#it doesn’t matter if it’s just a printed picture or a poster on a wall | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

typical-simplelove · 3 years ago

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To Capture a Moment (M. Barzal)

Author's Note: This was a prompt from the ever amazing @thatflyersfan, so thank you for this! The prompt was "taking polaroid photos", and I'm a sucker for childhood friends to lovers, so this is the product! I hope you enjoy it, and please let me know what you thought either in an ask or in the tags. Enjoy!

Author's Note 2: If you reblog this, I'll send you an ask thank you and mention you in an appreciation post (if I do this!)

Warnings: Mentions of sex, one or two slightly NSFW scenes (but VERY mild), a mention of a breeding kink (literally mentioned in one sentence), marriage, pregnancy, Santa, but the rest is just fluff!

Word Count: 9.3k

Enjoy reading!

If anyone were to walk down the hall of your and Mathew’s hallway of your new home, they would see it lined with polaroid pictures. These polaroid pictures show the relationship between you and Mathew from the young age of five to now sharing your new home, married, and with two children. A hallway that was the epitome of a picture is worth a thousand words.

Age 5

“Mathew, please, just stand next to your sister, please,” Mathew’s mother requests. Her tone was close to begging. Your parents had to deal with a family emergency, so they sent you to the Barzal’s to be babysat. Mathew’s mother decided to take Liana, Mathew, and you to Lafarge Park.

Currently, you are sitting on a bench giggling as you watch Mathew sigh as he gets up from where he was sitting next to you. He groaned as he got up and stood next to his sister. He wraps his arm around her but doesn’t smile. At the touch, Liana screams and begins to cry. It was close to her nap time, and the smallest things were making her fussy. Mathew’s mother sighs and goes to pick up her daughter to try to comfort her. Mathew grins widely and sits back down next to you.

“I don’t like taking photos,” Mathew says bluntly. You look at him but are squinting as the sun is in your eyes.

“You like taking photos in your hockey gear,” you point out.

“Yeah, but I don’t like taking photos,” Mathew emphasizes the word photos as if that were enough explanation. It wasn’t. “You know what I mean?”

“No.”

Mathew gives you a curious look, and you want to point out his hair is getting long, but his mother calls Mathew back over to take the photo.

“But I don’t want to,” Mathew whines.

“Mathew,” she says in a mother’s knowing tone, and Mathew gets up exasperatedly. He stands next to his sister. He opts not to put his arm around her this time and looks at you before the picture is taken. You smile widely at him and wave. Mathew wears a giant grin on his face in response. His mother notices Mathew’s wide smile; she smiles when she realizes you are the reason for Mathew’s smile. She takes the photo quickly knowing that Mathew’s smile is short-lived.

“Yn, come take a photo with Mathew,” she calls to you. You skip over to Mathew. Surprisingly, Mathew doesn’t complain about taking another photo. Then again, though, Mathew never complained about anything when it came to you.

“Mom, can we do the fancy camera? The one that prints out right away?” Mathew asks.

“Sure, sweetheart,” Mathew’s mother says and pulls the polaroid camera out of her purse. Mathew insisted she bring it today, and she guesses this was why. “Smile,” she directs and snaps the photo. Once the photo is printed, she places it in her wallet.

“I’m going to hang it on my wall,” Mathew tells you after the photo is taken and that he did. After he got home later that day from dropping you off at home, Mathew begged his mother for the photo. He tapped it on his wall next to his hockey posters because to him, you were just as important. As Mathew moved around for hockey, that photo always followed him around with a few others. It sat in his wallet, and when he felt homesick, he’d look at it with a wide smile. Now, it sits amongst the many polaroid pictures on your wall.

Age 6

Whenever you and Mathew were together, Mathew’s mother always brought the polaroid camera with her. Mathew always loved taking those kinds of photos with you. In the past year, you and Mathew have taken countless polaroid pictures that lined both your walls and his.

Today, you were sitting in a local hockey arena watching Mathew play. Well, you were watching the empty ice getting ready for warmups. You were wearing one of Mathew’s sweatshirts as you shivered in the cold of the arena. You were clutching the mug of hot chocolate Mathew’s mother gave you in hopes of warming up. When Mathew got on the ice for warmups, you smiled widely. Even at such a young age, seeing Mathew would bring a smile to your face and make you all warm and fuzzy.

You walked towards the glass to get a better look at your best friend. When he skated by you, you tapped softly on the glass to alert him you were there. When Mathew turns to see you, he gives you a giant smile from beneath his helmet. He takes a few moments to stop and looks at you for a moment. Mathew’s mother takes the polaroid camera out of her bag and quickly snaps a photo of the two of you in this exact position.

That photo remains on the Barzal mantle till this day.

Age 7

The annual Christmas Fair was back in Vancouver again, and Mathew was super excited to see Santa this year. He figured that his dream of playing in the NHL would come true as long as he asked Santa for it for every year of his life until it happened.

You were both standing in line waiting to go inside the Fair. Despite being bundled up in your warmest sweater, jacket, gloves, and hat, you were still cold. One would think that after spending copious amounts of time in a hockey arena watching Mathew play, you would be used to the cold, but you weren’t.

“Are you cold, Yn?” Mathew asks concerned. He can see you shivering but trying to hide it.

“Just a little,” you lie.

“Oh, here,” Mathew says and walks over to you. He wraps his arms around you in a giant hug to keep you warm. You feel your cheeks warm at the touch, but you, at the age of seven, think it’s just you already warming up. You rest your head on Mathew and wrap your arms around him. “No, keep them in your pockets, so you can keep warm.”

“What about your hands?” you worry.

“Don’t worry, I play hockey; I’m used to the cold,” he reassures you and flashes you his signature grin. Mathew’s mother wasn’t able to capture a polaroid photo of this event, but your mother was able to pull out her phone to capture the moment. Even at the age of 7, Mathew would do absolutely anything for you.

Eventually, yours and Mathew’s families end up inside the fair and in line to see Santa. Now, a hot chocolate in your belly and a warm meal, you were slowly warming up and didn’t need Mathew to hold you anymore. He was bouncing with excitement as you both got closer and closer to the front of the line.

When it was Mathew’s turn to see Santa, he walked up, and you waited in line for your turn. A sudden gust of wind made a giant shiver rack through your body, and Mathew noticed from where he was sitting on Santa’s lap.

“Is everything alright, son?” he asks.

Mathew looks up at him with worry. “My best friend is cold, and I don’t like it when Yn’s cold. I’d rather be cold instead of Yn.”

“Well, maybe we should finish here quickly, so you can go and make Yn warm. What do you say?”

Mathew nods enthusiastically. “Yeah, I like that.”

“So, what do you want, son?”

Mathew looks into Santa’s blue eyes and is about to ask for an NHL career. He then looks at you and sees you shivering. Mathew’s heart stops and realizes that it doesn’t matter if he got the NHL career if you were cold. You couldn’t be cold because if you were cold then you’d get sick. If you were sick, then who would be Mathew’s best friend? “I want Yn not to be sick.”

“Oh, is that so?”

“Yeah,” Mathew nods. “I can’t have my best friend sick because then who would be my best friend.”

“Well, then, I’ll be sure to grant your wish, son,” Santa says. In all his years of doing this, he’s never heard this one before. “Keep Yn close, okay? Yn seems like a special one.”

Mathew always kept those words close to his heart whether or not he remembered who told them to him.

Age 10

For the past ten years, you and Mathew have taken a photo on yours and his birthdays. It was always you on the right and him on the left. Whoever’s birthday it was would be holding the gift the other got them. It was tradition.

It was your tenth birthday, and the day was coming to a close. All your friends had left, and it was just your family and Mathew’s family who were still there. You were on your third piece of cake, and Mathew was trying to convince you to give him a bite, too. He looked nervous.

“Are you okay, Mathew?” you ask after finishing your final piece and giving Mathew a piece.

“I have a gift for you,” he mumbles.

“Oh!” you thought you opened all your gifts.

“Can I give it to you?”

“Yeah, sure,” you answer. Mathew gets up to grab the gift, and you throw out the plate in the trash.

“This is for you,” he says and passes the bag to you. You gently take the wrapping paper out of the bag; you set it to the side and pull out the box. You gasp when you see it. You smile and jump up to give Mathew a hug. You wrap your arms around him.

“Thank you for the polaroid camera, Mathew,” you whisper as he wraps his arms around you.

“Of course, Yn. It’s time you had your own, so we could take all the photos we want.”

“Come on, let’s go and get my mom to take a photo of us.”

You and Mathew go and find his mother. When you find her, you take the camera out of the box and hand it to her. You and Mathew position yourself against the wall, and he wraps an arm around you. You hold the box in your hand and smile. Mathew, though, isn’t looking at the camera; he’s looking at you with the widest grin on his face. All that mattered in his life was making you smile. If he made you smile, then Mathew always wore the happiest grin on his face.

Age 13 - Stargazing

Your parents had to go out of town to take care of your grandparents, so you were staying with the Barzals for the weekend. You were both currently laying on in his backyard on a blanket staring at the stars. It was your favorite pastime — laying together looking up at the stars.

You were both lying next to each other, shoulder to shoulder. You turned your head and looked at Mathew, but you looked to find him already looking at you. “It’s pretty,” he says.

“It is,” you agree and turn back to the sky. Mathew, though, remained looking at you.

“Do you have your polaroid camera?”

“Yeah, right next to me. Why?”

“Let’s take a photo,” Mathew answers. He sits up and leans over around you to grab the camera. In the process, Mathew’s arm brushes your stomach briefly, and his face grows warm at the touch. Somewhere, between the ages of 12 and 13, Mathew has developed a crush on you. He didn’t tell anyone because why would he? At this age, Mathew would get teased for having a crush on you, so he didn’t tell anyone. Besides, he wasn’t even sure if you liked him, too.

Mathew lies back down next to you and rests his head close to yours. He lifts his arm up and positions it so that the both of you are in frame. You both smile, and Mathew presses down the button.

The photo comes out, and Mathew’s heart warms at the picture reflected.

“Can I have my camera? I want a picture of the stars, too,” you ask. He hands you the camera, and his hand brushes yours briefly. You thought nothing of it, but Mathew’s heart was racing. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Mathew whispers, and you give him a curious look. “What?”

“Nothing, you’re just acting weird.”

“I’m not acting weird; you’re acting weird.”

You laugh. “Whatever. Doesn’t matter.”

Mathew watched you take a photo of the stars in the sky, and he came to one realization: he never wanted to live in a world where you weren’t there.

Age 16

It was Mathew’s 16th birthday, and you were sitting on a garden chair watching him have the time of his life with his friends. As you both started high school, you both found yourself in different friend groups. That wasn’t to say, however, that your friendship wavered. It just meant that you both weren’t next to each other all the time. You were okay with that new realization. You were okay with it because that meant that you could work through your new found feelings for Mathew. You didn’t know when it happened. One day, you were eating lunch with Mathew, your friend, with normal hair and normal eyes and a normal laugh. You were eating lunch with Mathew, your friend, who was normal looking. The next day, though, you were eating lunch with Mathew who had the most beautiful smile, the most beautiful eyes, the softest hair, and was the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen. He was no longer the boy you grew up with. He was Mathew, and you finally understood what all the girls were talking about. It was difficult for you to breathe around him because you wanted him to hold your hand and love you. It went from Mathew being your best friend to you loving Mathew as more than a friend, and it scared you.

You were sitting there smiling when Mathew caught your gaze. He looked you in the eyes and waved. You waved back and warmth filled you. He excused himself from his friends and walked over to where you were sitting.

“You brought the polaroid camera,” he says as he brings a chair next to yours and sits.

“Well, we’ve taken the same photo for the past sixteen years. We might as well continue tradition, right?” you tease.

“Yeah, tradition,” he whispers giving you a look that makes you melt. He leans his head close to yours with a soft smile. “Can I tell you something?”

You nod trying to suppress a shiver.

“Somewhere in the past —”

“Yn, can I borrow your polaroid camera, please?” Liana interrupts as if knowing what Mathew was going to say. You tell her yes, and you see Mathew, out of the corner of your eye, blush and shake his head while also glaring at his sister.

“Um, you were saying?” you ask hoping to rebuild the bubble you both just had.

Mathew looks at you trying to figure out if he wants to continue. “Um, somewhere in the past five or six years or so, I screwed up.”

“Screwed up, how?”

“I fell for you,” Mathew whispers, a blush overcoming his face.

“But, you’re sitting right now,” you say oblivious.

Mathew laughs his laugh, and you melt into a puddle. “I fell in love with you, Yn.”

“Oh. Oh!”

Mathew laughs again with a bashful smile settling on his features. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to fall in love with you.”

“Are you still sorry if I were to tell you I fell in love with you, too?”

“I wouldn’t be sorry, then,” Mathew says and leans his head close to yours. He takes one hand and cups your cheek. He rubs soft patterns on your cheek as he begins to tilt his head. “Can I kiss you?”

“Please,” you beg. Mathew places his lips on yours softly as your hands go to his neck and begin to softly playing the hair at its base. It was a kiss full of fireworks. All the noises around you mellowed out. All the emotions you feel for your best friend come out in one kiss as it deepens. You both pull away when a flash from a camera startles you both.

“Sorry, I just had to,” Liana apologizes, handing you back your camera with the photo printing.

“You didn’t have to,” Mathew grumbles angrily.

“It’s okay. Don’t worry,” you tell her, taking back the camera. You look at the photo and smile. Mathew was gently holding your face as he kissed you softly. You both had wide smiles on your faces as you kissed each other. “See, we have a photo of our first kiss.”

Mathew kisses your forehead softly. “Here’s to many more.”

Age 18

“Yn, come outside, please?” Mathew begs with a pout on his face. “I want to take a photo with you.”

“But we’ve been taking photos all day,” you groan. It was reaching 9pm at night, and the joint graduation party for you and Mathew was over. You were both lounging on your bed reminiscing about the future. Mathew was going to have this amazing NHL career, and you were going to college.

“I just want this one,” Mathew says as he gets off the bed. He looks at the many polaroid photos sitting on your wall of both your family, friends, and him. He was in most of them. He picks up your polaroid camera and grins at you. “Please? My parents bought sparklers, and we haven’t used them yet.”

You get up because Mathew could get you to do anything as long as he gave you that grin. “Okay.”

Mathew takes your hand and leads you both downstairs. “Liana, can you take a photo of us?”

“More photos?” she asks. Liana was just as fed up with taking pictures, too. “Yn, how do you put up with him?”

You shrug with a smile. “It’s easy when I love him.”

“I love him, too, but I can’t put up with him,” Liana mumbles following you both out the door. Mathew inquires about the sparklers and is directed to his mother’s car. You and Liana stand out in your backyard. “What kind of photo does he want?”

“I’m not sure, but I know he wants a polaroid photo.”

“He’s obsessed with those,” Liana comments as Mathew walks up to you two. He hands the polaroid camera to Liana and ushers you over to where he wants to stand. He takes two sparklers out of the box and hands one to you.

“I want to kiss you as we hold the sparklers,” Mathew mumbles against your skin. His words sent shivers down your spine.

“Okay,” you whisper as Mathew lights yours and his sparklers. He looks at you with a wide smile and wraps the arm that’s not holding the sparkler around your waist. You wrap your arm that’s not holding the sparkler across his shoulder and lean in for a kiss. “Liana, take the photo when we kiss, please.”

Liana makes a comment about how disgusting the two of you are before saying an “okay.”

Mathew leans in with a smile and kisses you. You kiss him back with a smile just as wide closing the space between you two. You see the flash out of the corner of your eye and pull away slowly to set the sparkler out. When they’re out, Mathew pulls you in for another kiss full of love and passion. He never gets enough of kissing you; if it were up to him, he’d kiss you for every moment of every day.

“The photo’s ready,” Liana interrupts, not wanting to watch her brother kiss anyone even if it were you. You both separate breathlessly and observe the photo. He wraps his arms around you and settles your back against his front. He rests his head against yours and holds you tightly against his chest.

“We look cute, babe,” Mathew whispers into your ear. You look into his eyes and break out into a smile.

“We do look cute,” you agree. You were about to say something else, but the flash of the polaroid camera interrupts your words.

“Sorry,” Liana apologies. “You guys just looked really cute.”

Mathew kisses your cheek, and his heart bursts with love. He loved you so much that there were no words. From where they were sitting on the back porch, your parents and Mathew’s parents were looking on with love. You and Mathew were perfect for each other, and they knew that your relationship would stand the test of time.

Age 21

You were in New York for the first time during the hockey season. In past times you’ve been in New York, it was either before the season or after the season. This was the first time that your school schedule lined up perfectly with a chance to go see Mathew play on Long Island. You met the WAGs for the first time tonight, and you instantly loved them and them the same. You were currently standing next to Sydney, who took you under her wing, at the glass as warmups just began. You had your new polaroid camera and ready to snap one of Mathew.

“Do you and Mathew have a strong connection to a polaroid camera?” Sydney asks.

You nod with a smile. “Yeah. For as long as I can remember, we’ve always taken photos with a polaroid camera. We have millions of photos together.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen them. Mathew displays them proudly across his apartment. He loves them, but he loves you more,” Sydney teases.

You don’t reply except for smiling bashfully and shaking your head playfully. You were about to say something when Mathew interrupted you by bumping into the boards in front of you. He looks at you, and his heart grows a million sizes seeing you wearing his jersey. You smile when you see him and wave. He begins to show off in front of you with his stick handling. You shake your head playfully at his actions, but you use the opportunity to snap a photo of Mathew. It’s of him concentrating on the puck. You tuck it into your purse to observe later on.

“Did you want me to take one of the two of you?” Grace asks, who was on the other side of you and has also taken you under her wing.

“Would you? That’d be great.”

“Of course,” she says and takes the camera from you.

“Can Grace take a photo of us?” you ask Mathew. You were suddenly nervous that he was going to be embarrassed of your tradition.

“That would be amazing,” he tells you genuinely. He leans against the glass on his side, and you do the same on your side, smiling at Grace. Once the photo is taken, you, once again, put it in your purse to look at later. Mathew waves before rejoining the rest of his team.

“You guys are cute,” Sydney comments with a smile.

“Oh, to be young and in love,” Grace comments and both girls laugh. You put the camera in your purse, and you smile as the heat rushes to your face. Indeed, to be young and in love.

Later that night, you and Mathew were sitting on his couch when you pulled out the polaroids from the day. Mathew looks at the polaroid that you took of him without him knowing and blushes. You notice it and kiss his cheek.

“You look good, babe,” you tease.

“Yeah, but this one is better,” he says pointing to the photo Grace took of you. His hold on you tightens as he rests his head on the crook between your shoulder and neck. “Wanna know why?”

“Why?” you giggle as Mathew’s breath tickles you.

“Because you’re in it,” Mathew flirts.

“Shut up,” you say bashfully as the warmth reaches your face.

“It’s true,” he whispers. “I’m not ready for you to go back to school. I want you here forever.”

“Don’t worry,” you reassure. “After I graduate, I’m going to get a job here in New York, and we’ll be here forever together. Don’t worry; you can’t get rid of me that easy.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Mathew says and places a kiss on your cheek.

Age 22

Mathew is sitting next to your father with a bouquet of flowers and your polaroid camera on his lap. Mathew’s leg is bouncing as he anxiously waits for your name to be called. It was finally your graduation day. You’ve been working hard for the past four years, and it was finally paying off. Mathew was so proud of you, and he was so happy that he got to be here at his super smart, super beautiful girlfriend’s graduation day.

A name a few before yours was called, and Mathew and your family perked their attention to be ready when you were called. In moments, your name was called, and you were walking across the stage. Mathew and your family all stood up to cheer for you. Mathew put the flowers down on his chair and put the camera up to take a photo. He snapped one exactly as you were handed your diploma. He put the photo in his wallet with the same one from when you were five.

As you were walking across the stage, you caught Mathew’s eyes, and he winked at you. You smiled bashfully, and as you sat, you felt the warmth on your face. The rest of the celebration went by quickly as you all threw your caps in the air and cheered. You were done! You finished! You were officially a college graduate! You said tearful goodbyes and congratulations to your friends before making your way to your family and Mathew.

Mathew stood to the side as your grandparents, parents, and siblings embraced you and congratulated you. He could see the impatience in your eyes as you greeted each and everyone of them, wanting to greet Mathew. As you hugged your grandparents after your parents, your mother walked over to Mathew.

“Hand me the polaroid camera. I’ll take a few as she comes over to you,” your mother says, and Mathew hands her the camera.

Finally, finally, it was Mathew’s turn to see you. “Congratulations,” he says to you softly.

“Thank you,” you whisper.

“These are for you,” Mathew says and hands you the flowers. You both vaguely notice the flash of the camera as your mother took a photo of Mathew handing you the flowers. You take the flowers and smile behind them embarrassed. One of your siblings takes the flowers from you, so you can properly embrace Mathew. He wraps you in a giant hug and kisses your forehead. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Thanks, baby.”

“I can’t believe that my girlfriend is a college graduate,” Mathew comments as you pull away to look at him. He leans his head down and kisses you softly. You reach your hands to wrap around his shoulders and pull him closer to you. You both deepen the kiss but not too much as your father was right there watching you two. As you and Mathew kiss, you both, once again, vaguely recall a flash of the polaroid camera. It didn’t matter. When you both were together, especially kissing, the entire world faded away. Finally, you both pull away with breathless smiles.

A few weeks later, you were both back home in Coquitlam, and it was nearing the end of your graduation party. Mathew was sitting on the back deck with his parents, Liana and your dad as the night winded down. In your hand, you held the two photos your mother took and wanted to show Mathew.

“Mind if I steal him for a moment?” you ask resting your hand on Mathew’s shoulder.

“Please, he keeps talking about you, and it’s making me sick,” Liana says. Everyone laughs in response, and you take Mathew’s hand and lead him away from the group.

“What’s up?” he asks.

“I want to show you the photos from graduation,” you tell him. “The polaroids.”

You and Mathew find a spot in the backyard and sit. Mathew sits first and opens his legs for you to sit in between. You rest with your back against his chest, and his arms reach around your waist to hold you tightly. He kisses the side of your cheek as you show him the photos.

“Here’s the first one,” you say and show him one. It’s the photo of Mathew handing you the bouquet of flowers. Smiles are adorned on both your faces, and Mathew’s eyes are laced with nothing but love for you. “We look good.”

“You always say that,” Mathew teases.

“Doesn’t mean it’s not true,” you reply looking at your boyfriend of many, many years.

He kisses your temple. “What’s the next one?”

You flip to the next photo and show it to him.

