#making a deadline i could have NEVER done even a few months ago | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

tkwrites · 1 year ago

Text

First Fight - Quinn Hughes x ofc

Title: First Fight

Author: Tory / @tkwrites

Relationship: Pre-established: Quinn Hughes x Original female character

Warnings: Angst, history of a bad relationship

Summary: Quinn and Sarah have their first fight - we learn more about Quinn’s previous relationship

Word count: 3000

Comments: Angst isn’t something I feel I write very well, so if you have any ideas of how to make this better, I would welcome any and all constructive feedback.

First Fight

A Quinn & Sarah Snapshot

Hey, I met someone. I want you to meet her when you’re in town.

Sending this text was like setting off a bomb in his life. Not because Quinn thought it would destroy things, but it would open up this fated little world to outside forces, something he’d protected against so far.

He wanted Brady and Emma’s opinion first before he started introducing the idea of Sarah into the rest of his relationships. They had been the only ones brave enough to tell him they didn’t like June. Everyone else in his life told him they felt the same only after he’d called it off completely. His own family hadn’t even told him.

Everything with Sarah felt different than it had with June. He didn’t expect the same outcome, but he wanted to be sure. June taught him he couldn’t always trust his own judgment.

Things with June were always complicated. In so many ways, their relationship had been easy. She entertained herself for the most part, looked good on his arm, and the sex wasn’t bad, but it never went beyond that. Quinn used to think their relationship could lead to marriage, but she never gave them that chance.

Looking back, he wasn’t sure if she ever actually liked him. She liked the lifestyle he offered, and liked being seen with him at events and after games. She would often flirt with other people, even after they decided to be exclusive and was happy to tell him how there were taller, more handsome, better dressed men she could get with when they fought. A few days later, she would always come back apologizing, telling him she loved him and that she wanted to be with him.

At one point, Brady had told him he didn’t want to hear about their relationship drama anymore. “You don’t even like her, Q,” he’d said, exasperated, “like, not just her body, but her.”

Eventually, Quinn had been forced to admit he was right.

They’d been on and off for more than a year, and it never went anywhere other than around in circles. They had the same fights about how long he was gone, how she wanted him to dress better, and that she was flirting with other guys all the time. It was exhausting, and not in a way that made it worthwhile.

You met someone? Brady responded. Who? When?

Her name is Sarah. We met two months ago. We've been dating since then.

It wasn't totally unlike Quinn to keep something so private, but the fact that it had been two months and he'd kept it all to himself made Brady wonder.

Do you think Emma could come out?

If he was asking for Emma's opinion, this was serious. Quinn trusted her judgment.

I'll ask her.

As soon as Emma’s flight was confirmed, Quinn brought it up while Sarah was at his house.

When he'd asked her to come over earlier in the day, she had initially turned him down, explaining that she had a deadline to meet.

“I just want to see you,” he said. “You could do your homework here.”

“I don't know if that would work…”

She wanted to see him, too, especially knowing he was headed out of town again too soon for her liking, but finals and year end deadlines were coming up swiftly. She didn’t have the time, especially now that she was spending so much time with Quinn, to put things off.

“Could we just give it a try? I'll leave you alone until you're finished, I swear. And then we can spend some time together.”

She'd agreed, and was pleasantly surprised to find that he kept every word of his promise.

By the time her first draft of the research publication she was writing was done, Sarah had been at Quinn's table for more than two hours. True to his word, he left her alone other than to bring her a plate of cut vegetables and kiss her forehead around the one hour mark.

Now, she wandered through the penthouse, looking for him.

“Quinn?” she finally asked when she didn’t find him downstairs.

“I'm up here.”

She climbed the stairs and found him in the gaming room. It was where he had all of his video game equipment set up, along with squishy arm chairs, couches and bean bags. He had enough controllers, he could probably host the entire team.

Glancing away from the screen, he asked, “you're done already?”

She shrugged, “I write fast.”

She did. He was impressed. “I’m almost done with this level, and I'll be done.”

“No rush.”

She wandered down the hall to one of the guest bathrooms. When she got back, he'd tossed his headset and controller away from him and was standing.

The hug he wrapped her in was warm and comforting. She snuck her hands under his shirt just so she could feel his warm skin.

They kissed for a long time, standing in that gaming room.

As they walked down the stairs hand in hand, he broached the subject, “my best friend, Brady is going to be in town on a road trip from Ottawa Thursday. I hoped we could all go to dinner together.”

“Oh.”

“What?”

“I have a cohort review on Thursday night.”

“So? Can't you just move it?”

“No, I can't. It took us a week just to find a time that worked for everyone, and I already told them I would be there.”

Quinn pulled his bottom lip into his mouth, thinking. “Just - he's only in town Thursday and Friday, and they leave Friday night. His wife Emma is coming in.”

“I'm sorry, Quinn, I wish you had given me more advanced notice.”

“Can’t you meet with your cohort after class or something?” he asked, “you all live here.”

Sarah bristled, feeling more and more disrespected as this conversation went on. “Quinn,” her tone was a bit sharper than she intended and she tried to bite it back, “it’s not my fault you didn’t tell me about this until two days beforehand. I can’t just move my schedule around because you forgot.”

“I didn’t forget,” he said indignantly.

“Then why didn’t you tell me before?”

“We just made the plan!”

“You can’t just make plans without consulting me! I have a life and responsibilities outside of you.”

He blew a breath through his nose, “I know that.”

“Do you? Because it seems like you're expecting me to just drop everything for your schedule.”

He groaned. “That’s not what I mean. Brady and Emma will only be in town for a day and a half. They live on the other side of the country, and I want them to meet you, and you to meet them, and you’re saying you can’t because of some school thing with people who live here and could reschedule.”

Sarah pursed her lips. “So it’s up to me to reschedule.”

“They’re going back home on Friday after the game!”

“Could we not have lunch on Friday or get together before the game?”

Quinn paused. It wasn’t ideal, but he supposed it could work. “I mean, I guess so.”

She nodded. “So when I said I have plans, your first call is to ask me to cancel them, rather than seeing if there’s something that will work for everyone.”

“Jesus, Sarah. I just want you to meet my friends, and dinner would give us more time.”

“I get that, I really do, but this review is really important, and I’d just…” traitorous tears rose to her eyes. They always did when she was frustrated. “I’d just like you to respect that I have important stuff going on that I can’t cancel.”

Shit. Now she was crying. Over something he did. Fuck.

They were real tears, too - frustrated ones she was trying to sniffle back - not like the over dramatic tears June would dredge up in a fight.

“I know you’re used to being single, but you need to respect my time, too. You’re not the only one working around a demanding schedule.”

The truth of it socked him in the stomach. June worked as an influencer. Other than modeling gigs, which weren't that often, she could change her schedule at the drop of a hat, and often did. She liked the spontaneity of it. He had rarely planned ahead with her.

His shoulders sagged, “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. It’s just, I already move so much stuff around because of your hockey schedule.”

That made him stop short. “You do?”

“Yes! I have to move my work and my research so we can spend time together while you’re in town. Last week, I canceled this same review group so I could come over here before you went off to the midwest, and I can’t cancel it again.”

“I didn't know that. I can't know stuff you don't tell me, Sarah.”

“It’s not really even about the review, it’s about -” he scoffed and she stopped talking, pursing her lips together.

Quinn crossed his arms over his chest. How could he have known she changed this meeting before? How could she possibly be mad at him for something he didn’t know?

They stood that way, at the bottom of his fancy, metal and glass stairs, each staring at the other for a long while. The longer they were there, the longer Quinn stayed silent, the more frustrated Sarah became. Didn’t he understand she was upset about the lack of respect in this conversation?

“Maybe I should go,” she said. Not because she didn’t want to talk things over, or figure them out, but because she knew herself well enough to know that with his silence and her frustration dipping into anger, she would say something she didn’t really mean if she didn't step away.

Great. This is just great, Quinn thought. If she wanted to leave, fine. He wouldn’t stop her.

It was only after she’d left with a sad, emotionless smile, and he’d torn the cap off of a beer from the fridge that the reality of what happened came crashing in on him.

He let her walk away. Over a dinner - over wanting to be right about a dinner. He was such a fucking idiot.

In the midst of his realization, his mind grasped hold of something his Grandpa had told him when he had asked for relationship advice the summer before. “Quinn,” he’d said, “I like to ask myself, is this my pride fighting? And is it worth whatever the outcome will be?”

With June, that line was always a little blurred. Right now, though, he could see he’d clearly crossed it. And being right wasn’t worth the outcome this had caused. She’d been gone for 15 minutes, and was likely already on a train home. If he left now, he might make it there when she did.

He grabbed his keys and ran out of the house.

Once he’d followed another resident into the building and ran up to her apartment, he knocked, frantically.

Eunice opened the door.

“Hey, Quinn…” she said, slowly.

“Is Sarah not here yet?” he asked.

“No. I thought she was going to be at your place tonight.”

“She was. I mean, she was there, but -” he didn’t want to get into this with Eunice.

“Did you fight?” she asked, cocking her head to one side, and looking at him like he’d just proved her wrong in all the ways she’d been hoping he wouldn’t.

“We argued, and I came to apologize. Do you mind if I wait for her?”

“I mean, sure,” she said, opening the door further, “but you could just call her, you know?”

In his haste, he hadn’t even considered it. Would she even answer if he did? Reaching into his pocket he found he’d left his phone at home.

Sarah walked from the train station, feeling lead-footed. This was a horrible day. Failed experiments all day at work, and the time actually spent with Quinn was spent arguing. Maybe she had been too harsh on him. She hadn’t told him about moving her plans last week, and that was on her. She’d jumped on the defensive too quickly.

She paused before going into the lobby of her building, digging her phone out of her bag. She didn't want to make this call with Eunice in the house. It rang seven times before the generic voicemail picked up.

“Damnit,” she swore as she pulled her keys from her jacket pocket to buzz into the lobby.

Eunice greeted her nearly as soon as she walked in. “Hey, Quinn is here,” she said, quietly, catching the door before it could shut. “He said you argued. He’s waiting in your room, but if you don’t want to see him, go in my room and I’ll get rid of him.”

Tears pooled in her eyes as much for Eunice’s care and concern as for Quinn showing up. “He’s here?”

She nodded.

Pushing past Eunice, Sarah ran down the hall to her bedroom.

He jumped to his feet as soon as the door opened.

“Quinn, I’m sorry,” she said at the same time he was saying, “I’m such an idiot.”

She let out a watery little laugh, and he went to her, wrapping her in his arms, backpack and all.

“I’m sorry,” he said into her hair. “I never want you to feel like your time isn’t important.”

She pulled out of his embrace to look into his eyes. He looked a little like a lost puppy. Her heart twisted. “I’m sorry I got so defensive.”

Quinn shook his head, “You had every right to be defensive. I shouldn't have expected you to just change your plans like that. That wasn’t fair.”

She gave a hearty sniff and tucked her face into his shoulder.

They stood there for a while, swaying gently.

“Does this mean I'm forgiven?” Quinn asked after a few moments of silence.

As she pulled back to look into his face, she said, “yes.”

He pulled her against him. “I'm sorry,” he said again. “I’ll call Brady tomorrow and figure something out that works for all of us.”

Her grip tightened around his waist. “Thank you.”

They stood in that little bubble for a long while. Soaking in each other and letting the bad day roll off.

Feeling settled, he couldn't hold back his question any longer, “do you golf?”

She stepped out of his embrace and finally took off her backpack, “what?”

“You have clubs,” he gestured to her door, where a purple bag of golf clubs was tucked behind it. He hadn't noticed it until today, when he'd been alone in her room, distracting himself by looking around at everything Sarah held in high enough esteem to keep in her space.

“Oh, yeah. My dad taught me. We used to golf every Sunday as a family. I was on my high-school golf team and walked on in undergrad. I got a scholarship my senior year.”

“Really?” he said, beaming like a little kid.

“Yeah. I don't have much time to go these days, but I'm pretty decent.”

Quinn knew enough about her to know that if she said she was decent, she was much better than she was letting on. She often downplayed her talents and accomplishments.

“Why?”

“I love golf,” he confessed. “Want to go together when I get back next week? I could get us an evening tee time.”

“I like the sound of that,” she said, smiling as she leaned up to kiss him.

They broke apart at a wrenching sound from the hallway.

“You guys are so disgustingly cute,” Eunice said. She was smiling as she said it, though, obviously happy things had worked out. “I'm making Mac and cheese if you want to stay,” she said with a nod at Quinn.

He glanced at Sarah.

“Stay,” she urged. “I make a mean turkey sandwich, and believe me, you don't want to miss out on Eunice’s mac and cheese.”

Even though he had practice in the morning, and knew all the carbs and dairy would make him sluggish, he agreed.

“Where did you even park?”

“On Nelson, across from the courts.”

“There’s no parking there, you’ll get towed.”

“I just found a free curb and ran up,” he confessed.

Shoving his shoulder playfully, she said, “let’s go move your car.”

They did, and the rest of what she said was true - Sarah did make a mean turkey sandwich, and Eunice’s mac and cheese wasn’t something to be missed. He had fun getting to know her roommates, and catching Sarah’s looks when Eunice said something unhinged. It felt like they were starting to create their own private language, and he was ecstatic over it.

It was also true that the carbs and dairy from the night before did make Quinn sluggish at practice in the morning.

“What’s up with you today?”

He shrugged off the question, “just an off morning. I’ll be fine by tonight.”

By the time the game had ended - vs the Jets, lost, in a three round shoot out - and he’d finished his media duties, Sarah had called him twice.

He called her back on the way home.

“Hey, what’s up?” he asked when she answered.

“Bryan’s sister went into labor, so he has to go home,” she said.

Quinn had no idea who Bryan was. “Okay?”

“So we had our cohort review tonight before he left for Calgary. I had to miss your game, sorry.”

If it was between her watching a game and getting dinner with his friends, he'd rather she missed the game.

“So you can do dinner tomorrow?” he asked, relieved, and also angry with himself. If he’d just let it lie, it would have worked out for the best anyway.

“Yep. Do you think Brady is still free?”

“I’m sure, but I’ll call him and ask.”

Want more Quinn & Sarah? Check out the Snapshots Masterlist

To read all my fics, check out the Fanfiction Masterlist

#quinn & sarah snapshots #quinn hughes #quinn hughes fic #quinn hughes imagine #quinn hughes x oc #quinn hughes fan fic #nhl fanfiction #nhl imagine #quinn hughes fanfiction #hockey fic #hockey romance

189 notes · View notes

joels-darlin · 9 days ago

Text

Dear Diary...

Pairings: pre-outbreak!Joel Miller x reader, CEO!Joel (sort of)

Warnings: angst, hurt, sadness, Joel has been an ass basically.

Summary: Joel Miller broke your heart. So it's time to do what you do what know best - dust off the diary from the top drawer of your bedside table and put pen to paper.

Word count: 771

Author Note: This one is already up on AO3 but reposting here as I originally deleted it. I also had an idea in my head for a banner so went with it. This is not beta read, if anyone wants to volunteer please let me know! <3

Original Author notes: I am back...sort of! Always wanted to write for CEO!Joel and my original idea just never got off the ground, then this came along. I am unsure if there will be more 'entries' - there are many ideas floating around my head right now for this fic. I guess stay tuned and we will see where this goes! Read on AO3!

Chapter 1: Brokenhearted ~ ~

Dear Diary, Its been awhile since we crossed paths, I left you collecting dust in the drawer for a few months and I’m sorry. For a while life was good, I felt happy. There was no urge to scribble away my deepest and darkest thoughts, I had someone who could take them away instead. His arms a place I considered to be at peace. But here we are again: putting pen to paper. Because everything fell down the steep slippery slope again and this is how I cope best.

Where do I even begin?

Oh wait I know, the coffee shop. The unexpected run-in that was once a happy memory, now tainted. Little did I know the moment I locked eyes with those chocolate brown orbs I was done for. We had our first date a week later, then 10 months he would go running back.

In the midst of all this I am the one that is dealing with the loss. Not just his presence but my routine. Weekends spent curled up in the comfy chairs at the back of that coffee shop, book in hand, a cappuccino and pastry for company. I could spend hours there. But I’ve not been back since, its too difficult. Joel, you have ruined that for me - I hope you are happy.

I’ve never felt loved by anyone. Joel made me feel special. Pouring all my energy into this…relationship? situationship? What would you even call it? it was never the topic of conversation. But those three words were spoken, I remember it clear as day. In the back of my mind there was hope: would I spend the rest of my life with this man? Had I finally found the one?

Everything seemed so right. But no that was not to be. That random Monday in December, the words engrained into my brain forever: “We can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry but…I still love her”

Her meaning his ex-wife, the one he divorced over 12 months ago.

Then it all came pouring out. Those times he backed out on or date nights or phone calls. Told me he was working late to meet deadlines or having client catch-ups. And I stupidly believed him - why you ask? because I understood being the CEO of your own company comes with huge responsibilities. But instead he was meeting her for dinner, drinks and god knows what else. I don’t even want to even comprehend to be perfectly honest. The worst of it? All those broken and empty promises I will never be able to forgive him for. I hope they are happy together.

It’s been a week since that day and everything still feels raw. It’s difficult to describe the feeling of heartache. That crushing weight on your chest making itself known on every breath. The heavy feeling in your heart at the memories that once were. Constant swirling pit of anxiety in your stomach, making things such as eating a chore. Not forgetting the racing thoughts. Overthinking every last moment of what happened these past few months - was it me? what did I do wrong? did you ever really love me? I can’t even begin to tell you how many hours of sleep have been lost. How many nights I’ve spent crying into my pillow, wishing the pain to simply go away. I probably deserved this.

The thoughts are at their loudest when I am alone, there are only so many distractions one can find - even if just for a short period of time. It all plays over and over in my head like a constant film reel. every kiss, every subtle, loving touch and well…every time we laid together. All of this now gone and only a distant memory, he is no longer mine to call. I am in a constant state of anxiety, waiting…just waiting for my phone to ping at any given moment with a message from him. But it will never happen.

I guess now the hard work is to come, attempting to move on from someone you had the deepest of connections with. At the end of the day it wasn’t just on a romantic level it ran so much deeper than that. We shared a common ground for many things: music, books, sports even down to beer! There was no-one else I could sit in the same room with, the two of us doing completely different things, but also feel at peace.

I love him…simple as that. but what pains me the most? I don't regret many things but looking back, he could be one of them.

#joel miller fanfic #joel miller x reader #joel miller #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x you #joel miller angst #joel the last of us

20 notes · View notes

ysmtttty · 1 month ago

Text

Again

Chapter 4 Read on AO3 or below || Chapter 3 Chapter 5 Lawyer AU where Eris and Nesta used to be rivals before she got married and decided to leave the field. But now she is divorced and determined to return to the legal field, even if it means working with Eris, not against him.

a/n: I am very very sorry I'm taking this long with chapters. I was sick all October, then had my deadlines, then sick again. Not cool. But I fought my flu to finish it today so yes, tried my best here:) So thank you for waiting and staying<3

“What do you mean you went home?” Emerie asked in disappointment, listening as Nesta recounted the events of last Friday.

They were sitting on the couch in her apartment, drinking wine while her daughters fought over the new toys Gwyn had brought. Astrid was desperately trying to reclaim what had originally been given to her, while Callista simply wanted everything her older sister had. Nesta watched them, but nothing threatened their lives except themselves—Callista kept biting, and Astrid, due to her age, was simply physically stronger.

“What was I supposed to do?” Nesta asked sullenly, taking a sip of her wine.

Both Emerie and Gwyn looked at her as if she’d asked the dumbest question possible. While Gwyn tactfully kept silent, simply giving her a look, Emerie wasn’t holding back.

“Eris Vanserra, your rich, arrogant, and objectively hot boss, whom you kissed,” she said, emphasizing every word unnecessarily. “Nes, this is straight out of half the romance novels we buy for our Kindles. You know what you should have done.”

Nesta grimaced and snorted. “I'm not going to compromise my professionalism any further than I already have. Besides, I don’t need a relationship, especially after just finalizing my divorce.”

“No one’s talking about a relationship, but se—”

“Emerie means you need to unwind,” Gwyn interrupted before Emerie could say something entirely inappropriate for a room where children were present. Not that it mattered much, as both Callista and Astrid were distracted by the cartoon playing on the TV and their ongoing quarrel. “Your divorce from Cassian took so much time and energy, and even during your marriage, things were... uh... far from smooth. Maybe you should consider—”

“Sleeping with my boss, whom I couldn’t stand for nearly a decade of my life?” Nesta raised an eyebrow.

Both her friends shrugged, as if to say it wasn’t the worst idea in the world. Nesta just rolled her eyes, taking another sip of wine. She and Eris? Never. Not even after twenty-four hours of being unable to focus on anything without recalling how they’d kissed in his office.

His hands on her waist, her hands in his hair, the feel of his lips on hers… Nesta wanted to smack herself for how much significance she was giving it. She was a grown woman, for god’s sake, with two kids and a jerk of an ex-husband. The last thing she needed was an affair with someone from her past. Even if that someone had been surprisingly good company for the past few months.

Even if she had genuinely enjoyed his company.

In any case, Nesta reminded herself, Eris was her boss. No matter how much she hated the fact, it was still true—Eris was her boss, and there was absolutely no way she could date him. Period.

“Even if not him, then at least someone,” Emerie huffed, clearly disappointed that Nesta wouldn’t sleep with Eris when it could have been ripped straight from the pages of the books they’d traded back in grad school. “Seriously, how many months has it been since the last time you had anything at all?”

