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wordingg · 11 months ago

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Mattress Store

Summary: Are mattress stores all fronts? Why are there so many of them? Why does it suck so much to buy a mattress?

The bat boys discuss.

*****

Dick’s life was perfectly comfortable, if maybe not exactly what he would have expected for himself when he was a kid.

He had his own apartment, he ran free gymnastics and yoga classes in his spare time, and had a complicated on again off again relationship with his long time girlfriend. He was also the general manager of a mattress store, one of the most comfortable if also the most boring job he had had since he turned eighteen.

Being called the general manager sounded a lot more impressive than it was. He only had one full time employee and one part time employee that he had to keep track of. Running the store itself was incredibly easy compared to some other management positions he’d held before. The only somewhat frustrating part of the job was that his boss had recently asked him to pick up his son from the nearby elementary school and keep him at the shop until he could come to pick him up. Maybe if it was a different kid it would have been fine, but Damian was one of the most prickly and surly kids Dick had ever met. Luckily, Dick had never met a kid he didn’t like.

Unfortunately, he didn’t think that was true for the rest of the employees at the shop.

Damian pushed through the front door of the shop, the bell above the door giving a cheery ‘ping!’ as he did so. The inside of Mattress Deals looked the same as it always did. Bare mattresses lined up in rows and columns on top of stained and scratchy carpet that probably hadn’t been replaced since 1996 topped with water stained drop ceiling tiles and big salt grimed floor to ceiling windows. The two other employees of the store were sitting at the back of the showroom floor at the only desk visible from the front.

Dick hurried after Damian carrying his backpack that felt like it held at least five encyclopedia volumes. What were they teaching these kids in that fancy academy?

Dick almost ran into the back of Damian halfway to their destination, having to skip around him to stop a collision. Damian had stopped to stare imperiously at the other two employees, tiny fists on his hips and nose in the air already wrinkled in distaste.

“I see that you two drawlatches are still managing to slack off on my father’s dime,” Damian sneered at the two other men in the shop.

“What the fuck is a drawlatch?” Tim asked without looking up from his phone. He put as much disdain on the last word as possible without actually moving his face.

Tim was their only part time employee. He attended Gotham U full time and was majoring in Computer Science, apparently to the great scorn of his father. Dick didn’t really know what the whole deal was there and honestly it wasn’t any of his business. Tim was a viciously efficient sales person, which more than made up for his weird personality. Despite being part time, he made the most commissions of any of them.

“A guest who overstays their welcome,” Jason replied dryly, turning the page of his book also without looking up at Damian.

Jason was their only full time employee. He was only a few years older than Tim, but already had a felony on his record which made it pretty hard for him to find work. Another thing that really wasn’t any of Dick’s business, but Mr. Wayne had assured him that Jason’s felony was from when he was very young, almost criminally young to have a felony attached to his record. Either way, Mr. Wayne trusted him and Jason was always on time. That’s all Dick could really ask of him.

“Wow, fuck you too, Gremlin,” Tim drawled, holding his phone up briefly as the tinny artificial shutter sound of the camera on his phone went off.

Damian snarled, “Did you just take my photograph?!”

“It’s called a pic. Are you sure you’re not like a hundred?” Tim sighed.

“Okay, okay!” Dick intervened, physically stepping in front of Damian when he started to stomp toward Tim. The last time the two of them had tussled across the store it had ended with Tim sporting a bloody nose and Damian with a split lip. He wasn’t looking forward to a repeat performance explaining something like that to his boss. “I know you’re all happy to see each other, but I need to get Damian set up at the desk so he can work on his homework.”

Damian clicked his tongue and dodged around Dick, but luckily he made his way toward the desk that Jason was lounging at rather than charging at Tim. Jason got up out of the chair and flopped down on a nearby mattress without once looking up from his book. Obediently, Damian got out his books and worksheets and pulled one of the pencils from his pencil case and started to work on filling out his worksheets.

Sighing, Dick rubbed a calloused hand through his hair. He cast a glance out over the store, but it was empty as usual. It was three o’clock on a Thursday, so it wasn’t like he was expecting a rush anyway. A few old sun bleached SALE! signs hanging from the ceiling floated in the slight breeze from the central air units. The only noise was the quiet scratch of Damian’s pencil, the muted tap of Tim’s thumbs on his phone screen and the occasional flap of a page turning from Jason. Stretching backward, Dick bent until he felt a few of vertebra pop satisfyingly before retreating to the broom closet that he charitably called his office. It was barely two steps from Damian, but at least there was a wall shielding him from the rest of the store.

The peace barely lasted for fifteen minutes before Damian seemed unable to help himself.

“How much work have either of you actually done today?” Damian shouted, slamming his pencil down as if the quiet of the store infuriated him. Dick put his forehead down on his desk and prayed for someone to set the store on fire or something. Not like a big dangerous fire. Just dangerous enough to close the store for like a week or something. A nice relaxing paid renovation, that sort of thing.

“Sooooo much work,” Tim moaned with a completely straight face.

“I’ve worked so hard today. I’m completely wiped,” Jason agreed, not looking up from his book.

Damian jumped to his feet in a fit of pique. “You terrible people dare to leech off my father like this! Off of his kindness and charity! As if anyone else would dare to laze about on the job!”

“Jesus, calm down. It’s just a front. Who cares,” Tim said with a roll of his eyes.

Jason snorted from behind his book, but otherwise didn’t respond.

“Guys,” Dick moaned. He wished Tim wouldn’t bait Damian constantly. He understood the temptation, he too was once a surly teenager or at least hung around them. Damian was such a fiery little guy that it was incredibly easy to wind him up. But, Tim didn’t have to deal with the hours of grumping, and growling, and fussing that came after.

Damian made a high pitched noise of outrage and looked at Tim as if he had just taken a shit right on his cat.

“My father’s business is not a front for money laundering!” Damian screeched.

“Oh, come on,” Tim said, finally putting his phone away and giving Damian his full attention. “There’s another Mattress Deals right across the street. What reason would there be to have two of the exact same store so close together?”