“Now this one, this one, we look good,” Mathew says, giving you a raised eyebrow. It was a photo of Mathew giving you your congratulatory kiss.

“We do look good,” you comment with a smile.

Mathew was contemplating on whether or not to tell you about the photo he took of you while you walked across the stage. He opted against it wanting to keep the photo to himself for the moment. “This is our thing, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean ‘our thing’?” you ponder.

“You know, all couples have their thing. This is our thing, taking polaroid photos,” Mathew explains.

“I guess it is,” you hum. “It’s not a bad ‘thing’ to have.”

“It really isn’t,” Mathew says and kisses you. He will be forever indebted to his mother for starting this tradition that the two of you have.

Age 24

On your first night after moving to New York, Anthony and Mathew insisted on taking you out to celebrate. You were tired, though, from unpacking and settling in all day, so you told them you didn’t want to do anything crazy. Why was Anthony tagging along? You didn’t know. He was there to help unpack, and he said you three should celebrate, so here you were.

You let Anthony and Mathew pick what they wanted to do as you showered and unpacked your stuff in the washroom. You walked out freshly showered to Mathew and Anthony having wide smiles on their faces.

“What if we took you to Times Square?” Mathew says. He walks over to you and wraps you in a giant hug. You hum in response, but Mathew isn’t sure if it's from the hug or agreeing with going to Times Square. You wrap your arms around him and breathe in his scent. You missed his scent before you moved in with him. You spent a few years back home with a job before you moved to New York. You wanted to be on your own for a bit before making the trek across the continent.

Anthony clears his throat to signal that you and Mathew weren’t the only two in the room. You both pull away, and Mathew’s face is crimson red as he meets his friend’s eyes. “So, Times Square, yes or no?”

“Sure, but not too late because I’m tired,” you reply. Getting to Manhattan from Mathew’s, no your apartment, Long Island apartment was long. You told them the train would be easier, but Mathew and Anthony would rather drive, so driving it was. The entire night was a blur. You were tired and exhausted, and the ecstasy you felt from being in the City with your boyfriend, finally, was too much to handle. You were over the moon overjoyed.

The three of you stopped for a moment in the main square of Times Square, and you looked around in awe. Mathew was watching you with nothing but love in his eyes as you took in the sight. He spent every night over the past few years wishing and dreaming of the nights and days he’d get to have you by his side. Anthony, on the other hand, was rolling his eyes at his best friend’s love sick nature.

“Did you bring your polaroid camera?” Mathew whispers into your ear.

“Yes, why?” you ask with a smile on your face that makes Mathew melt into a puddle.

“Let’s get Beau to take a photo for us.”

You watch as Mathew asks Anthony to take a photo of the two of you; you giggle quietly as Anthony rolls his eyes but says yes. Mathew walks over to you and wraps his arms around you. Anthony holds the camera up as you and Mathew smile for him. However, instead of looking at the camera, Mathew is looking down at you as you smile at the camera. He’s looking at you, the love of his life and the light of his life. Anthony snaps the photo but rolls his eyes at the lovesickness of his best friend. The photo prints, and you throw it into your purse to look at later. You continue to explore the awakeness of the Big Apple with your hand in Mathew’s. You fell in love with the city, and you were excited to be living in the lively state of New York.

Later that night, you’re getting ready for bed and standing at your dresser in the bedroom. You set your purse on it and take the polaroid camera out. Next, you take the photo out of your wallet and look at it. You smile at you and Mathew in the photo. As you’re looking, Mathew walks out of the washroom with his sweats hanging low on his hips without a shirt on and wraps his arms around you. He holds you close against his bare chest and rests his head on your shoulder breathing in your comforting and familiar scent.

“What’re you looking at?” he asks in a low husky voice that sends chills down your spine.

“The photo from tonight,” you say in a low voice as Mathew pulls you closer into his body. “You didn’t even look at the camera.”

“It’s a waste of time to stare at a camera when the best part of my life is right there,” Mathew flirts. He kisses your neck in between words pulling a soft whimper from you.

“You’re such a flirt,” you teasingly scoff. You rest the photo on the dresser and turn around, so you’re facing Mathew. You rest your arms on his shoulders and feel the expanse of the muscles there. You watch as Mathew’s eyes begin to darken and fill with need and desire.

“How else am I supposed to keep my girl satisfied?” he smirks.

“I can think of a few ways,” you tell him confidently before closing the space and placing a kiss on his lips. Mathew instantly picks you up, and you yelp slightly at the sudden touch. He carries you to the bed and places you down slowly. In between kisses, you tell him, “I love you.”

“I love you, too. More than anyone or anything in the world,” he replies. One day, he knew that he’d be getting Anthony to take a photo of the two of you with an engagement ring on your left hand.

Age 25

Engagement Party

Four months after you moved to New York, Mathew proposed to you. He got down on one knee during a date-night at home. You knew something was up when Mathew was nervous the entire night. You, obviously, said yes to forever with your best friend and the love of your life.

Now eight months later, Mathew’s family was throwing you both a small engagement party to celebrate the engagement about a month before your wedding. It was just both of your immediate families and close friends. You didn’t invite many people knowing the majority of the important people in your life would be flying to Vancouver for the wedding in about a month.

You were wearing a white sundress that made you feel like the bride that all movies and books describe. You were surrounded by your family, but most importantly, you were celebrating getting married to your best friend and love of your life.

It was getting late, and you were sitting on Mathew’s lap. You were resting your head on his shoulder with your arms wrapped around his neck and his arms wrapped around yours. The steady breathing from him and his warmth led to you falling asleep. He was tracing small patterns on your hip as he continued to talk to the small group of people around you. At some point, you heard Mathew tell someone to grab his sweater, and he threw it over your shoulders. You were so tired and didn’t tell him you were cold, but he just knew.

You didn’t know when you fell asleep, but you just did. No one noticed you were asleep until someone asked you a question, and you didn’t respond. Mathew looked down at you and noticed that you were sleeping. You looked adorable and comfortable in his arms. Mathew’s heartbeat quickened as he realized that he got to spend the rest of his life with the person in his arms. He got to spend the rest of his life with the person in his arms who looked so at rest, so beautiful, and so happy.

Liana quietly gets up to grab your polaroid camera from your purse. She knew that you’d want to have this documented.

“Get used to this, Mathew,” your dad began. “Yn will be falling asleep in your arms like this forever.”

Mathew smiled at your father’s words and rested his head against yours. He’d be more than okay with that. Liana didn’t tell Mathew he was going to take a photo. She knew that you’d far rather that the photo was candid and not scripted. Liana approached the group quietly and snapped a photo. Mathew was too absorbed in holding you that he didn’t notice. Liana left the photo on your nightstand where you found it the next morning. You smiled at the photo when you saw it knowing you weren’t making a mistake with who you wanted to spend the rest of your life with.

Wedding Day

You woke up the night after your wedding day curled into Mathew’s bare chest. You opened your eyes and a wide smile erupted across your face. You ran your fingers along Mathew’s stomach, and your breath hitched in your throat when you caught sight of your wedding band on your left finger.

“Morning, baby,” Mathew says in his morning voice that still makes your heart flutter. He runs his left hand across your back, and his wedding band sends chills down your spine.

“Did you know that we got married last night?” you ask sweetly.

He gives you a low chuckle. “Yes, I do know that.”

You giggle. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

You both lay in bed for a while in silence before Mathew says anything again. “Liana gave me the photos she took on the polaroid last night.”

“Oh,” you say as you sit up. You and Mathew put Liana in charge of taking a few polaroid photos of the two of you knowing she’d be the best one to do so. Mathew also roped in Anthony, but you both had more faith in Liana.

You sit up against the headboard as Mathew gets up and grabs the envelope that Liana gave him before you both left the previous night. Mathew pulls you against him as he rests against the headboard, too, and hands you the photos. You look in the envelope and notice six photos.

You pull out one and smile at it. It was your first dance with Mathew. Liana took the photo perfectly just as the song was coming to a close and Mathew was twirling you with your dress splaying out around you. Mathew had nothing but love in his for his new wife and a giant smile on his;he had tunnel vision when he looked at you. The entire world faded away except for you. You remember Mathew placing a kiss on you just as you reentered his embrace. Your heart was beating through your chest as Mathew and you continued to dance to the remainder of the song.

“We look good,” you tell him, showing him the photo. Mathew grabs the photo from your hand and is careful to only hold the corners. You’ve been on his case many, many times about not smudging the photo.

“You look good, babe,” Mathew corrects. “You always will look better than me.”

You smile bashfully at your husband’s words and smile into his chest. He tightens his grip around you before grabbing the envelope, placing the photo in it, and grabbing another. He smiles at the photo of him and his mother dancing together. “Look, it’s your mother-in-law,” he comments.

You look at the photo and smile. “Indeed it is.”

“Is it weird that she’s officially your mother-in-law?”

“Not really. I mean, it’s different, but not weird. Your mom has always been in my life, so it’s not like I don’t know her. Is it weird that my parents are your in-laws?”

“Yes, absolutely. The amount of stares that your father has given me? He never scared me when we were growing up, but in the past few years, he has.”

You laugh and place a kiss on his cheek. “Don’t worry. He’s just being protective of his child.”

“It better be just that,” Mathew mumbles. You grab another photo from the envelope and smile at the photo of you and your dad dancing together. Both yours and your father’s eyes had tears in their eyes knowing that this was it. This was what you both knew was coming but weren’t ready for. You were starting a life with Mathew and forming your new family, and your father was losing his child to the man who loves you as much as he does.

You put the photo back in the envelope and grab the next one. It was the photo of the kiss after the officiant said, “you may now kiss your bride.” You and Mathew both had wide smiles on your faces as you leaned in for the first kiss as a married couple. You remember how eager Mathew was to kiss you and how much he needed to kiss you. Sometimes, it makes you wonder how he goes on long roadtrips without kissing you. Mathew’s hands were sitting on your waist under the edges of your veil with his gold wedding band reflecting the light of the ceremony’s venue. Your arms were wrapped around his shoulders with the light reflecting off your grandmother’s tennis bracelet, your something old, and Mathew’s grandmother’s gold bracelet, your something borrowed. The space between you two was non-existent as you both needed to be as close as possible to kiss. You and Mathew both had a professional photographer at the wedding, but there was something more special about the photo being taken by someone who you loved.

The fifth photo is of you and Mathew giving each other a bite of your wedding cake after biting it. You both opted for a traditional two-tiered cake with white fondant and flowers around the base. Mathew had his left arm on your waist, your veil taken off to preserve it, with his right hand holding a fork close to your mouth. You had your dominant hand resting on his chest with your nondominant hand with a fork in it to feed Mathew a piece of cake. You both were looking in each other’s eyes but midlaugh. You couldn’t remember what he said that made you laugh so hard, but you did.

The six and final photo Liana took was of your send off. To reminisce from your high school graduation party, you and Mathew opted for a sparkler send off. Sure, it was cliche but much of your relationship with Mathew was a cliche. You and Mathew were standing in front of his car as your family and friends held sparklers cheering for you all. Mathew had his hands cupping your face and giving you a kiss with a wide smile on his face. You had your arms in his hair holding him close to you. It was a perfect ending for the day of your dreams with the man of your dreams starting the life of your dreams.

“I can’t wait to see all the professional photos,” you tell him as you put the envelope on the nightstand.

“Who really needs professional photos?”

“I mean, we have all those polaroids from growing up but not many from last night, so we do?”

Mathew looks at you and smiles. “I guess we do.”

The professional photos were exactly what you were hoping for. Each time you looked at them, your heart beat just a tad faster and your stomach did somersaults. Mathew always did have that effect on you.

Honeymoon

After the wedding of your dreams, you and Mathew were off to Paris for a honeymoon of your dreams. Sure, it was very cliche, but, again, everything about yours and Mathew’s relationship was a cliche.

It was halfway through the trip when it dawned on Mathew that you both didn’t have a polaroid photo together. He was shocked to say the least when he realized it. That same day, you and Mathew were heading to the Eiffel Tower, and Mathew figured it was the best opportunity for a photo op, so he threw the camera into your purse and made a mental promise to get a photo of the two of you.

You and Mathew purchased your tickets and took the elevator to the top of the tower. On the descent, you and Mathew got off on the second level to get more pictures opting to take the steps down. You were looking at the Parisian skyline with Mathew holding you against his chest. Your arms were crossed against your chest with Mathew’s arms on top of yours. The metal of his wedding band sending shivers down your spine.

“Can we take a photo?” Mathew mumbles against your ear.

“Yeah,” you whisper back. You aren’t sure why you whispered, but you didn’t want to break the intimate moment.

“I’ll go find someone to take it for us. Polaroid, right?”

You smile softly. “Yeah.”

Mathew asks one of the working attendants to take a photo for you two. You hand the polaroid camera to the attendant. You and Mathew take the same position you were just in; however, now, you were both facing away from the skyline. You smile for the camera, but, as usual, Mathew isn’t looking at the camera but at you.

“Your husband wasn’t looking at the camera, would you like me to retake it?” the attendant asks.

You laugh softly. “No, that’s okay. Thank you.”

The attendant walks away as you look at the photo. “Why don’t you ever look at the camera? We rarely have any photos of us — polaroid or digital — where you look at the camera.”

“I think I’ve said this already, Yn, but there’s no need to look at the camera when all I want to look at is you.”

You smile and shake your head playfully at your husband. “Okay, smooth talker, take a photo of me?”

“Gladly.”

Mathew took way too many pictures of you on his phone, but his words were “it’s important to capture your world in someone else’s eyes” which he did.

Age 27

Three weeks after giving birth to your first son, Isaac, you and Mathew were exhausted to say the least. Being new parents and with the stress of the end of the regular season coming soon, you and Mathew were just plain exhausted.

Mathew was at a hockey game that night. Somehow, despite the exhaustion of being a new father, Mathew was still playing well. He managed to have a four point night; the commentators said something about his new found “father strength.”

The game ended about an hour ago, and Mathew would be home any minute. Finally, finally, Isaac was sleeping and wasn’t crying. You posted a note on the door for Mathew telling him that if he woke Isaac, you were going to a hotel to sleep. Mathew, chuckled to himself, when he read your note. He walked into your apartment, and his heart melted at what he saw. You were sitting on the couch with Isaac sleeping on your chest. You were stroking his back to keep him quiet. Every few moments you’d kiss his head out of love.

You left the polaroid camera on the kitchen counter after taking a few photos of Isaac and your new family. Leaving the camera out allowed for Mathew to take a photo of you without knowing. He puts his stuff down quietly and picks up the camera. He takes it out of the case and snaps a photo. The flash of the camera startles you slightly. When you look over to the flash, you smile when you see your husband. Mathew places the photo facedown on the table and walks over to you. He takes his tie off and rests it on the side of the couch. He sits next to you and kisses your forehead. “Hey,” he whispers.

“Hi,” you whisper back.

“How was Isaac?”

“He was good,” you tell him. “I’m tired. I’m not sure how I’m going to get through the rest of his life.”

“Hey, we’ll be okay, okay? We’ll figure it out, okay?” Mathew reassures.

You nod. “Yeah, we’ll be okay.”

Later that night, you put Isaac down for bed and enter your bedroom. You fell asleep easily that night in Mathew’s arms with a soft smile on your face. Yeah, everything would be okay.

Age 28

Shortly after giving birth to Isaac, both you and Mathew were hit with a really bad case of baby fever. Everytime you or Mathew held Isaac, the next immediate thought you both had was “let’s have another baby.” Every time you saw Mathew doing skin-to-skin contact with Isaac, your heart would flutter with love for your husband, your son, and a strong desire for another baby.

Seven months postpartum, you finally felt comfortable with approaching your husband with the topic of having another baby. Mathew was super excited that you brought it up. At first, trying to conceive was slightly painful. You were both patient with the process knowing it would happen when it would happen. You finally conceived after six months of trying.

Five months later, you felt comfortable announcing it to the world. You bought a whiteboard and wrote a message that said, “Baby Barzal #2 coming soon.” Also, you placed the ultrasound photo on the top corner with a baby jersey with “Barzal 02” on it. You took a photo of it to post both on yours and Mathew’s instagrams. You smiled at the messages you received from your friends, family, the WAGs, and Mathew’s teammates. You both opted not to tell anyone except for immediate family wanting to enjoy the news on your own for the time being.

“Mathew, do you know where the polaroid camera is?” you call out realizing that you had a polaroid of the baby announcement for Isaac but not baby number two.

“On the dresser, probably,” he called from Isaac’s room. You could hear the scrunch in his nose as he changed Isaac’s smelly diaper.

“Thanks, babe,” you call back and walk into your bedroom. You grab the camera and walk back to where you have the pregnancy announcement still sitting on the floor. You snap a photo and smile as you place it on the wall.

With baby #2, your heart was full and excited for what would be coming in the future.

Age 29

“Anthony, please?” you beg.

“Why do you guys always get me to take the photos of the two of you?” Anthony whines.

“Because you’re the best at it!” These words do not convince him further to take a photo of you, Mathew, your daughter, Shannon, and your son, Isaac. “What about, if we have another baby, we name them Anthony”

“What? No,” Mathew yells. “No way. No more kids”

“Just give me the camera,” Anthony sighs. You, who is holding Shannon, and Mathew, who is holding Isaac, walk out to the door of your new house. Shortly after finding out you were pregnant with your second child, you and Mathew began looking for a house to live in, figuring an apartment, no matter the size, was too small for the family you both wanted to build.

Mathew holds Isaac in his right arm and wraps his left arm around your waist. You hold Shannon in your left arm with your right arm wrapped around Mathew and look up at him and smile. He smiles back down at you. Anthony knows, after taking way too many polaroids for you two, when to take the photo — when you both inevitably kiss. As he expected, Mathew leans down and kisses you with a wide smile. Anthony holds up the camera and snaps a photo. You both pull back as Anthony hands the photo and camera to you.

“One of your future kids better have Anthony as their middle name or something. Don’t say you’re not having more because we both know the way Barzy is,” he grumbles as he walks back into your newly finished house.

Mathew goes into Isaac’s bedroom to put him down for a nap as you put Shannon down for a nap and grab the tape to put this new polaroid photo on the wall. You put it up and smile at the rows and rows of photos that line the walls. You stand there looking sentimentally at all the memories.

“Hey, you okay?” Mathew asks and rests an arm around your waist.

“Yeah, just look at all the photos from our lives,” you tell him. You rest your head on his chest as you both your eyes trace over the photos. The photos spanned from many different parts of your lives, both together and separately. On the wall, there are many photos of you and Mathew from when you were young, to young adults, to adults living together in New York. On this wall tells the story of how you were best friends from a young age to being lovers to finally being married. The wall tells the stories of you and your friends from high school and college, and it tells the story of Mathew’s hockey career. The wall tells the story of your engagement and marriage. All the photos are a piece of who you both are.

“Here’s to many more photos on this wall,” Mathew says.

“And to maybe another wall dedicated to polaroid photos,” you add on getting a smirk from Mathew.

“The more kids we have, the more photos we’re going to have.”

You giggle. “I thought you didn’t want any more kids.”

“We make some really great kids, so maybe.”

“And it's not because you have a breeding kink?” you tease, and Mathew blushes at your words.

“Maybe it’s because you look great pregnant.”

“So, maybe more kids?” you suggest with a smile.

“Maybe more kids,” Mathew confirms with a kiss on your cheek.

Despite the wall being 75% filled, you knew that your best days were still ahead of you. You couldn’t wait for the future photos that will tell the story of yours and Mathew’s lives together.

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delimeful · 3 years ago

Text

you can’t go back (4)

warnings: mentioned child neglect/bad parenting, mentioned awkward saucy teen flirting, arguing, emotional upset, the dubious ethics of over-excited teenagers

Roman had been acting strange, lately.

It was perhaps a harsh thing to think about his friend, especially considering he was bound to behave differently when the recent disappearance of his twin was taken into account, but it was also true.

Logan had known Roman for years, long enough that it was an effort to search back through his memories for a point that they hadn’t been together, if perhaps not always in the most amicable of circumstances. They’d gone through the entire gamut of enemies-frenemies-rivals-friends, and Logan liked to think that he had a fair grasp on Roman’s tells by this point.

All of Roman’s tells were currently telling him that the other student was trying to hide something, something big.

It wasn’t just the way that he had stopped sulking whenever something happened that reminded him of his missing brother, or that he was suddenly scrawling what almost seemed like notes in a glitter-covered notebook when he hadn’t had the inspiration to work on anything creative in weeks, or that he had all but given up on the pretense of paying attention in their shared classes.

No, the real sign that something was wrong was the way that Roman had begun to outright neglect his two closest friends.

Logan was hardly affected, of course. He was above the base emotions that so many of his peers were constantly fraught with, and less time with Roman gushing in his ear about whatever had caught his interest or complaining dramatically about those who had wronged him meant more time for Logan to focus on what was important, like his AP classes and many, many extracurriculars.

Of course, that didn’t explain why he was currently trailing after Roman on his walk home, when he really should be at violin practice. No matter how much of a soft spot the teacher had for him, he’d gained his skill through hard work, not skipping practice. Certainly not skipping practice to hound off after his erstwhile classmate.

However, he wasn’t the only one being abandoned in this scenario.

Logan Croft had been forced to sit at a lunch table with an increasingly secretive and distant Roman, and a mournful, kicked-puppy version of Patton Hertz, the most cheerful guy in their grade, if not the entire school.

Roman, stuck in his own thoughts as he clearly was, seemed to not notice the effect his lacking presence had had on Patton, and Logan was just about fed up of watching the slow decay of the half life of their little group.

The secrecy was ridiculous. They’d been there when Roman had been so worked up about the ‘police coverup’ that he’d actually considered trying to break into a government building, they could certainly be here for whatever it was that had him so bizarrely clammed up now!

Logan paused from a distance and watched as Roman hurried in through the front door of his house, counting backwards in his head. It would be a fair challenge to try and break into Roman’s room, particularly with Roman in the house, but if his deductions about the seeds constantly caught on his friend’s pant legs and the odd-colored mud left on the soles of his favorite tennis shoes were correct… There!

Sure enough, only a few moments later, Roman was pushing out through the back door, taking an unusually careful moment to close the screen door behind him before turning and walking determinedly down the path into the rural wilderness that made up half of the grounds his family’s farm sat on.

Logan waited until there was little chance that Roman would double back for something he’d forgotten, and then strode confidently up to the front door, rapping on it twice. Going by the fact that there was a car in the driveway and the door had been unlocked when Roman had gotten home from school, someone else was home to answer.

Mrs. Torres opened the door, looking surprised at the sight of him for a moment, before breaking out into a warm smile. “Logan! It’s so good to see you, are you here for Roman?”

