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shysneeze · 4 years

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persausion (part one)

George Weasley x Malfoy!Reader

*part one*

Description: two years after she’s broken George’s heart at the hand of her parents’ persuasion, she bumps into George at the leaky and everything comes flooding back .

Warnings: alcohol, angst and I want to say swearing but I genuinely don’t think there is. It’s very AU. Fred is alive because he deserves to be (let me know if there is any ive missed please)

(Author note: not what i wanted it to be hence long ass delay in posting cause i got angry but hey ho. Also can you tell I’ve literally given myself a big fat crush on Fleur??”)

series masterlist

A giggle bubbles in (Y/N)’s throat as she sways slightly, arm hooked through Fleur’s as they struggle their way across the cobblestone of Diagon Alley towards the Leaky Cauldron in their heels. The winter air is crisp, and it bites at their bare skin. The plan was devised at the last minute and mostly fuelled by the buzz left from the bottle of wine they’d shared in (Y/N)’s apartment.

“It’s freezing!” Fleur shivers. “Why didn’t we bring jackets?”

“Excitement?” (Y/N) laughs with a slight shrug of her shoulder. “Probably the wine.”

“Definitely the wine.”

The woman burst into another fit of giggles, followed swiftly by a hiss of relief when they enter the warmth of the pub. They pause in the doorway together, long enough to fix each other’s hair and pull their dresses down. It’s not until they step further into the pub that (Y/N)’s smile begins to fade as the voices grow louder, and suddenly, she remembers why they usually stick to drinking in her apartment.

She can see it happening every time she steps in a crowded shop or in this case, pub, the exact moment that she goes from being a stranger in the corner of someone’s eye to (Y/N) Malfoy, first daughter of a notorious ex-deatheater. It’s no different this evening and her eyes sink to the floor when the whispering begins, already uncomfortable and longing to return to her apartment. Her change in demeanour doesn’t slip by unnoticed by Fleur who has already begun to fend off the dirty looks with a well-practiced glare of her own.

“Why is it so busy in here tonight?” Fleur sighs dramatically, standing slightly on her toes to see over the mass of people that are lingering around the bar without seats. “We’ll never get a booth!”

“How tragic.” (Y/N) makes an attempt to tease. “We’ll have to go back and drain the bottle of gin you got me for my birthday now.”

“No!” Fleur whines. “I have only just gotten you out of that apartment and I will not let you back out now. You’ll become a recluse!”

“Ouch.” (Y/N) pouts. “That’s harsh.”

Her own hurt at the comment is unconvincing to even (Y/N) herself as her pout soon turns into another bout of giggles. Fleur laughs with before returning to look out, searching every corner for somewhere to sit. She’s about to give up and reluctantly agree with her friend when she spots them.

“The twins!” She exclaims. “They’ll let us sit with them.”

Before she can even process what Fleur has said, they’re on the move again, Fleur’s dainty hand wrapped around (Y/N)’s wrist. It takes a moment for the words to sink in, but as soon as they have (Y/N) comes to a halt instantly, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. She doesn’t even try to explain herself when Fleur turns to frown at her, she’s already staring across the room where her eyes find George Weasley’s.

His eyes are just as wide, hand paused in mid-air with his pint halfway to his mouth, and for a second, all they can do is stare at one another. Then, his brows drop into a scowl and the look that falls onto his face is a jab straight to the heart for (Y/N). The disgust written all over his face forces the air out of her lungs and her hands to tremble nervously. She remembers back at Hogwarts, hidden away together in the astronomy tower or, after graduating, tucked away in his bed above the shop, how his eyes chocolate brown eyes were the only ones in the world that made her feel safe, the only ones that looked under her surname. Now, they make her feel nauseous with guilt as they bore into her own and she can’t even blame him.

“(Y/N), are you coming?”

Fleur’s question makes (Y/N) jump, turning back to her friend, mouth stuttering wordlessly as she tries to gather the sentences that she needs to tell her friend that she absolutely cannot sit with George Weasley.

“It’s only the two of them.” Fleur continues, hand slipping into (Y/N)’s. “They won’t mind.”

(Y/N) gives up on her protests and allows herself to be pulled towards the booth at the back because what is she supposed to tell her? How is she to explain that she can’t sit with her friend’s brother-in-law because three years ago, she broke his heart? No, she can only follow in silence with her eye firmly stuck to the floor. She already beginning to feel whatever confidence boost the wine had given her wearing off.

“Fleur?” She hears Fred exclaim, a drunken joyfulness in his voice. “What are you doing here?”

“Trying to find a seat.” Fleur exhales a sigh as they come to a stop. “It’s so busy tonight.”

“Well, we’re not waiting on anyone else.” Fred states. “You and your friend can sit with us. We don’t mind, ay, George?”

There appears to be no response from George, though (Y/N) can’t bring herself to look up yet. Fleur’s hand slips out of (Y/N)’s as she goes to hug her in-laws and a sudden vulnerability hits (Y/N) at the lack of contact.

“I told you, (Y/N).” Fleur nudges her. “They’re fine with it.”

At the soft jab to her side, (Y/N)’s eyes filter upwards despite her own resolve to stare at the ground until it swallows her whole. She watches the recognition flicker across Fred’s face, smile forming a sort of ‘o’ shape. (Y/N) can only give him an apologetic look as she’s tugged into a seat across the booth beside Fleur.

“Hi.” She squeaks.

“Malfoy.” Fred manages, eyes drifting for a moment to his brother. “It’s been a while.”

“I forgot.” Fleur exclaims. “You were all in the same year back at Hogwarts, no?”

“Yes, we were.” (Y/N) manages quietly, sobering up faster by the minute.

“Yeah it’s been a while.” Fred agrees with an awkward grin. “How are you?”

The question is so clearly forced and (Y/N) can’t believe she ever believed that her and George had kept it all a secret from him years ago because now, two years later, it’s clear he knows everything and he’s just as annoyed as George is.

“I’m good.” She nods. “How are you two?”

“We’re great, right George?” Fred chuckles awkwardly.

Once again, George doesn’t reply and only raises his brows before downing the remaining contents of his pint. His glass is forced onto the table with slight thud and he gets to his feet without a word. Everyone at the booth watches as he silently makes his way towards the bar and all (Y/N) can do is purse her lips at the whole thing.

“Anyway…” Fred clears his throat. “I never realised you two were friends. How did that happen?”

(Y/N) can only hope her face portrays the gratitude she feels for him at this moment for that distraction. Rather than questioning George’s abrupt departure, Fleur jumps into explaining how she and (Y/N) met at (Y/N)’s shop and quickly became close friends, and Fred listens attentively, even in his intoxicated state, humming and a nodding at all the correct places.

“I never knew you owned a shop.” Fred blurts, leaning in slightly out of curiosity. “On Diagon Alley?”

“It’s tucked out the way somewhat.” She admits. “It’s just down the street from, um, your shop actually.”

She doesn’t quite know why she’d hesitated, as if bringing it up is incriminating in some way. It’s not of course, their joke shop is famous and not exactly subtle either, no one else would expect her not to know of Weasley Wizard Wheezes and no one seems phased by her mentioning it at all. Yet, a sudden anxiety hits her, as if acknowledging the shop is only a step away from revealing the secrets the apartment above it used to hold.

“Wow, I didn’t know that.” Fred exclaims. “What do you sell?”

“She does the best perfumes I’ve found here in Britain.” Fleur gushes.

“I guess it’s more of a boutique in a way…” (Y/N) confesses nervously. “I sell magically enchanted gift items of sorts.”

“Huh, I never imagined you doing that.” Fred admits. “Always assumed you’d be in the ministry.”

“Oh no, I’d hate to be stuck in an office all day.” (Y/N) shakes her head. “I like meeting people and making things with my magic that might make people smile.”

“That’s a bit like George and I.” Fred grins.

“Well, my roses tend not to bite.” (Y/N) jokes.

“Biting roses…” Fred begins to ponder. “That brilliant!”

“What’s brilliant?”

George has returned, face still devoid of a smile but no longer holding the same animosity it did earlier. It might have been years, but (Y/N) can tell he’s given himself some sort of pep talk at the bar. He slides carefully into his seat again, the contents of the glasses huddled in his arms sloshing dangerously up the sides. (Y/N)’s automatic response is once again to drop her eyes, afraid to meet his in case it takes her too far into the past again.

“(Y/N) just gave us a great idea for the shop.” Fred explains. “Roses that bite.”

“Hmm.” George hums uncommittedly.

He pushes a glass of wine towards Fleur once he’s sat, then, taking (Y/N) completely off guard again, he places a glass of wine in front of her, drawing her eyes up to meet his in surprise. His brows are peaked almost questioningly at her expression.

“T-thank you.”

With a shrug he turns away again, facing his brother as he bursts into a pitch for biting bouquets for Valentine’s day while Fleur giggles at his enthusiasm. (Y/N) fiddles nervously with the stem of her glass, watching the side of George’s face as he listens, eyes fixed on the smile that begins to tug at his lips over his brother’s antics.

It hurts.

It hurts to see him, a reminder of what she could have had if she hadn’t allowed herself to be persuaded to destroy it. She hasn’t got the right to miss him as much as she does, not after how she left him, with a poorly written letter full of excuses that she herself didn’t even believe. No, she deserves this cold shoulder, deserves much worse in fact. She almost wishes he’d just shout at her, to tell her exactly how evil she is.

“Thanks for the idea, (Y/N).” Fred announces, pulling (Y/N) out of her memories with a start.

“Oh.” She recovers. “I can’t really take credit. It’s all yours.”

“Me and George will have to come visit your shop sometime.” He continues. “It’s just across from us, George.”

George lets out another bored hum that makes his brother’s smile twist into an awkward grimace, brows tightened and frozen for a second as he considers how to recover from this.

“Don’t feel the need to go out your way.” (Y/N) mumbles. “It’s not all that exciting.”

“That’s not true!” Fleur bursts. “You’re being modest. Your products are fantastique.”

An embarrassed sort of smile creeps onto (Y/N)’s lips at this and Fred laughs a little at her shy expression at Fleur’s declaration. Fleur seems to be completely unaware of the fact that she’s made the entire evening that little bit more bearable for her. Fleur’s always doing these little things that make everything more bearable and (Y/N) has never been more grateful for their friendship.

“Thanks, Fleur.” (Y/N) smiles softly.

Fred picks up another conversation, one far less likely to lead to any awkward silences. It holds better than any of the previous conversations have this evening and (Y/N) considers that this is because it is mostly dominated by Fred and Fleur, not that she’s complaining. (Y/N) is quite content for the awkwardness to settle solely between George and herself, where it truthfully belongs, and not to interfere with Fleur’s evening, especially after she’d been so excited to get (Y/N) out of her flat.

She considers that, if nothing else, this evening will relieve her of her life sentence to become recluse as Fleur had suggested.

An hour or so later they find themselves walking together back along Diagon Alley, shivering in the cold and hobbling with blistered feet. With the end of the night within her grasp, (Y/N) can hold herself a little lighter, and she finds herself laughing honestly as she watches Fleur and Fred babbling drunkenly together. To her side, George hides a smile stubbornly under her gaze and now that they are far enough from earshot from the others, she takes a risk.

“Thank you.”

“For what?” He asks, brows piqued quizzically.

“For not saying anything.” She expands. “I didn’t deserve that.”

He lets out a breath that almost sounds like a scoff before turning his head away from her, as if trying to hide his expression.

“I didn’t do it for you.” He states after a moment.

She knows this, it’s not a surprise. She’s suspected all evening that his lack of outburst and direct insult has been for the sake of his pride, for Fleur and for his brother, but certainly not for her, and so the knowledge doesn’t insult her. She’s glad in a way.

“I know.” She whispers. “But thank you nonetheless.”

She knows him well enough still not to push it any further and she quickens her pace to catch up with the others. They’re slowing to a stop in front of the twin’s shop and Fred flings his arms around both the Fleur and (Y/N)’s shoulder and pulls them into a hug.

“We need to do this again.” He announces.

(Y/N) can’t fault him in being as drunk as he is, not after he’s held the entire evening together so well. Instead, she laughs and nods as she pulls from his grasp. George is rolling his eyes at his brother, lips twitching into a sort of smile.

“Yes well, we need to invite Bill next time.” Fleur agrees. “He’ll be jealous to have missed it.”

“He does know you’re staying at mine, right?” (Y/N) asks, panic stricken for a second. “Neither of us are in fit state to apparate.”

“Of course.” Fleur assures dismissively. “You’ve sobered back to your worried self again.”

“Yes, but I’m no longer a recluse.” She retorts. “So, the evening hasn’t been all in vain.”

“I’ll take that achievement.” Fleur nods matter-of-factly. “Now, let’s go before we freeze.”

“Okay, okay.” (Y/N) chuckles. “Thank you for letting us share your booth.”

“Any time.” Fred curtsey’s mockingly. “Goodbye, Ladies.”

With a final eyeroll, (Y/N) loops an arm around Fleur’s waist and turns to make her way towards her own apartment.

As cliché as it may be, (Y/N) can’t resist the temptation to sneak a look behind her as they walk away, a last glimpse of the man she lost two years back. Expecting to see his back as he retreats into his apartment, she is startled to find him facing her, eyes capturing hers again. They’re not full of surprise or disgust as they had been at the beginning of the evening though. They’re the soft, brown eyes she remembers, the eyes that once held her hostage in the potions classroom, that shared secrets with only a glance across the great hall and that saw her as herself for the first time in her entire life.

Upon the realisation that his private moment has been witnessed, he turns away and follows his brother into the shop. A wave of tears stings her eyes before she realises what’s happening and they blur his retreating figure as they trickle down her cheeks.

“(Y/N)?” Fleur asks gently, coming to stop. “Are you crying?”

“Oh!” She jumps, turning back and forcing a painful grin. “It’s the sodding blisters. I hate heels.”

Fleur looks unconvinced, holding her friend’s eyes longer to try and decipher what’s caused this sudden bout of tears to spring loose. Frowning and with an almost imperceptible shake of her head, she lifts her hand and gently uses her thumbs to wipe away the tears from beneath (Y/N)’s eyes.

“You’ll ruin your mascara.”

Relief escapes (Y/N) in the form of a choked laugh. She’s amazed again at how perfect a friend Fleur is for not pushing her. She knows Fleur enough to know that she’s not let it go, but she’s willing to let (Y/N) come to her in her own time.

“Thank you.” (Y/N) sniffles. “I’m sorry for trapping you in my apartment all the time.”

“Nonsense.” Fleur dismisses.

“No.” She continues. “No, I’ve been selfish and scared. I’ll make an effort to be more adaptable in the future.”

Curiosity flood’s Fleur’s expression but a smile grows on her lips regardless and she lets out a soft, bell-like laugh. She hooks an arm through (Y/N)’s and guides the pair forward along the street again, huddled tightly to fight to bitter cold.

“You’re so formal at times.” She shakes her head. “Let’s get home and get your shoes off before you become a puddle.”

“Oh thank Merlin!”

#persuasion #george weasley x reader #george x reader #george weasley #george weasley imagine #george #george imagine #fred weasley #fred and george #harry potter #weasley twins #weasley #malfoy #draco malfoy #fleur delacour #fanfiction #reader insert #malfoy reader

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bounce-a-coin-off-your-witcher · 4 years

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Fear Not, Fair Maiden

(Thank you @spielzeugkaiser for letting me write a story about your amazing art! This was so much fun and it’s so fluffy. I may have thrown in a little nonhuman-Jaskier as a treat but Jaskier doesn’t know so...)

Etheid is the baby green dragon that Borch rescues in “The Sword of Destiny” book. I thought I’d make that scene more interesting and less sad for everyone by sticking to the book canon version for this story.

---

Jaskier woke up somewhere warm and soft and definitely not wrapped in the raggedy blanket he’d fallen asleep with atop his worn bedroll. He groaned in confusion and rose into a sitting position on the soft feather mattress to better wipe the sleep from his bleary eyes. He was sitting on a beautifully carved mahogany bed with four posts and lovely hanging curtains made of pale pink gossamer.

“Where am I?” he yawned to no one in particular.

In my tower, a voice echoed through his head. The bard leapt from the bed, suddenly alert and terrified of whatever had brought him here. The voice returned, slightly frightened in its own right and clearly looking to soothe. Don’t panic! I’m sorry! I probably should have introduced myself better. Come to the window, my sweet visitor, and let me say hello!

“You’re not going to eat me, right?” Jaskier squeaked.

Of course not, Jaskier. You’re my guest. That would be highly indecorous of me.

“Monsters with manners. Finally some decent company.” Jaskier made his way confidently out onto the balcony surrounding the tower’s main room and glanced around. “Hello? How do you know my name?”

A large, scaly green head rose over the side of the balcony wall and Jaskier took an involuntary step back. A thin-slit reptilian eye blinked at him. Once. Twice. Then the rest of the dragon’s face and snout appeared. Do not fret, my dear. You are in no danger at all. I merely wish to see a performance.

“You want me to sing for you?”

That was not my purpose in stealing you, but I would not be adverse to some music later this evening. I’m sure your Witcher is already on his way here to rescue you. Jaskier swore he heard the dragon release a deep, dreamy sigh from its steaming nostrils. Ah, I wonder if he’ll climb the spiral stairs and try to avoid the traps or if he’ll fight me first and scale the outer walls.

“Wait a second,” Jaskier held a finger up. The dragon paused its daydreaming and looked down at its tiny human captive. Well, mostly human from what the dragon’s senses could pick up. Perhaps a bit of dryad in there somewhere. The semi-mortal’s connection to nature was stronger than most; ancient in a way that drew the dragon to him in the first place. Well, that and the handsome, white-haired Witcher who kept the bard close to his side like a favorite puppy. “You kidnapped me so that you could watch Geralt rescue me?”

The dragon’s enormous snout bobbed up and down as it nodded. The bard leaned heavily against the balcony’s edge and released a series of hysterical giggles. Are you alright, Jaskier?

“How do you know my name?”

You met my godfather, once. Borch.

“Oh, you’re the baby green dragon!” Jaskier perked up. This was an old friend, then. “My, how you’ve grown.”

And my, how you haven’t, the dragon observed. If the bard didn't’ know any better it appeared as if the creature was raising its eyebrow at him. You don’t seem to have aged a day.

“Haven’t I?” Jaskier glanced down. “Perhaps I’m just remarkably well preserved.”

Magic, the dragon shrugged. Anyway that is not my purpose here. I’ve grown bored with my usual antics and wish for something better.

“So you thought you’d make up some entertainment by bard-napping me?”

Correct.

“This is like a play, then? I’ve been given the part of Fair Maiden and Geralt has been cast as our White Knight? My Prince Charming, as it were?”

Yes, although you find Geralt’s animalistic tendencies and Witchery nature more alluring than any fairy-tale prince or wayward knight.

“Hey! Hands off my private, personal thoughts,” Jaskier cried, waving his arms at the dragon as if the gesture might sever their mental link. The dragon huffed out what may have been a laugh.

I cannot help myself, I apologize. My name is Etheid, by the way. So you can stop referring to me in your mind as Baby Dragon I Held Once.

“Sorry,” Jaskier shrugged. He laughed again, this time genuinely. “Do you think Geralt really loves me enough to come rescue me from an entire dragon? He knows you can’t be beaten with one or two flimsy swords.”

He is determined to find you, Etheid replied. He will be here in two days time.

“So until he shows up do I just...sing for you, then? Is there any food? Oh, is there a bath!?”

You’re the most eager and friendly guest I’ve ever had, Etheid rejoiced. There’s food aplenty in the cupboard in your room. Wine, too. I also have bathwater ready at your request and I can heat it to whatever temperature you like. I even have costumes!

“Costumes!?” The bard beamed widely and clapped his hands together beneath his chin. He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet and even spun in a quick circle. “What kinds of costumes!? Is this going to be a tragic rescue? Is this going to be dramatic and romantic? You mentioned traps, what kinds of traps will Geralt be facing if he comes up the stairs?”

Eager to see your handsome Witcher again?

“Eager to make sure that he isn’t injured trying to save me from your lovely tower, here.”

He will be absolutely fine. These traps were made for squires to outsmart; he’s a Witcher.

