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cartoonsaint · 3 years ago

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been busy (but in decent health yay!) the past month so writing’s been slow; figured that for now i’d offer a lil sth i wrote about a year ago and never finished, mostly bc it required me to maintain too high a suspension of disbelief about how hot and/or how much effort mr gordos feetman would put into his appearance. the guy canonically uses head & shoulders. and he's proud about it. man wouldn't know a mousse from a moisturizer.

a lot of the beats and central tensions i had planned for this story have been folded into a different project i like more, so this little bit is all that remains. Not A Game AU, might actually be rated G (wow!), contains eating and some talk of weight and appearances. enjoy an oblivious gordon learning that many people think he’s hot, including at least one person at the dinner table. surely he’d use that information wisely and not be a big dumb smug bastard about it, right?

That night at dinner, Joshua sets aside his drink (root beer cut with seltzer, a treat he only gets when they eat with the NeoScience Team), a thoughtful look on his freckled face, and asks, “Daddy, why do all the other parents always wanna talk to you?”

“What?” Gordon says, chuckling. He nudges some of the mystery root vegetable he’s just cut up towards his son, who studiously avoids it to fork another bit of meat. Venison of some kind, he thinks? Tommy and Sunkist caught it today, they said. “The other parents don’t always wanna talk to me. I’m hardly ever even there, bud.”

Joshua frowns and opens his mouth to rebut, but Coomer advises, “We don’t talk with our mouths full at the table, Joshua!” Obediently, Joshua closes his mouth and begins to chew quickly, the better to ask his question sooner, but the rest of the table has already had its attention caught.

“Why would anyone ever want to talk to your father?” scoffs a voice in Sylfaen, though Gordon can hear that Bubby’s smirking around the straw of his protein shake. “He’s so boring. He can’t even set anything on fire.”

“Don-don’t say that!” Tommy interjects. Under the table he’s clearly offering a bite from his plate to Sunkist, who is in the form of a large hound today. The Perfect Dog does not beg, of course — though with Tommy’s big heart around, she doesn’t need to. “I, I’m sure Mr. Freeman could light, could set anything on fire if he really wanted to.”

“And since he doesn’t, he’s boring,” Bubby snarks back.

“Oh, are we setting things on fire?” Coomer asks brightly, pushing his chair back from the table as though to leap into action.

“No! We, we have to let Mr. Freeman do it!” Tommy protests, already half-standing.

“Why, so he can f— screw it up?”

“We’re not setting anything on fire,” Gordon says loudly before an argument (or a fire) can erupt. “Everyone sit down! Besides, Joshie, Bubby’s… well, kind of right. The other parents are just being friendly.”

“Of course I’m right,” Bubby mutters from across the table, but at least he settles some. The others retake their seats and for a moment it seems like they’ll be able to continue their nice, (relatively) calm dinner together without any more fuss.

But Joshua shakes his head furiously, swallowing at last. “Nuh-uh! When Daddy comes pick me up, all the other moms and dads always wanna talk to him. Benrey knows,” he adds stubbornly. “Benrey thinks it’s weird, too.”

As one, the table turns to Benrey.

Benrey, who is sitting on Josh’s other side cutting up his meat while Gordon cuts up his vegetables, doesn’t appear to notice. He reaches across Joshua’s plate to nudge the sweet potato (?) closer to him once more, sets his utensils down, and picks up his glass of Powerade. He’s mid-sip by the time he realizes he’s being stared at.

“Huh?” Benrey says.

Bubby mutters something under his breath that could be “slap him on the ass” for all Gordon can tell, but Coomer pipes up with, “Welcome back to the conversation, Benrey! We were just discussing whether or not the parents at Joshua’s elementary school go out of their way to talk to Gordon more than is typical. Since you work there, we figured you would know best!”

It’s still a mystery to Gordon how Benrey managed to land a job as a security guard at a children’s school in such a safe town, but at this point he knows better than to look a gift horse in the mouth (especially when that gift horse is Benrey). And anyway, Joshua and Benrey being in the same place kills several birds with one stone: Benrey’s out of Gordon’s hair, Gordon has the house to himself during the day, Joshua is under the constant protection of a non-human monster who is absolutely devoted to him, and if Gordon has a panic attack about living with a non-human monster who has access to his son, then he gets several hours alone to deal with it himself without anyone being the wiser.

It also means that Gordon rarely picks Joshua up from school. Benrey brings him home most days, except for when Gordon goes to collect them both so they can all go directly to a NeoScience Team Dinner together. So if there is a difference in the way the other parents treat Gordon, Benrey would know.

Despite himself, Gordon finds his attention on the other man, curious. What, if anything, has Benrey noticed?

“...Oh,” Benrey says slowly in response to Dr. Coomer. He sets his glass down slowly, as though his thoughts are elsewhere, and then he glances sideways at Josh so obviously that even Gordon notices.

“What are you—?” Gordon starts, but Bubby hushes him. Gordon glances around the table to find all eyes focused on his son and his roommate, whose own eyes are locked as they silently have what must be a ferocious, facial expression-based argument. Gordon huffs in frustration. “Come on, at least—”

Joshua interrupts him. “Benny, pleeeeease?”

At that Benrey throws his head back; his hands come up to tug at the strings of his chullo. “Ugh,” he groans, which transforms into a bout of sweet voice in bright blue and green with pink shot throughout.

“Watermelon slice by the pool: I love you, but you make me act a fool,” Tommy translates dutifully, but Gordon had already gotten the gist. He stares at Benrey as the guy slumps forward, face in hands. Joshua, apparently satisfied, picks up his fork and starts eating again.

“...Yeah,” Benrey finally says, voice as unreadable as always. “They all always wanna talk to him. Won’t leave him alone… sometimes me n’ Josh can’t even reach him.”

“Wait, really?” Gordon says, eyebrows shooting up. He’d noticed that the other parents did tend to clump together when waiting for their kids to come out, and they did always include him in conversations, but surely that was just them being friendly? “But they always — Isn’t that just… like, normal?”

Joshie actually giggles. Benrey, face still in his hands, shakes his head.

Gordon tugs on his bangs, uncertainty rising. “Really? But I don’t, I don’t even — why?”

“Muh, maybe it’s because you’re fun to talk to?” Tommy offers.

“O-oh. Well, I — thank you, Tommy,” Gordon says. “I mean, I guess I sort of am? Like, like I can talk about science all day, I guess, and — well, I am very funny. But I don’t, uh, don’t usually—”

“Perhaps it’s because you’re the main character, Gordon!” Coomer says boisterously.

“What? Dr. Coomer—”

“Oh my god,” Bubby mutters before raising his voice. “You’re all morons. It’s because he’s a DILF.”

Gordon sputters some high-pitched, disbelieving laughter that fails to resolve into words because, immediately, Benrey growls.

Gordon jumps. He recovers quickly, though — at least this is a distraction from that totally absurd conjecture that would likely end in his mockery — and puts his hands over Joshie’s ears, protective. “Benrey,” Gordon says warningly, but the guy doesn’t even look at him. He just goes silent, pulling his hat even lower and again covering the rest of his face with sharp-clawed hands.

“Oh, relax, I’m happily taken,” Bubby says waspishly, which has Gordon doubletaking as Joshua wiggles out of his hands. What? Since when? Who—?

“That would make sense, though,” Tommy says, thoughtful. “The, the DILF thing. Humans — uh, people do like to be close to attractive people, and, and talk to them, too. And Mr. Freeman is pretty hot.”

Gordon sputters, heat rising to his face. “W-wait, what??” Bubby spouting nonsense is one thing, but it hits different coming from the most put-together adult of their group. “Tommy—”

“What’s a DILF?” Joshua asks loudly.

“Excellent question, Joshua! The term DILF is based on the slang acronym ��MILF.’ It stands for ‘Daddy I’d Like to—’”

Sunkist barks sharply in time with Gordon’s quick, “Woah woah hey!”

“It means they think he’s attractive, and would like to, to maybe date him,” Tommy explains kindly. Joshua ohhhs and stabs his last bite of meat, watching the conversation continue ping-ponging around the table without Gordon’s control.

“Subjectively, you’re too tall and your teeth are too white. Objectively, euh… some people like that.”

“Your face is very symmetrical, Mr. Freeman, and the, the gray streak and scars are — they’re distinctive and appealing!”

“Gordon, you often wear t-shirts that show off your arms, and your work-out regimen is clearly paying off,” Dr. Coomer says matter-of-factly.

“W-well, I had to be able to carry the HEV suit, and then exercising helped with stress,” Gordon admits. “But it’s not like I’m losing weight—”

“But you, you carry it well, Mr. Freeman,” Tommy says earnestly. “You look healthy.”

“Your skin is, hm, pretty good, too,” Bubby adds stiffly. “Keeps all your blood in. And your hair is…” He slurps at his near-empty protein shake, the sound somehow judgmental. “...fine.”

“Those are high compliments from the perfect organism, Gordon!”

“Uh, thanks, I moisturize. And use conditioner. But — but that doesn’t make me — those things don’t make a person hot.”

“No, but the effort certainly helps!” Tommy chirps. “You don’t seem to notice, but when we go out people sometimes — people stare. Plus you’re a, a single dad who loves kids. From the outside, you’re kind of a, kind of the total package, Mr. Freeman.”

“...Wait, ‘from the outside’ — what’s that supposed to—?”

“How did you think you got so many followers on JustinTV so fast? It obviously wasn’t your sparkling wit.”

“He’s right, Gordon! Attractiveness likely accounts for a large portion of the viewers on your channel!”

“No, hey, my wit is plenty sparkling! And, and, my filming set-up is kind of crap and you know it. Viewers probably wouldn’t even notice if I was, was—” For some reason, Gordon looks past Joshua (who appears to be attentively cataloging the facial expressions of everyone at the table) towards Benrey — but the guy is holding his hat to his face and singing a series of muffled chords into it, the colors of his sweet voice muted by the fabric, and doesn’t appear to even notice. Why isn’t he—?

“It’s four against one. You’re hot, get over it,” Bubby says, swapping his shake for a glass of bug juice.

“You really haven’t noticed, Mr. Freeman? People even, they treat you differently, even. Don’t you remember the other day when you, when that clerk gave you a discount for no good reason?”

“Hm! Gordon’s obliviousness would explain why he never uses his good looks to his advantage,” Coomer says thoughtfully.

“Wait, you can use being pretty to get stuff?” Joshua asks quickly. “Can I be pretty??”

“Of, of course you can, Joshua,” Tommy says indulgently.

For Gordon, this dumb hotness hypothesis is all too quickly developing into an unexpectedly supportable thesis. But he still has the evidence of twenty-seven years of being himself and looking in the mirror; while physical attractiveness isn’t necessarily the kind of thing to which he pays that much attention, surely he wouldn’t have missed it if he were hot.

“Guys, none of this matters because the premise of this conversation doesn’t make any sense. I’m not — I look okay, but I’m just regular. I’m nothing special. And I’m a smart guy, I graduated from MIT, I think I’d know, or notice, if I was, was — hot, or whatever.”

The table goes silent, all eyes on Gordon, and he can practically see the ellipses floating around his friends’ heads. A flush starts to build, heating his face and chest. “I would! You —” he tsks, annoyed — “you know, sometimes you guys act like I’m completely oblivious, but I’m not.”

The hum of sweet voice suddenly cuts off. Gordon barely has time to blink before it’s replaced with a hoarse, incredulous cackle, the kind that he only rarely hears, even living with the guy. He jerks his head round to find Benrey staring directly at him, sharp teeth flashing as he sucks in a breath to laugh again.

“What??” Gordon demands, the heat of his embarrassment and confusion easily flipping towards anger.

...

“Must we… really. Discuss this at — hhh — the dinner. Table?” the G-Man finally interrupts, gliding from the open plan kitchen into the dining room and setting down a basket of oven-fresh rolls with an exasperated thump. For a moment the weird air breaks; Gordon seizes on it, never more grateful for the G-Man’s disarming presence.

“I agree with Mr. Coolatta,” Gordon says quickly. “Let’s just — here, Joshie, why don’t you finish up your plate? You’ve still got these, um. These… white carrots? Left to eat.”

“That. Is a turnip… Mr. Freeman,” the G-Man says, disapproval frosting the air between them.

On Joshie’s other side, Benrey carefully spears one of the turnips with a fork, bringing it to his nose to sniff. It must pass muster, because he puts it in his mouth, chewing slowly — and then makes a noise of interest and spears another.

Joshua, seeing this, immediately picks up his fork and goes for one of the turnips as well. Gordon blinks and looks with renewed interest at his own plate; maybe he ought to try one as well.

and... that's it, sorry! onto better things etc. hope u enjoyed this behind the scenes peek, & thanks for reading! :)

#hlvrai #hlvrbtaiisa #saint writes #gordos feetman #nothing against head&shoulders. or people who interpret him as hot #i love to see pictures of pretty people and i enjoy writing from benrey's perspective which comes w some Strong feelings about gord so.#like i get it u kno

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binniesthighs · 4 years ago

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call me babydoll | reader x chan

a/n: ahhhhh wow WOW cuties LOL i was not expecting this fic idea to keep me up in my sleep and occupy all my waking thoughts BUT thank you so so much for you words of support!! hehe well....here we goooo i hope that ya’ll are ready teehee--also tags will be added as they come! You can read part one here

Two

Pairing: self insert, female reader x bang chan

Genre: action, mystery and suspense, fluff, smut, angst

Tags: (of this part) bodyguard au, secret agent au, royal au, moderndayprince!chan, secretagent!reader, secretagent!jeongin, secretagent!jisung, skz side characters, adventure and mystery, action and peril, plot driven, running out of time, slow-ish burn, growing feelings, sexual tension, explicit language, jeongin in this fic is my bb and i will protect him, sexy and smart jeongin tho still hehe

CWs: mentions of death, people dying/killing, mentions of blood and wounds, mentions of getting drunk, hungover, and vomiting, a bombing.

Word count: 5.2k

Parts

ONE | TWO | THREE

The road was long and winding, pitch black, desolate, quiet and foreign. In the backseat of the car, Chan had slumped his head over on Jeongin’s shoulder and bobbed with the motions of the road. His nose would twitch in his sleep, and he would make little grunts of nonsense words. He had worked himself up after the banquet, and actually hadn’t stopped his “love confessions” until you told him to shut up or you would shut him up.

Your partner’s glasses were illuminated from the screen of his laptop which he tapped quietly away at. You too felt drowsy, but sleep would be for later once you had properly arrived at the safe house, or safe hotel, or safe hole in the ground...whatever it was.

“You hear anything from Carroll?” You slung your arm over the seat and lowered your voice.

“Nothing yet.” His eyes flicked around the screen. “It’s almost like it’s too quiet. I’ve already told her that we have the prince and that he’s safe, but..nothing.”

“You don’t think...they got targeted too?”

Chan snored lightly on his bodyguard’s shoulder, and he didn’t dare to move an inch.

“I sure as hell hope not. But...that would explain why things have been so quiet. If this was a larger scale attack...I don’t know what this could mean then.”

From the darkness of the outside world in the car windows, you passed a forest of pines and oher types of stoic trees making up the mountainside.

“Well, I think that we should be optimistic for the time being.”

Jeongin nodded. He looked to be a mess: blood had splattered at his white shirt collar and in specks on his neck. His cracked lenses however, didn’t keep him from his work. He had pulled his tie loosely around his neck, and had also provided his jacket as a pseudo-blanket of sorts for the prince. The prince, had offered his own jacket to you seeing as you only had your dress, but you had been managing just fine. You accepted it, but only because it could soothe his chivalrous ego. He had a hard night already, so you saw it best.

“Two, where are you taking us?” You called to the mysterious driver.

Ever since meeting him at the hotel, he had been nearly silent the whole ride.

The man cleared his throat, “As far away from here as I can. I don’t know of any safe houses so...I’m just trying to remove us.”

“I can find one for us if Carroll doesn’t get back to me....which she should...”

Jeongin was not one for speaking of his mother as anything other than his boss. Since he had been assigned to be your partner a few months ago, he had never referred to her as his mother, nor did he ever seem to harbor any emotion for the stern woman. Both of them had been a bit allusive to you, but that was simply how it was in this line of work. You didn’t know things about the people around you, and you didn’t need to ask. You had wondered if he had worried about her, or thought about her when you were on missions. The young man had trained rigorously, and had passed each exam from the academy with flying colors. After considering it for a while, you figured what immense pressure he must've been under: son of the woman in charge, a master at infiltration, espionage, manipulation, cybersecurity, and a million more things; he had to prove himself and more.

You couldn’t have asked for a better partner, but you almost did wish that you had known more.

Two fiddled with the radio, settling on a station that played some kind of country-western type music.

“What’s your specialty Two? How’d you end up a part of this shitshow?”

The driver laughed, then hummed along with the music for a moment. “This has been my gig for few years, but I’ve never been a part of this unit before. Carroll always saw it best for my services to be used in other places.”

“You have a specialty?” Jeongin asked while still typing furiously.

Two scratched the back of his head. “I do a little bit of everything. But...let’s just say that I’m good at making friends. That’s why Carroll likes me.”

“--You know her personally?” Your partner quipped, but the edge to his voice didn’t sound like judgement, but rather caution.

“We’ve had a few meetings.”

“Hm.”

You kicked off your heals to massage your aching toes. If only they had attacked at a time when you had the proper footwear.

“You said we could also call you J?” You sprawled over the back seat in an attempt to make yourself more comfortable. Still, the plastic seatbelt buckles poked into your back.

“Yes. You can call me J.”

And that was that. No “What’s J stand for”, or “where are you from”, “where’s your home base,” “how did you rank at the academy?” You added questions to the list of things that weren’t allowed as well.

Jeongin tore off his glasses with an exasperated sigh to rub at his tired eyes. Chan made a happy little noise, presumably because he had found a cozier spot on Jeongin’s shoulder. He had now gotten the chance to sleep off his drunken stupor that may or may not had contributed to his sudden confession, and the reason behind the two pitstops you had taken for him to retch on the side of the road.

If he was a prince, he might’ve also been one mess of a prince. In all of his grace and confidence, the pleasures that he partook in would often get the best of him at times too.

