viewing that Elayne is pregnant, despite telling half of the Royal Palace about it before she jetted with Rand and Nynaeve.

Overall, Min is a LIABILITY to Rand for pretty much the entire time that she’s with him from LoC through KoD. She contributes nothing useful, despite actually having knowledge that would help him (she knows about the sul’dam secret), mostly spends her time being Rand’s Sexy Sexy Lamp or making his quality of life worse via her viewings stoking his paranoia and her lack of trust in him leading to her empowering people who treat him poorly (Cadsuane).

For Egwene: Kinda meh to ‘eh, might as well’ lol. She flipped a switch over to Gawyn during TFoH and basically just marches along that path in these books. It’s not a romance with very much substance to it (or screentime!), imo, even as they tell me how much they love each other. Egwene’s real love is politics, and THAT pairing I do like for her, lol. (apologies to @markantonys lol)

For Mat: Kill all ‘romances’ here with fire, lol. Hated everything with Tylin. Hated everything with Tuon. I do think Mat has a lot of chemistry with the women that he’s not allowed to seriously romance in the narrative (Elayne or Auldra, for example), which makes his actual ‘romances’ even worse in comparison, lol. Before, I was all “just let him be single; he’ll be happier that way” and am now on “wtf, just let him be single because the Pattern sucks at matchmaking”.

For Perrin: For all that the domestic violence/struggle between Faile and Perrin frustrated me early in the series, I have to admit it comes off much better in retrospect when compared to what’s happening between most of the relationships NOW.

In The Dragon Reborn (book 3), Faile and Perrin’s struggle over her preferred name vs Perrin forcing her family-given name of Zarine on her ends in Faile’s favor with him accepting that HER choosing to be Faile means that she’s Faile. In Tuon and Mat’s storyline, Mat is NOT allowed to have his preferred name be used by his wife -- instead, Tuon will use anything EXCEPT his preferred name for him, and we end in Knife of Dreams (book 11) by having her force his family-given name on him, refusing to call him ‘Mat’ and only using ‘Matrim’.

When Faile punches and attacks Perrin in The Shadow Rising (book 4), he makes it clear that he does not consider this acceptable behavior between romantic partners. I’m not thrilled with how Jordan went for a ‘fire vs fire’ approach of having Perrin humiliate/beat Faile into not enacting violence on him (violence to stop violence generally is not a great solution) but no one even tries to push back against the domestic violence anymore! It’s just considered acceptable for wives to punch their husbands hard enough to make their knees buckle (Setalle Anan to her husband in Winter’s Heart, book 9) or make them worry that they’ve broken a rib (Tuon to Mat in Knife of Dreams).

When Faile and Perrin get married in The Shadow Rising, though it is a rush decision, the relationship is still entered into with honest and clear eyes on the parts of both parties. Perrin is technically fated to be involved with Faile, but his decision to be with her is not based on Because Destiny Says So and is instead because he genuinely WANTS to be with her (even if he doesn’t understand her and there’s a major culture clash between them). They do choose one of their cultures to get married by but, again, Faile still AGREES to marry Perrin and she doesn’t do it by accident or get tricked into it by the Pattern, the way Mat is tricked into saying his vows to Tuon in Winter’s Heart.

The entire Faile and Perrin courtship is looking a lot healthier by comparison with all the later relationships that get featured screen-time. Both sides actually have to compromise and talk things out and the burden isn’t placed entirely on one party to do all the compromising. They’re together because they both freely choose it. And, after some struggle, they’ve realize that impulsive violence is not something that should have a place in their relationship.

I do still hate the tunnel-vision that Jordan gave Perrin in these recent books though. Literally anything that isn’t Faile gets dismissed as unimportant, whether that’s a best friend losing a hand or slavery infesting the continent where he lives.

For Nynaeve: Actual Equal Relationship? Sorta? With Consensual Kink? It Seems? The only bad part is that Nynaeve continues to feel shame about sharing her sexual feelings with... her husband? Like, Nynaeve if you can’t share them with LAN??? He is literally the most appropriate person to share them with. Please stop feeling ashamed about wanting to have sex with your husband; it makes me feel so sad for you and also makes me judge the Two Rivers hard. Plus the fact that the narrative kinda tricks them into the kink makes me sad all around. Don’t do it if you don’t like it! It doesn’t matter that the Sea Folk literally write kink into their wedding vows! They are not in your bedroom!

... if Avilayne were a canon romance, it would definitely be the winner right now though, with barely any competition. Emotionally intimate! They are never violent with each other! They support and care for each other and are a safe place for vulnerability and trust. This is what a healthy relationship looks like. I would like every heterosexual relationship in this series to please take some notes.

I’m planning on rereading New Spring and maybe The Strike on Shayol Ghul before I dive into the Sanderson books. But my next post is going to be my personal evaluation of The Slog (tm). Summary: oh boy it is so real.

[hoaqins-funk-house]

Springtrap

Yandere

Male Reader

Part 1

Sitting in the black swivel chair, you spin once or twice before coming to a stop, grimacing at the feeling of sticky floors beneath your shoes. This place is brand new, how the hell are the floors sticky? 

Actually, on that note, how is everything so covered in dust?

Sighing, your mindless fidgeting comes to a stop as the phone, just as dinky as the walls around you, begins to ring. You pick it up but put it back on the table, eyes drifting to the laptop and swing-out tablet. When you flip the former open, you note the four buttons, each relating to something you would have to reset when it comes time to. The latter has cameras that are scattered around, including a separate tab for vents. There’s an option to block off vents, which sends a chill up your spine as you glance to the big ass one at your side.

You decide to block that one off for now.

Humming, you familiarize yourself with the layout of the place, deciding to ignore the shadows that crept through your vision.

Your unenthused eyes scan and take in everything. The replicas (you had seen the originals, and they were permanently stained with both the smell and color of pizza sauce and lawsuits) that were in and around the office, as well as the little bobbleheads that sat on your desk of the animatronics, which were, for some reason, human? You boop the one who you assume to be Freddy, hearing the familiar squeak. 

A small smile comes to your lips.

It was at this time that you realized you had completely ignored the man on the phone, but you couldn't really bring yourself to care. 

The little drawings that were put up were authentic; not just anyone could recreate what a child's mind spits out and decides to draw. 

That Freddy looks a bit fucked up.

The posters were cutely designed, and after getting the gist of what everything was and how everything works, you were on your phone the rest of the night.

When six strikes, you casually leave, giving the building a quick once over as you leave the doors, locking them behind you.

If every night is going to be like that, this is going to get boring.

-

He’s stuck.

This suit traps him like a rabid dog, eager to stay gripped onto his neck.

Still, things would be changing soon.

He can feel it.

He can feel it as a fresh breeze, the first in many years, hits his nostrils, sending a wave of euphoria through his system. The bloodied musk that hung in the dank room was not a pleasant one.

He can feel it as his body accepts this new host, more and more, until soon, quite soon, he will become one with his vessel. 

Just as the animatronics before him did.

He ponders. 

Why was he being freed from this prison of his own design?

Is he being taken somewhere?

…

Will there be a night guard to terrorize?

A grin takes to his broken lips as he ignores the pain and blood that comes from them. Oh, a night guard! Truly, that will be a sight!

He can't wait. 

For now, however, he must play dead.

My, that voice that shouts with excitement from behind him…

It sounds so familiar.

"Bring the truck around!" He calls. "I found one, a real one! It's got the rips, the weird colors, and what I am going to assume is pizza sauce! Ohohoh man, I hit the jackpot with this one! Fazbear's Fright needed something, and here it is!" 

His congratulatory tone made the man within the suit want to throw up. Finding him was nothing to be happy about; he is despicable, incapable of redemption, and an awful being. 

And you know what? 

That's just the way he likes it.

So to have someone happy to find him, especially for their own purposes?

He won't let it stand. 

Yeah, if this place has a nightguard, he'll kill them without mercy before burning the entire thing to the ground.

Might as well make it fun for himself.

As light peeks through, clearly originating from a flashlight, he feels his pupils shrink, resisting the urge to let out a groan as his weak eyes ache from their decades of being in the dark.

"Whoahoh! This one looks gnarly!" The same man as before speaks, probably referencing the organs and tendons that were showing. "C'mon, let's get it up!"

His grin only grows as two people lift him onto a dolly, beginning the move.

Goodbye, saferoom.

And hello, Fazbear's Fright.

-

Humming, you walk into the building, skimming over the decorations once more before noticing something.

The papers that had fallen onto the ground from before, they had dirt on them. Not surprising on its own, but when they were in the shape of tire tracks? 

You decide to follow them, using your memory of the cameras to guide you through the building, which was already rather linear anyway.

Entering the last area, you could see a rather dilapidated animatronic suit, with organs visible and its fur matted with blood. Real blood. The old Springbonnie suit was nearly green from how old and dirty it was.

Your eyebrows raise. "Is that guy just stupid or did he knowingly bring in a suit that has a dead body in it?"

Honestly, you didn't care. "Eh, whatever. It'll probably start moving when I start my shift… I've heard those rumors about the other locations." You turn, stretching, unaware of the eyes that followed you or the head that turned your way.

Damn, does he want to kill this one?

Well, he can think it over more soon. After the merge.

He grins again, feeling his uneven, gouged skin begin to flare with pain.

You exit the room fully, making your way back to the office with all the urgency of an ADHD-riddled person doing laundry.

Which is to say… not much.

You fall into the chair, cursing as the thin mesh cushion does nothing to protect your tailbone from the metal frame of the chair. The phone rings not a moment later, you picking it up and laying it on the table again, eager to ignore it just as you had done before. You stretch again, arms raising above your head as you begin to flip through cameras, finding the rabbit in the same spot it was in before. 

You yawn.

Hopefully it starts moving soon, or else the entire reason you took this job would be unfulfilled. 

You were bored, and you remembered this place from the times you had gone with your younger brother, who was now in his early twenties. You, however, were 28 years of age, with nothing better to do than 'investigate' the Fazbear's Fright that opened up. Still, if that rabbit has a corpse in it, it should make things more fun.

As you lazily flip through your cameras, you set it down and look to the side, seeing a rather dirty looking man with an eyepatch and fox ears. To his confusion, before he could lunge at you, you reach out and swipe a hand through his chest. You continue to swipe forwards and backwards, the incorporeal man stuck standing there until you leaned back.

"So, you're a ghost."

His mouth opens as if to retort, but he just gives up and leaps at you, you not even looking at him anymore. He closes his mouth halfway through the jump, and with an unsatisfied sigh, he disappears.

You continue flipping through the cameras, checking in on the rabbit a couple of times before shoving the tablet out of the way, opening the laptop to have it ready and sitting back in your chair.

You glance towards a shifting figure in front of the window, the hat and bear ears telling of who it is. He limps along, eventually falling beneath your view before seemingly phasing through the wall and leaping at you. You stare passively as he does so, him not completing the jump to instead stand in front of you, confused. 

For shits and giggles, you wave your hand through his chest once or twice.

"Why… aren't you… scared?" He croaks, voice ruined from years of no use.

"Oh, was I supposed to be scared?" You genuinely ask. "Uh, sorry. If you do it again I promise I'll hyperventilate."

"Don't try to… lessen your survival chances…"

"Okay. My bad." 

He sighs, and after annoyedly rubbing his face, he disappears.

You flip out your cameras once more, finding the screen obscured by static and a small error in the center. Lazily, you reset cams.

When your screen clears, you check the rabbit. He looks… strange. Like his body is evolving in front of your eyes. 

To be honest, you don't give enough of a shit to watch a potentially world-changing discovery if it looks that gross. You aren't paid enough to, anyway.

At this pay grade, you even coming into the damn building is volunteer work.

You check your phone for the time, seeing a cool time of one in the morning. 

"Aside from that science experiment gone wrong happening in the back room, it's still really damn boring."

However, it's still not boring enough to watch that transformation or whatever. That corpse (well, at this point, you kinda doubt it's dead) can do whatever the hell he wants with that suit. It's his body, not your business.

After another fifteen minutes of staring at a wall, you check the cameras to the sound of loud clicks and pops, now seeing a heavily scarred man with 1.5 rabbit ears in place of the suit. He takes one step out from his original spot, body heaving forward before he lifts himself up, looking up at the camera with a grin.

"Huh. That's new." You say, watching him jolt forward, continuing to take steps before relearning how to walk smoothly.

It only takes him a moment to rocket off.

"I doubt that's good." You mumble, beginning to flip through the cameras to follow him before playing a sound in the room behind him, making him pause. He turns, walking back with a confused expression.

Continuing to flip through cameras, you watch as the man, who you'll dub Rabbit Guy, wanders, seemingly having lost his focus. Hearing a sound to your left, you pay no heed to whoever it is, instead waggling your hand in what you would assume to be their torso.

"You're strange…" They say.

"Uh-huh. If you'd excuse me, I am currently working on keeping Rabbit Guy the hell away from me." Your voice is monotonous but sincere; you aren't trying to be sarcastic or mean, just trying to tell them the facts.

Glancing to the side, you see that it was a child, so you were waving your hand in his collar. "Oh, my bad. Does that… make you guys uncomfortable?" You ask, retracting your hand.

"No, we can't feel it." 

"Huh." You blandly respond, playing the sounds to lead Rabbit Guy back to where he started, before resetting sounds as you weren't able to play them anymore.

It seems like Rabbit Guy is getting progressively more and more annoyed at being led back, if his attempts to move fast enough to avoid the sounds or block out his ears meant anything. 

His body was responding to the sounds, not him.

It was then that he disappeared, so you check vents, finding him in one that led directly to the room beside your office.

You block it off, much to his annoyance, before yawning and sitting back as any thumps you hear from inside the vents come to a stop. 

You find him standing in the room where he had entered the vent, irritated as he glares at the camera. Preemptively, you reset all, thankfully right as cams and sound go out. 

Sighing, you lazily check through cameras, brows slightly furrowing as you look for him. He was completely gone, not in vents or in rooms. It really is unfortunate how many blind spots and shadowed areas there are.

When you hear the thumping of the vents, you search through them, only finding a stupid knick-knack laying on its side halfway in your sight.

Looking to your side, you peek into the vent, leaning down to see if anything was there. Your gaze meets Rabbit Guy's. 

"Shit." You say, quickly switching cams over to this one and holding down the seal button. 

Your eyes shift back to him, finding him way too close for comfort. As you lift your finger to let the gate close on the vent, the man (who was crouch walking) catches it, forcing it back up. You hear something grind that definitely shouldn't be grinding, and you have a feeling that that vent cover just might be broken.

Getting out of the vent, he stands over you, waiting for some sort of plea or… literally any response at all.

"So, you, uh… come here often?" You ask, leaving him genuinely at a loss. 

"Wh- was that a pickup line?" His rough, baritone voice catches you slightly off-guard. 

You weren't expecting something that was pretty much a zombie to have such a good voice, or a slight british accent for that matter. "Was it? Shit, more people've flirted with me than I thought."

"Really? That's all you can come up with before your death? I'd hate for those to be your final words." He lightly teases, leaning against the wall with a mean grin. 

You look up at the ceiling with a vague smile, his eyes widening momentarily. "To be honest, of any place to die, I'd much rather have it be in a place where I know I'll reach the front pages than in some random alley."

His grin falls into a frown as he watches you turn to him, the smile still on your face. It feels strange.

He feels strange. 

Why does a random night guard make him feel so…

So… comfortable?

You were calm, collected, not making any sudden moves or even attempting to exit the chair. Theoretically, the perfect prey, but not a satisfying kill. 

If he even wants to kill you, that is.

“What’s your name?” He asks, watching as you spin to face him in your chair. You would be taller if you stood, but he would still have a few inches on you.

“Y/N. You?” 

“I’m… William. Or, rather, I was, when I was well and truly human.”

“And now?” You ask.

“I don’t exactly have a name.”

“Can I still call you William, then? Well, if I live long enough to do so?” You ask, eyes moving up to meet his. Looking up at him like that… He wishes the hot feeling in the pit of his stomach would go away.

“...Fine.”

“I mean… are you going to kill me?” You ask, face not shifting as he glares down at you. 

“I won’t kill you on the first night, you need to give me more entertainment.” At least, that’s what he told himself.

“Oh, so we’re both here for the same reason.” You blankly say, his face contorting from a glare to confusion once more.

“You’re here… for entertainment?” He slowly asks, answered by your nod.

“I’m certainly not here for the pay. This place gives like half of minimum wage but I can’t complain about it because the other part is supposed to come from tips. Somehow.”

“How do you even live?” 

“Well, right now I’m on an paid leave due to some unfortunate deaths in my family. To be honest, I never really cared for any of them, but hey. I’ll take any chance for a break I can. Then I got bored.”

He huffs out a laugh. “So you went to another job on your break?”

“Listen, getting a month off leaves a man with little to do when capitalism has left me with no hobbies. Besides, this gives me a great excuse to continue avoiding people.”

His lips curl into an amused grin as he leans forward, lowering his head to be eye level with yours. "Well, you won't be avoiding me." He practically purrs, you averting your eyes at the tone he uses. 

Why would he say it like that?! 

His golden eyes follow you as you close the laptop's screen, enjoying your reaction. You…

He'll keep you around. 

You're entertaining and friendly. Open, and… warm.

He wonders. 

You're human, and fully alive. He's a revived corpse who merged with his vessel. You probably are very warm compared to him.

When he comes back to his senses, he notices you slowly raising out of your seat, hand outstretched towards him. 

Well, might as well take the chance.

He grabs your wrist, looking down at you unimpressed. You quietly huff, falling back into your chair and forcing him to move away from the wall in order to not dislocate your wrist.

Well, his hypothesis is correct. You are very warm. 

He feels the tightening in his gut, not wanting to let go but knowing that he will have to.

You, however, don't actually care either way. You begin your attempt again, this time with your left hand. Slowly raising out of your seat, you actually manage to stand fully up before he notices again, grabbing your other wrist. 

"What are you even trying to do?" He asks, a light sneer on his lips.

"Well... uh, I was trying to… boop your nose? If you're bonded with one of the original suits, then I figured either you or Fredbear would have the sound effect."

He lets out a few short laughs, his sneer replaced with the same amused grin as before.

"I'm afraid neither of us have the sound effect. That only came about with the second and third generations of animatronics."

You hum, interested.

His eyes quickly scan over you, taking in your form. This position, practically holding you hostage… Needless to say, he didn't dislike it.

Still, he releases you as he catches you glancing at what he assumes to be a phone. Things have advanced quite far since he was trapped. 

You turn it on quickly, checking the time. “Well, we have around an hour and a half before my shift ends, so…” Pausing, you check the time again. An hour and a half?

He steps closer, you glancing back up at him before leaning back as he leans forward, looming over you. “Tomorrow, you best make this more fun for me. I’ll greet you, but then I’ll head to the back. Try and stop me from getting in.”

“Uh, sure. Are you still planning on making the punishment for loss, uh, death?”

His eyes narrow in coordination with a widening grin. “That’s for me to know. You either figure it out, or you don’t. It all depends how well you play.” His gruff voice slightly echoes in the mostly empty building, you nodding in response. 

“Oh, cool. Can I tell my brother about you?” You ask suddenly, him quirking a brow as he stares down at you, easily at least half a foot taller than you. He was always tall, but now that he’s in this new form, he grew to be somewhere from 6’6 to 6’8. You sit down once more, exacerbating the height difference.

“Feel free to. Just know that if he ever comes around here, he won’t be alive for very long.”

