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skyward-floored · 9 months ago

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Hey thanks @wizard-finix!

How many works do you have on AO3?

46! Which is incredibly overwhelming I can’t believe I have so many XD Not to mention if you take into account how several of them are actually oneshot collections, so the real number is probably closer to... 70 or so 😅

What’s your total AO3 word count?

515,383 and WHEN DID THAT GET SO BIG

How many fandoms have you written for, and what are they?

12, but almost all of those are various zelda games that are classified as separate fandoms. So more like 2: the legend of Zelda and related fandoms, and LEGO Ninjago.

Top five fics by kudos:

1. Brethren in a Cradle is in the lead at 986 kudos (!!!). It’s pretty much always been my most popular work though so I’m not too surprised lol. Wild ends up with a baby, Dark Link is trying to get him, good times.

2. Because They Aren’t Suffering Enough in Canon (Linkeduniverse Whumptober 2022) is next, which is my whunptober collection from 2022. This has some good fics in it, I’m glad so many people like it!

3. Accidental Domestication is third, my silly fic about the chain befriending random wolves that they mistook for Wolfie, which spiraled slightly out of control. It’s got silliness, it’s got drama, it’s even got bunnies. One of my favorite things I’ve written honestly XD

4. Always Darkest Before the Dawn (Linked Universe Whumptober 2023) is fourth. Somehow two of my most popular fics are whumptober ones?? How did that happen. Well again, I’m pretty proud of some of the fics in here, so I’m happy people like them.

5. And somehow Troubled Waters is in fifth, my first mermaid Legend fic. I’m kinda surprised this one made it onto the list, but I guess it’s more popular then I thought. Mermaid Legend is always a good time.

Do you respond to comments?

I try to! I don’t always manage to, but I’m trying to be better about it. I appreciate comments so much though, you guys are so lovely <3

What’s the fic with the angstiest ending you’ve ever written?

Oh boy. I... honestly don’t know? I rarely end a fic on a solely bad note, I like my hopeful/happy endings. Maybe this Incredibles au oneshot? It’s pretty angsty.

Do you write crossovers?

I write mainly lu, so... yep. Plus my incredibles au could maybe be classified as a crossover, so yeah I do!

Have you ever gotten hate on a fic?

Not... hate per-say, but I’ve had a few comments that have been like “well I would’ve written it like this” which like. Okay..? Why did you tell me that? XD Oh I also got a bot once that left a really scathing comment, but it was just a bot so it wasn’t too big a deal.

Do you write smut?

Nope.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I hope not.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope! I wouldn’t be adverse to it though!

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Zelink!!! Pretty much every iteration of them, but skyward sword will always be especially special to me :]

What’s a wip that you want to finish, but don’t think you ever will?

Aside from all my long fics you mean? XD Well, I’ve got a very old fic I started years ago, but I’ve barely touched it since, and haven’t felt any draw to try and wrangle it into something worth publishing, so I don’t know that I’ll ever finish it.

What are your writing strengths?

People have told me my characterization is good, as well as how I write emotions. I personally think I’m pretty good at dialogue— at least that’s what I tend to struggle with the least when I write!

What are your writing weaknesses?

Balancing descriptions with pacing and dialogue, I feel like I can never find a good moment to describe things XD I also struggle with being a perfectionist, I reread my drafts a lot before posting them, and I can get bogged down in that “this must be perfect” mindset.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fics?

It’s neat! I haven’t really done it much, but it’s cool to have more then one language in fics.

What was the first fandom you ever wrote for?

Warrior cats... I still have a couple pages of some fanfiction for it hiding in a notebook somewhere, but those are never seeing the light of day XD

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written so far?

I can’t pick!!! I like a lot of the stuff I’ve written I have no clue what my favorite is... Brethren in a cradle will always be special to me though, working on it got me through some hard stuff (and still does!)

No pressure tags for some folks: @adrift-in-thyme @hotcheetohatredwastaken @nancyheart11 @telemna-hyelle

Ao3 tag game!

THANKS @ragecndybars FOR THE TAG I APPRECIATE IT

*cracks knuckles* lets do this

How many works do you have on AO3?

24 works! I would have never expected to have that many 5 years ago, hahaha

What's your total AO3 word count?

186,291! oh wow, almost 200k!! (unsurprisingly PT minato takes up over a third of that LMAO)

How many fandoms have you written for, and what are they?

10 fandoms! I'm counting Persona 3, 4, and 5 and separate, but I'm grouping all the Zelda fandoms together since it's all Linked Universe fic.

Here's the breakdown!

The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms (6)

Persona 5 (5)

Persona 3 (5)

SPY x FAMILY (Anime) (3)

Wizard101 (Video Game) (3)

SPY x FAMILY (Manga) (3)

Runescape (Video Games) (3)

Pirate101 (Video Game) (3)

Persona 4 (2)

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom (2)

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga (1)

Star Wars - All Media Types (1)

The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Warriors (1)

Top five fics by kudos:

The Ghost of Mementos/Stygian Ringlet (Persona3/5) - to the surprise of absolutely no one, since this is currently my longest fic. I'm very happy with Stygian Ringlet being the top because I love my boys :)

True Crime Special on the Midnight Channel (Persona 4/5) - my Ren has a TV Dungeon fic! also very proud of the dungeon concept for this one, I really need to finish the last two chapters

Dark Clouds on the Horizon (Linked Universe/TOTK) - I feel like this one got a lot of momentum partially because it was directly in the wake of TOTK's release, but I'm happy with how it turned out :)

Strangers Are Just Friends You Haven't Met (Persona 3/SPY x FAMILY) - this was a collab series with mewrose and a few others in the marigolds discord! we were throwing ideas at the wall to see what stuck and I really had a lot of fun with Shinjiro-related prompts, because I LOVE him and hitting him with the isekai baseball bat into a universe with Anya brings me great joy

Salt Tears and Raindrops (Linked Universe/TOTK) - directly related to Dark Clouds, and I'm glad people enjoyed good ol' fashioned angst >:) (I do need to post more of my wips, I do have a couple more roleswap AU wips that I want to post)

Do you respond to comments?

Yes! I almost always do because I really appreciate them and its my way of saying thanks for the comment! If I don't comment it's because I lost track of it or because I can't think of a response.

What's the fic with the angstiest ending you've ever written?

Probably Salt Tears and Raindrops. I was in a Mood and decided to go for the tried-and-true method of putting fictional characters I like through the emotional wringer. That's how I got the rough draft for this fic :)

Do you write crossovers?

*looks at my persona fics and recent LU fics*

...I think it's safe to say most of my fics these days fall under crossovers lmao

Have you ever gotten hate on a fic?

I wouldn't say I have? One or two comments that came off as rude, but no actual hate, thankfully. If I did, I forgot about it. I've been blessed by wonderfully nice readers <3

Do you write smut?

Nope. I don't read it, so I wouldn't know how to write it anyway.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of? I sure hope not.

I have seen a couple short fics slightly imitate Ghost of Mementos though, which I thought was really sweet that they liked it enough to inspire their own writing.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope, but I'd definitely be open to it!

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

RYOMINA. Hands down. I love them so much, I am so mentally unwell about these two

What’s a WIP that you want to finish, but don’t think you ever will?

My two Runescape fics, Whispers in the Temple and Welcome to the Jungle. I absolutely loved going hogwild with rewriting old quests in Runescape, but I psyched myself out of Welcome to the Jungle because I got overly anxious about accidentally doing bad representation.

(in hindsight, it probably wouldn't have been as big a deal as I thought; it's hard to make it worse considering how bad Legend's Quest was with the british-african stereotypes. that quest DID NOT age well.)

I also want to finish Snake in the Grass; that was my first attempt at a genuine mystery plot and I really liked playing with Warriors in that fic in the context of the gang trying to figure out who the heck is trying to murder him.

What are your writing strengths?

I feel like I'm pretty good at dialogue! I try to make sure it matches the character's speech patterns and personality. Really well-written dialogue can tell you who's speaking without actually telling who it is. (For example, the way I write them: Minato speaks as few words as possible and has very little filter with his observations when he does share them, and Shinjiro is pretty rough around the edges, with shortened words and the occasional swear. Warriors is good with words and wit, but he has a certain military-esque directness and doesn't dance around the topic.)

I do try hard to keep the plot clear and understandable over everything else, so probably that as well.

Also, now that I think about it, maybe fight sequences? I don't do them much, but I do enjoy the challenge of making a clear sequence of what happens in a fight and trying to make it understandable. Fight sequences are easy to skip or gloss over, but I think of them like their own miniature plot. What happens? What surprises are there? What are their movesets? How do they get the upper hand? (and of course, what looks cool as fuck)

What are your writing weaknesses?

Time management. I tend to over-proofread since I beta my own work, and often I'll go back to tweak stuff if I had additional thoughts to add to it, or extra insight. Lately, it takes longer to write chapters than I'd like.

Also, dialogue-heavy scenes often get very chaotic in my WIPs because of the way I rough out fics. I'll throw together a bunch of dialogue bits I think would be cool to include, and sometimes they'll clash or get really messy, especially if there's lots of characters (looking at the latest two chapters of Stygian Ringlet)

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fics?

I think it's cool! It adds flavor to fics. If it's more than one short phrase though, or if it's story important, then I do prefer that there is a translation in the author's notes. I haven't done any non-English dialogue in fics, save for one memorable adventure into trying to figure out how Latin grammar structure works for a character that didn't speak English.

What was the first fandom you ever wrote for?

Wizard101 and Pirate101. I was obsessed with those two for YEARS. I really, really liked pirate stories in high school, and having a cast of crewmates that accompany you throughout the game really inspired me to write my first fic featuring my OC. (I was also into One Piece at the time, but I never wrote for it.)

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written so far?

Stygian Ringlet. It's really dear to my heart. I have poured so much love and effort into that fic, and the reception on it has completely blown me away.

THANKS FOR THE TAG!! Uhhhmmm for tags I'm going to go with @skyward-floored, @catreginae and @breannasfluff (but only if you want to!! no obligation of course)

and of course any other writers that want to do it as well!! go forth

#thanks again!!#tag game #long post

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alltooreid · 4 years ago

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Invisible String

Although Spencer Reid and the Reader don’t find themselves in a romance with each other until well into their adulthood, their relationship has been decades in the making. Almost as if something as been pulling them together all these years.

A/N: sorry for such a long wait but i’ve been struggling a lot mentally as of late. i hope you guys enjoy this one shot!! As always requests are open and heavily encouraged!! And of course this is inspired by the taylor swift song of the same name :)) Also keep in mind although the following scenes are heavily inspired by some scenes in Criminal Minds, elements of them have been slightly altered to fit in Y/N as a character.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Reader

Type: a cute strangers to lovers fluff fic!

Word Count: 3.9K

Content Warnings: typical criminal minds case discussion, mentions of child trafficking when discussing this case, but no real detail. slight spoilers for season eight (beginning maeve stuff) and tiny spoilers for season fifteen (briefly mentions max but nothing really important to the plot at all)

“Time, curious time Gave me no compasses, gave me no signs Were there clues I didn't see?”

You had met Spencer Reid 3 times before you had really met him.

It was almost silly to think about it now. Now that you and Spencer have been dating for 3 years, it was strange to believe there were so many chances for you two to meet years earlier.

When you were sixteen years old, you got your first part time job. You worked at a self-serve frozen yogurt shop called Iced Dreams. You hated it so much. Your manager was a total creep, your older coworkers were rude and condescending to you, since you were one of the youngest people working there, but most of all you hated the uniforms.

Consisting of a very stupid looking hat, bright pink with randomly embrodiered teal patterns, an outdated bright teal shirt, it had been given to you from a dirty bin in the back, and judging by the sewn in shoulder pads, it had to be at least a couple decades old.

So one day, you didn’t wear the hat.

It wasn’t entirely purposeful. You couldn’t find it, you searched your room, you searched your car, so eventually you had to leave without it to prevent being late. Still, as you clocked it and passed the box of extras in the office something made you decide to leave it alone.

You were about 8 minutes into your shift when your manager approached you. “Y/N? Where’s your hat sweetheart?” You hated this man so much. You had gone to your parents time and time again, recounting his creepy behavior towards you and the other teenage girls who you worked with, but they refused to let you quit.

When you had started working there, he used to enforce this ridiculous rule that all the female workers had to wear skirts as part of their uniform, but you had gathered all the sixteen and seventeen year olds who worked there and all threatened to quit if he didn’t change the policy. So you were no stranger to breaking and defying the rules.

“Yeah I couldn’t find it, sorry.” you shrugged.

He chuckled and reached his hat out to touch your face. You jerked back, you almost wanted to refuse to wear one of the stupid extra hats just so that you could get fired.

“Well, Y/N its policy sweetie. No matter how special you are to me you still need to wear the hat. There’s extras in the office.”

“No way I’m wearing one of those. I bet they have like lice or something.”

He pursed his lips and sighed “Well I suppose that beautiful hair is just too pretty to wear a used hat huh. . . What do you suggest? If you’re working you have to wear it.”

You laughed, “Well you could let me go home.”

He paused, “Why don’t you go sit in the office, I’ll come talk to you in a minute.”

So you did, for about 10 minutes you sat in the office, surrounded by frozen yogurt flavor marking posters and boxes of old uniforms, and each passing minute you feared for the worst. Maybe you were actually getting fired? You really didn’t want to go that far, because, as much as you hated it, you really needed this job.

When your manager finally came to talk to you he held a small salted caramel frozen yogurt, your personal favorite flavor, and a twenty dollar bill. He handed them both to you.

“You seem so stressed Y/N, why don’t you take the day and go get lunch. My treat,” he said, smiling that weird twisted smile that always made your full body shiver.

However you were broke as hell, and no teenager in their right mind would ever pass up free food, so you took it, grabbed your keys and started to leave

Yet as soon as you walked out the back door you dropped your frozen yogurt, cup fully upside down, onto the pavement. You cursed, you hadn’t even taken a bite of it yet, and it looked like he had put coconut flakes on it, and you loved coconut. Still, you had your twenty bucks, and that was a pretty sweet pay out considering you were only clocked in for about 20 minutes.

So you got Chinese food, and spent what was supposed to be your shift in the shopping mall across town, completely and blissfully unaware of the fact the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI was dragging your manager away in handcuffs.

➽───────────────❥

Young Spencer Reid had only joined the FBI about a month ago. Despite being a genius, and providing crucial information to the solving of cases, he was aware of the most obvious. He was only twenty two years old, and he was scrawny as hell.

He felt this intense need to prove himself, especially to make Gideon proud.

So when they got a case about a the kidnapping and sex trafficking of teenage girls, he saw it as something he could really involve himself in. Based on the profile, it wasn’t going to be a large, strong, confident unsub who Morgan needed to tackle. This man would be ugly sure, but he would be a manipulative mastermind. Reid could work with that, he could prove himself.

He surprised everyone with his sheer work ethic and determination to find this man, and through consistently revising and delivering the profile soon enough they got a hit. A young woman in her early twenties called the tipline and reported her own manager. Insisting he fit the profile perfectly, and described how strangely he treated the minors who worked there, and how he almost exclusively hired young girls, treated them great and then switched as soon as they became legal.

So Garcia did her magically digging, and soon enough the FBI was tearing up a frozen yogurt shop, looking for any evidence of pedophilia. Garcia was even brought along, as she was pivotal to discovering any secret files in his computer.

At first, all they could find were strange compilation videos and under employees skirts. Spencer, and the rest of the team, were struggling to connect how he could get so many videos from an angle like this without anyone noticing or reporting him, until Gideon uncovered an old dusty pair of shoes, in which the right one held a small camera at the toe.

Although this was absolutely disgusting, it wasn’t enough to prove he was running the ring or kidnapping the girls, so Garcia kept digging. Meanwhile, Spencer tried to make himself useful by checking out the back of the store.

That’s where he found your clock-out receipt.

“Hey guys, we might want to take a look at this,” he shouted out.

Morgan grabbed the paper from his hand, “Ok, I don’t get it kid, it’s trash.”

Spencer pointed to the details on the slip, “Yeah but it says here she clocked out 18 minutes ago after only working for 23 minutes and 46 seconds. If this guy is our unsub, this girl could be in a lot of trouble.”

“Maybe she’s still here, has anyone checked out the parking lot yet?”

Spencer shook his head, and followed Morgan out the back door. There they discovered some almost completely melted salted caramel frozen yogurt.

Morgan bent down to investigate, “Yeah, we gotta get this to the lab, but I can tell you right now that there’s clearly more than just coconut topping this yogurt. It also means we have another victim.”

Spencer crouched down as well, “Not necessarily.”

“What do you mean kid? We’re missing a teenage girl and we’ve already found illegal evidence on this guy's computer. She’s in trouble.”

“Well judging the shape and inscription of these pills it appears to be some pretty strong rohypnol, almost certainly prescription grade. And ingesting it like this means she probably would have begun to feel its effects fairly early, I would predict 15 minutes. She clocked out 18 minutes ago, so even if she left exactly at that time she would have certainly crashed her car on the way home. The nearest residence is 8 minutes away from here, we’re in a complete shopping district. There’s only two cars out here and neither have a passed out driver, so I would bet she didn’t eat any of it. Also, the only spoon out here is still wrapped in plastic, “ Spencer analyzed.

Morgan sighed, “Well what do we even do then?”

Before Spencer could answer Hotch opened the back door. “We got him.”

Spencer turned to Morgan, “I’m sure her phone number is somewhere inside, I say we call her and make sure she’s ok. She probably doesn’t even know this is happening right now.”

So he did find your phone number, and although he initially pushed the phone to Morgan, he just chuckled and pushed it back.

“No way pretty boy. You’re the know-it-all with all that profiling out there, you can call her,” and before he could protest Morgan left, so Spencer was left to call you.

And strangely, for it being the first time he would ever interact with the love of his life, he thought nothing of it.

And that was the first time you had met Spencer Reid.

➽───────────────❥

The second time was years and years later, when you were waitressing night shifts to make extra money. You had never forgotten meeting Spencer Reid the first time, but this was the first time you would ever see his face.

You were slightly concerned when you got a call from a man, whose name you had now long forgotten, claiming he worked for the FBI. Although you weren’t incredibly surprised to hear your manager committed such heinous crimes against children, you were taken aback by how close you had come to becoming one of his victims.

But that was 9 years ago. In your college days it became a fun story you told at frat parties, but you were 25 now. Sometimes you would think about the incident when you couldn’t sleep, and if you were feeling feisty you would use it as an icebreaker or a “two truths, one lie” statement, but otherwise you didn’t really think about it.

You had plenty of other things to worry about, in fact, that’s exactly why you worked so much. It was so much easier to forget when you were constantly preoccupied with complaining customers and terribly awkward blind dates.

You had just sat this man, incredibly handsome, however it was clear he was on some kind of date. His reservation was for two, and he spent way too much time adjusting his clothes and table setting for him to not be trying to impress someone special. He also brought a gift, which judging by the packaging and shape, seemed to be some kind of wrapped book.

Even though he was 15 minutes early for his own reservation, he still looked really nervous, almost like he already believed she might not show up. You couldn’t help yourself, you had to go talk to him.

“Anyone ever tell you you should model?” you started with.

He looked up “Excuse me?”

“Sorry for being so bold, you just look so familiar,” he weirdly sounded very familiar as well, but you didn’t tell him that. “Are you sure you haven’t modeled? You have excellent bone structure. I bet you could.”

He laughed to himself, “yeah I’m sure.”

“Well your date is very lucky either way. I wish I had a boyfriend as handsome as you. Actually I wish I had a boyfriend period, but that’s a whole other story.”

He chuckled, and although you knew in your heart that you shouldn’t be flirting with him considering he was 15 minutes away from being actively on a date talking to him made you feel something you hadn’t felt in a long time. “What happened with your boyfriend? Do I even dare ask?”

“Well I kind of always knew he wasn’t super interested in me, but I really liked him, so I did my best to ignore his wandering eyes,” you sighed. “That didn’t stop him from leaving me for his coworker though.”

“That’s terrible.”

You smirked, “That’s not even the worst part, he broke up with me over a 27 second phone call. He didn’t even let me respond, he just kind of hung up.”

“I’m sorry, no one deserves that. Especially not you. I’ve only been talking to you for a couple minutes and I can tell that.”

“Oh really? What makes you so sure?”

“I’m pretty good at reading people.”

You smiled, “Well I should probably stop flirting with you now, considering your date hasn’t even started yet. And don’t worry, she’ll show, you’re so handsome she’d be stupid not to.”

He looked confused. “You were flirting with me?”

You laughed, “I thought you were good at reading people?”

He smiled back at you, and it made your heart soar, this silly, pure goofy smile that made you want to replace his date and have dinner with him right then and there.

You walked back to your hostess stand. A couple minutes later you noticed the handsome stranger on the phone. You thought nothing of it until later when a woman came in, clearly nervous, holding a gift bag.

“Can you give this to Spencer Reid for me please?” You recognized the name, the man you were just speaking with had filed his reservation under it.

“Um, yeah sure, aren’t you going to go in? He’s at that table over the-” but before you could finish your sentence the woman was gone. Your heart sank, poor Spencer, how could someone drop their date off a gift but stand them up anyway? That’s just cold.

When you get up to bring the gift to him, he’s already heading out of the restaurant himself.

“Sir? Spencer? Dr. Reid?” he turned his head. “A lady came in and dropped this off for you.”

His face dropped, it almost looked like he was about to cry. “Thank you,” he said as he looked up at you before leaving.

He ran out the door, both gifts in hand and whipped his head around a few times before sighing and speeding off in one direction. Even before you learned what happened after that and leading up to it, you felt terrible for the handsome stranger.

How could you not for someone so clearly distressed? Someone so clearly in love?

➽───────────────❥

7 years and a divorce later you were spending your Saturday in a park, strangely contemplating love itself. Although you barely remember that night all those years ago when you spoke to Spencer, he did. Vividly. In fact, on this Saturday you both were in a public park, contemplating your many failed attempts at true love.

It was your first wedding anniversary without your husband. Although you had only been married for two years, you still were having a hard time navigating life without him.

You started to wonder if you would ever find the true love you had been wishing for since your youth. Was 32 too late? Had you lived out all of your opportunities?

When you were little your mother had told you that all soulmates were attached at the left ring fingers, by small, incredibly thin strands of gold string, invisible to the naked eye. She insisted that these strings were constantly trying to pull you and your soulmate together, and that when life was ready for you two to meet, you would.

Until then, you would have small, mindless interactions. Things you wouldn’t think about, maybe even things that weren’t interactions at all. You would get the same commercial jingle stuck in your head. You would both get an intense craving for the same food. You’d have the same dream.

As a kid you were obsessed with this idea, you thought it was so romantic, and you fully believed everything your mom told you about it. You always asked her for more stories, and at bedtime you refused to sleep unless she would tell you more.

But now you were sure soulmates, true love even, didn’t exist. The invisible pretty gold strings your mother weaved fantastic stories with were completely fabricated. If they weren’t, you would have seen the clues by now.

Right?

➽───────────────❥

Spencer Reid was given an assignment from his therapist. He had to spend his Saturday off trying to interact with a stranger. Making friends with someone other than his colleagues may seem like a simple task for some, but it was something the young genius had almost no experience with.

He understood that it was probably for the best. He wasn’t exactly great with relationships of any kind, but especially not romantic ones. It didn’t take a genius to know that a couple of flirtations, a dead girlfriend he had only seen once, and a long time unrequited (or at least he thought unrequited) infatuation with his best friend and godsons’ mother was not a very great track record.

He, just like you, was also beginning to believe that he was hopeless when it came to love. That 38 was too old, that his time to meet someone and have the children he dreamed of had long passed.

But right as he was about to call JJ, to see if she would invite him in on the case Garcia had started to work on, he saw you.

Unlike you, he remembered your face and your interaction vividly. That almost date with Maeve was one of the biggest defining moments of his life, and what are the chances that the waitress from that very night was now less than 30 feet away from him, reading under the green leaves of a tree.

He wasn’t going to say anything, until he saw the book you were reading.

The Narrative of John Smith.

It must have been a sign, for what he wasn’t exactly sure yet, but it just had to mean something. The universe had to be reaching out to him, he had experienced crazier things.

And just as he was about to walk over to you, to close the gap between the gold strings tied around your ring fingers, a child interrupted his train of thought.

“That’s a strange haircut.”

➽───────────────❥

Derek Morgan and Spencer Reid were finally reuniting after many years. They barely got to see each other these days, but even though he was teaching and working at the BAU, Spencer still was willing to clear his schedule to second Derek suggested they meet up.

Morgan was excited as well, both to see his friend and to hopefully help him get a date. Sure, he had liked what he had heard about Max, but he wasn’t exactly surprised it had only lasted a couple months between her and Spencer. They just seemed too different.

Plus, now he got the chance to play wingman again, and he was ecstatic about that. Spencer not so much.

“I don’t know Morgan, it’s only been a couple months since we broke up. Wouldn’t it be too early to start talking to other people?”

“Pretty boy, you and I both know that the rate in which you’ve had relationships is not even close to the average. You need to balance that out somehow.”

Spencer sighed, he knew Derek was right, but he still felt strange.

“Morgan, have you ever heard of the red string of fate?”

“No, but I’m sure I’m about to hear all about it.”

“It’s an East Asian philosophy, based on the discovery that the ulnar artery connects the heart with the pinky finger, actually that’s where the belief in pinky promises come from. The reason it’s integrated in so many different cultures is that-”

“Kid, you’re losing me here,” Morgan interrupted. “Finish your thing about the string.”

