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hannahssimblr · 11 months ago

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Chapter Eighteen

Back in Clontarf, I perch at the gleaming, marble island while Jude prepares dinner. I watch him doing it with undisguised interest, because he cooks the way that I imagine he makes art, fully absorbed, with precision and confidence, and completely and utterly in the flow of his own enjoyment. He connects his iPhone to a Bluetooth speaker and plays music for a while, until Ivy bursts in and complains that she can’t focus on her homework with all of the noise.

He switches it off for her, but even in the silence he moves around to the beat of the music in his head, with a smile on his face that only endures the more stupid questions I ask him about what he’s doing. He’s making a spice mix in a pestle and mortar, he’s coating the fillets in flour, that’s actually rose water, not vanilla, yes, he taught himself how to do this, those flowers are actually totally edible, they’re not just there to look good, so a shallot is actually stronger than an onion, that’s why he’s using it. He prepared a lot of it earlier, marinating fresh fish in harissa for hours, and par boiling the potatoes so that they’d be oven ready by the time we got home from visiting Jen, and when I ask him where he found the time to do all of this he explains that he was simply procrastinating, because he doesn’t want to write his thesis.

We eat at the dining table with Ivy, who shovels the food into her mouth in the span of about five minutes despite her complaints about it tasting bad, and gives a series of very bored, one word answers to his questions about school in between mouthfuls. He reminds her that she should practise for her piano lesson tomorrow and tells her that he can’t collect her from afterschool hockey so she’ll have to get the bus. It occurs to me that this is perhaps the most un-sibling like relationship I’ve ever witnessed. Perhaps it’s a symptom of their age gap.

“Where’re your parents tonight?” I query once Ivy rushes off to her bedroom to reconvene whatever teen girl things were interrupted by dinner, and he looks down at his plate. “Working late again.”

“Seems like they really like to work.”

“They sure do. Or they really like not having to be in this house.”

He’s said things like this to me before, these kind of vaguely troubling statements about his parents in very casual, matter of fact ways, as though they’re entirely absent and have no love for each other whatsoever, and this is something he finds normal. I’ve never asked him about it before, and something I’ve never quite been able to handle the idea of broaching, but now, since we’re… kind of, sort of going out with each other it suddenly feels important to know whether his expectations for his own relationships are different to his parents’ strange marriage.

“What is it about them?”

“We don’t have to discuss these grim things about my family, it’s alright.”

“We don’t have to, but I think I’d like to know about it.”

He pushes his food thoughtfully around his plate. “They just shouldn’t have gotten married, I suppose. I think they meant well initially but it’s ultimately done more damage than good.” He glances towards the closed door and up towards the ceiling, where his sister is, and lowers his voice a little bit. “I think they’ll probably get a divorce as soon as Ivy finishes school.”

“Oh.”

“I’m the reason they’re married, and she’s the reason they’re still together. They had this amazing idea at one point that having another child would solve all of their issues, but now they’ve just trapped themselves in a bind for an extra nine years. They could be blissfully divorced by now, but they won’t do it until she’s moved out, because they don’t want to disrupt her schooling.”

“How old were they when you were born?”

“Nineteen and twenty one.”

“Oh, God.”

“Yep, big mistake. Whoops.” he tosses a chunk of potato into his mouth and leans back in his chair. “Mom finished school and went to stay with her aunt in America, took up a job at a department store in Albuquerque, hooked up with a med student at a bar on her first month there, and well…” He throws up his hands in mock celebration. “Here I am!”

“I suppose that being unmarried with a child wasn’t really an option for your mother at the time.”

“No, not at all, I mean, she had come from catholic Ireland. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to live at home again unless she married the man from that bar.” The way he speaks about his father is strange, as though despite his presence in their lives, he’s still some random, nameless med student from San Bernardino.

“And then what?”

“Well, then my dad continued school, and my mom began her studies and my great aunt took care of me on and off until my dad got his doctorate degree. Then they had Ivy, on purpose, by the way, and when she was a baby we moved back here.” He shrugs. “That’s all.”

I breathe out a laugh. “You’re so cagey.”

“Am I?”

“Yeah it’s like you don’t want to talk about them, or your home life, like, ever.”

He doesn’t look like he’s all that bothered by my interrogation, he just gives me this self-effacing little smile. “Come on, Evie. It’s because this stuff is boring.”

“I don’t think it’s boring at all.”

“Well, okay. They didn’t want to be together, they shouldn’t have had kids, and they act like they never did because they barely parented either one of us. Has anyone ever told you that you’re bad at letting things drop?”

“Yeah, loads. Has anyone ever told you that you’re bad at talking about serious things?”

“Of course.” The corner of his mouth quirks up and he lifts my arm from the table to kiss the inner part of my wrist. “Has anyone ever told you how pretty you are?”

“Yes, you. Tell me what it was like for you when you were growing up.”

“I’ve told you loads about my childhood already though.”

“Yeah, you have, and I loved hearing about how badly behaved you were and what it felt like to live in America, but I wish you’d get into the guts of it, the real stuff.”

“The real stuff?”

“The stuff that makes you so clearly sad. You get that look on your face whenever it comes up.”

He hasn’t let go of my wrist, and now his thumb is gently stroking the skin that he kissed a moment before while he stares out into the garden through streak-free glass patio doors, and he chews on his lip before deciding to speak. “Well, when Ivy was born I stopped being a kid, I suppose. My parents didn’t have a lot of interest in caring for either of us, and I was lucky, because my great aunt in Albuquerque did all of that for them when I was little, but when we moved here the support system really fell away. Nobody had considered that. We have my mom’s parents, but they’re about as warm as she is, and even though we’d be dumped over to theirs at the weekends, it wasn’t like we had especially fun or memorable times. Usually we’d get some bucket of crap toys from the seventies and whatever was on the three TV channels that they had. They were okay, but Ivy was a really nervous toddler. She didn’t like being around unfamiliar people, to the point that our grandmother would have to roll her bottles down the hallway to where she was hiding at the bottom of the stairs so that she’d drink anything at all. She just screamed whenever either of our grandparents came near her. It just wasn’t working out, so we eventually stopped having to go, and by then, when I was like eleven, it just made sense that I’d look after her instead.”

“What did that involve?”

“Everything. Feeding her, dressing her, putting her to bed, shopping for food, toys, eventually bringing her to the creche. She used to go to the childminders while I was at school, but only until I finished at three or four o’clock, and then I’d swing by and get her. A child collecting another child, like, I don’t know if they’d let that kind of thing happen anymore, but it was a small family run childminders, the kind of lawless place where they have this one old granny looking after about twelve children in her house and everything and anything goes. My mom used to come home and cook dinner for a while, but she was delighted when I got old enough to do that for her too. It meant she could stay out of the house for longer and do whatever she used to do. Have affairs or whatever.” He huffs out a laugh. “I mean, I really don’t know if that was ever the case but I wouldn’t be that surprised. Everything got really confined because of Ivy, you know? I always had to be home, and helping, and collecting and living my life on this schedule while all the other teenagers were just being blissfully selfish and… just teenagers.”

“But you had time to yourself, surely?”

“Yeah, at night when my parents were finally home from work, but I mean, yeah, it wasn’t about not having time to do hobbies or hang out with my friends, it was about having to do it at all. It was about having to consider those things. Nobody should have to parent their siblings, it was really stifling and really unfair. If my parents wanted another child then they should have been prepared to take care of her. You can’t just offload that responsibility onto the older child. I resented it, and I still do.”

I spear my fingers into the side of his hair and run my hand down the back of his head. “That’s why you went to Berlin.”

“I just didn’t want to do it anymore.”

“You shouldn’t have ever had to.”

“Right.” He hesitates and his teeth rake over his lower lip, pulling the skin until it’s taut and white. “I just feel like going to Berlin was the most selfish thing I could have possibly done though.”

“No way.” I say. “It forced your parents to do what they should have been doing all along, and look after your sister.”

“Yeah but it didn’t really do that. I look at Ivy now, and she’s doing a lot of those things I used to do for her all on her own. My parents never stepped up like I hoped they would, so she’s just becoming another teenager with too many responsibilities, and parents that will divorce as soon as they can and leave her without a solid base to come home to when she’s in college. And then, you know, on the other hand I think about Jen, and how bad everything has become for her and I know that if I’d stayed, and if I’d been here for her then maybe I could have-”

“It’s no use thinking that, Jude. You had to be on your own for once. You can’t hold up the whole world on your shoulders.”

“I’m selfish.” His voice is acidic, and the moment I feel his fingers loosen on me I grab a hold of his sleeve, because all of a sudden it feels vitally important to keep a connection between us.

“You didn’t get a proper childhood. I’d be even more selfish if I were you. You need to be doing the things that you want to do, seeing the world, partying with your friends, all of that stuff that you’ve been doing for the last four years. It’s all food for your soul.”

“You’re too forgiving of me. It’s okay to say that I’ve been generally inconsiderate.”

“You’re way too hard on yourself.” I say quietly. “And you know that’s not true. You’re a good person, and you were always so nice to me, even when I was quiet and shy. You made an effort to talk to me at that time that Jen invited me to that modern art exhibition in Dublin, and you made me feel so included and asked so many questions about me even though I felt so nervous around you both.”

“I feel like that’s the least anyone could have done.” He says sulkily, as though he doesn’t really feel like being talked out of his mood. “The more I dwell on it the more I think there is something seriously wrong with me. Something that should have been figured out a lot earlier, but like, here I am, a twenty two year old, in the final months of my final year at college and I feel a bit… I dunno, lost, or something. I’m floundering, and I don’t really know who I am anymore. I swore I had it figured out at eighteen but now that seems laughable to me.”

“Nobody tells you how weird it is to be in your twenties.” I declare. “They insist that it’s amazing and fun and you’ll have all of this independence, but actually it feels strange and vulnerable, and there’s no rule book about how to navigate your way through it. One day you’re a stupid teenager and the next you live on your own and you have to know how to use the city bus and remember the pin of a debit card.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s alright that you find it hard, is all I’m saying, and I for one, feel like I truly knew nothing about being an adult. To be honest sometimes I get a bit freaked out by how lost I feel. But then I try not to think about it, and I just go on with my day.”

“That’s your advice?” He says, with the hint of a smile threatening to crack through the gloom. “Just don’t think about it?”

“Probably shouldn’t be, should it?”

“I think that’s terrible advice, Evie.”

“Well that’s all I have for you.”

He leans into me and lightly kisses my jaw before going back to his food, and the featherlight touch of his lips sends shivers right down to my toes. “Well I think we should think about hard things.” He says. “I think that ignoring them only gives them more power, actually.”

“Maybe some things aren’t meant to be processed now. They’re meant for later.”

“How much later?”

“I don’t know. Just later.” I push the last of my dinner onto my fork and into my mouth and try not to feel self-conscious about the fact that he’s watching me like I’m under a spotlight.

“I just want you to know that if you ever wanted to talk to me about any of the things that happened you in first year then-”

My chair makes a hideous scraping noise against the parquet floor. “Do you have any pictures of you when you were small?” I say, wiping my hands on the thighs of my jeans, and he blinks. “Um. Why?”

“Just when we were talking about your childhood, like,” I stack his empty plate on top of mine. “I was wondering to myself what you might have looked like as a little boy. That’s all.”

“There are some, somewhere yeah. I can root them out if you want.”

“I’d love that, would you mind?” I hastily pack things away in the dishwasher, and I put the plates in crookedly, and I can’t find where the cutlery goes, and Jude is there, and he takes the forks out of my hands and gingerly places them into the sink.

“It’s fine. Leave it.” He says. “Come into the living room, I’ll get the baby photos out.”

Beginning // Prev // Next

#lucky girl part 3

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musicalsiphonophore · 6 months ago

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Yesterday I wasn't working on any pieces. Well, I sightread the first page of the Allegro Giocoso Quasi Fandango (Burton third movt.), but I only played it once and only because I was bored, no real piece work occurred.

Instead, I was working on my diminuendos.

Now my diminuendos are BAD. I go flat, or the note doesn't sound, or both, and it's so difficult to get my dynamics to fuckin Work that I end up just playing the most measly non-diminuendos and then jumping to piano / pianissimo. I am great with crescendoes, and I'm decent for dynamic contrast in general (unless the piece is so hard that I don't have mental space for dynamics, cough cough Russell Stokes). It's just diminuendos that are the chink in my armour.

I was trying to do this by raising my air stream, focusing it more upwards across the flute to avoid flattening. (I received this advice as a half-comment from a conductor, "Siph, I do wish I could have a lesson with you to work on your diminuendos. You need to direct your air stream more upwards." And then I had to take my two weeks of no practice. So now I shall act upon her comment.) This worked beautifully in the lower / middle register, but as I go up the instrument, the diminuendos get tougher.

Tbf, any flutists will know, as you go up the instrument, playing quietly in general gets tougher. But I don't struggle too much with this, I worked on it a lot last year and now I can get a pianissimo high C (quite a flex if I may say so myself) without too much difficulty.

I suppose it must be the change in the shape of my embouchure that a diminuendo demands? I suppose my lips sort of close as I grow quieter, which means that my lips point more down, and then I go flat. Intentionally directing my air upwards can counteract this, which makes a lot of sense. The issue then is that on higher notes, there is such a narrow range of embouchure in which the note actually sounds, so that trying to alter my embouchure just gives me a non-functioning note.

But yeah. It was the higher notes that were an issue. I didn't even get to high-high notes. I tried it on a D, and on a G, I didn't even try going above G because my tone is so fragile when I go higher than that, I figured I needed to get the D and the G right at least before I attempted it.

Also, my lips are pretty chapped which doesn't help!

Relistening, my dims and crescs are far too steppy, but they're improving. They are improving. I just need to get more familiar so that my pitch automatically adjusts with volume and then I can focus on changing the volume at the right pace.

#this one is pretty technical #i talk like i know what i'm doing but i am not actually very good so don't be fooled #practice log

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abbcube · 2 years ago

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oh god oh heck this is so much pressure ;-;

1. Name? Steven

2. Pronouns and gender? He/Him, Male.

3. Sexuality? Straight (kinda wish I was bi tho, being attracted to more people sounds nice.)

4. Country? US (Northern California.)

5. Top 5 fandoms? NotITG, FFXIV, Warframe, Chainsaw Man, The Owl House.

6. What is your most forbidden snack? Foamy soap/hand sanitizer.

7. Would you pet a bug? Moths are floofy and friend-shaped. They don't like to be pet though :(.

8. Share a weird fact/story about yourself with the class: I once learned an entire piano piece by ear because I'm still terrible at reading sheet music.

9. What does the color blue taste like? Frosting (I'm Jewish, so cookies/cake with blue frosting were common growing up.)

10. What is the stupidest thing you've ever done? When I was like 6 or 7, I made a huge pile of pillows at the bottom of a set of stairs, and kept jumping down onto them, seeing the highest step I could jump from. I made it all the way up to the sixth step! Later that week, some friends came over, and I wanted to show them my accomplishment. It never occurred to me to put the pillows back though. One broken heel later, and I had learned my lesson about hubris.

11. What is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen? A night sky free of light pollution. Pictures really don't do it justice.

12. Stupidest thing you've ever seen/heard someone do/say? Didn't personally hear it obviously, but the sentence "I know the Ancient Greeks followed Christianity" lives in my head rent free.

13. Hyperfixation song? If I had to pick one: Marry me, Nightmare by t+pazolite (Did you know that this song has sections in 35/4 and 23/6? I think that's neat.)

14. Is there any meaning behind your profile picture and/or username?

Profile picture: OneShot left a pretty massive impression on me, and I thought this image of Niko was funny. To my friends, however, my identity is inextricably linked to this jpg of a crying cat, so I can no longer change it.

Username: a combination of two things; "abb" and "cube." Abb is from a stupid inside joke with friends. The kind whose meaning has been lost to time, but it remains as a source of brainrot in our vernacular anyways. Cube is from when I was ~12 and shared a Minecraft account with a friend, and we were talking about what username I could use if I got my own account. The account we shared had a skin that was a Slime King, so I thought a counterpart to that, (Magma) Cube King, sounded pretty cool. Throughout the years that eventually got truncated down to Cube.

15. Dream career as a child? I don't think I ever had any idea.

16. Dream career as an adult? I somehow have even less of an idea, but computer science doesn't suck so far.

17. Thoughts on cilantro? Restaurants should simply offer a gigantic plate of cilantro on the menu. For me, exclusively.

18. Have you ever been banned from a location, and if so, why? I've never been banned, I'm a conformist ;-;.

19. What is your cursed food combination? Salt + absolutely nothing. I will straight up eat salt every now and then (sodium deficiency gang rise up).

20. Trans Rights? Sorry, due to budget cuts I can only say Trans Right. Y'all will have to share. (In all seriousness, trans rights 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️)

I'm supposed to tag people??? Sorry if any of you have already done this..

@charyou-tree @starfightervicki @opposite-massive @pissgargler @aaskaaska @awesmelie

“I just came from r/196” ask game

Saw another post. I think I should invite y'all to one of our longstanding traditions. Answer the questions then tag 10 (or more) people. I'll go first.