“I doubt he will. He’s always preferred Foxy the most because he has taste, but-”

“Taste? For liking that liability-strewn fox? You like him as well?”

“To be honest, I never really liked any of them more than the other. I was in my emo phase when I went to see them, so it was practically illegal for me to like anything. But Foxy had sharp teeth and a wicked lookin’ hook, so… I guess I did.”

He hums, clearly slightly annoyed.

“Are you jealous that I liked the fox more than the rabbit that isn’t even the same generation as you?”

“I really should kill you.” His irritated expression shows the truth to your statement.

“It’s okay, I’m willing to call Springbonnie my favorite.”

Now, William was confused. Your tone… you weren’t joking. You were being genuine about something as stupid as this? What is with you?

“You’re very confusing. I think you joke, and then I listen to your tone and you’re genuine. But still, I wouldn’t mind if you did so.”

“It’s not nearly as confusing as how time passes in this place. It’s been like ten minutes since I met you but the clock says like three or four hours have passed.”

“What? Really?” His brows furrow as he steps closer, finding another excuse to close the distance between you both as he leans over the chair, seeing you pointing to the screen. “How strange…”

“Yeah. It doesn’t seem like tomorrow’s hunt will last for six hours, then. Thankfully.” You sigh.

“What, do you not want to feel like my prey for six hours straight?” He grins, leaning over further until his arm rests on your shoulder.

You shiver. “Why do you have to say it like that?”

“Because it makes you react, obviously. It’s entertaining to watch you squirm from something as simple as... the tone of my voice.” Of course, in order to prove his point, he does exactly what he did before, lowering his voice a few pitches and upping the growliness of it.

In covering your eyes, you also cover your cheeks, which have gained a slight flush. “William, I am begging you. Please, please, please, stop talking like that.”

And, naturally progressing, he was left somewhat stunned by the sound of your pleading tone. There’s just something about it, especially as you say his name, that makes him want to…

...makes him want to chase, and capture, and possess forever.

You as his prized prey, and him as the hunter.

“I’ll use it when necessary.” He vaguely answers, watching your head droop.

“I’ll take what I can get.” You concede breathily. 

He chuckles, hearing the chime of a bell, signifying 6 in the morning. "Well, I suppose I'll see you tomorrow, then. Don't keep me waiting."

"Asshole. I won't." You turn your head away from him, hiding the flush on your face, and stand up, stretching. "See ya, William."

He hums, eyes tracing your form as you stretch. It was a nice view, watching the button up shirt crease around your back as you stretch, clearly hinting at the muscle beneath. His eyes did drift lower once or twice, and that's how he figures out that damn, you have a really nice ass!

You begin to walk out, and he follows you with his eyes, watching you turn past the replica Freddy husk and unlock the door, exiting into the fresh morning. His eyelids droop, gaze slipping up as his lips curl into a wide grin.

“Y/N… I won’t kill you. Especially not when I’m presented with such an ample opportunity to make this into something so entertaining.” 

Well…

Is that the only reason?

Of course, he knows it isn’t.

His grin falls, leaving him coldly leering at the aged panels above him before his sight shifts back to the room around him. As he exits the office, he glances at the stained and shaded glass of the door, not allowing much, if any, light in. He turns away, heading back to where he was originally.

As he walks, he lets his form shift, feeling his body grow to his previous monster rabbit self, the creaks of his metal joints loud in the silent building. 

He ignores any shadows that creep in the edges of his vision, the specters traversing without sound. 

“This is going to be… boring.” His voice, far rougher than before, comes out unfeeling and croaky. As he returns to his previous position, slouching over once more, he decides to use his old tactic to pass time; inflicting enough pain on himself to fall unconscious. It doesn’t matter if his dreams are infested with darkness, nor how much he suffers in them. 

It was better than the boredom of sitting in one position with an unchanging environment.

He begins forcing his muscles to flex and strain within the suit and pull against the beams they have welded to, making him grit his teeth before the searing pain fades away, along with his vision.

Goodnight, Y/N.

-

“Yo.” You greet your brother, the man tiredly yawning as he ruffles his hair.

“Heya, Y/N. What’re you up so early for?” 

“Well, I got bored and got a night shift job at this dinky little horror attraction opening up next week. I decided to tell you about what happened there before I head off to sleep.”

“You got bored during a break from your job so you… got another job?”

“Y’know, William said the same thing.” You say, your brother narrowing his eyes at you.

“A coworker?” He asks. 

“Eh, not quite… he is the reason I stayed up to talk to you, though.”

He hums, walking around the couch you were splayed on with your shirt half unbuttoned. 

“So, to begin my tale, you remember Freddy’s? The pizzeria with the animatronics?” You question.

“Yeah?”

“Well the horror place I went to is based off of that; it’s filled with replicas and a few actual things from the pizzerias of the past, but something came in tonight that was… different.”

“Which was?”

“An animatronic. One of the originals, Springbonnie. Granted, the suit was ripped to shit and covered in enough dirt to be green, but it was authentic. It even has the dead body! Well - not so dead body, but still visible.”

“Did you call the cops?” He asks, worried.

“Hell no! I’m not paid enough to give a shit about what could-or-could-not-be a dead body. Either way, he transformed into a human, which was rather odd, but-”

“Just to be clear, this rabbit had a dead body inside and transformed into a human, and you don’t question it?”

“No. Continuing on, he got into my office and then we talked for a bit, I learned that his name is William, time passed really weirdly, and then we struck a deal where I have to keep him out of my office or I'll maybe die.”

“You’re still going back there?! And ‘maybe die?!’”

“Yeah, he said the knowledge about whether or not I die from losing the hunt was ‘for him to know.’ I didn’t question it further.” 

“You know, Y/N, sometimes it feels like I’m the older sibling. You’re fucking stupid.”

“I’m well aware.”

He leans over the couch, glaring down at you. “Then wisen up and quit that damn job.”

“I’m good. William is good company.”

“He threatened to kill you!”

“And? He hasn’t. Yet.”

“You infuriate me, gayboy.” He says, stepping away from the couch.

“Cool. I’ll sleep here for now, when you get back from work I’ll definitely be up.”

“Whatever.” He waves his hand at you, ignoring the middle finger pointing his direction from behind the couch’s back.

---

Part 2

also a lot of the stuff i write from now on may be male reader inserts lol

heres my springtrap design

here's the updated design lol

[sunkisseddaffodils]

reunion- pt 2 (final)

Pairing: sherlock x fem!reader

Request: 'hi! can i pls request a sherlock x fem!reader fic in which reader is kinda john's childhood bestfriend, but they were separated when reader with her parents moved somewhere (to united states, for instance). so now when she is in britain again, she sort of struggles with finding a not very fancy place to stay. fortunately, she meets our johnny boi and he immediately proposes for her to stay in 221c, baker-street. so reader moves there, meets sherly and they sorta starting to fall in luv with each other'

Summary: Sherlock accidentally drags up some old unwanted memories for the reader

Genre: reader insert, angst

A/n: this is the final part of the above request. Sorry, I didn't exactly follow the request but I mostly tried to. Thanks to anon for requesting though! Enjoy!

Read pt 1 here.

-

The following day, after a restless night’s sleep, Y/N sat nervously in Mrs’s Hudson cosy kitchenette. Mrs Hudson had switched on the kettle and was preparing to make both of them a cup of tea. From what John had told her, she was perfectly lovely but she couldn’t help but be anxious. It was in her nature; she worried about everything. She made sure to bring papers to prove to her that she had a monthly income. But what if that wasn’t enough and Mrs Hudson had already decided that she wasn’t good enough to stay in her upstairs flat? The sound of china cups being placed on the table brought her back from the depths of her mind.

‘What brings you to London? John tells me you moved all the way from the States?’

John was right, Mrs Hudson was delightful. Y/N felt more relaxed at the sound of her comforting voice.

‘I’m starting my training next week to be a dentist in Harley Street ’

Mrs Hudson’s eyes genuinely glistened with interest.

‘Oh? John told me you already completed dental school in Seattle? Aren’t you already qualified?’

‘Yeah in the States. To work here, I have to do an extra year before I’m qualified. I don’t mind though, I wanted a fresh start in the UK.’

A door closing behind them interrupted their conversation. Both Y/N and Mrs H turned to where the noise came from but couldn’t see who or what made it. The latter called out.

‘Sherlock? John? Is that you?’

With no response, they returned to their conversation.

‘Y/N, you seem like a lovely young woman with a bright future. Of course, you can stay in the upstairs flat!’

She smiled widely, uttering a thousand ‘thank yous’. Y/N grabbed her important documents and handed them to Mrs Hudson.

‘Thank you. I’ll take a look at these later.’

Tomorrow, Mrs Hudson gave Y/N a tour of 221c. She fell speechless as she looked around. It was the same layout as Sherlock’s but had recently been renovated to have a more modern look. The apartment was already furnished so all she had to do was move her belonging's in from storage. She couldn’t believe that she was able to afford this apartment! Especially, as it was in central London. Promptly, she strolled over to where her new landlady was waiting by the front door.

‘So I get all this for this price? That’s insanely cheap for London.’

Y/N commented while pointing to the tenancy agreement Mrs Hudson was holding.

Simply, she just chuckled.

‘I do special rates for Sherlock and John. If you’re a friend of John’s then you’re a friend of mine. I’ll do the same for you.’

She continued.

'I met Sherlock in Florida when my husband was sentenced to death. He was able to help out so I owed him a favour. ’

Her face was completely serious yet it sounded so implausible. How could a lovely little lady like Mrs Hudson have such an impossible past like that? Adding to that, Y/N wondered that Sherlock really must be a genius if he can stop someone from being executed.

‘Wait, are you saying that Sherlock stopped your husband from being executed?’

‘Oh no, he ensured it.’

And with that bombshell of a statement, Mrs Hudson disappeared downstairs leaving Y/N utterly astonished in her new apartment. She made a note to herself to remind her to ask John about Mrs Hudson’s past. There was so much she wanted to know about her life.

A few days passed and the time finally arrived for Y/N to move into 221c. She was standing outside the cafe with Mrs Hudson, waiting for the moving company to arrive along with her possessions. She glanced at her watch, anxiously. The moving people were already five minutes late. Meanwhile, Sherlock and John were upstairs having carried three boxes between them that Y/N had brought herself. John was busying himself, tidying up the flat, waiting for a text from Y/N so he and Sherlock could help her move in and set up the place. He had told Sherlock to make himself useful but looking over his way, he hadn’t. Sherlock was staring intensely at the three boxes they had placed on the dining table by the windows. John marched over there to tell him off.

‘Sherlock! What are you doing? If you’re not going to make yourself useful up here, then can you at least go downstairs to check what’s taking the mover’s so long?’

Sherlock completely disregarded everything he just said.

‘Look at these three boxes, John. What do they tell you?’

He just groaned.

‘Nothing, they’re just boxes.’

‘Fine, if you’re not going to play ball then I will just tell you.Y/N has made sure she took these boxes here herself. Why? That suggests they’re private and she doesn’t want strangers, i.e the movers, to touch them. The first two boxes are labelled: electronics and toiletries. Makes sense then for why she would want to move them herself: one’s valuable and the others personal.’

He pointed towards the last cardboard box.

‘But why hasn’t she labelled this one? I’m sure I’m right to assume that she would have labelled every single box from what I’ve seen from these two. So what’s in this box that separates it from the rest?’

John stepped away from the dining table and started fluffing some pillows on the couch.

‘Sherlock, I really couldn’t care less. There’s nothing weird going on. She’s not part of some underground crime syndicate. Just leave it alone. You can’t know everything.’

However, the crinkling of tape being peeled off from the box told John that Sherlock, was in fact, not going to leave it alone.

John raced back over to the table and seized the box from Sherlock. Soon, a tug of war for the box began between them.

‘You are not going through Y/N’s private things!’

He yanked the box harder.

‘But John, I have to know what’s in there.’

John glared at him, pulling the box back towards him.

‘Tough luck. Once again let me spell this out: you cannot go through other people’s belongings. It’s rude.’

Sherlock’s grip remained firm, however.

‘Don’t you want to know more about why she’s moved back here? The answer could be in this box. It’s strange that she just packed up and left her life back in Seattle. She obviously doesn’t have any family here. Otherwise, why would she come to you for help? And there’s also the fact I heard her tell Mrs Hudson that she has to do extra training to be a qualified dentist in the UK. Why go to all that effort when she’s already qualified back in the US? Aren’t you in the least bit curious?’

John once again dragged the box back to him.

‘Oh so now you’re not only going through her stuff, you’re also eavesdropping on her?’

Sherlock was offended even though there was a hint of truth to what John was saying.

‘It wasn’t eavesdropping! I just happened to overhear her.’

What Sherlock was saying did make John curious, but still, Y/N deserved her privacy. It was up to her if she wanted to them the real reason she moved back to the UK. John was about to tell Sherlock this when the door burst open.

‘Hey, guys! The movers are here now if you wanna come down.’

Y/N’s voice staggered when she saw the scene before her.

In a moment of alarm, both Sherlock and John had dropped the box. Its content spilt out onto the floor. An off-white ornate picture frame smashed onto the hard wooden floor, glass spraying everywhere. The picture in the frame was of Y/N and a man in front of the Seattle Great Wheel. Y/N stood in surprise as the said man was knelt down holding a rose gold diamond-encrusted ring. The picture frame was custom engraved and it read ‘For my love.’

Oh.

It all made sense now to Sherlock.

However, there was no time to think more about the picture. Sherlock and John stood like a deer in headlights

‘It was Sherlock!’

John pointed accusingly towards Sherlock.

Y/N didn’t say anything, simply walked over to where the box had fallen, glass crunching under converse trainers. She knelt down to pick up the photograph. She remained there for a moment, an expression of profound anguish on her face.

John tried to help her up, but she refused. She practically ran out of the flat, trying to conceal her pain. John didn’t even have time to tell her that she had cut her knees on the glass from the floor. He grabbed a broom from the kitchen and started cleaning up the mess on the floor. He looked at Sherlock who was still in the same place. He had a look of regret on his face.

‘Sherlock there’s no point making that face now! You’re cleaning this mess up too. We’re going to make it up to her by making this apartment look really nice before she comes back.’

As he shifted the box back onto the table, he thought of his own way to make it up to Y/N.

-

Y/N was falling asleep at her desk, she was now four hours into writing her essay on dental hygiene. She placed her head in her hands, thinking she would just have a quick nap. Her phone ringing ended that plan though. She saw that it was Sherlock and hesitated. She still hadn’t forgiven him for trying to go through her things and bringing back unpleasant memories. It had been a week into ignoring him and giving him the cold shoulder. She let it ring out. Sherlock still didn’t get the hint and texted her.

‘Y/N meet me here. I wanna make it up to you. S.H’

That text was accompanied by a GPS location.

Y/N couldn’t think of any possible reason why Sherlock had asked to meet her here. Her uber ride had stopped outside of a manor house just on the outskirts of London. She quickly checked with the driver to make sure she was at the right place. To her bewilderment, he answered yes. Hesitantly, she strolled up to the door. She didn’t even have to knock when Sherlock opened the door. He motioned for her to follow him.

‘Sherlock, what the actual fuck? Do you live here?’

Sherlock led her through a ton of rooms. Y/N swear she could have counted there were at least five formal living rooms.

‘Nope.’

He opened a set of French doors and led her out into the back garden of the estate. Not that you could call it a garden. It was massive. In the distance, she saw stables as they walked through a formal botanical garden. Sherlock was more like running though, but Y/N didn’t know what was so urgent.

‘So if you don’t live here. Then who does?’

An undesirable thought entered her mind.

‘Don’t tell me you broke in here?’

Sherlock turned around just outside of the exit to the formal gardens, jangling keys in front of her face, a childish grin on his face.

‘It’s not breaking in if you have a set of keys.’

They had finally reached their final destination. Y/N saw that someone had set up a bonfire in the middle of a field. A can of petrol and a box lay adjacent to it. That box seemed really familiar. Sherlock picked it up and brought it over. It was hers!

‘Sherlock, you’re going through my things again. You know what, I’m done here!’

She began jogging back towards the house. Sherlock grabbed her arm.

‘Wait! Y/N. Let me explain.’

She gazed back at him intensely, waiting for an explanation.

He placed the box down.

‘I know you haven’t told me about what happened. But unfortunately, I am good at deducing things. Those things in that box came from a bad past relationship. I’m pretty sure I can guess what happened.’

He started to stammer, not sure of how to word what he wanted to say next.

Y/N wasn’t sure where he was going with this but could see he was trying.

‘John will be the first to let you know that I’m no expert on love or on relationships. But I can see you haven’t moved on. I thought it might help if you chucked all of the old stuff from the relationship on that bonfire and set it alight.’

She looked down, knowing that Sherlock was right. He had guessed everything perfectly. He had read her like a book.

‘You’re right. But I took running away from your problems to the extremest.’

She sat down on the grass, wrapping her arms around her knees. Sherlock shortly joined her.

‘He was my world. Or I thought he was until one night I returned home to see him shagging my best friend on the sofa.’

There was a moment of silence before she continued.

‘I just felt so foolish. I had to get away from Seattle. The place was full of memories of my time with him. I couldn’t stand it any longer.’

Sherlock got up and picked up the box.

‘And that’s why you should burn this stuff. He doesn’t deserve to have this much hold on you when he never cared about you in the slightest. We don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. But please just think about it.’

Y/N stood up with determination. Sherlock was right. She had to burn all of this stuff to finally move on. Together they placed the contents of the box around the bonfire.

Y/N stood back as Sherlock poured the can of petrol over the bonfire. He asked.

‘One more thing. Do you have that picture with you?’

She grabbed it out of her bag as an answer and showed it to him.

‘I thought you would', he stated.

She placed the picture in the centre of the bonfire.

They walked back a safer distance from it and Sherlock got a box of matches from his pocket. He lit one up and handed it to Y/N. He could see that she was having trouble actually lighting the bonfire. He reached out and held her hand to comfort her. Y/N greatly appreciated that. She took the final step and with her other hand, threw the match into the bonfire.

The bonfire went up in ablaze. It was oddly beautiful watching the embers rise up into the sky. Standing there in hand in hand with Sherlock, she felt the weight that had been on her shoulders for months slowly lift off. The whole experience was cathartic.

Out of the blue, they heard the distant sound of alarms ringing from back at the house. Y/N looked to Sherlock for answers. He just told her to:

‘RUN!’

They sprinted, holding onto each other, seemingly heading towards a gate at the end of a stone wall surrounding the estate.

‘Sherlock! What’s going on?’

Sherlock tried his best to explain as they were running.

‘Technically I did break into this house. But it’s my brother's so it should be fine. There should be a cab waiting just outside this gate.’

‘Oh my god!’, she exclaimed worrying about the consequences to come for their actions.

When they had reached the road outside the gate, they stopped to catch their breath. Then they looked at each other and burst into laughter.

She hadn’t laughed that like in months. And it was all thanks to Sherlock.

-

[mcwriting]

The Marriage Project (11)

I'm baaaaack :) Sorry it's been so long y'all but I'm finally on break so hopefully I can push out more content soon! Pls enjoy!

Masterlist

Word Count: 2130

Warnings: little bit of language, mild mentions of alcohol

% approximately the last weekend of October/first week of November %

Sunday, you went wedding dress shopping.

Kinda.

It was for homecoming court. Your school had a tradition where the ladies in the running for queen wore white wedding dresses, so your mom and you went out in search of one.