“Oh yeah, sorry. It’s the idea that human relations are predestined by a red string that the gods tie to the pinky fingers of those who find each other in life. Legend has it that the two people connected by this thread will have an important story, regardless of the time, place or circumstances. The red string might get tangled, contracted or stretched, as surely often happens, but it can never break. Essentially, the idea is that although we might not realize it, our lives move in a pre-ordained direction, guided by invisible strings that are woven into the fabric of the Universe itself. And all the while, the red thread connecting us to our distant soulmates is getting shorter.”

“Well it’s an interesting theory kid, but it’s a lot to think about. I mean, we’re in a bar, let loose a little bit. Not every interaction has to be about getting closer to your soulmate. And sure, maybe you’ll meet them one day, maybe even soon. But you’re here now, and just because your one true love may not be, doesn’t mean it’s not worth it to be here.”

Spencer sighed, “You’re right. I don’t even know if I believe in that anyway, maybe I’m just looking for something to explain this all.

Derek patted his friend on the shoulder, “okay pretty ricky, this is how it’s about to go down. I’m going to buy you two drinks. You’re going to take both of them, and go find someone, anyone here to go talk to.”

“Ok, I think I can do that. Who?”

Derek looked around, trying to find who he believed would be the best match for his friend. “How about her?” he asked, pointing at you.

Spencer couldn’t believe it when he looked. There you were, the girl, the one he had met three times before, even if he could only remember two. The woman he knew was some sort of universe sent sign that Saturday he saw you underneath the greenery. The girl he was so close to talking to before he was interrupted by Max’s nephew. The woman who (and he obviously did not know this at the time) he would marry 3 years later. The one who would carefully knit the baby blankets for all of their friends and exes. The one who he would adopt 3 children with. The woman who, he was now sure, was at the other end of his invisible string. The girl he needed to talk to right now.

“Is it just me,” Morgan said, “Or does she look kind of familiar?”

“Yes,” Spencer responded, “yes she does.” He got up quickly and started making strides towards you.

“Wait!” Morgan called, “You forgot your drinks!”

“I don’t need them!” he shouted back. When he sat down next to you, you smiled. It made his heart soar, you had this silly, pure goofy smile that made him want to ask you out right then and there.

Instead he settled on the only conversation starter he could think of.

“Have you ever heard of the invisible string story?”

And you couldn’t help but laugh.

“A string that pulled me Out of all the wrong arms right into that dive bar Something wrapped all of my past mistakes in barbed wire Chains around my demons, wool to brave the seasons One single thread of gold tied me to you”

- Thank you for reading! Please reblog and let me know what you think :))

#spencer reid #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid one shot #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid fanfic #reid #Criminal Minds Reid #Criminal Minds Spencer Reid #reid fanfic #reid fanfiction #Criminal Minds #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds fluff #reid x reader #spencerreidxreader #spencer reid taylor swift

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nicka-nell · 4 years ago

Note

Osamu, fluff, 13, 30, childhood friends and Ukai, angst, 26, 46 thanks!

A heartbreaking break-up (Ukai x reader)

Childhood friends to lovers (Osamu x reader)

Aiii Ukai angst. Poor old man, I love him, but well I hope it’s angsty enough. TT.TT I hope you like it ♥

Valentine’s Day - Prompt Event | Masterlist (coming soon)

Pairing: Ukai x reader

Warning: angst, a hint of nsfw, cheating, break-up, mention of alcohol

Prompts:

26. “They don’t need to know.”

46. “Did you at least think of me, when you were having sex with her?”

In a relationship, there are always difficulties. You too had experienced a lot together. At that time you were still a manager in the last school year, when Ukai came to your school and started as a coach.

You had gotten along well, and it didn’t take long for both of you to understand that there was a closer connection between you than between all the others. It didn’t take long for the two of you to be alone in the gym, which you still wanted to clean up when he had unexpectedly kissed you. It also happened quickly that the two of you had decided on this secret love, because as long as you were in school, no one should know that you were together.

It was hard for you to act like you always did. Also, for him it was difficult at that time to see how the boys had flirted with you and he could do nothing about it. You fought a lot, but after you graduated, everything was different.

You could officially go outside as a couple, were in love and had rarely arguments. If you’ve had a fight, it’s about things that every couple argues about. Sometimes it was about Ukai always putting his coffee cup on the dishwasher, and not directly into it, or also about you always sticking your hair to the tiles under the shower and not rinsing them away.

Now over five years have passed, unfortunately, everyday life catches up with you before you graduate. Because you fight repeatedly. Mostly for no reason for small things that degenerate into a big argument.

So far that you lie in bed crying while Ukai sleeps on your sofa in the living room. Sometimes he was even away for days, had used the room in his shop as a retreat. Yet he was always the one who came back, who had apologized and told you over and over again that you could do everything together. Still, everything feels weird to you.

You meet your old schoolmate and talk to him about all your worries and fears. But he only tells you that you should not worry and should just trust Ukai. And so you do. This time, you want to trust him more, want to be the one who apologizes to him for all your disputes.

So you go to his favorite whisky shop. You look there for a whisky he does not have yet and also buy him a pack of his favorite cigarettes as well as a book with different volleyball strategies. That would certainly help him as a coach.

Adorned with a sweet gift basket, you take the apology gift into your hands, look at the kitchen clock again before you make your way to your old school and his place of instruction. When you arrive, all the students should be gone, only Ukai should be in the hall. Maybe just one or the other student who wants some tips.

The buttons of her blouse rattle as they fall to the ground, Ukai’s hands move hastily over her shapely upper body, while his lips passionately kiss her neck. “Haaah fuck, Keishin! We haa… We should stop.” She only cries as she pulls his head up and shoves her tongue down his throat.

Her cheeks are red, her eyes large and round, her lips already swollen, and the dark red lipstick barely on her lips. “What if someone shows up? What if we get caught? That wouldn’t be good for both of us.” She breathes in a shaky voice as she spreads her legs so that Ukai can thrust into her better.

“They don’t need to know. And nobody’s going to find out if you keep your voice quiet.” He whispers as he continues to kiss her neck before hitting the fat of her thighs and pressing deep into her one last time before he comes. He plays on her bud until she also comes to her climax loudly and falls behind on the coarse sports mat.

Without really paying much attention to her, he steps away and draws the condom from his now half-stiff member as he knots it together and throws it into the trash can next to him before putting on his pants again.

The hall is empty as you step into it, but Ukai’s bag is still next to the entrance. Thoughtfully you look through the sports hall when you suddenly hear a loud moan from the storeroom. Your entire body is suddenly constricting.

You feel your heart stopping, afraid of what to expect when you go there. But your body moves on its own, taking you to the room where Ukai and you used to spend a lot of time. Your hand trembles terribly as you lay it on the door handle and open the door, hoping you have misheard and there is nothing to find behind this door except an empty storage room. But it’s not like that.

Because all you see is your beloved boyfriend closing his belt, his sweater still in the corner on the floor, while a young woman is lying on the sports mat. The young new gym teacher Ukai told you about. The teacher that Ukai found terribly tiring, loud and annoying.

And now she lies there, with the top open, the skirt and panties only sloppily pulled to the side, as if the two had no time. Trembling, she lifts her chest up and down as if she had just had her best orgasm. “Kei… shin?”

Like a loud siren, your soft, shaky voice enters Ukai’s ears. Let his heart come to a standstill as his eyes look at you, frightened.

They’re looking at the face he’s been seeing every day for years. On the lips, he kisses every day. The eyes he looks at every time he tells you he loves you more than anything. But they don’t shine.

No, your face is full of disappointment, full of sorrow, your lip trembles terribly and your otherwise shiny eyes now shine from the tears you are trying to hold back frantically. But you can’t hold them back anymore.

They roll over the cheeks, which Ukai had always pinched, when you once again told him that he had grown old, when he rubbed his back and complained how much it hurts.

You keep silent for a long time until you turn around and try to get out of here as soon as possible. But Ukai’s body acts faster than yours, as his hand grasps your wrist, draws you to him when he looks into your crying eyes.

“Did you at least think of me, when you were having sex with her?” You yell at him, but he won’t answer. He just looks at you like he doesn’t know what to do. “How long are you doing it with… her?!” You keep screaming, your voice is accompanied by your sniffle. But Ukai doesn’t say a word.

You feel so silly; you wanted to make things right. That you worried, while he’s probably been sleeping with that disgusting woman for weeks, if not months. Disgusted, you pull away from him, turn around to leave the hall, but you quickly feel Ukai’s arms as they wrap around your body.

“I’m so sorry… I am so sorry Y/n. I don’t even know what got into me. I don’t even know why I did it. But believe me when I tell you, it was just today. This one time, and I know it’s one time too many.”

Your whole body trembles in his arms. With every word that comes out of his mouth, your body quivers more and more. With grief, with disappointment, with anger.

“I’m an incredible idiot. An asshole. But please, I love you Y/n. I’ve always loved you, and God damn it, I still love you so much. Please forgive me, I don’t know what’s been going on with me lately. Please forgive me this last time. I want to make it up to you. Please let me show you I’m sorry. Please… don’t go!” Now his voice trembles even more than your own body, but you can no longer hear his words.

You pull yourself away from him one last time with full force, throw him the basket with the gifts at his feet and whisper to him quietly that it is too late for his apologies. Just for a brief moment he looks at the gift basket, at the content that makes him happy, because there is so much love in it.

But when he looks up in the direction you were standing before, there’s nothing left. But Ukai knows he can fix it. After all, you two are destined for each other. You’re his young bird and he’s your old cat.

But when Ukai comes home, the apartment is empty. He knows you need some time for yourself, and he knows it’s not right to call you right now. So he waits. Because you were meant to be together.

Yet even after a week, the apartment is empty, just as empty as the whiskey you gave him. Even after a month, it’s as empty as his heart. Still, after more than two years, the apartment is empty and cold. Lonely without you.

Your things weren’t in the apartment after a week, because you picked them up while he was at work. His T-shirt, which you always wore, doesn’t smell like you anymore. He bought your perfume, sprayed it on his T-shirt so he could at least carry your scent. But this is not the same. Because your scent was different. Everything is different without you. Cold and dreary.

The messages he sends you are always one-sided, because you do not answer. Even your friends won’t tell him anything. Your coworkers, too, because they won’t let him see you. He can’t even go to your new apartment because he doesn’t know where you are.

You had disappeared from the scene. In front of the stores where you’ve always been, you weren’t anymore. There was no trace of you in any of the places you used to visit together. Only your photos show him what he had done wrong.

That he’d thrown away the love of his life for a woman he couldn’t even stand. Only photos and his memory of you remain. Because you’re gone, and you always will be.

How long has it been since you met those two brothers? Actually, as long as you can remember. Because when you started crawling on your knees and hands on the floor, the two guys have already taken their first steps. When you went to school, the two of them were one class above you and they were always looking out for you. Even in high school, the two have always had a watchful eye.

Pairing: Osamu x reader (childhood friends to lovers)

Warning: just fluff

Prompts:

13. “You can’t say you haven’t thought about it? I have.”

30. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

The better they thought it was that you took the job as manager of the volleyball club. Because that way they could take care of you even better. But even though both boys had tried to protect their little girl, Osamu was always the one you liked more. Then he was like a knight to you.

Back then, it was Osamu who always let you play volleyball with them. You were not good at volleyball, and at every practice Atsumu had only tossed Osamu the ball.

Your gaze got sadder and sadder, your tears were almost tingling, and all you really wanted to do was leave when Osamu gave you the ball and told you with a slim smile that you were going to make it.

When you fell, he was the one who wiped the tears from your eyes, who glued a band-aid over the tiny graze wound and said that everything was going to be fine. He was also the one who comforted you at your first lovesickness. The one who comforted you in your second relationship. He’s always been there for you.

And at some point, you also had to realize that he was not only there for you, but that he was also the one for whom you feel more than just friendship. But is that right? No… Because you are friends, always have been and always will be. At least if you don’t tell him about your feelings. If you do, you’re sure you’ll destroy your friendship.

So you try to plunge back into a relationship that distracts you from your true feelings for a brief moment. At the end, even this one doesn’t last long and you quickly find yourself back in Osamu’s arms.

“When are you gonna tell her, idiot?” Hisses Atsumu, who stands annoyed in the doorframe of his brother’s room. But Osamu is just sitting at his desk, watching a cooking video on his laptop, while his thoughts are somewhere else.

“Don’t ignore me, Samu!” His brother shouts angrily to him, as he suddenly stands right next to him and flicks his forefinger and thumb against his forehead. “Are you out of your mind, you fool? What are you doing here?” Osamu tries to sound angry, but his voice is calm, almost bored, just like his expression.

“You told me months ago that you’d be the happier one of us both. You and your shop! Then change this and don’t cry like a stupid crybaby! Go to her and tell her you love her, or I will!” Groaning, he grabs his brother’s jersey collar, shakes him several times until their two faces only minimally are separate from each other.

But it does not take long until the blond man’s back touches the ground, with a dull sound and Osamu is now sitting on him. “Shut your mouth! You have no idea! You can’t understand this because you’ve never been so good friends with her. My feelings for her don’t matter! If she’s happy, I’m happy too, so stay out of it if you do not know, idiot!” He yells at him before the two men start fighting like they used to back in childhood. Rolling back and forth on the floor, slapping each other in the face and throwing stupid sayings at each other’s heads.

“Stop talking shit like that! You’d be happy with her! Not if only she’s happy! But I don’t care, do what you want. This is your life you’re screwing up. I’m going to bed. Because I have an important game tomorrow! Right, a game with MY volleyball club. With the club that makes me happy! Because I AM happy!”

Without even waiting for an answer from Osamu, he slams the bedroom door and leaves his twin alone in silence. “It is best to prepare the dough the day before, as it must rest for twenty-four hours.” When Osamu hears the cook talking from his laptop, he gets up and looks at the video, where he doesn’t even know why he turned it on in the first place.

“Fuck it…” He just curses, folds his laptop and walks into the hallway to put on his shoes and jacket. This conversation has given him a headache, and fresh air is best for him. His hands hide in his pocket, his face is serious as he looks up into the bright moon. Only it glows in the sky. Not a single star is visible.

Again and again Atsumu’s words go through his head, and again he has to agree with his brother. And it annoys him…

Osamu doesn’t know how long he’s been walking around. But he doesn’t want to go home now. He doesn’t want to go back to the place where his brother’s voice gets in his head. He has no desire to listen to Atsumu, that he currently has such a much happier life than he. Because it’s true. Atsumu has everything he wanted. An fantastic volleyball career.

Even the grey-haired man has his Onigiri shop. And he was sure that this would make him completely fulfilled and happy. But this one piece of the puzzle is missing. The last part you need to make a puzzle into a complete picture. You.

Shaking his head, he lowers it, as he looks forward when he suddenly finds himself in front of a door so familiar to him. Without knowing it, he wandered around the area to end up standing in front of a front door that makes his heart beat several beats faster. On your doorstep.

No, he has to leave. Whatever brought him here has to get him home now. Convinced to turn around and walk, his body acts as if another person were controlling it. Because instead of leaving, he rings.

His hand gets sweaty despite the cold outside. For a blink of an eye, he quickly thinks about turning around and leaving. It’s already the middle of the night and it’s quite possible that you’re already asleep. Yeah, he should go. Osamu just wants to put one foot back, move his body as the creaking wood makes him swallow and puts his body in a heat wave.

Tired, you stand before him, your hair stands out in all directions, he can see sleep in the corners of your eyes. Only your cute plush socks and an old T-shirt adorn your body. His Shirt.

“Samu? What are you doing here? It’s the middle of the night.” It hurts him to see you like this. In his things and knowing that you will never be his. It hurts him to know that he’s leaving right now and you’ll only see each other again as friends. Still, he just doesn’t know where to go at the moment.

“I didn’t know where else to go.” He says so quietly that you can only guess his words. But you open the door just one more piece, grab his icy hand and drag him into your apartment. You want to know if anything happened, but he just shakes his head thoughtfully.

It’s stupid of Osamu to think you can’t see through his lie. Sighing, you drag him into your living room, letting him understand without a word that he should sit down before you leave him for a moment.

Immersed in his thoughts, he does not notice how you come back with a delicious smelling green tea. You hand it over to him with your beautifully shining eyes as your fingers brush for a lash. “Thank you.” He breathes calmly, looking into the greenish water, just to see his reflection.

He doesn’t notice your hands trying to find their way to his lap. How they lie down on it and your eyes look up to him under your long eyelashes. You say nothing, just look while he smiles back at you almost sad, and puts the tea on the table, just to place your hands in his and drive his thumb over the back of your hand. He had often wondered what it would feel like to have your fingers linked, what it’s like to kiss them and look at your face full of love.

Osamu does not know what is going on in his head, but completely absent-minded, he opens his mouth while his gaze still remains on your hands. “Your hands are so soft Y/n. I’d love to know how soft your lips feel.”

Too late, he realizes that he has heard his voice not only in the head. Because your hands twitch briefly in his, making him look into your glowing and totally surprised face. Osamu’s heart is beating wildly. His pulse is racing and he knows it’s too late now to talk his way out of this situation. Again Atsumu’s words return to his thoughts.

Say her.

You guys have been friends for so long when he first start thinking about things like kissing you for the first time. So maybe you did that too sometime? He has to try. He has to risk it. Or is he just ruining everything?

“I mean… You can’t say you haven’t thought about it? I have.” He tries to be as serious as possible, hoping you don’t realize how nervous he actually is. But his hands press yours even more tightly when you do not answer him, just simply look at him silently with big eyes.

He’s the one who destroyed it. Your friendship. Everything you’ve built together. All these years destroyed in a moment. If he were alone now, he would punch his fist against a wall, or just lie in silence in his bed.

“So did I, Samu.” Your voice is only silent in his ears, but for him your words were crystal clear. You didn’t abandon him. No, but you didn’t say you felt that way too. At least at the moment.

Hesitantly, you move a little closer to the gray-haired man. You won’t let go of his hands for a second.

In the yellowish glowing ceiling light, you keep silent, look the other only quietly in the eyes, while you listen to your own loud beating heart. And before he knows it, Osamu’s face is just a nose tip away from yours. He can feel your breath on his lips. Smells your sweet scent and realizes that you’re still not backing off.

That your hands hold his, like you’re afraid he’ll let you go. No, he just has to try. It’s now or never. “Will… Will you allow me to kiss you?” He whispers softly to you, drawing you with his dark eyes into his spell.

He makes you speechless, even though you want to say something. But your voice just doesn’t come. Instead, you nod slowly, looking down at his mouth until you close your eyes and feel his warm lips.

Your grip on his hands becomes looser, which makes Osamu detach from them and gently encloses your cheek with one hand, while his other moves to the back of your head and pulls you closer to his body.

Your lips are soft, your body warm and your taste wonderful. He won’t let you go, nor do you want to. As if he were afraid of losing you, he buries his hand in your hair, pressing you even closer to him. No, he won’t let you go again, because you’re his last piece of the puzzle. The piece he missed to be happy.

#haikyuu #haikyuu x reader #osamu x reader #ukai x reader #lovebirds-event

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tuanyiems · 4 years ago

Text

First Everything

First Everything Bambam x Fem Reader Genre: fluff, a little angst Words: 9.2k [Masterlist in blog description] Plot: Sequel to Muse (Arranged Marriage AU) Part of the Marriage Life AU series. A series of dates in which Bambam tries his hardest (poor boy) to convince you that he really, really wants to be with you. a/n – lol idunno how I feel about this but here you go~

When the door of the restaurant opens, Bambam’s eyes dart over to the bodies entering for the umpteenth time. When it’s not you, he sighs, rubbing sweaty palms over the deep purple suede of his pants. The designer material darkens under his touch, but he’s too nervous to fret over his outfit at the moment.

He’s beginning to regret not picking you up at your place. He should have been more insistent. But the choice was made and now he is here, leg shaking in his chair of the Michelin star restaurant that he’s not quite sure you’re even going to meet him at.

He gulps down his second glass of water, throat parched at just the thought of getting stood up. He eats at this place at least three times a month. How embarrassing would it be for everyone to witness this rejection?

The door opens again and Bambam jerks his head up like a meerkat. An elderly woman walks in, much to his disappointment.

He sinks into the plush seat, tipping the glass to his lips again only to find it empty. A waitress promptly comes over to refill his glass, relieving him of the menacing view of the restaurant door for a fleeting moment.

What’s wrong with him? Bambam hasn’t been this nervous since…well, high school.

“Kun…pi…mook uh Bu—”

Bambam rolls his eyes at the freshmen English teacher, Mr. Kim, butchering his name. “I just go by Bambam,” comes his automatic response.

Mr. Kim breaks into a sigh of relief, taking pen to clipboard, “Great, Bambam it is.”

But Bambam has already zoned out.

Because right across from him is you—an unassuming girl in the back seat, smiling to yourself. Your lips move as you tilt your head down, but Bambam knows exactly what you’ve mouthed and his heart catches in his throat. Bambam.

His name makes your cheeks dimple.

He doesn’t know why, but this little bit of knowledge makes his chest squeeze.

The next day and every day after, Bambam makes sure to sit next to you. Thus, began the beginning of your beautiful love story…

…is what he had hoped.

But after the first day of high school, you don’t even spare him a glance. So instead, Bambam spends every hour of English period watching you from his peripheral.

You are a quiet student and most days you spend the hour doodling in the margins of your notebook. Often, your doodles are centered around cute cartoons yelling at you to pay attention in class. Every once in a while, he’ll catch a funny caricature of one of your classmates.

Maybe you’ll draw him one day, he hopes to himself.

(You don’t.)

“Bambam and Y/N, please read the next passage,” Mr. Kim interrupts his daydreams one day, about a month into the new school year.

His eyes widen, fingers flipping through the pages of Romeo and Juliet.

“Page 46,” you whisper as you get up from your seat.

Bambam lets out a breath, thumbing to the right page as he stands from his seat beside yours. He squares his shoulders, attempting to stand tall though his shoulders only manage about an inch higher than yours, but every inch counts!

“If I profane,” you whisper when he doesn’t begin reading.

Mr. Kim looks at Bambam pointedly.

“If I proFANE!” he starts loudly, cringing when his voice cracks. His classmates snicker, making his cheeks go red, but you don’t even flinch. Your eyes remain steady on the page of your own book, waiting for him to continue. He clears his throat, “If I p-profane with my unworthiest hand, this holy shrine, the gentle fine is this: my…lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand, to smooth that rough touch…with a tender k-kiss.”

Bambam swallows, wiping a sweaty palm on his khaki pants. He prays no one notices his stutter. If you do, you don’t let on, lowering the book as you speak.

“Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this; for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.”

“Ha-”

“You guys,” Mr. Kim sighs, interrupting Bambam. He looks around the room with a scowl. “Can we not read this out like robots, please? This is young love! They’re talking about kissing! Be more excited!”

“Is that what they’re talking about?” you mutter under your breath, eyebrows arching as you scanned the page.

Bambam snorts before covering his mouth with his hand quickly. You catch the sound though, looking up at him with a smile.

His heart catches in his throat.

The playful glint in your eyes keeps him afloat for months after.

When the restaurant doors open again, Bambam chokes on his water. He coughs into the red linen napkin, his grey contact eyes watering. He can’t help chuckling despite it all though.

You’re here. And fortunately for Bambam, your gaze is focused on the hostess. You’re asking her something, probably for directions to his table. You lean towards the hostess’ podium, the heels of your blush-colored flats rising to your tiptoes out of habit even though you are at least a foot clear of the podium. You have on your signature cream oversized knit cardigan which you pull tighter to your chest, covering the simple white dress beneath.

It is so very you—even the stroke of blue paint at the bottom of your dress (which you probably aren’t aware of). On any other girl, Bambam would have scrutinized the stain, especially at a restaurant of this class. Yet, on you, the mark is somehow endearing.

He wonders if the paint stain is fresh. Were you so absorbed in a painting that you came rushing straight here with no time to change? Or was this an old stain on a dress you loved so much you couldn’t bear to part ways with it?

“Hey,” your hesitant voice breaks him out of his thoughts as you take a seat across from him.

“Hi,” he breathes. Underneath the table, he pinches his thigh. Nope, not a dream.

“Sorry I kept you waiting, I had a hard time finding the entrance,” you chuckle to yourself. There’s a story behind that smile, there always seems to be a story behind every expression and gesture you make. He wonders if he’ll ever be part of that story. When he doesn’t respond, you tilt your head nervously. “Were…you waiting long?”

“Oh! Ha, no, not at all!” Bambam straightens in his seat.

You smile politely before turning away to admire the place. It’s a beautiful French restaurant that sits at the top of one of Seoul’s tallest hotels. The entire restaurant is surrounded by floor to ceiling windows, offering a spectacular view of the city. Your eyes linger on the glittering lights of Seoul’s Friday night skyline.

Bambam doesn’t bother to glance out the window. His eyes remain on you, the glow of the candle at the center of the table flickers like stardust on your skin.

When you finally look back, Bambam leans on the table, lifting a proud brow. “Like the view?”

“This place is breathtaking,” you admit, fingers rubbing absentmindedly at the ends of your sleeves.

“Right? It’s one of my favorite places in the city,” he smiles triumphantly. “Wait ‘til you try the food.”

“Do you come here often?”

“Yeah, Lisa introduced me to this place a year ago and I’ve been coming ever since.”

“L-Lisa? Like…from Blackpink?” you look at him with wide eyes.

“Yeah, that Lisa, she’s a homie.”

You blink at him. “Wow, okay…cool.”

He pauses, not quite sure how to read your tone. Before he can ask though, the waitress interrupts with the usual spiel on menus and dishes of the night. When you read through the menu, your eyes grow big.

“My card is still on file, right?” Bambam asks, quick to assuage your worries. His card has been on file for months now.