Name? Frankie

Pronouns and gender? he/they/it, transmasc

Sexuality? Lesbian

Country? USA

Top 5 fandoms? Bungou Stray Dogs, Cosmere, All for the Game, Fundiesnark (not a series but I'm too deep in it to not consider it a fandom), .....the tornado fandom? (they're my special interest)

What is your Most forbidden snack? The preserved bones at the Atlanta Bodies Exhibition. They looked so crunchy...

Would you pet a bug? If it's big enough, it is pettable.

Share a weird fact/story about yourself with the class. I like to drive around rural areas and photograph old, sometimes abandoned locations in the dead of night. I have been literally chased out of towns by foot and by car on two separate occasions. The second time this happened, "See You Again" by Miley Cyrus came up on shuffle and that's the soundtrack my friend and I tore out of town to. Also every "guy" I've dated except for my most recent ex (who has big egg energy) is a lesbian now.

What does the color blue taste like? Creme brulee

What is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen? The appalachian mountains of Tennessee in the middle of summer. There's kudzu everywhere. On the backroads, there were several old, dilapidated Baptist churches barely hanging to the side of the mountain. I wonder how many of them were still in use.

What is the stupidest thing you've ever done? Short version: my friend's house almost got broken into by this dude who'd been stalking us for months while we were home alone. Instead of calling the cops, we decided to confront him with a bow and arrow (me), a hatchet, and a baseball bat (him). The plan was that if it went badly, we would simply throw his corpse into one of the many lakes in the neighborhood and let the alligators eat his remains (this was Florida). Why? Because we were afraid of having our home-alone privileges revoked. Luckily for us all, the guy fucked off and we never saw him again.

Stupidest thing you've seen/heard someone else do/say? My ex thought that Jackalopes were real. Also, a nurse I was doing rotations with apparently thought that "Witness Protection" was for Jehovah's Witnesses.

Hyperfixation song? Young Enough + Bleach by Charly Bliss

Is there any meaning behind your profile picture and/or username? Profile pic; I'm transmasc and I'm currently obsessed with TriStamp. Username; It was my fake internet name when I was like 13. I won't change it because I want my mutuals to recognize me, and because I do have a viral post associated with this name.

Dream career as a child? Doctor (funnily enough I'm now in nursing school)

Dream career as an adult? Professional Jester. Not a comedian. I just want to be some weird little guy who dresses silly and you can hire me to roast your boss at work parties.

Thoughts on cilantro? Delicious

Have you ever been banned from a location and if so, why? I honestly can't remember? Probably... but in recent memory I've mainly banned people from places.

What is your cursed food combination? Pineapple on a hotdog with grilled onions. It Slaps.

Trans rights? TRANS RIGHTS

Tagging: @rocket-mankoi @mostlymarco @atleast8courics @jazzlike39 @gemsweater72 @limbobilbo @ameliaaltare @redcrane112 @theoneofwhomisblue @twinkenjoyer @theultimatecarp and anyone else who wants to jump on

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shesey · 2 years ago

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Excerpts from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

I wasn’t steering anything, not even myself. I just bumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from parties to my hotel and back to work like a numb trolley-bus. I guess I should have been excited the way most of the other girls were, but I couldn’t get myself to react. I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo. Everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight of my own bones. There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It’s like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction -- every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it’s really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and that excitement at about a million miles an hour. I’m not sure why it is, but I love food more than just about anything else. The floor seemed wonderfully solid. It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther. I reckon a good poem lasts a whole lot longer than a hundred of those people put together. People were made of nothing so much as dust, and I couldn’t see that doctoring all that dust was a bit better than writing poems people would remember and repeat to themselves when they were unhappy or sick and couldn’t sleep. You oughtn’t to see this. You’ll never want to have a baby if you do. They oughtn’t let women watch. It’ll be the end of the human race. I thought it sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent. Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn’t groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby, because the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor of pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again. I think Buddy could have been a teacher as well, he was always trying to explain things to me and introduce me to new knowledge. He was always saying how his mother said, What a man wants is a mate and what a woman wants is infinite security, and What a man is is an arrow into the future and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from, until it made me tired. He was very proud of his perfect health and was always telling me it was psychosomatic when my sinuses blocked up and I couldn’t breathe. I thought this is an odd attitude for a doctor to have and perhaps he should study to be a psychiatrist instead, but of course I never came right out and said so. I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was 9 years old. After that - in spite of the Girl Scouts and the piano lessons and the water-color lessons and the dancing lessons and the sailing camp, all of which my mother scrimped to give me, and college, with crewing in the mist before breakfast and black-bottom pies and the little new firecrackers of ideas going off every day - I had never really been happy again. The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I felt like a racehorse in a world without race-tracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone. I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig-tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and off-beat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig-tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs i would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet. A million years of evolution, Eric said bitterly, and what are? Animals. There were no people I knew he would want to brag to about it, the way college boys bragged about sleeping with girls in the back of cars to their roommates or their friends on the basketball team. Now the one thing this article didn’t seem to me to consider was how a girl felt. I couldn’t stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not. That’s one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the coloured arrows from a Fourth of July rocket. I tried to imagine what it would be like if Constantin were my husband. It would mean getting up and 7 and cooking him eggs and bacon and toast and coffee and dawdling about in my nightgown and curlers after he’d left for work to wash up the dirty plates and make the bed, and then when he came home after a lively, fascinating day he’d expect a big dinner, and I’d spend the evening washing up even more dirty plates til I fell into bed, utterly exhausted. This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A’s, but I knew that’s what marriage was like, because cook and clean and wash was just what Buddy Willard’s mother did from morning til night, and she was the wife of a university professor and had been a private school teacher herself. And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs Willard’s kitchen mat. I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn’t want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterwards you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state. How would you like to be Mrs Buddy Willard? I had an awful impulse to laugh. Well, you were right, I am neurotic. I could never settle down in either the country or the city. If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell. If you love her, you’ll love somebody else someday. A feeling of tenderness filled my heart. My heroine would be myself, only in disguise. I leaned back and read what I had written. It seemed lively enough, and I was quite proud of the bit about the drops of sweat like insects, only I had the dim impressions I’d probably read it somewhere else a long time ago. I wondered, if I’d been my old self, if I would have liked him. It was impossible to tell. I would rather have anything wrong with my body than anything wrong with my head. I knew I should be grateful to Mrs Guinea, only I couldn’t feel a thing. If Mrs Guinea had given me a ticket to Europe, or a round-the-world cruise, it wouldn’t have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street cafe in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air. If I was going to fall, I would hang on to my small comforts, at least, as long as I possibly could. I don’t see what women see in other women, what does a woman see in a woman that she can’t see in a man? Doctor Nolan paused. Then she said, tenderness. That shut me up. What I hate is the thought of being under a man’s thumb. A man doesn’t have a worry in the world, while I’ve got a baby hanging over my head like a big stick, to keep me in line. Would you act differently if you didn’t have to worry about a baby? How easy having babies seemed to the women around me! Why was I so unmaternal and apart? Why couldn’t I dream of devoting myself to a baby after fat puling baby like Dodo Conway? If I had to wait on a baby all day, I would go mad.

#the bell jar #sylvia plath #feminist quotes #feminist books

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garrothromeave · 4 years ago

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mcd garroth + laurance headcanons for the sake of me posting something while working on my long-ass post, also happy birthday blaze ily,

garroth - total momma’s boy. seems obvious, but it’s true -- back in o’khasis, he was practically glued to the side of zianna. whenever she had to leave for a few days when he was younger, he’d cry if he couldn’t go with her. when he left for the guard academy, he wrote to zianna on a daily basis. to put it simply, he had separation anxiety. the hardest thing about faking his death was not being able to see or talk to his mother. - incredible piano player. his father made him take lessons when he was younger for quite a few years, but he was naturally very good at it. he never mentions this skill to anyone. while they were at malachi’s castle and were looking for materials before they left, garroth stumbled upon an old piano and played something. he got really into it, and laurance ended up stumbling on him playing. he made laurance swear to never tell anyone about it. - when garroth was around eight or nine, his stutter was so bad that garte didn’t let him speak in public or around any people other than the family out of shame. vylad and zianna used to help garroth with his stutter.

- garroth is very sensitive to the saying “oh my irene.” growing up in the ro’meave house, it was taboo to use irene’s name in vein. or anywhere in o’khasis, really. nowadays he’s still very caustious whenever he says it, because he thinks that someone is going to yell at him. - horrified of getting hurt. back during the days of training in the guard academy, while he was very good with technique and fighting itself, he had a very bad flinching problem. overall, for the longest time, wounds and pain made garroth very uncomfortable. because of this fear of getting hurt, he has a bit of a stubble because of the one time he hurt himself while shaving. - 6′4, because 6′11 is unbelievably tall and i honestly don’t even think that it’s canon? s’yeah. he seems 6′4 to me.

- garroth often sees new things and (internally) has this very child-like wonder response. he was sheltered for the entirety of his childhood and teenagehood. and after the guard academy, he stayed put in the same village for 5 years -- so he hasn’t experienced very much. he often wants to ask dozens of questions, but because of his shyness, he tends to just observe anything new very closely. which leads me to my next headcanon,

- because of o’khasis’ intolerance to many things, he was not very commonly exposed to magick’s users. the first magicks user that he directly met would be zoey, and he was very nervous when talking to her the first time he met her. when garroth gets to know her more, she catches on that he’s curious about a lot of things, and offers to tell him about things. he declines, and he regrets that decision to this day.

- as stated before, o’khasis isn’t very tolerable of things, which caused garroth to develop incredibly bad internalized homophobia. when aphmau comes along, he gets a very strong desire to protect her (little do we know, this strong desire comes from his connection with esmund) and confuses it for/tries to convince himself that it’s romantic love. it is in fact love, just platonic. so basically, this man’s gay as hell.

- garroth has more freckles than any other ro’meave family member. he’s mildly insecure about his freckles, seeing them as a ‘childish’ trait, which is why he wasn’t very bothered with the idea of hiding his face with his helmet.

- his hair is super curly. it used to be more tame, but as he got older, it got more curly. it’s usually a mess because he doesn’t know how to take care of it, but it somehow looks hot as hell. (no homo ofc.)

- garroth is allergic to blueberries.

- raven was garroth’s first genuine connection since he left o’khasis. zenix was his second. he loves raven a lot, and hates that he can’t see him as often as he’d like to.

- garroth is a total cat person. don’t get me wrong, he loves dogs, but if he were to choose between having one or the other, he’d choose to have a cat. he had a pet cat when he was little that he still thinks about a lot. (probably named sprinkles, just for the hell of it.)

- because of how he grew up, garroth’s actually a very picky eater. while he’d never admit it to himself or anyone else, he misses the more “rich-people” food he was spoiled with.

- garroth isn’t actually that stupid, when he first arrived at pheonix drop, he had a name in mind that he wanted to go by (to better hide his identity). however, when his name was asked by someone, he panicked and “garroth” accidently slipped. he beat himself up for the longest time after that. the only reason he finally let go is because no one had ever pointed out how/seemed suspicious he had the same name as the deceased first-born son of o’khasis.

laurance - his hair grows decently quick, so even after cadenza cut it for him, it only took about 4 months for it to grow back just past his shoulders. he prefers it having some length to it anyways, and usually ties is back into a ponytail. after the irene dimension, he would let nekoette braid his hair. - has a very lanky body type. naturally has long limbs, and would often get called a ‘stick’ when he was younger. he’s about 5′11. but don’t confuse his thinner stature for weakness, he matches garroth’s strength easily.

- bi icon. fuck that “you were my first kiss” bullshit he gives aphmau, the list exists and while it’s stupid and weird, according to it, garroth was his first kiss. which is fuckin funny as hell if you think about it.

- laurance is very good with animals. more so rodents and smaller creatures, like squirrels, birds, rabbits, etc. cadenza was convinced that laurance could talk to animals for the longest time. he even had this little mouse that would pop in his house. however, on the contrary, larger animals -- not so much. he’s shit with horses and cows, especially.

- incredible singer. has serenaded aphmau on multiple occasions, and has even gotten her to sing along with him from time to time. he sang for malachi to help him fall asleep every night since the day they met him. this caused him to start singing for levin at night as well. when laurance saw malachi again after the 15 year jump, within the first few days of his return, malachi asked for laurance to sing for him again just like he used to. which brings me to my next headacanon,

- laurance saw malachi as his own child, and treated him as such. they were very close, and malachi was the most heartbroken over laurance’s disappearance since he saw him very much as a father. it wasn’t that laurance favored malachi over levin that created this bond, it was the fact that laurance first-hand saw a child in need of a home and someone to love him, and it reminded him of when he was small.

- he’s a sucker for bets. gambles, wages, anything like that. while he’s not directly a gambler, if someone offers he’s sure to accept. he’s a risk-taker, and ends up getting really into it. this also branches into his competitive behavior. he’ll be really upset and possibly a bit petty if he loses. why else do you think he still hadn’t given castor the 5 dollars he owes him?

- slingshot master. you give this motherfucker a slingshot he can kill someone with his impeccable aim. he’s also very good with a bow and arrow or any sort of projectile, but he’s the best with a slingshot. when he was younger, he hand-made slingshots from materials that he’d find around the forest.

- speaking of the forest, laurance is a very nature-loving soul. when he moved to meteli when he was adopted, he’d often go and explore the forests nearby. he and cadenza would use their imaginations and play all sorts of games. laurance and her especially loved to climb trees, and would jump from branch to branch. this helped laurance become very flexible. this is also how he met sasha, she was sitting in his favorite tree one day and they just hit it off from there.

- after he was rescued from the nether, laurance frequently had nightmares that would lead into sleep paralysis episodes. the first time it happened garroth had been looking over him (since this was around the time when laurance first got back and garroth had allowed aphmau to go do her lord tasks while he watched over him) and when he had the ability to move and speak again, he started freaking out. garroth had to calm him down and assure laurance that he’d talk to zoey about what happened. garroth and zoey are the only ones that know of laurance’s sleep paralysis, mainly because he didn’t want to worry aphmau or anyone else. zoey often gave him ways to cope with it. it didn’t happen every night, but it did occur at least 5-6 times a month. his sleep paralysis stopped the moment he entered the nether for the second time.

- the first time laurance heard he’d made the list for the jury of nine, he felt honoured. when he was oblivious to how corrupt it was, he saw it as a huge opportunity. after learning about it’s true nature, he was still glad that he’d made the list -- because him being on the list prevented another person from risking being on the list and being chosen to be apart of the jury.

- yes, laurance can cook very will in this universe as well. it’s not that he was taught, it’s more that he can look at ingredients and just throw them together to make great combinations. zoey also taught him a few things.

- laurance does not know his real birthday. malachi does not remember his. since cadenza had “given” laurance a birthday, he offered to let malachi share his unofficial birthday with him. malachi accepted.

garroth + laurance

- laurance began referring to garroth as “pretty boy” after seeing his face. he continued to call him that for the first month of their friendship. garroth hated it, and that’s the only reason laurance eventually stopped.

- laurance and garroth are both very good story tellers, but after one incident where garroth was telling levin and malachi a story, he started stumbling a bit over his words and couldn’t articulate correctly, so laurance picked it up and continued it. from there, they took turns with the story and occasionally interrupted one another to add a detail or plot point, and after that, malachi refused to listen to garroth or laurance separately when telling stories, because their collective minds came up with the most fascinating shit.

- garroth isn’t the best at coming up with insults because he’s simply too nice, but laurance loves to make fun of garroth (in good fun, of course). however, there is one thing that garroth could hold over laurance; and that was their height difference. whenever laurance would mess with him, garroth would just bring up height to piss laurance off.

- when laurance regained his sight, him and garroth sparred very often. that’s when garroth realized how much strength laurance actually had, since he’d originally underestimated him. laurance, in all honesty, was equally surprised. their spars were pretty evenly matched.

- while these two are best friends, the amount of arguments they’ve had is insane. most of them were light-hearted and were more so disagreements, but sometimes things escalated and would result in yelling. that’s because laurance always took it a step too far. that, or garroth would try to disregard what they were talking about, which only made laurance more heated. but they’re both incredibly quick to forgive each other. once they had a really bad argument and didn’t talk for an entire hour afterwards, but once they saw each other again it was like they’d never fought.

- since garroth grew up with everything and laurance often had to hunt and shit, garroth wasn’t amazing at it. laurance found out, originally teased garroth, but gave him tips and took him out and taught him how to hunt. garroth’s still shit at it when he does it alone, but when he does it with laurance he’s pretty decent.

- garroth doesn’t drink. laurance does. laurance once tried to convince garroth to drink, but he refused -- which laurance respected, but garroth had to deal with drunk laurance for the rest of the night at the guard station. he learned things that he really wish he hadn’t that night.

---

i had more for garroth and laurance’s relationship, but uh, i don’t really have time to write them down, so take these for now! i hope y’all enjoy them as much as i did writing them :]

#minecraft diaries #garroth ro'meave #laurance zvhal #aphmau

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fillard-millmore · 3 years ago

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Louisa

As I finished putting away the last of my laundry, I could hear Mr. Weaver calling my name throughout the house. This has not been the first time it has happened; it hasn’t even been the first time it occurred today. Mr. Charles Weaver has been such a forthcoming man during my stay at his residence. I have the slightest clues that if he had it his way, I would not be stationed at his home. However, such a thought of that caliber is illegal, and Mr. Weaver is a practical man, a man of the law. Once I find him, he dismisses me without a single glance or movement.