“If he loved me as I love him,” Jaskier sighed wistfully, “Then this would be even more fun.”

Etheid considered telling Jaskier the truth about his Witcher’s romantic feelings for a moment but figured that it was Geralt’s job to do so, instead. The dragon could wait. The dragon could write such a fantastical scene that Geralt would have no other option but to admit his feelings to the jovial and kindhearted bard.

There are dresses, of course, but there are some lovely robes as well. You can take whatever you like from the chest at the end of the bed.

“You’re going to regret saying that!”

Go ahead. Do what human things you must. I’ll heat the water and be on my way; dragons need to eat, too.

“No pesky villagers, please. Stick to wild animals so long as I’m your guest?”

I am not a heathen, Etheid scoffed. Deer only for now. The forest is fat with them.

“Excellent. See you after dinner and a bath, then. I’ll sing you some lovely ballads.”

About your White Wolf?

“I wouldn’t exactly say that he’s my White Wolf,” the bard blushed. “But yes, songs about Geralt.”

---

Geralt reached the base of the stone tower and squinted up. It seemed endlessly tall against the rocky mountainside and the blue of the sky. Jaskier was up there, though, and the dragon was probably nearby. The Witcher had chosen not to wear his armor for this particular rescue mission; it would only make him noisier and this was a battle of the wits. Dragons wanted to be outsmarted, not slain.

Geralt remembered Borch Three Jackdaws fondly, the golden dragon that had shown him such kindness and taught him that not all monsters were to be feared. Well, Borch hadn’t so much taught Geralt about the nature of monstrosity so much as he had reinforced a previously held belief.

But that didn’t matter now. As he slid into the passage that led to the tower stairs his only focus was his stupid bard’s physical safety.

No, Geralt, the Witcher corrected himself firmly. He is not your bard, he is merely a traveler who chooses to spend some of his free time dallying about with you. He likes writing songs about your adventures and that is all.

He could hear the sound of a lute growing slightly stronger as he ascended, and kept his eyes peeled for any sort of traps or pitfalls. He sidestepped two swinging axes with ease and ducked beneath a flying crossbow bolt as simply as he breathed. This tower was for amateurs, not highly trained Witchers with unparalleled senses. Not the most graceful Witcher the Wolf school had ever turned out onto the path. Not Geralt of Rivia, Jaskier’s Witcher.

---

Jaskier stopped singing suddenly and set his lute to the side, as planned. He laid himself out as Etheid had suggested, the white cotton robe pooling around his bare legs and spilling rather nicely off his left shoulder. He’d cinched a soft blue ribbon just so around the curves of his waist. His hair was ruffled just the way Geralt liked it; the way it was when he saw the Witcher’s gloved fingers twitch at his sides, clearly aching to touch him but too afraid to make a move.

He’ll have to make a move this time, Etheid said. Jaskier could hear the smile in the dragon’s words. Get in position! He’s nearly to your room, Jask!

“Jaskier!” the Witcher cried, bursting through the door only a moment later. The bard could sense Etheid just outside the window, hidden by a thin curtain that hung from the back of an ENORMOUS four-poster bed. Geralt was too excited to find his precious bard safe to care about the looming threat.

“Geralt! You came for me!”

“Of course I did,” Geralt rolled his eyes. “You’re always getting yourself into trouble.”

Ugh, you’re so right. He’s horrible with romance.

Jaskier stifled a smile but Geralt caught it anyway.

“What’s so funny, bard?”

“My captor doesn’t find your rescue speech very romantic or amusing,” he said, pulling the curtain aside. Etheid’s large blue eyes were focused on the scene, waiting for something good to happen. The dragon had been bored for so long and he’d heard so much from Borch about this White Wolf and his loyal, loving bard. Jaskier whispered the next line as if Etheid wasn't’ supposed to be hearing it, “Perhaps you should make our little reunion more flowery?”

“Jaskier, I - uh,” Geralt swallowed hard and took a step forward. Might as well go for it, the Witcher thought. “I’m so glad that I made it back to your side in time. I’m so glad that you’re unharmed.”

“I knew you’d come for me,” Jaskier sighed, holding out his hand. Geralt stepped even closer, leaning down to press his lips against the petal-soft skin of Jaskier’s knuckles. The bard blushed softly and Geralt felt his own face heating up to match. “You always save me, even from the worst situations.”

“I always will.”

The Witcher had admitted his greatest secret aloud before he could stop himself and he watched the bard’s eyes widen even further. Geralt’s brand of gruff sincerity was unmistakable.

“Geralt,” the younger man grinned, tears gathering in the corners of his perfect, cornflower blue eyes, “I knew you loved me back.”

“You mean...?”

“Of course, silly,” the bard laughed, throwing himself up off the mattress and into Geralt’s arms. “I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you brooding at that tavern in Posada!”

“Oh Jaskier,” the Witcher gasped. His lips found the side of his bard’s pale neck and out on the balcony Etheid released a happy, contented huff. “I would give anything and everything to know that you were safe.”

“My sweet Witcher,” Jaskier leaned back, cupping Geralt’s face between his hands. His weight was now being entirely supported by the thick arm wrapped around his waist and he reveled in the strength of his beloved before leaning up to kiss him. “Then you must know how I feel every time you leave me on a hunt. Or go to fight with Yennefer about something silly.”

The Witcher could only press their foreheads together and breathe in the happy, rain-shower scent of his Jaskier. “Hmm.”

Excellent, yes! I can’t wait to tell Borch and my friends about this! Etheid cheered. Congratulations, Jaskier! I’m so happy for you!

“Thank you,” the bard murmured.

“Hmm?” Geralt hummed again, raising an eyebrow. Jaskier pulled his head away and shook it.

“Don’t worry about it. Are you getting me out of here or not?”

“Can you walk in this getup? Will the dragon just let us go?”

Jaskier shot a curious glance towards Etheid, who nodded.

Tell him you can’t walk, though. I want to see him carry you off to his horse and ride away with the white robe flapping in the wind. Maybe he’ll even wrap his arms around you from behind to keep you safe. Like a real princess.

“No, I can’t walk in this silly thing at all. Keeps getting tangled around my ankles; I’d probably fall down the stairs and kill myself.

Geralt swept the younger man up into his arms and grabbed his lute from its place on the floor. “Well, we can’t have that.”

“No, my Witcher,” the bard replied with a contented smile. “We can’t have that at all.”

---

And if one of Etheid’s curious friends kidnapped Jaskier a month or so later and three countries over then...oh well. More weird dragon friends for the both of them.

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jostenneil · 3 years

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How did you go from hating Sasuke to loving him? Is Boruto included in the character development? Or the manga? Btw is it true that Kishimoto doesn't hate women it's all Studio Pierott's doing because that sounds like a big fat lie to me, so far it feels like the studio amplified the writer.

boruto is definitely not ajkfjdslgjd terrible series my goodness but mostly i think it's just like taking the time to sit down and actually process what he went through and why he is the way that he is. like i don't necessarily mean to make excuses for him but i think a lot of people just tend to forget what he was made to go through at the age of like. six. like to walk into your home and to see that the one person you adore more than anyone else has brutally murdered your entire family is kinda insane to process at that age, and i think a lot of people forget thereafter that the moments where he reacts non-ideally to others are usually due to his inability to still process that trauma. like when he gets angry at sakura for her comments about naruto at the beginning of the manga, or later when he gets really volatile in the aftermath of itachi returning to the village bc he realizes he's still weak and there's nothing preventing itachi from massacring the people he loves all over again, or in part two when he starts to genuinely lose it after he has his fights with danzo bc seeing the eyes of his dead family in the arm of a man who only wanted power is kinda insane. and throughout all of these moments he's at best anywhere between twelve and seventeen years old which i think hits harder for me bc i have a sixteen year old brother so like. i know what a child looks like like this is a general fandom gripe i have but sometimes i don't think adults in fandom have ever interacted with kids before bc the maturity they assume a teenager would possess can at times be unrealistic. this isn't to say every transgression a teenager makes should thereby be excused, ofc not, but in sasuke's case it's like if i had to go through that at that age and all people tried to do was make me happy instead of actually addressing my trauma or fears and i had to come face to face with the truth about how my family was massacred bc of state politics then yeah i'd go a bit batshit insane. also a side note ig but over the years my tastes have definitely shifted from fluff to tragedy and he's like. the epitome of a tragic shakespearean hero imo so that helps gjkjglhfdfsgs

#uchiha sasuke #naruto #asks #mine:meta

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anna-justice · 4 years

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Lost or Found - 14

Summary: As Jay, Hailey, Kim, Adam and Kevin start their junior year in the wake of a tragic summer, the past year of their lives comes back to haunt them. If you enjoyed Pretty Little Liars, this is for you! *UPSTEAD/BURZEK High School AU

...

14 - Your Favorite One ...

Jay sat in the front seat of his truck, keys in the ignition, seat belt buckled and hands on the wheel. He had every intention of pulling out of his driveway, but he was a bit distracted. Admitting his feelings for Hailey had shaken him, even if it wasn’t out loud and it had been affecting him for days.

Speaking of Hailey it was Friday night and he was supposed to pick her up for the first football game of the season. They were all going to support Kevin, who had made starting lineup. Jay would admit that his outfit was a little ridiculous, all the games are themed and tonight’s was hawian. He was sporting vans (because he refused to wear flip flops), khaki shorts and a very ugly hawian print shirt. Not to mention sunglasses and a lay that was making his neck itch.

The drive felt a little longer than normal, probably because his head was all over the place. He had stayed when the doctors explained Hailey’s condition to her, and he hadn’t stopped worrying since. She needed the pacemaker and it was going to stay until they had to remove it.

Hailey being in the hospital had really thrown him for a loop. It wasn’t until then that it all clicked for him. Erin was really dead and whoever killed her tried to kill Hailey and Kim. There was no way around it anymore.

When he reached her house he jumped out of the truck, normally he would have just texted her, but a switch had flipped and now “i’m here” just didn’t seem good enough. He rang the doorbell, taking a step back as the door swung open. He took in the girl standing in front of him. Her blonde hair was falling in waves over her shoulders, pulled back out of her face by the sunglasses resting on the top of her head. He couldn’t control his wandering gaze, which reached the tiny, white crop top paired with high waisted (and very ripped) denim cut offs. He was so distracted that he almost didn’t notice the obnoxious flamingo print that covered the massive, open button up she was wearing.

Hailey’s voice snapped him out of his trance, “What? Do I look stupid?”

“What? No!” Jay choked out, raising his gaze to meet hers. “You look great.” He sighed.

She smiled softly, pulling up her top that was barely covering the scar left behind from her surgery that plunged down her chest. Jay gave her a sympathetic grin, causing her to drop her hand from her chest. “Let me grab my ID.” She said, disappearing behind the door and returning a few moments later. “Ready.”

Jay smiled, nodding at the truck. Hailey followed him like she always did, struggling to keep up due to his much larger strides. She couldn’t help but feel giddy, sure she was tired and a little sore, but she was ready for life to start again and she would be damned if she missed this game. It was so important to Kevin.

She hoisted herself up in the truck like he always did, slamming it shut as Jay turned the key. She watched him as he turned to look over his shoulder, his right hand resting on the back of her seat. His eyebrows were furrowed in concentration as he navigated his way out of the driveway, smoothly switching gears and pulling forward out into the road. He always drove with his left hand at the top of the wheel and his right elbow leaned against the center console. Unless he was in reverse, then it was stuck on the passenger seat, radiating heat to Hailey’s shoulder just a few inches away. Jay’s head turned to the right, watching for oncoming traffic and Hailey snapped hers down to hide her blush. She suddenly realized that she had spent the past several minutes watching him drive. And it was her only thought for that entire period of time.

Jay noticed her sudden movement and decided to break the comfortable silence. “How are you fee--”

Before her could even get the words out, Hailey cut him off. “Please don’t ask me that.” She said, sighing. “I just want to pretend for tonight that we are normal high schoolers going to a game, and that the only problem we are going to have tomorrow is hiding a hangover.” She pleaded.

Jay nodded, knowing that they weren’t normal high schoolers and they probably never would be again. He was determined to let her have one night of peace. “Yeah, me too.”

“Thank you.” Hailey said, moving her hand to rest over his on the center console.

It was gone as soon as it appeared, only giving him a small squeeze, but Jay still found himself fighting the urge to look down. To make sure that it had actually been there. He felt the heat rush to his cheeks and cursed himself for something as little as her touching him affecting him so much. He trained his eyes on the road as Hailey turned up the radio and the two of them spent the rest of the short drive in silence.

…

Not thirty minutes later, Hailey found herself squished between Sylvie and Kim in the middle of the student section. Jay had gone with Adam to get them snacks while the girls held down their seats. There were lots of familiar faces around them, many of tem stopping by to see how Hailey was doing. On the other side of Sylvie sat Joe and Brian, who Hailey had learned were her best friends.

Hailey became acquainted with Sylvie through Kim, along with Stella, who was currently standing with other members of the dance team along the side lines. It was strange to Hailey how much her circle had grown, especially after how crazy the past few weeks had been. Suddenly the crowd erupted and Hailey stood with everyone else as the players took the field. Hailey watched Sylvie grin, following her gaze to see the quarterback throwing her a quick wave.

Apparently Kim noticed too, because once the roaring died down she called it out. “So you and Matt? Are you guys together now?” She asked, wiggling her eyebrows.

Sylvie blushed, shrugging her shoulders. “I don’t know, we went out last weekend and it was great. I really hope he asks me to homecoming.”

Homecoming. Hailey had completely forgotten in the midst of all the craziness. As Kim and Sylvie continued to talk, Hailey’s mind wandered. She couldn’t help but hope that a certain green eyed wannabe detective would ask her.

As if on cue, a bag of skittles and a can of Dr. Pepper were dropped in her lap. She grinned, turning around to face the culprit. She smiled at Jay, “Thanks.” It faded when she noticed the slice of pizza in his hand, he froze mid bite, immediately realizing his mistake. Hailey let a pout overtake her face and Jay sighed, leaning down and letting her take a bite out of the massive slice. “You’re my favorite.” Hailey said, grinning big.

Jay shook his head as he laughed, “I better be.” She shot him a dirty look before turning back around to face the players.

Adam cocked an eyebrow at his friend, having witnessed the whole scene. He fake coughed, covering his mouth with his hand. “So.” Cough. “Whipped.” Cough, cough.

Jay punched his arm before turning his attention to the game as well, but he couldn’t focus. Not with the blonde beauty sitting in front of him.

…

Lots of screaming and stupid cheers later, it was halftime and they were up by thirteen. Jay would admit that he hadn’t seen much of the game, between answering Hailey’s questions and getting distracted by her contagious laughter, he didn’t have time to focus on much else.

He excused himself to go to the bathroom, fighting through the crowded student section. He barely made it out of the stands before his pocket buzzed. He froze, knowing exactly who it was.

Blocked ID: Did you miss me? I’m sure you did. It’s time for the athlete to weaken his game. If the tigers win this game, Hailey won’t be the only one to know how it feels to have their heart stop.

Jay fought the urge to throw the phone on the ground and stomp on it. Kevin didn’t deserve this, and every second he played counted. He considered not telling him, but he would never forgive himself if something happened to Vinessa. Neither of them would.

He changed his course, heading to the locker room instead, he needed to talk to Kevin. Thankfully they had finished the halftime meeting by the time he got there, so getting his attention was easy. Kevin walked over to him with a huge smile on his face. Jay couldn’t blame him, he was playing great.

“What’s up man?” He asked and Jay frowned, holding up the phone for him to see. Kevin took a moment to read the text before slamming his hand against a locker. “Shit.” He snapped and Jay was thankful that it was so loud that none of the other guys had any idea of what was going on.

“I’m sorry.” Jay said genuinely.

Kevin nodded, “It’s whatever, I’ll figure something out.” He said and Jay sighed. He clapped him on the back before making his way out of the locker room and back to the stands.

Adam was the first to see him when he returned, “Did you take a fat dump or something?”

Jay rolled his eyes, “Yeah, or something.” He kept quiet about the text. He wasn’t ready to ruin everyone's night yet.

…

Sixty depressing minutes later, Jay found himself in his truck with Hailey once again. They had lost, and they lost bad. Kevin did his job and he might lose his spot in the lineup for it. Hailey sighed in the passenger seat as they pulled away from the school. “He had to do it didn’t he?” She asked and Jay nodded. Hailey hit the car door and Jay fought the urge to gasp. It was the most violence he had ever seen from her, understandably. “This is so freaking stupid.” She yelled, throwing her head about the headrest. “How are we supposed to live like this Jay? When does it end?”

Jay’s heart clenched in his chest, he hated seeing her so upset. “I really don’t know Hailes.”

Hailey’s head snapped up at his words. Hailes. He had never called her that before. Suddenly all her anger fizzled away, her gaze trained on him. She felt like puddy in his hands. She tried to rationalize with herself, it was just a nickname, but there was something about the way he said it. It just sounded so...she didn’t even know, but it was perfect.

“I really wish I did,” He continued, and Hailey wondered if he had been talking the whole time.

Her gaze softened at the sight of his, he was visibly upset, looking much more vulnerable than he usually did. “Me too.” She rubbed her hand on the dash, she wished she could say thank you to his truck. Almost every important moment in their friendship had happened inside it and she was beginning to feel guilty for hitting her earlier.

They made it home faster than she would have liked, she could have used a million more minutes of his time, but unfortunately nights have to end and tomorrows have to start. And it was starting to feel like the sun wasn’t going to ever come out. He walked her to the door, something that he hadn’t done since the first week they hung out. She hugged him tightly before pushing the door open, she knew she should walk in and close it behind her, but instead she decided that the night didn’t have to be over yet. “You want to come in? It’s been a rough night and I have hot chocolate.”

Jay grinned, nodding. “I’d like that.”

Hailey wasn’t sure what had changed, but something felt different. Him coming inside felt like a step in the right direction, even though they had been moving backwards for weeks. And even though she understood all the reasons why they shouldn’t be together, it was getting harder and harder to care. They were living in a world where everything they wanted was slipping away and she was holding onto him for dear life.

...

A/N: Oh my gosh, I finally updated! I am so sorry for being gone for so long! I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Also, I have watched an unnecessary number of episodes of dateline trying to write this fic.

@lissethsrojas @fuckyeahkillianemma @puckluck28 @chilly7188 @thebigapocalypsewolf @karihighman @upsteadheart @ruzek-halstead

#jay halstead #hailey upton #upstead #upstead au #kim burgess #adam ruzek #burzek #burzek au #kevin atwater #sylvie brett #matt casey #brettsey #stella kidd #chicago pd #chicago pd au #chicago fire #one chicago

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caleblewis94 · 4 years

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Preview: The Door To Infinity

Puck was now a forty-two-year-old man who still hadn’t learned his last name due to a grease stain from a slice of pizza obscuring the name on his birth certificate in the no-good year of 1978. Why couldn’t his mother or one of his eleven older siblings have told him somewhere during these last 4.2 decades, you ask? Why because they had all died in an oxygen tank explosion that had completely obliterated the house before the Fire Department could even arrive, of course. What else could have possibly happened? Puck’s mother whose name was literally Mother, and who had once been a nun before she was banned for playing Elton John on the church organ, could actually be called Mother Mother, the mother of Puck, because as the saying goes: once a mother, always a mother. That sure is a mouthful, thank God she’s dead.

Mother returned home from the hospital bringing with her a cart of portable oxygen bottles for her own mother, Mother the first, who suffered from COPD which was exacerbated by the pre-existing condition of being apt to not listen to advice or heed warnings. Upon the delivery of oxygen bottles, Mother Mother the mother of Puck finally thought to cut the umbilical cord. The wailing mucus membrane with the fat, pudgy face of a forty-two-year-old man on the disproportionately large head of a newborn had tripped her on the way up the stairs, reminding her that she had forgotten to “forget” him at the hospital. With a sigh, she cut the umbilical cord with the first thing she could find: a pair of safety scissors. The act was hilarious and took nearly fifteen minutes to complete. Afterwards, she lugged the oxygen bottles in and gave them to her ornery old witch, but minus the cool magical powers, of a mother.