“Yes, it should be, but I can check again for you,” the waitress smiles at him politely, knowing just as well that Bambam already knows this. He winks at her as she leaves before turning back to you.

Unlike his expectations though, the crease between your brow only deepens. He clears his throat, rubbing his palms against his thighs again.

“Anything catch your eye?”

You force out a smile, putting down your menu. “I can eat anything. Why don’t you decide?”

Bambam lifts a brow but nods in agreement. He wonders if French cuisine just isn’t your thing. He should have listened to Yugyeom and gone Japanese, huh? You can’t go wrong with omakase!

“Do you like wine?” he blurts, trying to get his best friend’s voice out of his head.

“Oh,” your eyes dart to the clear glass cases at the center of the restaurant showcasing their selection. You sink into your seat a little. “Well, I’m not really an expert, but I can drink it. Do you like wine?”

“I’ll let you try my favorite bottle! It’ll go great with the usual course I order,” he smiles, quite pleased with his decision.

“Sounds good,” you nod curtly.

After Bambam puts in the order, an uncomfortable silence follows. Your eyes keep traveling around the room like you don’t want to look at him. And Bambam, who could easily entertain an entire party of people at any given moment, finds himself at a loss for words. There’s probably a stain on his thighs now from how often he keeps wiping his palms. He’s too afraid to check.

“So,” he starts, extending the single word uneasily. He doesn’t manage to figure out the rest of his sentence though.

But it’s then that you finally break into a smile. A real one.

“Bambam,” you let out, and his eyes dart to your cheek where the ghost of a familiar dimple lays. “Are you feeling as awkward as I am?”

“More like nervous,” he confesses, leaning back into his seat.

Your brows raise, “You? Nervous?”

“It happens when I’m with beautiful people.”

You roll your eyes, “Says the same guy who’s ‘homies’ with Blackpink’s Lisa.”

Bambam grins, “When you meet her, you’ll see, she’s a bro.”

You arch your brows, clearly not believing him. “If she’s a bro, I can’t imagine what I am.”

You’re frowning and his heart sinks. He hates that you actually mean it. He hates that he can’t even tell you honestly what you mean to him. It’s way too soon for that kind of confession. He’s sure you wouldn’t take him seriously anyways. After all, he barely managed to even get this date.

Yn_ig: The animes lied to me. High school sucks.

Bambam snorts loudly, muffling himself beneath his blue checkered duvet before his mom can hear and yell at him to go to sleep.

It’s midnight and tomorrow will be the first day of sophomore year. He really should be sleeping, but instead he’s smiling stupidly at his phone. Your scowling face lights up his screen. Your best friend smiles brightly beside you, poking your cheek with the end of a paintbrush. You had spent your break taking an art class.

Bambam knows this because he’s been stalking your Instagram, although he’s been too afraid to like any of your posts.

You’ve gotten a lot better in the span of a few weeks though. Or at least, that’s what it seems like from having spent all of freshmen year watching you doodle in the margins. He wonders if he’ll get to sit beside you this year too. His stomach flips at the thought.

When morning comes, Bambam yawns loudly, his eyes barely open as he rushes to the bus stop. He hadn’t meant to stay up so late, but one thing led to another and suddenly he was on Soundcloud, listening to an indie artist by the name of Defsoul, who you had commented about on your friend’s Instagram post fifteen weeks ago.

He pulls out his phone, plugging in his earphones to continue listening. He steps into the bus, in the middle of bopping his head to a song when the sound escapes him and all he can hear is the thumping of his heart.

You’re sitting near the back, looking out the window. You have on headphones and a scowl that looks just like the picture you posted last night.

Steadying his breath, he walks past you and slides into the row of seats right behind yours. He wonders if you’re listening to the same song.

Maybe you’ll share the same homeroom this year. The entire bus ride to school, Bambam daydreams about all the conversations you’d share every morning if that were the case. He’d talk to you about Defsoul and then you’d share your stories about break. He’d tell you his was alright, but it would’ve been better if you two hung out. You’d give him that look, the same one you gave when you read out loud together, and then he’d poke your cheek like he’s always wanted to, right where your cheeks dimpled.

His bubble bursts as soon as a guy takes a seat beside you. Bambam can’t remember his name, but his face is familiar. He’s a senior, and by the way you move your headphones to the nape of your neck and smile, it seems like you know him. Holding his breath, Bambam pauses his song.

“2A? That used to be my homeroom!”

Bambam clenches his fist. His homeroom is at the other end of the hall from yours. Frowning, he eyes the back of the guy’s head as he leans into you.

“So, have you thought about what I asked over break?”

You fold your arms across your chest and Bambam can’t help but wonder what he’s asked of you. Is it a date? The way he whispers seems like it would be that kind of thing, and Bambam doesn’t doubt a girl like you must have a lot of admirers. Is it making you uncomfortable? Should he interrupt you two? But then, you’d clearly know he had been eavesdropping. But if this guy was making you uncomfortable, that shouldn’t matter, right?

Thighs straining, Bambam almost stands from his seat when you laugh. It’s the loudest he’s ever heard you, at least in person anyways.

“I thought you’d forget by now,” you chuckle.

The guy feigns offense, holding a hand to his chest. “Me? Forget about you? I see you think very highly of me, Y/N.”

Bambam rolls his eyes.

“Sure you aren’t just trying to dump all your responsibilities on me?” you pout. Bambam melts inside.

“Ha, you caught me!” the senior laughs, making you laugh too. It’s such a pretty ring to his ears, Bambam already knows he’ll be thinking about it for the next couple of weeks. “But you know I wouldn’t give it up to just anyone. It’s practically my baby.”

“That’s true,” you admit, chuckling, and then quieter, “You think I can do it?”

He put an arm around your shoulder, pulling you close. Bambam squeezes his fist.

“Not just doing it. I know you’ll be a great president,” he tells you confidently. Your ears go red, and if Bambam weren’t so focused on the hand on your shoulder, he would’ve found it very endearing.

“I don’t know, I just…” you pause nervously.

“Yo,” Mingyu breaks Bambam’s concentration. “2D?”

Bambam breaks into a smile, highfiving his friend as he takes the seat next to him. “2D!”

“Sweet!” Mingyu cheers, shoulders bumping against his playfully. “Kook’s with us too. It’s gonna be a wild year!”

Bambam laughs, shaking his head. “You guys are gonna get us kicked back a year.”

His friend whistles. “Girls are into older guys, Bam, it’ll be like one of those harem animes Kook loves so much!”

Bambam laughs, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes as he glances back at the hand still on your shoulder. He hopes that’s not the case for you.

“It got cold,” Bambam musters as the two of you leave the restaurant.

You nod, looking up at the night sky. “Seems like winter doesn’t want to leave us yet.”

The two of you pause by the curb, in front of the valet.

“Are you sure you had a good time, Y/N? You barely touched your food.”

You look up in surprise. “Oh, I really did have a nice time, Bambam.”

He looks at you skeptically.

“The uh, the…gourdine?”

“Bouchée à la périgourdine?”

“Yeah, that!” you chuckle awkwardly. “That was delicious.”

Bambam still doesn’t believe you but you look uncomfortable, so he lets it go. Actually, you’ve been looking uncomfortable ever since you laid eyes on the menu. Most of his dates took advantage of his generosity, especially at a place like this—ordering the most expensive dishes and trying out all the wine. You though? You insisted on being full after the first course. When he asked you what your thoughts were on his favorite bottle of wine, you mumbled something incoherent as you tipped the entire glass down your throat. You only had water after that.

It was like you couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

Maybe he had read things wrong. He thought you were at least interested in him too. The night of Mark’s fashion launch, the two of you had shared so many things—secrets, confessions, old memories and what he thought had been chemistry.

He glances over your way. You’re turned away from him, eyes watching the valet workers instead. You had admitted to hating him in the past. His stomach sinks at the thought that maybe you still do.

You shiver, pulling your cardigan closer to your chest. Bambam unwraps his scarf, holding out his hand for you to take it.

“Oh, I’m alright,”

He lets out a soft sigh before stepping in front of you.

“Do you maybe,” Bambam asks softly, placing his scarf gently around the nape of your neck. “I don’t know, it’s Friday, we could walk around or something or…”

He doesn’t finish his sentence, instead biting on the tip of his tongue as he wraps the cashmere cloth securely around you.

Your fingers brush against his, just barely, but he feels it tenfold. “It’s getting late…”

Bambam tries not to look too hurt when he smiles back at you. “I’ll drive you home then.”

A week later, Bambam finds himself outside of your studio apartment. When you open the door, you’re wide-eyed and frozen like you’ve seen a ghost. In your defense though, Bambam doesn’t look like himself. He hasn’t ever since the night you left him at this exact spot last week.

Dark circles line his eyes and his newly dyed black hair only makes his complexion paler.

“Is everything okay, Bambam?” you ask finally.

He sighs, squeezing at the bridge of his nose. His gold frames lift at the gesture.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters, “I probably should have called first.”

“Hey,” you place your palm gently on his arm. “Why don’t you come in first.”

Bambam lets you tug him inside like a lost puppy. His eyes travel around the room. Of course, he’s seen your place before in videos, but it’s different being here now. He doesn’t expect the smell of ginger and lemongrass to greet him. The longer he lingers, the more aware he becomes of the subtle scent of jasmine rice wafting in from the open kitchen. It’s comforting.

Your bedroom door is open, and he can see you’re working on a series of paintings. The canvases line your wooden floors in a haphazard row across the room.

You sit him down on your couch, a worn out burgundy but the geometric pattern is intricate despite its faded color. He lets his finger trail over a line while you poor him a cup of water.

“Your hair is black,” you break the silence.

“Oh,” he runs a hand through his hair like he is discovering this for the first time too. A faint pink colors his cheeks.

“I like it,” you smile softly. “It suits you.”

“Thanks,” he utters. His eyes trail down your hands. Your thumb smooths down your own cup of water repeatedly. Your fingers are speckled with green paint.

When he doesn’t say anything more, you chuckle softly to yourself. He looks at you in surprise.

“I like this new look,” you explain, eyes gesturing to his outfit. Today, Bambam is in a simple white t-shirt and black ripped jeans. Granted, the t-shirt is still Tom Ford, but you don’t know that. More noticeably though, is what he is not wearing, no sparkling diamonds around his neck, no Rolex on his wrist. Only a plain, silver ring adorns his right pinky. “So, why are you here, Bambam?”

He winces inwardly, reality setting in on him. Why is he here? Because the hair dye didn’t work? Because he agreed to too many projects in an attempt to keep busy but now he’s just tired and confused? Because Yugyeom pushed him out of the office and told him to figure things out?

Because no matter what he does, he keeps thinking about last week’s date and how you looked at him right before going inside—the mixture of disappointment and sadness in your eyes that felt like he had lost it all.

“Bambam?”

“Did I do something wrong?”

His question catches you off guard. “What? No, of course not.”

“You didn’t like the food,”

“The food was delicious.”

“Then it was me. I was boring.”

“Are you really Bambam? Where did all your confidence go?” you joke, lifting a brow.

His shoulders slouch. You make his confidence deplete like he is fourteen again. When he doesn’t say anything, you put your cup down onto the coffee table and look him in the eye.

“Hey, really, it had nothing to do with you Bambam, and everything to do with me.”

He chuckles dryly. “I don’t need a ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ to soften the blow. You can give it to me straight.”

You look at him with a frown, lips threatening to jut into a pout and if Bambam weren’t about to get his heart crushed, he would’ve found your expression to be very adorable. Well, okay, that’s a lie, he still finds you very adorable right now.

“It’s really not you,” you purse your lips together, looking away. “I just…I was very out of place there, Bambam.”

“Wha-”

“I couldn’t pronounce half the menu,” you continue, cheeks flushing with embarrassment. “Or the wine.”

“But it tasted good?”

“Yeah,” you chuckle, looking at him. “It was amazing, Bambam. But that one meal cost about half the month’s rent of this place!”

Bambam doesn’t mean to, but he laughs at your outburst. He is reminded of himself a few years ago when he first became friends with Jackson Wang, who gifted him a set of Cartier jewelry on his birthday.

When he sees your face, he immediately stops laughing. “Wait, I’m not laughing at you!”

“Yeah, sure,” you roll your eyes, but it’s a harmless gesture. Rising from your seat, you look at him, “Is that all you came here for?”

“Well, no.”

Your brows lift.

“There’s this event,” Bambam rushes, digging into the pocket of his jeans. “Actually, I was working on this mini documentary with this artist and he’s opening up a new exhibit this weekend.”

He raises the tickets tentatively towards you but freezes when your eyes bug out.

“Yoshitomo Nara?” You practically scream, falling back onto the couch right beside Bambam. You smell warm and sweet and the memory of the night you shared a few weeks ago flickers in the back of his mind.

“Yoshitomo Nara,” he confirms softly.

You frown his way, though it quickly turns into a smile, “Well, that’s just not fair. You know how much he means to me.”

“I do,” he smiles quietly.

“So you came here to bribe me?”

He laughs, “More or less. Is that a yes?”

You smile, thumbs smoothing over the tickets repeatedly.

“Jokes on you, Bambam. I would’ve said yes even without these tickets.”

Somehow, he doesn’t quite believe you, but you are giggling, and he has a date.

And that is all that matters.

Bambam sits nervously on a stool of the art studio, his fingers twisting the lens of an old DSLR he’s still not confident about using. From the elevated windows above, the pink evening sky illuminates. Everything about this moment seems picturesque. If Bambam could use his camera properly, he would’ve known.

But instead, the camera remains abandoned in his grasp as he stares in front of him where you stand in front of your easel mere meters away. It’s just the two of you. Everyone from both the photography and the painting club had gone home already. After seeing you continue to paint, Bambam had insisted on staying behind to practice with his camera more.

To be honest, he is hungry and could care less about photography, but he can’t find himself to go home.

“Hey,” you twist around and Bambam’s mind spins.

“H-hey,” he musters up, still unconvinced you’re talking to him.

He blinks owlishly at you, and then, his stomach growls. Loudly. His ears turn so red and he feels like he’s been set on fire, but you don’t even react.

“Mind if I play music?”

“Uh, yeah…that’s fine,” he answers you meekly, eyes diverting in embarrassment.

“Cool,” you reply nonchalantly, walking up to his side of the room where the speakers are. Plugging in your phone, the familiar tune of Defsoul’s music fills the studio. It takes Bambam a minute to get over his own mortification before the music reaches his ears and he perks up. But when he looks around the room, you are gone.

Alone now, Bambam finds the courage to get up from his seat and approaches your easel. The chair beside your easel is stacked with art books of Yoshitomo Nara. It seems you are doing a study. Just like the angry little girls on the cover of the art books, your easel holds a portrait of a little girl too. It is different though.

When he looks at the girl in your painting, he sees you. The little girl holds the ghost of a smirk beneath her scowl and her eyes glint with secrets of mischief, just like you. Without thinking, Bambam takes a step back and raises his camera.

“Like it?”

Bambam jumps in surprise, the flash of the camera going off before it slips from his hands entirely. Flustered, he rushes to bring the camera back into his grasp, thanking god he had kept the old leather strap around his neck.

You giggle softly, standing beside him. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

“It’s alright, I was just spacing out,” he mumbles sheepishly, eyes averting to the screen of his camera. You lean in, filling his senses with faint notes of your strawberry vanilla shampoo. “I’m still learning how to use the camera.”

“I like it,” you smile, looking up at him. “Can you send it to me?”

“I-really?” he looks at you surprised. Your painting isn’t in focus and off centered. The photo is not good, even Bambam knows it.

“Yeah, gives me album cover vibes,” you chuckle.

He snorts. “When is your mixtape dropping?”

You grin, raising a brow. “You never know what could happen in the future, Bambam.”

He shrugs, pretending not to melt at the sound of his name on your tongue. He didn’t think you’d remember him.

“Here,” you hand him a bag of cheese puffs before opening your own bag. “The vending machine popped out two.”

“Oh, thanks.”

Bambam walks back to his seat, gaze on your back again as you return to painting. He glances at the blurry photo on the screen of his camera and then slowly, he raises his camera once more, one eye squinting into the viewfinder.

Maybe photography isn’t so bad after all.

He snaps another photo. Click!

“Wait, this is a formal thing? Should I change?”

Bambam watches with amusement as you bounce nervously in front of his car. You are dressed in a plain pink tank top and matching satin wrap skirt. Of course, your classic cream cardigan drapes over you, and to his pleasure, so does his scarf from your last date.

“You look beautiful,” he reassures you.

You bite at your lip, unconvinced. “But you’re in a suit.”

“Okay, but when am I not?”

Your pout reluctantly turns into a smile and you huff, walking through the door he’s holding open for you, into the passenger’s seat. When he gets into the driver’s seat, you turn to him.

“When you’re wearing your designer gym clothes,” you smirk.

“Stop, you aren’t allowed to make jokes while I’m driving,” he laughs, pulling the car out of the driveway. “Also, tracksuits are still suits.”

Your giggles ring throughout the car.

When the two of you get to the venue, the place is already busy. The exhibition is part of the new contemporary art wing in the museum, which has been closed for the night for an intimate opening with select guests. Many of these guests are artist friends of Yoshitomo Nara, but even more are the wealthy collectors who are more than eager to call first dibs on the latest works. The only reason Bambam has been invited is because his mini documentary of the artist is playing on loop in one of the screening rooms.

While he loves art, these type of art scenes are not his thing. They’re a bit too stuffy for his taste and exactly why he dropped out of art school in the first place. But when he sees the way you seem to shrink into your cardigan as soon as you step into the gallery, he squares his shoulders and grabs hold of your hand.

You look surprised by his touch, but thankfully, you don’t pull away.

“You have to get used to these kinds of events, Y/N. You’ll be hosting them soon.”

You chuckle, glancing away. “Well, if I’m lucky, you’ll be hosting them.”

It’s his turn to blush now, but he pretends to be cool, pointing to the first painting to the right. “Shall we start here?”

You only grin, gripping his hand tighter. You seemed to get a little too much joy out of making him feel shy. Bambam can only sigh, quietly relishing in the warmth of your palm against his.

When you finally turn your attention to the paintings, the two of you look on in silence. Naturally, Bambam’s gaze falls onto you. There is a glimmer in your eyes, emotions passing through your features like its own movie. There is a lift of revelation in your brow, a scrunch of displeasure in your nose, the twitch of amusement on your lips.

Bambam fights the urge to take out his phone and record you. Instead, he follows after you, committing your profile to memory.

“Why do you like this guy so much?” he blurts out after passing a few paintings. You peel your eyes away to look at him in surprise, cheeks rosy.

“I-I don’t know, I’ve just loved his works since high school.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean for the question to come out harsh. I was just curious, I mean, his art is really nice.”

You squeeze his hand, calming him. “I know. I guess I was just drawn to his characters. They’re cute, but rebellious and real. It��s charming.”

Bambam smiles. That’s how he feels about you.

“And it blurs the lines of what is fine art,” you go on, turning back to the painting in front of you. “Like right now, it is hanging in this museum, so it’s considered high end art, right? But this girl can easily be inside a children’s book, and his previous works have.”

You glance back at him, looking embarrassed after your spiel. “I don’t know.”

He doesn’t let you skirt over the topic though as he follows you to the next painting. “Is that why you dropped out of school?”

You sigh. “There were a lot of reasons. Maybe my skin wasn’t thick enough.”

“No, I get it,” he rubs his thumb across your skin. “I don’t like museums much, to be honest. I like the idea of them, but in reality, places like these only cater to the gatekeepers and the gatekeepers are just boring ass, tax-evading millionaires.”

You laugh, leaning into his chest as if that’ll rid you of the attention you’ve already gained around your corner of the room. Bambam ignores their stares, laughing along with you.

“Your art shouldn’t be jailed up in this stale room,” he adds, after your giggling subsides.

“But yours is,” you chuckle, making your way into the dark screening room.

Projected onto the wall is Yoshitomo Nara talking midsentence about his latest artworks. You take a seat on the bench before gesturing for Bambam to take a seat next to you.

“This is filmed beautifully,” you lean into him to whisper. The action makes him smile since you are the only two in this room, but if it’ll bring you closer, he doesn’t mind. “You’re really talented, Bambam.”

“I have a good team with me.”

“I always knew you’d make it big.”

He smiles quietly, watching as the glow of the video illuminated your face. You really did.

Yn_ig: This is amazing!

Bambam1a: Thx!

Bambam chucks his phone between his thighs before shoving a spoonful of rice into his mouth to hide the smile spreading across his face. He pretends to laugh at something his brother said, though really, he’s twisting with glee because you just liked his latest post on Instagram. And you commented!

“Remember Bammie, this weekend you’re coming with me to…”

His phone dings and his mom’s voice fades into the background. Grabbing his phone, his stomach flips when he sees your handle name sending you a direct message. Ever since the beginning of junior year, he’s been talking to you over Instagram under the alias Muse_ig. It hadn’t been his intentions to deceive you. He was just nervous about talking to you online, but still wanted a way to support you. One comment on your art led to another and suddenly you were messaging him a thank you. Very quickly, that thank you turned into memes and inside jokes. Now, the two of you were talking to each other almost every night.

He clicks on the notification, nodding blankly to whatever his mom is saying.

Yn_ig: Hey! You said you liked photography, right? You should check him out. He’s my classmate. Really talented guy.

Bambam clutches his phone, trying to keep from jumping out of his seat when he sees you’ve sent his Instagram profile.

“Bammie, are you listening to me?” his mom looks at him pointedly.

He tries to school his expression, but joy floods his face anyways. And despite her tone, his mom smiles too.

“Whoever it is, she can wait. Put your phone away,” she teases, inciting laughter from all his siblings.

Bambam laughs it off goodheartedly, tucking his phone away. You think he’s really talented and nothing can diminish the high that this newfound knowledge brings him.

Well, nothing except, of course, you.

You see, when Bambam agreed to tagging along with his mom to her new friend’s house so she could introduce their daughter to him, he was expecting to spend a few awkward hours with some strangers. Maybe bond with said daughter over the awkwardness, but then he would go home and play video games and that would be that.

What he doesn’t expect is to greet you first thing at your doorway. He doesn’t expect to sit across from you during dinner. And he definitely doesn’t expect the glare you send him between each bite.

“You really are the prettiest thing!” His mother coos from across the table. “She definitely takes after you.”

“Oh, stop it,” your mom blushes, waving her spoon. “To think our kids already knew each other. This must be fate!”

“Hardly,” you mumble under your breath, but Bambam hears it. His heart breaks.

He can’t even blame you for it though. This dinner hasn’t exactly been easy for you. He remembers your late-night texts a few months ago and now all those self-deprecating comments make sense. Those words you were repeating? The I’m not good enough and I should just give up—They were never yours. It was your parents’.

“Bambam told me she’s one of the smartest in her grade!” his mom continues to compliment. He nods eagerly. Your frown only deepens as you poke at the asparagus on your plate.

“What good are all those As when all she does is doodle?” her mom laments, chuckling weakly. “We put all this money into her education but all she wants to do is draw.”

“Paintings,” Bambam musters. Both his and your mom look at him, surprised. He wipes his palms against his pants. In his peripheral, he knows you’re looking at him too, but he’s too afraid to look at you. “She paints, and she’s really good.”

There’s a pause and Bambam’s entire face heats up.

And then your mom breaks into a laugh. “And I heard you’re doing photography!”

His chest deflates and he nods meekly.

His mom laughs, hitting him on the back. “Unlike Y/N, Bammie here is terrible at studying. I really hope this hobby takes off.”

“Your mom showed me some of your photos, boy,” your father speaks up gruffly, pointing the steak knife his way. “Keep it up and you’ll earn yourself a free ticket to college.”

Bambam rubs at the nape of his neck, “I don’t know about that.”

“No really, there’s a scholarship, isn’t there, Y/N?” your father insists, looking at you.

You nod, putting down your fork. You look at your dad but it’s clear in your tone that you’re talking to him.

“It’s called the Artisan Award—a full scholarship to your art school of choice. It’s given to one graduating senior for their excellence in art across multiple disciplines—including photography. I’ll be applying to it next year.” You don’t even offer him a glance, focusing instead, on your glass of water.

“Well, you’ll be applying to a lot of scholarships,” your mom chuckles uneasily. “There’s still a year to think things through.”

“You should apply too,” your father adds, looking at him.

“Oh, I don’t know if I’d be any good. Sounds competitive,” Bambam mumbles, glancing at you. You’re scowling down at your plate.

“Wouldn’t hurt to try though,” his mom cuts in, smiling at him. “What are the kids saying nowadays? Have to shoot your shot into the hoop?”

He smiles, pretending to grimace at his mom, making her laugh.

“While we’re at it, let’s apply to the athletic scholarships too,” she jokes.

He laughs, rolling his eyes. “First I have to make a shot into an actual hoop.”

His mom snorts, “It’s okay, if anything you can dropout and become a comedian! We’ve got options.”

The table breaks into laughter but when he glances your way, you are glaring at him.

“I still can’t believe you were Muse_ig this whole time. I dropped out because of you,” you giggle, a crumpled brown napkin in one hand while the other cradles a half-eaten slice of pizza. The two of you had stopped for a bite to eat next door to the museum.

“Hey, don’t blame me, I was just sending you encouraging messages. You made the decision,” Bambam whines, one cheek still stuffed full of pizza.

“Only because I had you feeding into my delusions!”

“You mean showing you your true worth?” he corrects.

You smile, leaning onto the table towards him. “Which ultimately pushed me to drop out.”

He sighs, “Okay, fine, you win. Please don’t tell your mom, though. She’ll hate me.”

“Impossible, she loves you.”

