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bbdaydreams · 4 years ago

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Courage My Love// Semi Eita x Reader

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Chapter One: Late

You and Semi were assigned to sit next to each other in your English class during your first year which is how you initially met. About a quarter through the year Semi noticed you had the letter “X” in black marker on the back of your hand which led him to ask if you went to a show the night before. You said yes and told him what band you saw which made him light up and show you his hand as proof that he was there too.

“Dude, let me know when you go to a show! We could go together,” Semi told you with a grin on his face.

“Will do, bro,” you smiled back at him.

Since then, you’ve been concert buddies and best friends. You weren’t afraid to run up to tackle the other from a distance. Semi’s lent you multiple sweatshirts that other students immediately have identified as his considering the size difference. You’ve gone into his personal bubble many times, mostly to bother him by squishing his face. Other’s believe there’s more going on between you two but you’re both quick to shut down those comments, even if in reality you did harbor feelings for him.

You were both currently in his dorm fiddling with tunes on your guitars. “Y/n, you’re going too fast. Slow down,” Semi laughed while holding your wrists in place on the guitar.

“Dammit! I got nervous,” you responded setting the acoustic guitar down next to your body before using your hands to rub your face.

“It’s just me here. You don’t have to be so nervous.”

“I know, I know. I’ve got to get over this fear.”

Semi picked up his electric guitar and put the strap over himself so he could play properly. “I mean, I get it. It’s not easy playing in front of people, let alone perform. Did you see where I put my pick?”

“How do you do it? You honestly make it look easy. Also, dude, you have like three still stuck on your face.”

“Oh shit,” he responded before feeling his forehead remembering the guitar pick war you guys had. He grabbed one and wiped it on his shirt to take off your saliva for a better grip. “Uhh, I don’t know actually. I definitely do get anxious sometimes but I think I get so caught in the moment that in the end I don’t care who is watching. I’m just having fun, ya know?”

“I’m so focused on what others think, I don’t think I could ever perform how you do.”

“Well, you better get over it. You gotta hold up your end of the deal since you wanted me to do the talent show so bad.”

After Shiratorizawa lost to Karasuno, Semi had more time to focus on his band, which had formed the summer of your second year. They try to put on a show every other week at a local café and managed to gain a decent amount of attention but it definitely wasn’t enough for them to break out. You wanted to push them in anyway you could which led you to annoying Semi to sign up for the talent show.

“Eita, you should sign up for the talent show!”

“Nah. Too many preps. They’re not gonna be interested,” Semi responded in between bites of his lunch.

“Don’t think like that. Your guy’s music is good okay? I’m not just saying that because I’m your best friend I’m saying it because I legitimately mean it. Eagle Thorns is my favorite band. I know you guys will make it big and this can help!”

“They’ve got a good point, Eita,” their bassist, Ranmaru, said.

“I think it’ll be fun,” the drummer, Subaru, added on.

“We’ll do it,” Jiro, the lead guitarist, responded as he smiled up at you.

“Thank you, boys. I’ll sign you guys up-“

“Nope. Nope, no, no, no,” Semi spoke up, leaning over to take the pen from your hand.

“What do you mean no? Everyone else said yes.”

“I didn’t agree. I’ll agree to it if you do it too. I’ll even write your name on the list for you,” Semi stated with a smirk.

“You’re an asshole.”

“Guess we’re not participating then. Sorry boys-“

“I’ll do it. I want you guys to perform.”

“I don’t get why you want me to participate. I’m not the one with a band,” you told him.

“I know, but you want a band of your own. This could help you too. And even if you end up not finding members, it’ll help you get over your stage fright.”

“You have a weird way of showing you care,” you laughed while pushing his shoulder.

“Oh yeah?” Semi responded while pretending to square up.

“Yeah,” you immediately bucked back standing on your toes to help you get closer to his face.

“Ranmaru, the love birds are at it again!” Subaru spoke when he opened the door to Semi’s room.

“Oi! Eita, stop flirting! It’s time for band practice,” Ranmaru scolded.

“How many times do I have to tell you? We’re just friends,” Semi retorted turning his back to you.

You made eye contact with Jiro and he gave you a sorry look. Jiro was the only one that knew of your feelings and you planned to keep it that way. He was a year younger and didn’t speak to many other third years so you felt you could trust him.

“Yeah guys, c’mon. How many times do we have to tell you we’re just friends? It’s getting tiring at this point,” you added on with a fake happy smile on your face.

“Whatever. You get a song ready, y/n?”

“Still working on it. I’ll leave you guys alone and head back to my dorm. Have fun!” And with that you excused yourself and headed off.

When you got back to your dorm, you immediately sent a text to Tendou asking him to come over so you could vent to him. While waiting you came up with a plan. You decided you were going to play a song that expressed your feelings and then once you came off stage you were going to walk up to Semi and confess, hoping that the high from being on stage walks off with you.

“He said that?” Tendou asked as he sat on your bed with a large plush in his lap, watching you pace around your dorm.

“Yes! I don’t know what to do! Graduation is just around the corner and I wanna tell him before we go out separate ways after high school. Tendou, I’m so scared what if we don’t talk to each other again after graduation?”

“No, that’s not happening. You guys are best friends. I doubt he’d stop talking to you after we graduate.”

“Ok, but what if I confess and he doesn’t feel the same?”

“Trust me he feels the same.”

“How do you know that? Does he ever talk about me?”

“I can just tell by how he looks at you! And I’ll be honest he doesn’t bring you up but when someone else does he immediately tells them to shut up. Incase you didn’t know, I understand guy code. That means ‘don’t talk about my girl’.”

“Okay, okay. That puts me somewhat at ease.”

“Good. Now all you have to do is play that song without fucking up.”

“Ugh, Tendou! That just made me sick to my stomach!” You exclaimed before jumping on the bed and tackling him.

“It’s the truth! Just picture the audience in their underwear!” Tendou retaliated as he grabbed a pillow to hit you with.

“It’s not that easy!” You said while lightly hitting his chest.

“Why do you care so much as to what people think?”

“I don’t care about what others think I just care about what he thinks!”

“Shit, you have it BAD, bad,” Tendou laughed while putting the pillow behind his head for support. “Y/n, he’d be an idiot to reject you. And I’d remind him daily if he did. You are such a catch, it’d be a shame if he let you go to waste,” he told you earnestly.

“I-, thank you, Tendou. It means a lot-“

“Oh shit, I didn’t know you guys were in the middle of something,” Semi voiced when he let himself into your dorm, a reoccurring scene he’s noticed.

“Eita!” You greeted him, immediately getting off of Tendou to go hug the setter.

“Semi-Semi, I thought your practice was going to last longer,” Tendou said, taking note of the small glare Semi gave him.

“Stop calling me that and we finished early,” the ash blonde responded before turning to you. “What about you? Did you manage to pick a song?”

“I did!” you told him with a smile.

After two weeks of practicing it was finally the night of the talent show. You had your guitar in a soft case, that Semi had given you, across your back. Were you nervous? Yes. Of the crowd? Not exactly. What you told Semi and Tendou wasn’t a lie. You didn’t care about what people thought of you, unless they were people you cared about. You cared about how your friends would react. You cared about what Semi’s band members thought. You even cared about what the members of the volleyball team would think, even if you’ve only met them a few times. But most importantly, you cared about what Semi’s opinion of your performance was.

You and Semi have sang along to numerous songs in different settings, even taking turns to do karaoke in the car. All those times you didn’t care about what he thought because you were so comfortable being around him, but now that it matters, that’s when your self doubt kicked in.

“Ready?” Semi asked you from behind, making you jump.

You took a deep breath after the scare before smiling up at him, “Nope, but I’m up soon.”

“Indeed you are. You’ll do great. I know you will.” Semi’s honesty was something you always admired about him. In your three years of friendship, he’s never lied to you. He’s always evaluated the situation and told you his thoughts without a single waver in his voice. Him believing in you, gave you all the confidence in the world.

You guys were standing side to side watching the other acts perform their talents from side stage. As your turn neared closer, he raised an arm over your shoulder, rubbing it to help ease your nerves causing you to lean your head on him.

“Hey, I gotta tell you something later,” you spoke, avoiding looking at him.

“Tell me now,” he responded gently.

“Nah. After we perform.”

“Alright,” he laughed. “Ima go find the guys, we’re up after you. Good luck, don’t fuck up or else you won’t hear the end of it from me.”

“Ha, ha, ha. Okay jackass. Good luck to you too. Tell the boys I wish them luck too.”

As soon as Semi left your side, the announcer spoke up to announce it was now your turn to perform. You took a deep breath before shaking each of your limbs to make sure they were working. Once you concluded that they were, you made your way to the center of the stage.

“Good evening, L/N, the stage is all yours,” the announcer spoke before placing the microphone on a stand and adjusting it to your height while you grabbed the chair left on stage for you to use. You gave him a silent nod before he left the stage.

“Thank you,” you spoke while grabbing the mic to tilt it a little more towards you. “I’m going to be singing a song by a band called ONE OK ROCK. This song is called ‘Wherever You Are’. Please enjoy.”

Wherever you are, I'll always make you smile

Wherever you are, I'm always by your side

Whatever you say, kimi wo omou kimochi

I promise you "forever" right now

You were almost done with the song and decided to look up and scan the crowd. You were quick to notice Tendou and Ushijima sitting in the crowd, Tendou looking more impressed than the latter. When your eyes connected with the judges you remembered situation you were in and closed your eyes to put all your effort into the last three lines. It went quiet in the auditorium after you finished which only made your eyes stay shut until loud clapping and hollering commenced, one voice sticking out from all the rest.

“Wooooo! Go y/n!” You could hear Tendou yell. You looked up to make eye contact with him again. He was grinning from ear to ear while talking to the people beside him, most likely telling them he knew you.

You grabbed the microphone again and gave a small chuckle before speaking, “thank you, everyone.”

The announcer came back into the stage and gave you a hand to help you get up from the chair. While you put the guitar away he put the chair away and spoke into the microphone as you waved the crowd goodbye. “Beautiful wasn’t it? So passionate. Thank you so much for blessing all of our ears with your voice. Now, up next we have another musical performance. This next one is a group and they call themselves Eagle Thorns! Please welcome Eita, Ranmaru, Subaru, and Jiro to the stage!”

Subaru walked up first with his drum sticks in his hand and made his way to his kit. Once he got to his seat, he raised one arm up waved to greet the crowd. Jiro and Ranmaru walked up together with their instruments and waved to the crowd as they went to their spots. Semi followed them from a couple feet behind with his guitar and made his way to center stage. “Hope you guys still have some energy after all the performances you’ve seen tonight. We are Eagle Thorns and if there’s any parents in the room, I hope you brought some ear plugs,” Semi joked.

You were standing off to the side of the stage watching them. It was funny to you because they were really acting how they did for any other gig. You’ve been to almost all of their shows and we’re still amazed every time they took the stage.

“This song is an original. It’s called ‘Late’.”

I can't stop thinking it, thinking it

That it's a little too late, a little too late, a little too late, a little too late

“Here we go!” Semi yelled into the mic. What followed was Ranmaru sing the first part of the hard vocals while Jiro did the second part which made you realize why Semi made his joke directed towards the parents earlier. In true Semi fashion, he found a way to include some spice into the band’s performance.

What kept bothering you was his use of the word ‘mistake’. All it did was make you question who he was talking about. You went down the list of people you thought it could’ve been but as far as you knew, Semi didn’t talk to a lot of people regularly. He preferred to keep his social circle small.

“Thank you so much for giving us a chance to play tonight. Before we leave the stage I’d like to ask someone very special to come up to the stage. They already know who they are,” Semi spoke into the mic.

A couple of performers that had gone up before were whispering amongst themselves.

“Is he doing what I think he’s doing?”

“Super bold move of him if he is.”

“Oh my god! He’s gonna ask someone to be his date for the dance next week!”

After that last comment you could feel a bunch of gazes landing on your form. The small group of students were now encouraging you to go up, but all you could do was grip into the strap that was across your body for comfort.

“Y/n! He’s talking about you!”

“Y/n go up there! What are you waiting for?”

“It’s not me guys,” you spoke. You knew you weren’t that special someone the moment Semi turned to the direction that was the opposite of where you were. “After all, we’re just friends.”

The group around you grew very confused from your response until they looked forward and saw someone else walk on stage towards the lead singer.

“I can’t stop thinking about you. Would you go on a date with me and accompany me next week to the dance?” Semi asked the girl, who you knew nothing about. He was asking out someone you had no idea existed.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” you excused yourself from the people surrounding you and bolted to the closest restroom. When you made it outside the door, you slid off the guitar and placed it on the ground so you could run into a stall. You immediately took out your phone and started texting Tendou asking him to come to your dorm so you could have a shoulder to cry on since the one you normally rely on isn’t an option at the moment. Tendou responded immediately, encouraging you to at least wait until the event is over for the awards ceremony. You were about to text him back but froze when you heard foot steps.

“I think she’s in here,” a soft voice spoke.

“It has to be this one, who else’s guitar would this be?” another voice spoke.

“Hmm,” a third girl spoke. “Hi, we’re looking for L/n Y/n! We-“

“Shhhh! You don’t have to be so loud, Izumi,” the second voice spoke.

“I don’t think it was a good idea to come looking for them now.”

“You’re probably right, but we wouldn’t have another opportunity to talk to them.”

What could they want with you? What could some strangers possibly want to talk to you about? You quietly leaned forward on the plastic door to look through the crack to judge the situation. There were three girls total, and one of them looked mean. As much as you didn’t like judging people based on their looks, the other two girls appeared to be nicer which made you take a chance.

“You’re looking for me?” You asked, stepping out of the stall while wiping your eyes.

The girl with the soft voice immediately took notice of your state and turned to grab a paper towel and wet it before handing it to you. “Here you go,” she said with a small smile.

“Uh, thank you,” you responded awkwardly.

“Sorry we’re meeting like this but we wanted to ask you a question. Would you be interested in being in our band? We’d love to have you,” the girl you were on edge about asked.

“You want me in your band? I only know how to play acoustic guitar, I’m an amateur at best,” you responded honestly while dabbing your face with the wet paper towel.

“Okay but you sing amazingly! We need a lead singer and your voice matches our vibe! At least think about it. Please. Let’s change information,” the louder one spoke as she handed you her phone.

You gave a genuine smile to the girls before accepting the device and started entering your information as you took yours out so she could do the same.

“Award ceremony is starting! All performers please make your way to the stage!” Someone yelled from the hallways.

You were about to speak but the leader of the girls spoke up for you. “Guess that means you, girly. Good luck!” She handed you your guitar back and ushered you out of the bathroom so you’d be able to make it where you needed to be on time.

When you made it back to the stage, Semi quickly made his way towards you, leaving his band behind, with a smile on his face. “Hey! Where’d you go?” He asked, completely unaware that you ran off to go cry.

“Not important,” you told him dryly.

Giving you a confused look he decided to continue the conversation. “Alright... well what was it you were gonna tell me?”

Now you were having an internal battle within yourself. Do you actually confess to him after he technically just confessed to someone else? Do you tell him something else? Or, do you just not tell him anything?

Knowing the last option would just cause him to bug you until you told him something you decided to go with the second option.

“I was gonna say that there’s a big name in the crowd tonight. Someone from a record label is here to scout out a new artist but I don’t know who.”

“Oh shit. No way! Hope they liked us.”

“Yeah.”

At this point you didn’t know what to do. You were upset that he’s never spoken about this person to you before. You thought you were closer than this. Don’t best friends tell each other about their crushes? Don’t best friends tell each other about things like this? Did you see Semi more as a best friend than he did for you? Were you putting in more effort into the relationship than he was this entire time? Were you so stuck in your fantasy that every small task he did for you mean nothing to him? Was he just being nice to you?

“Semi, who is she?” you asked trying not to cry for the second time in the past hour.

“Semi?” He asked taking notice of how you used his last name instead of his first name. “She’s someone I’ve been seeing on the low for about a month now.”

A month. He’s kept her away from you for a month.

“Why haven’t you ever introduced me to her?”

“I didn’t think it was important.”

“Why would you think that?” You asked with in a louder tone.

He looked at you even more confused as to why you were acting the way you were. “Sorry, I didn’t know I needed my friend’s approval to date someone?” Semi responded with the same tone you did, but with a little more bite.

His answer left you feeling as if you’ve been stabbed in the front. Out of all the ways he could’ve said, he chose to respond like that? Not wanting to draw attention you guys you decided to end the conversation before it got out of hand. “Don’t talk to me Semi,” you told him before turning to walk away from him.

He tried to reach out to grab your arm and ask you what the hell your problem was but the announcer spoke up.

“Alright, now that everyone is here and the judges have counted their votes, it’s time to announce the winners! In third place we have the dance duo! Congrats you guys!”

You were walking behind the line of performers so that the crowd would hopefully not see you walk off the stage as the announcer spoke.

“And in second place we have Eagle Thorns!” You froze at the loud cheers that erupted and the arm that you recognized belonged to Jiro as the hugged you from excitement right when you walked by.

“And in first place, drum roll please... we have L/n Y/n! Congratulations!” Now you can’t help yourself. Being too overwhelmed with emotions is never a good thing because now here you are, letting tears fall in front of a whole room of people. Jiro immediately picked you up and spun you around before putting you down and encouraging you to walk to center stage to accept the fake trophy that you weren’t expecting. You wiped your tears for a second time that night and gave a slight wave to the crowd before speaking into the microphone that the announcer was holding for you.

“Judges, thank you so much. I honestly didn’t think I’d win this but from the bottom of my heart thank you so, so, much!”

While you were giving your thank you speech, all Semi could do is question why you were so upset. As far as he knew, you had a thing for Tendou and Tendou had a thing for you, so why were you so invested in his relationship?

#haikyuu!!#haikyu #semi haikyuu #semi x reader #semi eita x reader #semi eita #haikyu x reader #haikyu angst

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imagining-in-the-margins · 5 years ago

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Here to Misbehave (Pt. 13 | S.R.)

Summary: Spencer finally meets Reader’s roommate while the two prepare for a picnic. After Spencer lectures Reader on the dangers of the outdoors, the two face a different kind of danger at the bank.

Couple: Spencer/Fem!Reader   Category: Smut (NSFW, 18+) Content Warning: Gun violence mention Word Count: 6.3k

MASTERLIST

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Although I’d been inside (Y/n)’s apartment several times now, I couldn’t say I’d ever actually looked much at my surroundings. It felt strange to admit that, mostly because I felt like I was doing something wrong; like I was a traitor to my job.

But then again, it felt worse to try to profile her. The few times I had made it obvious, she had made it very clear it was unappreciated. I could understand why.

So, before we even got to her door, I tried to quiet the voices screaming in my head, telling me to look for clues to all the unknowns about her. It wasn’t because I was expecting her to be hiding anything; I just wanted to know everything about her.

I could simply wait for her to tell me, though. We had all the time in the world, right?

“Laura, I’m home!” She called out immediately after breaching the entrance, following the exclamation with a very hurried request. “Spencer is here so please don’t be weird!”

The response was a calm, steady series of footfalls down the hall. The girl stuck her head around the corner, peeking at the two of us with a devilish grin.

“Pleasure to finally meet you, Dr. Reid.”

I told myself I probably shouldn’t be this nervous. If she was friends with (y/n), she was most likely a decent person. But let’s just say women around that age had never been particularly kind to me. They brought to the surface a lot of memories I’d tried very hard to bury.

She didn’t put her hand out to shake, which told me they’d already probably talked about me more than I’d have liked. ‘Wait,’ I thought to myself, ‘Is it okay to profile her roommate?’

“I’m going to go get a basket together. Wait in the living room, my kitchen is a disaster.”

Before I could argue, she had already disappeared, leaving me stranded in the hallway with her roommate who looked ready to cause trouble. I just hoped it wouldn’t the kind that revolved around me.

She waved a hand in front of her, motioning for me to make my way into the living room. Once we were there, she immediately took a seat, but I remained standing. Felt better to be able to escape.

The silence was awkward and suffocating. I could feel her staring at me, but she wasn’t saying anything. It felt wrong to look back.

“She says you read people for a living.” Her voice had a hint of skepticism in it I’d grown used to. “Sounds kind of like what psychics say.”

“Yeah, we use a lot of the same strategies, too. They just aren’t as honest about it as we are.”

“What do you see here?”

That was what got me to turn around and face her. She looked so comfortable, curled up on the couch.

“Pardon me?” The question caught me off guard, even though it shouldn’t have. I’d heard it so many times.

“What does our apartment say about us?” She asked, clearly not understanding why it was an inappropriate thing to ask. Or more likely, just didn’t care. Curiosity is a powerful thing.

I cleared my throat before looking back away and saying, “I agreed not to profile (y/n).”

“Well, can you at least tell which stuff is hers?”

I’m sure she was just checking to see if I was legitimate or just scamming her. Maybe she was checking to see if I was too good at it.

She didn’t need to worry. (Y/n) could handle herself. She wasn’t tricked easily. In fact, most of my intrigue and concern surrounding her unknowns was just how good she was at hiding things.

It wasn’t until I had registered that question and was staring at her walls with a newfound sense of purpose, that I realized how little I knew about her past. Then again, I don’t really care about her past.

It had made her who she was today, and that was the woman I loved.

My fingers brushed over old, cracked plastic on DVD cases displayed on a shelf beside the console center.

I didn’t even notice I was smiling at first, realizing that she’d kept the physical cases despite all the streaming services. She clearly still used the discs, too.

“These... are hers.”

“How can you tell?” The response in the form of a question told me I was right, and only made me feel even more deeply. Despite my greatest efforts to not look so excited by something so silly, I turned back around with my lips still curled in an awkward smile.

“Educated guess. Adrenaline.”

“What?” The confusion in her voice reminded me that she wasn’t aware of one of my deepest personality flaws.

“Research shows that only about 10% of the population are so called ‘adrenaline junkies,’ people who enjoy roller coasters and horror movies. It’s more often men than women, but it’s hard to tell because of the way we’re socialized.”

If I had turned around to face her, I probably would have seen the dead stare she was giving me during my rant.

“Regardless, people tend to either love horror or hate it. So, I considered the fact that (y/n) seems to enjoy things like... sneaking into bars with fake IDs and… other risky behavior.”

Well, that was close.

“But what really gave it away was the fact they’re not dusty, which means they’re still being used despite all of these movies being available on streaming services I know for a fact she uses. Considering how patient she is with my own Luddite tendencies I just figur—“

“Wow.”

The word cut off my train of thought, and I realized that I had barely breathed since I’d started. Wincing in response to the dumbfounded look on the poor girl’s face, I gave a nervous chuckle.

“Sorry. I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

“A little bit,” she said with her own little pity laugh. I’m sure (y/n) had told her enough about me that this wasn’t that big of a surprise.

“I do that when I’m nervous.”

“You shouldn’t be nervous,” she said like it was the easiest advice in the world, “You’re right about her, you know.”

Staring down at my feet, I wondered why the confirmation from her roommate meant so much to me. I hadn’t been actively trying to figure out things about my girlfriend — it felt wrong. But for whatever reason, knowing I had the ability to figure it out meant more when it was about her.

Laura laughed again, craning her neck to look around the corner before she quietly spoke. “She says it was the other way around, but she’s the one who convinced me to streak the lawn.”

Ah, the age-old tradition of UVA students. It was so easy to picture her stripping down to nothing in the dead of the night to prance down the length of manicured grass. My own personal little pixie.

If it was just an attempt to calm my nerves, it was working. Putting the focus back on (y/n) was a surefire way to bring out the best in me. She just had that effect on me.

“I am entirely unsurprised by this information,” I said before walking over to the other side of the room, noting the distinct lack of pictures of family among the shelves that clearly belonged to her.

Don’t read into it, I told myself, she might just keep them somewhere else.

“She also drank an entire water bottle of vodka during a full day of classes one time, just because I bet that she wouldn’t.”

I scoffed at the image of her drunk. It’d been a while since I’d seen her like that, and both times had been remarkably unique. She’s a dead giveaway; I was surprised she hadn’t been caught.

“I can’t say I relate to that,” I sadly admitted. Sometimes it was hard to realize that if I’d known her at the same age, we probably wouldn’t have gotten along. I used to hate people like that.

Granted, they had usually also hated me.

“She did mention you were a genius or something. I kind of figured. That’s her type.”

Well, that was information I couldn’t just gloss over. I furrowed my brow with a disbelieving smile, finally looking at the girl who was avidly watching my every move.