“Unless you don’t have to worry about competition,” Jason whispered from behind his book.

Dick threw Jason a dirty look, but he just grinned back at him with his uncomfortably pointy incisors.

“The store across the street used to be a Sealy’s and corporate bought them out last year. That’s why there’s two of the same store so close together,” Dick said, trying to be the voice of reason.

“Exactly,” Damian said with a nod. “There is a more than reasonable explanation. It’s just that the two of you are buffoons who are jumping to the worst conclusions.”

“Well, how about the inventory then. When was the last time you saw one of these mattresses actually sell?” Tim asked with an arched brow.

Damian was not cowed however. “I know for a fact that this store is one of father’s most successful. In fact, I’ve heard him say that it is the store with the most units sold in his region,” Damian said with an imperious tilt of his chin.

“Exactly,” Tim said, pointing one long pale finger at Damian. “So, why are most of these mattresses older than me?”

“Tim,” Dick said in exasperation.

“It’s true,” Jason said with a mischievous grin, finally putting aside his book and sitting up. “This mattress has the same stain on it from when I dropped chili on it the first week I started here.”

“Jason! There’s a stain on it?!” Dick yelped, jumping to his feet to inspect the mattress that Jason was still reclining on.

“Yeah,” Jason said with the same inflection that most people said ‘duh’. “I just pull the little velvet logo thing over it so people don’t see it,” Jason explained, pulling aside the long dark blue velvet strip of fabric with the manufacturer’s name and logo that wrapped around the lower half of the mattress. There indeed was a rusty red stain in the lower left corner.

“Jason, what the hell,” Dick whispered as he rubbed at the the stain with his thumb, despite knowing that it was years old.

“What? I was new. I didn’t know if you’d fire me or what,” he said with a shrug. “Now I know that you bitches don’t even pay for these things,” Jason kicked the side of the mattress he was sitting on with a dirty steel toe boot and the cheap metal frame groaned dangerously.

“You don’t pay for them?” Damian asked, his fury momentarily derailed into honest confusion, his little angry face instead twisted into befuddlement.

“No. The manufacturers give the stores free mattresses to display,” Tim said with a lopsided close mouth smile that looked like he was holding back laughter.

“If you knew that, why did you imply that the floor models didn’t change because the store made no legitimate sales?” Damian barked, his fury building back.

“Because sitting here all day doing nothing is mind numbing and riling you up is the only break I have from the monotony,” Tim deadpanned.

Damian made a strangled whistling sound in the back of his throat like a teakettle getting ready to boil. Dick swept in, turning Damian with a gentle press of his shoulder to get him to focus on him instead of Tim. See again, bloody nose / busted lip encounter.

“We’re just a showroom. All the actual product is stored in warehouses. People come here to try out the mattresses and make the payment and then we coordinate the delivery with the warehouse. That’s all. Nothing nefarious there,” Dick explained with his best soothing manager smile and voice. It didn’t usually work on customers, no matter how much Mr. Wayne assured Dick that he was very reassuring and charming. Luckily, Damian was still eleven and so it seemed to soothe him well enough.

“So, then there is a reasonable explanation for everything. This store is not a front,” Damian mumbled, sticking out his lower lip in a mulish expression as he seemed to turn all this information over in his head.

“Who said this store was a front?” a rumbling voice asked from the front door, the bell chiming halfway through the sentence.

Dick turned around to see his boss, the regional manager of Mattress Deals, Mr. Wayne, walking through the front door. He looked tired and harried, but that was his default expression.

“Father!” Damian exclaimed in excitement. He dodged around Dick and seemed ready to throw himself at his father’s middle, but apparently caught himself a bare second before he launched himself off the ground. He balanced on the balls of his feet for a fraught second, while Mr. Wayne put out his arms to catch him in case he toppled. But, Damian found his balance and bounced back into a straight backed stance and quickly tucked his hands into the small of his back.

In a much more somber (if somewhat embarrassed) tone, he said, “Father, you have returned early.”

Mr. Wayne very slowly moved his hands from where they hand been held out to catch Damian, one going to the back of his head to mess up his already ruffled dark hair and the other to his hip. It was an awkward movement that didn’t fool anyone and seemed completely for Damian’s benefit.

“Yes…” he said slowly, then blinked and seemed to come back to his normal monotone. “Yes, I had intended to do a quarterly evaluation of the east side store today, but it burnt down.”

“What?” Jason laughed, elated.

“What?!” Dick gasped, aghast.

“Fucking unfair,” Tim muttered to his phone screen. “Some bitches have all the luck.”

“Yes… Well,” Mr. Wayne said awkwardly. “The police are investigating it as a case of suspected arson. I’m sure they have it well in hand. In the mean time, I can’t very well assess their finances if all their paper records just went up in smoke.”

“Geez, did everyone get out okay?” Dick asked, crossing his arms over his chest as he nervously considered all the planes of foam and fabric surrounding them.

“Yes, everyone evacuated before smoke was even detected. Someone pulled the fire alarm,” Mr. Wayne said, putting a reassuring hand on Dick’s shoulder.

“Hence, the suspected arson,” Tim sighed.

“Yes,” Mr. Wayne agreed with a frown.

“I guess a mattress store would catch fire pretty quickly,” Dick said slowly and uncertainly.

“Mattresses are actually treated to be highly flame retardant,” Mr. Wayne recited dryly. “The internal layers are interspersed with flame retardant material and some fabrics are treated with boric acid to make them more flame resistant.” Turning to Tim, he added darkly, “The fire started in the break room and didn’t spread much further.”

“And those ungrateful bastards even had a break room,” Tim hissed back theatrically.

Tossing Tim a wry smile, Mr. Wayne put an arm around Damian’s shoulder. His small son, proud though he was, seemed to soak in the affection, leaning into his father’s side unselfconsciously. He led him back to the desk and helped him start to pack away his homework supplies.

“We were just discussing how all mattress stores are a front,” Jason said with a mischievous grin as he lounged on the chili stained mattress that Dick was realizing was the one he usually sat on if the desk was occupied. It was also the mattress that Dick had to clean most often out of all the ones in the store.

