#like you’d see in a PSA or an “after school special”)

[aestheticaltcow]

No Phone Policy 5.0

Trigger/Content Warning: DV themes to an extent, prayers, lots of anxiety mentions, abandonment?

I feel like I got a little too angsty with this one, but remember, y'all permitted it.

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The Bear Masterlist

You were frozen. One of Carmy’s arms was draped around your waist as he slept peacefully. All you could do was stare at the wall and wait for Wolf to cry so you’d have an excuse to leave the room. But the cries didn’t come. The room was filled with the white noise of the overhead fan and Carmy’s soft snores. You swallowed and tried to focus on anything besides the twinge of pain Carmy had inflicted on your wrists. What were you going to do? Carmy had never done anything like this before. All the after-school specials and PSAs you’d seen as a kid said that domestic violence starts small. The abuser tests the waters - see what they can get away with. You were the perfect victim in some way.

A month postpartum, maybe $500 to your name, some family but not many friends… but Carmy wasn’t an abuser? Was he? You racked your brain for hours trying to compartmentalize the last five years of your life. Was Carmy the perfect friend? No. He wasn’t always the ideal boyfriend, fiance, or husband, as evident by how he’d been ignoring you the weeks prior to you giving birth, but he wasn’t that kind of man. He wasn’t the kind of man who had to hurt people to feel significant or noteworthy. He wasn’t the kind of man who had to manipulate or lie to people to get what he wanted. Hell, it took months of you asking before he dared to smack your ass in bed- he wasn’t the type to lay hands on you. As you lay in bed with him, your brain racked with any other times Carmy may have done something subtle, something you missed that could have been a predictor of what happened. You were brought out of your downward thought spiral when Wolf’s soft cries came over the baby monitor. Fear washed over you when you felt the weight of Carmy’s arm disappear. 

Carmy mumbled something before getting out of bed and slowly exiting the master bedroom. When he was gone, you rolled onto your back and stared at the ceiling. “1,3,5,7,11,13,17,19…” you counted under your breath as you watched the ceiling fan slowly turn in counter-clockwise circles, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference…” you whispered to yourself. As you took another deep breath, you heard footsteps approach the bedroom. You closed your eyes and rolled back to your previous position. 

As Carmy got back into bed, you felt your stomach twist, “She’s okay, baby. Just needed a diaper change…” he whispered as his arms snaked around your waist. You felt like you were going to throw up when he pulled you to meet him in the middle of the bed. 

~

“So all it took was havin’ a kid?” Cerico laughed as he read the email Carmy had sent the night prior. “Hey, it’s sweet. He’s growin’ up.” Natalie commented as she scrolled through the email on her laptop, “Also, I don’t know how he spelled ‘special’ wrong four times with spell check.” 

“Okay—updates for the menu… so we are doing a singular special every night. It’ll highlight whatever produce is fresh from the farmer’s market. We'll make weekly menus instead of changing the menu every night. We’re also switching food vendors, so if you want extra hours, we’ll need an additional couple of sets of hands to unload the orders.” Syd explained this to the wait staff during their daily meeting before the dinner service. The sense of relief in the room was palpable; Richie thanked Syd for explaining the changes before taking the lead for the rest of the meeting. 

Carmy was sitting in the office that night when Richie found his way inside. He immediately noticed a picture of Wolf pinned on the corkboard above the computer, surrounded by post-it notes and various unpaid bills. He grinned and pulled a chair to the desk, “What’s good cousin?” 

Carmy looked up from his notebook when he heard Richie’s question. He shrugged, “I’m off the next couple of days… tryin’ help Syd out with some special ideas.”

“How are things at home?” Richie probed. Carmy shrugged again, much to his annoyance. “Y/N still pissed at you?” 

“We’re good. Babys good. Everything is okay.” Carmy answered as he ripped the page from his notebook and stuck it to the corkboard before getting up from his chair. Richie’s brow creased at Carmy’s explanation. There was no way ‘everything is okay’; he missed the birth of his child. While he hadn’t known for that long, he knew there was no way you’d just let Carmy off the hook like that. 

Carmy walked through the front door and heard noises coming from the kitchen. He smiled to himself as he found his way into the kitchen. Your back was turned to him; Wolf sat in her pastel Bumbo seat on the counter, babbling. You laughed along with her babbling as he stood in the doorway watching you wash dishes and continue your ‘conversation’ with Wolf. Carmy came into the kitchen and hugged you from behind, startling you. He felt you swallow hard as your body tensed. He pushed the concern out of his head and greeted you with a kiss on the cheek. 

“How you doin’ baby?” he asked as he let his arms fall and turned his attention to Wolf. You clenched your fist behind your back, watching Carmy lift Wolf out of her seat and cuddle against him. You shrugged, “Goin’ great. She napped like a champ, and I got some work done from home.” 

Carmy smiled as he rubbed Wolf’s back softly, “That’s great, baby.” You nodded in agreement and returned to finishing what you’d been doing before Carmy had gotten home. It had been a few weeks since Carmy did what he did, and you still felt conflicted about the entire situation. He was trying to be present and involved with all things parenting, but you couldn’t shake the way he’d hurt you. He pretended like it never happened. 

~

“How’d her appointment go?” Carmy asked as he entered the bedroom with a towel around his hips.

You locked your Kindle before meeting his gaze. “She’s good. She got four shots and was super pissed at me for like an hour, but she’s good now.” 

Carmy chuckled, “Did Feyre and Rhysand finish rebuilding the night court yet?” he asked as he got a pair of underwear from his drawers. You rolled your eyes at the question, “Not yet. I got to a good part, though.”

“How’d work go?” you questioned as Carmy got into bed. He shrugged, “It wasn’t anythin’ special. Just missed my girls…” his voice had dropped an octave as he scooted closer to you in bed. You felt your body tense as he snaked his arms around your waist. You glanced at the baby monitor, praying for Wolf to start crying. The idea of being intimate with him made you feel cold and clammy.

“Carm…” you trailed off as you tried to wiggle out of his grip, “I-I-I” you stuttered as you felt him press a kiss into the exposed skin of your shoulder. You squeezed your eyes closed as Carmy moved to hover above your body. The hair on your arms stood when you felt Carmy’s thumb run across your jaw. “I miss you baby… I know I fucked up, and I’m gonna spend the rest of my life tryin’ to make up for it… let me make you feel good…” he cooed. 

Before you could answer his demand, his lips were on yours. Blood rushed to your ears as he feverishly kissed you. Carmy was desperate to alleviate the frustrations that had been building since you came home from the hospital. Watching you take care of his baby left him feeling feral. The desire to ravage you had met its breaking point this evening when you strolled into the living room in those silky pajama shorts with the lacy trim. The pastel green popped against your skin; the material was tight around the fat of your thighs and beckoned for him to take you there and then. He just had to wait for the baby to go down.

Your stomach twisted as Carmy’s lips made their way down your jawline and neck toward your collarbone. As he sunk his teeth into the sensitive skin, you felt as if you were going to throw up. “Carmy,” you sniveled as he pushed a hand under the band of said silk shorts, lacing his fingers in the band of your underwear. You went unheard as Carmy sucked a hickey into your collarbone, “Carmy!” you cried as you brought your palms to his chest to shove him aside. 

Carmy was perplexed but concerned when he realized you were hyperventilating. “Baby- baby, are you okay?” he asked as he reached for you. You pushed yourself off the bed, stumbling as you rushed into the bathroom, desperate to get as far away from Carmy as quickly as possible. Carmy’s brow tensed as he scrambled to get out of bed, pulling on a pair of gym shorts that had been discarded on the bedroom floor before he got into the shower. 

Carmy knocked on the door before trying the doorknob. The door was locked, and he could hear your heavy sobs from the other side of the door. “Baby- Y/N, baby, talk to me. Did I do somethin’ wrong?” 

“LEAVE ME ALONE, CARMEN!” you chastised him through the door as your body shook. You sought comfort in the corner of the bathroom by the bathtub. With shaky fingers, you tried to tap against your skin to ground yourself, but the coping skin proved unsuccessful. 

“Baby? Please open the door,” Carmy pleaded shakily. “Y/N? Let me help you, baby.” He rested his forehead against the door as he jingled the doorknob. You didn’t respond to his pleas. Carmy took a deep breath. “Baby, please. " He begged and bargained for you to open the door. 

“CARMY, JUST-JUST GO AWAY!” Your voice cracked as you yelled through the bathroom door. You didn’t care about waking Wolf; you just wanted him to leave. “Baby, let me in. Let me help you,” Carmy demanded as calmly as he could. You took a deep breath before pushing yourself up from the floor. If you did this, it had to be quick.

The door flung open to Carmy’s surprise. You pushed past him and ran out of the bedroom. “Baby?!” he called after you as he tried to catch up with you. “Baby?! What the fuck! Talk to me!” he yelled as you reached the top of the stairs. He reached out and managed to get a hold of your wrist. Your eyes were wide as your mind flashed back to the last time he’d grabbed you like this.

You yanked your wrist out of his grip and quickly blinked away the tears welling in your eyes. You had to get away from him. “Y/N!” Carmy yelled as you stumbled down the stairs, tripping on your way. You landed on your hip hard, as a hiss of pain came out of your mouth as Carmy joined you at the bottom of the stairs. 

“Baby? Are you okay?!” Carmy sputtered as he pushed your hair out of your face. You shook your head and tried to push him away from you as he helped you sit at the bottom of the stairs. “Fuck Y/N! Let me fuckin’ help you!” Carmy protested as you pushed yourself away from him and up from the ground in a swift movement. 

“LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE CARMEN! I FUCKIN’ HATE YOU, ASSHOLE!” you screamed at the top of your lungs as you grabbed your bag from the table by the door. Wolf’s cries echoed throughout the house as Carmy watched you storm out of the house. 

“What the fuck?” Carmy grunted as tears started rolling down his cheeks. He sat momentarily on the stairs to compose himself before getting up to go into the nursery. 

“I’m sorry, princess…” he cooed as he picked Wolf up from her crib. She wailed louder as Carmy brought her to his chest. As he bounced her in his arms, he couldn’t shake the thoughts of something bad happening to him. “Mommy’ll be okay… I got you right now…”

[whiteferraristurns]

𝕨𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕤 ⚠︎︎ pure fluff, no use of y/n, mention of drugs, curse words?? lmao. Use of pet names (Ma & Doll)

(psa I will use my nickname if it’s implied because I don’t like using y/n or y/nn. Just imagine your nickname!)

Bri ༯ DEALER CHRIS DEALER CHRIS DEALER CHRIS.

masterlist🎞️

You sat on the edge of your bed, staring at the blinking notification on your phone with empty eyes. The text that had just come in replayed over and over in your head, like a broken record you couldn't shut off. It was your birthday tomorrow, and your boyfriend of a year had just broken up with you — no warning, no explanation, just a sudden, out-of-nowhere message that shattered everything you’d built with him.

We need to talk. I can’t do this anymore.

Your chest ached, the heaviness almost unbearable. A whole year of your life—gone, just like that. You swallowed the lump in your throat, your hand tightening around your phone, urging yourself not to cry. The last thing you wanted was to wallow in your misery alone on the night before your birthday.

You needed a distraction, something, anything, to pull you out of the sinking pit you were going into. Then, almost as if the universe had heard you, another notification pinged on your phone. This one brought a flicker of warmth through the numbness. Chris.

Chris had been a constant in your life for years, though your connection was anything but simple. You’d known each other since high school—he’d been two years older, the guy every girl in school had wanted but who had always stayed on the outskirts, too dangerous, too wild for most. He’d gotten into dealing after graduation, building a reputation that made most people steer clear, but you.

For reasons you couldn’t fully explain, Chris had always been your comfort, your favorite escape when life became too overwhelming. He had a way of knowing when you needed him without you having to say a word.

Hey ma. You good?

You stared at the text for a moment, your fingers hovering over the keys. He’d called you “ma” for as long as you could remember, that casual, almost teasing pet name that made you feel like you were something special to him, even though you knew Chris never let anyone too close. He kept everyone at arm’s length, including you.

Not really. It’s been a shitty night.

The response came almost instantly.

I’ll be there in 10.

Your heart skipped a beat. That was just Chris—he never asked questions, never pushed you to explain. He just showed up when you needed him, no matter what. You stood, pulling on a sweatshirt and running your fingers through your hair, trying to make yourself look somewhat presentable.

The breakup still hung heavy on you, but the idea of seeing Chris — of being in his presence brought a small sense of comfort you desperately needed.

By the time you heard the familiar rumble of his car outside, your pulse had quickened. You grabbed your keys and headed downstairs, opening the door just as Chris stepped out of his car, leaning against the side casually, a joint between his lips. He looked the same as always—black hoodie, ripped jeans, his dark hair a little disheveled, and those sharp blue eyes that never missed a thing.

"Hey, Bri," he said around the joint, his voice low and smooth, sending a shiver down your spine. "Rough night?"

You walked toward him, wrapping your arms around yourself in the cool fall air. "You could say that."

Chris stubbed his joint out, watching you closely. His eyes softened for a moment, just enough for you to catch a glimpse of something deeper beneath his usual nonchalance. Without a word, he pushed off the car and stepped closer, pulling you into his chest, wrapping his arms around you in a way that felt so effortless, so natural, like he’d done it a thousand times before.

His body was warm, and you let yourself sink into him, your cheek resting against his chest as you breathed in his scent— weed and cologne. "Guy did something stupid, huh?" Chris murmured, his hand gently rubbing your back.

You nodded against him, your throat tightening as the weight of everything hit you again. "He broke up with me. Right before my birthday."

Chris let out a low hum, his hand never stopping its slow, soothing motion on your back. "That’s so fucked up."

"Yeah, it is," she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut, silently blinking the tears that pricked your eyes away. You didn’t want to cry in front of Chris. Not tonight. Not when you wanted to feel anything but the sadness consuming you.

Chris pulled back slightly, tilting your chin up so you had to meet his gaze. His blue eyes were intense, searching hers for a moment before he gave you a small, almost teasing smile. "Then we’re not gonna let that dick ruin your night. What do you say we go for a drive, huh? Get you out of here for a bit."

You managed a small smile in return, nodding. "Yeah. I’d like that."

Chris’s smile widened, and he released you, motioning for you to get into the car. As soon as you were buckled in, he pulled away from the curb, the sound of the engine roaring beneath you as he sped down the quiet streets. The wind whipped through your hair as you rolled down the window, the cool night air helping to clear your head, if only for a moment.

You didn’t talk much as he drove, but that was the thing about Chris—he didn’t need to fill the silence with words. Just being with him was enough to help you breathe easier, to make you feel like maybe, just maybe, things would be okay.

After about twenty minutes, you ended up at the lookout point—a spot you used to come to back in high school, when you both needed to escape from the world for a little while. Chris parked the car and killed the engine, leaning back in his seat with a sigh, his eyes fixed on the city lights twinkling below them.

"You ever think about how shit used to be?" Chris asked suddenly, his voice quiet but steady.

You glanced over at him, surprised by the question. Chris wasn’t usually the nostalgic type. "Sometimes," you admitted. "I miss how simple everything was back then."

Chris nodded, his jaw tightening slightly. "Yeah. Me too."

You sat in silence for a few more moments before Chris turned to face you, his expression softening as his eyes met yours. "You deserve better than that asshole. Don’t let him make you feel like you’re not worth more."

Your heart clenched at his words, and for a moment, you felt like you might break. But instead of crumbling, you smiled, a small, genuine smile that you hadn’t felt all night. "Thanks, Chris."

He reached over, brushing a strand of hair behind your ear, his touch lingering just a little longer than necessary. "Anytime, Doll."

The way he was looking at you—intense, focused, like you were the only thing that mattered in that moment—it made your heart race. You weren’t sure when it had happened, when your feelings for Chris had shifted from friendship to something more, but now, sitting here with him, it was undeniable.

Without thinking, you leaned in, her hand resting on his chest as you pressed your lips to his. It was soft at first, hesitant, but the moment Chris responded, pulling you closer, the kiss deepened. His hand moved to the back of your neck, his fingers tangling in your hair as he kissed you with a hunger that left you breathless.

When you finally pulled away, your heart was pounding, your breath coming in short gasps. Chris looked down at you, his thumb brushing lightly across your bottom lip.

"Happy early birthday, Ma," he whispered, his voice low and rough.

You smiled, your heart swelling with something warm and soft. "Best birthday present I’ve ever gotten."

Chris chuckled, leaning in to kiss you again, and for the first time all night, you felt like maybe—just maybe—things were going to be okay.

Bri ༯ Dealer Chris is my boyfriend no questions asked.

[fancoloredglasses]

The final fates of Dini-verse villains part 2: The Winning Edge (If ever there was a PSA about steroids...)

[All images are owned by DC Comics and WarnerMedia. I hope I’m too small-fry to sue...]

(All videos in this review are courtesy of The Night Beyond)

In my last review, I mentioned that 7 “modern” era villains has their final fates revealed in the era of Batman Beyond. I have thus far revealed 5. The sixth reveals the fate of the newest Batman villain on this list (debuting in the comics a year after Harley Quinn debuted in Batman: the Animated Series)...

Bane, a villain created specifically...

(Thanks to Screen Rant)

...to remove Batman (much like Doomsday was created to remove Superman) In the comics, he’s a brilliant tactician (which didn’t seem to carry over as much to the Dini-verse) who uses a super steroid known as Venom to temporarily enhance his already impressive strength.

If you would like to watch the episode, you can either do so on HBO Max, or watch it on Amazon Prime behind the paywall.

We open in a dark alley in Gotham, where the Jokerz line up by an ice cream truck...

...with a cool secret. However...

...there always has to be a party pooper. The Jokerz grab the hardware from the gun and start firing (they do know they’ll have to pay for those, right?) Batman makes short work of them as Gotham’s Finest show to do the mop-up.

I should note this is early in Terry’s career as Batman...

...so he’s not used to the late nights yet. His teacher notices and gives Terry a disk with a note for his mother (Really? Even when this episode first aired email was fairly common!)

After school, Dana takes Terry to watch the Big Game. No clue what the game is. Near as I can tell it’s Zero-Gee Lacrosse.