Some say that a mother’s intuition can cause her to feel an impending sense of danger to her own. Perhaps this is why she went lovingly outside, cradling the slimy, writhing middle-aged newborn in her tattooed and cigarette burned arms, and ever so carefully dropped Puck into the first pile of trash she had found lying by the street, which just so happened to be a random bale of hay in a DIY manger that her neighbors had attempted to assemble after purchasing it from Ikea before growing frustrated and throwing it half-finished in the street. One can say this motherly intuition saved the baby named Puck that would one day grow up to become the man named Puck. Then again, her motherly instinct didn’t seem to apply to her other eleven comically-named children.

Mother Mother, the mother of Puck, went back inside her home. Puck no longer cried. Now he sat in the Ikea manger with his arms crossed and his lower lip jutting out. This would become his signature look which would make him quite popular, albeit for mocking purposes, with all of the former high school football stars who would form the majority of his coworkers at the glue factory in his adulthood. Moments after his mother entered the house behind him, he would hear, though he wouldn’t understand because he was a baby and everybody knows babies can’t understand words, his mother shouting at his grandmother in her obnoxious twang of a Country accent that Puck would thankfully never acquire himself.

“God Dayum, you old bat, Cain’t you read?” Mother Mother, mother of Puck shouted.

“I can read, you little skank. I’m just having me a cigarette,” Shouted Mother, mother of Mother Mother the mother of Puck.

“I’m tired of you smokin’ meemaw!” Shouted the shrill voice of one of Puck’s siblings. Judging by the whiny tone, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume it was Kyle.

“That’s too dayum bad.”

“The sign says no smoking, because it could explode if exposed to fire!” Mother Mother, mother of Puck shouted back.

“Then why hasn’t it yet?”

“Comical effect!”

In completely coincidental, and in no means embellished or made-up fashion, the entire house exploded immediately after the joke in the dialogue was wearing thin. The sound of the explosion sounded to Puck like the winner to the 1978 Darwin Awards if they were around in that terrible, no-good year of 1978. Kaboom with a capital KA.

Now, it’s reasonable to ask why Puck? Why this ugly, slimy, miniature spitting image of Donald Trump? Why did this little clump of living smegma survive in lieu of his entire family being incinerated instantly like a bunch of redneck Icaruses that flew directly into the sun because they didn’t believe the Science that said the sun can hurt you? It is because of a thing called fate. Puck wasn’t meant to die that day. For, you see, you beautiful reader, you, Puck was destined for greater things, like developing a nicotine habit he couldn’t quite kick, working in a glue factory overseeing the melting of the horses, and his destiny to die in a hilarious accident involving a shopping cart at the age of 42. As a wise man once said, so it goes.

∞

Puck, now a forty-two-year-old man full of past traumas and experiences that shaped him into the disgruntled, burned-out, and inconsiderate grump that people subconsciously hoped would drop dead, went to the supermarket. What he bought at said supermarket holds no importance whatsoever to the rest of the novel, but for the record was; 19 bushels of crab legs, 30 cans of Ragu spaghetti sauce, 20 gallons of vegetable oil, 12 cartons of increased fat milk, 8 sticks of extra-salted butter, 57 liters of Mountain Dew, 3 bottles of Coca-Cola that had been stuffed under the clearance shelf since 1958, 5 jugs of eggnog, despite it being the middle of April, two of those obnoxiously bright blue lightbulbs for some reason, and a Milkyway Lite because he was trying to watch his figure.

Puck pushed his shopping cart outside. Of course his luck would have had him picking the cart with the broken wheel, causing it to limp along like a sprinter who had torn their ACL and was desperately trying to hobble their way across the finish line. Plus, the fact that he had so much food weighing down the cart didn’t help him steer it any easier. Life was so hard for poor Puck. On his way to his car, Puck was passed by an old lady on one of those automatic shopping carts that truly highlighted the pinnacle of modern invention. The old woman was smoking three cigarettes at the same time, blowing tendrils of smoke through her nostrils like a dragon who had already expended all of his (or her) fire and couldn’t ejaculate any more. She had an oxygen tank on the back of the cart, though she wasn’t using it. Maybe she’ll need it later, Puck thought. Yes, riding an automatic shopping cart around a store for an hour sure is exhausting work.

Puck got to his car and popped the trunk, which promptly swung open much faster than normal, hitting him in the chin because even his car was tired of his shit. In the background was the sound of an explosion, but Puck thought nothing of this. He flung the groceries in the trunk and shut it back, then he promptly took the shopping and left it right there in the middle of the street, despite there being a coral only twenty feet away. It wasn’t that Puck didn’t see the coral—he did—he just decided to rebel. It was his way of sticking it to the proverbial man. Puck got in his car and drove home, the shopping cart looming menacingly in the parking lot, vowing to get revenge on the forty-two-year-old-man.

When Puck got home, he realized that he had forgotten to also purchase a diet Mountain Dew, because—how can he watch his figure without a pound of aspartame in his system?—Puck lovingly kissed his wife goodbye, and by lovingly kissed his wife goodbye, I mean he didn’t kiss her goodbye, he simply said “I forgot something, be back in ten” then left. However, he wouldn’t be back in ten. In fact, he also wouldn’t even be back at the supermarket in ten, traffic was awfully heavy for two in the afternoon on a Sunday. Also, he wouldn’t ever be back because he would be killed in a tragic, yet hilariously Shakespearean way. A way that said, maybe there is a God who occasionally involves himself in the affairs of humans to deliver righteous justice.

Puck went to the self-checkout line again, but this time at least he actually had under ten items. He hated the small talk Cashiers would make with him, especially the pretty twenty-something-year-old ladies who would make blatant attempts to flirt with him by saying things like “Good morning, sir,” “Paper or plastic?” and, worst of all, “Would you like a receipt?” The total on the screen came up to three dollars and twenty-three cents after tax. It was a bit more than he thought it had cost when he was just here half an hour ago, but he was trying to watch his figure, dammit, so he would not and could not be stopped. He paid for the bottle, and also a banana, and left, not even bothering to take the receipt that had printed from the machine.

“Have a nice day,” said a blonde and blue-eyed nineteen-year-old with a smile that conveyed anything but a genuine smile inside. It was a smile that seemed to say that this young lady was going through her own personal troubles and was having a tough time but was trying her best to be strong and kind to others. To anyone else it would be inspiring, but to Puck it was just another attempt to flirt with him. Puck, not wanting to be rude, gave her that kind of sideways smile any suburban white person would give someone they accidentally made eye contact with in public, and walked by, sidestepping a random broken piece of an oxygen bottle by the door. As he crossed the windy threshold that separates the land of groceries from the humid, suburban air of the Greater Atlanta Area, he swallowed the banana in one gulp. It was a fun party trick he had learned in college. He didn’t have to waste time chewing, and everyone loved it. Especially the random man he had accidentally made eye contact with in the process of the great swallow.

Puck walked out into the crosswalk without looking both ways, not that he needed to look both ways, there were stop signs and everybody in the United States obeys stop signs. He dropped the banana peel absentmindedly onto the ground and made his way towards his car.

As Puck approached his car, he bumped into the shopping cart he had left sitting in the street—not the corral, mind you—thirty minutes prior. The cart rolled forward towards him, ready for its vengeance. If it were alive and wielding a knife, it would totally stab Puck right in the abdomen. For far too long Puck had violated its shopping cart family’s rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of being put back in the corral. But, luckily for Puck, it wasn’t alive. It was a shopping cart. In frustration with this minor inconvenience, Puck pushed the cart further into the street with one swift kick.

“I should have used a basket,” He muttered to himself.

However, the shopping cart heard him make this remark. Or it would have heard him if it were alive and had ears or some other method for processing auditory information. And if it were alive and capable of not just processing auditory information but also understanding English, this comment would have been the last straw. The shopping cart would teach him a lesson if it were alive. Puck was so lucky it wasn’t alive.

Puck turned back to his car and fished for his keys in his pocket, except the keys weren’t there. What the hell, Puck thought. I just had them! He checked his pocket again as if he could possibly miss a keychain the size of Timbuktu, and to his utter shock, the keys hadn’t pulled a David Copperfield and magically reappeared. He turned back around to head into the store and angrily ask the poor girl behind the customer service desk if anyone had found and returned his car keys, as if she were the one herself who had misplaced them. However, before he could do so, something glimmering beneath the partially clouded sky caught his eye. His car keys lied in the bottom basket of the shopping cart that, after being kicked, scampered away before settling eighteen feet away from Puck and just a measly two feet from the corral.

You got him now, you devious shopping cart you, the corral would have thought if it were alive and capable of thought. With a long, drawn out sigh, Puck crossed the street. He removed the keys from the lower basket and glanced at the corral which was now literally not even out of his way to return the cart to. The shopping cart was already facing towards the corral like a baby reaching out for its mother. Puck didn’t even have to walk forward at all to return it, all he had to do was lightly push the cart and it would be back in its rightful place. Puck didn’t do this. Instead, he took the cart and placed it back in the middle of the street for some reason, and then went back to his car.

This would have been the final straw for the shopping cart if the shopping cart had any packets of straws left to give, never mind the rude comment about getting a basket instead. Oh, if only the shopping cart were alive and capable of inflicting punishment upon this horrible man with an even horrible-er—or, dare I say—horrible-est name. Puck? More like duck, the shopping cart would have thought, not that the cart would have any prejudices against ducks, it was just a slightly speciest saying it would have learned growing up in a family of shopping carts in the Southern states.

Suddenly, like a car that had hit a pothole at 110 miles-per-hour, causing it to flip over multiple times before flying into a tree, a car driving at 10 mph, ignoring the 5 mph speed limit sign on the wall next to the cross walk, struck the banana peel Puck had left in the middle of the street. The car going twice the speed limit, lost control and swerved to the left, ironically enough while using a blinker. The out of control car collided with the poor shopping cart with an unquenchable thirst for blood and vengeance at the devastating speed of 2 mph. Puck turned around in time to see the accident.

What, scientifically speaking, should have sent the cart forward with the same force as the weak kick Puck had given the cart minutes earlier, oddly enough launched the cart at the speed of 200 mph directly at the man who never put his carts back in the corrals where they belong. Puck didn’t even have time to realize the error of his leaving-shopping-carts-in-the-middle-of-the-street ways, before the cart flew directly into his face, causing his head to explode like the 125,452nd watermelon destroyed by the great philosopher Gallagher, splattering blood all over a man walking past who had made the foolish mistake of wearing a white t-shirt over-confidant in his ability to avoid acquiring a stain, and sparking the obsession with blood of a three-year-old who was watching the whole scene unfold through a pair of binoculars from his parents’ house across the street.

Puck, the youngest son of Mother Mother the mother of Puck, and the youngest grandson of Mother the mother of Mother Mother the mother of Puck, was dead, though his story and misadventures wouldn’t end there. It was a tragic death. Nothing that has ever happened in human history has ever been more tragic than the death of Puck on that cloudy April day in the year of whatever year this is being read in. But don’t be sad—stop crying, society says it’s not cool to cry with empathy—for there was a sign that he had read thousands of times before that read: Please put your shopping cart up, we can’t afford another fatal accident. So, if it makes you feel any better, Puck kind of deserved it.

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egg-emperor · 4 years

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Is it true there was a sonic game where he fell in love with a human woman? I think I’ve seen clips of it. And they made Eggman realistic looking and he looked weird.

Yeah, it’s from what I and many others consider to be one of the worst Sonic games. I was just replaying it yesterday just to fuck around with the Egg Wyvern boss and the Shadow’s Radical Train level because I find amusement in those and Eggman is involved. I want to use this as an excuse to dive in and discuss it now.

Also to preface this, I’m not against anyone that does like this game. I’m glad they can find genuine unironic enjoyment out of it. I have a right to have an opinion on this game because I’ve played and have owned it for years. I know it like the back of my hand as I do with all the main Sonic games.

The game is called simply called ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ because it was supposed to be a reboot (a failed one) but we call it Sonic 06. I wouldn’t say that I feel a burning hatred towards it anymore like I did back in the day- Unless I’m playing it because it’s one of the worst experiences I’ve had and the clunky gameplay makes me angry lol. But nowadays I play it for some kinda fucked up amusement or something, a couple of levels are a little fun and I like Silver? Idk.

But the game is fucked up in gameplay with the controls, glitches and lag. The story is basically a mess. It’s almost like they realized that since the characters erased the events at the end so they have no memory of it. The character models look uncanny and the attempt at realistic humans failed. Look at how scary the in game models are especially:

Human characters are actually my favorites most of the time in Sonic media but in this game all of them are demons and this is tragic. The only thing I kind of like is the in game interactions with some of the people in the hub worlds, to an extent.

The last woman on the right was Sonic’s love interest in the game. I’m generally not against human x anthro ships and that’s not the reason why I didn’t like it. This always irked me because of the weird creepy human models compared to the huge headed anthros. And spoiler alert, she kissed Sonic’s lifeless body. Why would you kiss a dead hedgehog? I don’t need any other reason to dislike it even though there are lots more.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: I really think they did my boy dirty because of the awkward design choices and the way they hardly made him look and act like himself. Like how did they go from this big, gorgeous, round, tall man that was full of life and energy with a nose that was bright red for some reason (it was the booze, all that alien invasion, black comet shit and dying three times in alternate cutscenes was rough):

To this in 06? :

He’s all over the place in proportion, his arms are still thin and his legs don’t look right, nor do the short cut boots. His teeth look a bit uneven, unlike the actual modern’s perfect set. His chin isn’t visible in this render but in the game, it’s got this flat turned up look?

Imo this is one of the first examples of a drastically skinnier Eggman predating Boom and the movie other than like, that bad Sonic bible inspired stuff. I’ve seen some say it’s to look more realistic or something. But how is not being as fat adding to any realism? That doesn't make sense and I am very certain that this is not what a more realistic version would look like as a whole.

And the outfit... For some reason, his tits are out. He also has golden nipple buttons instead of the usual square ones. The outline of stitching on his bodysuit makes it look like there's some kind of flap he opens to piss.

Also, this was the first game where they showed Eggman eye color:

Show them on the actual modern Eggman already instead of on this imposter! And look, his glasses aren’t even pince-nez because apparently those aren’t a thing now.

OH and he doesn’t have a colored nose either. It’s not red, it’s not pink/peach- anything. There’s no blood flow, he’s dead, dead inside. SPOILER: he does actually die in the Egg Carrier crash in the game but it technically never happened because Sonic went back in time and stopped it. But in 2005 and 6 they really wanted to keep having Eggman non-canonically die for some reason. It was his fourth death in a cutscene in two years. That’s rough.

Anyway- it’s a good thing that the events of the game were erased so technically he didn’t ever actually look like this in canon!

To end on a much more positive note, the next main game after this was Sonic Unleashed- one of the games where they had Eggman looking so handsome in the most gorgeous CG cutscenes! And there were realistic detail to his model that actually look perfect on him and that's more like it! THERE'S the man that I miss dearly whenever I see 06 💜💜💜💜💜

#asks #anti sonic 06 #anti sonelise #this isn't supposed to be a hate post but tagging just in case people don't want to see this kind of discussion about a game they like #I get that #my post #txt #opinion #rant #dr. eggman #eggman #dr robotnik #dr eggman #sonic 06

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sparrellow · 4 years

Text

Break A Leg, But Not Literally

Len was happy working from the shadows. Rin was a natural performer. Kaito loved being in the spotlight.

Another year, another school musical—and yet, just when all seemed to be going as usual, the universe had other plans.

rating: T genre: romance/friendship/humour/fluff ships: rin/len, miku/kaito if you squint words: 10,164

Len had always been a shy kid, avoiding anything that would draw unnecessary attention to him.

Every semester, his high school’s theatre club would hold a musical. It wasn’t his idea to join the theatre club (honestly, he’d rather be part of the go-home club), but he had no choice after being dragged by his bold best friend, Kaito, to the sign-up booth during first year.

Kaito was the polar opposite of Len. He loved the spotlight. He’d been acting ever since he was five. He was always first to volunteer in middle school for plays and the like. The guy was just, well, overwhelmingly eager to have hundreds of eyes staring him down.

Of course, Len never dared set foot on the stage—grudgingly obliging to work on props and lighting, and act as a stagehand. That was fine. He liked working from the shadows.

However, it was soon their last semester in which they could participate in a musical before graduation, and naturally, Kaito was trying to nag him into actually doing something.

“C’mon, you could be like, a tree, or a swan, or something,” he hissed to him.

They were sitting at the back of the auditorium, watching the auditions for the female lead roles. The male lead role auditions were scheduled next, and hence, Kaito was waiting for his time to shine.

This semester’s musical was Swan Lake , interestingly enough. (Although, by the sounds of it, they were opting for a less tragic ending, much to Len's disappointment.)

Len rolled his eyes, although his friend couldn’t see his expression in the dark. “I’d rather be stung by a thousand wasps,” he said. “Really, Kai. I’m just happy to watch from the sidelines like always.”

“You’ll regret it,” Kaito said. “And I mean, like, you did a pretty good Odette impression when we were practicing yesterday.”

Len snorted. “Hilarious.”

“It’s true! And when you—”

He shushed his friend as the next auditioner walked onto the stage. Small, feeble, yet very cute; there stood a nervous-looking Rin Kagamine.

Kaito wolf-whistled and waved at her, earning a slap on the leg from Len. Rin glanced up at them and smiled sheepishly, before beginning her audition.

Rin was… well, she was one of the best performers in the theatre group. She’d been doing ballet since she could walk, and taking singing lessons since she could talk. She was humble and sweet and eager to please, always wearing a smile, always being soft-spoken.

There was just a lot to be said about her, but Len could never find all the right words.

One could say it was a crush, and maybe it was—he just really, really admired her.

Kaito and Rin were good friends, having played major roles in past musicals together many times. Len could barely get out a sentence around her, though. Nevertheless, she was Rin— painfully polite and always treating others kindly.

Len watched as she acted out the scene where Odette sees Siegfried and Odile dancing together in the castle. The emotion she poured into her acting and singing—even though it was just an audition—made it seem as if the pain she was feeling was real. The performance pulled at his heartstrings.

When Rin finished her audition and toddled off the stage looking like she’d walked straight into a storm, Kaito turned to Len and said, “Oh, she’s definitely getting the lead role.”

“Yeah?”

“Too bad you won’t be her Siegfried,” he teased with a wink.

Len sighed. “What, you want to audition for Rothbart instead?”

Kaito stroked his chin in thought. “Well, auditioning as a villain is definitely a first, but I’m not opposed…”

They watched the rest of the auditions in silence. Perhaps Len was just biased, but it really did seem likely Rin would get the female lead. Of course, the other students were good, but Rin… she just stood out something special on stage.

Next were the male leads, and Kaito jumped up, ready to go wait in line to be called down by the front.

“Good luck,” he hissed to his friend.

Kaito blew him a kiss and ran off.

Unsurprisingly, he blew his audition out of the water. Of course, Len already knew that—having been his Odette while he practiced for the audition of Siegfried for the past week or so. He was definitely talented.

A few weeks after the auditions, all roles for the musical were announced. As expected, both Kaito and Rin got the leads. Rin seemed genuinely surprised, being too humble for her own good, but Kaito just looked smug.

“It’s a pity you can’t be my Odette,” he joked, as Len checked the lists for what job he’d be appointed. Ew, yet again painting and moving the props.

“I’m quite happy for Rin to be up there instead of me,” Len said, frowning at the paper as he read the names of other students who were helping out. Ugh, and that bossy girl Meiko is in charge of it? What a nightmare.

“Really? Doesn’t seem like that to me,” Kaito observed. Then he leaned over to read the list Len was looking at, snickering at something. “Oh, look! Your best friend Meiko is going to be working with you.”

The last time Meiko and Len were on the same team for the musical, she made him repaint an entire set because she didn’t like the shade of green he used. God, were art students such a pain in the butt.

Len shrugged his shoulders, considering asking to be moved to lighting or audio. “Hopefully I’ll get the paint colour right this time.”

Rin came skipping over to the boys with a smile that lit up the whole room, drawing their attention away from the list. She congratulated Kaito on landing his role. “I look forward to working with you!” she exclaimed, bowing politely.