You gave up on trying to get some sleep, but rather sat up to watch that paradoxically handsome and misshapen prince. Just like this: sleeping, vulnerable, with some kind of lopsided smirk on his face, he was much less than the regal figure that you had painted him to be in your mind. For maintaining appearances the whole day long, you hadn’t ever really gotten the chance to see him like this before. His façade faded, and you surmised that maybe he really was different from the way that he let on.

“I’m so fucking tired.” Jeongin yawned.

“Get some sleep then. I’ll stay up to watch things.”

“That’s just it. I can’t sleep even if I tried.”

“What do you mean?”

“Can you pass me some hand sanitizer or something? There’s...blood on my hands.”

Your partner’s voice cracked slightly. It was then when you realized that this had been the first time that he had fired at real people.

“I’ve got a water bottle? Is that enough?”

“Yeah. It’s fine.”

He splashed the liquids around while wiping his hands away, then flicked the remnants of water away.

“Something about this doesn’t sit right with me.”

“How do you mean?”

Chan’s coat draped over your shoulders, and you pulled it in closer around your arms. The night had been cool, and the AC blasting in the car didn’t make it much better.

Jeongin licked his lips. “Nothing was supposed to happen tonight. We made sure of it. No one was suspicious, we ran background checks, we checked the whole area...”

“Hey,” You attempted to turn your tone softer, “We couldn’t have seen it coming. They just rolled up out of nowhere, there was no way that we could’ve stopped it--”

“--Innocent people died tonight. If they were out for the prince, or maybe they weren’t, why so much collateral damage?”

“Obviously they don’t care.”

“Bastards.” Jeongin took the last bits of water to slug. “We’re gonna fucking find out why they did all of this.”

Two shifted in his seat, “Any word? Hate to mention it, but I’m getting kinda tired. It’s past three already.”

“Fox?”

He clicked around, then shook his head. “Still nothing.”

Chan snorted a bit in his sleep: an action which woke him up.

“Wha-what? Where are we? Are the there yet? What time is it? Fuck...my head feels like it’s splitting...”

“We’re finding somewhere, your Highness. We’ll be there soon.” Your partner motioned for you to hand him another water to give to the disorientated prince.

Chan nodded while he rubbed his temples. “Shit. Please tell me that I just made this all up. That it’s some kind of fucked up nightmare...”

You threw Chan’s coat back to him. “Unfortunately, no. We’re trying to figure out everything that we can.”

“Who the hell were those guys?” Water dripped down his neck in a way that you pretended not to notice. “They were wearing crests. I couldn’t tell, but weren’t they red?”

“Very observant, your Highness. F?”

The younger man bit his lip, “I’ve already tried finding where the crest is from, but I can’t find anything that resembles it within our database. I was able to see one up close. It looked like a heart or something like that, and a diamond. I’m guessing that it could’ve been maybe a spade? Like the kind that you see on playing cards? Still, since we’ve never seen it before, we can only assume that they must be a new group.”

Chan nodded, but anyone could tell that the information had flown right over his head. He licked at his wet lips, then sighed.

“Bee, You okay? Fox? I suppose that I should ask you both.”

“I’m...fine.” His sudden concern came as a surprise, and your partner looked just as shocked.

“I-I’m fine too. No holes in me or anything.” Jeongin suppressed a laugh. “But you’re not, your Highness. How much did you have to drink?”

“Oh...enough. I guess that I lost track at some point. Those kind of things are boring anyway.”

“Fox? You’ve got that locale?” Two clicked the turn signal.

“Oh! Yeah, I’ve got one. Sorry, It’s about an hour from here.”

“Locale?” Chan cocked his head.

“A safe house. Or something like that. We need to lie low while we wait for instructions.”

“No one has said anything...? Not even...my father?”

Jeongin shook his head gravely. “No.”

The young prince fell silent, and you watched as worry fell over his clouded eyes that were lined with bags. Normally his expression was anything but strained, but in this moment, you saw doubt sweep over him like the darkness on the road ahead. You leaned the farthest you could from your seat to grab at his hand behind you.

“You’re safe with us. Nothing is going to happen to you.”

His hand was warm, maybe a little clammy, but it was soft, like that of a prince, naturally. Still, it was strong and veined. Chan’s thumb rubbed soft little circles into your own skin, muttering, “Thank you.” For once, his eyes which would normally devour you like some kind of rare dish held you earnestly. I trust you, they said.

“Two. Let’s switch.” Jeongin slammed his laptop closed. “I’ve got it from here.”

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

The safe house was quiet. As most of them where. It was even a bit stereotypical: a little cottage in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by woods on nearly all sides. It had a little overgrown garden, and a shed that looked like it held either all kinds of gardening equipment, or the real thing that sheds were meant for in your business: ammo. It had a white painted porch with cracking paint, as well as porch swing with rusting chains. In the early morning the windows were are black, but still faintly reflected the massive array of sparking stars above your heads. The only thing less antique about the home was the touch keypad on the front door. It beeped with a little tune, then flashed the insignia of the agency: a ticking clock.

“Two, can you find a generator or something? Get the electricity up and going?”

“Can do,” He said, then disappeared.

Two was mostly a quiet man, a feature that gave you both reasons to trust him and to be suspicious. Besides him being a bit smaller in stature with thin legs and characteristically round cheeks, there was something different about him that you couldn’t place; something unexpected. You wished once again that questions weren’t on the list of things that weren’t allowed.

“There should be clothes around here somewhere.” Jeongin padded his way through the dark rooms. “You shower first your Highness.”

Chan tripped over his feet as he spread out his arms to find his way. You giggled lightly at the action. A man really was stripped down of any and all sense of composure when his life had been threatened and he had to have his bodyguards pat his back while he had gotten sick after one too many royal drinks.

The lights flashed on, flickering at first with the sound of the lightbulbs waking up after a long sleep. The interior design of the place was exactly as you had expected: it was a family home with a fireplace and several chairs and couches covered in dust. Bookshelves were full with the strangest assortment of reading material and board games there held a thin layer of grey dust too. The kitchen was small and cozy: it had all the necessities. A stained glass chandelier hung over the wooden table for eight, and was decorated with glass hummingbirds and pink flowers. In odd corners of the house, children’s toys had been sitting untouched. A family must’ve been living there, and you wondered what must’ve become of them.

Two returned with spiderwebs caught on his dress coat. “Water should be hot in about thirty minutes or so I think.”

Your partner crossed the room, raking a hand through his snowy white hair. “I’m gonna try and make the calls again. See if I get anything. If not, we’ll have to...begin Operation Cheshire.”

It was the phrase that you had hoped neither you nor your partner would have to say.

Chan slumped down in one of the upholstered chairs, throwing dust into the air as he did. Compared to the rest of the room, him and his designer clothes seemed comically out of place. “Wha-what’s that?”

Two pinched between his eyes, and your chest shook with an unsure inhale.

“It means that we assume the worst. HQ got taken over and we’re all at risk. Information about us could be accessible to anyone. Essentially, we go into sleeper mode until we can reconvene with other agents...if there are any more. We dissapear. Next, we work on getting you back home, no matter what it takes.”

“HQ?” What are you talking about?” Chan toyed with his diamond set cufflinks. “HQ? Like whoever manages the bodyguards??”

“Your Highness...” You and your partner exchanged knowing glances. “We’re more than bodyguards.”

“What?!”

“We’re operatives. Agents. We work for an intelligence agency that specializes in a bunch of different things...protecting royalty if needed.”

“What the fuck?! Why didn’t anyone tell me? Chan slapped his leg. “Fuck! No one tells me anything!!! I get that I’m a fucking prince but I’m not fucking useless!”

The memory of the confidential file reemerged in your memory: the promise that you had made to His Majesty The King after he had requested a “special hire” to watch over his son. The file itself had contained a several thousand words or so that you hadn’t bothered to read, but rather skimmed till you got to the signature part. Carroll had simply nodded before you put your pen to the paper.

“It was for your saf--”

“--My father did this, didn’t he? Didn’t he? Some kind of sick way to keep tabs on me? See what I’m doing?? God! The man never trusts me. If the thinks that I’m that much of a disappointment...this is just--”

“Your Highness, it’s been a long day, you’ve been through a lot, just take a shower and get some rest. Alright? We’ll talk more about this in the morning.” Two stepped forward with his hands folded in front of him. His interjection was unlike his previously quiet presence.

The prince sighed, tapping his tragically expensive shoe on the hardwood.

“Fine. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

Chan’s eyes grew dark with an authoritative air that you had seen before. His façade had slipped over him like a cloak. He rose, buttoning his jacket, then tweaking his sliver brooches decorating his neck.

“Fox. Bee. Two. Thank you. Good evening.”

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

Chan knew that it was you at the door when you would knock two times, then pause, and knock twice more. In your hands, you held a cup of warm milk. For a prince, even he couldn’t reject the beverage to help him fall asleep at night. You had seen him order it at hotels on more than one occasion. Jeongin had found a nearby store to get food for the morning. The two of you had suddenly found yourselves as now both his bodyguards and his servants. While you waited, you hoped to God that Carroll would compensate you for the extra work.

The door creaked open, revealing your prince modestly dressed in plaid flannel, hair dripping slightly in wet strands. You had never seen him as simple as this before: no princely persona or cold exterior to upkeep. He looked...normal.

“What is it Bee?”

“I thought you might like some...well, this.” You provided him with the cup. “I know that it’s nearly morning, but you should still try to sleep in. We’ll take care of things.

He took the ceramic mug from your hands, fingers barely brushing against yours for mere moments.

“Thank you.” He hushed with a thankful smile. “Would you like to come in? We could...just kind of...sit for a minute.”

Behind him, sun peaked at the horizon, a splitting of red piercing the navy deep of the night. The colors muddled, blurred, a bit like the color of blood fading into the deep fabric of one’s formal wear. It was desolate, but still beautiful.

“To be honest,” His eyes fell, “I don’t want to be alone right now.”

You had saved the biggest room for him. It smelled of mothballs and other old things like sheets that had rested in a dark room for much too long. Still, there was a kind of familiarity to it all and the way that the matted rugs and brass vintage lamps lit the room with a soft yellow light. The full sized bed creaked once you had sat down. In his golden halo, Chan’s brown strands appeared to be softer, and not as prim and staged.

“I’m sorry for snapping earlier. I realized that there are things that are out of my control. You know more than I do, and I accept that. I trust you...a-and Fox.”

You rubbed your hands into the jeans you had found in the cupboard. They had dirt and grass stains from work in the garden you presumed.

“It’s okay. I understand that you would be scared. It’s okay to be. I...get scared sometimes too. I know that it might look like it, but I fear...for my life too. So does Jeong--Fox.”

Chan’s voice cracked. “Is someone out to kill me?”

You sighed, sensing his hesitation. “I don’t know. But we will know soon.”

The prince stared down at the white bubbles in his milk, then swirled around the liquid to watch the way that that it moved.

“I don’t think I’d like to die. Would be pretty unfortunate, don’t you think? I feel like I’ve got so many other things to do. A kingdom to manage, people to govern, much more bottles of Scotch to drink, parties to attend...”

His eyes met yours, and you could see the very fragility of the life that he spoke of right in them. He was right in that dumb speech of his. He really was just a person.

“...I like to think that I’ll get married someday to someone that I love. I actually would really like to do that.” He chuckled. “Lame, right? Someone like me who always bounces around. Wouldn’t take me for one?”

“Mm. No. I think that from what I’ve observed of you, and I’m trained to observe, I think that bouncing around...means you’re looking for the right thing. And, I guess that it’s fun too.”

Chan chuckled, “You’re good at observing.”

You paused, remembering Lee Minho from earlier.

“Were you looking when you were talking to that man at the banquet? He was very handsome.”

The prince placed the cup down. “He was. I don’t know. He just seemed kind of interesting. The kind of mystery that only a stranger has. I would’ve liked to have talked to him more now that I think about it. Maybe it would’ve been worth my time.” Chan twisted his back to crack it. “I don’t know if you saw but he had some really nice fucking thighs.”

“Ahhh. Nice thighs. Didn’t know that you cared for that.”

The two of you laughed together a bit like old friends. It felt nice.

“...Bee. I should also probably apologize for how I acted back before we got in the car. I was...drunk, scared. I said some things--”

“--That you were in love with me?”

“Yeah...that. I realized that...I’ve been...unfair to you. You don’t deserve the ridicule. You’ve only ever been helpful to me and--”

“--Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.” You shrugged. You had met hundreds of guys like him before, at least you thought.

Chan sighed as if he was gathering himself. “Bee. I did mean what I said.”

“What? Ch-your Highness, you don’t mean that.”

He laughed, “It’s alright. You can call me Chan. And...yes. I did. You’ve got a kind of mystery to you too. Frankly, I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“This...this is inappropriate.” You shifted, the rising off the bed. Your cheeks warmed, but you couldn’t know why. Maybe he was just too damn charming. But, he was like that with everyone.

He rose too, hastily following you on your way to the door. “Bee, wait.”

“Chan, you can’t do this. It makes things...complicated.”

He advanced, slowly, closing the space between you. “It’s only complicated if you feel the same.”

“I-I don’t.”

The prince’s hand carefully rose to cup your face, a gesture so gentle that you shied from the feeling. Even this close still he smelled of white roses.

“Have you ever heard of conflict of interest?” Your breath hitched.

Chan grinned, “There you go making this complicated again.”

A wandering hand of yours acting on its own reached to tug hold of his shirt.

The prince leaned in closer, nearly close enough to breech the gap between his plush lips and yours.

“What if I don’t mind making things...” He whispered the word, grazing his mouth over yours, “...complicated?”

“Ch--”

He pressed his weight fully into you, a smashing of lips met with incessant heat and your back shoved into the door. His tongue easily twisted around yours, and his soft gasps filled up your mouth. It had taken you a couple seconds to realize what had happened, and to decide what to do with yourself. His mouth was blazing, it was as if he was weaving a spell, or perhaps you had made it up for yourself. He kissed you with vitality; like he had never tasted anything like you before and was starving for you. You realized, perhaps you had wondered what it would’ve felt like. One hand squeezed tighter to his shirt, and you kissed back, meeting his heat.

Jeongin’s voice called down the hall, “Bee? Bee, are you there?” The sound of your bedroom door shut.

You pushed Chan off you with flat hands on his chest and an amazed smile on his face.

“This...this doesn’t mean anything.” You gasped, reaching for the knob after a moments pause.

Chan snickered, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Goodnight your Highness.”

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

For a man so young Jeongin liked his coffee black, and drank it like an old man too with his nose buried in a newspaper while it fogged up his glasses--or what was left of them.

“I finally got correspondence from Carroll this morning. She said that HQ experienced some kind of blackout and all the systems went offline. It wasn’t safe for her to contact us on a regular line. They got everything back up and running and everything seems fine, or so they think.”

Your partner had already made himself comfortable in a pair of sweatpants and a cotton tee with slippers. You never would’ve guessed that he was a trained assassin on the side.

Two returned huffing in the door from his morning run. He was one of those people.

“Any word?” He rubbed his face off with a dishtowel.

“Disgusting.” You sneered at the crude action.

“Well, we’ve got thousands of miles between us and the kingdom and what seems like a hell of a lot of guys on our tail, but, after I sent Carroll the info about the red crest, she wants us to do some digging.

“With the prince in tow?” You lowered your voice lest the sleeping royal heard you. “I don’t think so.”

“It sounds like she’s convinced that the person behind all of this could be someone who attended the charity ball. And, I don’t really disagree. They must be good at keeping secrets if they evaded us.”

“Hm. You’re right. A high profile event like that, even though its for a good cause it’s always a competition with those snobs. I just don’t know who could order something so cruel...all those people in the same place...”

“Since it’s a new group, they must still be underground. So, to see who lives underground, you’ve got to go there yourself to find out. Or, in our case, find someone who knows the rabbit hole.”

Two grabbed a chair, ruffling his deep brown soaked hair. “What does that mean?”

Jeongin flipped his laptop around. “This is the man that we need to go see. Codename White Rabbit. Or as he calls himself--”

“--Bun.” You cut in. “Yeah, I know him.”

Both of the men chimed, “You do?”

“Yeah, he’s undercover ops for the agency. He’s sort of a jack of all trades. He owns some kind of front out in Egypt. It’s called The Tea Party. Bar up front, but in the back he provides all kinds of information--for both sides. His cut is that for any information he gives to the agency he gets cash compensation. If anyone would know about anything underground, it would be him. As I’m sure Carroll told you, he’s a stickler for meeting in person. He’s one of us. I think.”

“You think?”

“He also does...other deviant things. I heard that these days he’s had a couple dealings in some...substances. Black market stuff. Carroll also provides safety for his business in return for his information.”

“That...sounds illegal. Immoral even.” Jeongin’s eyes widened upon hearing the news about his mother.

“You’ve got to pay to play you know.”

“So Egypt then?” Two wiped off the back of his neck with the dishtowel, stretching out one of his toned arms. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”

“Oh--one more thing.” Jeongin took a rather long sip from his cup. “The King’s counsel reached out to me too this morning. They asked me if the Prince was safe and where we were. I have them loose details of both. They seemed somewhat relieved.”

Chan sauntered down the steps with a massive yawn, stretching up his arms and shirt to reveal an inkling of his abs. You also pretended not to notice it.

“Gooood morning everyone. Fox. Two.” He dished out a wink. “Bee.”

“Morning your Highness.” Jeongin nodded, and crossed his legs. “Feeling well?”

“Ahhh much better.” He poured himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen, staring out the little window over the sink, then took an indulgent sip. “It’s peaceful here. I kind of like that.”

“Your Highness, we’ve received word--”

Chan rose his hand to shush your partner, then languidly took another sip. “I’m still enjoying my drink F.”

A light buzzing resonated somewhere in the house, a bit like the sound of a dryer, and the home started vibrating. Your water glass on the table rippled.

“Two, did you notice if there was anything strange about the house?”

The buzzing grew nearer.

Two looked puzzled, “No, why?”

The vibrating grew more violent, and your glass shuddered off the wooden table, shattering on the ground upon impact.

Chan squinted out the window, “Is that a--”

“CHAN GET DOWN!” You shrieked.

Within milliseconds the whistling of a bomb screeched through the air, then crashed into the rickety ceiling, splintering wood everywhere and demolishing the furniture.