Batman recognizes “Mason” as one of the athletes from the game earlier in the evening (who is also dating his friend Chelsea)

Speaking of the happy couple, Chelsea is worried Mason (who looks like Death Warmed Over) is using something called “slappers” (you don’t suppose she means those squares he was placing on himself that made his veins pop out, do you?) Mason brushes her off, so she storms away. Guess the honeymoon is over.

Then Mason’s teammates arrive with the cash they got for selling the stuff they stole last night...

...which he trades for slappers for him and his fellow players. His hands are trembling so much he has to slap one on just to get home.

Unfortunately for Mason, someone followed him and saw the whole thing.

That evening at Hamilton Hill High School (where Terry goes to school)...

...Batman pays a visit to the boys’ locker room, picking Mason’s locker open and finding his stash of Slappers. Next stop, the Batcave so Bruce can analyze them.

But before he can leave, he gets hit from behind!

You’d think the Coach would want to know why Gotham’s resident superhero is snooping around his locker room, but instead he wants to take on the Bat.

The fight is carried to the...Zero-Gee Lacrosse(?) arena where Batman makes short work of the Coach.

Afterward, Terry heads home later than normal, and his mother is worried, especially since the school told her about Terry sleeping in class. His brother Matt “helpfully” goes in Terry’s bag to get the disk (OK, I get that little brothers are jerks who want to see their sibling get in trouble. Hell, a few months after I moved from my mother’s custody to my father’s, my brother was STILL trying to get me in trouble with my mom! But Matt embraces “sibling rivalry” with almost sadistic glee!). When Terry grabs the bag back, it spills open, revealing...

...the slappers Batman took from Mason’s locker. Terry’s mom, of course, freaks. She grounds Terry except for school and working with Bruce Wayne. Matt is giddy that Terry’s in trouble!

Later at the Batcave...

This episode is turning more and more into an Afterschool Special.

Meanwhile at Zero-Gee Lacrosse(?) practice...

...Mason looks worse than ever, and the Coach notices, sending him to the showers. His cohorts bitch at him about his stash of slappers going missing, but one of them “found” his parents’ cash cards so Mason can get more.

That night, Mason approaches his dealer’s car when...

The dealer high-tails it out of there, but not before Batman tosses a tracer on the car. Bruce tracks the vehicle.

I know Bane was defeated at least once by damaging the device that feeds him Venom until it overloaded his body, so this is certainly plausible. Plus it shows the dangers of drugs by showing a guy ODing.

Anyway, Terry is out past curfew, so likely his career as Batman may be over (and Matt is likely doing a Victory Dance in his room)

Hope you enjoyed the episode (even it it was a bit heavy-handed) I know Matt didn’t like the ending.

Six down. The final villain’s fate to be revealed next week...and it’s a chiller!

[age-of-moonknight]

Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe Again (Vol. 1/2017), #3.

Writer: Cullen Bunn; Penciler: Dalibor Talajic; Inker: Goran Sudžucka; Colorist: Miroslav Mrva; Letterer: Joe Sabino

[emotionalcello-makefanfics]

Disclaimer tho, all my knowledge of the fandom is strictly from fanfic and google. I don't read the comic or watch the anime. I only have some vague knowledge of what's canon or not and making this fanfic has been somewhat of a fever dream.

Tags: Fluff and angst. Attempt at humor. Crying. Probably ooc. No smut, just holding hands and some hugging and some kissing. Shouto smokes, and probably incorrect depictions of smoking. Implied child abuse (you know who). Lowkey Fuyumi bashing.

Warning: In character cussing from explodo boy. 

Summary:

They found each other in coinciding vulnerability. Shouto was smoking, Katsuki was crying. Miraculously, no one died. It seems that vulnerability is exactly what they need to get through their respective problems, because vulnerability makes them do the one thing the two boys are allergic to do, opening up.

Or, Shouto and Katsuki cope with each other. It miraculously didn't end in explosions, just a lot of physical affections and crying.

Words: 10.9 k

 You don’t have to take life so seriously Shouto! It can be whatever you want to be, it’s yours!

Shouto knocks his head back and parts his lips. White ribbons bleed to the orange sky. The clouds are pretty pink instead of white. The smoke doesn’t blend in with the white clouds anymore like a few hours ago. He taps the amber ash on the portable coffin-shaped ashtray. More than a dozen filter buds crammed there.

He should go back to his room. Any darker then it would be noticeable when goes back to his room. But there’s always that small whisper at the back of his head: Maybe after one more. This spot has been his salvation from overstimulation. It’s the highest building in UA, the rooftop of the dorm. He’s been here for two years and has always been alone.

The door slammed open.

High on nicotine, Shouto passes through shock to immediate acceptance that he’s busted.

Only, he’s not busted. The next sound that came is sobbing. The first thing he sees is awry blond hair and a tear-streaked red face. Soon came the already red blood-shot eyes, staring at him with a sadness that not even in Shouto’s wildest imagination can imagine on Bakugou’s face. It takes a few seconds too long for the default glare and anger to return.

“The fuck are you doing here!” He yells, his voice croaks in a not angry way. Wet and breaking at the pitch.

Shouto, still a bit floaty and relaxed from the nicotine in his system, nor is he yet to register the shock from seeing Bakugou’s tears, just points down towards his fingers.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” his voice is scratchy, a tad bit deeper. He never smoked so many that that happened. Then again, today is a special day.

Seemingly just as shocked, Bakugou seems to still. Shouto expects crackling hands, bared teeth, or maybe a ‘TELL ANYONE AND DIE’, but never that he strides his way and sits on the floor beside Shouto.

“Still have one of those?” Bakugou leans back.

Wordlessly, Shouto digs the last pack from his pocket. There are six left. Bakugou takes one, and Shouto lit a fire on the tip of his thumb towards Bakugou.

“How do you do this?” Bakugou says, eyeing the fire.

“You’ve never done this before?”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I have Icyhot! Now fucking tell me already.”

“You put it between your lips, and inhales a bit as you put this corner on the fire.” Shouto crowds him cupping the end of the smoke with his palm and keep the fire controllably small. It feels like Deja Vu, but this time, Shouto is showing someone how to smoke instead.

Bakugou tries, and before Shouto can say to take it slow, Bakugou already choked and doubled over coughing. Shouto pats his back.

“What the fuck was that!” Bakugou roars and grimaces when he sees the stacks of cigarette buds on his ashtray. “How the fuck do you smoke that many!”

Shouto shrugged, “I’m used to it.” He puts out his bud on top of the pile and picks up the mostly one-piece cigarette that Bakugou chucked to the floor and lights it up. He feels eyes on him as he put the filter on his lips and lit it up in one smooth move.

With the cigarette properly lit, he offered, “Wanna try again?”

“No! That shit’s nasty.” Bakugou snarled at the hand holding the smoking cig.

“Suit yourself,” Shouto takes a deep drag and sighs. Surprisingly, Bakugou doesn’t up and leave, and more so that Shouto doesn’t mind the silence.

Alas, it only lasted exactly 33 seconds.

“How the fuck did you get in here!” Bakugou grumbles, “The door was locked.”

“I made ice stairs from my balcony.”

“Like how Elsa did?”

“Exactly like Elsa did, she was my inspiration.”

Bakugou snorts. No sadness left, just a condescending smile, which is better than the ghostly tears in his eyes.

“How did you get in through the locked door?”

“How else would you think?” Bakugou lifts his hand, cradling a small cluster of explosions.

Shouto face palmed, dragging it down.

“What?” Bakugou barks.

“Well when they figured out the door broke then they gonna figure out that someone’s been here, don’t they?”

“That nicotine is already killing your fucking brain cells.”

“That’s not how it’s-”

“Let’s get the fuck outta here before anyone finds us you loon.”

“But I-”

“You’ve burned through enough death sticks, let’s go!” Bakugou grabs his hand and pulls him up.

“Fine fine, let me tidy up.” Shouto could barely close his ashtray with all the buds in it, and he dusted the ashes that drops to the floor.

Shouto already makes the stairs down to his room before looking back at Bakugou, “Want me to drop you to your balcony?”

“I don’t know,” Bakugou narrows his eyes dangerously, “Will it suddenly melts away as I walk on it?”

Shouto huffs, “You have no faith in your favorite sparring partner?”

“The only thing I learned these past couple of years with you being shoved at my face as my sparring partner is that you’re a little shithead.”

Shouto makes the stairs towards Bakugou’s room first, reveling in how badly Bakugou tried to cover his amazement at the stairs.

“Just like Elsa’s, right?”

“You want me to give you Elsa’s number 1 simp trophy?”

Shouto melts Bakugou’s step and lets him fall blond head first into his balcony.

“YOU’LL FUCKING PAY FOR THAT, COCA-COLA SHITHEAD!”

Bakugou roars, and Shouto giggles as he jumps upstairs to his room with explosions fading behind him.

Not until he’s laying in bed that night that he thinks about Bakugou’s tears again. Rest assured, his imagination spiraled to ‘what could it be’ until 4 am.

  ++++

 I don’t understand why your dad wants you to be number one when he should’ve want you to just be happy. Nothing in life really matters unless you’re happy.

Shouto loves everything about living in the dorm, but it has one and only one weakness. He can’t smoke as freely.

His dad knows and just rant about how it’ll affect his performance.

Now, Aizawa knows, and he’s at the principal’s office.

Shouto instantly knows how. Bakugou broke the rooftop door. Iida must’ve found it, reported it to Aizawa-sensei. Maybe his homeroom teacher has magnifying vision too because Shouto could’ve sworn he left no trace.

Yet Shouto can’t find it in him to blame anyone. He knows as an aspiring hero he shouldn’t smoke, those reasons never matter at those desperate times he needed to smoke.

“Tea?” Nezu raises his pot of pink teapot, Shouto narrows his eyes at the paw (how did that paw hold the teacup?)

“Yes, thank you.” The cup is equally pink, with two cheerful yellow flowers on each side. This looks like a tea set Eri had.

Shouto sips the possibly herbal tea, trying to ignore the glare Aizawa-sensei is sending his way from beside Nezu.

“Todoroki, how long have you been smoking?” His sensei’s voice gravels, like he just woke up from bed, his bed hair supports the theory.

Apparently  a little mental, Shouto said, “Overall or in school?”

“Both.”

“Started when I was in first-grade junior high school.” As soon as he has any time away from home. “In UA, as soon as I stayed at the dorm.”

“Now, Todoroki,” Nezu put his paws together, “You know someone as young as you shouldn’t smoke. You’re underage, and an aspiring hero on top of that...”

Nezu then continues his PSA on smoking. Nothing Shouto hasn’t heard. Every word goes in the left ear and came out the right. He also isn’t surprised that Aizawa will be taking his stash of cigarettes. It doesn’t suck as much because Shouto doesn’t have a lot left anyway, nor is he been regularly smoking. He smokes when he’s stressed and nothing else could calm him down. He never reached out to the cigs first. The coffin-shaped portable ashtray reminded him that.

As soon as he’s back at the dorm, he’s greeted with a cheerful environment. Half his classmates are hanging in the living room. There’s a group playing Mario Party, a group that’s putting on nail art, and a group that seems to cook something ambitious. Shouto usually joins the group, but not today.

“Todoroki!” Iida comes from the hall, “Aizawa-Sensei came earlier and ran through your room! He seems to confiscate a pack of cigarettes. I’ve tried to tell him that it’s all a misunderstanding-”

“No, it’s mine.”

“Todoroki! At our young age as aspiring heroes we sho-”

“Nope, sorry not today Iida. Good night.”

Todoroki feels a few eyes on his back, but he walks on. With him naturally keeping things to himself, his friends tend to worry but they trust him to reach out to them in his own time. When it gets too long they usually check up on him. Shouto wished they never will.

 +++++ 

 You have the power to be whatever you want, but why are you following the wishes of someone you hate? I know he’s your dad, but your life is yours, Shouto.

Shouto’s wish didn’t come true when Bakugou bugs him on the rooftop again two days after he was raided.

It’s Deja Vu, but fewer tears from Bakugou and Shouto isn't a pack and a half deep in cigarettes.

“I fucking know you’d be at my spot again!” Bakugou spat scathingly.

“Excuse you,” Shouto scowls, “I’ve been smoking at this spot since the dorm opens. This is my spot.”

“Well, I’ve been- I’ve been-” Shouto should’ve known that Bakugou would turn red and explodes instead of admitting he’d been caught emoting, “What the fuck are you doing here anyway! You’re doing nothing!”

“No thanks to someone.”

Bakugou narrows his eyes, confused at the implication, but his exploding friend is smart, so he figured it out, and isn’t happy with what he figures out. “The fuck, get your accusing eyes away from me discount Sans, I don’t tattle.”

“No, but you exploded the door which leads to Iida reporting it, which leads to Aizawa inspecting the premises, and him figuring it out that smoked here.”

“That’s just your fucking fault for not covering your trace clean!”

Shouto inhaled indignantly, but then too tired to justify himself. There’s no ending of arguing with Bakugou, and Shouto had learned to choose his battles.

“How about you? How did you get in here?”

“Stole a key from Iida.”

“Are you here to cry again?”

Bakugou’s palms explode, his face an embarrassed flush and teeth bared in anger, “WHOS FUCKING CRYING!!?”

“I have eyes.”

“You’ve been sucking on those death sticks way too much.”

“I wasn’t smoking that type of substance.”

“Whatever, I’m not dealing with this,” Bakugou turns to step away.

“I don’t get it, it’s not a big deal!” Shouto raises his voice a bit, for some reason his heart rate picks up when Bakugou starts leaving. “So what if you sweat through your eyes? Midoriya does it almost every day, sometimes twice a day...”

“Don’t fucking compare me to fucking Deku you fucking fried ice cream!”

“...And Midoriya beat you at this year’s Sports Festival,” Shouto dismissed.

Bakugou grits his teeth, but his eyes watch over Shouto. “Stop stalling and tell me what you want from me,” Bakugou growls.

Shouto’s eyes widen at the sudden honesty, he nibbles on his bottom lips, “Stay here?”

For a second, Bakugou glares at him, but after two years of being his classmate, Shouto can confidently say that they’re friends. He knows Bakugou isn’t angry at him. As to prove his point, Bakugou sits beside him, a bit closer than Shouto expects him to, though still with that permanent scowl. Shouto moves his palms from his pocket, letting go of the aluminum ashtray. Shouto tests the waters and moves closer so their shoulder bumps. No explosions, no snarl, success.

Instantly, Shouto relaxes. Focusing on the pressure of their shoulders, the light shifts Bakugou does (because he can never fully stay still), and the clouds moving. No thought, just being alive.

Alas, no quiet ever lasted long with Bakugou, he expected it though.

“No wonder Aizawa figured it out, this place still stinks of tobacco.”

“It does?” Shouto takes a deep sniff, all he smells is Bakugou’s sweat that always smells sweet because of his quirk. “I didn’t smell anything.”

“Yeah no shit scar head, your nose is probably numb at this point.”

“I don’t smoke that much.”

“Said someone who smoked more than a dozen in one sitting,” Bakugou’s nags turns to worry, “Damn, was it really in one sitting?”

“Is that worry I detected?” Shouto deflects.

Bakugou grits his teeth, “I’m not worried! Go die off lung cancer I don’t fucking care!”

“Good, then, because yes it was, and there’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Fucking hell it’s not! What the actual fuck are your lungs made of? I barely suck it past my throat and I almost coughed out my insides.”

“I missed your dramatics,” Shouto says genuinely, and he waits for an explosion to come. Bakugou doesn’t do well with praises thinly veiled with snark.

It never came, Bakugou watches him closely instead, “Yeah? And who’s fault is that?”

Shouto dared to glare back, but it didn’t last long, he knows the answer. Shouto had come out of his shell nicely, as Momo had put it. He’s still awkward, can’t really quite grasp ‘pop culture’ and how to correctly implied it, but he regularly hangs out with his friends. As of late, he’s noticeably withdrawn. Going straight to his room after class, and opting out of game nights, nail nights, and even soba nights.

They had been giving him space, which he finds endearing. Of course, Bakugou isn’t one to give anything liberally.

“Mine...” Shouto admits, and Bakugou looks surprised.

The fun part of befriending Bakugou is that Shouto could be a bit of a bitch and Bakugou would be a bitch back, and it wouldn’t matter. No one’s feelings were hurt, and Shouto can let go of steam without guilt. Shouto could’ve been in denial, said that Bakugou should step off his dick and no feelings would be hurt.

But he had enough of space, though admittedly, he should’ve confessed that with someone that wants to be in his space.

“Finally, you’re done moping around, everyone’s been on my ass worrying about you.”

“Why would they be on your ass?”

“Hell would I know.”

“Was that the reason you cried?” Shouto is just teasing, but the grim in Bakugou’s face isn’t a familiar one.

“I told you that didn’t happen!” he growls lowly.

Shouto considers, clueless yet curious. “I’ll tell you about me if you told me about you.”

“Just because you’re vomiting your crisis that I didn’t ask for, doesn’t mean I’m obligated to do the same!”

“Okay, that’s fine too.”

“No, shut-”

“My mom and dad are getting back together.”

Bakugou’s expression mellows to confusion, “That sounds convoluted as hell. Didn’t they just got a divorce or something?”

“They never got a divorce. She’s just sent to a mental hospital and never came home, doesn’t mean the marriage is legally broken.”

The fact seems to sink slow with his explosive friend, “What the fuck.”

Shouto sighs, looking down his jittery hands, his mouth dries. “Last year when I visited my mom, we were talking about the future. She said she’d filed for a divorce, and I’d live with her.” Shouto feels oddly numb, but there’s this dull ache deep in his chest that’s constant. “I should’ve known. She said that before he ‘tried to change’... she said that when everything was still bad, she thought it still happened.”

“What still happened?” Bakugou sounds angry, but he always does.

“I got hurt a lot when I was a kid, because of training. She thought he still hurts me.”

He felt the shoulder beside him tensed. Beside Shouto’s jittery hands is Bakugou’s clenched shaking fist. Shouto looks up from their laps and finds that Bakugou’s face... an eerie stoic.

“Hmmm,” Bakugou hums, and a chill runs down his spine. “When did you start training by the way?” not even a curse in that sentence.

Shouto realizes then, this is Bakugou truly angry, even though Shouto can’t figure out why on earth would he be.

“The day after my quirk manifested.”