“I’ve been meaning to meet up with him for a project, but he left school before me, so I came here,” Logan said, not above lying through omission to uncover the truth. “Is he home?”

“Oh, he just got back, but I don’t think he’s inside-- ROMAN!” she turned towards the stairs and called up them, frowning when there was no response. “He must be out in the yard again. Come in, come in!”

Logan stepped inside smugly, glancing around. The interior was much the same as the last time he’d been here. If it hadn’t been for the pile of faded missing posters under a mug on the counter and his own prior knowledge of the situation, Logan would have been hard-pressed to guess that this was the home of a recently-vanished child.

“Honestly, I’m just glad he’s not staying cooped up in his room anymore,” Mrs. Torres was saying. The woman speaking casually in front of him only added to the eerie composure of the home, and Logan made his way through the general pleasantries and politely refused any refreshments with an unpleasant feeling in his gut.

“They didn’t even bother printing out new missing posters this time,” he remembered Roman telling them with a quiet, bitter sort of anger. “He dyed his hair, and they won’t even pay to put a recent picture of him up when it could be the difference between someone recognizing him or not!”

On a logical level, Logan can understand something concerning happening over and over, repetition dulling it’s effects until it feels mundane or everyday. Roman has mentioned before how his parents believed that Remus was simply acting out for attention, mostly while thanking Roman for being above that, as though the metaphorical ‘good twin’ wasn’t currently building a career on literally acting for an audience's attention.

What Logan can’t understand is that Remus’s parents are apparently completely uninterested in finding out why Remus is so desperate for attention that he would resort to a maneuver he knows will only get him negative consequences.

Logan himself would certainly like to understand. All queries on the matter had garnered only uncomfortable evasion from Roman, as though his friend might have had an idea but wouldn’t say, likely due to irritating personal feelings that Logan couldn’t parse.

So, he’d reached out to Remus directly, on one of the few days that he’d actually attended classes.

The delinquent had been visibly confused by his approach-- the twins allegedly hadn’t had a mutual friend since the beginning of grade school-- and resistant to Logan’s questioning, which Patton had later informed him was likely far too blunt for the situation. They’d gone in circles for a bit, Remus making outlandish or confusing metaphors while Logan refused to rise to the bait, and then he’d made a simple observation about the hypocrisy of the twins’ parents, and Remus had stared at him with an odd tilt to his head for a moment.

Shortly after, he had made a very confusing comment about something that was anatomically impossible, and when Logan had enquired further, Remus had then hared off with pink cheeks and ditched school for a week. He’d asked Roman about the situation, but his friend had only covered his ears with an agonized look on his face, utterly refusing to explain.

Logan shook the errant thought away, and the odd pang of something like regret that Remus had vanished before he could follow up on the interesting interaction.

He turned his gaze away from the unharried setting. The odd dynamic between the Torres family was not what he was here to investigate, not even remotely.

There was only one Torres he was investigating right now, and he had a strong suspicion that his odd behavior had less to do with family than one might expect.

“Go on ahead, I’m sure he’ll hear you once you get out back,” Mrs. Torres encouraged, picking up a particularly irritated-looking calico cat. “Just have to make sure Lady Macbeth doesn’t escape and disturb your little session. Roman’s been worried about coyotes, so we’ve been keeping her inside.”

Logan nodded, though privately he was a little surprised. Coyotes? He hadn’t thought they would be so bold as to lurk at a farm this close to urban areas. Perhaps there had been sightings near here?

He pushed past the creaky screen door with a striking sense of familiarity, despite the fact that it had been quite a while since the three of them had gone wandering together in the foliage and dirt of the Torres farm. Patton’s allergies could be quite fierce, after all.

As expected, walking into the backyard revealed no signs of Roman, even when Logan cleared his throat and called out. He knew his friend well enough to know that he would have reacted audibly to his unexpected presence, so the only logical conclusion was that he wasn’t nearby.

Clearly, it was time to check the perimeter.

He walked in a careful, orderly line next to the old wooden fence, eyeing the peeling paint and refraining from setting his hand on it. He had more to worry about than potential splinters, such as keeping an eye out for any potential strangeness that could explain Roman’s behavior.

There was little to be found in the brush except a regrettable amount of sandburs catching along the hem of his pants, so when he spotted the barn, he felt a surge of excitement.

And if he indulged in a little bit of sneaking, hoping to catch his quarry unaware, that was his business. Roman was loud enough that he could hear him ranting a good few meters from the barn, anyhow.

He managed to make it all the way to the edge of the barn wall before the rant abruptly cut off, and he stalked forwards hurriedly, pushing the door open before Roman could hide anything incriminating.

He needn’t have worried: the evidence was standing there in the middle of the barn, strapped to a support rafter.

It also wasn’t human.

“What are you doing here?” Roman shrilled, taking a quick step to be in front of the creature. It was an ineffective method of hiding it, seeing as what appeared to be long, spider-like limbs were extending in the air a good few meters in either direction behind him.

Logan had known about Roman’s theory, the one that had been laughed right out of the police station. He’d walked with Roman and scoured the fields for any sign of what Remus had mentioned, though they hadn’t found anything. He knew his friend still believed that his twin’s disappearance had been unnatural, extraterrestrial.

Knowing was quite different from seeing an entire alien right in front of oneself.

Roman was still talking, in that nervous chattering tone that he always took on when he was working himself into a truly incomprehensible explanation, but Logan could hardly be asked to divide his attention at the moment.

Extra anterior eyes, odd shiny patches along the sides of the neck, exterior hinges along the jaw, organic plating that had visibly darkened since his first glance-- there was so much that he needed to understand the purpose of, so many questions he had about their origins. How close by was other life? Which star had they hailed from? How had they gotten here?

He was moving forwards without a second thought, enthralled by the way the legs rose up-- like a bird mantling their wings, and they appeared smooth, not hairy as an actual spider’s would be.

“Incredible,” he breathed, and then there was a hand fisted in the back of his polo and he was being yanked away. Where he’d just stood, all four of the strange limbs stabbed into the ground, their reach longer and their ends sharper than he’d anticipated.

There must have been an extra joint closer to their back, the flexible kind that would allow for such an extension. He itched to circle around and look for himself, to confirm his hypothesis before the limbs retracted, but Roman was still clinging to him like a shrieking barnacle.

“What did I just say?!” he demanded, gearing up for a scolding. “It’s not friendly! Do you want to get stabbed into next week?”

“How long have you been keeping an actual alien life form from the world at large? From scientists at large? From me?” Logan shot back, shaking Roman’s grip loose. “Have you had them strapped upright this entire time? Can they talk? How did this even happen?”

Even as he demanded an explanation, his gaze was drawn back over to the alien, taking in their every twitch with endless curiosity. He wanted to know how to read each motion, from the downturn of their chin to the scrunching of their smaller eyes to the way the flat plates where a mouth should be had seemed to twitch. He wanted to know everything.

“It’s been like a week, I didn’t strap them up they came like that, either they don’t speak English or they’re a really good actor, and they showed up in my barn after Remus was abducted, you do the math!” Roman rushed out, edging closer as though he thought Logan was about to try and get closer to the alien again. “And I didn’t tell you because I knew you would do this!”

“This is hardly the first time I’ve almost been stabbed in the pursuit of science,” Logan retorted, annoyed at the presumption that he wouldn’t risk his life for his goals.

“It’s only a little bit about the near-stabbing!” Roman’s voice cracked, and Logan finally pulled the other half of his attention away from the alien to stare. “This is my only lead on my brother, and you’re going to want to-- to-- to put it in a laboratory or National Geographic Magazine or something!”

“I’d be far more likely to write a thesis paper on the matter,” Logan corrected helpfully. Roman’s hands twitched, the body language possibly indicating that he was barely restraining himself from trying to throttle Logan.

“Whatever! The point is, this isn’t a science experiment to me!” His rival’s face was crumpling slightly at the edges. “You can’t just-- just use the alien I found as a ticket to get into some esteemed college while Remus is left to rot in the far reaches of outer space!”

To Logan’s horror, Roman’s eyes had become suspiciously shiny. He floundered for a moment, wishing Patton was there to smooth things over as he so often did, before firming his shoulders and lifting his chin. He could at least try to explain, and hope it didn’t turn out too badly.

“I’m not going to ‘leave Remus to rot,’” Logan started, remembering the recycled missing posters stacked up on the counter. “If you believe that this alien is key to finding out what happened to him, then that should be-- well, our first priority should always be furthering the advancement of human understanding, especially with a discovery as big as this, but I am an accomplished multitasker, so we can do that while we attempt to locate and recover Remus.”

Roman’s shoulders slowly loosened from their frustrated hunch. “You’re going to help me? Seriously?”

“Do you really think I’d joke?” Logan replied, gesturing to his tie. “The more information we compile on this specimen, the better we’ll understand them, and the closer we’ll be to understanding the motives behind Remus’s abduction.”

“And you aren’t going to tell anyone?” Roman asked, looking more hopeful by the moment.

“Why would I? I work more effectively on projects on my own,” Logan answered, the same sentence that had sparked a loud argument between him and Roman in the middle of Biology two years ago. This time, however, Roman looked excited rather than offended at the response. “We really should figure out something to tell Patton, though.”

“That’s… a good idea,” Roman admitted sheepishly. “There’s no way we can let him around an unknown alien fiend, especially not one so… spider-y. You almost got stabbed, imagine what it might do to poor Patton!”

“You handle our story,” Logan decided, turning to look back at the alien fully. “I’ll see what we can do about those extra limbs. We won’t be able to do any sort of up-close analysis with a constant threat hovering over us.”

He straightened his tie, studying the way the extra limbs in question were vibrating just slightly in the air, drawn in significantly closer to the alien's body than they had been before. Despite the movement of the legs, the alien themself was still as stone, all of their attention locked on Logan.

Through observation and experimentation, he was sure that each little motion of theirs would soon become as readable to him as everyday human body language, and from there, real communication would be in reach.

Communication with an extraterrestrial... This would truly be a project like no other.

Fueled by a thrill of excitement, Logan couldn't help but smile.

#sanders sides #sanders sides fic #ts logan #alien au #ts roman #ts virgil #ycgb #you cant go back #humans are deathworlders #space au #writitng #my writing #ts remus #hes only mentioned #real mad scientist hours <3

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micromushroom · 4 years ago

Text

☼ BNHA Dorm Headcanons☼

Synopsis: What I think the dorms of characters would look like

Genre: Just general headcanons

W.K.: ~1.25k in all

C.W.: none

Characters ft: Bakugou, Tsuyu, & Shinsou

(~450 words)

This could go in so many different directions

My first thought is that if PlanetFitness™ was condensed it would be this man’s room

But honestly I see him more as a person to workout outside and do more active things whilst being productive

It’s canon that he likes hiking, so I feel like a lot of the equipment in his room would be based off of that

If anything, he probably has a few weights (like dumbbells) that are lying around

Has most definitely kicked one on accident at night walking around his room

I feel like it’s relatively plain but over time becomes more clustered

The Bakusquad will start randomly leaving or putting things in Bakugou’s room

It can be anything from Denki leaving little dollar store trinkets on Bakugou’s desk; to Kiri making random things out of garbage in class and putting it on Bakugou’s shelf

He doesn’t strike me as someone to have a lot of pictures or memorabilia, but there’s little pictures on the wall by his bed with sticky tack photos of his friends throughout the years

He’s an All Might fanboy at heart, but I doubt he has as much physical display of this as Midoriya

I headcanon that there’s posters and like some rare collectibles of action figures and merch

Inko made him a throw blanket as a kid for his birthday of All Might and he still has it at the end of his bed

Despite it being relatively clustered with small things in some places (again, courtesy of the Bakusquad), it’s still pretty clean and spacious

His curtains are usually closed, so the only possibility for plants that he could sustain are either fake or don’t survive for long

Since his parents are both fashion designers, his closet is full of clothing that he’ll probably never wear from name brands all over

His desk serves as a multiple purpose space: homework, charging station, and bookshelf

Bakugou’s bed is always made and—as much as I hate to say it—he probably only sleeps with two pillows—three on occasion

He has a speaker that he uses whenever he’s not doing homework, but it’s probably super loud (headcanoning that he’s partly deaf from his quirk)

His closet alone could be an entirely different post

Overall, Bakugou’s room is kind of dark and a tad bit more grunge themed

Kirishima leaves Bakugou lots of little notes saying things like are either:

“Hey Bakubro, can you help with math please? :D” to

“Remember to hydrate and take a break” with a little thumbs up doodle

Lots of self notes too reminding him of what he has to do and his schedule for the day

(~340 words)

Tsu canonically has all of the attributes—strengths and weaknesses—that a frog does

For this reason, I think that she has humidifiers and just temperature regulations throughout her room

Lots of plants and art prints, mainly from friends

Little lily pad shaped fairy lights strung across her room

I picture her room as having a lot of plants like ivy and vines, but also a lot of really exotic plants

Lots of pillows and blankets

Like at least five pillows and her bed is most definitely up against the wall

The blankets range from those really thin 50x50” ones to comforters to really fluffy and warm blankets

Hear me out—stuffed animals

I think that her friends go out with her to like, the mall, and end up coming back with a lot of stuffed animals

Throw pillows and rugs are main staples of Tsu’s room

Super comforting place and relaxing, but it can become kind of humid

Frequent naps at Tsu’s dorm bedroom have become so common that she has little bean bag seats that people sleep on

Color palette of greens and pinks

Think of a pastel version of kid core, with the mixed color fabrics

Her closet is also an entirely different post, but I’m picturing bucket hats and pastel overalls with different colors and patch sizes

You know those framed glass cases of bugs? Yes, those but a lot of them

Like they’re hanging up by pictures of her friends

Butterflies, iridescent winged beetles, etc.

Like the wood around them is an orangish color and honestly I might just draw this up later

I cannot stress this enough, but pictures of her friends both in and out of school as well as pictures of her family and herself growing up

Post cards from all over pinned up on her walls and cork boards

Generic, I know, but frog themed little details that are mainly jokes

Music isn’t as loud or used as Bakugou, but when she does play music, it’s most likely a shared playlist that everyone created

(~490 words)

Straight up, grunge. kid. bedroom.

Gotta put aside my biases for him for the rest of this

Either looks like a vacant room or the pure embodiment of a teenage boy’s room

I’m going with the latter for the rest of this

Clothes and trash are just all over the floor, save for a few spaces

His bed has been made once, maybe twice

But it is the most comfortable shit you would ever sleep in

I speak from experience of my own bed

Posters line the wall so much to the point where there’s very little actual wall space

These range from prints he likes, bands, movies, heroes he admires Aizawa, to joke posters like, “Live, Laugh, Love <3” and, “~Home is where the heart grows fonder~”

The LED lights desperately need a battery change because it’s more of a dim light, but that’s for another time to change

Jackets and hoodies over his chairs

Has a little gaming station beside his desk

I choose to believe his gaming chair and setup itself is the biggest thing that he has splurged on

The side of his monitor and the top of his desk are covered in stickers he’s collected over the years

Tapestry over his bed

Vintage cassette and record albums

As cluttered as everything is, it’s still somewhat spacious because the clutter is grouped together to provide a walkway

Much like myself, his closet is somewhat bare because all of his clothing he wears is from piles of clean and dirty clothing on the floor

Signature purple and black bedding and overall theme

There’s always music, like no matter what, but the difference between Shinsou and Bakugou is that Shinsou’s music is usually quiet

Wide variety of music, but at night it’s his an entirely different playlist of Lofi

He may not sleep at night 9/10, but at least it isn’t as chaotic and exhausting

Collection of bottle caps and tabs by his bed

Water bottles are everywhere, but at least the majority of them are refilled

At this point I’m just naming off how my room is rn

Half of his chargers are broken or living on 1%

Hair ties that are clinging onto life have their own little dish on his desk

Usually the curtains and blinds are closed

On the back of his door there’s a coat rack that’s used exclusively for his bag and also the capture weapon

Weights and overall workout equipment are frequently used but also so easily lost

The Grind Never Stops

I think the only pictures he would have would be of like sneaked pictures of him and Aizawa training

Aizawa’s in the back doing whatever pose and Shinsou’s either hold up a blurry peace sign to the camera or painfully imitating it

They’re a little frayed at the edges most of the time, but it just makes them more sentimental and fit in with the aesthetic

11/10, would recommend vibing in his room

#bnha #bnha headcanons #boku no hero academia #mha headcanons #micro writes #bakugou katsuki #bnha bakugou #bakugou x reader #bnha x reader #my hero academia tsuyu #bnha tsuyu #tsuyu asai #tsuyu x reader #mha shinsou #bnha shinso hitoshi #shinsou hitoshi #shinso hitoshi #shinsou x reader

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timextoxhajima · 4 years ago

Text

Love Me A Little Less: Chapter 2 - Auction

LOVE ME A LITTLE LESS CHAPTER MASTERLIST

Member: (3rd person pov) arranged marriage au with Lee Juyeon

Genre: angsty wangsty

Taglist: @hyunvelies

“You no longer own me.”

The guppies in the tank that spans nearly half the space of the wall flush around, their brightly colored and flared tails gently wading in the water. Juyeon gently taps on the glass, the yellow guppy swimming towards him instead of away. The shelves are stacked with books on marine life and nature, posters of the Northern Lights dawn the walls if they weren’t covered in the latest Apple commercial poster.

He hears the hurried footsteps before he hears his assistant, who is huffing by the time she’s at the door of his office. “Anything urgent, Miss Young? Forgive me if I imagined I told you that I would be unavailable until after lunch.”

“Sir, I think you should see the news. I know why your parents aren’t in office today.”

“What?” Juyeon finally pulls away from the tank, worried eyes scanning his assistant. She’s well-dressed, has short hair and ruby cheeks. She looks like she belongs in high school. “Anything serious happen? An accident?”

“Um, no, it’s just--”

Ring ring

Lee Juyeon turns to the phone set on his table, then side-eyes Young Jin Seol, feet turning toward the device.

“No, sir! Wait, before you--”

“Hello?”

“Good morning, Mr Lee. We’re calling from The Board to request your availability tonight for a press conference regarding today’s updates.”

Juyeon scoffs gently, standing straight up and resting a hand on his hip. He turns to look at Jin Seol, eyes filled with caution, as if they meant to say I told you not to pick it up.

“I’m sorry but... what updates?”

“The change in ownership of HERA & ARTEMIS and the marriage.”

There’s a brooding uneasiness in his gut as he processes the heavy word. In the world of corporate under The Board, the word ‘marriage’ is nothing but a contract.

“Remind me who this concerns?”

“You, sir. The marriage between you and Kim Jang Won. The Board would like your presence during a press conference to address the marriage as well as the following change in ownership of HERA & ARTEMIS.”

It’s like Medusa has just stared him straight in the eye, for Juyeon fails to respond in any way possible.

“Uh... sir? Hello? Mr Lee Juyeon?”

Jin Seol rushes over, able to hear the voice on the other end calling out to him. She grabs the phone and presses it to her ear, eyes plastered to Juyeon, whose lips seemed to be whitening. “Hi, this is Young Jin Seol, Mr Lee’s assistant. He’s not feeling very well now, so I’ll get him to give you a call later regarding the press conference, if that’s alright.”

“Oh, um, of course. But we’d like to have details settled by 1pm later, Miss Young. If it’s not too troubling to relay the message to Mr Lee.”

“Rest assured, he’ll...” Jin Seol watches Juyeon trudge to the couches sitting before the tank, sinking into the soft cushion and pressing his fingers into his closed lids. “I’ll make sure he gets back to you by then.”

Juyeon can feel the skin on his chest stretch when he sucks in a deep breath. The nonsensical thoughts start to crowd his head in the most logical way possible, if that was even possible. Luckily, the only thing he could hear was the bubbling of the oxygen pump in the tank.

He hears Jin Seol return the phone back into the phone set before he finally opens his eyes, vision a little blurred from the pressure of his fingers.

“I could schedule them in straight away but I have a feeling you’d want to talk to your parents first, Mr Lee.”

Juyeon brings his palms down to his nose and mouth, lips perpendicular to his index finger and his thumbs under his chin as he focuses on the table before him. The white tulips in the vase have already started to brown.

“Schedule them for lunch at 11 and I’d like to be left alone from 12.30 to 1. I’ll call The Board myself afterwards,” Juyeon notes the coldness in his voice, an element he doesn’t even recognise much. “My parents and I have alot to talk about.”

The Director of Chang’s Funeral Services personally flips open the file, turning it and sliding it across the table to the siblings sitting opposite them. Mr Chang would’ve shat himself if Kim Jang Won had come alone - she doesn’t have the title ‘Hera’s Princess’ for nothing. It’s a good thing ‘The Prince of Artemis’ had come with her. But maybe that’s just it, isn’t it?

What if he pulled out a gun and shot me right now?

Younghoon’s eyes conscientiously process the printed words on the document, his sister a little too over the edge to be paying attention to anything.

“We-- Um, carried out an investigation and realised that the bodies were... well... mismatched.”

Younghoon listens, but his gaze is still on the carbon print. The file was labelled KIM JO-PIL but the papers in the folder belonged to someone else. Someone else’s body. A common city address.

“Have you excavated the body?”

“In progress, Mr Kim. They should be calling any time now for after identification.”

“I don’t suppose you have the documents for Kim Jo-Pil? The ones that were supposed to be in this folder?”

“The thing is... I remember seeing the documents. My colleagues have too. The people in charge of your father’s burial saw it too. But... if it’s not in this office then frankly, I’ve got no clue where it would be.”

For the first time in 3 hours, Jang Won actually looks somewhat understanding, sympathetic, empathetic. Younghoon shuts the file and slides it over to Jang Won when she sits up in her seat.

“If you don’t mind, we’ll take the file and contact the deceased’s family. When’s that body identification phone call coming in?” Then the 3-hour streak is lost, and Younghoon sighs exasperatedly, out of her peripheral vision. “Taking mighty long for a simply body identification, no?”

Flustered, Mr Chang fumbles for the phone set sitting in the corner of his desk, hurriedly dialing a number.

“Where do you think he ran to for 2 years?” Jang Won squints at the deceased’s information. “Why 2 years?”

Younghoon runs a hand through his hair, probably worth about half a million Korean Won. “You ask me as if I know any more than you do.”

Mr Chang is finally talking to someone. Jang Won’s focus fixates on something familiar at the bottom of the page.

“That’s because maybe you do,” Lifting the file, she points to the bottommost section.