You had seconds to act while the matte black bomb hissed with a steam releasing from some seam and ticked. You sprinted to grab Chan’s arm as hard as you possibly good, all in a blur, pummeling your bodies against one of the shattered windows, and hurling yourself out to the morning dew. You had no time to see if Jeongin or Two had made their exit, but looked out, towing the prince so hard you must’ve done some damage to his shoulder. You stumbled to your feet, tripping, and grunting until the bomb diffused, and exploded the cottage altogether. You covered Chan’s head and most of his body with your own as a shield and the shards of wood, metal, and brick came flying.

“Ar-are you okay?” You patted the prince down in his shock, who stared blankly with empty eyes.

The prince’s flannel had been torn to shreds with glass, and blood oozed onto the fabric on his arms.

“Yeah...yeah...I’m...fine.”

“BEE! Y/N!” Jeongin screamed over the flames to find you.

“OVER HERE!” You bellowed back, and your partner came running with Two behind him with terrible cuts on his face.

“They knew. They FUCKING knew.” He panted after reaching you.

“We have to get out of here.” Two gasped, and blood ran down his face, nearly into his eye. “If they know where we are now, they’ll come to check to see if the damage is done. We have to move.”

The sky filled with an angry smoke, and the once peaceful forest filled with the colors of orange and red.

“The car?”

“Broken windows from the blast but I should be able to get it going. There’s spare parts in the shed. And ammo. A fuck ton of it.”

“We’ll need it.”

You pulled the prince to his feet as he blinked wildly at you and your team.

“Fuck.” Was all the could manage.

In your complete surprise, Chan’s bloodied and cracked hands pulled your face into his, kissing you with lips that tasted of the salt of blood.

“I fucking love you Bee. I’ve decided.”

Jeongin’s jaw dropped in the corner of your eye, so you promptly slapped the prince upside the face.

“You’re in shock. We need to get out of here.”

A wrinkled smile danced on the royal’s face, and you might’ve thought that it was a bit charming.

“Admit it. You love me too Bee.”

~🌹~

Bunch of (Ro)ses!

@minaamhh @dazzlehoseok @synnocence @jjewibeans @hyunsluvv @unexceptional-h @bobawithchaitea @lechanters @sailorhyunjinz @silencefavarchive @eunaeiekim @julesinthesoop

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slashersins · 4 years ago

Note

since it’s michael’s birthday today, how bout some birthday sex 😏

ya know what . okay . you’ll get your wish , but you’ll pay the price for it . michael is 63 today , so 63 year old michael is the michael who’s about to get his bones jumped . ( also i don’t like the fact that old man myers is balding bc he looks like loomis and that is not fun , so he’s just gonna have short messy grey hair , okay ? okay . he can keep the little scruffy beard though . ) now let’s get down and filthy with an old man . ( that sounded gross , but i am keeping it . )

since it’s michael’s birthday today, how bout some birthday sex 😏

the smell of cake is what woke him . the sound of light clatter filling silence of the house . the clock by the bed read four am . it was early . especially for you . he could just go back to sleep , wait until the sun peaked through the windows for him to fully wake , but the sweet scent of chocolate and sugar only grew the longer he stayed motionless staring at the door . even in his old age , michael could not resist the scent of baked goods . his sweet tooth screaming at him the same way his blood lust did .

he didn’t bother with his mask . right now it wasn’t important . what was happening in the oven was . it didn’t take him long to make it to the kitchen , watching with mild interest , wanting to know what you’d made . wanting to know why . you’d tell him , you wouldn’t have a choice . but for now , the man stood there . silent and observant as you bustled around the kitchen , making a mess of flour and eggs and sugar . he could compare your messiness in the kitchen to his own when he had a more than excitable kill .

it seemed you’d noticed the warpath left behind , the confectionery destruction . and you started to clean up . michael stayed still , like a statue . hidden in plain sight , unseen by you and yet so close . after the few years you’d spent together , your awareness of your surroundings didn’t seem to improve . was both an annoyance and amusement for the man . but right now was one of the times he was annoyed . especially when you took the mixing bowl and spoon , coated in thick batter , and carried it to the sink .

not a moment later michael was behind you , one hand wrapped deadly tight around the wrist holding the bowl , the other plucking the spoon up an out of it to bring it to his lips . all done while pressed against you , leaning over you , trapping you between him and the sink . his intention was to devour the sweet prebaked batter .

he ignored your squeak of shock at his appearance , too busy with the task at hand . but he did hear your laughter . the way you shook your head and called him a greedy old man . he didn’t care at the moment . the only thing that mattered was this cake batter finding a new home in his stomach . he only paused in his mission when he felt your lips against the stubble on his jaw .

“ happy birthday , michael . ” ah . so that is what it was . he’d stopped keeping track years and years ago . it never really mattered much to him anyway . but part of his old , cold heart seemed to warm from your little offering of sweets made just for him .

“ i’ll make all your favorites today . you’re my grumpy old boogeyman , and you deserve it . ” michael wanted to roll his eyes , but it’d be too much effort . so he settled for dropping the now lick cleaned spoon into the sink , taking the bowl from your hand and starting to scrap up what he could with thick fingers . his full focus seemed to be on ‘ cleaning ’ the bowl as he stood a bit away now , cradling it to his chest for better access .

you flushed as you watched him . ever serious in concentration . devouring and sucking and licking on his fingers . you had to look away , to embarrassed by your own thoughts to do anything more than the dishes . michael seemed to notice . his gaze tearing a hole straight into your core . he knew . eating like this , all fingers and mouth and tongue , it did something too you . something just as delicious as a well baked cake . and he loved letting you hang there and suffer in silence . with a pop of his finger out of his mouth and a near , finger scrubbed , clean bowl , michael dropped the bowl into the sink , waitng for you to glance up and catch his eye .

what you saw there was unmistakable . a hunger . a deep gnawing hunger . not for blood . not for the sweet treat currently baking in the over . it was something more dangerous . it was a hunger directed at you . a hunger michael came to know as lust . something that gave him the same sensation that gliding knife into the chest of some screaming victim gave him . so similar and yet so different . both ending with such satisfaction . and seeing how you had reacted to just the simplest of actions of him being close , he knew you felt it too .

you nearly buckle under his stare . the intensity of it . you’re not sure what michael wants . if he’ll leave you hanging like this , or go through with some needy desire . it’s always a mystery with michael . and god if that mystery doesn’t keep you wrapped up in suspense . it’s hard to maintain eye contact , each time you look back at the older man he seems to be staring harder . you can’t take it , and bite your lip , looking anywhere but his eyes .

“ you - you have some uh , some batter on your cheek . here , i’ll - ” it’s a bold move , but it also helps you understand what michael’s attentions are . if he lets you touch him , then he might be in the mood to do more . if he grabs you or pulls away , you might have crossed a line and that never ends well . surprisingly , michael only tilts his head downward so you can better reach . eyes boring holes into your soul as you gently wipe the brownie mix away with your thumb .

you make another surprised yelp when his strong fingers grip your wrist , refusing to let go and unmovable . you open your mouth to apologize only for it to die on your lips when the older man pops your thumb into his mouth and licks the mix off .

he doesn’t release your hand , instead choosing to keep it in place between the two of you as he walks you back towards the sink . there is still plenty of thick , sticky brownie mix in the bowl , and michael has just discovered it tastes better when it’s mixed the salt of your skin .

you have little choice , not that you were ever good at resisting michael , as he takes a knife and cuts through your shirt , ruining the fabric before stabbing the knife harshly into the cabinet by your head . his free fingers move to scoop the sweet mix from the bowl , painting your neck and collarbones with it . you want to squirm and snap and tell him to stop . it’s sticky and gross and now you need a shower , but then his mouth is on you . the roughness of his beard tickling your skin .

the mouths at you . licking and spreading the mess around before sucking harshly , hard enough to leave marks as his teeth dig into you , making sure to clean you . you can’t stop the moan that leaves you , the way your legs start to shake and thighs rub together . your free hand fists into his shirt , holding onto him as you pant at the roughness of it all .

“ mi - michael ! s - stop , we - we - i know it’s your birthday but maybe - ” there’s no arguing with him as michael forces a knee between his thighs . he may be older , but he wants , and it’s obvious how much he wants when he rocks his hips so hard into you that you make a pained noise when the counter cuts into your hip at the force of it . the feeling of him , hard and hot through his thin pajama bottoms making you whine . “ okay . okay . i’ll - yes . michael , just - ”

there’s no waiting when he swiftly turns you around , the fact he is still so strong after so many years making your head spin in a delightful way . the knife is pulled from the cabinet , leaving a splintered gash in the wood . you feel the cold metal of the blade against your thigh . slowly and practiced as he pushes it under your shorts and then tugs , cutting through fabric and leaving you bare before him . the knife if returned to it’s previous place , michael pressing in to rub his thigh against your bare sex .

you can’t help but moan , leaning forward as you wrap your arms around michael’s neck , fingers buried in his short grey hair . you haven’t gotten permission to move , but your hips rock on their own . and it seems that michael is fine with it , staying still and forcing you to do all the work , making you work yourself up into a needy mewling mess on his thigh .

but michael is needy , and starved , and enough is enough . he wants you . and you were right . it is his birthday . so why not take what he wants . you already said he deserves it , didn’t you ?

fingers still wet with saliva and sticky , michael pressed against your entrance . you panted and squirmed in his hold , you wanted him to press inside , to stretch you open before ramming himself inside of you , but he wouldn’t move . he only gave you a blank look . he wanted you to fuck yourself on those his fingers . he wanted you to show him just how eager you were to please him . and god , if that didn’t make you moan as you rocked your hips , trying to sink down and take what you could .

it’s hard to keep rocking , and michael keeps so still , only his even breathing keeping you company as he watched you come undone . it’s your plea , michael’s name falling from your lips so sweetly , so needy , that has the older man pulling away only to get out his length and line his tip up . he doesn’t wait , as soon as he brushes against you he’s shoving in . fast and harsh , only to stop and savor the way your walls spasm at the sudden intrusion . at how your eyes scrunch up and your mouth opens into a silent scream .

he stays still inside of you , and you think this might have been the nicest michael has ever been as you adjust to him . but that thought flies out the window when he pulls nearly all the way out only to swiftly thrust back in . there’s no holding back . it’s his birthday after all . and he wants to ruin you . he wants to thank you for the treat currently baking in the oven , this is the only way he can truly show you .

his hands grip your hips harshly , nails digging into the soft flesh there . his mouth goes back to attacking your neck and shoulder , leaving near bloody marks in their wake . he’s panting , gritting his teeth to keep back the growls that threaten to spill out . the way you squeeze around him , the sobbed out moans that leave your lips and fill the air , the way you cling and whimper michael’s name like he was some deity you were praying to - all of it had him fucking you harder , faster .

you don’t last long . the stretch of michael and his break neck pace has you pushed over the edge faster than you’d hoped , but that predatory gaze in his eyes was just too much when mixed with his animalistic rutting . you can only cling to him , vision foggy and eyes watering as he keeps using you like a glorified cock sleeve . and finally , after michael has pushed you into a second overstimulated orgasm , he cums .

he hovers over you , his chest heaving shoulder’s tense as he looks down at you . soon his hands leave your hips and he backs away , only to look at the oven and then back at you . you’re not sure what he is trying to tell you , too busy trying to stand up on legs made of jelly and a sweet soreness between your thighs . but then the timer goes off .

you want to laugh , but doing so might upset michael , or worse might make you fall on the floor and laugh more , and you don’t want to burn your boogeyman’s cake . somehow you wobble over , taking the cake out and setting it on the table . you know michael doesn’t give a shit about frosting , and he doesn’t have the patience to let the treat cool . but you do have time to stick the birthday candles on .

you steal a kiss , going to sit in a chair when michael pulls you into your lap as you pass by . you smile at him , leaning in a kissing his bearded cheek when he takes his first bite . “ happy 63rd birthday , mr boogeyman . ”

#michael myers x reader #michael myers #michael myers imagine #slasher x reader #slasher imagine #slasher #slashers #slashers x reader #( this is hella late )#( it took me three days to write )#( here ya go )#( sorry if it isn't good lmao )#( even tho it took me three days i still rushed it )

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drjackandmissjo · 3 years ago

Text

I don’t want to keep secrets just to keep you

(but I’ll do what I must for there’s no me without you)

*** Set throughout the course of their 7th and final year at Hogwarts, this story follows Slytherin's finest and one of the only sane members of the House, Blaise Zabini, as he navigates war-torn friendships, school under a dictatorial regime, Death Eaters and, most importantly, his secret relationship with none other than the new leader of the DA, known blood-traitor, Gryffindor, Neville Longbottom.

A sequel to my previous story: Firewhisky on ice, sunset and vine, you’ve ruined my life by not being mine

Chapter 1 --- next chapter

Harry Potter fic masterlist

29th of July 1997

“I have to admit: I enjoyed the film way more than I expected to,” he said once they had left the muggle theatre. The air had become chilly during the time they had spent inside, but neither of them was bothered by that: they were used to colder climates, after all, spending most of the year in Scotland. And for all its spells and constant fires, one thing always must be said about Hogwarts: certain rooms and corners had never seen the light of the sun and they surely behaved as such, even during warm days.

Like the Potions classrooms, while Snape was their Professor. Those dungeon rooms looked and smelled and felt every bit of humidity that came from being so close to the lake and that, even with the countless explosions that Theo and the Fire Kid from Gryffindor caused with each lesson, could never get anything warmed up. A Hungarian Horntail could breathe fire in there for 24 hours straight and it would still be humid and wet and cold.

It was a good thing Professor Slughorn had decided to move the classrooms up on the fourth floor, in rooms full of windows and light. Blaise could have easily gone without having to add to his ever-growing list of worries his skin getting dehydrated with the stained and stale air that circulated down there.

He watched from the corner of his eye Neville nod along to his statement in agreement, before casually running a hand through his hair and messing them up even further. No matter how hard he tried to keep them neat and proper, like his grandmother wanted them to be, the strands appeared to have a life on their own, especially when certain Slytherin hands had free reign in between them whenever they were alone.

Besides, it really wasn’t Blaise’s fault: Neville had decided he wanted to grow them out, instead of cutting them just as his grandmother suggested on the daily, and, much to Blaise’s happiness, now his bangs framed his face divinely, making for a perfect place to leave his hands whenever they were else occupied.

He also enjoyed the way Neville would scoff in pretended annoyance whenever he disarrayed them and then would shake his head in disbelief at his antics, aiding Blaise’s purpose even further.

And, really, who could blame him? If Blaise wasn’t as in love with the dorky plant-head Gryffindor as he already was, he’d fall even harder at the sight of him with his funky tousled hair and puffy lips as he took a bite out of Blaise’s food without asking first.

He had been so glad that day, having bought a muggle camera that worked similarly to a magical one but that was way easier to manage. He had taken dozens of stills of them, never seeming to get enough of Neville’s smiling face and of his own relaxed and happy one. For Salazar’s soul, he had even sent one of the two of them smiling to his mother, after she kept on asking to at least see the young man that had enchanted her son.

She had replied to his letter the following day, with a simple: “Rule number fifty-one: don’t let him go.”

Blaise had never once wanted to disappoint his mother and definitely wouldn’t start now.

“I don’t really like the way it ended, though. The part where J removed K’s memories was a nice touch, but I feel like we didn’t have enough time with neither,” Neville commented, shoving his hands inside his jeans’ pockets as they kept on walking further and further away from the theatre, undoubtedly to stop himself from doing something idiotic like holding Blaise’s hand when there were still people around.

Given the current political and non-political air that permeated both the Wizarding World and Britain, the two young men had decided that it would be best to limit their encounters only to muggle areas in London, although they would still have to maintain a rather low and inconspicuous profile. It had become incredibly easy to be together without raising suspicions, especially with almost an entire school year of experience sneaking around the castle, but they still preferred to be cautious, to hide from both dark wizards and close-minded muggles.

Neville still lived with his grandmother, but she had become less strict during the course of his first week back at home from school and didn’t really bother him with the amount of time he stayed out, as long as he spent the nights at home. Besides, in her own words, they all had ‘bigger problems than teenagers breaking curfew a little bit to meet with their friends.’ Blaise couldn’t believe that he could ever agree with Augusta Longbottom, but he had seen stranger things happen.

Still, when Neville told him, he had been so shocked he had choked on his drink, causing the Gryffindor to laugh at the spectacle he had created with his Cola.

Blaise himself had been invited to spend his vacation at either Malfoy Manor and the Nott’s, both families offering their hospitality and implicit protection, but he had declined immediately under the ruse of a simple: ‘I live with you the whole year, I need my space and I need to breathe proper air that isn’t tainted with your disgusting deodorant.’ While the sentiment itself was true, he did not want to risk being found out with Neville, a known ‘blood traitor’. Not to mention the part of him being a guy. And a Gryffindor.

Blaise wasn’t really certain about which part would get him into more trouble and wasn’t willing to find out anytime soon.

Therefore, he had chosen to stay at his father’s old bachelor apartment in London, while his mother moved back to France, not wanting to be anywhere near the War that was brewing.

He had asked Neville to stay with him as soon as he was done cleaning the place, making it welcoming and a cosy retreat for them, but his adorable boyfriend couldn’t leave his despotic grandmother alone the entire time, especially not now that the waters were rough.

Always the selfless Gryffindor.

They had retorted then in meeting for random dates almost daily, which had been heavenly. Neville would show up at his apartment with Floo Powder, since he hadn’t taken his Apparition Examination yet, and then they’d just walk around muggle London, as if they had no care in the world. They still kept their guards up, checking every corner for danger that could be avoided, but they tried to ignore the Damocles Sword that hung above their necks.

Which had led them to the muggle theatre on more than one occasion. It had been a perfect idea: in the darkened room nobody questioned why they were holding hands or sharing the popcorn; and they wouldn’t risk anyone from the Wizarding World discovering them, those who would cause them troubles too high on their brooms to even look down at something as mundane as a muggle theatre.

They had also gone to muggle museums and parks and bookstores and restaurants, but Blaise loved the privacy the theatres offered, he loved the way Neville would get engrossed in the stories, he loved the way their hands would link together as suspense built on the screen, he loved to discuss the film afterwards and to dissect every aspect that he found interesting.

And he loved Neville, so it was all an added bonus.

