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witchlyboo · 3 years ago

Text

Definitely, maybe.

Part five: The one who belongs to someone else.

Introduction. Part one. Part two. Part three. Part four.

Paring: Latina!reader x Logan Lerman x Tom Holland x Ben Hardy x Timothee Chalamet x Pedro Pascal x Michael B. Jordan

Warnings: Swearing, angst, misspellings, some Spanish, me learning how to write properly, and NY stuff that I've learned from movies that we all agree to pretend are real.

Word count: 6.4 k

a/n: You been asking for smut, I know, I know, I just wanted to introduce you to all the boys first, and we're getting there, just one more ahead. Also, I'm working on a masterlist because we are getting too many parts already.

All body types and skin tones friendly. You can also enjoy it as a no Hispanic reader. Constructive feedback and misspellings correction is always welcome.

Red and blue lights flash the driving mirror.

—No, no, no, por favor que no sea a mi—You beg to the sky looking at the patrol that is asking you to park, or someone else, there's a lot of cars in this part of the city, there's a big chance is the panic who's controlling your senses.—Dios, mi abuela fue a la iglesia cada domingo de su vida y nunca te pidió nada, please let me have some of her divina recompensa.—But that's not how it works, you end up parking with just a few seconds to think what to say. There's a perfect explication of why you are driving a car that is not yours in the middle of the night and smelling like a minibar.

Then this ridiculous thought comes to your mind, you look expensive, you've never seen the daughter of a senator but you must be close to it, it would make you less of a feminist if you just use your attributes? Ugh, you feel sick just to think about it but don't have enough money to pay a fine, and the constant paranoia of being chased all the time as an immigrant will only get stronger.

You pull down your dress a little so your neckline can do its job but you regret it immediately, and you're pretty sure you look more like an expensive prostitute who stole the car of his lover than some influential men's daughter.

—License and registration.—You hear him say when he approaches your window. You don't like this but you have to play the dumb tourist, the pretty foreign girl that is too stupid to be dangerous, with the look you have tonight it shouldn't be hard. But damn you hate cops, any uniformed man that works for the government is your eternal enemy, and you don't know how long you could keep the nice dumb Latina game before spit on his face.

—There's something wrong, officer? ...You?!—Your sexy and fake high voice is ruined when you see the face of the man who stopped you. This night couldn't get worse.

—Wait, what happened with the party?—Evan interrupts you while you finish some notes for work, little remainders for later when you don't have an eleven years old kid running around you, he's not usually this energic and you have to blame yourself for that, you're describing a life of excess and eccentric fun, something you let behind so many years ago that your own son doesn't know even a bit of it.

—Ugh, a nightmare doesn't worth telling.—You remember vaguely most of it but what keeps fresh in your mind is bad enough to don't want to bring it back.

—But if Timothée is my dad I have to know the important things, including the bad stuff.—Sounds perfectly reasonable and that's what makes you groan at him. Sometimes you feel blessed that your kid is better than you in any possible way, and sometimes you want to kill his brain with video games and reality shows like the rest of the parents.

—Ok, cool, but I'll keep all the +18 content for myself, so this part of the story might be blurry for you.—It kinda is for you anyway.

You should’ve known this night was cursed, you had a feeling because a) your earring fell off at the same time Timothée texted you to give you the party address and say he can't pick you up. And b) he won’t pick you up. Your mother would say that’s reason enough to not go, a real gentleman wouldn’t make you go to an unknown place in the middle of the night on your own in a city like this. But you decide to ignore it because you are a modern woman and because it’s worth it. It better be.

The outfit must be something special. You always take your time to choose what to wear, even if just another regular day, and since this isn't the case you thought about it for hours, that made your mind busy enough to not thinking about Tom and the whole love confession. He texted you saying he'll come for you to go to class together on Monday, which is completely impractical because he's way closer than you but is progress and you're going to take it.

You wanted to ask for Sheep's opinion but you thought she might not care, has been a few days since she started acting strange like she's bothered just to see you breathe. You want to blame his boyfriend to take all her time and attention from you but is probably just her new job, she got a small role in a Netflix show, and even when you're so happy for her, that's the event that has changed her into someone completely different. But you give her time, stress can do bad things to people.

The winner is the exact copy you made of the black and white striped dress Cameron Diaz wore in "The Mask" beautiful, classy, and sexy enough without being too scandalous, not that you have any problem with that, but this isn't the occasion, you don't want to feel like you're being too much or too little, just enough, it's supposed to be easy, right? you were born for this. Just adding some big shiny earrings you got on a thrift shop that look like real diamonds and you're ready, not that you own any to compare. Red lipstick, dark eyes, and a messy bun to get that disinterested pitch every look needs.

Getting there wasn't a problem, you were in the rich part of the city, everyone know who, where and what just to brag about it. The excitement is growing with every second, you check your makeup like thirty times in the elevator and send texts to your mom just to let her know where you are, and because you have to share that moment with someone and you are limited of friends these days.

Timothée opens the door with red eyes, drunk, high, or somewhere in between, you know then you were right about the bad feeling. He jumps on you to kiss you and no matter how much you try to explain the delicacy of your lipstick, he does it anyway, leaving a taste of alcohol and shrimps in your mouth. Taking you by the waist he walks you to a group of people you don't know while you're trying harder to fix the red color of your mouth without a mirror.

—Here is the companion I bought, look at her, that's how five grand per hour look like.—They laughed but you were too disoriented to process all the things he said, it was supposed to be a joke? if it is, why isn't he correcting? Instead, his hand goes straight to your ass and presses it to get you closer to him.

—I'm actually an intern in the costume designer department of the new version of "Sense and Sensibility".—You wanted to mention your recent promotion to hairstylist and makeup artist but that might be too pretentious. Anyway, they don't seem to care what you are or not, in fact, they don't even see you, all eyes are on Timothée

—Oh, well, is easy to forget when you're paying them—All laughs again. Who is this person? Who are all these people, actually? You recognize some influencers, a few cast members but there's no sign of the director, other main actors, not even his co-star. You feel like an extra in a movie where someone will be killed in a luxury party, hopefully not you. You take his hand from your body and clear your throat.—I'm just joking my love, she looks stunning, isn't she? I’ll get you a drink.

He leaves and the group of people surrounding you suddenly dissipated like boiling water, you were on your own again and despite some judgmental gazes is like you’re not there, you’re sure you could just take your dress off and throw it to someone’s face and unless Tim says something about it, no one would care. You’re there as his companion, an ornament, and that’s not enough to earn their attention because it’s too obvious you’re the one in turn.

You walk to the only window no one is smoking and check your phone, you know, the thing you do when you pretend you have important issues to attend, but no, you end reading some old messages, pictures, texting your mom of how much fun you’re having at the party, and somehow you check your filed Facebook messages to find Logan’s name. You cover the screen so fast you hurt your nail, his name is enough to make you tremble like a Chihuahua, you haven’t talked to him since that night, you know from his sister he lives in the house he bought for you two and he’s having the happiest life without you. You want to believe that because that means you took the right decision but deep inside… no, you can’t be that person, you want him to be happier than ever.

You find the guts to open the message, and you read as slowly as is humanly possible. “My angel, I hope this finds you in perfect health…” Dios, just Logan could start a message like that, your smile is almost too big to fit in your face so you bit your nail to cover it a little. “I recently found one of the human body drawings you made for me to study, you’ll be happy to know…”

—That’s a fucking long-ass message.—Tim appears behind you and takes your phone from your hand, spilling some of his drink on your dress in the process. Apparently, he's been there long enough to read part of the message.

—Give it back.—You command in the most severe voice you have, your magical moment got ruined and you remember the hole of hell you are.

—"My angel, I hope this finds you in perfect health. I recently found one of the human body drawings you made for me to study, you must know I still use them now and then"—Timothée starts reading the message, and even when no one is close enough to hear it and you don’t really care about this people’s opinion, that’s not for anyone to read, that’s one of the few parts of your life you treasure the most and you’re not ready to get over it.—You little slut, are you cheating on me with a med student?

—Give it to me.—You repeat trying to take the phone from his hand but he’s faster and walks away putting it out of your reach.

—"I meticulously preserve them, I certainly know any piece of art made by you will be priceless in the near future"—You don’t want to hear it coming from his drunk mocking voice, so you try to ignore what he’s saying and put more effort on chasing the phone.—Should I had kept the jeans where you left the wet spot on? I didn’t know you were an artist, my love.

—Timothée, por el amor de Dios.—Now you're trying to climb him, it wouldn't be that hard to take him down, he's skinny and you're fierce. That's what you thought but he's not moving even with you are on top of his shoulder and his opposite long arm keeps the phone away from you.

—Who is this guy and why is he talking to my girl like this?—You see the olive eyes getting darker and the tone of his voice went deeper than you thought he could do. You desist from taking the phone, you know the bullies love the attention, maybe that's exactly what he wants and give it to him just makes it worse.

—I'm not your girl.—You claim fixing up your dress having enough of games, and you have no reason to keep worrying about losing your job, the filming is done, and apparently your relationship with him too. You don't care about any of that anymore, just want to read Logan's text.

Even behind all the alcohol and the eyes injected in blood thanks for who knows what kind of drug, you can see the disappointment and anger, but it's not a broken heart, Is the hissy fit of a child that loses his balloon and now everyone will pay for it, especially you.

—Are you sure about that?—You can see him swallow hard, almost looking vulnerable, but his voice is defiant and threatening to prove you wrong. He just has to stretch out his arm to reach the open window with your phone in hand, his intentions are clear and the only thing you can do is raise your hands as a reflex.—You were mine the moment you put a foot on my trailer, and I don't fucking share my stuff.—Before you can say a word he drops the phone from the fourth floor.

You know is senseless but you find yourself running out of the party and going to search the device, using it also as an excuse to get away from that place. This is the first time someone makes you feel meaningless, you know the famous' world is cold and lacking in empathy but this is ridiculous, they're a bunch of parasites fed by attention and power. By Timothée.

The screen is crashed and the rest of it is probably beyond repair, not that you're surprised, its life is longer than you've been in the country and you admit you should have replaced it much earlier but you're not the kind to throw away things that still work. However, is not the phone you are worried about, not as much as what it contains.

—That was obsolete anyway, I'll get you a better one.—You didn't know he was following you, his voice interrupts your self-wailing. He sounds calmer and a little embarrassed, but not enough to say sorry, you don't think he's capable of saying it.

You shake your head and start to walk away without a word, you don't want anything from him, not materially, at least.

—Don't make a scandal out of it, it's just a phone!—He yells erasing any trace of regret in his voice. He doesn't see the reaction he expected and that's when he runs after you and with a hand on your upper arm pulls you back, you gasped for the sudden bluntness.—That annoying habit you have of leaving when I'm talking to you.

You push him away with all the strength you have, which resulted in him almost falling on the ground.

—I don't care about the stupid phone!—You finally break, but sadly is not as satisfactory as you thought it would be.—You are mean, vain, arrogant and the worst part is that you enjoy being this despicable human because you have absolutely no consequences to it. Everyone around you just accepts it and I feel so sorry for you because the only possible way for you to fill the void inside is to be surrounded by that crowd of mules licking your steps—To your surprise, he has nothing to say, he's just standing there with no facial expression, whatever he feels is easily covered by his years of experience acting, even drunk.—I can't give you that and it's obvious they don't want me either. What am I even doing here?—You ask yourself thinking where would be the best way of getting a cab, is a rich zone, must be easy.

—Everything is better when you're around—His voice is thin and fragile, you have to process what he said three times in your head to understand his words. You're not willing to look at him yet.—You're not like the others.

—Pure bullshit. You love to repeat that misogynist discourse of girls being in a certain way because is easier than be responsible for the people you choose to be—You were hugging yourself the whole time, is a cold night, but not enough to be bothersome, you enjoy Fall weather—You got me for a moment, I give you that, you fooled me but I'm too tired of guessing what version of you is real—When you return your gaze at him, he doesn't try to hide the guilt anymore, but there's still haughtiness in there.—Now, if you don't mind Mr. Chalamet, I need to get a cab.

—No, you came with me, you leave with me.—There's no trace of alcohol in his voice anymore, a good scolding is enough to put you sober, you know that thanks to your mom. Oh god, you're becoming her.

—You didn't bring me here, gigantic head—You look at him and put your hand in front of him with the palm up. He stares at it for several seconds before put his own on it—Not that!—You shake it and start looking inside his jeans pockets until you feel the metal of his key car.—You can't drive and I have to get home. You'll find it in the studio tomorrow.

That's how you ended with a car way more luxurious than you expected, driving so slowly and carefully that the police stopped you. What a night, but at this point, you couldn't care less about anything that is not that message, is been months and you can't get over it, over him. Not even Ben moans, Tom's comforting arms, or fight with a movie star at 3:00 am. is enough to get him out of your mind.

—So is true, you don't wear anything that hasn't appeared in a movie, huh?—Michael B. Jordan is leaning on the car window with a mocking smile and a sparkle of satisfaction that you would love to punch but his uniform keeps you in line, where you come from police is not equal to justice, most of the times is oppression.

—You know where it's from?—That was kind of comforting, no one at the party noticed. Not that you care.

—Is The Mask, not some Adam Hitchcock's blurb.—He smiles and even when you really don't like him, it's nice to be with a familiar face, you are really tired of running away, scaping for problems that are a result of your null capacity to deal with emotions. Ugh, what a word.

—Is Alfred Hitchcock, actually.—You didn't want to sound priggish, but you correct him with no time to stop yourself, an old habit.

—You got me, smarty, you know more than movies than me. Where did you get this car?—You feel really nervous even when you got this legally, you have your documents and license on time and he's being nice enough to not want to run away in a car that you technically borrowed for yourself.

—It's not mine.—No shit, Sherlock.

—No shit, Sherlock, I was asking where did you steal it.—You wanted to laugh but there's something with the uniform that just doesn't allow you to be yourself.—Are you drunk?

—No, no, fuck, no, it's just, I don't feel comfortable with cops—He raises his eyebrows but that is his only reaction.—Listen, is my boss' car, I'm doing the favor to take it to the studio, and I'm really nervous because is fucking expensive, he's an asshole, I haven't drive un almost a year because you people only use cars if you're rich or your work and lives depend on it. I'm starving.—The last part came out of nowhere, you haven't eaten anything in almost 13 hours, maybe that's the actual reason why you are that moody.

He doesn't answer right away, takes his time to look at you, what makes you blush, he's really close, closer than he's ever been. Does he smell like green apples? Not the actual apples, the artificial smell they had given to them.

—Get out of the car.—Oh no, is he arresting you? Is he finally taking revenge for every time you make fun of his Hawaiian-type shirts? You know you have too much karma accumulated and a cop making you pay for it when you don’t believe in their sense of justice is kinda poetic, and evil.

You don’t want to discuss with someone with a taser, gun, pepper spray, or who knows what else. So you take your bag, the key car, and get off defeated.

—My turn is almost over, I’ll take you to eat something, c’mon.—He walks back to his patrol and you stay still for a few seconds still processing his words, you must look totally devastated for him to offer that. How you see it you have two options, go with him and spend an awkward hour with a person you don’t like or risk getting a fine, Tim can pay it, it’s not a big deal but you don’t want to owe him even the minimal thing.

You get in the car holding on to your bag to feel calmer, this is the first time you’re fully alone with him since you found him half-naked in your kitchen. Those defined abs may never leave your brain.

—Are you cold?—He interrupts your thoughts with his question, you didn’t notice you were shaking. He looks for something under his seat and gives you an NYPD hoodie, you hold it doubting your next move, is not like you don’t appreciate the gesture but it’d be easier to take if it doesn’t get that words printed—Is clean.—He says chuckling when he sees the way you’re looking at it.

—Is not that, just, you know, fuck the police, defund the NYPD, demilitarize the pigs and that stuff.—You say putting on the hoodie anyway, is a cold night and you won't help the institution wearing their propaganda.

—Yeah, I get it, but you can't change the system just from within.—You decide is not the right moment to have a political conversation so you shrug your shoulders and discreetly smell the hoodie, a mix of cologne, green apples, and cheap soap, you know is cheap because you buy the exact same, do its job.

—I'm in the mood for pizza.—You say casually, making a deal to yourself to try to be his friend, he is a small part of your life anyway.—Domino's is open at this time of the night?

—Tell me you're not consuming that shit, dear Lord, you been here for how long, two years? I can't believe your idea of a good pizza is Domino's. Stella hasn't taught you anything?—You're surprised by the level of condescension with a pizza and you mirror his smile, suddenly feeling embarrassed. Your school program includes people from all around the world so you don't have that much experience with actual new yorkers. Logan is rich, so he doesn't really count.

—What's wrong with Domino's? I don't buy much street food, is cheaper to buy things on the food market. Besides, all pizza is good.—The mention of Sheep makes you a little tense, so you don't say anything about it, is not a conversation to have with him.

—Don't blaspheme in the patrol, I just washed it—You laugh, finally, after a terrible weekend. You can see why she likes him, there is something about his voice, smile, and his eyes that feel... calm, like watching Friends after a marathon of Lord of the Rings.—There are rules to survive this city, and I'm surprised you have made it this far without a proper guide.

—Chill out Mr. Miyagi, I'm not from the jungle, and I've learned a lot by myself.—He gives you a lopsided grin as a request, and you put your fingers up ready to enlist your acquired knowledge.—Walk fast, like you're about to be stabbed, something that actually happened to me, with an umbrella—He nods and laughs being related to it.—Number two, no small talk, no one cares, even if they ask. Number three, if you look a stranger in the eye, especially a homeless person, you have essentially invited them to approach you.

—Number four, we never eat from Domino's, Papa John's, Pizza hut, or any other chain restaurant, only trucks and local places are allowed.—You roll your eyes but you get the point, is just, again, you're not much into street food, it doesn't taste like home and the only way to eat food like that is preparing it yourself.

—Fine, fuck capitalism, let's support local places—You make an obvious fake enthusiastic tone but he nods proudly.—Number five, you don't need a car to live here, not even know how to drive. I would have successfully avoided this police brutality if I had followed that rule.