“And I’d like to keep it that way.”

You roll your eyes as Bambam finishes his last bite. Sitting in the pizzeria on a Saturday night amongst a crowd of college students from the local university, the two of you stand out like a sore thumb—Bambam, because of his tailored suit that’s probably the same price as some of these students’ tuition, and you, because, well, you’re you.

In his eyes at least, you always stand out. However, tonight, this is especially so. Unlike your first date, you are laughing and joking together. Maybe he should get pizza with you more often.

“This was nice,” you breathe out as you both step out of the pizzeria. When the restaurant doors close, the loud chatter muffles and is replaced by the quiet night breeze.

“So,” Bambam lets the word drawl sluggishly, not wanting the night to end, but he is reminded of the last date when you turned him down and hesitates to extend another offer.

“So,” you copy, voice soft as you start walking back towards the museum parking garage. “You never explained why you dropped out. Such a waste of a scholarship,” you tease.

“Ah, that…” Bambam stuffs his hands into the pockets of his pants.

You place a hesitant hand around the crook of his arm and his shoulders relax.

“If it’s a touchy subject, you don’t have to answer.”

He shakes his head, looking down at you. “No, it’s not.”

He opens the passenger door for you, helping you in before heading to his side.

“I guess I didn’t have tough skin either,” he chuckles softly, starting the car. “Some days it really did feel like being jailed inside an art museum. Photography didn’t feel the same without…”

His voice trails and his cheeks heat up. You look at him curiously but he’s too embarrassed to continue. Again, he is reminded by the fact that while you grew up together, the memories you share are quite different.

He glances at you and the way you smile at him is sweet. As if to say, it’s okay to not say anything more. But instead of being comforted, Bambam remembers the way you glared at him from across the dinner table as if it happened yesterday.

“I liked taking photos of the people I care about. I liked capturing moments that mattered…Feelings that…Art school just made me feel empty. I didn’t know why I was doing it anymore,” he finishes off quickly, looking away from you.

“I get that,” you smile weakly.

“But look at us now,” Bambam chuckles, lightening the mood. “We’re doing just fine on our own, aren’t we?”

You smile, glancing out the window. “Well, you are.”

“So are you! Aren’t you publishing a children’s book soon?” Bambam keeps his eyes on the road but her can see in his peripheral that you are looking at him in surprise.

“Did Mark…”

At the red light, he glances at you gently. “Your mom told mines. She brags about you when you aren’t around, you know.”

You frown, playing with the strap of the seatbelt.

“I know that’s her way of caring for me.” You finally say. “Sometimes, though, I wish she was more like your mom.”

“Well,” Bambam sends you a quick grin before turning back to the road. “If you marry me, my mom comes with the package too.”

You laugh. It rings throughout the car and sets his own heart at ease.

“You don’t have to bribe me with your mother, Bambam! If anything, I should be bribing you.”

“I’ll take it!”

“What?”

He chuckles. “Whatever the bribe is, I’ll take it. Think City Hall is still open?”

You shake your head, giggling softly. “I still don’t get you.”

“What’s there to get?”

You hum thoughtfully. “A young bachelor like you so eager to marry and me of all people? Who’s holding you against your will?”

At the next red light, Bambam steels himself and turns to you, eyes steady on yours.

“I like you. A lot. For a while now.”

Despite the dimly lit night, he can see you flush. Your fingers clutch the ends of your cardigan sleeves, a nervous habit.

When you don’t say anything, he continues. “I know your parents kind of forced you into this, but that’s not the case for me. Maybe I’m coming on too strong, This marriage arrangement thing…I get that it’s unnatural. I wish I could’ve gone about this differently, but we’re here now and I’m ready. I know you’re probably not and that’s okay, I get it. But I’m interested, I want to date, I want to go through the whole process with you. Slowly, at our own pace, and if I’m not a good fit…then that’s okay too. But I want to at least try.”

The light turns green and reluctantly, he looks away. The rest of the drive to your place is quiet. When he parks outside your apartment, he smiles as if your silence isn’t eating him alive.

“I had a really nice time, Y/N. I’m glad you came with me tonight.”

“Me too,” you reply, almost a whisper.

When you don’t say anything more, he gets out of the car and walks to your side, helping you with the door. But you don’t get up from your seat.

Instead, you turn to him, eyes staring up at him nervously.

“I like you too.”

It is soft, but his whole chest shakes. Bambam breaks into a smile of joy and relief.

He takes hold of your hand, helping you out of the car. His fingers linger, brushing softly against the tips of yours, and you smile.

“Then, I’ll see you next week at your family dinner?” he asks quietly.

You nod tentatively. You purse your lips, cheeks dimpling shyly. His heart skips as you linger, eyes shimmering under the streetlamp.

And then you lean into him, fingers clutching his and you tiptoe.

It is a fleeting touch—light and feathery on his lips—and then he blinks and you’re stepping away again.

“Night, Bambam.”

“N-night!”

He stays for ten minutes longer, waiting for the light of your apartment to flicker on, his lips still buzzing from your kiss.

Bambam’s lips sting from how much he’s been nervously biting them, the high from last week’s date now a fleeting memory. He sits at your parents’ dinner table across from you and it feels like déjà vu.

His mom laughs loudly next to him. Someone made a joke or something.

He doesn’t hear it. All he can see is the growing scowl on your face. Whatever feelings you had for him last week seem to be long gone if your expression is anything to go by.

Your mom swirls her glass of wine, leaning into his mom warmly. “When you told me you wanted my daughter to be your daughter-in-law—my daughter, for your Bambam!—I almost fainted!”

“What are you talking about? The minute I saw Y/N, I fell in love at first sight! I’m pretty sure it was the same for Bammie too.”

Bambam flushes, stuffing his cheeks with salad.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” his mom nudges him teasingly and he almost chokes but he nods adamantly towards you.

“You two are so humble,” your dad chuckles.

Your mom seems to nod in agreement. “I’m sure Bambam can find better options out there.”

“Y/N has one good trait though,” your dad adds, laughing. “She won’t cause any trouble as far as the love department goes.”

“Oh, don’t get me started, this girl is so stubborn!” your mom starts up again, waving her spoon accusingly at you. “Always work, work, work with my daughter. It’s all she cares about.”

“Oh, Bammie’s the same,” his mom cuts in, smiling amiably at you. “It’s the younger generation these days. Married to their work so to speak.”

“Bambam’s got a good head on him,” you father nods to him gruffly. “There’s a difference between working hard and working smart.”

“Unfortunately, she’s only good at working hard,” your mother sighs.

Bambam swallows thickly, gaze fixed on your expression. You’ve been chewing on the inside of your cheek since dinner started. He can see the tick in your jaw every time your parents say something mean your way.

At first, you managed to fake a few polite smiles, but now your head was fully down as you played with the rice on your plate.

“I like Y/N’s work ethic,” he finally speaks up. You finally look at him, eyes unreadable. “It’s hard work that brings talent to fruition and Y/N has both.”

Your gaze lingers on him.

“If we’re talking about talent though, we have to talk about your business!” Your mom breaks the air and the ghost of your smile completely vanishes from your face. You don’t look at him for the rest of dinner.

“Ready for dessert?” your mom asks after everyone was done eating.

You scoot your chair, rising from your seat. “Actually, I’m not feeling so well.”

“Oh, are you okay sweetheart?” his mother asks.

You smile apologetically, “So sorry to have to leave first.”

“Of course, honey! Bammie, why don’t you bring her home?”

“Oh no, that’s alright.”

“No, no, let me.” Bambam rises from his seat and takes hold of your hand. He gives you an encouraging squeeze. “Thank you for the meal! I’ll get her home safely.”

When you exit the house, you slip your hand from his. He pretends not to notice, leading you to his car quietly.

“Congratulations to our one and only Bambam for winning the Artisan Award, one of the most prestigious art scholarships in the nation.”

The morning announcement rings in his ears and his homeroom bursts in a parade of cheers and congratulations, but his heart lurches and he thinks of you.

He is reminded of the hours you spent afterschool every day in the art studio, working on pieces for your portfolio. He thinks of all the different art programs you attended during school holidays. He remembers your mother’s voice and the way you’d repeat those words during your late-night Instagram messages.

When he sees you at the bus stop immediately after school instead of in the studio, he almost turns the other way, but your eyes meet his and goes to stand next to you instead. You only give him a slight nod before returning to your phone.

It feels like a long time before the bus arrives.

You sit where you always do, near the back, beside the window. He takes the row of seats across from you.

His stomach twists with guilt when he watches your profile. You can probably feel his stare, but you continue to look straight ahead anyways. You’re probably trying hard to look unbothered, but he can see your disappointment clearly. There’s a slouch in your shoulders, a faint frown tilting the edges of your lips.

You are disappointed and probably dislike him right now.

He wonders if you’ll tell him about this over Instagram. He doesn’t know if Muse_ig will be able to console you this time around. He wishes he had the right words to say, but his throat constricts instead.

When your stop arrives, his eyes follow your back as you stand at the door and he beats himself up for having stayed quiet. And when the bus creeps to stop, you hesitate, before turning back to him.

“Congrats, by the way,” you offer him a small smile. “You deserved it.”

You step off the bus before he can say anything back.

You take a different route home for the rest of the school year.

At the red light, Bambam looks over at you. You continue looking straight ahead. There’s a sadness beneath your schooled expression, he can feel this in his gut, but he doesn’t know what to say.

“Y/N,” he starts hesitantly.

“The light’s green,” you interrupt.

He turns his attention back to the room. His gut clenches.

“Cupcake!” he blurts, gripping the wheel.

Your head turns abruptly. “What?”

“C-Cupcake, my cat,” he continues, not quite sure where he’s going with this. “You met her last time.”

After a pause, you reply back, “Yeah, I did.”

“I gave her a haircut. A really bad one. She had a bald spot, so I had to bring her to the groomers to get it fixed,” he rambles. “They tried their best, but she looks really awful right now. It’s pretty funny actually.”

You let out a soft chuckle. “Poor Cupcake.”

He glances at you briefly, his chest fluttering at the sight of your smile again. “You wanna go see my cats? I heard petting cats is therapeutic, although, not much to pet right now.”

Finally, you laugh.

“Sure, why not.”

When you finally get to his place, he knows he said the right thing. You sit on his couch, surrounded by his cats and a soft smile on your face.

“Awful, isn’t it?” he asks, taking a seat next to you. King jumps into his lap and he scoots closer to you.

“Absolutely terrible,” you chuckle, petting Cupcake gently.

“But you’re feeling better, aren’t you?”

You let out a quiet sigh.

“Bambam,” you look at him and his heart drops. “Maybe we should just stop this.”

“Fourteen!”

Your brows arch. “You really need to stop saying things without context.”

He puts King aside and grabs hold of your hand like a lifeline.

“I was fourteen. You mouthed my name on the first day of school. That’s when I started liking you.”

You blink up at him in surprise.

“The painting and photography club had to share the same classroom and I knew you just became the president. I did my brother’s chores for three weeks just so I could borrow his old camera,” he looks at you nervously. “I wasn’t planning on falling for photography. You’re the reason I’m where I’m at today.”

“Y-you’re giving me too much credit.”

He holds your hands tighter, shaking his head.

“Your parents have a screwed-up way of measuring your worth, but I don’t care about your job or how famous you are. I care about the girl who mouthed my name and made me feel special. You’ve always been kind to me, taking me seriously when no one else in our grade did. You were the first person to like my photos and you’ve always encouraged me, even though it came at the cost of your own feelings.” He looks at you seriously, “But it shouldn’t. I don’t want to compete against you, Y/N. I want to be on your side.”

“On my side?” you repeat, looking at your intertwined fingers.

“On your side, by your side,” he whispers. “You’re my muse, my first love, first heartbreak. I’d like you to be my last everything too.”

There’s a pause and his chest aches from the silence.

But then he sees it.

Your dimpled cheek.

“So, you had a crush on me since high school?”

He huffs. “That’s what you got from all that?”

You answer with a giggle, dimpled cheeks and very soft lips on his.

#got7 scenarios #got7 imagines #got7 reactions #bambam #fluff #fanfic #marriage life au

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wouldduskwood · 3 years ago

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Descendants of Despair Part 45

"Wait, what?” Jake roared as he pulled the car over to the verge and slammed on the brakes. “No, that can’t be possible!”

“I don’t know what to tell you, someone was waiting on the roof of one of the buildings I had trapped. They managed to follow me a small distance, but I think they were scared of the height or something. They seemed ungainly?” I shrugged, trying to lessen his distress while managing my own anxiety.

“I’m fairly certain it wasn’t one of my pursuers, if it was they were going rogue, so not likely.”

Jake said nothing, but pulled the car back onto the road. “Tell me what to do. Tell me otherwise I’m going to go back there and if I find whoever it is, I will kill them!” Jake cried as he fought with himself.

“Don’t go back there, let’s do this properly. We go home and we check out the footage from the cameras at the prison. We might pick up on the person if they got near enough then we can plan our next steps.” I stated firmly, suddenly terrified. I had never seen Jake so dark before and I doubted I’d be able to stop him if he got close to the pursuer while in this state. He could always beat me in sparring, so he wouldn’t have a problem with laying me on my ass if he thought it would protect my life.

Jake’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “I can’t let them go.” He groaned, talking to himself as much as to me.

You can, you will...because I need you.” I replied, trying to break through his cloud of darkness. “Jake, I need you!” I stated again, quietly but with firm finality. Finally his hands began to relax on the wheel and his speed reduced as he headed towards home.

“Thanks,” he mumbled as he remained staring at the road. “You’re probably right.”

I didn’t reply. If I voiced my thoughts right now, I knew they’d send Jake back over the edge. The reality was I had been taken unaware and that never happened. Usually I’d have some form of a warning - like I understood staying in one place too long meant I was more likely to have to bolt without preparation - so I’d prepare beforehand. This time there was none of that. I had been completely and utterly confident in the escape routes we had practised and it unnerved me a great deal to have them violated without even a trap being triggered. The person must have known before my escape. They must have been watching us as we prepared.

There was really no bigger slap in the face than the realisation that, after all of our precautions, somebody had still managed to sneak past our defenses. It gave a very clear signal. They’re one step ahead of us and they’re the ones in control...after all, they know who we are and why they are targeting us. We didn’t have the luxury of that knowledge. Avoiding the traps showed knowledge of our operation....and twisted that knife in deeper.

Jake turned into our driveway and pulled up quickly out front rather than hiding the car at the back as we usually did. He practically leapt out of the vehicle and sprinted towards the door. I followed at a small distance, contemplating our every action and compiling a list of potential suspects. If we could pinpoint any small slip up that they had made and discover who they were...then we were back into some form of control. Jake was far too agitated to slow down and think about it logically, so I needed to break through his cloud of anger.

“Jake, stop!” I growled as we entered the house. When he didn’t respond, I jumped on his back and wrapped my arms around his neck, trying to slow him down. “Listen to me would you! This reaction is exactly what they are hoping for! We will make mistakes if we react on emotion like this! You need to calm down!” I snarled in his ear. Jake continued to force his way forward and I could feel my grip on him slip. There was no way around it, I’d have to change tactics if I hoped to get him to slow down. ‘Be dramatic then,’ I thought to myself and threw myself to the floor.

My sudden departure from his back had Jake stop in his tracks. My appearance on the ground had him at my side in concern. “MC, I’m sorry,” he whispered urgently. “Please, I’m so sorry.” A sudden wave of guilt swept through me as I met his concerned gaze. I was used to doing exactly what needed to be done at any given time, but this time I had played Jake and it was something that I didn’t like to do. I sighed. “Look, I needed you to slow down and you weren’t listening to me…” I began. Jake looked like a hurt puppy which upset me further. “Fuck Jake, let’s think about the greater good here! Reacting out of anger or fear means we miss stuff. It’s going to be time consuming and tedious work, not something that we can complete when emotions are running that high.” I moaned, very aware that he was as good at playing me as I was at playing him. His silent act was really starting to piss me off, mostly because for some stupid fucking reason, I found myself constantly talking!

“Fine! I’m as upset as you are! I aren’t used to having people know my steps before I take them! Those traps should have worked where they were placed! The very fact that the person got past them and onto the best route we had planned for my escape...fuck Jake, it terrifies me.” I rambled before being interrupted by Jake pinning me down. “Then we go and we take care of it,” he snarled in my face from his position above me. Great, I’d reignited the beast. I swept my leg up under his and managed to flip myself onto the top, taking him by surprise.

“No, we stay here and do our due diligence. We get ourselves out of the mess without getting ourselves into a bigger one,” I growled as my fingers dug into his arms. He struggled under my grip before pushing me backwards off him. “I told you I’d protect you,” he sneered as he stood and headed back towards the front door.

“Not like this! You’re falling into their trap.” I screamed. Jake didn’t listen, and his paces towards the door became more purposeful. I righted myself and sprinted after him, sliding across the floor so I could take his legs out from under him by tapping his knees and stop him from leaving. As he fell onto me, I grabbed him with my arms and legs. Changing tactics, I decided the only option was to play to his emotions...and my own insecurities. “You’d really risk leaving me without any form of protection if you get caught?” I pleaded urgently, my voice breaking as I did so. Jake stopped struggling against me.

“What do you mean?” he asked quietly.

“I mean, you go out there and you risk getting caught by the police or hurt by the person that is waiting for us. Either way, you’re out of commission and I’m alone...again...with more enemies than I had before. I can’t do it again Jake. I’ve been a fucking adult since before I was 6 years old. My earliest memories are those of having to fend for myself, even before I wound up on the street. I never had the luxury of having someone care enough about me to be there. You changed that and I can’t lose you...not you…” I whispered, suddenly very exhausted, as I let him go and curled up into a ball on the floor, struggling not to cry. ‘Never cry for yourself, you made the choices that got you here.’ I repeated over and over in my head. It was a mantra I'd had for as long as I'd been on the streets. I didn’t even notice that Jake had put his hand on my side, too wrapped up in my own internal struggle. I’d gone too far, admitted too much and it was becoming too hard to claw my way back from the edge.

Part 46

#duskwood jake x #duskwood jakexplayer #duskwood jake x player #duskwood jake x mc #duskwood fanfiction #duskwood fanfic #duskwood jakexmc fanfic #duskwood #duskwood jakexmc #fanfiction #fanfic #duskwood jake #jake x mc #jakexmc

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badger-bear · 3 years ago

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Fic Writer Questions

Thank you @disgruntledkittenface for the tag! I loved reading your answers and I’m excited to answer too.

1) How many works do you have on AO3?

2) What’s your total AO3 word count?

222,272

3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

2 but I don’t know if you can count one. The one I write for now is 1d and in the past I wrote hockey au’s.

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Run Right Into You

Let’s Go To The Beach

Every Time We Touch

It’s My Job to Protect You - for some reason this fic has always been my most popular and I don’t know why. I wrote it so long ago, I posted it in 2013 but I’m sure I wrote it a year before that. It was my most popular on the other fan fic site I used as well.

There You Go Making Me Love You - this is so fucking embarrassing lmao please remember that this was written in like 2012 and it was one of the first fics I have ever written. Same with the one above.

5) What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Probably Downgraded, which was inspired by quarantine and The Office. It’s not quite ansty as it is sad.

6) What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Uhm, Downgraded is the only fic with a sad ending so this one is kind of difficult for me to choose. I wrote a 5 times Plus 1 fic back in like 2012 that probably has the happiest ending. It was a Ziam and it was five times they’re daughter woke up Zayn and the one time Zayn woke her up on her wedding day.

7) Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

No, I mean do au’s count? I don’t think so.

8) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Definitely, whatever I think is hot.

9) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

For the most part yes! Especially the ones that have left something about what they like about the fic, that always makes me so so so happy. But I try to at least say thank you. I know my fics aren’t popular and objectively speaking, especially the ones from back in the day, they aren’t very good but I’m constantly trying to be better. So when someone takes the time to say they liked what I wrote I want to acknowledge that.

10) Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Mm, no. I wrote a fic a loooooong time ago I posted on the old site I used and this person kept commenting how much they enjoyed it and the parts they liked and when I posted the final chapter they said it could have been better lol Which isn’t hate, its an opinion but it was confusing at the time since they seemed to like it before.

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yeah, but I think it was just a bot or something. My friend managed to catch it and I was able to report it.

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

No unless they did it after I said no.

13) Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes but nothing that has been posted online. My ex girlfriend and I used to cowrite all the time.

14) What’s your all time favorite ship?

Larry but I will read mostly every other pairing.

15) What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

There’s too many to count. But probably my pop punk Louis fic. I have tried to rework it a thousand times and it’s just not clicking.

16) What are your writing strengths?

This is hard for me to answer because I don’t want it to seem like i am fishing for compliments or whatever. I don’t think I am very good and while I love writing and I will keep writing and trying to get better, it’s hard to think positively when I just don’t think I’m very good. So I suppose I think my strength is coming up with ideas and persevering despite my self-doubt and imposter syndrome.

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

Fuck dude, what isn’t? Endings though!!!! I’m terrible at conclusions but also grammar.

18) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I haven’t done it until very very recently. It makes me nervous because I don’t know the language (Italian) and I don’t want to get it wrong so I will definitely be looking for help before I even think about publishing it. (I’d have to actually write it first though lol)

19) What was the first fandom you wrote for?

20) What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

I haven’t written it yet. That’s a shit answer isn’t it? The real answer is actually an original work but I don’t think that counts either. So I guess I’ll go with Medicine Baby Take My Medicine because Victoria was my beta and she was lovely and helped me so much and it was so nice to work with her.

I want to read everyone answer these because I find it super interesting! But I will tag @larryatendoftheday @chloehl10 @absoloutenonsense

#writing tag #this was fun and embarrassing lmao

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walker-journal · 4 years ago

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Fae Bay Productions (Mina +Adam)

Characters: Mina Fitzroy (Nix-Virginia), Adam Walker (Hunter-Tapir)

Timing: Before the events of Promise to Bind

Summary: While out on patrol, Adam and Mina find themselves trapped inside cinema tropes and a Fae experiment to understand human television.

Content Warning: Brief allusion to Emotional Abuse

Sometimes when your adrenaline is pumping things seem to slow down, but this is mostly just a memory trick. Your brain remembers novel experiences in more vivid detail. While it's true that you're stronger and faster while under the influence of adrenaline, things being slowed down is a cognitive illusion. Adam’s training had been quite clear on this.

But that being said, he’d been watching his knives cut into this thing for a while now.

Adam had taken to counting each of the distinct blood droplets swiveling through the air as his tactical knife plunged into the hellhound’s neck. The Hunter’s heartbeat was a slothful metronome in his ears as the knife sank by fragments of an inch.

Thirty six...thirty seven…thirty eight

Adam watched beads of sweat slowly slide down his taut biceps and the raised veins of arms, highlighting each glistening contour in the alley’s inexplicable mood lighting.

Aw fuck, he was trapped in a gatorade commercial!

Everything snapped back into focus with a whiplash of sensation and Adam became cognizant of the alley again. “Hey uh...Mina,” Adam asked, yanking his knife out of the Hellhound collapsed at his feet. “Was anything kinna weird just now?”

His head jerked back around at a sputtering sound, and the Hunter watched the slain Hellhound collapse into a mass of black and red paint. “The hell..”

This wasn’t quite what Mina had been expecting when she’d been asked to go with Adam on a hunt. Her boundaries were clear: nothing humanoid. That… was it. Mina would admit that she was having a hard time on coming up with boundaries, but, hey, at least she had one. So this was supposed to be normal, run of the mill, seek and destroy. But this? This was weird. For starters, she felt it as soon as they’d arrived, the feeling in her chest, at the back of her neck, that there was another Fae around, but, before she could even warn Adam about it, they’d been attacked, swept up in the action. Literally, it felt like.

Then when one of the beasts charged Mina off her feet, it felt like she’d been in the air for far too long before she’d landed on her hands and managed to flip herself back onto her feet. Really, if it was a long time that she was in the air. She’d started reciting pi while in the air and gotten 46 digits in before she stopped “falling.” She turned to Adam, looking around them trying to figure out what was going on. “Something’s really weird. I meant to tell you, before we got attacked, but I sensed another--” She was cut off by the sound of a growl at the other end of the alleyway and watched as a spawn jumped on top of a dumpster. “Are you kidding me?” Something looked off about it. Despite being under the streetlight, it was still covered in shadows, the harsh, inhuman glow of its eyes the only thing to be made out.

Adam turned to meet the approaching Spawn, drawing a stake from his belt in one hand while settling into a stance to meet the shambling chiropteran’s charge. The spawn’s mouth split into four fanged mandibles as it lunged towards Adam. The Hunter let out a measured exhale as muscle memory guided the feinting sweep of his knife….

The Spawn’s unearthly shriek and sounds of White’s Crest were abruptly replaced with climbing pizzicato chords.

Sail away, sail away, sail away Sail away, sail away, sail away Sail away, sail away, sail away Sail away, sail away, sail away

Adam and confused Spawn looked up as one as all the color faded to the tune of Enya’s Sail Away “Uuuuuuh Mina do you…”

From Bissau to Palau, in the shade of Avalon From Fiji to Tyree and the Isles of Ebony From Peru to Cebu hear the power of Babylon From Bali to Cali, far beneath the Coral Sea

Everything became shrouded in sepia colored haze, as from an old photograph.