His childhood is unforgettable. The day his training starts with fear and pain, then ends with exhaustion and anger. The day Touya never came back, the day his mom left, the longing stare towards the backyard wanting to play with his brother and sister. He remembers it all, like a tattoo in his memory.

“We been knew that Endeavor was an ass but I didn’t know he’s a fucking child abuser.”

The words snap him away from his musing. This time, Bakugou looks angry angry. Teeth-gritting, scowling, boiling anger.

Oh, that’s why he’s angry.

“It was training.”

“Not at five fucking years old you e-boy himbo!” Bakugou barks.

“That’s new, what’s a himbo?”

“Not the fucking point!” Bakugou takes his shoulder away, and suddenly Shouto feels cold. Then he’s held by his shoulders, pinned by sharp maroon eyes, and the lack of warmth turns cold when a growl says, “You’re telling me that your dad’s been abusing you, and no one stopped him? And he’s fucking getting away with it??”

There are so many things wrong with that question and implied statement. One is that it was not abuse. Two is that no one could’ve stopped the then number two hero. Three is that Shouto didn’t tell him any of that but Bakugou assumed anyway.

Shouto doesn’t get to say all of it as Bakugou lets go of him and takes deep breaths. Bakugou pinched the bridge of his nose, seemingly displeased at what he’s thinking.

“Why did you think your mom wants to get back together with your dad?”

Shouto feels relieved now they’re back on topic, “I don’t know. It feels like one moment she’s afraid of him, and now she wants to be with him again. I guess... he did ‘try to be better’. Everyone else seems to forgive him, but I can’t.”

Then Bakugou does something that he didn’t expect, he defends them, “I mean... He’s not that much of a dick now, right? He’s a dick but he was pretty alright when we have a work-study at his agency. And your mom’s better, so maybe they could make it work?”

Shouto knows it’s technically true, but displeasure clawed him still, his blood boiling.

“I don’t care whether it works! I hated that she forgives him so easily!” Shouto shouts.

“Well, that’s selfish of you, isn’t it! It’s her decision, not yours!” Bakugou barks back.

“What the fuck do you know about it?” Shouto spats, he stands up, “They’re going to destroy each other, and what then? Do they want me to just look at their trainwreck while they insist everything is okay? No! I’m not going through that again!”

“You’re just not trusting your mom! Things changed!” Bakugou stands up too, he looks exceptionally angrier than ever.

“No, I don’t. Especially after she said she wanted to get a divorce with him then changing her mind only a year later. Of course, I don’t trust her!”

“But isn’t it better to have both your parents together?”

“No, it doesn’t especially when she’s not happy!”

Bakugou doesn’t bark back, and Shouto only realized how Bakugou’s question was laced with a cracked voice. Shouto looks, only partially surprised that the eyes that look back thinly veiled with tears. The heat in his bloodstream wanes out, more worried/horrified that Bakugou is now openly crying.

This is the worst. Both of them are socially awkward lone wolves that have no idea how and what to do with emotions. So, Shouto does his #best.

“You can tell me.”

Bakugouu glares. Okay, so maybe Shouto’s #best isn’t what he needs.

“Only if you want, if you don’t then it’s okay too.”

“Shut the fuck up, thermostat.”

What else do you do when someone cried? Shouto racks his memories of times when he was crying a lot when he was little, trying to find examples he could follow. He remembers his mom.

“Come here.”

“The fuck are you trying to-”

Shouto cuts him off with a hug. It’s as awkward as it comes. Shouto has his arms around the broad shoulders, his chin hooked on the right side. Shouto doesn’t know how tight he should hug, but it’s enough to press their chest together. Then one of his arms, the left one, rubs Bakugou’s back, emitting a slight warmth. In two languid swipes, Bakugou’s tenseness bleeds slowly.

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Shouto says, mimicking what his mom had said once upon a time when he’s upset. “But it’ll be okay. Maybe it’ll take a long time, or it’ll be really hard, but you...” have me, you don’t have to deal with everything alone, was what his mom finished with. He doesn’t know if Bakugou would see him as reliable, but Fuyumi had said that intentions are the most important. “You have your friends, and you have me. I don’t know what will help, but I’ll do it if you asked.”

Shouto surprised himself that he means it. When he encounters an emotionally fragile situation, he usually gets Midoriya, or Urakara, or Momo to handle the situation. With Bakugou however...seeing that his usually prickly friend tipping at the edge like this, Shouto felt like he wants to help. Perhaps it was the camaraderie of the S.S. Emotional Constipation that makes him reach out his personal hand towards Bakugou.

Shouto found another surprise when Bakugou hugs him back, his spiky blond head tucked at the crook of his neck. Shouto also didn’t expect the reflex tears pooling in his eyes at the feeling of tightening arms around his torso. He’s being held, tight and needy. When was the last time he’s held like this? Tears pours without his will when he realized the last time someone hugged him was Touya as Dabi when he was about to burn himself along with Shouto.

They stay there on the rooftop just holding each other as if they’ll fall apart if they don't. When Bakugou lets go, his eyes are even redder than it already is. When those red eyes look up, he noticed the tear streak down Shouto’s face and doesn’t comment about it.

Instead, Bakugou says, “My parents are splitting up.”

Shouto says nothing, only to pull him in his arms again.

They say nothing else as they sit at the same spot on the concrete floor leaning on each other, hand in hand. Shouto instinctually teared up again when he remembered the last time someone holds his hand was his mom as she walked him to a park, all those years ago. Other than that, it was for survival and fighting.

Bakugou leans his head on Shouto’s shoulder first, Shouto says nothing about it. He then leans his face on top of Bakugou’s hair, it feels like a bed of grass, Bakugou says nothing about it too. Shouto realizes that Bakugou can be vulnerable as long as no one points it out. Being untalkative, Shouto can do just that.

The future is scary, especially when their supposed foundation is changing. Bakugou’s foundations are breaking apart, while Shouto had grown accustomed to the torn apart pieces now move together crossing fingers that they fit.

But the future is for tomorrow. The changes are not theirs to make. All they can do now is hold themselves together as everything changes, hoping they don’t break in the process.

Eventually, nightfalls, but none of them moved. Shouto suspects that Bakugou might be sleeping on him.

It’s a suspicion no more when Aizawa found them there, and Bakugou doesn’t stir from being found. Those tired eyes already look exasperated as he finds Shouto’s tear-streaked eyes looking back.

Aizawa sighs, “Is it life-threatening ?”

Shouto knows that the teacher is prone to worries despite his appearance. Their stumble at first year seems to scar him and made him extra vigilant with his students ever since.

“There’s nothing we could do about it,” Shouto says, which is true, but seemingly a wrong thing to say.

“That doesn’t answer my question, trouble child.” Aizawa scowls, which means his worry cranked up to max. “Are the both of you facing a problem that harms you, or threatening your life?”

“It’s nothing like that,” says the bundle of blond in his shoulder. Bakugou sits up and stretches, yawning so big his jaw seems to unhinge a bit. He doesn’t look angry, just tired. “It’s family drama, you know how it is.”

“Is it really just drama?” Aizawa squints at Bakugou, too knowing for someone without a mind-reading quirk.

Bakugou looks at Shouto, searching and prodding. Shouto doesn’t understand what he could be looking for, or what he wants. Bakugou just sighs, “Yeah, just drama.”

Aizawa looks at Shouto too and softens. “If you two need to cuddle you can just do it in your respective room.”

“Nah, too many nosy people.” Bakugou starts to leave.

Shouto follows with a “Good night Sensei.”

Aizawa grunts.

“We can use my Elsa stairs,” Shouto pipes in as he walks alongside him.

Bakugou looks at him and huffs, “Turns out you’re not a himbo after all.”

Since Bakugou won't tell him, Shouto looks up ‘himbo’ himself. This raises a lot of questions about how Bakugou has been seeing him, but Shouto decides that he’d be offended by it.

  ++++++

 You could still be lonely even though you have tons of sibling, or even when they really love you. I guess they just don’t know how to show us they love us.

He really should’ve known. He really should’ve fucking known.

The thought spins in his head as he smoked the last cigarette on his freshly bought pack. No one to catch him this time. It’s the weekend and he’s supposed to be at home, but it’s unbearable to be in the same room with his family. Usually, he could just slurp his soba in feigning ignorance but not now.

He’s sitting by the bench of a lonely park. He’s been sitting here since sun down. He has no idea what time it is. His phone in his pocket is on silent, he hasn’t checked on it since he walked out.

He should’ve stayed at the dorms, fuck the family dinner.

It’s not that Shouto wants things to end up badly. It’s not like he doesn’t want to be home, especially since his mom finally comes home after so many years. Everyone is happy that she’s back, even Natsuo, even his dad. Everyone except her. It looks so hard for her to be there. Shouto can see in her face that some places still hold strong bad memories for her.

His mother is strong because she pulls through. She holds herself through it all even though it seems only barely.

Yet why is he still so angry at her? Maybe not angry, frustrated. Shouto wants to ask her clarity. Why is she doing this? Why did she change her mind? Why come back here? Why not grasp the independence she had been telling Shouto she strived for? Was she coaxed to be here? Was she feeling some kind of responsibility to go back here? To salvage that sham of a marriage she had with Endeavor?

Shouto wants to ask, wants to understand. He crowded her with questions that moment when they said they’d be getting back together, only for his mom to wince, eyes widen, and quickened breath. For the second time in his life, his mom had looked at him with fear. Today, Shouto could barely meet her eyes again.

Is he really such a monster in her eyes just because he’s half his father? Then why go back to his father at all?

Shouto bought half a dozen packs as per tradition. Also because of his self implied tradition, he puts all the ashes in the coffin-shaped ashtray, even though there’s a park ashtray right beside him.

“You carry that everywhere,” Says a groveling voice that Shouto would notice anywhere.

Bakugou is in casuals. Black jeans and a grey hoodie seem like he’s out in a hurry. Just like Shouto.

“You’ve got to stop stalking me,” Shouto inhales deep, watching red amber burns till the filter and sighs.

“Who fucking stalking you Zuko.”

“Zuko doesn’t have-”

“Shut up,” Bakugou plop his ass beside Shouto, sitting waaay too close. He snatched the coffin tin, inspecting it. “Even when you didn’t smoke you carried this.”

“How did you know?”

“It shows your pocket, not big enough for a phone.”

Shouto knows he can’t get away once Bakugou began prying. “My first friend gave it to me.”

“That fucking Deku???”

“No,” Shouto chuckles at the image of Midoriya taking the role of what his first friend did. “It’s someone I met first-year junior high. She gave me this after introducing me to cigarettes.”

“That’s so fucking passive-aggressive I would’ve punched her in her teeth,” Bakugou grumbles, putting the ashtray to Shouto’s lap. “And why the fuck would anyone smoke at thirteen anyway!”

“Exactly because we’re thirteen, Katsuki, just because,” Shouto chuckles again at the memory. Seemingly too carefree from the nicotine, Bakugou had become Katsuki in his tongue. Katsuki bristles at his given name, but says nothing about it. It mysteriously made Shouto very happy.

“Among everything though, she was my first best friend, she teaches me a lot of things that make me who I am. She made me realize that I didn’t have to follow my dad’s wishes. That I can be what I want to be instead of what I was born for. That it’s valid to be lonely even though I technically have a big family. That it’s okay to not strive to be the best and just to be... happy.”

Shouto closes his eyes, remembering her lessons always fell bitter-sweet. But he’ll hold it in his heart forever.

“What you’re born for?” Katsuki says scathingly.

“Yeah, you know about this.” Shouto was told that Katsuki had eavesdropped on his conversation with Midoriya. Shouto was born to fulfill another man’s vendetta. A purpose first, and a son last.

“Seem like a wise person for a thirteen-year-old,” Katsuki sneers.

“She was, I loved her,” Shouto’s confession brings Katsuki’s face to a red grimace.

“Shit, I didn’t ask you to tell me your fucking secrets.”

“It’s not a secret.”

“Oh, really?” Katsuki spat bitterly, “Then why are you hiding your girlfriend from us?”

So many things wrong with that question. Shouto raises his eyebrows in surprise, “She’s not my girlfriend, and I’m not hiding her. She’s dead.”

The grimace fell like a hot potato, it would’ve been fun watching how Katsuki splutters if he didn’t look like he’s legit choking. “Holy fuck, that's... fuck, then why the shit you’re so stoic talking about it,” Katsuki seems appalled.

“It happens a long time ago. She seems accepting of her death that I... well I want to respect her decision.” Shouto knows it’s weird to not feel mournful of the departure of your closest friend. He still misses her, but she had been so positive until the very moment she left. Shouto was sure that she’s happy, so Shouto wants to be happy for her.

Katsuki paled, horrified, seemingly to misunderstand again.

“She had a terminal illness. Very likely no chance of survival. She chose to live her remaining time normally instead of undergoing treatment.”

“There’s... There’s no way her parents let her do that.”

“They’re economically challenged. They tried though, just too late in the end.”

“Fuck...” Katsuki cursed, running through his hair roughly. “Never thought you’d be the type of person to have life-changing moments like that.”

“A lot of people have proven to me that everyone has potential to be unexpected, and that’s just how it is.” Shouto looks pointedly at Katsuki, who glares at him in retaliation. “There’s a reason why we’re both here instead of home.”

“Yeah?” Katsuki mumbles, clearly not wanting to talk.

Shouto doesn’t too, to be honest, and yet keeping it in feels more exhausting, “My mom’s home.”

“No shit?” Katsuki was mildly surprised, “So it’s really happening huh.”

“It’s like walking on eggshells with her. I wanted to ask, but last time I did she flinched at me. I couldn’t look at her today.”

Katsuki sighs. This time, Katsuki is the one that scoots over till their shoulders touched all the way to their thighs. The contact makes Shouto breathes easier, he’s drawn to it like moths to a flame. His body goes limp as if it’s been too tense too long from holding itself together, and he drapes himself on top of Katsuki. Shoulder pressed together, his head heavily falls on Katsuki’s shoulder. Instinctually, his hand looks for another hand. Katsuki snakes around his hand and clasps it with his. It’s uncharacteristic, but Shouto finds himself grateful for it.

It’s warm, it’s damp, it’s grounding. Like lying on even earth after running away for so long.

“I don’t want her to be with him under the obligation that parents are supposed to be together for the kids. She’s been through so much, I would’ve understood, but I didn’t know how to say it without triggering her.” Silence follows, and Shouto realized what he said. “Sorry, uh, I’m not insinuating-”

“Shut up candy cane, I know.” Katsuki leans closer, his head on top of Shouto’s.

It’s warm, just what he needs in the middle of an emotional crisis at the beginning of November. It’s a bit out of character for Katsuki to do this, nor Shouto, neither of them are known for physical contact or talking about their personal lives. Yet here they are.

And Katsuki speaks anyway, “They’re fighting.”

Shouto, contrary to what Katsuki called him, isn’t a himbo. He knows who they are and he knows what a fight could entail.

“Did they hurt each other when they fight?” Shouto asks, then mused even if they did, could Katsuki do anything about it? Shouto couldn’t back then.

“No!” Katsuki says, indignant, “Of course not, they’re just bitching at each other about... about... I don’t know, it’s fucking stupid.”

“Hm, that’s good.”

“Fucking hell it’s good, they’re being idiotic!”

“They’re not hurting each other.”

Katsuki paused, his hands clenched tighter, “Did he hurt your mom when they fight?”

Shouto takes a deep inhale at the surge of memory. The fear that settles is old, he knows. Just leftover trauma that never went away, still, it bubbled to the surface, makes his skin cold.

Not trusting his voice, Shouto nods.

“They were fighting about me,” Katsuki says after a while, his voice a bit shaky, and Shouto knows better than to point it out. He keeps his head on the shaking shoulder and listens. “They didn’t know I was listening, they never did. They never... Turn-Turns out they didn’t even plan on having me.”

Katsuki holds his hand tighter and trembling.

“I’m a fucking accident,” Katsuki spat, venom dripping in every word. “Then they had a shotgun wedding, they didn’t even love each other at all.”

Shouto hears one escape of a sniff and lets himself relax, feigning clueless that Katsuki must’ve been crying. He lets the silence stretches until the hand holding his relaxed and the shaking subsides. Shouto had the same breakdown before. It downs to him that they’re not so different after all, children of a loveless relationship. Though he wonders if that instantly means he’s unloved. It had felt that way, but now... now it feels so much complicated than yes or no.

“Does it matter why we’re born?” Shouto hears a deep inhale of an incoming rant but he cuts it off with, “We’re our own person, with our own lives, and our own dreams. No one can tell us otherwise. Not even the one who makes us.” Shouto pauses and listens, what came to his ears is soft breathing, so he continues. “So what you’re not planned? That doesn’t mean you’re unwanted,” Shouto rubs his thumb over the damp knuckles, “You’re not unloved.”

Because Shouto had been to the Bakugo residence. Bakugou Mitsuki is as explosive as he is, but he can see her adoring stare at her son even when she’s scolding him. Bakugou Masaru is softer, always trying to calm both of them and giving small smiles when Shouto tells him stories about his son at school.

“What the fuck do you know, water dispenser?” Katsuki lowly growls, but it doesn’t have that biting hate, he doesn’t move away from Shouto.

So Shouto only hums and lets the silence stretch. He grabs the ashtray with his other hand, rubbing the plain surface with his thumb, remembering her, thanking her.

“What’s her name?” Katsuki says after minutes of silence, his voice with less snarl.

“Arisu.”

“... I’m sorry you lost her.”

And that’s what happened, isn’t it? Shouto may be able to let her go, but she’s still lost to him. Still hurts, Shouto still mises her. “Thank you.”

They didn’t let go of each other until Shouto’s phone rings. It’s Natsuo. His brother is just as unhappy about their parents' reunion, though for him it’s more about hating their dad and less about questioning their mother as Shouto did. Natsuo called to offer to spend the rest of the weekend at his place. Shouto immediately agrees, then he remembers Katsuki.

“Is it okay if I bring one of my friends?”

Katsuki instantly glowers at him.

“Who?”

“Katsuki.”

“Who??”

“Bakugou.”

“Oh, yeah sure. Buy some dinner on the way, I didn’t get to eat much.”

“Okay, me too.”

As soon as they hang up, Katsuki bares his teeth.

“Who says I’ll go with you, Pokeball?” His voice raised a bit, his arms crossing defensively.

