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thyme-in-a-bubble · 2 years ago

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orchid

a/n: thought about splitting this one up into multiple parts, but no, you're just getting one big fic. yet again, just a daydream I had that I scribbled down, just vibes, nothing fancy. also the tiny apartment she lives in, that's just where I lived a year ago. like a ghost in the attic (also also also, I almost exclusively worked on this in the middle of the night, so if it’s not up to par with the rest of my works, I do sincerely apologise)

update: i will not write a part 2 for this story so please stop asking me! you are giving me a stomach ache

summary: “Alright, so even though I’m not, why is it that it would be such a bad thing if I theoretically had a thing for him?”

warnings: Sirius Black x reader, modern!au, college!au, starving artist!reader, posh boy Sirius, very light enemies to lovers energy, probably extremely inaccurate country club, reader works at the country club, playing 20 questions, kissing, sexual comments and references but no actual smut in this one, alcohol consumption, a little bit of light B & E as a cute date, small tolkien reference, open ending (kinda)

word count: 6023

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“All right, listen up folks,” bellowed the short snappy figure of your boss, “it’s gonna get a lot busier starting today since a lot of the member's kids are coming home on break from boarding school and university and whatnot, so that means not only will there be more people to keep happy but also a lot of stressed-out parents who await the luxury that they are paying for. I expect you all to be on you’re A-game, is that clear?”

“Yes, Mr Barrett,” echoed throughout the room like a choir.

“Good. Now get back to work everyone!”

Just as the herd started to thin, Mr Barrett waved you over before you had a chance to slip out, ��Y/l/n!”

Watching your work friends duck out before he could call upon them as well, you gave in to the newly formed reflex and said, “yes sir?”

Not lifting his eyes as you stepped closer, he kept them glued to the clipboard in his hand and ordered, “go restock all the bars.”

“Um, why? Didn’t Tim just do it last Monday?”

“He did,” Mr Barrett finally glance up at you and explained sternly, clearly already being over this conversation, “and now I’m telling you to go do it again. Look, these folks' kids are coming home. So, trust me when I tell you that it needs to be fully stocked.”

“Alright,” you exhaled and scurried out at the irked wave of his hand.

You hadn’t been working here at the Millington club for that long, but even when you consider the fact that you had to mosey up to a bunch of insufferable rich folk, the paycheck was still a lot better than any other place you’d ever worked at, consequently making it tolerable.

Now balancing a heavy cardboard box jam-packed with various clanking liquor bottles, you made your way through the glamorous halls of the club, first making your way down towards the east side lounge. Glancing down at the clinking flasks, you couldn’t even begin to calculate how many months of rent you would have to give for even just one of these lavish drinks.

As you entered the posh sitting room and made your way over towards the bar, a collection of rowdy voices caught your ear.

“No way, I don’t believe it.”

“No, I’m telling you, mate,” you sat the box down on the marble countertop and glanced over to spot the young raven-haired man answering his friends, “it’s true, right there in the library.”

“What genre was it in?” one of the two young men asked. They were all three spread out on a few small queen Anne couches, clustered in the corner, as if they owned the whole establishment, “biography? That corner’s pretty private…”

“Um, I was a little too preoccupied to notice,” the cocky boy scoffed, “you know, with my head being all the way under her skirt and all.”

Kicking his feet up onto the mahogany coffee table in the middle, the bespeckled one in the group chuckled, “only you mister I lost my virginity in a threesome could just casually have that happen to him on a Tuesday afternoon.”

“Who was it with anyway?” the other one asked.

Furrowing his brows, the man in the centre of the story genuinely didn’t seem to remember, “I think her name was Emma? Something like that.”

“Didn't your mother tell you it’s creepy to stare?” you flinched at the sudden and sneaky arrival of your co-worker’s familiar voice, uttering directly into your ear.

“Jesus fuck, Lucy! Don’t scare a girl like that! I could have dropped one of these,” you held up the expensive bottles in hand, then swiftly went back to putting them away.

“Please don’t tell me you have a thing for him,” she ignored your annoyance, crossing her arms.

“What?” was she referring to the brash handsome man you couldn’t rip your eyes away from just a second ago? “No! I don’t even know who he is.”

“Wait, you don’t know who that is?

“No.”

“Seriously?”

“Nope.”

“That’s Sirius Black,” she told you as if the name alone was common knowledge, but then continued as the lightbulb over your head clearly didn’t turn on, “Orion Black’s oldest son?” still nothing, she tried one last time, “as in the Black automobile company? That super old posh one?”

“…the one that the royal family drives around in?”

“Ding, ding, ding!” she threw up her arms and continued to look at you as if you were an idiot.

“Alright, so even though I’m not, why is it that it would be such a bad thing if I theoretically had a thing for him?”

“Because that man right there, gorgeous as he might be, is the biggest playboy on the planet. He doesn’t even know what the definition of a relationship is, let alone love. Y/n, I know you. You, my wonderful friend, is a relationship type of girl, not a casual sleep-around like it’s nothing type of girl. So, trust me when I say, don’t go there.”

“I wasn’t gonna!” you said defensively as she finally turned around and left you to your work.

Bending down to open up a small cabinet, you kneeled on the polished hardwood floor and scurried to finish your work of restocking the bar.

“Hey love,” you heard after only a minute had passed. Glancing up, you saw the very same man you had been so fixated upon earlier, casually leaning his forearm against the counter. He looked like he could have just stepped out of a ralph lauren ad with how impeccable his clothes were.

Shooting up, nearly bumping your head on the way, you felt your heartbeat pick up as his dark eyes bored into you, “hi! Can I help you with anything?”

“Me and my mates over there were just about to go do something a little more fun than what this snooze fest has to offer,” he gesticulated, then added rather smoothly, “you look like you could use some fun, you should join us.”

“Sir, I can’t just leave,” you cocked your head, “I’m in the middle of my shift.”

“So, when do you get off?” he asked, but then as you simply averted your gaze, scrambling for a polite way to untangle yourself from this mess, he pushed, “oh, come on, I know you want to.”

Keeping your eyes low, you shook your head, “I’m not really supposed to socialise with members.”

“Ah,” he leaned in a little closer, lowering himself to your eye level, “you’re a real good girl, aren’t you?”

Eyes growing wide at his suggestive word choice, you blushed, “e-excuse me, sir?”

“I noticed the way you were looking at me,” his studying gaze didn’t waver for a second.

“Oh, that wasn’t-“

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell if you won’t.” He then leaned in even closer, “hey,” nearly whispering into your ear and effectively sending shivers down your spine, “if it fits your schedule better, we could just go into the billiard room right now…”

“Why would we-“

“My friends can stand by the door if you’re nervous,” he interrupted once more, reaching up to push a lock of your hair behind your ear, “no one will bother us, promise.”

Completely stunned by his bold proposal, it took you a few seconds to decline, “sir. I-… I’m gonna go back to work now…” then slowly picked up the now empty cardboard box and exited the room, leaving Sirius alone to pick up the pieces.

“She’s new… I want her.”

That was all Sirius had uttered to his friends before making his way over to hit on the new girl, occupied restocking the bar.

Now standing there, alone and blinking hard, not understanding why his usual charm hadn’t worked on you, he heard his friends come up behind him.

“How did it go? You meeting her in the bathroom or what?”

“She turned me down…” he was still frozen, staring out the door you’d disappeared through, with a stunned smile on his lips and a determent glint in his eyes. His words didn’t sound unhappy, simply surprised and even a little amused.

“That’s nice, good for your health to be turned down by a pretty face such as hers. Also means you are in fact human after all,” Remus pulled out his box of cigarettes and swiftly tugged one into the corner of his lips to lite it, “so, that’s nice to know…” noticing the look in Sirius’s eye, “come on,” he wrapped an arm around his neck, “we’ll just go out tonight. Get you nice and pussy drunk. That’ll make you forget her in no time, promise.”

“Funny seeing you here,” you didn’t even bother to look up as the slightly familiar voice found your ears.

“Yeah,” you kept your eyes on the list in your hand just a little longer, “it’s almost like I work here or something.”

Finally glancing up, you met the intoxicatingly dark eyes of none other than Sirius Black, “you’re funny…”

“So,” you started moving along, not letting his bugging hold you back from executing your work, “is there anything I can do for you, sir?”

His long legs made it a piece of cake for him to follow along with you, “go out with me.”

Stopping your stride, you sighed, “Mr Black-”

“Please, call me Sirius,” he interrupted you with all the charm in the world.

“Mr Black, excuse me for being blunt but when will you get the hint?”

“Y/n, hey!”

This dude really doesn’t quit.

“You know my name now,” you couldn’t stop your eyes from rolling even if you wanted to.

“Yeah, well I asked around a bit about you. That was just one of the many tantalising facts I learned about you,” he winked, and you tried your best to ignore the butterflies that cheap trick had successfully sent fluttering throughout your stomach.

Moving to leave the room, he swiftly blocked the door, making you see nothing but his annoying smirk, “seriously dude, what will it take for you to just leave me alone?”

“Go out with me,” he shrugged lightly and crossed his arms.

“No.”

“Why not?”

Feeling like you might explode if he didn’t get out of the way, you exclaimed, “because I’m not I’m not gonna sleep with you!” your eyes grew a bit wider at the proclamation you’d let slip out.

“Oh really?” he simply smiled, clearly just taking it as another challenge.

Squeezing your eyes shut, you hoped that the conversation would get less uncomfortable if you couldn’t see his jaw-dropping visage anymore, “yeah, I’ve heard what people say about you.”

Completely loving it, he clearly took that as a good thing, “really?”

“Yeah, well it’s like a fucking ghost story around here, so I didn’t have much of a choice. You’re just that kind of guy and that’s fine! But you just need to know, all that charm, it won’t work on me, so you might as well just turn around now. I am not just gonna be another notch in your belt, another hot new little thing for you to pass the time with, okay?”

Eyes still shut, you thought for a second he had left with how long he took to answer you, “okay, fine.”

“Fine?” you finally blinked your eyes open.

“Fine,” he smiled, “I won’t sleep with you.”

“Great!” you threw up your arms and moved to exit the room, though he stepped in front of you again, leaning down to be at your height.

“I mean, it’s probably gonna be really hard for you to resist after the date I’ve got planned out, but sure, if you don’t want to.”

Gnawing the corner of your bottom lip for but a moment, you gave out, “if I say yes to go on a date with you, one date, will you leave me alone?”

Face only inches from your own, his smile grew wider as he agreed, “deal.”

“Mr Black! Welcome back, sir,” not only the security guard but also an older gentleman in a crisp suit had greeted you both at the entrance of the unusually vacated museum, “enjoy your evening.”

“Thank you, Henderson,” Sirius politely shook his hand before planting it on the small of your back, guiding you further inside.

Glaring up at him as if he was an alien, he finally questioned your gaze, “what?”

“What are we doing in here?” you spoke in a near whisper, “the museum closed like 2 hours ago.”

“Yeah, well,” he shrugged, climbing the big stone steps that lead up towards the first exhibit, “my family’s a big donator to this place, so I just pulled a few strings.”

Fighting the urge to roll your eyes, you simply followed him into the first breathtaking room and breathed out, “okay…”

Even if the company was somewhat challenging, you couldn’t deny how the beauty hung up all around you made the evening at least tolerable. Your little art heart was too weak not to swoon at the sight of all the impressionistic pieces that were on display in this season's unique exhibit. Iconic pieces you could have only dreamed about studying this close.

After a surprisingly long while where Sirius miraculously shut up and simply let you roam and relish in the paintings, you took a deep breath and decided to actually make the smallest of efforts to test if your companion did in fact have any more depth than a teaspoon.

“So,” you started as he settled in beside you, his dark eyes washing over the landscape in front of you, “you’re home from uni for a bit?”

“Yep,” he buried his hands in the pockets of his black trousers, “oxford.”

You felt so strong for not just bolting in the opposite direction. “You’re an oxford man?” you scoffed, “should have figured…”

“Like my father was and his father before him,” he added rather coldly, sounding like this was a rehearsed reply that pained him to recite.

“What do you study?”

“Business,” he kept his answer short.

“Oh yeah?” you glanced over, trying to break through and see if his outsides matched his insides, “is it fun?”

Brows furrowing, he turned to meet your gaze, “what does that have to do with it?”

“You don’t enjoy your major?”

“It’s just,” he inhaled deeply, uncomfortably trying to end this specific chat, “school, you know?”

“No, I actually don’t,” you informed him, slowly moving towards the next painting.

“No?” he followed.

“I don’t go to school,” you informed.

“You don’t?”

“No.”

“Oh, okay…” he averted his gaze, but still felt the need to explain his confusion, “I knew you liked art, so I just kinda assumed that you went to school for that or something…”

“Why bother paying a ridiculous amount of money in order to learn about something that I’m already really good at? No one is gonna deny me the right to create art just because I don’t have some fancy degree in it. If it’s a masterpiece, then it’s a masterpiece.”

“Yeah, I guess so…” you could tell how foreign your words were to him, “so that’s what you do for a living? You paint?”

“It doesn’t pay the bills, but that’s not really the point now is it?” you reflected with a small smile, “just because it’s what I do doesn’t mean I earn a large profit from it, if any at all.”