While Mr. Weaver is the embodiment of nosy, his wife, Margret Weaver, is the exact opposite. She is a soft spoken, tender hearted, and frail woman, yet she has a streak of boldness in her. She had met Mr. Weaver in Philadelphia when her name was still Margret Bradford. Mr. Weaver had been enrolled in a school there at the time and met Mrs. Weaver at a ball during the season. Ten months later, they were already married and expecting their first child together. Their first two daughters had been born during the war with the French and the Indians, and their last daughter followed soon after.

The daughters had grown up in a wealthy household surrounded with fortunate opportunities. They had a French governess from the age of two and learned what was expected of them. Two of the daughters excelled in their lessons, but the middle daughter, Louisa, did not. While her sisters were experts at embroidery, singing, managing a household, and playing the piano forte, Louisa struggled in the basic tasks for her sex. Apparently before I, Private Abandon Murray, had set foot in Oyster Bay, she had already been a queer lady.

Ms. Louisa is a stark contrast to her two sisters. She is always seen in dresses that appear older and worn out with stains, compared to her two sisters that are always of the latest fashion and beg their father to allow them to wear French styles. The first time I ever saw the Weaver ladies, Ms. Louisa could have fooled me to be adopted. Each member of the Weaver family had brown hair, but Louisa had not been so blessed, because below her delicate halo, grew red hair. If one can look past her waist length fiery hair, they would see a slender and very tall woman. A woman, who in fact, stands slightly above some of the other soldiers stationed at Oyster Bay. The only competition Louisa would win against her sisters was due to her gracefulness. Ms. Louisa does not walk, she glides. It is as if the world is a sheet of ice to her and she just slides across. Her soft and swift movements are her only saving grace in her family.

She is rarely seen outside of her room and if she does step out, there are always a pair of delicate watchful eyes on her. She is not forcefully pushed to spend her passing hours with herself, but even if she was, it is probably an option she will take. Her room is completely severed from the rest of the house where the other rooms are. The family’s and my quarters are on the second floor, while Ms. Louisa’s are on the third floor. I have been up there only once, and by the condition of her bedroom door, I do not hold much hope for the inside of her room. While the rest of the house has been completely refurbished, Louisa’s door appears older than the house itself, it is wooden with scratches on the bottom half of it, most likely from a family pet in the past. The hinges barely hold the door to the wall and the doorknob is slipping out of its socket. I am frightened that if I even look at the door it will fall apart!

It is of no importance as to why I was on the third floor, but I refuse to go up there again. Once I passed the threshold of the staircase, it was as if I was in a completely different house. The household with a strong masculine presence and womanly touch had turned into one of fear and pain. It sounds silly because it is, but I have taken notice that no one else in the household, including the servants, spend their time up there. The most demonizing reason I will not willing step foot on the third floor is because of the baby. A baby’s cries can be heard on that floor, but only when one is on the third floor. The wails were so gut wrenching that they seemed too raw, too full of emotion to be coming from a baby. It could not have been Louisa because she was not in her room at the time, but it leaves the question, what is making that noise? There is no baby in this household. I checked the registry, living in the house is Mr. Charles Weaver, Mrs. Margret Weaver, their three daughters, and formerly Captain Dolion Smith. To update the registry, I changed Captain Smith’s name to Private Abandon Murray. All had been accounted for, but a baby.

When I return back to my room after Mr. Weaver had summoned me, I grab my hat and make my way outside to where Ms. Louisa and one of the household servants are waiting for me. I apologize for my rudeness and hope my tardiness will not cut their walk into town short. The walk into town is not a long one, but it is tiresome. The Weaver’s residence is located on top of a large hill that overlooks the seaside port. The trip into town is no problem for myself, however I know that the trip back to the house will be the bane of my existence. The reason for Ms. Louisa’s trip into the town is unknown to me since they are ever so infrequent. During my two week stay here, I have not seen her leave the house once. I hope that my questions will be answered when we get into the town’s center. I assume that Ms. Louisa is buying fabrics for a dress or fruits for baked goods, but we pass both the tailor and bakery without a single glance from Louisa. In all honesty, Louisa does not give any mind to anyone during the trip and the townsfolk give her the same courtesy. It is like she is not there, but she is there. Surely her movements may be one of a ghost, but she herself is not a ghost. The humble servant and I catch the attention of the townspeople on occasion, but Louisa lets nothing get in the way of her unknown mission. We continue to walk further into the unknown, following Louisa, when she comes to a strict halt. I move to the side of her, so as to not accidentally run into her. When I am at her side, I look at her and notice her peculiar gaze. She is looking at someone, the only person she has taken note of, Captain Dolion Smith. Her face is as I have never seen it before. She carries the expression of hurt, sadness, disgust, and betrayal like an Allan Ramsay portrait. She continues to look at him. It is not so much a glance or look, but more as if she is staring into his soul. To my disbelief, Captain Smith looks back at her. Albeit, it is brief, but he sees her. As soon as his eyes hit her, he looks away, and puts on a facade as if he does not notice her. He is uncomfortable, it is obvious, he has gone dead silent and is giving Louisa side glances to check if she is still looking at him. Louisa does not give up though, she continues to keep her eyes locked on him. I would have continued to observe the two’s interaction, but a great gust of wind makes me avert my gaze and fall slightly back. In a force I have never experienced before and never believed was humanly possible, Louisa whips herself around putting her back towards Captain Smith and flies back the way we came.

I ponder in Mr. Weaver’s library when there is a sudden knock on the door, then another knock, that becomes ever so consistent. I find it odd that not a soul has answered the door and I can no longer stand the persistent knocking, so I take it upon myself to answer the door. I am greeted by the face of a boy no older than sixteen with the family’s daily post. He hands it to me, and we exchange bows before he is on his way. This is when the ever so helpful and humble servant that was needed a minute ago comes to assist me. We travel throughout the house together, delivering each family member's post. I am about to return to my cocoon within the library when I notice there is one letter left. Originally, I believe that we forgot to deliver this letter to its intended recipient, but I am utterly shocked when I read who the letter is addressed to, Miss Louisa Weaver. The small notion of her being in correspondence with someone is completely preposterous to me. She has never received post while I have been here, and I’ve been told by her sisters that she barely received post before my arrival. The only logical place Ms. Louisa would be located is in her chambers and I suddenly realize that the hill the house is located on is barely the bane of my existence, instead it is the third floor. It is a silly preposition that a woman in her bedroom scares me. After all, I am a private in the British army who has spent an entire life in orphanages, and I am reminded of it every day since my name has always been an insult to my circumstances. However, Louisa is just a woman. Why does she insight so much terror in me? I make my way up the stairs as slow as I possibly can, the humble servant takes note of this and pesters me to move faster. Once my right foot leaves the last stair, I immediately start hearing the cries of a baby. With each passing step the cries get louder and louder. The humble servant continues to trot their way down the hallway without any interruptions. They take no note of the cries-, no, the wailing of this creature. By the time we reach the door, the thing is screaming. I cannot take it anymore, I want to run back downstairs to the sanctity of the library and listen to the post boy knock on the door or the girls play their instruments, fight, and sing. I cannot though, I must not run. The letter is intended for Louisa to receive, and do I really want to hide? Louisa herself has been the source of my many questions and the answers lead back to her room. She may live in the same house as her family, but she practically does not live here, I live here more than it ever seems she has. The knocking of the humble servant on Louisa’s door only brings the baby into a more intense scream. This scream is like no other I have ever heard before, but yet, the humble servant is still unmoved. Gut wrenching screams that make my heart sink to the bottom of my stomach, I feel as if the creature is using all of my internal organs for its vocal energy. While we wait for what seems as an eternity for Ms. Louisa to grace us with her presence, I have no other choice, but to stare at her door, the thin veil that so frequently disconnects her from our realm. The doorknob is practically falling off and I reach my hand for it. Nothing else matters to me currently, but the old piece of metal that has the ability to unlock me into the mystic realm where Louisa spends all of her time. I am so fixated on this door and gaining access inside that the cries of the baby fade out to me and become something of the past that is of no importance now. My skin finally makes contact with the doorknob, it is ever so slight, and it is electrifying. The electrifying shock turns into an electrifying sting when the not-so-humble, but now violent servant swats my hand away from the doorknob. Her death glance lasts for about a second when she takes Ms. Louisa’s letter out of my hand and slides it halfway under her door. Not a second later, the letter is hastily grabbed to finish its journey to the other realm.

As I settle myself for bed, I hear a knock upon my door. It is the humble servant checking upon me. The visit is to make sure I am in my room and if I am in need of any more candles. I respectfully refuse and they are on their way. I settle myself back into bed and let my thoughts take over as I stare at the ceiling. The events that transpired on the third floor today are on the forefront of my mind. What about that door is so perplexing to me? It is just a door. I have seen and touched doors before in my life, what makes this one so different? I know what makes it different, Louisa. How can a simple woman make my perception of something as simple as a door change? Why… why… WHY? I continue to ask myself this as I make my way up the stairs to the third floor. Even my endless one-word question cannot protect me from hearing that demon’s language. Step after step the wailing gets louder and louder, but I will not stop, as I am determined to find my way through that portal. For my determination, I stand and stare at the doorknob longer than I should admit to, but my eyes bounce between the scratches at the bottom, to the hinges, and then back to the knob, where they settle for a long while. I will not relent, and neither will the wailing from inside. Like a magnet, my hand is now on the doorknob and will not let go. The longer I stand there, the more the heart shattering cries pierce through the air. The turning of the knob is one quick movement, the door is now slightly ajar, and the demon can no longer be heard. It has stopped and the house is back to the silence it never left.

The door opens itself and I am met with nothing. It is a dark square room where nothing appears out of the ordinary. I should not step inside, I know this, it is not my room. It would seem criminal of me to step into a lady’s room in the middle of the night without a chaperone, but I cannot stop my own movements. My actions are ungentlemanly, no-, unspeakable, but I must cross into this unspeakably foreign realm. Once I am past the door frame, everything is as it was before. There are no more cries from the baby and the room is still a dark square. The walls are damp, and the paint is not uniform throughout the room. The walls appear mostly covered with the color gray, but every so often a spot of color can be found. Louisa’s bed is on the wall adjacent from the wall the door is on. It is missing bed sheets and has only one pillow. On the wall parallel to the door, there is one window and next to it is a desk. The desk has but a few items on it and the chair is missing. On the last wall, parallel to the bed, is the most expected, yet completely mind-boggling discovery. A crib, with a small and very thin piece of gray veil covering it. I slowly make my way out from under the door frame and begin to draw closer to this object. I inhale and exhale with every step I take and look down at the object. I know what I am expecting, but am I ready? I grab hold of the veil, as if it were the magnetic doorknob and pull it off of the crib to expose it. I drop the veil and take two steps back. Nothing. Just as the room is, there is nothing in the crib. From where I am standing, I look at every visible crevice that is available to me. There is no baby. Absolutely nothing, and no other indication besides the crib would indicate that there has ever been a baby in this room. I make my way to the window and only stare. I look out as if I were looking for something and expect to find it, but I am not looking for anything and I let my thoughts take over. Until I think about Louisa, now my mind goes silent and only now. Where is she? This is her room, which she rarely leaves, and it’s the middle of the night. Where can she possibly be? My eyes fall upon the desk next to the window. Upon the desk is a necklace, with what appears to be an eye painted on the pendant, a copy of the book “Pamela” with a lock of hair located inside the book under the cover, and one sketch that is truly horrific. An underdeveloped, skeletal baby. Its limbs are short, there is a large bump above its heart, and it has one eye completely colored in. This shaded eye has one tear falling from it. I put the sketch down when I see another piece of paper below Louisa’s copy of “Pamela”. I lift up the book and notice that it is the post from the morning. My eyes graze the letter and I stop breathing. The bottom of the letter holds the pain and fear of this room. So sternly and so distastefully added, is the identity “D.S.”, and I know exactly where Louisa has gone.

I cannot catch my breath as I run down the hill into town. I am running with an ungodly speed past the town’s center and the various shops and businesses. I finally see my destination, there is not a single candle lit throughout the house, the darkness consumes it. There is no need for me to open nor kick down the door because someone has already done that for me. I travel up the staircase, swallowing three stairs with each step and see what I came here for. I cautiously move under the door frame, as to not alert anyone of my presence, but I surely think my speed and sound have already done that for me. When I am under the door frame, I see Louisa standing above Captain Dolion Smith from the side of his bed. She is wearing a stained shift and a gray colored robe. She continues to look down at Captain Smith, just as she did when we were in town yesterday. Her face carries the same emotions of hurt, sadness, disgust, and betrayal, but her eyes stare deep into his soul. Louisa still continues to ignore my presence and Captain Smith still has not awoken. I catch a glimpse of Louisa’s right hand, but she has her body obstruct my view. Her left hand is empty and hanging by her side. I do not believe the same thing can be said about her right hand. She is holding something, but what? She begins to raise her right hand to Captain Smith’s right check. The object in her hand is a mere extension of her fingers. I look at the musket in the room and notice Captain Smith’s bayonet is missing. It is now being used to caress his checks, by the woman who did not refer to Captain Smith as I would. Only then does Captain Smith begin to stir. His eyes first gaze at the bayonet on his check and then to the woman who wields it. I see Louisa give Captain Smith a smile. A toothless smile that goes from ear to ear and Captain Smith reciprocates with an unsure and weak smile back to her.

Captain Smith’s smile never falters when Louisa digs his bayonet into his jugular. She guides the tip of the bayonet right into the center of his throat and pushes it as far down as it can go. The strike inward is a quick and stealthy blow, but its removal is tantalizing and painful. It is obvious that she is keen with her own movements, she knows exactly what to do. After she removes the bayonet from one of his vital life sources, she slides it down to his chest and prods it over his heart. He reaches his hands for hers, but only his left hand finds her right wrist. He looks at her with pleading eyes, that once held the colors of the darkest teas, but have now morphed into blood shot eyes that have bloody tears falling from them. His head falls back, and he tries to fight Louisa when she digs his bayonet under the layers of his skin, just enough to pull all the layers back. The battle he musters is in vain though, for she does not stop, but instead goes even slower as she works with her canvas. Once she peels back the various layers of skin and muscle, she finds what she wants, his rhythmically slow beating heart that has forgotten about her up until the very end. She does not give this life force the same respect of one blow as she had for the other. Between each rib cage she drags the blade horizontally over the mushy membrane, just enough for it to bleed out and stop beating. After his beating drum has stopped, Louisa stares at his grotesque corpse. With a movement that is as startling as the rest, she goes for his lips. She does not begin to stab or prod or slit his lips, instead she begins to slash them. Up, down, diagonally, vertically, every movement she can possibly make has become a stroke to her masterpiece. She wants it this way, she wants his lips to be so contorted that he cannot use them as he pleases in the afterlife.

She takes a step back from her work and acknowledges my presence with a single glance. With this glance, I know exactly what she is asking me to do. I shuffle to grab my former Captain under his arms and Louisa takes him from under his knees. We prepare to take him down the stairs, both of us are walking forward with Louisa’s back to me. Still the picture-perfect vision of grace, Louisa never falters. She glides down each step, while I stumble on every other one. I cannot tell what I am in awe of more, the transgressions I just saw conspire or the ability of the members of this household to sleep.

I follow behind Louisa like a dog with my tail between my legs, my master has just called, and I am at her every beck and call. We make our way through the town the way I came and I’m sure the way Louisa came too. Again, I find myself following Louisa through the town with an unknown destination. As she glides into the town’s center and I continue to shuffle behind her, I begin to have my doubts that Louisa even has a destination, but that’s not like her. I come to a sudden stop when Louisa halts and drops her former “companion’s” body. I do the same as her and drop Captain Smith’s body in the town's center, for all to see when Apollo’s light comes to greet us. I am unsure of where to look when Captain Smith’s mutilated corpse is on the ground. Louisa just continues to stand and stare at him, like she had when he was sleeping, and I find myself staring back and forth between the two spectacles. Captain Smith’s blood covers both himself and Louisa, from head to toe. Captain Dolion Smith died of a broken heart. She broke his heart like how hers had been broken. She had taken his precious lips from him and in a movement I must have missed, she did the unspeakable to him that no man could ever imagine. I am disgusted with his behavior, but I am appalled by her. My eyes still bounce between the two of them, while her eyes fixate on Captain Smith and she utters the word, “abandon”.

#american revolution #oyster bay #gothic #american gothic #gothic story #female hysteria

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bbhyeoliskooks · 4 years ago

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ꉂ ‵̤๑♡ 𝐂𝐚𝐧'𝐭 𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐩 𝐅𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞 ♡๑‵̤ꉂ

➶ TXT’s Reaction to Realizing They’re Falling in Love

‵๑*’;.‵๑*’;. ‵๑*’. ‵๑*’.;‵๑*’;.‵๑*’;. ‵๑*’.

Genre: 5 cuppies of fluffies and three sprinkles of angst~!