“Is it? I always pictured her with someone with more… Kinaesthetic intelligence.”

She gave me that look people give me when I said something weird, but continued nonetheless, “I don’t really know what that means, but she takes school pretty seriously. Honestly, probably a little too much. Part of why I dared her.”

“It’s strange to imagine her in class.” I hadn’t meant to say it, but once it was out there, I couldn’t take it back. And I was glad I couldn’t, because I was very curious about the answer.

“She’s the girl who knows all the answers and shuts down all the stupid guys trying to talk over her.”

I knew that those behaviors weren’t exactly favored in classrooms, having myself been the one at the brunt end of the bullying that followed.

“It’s pretty impressive.” She was being genuine when she spoke, and I was inclined to agree. At the same time the thought crossed my mind, I found a picture of her perched on the lap of the Thomas Jefferson statute.

God, I loved that girl.

“I bet she is.”

Almost on call, (y/n) poked her head into the room with wary eyes, looking at me as I awkwardly waved before looking back to her roommate.

“Laura, are you being weird?”

The girl rolled her eyes, but didn’t respond. Instead, she turned to me like it was my question to answer. Afraid to spoil any tenuous, newly formed loyalties, I shook my head no.

“Okay…” She only barely accepted my answer, “But if you say some dumb shit and get arrested, I’m not bailing you out.”

Briefly sticking out her tongue as she walked past me, she continued on her way. I couldn’t help but give that lovestruck, idiotic grin I always gave when she was around. If you’d told me I would’ve ever felt like this about someone who felt the same about me, I wouldn’t have believed you. Part of me still didn’t believe she could ever love me the same as I loved her.

Turning back to the girl cringing at the blatant intimacy shared in a simple glance, I immediately became awkward again.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t bring my handcuffs.” I joked, showing my hands in a strange display of innocence.

She… took a different approach.

“I know for a fact she has a few pairs in her room if you need one.”

A high-pitched whine nearly escaped my throat at the casual mention, and I cleared my throat and turned to look at her with a very unconvincing laugh. “W-what?”

“You have to know it’s impossible for her to keep her sex life a secret,” she droned with a bored expression, “I live one room over.”

“Right,” I nodded.

There was an extended, never ending silence as she just let me stew in my own discomfort. It didn’t seem to bother her one bit, because the longer I avoided her eyes the more she seemed to smile.

“I’m uncomfortable.” I finally admitted, and she just shook her head, running her hand through her hair before giving me one final hard look.

“You’re sweet. You make her happy. I appreciate that.”

My mouth scrunched in a humble half-smile, my hands finding their way back into my pockets as I tried to consider the reality I’d found myself in. Of all the infinite possibilities, I got to exist in the version of the world where I loved a girl who loved me back.

“It’s all her,” I finally said with a voice that crackled far too much for my liking, “I don’t do anything. I’m just the lucky one she decides to keep around.”

Laura flashed an approving grin, but then got up when she heard the familiar, happy feet beating down the hallway. (Y/n) burst out from around the corner, her arms full with a picnic basket and a blanket she clearly owned for just these occasions.

“Ready to go, babe?”

“Lead the way.”

I’d have followed her anywhere.

—————————————————

It was the perfect time of year for a picnic, despite Spencer’s insistence that there was no such thing. Once we were in the park, his whining dramatically decreased. Maybe it was the sunshine, or maybe it was the smile on my face, but he was certainly in brighter spirits.

He even let me rest my head on his lap, his legs crossed underneath me while he alternated between staring off at the trees slowly losing their color to autumn and my quiet contentment as I nibbled on an assortment of fruits.

There was no awkward silence or hidden darkness in this day, and even the sweetest strawberry couldn’t be more refreshing. To be here with Spencer, soaking in the late Summer sun, was all I could ever ask for.

But I was also eager to take advantage of the uncharacteristic softness between us. It wasn’t often we could share moments like this. Between his job and all our problems over the past few months, I wasn’t sure when we could be like this again.

“Let’s talk about something fun.” I blurted out, earning an intrigued look from my boyfriend. He readjusted his position, leaning back on his hands so he could look down at me easier.

“Okay, like what?”

“Don’t make fun of me…” The way he was looking at me gave me no hope he would actually listen to me, but I continued anyway, “I have conversation starters I looked up.”

He snorted while trying to suppress his chuckle. “Of course you do.”

Dropping my mouth open, I reached up to lightly smack him on the face for immediately doing exactly what I had asked him not to.

“What? Like you’re the epitome of sociable, Dr. Reid?”

He ran a hand through his hair, trying to stop the laughter that kept bubbling in his chest over something that was decidedly not that funny at all. We were just that stupid kind of happy where everything was wonderful.

“I’m just not surprised!” He reminded, then nodded for me to continue, “Go on, tell me one.”

“Tell me something you’re scared of.” I shot back, excited to hear the answer.

“The dark.” It was the most anticlimactic, stereotypical answer I could have imagined. It was my turn to scoff now, hardly believing the answer to be real.

“Seriously? You’re an FBI Agent, Spencer.”

“You told me not to make fun of you, but then you make fun of me? Unfair. I didn’t sign up for this scrutiny.” His legs started to move under me as he pretended like he was about to dump me from his lap and leave me here.

“Fine!” I shouted, reaching my hands up to grab his face. Although they fumbled awkwardly from my strange position, he took the time to lean to the side and kiss my palm lightly. “Favorite memory of the two of us.”

He blew out a long breath, his eyes squinted like they always did when he was in deep contemplation. But something told me something actually jumped straight to his mind, but he was holding it back for some other reason.

“That’s not fair. There are too many.”

I wasn’t falling for it. I flicked his nose before pulling my hand back, smiling at the way he jerked away like it actually hurt him. Giant baby.

“No cop out answers, old man. Favorite one!”

Spencer just sighed, letting his head fall back as he actually thought about what he was about to say for once in his life. I took the brief moment without his scrutiny to reflect on just how lucky I was to be able to see him like this.

“Okay. So, remember when we went to the bakery in Downtown?” He asked like I could have forgotten.

“Pauls? Yes, I remember.”

They’re legends in the area, but a total pain to try and get. You have to get there first thing in the morning and wait in a ridiculous line. But they were always worth it. Spencer had told me he’d never been, and I just couldn’t let such an injustice stand.

“While we were waiting in that ridiculous line, I remember looking at you and just seeing how excited you were for a donut, even at 7 in the morning.”

“That’s objectively the best time for a donut.” I interrupted with the most matter-of-fact tone I could emulate.

“Right,” he laughed, recalling how I kept reminding him of that fact while in line, “Well, we got to the front and before I could even talk, you had already ordered one for me.”

It took me a second to remember exactly what had happened. So much had happened since then, the memories were becoming muddled in my mind. But once I did remember, I smiled.

“Chocolate frosted with sprinkles. For the child in us all.”

“That’s it.” His voice had gotten soft so quickly, his hand brushing over my cheek while he played with the strands of hair blowing back over my face. “That’s my favorite memory.”

If I didn’t make a joke of it soon, I was scared my heart would burst.

“Really? That’s your favorite memory? Of all things?” I asked with a playful grin, clasping both of my hands around his and holding it against my chest.

“Yes.” For a man of so many words, it meant so much more when he spoke so little. You could feel the truth in the way the sound hit your ears.

Even as I bit on the inside of my cheeks to withhold my excited giggle, he was looking at me like I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“Spencer, that’s so lame.”

In that way he always did, he so charmingly replied, “How fitting for us.”

“Rude,” I muttered, finally finding the strength to sit up from my position on his lap. The world only spun for a second as I reoriented myself. He seemed equally grateful, stretching his legs out in front of him.

“What else do you want to make fun of me for?” Spencer said with a smile, watching as I reached into the small basket and pulled out a small clementine. I ran through the questions in my head, trying to decide which one to spend our limited time on.

“Okay,” I decided, “What did you think the first time you saw me?”

His face scrunched up with the leftover embarrassment from our very first meeting, during which the first thing he had ever done to me was lie. It had been a flattering one, though.

As I popped a section of the small citrus fruit into my mouth, I noticed the way he licked his own lips. The sight caused butterflies to flurry in my stomach, and I wondered which was more appealing to him; the mouthwatering scent of oranges or the idea of slipping something else between my lips.

“I thought... that you were beautiful and intriguing. And I was right.”

I got my answer to my preceding thought, because he had quickly wrapped his hand around the back of my head, pulling me into a kiss with crushing force. For someone who wasn’t the biggest fan of public displays of affection, he certainly didn’t mind kissing me like this.

Despite how deep and hard it was, it ended far too quickly. I sucked on my bottom lip as he left, staring up at him with wonder and devoted attention.

“Why was I intriguing?”

He clearly hadn’t thought that far ahead, probably hoping that the kiss alone would distract me from asking any more questions about that night. Unable to get out of it now, though, he just shrugged with a nervous chuckle, “You... were looking at me?”

My laugh, on the other hand, was full bodied as I pushed him away from me with just enough force that he actually almost toppled over.

“That was it? Because I looked at you?”

It seemed so silly, but I could tell by the way he responded that he meant it. He had told me before, on that night actually, that he wasn’t used to women showing him attention. But surely, he must just be missing it. He was an amazing man.

“I don’t know. There’s just something about you.” He paused between his words, taking a deep breath before attempting to work through his thoughts, “Like... like things just revolve around you. You have this intense gravitational pull that just told me that I had to get closer to you or I wouldn’t be able to survive.”

Fighting back the blush quickly forming on my cheeks, I struggled to maintain my typical aloof nature. I couldn’t have him getting a swelled head just because he could string together a couple cute sentences.

“Are you calling me a star, Dr. Reid?”

“I guess I am, yeah.” He hit me back with that confidence he rarely displayed outside of our play. I loved to see it like this. It made me feel like I was actually with him, rather than any manicured person he’d created to suit the needs of the current situation.

“If you felt that strongly about it, then why lie and say you weren’t checking me out? I could’ve left, you know.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Yeah, but I thought about it.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. There had been a couple of times during that night that I almost cut my losses—admitted that we were just too different to ever be compatible. Thank god I’d ignored that flawed instinct.

“I wouldn’t have blamed you. Have you looked at your boyfriend? I’m so weird.”

The ease with which he flouted his eccentricities brought a smile to my face, and I shook my head as I tried to fight back in his defense. “You’re not that weird.”

“Are you joking? Look at yourself. You’re—You’re normalcy personified! No, actually, you’re not even that. You’re this... beautiful, smart, talented young girl and I’m just an old man who’s hoping to keep you around long enough that you forget you have better options out there.”

The longer he spoke, the more my jaw dropped open. Eventually, I had devolved into a fit of laughter.

“Dr. Reid, you can’t seriously be telling me that you think I am out of your league!”

“I mean—!” he started, but I wasn’t going to allow him to even entertain the thought. I clapped my hand over his mouth, nearly climbing onto his lap to hush any noises he attempted to make.

“No way!” I shouted, “Shut up!”

Instead of trying to wrench my hand away, his hands came to rest on my hips. I could feel the smile spreading across his cheeks under my fingers.

“You’ve got to be kidding me, Spencer. Fucking FBI Agent with three PhDs. Get out of here.”

He began bouncing his leg under me, and when I looked down to see what he was doing, I was shocked to feel a wetness on my palm. Ripping my hand away, I looked at my hand to see the swipe of saliva over the skin.

“Did you just fucking lick me?!” I screeched, unable to comprehend what had just happened, staring at my boyfriend with a shit-eating grin on his face. “I touched the ground with this hand! What are you doing?!”

“Yeah, I’m definitely going to rinse my mouth with bleach when we get home. But it was worth it, to see that look on your face.”

He went to wipe his own face, but I still couldn’t get over the fact my hand was fucking wet. So I took my hand once more, wiping the residue of his own spit back over his cheek. Surprisingly, he just let me do it, laughing as he only slightly tilted his head back.

“Nasty old pervert,” I joked, rolling my body off him and sitting on own once more.

“You’re very mean when you’re nice to me.” Spencer pouted.

I was distracted, trying to get my hair to stay out of my face and mouth as the wind started to whip through the park. Still, I managed to say a few very important words of warning.

“Yeah, well, get used to it, bud.”

Taking pity on my obvious distress, he reached out to grab my arm, tugging me back over to him. “Come here, little girl.” he instructed while I crawled over on all fours to sit between his legs.

I was going to ask him what he was planning when I felt his hands begin threading through my hair. I sat patiently, recognizing the pattern he was weaving.

“... When did you learn how to braid hair? Did your mom teach you?”

“My mom has short hair.” It was an evasive, but truthful answer, so I didn’t press it. I was sure I would find out more about his family as time went on. I just had to keep reminding myself that we had all the time in the world to get to know each other.

“I never learned how to braid hair specifically. I’m just applying the same pattern I would with a knot or a puzzle.”

“How romantic.” I gasped, tucking my hands between my legs as I enjoyed the way it felt for him to play with my hair.

It was always bizarre, to consider the way he could be so soft in moments like this. Or rather, that he could be so far the opposite at other times. In my heart, he was always the kind, goofy man I had met that night at the bar.

But I’d seen him angry, depressed, and in pain. I’d seen him desperate and scared. Basically, the only way I hadn’t seen Spencer Reid was however he was at work. Part of me wished that I could; it was obvious he was good at it and, to a certain degree, enjoyed it.

Then again, when I know he does things like get shot at, it makes it a little bit harder to be interested in. I couldn’t imagine getting that phone call one day while they loaded him into the back of an ambulance... or worse.

“Ah, the things I do for love.” His calm, smooth voice tore me from the destructive thoughts and back into his warm embrace.

“Hey, Spencer, I have a serious question.”

“Well, that’s terrifying.” He joked, holding out his hand for my hair tie, which I happily gave him. I hated to admit that he did a better job at braiding my hair than I’d ever done. Freaking stupid genius stuff.

“When do I get to say it back?”

I swear, I felt a chill spread through the air between us. His entire body froze, his hands stuck mixed with the elastic as he tied off the braid.

It was an intense, unwelcome flashback to the second night I’d spent with him, when we had talked about things too serious, too soon.

Terrified, I immediately cut off anything he might have been able to say, muttering, “Never mind. Forget I asked.”

Letting my hair slip from his fingers, he let his hand drag along my spine. I wished I could see the look on his face, but I didn’t dare turn around.

“I’m sorry.” He said after another moment of silence, and it physically pained me the way the words fell from his lips.

“Don’t apologize,” I said in the cheeriest tone possible, trying to lighten the mood, “I just wanted to test the waters.”

With that, I spun around dramatically, noting the way his face lit up once it saw the smile on my own. “And they are frozen solid!”

He laughed at the enthusiasm I displayed, swiftly throwing his arms around me in a tight embrace.

“Well, I’ll just have to warm you up, then.” My whole body in his arms, he yanked me off the ground and onto himself. I struggled playfully under his arms, not paying any attention to the other people in the park watching our childish antics.

“Hypothermia is very dangerous, after all,” he lectured, “Let me take your temperature.” Burying his face in my neck, I felt the familiar overstimulation that accompanied frantic, light touches of my sides.

“Stop!” I burst with laughter, “You’re tickling me!”

The movements all halted, but only to be followed with a terrifyingly devious tone of Spencer’s voice. “You’re ticklish?”

“Don’t you dare—”

“Oh, I love this information.” And just like that, he began his onslaught. His fingers danced over every inch of my sides, his lips pressing quick, frenzied kisses against the underside of my chin. The harder I laughed, the more he continued.

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” I screeched like a banshee, trying to slip from his hands or turn around—anything to get the upper hand again.

After nearly wrestling him, I managed to get both hands on his shoulders and shove him back against the blanket. The force with which we hit the ground knocked the air from his lungs, and he groaned at my body weight on his chest.

“Okay, okay! You win!” He yelled, holding his hands in front of me while struggling not to touch the ground with his head. “I’m not risking more surface area of contact with the ground to fight you.”

“(Y/n) emerges victorious!” I grabbed hold of both of his hands, shaking his arms with all my leftover adrenaline while I cheered myself on.

“Dork,” he muttered under his breath before he grabbed my sides, laughing at the way I instinctually jerked. I threw myself off of him to avoid the potential tickles, landing clumsily next to him. And Spencer, being the genius, recognized it as the perfect opportunity to pin me against the ground.

Wasting no time, he pressed the same instruments which had begun the great tickle war against my own lips. My hands found their way to his cheeks, pulling him closer as his tongue easily found mine. Just like it always did with us, it felt like the world was disappearing around us.

All I could feel, smell, taste, think, was Spencer Reid. His love and admiration flowed from him with ease, and I was happy to take it in. After a few minutes, we had to break apart. We might like a little bit of exhibitionism, but I was pretty sure neither of us actually wanted to tear the other’s clothes off in a park.

Could you imagine if people knew he was an FBI Agent? I was sure they already thought our age gap strange. But I didn’t care what they thought. Because right now, we were happy.

“I’m the dork you love, though.” I whispered against his lips.

“Indubitably,” he mumbled back, starting to laugh at the way the word sounded in our teenage love-like delirium.

“Now who’s the dork.” I teased as I smoothed my hands over his shoulders.

“Hm. Still you. And a little bit me, too.”

Laughter was bursting from me again.

“You have grass in your hair, idiot.” Before he could do anything about it, my hands were all over it, ruffling his hair wildly out of place. He just squeezed his eyes shut, letting me ruin any semblance of maturity or control from his appearance.

“Wow. Thanks for that.”

“You’re welcome.” I chirped, accepting the small peck he gave me before he started to retreat from his spot above me.

“You ready to head home?”

“Yeah, just about,” he sighed like it was a terrible thing to do. He hadn’t even wanted to come on this picnic!

“I promised to check you for ticks, after all.”

Ah, the real thing we were both looking forward to. Although, I was sure he was going to take it way too seriously for a few minutes before we devolve into sex on the bathroom floor.

“Mmm. I’m thrilled.” I replied honestly, struggling to sit up now that my body had already slipped into Spencer Reid is on Top of You mode. It was one of those rare moments when I wondered if there really was a female version of blue balls, because I was almost certain I had it.

“I have to stop at the bank first, though. I’ll go throw this stuff in the car and we can just walk over.”

“Sure thing, old man.” I huffed as I stood up, holding the much lighter basket while he collected the blanket. Once he took it all from me, I glanced over at the nearby bench with a pout.

“I’m going to miss you.”

“You’re cute,” he smiled, kissing my cheek like it were a more serious goodbye, “I’ll be right back.”

While I waited for him, I cautiously watched the large, dark clouds rolling over the horizon. They threatened to swallow the sunshine that we’d basked in less than hour before. I tried not to think anything of it.

It wasn’t a metaphor; it wasn’t an omen. It was just the weather.

Spencer must have seen the anxiety, because when he came back, he gingerly placed his arms around me from behind, resting his head on my chin.

“I guess we have good timing. It looks like it’s about to storm.” I absently spoke, my eyes still fixed on the sky.

“Yeah, typical finicky Virginia weather, I guess.”

I wasn’t sure if I actually heard it in his voice or made it up, but I swore Spencer was also trying to stop himself from thinking something of the rain. I was probably just being paranoid. It was just a storm. They happened.

“Well, let’s get going so you can cash your check in person like an eighty year old man.” I joked, grabbing his hand and dragging him back towards the exit to the park.

“That’s a bit of an exaggeration. There are other people my age who don’t trust cell phone banking transactions.”

“Are there, though?”

He just shook his head, deciding it wasn’t worth it to get into it with me. Typical young kids, he must have thought, so irresponsible. But he didn’t say it, just held my hand on the short, quiet walk to the ornate building on the corner of two busy streets.

I swung our hands dramatically back and forth, earning an unamused, but still playful, glare from him.

“Your age is showing,” he pointed out before licking his lips and avoiding my eyes. I glared right back before responding, “Your stick-in-the-mud-ness is showing.”

“Not a word. Not a phrase. Not a thing.”

He stopped our hands dead in their tracks as he crossed the threshold, and for a second, I thought he was going to seriously be a spoilsport. But right when I least expected it, he swung our hands again and I nearly smacked into another person.

We both laughed, with me blurting out a frantic, “I’m sorry!”

“So immature,” he chastised, shaking his head with disapproval.

“I can’t believe you. You are such an asshole!”

The familiar hum and beeping of the metal detectors threatened to dislodge memories from the back of my mind, and I shook my head to try to get rid of them again. Spencer glanced over with concern but didn’t mention it.

I was grateful. I didn’t want to talk about it. Once we had passed security, he settled into the line like he’d done it a million times before. But me, being a normal person who used my banking app to cash checks, felt strangely out of place.

Figuring it might be a minute, and that the ride home would be significantly longer, I decided to go get any residual dirt and grass out of my hair. After all, it would get in the way of our tick searching activities.

“Hey, I’m gonna run to the bathroom. Don’t go anywhere.” I pointed an accusing finger at him as my arm slipped from around his. His hand followed me until he couldn’t hold on any longer, an innocent, lovesick smile on his face.

“You know I could never leave you behind.”

As cheesy as it was, it still made me smile. My heart ached with the saccharine sweetness of his affections. I’d gotten so used to them so fast; I couldn’t even imagine a world without them anymore.

“Don’t miss me too much, Dr. Reid.”

“You know I will, little girl.”

That storm cloud feeling was brewing in my chest again as I pressed a kiss to my fingers, blowing it across the ever-growing distance between us. Why did he feel so far away so suddenly?

I tried not to pay it any mind, humming You Are My Sunshine and imagining Spencer’s terrible singing voice instead. Looking at my reflection, I realized why my cheeks had been getting sore. Because there, staring back at me, was a smile on a neutral face.

I don’t even know when it happened, but it hit me in that bathroom of a bank at 12:47pm on a Saturday that I had fallen madly in love with Spencer Reid. And it suddenly made sense, why he didn’t want me to say it yet. Because I hadn’t realized it yet.

But now I had, and it filled every cell in my body. The blush on my cheeks was evidence of just how much I needed to let it out, to scream it from the rooftops, or at least in the lobby of this old bank.

There were so few things that could overwhelm the emotions I was feeling and rob me of this moment. My brain rioted against any sign of darkness or despair, clinging to the hope that I would be able to tell him soon.

So, when explosive booms rang through the bank, for a long second, I tried to convince myself they were thunder.

But they weren’t. The storm had indeed come, but it wasn’t responsible for the sounds that caused my heart to tear in two and shatter against the floor. The people outside the room were not screaming at the wrath of God, displayed with lightwork in the sky.

It was not thunder.

They were gunshots.

—————————————————

| Part 14 |

#spencer reid #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid series #Criminal Minds #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds self insert #criminal minds fluff #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you #dr spencer reid #spence reid #reid request #spencer reid request #fluff #h2m

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dgcatanisiri · 3 years ago

Text

Tried to make a brief summary of the issues of Mass Effect Andromeda’s handling of queer men and how it relates to why we’re (broad use here) upset with the Legendary Edition failing to provide better representation than the originals, and it kinda turned in to what amounts to an open letter for BioWare.

So, what the heck, here it is.

A little personal background. I spent my high school life completely in the closet. After graduating, I had a new computer and the opportunity to play a new game. The game chosen was BioWare’s Jade Empire. Still a fairly recent release, and I was a big fan of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, also by BioWare. So, being a young gay man, still uncomfortable and uncertain of who I was, I was very excited when I got to play this game that would allow me to play a gay romance, a romance that featured two men. I burned through two playthroughs of the game within less than a week, enjoying that rush of acknowledgement that yes, gay guys could be the hero. It was a massive affirmation for me at the time, something that said that my sexuality was not going to prevent me from being the hero, which legitimately was a message that I felt like most media was giving me to that point, because gay men barely appeared in anything other than guest roles for an episode or two on a TV show, but certainly not in video games. That game, that experience... I’ve said for years that it had cemented me as a BioWare fan for life.

If I say that now, it is a statement with a few caveats.

The history of the failure of Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 to provide any male/male romances is well documented. I was excited, very eager to romance Kaidan Alenko in Mass Effect 3. But even then, I noticed that there were things that were lacking in the romance. It was noticeable, for instance, that the basic dialogue between male Shepard and female Shepard was unchanged, if either was starting a new romance with Kaidan. The thing that always felt... WRONG about that was that if I’d had the option to begin a romance with him in the first game, I would have. Yet there’s not even a bit of dialogue that even references that inability, no comment of “I didn’t think you were available,” or anything of the sort, nothing to say that, say, Shepard was interested in Kaidan at the time, but didn’t believe he’d be receptive, didn’t want to damage their friendship, something of the sort. There was even a cut in the romance scene, where female Shepard will sit in Kaidan’s lap before being lifted up and carried to the bed, but with male Shepard and Kaidan, just fades to black. And then in the Citadel DLC, while all the other pairings walked in to the casino arm in arm, male Shepard and Kaidan are leaving plenty of room between them. There’s also the absence of any cuddling as they return to the Normandy.