“I’m not, I said if. You don’t have to, but if you want, you can.”

“No one fucking asked you for shelter,” Katsuki scoffs, facing away.

“I know...” Shouto knows Katsuki would rather leave than accept help. The only way he accepts it is that if no one acknowledges it. He knows Katsuki can take care of himself, but Shouto is the one that doesn’t want him to leave just yet. Shouto knows he’ll go back to Natsuo’s place only to hear him bitch about Endeavor when the real problem is with their mom and her odd decision.

“Can’t you just stay for dinner?” The desperation in his voice is real, Katsuki seems to notice it and is bewildered by it. “Please?”

Katsuki’s eyes widen at the magic word because no, Shouto doesn’t say it often, much less towards Katsuki, he had enough ego already.

Nose flared and fist clenched, Katsuki finally barks, “Fine! But we’re cooking instead of ordering take-out, I fucking know what you’re gonna get you soba simp. Your brother better has a kitchen.”

“He does,” Shouto replies, the upbeat tone in his voice is rare. Can you blame him? He’s excited that he’s not coming home, and Katsuki goes with him with his admittedly superior cooking.

At Natsuo’s apartment, Shouto helped Katsuki cook, nothing more than chopping stuff. Natsuo gave him a brief summary of what happened at home after Shouto left, but thankfully, he’s not saying too much because Katsuki is there. Once Natsuo finished talking and left to get beers, Shouto gives Katsuki an arm squeeze of thanks. Katsuki only grunts.

Dinner is ‘simple’ in Katsuki’s opinion. Stir-fried vegetables, miso soup, and hamburg steak. As always, it’s delicious, and Natsuo who’s none the wiser to Katsuki’s God-like cooking skill is blown away.

They’re in the living area on the sofa watching TV when Shouto scoots closer again. Natsuo is in his room studying.

“You can stay here for the rest of the weekend if you want,” Shouto says, bumping shoulders.

Katsuki frowns, eyes on the screen. “I don’t have my change of clothes with me.”

“You can borrow mine, I have some here.”

“Ran away a lot don’t you?” Katsuki sneers.

“You have no idea,” Shouto admits.

The sneer falls, “Why?”

“Just because I finally can.”

“You couldn’t before?”

Shouto shakes his head, finding his head heavy, so he lays his head on Katsuki’s shoulder again. “Before he was number one, he insists on using all my free time on training. If I didn’t, he’d take my phone, or the internet, or my manga, even burned them on some occasion. He even flushed my pet fish, rest in peace Kiya. Then he’s number one, and the dorms are established... so...”

Shout shrugs. He doesn’t reach for Katsuki’s hand this time, just pressed against him, afraid if he pushed then Katsuki would retract. Shouto doesn’t want to stop his newfound comfort just yet.

Then his hand is grasped by a firm clammy hand. Shouto keeps thinking of how Katsuki’s sweaty hands must be because of the nitroglycerin of his quirk. If he’s not thinking about Katsuki’s quirk then he’d think about how it makes his heart skipped a beat that Katsuki initiates the touch again. So yeah, clammy hands that hold him tight.

“Why didn’t you tell anybody?” Katsuki says, weaker than he’s accustomed to. It makes Shouto wary.

“I don’t know what is there to tell.”

A groan stretches, “What do I do with you?”

“Hey...” Shouto mock complains “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Does he still train you like that?”

Shouto feels a bit of whiplash with all these questions. Katsuki has been asking personal questions left and right, and Shouto doesn’t understand why answering it doesn’t feel as hard as usual.

“No, not since he became number 1.”

Katsuki scoffs, “Got what he wanted didn’t he?”

“Sometimes I wonder if that’s the case. When he got it, he didn’t seem happy, just angry. Then he started wanting the family he broke to get that number one spot.”

That renders Katsuki to another bout of silence. He knows Katsuki strives to be number one too, and at first, Shouto had ridiculed him about it. Why does a superficial title mean so much anyway? Katsuki changed over the years though, with Midoriya being the main cause of it.

Heart on his throat, Shouto dare asks, “Hey, Katsuki? Why do you want to be a hero?”

Katsuki tensed, but Shouto holds him tighter, “Why are you getting nosy all of the sudden?”

Shouto knows he’s not getting things easy, “I just wanna know.”

“Yeah, that’s nosy.”

“No, I just want to get to know you.” Shouto bites his lips as soon as the words left, was that too forward?

They’re not looking at each other, but Shouto can feel the glare directed at him. “Why?”

“We’ve been friends for a while...”

“We’re not fucking friends-!”

“...But I feel like I’m taking you for granted. I didn’t even know you’re going through something so big.” Some friend I am, Shouto broods.

It takes a few seconds, but Katsuki defeatedly sighs, and Shouto smiles in victory, “At first, I just want to be the best.”

“Best at what?”

“Everything...” Katsuki muses, his head knocked back, “Then I realized that it was an impossible goal... Did a lot of thinking, did a lot of uh, self-reflecting. Started talking to Ito-san too. I realized that I just want to be needed.”

It makes sense why Katsuki is here then. Shouto wished he could outright say that he needs him so Katsuki would stay longer, but just imagining him doing so already makes him pink in embarrassment.

Ito-san is the school counselor, her doors are open for every UA student. Shouto had half the mind to go to her, but there’s always this weight of silence from being a son of a high-profile hero. Endeavor always drilled him about secrecy and how he shouldn’t say anything about his family to anyone or it’ll ruin everything. It’s the reason why Arisu was his only friend, she was dying, and she did take his secret to her grave. Shouto still feels guilty about that.

“Have you ever talked to Ito-san?” Katsuki asked as if reading his mind.

“Can’t.”

“Why?”

“Everything that comes out of my mouth is tabloid-worthy. Endeavor had drilled me from way young that I can’t run my mouth about our lives. He’s right about that at least, I didn’t want paparazzi swarming us demanding half-assed rumors if I can help it. It had happened before, someone even sneaked into my mom’s hospital to reach her. I guess... that’s also why I never told anyone at all about anything.”

“You told Arisu didn’t you?”

Shouto bites his lip, guilt gnaws at him, “Because I know she won't carry my secrets long enough.” Please don’t hate me. Shouto’s grip on Katsuki tighten.

“But you told Deku, you told me.”

“Well, I trust you,” he says like it’s the most obvious thing. “You sure you don’t want to stay over?”

Katsuki leans away, and the cold strikes immediately. Shouto leans back, pointedly not looking at red irises.

“Fine.”

Shouto quickly looks up, then he finds Katsuki’s face odd. There’s something familiar with it. He’s... smiling, only slightly, but it’s a smile, and his eyes aren’t furrowed or angry or glaring. His eyebrows relaxed and he looks.... soft. Maybe Shouto fell asleep and currently dreaming.

“I’ll need to call my parents first,” Katsuki says after clearing his throat, looking away a bit flushed.

“Sure, I’ll get you settled.”

Shouto is half excited half worried. He told Natsuo that Katsuki will be borrowing the couch, which only replied with a hum while his eyes doesn’t leave the book. His brother is not unfamiliar with runaways. Shouto isn’t the only one seeking shelter at his place.

Shouto passes the balcony where Katsuki is screaming at his phone. Shouto can only hear muffles, but he gives Katsuki some privacy and gets some spare clothes. When Shouto sees that Katsuki is still on the phone even after ten minutes have passed, he takes the liberty of taking a shower first.

When Shouto walks out, he finds Katsuki sitting by the sofa, his hands suspiciously inflamed. He faces the screen but looking particularly nowhere. Shouto had seen those empty looks before.

“Katsuki?”

He jerks slightly as his name is called. Katsuki schooled his expression to a careful stoic, walls up. No matter, Shouto thinks, sometimes you don’t need to tear down walls to help a person, just hold their hand through the gate.

“Go take a shower, bath’s warm.”

Katsuki nods, taking the towel Shouto offered and the spare clothes. Shouto makes tea, for him, his brother, and Katsuki. Shouto delivers the cup of tea to Natsuo’s room, seems like the books are multiplying around his brother.

“Tea,” Shouto says before putting it on a coaster.

“Thanks.” Natsuo finally looks away from the book and takes a sip. “That Bakugou, how is he?” Natsuo asks, knowing that Shouto only brings his friend here in a dire situation.

The only other person he brought was Kaminari, believe it or not. Kaminari had said he didn’t want to come home for the weekend because he was scared of facing his parents after he came out via text. From the replies, it hadn’t been good. Kaminari spent the rest of the stay switching between sobbing and full-on crying. Only God knows why Kaminari asked him instead of any of the Baku-squad, but Kaminari is still his friend too, so Shouto provides.

But today with Katsuki is different though. Shouto had to beg him to stay, whether it’s for the benefit of him or Shouto the line had blurred.

“Hopefully he will be,” Is all Shouto can offer. Natsuo nods before going back to his book.

Shouto lays out his futon in the living room adjacent to the sofa. He’s laying down, scrolling at his phone. Putting his dad on read and ignoring Fuyumi’s and mom’s chatbox. He opted to look at cat videos instead. Soon, Katsuki came out of the bathroom, drank the offered tea, and laid down on the sofa.

They spent probably an hour separately looking at their phones when Shouto finally calls it a night. He turned off the lights, and tuck himself in. Before he said goodnight, Shouto thinks and his desires take.

“Wanna hang out tomorrow?” he asked.

Blood red eyes look at him from the screen, “Where?”

Shouto shrugs, “I don’t know, just around, get my mind off things. There’s a cat cafe I’ve been wanting to see, then we’ll go from there.”

Katsuki stares, seemingly thinking it over, “Have you ever been to a rock climbing gym?”

“A what?”

Katsuki smirks, sharp-teethed and evil, “Oh you’re in for a fucking experience, red velvet oreo.”

Shouto is a bit suspicious, even so, he finds himself looking forward to tomorrow.

  +++++

 I’m sorry for not telling you sooner, but you shouldn’t think that way. Of course you’ll have more friends. You’re more lovable than you think, Shouto.

Something changed between them after that weekend. Comfort grows between them. Comfort that they don’t want to let go just yet, perhaps not anytime soon.

The bad thing about it is that everyone notices. Everyone.

To their friend's credit though, they came to school together, walking very close to each other. It was fully initiated by Shouto, but Katsuki didn’t snap or push him away, so he assumed everything is okay.

Everything is absolutely not okay because the moment he walks to class everyone has eyes on them. Shouto thought it won’t matter to him, but Katsuki tends to be defensive. When Katsuki is defensive, he pushes people away. Shouto tried not to watch Katsuki for the whole class.

Momo noticed, of course, but she notices more than superficial things.

“Shouto,” Momo whispers, “Everything alright?”

Shouto gives her a smile and nods.

It’s not until they’re getting up for lunch that Shouto is tested in a form of Kirishima.

“Bakubro! How long have you been dating Todobro?”

The world screech halt, and Kirishima tensed at the sudden chill he’s feeling. When Kirishima found the source of burning in his back, he sees Shouto, glaring hard and terrifyingly at him. Face darkens, pupils small, ready to kill.

Kirishima squeaks, “He-hey, uh-”

“Back off Kiri, it’s none of your business,” is all Katsuki says. Not even a scream, just a conversational tone as if he’s bored. No defensiveness, no snarling at Shouto in retaliation. “The fuck are yall extras staring at? Move outta my way, I’m hungry!” Then he left.

No one is barging Shouto with questions instead. It’s out of character of his classmates to not poke their nose in something juicy, but as he drops his butt at his chair, he finds himself alone in class.

Shouto is left in class with a big wave of relief, so much that he couldn’t stand. Why is it that the thought of Katsuki pushing him away scares him this much?

A hand landed on his desk, he looks up to find Momo’s honest stare, “Something is not alright.”

Shouto sighs, “No.”

Unlike Katsuki, Momo never pries, only assuring that she’s there for him. Unlike Momo, Katsuki understands that some things can’t be fixed, wherein if he opens up to Momo and some others, they tried to help by fixing. The number of times his friends told him, again and again, to go to Ito-san when they found out about Dabi being his brother is an exhausting amount. Maybe that’s why Shouto has been more comfortable with laying his problems to Katsuki.

So he eats lunch with Momo in the silence of comfortable company, and there’s just that.

  +++++

 Thank you for being there for me. You’re the bestest best friend I could ever wish for. And you won’t be lonely for long, you’ll see.

Shouto has peaceful days following that first Monday. His comfort with Katsuki doesn’t change. Though they don't get together on the rooftop anymore (Iida never let go of his key since Katsuki managed to steal it), they still gravitate towards each other whenever they don’t feel particularly great.

Katsuki would approach and say things like, “They want me home this weekend.”

“You wanna stay at the dorms or my place?”

“Can’t. I know they wanted to talk to me about who I wanna stay with.”

“We can make up an excuse if you want.”

“Hm.”

Then they spent the rest of the day together, just sitting at the school’s lawn, looking at particularly nothing. And if they sit too close together and their clasped hands only partially hidden by their legs, no one pointed it out.

Shouto would approach and say things like, “Fuyumi wants to call me, I know she’s just gonna talk about how I’m tearing the family apart.”

Katsuki snaps from his bed towards the window where Shouto is stepping down from his Elsa stairs.

Katsuki’s shock then turns to fury, “Your sister, Fuyumi, THAT Fuyumi said that to you?”

“She wanted the family together. I think she’s frustrated that I keep making my parents' union difficult.”

“You know what, her spicy mapo tofu isn’t that delicious anyway!” Katsuki barks his hands clenched down mini-explosions. It’s one of Katsuki’s outbursts that Shouto doesn’t understand, nor does he understand why her mapo tofu is related in any way, so he doesn’t comment.

“I’m gonna head up to the roof, wanna come?”

“No, you’ll just smoke and you’d give me fucking cancer.”

Shouto feels cold, Katsuki had never said no from hanging out before, “Fine.”

“Who said you can leave? Come here!” Katsuki held his ankle from the balcony, gripping tight.

Shouto blinks, remembering what Aizawa-sensei had said some days ago. “Oh, are we gonna cuddle?”

Katsuki’s face set aflame, “Just fucking come in here Katy Perry, before I yank you by your stupid Poland flag hair.”

Shouto finds himself obeying at the thought of cuddling, but then confused, “Why Katy Perry?”

“Hot and cold.”

“I guess that’ll make sense if I know who Katy Perry is but.”

Katsuki spat a curse, “Alright, time for a session of pop culture.”

“But I already had them with Mina and Sero”

“And they’re doing a shit job about it if you didn’t know the person that shapes a whole ass generation.”

It started with a music video of Hot and Cold by Katy Perry and ends with a retelling biography of Lady Gaga. Who knew Katsuki is so knowledgeable about female pop stars.

“TELL ANYONE AND DIE,” He said after Shouto pointed it out.

Most important of all, they did cuddle. They were sitting on the bedside then suddenly they’re laying down side by side. They’re watching a gameplay video of a Swedish man playing a horror game, another important role in pop culture as Katsuki said. It’s an old video, and Katsuki said that the man owns some part of Antarctica, which Shouto knows it’s some kind of an inside joke.

The nights getting late, and Shouto is reminded of the text on his phone, how it vibrates occasionally. Shouto has been in Katsuki’s room for four hours, but he doesn’t want to go back to his room.

Katsuki notices him lingering, “You wanna stay here for the night?”

Shouto looks up from Katsuki’s phone with big sparkling eyes, “You sure?”

“Tch, I wouldn’t have offered if I don’t.” Katsuki looks away, exposing his neck that seems red to the tip of his ears, “It’ll be a little cramp though with my single bed.”

“I don’t mind it. Just don’t kick me out of bed.”

“No promises.”

Katsuki didn’t. He curled away from Shouto as soon as the blankets tucked.  Their backs pressed against each other because of the small space. Shouto finds it hard to fall asleep, could be the new environment or the gnawing anxiety.

He’ll admit that Fuyumi is his favorite sibling. She’s there for him when he was condemned in that lonely manor only to train and study. Fuyumi stays back for him, tend to his wounds, cook for him, keep him company. Natsuo had left and rarely come back, even though he’s there for Shouto in the end.

Then his dad had a bootleg redemption arc and Fuyumi dropped him like hot potato and shoved both of them together despite what Shouto feels about his dad. When his parents are getting back together, Fuyumi stopped consoling Shouto and started to support them blindly. So desperate to have their family together. Doesn’t she know that there’s nothing to salvage? Doesn’t she remember what he did?

“I can hear you from here, air conditioner,” Katsuki grumbles, his back vibrates, “Go to sleep.”

“I’m trying.”

Shouto can’t stop thinking, can’t stop getting angry and getting hurt. It hurts when his sister is pointing the blame at Shouto, it hurts even more when it’s kind of true. It hurts that despite his fear of facing her, he still owes her a call at least. He’ll never be ready for what she’s about to say, never be ready to be hurt by her. Shouto turns around and buries his face at Katsuki’s back, ducking under the cover.

“What is it?’ Katsuki asks, not demanding, but Shouto’s floodgates are opened.

“I don’t understand how they could forgive him. He hurts mom, he hurts Touya to a point that he left and hates us, and he... he hurts me. It’s just training but-but- fine, okay, it hurt and I was scared most of the time that he’s not gonna pull his punches. Fuyumi forgives him so easily, and mom just went back in there even though they were never in love in the first place. It’s like they’ve forgotten what he had done, how deeply he scars all of us. Like what- like what happened didn’t matter.” Shouto’s voice breaks the whole time, a sob escaped in between the jumbled words and he’s trying so hard, so hard not to cry.

Katsuki turns around, his arms wrapped around Shouto’s hunched shoulders. A burnt sweet scent hits his nostrils, his face pressed against a defined neck and collarbones. All tenseness bleeds away when Katsuki starts rubbing his back, and tears break from his eyes without his will. Shouto wraps his arms around his friend’s torso, feeling his chest constrict when Katsuki mercifully says nothing about the silent tears landing on his chest.

He shuts his lips, pressing tightly because he’s not sobbing to Katsuki’s chest. They’re comfortable with each other but not that comfortable... right? Shouto’s tolerance to breakdown cries is thanks to exposure to crying most of his childhood, the same can’t be said for Katsuki. The hug is enough, it’s everything. Shouto never realized how much he craved being touched until that day Katsuki sits way too close to him.