Mr. Wayne’s mouth pulled into a similar smile at the leading statement. “I think looking in from outside it makes sense,” he said slowly. “But, that’s only because people don’t understand how incredibly lucrative mattress sales are.”

“I did not know that, Father,” Damian said stiffly, a textbook clutched to his chest. He stared up at Mr. Wayne with restrained curiosity as his father tucked his unaccountably cute dog patterned pencils into his also incredibly cute cat patterned pencil case.

“Oh, yes. Mattresses enjoy the highest markup of all furniture items,” Mr. Wayne explained as he continued to pack his son’s school supplies away. “A mattress usually costs between $75-$150 to manufacture, because the materials used are very cheap. However, because it’s a purchase that most consumers only have to go through every ten years or so, because it’s a purchase they likely have put off until they have to get a mattress quickly, and because the used market is practically non-existent, mattress sellers can basically pick their price point.”

“That is…” Damian’s face was making some entertaining fluctuations between horrified and impressed.

“Almost criminal,” Tim added when it didn’t look like Damian would come up with anything.

“My father is not a criminal!” Damian was quick to snap.

“Well,” Mr. Wayne said with a shrug. “That’s business, I think.”

Tim snorted and let himself slide off the mattress and onto the nasty carpet below.

“And, we can all be grateful for it, because it’s the reason we all have a job! Right, guys?” Dick said loudly.

“Yes, boss,” Jason and Tim chorused like two recalcitrant school children.

“And I, as always, am grateful for all the great work you all put in. Keep up the good work and please do not burn the place down,” Mr. Wayne said with a long suffering laugh.

“You got it, boss,” Dick said with a laugh.

“Apparently these bitches don’t burn anyway,” Jason said with a suspicious look at the mattress he was sitting on.

“Get us a break room and I’ll think about it,” Tim said from the floor.

“It was lovely talking to you all. Dick, feel free to close up early if business is dead,” Mr. Wayne said with a sympathetic glance around the empty storefront.

“Sir, yes sir,” Dick said with an enthusiastic salute.

“What do you say to take out for dinner?” Mr. Wayne asked Damian with an indulgent look down at his little scowling face.

His big green eyes got bigger. “From White Elephant?” he asked hopefully.

“I can never say no to their samosas,” Mr. Wayne agreed with a pleased grin.

Damian practically skipped out the front door, his father following behind him with his son’s small red backpack slung over his forearm.

The second the door closed, Tim’s head popped up from below a nearby mattress. Dick suppressed an unmanly screech only at the last second. That was not the mattress that Tim had slid off of. How had he gotten so close so quietly?

“So… We’re closing now right?” he asked with a face that said he absolutely saw Dick flinch.

“Guys, it’s not even four,” Dick sighed. “Tim, you’ve been here for like an hour.”

“But, you’ll pay me for my whole shift, right?” Tim asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I want to go see the Barbie movie before it leaves theaters,” Jason put in.

“You’ve already seen it like a dozen times,” Dick said aghast.

“It’s a feast for the eyes! A distillation of our culture! A tour de force-” Jason began to go off.

“Let the man see his Barbie movie, Dick!” Tim shouted from somewhere around Dick’s ankles.

“Oh my god!” Dick groaned at the ceiling. A sad gray water damaged ceiling tile looked back at him indifferently, like the uncaring god that put him in charge of these two fuckos. “Okay, god. Yes. Go.”

“Finally!” Jason exclaimed and jumped to his feet, shoving his paperback into his back pocket and already making his way toward the exit.

“Yay~” Tim sang somehow making it sound like the most sarcastic yay that any teenager had ever said. Dick didn’t see him emerge until he popped to his feet a few feet from the glass doors.

After the two of them had disappeared out the front door, Dick walked around trying to clean up and put things away. Not that there was much to tidy. They hadn’t had a customer all day.

As he was straightening up the small desk in the back, he laid eyes on the old desk lamp. It was a classic with a basic incandescent bulb, the kind that got pretty hot after you left it on for a while.

Dick stared at it thoughtfully. He looked back at the chili stained mattress beside the desk. The mattress was so close to the desk that if someone bumped the desk hard enough, the lamp could easily fall onto the mattress.

As Dick stepped out of the front door for the night, he looked back at the mattress, the bright desk lamp glowing faintly where the bulb lay right against that damn chili stain.

“We’ll see how flame retardant you are,” he muttered. Then, he turned and locked the door behind him before sprinting for his car. He wondered if Barbara would want to make up with him that night. He could always buy some nice flowers and chocolates and give it a try.

#batfam #fanfiction #alternate universe #no capes au #mattress store au #dick grayson #damian wayne #tim drake #jason todd #bruce wayne #money laundering #wordinggwrites

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mattheo-riddles-princess · 21 days ago

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Twin Sized Mattress Masterlist

Adrienne Celeste Potter agrees to an interview with The Daily Prophet about her time with The Marauders. While the interviewer thinks she is just getting the story about why the band broke up, Vega tells her the whole story; starting from their 7th year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

TROPES: Forbidden Love Close Proximity Lovers to Enemies to Lovers Best Friends to Lovers Jealous Love Secret Dating Fake Dating

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Interview 1997 || Adrienne

#marauders #marauders band au #forbidden love #close proximity #lovers to enemies to lovers #best friends to lovers #jealous love #secret dating #fake dating #twin sized mattress #dorcas meadowes #harry potter #james potter #lily evans #remus lupin #sirius black #regulus black #band au #marauders fic

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sesamestreep · 10 months ago

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30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 1

Write about a first kiss (from this list) ➸ …this is a high school AU….? don’t ask me why, it just happened….

“I thought you’d be more excited about this,” Matt says, leaning his cheek against his cane.

“I’m excited,” Foggy says, from his spot next to him on the bleachers. He’d come over to say hi when he noticed Matt loitering there after he got out of rehearsal and now they’ve been shooting the shit for thirty minutes and his mom is going to be beside herself worrying about him getting home late. That’s still not motivation enough for him to get up and leave, though.