There was a small theatre nearby his place that was quiet and seldom fraught and that allowed them to spend their evenings together, with the walk towards it full of the most random topic the pair could come up with and the walk back usually occupied with their thoughts and opinions about the film they had just watched. Neither of them had been too well versed in muggle culture to begin with, but it was very easy to pick up, especially with the way the family-owned theatre would sometimes project well-known and older productions, instead of only showing the recent ones.

It made the muggle spectacle even more fascinating, in Blaise’s eyes.

“It was kind of poetic, like a rite of passage and everything, but I understand what you mean,” Blaise said as they kept on walking, itching to grab Neville’s hand but holding himself back for the time being: they were still under the scrutiny of the public eye, after all. He’d have to wait until they turned two corners and were finally alone in the streets to finally place his hands on his boyfriend’s. With moderation, of course. “I feel like the story isn’t finished, especially with the way they had the doctor become an Agent. I understand that she had had her memory wiped more times than Lockhart, but she seemed fine! I don’t know, that ending left me pretty unsatisfied as well.”

His boyfriend huffed out a laugh at that and began to silently shake his head: “Lockhart got obliviated only once, by his own spell bouncing back from Ron’s broken wand. Compared to him, that doctor got her brain scrambled on the daily. But you’re right, it would have been so much better if she kept her job and was on the loop with the alien stuff.”

“Speaking of Lockhart, I wonder how’s he doing…” Blaise inquired, scratching his neck. It had been over three years since anyone had heard of the famous wizard and pretty much everyone had seemed to have forgotten about him. It was such a mystery for some, his sudden disappearance after his year teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts.

Yet again, pretty much all the students at Hogwarts knew of the curse on that position, which made his absence plausible, but to have such a well renowned and celebrated man vanish into thin air after publishing a controversial book where he told the world he had no memory of who he had ever been, it was more than suspicious.

“At St. Mungo’s, giving out autographs Godric knows what for,” Neville answered his implicit question with nonchalance, “I see him sometimes when I go visit Mum and Dad.”

During the time they had been together, Neville had slowly begun to tell Blaise about what had happened to his family: how they were members of the original Order of the Phoenix, fighting the Dark Lord during the First War; how Dumbledore had suggested they hid as well as the Potters, because of some prophecy that would connect their children with the Dark Lord himself; how, after he was defeated and the Potters were killed, his parents were tracked down by four remaining Death Eaters and tortured to insanity; how they now stayed at St. Mungo’s, without a single memory of their son, completely out of their minds.

Blaise had always been cold and calculative and preferred to keep a rational outlook to the world, but when he saw, for the first time since that new information, Bellatrix Lestrange, at Malfoy Manor, free and enjoying life, his blood had begun to boil. He had never wanted to murder someone as much as he did in that moment, forcing himself to maintain a smile on his face and to pretend like he wasn’t ready to slaughter someone. When he came back home that night after dinner with Draco and his wretched family, he had spent an entire hour in the shower, scrubbing at his skin as if he could erase the memory of that wretched woman, drinking wine and telling them all about the Cruciatus Curse and how useful it could be to a dark wizard. He had kept that piece of information hidden from Neville, even though he had recounted pretty much the entire evening the following day, while his boyfriend attempted to calm him down from his homicidal plans, without truly knowing what had instigated them.

And he would never know, for Blaise would go to any lengths to avoid his sweet and loving boyfriend any pain. He had already suffered too much, in his short life.

“Really, he’s at St. Mungo’s?” Blaise asked, trying to distract himself from those dark thoughts. When he was with Neville, it almost felt as if Death Eaters didn’t exist, as if the Dark Lord hadn’t risen again, as if they weren’t on the verge of War. “I thought the whole ‘Who Am I?’ book was all a plan to disappear after he botched our second year without being bothered and now you tell me that Weasley sent him to the healers and basically deprived the Wizarding World of that perfectly blinding smile?” Neville playfully shoved him to the side with his shoulder, lingering a little in his touch as they kept on walking, just as restless as he was to be behind closed doors and to have their privacy and safety: “Ron didn’t send him anywhere and he got what he deserved,” he commented sheepishly, regarding Blaise with a blinding smile of his own.

And Blaise definitely preferred his boyfriend’s smile, so true and sincere and warm and just perfect, rather than anything their former fraud of a professor had ever shared.

“He spent the entire year pretending he could do shit and leaving me hanging from the ceiling, multiple times, and then, at the first sign that he needed to be a responsible adult, he tried to Obliviate Harry and Ron and leave Ginny down with the Basilisk. They got so lucky that Lockhart took Ron’s wand that still hadn’t been repaired, otherwise they’d all still be down there.” Then, as if in an afterthought, he added: “And don’t worry, he still got that smile,” his face reddened and visible even in the dimly lit street.

“No need being jealous of a man who isn’t even worth the mud under your shoes, Nev,” he teased, enjoying how his boyfriend would stammer embarrassed at being discovered.

“I’m not jealous!” he defended himself, but the crimson on his cheeks spoke of another story.

Blaise itched to cup his cheeks and to feel the warmth of his skin, but they were still in the middle of a street that was fairly illuminated and with people around. Therefore he did the next best thing: returned on a safer conversational path. “Oh, yeah, I remember about Weasley’s wand,” he said, laughing at the memory, “It bounced back that Slug-vomiting charm that was aimed at Draco. We had a blast that day, when he told us the story.” “Glad some of you enjoyed it, with your sick sense of humour,” Neville said, shuffling his hands inside of his pockets as they moved closer and closer to the corner that would lead them to the apartment, “poor Ron had to carry a bucket wherever he went for two days straight!”

Blaise couldn’t help himself: maybe it was the serious way he defended his friend, or maybe it was the image of a tiny second-year Weasley carrying around the entire castle a bucket to throw up slugs in, undoubtedly aided by an equally tiny Saint Potter with a bewildered tiny Grander following suit and reprimanding them both, but he just burst up laughing, his entire body shaking with it as he put his hands over his stomach, to try and regain his composure.

Yet, all thoughts of etiquette were damned as soon as he heard his boyfriend join in, his own laugh bright and pure and just perfect.

And the icing on their cake laid in the fact that they were alone, without anyone watching them, and they could just be themselves. Blaise didn’t hesitate a moment into grabbing Neville’s hand, enjoying the warmth that the Gryffindor radiated. They kept on laughing and holding hands as they walked back to the one place they could call theirs.

They all but ran the few meters that kept them vulnerable, staggering over the stairs as if they were drunk. It was a somehow good paragon, considering how inebriated they were with each other, and Blaise couldn’t stop thinking about how wonderful his life was in that moment. He could just be himself, around Neville, without having to worry about composure or secrets or manners.

When they closed the door behind their backs and stumbled inside of the apartment, they didn’t even open the electrical lights up, too engrossed in making up for the time they hadn’t been allowed to share, close and up in each other’s personal space.

Blaise would’ve been content in simply existing there, in the tiny apartment that once belonged to his late father, with his hands up on his boyfriend’s hair as he worked and worried over Neville’s exposed neck, slowly undoing the buttons of his shirt, watching him lean against a wall for support once his legs had given up completely. The outside world didn’t matter anymore, not to him, not when he had Neville’s hands on him. He’d be glad dying there, in his arms, unbothered by the imminent war, by his friends, by their duties.

But reality had to crash down on them at some point.

Neville removed his mouth from his, panting and with his eyes shut, savouring for one more moment their closeness. Blaise studied his face from the short distance, as he always loved doing, recognising his boyfriend’s reluctance to separate. Yet, his duty would win, as it always did, and he would take a step back, trying to recompose himself and running a hand through his hair.

It was long due a haircut, by now, but Blaise was an egoist and wanted the length to stay for a little longer. Besides, when September came, his grandmother would definitely cut it, even against Neville’s will. And Blaise would take whatever he could, when it came to going against Augusta Longbottom.

He hadn’t even met the woman yet and he had already accepted defeat, if it meant keeping Neville in his life. And, while he did not harbour any love for the witch, he was most certain he could keep an amicable front with her, at least, all for Neville’s sake.

That didn’t mean, though, that he didn’t try to stray her grandson into a different path than the one she wanted, at every corner: “Can’t you stay this once?” he asked in a low and sultry voice, fully conscious of what that tone did to his perfect Gryffindor boyfriend, refusing to take a step back and let a single centimetre separate the two of them.

He watched as Neville slowly opened his eyes in the dim light that was filtered by the window from the empty street below. He watched as his throat bobbed as he swallowed, trying to regain his breathing. He watched, powerless, as Neville slipped them over, switching their positions, effectively trapping him against the wall in his arms.

The Gryffindor bent down a little and placed the most chaste and sweet and anticlimactic kiss on Blaise’s lips, driving the Slytherin mad with want and desire, unable to do anything other than comply.

“You know I can’t, flower,” he murmured directly against Blaise’s lips, his own stretching in a wicked smile. Neville Longbottom knew exactly which buttons to press and when to use them all against him: Blaise couldn’t help the shiver that ran over his back at that simple word, still not used to the way the simple pet name made his toes curl and his heart beat out of his chest, nor could he help the sound of appreciation that came out of his throat, and that transformed immediately into one of disappointment as soon as his boyfriend untangled himself from him.

He tried to make some air reach his brain, when Neville stepped back from him once again, leaving him space to breathe and recollect himself while still being infuriatingly close, neither of them wanting to truly part despite their obligations.

“Yes, I unfortunately do…” he answered, still leaning against the wall. He ran his right thumb over his lips, enjoying the way the Gryffindor’s body stiffened at the sight as his eyes tracked the movement. He sometimes still couldn’t believe his luck, especially when Neville looked at him like that, as if he needed all of his strength just to hold back.

Most of the time, Blaise wished he didn’t, yet the knowledge that he was the one to make the apparently timid, placid Schlongbottom, as his friends still believed he was, lose his mind completely was intoxicating. And he lived for those moments and hours when Neville would let go of his composure fully, causing Blaise to follow suit without a single complaint. Because he couldn’t be the farthest from timid or placid, but only he saw that side of him, only he got to enjoy that part of his sweet and amazing boyfriend.

“What are you going to do tomorrow?” Blaise asked almost out of the blue, conscious already of the reply, but wanting to steal some more time alone with the Gryffindor.

He didn’t particularly care that he was abiding by the stereotype that Slytherins were manipulating and tempting, not when Neville would shoot him a blinding but cocky smile as he fired back: “Already missing me?”

“Always.”

“I told you, I’m going to help Luna find a dress for the wedding and Grandma’s organised that family gathering to celebrate my 17th…” he trailed off, scratching the back of his neck, to try to make his blushing less noticeable. Unfortunately for him, in doing so, he had involuntarily made his shirt rise a little, showing off the skin beneath, and Blaise was not going to let such an opportunity pass: he moved closer and snug his arms around his boyfriend’s midriff, planting his hands in the small of his back. “Remind me again why I can’t crash her party and steal you away?” he asked casually, next to his ear, before he began to worry the earlobe with his teeth.

Neville seemed to be at a loss for words under Blaise’s ministrations, which was entirely his goal, but he eventually did manage to speak again: “Because she doesn’t know about us, since if she did we’ll never hear the end of it ‘cause we were keeping this a secret, and you are a Slytherin and I am a Gryffindor, and because she is not allowing me to invite any friends,” he said, his voice firm and unfaltering, despite the way his hands were holding Blaise close to him, silently begging to keep up with his work.

Not that he was planning to stop anytime soon. Still, some words at the back of his throat itched to be said: “I have a few words I’d like to tell your grandmother and none of them are kind,” Blaise claimed, staring right into Neville’s eyes and wondering how such a stern woman could raise such a loving man. While it was true that she had laid off his back for the time being, she had doubled down on her questions about Neville’s private life: the poor Gryffindor had to retort to lying simply to avoid her finding out about their relationship. It was a good thing that he had quite a vast number of friends and that said friends didn’t interact with his grandmother, because, based on Blaise’s very own experience with pureblood families, everyone knew everything, especially when ‘keeping the lines pure’ was involved and everyone turned out to be related.

For instance, Neville’s white lie for that day’s activity was very simple: “I’m going to play Quidditch with my roommates and we’ll have dinner afterwards.”

When Neville had told him as much, Blaise had exploded into laughter and disbelief. Was it believable for his boyfriend to play Quidditch? Absolutely not, but he shared a dormitory with Weasley, Thomas and Saint Potter, therefore he played by proxy. It would have equally been absurd for his grandmother to and not to believe him, which was what made the lie incredibly clever.

Blaise shook his head as he silently snickered at the fresh memory, still hesitant to remove his hands from his boyfriend’s body: “Anyway, who’s getting married now that we’re almost on the brink of war?” he inquired, truly curious. A wedding in the Wizarding World was a very public event, especially when pureblood families were involved, which they must have been, if Lovegood was invited.

All of his friends still kept on calling her Loony, but he had stopped using that epithet, since he had begun to consider her a friend as well, thanks to their mutual connection to Neville. And she was an excellent friend, both to him and his boyfriend, kind and compassionate and considerate.

He had already begun to wonder about who the couple must have been, considering no one in his circles had mentioned anything, when Neville spoke, making him understand exactly why nobody amongst the purebloods he spent his time around had even known or cared about such a thing: “Bill Weasley, Ron’s eldest brother, and Fleur Delacour.”

“The Triwizard Champion? How did they even meet?” he inquired, now even more curious. He had seen the eldest Weasley only once, at Gringotts, and it was in that moment that he first began to question whether or not he was straight. And, to pair that with Beauxbatons’ champion, well… That must have been a hell of a good looking couple!

“I don’t know,” Neville said, leaning his head against Blaise’s shoulder and looking at him with a soft smile through his eyelashes, “but they’re super cute together, at least that’s what Ginny told me.” “And you haven’t been invited?” His boyfriend shrugged at that, Blaise knew he did not particularly care about mundane events and being into the public eye: “No, from what Ginny told me it’s not going to be that big of a ceremony. Only family, close friends of the couple, and neighbours. Which is why Luna’s going, as well as to spend time with Ginny.”

“That’s a shame you won’t be there,” he commented, running for the umpteenth time that eventing his hands through Neville’s hair, as the other wizard stayed there, merely enjoying his ministration while he tried not to fall asleep. It had happened already once, right before he had to leave, and that incident had prompted his grandmother into a speech about the right of an adolescent Gryffindor to a little bit of rule-breaking. “I bet you would’ve looked dashing in a suit.”

“Jealous, darling? You know you could always look at me in a suit, if you’d just let me borrow one…” “Not a chance, caro. Mine are all tailored to perfection for my body,” he said playfully, moving his head to the side to place a small kiss on Neville’s nose, causing the other wizard to blush and giggle, “Besides, I prefer seeing you without a single stitch.” “Blaise! You can’t just say shit like that!” his boyfriend spluttered, trying to get away from his words as if they had just tickled him. He loved the way Neville would get all cute and embarrassed. His usual tell was the blush that started on his cheeks and spread throughout his body, and that was incredibly adorable. Blaise had tried to see just how farther the colour could spread, but he had been distracted in his path, somehow. “Why not? No one is listening and it’s true!” he had begun to retort, only to be shut up quickly as two lips pressed against his own, soft yet insistent, gentle yet commanding. One thing had to be said about Neville Longbottom and that was how efficient he was at quieting him with a single gesture, whether with a kiss or by simply occupying his mind with the little things he always did, essentially being himself, unfiltered.

It took them less time than usual to resurface for once, mainly because Blaise still wanted to know more about the hot new wizarding couple that could definitely take over the world, if the Dark Lord wouldn’t win.

He desperately prayed he wouldn’t, for countless different reasons.

“When is this marvellous event?” he asked, still refusing to put a single millimetre of space in between them.

“In three days, on the first. Luna’s absolutely on her last chance, looking for the perfect dress that won’t attire Wrackspurts,” he commented, shaking his head. Something inside of Blaise told him that it wasn’t the first nor the second time they went out shopping and, if Lovegood was anything like Pansy, it must have not been an easy task chaperoning. Pansy Parkinson could try on an entire street of boutiques, buy every single item of her size, and still lament she had nothing to wear.

“Why? Wanna meet up? I thought we were going for lunch on the second,” Neville added, pulling him out of the horror of the memory of the first time that witch had discovered French Haute Couture: a tornado would’ve left behind less damage.

“Yeah, I’ve been invited to Draco’s for dinner on the first, with all the others…” he trailed off, remembering exactly what had been discussed the previous night amongst the Death Eaters. It wasn’t unusual for Draco and Theo to invite him over, especially since they both believed he was fully on the Dark Lord’s side but was merely acting precious, never truly giving in. And he couldn’t deny an invitation, otherwise it would have looked suspicious. After all, his friends knew that he was staying all alone in London, away from his family, and that he wasn’t fooling around with anyone, which, in their eyes, meant he had a lot of free time.

Free time that they tried to occupy, not wanting to leave him completely alone. Thankfully, they weren’t overbearing, having him over every couple of days or so, respecting his privacy, but whenever an invitation came, he had to follow through.

Now, he couldn’t exactly tell his friends: “No, I’ll pass on spending time with you, I’m going to go watch muggle entertainment with my Gryffindor boyfriend,” could he?

Luckily for his relationship, though, the invites were rather old fashioned, called days prior, and that left him and Neville plenty of time to organize. The only person in their friend group that liked to show up uninvited or unannounced by an owl was Pansy, but she would’ve stayed in Spain until the mid of August, which meant Blaise could breathe a little without having to worry about her finding out his secret. Draco and Theo were way too busy in their official Death Eater work to even want to hang out with him in the mornings and afternoons anyway.

“What is it, B?” Neville asked, undoubtedly feeling the way his shoulders had tensed from up close. His hold on Blaise became slightly tighter, grounding and real, while still remaining gentle, letting him know that they were alright and, no matter what happened, they’d be okay.