His lips pressed tight keeping from sobbing, but his hands tremble on Katsuki’s back instead.

“Damn, you’re touch starved aren’t you,” Katsuki sighs to his hair, his face buried there.

“I didn’t know,” Shouto’s voice shaking pathetically, breaking at the edge and Shouto is too torn to care about it.

“Me too.”

Shouto doesn’t know which one Katsuki meant, but neither let go until they sleep.

  ++++++

 I love you too, Shouto. Don’t be scared of letting people in, okay? Not all of them are gonna leave you, I promise.

Things get rough, but their comfort pushes each other through.

Katsuki chooses to stay with his dad, but he’s co-parenting with his mom. Katsuki spends his weekends at both their house, switching every weekend. There’s still tenseness between his parents, and Katsuki explodes whenever his dad or mom asks Katsuki about the other. ‘Stop fucking asking me! If you wanna know so much then you shouldn’t have gotten the divorce!’ Katsuki doesn’t want to hear their reasoning, feeling better to just accept the change and move on, but Shouto thinks he’s just not ready to hear it. Sometimes Katsuki stays at the dorms with Shouto or the Todoroki estate when he gets overwhelmed.

Shouto finally talks to his mom. At first, it didn’t go anywhere. She’s as unsure as Shouto, but her willingness to try and salvage the marriage is as honest as it comes, even though her feelings might not be there yet. It feels like hearing Fuyumi talk, hearing the same desperation and blindness in putting things together. It’s hard to understand her foolishness, but Shouto tried to trust her. Shouto’s opinion might have been persuaded a little when his father announced that they’ll be moving houses due to mom’s tense reaction to the place. It’s a plus that his dad is willing to do that for his wife, but Shouto is still keeping an eye on them.

Then things get better, but their comfort doesn’t stop. Shouto is comfortable in following his desires without questioning them, but he quizically finds that Katsuki seeks him too even though he no longer approach Shouto with that near tears scowl, and situation bomb.

“How’s your mom?” Katsuki asked out of the blue under the summer blue sky. They’re sitting by the school lawn, their backs to a tree trunk, their friends strangely been leaving them alone.

“She’s fine.”

“Then why did you want to meet here?” Katsuki murmurs, looking down at the comic book Shouto lends him but not reading it. The tips of his ears are red.

Oh, Katsuki is testing the waters, “I just want to be with you.”

Katsuki flushes, “Ew, where the fuck did you even get that cheesy line.”

Shouto pays the snark no mind. “We haven't had any excuses for being together lately, do we?”

Katsuki hums.

“Do you not like it?”

“It’s fine,” Katsuki grumbles.

“Say... If I ask you to go to a cat cafe this Saturday, will you go?”

“Satan in hell, cat cafe again? I still have fucking fur on my black jacket from the previous visit! I felt like we’ve been to all the cat cafes in the country!”

Shouto pouts, “That’s not possible.”

“Let’s go hiking instead.”

“Okay.”

Katsuki twist his head towards him, “You would?”

“Just us two right?”

“Obviously, there’s no way I’m taking those extras. Those nature documentaries made them wimps.”

Shouto only listened to the first word he uttered, “I’ll go with you.”

Then Katsuki looks him that way again. Soft eyes, relaxed eyebrows, fond stares, and the most devastating of all, a small genuine smile.

“Cool. Come to my place, we have to wake up early. I miss seeing the sunset there, it’s awesome.” There’s light in his maroon eyes, excited to go, and he’s taking Shouto with him to his hobby, his precious place.

Shouto feels warmth radiating from his chest all the way down to his toes, a smile blooms on his face. He’s been feeling this mysterious warmth pretty often lately, only now has he realized that Shouto is happy and that he hasn’t been lonely despite his current family strain.

Katsuki’s rambling about his favorite hiking spot is cut short when Shouto leans in to kiss the corner of his lips. The smile is exchanged with shocked parted lips. Shouto feels himself shrink by the silence of Katsuki’s loud mouth and the pinning stare of his sharp eyes. Blood rushed to Shouto’s cheeks, knowing that he’s blushing up a storm, suddenly nervous.

“Is that okay?” Shout asks, too cowardly to say that he wants more, closer, to continue being together for no reason at all other than just because.

“No.”

He’s grabbed by the face, and a pair of lips pressed against his. Shouto expected to be bitten, his head clawed, and his lips bruised. But the weeks he spent with Katsuki should’ve made him know better. Because the gentle hands cradling his face, the complete capture of his lips, and the soft nips are all unsurprising. Shouto melts away, leaning his whole weight so they’re chest to chest. He grabs Katsuki by the hips, pulling closer, kissing back.

Katsuki hums, and the vibration echoes on Shouto’s body deliciously. Katsuki’s lips taste sweet and hot as it moves to nibble Shouto’s bottom lip. The hands cupping his face moves past his neck. One is clutching his back and the other plays with the hair at the back of his head. Fingers card gently around his nape and Shouto has a whole body shiver.

Then the lips go missing, and Shouto goes limp in Katsuki’s arms, gasping for breath on his chest.

“And that’s how you kiss, Strawberry Shortcake,” Katsuki says smugly, patting Shouto’s back condescendingly.

Shouto scoffs and leans back. Katsuki still has that fond eyes as he looks at him, but now paired with a cheeky smirk. Shouto wants to kiss that too, and Shouto does.

From then on, it’s expected that he sometimes steps down his icy stairs just to cuddle with Katsuki, and it’s perfectly acceptable that Katsuki barges into his room and starts pulling his hand towards wherever he wants.

They’d still bicker sometimes, and sometimes Shouto unintentionally steps on some lines that set Katsuki to explode. Sometimes Katsuki is frustrated with him. Those days they fight makes him nervous.

But they always say their apologies eventually. Katsuki always comes back and tries again with him. Even when the fights are between them, they eventually get over it and get better while they’re still leaning onto each other for comfort.

Eventually, Shouto keeps the coffin ashtray in his keepsake instead of his pocket.

He’d like to think that he can finally let her go now that she’s proven right.

Shouto finds someone that loves him, someone that makes him happy, and someone that doesn’t leave.

 ++++

nicknames that didn't make it: Colgate toothpaste, hot pocket, tide pod, dry ice. nicknames that I magically forgot: Half and half.

Tag yourself as Shouto’s nickname, I’m water dispenser.

[flange5]

Hi angie! I just had a quick question that, if it's okay, I'd like to get your perspective on as a teacher. I ended up in 2 of this one professor's classes this semester and I really liked his class structure, and him as an instructor - so I signed up for more of them next term. Is that a weird thing to do? I know you dont speak for every teacher but wokekwkwks thank you

Hi, anon!

That’s a really good question and I can see both why you’d do it and both why you might be a bit nervous to do it. 

SO, first off your professor doesn’t think you’re weird or a kiss-ass, so if that’s your concern, feel better! We often are excited to get repeat students bc it means there are names we don’t have to memorize, personalities and learning styles we’re already comfortable with, and it is kind of validating to know a student felt good enough about their experience in another class to sign on again. 

That said, there are some things to consider about diversifying:

1) Rec letters. This professor is likely going to be your go-to for recommendation letters for internships, transfer if that’s a possibility, grad school if that’s a possibility, scholarships and grants,  possibly a job. So on the one hand this person is a natural bc they’ll know you WELL and that means they can build a picture of you that is much more individual than someone who only saw a student in one class and didn’t really interact much.

BUT. Be aware that you may be putting a lot of eggs in one basket. So, if you really like this prof but they’re disorganized or bad with deadlines, you may have some stress if you’re relying on them for this. ALSO, make sure you are also making relationships with other professors in your major/field even though you are obviously taking a bunch with this professor–I might make an extra effort to drop by office hours early in the semester for OTHER professors so they can start to build a positive picture of you and also start to hoard things to say in case you ask them for letters in the future.

–HONESTLY, I wish people would more directly talk to students about recommendation letters early in their college careers, and how to strategize for getting good letters. Start in your first semester, so you have options and backups. I just had a student who I’ve known for 3 weeks (i.e. I don’t know her at all) ask me for a letter, because a prof in another major is apparently ghosting her after saying yes and I’m in the position of saying I CAN write her a letter and I’ll do my best to make it as good as possible, but I can’t lie, they will ask how long I’ve known her, and it’s going to be hard for me to write her an effective letter that will do anything other than check a box on their checklist, but she still wants me to do it, either because I’m approachable or because she’s not had/cultivated relationships in her previous classes that allow her to ask other people.

/side rant/PSA

2) coverage of field--professors have areas of specialization in their field, so by sticking with one prof you may be getting a kind of lopsided view of your major–that said, your department/institution has coverage requirements and this is only really an issue to consider if you’re strongly considering grad school or employment truly based in your major and trying to avoid accidental blind spots in your preparation.

3) pre-emptive damage control–not to catastrophize, but the only other concern I’d have about loading up another two classes with this professor is that if you have a falling out with them between now and the end of the semester, that’s going to make next semester difficult and stressful for you (and them). But if you feel like there’s a good rapport/match, why borrow trouble–if something goes super sidewise, you can always switch sections or move things around. To avoid this, it’s really important to avoid nasty surprises–be aware of syllabus policies, especially for late/short work, and of the grade breakdown–how much are different things worth, so you don’t get blindsided by anything and carry that upset with you in the future. The cool thing about a 4x repeat prof, though is that we tend to carry over our policies from class to class so you’ll likely be super familiar with this one guy’s rules. 

related: I often recommend my first years write out class specific policies in the cover of that class’s notebook/folder if they keep one, or create a master sheet listing the policies for each class and saving it to the phone and posting it on the fridge/somewhere prominent as a reminder–late work policies, short/long work policies, contact info, weird specific rules about how/how not to submit work (electronic or not, will they accept emailed work as a time stamp even if they will require a hard copy later?) yadda yadda, so when it’s 1am and you’re exhausted and sick and can’t brain you can just glance at a bullet point list for that class tomorrow and know whether or not it’s worth pushing through or taking a 5% hit for late work bc this professor accepts it with a minimal penalty but that jerk in the afternoon doesn’t accept late work, so prioritize them. You don’t want to mess that up and it’s so easy to mess that up.  

tl;dr, but it won’t be an issue for your professor, but there are some potential opportunity costs in terms of relationships, experiences with other professors, and a slight risk if the relationship goes south. But if you do preventative maintenance, you’ll have done a great job of engineering a semester where a good chunk of your classes will be taught by someone you’re comfortable with, and who can write you a great letter! That’s pretty good!

I hope that helps, and I’m sorry I rambled so long. Pity my students. 

[thestaffofgrayson]

1-100 for the unusual asks, you meme lord

Mmmmkay so I cant help being sassy but also wanna give a real answer so we gonna do this -> Anything in parenthesis is a real answer everything else is sass central station

1) Spotify, SoundCloud, or Pandora?  Im a dank soundcloud rapper check out my soundcloud at nobodycares540.soundcloud.fuck (I dont really use any of em tbh)

2) is your room messy or clean? *glances over* clean (m e s s y)

3) what color are your eyes? All 16 of em are different colors actually (blue)

4) do you like your name? why? No because its not Jojo (Yes!!! Love the name Perrin gonna be honest)

5) what is your relationship status? *sets status to its complicated* you could say im a bit of a player (deathly single)

6) describe your personality in 3 words or less? Im sorry who? (Described meme lord)

7) what color hair do you have? Minecraft Steve Brown (Ver Ver Pink)

8) what kind of car do you drive? color? No I run like sonic next question (nope fuck driving fuck boulder)

9) where do you shop? Uuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh (For what Next question)

10) how would you describe your style? Goku Black cosplay (Goku Black cosplay)

11) favorite social media account? The one with the Z U C C (Tumblr fuck snapchat)

12) what size bed do you have?  Uuuummmmmmm my size OBVIOUSLY next questions (Dont know tbh queen maybe?)

13) any siblings? Little shit brother (thats not even a joke)

14) if you can live anywhere in the world where would it be? why?  Why this world fuck you what about mars (uuuuhhhhhh no idea gonna be honest)

15) favorite snapchat filter? Oh man! Love this one altho its not well known what ya gotta do is hit the delete button and when it asks if youre sure say yes :D (they change so often I dont pay attention)

16) favorite makeup brand(s)? Whatever it is Genji uses as eyeliner (dooont wear makeup)

17) how many times a week do you shower? I get clean by rolling around in the snow so maybe like 3 times a year (depends usually once a day with exceptions)

18) favorite tv show? I dont watch tv I AM the tv (The Office or if its Anime then Jojos Bizarre Adventure)

19) shoe size? M Y   S I Z E (size 10)

20) how tall are you?  hOWs ThE wEaTHEr dOwnTHeRe (5′9 - 5′11 somewhere in there)

21) sandals or sneakers? Gadget Shoes (legit those are cool but sneakers)

22) do you go to the gym? I think theeessseeee muscles speak for themselves (nope but I do martial arts)

23) describe your dream date  Killing all mortals and achieving a state beyond that of a god (iiiii dont know I dont really see myself going on a date)

24) how much money do you have in your wallet at the moment? Why do YOU wanna know (no really why tho)

25) what color socks are you wearing? Well I’m at home on the sofa playing sonic the hedgehog and typing up responses to an ask on tumblr that about 5 people are gonna see. That being said, Dragon Ball orange. (not wearing em but I have a fuzzy pair of polar bear socks my friend Ana sent me that I love!)

26) how many pillows do you sleep with? Wait what do you mean not everyone sleeps with 25 pillows are they mad? (One for my head, one on each side, smol pillow, pillow pet)

27) do you have a job? what do you do? I am assistant regional manager at a paper supply company named Dunder Mifflin. (Not currently but I’m gonna apply to Gamestop and Costco here soon)

28) how many friends do you have? Toooooooooooooo many I hate mortals (honestly I’m too lazy to try and count rn)

29) whats the worst thing you have ever done? Well I haven’t seen Mulan don’t call the cops (Iiiiiiii’m not sure I guess cheated on my Chinese final freshman year but hey I needed to pass that)

30) whats your favorite candle scent? V o i d  (I dont use candles that much and I shooouuulld)

31) 3 favorite boy names Jo[seph] Jo[estar], Jo[taro Ku]jo, Jo[nathan] Jo[estar]  (uuuuhhhh I like my name so it would be Perrin, Joji, Donovan)

32) 3 favorite girl names Jolyne Kujo there is no 2 and 3 (Jolyne yes I know but I actually really like the name, Perrin is also a girls name so, Milly)

33) favorite actor? Shrek from Shrek the musical (Robert Downey Jr and Chris pratt)

34) favorite actress? Taylor after she sasses me and acts like nothing happened (Millie Bobby Brown)

35) who is your celebrity crush? McCree (Matt Mercer)

36) favorite movie? UM IS THIS A QUESTION LIKE??? OBVIOUSLY THE SHREK AND BEE MOVIE CROSS OVER SHREK B: HONEY AND SWAMPS (I LOVED Black Panther and Thor Ragnarok but Secret Life of Walter Mitty’s stuck with me for a loooong time)

37) do you read a lot? whats your favorite book? I don’t read cuz I’m not a NERD (I mean actual books I don’t ask me about it another time but comics I sure do I love the Marvel Civil War storyline)

38) money or brains? They say Money can’t buy happiness but it can buy me more games! Eat that SUCKERS (Honestly brains because then you can be smart which can make you a lot of money. So many more benefits)

39) do you have a nickname? what is it? Perriushium, destroyer of life and bringer of the new age (Pey given to me by my brother when he was still a baby and couldn’t say my name)

40) how many times have you been to the hospital? Enough to be immune to every disease known to man NOW IM UNSTOPABLE MWAHAHA (none for any of my own conditions or injuries but for family stuff about twice)

41) top 10 favorite songs All Star, All Star, All Star, Chum Drum Bedrum, All Star, All Star, All Star, Never gonna give you up, All Star, All Star (Bloody Stream, Sono Chi no Sadame, Flying Battery Zone, Stardust Speedway, Stand Proud, Goku Black theme, Halo theme, The Apparition, Shovel Knight main theme, Hooked on a Feeling)

42) do you take any medications daily? I take a shot of cold hard whiskey when I get up (nope I dont have anything)

43) what is your skin type? (oily, dry, etc) The largest organ of my body I’ll tell ya that much (I honestly dont know?? Smooth and soft I guess?)