You’d already gotten your dress for the actual dance weeks prior, so you started at the same store.

It didn’t take long for you to stumble upon one you liked, a slim a-line that accentuated your muscles and curves. There was a draped neckline and a somewhat low back. The entire dress had a grecian feel with the small silver accents dusted across it.

The second you put it on you fell in love, so you made the purchase and set off for shoes, easily finding a pair of heels that would put you at a similar level with Tom.

The next day, you made your way to class for another round of praise and congratulations for the tournament that weekend. The trophy was already sitting in the school display case, the plaque yet to be made with your school’s name and the year.

It was spirit week, so everyone was dressed in clothes that fit the day’s theme.

All morning, people were coming up and asking you about the tournament and homecoming, many of them pledging to vote for you.

Things felt nice.

You and Tom didn’t talk much throughout the morning, but exchanged a few jabs and laughs here and there.

Later, you sat around the lunch table with your girlfriends as usual, this time discussing the homecoming nominations.

“Y/n, there’s literally no way you won’t be queen. I’ve talked to a ton of people and all of them are saying they’re gonna vote for you,” one of them said.

“Aw shucks, you’re making me blush. Obviously I’d like to win queen, but we’ll see. It’s whatever. If Harrison wins king I’ll drop out.”

“As if. No one even likes him. I’m pretty sure he was voted in as a meme. Everyone knows Tom is gonna win,” Alexis stated. “And if Tom wins, you’ll win too with everyone thinking you’re together.”

“Hmm. I honestly hope Tuwaine gets the vote. He’s so sweet and totally deserves it.”

“I think we all know you’d prefer Tom as your royal counterpart,” one friend suggested, causing you to roll your eyes.

“How many times do I have to tell you guys! Nothing is going on! On another note, though, I got my white dress,” you mentioned, trying to steer the conversation away.

“Really? Let us see!” Caroline exclaimed.

“Ah, ah, ah. I’m saving it as a surprise for Friday. The only person who’s seen it is my mom, and it’s staying that way until the parade.”

You continued talking about the upcoming festivities and your excitement for the week, and the announcement of who would be crowned queen Friday at the pep rally.

That afternoon, you went to study hall with Alexis. Now that you were between sports, you had a free period to go do art, work out, or just “study,” so you chose the latter as a way to take a breather from everything that had been going on.

“So tell me everything about Johnny’s this weekend. Loved the costumes,” you started as you plopped down at two desks in the very back of the room.

“Not much to report. We mostly just hung out but I heard one dude had to go get his stomach pumped or something after the cops got there. We dipped out before it was busted because it was obvious they were coming. Now how was your weekend, since we’re finally alone?”

You thought about how much you’d actually tell her, especially considering that you hadn’t told her really anything about yours and Tom’s interactions in past weeks.

“Pretty good. It was mostly just volleyball.”

“Oh yeah? What all went down with Tom? Anna told me you seemed pretty close.”

Your face burned.

“We hugged after winning the tournament. Not a big deal. Oh and we maybe kinda pretended to be a couple Friday night.”

“What? You didn’t think to lead with that?!”

“It was for like a minute while we went up the elevator. This drunk couple was harassing us so we just played along for a little bit. Whatever,” you shrugged.

“Did you do anything couple-y? Don’t tell me you guys kissed.”

You tried not to cringe before somewhat telling a lie.

“I kissed him on the cheek and he put his arm around me. I swear it was nothing serious, Lex.”

“Hm. I still think you’ve gotta be hiding something, but I just don’t know what. And I’m gonna get to the bottom of it.”

Good luck with that. I’m not about to crack yet.

%

Spirit week continued with people coming up to let you know their votes had been cast for you. The voting ended Thursday so that votes could be counted before the pep rally.

When Friday did hit, you woke up early and tucked your volleyball jersey into some jeans and tossed on your letter jacket, as the day’s theme was school colors and jerseys.

You popped on some mascara and lip gloss, then headed to school, becoming more nervous as you got closer.

The pep rally would be right after lunch, but almost everyone was so excited for the weekend festivities that teachers basically gave everyone a free day so that the students in charge of the event could continue their planning and the athletes could prepare for the rally.

The pep rally was mostly for the football game, but they were also going to recognize the volleyball team’s accomplishments, so you prepared for that and the whole homecoming court thing.

In home ec, Mrs. Flynn let those that needed to help set up for the pep rally eat your lunches in class and then leave early.

You and Tom finished about the same time and went to your lockers to grab your things.

“Ready to win?” Tom asked as you walked towards the gym.

“Nope. You?”

“Yeah, actually. Maybe it’s just because I love winning so much.”

You gave him a little shove as you continued walking. Tom had his jersey on without the pads, so it fit big on him. You admired the way it draped over his thin, toned frame.

A bit later and the pep rally had begun with the dance team doing their routine, then came athlete recognitions.

They started with the volleyball team, calling you all out to the basketball court to wave as everyone cheered. After you all, the cheer squad hyped everyone up for the football team to come out.

You stood in a corner of the gym with Zendaya, as they would be announcing the homecoming court next. You both talked a little bit, but things were somewhat awkward.

Finally came the time to announce the winners. As with nominations, things went in order from freshman to senior, eventually reaching the king and queen announcement. The six of you stepped out onto the basketball court, the pit in your stomach bigger than before.

“Alright ladies and gentlemen, I know that this is the moment you have all been waiting so patiently for!” Mrs. Johnson looked around the bleachers at the cheering students, holding up her paper with everyone’s positions.

“We’re going to start with our third place, the duke and duchess of homecoming! May I have a drumroll please!”

Everyone stomped their feet and clapped.

“This year’s duke is Mr. Harrison Osterfield, and the duchess is Daisy Ridley!”

Cheers went up, not completely enthusiastic for the pair. You felt a little bit of satisfaction knowing the people you liked least had gotten third place.

“Now for our runners up, the prince and princess!” She paused for effect. “Tuwaine Barrett and Zendaya Coleman!”

More cheers rang out than before. Your jaw dropped as you looked at Tom.

“And that means that your senior king and queen are Tom Holland and y/n y/l/n! Congratulations to all of you. Can’t wait to see you at the parade, game, and dance!” Mrs. Johnson called out, dismissing everyone back to class.

Someone came and placed the crown on your head and slipped a silver sash which read “homecoming queen” over your body. You couldn’t help but slap a hand over your mouth.

“What did I tell you! I knew you’d win!” Tom exclaimed, holding out his hands. You so badly wanted to hug him, but decided not to in front of the whole school, at least not until tomorrow night.

Your friends rushed up and congratulated you, fawning over the crown and sash and laughing. Before you left, you had to return the two items to a teacher so you would have them for later that night.

As you left school that afternoon, you felt like you were floating on air.

%

You were back at the school later that evening, the game just over a couple hours away. There were families lining the street prepared to watch the parade make its way down.

Since leaving the school before, you’d put your hair in loose curls and done a full face of makeup. You tossed on some sweats and zipped up your varsity jacket, taking your dress and shoes along in the car to change there.

You waited until the last minute to slip on the outfit, causing people to fawn over you when you stepped outside to see everyone who was waiting.

Someone pinned the crown to your head and helped you slip on the sash, then led you to the convertible where Tom was waiting. You’d get to ride around sitting on the back waving like you’d always dreamed of doing.

Your heels clacked on the sidewalk as you confidently stepped. Sure, you didn’t wear heels much, but you sure knew how to work them.

It felt like slow motion when Tom turned around and you saw each other for the first time. He was wearing slacks and a sport coat and his curls were perfectly placed around his own crown. You both gasped a little.

“Y/n! You look… you look like-”

“Let me guess. A princess?” you smirked, raising a brow.

“I was gonna say queen.”

You rolled your eyes and chuckled, giving him a little shove. He helped you climb into the back of the car, and someone went to hand you his letter jacket.

“What’s this for?” you asked.

“Usually if it’s cold the queen wears her partners’ letterman over her shoulders if he has one.”

You thought about it. It was pretty chilly, after all.

“You don’t have to wear mine, y/n. Did you bring yours?” Tom asked, making you smile.

“Yeah, actually. I did. Would someone mind going and grabbing it from my stuff? It’s just inside.”

One girl ran and brought it back in a few minutes, and Tom helped drape it over just your shoulders.

“That’s more like it,” he said, giving you a smile as he fixed the neck.

A few minutes later, the cars and floats began moving and families cheered as you passed, waving with a smile on your face.

You and Tom talked to each other quietly as you looked around both sides of the street. When you reached the end, someone had you pose for a couple pictures in the daylight before the football players headed off to get ready for the game.

This was not only homecoming, but senior night, so they all wanted to be on their A-game.

Different people came up to congratulate you and you took pictures with friends, family, and even a few little kids. You were talking with the girls when you felt a hand on your shoulder.

You turned around to find the Holland family, including Nikki’s parents and a woman you assumed to be Dominic’s mom.

“Well I sure am glad to see that people have some decent sense around here,” Grandma said, giving you a warm smile. You gave her a hug then greeted the rest of the family.

“You look beautiful, dear. Congratulations,” said Nikki as she gave you a squeeze.

“Oh, y/n, this is my mother,” Dom explained, gesturing to another elderly woman.

“Just call me Nana, dear. I’ve heard a lot about you.” You smiled as she held your hands in hers.

“Thank you! Tom’s told me about you, too.”

Nikki shot some pictures of you with their family. It felt weird to be in their photos without Tom, but also comfortable, like you’d known them your whole life. You had to hold back a laugh when you took one kissing Paddy’s cheek and making him blush.

Eventually your parents also came over and talked to them, and everyone made their ways to the stadium.

%

A/N: omg it's been way too long since I updated TMP! I just wanted to pre-warn that next chapter will have the heaviest themes of this story. It will have adequate warnings but I want to make everyone aware!

Thanks for reading!

Send a message or ask if you’d like to be added to my permanent or series taglists so I can verify you’ve been added!

Story tag list: @jackiehollanderr, @one-big-fangirl, @l0lmk, @primadonnasdream, @bookworm06, @thenoddingbunny-blog, @agentnataliahofferson, @spider-babe, @stxfxniexreads, @justafangirlduh, @supraveng

[lostatsea303]

Let’s Talk About The Finale

Hey guys before we talk about that last episode we’re going full spoiler in this post so if you haven’t seen it yet you may want to stop here

So I wanted to make this post after seeing so many different opinions on the content of this episode and I figured I could add my two cents in and hopefully bring some praise and constructive criticism from my point of view.

First let’s talk Directing, Choreography, and Acting

First off let’s tip our hats to the VAs this episode they all did an amazing job! Elizabeth Maxwell, Miles Luna, and Taylor McNee all deserve recognition for being standouts in an episode where everyone nailed their parts.

In terms of choreography I think this met the RWBY standard. The Ironwood and maiden fights were top notch and while the RWB fight against Cinder and Neo felt a little off I think this was intentional; Team RWBY has been fighting and without rest for nearly 24 straight hours, they’re going to be slow and tired.

Directing I thought was very solid. There are some great shots I want to highlight in fact:

I think all these shots are excellent and there are a few more I’ll be using later. Directing and lighting has been something I think this volume has done exceedingly well! However there is one scene I think fell short.

This kinda looks like a meme doesn’t it? This moment completely took me out of the moment and I was wondering why. It’s not because of Harriet’s action’s I think she was sick of physically fighting and just wanted everyone to leave so she could die going down with the ship. No, I realized it was this shot: if this sequence had a close up of Qrow struggling against the weight of the bomb and cut back to another close up of Harriet yelling where you could see the desperation on her face (cause CRWBY did a great job with facial animation) it would work. Instead the framing, drab lighting, and stillness really hurt this scene.

Outside of this one scene however, I think this was a stellar finale in terms of production value!

WRITING

Overall I thought this was another good episode for the writers. Character dialogue was on point:

“You chose nothing, this was a gift”

“Whatever you wanted, I hope it was worth it.”

“I’ve only done what’s best for Remnant, and no one is grateful.”

And of course the whole Cinder and Salem interaction.

The events within the episode, I think, were all very good choices but there are two in particular I want to focus on:

The Sacrifice

I’m gonna talk about this first because I know this is where there is the most division right now and understandably so. We all love Penny, she has always been one of the purest characters within the show. That is why her death, even so shortly after she became human, is not only the right decision but a good one.

When you think about it Penny and Pyrrha are very similar characters: Morally upright, strong, and viewed as paragons amongst their peers. Pyrrha was chosen to be Vale’s Guardian and Penny was the protector of Mantle. They were people who always did the right thing for everyone else. However, their journey’s, not as people within the show but characters within a piece of art, would always require them to meet their end. 

Penny’s development was never about her learning what it was like to be a “real girl” because she already got that from being friends with Ruby. Her development was based around one of the key themes of this show: choice and control

RWBY has always focused on the question of who do we choose to be and what do we let control us. Penny rarely had a choice, and was always in danger of losing her control to someone else. At Beacon she was at Ironwood’s behest, in this season Watts had control over her in spurts. She was always in a battle to decide who she would be, and this was shown literally in the show with the fight between the virus and her soul. So when she became human she completed the biggest step in her journey of development: she no longer had any strings.

And she finally got to feel the warmth of the heart.

And that left her character development at an end. She had already learned what it meant to live, she finally got to experience the physical side of it, and finally she couldn’t be controlled again.

So when faced with the threat of someone taking away her control (Cinder) the completion of her character arc comes with her making the choice that Ruby didn’t earlier. But this time she was at peace with it, because she wasn’t dying because she had to due to an uncontrollable circumstance. No, now she chose to give her friend’s a chance, give Remnant hope in a new Winter maiden, and take from the enemy what they once took from her.

She chose.

While this completes her character arc it also develops everyone else’s which leads us into our final section

The Separation

We all knew that they were going to fall, you don’t have foreboding lines like “Do not fall” and not explain why.

But now all of the events have culminated in a perfect storm for our characters next season. Here’s what I mean:

This finale, especially with Penny’s sacrifice sets up every single character in this show for major developments. Starting from the outside:

Winter now has to learn to be a leader, not just a soldier anymore. She has to unlearn the years of regimenting and oppression that she’s been a part of.

Ren and Nora get to truly figure out who they are: There will be no team leaders among them, they will have to become them.

Oscar and Ozpin have to become the heroes that the former has always wanted to be and the latter always had other to become.

Qrow continues to learn to deal with loss and how even in spite of it he can keep moving forward and that the pains of the past can push him to better instead of holding him down.

Neo will learn what family is supposed to be, and coming to understand forgiveness for the things others do.

Jaune has to come to grips with the reality of being a hero and that sometimes the best choices we can make for others are the ones that cost the most of us.

Ruby will have to face not only another close loss in her life but she’ll have to learn about sacrifice and the unfortunate necessity of it. She’s been surrounded her whole life with people making the choice to sacrifice for her: Summer, Yang, Qrow, Weiss, and now Penny. She’s going to have to face Jaune making the choice she wouldn’t (Not to say that situation called for it but understanding the differences in those situations) and understanding that sometimes people have to go. While we should always do our best to save everyone we can, sometimes running away from the grief in our lives can creating greater loss than if we face it when we have to. 

Weiss has to learn to let go of control. She tried to protect and save everyone but in the end she was the last one from her team left. We’ve subtly seen through out this volume, and really the last couple of them if we’re being honest, Weiss always trying to be moderate within the team and be the glue and protector of the team as a whole. She’s always trying to be the best teammate she always promised to be but that has made her terrified to fail and in the end it’s stopped her from reaching her full potential. It’s a noble thing she does, but she’s so beholden to the expectations of other’s (now her friends instead of her family) that it secludes her. We’ve seen moments of her true strength when she focuses and trusts herself but she still hasn’t fully gotten there.

Blake is the flipside to Weiss, she needs to learn to take control. She’s still held down by the fear of being what Adam said she was that she won’t take the step forward. Whether this be with her relationship to Yang or even in situations like the one we saw in the second to last episode frozen and unsure how to proceed at the end. She tries to play it safe because of what she’s gone through. But Penny’s sacrifice and when she thought she lost Yang will push her.

Yang has already learned to necessity of sacrifice but she has to learn that not every situation requires it. Put simply she has to learn what she means to the others. Yang has always been the first to throw herself in the line of fire for others and take the risk when it’s time. But she’s never thought about how she affects others with her sacrifice. Penny’s loss may initially affirm her current view but she will have to come to face that Penny’s sacrifice happened only when absolutely necessary and when it was best for everyone else. Yang needs to know she’s worth more than what she can do for other people.

CONCLUSION

Honestly guys this was alot and if you read all this way thank you! I’m sure some people will disagree with some of my thoughts and that’s totally ok! In the end we’re all fans, and we all care alot about this show.

See you guys next season!

[corvus--rex]

First of two ideas I played with as a foil to OLIP (Our Life in Pictures, for the uninitiated, and on Ao3). Pretty short, just under 1k. I decided I wasn't really happy with where it was going, so I abandoned it. Because it was meant to be a foil to OLIP, it is an Omegaverse, and as usual, skip it if it's not your thing! :)

Side note: the book mentioned, Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers, is part of the Lord Peter Wimsy series of detective stories written in the 1930s.

~*~*~*~

Keith sat on the floor of his studio apartment, putting the final brushstrokes on his latest painting. His alarm went off, telling him that he needed to be ready to leave in twenty minutes to get to his job at Olkarion, the independent bookshop he worked at. He rushed around the open space, cleaning up from painting, getting himself changed, and then putting the still-wet painting out of reach of his cat. Red sat like the emperor he knew he was, watching. They had originally thought he was a Maine Coon, since that was what the shelter said, but the vet later identified him as a Norwegian Forest Cat. Keith scratched his fluffy head on his way out the door, reminding him to behave.

He was an unusual Omega. 24 and still unmated. Living on his own. His Alpha half-brother checked in on him every couple days, but Shiro knew Keith was fine. It was really their mother Krolia who worried. She was afraid of what could happen to an unmated Omega living alone in the city. She didn’t need to. Keith may have been an artist who worked in a bookshop, but he was also an experienced martial artist and could more than take care of himself. It was why Shiro didn’t worry about his little brother the way their mother did.

Olkarion was within walking distance of Keith’s apartment. He preferred walking, especially with city parking and everything he needed being within walking distance anyway. It was one more thing Krolia worried about with her younger son.

“Hey, Ryner,” Keith said as he walked in.

Ryner, a thin, grey-haired, older Beta, was the owner of Olkarion. Warm hazel brown eyes sparkled with intelligence from behind her green wire-framed glasses. “Oh, Keith, there you are,” she said from behind the counter.

He stopped, turning back to her. “I'm not late, am I?” he questioned.

She laughed. “Oh, no, not at all. Romelle has been attempting to sort out the Art section and I’m afraid it hasn’t been going well. If you could take over for her, please? You know it far better than she does.”

Keith snorted. “Sure thing, Ryner. You want me to send her up here?”

“Please do. The Shakespeare club will be in soon. We’re still reading Much Ado About Nothing, and the arguments! But, yes, please, send Romelle up.”

He laughed to himself and left for the bookshop’s back room. Ryner had been running a Shakespeare book club for years with some members who had been there since the beginning and the rest coming and going. Keith had been working there since high school, and knew all the oldest members. He also knew how much they liked to argue over interpretation. He would never forget one time when they were in the middle of Romeo and Juliet, and Miss Trigel, Ryner’s oldest friend, announced to the whole of the bookshop, “It’s all swordfights and dick jokes anyway!” The entire shop had gone dead quiet for several long seconds before Ryner and Miss Trigel burst out laughing.