“It is exciting,” Foggy says, aiming to sound more firm about it this time. “It’s just nerve wracking too. I don’t know.”

“It’s just pretend,” Matt says, with a smile that Foggy has categorized in his head as his charming asshole smile, the one he gives people (mostly Foggy, as far as he can tell) when he’s giving them shit just for the sake of it. He’s never called it that out loud, though, to anyone but especially not to Matt so far, thankfully. He’s not even sure why he needs a well-organized mental database of all of Matt’s smiles in the first place. “Why should you be nervous?”

“I’ve got to kiss a girl on stage,” Foggy says, and he sounds twelve. This is so embarrassing. “I mean, not yet, but eventually. We’re going to have to practice it too. What if it’s gross? What if I’m gross and it makes her cry or barf or a third worse thing I haven’t even thought of? What if she’s gross and I cry and barf and also a third thing? What if I fall in love with her and she doesn’t fall in love with me? What if we both fall in love, date for years, have children together, and years down the line, we break up because we mistook the excitement of being on stage together for love and erroneously built a life on that and not real, genuine emotion and respect for one another?!”

Matt considers him, still smiling. “Well, when you put it like that, you’ve got a lot to worry about, actually.”

“That’s not helping!”

“Okay, sorry. The girl from the play you have to kiss is Diana, right? Diana Weisfeldt?”

“Yeah,” Foggy says, stretching out his legs in front of him. Diana’s nice enough, though he doesn’t know her very well, but she’s two years older than him and just pretty enough that he’s got to worry about kissing her in front of people and not embarrassing himself. He’s never thought about her much before now, when he’s suddenly got to kiss her in the spring musical.

“Okay, well, between me and you, I don’t think you have to worry about Diana falling in love with you.”

“Ouch, thanks, Matt. Between me and you, your hair looks stupid today!”

“I’m not—” Matt laughs, thrown off like he wasn’t expecting it at all. “I wasn’t trying to insult you! I just…heard something that makes me think her affections are engaged…elsewhere.”

“Oh,” Foggy says, scuffing his shoe on the metal bleacher. “Sorry. In that case, your hair looks fine.”

“Sure, like I’m going to believe that now,” Matt says, with a wide smile, like he’s being sarcastic, but he does brush his hair back from his forehead, like he actually feels awkward about it now.

“What did you hear?”

“Huh?”

“I asked what you heard,” Foggy repeats. “About Diana?”

Matt rubs the back of his neck with his hand. “Oh. I couldn’t—it’s not for me to say, it’s just—don’t worry about kissing her is all I meant. I’m sure it will be fine. It’s just acting, and I’m sure you can manage a normal looking kiss with her. She’s cool, right?”

“Yeah, she seems like it,” Foggy says, hiding his disappointment. Matt always seems to know what’s going on with everybody, despite the fact that he only started at this school earlier this year.

He’d gotten assigned to Foggy’s homeroom and Foggy, in turn, had gotten assigned by their teacher to give him a tour of the school, which was fine. Foggy likes meeting new people and Matt seemed cool, especially after Foggy recognized his name from the newspaper all those years ago. He had the gangly half-starved look of the frontman of an emo band, just without the eyeliner or the tight clothes, which made him handsome in Foggy’s estimation, which itself was entirely based on what he heard girls saying when they thought no one was around. Matt’s clothes are always a little too big for him and a little faded and completely unfussy in a way that suggests he doesn’t worry about the way he looks ever, which is how Foggy kind of wishes he was. Even on that first day, he noticed all that, and the sort of folded up way that Matt carried himself, like he really didn’t want to impose in any way. He’s also the only blind kid at their school and, despite the evidence that Matt can manage on his own and maybe the fact that it was a little patronizing to even think this way, Foggy felt an immediate responsibility towards him, from that first interaction.

It didn’t help that Matt was sort of funny in a quiet way, where he’d say something under his breath that would take you a minute to really hear and then another to fully get and then you’d be laughing at a dumb joke that no one else heard way after he’d made it. That didn’t matter, though, because Foggy always caught Matt smiling to himself, secretly pleased, when he made Foggy laugh. It certainly didn’t help when a few days later, after this handsome, mysterious kid with dark glasses and perfect manners and an even more perfect jaw (according to the cheerleaders who sat behind Foggy in Pre-Calc, at least) arrived, the rumor got around that Matt had only transferred to this school because he’d gotten kicked out of his last one—a Catholic school, of all things—for fighting too much. Some people said he’d gone after a teacher, which sounded made up to Foggy. It wasn’t hard to imagine Matt getting into a fight in general because, despite his good manners, there was an edge to his pleasantries on occasion that even Foggy could sense, a limit to his good graces that no one had, luckily, discovered yet but existed nonetheless. But fighting a teacher seemed like an exaggeration on the part of the rumor mill, for sure. Foggy had never gone to Catholic school, so he wasn’t certain, but he thought the teachers there were, like, nuns and stuff. Surely, Matt wouldn’t punch a nun, would he? That would be kind of extreme.

Still, Foggy had been grateful that fate had thrown them together and given him a chance to befriend Matt before that rumor started, because Foggy didn’t want to be the guy who was only nice to Matt after he heard he had anger issues. Matt seemed to like him too, despite an abundance of cooler, better options. It was probably just loyalty that motivated him to keep seeking Foggy out. A lot of people think Matt’s cool and even more girls want to date him, from what Foggy’s heard. He could definitely do better, but he might not know that. Or maybe he just likes that Foggy didn’t ask him anything about his old school. It’s hard to tell. Foggy’s not complaining, anyway.

“It’s like I said, don’t freak out about it,” Matt says, oblivious. “It’s just kissing.”

“Right,” Foggy says, to the middle distance. There’s a pigeon on the sidewalk carrying a lottery ticket in its beak. He hopes it wasn’t a winner. “Just kissing.”

“I mean, you’ve kissed a girl before. It’s just like that, but…on stage…”

“Right. Exactly. Just like that.”

“Foggy,” Matt says, slowly. “You have kissed a girl before, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” Foggy lies, and sees Matt wince. “I mean, kind of. More or less.”

“‘More or less’? What does that mean?”