—For someone who is about to eat for free, you whine too much.—He parks the car and gives you a sign to go with him. You see him go to a pizza truck and order, you realize at the moment how ridiculous you look, so before chasing him you let your hair down, take your huge earrings off, and roll up the skirt of your dress until your mid-thighs letting the hoodie cover the rest, and clean the red lipstick with a Kleenex from your bag. Now you look more like a college person and not a rich girl who just got seized.

—Here you go.—He says giving you a slice as big as your head, looks oily and spreading cheese everywhere. Perfect.

—Is it vegan?—You ask receiving the food with an obnoxious face. His kind grind turned into a dread expression and you give him your second laugh of the day.—I'm kidding.

You are about to give it a bite when you see passing next to you a huge rat with the exact same slice as yours in its mouth, running into the dark of the night happy to have obtained the food for its family. They use to scare you when you just moved out but now they're like any other pigeon in the sky.

—Rule... whatever, a rat with a slice of pizza is a symbol for good luck, congratulations.—He pets your head awkwardly, not sure if you're ok with the physical contact, which, surprisingly, you are.

—I see rats with bagels all the time.—Pizza and bagels, that's the main culinary wonders of the city, you like it, not much to object but is hard not to compare it with your home's food.

—Is easy to confuse a rough diamond with a simple rock.—You both eat in silence, enjoying the mixed sounds of the city and all the different smells, the whole situation feels like one of those lofi music videos. You remember thinking about moments like this before getting the scholarship, what would it be like to feel normal in the city of your dreams.

—How do you know that much about movies?—He asks after a few minutes when you take a break to drink something, that pizza is not easy to take.

—When I was a kid a spent much time on my own, so my dad bought me a used DVD reproducer, and at the corner of my neighborhood was this movie store where you could buy 5 pirate movies for one dollar. They were blurred, with a terrible sound, and most of the time with the wrong movie inside but they helped me to not feel lonely. Eventually, the store closed but I've watched everything in it by then—He gives you a warm smile, you never told that story to anyone, not because is too intimate to share, but because no one asked, it doesn't sound like a question with a complex answer.—Anyway, I watched Marie Antoinette when I was like eight, and I decided at that moment that however is done I wanted to be part of that magic.

—You hear all kind of people chasing dreams in this city but is hard to find someone who actually deserves it.—You blush and you cover it with your hair but the smile on your voice is impossible to hide.

—Is that a compliment? You must really want me to like you to date Sheep.—You laugh but you can see his face tense, so you can guess your friend has been busy breaking everyone’s hearts.

—She hasn’t returned my calls in three days so I don’t think there’s much you can do—You nod, all this time you thought he was the reason she is ignoring you but apparently you are both in the same boat.—But yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking, what I should have said is, Marie Antoinette at eight? I can see where all the damage started.

You gasp and throw your napkin at his head, he easily catches it without even looking at it and laughs; that was unexpectedly attractive.

—Why a cop?—You ask, not sure where that question came from, maybe you authentically want to know more about him, he just bought you food, and honestly, that's the easiest way to win your trust.

—I wanted to be an actor when I was a child. This is the city of opportunities so you may think that if you want to chase the big wonder, this is the perfect place to do it. But I grow up surrounded by these people giving their entire lives to get something just given to one in a million so I decided is not worth it. For many years I wondered what I wanted to do with my life and the answer was really clear, my dad was a cop, a good one, or that’s what people say. I don’t remember much because he died when I was seven—Conversations about death are not your strength, everything can turn out uncomfortable if you choose the wrong words.—It might not be that glamorous but if my father died for it, it surely worth it.

—For the good ones.—You raise your almost empty can of Coke and he does the same with a grin that warms the cold weather of the night.

—For the good ones.

The next two hours passed like minutes talking about anything and everything. It just felt right to talk freely with him, you didn’t feel judged for your awkward family moments or your random thoughts, not even once because he told you his too. At some point of the night he borrowed you his gym sweatpants, any of you could just suggest going home but that was off the table, end that peace just for weather reasons would have been a tragedy.

—I read Timothée Chalamet is a dick. Is that true?—The mention of his name remains you of your life and everything that comes with it, including the middle semester project that you must dedicate your entire day, one that is about to start.—What, you can’t talk about it?

—He is a complete dick with no sense of privacy or human decency—And when he interrupts a deep kiss to look at your eyes, smile, and caress your chin, you feel like a character of his Victorian movies. But he didn’t ask that.—But the next week he’ll be no longer my problem.

—That’s why we have rule twenty-three, don’t ask for a picture of a celebrity unless they are local—You have heard about it before but you haven’t got the opportunity to decide if you like that rule because the only celebrities you have seen are from work and that club’s party opening.—That means you’ll be free to go to the Stephen Kings’ movie projection there will be for Halloween.

You don’t know if that was a proposition, a suggestion, or just a simple recommendation, and whatever it is, you noticed he was nervous to ask. Is it wrong? It feels wrong like you were betraying your friend accepting to hang out with his boyfriend without her consent. But he didn’t ask you to go with him so is safe to answer.

—Yeah, I guess—You get a moment, four seconds top, where you shared innocent, curious, and tenting gazes like three graders in the playground. And that’s the further you will allow yourself to go.—We better leave, if the sunlight touch me I’ll turn into dust.

You get off the car hood and go to the side door, but this time he opens it for you. You give him a “seriously?” Look, receiving a little push in your arm as a response.

↬☀︎︎

A distant voice asks you to wake up, softly whispers that turn into caresses on your cheek, your eyes feel so heavy, even when you are well aware of your environment your eyelids keep closed.

—Good morning, Princess—This is the first time Tom calls you that way, the change from silly nicknames to Princess is enough to get you out of hibernation. He is squatting beside your bed, his smile is the promise of a better day, and chasing that idea you give him one small back.—Your mom has been texting me desperately all day, she said you're not answering her calls and is worried.

—Fuck, my phone broke last night, can I call her from yours?—That’s an oversimplification but in the search for a better story, that's what you decide to believe and tell. Tom nods and gives it to you, he looks happy, beyond that, this is the first time you see that subtle blush on his cheeks and the eyes sparkling. You sit on the bed next to his body looking for your mom's number, slowly he moves between your legs, you have shorts and an oversized Back To The Future t-shirt, you got took the time to prepare yourself to bed last night and keep Michael’s clothes inside your closet to wash them, like The Tell-Tale Heart, a little innocent secret who feels dirty somehow

The conversations with your mom are always long, nostalgic and the tears are hard to hold for both parts; after a long life sharing almost every day with her, her absence never feels smaller. But this time is different, Tom is exploring the bare skin under your knee with his warm hands, asking for permission with curious eyes, and when you don’t object to the touch the British boy keeps his exploring mission cautiously, giving special attention to see your eyes in case something change. Is time to hang up when he gives a long and loving kiss to your knee, the less erotic kiss you could think of but so intimate to bristle your skin.

—Not nice to touch someone's daughter when is talking to her mom.—The protest of your voice loses strength at every word, he heard that and just straight his back to reach your face, the gap is almost extinct.

—We're okay, she likes me.—He assures holding your hips and pulling you a bit to him. Tom looks very comfortable with the new closeness authorization, you like it but are not very sure about it yet, most of you still think of him as your best friend.

—Did she tell you that? Are you talking with my mom behind my back?—You laugh when he does, almost like nothing changed.

—She adores me, I swear, I'm invited to Christmas, you know?—You're not surprised, she invites everyone, Logan was too but the first time he got family plans and didn't make it to the second.

—You should go, maybe we can do...—His lips touch yours in a peak at the middle phrase and makes you forget what you were about to say.—Man, the audacity to interrupt...—Then he kisses you again, deeply, using his tongue to taste your inner lip and his hands holding your shirt in fists. That's a twist of events.

—Is that ok?—You hear a weak whisper coming out of his voice but you got so mesmerized on his lips that decided to ignore it and kiss him back instead. He responds to your touch and starts to lean over you to make you lay on the bed.

Jesucristo bendito, is this happening? like, actually happening? you must look like trash, you barely took all the makeup from the night before and didn't take a shower, you start to get so worried about smells, feelings, and what that'll mean to your already too much-spoiled friendship.

However, the time of doubts is done when Sheep starts yelling in the living room, you both reacted running to the sound and looking for your blonde friend. Michael is there but doesn't look like the same as a few hours ago, is annoyed and tired for the lack of sleep, a look that doesn't match him at all.—What did you do?—You ask him fast assuming she's mad for something he did.

—Just in time, the star of the movie, I was wondering how much it will take you to be the protagonist of this.—That is Sheep's voice talking about you and what must be your heart breaking from her words.

—Excuse me?—You wish your tone would be less savage but you can't help respond the same way she did.

—Logan wasn't enough, then you got the drummer, fucking Timothée Chalamet, Tom and now my boyfriend. I'm so glad I didn't leave you alone with my dad or I'd be calling you mom now.—You have no words to that, Michael doesn't even dare to look at you, he must have told her something she misunderstood, but Sheep, or well, Stella is saying things she actually thinks and keep to herself. Tom walks in front of you whispering things to her to calm her down but she is not looking at him, you didn't tell her anything about Tom either so he's taking responsibility this time.—Go ahead and fuck the whole city, Michael if that please you but you're crossing the line with Tom and you know that, you're going to ruin him as you ruin every man that enters in your life.—She has a very you moment having the last word of the dispute and getting out of the apartment with Michael going after her but not putting much effort in it.

✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧

Taglist:

@eridanuswave @cjand10 @deluxeplanteater @rorodendra @navs-bhat @coxxxxxpi @leviosatothestars

Thanks for all the love and support, if you have opinions, suggestions, or want to be part of the tag list (Or don’t want to be part anymore) let me know, I appreciate every message.

#ben hardy imagine #michael b jordan fc #tom holland x reader #timothee chalamet fanfiction #pedro pascal #logan lerman fc #definitely maybe #fluff #angst #timothee chalamet #Tom Holland #Ben Hardy

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pathetic-dumpling · 3 years ago

Text

Coming to Terms

Dream has been having a bad day, which has quickly turned into a bad week. Techno and Phil both need to go out and do essential tasks around the tundra, but they can't leave Dream alone either. So... they find a babysitter. words: 5,188 - read on ao3 instead

CW: overstimulation, implied panic attack, unintentional self-harm, referenced abuse

Dream has been having a bad day. Correction, he’s been having a bad week. He’s been caught in a bit of a spiral for the last several days, and the exhaustion from an attempt at healing keeps dragging him down before he can get out. The last thing Techno wants to do is leave Dream alone like this, but he and Phil have already pushed off as many necessary tasks as they can. They need to head out, but they can’t leave Dream alone… So in comes the Syndicate.

They consider a few people. Niki is chosen.

“Look, all you need to do is watch him for a day. We’ll be back by the end of it, and you can leave, alright?”

Niki scrunches her face up, which is, in all honesty, reasonable. She’s one of the people who didn’t want to interact with Dream, but Techno and Phil are running desperately low on options.

“Is there anyone else?” She asks. “What about Puffy? She’s a therapist, right? Wouldn’t she be more equipped for something like this?”

“A, we don’t want more people knowing about Dream than necessary, and she’s already refused to give Dream treatment. B, we don’t trust her to not psychoanalyze Dream when he really doesn’t want to be psychoanalyzed. Plus, we don’t know what kind of domestic issues there are because Dream hasn’t opened up about that part of his life yet.”

Niki winced. “What about Ranboo?”

“Well, you see, Ranboo’s been growing into himself recently,” Phil interjects, beside Techno. “Which is good, by all means, but that also means he’s been embracing that he’s a little bit of a dick sometimes. You’re literally the only person we can think of who can be… pleasant and hold your tongue around Dream.”

“And- and we don’t wanna sound misogynistic,” Techno quickly adds. “This isn’t a ‘the kind woman puts up with the toxic man’ situation; it’s just… Dream is fragile right now, like, really fragile, and we’re pretty sure you’re the only person who has the kind of self-restraint to not break him any more, you know?”

Niki raises a brow but ultimately sighs. “This is your only option?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Phil laughs.

“...alright. I’ll watch him. One day, got it?”

“Oh my gods, thank you so much, Niki.”

So Niki is given keys to the house. Mentally, she prepares for whatever Dream might try. She saw him, briefly, in a Syndicate meeting or two, but only between several layers of fabric and zero spoken words. She doesn’t know what he’s like if he’s grown out of his… nastier habits yet. Techno has done everything in his power to tell the Syndicate that Dream has changed, but none of them have actually seen any change. Niki kind of doubts it, if she’s being honest, but she trusts Techno’s judgment more than anything. She knows Techno wouldn’t lie to her and lead her on like others in the past.

She wakes up the following day when things are still dark. Niki can see her breath, even within the small haven of an underground city warmed by countless fires and lanterns. She throws on her Syndicate cloak, getting ready to head out to the arctic. Hopefully, Techno didn’t want her to do anything with the animals because she definitely wouldn’t be able to stand being outside for that long. When she arrives, Techno thanks her profusely. He pledges to show her around the house and offers a few tips while Phil gets ready for their trip outside.

“Alright.” Techno swings his hands by his sides. Niki has noticed he’s stopped clapping them when he begins to speak. “First things first, Dream hasn’t eaten in, like, three days, so we really need you to try to get him to eat something. His diet has been pretty limited so far, but we left a list of things he’s been able to eat so far on the counter. Try to stay fresh- anything stale makes him throw up, and so does steak. Don’t offer it. We keep apples in a little icebox downstairs because he likes fruit cold. Also, Dream likes himself cold, too. He gets anxious when he’s hot.

“If Dream hides in his room, he’s most likely hiding under his bed. If you need to interact with him during that time, do not try to pull him out. That will scare him and he might bite. Instead, just kind of lay on the floor and face him and just… wait until he’s ready to talk. If you try to push him, he’ll probably just curl up more, and he tends to get really distant for the next day or two when that happens.

“If he asks for something, it means that he needed it about three hours ago and has only now gotten the courage to ask for it. Even if he prefaces it between a lot of ‘only if you want to’ and ‘you don’t have to,’ don’t believe him. We’re trying to teach him that asking for things is good but it’s been a bumpy ride. Also, he’s iffy on touch; I’d say it’s better to not try.”

Techno stops, tapping his lip. “Try not to let him outside without supervision; we haven’t really been able to block off potential hazards yet. Other than that, I think that’s everything. Dream is sleeping right now, but he knows you’ll be here. He might get startled anyway. Try not to stare or anything. It makes him uncomfortable. Just treat him like a nervous cat or something.”

Niki blinks, trying desperately to process all of the information that was just dumped on her. Techno waits patiently as she mentally backtracks and tries to commit everything to vague memory. Nervous cat? That’s what the ruler of the server has turned into?

“Okay… I think I got all of that?” Niki says, hoping she got everything she truly needed down. She knows how awkward things get when she or Techno has to start repeating themselves.

“Cool.” Techno sighs, running a hand through his hair until it gets caught in his braid. “A nervous, injury-prone cat… That’s Dream. Thank you for doing this, really. Dream just started being okay with being in the same room as boiling water, and I think I might have a breakdown if I have to leave to make tea again. This means a lot. Anything you need from us, me or Phil, we’ll be happy to help as soon as we get back.”

Niki nods. “Honestly, I didn’t think this would be on the agenda when I joined the Syndicate, but I’m happy to help you, Techno.”

“Of course.” Techno bows his head. “Of course. We’ll be back as soon as we can. Again, don’t let him… do anything to himself, okay?”

Niki gives another nod and a thumbs up. “You can count on me, Techno.”

Techno gives a strained smile and then, awkwardly, does a slight bow before leaving. His muffled voice filters through the door as he calls out to Phil, and then they head out. Niki takes in a deep breath, holding it for a few seconds before sighing as she watches the silhouettes of her friends disappear over the horizon.

Alright. She can do this. She may not like Dream, but she did agree as a part of the Syndicate to… help. This is just for Techno and Phil, to keep them from worrying. To watch Dream and make sure he doesn’t try anything he shouldn’t. Niki could do that. In fact, she was happy to keep the man out of trouble, if it were for Techno’s sake. Now she just needed to find something to do until there was someone to watch.

Niki glances around the house, finding things pleasantly clean. The chests were a bit of a mess, but things weren’t lying all over the place, and it looks like it’s been cleaned recently. It looks like the house has been somewhat baby-proofed, too, which makes a little chuckle bubble in Niki’s throat. They’ve only been housing Dream, and he’s certainly a grown man, isn’t he? What would they need to keep him out of drawers for?

Niki gets to entertaining herself with one of Techno’s many book recommendations, making a tiny home for herself on the couch. She opens the blinds and curtains, letting any sort of light filter in as much as it can. The sun is slow to rise in the arctic, and candlelight can only do so much. Slowly, as the sun rises over the north, Niki finds herself growing more hungry, so she starts making some food. It gets bright soon after that, lighting up the room with the near-blinding rays of the sun. Niki adjusts soon enough, simply happy to have more than enough reading light.

A few hours later, after Niki has already eaten and taken care of her share of the dishes, Dream emerges. The first thing she notices is that he’s completely maskless. Secondly, he looks exhausted to the bone, drowned in a dark green jacket and a black shirt underneath. Loose-fitting pants cover Dream’s legs, almost completely hiding his figure from view. Dream’s eyes are dark, his posture slouched inward, and his hair is messy, long, and frail. He looks unbearably tense. His eyes squint at how bright it is, but he tries to shake it off quickly with a flick of his hands. He does a quick double-take on Niki, eyes darting around the room before relaxing slightly. His attention never leaves her, though. His gaze makes a shiver crawl up Niki’s spine.

“Good morning, Dream!” She says politely because maybe Dream is worse in the mornings.

Dream waves tiredly, and Niki notices his bandaged finger. Something about it looks off until she realizes it’s too short to be normal, missing nearly the entire first section. She wonders how it happened, how she’s never noticed before. Dream takes his bandaged hand, dragging it down his face. He lets out a long sigh, sitting down at the circular table in the kitchen, leaning heavily on it for support. He raises his hands, and although they tremble and shake, Niki recognizes one thing. Dream is signing.

Oh. It looks like Technoblade forgot to mention one thing.

“Oh!” She says quickly, tucking her book into her chest. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know sign language.”

Dream, from the table, raises a brow at her. He raises his hands, signing what Niki can only assume is: you don’t know sign?

“I always meant to learn, but the only people who use it actively on the server are Callahan and….”