In the back room, Keith hung his jacket and slid his messenger bag into one of the antique wooden “lockers” Ryner had bought from a boarding school’s remodel several years earlier. Her entire shop was like that. Full of “rescued” antique wood in the form of bookcases – the only rule was that they had to be approximately the same height, sort of – side tables, chairs, the two latter scattered liberally throughout, and the farmhouse table surrounded by armchairs taking up an entire alcove.

Keith found Romelle in the Art section, where she was sorting books by size as opposed to subject and author.

“Ryner wants you up front for now. Shakespeare club,” Keith said stopping beside her, “I’ll take over here.”

“Finally! Thank you,” the other Omega sighed in relief, “I don’t know how much longer I could do this. How do you do it?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. I just kinda tune out, I guess.”

“Well, I’d better get up there.” Romelle practically skipped away.

Keith shook his head at her energy and got fixing the disaster. An hour later, and he’d mostly done it. Romelle hadn’t done as much damage as he’d been afraid of. Another twenty minutes, and he was reshelving the last misplaced book. Coming down from the tracked ladder built into the wall shelves he nearly walked into someone. He found himself eye-to-shoulder with an Alpha. The Alpha quickly backed up.

“Oh, I’m sorry. That was my fault. I wasn’t paying attention. Are you ok?” he asked all at once.

Keith blinked in surprise and backed up himself. “Uh, yeah, I’m fine. Was there something you were looking for?”

“I think I’m in the wrong place. I’m supposed to be looking for Gaudy Night?”

The Omega nodded. “Dorothy Sayers. Mystery’s this way,” he said, leading the way through the maze of shelves and bookcases to an entire room dedicated to the genre. He pulled a copy off the shelf, handing it over. Keith folded his arms and leaned back against the shelves. “I hope you don’t mind my saying, you don’t seem like the type for Thirties detective stories.”

“It’s more my sister’s thing, but she’s been trying to get me into it for years and I'm finally giving in.”

“Well, if you end up liking that one, there are several others in the same series and a couple other authors from the same period that are all good.”

Keith knew the Alpha nodded just from the wave his scent made. It was woody, but green, unlike the strong musk most Alphas had. A forest at the height of summer, bright and earthy, and if sunlight had a scent, this Alpha had it. Keith looked up to bright blue eyes watching him.

~*~*~*~

Links to the rest of the series:

1 | 2 | 3* | 4 | 5* | 6* | 7 | 8 | 9* | 10 | 11 | 12* | 13 | 14 | 15* | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

[keanureevesisbae]

Mister Cavill, your dog is kinda fat - Chapter 4

Summary: Veterinarian Olivia Tran has zero time for bullshit. After becoming a mom at age twenty three, the one thing she wants is a good life for her daughter Vanessa. Her ex didn’t want anything to do with her nor the baby and she decided that man are officially banned out of her life. But then she meets Henry Cavill at her clinic and her ban slowly starts to crumble apart. Henry on the other hand is looking for one thing: a family. And when he meets Olivia Tran, he finds just that.

Henry Cavill x Olivia Tran (ofc)

Warnings: None

Wordcount: 3.3k

Masterlist // Previous chapter // Next chapter

Three weeks pass by. Three whole weeks of Henry hoping he bumps into his favorite pair again, but no luck. After that time he saw Olivia and Vanessa on the curb and the four of them went to the park, was also the last time he saw them.

He seriously regrets not asking Olivia for her number, so he could arrange more of those kinds of “dates”.  He already has an excuse: “Kal needs to be around kids more and since Vanessa doesn’t have a dog, it’s a win-win situation, honestly”.

After Vanessa fell face first into the mud, the two of them left, because she was in need of a bath and Kal was too, because he thought it would be funny to roll into the dirt as well.

These weeks passed agonizingly slowly. The fact that he wasn’t working, isn’t helping at all.

It did gave him the time to realize one thing though: he is falling for someone he barely knows. Google searches for Olivia Tran didn’t bring him a lot, except one of the things he already knew: she’s a veterinarian at Animal Clinic Westside. No social media whatsoever, something that he finds pretty rare and unique.

But finally the day he has been looking forward to has arrived. He is sitting in the waiting room of his favorite animal clinic. He hasn’t seen her yet and he sure hopes that she’s even working today and if so, that she is going to help him out. If she isn’t helping him and Kal, then it’s the universe telling him she is not the one for him.

If she does help them, he needs to ask her out, because he doesn’t know if he can’t endure time apart from her again.

While he is waiting with Kal, Henry looks around at the other animals, even the creepy bird who hasn’t stopped staring at him. For a second Henry is afraid that the bird will recognize him, but he shakes off that thought before he can think about it even more.

A door opens and he hears: ‘Kal?’

He noticed how in this clinic (and maybe elsewhere too, he doesn’t know), they call in the patients by the names of the animals, instead of the owners. He is eternally grateful, not wanting to draw attention that he is in fact Henry Cavill.

He looks up and sees his favorite vet standing in a doorway. He can’t help but smile. He notices a bright grin on her face and from that alone, this day can’t be ruined if it’s up to him.

Besides, he needs to ask her out now.

Henry stands up, tugs Kal’s leash and walks over to the doctor. Olivia steps to the side, letting him and Kal go into the room first. he smells great, he thinks to himself. Like lavender, he didn’t notice that before.

‘We should weigh him first,’ she says, placing her clipboard to the side. ‘He does look slimmer already.’

‘I’ve been restraining myself,’ he laughs. ‘It’s just really hard to say no to this face.’

‘Weak,’ she comments, chuckling in the process. Henry knew he missed her, but after that comment left her lips, he didn’t realized how much he missed her. ‘Come on, Kal, get your fat ass on the scale.’

Henry places his hand over his mouth, but a loud laugh leaves his lips anyways, especially when Olivia looks at him with a playful look on her face. She checks the screen and claps her hands when she hears a soft beep, indicating the scale is done measuring Kal’s weight. ‘Good boy, Kal, you lost three whole kilos already.’ She presses a kiss on top of his head and looks up at Henry. ‘You’re not as weak as I expected you to be, mister Cavill.’

Henry smiles, as he’s taking in her appearance. Those two times he saw her, she was already breathtaking, but there is something different about her today. Is she wearing lipstick? He notices her hair isn’t in the usual bun. Her wavy locks frame her face and when she runs her fingers through it, he has to look the other way, because damn, she is beautiful and this isn’t the time to faint.

‘Anyways,’ she says, a blush appearing on her cheeks, probably because Henry kept gawking at her, ‘this big boy needs to get his shots today.’

‘I do have to tell you, he isn’t the greatest with needles,’ Henry warns her.

She nods. ‘Aren’t you projecting your own fears on your dog?’ she jokingly asks him.

He wonders if she’s like this with other clients or if she strictly reserves this for him. He sure hopes it’s the latter, though he feels a bit attacked, because it may be true, that thing she said about projecting his own fears on his dog. ‘No, he really doesn’t like them,’ he says nonetheless.

Olivia prepares two shots for the big canine, who keeps staring at her, but letting out a small whimper. ‘I know, baby,’ she says to Kal in a higher voice, ‘it may be scary, but it’s over before you know it.’

She sits next to him, pats his head, while Henry crouches down near the dog as well. He can’t help but stare at her. She is so pretty and the way she is comforting the dog, he falls even more in love with her.

When she grabs the syringe, Henry swallows hard, while Kal’s entire body shakes with excitement.

Olivia glances at him, before she sticks the needle into Kal’s thigh. He doesn’t even whine, but Henry rubs his own face. ‘Are you okay, Henry?’ she asks, but he doesn’t hear what she says anymore, because he passes out.

≫≫≪≪

Henry wakes up in the corner of a room, his back pressed against the wall and his legs sprawled out in front of him. Kal is no where near him, while Henry swore they were together before he fell asleep.

He had a nice dream, of the beautiful doctor at the animal clinic. He dreamed that they were sitting in the park, her head against his shoulder, as they watched Vanessa and Kal play. It was nice to dream about her like that, just like he did that in those three weeks he didn’t see her.

He tries to remember where he is and when he looks around, he sees he is at the animal clinic. The examination table, his own dog sitting next to doctor Olivia Tran, who walks up to him and crouches down in front of him. ‘You’re up,’ she says with a chuckle. ‘For such a big guy, I never assumed you’d pass out like that, simply because I was giving your dog a shot.’

‘Oh fuck,’ he mumbles, rubbing his face, a sad attempt to cover his flushed cheeks. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘No need to, it was kind of funny, especially when I had to drag you around this examination room and had to explain to the assistant that the loud thud she heard, was the owner that collapsed and not the overweight dog,’ she laughs, handing him a paper cup filled with some water. ‘Here, drink this.’

He takes a tiny sip, still embarrassed of what happened to him. God, did he really just pass out in the examination room because his dog was getting a shot? ‘This is really painful,’ he chuckles, hoping it helps him not to feel the shame he is feeling right now, but it’s not working at all.

She places a slender hand on his calve, causing him to hold his breath because of the sudden touch. Him passing out like that, does have his perks come to think of it. ‘Listen, it happens to the best of us. The first time I had to help deliver a lamb, I threw up and passed out in my own vomit, in front of the entire class, so honestly: it’s okay.’

Olivia stands up again and holds out a hand. He carefully places his in hers and she pulls him up, though he mostly pushes himself up, because he is afraid he’ll drag her down. Not that he would compla—

No, he can’t think like that, not when his jeans is already this tight. Later tonight he can think about the possibilities that came with her pulling him up.

‘Thanks, Olivia,’ he says.

‘Are you feeling okay? You want something sweet to eat, before you hit the road again?’

That is so thoughtful of her. ‘Maybe some sugar would be of help,’ he says.

‘Perks of having a six year old,’ Olivia says, rummaging through her purse, ‘I’m always prepared for emergencies.’ She hands him over two candy bars. ‘You can have those, Vanessa doesn’t like them anyways.’

‘How is Vanessa doing, by the way?’

Henry might not know Olivia very well, but what he does know, is that something happened.

‘Is everything okay?’ he asks.

‘Yeah, it’s just that her teacher continues to pester me about how Vanessa should change her work ethic, which I think is too much to ask of a six year old and… I’m sorry, I shouldn’t bother you with this. You probably don’t even care.’

‘No, I do care,’ he quickly says. Way too quickly.

Olivia sighs deeply. ‘I’m just worried about my girl sometimes. Comes with becoming a parent I guess.’

He wishes he could agree. ‘Listen, it might be extremely inappropriate, but I have to ask.’ He can hear the wise words his common sense is screaming. Abort mission. Don’t do it, Cavill. For the love of God, don’t ask the gorgeous doctor out on a date. ‘Would you like to go out with me? Like… Tonight? For dinner?’

Olivia crosses her arms in front of her chest. Why isn’t she saying anything? ‘As in a date or as a thank you for saving your dog?’

She is not making it easy for him and he has to give her props for that. That’ll teach him from asking cute women out, who just smiled at him and were nice to his dog. ‘A date,’ he says, all of the sudden not too sure about this action anymore. ‘I know it might be weird, because of what you do for a living and how we met, but I… I’m really interested in you.’

‘In me as a person or what’s in my pants?’

Well both, but he can’t say that, without looking like an absolute creep. ‘In you as a person, what kind of man do you think I am?’

She chuckles. ‘A man who is afraid of needles and can’t say no to his dog,’ she tells him. ‘I’ll go out with you tonight. Can you remember my number or do you want to put it in your phone?’

≫≫≪≪

It took Henry about three hours to go through his entire closet, just to find the perfect outfit for tonight. He didn’t want to look like such a try hard, but he also didn’t want to look like a slob. He eventually opts for a simple black sweater with some fitted jeans and his Chelsea boots. It’s casual, yet it has a fancy streak to it. He grabs the grey blazer from the hanger and while he checks the pockets, he hears Kal whimper, who lays flat on his bed. ‘We’re going out tonight, bud,’ he tells the large canine. ‘You are going to keep Vanessa and her babysitter company, while I’m going out on a date with Olivia.’

He still can’t believe this is happening. He asked the doctor out on a date and the most bizarre thing of it all, was that she said yes.

Olivia Tran said yes to him.

He would lie if he said that he wasn’t nervous. In all honesty, he is about to die from his nerves.

He checks the clock and realizes he should leave his place now. He clicks his tongue, causing Kal to follow Henry downstairs. He puts on Kal’s leash and when he closed off his place, the two of them get in the car. He hums along with the song on the radio, as he drives to her house.

In the past he went on tons of dates. He likes dates, getting to know someone and finding out whether or not they are compatible. But there is something different about this date. He wants to get to know more about Olivia, but he is afraid that once she gets to know him, she’s not interested in him anymore.

He parks his car in front of her house and he takes a deep breath, trying to procrastinate the moment that he has to walk up to the door. Kal whines, as if he knows where they are and he sees that as a moment to get out of the car. The two of them walk up to the door and he rings the doorbell.

‘Mommy,’ Vanessa says from the other side of the door, ‘Henry is here.’

‘Do not open the door!’

‘But mom…’

‘Sweetheart, what if it’s not Henry, but a pervert?’ Olivia asks.

‘Oh my God, Olivia, the person on the other side of the door can hear you!’ he hears a different female voice scream and he can’t help but chuckle. He wondered what kind of household Olivia would have and somehow this situation seems fitting.  

‘Mom, what’s a pervert?’ Vanessa asks.

‘A disgusting human being,’ Olivia explains.

‘Is Henry a pervert? I thought he was Superman?’

‘Olivia, I mean it,’ the other woman says, ‘people on the other side of the door can hear you two.’

The door finally opens and he sees both Vanessa and Olivia standing in the doorway. ‘Hi Henry,’ his already favorite duo say in unison.

‘Hi there,’ he says with a smile. It’s six in the evening and Vanessa is already in her pajama. From the looks of it, it’s light pink with bears on it.

Kal pushes past him, to give the little girl a lick on her cheek, causing her to giggle.

As endearing as that sight may be, he can’t help but look at Olivia, who wears a grey plaid pants paired with a black shirt that hugs her upper body. The outfit shows off her godly proportions. He even sees a hint of tattoos on her arms, but she grabs a coat and it covers them up before he can see them properly.

But if he saw it correctly and she does have tattoos… That’s almost unfair. She is already beautiful, but add tattoos in the mix and that gives him enough to dream about tonight.

Another woman appears in the doorway and she hums in approval. ‘It’s such a shame that I wasn’t on call when your dog started to throw up,’ she says with a smile. She extends her hand and says: ‘Hi, I’m Belle.’

He saw her earlier today. She is another vet and when he was paying for the appointment, she bumped her hip against Olivia’s and they shared a look, one that best friends share. Guess Belle is the certified baby sitter. He quickly shakes her hand. ‘Nice to meet you, I’m Henry.’

‘God, you were right, Olivia,’ Belle says, ‘he is even more handsome in real life.’

Henry detects a fire red blush on Olivia’s cheeks, but she looks down and slips on a pair of boots that have a heel, something he hasn’t seen her wear before. He wants to take in her entire appearances, glancing her over more than once, but he restrains himself, since he doesn’t want to look overly eager.

‘That must be a sign that we need to go,’ Olivia says, before she pinches her friend in her side. She leans down, to give Vanessa a kiss. ‘Be nice to auntie Belle and Kal, okay?’

‘Okay, mommy,’ Vanessa says. ‘Can Kal sleep in my room tonight?’

‘He can,’ Olivia says.

The little girl smiles and looks up at Henry. ‘Is that okay with you too, mister Henry?’ she asks. ‘Kal is your dog.’

‘He can sleep in your room,’ Henry says, touched by the fact that she actually thought she should ask him about this. Olivia is raising such a lovely and polite girl. He truly admires her.

While Olivia rummages through her purse, Belle crouches down and whispers something in Vanessa’s ear.

‘Okay, I’m ready to go,’ Olivia says with a smile.

‘Enjoy your night,’ Vanessa says to the both of them, as Olivia steps out of the doorway. ‘And you two shouldn’t have too much fun.’

Henry nearly chokes on his own spit. ‘Belle, I swear to—’ Olivia wants to say something, but swallows the words before she can express her true feelings. ‘I love you, Vanessa,’ Olivia says to her daughter.

‘I love you too,’ she says to her mother. ‘Will you give me a kiss when you get back?’

‘Of course, angel.’

Vanessa smiles. ‘Bye, mister Henry,’ she says to him.

‘Bye sunshine,’ he says to the young girl, who starts to beam with happiness when she hears her new nickname. He doesn’t know where “sunshine” came from, it just slipped out.

Olivia and Henry walk to his car, but he can’t help but notice how she keeps looking up to him. He opens the door for her and he watches her get in. He waves to the two—three, if you include Kal—in the doorway, before he gets in himself.

‘I’m sorry,’ Olivia says, the second the door closes.

‘No need to,’ Henry laughs, starting his car. ‘It was funny.’

She snorts, while she waves to Belle, Kal and her daughter as he drives off. ‘Well, leave it to Belle to embarrass me.’

‘She a close friend?’

Olivia nods. ‘Very close friend. When I found out I was pregnant with Vanessa, she was there for me when no one else was. She forced me to live in her house for a while, even after Vanessa was born.’

Henry frowns. ‘I thought it was just your ex who wasn’t there for you.’

She sighs. ‘Well, my parents and two brothers weren’t too keen on me having a kid out of wedlock. My mom kicked me out seven years ago and since that moment, no one has tried to contact me. I haven’t seen them ever since.’

This is un-fucking-believable. He knows for sure that, had this happened within his family, his brothers would be over the moon to be an uncle of yet another kid and his parents would love another addition to the family.

And her family just kicks her out?

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he says and he means it from the bottom of his heart. ‘Were you close with your family?’

She shrugs. ‘Growing up I was. Not really with my mom, but with my father and brothers I was super close. I thought that they would love it, a little bean added to the family. Guess I was wrong. But you know, I have Belle, so that’s enough for me right now.’

Right now. That means the door is open for someone else, right? Or is he trying to read something that isn’t there?

‘By the way,’ she says, ‘how did you come up with “sunshine”?’

Why does Henry feels like he just got caught? ‘Just slipped, I guess. I’m so—’

‘Don’t you dare apologize, Cavill,’ she interrupts him. ‘I love the nickname and did you see Vanessa’s face?’

He does actually. He recalls the way her face lit up with happiness and pride.

Olivia looks to the side and when he stops for the traffic lights, he meets her gaze. She smiles. ‘I’m really happy we’re on this date,’ she says. ‘And maybe I’m a bit rusty in the whole dating department and is what I’m about to say way too blunt, but I need to tell you that you look really handsome tonight.’

Maybe that is too blunt, but Henry doesn’t mind. He doesn’t mind at all. His hands get a bit clammy. ‘Thank you, Olivia. Allow me to be just as blunt.’

‘Surprise me.’

‘You look stunning and I’m really happy that you agreed on going out with me.’