Closing his eyes and leaning against his boyfriend’s shoulder, he began to recount what he had eavesdropped: “When I was at Theo’s last night, his father and his uncle were talking about something that went bad for them the day before, so on the 27th, and how the Dark Lord was more than displeased. All I got were hushed words about a failed kidnapping, I believe, and how the Dark Lord had completely exploded against his followers in anger, even though he had no idea who to even blame and punish. But then his father moved onto a different topic and said that they’d have their victory in a couple of days anyway, that they needed to wait, that they couldn’t lose, that August would be their month of victory. But he didn’t explain what exactly he had meant, without a doubt to keep us ‘children’ in the dark. I couldn’t really understand much, Crabbe had gone off about some bullshit of his and they were speaking in a low voice on the opposite side of the table, but the intent was clear. Something big is about to happen.” “Blaise…”

“I’m sorry I can’t tell you more, but they don’t fully trust anyone who doesn’t have the Mark. Besides, they consider us children, even Draco doesn’t know much and he let the bloody Death Eaters into Hogwarts! They know he’s loyal, or at least think so, ‘cause he was at some meetings with the Dark Lord himself. Yet they still don’t tell us shit. Not even to Theo, who’s more of a fanatic than a follower. And I am not going to taint my arm with that disgusting thing anytime soon, even if that would help. But it’s so frustrating and…” he continued, still refusing to open his eyes: he knew he should’ve told that story to Neville earlier, but he had got distracted by their date; he knew he should’ve contacted Professor McGonagall, warning her about what was going on and whose side he was on, but he was terrified he’d be intercepted somehow; he knew he was a terrible spy and that his motive was entirely egotistical, fuelled only by his will to keep Neville safe, and he couldn’t do anything about any of that.

War was coming and Blaise Zabini was powerless against it, unable to do anything concrete.

It wasn’t until he felt warm lips on his forehead and felt warm hands on either side of his face, gently holding him together, that he stopped his rambling. He usually wasn’t like this, letting his mind wander and his mouth running to catch up, at least not in front of other people, because it could potentially be dangerous and could bring unwanted questions. “Rule number eighteen: do not blabber, unless you intend to become a thespian and need practice for monologues,” his mother always said and he preferred to maintain a decent amount of control over the words that came out of him, never going into a rampage, unlike Draco did whenever he messed up his hair, yet never appearing bothered by the simple act of speaking, unlike Theo, who favoured monosyllabic replies to everything. His was always a perfect balance, studied to the last detail to make his speeches and his sentences reach the point and the mind of those who lent him their ears.

Rule number nineteen was: “do not fall in love with a thespian unless they’re a muggle actor from Hollywood,” yet Blaise knew he wouldn’t use that rule. Not anymore and hopefully not ever.

Still, of course, as it had become a routine in his life, everything about him became erratic and unpredictable when he was with Neville. He had found himself digress many times and he was always quite shocked when he realised how far he had gone from his initial path, much to his boyfriend’s delight and amusement. “I like seeing you ruffled,” he had admitted once, earning a copy of ‘Advanced Potion Making’ chucked at his head as they both laughed, with Blaise trying to hide his blushing cheeks.

“Blaise, my love, calm down,” Neville whispered softly against his forehead, hugging him closer and managing to reassure him without wearing him down with his own emotions, “I’m sure everything will be fine. The Order probably knows already that something’s about to happen. Besides, McGonagall’s in there as well, she’s not going to let anything happen, bad or not. Everything will be alright and I’ll come here on the second just like we planned to. You gotta trust me.”

He took a deep, steadying breath as he tried to ground himself back again. Neville’s presence helped greatly, as he had already told the other wizard countless times. “I trust you, more than anyone else,” he admitted, staring straight into his brown eyes as if they could hold all of the Universe’s answers, “But promise you won’t jump headfirst if something happens.” “Of course, I’ll stay home with Grandma as much as I can, when I don’t have my powerful Slytherin around to protect me. Besides, I’m pretty sure You Know Who will stay out of her path, she’s almost as scary as McGonagall!” Neville joked, causing Blaise to shake his head: Gryffindor antics were hard to knock off, it seemed. And, even if he was already wildly intimidated by Augusta Longbottom and she might make the Dark Lord reconsider his career path with her umbrella and her hats, theirs was not a topic to take lightly. “Neville, I’m serious.” “I know.”

Blaise scoffed at that and removed himself from their embrace, allowing space in between their bodies to better convey his message: “I know I can’t make you promise me you’ll stay put, ‘cause you won’t. But can you swear to me that you won’t risk your life recklessly?” he asked, unbothered if some of his desperation seeped into his voice. He knew he could let his walls down around his boyfriend, after all. “You mean like a Gryffindor,” came immediately the reply as Neville crossed his arms over his chest, now that he had the space to do so. “Nev…” “Only if you swear on Slytherin himself that as soon as shit starts to go down, you’ll get to safety,” he intercepted him, stopping Blaise before he could go on another tangent about House Values, “I need to know you’ll be careful.” Blaise nodded at that, he could understand the sentiment: of course his boyfriend would want him safe. But times were darkening by the hour and soon neither of them would probably know what safety even meant.

“Let’s make a deal:” he suggested, already knowing that Neville would agree to his plans, even if they were half-assed ideas about sneaking inside of a muggle library just to study and recreate the ambience of Hogwarts’ own, “usually I’m back from Draco’s around midnight. If nothing happens, we’ll just see each other in the morning after, as we planned. But if the world ends, meet me here at midnight. Sneak past your grandmother or stun her, since you won’t have to worry about the Trace by then. But just, come here, please.”

“The world’s not going to end, my love. Not on my watch,” Neville said, holding once again both of his hands in his and placing a soft kiss on his thumbs.

With the Gryffindor, it was all about the soft and subtle touches, the small moments. Blaise had dived into their relationship wanting to keep it hidden to avoid uproar by the entire school, yet he had been surprised when Neville hadn’t complained about their subtlety; he had almost expected the dorky plant-head to be the most PDA-indulging being in their entire school and it had been unexpected, yet not unwelcomed, his quiet way of giving affection, even when they were all alone and safe.

“Thank you, my mighty Gryffindor,” he replied with a flourish, pondering the pros and cons of bowing. On one hand, he’d keep up his theatrics that seemed to amuse Neville to no end, but on the other, he’d have to let go of his boyfriend’s hands, which was something he wasn’t willing to do. Neville, as always, resolved his qualm without a second thought: he playfully shoved Blaise away with a push from his hands, before pulling him back closer and making him crash against his torso. “Besides, it’s not like we’re not going to see each other before then! What did you say we would do again…?” Blaise saw right through his feeble attempt at distraction immediately: “Nope, I’m not going to tell you, it’s a surprise!” he exclaimed, placing a placating kiss on his boyfriend’s cheek. He had already planned the entirety of their date since he found out the plant-head wouldn’t be free on his birthday: they’d start the day by having lunch at a Chinese restaurant Neville had particularly enjoyed and then they’d move to visit the Royal Botanic Gardens, allowing for them to spend the entire afternoon and evening there, since he already knew very well that his boyfriend would get distracted with every single leaf. And Blaise loved when Neville got side-tracked to talk about plants, even if he didn’t care about the ‘green things’ himself, so it would be a win-win. “Please, B, you know I don’t really like surprises!” he lamented, but Blaise was adamant on his position. “Mio caro, you’ll have to suffer then.” “You’re so mean to me.” Blaise kissed the tip of his nose once more, giggling at the way it involuntarily twitched under his lips: “Yeah, but you love me nevertheless.” What followed was a bad series of sloppy kisses and giggles shared between them as they walked in tandem next to the fireplace, miraculously avoiding tripping over furniture. They knew it was time for Neville to leave, but they were both incredibly reluctant to let go.

“Goodnight, then,” Blaise said, attempting without any real intent to put some space in between them, and he was almost immediately followed by Neville’s own: “Goodnight,” spoken directly against his lips as he removed his hands from around the Gryffindor’s torso, giving a little push to create some distance in between them. “I love you,” Neville sing-sang as he grabbed a handful of Floo Powder, waiting for Blaise’s reply before disappearing into the Network. “I love you too, but go before your grandmother decides to murder me for keeping her grandson away from home all the time!”

And with that, Neville Longbottom had gone back home, leaving Blaise alone in the quiet apartment, his laugh still ringing clearly in his ears against the deafening silence. The place always seemed to lose its warmth as soon as his boyfriend left and so he shrugged on a jumper he had ‘borrowed’ from the Gryffindor, without his knowledge and without any real intent on giving it back.

He was not as naïve as Neville was sometimes, still believing that everything would be alright in spite of all the signs pointing to Hell, but he knew that they would be together even if the world did fall off its axis, and that thought warmed him more than any fire could.

And with that, plus the jumper, he tried to fall asleep, ignoring the way his heart pounded at the uncertainty of his future.

But, of one thing only he was certain: he’d stay by Neville’s side and he’d stay at his, no matter what.

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fuckyeahisawthat · 4 years ago

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Have you been asked yet to rank Trust eps? Cos I'm asking! But your the criteria for ranking I leave to you to decide.

Ahahahaha I’ll have you know I put way too much thought into this. :-D

Ok so first of all, there is no such thing as a bad episode of Trust. The whole thing is really tightly written, every character and plot thread has a purpose, and even the episodes that I haven’t watched over and over again are important to the overall story. And a lot of the impact of the show comes from things that are cumulative over multiple episodes.

That being said, I do have favorites. Since the definitive ranking of Primo’s outfits has already been taken care of, here is my ranking from least to most favorite based on some nebulous criteria of artistic/narrative effectiveness and emotional impact, my judgement of which is obviously highly subjective and also correct.

Under the cut because this got ummm unbelievably, ridiculously long.

10. The House of Getty (episode 1)

Sorry Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy, the pilot is my least favorite episode. Still think it was the wrong choice to open with a flashy (and, I can tell, expensive) sequence showcasing the death of a character we literally never see again. And, look, I’m an impatient viewer. If I don’t get someone to root for/emotionally identify with/otherwise catch my interest early on in a narrative, I’ll tune out. And Old Paul is not only unlikeable--far from a mortal sin in dramatic storytelling--he’s boring. I don’t care about any of his rich people problems, and I’m not the kind of viewer who can be kept engaged just by hating someone and watching them be terrible.

Some of the secondary characters in the Getty household do have interesting plotlines, but we don’t get to learn very much about them in the first episode. And I do think things get interesting once Little Paul shows up (although I maintain that the whole episode is more interesting if we understand what the stakes are for Paul getting the money), but if I had started watching this show with no context I wouldn’t have made it past Old Paul’s pre-coital erotica listening routine.

If this had been anything other than the first episode I might not have ranked it last, but extra penalty points for leading with your least interesting characters.

9. Lone Star (episode 2)

This episode is, I think, saddled by the fact that it has to do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of exposition and setup. It mostly works because Chace is an entertaining narrator, and once we get to Italy with Gail I think things zip along at a pretty good pace. Opens with an attempted rape to show how Bad the Bad Guys are, which is...not my favorite trope.

Once again, I think a lot of the information in this episode would have worked better if episode 3 had been episode 1. (We’d already know who Berto was when Chace meets him; we’d already know about the box of guns in the apartment; we’d know when certain characters are lying.) This whole show runs on the suspense of the audience being the only party who knows what’s going on with all the characters at once; I think trading mystery for suspense here was the wrong move. I also can’t help thinking there was pressure to front-load the well-known American actors in the beginning of the show at the expense of the strongest narrative choices.

Imo the best thing about this episode is the sort of...multiple competing images of Paul that emerge. His mom sees him as an innocent victim who couldn’t possibly have planned any of this. Chace sees him as a spoiled rich kid trying to swindle his granddad. Neither one of them has the complete truth.

Next we get into some episodes that are certainly not bad, but their greatness is more on the level of some bangin’ individual scenes than a whole package.

8. John, Chapter 11 (episode 6)

Again, this isn’t a bad episode. The main reason I put it near the end of the list is that the first time through I got sort of impatient during the first half. We, the audience, by virtue of our extra-textual knowledge, know that Paul can’t be dead, and we spend about half the episode before we know what really happened to him, which felt a bit too long to me.

This episode does have some fantastic individual scenes including: Leo talking Primo down in the farmhouse, Leo and Paul’s conversation about Angelo’s death, Gail being an absolute badass, and the meeting between Salvatore and Old Paul. A lot of these scenes are essential on a thematic level, but I don’t think the episode as a whole is the most streamlined.

7. Consequences (episode 10)

I debated for a while where to put this episode because the overall feeling of 57 Chekov’s guns going off in the space of one episode is SO satisfying, and the resolutions of some of the individual plotlines are delicious. Ultimately I would have liked more space for Paul and Gail and less Old Paul being grumpy about his substitute child museum’s mediocrity (although the scene with the bad reviews is hilarious). Once again I feel like the show creators felt they had to pull the focus back to Old Paul to wrap things up and I just. don’t care.

That being said. The resolution of Primo’s storyline? SO SATISFYING. And tbh I don’t dislike the scenes that exist with Paul and Gail; even the happy scenes have this poignant tone to them. I think they were trying to deal with the fact that his irl story is just...incredibly fucking tragic, and you can see a bit of the strain showing.

6. Kodachrome (episode 7)

I know episode 7 is not one of your personal favorites, but it’s the one where I think jumping between multiple plotlines/sets of characters is used to the most satisfying dramatic effect. It has this sense of dramatic irony that feels like some Shakespearean family tragedy. The whole episode, we are hoping that Paul Jr. will finally do the thing we want him to do, which is stand up to his father. And he does it--but at the absolute worst, most selfish and destructive moment possible.

Paul Jr. may be the literal worst, but I do have compassion for him in the flashbacks, mostly because it seems painfully apparent that no matter what he does, he will never be able to please his father. But he doesn’t seem to realize this, and he keeps trying, even as it’s destroying him and his relationship with his family. Credit to Michael Esper for his performance for making me feel a smidgen of compassion for this bastard.

I think the other thing this episode shows is how both of Paul’s parents keep putting him, a child, into roles and circumstances that he shouldn’t really be in. He’s wandering around through what seem like very much adult environments with his dad and Talitha in Morocco. In the Trust version of events he’s there when Talitha ODs and is the one trying to revive her while his dad is having a breakdown in the corner. Gail seems like the more responsible parent but there’s something about her bringing Paul as her “date” on a night out, and the understanding that this is a thing that happens regularly...to me the disturbing part is not so much bringing a young kid to a party with adults but the unspoken expectation that Little Paul will fill the void of companionship that his father has left empty. (Gettys expecting Little Paul to step in to cover for the failings of his father is a repeated theme, and it even plays into the ear thing. His family has failed to pay the ransom, so this is now a problem he has to solve himself.) Combine this all with Leonardo going, um, excuse me but what the actual fuck is wrong with your family? and I think it makes a very effective episode. And the last couple minutes had me yelling NOOOOOOOO GODDAMMIT because you can see what’s going to happen and you’re just watching it unfolding like a car wreck. Also has one of my hands-down favorite scenes, of Paul and Primo in the car waiting for the ransom.

5. White Car in a Snowstorm (episode 9)

The ~ D R A M A !!! ~ This episode is an opera. I mean this whole show is dramatique but episode 9 really leans into the vivid imagery--that snowy highway in the mountains above the sea, the all-white ransom exchange, Paul clinging to the pole at the shuttered Getty gas station, some Very Serious Mobsters throwing the ransom money around like idiots in a moment where you’re encouraged to be happy along with them.

This is also one of my favorite episodes for Primo and for Primo and Paul’s weird sometimes-alliance. Primo walking away from Salvatore to go tell Paul “they always pay in the end”? Primo and Paul teaming up to argue with Salvatore about why Paul shouldn’t die? Primo being all threateny to the doctor treating Paul because somewhere deep down he is worried (that’s my take and you’ll never convince me otherwise)? Primo dressing up to fake-scab on a postal strike in order to find a misplaced severed ear? All gold.

Fun fact: the letter Gail writes to President Nixon did happen in real life, but as far as I can tell the phone call did not. The real details of who convinced Old Paul to finally pay (some) of the ransom are considerably less cinematic. They’re the same amount of sexist though!

Ok now we are getting to the top tier...

4. That’s All Folks! (episode 4)

This is definitely the episode that took me from “ok this is fun” to “oh holy shit I’m invested now.” It’s the episode where we get introduced to most of the Calabrian characters and their world. It’s also the episode where we start to realize that Primo is not just a fun antagonist but is really a parallel protagonist to Little Paul, with his own set of relationships and motivations that we start to see from his POV. (I’d argue that, with the exception of his very first scene, we’ve mostly seen Primo through other characters’ gaze up until episode 4, and this is the point where we start watching him as like, the character whose pursuit of a goal we’re following over the course of the scene.)

This episode ranks high for capturing so much of the weird mix of tones that makes Trust work. It can be very funny. (I never fail to fuckin lose it when Fifty is on the phone with Gail the first time and when he’s talking to the thoroughly unimpressed newspaper switchboard operator.) It has this weird unexpected intimacy between characters you wouldn’t think would connect with each other. (Primo and Paul, Paul and Angelo; in retrospect the arc of the relationship between Primo and Leo gets started in that scene in Salvatore’s kitchen.) And it has one of the show’s absolute best record-scratch tone shifts when Primo gets the ransom offer. I remember saying “oh FUCK” out loud the first time I watched the end of that episode, when Primo comes back to the house, visibly drunk and clearly furious. We’ve seen him be violent plenty before now in the show, but always in a controlled, calculated way. This is the first time we see his potential for out-of-control rage-fueled violence and he’s terrifying!

3. La Dolce Vita (episode 3)

I stand by my claim that this episode (with a few minor continuity adjustments) should have been the pilot. Can you imagine a title card that’s like “Rome 1973” and then away we go with Paul snorting coke and taking racy photos and jumping on cops and fucking his girlfriend in what is definitely not proper museum etiquette, and then the smash cut to Primo intimidating and robbing and murdering people? And that’s the opening of the whole show? And you’re like how are these characters connected and then they meet each other and it’s the fucking sunflower field scene??

Anyway aside from the fact that I think knowing the information in this episode would have made episodes 1 and 2 more interesting...it’s just a great fucking episode. It’s kinetic and propulsive and funny and tense and violent and features Primo’s sniper skills and his ass in those cornflower blue trousers. I rest my case.