Me. Niki can guess that one well enough.

“Yes… you. I’m sorry.”

Dream waves his hand dismissively. He gestures for a pen, which Niki retrieves without much hesitance. She may not like Dream, but she still needs to communicate with him if this day even has a chance at going well. She places the pen and small pad of paper on the table, stepping back quickly. Dream lets out a long breath before beginning to write.

I’ll show you some stuff I probably won’t be able to translate in the moment, Dream writes. Writing looks a little more challenging with the ever-present tremor in Dream’s hands and his shortened finger, but he makes do. He writes down a few simple words: can’t, stop, no, sorry, and shows the signs for each of them. Niki furrows her brow.

“These are all negative responses. What about… ‘yes’?”

Dream struggles to meet Niki’s eyes for a second, looking away almost immediately. He seems borderline uncomfortable. Slowly, he curls his hand into a fist, nodding it forward twice.

“Yes?” Niki asks in conformation.

Yes.

Niki nods, trying to commit this information, like everything else dumped on her today, to memory. Dream drops the pen after that, cradling his hands in his lap. They certainly… don’t stop shaking. Hm. Niki would ask about it, but she doesn’t really want to poke at any boundaries. Dream fiddles with his fingers, beginning to bounce his leg.

“Em-” Niki starts, catching Dream’s attention and picking at the back of her neck awkwardly. “Techno told me that you should probably eat today, right? I made food a few hours ago, but I can make something for you or….”

Dream waves his hands, furiously shaking his head. He scribbles down variants of I’m not hungry, and you don’t have to, which Niki isn’t given a chance to object to. Dream carefully gets up, grabbing the notepad beside him and pushing past Niki. He makes his way over to the couch, plopping himself down and sighing. Niki watches him, unsure of what entirely to do. She knows what Techno told her, but there was only so much that was truly in her power. It didn’t help how dismissive Dream appeared to be with her attempts at offering him food.

This Dream is… new, to say the least. She didn’t know the old Dream outside of what she heard from her peers, but she especially doesn’t know this Dream. Is he better? Does he know that what he’s done is bad? Terrible? Unforgivable, even? Does he regret it at all, or does he just think he’s a victim in all of this?

It takes two more attempts at getting Dream to eat before Niki’s patience starts running a little slim. She’s never had the time to talk to Dream before, but right now, he just seems nothing more than tired. He looks fine, if not a little skinny, maybe a little quiet. For all Niki knows, this could be a ploy, a trick, to live the high life off of Techno’s dedicated care and then run off into the woods. Niki feels a little nasty for thinking this, but what if Dream is just faking this all? What if he’s just playing it up for show and sympathy? To get free protection while his next plan brews quietly in the background? She’s heard about the lengths Dream was willing to go to in the past; what would make this different? She knows how convincing an actor Dream can be, and dedication to a part can take someone a long way.

Well… Now is as good of a time as ever to get a few things off her chest, Niki supposes. If Dream isn’t faking, he’ll have some kind of genuine reaction, and if he is, then, well… Niki can keep her friends from getting used again. It’s a win-win, really.

“You know, you’re very lucky Techno decided to care for you so much,” she says from the kitchen because the distance makes her feel safer. “He didn’t have to do all of this, you know? It’d certainly be easier for him to have ignored your favor. I would’ve.”

From behind, Niki hears a sharp intake of breath, but no objections come. Niki looks behind her at Dream, still sitting on the couch, wide-eyed and staring at her. He swallows, eyes darting to the side like he’s sorting through his thoughts. He gestures at Niki, a sort of go-on movement, so she turns around and continues. “Things like Wilbur, Doomsday, the festival, you played a role in all of those, you know? You’ve been the authority figure of the server for so long. You-- you had control over exile and Tommy and… Everything you’ve done, it’s hurt all of us. It’s- it’s hurt me, and I-”

There’s a loud, distinct sniffle behind Niki. Slowly, she turns to look behind her, finding Dream curled up on the couch. He brings his knees up to his chest, pressing tightly into himself. He’s looking to the side, almost shameful. His shoulders are shaking.

“...Dream?” Niki asks. Maybe this is the genuine reaction she’s looking for.

Dream nods sharply. He looks up, meeting Niki’s eyes, his own glassy and red and wet. His eyes fill with tears, so he quickly hides his face again, pressing it into the arm wrapped around his knee. It feels like he’s forcing himself to keep his gaze on Niki, and that information tastes a little bitter going down Niki’s throat. He lifts his head just enough to meet Niki’s eyes again, folding his hand into a half square and pressing it to his temple. Niki doesn’t know the sign, but she doesn’t need to.

I know, he says. I know.

Dream takes a shuddering breath, fingers dancing across the parts of the body he’s gripping. They speed up and slow down as he filters his thoughts, eventually coming to a standstill. He grabs his notepad with trembling hands, scribbling down something hastily, ripping out the paper, and holding it out for Niki while hiding himself. Nervously, Niki steps forward because the memory of powerful and quick and ruthless Dream has never left her, even when presented with the sight of the trembling man before her.

I know, the paper says. I want to listen. But not today. I can’t today.

Niki swallows. She looks at Dream, trembling and crumbling in on himself, and nods. “Okay,” she says. “I understand. I… I’m sorry. That was out of line, I...”

Dream nods quickly and sharply. His fingers tap quickly against his leg. Niki feels awkward, standing in front of Dream like this as he fidgets and shuffles. She puts a little distance between the two of them, retreating back to the kitchen. The house is plunged into a small period of unrelenting silence. Niki wished that she knew at least a little sign because maybe things wouldn’t be so awkward. Dream doesn’t look all too thrilled to be talking with her either way, though, so perhaps it was wishful thinking. He’s running a hand through his hair, pausing to tug on the long strands every few seconds.

Niki frowns. Has Techno told her anything about how to handle something like this? Sorting through her memory quickly tells Niki that, no, Techno hadn’t spilled anything helpful for a time like this. He’d asked Niki to make sure Dream didn’t do anything to himself, but certainly, he wasn’t that much of a danger to his own wellbeing, right? Techno had mentioned some other useful things, but he seems to have forgotten some details Niki would’ve loved to have. She sighs.

Niki supposes that the best she can do right now is swallow her words and try to be helpfully polite. To, in kinder words, simply watch Dream. She tried to ask him about some things here or there but mostly ended up talking at Dream instead of with him. That’s okay, Niki didn’t mind. She didn’t really go into today expecting some sort of riveting conversation, and the one she’d already tried to have ended oh-so-splendidly.

Suddenly, the sound of Dream’s stomach growling caught her attention. Niki looked back from her chunk of dough that she’d started kneading to fill the silence at Dream, who was caught like a deer in headlights. He looked to her quickly before starting off on what Niki thinks is a garbled bundle of excuses about how he wasn’t hungry again. Niki laughs kindly, making Dream’s hands pause mid-air.

“I’ll go get you an apple or something,” she says, running her hands under the sink to wash off the extra flour. “Techno showed me where everything was before you woke up. I’ll be back in just a second. Stay put, okay?”

Dream nods, hiding his face and giving a small thumbs up. The trip downstairs is quick, only interrupted by a skulk of three foxes Techno apparently kept in his basement. The box with cooled fruit was propped up, probably to keep the foxes out of it, Niki mused, if the scratch marks on the side were anything to go off of. Dream was sitting in virtually the exact same position Niki had left him in, nervously glancing at her when she approached. At least he’s good at following directions, Niki noted. She held out the apple, waited a long few seconds for Dream to take it, then set it on the table next to him. Dream’s eyes watched her with rapt attention, almost like he was afraid she was suddenly going to turn around and attack him.

After that little experience, Niki went back to kneading dough as pleasantly as she could. She couldn’t explain the small smile that crept onto her lips when the inevitable crunch of an apple being eaten hit her ears after minutes of silence. Niki chalks it up to the fact that Techno would be happy that Dream ate and tries to move on from it as passively as she can.

Shuffling fills the corners of the house between the clanging of various pans and Niki’s humming. Dream had come a little closer, sitting stiffly at the counter and watching Niki work after throwing his apple core into Carl’s stable from the window. He keeps the notepad close to him, bouncing the pen back and forth against the solid surface. Niki greets him and starts explaining what she’s doing, to which Dream nods along. She tries to suggest Dream join the baking whenever she can, moving pans around and into the sink when they’ve become dirty. Dream’s eyes follow her hands as she gestures around, eyebrows twitching downward every few seconds. Every semi-loud sound makes his eyes blink in surprise and something else Niki can’t quite place. It goes on like this for about half an hour, with various levels of participation coming from Dream.

Eventually, he begins to look more and more lost in thought, distracted, even borderline frustrated, eventually dropping his pen roughly and tapping his pointer finger against the counter. His other hand goes to his hair, pulling, as a small whimper tumbled into the air. Dream’s nail makes a quick tap, tap, tap that sounds borderline panicky, only increasing in speed. His shoulders are tense, and because Niki is so used to providing comfort to those unscarred by touch, she reached out for his shoulder.

Dream jerks away as soon as her hand meets his shoulder, a small, distressed noise leaving his throat. He stumbles onto shaky legs, looking almost as if Niki burned him. Niki, in return, pulled her hand back to her chest. Dream holds up a finger, a small give me a moment, before distancing himself. He hangs his head and holds up his hands, shaking them out almost violently as he paces the living room.

“Dream?” Niki begins to ask, watching the man pace and shake his hands. What was he doing? What was going on?

Her thoughts are abruptly cut off by a sharp yelp when Dream suddenly turns and pushes over a chair. This is still Dream at the end of the day, and once upon a time, he was terrifying and dangerous. Niki clamps her hands down over her mouth to keep any further sound from escaping when it makes Dream flinch. His breath picks up in shakiness and speed until a loud crash makes the house go silent.

Dream’s head whips around, finding a pile of shattered glass on the floor next to the chair he flipped over and the table it apparently took on its way down. He stares at it for a good, long second, the breath stolen from his lungs. A quick, strangled sob leaves Dream’s mouth as he drops to his knees, scrambling for the glass pieces. Hot, fat tears fill the corners of Dream’s eyes. His hands are shaking so much it makes the glass pieces he picks up clink against each other. Almost desperately, Dream tries to wipe away the tears, and Techno’s worry about Dream hurting himself suddenly becomes much more apparent as the world catches up to Niki.

“Oh- Dream, no, we- let’s not-” Niki drops to her knees beside Dream, holding her hands out gently. “Let’s not do that, okay? You’ve got glass in your hands.”

Dream doesn’t stop. The tears and sobs only spilling harder and faster. Niki doesn’t think this can get any worse, so she slowly puts her hand over Dream’s, grasping it and pulling it away gently. There’s no resistance, even as Dream digs his chin into his chest. Pricks of blood are already forming on scratches left on Dream’s cheeks from the glass, quickly mixing with tears. Dream starts signing something frantically, and Niki doesn’t know what he’s saying, but, oh, she wishes she did.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Niki tries. “Are you worried Techno will be angry?”

Dream nods, choking on another sob.

“I’m sure he won’t be!” Niki presents her hands, cupped, to Dream again. “He really cares about you, alright? He won’t be mad over a broken cup, okay?”

Dream makes a strangled sound that almost sounds like a “but” as he snaps his head up to face Niki.

“No. No buts.” Niki pushes her hands forward pointedly. “I’ll clean up the glass, okay? I think you should go lay down on your bed and rest. Calm down a little, alright? I’m supposed to be here to help, and Techno would be upset if you hurt yourself. I’ll let you know when everything’s been taken care of.”

Shakily, Dream brings his free hand up to his face, fingers touching the newly formed cuts as his lips trace Niki’s words. His eyes go wide, pressing down on the tiny bubbles of blood forming. He drops the glass into Niki’s hands, staggering up with a sharp breath. He mutters something too faint for Niki to catch before disappearing into his room. Niki picks up the rest of the glass, her hands thankfully much steadier than Dream’s own despite what just happened. Periodically, she glances up to Dream’s room, watching, waiting.

She isn’t quite sure what she’s waiting for, maybe for him to come bursting out, angry at being coddled, or perhaps for him to come slinking back with shaky hands and hot tears and try to help again. Whatever it is, it never comes.

Carefully, Niki spends a few minutes making sure no shards had spread out over the house or that she misses any finite pieces. After her searches come back clean, Niki moves to the knocked-over furniture. She rights the table and chair Dream had knocked over, huffing out a small sigh of relief. The living room was clean again, thankfully. She hopes Techno won’t be mad. That would just make her look bad when Dream was so clearly distressed over the whole ordeal.

At the thought of Dream, Niki makes her way over to his room. She knocks, the wood giving way and opening up into the small room. Dream lays on his bed, curled up into a ball, and appears to be fast asleep. The blankets look almost deliberately untouched around him. Niki steps into the dark room, noting the closed blinds on his window. Everything is kept down to nearly a depressing minimum, the only trace of life in the room being the messy, yet unmoved, sheets and a single flowerpot laying on a chest.

It would be better to let him sleep, Niki thinks. The room is kept cold, and Niki doesn’t want Dream to get sick, so she decides to drape the untouched sheets over Dream’s sleeping form. As she pulls up the blankets around the sleeping body, though, Dreams’ eyes flutter open, and his body tenses. He turns his head to watch her silently.

“I’ve cleaned up the glass, so the living room is good to be in again,” Niki offers. She pulls her hands away, crouching down so she doesn’t loom over Dream. “I was going to let you sleep; sorry for waking you.”

Dream shrugs, not really looking like he had been sleeping in the first place. He sits up, glancing at the sheets pooling around him. Dream glances around, scrubbing at his face and swinging his legs over the side of his bed. Despite Niki’s protests, he gets up and shuffles his way into the living room. His eyes fall on the now empty space on the table, sucking in a soft, shuddering breath. Niki comes to stand beside him.

“Hey,” she says. “It’s okay. I’m not angry, and they won’t be either, okay?”

Dream’s eyes flit from the table down to Niki. His body, slouched forward, leans a little closer to her as he nods silently. He looks back to the room, eyes squinting. He shoves his hands in his pockets and produces the pen and paper he’d kept on him; scribbling down, can you close the blinds? Niki smiles. She needs to encourage him to ask for things, too.

“Sure.”

Dream makes a home for himself on the couch. He eyes Niki’s book and they make idle chatter over it, Niki sitting across from him in the chair. They slide the notepad between each other on the table, both patiently waiting for the other to read or write before responding. Dream apologizes for the outburst. He said that he was feeling overwhelmed and hasn’t had to deal with something like that in a long time. The apology was accepted. Niki even manages to get a small laugh out of Dream, one that tugs gently on his throat and makes his chest stutter. It’s nice to see Dream’s smile, the way it cracks his face as he chuckles to himself. Somehow, it’s the most pride she’s felt in a while.

When Niki gets up to make herself some food, Dream takes her up on the offer to eat together. The list Techno left with what Dream could eat suddenly became very useful when preparing dinner. He doesn’t eat much and apologizes about it, for the hassle he must be causing, but it was what Niki was expecting anyway. Dream goes to sleep soon after that, pausing at his door and sending a quick, earnest thank you to Niki. She smiles.

“You’re welcome, Dream.”

Techno wasn’t mad, and neither was Phil. They seemed more focused on the fact that Dream actually ate a decently sized meal for the first time that week than anything else. Dream, who was hovering in the back, made sure to send Niki off with a little wave.

If she feels a little protective over him during the next Syndicate meeting, that was only her business. If she spoke in a hushed tone and kept an eye on him so he wouldn’t get into trouble, it was just general caution mixed with a bit of care. When she brought the loaves of bread with her on a visit, they were for Techno, Phil, and Dream, but she couldn’t deny the tiny bit of excitement that bloomed in her chest when Phil suggested Dream learn how to bake to help with tremors and outbursts.

If she let Dream into her stash or secret recipes for pies and bread, it stayed between them. Dream promised to keep them secret, and Niki didn’t doubt him. He smiled at her one day, growing nicely into the freckles that had started to speckle his skin, while his third batch of experimental dough was baking. Niki couldn’t help but smile back.

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larrythefloridaman · 1 year ago

Text

Hah, funny, notes on my notes. To answer some questions:

The Grunk's death was, in fact, an accident! Crimson intended to Corrupt the Grunk, not kill him. he intended to do to him what he did to Shantae. Still bad, but death was not the intended outcome. At first the suggestion that its an accident in episodes like the reboot and 11 could be written off as being in the 'theres been a Terrible Accident...' sense people sometimes use to describe a murder, but later episodes reinforce no, they meant Literally, it was a genuine Oopsie Doodle- i believe it was 26? Where its established during shantae's attempt to kill sans as part of explaining corruption, and is further supported by Crimson's response to it being brought up during the next episode, squad strike, being an audible cringe and going "oh yeah, that was... messy..." or something along those lines (havent gotten there in the rewatch yet, memory's foggy) like he forgot about it completely for a second. lol

I hope order was in that bush for hours. I hope she fell asleep in it for a bit

In the nccts, its established that Order learned about Prism's existence after the Grunk's death, deducing the existence of a higher power than Crimson after retrieving a sample of him from the Grunk's corpse, and she initially mistook chartreuse for her when she arrived, so its almost certain she didn't know that google's opponent in 15 WAS that higher entity. Google almost definitely picked up something was weird with her though, as evidenced by goog's awareness in green by that time she'd worked out how to make something that processes the Script, presumably in the process of deconstructing and reconstructing j0hn. At what point she learned Prism's name is unclear, and we know she never learned about Spectrum until her direct confrontation with them in 20. Knew to some degree about the Script and that the higher entity manipulated it. not sure if she knew its name either though. (quad only seemed to learn it was called spectrum as of Orange, and his internal monologue called feeling spectrum the Mist because thats how it felt to him to percieve it in ncct4, iirc.) Shes like those scientists that were trying to make extra-purple petunias and didnt yet have the scope of understanding to get why they were coming up white, i think. she doesnt get why the robots keep becoming sentient people because she doesnt have enough information about what Spectrum and the Script ARE, just the visible effects of them. That ideas just some fun speculation, though. My phrasing is admittedly a bit confusing sometimes- sometimes i use 'detecting spectrum' when i really mean 'detecting the script' because of how intertwined the concepts are.