A/N: Don’t worry, the next chapter will cover their date 😉

Taglist: @thelastsock​ // @flhorah​ // @sausagefest1996​ // @laufeysodinson​ // @xxxkatxo​ // @memoriesat30​ // @henrythickcavill​ // @crimsonrae​ // @henryobsessed // @madbaddic7ed​ // @summersong69​ // @lyrafraiser​ // @peakygroupie​ // @coldmuffinbanditshoe​ // @mary-ann84​ // @thereisa8ella​ //@crazyandanonymous4u // @xuxszx​ // @emmaofgreengabbles​ // @jimmypagesandbrianmayshair​ // @onlyhenrys

[infernalrevenge]

I’ll Cover You, My Love

Fandom: Choices - Foreign Affairs

Pairing: Ayna Seth x M!MC (Magnus Quezon)

Rating: T (for some self-deprecating stuff)

Summary: Ayna feels guilty about Magnus taking the brunt of the scandal, but he is having none of her negative talk.

Notes: Ayna betrayal plotline? Who's that? Never heard of her. That never happened. I don't know what you're talking about. Anyway, here's a comfort fic for my favorite TA, because I will not take any Ayna slander, not even from Ayna herself. I would just like to say that before I locked in my scandal partner, I had such a hard time picking between Ayna and Blaine, but I went with the latter for maximum drama. Doesn’t mean I still can’t ship my current MC with Ayna though, because I can do what I want. I hope y’all enjoy!

Also hi, I know you asked to be tagged in this :P @robintora

----------

Ayna leaned against her hand propped up on her desk, the words on the paper she was reading starting to blur as she tried her best to stay awake. Ever since she saw the front page cover of the stupid tabloid and Magnus had been the talk of the proverbial town, she hadn’t been able to get a good night's rest as she was wracked with anger and guilt.

Anger at the people who have passed judgement on him so quickly, who decided they knew exactly what kind of person he was based on one stupid picture and the speculations not just on the company he kept, but also on his character...

...and guilt for not being there to take the fall with him. A part of her kept wondering what might have happened if she didn’t get the chance to cover her face the way she did that night. Another part wondered what would have happened if she had just come forward earlier, but Magnus quickly shot the idea down. He explained to her that it was for the best, that he wanted to protect her from the scrutiny.

"You don't have an entire PR team that can spin the story around or make sure it gets buried. This won't just ruin your image -- if you lose your job because of this, it could ruin your life. Please don't say anything to anyone. Let me do this for you, I can handle it," he told her the last time they talked in person. She knew he was just trying to reassure her, but even she can see through the sadness and stress in his eyes, despite the smile he gave then.

At the moment, she simply was not in the best state of mind, and adding to the pile the other things she had going on in her life... she was damn near close to bursting. She was just about to take another sip of coffee, desperate to stay awake, when she heard a knock on her office door. "Come in."

In popped up a familiar head of fiery red hair, his eyes seeming to dart around cautiously before realizing she was alone. A bright smile shone on his face as he came in, waving off to someone from behind the door.

"Magnus, what are you doing here?" Ayna yelped in surprise, standing up.

"I came to see you," he said like it was the most obvious thing, slowly closing the door behind him to make minimal sound.

"What, w-what if someone saw you? Someone might've tailed you o-or people might get suspicious--"

"Hey, don't worry," Magnus stepped toward her, laying his hand on top of hers. "If anyone saw me, they might just think I needed to talk to you about something -- you're also my academic advisor, after all. Plus, Tatum checked and not many other people are out there. I told him to take a short walk so people won't suspect that I’m here for too long."

"Yeah, but we need to be more careful still, I don't want you to--"

"Ayna, I promise I've got it covered, okay?" He squeezed her hand in his, and laid the other one on top. "Just trust me."

She looked up at him, sighing wearily as she let her shoulders relax and sat back down. The young man offered a smile of reassurance, taking a seat from across her desk and carrying it over to the other side to sit next to her. “So, how’ve you been?”

“Honestly? Not great,” she replied, leaning back as she glanced at her laptop screen, multiple windows and tabs opened. “This manuscript isn’t exactly easy to write,” she added with a chuckle. Working on it had been her way of distracting herself from other problems recently, but it wasn’t entirely successful. Her mind had still been brewing with “what-ifs” -- it was much easier to be told not to worry than to actually do it. But she didn’t want to dwell on herself for too long.

“What about you, though? I know the last few weeks have been...” she trailed off, looking down as she was unsure.

“It hasn’t been all bad. I did get Joaquin, after all.” Ah yes, that lynx he got at the pet store during that live interview. Ayna had tuned into it then, and she remembered her fists clenching when the host brought up the scandal unprompted. She almost wished she could have told off that nosy woman to keep out of his personal life, but the way he was able to take back control of it was quite an admirable sight.

“You wanna see pictures?” He excitedly brought out his phone, leaning closer to show her the whole album he had dedicated to the small feline.

“You’ve had him for all of two weeks and you’ve already taken, what, a hundred pictures?” She couldn’t help the amused laugh that escaped her, listening to him coo at nearly every photo he swept through -- some of Joaquin jumping around, some playing with toys, and even some with Dionne in the frame. She had to admit, the combination of the adorable pictures and the equally adorable sight of him describing each one did help lift her spirits a little.

“I can’t help being a proud papa now,” he said, stopping on the picture of the one he took of Joaquin’s first day in the suite. “He’s been helpful in... distracting me, I guess. He somehow just knows what I’m feeling, coming in to comfort me at the right time. The break from reality is always welcome.”

Magnus looked at the woman, noting how her eyebrows furrowed and the frown she wore as he talked about his experience. “Sounds like you might need a break too.”

“This dissertation isn’t gonna finish itself.”

“You know that’s not what I mean, Ayna.”

Guess he managed to learn a thing or two from the lynx then.

“I know you said not to worry about it, that you’d handle it, but...” she sighed, shrinking into herself as she avoided his gaze. “I can’t help it when it’s about you. I can’t even imagine what you’re going through, having thousands of eyes watching you, like they’re waiting for you to slip up.”

The Rutherlandian reached around and wrapped an arm on her shoulders, pulling her closer. “It’s not really anything I haven’t dealt with before. In a way, I’ve kinda gotten used to it.”

“But a scandal of this proportion? That... that has to be different,” she replied, trying to allow herself to lean into him, but not feeling like she deserved his comfort. “It’s not just people waiting for you to mess up now, because they already think you have and they want to watch the whole downward spiral.”

Magnus knew she had been feeling guilty over not getting to step forward and take part of the “blame” (if one could even call it that), but he had no idea how much this was eating at her.

“I can’t help but feel awful that you’ve become the target of such harassment. It wasn’t even your fault! And your mother shouldn’t blame you for everything either, you’re just living your life!”

“Ayna--”

“And here I am. I’m not the one being swarmed by paparazzi and having personal details of my life picked at, but I’m the one who’s stressed and anxious about it. God, how fucking selfish is it of me, feeling sorry for myself when you’re the one dealing with it all. It’s stupid of me to just--”

Ayna felt her face turned up, a gentle yet firm hand cupping her cheek as she met another pair of brown eyes. Anything else she might have wanted to say died off as they looked at each other, but she felt grounded by the way his thumb caressed her cheek.

“You don’t have to feel bad for worrying about me. I love that you care,” he said softly, a small smile playing on his lips. “But it’s not your fault either. What happened already happened, we can’t change that.”

I still wish I could.

The teacher’s assistant let out a shaky breath, leaning into his touch as she brought her hand up to cover his. “I... don’t deserve you, Magnus.”

“No, no, don’t say that. You are kind and beautiful, and you just have-- you have such pure intentions. I know you want to weather the storm with me on this, but I’m doing this for both our sakes. I want you to come out of this safe. Even if they did somehow know it was you, I’d still be keeping you out of it. You shouldn’t have to go through what I do.”

She shook her head, her eyes starting to look glassy as she took in his words. She wanted to believe what he was saying about her, but it was so hard. She didn’t know how he could see those things in her, especially now, vulnerable as she was. She could feel her throat start to choke up, but she spoke anyway. “I wish you didn’t have to... go through it alone. This... this isn’t worth it.” I’m not worth it.

“It is worth it, because you are absolutely worth going through this for.” He started to brush away the tears that rolled down her cheek, before digging into his pockets to find a handkerchief.

“And I’m not going through this alone. I still have you here with me,” he patted her face dry gently, wanting to let her absorb the meaning of his words. He wanted her to know that he meant every word -- that he was sincere in his feelings for her. “Even if you’re not out there with me, knowing that you have my back helps give me the strength to get through another day.”

His patient reassurance lightened the burden inside, if only a little. He knew it wouldn’t be so easy to get her to believe it all, but he would make her see it someday, no matter how long it took.

“I care about you so much, Ayna. You mean more to me than you know.”

Even though it didn’t fully relieve her of the heaviness, those words struck her in a way that helped pull her out of her head. For the first time since the day started, she smiled. A genuine, loving smile through her tears, from knowing that the person she adored so deeply felt the same way about her. If earlier her heart ached with sadness and guilt, now it ached with affection and love for him.

“I care about you too, Magnus,” she said with a sniffle, clearing her throat as it came out rather soft and high-pitched. “I care about you so, so much. I just kinda wish... I could, like, smack away every paparazzo trying to get near you right now.”

Magnus laughed at her exclamation. Sure, he expected that kind of outburst from his friend Blaine, but from Ayna? It was both amusing and endearing.

“Well when we become public, maybe you could. Tatum might even help you with that,” he replied, giving her the handkerchief.

A simple word gave her pause, making her look up at him again, a hopeful glint in her eyes. “When?”

“Well yeah. I... I really like you, Ayna. And I’m not just saying that, I really do. I was kinda hoping that, one day, when things are more, uh, quiet, we could actually be... you know, like, together together.” If his arm wasn’t around her then, he would have been wringing his hands together out of nerves. Was it too soon to bring up that kind of talk? Too soon for them? What if he just jumped into this? He hadn’t even considered if she wanted a relationship yet. Wait wait, he should backtrack--

Ayna pushed forward to kiss him, hands cupping his face as she kept him close. It didn’t take long for Magnus to fall into it, returning it just as eagerly. He could practically feel her smiling against him, a light and fluttering sensation filling his stomach. After a few moments in bliss, they slowly pulled apart, a wide smile on both their faces.

“I would love to be together together with you,” she teased, earning an exasperated sigh from the First Son.

“I get the feeling you’re not gonna let me live that down, huh?”

She only laughed in response, pecking him quickly on the lips again. “Thank you for everything so far, Magnus. I hope I didn’t seem ungrateful for your protection.”

“Not at all, don’t give me that talk.” He rested his forehead onto hers, his gaze turning soft. “You know I’d do anything for you.”

Her thumb gently caressed his cheek, smiling fondly at him. “Would you... let me meet Joaquin some time?”

Needless to say, he said yes.

.

.

.

(The next time Magnus visited her, he came in with an odd lump tucked in the front of his hoodie.

“You know, when I asked to meet Joaquin, I didn’t mean you had to sneak him into my office.”

“...do you want me to go then?”

“No, show me the kitten.”)

[callmemythicalminx]

Of Rain and Warm Embraces- Tommy Angelo x Reader

Fandom: Mafia Definitve Edition

Warnings: Mentions of blood, violence, slight gore, small reference to sexual assault, language. 

Summary: You’re in desperate need of help protecting your neighbourhood from a gang of punks. In a last resort, you ask Don Salieri for his services. Tommy is picked for the job, setting into motion a night of laughter, pain and confessions. 

A/N: Okie, so... this is kinda long, which is why it’s taken so long. I started writing with this one and didn’t really stop, so grab a blankie, some snacks, put on some nice mood lighting, maybe even treat yo self to a special drink and enjoy the ride...

Dedicated to: @kaiiiiiiparkerismyhusband @lolita-wolfson @mayday1284 @xxsamanthaxx @kneelingforvillains @loutino20 @levitate-gengar @dorothynerding ​ @blackbladevika ​ @my-blog-for-me ​ @rammstein-obsession ​ @octorebel @demonsouthere ​

---

The rain pours hard as you walk across the road. You’d hoped the weather would be clear this evening, but the world seems to be against you. Usually, you take the train home as it drops off right near your street. But on this occasion, you were taking a completely different route, one that had you traversing the streets of Little Italy. 

Though there are many people around, you feel on edge as you walk. You have done for the past few weeks since you moved to this city. Every once in a while, you take a quick look over your shoulder, but nothing is amiss. You’re paranoid. They won’t be on this side of town. That’s why you’re here, remember.

You hasten your pace regardless, pulling your coat and umbrella closer to you as the biting wind forces the rain into your face. 

By the time you get to Salieri’s, you’re practically drenched through. You dressed up especially nice for work today knowing you’d be coming here after. You wanted to look attractive, make a good impression- but that’s all gone to waste now thanks to the dreadful weather. You must look an image as you quickly rush into the bar, the door slamming behind you as the wind whips against it. Your wet hair flings up into your face from the force and you cringe. Oh yeah, you’re definitely going to make an impression alright. 

You’re cheap shoes squelch against the floor as you move towards the older gentleman serving at the bar. It feels like all the eyes in the small space are on you- it’s suffocating. You blush. As you stand there, waiting for the barman to finish with a customer, you cross your fingers and desperately hope you’re not making a puddle on the floor with the water dripping from your coat. You look down. There’s practically a lake on the floor already. 

You gawk at it, your eyes practically bulging out of your head. In a feeble attempt to get rid of it slightly, you swipe at it with your foot. You nearly break your neck as your foot slips on it. Thankfully, your hands latch onto the wood bar before you fall.  

The sound of a throat clearing with badly hidden amusement brings your head up so fast, you feel like you’ve got whiplash. You open your mouth ready to speak, but you stop short. Instead of the elderly barman who has mysteriously disappeared, a man stands in front of you, a devilishly handsome one at that. Everything you were going to say slips through your mind like a sieve. You just stand there, staring at him with your mouth open. Could your night get any worse?

The handsome man raises his eyebrow at you, a small smile playing on his lips. “Can I help ya, darling?” Damn, he even sounds handsome too. 

You try to speak. What you end up coming out with is a mix of a breath and a laugh. “I- I uh. I-I um.” His eyebrows raise further. 

“Salieri!” 

Fuck, did you really just do that? Shout at him?! From the slightly amused look on his face, yes, you definitely did just do that. 

“Sorry” you quietly murmur, looking down at the wood just to avoid his eyes. A deep, breathy laugh resounds in your ears, bringing your head straight back up. He’s laughing at you. Usually, you’d be annoyed at someone enjoying your obvious embarrassment, but you can’t seem to stop yourself from smiling back at him. 

“It’s alright…,” he gestures for your name “, Y/N.” He pauses, smiling slightly again. “Tommy. I’m guessing you wanna see Don Salieri then?”

“Yes! Yes, that’s what I’m here for. To see him… Don Salieri.” What the hell is wrong with you right now? You’ve never been this nervous talking to someone before. You forget your embarrassment for the time being though as Tommy smiles, nodding his head and pursing his lips. 

“That I can do. May I just ask why you wanna see the boss?” He leans down slightly on crossed arms, bringing his face slightly closer to yours. You swear you can feel his warm, whiskey scented breath on your face but it’s more likely the warm air seeping into your cold flushed cheeks. 

“I- I uh, need his help with something. Or his services should I say.” He nods, apparently pleased with your answer, then gestures for you to follow him. 

“I’ll show you to his office.”

As you make your way through the bar and into the back rooms, you curl into yourself unconsciously, running your hand through your wet hair in a desperate attempt to control it. You feel out of place here. The men are dressed to the nines, in expensive tailored suits. The women are just the same, smoking high-end cigarettes in dazzling dresses. You look like a drowned rat compared to them.

In a sense, you feel like you’ve walked into the viper’s den. You’ve heard the stories. Seen the newspapers- these men are criminals. The one in front of you who has enraptured your attention is no doubt one too. This isn’t the place for you. Danger and illegal activities aren’t exactly your go-to hobbies. You’re here only because you’re desperate. So why are you suddenly very interested in the gangsta in front of you?

Tommy leads you up a set of stairs and to the right, pausing at a door. He looks back at you and must notice your terrified expression, as he releases a small, wispy laugh. 

“Don’t look so petrified, yea? The Don’s only scary if you’ve done something wrong. Have you?” You shake your head hard in response. He nods. “Then you should be fine.”

He knocks and a strong voice from within grants entrance. Tommy opens the door, announcing himself.

“Boss, I’ve got a dame here to see ya. Says she’s in need of your services.” Timidly, you follow behind him, peering slightly from behind his back. You see the Don look up at you, a warm smile appearing on his face. You try to hide behind Tommy’s back again but he moves to close the door, leaving you in direct view. 

You don’t move for a beat. It feels like a million alarm bells are ringing off in your head, screaming at you to leave this room and run away. You’ve never been in a room with a man of such power and influence, so your body's fight or flight response is going wild, favouring the latter option to the first. You finally move forward when you feel a hand press against the base of your spine, leading you towards the desk gently. At that moment, you’re very thankful Tommy is here with you even though you’ve only known him for less than five minutes. 

“Don Salieri Sir!” You blurt, thrusting your hand up unceremoniously. You expect him to shake your hand but you’re shocked when he instead rises and grabs your hand with both of his own.

“Please dear, just call me Salieri. And don’t look too worried, I’m not as frightening as everyone makes me out to be.” 

You hear Tommy let out a small drawn out “Well” behind you, but it goes unnoticed by Salieri as he crosses around his desk to come before you. His hand rubs the top of yours slightly as he does so. 

“You’re freezing girl. Tommy, would you get the poor girl a coffee, please?”

“Sure thing, boss.” He leaves the room and you’re quite tempted to follow him, but you feel rooted to the spot under the Don’s intense, but intuitive gaze. He leads you to one of the couches and gestures for you to sit. You take your wet coat off as you do and he takes notice, offering his hand to take it off you. 

“That’s not necessary-”

“Please. I insist.” You give it to him, albeit with a little reluctance. You rub your palms against the fabric of your dress, smiling slightly when he turns back towards you. Thankfully Tommy then re-enters the room, easing your nerves slightly. He places a small cup down in front of you, steam rising like a beacon. The aroma is too enticing for you to handle and you immediately reach for the cup, sighing as the warmth begins seeping into your cold skin. The two men laugh slightly at your reaction, making you blush as you blow onto the hot liquid. 

Salieri sits opposite you, Tommy standing beside you. The latter must notice you shivering slightly now that your coat has been taken off as a sudden warmth envelops you, smelling like rich cologne and cigarettes. Tommy’s coat covers you like a blanket, incredibly long against your frame. You reach up and pull it around you tighter, looking up at him with a shy smile in thanks. He smiles back, this time with more softness than before. 

“Wonderful idea, Tom.” You barely register Saileri’s response as you find yourself enchanted by Tommy’s golden eyes. It’s only as he replies, that you seem to snap out of your trance. “Just tryna help the lady boss.”

“So my dear. How can I help you?” Oh yeah. Right. You actually forgot for a moment why you were here. You look back towards Salieri, taking a sip of your coffee as you do so. You can feel it already beginning to warm up your body and sigh before beginning to speak. 

“Well, where do I begin?” You let out a gentle, almost soulful laugh then continue. “I moved back into the city about a month ago. I’ve been away for a while because of an old job, but I’ve returned to look after my father. He’s quite ill, you see. I don’t think he has long left and I- I just want him to feel comfortable.” Salieri nods solemnly, eyes adrift. Tommy places his hand against your shoulder, squeezing slightly and you whisper a small thank you to him. 

The Don looks at the hand on your shoulder for a second, squints, then returns his gaze back to you. You take a deep breath, sipping more of your coffee before continuing. “My father and I live in an area of mostly elderly folk. They can barely see 10 feet in front of them anymore, nevermind deal with any trouble. Because of that, there’s this little gang of goons terrorising my father and his neighbours. They know they’ll be able to get away with it.”