Nesta rolled her eyes again, her cheeks flushing slightly with the embarrassment of knowing the answer. A long time. A very long time ago.

“We need to go out somewhere,” Emerie declared. “And find you a suitable companion for—”

Both Gwyn and Nesta shot her a look, making her pause. To her credit, Emerie didn’t falter much and quickly rephrased.

“For a good time,” she finished.

Nesta merely snorted.

“Mama!” both her daughters cried out simultaneously, their voices plaintive and whining. Nesta turned to see Callista biting down on a doll that Astrid was clutching, trying desperately to snatch it away.

“Next time, I’ll know to buy identical dolls,” Gwyn muttered, watching as Nesta stepped in to separate her daughters. Luckily, Astrid was old enough to be reasoned with.

Astrid distracted herself by climbing onto Gwyn’s lap, where Gwyn stealthily handed her another piece of candy while Nesta wasn’t looking. The delighted girl sat contentedly munching her chocolate as Nesta explained to Callista why biting her sister and grabbing toys wasn’t acceptable, no matter how badly she wanted them.

“I need to close the case first,” Nesta said, returning to the couch with Callista, who refused to leave her side. Emerie fondly ruffled the little girl’s hair as she stared at the coffee table, clearly plotting what she could grab. Nesta handed her a few grapes.

“Work, work, work,” Emerie mimicked with exaggerated boredom. “Do you really want to go back to that?”

“It’s still better than diapers, diapers, my husband’s dirty socks on the floor, and more diapers,” Nesta replied. Being a housewife had never appealed to her, not that anyone had asked her opinion.

“You’ve got two extremes,” Gwyn pointed out, reaching for her empty glass and refilling it with juice before passing it to Astrid, who murmured a soft “thank you.” “You need to learn to find balance.”

“I’m balanced. I don’t work weekends... mostly,” Nesta met two pairs of judgmental stares. “And I leave work at six almost every time. You can’t judge me.”

Gwyn just shook her head, finishing her wine and clinking glasses with Astrid. Emerie, meanwhile, stole one of Callista’s grapes, provoking the little girl’s loud protest. Nesta shot her friend a disapproving look that clearly said, Really?

After sitting a while longer, Callista fell asleep despite the occasional laughter and conversations between the women. Astrid, on the other hand, remained wide awake, feeling very much like part of the group, which both Gwyn and Emerie encouraged by asking her about school and any class gossip.

Nesta doubted first graders knew much about gossip, but she listened with interest as her daughter described how their English and math teachers always ate lunch together. Nesta, of course, didn’t crush Astrid’s speculation that this meant something.

Eventually, even Astrid began yawning, resisting all attempts to convince her to go to bed because she didn’t want the day to end. Nesta promised they’d wake up early and go to the amusement park, while Gwyn whispered something in her ear that sounded suspiciously like “mountain of candy.” Astrid just giggled and finally agreed to sleep.

For another half hour, Nesta, Gwyn, and Emerie sat together, chatting about everything happening in their lives. Gwyn talked about how Cassian’s step-brother kept showing up at her church while Emerie tried to convince her to let her punch both him and Cassian, much to Nesta’s amusement. Emerie also shared stories from her shop and her plans to open another branch somewhere in the city.

Then Nesta was distracted by a notification sound, half-thinking—or hoping—that it was Eris. Maybe he needed help with the case. Who knew? They had another hearing soon, so anything was possible.

But it wasn’t Eris. It was Elain, and after reading her message, Nesta groaned and tossed her phone aside.

“What’s wrong?” Gwyn frowned.

“Elain. Or Feyre, they are probably sitting together,” Nesta snorted, pouring herself more wine and taking a big gulp. “They’re both trying to drag me to a family dinner. It’s Nyx’s birthday in a few weeks.”

“Oh,” Emerie sighed.

That was Nesta’s reaction, too. “Oh,” followed by a string of curses. Because there was no way she was willingly stepping foot in Cassian’s family home. Even if, technically, he no longer lived there. Even if, technically, it was now Feyre’s home with her son, Nyx. Feyre’s husband, in Nesta’s not-so-humble opinion, didn’t count as a person, so his house’s ownership didn’t count as well.

She hadn’t seen her sisters since the divorce. Not because she didn’t want to, but more because Feyre’s idiot husband was always lurking around her, never straying far, and Nesta wouldn’t have been surprised to learn they even pooped together, holding hands on matching toilets. And Elain always insisted they meet as sisters only when all three of them could meet, though she probably spent her weekends hanging around Feyre’s house anyway.

They called almost every week, but Nesta was always more at ease with the separation. Maybe it was because she was older than both of them, and Elain and Feyre were closer in age and therefore in interests. Besides, they were both… easier company than Nesta? It wasn’t some self-hating observation, but Nesta could clearly see there was a lot more harmony and lightness in tending to flowers and painting those same flowers than in talking about law.

That didn’t mean the sisters were distant from her. They still found topics to talk about—Nesta could sometimes call Feyre and, if she didn’t hear Rhysand’s voice in the background, not hang up immediately but ask her advice about parenting or other child-related matters. As much as it was hard to admit, Feyre understood things better because Nyx was older, and Feyre had already dealt with everything Nesta was going through with Astrid.

With Elain, Nesta would just chat, like when she asked whether she needed to water the cactus Elain had given her for her last birthday. The cactus was still quietly thriving on her bedroom windowsill, even though it had moved with Nesta from her old house to this apartment. And generally, Elain always called to check in on her, which counted as communication too.

Nesta hadn’t completely cut herself off from her family. And she didn’t need to show up at this circus elegantly titled a “family dinner.” There was a small chance Cassian would be there because, for some stupid reason, poor Rhysand couldn’t go a day without his “brother,” and Feyre would never let her husband suffer for one single evening just so Nesta could avoid the most awkward and uncomfortable night of her life.

It wasn’t that she wanted to let Cassian ruin her family relationships even after their divorce, but Nesta wanted to avoid confrontation with him for now. They were barely coping with splitting custody of the kids by the days of the week, and Nesta was already preparing an appeal to get more days. She hadn’t yet figured out a schedule that would work for her and not deprive the kids of their father, even if their father was a complete jerk. Though Nesta could admit Cassian adored their kids with all his heart, much more than he had ever loved her. So she wouldn’t fully take his rights away.

"Are you going to go?" Gwyn gently and calmly pulled her out of her thoughts.

“No,” Nesta snapped and then lowered her gaze. “I don’t know. Should I?”

Gwyn and Emerie exchanged glances and both shrugged. This was a question they couldn’t give her a good answer to.

“They’re your sisters,” Gwyn said. “Maybe you should go. And besides, it’s your favorite nephew’s birthday—you can’t not go. That would break his heart. Cassian’s family can go to hell, but your family still matters.”

Gwyn rarely swore—practically never, given that she was religious and literally worked at a church. So both Nesta and Emerie stared at her wide-eyed at first, realizing just how much Cassian annoyed Gwyn. He annoyed all of them, but now Nesta felt even more support from her friends.

“One evening won’t kill you. And you can always get Astrid to pretend she feels sick, so you can leave early,” Emerie grinned, breaking the bad mood. “She’s growing into a little actress. Bribe her with cheesecake, and she’ll act out anything you want.”

Nesta laughed, as did Emerie and Gwyn. Picking up her phone, she texted Elain—and Feyre, who was surely sitting next to her—that she would come.

***

Eris Vanserra always considered himself a rational man. Or at least, he tried to be.

What wasn’t rational was continuing to think about Nesta Archeron, who had reentered his life three months ago and hadn’t left his mind since. Eris thought he might be a masochist for agreeing to hire her, because there was no other explanation.

Not that he was losing his mind, but he was getting distracted often. His secretary occasionally asked if everything was alright with the firm because he was reaching out to one specific paralegal far too frequently. Eris very rarely reached out to paralegals in his firm.

And yet, after promoting Nesta to senior associate, everything became ten times worse because his masochistic brain and complete lack of control over his tongue in her presence led him to invite her to join the Kallias case. Naturally, Nesta’s help was invaluable.

Eris never doubted that Nesta was an exceptional lawyer—probably better than him. Had she not gone on maternity leave, her firm would likely have been a worthy competitor, if not a full-fledged threat to his own. Unfortunately, when Nesta left, Eris hadn’t hesitated to crush that firm completely.

And now? Now he was pacing his office in circles, desperately trying to gather the remnants of his brain cells to focus on his speech for the trial. What was looping in his mind nonstop? Of course, not how to word things to extract the maximum compensation from those factory bastards. Instead, his brain kept replaying their kiss.

If Eris had been younger, he might have jumped to the ceiling. Now, though, he was tormenting himself with questions—what did it mean, and should he think of it as something more than a spontaneous act of emotion? Nesta rarely acted emotionally; she was as much a reflection of rationality as Eris thought himself to be.

“Are you this nervous before the hearing?” a teasing voice distracted him from his fifteenth lap around the desk.

Eris sharply raised his head to see Nesta standing in the doorway with two steaming mugs of coffee. He smirked and gestured for her to come in.

“I don’t remember what it’s like to be nervous before a trial,” he replied with feigned arrogance.

Nesta only snorted, clearly remembering how much they’d both stressed before the first Kallias hearing. “I thought you might’ve missed sleep, but now I’m debating giving you coffee at all. Too much energy, and you’ll hit hyperspeed.”

“Or have a stroke,” Eris joked. Nesta rolled her eyes.

She sat down at the table; he settled into his chair opposite her, and they both drank their coffee in silence. It had become a small tradition over the past few weeks, and Eris didn’t mind at all. He was used to the silence of his office, which was usually broken only by the sound of his own typing or the rustling of papers—or, very rarely, by someone daring to disturb him. But this silence was different. Eris had forgotten how comforting it could be to share a quiet moment with someone.

The last time he felt like this had been back when he and Nesta studied together in the library. That was before the bar exam, when they both lived on energy drinks, coffee, and anything but sleep to make it through. Nesta had been too exhausted to refuse when Eris sat next to her, and Eris... Eris had claimed he was too tired to walk to another table, though, in truth, it had seemed like a good excuse at the time.

Not that he was desperate.

He was definitely desperate.

“Is everything ready?” Nesta asked him.

Eris smirked. “Doubting me, Archeron?”

“You don’t have room for error, Vanserra,” she said firmly. “Or I’ll personally run you over with a car—along with the factory owners.”

He chuckled. He had every reason to believe Nesta would actually do it—and somehow extract compensation from them even posthumously. Maybe by bribing demons in hell? Who knew.

Setting her empty mug on the table, Nesta returned to the case documents, methodically reviewing them one more time. She insisted on preparing for the hearing to the bitter end, while Eris was confident that afterward, they’d be able to settle with the factory owners for a far larger amount than the court would order them to pay.

An hour passed. Then another. And soon they were sitting in Eris’s car on their way to court. Nesta was going over their strategy for the tenth time, while Eris found himself utterly mesmerized by her voice. Well, if he remembered the content of what she was saying, that still counted as listening, didn’t it? Besides, he couldn’t help it. To be completely honest—a rare occurrence for him—Eris would admit he could listen to Nesta talk about anything.

He just liked her voice, and he wasn’t prepared for how much it distracted him. Right now, the only thing saving him was that he was driving, so he could blame the traffic if it seemed like his focus wavered.

“Are you sure you don’t need another coffee?” Nesta asked, arching a brow. “You look like you’re not listening to me at all.”

“I’m listening,” Eris waved her off, glancing at her. And damn, he wished she had different eyes. Because looking into her light blue, soul-piercing gaze made it impossible to come up with a convincing lie. “I don’t need coffee,” he said instead.

They said blue eyes could pierce the soul. Eris felt the same under Nesta's gaze. Every single time. From the day they first met at university when she bluntly told him he only got in because of his parents' money after he made an ill-advised joke about her outfit.

Had Eris been a jerk in his younger days? Yes. But Nesta's presence in his life had been a profoundly humbling experience. She always knew what to say to him. Always knew how to retort to his barbs with sharper ones. Eris had never told her this—and likely never would—but he admired her ability to never back down, to push forward and always match whatever was thrown her way. Venom for venom, kindness for kindness.

For a time, he wanted to work in the same firm as her, but that would’ve been difficult, given their similar ambitions. Nesta wanted to become a partner at her firm, and Eris knew he’d just get in her way. Between him and her, the firm would choose money over talent. As exceptional a lawyer as Nesta was, the Vanserra legacy would tip the scales. So, Eris chose a different firm.

***

The courtroom was tense. Nesta’s cold gaze bore into the factory's lawyers, who lifted their noses, pretending innocence. When it came time for the cross-examination, Eris straightened, rising from his seat, feeling Nesta’s stare on his back.

“Before I ask any questions, I want to ensure you understand the consequences of perjury,” he began.

One of the factory owners sat before him, dressed impeccably, likely hiding a smug smirk, confident they’d get away with it. Eris knew that look too well—and he loved crushing it later.

“I understand,” the owner replied.

“Then you’re aware that you raised the factory’s insurance policy to twenty million dollars.”

“Objection,” the factory’s lawyer called from his seat. “Relevance?”

The judge shook his head, overruling the objection, and Eris suppressed a smirk. “They knew what they were doing. That’s why they conducted a so-called charitable redevelopment and replaced the soil.”

“You have no proof,” the lawyer countered.

“No, we don’t,” Eris admitted, stepping closer to the owner. “But we have the insurance policy your client signed. That policy outlined the exact sum you offered during negotiations, didn’t it?”

“That was a generous offer on our part,” the owner protested.

“No. You’ve been able to pay that amount for a year now,” Eris replied, narrowing his eyes.

The owner fell silent. Eris thought he heard Kallias growl softly in frustration behind him. For someone usually composed, calm, and even cold, Kallias was uncharacteristically emotional about this case.

“And it’s six times the standard insurance amount for factories,” Eris continued, his gaze unwavering. The owner’s eyes darted across the room, seeking help from his lawyers, who clearly couldn’t think of a way to assist. “Tell me, Mr. Attor, what makes this factory so special? What prompted you to insure it for so much more than your other facilities? Remember, you are under oath.”

For a few seconds, Eris held his gaze, staring into the eyes of a man who had calculated the worth of children’s lives and moved on as if nothing had happened. A few seconds felt like an eternity. Just as Eris was about to speak again, not wanting to waste the court’s time, Attor spoke.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, like any spineless businessman would. “I don’t handle the insurance policies.”

Fucker.

Eris merely huffed, returning to his table, where Nesta handed him the necessary documents with an icy glare fixed on Attor. Eris nodded in thanks, walking back to the factory owner.

“Your name is on the policy,” he said coldly, tossing the papers in front of Attor’s face.

“I need to confer with my client,” the lawyer interjected, but the judge denied the request.

“And I need him to answer my question,” Eris said through clenched teeth. “Why such a high insurance amount?”

Attor’s eyes darted around again, more frantically this time. Eris would have enjoyed grinding him into the dirt. The judge stepped in, pressing Attor to answer properly under cross-examination. After several helpless attempts to speak, Attor finally broke.

“Fine!” he barked. “We knew! We took measures that didn’t work. We couldn’t predict it, and the factory was already operational. But we found a way to fix it.”

“Fix it?” Eris echoed coldly, his gaze flicking briefly to the jury, each member watching intently. “You valued the lives of those children at a hundred thousand dollars each, knowingly poisoning them—and that can never be fixed.”

Attor exhaled shakily, his shoulders slumping as he closed his eyes, realizing he’d said too much under pressure. Eris glanced at the lawyer, who was now whispering frantically to Nesta, but her stern glare made it clear—the compensation wouldn’t come cheap.

***

Nesta stayed in Eris’s office as they dealt with the remaining documents. Mostly, they redirected financial burdens to the factory owners, hitting them with hefty bills for anything they could—one of the perks of being skilled lawyers.

Now that they no longer had to stress about the case—which ended with the factory owners paying Kallias one and a half million dollars per child—Nesta couldn’t help but notice a different tension. Like how Eris subtly pulled his hand back whenever they both reached for the same document. Or how he avoided her gaze whenever she looked at him.

Still, she didn’t want to be the first to address the topic. Otherwise, she’d have to answer a question she wasn’t ready to face herself. Why had she kissed him?

Because she was an impulsive fool, her inner voice answered. Though, deep down, she knew the real reason. But admitting it would complicate things even further—because no, she wasn’t about to make a move on Eris Vanserra. Not now, and probably not anytime soon.

“I’m getting coffee. Want some?” Eris interrupted her thoughts as he rose from his chair. Nesta simply nodded, watching him quickly head for the door.

As Eris reached for the door handle, Kallias appeared, wearing a tired but soft smile and carrying a box of expensive whiskey. Eris muttered something about getting coffee and left anyway. Nesta offered Kallias a small smile as he approached the table, setting the box down.

“How are you feeling?” she asked gently.

Kallias straightened his shoulders, clearly buoyed by today’s courtroom success. Of all of them, this case had been hardest on him. Nesta couldn’t imagine how attached someone running an orphanage could be to the children they cared for.

“We’ve managed to secure treatment for all the kids,” he said, much to her relief. “The doctors are optimistic about most of them. For the others… well, now we can ensure their comfort and provide all the necessary medications to minimize their symptoms.”

“That’s wonderful,” Nesta replied sincerely, watching as Kallias leaned against the edge of the desk, crossing his arms. “We’ll make sure the company sends your share as soon as possible.”

Kallias nodded gratefully. “I don’t doubt it. If there’s one thing you and Vanserra excel at, it’s intimidating people,” he chuckled.

“We’re karma incarnate,” Nesta quipped, smirking.

Kallias laughed, nodding in agreement. After a brief pause, he spoke again. “I’m deeply grateful you took this case. I know how much trouble those bastards caused you, and I know Eris could’ve made millions with less hassle elsewhere. But he chose our orphanage. He chose not to abandon those kids. And I wanted to thank you both.”

“I see,” Nesta said, tracing a nail along the edge of the box.

“It’s also an apology for not warning you about the debts,” Kallias added with a wry smile. “My wife Viviane and I are hosting a dinner this Friday. It’s an annual event for our sponsors and to attract new ones, but this time, I’d really like you to attend.”

“Is this you inviting my senior associate to dinner, or is there some context I’m missing?” came Eris’s voice from behind them. Both Nesta and Kallias turned to see him carrying two cups of coffee. He set one in front of Nesta and kept the other for himself, offering none to Kallias. Clearly, Eris had only caught the last part of the conversation, though Nesta doubted he was serious.

Kallias snorted. “I’m married,” he reminded.

“You wouldn’t believe how many ‘married’ people I’ve worked with,” Eris quipped, sipping his coffee. Nesta just rolled her eyes at his sharp tongue.

“Kallias is inviting us to a charity dinner,” she explained. “And we’d be happy to accept.”

Eris just shrugged, as if to say, You heard what she said. Instead of responding verbally, he began examining the whiskey bottle's box with interest, raising an eyebrow.

"From personal collection," Kallias explained as if Eris had accused him of spending the money he'd won from the factory earlier. "I figured after the circus I dragged you into, you'd need a drink."

"Not bad," Eris commented, setting the box back down. "Looking forward to seeing you and Viviane on Friday."

Kallias soon said his goodbyes, mentioning he had plenty of doctor and hospital matters to handle. Eris and Nesta watched him leave, then both turned their gazes to the bottle. Drinking midweek felt like a bad idea for both of them, but...

"Technically, I’m my own boss and can set any schedule I want," Eris said. Nesta just scoffed.

"My workday starts at nine in the morning," she reminded him.

"I’m sure your boss would understand if you’re a couple of hours late tomorrow," Eris shrugged, slipping on his coat. "Besides, I’ve yet to hear anyone turn down an invitation to have a drink at my penthouse."

"Always a pleasure to be the first," Nesta retorted with a smirk, though she was also getting ready to leave. "You could use a little humbling."

Eris simply picked up the whiskey he'd been given and extended his hand. Nesta took it without hesitation, walking with him toward the elevator. Eris’s assistant cast them a brief glance, and Nesta could’ve sworn the woman smirked.

As they stood in the elevator, Nesta couldn’t help but think about what the assistant might be assuming. This was, after all, one of her specialties—overthinking what people thought, then rethinking and overanalyzing... She was talented at thinking too much.

"Elijah’s probably misunderstood the whole thing," she muttered, looking at their reflection in the elevator mirror. Eris stood behind her, one hand holding the whiskey while the other was already tucked into his pocket after letting go of hers. Tall, in his expensive coat, with those strikingly red hair that she found far too attractive. Damn Eris Vanserra and his genetics.

"And what exactly did she misunderstand?" Eris asked quietly, leaning slightly toward her ear, sending a wave of goosebumps down her spine. She definitely needed that whiskey. Preferably right now.

"That you’re breaking workplace ethics and abusing your position," Nesta straightened her shoulders, lifting her chin to meet Eris’s gaze in the reflection. He was watching her just as steadily. "She could report you, you know."

"I’m not breaking workplace ethics with her," Eris chuckled. "I haven’t broken any rules yet; my hands are clean, Archeron. I thought you were well-versed in legal matters."

Nesta rolled her eyes as the elevator chimed, signaling their arrival at the right floor. They both headed toward Eris’s car, more out of habit than conscious decision. Once they were inside, and Eris was starting up his Aston Martin, Nesta warned him that if they ended up drinking, he’d be obliged to either drive her to work in the morning or pay for her cab since she’d left her car in the parking lot. Eris quickly agreed, clearly not considering it a difficult condition.

He hadn’t lied when he said he’d purchased an office close to his home. They arrived very quickly—much faster than the food delivery Nesta insisted on ordering during the drive. It was evening, and Eris had immediately admitted that his place was stocked with little more than water and, if they were lucky, a yogurt or two. To this, Nesta responded that this idiot could buy half the buildings in the district but couldn’t invest in a properly stocked fridge.