The Machs showcase the most rudimentary form of working anti-prism measures, with an alarm and an involuntary attack-dog type violent response to detected script alterations, but j0hn and the clonebots after him, as showcased in green and the nccts, are capable of detecting specific changes in the script and not just Prism or her power's presence, and mach 2 references being made before google in the nccts. its possible j0hn's degree of awareness, similar to goog and the other clonebots, was an accident of some kind that she wasnt fully sure how she'd achieved, and she simply iterated on what she'd figured out with him and it was only successfully replicated After the machs, but im not sure on the exact timeline here. Lots of questions.

As for Machi being her first from-scratch creation, crimsonaut might predate them as well as her discovery of prism- if she had already learned about Prism from a sample of crimson and Prism's who she ultimately wanted to usurp the power of, what motive would she have to make a little guy JUST to send on an expedition into The Crimson (location) and then ditch when she already had what she wanted from that particular failgod? Then again, she made subzero, so she's not totally above simple curiousity as a motive for cruelty. So Machs were almost certainly Some of the earliest, but crimsonaut may or may naut have been even earlier, especially given he didnt seem to know who Prism was beyond what very little Crimson told him, iirc. Its ambiguous. Ive always assumed she made him as a little driver for the bus and to collect information on the side, considering how ones an interdimensional vehicle and hes built to be an interdimensional explorer and cpuk20 pairs them as guards, and the bus has been In Use since during season one and its been suggested by Ryan in the discord that hamhel's machine he was working on circa cpuk 5 or 6 that resulted in crimson's summoning was worked on in tandem with order, and that machine was the bus.

The fact the bus can breathe and eat will haunt me perhaps forever

As for Order's relationship to machi, theres also a bit of evidence to suggest she just. has a soft spot for cute things as far as cruelty goes. or atleast did at the start. In her first episode its suggested she has to psych herself up to be willing to hit therapuppy at first, and. well. crimsonaut appears to lean into other people thinking hes a cute likeable clueless little guy who doesnt know whats going on as a form of shielding against closer scrutiny, as seen in moments like his confrontations with Folk in 21/22 where he initially pretends not to know about Crimson inhabiting his body or why Folk's pinning him against a wall by his neck, and in White where Crimson asks him to ask about splitting them up for crimsonaut's birdwatching plans and we see him flip from being snarky and blunt with Crimson to Aw, Little Guy! mode on a dime when entering to talk with Prism and company. her apparent revenge-worthy mistreatment of zapmouse despite this seeming softspot for Cute Little Guys could be easily explained by her simply having the sadly common opinion that rats are gross.

Im also of the opinion Larry's situation is fully organic! Unless you count whatever mechanism by which the signal is sent out that its said All her creations have as being sufficient enough to be disqualifying. I dont think Spriteman's robotic in nature (despite being a megaman, lol) he was just a guy named todd that liked sprite too much and he's still got Something in him that allows Dr. O to trigger Perfect Spriteman remotely, as seen in the nccts. Not sure of the precise mechanics of it but i still consider them fully organic in the same way i dont automatically consider someone with piercings or a chipped animal a cyborg

I love the subtle meta of the running bit of the commentators pretending all of this is real so the cpus dont notice and being really bad at remembering to keep the guise up, like jay's comments during the p. rool arc about this being a Completely Real Fighting Tournament and how them being noticeably bad at it just kind of makes when they forget to do the bit at all even funnier because it feels like theyre just completely forgetting that its a secret when they, semi-frequently, directly address the fact the characters are cpus in a game in-character. Really makes the unreliable narratorship comedically sparkle

I was running on the assumption the file order had for Larry in Gaiden 2 for Ryan to read was like, a personal project file rather than Larry's kerfuffle file, and thus would only have information she would know and that would be pertinent to her. Additionally, home's file is the one that contains the revealing information that he's larry, larry's file saying hes larry is pretty uneventful, lol. I believe the theory about riley interfering with the files mightve been jort's or basalt's? its not ringing a bell to me off the top of my head.

Rewatch notes, Dr. Order arc edition! My notes are getting longer and longer as the story gets denser. I fear what comes when we start hitting The Big Ones. Pray for me. These are just notes for 15 and gaiden 2, and this post will be updated as i make my way through.

CPUK15. goggle……………

Representing Calibur, Google, the green roy! Google being created from the base of Bing after she lost to him last tournament 'with Bing's weaknesses buffed out,' is established out the gate as a strong local theory. Comona believes in Google's potential, praising his pedigree and ability to analyze data and general knowledge base about combat, being that he's a search engine.

Cash Money, Instajennifer! Instajen is on a quest to become the biggest influencer on the planet, and film a sponsored makeup tutorial between her matches. Here to show up and show off. She will beat you to death and take a selfie with your corpse.

Team Cones, the Red Shadow. A funny prankster type. A greninja with the prankster ability. Puts whoopee cushions on benches and replaces sugar packets with salt and such.

Team Clutch, Alabaster Uppercut <3 funny punch man

Team Chonk, in his first solo debut since death, The Gruuuuuunk, back and better than ever! Comona: "im going to kiss home md on the mouth for bringing him back." Ryan: "its what he deserves."

Team Charm, described here as a team of positivity and niceness and such rather than the usual very explicit do-gooder description, represented by Prism. Hi prism. here to right crimson's wrongs :)

Team Cracken, Patchman! The pac is back. Man of the earth.

Team Cross, a celebration of all things crossover, today we have the one the only Miles Edgeworth. Or so he claims.

Exhibition match, Minecraft Steve vs. Therapuppy! Guess steve didnt get kicked out like i thought, forgot this match happened. I forgot a lot of exhibition matches. Therapuppy makes simple work of him.

TWOOOOOOO bamamas

Google vs. Prism. First match of the night. Comona thinks Prism has an edge in this match by her command of her lil creatures, but based on bing's performance and what hes heard about Goog being more reliable, Goog won't be going down without a fight. Prism lays down a LOT of damage very quickly but Goog takes first stock with a good edgeguard and dashdances on her for good measure. Commentators note Google is very different from bing in terms of combat behavior- strong reliable momentum and much less reliant on comeback factor. Google gets good damage on her and spikes her with a viciousness for the second stock before prism can even take his first. Google doesnt want to let you live past 70%. Prism manages to take it to last stock with some careful comboing. Google takes round one after a nailbiting match.

Ryan: "Spoiler Alert, can't wait for the round three." Comona: "you say that as though you know its already going to happen." Ryan, smugly: "hmmmmm."

They discuss how Google does his best taking stocks as early as possible, when he's fighting from a position where he doesn't have to be afraid to commit to an action, and so if Prism can survive until Google starts getting nervous, she can win. Prism has advantage on the second match stage, and makes quick work to combo him to death, dragging him down to last stock before she even has 50% on her second. Google is trying So hard to spike her and its not working. Prism baits google offstage at just the wrong time and he SDs, using up his jumps and upsmash trying to make it back up to the stage as it moves upwards away from them, Prism's squirtle able to make it back where he can't. The prophesied third round comes and Prism keeps firm control of the stage, losing one stock but taking all three of google's, the last stock with a vicious spike to match the one Google landed on her in their first match, sending Google to Loser's.

Alabaster vs. Red Shadow. Commentators comment on the big color theme going on at the moment. Ryan: "fortunately none of them are crimson specifically." Comona: "just regular ol red." Ryan: "just normal red. crimson is gone." lol. lmao. yeah he sure is

This match is so silly-goofy. Red Shadow a pride and joy of team cones with regard to getting funny with it. Goes stock for stock, until the Red Shadow dominates the last stock with a viciousness. Hes getting silly with it but he still doesn't want to lose to Al. Game 2 Alabaster is taking things more seriously too, the commentators plead with him to remeber who he is, to not lose sight of it, and hes doing good, aaaaaand he sds right on time for it to be a last stock situation. and then shortly after Al chokes again. Ryan: "now he's gonna have to fight Google in losers, thats not gonna be fun for him!" Lives are about to be changed 👍

Team Clutch and Team Cones are described as having an interesting specific sort of rivalry- Salt of the Earth training buffs and tricksy bitches.

The Gruuuuuunk vs. Patchman. Patchman is going to lose and the commentators know it. Grunk takes round one as predicted. Patchman did better than expected but the grunk cant be stopped. Patch manages to take first stock in the second round but, as predicted, the Grunk aint losing this one.

'Miles Edgeworth' vs. Instajennifer. Weird ass matchup. Commentators have nothing to say about it its weird. The commentators DO comment on how odd Miles' general willingness to scrap is. Comona comments on how weird it is that 'Edgeworth's' using some sword from the evidence room. Ryan points out how illegal that is "but its fine." Instajen is parrying for the clout. She was in the lead for a wild amount of time before 'miles' took it. Instajen's taunts are tiktok dances. 'Miles' is being Cruel in the second round. I do not know how jen took round 2 but it did piss 'edgeworth' off enough to threestock in round 3. Instajennifer #autopsyreport

Ryan: "I dont know if we're gonna have a fun character arc this week like we did last but we've got plenty of fun matches on hand regardless." He says during a break, immediately before Google vs Alabaster,

Google, a creation made to be perfect but already in losers bracket vs Alabaster, a guy who's never made it past 5th place but intends to make a name for himself regardless. Comona and Ryan discuss the idea of doing a 'worst of the worst' tournament featuring the most shameful, embarrassingly bad fighters immediately after introducing Al. Mean to him. Not wrong but mean to him. Anyway theres no faith in Al's chances against goog. Goog's peeved and has something to Prove. This desperateness to prove himself makes him easier to rattle, and Al does pretty damn good right up until google fucking Gets him at the end.

Comona says what ive been thinking since season one and forgot they said, that being. Again. Al is very strong hes just not up to par with insane battle freaks. Hes yamcha or tien or krillin hes good! Hes good as fuck! he just cant fucking keep up with superhumans! Hes a star member of team clutch not for his record, but for his spirit. Al takes stock one in round 2 with Pinball Variation. They're trading blows and it's all very anime. Al keeps a lead for a while in the second match until Google pinballs his ass right back and then takes his last stock at 200%.

Field report: Al laughs off his loss with a respectful thumbs up and starts to walks away. Google: "I don't GET IT. You always come back for more despite the fact you've never put up a performance befitting that of a competitor- what brings you BACK, alabaster uppercut?" Alabaster: "take a look around, google. Take a look around this great world we live in. Maybe then you'll see why I keep coming back." iconic moments in kerfuffle history. Comona's goog voice is so funny its so growly and anime-arrogant compared to what Holly does with him later that sticks, the whole 'a bit odd and softspoken but fiery' vibe he gets later

Google, starting to have his identity crisis: "do you think i was born yesterday?! I mean, it was last week, technically…" and then gets real quiet.

Patchman vs Instajen. Comona anticipates a long set. CPUK provides coca cola as refreshments to workers like the social media interns who are not allowed to leave their desk while a tournaments running. and if you want pepsi theyre giving you coke and you have to be okay with that. you have to. Patchman is described as one of the more particularly intelligent salt of the earth types here

Patchman dominates a bit first match but, instajen, always dedicated to style, after taking patch's first stock, almost zero-to-death's the second. Doesn't pull out a win though. Ryan: "I will point out that in this tournament every fighter except Alabaster Uppercut has won a game. F." Second match is pretty close and goes to instajen with a decisive stomp Ryan says her stans would be envious of. Third match goes pretty similar, sending patchman home downtrod and disappointed.

Corn is an instajen stan. and freaked out about her dad getting to meet her in bracket. funny to me.

Prism vs. The Red Shadow. :) prism is built different and is not intimidated by some romhack'd red greninja. Red shadow canonically laughs like tim curry pennywise. Prism fights vicious and red shadow struggles hard to find a kill. Prism wins match one and she's white woman smiling at a glaring Red Shadow. The Red Shadow is 3-stocked on Dracula's Castle and becomes The Prismatic Shadow, after Prism has a little conversation with him :)

Ryan: "he's joined the prism club." Comona: "yeah, prism has that effect on people. I wonder if this means he'll- not FULLY take a step back from, still team cones, right-? But try to keep the prankster mischief to more of the tactical use rather than trying to be tricky at every turn." Ryan: "less about being unexpected, and more about being unexpected EFFECTIVELY." Comona: "when you can expect the unexpected its not really unexpected anymore." :)

The Grunk vs. 'Miles Edgeworth!' Pikachu weight. Goes very very close, but the grunk keeps a strong lead until last stock of the first match where 'Miles' takes it. 'Miles Edgeworth' lives in northern crater. Ryan: "where was this sauce when we actually introduced sephiroth?" Comona: "maybe its because its red sephiroth?" Ryan: "maybe. its that crimson magic*. *not actual crimson." Next match progresses much more evenly, with miles taking the lead at stock two. The Grunk pulls out the win in the end though, as predicted, and does so for the last match as well.

Chat Member: "Miles was the prosecutor in the Grunk's murder trial before he got revived and he's salty because he didn't get paid because the trial was canceled when The Grunk came back." The commentators laugh and roll with it, canonizing it. Ryan: "and the defendant was just an interdimensional demon! Whatever." Okay I just want to pick this scenario apart for a second because holy god its so. Its just so. Every time i remember this and that the Grunk's death was an accident i lose it all over again. Captain Crimson just standing over the Grunk's crimson-melted corpse while Val and Crimson do that one scene from one tree hill people animate their morally bankrupt ocs to (crimson, realizing uncomfortably its taking a weirdly long time for the grunk to arise anew as a Cool Evil Corrupted Beast: "well. I guess he could be dead by now." While Valentine panics about a body in a soundstage, HIS SOUNDSTAGE,) in his head. Captain Crimson got dragged into detention and might've plead oopsie daisies. The Grunk presumably canceled his own murder trial and pursued no other charges??? Valentine is the only person in this scenario probably having a relatively normal emotional reaction to being made an accomplice to manslaughter because this whole thing is a goof and a bit. Valentine brings up very pointedly the grunk's own murder charges in cpuk23, presumably either shortly before or after learning they're all fictional characters given its around this time he starts more officially becoming a full part of staff and not just an event emcee, and is understandably Fucking Stunned by Grunk's 'wheres my trophy?' response. Crimson, who has known this is comedic fiction the whole time but doesn't tell anyone that because it would be 'more trouble than its worth', as of CPUK Orange, does not appear to understand why his manslaughter accomplice doesnt want to hang out anymore when he's like, pretty sure there were no LASTING consequences. its all, just SO MUCH,

'Miles edgeworth' vs. Google. Ryan: "imagine trying to sue google." Googles described as having kind of an introspective air about him, thinking on his conversation with Al. Google SD's first stock, and never quite gets the momentum going enough to manage more than one kill, 'miles' capitalizing on his distraction. Comona: "somethings fried his circuits a bit." Ryan: "somethings Up with google." Comona: "definitely not feeling the same as he was at the start."

Miles is taunting him. "Fool. You consider yourself to be an antagonary force? You're such a fool to think so- you don't even have the power to take down someone like myself! After all, who else have you lost against- that Prism fellow? Please. If you wish to be an antagonist, and see the world as truly dark, you have so much to go. Dr. Order created you to be the perfect being- and look at you. You're nothing. Trash." Google: "Listen… here, 'Miles.' I was made to be the Ultimate Fighter. I was made to win. But now I'm realizing- theres more to this than winning, theres more to this than kicking your ass! But thats not going to stop me!" And round 2 commences.

Comona: "are we even sure this is miles edgeworth-? I know he can be cold but-" this thought is interrupted by some Sick Plays. 'Miles' does some serious damage to goog, but goog takes first stock and Fast. 'Miles' takes it right back. Goog is getting fiery and 'Miles' stays cool under pressure. Ryan and Comona describe how quickly Goog's flipped from antagonism in his match with Al to more antiheroic behavior. The match is fast and frenetic and Google just barely survives offstage and manages to take 'Miles' last stock. 'Miles': "Finally acting like the competitor you're supposed to be." Goog is silent. They go to warioware. Goog demolishes the first stock. Miles Edgeworth has a bad history with elevators. Goog keeps a firm two-stock lead and completes the win. 'Miles,' after losing, pulls out a phone: "Doctor? The deed is done." And walks out.

Miles picked that stage. Miles Edgeworth Would Never Set Foot In An Elevator. Thats Not Edgeworth. Thats just sephiroth with a red coat.

Google shows a 'return to form' with that match, by the commentators observation.

Prismatic Shadow vs. Instajen. If instajen wins shes gotten farther than the person who three-stocked her. Instajen fumbles round one hard and shadow takes it. Instajen zero to deaths shadow for the first stock of round 2. Instajen's the kind of person that doesn't take flops hard, Instajen: "just make another post girl. Just make another post." Instajen pulls out a win for round two, taking it to game 3.

FUCK spectrum. Commentators are venting about the internet provider. Comona: "the only spectrum I care about is the spectrum of colors these fighters bring to the stage. Round three!" The shadow drops stocks way too early, and ultimately Jen takes it.

Prism vs. The Gruuuuuuunk, winners finals. The connection starts getting Crunchy and Prism loses her first stock Very early. Grunk bodyblocks her off the ledge to take stocks twice, and the third Prism loses all on her own as frames continue to drop. A chat member suggests shes throwing on purpose because she wants to meet Instajennifer in losers. Second Round is on Prism Tower, PURE homecourt pick, but to the Grunk, Everywhere is home, and it doesnt take long before he crushes Prism's first stock. Prism takes the lead before last stock, but again as the frames are dropping, she fails to recover. She do be performing worse when the connection is weak. 15 is sliced into two vods due to technical difficulties.

Ryan: "spectrum iiiis dead. im killing spectrum personally, actually. Spectrum is the final boss of CPU Kerfuffle. The crimson is spectrum." All of these statements are hilarious in their own ways with time

Google vs. Instajennifer! Insta fumbles round one pretty hard. Ryan: "round one goes to google in a heartbeat of a match! I dont know what that means." Chat suggests the stage was bad for jen because it was a bad environment for selfies and such. Round 2 gets off to a better start for Jen, the two of them dancing around eachother and Jen landing her smash attacks much better, and this match looks considerably more even, but goog still takes it, beating Insta 2-0. She takes one more selfie in front of the stadium and makes her exit.