Adam glanced to the side and saw a familiar shaggy-haired preteen holding an oaken stake while a statuesque woman with brawny arms and eyes like flint guided the boy through stances. “No love,” Esther Walker chided in a firm contralto voice. “Your breathing is throwing the strike off center.” The Hunter in training inhaled and lunged forward, only for Esther to step aside from the stake’s momentum at the last moment and send the boy sprawling in the dirt with a brusque backhand to his spine. “Better Adam,” the Esther allowed, “but choreograph your movements like that and you’ll never survive the night. Now again”

Turn it up, turn it up, turn it up, up, adieu. Ooh ooh Turn it up, turn it up, turn it up, up, adieu. Ooh ooh Turn it up, turn it up, turn it up, up, adieu. Oh

Adam looked around in the sepia mirage of images of himself and Esther Walker training over many years of montage like an exposed photograph’s afterimages. “Uh, hi mom? Kinna busy ”

“Remember your stances…….”

Adam sighed and assumed a fighting stance again.

“.....and your footwork,” reminded an echo of the phantom voice.

Adam scooted his back foot forward a few inches.

“Remember…..”

“Damn it mom stop backseat slaying for a sec!”

The sepia overlay to everything snapped back to full color with a fading of Enya and the Spawn was on Adam again in an eyeblink. One grudgingly perfect harmony of stances and footwork later the Spawn had been staked into nothing more than a puddle of black paint.

Ok fine! You win not-mom voice. Got sloppy on the left withdrawal counterpoint there! Happy?

“Um Mina,” Adam, “not to make this weird but uh…...did you happen to have a like...flashback just now?”

Mina remembered being young and hearing a man pounding away at a piano in the bar below where she and her dad stayed. Frantic, panicked sounds that kept her awake at night, even when she couldn’t hear him playing. That wasn’t when she decided she wanted to play the piano. If anything, it turned her away from it, from the emotional complexities that music could convey. She heard it now, as she watched Adam deal with the spawn by himself, as the image of him shifted and distorted, everything changing, everything like something out of one of the movies she’d watch with Bex. She saw her dad, along with Alexei and Katya Orlov, a father daughter pair of slayers, dealing with a spawn very much like the one she and Adam were dealing with.

“The fuck are you doing?” Eric Fitzroy yelled at his daughter.

The piano seemed to get louder in her ears, the sounds of it stressed. Her frantically beating heart made an excellent percussion. She couldn’t move. The three of them were dealing with the spawn, and Mina couldn’t move. She watched as the creature lashed out at Katya, grabbing her around the neck, and Mina dropped the stake she had in her hand as she panicked. One of the keys on the piano was broken, the sound of it loud and off in her mind, and it was like it was being tapped over and over again, and her dad was the one to stab the spawn, turning it to dust, and the music stopped immediately.

Eric whipped around to face his daughter, walking up to her and gripping her shoulders tightly. “You hesitated, Mina! You can’t hesitate! Never hesitate! Not only could you get hurt, but someone else could get hurt! Get your head out of your arse, girl!”

Mina could feel his words bouncing around in her skull like the music had been as she looked at Adam, trying to piece together where she was, who she was with. She wasn’t a teenager anymore. She was with Adam Walker. There had been a spawn. He’d killed it. She’d hesitated. She always hesitated. “I--” She cleared her throat and looked around them again. She’d dropped her knife. She picked it up, hand gripping it tightly. “Something’s wrong,” she said instead of answering his question. She didn’t want to talk about flashbacks. Not at that moment, at least. “I wanted to tell you, before the spawn showed up, but there wasn’t any time. There’s another Fae around here. I don’t… I don’t know what kind, but we should be prepared.”

“Fae huh, why would one of them be around Spawn? Vamps love Fae blood. Why did this one turn into paint instead of dust? Adam frowned in thought, trying to piece it together. His eyes strayed to Mina for her input, but it suddenly struck him that she didn’t look ok. It also clicked in his head what Mina had once told him about being hated by all sides. What must it be like for her, facing another Fae alongside a Hunter, probably unable to fully trust either.

Cherry blossoms began to lightly drift down from the sky as Adam frowned, their soft feather-like touches brushing the Hunter’s cheeks as he struggled to find the worlds.

“Hey uh Mina...look its obvious somethings playing with our heads, maybe Fae magic, maybe something else…”

High descending piano notes played in the background, crisply poignant and thoughtful.

“Just like, I’m glad you have my back you know? And if you ever need me I’ll back your backup.”

Soft rosy radiance backlit Adam, accentuating the concerned set of his lips and the imploring glisten of his eyes. The petals swirled about them in a sudden breeze. The soulful piano notes abruptly ascended up the scales!

“Because I’m not going to claim I know whats like but I do at least know…Woah! .Ok what the fuck?

Adam flailed his way out of the pink petals now covering his hair and shoulders like a dog shaking off water. The piano solo ended with an abrupt off-key thonk.

“Wait whut? Is this like...a flower Fae? What's happening?”

“I don’t know why they’re around the spawn, or the hellhounds, or the paint. Wait, paint. Wait.” Mina looked around, trying to figure out what was going on. She could tell that the other Fae was close and moving closer, and she almost allowed her senses to lead her to it, but then Adam was talking, and she wanted to pay attention.

It was hard to pay attention with the music playing around them, and Mina frowned. “No, no. I mean, well, yes, they can mess with your head, but it’s a little harder to mess with mine. I-- I think they’re messing with the environment, actually.” And the music was so loud, and normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but it was all that Mina could focus on. That and the pink swirling around them, and the scent of flowers. “Wait, why is your face doing that thing? Why are there flowers in the alley?”

Adam was close, and Mina leaned back a bit, before the piano stopped and Mina jerked to look up and see a saetimp shaking its fist from one of the dumpsters. No, not a saetimp. The saetimp. The one that gave her that bloody tattoo. “No,” she snarled, an actual growl in her voice. “Not a flower Fae. A fucking saetimp.”

A saetimp wearing a movie director’s hat and sitting in one of those strange chairs. He made a bunch of angry sounds and pulled out his paintbrush, painting a boombox. “Careless Whisper” started playing loudly. The pink aura refilled the air.

“First a monster attack and now this? What bloody genre is this?” Mina pulled a throwing knife from her belt and just started cursing at ram-like Fae in English. And Polish. And German.

Maybe he didn’t understand everything that she said, but the saetimp seemed properly scandalized.

“Stop, now,” Mina said, waving the knife threateningly. But she wasn’t going to kill it. She told herself that it was because she wanted the mushroom tattoo removed, but, really, she just didn’t have it in her. She looked at Adam, hoping for support.

Adam looked from Mina to the suited Saetimp for a calculating moment before sheathing both his blades in one smooth motion. “Hey what are you…”

Director Saesese Bay held up a gloved hand in a shushing gesture before pointing towards sheets of poster paper and markers that were abruptly there at Adam and Mina’s feet.

Careless Whisper lilted through the alley as Adam and the Saetimp fixed each other with a long stare. Eventually the Fae’s painted eyes proved too unnervingly dollike and the disgruntled Hunter relented for the sake of looking at something, anything, else.

Adam sighed. “Love fucking Actually right now,” he told Mina before taking one of markers. “I hate romcoms, stalker clingy creepy shit made out to be wholesome,” the perhaps biased fraternity boy groused as he wrote on the poster. Felt point squeaked for a moment before Adam flipped over the paper and held it above his head for the Saetimp to read. .

-Yo Mickey Mouse fairy. What the actual Fuck are you doing?-

Director Saesese Bay turned literally purple with approbation, eyes widening across their face until the pupils were just tiny dots that were a bit too perfectly stationary to be entirely convincing. It took only a second for the Fae to produce poster paper of its own with beautifully flowing script worthy of any medieval illumination.

-We are incorporating masterpieces of human cinematography into our artistic odyssey! :O You are my star characters! : ) You’re welcome-

Staring at Adam incredulously for a moment, Mina frowned before putting the knife back into the pouch attached to her belt. Why couldn’t Adam just be his usual utilitarian self for a moment and allow the two of them to dispose of the threat instead of humoring it. Not that saetimps were particularly threatening. Creepy? Certainly, their eyes really made her uncomfortable. Like all Fae, her body had practically been programmed to dislike that instant tingling sense of familiarity that came from being around them. But threatening? Rarely. Even if this one had sent painted monsters after them and had poor choices in music.

With a sigh, Mina picked up her own poster and marker. She couldn’t believe they were playing along with this. How could they possibly get this to stop? She didn’t want to spend all night playing leading actress in some sick, twisted little creatures production of… “I’ve never watched that movie,” she muttered. Love Actually. What even was that? Adam’s description made it sound terrible. She preferred Jurassic Park or the Mummy. Not that she wanted to give the saetimp any ideas about siccing dinosaurs or reanimated corpses on them.

Mina scribbled a poorly drawn sketch of a hand holding up a middle finger on her poster board and wrote, ‘Stop. Please.’ under it. She didn’t feel like humoring this creature any more. If they weren’t careful, she and Adam could get seriously hurt because of its games.

Adam scrutinized the faerie director for a time in thought. Mina seemed ready to shank the shit outta bobble eyes here and it might well come to that. But this bohemian goblin thing was an intelligent being that didn’t want to eat people. Adam felt it behooved him as a guardian to try to broker peace if it could be done.

If not? Then iron Mickey Mouse shikabobs it was.

-Hey Director. Learning about human cinema, like how it's structured, the symbols we use, that sorta thing. That’s what you want? For your odysseus shit right?-

Director Saesese Bay regarded the more thuggish member of his action hero duo for a moment, as if doubting that the murder monkey could have much to offer on the matter of high art. Nevertheless, a response came into being on the poster paper.

- ; / Yes, I want to understand the patterns within this medium of recorded motion and light. But aren’t you wasting time? I have explosions for you to depart from while not reacting! :D -

“God I wish Bex were here,” Adam confessed to Mina, wishing he had someone more versed in media culture before trying diplomacy with an art major.

-If I offered you the location of a grimoire in which humans collectively archive and gather all the patterns and common themes in our cinema culture, would this be enough to cancel the production and let us retire alive from your show business?-

Director Saesese Bay gave start, conflicting eagerness and suspicion playing across their features in waves of pixelated green and yellow.

-:O Are you toying with me action primate?-

-No Director- Adam wrote. -I promise to provide to the location of a huge collection of human cinema lore with references to thousands upon thousands of other works-

Saesese Bay sealed the promise with a flourish of paint.

-Agreed, with one stipulation, a single closing scene, and you may both retire from your careers alive and unharmed ; ) agreed? -

Adam turned to Mina. “Well?”

Mina would have stabbed the little bastard and forced him to undo the tattoo and whatever weirdness he’d forced on the town, but that wasn’t the way to go about this. She knew that wasn’t the way to go about this. She was letting her feelings towards the saetimp, negative and irritable as they were, to skew her judgement, and that wasn’t right.

“I do, too,” Mina said quietly, thinking about how Bex being there would probably just make the situation better regardless. Even if she didn’t want Bex to get caught up in whatever nonsense this, no doubt, ended up becoming.

Eyes widening at the promise Adam made, Mina looked between him and the saetimp and wondered just what it was that the hunter had up his sleeve. She had no idea what he was referring to. For all she knew, he could be making something up. But he couldn’t be. He made a promise.

Alive and unharmed sounded a bit too good to be true, but a deal was a deal, and that was really the best that Adam and Mina could ask for. She sighed. “I hope you know what you’re doing.” WIth the felt point marker, she wrote -Agreed- on her poster board, the middle finger she’d crudely drawn vanishing through some sort of movie, saetimp magic.

“Woah wait...did you just censor her?” Adam tried to flip the bird experimentally but found his middle finger’s silhouette suddenly blurry. “Woah...ok like dick move but that is kinna cool...so what if I like….just dropped trow now there’d be a….”

-:O Focus monkey focus! Where is the grimoire of cinema secrets!-

Welp here goes. Adam put on a grim face, as if the Director had managed to pry from him one of humanity’s greatest secrets, the hidden repository of all human film knowledge. A dramatic inhale and exhale latter, the squeaking of a felt pelt forever put mortalkind at Saesese Bay’s mercy.

-https://tvtropes.org/-

Director Saesese Bay squinted curiously at the eldritch formula by which humans arbitrarily assigned spots in an infinite electronic space full of upsetting slander from people they’d never meet.

- O.O?? This is the grimoire?--

-Yup- Assured Adam. -In it you’ll find almost every thematic pattern outlined and described with examples and links to more patterns and the works they come from. This I promise-

Director Saesese Bay drew a properly devious mustache on their face and rubbed their gloves together in an appropriately machiavellian fashion while smirking at a nonexistent audience.

Adam knew he needed to move this along and more felt pen squeaking ensued.

-So what's the last scene director?-

Director Saesese Bay made a flourish and the alley was bathed in hazy golden light and a flurry on lens flares. The clarion notes of the Mission Impossible theme from nowhere, drums and bouncing synthesizer notes rippling across the now brilliantly lit night.

-The dramatic slow action exit!-

Adam turned to Mina, hair swishing with unnatural slowness as sunglasses appeared on his face from nowhere. “Well Mina...shall we?”

Mina almost wanted to ask what tv tropes were, but she didn’t want to invalidate Adam’s claim. She didn’t like when the saetimp gave itself a mustache, and she didn’t like the command of a slow and dramatic exit, but hadn’t that been how the night had been going, anyway? Lots of slow, dramatic sequences that, really, she just didn’t understand and probably never would.

Looking down at her hand, Mina looked at the pair of sunglasses in them. It was the middle of the night. Why did they need sunglasses? This was terribly ridiculous, and it didn’t make any sense at all, and she was reminded of the few instances that she’d complained during movies about the lack of believability, at least when compared to her own experiences.

“I suppose we shall.” In slow motion, Mina shook out her hair, the loose waves of it cascading around her shoulders, even though she just knew she’d put it up in a ponytail before they went on their hunt. The sunglasses went on in slow motion, and she gave Adam a nod in slow motion, and, together, the two of them walked out of the alley, their strides matched. Something exploded behind them. Mina flinched in slow motion but kept walking, and she and Adam walked away from the sound of a car alarm going off.

Eventually, when they could walk at a normal speed, Mina looked over at Adam and groaned. “I fucking detest that little monster.”

#Fae Bay Productions #Emotion abuse tw #chatzy #drowningisinevitable #mina #adam #Seatimp

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innitmarvellous · 3 years ago

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For the ask thing: 5, 7, 30, 46 and 74 please 😄

Thank you! :D

5: What three things/people do you think of most each day?

Hmm, that's a good question, actually. Well...in no particular order:

- probably something I read in the newspaper, being the stupid politics nerd I am

- the book I'm currently reading or the show I'm watching

- my current fictional/celebrity crush (or some other person I'm really invested at the moment for whatever reason)

7: What is your opinion on [insert person/thing here]?

- Am I supposed to just pick a random thing here? Well, then...I'll just randomly go with Doctor Who, because I'm watching the classic series at the moment. 😉 In my opinion both the old and new series are a lot of fun, even though they feel really different. Well, that's obviously, since the oldest episodes aired 50 years ago, but...they don't even feel dated to me. And as much as I loved the new seasons, I think the old ones are just as entertaining!

30: Favourite movie?

- I haven't seen many movies in my life (if I don't count anime and weird 1960/1970s stuff from my own country etc, that is), but I still can't decide on one...I'd say my top three are The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Death at a Funeral and Red Cliff!

46: Talk about your crush, if you have one!

- No real life crushes in sight, but thankfully I've got a celebrity crush since last October and it has been awesome so far :D I watched The Thick of It back then, developed a crush on one character after like three episodes and have been in love with a certain British comedian (who's like 20 years older than me since that seems to be my target age group lol) ever since, haha. Right now I'm still slowly working myself through all the stuff he's been in and worked on and...yeah. 😘 (It's so hard to find out who I'm talking about just judging from my blog/pinned post etc... 😏)

74: What is one random but interesting fact about yourself?

- I'm reading a lot of books (and even more manga), and a few years ago I managed to read 31 novels in a single month. I don't know if that's interesting...but at least it's definitely random 🤔

#ask game

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glorifiedgpjfic · 4 years ago

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Glorified G - Chapter 46

January 22nd 1992

Over the past few weeks Joanne had had her first few CPT sessions, they seemed to be going well and they helped her to keep the nightmares and flashbacks at bay, she did however still struggle to sleep and the people around her were often victims of her angry outbursts- which Dr Isles had assured her were a side effect of the PTSD. Joanne hadn’t rushed to ask the director to take her out of the field as she was apprehensive about it and she didn’t want to risk losing her job by asking to be moved out of the line of fire, and she certainly didn't want to be sent back to London to go back to Interpol. She hadn’t told Eddie this of course, as far as he knew the wheels were truly in motion for her to be taken out of the field, she felt awful about lying to him but she just couldn’t bring herself to do it, not yet.

Eddie and Jo had spent every free second they had together looking at houses, they’d managed to find three contenders- all were relatively central to both potatohead and the FBI building, meaning that their commute wouldn’t be any longer than it currently was. The house that Jo liked the most had a large gate on the driveway and high walls that she felt would be good considering Pearl Jam were gaining popularity, she’d done a project on celebrity stalkers when she was at university so she was armed with enough evidence to convince Eddie that although it is rare, celebrity stalkers can indeed be violent, for example Mark David Chapman who shot John Lennon in 1980. Having high walls and a gate offered her piece of mind, Eddie hadn’t seemed opposed to it, which was something Jo was grateful for, she didn’t want to have to argue with him on this.

The guilt of hiding the truth from Eddie was starting to get to Jo, so she had asked William to have a meeting with her so she could discuss the prospect of her getting out of the field, she was concerned that this would make her seem weak to her boss and that he might even suggest her transferring out of the office into a full time teaching role, which as much as she loved her teaching experience with John Douglas, she didn’t fancy it full time as she found it rather tedious. She hoped that she would be able to stay exactly where she was just without going out into the field, but she knew that being in the field was a big part of her job description and the only real exception to getting out of being in the field was if you were injured and generally even then that was only a temporary thing. As she took a seat in the director’s office the nerves began to pool in her stomach,

“Good afternoon Agent Taylor, how are you doing?” William asked while making the two of them a cup of coffee,

“I’m doing okay, I’ve been seeing Dr Isles, and I think that it's helping- I’m still struggling to sleep ya know?” William nodded at the young woman in front of him, the truth was he knew exactly how she felt he knew exactly what she’s going through,

“You know, everyone on this team has cases that have stuck with them, mine was one of the first cases I was on-” He paused, a brief look of sorrow graced his features, “There was a serial killer abducting young children, little girls- his type just so happened to look exactly like my daughter, each time we got a report of another girl being taken my mind always assumed it was my baby- it struggled so hard to stay focused on that case. And weeks after we found the guy a part of me still expected him to come back and get my girl, the images of the children he killed stuck with me for years, i used to see Louise’s face ion the faces of those we didn’t save- Dr Isles helped me through that so I know you’re in good hands.” Jo gave him a small smile as he sipped his coffee,

“I uh- I’ve been thinking, is there any chance I can have some time out of the field? I’m not sure how long I’ll need, I just- I’m not as focused as I should be in the field and I’m worried I’m putting everyone at risk.” Jo searched William’s face for a hint as to how he was going to respond, she took a sip of her coffee as he pondered what she was saying for a few moments,

“Do you want to be out permanently?” He asked, Jo shook her head violently,

“No! Just for a little while till I get back on top of things.” He nodded before speaking again,

“Do you mind if I make some calls and see what I can arrange for you?” Jo raised an eyebrow,

“Could I not just consult on cases and do paperwork? I’ve got a stack that will probably take me a while to finish,” The director shook his head,

“Jo, if you do that you’ll be bored out of your mind, I’ll see what I can find you- if there isn’t anything then you can do that.”

“Why are you going out of your way just to make sure I don’t get bored? If you don’t mind me asking, sir.” Jo knew that he didn’t have to find her an alternative to field work, yet for some reason he was making it his duty,

“If I’m honest it’s because you’re one of the best agents I’ve seen in a very long time, and I’d hate for you to leave us when you’re such an asset to this team.” He spoke slowly as though he was pondering the weight of his words, “and I can’t help but feel responsible for what you’re going through, you were right when you said it was me- if I could change it I would believe me-” Jo was quick to silence her boss,

“Sir, I was upset that day and it was all such a shock to me, I promise you I didn’t mean any of what I said- it was out of order for me to say that.” She offered him a small smile as a silent apology,

“I know, but you weren’t out of line I completely understand, and I would’ve been just as upset if I was in your position.”

Jo left William’s office feeling less guilty than when she entered, she was glad he valued her for what she did as much as she loved Eleanor and her colleagues she knew for a fact that her paperwork was always done to the highest standard while they generally rushed to get it done so they could go home, occasionally they asked Joanne to finish for them. She sat at her desk trying to tackle some of the paperwork, but at the same time she didn’t want to start it if she was going to be working on something else for the foreseeable so she decided to sit and stare off into space for a while.

William Webster racked his brain trying to think what he could get Joanne to do, there wasn’t anything in the office that would be a good use of her time, so he decided to give an old friend a call.

After an hour or so of Jo staring into space and trying to busy herself she was summoned into William’s office once again, she took a seat opposite him eagerly waiting for him to tell her what she was going to be doing for the next few weeks or months. He grinned at her as she sat down,

“So, I’ve made some calls, and how would you feel about doing some research for John Douglas? It’s local so you won’t have to move or travel any more than you already do,” Jo nodded before thinking about how she’d felt during the time she had spent teaching alongside Douglas,

“Is it a teaching role?” She questioned and William gave her a smile and shook his head,

“No, I know how dull teaching can be- John is doing some research that I think you might be interested in, I’ve told him you’ll give him a call,” William paused briefly, “He can explain it better than I can.” Joanne gave an awkward smile, she began to ponder what the research could possibly be, was he going to study her and her plethora of trauma?

“I’ll go give him a call now, thank you Sir.”

Eddie was on the phone to Mike discussing a potential song when he heard Jo’s car pull into the driveway, he watched with caution as she seemed to skip to the door - he quickly brought the call to an end, puzzled by his girlfriend’s sudden change in behaviour. He put a pot of coffee on to brew as Jo beamed stating that she had ‘so much’ to tell him, she quickly changed out of her work clothes into some joggers and an old Motley Crue band tee, Eddie handed her a mug of coffee before taking a seat opposite her,

“So? What’s got you in such a good mood?” He asked with a curious smile,

“Well, John Douglas wants me to help him with some of his research! He’s interviewing violent offenders to try and see if they have anything more in common that can be used to help law enforcement when searching for offenders. So, I get to go into prisons and conduct interviews on his behalf, so we can cover more ground between us if that makes sense- I’ll probably be only meeting with a handful of the prisoners, but he wants me to try and build up some sort of rapport with them, ya know? Try and gain their trust and not antagonise them, see if they open up to me. The best bit? I’ll get an acknowledgement when he publishes his findings!” Eddie smiled at Jo’s enthusiasm, it amazed him how she could be so passionate about something that would scare him half to death, he wouldn’t even dream of speaking to one of the monsters that Jo would be interviewing, but that was one big difference between the two of them; Jo tried to see them as more than their crimes, she wanted to understand them, help them. Whereas Eddie saw them as animals, monsters who should be locked up.

Joanne had been briefed by John about how to behave in the prison setting, she knew that they would most likely lie to her about their crimes, and that when they did, rather than calling them out on it in an accusatory manner she should simply state that she’d read the case file, she knew every detail about the case. She knew how vital it was that she’d learnt everything about the cases, so she wouldn’t be shocked or disgusted by anything they told her. He had also informed her that they were more likely to open up if she wasn’t making notes during the interview and that taping the interview could often distract them or prevent that from divulging certain details. She knew all of the theory that would help her for this research, however no amount of studying could prepare her for what she was going to face when she sat down across from serial rapist, Marc O’Leary.

#eddie vedder #Eddie Vedder Fanfic #Pearl Jam #pearl jam fanfiction #pearl jam fanfic #grunge fanfic #grunge fanfiction #mike mccready #stone gossard #dave abbruzzese #jeff ament

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sapphirewolf1122 · 5 years ago

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Just Talk

Summary: Katsuki has been pulling away from you and you don’t know why

Word Count: 3,851

A/N: So I wrote this for myself a while ago, just to kind of let some feelings out. I do feel like I wasted the quirk idea a bit so it might make another appearance in another fic at some point. Thanks for reading! “I’m going to be going off the grid for a few days.”

“Oh...so does that mean you can’t come by tonight?” You tried your best to keep the disappointment out of your voice.

“Of course I can’t fucking come by, ____. They’re sending a group of us out on a mission; we won’t be back for at least a week.”

“A week?! You just got back from the last big mission! Where are you going?”

“That shit’s classified and you know it. Now I have to go; they’re doing a last minute check up.”

“Oh okay, good—” Bakugo had hung up before you could finish your sentence.

“...luck.”

You stared at your phone for several moments before throwing it on your bed. Covering your face with your hands, you fell back next to it, groaning as you did. Even though you weren’t exactly surprised, you couldn’t help but feel let down. That was the fourth time that Katsuki has had to cancel plans because of a mission. It was almost like he was signing up for those particular ones on purpose…

You shot up and shook your head. That was ridiculous. You knew what it took to be a rookie hero trying to do his best to work his way through the rankings. And no one worked harder than Katsuki. He had only been a pro for a little over a year and Katsuki had already been ranked in the top 50, along with Deku and Todoroki.

You had just graduated from U.A. yourself but not from the hero course. Your quirk was to take on the pain of others. For a time, you could lessen a victim’s pain, even take on their injuries. On some level, you could even help heal them, though it took a lot out of you. Though useful, it wasn’t exactly a good quirk for making it in the hero course. Therefore, you had been put in the department of general education.

It had been at U.A. that you had met Katsuki; he had been in the year before you. He had been admitted into the infirmary after a particularly tough training session his third year; your second. Due to your quirk, you had spent a lot of time in there, studying under Recovery Girl. Then, your time was largely split between there and your internship at the hospital.