"I still don’t understand what’s so hard about buying groceries," Nesta shook her head as they stood in the elevator again, this time leaning against opposite walls.

"I’ve always got delivery services," Eris shrugged, clearly unbothered by his fridge’s state. "And we’ve already ordered food. I even compromised and agreed on sushi."

Nesta muttered something about how disliking sushi should be against nature as they both stepped out of the elevator and headed into his apartment. Eris just laughed, opening the door and letting her in ahead of him.

Eris’s apartment was about what Nesta had expected—minimalist, clean, empty. Nothing out of place, as if everything had been measured with a ruler.

"No signs of life," she remarked, hanging up her coat. Eris hung his next to hers, heading into the kitchen to drop off the whiskey and find glasses.

"I’ll take that as a compliment," he replied.

Nesta continued to look around, turning her head this way and that, now studying the kitchen. She took a seat at the high bar table—not particularly practical. That was one of their differences: Eris didn’t care about whether his furniture was practical for others. His height allowed him to sit at the table comfortably, while Nesta’s first thought upon seeing it was that children could easily fall and hurt themselves.

"Behold, I’ve found cheese," Eris announced, peering into the fridge. Nesta couldn’t help but laugh at how simple that sounded. Eris had never struck her as simple before, and he still wasn’t, but there was something amusing—and even endearing—about the way he proudly showed her the cheese, as if it were some kind of treasure.

"Wow, we won’t starve after all," she replied sarcastically as Eris rummaged through the drawers for a knife and a cutting board. "And we won’t get completely drunk before the food arrives."

Seeing that he clearly had no experience cutting food, Nesta watched him struggle for a few moments before clicking her tongue and taking the knife from his hands. She quickly sliced the cheese with practiced efficiency, pushing him aside.

Eris muttered something under his breath, watching her, before they settled into his spacious living room. Twenty minutes later, the sushi arrived. By then, the whiskey had been poured into glasses, and they were chatting.

"You chased Cassian with an axe?" Eris laughed, nearly spilling whiskey on the white couch.

Nesta shrugged, smirking as she popped another warm roll into her mouth. "It was deserved."

"I don’t doubt it," Eris said, raising his hands in a mock gesture of surrender.

"I’m serious. It was so long ago—I was a little more hotheaded then," they both snorted at the word "little," "and it drove me insane how, after everything that happened the night before, he had the audacity to cheerfully say, ‘Good morning.’ Seriously, ‘good morning’? I bailed him out of jail because his dumb ass got into trouble while drunk."

Eris just shook his head, pushing his portion of warm rolls closer to her while stealing one of her Philadelphia rolls. Nesta didn’t put up much of a protest.

"Good to know you’ll show up to my office with an axe if something doesn’t suit you," he joked.

Nesta arched a brow at him, leaning back into the plush cushions of his couch. She toyed with her glass, swirling the amber liquid inside before taking a slow sip.

"I wouldn’t waste an axe on you, Vanserra," she said, her voice smooth but laced with challenge. "Too dramatic. I’d find something subtler."

"Subtler, huh?" Eris leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees as he mirrored her gaze. "I’d almost be offended if that didn’t sound equally dangerous. What would you use then? Poison? A lawsuit? Maybe just a sharp tongue—your usual weapon of choice."

Nesta smirked, her lips curving just enough to be maddening. "You’d deserve it either way."

"Would I?" His tone dropped, laced with playful skepticism, but there was something darker in the way his eyes dragged over her face, lingering just a beat too long on her lips.

Nesta didn’t flinch, didn’t look away. She tilted her head, the faintest challenge gleaming in her eyes. "I always have good reasoning, so don’t tempt me." She couldn’t ignore the way his gaze had shifted, as if studying her every move. It sent a ripple of heat down her spine, one that she stubbornly refused to acknowledge.

"Tempt you?" Eris asked, raising a brow as he leaned forward, resting an arm casually along the back of the couch. His eyes gleamed with teasing. "That’s not the word I’d use for what I’m doing."

Nesta narrowed her eyes at him, swirling the amber liquid in her glass. "And what exactly do you think you’re doing?"

Eris tilted his head slightly, considering her. "Testing your patience, apparently. And maybe my own."

"You’ve been testing my patience since the moment we met," she replied with a snort.

Eris chuckled. "And yet here you are. In my home. On my couch."

Nesta arched a brow. "Because you bribed me with whiskey and takeout. Hardly a groundbreaking strategy."

"I didn’t hear you complain," he countered smoothly. "So careful, Nesta. I might think you’re enjoying yourself here."

Her scoff was immediate, though her lips twitched as if she were fighting off a smile, the flush creeping up her neck betrayed her. "You’re insufferable."

"And you’re here," he countered smoothly.

Nesta opened her mouth to retort, but the sound of her phone buzzing on the table cut her off. She glanced at the screen—Cassian’s name lit up the display.

Eris noticed immediately, a flicker of something sharp flashing across his face before he masked it with an easy smile. "You’re welcome to answer that, of course. But if you do, I reserve the right to confiscate your phone for the rest of the night. House rules."

Nesta arched a brow at him, clearly unimpressed. "Confiscate my phone? Try it and see what happens."

The challenge was clear, and for a moment, Eris looked like he might just take her up on it. Instead, he reached for the whiskey bottle, pouring her another glass. "Your choice. Though I’d hate for you to miss out on this exquisite company."

"Exquisite?" Nesta drawled, accepting the drink. "That’s a strong word for someone who thinks finding cheese is an achievement."

"You wound me," Eris said, his smirk growing. He leaned back, his long frame stretching out on the couch as he watched her. "But don’t worry. I’ve got thick skin. And an even thicker skull, apparently, since I keep letting you stick around to insult me."

Nesta met his gaze, her smirk mirroring his. "Maybe you enjoy it."

His eyes darkened just slightly, a flicker of something unmistakable passing over his features. "Maybe I do."

She felt her pulse skip, but she didn’t let it show. Instead, she leaned back, matching his casual posture, and arched a brow. "Careful, Vanserra. You might regret saying that."

Eris tilted his head, his smile more wolfish now. "Careful, Archeron. You might be underestimating me."

Nesta's gaze lingered on his lips, curved into that damn smirk she shouldn’t have found as attractive as she did. Now it felt like they were sitting too close. Eris was right there, and she couldn’t help but notice the slight flush on his cheeks from the whiskey. Her own cheeks were probably just as red.

The light teasing, the subtle flirting—it was all so familiar. And yet, Nesta felt that if they stayed like this for even a few more seconds, she was bound to do something impulsive again. Especially with his lips so close and Eris himself clearly not opposed to the idea.

But before she could act on the reckless thought blooming in her mind, her phone buzzed again. She remembered she needed to take the call, even though every fiber of her being wanted to ignore Cassian. What could he possibly need from her at nine o’clock on a weekday evening?

Nesta sighed, pulling back from Eris and reaching for her phone before answering.

“Nes, hey,” Cassian’s voice came through, sounding uncharacteristically tense. “You need to come here. Now. It's very urgent.”

#eris vanserra #acotar #nesta archeron #neris #neris fanfiction #nesta x eris #nesta archeron x eris vanserra #eris acotar #acotar fanfiction

14 notes · View notes

berryz-writes · 7 months ago

Text

Your the only one for me

(part 1)

SOOO THIS TOOK A WHILE. sorry xx. also THANK YOU 🤍 (a lot of requests have been made based off of this request so I'm making it into one long fic x)

Summary: You find something suspicious on Grayson's phone and confront him about it. During your argument you get seriously injured. Is it all a misunderstanding or is he just using you?

Grayson Hawthorne x reader

It was Thanksgiving weekend. A time for family and friends. For loved ones to gather and enjoy good food and share stories and memories. At the moment Xander was explaining the story of how the two of us had paired up in a robotics competition, in which I had screwed something wrong resulting in an explosion and causing our professor to ban us from robotics club. This happened almost 3 months ago and he was still hurt about being banned from the club. He was now explaining how he was starting his own club. And apparently I was not invited.

Grayson's hand rested on my thigh, a comforting gesture and something that helped me stay calm in such a chaos of a family dinner. It wasn't exactly a "family dinner" seen as though half the people weren't even here. It was a more get together dinner with Xander, Jameson, Avery, Grayson and me. Nash was out somewhere with Libby and Max was actually trying to get a few projects done, surprisingly.

Thanksgiving was actually in 2 days time but according to Jameson "It's never too early to get together". This also meant he had probably planned something that included more than 4 people to play. I didn't mind. It gave me an excuse to forget about my deadlines for abit and spend time with Grayson.

*A few hours later*

I watched as Grayson finally came to stop in front of me in the pool, smiling up at me. I refused to go any further into the water and just let my legs dangle slightly in. Besides watching Grayson swim with his muscles on show like that was always nice to watch.

"You should join me. It's warm" He said, his height being enough for him to stand with the water coming up to his chest.

I shook my head "Who wants to voluntarily swim? It's like saying let's go on a treadmill, it's fun"

Grayson let out a laugh "It's not entirely like that sweetheart. But fine" Before I could say anything a notification popped up on Grayson's phone. It was too far back for him to get it so I grabbed it for him. Because I was nosy and my eyes immediately went to see who the notification was from, I immediately wished I could turn back time and pretend I had never seen it.

A notification from Sophie that read *I had so much fun yesterday. We should definitely do it again.😏*

I didn't give him the phone, instead I held it tightly in my hand and showed him his screen.

"Who is this?" I asked, trying so hard to not get angry and see reason to what was happening. Grayson's smile dropped and immediately became confused. He ran a hand through his hair

"It's just Sophie. She does the photography exhibit with me" He said after a while.

I put his phone down, although what I really wanted to do was throw it into the pool. I stood up and looked at him in disgust. I thought he'd have better morals than cheating on someone. Especially someone they had said they loved.

"Just Sophie? Is she the reason why you came home at two in the morning yesterday? Or the reason why you haven't been telling me anything whenever I ask you?"

Grayson looked up at me, still in the pool. "Sweetheart. I was at the photography exhibit, finishing things off." He had gone pale and was frozen in place.

I scoffed. He just kept thinking if he made the same excuse I would believe it "Well I'm finishing things between us SO YOU CAN GO SPEND TIME WITH SOPHIE LIKE THE LYING FUCKING CHEAT YOU ARE" I felt tears make their way down my cheek as I walked away into the darkness, half running and half stumbling because I couldn't see a thing with my tears cascading down.

Why was I crying? It was just a breakup. I was trying to justify it all but really I was crying because I didn't expect it. I was crying because I thought if things ever ended between the two of us it would be on good terms. Not him cheating. I loved him. I probably still did and that's what hurt most. When had he started seeing someone else?

Did it start just last week when we had our date? Or had it been months now and I was just too oblivious to see it all? My heart hurt so much it was unbearable. I wanted to rip it out and ignore the reality of it all.

I walked in a daze to the room me and Grayson shared and tried to get everything of mine into my bag. Luckily because I was a lazy bitch I hadn't even unpacked yet. It's like I knew this was going to happen. Putting my hair brush into my side bag and looking around the room one more time I wheeled my suitcase to the stairs.

I couldn't do it. I couldn't. Imagine, the one person who loved you thinking you aren't worthy enough. I spent so much of my time and effort into loving Grayson wholeheartedly and what did I get back? Heartbreak.

I sat down on the top most stair and let the tears flow until there were no more. The pain in my heart receding to a dull ache in my chest. I wasn't ready to see him but there he was, looking up at me with sad eyes and a regretful expression.

"Y/n. Please. Don't leave" His hair was still wet, his swimming shorts were still on and he had pulled on a shirt. I wanted to throw my suitcase down at him and have him hug me all at once. Why did he have to cheat? Was I not good enough?

I didn't feel like talking to him so instead I stood up and kept my expression blank. As if he didn't faze me at all. Before I had even touched my suitcase Grayson came running up the stairs and stopped in front of me "Please y/n. Let me explain. I love you. How could you think I'd cheat on you? Why would I? Your perfect." He explained.

I shook my head, not wanting to look him in the eyes. If I did I might start crying again "I saw the message. Don't lie to me" I pulled on my suitcase. He gently grabbed my arm, not letting me move any further. His touch was so soft and warm. I used to love it. He brought me so much comfort. But now I hated it. He had probably kissed and hugged Sophie just like he did me. I wasn't anyone special to him. I don't know why I thought I was.

Gritting my teeth together I yanked my arm away "don't touch me"

As soon as the words left me I looked up at him, breaking my vow of not looking into his grey eyes. I felt bad. I felt bad for hurting him even though he was the one cheating on me. His arm slowly dropped back to his side, his lips parting in surprise at my harsh words.

"Please, sweetheart. I-" His voice broke. I couldn't stand here any longer. Swallowing the pain and tears I lifted the suitcase, underestimating it's heaviness. Without warning the suitcase tipped forward, pushing me off the landing, my weight propelling me forward to crash and roll down the flight of stairs, banging my head and every limb in my body on the way. I couldn't feel anything. My vision had gone black and I didn't even know if my eyes were open or not. I couldn't tell where I was. I could only feel the discomfort of the position I was in. My breathing was sharp and heavy as if I couldn't get in enough oxygen. My brain felt as if it had been hammered and my back felt like it was being crushed under a heavy weight. I wanted to sit up. I wanted to breathe properly again.

#grayson x y/n #grayson x you #grayson headcanons #grayson x reader #grayson hawthorne headcanons #grayson hawthorne #grayson hawthorne x you #grayson hawthorne x reader #grayson hawthorne x lyra kane #the brothers hawthorne #the grandest game #the final gambit

24 notes · View notes

thewadapan · 3 months ago

Text

TFNation 2024 post-mortem

So I went to the Transformers convention again! If you're following me for non-Transformers reasons, then this blog post will be worthless to you, sorry. If you didn't go the convention, it will probably be worthless to you as well. And if you did go to the convention, then it might even be worthless to you, too! I'd strongly recommend just listening to the podcast Jo and I recorded looking back on the event; it's more fun. I really only write these things as a personal record of the weekend, so it doesn't just fade into memory, because TFNation is one of the most important times of the year for me.

In previous years, I've followed the convention by making an hourlong vlog, recapping the event start-to-finish from my POV, showing off all the toys wot I got. Last year the production of that video was such an albatross that I committed to never doing that again, which turned out to be a good thing, because I don't think I could talk breezily about TFN 2024 to a camera for a couple of hours.

It's not to say that I didn't have a good time at TFN, or even a great time. But where some people seem to have found this to be the best TFN yet, I was definitely struggling a bit at some points in the weekend. In previous years, I've spoken to close friends of mine at or after the event, and they've expressed feelings of having had an off year one way or another, and I guess this year it was my turn! Partly, this blog post is going to be me working out what exactly went wrong, so next year's convention can hopefully go a little smoother for me.

The problems really started weeks before the convention. I had big plans to put together a really special zine, something that would prick people's ears up, something that I thought would genuinely leave a lasting impact. I'm being cagey about it because I hope it might still happen next year. But I couldn't source the material that I needed. Not to worry, I thought, I'd left myself more than enough time that I could brute-force the problem, create the material by myself.

And then I had an unrelated personal crisis, and suddenly it was three weeks later and I had nothing, with maybe a month to go until the convention. And I still made a go of it! But it couldn't be done. Not with what I had. Every approach I tried turned out to have hidden pitfalls and it was all turning out dogshit. I admitted defeat to my collaborators, who I'd inadvertently strung along for most of a year, which was embarrassing and frustrating.

Meanwhile, another deadline had been creeping up: the Refined Robot Co. zine, compiled by my close friend Ben, to which I contribute every year, needed to go to the printers in a few weeks and I had nothing. I'd picked a robot to write about out of a hat a few months ago, hoping that a good angle would occur to me in the intervening time, but it just didn't. I came up with an angle for Kingdom Rattrap, but immediately realised I had far more to say about that toy than could be contained within the margins of a single page.

When I saw the cover for the zine featured Missing Link Optimus Prime, who otherwise didn't have a page in the zine, I asked Ben if I could switch my page to talk about that toy instead. He agreed. However, around this time, I realised that the Transformers: Mosaic archive I've been working on for the last two years would be ending almost exactly coinciding with the convention; with the queued posts almost exhausted, I had no choice but to sit down and blitz through the remainder of the work. I gathered up all the scripts and previews I'd found, and I worked out a format for the posts. I lettered, coloured, and in a couple of cases wrote unfinished material I'd found to bring those strips to a readable state of completion, if possible. I wrote a blogpost reflecting frankly on the difficulties of the project, which would go over like a wet fart when it finally went live.

I started having problems with my eyes. They weren't hurting, not exactly, but they seemed to be producing copious amounts of sleep: viscous strings of yellow gunk accumulating not in the corner of my eye, but around the back, in the eyelashes, everywhere. I got some eye drops which didn't help. I went to the optician and she gave me some different eye drops, which did help. There wasn't any infection or anything. It was obvious what had happened: I'd been staring intently at the screen for days, drawing and redrawing the same gradients over bitcrunched artwork.

By this point—look, honestly, I'm losing track of the timeline here, in which order I did what—I really, really needed to get the RRCo review done. Feeling like I needed to make something worth the wait, I'd given some serious thought to the exact kind of writing I wanted to submit this time around. I wanted something in the vein of my intended Kingdom Rattrap review, but much tighter. An old memory surfaced and I finally had a hook; I wrote the page over the course of a few hours across a couple of days, in the electric kind of fugue state that happens when you're writing something that fucking slaps. Ben really liked it.

The problem, then, was the art: I'm not an artist. I can colour a drawing fine, but I don't even consider myself a colourist. The only way I can draw anything remotely good is through hard work: studying a reference object intently, drawing, erasing, redrawing the same line over and over again until it approximates reality. I was glad that the format of the zine encourages traditional media, because it meant I could force myself not to use the computer for a couple of days. I told Ben I hoped to have the piece ready by the end of Thursday (my day off); it was Saturday by the time I was able to sheepishly slip my rough pencils over the counter—for the robot mode, not even the truck mode! I spent Sunday inking and colouring. I spent Monday drawing the entire truck. Finally, it was done.

(If you haven't already, check out the rest of the zine here!)

There were now less than two weeks to go until the convention. Every year, I like to have something to give out, to give to people I meet as a little souvenir or whatever. It gives me an excuse to talk to people, and has been my #1 life hack for not being socially paralysed at the convention. I still had the Wheelie: Spotlights comic I'd made a year or two back, but I'd finally given up on my shitty old EPSON inkjet printer, which meant I needed to use a local print shop instead, which meant I needed to learn how to set up a PDF with bleed (on a comic that we'd drawn with zero bleed). The cheapest, quickest print shop in town is a forty minute walk away; I can make the round trip maybe twice during opening hours. Originally, I'd designed Wheelie: Spotlights to have a greyscale print on the reverse side as a costcutting measure, but the print shop told me that if I wanted one side in colour, the reverse side would have to be charged as a colour side as well. I decided to redesign the entire page in glorious full colour to take advantage of this fact. I reworked the comic itself to add bleed where necessary. I had to send through the file maybe three times before I'd finally gotten it all in the exact format they wanted.

The thing about Wheelie: Spotlights is that all of my friends already got copies at previous conventions. I wanted to make something else for them, and decided to make an A5 collection of prose and comics. I coloured an old bit of Transformers Animated concept art and designed a cover around it, made layouts for everything, typeset all the stories, wrote brief afterwords, and reeled off an introduction for the collection as a whole. I realised I probably could finish the Rattrap review in time, and did so; four people read it before the zine went to print. The vibe I got from the prereaders was that it's probably the best piece of writing I've ever released—but they're all biased. I sent through the file in the format the printers told me they wanted, only for it to turn out that they wanted it in a slightly different format, but then they managed to print it anyway as a special favour. Honestly, the print shop kind of rules. But what I'm trying to say is that the whole thing was very stressful.

On the way back from one trip to the print shop, I noticed an unread message from an IRL friend. They'd sent through a PDF several days ago. It was a photo of a handwritten letter to me, basically calling me out for being a shit friend and ghosting them for weeks during an important transitory period in their life. I replied with a rambling explanation for my behaviour, and apologised, promising to make things right in a couple of weeks.

But it did upset me! I was very angry at myself. And what made it even worse was that it happened at the peak of my fervour, when I had far too much momentum to simply stop and have it all be for naught. I was also painfully conscious that I'd been basically ignoring my girlfriend for days, in the run-up to this convention where I'd practically be going radio-silent for a long weekend. It all turned out okay, I got the zine done with a couple of days spare, everything was fine. But I had been stressed. I had been staying up late to work on my fake fandom job, and getting up early to work my real bullshit job. And my train was at 06:57 in the morning.

Honestly, that part on its own would have been fine, I wouldn't have it any other way: I usually arrive around noon on Friday, and there's plenty of people around, so it means I get as much out of the day as possible. But I was already tired, and I wound up paying the price.

Friday

I met up with Jalaguy and Daniel right away. Coming from the States, Daniel had brought us each a copy of the abortive Final Faction comic, which never came out in the UK. Meanwhile, I had an old LEGO book and a Transformers PlayStation 2 demo to give to Jalaguy; as always, we were rooming together this year, which made everything a breeze. I quickly gave out a bunch of zines to people. Ben arrived; he was staying at the Moxy, the other hotel in the NEC, and the plan was for us to store the copies of the RRCo zine in mine and Jalaguy's room so he wouldn't have to cart them all back and forth himself all weekend. For some reason I got it in my head that the Moxy is outside the NEC, like the Premier Inn and the Ibis, so I led Jala and Daniel on a wild goose chase out to the train station before finally checking my phone to work out where to go next, and realising that we'd already passed it.