LAST OCCUPATION:

PHOTOGRAPHER FOR ARTEMIS ENTERTAINMENT GROUP

“It’s your company and subsidiary. I’m surprised you don’t recognise the name.”

“I might own Artemis but I don’t personally know all 278 employees. If he’s a photographer and I don’t recognise him, that means he’s in another department. Women, or children or product. I’m only listed as a model under the ‘Males’ department.”

There’s a silence in the air that allowed Younghoon to hear the gears churning in Jang Won’s head. The appearance of Kim Jo-Pil, 2 years after his supposed death, has just dragged both his children and everybody else related into a mess of a puzzle. But Younghoon has no doubt his sister can find all the pieces, much less draw the connections.

There’s a reason why she could build HERA & ARTEMIS from the ground up.

Mr Chang finally hangs up, sighing heavily as he looks at the powerful siblings over the rim of his glasses. “They’ve confirmed. The body in the coffin you saw your father in belongs to the man in the document.”

Younghoon chortles in disbelief. “Right then. So our father did die, but someone managed to swap the bodies before it was lowered, and then proceeded to keep him alive for the next 2 years.”

Jang Won flips and finds a portrait of the dead man. “Question is... who?”

Younghoon stands up first, thanking Mr Chang and tapping Jang Won as he turns for the exit of the office. The Director doesn’t even get a chance to bid his goodbye when Jang Won leaves, behind Younghoon.

Escorted by four bodyguards, the siblings walk side by side with her heels clicking against the floor. Upon reaching the first floor, the lift doors ding open into an array of reporters hustling outside the entrance.

“Get them out of my face before I ruin their lives!”

The guards rush before them, hurriedly trying to disperse the crowd. Jang Won pulls out her sunglasses, covering her eyes.

“Time-wasting assholes.”

The shouted questions are loud and intrusive. The short distance of a few tens of metres feel like a mile from all the shoving and yelling. The flashes refuse to cease, but they’ve been in the spotlight for so long, it just gets annoying.

BREAKING: KIM YOUNGHOON AND KIM JANG WON SPOTTED AT CHANG’S FUNERAL SERVICES - KIM JO-PIL CONFIRMED TO HAVE BEEN SWAPPED OUT BEFORE BURIAL TWO YEARS AGO

Juyeon turns into the private room the restaurant manager has led him to, leaving him at the door whilst his parents gawk at the headlines blasting on the screen mounted to the wall. There’s a picture of Kim Jang Won and her brother getting into a car right below the headlines.

“Quite a mess, isn’t it?”

Both of them whip around to see the young man standing by the door, pushing himself off the frame and strutting into the private room. The whole fit he was wearing could buy a short vacation. His father reaches for the remote and shuts off the television.

“I expect nothing less from Kim Jo-Pil, given the history of HERA & ARTEMIS. It was just a matter of time before his daughter took over and turned it into a multi-billion name,” His mother sings, fingers around the base of a glass of wine and carefully swirling the blood-red liquid.

Juyeon sits, and a waiter comes by to fill his glass with wine. The gentle whir of the air-conditioning in the room is the only source of noise, other than the waiter taking his leave. Juyeon picks up the glass, raising a brow as he brings it to his lips. “I expect nothing less from my own parents when they are about to put me up for a certain type of contract,” He pauses, the glass in mid-air. “Say... a marriage.”

His lips meet the curve of the glass and he takes a sip.

“We wanted to tell you before we agreed, but--”

“But the money’s more worth?” He winces from the alcohol in the wine, frowning and offering a sarcastic purse of his lips. “I can imagine. All that stuff you have at home... you know, grand piano worth five million, a kitchen big enough for a herd of horses-- oh, not to mention the actual stable of horses... Yeah, I guess... I guess I could empathise with how you needed more than those. Planning a re-deco? I might know some great architects.”

“Juyeon...”

“No, no,” Placing down the glass, he waves his hand. “Let me put things into perspective for you. After all, gotta make the homework I did on my way here worth it right? See if it’s correct.”

Juyeon clears his throat and cracks his knuckles, knowing that his parents are offering him the most miserable looks they’ve ever given him in his life.

“The Board announces Kim Jo-Pil’s return. HERA & ARTEMIS goes back under his belt, leaving Kim Jang Won, current owner and might I say, the very reason why HERA & ARTEMIS is as good as it is today, jobless and absolutely helpless in a ditch. The Board then passes a rule, one which I have never heard before in my life, maybe because it’s never happened before, but... in order for Kim Jang Won to re-obtain some kind of ownership or at least some part of HERA & ARTEMIS, she must marry a name attached to The Board. And the two of you, seeing how rich and successful Kim Jang Won has made HERA & ARTEMIS, snatched the offer up first and put me on the stage... for auction.”

“Auction...!”

“Correct me, will you? Because that’s exactly what I think you did. What, becoming the next director of Apple-Korea isn’t enough for you? Owning the Korean branch of one of the largest tech companies in the world isn’t enough-- you must have a fashion-retail company?!”

The entire room falls into heavy silence. The waiters knock before entering with some seafood appetizer. Juyeon sucks his lips between his teeth, nibbling anxiously on his bottom one.

“Juyeon...” His father waits for the waiter to leave. “We... we just wanted the best for you. You know how powerful the Kim family is. Any remote connection to them will do us good. It’ll do you good.”

He scoffs and rubs his forehead with his index and middle finger. “I really have no clue what’s going on in those heads of yours sometimes.”

“I don’t know why you’re so against this, Juyeon. It’ll be helpful to you in your future!”

“As opposed to what? Wanting to be a marine biologist? Wanting to study the waters and nature? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

Thinking that his father would hush his mother, Juyeon is surprised when he doesn’t.

“Wow, really? Nothing?”

Silence.

His mother picks up a fork.

“Very nice to know that you’re treating me like a piece of property instead of your son.”

Juyeon pulls the napkin off his lap and stands.

“Oh, and uh... Don’t wait for a wedding invitation. You’re not getting one.”

“Juyeon!” His parents collectively exclaim in disdain, eyes widening as he struts towards the exit and out of the room.

“What? You auctioned me off! You no longer own me, right?!”

Juyeon huffs angrily, hands running through his hair and ruining his own efforts of waxing his hair. He enters the lift, multiple staff members looking at him stride into the metallic box, confused. His fingers search for his phone in the pocket of his blazer, the device buzzing non-stop from the headlines and messages and emails from broadcasting companies and companies he couldn’t give two shits about.

But when the lift doors open and he sees the Kim Jang Won standing right outside with the same suit and sunglasses he had previously seen her on TV with, his eyes widen with a mix of surprise and distaste.

“Well, if it isn’t Kim Jang Won... or might I say, my fiancé?”

“My dad couldn’t have done this on his own. I have a theory, and multiple plans to fix this mess of a shitshow, so I’m here to figure out if you wanna be in on it.”

Juyeon scoffs and shoves his hands into his pockets, stepping out of the lift and staring down straight at her. He attempts to search for her eyes through the chocolate-brown shade of her sunglasses, but fails.

A tiny smirk crawls unto her lips as she pulls it off, her bright, sparkling, manipulative eyes ignite some flame in Juyeon.

Because that’s just how smart and cunning Kim Jang Won is.

“I know you don’t give a shit, Lee Juyeon. About The Board, about the marriage, about Apple.”

He chuckles, teeth wiping his canine teeth as he pulls his shoulders back. “So you Googled me. Should I be impressed?”

Then his phone buzzes and he pulls it out in a bid to display some kind of disinterest.

Young Jin Seol [12.13pm]: The tulips are here! [photo]

He blinks, eyes travelling from the screen to the most powerful figure of his generation under The Board.

“If I could find this out from Google, I think you should revisit your privacy logistics,” Kim Jang Won squints one eye and raises her brow. “I’m not here to confuse you or piss you off, Lee Juyeon. I’m here with an offer, to save both our asses. I want HERA & ARTEMIS back but I cannot do it if I have no link to it.”

“What’s in it for me then? It’s not like you can buy me a degree in marine biology.”

“I can’t but you could have the freedom to do so. I’ll pay for you to start your own company. Whoever said you needed a degree to do what you wanted to do? In this world... all you need is money and a little bit of brain... but!” She points to him her sunglasses. “You don’t have to worry about either because I’ve got that covered. All I need you to do is get down on one knee -- willingly -- for the whole world to see... and I’ll give you your freedom.”

Juyeon sucks in a deep breath so hard that he wheezes and Kim Jang Won could not be any more satisfied with herself.

#juyeon #tbz #the boyz #the boyz juyeon #juyeon fanfic #juyeon scenario #juyeon scenarios #lee juyeon #lee juyeon scenario #lee juyeon fanfic #the boyz lee juyeon #tbz juyeon #love me a little less

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sjw-publishings · 4 years ago

Text

Retrospective Division

Josh and Henry walked hand in hand down the hallway, directly to the office in which they resided. The young men were in charge of small LGBTQ business in the building...only to be kicked out due to being too ‘liberal’, making room for tenants who were closer to his ‘Retrospective Vision’.

So much so, that the taller one had to voice it out.

“I’m...I’m going to send an email to the higher ups!” Josh spoke.

Josh Ming was the older of the two, only slightly older though at the age of 23. Fresh out of college and directly ready to start business with his newlywed husband.

Dressed in a pair of of white loafers with matching pair of beige khaki shorts, he wore a light blue buttoned polo underneath his pink checkered sweater vest with rainbow flag pin over his right breast...

Was that the final straw for the clearly conservative owner to kick them out after just a few months? If it was...

He scratched the back of his head, left palm messing with his wavy raven locks before briefly adjusting his rectangular half-frame specs. Something was real off...and he really wanted to get to the bottom of it.

This sudden rising passion of energy within him was also different, tightening his grip on his boyfriend, he would usually remain quiet and reserved, ignoring the such attitude towards them...but being kicked out? That really ticked him off.

“Honey, I like that attitude!”

Meanwhile, Henry was quite astonished by drive his husband was showing. Sure they both took turns in the bed and was Jeffery incredible when he was top, but he had never seen this side of him until today...

The 22 year old caucasian smiled, loving every bit of the drive from the other male, considering he was usually the one taking charge vocally.

Placing his right hand on his waist, swishing his hips in those pink bermudas while strutting in his own pair of slip-on, navy blue formal shoes that he recently got.

They had the right to dress liberally and freely, he would never sass directly-he and his boyfriend’s clothing says it all! With a matching light blue buttoned down-minus the sweater and throw in a white cardigan for variety.

Swooshing his blond curly locks, his sky blue eyes narrowed in admiration towards his partner, freckles rising with his cheekbones.

“Heh...must’ve gotten it from you~”

“Awww.”

In a matter of seconds, they reached the entrance to their office. They were told to pack up and go in the middle of the night, and with the full moon shining directly at them from a open window behind.

They immediately released the grip from the other as they walked in without question.

Not even realising that they won’t be holding the other this way when they come out.

————————————————————

As they entered, the room stayed mostly the same for now, with the only major difference, is that their desks are apart, parallel to one another.

Just like their formerly interlocked hands.

“Of course! the owner doesn’t support us working side by side directly!”

Josh noted, rolling his eyes as his tone got snappy. Folding his arms, not realising his lisp fading slightly with the remark.

“No worries hun, that just means I’d get a better look at you~”

He turned to his boyfriend, who looked lovingly at him at the side. At Eye level, re-assuring the other that everything will be alright. He blinked, did Henry just get taller all of a sudden? He definitely did not notice it earlier...must be the new shoes he was wearing.

“Right back at ya love~”

“Ooooh now there’s that attitude I love!”

PINCH!

“Oof!”

With that, Henry gave a tight pinch to his behind, smirking as he walked to his desk. Of course, it was far harder than usual, that tease. His husband liked to do that especially when he was happy, which was great when he was happy despite those remarks from the owner!

But something about the pinch...really set him off.

Playing it off, not noticing his larger steps as he strode to his side of the room. Legs stretching wide apart, feet grounded to the floor as he stood like a 1930s cartoon, except with more realistic proportions.

PLONK!

Landing butt first on his chair, he winced once again, he sat with more force than intended. Probably due to the aggression towards the owner, but wasn’t there supposed to be a cushion he and his husband brought from home on his-

Sleek Office chair, the modern kind without the comfort. Just pure professionalism like the way the owner demanded. Did that arse remove his-

Meanwhile Henry from across looked comfortable in his...’Chairman’s chair’. Like he was a higher up overseeing him, with a smug grin, but it was just cause he found him cute right?

“Sit up straight hun...wouldn’t want the owner to think otherwise.”

“Got it...! Thanks for reminding me!”

“No problem love...”

He responded quickly...though kind of irritated, he knew it was the owner’s policy too, about a ‘straight back leads a straight life’. He often made visits to everyone of his tenants or so he claims...especially them.

How ridiculous of a ‘motivational message’, though Jeff did like to keep his back straight for proper posture and presentation, not cause he was...

Anyways...what is with the fact that his fiancé is on a grand chair while he was stuck lookin’ like a subordinate. Sure Henry was slightly older...and taller than him, but the difference between them was huge.

He shouldn’t let that get to him...but its kind of pissing him off, specially with that smug grin on the older male’s face.

Mustering up all his professionalism, he spoke to the other male about their situation, holding in as much anger as he could.

“Say...how else do you think the owner expects us to behave?”

“Don’t know, probably...like him...”

Older days...yeah that sounds about right. Blinking, Josh watched as numerous LGBTQ posters and photos he framed up on his side taken down in an instant, replaced with framed photographs, mainly black and white of men and women in retro-esque attire.

But the main thing were the fact was there were only happy heterosexual couples in the wedding pictures that he took...where wuz’ all the gay ones huh?

Meanwhile, Henry’s side had the pictures reshaped into various expensive degrees and award certificates apparently. Josh wasn’t sure when his senior was such a stick in the arse and show off his life, but apparently its the reality they live in now.

Mixed with the wood panelling, their office walls split into two. With his fiancé’s side having a more polished grey shine to it...and his having wallpaper of grey rocks right behind him.

He was pissed, all his hard work gone to waste when the boss removed all his...stuff, doing renovations...Sure he kinda liked the new decor, always felt sturdy where he wuz at. But still it was his stuff!

Though then again, he also did help take some of those conference photos for the boss when he had met with several of his big league associates, a proof of skill he could use when advertising his talent to the boomers...

Whatevah! He was still goin’ to be typin’!

As he had started up his trendy PearPC, he blinked as the load in bar showed up. Tapping his fingers impatiently, not realising the shiny light weight frames becoming heavier and grounded as the quality of the pixels dropped tremendously with every second.

“Something is not right! And I’m gettin’ to the bottom of dis!”

“Whatever you say, hun...”

Rolling his eyes at his lover’s statement, the older male was not as passionate as he was when it comes to delivering the truth. Not fighting as hard as he was, whateva’!

He was doin’ it HIMSELF!

Rubbing his palms, as his ‘doorframe’ retro PC lit up, being an older model did not hinder his goal as he opened up the word processor and began typing away!

He was always a fast typer, especially when his grandpapy trained him when he was younger. Though that did not sound right? They didn’t have computers back in the day and age!

As Josh blinked, the digital letters seemed almost printed out the more he starred into them. As he continued typing on his keyboard, he didn’t notice the swiftness of his fingers as he crunched on the keys effortlessly, neither did he mind the metallic clicking sound with every syllable.

Precisely, rubbing his eyes, the glossy flow shifted into simple paper. Grinning to himself, retro it is! Right in front of em’, a policy that the boss really stood firm in his heart.

“Not that I mind, Chief.”

Muttering to himself, Joshon was raised by a highly conservative grandfather who drilled him in the importance of staying true to their values.

Not noticing with that remark, his rainbow flag pin stretched like taffy around his neck, solidifying into a black monotone neck tie as the collar of his Polo tee stiffened.

And folded down.

Sweater vest splitting into two, the sleeves merging with the polo as the vest thinned out. A long row of buttons trailed down the merged too, colour bleaching white into a straight, iron-pressed dress shirt.

Even though he was sorta queer, there was no way he’ll be outrightly pissing his grand-papy off! Folding his arms determinedly, as the pinkness of the remaining vest fabric faded to black, looping into straps with a big criss-cross over on his back.

SNAP! Wearing his suspenders with grey pride.

It didn’t really matter to him in the face of a scoop. Especially when it comes to whatever the owner of the establishment is doing, he was determined to write it like the reporter he was.

You can say, it was going to be the scoop of the century!

“Did you say something?”

Gohen got up from his throne, dressed in a thick black suit, with faint white checkered patterns all over, with the typical office dress shirt and matching tie he always wore.

Sauntering over to the reporter’s side of the room, possessively. The hispanic-caucasian stared at the pan-asian male...though its less so love and more so-

“What are you doing?”

But oh man, does he piss Joshon off.

Yeah they’ve been engaged, but the way he breathes down his neck makes the reporter sick. Arms toughening with strong toned biceps, as a healthy dusting of hair lined his forearms.

The roughness the two exhibited even in bed was less out of love and more so...pent up frustration, especially lately. No matter how the conversation went, its just conflict after conflict.

“I’m just typing away the new article, lovah!”

His lover’s been clinging onto em’ again. Examinin him like a piece of meat, even though they just get engaged recently...though it was more so the lawyer’s idea rather than Joshon’s.

Tied down to another guy like that, even that was too gay for his liking.

“Why don’tcha just-TALK TO ME?”

“I AM TALKIN’ TO YA!”

He was so ANGRY with his lover, getting up, hands pressing against the other...and with a-

PUSH!

The impact left a huge blow to their relationship.

Flinging both men back to their side of the room, onto each of their seats. Rings morphing into simple tie pins as they stuck onto their new ties. Nothing special or out of the ordinary, and definitely nothing to personal with the other male.

They just anger each other.

First came the realisation of the older male, who tugged relentlessly below, surging through age and maturity as his weathered face took on a caramel tan.

Hair styling into natural curls, shortening into a dark brown, embracing his new identity of a conservative single man in his fifties. Letting loose any notion of being attracted to anyone but his future-

“Hermosa!”

The hispanic BOOM-ER’ed his manhood, letting loose all his reservations and kindness as a dark glare rested on the male. Deep eye bags alongside a faint beard.

Dusting himself, the middle aged man made sure he appeared presentable, despite still in a hazy afterglow.

Shaking himself out of his trance, the older man glared at the younger male.

“Get out my office.”

Walls fell down between the two, a complete division of interests as the attorney faded from his sight.

“Well who needs ya?”

Still thirsting for release, his face contorted at any thought of attraction to the older man. What wuz he? Queer? That kind of shit gets ya kicked outta office!

Which was why he liked it ere’!

“PANSY!”

A young handsome guy free to be chasing the ladies! Hair slicked to the side, as his skin embraced that peachy caucasian tan of his new ethnicity.

“QUEER!”

The tense fights he had with his competitor and rival next door. He wouldn’t trade it for the world. Grinning arrogantly at the triumphs he had over the man, especially when he told Gomez about the queer vibe he got from those chicks.

And both ladies turned about to be lesbians!

Imagine how much the owner of the establishment would be proud of him, how his grandpapy would be proud of him.

His arrogant sneer framed by his squared jaw, licking his lips as his signature five o clock shadow lined his masculinity. Narrowing his much larger eyes, blowing a large-

“GOT DA SCOOP RIGHT ERE!”

And so the incredibly heterosexual reporter proclaimed, kicking back as his hard member came and came like the single retro business owner he was.

Slumping back in the afterglow, immersing in his heterosexuality like he always did past midnight as he-

Knock!

Jolted up, zipped his trousers, and crossed his arms as his boomer rival barged in.

“Matt! Will ya keep it down?!”

“Shaddup Diego! As if you and your crusty balls didn’t jerk off for the third time this evenin’!”

Of course, they initiated their famous, tense, stare down at the other. The caucasian reporter remaining in his position as the hispanic lawyer made his way to the seat in front of him.

The two of them fought ever since they met. With Gomez being being really disapproving towards Johnson as a result.

The Chief’s colleague vouched for their grandson Johnson to be a part of the many businesses in the building, claiming he will be a value asset to his ‘conservative vision’.

Of course, Reporter Johnson was a prodigy. Being raised in the art of the press by his Grand-pappy, the ins and outs on the ‘black N white days’ without too much influence from the modern world.

It was no surprise that the chief, the owner of dis ere’ place, gave him an office of his own.

Even bypassing Attorney Gomez’s approval, who, besides being the prime defence lawyer against any allegations towards the property owner, was also the one who made the deciding vote on whether someone was able to rent an office in the Chief’s estate.

Of course, the idea of a man, over a decade younger, having this much influence in the building had ticked the hispanic boomer to his very core. And ever since then, it became a non-stop cycle of one upping the other.

“Listen Matty, you know how it goes as much as I do. We’re men and still single, we need women.”

Though despite their numerous arguments, over the years, they may never admit it...but when it comes to getting partners, they were both unfortunate enough to remain single this long.

In their late thirties and fifties respectively, flirting with ladies and getting rejected like some 50s comedy routine.

“Never understood how did some guys get married immediately after college...bunch of queers.”

“Agreed, especially for a hot rich lawyer such as myself, being single is definitely out of the equation.”

“Hey! Hey! You think the ladies care about an old man in a suit when a hot stud like me is around?”

“Not when you are far from tactical with your words! Besides, you should see how the women look at me when I walk down the hallway.”

“Oh yeah? Well Chicks can’t resist spankin’ my arse with every step!”

And so the argument continues, like almost every time they met. Like a married couple, except they were straight and talking about women women women.

And for some odd reason, because of this fact, despite their glaring differences in almost about everything. They knew they had each other’s back when it comes to this.

“Anyways...the owner said he’s found two ladies working in an office below us...and that they are not only interested in us...but-”

Taking out the photographs from the brown folder, in them were two gorgeous women that these straight men could not peel their eyes off. Like an alluring magnet of compatibility, that kind that they were unable to resist.

The left one definitely screamed the ‘mamacita’ that Diego desired. As he placed his matured palm over that photograph, red tints could be seen over his cheeks as he subconsciously licked his lips.

Of course, Matt’s hard on throbbed at the sight of the right chick. Like a lesbian who turned straight in front of his lens, the kind of Gal he would spend his life with, and for some reason he knew she would too.

“You in?”

Lawyer Diego Gomez folded his arms, but barely hid the incredible pheromones of attraction towards his lady. Sandwiching his manhood and rubbing it, desperately needing her immediately, closing his single case once and for all.

Reporter Matt Johnson mirrored the older male, and not wanting to admit it, is thirsting for that retro babe like the scoop of the century. He really desired for her...but he ain’t gonna show weakness in front of his rival! He was taking charge, hungry eyes blending in with a determined expression.