Recovery Girl hadn’t been in the infirmary because some larger injuries had occurred that needed to be taken care of on-site. From the grumbling as she had walked out the door, you’d figured that it had probably been Midoriyia.

When Bakugo had been brought in, you’d heard him before you saw him. He had been screaming about how he wasn’t even that badly hurt and to let him get back out there. You’d thought you’d heard something along the lines of, “Not letting that shitty nerd get off that easily.”

Bewildered, you came from the back of the infirmary, where you had been going through some files, to see the spiky-haired blonde practically growling. It’s not like you hadn’t been familiar with who Bakugo was; he was kind of hard to miss.

But you had never had any sort of interaction with him before. Anytime that he had been there before, you had been in class or at the hospital. You had never exactly had any particular desire to meet him either. Based on what you knew about him, he seemed like the last person you wanted to be around.

Now, as you watched him scream at the bots that had brought him, you had to steel yourself for what you knew was about to be a terrible meeting. Taking a deep breath, you’d forced a smile on your face and walked to the front.

“Hi, my name is ___ ___, can I help you? Are you okay?”

“I’m fucking fine, you damn extra! Now let me out of these fucking restraints before I blow them off!”

You had been about to retort, your usually calm demeanor instantly gone as this hot-headed boy yelled at you. However, as Bakugo had threatened to blow off his restraints, he had let off small explosions around his hands and they caused him to instantly groan in pain.

Without thinking, you’d rushed to him, grabbing his arms. He’d recoiled at your touch, growling at you to “get the fuck off of him”. But you’d ignored him, instead tightening your grip and concentrating.

Within a few seconds, you felt the pain enter your own forearms, causing you to wince. Bakugo had noticed this, along with the fact that his own pain had reduced dramatically. Frowning, he’d stared between you and where your hands were on his arms.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he’d asked.

Somehow, despite the fact that he’d still sounded angry, his tone had become softer. You’d looked up from his arms to look him in the eyes.

“I’m using my quirk to take on some of your pain.”

His eyes had gone wide. “Why the fuck would you do that?” He had tried to yank his arms away but you’d tightened your grip even more, not letting him get away.

“Don’t do that! If you force me to let go now, all of the pain will rush back to you and could possibly hurt you even more.” What you hadn’t mentioned was that it could also cause some damage to you.

“Then let go of me, dammit!” Bakugo had growled.

“No! You are clearly in a great deal of pain and my healing abilities aren’t great yet. Therefore, I am going to relieve some of the pain until Recovery Girl can get here to heal you herself.”

The spiky blonde had just blinked at you for several moments. “So...you’re just going to hold onto my fucking arms until the old lady gets here?”

“Yup.”

After another few moments of silence, he’d said, “Fine. But if I feel even a fraction less pain, I will yank my arms away from you; damned the extra damage.”

You had had to try and keep yourself from giggling at how strangely sweet that statement had been. “Deal.”

The two of you had spent the rest of that time mostly in silence and after Recovery Girl had returned and healed him, you hadn’t expected to ever hear from him again. However, he had found you in the cafeteria one day and sat with you. From there, your friendship grew until one day, it became something more.

He had come back from a mission with his internship, grinning from ear to ear, and before you could even say hello, he’d kissed you right on the spot.

You had been together ever since.

After he’d graduated, you had done your best to make time for each other. Though Katsuki would never admit to it, he was actually very sweet when it came to your relationship. He had even made plans to be there for your graduation but had ended up getting an emergency call from work.

Since then, he had been kind of distant. You had told him multiple times that you understood and weren’t mad but everytime he spoke to you now, he was short and curt. You slid to the floor, banging your head against the side of your bed.

Had you done something wrong? Had the life of a hero made him realize that being with someone who wasn’t a hero isn’t what he wanted? Was there someone else? Did he not think you were worthy of him anymore? Were you worthy of him?

Your thoughts raced as you asked yourself these questions. They had nagged at you before but now they were coming through full force.

It didn’t exactly help that all of your old classmates were busy and even out of town now. You had managed get a permanent position at the hospital in a program that would help you pay for college. And to be fair, you had been so focused on school and your internship, that you hadn’t really made many friends. But those that you had made were either getting used to their own new jobs or had left to get ready to start college.

As happy as you were for them, this meant that you didn’t really have anybody to talk to. Your best friend did her best to keep in touch but you felt guilty talking about your problems whenever you did have the chance. The other day, you had even asked for some time to just kind of vent but had never brought it up.

Sighing, you felt as a pain tugged in your chest. It was a feeling that you were fairly accustomed to; it was the feeling of loneliness. You hadn’t felt it much since meeting Katsuki but you knew that this was not a pain that you could return.

Shaking your head, you told yourself you were being ridiculous. Even if your friends were busy, they loved you and so did Katsuki. If something was wrong, he would tell you...right?

Before you could dive down that rabbit hole again, you were interrupted by a sudden knocking at your door. Frowning, you checked your watch; it was 7:46 p.m. Who would be at your door right now?

Getting up from the floor of your bedroom, you made your way through your small apartment and looked through the peephole. Seeing red hair, you pulled back, still confused but opened the door.

“Hey, Kirishima. Not that I don’t love seeing you but what’re you doing here?”

“____! I was hoping that you’d be home! I was just in the area and thought I’d pop in.”

You blinked at the grinning red-head. “You live two districts over, what were you doing on this end?”

Kirishima seemed to hesitate before he responded. “I had a job over here. Some agencies asking for help with patrolling the area. Mochi?”

That got you to chuckle. “Sure, thanks. Come on in.”

You stepped back to let the hero inside. As Katsuki’s girlfriend, it was only natural that you would become friends with Kirishima as well. The two were practically inseparable in school, something that you had regularly teased Katsuki about.

Lately, it felt like you saw him more than Katsuki. In fact, it seemed like the last few times that Katsuki had cancelled on you, Kirishima had either called or shown up at your door. As that thought went through your mind, you stopped and narrowed your eyes at the redhead.

He was in the middle of stuffing a whole thing of mochi in his mouth and stopped mid-bite when he noticed you looking at him. “What? Sorry, I’ve been working all day and didn’t really get to eat lunch.”

Chuckling again, you shook your head. “It’s fine, hon. I just had a weird thought but it’s nothing. How was your day?”

You gestured to your couch and the two of you sat down.

Kirishima shrugged as he picked out another piece of mochi. “The usual. Patrolling and such; nothing too exciting.”

“What caused the hero agency here to call for help from other agencies?”

“Uh, nothing too alarming, really. Just some activity from a gang that gave them some trouble a while back. It’ll probably die down soon.”

You nodded. “You heard from Katsuki?”

Kirishima gave you a side glance. “Bakubro? Yeah, he sent a text saying he’d be gone on another mission.”

This time you looked down as you nodded. “Yup, he told me a little bit ago too. Gonna be gone for another week.”

“Are you okay?” You could hear the frown in his voice, causing you to look up with a forced smile.

“Yeah, sure. Just miss him, y’know?” Kirishima was sweet and would probably listen to you but you didn’t want to bother him. He’d just said that he’d had a long day at work, so he was probably tired. You just hoped that you had managed to keep the break in your voice under control.

Suddenly, you were being engulfed in a big bear hug, the kind that only Kirishima could give. Shocked at first, you found yourself leaning into the hug; the pain in your chest lightened a little bit as the warmth of the hug seeped through you. You really did have good friends.

As the two of you sat there, it took everything in you not to let it all out right there and cry. But eventually, the hug ended, and the pain went back to normal.

Huh, that was kind of the opposite of how it normally went...you preferred your way.

It had been a few days now and you’d decided to throw yourself into work. You figured that if you stayed busy, it would help time go faster and you’d be able to to find some satisfaction knowing that you’d helped people.

It was only kind of working but you told yourself that it was better than nothing.

Today, there had been a large explosion that had been set off by a villain. You wondered if it was the gang that Kirishima had mentioned.

The explosion had been set off near the foundation of the building and it had caused for it to collapse, along with a string of large fires. Heroes and fire departments alike had been busy all day and the hospital had been getting a steady stream of patients.

Some had been hit by the debris while others were burn victims. Or worse, a little bit of both.

Since you had not yet gone to college and been certified to treat patients with really serious injuries, you were only allowed limited interaction with them. Though you were certified to help and even treat some(thanks to your internship and your time with Recovery Girl), those with more serious injuries were still beyond you.

Therefore, you went around the ER, speaking to the patients and relieving some of their pain as a nurse did their check up. You took pride in knowing that you were helping keep many of them calm. However, it took a lot of self-control to not let your healing abilities trickle in as well. Still, as more critical patients continued to come in, it became harder and harder to ignore them.

At one point, you were passing by a curtained off area just outside of the ICU. From behind the curtains, you could hear someone groaning in pain and the sound of banging. Though you knew it was in the section that you weren’t allowed in, you couldn’t help but to poke your head through.

Inside was a man who had suffered severe burns all along his body. He was in so much pain that he was thrashing around, making it hard for the nurse with him to insert an IV. At the sound of the curtain being drawn back, she looked up at you desperately.

From the look in her eyes, you could tell that she knew who you were but in that moment didn’t really care about what you privileges you had right now. And neither did you.

As you had with that first meeting with Katsuki, you rushed forward without thinking, grabbing the man by his ankles. Once you had a firm grip, you began to concentrate.

Soon, you felt as his pain became yours. It seeped into every part of you, more concentrated in some areas than others. The more you took, the calmer the man became, until he lay still. At this point, you were struggling to even stand.

Breathing deeply, you went through the exercises that you had learned when it came to bearing the pain. Once you felt you had enough control, you looked over at the nurse and nodded.

At your signal, she went to work. She inserted the IV and did the check up. You tried to listen as she went through the task but maintaining your quirk was starting to become very difficult. This was the most that you had ever taken on. You stared down at your hands and noticed that the other part of your quirk had taken effect as well.

You had begun to take on the man’s injuries; burns had appeared on your arms. Still, you said nothing and continued to concentrate. However, when you looked back, you saw that the nurse had also noticed.

Her eyes wide, she rushed to you, her arms outstretched and telling you to let go. You went to shake your head, about to tell her that you had to let it go slowly but she never gave you the chance. She yanked you away from the man.

Almost instantly, a more horrible pain than what you had just been experiencing tore through your head. Letting out an involuntary scream, you curled in on yourself. The man on the table had also lurched from the sudden return of the burden you had been helping him to carry. However, you registered very little of that as your own pain persisted, coming in unyielding waves.

All you could do was close your eyes and take it, praying for it to end. Until finally, everything went black.

You first became aware of the sound of a beeping noise; it was the familiar sound of a heart monitor. The second thing was the achy feeling in your head.

Opening your eyes, you were greeted by the sight of a hospital room. Looking around, you noticed that the lights were out and it was dark outside. Huh, you must have been out for a few hours...wait.

You had suddenly noticed the person sitting next your bed; he had spiky blonde hair and was resting on his arm.

“Katsuki?”

At the sound of his name, the hero stirred. Looking up at you, it seemed to take him a moment to register that you were looking back. Once he did though, he leapt from his chair.

“___, you’re fucking awake! Are you okay? What the fuck were you thinking, you idiot?”

It took you a few moments to respond. “Um, I’m okay, I guess. What’re you doing here? I thought you were on a mission.”

“I-I was. But they sent me—I mean us—back early. And when I got back, I went to call you but some random extra answered your phone and told me what fucking happened. I repeat, what the fuck you were thinking?”

The question made you feel indignant. “I was thinking that I wanted to help people, Katsuki. Besides, it’s not like I let go of him on purpose. The nurse grabbed me before I could return anything that I had taken.”

“Was that before or after the burns had appeared on your arm?” Katsuki gestured to your arms, which were currently wrapped in bandages.

Looking down at them, you suddenly felt very tired. Sighing, you leaned your head back, closing your eyes as you did.

“Look, Katsuki, while I appreciate you coming here, if all you’re going to do is yell at me for doing my job, could you please save it for another time? I don’t have the energy and I don’t need the few moments I get with you to be full of you scolding me. Though, I would also prefer that I wasn’t in the hospital but hey, can’t be too picky, right?”

The explosive hero frowned. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I barely get to see you as it is, what with you being assigned all of those missions lately. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that you were avoiding me.” You tried to chuckle at that last part but the look on Katsuki’s face cut it short.

Clearing your throat, you said, “I see. Was it something that I did?”

That caused him to scowl. “What the fuck could you have possibly done?”

Making a helpless gesture with your hands, you replied, “How should I know? But what else am I supposed to think? You haven’t really spoken to me since before the graduation. You’ve cancelled almost every plan we’ve made. Even when you aren’t on a mission, we’ve gone several days without speaking. I’ve tried not to push cause I know how demanding being a rookie hero can be so I thought that maybe you just needed some space. But I really am not sure at this point.”

“Hasn’t Shitty Hair been checking in on you?”

“Sure, Kirishima’s popped in a few times but what does that have to do with—” You stopped at the look on Katsuki’s face, which had gone a little red. Your mind went back to thought you’d had the other day when you’d realized that Kirishima always seemed to be appear right after Katsuki had told you he wouldn’t be over.

“Have you’ve been sending your best friend to come and hang out with me every time you’ve cancelled on me?”

“Not...every fucking time….”

“Oh my god...why would you make him do that? Don’t you think the poor guy had better things to do?”

“He actually volunteered...it was his idea, the first time anyway.”

“Why was it even necessary? I don’t need a babysitter.”

Now the blonde was looking indignant. “For all the fucking reasons you just said. I know you and knew that you would start fucking blaming yourself for what I was doing.”

You were starting to get a new headache. “And what were you doing?”

Katsuki mumbled something that you couldn’t here. You blinked at him for several moments, waiting for him to repeat it but he didn’t seem inclined to. Finally, you said, “What?”

“I-I’ve been trying to make more money.”

“Since when has making more money mattered to you?” you frowned at him.

“Since I’ve been thinking about asking you to fucking move in with me.”

You jaw dropped. “Y-you want me to move in with you?”

Katsuki nodded. “But I know I’ve probably fucking ruined it….I just got motivated when you graduated and figured the more jobs I took, the faster it would happen.”

You had to keep yourself from squealing from how adorable he was being right now. This was the Katsuki that no one else ever saw. This was your Katsuki.

“Katsuki, I would love to move in with you.”

The blonde looked at you in astonishment. “Are you fucking serious?!”

This time you did laugh. “Yes. Just promise me you’ll talk to me from now on, okay? It did hurt, the way you went about it.”

“Only if you fucking promise to talk to me too, even when you think I don’t want you to. Or at least to someone, when you feel like you need to. Knowing you, you kept this bottled up.”

You ducked your head. “Deal. I guess I just need to remember that I have people who I can talk to.”

“Fuck yeah, you do.” With that, Katsuki leaned down and kissed you, long and hard.

After that, the two of you just talked for a while. You really were lucky.

#boku no hero #boku no hero academia #boku no hero fanfic #my hero academia #bakugou katsuki #bakugo katsuki #bakugou x reader #bakugo x reader #Kirishima Eijirou #bnha #kirishima ejiro #love is weird #loneliness #reader has a quirk #angst #reader is bad at talking

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travllingbunny · 4 years ago

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The 100 rewatch: 5x01 Eden

One of my favorite episodes of the show. It’s incredible how much I enjoy it every time I watch it. Clarke being my favorite character certainly helps, but the episode is so well done in terms of cinematography, music, acting, direction, and 95% of the writing. (The only thing that makes it less than perfect are 80 seconds towards the end that are very, very badly written.)

The fandom is split on whether the time jump was good or bad for the show, but I think it brought more good than bad, overall (especially since it was necessary, so the actors wouldn’t still be trying to pass as teenagers well into their 30s). If nothing else, then for Octavia’s storyline and this epic beginning of the season - the first 3-4 episodes of season 5 - probably the strongest of all seasons of the show.

Full disclosure: I already rewatched season 5 and season 6 while waiting for season 7, so this entire season is pretty fresh in my mind, but season 5 is still the only one that I haven’t covered in my episode reviews (since I wrote season 6 reviews week by week as it was airing), and I want to get that done. And then I also wanted to rewatch Eden after 7x02 The Garden, because of the parallels and contrasts between the two episodes which I mentioned in my review of The Garden. (Review of 7x03 is coming soon.)

In light of season 7, when the main characters are also separated and the timeline is very weird, it’s also interesting to see how this season 5 premiere is structured:

The opening shot is the Rings seen from space, then we see the Earth from space, before zooming in and seeing Clarke coming out of the ruins of Becca’s lab, 42 days after Praimfaya. ^^^

Almost 25 minutes of this episode are a Clarke flashback, and most of it is just her, fighting against the nature and her own despair and isolation, until she finds Eden and meets Madi, almost two months after Praimfaya. This is the show’s first full uninterrupted flashback that lasts longer than a couple of minutes, but it’s also the first time the show has covered a time jump in a flashback - its previous biggest time jump was 86 days, rather than 2199 days. (And the next time jump will be 125 years. Things have really escalated.)

Then we go “6 years later” (actually 5 years and about 10 months later) and the remaining 16-17 minutes are all set in the present. And even though this is a very Clarke-centric episode, it actually manages to feature all the main characters. First we see Clarke and Madi in the present, then it goes back to the Ring, but this time we see Bellamy and the Spacekru for the first time this season, to check in with them and see how they have or haven’t changed in 6 years.

We see them noticing Eligius,, then we go back to replay the present days scenes from the end of the season 4 finale, where Clarke was expecting Bellamy and kru in the pod, and instead saw the Gagarin transport ship coming down.

We meet Diyoza, McCreary and Shaw for the first time. There’s a few more minutes of Clarke and Madi trying to defend themselves against the prisoners, and killing two of them, but also alerting Diyoza to their existence. Then we go back to the Ring to see Spacekru preparing to board Eligius 4, and, almost at the end of the episode, we get the “OMG look at this twist! You didn’t expect these two to be together, did you? Or maybe you did because you saw the clumsy hints in the season 4 finale, I mean if you stop someone from committing suicide and then you happen to fall right next to each other that counts as setup for romance. right?” twist-reveal of Becho in a 1 minute 20 second scene.

But - that’s not the last scene (you need something actually dramatic for the last scene), because - right after Bellamy says the ironic-foreshadowing line “Octavia is the least of our worries”. we get a cliffhanger-teaser ending - our first look at the fighting pit, with Miller, Indra and Gaia looking on (yes, they’re all credited for this episode, alongside Marie/Octavia, though they all appear for about a second or two), until the winner of the gladiator fight turns to Octavia, and we see her for the first time with her new Blodreina persona. Leading into 5x02 Red Queen (which I hope to rewatch and review soon, too) - unlike this episode, fully set in one place, in the bunker, and most of it is the longest uninterrupted flashback the show has ever done. It only jumps back to the present at the very end, with another teaser-cliffhanger that’s again set in the fighting pit (this time, the twist is that Kane is one of the fighters), setting up a “how the heck did they get there?” question for 5x04 and flashbacks from 5x11 to explain.

(I wouldn’t be surprised if in season 7 we get more of such cliffhanger-teasers where a character or set of characters only appears in an episode for a minute or two, setting up their longer storyline in another episode. I don’t think all episodes will be like 7x02 and 7x04, fully set in one place and with all other characters fully missing.)

So, the first 2 episodes of season 5 had the task of showing us what happened to the three set of characters in three completely different locations over the time jump - with the focus on Clarke, Bellamy and Octavia. But we got almost 25 minutes of Clarke flashbacks (about the time that was the hardest and most eventful for her - trying to survive on the ruined Earth in the first few months after Praimfaya, meeting Madi), a full episode plus later flashbacks in another episode (about 50 minutes?) of flashbacks of the bunker; and.... 0 flashbacks of Spacekru on the Ring. And that says a lot about what the writers considered important to show. The boring, everyday, humdrum life is what you skip in fiction. So, the show told us right from the start that there was nothing of note that happened on the Ring. While Clarke in this episode - after her “death”, goes through her 40 16 days in the desert before she finds Eden (literally paradise!), and the bunker is clearly Hell on Earth, the Ring is basically just 7 people being stuck in quarantine for 6 years and trying not to get too bored.

The cinematography on this show since season 5 has been so good! Here, the sepia, grey and pale yellow tones help make Earth look desolate and ruined, and like a real desert. Until Clarke finds Eden, which is in normal colors. (This contrast in the color scheme between Eden and the rest of the Earth is there throughout season 5. Later we get the almost too colorful Sanctum, and the soft light and blue-green tones of Skyring.)

With how often TV does the Beauty is Never Tarnished trope - where female characters have to look as gorgeous as possible even when their circumstances are such that it doesn’t make any sense - I love the fact that the show let Clarke have radiation burns on her face and wear a dirty top for half of this episode. This shouldn’t be an exceptional thing in TV shows, but sadly it is.

42 days after Praimfaya - that’s how long Clarke was in Becca’s lab, until she either ran out of food, or judged it was safe to go outside because the death wave had passed, or both.

Oh hi, Rover, maybe the most memorable inanimate “character”. It got a lot of memorable screentime in this ep. The sea is no more - the one good thing is that Clarke has an easier time travelling from the island. First stop Polis - back when Clarke was hoping to reunite with her mom and the rest of the people in the bunker. How much would things change if she had? That shot of the destroyed Tower in Polis is such a memorable symbol of not just the physical destruction that happened in Praimfaya, but the end of the old way of life. Even though season 5 will then weirdly try to resurrect the position of Commander.

I love the opening titles! I can’t believe I have never paid attention to them before the hiatus between seasons 6 and 7. Starting with the title shot of the desolate Earth with the ruins of the Tower, the opening sequence is showing the death wave as it’s happening in the area where the first 4 seasons took place, going from Polis when the tower was still there, to Arkadia burning (where the death wave came before it got to Becca’s lab and Polis), to various other shots including the one that’s clearly the remains of the Statue of Liberty, presumably already broken during the first nuclear apocalypse, to shots of sea and forest burning, to a shot of Earth from space with a green spot, to the really cool animation of most of the Tower disappearing. (The shot of Eligius landing is the only one that doesn’t fit.)

The temple collapsed 46 days after Praimfaya (according to 5x02 - I’ve written that down before). Clarke was trying to dig out the entrance to the bunker for quite a while, stopping occasionally to get some rest and eat. That moment when she desperately pounds at the bunker door and yells “I’m here! Mom!” is one we see from Abby’s POV as she hears the sounds and learns her daughter she’s out there and not in space.

While unsuccessfully trying to clear the path to the entrance, Clarke notices the remnants of Lexa’s throne in the other rubble. A broken throne, another symbol of the past. The Clexa theme starts playing for a moment as Clarke notices it and take out one branch - probably just as a remembrance, because I’m not sure it looked that useful for her current task. And that somehow (however unlikely) seems to cause the rest of the Temple to collapse (a moment we also see replayed in 5x02) - meaning that Clarke loses her chance of being with her mother and other people during the 5 years, and the people in the bunker lose the hope they’ll be able to get out after these 6 years (or maybe ever).

The branch does prove useful later when Clarke uses it as a walking stick as she’s walking through the desert when she’s at the end of her strength.... And... this could all be seen as a metaphor? She met Lexa at the time when she was desperate to save her people, then she became isolated from them, then in her traumatized state, her relationship with Lexa became a crutch but was also isolating her further from her family and her people.

Back to the ruined Arkadia, where Clarke says she was looking for food or water but only found ghosts. One of the most emotional moment of the episode when Clarke cries after finding a chest with Jasper’s goggles, Maya’s music player he had kept after her death, and his letter to Monty. Clarke probably learned about Jasper staying behind to commit suicide off-screen from Bellamy some time at the end of 4x09, and learned about his when she reunited with Monty and Harper, but we didn’t see her react to his death in season 4. (This scene would later be a flashback in 6x07 Nevermind, where Clarke used that same chest in her mindspace to hide her memory in the Dark Place.)

(Maya had really good music taste! And it’s a neat way to hear some good songs and for Clarke to be able to listen to them while driving her rover.)

The hardships Clarke undergoes here and the way she fights shows her strong she is - one of her main character traits is that she does not give up, no matter how desperate the circumstances are. Clarke’s way of fighting despair was to talk to Bellamy on the radio. Sometimes she told him very meaningful things - as when she thought she might die: “If this is the last time I ever do that, I just want to say... Don’t feel bad about leaving me here. You did what you had to. I’m proud of you”. (This reminds me of the time in 2x05 when Bellamy told her he knew she had to leave him and Finn outside to save the others when she closed the dropship door.) Other times she’s telling him about her current problems, musing about her life, chatting about Monty and Raven and all sort of things, imagining he could hear her, even though it must have become obvious to her pretty early on that he can’t reply, and probably can’t even hear her. She wasn’t at this point even sure if he was alive. As she says at one point: “God, this would be so much easier if I knew you were alive, that I will see you again.” But it’s in Clarke’s nature to hope. She was also refusing to believe he and Finn were dead after the Ring of Fire, she refused to believe Bellamy could be dead or captured even while she was worrying about him all the time while he was in Mount Weather. At one point right after getting out of Becca’s lab, she is trying to encourage herself: “You got this” - the way she sometimes tries to encourage others and also the way Bellamy sometimes does it. And other times, she definitely was channelling Bellamy, gently mocking her: “Positive thoughts, Clarke”. He was the one who told her they had hope as long as they were breathing.

And I must say I’m impressed that Clarke had Jasper’s letter to Monty for 6 years and never succumbed to the temptation of opening and reading it. But to do that, would have meant she was giving up hope that she would see her friends again and give it to Monty.