For a moment, he just went quiet, staring at the many paintings with a slightly glossed-over look in his eyes. You were trying to catch his glances, read what it was that was going on inside that head of his, but your timid attempt at finding a new topic to blossom suddenly became the most effortless task in the world the second that he casually rolled his sleeves all the way up to his elbows.

“Wait, you have tattoos?” tumbled out of you as soon as you spotted the ink.

“Yeah,” he gave a small shrug.

“How did I not know that?” you asked, sounding genuinely interested.

“Guess my pretty face was just a bit too distracting for you to notice,” he winked, regaining a bit of his usual confidence, “do you have any?”

“Yeah, a few. Though they’re just some stick-and-poke ones one of my friends gave me.”

“Aw, my first tattoo was a stick-and-poke one! I was 15 and it was at boarding school in the bathroom,” he remembered fondly.

“Oh yeah? Your parents must have loved that,” you chuckled.

“Oh, they don’t know.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, well, clothing can hide a lot and they only really see me a handful of days out of the year anyways, so… what they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

Maybe he wasn’t so terrible after all… After finding a sliver of common ground, the rest of the conversation just flowed after that, making the remainder of the evening not just tolerable, but even enjoyable.

Nearing the end of the tour, you felt his shoulder lightly bump yours, “you like it?” ripping you out of the trance the art piece in front of you had induced.

“I mean, it’s a Monet,” you gestured towards it, finding his question a bit silly, “I think it’s physically impossible not to like it.”

“Darling, I wasn’t talking about the painting,” he clarified, smiling warmly down at you.

“Oh,” you looked up at him and couldn’t help but be blatantly honest, even if it meant that you had been wrong, “yeah, I guess it wasn’t half bad…” then cast your vision back on the painted pond and added as casually as you could muster, “but we are so not doing anything like this next time.”

“Next time?”

“I swear to god,” you sighed, shutting your eyes, “if you don’t shut up in less than two seconds, I won’t hesitate to change my mind. You were just starting to grow on me.”

“Yes, ma’am, wouldn’t dream of it, I’m just standing here, looking at the art,” you heard him smile and peeped your eyes open to find him boldly still staring at you.

“You sure we’re allowed to be up here?” Sirius asked, following you up the last bit of the clinking metal staircase in the seemingly abandoned factory you’d without context dragged him into.

“Oh, don’t tell me that you're scared,” you playfully glanced over your shoulder at him, “doesn’t your daddy’s lawyer always bail you out of all the shady fun you and your friends get into?”

“Who exactly do you think we are?” he scoffed lightly, though didn’t deny your claim.

“So, you’ve never committed a petty crime before? A party animal like you?”

“I have never done anything wrong in my entire life,” he shot back sarcastically.

“Right you haven’t,” you chuckled, trying without success to bust open the rusty door, putting all your weight into it, “give me a hand, would you?” you requested breathlessly, his frame quickly following your command, stepping right up beside you, readying his shoulder and waiting for your go, “okay, one, two, three!” you both gave it a big shove, making it fly open and reveal not only the factory’s small, flat rooftop but also the most breathtaking view of the city’s skyline and the rabidly disappearing sun.

Seemingly not impressed by the dingy surroundings, Sirius grumbled, “now do I get to know what we are doing tonight?”

“No sense of adventure…” you sighed teasingly, “I’m not telling you, you’ll have to find out yourself,” you sauntered over towards the small ledge by the section of the roof that sunk down a bit and had a bunch of vents and things. Taking a seat, you gestured to the cold concrete beside you and said, “now, sit.”

“You want me to sit?” he eyed the dirty surface mistrustingly.

“Yeah,” you smiled, patting the spot with your fingers, “come on, you can sit on my jacket if you’re such a wuss.”

“Oh my god, fine, I’ll sit down,” he moved towards you, “just keep your jacket. Don’t want you to freeze to death.”

“You don’t? That’s reassuring to know,” you jested as he carefully took a seat beside you, dangling his long legs over the edge.

“So… this is your big plan?” he asked, completely unimpressed, “sit on a filthy rooftop together?”

“Don’t mock when you don’t even know what it is yet,” you raised a defensive hand and then proposed confidently, “now, ask me a question.”

Furrowing his dark brows, he bit his lip in order not to stifle a laugh, “a question?”

“Yeah, you’ve got 20, so use them wisely,” you explained the childish game.

“Oh my god…” he groaned as he caught on, although still played along, “okay, is it a thing?”

“Yes.”

His pristine hair blew in the wind as his eyes scanned the city below for clues, “is it big?”

“No.”

“Am I physically close to it?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see it?”

“No.”

“Okay, so it’s small and close by, but I can’t see it…” he recited underneath his breath, “is it, fuck, I don’t know,” he grumbled, both completely over the game yet also way too invested to just quit immediately, “your phone in your pocket?”

“Good one, but no!”

“Fuck, I don’t know! Am I even close?”

“You are closer than you might think.”

“Can I just get a little bit more of a hint?” he pouted in your direction.

“Fine, it is within a meter of you.”

Head whipping around confused, “um, that’s literally just you. Is it you? Are you really calling yourself a thing right now?”

“No!” you snapped, slightly offended that he’d even think that, “just use your imagination for fuck sake. Don’t they teach you that at boarding school and fancy universities?”

Letting out a long exhale, he just kinda zones out a moment, genially scrambling for the answer and scanning every visible inch of you. “…I truly don’t know,” he then squinted his eyes at you, “was this some sort of test? Did I fail it?”

“No, calm down,” you pulled your backpack around to the front, ripping the biggest compartment open and fishing out a bottle of bargain beer for the both of you, “here,” you handed him one.

“What is this, a price for losing?”

“No, that was the thing,” you placed the corner of the bottle’s cap up against the hard edge below you and gave it a swift tap, effectively popping it off and sending a lava flow of bubbles soaring down the dark glass and soaking your hand.

“This was it?” he hesitated, but eventually mimicked your manoeuvre to open the lacklustre beverage.

“Yep,” making the last letter pop as you raised the bottle up towards your lips.

“You’re terrible at twenty questions,” he chuckled, taking a small sip.

“You’re the one who couldn’t figure the answer out!”

“Yeah, because there was no way I was ever going to be able to figure that out! You can’t just be like Bilbo and ask for a person to guess what’s in your pocket, it has to be something the other person would be able to figure out.”

“That’s never how I played it, but if you wanna go again, play by your rules, then go right ahead, I’ll guess this time.”

After the last of the beers, you’d brought with you were a thing of the past, after several rounds of that child-like play had flown by, the harsh chime of his phone interrupted your guessing of what you were pretty sure was the small spire visible in the horizon before you.

Like a reflex, he fished it out of his pocket, and you watched as the soft smile quietly vanished from his features as if it had never been there to begin with, snuffed out and forgotten like last season’s fashion. It hadn’t been the first time you’d witnessed his phone be a mood killer, it happened at least once whenever he had been in your presence.

“What is it?” you asked, tossing the game to the side to make room for the growing concern you simply couldn’t ignore any longer.

“It’s nothing,” you watched his face twitch slightly as he read the message that plainly bothered him. Taking a deep breath, he tugged it away in his jacket and circled back to the quickly forgotten game, “you, um, still have 4 more questions till you run out-”

“Sirius,” you cut him off, determined to figure out what was troubling him, “who was that?” not giving you an answer, he simply averted his gaze. “I’m not gonna tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about. Who do you think I know that I could spill all of your deep dark secrets to? My neighbour Mary who’s about 90? Oh yeah, she would have a field day, if she actually remembers to put her hearing aid in,” you joked, in an effort to get him to relax and open up, “come on, you can tell me.”

After a good long moment of him thoroughly biting his inner cheek, he finally spoke, “it was my dad. He wanted to remind me that I’m supposed to start sitting in on meetings beginning by tomorrow. Start doing my part for the family business and finally grow up. He wants me to follow in his footsteps. And I know that it must sound fascinating, running a huge company like that, but it truly isn’t. It’s just a bunch of long boring meetings with boring money-hungry people talking about boring numbers. It has absolutely nothing to do with the cars themself.”

“And that’s not what you want?” you asked softly.

“That’s not the point,” he uttered, sounding downright exhausted.

“Isn’t it? Do you want to follow in his footsteps?”

Staring out into nothing, he slowly let the truth slip out past his lips, “no...” the tiny word instantly hitting him like a truck, “fuck. I’ve never actually said that out loud before… I don’t wanna do that… I don’t know what it is that I want to do, but I sure as hell know it isn’t that. I don’t wanna become another soulless businessman like my father.”

“Can I ask you something?” you asked him gently.

“Sure.”

“Why are you still studying business if you know that’s not what you wanna do?”

Exhaling heavily, “because I think what scares me even more than this future they’ve got all mapped out for me is the unknown. I don’t know what will happen if I hop off the train, but at least I know what it looks like inside and I know where it’s headed.”

Without giving it a second thought, you reached out and took his hand in yours.

“You’ll get off. Might not be today, but someday you will.”

A soft smile spread across his lips as the stressful thoughts slowly melted away with the aid of your touch and he turned his attention back to the date. “I gotta admit, this wasn’t at all what I expected.”

“What did you think? That I was gonna take you to dinner at a michelin restaurant? Some day you will learn that money can’t buy you everything. I mean, just look at that view,” you nodded towards the blushing skies above, the sun now nearly disappeared down behind the many roofs of the city.

“Yeah,” he breathed, not taking his eyes off of you for a second, “it’s beautiful.”

Not soon thereafter, when the dark night started to bloom and the date was due to end, you took him up on his adorably chivalrous offer and let him walk you back home. However, when you reached the outside of your building, he wasn’t the only one anymore that wasn’t ready to part ways yet. When you fumbled with the keys and he eagerly asked, “could I maybe walk you all the way in to your front door?” all you did was nod, because right now in this very moment, just one more minute of his charm was all you desired.

“Just what floor did you say you lived on?” he puffed from behind you once you’d reached the third floor of the old apartment building.

“I didn’t,” if you’d told him that you lived on the fifth floor, right underneath the roof in a tiny shoebox of an apartment, he properly wouldn’t have dared to climb the steep stairs with you. “And just because you're walking me to my door doesn’t mean you get to come inside, okay?”

“Got it.”

Even though he looked to be in phenomenal shape, you still noticed his attempt to hide how much of a tole this trek really was for him.

Once you finally reached the small dark door to your home, out of sight and out of mind down a narrow hallway, creaking it open, his eyes widened at the sight of your tiny apartment, “oh my god, that’s your apartment?” he didn’t even have to poke his head inside to be able to view every single millimetre, seeing as the whole flat in its entirety was probably the size of his bathroom.

“That’s my apartment,” you confirmed, not finding the size as jarring as he did.

“Is it even legal to live up here? Aren’t these attic rooms for storage or something?”

“They used to be, but now I promise it's totally above board.”

After letting out a small chuckle, he then took one last long look at you standing in the doorway, smiling warmly down at you, “I had a lot of fun tonight.”

“Yeah, me too,” you smiled, and when he then turned to take his leave, you stopped him, “hey Sirius?” still close, he turned around, “can I-, could I maybe-…”

Taking a step closer to you, he stared down at you and uttered, “what?”

“…can I kiss you?”

Not hesitating for even a second, probably just in case you would change your mind, Sirius bent down and boldly kissed you. The feel of his soft lips pressed against yours and his tongue confidently asking for entrance surprisingly didn’t increase your nerves, it minimised them. It felt oddly comfortable. Like you’d already done it a thousand times before.

“Goodnight,” he breathed out, lingering just a little longer.

“Night.”

The persistent knocks at your door finally came to a screeching halt as you swung it open and revealed the unexpected figure of Sirius.

“I need to talk to you,” he insisted, sounding out of breath, probably having sprinted up the stairs.

Furrowing your brows at the less-than-warm greeting, you asked, “Sirius? What are you doing here? It’s 11 o'clock at night,” pushing past you, the small stumble he took as he crossed over the threshold didn’t manage to escape your perception, “hey, what’s going on?”

“Everything’s going on!” he bellowed, making you quickly close the door behind him and cross your fingers that the walls in your building weren’t as thin as you feared if he was going to continue at this dramatic volume.

Whirling around to plant his unfocused eyes on you, you saw right through him and asked, “are you seriously drunk right now?”

Fully ignoring your question, he sank down onto your small couch and spoke wearily, staring out into your dimly lit home, “you messed everything up.”

“Excuse me,” you crossed your arms and closed your light robe a bit more to cover your less then modest pyjamas up, on the verge of just ripping the door open again so that you could kick him out, “I haven't done anything-”

“You messed up everything!” his unsteady eyes finally met your glare, “everything was just fine before I met you, there was a plan, a good plan,” he gesticulated with his right hand, “I didn’t see any problem with the plan till you had to show up and turn it all upside down,” you felt your heart start to sink as his intoxicated words impacted, “you ruined it all. You ruined me. For the first time in my life, the world is a truly terrifying place. It’s never been that way till you showed up,” you noticed his clenched jaw begin to quiver, “you are like a bright light, showing me just how dark my life actually is. I didn't ask for that perspective! I was perfectly fine just wandering around in the dark!”