“You be my wingman this time Gomez, and you’ve got a deal.”

#retrospective division #gay to straight #g2s #mental change #personality change #lib to cons #racial change #retro tf

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bangingoutthetunes · 4 years ago

Text

Snowfall.

A drabble in which you walk home with your boyfriend in the snow and get to cuddle + braid his hair.

Word count: 2.3k

tags: hair braiding, fluff, bokuto is a human puppy

“Come on, (name)-kun! It’s literally so cold out here I might die!” Kotarou pulled your hand forward and you almost tripped at the sudden jerk. He looked back over his shoulder, puppy-dog eyes wide and shining. A cheerful grin had found itself onto its face at your smile.

“It’s not like I want to be out here in the cold, Kou! I just need to catch my breath, we’ve been running for the past ten minutes and although you’re wearing pants, I’m wearing a skirt and tights. Gimme a break!” If just for a moment, you felt burningly jealous of the pants the Fukurodani’s boys uniform required; they would’ve definitely kept you warm. Panting from the exhaustion, you trembled in his grip a little bit. He walked over to you and pulled you into his chest, chin resting on your hair and arms wrapped around your waist. He smelled like soap and vanilla and like the best parts of cold December afternoons.

Peering to the left of his arm, you took in the scenery around you; snowflakes had begun to blanket rooftops and adorn the naked trees, minivans would drive by full with mothers and their children’s friends, bike riders would exhale dragon puffs of condensation, and some other classmates were huddling at a corner shop to pick up some hot chocolate and coffee to continue on their way.

Having moved from the Miyagi prefecture in early March of this year, you hadn’t gotten to experience snow in a small town on the outskirts of Tokyo. This was of the first times you got to enjoy the gentle fall of friendly snow without having to worry about negative repercussions, and in this moment you wouldn’t rather be anywhere else or with anyone else than Bokuto Koutaoru, the six foot puppy that wanted to take you to his house through the long route so you could catch sight of all the wonderful sights his town had to offer. It was bitter cold outside, but the warmth inside of your chest, slowly spreading to your limbs, was enough to keep you running.

“Are you ready to keep going, princess?” he mumbled into your forehead, absentmindedly doodling on your back with his mitten-covered fingertips.

“Yeah, I’m all warmed up now!” You smiled into his chest, burying your nose into his vest and planting a kiss there as a silent thank you.

“Great, because tag,” he booped you on the forehead with his index finger and stepped back,” you’re it! Last one home owes a cherry soda!” He laughed, brilliant like the sun stretching its fingers through the clouds. The corners of his eyes crinkle and he wrinkled his nose, clearly pleased with himself.

“Oh, it’s on!” You chased after him, having committed the route to memory from walks home so many times before. You ran at a quick pace, but your legs were so much shorter and his training was so much more intense that you could barely stay at fifteen feet behind him. Damn him and his stupid volleyball captain gig!

He slowed down, if just for a moment, to let you catch up to him. He stretched his hand out to you, beckoning for you to hold it. “Come on, let’s get there quicker!” Once you laced your fingers into his own, he yanked you forwards. In no time, you made it to his doorstep. He fished for his keys in his coat pocket and unlocked the door with his left hand, tugging you into the warmth as soon as the door flew open. A gust of hot air flew out of the house, peppering your face in kisses and very welcomed heat. Kotarou stepped inside, and you followed suit behind him, the two of you placing your bookbags on the floor. You began to kick your uniform shoes off when he sneaked up behind you, wrapped his hands together at your belly and pulled you up into the air. “H-hey!” He laughed at your surprise and pulled your back into his chest, waddling with you towards his room.

“Give me a sec, I’ve just gotta get the door-” he placed you down on the flooring while he fiddled with the handle and the door slid open at the kick of his foot. He ushered you inside. “Come, sit on the bed! Get comfortable and change out of the uniform, you’re probably freezing right?” Concern laced his voice as he walked over to where you sat and he cocked his head to the side. “I think I’ll get into something more comfortable, thank you baby!” You reached over to grab his hand and gave it a kiss behind his knuckles, and you could swear you saw him shiver from the ghosting of your lips.

“You’re welcome! I’ll be back in a bit, I’m just gonna get some clothes from the dryer and bring us some snacks. I went out with ‘Kaashi the other day and we picked out some things for you!” Before he walked out of his room, he turned back to wink and blow you a kiss. You giggled at him. God, you’d be damned if he wasn’t the cutest thing to walk this earth. Stretching your arms above your head and wiggling out of the cold, you looked around his room to try and figure out where exactly he had his pajamas. You took a shot at his dresser, and it took a bit of digging but you found the perfect outfit: an oversized grey shirt with old sweatpants would do just fine to warm you up. You slipped out of your blazer and wiggled the skirt off while admiring the decorations in his room; he had some volleyball posters, some framed pictures of him with his sisters, and atop his dresser you saw some papers that made your heart flutter; he had your first movie ticket, Weathering With You, framed and the post-its you’d slipped into his locker decorating the outside of the frame. To the left, he also had a printed out picture he took of the two of you on his phone while you shared a chocolate ice cream cone (with extra sprinkles, of course).

You’d been to Koutarou’s house before, but you hadn’t gotten the chance to walk around his room; since his parents were out working, you’d come after school (on the rare days he didn’t have practice) and cook with him. One of your favorite memories of trying to cook with him was when you tried teaching him how to finely dice scallions; the poor boy couldn’t cut thinly if his life depended on it, and whenever he saw the knife get close to his thumb he would flinch.

You wiggled into his shirt and plopped onto his bed. He had a plush vabo-chan and a horned owl plushie resting in between his pillows. You kicked his throw blanket up so it could cover your legs and shut your eyes for a bit, nothing on your mind except for your angel’s smile and his kisses peppering your forehead. You could feel yourself slipping into a comfortable vibe and it was so nice to be able to rest your body after running in the snow for such a long while. At a knock on the wall, your eyes fluttered open and your gaze traced your boyfriend’s form, hair damp (but drying) against his forehead, long-sleeve shirt tight against his chest, eyes blown wide and smiling, and packs of sour gummies and dark chocolate in his hands. He bumped his body against the light switch to turn the lights in the room off, allowing only the soft glow reflected from white snow to enter from his window.

He ran over to the bed and threw the candies at its foot as he wrapped you in a bear hug. “You look wonderful in my clothes, baby!” He chirped, voice dripping with adoration, as he admired you in his clothes. He was so warm and soft against you, and you wrapped your hands together at the base of his neck and pecked his lips. They tasted like hot chocolate and chapstick and felt surprisingly soft for the cold weather. Even if his lips were chapped, you still wouldn’t have wanted to kiss anyone else’s. You pulled away from the kiss to gaze into his eyes, color reminiscent of sunflowers and sunshine, and your heart fluttered in your chest as his gaze lidded and his eyes smiled.

“What do you want to watch, princess? After all, movie night was your idea!”

You thought for a second, “Hmm, I saw that there was a cool documentary on netflix about international chefs! We could learn a thing or two from it so we can cook the best meal ever, right?”

He threw his head back in laughter and scooched closer to you on the bed, wiggling his feet beneath the blanket and pulling it up so it could cover the two of you. He turned the TV on, remote in hand, and clicked through the buttons until he saw the Netflix app. Flicking over to the Documentaries, he paused when he saw some about food. “Is it the Street Food one?”

“Yeah, baby. We can watch a couple of episodes, the order doesn’t really matter anyways.”

“Cool! I want to watch the one about Argentina! I’ve heard they have amazing steak down there.” For some reason, you hadn’t expected his favorite food to be steak and instead for it to be something more like pure sugar. It had nothing to do with his energy level…

In spite of the absolute fact that he was always riled up and lively, in this moment with his head rested on your right shoulder, he looked at peace. His eyes were glued to the screen (or so you thought, because his gaze was really fixed on your arm as he tried to count all of the freckles there), his breathing was even, slow, and his fingers were gently grazing against the side of your left arm. He really did look like an angel, a piece of expired heaven that fell into your lap and promised to be forever yours. You smiled down at him in a lazy fashion and bent your neck to give him a kiss on his scalp. It smelled crisp and clean, and your belly fluttered when he looked up at you from quirked eyebrows. His hair looked amazing when it was down and, if anything, you almost preferred it to the spiky owl look.

He shifted his weight so he could instead lay his head on your lap. You laced your fingers into his two-toned hair and lightly scratched his tresses. He had been gifted with many things, and among them was a thick head of hair; his locks were silky and plentiful; every meander of your fingers led to more strands resting between them. He seemed to lean into your touch and sighed contentedly when you scratched at a spot at his head that was left of center. He really seemed to like when you would twirl his locks on your fingers, and it made you wonder…

“Kou?”

“Hmm?”

“Could I braid your hair?”

He let out a hearty laugh and turned his head to look up at you. “I’d love nothing more, (name)-kun. Go ahead.”

You sighed, running both hands through his scalp and feeling the silk slide in between your knuckles was so unexpected but so so welcome. He leaned into the touch and tilted his head forward to let you play with more of his hair.

“(name)-kun, it tickles!” He laughed at the foreign sensation and his eyes crinkled shut. He was the sun.

Scratching his head with your fingerpads, you ran the fingers of your right hand up his arm to let him know that he was safe and that the new sensation was just that, something he should begin to get used to. He leaned into your touch, trusting, peaceful, calm. You separated three locks in between your knuckles and began to twist the center and right pieces together. Then, you twisted the right and left ones together, then the left and center. It was difficult because of his shaggy layered haircut, but you could tell from his staggered breathing and the nuzzling of his nose into your thighs that he was absolutely loving this. The first braid looked so pretty because of the contrast between his black roots and silvery locks, and you took a scrunchie from your wrist to tie it in place. Granted, it took five twists and the braid looked SUPER clunky, but you felt like that gave it so much charm. You tugged on the hair behind his right ear and began to weave it together like Arachne weaving her master tapestries, and braid begot yet another until the right side of his head was all tied up in a knot that you would (hopefully) be able to detangle. Hair tucked behind his ear, you noticed that he had a dusting of freckles on the pinna that trailed down to the nape of his neck. The black dusting of freckles against pale skin looked like stardust. He was beautiful.

His breathing steadied, and it seemed like he had fallen asleep at the behest of your touch. A smile was painted onto his face, his nostrils flared and his lips half-parted as if he were having a pleasant dream. This was too much, it was too cute. You shifted around for your phone and took a picture of him in your lap, face glowing from the chatter and brightness of an argentine street restaurant. He looked perfect. You sent his phone the picture and saw it buzz on the bed, screen illuminated with a picture of him giving you a kiss on the forehead. You began to smile, and a look out the window proved that the snowfall had gotten heavier. Your own exhaustion from the day began to settle in and take you prisoner. In between the soft whirr of the heating, Kotarou’s steady breathing, the soft background noise of steak sizzling and Spanish chatter, and the delicate dance of the snowflakes outside, you began to slip into a peaceful slumber. This would be the first of many naps with Bokuto to come.

#haikyuu!!#bokuto koutaro #fukurodani #bokuto x reader #bokuto x reader fluff #fluff #haikyuu! fluff #my writing #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu bokuto #haikyuu #haikyuu imagines #bokuto koutaru x reader #katherinewritessometimes

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currywaifu · 5 years ago

Text

𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: the sims 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩: settsu banri/reader 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: sfw 𝐰𝐜: 2.1k words

𝐚𝐧: banri and reader? using the Sims as an excuse to flirt? more likely than you think. been playing Sims 4, and I got a surge of inspiration at like 1 am. also, friends to lovers is one of my faves, goes hand in hand w/ many tropes (fake dating cough cough)

A laptop with no mouse, you’re such a pro-gamer.” Banri teases you, lifting the blankets slightly to let you settle in beside him. Fixing your position on the bed, you let out a laugh as he yelped from the skin contact.

“Your feet are fucking cold!”

You stick your tongue out at him, before turning on your laptop. “Then don’t make fun of my set-up, e-boy! You’re the one who wanted to game in bed.”

“I was expecting gacha-“

“I have event burnout,” you whine in protest, “I need a break from my eternal suffering, so we’re playing the Sims 4.”

Shuffling closer to you, his thighs now beside yours, he watches you load up an unfinished sim from your gallery. He snickers as he looks at the avatar closely.

“Oh, so we’re making each other then?” Banri asks, noting the various clothes that looked incredibly similar to stuff he actually owns. Clearly, you already got a head start. “My face looks kind of fucked though.”

Giggling, you turn to face him. “Obviously it’s hard to do your gorgeous, one of a kind face justice, have pity on my average sim-making skills.” You joked, observing Banri’s expression for a comeback. Whatever he throws at you, you’ll be prepared to throw back.

“Then I’ll let you look at my face as a reference, for as long as you want,” he replies, the quirk of his lips letting you know he had more to say. “Just like how you’re looking at me right now,” he continues, a little softer this time.

Caught off-guard, you force yourself to turn back to the bright blue screen as Banri’s sim lets out various sounds of Simlish non-sense. Did joining theatre make him even more smooth or something?

And here you thought you could avoid the feelings continuously sprouting in your chest. You supposed inviting the object of your affections over to your place didn’t help your case; with your friend spending more and more time as an actor, you secretly longed for and cherished the time you spent together.

Still, with how he grew and bloomed as a person it was hard not to catch feelings.

With a boyish grin set on his face, he found himself revelling in your cute embarrassment. “Made ya speechless?”

“Something like that,” you said half-heartedly.

You always found him attractive, bowl-cut, dumb animal print and all. Of course, as if you would ever tell him seriously lest his ego gets bigger. Yet when you were looking at a picture of him for reference, your thoughts weren’t ‘yeah my friend is attractive, what a good reference for this sim’.

Instead, it was more along the lines of, ‘I’d like to punch his mouth, with my mouth.’

Slightly concerned by your lacklustre response, Banri looks at your face for a sign of discomfort or anger. Lips slightly pouted, eyebrows somewhat furrowed, and eyes completely focused on the screen.

Wait, what were you doing?

“Yo what are you doing to my face! Stop stretching it out!” You were smiling again, so he wasn’t all that bothered by your petty retaliation really, plus it was nice to know he hadn’t said anything that was out of line with you.

“Fine, fine. I wanna get Banny’s face right.” You say.

Banri opens his mouth, then closes it, then lets out a huff of laughter. “You have a nickname for the sim now?” He was about to say more until one of your hands takes hold of his face.

Settsu Banri was not easily flustered, nor did his face turn red from small, insignificant touches. The tingling feeling rendered within him as your fingers brush against his skin, however, was present no matter how much he denied it.

This weird silence wasn’t really his thing, but if he spoke up now or teased you back, there was a chance you would stop. Why didn’t he want you to stop?

Your index finger traces his jawline, the pad briefly meeting his cheek before sliding upwards to the bridge of his nose. He didn’t close his eyes, but with your intense stare piercing through him, his gaze shifts towards somewhere, anywhere else.

The wall was a nice place to set his eyes on. Not so plain that his thoughts would wander but not so cluttered that he wouldn’t know where to start. There was a time when your room was littered with posters from different shows, games, bands- he could remember it pretty well, having made fun of you for it.

At the present a choice few posters still there, but now there was also the addition of photos of you and other people on the wall. Some were polaroids, others were pictures you printed out yourself and taped on.

From afar, he spots several photos with him in it- when you went thrift shopping together, the cultural festivals you dragged him to and the music festivals he visited with you. A part of him is pleased, smug even, to know that he’s important enough to you have his pictures up there.

He hadn’t really thought about it before, but when did the two of you get so close to hang out all the time? You had always been chill with him even when he was a delinquent, but after joining Mankai the two of you had grown closer.

“Oi, Banri. Look at this!”

Huh, when did you stop touching his face?

When Banri looked at the screen appraisingly, his sim version- Banny, you called him, looked a lot more like him. You even dressed him in clothes he would’ve chosen for himself.

“Like the animal print? Downloaded a bunch for you.”

He whistled, looking at the different outfits you chose. “You did pretty good, I guess. Could probably do better though.”

You scoff, looking a little doubtful. Sure, Banri excelled in many things, but making a good sim look-a-like isn’t a common talent, especially without any practice.

“Have you even played the Sims 4 before?”

Shrugging, Banri pulled the device onto his lap from yours. “2 and 3. Never touched 4, should be easy enough.”

He plays around with the options for a bit. After entering your name and gender, he looks through the possible aspirations and traits he could give your sim, which was easy enough. He briefly wondered if you would protest being given a mismatched trait, but when he hovers the cursor over one you don’t react at all.

Calling out your name, he eyes you from his peripheral. This wasn’t the first time you spaced out today. One arm went in front of you as he waved his hand to catch your attention.

“You can… also,” you paused, chewing on your lip for a few seconds, “for reference. If you wanted.”

He whips his head to face you completely, looking a little shell-shocked.

‘If I wanted?’

He paused, figuring out how to phrase his response. Honestly, he probably didn’t need to- he already has your face mapped out and memorised in his brain at this point, but there was no way he was admitting that.

Besides, if you offered it wouldn’t be wrong wanting to accept.

“Not that I need it, but I’m just making sure, ya hear?” His voice was the same as always, not a sign of wavering to hint at his anticipation or nervousness. “Bet you just want my hands all over ya or something.” He said, doing his best to manage a playful tone but not quite making the cut.

If someone else had said it you would have felt called out, or at worst offended, but you knew he was merely slipping into the language he most felt comfortable using.

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Your voice came out a little shaky at the start, but thankfully he doesn’t out you for it. “Just don’t be weird about it.” There was no doubt in your mind that your cheeks were hotter than the sun, but you were curious about how it felt.

“No pressure,” Banri said, hoping his face is still the picture of nonchalance despite the erratic thumping of his heart in his chest defying it. “You can back out anytime.”

You don’t answer, steadily avoiding his gaze by observing the hand hovering near your face. It twitched.

The blanket shifts as Banri sits in a way where he could look at you properly, putting the laptop aside.

As soon as you felt his fingers come in contact with your face you immediately shut your eyes, unable to bear the embarrassment. A multitude of questions ran through your head, unable to concentrate on a single one.

Why did you offer? Why did he accept? You did the same, so why was it such a big deal if he touched your face? Why did you touch his face in the first place? Why were you so touch-starved? Why did he it feel so nice?

You hoped closing your eyes hid the self-consciousness and pleasure you felt at this moment, enjoying his knuckles glide against your skin.

Banri narrows his eyes, stomach twisting at how overwhelmingly adorable you looked and how soft you were. Hell, you were turning him all soft and sappy and disgusting but that was the least of his worries right now. At least your eyes were closed, he doesn’t have to put on a facade— that this was just a friendly thing, because if he was reading the signs right you were both venturing somewhere beyond that.

His thumbs press against your cheekbones, so featherlight the sensation might as well be from a ghost. You stay still, unable— or perhaps unwilling— to move, and as much as you try to hold it in your breaths grow more and more uneven the longer Banri’s hand lingers on your skin.

You wonder if this is as intimate for him as it was for you.

Your skin is warm and soft, he’s a little conscious if the callousness of his fingertips feels uncomfortable to you.

Even with the slight roughness, his fingers felt infinitely tender as they swept through your cheeks.

Following your cheekbone, he moves to your jaw, to your chin, and with his fingers up again to his forehead, learning the planes of your face. He’s had you memorised visually, but it wouldn’t hurt to familiarise himself with the feeling of you. Banri stretches out his fingers before fully cupping your face with his palms, swallowing when you lean your head into one of them.

“Do you know,” Banri hesitates, “what you’re doing to me?”

His courage wanes, he wants to say more but it’s so difficult sorting out the emotions overflowing within. His head hurts a bit from figuring out what to focus on, the anxiety and panic or the joy and euphoria. The only constant right now was you.

One hand falls to your arm, slowly sliding up and down while leaving goosebumps in its wake. The other continues to rest on the side of your face, thumb inching closer and closer. As the pad brushes against the corner of your lip, your eyes open wide and gaze directly at the familiar pools of blue.

The first thought that flies through your mind is that he’s close enough now to kiss you. Everything about him, the air around them, feels warm and humming with an energy you’ve never felt from anyone before— other than Banri.

“This isn’t easy for me,” Banri lets out a breath, both of you doing your best to not disturb the feeling in the room. His hair falling loose but his eyes never leave yours for a second. “I’ve never… Look, I like being around you. You matter to me. A lot.”

You can’t help the smile that makes its way on your face, the utter adoration, and fondness and love you had for him escaping all at once. With what little space you had between, you pressed your forehead against his.

“You matter to me too. A lot.” You muttered, repeating his confession, closing your eyes again before ever so gently pushing your lips to his.

You’ve imagined how it would be like to kiss Banri before, rough and a little harsh, but as you felt his hand through the baby hairs at the bottom of your head you were more than content at his gentle kissing.

Banri continues kissing you slowly, unsure if the sun had already set, but all that mattered was this moment.

want to order again?

#a3!#a3! act! addict! actors!#a3! banri #settsu banri #banri settsu #cafe: dessert menu #a3 actor training game #a3! game #a3 imagines #a3! actor training game #act! addict! actors!#banri x reader #reader insert

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hartigays · 5 years ago

Note

How about #9 as a prompt, please? Maybe something post Starcourt??

9. “I missed you so much.”

every second leading up to steve knocking on the apartment door that looms before him was, initially, filled with excitement. but now that steve is finally here, soon to be face-to-face with the person who’s only lived in his dreams for the past year and a half, he hesitates.

it’s just nerves, but it feels like it’s eating away at steve’s core. leaving him exposed and raw, like a nerve.

what if things are different? what if nothing feels the same? what if steve’s dreams are better than reality? there are too many questions in need of answers. but steve doesn’t have the luxury of taking another few months to figure them out.

so he knocks.

steve takes a deep breath, steeling himself. willing his hands to stop shaking and his heart to stop feeling like it’s beating in his throat. it takes a moment, but finally he hears the sound of distant footsteps, growing closer and closer until the door swings open.

it isn’t billy. steve doesn’t know whether he should feel relieved, or concerned.

“you must be steve,” the woman in the doorway says, giving steve a dazzling smile.

it’s then that steve is confronted with recognition. she has the same smile as billy, the same bright blue eyes and sharp jawline.

she has to be billy’s mother, sandy. the person steve knows only through stories and shared memories. the person who had to leave billy behind years ago, when neil fought dirty for custody and painted her as some sort of evil criminal, stripping her of her parental rights.

billy is 18 now. billy can live with whoever the fuck he wants. billy is here, now, in california. and this is billy’s mother, the person he never should’ve been taken from, giving steve a smile bright enough to rival the sun.

steve isn’t expecting the swell of emotion that bubbles up inside of him. it has him surging forward, flinging his arms around the woman that he’d met mere seconds ago.

it’s a thank you, of sorts. a thank you for coming back, for welcoming billy back into her home, for giving billy a safe place to rest his head while he heals and recovers after the trauma and near-death of starcourt.

for letting billy love whoever he wants, and for letting steve stay here in her home, just for a little while, to love him right back.