Salieri nods. “Have they tried anything with you?”

“Um, well. They uh. They cornered me a couple of nights ago and started,” you struggle to get the words out for a second and feel another comforting squeeze on your shoulder “, touching me, but luckily there were some police walking down the street. So they left pretty quickly. They haven’t tried anything since, but to be completely honest with you, I’m more worried about the elderly residents than myself.”

“That’s kind of you dear. Putting them before yourself.” Salieri nods to himself, lighting up a cigar as he does so. “ You’re wanting some protection then?”

“Oh please. I’d be happy to pay.” Salieri looks at Tommy again. You don’t know what passes between them, but the former nods rising from his seat. You follow him after quickly sipping the last of your drink. 

“There’s no need. I’d be happy to help get rid of those punks.” You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding, bringing your hands to your chest in thanks. It feels like a great weight has been lifted from your body. Your father will finally be safe.

“Oh, thank you, Mr Salieri! I’m truly indebted to you for this!” The man in question shakes his head as he crosses round to you and grabs your hands again. 

“Trust me, my dear, there is no price for this. These punks need to know that I run these streets and look after all who live in them,” he turns towards the door “, Tommy will drive you home. I would imagine the goons are usually out around about now?” At your nod, he moves to collect your coat.

“He will deal with them tonight then. As for you my dear, if you ever need anything else at all, whether it’s a job or some money… please don’t hesitate to come back and ask.”

“I will. Thank you, Mr Salieri!” At that, he gives you one last smile, then retreats back to his desk. Tommy ushers you out the office after collecting your coat from his boss, then leads you back down the stairs. 

Before you reach the exit, you reach up to take Tommy’s coat off but his hand reaches out and stops you before you can do so. You look up and see him gazing at you with a warmth in his eyes. 

“Please. Keep it on. You need it much more than I do right now.” You open your mouth to argue, but from the look on his face, you surrender and instead pull the coat tighter around you. 

“Thank you, Tommy.” He nods, looking down, then pushes open the door. He reaches behind you and ducks you slightly, then you’re suddenly out in the rain again, rushing towards a building opposite. You keep your head low, trying to shield your eyes from the bullet-like rain. Tommy ducks you more, moving his other hand over the top of your head to shield you further. You feel your heart skip a beat at the kind gesture. No one’s ever been this kind to you before. Stop it Y/N, he’s part of the goddamn Mafia. You don’t need any more trouble. 

You choose to ignore the rational part of your mind as you reach the cover of a garage, a beautiful dark blue Eckhart Elite waiting parked inside. Tommy shakes his shoulders slightly in an attempt to lose some of the rain on his jacket. He reminds you of a dog, making you giggle. 

“You laughin’ at me, darling? After I just kept you dry from the rain?” You can’t help but continue giggling at his mock hurt expression. He shakes his head at you while he leads you to the passenger side. 

“Maam.” He opens the door for you and actually bows. You try to retain a smile, but it breaks out easily on your face. You mock curtsy in return as you climb into the car. “Why thank you, good sir, you do know how to treat a lady well.”

You see his smirk as he shuts the door and jumps in the driver seat after leaving your wet coat in the back. Once the engine is on and he’s got your address, he drives out into the rain.  

As you look out onto the road, reality comes crashing down around you, reminding you that you’re now stuck in a car with a criminal for the next 20 minutes. You take in a deep breath through your nose. Instead of calming your racing mind, it instead focuses your attention more on Tommy as you get a deep whiff of his smokey scent. Why not enjoy your time with him? He has been such a gentleman. For once, you can’t help but want to agree with your inner voice. 

“Your boyfriend must be a coward if he’s not dealin’ with these punks for ya.” Your head shoots back to Tommy, confusion on your face. “What? It’s not that hard to send a message-”

“Wait, no. I’m not- I don’t have a boyfriend.” Tommy looks at you with genuine shock. 

“You’re kiddin?”

“I’m telling the truth.” You shrug your shoulders as you look back out the window “Ever since I moved back, I haven’t really had time to date, what with my father and working. Well that and the fact I haven’t really found anyone I’m interested in yet.” Tommy doesn’t say anything back. You turn to look at him and find him looking at the road, but you can tell his mind is in a completely different place. He finally seems to come to his senses as he shakes his head, looking towards you. He actually blushes when he realises you were looking at him. To save him from the embarrassment, you start the conversation again. 

“Well, what about you? Does any lucky girl have the privilege of calling you there's? Surely a man such as yourself wouldn’t be single.”

Another eyebrow raise. “A man such as myself? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Damn, you really need to think about what you’re saying around this man. “Um, well. Y’know. You’re uh… handsome. And you're very gentlemanly and kind. You’re tall too. And you have… Nice taste in cars.” Your rambling now. It’s only when you hear a deep laugh come from your driver that your embarrassment quickly disappears. Instead, you look at him incredulously, squinting at him in mock anger. He notices and laughs even harder. 

“I’m glad you find my unfiltered mouth so funny Tommy.” You say it sarcastically, but you can’t help but smile as you speak. He breathes deep, looking down at the wheel then back up to you. 

“I’m sorry. It’s cute seeing you get so flustered darling.” You know you’re blushing again, but thankfully the absence of light on the street hides your rosy cheeks. No one’s ever called you cute before. “As laughable as it sounds, I don’t have a girl right now.” Now you are in disbelief. 

“Did you not just hear what I embarrassingly said about you? How could you possibly be single?!”

“Yea, I know, I know.” He shrugs, pursing his lips slightly. “I just… Haven’t found the right girl yet. There’s also not many women who wanna be with a guy like me.”

“Now why would you say that? It’s not your job is it? No wait, I know- you have some kind of weird hobby don’t you?!” You’re really taking the piss out of him now. And he knows it- you can see him silently laughing. He answers anyway. “Apart from being one of Salieri’s soldiers, my ‘nice taste in cars’ and my handsomeness, I haven’t really got much else to offer.” 

“Oh please, there has to be more to you than just being a gangsta Tommy.”

“Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t- guess you’re just gonna have to find out.”

You don’t get to process his answer fully, as your mind suddenly blanks as he turns onto the main street that leads to your road. You spot the goons out of the corner of your eye immediately. 

“Tommy, there! That’s them on the side of the road!” All traces of humour leave his face. He pulls the car in just in front of them and quickly gets out, slamming the door behind him. You follow him, jumping out into the rain. The goons having already noticed the expensive car were making their way over, but now that they’ve seen you, they quicken their steps. 

“Hey sugar, haven’t seen you in a while. You been holding out on us?” 

“Piss off.” You know it’s ‘unladylike to swear’ but you couldn’t care. You’re sick of these punks and with a gangsta at your back, you also feel fearless. The leader of the gang walks closer to you when you reach the sidewalk, but Tommy steps in front of you before he can get any closer. 

“If you saps aren’t careful, you’ll end up in wooden overcoats.” The leader looks taken aback for a second. But then his confidence returns and he slowly walks towards Tommy, puffing his chest out as he does. His friends follow close behind. 

“You brought your boyfriend sugar? It’s okay, he can watch. He can even join in at the end if he wants.” That’s apparently hilarious as the rest of the goons start laughing along with their leader. Tommy just gets more rigid. You can feel the waves of anger rolling off him and you know he’s gonna go for them any moment now. His tone is clipped and harsh as he replies “You fucks clearly don’t know how to treat a lady do ya?”

The leader’s laughter immediately stops.“Listen here pal. We know who you are- you’re one of Saleri’s washed up soldiers.” He spits on the ground at Tommy’s feet. “We ain’t afraid of you.”

“I don’t need him for this. Or anyone else.”

“Well then. Let’s see what you can do.” The leader swings for Tommy, but in the blink of an eye, he’s on the ground passed out. The rest of the punks pause for a second, thinking over their options before (stupidly) running towards you both, eager to get revenge for their leader. 

Tommy quickly jumps into action, biding his time between them all as he begins taking them out one by one. You stand there shocked for a moment, disbelieving of what you’re seeing. He takes them out easily, his fists landing heavy blows that can be heard even in the roaring rain. As one of the punks tries to grab him from behind, you jump into action yourself. You reach for a brick on the ground and hurl it towards his head.

Somehow, it actually hits him with a large thud. He falls to the ground just behind Tommy, the man in question turning around to see what happened. He smiles at you in both thanks and appreciation, before ducking out of the way of another punch. From your short interaction with him, you fail to see a beefy goon run at you from the side, pushing you back into the car. You slam into the wing mirror with force, the wind rushing out of your stomach. You gasp and sputter into his face as you try to breathe, making him angrier. You attempt to push him, lifting your leg up aiming towards his crotch, but he spins you around quickly forcing you over the bonnet. As thunder belows through the sky, your answering scream can barely be heard.

You panic, flinging your legs out wildly. Somehow, you manage to kick his leg and he curses behind you. He flings you around again. You barely register a sudden sharp pain against your face before you’re falling to the ground. Agony radiates through your head, your ears ringing. Luckily, your arm blocks your head from hitting the ground, but you feel your hands and knees scrape the gravel. 

You can’t move. The pain is clouding your thoughts. You can do nothing but lie there, breathing heavily as you wait for your senses to return. You feel hands grasp your shoulders, one of them rising to your face. You shrink back from it at first, but then the hand curls around your cheek, softly rubbing against a forming bruise. You look up into golden eyes and the world freezes around you. You feel safe. Comforted. As those eyes look at you with worry, you no longer feel the water soaking into your dress or the ache from the scratches on your skin. You can’t hear the thundering rain or the whistle of the wind through your ringing ears. You can barely even register your pounding hearbeat. All you can see, hear, feel… is Tommy. Those warm hands pulling you into a strong hug. The frantic beating of his heart from his solid but warm chest. Home. It feels like home. 

“Y/N?! Y/N!? You okay, darling?!” You struggle to answer, overwhelmed by the emotions running rampant through your body. 

Tommy rises with you pressed against him, pulling you into the open again. As you feel the full force of the rain again, the world centres around you and the chaos of the weather reigns over your senses once more.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Just a bit shocked is all.” You can hear how dazed you sound. Tommy looks down at you and curses. He pulls you back from the car, quickly opening your door and ushering you in. He turns around and runs around the car, getting in himself and quickly starting the engine. His hair is soaked and he runs his hand through it, trying to tame it before driving off. You just continue to look at him, unbelieving of the experience you just had. You ignore the bodies of the punks as he goes down the road towards your street. You ignore the body of the beefy goon whose head has practically vanished underneath a bloody brick. You can only focus on him. 

“Do you have a first aid kit at your house?” You don’t hear him at first. It’s only when he looks at you again that you snap out of your reverie. He repeats the question. 

“Yeah, yeah. I have one, it’s there for my father.”

“Your father ain’t the one I’m worryin’ ‘bout right now. I need to fix you up, your cheeks’ bleeding.”

It is? Your hand reaches up, stroking lightly. You feel a sting. Lo and behold, when you move it back, there’s a smudge of blood on your fingertips. 

“That fucker was wearing rings. They cut your fuckin’ face!” Tommy is angry- really angry. Though your cheek is bleeding, you can feel that it’s nothing to worry about. You attempt to calm him down. 

“Tommy, it’s fine. It’s just a-”

“That ain’t the point darling!” His fingers grip the steering wheel tighter, his mouth a grimace. You can practically hear his teeth grinding together. “I don’t like seeing women hurt. Especially y-” He suddenly stops talking. You look at him but he refuses to meet your eyes. 

“Especially who Tommy?”

“It doesn't matter. We’re here.” He jumps out the car before you can say anything more, quickly running round to your door. You limp slightly as you get out, the grazes making your legs ache with the pain. Before you even know what’s happening, you're suddenly in Tommy’s arms as he runs up the driveway of your home. You open your mouth to protest, but his arms grip you tighter, pulling you just slightly more into his chest. Why not enjoy it?

Once you reach the door, Tommy takes your keys from you and swiftly opens the door, carrying you to the couch in your living room. He goes to retrieve the first aid kit after closing the door, while you struggle out of his now soaked coat. You leave it hanging over the side of the armchair facing you. 

Tommy re-enters the room moments later, already routing through the kit. Thankfully, you only have the minor cut on your cheek and some grazes on your hands and knees from where you fell, so they only need to be cleaned and covered. 

He falls into a crouch before you, unrolling some cloth as he does so. Neither of you speak as he adds a dab of alcohol to the material, the weight of the conversation in the car still hanging heavily between you. When he reaches up to start dabbing at your cheek, there’s no way of escaping looking at each other. 

“Thank you Tommy. Not just for helping me deal with those goons. But for looking after me too.” He breaths deep, looking away from you as he adds more alcohol. He doesn’t say anything, so you continue. “I’ve never really had someone look after me like this before. Apart from my father, my experience with men is little to none.”

Tommy sighs, his hand dropping from your face. “Y/N, I-”

“Please. Let me finish.” You say it softly, almost a whisper. He purses his lips, but nods at you to continue. 

“I know you don’t think you have much to offer. I also know that we’ve only known each other for a few hours. But the way you made me feel tonight Tom….” You shrug, looking down at your fidgeting hands. “I haven’t ever felt this way before- like someone cares about me.”

You pull at your fingers in your nervousness, but his hand stops you, gently holding your hands between his. He rubs slightly at your skin with his thumb. 

“I’ve never really joked with another girl, like I did with you tonight. Usually, it’s my buddies takin’ the piss outta me. It was… nice.” You let out a scoff before you can stop yourself, swinging your face back up. Tommy looks off to the side with a reminiscent smile. 

“Nice? That’s it?” He laughs quietly at your response. He looks into your eyes and you swear you can see the battle taking place in his mind through those pools of burnished gold. 

“Fine. It was better than nice.” You nod, pleased and he just sends you one of his smirks, his eyebrow raised. 

“You really impressed me when you knocked that guy out. You also scared the shit outta me when I saw you fall to the floor after that punk…” he breathes deep unable to finish his sentence. Unconsciously, your hand reaches out and cups his face. You can feel his day old stubble beneath your fingers as you slightly caress his cheek to comfort him. His own hand reaches up and covers yours. 

“I ain’t ever been that worried about a dame before. It… scared me in a way.” 

“What are you saying Tommy?” You ask, stroking his cheek gently. 

“It ain’t obvious?”

“It is. I just wanna hear you say it.” You practically beam at him. He jokingly sighs, then leans forward tilting his head slightly. 

“I’m saying Y/N, I think I wanna make you my girl.” You can’t help the wispy giddy laugh that escapes your chest. 

“I think I’d like that Tommy.”

This is really not how you thought this night was gonna go. He finishes cleaning up your wounds, then covers them. You’ll have some explaining to do to your father tomorrow no doubt. Tommy rises to dispose of the stained cloth, walking to the door after helping you up from the couch. As he opens it, you suddenly realise you’ve left his coat on the arm chair. You turn to retrieve it, but his hand quickly grabs your wrist. You look at him in confusion but he just smiles michievlosuly. 

“You can bring my coat back to Salieri’s tomorrow. I’ll return yours. Then I’ll take you out. To the pictures maybe. I might even get ya some flowers.”

Oh, he’s smooth. You shake your head and lean up, placing a quick kiss on his cheek. You can’t contain the giddy feeling that spreads through your body when you see the blush painting his cheeks. “It’s a date.”

He grabs your hand, bowing again and kissing it. “Until tomorrow then maam”. You jokingly curtsy back. “Goodnight to you sir.”

He smiles one last time, then turns, hurriedly walking back to the car. You wait under the shelter of your porch until he drives off, giddily spinning when you see him leave the road. If you neighbours can for some reason see you, you don’t have it in you to care. You’re in a bubble of happiness right now and nothing is going to burst it.

After locking your door, you walk to the couch and pick up Tommy’s coat. Even wet, his smell still clings to it and you can’t help pulling it up to your nose and taking a whiff. Just the scent alone makes you feel warm and safe. You bring it up the stairs with you, quickly checking in on your sleeping father, before going to your own room. 

You leave Tommy’s coat to dry in the bathroom, touching it every so often as you get ready to go to bed. When you finally crawl between the sheets, you can still smell cigarettes and whisky. 

As you fall into slumber, your dreams consist only of golden eyes and a warm embrace.

---

Thank you for reading minxies! If it’s too long or boring, I’m sorry. I really just wrote with this one... (Unedited)

[meltwonu]

s n a k e     |     e y e s     [chapter 2]

pairing; snakehybrid!woozi x female!reader

this chapter’s notes; seokmin is a quokka hybrid in this and i know and if you dont know, quokkas actually spit out their food and eat it again but for the sake of seokmin not being gross in this, he doesn’t do that ok kjdhfks and also for those who dont know snakes smell by using their tongue so…. Very mild touching in this one( masturbation at the end hehe oops)!! I’ve also kinda changed some stuff around, not a big deal, but made it so it’d make more sense in this au!! hehe thank u for taking interest in snakehybrid!woozi 🥺💕

chapters; 1 - 2 - x - x - x

It’s a warm Sunday morning when Jihoon lugs his keyboard out into the sunroom. Mingyu’s already waiting there with the new hybrid at the adoption home, Seokmin. The smiley quokka-hybrid sleeps in the bedroom next to the snake hybrid and has a saccharine voice much like Jihoon himself. And despite Jihoon’s timid nature, he quite likes the company of the two younger hybrids.

“Hey Jihoon-hyung over here!”

There’s a clang when the keyboard accidentally taps the door frame to the sunroom and Jihoon has to pause to check for any scratches on the gift Seungcheol gave him.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, hold on. I need to plug it in.”

Jihoon shrugs off his jacket, tossing it into a corner while he goes to set up the keyboard by the other two lounging in the sun.

“I was wondering if we could try working on that song from last time, hyung?” Seokmin’s head tilts cutely to the side as he makes space for Jihoon on the floor. “Um, sure. I can try to remember how to play it.”  Seokmin and Jihoon work together to craft a song while Mingyu watches in awe, scrambling to find the camera Seungcheol gave him so that he can snap some pictures of the two.

The three hybrids lounge in the sunroom for a few hours, basking in the warmth as they sing together, urging Mingyu to take part in it as well.

“You have a great singing voice, Mingyu! You should show it off sometimes too!!” The husky hybrid blushes, tail wagging furiously behind him. “Oh my god, shut up you’re embarrassing me!” Jihoon snickers as Seokmin and Mingyu really get into it, his fingers dancing delicately over the keys.

“Alright, time for lunch!”

The sudden voice breaks them out of their little tussle; eyes traveling to the figure standing in the doorway with a cart filled with food. “Seungcheol-hyung brought food!!” By nature, it’s Mingyu who gets up first, barreling into Seungcheol. He sheepishly apologizes, helping Seungcheol distribute the food between the three hybrids.

“Okay, I want you guys to enjoy your lunch because we have a special visitor afterwards! She’s actually a friend of mine and she’s kind of been wanting to adopt a hybrid so I asked her to come by. I know it’s really last minute but I figured she’d just come meet you guys. How’s that sound?”

“Yay, new people!” Seokmin replies cheerily with a mouth full of salad. Mingyu nods, he liked meeting new people, especially if they were friends of Seungcheol. Jihoon on the other hand feels his appetite leave him almost immediately. He hated it when people came to tour the adoption home. He knew the three of them weren’t the only occupants of Seungcheol’s adoption home but he still disliked the inevitable stares and questions he got.

“Um, yeah, that’d be...great.”