The Moxy is comically different to the Hilton: decked out in plush leather, neon signage, vinyl records. When we got there, the elevator wouldn't work for us; we needed a keycard to operate it. We sat in these luxurious leather swivel chairs that span around frictionlessly. Ben took us up to his room. He was bemused because it looks like a dungeon: dark mood lighting, metal lattice on one wall, everything is strapped to everything else. We split the zines amongst ourselves and carted them over.

Jo and Rabbit rocked up; partners of 9 years, this marked the first time Rabbit has been able to come over from the States, and it was the first time they'd met in person. I think we all decided to give them some space. Nonetheless, we did a quick handoff, because I'd bought Jo's Timelines Transmutate off her. I gave her a copy of the zine, and watched with dawning horror as she flipped to the Kingdom Rattrap review, shotgunned the whole thing, then promptly got up and left without a word.

This was probably the first thing that really threw me. I'd given out maybe a third of the copies already, and was planning to give out the rest, and now I was like... is it bad? Worse—is it upsetting? As it happened, I had completely misread the situation in my sleep-deprived state. Jo hadn't even finished reading the story, she'd just needed to go to a panel! But I didn't get the chance to ask her about it until after the convention, so until then, it preyed on my mind.

While people were taking a look at Transmutate, one of the pegs ended up getting snapped, which also kind of sucked. I had anticipated it would happen, because 2010s toys are fragile, and felt like it was worth it to be able to share in the joy of that figure with other people, instead of just whisking it off to the hotel room. Thankfully it was just a tab for weapon storage, which still works, it's just a bit looser without it. But it's one of those things where you just go—agh! Another stupid little stressor for the pile.

Anyway, although I vaguely dislike Transformers: Prime in terms of the fiction, the toys are all from the period of design that I know and like best, and these particular colourways elevate them so much. Beast Wars: Uprising is amongst my favourite Transformers fiction, and these are the most iconic characters from that universe, so I'm thrilled to finally have them both. God, do I need to get a Lio Convoy now?

I think a high point on Friday was the "pen con" that took place between auto_thots and sixty_cats. I'd seen auto_thots tweeting about it, so I went over with the one pen that I'd happened to bring, a bright orange LAMY fountain pen I'd had since I was a kid. I'd recently been starting to think about changing my signature, because the one I've had all my life is illegible and ugly, and I wanted something nice and distinctive—they gave me some encouragement that I was along the right lines. I've honestly never seen such cool pens, either—sparkly inks, beautiful and functional designs. It was nice to be excited about something that wasn't Transformers.

Speaking of which, there was a lot of love for G.I. Joe this year. In particular, SameAsItEverWoz was going around showing us this one stock photo of Snake Eyes from Rise of Cobra, with his stupid fucking skintight bodysuit and luscious kissable lips sculpted into his helmet. It was kind of like the chicken game, insofar as if your objective was not to look at Snake Eyes, then you were basically fucked. Erica had a notebook with her and people started drawing their own takes on the image. I did a T-posing Snake Eyes (see my reference picture below) in fountain pen. Clearly the whole thing quickly snowballed and people began submitting some genuinely high-effort entries, so later in the weekend I went back and rendered my Snake Eyes out in Sharpie with full muscle definition, chiaroscuro. By the end of the weekend, there were entries from James Roberts, Jack Lawrence, and Nick Roche, which is fucking nuts. I desperately want this to become a real zine.

Anyway, I've gotten ahead of myself. On Friday, I had a handoff arranged with a guy on Facebook for an Armada roleplay Star Saber to give to Jo. It turned out to be far, far smaller than I had imagined it being as a kid, more like a Star Dagger to an adult, but it had a really fun mechanism.

Just like last year, I didn't have a ticket for any of the Friday panels; there was nothing to justify the cost of admission and I usually prefer to hang out anyway. In the bar, the usual big table at the back was covered in toys, all belonging to Rachel; she was having a big collection purge, and had decided that it would all be free to a good home. I was extremely tempted by a Titans Return Hot Rod to put with my various Lost Light characters, but it was missing its guns, so I hesitated, thinking I'd find a cheap complete copy in the dealer hall. I got to try a Fall of Cybertron Ultra Magnus, on which I snapped a tab (see, it's very easily done); I actually really liked the toy, but this year I was planning to cut down on the number of redecos I was picking up. Historically, a lot of my toys have been redecos, often toy-only characters, so I have kind of a weird collection—but increasingly, I find myself wanting to get molds in the colors they were originally intended to wear. That Fall of Cybertron Optimus Prime has always been an iconic design in my eyes, and after handling the mold, I resolved that I'd pick one up if I saw it (alas, I didn't). Meanwhile, Jala had been toying with the idea of starting a Star Seekers collection, after winning a Titan Class Tidal Wave at the Transformers One pre-screening they attended; one of the toys on the table was Prime Thundertron, which they quickly decided he hated, but they seemed pretty set on getting Legacy Thundertron if they could.

Around this point was probably also the most time I spent with Cone, who I know from the TFWiki Discord; it definitely feels like he's been able to come out of his shell a bit more with each convention he attends, which is really nice.

Dinner was Zizzi's, which I don't always get along with; a friend's parents back in uni would often take us there, and I found that I never liked the pizzas, which is my first instinct for Italian food. This time I had some seafood pasta which was much better. Afterwards, we kept things very lowkey; I remember playing Lexicon in the bar with Ben, Daniel, and Jala, getting very tired, and making it back to the room not long after midnight.

Saturday

I'd banked on getting over seven hours sleep that night, but for some fucking reason, the hotel decided to test their fire alarm at 6:40 AM. I was genuinely baffled by this. Hotels exist for one purpose: as a place to sleep. By momentarily blaring the siren, waking me up at such an ungodly hour, the hotel had failed at its one job. I spent the next hour trying to fall back asleep before giving up; it was time to get ready for breakfast anyway. I put on my SPREEM shirt and the matching (read: clashing) garments I brought to go with it. Last year, I had a pair of thrifted three-quarter-length hot pink cargo pants several sizes too big for me, which I held up with a belt; they were constantly falling down and showing my pants, which wasn't great. This year, I was able to get some pink shorts, which were an upgrade in that they'd stay around my waist, but a downgrade in that you'd sometimes be able to see my balls if I sat down in just the wrong position. If you saw my balls this year: I'm sorry, or, you're welcome.

My usual strategy for TFN—because food at the NEC is invariably expensive—is to really load up on the buffet breakfast, snack through the day, and grab a meal with people in the evening. I duly wolfed down an English breakfast, some yoghurt, a croissant, a waffle, and a mini muffin. Unfortunately, the opening ceremony began before I was quite finished, so I ended up cradling a little muffin as I speedwalked across the hotel to the panel room. I couldn't see any easily-accessible seats, so I opted to just stand at the back. I wound up stood right in front of a fire alarm button, with this muffin in my hands, and the audience kept needing to clap for the guests and the announcements, which I couldn't do, because I was holding this stupid fucking muffin and trying not to move a muscle because I kept imagining myself setting off the fire alarm. (At the train station the previous day, I'd accidentally hit an "intercom for assistance" button at the train station with my bag; I heard someone asking me how they could help just as the train pulled in.)

Gherkin appeared and said "Hi Wada," and I said "Hi," back. I couldn't turn to one side without, I imagined, hitting the button. I ate just the top half of the muffin and tried to clap at the appropriate moments; my arms got covered in crumbs. I later saw a message from Gherkin in the group chat: "At the opening ceremony right now waiting for wads to recognise who I am". Aaaagh!

Toy Fu had posted some pictures of their table at the start of the day, and I spotted a Thrilling 30 Swerve & Flanker, which was practically the one thing I'd told myself I'd buy instantly if I saw it this year. Even better, I could just about make out a single-digit price tag; I'd resigned myself to just sort of paying whatever at this point. I fully expected it to have vanished by the time the dealer hall opened, but after we made our way up the monstrous queue, I walked in to find it still sitting on the table unnoticed. I guess the demand for that toy really isn't what it once was! Alas, I am a slave to my memes. I also spotted a GDO Wheelie on the table for next to nothing, and was sorely tempted to buy it just for the sake of having a spare—like, I already have one!—but I resisted, and instead I asked one of the volunteers if I could leave a copy of the Wheelie comic with the toy. He was charmed by the idea; hopefully whoever picked it up enjoyed it!

After that, though, I ended up being weirdly stuck. I found an Armada Knock Out sans missile for a couple of quid, which was perfect, because mine is missing his legs (I didn't lose them, I got him like that). I found a loose hand/foot/gun for Combiner Wars Skydive or Air Raid (they're identical), which was perfect because mine had come with Firefly's hand/foot/gun for some reason. But apart from that, everything seemed too expensive. Was I really going to spend £25 on an Armada Deluxe? Not likely. Except £25 is what all Deluxes cost these days. I don't buy them at that price, but like... it's reasonable, from that perspective! Here I was, at the one time a year where it's possible to find pretty much anything, and the best I could do was pick up some piddly little bits and pieces for toys I already owned.

The longer I walked around, the more I found myself reckoning with the very thing I was trying to work through in the Kingdom Rattrap review: namely, that my relationship to Transformers and to money is completely fucked. Everything seemed more expensive than it had been in previous years, except this made perfect sense, because everything has become more expensive, the econony or whatever is in the shitter. I used to like getting cheap Scouts for a fiver; now I already own most of the Scouts and what the fuck does a fiver buy you anyway? 1.25 meal deals? I'd ask for the price of unlabelled toys, and balk at the answers: "I'll think about it, thanks!" They were usually gone by the time I got back.

Another issue was that, this year, the dealer hall was more crammed than ever. They'd completely rearranged the stalls to give more room in the aisles, which did help, but not nearly enough to cope with the horde that descended upon the place on Saturday. It was too hot, and too loud, and far, far too busy. Many of the dealers were visibly struggling to keep up. Speaking as someone who works in a shop, I shudder to think of the stock loss, the figures manhandled and broken, the accessories lost—hell, maybe even the shit stolen, there have been thieves at TFNation in the past.

I remember at one point during the weekend, at one table, there was this big tub of toys, and while taking a look I absentmindedly put a figure to one side—and someone snapped at me, something like, "Excuse me this is my table!" Turned out it was a separate stall, someone selling handmade stuff. Presumably that person spent the whole weekend doing that, getting progressively more irritated at the careless nerds more interested in toys than in crafts, constantly encroaching on the tablespace. And dealers pay for their tables—right? I totally understand why that person was miffed. But also, personally, being snapped at like that... didn't love it! Actually felt quite bad about it! I felt like the environment put me in that position. For all of Saturday, I flatly did not enjoy going around trying to root through bins. Again, see my review: I felt like a rat.

Still, I had an ace up my sleeve, one that would let me escape the sweaty press of the dealer hall altogether: another pre-arranged purchase from someone on Facebook. After a panel on vintage retailer catalogues—the only panel I attended on Saturday—we eventually found a mutually convenient moment to meet up. His name's Lee, he was a gregarious lad maybe a little older than me. I gave him a full suite of zines by way of thanks.

When showing people what I'd bought from this guy, I'd find myself always doing the same bit, because it felt like the only way to even communicate this insane pickup. I would produce this Commemorative Series Red Alert reissue from my bag, and say, "Yeah, so I got this Red Alert. He's really nice! He was £40, and normally I wouldn't spend £40 on a toy like this. But the thing is..."

And then I'd pull another toy out. "He did come with this Inferno."

And then I'd go back into the bag. "And he also came with this Skids."

"And he also came with this Prowl."

"And he also came with this Jazz."

"And he also came with this Tracks." (Tracks was still safely encased in his backing tray!)

"Oh, and he also came with this entire Menasor."

Ben, the only person I know who has a deep connection with the Commemorative Series (or similar) reissues, gave me the best reaction. "HOW? HOW?" The story goes like this—not that it's much of a story. I was about to leave the house one day. I happened to go on Facebook. There was a post in a sales group, timestamped three minutes ago. Amongst others, he had the above Autobot Cars listed: £5 each or take the lot for £25; along with the Menasor: £15, because Wildrider's arm is broken off and the combiner feet were missing. There were no photos of the Autobots. I messaged the guy to ask if Menasor was still available. He was. I asked if he had photos of the Autobots; he did, they looked fantastic. I said I'd take the lot and PayPal'd him £40.

He explained to me that he'd listed the toys as cheaply as he felt he could, because he wanted them to go to people who wanted them, rather than just the people with the most money. I felt like his logic was wrong: someone who pays a lot of money for something can be guaranteed to want it at least a certain amount. Someone who snaps up something valuable for not very much could just be a grifter. Still, I think what he meant was: he wanted the toys to go to someone who wanted them who would not otherwise be able to afford them, which is exactly who I am. G1 stuff like that has always enthralled me, and I've always kind of assumed I would just never be able to own them. Since last TFN, I've built up a nice little collection of the Retro reissues, by picking them up on deep discount, but I've always assumed the Autobot Cars would just be forever beyond my grasp. And now, thanks to Lee, I have a whole little collection of them!

(Hopefully a lot of other people were also able to benefit from his generosity. I remember he'd listed the reissue Insecticons for... maybe a tenner? Powermaster Optimus Prime and Apex Bomber for £25, a beautiful G1 Sureshot for literally a fiver, Robots in Disguise 2001 Optimus Prime for £40. Absolutely mad stuff.)

These toys went basically straight back to my room; they had too many bits to lose, and I didn't know how any of them worked. After the convention, I was able to get Menasor's feet off eBay, but it's mad to think that I paid about the same for the rest of the combiner as I did for those feet alone! They now have pride of place on my burgeoning G1 shelf.

(Oh, and as you can imagine, this stroke of insane good luck certainly hasn't helped my attitude towards Transformers and money.)

As always, Ben continues to have the best taste when it comes to toys. His sealed Beast Machines Scavenger instantly made me resolve to get a copy of that toy for myself, as I've always liked the look of it. His true star finds though were an X-Dimension Adventure Team—commemorating the opening of his very own comic shop this year—and a Stormtrooper Rage, with its perplexing water squirter and stunning colour scheme. Jalaguy got their own Adventure Team the next day; it's so nice to see people getting into Armada stuff.

The food situation ended up being a bit fucked on Saturday. Some people wanted a light lunch and a big dinner, others the reverse. We ended up doing Nandos mid-afternoon—I had a small chicken burger—and then later we got a Subway. These two small meals weren't far off the cost of a typical main meal at Resort World, so I was quite happy with that, and might suggest something similar on future Saturdays; trying to squeeze in a sit-down meal before, during, or after Club Con is often a nightmare. But I definitely think not everyone got exactly what they wanted in terms of food that day.

Rushing back from Resort World with Ben, I heard someone yell: "Nice shirt!" So I automatically replied, "Thanks!" And then they said something like, "Why does it say SPERM on it?", and I realised they weren't there for the Transformers convention, they were just a bunch of neds loitering by the lake. So I proceeded to ignore them, and they jeered at us as we walked away. I don't usually wear the SPREEM shirt in public, partly because I like it and don't want to ruin it, and partly because it really does look like it says SPERM. As we stopped by my room to pick up my Club Con wristband, I was becoming a thundercloud. Here I was at the Transformers convention, the one weekend a year where I don't have to feel too weird about my interests, and it's like I'm back in fucking high school. I wondered if maybe it's time to retire the shirt altogether. The outfit never quite works for me.

Club Con

Ah, Club Con. This was definitely the low point for me of the whole weekend, which sucks, because usually it's a highlight. I think what I should say is this: it was mostly a me problem. Things had not been going well for me up to this point. I was very, very tired.

So, the cosplay contest was spectacular, as ever. People have such wonderfully creative and well-done costumes, everyone is so buzzed about it. My favourite was definitely the Cosmos with a shiny retrofuturistic UFO-like dress, absolute conceptual slam dunk that deservedly took top prize in the "humanized" category; the cosplayer in question, Mika, turns out to also be a phenomenally talented artist. But there were a lot of really thoughtful outfits this year. I was surprised when the Rosanna/Flip Sides cosplayer (swapping faction onstage!) turned out to be none other than our Umar—though of course, who else? And Erica's sk8r grl take on Flamewar was also brilliant.

I will say, it definitely felt like the dividing line between the "mech" and "humanized" categories was a little blurred—both had the same regularly-dressed-people in helmets—and as is often the case, while the winners were all extremely worthy entrants, I did feel like some people got robbed. Well okay I'll just say it: JLaw is definitely biased towards Lost Light, he always has been, and cosplays based on his comic always do well as a result. There was a stunning—I mean really phenomenal, huge cardboard shoulder pillars visible even from my worst-seat-in-the-house behind a tall guy at the back-left—Armada Megatron cosplayer, appropriately chosen for a convention with David Kaye in attendance, who didn't even place in the top three for the mech category. Outrage!

Last year, you might recall that one cosplayer inadvertently ended up trapped improvising lipsyncing and dancing onstage for three minutes because the AV team didn't fade out the backing track. And while that was spellbinding, clearly the convention organisers have overcorrected, as it felt like the cosplayers were being ushered on and off the stage very briskly. I definitely think some of them should have been allowed to chew the scenery a little more. Particularly, I should say, considering what was to follow later in the evening.

During the changeover, we got to see a preview of the next episode of The Basics—this one featuring the Star Seekers. Honestly, it instantly pilled me on the Star Seekers. They're so fucking cool slash dumb. The Matrix Test was brilliant, as always; McFeely has a real gift for dredging up the obscure and the esoteric. This year, the TFWiki gang split into two teams, hoping to at least give everyone else a chance: I was with Jo, Rabbit, Ben, and newcomer James, carrying forward the torch of the Crack Calibre Laser-Blazer Broadswords, while Gherkin, Viv, Jala, Daniel and Cone formed Feast or Famine (named after the newly-discovered Star Seeker character from the Chinese MMO).

As usual, I mostly served as a voice to say either "yeah that's right" or "I don't know about that" as other team members answered the questions. It's really high time I learned to trust my gut, though—there were two questions, "What connects the characters Scrounge, Crankcase, SOMETHING and Devastar?" and "Is Motomix a Transformer?" where I was completely correct, but second-guessed myself. James totally surprised me by really holding his own, getting a few questions which had the rest of us stumped or uncertain. It later transpired that we had in fact won the quiz, in spite of our effort to handicap ourselves; they never officially announced this result, we had to ask McFeely, who had to ask David. Assuming this wasn't deliberate, which I would understand... kinda weird not to announce that at any point!

I guess I'll take this moment to talk a little more about James, 'cause he was one of the people I met this year and got to hang out with for more than just a single conversation. He honestly just sort of appeared from nowhere with a clear objective of "I am going to become friends with these people", which I massively respect (had he turned out to be a cunt, I would not have respected it, but he wasn't, so!). I was reminded of myself doing something similar towards the start of uni, and at my first solo TFNation not long after that. He seemed cool and was very nice to all of us. I've since chatted with him a little online; apparently the only reason he picked our group out of the crowd was the OSKO Rampage I had sitting on the table. I'd brought that figure along as a conversation starter, so looks like it did its job!

Anyway, so the evening progressed. There was the charity auction, which went crazy, but is also kind of just half an hour of clapping while people with money bid for mildly interesting items. Someone correct me if I'm wrong—that custom Action Master Billy Stripes sold for like a grand, right? I say this only because I remember when the sealed Animated Swindle remarked by the late Derrick J. Wyatt himself went for £650, I thought, wow, that is such a measly sum by comparison.

Simon Furman and Andrew Wildman went up onstage to announce their new podcast. Apparently the first episode went up over a month ago? Well, they have a Patreon, etc, you know the deal. I'm not saying that I won't listen to it, I might at some point, but definitely as an announcement to that crowd of increasingly-younger-skewing fans it went over like a wet fart. I presumed this was the "Like a surprise? Close your eyes..." teaser on the schedule, because podcasts are something you listen to, meaning you can close your eyes. As it turned out, I was very mistaken.

Next up, there was the script reading. As with last year, it wasn't written by, well, a writer, so it kind of sucked, to put it nicely. I guess without mercilessly dissecting the thing for every single joke that fell flat, I'll try and explain what a convention script reading should be like, as someone who's seen a ton of them. You have a handful of huge voice actors with iconic roles in the room. Your story, whatever it is, is nothing more than a means to have them play off each other, cover their full dramatic range, and say as many catchphrases as you can in as short a space of time as possible. You want to avoid in-jokes which the actors themselves—who typically aren't as deep in the sauce as you—are unlikely to get. You want to minimise the role of the narrator or other side-characters. You want to avoid splitting the cast in-story, to allow all the characters to play off one another, while still contriving to avoid having a voice actor swap between multiple characters in the same scene. You want the actors to play the specific versions of characters they actually played, not different versions from other timelines or whatever. You want to give fuckin' David Kaye some actually good material to work with—more Beast Wars, less Armada, dig? You want to pace the jokes so they lead to direct punchlines, so the audience as a whole can laugh and clap before the story progresses, rather than burying punchlines in the middle of individual line-reads or back-and-forths. I'm not a comic writer, but as an audience member I can definitely tell when things aren't working, and I truly wonder why on Earth at a convention with people like Jim Sorenson, James Roberts and Simon Furman in attendance, you wouldn't allocate some portion of your budget to commissioning a good script. As it was—as some of my friends also put it—the moment the narrator said "End of Act 1!", my heart just sank: so is this two acts? Three? Reader, it was three, and none of them were any good.