“sorry,” steve says when he pulls away, clearing his throat. he wipes his eyes on the back of his hand, stepping back. “didn’t mean to bombard you like that.”

“come in, sweetheart. let’s get you something to drink,” is all sandy says, stepping aside to let steve in. “billy’s just hopped in the shower, he won’t be long.”

steve doesn’t say it, but he’s grateful for the extra time to collect himself. he’d turned into a blubbering mess after speaking little more than two words to billy’s mother - he doesn’t need to fall apart the minute billy walks through the door.

billy has had enough to deal with. it’s the least steve can do to not turn into a gigantic crybaby today.

“was the flight okay?” sandy asks from where she’s rummaging around in the fridge. she returns with a bottle of water a moment later, and steve accepts it gratefully.

“oh, yeah. it was fine,” steve tells her, his leg jiggling nervously. he’s seated at one of the barstools at the kitchen counter, his elbows resting on the cool marble. “getting a cab here from the airport was the hardest part.”

sandy chuckles, nodding. “i imagine so. sounds like your flight came in at one of the busiest times of the day.”

steve just smiles. he picks at the label on his water bottle, trying to come up with something to say. nothing seems to fit, but in the end he goes with, “i, uh. i want to thank you for letting me stay here for a bit. with billy, and - um. and stuff. i know that it’s not - it’s not usual. but i appreciate it a lot.”

“everything and nothing is usual. it’s just a matter of perspective, or circumstance,” sandy says. she huffs out a soft laugh when steve just blinks. “billy can love whoever he wants. it doesn’t bother me one bit - i just want my son to be happy. i think you and i are alike in that respect.”

“has he been?” steve asks, relief flooding through him, warm and comforting. “happy, i mean?”

“he’s been well. healing. he misses you, though. i think he mentions it about five times a day,” sandy says, a small smile playing on her lips. “writing to you has helped him take some important steps in his recovery.”

“i’ve kept them all, the letters. didn’t know if i’d ever get to come out here,” steve explains, his voice soft. “it was nice to have that little piece of him while he was gone.”

“not gone, just a little out of reach.”

steve whirls around at the sound of billy’s voice, accidentally knocking his water bottle onto the floor in the process. it spills all over the counter and the hardwood, and steve curses.

“shit- i mean, sorry, that wasn’t- i didn’t mean to do that,” steve says, rushing to find something to soak up the water with.

sandy just shakes her head, resting a hand on his shoulder. “go on, i’ll take care of this. it’s just water, honey, don’t worry about it.”

billy is standing in the entrance to the hallway, leaning against the wall with a fond smile on his face. steve gives sandy a grateful look, before moving around the counter to put himself directly in front of billy.

it isn’t until they’re in billy’s room, with the door cracked at sandy’s request, that steve pounces. he has billy in his arms in a split-second, burying his face in billy’s hair and breathing in deep.

“i missed you so much,” steve mumbles, his voice muffled and strands of billy’s hair getting stuck to his tongue.

“missed you too, princess.”

billy smells like the beach. like coconut shampoo and sunscreen and saltwater, even after his shower. he’s squeezing steve tightly, and steve knows it means that billy has missed him just as much.

they stand there for a long time, holding each other. it doesn’t feel right to speak, so neither of them do. they just cling to each other like their each other’s lifelines, their hearts beating in sync.

“do you want to sit down?” billy asks after a while, rubbing soothing circles onto steve’s back.

“no, i want- ” steve stops short, pulling back just enough to look into billy’s eyes.

then, he’s kissing billy with enough force to make them both sway a little. billy nearly topples over and steve eases up, but their lips never separate. steve kisses billy desperately, chasing the taste of weed and nicotine and toothpaste on his tongue. billy kisses him back just as desperately, one hand grabbing a fistful of steve’s hair, the other holding steve steady by the small of his back.

“you know, we could’ve done that sitting down,” billy says when they break apart, panting just as hard as steve. but he’s grinning from ear to ear, and steve is suddenly struck by just how much he looks like his mom.

“didn’t want to wait,” steve murmurs, leaning in to press another kiss to billy’s lips, this one quick, but tender.

then steve pulls away, taking a moment to look around the room. he’d been in billy’s room in hawkins once before when neil was out of town, but it’d felt like it belonged to someone else. there were posters of women in bikinis everywhere, playboys stacked on almost every surface, beer cans crushed and tossed around the room, almost like they were staged that way.

here, steve feels like he’s resting comfortably in billy’s mind. there are still posters hung up, but they’re of the movies steve knows are billy’s favorites. billy’s got two big bookshelves, filled top to bottom with worn books that have steve’s lips twitching into a soft smile when he spots them.

there’s also a hell of a lot of art all over the place, hanging on his walls and even tacked up on his ceiling. all pieces steve knows billy painted or drew himself, because whenever he and billy were alone, billy’s nose would always be buried in some sketchbook or another. he’s always struck by billy’s talent, rendered speechless at the depth to it all.

steve spots a small drawing resting on billy’s nightstand, propped up against his lamp. it’s a simple piece done in black ink, but steve can’t see what it’s of until he steps closer. his breath catches in his throat when he sees that it’s a sketch of him, perched on the hood of the beemer, smiling with a cigarette in hand.

“you drew me?” steve asks, picking up the drawing and cradling it delicately in his hands.

“i draw you a lot,” billy says, shrugging. he comes up behind steve and wraps his arms around his middle, hooking his chin over steve’s shoulder. “i can show you the rest later, but first you have to let me draw you again. it’s been a while.”

billy doesn’t let steve go, but he does maneuver around him to open the drawer of his nightstand, pulling out a faded polaroid. it’s the photo billy’s drawing is based on, and the memory of the night it was taken hits steve like a train.

they’d been out at the quarry, drinking beer and smoking, shooting the shit. the sun was starting to set, and steve knew they were days away from graduating and everything was about change. he remembers his heart feeling so heavy he thought it might fall right out of him. but billy had been all smiles, staring at steve as he leaned up against the beemer, the sun setting behind him.

billy had said something stupid to make steve laugh, and the moment steve smiled billy had taken the shot. the memory has steve smiling down at the polaroid, his smile a little watery.

“i can’t believe you kept this,” steve says, twisting a little in billy’s hold to try and look at him. “it feels like this was so long ago.”

“i carry it around everywhere,” billy tells him, pressing a gentle kiss to steve’s shoulder. “carry these in my wallet, too.”

billy digs in his pocket and pulls out his wallet, producing a torn photo strip. it’s from the time they’d taken pictures in the photobooth at starcourt, before all the pain and devastation that came soon after. the booth had only printed one set, so billy took half, and steve took the other.

“i ever tell you that you’re kind of a softie?” steve jokes.

billy huffs a soft laugh, unwinding himself from around steve so he can take his hand and pull him towards the bed. he flops backwards onto it, and pats the spot next to him. steve curls up next to him immediately, resting his head on billy’s chest.

steve hears the click of billy’s lighter, and smells the smoke soon after. the window behind them is cracked, and steve can only hear the sound of the ocean crashing against the shore, seagulls, and billy’s soft breathing. he passes steve the cigarette a moment later and steve accepts it gratefully, taking a long drag.

“how long can you stay?” billy asks after several beats of silence, taking the cigarette from steve’s outstretched hand.

“‘bout a week. that’s all they’d let me take off,” steve sighs. “wish i could stay forever.”

“wish you could too,” billy says, his voice almost inaudible.

steve tilts his head up, pressing a kiss to the underside of billy’s jaw. “one day. i promise. i’ll be here to stay.”

billy just combs his fingers through steve’s hair, humming softly. they end up falling asleep like that once the cigarette is finished, dozing off to the sounds of the ocean and the city, the evening breeze ruffling their hair. but not before steve looks up at billy one last time, struck dumb by how much he loves him.

and for the first time in a long time, everything just feels right.

#thanks for the request nonnie! i love me some post-starcourt feels 💜💜💜#harringrove #my fics #ask #anon

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alkhale · 5 years ago

Text

Shoot the Ball (Ushijima x Reader) Ko-Fi request

Guuuurl can I please get like a bunch of accidental run in encounters with ushiwaka plssss I feel like he doesn’t get much love

Here’s the problem with a school like Shiratorizawa.

It’s a big school.

Fucking huge.

Massive campus yet elite, trimmed student body with a very personal class average of students to teachers. Private tutors are offered in every nook and cranny of the libraries, and the dorms are luscious and extravagant.

Unknown to many of your classmates but most of your team members are aware, you got into Shiratorizawa on a favor from your childhood kyudo coach and a hefty scholarship you had to claw your way towards over a bunch of other studious bookworms.

You’re the leading star on Shiratorizawa’s kyudo club, the ochi from your tachi group, the last person to shoot, the person who guides the rest of the team. You also hold the position of captain in your third year at Shiratorizawa, and kyudo is all you have ever known and love.

But, but, but, but, at a school like Shiratorizawa where a classic, high performance sport like kyudo, a traditional, beautiful sport like kyudo should be fairly popular, your club and your teammates’ performances are always outshone by more high-energy, easily watchable sports.

Shiratorizawa’s sports expect nothing but the highest level of triumphs from all their divisions. From basketball to dressage on horse, each club is required to perform admirably. If you perform well, the more funding you got for your club, the more prestige, and all good things.

Shiratorizawa’s kyudo club is actually high on the list, last year your team placed first at the Inter High and made it to the top four in nationals. Despite all this, despite the fact that you even scored consecutive kaichus, hitting all your marks and not missing a single arrow, making waves in the kyudo community and getting higher renown for your team, your headmaster still refused to acknowledge your club.

You’d come to him, white headband tied around your head, posters ready, armed and prepared to fight tooth and nail for an increase in funds and a spot at advertisements because if your fellow student body just knew about the sport, more people would join, more people would watch, and your club wouldn’t be in danger of closing down after you graduate or declining—

“It’s just not popular!” your headmaster clapped you over the shoulders himself, beaming. “Keep working hard though! Good job last year!”

Because popular and television-worthy, massive poster worthy, constant overhead announcements in the morning and the afternoon about matches, constant offered opportunities for extra credit, belong to certain sports at Shiratorizawa.

Shiratorizawa’s Boys’ Volleyball team.

Every morning you came to school and stared in disgust, not out of a personal vendetta for the guy, but for his whole damn team for taking the spotlight for the past three years you’d been here at Shiratorizawa, at the giant, blown up poster lining your school’s walls, posted in any classroom you two might have together. He flooded the school’s daily bulletin, online articles, even the god damn konbini near your house when your returned home for the holidays.

Ushijima Wakatoshi.

Volleyball star, playing for Japan’s national youth team—which was something you did drool over because nationals was your goal for kyudo—and even top of all his classes.

You kinda hated this guy and you didn’t even know him.

But it was no matter because this year you planned to take your team all the way to the top. Everyone at this damn rich school was going to known kyudo and love it, damn it. They were going to sing your praises all the way down the halls, line up outside the shooting range to get a peek at your beautiful team and fall in love with the bow.

All the way to the same stage this rich, boastful school’s especial crowning achievment and pride, enough to get them their own stupid bus, enough to get them their own damn gym, enough to get them their own damn cheer squad and—

Your first real, personal meeting with Ushijima Wakatoshi goes something like this:

I don’t need more protein, I need better results. You frowned, staring at the picture of the protein drink you’d been texted that was apparently quite popular these days, according to your fellow teammate. She constantly sang its praises, promising nothing but the best and urging you to start getting into it.

“Your practice schedule is too rigid!” she lectured, shaking her hands at you as you notched another arrow and took aim. “You’re going to shoot arrows till you’re an old maid! No one will marry you at this rate!”

“Kyudo will marry me,” you said, completely serious. “I’m marrying the best kyudo archer of this era and no one else.”

“He’s over fifty!”

“I like them older anyways.”

While normally you would have ignored your vice captain in favor of your own home remedies, your joints were acting up lately, specifically your left wrist and that was never a good sign. You had a feeling the tautness to the new string you were trying to break in wasn’t doing you any favors either. You needed to keep an eye on it in case it got worse.

I can’t bring this team down.

The school’s mini-grocery was fairly empty at this hour. Most students were back at the dorms and anyone still lingering around should’ve just finished with their own club practices.

The rows were designed so items could be taken from either side, not just one. You browsed the aisle, tempted by the choco-snacks but willing yourself to put another batch of fruits in instead. Have to treat my health like second nature. Results don’t come from potato chips.

“Finally,” your eyes zeroed in on the brightly colored bottle. A hefty size, meant to be poured out in cups and drunk daily. You had no idea how it would taste, but by your vice captain’s face, it couldn’t be too great.

You crouched down, reaching for the last bottle on the lowest row.

A massive hand engulfed yours at the top of the bottle’s cap, swallowing your hand whole.

“Holy shit!” you shrieked, ripping your hand away—only to find yourself unable to do so with the massive hand still laid down over yours. You hit the floor on your ass, gaping in horror at the monstrous palm and the calloused fingers and fearing this was finally the moment you were dragged into some abyss by an unknown creature and killed—

Eyes like olives, flecked with gold.

You stared, caught, unable to move for a second. You’d always thought his eyes were brown. You never noticed the weird lining to them that gave them a sharper look, like an eagle or—

“My bad,” Ushijima. Ushijima Wakatoshi said, his voice a deep, resounding rumble in his chest like a goddamn bear.

He crouched there, sitting back on his heels, directly across the aisle from you, peering through the metal shelf like some kind of monster trying to fit through a crack. His massive hand and massive arm barely had to leave his body to reach the same bottle of protein you’d both been shooting for.

Ushijima Wakatoshi.

All at once, the flood of posters assaulted your brain. The blaring announcements, the squealing girls, the headmaster, the volleyball buses with his face printed on the side, the magazines, the articles and—

You blinked, once, twice.

His lips parted.

You ripped your hand out from under his with a hefty amount of force. The action sent you flat on your back and you were sure he’d gotten a front row view of under your skirt but you really didn’t give a crap.

“Have it!” you barked out, awkwardly scrambling to your feet. You grabbed your basket and Ushijima blinked once at you, slowly, face monotonous. “You need it more anyway, jerk!”

You huffed, shoulders puffing up. Ushijima was silent on the other side of the aisle, wordlessly taking the bottle of protein with him as he stood.

You gaped.

HE’S A LIVING TREE.

Your neck actually craned a bit, straining to look up at him and he stared down at you from the top of the aisle.

His arm promptly stuck itself through the gap in the shelf, offering the drink to you.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, voice devoid of emotion. “You should take it.”

For some reason that irked you.

You forcefully—struggling with great difficulty—shoved the drink back to his side through the shelves. Ushijima blinked once, slow down at you and you bared your teeth at him before hoisting your basket up into your arm and storming to the check out where you flew through your wallet, aggressively paying the lady at the counter, nearly running into a smirking redhead at the doorway and rushing the rest of the way to your dorm where people kept asking why you looked so damn mad.

“Who was that?” Tendou chirped, sidling up to Ushijima. “A fan?”

Ushijima stared out the still swinging door and calmly examined the bottle of protein in his hand.

“No,” he said.

“...you gonna continue with the sentence or what?” Tendou prodded.

I hate this time of the year. You frowned, burrowing deeper into your muffler as you fought the early morning chill. Several other students were trudging beside you, sleep in their eyes as you all headed to the regular meeting for club time slots. You always showed up as early as possible to get the best dibs for your club.

You absently kicked a pebble in your way, wondering how you should organize practice this week. You wanted to brush up on your form again and—

Why was everyone looking at you like that?

“Good morning.”

It took you a moment to realize a massive shadow had engulfed your own. You stared at your feet for a moment, rubbing your eyes before slowly turning.

Ushijima Wakatoshi bore down on you, face cast in dark shadows from the early morning darkness, puffs of steam clouding by his mouth where he breathed.

He looked like a monster.

You felt your hackles raise, nearly jumping out of your sneakers as you started to backpedal away from him, “Hah?”

“Good morning,” Ushijima said, looking completely unfazed by the crack of dawn and cold.

You continued to hurry backwards toward the gym while barking back at him as Ushijima took calm steps forward—since you were both headed the same way—every three of your steps one of his own.

To anyone else, it looked as though a bear were advancing on a chihuahua.

“G-Good morning to you too!” you snapped. “Bye!”

“What?” Ushijima asked.

“I said bye you—”

“We’re still headed the same way.”

“Stop following me then!”

- - - - - - - -

You smirked, hefting the pile of posters into your arms. This was it, this was going to work for sure. No way anyone could ignore the please join flyers if you were pinning them up all around the school, and the team had worked hard to make it stand out and eye catching, appealing to all genders and interests.

Your wrist was starting to bother you a bit, so you shifted the papers to the other arm. I got careless trying to get the bow turn again. I need to slow it down and ice it tonight.

Who says we’re last on the funding list? You grinned, grabbing your tape. They can’t ignore us with a bunch of members—

“Good afternoon.”

You screeched, dropping your stack of flyers onto your foot. They scattered the hallway.

Ushijima calmly turned his gaze downwards, staring at the colorfully illustrated flyers now flooding both your feet.

Join the kyudo club!

“You,” you snapped, urging your heart to calm and shoving your tape back into your pocket. You hurried, grabbing the flyers and restacking them as he stood, towering above you. “What the heck do you want? Do you get some kind of kick out of scaring people or—”

In one smooth, swift motion, Ushijima had crouched down beside you. You stared, gaping in disbelief as his large hands—he has such big hands, I’ve never seen anyone with hands that big, this guy is all muscle and—moved across the floor, gathering up the papers in one fell swoop. His bangs shifted slightly over the slight furrow of his brows.

Ushijima looked at you, quiet, somber, unreadable as he carefully put your stack back together.

He looked weird in the school uniform. You were so used to seeing him in his volleyball one. He seemed like a different person. Oh, you’re the type that leaves the first button undone.

“I did not mean to scare you,” he said, slow, with that rumbling voice of his. It sent a timbre down your spine.

Ushijima remained silent, staring calmly at you, seemingly content with the silence.

“Y-Yeah, well,” you started. “My bad then.”

You quickly stood, lifting your stack. You stared down at Ushijima for once as he calmly looked up at you and promptly ran off without another word, unable to figure out the weird awkwardness that sat on your tongue whenever you dealt with him.

I mean, it’s not like I really… hate him right?

Why the hell am I running into him so much?

You just needed to shoot some arrows and you’d feel a lot better.

-----------

You shot too many arrows.

You frowned at your throbbing wrist, giving it a look of utter betrayal. The nurse had said to give her a few minutes for her to come back with some pain killers. You were only in the infirmary this time because the pain had gotten to a point where you’d actually dropped your bow in the middle of a draw.

Prelims are coming up. You glared harder at your wrist. You just needed to ice it and you’d feel better. I can’t let them down.

You were taking them straight to the top and then it’d be kyudo posters this school would see, not just stupid Ushijima’s face and—

“(L/n)-san.”

You screeched, nearly toppling off your stool. Your wrist smacked into the counter and you hissed in pain, tears pricking the corner of your eyes.

Ushijima stood in the doorway of the infirmary, staring at you with furrowed brows.

Why him, why now? You grunted in greeting, gingerly rubbing your throbbing wrist, turning away from him toward the window.

You heard the door close behind him, focusing all your attention on anything else to ignore the massive presence behind you.

“What happened?”

WHY IS HE TALKING TO ME.

“Oh, this and that,” you said simply, vaguely, struggling to find better words. You… you really didn’t hate this guy personally or anything, but it was personal at the same time? You didn’t know how you felt about him and it was making you confused.

You hated being confused.

Ignoring any and all other social cues, Ushijima took a seat on the stool beside you, back and posture impeccable. His hands calmly set on his knees. His volleyball uniform like second skin against his form, revealing nothing but miles of muscle and hardwork.

You stared at him in disbelief.

Ushijima faced forward, face unreadable.

….okay. You awkwardly glanced to the side, rubbing at your wrist. Way to make it even more awkward. Does this guy not socialize much or what?

“Uh,” no! Don’t talk to him! Just keep your mouth shut! “What happened to you?” you said awkwardly.

Ushijima’s face relaxed an inch. You blinked in surprise.

“My knee,” he said. “Coach made me go get it checked out.”

“...me too,” you said. He looked at you. You looked away. “Not my knee, I mean. My wrist. My vice captain will have my head if I didn’t. I told her I could just ice it.”

“You should be more careful,” Ushijima said.

You looked at him. He looked at you.

“I’m sorry?”

“You do not need to apologize.”

You stared.

Ushijima motioned to your wrist, not taking his eyes off your face, “Your fans would be disappointed if you were unable to perform.”

“I-I’m sorry?”

“You do not need to apologize,” Ushijima said again, shaking his head. You gaped at him. “I would be disappointed. I wish to see your kaichu again.”

Your brain short-circuited. You were left to dumbly look at Ushijima. He seemed to take pity on you and turned fully on his stool, several heads taller, looking down at you before he calmly said—

“I am a fan of your archery.”

The two of you sat there in silence.

Steam shot out of your ears as your face exploded into red. Ushijima watched in silence as you toppled over your stool and back onto the ground.

- i also stan one giant tree

#haikyuu reader insert #ushijima x reader #ushijima wakatoshi #ko fi requests #haikyuu

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sunnygang · 4 years ago

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analysing the sep 24 wigfrid animated short (don’t starve)

I am rewatching some Don’t Starve animations and catching up on some i hadn’t seen yet. I am watching the Wigfrid animation tonight for the first time (the sep 24 one). I am a few months late, whoops!

I will be putting this analysis under a cut, since I will be pairing a lot of screen caps from the short itself! Also this turned out WAY longer than I originally intended it to. There’s a tw for incest mention in one paragraph (about a stage play that is relevant, NOT about Wigfrid) and I put the warning surrounded in asterisks and bolded before the paragraph referenced!

The short opens with a shot from what is safe to assume is her front hallway. Wigfrid is an actress and she appears to live alone in a nice home.

The walls are of course covered in her various photographs and stage play memoriam. Over the mantle on the left the framed poster reads Die Walküre (The Valkyrie). Keep this in mind as this is Wigfrid’s best role. Also peep that nice chaise lounge she’s sitting on!