Warnings: Nothing, but it’s a bit suggestive(?) for jjuniebug~

Song: Can’t Help Falling in Love

(Yeah... guess who’s a clown for coming back after like 15 days of break when she’d said she’d come back in march 🗿🗿 we’re just gonna pretend that never happened, and shift to where i’ll post in a while?? thank you for being patient with me tho 🥺)

‵๑*’;.‵๑*’;. ‵๑*’. ‵๑*’.;‵๑*’;.‵๑*’;. ‵๑*’.

ꉂ ‵̤ Yeonjun ꉂ ‵̤

<3 You and Yeonjun had um... a rough night of frustration so you decided that even though you were friends, you could have a few benefits only the two of you knew about

<3 It had been a while of resting with each other after cleaning up with blankets covering the two of you as you giggled, telling stories

<3 This time you were being clingy instead of him, snuggling up to him while he fawned over how cute you were even if your hair was messy

<3 He was in the middle of telling the story when he stopped to appreciate how you were paying full attention to him and only to him for that matter

<3 Seeing how your sparkling eyes widened in the moonlight once he told you about how he fed the ducks in the pond with bread, he couldn’t help his new desire anymore

<3 Without warning, Yeonjun leaned forward and pressed his lips against yours

<3 The kiss lasted for a while >.< both of your hearts pounding against your chests quickly despite the other person not knowing anything

<3 You both pulled away at the same time, panting because of the loss of air once he captured his lips with yours

<3 “How can someone’s lips be so soft,” he delicately whispered before cupping your cheek tenderly with his hand (ahh my poor heart, why am i doing this to myself eeee >3<)

<3 Even like this, you were so gorgeous to him and you made him smile so much that goodness, he can’t help but fall in love with the beautiful you.

‵๑*’;.‵๑*’;. ‵๑*’. ‵๑*’.;‵๑*’;.‵๑*’;. ‵๑*’.

ꉂ ‵̤ Soobin ꉂ ‵̤

<3 Awwe late night drives with Soobders, let’s go~!

<3 It just peeked two am, the wee hour of the morning in which you obviously knew the two of you weren’t supposed to be out this late since classes started tomorrow

<3 How had it all started? Because both of you were still awake at one am for some reason, you decided to do an activity with him to make both of you sleepier

<3 It had been an adventure of driving Soobin to Mcdonalds first to get his ice cream like he asked, but then soon evolved into driving just because it was soothing

<3 Soobin was softly singing along to Magic Island, looking out the window while you thought internally how pretty his voice sounded

<3 All of a sudden, he spoke up after thinking for a while, “If we ever grow apart, will all our late adventures be over?”

<3 You were confused as to why he asked the question nonetheless, but you found his worries endearing... what made him think that in the first place?

<3 He looked to see you with a soft smile decorating your face when you hadn’t answered while you pulled over just to answer him

<3 “Don’t worry, my Soobders~ There’ll be much more to come, and I promise we can do this as long as you’re with me and I’m with you til the end of time. You promise, too?” You asked before sticking up your pinky finger.

<3 His heart- aghh he knows he can’t take this fluttering feeling much longer !!

‵๑*’;.‵๑*’;. ‵๑*’. ‵๑*’.;‵๑*’;.‵๑*’;. ‵๑*’.

ꉂ ‵̤ Beomgyu ꉂ ‵̤

<3 Beomgyu knew he had a fever and guess what he did that made you as red as a tomato due to anger !

<3 He wasn’t taking care of himself and you had enough of it :cc

<3 It was after you fed him (literally) with a ton of chicken noodle soup that you decided to reprimand him once and for all

<3 “You’re so stupid for not resting when you’re sick, idiot! I told you so many times to stay home, but you didn’t listen. What could’ve happened when-”

<3 Instead of answering, he tugged on your arm to make sure you’d fall into his chest, wrapping his arms around your waist in order to bring you closer

<3 “I know and I’m sorry, but could we please just stay like this? I wanna hold you, please. You know that your hugs give me strength the most.”

<3 Seeing how you didn’t object to his affection, he sighed against your embrace while sighing in relief~

<3 Although you were still a bit angry at him for not thinking of himself, with no hesitation you held him back while humming his favorite song quietly to yourself

<3 “Beomgyu, you know that I love you a lot, right? So please do me a favor and take care of yourself 🥺,” you cooed while mustering up the best puppy eyes you could do

<3 Seriously if you keep this up, he doesn’t know what he’ll do with that pounding heart in his chest

‵๑*’;.‵๑*’;. ‵๑*’. ‵๑*’.;‵๑*’;.‵๑*’;. ‵๑*’.

ꉂ ‵̤ Taehyun ꉂ ‵̤

<3 are you happy to be in paris- oui (ifykyk hehe)

<3 N E WAY, the teacher paired you up during this school trip to France for an assignment with the one and only Taehyunnie !

<3 You both easily completed it after thirty minutes, so for the rest of the time you had left, decided to scout a few trinkets and souvenirs for home~

<3 Along the way though, you finally found the Eiffel Tower and Taehyun awed at how pretty it was, pulling on your hand to get a closer look

<3 As if everything was going in slow motion, you heard La Vie En Rose echo from the back !

<3 You giggled at how the butterflies in your stomach fluttered as soon as the lights shone softly onto his warm face

<3 Taehyun held out his hand as if to say “care for this dance?” and you really couldn’t say no to that charming boy

<3 for this was a place containing the language of love after all~~

<3 The two of you stayed like that for a moment, dancing through the night while staring into each other’s gentle eyes

<3 He soon realized while holding you that you were the person he wanted to experienced new feelings with- and seeing your blinding smile grow whenever you were with him... it’s cheesy, but you two are definitely made for each other

‵๑*’;.‵๑*’;. ‵๑*’. ‵๑*’.;‵๑*’;.‵๑*’;. ‵๑*’.

ꉂ ‵̤ Kai ꉂ ‵̤

<3 It was a rainy day today :(( a bad rainy day today...

<3 At first, it was actually quite calming as you heard the famous piece “Clair de Lune” play from the distance~!

<3 But to add to the pile of misfortunes that occurred today from running late to classes to embarrassing yourself in front of everybody by loudly dropping both you and your books at the library, this was the most frustrating part since you forgot your umbrella when you left the house :cc

<3 Just your luck, huh? You were sure you looked like a pathetic fool in front of everyone there

<3 You just started piano lessons a few weeks ago so when you compared yourself to others, seeing how well they played, especially Kai...

<3 You couldn’t help but tear up since you kept thinking you weren’t going to be as good enough as them no matter how much you tried

<3 The tears welling up in your eyes gave you enough courage to step out into the rain, but before you could...

<3 You felt someone slip his hand into yours, holding an umbrella which covered the two of you as long as you stayed close to him

<3 When you burst into tears as soon as you glanced up at Kai, he felt the need to protect and make you feel better to the best of his abilities by engulfing you in a tight hug

<3 Really, what’s wrong with him? He said he’s too young for love, but what was this warm and bouncing feeling in his chest when he let you cry on his shoulder?

‵๑*’;.‵๑*’;. ‵๑*’. ‵๑*’.;‵๑*’;.‵๑*’;. ‵๑*’.

Posted: 1/15/21- 3:00am (yes ik im up so late but what can you expect after i’ve taken like a four hour nap earlier)

Tags:

#txt fluff #txt angst #txt reactions #txt scenarios #txt imagines #txt oneshots #txt timestamps #txt ot5 #txt drabbles #txt fanfic #txt ff #txt fic #txt headcanons #txt blurbs #ahhh hi im back #big cry i need to sleep soon it's nearing 3am #i have to go to physical on tuesday tho pls save me :D #anybody just randomly craving chicken rn or is that just me

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cesium-sheep · 10 months ago

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honestly how little energy I've had for music is a good measure of how sick I am. before I got sick I used to sing literally all the time. people had to make an active effort to stop me and it didn't always work. I sang at school, in choir and out of it. I sang on the street. I sang in the car. I sang at home. I sang at piano lessons. I sang All. The. Time.

even in the military, we had cadences. and I'd play human radio all the time, whenever we weren't duty bound to be stoic.

and that's when I got sick.

I still sang some, but we were in apartments and I didn't want to bother arin, or the neighbors. so it would mostly be at work. but I was too sick to work at the bakery so it was just when I'd walk out to run some errands. then I was too sick to walk around for errands so there were no chances to sing full out anymore. then I got more and more tired, and more and more sad, and I didn't even sing that much at home.

I want to. my god do I want to. at least in a house I can sing full out whenever I want unless my partners are sleeping, and even then we might have it structured right so I can sing anyway. and I can have a piano. it didn't even occur to me until we saw a white baby grand in the window of the piano store this morning, I could even paint the piano. I've given up the one I was raised with for lost, so I can pick one that's For Me. like the one in the practice room, with the very light keys.

but at this point I'm so sick I can't fucking think. I don't have anything left. and it's the only thing that seems even kind of near my reach. cuz getting less sick sure fucking doesn't.

#and part of it too is like a lot of these kids are in practice spaces or workplaces or abandoned pipes or whatever #and I Can't Fucking Go There #cuz I Can't Fucking Go Anywhere #so being in an apartment becomes a much bigger problem

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starsuh · 4 years ago

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do re mi | myg

featuring. min yoongi x reader | 3.2k

summary. while teaching you how to play piano, min yoongi realizes that his dumbass might have feelings for you after all.

genre. fluff | f2l | roommate!au | mutual pining

warnings. a quarter-life crisis and a soft make-out scene at the end

Amongst Min Yoongi's many talents, his sixth sense of knowing when something was bothering you was the one that most oft caught you off guard. Whether it was the intensity in which you slammed a door shut, or the way in which you didn't choose to annoy the fuck out him like you did every other day of the week; he would notice each time. It was only clockwork that he tentatively wrapped his arm around your shoulders when you had collapsed against the couch with perceptible chagrin.

"What's up?" he asked, a simple question that often entailed a more than complicated answer. Peering down at your tightened features, he awkwardly patted your shoulder as if to make known that silence would be just as valid of a reply.

You ran your hands through your face. "I don't know,” you said. If you did, you would've told him, just as you told him everything. Though the pair of you had began as merely two people who happened to be roommates because there were no other affordable options, spending months watching Netflix with another person tends to lead to friendship — even best-friendship, though neither of you had established such a title. It was the kind of friendship that needn't clarification, rather it was just another unequivocal fact amongst many.

After kicking off your shoes (Yoongi would scold you for that in a less emotionally-turbulent time), you pulled your knees up to your chest and wrapped your arms around them in a ball-like manner. "It's really fucking lame but I’m just realizing some things,” he nodded, prompting you to continue. "I'm scared of the future, I think. I mean, everyone is, but when our prof was talking about internships and shit earlier I kind of freaked out then decided that hiding in the bathroom was the best option.”

In his gaze was a reassurance so intent that you had to look away lest you become ensnared in it. He oft had that effect, increasingly so throughout the past few weeks. "What about it?"

Your eyes fluttered closed as you took a deep breath. “I think I know what I want to do, but then I see other people, people like you, who are so passionate about their place on Earth that to not do that thing would be a fate worse than death. Like, I love the path that I’m on but there’s always a voice that’s telling me I’m gonna fuck something up and regret everything.” You played with the loose threads of your top, pulling at the offending stitching. You laughed. “This is so stupid. I guess I’m just realizing that I might not be cut out for it.”

His sudden silence filled the room so heavily that you began to wonder if you shouldn’t have said anything at all. Gears turned behind the messy black mop atop his head that hung over his eyes; a face similar to the one he makes when contemplating a new track he had produced, seeking for each of its flaws and corresponding solutions.

It was so sudden when he reached down to grab your hand that you almost jumped. An inch away from falling onto his chest with the sudden upwards tug, you steeled yourself. "I'll show you something," he said to which you replied with a questioning stare. "It'll just be a sec, c'mon."

You allowed him to drag you to his bedroom, though not without glaring at the back of his head and whining. "Your room smells like Cheetos and day-old boxers."

He rolled his eyes. "I cleaned it this morning, so shut up."

He pushed the door closed with his hip, never once letting go of your hand until he unceremoniously shoved you towards the left end of the keyboard bench. You wiped the accumulated hand sweat against the rough fabric of your jeans, both thankful yet forlorn that he had let go. His was a comfort rarely given and you craved his affection the way one did with a cat that ignored those around it.

He reached down to plug the extension into the socket. "Can I play you something?"

You blinked, unsure if the nervous tone laced in the question was figment or reality. “What?”

He gave you a blank stare though it didn’t distract you from the way his hands fidgeted in his lap. “I said, can I play you something? Something I wrote?”

Impatient, he didn’t give you a second glance or a moment to reply before his hands flew across the board, pulling melodies out of the nooks and crannies of its black and white keys. Through every note, he told you of emotion, of love, of heartbreak and melancholy. You don't think you had ever understood what music was until then. It was more than his expertise, though he was quite the expert; it was the way his eyes closed at certain shrills and the way his shoulders hunched at others, the way he slammed harder into the keys and at other parts softer. He played like a poet. A writer. And you refused to be someone who didn't appreciate it for what it was: a story told to you.

The slight smirk gracing his soft features told you that he found amusing the way your mouth gaped open in shock. You’d only ever heard the distant echoes of his sound from behind closed doors as you walked past.

Yoongi had never played for you before, was even shocked that he was able to now, knowing that your mere presence in close proximity provided quite the distraction.

When he stopped, the air almost rang in its silence, as if you had forgotten what the world sounded like without his music in it. The hush blanket laid across the room felt bare and vulnerable. You understood now more than ever why he locked himself within the confines of his space in all hours of the day. If you could live in his symphonies, you would.

"Wow.” Because what else could be said? "That was... Yoongi, you're amazing."

His smirk remained, though as more of a mask to hide softer feelings behind. "Must've been if you're complimenting me for once.”

"Because you already have a ginormous ego."

He began playing once more. This time, a slow and deceptively simple melody. The chords were arrows tightly strung that flew through the air in wisps of smoke. To you, its warmth was paralleled to the feeling of his own beside you, his arm occasionally brushing yours as he reached to play a few lower keys.

"I think you're taking it too seriously," he said. "The future, I mean."

Your brows furrowed. "I kind of have to, dude."

He rolled his eyes but kept playing, occasionally glancing at you as he did so. "What I mean is," he pressed softly against the keys in the left end of the piano, their tenor notes filling your ears. "You need to calm down. Like this," the already soft melody slowed. "You know what you want, don't you? Why are you hesitating?"

You stilled, the feeling of being both caught and scolded grounding you in time. Your eyes focused on his hands to avoid the feeling of his analyzing gaze on the side of your face. “There are things I want to accomplish but there’s also things I want to have,” you groaned in exasperation. “I don’t know if I should choose the former or the latter but they’re so entangled that I can’t even tell which is which anymore.”

"Some things are only difficult if you think they're difficult." He looked down at the keys. "Like playing the piano, everyone knows that learning it is hard but something like this-" he played three chords in succession. "-sounds simple, right?" He continued to play those same chords until they blended together in a single melodious breeze. "But when I was a kid, learning piano was the bane of my twelve year old existence. I hated it so much because my impatient ass wanted to be good without trying. So, in true dumbass fashion, I quit taking lessons after two weeks."

You tilted your head towards him. “How did you learn then?"

“Well, I realized I was being a huge pussy and went back." Shaking his head before the glaze of the memory could wash over, he nodded towards you. Grabbing your hand, he placed them over the keys. “Can I teach you a chord?”

Your heart spiked in one fell swoop. “What? And embarrass myself in front of the music god himself?"

He laughed and it lit up his eyes brighter than the screen of his laptop that he had forgotten to shut off, still on the League of Legends home screen. “I told you, it's only hard if you think it is."

Too flustered to argue, you could only watch as he directed your fingers towards the correct keys until three were stretched towards their respective positions. C Major. You wondered if he could hear the rapid pace of your heart through the vibrations on your skin from where his larger hand rested atop your own. You could only pray to any god who would listen that he didn’t.

Among the numerous feelings that bubbled beneath your chest, the sudden pinch of ice that struck your nerves as he lifted his palm away from yours was one that you were the most unsure of. Filing that thought away for later, you focused on the most important task at hand: avoiding looking like an idiot in front of Min Yoongi.

Before you could retreat, your hands pressed down.

A sudden burst of sound filled the silence that you hadn't realized had grown so deafening. Your eyes widened as if you hadn't expected the chord to occur despite Yoongi's administrations, like trying to guess a passcode and getting it correct in a miraculous feat of luck. The now fading sound was not like anything you were expecting, though you knew even monkeys could do what you had just done. It was an actual piece of the puzzle that was music rather than the CD case or paper bag that had come with it.

Likened to an excited pup, you looked towards him for praise or assurance that you had done it right only to catch his already grinning countenance at your widened eyes.

For the next half hour he taught you two other basic chords, never failing to correct you in such a patient manner that your heart rose and fell with each glance and soft appraisal.

"But sometimes," he grinned. "Sometimes you need to stop thinking."

Your brows furrowed, though you didn’t need more than a few seconds to understand his cryptic wording before you yelped, almost flying off your seat at the abrupt disruption of the peace.