Goog vs. Prism- the runback. Google doesn't do too hot against Prism's charizard in particular, losing two stocks before taking one of hers. Google's so off his game at this point and cannot seem to find an opening against her. Prism seems to favor her Charizard, Fuschia, somewhat, throwing out flare blitzes like candy, taking first match. Goog's composure between his and Prism's first set and the runback has changed dramatically- the first angry, standoffish, but this time, he's laughing off his loss. Chat Member: "hes reading the results page for how to beat Prism."

Prism keeps a lead on Goog throughout their second match as well. Ryan: "if im google, im going in on this second match. Granted, I'm not Google. Maybe he knows something I dont." :)

Google, slowly standing up after getting 2-0'd by Prism: "...huh. Thanks Alabaster." And he walks out. Ryan: "not sure how well thats gonna go over with Dr. Order, but I guess we'll see."

Grand Finals! Grunk vs. Prism again. Ryan points out how hard Prism threw in their last match, so anything's possible here. He suggests that maybe the reason she threw was wanting to see google again for some reason, but he's not sure. She sure did take both his sets.

Squid Jenny's investigation of 'miles edgeworth's' identity is still ongoing, but its looking like he IS in fact sephiroth from sephiroth- and while saying this ryan gets a dm from sephiroth asking if there's a purpose for followers only chat.

Grunk and Prism on Pictochat, Prism loses first stock before the Grunk even has 40% and Prism's Ivysaur comes charging out in defense of their funny turtle friend. Perhaps Prism's pokemon do have personalities and feelings and such; she just ignores them because they're tools and extensions of her as a fighter. Would make sense. Prism manages to put damage on the grunk fast enough to take his first stock before he puts much on her second, but the Grunk takes her second stock with a viciousness and her third with a footstool.

Thank you Sephiroth For The Follow!

Round 2: Pokemon Stadium. Funny lizart fight. Grunk SDs, but takes Prism's first stock right back pretty quickly. They scrap, Fuschia and Grunk fuckin. Beam struggle with their fire breath before Prism finishes Grunk's second stock with a flare blitz. Last stock is pretty even right up until Prism pulls out Viridian and Grunk sends her straight to hell. The Grunk is our First Place Winner of CPUK 15! The Grunk's feeling the thrill for combat is extra special now after he spent a bit being dead. The Grunk only lost one match the whole tournament to miles. came back Strong.

Title Match! Ryan: "imagine dying and coming back just to become champion. Absolute zombie madman. Love him." Grunk vs. Captain Valentine! All things considered? Pretty awkward. There is no comment made on it before match start, however. Capn Val always a people pleaser, keeps it stylish, keeps it even, keeps it a show. Ryan: "I wonder if Captain Valentine's ever faced the Grunk- back when he was Captain Crimson, I know, but I wonder if any of those memories were retained from the experience." Does that happen? Does getting possessed by Crimson fuck with your memory? Do crimson'd bitches got partial amnesia? It doesn't seem like it with his other hosts, and Val's characterized later as just. Really Not Wanting To Talk About It with regard to the whole Crimson debacle so it honestly wouldnt stun me if he lied about not having much memory of the whole ordeal to. Again. Avoid Talking About It.

Last stock situation. Chat: "Wasn't Val kinda the one to kill him?" Ryan: "well, it was the crimson specifically, not sure if he was the one it was possessing at the time but it was, again, the Crimson specifically." Huh. I guess mayhaps Val Could've been the one in control of his body when appraising the potential candidates for moving forward with the distaste for ICEE and Dadondorf, while Crimson himself was off elsewhere doing a Corruption, in theory. when he's not in crimsonaut specifically and healthy enough to manifest physically he Can operate separate from a host, after all. Buuuuuut, the Grunk seems to be not particularly happy with or fond of Val- described as being particularly irritated with his loss to Val in this championship match but walking off reminding himself that 'at least hes not Dead this time,' which i think is. Strong enough evidence for me that Val was Physically Present for and Part Of that interaction. oofa doofa

After a chat member asks Ryan to stall for time while they finish their fanart, ryan pulls up a grudge match he'd meant to do earlier and forgotten- Outside the arena. Squid Jenny's catching a live feed. Google shouts for someone to come out, because he knows they're watching. And, out from a bush, Dr. Order appears. Order, who apparently either wasn't watching or is checking to see if he'll lie: "so. did you succeed?" Google, laughing: "you think it's all about winning, huh?" Order: "you were supposed to win the tournament and become the champion." Google: "yeah, well, I didn't. What the hell are you gonna do about it?" And so the match begins. Order takes first stock and Fast, but google puts on damage real fast too, uppercutting her AND sending her soccer ball back at her at the same time for a very funny series of hits. funny ball classic.

Goog takes her second stock before she can take his, but she takes it to even last stocks shortly after, but Order cant put damage on as fast as goog does and takes it. Google: "I'm done with you." Order: "Good! I don't want losers on my side." And the live feed cuts. Ryan: "soooooo. Google might need therapy. But that's okay, that's what therapuppy's for."

Its gaiden time bitch!!!! This ones gonna be fuuuuuun to make notes for what with the whole point of Gaidens being expanding on The Lore.

Order offered Comona a pastrami bagel sandwich from the 'concession stand' (the fridge.) Ryan Does Not Trust The Food Here. They're recording live from the labordertory for, not a kerfuffle proper, but an inhouse tournament. The commentators were invited both to keep things entertaining, and show off her fearsome creations to the world.

Ryan: "Dr. Order's got one goal- well, a lot of goals but the main thing right now is that she wants to create the ultimate fighter, a being capable of winning CPU Kerfuffle." 16 person single elimination tournament, because Order's got a lot of bastards to evaluate and she doesn't tolerate losers. She wouldn't let her champion be someone who'd proven themself capable of failing.

Order, in order to set up this tournament, set off a 'biological amber alert,' placed in every one of her creations' bodies that recalls them to the lab. Ryan: "not ALL of the creations answered the call to come back- if you recall google from last tournament, he isn't here- but there are other creations who didn't bother to come back due to, y'know, just general dislike." This is one of those little lore bits thats so fucked up. So fucked up. Dr. Order can and will just ping a fucker's brain. Imagine being traumatized by a fucked up science lady and finding out she can just ping your Fucking Brain whenever she wants. No ignoring her! No pretending she can't hurt you anymore! She's in your Fucking Brain Now! Between this and things like the nccts' remotely triggered perfect spriteman transformation and Larry and J0hn's whole Bit. 'someone has done something to your body. A violation. A permanent damage. You might have agreed to it in theory, you might not have, but it doesn't matter. it wasn't supposed to be like this, and either way, things will never be the same. you don't have the same control over it anymore. All you can do is manage what comes in the aftermath.' hits. sci-fi flavored medical malpractice trauma

Also between this ping system and Quad's fucking bio-signature radar shit for finding her that led him to susan (which her other creations potentially also have, assuming theyre not One And The Same Function, given Larry's vague comment of 'also getting the vibes' from Susan when Quad and the tests came back positive for a match, the arrogance is on full display. Woman with SO many experiments that hate her: 'i will give them all an innate radar for finding their all-important creator. Surely they will not ultimately unionize and kill me' its more shocking that they mostly didnt than if they would have. Im not even ten minutes into this episode,

First up- the Dimensional Bus. Jay usually takes it to get here for commentating, being from another dimension and all, but he's not here because the bus is busy with this. Chat member: "is this just the magic school bus?" Ryan: "kind of, it is a living, breathing bus, except this one can go between dimensions while that one could only really go through Arnold."

Returning fighter, Dan in his miserable new job as a lab assistant! Allegedly got fired from his ICEE job because he uppercutted an ICEE machine and busted it, so now hes here. People's champ!

Another returning fighter and fan favorite, Machiavelli! He was excited for this! His first tournament was so fun!!! He's excited for this!

Mach 2! A supposed evolution upon Machiavelli's floorplan, created as a backup in case Machiavelli ever defected, and, due to this and how beloved Machi is, (and by design, as we later learn when CPUK Orange rolls around,) Mach 2 has developed a bit of an inferiority complex and intends to prove himself the better of the two. According to the submission, not exactly a clone of machiavelli, but made from the same core genetic base but with alterations, taking loose inspiration for the shape of him somewhat from Machi's friendship with genfour, previously genwun, hence the pokemon-ish appearance. I think Mach 2 brought this up in 23, i don't remember the exact words but I recall him taking offense to the label of Clone and going 'im not a clone! Im not a clone! I read my file Im Not A Clone!'

Perfect Spriteman! The commentators were surprised to learn Spriteman's new and dreadful form had been the Doctor's doing. He has been a plant for months please god someone help him

Winston Overwatch fell from the moon and got taken in by Dr. Order in exchange for his collaboration and Winston's fine with this as long as he gets some ankles out of the deal. Winston, audibly smiling: "Im only going to be using my ultimate in this game! Because Im Mad As Fuck!" His guns and such are not allowed in the lab because Dr. O doesn't trust him not to break anything.

Google Plus. She just made another one. partly out of spite, partly just to even her roster back out after his defection, with what she deemed Google's biggest flaws removed. 'It doesnt feel, think, or grow- just a series of if-then statements that does nothing of its own volition.' Ryan: "I think Order's goal here is to just. Not get the shit beaten out of her by a web browser anime boy gijinka this time." Comona: "never again." Ryan: "I mean. We'll see what happens."

Hackerbot J0hn! Ryan talks about j0hn like a fully robotic, fully artificial guy who can just disguise as being realistically human if so desired for much of this episode, although this is later determined not to be the case. Dr. Order's primary goal in modifying john was apparently exactly what was technically achieved- to create a machine that appears human in every way- finding means of emulating emotion and appearance and everything through machinery- and is capable of modifying and improving upon itself. she just apparently achieved this by extensively cyborg-ing a hacker and roboticist who already knew how to do that stuff to other robots. with ryan later implying she did very little to ensure his survival of the process of getting cyborg'd, and how her creations keep wising up and ditching her, boy howdy j0hn really was just a trial run in every way for her. She was a total lamo to j0hn's entire body indeed. With how much monitoring she did of all her creations and the tournament overall, I wonder if she ever attempted to plagiarize any of j0hn's self-modification or did he and larry rip the spyware type shit out of themselves first and foremost. Could larry even safely remove that stuff given hes much more uh. Flesh-y? questions questions questions.

Anyway. j0hn can in fact switch freely between -bot and -man form without issue so again, the sweating and discomfort described from his intro ep switch is Interesting, especially considering other instances of what can be retroactively ascribed to some level of script-awareness.

My Grunk! Its zombie! Mean-spirited parody of Home's revival of the grunk. Comona: "not only poorly executed, but tasteless!" Ryan: "yeah, dr. order, wheres your ethics? Your Hip Of Cratic Oath?"

Subzero Amalgam- this one was just order fucking around. She was curious about the experience of sustained extreme cold, and so she made a guy who is always extremely fucking cold. She, apparently, just found other uses for him and his nature later. Its interesting to me that subzero is one of the doctors' only creations that remains loyal to her and probably the only one that remained loyal that isn't being naive as of the nccts and is also one of the only ones that wasn't made with a particularly restrictive goal in mind- he was made to be cold. Hes cold. Hes succeeded by nature of birth and cannot fail her because that was all he was meant for in the first place, everything else is just a bonus.

The Carrot Collective! Was supposed to be an olimar. lol. According to the submission information, a psychic hivemind of carrots grown by patch farms in collaboration with Dr. Order. Each individual body's life is very short, but more sprout up to replace them and the collective mind lives on unaffected. The fighter bodies we see are little mechas the carrots pilot for smash purposes because its difficult to have a traditional and fair 3-stock game against an army of regeneratively immortal psychic carrots. Likes to be called C.C. for short.

Crimsonaut. Little guy!!! Beloved!!! Dr. Order launched this little dude into The Crimson (location) to research it's nature and he came back from that little expedition Perfectly Fine, aside from some very permanently dyed gear. Totally uncontaminated otherwise, he was carefully screened upon his return. (lol. lmao.) Does have a bit of a personal bone to pick with the doctor due to the overall inhumane and scary nature of said forced research trip, though. The carrots like him, so some of them have a tendency to follow him around too.

Zapmouse! Angy rat that hates the doctor so so so much. so so so so so so so much. Dr. Order subjected him to Fuckt Up Experimence and he showed up to the tournament looking for an opportunity for revenge.

Nuke Suit! Somewhat unstable robot suit powered thoroughly by nuclear energy.

Recon Riley! Dr. Order's intel specialist, modified for stealth and acting as her spy on kerfuffle since the tournaments started. If Dr. O needed to know something about any given fighter, Riley's on the job. Genderfluid and uses any pronouns interchangeably.

There was one last open position that the doctor expected someone to arrive to fill- specifically Not google- but they never showed up, and so Sephiroth stepped into that empty placement in the Doctor's tournament. Think the implication with the twist grudge match at the end of this gaiden is that this spot was meant for Larry.

Dr. Order and Sephiroth fight for the exhibition. Sephiroth takes the win as expected.

First match- My Grunk vs. The Carrot Collective! Ryan: "I think Dr. Order's operating on a misled hypothesis- I think she thinks what's made The Grunk so strong is being brought back from the dead, but i think its more complicated than that. the grunk has a spirit that doesn't really… translate. My Grunk is very Zombielike. No life in him. No spirit. Now the carrot collective? I see spirit there." funny

My Grunk struggles with KOs, a single carrot surviving to almost 200% on first stock. Ryan: "My Grunk being this archetype of character requires a lot of micromanaging and planning the original grunk was not slowed down by. The Grunk was not and did not need to be… cunning." Comona: "theres a difference between a natural raw fighting instinct and battling with a spartan mind. and the grunk is not the latter." The match keeps close, but the carrots take it. Ryan has to fix the overlay and almost accidentally puts captain crimson in trying to put up the carrots. Comona: "that man is never allowed back in here again. That man is banned. From Life, even."

Chat member: "dr. order is just recording everything you guys say commentating, are y'all like… okay with that?" Ryan: "shes been monitoring everything thus far already and she hasn't gotten anything from our commentating so far, I don't see what difference it makes." Comona: "we broadcast on public channels, the information's already out there regardless." Ryan: "its about as much our fault as anybody's." sure bud.

Grunk WOULD play minceraft. But not hardcore mode he'd last all of seven minutes

My Grunk manages to take it to a game 3, munching on some nerfed meat. Comona: "NEVER NERF GRUNK'S MEAT!" Ryan: "I had a bit of discussion with Dr. Order about the Carrot Collective- we dont know a lot about these fighters, a lot of these guys are new- and while my grunk is pretty self-explanatory, just kind of mindless, yknow, like a zombie, Carrot Collective actually, is a collaborative effort with patch farms and is a relative to Corn on the Cob and the like." Comona: "I like that, its nice." Ryan: "just a nice little happy family!"

The carrots have a very funny SD and do not successfully climb out of the deficit it puts them in, and theyre first out of the tournament to the commentators and chat's disappointment. Dr. Order mentions disinterestedly the Collective's interest in joining up with Team Craken, so its not like they're going away. Ryan almost gave the win to the carrots by accident and the commentators reassure us that they would Never alter the results of a tournament in their own interest because theyre a respectable, upstanding establishment. Somewhere plum sneezes

Round 2, the unstable nuclear suit, vs. Machiavelli! Comona: "a lot of people arent gonna want to fight that, theyre gonna be like 'oh no, i dont know, what if something goes wrong-' Machiavelli does not care about that." Ryan: "Machiavelli's here to have a good time even if that means endangering everyone." Machiavelli LOVES to smash nuclear weaponry with comically oversized looney tunes mallet

Nuke suit was designed for anti-air capabilities and Machi loves to float, so round one is mostly a learning experience. I wonder how, with how order is, that Machi's so thoroughly decided 'fighting is for having fun and playing <3' moreso than winning. particularly in ncct 1 that interaction where they excitedly say they think larry's closer to the ultimate fighter because he's so versatile, 'shifty all the time!' even though he lost, and all.

Machi does a silly little happy dance when he takes nuke suits second stock in the second match. Machi's playing baseballs with Rockets. Machi, lets nuke suit take it to last stock for fun, for the Excitement, and eats a 2-0 for it. Nuke suit moves on. Order doesnt particularly react to this, just keeping a close eye on the nuke suit's instability. Machi and the Carrots leave to hang out in the lab's breakroom.

Zapmouse vs Winston Overwatch. A haunted rat in a haunted lab, seeking the most violent sort of revenge… and a funny monkey also. Winston wants to use zapmouse like a gun and zapmouse is Not Having It. Zapmouse plays careful and smart and gets a solid damage lead at the start in the first match but unfortunately, his opponent is A Fucking Gorilla. Zapmouse prevents a 3 stock but Winston wins handily. Winston has made an enemy today. Second match is much more even. Zapmouse loves zapping people off ledges. Winston swats him like a fly for last stock, winning 2-0. Zapmouse wanders off snarling.

Sephiroth taking the absentee spot and subzero amalgam is introed with Hey Ya- WHATS COOLER, THAN BEING COOL. Ryan: "so, we dont really know much about subzero amalgam personality-wise, but we do know subzero was only made to make a guy that knows what itd be like to be very very cold. So judging from that I cant imagine subzero's a very big fan of doctor order." Comona: "Subzero's actually so cold, its vocal box doesn't work properly, so it all just comes out as beeps. If Subzero was able to be warmer he would sound like a relatively normal man." nccts said 'lol. lmao. subzero's actually one of her only creations thats loyal to her still and is probably one of the most eloquent of them all when those beeps are translated <3'

Puzz asks in chat if subzero amalgam has any connection to ICEE and ryan says ICEE might be willing to eat him if you artificially flavored him. if he weren't sentient making that effectively cannibalism, of course. but there's no connection. awesome

Commentators keep ascribing a deathwish to subzero due to the horrors of being cruelly made just to be so very VERY cold. Subzero loses and Ryan says subzero's mostly just upset he isn't dead yet. Also that Subzero and Zapmouse are suffering buddies. Subzero left pretty much immediately after losing 2-0 to sephiroth, wandering off for whatever reason.