To say nothing of the lack of Steve Cortez during the story segments of Citadel – he is not part of the big team entrance to the apartment, just spontaneously appears in the lounge room. He doesn’t participate in the briefings, and he is not a casino date, despite being part of the assembled team. Cortez also suffers from the fact that his romance spends so much time on how he needs to move on from the death of his husband, Shepard can come across as predatory towards him, trying to push him out of his grief and his pants. Due to the lateness of his arrival in the story, in game three, as opposed to game one or two, there is significantly less time to establish him as a person – beyond his past as a pilot and the death of his husband, we gain almost no concept of his personality or personal history.

I bring all of this up to help set the stage of what was expected when Mass Effect Andromeda was nearing release. Mass Effect had been full of problems of representation of queer men specifically (not that they were perfect on the count of female/female relationships either, because there’s plenty to talk about there, but as I’m not a lesbian or bisexual woman, I don’t feel comfortable talking about their experiences for them). While there were flaws, Dragon Age, what is often considered Mass Effect’s sister franchise, HAD managed to provide male/male romances in every iteration of that franchise.

In fact, considering that Dragon Age’s most recent installment, Dragon Age Inquisition, had been put out with a lot of fanfare about the first gay male companion, who was considered rather popular in the fandom, and the game itself receiving the Game of the Year award that year, indicating that, if there was any risk in the business sense of providing representation of queer men, it was negligible at most in the bottom line of that game, the attitude of a lot of gay men in the lead up to Andromeda’s release was some variation of “okay, Mass Effect has been flawed, but BioWare’s learned from their past mistakes, and they’re coming off the heels of a hugely successful game that had a gay character whose gayness was front and center in his storyline... We can expect that things will be fine, and we don’t have to worry.” That was the dominant attitude I found in a lot of my queer-oriented spaces.

But we started getting uncomfortable as the developers remained cagey about romance options in Andromeda – there were Twitter responses to “we’re concerned about Mass Effect’s history of gay representation, we would like to know about the options” that came out as “we checked and yep! They’re there!” These responses came across as flippant and even tone-deaf – the reason that the question was being asked was because of prior failures to be included, and not simply a desire to get all the details before launch.

As the trailers started coming out, the questions continued from the fans, and the response from the developers... continued to be uncomfortable. When asked directly for a listing of romances prior to release, the response was that the developers wanted players to learn as they played, that “the fun is in experiencing it!” This was a specific response when it was learned that the romance options could be flirted with regardless of orientation, but they would shut it down. Despite the fact that the trailers DID include content from certain romances – specifically, the male Ryder/Cora and male Ryder/Peebee romances.

This was uncomfortable for a lot of queer players like myself because it spoke to a lack of consideration of what it is like to be queer. In many places, it is a serious question of safety to even put yourself out there to find a partner, to flirt with someone openly unless you are already certain that there is a chance for a positive response. There are places where a queer person flirting with the wrong person can get them harassed, assaulted, even killed for doing so. Even in the safety of a virtual construct of video games, these are honed instincts that queer people have developed. And no matter how many times we would say this to the developers, no one seemed to understand. Likewise, the fact that the trailers felt free to show off heterosexual romances, but not queer ones felt... questionable.

Then, finally, firm details started coming out, and... There were problems. Early data-mining said that there was an even split of romances between orientations. But there was a bit of discomfort around the reveal that the gay characters, Suvi and Gil, were limited to the ship, rather than being companions who would accompany Ryder on missions. There is a history of companions being given more involved storylines and involvement than secondary characters. It also didn’t help the disappointment from queer people who’d been eager for Cora or Liam as romances, who were firmly established as straight (Cora herself had a popular lesbian following).

That discomfort increased when it came out further that, ACTUALLY, Jaal would not be available for Male Ryder. This caused a lot of upset. Now it was a case where there was NO M/M squadmate romance option. This on top of the group of fans who were uncomfortable with the idea that, in a sci-fi series, gay men couldn’t romance an alien, while this had become a staple of the series, considering Liara, the character from a species described as equivalent to Star Trek green-skinned Orion girls, had been available for straight men and lesbian/bi women from ME1, and straight women got in on the act with Garrus and Thane in ME2, on top of straight men also getting Tali.

This got worse when the achievement listing for the game was released and there was an achievement for “romancing three different characters.” Meaning that it was absolutely impossible for a gay man to play the game and get this achievement without playing a sexuality other than his own.

This is why I led with my experience with Jade Empire, why it was so affirming to me. Because to hear all this, ten years later, to see what had been so affirming to me a decade prior be functionally dismissed, be shown to take a secondary position at best... It hurt.

And the game proper did not help that feeling at all.

So first we meet Gil Brodie. Engineer of the Tempest. One of the first things we learn about him is that he has a close friendship with a woman named Jill. And then he immediately tells us that one) she is a fertility specialist, and two) she “says [he’s] part of the problem” because he won’t have kids the natural way. This is immediately setting off red flags to me – I can think of plenty of my friendships where we give one another grief for various things, but I would never think of introducing any of them to someone else with that fact. So my reflexive thought in this situation is “what kind of a friend is this really?”

And then, as the game goes on... This is the only thing that Gil’s conversations involve, the prospect of having kids. We do not learn much more about him, just have him talking about considering the idea. The lock-in for his romance requires Ryder to meet Jill, who Gil again says that she will talk his ear off about his “civic duty” to reproduce, a fact that makes those earlier red flags wave higher and more furiously, because who DOES that to a total stranger? And this is passed off as being “charming.” This leads to the culmination of the romance, where Gil says that Jill has decided she wants to get pregnant and she wants Gil to be the dad.

There’s... A LOT going on here, so let me work through this. First, one of the few things Gil says as a bit of establishing his character is that he is impulsive, that he joined the Andromeda Initiative, the journey from the Milky Way galaxy to the Andromeda galaxy without really thinking through what it would mean, that it was a one-way journey with no way to back out once he’d gotten there. So this is already saying to me that this is not a person who really SHOULD be a parent, at least at this point in his life.

We also get a couple of emails from him in-game that paint him as putting in thirty-six hour workdays into the engines on the Tempest, that he cares about and puts a lot of time into those engines. So when I think about him as a father, I see him having to give up something he’s deeply passionate about to do it, because the Tempest is certainly no place to raise a child – they can’t exactly put a playpen in the cargo hold, for example.

This would be one of the first things that I would think of as a discussion element, but... it’s not there. All that we get is a couple of casual comments about how Gil should know that bringing a child into the world is a big thing, something that shouldn’t be done lightly. But this is framed as Ryder questioning Gil’s fitness to be a parent at all, rather than questioning if he’s thinking this through and having considered this enough to be ready to take on this responsibility, or if it’s even something that he even wants.

Because that’s the other big thing here – this is not Gil’s idea. This is not something that he makes clear is his desire. No, it’s Jill who has decided that she wants to get pregnant and use Gil’s sperm. For all that he matters in this whole thing, he might as well be a turkey baster. He’s basically an accessory in his own story, because he goes in to this with all the passion of a math equation: “The Andromeda Initiative is a colonization effort. Therefore, the idea is to have babies. Therefore, I should find some way to reproduce.” This isn’t him having a passion or desire to have kids, just it being “something you do.”

This is, genuinely, a failure to understand the character who was being written. Gil’s writing reeks of having been written by someone who does not know what they are talking about. There is an element to the gay experience that is not innate but learned. When we realize that having children is not a thing that will just happen, that if we want this to happen, it will require a lot of additional steps, there are many who will simply say “this isn’t for me, this is more work than I’m willing to put in to for this.”

Now, Gil could have been someone who had decided it was worth it, but that butts up against the idea of him being impulsive, that he doesn’t think things through. There is no time given to focusing on the reason he decides this is the right choice for him, to the point that many players felt that this was not Gil’s decision but something that Jill was pushing, that she expected him to jump on her command. Because we have so little of Gil, as a character and an individual, but plenty of him talking up her, this “friendship” feels toxic to many.

Just about everyone I have ever spoken with about Gil is deeply uncomfortable that literally, the only way that he will not have a child at this point is if a romanced Ryder stops him – if I am playing a game where I don’t romance him, I actively just stop interacting with him at a certain point so that this never comes up, because this does not come across as happy. It comes across as forcing a gay man into a heteronormative experience to satisfy some traditional idea of “man and woman, raising kids.”

And, as the cherry on top, if you do tell Gil that you’re not comfortable having kids – a very real thing, whether gay or straight – then, unlike other romances, Gil and Ryder do not share a kiss at the finale of the game. And, during the last conversations on Meridian, the only thing Gil even brings up is Jill being pregnant, whether or not it’s his child.

This is what “representation of gay men” amounted to in Mass Effect Andromeda. A homophobic story that was about a gay experience written by someone who is not a part of this community and does not know or understand the experience personally, going through the motions of development when really, all that is cared about is the end result. To say that most of the gay men I know who have played this game find this homophobic is to undersell the point.

It doesn’t help that, of all the Tempest romances, Gil also clocks in with the least amount of romance exclusive material – a few flirts, the romance lock in and scene, and being able to stop Gil from having kids. Other than that, his friendship and his romance are virtually identical.

Speaking of, the romance scene consists of a make out session that fades to black, before coming back in with Ryder and Gil, shot from about shoulders up, briefly wrapping up their conversation that preceded the fade to black. This is noteworthy when the heterosexual romances between Ryder and their human love interests, as well as Peebee and Jaal, the former having a similar body model to naked human women, just blue, and Jaal, who is naked at other points in the game, have much more involved romance scenes – Cora’s in specific received special attention.

All of this, individually, may have just been reflective of time crunch and other external pressures – we all understand the realities of game development, that for all the ambitions that go in, when the deadlines are nearing, something has to give. But taken collectively... The kindest question is to ask why all of the “give” happened in regards to the gay man?

The end result with Gil honestly feels like he was written in response to the bad faith arguments that had come up in the period after the name for the game was revealed and it was made clear that the game would follow a colonization effort. There were a contingent of people who said that “there shouldn’t be gay people coming along, a colonization effort needs to reproduce.” This is a bad faith argument from homophobes, trying to justify why they don’t want gay people in “their” games. In answering their question, the question they only “ask” in order to explain why they don’t want to have gay people in the game without saying that, it comes across as catering the gay content for a heterosexual audience. It should go without saying that this is a bad position to take.

So, that’s Gil. What about Reyes? Well, Reyes himself is bound to a single planet, which, again, points to a minimizing of how much content he will even get, since his content can only be accessed on this single planet. Likewise, Reyes, as a character, is someone who falls in to several old, tired tropes with regards to bisexual men – he is a shady, untrustworthy character, in this instance literally a criminal, meant to be evocative of the “dashing rogue” archetype. This is a characterization that has often been BioWare’s go-to with regards to bisexual men, because we see this archetype drawn on in Jade Empire’s Sky, Dragon Age Origins’ Zevran, Dragon Age 2’s Anders, and even elements exist in Dragon Age Inquisition’s Dorian (even if he is a gay man). It’s a well that BioWare has frequently tapped when it comes to a romance option for queer men, to the point that it starts to feel like BioWare in general believes that this IS what queer men are.

There’s also the questionable portrayal of Reyes that leads to a description of the trope “the depraved bisexual,” an explicitly bisexual character who uses sex and sexuality as a manipulative tool, that they treat others as simply there to be their toys. Over in Dragon Age Inquisition, one of the romance options was specifically NOT made bisexual in order to avoid this trope, but Reyes himself seems to be a candidate for that trope all the same.

All this, and, again, the romance options for gay men were unequal to those for everyone else. This prompted the campaign #MakeJaalBi – Jaal was, notably, the character initially assumed to be the bisexual male companion, and on release, his romance was heterosexual exclusive. But datamining revealed that there was code for him to be romanced by male Ryder. Indeed, on release, it was noteworthy that Jaal could not even be flirted with by male Ryder. Liam had a distinct turndown for male Ryder, a couple of them, depending on when Ryder flirts with him. Jaal had no such turndown.

And this worked. BioWare released the patch for Andromeda that gave Jaal a bisexual romance. However, this was the only change that Mass Effect Andromeda received in regards to the issues of the romances before support for the game ended. While it was seen as an improvement, it was also questioned why this was the only change, when... Well, I spent the better part of two pages outlining the problems of Gil’s portrayal.

(I feel I would be remiss to not mention there was also a character, Hainley Abrams, who would, upon interacting with her, proceed to deadname herself to Ryder, as if that is the only way to establish that a transgender person is trans. This was also changed in a patch after the trans community complained, and, in conjunction with the above, led more than a few people to wonder if the Andromeda script had been looked over by any queer sensitivity readers, given the earlier issues with Gil. This does go out of the scope of everything else in this discussion, but it is worth mentioning.)

When Mac Walters says players will talk about how Shepard is each of theirs, that every individual player approaches Shepard as being “their” Shepard, he isn’t wrong. He says the characters, and the relationships we have with the characters is the heart and soul of the series, he isn’t wrong. And yet... When I play the trilogy, my heart and soul are being torn apart, because I do not get to see myself in the trilogy. I am not there in this story, at least for two thirds of the way. And in that third that I am there, I feel like I am cared about less than my counterparts who are heterosexual.

The idea that “making” characters available for same sex romance changes them is like saying that there is some inherent difference in a person because of their sexualities. While it’s true that the experiences of queer people does offer different perspectives on matters, it does not fundamentally alter the person, the individual that we are. It does not change our heart and soul. Restoring the bisexuality of characters like Jack, Jacob, Ashley, Thane, or Tali is not changing who they are. Making Kaidan bisexual in ME3 did not change who he was, and restoring a romance between him and male Shepard in ME1 would not change him either.

Every game has some cut content surrounding queer content specifically, and a great deal of that content is specifically for gay players like myself. I said at the beginning that I once thought of myself as a BioWare fan for life, but that now comes with caveats. The caveats are pretty simple – while the games produced by BioWare once felt affirming, now they feel like they’re only grudgingly allowing me to be there. That if I must be there, I should just take the scraps I’m given and be content with that, rather than being treated as an equal.

I like to think that this is not the message that the people at BioWare wish to impart to their players. I like to believe BioWare’s statements of wanting to be an inclusive and welcoming environment for their players, regardless of gender, race, sexuality, orientation, whatever identity and label one chooses. But based on the experience of the last four games, of the Legendary Edition perpetuating the homophobia of over a decade ago... I have a hard time believing that.

BioWare games once made me feel like I was equal to the straight heroes across my media. Unfortunately, I don’t feel that way about their games anymore. Not when, after having the opportunity to restore the bisexuality of Kaidan – of multiple characters, really – in the Legendary Edition, I am still being told that offering representation for people like me is something that only comes grudgingly.

And if that’s what I see now... What does it say about what the future of the franchise will offer? If every game in this series involves fighting for content that, in particular, heterosexual players will see offered as the rule, what motivates me to want to continue to be invested and involved in this franchise?

#bioware critical #dg rants #another angry queer rant #make mass effect inclusive #make mele inclusive #makemeleinclusive

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rpbetter · 3 years ago

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"writes dubcon therefore is a freak who should be bullied off the site" ho boy i'm fed up with people acting as if consenting adults writing [insert "problematic" fictional thing here] is the worst thing in the world. seen way too many people justifying harrassment of REAL PEOPLE by "they write thing that triggers me". ok, and? mute the tags or don't follow! "it triggers someone" is not a valid reason to ban a topic. piano music triggers me yet i don't go around demanding everyone stop playing the piano.

Anon, not only is everything you said absolutely valid, but also, thank you for demonstrating that triggers are incredibly varied and as such, we cannot predict everyone's triggers. Making the entire "point" of banning for possible triggers invalidated as hell.

We should be aware of things like the most commonly occurring phobias (things like arachnophobia and coulrophobia that are, additionally, easily triggered by imagery) and tag them. We should be aware of very obvious triggers, that are, again, easily set off by imagery, like blood, eye trauma, and depictions of domestic violence. And we should always read and be aware of our writing partners' stated triggers so that we can tag them appropriately or even decide that it isn't going to work because our muse, canon story, or interests are going to present an unfair situation in this partnership.

But triggers can be highly unusual, as well as activated differently (even at different times) for everyone. I'm not triggered by seeing hotel rooms in pictures or movies, I'm not triggered by writing scenes that take place in them, but I'm triggered to some degree by being in one. It's outrageous oversimplification to act like all triggers are the same, they all display the same way, they're all going to trigger someone on the same basis, everyone's going to react the same to their triggers. There is absolutely no way to prevent 100% of possible triggers for 100% of the population, 100% of the time.

Add to this that way too many people trivialize triggers by throwing around that term to justify the banning of something that makes them uncomfortable or that they take a personal, moral issue with. "I don't like this" and "I'm grossed out by this" and "this makes me feel uncomfortable" is not being triggered. It's just a good way to weaponize the better nature of other people so that they comply.

Most people legitimately do not want to trigger someone, especially if they have triggers and know what it's like. Just like no one wants to be accused of cruelty towards trauma survivors in general, or be designated a pedo, rape apologist, or fascist. They're all things to weaponize in order to isolate, shame, and control. And that's really fucking gross. These are serious, real things that have no business being trivialized to police content, win internet arguments, or garner popularity.

The potential for someone to be triggered isn't a reason to ban anything; we have tags, we have blacklist.

While I'll be the first to say that tumblr's blacklisting can be as shitty as everything else on the site, the primary issue with running into content you don't want to see comes down to two factors: no one tagging/tagging correctly and actively exposing yourself to that content. Going through people's properly done tags and blog warnings about their content in order to "call it out" is actively exposing yourself by choice. You actual walnuts.

Calling people on on their "problematic" content is bringing those topics to the attention of other people. That's the whole point of this gross behavior: look at the freak pedo abuse apologist I found, they write dubcon!! Don't look if you'll be triggered uwu

Buddy, pal, my guy...you just put that on blast for anyone to run across. Maybe their blacklist catches those words in your callout post, maybe it doesn't. Maybe they think you're a safe space because you promote yourself that way, so they click it anyway. Point is, you just willfully and irresponsibly exposed people because it's more important to you to demonize a rando on tumblr RPing something you take issue with. Good job!

Furthermore, dubcon itself is such a hilarious issue to take. Do they realize that isn't always sexual, or? Not? I'm thinking not. Funnily enough, one of the oldest posts I've been working on for this blog is about exactly this topic, the myriad situations that are dubious consent. That doesn't have to be sexual, and neither does it have to be intentionally predatory. You can come up with some amazing character development with a lot of muses in the RPC with dubcon because almost everyone's muse has some manner of trauma that might negate their perception of their own consent...and what do you do then? Is it removing more agency from that muse to shut them down, or is that always the better option? Can you separate your opinion as the mun from your muse's natural reactions? How does this impact the muses involved not just that moment but the next year?

Point is, dubcon isn't always some rapey situation. Even if it was, even if someone is writing it that way, it's literally not your business or your problem.

There's one mutual-in-law on my RP blog that really bothers me. They write things that I find fetishizing, incredibly rapey, all around shit that bothers me. I don't want to see it, some of the things they write makes my damn skin crawl. This person doesn't know it, we certainly don't speak and I don't think they like me very much, but I've repeatedly defended their right, specifically their right as a person with some long-term callouts on them, to write what they want to. I have them blocked and their urls blacklisted so I never have to see my mutual reblogging their threads. It's not a problem because I don't click "show anyway." Why would I, if it genuinely bothers me so much?

That's how you handle things that bother you; you use the tools available to not interact even by accident. Not by launching a morality crusade.

If any of us want to write what we enjoy, we have to allow others that same freedom. It's always a matter of time before this policing grows to include more and more topics, it's been used multiple times to get well-meaning people who don't fall into the general demographics to police queer, BIPOC, and other marginalized groups off of platforms. We've been fortunate in most of the RPC that it implodes on itself before it gets all the way there, but even so, you can see it.

It starts with things that produce a visceral reaction in the great majority of people, positions this with a repeatedly condemned idea presented as solid fact that fiction is reality, and you've got the start of something awful. Today it's something you don't like, maybe even something that triggers you, so you either support it or you quietly allow it to happen. Who needs to write that "freak shit" anyway, can't they just be gross privately? Six months from now, it's something "problematic" that you enjoy like violence that's canon-typical for your muse, or your OTP because they're gay and that's fetishizing, they're cis male and female but one or both is bi and that's bad representation, or they canonically have a rocky relationship so that's romanticizing toxic/abusive relationships.

If you can't care for any other reason, you really should care about how it is going to impact you sooner or later. In an environment like this, you can stay in your space, put warnings on your blog, and tag properly and you're still going to get a callout if the wrong person finds your blog. Just takes a single person with more time, energy, and skewed ideas of justice than they have reading comprehension or common sense.

Again, I cannot encourage people enough to give warnings, but it's difficult to ignore why those warnings are slipping; they're a way to be found, designated as a Problem, and called out. Look, it's another reason why callouts actually make things worse, not better! People put that shit in their rules so you can avoid content, they're being responsible and interested in promoting a safe RPC. Let them do it, damn.

You can't tag everything, and if you've never experienced what a giant series of repetitive tags is like on a screenreader you probably should before you tag seven paragraphs of possible issues. You can tag for visuals, you can tag for the obvious things, and you can tag for what's in the rules you agreed to when you followed/followed back. But you should also warn people that you write "dark topics" on the tin, and expand on that in your rules for specific things like graphic violence, toxic relationships, dubon, and addiction.

That's how responsible adults, not over-aged children, make better decisions about their mental health and general comfort. Not by appointing themselves the watchdogs of the damn RPC, here to protect you whether you want to be or not, find that incredibly insulting or not when you're in one of their categories of people who must be protected, by forcibly banning Problematic Everything. Problematic, of course, being entirely in the eye of the content police.

It's fiction. No one and nothing real was harmed. It's great that you are so invested in the fictional world and people that make you happy, but take a fucking big step back into reality. The real people you're harming with your bullshit had every right to peaceably exist. If what they're writing is triggering to you, stay. away. from. it.

Without any coincidence whatsoever, that's how you get from the base-point of Problematic Material to Problematic Mun. Yeah, it's just fiction, it's just RP, but I also took something out of context OOC or was upset by their tone on their own blog or couldn't exercise the minimal adult logic to remove myself from their presence OOC as well. So, now, you've got OOC behavior being added to the callout, if it wasn't already. Everyone is now ableist, transphobic, racist, and a misogynist because it lends that visceral reaction to the callout and ups the game from just being "y'all so gross you aged up a cartoon character to ship" to "this is REAL and it won't be tolerated! OP is actually a pedophile, they told a sexual joke in a discord server with a minor present and I have the receipts!"

What are the most storied callouts in the entire RPC? I'm absolutely certain the same names came to mind no matter what fandoms you're in, and one of them was "Matt." Another was probably "Ares/Snow". They're all successful and keep being brought up out of the closet anytime people are bored enough because their primary punch is the mun themselves being a predatory threat to the community. The mun is verified to be a bad person. Well, of course, that's got to be repeated, it worked. (Even if it did not, at all, work and only made it harder for people to avoid any of these muns.)

Are there people in the RPC who are legitimately a problem? Absolutely, yes. We're all supposed to be adults, however. Part of being an adult is having and acting upon one's agency. If someone is coercing you into things you are not comfortable with, shut it down. If you have difficulties being certain of those situations, run it by a trusted, honest friend or available, impartial source in the RPC for a second opinion. If you can't handle any manner of confrontation, there really are situations in which it's perfectly alright to block someone without any discussion. It's just the internet, you're in control of your space. Own it.

Minors are a whole other can of fucked up worms I'm not even getting into right now except to say that because a minor exists in a space they were told to stay out of does not mean we ban all topics inappropriate for their consumption.

tl;dr: banning shit doesn't work anyway, the whole idea is predicated upon some incredibly problematic takes IRL, and no, there's no justification for it outside of intense personal problems with one's own importance. That energy would be infinitely better spent volunteering one's time to help real people in crisis or after surviving one, or even oneself in developing some healthier approaches and thought patterns.