Jihoon tries to finish his food for the sake of not being hungry later but he can barely get it all down before  Jeonghan pops his head into the room. “Hey ‘Cheol, your friend is here.” The two leave together, leaving the three hybrids alone once again.

“Hey, do you think hyung’s friend is gonna adopt anyone?” Seokmin stretches out onto the floor by the piano, Mingyu in tow. “Dunno, but hyung said that she was looking to adopt so maybe?” The two delve into mindless chatter as Jihoon sits alone with his thoughts. He was thankful most of the time that they didn’t have many visitors because all it brought him was unneeded stress.

There’s a knock on the door, Mingyu yelling “come in!” from his place on the floor before a female laugh can be heard, Seungcheol’s voice accompanying it.

“And these are the three muskateers. Come say hi, everyone!” They all get up from their positions, each of them introducing themselves to you as Jihoon lags behind. “This shy one is Jihoon, he’s a snake hybrid.” Jihoon’s lips press into a firm line as he stares off to the side; mildly uninterested and a little bit anxious.

“Oh, interesting, a snake hybrid!”

Jihoon mentally grimaces. Usually when people came hoping to adopt, there were two typical reactions they had towards him. The first one was confusion; mainly because Jihoon didn’t have any physical features that a snake hybrid normally had. The second one was usually fascination with him being a snake hybrid. Jihoon almost preferred the former because it usually meant he’d stay at the adoption home and wouldn’t have to  do or change anything. The latter typically meant he’d potentially get adopted and whoever his owner was would find out he was too much maintenance for a hybrid that didn’t even look like one.

“If you don’t mind, do you think we can have a little chat together?” Your voice breaks him out of his thoughts as he finally looks you in the eye for the first time since you’d walked in. He’s hesitant, shooting Seungcheol a quick glance. “Um, Jihoon’s a little shy…”

“Oh, that’s okay then! I completely unders---”

“It’s fine. We can… talk.”

Jihoon’s palms feel clammy and his throat feels dry when Seungcheol escorts the other two hybrids out of the sunroom so that you can talk to him properly. The air feels awkward and somewhat tense when he turns his back towards you; settling down in front of the keyboard still placed on the floor.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to come off as harsh but what do you want? I’m sure Seungcheol told you about me or my history so...” You twiddle your thumbs, walking over to the windowsill to lean up against it as you watch him run his fingers along the keys.

“What do you mean?”

“You probably have a ton of questions right? Why don’t I have any hybrid features? Why do I look like a normal human? Do I have any weird appendages? How many times people have returned me here?” The room is quiet; only the sounds of the birds outside chirping filling in the awkward air.

“Not really. I didn’t come here looking to adopt a hybrid for the sake of their appearance or their rarity, I guess. I just… I don’t know, I guess I wanted a companion. I work at home a lot since I’m a writer and it gets lonely. Thought someone could keep me company. Or maybe someone wanted company.” Jihoon lets your words sink in, his fingers trembling as he presses down on a random key.

“Oh.”

A few days passed since meeting Jihoon and he had carefully agreed to you adopting him. The two of you had talked a little bit longer; Jihoon feeling more at ease with you than most of the people he’d met in the past. Seokmin had been sad that his new friend was leaving and Mingyu had been wary about the entire thing. But Jihoon had soothed them both; telling them that they’d probably see him soon anyway.

Seungcheol drives him to your apartment, Jihoon’s things in boxes in the trunk as he sits nervously in the front seat.

“Jihoon, I know you’re… this is a lot. It’s okay to feel anxious and nervous and.. I mean with everything in the past, I--”

“I know. You don’t have to feel sorry for me. It feels bad. Just… don’t be surprised when you see me back at the adoption place in like a week, okay?” He chuckles sadly, eyes focused on the scenery outside the window. Seungcheol sighs, hands gripping the wheel.

There’s three knocks on the door before you’re rushing to open it, vacuum still buzzing in the background as you all but rip the door open.

“Hey!” You shoot both the males a smile, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. “Sorry I was in the middle of cleaning but come in!” You give them space to enter, Jihoon toeing off his shoes and setting them by yours at the entrance as he balances his prized keyboard in his arms. Seungcheol sets one of the boxes of Jihoon’s things down on the dinner table, wiping the sweat off his brow.

“Sadly the elevator was broken so we had to take the stairs. Who would’ve thought carrying one box of things up the stairs would be the death of me. Can I have some water?” Jihoon snorts, taking in the features of his new home as he sets the keyboard down by the sofa.

“‘Cheol, you’ve got the stamina of a 90 year old man.”

“Hey, it’s not easy being old okay!” You pass him a glass of water, trapezing around the vacuum cord to turn it off. “I wanted to be done cleaning up before you got here, Jihoon. Sorry, I’m a little slow, I’m used to it just being me here and just living in my filth I guess.” He shrugs, “S’okay, Mingyu usually leaves a mess around the place anyway. Guess you can say I’m used to living in filth.” Seungcheol sputters, wiping the water off of his chin. You can’t help but laugh, patting Seungcheol on the shoulder as you gesture Jihoon further into your place.

“Let me show you around!”

Seungcheol decides to get more of Jihoon’s stuff out of his car as Jihoon walks behind you cautiously down the hallway, only stopping when you get to the door at the end of the hall. “Um, This place has three bedrooms and mine is on the opposite side but I wasn’t sure if you’d want the room that was next to mine or if you wanted space? I’m using the other room as a workspace right now, so you can put your stuff in here for now while you get used to the place… And then if you change your mind, we can switch some stuff around!” Giving him a small smile, you tug the door open, letting him enter first and for once, Jihoon is shocked. The room is much larger than any room he’s ever had and he takes notice of all the fancy heaters and humidifiers already placed around the room.

“Wow…”

“Sorry, is it, like, too much? ‘Cheol said you had some heaters and stuff in your old room but I thought I’d get you some new ones… Kind of like a housewarming gift?”

“This is… nice. It’s, um, very kind of you.” He can feel a soft blush wash over his skin as he tugs his sleeves down over his hands. “I… like it a lot. Thank you.”

When Seungcheol finally leaves after bringing up all of Jihoon’s things, it’s finally time for the two of you to settle in. 

Jihoon’s safety net is gone and the reality of being in a new space has his anxiety spiking back up tenfold. “Hey, Jihoon?”

“Huh?”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you or anything but I thought we’d order out for dinner if that’s okay? I’d usually cook but I think we’ve both had a long day. What do you think?”

“O-okay…” You can basically feel the nervousness radiating off of him as he awkwardly stands in the middle of the living room. “Jihoon, do you want to, um, I mean, you don’t have to stay out here if you don’t want to? You’re free to roam around if you’d like.” He shuffles closer to the sofa, biting his lip as he stares out the window.

“It’s… okay, I should m-maybe, um, spend some time with you? If that’s okay?” By now, his past owners would send him off to his shoebox of a room, only calling him out when it was necessary. Usually, he’d immediately plug in his keyboard by now, tuning out everything until he was just focused on composing something until he was needed.

Instead, he inches closer to the sofa, sitting down on the plush material as you put the last bit of cleaning supplies away and plop down onto the other side. “Hey, Jihoon? Can I be honest with you for a second?” He turns to you, nodding curiously. “I’m gonna be real, I did some research on snake hybrids but I couldn’t find much… I’m kind of inexperienced with the whole hybrid thing and even more uneducated when it comes to snake hybrids so… is there anything I should know? Like, snakes smell with their tongue, right? So, is it the same for you? Sorry if that’s offensive or something!” You watch the blonde haired male lick his lips, his leg bouncing slightly.

“Um, technically that’s correct. But snake hybrids still can use their human noses, it’s just… more intense when we use our tongues. Uh…” A blush settles on his cheeks, his mind no doubt going in a different direction than he intended. “Just, yeah, m-more intense, that’s all. Some foods might be more off-putting for us because of that. And, to be fair, I don’t… have many features that most snake hybrids have anyway. It’s just my surroundings and I guess some of my mannerisms? I basically exist normally other than that.”

You nod appreciatively; glad that Jihoon was willing to open up to you, even if it was only a little at a time. It would take a lot of getting used to on your part and his, but he seemed okay for now, albeit still timid. “I just want you to know that even though I adopted you as a hybrid, I don’t want you to think that I think less of you. I think of us as equals!” You turn to him smiling; ecstatic when he turns to face you as well.

“You have the freedom to do whatever you want here as long as it’s not destroying stuff, I guess. And if you need anything, you’re more than welcome to ask me! I’m home a lot since I’m a writer but I do have to pop into my editor’s office every now and then. But if you want to go out and eat or… um, I dunno, maybe go for a walk in the park? I’m always down to go!” Now it’s your turn to blush as he watches you, his fingers interlocked in his lap as he sits there quietly processing what you’ve said.

“I… thank you, you’re a lot kinder than any of my previous owners.”

Jihoon is on cloud nine when you tell him that he can pick what dinner he wants to have, eyes scanning over all the options on the food delivery app on your phone.

“I mean, as long as you don’t run up a $100 bill on food, you can pick whatever you want!” He chuckles quietly, clicking on various items and adding it to the cart. “Thank you for letting me pick dinner.”

“Yeah, it’s no problem! It’s your first night here, I want you to feel comfortable. This also reminds me that I need to get you a phone, just in case and also so you don’t get bored.”

The pretty flush doesn’t leave Jihoon’s face the rest of the night, even as the two of you sit at the dinner table eating the fried chicken and soda combination Jihoon picked out. The cute snake hybrid apparently had an obsession with the sweet drink, downing cups of it as you took mental notes to buy some for him later. And for the first time, you see him genuinely smile as he eats, cute lips curving up as he polishes off the rest of the food.

A crumb sits at the corner of his lips, and by instinct you lean over, thumb already next to his mouth before you can even stop yourself. There’s a pause, Jihoon’s eyes wide as you swipe at the crumb, ready to settle back into your seat when Jihoon’s hand comes up, wrapping around your wrist and holding you there.

“I, oops, I should’ve just told you there was a crumb! Sorry!”

You laugh awkwardly, hoping he doesn’t accidentally snap your wrist because you just invaded his personal space. Instead, you watch as he brings your hand closer to his mouth, pink tongue peeking out as he swipes at your thumb. You try to not question it, convincing yourself it might just be a snake thing, so you let him do whatever it is he’s doing as he begins to nose at your palm. It feels ticklish; your hand wanting to close at the feeling, but you can’t deny the way your body heats up on instinct, the innocent gesture riling up your thoughts about the snake hybrid for some reason. There was no denying how handsome he was; blonde hair falling into his sharp eyes and a lean but slightly muscular form.

Trying to shake off your thoughts, your eyes flit to the hand currently wrapped around your wrist and you can’t help but admire how delicate and pretty his hands were. Again, your mind conjures up situations that you probably shouldn’t be thinking about right now and you really hope Jihoon can’t tell.

When he decides he’s done, he lets go of your wrist, quietly taking a sip of his drink before setting it down on the tabletop again. “Um, sorry. I don’t… I just wanted to, um, s-smell you? I guess, um, snake thing, probably. Just wanted to get to know my, uh, owner.” You nod at his explanation, settling back into your seat as you try to push out all the inappropriate thoughts you just had.

“You’re very warm.”

That night when you split off for bed, you wish him a good night's rest; making sure the snake hybrid has everything he needs before you make a beeline for your bedroom, hastily locking the door behind you as you get ready for bed.  There really was no denying how attractive Jihoon was, but damn, he had literally just moved in today and your mind and heart were already racing. You try to think of everything but Jihoon when you slip under your covers for bed and hope that you can get a good night’s rest yourself.

But you feel bad. Really really bad. You’re almost certain satan has a special seat in hell for people like you. 

But you can’t help the way your hands roam all over your body as you lay under the bed sheets, fingers deep inside your pussy as you imagine them to be Jihoon’s instead. It was questionably an innocent gesture earlier, but your mind can’t help but conjure images of his tongue all over your skin and his delicate fingers fucking you nice and hard. The contrast of his colder skin on your warm skin has your toes curling imagining him playing with your nipples and wrapped around your throat. Damn, you think, I really need to get laid soon or this’ll get bad.

You’re almost certain your lip is bleeding from how hard you’re trying to keep your moans in when you cum around your fingers; the image of a particular snake hybrid dancing behind your eyelids even when the bliss starts to ebb away.

Muttering curses underneath your breath, you get up, wiping your wet fingers onto your shirt as you tug it off and throw it into the hamper, sliding off your wet panties and chucking them in as well. Sighing, you really hope Jihoon’s sense of smell isn’t as strong as other hybrids as you step into your closet to get a change of clothes.

Realization hits you like a brick when the back of your head slams against the pillow once you lay back down.

This was going to be harder than you expected.

[jaskiers-sweetkiss]

Sunset Swerve - Part 10

Pairing: Luke x OC

Word Count: 5.3K

Warnings: some swearing, i actually think that’s it for this part?

A/N: Okay here’s part 10, or as I’ve been calling it: Part 9 2: Electric Boogaloo. This is a very special edition of Sunset Swerve in which you get to read from Luke’s POV! This is covering the same time frame as part 9 but Luke’s pov provides some different scenes and new insight that’s kinda significant so I would really recommend not skipping it lol. I wanna shoutout @meangirlsx for being my sounding board and giving me loads of help on these two parts! As always, send me a message/drop a comment if you want to be tagged and let me know what you think!

Part 9  Masterlist

___

The week started off great for Luke. He was coming off the high from their performance at the open mic time and the relief that Julie didn’t have to quit the band. The latter fact also absolved him from his guilt of having suggested that Julie sneak out in the first place.

He found himself spending a lot of time with Jordan in the following days between talking about the book he’d started (she had been right, Annabeth was really cool though he maintained that she was stuck-up) and writing music. Their relationship had become much more civil following his birthday, though the fighting didn’t stop. Luke was starting to wonder if Jordan could survive without regularly making snarky or sarcastic comments. Still, the newfound closeness had been… nice. Luke wasn’t entirely sure how to categorize it, especially alongside the feelings he was certain he had for Julie.

As he sat across from Jordan, close enough that their knees were touching as they worked through some rhythms on a new song, Luke found that he wasn’t certain of anything. Jordan felt like a magnet- he realized belatedly that she always had- constantly pulling him closer and closer no matter how much either of them tried to pull away. He was starting to wonder if learning metaphors at book club was really a good thing.

“Hey Luke, can I ask you about something?” Julie pipped up from the entryway of the garage, pulling him away from his thoughts and Jordan.

“Sure, what’s up?” He asked, quirking an eyebrow quizzically.

“Oh, um, actually can we talk outside?” She asked and he furrowed his brow but nodded, setting down his guitar and jogging over to where she stood by the doors.

“This is gonna sound weird but can I ask why Jordan was with you at your house the other day?” Julie asked unsurely once they were outside and Luke froze, not expecting the question.

“How’d you…?” He trailed off, peering at the girl suspiciously. He hadn’t told anyone that he made frequent visits to his house, though he suspected the guys knew and Jordan had figured it out on his birthday.

“Alex and Reggie took me…” Julie said, tucking her hair behind her ear embarrassedly. “After I called you selfish and said you didn’t care about anyone but yourself…”

“That’s ironic coming from you, Miss Boundaries,” he scoffed irritatedly, brows furrowed in anger and Julie sighed.

“I’m really sorry Luke, it was wrong.”

“But now you wanna snoop even more,” he frowned, raising his brows as if to say ‘seriously?’

Julie opened her mouth to defend herself but Luke cut her off with a sigh before answering her question.

“If you must know, Jordan and I have spent every birthday together since we were five, I guess she figured I could use the comfort and familiarity.” He shrugged, trying to downplay how much the gesture had meant to him. It’s been really difficult, grieving his loss of his parents while they grieved him even twenty-five years later. At least when he was a runaway there was still always the possibility of reconciliation. Now there never would be.

“That’s really thoughtful,” Julie said, “But it doesn’t make sense. You guys hate each other, what happened?”

“Oh, we always have,” he smirked to himself, remembering that first day they met. He’d found a massive spider in the yard and thought it would be funny to put it in her hair, obviously, she hadn’t felt the same and the rest was history. “But our parents really wanted us to be friends so… birthday parties.”

“That explains a lot, actually,” Julie nodded thoughtfully and now it was Luke’s turn to be confused, tilting his head in a silent request for the girl to explain. “You guys have these moments where you like, exude this closeness that totally doesn’t fit the nature of your relationship. It makes sense now, knowing how long you’ve known each other.”

“I mean, there was a point where we were basically the closest thing to family each other had,” Luke shrugged, thinking about those last five months in the studio. “Guess we forgot about that when we died.”

They’d grow inexplicably close in those months that they’d lived together. It was an unspoken closeness, neither of them dared to acknowledge it but Luke saw it often in the little things. They’d stopped calling each other names when it was just them in the garage and sometimes when he was stuck on a new song he was writing she’d shout out suggestions from across the room. It was like they’d called an unconscious truce in their grief but when they came back as ghosts that all disappeared, the two immediately back at each others’ throats.

When Luke returned to the studio after his conversation with Julie it had sort of felt like the same thing had happened again. He’d thought he was finally making headway with Jordan, that they’d finally started back on the path to friendship after his birthday, or maybe even something more, and while things hadn’t totally changed, they felt different somehow.

She’d stopped hanging out with him in her free time. Instead, she spent the time holed up in the corners of the studio with her notebook or sitting behind the piano or her guitar, playing or strumming as she hummed softly. Luke wanted to help her out or tell her she sounded beautiful but he couldn’t help but notice how secretive she was being. They’d been working on songs together recently but this one she seemed determined to keep to herself.

When he entered the studio one afternoon to find her notebook on the couch, completely unguarded he couldn’t help himself. He blamed his overwhelming curiosity for why he picked it up despite knowing first-hand how sacred a song journal was.

When he found the partially written song at the back of the notebook he sucked in a breath, chest filling with hope at the lyrics on the page. It wasn’t much, only one verse and a chorus and what looked like half a pre-chorus but he couldn’t help but wonder if it was about him.

[Verse ?]

Bored of games why do you still play?

Back and forth, it’s always the same

You’re player one, I’m player two, who is she, player who?

Roll the dice and make your way

Pre-chorus

I know I’m hard but that’s part of it

You could leave but you are still here

and I’ve nowhere to go but ???

His mind whirled as he tried to work it out for himself. It screamed jealousy to him. She’d started writing after he’d had his conversation with Julie, so it wasn’t an unreasonable guess that he was “you” and Julie was “she.” She was jealous of him and Julie. But was it platonic? Was it more than that?

He was pretty sure he’d lost his damn mind in the hurricane of questions racing through his brain. It was the only explanation for the pure stupidity of what he did next.

“Moss, what’s this?” He asked when she found him with her notebook. Then he started to read off the chorus,

“I’m selfish, I’m selfish, I’m selfish

when it comes to you.

I can’t help it, can’t help it

crazy things that I do.”

“Give it back,” she snapped, cheeks flushing in what he later recognized as a mix of embarrassment and anger but at the time his brain ignored entirely, too caught up in an unthought-out attempt to confront her feelings.

“When I need you I come back to you.

I’m selfish, I’m selfish

when it comes to you.”

“I’m serious, Patterson. You don’t see me poking around in your notebook,” Jordan argued, grabbing hold of the notebook but not pulling it out of his hands.

“You don’t see me leaving my notebook lying around.” His body and his mouth were moving on autopilot but without a GPS as he responded cheekily, letting go of the notebook. Somewhere in the back of his mind, his rational brain was screaming at him to shut up but he just kept talking. “Who’s it about?”