Spriteman vs. Hackerbot J0hn! Comona praises J0hn and Spriteman's professionalism, and Ryan says the report from the field is that J0hn will swap back to human form if bot form proves disadvantageous. It proves disadvantageous. Perfect Spriteman is vicious and playing honest with the projectiles is NOT helping, and Bot form is going in his pocket for now as we get a scene, heard through the Copious Amount of Recording Equipment in the lab, Because the Dr. Is A Freak About It. J0hn: "you… you bastard. You used to be just like me- what happened? Why did you abandon who you were?" Perfect Spriteman, trying to speak and failing: "sprite… sprite…" J0hn, clearly disturbed: "....what the Fuck? Okay??? Alright??? I mean I went with this form because I was expecting a pushover, but maybe I was wrong. Let's do this motherfucker."

Comona speculates Dr. Order doesn't really like or want J0hn hanging around the lab in -Man form because that hacking sword is Worrying for her. Also suggests J0hn can hack opponent's minds to read for what they're going to try next, which... thats an application of script awareness/sensitivity ive wondered about before- if you can read the script and someone's current thoughts are important enough to get logged in it wouldnt that make you effectively Slightly, Incidentally capable of reading minds, if only usually for the Narratively Important ™️ bits, and communication over the script in a telepathy-like form is smthn that happens a few times during the nccts between people capable of percieving and manipulating it, particularly cosmic with the other non-cobalt gods. Certain workings of the script appearing to function like supernatural psychic phenomena to the unknowing eye. Chartreuse and Crimson have had unsecured script-based twin telepathy and known they were fictional characters since they were like. born probably. and just. never directly told or explained any of this to cobalt ever and still havent. Im rambling this tangent's barely relevant to the gaiden at hand

J0hn takes first stock with an effective usage of glass cannon protocol (smash art.) Sprite is dissolving the plant's brain and he is playing DUMB this match, j0hn taking it to a round 3.

Perfect Spriteman is just gasping and sputtering 'sp-sprite…' and J0hn looks on. "Jesus Christ, what'd Doctor Order do to you…? Looks like I gotta get you back to the way you used to be, my man." Ryan sets the rule as: if J0hn wins with two stocks or more, spriteman will be cured. J0hn is decidedly doing considerably better in -man form, but alas Spriteman is still a vicious battle freak. J0hn, after losing: "wish the best for ya, my man. If you ever feel like coming back to reality, I'll be right here for ya."

Crimsonaut vs Google Plus! Crimsonaut described as being of a nervous disposition, but again, Ticked Off about Dr. Order abandoning him in an alternate evil dimension that he 'barely made it out of with his life' and Google Plus as not really… having a personality yet. Just if/then statements. Crimsonaut, to Dr. Order and about Google Plus: "I want to destroy you, and everything you stand for, and I'll start with your little pet project here!" Considering the slimey hiss of a voice Comona gives him here and how Crimsonaut stands guard during the raid and how Crimson attempted a coup in the bad timeline and calls the doctor a freak when orange rolls around this bit is fun. This bit is fun.

Their first match has Plus in the lead to start with, but Crimsonaut evens out the damage and although plus takes first stock, Crimsonaut takes them back to even shortly after. However, an unfortunate offstage fumble Plus takes advantage of costs the little man an early second stock, Plus having a little throwback to Bing in terms of enjoying those offstage dunks. Crimsonaut takes it to a close last stock anyway with a lot of careful play, but Plus takes it. Ryan: "Crimsonaut's been working with the Doctor for a long time. if you trust a guy to take your stuff into a different dimension you probably trust them with a lot- he's probably been familiar with her if/then programming pretty long, granted he's been away for a while now, but he still knows her style."

Crimsonaut embarrassingly early first stock in round 2 😔 but crimsonauts got good momentum and puts enough damage on fast enough to even things out again. Plus appears to begin… malfunctioning somewhat. Having some weird reactions intermittently. The match goes down to last stock, evenly high damage playing ledge games until Plus throws out an illogical move that Works, taking Crimsonaut's last stock and winning 2-0. Comona: "i hate to bring this up, but… d'ya think google's gotten into Google Plus's head? That didnt seem like an if/then scenario." Ryan describes Dr. Order looking worried about the situation unfolding and covering the window she's watching the combat from when she noticed him looking. Ryan looks at Orders cybersecurity monitoring setup and can't See any outside influence causing the apparent disruption, but he's not sure, they'll have to wait and see. Comona describes how if they were Order, they'd be keeping a close eye on their creations because yet another rogue element could be dangerous for her.

The Dimensional Bus who abandoned Jay at the station, vs Mach 2! Mach 2 is mentally locked on doing better than his predecessor, who got out round one, by taking this chance and kicking the bus's ass. The Dimensional Bus was with Crimsonaut when they ventured into the Crimson and made it out just fine. Unclear if this means the Bus was stranded with Crimsonaut and came back with him or ditched him there by himself at some point to return to its job of ferrying people between worlds, but the latter seems more likely as it sounds like Crimsonaut only got back really recently and the bus was In Use in previous episodes. The Bus was also thoroughly screened for Crimson contamination and came back clean, but considering Crimsonaut smuggled Crimson in unnoticed through the same screening process, the only reason I trust that is because Dan beats the hell out of the Bus later and not a thing comes of it crimson-ways.

Mach 2 takes round one, but in round 2 as the commentators completely fail to pay attention to the match discussing music tastes instead, he does markedly worse, feeling even more inferior that the people being paid to be here to commentate on his fight could not give a shit less because theyre more concerned with talking about Nickelback. Pour one out for Mach 2's round 2, run over by the vengabus.

Round 3 opens STRONG with mach 2 footstooling the bus into a pit, but the bus takes mach 2's first stock and pineapples him for the second, creating a reversal of the lead that mach 2 cannot climb out of the pit of. Mach 2's absolute nightmare scenario. He loses.

Mach 2, very upset, calls out Machi to come settle a score. Machi: "Okay! :D" its grudge match time! Comona: "I know this is probably a fairly even match but i can't help but get like, yamcha vs. the saibamen vibes." Ryan: "yeah, mach 2's about to get yamcha'd." Chat member: "vegeta level complex, yamcha level winstreak." The match IS actually quite even, although Machi keeps at least a small lead the whole time. Machi, in his littol baby voice as he closes last stock: "nothing personal, Mach 2!" and teleports behind him kicking him into the blast zone. Mach 2 is left facedown in a crater yamcha posed while Machi gives his limp, motionless body a hug before walking off.

Chat member asks if mach 2's like, actually dead and ryan clarifies no, he doesn't like killing off characters for anything less than big stakes and even then he brought the grunk back, they didnt even kill crimson really, just banished him. Chat Member: "except light pit." Ryan: "oh SHIT i forgot, light pit DID get canonically killed by palutena."

Lab Intern Dan vs Recon Riley! Ryan intros Riley with a homestuck reference. Recon Riley is the ninja, the secret agent, the silent watcher thats so hard to come to terms with the presence of this whole time due to their skill in moving unnoticed and untouched. Dan and Riley are both employees here, but Riley's the one with the status, that actually gets to sit at the meetings that Dan brings coffee to. Comona: "Dan's not an avaricious man, but he probably thinks 'man, it'd be cool to be the one that gets a seat at the table.'" Riley is stated to be genderfluid here because Ryan noticed he was playing fast and loose with the pronouns in regard to them so hes deciding thats because she uses any/all of 'em.

Despite TWO self-destructs from fumbled kill attempts, Dan takes Riley to last stock, and then he SDs again. dan's said to put so much time into 9-5ing that he has almost no time for doing or practicing things he actually enjoys. Feel that buddy 😔 Riley's only real combat strength is being a mosquito. Being fast and hard to hit and unmerciful. But that wont help when dan has the Giant Fist. Get uppercut'd nerd its game 3 time. After that uppercut kill dan's feeling CONFIDENT and he gets out to a strong strong lead. As things go to last stock and dan has a dramatic damage lead, Riley's only beginning to panic about losing to the rank and file employee right as its about to happen, and Dan socks riley with a jab for last stock

My Grunk vs Nuke Suit! Comona praises that nuke suit is just a learning combat ai suit with no sentience at all whatsoever and that's what Dr. Order's stuff works best as. Ryan reminds that Nuke Suit is potentially very dangerous due to its nuclear nature, and also compares its robotic nature to Google Plus's. First match between these two- if you get distracted for even a moment you will miss nuke suit losing its first two stocks. My Grunk takes it. Nuke Suit shifts to what the commentators call an 'unstable form.' Ryan: "my grunk? Sweetie? Be Careful."

My Grunk, immediately: (makes a dick shaped dirt sculpture between bullying nuke suit with fire, trying to blow it up with dynamite and taking apart a plane with his bare hands)

Commentators start considering evacuating the building before getting messaged by J0hn that they can relax, nothings gonna blow up the nuke suit's full of shit. He was monitoring the situation and it was just in Intimidation Mode, using the appearance of instability to try to get an edge in combat by making its opponent panic. Dr. Order: bad person, interesting ideas!

Sephiroth vs Winston Overwatch. Sephiroth hates this fucking ape and wants to prove he can get further than midway into a tournament. Winston yeets sephiroth's twink ass like an empty can for the first stock and its VERY funny. Most of this first game is vine jokes, match commentary and very silly kills. Funny Monkey GETS him. Round 2 is more in sephiroth's favor, and a lot of the commentators begging for winston to fucking GET him with the funny donkey punch in his very punchable face. Winston ALMOST reverse 3-stocks. but sephiroth HAD to rob us of it. Sephiroth: "how could you take me to my limit?!" Winston: "Hehe, hi there, im a funny monkey." Sephiroth, responding to the audience: "...how do they know… about the weights in my shirt?" And goes shirtless. Winston wonders what he'd look like with pink hair (due to a silly skin misclick), completely disengaged from the anime dramatics.

Sephiroth: "This Is More Of A Tits Out Kind Of Look." Chat Member: "sephiroth now weighs as much as a pichu." Winston overwatch sends him straight to hell with a stomp. Hell is said to be in paris but i think this is just ryan making an overwatch map joke in context. This being said it would be very funny. Sephiroth wins with his shirt off in an electrically close down to the wire match. Winston then immediately raids Dr. Order's breakroom for its stock of peanut butter and immediately dips. Ryan: "respect the grift, my man." Winston overwatch becomes accomplice to war criminal for some fucking peanut butter

Spriteman vs. Google Plus! Spriteman's still lost in that sauce called sprite. Perfect Spriteman takes advantage of Plus's general predictability to read him again and again. Google Plus is still behaving a bit erratically- possibly due to outside interference, possibly not, it's unclear yet, but it could be contributing to why Plus is losing here. Ryan: "both of these people are… very very damaged by Doctor Order and need to come to terms with it- Plus being entrenched in pure objectivism and Perfect Spriteman is just all about… obsession." I know what ryan Meant here but hearing 'Google Plus is into objectivism' took a year off my life never imply Plus reads ayn rand ever again even on accident please and thanks (lighthearted)

After losing to Spriteman and after certain weird aspects of his match with Crimsonaut, Plus questions the effectiveness of the if/then logic format he's been acting based on due to it returning inconsistent results despite being based on consistent reasoning, and decides to reformat his thought processes and seize control, 'becoming sentient' in his words. He just sort of decided "ok this isnt working perfectly 100% of the time. ergo clearly i have to be at least enough of a person to figure out what actually DOES work.' Doesnt make him do any better fighting perfect spriteman in though. Plus checks his database for what to do about failure, finds nothing, decides next action based on newly acquired 'sentience' and wipes both his queries and an unnamed External Force from mind and demands a battle with the Doctor.

Doctor Order's head is in her hands. She doesn't know why this keeps happening. (My money's on 'cant make a thing Detect spectrum if it cant understand what spectrum is at the baseline, that being art and connection, something that requires complex nonliteral thought and the ability to process communication and emotion to thoroughly get. Not to Philosophy of Art but elephants can slap abstract strokes of paint on a canvas and AI can recombine assets to make a new image but far as im concerned without communication and interpretation its not really anything grander than the blunt sum of its parts by itself, and while you can interpret both those examples if you feel like it you cant feel a communication of intent bc to an elephant the paintbrush might as well be a stick with mud on it thats fun to smear on things and to an ai its just data because it doesnt Think like we do. There isn't the same Artistic Intent in the action because it couldn't begin to process art the same way we do. We can make it art through interpretation but it was not created with intent of making art by what made it, even if the zookeepers and the users of the AI or the people who had their data scraped to train it had artful intentions, because art is a Human Thing, so there is something always just. Missing. anyway.) Plus is kicking her ass. Stop making animeboy web browsers. You only have yourself to blame doc.

There's the suggestion made in this episode that maybe there's something special about Bing thats lead to Goog and Plus's awareness, but honestly Especially in hindsight i don't buy it he's just a guy to me. No amount of Technique (nccts) can convince me otherwise. I think Bing could do that where Dani couldn't because he is simultaneously so relevant (by extension of goog and now dani) and irrelevant that he could both enter the void and not be claimed by it and no other reason. I think making him special is unnecessary and would be distracting, although he'd probably disagree with me. The idea that goog and mac have to be made from someone special to be special is rey palpatine logic to me

Comona: "i think that Google Plus playing reactively now instead of distracting himself trying to process a bunch of different scenarios all at once bodes well for the mechanical being that he is." Ryan: "yeah, for a guy made of flowcharts hes reacting very well, abandoning the flowcharts is probably the best decision hes made." Doctor Order loses to an uptilt and goes back to her viewing box grumbling irritably about it happening again, and snaps that it doesnt matter, Plus might not have emotions or whatever but he still lost the tournament, so if he wants to leave then go AHEAD, because she won't be using him anyway. Plus: "Victory achieved. Seeking further victory." And marches out of the lab to go pick some fights like an unbothered king

Dan vs The Dimensional Bus! Dan can, should, must and WILL demolish a FUCKING bus. He did get tazed in the ass in the process but its fine its fine its fine. Dan prints out memes and puts them on the fridge in the breakroom and is also good as fuck at peggle. Thoroughly destroyed that fuckin bus in both rounds. Ryan: "if you told me at the start of this tournament that dan would be in top 4 i would have laughed you out of the room."

My Grunk vs. Sephiroth. Sephiroth fought grunk proper last tournament so thats funny. Ryan: "oh god, i've just realized that of the 16 people here only a few of them weren't created by doctor order and two of them are in top four. I think Dr. Order kind of sucks." Sephiroth, stuck in a minecart: "i will show this minecart despair." Alas the zombie cant compete well with Sephiroth From Sephiroth, and round one is Cruel. Chat asks if Riley is a creation of Dr. Order and Ryan replies yes, but only in the sense that Riley was Modified for stealth by Order, they were born a regular person.

Perfect Spriteman vs. Dan! Perfect Spriteman takes first round pretty easily and handily, but someone gets sent down to let Dan know how many people are cheering for him. Dan: "...What? They're cheering for me? What? I'm just a Guy. You sure? You're not confusing me for someone else? Me? ME? I feel like you've gotta be messing with me here, but I win, I lose, its for you guys, aight? Stay frosty, motherfuckers." Commentators discuss how cpu kerfuffle true ending is Dan getting to be champ and how he should be in charge actually as Dan takes first stock, and the match is fun and tense as dan works hard to successfully pull it to a round 3.

Dan apparently knows and feels next to NOTHING about what's specifically going on with the labs, he's just here for the paycheck. He doesn't even know Perfect Spriteman used to be a guy. which i mean yeah makes sense his first fuffle was already after Spriteman transformed. Ryan: "hes just here to punch." Comona: "hes just like 'oh theres a monster? I mean thats kind of normal for kerfuffle so whatever'" Ryan: "I was here for like. kerfuffle 5 to fight hamburger helper. this is nothing." Ryan makes a comment on the match about CPUs not being smart enough to make a particular play a human could go for and Comona shushes him and Ryan goes "oh yeah i forgot." Match is tense enough the commentators dont comment on much else. Ryan: "The pressure is on- but I don't think Dan's feeling it because he doesnt realize just how many people are watching and rooting for him, and I dont think perfect spriteman even realizes he's in a tournament right now hes just acting on base instinct." Spriteman takes last stock, winning 2-1.Dan pushes Spriteman out of center stage a little bit to say something. Dan: "that guy on the side said there were people watching this and… cheering? for me? So I still don't know if this whole thing is a bit, so I'm gonna preface this whole thing with that because if I'm being played for a goddamn idiot right here and like, you're gonna put this in a cringe compilation or something thats some Bullshit- but to all you people out there cheering for me… thank you so much. Im not sure if you all know it, but god DAMN does that mean so much to me. To know that like- even though my life's been Failure after Failure that like- theres still people out there chanting my name- APPARENTLY, according to that guy- so uh- if this is a cringe compilation you BETTER not post that shit- but if it isnt… thanks you guys. I'm gonna hit up steak and shake." I want to hug him. I want to hug him so bad it makes me look stupid.

Sephiroth vs Perfect Spriteman, Grand finals! Fast and tense set. Sephiroth takes game one, directly demanding to be taken seriously as an antagonist and like, with the metanarrative element grand kerfuffle and the nccts introduced with time that's Funny. Commentators reiterate how funny sephiroth doing so well is when he wasn't even supposed to BE here, someone just didn't show up. During the second match, the commentators hear something go off somewhere in the lab- some kind of distant siren or alert. Second match goes to a last stock situation, and Spriteman clinches it, taking it to a game 3. The shirt comes off, theyre on new donk and sephiroth is leading and hes being scary scary scary and then he sds, choking in the silliest way possible and never recovers. The tournament's winner, and calibur's representative for the next tournament is Perfect Spriteman!

But before the commentators can finish announcing that, Dr. Order arrives on the scene with an urgent announcement: "Listen, everyone, theres been a break-in, and we need to lock down and take care of the problem, every stay where you are and once the intruder has gone away-" and shes interrupted. "Ho ho, you want to stop NOW huh? Maybe you should've stopped when you gave me all of this… bullshit! Don't get me wrong, I love the bullshit, but I still think you've gotta pay!" And Larry appears, first as himself, and then as his 'true form' melts away to get set for a random roll: "Listen, you made this bed, time for you to lie in it!" Dr. Order: "I've had enough of this shit anyway. Doesn't matter what happened. I will have Perfect Spriteman as my champion, and you'll see, in the next tournament, Perfect Spriteman will-" Larry, cutting her off and starting the match: "Yeah, yeah, whatever." Comona, as Larry: "Pull up those yoga pants and come for a fight, 'cause I'm looking for one."