He began smashing his hands against the piano, creating the worst orchestra your ears had ever had the pleasure to hear. Overcoming the shock, both of yours laughs bubbled out, drowned by the keyboard speakers. Without a second thought, you joined, key smashing against the lower end. Together, you created an ear-grating masterpiece of cacophonous noise and piercing melody, yet it was still one of the most beautiful things you’d ever heard.

Yoongi began cheering your name like the greatest hypeman in existence as you gave the most effortful performance of your life, hands pressing against the first keys you saw to the last. You didn't know what you were doing but it didn't matter, not when he was smiling with his gums on full display as you went with your gut for the first time in years. Yoongi, the boy whose hands crafted magic, whose words changed you, whose music moved you. Yoongi, who looked at you and saw past your forced pretensions and society-enforced perceptions.

You laughed until your lungs ached for air, having not even realized that your whole body leant against his as you tried to catch your breath.

"Oh my god, I think my ears are broken," you covered them, finally dragging your hands away from the keys.

His grin widened. “You're a quick learner."

“Is this the part where I say that it's because you're a good teacher?"

“Only if you're polite, which we know you aren't." He hadn't stopped smiling and you had never felt prouder of any accomplishment in your entire life. “Was I able to distract you?"

You laughed, bringing your hands back to your lap to fiddle with them. He's seen you wear the same ramen-stained hoodie three days in a row with hair just as ratty yet you had never more felt exposed. “I’d say yes but I think I’ve exceeded my Yoongi compliment limit for the day."

"And here I was thinking that that compliment limit was zero."

"Hey," you playfully knocked against his shoulder. "I always say your breakfast is good."

He knocked against you back, his eyes turnt to half-moons. "That's because you want to brainwash me into cooking for you everyday with half-assed compliments."

"Or maybe," you lightly leaned against his hoodie-covered shoulder. "It's because I like eating breakfast with you."

He paused, and a grin that could only be described as shy graced his features. He tapped against the keyboard but didn't press hard enough to allow a sound to be let out.

"I trust you," he said in the silence. "That you can follow your heart. Even if that sounds corny as fuck, I really believe it."

You smiled, something you've been doing more and more often with him around. "I'll try," you said, watching as he contemplated his next words with a bite of his bottom lip. Giving him time, you glanced back at the piano. "Is it really that simple?" You pressed on a key.

He finally looked up. "I think so," he played the key beside the one you had just pressed, the side of it touching yours. "Even if it doesn't sound right to other people, who's to say that random key smashing isn't music? When you think you're supposed to play a certain way, that's when you hesitate. Even when you fuck up a piece," he pressed another key. "Regretting it doesn't stop the echo."

He began to play another soft melody, leaving you just as entranced as you were the first time he did.

“I’m a hypocrite, though,” he closed his eyes, lightly scoffing. “Giving you advice that I can’t even take.”

Your voice came out in a whisper. “Why?”

“Because...” He took a deep breath, hands leaving the keyboard as he fully turned to you. “I like you," he said it like it were a fact you should've already known. “I... I like you. A lot. I can't remember when you stopped being my annoying roommate who'd hog the fridge space and became the annoying roommate who I couldn't stop writing songs about. Before I could even realize and stop myself, today’s me kept looking forward to tomorrow’s you. I’d be a hypocrite to tell you to stop hesitating about the things in your life while I spent every second of every day wondering whether I should tell you my feelings and ruin our friendship.”

For if there was anything Yoongi knew more than most was that love was fucking stupid. It caused people to be irrational, selfless, and weak-hearted, yet why did he want to forget the stupidity that came with it whenever you walked into the kitchen for breakfast, hair messy and shirt tousled?

Love was fucking stupid. But maybe he could be an idiot if it meant that you'd be stupid for him too.

“I know you don't feel the same way but I just needed to tell-" you kissed him before he could finish what was sure to be a sentence so ridiculous that even the most astute of linguists would be left baffled. He was Min Yoongi. The boy who spent all day locked in his room making music and playing games with his friends. The roommate who'd wake up early just to cook you breakfast. The friend who knew you better than you knew yourself. The man who you'd found yourself falling for with every gummy smile. Yoongi. It had always been Yoongi.

And he was kissing you back.

His lips were as warm as the hands that carefully wrapped around your hips, gently pulling you closer to him. He kissed the way he played, soft and thoughtful.

Pulling away, he whispered your name slowly, prolonging each letter as if to savor them. Never before had your name ever felt so wonderful a one. His forehead pressed against yours, eyes flickering between yours in disbelief. The hand around your waist tightened as if in fear that at any moment you might say that you hadn't meant to give him what had to be the best moment of his life -- that you had actually accidentally fallen on him and he had simply been mistaken.

"You're an idiot," you laughed. "I've liked you since the first time you've cooked me breakfast if the heart eyes I gave you each time weren't already a dead giveaway."

He shuffled in his seat. "You have low standards then," he said. "Or are in desperate search for a house-husband."

You smiled, your nose brushing against his. "Maybe, a bit of both."

He leaned away from you, eyes lit up in a euphoria that didn't hinder from his nervous cadence. "Actually, that song I played for you? Earlier?” You’d never seen him blush before. “I, maybe, composed it thinking of you.”

"A personal chef, jester, and composer? I think I'm winning."

His nose crinkled. "You know you can still back out, right?"

"You're acting as if I'd even want to."

"Stupid songs like that... I suck at love yet I still want to give you everything," he whispered, voice hoarse. "But my everything will still only amount to that."

"If that's your everything,” your hands interlocked with his. “Then your everything is more than enough."

"I like you," he murmured the confession between your lips as if it were clandestine, the urge to say it a million times more bubbling up from his chest. Though stronger than his urge to say it was his urge to hear you say it back.

Your lips met his completely. Perfectly. "I like you, too."

Pulling away once more you couldn't help but laugh at the reddened color of his cheeks and ears. Cutting away at the awkward and still unsure tension, he inched backwards with a startlingly loud clap of his hands. "Now that that's settled, can we go back to making out? This corny shit is so awkward."

"I can't believe I like you," you groaned but kissed him back anyway.

While there was nothing in your life that you could be sure of, you knew that the man whose smile could light up the entire city of Seoul would be there for you for every step, and you wouldn’t have had it any other way.

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miraculousluvbug · 3 years ago

Text

WINGLESS | Ch. 5

***New to Wingless? Start at Chapter 1!

CH. SUMMARY: Plagg panics because Lila's the devil incarnate and Lila learns that Gabriel Agreste is far stupider than he seems.

Adrien fondly flicked through the pages of The Pun-thagorean Theorem (Making Math Funny!) textbook. Plumes of dust wafted up his nostrils, causing his eyes to squint and his mouth to contort into the longest face known to man to avoid a hacking fit, but he smiled afterward nonetheless. The book was withered beyond measure, sure, but within its decaying jacket, it held the fleeting whispers of a previous life. A life before his mother went missing. When she enjoyed teaching him math with puns and pieces of candy while his father clung to the confines of closed doors. When her jokes graced the halls and her smiles left behind a fog of golden joy in her wake.

Adrien’s heart thudded with longing.

But he was determined to push back the feelings he had kept buried deep, deep, deep within his heart. So deep that he often forgot they were even there until they reared their ugly heads like a Hydra from the deepest recesses of the sea. Every time he thought he dealt with it, thought he had cut off its head and could breathe for just a second, two heads sprouted in its stead, determined to grip him by the ankles with their jagged teeth and force him to drown in his debilitating lack of self-worth.

He shook his head violently, as if that could shed him of his intrusive thoughts.

Hopefully, this book would help Lila. And then she’d leave. And then he could skip the anime and just take a fat nap. Keeping the Hydra at bay was exhausting.

Correcting his posture, Adrien approached his classmate, noticing straight away she had moved to his desk chair. Odd. But he was willing to roll with it.

Ha. Get it? Desk chair. Roll with it.

He pursed his lips, trying to hold back his laughter at himself.

Kagami had called him a clown, but Ladybug, as it turned out, appreciated his sense of humor. And if Lady-friggin’-bug--Commander of Wit and Creative Mastermind--thought he was funny, he must have been a damn comedic prodigy.

Plagg recognized that love-struck look on Adrien’s face and had to physically restrain himself from making barf noises.

“Are you ready to start, Lila?” Adrien said. Oblivious to Adrien’s whereabouts, Lila started and spun to greet him. (Was he always that quiet on his feet?)

“Adrien! You found the book.”

“Yep! Why don’t you take a look at it before we start?” Adrien smiled as he passed the book to her.

Lila returned the smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Adrien idly wondered if she had ever meant a smile in her life. She pinched the book between her thumb and forefinger as if it were a moldy sock. “Wow, Adrien, this book is so . . .”

A silence lingered as Lila racked her vocabulary for a word less insulting than crusty.

“Old?” Adrien offered, tilting his head.

Lila tittered unenthusiastically. “Yes, old.” She draped the book onto Adrien’s desk and poked at it. “How long have you, um, had it?”

“It’s been in the family a while.” Adrien hesitated. He didn’t really want to mention his mother to Lila. Lila was poisonous. She spun every piece of information she caught into a sticky web of lies like it was second nature. He didn’t know if he could stomach hearing lies about his mother.

So he bit down on the story of his mom before it could tumble from his lips. Even though he so badly wanted to tell anyone who would listen. His father never afforded him the opportunity to speak about her. His friends at school avoided the topic like the plague.

Come to think of it, Marinette was the only one of his friends who tried to help him see her movie that fateful day the press tried to pass her as his girlfriend. (Which he wouldn’t have minded, honestly, but she always seemed hellbent on them being just friends, so he accepted it.)

Ladybug, the other important person in his life, saw his mother on his desktop during that one akuma attack and commented on her smile. Those two girls (er--women? Which term was more respectful?) were the only people he truly felt safe around. Safe enough to turn his back on the Hydra he always kept a watchful, tired eye on and just enjoy the breeze of the ocean as it caressed his cheeks and messed up his perfect hair.

No, the subject of his mother wouldn’t scare them away. They could handle it.

But Lila was no Ladybug, and she definitely was no Marinette.

Behind them, Plagg was practically pulling his antennae out. It had been at least eight, maybe ten minutes since the akuma alert and his kid was none the wiser. And it really didn’t help that he just saw Ladybug and Rena Rouge pass by Adrien’s gigantic glass wall in a blur of red and orange.

But it was hopeless! He couldn’t get the message to Adrien without being seen!

Or . . .

Or could he?

“‘What’s Pythagoras’ favorite instrument?’” Lila read aloud. Her eyes darted over to the blonde leaning against the desk beside her. He bit his lip and his eyes were doing something weird. She had never seen that emotion on him.

“Go on,” Adrien pushed, his eyes practically sparkling. Huh. Was that emotion . . . eagerness?

She cleared her throat and turned the book upside down to read the answer awaiting her at the bottom of the page.

“‘A triangle.’”

Adrien giggled. What he wanted to do was slap his knee and let the whole world know he found it funny with a booming laughter that rivaled Tom Dupain-Cheng’s, but he knew that was un-gentlemanly.

Lila quirked an eyebrow.

Adrien sobered immediately. “You know,” he tried. “Since a triangle is an instrument and the theorem is about right triangles.”

Lila’s stare was unrelenting.

Adrien coughed. “So the triangle is his . . . favorite instrument.”

Lila stared for a bit longer than necessary before letting out a glaringly obvious fake laugh. Adrien was more offended that she thought that laugh was believable than that she didn’t find the pun funny at all. “Ha. That’s, like, so funny, Adrien. I can tell already that this book is going to be a big help.”

Adrien’s shoulders drooped a little. He hadn’t expected her to fall to the ground in ceaseless mirth, but he hadn’t thought her to be such a brick wall either. “Right. Well, why don’t we start with number one? Do you have your notebook or do you need a spare piece of pap--?”

The sound of the television coming to life cut Adrien’s question short. Lila’s eyes bulged out of her head and the sight would have been comical had it not also meant that Plagg was being a nuisance. Again.

But honestly, when was he not?

Lila burst from her seat and sprinted to the television. “Were you standing on the remote or something?” Lila queried, her voice high-pitched and grating to Adrien’s ears.

Adrien scratched the back of his neck. Think, think, think . . .

“Um, my room is haunted?”

Lila gawked at him wordlessly, gripping the back of his sofa. “You posted something about that on Instagram, but I thought you were, I don’t know? Making it up?”

Because you would be an expert on that, right, Lila?

Adrien plucked the remote from the coffee table and pointed it at the television, his thumb barely brushing the power button when the words from the newscaster reached his ears and sent chills down his spine.

“New akuma . . .”

“Ladybug and Rena Rouge on the scene . . .”

“Chat Noir yet to be spotted . . .”

Adrien’s heart skipped a beat. Furrowing his brow, he ran to his phone and ogled its empty notification list. Why hadn’t he received an akuma alert? Was the Ladyblog acting buggy?

Adrien had to come up with an alibi and fast. Lie like the wind, Bullseye.

He scooped up his cherished pun textbook and shepherded Lila to his bedroom door despite her protests. “I’m so sorry, Lila! I, uh, just remembered I have to practice piano for an extra hour today.” The television droned on about the deadly, unstoppable, mind-controlling, threateningly large, new akuma behind him. The hair on Adrien’s neck stood up with every added adjective.

“You’re not seriously sending me out into the city where the akuma is?” Lila exclaimed.

Oh. The thought hadn’t occurred to him.

“Um, sorry, Lila, but I’m sure you’ll be fine! You’re Ladybug’s best friend, right? She’d never let anything happen to you.” Adrien smirked inwardly at that. Lila was failing miserably at hiding her disgust for his spotted partner when he shut the door--politely--in her face.

Quickly, he propped up his phone on the piano and navigated to his voice memo app.

“I deserve extra cheese,” Plagg drawled, hovering to the side of Adrien.

“For nearly exposing yourself to Lila?” Adrien remarked bitterly.

Plagg narrowed his eyes. “No, for figuring out how to get your attention when Lila was clearly undermining you!”

Adrien stopped dead in his tracks. His finger hovered above his latest piano recording while his mind raced. “What do you mean, Plagg? I didn’t get an akuma alert. That’s not her fault.”

Plagg scoffed. “Uh, you did get an akuma alert. That--that menace got rid of it!” Plagg folded his arms across his chest, clearly much angrier than he would ever admit. “She got rid of the notification so you wouldn’t see. Even when she doesn’t know she’s doing it, she’s sabotaging Ladybug! You can’t let her in your room anymore, Adrien.”

Adrien stiffened. So Lila was far worse than he gave her credit for. He wouldn’t underestimate her again. Harmless snooping, he could live with. Interfering with him protecting his lady? Unforgivable. She did that when he was Chat Noir and he thought he had learned his lesson.

Apparently not.

“We’ll talk about this more later, Plagg,” Adrien finally decided. A moment later, the soft melody of a piano piece danced around the room. His eyes wandered to the whiteboard on his wall that had twelve tally marks souring its otherwise pristine surface. Plagg followed his gaze and looked back at his kid with a frown and drooping brows, tail and antennae betraying his melancholy.

Adrien pointedly ignored Plagg’s Pity™ look. “Ladybug’s already cleansed an akuma twelve times without needing my help. Let’s not let there be a thirteenth. Claws out!”

Meanwhile, from the other side of Adrien’s door, Lila simmered, jaw clenched, mouth dry. She didn’t have an inkling why Adrien had concocted such a ridiculous excuse, but she was ninety percent sure it had something to do with Ladybug.

It always came back to that impudent roach.

Lila dragged her feet all the way to the main staircase with every intention to vacate the Agreste premises, but a quick sweep of the mainroom revealed the bodyguard was nowhere to be seen. And interestingly enough, neither was that dreadfully stoic assistant Adrien was so fond of. Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen her when she first entered.

Empty. The room was deliciously empty.

And Lila had never seen the inside of Gabriel’s office.

Smirking, she decided she would have to correct that.

Just in case she got caught, Lila inconspicuously flitted around the room in an attempt to appear like she wasn’t on a mission. She fawned over trinkets and leisurely “admired” the boring paintings accosting the walls before her twitching fingers rested on the door handle.

She waited with an ear pressed against the wood. Silence had never tasted sweeter.

The room was . . . well, it left something to be desired.

Wasn’t Gabriel supposed to be a fashion icon?

His interior design made her want to gouge out her eyes with a plastic spork.

Lila gingerly let the door fall into place behind her, the hinges creaking only slightly (a billionaire or whatever he was could afford to professionally oil his door, she assumed) before her feet carried her to a mustard yellow tapestry. The woman adorning it she recognized was Adrien’s mother. The photos of Adrien to her right were all edited from photoshoots. Perfect. Unblemished.

Lila supposed she could overlook Adrien’s pitiful sense of humor. Adrien was still great eye candy, and his reputation made him an even tastier prize.

The scent of cologne and disinfectant mingled, battling each other for dominance and the result was only a bit nauseating. Orange light seeped in from the windows, the tendrils of luminance touching everything in the room but the wall with the tapestry. It was golden hour apparently.

Unable to help herself, Lila brushed her fingers along the edges of Gabriel’s touchscreen, searching, searching. Ah. There. A ridge. A power button, perhaps? With the tip of her fingernail, she pressed it and . . .