“Sirius,” you reeled back, completely stunned by the tornado that had just interrupted your evening routine, “what are you-”

“You scare the shit out of me, Y/n,” he exclaimed, cutting your question off before it could fully form, “no girl has ever done that, except for you. Fuck, I love you! That terrifies me!” he sank down even further, nearly laying down at this point, overwhelmed by the storm brewing between his ears, “but what scares me even more is the thought of losing you.”

Completely stunned, you found your body slowly dropping down upon the mattress of your bed, sitting there at a complete loss for words, flabbergasted as you watched his low groans and curses gradually fade away until you picked up on how his breaths had slowed, and his lids had grown heavy, exhaustion snuffing him out like a flame.

Curled up on the windowsill, backlit by the morning sun, you raised your eyes from the sketchbook balanced on your bent knees, to reference the dark-haired man still passed out on your tiny couch.

Even after you’d not so silently riffled through your pantry this morning, checking to see if you had any resemblance of a hangover cure hidden away in there, he still slept like a baby, through all the crinkly bags and accidentally dropped containers.

Though now, as you weren’t really making any noise at all, simply emanating the silent scratching of your pen against paper, you saw him stir, inhaling sharply as he awoke.

“Morning sleepy head,” you tried to be mindful of your volume, the light wince your tone evoked from him clearly affirmed your suspicion of the horrible state the night before had put him in.

Craning his neck to look at you, he sat up, squinting in confusion as the bright morning light washed over him, “Y/n, what, um,” his voice sounded like it had been through a meatgrinder, “what am I doing here?”

“You don’t remember?” you sat the sketchbook down beside you but kept your seat in the window, merely shifted a bit.

“I-… Did something happen?” his palm lifted up to shield his mouth in worry, “did we-”

“Oh my god, no,” you got what he was hinting at and quickly cut in to correct him before your cheeks had a chance to turn an even brighter shade of red, “you showed up here last night, completely wasted.”

“Oh…”

“Yelled at me for a little bit and then you kinda just passed out.”

“Fuck…” he sighed, jaw clenching from guilt, “Y/n, I’m really sorry.”

“Yeah, you should be,” you crossed your arms tightly across your chest, “what even happened last night? Were you just at some club and randomly decided to come and shout at me a bit?”

“I wasn’t out,” he shook his head, still not meeting your eye, “I was at this stupid party with my family, some fundraiser I think, and became maybe a bit too pissed and got into an argument with my dad,” taking a deep breath in, he spoke, “I told him that I’m dropping out of school and that I don’t want to take over the company.”

“Oh…” it nearly came out as a whisper.

Taking shelter behind his hands, he lightly ran them down his face, “I’m really sorry,” he said earnestly, “I shouldn’t have bombarded you like that. I don’t remember what I said, but you don’t deserve any of it.”

Every word he had uttered the night before still played on a loop inside your mind, “…none of it?”

“No,” he finally met your gaze, “not one.”

Your churning stomach tried to prevent the words from flowing out, but your now fully bloomed feelings eventually prevailed as you found yourself asking him softly, “not even the part where you told me you love me?”

#lea’s writing #sirius black x y/n #sirius black x fem!reader #sirius black x reader #sirius black imagine #sirius black x female reader #sirius black fluff #sirius black x you #sirius black fanfiction #sirius black fic #orchid #marauders era imagine #sirius black fanfic #sirius black angst #modern!old money!sirius black #artist!reader ᰔ

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jujumin-translates · 6 months ago

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★ Main Story | Act 13 - Budding Spring | Chapter 24 - Family Wish

Chikage: Well then, take care.

Company Employee A: Huh? You’re not on the same flight, Utsuki-san?

Chikage: I still have a few errands left to take care of, so I switched my flight to tomorrow.

Company Employee A: I see. Well, you were a lifesaver this time. Thank you so much.

Company Employee B: It was thanks to you that we were able to successfully conclude our business negotiations, Utsuki-san. Their attitude towards the whole thing softened considerably compared to when we first asked.

Company Employee B: The power of language really is incredible.

Chikage: I’m glad I could help.

Company Employee A: Well then, we’ll take our leave.

Chikage: Good work.

*Footsteps*

Chikage: (Alright… Just in time to catch the next bus.)

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

Chikage: (It’s going to be a while from here, so I guess I’ll get some work done.)

Chikage: …

*Typing*

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

Driver: 《Have a nice trip!》

Chikage: 《Thank you.》

Chikage: (I guess he can tell by my outfit that I’m not a local.)

Chikage: (Has it really been almost twenty years…?)

Chikage: (The city really has changed a lot since then. Well, that thing can’t be the same after all this time, right…?)

Chikage: (Anyway, the place where people are likely to gather is…)

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

Shopkeeper: 《Welcome.》

Customer A: 《That was so crazy back then!》

Customer B: 《I know, right?》

Customer C: 《Dad, they said it’s still gonna be a while.》

Customer D: 《Let’s just have dinner first.》

Customer E: 《What are we gonna eat?》

Customer F: 《I’m not really that hungry, though.》

Chikage: (How nostalgic. Just sitting here, there’s all kinds of languages being thrown around.)

Chikage: (This is a great place to get some multilingual input.)

Chikage: (If we as a theater company are going to expand our overseas outreach in the future, there’s no better way to do it than to have correspondence in as many languages as possible…)

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

Chikage: (If I relax for any longer, I’ll miss the bus.)

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

*Footsteps*

Chikage: (The wall of this vacant lot… there’s even more graffiti than I remember. Was there really that much written on it before?)

Chikage: (It doesn’t seem like it’s gotten any less safe, at least.)

Resident: 《That area’s already all filled up. You’d have to write really small if ya wanted to put something there.》

Chikage: 《Does the graffiti here have some sort of meaning?》

Resident: 《Ahh, so you don’t know? Somewhere along the line, a rumor started goin’ around that if you wrote your name here, your dreams would come true.》

Resident: 《Even tourists started writin’ things here.》

Resident: 《Well, the owner doesn’t mind it, so it all just stays here.》

Resident: 《At first, there were just one or two things written up there.》

Chikage: --.

Chikage: (This is… my name…)

Chikage: (There’s only one person who would’ve done this. There’s no mistaking it, that handwriting is his--.)

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

“Hey.”

“Do you have a family?”

“Do you have a dream?”

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

Chikage: …

Chikage: (Dreams coming true, huh? What came first, the rumor, or the name…)

Chikage: (Hah, even now I still can’t figure out what he was thinking.)

Chikage: (Dreams, huh… Maybe the reason I was able to come here was because mine came true.)

Resident: 《Hm? I feel like I’ve seen your face somewhere before… Nah, you just look like an acquaintance of mine.》

Chikage: ?

Resident: 《You kinda look like an old colleague of mine. Your smile, especially.》

Resident: 《He passed away decades ago, though.》

Resident: 《His wife also passed away a few years back due to an illness… I’m pretty sure they had a son, but I think he was sent somewhere far away, or something like that.》

Chikage: 《...I’ve heard that I have distant relatives from around this area, so maybe there’s a connection there.》

Resident: 《Maybe so. If only his wife were still alive… I’m sure she’d be happy.》

Resident: 《A while back, I asked her about her son, and she said she’d probably never see him again, but all she hoped was that he wasn’t alone.》

Resident: 《Lookin’ at you, I feel like I’m seein’ their son.》

Chikage: …

Chikage: (Selfish to the very end.)

Chikage: (I didn’t feel loved by them. Hell, I don’t even know if I love them.)

Chikage: (As a kid, they were like a huge, detestable existence that loomed over me. Even after they left me, no matter how much time passed, they stayed imprinted on me, like a scar that can’t be removed…)

Chikage: (But, I get it now… I never have to look at this name again.)

Chikage: (It doesn’t exist anywhere in this world.)

Chikage: (...I wonder what this feeling is. It’s not really nostalgia, sadness, or relief.)

Chikage: (It’s like one small sense of closure… It feels like it’s fitting into my heart somewhere. Like a book fitting into a shelf where it belongs.)

Resident: 《If you have distant relatives around here, why not visit their graves?》

Chikage: 《--I’ll have to pass since I have a bus to catch. I need to get back to my family soon.》

Resident: 《Gotcha, have a good trip.》

Chikage: 《Thank you very much.》

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

Chikage: (...I sort of doubt there will be anyone on at this time.)

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

UC has entered the chat.

UC: I’m on my way to the hotel near the airport now.

taruchi: gg

UC: Ah, I see. We must be fairly close.

taruchi: well, think i’m somewhere between japan and u

taruchi: how’d ur new challenge go?

UC: How indeed. I do know that I’m glad I came here, at least.

[ ⇠ Previous Part ] • [ Next Part ⇢ ]

#a3!#a3! translation #chikage utsuki #itaru chigasaki #// ended up crying my eyes out while tl’ing this

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inquisimer · 9 months ago

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holy HELL just played the Landsmeet with my Brosca and my head is SPINNING that did not go the way I planned kermiecrisis.jpg

I've been debating the whole time about Alistair marrying Anora vs Alistair ruling alone BUT when it got to the moment where I was like "nah Loghain is gonna live" Alistair's dialogue S L A P P E D me in the face.

Nika rebutted his argument with the "not all of us have spotless histories you know" line and Alistair really spouts off about how Loghain's crimes aren't minor, but Brosca has been struggling with her own history this entire time!!! Especially in her relationship with Alistair!!! Like, he doesn't know the circumstances of her recruitment!! He doesn't know what she was in Orzammar!! She has literally been a criminal her entire life!!! She's listening to this and she's thinking that all the people she's killed or help kill or otherwise done harm to could easily add up to a number that Alistair wouldn't think is acceptable!!! So he's saying all of these things and she's not hearing them about Loghain, she's hearing Alistair say them about her ;-;-;-;-;

And like. Suddenly a) he wants to make A Decision and b) now he's all eager to rule as long as it ensures that he can get his vengeance. She is PISSED about that because she has been making hard fucking decisions and doing shit she did not want to do in the slightest for THREE YEARS (hc timeline) and she was FIFTEEN when this all started and she's just been through hell and he's throwing a fit and she is just. so fucking done????

And then. And THEN. I guess I didn't realize that after Alistair is like "yeah I'm gonna leave then" that Anora will still be like "nuh uh, I'm ordering your execution". But she does!! So after everything, with all these shitty thoughts going through Nika's head and she's also just finished a massive duel and political banter on top of everything else, she uses her favor from the queen to spare Alistair's life

AUGGGHHHHHHHHH ;-; ;-; ;-; ;-; ;-;

I'M IN A GLASS CASE OF EMOTION!!!!!!!!

And then she just tells him to leave and suddenly they've lost three years of coming together and learning about each other and supporting each other and dumb jokes and childlike fuck ups and the oh-god-we're-saving-the-world adrenaline. And he says that makes it EASIER 😭😭😭

God, I don't think anything in DAO has ever slapped me as hard as that did right there. This fucking game man😭

#this fucking GAMEEEEEEE #I'm losing my mind #I literally screamed and woke my dog up #dsklhjklfdhlkgfdh #I did NOT expect this #but I guess this is a drunk alistair worldstate now #oc: nika brosca #dragon age origins #dao #brosca #warden brosca #alistair theirin

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soparklgc · 10 days ago

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# Plots and Sentence starters ━━ This took longer than expected, but below is a brief list of plots and sentence starters. Feel free to grab any of them! If nothing tickles your fancy, Seonam is open to all kinds of relationships—friends, rivals, mentors, fans, exes, and everything in between. If you have any ideas, just let me know, and we can brainstorm together!

(side note) I would love some pre-established relationships. He's been a trainee for 3 years so I'm sure he'd have a few friends here and there for him.

- "Smoke and Secrets" - Seonam is taking one of his usual smoke breaks, lost in thought. He notices (Muse A) approaching and, with a half-smile, offers them a cigarette without a word, almost like a silent invitation. As they take it (or turn it down), he asks. "What's your story then?" - "Night Market Stroll" - After a late night of practicing, Seonam decides to hit up a local street food vendor for his favorite tteokbokki. He bumps into (Muse B), who’s also out grabbing food or trying to get their bearings in the lively night market. Seo Nam offers to show them the best food stalls he knows, and maybe some other non-company sponsored fun-if they're up for it. - "Behind Closed Doors" Seonam's patience has finally run dry. The whispers about his family have been trailing him for days. He’s done ignoring the glances, and half-smirks as he passes by. So when he catches (Muse C) nearby—someone he believes has been spreading the gossip—something snaps. Whether they have or not doesn’t matter; he’s prepared to make an example of them. - "The Great Escape" - It’s a grueling day of training, and Seonam is over it. As he glances at the clock, an idea strikes him, and (Muse D) just happens to be in the right place at the wrong time. with a mischievous glint in his eye, he proposes they sneak out and promise a much-needed break from the grind. After all "There’s a whole city waiting to be explored” -"Lingering Looks" - (Muse E) catches Seonam’s attention in a way he didn’t anticipate, and he finds himself looking for excuses to be near them. During a late-night practice, he spots them in the hallway. Without directly saying it, he hints at his interest, his typical guardedness peeling back just enough for a subtle game of “Are you interested too?” - "The Dare" - Seonam views (Muse F) as about as interesting a silk flower. nice to look at but aromaless and uninteresting. He's amused by their innocence and, with a sly grin, decides to challenge them to do something - or things- outside of their comfort zone. From sneaking out past curfew to climbing the rooftop of an old building. it'll be a night that promises to be anything but innocent. - First Impressions" - (Muse G) joins the program, and Seonam, ever the observer, decides to scope them out. He watches from a distance, taking in the way they fumble through routines, stammer through introductions, and try to find their footing. With the tiniest bit of curiosity, he decides, perhaps for his own entertainment, to take them under his wing. From the start, it’s clear that his mentorship isn’t going to be the gentle, reassuring type. - "Old Mixtapes" - Seonam, ever the collector, has briefly unearthed one of his old mixtapes he made once upon a time. When (Muse H) stumbles across his little walk down memory lane, Seonam lets them listen in. Together they sift through his old tracks. perhaps together they can craft something better picking up on a melody here, a lyric there.