44) what is your biggest fear? The Communists lol jk Communism is the only way (I’m not so sure on this one gonna be honest I do fear something I just cant think of it at the moment)

45) how many kids do you want? I mean I’m a 16 year old teenager in high school with no job and no relationship that being said 5 (NONE EVER NOPE 0 KIDS)

46) whats your go to hair style? Super Saiyan 3 (Idk I just kinda comb it to the left)

47) what type of house do you live in? (big, small, etc) All Star. Wait fuck wrong quest- (Two floor medium sized house) 

48) who is your role model?  Uuuuuuuuhhhhhh (uuuuuhhhhhhhhhh)

49) what was the last compliment you received? A like on my post we did it guys we hit one like so I’m here making this 1 like special (I was told that everytime my friend see’s my dyed hair it absolutely makes his day :D) 

50) what was the last text you sent? Yeah that’ll be $5000 for the kill nice doing business with you (Maaaannny pictures of Genji Shimada)

51) how old were you when you found out santa wasn’t real? WHAT SANTA ISNT REAL????!!!!!?!?!?! (It kinda faded over the years my last strands of belief were gone by 12)

52) what is your dream car? Odie’s car from Garfield Kart (The Mach 5 from speed racer there’s a street legal car look it up)

53) opinion on smoking? Jotaro does it so I do it too (PSA: Smoking doesn’t make you cool or look cool you’re just killng your lungs. I won’t try and make you stop as long as you’re aware I don’t want you smoking around me and you understand the consequences)

54) do you go to college? After that SAT I meeeaaaaannnn McDonalds might be hiring (I’m still in High School but I want to)

55) what is your dream job? To stand in a corner for 8 hours with a lamp shade over my head and make a clicking sound every so often (I would like to be able to draw, animate, design and/or play games for a living. Achievement Hunter would be a fantastic job but I doubt that’s happening)

56) would you rather live in rural areas or the suburbs? I wanna live in a cloud In the sky and abduct people to harvest their DNA and make clones which I can fight to the death with (eh somewhere quiet and disconnected from people tbh)

57) do you take shampoo and conditioner bottles from hotels? They fetch pretty high prices on eBay you’d be surprised (Nope I dont use them at all I bring my own and take my own)

58) do you have freckles? My face is a giant freckle little known fact (not really thank god I would look real bad with em)

59) do you smile for pictures? *leans in* I’m gonna let ya in on a secret kid. I wait until the photographer is just about to take the picture and then I hold a middle finger over my face to block the proper shot. Do it enough times then they’ll be payin YOU to get the picture done (I do but I only open my mouth slightly)

60) how many pictures do you have on your phone? They’re all of people I’ve killed because they showed me a stale meme dont worry about it (960 exactly and they’re all either memes, fan-art, or my cute friends)

61) have you ever peed in the woods? Ew no I don’t go outdoors thanks (Yep once on a school field trip in which we hiked to the top of a mountain it was fun)

62) do you still watch cartoons? Well I mean SOME ONE spoiled my belief in Santa earlier so I’m a bit too old for that now. I have a boring desk job thanks LAZLO (I do spongebob is really funny to me still and I LOVE the original Teen Titans)

63) do you prefer chicken nuggets from Wendy’s or McDonalds? McWendy’s next question (I dont eat either so)

64) Favorite dipping sauce? Drip dip dip I’m boutta rip please i want to die (I dont use dipping sauce either call me a heathen all you want)

65) what do you wear to bed? Well I take off the clothes I wore for the day, take off my earring, ring, necklace, eyes, hair, 3 layers of skin, and call it a night (Pajamas mostly and sometimes sweatpants)

66) have you ever won a spelling bee? *Obligatory Bee Movie Joke* (I’ve never even heard of a spelling bee in any of the schools I’ve been to)

67) what are your hobbies? Well I like to kill all mortals #ZamasuWasRight  (I enjoy martial arts, drawing, video games, game design, and walking around my house with nothing to do)

68) can you draw? UH BOI YOU DONT KNOW WHAT ART IS UNTIL YOUVE SEEN A SHITTY JOJO DRAWING OF MINE (I mean yeah but not well)

69) do you play an instrument? Electric Triangle (Actually, I play the Violin but not super well)

70) what was the last concert you saw? SORRY WHAT I CANT HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF THE CONCERT (I’ve never been to one that seems like the opposite of fun for me personally I hate hyper loud music, people, and crowds)

71) tea or coffee? Coftea next question (tea. I don’t drink caffeine if i can help it)

72) Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts? I need my sugar sonic rings (Again, Don’t drink caffeine)

73) do you want to get married? I’m already getting married. MARRIED TO THE LIFE OF CRIME THAT IS UP TOP (I mean I would like to one day)

74) what is your crush’s first and last initial? My  Self (I don’t have anyone I’m crushing on)

75) are you going to change your last name when you get married? What’s crimes last name? Smigglesworth? (If my partners last name is something with an S cuz then I can be PJS)

76) what color looks best on you? You know the color mario turns when he uses the super star? T-that (Pink and Black)

77) do you miss anyone right now? PPFFFFFT NOOOOO WHATS A FEEL *CRIES* THOSE ARENT TEARS ITS JUST SWEAT IVE ANSWERED A LOT OF QUESTIONS OKAY (I miss all my internet friends :(  *cries*)

78) do you sleep with your door open or closed? It is neither open nor closed it is in a hyper dimensional state between open and closed in which no mortal can enter or exit but also cannot be blocked from passage (clooossed because otherwise the cats are gonna kill my fish)

79) do you believe in ghosts? I mean how else would I make a long and successful career as a ghost buster (I do!)

80) what is your biggest pet peeve? My pet, Peeve! Biggest one I know! (depends on for what tbh the other day a guest speaker was talking to the class and this kid was playing music in his headphones really really loud and it pissed me off)

81) last person you called? Called what? Called them a nerd? A good bean? A meme? MAKE MORE SENSE YOU ******* **** *** ******** (Well according to my phone, the name listed is “Mom”)

82) favorite ice cream flavor? I’ll ice your cream if you’re not careful (Vanilla with chocolate syrup mixed together is hella everyone GO TRY IT)

83) regular oreos or golden oreos? The fuck is a golden oreo?? (No seriously, what the actual is a golden oreo)

84) chocolate or rainbow sprinkles? *mario invincible star song plays as I flash color and dash down rainbow road* I’ll have to think about it (rainboooowww!)

85) what shirt are you wearing? Well I…. You see… The thing is…. excuse me for one second (yeah I can’t think of sass to this one but my favorite shirt! Sonic mania that my friend Tasha bought for me and I love it!!!)

86) what is your phone background?  RYUJIN NO KEN WO KURAE!! “What do you think of this color? Is it not beautiful?” If you dont know those HOW DARE YOU LEARN THEM AND WE ARE WATCHING DRAGON BALL (Genji lock screen and Goku Black home screen)

87) are you outgoing or shy? Does THIS answer your question >:D (Outgoing when I want to be, but I’m antisocial so it’s like I CAN be outgoing and personable but it’s highly on my terms ya feel?)

88) do you like it when people play with your hair? My hair is a pride to my race the Saiyans hair is a sacred thing I will advise you not to touch it (YYYEEESSSS I LOVE IT WHEN PEOPLE DO THAT BUT THAT HARDLY EVER HAPPENS)

89) do you like your neighbors?  …..the what? Never heard of it before is that a type of appliance? (I mean they’re chill we don’t interact a lot which I’m cool with)

90) do you wash your face? at night? in the morning? Nothin can cure this ugly face fest of spring 2018 (I use face wash when I shower which is typically right after school not sure why it matters but there ya go :V)

91) have you ever been high? “I’m high on LIFE maaaannn” -Incorrect Shaggy quotes (N o p e  never have don’t plan on it)

92) have you ever been drunk? shots ShotS SHOTS SHOTSSHOTSHOTS (nope but I will one day maybe in College years)

93) last thing you ate? The shattering realization that my friends will keep saying OWO to me every chance they get (Pancakes! asked for french toast but I loooove the breakfast food so no complaints)

94) favorite lyrics right now someBODY Once Told Me The World Is Gonna Roll Me… (The lyrics to Bloody Stream dude it’s a  g r e a t  op)

95) summer or winter? Sorry I’m on Mars weather its ZXAR right now (eeehhhh winter cuz then I have an excuse to be inside and it’s also the ski season)

96) day or night? I am the darkness. I am the night. I am BATMAN (Night honestly I’m a fan of the darkness)

97) dark, milk, or white chocolate? Plllleeeeaaase its like asking if you’re heart is pure of evil or not. Dark Chocolate is a sin (Milk chocolate is the best chocolate fight me on that)

98) favorite month? See, some may argue for their birthday months, christmas, new beginnings to the year, but I say there’s only ONE spooky time :3 (Altho I’m one of the fools that’s gonna have to go with March because it usually has my favorite kind of weather for where I live)

99) what is your zodiac sign  I refuse to go by Zodiac signs until Ted Cruz is proven to be the Zodiac Kill————–”OLD MEME ALERT THIS IS THE MEME POLICE”   “I AINT GOIN BACK TO JAIL”  (Cancer! I wear a necklace of my sign all the time fun fact for ya)

100) who was the last person you cried in front of?  Me after writing all these (Don’t know actually I try not to cry in front of people ever)

[emperor-lover]

Could you do a college au for sungwoon? He's my bias and no one really writes for him 😭 tysm love UR MINHYUn scenarios are so cute they made me soft

aw anon of course!! I can totally relate about not having many things to read about your bias/bias group as well :( and yaasss i’m glad my Minhyun scenarios are having this effect on people hahaha!! I tried my best, hope you enjoy! x

Ha Sungwoon College!AU

first of all, what. a. cutie.

probably the happiest little bean you know at college

he had gone on a gap year after high school so he was one of the older guys in your cohort but his baby face suggested otherwise

literally everyone thought he was one of those young geniuses that had skipped a couple of years of high school 

he is still pretty much a genius though

He’s a business and marketing major, and he just absorbs all the information in lectures like a sponge

maybe that’s why his spongebob impression is so superior

he’s such a people’s person and is so warm-hearted

everyone has a soft spot for him

heart of gold, so so friendly, to the point where you were pretty sure he was a real life angel

you barely saw him angry or annoyed but you had seen him upset once before because his best friend Taehyun was going on an exchange to a college overseas for the entire sophomore year and Sungwoon had cried in his room and refused to talk to anyone

you first met Sungwoon during orientation week as a freshman/first year

you had gotten kinda lost and overwhelmed by all the hustle bustle of the students around you and your roommate that you met a couple of hours earlier had disappeared amongst the crowd

all these seniors had leapt at the opportunity to convince you to join their clubs or organisations

which left you drowning in a sea of flyers

you tried to get the campus map out of your bag in attempt to find your way back to your room, but your hands were too full so a few pamphlets slipped out of them

as you went to pick them up, Sungwoon had already reached down and gotten them

you thanked him and he had smiled brightly before passing them back to you

“oh hey, I was thinking of joining that club too!” he had gestured to one of the many fliers you were holding

you hadn’t even had time to look at them yet so you had no idea which one he was referring to

“Maybe I’ll see you there!” he had beamed before heading off back into the crowd

you manage to reunite with your roommate after a little bit more searching and you both decided to head back to the dorm

You’re waiting for the lift to reach the ground floor because you refuse to climb 9 flights of stairs

as the door opens you see a familiar face

“Hey it’s you again!”

Sungwoon is standing there with one of your close high school friends, Hwang Minhyun

Minhyun looks between the two, “Sungwoon, you know y/n too?”

“I bumped into them before! They were holding a pamphlet for the ballad club that we were thinking of joining!”

He turns to look at you properly, “I’m Ha Sungwoon, I’m sure we’ll see each other lots this year y/n!”

You’re a bit taken aback by his positivity but it’s in a good way

Like you’ve never met someone with such a nice and welcoming aura

And it turns out that Minhyun and Sungwoon are roommates in the floor above you in the dorm

so you’d literally bump into them all the time

you’d lost count of how many times you’d now bumped into Sungwoon in the lift

He’d nudged your shoulder teasingly

“y/n, you’re not stalking me by any chance are you?”

“I could say the same to you!

After getting to know him you realised that Sungwoon was someone who was prepared for anything and everything

It started raining suddenly? Sungwoon’s got an extra umbrella

Feeling hungry? He’s got a special pocket in his bag full of snacks that could rival Ong Seongwoo’s.

You got a papercut? Sungwoon’s got a plaster, antiseptic, first aid kit, the whole shebang

The thing with Sungwoon though is that because he’s so nice to everyone it was easy to presume that he wasn’t flirting with yu

he’s just being the nice soul that he is

like you just assumed that he was this friendly to every person out there

so you never realised during lectures together last year, you were the source of his distraction

his eyes would wander over to your face admiring you from a distance

if you finished later than him for the day, he’d always wait for you in the library to walk back to the dorms with you

there was one day where your timetable was so packed that you barely had time to eat and Sungwoon had just pushed his lunch towards you insisting that he was full

it wasn’t only one way though, you had always been his biggest supporter

You’d go to all his singing performances, cheering him on loudly from the audience

you’d let him snooze on your shoulder whenever he hadn’t been getting much sleep which was often

so you were always worrying about his health because Sungwoon was someone who always put others before himself

He’s someone that you truly cherish in your life

You weren’t sure about your feelings for him, but after a long conversation with Minhyun, the two of you deduced that you indeed had a huge ass crush on Sungwoon

Minhyun was so fcking pleased because you had always nagged him about his crushes so now he could tease you about this one

And whenever he saw you and Sungwoon hanging out (which is often), he’d make little sassy remarks

“oh, guess I’m third wheeling again today!”

Fast forward to the start of your Junior year, you and Sungwoon had driven into the city to shop for new university supplies

The two of you have got the music turned all the way up and you’re both singing at the top of your lungs

Sungwoon’s phone starts ringing so he turns down the music and presses the answer button on the car dashboard (PSA never drive while using your phone!)

“SUNGWOOOON, where are you man?”

It’s Yoon Jisung, a senior and the ballad club leader

In the background you hear a commotion and snippets of conversation

You can clearly hear Minhyun’s low voice

“Jisung hyung, tell Sungwoon that he can’t come back today until he asks y/n out.”

Your eyes widen and you just look at Sungwoon who has gone a very bright shade of red

“Oh yeah, are you finally going to ask y/n out this year?!”

“I don’t know what’s stopping him, I’ve already told him that y/n likes him!” Hwang Minhyun, you traitor, how could you leak this info

“Because I swear, if I hear you gush over her again this year like you did for the entirety of the past 2 years of college I will banish you from the club”

“It’s getting hard for us Sungwoon, so we have to intervene.”

“Sungwoon?”

“Did he hang up on us? Oi, Ha Sungwoon, answer us!”

You’re still blinking rapidly at this discovery but it’s clear that Sungwoon is more shocked than you are at the current moment

You cough awkwardly and you can practically imagine all the guys on the other end of the phone freeze

“Uh…Sungwoon, i guess….you’re not alone….uh we’ll just…uh hang up now,,”

the line goes dead and the car ride just continues on in uncomfortable silence

you keep your eyes fixed to your hands that are fiddling in your lap not sure what to say

It’s so silent that it’s almost to the point where you feel like it’s suffocating you until Sungwoon finally speaks

“y/n, I hope this doesn’t change anything between us, but I guess seeing as I just got outed by the guys, I may as well come clean…”

He gives you a shy smile before returning his gaze to the road

You’ve actually never seen Sungwoon look so unsure and insecure before

“I really do like you. So much. But I totally get it if you like me as just a friend, i can imagine it’s probably quite awkward for you right now…”

You’re not sure if you’re imagining it, but you swear his hands are trembling from his nervousness as his hand tightens its grip on the gear stick of the car

Reaching over, you take his hand in yours and squeeze it gently

“Sungwoon, the feeling’s mutual, i really like you as well, and it’s been a long time too.”

And the sigh of relief that you hear from Sungwoon is the cutest thing ever

He squeezes your hand back, and runs his thumb gently across your knuckles

“You don’t know how much I’ve wanted to hear you say that yourself.”

you guys become the cutest campus couple ever

cute level = legendary

just the fact that you both look out for each other and everyone else around you, makes you such a loveable couple

also Minhyun tries to act all smug because he knew all along that you two were the perfect pair and always tries to take credit for your relationship

“Hwang Gallyang strikes again, I should just drop out and be a fortune teller.” 

And you and Sungwoon are just so done with him, like pls stop third-wheeling our dates hwang, we know you’re loud and proud about being a clairvoyant

but apart from that, you just have such a peaceful and happy relationship that’s full of a lot of adoration and warm hugs and kisses and whisperings of sweet nothings to each other

cries what a wholesome relationship i cant

hey all~! Hope you enjoyed this college!AU - I have a couple of tests at uni next week so posting will slow down a bit, but I have a few drafts that I’m excited to update and show to you all! Please look forward to them

[notanicequeen-blog]

Bookworm Reviews: Go Ask Alice

Guest starring my cat, because hoping to keep her out of frame is a very naive hope.

Apologies for... wobbliness. One of these days I will figure it out.

Transcript under the cut.

Hi! I'm Elsa. And this is a bookworm.

Today I'll be reviewing Go Ask Alice. According to the book cover it's by ~*~Anonymous~*~, but about thirty seconds of digging reveals that it's by Beatrice Sparks, who made something of a hobby out of publishing fake diaries of troubled teenage girls and then trying to pass them off as the real deal. A pretty disingenuous move, but whatever, it's a bit late to complain. The book came out in 1971. Either way, I'm not a fan. Both of that specific marketing choice, and of the book in general. We'll get to that.

Like I said, it's presented in the form of a diary. Despite the popular assumption that the diary belongs to Alice, while we know the diarist was a teenage girl--she was fourteen when she started keeping the diary--we don't actually KNOW her name. There is a vague allusion that her name might be Carla, but she never says her name outright, and the only Alice in the book is a different character entirely who only shows up briefly. Granted, a few adaptations and various different cover blurbs have only encouraged people to think that the diarist's name is Alice, so it may as well be.

That also bothers me, if you hadn't guessed. The book is not actually written in anything approaching the way I would envision a real teenage girl to write in her diary, so I'm pretty sure her name could have been worked into it with only a modicum of added clumsiness. Then again, giving her an actual name probably would have made it easier for people to figure out that it wasn't a real diary. Kudos to Beatrice for covering her tracks.

Anyway! Summary. I'm supposed to do that.

So, whats-her-name starts keeping a diary, initially about the general things you'd expect a teenage girl to keep a diary about. Her family moves when her dad gets a new job, though she goes back to her original hometown to stay with her grandparents for summer, and she goes to a party where she has a very pleasant LSD trip after unwittingly drinking spiked soda. Encouraged by that initial experience, she mingles with some of the partygoers more in the future, does more drugs, and then loses her virginity while tripping on LSD. From there, due to various related and unrelated worries in her life, she winds up hooked on sleeping pills.

She befriends a girl named Chris and the two of them date college boys, deal drugs for those college boys, and then run away together when they realize those college boys are just using them. In San Francisco, Chris gets a job at a boutique, and despite the girls' determination to stay clean, they start taking drugs again and get introduced to heroin courtesy of Chris's boss Sheila and Sheila's boyfriend. After being sexually assaulted by Sheila and her boyfriend, the diarist and Chris run off to Berkeley, where they start up a jewelry shop, because I guess that's something two teenage girls can just… DO. Pretty well, as it turns out. But despite their success, they decide they miss their families and go home.

Despite their determination to stay clean (again), peer pressure and family trouble leads to them relapsing, and then they're on probation when they're caught in a police raid. The diarist runs away again, hitchhiking for a while, prostituting herself to pay for drugs, and being homeless for a while until a priest gets her back to her family. Once again she's determined to stay clean, though she faces hostility from former friends for that decision. When she calls the parents of one of those former friends because she showed up high to babysit, her former friends threaten her, harass her and her family, and drug her against her will. Her resulting bad trip leads to both physical and mental damage, and she's sent to a psych ward until her dad can prove that her recent trip was forced upon her and not done of her own volition.

Once she's home, things seem to be going well! She's getting along with her family. She has new friends. She has a boyfriend. And now we're going to get to why I hate this book. So, I'll warn you in advance: I'm about to read the last two pages of the book to you.