2. Silenzio (episode 5)

I’ll be honest, I went back and forth on the top two a bunch. Silenzio is definitely my personal favorite episode, and I’d argue that it’s the best written, in terms of what it accomplishes narratively, which is to keep you emotionally invested in both Paul and Angelo trying to escape with their lives, and Primo and Leonardo hunting them down. That’s so fucking hard!! And yes some of it is great acting but it starts from the foundation of the writing. It’s just such a perfect little self-contained horror movie, and it has this profound sense of fatalism to it, because you know from the beginning (if only by virtue of only being halfway through the series) that Paul is not going to escape, and you sort of know that there is only one way this will end for Angelo. And yet they escape by the skin of their teeth so! many! times!

It’s also the episode where you see how much power the ‘Ndrangheta has over people’s lives in this community: Salvatore is like God, calling his servants to him with the church bells. Combine that with the visuals of two characters running for their lives mostly on foot through this unforgiving landscape, and you really get the sense of this environment as a harsh place where most people have a very constrained set of choices, and the claustrophobia of that. You get the sense in this episode that everyone is trapped in these expectations of violence and duty and honor. Angelo did what anyone with compassion would do, and saved Paul from what seemed like certain death, and he’s doomed for it. At the same time Primo is doing exactly what anyone would expect him to do in response to a subordinate who disobeyed him. In some ways the end of the episode feels inevitable, unsurprising, and yet they do SUCH a good job of winding up the tension until the literal last seconds of the episode, and then releasing it with a big dramatic bang. It’s so good!!

1. In the Name of the Father (episode 8)

Ok I’ll be honest the ONLY reason In the Name of the Father edged out Silenzio for the top spot is that it is really clear they pulled out all the stops in terms of making this episode feel extra heightened in a show where everything is already heightened. Like, the cinematography is different? They still use handheld a lot but I swear there are more still shots and more extreme, editorial camera angles like that shot of Francesco looking upward in church where the camera is looking down from above him. I can’t tell if they actually tweaked the color grading or if the bright white and blood red just stand out against the Calabrian color palette which is mostly earth tones, browns and greens and blues.

There are just. So many layers to this episode. The imagery! The literal sacrificial lamb at the beginning, Francesco being guided by Leonardo through an act of violence against an animal, something that I’m sure they don’t even see as violence but just part of farm life, part of survival and in this case part of a celebration, but something that fathers teach their sons how to do as part of becoming a man in this world. Paul as the metaphorical sacrificial lamb later, drawing parallels to Jesus (the lamb of God), Isaac (a father sacrificing his son), any number of martyred saints, pick your Catholic imagery. The blood of the lamb on the tree stump and Paul’s blood on the stone. The communion wafer (the body and blood of Christ) and Francesco at the end with Paul’s blood and a literal piece of his body held in his hands the same way.

And then there is like, the suspense of watching everyone marking time through the steps of this community ritual that’s supposed to be a joyful, communal celebration, while we know that there is a secret ticking away under the surface. The slow unfolding of the lie told to one person spreading to everyone in the village, and then the knowledge that Salvatore knows spreading to all the people who’ll be in trouble for that. The relationship arcs between the main Calabrian characters...not resolving, but sliding into place for the final act. Primo finally being done with Salvatore. Primo and Leo’s alliance being cemented and Leo physically stepping between Primo and Salvatore, to protect Primo. (No one ever protects Primo!! Still not over it!!!!) The confirmation celebration as a mirror of the Getty party in episode 1, the parallels drawn between the 3 Pauls and Salvatore-Primo-Francesco and how Primo reacts to being passed over as heir vs. how Paul Jr. reacts. Little Paul having two whole minutes of screen time and managing to break your heart with them. Regina! Just...Regina’s whole everything. The music going all-instrumental for an episode and having this haunting, dreamlike but still tense quality to it. And the fact that we never cut away from Calabria to another plotline gives the whole episode this hypnotic, all-encompassing quality. It’s just. SO GOOD!!!!

#fadagaski #asks answered #trust fx #long post #so so long omg #i can't believe how long i spent writing this but HERE IT IS #trust alternate watch order

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slashersins-abandoned · 4 years ago

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happy birthday

but michael is needy , and starved , and enough is enough . he wants you . and you were right . it is his birthday . so why not take what he wants . you already said he deserves it , didn’t you ?

#michael myers #michael myers imagine #michael myers x reader #slasher #slashers #slasher imagine #slashers imagine #slasher x reader #slashers x reader

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tmngoose · 3 years ago

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Cause for Concern: an OC one-shot

Alternate Title: Hurt/Comfort Characters: Rikki, Red Fox, Jupiter Jim, Clem, Rikki's mom (mentioned) Tags: ANGST, Anxiety, Distress, Poor familial relationships, Abuse, Minor Injuries/bruising/scabs, Hurt/Comfort, Blanket forts, Lots of comforting, Additional Tags to be added... Summary: Rikki gets a letter in the mail and Red has a right to worry. Word Count: ~1,799 -x- A/N: I know what you're thinking. "Goosey! This isn't any of the updates you promised us >:C what's up with this OC baloney?" -- Ok, yes, but listen; I wrote this mainly to practice writing Red Fox and Jupiter Jim since I'll be (ahem) writing them very soon for a certain somethin'-somethin' (Also? I need to update Let's Make a Deal and this was good practice to get back into writing for Rikki). I won't be uploading this to my Ao3. Read Cause for Concern under the read more:

It started with a letter—a small black envelope that came in with the rest of the mail: the bills, the take-out menus, and the weekly Stock and Shop circulars.

It was addressed to Rikki, which was odd to Red since Rikki never received mail; at least nothing intimate.

"Hey, Rikki! You got mail today!" Red said as soon as the mongoose returned from her shift at Clem's. She presented Rikki with the black envelope, her tail swishing excitedly.

"That's for me?" Rikki raised a brow.

They settled down at the kitchen table. Red sat across from Rikki, who examined the mysterious piece of mail. There was no return address, and the envelope was perfumed with something that made Rikki's nose wrinkle. She turned the envelope over, and that was when she saw it; the ivory wax seal depicting the image of fang—her family's crest.

Red's grin shrank as Rikki tensed, the color draining from her face, "Well? Who's it from, Rik?"

"It's… ah…," Rather than answering Red, Rikki reached for their salt shaker and unscrewed the metal cap. She poured a perfect circle onto the wooden surface, then dropped the envelope into its center.

Suddenly, it burst into a column of purple flames.

"Oh, my stars!" Red gasped. Her red banded-tail morphed into a giant hand and reached into the cabinet under the sink for the fire extinguisher.

"Don't worry, it'll put itself out," stated Rikki, unbothered by the phenomena. "It's a hex message."

"A 'hex message?'" Red furrowed her brow as the flames flickered before them, contained within the circle of salt. "I've heard of chain letters cursing folks, but this is just plain rude! Who would do such a thing?!"

"My mom."

"Oh," Red's tail twitched. It was a touchy subject they never discussed, mainly because Rikki avoided any conversation regarding family relations—especially if they were about her mother.

When the purple flames disappeared—embers and all—a scorch mark was left behind; Rikki buffed it out with the sleeve of her hoodie. Now that the letter was 'cleansed,' she sliced open the side of the envelope with her claw and emptied a folded piece of parchment into her hand.

The apartment fell silent as Rikki read the letter. Red knew better than to pry, even if the suspense kept her at the edge of her seat.

"Mom wants me to come home—for a visit, not to stay," Rikki grimaced, "She wants to 'talk.'"

"When?" Red asked while Rikki calmly tore the letter into tiny squares.

"A-sap," Rikki brushed the bits of paper into her palm and stuffed them inside the pouch on her hoodie. She went over to the tiny coat closet by the front door and retrieved an old backpack that would suffice as an overnight bag.

"W-wait, you're leaving now?" Red pushed back her chair. Her stomach twisted, and a feeling of dread penetrated her bones. She had no idea where the influx of anxiety came from, but it was enough to get her fur to stand on end.

Rikki shrugged, "I can't keep the lady waiting."

"What about work?"

"I'll tell Clem somethin' came up. Besides, that's what PTOs are for..."

"Is everything alright?" Red's ears flattened, perturbed. "You're not in trouble, are you?" Why would she think Rikki was in trouble? Maybe Rikki's mother always communicated via hex messages. Perhaps that was just how yūrei's spoke to one another; a cultural thing.

Rikki didn't answer. She quietly stuffed her toiletries into a plastic baggie, then went into her bedroom to gather a change of clothes. The silence between them only told Red that she was right to fret about her roomie's well-being.

"… It's nothing, Red," Rikki answered, slipping her headphones around the back of her neck. "Don't worry about it. I'll be fine."

Red's unconvinced by the string of reassurance; they sound a lot like empty promises, "Rikki…."

"Red, I'll be fine," Rikki crammed her chargers and electronics into the small pocket of her backpack. "I should be back sometime soon-ish. We'll order sushi and throw ourselves a little party, ok?"

"… okay," Red stepped out of Rikki's way, reluctantly letting the mongoose pass by. She escorted Rikki to the elevator down the hall and playfully elbowed her in the arm, "Call me if you need back-up, yeah?"

"Whatever floats your goat, space ace," Rikki snorted as she waited for the elevator's arrival. She slung her bulky backpack over her shoulder, "And speaking of goats, I better call Clem…."

Rikki forced a smile as the elevator doors slowly closed. Red saw past the mongoose's attempt at feigning confidence; the distant, fearful look in her eyes gave her away. Red suppressed the urge to summon the elevator and prevent Rikki from leaving.

Red told herself that it was all in her head, the idea that nothing good would come from Rikki's trip to her mother's. She knew Rikki could take care of herself.

Rikki will be back before you know it, Red thought to herself. It'll be alright. I'm sure her mother's a lovely person...

__________

Rikki didn't come home the next day. Or the following day. Or the day after that. When Red tried reaching Rikki on her cell phone, her attempts led her directly to the mongoose's inbox.

Not even Clem heard from Rikki, although he was instructed to 'use her sick days if she ran out of PTO.'

Red kept herself busy with menial chores to steel her nerves and stop her imagination from crafting worst-case scenarios. When she wasn't cleaning the apartment, the yōkai volunteered at the community theater, ran errands, and hunted for Scor-Pion with Jupiter Jim.

"Why so blue, Red?" Jupiter Jim asked during one of their stakeouts atop the eccentric actor's apartment building. "You mustn't let Scor-Pion get you down. The elusive fiend will show himself soon enough!"

"It's not that," Red sighed. "It's my roomie/friend! She's been gone for almost a week, and I've lost all forms of direct communication with her! And even if I wanted to go searching for her, I have no idea where she could be!"

"Hm, that is quite the predicament. I wouldn't be surprised if Scor-Pion is behind your friend's mysterious disappearance!"

"I doubt it…," Red peered through her binoculars and scanned the city's skyline, hoping to spy Rikki. She perked up when she felt Jupiter Jim's hand clasp onto her shoulder, "Sir?"

"Have faith in your friend," Jupiter Jim consoled. "The universe is a vast place, yet we all find our way home sooner or later. We must welcome the weary when they return, but to do so, it's crucial to keep our spirits high."

Red smiled weakly at the profound piece of wisdom, "Thank you, Sir."

The mood was ruined when Jupiter Jim mistook an old lady with a green skin complexion as Scor-Pion. Fortunately, Red's prehensile tail was strong enough to hold the space adventure back from ambushing the strange senior citizen.

If only Red used her tail to keep Rikki from leaving...

_____________

It was Wednesday night. Red had finished washing the dishes and was now standing at the kitchen counter, prepping vegetables for dinner. She was so preoccupied with peeling potatoes that she failed to notice someone unlocking the front door.

And that someone was Rikki.

"Hey, I'm back," Rikki announced as she closed the door behind her.

"Rikki!" Red exclaimed, dropping the potato peeler and spud into the sink. She ran over to Rikki and hugged her tightly, "Leaping light-years, you have no idea how worried I was! You didn't call or text, and Clem said—"

Red froze. Her eyes darted from Rikki's black eye to the bruise on her cheek. Several small knicks speckled the side of her brow. They were scabs now, but the implication that Rikki had bled was still there.

So this was the kind of relationship Rikki had with her mother: a bad one.

Rikki isn't put off by the horrified look on Red's face, "Honestly? It's not as bad as it looks. In fact, I think things went better than I expected." She tried maintaining a modest tone, but it faltered.

I knew I shouldn't have let you go, Red frowned. Hesitantly, she tried reaching up to touch the bruise on Rikki's cheek.

"I'm gonna go take a shower," Rikki said as she casually ducked away from Red's hand. "I had to take the long way back, and I'm kinda gross. Do you need the bathroom?"

"N-No, you go ahead. I'm making stew for dinner. Would you like some?"

"Naaah. I'm not that hungry…."

Red nodded, "Copy that." She watched Rikki's bushy tail drag across the floorboards on her way towards the bathroom.

The universe is a vast place, yet we all find our way home sooner or later…

"Hey, Rikki?"

"Hmm?"

"Welcome home…"

It's such a warm, simple greeting, yet it meant so much to Rikki. She got as far as the hallway before she grabbed onto the wall for support. She sank to the floor and curled in on herself, trembling.

In a split-second, Red's beside her. She held Rikki close, protecting her by wrapping her striped tail around her body. She never heard Rikki cry before; the mongoose is quiet with the occasional whimper that breaks Red's heart.

Red held her tighter, "… We can still order sushi if you want…."

Rikki sniffled, "Yeah, I-I'd like that."

"Heh heh, good! Honestly, I was getting tired of peeling all those potatoes!"

_____________________

Stacks of aluminum take-out containers are left on the kitchen table with empty plastic cups of soy sauce. They make good on their promise to throw themselves a party. So Red and Rikki dragged their mattresses out from their bedrooms and constructed a blanket fort around them.

Once their nightly bathroom rituals are completed, they pile into their fort. Red noticed a few more bruises on Rikki's forearms that were previously hidden by the mongoose's hoodie.

"Clem said he'd give me the day off tomorrow," Rikki said as she slid her phone underneath her pillow. "I told him I had a rough trip. He understands."

"Aw, that's nice of him," Red yawned as she rolled onto her side, facing Rikki. Goodness gracious, who would've thought all this worrying could be so exhausting...

"Hey, Red?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you," apologized Rikki, her voice hoarse. She stared up at the canopy of mismatched blankets and bedsheets, "I'm sorry I didn't keep you in the loop..."

"Don't worry about it, Rik," Red scooched over towards Rikki, "I understand."

They nestled against each other, their tails entwined--another layer of comfort. Red felt obligated to ensure Rikki fell asleep and didn't stay awake to think about whatever cruelties she endured at her mother's. Only when Red was sure Rikki was fast asleep did she finally allow her eyelids to shutter.

#rottmnt oc #Rikki #rottmnt Red Fox #Jupiter Jim #rottmnt Clem #(not a shipping fic! they are just roomies who care about each other I swear to pizza supreme in the sky)#tmngoosepost #tmngoosefic

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algernoninwonderland · 4 years ago

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Miraculous is playing one big game of Calvinball with its magic/power system and it undermines the show quite a bit

TL;DR: Miraculous has, at first glance, a very basic power/magic system… Only whenever it tries to get more complicated than “Moon Prism Power, Make up!” it ends up being an unspeakable mess, due to poor creative decisions that don’t allow for the audience to truly understand what is going on and why, outside of “whatever the plot requires so that we can get to the next scene”.

It may well be because the people making this show wanted to shift their attention to kwamis and their powers in the future seasons, but holding onto that for seventy-something episodes has done the show a disservice.

Longg isn’t the kwami of Perfection. Longg is the kwami of being a cool dragon. And sometimes, being a cool dragon is enough, you know? Instead of doing complex things poorly, you can tackle simple concepts really well and people won’t think any less of your creation, au contraire.

Throughout the history of the superhero genre, a pretty nifty thing most creators have understood is that you need to explain a bit of how and why the hero’s powers work. Superman is superpowered because it’s all a matter of gravity, a fact underlined in the very first issue of Action Comics, in the very first page of Superman ever. The X-Men are mutants. Sherlock Holmes was bitten by a radioactive detective.

Basically, what happens in most cases is, the creators come up with a set of rules to sort of explain the storyworld so that you know to manage your expectations, so that the storyworld feels more cohesive too. That’s what I call a neat way to allow your audience to suspend their disbelief and feel more involved in the story being told! Things happen and are allowed to happen a certain way for a reason in-universe, there is a kind of logic proper to the work of fiction being built that makes it easier for the audience to fully get into said work.

In Hunter X Hunter, Nen is a pretty cool concept that is well-defined, we see what it is at first with no explanations, and it’s hella intriguing, which makes you want to know more (and that’s deliberate) and then the manga explains it to you a few chapters later and for the most part, Togashi sticks to that definition. And now we understand what is going on and how. Cool, right?

What do we have here? Creative decisions that are often given justifications in-universe to make them more believable in the context of the story being told, even though they are ultimately arbitrary decisions which can be challenged (see how Superman’s powers changed over time, for instance). You can toy with these explanations and that makes for great comedic potential, just look at One Punch Man!

Magic can be a little murkier for sure, because magic doesn’t necessarily follow rational logic. I won’t be getting into the soft/hard magic talk here. Still, if you want your audience to understand what is going on and if you’re not a complete hack (looking at you Joanne Kathleen), you tend to set up some rules so that the audience can grasp what the hell is going on, understand why something is really impressive or really basic. Is it really such a big deal that a character is able to master that one spell? Why? Ursula Le Guin and Brandon Sanderson are really good at that, and manage a good balance of mystery and understandability.

Miraculous fumbles the bag pretty hard when it comes to how its magic/power system works. Which, after 70-something episodes, is not great.

Part of it is due to the exposition style Miraculous has chosen for itself, which could be great but ultimately isn’t, and part of it is due to poor definition in the first place.

Miraculous hates exposition dumps most of the time, and I think it’s actually a good thing. No one wants to feel as though they’re sitting through a boring class instead of having fun. Well done, guys! Exposition dumps often make you all the more aware of the artificiality of a story. And so, Miraculous mostly relies on context cues as a means of introducing you to the world. They just show you the thing and trust you to understand and interpret it properly. And sometimes, it works really well!

I still sincerely believe that Stormy Weather is a fantastic first episode, and it does its job amazingly well. In 24 minutes, you learn the very basic outlines of how stuff works, relationships between the characters and superpowers. Yes, it’s very basic, but that’s fine, you can’t drop all that new information on your audience all at once. We understand that the power within the Miraculous, that of the kwami, allows for its wearer to transform. This comes with nifty perks, heightened agility, reflexes, amazing strength, magical accessories, and special quirks unique to each of the Miraculouses.