Sentence starters:

❛ Great, now I’m gonna be stuck with serious thoughts all day. ❜ ❛ Well, before I succumb to the ravages of old age, why don’t you tell me what brings you here? ❜ ❛ Due to personal reasons, I’m evil now. ❜ ❛ Sorry I called you a fucking idiot; I was trying to flirt. ❜ ❛ Brooding. Good look. Do you practice in the mirror? ❜ ❛ Partner, I reckon that I ain’t been feeling very yeehaw lately. ❜ ❛ I think my brain has officially shut down; if anyone needs me, I’ll be in my corner questioning all my life choices. ❜ ❛ I know we said we’d take it easy tonight, but I brought a bottle; want a sip? ❜ ❛ I can’t tell if you’re flirting with me or if I’m just reading too much into everything; either way, I’m not complaining.❜ ❛ Every time you open your mouth, I feel a little bit more of my soul withering away—thanks for that. ❜ ❛ I mean, I don’t love bad decisions, but they sure love me. ❜ ❛ Look, I’m just saying… what’s life without a little risk? ❜ ❛ Well, I’m all out of good ideas, so let’s try this instead. ❜ ❛ Don’t worry—I only cause mild chaos. Most of the time. ❜ ❛ If I had a nickel for every bad decision… well, I’d still have no money, but that’s beside the point. ❜ ❛ You’re doing that thing where you think too hard. Stop it. ❜ ❛ If there’s a lesson here, I promise I’m not gonna learn it. ❜ ❛ You’re the kind of person who plans. I’m the kind who doesn’t. Together, we’re unstoppable. ❜ ❛ Look, I get it—you’re perfect. But maybe you could try being human for once? ❜ ❛ I’m only showing you this once, so pay attention. ❜ ❛ I’m not saying I’d die for you, but I’d probably look out for you a little longer than I should. ❜ ❛ Is this where I’m supposed to thank you, or can we skip to the part where I roll my eyes? ❜ ❛ Sorry, I don’t do heartfelt moments. I can offer sarcasm—same thing, really. ❜ ❛ So, what’s it like to be so… relentlessly optimistic? Asking for a friend. ❜

#|∘∘∘| ⸢𝐨𝐮𝐭-𝐨𝐟-𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫⸥ ✧#|∘∘∘| ⸢𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥⸥ ✧

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mrs-monaghan · 2 years ago

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Kinda funny how all those years Jikook dressed alike, matching almost head to toe or in exactly the same outfit, this whole fandom wrote it off, even after RM asked them point blank if they were a couple. Then to hear when JK was watching Suchwita, ask why YM were wearing similar clothes, even tho their clothes really were nothing alike, but triggered him enough for a response, really made me laugh. I saw YM & TK shippers saying its cause he knows about YM. LMAO idiots, their clothes weren't couple clothes or matching, they were just too similar for JK's liking. Hey Suga, go try to peel off JM's leaf for him, with JK watching. I just wanna see something for research purposes. We always tease JK & Minimoni, but he also gets high key annoyed with Yoonmin, too.

Anoooooooooon why do you think JK reacted to Suchwita in the first place?? Yes JK is a Minimoni anti. That's been established. But he is also a major Yoonmin anti. Like big time and it's been going on for a long ass time. He he hee. JK is not a fan of Yoonmin moments which is why we don't talk about Yoonmin so shh

But also let's talk about Yoonmin shall we? Only because JK's dislike for their moments is underrated. No other reason 🤭🤭

Before we begin. Here is a compilation of Suga checking out the Jibooty. Tbf he does check out other members as well but....this is about Yoonmin. He hee

So! Off the top of my head exhibit A) this BBMA 2017 Live. JK did not take his eyes off Suga until he got off Jimin

First of all, there is ALOT happening on this live. Like alot. Which is why I'm not clipping the exact moment because you should absolutely watch this entire live. JK has a stronger reaction to RM being on Jimin but he also kept an eye when Suga did it 👆🏽

Exhibit B) Is my own personal theory. Remember in winter package when JK went with Yoonmin for beer tasting and gave up zip lining?

In what world would thrill seeker JK give up zip lining so he can go beer tasting? Now don't get me wrong, JK loves his liquor much like the rest of them. But still, it was kinda sus to me, alright? Could it have been satellite Jeon wanting to be with his man? Maybe. Still, knowing Jimin was gonna spend all day with Suga getting tipsy... idk. I can see JK wanting to be around for that 🤭🤭🤭

Exhibit C) incase someone missed Suga drooling during this

(Put your phone on landscape and u can zoom in and take a closer look🤭)

Exhibit D) do we really need to talk about Suga Vs Blood sweat and tears Jimin?? I'm sure we've all seen this.

Exhibit E) this segment. Jimin's letter said everyone should tell Suga they love him. Everyone did except one person..can u guess who? Even Hobi called him out. Asked JK "why didn't u say it?" 🤭🤭🤭

Exhibit F) should I include this? Coz I'm not seeing the difference here. Btwn this

And this

Moving on.

Exhibit G) (watch Jimin) Suga touches Jimin's ear and what's the first thing Jimin's does?

Also don't think JK and his grandpa clothes is not watching that through his periphery. Mans always aware of what Jimin is doing at all times.

Exhibit H) They're discussing Jimin's armpit. JK is smiling, quite big. Then Jimin asks Suga if his armpit is sexy. JK's smile is no longer anywhere to be seen 👀

Exhibit I) this was a favourite of mine. Ngl. Listen. People can deny till the cows come home. But JK reacted the way he did here for a reason. Memories 2021. JK looked away as soon as Suga touched Jimin's chin. Not before. Not after. As soon as Suga touched Jimin, JK looks away so fast I got worried about his neck there for a second. It happened. Anyone who said it didn't well... idk what to tell ya. JK has been looking away for years when something that he doesn't want to see, is happening. Especially after he got a hold of his possessiveness he started to just look away instead of acting on it. It is what it is 🤷🏽‍♀️

Last one but definitely not least is Exhibit J) this was a popular Jikook moment after this run episode aired. The thing is though... yes we gushed and we "awwed" because JK's ears moved as soon as Jimin started dancing. But you know who else's ear moved?? And he was the only one apart from JK that was affected by that 😏😏😏😏

I could do this all day guys. 😂😂

If JK is staring... so is Suga. If JK is checking out the Jibooty, so is Suga. And we have not even started on how Jimin is clearly Suga's favourite. Be it vocals, be it in general; always choosing him no matter what. And we haven't even talked about how Suga isn't big on skinship but with Jimin that doesn't seem to be a problem???

You guys think JK doesn't see what we see? Doesn't know what we know? Huh? How can he not? I mean, this was right infront of his salad 😂😂 kinda makes me wonder if he blocked Suga on purpose 🤭🤭

What I'm I saying? Even though we will never see Jimin reciprocate whatever this is, (Mans only has eyes for JK. Always has, always will) Yoonminers are the only shippers allowed to try to argue with Jikookers. Them and them only. And genuine Yoonminers. Not tkkrs who ship Yoonmin coz they wanna shove Jimin somewhere to keep him away from their ship.

Bonus: everyone is looking at Jin except Yoonkook. JK its okay, coz that's his man. But i'mma need Suga to get his shit together. Fr fr

#we don't talk about Yoonmin #jikook #kookmin #minkook #ask shaz #yoonmin #jimin and jungkook #park jimin #jeon jungkook #jimin #jungkook #bts #jikook theories #jikook analysis #jikook bothered

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junko-en0shima · 2 years ago

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He's A Pirate - Pirate! Eddie Munson x Mermaid! Reader

Summary: Captain Eddie is traveling for the seven seas with his first mate Steve Harrington and their crew, but to reach the treasure island they've been looking for about four years now, they have to go through The Mermaids Bay on a Blood Moon night which many legends are told about. That sounds dangerous, doesn't it?

Warnings: mention of drinking, (h/l) = hair lenght, (h/c) hair colour, (e/c) = eye colour.

A/N: Hey there, my Eddie loving fellas! This is my first fics ever about Stranger Things and Eddie Munson ofc hahah. I want to make this a mini serie, so please let me know if you want part 2.

*Comments and reblogs are appreciated!*

The wind blew harder than usual, pushing itself against the white sails which were light orange because of the light of the Blood Moon which could be made out of the blood of all the sailors who were captured by the mermaids a lot of legends told about.

But Captain Eddie didn't believe a word of those silly legends!

He was just standing there, proudly point his sharped sword towards the horizon to announce anyone who dared to get in his way his arrival.

"Together we will conquer every island, fighting the most dangerous creatures the world can provide and finally, I, Captain Edward Munson, will be the king of the seven seas!" He repeated his iconic line.

"You told this about a thousand times today." First mate Steve Harrington complained before to take a sip from his rum bottle. "You should cut it off repeating that childish line all day long." He added.

"But people should know who's soon gonna rule them all." Eddie jumped down from his spot.

"You told this about a thousand times, too." Steve took one more sip as he was slowly beginning to forget what patience was.

"You're gonna thank me once we'll get to put our precious hands on that freaking treasure." He looked through his telescope to scan the horizon once again which caused Steve to roll his eyes at him.

In the meantime, their crew mates, Dustin, Mike, Lucas, Gareth, Jeff, an unnamed freak and their new addition Erika, Lucas' younger sister, were sitting on some barrels to discuss about the treasure they had been looking for about four years.

"What do you think those old folks put in that old wooden chest?" Dustin asked his mates.

"Gold coins?" Will suggested.

"Jewerly?" Mike added.

"Pearl necklaces?" Jeff suggested.

"That's jewerly, too." Dustin whispered and Jeff pulled an 'oh...' face at him.

"More maps to find more treasures?" was Erika's theory.

"That would be too silly of them." Lucas immediantly contradicted his sister.

"These are all good theories, but first we have to find this chest to find out." Gareth reminded. "We've been navigating for about four years now and nothing to be found yet."

"We should ask Eddie about that." Erika spotted Eddie talking to Steve, probably both drunks already, before to get up her way to go to her captain.

Everyone nodded in agreement and got up from their barrels to march to their captain and his first mate.

"Excuse me, long haired freaking captain." Erika spoke, making sure to catch Eddie's attention.

Eddie turned to the girl. "Yes, Sinclair?"

"How long is it gonna take before we find this 'treasure' island?" She gestured open brackets. "Is that even real?"

"Well, all the retired captains I confronted before to sail told me that the treasure island should be right behind the corner..."

A smile of relief begun to appear on their faces.

"... but not before we pass The Mermaids Bay." He finished.

"M-m-mermaids?" Jeff was shivering like a leaf, clutching to Dustin, who begun to shiver as well. "B-b-bay?" He tried to finish.

"Yeah, what about that?" Eddie raised an eyebrow at the two scared little mouses.

"Legends say that all the sea dogs that tried to sail this dark bay..." Jeff begun.

"... were put under a spell by the mermaids singing which leaded them to fall in the trap, with their whole crew and ship, elaborated by these beautiful, but dangerous creatures." Dustin continued.

"And they were never ever seen again." Jeff finished, giving everyone a serious look.

Eddie stared at them concerned for a moment... before to burst into a fit of laughs.

"What's funny?" Dustin asked him. "Yeah, it's a true story!" Jeff specified.

"Yeah..." A tear escaped from Eddie's eye which he quickly wiped away with his index finger. "And I believe it." Eddie kept laughing, slapping his knees before to begin hold his stomach which was twisting for the laughs.

Steve stared at his captain and then stared at the kids. "Tonight is gonna be the night of The Blood Moon, too."

The kids, most likely Dustin and Jeff, begun to panic and pronunced 'Oh, it's really late! We're going to bed! 'Night!' as an excuse to run lower deck to hide and the others followed them behind; Lucas, who was most of the time the cold-blooded of the crew, panicked as well and grabbed his sister by the hand to drag her away with them.

Eddie and Steve were now alone.

"Well, I guess I'm going to sleep, too." Steve faked a yawn and took a last sip before to pass the now empty bottle to Eddie, wishing him a good night and head his way to bed.

Now Eddie was pretty much alone. He already planned to stay awake, though, so he knew he would be.