[BOOK EXCERPT: I'm scared witless inside about going back to school but in my head I know it's going to be all right because I have Joel and my new super straight friends and they'll help me. Besides I'm much stronger than I used to be. I know I am. I used to think I would get another diary after you are filled, or even that I would keep a diary or journal through my whole life. But now I don't really think I will. Diaries are great when you're young. In fact, you saved my sanity a hundred, thousand, million times. But I think when a person gets older she should be able to discuss her problems and thoughts with other people, instead of just with another part of herself as you have been to me. Don't you agree? I hope so, for you are my dearest friend and I shall thank you always for sharing my tears and heartaches and my struggles and strifes, and my joys and happinesses. It's all been good in its own special way, I guess. See ya.

The subject of this book died three weeks after her decision not to keep another diary. Her parents came home from a movie and found her dead. They called the police and the hospital but there was nothing anyone could do. Was it an accidental overdose? A premeditated overdose? No one knows, and in some ways that question isn't important. What must be of concern is that she died, and that she was only one of thousands of drug deaths that year.]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset that she died. I'm upset that it came right the fuck out of nowhere. The book was an enormous anti-drug PSA, but rather than show us that horror show up until the end, rather than letting us watch her fall apart until there was nothing left, the author turned into a chicken shit and pussed out, and gave us the laziest, least satisfying ~*~LOOK HOW TRAGIC~*~ epilogue I have ever seen. I hate this book, and it is largely because of these last two pages.

Granted, those two pages aside, it's not really a GOOD book by any means. It's preachy and ham-fisted and awkward. The writing is clumsy and clunky. It has a point to make and it drives that point home with the grace and subtlety of a flying toolbox. Plus, the fact that it's a diary means that only the diarist really gets any characterization. But despite all of that, I was rooting for her by the end. I wanted her to either put her life back together, or go down kicking and screaming.

And then the author shit on it.

Don't read this book. It's not worth it. There are better written, less insulting anti-drug PSAs if that's what you really want. Go read Theories of Relativity by Barbara Haworth-Attard.

[samanthasroberts]

Meet Wyatt Russell, Hollywoods Most and Least Likely Leading Man

Wyatt Russell walks into a room and it’s almost too easy to make assumptions about him. Luckily, he upends nearly all of them.

The star of AMC’s big-swing summer series, Lodge 49, which debuts Aug. 6, towers a few inches above a tall-and-thin six feet, with hair down to his shoulders, a scruffy beard, and a languid surfer beach drawl to complete the stereotype of the SoCal beatnik—which he plays very well, but hardly fills.

No, this is the son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, and his foray into Hollywood would seem a formality had the 32-year-old actor not spent the majority of his life rejecting the family business in pursuit of a career as a hockey player.

When we meet in Beverly Hills to discuss his new series, which is also his first leading role, the person we encounter is not the strung-out stoner his looks might betray, nor is it the entitled heir to Hollywood royalty you might expect from a person with as much celluloid history in his bloodstream.

Instead, the Wyatt Russell we meet is as wide-eyed and enthusiastic as a breakthrough actor experiencing the spoils of Hollywood for the first time, but with the self-awareness and intelligence of a person who knows how brutal the industry can actually be.

Maybe that’s because, for all the ways he’s seen his mother, father, and half-siblings Kate and Oliver Hudson navigate the business, he’s also churned through perhaps the only industry more ruthless: professional sports. Before he started seriously pursuing a career in acting eight years ago, he had spent over a decade as a promising hockey goalie, until an injury set him on a new path.

It’s perhaps fitting, then, that Russell’s debut as a leading man is in a TV series as unconventional as Lodge 49. As Russell tells it, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

The official logline for Lodge 49 describes it as a “modern fable,” centered on Russell’s character Dud, a lost soul trying to rebuild his life after a surfing injury, the death of his father, and crippling debt have left him homeless. One day, while spelunking for treasures with a metal detector on the beach, he discovers a lost ring that takes him to the doorstep of Lodge 49, “a dusty fraternal order which offers cheap beer and strange alchemical philosophies.”

So what you have is this unusual mix of a series about this eternal optimist, Dud, who is either blind to the fact that he’s hitting rock bottom or manifests a trampoline from optimistic delusion to bounce him back up again. He lands at a Masonic Lodge, of sorts, that provides a lifeline yet espouses just enough woo-woo philosophy to make you fear: Is Dud in a cult?

Nonetheless, for all the talk about this six-foot surfer boy with Hollywood lineage in the starring role, it’s because Russell so intrinsically telegraphs a glass-half-full kind of gumption that the tonal gymnastics of the show sticks the landing. More, that it still feels at home on AMC, a network that has pretty much defined its brand in dark, disturbing drama: Mad Men, Breaking Bad, or The Walking Dead.

Ever exuberant, Russell sees a throughline.

“Everybody starts from an honest place of who they are: Don Draper, Walter White, and Dud,” he says. “It may be easier to utilize a character who has darkness in them because you can find a lot of interesting qualities in those people. It’s harder to find the interesting qualities in optimism, because it’s not something that we necessarily gravitate towards in our everyday lives, especially in our 24/7 news cycle where, constantly, what grabs our attention is negativity.”

So bless Dud’s gumption. And, really, Russell’s, too.

This isn’t a profile about the little boy who grew up on a movie set, and whose scrapbook of school-play star turns hinted that he’d one day follow his parents’ footsteps all the way to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In fact, he tells me, despite his family’s careers, Russell only recently  “after many years of thinking it wasn’t,” began to think of acting as “a fantastic way to make a living.”

He lived in Santa Monica until he was 15 before moving to Vancouver to play hockey, at the advice of coaches who saw Russell’s potential. Kurt and Goldie moved with him. (The reasons that Russell emerged a well-adjusted Hollywood kid should be apparent.) Cute side story: Kurt Russell once told The New York Times that he took the role as coach of the heroic 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team in Disney’s Miracle in homage to Wyatt’s passion.

After two years of playing college hockey at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, he headed to Europe to go pro, first in Germany and then in the Netherlands. His stories from that time are about as wild as you’d expect from a guy in his twenties touring tertiary European cities with busloads of hockey players. “ I lived with a heroin addict named Harm," he told The Ringer last year. “That was the life experience, watching somebody shoot up heroin while you’re eating potatoes he made."

A series of groin injuries and a broken hip, exacerbated by cramped bus rides and the general body wear-and-tear accrued by a goalie, brought an early end to his hockey career. It dropped Russell smack-dab in the throes of a mid-life crisis a good 20 to 30 years before most men find themselves at a similar crossroads: “Alright. What now?”

While recuperating from his injuries in Groningen, Netherlands, he binged movies. Maybe, he thought, he’d direct. He had acted in one film before throwing himself into hockey—a scene in his father’s film Escape from L.A. when he was 10—and, more than a decade later, still remembered that he didn’t like being in front of the camera.

“I liked playing hockey and being a goalie because it was numbers related,” he says. “You’re either the best or you’re not. It’s numbers. You have the best goals-against average and save the most pucks and win the most games, or you don’t. It’s not subjective. So going into this world, I didn’t like the subjectivity of it because it meant that other people were going to put what they thought about you onto you.”

Consider his decision to try his hand at auditioning, then, a whim—albeit the most epic of whims, one perhaps buoyed by his family’s pedigree. His first audition was for a role in Captain America: The First Avenger. He didn’t get that one, but he started getting others. There was Law & Order: L.A., Cowboys & Aliens, and his first big breakout, a part in 22 Jump Street.

Early on, though, there was a pattern. In 2010’s High School, he played “Drug PSA Stoned Teenager.” In This Is 40 he was “Flirty Hockey Player.” As his roles expanded, the “type” he was cast as didn’t necessarily follow suit, whether it’s a spaced-out pitcher in Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!! or a backpacker roped into a video-game horror show in an episode of Black Mirror. Lodge 49, too, sees Russell working in that mold again.

But take a closer look at those projects he’s been cast in, and what’s impressive is not so much that he’s been routinely cast as a surfer-stoner-laid-back-bro, but that each time he has, it has been in wildly diferent genres.

In the last year, he’s starred in Blaze, a biopic of country musician directed by Ethan Hawke, finished work on Overlord, a World War II/sci-fi hybrid produced by J.J. Abrams, and was cast in The Woman in the Window, a thriller adapted by Tracy Letts, directed by Joe Wright, and starring Amy Adams. Then there’s Lodge 49, a prestige cable drama that escapes tonal definition.

“It’s been 7 or 8 years since I started doing it,” Russell says, of acting. “For the first time now I probably just last year felt like I might be able to do certain things.”

He remembers getting cast in High School as a hippie-like stoner because he knew how to play guitar.

“From that, you gain confidence to say, ‘Well, I did that, I can do a different version of it,’” he says. “I found myself always trying to find the different version of the guy you had done before. Because that’s the way it works. Somebody sees you in something that they like you in, and they go, ‘Oh he would be great in this.’ It’s up to the actor to give it dimension. Inside the dimension you give it, sometimes somebody else sees an aspect of that dimension and says, ‘I bet you they could do that.’”

In the early episodes of Lodge 49, there are distinct themes that emerge. Russell’s favorite is the way that the show honors the blue-collar population of Long Beach: the plumbers, pool servicemen, and trade workers who give the area life. More, it shows that the emotional weight stressing a family business can be as important, and as volatile, as the finances.

The character of Dud doesn’t just miss his father, he misses the normalcy that the family business—pool cleaning—provided. Russell’s own family business operates from an obvious extreme in relation to Dud’s, but he understands, especially in these last few years, the comfort that comes from normality.

Yes, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn’s actor son can refer to the family business as normal.

“It did seem normal to me because they never made what they did abnormal,” he says. “They never made themselves abnormal. They never looked at themselves like, ‘I’m special because I do this.’”

“The normalcy of who we are came from the core values of who my parents were when they grew up and transferred it into their parenting styles for the way we are. It’s definitely not a normal thing, to do this. People can get caught up in it. It’s hard not to sometimes.”

When we talk, Russell is wrapping up a week that had him travel back and forth between Los Angeles and New York four times. He’s engaged to Search Party scene-stealer Meredith Hagner, whom he met while shooting the indie Folk Hero & Funny Guy. And he’s promoting his first leading role, an achievement some might rule destiny given who his parents are, but that others might rule unlikely, given the unique story of the actor who sits before me. An actor who still can’t help comparing things to hockey.

“There’s almost nothing else that’s truly numbers-related,” he says. “That game was. That’s what special about sports in a way. It’s an equalizer. This is not that. I didn’t think about ‘I’m going to be a leading man,’ because I just wanted to do something that made me as happy as hockey did.”

Now, he’s doing it.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/meet-wyatt-russell-hollywoods-most-and-least-likely-leading-man/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2019/01/02/meet-wyatt-russell-hollywoods-most-and-least-likely-leading-man/

[adambstingus]

Meet Wyatt Russell, Hollywoods Most and Least Likely Leading Man

Wyatt Russell walks into a room and it’s almost too easy to make assumptions about him. Luckily, he upends nearly all of them.

The star of AMC’s big-swing summer series, Lodge 49, which debuts Aug. 6, towers a few inches above a tall-and-thin six feet, with hair down to his shoulders, a scruffy beard, and a languid surfer beach drawl to complete the stereotype of the SoCal beatnik—which he plays very well, but hardly fills.

No, this is the son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, and his foray into Hollywood would seem a formality had the 32-year-old actor not spent the majority of his life rejecting the family business in pursuit of a career as a hockey player.

When we meet in Beverly Hills to discuss his new series, which is also his first leading role, the person we encounter is not the strung-out stoner his looks might betray, nor is it the entitled heir to Hollywood royalty you might expect from a person with as much celluloid history in his bloodstream.

Instead, the Wyatt Russell we meet is as wide-eyed and enthusiastic as a breakthrough actor experiencing the spoils of Hollywood for the first time, but with the self-awareness and intelligence of a person who knows how brutal the industry can actually be.

Maybe that’s because, for all the ways he’s seen his mother, father, and half-siblings Kate and Oliver Hudson navigate the business, he’s also churned through perhaps the only industry more ruthless: professional sports. Before he started seriously pursuing a career in acting eight years ago, he had spent over a decade as a promising hockey goalie, until an injury set him on a new path.

It’s perhaps fitting, then, that Russell’s debut as a leading man is in a TV series as unconventional as Lodge 49. As Russell tells it, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

The official logline for Lodge 49 describes it as a “modern fable,” centered on Russell’s character Dud, a lost soul trying to rebuild his life after a surfing injury, the death of his father, and crippling debt have left him homeless. One day, while spelunking for treasures with a metal detector on the beach, he discovers a lost ring that takes him to the doorstep of Lodge 49, “a dusty fraternal order which offers cheap beer and strange alchemical philosophies.”

So what you have is this unusual mix of a series about this eternal optimist, Dud, who is either blind to the fact that he’s hitting rock bottom or manifests a trampoline from optimistic delusion to bounce him back up again. He lands at a Masonic Lodge, of sorts, that provides a lifeline yet espouses just enough woo-woo philosophy to make you fear: Is Dud in a cult?

Nonetheless, for all the talk about this six-foot surfer boy with Hollywood lineage in the starring role, it’s because Russell so intrinsically telegraphs a glass-half-full kind of gumption that the tonal gymnastics of the show sticks the landing. More, that it still feels at home on AMC, a network that has pretty much defined its brand in dark, disturbing drama: Mad Men, Breaking Bad, or The Walking Dead.

Ever exuberant, Russell sees a throughline.

“Everybody starts from an honest place of who they are: Don Draper, Walter White, and Dud,” he says. “It may be easier to utilize a character who has darkness in them because you can find a lot of interesting qualities in those people. It’s harder to find the interesting qualities in optimism, because it’s not something that we necessarily gravitate towards in our everyday lives, especially in our 24/7 news cycle where, constantly, what grabs our attention is negativity.”

So bless Dud’s gumption. And, really, Russell’s, too.

This isn’t a profile about the little boy who grew up on a movie set, and whose scrapbook of school-play star turns hinted that he’d one day follow his parents’ footsteps all the way to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In fact, he tells me, despite his family’s careers, Russell only recently  “after many years of thinking it wasn’t,” began to think of acting as “a fantastic way to make a living.”

He lived in Santa Monica until he was 15 before moving to Vancouver to play hockey, at the advice of coaches who saw Russell’s potential. Kurt and Goldie moved with him. (The reasons that Russell emerged a well-adjusted Hollywood kid should be apparent.) Cute side story: Kurt Russell once told The New York Times that he took the role as coach of the heroic 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team in Disney’s Miracle in homage to Wyatt’s passion.

After two years of playing college hockey at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, he headed to Europe to go pro, first in Germany and then in the Netherlands. His stories from that time are about as wild as you’d expect from a guy in his twenties touring tertiary European cities with busloads of hockey players. “ I lived with a heroin addict named Harm,“ he told The Ringer last year. “That was the life experience, watching somebody shoot up heroin while you’re eating potatoes he made.”

A series of groin injuries and a broken hip, exacerbated by cramped bus rides and the general body wear-and-tear accrued by a goalie, brought an early end to his hockey career. It dropped Russell smack-dab in the throes of a mid-life crisis a good 20 to 30 years before most men find themselves at a similar crossroads: “Alright. What now?”

While recuperating from his injuries in Groningen, Netherlands, he binged movies. Maybe, he thought, he’d direct. He had acted in one film before throwing himself into hockey—a scene in his father’s film Escape from L.A. when he was 10—and, more than a decade later, still remembered that he didn’t like being in front of the camera.

“I liked playing hockey and being a goalie because it was numbers related,” he says. “You’re either the best or you’re not. It’s numbers. You have the best goals-against average and save the most pucks and win the most games, or you don’t. It’s not subjective. So going into this world, I didn’t like the subjectivity of it because it meant that other people were going to put what they thought about you onto you.”

Consider his decision to try his hand at auditioning, then, a whim—albeit the most epic of whims, one perhaps buoyed by his family’s pedigree. His first audition was for a role in Captain America: The First Avenger. He didn’t get that one, but he started getting others. There was Law & Order: L.A., Cowboys & Aliens, and his first big breakout, a part in 22 Jump Street.

Early on, though, there was a pattern. In 2010’s High School, he played “Drug PSA Stoned Teenager.” In This Is 40 he was “Flirty Hockey Player.” As his roles expanded, the “type” he was cast as didn’t necessarily follow suit, whether it’s a spaced-out pitcher in Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!! or a backpacker roped into a video-game horror show in an episode of Black Mirror. Lodge 49, too, sees Russell working in that mold again.

But take a closer look at those projects he’s been cast in, and what’s impressive is not so much that he’s been routinely cast as a surfer-stoner-laid-back-bro, but that each time he has, it has been in wildly diferent genres.

In the last year, he’s starred in Blaze, a biopic of country musician directed by Ethan Hawke, finished work on Overlord, a World War II/sci-fi hybrid produced by J.J. Abrams, and was cast in The Woman in the Window, a thriller adapted by Tracy Letts, directed by Joe Wright, and starring Amy Adams. Then there’s Lodge 49, a prestige cable drama that escapes tonal definition.

“It’s been 7 or 8 years since I started doing it,” Russell says, of acting. “For the first time now I probably just last year felt like I might be able to do certain things.”

He remembers getting cast in High School as a hippie-like stoner because he knew how to play guitar.

“From that, you gain confidence to say, ‘Well, I did that, I can do a different version of it,’” he says. “I found myself always trying to find the different version of the guy you had done before. Because that’s the way it works. Somebody sees you in something that they like you in, and they go, ‘Oh he would be great in this.’ It’s up to the actor to give it dimension. Inside the dimension you give it, sometimes somebody else sees an aspect of that dimension and says, ‘I bet you they could do that.’”

In the early episodes of Lodge 49, there are distinct themes that emerge. Russell’s favorite is the way that the show honors the blue-collar population of Long Beach: the plumbers, pool servicemen, and trade workers who give the area life. More, it shows that the emotional weight stressing a family business can be as important, and as volatile, as the finances.

The character of Dud doesn’t just miss his father, he misses the normalcy that the family business—pool cleaning—provided. Russell’s own family business operates from an obvious extreme in relation to Dud’s, but he understands, especially in these last few years, the comfort that comes from normality.