Of course, the thing would be password protected.

Maybe Adrien’s birthday?

Wait. Did she even know Adrien’s birthday?

Lila shrugged and turned on her heel. She was curious, but odds were she would never be able to guess Monsieur Agreste’s password. Unless . . .

Slowly pivoting to face the screen again, she tried typing something crazy and, albeit, a little stupid.

There was just no way. It was a waste of time to even try.

She tapped a green enter button.

The waiting screen consisted of the outline of a butterfly slowly being filled in and then repeating. Interesting. She wouldn’t have pegged Gabriel to be a butterfly guy. But if she thought about it really, reeeeally hard, she could just barely recall a few designs Adrien had modeled that sported a butterfly-like logo.

But whatever. This butterfly waiting screen meant nothing. There was still no way.

There was absolutely no way the password to the great fashion mogul Gabriel Agreste’s personal computer was “password.”

Was there?

She idly tapped her nails on the screen, the clack-clack-clack echoing around her in the frustratingly barren room. The anticipation ate away at her until . . .

Bingo. The screen unlocked, and the light shining on Lila transitioned from the black of the waiting screen to the blue of a schematic.

Lila snorted. “Seriously? I’m no Max but even I know that’s the most brainless password known to man.”

Closer inspection led to a fascinating revelation. The schematic wasn’t actually for a building or even a design. There were photos of her classmates and their . . .

Their hero personas? Interesting. Could he have been planning a Superhero line? How did he even find out their identities?

Wow, there was Nino as Carapace and that one girl Kagami as Ryuko. Max as some horse-looking hero she honestly had never seen in her life. Kim as a monkey. Unsurprising. Some guy with blue highlights who she’d only seen around Marinette. And Alya . . . as Rena Rouge.

Lila clenched her fists. Her nails left indentations in her palms.

She didn’t have time to stew over this infuriating morsel of information, however, before the floor beneath her began to tremble. Wasting no time, she sprinted to the middle of the room and was surprised to find the floor now still. Had she imagined the earth quaking?

What sounded like mechanical whirring had her spinning on her heel to face the painting. Her jaw dropped to the floor at the sight of a hole in the previously-unmarred tile. From the dark pit rose one bonafide, Barney-colored supervillain, his back facing her.

“Nooroo, dark wings fall.”

Instantly, a waterfall of purple and white glitter illuminated the room. The light was so intense, Lila had to lift her arms and shield her retinas. Her heart thudded wildly against her ribcage.

Any sane person would have run away at the sight of a supervillain in their classmate’s mansion.

But not Lila.

Lila quite liked Hawk Moth. She more than shared his distaste for the superhero duo and was overjoyed whenever he graced her with the opportunity to fight them as an akuma.

She was even more overjoyed to find out her boss and Hawk Moth were not just cut from the same cloth . . .

They were the same cloth.

The man otherwise known as Gabriel Agreste stood before her, hands clenched into tight fists at his sides.

His shoulders were hunched up to his ears as he grumbled, “Blasted children. I’ll get your Miraculous one of these days--”

“Um, Master?” a tiny voice interrupted.

Lila had never seen such a thing. Was that a bug? A fairy?

“What is it, Nooroo?”

Upon Nooroo’s silence, Gabriel turned around and was incapable of hiding the shock on his face when he found Lila Rossi trespassing in his office.

“How much did you see?” he demanded, scowling.

Lila tittered behind her hand. “Even if I hadn’t seen everything, Hawk Moth, I’d still be asking you what on Earth that thing is.” She jabbed a manicured finger at Nooroo.

Upon seeing his computer on and unlocked, Gabriel lifted his chin and sneered at the fifteen year old girl who had evidently outsmarted him.

Understanding, Lila shook her head. “You really are a boomer,” she mused. “‘Password’ is the least intelligent password you could have picked.”

“I thought it was clever, Master,” Nooroo meekly added.

Desperate to get control of the situation, Gabriel folded his hands behind his back and stood until he was at his full height. “So now you know.” He dared not move from higher ground. “I can’t imagine you thought it’d be smart to confront an adult man who’s shown he has nothing to lose.”

Lila raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you have, like, a son?”

Gabriel’s gaze was unrelenting.

Lila almost pitied the oblivious blonde boy. “Whatever. I just wanted to snoop around your office. I couldn’t have possibly dreamed a juicier secret. Paris’s beloved and esteemed fashion designer doubling as its masked terrorist?”

Gabriel bristled.

Feigning nonchalance, Lila perched upon one of Gabriel’s long purple benches and crossed one leg over the other before leaning an elbow on her knee and resting her cheek in her palm. Mischief twinkled in her eyes. “Scandalous.”

“I could make your life a living hell, young lady,” Gabriel began, but Lila held up a hand, halting him in his tracks.

“No need to get defensive, Monsieur. You have nothing to fear from me.” Lila stood then and crossed the room to stand on equal footing with Gabriel. While the top of her head was far beneath the man she addressed, her confidence made her a formidable contender. She leaned forward and peered up at him. “In fact, I want to help.”

Gabriel’s fingers twitched. He knew she liked getting akumatized, but this was unexpected. His initial reaction was to shut it down. This should have never happened. He had to ensure her silence but keep her far from involved.

His curiosity, however, got the better of him. He was a businessman at heart, after all.

“Help how?” he pressed.

Lila smiled crookedly.

Hook.

“You’ve akumatized me before and we’ve caused great chaos together.” Lila fiddled with one of her foxtails as she circled Gabriel. “Can you imagine if we actually strategized an akuma?”

“Are you implying my previous akuma were unplanned?”

Line.

“Not at all!” Lila mended, already sensing that Gabriel’s pride was a sore spot. “But you catch your victims when they’re unhinged, laden with their own emotions. How many times has an akuma put their own needs before yours?”

Lila turned her back on Gabriel then and moseyed toward the benches once more. She let her hand trail along the fabric of the cushions, waiting for him to take the bait . . .

“I’m listening.”

Sinker.

“What if your akuma’s goals were aligned with yours? Everything would be calculated. Predisposed. And--” Lila couldn’t prevent the smile from bleeding into her voice “--I’ve never had a sentimonster assist me before.” Lila stopped moving but remained facing the window. The sun was nearly set now.

Heels clacked against the tile. Approaching. Lila steeled herself.

“I don’t suppose you’ll join my assistant and I out in the gardens, Mademoiselle Rossi?”

Lila grinned from ear to ear. Oh, she could just imagine the taste of Ladybug’s fear when she loomed over her, fingers pinching her earrings and just ripping them from her lobes. Would the joy blooming in her heart be overwhelming, like a banana overpowering the flavors in a smoothie? Or would it slide down her throat like her mother’s hot chocolate? Rich, creamy, satisfying, and scalding all at the same time . . . but faintly nipping at her vocal cords from the traces of cinnamon?

Was it unbecoming to hope Ladybug’s ears would bleed?

“I would love to.”

Unbecoming or not, it was her greatest desire, from both the deepest and shallowest crevices of her soul.

-----

I just released Chapter 7 over on AO3, so if you're itching for more, go check it out here and leave me some love in the comments. Comments are jet fuel for my creativity 🥰 Follow me for updates and check out my Instagram where I post art!

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demonicheadcanons · 4 years ago

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can you do a HC of 18th century Obey Me brothers?? I'm super into historical drama at the moment and would love to see classical Obey Me AU

AN: Thanks for sending this in!! I’m not very good with history, so please forgive any mistakes as I have pretty much just skimmed a few different websites trying to find whatever info I could pick up ;u; This isn’t a traditional headcanon set, but rather an overall ‘18th century Devildom’ headcanon. I hope that’s alright!!

It is occurring to me as I write that this probably isn’t what you want at all because this ask says ‘historical drama’. Sorry ;u; I kind of just ran with whatever came to my head.

I make some references to things that happen later on in the game, around Lesson 15/16. I don’t mention anything outright, but there are definitely hints at some spoilers, so please don’t read this if you haven’t gotten that far ^^

Obey Me - 18th Century AU

The brothers are less put-together than they are in the actual game, with a few hundred years less development under their belt. It shouldn’t make much of a difference as they’re all at least a few thousand years old, but because of some issues between the brothers that have been dragged into the Human Realm, the Devildom is a disaster.

Issues like... Satan and Beelzebub have been having an ongoing argument, contributing to the many wars and famines across the globe. In his free time, Satan has been travelling to the human realm and assisting global leaders from the sidelines, to relieve stress and to cause chaos for his own amusement. Beelzebub’s anger causes food to spoil easily in the Human Realm. Belphegor watches it all from the sidelines, enjoying watching the Human Realm crumble under the demons’ grasps. He doesn’t like seeing Beel upset, and encourages him to take it out on the humans. Beel himself is reluctant to do so, and most of the damage he does is accidental. He feels guilty for it, but is confused because it seems to make Belphie a lot happier than he has been.

Diavolo decides to put a stop to it, and settles on an exchange program of sorts. He puts it into action immediately, banning the brothers from travelling to the human realm and pulling a few humans into the Devildom. The first exchange goes... poorly. There isn’t any way for the news to really spread in the Human Realm, so the disappearance of a few humans is easily covered up. The next time, the MC is pulled into the Devildom and put into the care of Mammon, who is less hostile than his other brothers.

Mammon believes he can personally benefit from a stronger bond between humans and demons - he’s already in contact with witches, and it would help him gain their trust. At the same time, he’s also willing to follow Lucifer’s lead irregardless of how reluctant he may seem. Because of this, he puts effort into actually protecting his human this time; last time, things hadn’t gone well, and he really hadn’t enjoyed the cleanup. He hadn’t been attached to the humans then, and now that he feels a pull to the MC he’s going to be by their side constantly so they don’t meet the same fate.

Asmo loves the clothing, and is one of the first to bond with the MC. The secrecy of it all! What do you really look like? Why do you insist on covering up so much? He treats the MC like a forbidden treat, but genuinely loves the outfits they wear and, with a few adaptations, starts trying to get similar clothing trending in the Devildom, with some genuine success. His forward and suggestive nature is somewhere between disturbing and almost refreshing - its nice to be around someone so open once you get used to it.

Levi is the same as ever, but without all of his technology. The Devildom is still more advanced than the Human Realm, but I can see him with a typewriter writing out poetry and such. Perhaps he and Satan are closer during this time, Levi not being quite so much of a shut-in, and the two read and write together at times. Levi also helps contribute when Satan travels to the human realm to cause chaos - he doesn’t really care all that much, but its fun to lead any navy, even if its a pathetic human navy, and it helps him to de-stress and gives him some inspiration for his writing.

This changes when the MC arrives. He meets them on that first day when Mammon runs away, and they still go through with the pact plan. He’s a little less awkward, but still talks down to the human until they break their seemingly quiet and controlled nature and snap at him. It creates an interest for him, because he’s never seen humans up so close when he’s not fighting them, and he’d only paid attention to the fictional humans in his books. He ends up watching the MC and spending time with them when Mammon isn’t, one of the more controlled brothers who doesn’t really feel like hurting them because there isn’t some big game to play on a watery battlefield.

Lucifer is... busy. RAD isn’t what it is yet in the game - its tough trying to wrangle the demons in and to get them to adapt and better themselves. He’s determined to help Lord Diavolo however he can, but between getting everything set up and dealing with his brothers’ outbursts, he’s rarely able to see the MC.

When he does, he’s a bit of a mess, jumping between being proud and acting like a nobleman, to teasing them because before they’ve adapted to Asmo’s nature, their reactions to everything are entertaining. He’ll flirt and be downright inappropriate at times to get a reaction out of them, using it to help him stay calm amidst all the chaos. Because he usually ends up feeling calm or excited around them, he takes a liking to them quickly enough and ends up quite defensive.

He has quieter moments with them, too, if they know how to play the pianoforte. He invites them to play duets together, and likes to listen to them sing or work their way through the sheet music he has laying about. One day they quietly make their way through an old, old song he last heard hundreds of years ago, and he stands silently in the doorway before walking off to spend some time with his brothers, the memories of easier times fresh in his head.

Satan is also a mess but for different reasons. He’s suddenly lost his main output, and now there’s a human here that he’s not supposed to mess with? He might be a little manipulative at first, but one day he walks into the library and the MC is curled up reading one of the many books, or has discovered some of his writings and is smiling to themself as they read it before carefully and gently setting it back where it was. He changes after that, becomes quieter and tends to watch them a lot when the two are in the same room together. Were all humans like this when they weren’t fighting with each other? When they didn’t immediately rise to his words? It’s not that he feels guilty for the things he’s done, because he doesn’t feel he has done much other than offer advice to people already wanting to fight and conquer. But a soft spot develops for the quieter moments in human lives, where they create - through embroidery, drawing, painting, singing, etc. He finds a new output through them.

Beel tends to avoid the human, not wanting them to realise that he’s potentially been a catalyst for some of their struggles in the Human Realm. However, he begins to feel left out as his brothers are all one-by-one getting attached and spending more and more time with the human. They remind him of something, some old memories he’d long since pushed down, and now he isn’t sure whether he wants to remember or forget about them. They become easier, softer, to hold onto with this human around, and so he stays by their side whenever he can. They seem almost enchanted by him too, Beel being different from how most humans present themselves at the time. A common curiosity is what holds the two together, really.

Belphegor stays the same as he is in game. When the two eventually do bond, its because of Beel, and because all of his brothers are already so attached to the MC. He wanders around silently for the first few days he’s able to, watching them read with Satan or sneak into Levi’s room to write letters together, listening to them laugh with Mammon and Beel, and play piano with Lucifer - it’d been so long since he’d heard that song, since he’d heard Lucifer sing like that. Its hard not to get attached, and he realises that there’s no ill will in their heart at all despite everything the demons had done. One day he’s in the planetarium, laying on the floor with his eyes closed, taking a break from watching the stars. The MC walks in and freezes when they see him there, and they lay a blanket over him before leaving, and it settles everything into place for him. He could trust them.

Diavolo throws a lot of balls / parties for everyone to get acquainted, and because he heard it was common in the Human Realm. He has the MC and other humans help to teach the brothers some dances, and in return the brothers and himself teach them dances common in the Devildom. This sparks a jealousy between the brothers, who have all in one way or another, started to become attached to the MC. It becomes a silent battle of who can ask them to dance first, who gets to spend the most time with them, and so on.

Diavolo himself joins in if only to see the brothers reactions, and to see how well his plans have all worked out. The human seems content, seems to feel safe, and they smile calmly up at him and he feels guilty because he himself has accidentally caused harm to their kind before. How can they look up at him as if they’re safe in his arms, how can they laugh as the two dance together, practicing and developing a new dance that combines human and demon tradition together to form something new, to begin a new era? He relaxes over time, especially with Barbatos’ guidance and input. The plans are working and the MC is happy, and he feels like both are equal accomplishments.

Barbatos himself is happy to watch it all from the sidelines. He trusts that Diavolo will lead things where they need to go, and if anything happens, he knows he himself is capable of taking care of it. He finds himself curious about the human, who has settled into a life so different from what it had been. He doesn’t get too involved, but regularly brings them treats and, if he passes them at RAD, asks about how they’re doing. He mainly keeps Diavolo updated on anything he notices.

The angels aren’t brought into the picture yet, but a second exchange program is held shortly after that involves the Celestial Realm as well, and both Simeon and Luke quickly grow attached to the MC. They’ve helped so much with settling the Devildom and helping peace grow between the realms. Luke clings to them and asks about how they can cope around so many demons, and enjoys participating when they bake or draw or paint. Simeon’s interest is quieter, and he mostly enjoys watching how they interact with Lucifer, and seeing what traditions they have kept from the human world. Like Satan and Levi, he finds them to be an inspiration, and asks if he can write a story based on them.

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dwellordream · 3 years ago

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“Girls’ schools promoted an intense female peer culture which contrasted with the disciplines of moralistic home environments. Evidence from the accounts of girls attending the myriad female seminaries and girls’ boarding schools throughout the Northeast suggests that their academic programs were relatively gentle, and that their peer culture was powerful and often fun. Despite the best efforts of outnumbered teachers, relations with friends tended to overshadow lessons learned. Overwhelmingly when girls wrote home to their parents, they described the girls they had met, and the antics they had shared; in diaries they noted the romantic intimacies they had formed, with academic work generating only occasional mention.

Girls’ peer life at school was high-spirited, collective, and ritualized all at once. Teachers themselves often participated. At Miss Porter’s in Farmington, Connecticut, in 1860, teachers organized a costume party, suggested characters for everyone, and helped sew costumes—perhaps in part a sewing lesson. (For Lily Dana, suggestions included an elf, Mischief, or a witch.) At a Prospect Hill School party in 1882, townspeople came, the girls wore flowers and white dresses, and Margaret Tileston reported that she had done the quadrille with Miss Clarke and the gallop with Miss Tuxbury—concluding that she had had ‘‘a very nice time.’’

Girls remembering their days at convent schools report similar good times. Julia Sloane Spalding recalled elegiacally her years at Nazareth Academy, a school run by the Sisters of Charity in Louisville, Kentucky, in the 1850s. ‘‘The sisters allowed us to romp and play, dance and sing as we pleased and our stage performances were amusing, if they had no greater merit. Musical soirees, concerts, serenades and minstrelsy kept our spirits attuned to gladness. Varied by picnics, lawn parties, hayrides, phantom parties, nutting parties in summer and candy pullings and fancy balls with Nazareth’s colored band to fiddle.’’