Some national culture, we get to see the newspaper she is reading. This paper is The Kronicle. The real life Chronicle newspaper, upon searching it, returned a good number of results. I am going to say that this particular article is the Ohio Chronicle (founded by the Lorain Printing and Publishing Co which was founded in 1829, the paper itself may or may not have been founded that same year), and I will get into why later.

The front page features the Tragedy in San Francisco. The tragedy of Maxwell and Charlie! The article header specifically reading “Tragedy in San Francisco! Many Still Missing After Devastating Earthquake!” This is around the same date, it has to be within a matter of days for this short to take place from the date of the Charlie and Maxwell disappearance in San Francisco. We don’t get to see Wigfrid reading this article, however. This is merely set there for the viewer’s sake. This is helping form our timeline of when these events all occurred. Many still missing. That means the search continues. This article could have been published a few days after the mentioned earthquake or a week even. Still, it gives us somewhat of a timeline to reference. The earthquake and the events of this Wigfrid short happened in relatively short time from one another.

This newspaper article header reads “Is It Curtains for This Prima Donna? Former Rising Star Seems Unable to Recapture The Magic of Her Precious Role”

Wigfrid isn’t shown reading the front article because she is focused on the news centered around herself. She’s called a prima donna here in this headline. Being called a Prima Donna can mean a number of things. It can mean a principle female singer in an opera or concert organization OR someone who is vain/undisciplined and finds it difficult to work as a team. She doesn’t have any quotes in DST that would indicate Wigfrid doesn’t work well with others. She mostly greets the other players warmly and hopes for good blessings from Yggdrasil, etc.

I think the journalists who wrote the article were looking to have this kind of double idea happening. The term Prima Donna comes directly from Italian for the types of female leads to the definitive aspect of the term. However around the same time (19th cent) it came to mean the second definition as well. Those writing the article likely wrote it with both aspects in mind. This gives Wigfrid her personal reason for wanting to ask Maxwell for help in some way. This is her drive. She is obviously a talented lead opera lady given the decorations and extravagant nature of her home. But this article says she is unable to recapture the magic of her previous role. The role in question looks to be very different from the Wigfrid Valkyrie we know. Her best role may be her Valkyrie role and maybe when she’s trying to branch into something else it isn’t working. And the critics and journalists think it isn’t good for her. She was a powerful Valkyrie, but not whatever this role happened to be.

We get to see her finishing reading the article (or maybe this short interrupts her just barely skimming it) and angrily crumple and toss the paper to the floor. She turns her nose up at it and dramatically walks to a bookshelf in the room and pulls out this record:

Die Walküre. This is the recorded orchestral arrangement for the stage play Die Walküre. In the bottom right of the record sleeve is the names of who I believe to be the composers for the recorded version of the orchestral arrangement. Vincenzo De Vera and Emmental Halle. Wigfrid’’s. Best. Role. The role with such “magic” that she has been since “unable to recapture.”

**incest mention in this next paragraph in the contexts of norse mythology and the real life stage play of The Valkyrie, not Wigfrid herself**

Interestingly enough, Die Walküre is a very real stage play. It is based on Norse Mythology about two twins who are separated in childhood and then eventually meet and fall in love (yikes!). This union angers the gods and they demand Siegmund die. Sieglinde and their unborn child are saved by the defiant actions of Wotan’s daughter, The Valkyrie. Valkyrie Brunnehilde faces the god’s retribution as a result of her actions.

More Valkyrie content hidden away in her shelves. She adored her role as The Valkyrie. Her house is, as we have seen, filled with memoriam from that stage play.

She plays the record and walks over to her wall and looks at her poster of herself as the Valkyrie. The newspaper clipping on the left reads “Audiences Left Spellbound by Soprano’s Powerful Performance.” Wigfrid is a GREAT performer and she is a soprano! She even has a little statue/sculpture of herself as The Valkyrie.

Here’s where I am going to go a little more into the Prima Donna bit. Wigfrid was the lead female for Die Walküre so she is a Prima Donna in that sense. however, she is also vain. She has surrounded herself with HERSELF. All over the walls in her home. Posters and pictures and photographs and SCULPTURES? You Prima Donna girl you, Wigfrid!

Her ceiling is even intricately decorated with scenes from Die Walküre.

And then we get here. We enter Wigfrid’s fantasy about performing as The Valkyrie who has to face a challenge. This challenge being a dragon that forms from this stack of newspaper pages. More entertainment pages that discuss Wigfrid’s stardom reaching an end.

Wigfrid’s real name is scratched out. So we know for certain that Wigfrid is NOT her real name. We can still call her real name whatever we please until we get more solid evidence surrounding her name. Wigfrid is probably Die Valküre’s name in the stage play that Wigfrid acted in. In The Constant it’s safe to assume that the character she takes on in the world happens to be this character, Wigfrid. At this point it raises some question as to whether or not Wigfrid is treating The Constant like a stage. Where she gets to really perform the role of The Valkyrie.

Back to the newspaper taking the form of a dragon, though. The papers are her enemy. The journalists writing about her in such awful ways literally conjure up as her enemy, a dragon, to vanquish. This reveals how she feels about the way others speak about her. Especially when they are critiquing her so harshly with claiming she is a fading star unable to capture her magic.

Wigfrid is thrust into the air by the dragon and she seems lost for a moment before she regains her composure and strikes down the dragon. These are the feelings she is expressing through her singing accompaniment with the arrangement playing on her record player. And Maxwell notices this.

Maxwell appears before Wigfrid through the newspaper. This intrigues me because we know that Them (the Shadow Creatures of the Constant) are capable of reaching into the real world from pages. Thinking back to Maxwell’s Codex Umbra where he first discovered Them and became Maxwell instead of William. Maxwell (or probably rather, They) reaches through these pages to communicate with Wigfrid and have her make a deal. The deal to regain her former glory.

Whisked away with this Shadow Maxwell form by the Shadows from the pages. And with that Wigfrid joins the missing group, taken to The Constant.

And then theres these shots in succession:

All that mail piled up. How long has it been since Wigfrid has disappeared. I think we can assume that some of the mail in her box might be fan mail. SHe has packages on her front step (in front of double doors for her entrance wowie!). I spy at least three packages there piled up with all the assorted mail she otherwise has accumulated while missing. I also spy at least four newspapers. It’s hard to say whether these newspapers are Morning Dailies, Afternoon Dailies, or Weeklies. And then we get the final, fifth newspaper copy tossed on top of the stack that labels Wigfrid as someone who is also now missing. This is an important newspaper because this paper is a DAILY newspaper.

The Kourier paper is likely a mirror to the IRL newspaper in Findlay, Ohio. This paper puts out a copy DAILY. I am going to assume that the first newspaper we see Wigfrid read is a weekly newspaper. It covers more national events such as the San Francisco tragedy. This final newspaper is a daily newspaper. This helps the timeline. Wigfrid has likely been missing for only five days at this point. At most it could have been a week, pushing it to of course seven days. Maybe one of the other papers in the could be another Kronicle copy, which I am deeming the weekly style paper. In my hunt for information about the IRL version of this paper in our real Ohio, I struggled to find specifics online whether this paper published weekly or daily. I do know for certain that tthe IRL Courier is put into circulation daily.

OKAY! Next I want to discuss the colors used in this short. Ignoring the fully colored bit in the center while Wigfrid fantasizes about performing for a moment.

In the beginning of the short we have warm colors. These colors can both reflect Wigfrid’s mood and also the time of day. Wigfrid is angry about the way she is being talked about in the newspaper articles. She is silhouetted by orange-red. It could also be the evening. Adding a little to what I stated just a bove about the newspapers, I think The Kronicle is a paper that is delivered in the afternoon. I personally deem this accurate because in this scene Wigfrid of course is just now reading this article (or rather just barely skimming it over for the first time). Judging by her reaction which I’ve detailed above. She isn’t reading it over again and having an already bummed reaction, One of her eyebrows is raised while she looks over the article before throwing it down. Thus, it was her first moment seeing the article along with us.

We see her anger melting into a kind of sadness, or forlorn feelings even when she first puts on her record. She is still angry of course, but she’s feeling a lot of emotions, as we do, at this point in time.

At the end of the short we have cold colors. At this point, Wigfrid has gone through her fantasy of performing The Valkyrie. She is feeling solemn about it all now though. What if the papers are true? What if I am losing my magic for my roles? I think it’s also into the night or even possibly into the morning. It’s either the shine of the moon coming in from the windows, or early morning blue hours peeking in. I don’t want to say that she spent the whole night fantasizing and performing for herself (The Valkyrie is not an 8 hour performance). BUT. When we get to see the scene where the last newspaper is delivered to her doorstep, it is again in the blue lighting. The Kourier newspaper delivered onto her stack of mail. The Kourier is a morning delivery vs The Kronicle being an afternoon delivery.

ALSO. Remember my post about Winona? WELL she was ALSO located in Ohio pre being dragged into The Constant. So far we have two characters safely concretely placed IN Ohio at the time of their disappearance. Obviously, The Shadow Creatures do not discriminate since Wes was likely trapped way back during the train derailment with William, and of course Charlie and Maxwell/William himself were taken from San Francisco.

Okay. That’s all I have time for this time around of over analyzing don’t starve content. I am glad I got into the imagery and symbolism this time around. I also went WAY in depth in this one. I plan on going in way depth on the other animated character shorts, so stay tuned!

#dont starve #dont starve together #don't starve #don't starve together #wigfrid ds #wigfrid dont starve #klei entertainment #video game analysis #well its video game ADJACENT #because its ABOUT the video game CHARACTERS

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into-crazy · 5 years ago

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More to the Madness Pt. 8

Ledger!Joker x Female Reader series

Summary: You and J throw some knives after your sex sesh. With the night off, you engage in a twistingly fun time together.

Warnings- Cursing, self-conscious thoughts, brief harassment(not from you or J), violence, murder

You can find the other parts RIGHT HERE and through the “More to the Madness” tag lovelies💞💞

Redressed in your red attire and shoes, you glanced at your discarded underwear. Torn completely to shreds. Collecting the fabric pieces, you couldn't help but giggle at the fact that you will now have to go commando the rest of the night. Which is quite comfortable. The only downside being you'll have no breast support. Poor girls. You stuck the futile garments into your boots. You'll dispose them later.

No traces left behind.

As for your bodily fluids in the mattress, grimy as it sounds, you have no choice but to risk leaving them to dry up and hopefully be forgotten with the building. Not like you have a sponge and a bucket of bleach on hand. You excused yourself from the bedroom to freshen up in the bathroom. Luckily the water that still ran in the desolate complex was clean. Actually, you're just lucky there's running water to begin with.

Enclosed in the private enclosure, you quietly observe your post sex state. Facial features blotched out with various colors, much like a paint bomb went off in your face. Murky water fell into the sink when you rinsed your face clean. There was no hope for your tangled hair, you redid the buns best as you could. You weren't sure how long you stood staring at your reflection in silence.

Mere seconds, a few minutes..

Solidarity time to process what happened. Try and calm those bothersome questions running rampant through your head. It wasn't until you heard the hasty knock at the door.

"Hope you're not up to anything sketchy in there." Joker's voice came from the other side, an obvious hint of annoyance in his tone.

You blink back into reality. That's when panic set in. Shit, oh shit! Your makeup is in your car. What are you supposed to put on to cover your face? "N-no," you give a half-assed answer. There's a shuffling noise then the door's barged open.

"Then what's the hold u-" J's words were abruptly cut off at the sight of your face, "-p." Utterly uncovered to him, for the very first time. His eyes scan every single feature, as if he were burning you deep into his memory. He's fully gathered, with a fresh coat of greasepaint. Which no doubt he slathered over the last layer.

You had no choice but to stare back, wide eyed and waiting. Why is he looking at me like that? Is he repulsed, disappointed?

Shooting his glance to meet yours, he smiles before finally speaking. "What's with the ah, shocked expression doll?"

You struggle finding the right response, "I, uh, I don't have any makeup on me." Turning away to peer disapprovingly at your reflection.

J huffs, "you don't need it." He leans against the door frame, closely watching you through the mirror.

Shaking your head, you scoff, "believe me, I really do." It was in the way you said it that made him figure you weren't only referring to confining your identity. Purposely avoiding his gaze. The distaste in how you're looking at yourself, almost embarrassed of your appearance.

Sure. When you're wearing the disguise, you feel like the sexiest, most confident woman alive. Because everything which defines your face, is hidden. Take that off, remove the cover, and all the insecurities flood in. Pinpointing each and every detail to find a flaw in. No matter the times you were told differently. By that sweet old woman at the entrance of your complex who calls you a "beautiful young girl." Or when random citizens heartily complimented your smile. Though it was appreciated, you just couldn't see what they apparently seen.

Joker couldn't grasp the way you viewed yourself. Staring with strong resentment and disgust. And you didn't have to say what you thought- he saw it through you. It didn't make sense to him, he's the one with the scars. The permanent mangled marks embedded in his flesh- protruding from his face, visible even under layers of paint. Yet, not once have you looked at him the way you are right now towards your own reflection. He sees no reason for it, he doesn't like it, and he wants it to stop. Right now.

"Y/n," he sighs heavily, stepping into the small space. The use of your name getting you to turn and meet him as he props both hands on the counter either side of you. "And you should listen to me when I say You. Don't. Need. It." He sternly punctuates every word. "Anyone ah, thinks otherwise can deal with me."

Alas, you manage a half smile, "I think otherwise."

"Well bunny, I guess you'll have to ah, take it up with me. Besides, no one else is gonna have the luxury of seeing my dolls pretty face tonight. Just me." His tongue grazes his lips with the statement. Which earned a genuine laugh from you. No other words needed to be said on the matter, your eyes spoke gratitude for you.

Thanks J.

With that, he left you to finish up. To him, it was becoming awkward, since he's not one for emotional stuff. He thinks it's pointless, there's no room for any of that in his world. He hardly(HUGE emphasize on the hardly) ever addresses his own. Therefore he didn't know how to help you cope with yours. He tried to the best of his abilities, despite how uncomfortable it might have been. Nevertheless, you were grateful.

Joker took the liberty of plucking your harness off the floor. Intending to hand it to you when you came out the bathroom. But instead stopped to marvel at the few selected weapons secured on the piece. He was especially intrigued by the throwing knives. Pulling a blade from it's secure compartment, his gloved fingers traced the smooth finish on both the blade and handle. Crossing your arms, you watch as he examines the item.

"These are something," he notes tussling the blade in his hand, "little small, but they have weight. I adore a girl with ah, unique tastes.. how come I never see ya use 'em?"

Dropping your arms, you sneer, "one, I haven't gotten around to it." Reaching out, you pluck it from his grasp. Positioning it between your thumb and middle finger, index grazing the back. "And secondly," you turn in a stance to throw, flashing him a cheeky glance, "you never ask." With a quick motion, you whip your arm towards the wall releasing the knife. The force sending the blade to pierce into the drywall. A good ole classic no-spin.

He cocks a brow at you, "not bad doll. Not bad." You reach into the next compartment for the other. Since the blades are on the heavier side, you only carry two on you. Which is really all you ever need. Lose or break one, you have replacements. Flipping it over, you wave the handle out for J to attempt.

"Your turn."

"Me?" He staggers, palming his chest in a dramatic manner. You nod, further beckoning the blade, trading it for the harness he still held. He squints at the diminishing look on your face. As though you're eagerly waiting for him to throw a bad toss. "Y'know," he acknowledges, "if I didn't know any better, I'd think you were ah, underestimating my knife throwing abilities."

"What?" You scoff, a playful expression spreading your cheeks, "what makes you think that? I didn't even say anything." Oh, how true was he. Falsely deny it all you want, you're certain he read it just by the indication across your face. Yeah, he's good with his knives, but how is he when it comes to throwing these bad boys?

Joker let out a sharp sigh, "ya didn't have to say it. Doesn't take much to throw a knife." In a lightning fast action, he launches the segment at the same surface. The sight of the blade actually gouged into the wall struck wonder in you. "Although, we could both agree that some skill would be quite beneficial." There goes that cocky grin again.

"Alright, that was good," you credit him, advancing to collect the pieces. Yanking them from the spots they landed. "Though moving targets are trickier," you tease passing him a second throw, "shame we don't have any of those around." You launch another flawless toss, reveling in the satisfactory form of it sticking into the old apartment wall.

Joker let out a breathy chuckle, "who says we don't," he hurls the blade, it lands inches shy of yours, "how about we go out and fetch us a couple?" A mischievous gleam in his blackened eyes as his tongue grazed past his lips.

You shake your head nonchalantly at his offer, which he was seriously considering. Pity the poor saps who'd fall into that category. "Tempting as that sounds," you return, "wouldn't you prefer letting me in on the next move?" Referring to the upcoming step in his plan, walking to collect for another toss. This time, it required extra effort to extract the blades you nearly flung yourself backwards. Cringing as your still sore from your previous activity.

"Later," J speaks before your throw, which wounds a slightly louder thud. "It can wait, the next job isn't til tomorrow. So we uh, got the rest a the night off." He chucks the blade using an underhand throw, it sticks the mark. Now, he's just showing off. No biggie. You've got a couple tricks up your sleeve.

"Oh do we?" You question as you recollect, "what did you have in mind?" There was a printed copy of a Harvey Dent propaganda poster taped on the wall to the side. A picture of Dent's face with the virtuous "I BELIEVE IN HARVEY DENT" slogan big and bold across the bottom. You tore the flyer from it's place, instead placing it in use as a target.

"Well," J states, "before you came in, I was in the process of ah, relocating." He launches the blade, it lands centimeters from the edge of the paper. Letting out a dissatisfied grunt upon missing the mark.

You hum, "Yeah, I seen that. Anything that involves getting some fresh air, I'm game. Because it's really hot in here." Fanning your warmed cheeks and neck with your free hand.

"Then," he replies, "take your shot so we can go." Motioning his hand impatiently for you to throw a toss.

You flash him a coy smirk, positioning the knife where the blade is between your fingers. Handle pointed away from your frame. A quick flick, you hurl the blade. Sticking the target, the blade piercing the eye of the man on the paper. The strike surprising even you.

"Hm," J sneers, "lucky shot." The low growl a clear indication he's irritated you struck it before he did.

"Yeah," you humbly gloat, a bounce in your shoulders, "was aiming for the neck or chest area, but I'll settle for that one."

To Joker's dismay, his crew failed to leave him a vehicle. So you insisted on taking your car since it was parked only a block away. You left him to finish gathering what he's bringing to the new hideout.

You'll admit, you were a bit wary on letting Joker into your car. Partly because he's not exactly a neat person, nor careful to say the least. In addition, he's bound to draw attention in some sort of way. In the loud and chaotic manner that he can. And you're not in the mood to be chased by Gotham P.D. or the Batman tonight. To say your concern grew when you brought the car around, and he carelessly tossed three large duffel bags into the trunk. Two of which containing nothing but vast weapons, ammo, and explosives.

In the car, you wait. Fingers tapping nervously on the steering wheel. Scanning the area to make sure no one caught either of you or identifies your vehicle.

J was quick with it, slamming the trunk to walk over to the driver's side where you sat. Knocking twice on the window to get your attention. You roll the window down a crack, and he tries the handle. It's locked. He tries again, "Let me drive, I wanna drive."

Shaking your head, you huff, "nu-uh, not a chance. I'm driving."

His gaze narrows as he leans in to speak through the small opening, "I know where the location is." Spoken on the verge of threatening. Like if you don't open that door and comply, you'll pay for it.

"The point of me driving is so that we don't draw attention," you explain.

He waves a finger at you, "fair point."

Joker didn't give you an exact address. He gave directions as you drove, telling you which streets to take and where to turn. This frustrated you because he mistakenly led you down the wrong street at least three times.

"Take a right here.. wait, that was uh, you were actually supposed to turn left."

You sigh, "seriously J?"

Reclining back in his seat, he grins slyly, "had you just let me drive, we wouldn't ah, have this issue." The little shit. Surely this is his way of punishing you for not letting him drive.

Apparently nothing in your car was off limits to him. The components of your glove compartment and console- he messily rummaged through them out of curiosity. He found the black eye shadow and lipstick you use. "So this is what you use for your eyes." He laughs waving the cosmetic in your view, "Hey ah, quick question, you didn't get your inspiration from me did ya?" He motions at the black paint around his eyes.

"No, I did not," you acknowledge, "before we even met I considered wearing an eye mask, but I decided makeup's more fitting. It actually allows me to see."

The street you were currently traveling was eerily quiet. Passing through the sketchier parts of the city, it's to be expected at this late hour. Only sellers and prostitutes occupying the corners. The few that there are anyways, they're in for a long night.

Coming up on a red light, your vehicle slows to a halt. J turns to glance at you, "ya could've ran that."

"Would've, could've, should've," you roll your eyes, "but I didn't."

He nudges your arm, "geez doll, lighten up. I know we're uh, layin' low and all. But have a little fun." Casually listing out, "run a red light, go thirty over the speed limit, hit a pedestrian, something."

See, THIS is why you're behind the wheel.

You were about to respond when a vehicle pulls up by your side. The light is still red, therefore it wasn't suspicious. Joker leaned back, obscuring behind the barrier of your seat to examine the car. You also turn to take a look. Three guys inside- windows rolled down, speakers blasting a tune. Appears they're out for a cruise, possibly up to no good.

Wandering eyes peek into your car and land right on you. You heard their voices as they talk obnoxiously amongst each other, a bottle in each their hands. They're drinking.. great.

"There's a chick in there!"

"Is there?"

"Yeah, yeah, there is!"

Your fingers grip the steering wheel in dread with what's coming next. Though nervous, you keep your cool, you've dealt with it plenty of times before. Just face forward and ignore them, they'll lose interest.

"Hey mami, how's it going?" A man calls. Another whistles at you like one would a dog, "look over here baby!"

You continue to stare forward, you're not concerned about them. The only thing worrying you to the max is having it happen with J sitting beside you. His jaw clenches and his hands ball into tight fists. So hard you could hear the pained squelching from the leather of his gloves. Growing angrier by the second, he reaches into his trench, pulling out his glock.

He goes for the door handle to get out. But your quick hand on his thigh stops him. As he looked back at you, you caught his blistering fury, ready to snap. You whisper, "no J- please- it'll draw attention."

He contemplated between staying in and getting out to handle the situation. His hand on the verge of opening the door as the men continue on catcalling. Words slurred from the alcohol in their systems.

This is the longest red light ever. Turn green dammit! You thought. Since they wouldn't get the hint, you retort to flipping them off. A clearer answer- I'm not interested, leave me alone. That only seemed to spur them on even more.