“It means I’ve…you know…the concept of kissing is not foreign to me, not entirely, but…you know, technically, I’m not exactly—I haven’t precisely, well…”

“You haven’t kissed a girl,” Matt interrupts, flatly.

Foggy shakes his head miserably. “No.”

“Not at all?”

“I don’t think there’s degrees of kissing!” he practically shouts, before catching Matt’s expression. “Oh my god, there are! Okay! I’m going to go…walk into traffic.”

“Hey,” Matt says, grabbing his arm. “It’s fine! You don’t need to be embarrassed!”

“I definitely do, actually, because I am and I will be forever!”

“No, it’s really fine. And honestly, your freaking out makes way more sense to me now.”

“I don’t want my first kiss to be in drama club,” Foggy whines, now that the thing he’d been holding back is out in the open. “That’s so weird!”

“It’s not that weird! Think of it as practice!”

“That’s honestly worse. Your first kiss is supposed to be important and, ideally, romantic. Mine’s going to be in front of Ms. Calder!”

“Well, if it helps, my first kiss was not romantic either, so…”

“When was it?” Foggy asks, too eagerly. “What happened?”

Matt looks slightly uncomfortable. “It was, uh—I was 11. It was at a birthday party.”

“That sounds nice! And normal.”

“It was a part of a game,” Matt says. “So it wasn’t special or anything. The same girl kissed two other people at that party. So did I, actually.”

“Oh my god,” Foggy says, burying his face in his hands. “So not only did you have your first kiss five whole years before me, but your second and third kiss happened the same day? With different people?!”

“And my fourth,” Matt says, looking chagrined. “But that was the first girl again.”

“How many people have you kissed?” Foggy asks, turning to give him an awed expression. Matt pulls a face, and he realizes it’s a weird question. “Right. That’s not cool to ask. It’s probably a lot, though, right?”

“I haven’t kept track,” Matt mumbles, awkwardly.

“Cool,” Foggy nods. “Okay. Reminder to self: do not keep count of number of kissing partners. If and when I ever find someone who wants to kiss me.”

“You will,” Matt replies, looking pained. “It’s not—it’s fine that you haven’t yet! You’re just—!”

“So help me god, if you call me a late bloomer right now, I’m not responsible for what I do!”

“No,” Matt laughs, shaking his head. “I wasn’t going to—everyone matures differently!”

Foggy shoves him and Matt sort of grabs his wrist to extend their scuffle a second longer. Yet another reason Foggy wouldn’t be surprised if Matt did get expelled for fighting: he loves to get up in people’s space. He does it innocently enough most of the time, being more tactile than the average guy, but Foggy can tell he kind of likes to push his luck now and then. Foggy yanks his arm away with more force than he needs to.

“Easy for you to say,” he grumbles. “You’re kissing up a storm out there!”

“Not really. I mean, I do okay.”

“You’re doing more than okay from where I’m sitting,” Foggy says, and Matt has the audacity to look guilty, which makes Foggy feel bad. He’d meant it as a compliment, but it clearly hadn’t landed that way, so he attempts to pivot. “The answer is clear. You must teach me your ways, Obi-Wan.”

Matt snorts. “Well, first you’ve got to start by skipping the Star Wars references—”

“Okay, fair enough.”

“And then—wait, you’re as handsome as me, right?”

Foggy nods vigorously, even though the physical comedy will be lost on Matt. “Absolutely,” he replies. “One might even say more handsome. In the right light.”

“Perfect,” Matt laughs. “Then, yeah, you should have no trouble with girls.”

“And yet, here I am! Unkissed! The injustice of it is hard to bear!”

“You can always just wait around for your shot with Diana…”

“Who knows how many guys she’s kissed that she’ll have to compare me to,” Foggy complains.

“Probably not a lot,” Matt says, mildly. When Foggy gives him a pointed look, he smiles in a way that’s both vague and devilish and then shrugs. “Not everyone’s as easy as me.”

“That’s certainly true,” Foggy replies petulantly and Matt laughs. “No, I mean, Diana’s nice and all, but it’s not—” He sighs, even though it’s far too dramatic under the circumstances, and continues, “It’s just not what I thought it’d be. And I’m going to be so nervous until it happens.”

“Yeah, that’s no good,” Matt says, sympathetically.

“It’s fine,” Foggy says, pushing himself to stand. It’s probably past time for him to head out. He’s been whining about this for a while and his mom is definitely going to send out a search party soon enough. And Matt probably has better things to do than listen to his problems, anyway. “I should get home. I’ve got homework and stuff to—”

Matt stands too, very suddenly, and while Foggy is still yammering on about whatever just to fill space, leans in to press his lips to Foggy’s in a brief but utterly life-altering kiss. It’s not really passionate or anything like that, but it is insistent, which helps dissipate the immediate thought that Foggy has that this is somehow an accident, that maybe Matt tripped and fell and kissed him on the mouth. He didn’t see any evidence of that and he was looking right at him when he stood up, but bleachers can be precarious and Matt’s blind and maybe Foggy blinked and missed it? It could happen, but also it seems unlikely given the way Matt is just lingering there, as if to give no room for plausible deniability. It doesn’t turn into making out and there’s no passionate embracing, like in the movies and also like Foggy was sort of hoping might happen when he finally got around to kissing somebody, just because that seems more romantic. The kiss stays closed mouthed and respectful, friendly more than anything else, really, except that Foggy now knows how soft Matt’s lips are from touching them with his lips and he’s going to be thinking about that probably forever. And even though there’s no tongues involved in this kiss, he can feel how damp Matt’s lips are from running his tongue over them right before initiating the kiss and he’s also going to need to think about that forever as well. All in all, he’s got a lot to think about and little time to really react.

The moment it’s over, Foggy is overwhelmed by the urge to do it again, because surely now that he’s not surprised, he can do better. After all, that’s why the whole stage kissing thing was bothering him, because Diana didn’t deserve his first shot at kissing ever. She deserved someone with some skill, at least, especially since she was just acting. He didn’t want to put the burden of pretending he knew what he was doing onto someone who wasn’t even getting real enjoyment out of it. He feels the same instinct with Matt, not because it’s the same situation, but because he needs Matt to know he can rise to the occasion, that he’s not thoroughly pathetic. He improves with rehearsal and he wants that on the record.