Honestly, the big thing that had me baffled was that the entire script reading was predicated on the fact that Gregg Berger has, in the past, voiced Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. But the thing is, I always thought it was Peter Cullen who voiced Eeyore! I'd coincidentally had a conversation about that very fact with Daniel earlier in the weekend! Gherkin googled it as the script reading dragged on. Sure enough, it seems that Gregg Berger only filled in the role for a few video games and ancillary media, beginning in 1997. He does a wonderful Eeyore voice, don't get me wrong, but I don't get the impression it's his role, and to place such a focus on "Eeyore from Kingdom Hearts II" for a Transformers convention felt like a misguided choice to me.

At the end of the script reading, there was immediately another bonus round of charity auction, where they flogged a signed copy of the script and an inflatable rubber ducky from Amazon. Up and up the price crept, in increments of £10 at a time. At £280, for some reason I'll never know, David asked us all to clap, as if this was in any way an auspicious figure. We duly obliged. The final bid ended up being for something like £450, or 2/3rds of a sealed Animated Swindle remarked by the late Derrick J. Wyatt.

Overrunning by this point, I thought: this is it, the headline event is starting soon, I'll be able to chill out for an hour watching the old cartoon, and then I can go back to the bar and hang out, hopefully feeling a little rested. But then it was the actual surprise! The Mapes brothers had found a never-before-seen recording from the '80s. What was it? It was the audition tapes for Wheelie. Because I'm still in theory the custodian of Wheelie's TFWiki page, I dutifully got out my phone to record. The performances were demented, delivering nonsensical rhymes in a nonspecifically exotic accent. After each, David would go, "Do you want to hear another?" And the audience yelled back, "Yes..." And I sat there, listening to these unfamiliar voice actors cackling and giggling, thinking how it's been years—literally years—since I started trying to fix Wheelie's wiki page. I haven't touched it in months. And I wondered, will I ever be free of you? Will my work ever be done? As I write this I have been home for less than 24 hours, and somebody has already added a note to the page. It rhymes badly. It's not cited. I'll need to fix it, I guess.

And then, Gregg Berger got up onstage, to read us an extract from his work-in-progress memoir. He told us, it's fine, feel free to leave, none of you are expected to stay, this isn't that kind of thing. But the thing is, I had no idea how long this segment was going to go on for (20 minutes, per the schedule? Everything had overrun!), and I wanted to watch the cartoon, you know, the headline event of the evening, the thing I'd been told was the big thing to be excited about, which most of my friends were staying here for anyway. I snapped. I couldn't take it any more. I got my phone out and started posting in the group chat.

I could not tell you a single thing Berger talked about in the extract from his memoir. I was simply too tired. It described a world utterly alien to mine. A third of the words he was saying seemed to be quotes from other people. And the thing was, the thing that really got to me, aside from all the self-hatred over feeling like a hater, was that I'd brought with me a zine containing some lengthy personal episodes from my real life, and all I could think was: does this sound like that reads? Will my friends read it, and slump in their chairs, and loll their heads, persisting only out of a sense of obligation?

I knew it was over because suddenly people started clapping. By then, it was already too late. I watched the first part of "More than Meets the Eye", a boring cartoon I'd watched mere months prior in the cinemas (and enjoyed, somehow), and it was only when I realised we'd moved into the second part without me even noticing that I decided I was simply too tired to stay any longer, and finally made the wise choice to return to the bar.

Usually, Club Con has been fun and exciting, and I think the problem TFNation is increasingly having with it is that they feel like every year they need to debut something which has never been seen before, something important, over something which sparks joy. Last year was great: Jayhan rocked. This year did not rock. It just rolled on, and on, and on...

And I hate to be a hater about it. The auction raised £6400 for charity, of course that's fucking brilliant. The script reading made me chuckle a couple of times. The Wheelie auditions genuinely shed some light on a character/performance which has always been controversial. Gregg seems to have touched the hearts of a lot of people with his reading. These things were all perfectly fine taken on their own. And of course a huge part of my problem was just the physical reality of it, my own tiredness, the caught-up-in-my-own-head of it all. It was a me problem. But also, also, could they not have saved Gregg 'til last, as they have done with people like Garry Chalk in the past?

Look, something was just cursed this year. Viv got trapped in one of the elevators for ten minutes; another of the elevators was permanently cordoned off with hazard tape. That Saturday night, there were reports of Jim Sorenson being pursued through the corridors by someone from the salsa convention. The salsa convention! In years past, this charming trademark of TFNation, these bizarrely coincident events, background set-dressing, now elevated to plot-relevance, twisted into something adversarial. We heard that one of our volunteers had got in a fight with one of theirs. What the FUCK was going on, that night? There was a new water cooler positioned by the entrance to the dealer hall. Could there have been something in there, turning our vision red, driving us to madness?

I don't really remember what happened after I left the panel room. I hung out in the bar for a bit, and began to enjoy myself again—but I don't think I stayed up much later.

Sunday

That night, I was finally able to get some rest: I wasn't awoken by a stupid fucking fire alarm, or even a deliberately-set phone alarm, but rather by my own body deciding "hey, that's it, you've had enough". I felt good. I decided that Sunday would be a reset for me. I shaved, as I'd planned to, because my beard has developed a sizable bald spot, creeping up my neck onto the right side of my face. It used to be quite small, hidden away under my jawline—but roughly coinciding with that aforementioned personal crisis, more of the hair seems to have disappeared, an ice cap melting. At work, strangers come up to me and whisper the word "alopecia", as though whispering it makes this in any way a remotely polite thing to say to someone.

I'm not really attached to my facial hair—or rather, I guess, it's not really attached to me—but the half-on, half-off look is just kind of stupid. It's distracting. My eyes are up here! So at the moment, I'm having to shave more regularly. Maybe it'll grow back, or maybe it'll all fall off, and I'll probably be fine either way. So on Sunday morning, I took it as an excuse to perform the ritual. Cleave it away! All that shit in my skull, pushing its way out—begone! I gave myself horrendous razor burn; my blade was too blunt. In the evening, returning to my room, I saw there was still a spot of dried blood on the centre of my chin. It had been there all day. Whoops. But in the meantime, it fuckin' worked and all. I felt great. I looked cute, in my Hatsune Miku t-shirt and pink shorts.

On the way down from our room, I was able to prove to Jalaguy just how dogshit my phone camera is. I've had the thing for maybe six years at this point; it was actually my first decent-spec smartphone, but the camera is a dreadful thing that smears out every shape into a blurry haze regardless of the lighting conditions. Apparently it's "AI-enhanced", which to my knowledge just means you have an option to crank up the saturation sometimes; presumably, this software was a vain attempt to cover for the camera modules being cheap pieces of shit even at the time. Still, I was able to get maybe my favourite photo of the weekend.

Sunday was so, so much quieter. There is a kind lie at TFNation that Sunday's dealer hall is just as good, that places like Toy Fu purposefully hold back some stock for the second day, that the big stalls like ID Toys won't run out. It's not fucking true. The Blokees blokes had sold out. The bins were all half-full, the dregs of Revenge of the Fallen Sideswipe redecos, Armada Side Swipe redecos, Siege Sideswipe redecos, accumulated like silt in the wake of the gold rush.

But as a true gamer, I thrive on Sunday. I will find the things that no-one else wanted. I made off like a bandit. At Toy Fu, I found a Generations Junkheap going for a song; nobody gives a fuck about the Reveal the Shield Junkion mold these days, it's hot garbage, Studio Series is where it's at, but I'm still a Classics collector and I think that toy looks sick. I got my Wreck-Gar from Umar a couple of conventions ago, and now he's got a bike to ride on. Or maybe Junkheap is a Star Seeker! The world is his oyster. I also picked up a Combiner Wars Firefly—with his correct hand/foot/gun this time around—to complete my Superion, except the rest of the Aerialbots are in storage back at my parents' house so this is mostly academic.

I finally got a chance to properly look at the stall of my favourite traders, Blue Beetle. I've historically spent tons of money on frankly absurd quantities of cheap shit toys from their stall; this year, it was slimmer pickings for me, their huge bucket of slop by that point consisted mostly of BotBots. As usual, there was also an assortment of Transformers- and Marvel-inspired 3D-printed paraphernalia, custom-designed by one of the pair. The coolest item he had this year was a working clock in the shape of Cybertron; the second hand is the Ark, orbiting around. I don't really have room for that kind of thing in my life, but I was able to admire it from a distance.

Yesterday, I'd been tempted by an incomplete Robots in Disguise Movor and Rollbar to complement my childhood Ro-Tor and Armorhide, but they'd sold by the time I returned. Still, I was able to pick up a cheap Wildrider with dog-eared stickers; I plan to rip out his arm and use it to repair the other one I got. Last year, they also had an absolutely ruined Tentakil in their big bin, so sun-bleached as to be practically a redeco, with painfully stiff joins I dared not to try; I had actually resolved ahead of time that if it was still there this year, I'd pick it up, to go with my knackered Snap Trap. Well, lo and behold, there it was, dredged up from the BotBot pick-and-mix! I picked it up, and the main guy at the stall (I really need to get his name one of these years) waxed poetic about it, in mock outrage. "All weekend, I've seen people pick that little guy up, and I'm just like—come ON, he's £2!!! Yeah, he's a little sunburned, but where are you going to get a G1 guy for £2?" Of course he was absolutely right. As I said to him, it was less a question of whether I wanted to spend £2 on a Tentakil, and more a question of whether I dared to dip into the world of peroxide or whatever. But hey, if there was ever a toy to test the waters with...!

My dream of a Robots in Disguise Ruination wasn't quite dead, however—another stall actually had another Rollbar, this one complete with instructions, for a similar price to the one I'd seen at Blue Beetle. I also grabbed a Classics Megatron (about time!) from the same seller, and he threw in a Universe Ravage for free (my secondhand Hound came without one when I got it, many years ago now, so it was perfect!).

I hesitated for far longer than I should've over a complete Armada Demolishor for literally a tenner at another store. The thing is that I already have a Demolishor, with Blackout, just missing his missiles. But finding the missiles on their own has proven to be far trickier than I'd ever imagined! So really, I'd just be admitting defeat by buying a complete copy and flogging my incomplete one to recoup the cost (I could probably sell the Mini-Con alone for a tenner, if I was patient enough). "Are you having a laugh?" said Ben, when I agonised to him over it, which immediately snapped me out of my indecision. Honestly, it's really funny how much on the same wavelength we can be in that room. At one point I saw a Transmetal Optimus Primal at the Toy Fu table, and was about to buy it on the spot, when Ben pointed out, "It's missing one of its kneecaps. There was another one here earlier which was complete—but I bought it." Unbelievable!

I helped Daniel find a Beast Machines Rattrap I'd spotted earlier in the day, which he in turn only wanted to give to Jo—and I think she in turn planned to give it to Rabbit? This reminded me that I wanted to go home with some Beast Machines stuff myself. There was a Strika and a Tank Drone, which were at the top of my list to go with the dark horse favourite of my haul last year, the Motorcycle Drone. Unfortunately, they were a bit too expensive for me to buy on sight, and they were gone by the time I circled around. I'd also set my sights on some of the other Basic Vehicons, but was torn between the original colorways and the Robots in Disguise redecos, which had starred in a comic strip of mine. In the end, I decided to favour the original Beast Machines versions; partly because as I say, I'm swearing off redecos, and partly because I didn't want to start a whole new collection of "guys who appeared in that one comic wot I did". These worked out to be about a tenner cheaper than the sets of the redecos I'd otherwise seen, so that was nice, especially because at first I was disappointed to discover that I didn't really like them: Scavenger was great, but Mirage and Nightcruz really refused to cooperate while transforming. I was later able to work them out, in the comfort of my own home, and now I like them all, thankfully.

My last purchase was really exciting for me. One stall which was new for this year was Junk Shop U.S.A., being run by a couple of gentlemen who'd apparently come all the way over from Japan, bringing with them a bunch of uncommon and niche exclusives! It's quite typical for me to spot something on Saturday which is in some way special, but not in very high demand, going for more than I could usually justify for a toy of that size—in this case, it was United Rumble and Frenzy, paired up for £40. That's just too much to pay for two Scout Class figures, in my head, but I resolved that if nobody else had bitten by the end of the weekend, I'd make them an offer. Sure enough, they didn't seem to have received much interest, so my waiting paid off. They also seemed to like my fancomic (I'd been giving copies to most of the dealers), so that was really nice. While at the convention, I often like to gather up weird little micro-collections, and I found that this year Rumble and Frenzy paired really well with the Universe Ravage and Classics Megatron. It's all vibes, innit?

Unfortunately, due to my fixation on making the most of my remaining time in the dealer hall, I made the usual mistake of neglecting to visit any of the guests until it was already basically too late. David Kaye had vanished, with only the deserted amusement-park-esque queue barrier snaking towards his table to indicate that he was ever there. Again, I should've just sucked it up and waited for half an hour earlier in the day, but ironically the reason I hadn't was a complication with the thing I'd planned to get him to sign: an Armada Megatron jigsaw puzzle Jo bought for me last year. It wasn't until lunchtime that day that I was able to enlist Ben and Jo to put the damned thing together. And let me tell you, we smashed that children's jigsaw puzzle. I was hoping to mention to Kaye how his performance in Armada was one of the main things I enjoyed about the show, back when we were watching it for Our Worlds are in Danger—but then I had to go and let myself be distracted by toys, and miss my one shot! Argh!

Nick Roche was also permanently swamped. One of the volunteers shook his head at us, saying that Roche was heading off on his lunch; Jo made a valiant effort by saying "We're close personal friends!" (are we? I'm not!). The volunteer just shrugged and said, "man's gotta feed sometime", which I thought was really funny. I managed to briefly accost Roche in the bar later and shove a zine into his hands while he was presumably on the way back to his room, so that was something at least. God knows what he thought of it, assuming he's even read it. Dude was also massively behind on commissions, and ended up staying up late in his room finishing a couple of pieces for Jo—not that you'd know it, they turned out amazing.

I was however able to catch James Roberts at his table. For the last few conventions I've been putting off buying the notebooks, but this time my number was up: I got the set. In exchange (well, apart from money) I also gave him a zine, because I figured if any of the guests would be into my pretentious-ass prose, it'd be him.

Jo and I also briefly spoke to Simon Furman, mostly to let him know that certain parts of his Armada run were the best things he'd written in the early 2000s. He did actually light up at the reminder, and bemoaned the cancellation of Energon/Cybertron, as he always has done. Plus we managed to not completely embarrass ourselves, so I'm calling this one another win.

We finally got the full story from Jim as to what the fuck happened last night. It's really a tale for the ages, and I won't do it justice here, but I'm sure the legend will only grow over the course of conventions to come. Basically, it was like this: somehow, the salsa dancers had arranged things with the hotel to cordon off one of the two corridors leading through the building. This was another reason why the convention felt so unbearably busy. The signs were carefully worded: "to avoid congestion", TFNation attendees were directed to the other corridor.

Now, to hear Jim tell it, he was rushing to the panel room, and at that point, the corridor wasn't cordoned off, or he didn't see the sign, or something. Or maybe he did see the sign—I'm sure he'll never tell. Regardless, he was three-quarters of the way up the corridor when he saw the barrier at the other end. Still, it would have been asinine for him to turn around and go back, so he ploughed ahead.

But then someone called after him! And so he glanced over his shoulder, and offered a "sorry!" in deference. Then suddenly, this person came up alongside him, tried to step in front of him. Jim sort of just carried on going, but no sooner had he passed the man, he felt hands on his shoulders! The dude had physically grabbed him, yoink!

Like a cartoon character, Jim's legs were in motion but going nowhere, and the salsa guy's supervisor or someone was saying "Let him go! Let! Him! Go!" Until finally, the guy let Jim go, and he scurried off to the panel room.

Now, I'm told that around this point, Jo and Rabbit happened to be outside the panel room. So these salsa dancers came up to them and asked, like, "Who is running your convention? The behaviour of your guests is completely unacceptable!" They dutifully pointed into the room, up on stage, where David was busy MCing.

Eventually, the salsa people ended up crossing paths with some of the volunteers. Jim likes to imagine that they made a demand along the lines of, "PRODUCE THE COWBOY!" One thing led to another, and apparently one of the salsa folk—presumably, the same blockhead who'd grabbed Jim—slapped one of the TFNation volunteers on the arm. Not a proper blow or anything, but like—what the fuck!

So finally hotel security stepped in, Jim got called out. The salsa guy began this litany of complaints: according to him, Jim bodychecked him in the corridor! He demanded that the security team check the CCTV tapes. "Yes, PLEASE check the tapes!" Jim agreed, because he knew for a fact that they would show their guy laying hands on him. And of course, he had no intention of pressing charges, but- Of course, that turns the tables. By that point, the other salsa guy was apparently at his wit's end trying to talk down his idiot pal, and finally the guy listened. And that's more or less the end of it, but apparently, hotel security later conferred with TFNation staff to say they had reviewed the tapes, and "Your guy did nothing wrong." Not only that, it turned out that Jim had been chased down the corridor not just by that one guy, but by four salsa dancers! Absolute scenes.

So yeah, that's the story of how Jim became the mortal enemy of salsa dancers. On Saturday night, I'd found the signs of this going on in the background to be kind of alarming, but in the light of day, it was impossible to see the situation as anything other than extremely fucking funny.

We had intended to stop by the "Construct-A-Con" panel, but by the time we arrived, David Kaye was up on stage doing an audience Q&A. It's crazy how much Kaye gives off the impression of being one-of-us, a bona fide fan of the franchise (or at least the parts he's been involved with!). We presume that the convention-organising roundtable had been swapped with Kaye's panel for some reason or another.

Back in the bar, the number of toys floating around had reached a critical mass. I think it was SameAsItEverWoz who had acquired a full set of Kabaya toys for Kenzan, Jinbu, and Ganoh. These came complete with ten-year-old Japanese chewing gum, so Erica, Sixty_Cats and myself all got to try some! I don't know why I'm phrasing that like this was a good thing. The gum was very bad, but we've since updated the TFWiki pages for Kenzan and Jinbu to properly document how it tasted. Ganoh's page has yet to be updated; poke Erica to get on it!

Daniel picked up a Collaborative H.I.S.S. Megatron (the toy I'd originally planned to cover for the RRCo zine)—mostly just for the sake of buying something! It was right before the dealer room was closing, so he got a good price, but a few days later his airline lost his damn luggage (he's since got it back, minus an expensive bottle of whiskey that apparently got stolen by airport staff). Still, we managed to eke what fun we could out of the thing; I was thrilled to find that Rumble and Frenzy could sit in his gun turret. Meanwhile, it turned out Umar had got a Classics Optimus Prime, which immediately made me keen to get my own copy out of storage; it's crazy how good a pair he makes with Megatron.

I'll level with you—at this stage in my journaling, it's been a full week since I arrived at the con, so my memory is hazy. These fragmentary scenes are all that remain aside from vibes. But I got to talk to a bunch of people that night. I had a good bitch sesh with Chris McFeely and PaperPlane off the YouTubes, as we chatted about wronguns in the community and the possibility of a YouTube panel at TFNation in the future (David was not keen). I got to shoot the shit about comics and stuff with Cradok from the TFWiki Discord, who I only ever really get the chance to chat with at TFN, but who's always a pleasure to speak to—he knows so much about so much.

There were a few people who left as Sunday was wrapping up, which always takes me by surprise, even though it shouldn't. Coordinating across the hotel proved to be difficult for me as I kept getting booted off the guest WiFi for some fucking reason, so I'd just randomly stop getting notifications. At one point I checked the group chat and realised that Viv had ollied outie maybe an hour ago—and it was like, welp, I'm probably not gonna see her again until next year!

That's the aspect of the convention which I find is really brutal: I like panels, and I like talking to guests, and I like getting toys, but most of all, I like talking to my pals. And unfortunately, for most of the weekend, all of these activities are in direct competition. There are physically not enough hours in the day. Most of these people, I could happily spend a whole day with them, and it'd pass in the blink of an eye. I'm not talking about the whole crowd—I'm talking about individual people. Even if I was never to step foot outside the bar the entire weekend, I'd still find myself wishing I'd got the chance to talk to all these people just a little longer. But it's only by the existence of this event that we're able to meet. For so much of the year, everyone is so far away.

I'm sick of all the typing. I just want to hang out.

I think it was Sunday night when I briefly lost my phone. My pink shorts were really throwing me off, so I didn't have my usual feeling of whether or not my phone was or wasn't in my pocket. At one point we went off to get tea, and we'd just left the hotel when I realised—shit! I'd left it in the bar. So we rushed back, but at that point it was already gone, handed in to the hotel staff by one of our pals. But the thing was, the hotel staff didn't seem to have a fucking clue about it!

I asked at the bar. They knew nothing about it and told me to check with reception. I asked at reception. The lady there asked me what my phone looked like. Oh dear, I thought. It's a generic off-brand phone. It's black. It's in a very badly yellowed clear case, I guess? "Yellow phone", echoed the receptionist. I shook my head. "No, no, it's a- nevermind. It's just a black phone." It was a moot point because she knew nothing about it. She went over to the concierge desk and tried to call housekeeping. Housekeeping knew nothing about it. She shrugged and told me to check with the bar again. Internally I was like, one of your staff has my phone! Are you not going to try and get the bottom of it? So I went back to the bar and asked one the wait staff. She passed me over to her supervisor. The supervisor went back over to the concierge desk, and finally returned with my phone, which had apparently been there the whole time. What a palaver! Daniel and Jalaguy looked after me during this whole little snafu, which was really great. We had a nice dinner and stayed up 'til late.