He took control of the helm after grabbing a new bottle of rum for himself; he insisted it helped him to concentrate though Steve told him tons of times it wasn't a good thing to do because it wouldn't take a long time for hum to crash against a rock.

Steve even made a bet on that and sweared on Dustin's mother he would celebrate, drinking all the bottles himself, if he won.

The fog begun to cover his view, so he couldn't see a thing, but he could hear a beautiful enchanting voice coming from afar.

At first, he simply tried to ignore it, taking a few more sips of rum as he believed it was just his mind playing tricks on him, but it was just too captivating to resist; he dropped the anchor, so he could leave the helm to go see what was happening.

Through the fog, he could barely spot a female figure with a human bust and a fishy tail, lying on a rock.

As it begun to fade away, he could see it better: it was a beautiful woman with (h/l) (h/c), enchanting (e/c) and a sparkly and scaly tail; her beautiful figure was highlighted by the red moonlight.

'For my uncle's golden teeth...' he though to himself, 'so... beautiful.' An enchanted smile grew on his lips; he had never seen such a beauty in his whole life.

Her hair looked just silky and soft to stroke, her tail was pretty interesting to examinate and her eyes seemed to talk to him.

Her glossed lips seemed to tune the same captivating melody he heard earlier.

The boys, Erika and Steve were hiding their faces under their pillows as her voice didn't sound as tunful in their ears as it sounded in Eddie's.

The woman jumped from the rock and seemed to be swimming to another one, closer to the ship.

"Hello there, sailor." She looked into Eddie's chocolate brown eyes as deep as the ocean with no shame.

"Hi..." He was a bit shyer, but kept eye contact with her as he managed to fall under her spell, enchanted by her beauty.

He couched to clear his throat and boldly introduced himself. "I'm Eddie Munson, Captain Eddie Munson."

"Oh, what a lovely name you've got there, Captain. My name's (Y/n)."

"Nice to meet you, little mermaid."

She shyly chuckled as her cheeks slighty heated up.

He was about to reach out her hand and so she was, when...

"Eddie!"

Dustin's voice seemed to be calling him and he was pulled back to reality.

"Eddie!" Dustin's eyes expressed all his worry. "We though you fell under the mermaids' spell!" His eyes looked like he was about to cry.

"Sorry, I..." Eddie tried to explain, but Steve cut him off.

"No time to explain. You should get a bit of rest. I'll be at the helm for tonight." He gently pushed him lower deck with the kids so they would make sure he would get some rest.

For all the time, Eddie could think of nothing, but that beautiful mermaid he met; was that only a dream or was it real?

#stranger things #eddie munson #pirate! au #mermaid! au #pirate! eddie munson #mermaid! reader #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x fem! reader #pirate! eddie x mermaid! reader #eddie munson x y/n #pirate! eddie x mermaid! y/n #eddie munson x you #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson hurt/comfort #eddie munson angst

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pitter-patt-art · 2 months ago

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Ace Attorney AU August oops-august-has-been-over-for-a-week Update!!

Hiiiii well okay first and most importantly of all! Happy investigations collection day everyone!!!! My copy is supposed to arrive by 10pm although I'm not sure I'll be playing it right away, but, hey, once it arrives I'll have in my possession at least one physical copy of every game in the series (2 for aai1, woohoo)!!! *Coughs* uh except all of the OG Trilogy which instead I own like 2 times over digitally (3 in T&T's case, thanks Wii) lmao. Ah well.

NOW the actual post. Yeah it's not August anymore but I've been recuperating or w/e so shhh, better late than never!

Overall I wrote over 50k words (actually in August itself) and posted 5 fics (with many more in progress), which is honestly just, wild???? That is so cool. Apparently the way to overcome writer's block is just overcommit to a month-long prompt list, who knew!

Here is my post about the first 17 days/AUs! And over here's my Ao3 series for these! Below the cut I'll wrap up the last 14 days of AUs, some thoughts, etc!

I am setting the goal for myself to actually finish writing these before the end of the year even if they're not technically "AU-gust" qualified anymore by the time I get to them sooo ...wish me luck!! In the meantime I am proud of myself for (tbh completely unnecessarily and to my detriment lmao) coming up with actually a full 31 solid AUs based on the prompts that I feel inspired by.

This post is gonna be a bit more rambly than the last one because I definitely did more of my writing last month the first 2 weeks rather than the last 2, but nevertheless--

Onto the remaining AUs!

18 - Space Travel

So, I actually started a draft at the airport before my vacation where I got wayyyy too sidetracked getting detailed about this one and thus ended up not being able to finish the post before takeoff lmao. I'm not sure whether it's annoying or interesting to include all of that here, but it's my post so fuck it, here's August 21st patt to tell you aaall about it so I don't have to: The Martian AU (I've only seen the movie and not read the book but i *did* literally just re-watch it because this thought crossed my mind lol. (Hello! It's future me popping in to say: fun fact, rewatching this movie literally ended up being the reason I knew a bar trivia answer last week lmao. Huzzah for the powers of Ace Attorney refreshing my movie quote knowledge.) Be glad this one occurred to me because my first inclination was to lean into the dark past of my vld phase (I'm super joking I had a lot of fun with it before the last few seasons haha sorry idk what to tell you friends) and see how much I'd retained if i tried to make that work but the martian sounded more fun in the end). Apparently my Thing™ is a) poisoning Phoenix and b) putting Apollo in an insane situation in which he's completely on his own--which all things considered is probably far meaner lol. I think Phoenix is to blame for creating his own problem here for choosing to eat the stupid necklace but I fully blame Capcom for all the BS Apollo has gone through after AA4 (bc...the stuff IN that game is. coincidentally also Phoenix's blame to claim. lol). That said I'm part of the problem teehee. Apollo can be Some Guy from the real world who gets isekai'ed and he can also be Mark Watney :P (sorry bud I love you but you have just the Worst case of unavoidable main character syndrome). ((Which is QUITE funny actually because I'll never get over Capcom calling 4,5,6 the """"Apollo Justice Trilogy"""" (it's really not and it's frankly insulting they're trying to say it is.) Like he's. Y’know. The main character in exactly one of those games...... so.)) What was I talking about? Lmao oh yeah so Apollo is left on Mars (not sure he actually has much in the way of Botanist™ vibes but the indomitable, never-say-die, highly sarcastic vibes.... ye haha that's my boy right there). Omg wait sorry I'm writing this and realizing this whole thing actually fits the 18th AND yesterday's (the 20th) prompt as well. Whoops.

Clay as the captain (let him do something, says I)

Trucy as I think the pilot ONLY because I am literally constantly on the lookout to make a Wright Flying Brothers joke, sorry

Klavier aaaas. Uh. So the German astronaut in the film is the chemist and navigator and I know Klav's not necessarily supposed to be actually German canonically but there IS something funny about it

Athena as the flight surgeon and EVA specialist (for a couple reasons but mostly so she can be a doctor lol. I imagine she also can be there for psych stuff too, like, it's a long ass space voyage, that does shit to your brain)

Kay as the SysOp and reactor tech, tbh mostly because for some reason i really have a thing for hacker/programmer Kay, i guess?

Ema I want to be there also lol so that would be exceeding the actual number of OG astronauts but eh it's my AU. The rest of these I'm just directly comparing to a crew member from the martian but I think some of the titles and tasks could be redistributed a little to allow an extra person as a treat for me.

Originally i kind of wanted Sebastian (....SIGH. or...Eustace. (I fear even though it's AAIC release day today, I truly may die on this hill forever, falling on my sword of devotion and gratitude to the fan translation team... That said, while I think Eustace is, like, a Deeply Fine name, I have to say that Excelsius is a fucking knockout name lmfao, that one took me out. Anyway, ahem: "I wanted Seb/Eustace...")) to be there too but I think that's getting into too many cooks territory just specifically bc I'd have too many voices to play with lmfao. So instead I think he's the operator who works the satellite and realizes Apollo is alive, I think he'd fit that well. NOT THAT that needs to be. Included. In the AU. I have...so much self control.

Anyway I have too many thoughts about it, it's a problem, ironically I think I would prefer to focus on the crew and not Apollo himself, so that would at least make it more than just a rehashing of the movie/book. (Or, the movie at least. Does the book spend more time with them? I should read the book.) ...I did, Of Course, also came up with a funny, pseudo-future-science-y way to do a Sibling Reveal in this one, so there's that, too, haha. OKAY AND, SCENE. Snatching my mic back from myself. I'm actually so devoted to the Martian AU now hahaha, I really didn't think I'd let that happen to myself but here we are... You'll see in a bit, but I for-better-or-worse do truly have an extended universe going on for it now, eheh... (Help.)

19 - Spies

Franmaya?? Franziska POV??? Here's the deal: I cannot BELIEVE I got this many days into the month and STILL hadn't come up with a franmaya-centric AU, it's terrible. Also I need a Maya POV if I want to hit my self-set, self-indulgent goal of having POV of every "main" character I can (did I exactly accomplish this no but that's perfectly fine obviously haha it was just a side achievement I had my eye on). So to that end, I ended up with something here that I'm not COMPLETELY sure I won't end up changing when I sit down to actually work on it, but in short: semi The Princess Bride vibes but with spies instead of pirates! Or uh! So um okay full disclosure lol I got all excited about an AU of this kind and then like an hour into daydreaming it into existence I realized I was heavily relying on / leaning into ASSASSIN territory rather than SPY. Which are notably different things. (Wait lol should I blame Spy x Family?? Totally Endo-sensei's fault and not at all mine, boom, take that.) ...And not to go even harder into sxf territory, whoops, but my idea was something along the lines of like, since Kurain School Channeling changes spirit mediums' appearance entirely, I was going to have Maya be something of an expert in disguise, and Franziska I was almost more or less going to let retain her actual position of international prosecutor with Interpol, although perhaps I'd lean more into a James Bond-esque intelligence agency sort of thing than what we see them do in-game, I'm not sure. Maya gets "killed" for real in 2-4 except she actually just becomes an international assassin(?) apprentice. Does this make sense? Probably not lol. But is it a little funny and a little sad? Yes, yes it is, and that's always my sweet spot as a writer. The only problem with this premise is I can't stop myself from considering what Phoenix would do / be doing in the background, because the problem with Maya "dying"-only-being-secretly-alive leaves at least twofold problems in justifying why Nick hasn't gone full conspiracy theory board stop-at-nothing-to-find-her, in that a) If she's not dead, Pearl can't channel her, and knowing Pearl I have to imagine that would be her first move to try tbh, and b) even if that weren't an issue, if the police were never able to track down Maya's body at all, I fully believe Nick would still throw himself at the problem until he's able to find answers irregardless, so. This ain't about him though!! So we'll just all have to deal with knowing he's taking reaaally really bad care of himself while he single-mindedly tries to figure out what's going on ahaha...ha. He's most absolutely the drowning child in the facebook post meme. Don't worry about him.

20 - Crossover/Fusion

Soooo. Okay. First may I say, I'm not the most crossover-fic-y person in the world neither as a reader nor writer. HOWEVER. Unfortunately. My one undying weakness has proven to be Ace Attorney x Legally Blonde (and more specifically Legally Blonde the Musical, the best version, though I do love Reese Witherspoon's performance ofc it's iconic but the musical is just MWAH ugh. One of my all-time favorite musicals and definitely the one I've listened to the most esp the past couple years hahaha.) The problem is, I've joked about so many slight variations / one very Long Intensive specific AA/LBtM crossover AU ideas, that trying to limit myself to a one-shot I could conceivably finish within a day proved too much for my decision paralysis and I didn't end up writing any of them lmao. Alas. Mostly, I just think it would be funny to see the characters interact in something of a vacuum just for fun, the problem is just that I happen to be uniquely terrible at not thinking through a Crack AU until I can, ahem, "crack" it, so to speak, to make it actually justifiably function. So in theory all I want to write for this day is some combination of like, Elle and Phoenix interacting and Miles and Emmett interacting, or the four of them having a conversation that goes something like "omg wait me too!! i also went from a creative undergrad degree directly into law to chase after some guy!! what are the odds teehee" while Emmett and Miles watch in horror, and also alternatively Emmett and Phoenix mostly bemusedly watching Elle and Miles geek out over like, fancy ass high class (pink) clothing like "uh yeah i have no idea what any of those words mean. she bought me this suit and i honestly wouldn't even be able to find the store again. oh no way he bought you yours too?? man, wild." Etc. (If anyone's interested in really watching me suffer and spiral: my longer and more intensive idea for an AU with them is to have them be tackling parallel cases where either of them (Elle and Phoenix) has specific knowledge that is helpful to defending the others' client, and they get like place-swapped through dimensional shenanigans somehow also related to the cases. And Phoenix has to abide by, like, nominally-accurate US trial law (I know he wouldn't really be licensed shhhh) -- by which I mean Emmett is sitting as his co-council and exercising the most restraint possible to keep from bashing his head into the table every two seconds. And Elle has to abide by guilty-until-proven-innocent Japanifornia trial law ("wait WHAT omg what do you MEAN the prosecution can just, like, not submit their evidence before the trial???? wait what do you MEAN we should just TAKE THAT that is EVIDENCE AT A CRIME SCENE--"). On the bright side, Elle gets to experience being one of the most normally-dressed people in a courtroom and not at all being looked down upon for her general vibes and wardrobe (like tell me she wouldn't fit right in in the ace attorney universe and seem completely ordinary), and Phoenix gets to experience a real jury (take that jurist system trial that Capcom would like to never ever talk about again) and also the judge going "so, Prospective Juror No. 103, do you understand that the defense in this criminal trial does not need to say a single word in order to be doing their job? the burden of proof lies entirely on the prosecution the entire time and the defense and defendant could choose to remain silent every day of trial and that would be completely within their rights, do you understand that? are you okay with that?" etc etc, shout out to my jury service a couple month ago and the kinds of questions a real life California judge asks jurors that would seriously blow the minds of every single character in Ace Attorney lmfao can you imagine? Anyway.) So yeah idk. Also something something, spirit mediums and the whole Greek Chorus bit from the musical... "School Spirit"... much to think about in crack AU land hahaha.)