Exclaimed Spalding, ‘‘O what fun!’’ in fond reflection on the good times among the sisters who served ‘‘good substantial sandwiches, cakes and fruit’’ from ‘‘great big baskets.’’ She concluded, ‘‘and so, the spice of life conduced to our health and happiness.’’ Mary Anne Murphy arrived at Nazareth Academy with her sister in 1859 during a quadrille, the slave musicians calling out the figures. She and her sister stood in ‘‘wonderment that such fun was tolerated in a convent.’’ Whatever the nostalgia of middle age, certainly these reflections suggest that elite Catholic and Protestant girls’ academies left some of their richest memories in collective fun.

If teachers sponsored some activities, they implicitly sanctioned many more. Wilfrida Hogan attended the Sisters of St. Joseph convent school in St. Paul in the 1870s and remembers fondly her class, which was known for its lively irreverence: ‘‘Each girl seemed to view the other as to who could play the biggest pranks, or have the most fun.’’

Ellen Emerson overflowed with delight in a letter to her mother (significantly, not her father) while at Miss Sedgwick’s School in Lenox, Massachusetts: ‘‘Every night we do things which it seems to me I can never remember without laughing if I should live to be a hundred. The most absurd concerts, ludicrous charades, peculiar battles etc. etc. Then the wildest frolics, the loudest shrieks, the most boisterous rolling and tumbling that eye ever saw, ear ever heard or heart ever imagined. I consider myself greatly privileged that every night I can see and join such delightful romps.’’

When teachers were around, the pranks were more likely to occur upstairs in student bedrooms. Lily Dana and friends joined together to victimize two other girls by putting crumbs in their bed, and cutting off candle wicks. Another evening Dana noted that she ‘‘Had some fun throwing pillows and nightgowns,’’ and though Miss Porter caught her, it did not seem to dampen much her spirits. Teachers at girls’ schools were occasion- ally disciplinarians, clearly.

One teacher told Lily Dana that ‘‘she supposed my mother let me do everything,’’ and the sisters at St. Mary’s Academy in South Bend, Indiana, turned the piano to the wall in order to keep girls from waltzing with each other. Yet students often emerged victorious; at St. Mary’s they played combs for dance music instead. (One participant reported that ‘‘the Sisters had to give up, for they knew not what to do.’’) The ideology of nurture combined with the shared exuberance of age mates overpowered much teacherly remonstrance.

It is sometimes hard to read such tales of schoolgirl exuberance without wondering whether the inmates had taken over the asylum, however, so a corrective is in order. One such account which requires a second look is the spirited account of Agnes Repplier, In Our Convent Days (1906), about her time in the late 1860s at a Pennsylvania school run by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. Repplier writes of the pranks and passions of her band of seven partners in crime, in an ebulliant account designed to appeal to a readership newly attracted to childhood naughtiness in revolt against Victorian propriety. It is clear in retrospect, though, that she must have concealed or minimized an- other side to her experiences. For the denouement of her story is her expulsion and removal from a school she adored.

Peer cultures could also be cruel and hurtful beyond the control of evangelical teachers, as the practices of hazing in British public schools testify. Some of the most painful memories of inclusion and exclusion in girls’ schools centered around that most primal of media, the sharing of food. Food boxes, customarily sent from home, were the occasion for impromptu parties, a demonstration of wealth and taste, or an opportunity to play favorites.

The elation which greeted such arrivals might well prove a commentary on the regular fare at boarding schools, which sometimes undoubtedly was very poor. (The advice giver Mary Virginia Terhune’s critique of girls’ boarding schools included the accusation that they fed their students from a ‘‘common vat’’ which supplied breakfast, dinner, and supper all together, a practice partially confirmed by one account of eating the same stew at least twice a day at an Ursuline academy in San Antonio in the 1890s.)

At any rate, the arrival of food from home occasioned select gatherings and provided opportunities for discrimination among friends. When one friend’s mother brought good things to eat, Josie Tilton noted that ‘‘we’’ had a feast tonight, explaining for the future who she would always mean when she said ‘‘we’’—‘‘Lizzie, Emma, May and I’’— the groupness secured by inclusion in this select group of diners.

Lily Dana suspected a friend of being miserly and so snuck into her room to inspect. ‘‘There was a box which had been filled with cake, part of a pie and several other things filling her trunk nearly half full. . . . If I had a box sent to me I think I should give my friend more than ‘five or six cookies.’’’ If girls could feel short-changed by each other, relations with parents could also strain over the sending of food boxes, which represented extremely conspicuous con- sumption for girls attempting to ‘‘belong.’’

In an unusually direct letter home in the 1840s, Maria Nellis passed on to her parents her unmediated hurt and sense of disadvantage in the competition for food—and the status that came with it. Elizabeth got her box yesterday and was favoured with six times more things than I was. Her box was so large and heavy the master found it his match to carry it upstairs. She has 4 kinds of cake, nuts, apples, candy, clothing and every thing else, but after all, Dear Poppy, I am not jealous. . . . When you sent that box you did not send half what I asked. I was very disappointed. You said it would be eatables, but it wasn’t. You sent only a few apples, one cake and some clothes. Why didn’t you send me some nuts? I haven’t had a nut yet this winter, and indeed I expected nuts above all things. E. Fox had a box worth speaking of. Now that shows that you don’t care enough for me to even send me a few nuts.

Intermittently, Nellis regained control, but her grievance was palpable. Finally at the end, she acknowledged to her parents that she might be hurting their feelings, reassured them that she loved them all with ‘‘a deep and fervent love,’’ and promised better behavior in the future. Clearly at stake for her was both status in the school world and a primitive sense of deprivation in her own family.

As the correspondence suggests, the emotional atmosphere in girls’ boarding schools was not only intense but more expressive and enacted than that within moralistic, Victorian households. Within private, female, boarding academies, duty-bound Victorian daughters learned languages of sentiment, desire, and emotional excess censored from other parts of their lives. The elaborate conventions accompanying the expression and affirmation of affection among boarding-school girls, sometimes involving teachers as well, was indeed a separate ‘‘female world of love and ritual,’’ as Carroll Smith-Rosenberg affirmed in a classic article about nineteenth-century women’s culture.

In recent years, Smith-Rosenberg’s ‘‘Female World of Love and Ritual’’ has been attacked for its overgeneralizing characterization of an exclusively female emotional sphere in the nineteenth century, but her strongest evidence confirms the significance, the power, and the longevity of girls’ boarding school friendships, which were enacted through elaborate rituals in a range of schools.

The rituals of boarding school life centered around the making and breaking of special friendships, known variously as ‘‘affinities,’’ ‘‘specials,’’ or ‘‘darlings’’ and increasingly as either ‘‘smashes’’ or ‘‘crushes.’’ One way of expressing interest was to ‘‘filipine’’ with someone, to leave her a surprise gift outside her door. (When Lily Dana was caught, she needed to give her gift, a large apple, outright.) Such relationships played out in diaries, letters, and the poetry of autograph books. Girls expected to pair up for many school activities and entertained a variety of ‘‘dates’’ with different girls for walking, going to church, and sleeping.

Sally Dana wrote home to her mother explaining that she was following her father’s advice not to form special friendships too soon, and so had ‘‘slept in eight different beds.’’ During these private moments, girls would share secrets about their own likes and dislikes, each other, their teachers, families, and their school lives. The intricacy of such social calendars opened ample opportunities for misunderstanding and frayed feelings.

These peer relationships characterized elite female seminaries in the North- east, but they also appeared in a range of schools, including the African American Scotia Seminary, founded by the American Missionary Association in Concord, North Carolina, following the Civil War. Scotia had northern roots, which may have influenced its student culture. Glenda Gilmore tells us it was modeled on Mount Holyoke, and was ‘‘calculated to give students the knowledge, social consciousness, and sensibilities of New England ladies, with a strong dose of Boston egalitarianism sprinkled in.’’

Roberta Fitzgerald went to Scotia in the early twentieth century and kept a composition book, likely in 1902, which was filled with the talismans of schoolgirl crushes. A note inside addressed to ‘‘Dear Roberta’’ asked, ‘‘Will you please exchang rings with me today and you may ware mine again,’’ and Roberta herself wrote a sad poem to a friend ‘‘Lu’’ who had thrown her over.

And so you see as I am deemed

Most silently to wait

I cannot but be womanlike

And meekly await my fate.

Ah! sweet it is to love a girl

But truly oh! how bitter

To love a girl with all your heart

And then to hear ‘‘Cant get her.’’

And Lulu dear as I must here

Relinquish with a moan

May your joys be as deep as the ocean

And your sorrow as light as its foam.

On the back of the notebook, which also contained class assignments, was a confidence exchanged with a seatmate. ‘‘I was teasing Bess Hoover about you and she told me she loved you dearly.’’

For those much in demand, this charged atmosphere of flirtation and intimacy in the North and South represented an exhilarating round of fun and sport. For those less secure, diaries and letters presented an obvious outlet for the anguish of the neglected. Agnes Hamilton, a member of a Fort Wayne clan which sent several daughters to boarding school on their way to prominent careers in progressive America, experienced some of both. Sometimes she basked in the glow of family reputation; often she worried over her own inability to keep up with her illustrious cousins. Her unusually detailed accounts document an entire school culture rather than just an individual emotional life.

Hamilton’s first impressions of school social life at Miss Porter’s School were favorable, but even these revealed insecurities to come. In an entry from November 1886, when she was seventeen, Hamilton noted that ‘‘Farmington is just as perfect as they all said it would be, the girls, Miss Porter, and all.’’ Her reservation had to do with her own imperfections: ‘‘But I don’t think I am the right sort of a Farmington girl.’’ Even so, Agnes was in demand, describing a flurry of close attentions from numerous girls. A week later, in her cousin’s absence, she received displaced attentions:

Yesterday Mannie was very nice to me. I suppose she thinks I am lonely without Alice. We walked past the fill around by the river to the graveyard. Then she came in and we talked for an hour. All evening we were together. This afternoon we walked together too for Tuesday is her day with Alice. We went down to the green house where Mannie gave me some lovely roses. I would give anything to know what she thinks of me. . . . Will I ever be able to talk and be jolly as other girls? Some girls are frightfully stupid and yet they can make themselves somewhat agreeable. I have struck up a sudden friendship with Lena Farnam. We were together Saturday afternoon and evening and Sunday I asked her to be my church girl in Alice’s place.

Agnes was still in a position to be picky, noting one drawback: Lena ‘‘seems very nice indeed but I wish she were not only fifteen.’’ Lena was far from the only prospect. Agnes noted another new friend: ‘‘I have seen a great deal lately of Edith Trowbridge too. When she overcomes her shyness she will be exceedingly nice.’’ Not surprisingly, with all the intensity of the socializing, Agnes mentioned with no comment that only three out of thirteen in the class were prepared for their lessons that Tuesday. In those early weeks, Agnes Hamilton’s enthusiasm for this exciting life of emotional intrigue was palpable. The next week (she seems to have written on Tuesdays), Agnes announced to her diary ‘‘the jolliest crush in school’’ involving one of her very own intimates of the week before.

‘‘I walked with Edith Trowbridge this afternoon, on purpose to have her tell me about Lena. I hinted and hinted in vain. I told her about every other crush in school but she never said a word about Lena’s, so at last I told her that I knew all about it but even then she would not say a word about the subject. I hope she will tell Lena so that she will speak to me about it next Saturday when we are driving.’’ The triangulation of such relationships increased the possibilities for intrigue. Agnes wearied a bit of the uncooperative Edith, though, observing that though ‘‘very nice . . . she did not get over her stiffness.’’

Agnes Hamilton seemed to be trying to do her schoolwork, but her roller- coaster social life intervened. One day when she was preparing for class, a friend came by to teach her a dance step, from which she was interrupted by the arrival of a buggy she had rented to take another friend for a ride, the same girl whose ‘‘jolly’’ crush had amused her the week before. (‘‘The more I see of her the better I like,’’ she now reported. ‘‘Her face is rather attractive at first and then it grows on one.’’) When she returned, she found another visitor who stayed till it was time for tea.

The result: ‘‘I have not looked at my Mental since Thursday.’’ By the end of the same day, yet a new ‘‘crush’’ had taken over when Agnes got word of someone’s interest in her, and Agnes wondered ‘‘if I have ever been as actively happy.’’ The frenzy had settled down a week later, when Agnes announced that she had all her walking days ‘‘just as I want them.’’ Each day of the week was assigned a different companion, with whom Agnes would exchange intimacies and gossip, using the rituals of girls’ school life to structure its emotional extravagance.

One must conclude that the intensity of the social life was seen to serve some purpose, for evidence suggests that it was allowed to flourish until the turn of the century. (Lily Dana noted that Miss Porter’s permission had been sought for at least one and probably more sleeping dates.) At that time, new sexualized interpretations of girls’ and women’s friendships brought a crackdown on such friendships. At the time, though, they appear to have received official sanction. In fact, one of the first of Ladies’ Home Journal ’s ‘‘Side Talks with Girls’’ took up the question of ‘‘School Girl Friendships.’’ The Journal endorsed such girlish relationships for their innocence and energy and their precious brevity, saluting ‘‘the giddy, gushing period’’ as one which ‘‘never comes to some and to most it soon passes.’’

In particular, it contrasted this girlish spontaneity with the superficiality of the jaded young lady. Its contrast of ‘‘young girls, lively, radiant, energetic, spirited, loving girls’’ with ‘‘young ladies who talk of their beaux, dresses and the surface shows of society’’ represented another version of a conventional warning against precociousness. Girls’ crushes on other girls were still perceived as innocent and healthy—and would be well after doctors first began to cast suspicion over such relationships in the 1880s and 1890s.”

- Jane H. Hunter, “Competitive Practices: Sentiment and Scholarship in Secondary Schools.” in How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood

#victorian #history #education #sexuality #american #jane h. hunter #how young ladies became girls

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kalaluchi · 4 years ago

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chapter 05: Jagged Stone

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Marinette was confused.

How could two people go from comfortable banter to awkward silence in a span of two days? She’d heard of going from 0 to 100 real quick, but she’d never thought it’d happen to her.

More accurately -- to her and Adrien.

She stared at the back of his head, wondering where she’d gone wrong, as Mme. Bustier droned on with her lesson.

Marinette had really thought she’d finally gotten over the shy-awkward-start phase after the whole movie “date” last Friday. (She still wasn’t sure if that had been meant as an actual date, or as a chill friend hangout. And frankly, she was too scared to ask.)

But then the weekend came and they’d barely talked. (Though she’d been secretly hoping for a random good morning from him or something -- even just once.) She’d been busy baking and cramming assignments and random projects, and just like that the weekend was over.

It was now Monday, and she was sad to think all her efforts to become closer had gone down the drain. They’d exchanged greetings as she made her way to her seat that morning, but it was now 2 periods after lunch, and he hadn’t spoken to her at all. There weren’t even any of the corny memes he used to send when they were both bored in class.

Not that he’d been ignoring her, though. It just seemed like… he’d forgotten about her or had nothing more to say to her.

She probably could have reached out herself… but every time she was about to approach him, she felt like she was walking on eggshells. One wrong step, one wrong word, and something would crack.

She groaned, painfully aware that she was probably overthinking things too much. She checked her phone for the 10th time that period -- no new messages.

Marinette let out a sigh.

One apparently much louder than she’d intended.

“Anything to share with the class, Marinette?” Mme. Bustier’s voice broke through her thoughts.

She bit her lip, her ears red. “No, Mme. Bustier. Sorry,” she murmured, embarrassed.

She thought it was absolutely worth it though, because just then Adrien offered her a small smile in sympathy before turning back to face the front. So there was hope for them yet.

She sat back in her seat, deep in thought again. On impulse, she leaned forward and tapped Adrien’s shoulder while Mme. Bustier was facing the blackboard.

“Do you, uh, can I borrow a pen?” Marinette whispered in his ear.

If she didn’t know any better, she would’ve thought Adrien was blushing slightly from the sudden interaction. “Here you go,” he replied in the same quiet voice.

Her fingers tingled when they brushed his during the exchange, but she thanked him anyway. She really had no intention of using the pen (she’d never leave home without her beloved pencil case, with all the colorful pens and markers, please) so she decided to wait until class ended to return it and use it as an excuse to start a conversation.

Brilliant! This must be what Alya feels when she comes up with one of her schemes.

An hour later, as Adrien began packing his bag to go home, Marinette tapped him on the shoulder nervously. Her brilliant-a-period-ago plan was starting to not feel brilliant at all.

Nevertheless, she held out the pen to him, smiling. “Thanks for lending me this a while ago. You’re a lifesaver.”

He chuckled easily. “No problem. You looked like you needed some life-saving,” he joked.

Marinette couldn’t help but scoff at that. “I can save myself, thanks,” she muttered, in a tone sharper than she intended.

“Of course,” the blond backtracked hastily. “I didn’t mean to assume, I just--”

“Is… that a Jagged wallpaper?” Marinette asked suddenly, immediately forgetting the earlier offense.