Kaito nudged Len, winked, then gave her a thumbs up. “Right back at you, Rinnie,” he said.

She glanced over at Len questioningly, who was standing off to the side looking like a cardboard cut-out. “Are you working on props again, Len?”

Len looked down, his ears burning. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Len, here—if only he would audition too,” Kaito said, throwing a thumb in his direction. “He didn’t make a bad Odette when I was practicing.”

Rin raised her eyebrows, surprised. “Really? I wouldn’t think of Len as one to do acting.”

“I don’t,” Len mumbled.

Kaito chortled, slapping a hand down on Len's shoulder, who grunted at the impact. “Oh yeah, but he’s always been a great practice partner! He’s pretty much half the reason I remember my lines.”

“That’s nice of him!” Rin said, beaming. “Maybe I need to practice with him too. I always take forever to learn mine…”

“Well, next time him and I are practicing, I’ll call you over,” Kaito said with a grin. Len wasn’t sure if he was being serious or not, but he was praying that he wasn’t.

A group of some theatre girls walked past, calling Rin over, and she cast an apologetic look at the boys. “Sorry, gotta go,” she said, before waving goodbye and running off.

Kaito turned to Len, the grin still on his face. “So, what do you think? Wanna help Rin remember her lines?”

Len scowled at him. “Kai, I can barely get a sentence out around her. Do you think I’d be much help?”

His friend slung an arm around his shoulders. “Oh Len, we just have to get that talkative side to come out first.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“We’ll figure it out.”

Fat chance , Len mused with a pout.

The weeks rolled by, with work on the musical starting off slow. Len spent most of his afternoons painting props and avoiding Meiko’s wrath, and listening to the other theatre kids gossip.

One day, one of his classmates—and fellow theatre club members—approached him.

“Hey Len,” she said.

She was playing the role of Odile, and helping with other things on the side—Miku, he recalled her name. They’d barely talked in all their years together, so this was a first.

She crouched on the ground beside him as he was finishing off the flowers on a bush, and looked at him with a serious expression while twisting a pigtail in one hand. “Are, you know, Kaito and Rin, like, dating? ”

Len paused mid-stroke, going, “Uhh.”

“Because, like, they seem to be really close, right, and they’re always getting the main roles,” she babbled, and he sat there in silence, wondering for a moment. “And like, I’m just curious, ‘cus they haven’t really said anything, but like, it just wouldn’t surprise me, you know?”

Eventually, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “I dunno. None of my business.” He didn’t think they were dating, but, hell, who knew. Maybe that had changed within the past day or so.

Miku looked at him weirdly. “Aren’t you, like, his best friend?”

“Yeah, and I dunno,” Len answered, returning the same expression. “What’s it to you?”

She flushed. “W-well, you know, I just thought…”

“Why not ask Kaito or something?” he said, looking back down at the prop he was working on. “The guy doesn’t keep any secrets.”

Miku huffed, frustrated with his answers. “Well, I—um, it’s just—that would be sort of rude, okay?”

Len raised an eyebrow. “Really.”

Then she threw her head back, groaning. “Wow, you are so weird. Never mind.”

Miku got up and ran off, not bothering him again. But that got Len thinking…

What if they were dating? Sure, they were friendly with each other, but that was just—he assumed—because they’d worked together on so many musicals before. Besides, Kaito was always sort of gently nudging Len to make a move on Rin, so it didn’t make much sense if they did happen to be dating. (Unless they were like, polyamorous or something.)

Even so, Len couldn’t blame people for assuming it. They were a good-looking couple when together. And the few practices he’d sat through, he couldn’t help but be mesmerised by their acting with one another. Their voices harmonised well, their height difference was sort of amusing, and even their personalities seemed to contrast nicely.

He frowned down at the ugly flower he was painting. It was impossible to see himself with Rin, when she was just so bright and cheery, and him akin to the dark side of the moon.

“Len!” Meiko snapped, disturbing him from his thoughts. She was standing over him, her hands on her hips and her face pulled into a snarl. “Can you pick up the pace? We still have thirteen more of these bush sets to paint!”

Len grumbled an apology, and got back to work, thoughts of Rin and Kaito reeling through his mind.

“Huh, so something weird happened today,” Kaito said, while peeling open an ice-cream he got from the cafeteria vending machine. They were on lunch break, and it was a pleasant, mid-autumn afternoon, so they were sitting out in the courtyard, enjoying the sun.

“What happened?” Len asked, picking at the hard-boiled egg in his lunchbox.

“You know that girl Miku,” he continued, “she’s Odile, right? Anyway, she came up to me all flustered or something and was like, ‘Oh my God, are you and Rin dating?’” He mocked her voice and everything.

Len popped his egg into his mouth and chewed slowly. “She actually asked?” he said.

Kaito then looked at him, surprised. “What, did you know about this?”

“She came up to me the other day, asking if you two were dating,” Len said, before taking a sip of his banana-flavoured milk.

“She asked you? What did you say?��

“I said, ‘I dunno.’”

Kaito raised an eyebrow. “You just told her, ‘I dunno’?”

Len shrugged. “Yeah. She wasn’t happy with that answer, though, so I said if she wanted to know, to just ask you. I didn’t actually think she would, though.”

Kaito scoffed. “She did, and she looked like she was in pain.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Seemed happy to know we weren’t— ” Kaito then narrowed his eyes at Len, “—dating, though.”

“Look, it’s not my business to know if you two have something going on,” Len defended himself, pretty pathetically at that. “And, well, you’re spending a lot of time together now so maybe something could change. I don’t know.”

Kaito sighed, throwing an arm over his friend's shoulders and roughing up his hair. “God, you’re a loser. But Len, you know, Rin isn’t my type. Not saying she isn’t cute, but…” He released him and gave him a serious look. “Anyway, I’m not that much of a self-centred dick to date her behind your back, am I?”

Len shook his head, reaching up to fix his fringe. “No, but, like, I don’t own her or anything. I can’t even look her in the eye.”

“Hmm,” Kaito said. “Len, you’re too complacent and nice for your own good. You should be more fighty if you want to catch Rin’s attention.”

“I don’t like conflict.”

“Man, you’re strange.” Kaito gave him a grin, taking a bite of his ice-cream. “But I guess that’s what makes you Len.”

Len gave a dry laugh, which died down pretty soon thereafter, because he spotted the tell-tale wobble of a certain girl’s white ribbon. Rin was approaching them from the other side of the courtyard, a sense of urgency in her step.

“Hey Kaito,” she called, waving. She nodded at Len as a greeting. “We’re having a quick emergency measure-up to double check our measurements for costumes before they get finalised. Can I borrow you for a sec?”

“Aw man,” Kaito groaned. “It’s lunch time! Can’t they let a guy rest?”

Her lips twitched. “Sorry, Kai.” As Kaito gathered his things, she turned to Len. “Hi Len. How are all the props going?”

“I’ve painted seven bushes,” Len said to his knees. “And my hand really hurts.”

“Len’s an art prodigy, you see,” Kaito commented, slapping him on the back, earning a disgruntled oof . “Meiko loves his work.”

Rin raised an eyebrow. This time, she couldn’t contain her smirk. “Really?” she said, sounding skeptical. “To be honest, that girl terrifies me. Well, good luck, Len!”

Then she and Kaito were off, leaving Len to sit in the courtyard by himself and sigh down at his half-eaten lunch.

Well, at least he said more than three words to her, this time.

Winter vacation came and went, and soon began the countdown. Of course, the musical was still at least two months away, but theatre kids liked to feel the pressure of impending doom for some odd reason.

Len’s team had finished with painting the bushes and were tasked to work on the castle shell with another team. Apart from a few students who were picky about design and colour, most days spent painting were uneventful.

The good thing was that the theatre club shared the auditorium for both prop preparation and rehearsal, so he got to see Kaito and Rin’s progress, too. Of course, on the odd occasion, Len was forced into helping Kaito practice his role on the weekends, but he preferred seeing it from the perspective of the audience.

One afternoon, while painting and listening to everyone’s rehearsal, there seemed to be some drama up on the stage. The theatre club’s president—Luka—was in a bad mood that day, and after Rin had stuffed up her lines for the fifth time in a row, she snapped .

Len had stopped whatever he was doing to watch as Luka pulled Rin aside to talk to her off-stage. A few minutes later, Rin went running out of the auditorium in tears.

No one else seemed to notice; rehearsal had moved on to another scene without her, and the art, audio and lighting kids were too busy focusing on their work to pay attention. Len looked around, hoping someone would follow after her, but no one did.

His stomach twisted, and he felt guilty having witnessed it, but not doing anything about it.

Len sat for a moment, waiting for her to come back, or something , before taking a deep breath and deciding to be the one to take the initiative. He excused himself for the bathroom and went out the same door Rin ran through minutes earlier, wandering down the hall in search of the girl.

Eventually he found her tucked underneath the staircase after following the sound of her sniffling. She looked surprised on seeing him, and hurried to wipe away her tears.

He stood there, staring at her forehead, before eventually clearing his throat and going, “Uh… um… are you… okay?”

It was the most ridiculous question to ask, given Rin was literally crying right in front of him, and he punched himself in the mouth mentally for not being at least an ounce more socially adept.

She didn’t seem to mind the foolish question, though. She sniffled, wiping at her nose with her sleeve. “Ah… Len. I’m sorry. I’m okay, just… a little stressed is all.” She gave him a watery smile in an attempt to lighten the mood.

Len glanced off to the side, fiddling with his sleeve. “I saw Luka getting mad up on stage.”

Rin winced, screwing up her face. “Yeah… she’s stressed, too.” She sighed. “I mean, it’s my fault for not remembering my lines, so…” Her voice wobbled a bit at that, and she sniffled again, tears gathering.

Oh boy. He didn’t want to make her cry more. “It’s okay,” he blurted out, as if those words alone would make the situation any better. “It’s not your fault. It can’t be helped. We’re only human.”

She smiled a bit. “Yeah. You’re right,” she said. “It’s just… a lot of pressure, you know? Being the main character. I can’t help but feel I’m not right for the role. Like Miku… well, she’s so much better at this than I am.”

“That’s not true,” Len blurted. Rin looked surprised, and so did he. He scratched at his neck. “Well, um, I dunno, when I watched your audition, I couldn’t stop thinking about how well you suited Odette. Like, Miku’s was good, but there was something yours had that… hers didn’t.”

Rin tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, looking down. Although she still seemed upset, she had calmed down a bit.

He continued, trying to fill in the awkward silence, “I think you can do it.”

She sniffled again, letting out a shaky laugh. “Thank you, Len,” she said. She hesitated a bit, before looking up at him. “And thank you for coming out to check on me. That’s… really kind of you.”

Len managed a smile, but couldn’t quite meet her eyes.

Rin wiped at her face again and fixed her hair, taking a breath. “Okay. Let’s go back.”

They walked back to the auditorium together in silence. Before they split off their separate ways, Len stopped her, fingers barely grazing the sleeve of her shirt.

“Um,” he fumbled, when she turned to look at him. “Good luck up there.”

The corners of her lips turned, and she held up her fists. “I’ll do my best.”

For the rest of the afternoon, Rin shone brilliantly on the stage, and Meiko threw a newspaper at Len’s head for getting distracted by her.

“Oh Len. You sly, sly dog,” Kaito said, having heard from Rin what happened the following day.

Len gave him a look. “Well, none of you were running out to check on her.”

His friend grinned, leaning against his desk and folding his arms over his chest. “That’s true, but honestly, she and I were both equally surprised you were the one to go after her. Rin was all, Oh, that Len! He’s nice once he gets over his shyness, isn’t he? ” Kaito tried his best Rin-voice impression.

Len groaned, leaning back in his chair. “Please never do that again.”

“What?” Kaito said, grinning. “ Talking like Rin? ”

“Stop!” Len threw a hand in his direction, and he caught it, using it as a weapon to whack Len in the face.

“Anyway, so, Rin wants to practice her lines with you and me so she can get Luka off her case. I think she likes you, hey.” Kaito winked.

Len snatched his hand back. “How am I supposed to help? I’m not even acting a part.”

“Yeah, but you always do a great job playing the other roles when we’re practicing. And you always drop good hints about my next lines when I forget, ‘cus you always have the lines to read off.”

Len propped his elbow on his desk and leaned his head against his hand, disinterested. “You could, uh, also do that with each other, though.”

“C’mon Len! If you refuse to practice, she’ll think you don’t like her and get sad. She’ll be all, Oh, how disappointing, Len doesn’t want to practice with me …” Kaito faked wiping a tear.

Len rolled his eyes. “If I agree to it, will you stop doing bad impressions of Rin?”

Kaito grinned. “Maybe.”

Len narrowed his eyes.

“Okay, yes. I will stop doing bad impressions of Rin to harass you.”

He sighed, his shoulders sagging in defeat. “Fine. I’ll practice with you two. Just this once, though.”

Kaito high-fived himself. “Hell yeah! I’m gonna go tell Rin.” Then he disappeared.

Len dropped his head on his desk with a loud thunk . He didn’t know how on earth he was going to do any sort of ‘effective’ practice with Rin around.

“Len, you’re supposed to be the evil Rothbart, not a mute teenager,” Kaito said.

They were at a park somewhat central to all their houses on a chilly Sunday morning. Kaito was stretched out on a bench, drinking juice, and Rin stood in front of Len, waiting for him to start taking his role as the villain somewhat seriously.

But… Len couldn’t. Not with Rin dressed in cute casual clothes like this. He’d never seen her without a uniform on, in all these years of attending the same high school… and, well, it was a lot to process.

“Let’s try again,” she said, a smile tugging at her lips. “You don’t have to be convincing. Just… enough is alright, Len.”

He scanned the lines on the page in front of him again and took a breath, giving a nod. He dropped the sheet to his side and cleared his throat. Then, in the best voice he could muster, he began—

“Oh dear Odette! That prince of yours will never love you back—for he has sworn his love to my daughter Odile!”

Kaito burst into laughter from the side, but Rin ignored him and went on to deliver her line. “No! That can’t be true!” she wailed, bringing her hands up to her face in shock.

Len quickly glanced at his lines, before raising his arms like he was, uh, conjuring some magical image, or something like that. “No, Odette… it is …”

Rin stared at the empty space between his arms, her eyebrows furrowing. “It can’t be…” she said, her hands dropping to her sides. “He doesn’t love me…”

It was at this moment, Len was supposed to laugh maniacally and say something else, but he became distracted by how convincing Rin’s acting was. He didn’t realise he was gawking at her until she waved her hand in front of his face.

He snapped back to reality. “S-sorry!” he blurted, scrambling for the next line. God, this was going to kill him. “Um—uh… n-now, you shall be my pretty swan forever…”

Rin then stifled a laugh, breaking character. “Kaito, I think Len has had enough of being Rothbart for now.”

Kaito snickered into his juice bottle, waving his hand. “Oh, he’s fine. I think you were pulling on his heartstrings a little, that’s all.”

Len’s face burned. He tossed his photocopy of the musical’s script at Kaito and took a seat next to him. “Whatever, can I take a break? You two have plenty of scenes to practice with each other.”

His friend rolled his eyes, getting up from the bench with a groan. “Yeah, yeah. Alright, Rin. Let’s start from Act 4 line 46, then. Len, can you help us with our lines?”

Len begrudgingly took the papers back from Kaito and shuffled through to find Act 4.

Oh.

Oh .

It was the act with the kissing scene.

Well.

Fuck you, Kaito.

They began with Rin dying by the lake, and Kaito running in after killing Rothbart. (Len was pretty sure in the original they were both supposed to die, but the school council was all, Noooo, we want a happy ending! )

He frowned as he watched Kaito embrace her and act dramatic, confessing his love to her—what he was guessing—dead body. Rin then rose from the dead and reached out to cup his face.

“Oh, my prince!” she said. “You came back for me… and the curse has been broken!”

Kaito then turned and looked at Len, mouthing the word line .

Len sighed, muttering his next lines. “Odette, I thought I lost you.”

Kaito repeated down to Rin, “Odette, I thought I lost you.”

Silence.

Len continued, “It was all my fault, mistaking you for that vile Odile.”

Kaito acted out the lines, then looked at him again.

Was he just doing this on purpose? He was doing it on purpose. This guy knew those lines, because Len had run over them with him at least a hundred times before. He wasn’t even looking at the script for reference anymore, because even he knew them.

“I could never love anyone else but you, Odette.”

The hint of a smirk tugged on Kaito’s lips as he repeated those lines down to Rin.

She stared up at him, as if he were a delicious slice of chocolate cake. “My prince…” she gasped.

Then it was the kiss scene.

Len averted his gaze as they leaned in for the kiss, signalling the end of the musical. He wanted to kick Kaito for this later.

A moment passed, and the pair stood up as if nothing ever happened, brushing the grass off their clothes.

“So, what do you think, Len?” Kaito asked with a shit-eating grin.

“You need to learn your lines,” Len deadpanned.

“You wanna practice with me? Kissy-kissy.” Kaito pursed his lips and leaned in. Len swatted him away, disgusted.

“It’s not a real kiss, of course,” Rin said, smiling. “Just a theatrical one.”

Len raised an eyebrow. “A theatrical one?”

She ushered Kaito over to demonstrate. “You know, this hand faces the audience. It hides our mouths. And this hand… well, I use my fingers as a blockade for our mouths.” She placed one hand flat on the side of his face, then the other on the opposite side, and pressed one thumb over Kaito’s mouth.

“Romantic, huh?” Kaito said through her thumb.

“Ew.” Rin dropped her hands to wipe them on her shorts. “I mean, as if they’d let people kiss on stage at school.”

“Huh,” was all Len said.

Kaito wiggled his eyebrows at him. “You wanna try?”

“With you? No thanks.”

“I mean, Rin might want to—”

“Also no thanks.”

“Ouch.”

Rin just laughed. “It’s alright,” she said. She tucked her hair back behind her ears. “Can we run over another scene? There’s this one in Act 2 I really need to work on… and Len, can you help out too?” She turned to Len and gave him a pleading look.

And, well, he really couldn’t say no.

“Okay…”

“Great! Well, I need you to pretend to be the other swan maidens in the lake…”

Len thought to himself, Oh boy.

The weeks continued to fly by. Soon, the musical was barely a month away.

Both Rin and Kaito seemed drained from countless practices. Len was going just fine, on the other hand; props were almost finished, and now they were finessing details (as Meiko liked to call it). A few times, they did some ‘unofficial’ full run-throughs as stagehands, but there was still a bit of work that had to be done.

When Len sat down next to Kaito for lunch, his friend turned to him and said with a straight face, “Miku and I made out yesterday.”

Len almost dumped his lunchbox’s contents on his lap. “You what? ”

“Yeah,” Kaito said, looking a tad dead inside. “It was weird.”

“Why?” Len asked, although that was a strange question to ask about kissing someone .

Kaito shrugged. “We were alone, and she was stressed, and we just started making out.”

Len found such a statement hard to imagine. We just started making out . Like, how the hell do you just start making out with someone? “So…?”

“I don’t even like Miku,” his friend moaned, dropping his head. “She’s too… I dunno, noisy? Not my type at all.”

Len couldn’t help but ask, “What is your type?”

Kaito tapped his chin in thought. “Hmm. Bossy. Cold. Could crush my head with her thighs.”

“So, like Meiko?”

Kaito tilted his head, squinting at the wall beside Len. “Eh, yeah. I guess so.”\

Len didn’t know what to do with this newfound information. He shovelled a dim sum into his mouth and chewed. “What are you going to do about Miku?” he asked.

Kaito groaned. “I don’t know. I don’t like turning people down and… I mean, I totally made out with her yesterday, so.”

Len went for the salad, saying, “I don’t make out with random girls on the regular, so I don’t have any advice to give you, sorry.”

“That’s alright,” Kaito said, putting his head in his hands. “I’ll figure it out.”

Len frowned at his friend, couldn’t help but feel concerned for him. The musical-induced exhaustion definitely was clouding his judgement (or he had some sort of attraction to Miku he was in denial about, but who knew).

He saw Rin in the hallway later that day, and she almost completely snubbed him, until realising at the last minute he’d walked past. She swung around and grabbed him by the arm, pulling him over by the wall.