21 - Absurd Tragedy

To be honest with you, this is the entire series lmao, so much so that I had trouble even thinking of an AU to be "alternate" in any way here, hahaha. What I sort-of landed on and have vague outline notes about in my doc is (not to make another excellent-musical-adaptation-of-an-already-top-tier-movie-which-is-itself-a-highly-unfaithful-adaptation-of-a-fairly-obscure-book reference) a Shrek the Musical "I Think I Got You Beat"-style debate about whose canonical absurd tragic circumstances are the worst, lmfao. Granted, this then turned into a "wait what if I use said argument as an absurd way in which to make Apollo and Trucy have a siblings realization completely on their own, which both compounds the fact they've both already lived such tragedy to begin with but also could touch on Phoenix knowing about it and not telling them about it", and uhhhhh lmfao a debate specifically between them is OBVIOUSLY not the romantic flirting banter of the song between Shrek and Fiona lmfao but like still, the general premise, just in a sibling bickering coat of paint instead. Also was toying with it being an Athena POV just to sell home / for the additional absurdity of the experience of "you've gone over to your friend's house to hang out and suddenly they're obnoxiously arguing with their sibling and their parents are nowhere to be seen and you're not exactly sure what you're supposed to do with yourself except awkwardly wait for them to be done" lmfao. Which I've most absolutely experienced from both ends multiple times hahaha. The alternative option for this prompt is just for me to write an excessively long essay debating and attempting to personally rank the main cast's level of absurd tragedy compared to each other, lol.

22 - Orphan

I wrote 324 words (slash one physical lined page in my actual notebook) of this while I was on vacation, lol. AU where Miles invites Phoenix to go watch one of Gregory's trials (or Phoenix invites himself, or Gregory invites him while Miles tries to hold the landline phone away from him, lol) and I mean of course the trial he goes to is The Trial (like, Jeffre... AW CRAP wait I don't actually know what Jeff Master's or Kate Hall's official names are lmfao uhhh. Well you know what don't worry about that. Happy AAIC day once again..? Lol. Anyway, the concluding day of Gregory's last trial, obviously, ignore the defendant's name.) Like, basically, here's my thought. AU where Phoenix is also there, and not only does that mean he knows what happened to Miles and Gregory but also, like, it's Phoenix. Tell me even at 9 he wouldn't be insisting on taking care of the poor kid who just lost everything and has nowhere in the world to go. Tell me he's not like, begging his parents they need to help him, lol. I think really this is just sort of an AU to explore one of my several personal headcanons for what Phoenix's parents are like, because I've spent a lot of time on a different version of them (coughs for the last AU on this list...coughs) but I also have a version of them which I find fun / funny where they're like, kinda hippy-dippy and like very hands-off (tbh almost all of my hc's about the Greater Wrights is they're very hands off, just in different ways) but in more of a "we want our child to experience the beauty and wonder of the world on his own time and not influence him or set rigid standards to conform to" kind of philosophy. Anyway my point is they like adopt/foster Miles somehow before Manfred can actually get his hands on him (he's still too busy dealing with the fresh bullet wound I guess?) This is just a gen au of course, not only because they're 9 lol but also the logistics of being adoptive/foster siblings gets weird quick lmao, but mostly I just find it interesting to think about what might have happened if Miles was in an environment where people paid more attention and cared more (and weren't explicitly influencing and manipulating him to exasperate the problem on purpose), because I have to imagine examining his nightmares a little more closely a little more quickly might have led someone (say, Phoenix who was also there in this AU) to find something slightly off about it or like start putting pieces together quicker, idk. I, uh, I'm not gonna lie to you, I don't actually remember how I intended to end this one hahaha ;; I started it but I was on vacation and neglected to outline / summarize the rest of my ideas the day of, so I guess I'll just have to see where my mind takes me when I get back to it.

23 - Musician

So my FIRST thought for this day was to use it as an excuse to finish my First Ever Ace Attorney Fic, which has been in WIP stasis for...uh.... 6. Years. i--SIX????? Shit. lmfao. yeah uh. I guess I created the first version of the doc (on my OneNote, god) back in 2018. So. Yeah. Hm. Omfg. This fic has partially existed since before Phoenix Disbarment Day. That is so. Wow. Damn. Y'all we're so close to aa4 time (2026) what the hell??? Ahem. Pianist Phoenix. That's. My point lmao. I know the original thing that sparked me loving this concept was actually some tumblr post I saw apparently a LONG long time ago, hahaha, and I know there's no way I'll find it with tumblr's abysmal search function, but just know it was not a completely original idea of mine when I say i fucking LOVE the headcanon that, you know what actually Phoenix CAN play the piano, he just chooses to do it as shittily as possible because that's kind of what he's like post-disbarment and he'd absolutely get a kick out of fucking with people like that even if they have no way to know they're being fucked with. It's like, he's no virtuoso or anything, but he can passably play the piano! He's just being an ass on purpose! It kills me every time lol. I won't say I think that's necessarily true in canon so ofc it's not like an end-all-be-all hc for me or anything but it's just sooooo funny to me that I like to break it out any time I possibly can. Look me in the eyes and tell me he wouldn't. Honestly, look me in the eyes and tell me if he actually put his mind to it in any meaningful way he wouldn't be able to get decent quickly regardless, considering the fact he became an accomplished lawyer on more-or-less a total whim. This to say: that was my intention, to finish this fic I've had brewing that was about Phoenix actually being able to play the piano and hiding it for a really long time but eventually being found out by Miles by chance. Except then I sat down on the plane and started writing a Pearl POV instead? In which she finds out about more or less the same exact concept but from Iris--also by chance, but less actually catching him playing and more being asked, "Oh, does he still play? He was always good at that." And then bc it's Pearl (Pearl I love you), of COURSE she goes and confronts him about it. Pearl might be the single most confrontational character in these games tbh which is SO FUNNY to me. Like I'm kind of exaggerating obviously but also am I? I know she has psyche-locks you have to break through multiple times throughout the series but stiiiill. Everyone else is so repressed and weird about anything remotely vulnerable, I stg. Props to Maya for making sure Pearl turned out pretty okay I guess, lmao. Anyhow yeah that's sort of the AU I ended up with. Pearl POV where she and Iris know they're sisters (don't get me started on this I have so many thoughts about the amount of information I'm positive Maya and Pearl are NEVER given skjflj) and Pearl visits Iris in prison regularly and on one such visit maybe she mentions Nick's job at Borscht and Iris makes a totally innocuous comment to the effect that Pearl learns he actually knows how to play the piano and she goes to get mad at him about it because he's definitely been pretending he can't and Pearl's pretty sure he's told neither Maya nor Trucy the truth and that cannot be left to stand.

24 - Pretend Hate

Okay, this exists in a similar realm to the Orphan prompt, except instead of Phoenix being there for the trial or the Wrights taking Miles in before Manfred can, it's more just AU where Miles doesn't actually cut all contact and he and Phoenix successfully end up exchanging correspondence (in semi-secret) during the time they're separated (i.e. they remain friends and close during the 15 years they're separated in canon). "Semi-secret" because they--esp Miles--somehow hide who exactly it is they're talking / writing to all the time but don't necessarily hide the fact they are doing that. Like, a fake cultural / language exchange program or something? I feel like there could be a world where Manfred really doesn't give a shit what Miles is up to as long as he's being molded into "someone Gregory Edgeworth would hate" (I don't think he would lol but that's another AU) and becoming a model von Karma protege prosecutor and such. He obviously goes to lengths to cut Miles off from everything he's familiar with in that he takes him to Germany, but I've always thought it's way more on Miles feeling guilty and blaming himself and thinking he's unworthy / pushing people away being the reason why they never talked before aa1 despite Phoenix's "attempts to contact him," whatever those may be specifically. And, yeah, I've watched that one episode of the anime but tbh I don't really use anime canon for almost anything besides maybe some of the fun visuals, haha, so I'm kind of disregarding that anyway. ANYWAY. My point is. The "pretend hate" part is that--sometime over the course of exchanging correspondence, Phoenix starts thinking something's weird and gets it in his head to "investigate" himself, since he's still in LA / has access to the scene of the crime and stuff, and then as a combo of him just plugging away at it until he has enough (circumstantial) evidence to be like "Miles I think you're wrong about this" and also a younger, slightly less repressed, slightly less in Manfred's pocket Miles actually being somehow willing to consider alternatives a little--they're able to put their heads together and eventually come to the (correct) conclusion ahead of time, before the 15-year statute of limitations, that it was almost certainly Manfred who did it. And then they work together to figure out how they can possibly PROVE that but they haven't thought of anything foolproof by the time aa1 events start rolling around (or at the very least, the 5-years-ago sections of aa3? It might make more sense if it's as soon as Miles returns to Japanifornia, and also I think Phoenix has way less reason to fall for Dahlia/Iris so hard if Miles is around and *coughs* available lmfao. Anyhow). So, in the hopes it'll keep Manfred from getting suspicious of Miles, they publicly pretend to hate each other, putting on a show of more of the canon attitude Miles esp. has before 1-4, but behind the scenes they're actually working together trying to think of a way they can definitely get a conviction to stick that Manfred won't be able to worm out of. And that's the AU! Idk, in terms of additional thoughts, I couldn't decide what to do / what would happen to Mia in this AU either, which doesn't super matter but did give me pause. So she might live, idk, depends the exact timeline. I do also think a scene where--Dahlia still hits on Phoenix in the reading room/courthouse library but he's like, actively there waiting for one of Miles' trials to conclude for a covert meeting, so when Miles gets there and is like "What are you messing with over there?" Phoenix is like "Oh, hey, check out this weird bottle some girl just gave me because apparently she fell in love at first sight, haha, isn't that so funny--" and then Miles recognizes it from the Fawles trial and they catch Dahlia earlier or something, idk. Or alternatively Phoenix was AT that trial so HE recognizes it. Or maybe it's funniest if he was there but doesn't recognize it until Miles does lmao, this is not the point of this AU but I can't stop myself from considering this part of it.

25 - Scientists

So THIS is the day I sort of alluded to earlier, many many words of post ago, where I got so invested in my The Martian AU that I started accidentally worldbuilding about it. What I've started and have about 400 words of (slash one notebook page, again from the plane after my vacation), is like, AU where it's NASA instead of law and I can make Phoenix go "What, like it's hard?" only it's about literally rocket science this time hahaha. Basically for this fic I just thought, well what if Phoenix just shows up as a flight tech or engineer or something (idk I don't really know that much about real life astronautics) as Miles is preparing for some space mission or something and he's just like WHAT are YOU doing HERE. I know I know I made Apollo literally be the titular martian and yes he ALSO has a (or tbh probably has a WORSE) canonical debilitating fear of heights, so, shhh, but I do like the idea that Phoenix is like, oh, who, me? In the flying metal death trap? No fucking thank you, I will be down here watching and talking directly to you through a headset or something. You cannot escape me however i can at least escape the building I'm in. No interest in seeing the Earth from above, thanks. Actually iirc Miles also doesn't love heights but meh whatever I'm fairly certain Phoenix talks about it the earliest in the series so there you go. Anyway, this would all be a mission prior to whatever mission it is that Apollo & Co. go on to Mars for the first part of the AU, so I guess you could consider it a prequel? And probably a fairly shippy one. I have other reasons for which it's fun for me if wrightworth is at least together if not outright married before the events of the "The Martian" part of the AU, so this one would be, like, about how exactly that went down.