“Uh, yeah. You listen to Jagged Stone?”

“Listen to Jagged? Get out, I practically breathe Jagged! Wow, I can’t believe he didn’t come up once in our conversations…”

“Well, I… didn’t really peg you to be a Jagged girl, honestly. No offense, though, I really don’t know why it didn’t occur to me. I mean, now it seems obvious. You’re nearly as cool as him.”

“Shut up,” Marinette laughed, waving away the compliment. “No one is as cool as Jagged. And it’s okay, I didn’t peg you to be a Jagged fan either.”

“You’re kidding. How could I not? A great singer, and a great player too. Piano, guitar, you name it! Heck, I bet he could even play, like, a lyre or something.”

Marinette scrunched her nose and raised an eyebrow. “A liar and a player at once? Can’t say that’s exactly my type. I’ve met too many of those, thanks.”

Red spots bloomed in Adrien’s cheeks as he sputtered, “No, I’m not-- that’s not what I--”

“I’m joking,” she interrupted, honestly surprised at his reaction. So annoyingly endearing.

“Oh.” Adrien sighed in relief, as Marinette bit back a smile.

There was an awkward pause as she thought of what else to add.

She had just opened her mouth when Adrien blurted, “There’s actually a Jagged show tomorrow.”

“Yeah, part of the Jagged Worldwide tour, right? I’ve got my room all set up with 3 flavors of popcorn to eat while I stream it.”

“Actually,” Adrien said somewhat nervously, “I may or may not have an extra ticket to the show, thanks to the Agreste brand and all.”

“Get out,” Marinette deadpanned, in shock.

(Adrien noted that that was the second time she’d said that in the last five minutes, and chuckled internally. How cute.)

“So, you wanna go?”

There it was again. That… awkward is-this-a-friend-thing situation. Marinette’s conscience told her no, don’t fall for his trap! He definitely only sees you as a friend, you’ll just get hurt if you hope for more! Which, true… but then again. This was Jagged. How could she say no?

“I’m in.” She beamed, bouncing on the soles of her feet. Even though the concert was on a school night, she was fairly sure her parents would let her go once they found out it was another ‘date’ with Adrien.

“Hey, Nino! Marinette said she’s game to come with us to the concert tomorrow,” Adrien called over his shoulder at his best friend.

“Sweet! See you there, my dude! I’ll pass the news on to Alya.” He gave a last wave before leaving.

Ah. So definitely not a date. At least she was aware.

Unless… a double date? Marinette groaned inwardly. Why did things have to be so complicated? She could almost feel the headache she was going to get from all this. (Especially now knowing that Alya would be involved.)

Marinette had never seen so many people in her life.

If she thought her bakery’s end-of-the-month sales were insanely crowded, that was nothing compared to the mass of people at the concert grounds, tightly packed and eagerly awaiting the arrival of their favorite singer.

As usual, something went wrong right off the bat. Their little group of four had gathered outside the grounds at 4:30pm sharp, but it hadn’t even been five minutes since they’d entered and already Alya and Nino were nowhere to be seen.

Marinette panicked immediately, obviously, frantically searching for the telltale brown-red-tipped hair of her best friend.

Adrien calmed her down immediately, saying that the lovebirds probably wanted to ‘spend some alone time together.’

Had Marinette been in a normal state of mind, she might’ve noticed that this practically reeked of another of Alya’s schemes. As it is, she simply allowed herself to be led by the blond-haired boy.

“Let’s go this way so we’re closer to the stage,” Adrien said gently, steering her one way. “Here, you can… hold my hand so we don’t get separated,” he added softly, taking her hand in his.

Soft. She was surprised to find that his hands were smooth and uncalloused. Well… she didn’t know what she had expected, but she thought they were absolutely fine as they were.

They finally made their way to the front as the singer stepped onto the stage to an eruption of cheers. She had to bite back a pout as Adrien dropped her hand to clap his own. She was about to suggest they link hands for the entirety of the concert, but all thoughts disappeared once the music started playing. She let herself get lost in the song, letting go of all her fears and doubts just this once, dancing to the tune, jumping to the beat.

A few minutes in, Adrien leaned in close. “I love this song,” he said, speaking directly into her ear to be heard over the crowd’s screams.

“Me too!” she shouted in reply, hoping in her heart it were actually words of endearment he’d said.

Once the first five songs ended, Jagged Stone stepped up to the mic, and a quiet hush spread through the crowd, waiting with bated breath for what he would say.

“I just want to thank everyone here for coming,” he started, pausing when the crowd roared their approval. He laughed heartily. “Never in my life would I imagine I’d be getting crowds like this, especially right here in Paris. Not many people know this, but I didn’t always like the name Jagged Stone. I mean, as is, it’s really nothing, right? It is what it is: a stone that is jagged. That means cut different from the rest, sort of sharp around the edges, prone to hurting others. Who would want that, right? Growing up, I was told I’d probably amount to nothing, so maybe I should choose a safer, more secure path. But then-- and here’s the key-- I grew up. And look where I am now.”

Marinette whooped along with the other concert goers, wanting her support to be evident.

“See, that’s the thing,”Jagged continued, on a roll. “These things take time. I came to love the name Jagged Stone. Because over the years, stones that are jagged smoothen around the edges. They become toned, weathered. They become the kind of precious stone you see being used in jewelry, maybe. Suddenly they’re something beautiful, valuable. Meaningful. Are they different from what they were before? Of course. But are they still themselves? Absolutely. Was that greatness there all along, right from the start? Without a doubt.

So to everyone out there: don’t rush it. Everything moves at its own pace. You may seem sharp around the edges, but that’s just how we are. Other people might not know how to approach those edges, afraid of getting hurt. But give it time. The ride will smoothen out. I want you to remember that there is already something valuable in each of you, even at this very moment. It’ll just take time for you to get used to that something, to hone it into the best version of you.

And speaking of time, I’d like to thank you all for the time you’ve given to be here! With that I’ll be performing my last song of the concert, my brand new single: Miraculous!”

“That. Was. Amazing.”

Ten minutes later, Adrien and Marinette had navigated their way out of the thick of the crowd, and were making their way to the meet-up spot as previously discussed.

“Definitely,” Marinette agreed, taking a bite of the cotton candy she’d bought. “That speech before the last song? That was my favorite part.”

“Really? He played six songs and not one of them classifies as your favorite part?”

“Oh, be quiet,” Marinette scoffed, shoving his shoulder lightly. “Stop judging. It just… hit close to home, I guess.”

“Oh… Well, uh, I don’t really know any of the context, but you do know you’re pretty amazing, right? As you are right now.”

Marinette took another bite to hide the blush spreading across her cheeks. “Thanks,” she said meekly, unsure of how else to respond.

“There you are!” a voice called. Marinette suddenly found herself enveloped in a tight hug. “I can’t believe we got separated right at the start! Nino here wouldn’t even let me go look for you because we’d found a great spot, he said.”

“Hey!” her boyfriend protested. “You were the one who said let the two lov-- oof, did you have to step on me foot?”

“Oops, accident,” Alya said lightly. “So anyway, how did you two find the concert?”

“It was fun,” Marinette replied softly, wrapping her arms around her best friend’s waist.

“Yeah? Something interesting happen?”

Marinette laughed. “No, I guess not. It was just… I don’t know, it seemed pretty--”

“-- miraculous,” Adrien finished, and they all had to agree.

As they headed back, Marinette reflected that maybe it wasn’t so bad she’d been treading on eggshells just the other day. Maybe her relationship with Adrien was just like what Jagged had said in his speech. At the moment rough at the edges, either party cautious of how to proceed in fear of hurting the other or getting hurt. And that was okay.

Because eventually, it would smoothen out.

And eventually, maybe, just maybe, it would bloom into something beautiful-- something hopefully more than friendship.

All they really needed was time.

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#adrinette april 2021 #adrinette #miraculous ladybug #idk what im doing sorry #ml #mlb #mlbcn #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng #adrienette #mlb fics #adrinetteapril2021 #day 5: jagged stone #jagged stone

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notyourdayrdream · 4 years ago

Text

Summer’s Almost Over (So Come Spend it with Me)

Day Thirteen, Side A: Wry

(read it here on AO3)

A/N: this is the second part to yesterday’s chapter, so it would make more sense if you read that one first!

Blaine was getting the feeling Kurt wouldn’t call.

The hours ticked by; eight, nine, ten, eleven. He did everything to distract himself, from looking through his song journal to facetiming Leslie and wishing her grandmother a happy birthday in person. He showered and was about to tuck his knees under himself and accept his fate when his phone rang. It scared the shit out of him.

He scrambled to find it, of course he left it on the kitchen island. He nearly tripped over his feet, and in the whole spectacle he missed the call.

“Shit.” Blaine dialed back almost immediately, pacing back and forth his apartment as he waited for the line to pick up. “Hey, sorry I missed your call, my phone was…Kurt?”

The other end was muffled on the other end, the sound of moving fabric pressed its way into Blaine’s ear. “Yeah?”

“Are you crying?” Blaine asked, pulling on a pair of dark jeans. He always felt so underdressed around Kurt. He grabbed his keys and slipped out of his apartment.

Kurt sniffed. “Yeah. I’m outside the complex. On the steps.” Blaine nodded to himself and took the stairs two at a time.

He was there when Blaine opened the door, slim body leaning against the rusted railing. Blaine had to admit he looked gorgeous; light skinny jeans and a brown bomber jacket. But he didn’t give himself too long to indulge when Kurt turned around and his eyes were puffy.

“Hey,” he said, eyes a mix of surprise and relief. This was the first time Blaine had ever seen him nervous. “I, um. Hey, Blaine.”

“I’m guessing this meant it went bad?” Blaine asked, mainly to make him smile.

Kurt gave a wry smile, his nose scrunching up. “You could say that.”

“C’mon.” Blaine wrapped his arm around Kurt’s and led them down the street. “Let’s go out.” Kurt followed him and they walked in comfortable silence. He wondered if this was what having a boyfriend was like.

It had to be twelve thirty when Blaine opened the creaky doors to a twenty-four hour diner a few blocks away. The linoleum floors were chipped and the neon sign had been broken long before Blaine moved into the neighborhood. It was empty save for an old man, who read a newspaper with a date of 1969.

As he and Kurt slid into opposite ends of a booth with cracked pleather seats, a woman in an off white uniform came up to them with a notepad and pencil.

“Well if it isn’t Blaine Warbler,” she smiled with her eyes instead of her mouth. “And a friend!”

“Hello, Ms. Donna,” Blaine said, blushing from the nickname. “This is Kurt, he’s a friend of mine.” Kurt waved hello and went back to peering at the menu.

“It’s so nice to meet you! You know, Blaine doesn’t ever bring people here with him.”

“Is that so?” Kurt smiles at Donna and then at Blaine, mirth dancing the blue ocean of his eyes.

Blaine blurted, “How’s your granddaughter?” As he moved to kick Kurt under the table. He missed terribly and stubbed his toe on wood.

“She’s just lovely, she misses you.” Donna smiled and placed a hand the color of black coffee atop his. Her touch was warm and papery. “You’ll be back for piano lessons soon, right?”

“Of course! I’m out of school for the summer, so tell Destiny I can’t wait to see her.” He knew the girl had a little crush on him, and he just didn’t have the heart to tell her he liked boys. He thought it was sweet.

She smiled and jerked, as if remembering she was at work. “Now tell me what you two would like,” she said, pulling her short pencil from his wispy gray curls.

They ordered coffee and a water, and Donna winked at Blaine as obviously as possible on her way to the bar. He didn’t know how much more red his face could get.

“She’s nice,” Kurt said, taking his coffee with a ‘thank you’ after Donna placed their drinks on the table. “I didn’t know you played piano.”

Blaine shook two sugar packets, enough to make his drink just sweet enough. Kurt, on the other hand, poured at least for packaged creamers into his, until the drink was the color of caramel. “Yeah, it’s the first instrument I learned to play.” The only one his dad said was acceptable for an Anderson to learn. It was classy and gave you the right kind of character. Blaine still didn’t know if he played it out of spite or not.

Kurt’s eyes went wide. “First? You can play more?”

Blaine went over the list in his head. Once he learned piano and violin, the other ones fell into place. But he didn’t want to brag, so he just said, “Just a few more.” And kept the brag humble.

He tried to move on and get the subject off him.

“So how was your date?”

To his horror, Kurt’s nose scrunched up like he was trying not to cry. He looked up at the ceiling for a moment and then back down, his eyes glassy when he did. “Could we not talk about that right now?”

Blaine’s eyebrows knitted together. He reached out for Kurt’s hand. “Yeah, of course.” Even if he wanted to know who hurt him so badly, he didn’t want to pry.

Kurt’s lips turned up; a half smile, half gratitude. He blew his nose on a scratchy napkin. After a moment, he smirked and said, “So, I’m the first person you’ve brought here?”

Blaine felt the blood rush to his face. Something about being with Kurt made that happen more frequently. “Shut up,” he said in feigned indignation, more embarrassed than anything. Kurt laughed, deep and unabashed and absolutely gorgeous. Blaine couldn’t help but laugh too.

Blaine also couldn’t help but think of it as a coincidence when the older man slid fifty cents into the crackling jukebox to play “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” by Frankie Valli, and they way Kurt’s eyes traced the outline of his lips when he thought he wasn’t looking.

The sky was dark blue and stormy by the time they exited the diner. It wasn’t close at all to sunrise, but Blaine liked to imagine the sun peeking out from the horizon.

Kurt tapped his shoulder and handed him an earbud. He looked happier now, his date hopefully forgotten. Blaine popped the earbud in and relaxed his shoulders when the soft melody of a Motown flooded his senses.

“So what’re your plans now that you’ve graduated?” Blaine asked. It was a silly question, sort of like something a parent would ask. But it had occurred to him he didn’t actually know Kurt too well.

Kurt sighed. “I actually don’t know anymore.” He jogged to make the pedestrian cross signal countdown. He grabbed Blaine’s wrist to pull him forward, who was mercilessly dragged behind. Stupid short legs.

He continued once they made it to the other side of the street. He hadn’t let go of Blaine’s wrist, and it occurred to him that he didn’t want him to. “My friend, Rachel, she’s on her Broadway run as Fanny Brice,” he smiled fondly, as if remembering a distant memory. “She’s brilliant. Meanwhile I’m playing Peter Pan and Prince Eric at preschools and nursing homes.”

“I just don’t know if this thing I put my whole life into is something I want anymore.” Blaine had noticed that Kurt had this amazing talent of not sounding bitter or jealous, even when he had every right to be. “Do you ever feel like that?”

He thought about it for a moment while the song ended. “All the time,” Blaine admitted for the first time out loud. “I’m good at singing and acting, I always have been. I was in show choir because it was safe. Now it just feels stagnant.” He had been doing the same thing since high school. Singing, dancing around a stage, being one of the few gay men in his classes able to play ‘manly’ roles. Because he could hide. Blaine was so tired of hiding.

“What if I want to be a teacher, or a doctor or something?” He exclaimed. It was an exaggeration, but still. He wasn’t only a theatre nerd. He didn’t have to only be that.

Kurt laughed. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. A New York Never, but there was nobody on the quiet suburban streets anyway. He turned so they were facing each other, and once again his face was filled with this anxiety Blaine couldn’t pinpoint. “You’re full of surprises, Blaine Warbler.” Blaine met his eyes, and instead of backing away, he stared right back. “You’re a wonder.”

They walked the rest of the way home in silence, hands swinging slightly between them.

“I had a lot of fun,” Kurt said, wrapping his earbud wires around his phone. He and Blaine stood on opposite ends of the door to their complex. “Thanks for getting me out of my funk.”

“It was my pleasure,” Blaine offered lamely. His pleasure? What was he, an eighteenth century gentleman? “I mean, it was no big deal. I’ll see you later, okay?” He held back a yawn and opened the door to the dark foyer.

“Wait!” Kurt cried, a lot too loud for the two of them. He was rocking on his heels. He was nervous?

“I um, liked doing this with you, and I was wondering…God, why is this so hard?” He cut himself off abruptly. It was sort of freaking Blaine out to see him like that, but he was more confused than anything.

“Kurt—”

“Would you like to go out again sometime?” He blurted, eyes screwed shut. “At a place a bit fancier than a diner?”

Oh.

“Yes, Blaine breathed out way too quickly. “I mean, if you’d want to.”

“Really?” Kurt asked, as if there was a possibility he’d say no. His eyes lit up. “That’s cool. I’ll text you or something.” He tried to cover up his excitement by biting his lip, to no avail.

“Yeah, yeah,” Blaine nodded until he gave himself whiplash. “Well, goodnight.” He moved to shut the door. Oh the embarrassing celebration dance he was going to do when he got upstairs.

“Blaine?” Kurt called out again, a chuckle at the edge of his words. “Could you hold the door?” He pointed, and of course. Only Blaine would be living in the same complex as his crush.

#tan lines and tan hands #spaceorphan's sophisticated challenge: wry #klaine #klaine fanfiction #wait now i’m actually liking this #what if i continued it whoops #also what is it with me and diners?#they’re peak romance places for me #glee

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