Monday

This was easily my best Monday at TFNation yet. I wouldn't dream of leaving on Sunday, but I usually find that the only cheap trains on Monday are late in the afternoon, by which point most people have usually fucked off already. Not so this year! I wasn't the last one standing! I was hanging out with people right up until the end! Ha!

I managed to find the last few people I'd wanted to give zines to, and shoved copies into their hands during the goodbyes. I walked a couple of people up to the train station, as is tradition.

Rachel's stuff from Friday was all out on the tables again; Prime Thundertron and Titans Return Hot Rod still hadn't found a new home, which I was thrilled by, because I hadn't found a complete Hot Rod and I'd really come around on the idea of Thundertron. I had a go of transforming him myself, and immediately decided that Jala was just wrong, it rules. There was also a Netflix Kingdom Rattrap, which I decided I'd like. My Kingdom Rattrap is the retail deco, and he's missing his rifle; this one was complete, and technically different, and it felt fitting considering all the thought I'd been giving to my stupid Rattrap collection. But then I saw Daniel playing with the toy, and I was like... actually, he should have it. I didn't need it, he'd get more out of it! It was really nice to see someone discovering that figure for the first time, a toy that means so much to me. I spent the entire train ride home just flipping Thundertron from one mode to another. Few toys exude such life and personality. Like I say, I'm normally the #1 Prime hater, so it's not a figure I ever would've thought to pick up—if not for Rachel's generosity. So I want to give her a huge thank-you, I'm sure a lot of us ended up leaving the convention with something like that which really excited us, thanks to her.

Also on the table was the original fucking pencil art for Jack Lawrence's cover to Lost Light #10, which auto_thots had bought. Unfortunately, it hadn't brought along anything to transport something like that with, so the damn thing was just out there on the table next to everyone's coffees. After a near-miss, I was like, hold the fuck on, we've got to get this thing off the table. Thankfully, Daniel had mistakenly ended up with a spare copy of issue #184 of the Marvel UK comic, which had a plastic sleeve of about the right size; in went the art, while Ella adopted the comic (we got to hang out a little bit more this year, which was nice!).

Jo, Rabbit and I are all Magic: The Gathering players, and the previous night, Rabbit had revealed that they'd brought along a bunch of Bloomburrow packs, so that we could do our own little tournament. This really thrilled me, because my coworker who I usually go to MTG events with had BETRAYED me for Bloomburrow by going away on prerelease weekend to play in another city, so I'd pretty much resigned myself to never playing the expansion, despite it being the most appealing set in ages. Thanks to Rabbit, I got to actually try some of the cards! On Sunday night, I made a WBR lifedrain deck with a bat/lizard typal theme, and we got the chance to play in the bar on Monday. My deck actually played really well! I won some, I lost some, but most importantly I had fun, and Rabbit was very patient with the fact that I was constantly getting up to say goodbye to people. I felt like I hadn't got to spend much time with either of them over the weekend up to that point, so it was really nice to actually sit down together and do something like that, right up until the time came for me to go and get my train.

Next time

So at TFNation 2025, here are some things which I hope will make me enjoy myself better:

I probably won't be contributing a review for the Refined Robot Co. zine again, assuming Ben decides to extend the trilogy into a quadrilogy. I love doing it, but drawing just takes me too long, and it's just not the same without drawing. Also, look, this isn't me blowing my own horn, but I think it'd be difficult for me to top this year's piece of writing—there were a perfect storm of factors which made this one work, and I simply can't think of a reason I'd ever be able to write a better piece in that specific format.

I have plans already for next year's zine, and if all goes according to plan, I will have the whole thing finished by the end of this year. Which should mean I will have the damn thing printed months in advance. Look, we all know how these things go, but that's my plan.

I might try to collaborate with someone who has a table to give away (sell?) some printed goods. I felt like this year was so busy that I actually struggled to give away nearly as many copies of the Wheelie comic as I'd hoped, for instance, and Ben definitely found the same with the RRCo zine. I'm sure there's lots of people who'd like my stuff if they knew it existed.

I will get lots of sleep before going to the convention. No, really.

If circumstances outside my control conspire such that I do not get enough sleep, I will allow myself to resort to the 500ml cans of Monster which the Hilton was selling for £2 each at breakfast for some unfathomable reason. Honestly, I can see why they weren't included in the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet; if they were, we probably would've seen a few heart attacks.

I will probably voice some of my criticisms of this year's Club Con in the annual feedback survey they do, in the hopes that they will take more of a back-to-basics approach. I'll also try to notice if I am not having fun, and try doing something else.

I will try to wear shorts with bigger pockets. (Sorry, Jo, I will not be able to participate in the cosplay show, though I will of course continue to rep the merch.)

I will stop taking items of breakfast food "for the road".

I will suck it up and queue to see guests towards the start of the day.

I will try and change my financial situation to have a stream of income outside of my job—whether by making significant sales from my existing collections, or by having a Patreon for some meaningful creative endeavour—which I will use to properly budget for things like TFNation. I need to allow myself to spend more on specific things that I want, and waste less time scrubbing around Facebook, eBay, and charity shops for random bargains (this year was a fluke). My attitude towards money has always been fucked and it's time to work on that.

In case it's not obvious, though, I did overall really enjoy myself this year, and that was entirely down to my friends, old and new, for being such wonderful people to be around. Even in my most sleep-deprived and highly-strung state, you all made me feel content, comfortable, and included in our little community. I was constantly being surprised by your antics. I hope to see all of you again next year, and I hope that I will see some of you before then!

9 notes · View notes

monstrifex-art · 1 year ago

Note

During your art challenge stuff like Vivid Shadows, how do you typically keep up motivation to continue doing it every single day? Because it’s been a struggle to keep writing stuff every single day. Granted this is my first time doing this, but I was wondering if you had any way you prevent creative burnout from doing these.

I have thoughts on this lol. There's a few ways. First a disclaimer, I started working on these Vivid Shadows pieces about a month ago. I have up through day 19 done right now (cough see them early on patreon cough). So I've been spacing these out a bit more than one every other day. I have done the challenge day by day before, and it's doable. But I'm a busy adult that needs to pay bills, and I like to give myself some cushion. But with that established, here are some thoughts I have. 1. Collaborators and Witnesses I doubt I could find the motivation to do these kinds of big projects if I didn't have friends and collaborators doing them with me. This is different for everyone, but I find I'm much more productive when I have someone else to bounce ideas off of, send WIPs to, and honestly to judge me when I don't meet my goals. This can be a friend you're working with, or a discord server where you share updates, or any other online community that you're a part of. 2. Effort Budgeting For big series like Vivid Shadows or longer comics with a lot of panels, I do not put all my effort into every piece. There's just no way. I consciously choose to half ass some things, and tell myself "eh, good enough" even if I know I can spend more time polishing. It is infinitely better to finish a piece at 60% of your full power than to pour all your heart into a project that never sees the light of day. If you feel up to it, you can spend more effort on some select parts that really make you happy. But those should be the exception, not the rule. And the more projects you finish, the better your half-assed work will become. 3. Creative Limitations You have to define some bounding rules for your project, or you'll get stuck with decision paralysis and scope creep. For Vivid Shadows, the rules I use are pretty simple. Each day has a prompt, one color to use, set dimensions and a hard deadline. I mostly use a limited palette (3 colors + black or white) because I know I can spend hours and hours shading and coloring otherwise. Limitations foster creativity. If you have a tight frame around what you can do, your brain comes up with way more ideas. 4. Keep an eye on the clock Part of what I like about projects like Vivid Shadows is that they have built in deadlines. I know I have to wrap things up by a certain day and time, and if it isn't perfect then so be it. I've done enough creative work to know roughly how much I can get done in a certain amount of time, which is very helpful for planning. The program I use for drawing has a built-in clock that tracks time spent on each document, which is a godsend. 5. Find your own methods This is all just stuff that helps me, but everyone's brain works in different ways. It absolutely takes practice to enter creative mode at will, rather than when the stars align and you feel inspired. Start with small projects, and as you train yourself you can eventually finish larger ones. Remember, something small and finished is always better than something grand that never gets done. Also worth mentioning, find the things that light up your brain. Personally, I've found that making my art horny is a powerful motivator for my creativity. In addition to the obvious neuron activation, I find it very satisfying to explore the boundaries of what I find attractive, like a mad scientist or detective. 6. Keep it fun! None of this will work if you don't enjoy the project. There may be parts you don't enjoy, but overall the project should bring you joy. If the project isn't fun, change it or drop it and start one that is. You don't owe your past self anything. Even if you abandon a project, the work you put into it is good practice for your next thing. Make work you like, and move on. Hope this helps! Good luck on your project 🙌

#ask

37 notes · View notes

snelbz · 2 years ago

Text

Better Or Worse {Chapter One}

Nessian. Angst. Modern AU.

@snelbz x @theladyofdeath collab

Better or Worse Masterlist

A/N: We are so excited to share this one with you guys! As you know, angst is sort of our specialty and while this one will be pretty heavy, we’ve tried to sprinkle a good amount of fluff as well. We hope you love it and always, please let us what you think!

Chapter Warning: Language.

Nesta -

“I'm going to bed.”

My fingers come to a pause on my keyboard. I glance up and find Cassian leaning against the door frame of my office.

The clock in the corner of the computer screen tells me it’s 10:46. I know he’s not telling me to try and entice me to join him. No, he’d given up on that weeks ago.

My fingers go back to flying over the plastic keys, clicking as I try to pick back up the stream of consciousness I was working on when Cassian interrupted. “I want to get this draft finalized tonight. I only have a few chapters left. The publishing company will have my ass if it isn’t submitted before tomorrow afternoon.”

Excuse.

That’s all I’m full of anymore. Excuses.

Excuses as to why I’m always at my office downtown late or don’t ever want to go to dinner. Why I’m distant or never try to touch him.

“Can you at least try to make it home by six tomorrow night? Please?”

My gaze leaves the screen and lands on him again. “I’ll try. You know I’ve got deadlines I have to hit.”

He’s as handsome as always, even more so with the shadow of stubble across his jaw. He must not have shaved this morning, if the dusting of hair was any indicator. That wasn’t like him. Shaving was a part of his daily routine, quickly followed by his morning shower. My husband may be brash and blunt, but he’s a man who has and loves his routines.

Routines that often feel like they are smothering me, stifling any spark of spontaneity in my soul.

His arms are crossed over his muscular chest, his tattoos just barely peeking out over the neckline of his t-shirt. I know those tattoos intimately, can trace them with my eyes closed.

It’s been far too long since I’ve done that.

His voice pulls me from my thoughts of the ink adorning his skin. “I’ll cook. Get a bottle of your favorite wine. We don’t have to go anywhere.”

He sounds like he’s negotiating a hostage situation, not asking me to dinner. I hate it.

I stop typing, trying my best not to show my annoyance. “I don’t know. I’ll have to see.”

Cassian's reaction does not reflect any sort of satisfaction. “Come on, Nesta. We haven’t had a date night in months. I will literally bring date night to you—”

“I said I’ll have to see.” The moment the words come out of my mouth, I feel guilty. My tone is embarrassing, but I can’t control it, the snap.

Cassian's mouth shuts and his jaw locks. “Fine.”

“Good.”

A beat passes between us before I start typing again. I can feel Cassian’s eyes blazing into the back of my head for a minute, then he’s turning around. “Night.”

“Goodnight,” I say, trying to sound as genuine as possible, but mostly I just sound stressed.

Which I am.

So damn stressed.

I hear him walk down the hall and close our bedroom door. I stop typing yet again, my eyes shutting as I rub my temples.

At least I’m honest. I could tell Cassian that I’d be home by dinner tomorrow, but then I would be late and he would just be disappointed and get pissed. It’s better to let him down up front rather than too late.

Being a best selling author isn’t all I was expecting it to be. Sure, seeing my book on shelves next to some of my all time favorites is awesome, but it’s daunting. My first book was self published, coming to life out of my own blood, sweat, and tears. So once it took off and I started working with a publishing company, I thought I’d made it. Things were going to get easier. All I had to do was get my words down onto paper and they’d do the rest.

Wrong.

Someone is always demanding something. Whether that’s a finalized draft, an update on an outline, or approval for cover artwork, I never have a moment to breathe.

As if the universe is laughing at me, a new text chimes on my phone, lying face down on my desk. I recognize the sound, immediately knowing it’s my agent, Eris.

I sigh, telling myself to ignore the notification. I’m already editing hours after I should be, but my eyes keep bouncing up to my phone. After reading the same sentence four times, not comprehending a single word, I snatch my phone up.

Got a phone call from the Velaris Times. They have an opening for an interview tomorrow afternoon.

An opportunity I can’t pass up.

Sounds like a plan. My office or theirs?

If I thought I would be able to focus back on my edits, I was wrong. Eris is typing back as soon as my text is received.

Over dinner, actually. Viviane Whittaker will meet you at Rita’s at 5:30.

My thumbs hover over the screen.

Can you at least try to make it home by six tomorrow night? Please?

Swallowing, I type out my reply.

I’ll be there fifteen minutes early.

I should go tell Cassian that there will be no date night tomorrow, but I think better of it. I’m already so tired and that is not a fight that I want to start so late at night. I’ll just text him about tomorrow.

I look back up at my screen and try to reset my mind, call back my concentration. Just as I begin reading, a jingling bell comes closer and a ball of fluff settles on my feet.

I look down at the chubby black cat and reach down to scratch him between the ears. “Hi, Greg.”

Greg shoots me a look full of judgment.

“Don’t try to guilt me,” I say, straightening back up in my chair. “I already feel guilty enough.”

With a huff, Greg lays his head against the carpet and closes his eyes. I’m officially the only one in the house not fast asleep.

Cassian -

I haven’t gotten mind-numbingly drunk since college, but all I want to do once I get out of work is drink to forget. I’ve never been good at handling my anger, and I was already on edge, so when Nesta texted me saying that she had dinner plans and would be home late, I was automatically seeing red.

I just want one night with my wife but I should have known that was too much to ask for. It usually is.

Already finding Rhys’ number in my phone, I hop in my truck and start the engine as he answers.

“We’re going out tonight. Drinks are on me,” I say, before he can even say hello.

“It’s a Thursday,” he replies with a laugh, but I know he’d be there regardless. Out of all of us, Rhys was the one who had ended up with a real “big boy” job. He’s one of the most respected lawyers in Velaris, and having his own practice, he basically gets to make his own hours if he isn’t in court.

“Glad you can read a calendar.” I sound like a dick but I can’t bring myself to care. “I’ll be at Windhaven in fifteen.��

“Should I call Az or is he already on the way?”

“I texted him first. Didn’t want him to leave work and have to turn around.”

Azriel works in a tattoo parlor two blocks down from our favorite spot, but lives outside of town. With Elain being pregnant, there’s only so much time we get with our brother.

I look over at the empty spot in the garage next to mine and sigh.

A hole in my chest that has been progressively growing larger aches. I’ve always been proud of Nesta. She’s always wanted to be an author since the day I met her, and she’s living her dream. And she’s really damn good at it. She has a way with words that I could never understand, that I couldn’t even come close to matching. She was meant to be a writer.

But ever since she’s found success, I’ve come in second.

It’s not that I always have to be her first priority. I want her to live for more than me, but it would be nice to be a priority sometimes. It would be nice for her to put our marriage first, to make time for me, for us. I barely even see her, and when I do, her eyes are glued to her laptop screen. She didn’t come to bed until four, then was up again at seven, barely uttering a word to me before she left for her office.

“Cass?”

I haven’t even realized that Rhys has been talking to me. “Sorry.”

“I’ll be there in half an hour,” he says, and his tone has softened, fully aware of where my mind has gone. “Get a booth.”

“Alright.” I hang up, reading Azriel’s text on my screen once I pull the phone away from my ear.

Perfect. Had to tattoo a flower on an 80 year old woman’s ass today. I need a drink.

Despite my current mood, I chuckle and pull out of the driveway. Keeping the radio off, I drive, wondering if I should send Nesta a good luck text. In all reality, she probably won’t reply, so I toss my phone in the passenger seat and let it be.

If Nesta wants to talk to me, wants to spend time with me, she would be home for dinner for once. I know I’m being petty, but after a while, being neglected by the woman you married becomes exhausting.

And I’m so damn tired. I need booze and bad food and my brothers. I’m man enough to admit when I need to get something off my chest, but not enough to do it sober.

Rhys’s instructions to get a booth were unnecessary. Azriel unsurprisingly beat me here and is sitting in our normal booth, the one with a direct line of sight to the bartender. A pitcher of beer sits in the middle of the table as well as three glasses. I appreciate my brother’s propensity to think ahead, but I need something harder than beer tonight.

Nodding to Az, I make a beeline to the bar. Breathing a sigh of relief, I see Ace is the one behind the bar tonight, not Devlon. The old man owns the bar and has never been a fan of me, Rhys or Az.

“You look like you need a free drink,” Ace says, as I make it to the bar and lean against the cool wooden top.

“I always need a free drink.” The words sound pitiful coming out of my mouth. Ace just winks and pours me a glass of whiskey without even having to ask me what I want. “Thanks.”

“Always,” she says, patting my hand before I turn to walk to the booth. I’ll see her again shortly. I don’t expect the glass of whiskey to last too long before I need another.

Azriel watches me approach, his glass already halfway gone. I nod to it as I sit across from him. “Has the image of elderly ass been erased from your mind yet?”

“No,” Azriel says, taking another drink. “But the memory looks better and better with every drink.”

I huff a laugh as I sip from my glass of whiskey, enjoying the burn as it slides down my throat and I pour a glass from the pitcher in the middle of the table.

Rhysand appears beside me and slides onto the bench. I hadn’t even realized that he’d walked in, but in my defense, I’m hardly present.

After pleasant hellos and Rhysand pouring his own glass, he asks, “So, is this when you tell us the reason you want to get plastered on a Thursday?”

Swirling my glass, I watch as the whiskey moves through the ice cubes, the color diluting as they melt slowly. Bringing my drink to my lips, I drink deeply and set the glass down, staring at the table top.

“My marriage is falling apart.”

Neither of them speak.

Neither of them do anything.

I wasn’t expecting them to fall over themselves to comfort me, but I was at least expecting a back pat or an I’m sorry, man. Glancing up from the table, they both just stare at me.

The look in their eyes tells me they knew. Everyone knows. We haven’t been ourselves in months. I can’t think of the last time we were both at a family dinner.

“I don’t know what to do,” I go on, when neither of them say a word. “I’ve been trying…but every time I try, no matter what I try, I feel like I’m pushing her further away.” I take a drink. “I’m exhausted.”

I down what’s in my glass and motion for Ace to make me another.

“I tried to give her a date night tonight,” I go on, working on my beer that’s quickly disappearing. My brothers simply watch me as I babble. “We haven’t had a date night in months. She never seems interested, so I stopped asking. Last night, I asked, for the first time in a long damn time.” I gesture around the table. “As you can see, I’m not with my wife.”

“Where is she?” Azriel asks, when it’s clear I’d paused my rambling, at last.

Another glass of whiskey is set in front of me. I give Ace a grateful look before shrugging. “With some reporter. Not sure where. They’re out to dinner and will probably be there until some ridiculous hour.”

Azriel looks away from me, his eyes locking with Rhys and then I feel both of their gazes on me. I turn to Rhys, who is usually the one who takes the lead in awkward situations. Tonight is apparently no different.

“She won’t have dinner with you, but she’ll meet some skeezy reporter for dinner?” He asks, an eyebrow raised.

Shrugging my shoulders, I start on my second drink. “So it seems.”

He folds his arms atop the table and leans towards me. “And you didn’t ask where they were going? Or when she would be home?”

“I stopped asking what time she’d be home months ago.” My voice sounds hollow, empty. I wonder how long it’s sounded like that. “And begging for answers seemed pathetic.”

They make eye contact again and Azriel clears his throat. “You don’t…think she’s having an affair, do you?”

“Absolutely not.”

He sighs. “Cass—”

“She isn’t sleeping with anyone else.”

“Cass,” Rhys begins, his tone as placating as possible, slipping into the voice of the man who can convince anyone of anything. It’s what makes him such a good defense lawyer. It makes me want to break something. Makes me feel weak. “We know you love Nesta and that she loves you.”

“She wouldn’t cheat on me,” I snap, and I mean it. We might not be on great terms right now, but Nesta is loyal to those she loves.

And despite the distance between us, I have to believe she still loves me.

“Sorry,” I say, trying to calm myself down once the silence between us stretches on for too long. The air is thick. They know they had struck a chord and are surely deciding if they want to keep the conversation going. “I just…don’t think that’s the case.”

“If she’s not cheating, then what’s the issue?” Azriel asks, tentatively. “Her work?”

“Yeah, she’s busy,” I say, staring at my empty glass. “But…I don’t know. Honestly, I have no fucking clue how we got here. We barely talk. Most nights, she doesn’t even come to bed. I can’t even tell you the last time we had sex.” That was a lie. I remember it, and it was way too long ago for me to admit. “Every time we do talk, it ends in a fight. I’m just…at the end of my rope. I don’t know what to do.”

The table is quiet for another minute before Rhys asks, “Are you saying that you want to leave her?”

It’s not that the thought has never crossed my mind. Lately, I think about it often, filing for divorce, giving up, but hearing the words out loud make me feel sick to my stomach.

I don’t answer.

I wave to Ace for another whiskey.

The table is silent until she brings the drink and returns to the bar.

“I don’t see what other options I have.” My words are whispered, as if I can’t hear them, they aren't coming out. My words are starting to slur a bit, a good sign I should probably slow down.