The man sitting shotgun shouts, "aye, come on baby. Don't be like that." The one in the back blurts, "Yeah, don't be a stuck up bitch! The three of us could give you a good night fuck." He then launches a beer bottle at the floor by your door, the glass shattering, a few shards scraping your car. They retort to laughing amid their own stupidity, going completely over the edge. You were nice enough to let it slide once, had they just stopped. However they chose not to, crossing the line into harassment.

Putting the car in park, you look at J. He's not going to let that slide, and neither are you. Pulling your gun from your thigh, you flash him a smile, "okay, I'm ready for that fun now." In return he grins back, wide and Cheshire-like, knowing exactly what you meant. Forget being subtle, you're gonna correct these disrespectful assholes- together. With a flick, the windows on your side of the car roll down.

Whistling and cheering, the men take it that you're giving in. You smirk darkly at them, cocking your head to the side. How wrong they were. You lean back in your seat, revealing J's presence next to you. If you could pinpoint the exact moment their souls left their bodies, you'd get it spot on. Eyes widening in fear as they see the Joker, you both holding the same spine-chilling expression. Confusion and panic wash over them.

"Ah shit! Hey man, that's the Joker!"

"The fuck is he doing with her!?"

Before they had time to react, you push your seat far back to aim your gun out the back window. J pointed his out the front above you. Savoring the sheer regret in their faces. A couple clicks are heard in the muted air, then you light up the car. The deafening gunshots ringing the street, echoing down the block.

When their movements stopped, you threw your shift back in drive. Flooring it the hell out of there before anybody could make you. Not to mention, the light was still red. The twisted mix of your shared laughter the last thing heard on the street as you drive away.

"Pull over," J instructs once you're a far enough distance from the scene. You comply, swiftly parking by the curb. Heated blood still rushing through your bodies, he grabs your face and kisses you greedily. You grab his wrists, kissing him back. It wasn't until you both needed air when you pulled way, staying close in your embrace.

The light from the lamp posts glows into the dimly lit space. Granting him the bewitching sight of his red spread across your lips panting against his own. It looks good on you. In fact, it'd probably please him if you'd sport his paint remains on your gorgeous lips. Perhaps maybe a lip shade identical to his, because red suits you perfectly. Especially his. He hums as the thought crosses his mind.

"You're mine." He breathes heavily on your lips, thumb swiping your flushed cheek. You trace his wrists in unspoken agreement. "Now scooch over hm, it's ah, my turn to drive." This time you didn't protest. When he got out and walked to the driver's side, you went over the middle counsel to plop onto the passenger seat.

It didn't take long to reach the destination. Within minutes, you arrived. To an enormous warehouse on the outskirts of the city. There are plenty warehouses that harbor the area. Many which currently remain in use, and some that are abandoned. The depot Joker, along with his crew, moved into was definitely one of the relinquished buildings. At least until now.

He parked a good distance from the entrance to the warehouse. Neither exiting the car just yet. "Did you ah," J starts, "did ya wanna come inside? I'll give ya a grand tour."

You take a moment to contemplate. "No, it's late. I better head home. Rest and come back for tomorrow's job- I mean if that's okay with you."

"Geez doll," he scoffs, "it's not like I gotta leash on ya- though we could uh, arrange that for another time if you're into it." His tongue clicking at the suggestive statement. "No- no, I won't hold ya. Ya wanna go home, go. Get some shut eye and be here early."

Joker grabs his bags from your truck while you take your place back in the drivers seat. Arms propped on the frame, you watch him drag the duffels onto the sidewalk near you. Chin lazily resting atop your arms.

"Now I better not find any trackers in my car." You jokingly mock.

"I look like the Bat to ya?" He throws back sarcastically, "don't push your luck sweetheart, you just keep givin' me great ideas."

"Some of which I might consider letting you take me up on." You can do this all night, the playful banter. Constant back and forth with snarky remarks. It's a strong, lively connection thriving between you two that somehow works. You like to poke him, he likes to poke back- harder. And vice versa. It never gets old. Alas, your body is exhausted and in need of sleep. It's quite noticeable, he can read the exhaustion on you. You smile warmly him, "night J."

Spoken so soft and calm, you're unsure whether he heard it or not. He did. Two light taps from his hand on the car's door proved to be. Thus ended your time together, and he stood there to watch your tail lights fade into the darkness before he finally deemed necessary to go about his own way inside the warehouse.

Man, what a night.

End of part 8. I hope this part wasn't too boring. I needed a good break from the smut- having written AND read😅 Anyways there's more to come!

#More to the Madness #joker #heath ledger joker #ledger joker x reader #joker x female reader #joker x y/n #ledger joker x y/n #ledger joker x female reader #the dark knight #fanfic

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amazingphanisnotonfire-imagines · 5 years ago

Text

Reggie//Heartbroken (part 3)

part 1 part 2

“Okay, so according to this book, babies learn how to talk in the womb. So we should be talking to it as much as possible.” Reggie’s leg bounces as he reads from the book he bought a few days ago. You place a hand on his thigh and he slowly stops.

The pale blue walls of the hospital make the two of you feel even more uncomfortable than you already were when you walked in. The woman at the reception gave the two of you a dirty look, and Reggie had to physically pull you away from her before you started either shouting or crying. He wasn’t entirely sure which one would be worse. There’s two other couples, also in the waiting room of the maternity unit.

One of them is sat in the corner, quietly whispering about names and gender. Both of them radiate excitement and the man keeps kissing the woman’s hand every so often, making the two of them giggle.

The other couple have brought their three other children along. One still in a pram who is sleeping, although you don’t know how. Not when it’s siblings are screaming, crying and fighting with each other.

Yours and Reggie’s future is right in front of you. Two possibilities, although you’re not sure if either couples have another man in the picture that may or may not be the dad.

“I er, I don’t think they can learn to talk this early.” You reply, pulling your attention away from the posters on the wall. There’s a few for new mothers about the support they offer. Another couple for adoption. And one right in the corner for safe sex. If you’re here though, its a bit too late for that talk. The thought makes you smile a little, until a kid screams bringing you back to reality.

“I suppose so.” He sighs and closes the book.

“You can keep reading though. Some of it may be helpful.” You say, trying to make him feel better. Reggie is just as nervous as you are. He didn’t think he’d be here at 17. Maybe 27, but not 17. And definitely not with you. “I’m sorry.” You whisper and he snaps his head to look at you.

“What for?”

“For this.” You sigh. “I can’t imagine you expected to be here at this age, especially with me.”

“No.” He agrees. “But did you expect to be here with me?” He asks, nudging your shoulder softly. The corner of your lips curl into a small smile and he mirrors it. “See. Its an adventure.”

“Yeah, I think I would have preferred like a camping trip or a holiday abroad type of adventure.”

“Eh.” He shrugs. “What can you do?”

“Practice safe sex.” You reply making him chuckle.

“Yeah.” He nods. “But I think its a bit too late for that.”

“You don’t say.” You reply and he takes your hand in his, giving it a soft squeeze.

“Y/n Y/l/n.” A woman calls out. You and Reggie stand and he quickly shoves the book back in his bag. He’s still holding your hand as you follow the woman out of the room.

“Don’t you think you’re a bit too young to be having a child?” A woman asks from behind you. You and Reggie turn around to see the too happiest couple staring back. The woman has an eyebrow raised while the man is trying to suppress a laugh. You squeeze Reggie’s hand and he knows you’re either gonna yell or cry, so he jumps in.

“Just wait until you find out I’m one of two possible fathers.” He replies, leaving everyone in the room shocked. “Yeah, its like Mamma Mia type thing...minus the singing.” He adds before you pull him away. “But, there’s always time!”

“Reggie!”

“What?” He says, a small smile on his face.

“Did you actually see Mamma Mia?” You ask him confused. He expected you to shout at him for telling everyone your business. So asking if he’d actually seen the film was a pleasant surprise.

“Yeah.” He replies. “Meryl Streep is an icon.”

“...Right.” You say slowly. You may be possibly having his child but there is still so much you don’t know about him. You’re hoping to change that, wether or not he is the father.

“Do you want to just lie there?” The sonographer interrupts your little moment and you smile at her, before getting on the chair. “And lower your jeans to your hips and pull your shirt up a bit.”

“Thats how we got here.” Reggie tries to joke but you and the sonographer just stare at him.

“Reg.” You shake your head and he sighs, looking at the floor.

“So, this is your first scan right?” She asks while putting the gel on. You nod while shivering a little and Reggie laughs. “Are you guys excited?”

“Kind of.” You shrug and look at Reggie. He’s looking around the room anxiously and you take his hand in yours, giving it a squeeze.

“What about you, dad?” She directs her question to Reggie who just shrugs awkwardly.

“He, err. I don’t know who the dad is.” You admit quietly.

“Ah.” She says. “Thats okay. We can help you work it out.” She reassures you. “Is he one of the possible fathers?”

“Yeah.” The two of you nod and she smiles.

“Great!” She says enthusiastically and you start to feel a little better. “Do you want to see your baby?” She asks and the two of you nod again. She moves the probe thing around your tummy and you and Reggie look at each other. “And, there’s your baby.” She points to the small blob on the screen and you gasp.

“Its so small. Reggie, its so small.” You turn to look at him but he’s already staring at the screen, tears running down his face and you laugh a little before wiping them away.

“Holy shit.” He mumbles before looking at the sonographer. “I mean, wow.” He says quickly and she laughs.

“Its fine. I’ve heard worse things.” She assures him and he nods.

“Thats our baby.” He says in disbelief. “I er. I mean your baby.” He corrects himself and you frown.

“Do you want me to print out some pictures?” She asks and the two of you nod quickly. “Great! I’ll just take a few measurements and then you can go.” She says and starts busying herself.

“Reg?” You ask and he tears his gaze away from the screen. “Everything’s gonna be okay, right?”

“Yeah.” He nods. “Everything is going to be perfect.” He says, pressing a kiss to your forehead.

“Okay.” The sonographer starts. You’re now sat on the chair while Reggie is stood beside you. “Given the dates you’ve told me, its too close to work out who the father is.” She explains and the two of you sigh. “But, you can find out when the baby is born. I’m gonna give you a few pamphlets to look at together and then you can make a decision.” She says, and gives you a stack of paper.

“Thank you.” You take the pamphlets and Reggie helps you up. “Have a good day.”

“You too.” She replies with a bright smile.

You and Reggie walk back down the corridor, you shove the leaflets in your bag while Reggie looks through the sonograms.

“I’m so putting one of these on my bedside table.” He says excitedly.

“Maybe you should hide them until we tell people.” You reply and glance over at him. He barely seems to register what you said, too busy staring at the small dot that is your baby. A soft smile is on his face while he’s looking at them and he’s so engrossed that he doesn’t notice that he’s about to walk into the man from before.

“Reg.” You say, trying to get his attention. You grab his arm and pull towards you and he stumbles pushing you into the wall.

“Shit.” He says, his eyes are wide as he looks you over, checking for any injuries. “Are you okay?” He asks and you nod, laughing a little.

“Fine. Although maybe I should have let you walk into that guy.” You say and he smiles.

“Maybe.” He agrees and the two of you laugh while the guy glares at you. “Come on.” He says, putting a hand on your back. “Do you want me to take you back home?” He asks and you nod. “Hey!” He eyes light up and you can tell he’s had an idea. “We should celebrate!”

“What?” You ask as the two of you walk to his car.

“Ya know, that you’re having a baby that is possibly mine! We should celebrate!” He continues and opens the car door for you.

“How?” You ask.

“Oh, you’ll see.” He sends you a wink before shutting the door.

------

“Really?” You cross your arms and stare at him. “This is how you want to celebrate possibly having a child?”

“Whats wrong with this?”

“Its a high school party.” You reply, pointing to the house. The music from Reggie’s house can be heard from two streets away, and there’s people hanging out the windows, some on the roof, others being sick in the driveway.

“Again, whats wrong with that?” He repeats his previous question and you huff.

“I’m going home.” You say angrily and start walking home. Why did you let Reggie pick you up.

“Oh, come on. Don’t be like this! Its supposed to be fun!”

“How is this fun for me Reggie?!” You shout. “I can’t drink, I can’t dance, I can’t have any fun.”

“Why can’t you dance?” He asks confused.

“Because everyone in theres is going to be drunk and flailing around.” You explain.

“Ah.” He sighs, not realizing what he’s done.

“You find out you might be a dad and the first thing you do is throw a house party because you’re parents are out of town.” You shake your head at him before sitting on the curb, your head in your hands. “I can’t do this. Neither of us are mature enough. You’re still throwing high school parties for christ sake.” You sob.

“Please don’t cry.” He pleads and sits beside you. “Please, please don’t cry. I’m sorry.” He says, pulling you into a hug. “I’m an idiot okay. But I’m trying, I promise.”

“What if its not enough? This baby is going to be a permanent thing in my life. Its going to affect literally every part of me. I don’t know how I’m going to tell Sweet Pea. He’s going to hate me, and then Josie will know, which means everyone else will. My parents are going to kill me, my whole life is ruined. And now, I’m the girl who doesn’t know who the father of her kid is. No matter how ‘mature’ we are, it’s never gonna be enough because we’re still only 17 and we still don’t know what to do.” You continue to cry and he squeezes you. “Why did I have to sleep with you? Why couldn’t I have just cried and eaten ice cream like any normal person after a break up.” You say and Reggie moves away from you, hurt by your words.

“You really regret sleeping with me?” He asks, his eyes are wide with sorrow, and his bottom lip is trembling.

“Don’t you?” You ask.

He thinks about it for a few seconds before shaking his head. “No. I don’t.”

“Why not?” You ask. “I ruined your entire life.” You laugh bitterly.

“Y/n Y/l/n.” He says sternly and you raise an eyebrow at his tone. “Stop saying that. You haven’t ruined anything. Just because you’re bringing a kid into the world, doesn’t mean your life is going to end. Its just going to change a bit. But I’m excited for the change. Even if it isn’t mine, its going to change me for the better, I can feel it. And I think its going to change you for the better too.” He says, nudging you softly. “So, how about we have one last night of teenage fun, before we change and mature and grow into better people.”

“But, I can’t do fun.” You reply and he rolls his eyes.

“Says who?”

“Every parenting book ever.” You say and he laughs, before standing up and dusting his jeans off.

“Come on.” He holds his hand out to you. “You’re about to have the best night of your life.” He says and helps you up.

“Whatever you say Mantle.” You dust your jeans off and follow him into the very loud and crowded house.

As soon as Reggie walks in, cheers can be heard from around the house making him laugh.

“Reg! Are you joining us for beer pong?” One of the football players ask and he shakes his head.

“Not right now. Maybe later though.” He replies and grabs your hand, pulling you through the party, making sure you have plenty of space. Once you’re in the kitchen he lifts you onto the counter making you giggle.

“So, what do you want to drink?” He asks.

“The last time you asked that we got so unbelievably drunk that we ended up sleeping together.” You tease and he shakes his head.

“Thats why this time, its not gonna have any alcohol in it.” He replies. “So what do you want?”

“Hmmm, surprise me.”

“Okay! One surprise coming up.” He says before moving around the kitchen. A minute later he’s stood in front of you, handing you a red cup.

“What’s in this?” You ask, eyeing the weird coloured liquid suspiciously.

“A surprise. It has all the parts of a drink you would find at a high school party, just without the alcohol.” He says and you raise an eyebrow. “Okay, weird colour? Check.” He says and you nod. “Odd smell that you can’t quite figure out whats it from but it smells like a drain?” He asks and you sniff, your nose crinkling.

“Check.” You grumble.

“Able to stain almost anything?” He asks and you look at him confused before a wicked grin spreads over you lips. You stick your finger into the cup before flicking the substance at his white shirt.

“Check!” You cheer and he starts mumbling to himself while wiping at his shirt.

“Now drink it.” He says and you tilt your head to the side.

“Are you sure its safe.”

“Yes I promise. Let me taste it though just in case.” He takes the cup from you and has a small sip. His face scrunches up and the taste and he forces himself to swallow it. “Maybe, er don’t drink that. Coke and orange juice do not mix well together.” He sighs, placing the cup beside you.

“Why do you think it would in the first place?” You ask and he shrugs.

“I dunno, I had an idea and rolled with it. Now, what else do you want to do?”

“Dance?” You reply and he smiles brightly.

“Coming right up.” He helps you off the counter. He leads you through the living room and down a corridor to the other side of the house. The two of you stop outside of a closed door and he takes a key from his back pocket, before unlocking the door. He opens it, letting you go in first and you gasp as you look around the room.

“You have a games room?” You ask in disbelief. There’s a huge TV mounted on the wall, with all of the games consoles you could dream off, old and new. There’s a pool table near the back of the room, and countless of arcade games.

“Yeah.” He shrugs and you look at him.

“You’re full of surprises Mantle.”

“Well, be prepared to be fully shocked.” He says and makes his way to the TV, turning it on.

“Why?”

“Because I’m a pro at Just Dance. The best in Riverdale in fact.” He says and your jaw drops. “I know, I know.”

“You still play Just Dance?” You ask and he looks offended.

“Whats wrong with that?” He says and you shrug.

“I just thought we left that in like 2013 or something...do you still play now?” You ask, a smirk taking over your features and he looks at the floor. “You so do!”

“Shut up.” He mumbles. “Do you want to dance or not?”

“Yeah.” You nod and he starts setting it up. “Reg?” You ask.

“Hmm.”

“I feel like I should tell you something.”

“What?!” He asks, standing in front of you in an instant. “Are you okay? Is the baby okay?”

“We’re fine.” You laugh. “Its just, I was the best Just Dance player on my street sooooooo.”

“Ohhhh, is that how its gonna go?” He asks. “You’re going down Y/l/n.”

“Bring it on Mantle.”

-----

“Reg!?” A frantic knock on the door distracts you from trying to teach Reggie how to play pool. You have no idea why he had the table if he didn’t know how to play, but you thought you could teach him, making something helpful come from dating Sweet Pea.

“Yeah?” He asks, opening the door.

“Err.” They start and look between the two of you. “Josie’s here...she’s brought Sweet Pea.” They finish and you and Reggie share a look.

“Do you want me to take you home.” He asks.

“Nah.” You shake your head. “This is your party, enjoy it.” You smile, and pat his shoulder before passing him. “I really enjoyed tonight. Thank you Reggie.” You say sincerely and kiss his cheek. Once your back to the main bit of the party, you start to feel overwhelmed. The smell of sweat, weed and alcohol is making you feel nauseous and you’re sure you’re starting to sway.

“Come on.” Reggie places his hands on your hips to steady you. “You can lay down in my bed for a bit.” He says. You start to argue, saying that you’re fine but he picks you up and carries you to his room, gently placing you on his bed.

“Thanks Reg.” You mumble and he smiles at you.

“No problem.” He replies, stroking your hair. “Now, what else do you want to do?” He asks from the bathroom. You can hear him fill a glass up and he comes back a few seconds later, handing you it. You take the glass from him and start to sip.

“I dunno.” You shrug and lie back down.

“What about drugs?”

“Excuse me?” You say.

“Not literally, but if I put this lava lamp on.” He says and switches the lamp on in the corner of the room. “And play this music.” He presses play on his stereo and some weird music starts playing making you scrunch your face up. “It’ll make you feel like you’re on drugs.”

“What makes you think I did drugs before I got pregnant?” You ask and he lays beside you.

“I dunno.” He shrugs. “I didn’t really know you before this.” He motions to your stomach.

“Yeah, true.” You agree.

“You feeling any better?” He asks and you nod.

“Much better. And I’ve thought of something else I want to do.”

“Whats that?” He asks.

“Jump into the pool...from the roof.”

“...okayyyyy. Let me think for a minute.” He says and you smile to yourself, knowing that he won’t be able to figure this one out. You take a minute to close your eyes and listen to the soft music playing. Its sort of drowned out by the music from the party, but its there, and even though its weird, it makes you feel calmer. Even with your ex downstairs with his new girlfriend.

“Got it!” He says and you open one of your eyes to look at him.

“I’m listening.”

“Stand on the bed.” He says and you do as you’re told. “Okay.” He says and stands on the floor in front of you. “You may not be able to jump from the roof into a pool. But you can jump from my bed, into my arms. Which may not be as high, but it is much safer. Plus my arms are so much better than a bit of water.” He explains and you laugh before jumping. He catches you easily and the two of you laugh loudly. “Hey, I’ve er. There’s something that I want to do.” He says quietly once you’ve both calmed down.

“Yeah?” You ask. His eyes flicker from yours to your lips, before he starts speaking again. “And whats that?” You whisper.

“I’d like to kiss you. If er, if thats alright.”

“Yeah.” You nod. “I think thats safe.” You say and the two of you lean in. His lips brush over yours and you’re about to close the gap, when... “Reggie. Put me down.” You say quickly, your eyes widening.

“What? Why?” He panics and lets you go, helping you steady yourself. “Are you okay? Did I do something wrong?”

“No.” You shake your head. “I’m gonna be sick.” You add and rush off to his en-suite.

“Again, did I do something wrong?” He shouts after you, and despite the fact that you’re emptying you’re stomach into the toilet, you can’t help but laugh. “You didn’t drink any of that stuff right?”

“No.” You shake your head, wiping your mouth and flushing the toilet. “It just happens.” You say. You wait for a response, but don’t get one. So when you’re sure you’re finished you stand up and wash your hands. “I hope this goes away soon.” You start as you walk from the bathroom, wiping sick from your shirt. “It’s supposed to stop in the second trimester or something, but I hope it goes away sooner. Because otherwise this baby is already kicking my as-you’re not Reggie.” Your eyes widen once you realize who you’ve been talking to. “Josie, what are you doing in here?” You ask slowly and she stares at you, sonogram in her hand that Reggie didn’t do a great job of hiding.

“You’re pregnant?” She asks and you stutter.

“Who’s pregnant babe?” A familiar voice asks and you close your eyes, cursing. Once you open your eyes again, both Sweet Pea and Josie are staring at you, while Reggie runs into the room.

“Josie and Sweet Pea are on their way u-ah.” He sighs and leans against the doorway.

“Who’s pregnant?” Sweet Pea repeats.

Heartbroken taglist: @i-love-you-green @thoseawkwardturtles @chipster-21 @mavelfanatic @bellarkebxtch @heda-mikaelson @findingmyselfinthismessedupworld

riverdale masterlist

#heartbroken #reggie #reggie mantle #reggie mantle imagine #reggie mantle x reader #reggie mantle x you #reggie imagine #reggie x reader #sweet pea #sweet pea imagine #sweet pea x reader #riverdale #riverdale imagine

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