It caught him off-guard, and he stuttered something of a hello.

She sighed, folding her arms over her chest. “Rehearsals have been taking it out of me. How are you doing, though?”

Len fidgeted with the collar of his shirt. “Prop work is far from as bad as your case is.”

“That’s good to hear.” Rin smiled. “How’s Kaito? He was a bit of a zombie yesterday.”

“Oh.” He recalled the conversation earlier, and the crisis Kaito seemed to be having. “Not so great,” he decided as the best answer.

She frowned, folding her arms over her chest. “He needs to take it easy. I was going to ask if you wanted to practice this weekend, but maybe we should let him rest…”

Len didn’t mind not practicing, because he’d been humiliated at least a million times during the past four practices they’d done. Of course it meant more time with Rin, but at what cost?

“Yeah, might be a good idea,” he agreed. Kaito would probably spend the weekend having a crisis about girls, anyway.

Rin dropped her arms to her sides. “Well, we’re almost there. Only four weeks to go!” She then waved goodbye and disappeared off down the hallway, into the mass of migrating students.

Len exhaled. Only four weeks to go .

Two weeks to go—that was when the accident happened.

Rehearsals had been slotted into lunchtimes to add extra practice, but Len usually didn’t have to go, so he spent a lot of his lunches by himself. He was enjoying his peace and quiet in the classroom, reading a manga and eating a sandwich, when the door clattered open and both Rin and Miku came running in looking like they’d run a marathon.

Rin stumbled over to his desk, breathless, and blurted, “Kaito’s going to hospital.”

Len dog-eared his book and looked up at her, not sure if he’d heard her right. “He’s going where?”

Miku appeared from behind, repeating, “The hospital. He’s going to the hospital.”

“He fell off the stage during rehearsal,” Rin continued, her eyes wide.

“His leg, like, snapped like uncooked spaghetti,” Miku added, the detail a little unnecessary.

Len finished his sandwich. “Is he alright?”

The girls exchanged looks with each other. “We don’t know, but the paramedics said he might’ve broken his leg. He just… landed on it in the wrong way, and it was awful,” Rin said. “Luka’s freaking out.”

What he wanted to know was, how the hell did Kaito fall off the stage? The guy wasn’t even clumsy, and yet, here he was, probably breaking his leg two weeks before the musical. What a clown.

“Oh,” Len said, unsure how to take the news. “Well, thanks for telling me.”

Miku was already distracted, telling another student about the incident, which signalled that whatever went down during practice would spread around the school like wildfire by the end of the day.

“No problem.” Rin’s eyebrows furrowed. “I’m just really worried. We’ll probably have an emergency meeting for it tomorrow, and for now this afternoon’s rehearsal has been called off, but…” She trailed off, chewing her lip with uncertainty.

“How did he fall off the stage?” Len asked, curiosity getting the better of him.

She shrugged her shoulders, the corners of her lips turning down. “I don’t really know. I guess he was really tired and just lost his balance… I wasn’t on stage at the time. I just heard him fall. It wasn’t good.”

“I wonder if he’ll be alright to do the musical,” he mused aloud.

Rin hung her head. “I hope he will,” she said. “But I have a feeling he won’t.”

That feeling was right. Kaito messaged Len that night to tell him, rather joyfully, that he had broken his ankle.

I’ll be at school nice and drugged up tomorrow! he added.

The next day, the emergency meeting for the theatre club was called after school. Although Len didn’t really have to attend it, being simply a stagehand, Kaito had dragged him along, asking for ‘moral support’.

“Do you really need moral support?” Len said, watching as his friend hobbled beside him on crutches.

“ Yes. It’s going to be hard to say goodbye to this role, you know. I’m going to need you to wipe away my tears.”

“Can’t you ask Miku to do that for you?”

“Len. Die ,” was Kaito’s harsh response.

They were the last ones to arrive at the auditorium, where most of the cast had gathered in a circle. Rin was chewing on her nails—something she tended to do when she was stressed—and Luka was pacing back and forth across the room, a frown etched into her lips.

Upon seeing that Kaito had arrived, Luka stopped and clapped her hands, drawing everyone’s attention to her.

“So, as you may know, Kaito has broken his ankle and has had to step down from his role from Siegfried,” she began. A shocked chatter rumbled through the group, and she cleared her throat, signalling for silence. “We had an understudy—Yuuma—but conveniently, he got the flu and won’t be able to take on the position.”

“Oh boy,” Kaito said, apparently having only just heard wind of this.

Luka pushed back her hair, exhaling. “So, now we don’t have anyone to play the role of Siegfried—and I’m trying to decide what to do next,” she said. “First, any questions, ideas, or concerns about this?”

Miku put up her hand. “Is the musical going to be cancelled?”

“No,” Luka answered. “But we may have to change things, if we can’t find someone to fill Kaito’s spot.”

People began to murmur, sharing their doubt for such a possibility.

“We only have two weeks,” someone said. “I don’t think we can find anyone else to play the role of Siegfried.”

Luka frowned. “Well, first, does anyone know someone who might be able to do Siegfried? Or does anyone think they can step up to the position?”

The room went silent. Everyone looked around at each other.

Then Kaito cleared his throat. “I know someone.”

Luka turned to him. “Who?”

He gestured to Len standing beside him. “This guy has essentially all my lines memorised.”

Len’s face went red as everyone’s eyes fell on him. Oh no. Oh no no no no no . “Kaito,” he hissed, panicking.

Luka seemed unconvinced, folding her arms over her chest and raising an eyebrow.

Kaito kept talking. “Len’s been practicing with Rin and me, helping us with our lines. I think he could pull it off. I forced him to make a band with me once in middle school, so I know he can sing.”

It was then Len wished for a hole to appear in the ground and swallow him up. What the hell was Kaito thinking? He did not want this at all.

Rin spoke up, much to his displeasure. “I think Len can do it too,” she said. “Like Kaito said, he already knows most—if not all—of Siegfried’s lines. So if anything, he would just have to learn the songs and his actions.”

Luka was slowly coming around, tapping her chin. “Hmm. Well. Anyone have another suggestion?” She scanned the group, waiting for another name to be called, but crickets chirped in response. “Okay. Let’s have a show of hands then. Who’s okay with Len taking the role of Siegfried?”

Kaito and Rin’s hands shot up. Then, slowly, one-by-one, other students began raising their hands, too. It was a good 80% of students voting in favour of him.

“It looks like Len’s our best bet, then,” Luka decided, after counting the number. She looked at Len, who was beside himself. “Well, Len. Is it alright if you take the role of Siegfried in place of Kaito?”

Len swallowed, a nervous sweat breaking out across his body. His eyes darted from Kaito, who was giving him a serious look, to Rin, who was basically pleading him with her eyes.

Oh God. Oh God. He hated disappointing people.

He found himself muttering, “Sure. Okay. Yes.”

Just like that, a sigh of relief seemed to wash across the theatre club.

Just like that, Len was going to be Siegfried.

Ah. Fuck.

Kaito tried his very best to convince Len he was capable of getting on stage and performing. Rin had even joined in, much to his surprise.

Len stared at the space above their heads, feeling as if he might puke.

“You’ll be fine, Len,” Kaito reassured. “Just think everyone in the audience is a potato.”

Rin nodded in agreement, her white bow bobbing up and down. “If you can get up and take on a role in front of me without even knowing the lines, you can get up in front of everyone else and be Siegfried.”

“But what happens if I forget my lines, or go off-key?” Len protested, looking pale.

“You just improvise, man,” Kaito said, as if it was the easiest answer ever. “You just keep going.”

“And Len,” Rin added, reaching out to grab his hands. She looked him in the eyes and his stomach did a somersault. “I’ll be up there with you, so don’t worry. If something happens, I’ll help you out if I can.”

His chest went warm and fuzzy. God, why did she have so much influence over him?

Len’s eyebrows furrowed. “I just… I don’t know if I can do it.”

Both Rin and Kaito yelled in his face, “You can!”

“You just have to believe in yourself,” Kaito said, hitting his own chest with a fist.

Rin nodded. “We’re all nervous going up there. But think of it as a fun challenge! You’re not being Len on stage. You’re being Siegfried.”

“Anyway, we should get on with practicing,” Kaito said, holding up his script. “We only have a week and a bit to go. Luka’s going to lose her mind if you show up next week with no clue what to do.”

Len whined as a complaint, but nevertheless, obliged.

Of course, Rin and Kaito were nice enough to spend essentially their entire weekend at the park helping him catch up, even going as far to teach him the dance moves and lyrics, and explain stage cues. Len was just absolutely terrified of getting up in front of hundreds of people to sing a solo song. Even doing such a thing in front of Rin now seemed like child’s play.

While Kaito hobbled off to the bathroom later in the day, they took a drink break.

Rin turned to Len and admitted, “You know what? I’m really glad you were chosen to fill in for Kaito.”

Len’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Really? Why?”

She smiled down at her bottle of green tea she bought from the vending machine. “Well, Yuuma’s cool and all, but I feel more at ease when acting with you and Kaito. I’m glad it wasn’t someone else. You know, since it’s such an intimate role.”

Ah. Right. “Oh,” Len said. He was happy to hear that, and a smile inched its way onto his lips. Hearing that she felt comfortable around him was… somewhat relieving to his anxiety over what she thought of him. “Thank you.”

Rin looked up at him, beaming. Her face glowed under the afternoon light, and her blue eyes glittered like stars. He couldn’t help but stare.

Kaito returned, appearing from behind them. “Oh, you two look nice and comfortable. Guess we’re ready for Act 4, huh?” he joked.

Len grabbed one of his crutches, threatening to take it from his grasp. “Don’t test me, disabled man.”

Kaito pulled a face.

“We still need to do Act 3, first,” Rin said, not quite catching the joke—or perhaps just ignoring it. “It’s the longest one, so Len needs lots of practice.”

“Alright, alright.” Kaito waved his hand. “Let’s keep going, then.”

The following week went by in the blink of an eye. Len was exhausted and busy every day, rehearsing and doing costume try-ons and so on and so forth. By the end of the week, he almost didn’t care anymore, he was so tired.

Most of Len’s costumes consisted of safety pins, considering Kaito was both taller and larger than him in size. It was always a struggle getting in and out of the costumes, which made costume changes much more dire in between scenes.

Luka seemed somewhat satisfied with what he could do, though, which was a relief to both him and Kaito. (Although, his dancing left much to be desired.) “It’s not perfect,” she said in regards to his performance, “but it’s better than nothing at all.”

He tried to take it as a compliment.

Soon, they were doing their last dress rehearsal, two days before the show.

Kaito came up to him after the rehearsal, having sat and watched part of it. “How do you feel, Siegfried?” he asked, swinging an arm over his shoulders.

“Like I might have explosive diarrhea on the day,” Len answered.

“Oh yeah,” Kaito said with a nod. “It be like that sometimes.” He gave him a rough pat on the back. “You’ll be fine though. Do it for the theatrical kiss with Rin.”

Len could only roll his eyes.

Finally, the day of the performance came. According to Rin, who was chewing on her nails backstage, the auditorium was packed full. Len’s knees turned weak, and he sunk down on the ground beside her.

Rin put a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll do great, my prince,” she said, giving a wink, before getting dragged off by one of the stagehands.

His insides melted like butter. A part of him still couldn’t get it around his head that this was happening.

Kaito appeared with his crutches, hopping over to give him a last minute pep talk. Mostly, he just rattled off with bullshit.

“Just don’t look at the audience’s faces. That’s what always throws me off,” he told him.

“Will try not to,” Len said through grit teeth.

“ Or you can try finding my face, in which I’ll blow you kisses.”

“That’s great to hear, Kai.”

Kaito grinned, checking the time on his watch. “Well, I should go now. But hey. Break a leg, alright?” He gave him a thumbs up. “Just not literally, otherwise you’ll end up like me.”

Len frowned at him. “You better not have jinxed me.”

Kaito ignored him and left, leaving Len to try his best not to throw up.

Soon, the music for the opening began to play.

three…

two…

one

It’s showtime!

The adrenaline rush kept Len going, somehow, through the entire musical. He made mistakes, sure, but the show went on. The lights were bright and blinding, and at times he was just lost up on the wide, empty stage. Yet, he did it all. He managed to make it to the end.

He realised this as he was leaning over Rin, her chest rising and falling, her eyelids fluttering.

“Odette…” he whispered, a cue for Rin to ‘awaken’.

She stirred, sitting up, meeting his eyes. She looked different with makeup on, under the heavy stage lights. It wasn’t bad; it made her look older, sharper, more adult than a girl. She smiled at him, and he wasn’t sure if it was her acting, or actually genuine.

Rin reached out to cup his face, hands warm and clammy. He didn’t mind. “Oh, my prince!” she said. “You came back for me… and the curse has been broken.”

Len’s heart was beating so hard against his rib cage, like it might leap out of his chest. He wondered if she could hear it. “I thought I lost you,” he breathed. “It was all my fault, mistaking you for that vile Odile.”

She shook her head, the feathers in her hair dancing in the air around her head.

He took a breath. “I could never love anyone else but you…” Her name danced on the tip of his tongue, and he swallowed it back. “…Odette.”

Rin gazed up at him. Her eyes were dark underneath all the makeup. He didn’t know what was going through her mind at that moment. “My prince…” she whispered.

She leaned in for the ‘kiss’ and he followed, expecting for it to go as it did in their practice. But for some reason, she didn’t place her thumb over his lips. She just went straight in , and their lips mashed together, and his eyes almost flew open in shock at the contact.

Of course, Len managed to keep his composure—just barely—reminding himself to push through until the curtains dropped in front of them, and the audience burst into applause.

Once they were no longer in view, Rin jumped away from him like he was on fire, her skin bright red down to her neck. “Oh my god,” she whispered, covering her face with her hands. “I’m so sorry. I totally forgot to move my thumb.”

Len’s mouth was still warm from hers. The stage around them was spinning a little. “It’s… fine,” he managed to get out.

The stagehands began ushering them off-stage before they could talk more, preparing them for the curtain call.

He didn’t have any time after that to speak with Rin about the kiss. Once they were finished with the curtain call, she was whisked away by a crowd of underclassmen congratulating her and giving her flowers for her last show. It was only now that he realised how popular she was.

Kaito found him amongst the crowd, holding his hand up for a high-five. “You did it!” he said. “My little Lenny has grown up.”

“Please never call me that again,” Len said with a groan.

Kaito ignored him. “What’s that on your mouth?”

“Huh?” Len wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. It was red lipstick. From Rin’s lips. “Oh.”

Kaito raised his eyebrows. “Speaking of which, that kiss with Rin on stage seemed awfully… realistic. ”

Len laughed nervously at that. “Yeah… well…”

His friend leaned in, his eyes going wide. “Wait, it was real?”

“It was an accident,” Len said. His face was hot.

Kaito’s jaw went slack. “Oh my god. You…”

Len shushed him. “It’s not that big of a deal. It was an accident . Rin forgot to put her thumb in the way so we just… you know…”

“She forgot to put her thumb in the way, huh,” Kaito said, narrowing his eyes and stroking his chin. “She never forgot with me.”

Len shrugged. “Maybe she was nervous, or something, I don’t know. I didn’t get to talk to her about it much.”

Kaito hummed in thought. There was a mischievous glint in his eye. “Well, I’m sure you’ll get a chance to talk to her about it at dinner tonight.”

“There's dinner?” Len echoed.

“Uh, yeah, we always do dinner. Didn’t anyone tell you?”

“No…”

“Oh, well. We’re having dinner at a yakiniku restaurant. Wanna come?”

“I guess?”

Kaito winked. “More time with Rin, too.”

Len blushed, then elbowed his friend in the stomach. “I wish you’d shut up sometimes,” he muttered, before walking off to get out of costume.

As they were taking the train to the yakiniku restaurant Luka had booked, Miku wriggled her way in between Len and Kaito.

“Len actually did pretty well up there!” she said. “I was surprised.”

“That’s a bit rude,” Kaito said down to her with a frown.

“What?” Miku batted her eyelashes innocently. “It’s his first time performing! I was sort of expecting something to go terribly wrong.”

Kaito rolled his eyes. “Well, of course Len did great. He’s like a closet superstar.”

Len snorted. “I’m anything but that, Kai.”

Miku pouted. “I’m not trying to be mean! You don’t think I’m being rude, do you, Len?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“See? He agrees with me!”

“He didn’t even give you a verbal answer, Miku,” Kaito said.

She folded her arms over her chest, puffing out her cheeks.

Rin turned, having overheard their conversation. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“We were just discussing Len’s total owning of the stage,” Kaito answered. “And Miku’s being a bitch.”

“I’m not!” Miku cried, indignant.

Rin giggled. “Len did really well, despite the circumstances,” she said. She kept her eyes on Miku and Kaito, avoiding meeting Len’s gaze “Who knew the quiet boy could brew such a storm?”

“He was just saving it up. Huh, Len?” Kaito looked at him.

Len mustered a smile. “I hope I never have to do that again,” was all he could respond with.

Everyone aww-ed in disappointment, and Kaito poked him with one of his crutches. “Nah. You loved it. It was the best experience you’ve ever had.”

“It was the most distressing experience I’ve had,” Len corrected.

Their train pulled up at their stop, and they filed out of the carriage, following Luka’s lead. The walk to the restaurant was around ten minutes, and everyone had moved on to another conversation with each other. Kaito was bickering with Miku, who seemed awfully touchy-feely with him.

Hmm , Len thought.

He didn’t mind the moment of quiet, though, as he tagged behind the group. It was weighing down on him—now that the adrenalin rush had finished—how goddamn exhausted he was. He couldn’t wait to have a bath and crawl into bed.

At the restaurant, Len took a seat between Kaito and another girl—Gumi—who played as one of the swan princesses. He hadn’t talked to her much before, but she seemed friendly. Across from him was Gakupo—who played Rothbart, Miki—who played another swan princess, and Piko—who was Seigfried’s best friend. He’d managed to get to know Gakupo and Piko through his role a little bit—they were okay.

Alas, Rin was at a separate table, along with Luka, Meiko and Miku (which was, perhaps, not entirely a bad thing).

So much for having the chance to talk to her about what happened on stage, though.

Although it was hard to organise a group of like, thirteen rowdy teenagers, eventually they sorted their orders for drinks and food. Everyone was busy chatting, and Len was just sitting there, staring at the empty table in front of him. Sometimes Kaito would try to drag him into his conversation with Miku, mainly asking for him to give his two cents in their argument, but eventually he would just… fade out of existence again.

When their drinks came, they made a toast.

Luka did the honours, being the club president. “Well, despite one of our leads breaking an ankle two weeks before our show, I guess we did pretty well,” she said, narrowing her eyes at Kaito, who wore a proud expression. “Thanks to Len being able to pull through and play the role in Kaito’s place. Thanks to everyone else, too, for all your hard work and cooperation for the past semester. It’s been an honour being your club president.” It was now she looked a bit teary.

(Len didn’t realise the theatre club was such a big thing to her… but, well.)

“So, a toast to our theatre club! Well done everyone, and good luck with finals next semester!”

Everyone held up their glasses.

“Cheers!”

After that was done, came the wait for food. Len took that as a chance to escape and get a breath of fresh air (he was getting a little claustrophobic, sandwiched between Kaito and Gumi). He excused himself to the bathroom, then slipped outside, unnoticed.

Len glanced at the time, making sure he didn’t spend too long outside that people came looking. He crouched down on the curb, breathing in the freezing, late-winter air.

There were footsteps behind him not long after he’d been outside, and he turned, expecting Kaito to have followed him out. But much to his surprise (and pleasure), it was Rin.

She tucked her hair behind her ears. “Mind if I join?” she asked.

Len nodded, the words getting caught in his throat.

Rin sat down beside him with a sigh. Her shoulder bumped against his, and his heart fluttered. “Are you feeling alright?” she asked, glancing at him. She’d wiped most of her makeup off, returning that familiar softness to her features.

“Yeah,” he croaked, before clearing his throat. “Just needed some air. It was a bit crowded, is all.”

“Yeah,” she agreed in an exhale. “The exhaustion sort of hits you around now.”