I ignore that sign and take a drink.

“You two fought like cats and dogs when you first met,” Rhys reminds me, as if I could somehow forget. “What’s different now?”

“Those weren’t fights, that was sexual tension,” I admit, shaking my head. “Gotta have sex for there to be sexual tension.”

Azriel refills his beer. “She hasn’t said anything to Elain, as far as I know.”

“Or Feyre,” Rhys adds.

“You both know Nesta,” I start, looking between the two of them. “She doesn’t talk about her feelings with anyone, much less me or her sisters.”

They both frown, watching me with concern, seemingly at a loss for words.

“Do you still love her?” Azriel asks.

“Of course I do,” I say, my anger fading as the alcohol calms me, consumes me. “But just because I love her doesn’t mean that it’s working anymore.”

“Don’t make any rash decisions,” Rhys says, calmly, refilling my beer for me before motioning to Ace for another pitcher. Seems I’m done with whiskey for the night. “I know you, don’t act out of anger. You have to tell Nesta how frustrated you are. You have to communicate.”

I know he’s right, know that communication has become a weakness in our marriage. I don’t want to communicate, I don’t want to work for it, I just want my marriage to right itself, to return to the way it used to be.

And I want to fucking drink.

So that’s what I do, alongside my brothers, until I’m not thinking about my crumbling marriage at all.

#better or worse #nessian better or worse #acotar #acomaf #acowar #acofas #acosf #nesta x cassian #nesta archeron #snelbz x theladyofdeath collab #snacmc collabs

128 notes · View notes

blazehedgehog · 1 year ago

Text

ICYMI: My Sonic Frontiers Criticism/Essay Is Out Now

youtube

So here's the last four months of my life come to fruition: the longest piece of edited criticism I've ever put on my Youtube channel, clocking in at just over an hour. For those of you that may be new around here, I am pretty against making long videos. I don't know if I overthink things too much or what, but it's rare for me to have much tolerance for feature-length reviews of things. They can wear me out just watching them, and it definitely wears me out to make them.

But sometimes you just have a lot to say. And I didn't even necessarily say everything I could have said here; there were things I would have added if not for the looming deadline proposed by the video sponsor. That's not a complaint -- sometimes you need someone else to tell you "be done by this date or else." Limitations foster creativity and toiling away at perfection can sometimes be just as toxic as crunch.

What I was trying to say is it's a big video, and it was hard keeping everything straight in my head because there was so much. One of those times where I was glad how I planned things out in advance, because sometimes the thoughts you had four months ago are not the same thoughts you have today, and the thoughts from four months ago were better.

It's already proving to be a bit of a divisive video, given I am going against the grain here. But I'm a big boy. I've spent time on the front lines of these sorts of things before. I know how to handle myself. I mean, half the reason I started my tumblr back in the day was pointing out some of the truly deranged takes I'd get in the replies to my Sonic 06 video.

Though I do worry. I'm getting a lot of people who are... politely declining to tell me what they think. More than a few "I don't agree with you, but I'm glad you released this video" that then never elaborate further. And that makes me feel bad? But why? Do I want to argue with my friends? Not particularly.

But more to the point, are people afraid to argue with me? Do I get too aggressive? I've picked up on a vibe, not just from friends, where people seem to go out of their way to avoid arguments with and/or around me. I mean I literally just said I started my Tumblr blog as a "get a load of this guy in my comments" spotlight (which, for the record, I don't do anymore). I don't want to be scary. But is it scary, or is it a strength? Or am I just imagining the whole thing? History says it's probably that last one, but it doesn't stop me from wondering. It's a lot to chew on.

At the end of the day, I do think parts of this script could have been better. I do kind of get a little mean at a couple points in ways I could have written around. A lot of people are bristling at the opening spiel, where I get more than a little "you people" about the Game Awards voting situation. There's another part later in the video where I also feature actual comments from a previous video and as I was editing it together I thought, "this sounds mean." But given I was less than 24 hours away from that deadline, I just had to roll with it (so I at least blurred the names and cropped the avatars out).

I'll end this post by quoting what I wrote on Patreon day before yesterday for the early access version of this video:

What a march this has been. I've worked on some videos that felt like they took forever, but nothing like this. This felt like the project that would never end. Some of that's because, after pushing myself so hard on the Sonic Adventure 2 video, I tried to be a little more casual with this one. I think I started the script around the end of April, a couple weeks after finishing the game on-stream. The idea was to avoid burnout. And then the script grew, and grew, and grew, to be the longest script I've ever written. After doing voice over, I had three hours of material I had to cut down. I captured more than 60 hours of gameplay from more than 50 games. Thank goodness I took the time to stop and "storyboard" out this review like I did with the SA2 video. It actually proved to be extremely valuable here -- with a video this long, that takes so long to put together, it's hard to keep all of your ideas hot and ready in your head. Often I'd fall back to the storyboard and realize I planned something months ago that was way better than what I was doing in the moment. And then in July, a sponsor came calling again. Suddenly I had a real deadline. The last four weeks have been a race to move this mountain of material into something resembling the shape of a video. The last couple days in particular have felt something like a miracle. A work ethic I hadn't tapped into in years suddenly roared to life as I locked down 20+ minutes of video in a matter of hours. It may have involved several actual panic attacks and me running on about four hours of sleep, but here we are. I was revising the script all the way up until a week ago. In retrospect, the sponsor segment probably leans a little too much on SAGE content, but by the time I realized that the train was barreling down the tracks too fast to stop. Thoughts for next time, I guess.

Patrons get a PDF of the script I used, including an unfinished earlier draft I abandoned where I think I was actually even meaner about it, if you can believe it. They also get a PDF of what my "storyboarding" process looks like (which is all just text).

I'll probably toss up a post for all the art I made for this video, too.

#sonic the hedgehog #sega #sonic team #sonic frontiers #youtube #video #long #behind the scenes #Youtube

45 notes · View notes

physalian · 8 hours ago

Text

A few years ago, I accepted a pretty abusive internship because it was a graduation requirement and my first pick ghosted me for three months just before I could formally accept the position, and I was out of time. I actively lost money because the cost of living was not made up by my paycheck.

The internship I got was with a narcissistic girlboss bitch. In one way, I understand her: We both want things done a very particular way. The difference is, I believe that if you want something done right, you do it yourself. She believed, however, that if you want something done right, you hand it off to an underpaid teenager and bully them with your incessant and contradictory revisions and unreasonable expectations as if they can read your mind.

It was a catch-all internship that handled everything she was too busy girlbossing around to handle, and part of that was the graphic design for her product that I took over from her previous graphic designer who quit. All I had to do was take the existing files and change the color schemes, super easy. Until it wasn’t and she wanted to start over from scratch, something I’d told her that I wasn’t qualified to do at the time, and it was just an endless cycle of this lady being unable to explain what she wanted, telling me she liked a concept, and then telling me she hated it once I replicated it across all 60 of her products.

That whole experience left me with two lessons:

I will never do what I love for money, if my livelihood depends on doing what I love. Nothing makes me hate creativity faster than having to produce it on someone else's deadline for someone else's imagination, or if a bout of artist's block means that I won't eat.

I am absolutely terrified of ever becoming her, thus, I am absolutely awful at speaking up when I get work done for me that is dissatisfactory, and it never happens more than when I commission something creative.

I’m much more likely to lose out on the money I paid accepting work that I’m not happy with, than to risk looking like a Karen asking for tweaks (and this goes beyond just this experience, but this lady made it exponentially worse)… so I started learning how to do the things that I would otherwise pay people for, specifically for art.

Two book covers down and they look great.

The third one? Not so much. It’s outside the realm of which I myself can draw, for a genre that typically demands a style that I don’t really like--contemporary fiction.

I generally dislike "clipart" covers that repurpose real images, even high quality ones, especially of people. To me, they will always look cheaper, like a checkout aisle book, than an illustrated cover. If you have a clipart cover, unless it's horror, it has to come from a very good recommendation for me to want to read it. Fuck if I know why, illustrated covers don't guarantee quality prose.

So I outsourced, and my top priority was ensuring accountability because my experience with freelancers a) doing the job and b) not holding it hostage has been abysmal.

I got exactly what I asked for from this artist, wonderful job, no complaints.

But it’s no longer what I want, and seeing the concept I gave them actually put together—the burden is 100% on me. With our contract, I have the chance for revisions, and I would rather lose out the entire fee I paid them than admit why I don’t like it, and that’s the feedback I gave on the preliminary concept: It’s exactly what I asked for, but I’m not happy with it. How much do I owe you for just the concept? I’ll just go somewhere else.

And I don’t… want to have to do that? But I have been on the other side, as a freelancer met with monumentally aggressive clients, and I’ve been a buyer, who has said before “I’m not happy with this” and been called all manner of names, that I’m entitled, that it’s a creative field and highly subjective and what I think is quality is not what they think is quality, etc.

But. Yeah. I’d rather lose the $200 and just start over, even if that means a delay of release of the book while I figure this out. They did their job based on a design that I gave them, and I have to own that.

#writeblr #physh be rambling

2 notes · View notes

sabraeal · 1 year ago

Text

If the Mind Is Willing, Chapter 5

[Read on AO3]

Written for @bubblesthemonsterartist, who long ago won the top prize of my 500 Followers raffle way back in 2018. These were all supposed to be done in the few months I had before I gave birth to my second son...who is now less than two months away from his fifth birthday. And in a few weeks, I will be posting the beginning of my 1000 Followers celebration. So you know. Better late than never

His fingers flex before they settle on the keyboard, a cacophony of cracks that would set his mother’s teeth on edge if she heard them. Not that she’d scold him; oh no, Yamazaki would just find a new bottle on his desk after school, some brown glass container— not plastic, never plastic; things like that were made from oil and oil has chemicals, and no matter how often he explain that all things are made of chemicals, even her all-natural essential oils, it would never take— that would say ‘Susu’s Supplements’ complete with a smiling face. Nearly four years out of the house and his shoulders twitch just thinking about it, ready to hike up around his ears at the first whisper of homeopathy.

Instead, Yamazaki rotates them, points angling from inward to outward, forcing his shoulders square and spine straight. Head over heart, heart over pelvis. A straight line from crown to coccyx. Already the muscles ache, longing to hunch— too many hours at a screen, his mother would say, we’re meant to hunt and gather, not hunt and peck. Lips pressed tight, he tilts his head, popping his neck for good measure. One side, then the other. There’s an order to these things, a ritual, and he’s in no mood to rush himself.

But he’s fast running out of joins to crack, excuses wearing thin as he twists his spine, then flexes his feet. A few satisfying pops press them flat to the floor, and he bites the bullet: inbox open, his outstanding draft unfurls across the screen.

Re: Re: Re: Final Grades Deadline, the subject line reads, and with delicate precision, Yamazaki types: Dr. Matsumoto, I hope you are enjoying your time back in Japan with your family, however—

Orange flashes at the corner of his eye. It’s the messenger, wedged tight between tabs on his task bar. Out of the way. Easy enough to ignore.

—however, it’s come to my attention that—

It’s silent, that’s the problem. Just a block of color that won’t go away until he clicks it. And a small 1 in the corner of it, letting him know it’s a direct message. That someone is looking specifically for him. And it won’t go away, not until he pays it some sort of attention.

—that there are still students for whom grades have not yet been—

Not that he has to. If it was urgent, if he was needed, anyone with that information could simply call him. This email, however, is time sensitive. Time oversensitive, if he really thinks about it. Which he’s trying to not, if only so he can finish it.

—not yet been finalized with administration. If there are any changes you would like to make, tomorrow is the last time to—

He could swear it’s flashing now, the number flicking up to 2, then 3. Like message after message is careening into his DMs, a pileup of personal correspondence he’ll only be able to sort through the wreckage of if this takes any longer.

—tomorrow is the last time to submit electronically. Anything after that will have to be manually changed by—

It’s a trick of the eye, an illusion of increased frequency. It blinks at the same rate for one message as it does for one hundred. His palms break out into a sweat. It would be so easy for 3 to flip to 4, for 4 to suddenly become 9+, and he’ll never know just how many messages are waiting for him, how many people are waiting for him until he finishes this damned email.

—stopping by the administration office in-person. Please let me know if you need any assistance with the electronic submissions.

Relief bows him over the keyboard, and with a quick flourish, he tacks on, Best, Yamazaki.

One last click sends the message on its way, that particular problem no longer his responsibility— until Dr Matsumoto inevitably makes it his— and he turns his attention down to the current object of his ire. The application flicks open, and—

[Saito.Hajime] Souji has sent me a number of Direct Messages regarding the creation of his character for our upcoming roleplaying event I thought you should be made aware

“Oh,” Yamazaki mutters, tension already flooding his shoulders. “Come on.”

[Susumu Yamazaki] Oh? Is that so? Color me surprised. Just what did he want to inquire about? Perhaps whatever character concept would be personally inconvenient for me to have to deal with on short notice? Maybe he’d like to be the emperor? Or a lizard person? A lizard-person emperor?

[Saito.Hajime] I do not believe his is taking into account your level of discomfort Though he did inquire about the non-human options open to him

[Susumu Yamazaki] Of course he did.

[Saito.Hajime] Also, I do not think the Zokujin are available as a player race Not in the current edition of the rules

[Susumu Yamazaki] No. They’re not.

[Saito.Hajime] However I did take the liberty of discouraging him from looking further into the Kitsune Impersonator school

Yamazaki grinds the heels of his palms over his eyes, fireworks splaying across the dark. The last thing he needs is letting Okita loose in a room full of roleplayers extremely sensitive to ridicule with a skill called ‘Fanning the Flames’.

[Susumu Yamazaki] Good. I would like to be invited back to the next event. So what does he want? There has to be some catch. There’s no way he’d be happy creating a character using just the core rules.

[Saito.Hajime] He asked if it was possible to acquire some information on his clan of choice There was not much present in the books we made available during character creation

[Susumu Yamazaki] 1) How would he know? He wasn’t even there? 2) The Player’s Guide has a sufficient overview of all the available Great Clans. Which one could he possibly have trouble finding information on?

[Saito.Hajime] Souji was interested in learning more about specific aspects of the Cat Clan

His teeth grit so hard he can feel the fault lines forming. Tell him, he types, pecking each key with relish, to go fuck himself. Each stroke feels good, feels perfect, up until he hits the backspace.

[Susumu Yamazaki] Leave it to Okita to pull something like this. Cat Clan isn’t even one of the listed options for play in 5th edition! Guy doesn’t even bother to show up to our planned group session, but now he wants to ask us to jump through additional hoops to help him create a character from a niche clan for the *meme*or whatever he’s on about now.

[Saito.Hajime] To know it is even an option means that he at least read the material we provided That conveys a certain level of personal investment on his part More than I would have expected Souji to show

[Susumu Yamazaki] Really? You don’t think that he just went, ‘I like cats. I think I’ll say I want to be a cat and see whether or not Yamazaki personally loses his shit about it?’

[Saito.Hajime] I think you are ascribing malicious intent where there is only indifference

[Susumu Yamazaki] Thanks. Definitely makes me feel good about all this.

[Saito.Hajime] Souji often masks his interest by attempting to be mocking or feigning disinterest

[Susumu Yamazaki] He’s also the kind of asshole who likes to take advantage of everyone’s better nature and pretend that he’s interested in something they care about, only to turn around and make a fucking joke out of it, like a total sociopath

[Saito.Hajime] If it bothers you to put in a sustained amount of effort to assist him in the event that he is ‘simply fucking around’ then I would be happy to help him on my own I would hate for him to be truly interested and refuse to engage with him over simple skepticism about his motives

[Susumu Yamazaki] Fine. It’s your time. I can’t stop you from wasting it.

[Saito.Hajime] Your concern is appreciated if not entirely warranted

“It’s just…” A hiss whistles through his teeth as his chair swivels, bringing him level with Saito’s level stare. “I don’t know why he’s even bothering to do this when he doesn’t even want to go. The other guys might be forcing him to go for” —to be honest, he’s not really clear on the reason, and at this point, he’s certain the answer will only aggravate him— “bonding purposes, or punishment, or whatever, but I don’t care if he puts in effort. He can feel free to have a bad time, it doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

Saito tilts his head, thoughtful. “Is it really so hard to believe that Souji might enjoy the idea of pretending to be someone else, so long as it was in a structured, positive, and judgment-free environment?”

Yamazaki swivels back to his keyboard, mouth pulled thin as he types, Stop trying to make me feel bad for Okita. It’s not going to happen.

Saito glances over at his screen and lets out the smallest, nearly imperceptible sigh.

[Saito.Hajime] I do not expect you to

[Susumu Yamazaki] Am I just supposed to forget that he broke Ibuki’s arm? It wasn’t even a year ago! It’s not like he’s changed!

[Saito.Hajime] You are not often so intractable, but on this subject you do insist on itAnd I respect that you feel that way

He scowls at the screen, pulse throbbing just beneath his collar. I’m not being intractable. If it were anyone but Okita, none of you would even—

Knock. It’s a soft little noise at first, but enough to jar him from his thoughts and set his hands hovering over his keyboard. Knock-knock. Knock?

Okita. That’s who it has to be. Clearly using Saito as his proxy isn’t yielding the results he wants. No, now he’s got to come down and twist the screws himself. Got to saunter on over and drink the annoyance straight from the spigot. Because of course that’s who his evening would choose to shape itself around: the single person in this house he can’t stand. That’s what would make narrative sense, at least.

But as he swivels over to scowl at the door, it occurs to him that Okita might knock, but he wouldn’t bother to wait. He’d try the knob at least, rattling it so hard Yamazaki would hear it even through the noise-canceling on his headphones. But this is tentative, almost a question, and that, that seems more like—

“E-excuse me?” A voice filters through the wood, almost as soft as the knocks. “Y-yamazaki? Are you h—ah, in?”

“Ah…” Saito’s mouth curls at a corner, as close as he comes to a smile, and Yamazaki’s tongue trips over, “Y-yukimura? Is that you?”

“Um, yes! It is!” Her feet shuffle on the carpet, boards groaning with every shift. “Is it…? I mean, would it be okay if I came in?”

“Oh, ah…” He scrambles to his feet, scanning their floor in a desperate scan for contraband. They both keep their sides tidy, clothes in hampers and beds neatly tucked, but it would be just his sort of luck for her to come in and stumble over a pair of yesterday’s boxers. “Yes. Of course. Please.”

Saito’s brows raise as he takes his seat again, less surprised than amused, and Yamazaki has just enough presence of mind to hiss, “Don’t,” before the door slips open, Yukimura hesitantly insinuating herself through the gap. Her eyes fix on the toes of her slippers as if she could will them to stillness.

“Thank you for letting me—oh!” Her gaze flicks up, fluttering when it lands on the other occupant of this room. “Hajime, you’re here too!”

“I can leave,” Saito offers, far too quick. “If you would prefer to be alone.”

“Oh, no, not at all.” Yukimura’s cheeks had already been a pale pink when she shuffled in, but now they veer to a vibrant rose. “Actually, this might be better. Ah, I mean…I think. Not that I had planned to, um…”

It’s…sweet, the way she shuffles; one fluffy slipper scratching fruitlessly at the back of her ankle as she tries to wrangle her intentions into words. Yamazaki could watch her do it for hours, one bashful scratch after the other, but he takes mercy on her instead. “Did you need something, Yukimura?”

“Oh, um, yes!” That gets both feet back on the floor, spine so straight even his aches in sympathy. “It’s…the LARP. I thought we might talk about it, maybe?”

She’s changed her mind, that’s what this is about. After two hours of listening to all of them talk about clans and rings and whether a lion was really Toudou’s fursona, she’s finally realized that it’s just some silly kid’s game. It’s Yukimura, so she’ll dress the reason up, nice enough that even gilt might shine like gold, but that will be the long and short of it: it’s a childish little pretend game, and Yamazaki is a loser for liking it.

“Oh.” Might as well yank this bandaid off before it can bond to the skin. “Sure. Of course. Why don’t you, er…take a seat?”

His hand sweeps out before he completes the crucial mental math needed to know: there’s only two chairs in this room, and him and Saito are sitting in both of them. He jumps to his feet, offer already on his lips, but—

But Yukimura simply smooths her skirt over her thighs, settling down on top of his comforter in a way that is…distracting. To say the least. And it’s not made any better with Saito’s eyes boring into his back.

“Oh, um, is this okay?” Her eyelashes flutter uncertainly, gaze darting from him to the door to his seat and then back again. Enough time to realize he’s staring like some sort of idiot. “If you’d prefer that I move, I don’t mind st—?”

“No! It’s—it’s fine. I wouldn’t even mind if you…” Slept on it. His teeth snap shut around the words. That’s not exactly the sort of suggestion a teaching assistant should be giving a student, even if the class had run its course. “Make yourself at home.”

“Ah…” Her smile stretches thin. “…Thank you.”

Despite the invitation, she’s rigid, a wary little statue perched at the edge of his mattress. Her heels hook on the frame, hands pressed tight over her kneecaps, bent like she’s ready to spring, to hop off at the slightest hint of his displeasure. Gargoyle, Okita might call her, savoring the nasty flavor of the insult— or at least he would until Saito hummed, without a spout for water flow, she’d really only be a grotesque.

But Yukimura isn’t here to emulate architectural features. No, she’s here to let him down gently, even if it seems she could use some assistance doing so.

“Ah, Yukimura…” Yamazaki clears his throat, forcing the bile back down to his stomach, where it belongs. “You know, if you aren’t interested in participating in the event, it’s all right. You won’t be hurting anyone’s feelings.”