“None of your business.”

Though his brain was on a self-destructive warpath, he couldn’t help but notice how adorable Jordan looked hugging the notebook to her chest protectively. Though, the adorableness factor was negated slightly by the death glare in her eyes.

“I think it’s about me,” he announced smugly, leaning back against the couch haughtily as if daring her to contradict him.

What the hell are you doing, man?

“I think you’re a dumbass,” she spat, and just like that she was gone, poofing away.

He leaned forward, putting his head in his hands with a groan as he realized what he did.

For the next day and a half, he could feel how the atmosphere between them had grown frigid. He’d tried to apologize a few times but every time he got close she would poof away, clearly not wanting to hear from him. What interactions they did have in those couple days were short and snide, laced with venom and insults. The behavior didn’t seem out of the ordinary to the rest of the group, but to Luke, it felt like he’d just stepped from the warm beach into ice-cold water and it was all his fault.

Luke was on the brink of losing his mind again when he went out on a limb that night. He, Alex, and Reggie were about to go out exploring like they did most nights after all the lifers went to sleep and he really wasn’t keen on leaving Jordan in the studio to stew in her anger.

“C’mon, Moss, we’re going exploring!” he called up to the loft. Deciding he’d given her enough space, it was time for ambush mode.

“And why would I want to go anywhere with you?” She called back venomously, not even deigning to come to the railing of the loft or poof down to speak to him face-to-face.

He sighed, clenching his eyes shut briefly before exhaling heavily and speaking.

“Look, I’m sorry, alright?” He called back, wishing he wasn’t doing this in front of Reggie and Alex. “I shouldn’t have gone through your notebook, it was a dick move.”

Luke was surprised at how quickly she forgave him, poofing down only moments after he apologized. He stared at her surprise, his body more relaxed now that she was spending time with them again. He hoped Alex and Reggie weren’t watching him, afraid they might somehow see the pure relief and adoration that he felt for her. Maybe he was being dramatic, but he swore he stopped breathing when she finally turned to look at her. He was totally screwed.

___

The next morning was quiet, though it felt like everything had gone back to normal. Jordan was sprawled across the couch which Luke had stopped trying to claim possession over, it was his couch but at this point, it might as well have been hers. Alex was sitting across from him making a friendship bracelet that he secretly hoped was for him but thought might’ve been for Willie, and Luke was reading his book. Things were really starting to pick up in the characters’ quest and he was apparently so invested that he barely recognized Reggie’s arrival until he heard the word “gig.”

Just like that he was on his feet along with Jordan and Alex, quest entirely forgotten as they all started blurting out questions.

“Where?”

“When?’

“How?”

Reggie excitedly explained how they were having a garage party at the house so that their band could perform and Ray and some of his colleagues would record them professionally for the band’s YouTube. Then Reggie patiently explained what a YouTube was and Luke briefly wondered when he’d learned more about modern technology than the rest of them. He supposed Julie did give him that iPod.

“We’re gonna record a music video? Like on MTV?” He exclaimed excitedly after Reggie had explained.

“Yes, dude! And Julie says if we get enough views we could go big!”

Luke gaped at his three bandmates, trying to come up with a vocalization for the thoughts flying through his head. All of a sudden there was a lot at stake for this event, the whole world would be able to see their performance. It had to be perfect. They needed to practice, hell they needed to pick a song.

He needed to talk to Julie.

When he reappeared in the school hallway he realized he probably should’ve told the group where he was going but it was too late now.

“What’re you doing here?” Julie asked him after getting over the initial shock of his sudden appearance.

“We need to talk about what song we’re gonna play tonight,” Luke said excitedly, grinning at the girl. “I was thinking Great?”

Julie held up a finger to signal she needed a moment before pulling out her phone.

“Wait seriously? You’re just gonna take a call while we’re talking? That’s so rude!”

Julie rolled her eyes at his dramatics before explaining, “Otherwise people might think I’m talking to myself.”

“Right, nice, okay,” Luke nodded, impressed by her quick thinking.

It was strange to be back in a high school hallway after so long, chatting with a cute girl by the lockers. The thought immediately brought the image of Jordan. Wow, he was really screwed.

“But yeah, I think Great is a… great choice,” Julie answered his question and he nodded, satisfied with the choice.

“Alright, sweet! Well, that was pretty much all I wanted to talk to you about so…”

“Oh! Okay,” Julie said, surprised.

“Actually wait- I wanted to talk to you about Jordan,” He started. He knew he and Julie had something between them but with these rising feelings about Jordan he’d been experiencing he didn’t want to lead her on. “Look, I, uh, I don’t really know how to say this but-“

“You have a crush on Jordan!” Julie gasped, effectively cutting him off.

His cheeks turned red and he scratched the back of his neck embarrassedly.

“Yeah- I mean, I don’t know but…”

“But you don’t want to hurt me,” Julie finished and Luke raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Wow, you are really perceptive Molina,” he said and she smiled.

“You don’t have to worry about me-“

“Sorry, my Patterson Idiocy Meter was going off,” Jordan explained as she suddenly appeared beside him, effectively putting an end to his conversation with Julie. “It lets me know when he’s doing something especially stupid.”

Luke rolled his eyes at the comment, sticking his tongue out petulantly at the girl and Julie gave him a knowing smile.

“Anyway,” Luke said dramatically, rerouting the conversation and turning back to Julie. “I was thinking, you should just ditch school today and come rehearse with us.”

He probably should’ve anticipated both girls’ protests but he still found himself trying to rationalize what he knew was a bad idea.

“Right, you were at school first, and now you’re leaving to go rehearse.”

“Stop trying to persuade her to do bad things!” Jordan chastised him, smacking his shoulder lightly.

“I really can’t. Plus I promised Nick I’d be his dance partner…” Julie explained, and Luke noticed Jordan wiggling her eyebrows at the mention of the name. He was clearly missing something.

“…and he’s heading this way,” Julie finished, pretending to hang up the phone in favor of talking to the blond-haired boy who just walked up.

“Well don’t you look sharp!” Julie’s reaction to his teasing told him all he needed to know about her feelings and the boy was not being sly about his at all. “Uh-oh, I think somebody’s got a crush on Julie!”

He couldn’t help it. It’s the designated role of all close friends to make fun of each other for their crushes. He knew by the way Julie had reacted when he’d told her about his (well, tried to tell her) that she was never going to let him hear the end of it. So, he dove right into it, mimicking Nick’s motions and facial expressions all with a playful glint in his eyes.

“Oh he is just too cute,” he teased when the blond lifer finally walked away.

“Boundaries,” Julie reminded him with a roll of her eyes. “I’ll see you after school.”

She began walking away towards her class but Luke wasn’t ready to end the conversation.

“Fine! I guess we’ll just have to carry you tonight, just like we always do!” He called down the hallway and he could see Julie shake her head slightly in exasperation. “I know you’re smiling, Molina!”

“Shut up, Luke,” Jordan rolled her eyes, smacking his chest lightly and he sent her a cheeky grin. “Good luck Julie! You’ll do great!” She called after the girl and Luke awed internally at the support.

“Yeah! Kill it on the dance floor!” He joined in, shuffling smoothly across the floor as he yelled.

“Dork,” he heard Jordan mutter and he snapped towards her, feigning upset despite how pleased he was at the attention he was getting.

“C’mon, we’ve gotta get rehearsing,” he spoke, brushing off the dramatics but she waved him off.

“I’ll be right there.”

He frowned, wanting her to come with him but he poofed away anyway, landing back in the garage between Reggie and Alex.

They immediately got to work, Luke walking them through Great. He felt bad doing it without Jordan since it was really her and Julie’s song more than anything, but he really wanted them to sound as best as they could. It was her song and they needed to do it justice.

They’d only just gotten through the basic structure and Jordan’s plans for the song, which she’d scribbled into the margins of his notebook pages while they worked on it together, when they were interrupted by a face in the window.

“Again? What’s all that about?” Reggie asked when Willie’s face disappeared from view, the boy clearly knowing he’d been caught.

Luke shrugged in response, just as lost as the rest but Alex stood, seemingly determined to get answers this time as he poofed out.

Despite their typical itch to snoop, the two boys gave Willie and Alex their privacy, instead moving over to their respective instruments to tune and warm up while they waited.

Luke could tell something was off when Alex returned but the blond-haired ghost had gone straight for his drumset, insisting that they start rehearsing. So, Luke didn’t push it, until about halfway through the song Alex got a little too into his drums, no longer playing along.

“Alex are you alright?” He asked sincerely once he’d stopped playing.

“Yeah... yeah, why?” Alex asked, trying to brush it off but Luke and Reggie had already connected the dots.

Alex only ever played like that when he was upset and since he was in a good mood before Willie showed up, it wasn’t difficult to figure out.

“I know it’s tough man. People say you never forget your first ghost.” Reggie spike sympathetically, “but... I’m sure there will be others.”

“Yeah, thanks Reg,” Alex nodded and Luke stepped forward, clutching his guitar strap as if to brace himself. He wasn’t very good at expressing things outside of music.

“Yeah, and Alex, you’re a great drummer and a great guy, okay?” He said, leaning onto the drumset slightly as he spoke. “I wouldn’t let all that stuff get in between you and what you love.”

Alex nodded and Luke finally noticed Jordan’s presence in the studio. He’d started to take steps in her direction to ask when she’d gotten there when Reggie spoke up again.

“I don’t know, sometimes a little fire onstage can make things better,” he said suggestively and Luke froze in the center of the band setup. “Like you and Julie.”

His head immediately snapped towards Jordan, trying to gauge her reaction to the statement. He was already certain she thought there was something between him and Julie, she’d written a whole song out of jealousy after all, but he needed her to know that wasn’t true.

“Uh, what... what is that supposed to mean?” Luke asked, trying to play innocent and hoping Reggie would get the hint and back off.

“C’mon, everyone can see the way you look at her when you sing,” Reggie chuckled, clearly not understanding. “You guys ooze chemistry.”

“Please never say ooze again,” Alex said to Reggie before turning to Luke, “But you have to agree he’s right.”

“No, no.” Luke denied vehemently, chancing another nervous glance at Jordan only to find she had become suddenly very interested in her shoes. “I have chemistry with everyone I sing with.”

It felt like a reasonable excuse to him, and it wasn’t exactly wrong. He did have chemistry when he sang with people, but it wasn’t because of the person, it was because of the music. Still, Reggie and Alex gave him looks of disbelief and he huffed and rolled his eyes.

“Seriously, watch,” he said, taking a determined step towards Jordan. Sure he was trying to prove a point to the guys, but maybe he could prove something else to himself and Jordan.

Still, before he could even take another step she stopped him.

“You’d better take that step back,” she demanded, not even looking up from the floor and his heart sank.  

He shook it off with a sigh, still determined to prove his point to the guys. So he turned on his heel, confidently stepping towards Reggie as he began to sing.

“I believe, I believe that we’re just one dream away from who we’re meant to be.” When he got close enough, he slipped his hand around the back of the bassist‘s neck, pulling their faces even closer together. “That we’re standing on the edge of… great.”

He winked at the boy when he finished and stepped back, watching with a smirk as Reggie gulped. Mission accomplished.

“Wow,” Alex remarked, “I see chemistry.”

“Yeah, that was pretty hot,” Reggie admitted, voice cracking as he spoke.

Riding on the high of his success, Luke took it one step further, kissing two of his fingers before placing them on Reggie’s lips. When he heard a giggle from behind him he whirled around to grin at Jordan, elated that he could turn her mood around. She rolled her eyes in response but he didn’t care. He was starting to think maybe they were a sign of endearment from her with how much she did it.  

“Girls, amiright?” Reggie croaked out and Luke chuckled.

“Yeah,” he agreed and Alex quickly chimed in.

“No,” the drummer said definitively with a light chuckle.

Jordan barked out a laugh at that, poofing over to the drummer to give him a high five before poofing back to the front of the band setup. Luke shook his head at that, ducking his head to hide his smile as he slipped his guitar strap back across his body.

Practice went smoothly after that, though Jordan and Reggie insisted on messing around until Julie got there. He felt kinda lonely with Jordan now hanging out on Reggie’s side of the setup but it was worth it to see her smile and hear her laughter. He didn’t even have the heart to tell them to take this practice seriously since they had a performance tonight. When the hell did he become so whipped for a girl he wasn’t even sure liked him back?

He couldn’t begrudge them their fun, even screwing around Jordan and Reggie were some of the best musicians he knew and it was obvious when Julie got there. They only had an hour of true, focused rehearsal with the whole group yet it sounded amazing. Still, Luke was nervous. If he’d had his way, they would’ve practice until it was perfect but he knew that wasn’t reasonable.

Luke was bummed when Jordan left to get ready in Julie’s room. He figured they needed their “girl time” or whatever but- though he’d never say it out loud- watching Jordan do her makeup had become part of his pre-performance routine and he was a bit fascinated by the whole ordeal. Instead, he spent the time leading up to their performance reading his book or talking with Alex and Reggie.

Luke’s nerves didn’t present themselves outwardly as much as Jordan’s did. It was something he’d noticed back when they’d both started performing. When Jordan got nervous she moved, flicking and shaking her hands, bouncing in place, anything to stop her standing still. Luke, on the other hand, internalized his nerves. He would become uncharacteristically quiet the closer he got. When he first started performing for crowds his hands would tremble, something he’d had to figure out how to counteract pretty quickly because it’s really hard to play the guitar with shaky hands.

Still, pre-performance nerves were when his insecurities popped up the most so when he looked up and saw Jordan, Alex, and Reggie all holding hands in the garage while Julie started the song, he felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. He probably looked like a kicked puppy but he felt like one. His bandmates had left him out of something.

As if reading his thoughts, Jordan reached her hand out to him in a silent invitation to join whatever pre-show ritual they’d started without his knowledge. As soon as he took her hand he understood why they did it: silent solidarity. A small but strong reminder that they were in this together. Then Jordan squeezed his hand lightly, giving him just enough time to squeeze back before they were poofing onstage, well, onto the driveway.

Julie and Jordan were electric in center stage and all five of them were sounding great (no pun intended). Everything was going perfectly until Luke nodded his head at Jordan, silently asking her to come share his mic but she pointedly ignored him. Luke furrowed his brow in confusion as she angled her body away from him as she picked up the next verse.

Maybe it was a mistake, he thought, trying it again as he and Julie joined her vocals.

“Sometimes we gotta lean, lean on someone else to get a little help until we find a way,” they sang together, and Luke frowned slightly. Those lines had always made him think of Jordan, especially after his birthday and it hurt extra that she was ignoring him.

He tried to ignore the stab of jealousy he felt when she moved to the other side of the setup to sing to Alex by focusing on the music and singing with Reggie but it didn’t fully work. He still wanted her attention and he wanted to know why he wasn’t getting it.

His wounded puppy eyes were fully intact when he stepped up beside where Julie crouched on the piano to play his guitar solo. She gave him a sympathetic smile before shrugging lightly, seemingly understanding why he was upset but also unaware as to why he was being shunned. It made him feel a bit better, at least he wasn’t the only one in the dark. As the section came to an end he noticed her eyes flicking out to the crowd and followed them, spotting a familiar blond. He sent her a teasing wink as he hit the last note and she stood fully on the piano in what was a truly epic moment. That girl was a performer through and through.

He slid back to his microphone behind the piano, still hurt but pushing it aside to finish out the performance. Now really wasn’t the time to get lost in speculation and self-pity.

He was surprised when he and the guys returned to invisibility only to see Jordan still out there, singing and playing along with Julie. It was clearly a beautiful and emotional moment for the two and he wondered when they’d planned it. Still, that wasn’t his first question when he finally got time to talk to the ghost girl.

“Hey, so, how come you were ignoring me out there?” He asked her after the lifers had evacuated the driveway.

Reggie and Alex were playing some basketball on the hoop hanging from the garage door while Jordan was perched on the ledge at the end of the driveway, scribbling into her notebook.

“What are you talking about?” She asked, looking up to stare at him in confusion.

“During the performance… I wanted you to come sing with me…” he spoke, leaving pauses in hopes that she’d catch on and put him out of his misery but she never did. “C’mon Moss, I did the head nod and everything!”

“Those were for me?” She exclaimed, looking at him like he’d lost his mind, “I thought you were trying to get Julie!”

He felt the relief wash over him with those words. So it was just a simple misunderstanding.

The relief was short-lived, however, as the four of them were suddenly struck through with another jolt, sending the three guys sprawling to the ground and Jordan doubling over.

“Jesus fuck,” he heard Jordan curse as she clutched her chest and he groaned in agreement, pushing himself off the cement.

“That wasn’t like the other ones,” he said, “It’s getting worse.”

“Why is this happening to us?” Reggie asked, still bent over as he recovered.

“It’s because you guys are in serious trouble,” Willie answered, nervously approaching the four ghosts. “We need to talk.”

They all nodded in agreement, silently moving together before Willie poofed them to Hollywood.

They followed him along the Walk of Fame as he explained all about how Caleb’s stamp was the reason the jolts kept happening. That he’d stamped them to force them to work for him because they were too powerful.

“So, if we don’t join his club, the weird power outage thing continues until there’s no power left at all?” Reggie asked, crossing his arms over his chest nervously.

“Yes,” Willie answered, not meeting any of their eyes.

“What exactly happens when the power goes out?”

“That’s… that’s it. You’re done.”

Luke heard Jordan suck in a breath beside him, freezing in her tracks and the rest of the group slowed to a halt.

“Yeah, what do you mean by ‘we’re done?’” Reggie asked the question none of them wanted to hear the answer to.

“You just… you don’t exist… anymore. Not anywhere.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jordan slap a hand over her mouth as if to cover up a sob. He knew she was thinking about her parents, how she’d never see them again because of this and his blood began to boil.

“So what, we have to give up everything and work for Caleb for eternity?” He spat angrily, “That’s some club you guys got going on.”

He took a step back, reaching down discretely to grab Jordan’s hand, hoping to provide her with any kind of comfort and support.

“But there is another way,” Willie explained, “That’s why I’m here.”

“Another option?” Alex asked skeptically.

“Just please, hear me out.” Willie pleaded, and Luke shared a look with the other guys. “Alright. If you guys could figure out what your unfinished business is, you do it in time, you could cross over and be free from all of this.”

“Okay, so what’s our unfinished business?” Luke asked, squeezing Jordan’s hand reassuringly. He’d figure it out just for her.

“I don’t know,” Willie said. “But since you all died at the same time it could be something you all have to do together.”

Luke’s mind began whirling, trying to figure out what it could be. He was so caught up in his thoughts that he barely registered Willie departing, or Alex and Reggie talking.

“We have to figure out our unfinished business,” he insisted, finally joining in on the conversation.

“Yeah, man, and how are we supposed to do that? Alright?” Alex asked frustratedly. “There was so much we wanted to do.”

The combination of Alex’s words and him noticing the sign in the background brought upon Luke’s epiphany.

“Yeah, but the night we died, there was only one thing we wanted to do together,” he explained, pointing towards the Orpheum sign with his free hand.

Part 11

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JATP Taglist: @meangirlsx @morganayennefertyrell

Sunset Swerve Taglist: @oopsiedoopsie23 @angryknightstatesmantrash @onlygetaway @deni-gonzalez @advicefromnixxxx @brooke0297 @vicesvsvirtuesfanfic @cordeliascrown