Len hummed in response. “I don’t know if I can get up off the ground, to be honest. My legs are killing me.”

Rin chuckled. “It’s all that dancing.”

“I didn’t know I had to use so many muscles for that.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Comes easy to me, having done ballet and all.”

Rin then leaned against him, her head lowering to his shoulder. He stiffened at first, then relaxed—although, all the skin she was touching was on fire.

“Still exhausted, though,” she mumbled.

“You did amazing,” he said.

Rin’s hand fluttered down to his thigh. It was hot through the fabric of his jeans. His heartbeat picked up, hammering against his chest as his mind went reeling. He didn’t know what was going on.

“You did amazing, too,” she said back, a smile in her voice.

Len wanted to disagree with that statement, but instead, decided to shut up for once. He settled for a quiet, “Thank you.”

He wondered if she could hear his heart, beating so loud. God, she could definitely hear his heart.

She then said, “I’m sorry about the kiss at the end, though.”

“Oh, um,” he fumbled. “It’s fine, I… it took me by surprise, but…” It was good. I wanted you to kiss me more.

“It took me by surprise, too,” Rin said with a laugh. “I almost broke character there on stage.”

Len laughed with her. “I was confused for a moment, thought your thumb was oddly soft,” he admitted.

“Oh, you’re telling me my thumb doesn’t feel like a kiss?” she jested. “Rude.”

They chuckled together, before a beat of silence passed. Then Rin said, “You caught me off-guard up there, Len.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I did?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Your acting was… really good.”

Len stared straight ahead at the vending machine across the road, illuminating the darkness. He knew Rin could hear his heart. Her hand was still on his thigh, and her head still resting on his shoulder. The gentle smiles and the fact that she was sitting here, out in the cold with him, and not inside with the others.

He didn’t want to get ahead of himself, and yet…

Something inside just told him to go for it. Maybe he was reaching a state of over-exhaustion and his brain wasn’t functioning properly, but to heck with it.

“It wasn’t acting,” he whispered, the words difficult to get out.

Rin lifted her head to look at him, going, “Hmm?”

Len swallowed, mustering up the courage to try again. “It wasn’t acting,” he repeated. Once they were out, it was like a heavy weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

She gazed at him, confusion first crossing her face, then consideration, then realisation. Her eyes went wide, her lips parting.

For a split second, he wondered, with terror, if he’d gotten it wrong. If he’d mistaken all her gestures for something they weren’t. If she was about to break his heart, then and there, in the most awkward situation ever.

But then Rin’s lips curled up into a smile. She leaned in close, her forehead touching his.

“Do you want to… try again?” she whispered. “But this time, not just an accident.”

Len didn’t answer. Instead, he leaned in, lips brushing against hers. She reciprocated, pressing back hard against his mouth. A hand reached up to grab the collar of his shirt, curling into a fist. The other still rested on his thigh, fingers pressing down into his skin.

He reached for her shoulders, then up to her neck, the sides of her face. He tangled his fingers in her hair, pulling her closer, drawing on her warmth.

Someone coughed from behind. Startled, they both jumped away from each other and turned to see Meiko.

She folded her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said, in a tone that wasn’t very apologetic, “but everyone’s wondering where you two went, so unless you want to have to explain to them in detail what you were just doing, you should probably come inside.”

Rin cleared her throat, flustered. “S-sorry Meiko,” she stuttered.

Meiko just shook her head at them, before walking back into the restaurant.

Rin looked at Len. She exhaled and shrugged her shoulders. “We should probably go back.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, breathless.

She leaned in again to peck him on the lips once more before standing up, dusting off her clothes. She held out a hand for him, and he grabbed it, pulling him up.

Together, with faces red like stop signs, they walked back into the restaurant and took their seats, acting as if nothing ever happened.

When they were saying goodbye later that evening and going their separate ways, Rin kissed him again, right in front of Kaito.

Kaito gasped. “Excuse me,” he said, holding up a hand. They pulled away to look at him. “When did this happen?”

Rin looked at Len, smiling, and Len shrugged. “Like, two hours ago,” he said.

Kaito put a hand to his chest. “And you didn’t tell me, your best friend? I’m offended.”

“Well, you know now,” Len said.

Kaito sniffled, pretending to wipe away a tear, before he dropped his hand and grinned. “It’s about time!”

Len rolled his eyes, but Rin laughed, leaning into his shoulder. “Can you let us kiss in peace, please?”

“What, you didn’t get enough time on stage?”

“Kai! Away!” Len shooed him, and the boy left, cackling to himself.

Rin shook her head. “I think those painkillers are ramping him up a little, or maybe it’s just because I’m tired.”

“Definitely the painkillers,” Len said.

She reached down for his hand and squeezed it. Her fingers were cold, like ice. Her expression turned serious as she looked up at him from under her lashes. “So… does this mean we’re dating?”

He gazed at her face a moment, surprised she'd even bothered asking the question. “Well, I hope so,” he said.

A grin started to fight its way onto her lips, her shoulders sagging with relief. “Me too.”

Len reached up to brush some hair out of her eyes. “You wanna do something fun during spring vacation? Like see a movie, or go bowling or something.”

“Yeah,” Rin said, beaming. “I’d like to do something.”

“It’s a date, then,” he said.

Then they leaned in for another kiss.

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a-strange-inkling · 5 years

Text

SASUSAKU MONTH DAY 2: Patterns

Rated T (for suggestive content and language)

Summary: Only in another life would Sakura ever hate Sasuke, and even then it’s debatable. Though in a different sky, the stars always follow the same pattern (RTN AU, First Chapter of Story that I’ve been working on)

Annoying

"You aren't mad at me, are you Sakura?"

Ah. There they were.

Uchiha Sasuke's infamous Puppy-Dog Eyes.

Haruno Sakura held back a sneer as she turned her attention back to the romance novel she was currently indulging, not in the mood for any of her overly hormonal team mate's antics. The sweet, childlike innocence in those round, onyx orbs of his was as sincere as a tray of fucking cheese. Sasuke knew better than anyone that she was mad at him.

She was always mad at him.

"Sa-ku-ra..." he cooed, trying again for her attention, speaking her name at a low and chilling octave, knowing she hated when he did that.

The Fourth Hokage's daughter only snorted at the sound of her name rolling seductively off his lips, before pivoting her entire body away from him, crossing her legs with a steely grace.

Sasuke rolled his eyes, unable to repress the smirk that had been playing at the corner of his mouth. "Well, I must have really hit close to the mark this time, you're even pulling out your age-old Ice Queen persona."

Sakura simply glared at the written text in front of her, refusing to get in yet another spat with the arrogant boy. However, the young Uchiha had not quite given up yet, he knew one particular trick that would get to the cold young woman.

"You know, no one has mastered the silent treatment quite like you, Sakura-chan."

"Don't call me that." Sakura hissed quickly, shooting him one of her nastiest looks. She never let him call her that.

Sasuke's smirk deepened. "Seems there is still some room for improvement though."

"Look, there is a pair of breasts right over there, Sasuke!" she exclaimed with feigned excitement, pointing to a fairly pretty brunette who was making her way down the street. "Why don't you go bother them for a while?"

Sasuke eyed the passing young woman thoughtfully, mildly interested, before shaking his head and turning his attention back to the spunky rosette. "Shouldn't do that, you might get jealous, then you'd be even madder at me."

Sakura stood then, abruptly, closing her book with a resounding snap, as she put distance between herself and the young Uchiha.

"Come on, Sakura!" he called after her, growing annoyed as the kunochi went to find another place to wait for the rest of their squad. She was secretly pleased that his voice had an agitated edge to it instead of the usual carefree ring that usually resounded from his mouth. "Are you going to be like this the whole mission?"

Silently, with her unparalleled grace, the kunochi leapt up several branches of a nearby oaktree, before settling back down with her book. It was all of nine seconds before Sasuke was perched behind her, peering over her shoulder.

"...how's your latest 'Kiss Handsome Boy' book?" he asked coyly.

"The hero is not handsome, he's deformed," Sakura replied with a roll of her eyes. "What's compelling about him is how deeply he loves and how loyal he is... Something you wouldn't know anything about."

"Deformed as in one side of his otherwise attractive face," Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Oh, is there a scar over one of his eyes? Or is he missing a limb?"

Sakura looked skyward in agitation.

"Heh." Sasuke smirked. "He's just missing a limb isn't he?"

"Would you just leave me alone, please?" Sakura asked him with a sigh, shifting down the branch.

"Oh, come on, aren't you going to tell me more about your hero?" the Uchiha asked smugly. "I bet he's all brooding and tortured with a tragic past, and I'm sure only you can save him."

Sakura growled in agitation before closing the book once more and placing it in her back pouch before turning her jade orbs on the Uchiha playboy.

"Okay, Sasuke, you win," she said, crossing her arms. "You have my attention, now what the hell do you want?"

"Hey," Sasuke put his hands up in surrender. "I'm just trying to find out why you're mad at me, Sakura-chan, it's not good for a team to go on a mission with unresolved issues."

"I'm not mad at you, Sasuke." she said evenly. "I just genuinely can't stand you."

"Aw." Sasuke chided, swinging his legs over the branch to let them swing. "We both know that's not true, we used to be friends once, you even used to call me Sasuke-kun, remember?"

"I was just a stupid kid back then," she replied. "Now, would you leave me alone, it's bad enough I have to spend a whole week with you."

The infamous playboy placed a hand over his heart. "Ah, you wound me, Sakura-chan... Don't you care at all about the importance of teamwork?"

"Oh, are you going to lecture me about teamwork?" she asked him. "You, the one who abandoned the team to flirt with that busty nimrod last time?"

"You're so high and mighty, you know that?" He scoffed. "Sorry that I like to enjoy myself once in a while and talk to people, unlike Menma who can barely form coherent words around women, and you, because you're too busy trying to keep up you're frigid bitch facade."

"Wow, Sasuke." Sakura gave him a mocking grin. "And you wonder why I don't like you."

"That's your problem, you don't like anyone," Sasuke explained matter-o-factly. "That's why you're so lonely all the time."

She felt her breathing hitch and her whole body stiffen at the word.

What did he just say?

Lonely...

"How would you know?" she asked lowly. "You don't know a damn thing about being alone."

"Sakura..." he began, realizing he had gone a little overboard. She was just so harsh sometimes, he couldn't help it. "I didn't mean it like that, I just..."

"You're so damn annoying! Acting like you actually know me!" she exclaimed, so angry she didn't know what to do with herself. "Why don't you just keep your mouth shut about things you don't understand!?" She stood up and leapt down from the tree, unwilling to wait around with him a moment more.

Luckily, Menma appeared, walking up the cobbled path, giving her a shy smile. "M-morning, Sakura-chan."

"Hello, Menma." she replied with a sigh of relief. "It's so good to see you."

"It really is," Sasuke replied, jumping down from his perch. "I'll have a witness in case Sakura-chan tries to do me in."

Menma sighed to himself. It seemed this would be another mission of tension between his two teammates. "Hey, Sasuke... M-my mom made cookies for the journey if you guys want some," he told them, holding out a brown paper bag where his mother had drawn a lopsided smiley face. It was an immature tactic to make peace, but it was effective more times than not.

"Ah!" Sasuke exclaimed, helping himself. "Let me at 'em! Kushina-san's cookies are always the best!"

"Sakura-chan?" Menma encouraged her to take one, trying not to blush.

"No thanks, Menma." Sakura replied, putting up a hand. "I'm on a cleanse, but they smell delicious."

"A cleanse?" Menma asked.

"Probably for the best." Sasuke nodded. "They’re too sweet to share with someone so bitter. Not to mention you've been growing a little thicker around the middle."

Menma cringed in fear. Did Sasuke just call her fat? Did he dare? So much for his peace cookies. Maybe he should try dumplings next time.

A sort of dark shadow fell over Sakura's eyes as she shot a deadly glare up at her raven-haired teammate.

Sasuke smirked in response. "Sorry, koishii, that doesn't work on me."

Sakura had a talent for scaring off her many admirers with that dark look alone, however, that frightening attitude of hers had an opposite effect on Sasuke.

He wasn't afraid, only amused.

"Heh," she replied, startling him a bit and switching gears as an easy smile spread across her face, mirroring his own. That may not work on him, but she knew something that would. "On second thought, I would love a cookie."

She strode past him then, with a little extra swing of her hips, purposefully knocking her shoulder with his own as she did so, and took a large round cookie from the offered bag."Thanks, Menma-kun, you're so sweet!"

Surprising both her male teammates, the kunoichi leaned up and brushed her lips against Menma's cheek as a token of her appreciation, making the blonde turn seven different shades of red and Sasuke's smirk diminish a little.

"Da...uh... N-no problem, Sakura-chan." the poor boy stuttered, his hands clenching around the cookie bag, lost somewhere between pure joy and mortification. His mom was right. Sweets were the way to a girl's heart!

Sakura turned and smirked triumphantly at Sasuke, glad to see his own had melted into a displeased frown, as she took a slow enticing bite of the cookie. "Mmm... you're right, Sasuke, these really are the best."

"Hn." he hummed. "Careful you don't choke, Sakura."

"Good morning, students!" Kakashi greeted, interrupting the spat.

"Ah, right on time as always, Sensei." Sasuke waved before shoving his hands in his pockets. "Where are we off to today?"

...

"Tell me."

"No, go away."

"C'mon, just tell me what's bothering you."

"No! Stop that! Get the hell away from me!"

"Sakuraaaaa."

"Sasuke."

"Look, I'll stop bugging you for the rest of the journey if you just tell me."

"No!"

"Please, Sakura," Kakashi begged from where he was leading the three teenagers. "For all our sakes, take him up on that offer."

Menma nodded in agreement. It was hard to focus on reading the map with those two bickering behind him.

"I'm not giving in to his whining." the rosette replied angrily. "...I'm going on ahead to scout."

With that, she leapt away into the trees and disappeared from sight. Sasuke moved to jump after her.

"Sasuke, give her some space," Kakashi commanded.

"Heh, she's not getting away that easily." was the ninja's careless and insubordinate reply.

Whether she wanted to admit it or not, Sasuke knew Sakura. He had known her his whole life and she really wasn't the icy, badass bitch she made herself out to be. She had been putting up with his normal bullshit for years with the usual scoff or roll of the eyes, whatever he had done most recently must have really upset her.

And, truth be told, he wasn't all too happy with her either.

"I can't really be sorry for something if I didn't even know what I did, you know?" he told her once he caught up with the angry kunoichi. "Come on, I genuinely want to know what's wrong."

"You, genuine?" she scoffed.

"Okay, I don't deserve that," he told her. "We're not thirteen anymore, your lousy attitude is not going to send me into the corner feeling bad about what I did. I'm human, I make mistakes. Not all of us can be perfect like you..."

"You see, that's exactly what gets on my nerves." she turned on him then, her finger pointed right into his face. "You think everything is about you."

"Well, isn't this about me?" he asked. "Isn't that why you haven't spoken to me for days, this morning, and that stunt with Menma you did to try and get me jealous."

"Ha! Don't flatter yourself."

"Well, you were." he laughed. "Unfortunately, I'm not the jealous type like you."

That earned him a glare. "Whatever makes you feel better, Sasuke."

"Look," he sighed. "Is this really going to be the whole mission? Can we just..."

"Ino is not one of those girls!" she exclaimed.

"What?" Sasuke asked, dumbfounded.

"Ino," she remarked. "You know, my best friend? She's not like those girls you hang out with, the ones who enjoy flirting with you as much as you enjoy flirting with them. She's shy, even more so than Menma, anytime a guy gives her any attention she takes it to heart. She took you flirting with her seriously."

"Who are we even talking about?" he asked, confused.

"INO!" Sakura exclaimed. "She's been in every class with both of us since the Academy. Blonde haired, blue-green eyes, wears five layers of clothing."

"Ohhhhh." Sasuke realized. "The stuttering girl... she's your friend still, huh?"

"Kami." Sakura hissed, turning and jumping to another branch.

"Look, Sakura, wait," Sasuke called after her. "I'm sorry... I didn't mean anything by it, it was Shikamaru's idea, it was all just a joke."

"Just a joke?" Sakura asked him. "Hurting a girl's feelings and making her feel foolish for believing you were actually genuine is not a joke... do you know how hard it was for me to tell her what you're really like, that you didn't actually like her, you were just messing with her?"

"Look, it was stupid," he sighed, jumping and landing beside her once more. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well, you tell her that next time you see her," she quipped. "Maybe she'll forgive you."

"Fine, mama bear, I will." he sighed, placing a heavy hand on her shoulder. "As usual, you're blowing this way out of proportion."

She shoved his hand away and crossed her arms. "I told you what was bothering me, wasn't that the deal? Now stop bugging me for the rest of the trip."

With that she jumped away again, not slowing down, leaving Sasuke to stare after her.

Kami, that girl. She drove him absolutely crazy.

...

They set up camp and Team 7 had fallen into a not so easy silence. Sasuke had been true to his word and let Sakura alone, but the tension from before was still sizzling in the air as they went about their tasks. It was all standard teenage shit for Kakashi, but Menma was always uncomfortable with any sort of discourse, especially between his only two friends, and found himself actually missing their bickering. This competitive silence was somehow worse.

Once they all settled around the fire, Menma had calculated that no one had spoken for an hour and twenty-three minutes. While he was a quiet fellow, himself, this was just ridiculous. He turned to Kakashi with a pleading look.

Do something, Sensei!

But the silver-haired jonin was looking over their map, planning for the next morning, quite content with the silence, no matter how awkward it was. Menma turned to his right to see Sakura at the farthest end of the fire, her nose in her book, legs crossed and body pivoted away from them all. To his left sat Sasuke, sharpening his kunai, a full pout on his face as he watched Sakura's back. Menma had never seen him so grumpy. Though bothering Sakura was his lifeblood, being cut off for even an hour seemed to have negative effects.

Menma, knowing it was up to him to break the ice, squeezed his cookie bag in dread. He hated bringing attention to himself, but if it was for the good of his team, he would do it. He glanced around before choosing the member of his squad he currently liked best to try to engage with. While it was a wide known fact that Sasuke was his best friend, Sakura-chan was very pretty.

Plus she had kissed him that morning, he still felt it burning beneath his skin.

"How is your book, Sakura-chan?" he chirped, feeling blood rush to his cheeks. The sound of his soft, raspy voice was like a piano crashing from the sky on top of them all. He felt Sasuke's glare burning a hole in the back of his head and realized that he may have betrayed a rule of comradery between them that he had been unaware of. Apparently, if the Uchiha wasn't talking to Sakura, he wasn't allowed to talk to her either.

Forgive me, brother!

Sakura lowered her book and gave him a rare sweet smile over her shoulder. "It's a work of genius." she sighed dreamily. "The hero just proposed to his dying lover."

"Oh, that's um... nice," Menma replied, though he wasn't sure if it was. He wasn't one for reading, and certainly couldn't manage a thick romance novel without dying from secondhand embarrassment, but Sakura never went on a mission without one. It was the funny riddle of her being for her teacher and teammates, that someone as cold and crass as the village Ice Queen read sappy paperbacks.

Sasuke scoffed from behind, but Menma didn't even dare to face him. "There's one more cookie, if you want it, Sakura-chan." he offered, holding out the crumpled bag once more. If he was going to have to speak, he might as well try and get another kiss for his efforts. Sakura beamed and not only accepted his offer, but set aside her book before rising and coming to sit beside him. "Thanks, Menma." she beamed, making him turn a full shade of scarlet. "You are so thoughtful."

That set the Uchiha off, he tossed his kunai aside and rose to his full height. "Why does she get the last cookie?"

"I-I uh..."

"You don't have to explain yourself to him, Menma." Sakura told him firmly, placing a hand on his shoulder, making his soul leave his body a little. "Despite what he thinks, he's not the boss of you."

"Oh, wow," Sasuke started to laugh, thoroughly pissed off now, but refusing to acknowledge her before she acknowledged him. "Real nice, Uzumaki, leaving me high and dry for a pretty face."

"Sorry..." the blond began, feeling awful.

"Don't apologize to him!" Sakura exclaimed. “Like he’s one to talk.”