The amount of personal disappointment Saito can pack into a single cluck of his tongue would give his mom a run for her money. But if guilt is the target he’s aiming for, Saito misses it by a mile; instead, Yamazaki’s annoyed. Here he is trying to smother the sickening free fall of rejection, not letting a single twitch of it show on his face or the slightest tinge color his tone, and somehow it’s not enough. That somehow by refusing to push her, he’s letting everyone down, and—

“No, that’s not— I don’t mean that at all!” Yukimura waves her hands, as if that alone might clear his misunderstanding. “It’s the opposite. I mean, if there is an…um…opposite for something like this. It’s just…I know what I want to do! But I wanted to talk to you about it first. Oh, ah” —her gaze darts behind him, to where Saito sits— “the two of you, I mean. Since both of you will, um…”

She shrugs, helpless, but Yamazaki can hardly help her. It’s taking all he has to just gape, to parse that not only does she want to come with them, but she has a…a concept. A character she wants to play, one that’s complicated enough she wants his input, and he’ll look stupid if he pinches himself, but that’s the only way he could possibly prove he’s awake.

So it’s Saito that chimes in with, “Of course, Yukimura. We would be happy to provide whatever assistance you need.”

“Oh, really?” She perks where she’s perched, mouth as round as her eyes. “That’s…good! Great, even.”

“So, what are you thinking?” It’s a struggle to keep his excitement from tugging on his words, dragging them out of his register like an overeager puppy. “I know you hadn’t made up your mind when we were all working on characters, so—”

“Ah, actually…” Her shoulders round, barely obscuring the shy pink spread over her cheeks. “I, er, sort of knew what I wanted to do then, but I just…I thought that maybe it wouldn’t be okay? So I tried to come up with something else, but…”

But this is what she wants to do. What she really wants, because she has an opinion about it. She cares what she plays. It’s terrible how much he likes that about her.

“Anything you want would be fine,” he rushes to assure her, too breathless. “There’s very few things that aren’t allowed.”

At least, things Yukimura might think to do. When Saito finally strong-arms him into give the same talk to Okita, there would need to be more than a few caveats. Strictures, even.

Saito nods.“The event organizers are quite open to most concepts their players create. If you have conceived of something outside the usual bounds of play, I’m sure they would be happy to work with you to—”

“Oh, no, it’s nothing— nothing like that.” The look that filters up through her lashes is shy, hopeful even as her head ducks against her shoulder, as if she’s bracing for a blow. “I just…I thought…I mean, it was really Kimigiku who said it first, but I think I agree that it would be, ah, best if I made a character that would give me an excuse to stay near more experienced players, since I’m, you know, new, and, um, not really good at acting yet, and, ah…?”

“Ah! Excellent idea, Yukimura. There are plenty of well-established players that enjoy teaching newer ones.” Shimada would be an obvious choice— he’d been the one to take him under his wing, shinobi-to-shinobi, back when Yamazaki first joined— though his steely Hiruma scout was a difficult sell for companionship. Enomoto too, though as an organizer, it would be hard to say if he’d be playing his Kitsuki investigator or a more plot-bearing role. “Do you think if I were to email Ootori now, he might be able to get us a list of—?”

Saito clears his throat, pointed. “I think Yukimura might already have some idea of what mentors she would prefer.”

“Oh…?” Yamazaki glances at her, catching the quick bob of her head. “Ah, sorry! I didn’t think you knew anyone but Saito and myself. But if there’s someone else…?”

He hardly thinks he’s earned the weary glare Saito slings his way. At least until Yukimura stutters out, “It’s just…I thought…?” Her eyes dart between the two of them, brow pinched tight over her nose. “I thought maybe…I might play the, um…daimyo’s daughter? If that’s okay, that is.”

For as acute as his hearing is, Yamazaki cannot have possibly heard that right. “…Excuse me? Which…?”

“The, uh…Crane Clan princess.” Her lips purse, thoughtful. Too thoughtful, really, when he can’t even knock two brain cells together to get a spark. “Or I guess she’s not really a princess, but…um…?”

“The Doji daimyo’s daughter,” Saito says, devastatingly even. “The one that Yamazaki and I are sworn to protect.”

“Yes!” She smiles so bright she can’t possibly understand what she’s asking. “That way I’ll have a reason for sticking close to you two!”

He can only stare, mouth working useless at a muffled, “W-what?”

“Oh, I just…I didn’t want to impose on you two by making some new character and forcing you both to shoehorn her in to accommodate me. But I…” Her hands flutter, flustered under his gaping gaze. “I could do that, if…if that’s better? Or I mean, you don’t have to do anything for me at all, I could just, um…?”

“What?” Yamazaki asks again, slightly louder. “Do you really want to…? I mean, the daimyo’s daughter…?”

“Yes! Unless it would be a problem?” Her teeth worry at her bottom lip, and— and he can see it now, the pucker of red that would be painted over it, bright against the white of her teeth. Heat flares up his neck, head ringing with sudden rush of blood flooding over his ear drums. “Ah, I didn’t even ask if there was someone already playing her character! There probably is. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed—!”

“There isn’t,” he blurts out, more exorcism than information. God, what he wouldn’t give for a good slap, just to rattle his brain back into working order. He’s never been one to believe in percussive maintenance, but he’ll make an exception, just this once “She’s just…just lore.”

“In my opinion, it’s the perfect solution.” Saito’s mouth lifts at a corner, practically a smile. “As expected from you, Yukimura.”

“O-oh.” Hands clap to her cheeks, but it does nothing to cover how pink floods her from collar to hairline. “It’s nothing, really. I wouldn’t have even asked if Sen and Kimigiku hadn’t told me I should.”

“It is a good idea.” He means the words as he says them, and yet somehow he can’t help but add, “It’s just…I don’t see why a daimyo’s daughter would be following around a shinobi. Her father pressed him into another service nearly three years ago, so why would she…?”

Care. That’s the crux of it. For all that hime-sama had meant to him, a shinobi is eta, less than a person, worth no more than the dirt at the bottom of her slipper. That she had even deigned to notice him was proof of her generous nature, but to care for him beyond what a girl does for her most loyal hound, enough that she would risk herself and the reputation of her family to come to his side? That could be no more than a fantasy, a story he might tell himself in the last moments before death claimed him, and she—

“Kimigiku had a good idea for that too, actually.” Yukimura’s tremulous smile finds its footing, growing more eager with each word. “What if there was someone who was after her? An assassin, or maybe…some other clan who would like to hold her ransom? That way she’d have a good reason to be in disguise.”

“Disguised?” Saito settles back in his chair, eyebrows raised. “As a kunoichi? Or as someone else?”

“Kuno…?” Yukimura blinks, turning those guileless eyes onto him.

“A female shinobi. Er, ninja, I guess.” He raises his hand, but there’s no bag to tug, no strap to hold onto while he flounders. Instead he has to settle for his collar, the echo of his mother’s voice clucking, keep that up and you’ll stretch the darn thing out. It only makes him tug harder. “Mechanically, there’s no difference. It’s just, uh…flavor, I guess.”

“Oh.” Her mouth rounds into a perfect circle. “Then I guess…no? I thought that— well, Kimigiku thought that it might make more sense if I…ah, I mean, since she has been traveling by herself, that she might be trying to pass herself off as a boy?”

It’s the perfect idea, slotting right into the extensive backstory they’d hashed out three years ago— adventurous hime-sama, separated from her two most stalwart protectors just as the pillars of the Doji clan shook beneath the weight of an ailing emperor. A daimyo’s daughter gone missing in the chaos of the capital, right when her marriage would legitimize either of his son’s claims.

Silence stretches between them, long enough it starts to buzz, to ring. Like static, only interrupted by the ragged pull of his breath, and the relentless pounding of his heart.

“You…?” His tongue tangles, mouth too dry to right itself properly in his mouth. “That’s…?”

“Very clever, Yukimura.” A corner of Saito’s mouth lifts, spreading into the faintest smile, and— ah, of course he’d enjoy this, the sadist. It’s not like it’s his heart trying to escape through his rib cage. “Quite impressive.”

A blush flares across the highest arches of her cheeks. “Oh, it’s not me that…I mean, it was really Kimigiku who thought of everything. She even had a costume I could borrow, if I wanted. Do you want me to show you?”

Against all reason, Saito’s brows lift, and it’s all the encouragement Yukimura needs to fish through her pockets, pulling out a slender screen covered in cherry blossoms. She scrolls, excitement practically palpable, and yet all Yamazaki can stumble out is a “But…?”

“It’s a good hook.” Saito gaze darts toward him, pointed. “A very good one.”

Meaning: Ootori’s going to love it. With the emperor barely clinging to his mortal coil, a conflict between his sons would be imminent. The reappearance of Doji Hogyoku’s prodigal daughter at a secret meeting in support of the youngest imperial son would cause the exact sort of political upheaval that man salivates over, and all he has to do is sign off on a player’s participation. The fact that it would create a good amount of personal drama for Yamazaki in particular— well, that would just be the cherry on his sadist sundae.

“I know it is,” he snaps, shoulders hiking up to his ears. God, the smile that’s sure to spread over that cherubic face— it gives him shivers just thinking about it. “It’s just…”

He’ll never live it down. For hime-sama to show up— no, for her to arrive in his care, a personal friend he’s allowed to take her roll—

“O-oh.” Yukimura’s hands fall to her lap, grip limp where they wrap around her phone. “I’m sorry. I’m overstepping, aren’t I?”

That’s exactly what she’s not doing, but his head’s too scrambled to say so, not before her shoulders round, framing a rueful smile. “It’s really okay if you don’t want me to play her, Yamazaki. I know she’s really important to you. I can just come up with—“

“No! No.” His hand flies, like he could somehow physically stop her from running off with the wrong idea. “That’s really not it at all. Saito’s right, it’s a great idea. I’ve already, uh…”

He’s not sure what’s worse: the hopeful look Yukimura gives him as he stammers to a stop, curiosity shining out of every eyelash— or the casual way Saito kicks his chair, dislodging what he’d hoped he could keep to himself. “I’ve already played around with a potential build for her. I’ll, ah…email it to you.”

Saito’s glare burns where it bores into his neck, but he can stare all he wants; Yukimura doesn’t need to know how long this character sheet has sat on his hard drive, unused. Never meant to be used, not unless Ootori asked for it, the metatextual third member of the Crane Clan trio, the one both of their characters had been built around. The one whose absence left them less than whole.

And now here is Yukimura, squinting at her screen, about to fill it.

“Oh.” Her eyes pulse wide, scrolling through the overview. “You’ve filled out the whole thing!”

“I don’t expect you to use it! I mean, not as-is, if you don’t want to.” He shifts his squirming into a shrug, not casual enough to be normal. “You can do whatever you like, it’s just, ah…someplace to start. If you want it.”

“I do!” Yukimura’s smile peeks out from behind her screen, the sun emerging from behind the clouds, and an inconvenient warmth rolls through him from head to toe. “I mean, I have a couple of ideas that I thought I might want to use, but this…this is super helpful. It must have been so much work.”

“Less than you’d think,” he manages, faintly. “I’m glad it helps.”

She nods, emphatic. “It really does. Do you think I could take a couple minutes to look through this on my own, and then maybe…?”

There’s uncertainty in the way she lifts her gaze, a hesitation in the way her voice rises, as if she’s waiting for someone to finish the thought— and it’s not until his chair jolts under him, aided by the firm application of Saito’s foot, that Yamazaki realizes that it’s supposed to be him.

“Ah!” The sound slips through his teeth long before he’s composed an acceptable interjection, but now she’s looking at him, expectant, and the pressure alone squeezes out, “Did you want me to help you, Yukimura?”

It’s worth it for the way her whole face lights, for the way her whole body pitches forward, eagerness leaking from every pore. “Yes! I mean, if that’s okay.” Her eyes dart over his shoulder, curious. “Do you mind?”

Saito shakes his head. “It would be our pleasure.”

“Great!” The sun itself couldn’t put out the wattage Yukimura does now, so bright Yamazaki nearly squints. Oh, he’s never going to live this one down. “Is after dinner okay?”

“Yeah,” he manages faintly as she springs to her feet. “Perfect.”

The door’s barely closed behind her before the pressure of Saito’s stare bores into him, the pregnant silence only honing his unspoken words to a point.

“I know,” he grunts, head falling back against his chair. “I know.”

“It’s a good idea,” Saito says after the world’s most judgmental pause. “I’m sure Ootori will feel the same.”

A groan filters through his fingers. “I know that too.”

“It will solve more than a few logistical issues this session’s agenda has presented.” Yamazaki hardly knows what’s worse: the ribbing he’s about to take from every player in their party, or the fact that Saito has done his own math on the matter, and whatever amount he’s derived has made his tone downright sympathetic. Gentle, even. “Her part would have to be filled sooner rather than later, and I would rather have it be someone of our own choosing, rather than having it assigned to one of the admin—”

“I know. I’m going to DM Ootori about it in a minute. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.” For more reasons than logistics, but that’s the last thing he’s ready to hash out right now. Especially with someone whose personal philosophy is that all is fair in LARP and roleplay— as long as it’s interesting. “It’s just…”

There’s too much ‘just’ to make a tidy little list; so many it’s impossible to separate them from their Gordian snarl into discrete, presentable bullet points. So instead the silence stretches as he struggles, trying to cut it down to its most salient points, the ones that Saito might not only understand, but appreciate, and—

“Complicated?” Saito offers simply.

Yamazaki sighs. “Yeah. Really fucking complicated.”

[Susumu Yamazaki] If you have a moment.

[The1andOotori] for my favorite shinobi? any time

[Susumu Yamazaki] I wanted to update you on our progress with character building. Or rather, if one player wants to progress with one of their current concepts, I think it may require Story Master permission.

[The1andOotori] oh? intriguing if they’re your friends, Susumu, i’m sure that i’ll be happy to accommodate them the others have been just fine right? we were a little thin on lion clan people anyway good to have some more

[Susumu Yamazaki] Please reserve your praise until after I’ve explained their idea.

[The1andOotori] ominous! i like that in a concept anyway lay it on me. promise to react with suitable horror maybe even clutch my pearls

[Susumu Yamazaki] She is an inexperienced player and concerned with her ability to roleplay well with people she is unfamiliar with. So she wanted to pick a character that would allow her to stick close to more familiar and experienced players.

[The1andOotori] that’s pretty clever

[Susumu Yamazaki] She is.

[The1andOotori] so she wants to stick close to you and hajime? i think we can manage that did she have some idea of what she wanted to do?

[Susumu Yamazaki] She wants to be Doji Hogyoku’s daughter.

[The1andOotori] HIME-SAMA??? sorry, just surprised that’s…good with you?

[Susumu Yamazaki] Saito and I have agreed she would be an adequate player to embody her role.

[The1andOotori] wow okay yeah that’s fine wow it actually takes a load off my plate. we were going to have to cast her for this session marie already volunteered but i can tell her we got it covered wow

[Susumu Yamazaki] My friend can pick another role if you it would be too difficult for you to change plans now. I know this is short notice.

[The1andOotori] no no this is good i’d rather have hime-sama be someone you like

[Susumu Yamazaki] I’m sure Marie could also do an admirable job with hime-sama. If that would make things easier for you.

[The1andOotori] uh huh okay if you had your pick of hime-samas do you want marie or your friend?

[Susumu Yamazaki] …

[The1andOotori] no judgment. your choice

[Susumu Yamazaki] I think hime-sama’s personality would come more naturally to Chizuru.

[The1andOotori] there it is then i’ll want to talk to all of you after check-in Saito too i think you guys will be interested in what we’ve cooked up

Yamazaki doesn’t so much sit back in his chair as wither into it, hands clapping over his eyes. “There. I did it.”

A chair squeaks— Saito must be turning to him. “You’re going to have to tell her.”

His shoulders stiffen so fast they ache. “I can’t do that. It would be— be metagaming. She should only know what hime-sama knows.”

He’d also rather die than explain that particular bit of backstory to Yukimura, but he doubts Saito will find that as compelling an excuse.

When his hands tumble to his lap, like dying leaves from a tree, Saito is staring at him. “Who is to say she doesn’t?”

“Excuse me?” He straightens, righteousness flaring beneath his chest. “The Daodoji are circumspect. He would never let her think— no, not even let her suspect—”

“I understand,” Saito assured him. “But what if she hopes…?”

Yamazaki licks his lips, his mouth impossibly dry. “No. That’s not possible. She doesn’t…hime-sama thinks of him as her loyal retainer. And it will stay that way.”

“Unless Ootori changes that.” Saito gives him a pointed glance. “Or Yukimura.”

His heart flutters uselessly in his chest. “She won’t.”

Saito hums, unconvinced. “I could tell her if you want.”

Yamazaki glares. “I certainly don’t!”

“Hm.” Oume settles back in her chair, a slender finger pressed against her pursed lips. “Cutting the deadline a little close this year, aren’t we, Mr Yamazaki?”

“Ah…” Yamazaki’s hand spasms around the strap of his bag, guilt pulling his polite smile thin. “Professor Matsumoto had a few contestations in progress before he left for Japan. I’m given to understand the thirteen hour difference made the process go…slower than either party liked.”

Oume gives him a look over her half-moon spectacles so eloquent the lit department could write a dozen papers about its themes and allusions without even scraping the surface of her meaning. She might be in Administration now, but fifteen years as the former provost’s personal assistant had left her fluent in the sort of subtlety that would make government agencies green with envy. "And that is why you are here, handing me a handful of grades on a…post-it?…at three forty-five?”

“Uh…” He swallows, neck so tight he’s half afraid he’ll gag on his own Adam’s apple. “Yes. But to be fair, I at least put it on a Large Note?”

Her finger twitches; the note’s struck across it, wide enough the stickum spans the whole length, delicate blue lines running in parallel. The movement angles it just enough to read his neatest print, each name and grade change logged with precision, and her mouth wobbles at a corner. “Whatever Ryojun pays you, it isn’t enough. You can tell him that, from me.”

He won’t— even an undergrad knows better than to get between an academic and their funding— but he appreciates the thought. “Sorry again for the late changes. I tried to get them over as early as I could.”

“I’m sure you did, Mr Yamazaki.” There’s a hardness to the set of Oume’s face, a sharpness Yamazaki’s not used to seeing. With a keystroke, she brings up her university inbox, mouth pursed as she clicks Compose. “Don’t worry, I know exactly who to blame.”

It’s a sign— not one of those simple ones, like Caution: High Voltage or Slippery When Wet, but the kind that had skulls and thunderbolts and reads, This Will Kill You and Hurt the Entire Time. His sign really, telling him it’s time to clear out before he can get caught in the splash radius of whatever cursed energy she’s about to lob across the pacific.

He clears his throat, just soft enough to catch the edge of her attention. “Have a happy New Year, ma’am.”

Pale eyes flick up toward him, her mouth sparing him the smallest of smiles. “You too, Mr Yamazaki.”

Yamazaki steps out into the hallway, making it nearly three strides before he lets go of the breath he’s holding, deflating like Toudou’s most recent attempts to make something edible. Next semester, he’s going to sit on Dr Matsumoto’s luggage until the final grades are filed.

“Ah, Yamazaki!”

His whole body starts, jerking to attention, but when he looks up it’s straight into the second button of a maroon parka, left open over its zipper. He has to take a step back— and crane his neck— to even catch a glimpse of the friendly smile hanging above it. “Haah, Shimada. I didn’t see you.”

How a man as big as that can move so silently, he will never know. He appreciates it in the LARP, but here on campus— well, there’s a reason big dog owners at least put collars on them. People usually like a little warning before a Great Dane bounds up into their business.

Shimada’s mouth twitches. “I take it Oume is perhaps not in her best mood?”

“If that folder you are holding contains final grades in it, then I would not expect a warm reception,” he confirms, sternly. “I didn’t think you’d be the sort that would sit on them this late.”

“Oh, no.” A manila envelope has never looked so reasonably sized as it does in his hands. “These are the class descriptions for next semester.”

His brows raise. “Weren’t those supposed to be in a month ago?”

“Yes.” There’s another twitch of that wide mouth, this time in the other direction. “I have a feeling she’ll be just as happy to see these as she would be if this was full of grades.”

Yamazaki has no answer but a grimace.

“Oh, I talked to Ootori last night.” Shimada’s tone is curious, but only politely so. “I heard you’re bringing your friends this weekend.”

“Ah…” He can only hope Ootori didn’t get specific about just who was coming. The last thing he needed was everyone pressed to the glass when they showed up, trying to get a glance at the girl he let play hime-sama. “Yes. My housemates, actually.”

“Oh, that will be nice.” Shimada’s smile widens. “Itou probably hasn’t seen them in a while. No doubt he’ll be excited for them to see him in his biggest role—”

Yamazaki stiffens. “Ah…what was that?”

Shimada blinks. “Oh, didn’t you hear? He’s getting to play Hantei’s younger son. Daisetsu.”

[Yamazaki Susumu] I think we may have made a grave miscalculation.

[Saito.Hajime] How so?

[Yamazaki Susumu] Itou is going to be there.

[Saito.Hajime] Yes?

[Yamazaki Susumu] And we’re bringing Okita.

[Saito.Hajime] Oh Well Shit

#yamachi #hakuouki #my fic #modern au #college au #If the Mind Is Willing #LARP au #i'm having the realization that i do indeed need to build like 12 character for the next few chapter to flow properly and like #freestyle screaming over it. i have bought the 5th ed sourcebook and i have a feeling I will be picking at this #for a few months whenever I wanna stop thinking about my bigger projects 🤣#next chapter is also going to involve OCs and BOY is that gonna be SOMETHING #maybe i can finally find a place to squeeze in souma and nomura 😅

13 notes · View notes