26 - Victorian Era

Okay, once again, this just. IS. Literally. Dai Gyakuten Saiban / The Great Ace Attorney. Lol. That said, I've always loved the fanart I've seen of like Ryuunosuke and Phoenix (and respective Co.'s) interacting, or like, one or the other ending up in the other time period somehow, so I thought it'd probably be fun to try my hat at that. I feel like I've neglected the tgaa characters anyway, considering I actually somehow managed to reference PLvPW already, which is obviously significantly more of a spinoff and also just largely non-canonical, lmao. Also tgaa is just SO GOOD, augh. I'd love to have the multi-witness cross examinations from both of those games back sometime again, and I had so much fun with the jury in tgaa too, excellent mechanic. What was I talking about? So, I never completely decided on a concrete direction to take this, but even before AU-gust had started I'd already been toying with the idea of an AU where maybe Maya or Pearl channels a character from tgaa specifically because some documentary or special or something comes out talking about the real-life Herlock Sholmes (as opposed to the Totally Fictional "Sherlock Holmes" who Phoenix references in that one trilogy line, because I really think that's the funniest possible explanation for the discrepancy) and they're arguing over how that cannot possibly be a real person and no one was named that and etc etc and then to prove once and for all one way or the other Hurley is channeled and also for bonus joke content "recognizes" Phoenix at first (idk pretend his eyesight got worse in his older age, I know Phoenix and Ryuunosuke look, tbh, less alike than Ryuu and Apollo do, lmao, but again that's another AU) and then I get to play with Phoenix's mom's maiden name is Naruhodou and his middle name is Ryuuichi or such to that effect, because that is also a favorite headcanon of mine (not in small part because I can project my own life onto him by making him half-Japanese from SoCal, lol). So that's an idea I'd had that was already decently fleshed out and the ONLY problem is that if I'm having characters actually be channeled then there's a very real limiting factor of how many spirit mediums exist, and also that means Maya and/or Pearl don't get to interact with them, which for the sake of not overwriting would be good but for the sake of my love of a chaotic group conversation would be bad. But, uh, hopefully I do manage to hold myself to a less broad cast of characters, ideally, instead of bringing a bunch of them over to the other time period to see how they'd deal with that and interact en masse. Ha. Haha.

27. Younger / De-Aged

So here's another AU I'd already had idle thoughts about before AU-gust had even started! I...will get into this later, TRUST I will, lmfao, but I do have an extremely involved AU already in which Time Travel of the "regression" type is involved, i.e., they have their memories of the "future" but are thrown back into the past including their own younger bodies however-many-years-ago. So I've got that type of thing covered, I promise I do, haha. And additionally, I've actually already written them "younger" for my colorless AU way back on day 2, so I did think perhaps I'd just continue that one and say it was for this prompt (a smart person thing to do. this is the objectively correct option). On the other hand. I find pre-DL6 Phoenix and Miles reacting to how their lives actually turned out in the end HILARIOUS. Tell me it's not funny. And tell me it's not, like, some sort of depressing-yet-ultimately-hopeful for the older/current them to look at their child selves and be like Kid, Oh, You're Going To Go Through Some Shit, but also reflect on how they did make it and things turned out okay and life goes on etc etc. My problem with this kind of thing is that it's hard to come up with a justification for and that's not a problem in itself but it is a problem in me not knowing how i'm going to end a fic, which often gets me decision-paralysis-ed into not being able to start it in the first place, which did in fact happen to me here, haha. I think ideally I'd just do a quick "wait, was that a dream?" kind of thing where they (Miles and Nick) have a short conversation with themselves, but... Uh-oh, what, did you think that was all I had? You clearly don't know me at all. OTHER au option where young Phoenix is in the future/present and rather than himself and Miles it's the Wright Anything Agency who like, idk, find him roaming the streets of LA (fun fact! I actually came up with this AU one day while I was quite literally roaming the streets of LA myself at like 3am-ish. Do with that what you will). He is of course wearing a hat or beanie or something at first because come on, that's way more fun, and no matter how much Trucy, Apollo, and Athena are like "hm idk something about this kid seems familiar" I just don't think my first thought upon seeing some vaguely familiar kid alone on the street would be, like, "Oh, that's obviously a child version of my father/coworker/boss!" So. I'm not really sure that one has an end point either, though, so the same problem still stands, haha. The bad, someone get a spray bottle to spritz me, option of this is, obviously, to combine the two, so it's like the WAA find him first and then are like UHHHHH we need an adult (never mind actual adult-age-ness between them) and somehow end up getting Miles there too, but idk. I... should not. Overcomplicate. I shouldn't. Even, even if...august is over...so theoretically there's no longer any sort of On-Time component since it's late either way........ definitely not.

28 - Caretaker

Here are my exact notes / entire doc for this day. Ahem. And I quote: i brought up the lighthouse keeper thing but i dont know where that would be going exactly maybe this is a thing i could do franmaya for??? since i still havent gotten there? actually lol that as a lighthouse thing is funny. ghost romance? my three tropes rattle End quote. Anyway, shout-out to my friend hailstorm for being the one there to brainstorm "lighthouse keeper" with at the self-same bar trivia that I mentioned previously, lmao. I actually think that was even the same exact day as the The Martian quote was a relevant answer to a question. So yeah, even though I already kind of have franmaya planned for the spies day, that's both kind of sort of a darker AU overall and--WELP well, okay, so, i do, you know, recognize maybe a ghost romance isn't, uh, necessarily the fluffiest kind of AU lmao. Don't mind that. My point is, I love the vibes of a lighthouse keeper AU, and I generally like ghost romance as a trope, so that does feel like a viable option. Honestly, I kind of separately wanted an excuse to practice writing miego also, so maybe the Feys are just all chillin' in this lighthouse for...Some Reason, and that's side-plot relevant somehow, idk. I know Franziska and Godot exist in the same place for a minute in 3-5, but I honestly can't really remember them interacting? I think she'd fucking HATE him though lmfao. He'd think she's funny but I actually think she'd be too reactive for his most preferred teasing/fucking-with-people dynamics, haha. Regardless, if he is there at all, it's a very minor B plot, I think, 'cause this ain't about him, lol.

29 - Forced into Hiding

Achtung, baby, 2566 words of this are written! Lol. So uh, yeah. In short, AU where Klavier gets hounded by fans on the street while he's also having just a bad personal day, and the closest and best place he can think to hide from them is at the WAA. I, um, actually hadn't realized I'd written quite this much of this, haha, it was supposed to be short and fairly silly but then it turned into Klavier having a little bit of a panic attack maybe and getting consoled by Apollo, sure, of course, but then also having to deal with and experience some amount of closure / reach some kind of understanding with the Wrights, also. It's kind of part Klav character study, kind of part complaint against freaking Capcom for neglecting him (boo, I love him, stop ignoring him, or, yknow, worse, whatever the heck turnabout academy was supposed to do for him, which honestly almost felt like a step back to be quite honest). Okay, also, taking a slightly closer look at what I've already written, the REASON I'd thought I'd written way less than this is definitely because he hasn't even GOTTEN to the Agency yet, never mind spoken with any of its members, lmao. That would do it. In any case, I like the idea of Klavier having a bit of a vulnerable moment, and I also like the idea of him and Phoenix actually, like, talking for real, instead of, once again, whatever Turnabout Academy and DD was meant to tell me, which seems to be less than nothing. I kind of like the fact that it gave him a law mentor? I mean, she was very dead, but I have a very meaningful Use for her in later-to-be-announced-AUs-I-keep-teasing, haha. I of course considered other people and times when people in AA might be forced into hiding, but this felt like a silly but also meaningful way to do that without it just being an exploration of Miles and his not-suicide note (which wasn't exactly "forced" anyhow, he did that all on his own) or like, Zak Gramarye (who also completely did that to himself but w/e). Making it about Klavier completely escapes the bounds of canon, because canon is a weenie about talking about any of his actual feelings EVER, so screw you Capcom, I'm doing it for you. Don't worry about it. Trucy commiserating with him about still Loving someone, perhaps the very closest person biologically related to you you've ever known and depended on in your life, who not only did you very big harm personally but explicitly used you in a very real and participatory way to perpetuate the harm elsewhere and all the complexities about Feelings For And About Them Therein, and Phoenix somehow having enough self-awareness to recognize that shutting down completely and isolating yourself away doesn't actually do you any good even when you're at your lowest, and recognizing that Klavier doesn't exactly have a "Trucy" to be a focal point to draw him out of that, and that therefore he needs to be a bit more open to his peers. (Insert joke about "Well, I'm really definitely not suggesting you go adopt an entire child, that's really probably, uh, not the way to go, actually, but, you know. Everyone needs people, that just makes us human." Etc.)

30 - The Beginning of the World

So, hm, as it turns out, I got extremely sidetracked this day thinking about the next day on the docket. Whoops! Unfortunately this ultimately means my ideas for this day as of now are relatively uninspired: I had the thought that I could explore the beginning of Troupe Gramarye, which is its own sort of world, or else, maybe something about the beginning of the series itself but from the somewhat unconventional POV of a one Mr. Larry Butz. Yes, that's a bit self-serving in that it lends toward trying to complete a list of "main, recurring characters' POVs" that I've had as a sidequest all month, but, still. That said, just exploring actual canon through Larry's POV isn't exactly what I'd classify as an "AU" necessarily, so I feel like something would need to be different here. Okay, wait--not to draw inspiration a dang week late to the party, BUT. Now that I'm typing this up, I'm thinking, okay, maybe, what if. The "Beginning" of the series, technically speaking, is basically the fact that Phoenix gets put on (class) trial for stealing Miles' lunch money--which notably only happened because Larry himself picked it up when it fell on the floor. So, perhaps, what about an AU where he doesn't do that? I mean, I guess it would just turn the entire world of AA into something of a terrible series of tragedies with no real closure about them, lol, rip, but it could possibly be interesting? I dunno! (And, yes, I know DL-6 itself is more or less the basis of the series, if we're being ticky-tacky, but Phoenix wouldn't have been involved without meeting Miles, and that somewhat necessitates the class trial, and without him none of canon would get resolved, so. I will say, I do love going back to the earliest points to see how and how much you can make canon deviate or stay the same--reasonably speaking--via minor tweaks and butterfly effect and all that, so this could be interesting, although I once again must say I think it really just means a bunch of innocent people, Miles included, are going to be put away and possibly executed over murders that weren't their faults, lol. Hm. Much to consider.)

31 - Two(+) of the Above:

Beginning of the World + Younger/De-Aged + Canon Divergence (+ Feat. Jokers: Guardian, Everybody Lives)

With all of this, the ONLY prompts I've actually missed on this list become Animagus which I swapped for the Wings joker, and the last joker of the four, Thriller, which was never exactly a priority of mine because I'm not sure I'd write that sort of thing particularly well, so! Wild! Completionists everywhere almost rejoice, haha. SOOOOO. For the eagle-eyed readers out there, I'll bet you're just dying to know what this one AU I've been teasing all post could Possibly be to warrant such a build-up, right? (...Right?) The answer is the at-ow! (Phonetically, lol. I've been calling it that instead of out loud saying all the letters in AATTAU out loud every time.) My friend Ben can attest to the fact that this behemoth AU (her word which I'm stealing) has been in the works for, uhhhh... months?

MONTHS. AHAHA. Ha. That. Sure says March! It sure does! And it is not lying. Lmfao. (Ignore the time, I was working overnight then--my beloved work schedule whomst I miss dearly--so that's a perfectly reasonable discord-ing hour for March-me.) Also, once again, I'm choosing to blame Ben for my extensive AU problems, she sent me a very cute time loop AA fic that utterly destroyed my entire mind because it got the mere idea of "Time-based AU" caught in my endless void-idea-hole. So. Here's the real rub. The literal reason I started doing this AU-gust challenge in the freaking first place was that I was absolutely Desperate to find a way to overcome my writer's block. And one of the (admittedly many) reasons I wanted to do this was because I have been ITCHING to write this stupid behemoth AU for real. I have a massive outline doc already, I have a whole slew of scenes planned, I have lots of character archage, I have sooo many things I want to say and explore about them all you have No Idea. It's extremely self-indulgent and absolutely my personal magnum opus for all my very specific favorite AA headcanons and ideas and thoughts. And obviously, it worked! I did indeed overcome my writer's block! And I had so much fun doing it!! And I'll admit, from the very beginning, I had been eyeing that "Everybody Lives" joker prompt, because...that's it! That's basically the point of the AATTAU (Ace Attorney Time Travel Alternate Universe, if that wasn't clear, haha). I don't want to let myself get TOO into it, because Oh Boy, I sure will! If you let me! Haha. But basically the premise is EXACTLY what I stated in that very first discord message I could find about it. Maybe not so much "time travel" technically speaking than it is "gaining memories of everything that happened in canon right as the DL-6 earthquake happens", so it's more regression than actual time travel since they're in their own younger bodies and everything, but still. It's basically my excuse to treat canon like it did happen and YET allow for everybody to survive and for the very fun cocktail of traumas and joys that come from remembering what happened but having the chance for something different (and all the effort that goes into making something different happen in the first place).