#hey what if we all start saying we're triggered by callout culture is that bannable then lmao #vespertine #drama cw #bsnf #callout culture #tumblr rpc #rp problems #also thank you again anon I hope you're having a great day!

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nimmy22 · 3 years ago

Text

A Mistake: Chapter 12

~ The following day, Saturday ~

"Do something, Wesker! These fucking imbeciles at the papers are starting to question my competence as chief all because of a pathetic group of boys you can't seem to dispose of." Irons seethed, slamming his cup of whisky on the desk, knocking his nameplate to the ground.

Wesker gave nothing away of his emotions, save for a tick in his brow. His hands craved to wrap around Irons’ neck, giving it a swift snap. It's how he felt most of his days at the station. Irons was replaceable. The man didn't realize just how worthless he was to Umbrella. His replacement could arrive this very afternoon.

"We are working on finding the gang's nest. The big players keep using young boys for the jobs but tell them nothing about insider information. There are too many eyes watching us right now. We cannot use any special means to dispose of the group in order avoid questions."

"Just Do your fucking job right. I can't stand the news conferences anymore. the journalist's questions make me look laughable." Irons clutched his glass, throwing it hard against the wall. Tapping a finger on the armrest, Wesker didn't bat an eye at the behavior of the chief of police. One couldn't expect much from such a lowly creature.

"You seem to forget why Umbrella put me as captain of STARS. It isn't to keep up your public appearance but to protect theirs. I'm not the one who isn't doing his job. Deal with the journalists while I handle the little boy scouts." pushing back his chair, Wesker made sure to leave deep grooves on the freshly varnished floors. The scraping sound was like music to his soul. He didn't miss the deathly glare on his way to the door like hot iron rods.

Returning to the STARS office, Wesker ignored the gossiping of Chris and Jill about the newest trouble between their captain and Irons. Shutting the door to his office, he took a seat behind his desk. Through the office blinds, he eyed each present member of STARS. of course, no one was getting any work done, lazing around the office, making meaningless bets.

This simply will not do.

It was time they did some undercover work, gathering information about Raccoon city's newest crime family. These boy scouts wouldn't last long around here, especially since they fell on the radar of the real monsters in the shadows of Raccoon.

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

She sat alone on the staircase, elbows resting on her knees, wondering how the hell she got here. The house was familiar to her. How many times has she looked after Sherry here? Still, it felt strange. It was his space, and she was invading it.

This was now supposed to be her home. The place gave no hints as to who lived here, lacking any personal touch. It was likely the work of an anterior designer following the most fashionable trends. The home of a bachelor.

Speaking of Wesker, he left after dumping her here last night and vaguely pointing her towards the guest room with a 'help yourself' to any food. As always, he gave her the bare minimum of info, not that she asked what he was up to. She didn't care whether he spent the night hiding bodies or doing legitimate police work. She was too terrified to sleep under the same roof, only a few walls apart. Does the man ever sleep? Shower? Eat?

She won't lie. She was glad Wesker left. But even with him gone, she couldn't stop thinking about what happened. More so the kiss than almost becoming a guinea pig. It was a lot to process, and she couldn't even begin.

For the nth time, she forcibly pulled her fingers away from her lips, scolding herself for replaying the memory again. This man was absolute bad news. She needed to get out of the house, and an incoming call from Claire had her scrambling to answer as quickly as possible. Her friend presented an idea, and Cara was all too grateful to join in.

Pulling up Wesker's name in the contacts, Cara's fingers hovered over the letters, unsure of what and how much to tell him. Where did they stand? Did he really mean everything, or was it a trick? Was she free to leave? Did he give up completely on the idea of killing her?

"Going out with Claire. I will be back late." she texted, fully knowing a lot of info was missing. But it's not like he ever gave her a ton.

"Stay out of trouble.' came a replay moments later.

The words were unsaid, but Cara definitely heard them. 'I don't have time to drop everything and run over to the rescue each and every time you get in trouble,'

'I asked for help only once. The other time's nobody asked you to come.' Cara grumbled but deleted what she wrote. she could've gotten herself out of those situations...with a little bit of thinking. Actually, a lot of thinking.

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

Cara had to walk several blocks away from Wesker's house to prevent suspicion. If by any chance, Claire knew the address of her brother's captain, it would be a hole she did not want to leap into.

Standing in front of an old bookstore, she waited for her friend. The building was slightly rundown, its walls covered in graffiti, but the owners were a kind elderly couple. They pushed discounts her way, and she was guilted to buy something. She ended up buying a useless cat plushie toy after seeing that most books were non-fiction or raunchy romance novels. She would rather die than have Wesker coming across an erotic novel lying around his house.

She stared at the plushie as she leaned against the wall outside the shop. Cara considered giving it to Sherry the next time they met. This would be the first present she ever gave the young girl, and she could almost imagine the excitement on Sherry's face. It made her smile.

A helicopter passed overhead, sleek black and adorned with the Umbrella white and red symbol. Cara watched the chopper get smaller and smaller until it disappeared, heading in the direction of the Arkley mountains. she wondered about their business up there was. Looking around, no one else seemed to notice nor care. Maybe it was best to keep all knowledge to herself.

Seeing a familiar redhead and a motorcycle, Cara waved as Claire pulled up, handing her a helmet.

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

The barn smelled of sweat, dust, and old wood. The unmistakable smell of alcohol was thick in the air as it was passed around freely in cheap red plastic cups. She recognized kids from school, but many more were older, likely from Raccoon university. A light disco machine was nailed to the wall, casting the barn in a series of flashing lights. Tall Straw piles of hay distributed across the barn ensured there was no shortage of dark corners for people to disappear to. For a moment, Cara considered hiding in the straw and then going home when the party was over. But seeing the sparkle in Claire's eyes about hanging out with her best friend threw the idea out the window. With a sigh, she followed her friend.

Over the course of the night, the girls danced and drank, carefree. A blond-haired boy was staring at her, Cara noticed. He attempted to walk up to her but turned around before getting within ten feet. He tried multiple times but always chickened out despite his friends constantly cheering him on. Claire thought it was cute and refused to stop openly staring at him and giving a thumbs up. Cara swatted Claire's hands before holding them behind her back in a pretend arrest, pushing her against the straw pile.

"Sorry Officer! I was just trying to help you get laid," Claire giggled. "I hope you're into blonde's though,"

"This is so embarrassing. Stop, or I'm leaving," Cara snapped, feeling a blush heat her face as Wesker crossed her mind. Fuck, why now?

"Oh? so you are into blondes," Claire's smile was cunning. "Let me help you,"

"No. Bad Claire, bad, bad girl. No treats for you tonight." Cara scolded, Stealing the can of beer her friend stole from a guy before cracking it open and downing its contents. She wouldn't yet consider herself drunk, just pleasantly buzzed.

The boy ran off again. Cara felt bad for him and was actually tempted to go up to him instead. His friends kept a steady stream of alcohol into his hand.

"H-hey, " And then he did it, with the help of liquid courage, of course.

For the effort, Cara decided not to openly embarrass him with rejection but not lead him on either. Walking away backward, Claire gave her a thumbs up along with a suggestive motion of the eyebrows, making horrid shapes with her hands. Cara covered her face, hoping to purge the image out of memory. She'll get her back in no time.

Ben was a bit shy at first, but soon they got talking and enjoyed themselves. His hair was a few shades darker and shorter than Wesker's. She didn't have to look up at him as they stood at a similar, comfortable height. Slender and skinny, he would shrink to nothing beside the captain. Cara grimaced, realizing she had been comparing the poor guy to a demon. It wasn't his fault that her mind was occupied with someone way out of her league... the legal kind.

The barn was becoming more and more crowded, and the dancing crowd swallowed them. Sticking out like two sore thumbs, they did their best to dance. Cara felt awkward but seeing the dimples in his smile made her feel better even as it became a tighter fit among the crowd. They had to dance closer lest they got separated.

She wondered what it would feel like to dance with Wesker. He seemed like the sophisticated type. The awkward moves of a teenager would never be adequate for him. Did he ever do anything that was remotely recreational? What do villains even do in their spare time? Manipulating the feelings of underage girls looks like. What stupid, stupid thoughts.

She prayed all these ideas would go away soon, as the thrill of the kiss wore off, and everything went back to normal. Did she want to go back? Why in the world would he like her? she knew who he really was, and he still let her live. Why take the risk with her? she was just a seventeen-year-old. Useless to everyone, with no connections and no money.

Fuck it. Cara refused to think about Wesker anymore tonight. There was a perfectly alright guy in front of her, someone her own age, someone in her league, someone she wouldn't have to hide. Someone who was looking at her with a soft expression, blinking slowly.

Cara placed her hands on either side of Ben's face and pulled him towards her, connecting their lips. He reacted instantly, kissing her back. His hands awkwardly hovered over her arms before stroking them softly.

He was a nice guy, not a terrible kisser, but she hated it. Hated every touch because it wasn't as good as with Wesker. She couldn't stop comparing, and it was frustrating, spurring her to kiss Ben harder.

She continued, out of spite, to kiss the boy who looked at her with affection. in the background, she heard a few boys cheering, likely his friends. This was wrong, very wrong.

A firm hand gave her waist a painful squeeze before it was gone, and she thought it was Ben. Her eyes flew open as she felt a warm breath by her ear. It wasn't Ben.

"If I was not undercover right now, this lesser specimen of a boy would've made some unforgettable acquaintances a lot sooner. You could've done so much better, yet you have chosen to this..." Wesker seethed by her ear, sending shivers down her spine. Her body froze, but Ben didn't pick up the cue. Wesker's muscles were tense as he pressed against her back. She could almost hear the exhale through clenched, grinding teeth.

Then he was gone, slipping through the crowd just as he came. No one notices anything. Cara broke the kiss and shoved Ben away. "I'm sorry, it isn't going to work out." She hurried after Wesker, but he was already lost in the crowd.

She shoved her way through the throngs of people but only managed to find other members of STARS in civilian clothes. None seemed to notice or recognize her. They must've been here on undercover work, but why? she put that question aside as there were more pressing things to worry about.

She felt sick and wanted to throw up, but nothing was coming up. she burst through the doors of the suffocatingly hot bran, raking her hands through her hair. The cool night air hit her heated skin, but she couldn't find relief. She wanted to be swallowed by the ground.

She needed to find Wesker. But then what? Apologize? Apologize for making her own choices? They weren't a couple.

She continued to look for him nevertheless. She walked further from the barn towards an old car junkyard. She thought perhaps a fuming man would need some privacy. A strong feeling in her gut told her this was the right way.

Cara walked far enough from the party that the music was nothing but a distant noise. It was dark and quiet, the perfect place for an assault. If Wesker decided to murder her, no one would find her for at least a week, stuffed in the trunk of a car. If ever.

Grabbed from behind, she was thrown against a car. Sliding to the ground, she cradled her aching arm, squinting in the dark to see her assailant. Wesker kneeled beside her, his civilian clothes dark and expensive.

"Why cut it short? You should've kissed him more while you still can because he will be the last boy you will ever kiss." squeezing her cheeks harshly, he dragged his thumb with heavy pressure over the flesh of her lips, still swollen from kissing Ben.

As Wesker let go of her face, she felt the cold muzzle of a gun pressing against her temple. Her heart skipped a beat, but she glared at him straight in the eye. Daring.

"I don't know what you want from me! You told me to keep out of trouble, and I did. Yet here we are," Cara lied. She knew what he wanted but didn't know why he wanted it.

"Were my intentions not clear enough? Do I have to spell it out for you? But I suppose intelligence was never your strength,"

Wesker pressed the gun harder against her temple, her glare unwavering. "Go ahead. Shoot me. why do you even bother?"

Neither moved, naked eyes locked with no shades between. Cara reached up and pulled the gun out of his hands with ease. He didn't resist, glaring at her with a tense jaw. Looking down, she almost laughed, seeing the safety was still on. This man couldn't bring himself to kill her. It was all a show of intimidation, and she wasn't falling for it. Not anymore.

As she made to stand, his hand pushed her down. Thinking he wanted the gun back, she returned it to his hand and tried to stand. again, he pushed her down. "Can I get up now?" she scowled, staring up at him.

Things happen too quickly for her to process. The hands on Cara's shoulder grabbed her legs, lifting her off the ground as Wesker wrapped her legs around him before slamming her against the car. She was winded, gasping for breath as he watched her with a smirk. She grabbed his arms, digging her nails into his defined muscles.

"You're up now," he whispered before his lips kissed her neck, sucking and nibbling the skin. A moan escaped her lips, and she covered her mouth immediately.

Grabbing both her hands, he pinned them against the car. "I need to clean your mouth of all traces of that boy,"

"Are you going to rinse my mouth with soap or something? This is childish and-" Cara's words settled in a moan as Wesker began grinding a very defined length against her growing sickness. She tightened her legs around his waist, drawing him closer.

Trailing his nose across her skin, he followed the curve of her neck to the ear, taking the lobe between his teeth. She melted against him when his hot tongue entered her ear. His tongue plunged in and out repeatedly like a preview of what he could do to her. Her heart went on an overdrive.

"Just kiss me," Cara breathed, a tension building in her belly. She wanted to taste him. in addition to sparing any additional marks on her neck to hide.

"No,” nuzzling into her neck, he grinded harder against her, earning a series of moans.

"You know who else wouldn't mind kissing me-" Wesker slammed his lips to hers, kissing her roughly, their teeth clashing. Cara melted further, a smile on her lips as her tongue danced with his. She savored everything, The taste of him, softness of his lips, his warmth, and the building friction between their bodies. There was nothing more she wanted.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Three gunshots were fired.

Cara was barely steady on her feet when Wesker dropped her to the ground, his eyes scanning their surroundings. What little they heard of the music was drowned out by distant screams of the partygoers.

"What's happening?" she questioned, grabbing his arm, but his attention was fixed on the barn.

"Stay here," Wesker warned, already talking to someone by an earpiece she hadn't noticed before.

With his gun ready, he took off, running towards the barn. Cara made to follow him but was pulled back towards the car by her hand.

The fucker handcuffed and left her in the middle of a junkyard in the dark.

#resident evil #claire redfield #albert wesker #Albert Wesker X OC #oc

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broadstbroskis · 5 years ago

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surprises- pt 2 | mat barzal

back for part two! thanks for the love on part one! i would like to highly encourage you all to watch how i met your mother, which is referenced in this chapter, and is one of the all time greatest tv series (with one of the all time worst endings-does it count as spoilers if its this old??)

anyway, enjoy part two💜

part one

-----

Mat rolls back into town a week after you’ve confirmed the results. So just when you think you’ve got your panic under control, you and Molly catch him walking out of his apartment as you’re walking out of the elevator back toward yours, and the panic flares up immediately.

“Hey!” Mat grins, walking faster to meet the two of you at the elevator, where Molly is holding the door for him. “Missed you guys!”

“You too!” Molly says, when it becomes clear that you’re incapable of speaking. “How was home?”

“Good.” Mat smiles. He looks lighter, happier, as relaxed as he always does upon his return from home. You almost laugh when you realize it won’t last long. “But it’s great to be back.”

“Always is, right?” Molly smiles.

Mat nods. “Yeah, and not just because you two won’t be killing my plants.”

“Oh shit!” Molly slaps her mouth over her hand and you freeze, eyes wide. In all the panic, you two had totally forgotten to even attempt to water, let alone replace the plants in his apartment.

“Oh shit is right!” Mat laughs, used to this particular brand of chaos from you and Molly. “Usually you guys at least pretend like you’ve done work and buy new ones! What happened?” You look down, avoiding his gaze completely, and Molly coughs out a string of words you’re certain aren’t English and definitely aren’t a real sentence. “Oh shit, did something actually happen?”

“Do you want to have dinner with us tonight?” Molly blurts.

“Molly!” You cry.

“Okay, never mind?” She hesitates.

You sigh. No, her first thought was right. It’s best to just rip the bandaid off. “No, tonight’s fine.”

Mat’s giving the two of you a weird look-well, actually, it’s directed mostly at you. Like he’s finally noticed you refuse to meet his eyes. “Is everything okay, you guys?”

“Yeah,” Molly assures him. “We’re good!”

“YN?” He asks hesitantly. “Are you okay?”

“Yep.” You squeak, eager to go take some deep breaths away from his presence. You’ve got some thinking to do about this evening. “All good.”

Mat eyes you skeptically, but shrugs one last time. “I’ll see you guys tonight then.”

-----

Around fifteen minutes before Mat is due to arrive at your apartment for dinner, Molly pulls on a sweatshirt and starts to make her goodbyes. “Well, hit me up if you need me; Brian says his offer to beat Mat up still stands.”

“You’re leaving?” You ask incredulously, from the kitchen, where you’re filling a bowl of chips to snack on before pizza arrives.

She gives you a look. “I mean, do you really want me here?”

“Yes!” You huff immediately.

Molly presses harder. She knows you too well. “Really?”

You sigh. “No.” It’s definitely something you want to do on your own. Just you and Mat.

“Right.” She laughs. “I’ll come as soon as you call.” She promises, reaching out to hug you supportively. “If you want me back tonight, I’ll be here!”

“Thank you.” You squeeze her one last time and then let her go.

The next fifteen minutes rival only the time you spent waiting for the line to appear on that first pregnancy test you took just over two weeks ago on how high your anxiety is. UberEats buzzes your phone, notifying you that your pizza has arrived, so you slip down to pick up dinner, noting the slightly open door of your apartment when you come back up and pausing for a minute before entering yourself.

Mat’s arrived. This is it. No going back once you step inside.

“YN!” A voice that is decidedly not your neighbor’s shouts the second you walk in the door. “Aw man, and you’ve got pizza? A woman after my own heart!”

You freeze in the doorway as Mat slugs the arm of his teammate. Anthony Beauvillier just laughs. “Sorry.” Mat apologizes. “Just for his everything. I figured you guys wouldn’t mind if he came though.”

“Heh.” You say, unable to articulate a real thought. Under literally any other circumstances you wouldn’t have minded Tito being here. But now? This second?

“Where’s Moll at anyway?” Mat asks, looking around.

You realize that you’re still frozen in the doorway and start to make your way toward the two of them slowly. “Uhh she’s uhh at Brian’s.”

Mat frowns, like he’s trying to place his name. “The guy all over her Insta?” You nod. “Rude. Invites us over for dinner and then ditches us?” He pulls out his phone and starts texting. “I’m going to give her so much shit.”

“Heh.” You say again, looking for any subject to move on to. “Should we eat?”

“Fuck yeah, I’m starving.” Mat says, throwing his phone down after finishing his text.

You try to smile at that, try to keep things as normal as you can as the three of you make small talk while you get plates and pizza. You’ll just tell him later. Tito will go home and you and Mat will talk at the end of the night. Or tomorrow. You’ll go over first thing in the morning and tell him if you need to.

You’re so distracted by this thought you don’t even notice Tito. “Beer?” Mat nods and Tito chucks him one from the fridge. “YN, catch?”

“No thanks.” You say nervously.

Tito shrugs but when he comes over, he’s got two bottles in his hand and he slides one over to you. “Which one?”

“Uhh.” You hesitate. This was not how you wanted this to go down. “Neither.”

Tito laughs. “I’ve never seen you turn down a beer! What, are you pregnant?” He jokes.

There’s absolutely nothing you can say to that so you bury your face in your hands, unable to face Mat, who’s now choking on a very poorly timed sip of beer.

“Holy shit!” Tito mutters repeatedly. “Holy shit, holy shit.”

And it’s that that finally gives you the strength to look up at Mat, tears in your eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“Get out.” Mat gestures to his best friend, voice still sounding absolutely wrecked from minutes of choking.

Tito’s already moving before he even says it. He’s got his beer in one hand and grabbing one of the pizza boxes in his other and practically running from your apartment. From the silence between you and Mat you can hear the door to Mat’s place slam shut and then Mat, who hasn’t taken his eyes off of you since you looked up at him, opens his mouth to speak, but you cut him off. “I’m so sorry.” You repeat and then the damn breaks, the sobs coming uncontrollably.

Mat’s arms wrap around you, pulling you close the second he gets over to you. He presses soft kisses into your hair and holds you closer and closer but you’re fairly certain that he’s crying the same as you are the entire time.

-----

It’s hours before you can lift your head again and you only know that because it’s dark outside your window. Mat has, apparently, moved the two of you to your living room couch at some point, because his arms are still wrapped around you and you’re both lying comfortably on the couch, instead of collapsed into his arms from the chair. He doesn’t seem to notice your arrival back to Earth, one hand just gently moving through your hair, and so you take a shaky breath and start. “Please don’t be mad.”

“Mad?” He sounds incredulous and his hand stops moving for a second, but just before you have time to mourn the loss, picks right back up. “I mean-” He lets out a deep breath. “How could I be mad?”

You shrug. You’re pretty sure you’ve hit every emotion on the spectrum since you found out, including anger, and you tell him so. “I’ve been a bit of a wreck for the last couple weeks.”

“Well I think you’re allowed to be.” Mat replies. “But weeks? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“About two.” You tell him softly. “I really didn’t want to tell you over the phone.”

He’s silent at that. “You could’ve...I don’t know. Told me to come home, or something. I would have been on the first flight back.” Yeah, he probably would have; you’re almost certain of it. But the time to process the news yourself was needed, whether you knew it at the time or not. “I’m sorry you were going through this by yourself.”

“You’re here now.” You tell him. “That's all that matters.” He drops another kiss into your hair. “And now we can talk about what to do going forward.”

He freezes. “What uh. What do you want to do?”

You pick your words carefully. “I want you to know that I’m not holding you to anything. Really! I just wanted you to know-

“I’m going to be here.” Mat cuts you off.

“Okay, but you don’t-”

“YN.” Mat says, maneuvering himself so he can look at you. “I’m serious. I’m here for this, all the way. You’re in, I’m in. Whatever you want to do. Okay?”

You nod. “Okay.” You repeat.

“Good.” He smiles at you, the first time since the news dropped, and you hesitantly return it.

“Brian did threaten to beat you up if you weren’t in, so I guess it’s good you’re sticking around.” You poke him.

“Skinny little Brian, all over Molly’s Insta?” You nod. “You don’t think I could take him?”

You shrug. “Won’t have to find out, will we?”

Mat laughs, lying his head back against the pillows and pulling you close again. “I’ll find something to throw down with him, don’t you worry.”

-----

Your first official check up with your OB/GYN has you feeling so much better about the baby thing in general. Anxieties eased with your questions answered, you text Mat a picture of the ultrasound on your way home, captioning the picture we have a cherry.

“Where are you?” He demands, when he calls you less than a minute later.

“Walking into the building.”

“You went without me?” He sounds hurt, legitimately so, not like he’s faking it for the dramatism, and it occurs to you that maybe you should have let him know what was happening. But there were just so many weird things changing with you; you just wanted to be able to fire off questions to your doctor about everything.

“I’m sorry.” You suppose you could have just kicked him out of the Q&A portion of the day. “Really. I just-you can come next time, I promise.”

“I want to!” Mat says quickly.

“Are you home?” You ask. “I can come over right now.”

He is, so instead of going over to your place, you bump over into his, where he is, unshockingly, playing some video game with Tito. Mat shuts it off the minute you enter though. “Hi.”

“Hi.” You laugh, sitting down in the chair across from them, delighting in the look on Tito’s face as he looks between the two of you.

“I guess...I’m going...to go.” He says slowly, making no moves to stand.

You fight back a laugh. “Tito, d’you wanna stick around?”

“Yes!” He grins at you immediately. “How’s our little girl doing in there?”

“Our?” Mat parrots. “What do you mean our? What role did you play in this?”

“Godfather, obviously.”

“Oh, you think?” Mat grins.

“Actually, right now, you are one of five people who does know about this.” You tell Tito. “And I’d like to keep it that way until we get a chance to tell some other people we need to.”

His eyes light up. “Can we call ourselves Team Baby?”

“You can call yourselves whatever the fuck you want as long as you keep it between us three, Molly, and Brian until 12 weeks and you don’t get those stupid fucking t-shirts made, alright Ted Mosby?” He’s already texting; you’re sure he and Molly are already in plans to make shirts.

You look over at Mat, laughing at his friend, but Mat’s just eyeing you carefully. “You’re okay?” He asks. “Everything’s good?”

You nod. “Right on track.”

Mat nods, looking more pale than you’ve ever seen him, and he breathes out a deep breath. “Right. So we’re having a cherry then.”

“Next week, it’ll be a strawberry.” You inform him.