Though, of course, he can’t do that. Matt might not be acting, but he didn’t kiss Foggy just now out of genuine feeling. He was trying to help him and be a good friend, but it was an act of pity. He was putting Foggy out of his misery, which was considerate, but it doesn’t mean he wants to keep kissing him. He’s the one who pulled away first, after all.

“There,” Matt says, looking pleased and utterly unbothered. “Now you don’t have to be nervous anymore.”

Foggy nods, not knowing how to articulate that Matt has, instead, given him several new reasons to be nervous. “Thanks,” he replies, faintly.

“I know it’s still not romantic, like you wanted, but…”

Matt trails off and he doesn’t look nervous himself, but there’s something anxious to the way his gaze, never really riveted on the person he’s talking to so much as angled in the general vicinity of their face, skitters off into the distance rather than staying on Foggy that betrays the smallest chink in the armor that is Matt’s confidence. Like he thinks Foggy might actually be mad at him for this, rather than just absolutely reevaluating everything he thought about who he is as a person as of two minutes ago.

“It’ll do,” Foggy manages to say, somewhat confidently, and the shadow of doubt passes from Matt’s expression, leaving him looking as charming and dear as he’s always been to Foggy and somehow entirely different at the same time.

#HWS30days #homelywenchsociety #that’s my writing tag! don’t worry about it!#mattfoggy #matt x foggy #daredevil #this got VERY out of hand #every day will not be this long I just got swept up in this prompt #enough that I?? Wrote a high school AU??? which I famously don’t enjoy???#what’s going on here??#apparently is exclusively write AUs where these two kiss under weird extenuating circumstances #anyway we know foggy did theater as a kid/teen that’s canon I’m just giving the people what they want #in my head the musical he’s doing here is once upon a mattress #I know there’s kissing in like most musicals but that’s what popped into my brain #tell me he couldn’t manage a killer version of ‘yesterday I loved you’ YOU CANNOT #it would be great #anyway I’m doing a good job being chill about this challenge already

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totaleclipse573 · 3 months ago

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Thinking rn about how Terios was raised and grew up on the Black Comet I’ll talk in the tags

#Giant alien creatures and the tiny toddler that they know if they attempt to harm (outside of practice) they’ll probably be killed for #(he’s important)#I imagine little Terios was scared of the Black Arms at first but was raised to see them as his own brethern #but also Terios’ over-sympathy for them as he grows vs Doleon’s “it’s sick/injured? Smh kill it we can just make a better one” my god.#I ALSO imagine Doleon had his own place within the comet. (Like Black Death did in the comics) By extension Terios was also allowed in ther #Ter probably felt really guilty and sad when all the Black Arms died just because Doleon did (the first time) oughhhhh #They had no free will. They were tethered to the hivemind. to Doleon. Thats not fair….#IM INSANE RN #Moves into team dark’s apartment and tries to sleep on the floor at first #“Do people not normally sleep on the floor?” He asks and they’re like #OH OF COURSE there were no beds or such things on the comet. Why would there be.#He’s so genuine with his question. Never seen a bed in his life. Maybe he’s the first to use the corner mattress?#But gives it up for Clippy later. He’s totally fine with it! The couch is still comfier than the floor shdvdjdbdjd #I’m getting off topic now but DO YOU SEEEEEE #wow that was a lot #sonic the hedgehog #sonic fandom #sth #oc universe au #black arms #sonic oc #terios the darkhog #sonic au #terios lore

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carnivalcarriondiscarded · 1 year ago

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me? watching dhmis for the 'nth time? its more likely than you think

#when your comfort show is 6 episodes of puppet horror #Theres Three Of Us! Just Three Of Us! Look Closely You Will See~#i need my dose of these idiots ok #just battled through hell traffic #and moving big ass mattresses #i deserve to watch my comfort puppets & eat my tasty lil beef bowl #and then... perhaps ask answering. or writing. or both #or scribbles!! who knows!!!#wait no. show. beef. Shower. then creative stuff #we will see how i feel....#absolutely unprompted #i am feeling Very motivated for lights out rn #somebody went through like.... the entire tag and provided their own tag commentary/thoughts #and it was Delightful #i was like 'yes! oh! good thoughts!! excellent point!!! Fantastic Question!!! nodding enthusiastically!!!'#for a second there i was gettin kinda :/ about the au for Multiple Reasons #but they've helped banish those Stressful Thoughts and its like hey! yeah! i Love this au!#but anyway! puppet time! beef time!#time to see my favorite special guest - Unemployed Brendan! (he's me!)

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softquietsteadylove · 1 year ago

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Can you write a story which thena and gil a childhood best friend but one day gil got kidnapped and everyone assume his dead but not thena her family even sent her to a mental institution to make her better, Year after year past she still can't accept gil is gone, then one day Gil appear in front of her out of nowhere and was like "Sorry to keep you waiting"

"Hi, I'm Gil."

She could always remember him being like that--so warm and open and inviting. She had met him as just a little boy, her age, maybe a year older. And when kids are young like that, one year can be a huge difference to overcome, but young Gil had come right up to her, a gap between his front teeth and the biggest smile she had ever seen.

"Wanna be friends?"

The would become the very best of friends. Always together, always doing something, or nothing, so long as they didn't have to be apart for it. He would play anything with her, even if it was a game 'for girls', or 'babies', like her brother would say it was. Gil would collect butterflies with her, or help her learn to braid hair, or set up elaborate tea parties. They did everything together.

Even as they got older, and even as they gained other friends, nothing came between them. Ikaris still always insisted it was dumb that Gil liked playing with his baby sister more than him, but neither of them cared. And Sersi and Makkari never minded Gil playing with them.

Not even starting school divided them. They weren't exactly in the same class, but recess and lunch were their little moments of reprieve. Gil would share the snacks and lunch he got as a growing boy, and Thena would happily trade away the parts of her lunch she didn't like but knew Gil enjoyed. Everything else could wait, whether it was school, or their own circles of friends.