Now, as far as AU-gust goes. I was obviously not about to even pretend I could remotely start this during August itself or justify connecting any of it to the series and the prompts I'd already written for it, lol, but I also couldn't get the idea out of my head, so I got it in my head I really wanted to end the month with SOMETHING that somehow tied into my AATTAU, if only to motivate myself to actually get on it and start writing out instead of solely outlining everything that's been in the works all these months. So to that end, I saw the "Everybody Lives" and the "Beginning of the World" prompts, and an idea came to me. I'd been dancing around the justification aspect of this AU for most of the time I've had it because let's be honest, it's just a very self-indulgent idea and it does not NEED "justification" to serve the purpose I want it to serve and be what I want it to be. But the AU-gust prompts gave me some actual inspiration and an Idea as to a way to solidify my unnecessary "justification" but in a way that it doesn't need to be directly part of the final product of the AATTAU (like, I could make it a separate one-shot and either just link it to and from the AATTAU fic itself, or if it all ends up being a series, then I could just include it in the series but it wouldn't be necessary to read to understand what's going on. And so, I present! The Ami Fey one-shot special I came up with just to fit these prompts :3 ...And by "i present" i mean, uh, I wrote 4k words of it on the 31st and didn't even come close to what I wanted to cover, because I suck at being concise. Lmfao. (Shocker.) Basically, I used Ami Fey as a semi-self-insert kind of godlike figure to reason out a semi-plausible way to make the concept I want to explore happen, happen. And I had a lot of fun, but I do still have a bunch to finish, but either way, I'm very pleased to have a (somewhat silly but ultimately fun for me) reasoning as to the gears ticking behind the scenes of my idea! To be somewhat less vague, the whole AU is predicated on the idea that, Phoenix and/or Miles (who remember from the beginning / from December 28th, 2001) meeting the other characters at-or-after the time they originally met in canon are able to recall their memories of the "original" (i.e. canon) timeline. I've used some magatama shenanigans to have some fun with this, and I'm now using Ami Fey and magatama shenanigans to explain how and why this is A Thing, even if it isn't necessarily the objectively most logically sound argument I've ever made. It's still a good one, in my book, and more importantly I like it, so that's all that really matters.

To briefly explain the "two" (by which I mean 5?) of the "above" I'm using here:

Beginning of the World: This fic specifically would show the beginning of the "world" of this AU specifically! Woohoo! Go Ami Fey, creating a whole new set of problems for our beloved little Guys to go through, hahaha. I think I may have based her character a little too much on Maya mischievousness, but, oh well. Let's just say that's where she gets it from.

Younger/De-Aged: As I've already kind of expressed, the premise of this AU is mostly just them being their own younger selves except they also have the memories of all of canon (and maybe a year or two after the fact, I need to confirm a couple dates).

Canon Divergence: I feel like this is decently self-explanatory, but then again maybe it's a bit cheesy to include this here, since it basically diverges from nearly the first major event of canon (DL-6), but that's not the only time things go almost-canonically but diverge a bit in some way, so I think it really does fit here.

Guardian: This one is a bit multi-fold. It somewhat refers to the way I'm making Gregory Edgeworth the de facto guardian (as in, legal guardian) of mostly everyone I possibly can because I love him and he would be great at it. But also, guardian in that, Mr. Savior Complex Phoenix Wright himself has literally all of the information at his disposal to try to "save" the potential Happy Lives of literally every person he loves, and, well. He does a pretty good job about it; not without cost, haha, but I feel like I can definitely call him a "guardian" of others in this AU. And, as for specifically the one-shot Ami fic, she is essentially the guardian of the entire Fey lineage, in this AU at least, so that also totally fits and is most immediately relevant.

Everybody Lives: I think this one is pretty self-explanatory at this point, lol. But for the one-shot: Ami is essentially trying to secure an "everybody lives" scenario, even if it hasn't been achieved yet, so it's more an aspiration at that point, but ultimately it is indeed successful. Now, "living" does not mean, like, "totally healthy" (mentally or physically), so there's lots more to it, but in short, yes, they live.

And......that's basically a wrap on that!

I mean, it isn't actually at all, since I still have to finish 26/31 fics, lmfao, but as far as the idea generation stage goes, and the use of the AU-gust prompts, that's what's up in my world! Somewhere out there maybe there's an AU of my actual real life where i finished more of these on time, but i'm still pretty pumped by all the work that's already been made on making so many AA fics a reality for me. I've come a long way since starting that first AA fic in 2018...!!

I still have all the aforementioned 26 fics to finish obviously, and I also have AU continuations planned for at the very least, day 2's colorless prompt and day 3's dark academia prompt (let alone day 31's, lol, but that's its own monster entirely), but I'm optimistic!

Thankfully I actually finished using nano to word track for me before they, you know, doubled down on AI and called everyone "abelist" (???) for not supporting it, which, uh. Well. But for my own posterity and if anyone's curious, here's what my word counts looked like throughout the month of AU-gust--admittedly including some planning and outlining:

It ended up being 51,377 words total in August on these AU prompts alone!

I feel like I wanted to say something poignant and meaningful at the end here, but it's almost 9:30 and I work at 4am tomorrow, so I'm going to go ahead and wrap this post up here, haha. If you read all of this, thank you very much for joining me on my little journey!

Once again, here is the Ao3 series where I'll post anything more that gets done, so if you'd like to see how any of these AUs turn out, feel free to keep an eye on that!

And here is the previous post with the 1st half+ of the AUs if you missed it and are interested now!

My copy arrived literally as I was writing this up so I've spent the last several prompts of this post listening to the AAIC soundtrack in the music collection, and, oh man, it's seriously so surreal this exists??? I might be an old fogey who has and will for an indeterminate amount of time continue to have trouble letting go of the fan translation names I've lived with for the past decade or whatever, but it's seriously so awesome the entire series is finally available internationally!! Let's hope for my sake AA7 doesn't come out before I finish any of my AATTAU, because that would really throw a bit of a wrench in my decision-making process, lol.

Bye for now!

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thatbadadvice · 1 year ago

Note

Dear Advisor,

I (M 21) have formed a tight-knit friend group in college. Yay! My closest college friends are the members of my ttrpg group, who we’ll call A, B, C, D, and E. A (F 21) and B (NB 22) have been dating for the whole time I’ve known them, about a year. Last year, A, B, and C lived in the same residence hall and were rarely apart. Now that B has graduated, the plan next year is for A and D to be roommates while C, E, and I live in a similar residence hall. I expect to see a lot of B, who plans to find a job and apartment in this town.

B is my friend, so this is *almost* fine. Except that while I like A, and I like B, it is painful to hang out with both of them at the same time. B is a fairly jealous person, and they get very upset and mean when A hangs out with friends without including them. When we get lunch together and the topic turns to an interest of A’s that B does not share, B usually ends up monologuing about how much they dislike the interest. These monologues often turn into teardowns of A as a person that the rest of us awkwardly sit through. A and B have a lot of their fights in public, and they’re mean to each other.

At this point, I’ve seen enough meanness that I don’t consider B a close friend anymore, and I’m wavering on A. I like both of them, but the way they’re willing to treat each other in public, especially the way B treats A, throws up a lot of red flags.

Any good options? I’m worried that if I tell A that I don’t like how B treats her, it’ll torpedo my friendships with both of them. C is A’s best friend, E is B’s best friend, and D is about to be A’s roommate, so it’s not like I can avoid either of them. And I do still like them, especially A. When it’s just the two of us, A is a good friend.

What do I do? I’m tempted to bring it up to our other friends, but I don’t like talking behind people’s backs.

Readers sometimes send Bad Advisor their real-ass questions to answer, so the Bad Advisor is periodically going to try her hand at answering them. If you’d like to submit a question for a Good Advice Interlude, use the “ask” form!

What a surprise it is, going on a decade-plus of Bad Advice, to finally have some TTRPG drama on the blog! ("Table-top role-playing games," for the uninitiated.) The Bad Advisor is all too familiar with the Darth Partner/Missing Stair dynamic (h/t Captain Awkward, the Pervocracy) in TTRPG scenarios and it's a real goddamned bummer, because you can mostly scoot away from the DP/MS at a party but when you're stuck at the gaming table with them, woof.

My first inclination, as an old-ass gamer lady, was to simply tell you that B will probably just move the fuck on from your group now that they're graduated and doing non-college things, but that doesn't help you in the moment, and they might not, and frankly DP/MS folks will show up for your entire fucking life if you're a game-type person in many and various modes, and it's good to figure out how you're going to handle them now and get some practice in with not tolerating nonsense in your circle. I'm gonna use some elaborate/belabored RPG metaphors in this response and want to emphasize that it doesn't mean your life is a game! (I also believe TTRPG life is real life, because it's my real life, too!) But you've given me a delightful tableau within which to work.

Your instincts for not just straight-up shit-talking and gossiping about A and B's deal are correct! You will never be able to keep those conversations totally private (nothing that starts in the TTRPG side-chat ever stays in the TTRPG side-chat), and for both A and B, it will suck to inevitably find out that their buds were engaged in such conversations. Is it possible you could safely feel out the other members of the group on the A/B relationship dynamic, as a fact-finding, temperature-taking mission? MAYBE. But it's a very risky maybe IMO, and if you don't love the dynamic, I don't necessarily think you need side-chat validation on this point. You have information the other players may or may not have; you are entitled to act upon it. I think we dispense with C, D, and E. You aren't them, and you can't control what they do or say or feel, and they aren't asking me for advice. But you can model behavior and steer your party!

So. What are you gonna do?

You start by describing B as a friend, but waffle on that some -- you've become less close because you dislike B's treatment of/behavior around A, which is fair! You're allowed to decide, with new information about how B behaves in particular situations, that you don't really like parts of a person, or maybe even that person at all! You don't have to set the whole motherfucker on fire to make your feelings known in a thoughtful, polite, and even kind way; if somebody else (B) blows that shit up, it's on them! They are a whole other person who will act a way in a game/life that you cannot control; the only thing you need to feel good about at the end of your turn is that you did something that was true to you/your character. Because for real, if there's one thing I know about people, it's that telling people to do a thing because you want them to do a thing (such as: "Y'all are miserable and you should split up!") will almost always result in the told-parties doubling down on the opposite of what the telling-party wants them to do. (This is what I do to torture my folks when I am the dungeon-master, because it is what people do!)

Assuming we're talking about garden variety shitty relationship behavior (which is what I think you've described here) and not full-scale abuse in public, I think you have a number of options depending on the situation. I don't mean to suggest that you should accommodate bad behavior; you already know that feels crappy and sows discord and confusion because you're doing it, now, by trying to side-step around the ick. You gotta choose your move depending on where you are on the board.

The next time A and B get into it in front of everybody (during a game, or at the bar, or the coffee shop, or the student union, or wherever), you pretend-roll a charisma check and imagine you got a 15+ and they rolled a combined 3 (because they have??? nobody likes this!!!!), and you say something to this effect: "Hey, A and B? These vibes are not great, can we table this tiff until later?" Repeat as needed! Passive voice/vague antecedents are great in these kinds of situations: "Can folks not get into this right now?"/"Moving on! Let's focus on XYZ!"/"Feels like we're getting off track — can we do ABC instead?"/"Wow! That's kind of awkward and private! Let's not do that here!" If it helps, imagine B is the obnoxious NPC you need to get the bare minimum of compliance out of to continue the game of not blowing up the entire situation. You already have a good bead on what people do when they feel attacked, because you're literally playing games wherein that make-believe happens! People fight back and get defensive! It's a bad scene!

Other people's bad relationships are theirs to solve, so you can treat interactions regarding those relationships as open-ended puzzle games that are not for you to finish. You are the Oracle, not the puzzlemaster. If you get A or B on their own in a safe space where you're not rushed to get somewhere or hungry or otherwise pissy or wanting, why not ask: How does it feel when A/B does that? What would you like to see happen instead when Bad interaction happens? What might you do about that irritating/annoying/weird thing A/B does? Despite what I said in the prior bullet points, your friends are not NPCs, and of course you know this or you wouldn't be asking — they are the main characters in their own lives, and you can neither save nor sink them.

It might be that A and B stay in this weird bad relationship! If it continues to cause bad vibes at the game nights/within your circle, I think you're well within your rights to say, either to one or both of them if they haven't gotten previous messages: "Hey, I like you both, I want to keep doing XYZ fun things with y'all, but this dynamic is actually really, legitimately killing the vibe, because I don't get to see the fun part where y'all make up and feel good about everything, I only see the bad arguing parts and it's just a real downer!" Don't let them off the hook about this! Stand your ground when they come back with "Oh, we're just joking" or "Ah, well, that's just how we are." Okay, they're joking and that's how they are, but it SUCKS TO BE AROUND and if it's not a big deal, they can cut that shit out!

The whole deal blows, and you're in a sorry position to have to navigate it. It just absolutely is a shit situation to have a friend-group whose dynamic is messed up in this way. But you're asking because your interest is in maintaining a collective good-feeling, and I can promise you that skipping the missing stair of A and B's bad vibes (and maybe specifically B's behavior) will absolutely in the long-term result in the precise kind of bad-feeling you're trying to avoid by skating past it today. Resentment, distrust, annoyance, back-channeling — all of the things we build and do to avoid being emotionally honest with people who care about because we think it'll hurt less in the moment, or get better later, or just change, somehow — are also 10000000% guaranteed ways to push us farther apart from the people we love, rather than keep us close and friendly.

Your people will always be your people. You have a wonderful and beloved friend group, and you will lose and add members of your party throughout your life, but you will never lose any people who were supposed to be your people if you commit to being kindly forthright while modeling your needs, boundaries, and appreciations for them. This isn't a skill you pick up once and do automatically forever; it takes work and commitment throughout your life and it's fucking annoying and awkward and so, so worth it.

#ttrpg #dnd #advice #bad advice #reader submission #college #college friends #friend advice #boundaries #awkward conversations #we've all been there

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