That does absolutely nothing to decrease the worry on his face.

#mat barzal imagine #mat barzal fan fic #hockey imagines #hockey fanfiction #nhl imagines #nhl fanfiction #my hockey fics #surprises series

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dukeofonions · 5 years ago

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How do you feel about the upload schedule for sanders sides? It’s been 10 months since the last proper episode. Also, I read a post on another blog about how they feel him hiring his friends leads to a slower production process due to messing around. Thoughts on that? Also also, do you think that since YT is his job, he should upload more? these are things I am thinking of tonight.

Not to worry anon, these are things I think about a lot because I have nothing better to do with my life.

Seeing as I joined the fandom shortly after Can Lying Be Good? came out, the longest my first wait for a new episode wasn’t that long actually. The video came out in February but I didn’t see it until early March. The next episode Logic vs Passion, came out in April. So it didn’t bother me much. And right after that we got Crofters: The Musical so I was on the hype train and fully invested.

Then we didn’t get another episode until October which left me a bit antsy, but I was still excited anyway and didn’t mind the wait. Embarrassing Phases then came out that December. So we got two videos within a fairly short time span.

SVS Part 1 came out that next year in March, again, bit of a wait, but it’s becoming standard now that we get a couple of new episodes every few months. No biggie. We get Dealing With Intrusive Thoughts in June, Asides in November... This newest one just came out now in May...

Yeah, if we hadn’t been given that Asides, we would have had almost a year-long wait for this next episode. And we did have a year-long wait for the follow up to a video that honestly, kinda made me think “Why do we still care about this? I’m not really invested in the “Wedding or callback” dilemma anymore” which, when you’re trying to tell a story using this medium, the last thing you want is your audience to lose interest in something that’s meant to be this big of an event within the series.

And what do all these videos have in common? Each one uses some kind of gimmick. CLBG and SVS had them filming in different locations, Logic vs Passion, LNTAO, and POF involved them using different mediums to tell the story (animations and puppets) Crofters and DWIT both had music in them, and Embarrassing Phases had the costumes.

Before that, the videos were all fairly simple. Maybe a few gimmicks here and there, but none of them went to the same level as these other ones.

Basically, what’s happening here is that with each new episode, the team is trying to bring something new to the table each time, and their solution is to use a different gimmick. Which, in theory, is fine. But I honestly believe these are doing more harm than good. For one thing, not everyone is a fan of these gimmicks and while sometimes they can be used to benefit the story, other times they just take over and the writing suffers for it.

The main reason (as far as we know) that this newest episode in particular took so long was because of the video game animations they wanted to use, but after watching the video besides a few instances, they really weren’t necessary to have.

And I plan to make a whole other post on this topic so I’ll leave it there for now. In regards to Thomas hiring more of his friends to work on episodes? Again, it’s good in theory, but I for one have noticed a certain change in the episodes since they brought on more writers, which officially started with Embarrassing Phases where Thomas said in the live stream following it that it was the first episode he really didn’t work on and it shows (but more on that in another post) I do think the other writers are talented people, but maybe all of them shouldn’t be working on Sanders Sides.

Each one is gonna have their own preferences for each character and ideas that may clash, and if these were simply coworkers, it wouldn’t be as much of a problem shutting down ideas that go too far. But when they’re literally all your friends, you have that connection to them and you don’t want them hurt, which can make saying “No” to certain things much harder. I’m not sure exactly how the writing team gets along so I can only speculate based on what I’ve learned from live streams.

As for their inclusion making the production for videos longer, I can also understand that seeing as you’re more inclined to goof off with people you’re close and comfortable with, especially when you’re not in a professional setting. Which, in Thomas’ case, he’s usually at home with his friends around. This automatically makes things more casual and one would feel more relaxed and not worry too much about being serious. Which, when you’re trying to get things done, can be a problem.

I’m gonna briefly use my own workplace as an example: I work in fast food, and all of my coworkers get along really well. We like to joke around and have fun, especially when we’re slow. But as soon as things start picking up it’s like a switch is flipped and we go from “Fun mode” to “work mode” just like that. Sure, we might continue to quip and joke with each other. But we never let it take precedence over the work that needs to be done. Some of our coworkers, don’t understand this. And when the rest of us are trying to work, they’re still goofing off. And in fast food, if just one person isn’t doing their job, it can bring everything crashing down. We have customers waiting in line for almost ten minutes, they get angry, they get mad at us, even if it’s just because of one person not doing their job. But we don’t have time to argue. We accept their complaints and do our best to fix the issue and get things moving again.

Obviously, what Thomas does is very different from working in fast food, but Youtube is still his job. Logan puts it best in LNTAO, “Thomas made a commitment to regularly sharing content. He must be held accountable.”

Now in fast food, we are most definitely held accountable by the customers if their food isn’t delivered in a timely manner or isn’t made to their liking, and we as the providers of said product, have to heed their words and make the product to their liking in order to ensure their satisfied. If they’re not satisfied, they won’t want to pay. Simple as that.

Thomas, on the other hand, is never held accountable by his fanbase. Now I’m not saying it’s a bad thing for him to have such a supportive fandom, heck I wish the customers I had to deal with on a regular basis were as understanding. But honestly, the way the majority of this fandom blindly follows Thomas and holds him on this golden pedestal is...

Kinda creepy...

He is surrounded by constant praise, hardly any criticism, and I believe that’s why we hardly get content from him.

Quick note, I understand that part of why this video in particular was delayed due to the pandemic and I respect their decision to not put themselves or anyone else at unnecessary risk for the sake of a Youtube video. However, plenty of Youtubers are still making and posting regular content on their channels despite this. To me, the main issue with Thomas’ content as of late is that he tries to put too much into what should be simple things. I understand wanting to give your audience the very best, but honestly, in my opinion, his newer content isn’t as good as the older stuff. It all had just such a simple, wholesome charm to it, that’s now been replaced with a fancier production and flashy editing. Not only that, they tend to start way too many projects at once, which result in never getting done.

You guys remember when they said they’d be bringing back Story Time Madlibs? That was last year, and the most recent thing we’ve heard about it is that they want to add more to it by including animations made by different people! Which will only increase the amount of time it will take to make what should have been a simple video that shouldn’t have taken more than a couple of weeks to film, edit, then post.

I’m not saying they shouldn’t try new things, but they’ve been trying to do so much that we end up getting nothing, and the fandom just seems okay with this.

At the end of the day though, this is just one opinion from a random faceless, nameless person sitting behind a computer screen. I doubt anyone on Thomas’ team will see it. I doubt a majority of the fandom would agree with any of it. But with more people starting to voice their opinions, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes too much of a thing to ignore. And if it becomes apparent that there’s a group in the fandom that is being ignored, that’s definitely going to cause problems.

Because in short if someone is out there, producing content for people, and they have complaints about it, then if those complaints are legitimate and can be fixed, then I believe it is the responsibility of that person to consider what they are saying and do their best to heed their words. If no one is ever criticized, then how will they ever improve? Criticism is not a bad thing. And once people get that out of their heads I think things will go much smoother for this fandom. But honestly, that’s just wishful thinking at this point. Sorry this answer got so long, I really should have just made a whole other post about this. XD

#fandom criticism #ts unpopular opinons #creator gripes #dukeofonions

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let-it-raines · 5 years ago

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Catch Me If You Can (39/40)

298 days. That’s how long Killian Jones was away from a baseball field. It’s less than a year, only part of a season for him, but it might as well have lasted a decade as he alternated between physical therapy and spending an excessive amount of time sitting on his couch.

But then he came back and won the World Series.

It’s something no one saw coming, and it’s certainly not something anyone who knows about his arm would predict. Now it’s a new season with new possibilities, and anything could happen. On-field reporter Emma Swan will be there to cover it all even if she is not his biggest fan right now.

Asking her out live on-air will do that.

Rating: Mature

a/n: thank you to @resident-of-storybrooke for literally everything, to @imagnifika for this banner, and to all of you for all of your support on this story and on others. I never expected to get quite so attached to this one, so I like that you guys are too. Misery loves company and all that. lol.

I hope you enjoy the last real chapter. The epilogue will be coming soon! ❤️⚾️

(If there’s any weird formatting, hop on over and read on AO3. Tumblr is being funky with my formatting.)

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-/-

Outside, thunder rolls, quickly followed by a flash of lightning that illuminates the bedroom.

It’s raining.

Raining.

On the final day of the World Series.

Fuck.

Emma jolts up in bed so quickly that her head gets a little dizzy, all of the blood that’s supposed to be in other parts of her body very obviously in the wrong space, and she has to shut her eyes to keep from throwing up while the sound of rain continues to pitter outside, a continual drip that she doesn’t want to be hearing.

It cannot rain today.

After a few seconds, when Emma’s head feels normal again and not like she’s about to feel dizzy enough to fall down even without standing, she opens her eyes and twists to the side to make sure that Killian is still sleeping.

He isn’t.

In fact, he’s not even in bed.

For a moment, Emma wonders if she should bother to go and find him or let him be by himself wherever he is in the apartment. He was understandably quiet on the entire way home and through dinner last night, and she could practically see all of the gears turning in his head. There’s an unwritten list up there of how he wants to pitch to each and every batter on the Dodgers today, and Emma is almost positive that Killian is currently going through it and changing his game plan over and over again until he perfects it.

Considering the fact that her phone says it’s three in the morning, Emma is thinking that she needs to drag Killian back to bed. He may not fall asleep, but he can at least stay in bed so that his body gets a little bit of rest. Maybe he’ll fall asleep. Maybe he won’t. But it’s worth the effort.

Sighing, Emma pulls the thick covers off of her legs and adjusts her pajama pants so that they’re not hanging below her ass from where they shifted in her sleep. She doesn’t bother turning any lights on, the city and the storm bringing in enough that she can see without it, and after walking out into the hallway, Emma doesn’t even have to look in the spare bedroom or the gym to find Killian.

He’s sitting on the window seat in the living room, his legs pulled up to his chest and his cheek resting against the window as he looks outside, very obviously awake.

Killian is going to stress himself out far too much.

Quietly, she makes her away over to him, and while he doesn’t say anything to acknowledge her presence, he does let his legs fall open in obvious invitation for her to join him on the seat. She does, slowly adjusting herself to make herself comfortable while Killian wraps his arms around her stomach so that the warmth of his palms permeates over her skin to warm her from the chill of the apartment. It’s November in two days, but New York is already cold.

There’s a brush of scruff against her cheek followed by the soft press of lips against the underside of her jaw before Emma sees the reflection in the window of Killian resting his chin on the top of her head.

His fingers tap against her stomach in a pattern that she doesn’t recognize, but she doesn’t mind. She may have come out here to convince Killian to come back to bed, to get some rest so he won’t be like a zombie out on the field today, but there’s something almost soothing about watching the rain fall down to the ground to cover the street under the florescent lighting of the street lamps. Even with the thunder, the sound of rain is relaxing, and Emma can understand why Killian was out here being consumed by it.

(She’d still prefer the rain to stop.)

“What are you thinking about?” Emma whispers.

“You.”

“Liar.”

Killian chuckles, something deep in his belly, and she can feel it reverberate throughout her back from where he’s pressed up into her. “I mean, at this particular moment I was legitimately thinking about how good you smell, but no, I haven’t been thinking about you and the softness of your hair the entire time.”

“Damn. I thought our deal was that you always had to think of me and nothing else. Don’t you love me?”

Killian squeezes her stomach. “It’s too early in the morning for you to be so cheeky.”

“Says the man who probably never even went to sleep.”

“I did go to sleep,” he sighs, and Emma watches his eyes flutter closed in the window. “I maybe woke up an hour or so ago to use the restroom, and my mind just…it didn’t bloody turn off. I have changed mine and Al’s game plan at least seven times.”

Wow. She knows him so well. It’s almost a little ridiculous. Not that she’s complaining.

“Let’s…” Emma hesitates, not sure what exactly what to say that she hasn’t already said. “Let’s talk about something other than baseball, okay? We will talk about it after we’ve gone back to sleep and gotten some rest, but for now, this apartment is a no baseball zone. So, talk to me about literally anything else.”

His fingers keep tapping against her stomach, and Emma moves to place her hands over his, a silent reminder that she’s right here and not going anywhere. She may have run before, may have not known what to do when he lied about his shoulder and his accident and everything that came with that, but she’s not going to run now.

This entire relationship has been terrifying, but she’s glad that she took the leap. They’ve conquered some big freaking mountains.

“I’ve emailed someone to see what I need to do to finish my degree.”

Emma almost jolts forward so that she can turn to look at him, but Killian doesn’t let her, holding onto her that slightest bit tighter so that she loses a little bit of her breath.

“When did you decide to do that?”

“A couple weeks ago.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“Wasn’t sure if I was going to go through with it. I’m…I’m still not sure when exactly I’ll go back. The woman said they could arrange online classes for me, and they can help arrange a different schedule. I don’t know if I’d start during the off season and see how many credits I can finish before next season starts up. Or maybe I’ll go all year round even while playing. I could always wait until I’m retired, but I don’t exactly want to do that.”

Emma tries to take it all in and figure out the best way to respond to him. This is obviously something Killian has thought about a lot. There’s not a reason in the world for Killian to have to go back to school. He’s not going to be a physics teacher or professor any time soon, if at all, so this is obviously something he’s decided to do for himself just to have as an accomplishment.

Killian deserves to get to do things for himself.

“I think you’ll figure out exactly how you want to do it, babe. I’m really proud of you for doing that.”

“It’s nothing to be proud of.”

“Too bad.” She pats his hand again and shifts her head back so that she can kiss the underside of his jaw. “I’m proud of you. Unless this is some kind of long con to actually become professor Jones so that Will can’t say it mockingly anymore.”

He chuckles, and she kisses his jaw again. “Damn. You’ve foiled my plan.”

“I knew it,” she yawns, unable to cover her mouth with her hands. “You know, when I graduated from college, I got some kind of fancy ink pen that I never used. They gave them to all of the journalism majors. What do you think they’d give physics majors? Calculators?”

“No, because we’d already own a hell of a lot of those. I might need to get some new ones, though. And possibly find some old books and go through them. It’s been almost a decade. I’m not sure I even remember anything.”

“We can go back to school shopping for you. We’ll have to take a picture of you in your cute little outfit with your backpack on your shoulders. I’ll put it on the fridge and everything.”

“You realize I’m doing this online so I’ll just be wearing my regular clothes sitting on my ass in here. I may not even wear clothes while I’m doing it.”

“Well, I can still put that picture on the fridge, but we’ll have to take it down every time someone comes over. No one needs to see that much of you.”

Killian practically purrs in her ear as he trails hot kisses down the side of her neck, and it sends chills down her spine and up over her skin. “You certainly do. You could see it now if you want to.”

Emma brings her bottom lip between her teeth and tries to rein in any budding arousal. “As tempting as that sounds, you and I are both deliriously tired, and I really only came out here to get you to come back to bed…to sleep. We should go do that.”

Teeth bite down onto her neck. “Fine. That seems like the sensible thing to do, and as an almost college man, I have to be sensible, right?”

“Or binge drink and then study all night for a test at the last minute even though you had weeks to study for it?”

“Do people still do that?”

“I think so.”

“We’re really old, Swan.”

“Yeah,” she sighs as she stands from the bench and pulls Killian up with her, “but I think we’ve still got it.”

Emma easily falls back asleep, especially when Killian closes the curtains and turns on the box fan to drown out the sound of the storm outside, and while she doesn’t really know when Killian fell asleep, he’s slumbering away when she wakes up, his breath coming out in small puffs and his hair falling over his forehead. The weight of the world isn’t on his shoulders right now. He’s not thinking about what he’s got to do today or not do today, and Emma hopes that he sleeps as long as he can.

Hopefully right up until he needs to eat breakfast and go to practice.

But hopes are not always reality, and in reality, Killian wakes up a little past nine and all of the tenseness in his body returns. She can see it in the set of his shoulders and the way that he carries himself as he does some stretches to loosen his body up before making breakfast and getting on with his morning routine. She’s terrified, her stomach absolutely in knots, but she’s not going to tell him that. Emma is sure that he’s aware that she’s in this and wants this for both herself and for him, but she’s not going to tell him and put any extra pressure on them.

It’s more than just one man out there. It’s more than just Killian, but Emma understands how Killian works. If they win, he won’t take any credit for it. If they lose, it’ll be entirely his fault. She’s sure he’s talked himself into thinking otherwise, but his brain will revert back to that.

The storm in the night seems to have disappeared, the streets beginning to dry even if large puddles of rain water are left in dips in the cement, and according to all forecasts, it should be dry enough for them to play today. There are supposed to be light sprinkles, maybe a scattered storm or two, but it’s all sunshine when the game is scheduled to start. If there are any delays, Emma hopes that they aren’t long.

Killian may very well lose his mind.

(She may too.)

He’s currently showering, and while she hasn’t been keeping track of how long he’s been in there, it’s been long enough for her to curl her hair. She’s entirely sure that the humidity is going to cause it to frizz and fall flat, and the network will probably have her hair constantly attached to a curling iron and hair spray until her hair is like a bird’s nest of tangles and product.

Whatever it takes to look good on TV today, right?

She’s supposed to wear a dress or a skirt, something form flattering and attractive for television, but since there are no technical rules as long as she stays dressed, Emma completely ignores that suggestion in favor or her favorite jeans, a pair of trusty boots, and one of Killian’s jerseys, buttoning it up and tucking the front into her jeans. She’ll have to put on a sweater later to combat the cold, but she doesn’t want to do that just yet.

It’s ridiculous, but putting on the sweater means it’s time to go and she’s just…she’s not ready. They need a little more time.

“Are you wearing my jersey?”

Emma jumps and clutches her hand against the chain around her neck that’s visible with the way the jersey is buttoned up. She did not hear the shower turn off or hear Killian open the bathroom door. But considering he’s standing in the doorway with a towel wrapped low around his waist, he obviously did.

“Yeah?”

“What about – ”

Emma shrugs, a smile stretching across her lips. “Fuck them. I don’t give a damn about what anyone has to say. I can do my job while also dating you. It’s not a mutually exclusive thing, and today is a big day. If I want to wear the jersey, I can wear it now.”

Both of Killian’s brows rise high on his forehead, but he’s smiling too as his arms cross over his chest so that his muscles bulge the slightest bit. “I think this is the most attractive you’ve ever been.”

“Because I’m wearing your jersey? I thought we’d gone over that before. I – ”

“No,” he laughs with a shake of his head. “Because you’re saying fuck ‘em to all of the people who we both know will say shit about you wearing that. I personally think they should all pull the sticks out of their asses, but then what would they have to talk about?”

“Happy things?”

“Nah, that’s too boring for them.” Killian walks toward her, a definite swagger in his stride, and the cool tips of his fingers come up to touch her cheeks as he cups her face and brings his lips down to move over hers, slowly and thoroughly kissing her until she can’t breathe. It’s the good kind of breathless, though. “I don’t know if I’m going to kick ass today, but I know that you are. It’s pretty much undeniable.”

“You’re going to kick ass. Think it into existence, twenty-nine.”

“Yeah, but I don’t…I don’t know. I – ”

Emma sighs, and she swears it goes all the way down to her bones. There’s only so much she can say. At the end of the day, Killian has to be the one to believe in himself.

“You know,” she starts as her hand reaches up to her neck so that her fingertips ghost over the cool metal again, “about two months ago I had this really big thing happen to me, and I don’t think I’d ever been that nervous. Well, that was until my idiot boyfriend decided to play with an injured rotator cuff because he was too dumb to say something to anyone.”

Killian playfully rolls his eyes, but she sees his jaw tick. Still such a stubborn ass.

“Anyways,” Emma continues as she reaches up to unclasp the necklace, grabbing onto it and the ring before guiding her hand up to his where they’re still resting on her cheeks. Killian’s blue eyes widen so that she can see every color in them, and they get the slightest bit bluer when she places the ring in his palm and closes his fingers over it. “I was given this really beautiful, special ring so that I had a reminder that someone was cheering me on even when I couldn’t hear the cheers. You had this for a lot of years. I think you might need it back.

Killian’s Adam’s apple bobs up and down before he starts shaking his head from side to side, his eyes closed so that black lashes land against his cheeks.

“No, no, no. I’m just…no, Swan. I’m not taking it back.”

“It’s your mom’s ring.”

He opens his eyes then so that she’s consumed by the blue even as he steps away so that they’re no longer touching each other. Has she done something wrong?

“Aye, my love,” he mumbles even as he opens up the chain and wraps it around her, easily clasping it back so that it hangs around her neck once more. “It was my mom’s, but I gave it to you. I’m not taking it back. It’s yours now.” Killian smiles at her, the soft one that makes his eyes crinkle that she’s come to know as her own, before bringing his closed fist to his chest and tapping right over his heart. “I know right here that people are cheering for me. I know that my mom, my family – I know that you are cheering for me no matter what happens out there today.”

Emma’s not crying. She swears that she’s not crying and that the tears in her eyes are allergies or something, but that would be a lie. It would because she loves him a ridiculous amount, and she’s proud of him over everything that he’s done and been working toward lately.

He’s a good man with a good heart, and he deserves all of the world.

Stepping forward, Emma reaches up to tuck his wet hair behind his ear as her thumb traches over the apple of his cheekbone. “I love you, and I don’t care what Liam or Elsa or Addy says. I’m your biggest fan in that stadium today, and I promise I’ll be cheering you on no matter what happens. Tonight, win or lose, you and I are celebrating, okay? We’re going to sit in our pajamas stuffing our face with all of the food that you’ve been stress baking, and we’re going to drink copious amounts of alcohol.”

He arches his brow. “This sounds unhealthy.”

“You’ll have either won or lost the freaking World Series. I think we deserve a little unhealthy.”

“I think you might be right,” Killian chuckles, dipping his head down to slant his lips over hers. “I love you too, by the way. I’m probably going to tell you that a lot today.”

“You won’t hear any complaints from me.”

“I don’t believe that at all.” He winks, and Emma swears that her heart flutters. “I’m going to get dressed, and then we can go to the stadium, okay? I want to get my practice in early in case it does rain again.”

“Yeah, sounds perfect.”

-/-

The stadium is nothing like it was yesterday morning. There’s no empty field that’s covered in morning dew with a quiet air around it that allows someone to simply sit out there and think about the history of this place that’s happened before and the history that’s still to come both for the team and for each individual player and for those who love them. People are bustling everywhere. Vendors are already in their stalls, executives are walking up and down the hallways in their suits, heels clacking along the tile, and players are seemingly everywhere. Emma wasn’t quite expecting anyone to be in the clubhouse, maybe just a few people, but they’re all watching old tapes, eating food, stretching, and bouncing strategy back and forth.

It’s like being thrown into chaos with no hope of getting out, but Emma manages to when Ariel pops up out of nowhere with a bright smile on her face that only broadens the moment she sees Emma.

“Perfect.” Ariel claps together her hands. “Just the couple I was looking for.”

Emma points to herself. “Us?”

“Yep. Things are about to get really crazy today, and I need the two of you to pose for a picture before we forget. It’s just perfect that you’re wearing his jersey.”

“Why do you need a – ”

“Just go with it, Swan,” Killian laughs as he wraps his arm around her waist and tugs her closer so that Emma can rest her hand on Killian’s chest. “When it comes to A, it’s best to obey.”

“That sounds like a great motto.”

“Kind of like a cult, though.”

“Just a little bit.”

“Shut up,” Ariel groans as she lifts her phone in the air. “And smile, I mean. Don’t look like I’m forcing you to do this.”

“But you – ”

Emma doesn’t get to finish her sentence before Killian is squeezing her hip and making her squeal as he brushes his lips against her cheek so that his scruff scratches at her skin like the asshole that he is.

But at least he’s an asshole in a good mood.

“Perfect,” Ariel sighs. “Now, Emma, I need you to come with me.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s about to get even crazier in here, and I’m saving you from the madness.”

Emma doesn’t even get a chance to tell Killian goodbye or good luck before Ariel is dragging her by her forearm out of the clubhouse and down the hallways of the stadium going on and on about everything that’s going to happen today like Emma doesn’t already know. Of course, there are several things that Emma didn’t know. Apparently, her plan for she and Killian to go home and eat junk food and get drunk isn’t really going to happen. He’s got press obligations that far exceed anything that she does, and then there’s usually some kind of team celebration that they all do together. It could be moved to the next day, but that’s usually reserved as an off day before the city does a parade and other celebrations and…

This is only if they win.