Are we good so far? See, if we stuck to that, it’d be fine. Not mind-blowing but pretty okay still. Doesn’t have to be too complicated to be enjoyable, just look at Sailor Moon!

And then Miraculous tried to spice things up and communicated its ideas so poorly that the arbitrary decisions taken by the writers are glaring, and seriously affect the audience’s suspension of disbelief and enjoyment.

The kwamis aren’t just cutesy mascots, they’re gods. And yet their powers are very limited. Why? Well, the show doesn’t really bring that question up, we can only try and infer things. Now, what are these limitations, and why do they exist in the first place? I’ve got a vague answer to the first question (a time limit for transformation once the special power is being used).

The answer to that second question is very unsatisfactory, and that’s the only one I’ve got: “because the plot requires it if we want to do such and such thing”. Which is an answer that applies to absolutely all creative decisions in fiction, yes, but there’s usually more to it as well, in competently-made shows at least, it’s not so transparent. Why is Marinette able to wield so many Miraculouses at once? Well, it’d look cool and it’d make her look powerful, so why not! But Adrien can’t. Why? He just can’t. No explanations whatsoever. Just because. It’s magic. Shut up and watch the show.

Well, that’s not entirely true. We’ve got fleeting remarks about being able to unlock kwami powers and maintaining a transformation for longer and whatnot. The problem is, they’re just that, fleeting remarks, and worse, they are so scattered across the show it’s really easy to forget about them in-between episodes, especially since the release schedule is absolute nonsense (it isn’t the creators’ fault, but it certainly has an impact on the way the audience engages with the show). So no, the show isn’t going down the “just roll with it” route, not entirely… And that makes the lack of proper explanation that much worse.

It feels as through the few rules there are in Miraculous are being made up on the fly and… Heh. That’s just not great.

It doesn’t help that the powers themselves are… Really something, huh?

Chat Noir’s power is the only one that really fits with what his kwami is meant to represent. Destruction. Easy to represent, right?

Creation is trickier, that requires being imaginative, and Miraculous isn’t terribly imaginative when it comes to its lucky charms. Hey kids, did you know that you could use a ladder to stop an ice-skater? How creative! I mean you could also use salt to melt the ice, or a baseball bat to smash his kneecaps, then… The point is, being convoluted isn’t the same thing as being creative, and while Chat Noir gets to decide what he destroys, Ladybug gets an item thrown at her and you better believe she’ll find an use to it… How is that creation exactly? Is the lucky charm popping out of thin air creation? That’s a bit underwhelming, isn’t it?

Tikki represents convolution, Nooroo is the power of creating minor antagonists…

I had to check the Wiki to remember what concepts the other kwamis are meant to represent. There’s a disconnect between that and the way powers are represented on-screen. Pollen isn’t the kwami of Subjection. Pollen is the kwami of stabbing people with a stinger. How do I know that? I watched the show and nothing else.

If you want your audience to not be confused, if you don’t want your story to feel completely arbitrary to your audience (though it’ll always be just that), maybe take the time to explain things that are crucial for the understanding of the storyworld’s inner workings. You don’t have to give everything away in the first ten episodes, not at all, but you should explain them at some point, take the time to do so if these are more complex concepts that are crucial to your show. And if they aren’t key to your show, you don’t have to include them, and I promise no-one will notice.

#ml salt #ml canon salt #ml writers salt #ml critical #ml analysis

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opbackgrounds · 4 years ago

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So I read the Ace Novel (Part 2)

I’m going to be level with you, if I hadn’t said I was going to do a write up for the novel, I don’t think I would have finished this one. The first fifty or so pages are terribly boring, and while it picks up considerably toward the end, I don’t think I can recommend it, for one reason and one reason only:

It reads like a freaking wikipedia article. And I hate it.

I described Part 1 of the Ace novel like three separate one shots with the barest hint of continuity between them. That’s not the case this time around, as most of what it covers are events mentioned in the manga: The fight with Jinbe, Ace’s 100 battles with Whitebeard, Ace formally joining the Whitebeard Pirates. Comparatively speaking, that’s a lot of canon material to get through. Consequently, it’s also quite a bit longer than Part 1, about 200 pages.

(some of those pages happen to be longer than others)

(yes this made me literally laugh out loud)

The problem is there is a metic ton of manga recap that has nothing to do with this novel, especially in chapters 1 and 2. This was baffling to me, as it seems unlikely that someone would pick up a One Piece magazine (where the novel was originally published) or a One Piece side story without bing familiar with the manga. Yet concepts like the Four Emperors, Celestial Dragons, and even the Grand Line were laid out in meticulous detail.

I am going to be unfair for a moment and compare the Ace novels to my favorite spin-off series of all time, the Kyoshi duology that takes place in the Avatar universe.

Unlike the Ace novels, they take place several centuries before the main series, so there aren’t a lot of plot details that overlap with the animated series in the way the Ace novels do to the main manga. What is in common, however, isn’t repeated. Nowhere in the two Kyoshi books does she learn the story about Avatar Wan or any of the same lore details that are important to Aang and Korra’s stories. Instead it expands on the world building details laid out in the main series and deepens them.

For example, do you want to know how the Fire Nation royalty got so good at lightning bending, or how the greater Earth Kingdom political landscape works? Read book 1. Do you want to know how the Fire Nation went from a fractured clan system to a strong centralized government or how advanced water bending healing techniques work? Read book 2. It’s exposition that fleshes out the system already in place, rather than retreading what’s already been established.

Part 2 of the Ace novel does this a little bit when it develops the Pirate Code, something that has never mentioned in the manga, and even if it was Luffy’s not the sort of character that’s going to care to adhere to it. The strongest portion of the novel shows Ace going out on a mission on Whitebeard’s behalf, showing some of what it’s like to maintain the vast territories that he keeps under his flag.

But mostly...mostly it’s just recap. Literally the entire Fishman Island backstory is written out in some of the blandest narration I’ve ever read, paragraphs upon paragraphs talking about Queen Otohime and Fisher Tiger and the civil unrest of the Ryugu Kingdom, including but not limited to Vander Decken stalking Shirahoshi and her subsequent imprisonment in the royal tower.

There’s also the wholesale recycling of gags straight from the manga that 1) don’t necessarily work as well in written format, and 2) show no originality or creativity on the part of the author. In my opinion, recurring gags are funniest when a writer can contrive different variations and circumstances around the base joke. Instead we get scenes like this beat-for-beat copy of Ace’s narcolepsy gag in Alabasta, down to using the waitress’s skirt as a napkin

I noticed in Part 1 that the author had snuck some canon elements in, such as Deuce and Ace building Striker—the one man, fire-powered boat he showed off in Alabasta—when I personally didn’t think either of them were smart enough to think up, let alone construct, anything that sophisticated. I didn’t mention it in my previous write up because there are a lot of fans that enjoy those kind of Easter eggs, and it’s a novel that runs on manga logic so it’s not exactly breaking my suspension of disbelief either. It was a minor quibble that didn’t really detract from my overall enjoyment.

But the story of Fishman Island is at best tangentially related to the events of the novel. The only reason Fishman Island is important at all is because Ace decides to burn down Whitebeard’s flag on his way into the New World.

Which brings me to perhaps the most interesting aspect of the novel: Ace himself.

Even in the manga, you can make the case that there are two Aces, the happy-go-lucky, cool, and mysterious older brother of Luffy seen at Alabasta/post-Enies Lobby, and the angsty, existentially depressed young man with daddy issues that shows up during Impel Down/Marineford.

The novel leans much closer to the latter. More than I expected it to. The Ace of Part 2 is hotheaded and a bit of a jackass. Whereas Luffy tends to go after people he has a personal beef with, Ace specifically targets Whitebeard because he was the closest to Roger, and he thinks that defeating Whitebeard will somehow bring him fame greater than his father. He ignores the concerns of his crew and the repeated warnings about how Emperors control vast armies...because of daddy issues. The novel goes out of his way that Ace’s dreams made him better suited to be a Revolutionary than a pirate, and it’s only because of his childhood promise that he became a pirate at all. It wasn’t something born out of true conviction or desire.

Laying it out like that, it might seem like this is a negative, but to me it’s one of the most interesting things the novel has to offer. I thought Part 1 worked best when it acted as a character study for Deuce, Ace, and the marine girl whose name I have already forgotten, focusing on how Ace brought together degenerates unwanted by even other degenerates. The same is true here: Once the exposition dumps are over and the focus returns to the titular character, the author is able to dig a little bit deeper into into Ace’s psyche, and he takes it in a direction I didn’t expect, but was consistent with his manga portrayal.

I just wish I could have seen a little bit more of it.

And speaking of characters I wish I had seen more of, after focusing so much on Deuce and Marine Girl in Part 1, they have a much reduced role in Part 2. In fact, Marine Girl isn’t seen or mentioned even once, which I thought was kind of strange. I guess I don’t see the point in putting so much effort was put into her only for her to be thrown away without even a cameo. Likewise, after spending Part 1 as the principal POV character, Deuce is set aside for Thatch and Teach. Whether that’s a good or bad thing will depend largely on how much you enjoy those individual characters.

I don’t say this often, but these are books that can be judged by their covers. Part 1, Ace is more jovial—the burning flame that attracts others to his greatness—while introducing two major new characters to his journey. Part 2, Ace is grim and angry—the dark, smoldering flame burning with the desire to destroy the system that would have killed him for being the wrong man’s son—while focusing much more on the Whitebeard Pirates and what makes them great.

It’s an interesting contrast, the two sides of Ace’s character as seen in the manga given a little bit of limelight. But damn if it wasn’t tedious to get through.

#long post #opbackgrounds #ace novel #analysis #review

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holicanth · 4 years ago

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Hanging On Threads (2)

@shinoweek 2021 Prompt 3 - Sunset/Canon Divergence

Words: 3.7k

Genre: Angst. Drama. Shinohina. Tragedy

Warnings: -

Additional Tags: Shinohina, Kibahina, Naruhina, family issues, Konoha’s noble clans, nepotisme and collusion.

Author’s Note: I’m so sorry y’all. I’ve been extra busy :( Here’s chapter 2 (?) of my Shino week series. I hope you have a great day :)

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2

It has been 3 days since Shino disappeared from the Aburame compound.

It has also been 3 days since the Konoha elders re-welcomed the Aburames and reintegrated them into society.

Ever since, Shino has been staying at ROOT, hiding undercover while waiting for Danzo's orders.

And with that, Shino is handed the dreadful task of explaining every little detail to Torune.

"I just can't understand your logic, Shino." He says, clenching his fists on the table. "You should know better than to just run away from home like that!"

"What do you think you'll achieve with this?" Torune grits his teeth, "You cant escape this--there's no way Danzo will let you out anymore!"

Guilt that has previously bubbled inside him was now gone. Shino felt close to nothing as he stays cooped in ROOT. No fear. No anxiety. He was obviously feeling full of himself, believing to have won his side of the bargain. As such, none of Torune's words were ringing bells inside his head.

Shino tries to keep his facade well-put.

"How is Uncle Shibi taking the news?"

"I've sent some beetles to Father. I can tell he's doing well even without me. Nothing else will change in the household."

"Not until," Shino's words come to a startled halt. "Until I finish my promise to Danzo."

His brother bangs the table in a display of panic that Shino has never seen. " You don't know what he'll do to you. Shino, you don't know anything..."

His words cut off abruptly. In a split second, Shino senses a tremble in Torune. A slight quiver of his lips.

Torune used to live with them, and had expressed massive gratefulness towards his uncle. Shino didn't realize at that time (he was but merely eight), that more than anything, Torune's sacrifice was addressed more towards Shibi. The boy would do anything to protect his uncle—you can see it in the way he devotes himself to his work.

A kindred sort of regret rose in Shino. To think that he had so easily thrown away the ideal life that Torune had bestowed upon him—and voluntarily at that.

But both of them know that there is no safer alternative.

(It's an inevitable fate, they console themselves. It is a necessary sacrifice.)

"I had to do it for our clan." Shino repeats the fact to his brother. "We were to be killed soon enough. And it would have been Father first."

Shino's eyes flit nervously as he spoke.

"And who do you think would pull the trigger, Shino?"

Torune didn't ask why. Like he knew all of the details already.

Shino glanced around the room, thinking. He already knows the answer. Rather, he's trying to figure out how to word it in a manner that doesn't...offend Torune.

(Shino could list all the names of the ANBU members that have been in contact with particular individuals. Journalists, Governors, Clan heads, people of high posistions. Their agenda was blatant. Shino knows because their names have been whispered in contemplation throughout the Aburame compound.)

"The jonins," Shino says, in a hushed voice. "The jonins will work together with the ANBU. The Sarutobi clan will be extremely involved too."

There is a pattern Shino notices in Konoha's history. It's that the types of people who reign over the village are identical and identifiable amongst each other. A teacher to their student, A blood relative to their predecessor. Lesser clans would do anything to grab ahold of that social circle.

Replacing an unliked noble clan would be one of such tasks.

Torune listens keenly, in a hum that neither denies or confirms it.

"Not only that," He resumes, "There seems to be equal participation from other clans. Such as the Nara. You know they've been looking to steal our research on bugs."

"They're especially interested in yours, Torune."

He doesn't oblige. Torune was aware of this well before he came to ROOT, too. Fear and suspense were not things Torune had to be worried about. But today, he finds that he had to face it--the abject horror of seeing his little brother in a hostage situation. The pure fear of knowing how hopeless he is engulfs him. Was there nothing that Torune can do?

(A shinobi must constantly opress their emotions, follow a strict set of rules that they decide among themselves, and avoid extraneous conflict.

This was the first lesson Danzo had stamped inside Torune's memories.

To disconnect oneself from the act of murder—it was the essence of a shinobi.

Or so Torune thought.)

"I was to be sent as well, Shino." Torune looks down as he breaks the ice. "They want us gone because of our power. Of our potential. They'll take our knowledge and use it to their own benefit. All the research, medicine, poisons and bugs."

(The Aburames are notorious for being mysterious. All done in order to conceal oneself, to prevent oneself from having their secret techniques outed in public. Ensuring, that they stay formidable, underestimated,

and strong.)

"You heard Danzo say it. They think we're weird. Unsanitary. Off-putting. That our secrecy is a form of betrayal, even when we've been constantly obedient to Konoha."

"And will you die as well?" Shino asks cautiously, "After you've killed all of us, will they dispose of you too, Torune?"

A sorrow smile lit up Torune's face. There was, again, no answer. Shino knows—No, he had plenty of ideas already. Torune’s predisposition was already a valid enough reason for Konoha to justify his death. Killed or not, there are many ways to make a man break. Danzo would have his merry time trying out which one of those methods satisfy him best.

What Konoha was capable of bringing unto the Uchiha was just as likely to happen to the Aburames.

(This exchange ended on a heavy note. Nothing Shino says will add or subtract from the issue at hand. Just a hanging air of dread, looming over their clan's future. Both of them did what they had to preserve their clans. To protect those important to them.

But this sense of kinship—to protect those that they love. Is it not what Konoha preaches to their young, too?

Or was it the reason that Konoha wants to tear apart the Aburame family ties?)

A knock on the wooden door brings an end to the brothers' conversation. The Yamanaka boy comes in, head held high.

"Lord Danzo has requested for you, Shino Aburame. Come along, now."

Shino leaves Torune in the room. Torune knows best that he should not interfere lest he wants to live a day beneath the soil.

It can be said that ROOT was an illegal form of bodyguards, acting as Danzo's personal squadron. A blatant display of political corruption, despite Danzo’s "fancy" position as Konoha's elder. The facility was well maintained, and there was never a shortage of child soldiers sent there. The clan leaders know Danzo as a demanding figure.

The Yamanaka boy—Fuu Yamanaka stops to knock at a set of tall doors. Shino stops to ponder whether he was related directly to Ino Yamanaka.

An oddly lit room opens up by Shino, displaying machines, scrolls, and different books that are perfectly arranged inside the giant walls of bookshelves. Danzo stood in the center, on a throne chair that he does not deserve.

"You may leave now, Fuu." He spoke in a low tone.

Something in Shino buzzes as he watch the Yamanaka eye him begrudgingly while he closes the door. The buzzing didn't stop after he went out.

(His bugs were reacting to something. A feeling that Shino doesn't want to name)

"You. You're the son of Shibi Aburame, aren't you?" Danzo sneers, "So the Aburames have a dojutsu now, huh? What a nuisance. What, is your dojutsu like the Uchiha's? Prompted by deep emotional pain?"

(Shino feels the buzzing again. His bugs were on guard, but for what?)

"Does Shibi have this ability, too?"

"No." Shino spouts a half-lie.

"And how did you get your hands on this? Are you saying that it just appeared out of nowhere?"

Danzo was gauging for answers. Shino was never good at communication himself, but he was naturally gifted in speaking conspicuously

"It was always in the Aburame blood. Just forgotten through time. Nothing new."

"And you vermins have been hiding this to yourselves, haven't you? Yet you wonder why Konoha has no trust in you."

"The other clans have aces up their sleeves, too. It's why they call it a Hidden Jutsu."

Shino didn't mean to sound snark. But Danzo himself might not have the mental intelligence to understand sarcasm, so Shino thinks it's okay.

"So this dojutsu of yours—The Senrigan—tell me how this is more useful than the Byakugan."

Shino bit his tongue before answering. Once more, he'll have to cherry-pick his words exceptionally well.

"I transfer my sight to my bugs. Depending on how many bugs there are and how they're aligned, my sight can reach other countries."

"The Senrigan requires one to be perfectly still, but the bugs can collect all sounds, sights, and other details without having their chakra traced. Hiding my chakra under the bug's natural chakra will make them unnoticed by sensors"

Danzo squints his eye, thinking. "Quite the useful spying tool, huh."

"Still, we need to make sure you're telling the truth. Take off your glasses."

Shino was taken aback from the sudden request,

"Now."

He does as he's told. The sunglasses are safely kept in his pockets. Shino's eyes were dark under the sunlight, and an even deeper shade of obsidian indoors.

"Let's have you demonstrate your Senrigan, shall we? I've sent Fuu to loiter around Konoha's busy streets. Locate him using the senrigan, and tell me every word he's speaking."