Larry rolls ryu. This does not bode well. Ryan, now looking into the Doctor's files, determines Florida Man was once just a joker, but after interacting with Dr. Order, became what he is now with the powers of shapeshifting. Dr. Order takes first stock. Order: "you think I couldn't best my own creations?" Larry: "yeah, I talked to google!" Dr Order keeps a strong lead, but Larry IS out here playing street fighter. Larry, comboing her: "hey doc Google Plus showed me how flowcharts work Check This Shit Out!" Alas, while Larry does Pretty Damn Good for a Ryu, he gets footstooled and loses his last stock. Doctor Order, looking down on him: "you really thought you could come back, and you could defeat me? After all this?" Larry laughs, on the ground. "Yeah, its called making it past seventh in a tournament. But hey, you know the curse you gave me. You win some… you lose some. I'm getting the hell out of here. I know you're so PROUD of ~Perfect Spriteman~ but you aren't so proud of yourself, are ya?" Dr. Order tries to snap back "I dont NEED to be-" but larry, not letting her finish, turns into meta knight and teleports away with his cloak, and Squid Jenny delivers the finalized cast list for the next episode.

#under a readmore in order to not clog dashboards #cpuk spoilers

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airborneice · 2 years ago

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I'm very new to digital art and was wondering what sort of process/brushes you use for your Hilda art? I absolutely love your trolls and centaur designs ❤️

aw that’s very kind, thank you!! tbh my art approach is kind of all over the place but I’ll do my best to answer!

first off, I draw in photoshop and use mainly these two brushes -

the 1st is pretty much the standard PS brush and the HB one is what I used for most of the trolls/centaur stuff! generally I pick one of these brushes and use it for both lineart and putting in colour/shadows. (to be honest photoshop somehow got the settings on the HB brush messed up a lil while ago which is why I use it for lineart less now, but it’s still nice for doing shadows bc it has a really pretty soft edge :) )

as for art process, I’ll try to explain with the hilda little mermaid drawing I did recently - explanation thingy under the cut!

so with most of my art I usually start out sketching it on paper first and then move the sketch to my computer - since you’re new to digital you might find it easier to start that way, it helps make things less complicated bc you already have something to start from

so for the drawing in question I started with this which is. A Mess

everything is all over the place and yasha from crit role is hanging out in the middle of it but this is the type of thing I start with! first with the lil thumbnail sketch up in the corner, and then doing the characters in more detail separately (if I know I’m gonna end up moving something to digital I’ll just draw the characters anywhere I can fit them on the page, bc I can worry about fitting them together properly later)

u can honestly skip the thumbnail sketch if u want, but for bigger drawings I find it useful to have something rough to refer back to, so I don’t forget what I’m aiming for overall when I start getting into the details

anyway then I move the paper sketch to digital and arrange things properly and add anything I’ve missed, and depending on how messy it is I do another slightly cleaner sketch overtop -

I’ve learned the hard way that fixing things at the lineart stage is a lot more hassle so I try to make sure everything’s looking as it should in the cleaner sketch - david’s initial sketch looked mostly fine to me so I only redid a couple things and added some details, while I changed a lot of kaisa til I was happier with the pose. I knew the salt lion was gonna end up being mostly hidden so I didn’t worry about refining it

SO next I make a new layer and start drawing the clean lineart over the sketch. I like using coloured lineart these days, so I pick a colour to sketch and do lineart in - literally any colour except black, since photoshop lets you change the hue later (you can go to Image -> Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation and change things as much as you like). I did all the lineart for the characters here in purple, like the sketch, and I made sure to keep all the lineart for different characters separate so I could mess with it individually later. I’ve got a bit of what kaisa’s lineart folder looks like below, and you definitely don’t have to put Everything on a new layer like I did, but I usually keep the eyes, brows and little details like the fin lines and scales separate bc they’re the things I’ll most likely want to adjust later

once I’ve got the lineart done in that one colour, I’ll use the Adjustments-> Hue/Saturation slider to change some parts of it (this is where having things on different layers comes in) to blend in or stand out more, so by the end it looks like it does below. I made some swatches so you can see which parts I changed from the main outline colour:

so I kept the original purple for most of it, but I changed the salt lion’s lines to blue, and kaisa’s scales to a light grey so they’d blend in more, and made her eyebrows much darker so they’d stand out from her hair. (I usually do this step after I’ve started colouring them in, bc it’s easier to see what’s working then and what isn’t, I’m just showing it here so you can see it in isolation). also, I’ll usually set the whole lineart folder to ‘multiply’ so it blends in with the colour layer even more

(tbh you don’t have to do it as complicated as this, everyone has their own approach depending on what they’re going for and it might take some trial/error before you find what works best for you. I just do this bc I’m used to it and don’t mind the extra hassle. pretty colours go brrr :) )

for colouring in, I use the lasso tool to trace over areas of the drawing and the paint bucket to fill them in. I usually put every different coloured area on a new layer so it’s easier to go back and change something if I decide I don’t like the colour. so everything is built up over a number of layers, and I can use the airbrush tool to soften the edges of some areas (like david’s arm fins). for the parts with gradients like their tails, I put down a flat colour layer (like the orange for david), select that area and then make a new layer and put the gradient on with a big airbrush tool. also for stuff from hilda I usually colour-pick straight from a screenshot of the show with the eye-dropper tool, it’s much faster than guessing them

so then we have the flat colours done, and I can show you why I like doing coloured lineart even though it takes longer bc

here’s the lineart all in black vs the final result with the colours. like…it’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with the all black one, but having the colours really helps soften things imo!

I didn’t really do much by shading for this one but to go over it real quick -

if I was just drawing a character on a white background I wouldn’t bother with this step, but here I know this scene is taking place in the dark & underwater, so I selected the characters, made a new layer and filled in a dark green colour overtop on a low opacity & set to Multiply, so the characters get this slight green tinge and look more like they’re in the setting (I did the same with the salt lion but I’m gonna just focus on these two for now)

for the actual shadows I got the same green colour, and on another multiply layer blocked it in, and just played around with the opacity til it looked about right

honestly not my best job at shading lol but it helps give it some depth and put them in the scene! if I hide the colours and lines for a sec you can see that literally all I’ve added over the original colours is this:

and if I add the basic colours of the background in, you can see how much it helps compared to the flat colours I started with -

they look so much more like they’re in the scene!

anddd after doing the same thing to the salt lion (which is just the same shading process but more layers and darker) and adding the rest of the background that’s it!!

don’t worry they’ll be fine lol

anyway sorry this got so long, I hope it helps!! I’m not the best at explaining myself so if anything I said here doesn’t make sense then feel free to ask :)

#ask #anon #little mermaid au

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amazingphanisnotonfire-imagines · 3 years ago

Text

Maeve//i don't belong, and my beloved, neither do you

Request: Could you please do something else with Maeve? Perhaps something where reader works with Maeve on an English project and she's surprised that they have so much in common. She realizes she has feelings for her somehow after that? Sorry that's sort of rubbish, have a swell day/night.

hey! what’s up everybody! i hope everyone is well, and i hope you like this!! title is from ‘the lakes’ by taylor swift!

- English projects are never fun

- I mean, who finds constant stress and a deadline that’s always far too close fun?

- Nobody

- That’s who

- Well apart from Mrs Jones

- Your year 9 English teacher who made every minute of her classes a living hell

- And who mysteriously went missing half way through the year after having a screaming match with a fellow English teacher

- When she was supposed to be teaching you Romeo & Juliet.

- One day she was accusing Miss Newman of being a terrible teacher and purposefully bumping up students grades so she looked better

- And the next day both her and Miss Newman were gone

- And you only got a replacement teacher when you moved into year 10

- Right now though

- Its seems Miss Sands is going through some stuff

- Because not only did she give you an assignment on Friday with a deadline of Monday

- She also chose your partners instead of letting you choose your own

- Which is why you’re stood outside of Maeve’s in the pouring rain

- On a frankly miserable Saturday morning

- It seems the weather knew exactly what sort of weekend you were facing

- And decided to make it even worse.

- By the third knock

- You’re about to give up

- The curtains are still drawn

- And you’ve seen more movement in a graveyard

- Plus

- You kind of already assumed you would be doing the project alone

- Maeve Wiley was known for being very...

- ...independant

- And group projects are no different

- You actually think she may be more independent during group projects

- So as soon as Miss Sands paired you together

- You knew

- You were 99% sure that

- You’d do your thing

- She’d do hers

- And then five minutes before the presentation

- You would figure out a way to connect the two.

- Anywayyyy

- While daydreaming about a time when you won’t have any assignments

- And making awkward, accidental eye contact with Maeve’s neighbours

- The door in front of you opens

- Simultaneously giving you a fright and almost knocking you out

- She yawns and scratches the top of her head

- ‘what are you doing here?’

- She sounds both tired and annoyed and you blink at her a few times before answering

- ‘er - i - the project. for english.’

- It takes her a few seconds to process what you’ve said

- But when she does

- She looks even more miserable than she did five seconds ago

- And you brace yourself for a long weekend

- She sighs and rolls her eyes

- Before slowly opening the door properly and letting you in

- You feel slightly nervous as you walk in

- But you really have no idea why

- It’s not like she’s a complete stranger

- But then again

- She’s not exactly a friend

- ‘don’t worry, i’ve hidden the drugs. i don’t really like to share anyway.’

- ‘what?’ you ask confused and she rolls her eyes again

- She huffs and crosses her arms before nodding to the slightly messy living room

- ‘i get it. we’re a bunch of benefit fraud chavs that do nothing but drink and smoke all day.’

- ‘that’s not what i was thinkin-’

- ‘sure it wasn’t.’ she rolls her eyes and you stare down at the floor. ‘i need to get changed so make yourself at home I suppose.’

- She walks into what you assume is her bedroom and slams the door behind her

- Leaving you to stand awkwardly in the middle of the living room

- It’s small and slightly cramped

- And most people would say that all the stuff makes it look busy

- But to you

- It’s wonderful

- It’s filled with stories and memories

- Some self explanatory

- Some slightly more bizarre

- Like the wonky blue and yellow clay swan living on the coffee table

- You really want to know the story behind it

- But decide it might be a little early in your partnership to start asking about her attachment to a half swan, half moth looking ornament

- So instead you pick up a pile of books on the dining table and move them onto the floor

- You can hear Maeve opening and closing drawers while humming a familiar tune

- And you feel yourself relax slightly as you place your laptop and books where the books were previously sat

- Even if it does feel like you’re using all of your braincells to try and figure out where you’ve heard it before

- ‘wow, do you actually trust me around that?’

- ‘what?’ you stop humming and look up at her

- She looks between you and the laptop, staring at you expectantly

- ‘oh no. i mean of course i do.’ you blush and she shakes her head before sitting opposite you

- ‘so what do we know about women in fiction?’

- ‘historically they are written as either a femme fatalle type or some sort of innocent angelic being.’

- ‘they still are’

- ‘true’ you agree and flick through your textbook

- ‘why don’t we write about that then?’

- ‘what? how we’re still depressingly far back in the equality movement, despite being told otherwise?’

- She stares at you for a few seconds

- A mixture of shock and surprise

- Before nodding

- And smiling

- An actual genuine smile

- You didn’t even know she could do that

- Well you did

- Of course you did

- But you just haven’t seen it a lot

- Usually when you see Maeve

- She’s either mad, grumpy or very, very, very angry

- But her smiling

- Puts a smile on your face

- And this was definitely not where you thought this was going

- ‘yeah...that’

- ‘okay.’ you shrug. ‘you can do classic literature because i know you prefer them and i’ll cover modern works.’

- ‘how do you know i prefer classics?’

- ‘the pile of books’ you nod towards the floor and she follows your gaze, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. ‘they’re all ripped and folded. you either love them or really, really hate them’

- ‘okay’ she eyes you suspiciously as you focus on your laptop

- And you can feel your cheeks heat up under her gaze

- However as quickly as they were there

- They disappear

- And the two of you fall into a surprisingly comfortable silence.

- After about half an hour

- Maeve stops what she’s doing to stretch

- ‘is it okay if i play some music?’

- ‘sure, it’s your place. do what you want...as long as its not awful’

- ‘and what constitutes as awful?’ she asks, a smirk playing on her lips

- ‘well’

- And with that one question

- Your entire day disappears in front of you

- Laptops and books are closed and long forgotten

- And instead you talk about music and movies

- Books and plays

- Characters that you love and hate

- And the fact that her favourite character is the one you hate the most

- She makes you lunch while you debate between movies and books and which adaptations are good

- And which ones should never have been made

- And you clean up and apologise profusely after a stray cushion (possibly thrown by you) ends up knocking the pan over

- Surprisingly

- She finds it quite funny

- And you let out a relieved sigh

- Soon the sun goes down on another day

- And you’ve barely written two paragraphs done between you

- ‘do you want to stay?’ she asks while your putting your jacket on

- If she’d asked you that this morning

- You would have thought she had lost it

- But now it feels almost inevitable

- And you feel genuinely lucky to be asked

- Not many people get to know Maeve

- The real her

- And that last person she told all of this to broke her heart

- Very publicly

- And she told herself she would never let herself be that vulnerable with someone ever again

- But this just feels right

- For some reason you feel right

- She feels safe with you

- And part of her hates herself for it

- But then again

- She hates herself for not getting to know you sooner

- She feels far too attached to you

- And it’s barely been twelve hours

- You of course agree to stay

- Shocking yourself and her

- And while she sorts to sofa out

- You excuse yourself to the bathroom

- Under the pretences of telling your parents where you are

- It takes two seconds to text them

- And the other 28 to ask yourself

- What the fuck are you doing?

- Why are you agreeing to this?

- Why do you feel like this?

- What are you feeling?

- Who knows?

- Not you

- Great

- Now you’ve been in the bathroom for a suspicious amount of time

- Just get it together, Y/n

- It’s just a study sleepover

- Maeve gives you a questioning look as you leave

- ‘you know how mums are. always worrying about where you are and what you’re doing’

- ‘i wouldn’t actually’ she shrugs and your eyes widen

- ‘oh shit, sorry. i’m so sorry. god, i’m an idiot.’

- ‘it’s fine’ she forces a laugh and you wince. ‘i got you an extra duvet and little women is ready to watch so i can show you that the book is better’

- ‘that’s not what i said and you know it’

- ‘i’m sorry. i can’t hear you over the sound of me being 100% right and you being 100% wrong.’

- ‘you may be good at english, but you suck at maths’

- The next day you wake up to the sun shining through the curtains

- And a clump of Maeve’s hair in your mouth

- You splutter and cough and wake her up quickly

- And she jumps away from you and smacks her head of the table

- The two of you ended up moving the blankets to the floor while watching Pride and Prejudice

- And neither of you bothered to move back

- Maeve yawns and scratches her head

- Exposing a small part of her stomach and you feel yourself become a little breathless

- ‘are you okay?’

- ‘ye-yeah’ you nod and she eyes you suspiciously

- ‘whatever’ she shrugs and starts making breakfast

- You watch as she pours to bowls of cereal

- Giving you the last of the milk

- And for a second you’re a little worried as to how she knew you liked it

- But then you remember that she also likes it and you had a whole discussion about the best and worst types of cereal at 2am

- And half way through breakfast

- You remember the original reason you’re here

- And both of you curse loudly

- Before rushing to finish eating

-You get half way through your project

- When Maeve asks if you want to go out for a bit

- And well

- She doesn’t need to ask you twice

- And by the time you come back

- The feeling you had last night returns

- And has settled in your stomach

- For the foreseeable future it seems

- It makes you feel both light and heavy at the same time

- And when you look at her

- You feel dizzy

- So you rush to finish the project

- So you can go home and pretend nothing has changed

- And yeah

- With the need to leave

- You get the rest of the assignment done fairly quickly

- But you end up leaving feeling more confused about Maeve as you did when you started this

- Maybe Miss Sands was right about a weekend project

- Any longer and you would have gone insane trying to figure out whatever the hell this is

- You just have to get through tomorrow and then you’ll be okay

- Everything will go back to normal

- You and Maeve can go back to being neutral to each other

- And you won’t have to deal with all of these confusing feelings that have decided to make an appearance for some reason

- Wellll

- Turns out Miss Sands was wrong

- A weekend is not enough time

- And the first few presentations are awful

- To put it nicely

- So you spend the next week in a permanent confused state

- Confused as to why you start looking for Maeve whenever you enter a room

- Confused as to why your heart skips a beat whenever you hear her laugh

- Confused as to why you never want her stop talking in class

- Even if the bell has rung and it’s lunch

- Confused to why you keep looking for excuses to go over to see her

- Despite your assignment being long done

- And even more confused as to why you feel anxious when you’re waiting for her to answer the door

- The next Monday rolls around both painfully slowly and far too quickly

- And while you wait for Ola and Danny to finish their presentation

- Your hands shake with anxiety while your grip your papers

- Maeve reaches over the table and gives them a reassuring squeeze

- But it just makes them shake more and she slowly pulls back

- Your turn can’t come quick enough

- But then it’s over far too quickly

- And you slump back down in your seat disappointed

- Despite Miss Sands’ praise

- Because it’s over

- You no longer have an excuse to hang out with her

- You never talked before

- So why do you care about after

- But there’s so much about her that you want to know

- Like the weird swan/moth hybrid

- And the ugly plate that sits on top of the bookshelf

- You want to be part of these stories

- You want to be able to point to these things and say

- ‘yeah, i know exactly why that is special to you’

- You want to be the reason to add to this random collection of stuff

- You want her to smile when she looks at them because they’ll remind her of you

- You want her to smile when she looks at you

- ‘y/n? are you okay?’ she asks making you jump

- The classroom is now empty and you didn’t even notice the bell go

- ‘ye-yeah’ you nod and grab your bag

- ‘are you sure?’ she grabs your arm forcing you turn around

- ‘whats the weird swan thing on your coffee table?’ you ask and she furrows her eyebrows at you. ‘it’s just i saw it when i first came over and i really want to know the story behind it’

- ‘oh. aimee went through a pottery phase last year and that was the only thing she made that didn’t have a hole in it.’

- ‘and the plate?’

- ‘birthday present from my neighbours’

- ‘they got you a plate?’