They were barely 11 years old when Gil went missing.

"Hi sweetie," she could remember a police officer kneeling down in front of her. "Do you remember the last time you saw your friend?"

"Lunch," she had answered, feeling completely numb. She had already assumed something was wrong when Gil was nowhere to be found when it was time to walk home together. "We always have lunch together."

"And do you always walk home the same way?"

There were plenty of questions like that. Thena could remember Gil's family and hers mulling around their home, police officers walking in and out all evening. Gil was missing--just vanished in the few minutes no one from the school had eyes on him and before she rounded the corner from her classroom at the back of the building to join him.

If she had been with him just a minute earlier, it could have saved him.

Everyone told her not to think that way, of course. She was put in counselling, but her determination that Gil was still out there somewhere was 'something to keep an eye on'. The word 'obsessed' was tossed around plenty as well, but Thena had more important things to worry about: Gil.

Makkari and Sersi were worried too, but their support exceeded their concerns. They supported her when she said she wanted to go into criminal psychology. They supported her obsession with true crime and morbid and macabre curiosities. Even if they were worried, they understood why she was possessed by the idea of understanding what would make a person do something like that. And more importantly, learning about what would happen during, and then after the abduction.

For all those calling it a sick obsession, it served her well. It drove her like nothing else. She excelled, advanced quickly and aggressively in all she did. Who cared what the reason was? At least she was doing something, unlike everyone who had inevitably given up on him.

The officers who had hounded her with questions?--gone. The judge who deemed the case cold?--nothing. Her own family--Gil's own family! Ikaris believed it too, but every time he tried to tell her to give up for her own well being they just got into a huge, violent fight over it. So he stopped trying to convince her.

Once she had enough knowledge to begin her own investigation, then it was a bridge too far. The worry could no longer wait, and everyone decided that she needed help. Sersi and Makkari pleaded her case, but her parents deemed her mentally unfit. Even Ikaris stood by as she was hauled away into the back of a van, kicking and screaming for all of the neighbours to whisper about.

Let them watch, she figured. It was a good opportunity for her to remind them that they had failed an 11 year old boy because of their blind eyes.

"Go on."

Thena lifts her eyes and then looks back down at her lap. They ask her this every year, around the time Gil disappeared. There are plenty of other routine appointments through the year, but they only bring up Gil and her past at this certain time.

If she just admits that there's no way he's still alive, and that her obsession is a coping mechanism, then she gets to go home.

"He's alive," she claims outright, nailing another stake in her coffin. Her eyes are clear as she looks at the psychiatrist who then scribbles something in her notes. Thena narrows her eyes at her, "I know he is."

"Tell me more about Gil," the psych asks of her, switching tactics instead of locking horns with her. Not that it gets anyone anywhere.

Thena sighs. She has nothing better to do, staring out the window of the office and at the leaves changing. "Gil was...the best."

"Gil was sweet. He was sweet in a way boys usually aren't, especially so young. But he liked playing quiet games or drawing or playing house more than he did roughhousing. Other kids called him names for it, of course, but he didn't care."

She smiles.

"We would play house, and he would braid my hair and wave me off to work," she laughs at the memory of how they thought the world worked back then. "I would come home and he would have a beautiful pretend meal set out for us. He would put on whatever music we could find and ask me to dance for our anniversary."

"That sounds very sweet."

Thena glares at the woman for interrupting her blissful trip down memory lane. But she continues. "Gil was always sweet. Even when we got older, started school, he never stopped spending time with me even though I was a girl, or I was younger than him. He would defend me from older children and I would defend him from just about anyone else."

"He wanted to be a chef," Thena says, and her throat tightens and she chokes on her air. Because he would have become such a brilliant chef, and he would have that smile he always had, and she doesn't even know what he looks like now.

"It sounds like you two loved each other very much."

Thena doesn't bother answering that. No one understands, anyway. Everyone likes to think of their friendship as this precious thing of the past, like they were such angelic things. Everyone acts as if her memories of Gil are all she has left of him.

"Thena," the therapist shifts in her seat as she tries to breach more dangerous territory. "I know how much you love Gil. Can you tell me how this time of year makes you feel?"

Not this bullshit. Thena resists the urge to roll her eyes, looking out the window again. The leaves are changing, and it makes her think of the leaf Gil saved for her the morning he disappeared. He gave it to her before school, claiming he'd never seen a leaf the colour of her hair before.

She still has it. It's one of her few possessions, pressed into an old and worn copy of Robert Frost work. She sighs, "Gil liked poetry."

The therapist resigns herself to being ignored.

"He liked making things rhyme, rudimentary literary devices, jokes and brain teasers," Thena smiles again, now just speaking aloud to herself. "I told him he could be a poet. He said it wouldn't pay well, and then how would we do things like pay mortgages and have two cars?"

"He really thought of everything."

He did. Gil was very forward thinking as a child. He always considered every possible angle of something, despite looking more like a kid who would act first and think later.

All the more reason to believe that he wouldn't have just wandered off with someone, or that he would have found a way to escape if he did get plucked off the street somehow.

"Thena-"

"I believe that's our time," she cuts the therapist off, standing and beginning to walk out the door on her own. She's been here long enough that they aren't quite as strict with her.

"Indeed," the psych stands as well, at least giving her the respect of sending her off properly. "I'll see you next week."

"Can't wait," Thena mutters as she heads for the common area. Sometimes she wonders if prison would be better than this place. At least prisoners are allowed to keep things in their cells.

It'll be winter soon, and she'll think about Gil, wonder if he has to endure winters in some terrible little cellar. Or maybe he did manage to get away, because he was always clever. Maybe he managed to find a new life for himself somewhere.

After a trauma like that, maybe his mentality was so affected he wouldn't be her Gil anymore anyway. A morbid thought, but she didn't study psychology for some delusion that he could be completely unaffected by it all.

She has been in this mental institution for years now, too. Her parents don't want anything to do with her, and she could be released if they weren't funnelling money in to keep her here. All they want is to hear that she's forgotten about Gil completely.