“Look, here’s a little free advice, Menma.” Sasuke went on regardless. “Cute as she is, she’s just going to chew you up and spit you out, there are a lot of way nicer girls around.”

Menma felt Sakura’s hand squeeze his shoulder unintentionally and knew that comment had more than stung the kunoichi. He felt something foreign in his chest flare up all of sudden.

“Sakura-chan is nice!” he told him, taking a tone with his friend he never had before. “She’s always nice to me!”

“Only cause it serves a purpose.” Sasuke rolled his eyes, unsure how the kid could be so clueless.

“Kami, you really are the most arrogant, hypocritical, egotistical, delusional fuck boy to ever grace the planet!” Sakura all but screamed at such an accusation. It was all she could do to not send a fist into his nose.

“Ah, there she is!” Sasuke grinned triumphantly.

Kakashi sighed, looking toward the heavens. It had been such a glorious hour and a half. Perhaps he had summoned some sort of karma for foolishly hoping to finish his work before they both started back up again.

“You’re such a horrid friend to him, do you know that?” she stood up and strode right up to the boy that loomed over her about a good seven inches. “You’re always telling him what to do and making him feel like he’s second best to you.”

“Yeah, well it’s better than you not even letting him speak up for himself.” he pointed out. “Stop trying to be everyone’s mother.”

“Excuse me?” she asked, placing her hands on her hips.

“Look, if you’re so concerned about Menma and his feelings, then why don’t stop using him as fuel to get to me?”

“Oh, get over yourself, Sasuke!”

“That’s enough!” Kakashi intervened. He considered himself an even-tempered man, but he could only take so much of the ongoing saga of Sasuke and Sakura. Honestly, he’d come to wish they’d get it over with and just fuck or do each other in. The older they got the more their bickering and sexual tension was getting out of hand. “Both of you, go blow off some steam, Sakura go North, Sasuke go South, I don’t want to see either of you back here until you can both be amiable comrades to one another and stop pulling Menma into the middle of your immature spats.”

“But, Sensei…”

“Now, Sakura!” He commanded, pointing his finger, making her huff as she grabbed her bag and leaped off.

“Whatever.” Sasuke shrugged, turning and taking her leave as well, leaving the silver hair ninja with his remaining student. He ruffled his blond hair tiredly. “What are we going to do with them, huh, Menma?”

“Don’t know, Sensei.” he shrugged. “They really hate each other, don’t they?”

Kakashi’s mouth formed a line. “If only it were that simple.”

…

Sakura knew it was stupid to think that Sasuke would, for once, listen to Kakashi and actually put some distance between them, but she would have liked at least a second to herself.

“You’re really something else, you know that?” he asked coming up behind her.

“Didn’t you hear Sensei? You’re supposed to go South.” she shot back heatedly, storming off faster, knowing it was pointless. If there was one thing she’d admit that Sasuke had on her it was speed. He was soon walking alongside her.

“Who cares what he says?” he huffed. “I’m not done with you yet.”

“Yeah, well I’m done with you.” she retorted.

“No, you don’t get to call me out on leading your friend on, when you’re doing the same thing to Menma, and then call me a hypocrite,” he told her. “That’s not how it works.”

She stopped abruptly and turned to face him. “I’m not leading him on.”

His face went deadpan at that, before taking on a persona that she assumed was herself.

“Oh, Menma-kun, I’d love a cookie!” he gushed as high as his deep voice would let him go. “You’re so sweet! You’re so thoughtful! I’m not just using you to get under Sasuke’s skin at all!”

She turned and kept walking at that, enraged that he would make such an accusation, and even more so because he was not completely wrong either.

“Ever thought about how that will make Menma feel?” he asked. “You know how he feels about you.”

“What are you talking about?” she stopped and turned around.

“He’s in love with you!” Sasuke exclaimed as if she were an idiot.

Sakura felt something snap like a twig somewhere inside her. “No, he’s not.”

“Yes, he is.” Sasuke nodded reassuringly.

“No, he’s not.”

“Yes he is!” he nearly yelled in exasperation “Most men are! Have you seen yourself?”

“...Kami” she whispered slowly, wishing the earth would just swallow her up right then and there. She hadn’t realized that Menma had a crush on her, let alone loved her. How could someone who spent so much time with her be in love with her? That was insane.

She thought of all the times she had sent him attention just to spur Sasuke and never felt so low. While it was not often and never harmless, it was flirty and could have easily made him feel that she was interested in something more than friendship. She was no better than the Uchiha,

“Yeah, it’s true, so stop playing with his feelings.”

As guilty as she felt, she couldn’t bring herself to admit defeat to him, not three times in one day. She’d make things right with Menma, but Sasuke didn’t have to know that. “Maybe I’m not playing.” she shrugged coyly, turning and continuing on her way.

“...what?” Sasuke muttered in confusion.

“Maybe I’m in love with him too,” she suggested with raised palms. “I mean…”

Sasuke was suddenly in front of her, making her almost walk head first into his broad chest. “You’re not in love with Menma,” he stated as if it were the most basic fact of life, like the rising and the setting of the sun.

“Why not?” she asked with a raised brow, genuinely asking herself as much as she was asking him. Why hadn’t she ever thought of Menma as something more? “He’s handsome, considerate, sensitive and always good to me, why wouldn’t I be in love with him?”

“Because you’re in love with me,” Sasuke told her just as simply. “That’s why.”

She stared up at him, lips parting wordlessly at such a claim. Where there was a snap before now felt like she had been struck by a bolt of lightning. To her surprise, as well as his, she began to laugh. She laughed so hard she bent over, hugging herself around her middle. Sasuke remained stoic, emitting only a small smile when anyone else would have been more than wounded.

“I’m not in love with you, Sasuke.” she told him when she straightened up and caught her breath. Where had the clueless bastard got that idea? He was just watching her with a knowing, adoring look in his eye, his hands tucked snuggly in his pockets. She tilted her head up so that she was looking directly into his eyes. “I hate you.”

Honestly, what planet had he been living on?

Suddenly he took her face gently into his hands and made her still, all mirth and smugness abandoning her. She stared up at him in shock, eyes wide and sparkling in the darkness as he kept her there, not two inches from his face. Blood rushed to her face so fast that it felt as if she were burning alive from the inside. Why was everything so quiet all of a sudden?

“What was that, Sakura?” he asked with an easy smile, seeing everything he needed to see, rolling her name around the way he knew drove her crazy. “I didn’t quite hear you.”

“I-I said,” she breathed out shakily, wondering what the hell was wrong with her voice. It sounded so soft and unsure. Like it was someone else’s entirely.

He had caught her off guard with this play. Nothing in her body was working like it was supposed to. Damn it! Why did he have to be so fucking beautiful? And tall? And sexy?

It wasn’t fair.

But, it didn’t prove anything, she assured herself. He was Sasuke. Everyone was attracted to him one way or another. That’s the only effect he had. Attraction wasn’t love. She wasn’t in love with him. In fact, this only made her more angry at him. If she could feel her hands she would have sent a fist straight into his perfect jawline.

She swallowed thickly. “I said, I hate…”

Kami, was he going to kiss her?

She stiffened as she felt his thumb brush along her cheekbones as he loomed over her all the closer, his hot breath spilling over her face.

“What?” he hummed softly. “Go on, say it.”

She stared at his lips, contemplative for a moment of what it would be like to kiss someone, but quickly remembered just who she was dealing with and snapped her gaze back to his dark eyes, so close now she could count his lashes.

“I hate you.” she whispered, her eyes darkening, it was hard to breathe at this angle he held her. But, she did it. She got it out.

She won.

He smiled then, looking so pleased that for a moment she wondered if she had said the wrong thing. The opposite thing.

He leaned forward ever so slightly, hands slipping down to her neck, and she nearly jumped out of her skin, but his lips took an alternate route gently and brushed over the hollow of her cheek, the same place she had bestowed a kiss to Menma for his sweets.

He pulled back and she watched him, flushed and frustrated by his brash action and by the burning in her face centering around the focal point where he had touched her.

“You too, Sakura-chan.” he told her with a wink before turning and going on his way, leaving her alone like she wanted.

#ssmonth2019 #ssm19 #ssmd2 #sasusaku #rtn au #road to ninja au #sasuke and sakura

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chiseler · 5 years

Text

JOAN BLONDELL: The Honest Con

Every carny is the same: the same hicks milling around in overalls and print dresses, as trusting as cows; the same stalls and banners emblazoned with fat ladies and fire-eaters; the same bored cooch dancers listlessly gyrating their hips; the same pickpockets working the packed, sweaty crowd; the same atmosphere of hucksterism pervading everything as thickly as the smells of grease and popcorn and sawdust and cotton candy. The cacophony of spielers: Step right up! Move in closer, folks. The show is about to begin! Try your luck. Everybody wins a prize. Only a dime, ten cents, the tenth part of a dollar…

Every movie set in a carny opens the same way, with the camera elbowing through the midway, taking in the sights with a knowing eye. Sinner’s Holiday (1930), Joan Blondell’s first feature film, began this way, and so does the masterpiece of her later years, Nightmare Alley (1947). Here the camera glides over the crowd to find Blondell standing in the shadows at the back of her booth, surveying the scene. Her flowing robe, poised stillness and grave expression give her a hieratic air. Her eye is fixed on a handsome young roustabout in his undershirt, but her look is pensive rather than lustful. The wary, contained way she observes the world, and her calm unmannered presence, were with her from the beginning of her career, but here they have aged and deepened and mellowed like spirits.

She’s come a long way from Myrtle, the brassy photographer’s model of Sinner’s Holiday. Now she’s Zeena, a mind-reader, “the miracle woman of the ages” as her barker tells the gullible throng. Zeena’s act is pure hokum (she gathers questions from the audience, pretends to destroy them, and reads cues supplied by a hidden accomplice), presented with good-natured flim-flam that would fool only the most naïve. Off-stage, though, Zeena is a true believer in the Tarot, a woman of much deeper intuition and understanding than her gimcrack act suggests. Here Joan Blondell pulls off the same paradox that defined her greatest early roles in Blonde Crazy (1931) and Blondie Johnson (1932): in all these films she’s a con artist who makes her living off scams of one kind of another, yet who somehow remains fundamentally decent and even honest.

One of the links between pre-Code and film noir is their mutual obsession with dividing the world into chiselers and suckers, the wised-up and the chumps. Pre-Code movies, made at a time of mass disillusionment courtesy of the Depression, reveled in the exploits of con men, sharpies, hustlers, and maestros of ballyhoo. Films like the exhilarating James Cagney vehicle Hard to Handle (1933) depict a country where everyone is either on the make or being taken. “The public is like a cow, bellowing, bellowing to be milked,” Cagney declares, echoing his speech to Blondell in Blonde Crazy about the “age of chiselry” in which “everyone has larceny in his heart.” In the first scene of Nightmare Alley, Blondell’s Zeena listens to Stan Carlisle (Tyrone Power) as he explains why he loves the carny racket: how looking at the rubes out there gives him a feeling of superiority, a sense of being in the know, being on the inside while they’re on the outside.

She’s heard it all before. At 41, Blondell is seasoned and wise, yet still vulnerable and open-hearted—just like she was at 25. What she brought to all these movies about rackets, about schemers and saps, was the ability to put over a con and let us enjoy her triumph, yet also to express, without sanctimony, the melancholy weight of too much knowledge. As she listens to Power’s speech, all this is in her eyes and in her silence. The oily Stan is an homme fatale who shamelessly uses his wiles on the older woman, making love to her because he wants her to reveal the secret of a verbal code she and her former partner used in a successful vaudeville act. Blondell’s role could easily have been a humiliating one—as soon as Stan gets what he wants from Zeena, he cheats on her with the pretty, innocent young Molly (Colleen Gray)—but Blondell makes Zeena’s susceptibility appealing rather than pathetic. When Stan tells her she’s a “real woman” (praising her generosity to her washed-up, alcoholic partner Pete), it’s with his usual slick insincerity, but she can turn this smarmy compliment into simple truth. Zeena blames herself for her Pete’s drinking, since he hit the bottle after she cheated on him. It was Pete who said she had a heart like an artichoke, “with a leaf for everybody.” She ruefully quotes this to Stan as they drive through the night with Pete sleeping drunkenly in the back of the truck.

Wanting to pick Pete’s brains about his past success, Stan plies him with liquor, but what he learns is that even he can be suckered by a spiel. Gazing into the bottle of moonshine as though it were a crystal ball, Pete summons a vision of a barefoot boy running through rolling green hills, a dog at his side. “Yes, his name was Gyp!” Stan eagerly confirms, at which Pete reveals that it’s a stock reading that fits anyone. “Every boy has a dog!” he laughs. Much later, when Stan has followed in Pete’s alcoholic footsteps, he pulls the same trick on his fellow bums in a hobo jungle. The mind-reading racket depends on the fact that people’s memories and feelings are all pretty much the same, and nothing is more universal than the belief that one is unique.

In pre-Code, con games exploit the simplest appetites—chiefly greed—and their elaborate mechanisms rely on no profound psychology. In Nightmare Alley, Stan plays with more volatile elements: with people’s insecurities, guilt, regrets, memories, and desires. The film lays bare the irony of the mind-reading scam, in which the appearance of uncanny sympathetic understanding, a luminous glimpse into the human heart, is just a ruse to bilk money out of suckers. Stan eventually teams up with a cruel, manipulative psychiatrist, who practices the same sort of racket under the cover of science. In the book by William Lindsay Gresham from which the film was adapted, the key to Stan’s character turns out to be a textbook Freudian revelation, his sexual desire for his mother. Forced by the Production Code to drop this, the film actually improves matters by replacing it with an account of his childhood in orphanages, during which he learned to cynically manipulate authority by feigning conversion and repentance. All this pretense of empathy and communication only accentuates the alienation at the heart of the story: Stan’s destiny is to become a geek, an isolated freak who has traded his humanity for a bottle a day.

The movie’s tacked-on, studio-imposed ending not only rescues Stan from his proper fate as a geek, but adds a pat moral to the story: he fell so low, a carny-owner opines, because he reached too high. What really happened was that Stan finally encountered someone who was even more skilled and ruthless than he as a manipulator of minds. But although it’s trite, the moral accords with noir’s foundational pessimism: an un-American distrust of ambition, a certainty that those who crave more, who want to make it to the “top of the world” are courting failure, destruction and death. When Zeena reads Stan’s fortune with the Tarot, his card is the Hanged Man, a figure derived from Odin, who hung upside-down from the world-tree and sacrificed an eye to gain knowledge that would make him supreme.

Movie stars are, by and large, people driven by the burning need to be “somebody,” the same drive that Robert Warshow pinpointed in “The Gangster as Tragic Hero”: to be separate from the crowd, to be “way up high where it’s always balmy,” as Sidney Falco says in Sweet Smell of Success. One reason, perhaps, why Hollywood was so good at making movies about confidence tricksters is that so many of its great stars were self-invented, bearing names that weren’t their own, inhabiting personas that were nothing like their real selves. Joan Blondell belonged to a smaller group of stars whose air of authenticity was not an act; and that burning drive to get ahead and be the best that defined the personae of actresses like Crawford and Stanwyck was not part of her make-up. Her screen persona (like the off-screen Joan) knows poverty and will do what it takes to stay off the pavements, but she’s not naturally aggressive or afflicted by restless hunger. She is, for this reason, not really a noir type, and Nightmare Alley proved to be her only stroll down noir’s dark alleys.

It’s part of Blondell’s mystery that she is compelling on-screen despite lacking that fierce need to be the center of attention. How many genuine movie stars could be plausible in the role of a stand-in, as Blondell is in Stand-in (1937)? One of the better offerings from the mass of her post-Code films, this is an off-beat movie about Hollywood that focuses on the “little people” who labor in the film industry. In the title role, Blondell plays former child-star Lester Plum (she had, in real life, started in vaudeville as Baby Rosebud), and performs a hilarious, squeaky-voiced impersonation of Shirley Temple singing “On the Good Ship Lollipop.” Having failed to establish herself as a grown-up star, Lester uncomplainingly does the standing around and sweating for a bitchy, temperamental actress, and lives in a boarding house inhabited by trained seals, their keepers, and other show-biz oddities. Her task in the film is to awaken the heart and humanity of an Asperger’s-stricken mathematician played by Leslie Howard, who has been sent west by the New York money men to assess the financial viability of the studio where she works. Directed by the underrated Tay Garnett, the film features an array of eccentric character turns, including Humphrey Bogart as a director who goes through the film toting a Scottie dog under one arm.

It’s a cut above most of her post-Code films, which took on a drearily routine quality. The problem with the movies she cranked out during the remainder of the thirties is their relentless lightweightness. They try for the dizzy comic tone of her pre-Code films, but have none of the edge or the ballast, the dark shadows under their eyes that gave those early-thirties gems their bite. The pre-Code films had a delirious exhaustion that made them tremble on the verge of hysterical laughter or sobs; the post-Code B comedies merely feel tired. In movies like Topper Returns, or her many pairings with the deliciously acerbic Glenda Farrell, Blondell is all round eyes and pearly teeth, but the scripts deny her the wounded reserve that was, paradoxically, essential to her comic presence. There’s often plenty to enjoy, and the constant stream of wisecracks in Kansas City Princess (“Your grammar ain’t fit to eat!”) is almost enough to disguise its basic insubstantiality. But something was lost, as it was for other stars like Warren William and Mae Clarke whose careers declined after the Code sanded off their edges.

Blondell struggled to find work in her middle years, partly due to her age and partly to the personal turmoil of her third marriage to Mike Todd. Strangely, she never got many of the mother roles that subsumed actresses like Mary Astor (though off-screen she was the devoted mother of two children.) Her best-known later part was as the free-spirited, scandalous Aunt Sissy in Elia Kazan’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945). Rather than matrons she tended to play older, single working women: she was Jayne Mansfield’s secretary in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957), and in Desk Set (1957) she shares a surprising rapport with Katharine Hepburn, who never seemed more relaxed or likeable than when she and Blondell get drunk on champagne together at an office Christmas party. A work-horse to the end, Blondell put in a lot of time on television and returned to the stage, often in stock. In 1972 she published an autobiographical novel, Center Door Fancy, about her life in show business.