But it would be far less realistic if she hadn’t had a moment of complete despair. (Another character known for being a survivor, Murphy, had that moment after 86 days of sitting in a bunker alone.) Long isolation is a torture in itself and can drive you mad, as it was emphasized in 7x02. It’s not the first time Clarke has been isolated - she was in solitary for a year on the Ark when she was 16-17 (she only had the walls and her drawings to distract herself with), she isolated herself because of her trauma for 3 months, and now she was again forced into isolation. This time she was also losing hope due to the terrible conditions she had to fight, and the way everything seemed to be getting worse. “I’ve done! I’ve lost everything! My friends, my parents. I have nothing!” As Buffy would say - she still had something left, herself. But this is the first of the three times we see Clarke almost lose all hope and the will to live - but the other two times were under the influence of a psychosis, and when she had been bodysnatched. This time it was the tiny hope that there could be a place to live, with basic living conditions, that made her change her mind.

Who was Clarke talking to when she said “You think you can kill me? Have at it” and later when was yelling that at the sky? Nature? Gods or gods? (There has never been any indication that she was religious. Probably not.) It’s the only times during in her solitary moments when Clarke isn’t talking to Bellamy, or, occasionally, to herself.

Finding Eden saved Clarke from despair, at least for a while, I don’t think she would have been able to keep her sanity and her hopefor 6 years if she hadn’t met Madi, almost two months after Praimfaya. Having someone for company, having someone to take care of, is very different from being all alone. Still, even after meeting Madi and became her surrogate mom, Clarke still needed to keep talking to Bellamy every day, for 2199 days in total, to keep herself sane, to have something to look forward to.

These people from the Shallow Valley clan seem so cool, they’re already my favorite Grounder clan from the little we see of their way of life (at least this community - I wonder who the 100 chosen for the bunker were), and most importantly, from the fact that Madi’s parents must have had support from their community in keeping her from the Conclave and all that garbage. Of course they didn’t want to give their child away, so she would be forced to fight and kill other children, probably die at 12, or at best become Heda and be separated from her family tor the rest of her life, because ‘love is weakness’ etc.

The shot of the dead boy is so sad. But he and the other dead people look far too peaceful for radiation victims?

Poor Madi - 6 years old and already she saw her family and everyone she’s ever known die. Her mother died in her arms, and she was left alone. And even before that, she had to hide and learn to fight and lay traps to avoid Flamekeepers, whom she saw as her archenemies. She was another girl who had to hide from birth, like Octavia. No surprise she was a “child from Hell” when Clarke first met her.

Clarke’s world view has gotten so dark. Her old moral certainty from season 1 has been chipped away gradually, and, at this point, she has accepted the moral relativism idea that “everyone does things for their people” and there is no right or wrong - which so many of her enemies or temporary allies have tried to install in her. She’s started to see herself as the “Commander of Death”, too, believing fighting is all she does and can do. “I used to think that life was about more than just surviving… I’m not sure anymore. Animals don’t feel guilty when they kill. It’s kill or be killed.” Interesting - this is the same thing Pike said in season 3a. Clarke has more empathy for her enemies “ I told myself that every life I took was for a reason, but the other side had reasons, too", but the end result is now the same, as we see later...

“There are no good guys” - this line has been said in so many versions and contexts throughout the show, and many people seem to think it’s the show’s motto. But it’s more complicated than that. Those words have changed their meaning and been challenged and opposed. When Abby told Clarke “Remember that we’re the good guys” in season 2, she was telling her: don’t lose yourself, don’t become as ruthless as your enemy in order to beat them. When Clarke said “I tried... I tried to be a good guy” and Abby replied: “Maybe there are no good guys”, she meant that it may not be possible to keep your hands clean in a world like that. (Mind you, neither of them ever said there were no bad guys, or that Mountain Men weren’t that.) When Clarke said to same to Bellamy when he was wondering “What do you do when you realize you may not be the good guy?” in season 3, she was comforting him and telling him she knows what it’s like to hate yourself because of the things you’ve done, in a grey world where it’s often hard to see right and wrong. But Abby in 4x12 told Clarke something different: “I told you there were no good guys. But there are. You are.” Clarke needed to be reassured, so she wouldn’t hate herself, that she was a hero, because her motives were good and she was trying her best under the circumstances, where, as they both agreed, they were no good choices. Sadly, Clarke obviously didn’t take that to heart. In season 5, she does not consider herself a hero. And when Madi says “I think he may be a good guy” about one of the prisoners, the one who argued against killing a child, unlike his buddy - Clarke’s reply “There are no good guys” before she kills him, has a darker meaning: she has lost her faith in humanity (with a few exceptions, at this point), and this a different Clarke, one that isn’t ready to give people the benefit of a doubt. She as at her most murderous in season 5 - because she’s now ready to kill even when it’s not absolutely necessary and when she can’t see another choice, as pre-Praimfaya Clarke. It would take her the whole season to start coming back from that - and decide to try to be a good guy, as Monty asked her to.

First introduction of Diyoza, McCreary and Shaw. Diyoza has changed so much since. Her similarities to Octavia have been emphasized much more because they were the opposing sides in season 5 and because of the relationship they develop later, but she also has similarities to Clarke. She also used to fight for what she believed in against who she saw as bad guys, went through a lot, killed a lot of people, was considered a monster, started to fear she was one, became jaded, and finally decided to find peace and happiness and leave violence behind.

“We’re not alone”. Season 5 is really going for the callbacks to season 1. And I’m still not sure how I feel about this comparison between the Delinquents and the Eligius prisoners. Because there are two ways to look at it. If it’s a part of the “let’s see the humanity of these people rather than see them as one-dimensional villains” thing, I’m all for it. But it makes no sense to see it as an exact parallel. Because in one corner, we have the level of threat posed by 100 unskilled and (at first) unarmed teenagers who just went about, vs thousands of people who had hundreds and hundreds of armed and experienced warriors and who saw fit to immediately almost kill one of these teenagers and start terrorizing them... and in the other, a bunch of adult murderers with all sorts of powerful weapons and a military strategist at the helm, immediately moving in to take over a valley, and the threat they pose to a lone woman and a child...

Before we meet the Eligius prisoners, we get some sweet mother/daughter moments between Clarke and Madi. We learn that Clarke is telling her stories about her friends (Octavia is Madi’s favorite) and drawing events from her past (as they sit by the fire and look through her sketchbook, we see portraits of Octavia in the Conclave, Bellamy and Clarke looking as her friends are leaving her on Earth). Clarke says she doesn’t regret staying, because she met Madi. But she still yearns for them to come back and gives a longing look - and we get this transition:

Spacekru

When we see Spacekru after 6 years, we get the updates on what has changed and what hasn’t, and what the time on the Ring has meant for each of them:

Raven has been unsuccessfully trying to get them back to Earth for a year - which Bellamy, in particular, isn’t happy about. He has no idea that Clarke is alive, but he is eager to see his sister again.

Monty has been keeping everyone alive with his algae farm, although we get a lot of jokes and complaining about their taste (which seems so out of place after you have seen what was going in in the bunker in the meantime).

Emori has been learning to pilot.

Memori have broken up at some point (and Raven has had Emori as roommate since) and Murphy is the one person in the group who has been negative and bitter, to the point they have “exiled” him (history repeating, but in a much more benign way?) to another part of the station. It seems realistic that at least one person and one relationship would crack under the pressure of peace and boredom and being forced to spend time with the same people every day. According to Bellamy, Murphy needs to feel like a hero in order not to feel useless - and without dangers and conflicts, he can’t save anyone and feel like one. According to what Emori says later in season 5, their relationship is one that works better when there is some kind of danger they can face, and Murphy as a fighter and survivor is the version of him she loves.

Bellamy is the obvious leader, in spite of the easy camaraderie between the group - this will become more obvious when they start planning to board the ship and go to the ground, but even here, he is the one who gives pep talks and tries to inspire others - like Murphy, telling him he is not useless. This friendship has certainly developed in those 6 years - before Praimfaya, Bellamy still wasn’t even ready to trust Murphy and was constantly questioning his motives. And they have certainly come a long way from season 1...

Bellamy’s calmed and lighter manner has been discussed a lot. I’d say it made sense 90% of the time - it was simply a result of 6 years of peace, something he had never really had before. It doesn’t mean he was super happy - but simply that, for a change, he didn’t have to constantly fight and he under stress.

Two people who definitely were happy on the Ring are Monty and Harper. Monty is the only one who is even reluctant to go to the ground - scared that he will be pulled again in the world where he will have to fight and kill again. Earth has bad memories for him, from having to kill his mother - twice - to save others, to his best friend’s suicide. The Marper scene is the best of all the Spacekru scenes here. And when Harper tells him his strength - which he showed in all the hard things he had to do - is why she loves him, he has the best line in the episode: “No one should have to be that strong”.

Echo is friendly with everyone and has been teaching them to fight Azgeda-style. And oh, yeah, did we mention she’s been dating Bellamy for a while? Here’s a brief confirmation through a kiss and a conversation where we only learn that Becho is a thing, we don’t know how long it’s been a thing but it’s at least less than 3 years, since he took 3 years to even forgive her (and I don’t think it necessarily means immediately starting to date).; and Echo is worried if it’s still going to be a thing after they go to the ground.

Here’s a thing with Spacekru: the time jump worked much better with Octavia and Wonkru and with Clarke and Madi, because we saw flashbacks, and because we got a good idea what those 6 years were for them, even for things we didn’t see. But the complete lack of flashbacks for Spacekru means that the audience won’t be able to relate to their new “family” unit, because Show, Don’t Tell is the main TV storytelling principle. Even when viewers learn about something in dialogue (like the Farm Station’s tragic backstory since they landed on Earth), they don’t care because they haven’t seen it.

But with Spacekru, there is an additional problem: the show keeps giving us contradictory info about what those 6 years on the Ring were even like. Or rather, most of what we know is consistent with the idea that their biggest problems were boredom and lack of tasty food. *OK, the first batch of algae apparently put Murphy in a coma, but that’s the only traumatic event we hear about.) There were no other people, no one who could be a threat - and while they could have, in theory, had some malfunctions they had to deal with, we never hear anything about it. But the show also has characters saying things like “we kept each other alive” or that Echo has “proven herself on the Ring”, which makes it sound like there was something much more dramatic going on, but they never explain why.

As a result, the idea of Spacekru as a tightly knit family unit - comparable to what the Delinquents were like in season 1 - just doesn’t work so well. The relationships that work the best and are the most compelling are those that had already existed before - Marper, Memori, the friendship between the former 100+2. The Emori/Raven/Murphy trio works because we saw them already interacting in season 4. But Echo is the character who gets the short end of the stick, because all the development she was supposed to have, including her friendships and romantic relationship, happened off-screen. And with the way the show positioned her as a villain in seasons 3 and almost all of season 4, threw her pretty much accidentally (and because she had no other choice and the others accepted her) with the group, and then said “here, she’s one of the good guys now”. That’s really crappy writing. And it set up Echo to be hated, or at least irritate a large part of the audience. Imagine if there had been a time jump in mid-season 2 where Murphy went from being barely tolerated by everyone, to being everyone’s best friend and dating Raven. That’s pretty much that.

Most of these problems are concentrated in the Bellamy/Echo scene at the end. So much bad writing in those 80 seconds. Now, I’m not one of the people who say that this relationship makes no sense. It does make sense for what is it - two people got stuck for 6 years in the same place, with just 5 other people, 4 of which were coupled up. After so much time forced to spend together, you either have to start tolerating and forgiving someone, or your life will become unbearable. There’s a force of habit, the closeness that comes from seeing someone every day, and the lack of other options. There’s also the fact that Bellamy had mourned Clarke and was convinced she was dead. They are both physically attractive people, I’m sure they trained when she taught him Azgeda fighting and he taught her shooting. I have no problem with it as a placeholder relationship that the show is very obviously using as a plot device. And it’s not even subtle about it. Here we learn about the existence of that relationship as a surprise twist at the end of an episode that was focused on Clarke, Clarke being left alone on Earth and struggling, Clarke talking to Bellamy for 6 years and waiting for him to return. (And later episodes will keep making B.E scenes always about Clarke or connected to Clarke, in even more obvious ways.) There is no attempt to show what exactly it is that these two people like about each other, what drew them to each other, how they went from enemies to friends to a couple off-screen, anything apart from the mere fact that the relationship exists. Here, they are kissing, therefore you know they are in love. Maybe. As if the show is saying: no, it doesn’t matter and you don’t have to see it. Yes, you can conclude that it’s just a relationship of convenience and circumstance.

This kind of relationship and love triangle has been done to death in many TV shows. But even for what it is, it’s remarkable how little the show even tries to make this relationship compelling, compared to just about any other relationship in the show, including those of minor characters. I gotta say, as a Bellarke shipper, I kind of enjoy all the B/E scenes, because they are so devoid of chemistry, so forced, so empty. But as someone who appreciates good storytelling, they are pretty painful. When the show tires to focus a little bit on this ship, we get terrible dialogue like this:

"Wouldn't it be easier to just walk outside? This is Bellamy's callback to what he told Echo in 4x13 when he talked her down from suicide. He says it in a lighthearted way and she smiles.Her suicide attempt is a cute remembrance they joke about?! Really? Also, it;s been 6 years for them. Do they joke about that often? Or does he think going to the ground is a cool opportunity to remind her of her suicide attempt? Which is a cute memory for her, apparently?! I’m pretty sure this is not how human beings interact. This line may be even worse than the infamous "We found each other in cages".

."We kept each other alive". How? Unless it's just about that half an hour while they were getting to the Ring, they were never in danger of dying during those 6 years. Bellamy even tells Murphy "Up here, there are no heroes." Monty is the only one who kept them alive, with food. They may have kept each other sane, maybe. However, that goes for all 7 of them. And Bellamy does say “We are family”. Which extends to all of Spacekru and doesn’t really say anything about whether he and Echo will continue being a romantic couple. (Or maybe that was the whole point?)

Bellamy again, making light of the fact that Echo tried to kill Octavia and telling Echo that Octavia will not be a problem and will understand and forgive her easily - even though it took him 3 years. “I’m more stubborn than she is”. Oh come on, Bellamy! You know Octavia better than that! You know more than anyone that this is not true! Is he simply lying to calm Echo’s mind? I like season 5 Bellamy 90% of the time, but he just comes off so fake and weird in this scene - even if “Nothing will change on the ground” and “Octavia is the least of our problems” are enjoyable for their irony.

Body count: Two Eligius prisoners – the bad one (Baines) shot by Madi, the possibly “good” one (Janson) shot by Clarke

Two Wonkru members killed in the fighting pit

Rating: 9.5/10 (half a point knocked off for the B/E scene)

#the 100 #the 100 season 5 #the 100 rewatch #the 100 5x01 #eden #clarke griffin #madi griffin #belamy blake #monty green #john murphy #maroer #emori

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iatheia · 4 years ago

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EDA reviews Part 5 - books 38-46

Previous part 1, 2, 3 & 4

38) Casualties of War - a lovely story. In form and in function it is pretty much identical to the previous story, and even reveals pretty much the same info verbatim. The plot is similarly nothing outstanding, from ~5 minutes in you can tell pretty much exactly how it is going to turn out. That said, it has a much better atmosphere than the Burning, and Doctor’s characterization is also much stronger. Nice and relaxing, if a bit gory at times, and veering off towards supernatural by the end. 8/10

39) The Turing Test - Wow, these stories keep getting better and better! It is overwhelming and exuberant. Only a handful of books have even attempted to get anywhere near close into the Doctor’s psyche as this one has. Moreover, it has multiple narrators, and all three have a very different relationship with the Doctor, you get into the different facets of his persona, multiplicity of his character. You have a dashing and breathless romantic whose mere presence sweeps you off your feet, a reckless hero, an enigma, at the same time, there is a rather selfish and cruel streak as well. He is a manipulator, someone who knows more than he should and willing to use this knowledge to achieve his aims, willing to play people against each other and show a side of himself that they would be most accepting to see. It is never to the degree of Seven, this behavior is all Eight through and through, the core of his characters never sways, it’s just viewed through a different lens. The previous novels have established these facets, but more on accident, due to lack of consistency between different writers, picking one and going with it. But this is the first one I feel they were actually explored in full, though, certainly, there will be other stories to tackle this in the future as well (Caerdroia in particular comes to mind). An outstanding story through and through. 10/10

40) Endgame - Hot off the heels of the previous one, another fun story - or, at the very least, something that would have been a gem if it had managed to sustain the energy it had at the beginning. Doctor’s claustrophobia and depression were very poignant, and, as much as I loved Stranded already, it does make me look at that story in a new light with a newer appreciation. And, on top of that - this book is funny, the Doctor evading spy agents with ease is the comedy of errors. That said, in the second half there is too much runamock it’s a bit repetitive, not very well organized, they needlessly cross the ocean so many times, the situation at a given location is resolved the second the Doctor shows up on a scene, and it all ends in deus ex machina. The authors note says that the original draft was submitted unfinished, and boy does it show. Still, I had fun with it. 8/10

41) Father Time - It is hard not to notice though that some of the novels come in pairs (or trios). The Burning and the Casualties of War had a lot of overlap. Turning Test and Endgame were both based on political intrigue. And now, Endgame and Father Time, both feature some mysterious entity that know the Doctor from before, with him not knowing who they are. They are even called similarly, “The Players” and “The Hunters”. When these overlaps are so close to one another, it does rather stick out. This ark is not the first time this happened, obviously, there have been a number of stories before that makes you pause and go “wait, you’ve just done this in the previous book, too”. It’s probably more to do with how quickly the books are released one after another, so as the writers discuss some ideas, they end up being in several places....

That said, the first third of the book had me singing its praises. After going through the five stages of grief, and battling against the depression of the previous novel, the Doctor is finally reaching acceptance of his situation, and possibly nurturing hope for the future. It’s exactly the type of a fluffy story I have a weakness for. But then... you have a time skip, which gets all the pacing torn into shreds. Not only the conclusion of the first part is too abrupt, everything falling into pieces as if by accident, but also, none of the things that happened in the first part (or most of the characters that were introduced) matter for part two. It turns into a chess match play by numbers, moving characters across the board almost without any transition in service of “plot”, without much of consideration for their head space, keeping everyone rather ooc. The change in visuals is very abrupt - it’s hard to accept the Doctor as a millionaire business consultant living in a grand mansion, new family situation or not. It’s not just at odds with his bohemian persona, it also begs a question, if he is so famous, what do the UNIT and Torchwood are doing about it? And also, *sigh*. You have a sixteen year old girl, who, in the previous chapter, just been ten. And you decide to spend the next two chapters on little else than musing how “she hasn’t been interested in sex, even though she is SO HOT”, only to decide that she is interested now, actually. It comes across more than a little fetishistic, and the story continues to follow her around with the male gaze. I’m not here to follow sexual exploits of minors - not in a Doctor Who novel. It is utterly unnecessary, doesn’t add anything of value to the plot, not character driven, and made me lose pretty much all of the good will I had from the first part of the story (and I had a lot of it, because the start of it was basically perfect). In the third part, it just turns into a discount Taken story, somehow managing to lose any cohesiveness and suspension of disbelief, and fizzles out in the end. 4/10

Amnesia watch: #7. It’s a bait and switch - the Doctor was just pretending, but I’m counting it anyway.

42) Escape Velocity - I wonder, how much sponsorship did various fast food places paid for this novel....

And we are back with Fitz. I didn’t really say it before, but it was really rather a dick move leaving the Doctor all alone for over a century. I mean, it worked, narratively speaking (more on that later), but, still, in an option between traveling through space & time BUT leaving them alone for that long, without any idea who they are, without any network of support, letting them slowly go mad, only being there for the fun bits, versus staying with them to help them through it all, you are kind of a bad friend. Sure, Compassion was in the driver’s seat, but Fitz didn’t exactly protest all that much, did he? And why 20th century earth? If the conditions for Doctor’s maroonment was that he had to stay somewhere for over 100 years while the TARDIS repaired itself, then any other technologically advanced era that didn’t have two world wars would have sufficed? And, psst, Doctor, your adopted kid has a space armada. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind giving you one ship that would allow you at least space travel, you didn’t have to spend last 11 years on Earth - you could have went traveling, TARIS in tow on that ship, and only checked in at the deadline.

Also, I get it, memory loss is a traumatic experience, and the Doctor isn’t human, and there is a sense of wrongness. But, he has lived on Earth for over 100 years. In that time he had more memories and experiences than any human alive. After a while, this entire thing of “I don’t know who I am” should start wearing a bit thin, don’t you think?

This rant aside, the book is a bit play by numbers. A lot of unnecessary runaround, traveling from London to Brussels and back several times for no particular reason. A rather boring “aliens invading earth” plot that left me checked out for a vast majority of it. Nothing bad about it, but nothing stands out about the plot either. But, it did have several heartfelt emotional scenes - the long awaited reunion, seeing TARDIS interior again, the finale. They were fairly brief, and it’s a bit of a pity they weren’t savored for a bit longer, instead letting the plot get in the way, but the little that was there was nice. 7/10

43) EarthWorld - I was hoping to enjoy this book a bit more than I ended up, I usually am quite fond of Rayner’s works, but I guess it is one of her first books. It’s a bit monotone, landing on the side of quirky, whether it was suited for a scene or not. Also dwelling on the past quite a bit, invoking the imagery of Unearthly Child, War Games, Greatest Show in the Galaxy in a rapid succession, for no specific reason, and then dwelling for quite a long time on several previous novels in a not entirely organic way. Instead of using this as an opportunity so start afresh now that we’re finally back in the TARDIS, it feels like it is focused more than ever on recapping how they got here, especially as the previous novel offered a way out by letting Fitz forget most of the previous “ark”. There were a lot of lovely character moments - but some of it did feel overly gratuitous. Still, it’s a decent book, even if it doesn’t quite reach full marks 8/10.

44) Vanishing Point - Easily the best Steve Cole novel of the ones I’ve ever read and/or listened to. This is the fresh start to the team adventures that I was hoping for. The alien world is interesting, with great worldbuilding (which is actually kind of rare in the novels). A lot of exciting imagery. The characters are a joy to behold. Not just the trio, but the secondary characters too. The first half of the book is basically perfect. It... kind of fizzles out in the second half, never really delivering on its set up in an entirely satisfying way.

A big part of the difficulty of suspending disbelief, though, was Fitz’s leg. I twisted my ankle once. I could barely walk for several days afterwards (so it having happen at a beginning of a trip was Awful), it took months for it to fully heal, and even now it feels more wobbly than the other one. And a colleague of mine ended up getting a special boot, because she keeps twisting her ankle (always the same one). Fitz had twisted his ankle, and then he was shot in the leg. And he is running about mountains and waterfalls almost immediately. 8/10

45) Eater of Wasps - You have to give it to Baxendale, he has a very particular style. Everything described so masterfully you couldn’t help but imagining every single detail, like painting a picture before you. Even though a significant portion of it is body horror that is described exactly as lovingly as the British countryside. Never before has the title been this appropriate. Very careful in setting up the conflict and tension between the protagonists. 10/10

46) The Year of Intelligent Tigers - This story is just nice. Another one with incredible visuals and incredible feelings behind it, exuberant and overwhelming, like a hurricane. The ending is particularly strong. This is peak Eight - a force of nature, alien and unknowable, and yet, you can’t help but being swept off your feet. Stories like this one is exactly why he is the platonic ideal of who the Doctor should be.

Overall impressions so far: This was like a breath of fresh air. The “stuck on Earth all on his own” ark was not only beautifully executed, but it was also badly needed. The last time I was complaining that few novels actually did anything with Eight - he would react to the plot, but never really be affected by anything. And at the heart of it was the issue that the writers, through trial and error, did come to a consensus about who he should be, but rarely took time to actually get into his head - they started out somewhat flat-footedly, and then got swept up in other things. Here, though, they were forced to slow down and focus his undivided attention just on him, what makes him tick if you break him down to the barest essentials - so even after reuniting with the TARDIS and the companions, his portrayal is all the stronger as a result. Rather than merely reacting to the world at large, he is now an active participant.

The companions are great. There is nothing particularly special being given to Fitz to chew upon, but his presence is always welcome, especially with him being as mellow as he has been back in Autumn Mist. What is it about the Doctor that attracts so many companions with an acute case of praise kink, I wonder? Anji is also interesting, and I love seeing what’s being done with her. She slots in perfectly, delivering so sorely missed snark Compassion had in her pre-Shadow of Avalon outings, all the while having a rather unique relationship with the Doctor - acknowledging his eldritch horror moments, being one of the few who does stand up to him. Especially after the last couple of books, I’m curious to see where this goes and how it continues to build.

The books themselves are a significant step up to what was there before, which got pretty joyless for a short while, alternating between mediocre to awful. In this batch, tough? Sure, there are some weaker offerings, but even there there is at least one stand-out scene that makes the book. Even if the plot isn’t exactly the most revolutionary thing in the world, it is being made up with solid character work. Honestly, for any new readers I would recommend just starting with #37 Burning and going from there - at least so far.

#doctor who #eighth doctor #eighth doctor adventures #eda

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angelaiswriting · 5 years ago

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Children (4 of 4) | Michael Gray

[Photo by Pixabay from Pexels]

✏️ Pairing: Michael Gray x wife!reader

✏️ Summary: Michael is back from the war, but is he really? Life is still difficult and the Gray family is falling apart under Y/N’s helpless gaze. (Requested by @duckydae)

✏️ A/N: wow, I reached a new level of angst. @kind-wolf will not be happy haha

✏️ A/N 2: also, another note, just as a sort of background info. The whole America thing (and obviously Gina) didn’t happen, everything’s peachy between Michael and Tommy (and the rest of the squad fam). :)

✏️ Warnings: angst and a slight hint of smut and ‘mature’ themes (sort of PTSD talking, drugs use, depressive moments ?), so for safety measures, 18+ only! I hate it when you guys are minors and cheat me, don’t think I’m stupid.