Emma points that out, and Ariel immediately corrects her and says “when.” She’s convinced that they’re going to win, and she will not take any other kind of thinking around her. Positive vibes only.

Emma and Killian are totally going home and eating junk food and possibly getting drunk before falling in bed. To sleep. Everything else can wait. And if it can’t, fine. They’ll deal with that and do all of the celebrations and be happy about it because it’s a really big deal, but at some point in the next week, they’re both locking the door, turning off their phones, and then not letting anyone or anything bother them.

Unless it’s the food delivery guy. He can bother them.

But that’s it.

She’s gained approximately ten new wrinkles on her face in the past two weeks, none of them coming from being a year older, and Emma very much needs the season to be over for her own sanity.

Without a doubt, she’ll start to miss baseball in no less than two weeks.

Ariel Fisher, however, lives and breathes baseball and managing baseball players and quite possibly being the most supportive woman on the planet – and that includes Mary Margaret Nolan and her continual positivity – and even if the Yankees sucked, she would somehow cause them to win by her willpower alone.

Emma has known her in a personal capacity for over half a year now, and she’s still not used to all of the never-ending energy. Ariel probably had a full night’s sleep last night. Or maybe she didn’t sleep at all, and she’s in that stage of sleep deprivation where everything is heightened and you’re hyperactive.

Emma would bet on the latter of the two.

But Ariel does eventually finish talking once they’ve made it far away from offices and weight rooms and restaurants up to the suites that Emma is so familiar with now. She’s also familiar with all of the people waiting inside. Killian’s family doesn’t joke around when it comes to baseball. There is no reason for them to be here this early, and yet here they are.

And suddenly Ariel has disappeared, probably off to talk someone else’s ears off.

��That isn’t rain.”

“That most definitely is rain.”

“Anna,” Kris sighs as he and Anna stand at the windows looking out to the field, “that’s rain. It’s this thing that happens when – ”

“I don’t need a science lesson. I need it to stop.”

“I’m pretty sure the entire team is doing some kind of rain prevention dance downstairs because I think we all need it to stop.”

Everyone turns to look at her like they didn’t hear she and Ariel come in.

“Emma,” Lucy shouts, scrambling up from the couch to run toward her and tackle Emma in a hug that’s quickly joined by Addy.

“Hey, girls. Are you guys excited?”

“I’m bored,” Addy sighs out, which is not at all what Emma was expecting.

“Bored? How can you be bored?”

“Because I want the game to start! It’s taking too long, and we’ve been in here forever.”

“It’s been fifteen minutes,” Liam tells Emma as he walks over to her and scoops up his daughter while bending to kiss Emma on the cheek. “But we’ve been very impatient with waiting even though whining isn’t going to speed up the game time.”

“So it’s been a fun morning in your house then?” Emma asks.

Liam rolls his eyes, and even though he and Killian don’t look too much alike, she can see the resemblance there. “Joyous. And from my chat with Killian this morning, I can tell it was about the same at yours with the sleepless night.”

“Well, it is a big day today.”

“Just look up the weather forecast, Anna,” Elsa groans as she moves to rest her head against the countertop. “It’s supposed to rain in the middle of the game. We have known that the entire time, but the sun is literally coming out. It will be dry enough to start play on time.”

Emma arches her brow. “Was Elsa the one not sleeping?”

“Yeah,” Liam mumbles as he adjusts Lucy on his hip, “yeah, she was. She and Addy sat in the living room all night because they couldn’t sleep. I expect them to crash soon.”

“I’m fine,” Elsa promises even as she takes a sip of coffee out of the largest mug Emma has ever seen. “I’m exhausted, but I’m fine. Where in the world did Ariel go?”

“I have no idea. She was here and then she wasn’t. I’m not even sure why she pulled me away from the clubhouse. It’s all been a bit of a blur.”

“Her nickname could be The Blur or something ridiculous like that. She’s always zooming in and out of rooms.”

“How’s Killian?” Anna asks as she steps away from the windows. “Is he freaking out? Has he tried to run away yet?”

Emma’s hand reaches up to toy with her necklace, moving the ring from side to side and choosing not to worry about the weather any more than she already has. “He’s fine. He’s freaking out, but he’s fine. All he needs is for the game to start so he can stop psyching himself out.”

“I want the game to start too,” Addy whines once more as she falls out on the couch and throws her arm over her eyes.

“Darling,” Liam laughs, “have we ever considered that we made her too big of a fan?”

Elsa shrugs. “I don’t think we ever even had a choice.”

Emma stays up in the suite talking and eating cheeseburger sliders and drinking hot chocolate for the next hour, and it’s enough distraction that she doesn’t really think about what’s going on and the nerves radiating deep from her stomach and out to every inch of her. That only really begins when she has to officially start working, leaving the suite to walk to the ESPN booth and get her microphone hooked up to her and prepped for the start of the game. They have her hair curled again, just like she thought, and Isaac and James most definitely eye the jersey she has on. Emma ignores them, even if she does put on her sweater and take the raincoat the network offers her, and leaves the booth to go find the spot they have saved for her behind home plate.

People are filling the stands, a hushed murmur covering the stadium as the sun continues to peek through dark clouds, and Emma’s eyes are stuck on Killian as he continues the last of his pre-game warm-ups.

This exact day last year was one of the craziest days of her life, and she doesn’t think any of it could compare to this.

“You look like you’re going to vomit,” Jeff murmurs as he sets up the protective cover over his camera.

“I kind of feel like I am. Don’t date someone on the team. It’s too much.”

“I think I’m safe in that department.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do,” he laughs, and Emma doesn’t miss the rare smile on Jeff’s face. “You ready to go?”

Emma adjusts her earpiece. “Yeah, I’m ready to go.”

-/-

The Dodgers score on Killian’s first pitch.

A home run right off the bat – literally – and Emma feels the collective groan around the stadium in her bones. That is not what was supposed to happen. It was supposed to be a strike, then two more, and an out. Easy as pie, right?

(Killian would tell her pie isn’t actually easy.)

But that’s obviously not how things are going to go today.

Sports have really got to be a little less dramatic. Her nerves can’t take it. Can’t things just be simple? Can’t they have gone back to the beginning and have won in four straight games instead of losing enough so that they’re in game seven of the World Series?

“If” doesn’t exist, especially in sport, Emma reminds herself. That’s what Killian would tell her, and that’s what she has to remind herself.

It only works a little bit.

One pitch at a time. It’s how Killian is going to be out there, and it’s how Emma is going to be sitting in the stands talking back and forth with the guys up in the booth thinking the same thing. It’s kind of hard to think that, though, when there’s a continual string of near hits and misses and Isaac and James up in the booth won’t stop being so damn negative that it makes Emma want to scream.

The score is 1-0 in the top of the third inning. It’s not the end of the world.

The looming dark sky overhead is kind of making her think that way.

“I’m too nervous, Rubes,” she mumbles while Killian winds up his arm to throw a pitch. There’s two men on base, both due to errors from King. She’d feel petty and a little glad if she didn’t need him to play well for the team. “Tell me about wedding stuff. Distract me.”

There’s static in her earpiece before Ruby’s voice comes in. “We’re getting married on a beach with no clothes on. Don’t worry. We can get waxed on the bachelorette weekend, so we’ll all be as smooth as babies.”

Emma huffs. “You’re not funny.”

“I’m hysterical,” Ruby corrects, and a part of Emma knows that Ruby and Graham might legitimately get married like that. “We haven’t planned any more than what we talked about last week. Small, intimate, and then a killer party with good food and drinks. Finding a location is hard. Everything is so expensive.”

“Destination wedding?”

“How is that cheaper?”

“I’m sure you can find a really inexpensive place in Nebraska or something.”

“You can get married in Central Park for one hundred dollars,” Jeff adds in, and Emma snaps her head away from the game to look at him. He shrugs his shoulders. “What? I know things.”

“I think the one hundred dollars is only if you want to get married in a certain spot, though,” Ruby sighs. “We’re going to keep looking. Graham said that he’d ask some of his buddies at the precinct if they knew of any spaces. It doesn’t have to be pretty since I know Mary Margaret will work her magic to make it that way no matter what.”

Killian’s pitch lands right in Will’s glove, and the umpire calls the batter out. Thank goodness. She doesn’t know what she’d do if someone else got on base. Then they’d be loaded with no outs, and things would pretty much be screwed from here on out.

Emma reaches over into her bucket of popcorn (she bought the jumbo size because she is stress eating) and stuffs a handful into her mouth instead of eating one or two at a time. One piece falls out of her mouth and down her shirt, landing somewhere in her bra so that she has to pick it out.

“You’re on the jumbotron right now, Emma,” Ruby giggles.

“Ah, fuck,” Emma mumbles as she looks up to see there be a replay of her digging in her shirt. “I hate everything.”

“That’s a little dramatic.”

“Me eating is like a running joke this season. I don’t get it.”

And she doesn’t really have time to get it before there’s the thwack of a ball against a bat straight past first base and away from everyone.

Shit.

It’s not good. Not at all. The two runners already on base get home, and the batter manages to make it to second.

It’s 3-0, and this is not at all how today was supposed to go.

Emma’s lungs are doing that thing again where they’re not taking in air, and there’s not enough popcorn in the world to make any of this better. If the tick in Killian’s jaw is any indication, she knows that there’s no one in the world more pissed at what’s happening than him. They don’t have anything together, and if they don’t get it together soon, they’re going to run out of time.

And then the sky opens up, little droplets of rain falling and landing on Emma’s nose, and that saying “when it rains, it pours” seems oddly appropriate right now. Her sadistic sense of humor is about to get worse.

They can’t lose. They can’t. she won’t allow it.

The rain keeps falling, a steady downpour of water, but it’s not enough to call for the rain delay. Not yet. And Killian is able to strike out the next guy and then get the third out of the inning with Eric catching the hit.

And just like the rain, the play stays steady. It’s not spectacular baseball by any means, mostly just a sludge match as everyone tries to keep their hands dry and the water out of their eyes, and the score slowly improves. Lance hits a good ball to get two RBIs, making it 3-2, and they manage not to allow any runs in the top of the fourth inning.

Good.

They’re creating chances. That’s what matters. They’re creating chances, and Emma can continue to eat her soggy popcorn while she freaks the hell out about what’s happening and continues to try to act like she’s a professional and not overly invested in the outcome of this game like she’s got money on it.

It’s the bottom of the fourth inning now, a chant of August’s name moving across the stadium so that it shakes in anticipation, and the bases are loaded. There are also two outs. Emma’s not saying that this could be the thing that changes the momentum of the game, but if the way that she’s gripping onto Jeff’s arm is any indication, she knows that this could change the momentum of the entire World Series.

“Come on, Booth,” Emma yells out as her free hand hits against her thigh, the wet denim clinging to her skin. “Be smart. Watch the ball.”

August obviously doesn’t know how to follow instructions because then it’s a swing and a miss.

Strike one.

There’s no chance for a strike two because while the rain has been sprinkling for the past hour, it’s pouring now. Jeff is mumbling about his camera and the cover not doing enough, but all Emma can focus on is all of the players running inside to the dugouts and fans shuffling inside while an announcement comes over the speakers that there’s an official rain delay.

An hour ago, she would have welcomed it. They didn’t have any of the momentum then. They do now.

This isn’t how things are supposed to be going.

Fuck.

-/-

“So how long is the rain delay going to be?”

“I don’t know.”

“But can you find out?”

“I can’t control the weather, Emma.”

“But you know things that we don’t, David,” Emma groans as she paces back and forth in a tunnel in the stadium, her hair frizzing around her face and her jeans completely soaked through. “It’s been an hour. Are they going to call the game? Are they going to continue it? This is agony.”

“You need to calm down.” Emma looks over to David with raised brows, and he holds his hands up in the air. “Sorry, sorry. Didn’t mean to say that to you, but you’re going to give yourself a heart attack if you keep worrying like this.”

Everyone they know is going to give themselves a heart attack, apparently.

“I know, I know,” she sighs, reaching up to hold onto her necklace and quieting down as some people pass by the two of them, probably looking at her like she’s a crazy person. “I’m nervous. This is really hard. I just…I want to be allowed into the clubhouse so that I can see him. He’s going to be freaking out. I just know, and I – ”

David walks toward her and places his hands on her shoulders while he looks down at her with a soft, reassuring smile on his face. She’s sure that he would hug her right now if she wasn’t soaking wet.

“Killian is fine, sweetheart. You are fine. We’re in the fourth inning. There’s still five more to go, whether it’s finished today or tomorrow or a week from now. They have time to come back. You, however, need to be back in hair and makeup because you’re supposed to be doing a clip on SportsCenter in fifteen minutes to fill the dead air time.”

“Shit. Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

“I couldn’t get a word in. You were kind of having a meltdown.”

Emma practically has to run down the hallways, which doesn’t help her appearance at all, and she’s sure that here makeup is streaky and her hair a wild mess that can’t be tamed, and the entire world can probably see her bra underneath her jersey right now. There’s not a hell of a lot that the makeup department can do, especially without a change of clothes besides a dry raincoat to replace the one that got soaked through, but they try their best before she’s standing in front of a plain backdrop inside the stadium talking back and forth about what’s going on in the game, breaking it down inning by inning in a way that she hasn’t had to do quite some time.

Considering she does it all with last minute notice and no notes in front of her, she thinks that she does a damn good job.

None of that really matters, though, because right as they’re wrapping up the segment, they get the announcement that play will resume in the next twenty minutes.

It’s time to play some more baseball.

Emma shouldn’t have eaten all of that popcorn because her stomach is most definitely churning with nerves.

They can do this. They have to. They will.

-/-

August immediately gets struck out, and the fourth inning ends with the Yankees still down 3-2.

The next two innings are scoreless for both teams, and Killian wraps up his game after that. He played well. It wasn’t his best, the weather and the nerves probably impacting him, but she’s proud of him.

She’ll be proud of him no matter what.

And she really wishes that the network wanted her to do a mid-game interview or let her go into the dugout just so that she could see him and tell him that in person, but they seem to be determined to only allow her to stay on the sidelines by herself.

Emma: I love you, I love you, I love you.

Emma: You’re my favorite player (and person) no matter what, and I can’t wait to see you when this game is over and you’re holding that trophy.

He texts back almost immediately, and he must have his phone out on the massage table.

Killian: Will you go out with me if we win? Or if we lose?

Laughter bubbles up inside of her, and it’s the first time all afternoon that she’s felt this light.

Emma: Only if you ask me out on live television like the asshole you were when you did that last year.

Killian: I think I can do that.

Her stomach flutters again, and even though this is kind of the biggest game that Emma has ever watched in her entire life, her eyes keep switching between her phone and the game. It’s pretty much the only way that she can stay calm and keep getting air into her lungs without one of them collapsing and her having to go to the hospital.

This game is going on forever. Literally. Each inning is longer than the last, and the sun is beginning to set over the horizon so that the remaining gray clouds disappear into the dark of night. Florescent lights fill the stadium, lighting up the crowd and the players, and Emma can’t stop shivering, especially with the remaining dampness of her clothes and the chill that’s whirling around. It’s got to be forty degrees out here at the most, and if it weren’t for Mary Margaret brining down her coat for Emma to use, she’d turn into an icicle by the end of the game.

Probably before the end of the game.

Today is obviously going very well.

It’s not just Emma, though. The crowd is starting to get a little delusional now too. The game has been going on for over six hours now, the last three completely scoreless, and everyone is getting restless and antsy and probably very, very drunk.

Some rum or whiskey or several shots of tequila is sounding really good right now.

She can’t have any of it.

And she’s moved on from popcorn to copious amounts of hot chocolate to keep her warm.

It’s now the bottom of the ninth in what could possibly be the last inning of the game and the end of the season, and they’re still down by one run. It’s almost exactly what happened last night, and Emma’s dentist is going to hate her for how much she’s grinding her teeth.

Just one run to tie it up. One more to win the whole damn thing.

Easy, right? Right.

“Fuck,” Emma mutters underneath her breath, unable to keep the thoughts inside. This cannot end up like last night. They’re so damn close. They can do this.

Eric settles into his position in the batter’s box, his hands moving up and down his bat until they’re in the right spots, and Emma would probably give up her entire salary to know just what Ariel is doing right now up in the suite. She’s got to be losing her mind.

Emma is kind of losing hers.

One. Two. Three.

The ball flies off of Eric’s bat, straight down past third base so that it practically paints the line, and Eric is off like a cheetah, quickly passing over first base and turning so quickly that he nearly falls on his way to second base. Emma stands, unable to stay sitting down, and she can’t even hear herself yell over the roar of the crowd as Eric slides against the dirt to mark up his uniform and have his fingers touch second base right before the ball gets to him.

Safe.

Holy shit. They have a man on base.

And August is up next. God, she hopes that he doesn’t choke again. There’s been a hell of a lot of pressure on his shoulders in the past two days, and he’s crumbled underneath it after having some really big opportunities to close things out. As good as these guys are at playing in the moment, the past does have the ability to creep up around them and wrap around their neck to pull them back to the past so that they can’t move on.

August has to move on.

One. Two. Three.

Strike.

Shit.

One. Two. Three.

Ball.

Okay.

One. Two. Three.

Strike.

Fuck.

Emma cannot do this. She absolutely can’t. It’s too much. It’s all too much, and she has to bend down to put her head between her legs. She knows that her phone is going off, that she’s got texts and calls and emails, but she can’t look at any of them. If it’s something for work, Ruby will speak into her earpiece or Jeff will say something.

This is the worst. Who likes sports? This is just the worst.

One. Two. Three.

The ball thwacks against August’s bat, and it flies toward left field. Emma is positive that it’s going to go over, absolutely positive that it’s going to be a home run and that they’re about to win this game. But then it hits against the wall, and suddenly it’s back in play. It’s not a home run, not quite, but it’s enough to have Eric round third and run toward home, his body barreling as quickly as possible before he’s sliding through the dirt once more so that it flies up around him.

Safe.

3-3.

Holy fucking shit.

Emma can’t hear. She can’t. The crowd is that deafening, and while Emma isn’t jumping up and down, her knuckles are going white as they grip onto the sides of her seat. All she can focus on is the way that Eric runs straight into Killian just outside the dugout, the two of them jumping up and down and hitting each other’s backs and asses as every other member of the team surrounds them in a celebration that sends chills down her spine.

Her cheeks are warm for the first time all night, and Emma has to force down the emotion in her throat.

It’s not over.

But that’s a good thing. They have the chance to do this, to win this now, and Emma’s heart is pumping blood faster than it ever has in the entirety of her life. It may very well beat out of her chest.

She doesn’t even care.

The high comes down five minutes later when King is easily struck out, putting their first out of the inning on the board, and even Emma isn’t petty enough to want Arthur King to do poorly when him doing well is good for the team. She’s petty. Just not petty enough.

Will Scarlet, though, deserves the entire world, and all of the organs in Emma’s stomach shift again when he steps into the box and adjusts his helmet. Sprinkles of rain are falling down from the clouds and spitting against Emma’s skin, but it’s not enough to stop the game. Not yet. The momentum is with them again, the game and the championship on their bats, and Emma has never known Will to be scared of a little rain.

One. Two. Three.

A swing and a miss.

Strike One.

One. Two. Three.

No movement. Deep breath inhaled.

Ball.

One. Two. Three.

No movement.

Strike Two.

“Damn,” Emma mumbles under her breath as she tightens the jacket a little further over her arms, her legs shaking and tapping enough to power the electricity in all of the Bronx. She’s going to break the chain around her neck for how tightly she’s tugging on it. It’s fine. It’s all fine.

It’s got to be all fine.

The water is spitting a little harder now, Emma’s vision getting a little bit blurred, and it’s taking everything in her not to stand up right now so that she blocks the people behind her. Ruby is chattering in her ear cursing or hoping or something, her phone is still going off, and Jeff has to be complaining about how much Emma is crushing his forearm.

She doesn’t care.

Because Will is standing in position again, and he’s ready.

One. Two. Three.

There’s a sharp blow when the ball makes contact with the bat, and while the rain and the stadium lights make it hard to see, Emma already knows that the ball is going over the back wall and into the crowd.

Gone. It’s gone.

It’s freaking gone.

Will Scarlet is an absolute legend.

The Yankees just won the World Series.

Killian just won the World Series.

Everything is so loud around her, cheers reverberating and shaking the stands so that Emma can literally feel sounds, but she has trouble focusing on any of that over the sound of her heart pounding in between her ears and Ruby yelling in her earpiece that Emma has to get down to the field.

The field.

She has to get down to the field, and somehow, she does. Jeff must have carried her there or pushed her or something. It’s a madhouse, one Emma can’t navigate, and she knows that she’s supposed to be doing some kind of interview, preferably with Will, but there’s no way for her to find anyone. It’s a mass of players all huddled together and jumping up and down as coaches and wives and children all join in, the rain coming down even harder than earlier.

All Emma really wants is to find Killian and kiss him like she’s never kissed him before.

That’s saying something.

Emma sees him standing ten feet away from her on the outskirts of a pile of men embracing each other in happiness, his hair a mess like he’s been running his hands through it for the past two hours and his smile so large that it reaches his ears. He looks beautiful, ethereal almost, and Emma can scarcely breathe looking at him after pushing through so many people to find him.

That’s when he sees her through the people and the rain and the unending joy.

Killian pulls his arm up to tap his closed fist over his heart, and Emma’s heart stutters at the movement before a slow grin stretches across her lips while she reaches up to tap her fist over the ring and her heart.

She was cheering him on the entire time.

One. Two. Three.

Emma takes off toward him, ignoring Ruby in her ear and Jeff behind her with the camera, and in six strides, she’s pressing up onto her toes and wrapping her arms around his neck, holding onto him so tightly that her feet come off the ground and Killian’s hands scramble for her ass, barely holding onto her as he lifts her in the air and swings her back and forth as they both get covered in the continual downpour of rain.

She can hardly see, the water far too much, and when she cups Killian’s cheeks and slams her mouth into his, he tastes like water and spearmint gum and quite possibly all of the happiness in the world bottled up into one human being.

Kissing him and being here with him is everything she ever wanted and everything she never allowed herself to dream.

“Fancy seeing you here, Swan,” Killian laughs, his mouth still pressing against hers.

“What are you talking about, Jones? I was right here last year.”

“Yeah,” he smiles, the grin the most infectious thing she has ever seen, “but I think I like this year a hell of a lot better.”

“Can’t wait to see how you try to top this next year.”

Killian throws his head back in in laughter, his skin covered in rain, and he finally puts her down on the ground so that her feet sink into the soft grass below her, arms still wrapped around Killian’s neck so that she’s close enough to see the sparkle in his eyes and the smile on his lips.

“You know what, my love? I think I’m good staying right here in this moment for now. We can figure out the rest later.”

-/-

Tag list: @dorisquinn @onepunintendid @authorarsinoe @stunningswan @eala-captian @galaxyzxstark @xellewoods @mariakov81 @ultraluckycatnd @royalswan @shey-starsfury @superchocovian @sals86 @iam2307 @ashley-knightingale @karenfrommisthaven @scientificapricot @captswanis4vr @ultimiflos @jamif @idristardis @nikkiemms @resident-of-storybrooke @tiganasummertree @bmbbcs4evr @onceuponaprincessworld @jennjenn615 @mayquita @captainsjedi @teamhook @notoriouscs @kmomof4 @ekr032-blog-blog @cs-forlife @andiirivera @jonirobinson64 @qualitycoffeethings @carpedzem @tornadoamy @397bartonstreet

#catch me if you can #cs fic #cs ff #cs fanfic #captain swan fanfic #captain swan ff #captain swan fic #captain swan

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mysterylover123 · 6 years ago

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My Top 10 Favorite (and Top 5 least favorite) Izuocha moments

mysterylover123

OK, to explain that title and why I didn’t have a “least favorite” for any other ship: While I have moments for other ships that I don’t like, none of those ships are canon. I have no interest in making people feel bad about shipping things. I do feel it’s ok to critique writing choices you don’t agree with in the actual show, and there are a few big Izuocha moments I don’t like, so I needed to cover them. I do like this ship, for the record - but the canon handling was odd to me, so I thought I’d do a favorite and least for this list instead of just a favorites.

#10. Battle Trial Arc Teamwork

From: Episodes 7-8

What Happens: Deku and Uraraka are teamed up to fight Iida and Bakugo. Uraraka is very reassurring to Deku about their teamwork and at the climax of the arc, they work together to defeat their opponents in awesome fashion. Uraraka also goes up to Deku post arc with concern

Why I Like It: I do like me some battle couples. I love seeing Deku talk to Uraraka about his feelings (albeit for Bakugo) and Uraraka calling them a team and working hard because Deku inspires her to try harder. Deku showcases his scheming brilliant brain here too.