Yes, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn’s actor son can refer to the family business as normal.

“It did seem normal to me because they never made what they did abnormal,” he says. “They never made themselves abnormal. They never looked at themselves like, ‘I’m special because I do this.’”

“The normalcy of who we are came from the core values of who my parents were when they grew up and transferred it into their parenting styles for the way we are. It’s definitely not a normal thing, to do this. People can get caught up in it. It’s hard not to sometimes.”

When we talk, Russell is wrapping up a week that had him travel back and forth between Los Angeles and New York four times. He’s engaged to Search Party scene-stealer Meredith Hagner, whom he met while shooting the indie Folk Hero & Funny Guy. And he’s promoting his first leading role, an achievement some might rule destiny given who his parents are, but that others might rule unlikely, given the unique story of the actor who sits before me. An actor who still can’t help comparing things to hockey.

“There’s almost nothing else that’s truly numbers-related,” he says. “That game was. That’s what special about sports in a way. It’s an equalizer. This is not that. I didn’t think about ‘I’m going to be a leading man,’ because I just wanted to do something that made me as happy as hockey did.”

Now, he’s doing it.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/meet-wyatt-russell-hollywoods-most-and-least-likely-leading-man/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/181638817272

[allofbeercom]

Meet Wyatt Russell, Hollywoods Most and Least Likely Leading Man

Wyatt Russell walks into a room and it’s almost too easy to make assumptions about him. Luckily, he upends nearly all of them.

The star of AMC’s big-swing summer series, Lodge 49, which debuts Aug. 6, towers a few inches above a tall-and-thin six feet, with hair down to his shoulders, a scruffy beard, and a languid surfer beach drawl to complete the stereotype of the SoCal beatnik—which he plays very well, but hardly fills.

No, this is the son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, and his foray into Hollywood would seem a formality had the 32-year-old actor not spent the majority of his life rejecting the family business in pursuit of a career as a hockey player.

When we meet in Beverly Hills to discuss his new series, which is also his first leading role, the person we encounter is not the strung-out stoner his looks might betray, nor is it the entitled heir to Hollywood royalty you might expect from a person with as much celluloid history in his bloodstream.

Instead, the Wyatt Russell we meet is as wide-eyed and enthusiastic as a breakthrough actor experiencing the spoils of Hollywood for the first time, but with the self-awareness and intelligence of a person who knows how brutal the industry can actually be.

Maybe that’s because, for all the ways he’s seen his mother, father, and half-siblings Kate and Oliver Hudson navigate the business, he’s also churned through perhaps the only industry more ruthless: professional sports. Before he started seriously pursuing a career in acting eight years ago, he had spent over a decade as a promising hockey goalie, until an injury set him on a new path.

It’s perhaps fitting, then, that Russell’s debut as a leading man is in a TV series as unconventional as Lodge 49. As Russell tells it, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

The official logline for Lodge 49 describes it as a “modern fable,” centered on Russell’s character Dud, a lost soul trying to rebuild his life after a surfing injury, the death of his father, and crippling debt have left him homeless. One day, while spelunking for treasures with a metal detector on the beach, he discovers a lost ring that takes him to the doorstep of Lodge 49, “a dusty fraternal order which offers cheap beer and strange alchemical philosophies.”

So what you have is this unusual mix of a series about this eternal optimist, Dud, who is either blind to the fact that he’s hitting rock bottom or manifests a trampoline from optimistic delusion to bounce him back up again. He lands at a Masonic Lodge, of sorts, that provides a lifeline yet espouses just enough woo-woo philosophy to make you fear: Is Dud in a cult?

Nonetheless, for all the talk about this six-foot surfer boy with Hollywood lineage in the starring role, it’s because Russell so intrinsically telegraphs a glass-half-full kind of gumption that the tonal gymnastics of the show sticks the landing. More, that it still feels at home on AMC, a network that has pretty much defined its brand in dark, disturbing drama: Mad Men, Breaking Bad, or The Walking Dead.

Ever exuberant, Russell sees a throughline.

“Everybody starts from an honest place of who they are: Don Draper, Walter White, and Dud,” he says. “It may be easier to utilize a character who has darkness in them because you can find a lot of interesting qualities in those people. It’s harder to find the interesting qualities in optimism, because it’s not something that we necessarily gravitate towards in our everyday lives, especially in our 24/7 news cycle where, constantly, what grabs our attention is negativity.”

So bless Dud’s gumption. And, really, Russell’s, too.

This isn’t a profile about the little boy who grew up on a movie set, and whose scrapbook of school-play star turns hinted that he’d one day follow his parents’ footsteps all the way to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In fact, he tells me, despite his family’s careers, Russell only recently  “after many years of thinking it wasn’t,” began to think of acting as “a fantastic way to make a living.”

He lived in Santa Monica until he was 15 before moving to Vancouver to play hockey, at the advice of coaches who saw Russell’s potential. Kurt and Goldie moved with him. (The reasons that Russell emerged a well-adjusted Hollywood kid should be apparent.) Cute side story: Kurt Russell once told The New York Times that he took the role as coach of the heroic 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team in Disney’s Miracle in homage to Wyatt’s passion.

After two years of playing college hockey at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, he headed to Europe to go pro, first in Germany and then in the Netherlands. His stories from that time are about as wild as you’d expect from a guy in his twenties touring tertiary European cities with busloads of hockey players. “ I lived with a heroin addict named Harm," he told The Ringer last year. “That was the life experience, watching somebody shoot up heroin while you’re eating potatoes he made."

A series of groin injuries and a broken hip, exacerbated by cramped bus rides and the general body wear-and-tear accrued by a goalie, brought an early end to his hockey career. It dropped Russell smack-dab in the throes of a mid-life crisis a good 20 to 30 years before most men find themselves at a similar crossroads: “Alright. What now?”

While recuperating from his injuries in Groningen, Netherlands, he binged movies. Maybe, he thought, he’d direct. He had acted in one film before throwing himself into hockey—a scene in his father’s film Escape from L.A. when he was 10—and, more than a decade later, still remembered that he didn’t like being in front of the camera.

“I liked playing hockey and being a goalie because it was numbers related,” he says. “You’re either the best or you’re not. It’s numbers. You have the best goals-against average and save the most pucks and win the most games, or you don’t. It’s not subjective. So going into this world, I didn’t like the subjectivity of it because it meant that other people were going to put what they thought about you onto you.”

Consider his decision to try his hand at auditioning, then, a whim—albeit the most epic of whims, one perhaps buoyed by his family’s pedigree. His first audition was for a role in Captain America: The First Avenger. He didn’t get that one, but he started getting others. There was Law & Order: L.A., Cowboys & Aliens, and his first big breakout, a part in 22 Jump Street.

Early on, though, there was a pattern. In 2010’s High School, he played “Drug PSA Stoned Teenager.” In This Is 40 he was “Flirty Hockey Player.” As his roles expanded, the “type” he was cast as didn’t necessarily follow suit, whether it’s a spaced-out pitcher in Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!! or a backpacker roped into a video-game horror show in an episode of Black Mirror. Lodge 49, too, sees Russell working in that mold again.

But take a closer look at those projects he’s been cast in, and what’s impressive is not so much that he’s been routinely cast as a surfer-stoner-laid-back-bro, but that each time he has, it has been in wildly diferent genres.

In the last year, he’s starred in Blaze, a biopic of country musician directed by Ethan Hawke, finished work on Overlord, a World War II/sci-fi hybrid produced by J.J. Abrams, and was cast in The Woman in the Window, a thriller adapted by Tracy Letts, directed by Joe Wright, and starring Amy Adams. Then there’s Lodge 49, a prestige cable drama that escapes tonal definition.

“It’s been 7 or 8 years since I started doing it,” Russell says, of acting. “For the first time now I probably just last year felt like I might be able to do certain things.”

He remembers getting cast in High School as a hippie-like stoner because he knew how to play guitar.

“From that, you gain confidence to say, ‘Well, I did that, I can do a different version of it,’” he says. “I found myself always trying to find the different version of the guy you had done before. Because that’s the way it works. Somebody sees you in something that they like you in, and they go, ‘Oh he would be great in this.’ It’s up to the actor to give it dimension. Inside the dimension you give it, sometimes somebody else sees an aspect of that dimension and says, ‘I bet you they could do that.’”

In the early episodes of Lodge 49, there are distinct themes that emerge. Russell’s favorite is the way that the show honors the blue-collar population of Long Beach: the plumbers, pool servicemen, and trade workers who give the area life. More, it shows that the emotional weight stressing a family business can be as important, and as volatile, as the finances.

The character of Dud doesn’t just miss his father, he misses the normalcy that the family business—pool cleaning—provided. Russell’s own family business operates from an obvious extreme in relation to Dud’s, but he understands, especially in these last few years, the comfort that comes from normality.

Yes, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn’s actor son can refer to the family business as normal.

“It did seem normal to me because they never made what they did abnormal,” he says. “They never made themselves abnormal. They never looked at themselves like, ‘I’m special because I do this.’”

“The normalcy of who we are came from the core values of who my parents were when they grew up and transferred it into their parenting styles for the way we are. It’s definitely not a normal thing, to do this. People can get caught up in it. It’s hard not to sometimes.”

When we talk, Russell is wrapping up a week that had him travel back and forth between Los Angeles and New York four times. He’s engaged to Search Party scene-stealer Meredith Hagner, whom he met while shooting the indie Folk Hero & Funny Guy. And he’s promoting his first leading role, an achievement some might rule destiny given who his parents are, but that others might rule unlikely, given the unique story of the actor who sits before me. An actor who still can’t help comparing things to hockey.

“There’s almost nothing else that’s truly numbers-related,” he says. “That game was. That’s what special about sports in a way. It’s an equalizer. This is not that. I didn’t think about ‘I’m going to be a leading man,’ because I just wanted to do something that made me as happy as hockey did.”

Now, he’s doing it.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/meet-wyatt-russell-hollywoods-most-and-least-likely-leading-man/

[amstcrdamarchived]

if they had a kid meme for ALL the ships pls

send me a pair name and I’ll tell you what I think it would be like if they had a child ( psa: i ain’t doing faceclaims cause like ?? just imagine a child with ships features instead )

HAYDEN & RILEY!

Name: i think !! it’d be like mason ?? or lil noah

Gender: in all honestly, i think their first kid would definitely be a boy, and they’d have a girl second because of course they’d end up having the perfect little family

General Appearance: i think face shape would be like hayden, like little snippits of riley in his eyes, the way his hair sits and his smile, they both have beautiful smiles and it makes hayden so proud to have such a perfect wife and son.

Personality: HAPPIEST kid ever, you know that little kid that’s just full of life in primary ( or what elementary school ?? ). having such kind souls as parents, his values and morals would be straight, but that doesn’t stop him from being the literal spotlight in the room, gravitating everyone towards him. he’ll make you laugh with how outgoing he is –– his parents just wanted him to be exactly who he is and give him nothing but love, his personality easily reflects that.

Special Talents: nothing in particular, athletic if anything, he’s the type of kid that’ll do something out of the blue like say something weird or just do something and hayden and riley would be like, dude what ?? your freakin RAD ily lil man.

Who they like better: little mumma’s boy secretly, but he’d have a TIGHT relationship with hayden

Who they take after more: he’s LITERALLY a mini-me hayden, to the point he tries to dress the same as him and hayden is full heck yeah buddy you’re a KILLA, with riley just being like smh. 

Personal Headcanon: i reckon he has like an ANGELIC voice when he sings n despite hayden & riley being athletes themselves, they’d be full on encouraging their son to develop his musical skills

ROSS & RACHEL!

Name: like reuben or roman or elliot

Gender: i’m gonna go w/ boy because they have a girl in the show so something a little dif dif

General Appearance: little rachel with ross’ hair ngl

Personality: w ow would this kid have attitude, you’d seriously be like damn boy, with rachel’s fiery wit and ross’ nerdish quirks, this kid is kinda unstoppable with the shit that comes out of his mouth ?? you’d probs feel like you’re talkin to an adult and it’s weird ?? ross n rach are o…..k dude chill out

Special Talents: he is probably technologically advanced ?? lil whizkid on our hands here they live in the big apple n he just THRIVES on 

Who they like better: ross probs bc i can see him getting a little TOO into the toys they buy him like you best believe he’s got a killa dinosaur collection n like weird ass fun ass tech shit ?? nerds

Who they take after more: h onestly rachel they’re definitely stubborn and witty as heck there would b PLENTY of eyerolls from ross with how much they’re like each other om L

Personal Head canon: he’s sort of lowkey shy ?? keeps to his peeps like the og gang n especially his parents bc that’s where he’s grown up around

LUCAS & MAYA!

Name: amelia or layla

Gender: girl DEFINITELY holy heck could u imagine lucas lovin his two literal PRINCESSES

General Appearance: mainly maya with but you can definitely see that country girl look in her like lucas has if that makes sense ?? u can literally see the sweetness radiating off her like lucas n she is BEAUTIFUL. she’s got lucas’ skin tone n big blue eyes with such a heartwarming smile n she has a cute as heck button nose

Personality: u best believe she is a literal sweetheart, most caring personality ever like you’d wanna cry watching her play with her dolls bc she is so gentle but she also has that crazy wild side like maya n u best believe you’d be able to find them dancing in their pjs during morning routine n singing their hearts out lucas is in love

Special Talents: definitely has her mother’s artistic abilities bc they spend so much time doin arts n crafts. i think she’d also be insanely smart like not special kid kinda smart but she just knows her shit ??

Who they like better: she would DEFINITELY be a daddy’s girl bc of the animals he’ll sometimes bring home to help specifically and she helps him

Who they take after more: both honestly, you’ve got lucas’ literal angel personality mixed with maya’s confidence honestly you’ve got the best child ever –– can sometimes be a little stubborn but in a good way ??

Personal Head canon: when i say she cares a lot i mean like she’s probably going to be a nurse with the way she cares abt people honestly bless her SOUL this child needs to be protected at all costs

[fancoloredglasses]

The “Other” Captain Marvel

(Thanks to Edward Eberhardt)

With Marvel’s Captain Marvel in theaters and DC’s Captain Marvel SHAZAM! coming soon, I thought it appropriate to visit the good Captain.

But first, the convoluted story of how Marvel and DC have a character named Captain Marvel...

Captain Marvel was created in 1939 by Fawcett Comics. Shortly thereafter, National Publications (the company that would eventually be known as DC Comics) sued Fawcett because Captain Marvel was more popular than too similar to Superman.  DC eventually won the suit and Fawcett was forced to stop publishing Captain Marvel.  DC eventually licensed the character from Fawcett beginning in the 70s before acquiring the character outright in 1991.

Now, Marvel saw the Captain Marvel name and wasn’t about to let an opportunity go to waste! So 1967 began the adventures of Captain Marvel, who would be the first of three heroes to carry the name (and trademarked title, since Fawcett’s Captain was published in Whiz! Comics)

So DC and Marvel both had legal rights to a character named Captain Marvel (though Marvel had the rights to the title). DC started using the Captain again after Crisis under the title SHAZAM! Eventually, DC gave up any ties to the name Captian Marvel and just called the hero Shazam (which must make introductions hard, since uttering his name would transform him between the hero and his alter ego of Billy Batson, 10 year-old)

In the 70s, Filmation licensed the use of DC’s version in the SHAZAM! Saturday morning television series. True to Filmation form, the show had a moral that permeated the show with a mini-PSA at the end just to hammer the point home.

Captain Marvel was the first DC hero I knew about (but not the first super hero, thanks to Marvel teaming up with the Children’s Television Workshop to put Spider-Man on The Electric Company) so you can imagine my frustration that there were no comic books out featuring the good Captain, save the occasional appearance when the Captain visited Earth-1 from Earth-S (I promise this will make sense when I get around to covering the Crisis)

Now, if you saw the opening credits I posted above, (and if you didn’t, please do so.  I’ll wait right here)...

(All set?)...

(Good) you will note that the Wizard Shazam (who gave Billy his powers) is nowhere to be seen.  Instead, we have the Six Elders, who grant Billy their abilities. (and it should be noted that they are the inspiration of Billy’s powers in the comics, just not personified) They are...

The wisdom of Solomon

The strength of Hercules

The stamina of Atlas

The power of Zeus

The courage of Achilles

The speed of Mercury

Now one would think that, given this is a super hero show, we would see Captain Marvel fight super villains, or at least the occasional bank robber. However, we never see a trace of Black Adam, Dr. Sivana, or even Mr. Mind. (check out the DC Comics Database if you’re unfamiliar with these characters) Instead, we’re treated to an After School Special with super powers.

We start with Billy Batson (who has obviously been Captain Marvel for a few years, as he looks like he’s at least 16) and his mentor (whose name is apparently “Mentor”) driving through what looks like southern California in a Winnebago with the Captain’s lightning bolt emblem on the front (you would think that would make it easier for the likes of the Captain’s rogues gallery to find them...) when Billy is summoned by what looks like a cross between a disco ball and the gaudiest Christmas decoration ever. We are then treated to a conversation between Billy and a badly-animated representation of the Elders, who inform Billy he’s about to encounter the subject of this week’s moral and advice on how to help them (you’d think if they knew all this they could directly intervene, but I guess Billy and Mentor are the only ones who believe in the Greek gods any more, so they can’t manifest on Earth)

Sure enough, not five minutes later Billy and Mentor encounter the subject of the week’s moral.  Billy tries to help, but then the stakes get raised that there is real danger involved (usually self-inflicted), so...

(Thanks to Warnerarchive)

...Captain Marvel flies in to Save The Day.

Then Captain Marvel shows up in a typical Filmation mini-PSA to hammer the moral into the kids’ brains one final time.

OK, given Filmation did this on a Saturday Morning budget with a bunch of kids who no doubt never acted before in their lives, they tried really hard, but given what Filmation animation released 10 years later, (such as He-Man and She-Ra) not to mention what it was doing at the time (such as Star Trek and Fat Albert and the [REDACTED] Kids), Shazam! did not age well.  However, it was fun to watch and certainly doesn’t lessen my hopes that the “Other Captain Marvel” movie does well.

As always, if there are any episodes you would like to see (apparently there is an anti-drug episode that features cocaine (on a 70s kids’ show? What the hell did they think kids were doing?!)) let me know.