- ‘yeah, they don’t have any kids’

- ‘clearly’

- Silence fills the room and you stare at the peeling posters behind her head

- You can feel Maeve move closer to you and your breath hitches when she stops a few centimetres in front of you

- She grabs your hand and squeezes it again

- And your heartbeat increases

- ‘y/n?’

- ‘yeah?’

- ‘i’m really, really confused right now. like more confused that i have ever been in my life. but what i do know, is that if i watch you walk out of that door without saying anything first, then i’d regret it for the rest of my life. i’ve only ever felt like this about boys before, but now i feel this and more about you and i have no idea where it’s come from or what i need to do, but i do know i need to tell you. because otherwise, it wouldn’t be fair for either of us’ she whispers and you stare at her wide eyed

- ‘can i kiss you?’ she asks and you nod your head quickly

- Slowly she leans in

- Her eye flutter closed and you follow

- Your lips brush over hers

- Her hands wrap around you waist to pull you close

- And then your lips connect

- And you feel everything change

- She kisses you slowly

- And when you pull away you both feel breathless

- Her cheeks are bright red

- And there’s a shy smile playing on her lips as she looks at you bashfully

- And all of a sudden you feel really grateful for Miss Sands and her personal issues

- Although you really hope they are resolved now

- For your sake as well as hers

support my writing! if you want!

#sex education #sex education imagine #maeve wiley #maeve wiley imagine #maeve wiley x reader

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a-small-batch-of-dragons · 3 years ago

Text

Healing

Prompts: So I’ve recently binged all your SS fics practically and I know you SWAMPED in prompts, but if this sounds like something you could enjoy creating I’d love to request a promt as well:

Set in your SS Butterfly Project, could we maybe get Virgil reacting to all the sides (specifically L and Ro) learning to heal, and bouncing between helping sooth everyone’s anxiety over all the changes? I’d just love under appreciated Virgil helping in the moments in between the healing process if that makes any sense…

I appreciate the he*l out of you regardless if you take this prompt or not; and you deserve all the kindness the world has to offer you. ❤️ - mylgbtbabies

I would take any fic where somethigns off and virgil knows it. Someone: Im sure its fine!! Virgil: Idk man Im anxiety my spooder sense be tingly. - anon

If you're taking requests for Sanders Sides uwu can I ask for something Virgil-centric? I just love the emo boy - anon

ahh yes the babes

Read on Ao3

Warnings: ngl this one's pretty much fluff

Pairings: DLAMP, LAMP, DLAMPR, that found family

Word Count: 3538

Healing: To restore to health or soundness; cure.

Healing: To ease or relieve (emotional distress).

* * *

Healing isn’t a linear process.

It’s messy, it’s hard, and no one should expect it to be anything otherwise. Humans are complicated, more often than not brains are absolute garbage, and trying to navigate everything on your own is difficult. Really difficult.

So is learning how to ask for help.

Virgil sighs and leans back against the couch as Roman continues to type on his laptop. He risks a glance up at Princey to see his brow furrowed slightly in concentration. Every so often he’ll quirk his eyebrow in the way that means he just made a hilarious typo and has to go back. Virgil hides a smile as he turns his attention back to his phone. Can’t intrude too much on the process, that’s not how it works. He glances up to make sure no one’s coming down the stairs and shifts his weight again.

“Are you alright?”

There’s Roman, taking care of everyone else first. “I’m good, Princey, just trying not to fuck up my spine.”

“…do you want to come sit up here with me? I won’t mind.”

Virgil cranes his neck back, letting a slow and lazy smile come across his face. “Nah, ‘m good right here. You just make with the typey typey, okay?”

Roman smiles too, victory achieved. “Okay.”

“That’s my Princey.”

Virgil isn’t humble enough to not feel the little rush of pride at seeing a quick flush spread to Roman’s ears as he turns his attention back to his laptop. Suppressing a chuckle, he starts mindlessly scrolling again, getting sucked back into whatever’s contaminating his dash this time. What’s this about a k-drama…?

“Oh! There you are!”

Patton might not notice the way Roman startles, but Virgil does. He looks up and quickly shakes his head as Patton comes the rest of the way down the stairs.

“It’s work hours, Pat.”

“Oh, I thought—“ Virgil gives him a look that he knows Patton understands as Roman is setting the rules here, and he nods quickly— “well don’t mind me, I’m just getting a drink.”

Roman relaxes slightly as Patton bustles in and out of the kitchen, then a little more as Virgil reaches up to squeeze his hand.

“Thank you,” comes the quiet mumble.

“I gotcha, Princey. Work hours are your thing, I’m happy to help.”

Sure enough, a few minutes later, when Logan comes down the stairs carrying his computer, he takes one look at them in the living room before his mouth drops open slightly.

“Is it…work hours?”

“Mhm,” Virgil says, letting his head loll back, “you wanna join?”

“May I? I can be quiet as well.”

Virgil looks up at Roman. Roman glances up, smile softening when he sees it’s Logan, and gently pats the sofa next to him. Logan smiles too and yeah, okay, Virgil’s fine with his edge lord image fading slightly if it means he gets to be fond at watching these two nerds be gentle with each other.

The two of them start to type on their laptops, Logan’s constant murmurs of what he’s working on an amusing contrast to Roman’s silent yet expressive face. Virgil keeps the barrier there, warding off Janus and Remus when they try and drag the others into the dramatics—if anyone, especially Janus, tries to deny that he’s as much a part of it as Remus is, do not under any circumstances believe them—to keep the nerds safe.

After a while, when Virgil re-emerges from whatever deep dive he’s gone on this time—and yeah, he might be looking to pirate that k-drama, maybe—he realizes there’s no more typing. He looks up, a little concerned, only to be incredibly glad no one else is around to see him melt at the sight on the couch.

Roman’s laptop lies partially closed on his lap, the screen just touching the tops of his knuckles. His head and shoulders are angled toward Logan and his eyes are closed. Logan’s glasses are slipping slightly off his face, his head on Roman’s shoulder, eyes closed, lips parted slightly as his hair falls back into his face. His laptop has been set on the coffee table, somewhere safe.

Virgil shakes his head, standing and carefully taking Roman’s laptop from him. He saves whatever’s on it and sets it next to Logan’s. Then he takes the blanket from the back of the couch and carefully drapes it over the two of them. He slides Logan’s glasses from his face and undoes the top button of Princey’s collar. Can’t do for them to have a red mark, after all. And he sits back down to keep watch.

Sometimes, when they’re doing better, they ask for more. Roman comes to him sometimes and asks, very very quietly, but he does ask, for Virgil to come sit with him by his room. Virgil happily takes up residence in the warm spot in the hallway next to Roman’s room, right where the big windows are, soaking in the warmth from outside as Roman closes the door gently behind himself.

Something that everyone had to learn pretty quick once Logan and Roman started reaching out was that both of them are extremely private people. On the surface, it might seem like they’re different—and if they’re being honest, they certainly thought they were very different—but they aren’t. Not really. Roman hides behind being too much, Logan hides behind not being anything. Whether or not anyone actually knows them without any of the facades is up for debate.

Except each other. They…they…know each other.

Virgil would be lying if he said he isn’t a little jealous of how close the two of them have become. There are soft smiles they only have for each other now, little brushes of their hands against each other’s as a constant way of saying ‘I’m here, I see you, are you alright?’ And sometimes it’s Virgil’s job to sit outside one of their rooms as they try and hold each other steady.

Their company feels better than their solitude and it’s up to them to decide where that line is.

Today, Virgil’s just keeping an eye on Roman. Fielding off anyone who comes to knock on his door, glaring away the more persistent ones who don’t seem to understand that Roman needs his space right now, kindly fuck off. Logan comes around the corner and immediately understands and he sees them murmur quietly to each other when it’s time for dinner.

When he watches Logan, it’s a little harder. Because poor Logan is so used to pushing himself to the side to be able to make decisions, to help do things, that Virgil has to remind everyone involved that no, Logan’s enforced a boundary that means he doesn’t want to be disturbed right now, he’s allowed to do that, let’s leave him be for now. Left brain boys have to stick together.

But the others, to a certain extent, are easy. They care about Roman and Logan as much as Virgil does, and if it’s to help them, they’ll do whatever they have to. Protecting them from themselves…that’s another story.

Logan is too fucking good at pretending he’s fine. He’s too good at pretending he doesn’t have emotions, that he doesn’t care what’s going on unless it’s the absolute most illogical thing that’s happening. So, sometimes he has to work a little harder to get Logan to admit it.

“L,” he mutters as the others continue to argue, “check-in.”

“I’m fine.”

Janus shoots him a look as he continues to argue. Virgil tugs gently on Logan’s sleeve.

“No one’s gonna be mad if you say you aren’t, bud.”

Logan shakes his head firmly, eyes still trained on the way Patton and Janus are insisting that they’re the one right.

“Hey,” Virgil says softly, making them take a step back, “I need you to look at me, L.”

“What is the purpose of this?”

“You’re seizing up again.” Logan looks down at his hands, sees the way they’re shaking as Virgil gently runs a finger over the back of one of them. “It’s okay, bud, you’re gonna be fine, you just have to let yourself not be for a moment, okay?”

Logan risks a glance at the others but they haven’t noticed anything. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. Judging by the way Janus is being more dramatic than normal and Roman has turned so his back is facing them, they’ve noticed something’s wrong and are purposefully not noticing anything else.

“Logan,” Virgil calls, “do you need a minute?”

Logan’s mouth opens, closes, then he nods sharply.

“Okay, thank you, I’m really proud of you for saying that. Can I sink you out?”

Another sharp nod.

Virgil sets his hand gently on Logan’s elbow and sinks them out, right outside Logan’s room. He nods to the door.

“Do you need to be alone for a moment? Or do you need me with you?”

Logan looks at the door. His hands shake again. Virgil sees them twitch toward his legs. Then he looks at Virgil and oh, okay, no, Virgil’s definitely coming inside.

“Come on,” he says, guiding hand still on Logan’s shoulder, “just through here, okay? I’m gonna get you a glass of water.”

Logan looks small, Virgil decides he doesn’t like that. He presses a glass of water gently into Logan’s hands, watches as he drinks the whole thing without complaint, and then carefully sets one of Logan’s fluffier pillows into his lap for Logan to hang onto.

“Do you want to sit here for a moment?”

Logan nods, then buries his face in the pillow and breathes. Virgil closes his eyes and starts to breathe too, keeping it slow and steady as he breathes in, then out, then in, then out. When Logan’s breathing starts to hitch, he opens his eyes and scoots a little closer, wordlessly offering a shoulder. Logan takes it after a moment, his face still buried in the pillow even as his head comes to rest on Virgil’s shoulder.

“Let it out, bud,” Virgil murmurs into the crown of Logan’s head, “don’t try and keep any of that shit in you. It’s just me.”

Watching Logan cry isn’t fun. He doesn’t recommend it. But it’s much, much better than the alternative.

“Hey,” he calls again, a fresh glass of water in his hand, “drink, bud, it’ll help.”

Logan drinks, a little slower this time, as Virgil settles back on the bed, one leg folded under him.

“Do you want to talk about it? Or do you want me to distract you?”

Logan shakes his head. “I…do not think distraction would be helpful.”

“Okay. Do you want me to give you the logical reason why this is fine, or the emotional one where I tell you how much we care?”

Logan sniffles.

“Both it is, then.” Virgil scoots closer, ready if Logan needs to lean against him again. “Despite the fact that your role is Logic, no one expects you to be entirely logical. You are a person, you have feelings and emotions, and they are as much a part of you as Logic is. Trying to deny that isn’t logical, nor productive. The reason you are who you are is equally due to both of those things.”

He softens his voice as Logan leans toward him again, smiling at how shamelessly Logan is asking to be comforted.

“And that’s why we care about you,” he mumbles, ignoring the heat rushing to his own face, “because you’re you. You’re…prissy and stuck-up and a know-it-all and it’s perfect, L. You’re our braincell and you’re fucking ours. You’re—you’re not going anywhere.”

Logan’s arms still grip the pillow tightly even as his head nudges its way under Virgil’s chin. Virgil smiles and lets him, only realizing he’s absentmindedly nuzzling Logan’s hair after a minute.

The others will be fine. Logan just needs a moment to check out.

Roman, on the other hand, fucking sucks at letting himself ask.

And yeah, Virgil’s not too proud to admit he still feels sick at how much he’s fucked that up for him. But he’ll be damned if he doesn’t try and fix that now.

Princey’s gig as Creativity isn’t misplaced; Virgil’s equal parts impressed and dismayed at how well Roman’s managed to get himself what he needs without directly asking for it, be it a favor, a piece of feedback, or a conversation.

The one thing he can’t do that with is touch.

Roman needs physical contact like he needs water. He may run hotter than a goddamn furnace but he somehow manages to look cold. Watching him sit himself apart from everyone else hurts now, especially when Janus comes and confesses that he can hear how much Roman tries to insist that he doesn’t need affection from the others.

So, they built a system. Some with Roman’s knowledge, some without. Roman goes to them for comfort when he needs it, but sometimes, when he really needs it, it’s up to them to figure out just how much.

Remus knows his job when it comes to this. His brother is Roman and you don’t get to be a Dark Side without Janus as a dramatic caveat. He’s well-versed in blackmailing self-sacrificing idiots into taking care of themselves.

Remus finds Roman when Roman’s sitting alone, off to the side, staring out into the expanse of the Imagination. He sits down, brushes their shoulders together, and frowns when Roman apologizes and shifts further away.

That’s the first indication.

He suggests they go bother Patton, or sneak out to the field and practice cliff jumping. If Roman’s alright, he’ll roll his eyes and propose an alternative, or agree and they’ll scamper off. But instead, he smiles softly and says no thank-you, politely inviting Remus to stay if he likes, but he’d rather not move.

That’s the second indication.

The third one comes when Remus carefully—really carefully—prods at Roman to see how obvious Roman’s dazed state is. He’s barely there.

Time for reinforcements.

Who gets called depends on who’s around. Since Remus is usually the first one in the chain—although that responsibility does get bounced around—everyone else’s schedules make absolute consistency difficult.

Today, it’s Janus.

He sits on Roman’s other side, pressing their shoulders together. If he’s alright, he’ll lean into him, or at the very least, tolerate it. His presence is strong, enough to coax down his shields and that’ll be the end of it. But today, he scoots away from him too, another apology on his lips.

They exchange a look over Roman’s head.

No one banters quite like Remus and Janus, and sometimes that’s all it takes to pull him out of his head. Sometimes it’s an offer to go flounce around an abandoned castle, and there’s a small smile on his face as they leave.

Not today.

As a last resort, Janus reaches out and gently calls to him.

“My prince, are you alright?”

Sometimes it’s enough.

Not today.

“Alright,” Remus declares, getting up and clapping his hands, “time to pull out the big guns.”

Sometimes he’ll get up and walk with them, sometimes he won’t. He has carried him through the Mindscape before, but it was only once. And that was when he couldn’t actually move and they’d had a murmured conversation where he gave him permission to.

Today he gets up and follows them, confused as to what’s going on. They march him straight to a door and Remus knocks on it.

“Roman’s upset,” he says as soon as the door opens.

Virgil smiles and steps aside, letting him come in. Sometimes it’s a waiting game, sometimes Remus pushes him inside. But today, Roman bows his head and walks inside, letting Virgil close the door behind him.

Sometimes it’s a protest. Sometimes it’s a: ‘this really isn’t necessary,’ or a ‘do we have to do this?’ When that happens he indulges Roman, meets every quip with one of his own until he can knock Roman off-balance with well-placed sincerity and use his distraction to steer him to the bed.

Sometimes it’s an apology. It’s an: ‘I’m sure you’ve got other things to do, I can just go,’ and he shakes his head, tells Roman he’s more than happy to spend time with him. That no, he’s not being rude, that he all but asked for Roman to come. When that happens, he normally clams up, stays quiet, until he relents and gathers Roman up into a cuddle by the door.

Sometimes it’s silence. It’s a bowed head, curled up like a frightened animal, braced for punishment. It’s the moments where the gap between Light and Dark feels uncrossable. It’s the moments where the anger is disappointment, where the frustration is indifference, until he speaks first and murmurs that no, Roman’s not in trouble, he’s not here to lecture him, he’s hurt and he wants to help, as he takes Roman into his arms.

Every time it’s a fight.

It’s knowing that he can’t win because of course, he can’t win but this isn’t something he’s supposed to win but he can’t show weakness but he won’t have a choice because it’s the slow, patient kill that speaks of nothing but kindness and care but Virgil has enough to worry about and he doesn’t get to dump all of his problems on Virgil but he knows he wouldn’t do this if he didn’t care but he cares about everyone and Roman isn’t special but he knows that doesn’t matter and he needs this but it makes him want to rip all of his skin off and start over but then he’d get blood on his carpet and that wouldn’t be very polite either—

Virgil guides him to the couch with a hand on his back, sitting him down and bringing two cups of tea to the table. He cups Roman’s hand around one to gauge how warm it is and if his fingers grow too red, he sets it aside. He sits next to him and carefully reaches out.

Here she is, sitting right next to him, and yet he’s almost nowhere to be found.

He needs to relearn how to ask for comfort, for reassurance, for what he needs, but the wait hurts them both.

I’m trying, I’m trying, I promise, I’m sorry—

It’s alright, I’m right here, just ask, that’s all.

When he finally reaches out, Virgil snaps and bundles Roman into his arms. He tucks Roman up against his chest, letting him wind his arms as tightly as he needs to, guiding one leg, then the other, over his. Roman lets out a little whine as he tucks his face into the crook of his neck. He cards his fingers through Roman's hair and smiles as the poor prince melts into his arms.

The familiar protective instinct swells up and Virgil finds himself wanting very much to wrap him up in his hoodie and keep him safe from the universe.

He keeps his breathing even, hoping his heart doesn’t begin to race from the need to protect the Roman. This is for Roman, this is what he needs, to chase away the worries of the world and be safe.

Sometimes they fall asleep like that. Sometimes Roman needs to cry and he hushes him tenderly. Sometimes he seems convinced that if either of them lets go they’ll fly apart.

It doesn’t matter.

If he feels the safest with Virgil’s arms around him, his head on his chest, his heartbeat in his ear, the world could be on fire and he would not leave his side.

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