She had that brand of level-headedness that seems common to people who started in show biz as children, those lifers who see through every illusion yet understand better than anyone the value of illusions. Throughout her career, Blondell exemplified one definition of what good acting is: an honest con.

by Imogen Sara Smith

#Imogen Sara Smith #The Chiseler #Joan Blondell #Tyrone Power

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dwellordream · 4 years

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I’ve been reading haunt/hunt and I absolutely love how you wrote Nell and her story as well as how you flesh out all the female characters in your fic! So far chapter 45 probably made me the most emotional that I have a lot of feels about it. I’d love a Director’s Commentary and your thoughts writing it, especially the dream Nell has about Bethany and the whole grief and rage and pain that comes with it. Also, Walda’s side during her conversation with Nell would be interesting.. thank you!

thank you! I really dreaded all of Nell’s chapters at the Twins because I’d already gotten some backlash over the plot that culminated with Robb’s ‘death’ and her ending up a captive, and I figured frustration was just going to build the longer I spent writing Nell basically treading water at the Twins trying to figure out how she was going to escape. ultimately I’m pleased with how these chapters turned out but at the time I was always a bit anxious and tense when writing and posting them, because I was worried it was just going to be people in the comments going ‘this sucks. why am I reading this, again?’ (not that there isn’t room for criticism of those plot points, I think the pacing of Haunt/Hunt is a bit janky overall, but... not all that much I can do about that at this point haha) I knew the major setpiece of the chapter would be the sept at the Twins, the same one where Edmure and Roslin were just married, the same one that at the Freys presumably pray in... septs are always foreign places for Nell because she wasn’t brought up in that faith, never had a septa, and there was never a sept at the Dreadfort or Barrowton. the obvious contrast here is that the sept is a holy place but it’s also at the site of a massive betrayal, and in the midst of this service Nell is plotting and scheming. there’s also the fact that this takes place shortly after Joffrey’s death, and so the Freys are mourning one boy-king after having just slaughtered another. Nell is so shocked and in grief that she can’t even summon up much triumph at Joffrey’s death, as she acknowledges that they will just crown Tommen instead, who is just a child being manipulated by the adults around him. I think it also highlights a main point of the fic- Haunt/Hunt is not a retelling of the entire ASOIAF story, it’s just narrowly focused on the North and the prominent characters there. I feel bad sometimes because I sometimes think readers are expecting me to suddenly pivot to characters like Dany or Cersei or the Martells, and while obviously their actions have consequences for everyone in Westeros, they’re not really the focus here. finally we get to the convo between Fat Walda and Nell. Walda is obviously very wary of Nell, given recent events and the fact that she’s married to Nell’s father. Nell sees Walda dressed in Bolton colors and thinks about how she used to take such pride in her house, and how when she first met Robb she was pretty snotty and felt him childish and beneath her. she feels horrific guilt over even being married to Robb in the first place, wondering if he’d married someone else he might still be alive and winning the war. she also feels so lost without the one person in her life besides Dana who she felt like really chose her and loved her in spite of her flaws. Nell and Robb’s love story is really crucial to the story as a whole and it obviously still plays a major role even after he’s dead. we then flash back to Walda, who, despite everything that’s happened and her torn loyalties, does genuinely sympathize with Nell and promises to keep Lysara safe. Nell is less than impressed with this, but does warn Walda about Ramsay- although it’s not just from concern for Walda, but fear for Lysara’s safety. she also warns Walda that Roose loves no one and nothing but himself, and whether he treats her well as his wife or not, he can’t be relied upon to keep her safe from Ramsay. Walda does, to her credit, take Nell seriously, and reveals her pregnancy, while confessing that Roose hasn’t, in her opinion, been all that cruel to her, adding that he is a much finer match than she could have ever hoped for as a Frey. many people acknowledge that canonically Walda seems quite pleased with Roose as a husband, praising him in her letters and seeming eager to have children with him and rule the Dreadfort. I wanted to keep some of that while acknowledging that, well, this Walda was also friends with his daughter... who’s just been betrayed and imprisoned and had her husband murdered... and is about to have her daughter taken from her. Roose isn’t a good or kind person and I think Walda recognizes that while at the same time feeling that, well, he may be a murderer and a rapist and a traitor, but he’s not constantly bullying and insulting her, he doesn’t beat her, and any children she has with him will have a claim to the at-present most powerful house in the North. so is she in love with him? no. but she is used to having to be very pragmatic, given her upbringing. jumping to the dream sequence (actually the last time we’ve seen Bethany in a dream in this fic, I believe) it’s kind of a call to arms? it’s just the culmination of all Nell’s rage and pain and sorrow, triggered by the new loss of her daughter. she dreams she is back in her mother’s bedchambers in the Dreadfort, watching her waste away from illness, and for the first time she really goes off on dream!Bethany, voicing the pain and fury she still feels at being left motherless. to have Bethany die after promising Nell that they’d be happy and go live with her aunt if Roose died in the Greyjoy Rebellion was especially brutal for her. Bethany apologizes to her- something that never happened in real life, as Nell never had any adults apologize to her for her upbringing or the trauma she experienced- and encourages Nell to keep fighting and not give up, pointing out that she tried to teach her to be strong and determined, even in the face of evil. to be honest, “I died for nothing, aye,” Bethany acknowledges faintly, too shrouded in smoke to be visible clearly to Nell now, although her voice is longer than before. “Yet before I died I lived for you. I lived for a child I thought could be more than the sum of all my rage and pain and regret. A child I thought could grow into a woman who might do things I had only dreamed of. And I have been wrong on many counts, my Nell, but never that one.” is one of my favorite parts of the entire fic. I think the ‘oh, *insert character* died for nothing’ or ‘the moral of the story is the world sucks and kindness is weakness’ is something that gets thrown around a lot in the ASOIAF fandom, maybe due to the influence of the TV show, maybe not. but I really disagree with that. for all the horrible things that happen in the series I think the ending will be one of hope, not defeat or ‘accepting the world as it is’. change can happen and it can be positive, and not all sacrifices are in vain. Ned Stark didn’t ‘die for nothing’- he died to save Sansa’s life and he taught his children really important things about respect for others and keeping your promises and protecting those weaker than you. we see his influence in Robb always trying to do what’s best for his people, Sansa being kind to others in spite of her suffering, Arya still defending the weak even at risk to herself, Bran trying to use his powers for good, Jon always trying to make the hard but fair decision at the Wall. they may not always make the right choices and they do fail, frequently, but the point is to try, not to always be victorious. in the same token, Robb didn’t ‘die for nothing’ in this fic- he dies fighting a war to return home and help his people, he dies with Nell and Lysara’s names on his lips, he dies always trying to protect the ones he loves, and I think that’s the actual point, not that he was ‘stupid’ or that Roose ‘outplayed him’. life isn’t a game and it’s not supposed to be treated as such. what matters is what Robb did while he was alive, the people he helped and the lives he changed. Nell is 100% a better person for her relationship with him and the growth she went through as she matured and took on more responsibilities. she is 100% a kinder and more compassionate person because of her relationship with the Starks, and Dana, and her ladies at Riverrun. she had to choose to change and step into her role as queen, but Robb really gave her a lot of confidence in herself and her abilities. so yeah, I think the overall message of chapter 45 and the fic in general is “it doesn’t matter how you die, it’s how you lived.” Robb’s death doesn’t wipe out everything he did before that. the loss of Lysara doesn’t erase the love Nell feels for her. even when things look dire and life is shitty you can still take it one day at a time and keep striving for something better. Nell has to recognize that while Bethany’s death was painful and tragic and unexpected... she did help shape Nell into the woman she would become and her ultimate wish was not that Nell would be exactly like her, but that Nell would be better than her.

#haunt/hunt #ask #anon #ask game

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shenanigans-academia · 5 years

Text

Summer Training Camp Arc/ Rescue Bakugo/ The End of All Might

Episode 39: Game Start

•the fact that Denki and Mineta physically went to Mido’s house to invite him to the pool is actually kinda cute. Too bad they have creepy intentions

•Momo:”Aw I was supposed to spend several weeks traveling Venice with my parents”

Uraraka: “WHAT is YoUr LiFE??” I feel you girl

•Mineta/Denki:”TheRe’S BoObS At tHe End Of ThiS TuNnEL”

Iida-Absolute Unit-Tenya:”HELLO FELLOW CLASSMATES”

•Iida is built like a fucking TANK what the heck but why the fuck are you walking like that Iida lmao

•Iida talking about how far he and Izuku have come as friends, I’m soft

•Kiri refusing to come without Bakubabe convincing Bakugo to join then looking so defeated when he immediately starts picking a fight I can’t with these two

•”friendly competition between classmates” cuts to Bakugou looking possessed before saying “I’m going to annihilate you Deku/ Icy Hot Bastard” bruh do you have an off switch or at least take it down like 20 notches you’re exhausting

•”YOU DIDNT EVEN TOUCH THE WATER”

“ITS CALLED FREE STYLE SWIMMING”

•Lmao the whole class is cheating

•I love how it just cut to a dramatic montage of TodoDeku moments while Sho can’t take his eyes off Mido WHY THEY ALL SO INTENSE FOR YOURE 15 HANGING OUT AT A POOL DURING THE SUMMER WHY ARE YOU GUYS ALWAYS ON

•Mido/Todo/Iida all just staring at each other intensely having their own inner montages. Literally anybody watching them “...are they okay?”

•Aizawa you party pooper

•I’m sorry but Kirishima is so in love and no one can tell me other wise no I do not take constructive criticism

•Okay that end montage is so fucking pure I’m. So. Soft

Episode 40: Wild, Wild Pussycats

•Kirishima “can’t keep my hands to myself/off Bakugo Katsuki” Eijirou

•Class 1B to anybody they meet: “we’re sorry about Monoma”

•Aizawa loves his class can’t you tell

•”Long time no see” Aizawa’s a cutie

•Lmao KOTA the first of Mido’s adopted kids

•These poor fucking kids can’t catch a fucking BREAK

•Koda tried and I love him

•Kiri’s heart eyes are so LOUD

•I love when they all work together

•”YOURE IN MY WAY ICY HOT”

“Then pick another route” Todoroki doesn’t have time for your tantrums Kacchan

•These poor kids

•Kota went for the KO

•”YOU FIEND OF A CHILD. GEEZ KID HOW OLD ARE YOU”

•”Brats got spunk”

“He’s like a mini version of you “

He’s right and should say it

•Mineta needs a muzzle

•The boys are all like we’re just as curious to see the girls but Mineta needs to calm down 300%

•Kota to the rescue!

•IIDA GOT A FACEFUL OF MiNETA ASS HE DIDNT DESERVE THAT AGSFJSHHSJXG

•Mina almost killed a child with her boobs I’m dead and so is Kota

•I’m sorry but it’s both funny and weird that Midoriya is just naked while being told this child’s tragic backstory

•Aizawa you are actively trying to kill your students aren’t you just admit it

Episode 41: Kota

•Testutestu is such a good boy

•Good training idea according to UA Teachers: Break yourselves or else you’re weak. Just fucking die then you can be heroes

•Tiger is amazing “I’m here to beat you guys to a pulp”

“I have some questions about him...” ME TOO RANDOM CLASS 1B STUDENT BUT I LOVE HIM

•Iida tries so hard

•Momo explains how her quirk works: smart and precise description

Sero Fucking Hanta: “like how poop works” BRUH

•This kid is literally just a mini Kacchan

•I’m sorry but Mido why would you ask a small child who you’re trying to befriend about their murdered parents like what part in your mind made you think that was a good idea

•Mina And Bakugo sleep the same way, starfish style, I love them. But who the FUCK is sleeping under a bunch of pillows off their mattress on the straight floor with their butt in the air (I bet money it’s Kaminari)

•everyone complaining about training in the dark:

Tokoyami: ”Revelry in the Dark”

•Kirishima’s too tired to deal with his angry boyfriend

•Todoroki trying to help Midoriya with Kota “be careful what you say, you can be really annoying” he’s trying

•Tokoyami constantly whispering “Revelry in the Dark” to himself is the FUNNIEST thing to me I love you, you emo punk

•It Dabi Time

Episode 42: My Hero

•these poor fucking kids I swear

•”we want our treat Mr. Aizawa”

“Do you want me to tighten your bindings?”

Oooh Kinky Bad Aizawa akshdhbekal

•MONOMA SHUT UP

•Spinner is a long lost Ninja Turtle Brother change my mind

•”DIDNT ANYBODY TELL YOU ITS NOT A HEROES JOB TO BE HAPPY” clearly

•I respect Testutestu so much

•This muscley villain is Bakugo’s real dad and nobody can tell me other wise

•Okay that fucking Bondage villain is genuinely terrifying

•KOTA BABY STAY BACK P L E A S E

•it’s been X amount of days since breaking my bones- erases whatever number was there and puts a fat zero MIDORIYA YOU WERE DOING SO WELL but for this we will make an exception I guess

•oh my fucKING GOD KOTA JUST R U N

•Mido really thought he was gonna die holy FUCK

•”One For All One Million Percent” MIDORIYA YOU CANT EVEN HANDLE 5% BABY BOY WHAT IS YOU DOIN

Episode 43: Drive It Home, Iron Fist

•Shiggy thinking in Video Games format is honestly so on brand

•Mido is FUCKED UP right now poor boy

•”We’re in big trouble” YEAH NO SHIT ERASURE

•BAMF Aizawa is my reason for living

•Okay I forgot how much I love Twice

•Aizawa seeing Izuku’s broken bones: ”AGAIN???”

•Kota’s precious and I LOVE DADZAWA

•KIRI’S SO UPSET THAT THAT THE VILLAINS ARE HERE FOR BAKUGO IM SOBBING

•”Teachers changing their minds about fighting, why do I feel like this is Deku’s fault” BAKUGO SHUT UP YOU HAVE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT RIGHT NOW YOU DICKHEAD

•TESTUTESTU IS SUCH A GOOD BOY

•DUDE BROUGHT A FUCKING GUN TO A CAMP I FORGOT ABOUT THAT HOLY SHIIIITTT

•CLASS 1B MVPS KENDO AND TESTU MOTHERFUCKING TESTU

•Midoriyas doing a Naruto run because his arms are fucking broken I’m crying

•Tokoyami, Dark Shadow And Shouji IM READY

Episode 44: Roaring Upheaval

•Tokoyami tries so hard to be good I love him

•WE! DESERVE! SO! MUCH! MORE! SHOUJI!

•Yami is so emo And is just such a Good Boi AH

•Scared Bakugo is Baby

•Honestly they’re all Baby

•Toga:”I love messed up bleeding people”

Mido: shows up completely broken

Toga:”Mr. Stainy who? I want that one”

•Aoyama would be the kid who gets caught in hide and seek because they think they have a great spot and can’t be seen and try to peek them convince themselves still nobody saw them in plain sight

•Awase was fully prepared to die protecting Momo I’m CRYING he’s my new favorite

•Battle Plan Mastermind Mido is amazing

•Also poor unconscious kid just being dragged behind Uraraka haha

Episode 45: Shat A Twist!

•Kiri: “I cant let them take my boyfriend” poor boy just wants to help so bad

•Whelp nobody is safe

•LMAO Aizawa just stomping on Fake Dabi has me dying

•Shouto how long has it been since you last saw your brother...?

•Shouji SMACK A BITCH Mezo

•I LOVE SHOUJI

•Compress you freak get those kids out of your mouth ya nasty

•AOYAMA YES

•Dabi stop being a dick to your little brother I’m gonna tell Rei

•Kirishima is so upset AND IM UPSET MY BABIES

•These kids just wanted a fun week at camp LEAVE THEM ALONE THEYRE 15

•...Mic...is the traitor...

•I love how everybody hates All Might’s ringtone lmao

•All Might’s like only Us teachers are allowed to beat our kids to a pulp in order to better them as heroes y’all are just mean

•I know Mitsuki has just a bad a temper as her son but how do you think she reacted finding out her child was the kidnap victim of a villain attack? No matter what you think of her as a parent, that’s still her kid and she must have been devastated. But just like Katsuki she would never admit it to his face

•Precious Boy Denki And Class 1A coming to visit their hurt friends I love this class so much

•”I brought a present! I mean it’s from everyone. It’s a melon!” Okay that was pretty cute

•Kirishima being like “why is everyone crying we’re going to go get him let’s go gays time to get our Gremlin back”

•Kiri:”he’s still within your reach Midoriya!”

Mido:”...my arms are BUSTED my dude nothing is in my reach right now I’m still gonna come tho”

Episode 46: From Iida to Midoriya

•Kirishima is THE Best Boi I love him so fucking much I would die for him

•Iida’s trying his best not to blow a gasket

•”Hysterical Strength” yeah sounds like Deku

•”Go home and take it easy” lmao have you met this kid?

•Kota is so freaking sweet

•Izuku. Go see your mother

•Iida’s got some good points. I’m including that punch to Midoriya

•Bakugo must be so tired of being tied up and restrained you know he doesn’t have bondage kink later on in life just hits too close to trauma

•Kiri’s constant state of mind: WWBD (WHAT Would Bakugo Do)

•Mido: Stealth Mode=Wakanda Forever

•Iida has the best costume this is not up for debate. I also always forget he has an undercut, we Stan an icon

•”So the rich girl just wants to go shopping” I’m crying

•Clean Shaven/Neat Hair Aizawa? Hell to the fucking Yes Please

•I’m genuinely proud of Bakugo and the fact that he knows that he’s intense and scares a lot of people/ how he comes across is aggressive and almost villain like, he adamantly doesn’t want to be a villain even if everyone just assumes he would be. He wants to be a hero. Whatever it takes

Episode 47: All For One

•Rightful shoutout to Kendo and Testu

•”We are offering mental health counseling to every single student but right now we do not see signs of any serious psychological trauma” Nezu I’m sorry but those kids are officially fucked up for life you can’t be serious

•”what if they’re brainwashing young Bakugo right now towards the path of villainy” leave Bakugo ALONE

•Aizawa is like you come for my angry son I come for your throat try me again bitch

•FERAL GREMLIN BOY FIGHT OR FIGHT MODE ACTIVATED Bakugo has no flight mode only fight

•Mido: Incoherent mumbling

Momo:“this is peak Midoriya” I love how they’re just used to him now

•the boys are just like you’re not touching our friend you drunk creeps

•Kirishima came PREPARED to get his boy back I love him

•Bakugo just take the help you prideful little shit

•Okay Edgeshot is great where has he been all this time

•Annndddd it all went to shit so fast

•oh my god Best Jeanist is fuckin dead

Episode 48: Symbol of Peace

•”You won’t escape Shigaraki” umm so how’d that work out for ya All Might?

•Kamui Woods “IM SO SORRY” poor boy

•Talking to Best Jeanist:”consider me...pressed” All For One got jokes huh

•...yeah no BJ REALLY Fuckin Ded

•These kids are so fucking traumatized

•A WILD BAKUGOU APPEARS

•Twice has big Deadpool energy tbh

•Lmao Iida has had enough

•Mom and Dad of group award goes to Iida and Momo

•All For One: asks Kurogiri to help warp the League

Also All For One: Stabs him while doing it

•”I don’t think so. Because... I Am Here!” All For One really said Fuck All Might

•All these kids think in Video Game Lmao

•I know there’s a lot of commotion happening but I definitely feel like the villains would be able to hear them talking

•Midoriya went to Kirishima like time to get your asshole boyfriend back you lovesick fool

•”YOU IDIOTS” you’re smiling because your friends are here you jerk

•Everyone’s so intense then Kiri-fucking-shima is there smiling like an idiot because BAKUGO’S BACK

•ALL MIGHT ALL MIGHT ALL MIGHT ALL MIGHT

•...I always forget Shiggy’s familial lineage and it’ makes me sad every time

•I love this episode so MUCH

Episode 49: One For All

•YOUNG MIGHT

•Nana Shimura looks just like Momo...Todoroki Secret Lovechild Theories Intensifies

•”YOU GUYS DIDN’T RESCUE ME YOU WERE MY BEST ESCAPE ROUTE”

“You’re welcome!”

Oh Bakugo just say thank you

•...soooo many people died in Camino Ward, man...

•Aizawa looks so young

•ALL THE KIDS WATCHING THEIR TEACHER AND HERO GET BEATEN TO A PULP HORRIFYINGLY IM SO UPSET

•All For One really just pulled an “I am your father” move but with Shiggy and Nana that’s messed up

•THE PEOPLE RALLYING BEHIND ALL MIGHT IM SOBBING YALL

•NOW IS NOT THE TIME ENDEAVOR

•THERE WE GO THATS BETTER

•Everyone loves All Might I’m so soft

•I’m genuinely crying guys

•...can everyone hear All For One talking about Midoriya oorrrrr???

•All Might you’re pulling a Deku pleaSE STOP

•United States of Smash I cant

•Kirishima really tried holding Bakugo’s hand YALL

•...Bakugo knows

•I love this episode too I’m so upset

Episode 50: End of the Beginning, Beginning of the End

•Gran Torino explaining why they didn’t know about Shimura’s family/Shigaraki is. Sad

•Bakugo is traumatized someone please help him

•Endeavor and Bakugo are the same person and I hate it

•Midoriya and All Might running to each other on the beach is big Marty and Alex from Madagascar energy I’m cackling

•PROUD DADMIGHT MAKES ME SOFT YOU’RE BOTH CRYING AND I AM S O F T

• PARENT TIME YES

•Jirou’s parents are so cool, Kyoka’s so cool THE JIROUS ARE SO COOL

•Oh my god the Bakugos are so CHAOTIC

•It all makes so much sense why he is the way he is and it’s all. Too much. Poor Katsuki

•He’s so. Tired. You can tell. I just want to give him a hug

•”Be CoOl MoM” Izu you’re just as tense and you’ve been with All Might for literally HOW LONG???

•Mama Midoriya is. Right. But that sucks for Izuku

•This is. So. Emotional

Last part of Season 3 is next. DORM LIFE BABY just a little less angst thank god these kids need a break

#mha rewatch #mha #my hero academia #bnha #boku no hero academia #long post #summer training camp #camino ward #rescue bakugo #part 5 #DORMS DORMS DORMS #spoilers

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