#9. Voting for Deku

From; Episode 9 “Just Do your best Iida”

What Happens: The voting happens. Bakugo pitches a fit that two people voted for Deku, and Uraraka whistles while thinking “I’ll just keep my vote to myself”

Why I Like It: Uraraka voted for Deku, like Shoto did for Momo, and keeps it a secret. I’m hoping we get a similar scene to the Todomomo one where Ochako reveals this, though I’m not sure how that would play out.

#8. Someone you like

From: Season 3 Episode 15

What Happens: Uraraka, embarrassed about her classmates grilling her on her love life, floats to the ceiling - and sees Deku out the window practicing ultimate moves. She seems very smitten.

Why I Like It; This is a more pure Izuocha moment as she responds to him romantically, reaction to how cool he is and how much she admires him. I’m not wild about Mina telling Uraraka she likes Deku, but I do like he actually acting like she does.

#7. Cavalry Battle Teamup

From: The Sports Festival Arc 2.04-2.05

What Happens: Ochako teams up with Deku in the Cavalry battle, hoping to as she later puts it “rely on him to get by”. She gets jealous of how much attention he pays Mei. Deku thinks about her support of him and all she’s done for him as he fights hard to win.

Why I Like It; This is actually more of a Deku on Ochako moment, since she later complicates her own role in this with her admission about Iida. But Deku says that he wanted her for his team, and thinks how cool she is, and is inspired by her support of him to fight Todoroki. It shows how much he values her support.

#6. Joint Training Arc Teamwork

From: Chapters 209-216

What Happens: Deku and Uraraka watch each others’ backs in combat. Uraraka saves him from his powers gone mad, hugging him to calm him down. Afterwards she blushes about it, and he possibly blushes too though it’s not clear.

Why I Like It: Again, love some teamwork pairings. I wanted a little more from this arc (Uraraka talking Deku down instead of Shinso) but we still got her hugging him and blushing about it while thinking about her new “who saves the heroes” motivation. Deku is also grateful to her for saving him. Uraraka works well with him, worries about him, but now she doesn’t let it distract her.

#5. First Meeting and Rescue

From: Chapters 2-4

What Happens: Uraraka saves Deku from tripping over his feet. Deku is attracted to her; she gets trapped in the fight and Deku saves her. This gets him into UA. She also offers him her points to Present Mic.

Why I Like It; It’s such a sweet first impression. He thinks she’s cute (she finds him plain, which annoys me - someone call Deku pretty before the series if over.) He saves her, she saves him, she offers him her points, he thinks about how she helped him before and tries to go talk to her. I like how he compares it to saving Kacchan from the sludge monster too - saving Uraraka is put in the same category as saving his lifelong acquaintance, despite having just met her.

#4. Deku means you can do it

From: Episode 6 Rage you Damn Nerd

What Happens: Uraraka greets Izuku as “Deku” based on Bakugo’s name. Izuku corrects her but she suggests Deku could mean “you can do it.” Izuku immediately changes his attitude on the name. Later that ep he takes her name as his “you can do it” motto, which she finds touching.

Why I Like It; The Deku name is one of my favorite Izuocha bits. I love how she gives his nickname a new meaning and he likes it, takes it for himself, and finds strength from this support. (Of course, this is one of many moments on this list that some how also connects with Bakugo. There’s a lot of subtle parallelism between Ochako and Kacchan, probably since these three were the first three characters designed for the series).

#3. Giving her a plan

From: Season 2 Episode 8 Battle on challengers

What Happens: Deku notices how upset Uraraka is before her match and offers her a scheme to use against Bakugo. She declines and heads out to her match; post fight, he comes in to comfort her and is touched again by her support.

Why I Like It; Deku noticed she was upset! He offered to help her, wanting to support her like she’s supported him! He roots for her and admires her techniques, corrects Bakugo about her hard work, and tries to be there for her when she loses. She’s so sad about her loss, and I wish she’d cried on his shoulder instead of shutting him out - one day, she will, I hope.

#2. The real Uraraka

From; Shiketsu High Lurking 3.16

What Happens: Deku, while fighting Camieraka, recognizes that she isn’t Ochako. He runs down all of Uraraka’s features and why Camieraka can’t really be her.

Why I Like It; Deku shows here that he actually knows Uraraka pretty well, understands her, knows what she would never do and guesses that Camie was impersonating her. I like when people show they know their dates - once again, he knows her by now to the same degree that he knows his lifelong acquaintance Bakugo (in S1’s BTA he also knows Bakugo’s techniques in the same manner). I like that kind of familiariity.

Extras

Movie

Filler

#1. Deku, that has to be my codename

From: Season 2 Episode 13 Time to pick some names

What Happens: Midoriya picks Deku as his hero name, explaining that Uraraka made him see it in a different way, and smiling about it. We see Kacchan and Ochako both reacting.

Why I Like It; This simple scene is my favorite Izuocha moment, because I love how much the Deku name means to Midoriya. It’s kind of a motif among friendships in the show, this “picking your hero name” thing, and while Bakugo did come up with the name, Ochako gave it its new meaning. I like seeing them happy.

Top 5 Least Favorite

#5. Putting those feelings away

From: Provisional License Exam Arc

What Happens: Ochako decides to put her feelings for Deku away instead of acting on them in a little monologue.

Why I Didn’t Like It; While I’m glad we get to focus more on Ochako being a badass, as a shipper I found her decision frustrating. It just makes no sense that she can’t just tell Deku she likes him, date him and be happy. All that buildup doesn’t seem to be leading towards anything but delaying the inevitable. I find it really annoying when series up off the inevitable get together till the end just because it’s expected.

#4. Running away at the mall

From: Season 2 Episode 25 “Encounter”

What Happens: Ochako, left alone with Deku, runs away yelling about bug spray. He gets attacked by Tomura while she freaks out about her feelings.

Why I Didn’t Like It; Well for one, we miss a chance for them to hang out one-on-one. Two, Uraraka indirectly calls Deku a “pest”, hurting his feelings. Three, we juxtapose her feelings with Tomura nearly killing Deku. Forth, she finds the idea of liking him so scary and off-putting, and this becomes her story for the next two arcs, which I find annoying since it just repeats the same thing over and over again.

#3. Because you like him?

From: Final Exam Arc

What Happens: During their fight with 13, Uraraka is thinking “what would Deku do?” Aoyama asks Uraraka if she likes Deku. This freaks her out and nearly gets her killed.

Why I Didn’t Like it: I don’t get why Aoyama did this. Why? What was he thinking, why ask this during their test, why does this lead to Uraraka beating 13, why was this the way we made Izuocha canon? I don’t get why Uraraka’s crush on Deku has to be something other people tell her she has, can’t she just figure it out for herself? Aoyama what is your deal? I legitimately don’t get what Horikoshi was going for her.

#2. Hey jealousy

From: Various

What Happens: Uraraka freaks out when Deku gets near Mei, Melissa, and Camie, burning with Jealousy. Most recently she punched herself in the face for doing so.

Why I Didn’t Like It; I didn’t mind the first time with Mei, because it was Deku complimenting Mei, or Melissa in the film. But the other times, Deku is getting felt up and creeped out by invasive girls who scare or harm him, and Uraraka reacts by getting jealous of him, instead of trying to defend him. Try flipping their genders and see how disturbing it comes across. Like a “Nice Guy” getting mad that his crush is daring to get felt up by other men. Even if she says it makes her uncomfortable.

#1. Himiko Toga’s monologue

From: Training Camp Arc

What Happens: Toga recognizes that Uraraka likes Deku and creepily tells her that she has “her smell”, that they’re both obsessed with copying and replacing their boys. She later says “a great deal of faith is placed in you”.

Why I Didn’t Like It; Toga is Uraraka’s evil foil. If liking Deku this way is Uraraka’s flaw, that places a really negative spin on Izuocha. It makes it seem like liking Deku is only going to lead Uraraka down a wrong path and make her fall. Why? Why does her main romance have to be something that apparently scares and hurts her? It’s Deku for crying out loud! He’s a sweetheart, he likes her, they get along. This implies that Uraraka’s feelings for Deku are similar to Toga’s for Stain - she wants to kill and replace the person she admires. Also, the “trust in you” line sounds like blatant Traitor-Uraraka baiting, like that line in her bio about there being no “hidden side to her”. I love Toga, I love Ochako, I want them to be great foils, but I don’t want that to be in a way that makes Ochako’s romance look creepy.

So that’s my thoughts - read my meta for the whole story. I ship it but I want the story to start handling it differently.

#IzuOcha #my hero academia #midoriya x uraraka #ochako x izuku #midoraka #ochadeku #ships #top 10 moments

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audikatia · 5 years ago

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2.20 Prom Queen

Rating: 5/5. I really, really love this episode. Like, do I even want to watch the rest of the series? Does it get better than this?

Best Song: I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You. This is one of my favorite songs of all time being sung by my celebrity crush. It can’t lose.

Memorable Quote: “What’s the point of dressing up? I mean, that’s why some guys wear the tails with the top hats and the girls wear the hoop skirts.” -Kurt

General Notes:

Mercedes, you have another prom next year to be wooed like the queen you are. Don’t fret.

Kurt’s excitement over Blaine agreeing to go to prom with him has extended my lifespan by approximately ten years. He’s just so pure and happy. I also really love that he did give Blaine an out if it made him too uncomfortable given Blaine’s past trauma with dances, and I love that Blaine told Kurt how crazy he is about him and that he’s willing to give dances another chance with Kurt. I really think they make each other better.

Rachel, Mercedes, and Sam all going to prom is adorable and I love how Rachel and Mercedes came up with a fun way to work within budget restraints. Makes me kinda want to go to prom again

Oh, okay, Jesse! I see you! That raspy rocker voice can get it

I’m really glad I didn’t get involved in all with prom queen bullshit. It seems really un-fun, doing all that campaigning and planning. And then if you don’t win, not only did you have a really stressful few weeks leading up to the night, but then you have a bummer of a night instead of a fun time with friends. That just sorta sucks.

RACHEL. YOU HAVE NEVER BEEN SUPPORTIVE OF FINN AND QUINN.

Also, Rachel you came up with a corsage for Quinn really quickly. God, they just write fic for themselves, don’t they?

Karofsky can’t really pull off that beret, huh?

I feel really bad for Artie. Yeah, he shouldn’t have called Brittany stupid, but he just found out Brittany had been inadvertently cheating on him and that Santana had been taking advantage of Brittany’s naivety. And it’s not his fault that the writers just needed to break them up so she and Santana could be together.

Finn immediately accepting and complimenting Kurt’s prom outfit that Kurt’s clearly proud of warms my cold, dead heart. Again, I love any scene with Burt involved because he is just so perfect. He runs that careful line of wanting Kurt to be exactly who he wants to be but also wanting his kid to be safe. And if I’m being honest, I’m with Burt and Blaine on this one. Blaine went through a pretty horrific attack at his last dance. If my significant other had gone through something like that, I wouldn’t want to do anything that might make them a target again. That’s not to say that Kurt’s outfit isn’t slamming, it is. But I get both sides of the argument.

Also, happy birth of a thousand Kurt-in-a-skirt porn fics.

Oh, also also, Finn has a cup of milk! I can only assume it’s a cup of warm milk that Kurt brought to him <3

Kurt is so optimistic and so certain of the good in the world. And I love that he’s actually kind and supportive to Karofsky when he has every right to be a dick to him. This is also why I like Karofsky because when given the chance to see that he might be accepted, he actually starts becoming a better person. I’m not saying it’s okay that he threatened to kill Kurt, but I do think he (and other people like him) should be given the chance to become better people. Sometimes I think when someone is a bully once, they are painted as a bully forever. We have to allow people to redeem themselves. Isn’t that what we want? We want the bullies to learn their lessons and become good people? Isn’t that better than wanting the bullies to always be bullies and then have shitty lives when they get older? I prefer redemption to punishment. I find that more satisfying, especially when it breaks away from the cycle of abuse.

Kurt is hella attractive in this scene with Karofsky.

And Quinn is so fucking gorgeous with all the mirrors around her, omg. I want to be her. Also, I love that she doesn’t seem to care much that Finn is there to pick her up. Because her focus is, as it always is, on the goal not the person.

Sam, Mercedes… just back out of the conversation with Rachel and Jesse. I have met people like Jesse. Don’t get sucked in.

Puck and Artie is an underrated friendship and I actually really love it

Quinn telling Finn how happy she is to be there with him right after Rachel sang to him is such a good manipulative move. If she had been in Game of Thrones, she would have won.

Oh, Sam and Mercedes are precious. They are both such good people

Artie’s hair looks amazing

Darren Criss singing one of my favorite songs is legitimately going to kill me. The way he’s dancing with the mic stand? Holding the mic sideways? His expressions? I am deceased.

Also, what a lame fight with Finn and Jesse. Just shoving? C’mon, punch each other like adults.

THE REVEAL. Remember when it was spoiled and everyone thought the spoiler was fake? lol good times, classic Glee. Okay, but I have a lot of thoughts on this. 1. Why did Figgins read out Kurt’s name? If I was the principal, I would have said the name of one of the girls on stage. Kurt did not need to be humiliated like that. 2. Quinn and Santana, I get that it’s upsetting to work that hard, but shut the fuck up. It’s not that you weren’t liked or that people give enough of a shit about Finn and Rachel that they didn’t vote, it’s that they are cruel people who cared more about making fun of Kurt. 3. YAS QUINN. SLAP RACHEL. This shit is so compelling. 4. KURT. BABY. He wants so badly to see the good in the world and they just won’t let that happen for him. And bless Blaine for going after him, for comforting him, for willing to do whatever Kurt wants to do to feel better. May we all have a Blaine in our lives.

Also, Blaine had tissues ready? I have literally never met a man who had tissues in his pocket or whatever. Blaine is a dream.

AND THEN BLAINE ASKS HIM TO DANCE. This man is a dreamboat, I swear. And this is such a big moment for both of them, Kurt being openly loved and Blaine replacing the memory of his last dance. Ugh, I love them so much.

#Glee #audi rewatches Glee #Klaine

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pynkhues · 6 years ago

Note

Say Dean did give her the necklace. Out of all the horrendous things he’s done to her, why would she decide to wear it tho?

Well, assuming that he is the one to give her the new necklace, which Istrongly suspect he is (although I’ve been wrong before!), I think there are afew reasons she’d wear it. And hey! I’ve had five or six asks since 2.08about Beth and Dean’s relationship, history and age gap, which I had a fewdrafts of, so I’m so sorry! I’m going to highjack your ask to combine/answerthem all! Hope that’s okay.

Putting all myheadcanons and theories aside (at least for the first half of this post haha),let’s just talk about what canon has established about Beth and Dean and theirrelationship over the last 18 episodes.

This is like, verylong (seriously 2,800 words), haha, so I’m putting it under a cut to save all your feeds.

The Marks’ Family ValuesWhile 2.08 clarified a few things about the way Beth, Ruby and Annie wereraised, there’s still a lot that we don’t really know, so let’s look at what wedo know:

1. Beth as a youngteenager crashed her mother’s car out the front of Ruby’s house with her kidsister in the passenger seat because there was no food in the house, and theirmother wasn’t getting out of bed. The implication, from Annie’sdialogue “She just really likes it there” is that this is not a new thing.(2.08)

2. Annie was areckless kid and had a broken arm during a time it’s implied she and Beth were neglected.(2.08)

3. “You knowwhat my mama used to say? You get what you get and you don’t get upset.” – Beth(2.01)

4. Beth played pianofor six years after her parents dropped $$s on it, despite changing her mindand wanting to play violin, which on its own I think can be written off as generalchildish indecisiveness, buuuut I think means a little more than that in thecontext of everything else. (1.05)

5. Beth worked heronly legitimate job in highschool at the Dairy Queen. (1.03)

5. Annie used to gethigh and was sexually active in highschool, and had gossip/rumours spread abouther. Their mother came into the school to address it and, it’s implied, madethe situation a lot worse, causing Annie not want to do the same to Sadie with Sadie’sbullies. (1.04)

6. Then Annie gotpregnant in highschool. (mentioned multiple times)

7. Beth has alwaysbeen the one that Annie has called to bail her out of trouble (mentioned a fewtimes).

9. Beth had postpartumdepression with at least one of her children. (2.05)

The Boland Timeline

While we haven’t gottenconfirmed ages of the characters, we do know that Dean is, at the very least, ayear older than Beth, although I think it’s more likely around three yearsgiven the way it’s framed in the episode. SO.

1. Beth meets Dean atschool when she’s either a freshman, sophomore or junior. He’s a senior. It’sat a point in time where we know her mother is bedridden and Beth spends a lotof time looking after Annie (she even took Annie to Ruby’s father’s funeral,which I think says a lot as to how much Beth – and by proxy Ruby – were lookingafter Annie). (2.08)

2. Beth and Dean havebeen married for 20 years during S1, so that puts them likely at gettingmarried when Beth is somewhere between the age of 20-22. (mentioned multipletimes)

3. Somewhere in thistime period, Dean takes over Boland Motors from his father (one of the photosin the screensaver Dean’s looking at in 2.04 looks like it’s from a grandre-opening, and Beth’s holding a baby boy, so it looks like this could bearound the time Kenny or Danny is born) and Beth becomes a stay-at-home motherand a housewife. Dean also has full control of their finances, and Beth is onan allowance that he also controls.

4. Kenny has hiseleventh birthday in S1, so Beth would’ve been in her late twenties when shehad him.

5. We don’t know theage gap between the rest of the kids (and in fact, those age gaps have obviouslychanged between S1 and S2 lol) but it looks like Jane is now the youngest, notEmma, and that Beth and Dean hadn’t had sex in the two years before gettingpregnant with Jane, and then that they hadn’t had sex since she was born until2.06, which seems to be about five or six years. (2.05 / 1.05)

6. Beth had postpartumdepression after at least Emma (it was the specific given reason as to why theyhadn’t had sex in the two years before getting pregnant with Jane), although Ithink the implication is that it was with more of the kids than just her.

7. Somewhere in allof this, Dean had multiple affairs. He says four, but the implication fromAmber is that it’s more than that, and then I think Beth basically confirmsthat when she says “Dean’s slept with half of Detroit” later in the episode.Plus Dean being a pathological liar isn’t exactly a secret. (2.05)

8. Beth finds out hesleeps with Amber in 1.01 and that he’s mortgaged their house three times andthat their savings are gone. She kicks him out, takes control of theirfinances, and robs Fine & Frugal.

9. Dean tries to winher back a few times - first by appealing to her pragmatism (and I’ll beexpanding on this shortly) - by talking about how they’ll both be worse offfinancially if they separate - before telling her that she’s the love of hislife, then by showing up unannounced to mow the backyard (a traditionally malehousehold job), then by using Kenny’s birthday wish that they were backtogether to try and guilt her (another point I’ll be expanding on shortly!)

10. Cut to Kenny’sbirthday party. He implies Beth’s having an affair with Rio (lols for so manyreasons), they fight, Beth insinuates that she’ll be filing for divorce soon(”You’re still my wife” “Yeah, I’ve gotta get on that.”) and Dean drops TheCancer Lie. Beth is obviously upset, and lets him move back in, but he’ssleeping in Kenny’s room. (1.04)

11. Dean doubles down on the cancer lie by bribing a doctor to tell Bethhe has prostate cancer, but he also covers for her when Turnerfinds the Boland Motors car the girls stole from the lot. He then confronts herabout it in a very paternalistic way (”Why don’t you get a job?” “Sit down!”“These people prey on good, innocent people” “I’m sorry I yelled at you, buteverything’s going to be fine. I’ll take care of you.”). Beth plays along inthe moment, but Dean changes the locks without telling her (and also doesn’thelp her bring the grocery bags in which is sooo telling), reveals he’sswitched hours with a guy at work to be around to ‘protect’ her, and Bethfinally stands up for herself “You have no idea what I’ve done or even who Iam”. (1.06)

12. Dean asks her ifshe’s doing it for the kids. She says yes, and he says it’s all he needs toknow. It genuinely seems to comfort her in the moment. It’s one of their fewnice scenes and I think shows what they were like when they were at their verybest. (1.07)

13. Rio shuts down,Beth is back on an allowance. She tries to get a loan, but their credit hasn’trebounded enough and they still have too much debt. Dean solves the problem bymoving the botox via the doctor he bribed. Dean won’t tell Beth how he did it,but she’s grateful enough to end up coming clean about what she does for Rio.They have their second nice moment. “You don’t deserve anything I did toyou.” + “I think you’re incredible.” (1.08)

14. Dean obviouslyfeels like he and Beth are getting back on track, and is annoyed that Annie’sliving with them temporarily. He builds Beth a craft table with hiddencompartments to hide her fake cash! (1.09)

15. Dean tries toorganise something for their anniversary, which Beth doesn’t agree to rightaway, but does later in the episode when he tries to help her after realisingshit’s going down in the crime world. Dean gets into a car accident whilechecking out another woman, Beth finds out he lied about the cancer (like thatgrenade was never going to blow, Deansy), he came home, Rio shoots him to getback at Beth, but not before revealing a certain degree of intimacy and trustbetween the two of them, which Dean clocks instantly. (1.10 / 2.01)

Then Season 2happens, haha.

So let’s talk about Beth & Dean

I’ve said it a fewtimes before, but when it comes to Beth, we’re ultimately watching somebody whohas been disempowered and disenfranchised for a really, really long time tryingto reclaim a sense of identity and control over her life. Even before 2.08, wewere looking at that through the sense of her marriage to Dean where she had noreal independence. Her entire life was dictated by decisions that he made forthem, personally, professional and financially, and a lot of the first half of Season1 was devoted to her realising exactly how many of those decisions had been bad ones. As the series went on, she reallydid start to gain a sense of financial independence (which is incredibly important)as well as a sense of her own identity and agency, only for that to becompletely crippled again across that four episode arc - 1.09 through to 2.02 –firstly by thinking Rio had played her for a fool (the empty truck), then Rio firingher, then realising that Dean hadplayed her for a fool again (thecancer lie), and then her plot to put Rio away falling apart, Dean being shot,and her realising that she was newly indebted to both of them.

I think what 2.08contextualised was that Beth has never really been allowed to explore who sheis, because there’s always been somebody she’s had to look after. She’s alwayshad dependents and she has lived a life of constant compromise, making her incrediblypragmatic and sacrificing of her own needs and wants. The episode establishedthat Beth spent most if not all of her adolescence caring for Annie and theirmother, married young, and then spent her entire young adult life looking afterDean and their four children.

Likely the appeal ofDean was that he was older, gave her attention in a way that seemed to ‘see’ herat a time where her needs were neglected at home, and likely popular – he’s goofyand fun, as the show’s establishedmultiple times, which I think would be more likeable at that teenage age, and Ithink he probably appealed to Beth as a way out of a troubling home situation.At the end of the day, the show has established pretty firmly that Beth is, whenit comes to her and her own, a survivor. And when I say survivor, I don’t meanthe badass, action heroine sort of survivor - I mean the desperate, do-what-she-has-tosort of survivor. She has an uncanny ability to lie and perform to get herselfout of situations, and also a tendency to sacrifice her own happiness for thoseshe loves. I think when it came to Dean, for a very long time, Beth sacrificedpower and control for a security and safety that she hadn’t had growing up,first for herself (and likely in part for Annie too), and then for her fourchildren.

And I think Dean, priorto the start of the series, had never truly been challenged on any of thecontrol that he wrought over their lives. He’s your classic embodiment of whitemale privilege, and I think he has all the baggage that comes with that,including a firm belief in gender roles, a heady sense of entitlement, and asubconscious expectation that things will usually work in his favour. The factthat he started dating Beth when she was so young, that he inherited BolandMotors from his father, and the fact that he blames Beth’s postpartum depressionfor his affairs too I think drasticallyemphasises that. We talk a lot about the power play between Beth and Rio, butBeth and Dean, since 1.01, have been in a power play of their own – Beth in herdesire to break out of their traditional roles, to ‘steer the ship’, and toreally put her family in a more secure position in life (something she realisedDean was incapable of doing), and Dean in his desire to keep them in their traditional roles, to ‘steer the ship’, and tokeep the status quo (I mean, hell, the fact that he was checking out anotherwoman on his way to his anniversary dinner with Beth in 1.10 says a lot about exactly how little he wants things tochange).