✏️ Word-count: 5,613

<< part one: children << | << part two: anna and john << | << part three: a bigger table << | PART FOUR: WARHORSE

There has never been this much silence in the Grays’ house―six years have done plenty to change the precious status quo of things. Even the children are afraid to step on those floorboards that creak a little louder than the rest.

“The children”―they have stopped being children a long time ago, when their Daddy had to leave for the continent, Y/N reasons. They’ve grown up quicker than she did when her time had come, when the war had come crashing against the shores like a tide and had brought her father away in its muddy waves.

John and Anna are now adults―probably too young to be such―definitely too young―but it doesn’t matter, not in 1946. John is eighteen, Anna just two years younger, and while Y/N always sees them as her babies, she knows that what she’s looking at is the result of something she never thought would come again.

Even the twins don’t feel like the fourteen-year-olds they’re supposed to be. Rebellious, headstrong, Henry and Paul get in more trouble than she can count and there’s nothing she can do to help. Nothing she can do to stop that barbaric destruction her children are going through.

Michael doesn’t help. Michael can’t help―he can’t even help himself. He sits in their bedroom with the curtains drawn and the lights switched on―he’s afraid of the outer world, but he is even more of the darkness. And of what the darkness carries in its hands when it clouds his vision and the ratatat of the artillery fills not only his ears, but his veins as well.

Bill can’t help his Daddy. Bill, with his angelic face and curly hair, with that omnipresent smile on his face and that silence that always accompanies him around. Bill, from the hill of his ten years of age, can’t help his Daddy, can’t bring him back to the Brummie countryside where everything is as quiet as he is.

He’s hated―Y/N knows it and refuses to acknowledge it at the same time. His father can’t bear his company, can’t bear his presence. And it’s not because he’s mute, but because his silence fills his father’s void with screaming creatures and living horrors he just wants to forget, to delete from his memory, a burning rod scraping and digging into the grey matter of his brain.

He’s mute, too, Michael, but for a completely different reason. His lips are sealed during the day and while he’s started to finally eat again, his tongue doesn’t move, his lips don’t give shape to any kind of words.

There are screams during the night, though―blood-curdling screams that give her nightmares in the waking hours of her days―that make her skin crawl as she turns on her left side to face her husband. The screams are worse than the bombings, worse than the shrilling yells of the air-raid sirens that sometimes still thrum in her lungs and in her stomach.

But tonight is different. Tonight Michael doesn’t scream―and that’s because he doesn’t sleep. He can’t sleep, can’t bring himself to close his eyes, to see the walking skeletons that still plague his every breath with the same violence of the silence in this house. He lies there, on top of crumpled sheets, butt-naked, staring at a ceiling that’s giving him visions. He sees waves in the stucco decorations watching his every move from above, and he hears voices, whispered voices that ring like a mixture between Russian and German to his frustrated ear.

The need to scream is there, tickling the base of his throat with those chilling cold fingers that scrape at the sides of his brain every day. But there’s no sound leaving his lips.

He thinks of snow. It’s the first time in forever and the need is so strong that it’s making his mind spin, his vision blur, the muscles in his thighs cramp. He thinks that if only he manages to find some―he’s sure John uses some every once in a while―then everything will be alright. For a few hours, that is. His wife doesn’t need to know, doesn’t need to hear a thing. All he has to do is get up from that bed of thorns, walk down the corridor and into his first son’s room, and look for that God-damned magic white powder that will make him leave his body for a few, precious hours.

But when he sits up, a man possessed by his need for cocaine, the bedsheets whisper under his ass, the mattress moans and holding his breath is of no use because his wife is already turning in his direction. She didn’t fall asleep in the first place―she just can’t if he doesn’t fall asleep first, these days.

Hate bubbles up in his mouth like vomit―and it’s so sudden and unexpected that it would make him shiver if only war didn’t skin him alive. And it’s hate that makes him seethe that Go back to sleep through gritted teeth.

“Where are you going?” Her voice scrapes his eardrums, removes layer after layer of membrane from his brain. Even the faint sound of her breathing makes the nerves under his skin come to life, tense and creak like a branch ready to break and fall to the ground.

“Go back to sleep, Y/N.” It’s the most he’s said in the five months he’s been back home and he all but hates the sound of his voice. It’s foreign to his own ears, and it’s strained, paper-thin, dry like fallen leaves on a winter day.

He wants to tear his throat out with his own bare hands.

She doesn’t answer and he feels the mortal combat going on in her soul, feels it in the air like the static electricity before the storm comes. But the storm never comes. And despite his raging need for some drug-induced happiness, he sits and waits like a man staring out at the never-ending expanse of the sea.

His mouth is dry, his tongue a dead weight pressing against the back of his teeth. It weighs him down, loads his muscles with lead and cement and ashes. So many ashes that he can smell his own flesh burn and combust, baring his bones for the world to see.

“Come sleep with me.” It’s a whisper and the sound of his wife’s voice is worse than the furious march of tanks.

He’s repulsed by his wife―and repulsed by the fact that he’s repulsed by his wife.

There’s a mist of constant anger following Anna and her mother can’t read its reasons behind it. She wants her father back―she needs her father back now that she ended up pregnant with the child of a veteran more dead than the dead.

She’s only sixteen and she’s having a baby she doesn’t want with a man that doesn’t see her through the curtain of what he’s already seen.

‘46 is the year Love died, or so it feels as Y/N cries bitter tears in the desolate solitude of the kitchen. It’s like war didn’t end, like it brought back a monster that still has to exhale its last breath.

Sometimes she thinks she sees it. In the vacuous look in her husband’s eyes. In John’s stubborn studies. In the mess the twins give birth to every single day without cease. Even in William’s eerie silence, and she’s glad he’s off to school, now, she’s glad the week has finally started again and has brought him away for a few days.

There is no escaping what the monster does to people. Anna could get rid of the baby if she weren’t that scared, but she can’t get rid of her husband. Can’t kill off the only man she’s ever loved and that has always treated her like a queen, worshipping her like one worships God in a temple.

“Why doesn’t he say anything?” Rage burns her only daughter’s voice as she stomps into the kitchen, purposefully loud as if she’s trying to catch her father’s attention, to rile a reaction out of him the way warm water and baking soda help you vomit. “Why doesn’t he say anything?!” Voice louder, tears are burning hotter than her anger on her cheeks and there’s no stopping the furious movement of her hand, which reaches up to wipe them away.

“Anna-”

“NO!” It booms and echoes in the cramped space of the kitchen of that countryside house. It rattles against the dishes in the cupboard, scratches the wood on the walls, hits the thick panels of the windows as it scorches the girl’s throat, threatening to punch out her teeth. “Don’t do this, don’t treat me as though I don’t understand shit!”

They cry―it’s unwanted and almost humiliating, for everybody’s trying to ignore the elephant in the room, but they still do cry together, clutching at each other like they both were unyielding rocks under the onslaught of the sea. They cry and they do so in vain, for Anna’s still pregnant and Y/N’s still hated. Those tears don’t change the new reality of things and while the hiccups disrupt the otherwise gravel silence of the house, nothing happens.

Nothing can happen.

Probably nothing ever will.

“I need him and he’s a fucking ghost.”

When they look back at it in a few hours, neither will be able to say with complete certainty who pronounced those words, for they belong in both of their mouths. Y/N craves love, Anna - a father, and neither can have any.

John is high. He’s so high it’s a miracle he’s not floating mid-air and while his mother knows how good snow can feel, she still cries bloody tears when she sees her son like that.

John, ahead of his peers and studying psychology to help build a better world from the inside, is just as shattered as everybody else. He lies on the grass, under the shadow of an oak and the blue sky of a late-May afternoon.

And for a blind moment, Y/N thinks she’s lost him to the family’s very own sin. And she almost pukes right then and there, turned away as she is towards the flowerbeds she’s spent so much time tending to―it doesn’t matter that the house is surrounded by flowers planted in the hopes of forgetting, for nobody seems to be able to see them anyway.

But then he smiles, and he calls her over, and for a second she can see a glimpse of how Michael used to look like. The boy lost John Shelby’s looks and resemblance right before turning ten and has since then started down a path that was bound to make him stand out like his father’s very copy. Beautiful and strong and just as passionate about life and horses as one could be.

Life and horses and Tokyo.

“You are so beautiful, Mum,” he says, knocking the air out of her lungs as she stands there, frozen in time and space as she stares down at him. “You shouldn’t cry so much. Red eyes don’t look good on you.”

For a weird, unknown reason she bursts out laughing. She doesn’t know when the last time she laughed was, and John doesn’t recall it either.

It feels good, liberating, even. She didn’t think she still had it in herself to produce such sound, to let go in a burst of unexpected laughter induced by a second-hand high. But it’s good and for a moment, it makes her forget better than gardening has ever done.

“Where did you find it?” The words are out before she can stop them―she doesn’t want to know. She doesn’t want to know who gave her precious son a pinch of that artificial happiness that’s still staining his nostrils.

John looks happier than he’s ever looked in the last six years and a half. He looks like himself once again and she’s terrified to the bone by this thought―by this realisation―by the fact that there’s still a glimpse of the real him just because he’s managed to find the Devil’s powder somewhere she can’t even name.

“Charlie,” he answers with a chuckle almost as if to ask her Who else do you think has coke to spare, uh, Mum? The name also rings like an accusation, acid and scorching like an unwanted truth―It’s always been in the family and always will be. We’ll turn into snow when we die. And then we go straight to hell. “It’s good shit.” His dreamy eyes are more terrifying than the appalling screams tearing her husband’s body apart from the inside. “Have some with me.”

She doesn’t. The need to is strong, buzzing with a life of its own in her very veins with the same intensity it burned in Michael’s just a month before, the night he ordered her to go back to sleep before walking out naked of their shared room.

“Isn’t this the best feeling in the world?” Johnny asks and she lies―Yes. Yes, it is.

But she’s crying. She’s crying silent tears that stream down her ashy face like rivers. Their saltiness tastes like blood between her parted lips and she’s sure that they’re staining her teeth red, turning her mouth into that of a monster.

That’s the first time she thinks her family is dying, slowly falling apart between her numb, useless fingers, under her heart as heavy as a tombstone. It wrecks her from the inside out, a little more with each minute she passes staring into her son’s blissed-out eyes.

Yes, it’s the best feeling in the world, she cries, holding him between trembling arms as she feels old and decomposed inside.

Tommy’s visit is unexpected that night. And for a moment, his possessed face is all Y/N can see as she does her best not to recoil in front of that ghost as she keeps the entrance door open.

“Can I come in?”

His voice rings foreign to her ears, paper rustling in the wind, aged by years spent smoking―and then screaming. His whole face appears alien, a haunting vision out of a blood-freezing nightmare.

She doesn’t answer, but she does step back―enough to let him see the bare hall but not enough to let him pass. And it’s not because she doesn’t want him in her house, but because she can’t move, rooted as she is to the stone floor she scrubs every morning, from four to six, just to keep her own mind distracted after the restless night she’s had.

Henry and Paul follow the man with their heads hanging low and they, too, look like a spectral vision. Bloodied faces, crumpled clothes. Two fourteen-year-olds suddenly aged into old men.

She’s on the verge of fainting.

She’s weak and trembling inside, eyes almost bulging out of their sockets and she doesn’t even know why. Doesn’t know why the world is spinning and her throat constricting, vomit threatening to make an appearance after the tasteless dinner she’s still recovering from.

Yes, it’s the best feeling in the world. She now wishes she had kept her son’s cocaine because she could so use a snort right about now.

If nothing, it’s a blessing that Michael is in bed already―that he hasn’t moved from the mattress the whole day. A lack of reaction on his part is what would make or break her―break her most likely.

“Where is Michael?”

She doesn’t answer. Her tongue is knotted and her mouth is stuffed―with what, she doesn’t know, but it has the strangely familiar taste of nightmares. Her hand is still on the door handle: if she lets go, she’s going to fall. She’s going to fall knees first to the floor and there’s nobody there willing to pick her up―not her sons, not her husband’s cousin.

He’s seen too much already―Tommy. He’s marched through two wars and the extra years he’s been granted in France after the Great War have been wasted away between France and Germany now, possibly even Italy―she doesn’t know for sure―doesn’t want to know for sure.

Y/N wants to speak but can’t. Wants to ask her children what’s wrong with them and why do you want to break your mother’s heart? You stop being you the moment you give birth to your children, or so she’s always thought. Life starts again with a new Day One and all that came before that was extra. But now motherhood feels like lead shoes, pulling her down to the bottom of the ocean as her lungs fight against the salty water, fight for oxygen, fight for-

She doesn’t know, not anymore.

“They’ve been going at it again,” Tommy says, looking around and taking in the bare walls of a once well-decorated house. There had once been wind chimes hanging from the ceiling on the middle of the hall, but they’re not there anymore. And Tommy knows why. “Paul more than Henry.”

He says this almost as though Y/N knows what he’s talking about. The truth is, she doesn’t. And as soon as he’s going to leave, the twins are going to go upstairs without even glancing in her direction. That’s how it always goes, how her heart keeps on breaking day in and day out. There’s no rest. Absolutely no rest from that kind of torture.

“I’ll keep an eye on them, but…” He trails off, averts his eyes from hers almost as though the sight of her has burned him. He breathes in deeply and for a moment he keeps the air there, somewhere in-between his nose and his brain, afraid he’s going to smell blood or gunpowder or the acrid stink of war. “You keep one on them, too.”

The best feeling in the world―she’s not even sure she remembers what such a thing is. Nor if it even existed and she was there to witness.

She nods, and it’s all she can do.

“Keep them home for a week. The waters need to calm down.” These words make her gag, but she’s quick at swallowing it, at looking away―from the devil and from her sons. Then, Tommy reaches the door again, takes her hand off the handle. It’s not a gentle touch―he pries her fingers off the brass knob and that’s it. Dead fingers touching dying fingers―it doesn’t matter that her nails are painted a calm shade of pink, pale cyclamen on a spring morning. “Two is better.”

He leaves without turning back, without telling her it’s all going to be okay, that he’s there for her and her family, that he’ll come back, sooner or later. There’s no solace for her soul, sick and tired and on the brink of the abyss, staring up at her with its raping, hungry eyes. There are no words for wives like her, for women like her, left behind even when the husbands are back, breathing.

The best feeling-

She’s sobbing before she has the chance to feel the sob, to feel the tears sting her desensitised eyes. And she’s clutching a hand over her mouth because she can’t make a noise, can’t make a noise, can’t make a noise. Not in this house, not in this world.

“Mum?”

She wants to scream at them, wants to kick them out―out of the house, but not out of her life, she couldn’t take it, couldn’t-

“Mum?”

There’s a hand on her shoulder and the contact makes her jolt―almost jump out of her fucking skin.

They can’t see her like that.

And at the same time, part of her wants them to see. Wants them to know they’re not the only ones suffering.

Greedy bastards.

And she’s scared of that sudden, intrusive thought in the desolated land her mind has become.

“We’re sorry, mum.”

And when they hug her, Henry from one side and Paul from the other, she cries even harder because she’d do anything in her power to give her children a better alternative ending, but she can’t. She doesn’t have the power, doesn’t have the strength.

“So sorry.”

The best feeling in the world is that of the memories long forgotten in the deepest part of her mind, inside that red room she’s had to securely lock back in ‘39. A sunny September day it had been, still tasting like August and summer and the lovemaking sessions under a starry sky her husband had gifted her.

This is…

This is not…

“We’ll be better.”

And she cries because she knows the promise is sincere―fate just isn’t. Fate is against them, a growing tide ready to kidnap anything and anyone on the shore, staring up at an unforgiving moon.

It will last for a day, maybe a week, but soon enough she’ll have to witness her twins’ return home bloodied and battered, and she’ll have to live this moment again.

And again.

And then once more.

And one day Tommy will come home to tell her that her boys have died, that someone has stabbed them both to death and Quick! and Come! Before they bleed out in the middle of the street!

Her worries leave her mouth without her knowing she’s spilling them, bullets of a machine gun travelling a thousand miles a minute, hitting flesh and bone and brick. And soul.

They let her cry until there are no tears left, until she can barely stand on her feet, her right hand back wrapping around the door handle.

The best feeling in the world is a cocaine-induced orgasm, but she doesn’t tell them.

Bill is home from school. One more week and she’ll have to endure his presence for the whole summer. She’s terribly aware of how wretched a mother she sounds like, but she thinks this for his own good.

She doesn’t want him at home, at home where everything hurts and the silence eats him alive. Eats them all alive. She wants him away, in some far-away boarding school, someplace where nobody has ever heard of war or grief or silence and every day is a blessing.

Where is Dad? he wants to know with a smile on his face.

He’s a kid―he’s still her baby, the one she held in her loving arms back in ‘35, when shit still had to pop. She’s loved him then and she loves him now, but she’s a liar.

Y/N is a mother and a liar.

“Sleeping,” she answers, stretching a terrifying smile across her lips.

She’s making apple pie―the family’s all-time favourite―and Billy is helping her, pouring cinnamon on freshly cut apple slices with those tiny-but-growing hands of his.

Do you think he’ll enjoy his birthday present?

Oh, honey, I’m not even sure Daddy knows what day it is today, she wants to say but keeps quiet. “He’ll love it, baby.”

William always blushes when she calls him ‘baby’―I’m not a baby anymore, Mummy. And she smiles because he still calls her ‘Mummy’ when the rest of her kids have stopped calling her that before they turned ten. He’s her precious ray of sunshine on a stormy day, somehow managing to pierce the thick layer of clouds covering all sources of light.

But he doesn’t complain today. William is mute, not deaf, and he knows his Mummy cried herself to sleep in the living room last night. It’s his favourite, he signs, fingers wet and sprinkled with cinnamon.

And she hums and for a moment she feels like singing as she’s always done in the past. But she doesn’t, she can’t feel the music inside herself, can’t even conjure up the names of the notes. “We all love it,” she adds, turning back towards the dough she’s somehow correctly making. “You’ll be an amazing chef one day. Everybody will know William Gray’s name from Los Angeles to Tokyo.”

She’s glad Will doesn’t know what Tokyo can be―nor that she’s had a pinch, a few days before, and that that’s been her fuel for a whole day, keeping her up on her feet when all her knees wanted to do was give out under her weight.

It’s almost four in the afternoon when Anna joins them, baby bump barely peeking from underneath the yellow sweatshirt she hopes would help brighten up her day. Andrew hung himself the month before and the unexpected baby won’t have a father for real, now.

She’s used coke, too, a couple of times. Probably not the best choice when there’s a baby involved, but snow always helps everybody, whether it comes from the sky or some back-alley pusher.

“Hey, Billy-boy.” She ruffles William’s loose curls and everybody knows he hates it, but he still smiles at his sister from underneath beautifully long lashes.

Ten years old and he’s probably the more mature in the house. He sees right through the lie, but doesn’t make you feel guilty for lying, doesn’t kick you with the donkey-kick of a priest. Hey, Annie-girl.

She chuckles at the nickname and before she can second-think it, she kneels down and kisses his fingers one by one and then the tip of his nose and hugs him as tight as only a big sister can do. The sight warms Y/N’s heart and for a moment she stands there, tea cloth in one hand and wet kitchen counter forgotten.

The best feeling in the world has the taste of her children hugging, not the bitter one of snow. And it’s warm and bright and breathtaking―utterly breathtaking even now, on the edge of the unknown.

“You’re a good kid,” Anna murmurs in her brother’s ear and then she gasps and freezes and it takes Y/N a while to look up from her kids to see what has shocked her daughter so much.

The world stands still for a minute as she stares at him from the other side of the kitchen. It’s a scary view, it truly is, but it tastes like the sweetest lie, even if he doesn’t say anything, even if it looks like he barely registers his wife or two of his children’s presence in the room.

And then, the spell snaps and it breaks and all Y/N can see is the revolver in his left hand.

The children are out before they have the chance to complain, to tell her that they’d rather stay, that I’ve heard of shit happening, Mum, and I don’t want to bury you in that sweet and worried voice of her daughter that will plague her forever if things go wrong.

“Baby.”

She hasn’t called him ‘baby’ in forever and the word has a weird weight on the tip of her tongue right before it jumps out. The tea cloth is on the floor, forgotten, and she takes slow steps in her husband’s direction, bare feet against bare stone as she tries to ground herself in the moment, to not let her mind wander off. This is not a rabid dog she can shoot in the back of the head, this is her husband, her best friend, the love of her life.

“Baby.”

He’s breathing hard and fast, and when she’s close enough to touch him, she can feel his warmth―his heat. There’s no need to touch him to know he’s feverish, no need to read more in the goosebumps dotting his skin than the temperature rising higher in his body.

“People were here to hurt you.” It feels like each and every word he speaks pains him as his chest rises and falls and the air comes out scorching hot from his flaring nostrils. “Hurt you.” He cradles the side of her face with his right hand and the gun in the other presses its side against her cheek. There’s no menace in the action, just a husband holding his wife’s face and forgetting about the weapon he’s still clutching on to. “Hurt you.”

He doesn’t see her―his gaze is vacuous and distant―and it’s almost as though he can’t feel her, for the pads of his fingers press harder into the soft flesh of her cheeks.

There are tears on his face and those are the first thing John sees when he rushes into the kitchen from the door that gives on the back yard and the fields beyond, where Anna or William probably found him right after leaving the room. And they’re what stops him in his tracks, ready as he is to lunge himself on his father and push him away from his mother.

“Killed the kids,” he’s saying―Michael―and he sounds pained, more pained than he does at night when the horrors behind his closed eyelids wake him up. “Wanted to rape you.”

Anna is late at covering William’s ears, at shielding him from words whose meaning he doesn’t know, not yet. Snow and rape are still terms in the vocabulary he hasn’t reached yet―and hopefully he never will.

“They wanted to hurt you.”

It’s a blessing that John has managed to hide all the bullets he found in the house and that his father’s gun is not loaded. If it comes down to violence, he knows it won’t end with a bleeding hole in his mother’s chest.

“Dad?”

Michael moves almost as though he’s standing in the fog, fog so thick that both sound and light get distorted into nightmarish visions and sounds.

“Come outside, let Mum go.”

Summer ticks by painfully slowly and out here, in the country, the nights are silent. Cicadas are quieter than they ever were and it’s almost as though they know they shouldn’t disturb the warhorse.

Not even when he’s awake.

It’s a foreign feeling, that of being touched by her husband once again, of having him pumping inside her as he keeps himself propped up on his elbows, his hands cradling her face, his eyes focused on a spot right above her head, on the pillow.

It’s not love, it’s barely the shadow of what love used to feel like between the two of them, but it’s not violence, either―Michael came back many things from the war, but not a violent man. It’s the desperate attempt of going back to normalcy, of feeling alive again even when your limbs are cold and your loins feel dry. It’s tasteless and mechanical, but not meaningless.

This is not the best feeling in the world, but it can be, one day. It can be.

It will be again, Y/N knows it, and she’s willing to wait, she’s willing to help if he allows her.

Even now, her hands are soothing on the tense muscles of his back and on the ridgy scars left behind by God knows what kind of horrors. And her lips are warm against the cold sweat layering the skin of his neck, and her words soft―honey-like in his ear as she tries to bring him back home, bring him back where he’s loved and cherished and safe.

It’s silent. Their new lovemaking sessions are silent even when he pants above her, lost in some memory of his, in some feeling of his as he thrusts into her, trying to remember what it used to feel like.

He’s not back yet, Billy said that day in the kitchen, too wise for his own age and sake. But he will be. Don’t worry, Mummy.

She doesn’t worry, not when her son’s words meant the world to her back then―not when they still mean the world to her right now.

There is still hope and this is what she thinks of when Michael lies on his back, skin flustered and sweaty and breath short and ragged, his eyes staring up at a ceiling she doesn’t know if he’s seeing or not. He’s trickling out of her, down her thigh and onto the mattress, but it doesn’t matter, she doesn’t care.

She looks at him and she thinks that there’s still hope, that one day they’ll be back in their Birmingham bedroom and he’ll take out those stupidly expensive Parisian earrings from her ears and he’ll unclasp her diamond necklace. And he’ll let it fall to the ground―as carelessly as only he can―as he worships her body with his own.

Her fingertips are butterfly wings on the skin of his abdomen―still tight and soft as ever, maybe just not as full. She traces one of his scars, circles her bellybutton, and then plays for a moment with his happy trail. She stares at it and the only thought in her mind is, Oh, how I wish you still knew what the best feeling in the world is!

He’s ticklish, he’s always been, on his abdomen, behind his knees. He’s not as much now, but his body still tenses under her touch, an involuntary reaction she’s quite sure he’s not even aware of. She doesn’t know whether he felt her around him just a while ago, doesn’t know whether he’s heard her sweet nothings whispered like prayers in his deaf ears.

But when she looks up at him, she finds him looking down at her, brows slightly furrowed in a questioning expression, almost as if he’s wondering When did she get here?

He doesn’t touch her, doesn’t move his hands―his right one from his stomach and the other from the mattress. He doesn’t touch her but his eyes still caress the features of her face, trail down her naked body and then back up. It’s like he’s seeing her for the first time after a long absence, like he’s not just been sheathed inside her for the better part of the last two hours, trying to make himself feel something again.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” she says, and her whisper floats up to him and makes his eyes sting. “However long it takes.”

What do you think of this story? Please, let me know in a comment/reblog or through the chat or ask box, it would mean the world to me to know what your reaction to this was!! 💛

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