Well, it's never going to happen, so her parents can go to hell.

Thena arrives in the common area, devoid of anyone else this close to meal time. The food is awful anyway. She would rather starve and think about Gil's cookies he would make every winter.

She leans on the windowsill, looking out at the trees. "These woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep."

"And miles to go before I sleep."

She doesn't turn to look at who's joining her. She doesn't much care, and she doesn't recognise the voice, although it is familiar.

"And miles to go before I sleep."

It is familiar. It's soft, and gentle, deeper than she imagined it. Soft steps come closer to her.

"And be one traveller, long I stood," it continues until it's right behind her, "and looked down one as far I could."

"To where it bent in the undergrowth," Thena finishes and frowns. She knows why she knows this poem, and plenty of others from the same volume. But it's rare to find someone else who does.

"Your hair's so long, now."

She stares at the window as gentle hands run through her hair, mindful not to hurt her as they start to wind the locks together. Her throat tightens and she chokes on her air, "y-you still remember how to braid?"

He just chuckles, and it's when she hears the hint of his laughter that she realises this is real. She hasn't finally succumbed to this hell around her and lost it.

She turns. Her hair is half braided down her back, but Gilgamesh is standing there, still just a year older than her, but looking completely unlike he once did. But it's definitely Gil. "You're here."

"It's our anniversary," he smiles at her like when they were children, playing house in her backyard. He holds his hands out, "sorry to keep you waiting."

#Thenamesh AU #honey this is a beautiful prompt #and oh my god this is so sad #but a happy ending!#Little baby Gil and Thena tho?#Ikaris is like playing house is for girls and little babies!#little Gil is like well my wife is going to work while I clean the house all day!#he makes huge feasts for them and pretends to drink a beer from his big grownup coffee mug #I won't be touching on this a lot for obvious reasons #Gil got abducted and kept in a dank little cellar #he had a rug and a little mattress and got fed #he would braid the tassles of the rug and think of Thena #he cooperated slowly gaining trust until he was allowed upstairs #then to go out of the house sometimes #then more often #then alone #until eventually he managed to escape #by that time he was several states over and had no records of who he was with him #but he manged to get back and the first thing he did was ask Where's Thena?#he was furious but he went right there to see her #and now they can get married and have a mortgage and two cars so Thena can go to work and I'm emotional

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modern-inheritance · 5 months ago

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That Galbatorix Won AU that will not be written

I love how like 6-8 or more of yall individual people liked my Galbatorix Won AU post things while those posts also state that y'all are probably never going to see it in full.

Like it's not even fully fleshed out. It's word vomit on a drive doc that I can't really look at right now because the dissociation is real jesus fucking christ. Maybe I SHOULD ask a psychiatrist about this depth of method-writing(???).

I will say this is the gist. There are themes of self deletion, implied nasty things, and it's just not a happy thing really. No reread, we die like women with migraines.

Arya convinces Brom to flee to an unknown location before the Urubaen start. He does so. Galbatorix wins. Eragon eventually snaps in an unexpected way after Arya is broken due to being essentially forced to mercy kill Glenwing after she was subjected to let's just say Galbatorix level abuses on all levels of physical and mental planes and she, mute and carrying around her dead Battle Mate's arm, nonverbally asks Eragon to kill her to end this, as she's being used to hurt the people she loves and her continued existence is more harmful than good.

Eragon's snap is to use formless magic to essentially separate Arya, as a whole, from the magic of the Ancient Language. Don't ask me how nor the repercussions in full. But she is essentially 'dead' to magic. Galbatorix cannot use the name of names now to have hold over her and what she does and can't even scry her. She cannot cast magic, but magic cannot be casted on her either. Spells targeting her do not produce results. She is a void and dead in the eyes of the Ancient Language.

Somehow, don't ask how, Eragon gets Arya out of Uru'baen and naturally forces himself through some fun psych to believe he did indeed kill her. Everyone else believes him.

Arya wears the pieces of Glen's arm. Just wanders Alagaesia until she wanders into the Spine to die. Turns out it wasn't that, it was more mystery forces at work and/or her subconscious thinking that it would be a safe place, and she finds, SURPRISE! Brom living with the Urgals that managed to slip away even further north into the Spine. She's mute, dissociates every couple of hours to just sorta wander off, Claustrophobic/domaphobic so she never goes inside Brom's hut or urgal tents, and still can't even get herself to not bolt backwards if Brom comes within 10 feet of her. She is not the same person Brom saw last. There's bits and pieces of the Arya he knew, but she's unable to hold those pieces together longer than maybe a handful of hours at a time and still can't speak when she does. At most she can touch his hand during those moments, try and mouth words, and write things down in frantic attempts to preserve her sanity and memories of her life before. These moments get longer and longer over time, eventually until she's 'back,' but she never fully regains speech and still has much of her problems with buildings and has to be the one to initiate hugs or walk towards Brom rather than the other way around. She's never again really, truely, the same person.

Brom and Arya convert Riders signs to their own homesign and just start living. Arya frequently hallucinates Glen and 'speaks' with him through sign, spends days staring off hugging her Glenwing-mech-arm encased forearm to her chest, and has lost most of her fight. Brom takes his new mission on as taking care of her, helping her heal and find her fire again, and to once again be the last Old Guard to remember true history rather than Galbatorix's fucked up version.

There is no happy ending. Only Brom and Arya, the way MIC started.

And no, this will not be fully written. Ever. You guys may sometimes get little bits and pieces that will be labeled as such but haha I cannot take the weird fugue/dissociation this version of Arya brings over me and the absolute trauma of losing everything twice and being powerless to stop it that Brom's internal voice brings. Garzvog is cool though. I like this version of him. He's surprisingly nice.

#eragon #inheritance cycle #the cyclists #Galbatorix won au #an au of an au #the world of eragon #the inheritance cycle #modern inheritance #modern inheritance stories #ket's modern inheritance cycle #mic au #*screaming into mattress because me too buddy* who is buddy no one knows #please let this get out of my head now

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