In what is typical ofpeople who are nurturers/carers or have been forced into nurturer/carerpositions in their life, Beth also seems to feel guilt to a disproportionatedegree, and in a way that often seems to cancel out any other emotion,including her anger. This is established pretty early in season one in smallways - her snipping with Annie then immediately back pedalling when sherealises Annie might lose custody of Sadie, with not being able to throw Kennythe birthday party he wants, with her telling Dean about what she does for Rioafter Dean offloads the botox, and then reiterated in big ways this season -nursing Dean after he’s been shot, crawling into bed with Kenny after he gotcaught binge eating at school, going above and beyond to get the dubby backafter Jane feels neglected, I’d even argue that the whole situation with MaryPat has partially been fuelled by guilt for putting Mary Pat in that situationin the first place when she’s a widow with four young children.

And I think Dean knows this! He has guilted her so much across the course of this show, often in a way to deflectfrom his own shortcomings or to ultimately playher. He gaslights her all the time,and she often doesn’t even realise it, which demonstrates, to me at least, howoften he’s done it over the course of their 20+ year relationship. The wholething about the cancer lie in the first place was to back her into a corner,which he succeeded in doing. He guilted her about being at Boland Motors andaway from the kids. When Jane went missing, he immediately blamed her and guilted her for her involvement with Rio(instead of………you know……….looking for his daughter), in 2.08, he guilted Beth for checking on her moneybefore untying him after he’d tried to organise a hit on her partner and gottenher robbed blind in the process.

And when the guilt and the manipulation stopped working, he did thething he knew she couldn’t ignore (and that would hurt her the most) which istake the children. Beth is, like I said earlier, a survivor and a sacrificer whenit comes to her and her own. There’s no way she won’t give up everything togive those children what she didn’t have – a mother who she could rely on. I thinkDean’s ultimatum won’t just be about them either. I could be wrong, but I thinkhe’s going to tell her that they have to try again as a couple, and I thinkthat’s what that necklace is going to be about (seriously though, if he givesit to her as a part of the ultimatum, everything about it symbolically is acollar), and she’ll put it on for her children, and I think it’s all honestlygoing to push her over the edge in a really big way before the season’s over.

I’ve mentioned this in other posts, but I think Beth fully was intendingto leave Dean before the cancer lie, but then she needed to care for him(again, a manipulation I think Dean knew would work because of Beth’s historycaring for her mother and Annie), and then the shooting (same reason, plus theadded bonus of her having caused it). Since then, I think she has almostcompletely emotionally divorced him – having sex with Rio, taking over BM,checking on the money first, not letting him back into her bed – is all verytelling of this, and I think she had likely had her pragmatic hat on and waswaiting until she could feasibly balance all the pieces in her life on her ownbefore filing for divorce. Of course, that’s now blown up with Dean holding thechildren essentially hostage.

And look, do I thinkDean loves Beth? I do actually, in his own way. Do I think Beth loves Dean? Ithink she did, but like she said to Ruby – Dean’s not a soulmate for her, oreven a partner. Beth and Dean should’ve maybe briefly dated in highschool andthen broken up, but they’re both in too deep now, and I don’t think anythingshort of a bullet or an arrest is going to easily disentangle them.

#beth x dean #NBC Good Girls #speculation #gg 2.08 #gg 2.09 #welcome to my ama #character backgrounds #timelines #beth boland #dean boland #staying's worse than leaving #gg season 2

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almaasi · 5 years ago

Text

reaction post typed while watching JIBcon videos (part 2 of ?)

Cockles panel

in which Jared is abusive to Misha :C :C :C (and Jensen is maaaaybe angry about Destiel not being canon??? whoa)

previous post HERE

03:51

how long’s it been, 3 days? 4? idk but HI LET’S WATCH MORE

i was 11 minutes in, after 2 hours. oh boy

just rewatching the bit where the fan asks if they can sip the apple juice and i just realised jensen said “no!!” at the same time misha nodded and said “yep”

aaaaand jensen watches misha drink before he licks his lips and drinks too *u*

03:56pm

misha: “supernatural the series will be ending, it’s been announced, but we will be doing a puppet show in jensen’s backyard... for another ten seasons”

i would pay money

misha’s joking but i would pay money

and jensen’s mouthing “oh my gaaahd” at misha bc he did not expect 500 people to cheer that

jensen: “THAT’S BRILLIANT”

yes

yes it is

“no seriously i think we’re gonna do that”

i would legit love that pls do

the apple juice is getting to him already

04:00

fan: “what one thing you won’t miss after it’s done? and don’t say each other, that’s not true”

shoutout to that fan right there looking out for all of us

04:0

misha: “i’m not gonna miss jared and jensen hurting me”

jensen goes all quiet, misha touches his leg

AND THEN MISHA APOLOGISES FOR FONDLING HIM

this is so fucking complex but also probably so simple

on the one hand that touch was automatic, assuring jensen, but also misha’s aware of how that exact kind of touch is not especially consensual in the context of what he’s talking about

they kind of seem to have two separate relationships, the personal/private/convention-performance one... and the on-set one. off set, misha’s in charge and jensen is his princess, but then on-set, misha is a sexually abused puppy

and honestly i don’t know how i feel about this, so i try and figure out how misha feels about it. like... it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t enjoy being hurt, but rarely actually gets upset about it (i.e.: the airplane), and still maintains an apparently consensual, respectful and emotionally intimate relationship with jensen and jared outside of set??? it’s confusing to me and what i’m seeing here isn’t really helping me understand yet

04:12

oop the video finished, time to move to the next one

i’m still torn on this issue

like it’s...... funny, i guess? jared army crawling onto set to hurt misha? BUT ALSO IT’S NOT, and it shouldn’t be, it’s only funny because they apparently find it funny

or at least jensen does, but jensen loves misha the most, so like..........

god i still don’t know

every year i’m still baffled by this

i just want jared to stop hurting misha

those poor inner thighs

part 2!!

JIB10 - Jensen and Jared and Misha panel part2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd8O2-_Akk0&ab_channel=thiniassk

04:16

misha’s now talking about mark (sheppard?) and how mark wants other cast people to make “an environment where people are happy to go to work” the way the spn cast does

back to the thigh pinching though. so misha can quote that with total conviction... so i guess despite the pain he does enjoy it?? maybe he’s just a masochist and likes being hurt, idk...... and yet he says he won’t miss it once it’s over

who knows if i will ever understand this

04:1?

extended eye contact with misha as jensen says “i would’ve loved to have slept in”

UH HUH

04:?5

OH GOD IT’S HAPPENING IT’S HAPPENING THEY’RE LYING ON TOP OF EACH OTHER

in which jensen is being misha and misha is being jared

“yeah you sexy bitch you like this”

????????????????????????????????????????

and then misha pulls jensen up by the hand~

that did not last nearly long enough

ARE YOU KIDDING ME THEY DIDN’T EVEN GET TO RECOVER OR FINISH THE SENTENCE BEFORE EVERYONE ELSE COMES ON STAGE

UGH

EVERY FUCKING TIME

WHEN DO WE NOT GET COCKBLOCKED

OH it’s not even everyone else it’s just jared

does he have internal alarms that go off when jensen and misha are being publicly intimate and he has to show up with a cowbell and a taser

04:30

jensen is definitely tipsy now

04:41

jared: “i was like ‘shut up bitch’ and you were like ‘yeah, hit me’

jensen facepalms and misha mouths “no i didn’t”

?????

jared is such a wildcard in this dynamic

on the one hand they’re advertising themselves as the model set relationship, and there’s obviously love between them, but on the other hand they’re all being abused by jared

i’m so perplexed

04:35

https://youtu.be/dd8O2-_Akk0

misha to jensen: “do you... you wanna tell your... your dream?”

jensen shakes head “nope”

jared: “whoa!! this just got really romantic” (backs up)

(thank you jared for trying to keep out of this, i guess)

04:44

i just took a lil break and i’m back now

i thought a bit about what i’ve watched so far today and compared it to the first part of the panel that i watched last time, and i’m trying to figure out if the energy is different because i’m in a different mood or whether it actually changed around the same point i paused last time, around the 11 minute mark. the first part of this was flirty and silly and fun, and then that vibe kind of plummeted... i guess it was because they started talking immediately about the abuse on set

but yeah, no, just typing that made me realise i’m right, the energy did change. misha mellowed out and jensen followed suit. despite getting tipsy and being more open to shaking his ass, he and misha remained subdued

like.. jensen clearly finds the abuse hilarious but i don’t think misha does. he loves jared and jensen both but i think there is legit pain there. people can be both abusive and loving, you know? jared’s awful but also nice, and i guess i enjoy his obvious outward support for jensen and misha’s romantic relationship, but i’ve always found it harder to appreciate him, compared to the effortless love i have for misha.

misha always, ALWAYS demonstrates that it’s absolutely possible to be dominant without hurting or demeaning people, and jared is just... not like that.

and yeah this upsets me enough that i’m now blurry-eyed with tears while typing this

it’s been kind of hard to enjoy this part of the video and i needed a moment away to figure out why

my favourite jibcon will always be the one where jensen leaned in to kiss misha. he was upset and misha went to comfort him, and supported him the whole time. i was thinking the other day how that energy was fresh. like they’d only just begun a sexual/romantic relationship in real life, or were about to and were eager for it. and this time it’s clearly been years and they’re more comfortable with their attraction.

but like.

yeah i’m disappointed that jared is on stage now. i can’t help it, i always am. his presence just seems especially upsetting after everything misha’s told us

i’m in no way saying they’re not friends, because they are, and i can’t doubt that they’ll be friends for the rest of their lives, happily and comfortably, but at the same time i will never be able to deny that jared is abusive. he violates consent in every possible way and just because it’s funny doesn’t mean it’s okay. these three spin the stories to make us laugh, but truly, under all of it, i find it upsetting.

someone’s always gonna say “but misha’s fine, he can take it”

but abused people can be fine, because they tend to be the strongest people, yet that doesn’t make the abuse okay. he’s not agreeing to it, he’s showing up for work each day because he has an obligation to and a family to feed. and he does love working there, and the people he works with, DESPITE the abuse.

i just. i don’t want people watching this to ever think that it’s okay for friends to hurt you. it’s possible to be bullied by friends. in fact that seems most likely in my own past. you may still be their friend, and your love for them may be warranted, and understandable, because they are lovable, but that doesn’t make their actions okay

anyway

05:05pm

misha: “are you wearing a t-shirt that says destiel is real?”

jensen’s hand ZOOMs to him i.e. “stop talking”

also he tied the pocket scarf around his neck and it looks good

I LOVE THAT EVERYONE CHEERS

omg remember when people would boo

THIS IS BETTER

is jensen like........ pumping for more cheers or being sarcastic? can’t tell, it’s kind of both

and then jensen just goes “DESTIEL IS REAL”

his tone is like.........forceful joking? but also he just SAID it ???

jensen: “is it? is it??”

crowd: “yes no yesss noo”

https://youtu.be/dd8O2-_Akk0?t=12m59s

jensen: “where? where is it real?”

misha: (pulls jensen down) “don’t get in a fight with people, honey”

HONEY. HE DID JUST SAY HONEY RIGHT?? HE SAID HONEY.

me: wrote a fic called He Called Me Honey

OMG.

misha is the best and will always be the best and his support is the best and i love him more than words can say

05:13

k but

i think people’s claims that the destiel thing annoys jensen do have truth to them. his middle finger is on the mic, he’s PISSED.

but ........

honestly i don’t think it’s for the obvious reason. right now, *tilts head*.... looking at this, i think he’s actually more annoyed that destiel is not canonically canon. from what he sees, people are seeing something that’s “not there”, because despite him acting, he can’t hide his attraction to misha. and it’s still the old stuff from season 4 and 5 that put down the basis for all this, when he didn’t realise his pupils were dilating in the first few weeks with misha. and the storyline pushed them together.

theory: jensen’s annoyed about the destiel thing because it’s not as canon as he wants it to be.

maybe.

just........ the way he reacts to destiel stuff out of panels seems way more supportive. he’s just currently feeling attacked by the disparity of opinion in the room, everyone yelling about their take on it, whereas his question was legitimate: “where are you guys seeing the romance?” because (despite his best efforts?) dean still hasn’t kissed cas on screen.

deleted scenes = deleted destiel. i’m still 80% convinced when cas came back from the empty, there was a shot where dean kissed him. and it wasn’t used. (i have no proof. this is a theory. just with the setup to the scene, and the way jensen flirts with misha on set, i refuse to believe there wasn’t a kiss shot at some point. even if jensen was messing around for giggles. he knows what’s up, deep down.)

anyway, my point is, i don’t think jensen understands the romantic subtext. i think he understands physical touching, spoken words, kisses. and he hasn’t seen that in the show. i think he absolutely acts dean as being best friends with cas, but the subtextual romance comes from the writers, editors, and people picking up on jensen’s unconscious attraction.

but jensen has not seen what he would interpret as Romance in the show. and i think he’s miffed that other people see it, because in his interpretation that means it’s actor bleed. i think he just doesn’t get it. not saying he hasn’t studied subtext and stuff, as a director, but i think for him personally, romance is romance when it’s seen (hence him touching cas a lot more when he directs). and any bold choices he’s made as dean interacting with cas have been hidden away by the producers.

again, this is all theory, my take on it. the other theory is that he doesn’t support destiel and doesn’t like talking about it at all. but THAT IS NOT TRUE and if anything, *THIS* and *THIS* prove that

05:50pm

k well those links just took me 20 minutes to find, and i still can’t find the version with the actual fanart. it was sunshine yellow, dean and cas were naked in towels, drinking coffee, and dean has a boner under his towel, and jensen drew a speech bubble saying “who the fuck are you?”

but yeah i think i gotta stop for today. I WILL BE BACK. maybe tomorrow, maybe in a few days. still got 4 minutes of this panel and then jensen & misha’s solo panels to watch. and i wanna get all my reaction posts up before the ‘good omens’ series drops at the end of may!! because maybe i’mma post reactions to those on tumblr too c:

hope you’re all having a decent day <3

Elmie x

#Cockles #Jensen Ackles #Misha Collins #Elmie watches things #jibcon #post of postiness #shipper!Jared #shenanigans #abuse cw #J2M #Jared Padalecki

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forhelvede · 5 years ago

Text

Where the Storm Meets the Ground Ch. 6

In which I try my hand at cutesy stuff.

Chapter 6- The Promise

The drive to the hospital took forever. Or at least, that’s how it felt to Laurie. She held onto Alexei’s hands as tightly as she could without breaking it and found comfort in the knowledge that he was still holding onto her, still looking into her eyes as he fought to stay awake.

Joyce sped through the parking lot and pulling to a screeching stop in front of the emergency room door. Murray pushed opened the car door and ran to find a doctor while Jim helped Laurie carefully get Alexei out of the backseat.

They helped the hurt man up to the door where they were met by a nurse with a stretcher. Jim grabs Alexei’s legs as the man sits on the stretcher. Jim swings his legs up on the stretcher and backs off as the nurse and another doctor start to push it inside. Laurie turns to the trio.

“You three go. I’ll stay with Alexei,” Laurie ordered.

“Lore, Murray should stay,” Jim argued.

Laurie shook her head. “I’m FBI. I can translate and I’ll keep an eye on him and make sure no more Russians come for him. He told Murray everything you need to know, so Murray goes with you. Now go! You don’t have time for this!” she yelled. She gave Jim a quick hug and then headed off into the hospital after Alexei.

She caught up with the nurse and doctor, who had already cut off Alexei’s shirt and were starting to put an IV in. “I’m Special Agent Laurie Miller. He doesn’t speak English,” she explained as they tried to talk to Alexei and ask him what happened. Laurie pulled out her badge to show them. “I’m with the FBI. This man is.... he’s my partner. He was shot twice in the heart, but was wearing a vest.”

The Doctor nodded. “Tell him we’ll take care of him. We’re going to have to take him into surgery to stop the bleeding.”

Laurie leaned over Alexei’s face. “You’re going to be okay. Just be calm. I’ll see you when you get out. I’ll be here,” she whispered, gently caressing his forehead again.

“Promise?” he asked, staring up at her weakly.

“I Promise, Alyosha.” She kissed his forehead and then stepped back, tears pricking her eyes as they wheeled him away to take him to surgery.

Laurie quietly followed a nurse to the waiting room. She took a seat and began impatiently waiting. She worried about Alexei and she worried about Jim. What if the trio weren’t able to get into the bunker? What if they did need her help?

Unable to sit still, Laurie stood and began to pace around the waiting room, wringing her hands together. She was normally a fairly calm person. She had been in a shootout before and kept her cool.

So why was she so freaked out about Alexei? She barely knew the guy.

And yet she was here, pacing a hospital waiting room, terrified she might never see the young Russian man again.

Taking a deep breath, Laurie sat down again and putting her heads between her knees, she took several more deep breaths and let them out. After a few minutes of this, she felt calmer. Her heart beat slowed back to normal and head became clear again.

Jim could be trusted. Murray…probably in this case was going to do what he had to. Everything was going to be okay. And Alexei was going to live.

He was. He had to.

Laurie suddenly realized she hadn’t called in to her boss all day. Dreading it, but knowing it had to be done, she headed for a payphone and dialed her boss back in St. Louis. Adam James was a bitch of a human being, but who in his position wasn’t? Laurie didn’t know a single department head in the FBI that was nice.

“Do you fucking know what time it is?” he cussed once she identified herself.

“I’m very aware, sir. But I haven’t called in…”

“No, you fucking haven’t. You better have a fucking good reason why.”

“It’s been a very quick series of events and lots of driving.” Laurie took a deep breath and began explaining, starting with arriving at Murray’s and finding Alexei and getting all the way up to Alexei getting shot. She left out some of the weird stuff regarding another dimension. Adam, to his credit, listened quietly to the entire story.

“And you promised him he could be a citizen if he helped?”

“I promised him I’d help him defect if he helped, which he did.”

“Sounds like he got himself shot to me.”

An uncomfortable feeling grew in Laurie’s gut. She gulped nervously. “If he hadn’t given Chief Hopper the information, they wouldn’t have even known there was a secret Russian bunker underneath the fucking mall in Hawkins!” Laurie knew getting angry wouldn’t help, but God damn if she wasn’t going to fight for Alexei. He had helped.

“Don’t you fucking yell at me, Miller. You’re on thin fucking ice.”

Gritting her teeth and grimacing as much as she could without causing herself physical pain, Laurie held the phone away from her face and silently grumbled at the pay phone. She took a deep breath and then brought the phone back to her ear. “Sorry, sir. What I mean, is that Dr. Alexei has provided us with priceless information that has led to uncovering a dangerous Russian mission here on U.S. soil.”

“And is the fucking Hawkins Police Department the only law enforcement involved in this?” he questioned.

“No, sir.” Laurie grimaced again, knowing what was coming next. “The Department of Energy is also involved?”

“The Department of-…are you fucking kidding me? You disturbed me at eleven o’clock on fucking Fourth of July to tell me that the fucking Department of Energy and Hawkins fucking Police Department are fucking uncovering a goddamn Russian plot to infiltrate and destroy our country?”

Well, when you say it that way…, Laurie thought. “Um, I suppose so, sir. The FBI was also involved, too, you know…because of me. But yes…the Department of Energy.” She went quiet as her boss began screaming nonsense on the other end of the phone.

She was definitely not getting a promotion.

“Who-the fuck- at the Department of Energy is involved in this shit show, exactly? Or do you not know that?”

“That would be Dr. Sam Owens, sir.”

Adam breathed heavily, and quite angrily, into the phone. “I want you back in St. Louis first thing in the morning and I want that Russian deported. Call the Indy office now and let them know.”

“Sir!” Laurie protested.

“This is bullshit, Miller. None of this sounds legitimate. You are being played. Congratulations.” He went quiet for a moment as the anger and embarrassment began to fill Laurie. “I thought you were a better agent than this.”

A dial tone quickly followed his insult. Laurie stood there for a moment with the phone still at her ear, the familiar horrible feeling of sadness that was welling up in her chest. With a sob, Laurie slammed the phone back on the receiver and went back to where she was sitting.

This was why she hadn’t called anyone earlier. There was no way that the FBI would believe any of this was happening and they wouldn’t have acted soon enough.

If she didn’t go back to St. Louis in the morning, if she didn’t contact the Indianapolis FBI to tell them to get Alexei deported, she would most certainly not get the promotion and she very well might get fired. If she tried to wait to get information from this Dr. Owens, to get proof, she would likely still get in trouble at work.

What was she supposed to do? The FBI had been her life for fourteen years. What would she do if she lost her job or got demoted? A few more years and she could retire.

But Alexei…

If she had the FBI deport him, Alexei was certainly dead. The Russian government had already tried to kill him once. He needed to be protected.

He needed to stay.

“FUCK!” Laurie yelled, standing up from the seat to scream down at the floor.

“Excuse me!” A receptionist snapped at Laurie. “This is a quiet place!”

She threw her hands up at the woman and sat back down, putting her head in her hands. This was an impossible situation. Potentially lose her job (or worse. What if Adam accused her of working with the Russians?) or get Alexei killed.

What a choice.

Laurie crossed her arms and leaned her head back, squeezing her eyes shut. Before she knew it, she had nodded off, waking suddenly when someone lightly touched her arm. Laurie startled, grabbing the arm of the person who had touched her.

“Sorry,” she apologized when she realized it was just the doctor.

He frowned, but nodded. “Your friend is out of surgery and he’s doing well. Part of his sternum broke off with the force of the bullets and embedded into this heart, causing the internal bleeding you saw. Luckily, it wasn’t in there too far and we were able to remove the broken bone pieces, stop the bleeding, and seal it all up. We’ll want to keep him for a few days, but he should be okay.”

Laurie let out a breath that she didn’t realize she was holding. “Thank you. Can I see him?”

The Doctor nodded and gestured for her to follow him. Laurie walked down the white hospital halls, her mind still trying to come out with a way she could keep Alexei in the country and keep her job.

They finally came to the room that Alexei was in and Laurie stood in the doorway, taking a few deep breaths. There was no reason she had to tell Alexei anything right now.

The Russian was still unconscious, unsurprisingly. Laurie walked up to the side of the bed and took his hand in her own, squeezing gently. She stared down at his face. He looked different without his glasses. He was still handsome, for sure, but the boyish charm was missing. There was some more mature about him without the glasses. Something harder now.

She didn’t like it.

Laurie found his glasses on the side table and quickly put them on.

There. That was Alexei.

With her free hand, Laurie reached up and ran her hands through his hair. After watching him for a minute, she reluctantly pulled her hands away from him. She grabbed the nearby chair and pulled it right up to the bed. Grabbing his hand once again, Laurie then laid her head on the bed next to his arm, closed her eyes, and drifted off again.

Her dreams were not good.

She dreamt that Alexei had never put on the vest and that she had found him, after wandering a packed fair for what felt like hours, bleeding on the ground, everyone just wandering around him, ignoring him. And no matter how hard she fought through the crowd, she could never get to Alexei. Never touch him.

Never save him.

Once again, Laurie jerked awake. She checked all of Alexei’s machines, making sure he was still alive and breathing, before she sighed in relief. He was okay.

She stood up again, unable to stop herself, and leaned over Alexei to kiss his forehead, tears welling up in her eyes.

How could she possibly choose her job over him? She had only known him for a day and yet the idea of being selfish and saving her job made her feel like a traitor.

“Why do you cry, lyubimaya?” a croaky voice asked. She felt a weak hand touch her head and Laurie gasped as she moved back from Alexei’s face.

“Alyosha!” she called out, tears now spilling down her cheeks. “You’re awake!” She pressed soft kisses all over his forehead and cheeks.

“I am fine?” he said. Laurie wasn’t entirely sure it was a question or a statement.

“The Doctor said your sternum was broken and some pieces went into your heart, so there was bleeding, but it’s okay now! You’re going to be fine,” she said, lowering her voice as she realized she was almost yelling into the poor man’s face.

Alexei smiled up at her, though slightly weakly, which made her smile even bigger. “You stayed.” He ran a finger down the side of her face.

“I promised,” she whispered as she leaned down over him, their noses touching, lips just inches apart. “I promised.”

#Stranger Things Season 3 #Alexei #Dr Alexei #Dr. Alexei #Jim Hopper #joyce byers #Murray Bauman #Where the Storm Meets the Ground Fanfic #Fanfic #ST 3

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