And without further ado, Shino created some hand seals, took a deep breath, and a swarm of kikaichu flew out of his body, travelling through the doors and crevices of the ROOT headquarters before dispersing overground. The emerald hue of Shino's eyes looked stunning in the dark.

Even from a distance, Danzo can sense an intricate, huge web of chakra dispersing from the boy's body, Undulating, stretching outwards, and going back and forth between Shino's body and his bugs. Then, as if on command, the chakra fell silent and Shino lets out a long exhale. He's successfully established the connection.

As Shino stills his senses to callibrate himself to the beetles, he orders them to trace any signs of the familiar Yamanaka chakra signature. He steadily reduces his chakra input. When a preferable balance is reached, Shino waits in silence. Until a bug notifies him of any significant clues

(Go to the streets. He instructs them. Hover around in small swarms and don't terrify the people.

A short pause. Don't bump into anyone that I know, He commands again.)

Danzo watches as the Aburame in front of hin froze into a lotus pose. The stare in his eyes blank, but definitely buzzing with intel and chakra. There is much to be studied with this new forbidden jutsu.

Shino is notified of a sighting near Konoha's marketplace. He checks in with the bug, and once their visions link he can tell that the person had the same chakra signature.

"I've located him." Shino said. "He's using a mask and brown cloak, performing jutsus to the local children."

"And what is he saying?"

Shino tries to concentrate as hard as he can. The hand seals that Fuu was using was something he didn't recognize. Apparently memorizing while the Senrigan is activated proved to be more dizzying than he thought.

"Tori, Uma, Ne, Inu, Ne, Tori, Hitsuji, Tatsu, I, Ushi..." Shino recites slowly, making sure that he isn't wrong. "This is a variant of the Water-style technique. He's forming water spouts from his fingers."

That's absolutely correct, Fuu signals to Danzo, who had been telepathically communicating with him all this time.

"Well done, Shino. You've proven to us that you and your clan can be of use."

And with that Shino scrunches his eyes shut. A little bit disoriented from having to memorize while using the Senrigan. His beetles swiftly fly back to him, bringing him a small amount of chakra they absorbed from the villagers.

"I've done my part in reintegrating the Aburames. Give me a month and things will be back to normal. Are you ready to fulfill your side of the promise?" Danzo asked, as he stood up from his chair.

Shino gulps nervously. He didn't really plan out what to do next. But Shino was a master at lying, and with a countenance that no one can read, he was indecipherable.

"Why did you want us gone in the first place?" Shino asks, not realizing that he had voiced the thoughts out loud.

Danzo Shimura was a man who took the Second Hokage's manifesto to heart. Perhaps a bit too much. Shino had suspected, backed with the evidence and observation of his clansmen, that Danzo was pulling strings that led to the Uchiha massacre. It was easy to connect the dots, especially with Shibi and Shino's ability (they were tasked to clean it up. Shibi was fast in doing so, while Shino tended to the unconscious Sasuke.)

From the very formation of Konoha, the Aburame clan was in charge of the most tedious work. Often times having to deal with the brunt of it while Konoha lives scott-free. Border patrols, cleaning up after crimes, interrogation. The Aburames are efficient, but this efficiency ultimately lead to their public consternation.

"You Aburames are skilled, I must admit." Danzo's croaked voice echoed through the chamber. "So much so that any village would want to use you as weapons."

"And that's all there is to it, really. You bunch are too strong. Too skilled. There's too many unknown factors. The higher-ups have agreed to eliminate these threats. After all, Konoha prides itself in being a friendly nation. Your blood brings filth to our soil."

Shino knows that there is a lie slipped between those words. Danzo was not a friendly type of leader.

"The Four Noble Clans of Konoha are in need of a change. The Uchihas have proven to be evil. It is in Konoha's best interest to discard the bad, and salvage whatever is left. Haven't you noticed? The only reason we keep the Akimichi is because they're dumb enough to be controlled by the Nara and Yamanaka. And the Hyuuga's reputation are held at our mercy. You're smart enough to figure the rest." Danzo says, walking to approach Shino.

What?

Did he hear his words right? The Akimichi clan? All along, Shino had thought that the lucky title of a 'Noble Clan' are given to clans who had body modifications that cannot be replicated by other ninjas. To think that his fellow team had such a scheme hanging around their backs...Shino wants to believe that Team 10's friendship is genuine.

"Tomorrow," Danzo says, patting the chuunin's back, "You will be promoted as Jonin and will be registered as a member of the ANBU. Of course, that's a lie. Because tomorrow I will personally have you run... special errands for me."

Shino gulped. He didn't like the close proximity.

"Make sure you say your goodbyes today. You'll be listed as dead for security reasons."

And with that, Shino is let out of the facility. He finds himself pondering aimlessly on a nearby park bench. Autumn has turned the Konohagakure into a beautiful display of warm colors. The trees looked like they've been covered in a rich, velvet cloak and the air was sublime. Shino wonders how long it'll be till he can bask in this scenery again.

First, he'd visit his father. Then, he'd visit his other family members. After that he'll visit...no one. How could Shino bear to look at his friend's faces after resolving so adamantly to despise them? After convincing himself that they've forgotten him.

(And Shino still hopes. He hopes that somehow someone will notice eventually.)

But he supposes he'll finish his priorities first. Evade a civil war, restore his clan's honor, and the rest will be his secondary concerns. It is dire that he doesn't get emotional, especially in the current state Konoha is in.

He looks at the children, playing games under a nearby tree. They were too young for the academy, of course, but if they were old enough to attend, would they all turn out like him? Cold and efficient?

Shino thinks that he used to be a perfectly good student. A good ninja, but perhaps not so good as a friend. One can see plenty of differences between Shino and the rambunctious Naruto, but do they realize how much he envies his cheerful personality?

(And Shino envies him so much. He's taken the attention of the girl he favors. And now, he has taken everyone's attention away from Shino's disappearance.

Naruto had outshined Shino. As if Shino was a shadow that should not exist.)

He's had enough of the pointless thoughts. It was almost noon and Shino has to hurry home if he wants to say proper goodbyes.

But a shrill bark had frozen him to his seat.

"Akamaru, calm down!" A familiar voice shouted.

Shino jolted at the sound. It was coming from behind him. He senses two people walking by, and a dog beside them. Shino was already certain of who they were.

"Akamaru, what's wrong boy? You shouldn't be barking at strangers." The man—Kiba himself said, as he crouched to rub Akamaru's head.

"Maybe he sees someone, Kiba-kun? I don't think anyone's back home from missions..." Hinata replied, looking around the park.

Oh heavens. If there was anyone who Shino would avoid the most, it'd be these two—Hinata and Kiba. He doesn't want to face them. He doesn't even want to be near them. Alas, everytime Shino denies this thought his heart urges him more and more. To simply turn to them. To tell them everything.

(But who was it really who had decided to forget about him in the first place? No one had bothered to ask where he went after the Chuunin exams.)

Akamaru's barking turned into a soft whine. The canine was visibly confused.

Shino has yet to move from his spot at the bench.

"Come on now. No one is here. You've mistaken him for someone else, buddy." Kiba says, sounding a little harsh for someone who claims to be Akamaru's partner.

(Shino wanted to burst out laughing. Doubting a ninja dog's nose? Especially one who has worked with Shino for years? Kiba was a bad liar.

See, even Akamaru notices! Shino thinks to himself, proud to have concluded that the fault was theirs all along.)

Akamaru still whines when Kiba motions him away from Shino's bench.

"Why are you being so difficult today?!" Kiba grunts, frustrated. "Come on Akamaru, you don't want to upset Hinata on our date!"

Oh.

So it’s like that, huh.

"K-Kiba-kun! Please don't shout in public..." Hinata whimpers, fiddling her thumbs together.

And with a little nudge, Akamaru finally moves on with them. The couple enjoying the beauty of Konoha's Autumn, oblivious to everything behind it.

It took minutes. Hours, even for Shino to compose himself enough to process the ordeal.

And those hours were filled with empty pondering. With words that were on the tip of falling out of his mouth. With feelings that he had not been brave enough to admit before. With the eternal, everlasting regret of not speaking up.

But there was nothing he could do.

A shinobi must constantly suppress their emotions, follow a strict set of rules that they decide among themselves, and avoid extraneous conflict

This is for the best. he repeats to himself. Hinata would be better off without him, he thinks.

(But he could have made her happy too. He would've given everything for her.)

A stroll to wash off these thoughts. Yes, Shino thinks that all he needed was to cool his head, shrug it off, and return to his obligations tomorrow. The warm glow of sunset was eager to mask his unease.

The sunset was particularly shy that day, and had swiftly sank to allow the moon to greet him instead. It's already past six o,clock. He knows that he needs to greet his family, but Shino's distraught conscience told him to look at the sky. The moon was still as luminous as usual.

Shino had always known how beautiful the moon is. How beautiful its pearly shimmer is.

(How gentle her eyes were, radiating such a serene, pure love)

And like an opened dam, suddenly Shino feels his chest aching. Like a hole had opened inside him--one that he can't touch nor see. A hole that, no matter how hard Shino tries, would always engulf him in rain. In a downpour that feels like a thousand needles showering on him.

It feels like such a distant memory. Months ago they were still fine. Hinata was still his comrade. And now, she's floating further away from his grasp. Was there no more space for Shino in her heart?

(But Shino was a fool to believe—

A firefly can't love the moon.

Its language can't be heard,

Its wings can't reach the sky,

Its light can't compare to the sea of stars.

It can only do what a firefly does best.

Illuminate the night in its own glow.

A token of a love that falls on deaf ears.)

By the time Shino reaches the Aburame compound, his tears were already dry. Shibi waits for him near the estate gates, and without speaking a word, held his son in a deep embrace. A fitting greeting for a child who's always been forced to grow up before his time.

Shino was going to stay the night in the estate. Saying goodbyes and packing things up. Of course, no further information would be given—everyone was in a state of wary due to the constant supervision.

He had to console them the best he can. Explain the situation. Share his insights. Assure them that this is his job as the Aburame heir. And for that, he would do everything in his capacity to make sure his loved ones don't perish.

A night is never enough to tell stories. By tomorrow morning, Shibi would have said goodbye to two sons.

#shinowek2021 #Shino Aburame #aburame shino #naruto headcanons #naruto fanfiction #hinata hyuuga #kiba inuzuka #akamaru #Akamaru is the real mvp here #we love some good team angst #also...i rlly like the last sentence i wrote in this one 👁️👁️#also..i like the last sentence i wrote in this one 👁️👁️

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pochapal · 4 years ago

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I hate doctor 11 but ive never been able to explain why in like words lmao. He feels like such a mary sue character imo and like theres something about his characterisation that was always just really ineffective (like the stuff about fishfingers and custard or whatever it was). Imo i'd love to hear you give top 5 worst things about the 11 era because i rlly just love when it gets torn apart

i hold nothing but a seething contempt and loathing for that man. every time he appeared on screen i felt ready to snap like a riled up chimpanzee in my enclosure. i am frothing at the mouth and overcome with a desire to start flinging heavy objects. this might be incoherent and inconsistent but i started this rewatch in feb 2020 and only finished this week so i got through 11′s episodes last august/september time and i refuse to revisit it to jog my memory or fact check anything i’m saying here because this man does not deserve the space in my mind for that.

the first thing is i can’t fucking STAND the quirky whimsy timey wimey bit he has going on all of the time. i can’t even say this is because this is a kids show and i was a teen and then adult when i first properly watched him but actually!! when i was eleven years old i’d sleep over at a friend’s house most weekends and it always coincided with the airing of a new season 5 episode and i remember we watched the finale with the dumb time hopping to get out of the box prison that was never explained and didn’t make sense and i thought at the time “this is really stupid”. and before that my only other doctor who exposure was watching the david tennant christmas specials with another friend and throughout childhood my only opinion on doctor who was “this is a tv show that is not for me but is one that all the boys i am friends with like so i will put up with it to maintain our friendships” but at least those episodes were both suspenseful and engaging enough to keep me watching all the way through. like who the fuck does an end of the world sci fi plot and approaches it with an “oopsy woopsy i am a funny little alien man who is going to stop you all by making you do a hecking silly” like it’s unneeded and self-parodies an already cheesy show to the point where it becomes unwatchable and makes it impossible to ever take this man seriously.

next thing that downright sucks ass so badly is the stupid fucking overwritten constantly escalating plotlines. like everything from season 5 up until his regeneration at the end of season 7 is meant to be this grand interconnected cosmic plot about how...the doctor trying to bring back his planet will end the universe or something so all the top powers across all of reality tried again and again to stop him from doing that except he doesn’t know what’s going on so he keeps thwarting these people who supposedly mean good?? i mean i sure don’t fucking know what they were trying to say!! like for some reason we never get the doctor suddenly becomes this superdemon that threatens everything so these people (whoever they are) decide to, in sequence: suck him through a time rift to erase him from existence, trap him in a prison and remake a universe without him, take his companion’s baby and turn her into a perfectly trained doctor killer, form two(!!) secret societies to hunt him throughout history that are only stopped by his companion splintering herself across his personal timeline to protect him, and repeatedly cause reality collapsing events because it’s a kinder outcome for the universe than what he will do. this grand and terrible event turns out to be...he spends a few hundred years chilling by a rift that leads to his home planet and protects a few generations of children from monsters which convinces them to give him infinite regeneration power then fuck off back to their pocket universe. and it’s like!! what is the point of anything that happens in this man’s era when everything is always “the darkest moment” or whatever the fuck!! i don’t care!! we never get a compelling reason to believe this bumbling clown of a man could ever be a universal threat!! the whole thing is so dumb i hate it!!!

thing number three i hate is how the eleventh doctor is ALSO characterised as this abrasive egotistic male supergenius to the point where he becomes genuinely indistinguishable from bbc sherlock. genuinely who enjoyed seeing this guy constantly tell people their tiny human minds can’t comprehend what he’s doing and then basically just wave his magic wand to solve whatever problem each episode is facing. 2012 is the year of human sin because this fucking shitsmear character archetype somehow became both a redditor role model AND a tumblr sexyman and it’s like!! nobody is enjoying this stop making this seem cool! him saying timey wimey thing any time he does anything is frustrating and dumb and locks the viewer out of giving a fuck about anything that is happening! smartest man in the room syndrome is a disease and the eleventh doctor is terminal with it. like remember how they established river as an accomplished scientist (when she wasn’t being a child soldier or a time paradox or whatever the fuck) and every time that came up mr doctor eleven man was like “oh this thing is obvious because i’m a genius and you didn’t realise because your brain is tiny so get out of the way and let the grownups think” or that time it turned out amy had been replaced with a slime clone for half the season and the doctor chewed rory (audience surrogate) out for somehow not realising this fact we didn’t know right from the start and like. this served no purpose other than to draw into severe question why the doctor is also this super beloved magical figure implicitly trusted by all children everywhere like. mr steven moffat is totally allergic to writing and solving mysteries in his tv show and fuck you for wanting to figure things out as you go along based on the new evidence you uncover at strategic plot intervals just let this asshole man use magical thinking to reveal he knew the answer all along and you’re a fucking idiot for not also realising this thing which had no basis or precedent anywhere else in the show.

speaking of dumb things let us not forget the absolute shitshow that was minority representation in this era. i’m not even talking about the low hanging fruit of how genuinely unironically sexist amy and clara were written where each episode moffat either seemed to loathe them or was incredibly horny over them and they had no character growth or arc or fucking anything. i’m talking about how fucking shit terrible the incidental representation was. god remember how every single fucking gay person who appeared in this era was written as one incredibly fucking stupid joke and how the women were all either sexy dominatrix, feeble girl in love, or Mother (or all three in some really terrible cases) and i’m not qualified to talk about this but also how incredibly white this era was and how on two separate occasions we had monarchs reimagined as sexy girlbosses with a gun played by black women who the doctor leched over. nothing about any of this was good ESPECIALLY coming off the back of rtd who was surprisingly forward thinking for 2005 and did a really good job of positing travel with the doctor as queer allegory. in comparison moffat gave us THE MOST heterosexual shlock i’ve ever had to endure. amy and rory could have been interesting characters were they not hemmed into this domestic bickering young straight married couple bullshit that was in no way changed or altered by traveling with the doctor except for the quasi incestuous river song reveal that was dumb and bad and stupid.

the last major mega gripe i have with the series is moffat’s fucking jingoistic boner for british military aesthetics. this carried over throughout his entire tenure as showrunner but was super terrible vomit inducing in eleven’s era. the unironic admiration for ww2 britain and winston churchill is downright wretched. are you incapable of telling a second world war story outside of churchill’s london and plucky blitz fighters. shit gives me hives so badly. and then!!! that weird church owned army that features in the future that end up being bad not for the concept of what basically amounts to an imperialistic intergalactic rendition of the fucking crusades but because they’re part of the nonsense go nowhere puzzlebox narrative that says the doctor is a not good man who will do bad things to the universe :(. remember how rtd’s doctor was a freshly traumatised man hot off the war criminal press who time and time again vehemently refuses to engage in military violence, but who tragically inadvertently turns every one of his companions into soldiers in his own personal army, and he has this moment of complete horror at the realisation and it is this which causes the downward spiral that ends in 10′s regeneration. and then how there’s this cringe line about how there’s a force of people who are “the doctor’s army, always ready to fight his battles when he’s not around” or some shit and then it turns out this is actually massive literal military operation and we’re meant to celebrate this. fuck off.

bonus round because this needs to be said but i have never hated anything like i hated that fucking human tardis episode. everything about it induced violent anger in me from the sickening overindulgence of that softgoth dark whimsy helena bonham carter tim burton aesthetic to the bafflingly terrible evil carny stereotype of those junk scavengers to the overblown sudden tragic shipbait romance of human tardis and the doctor. every word out of her mouth was trite shit and the fact that the death of her body was presented as this super emotional dramatic scene despite there being no buy in or incentive to care and the fact that every single person on tumblr in 2012 ate that shit up like it was fucking gourmet. i loathe every single thing about that episode so much.

#Anonymous #hi bestie here's 1500 words of me getting mad about the worst television experience i had in my life #why the FUCK was this man tumblr's favourite back in the day. what the fuck did anyone see in any of this shit #i never want to think about dr whom ever again

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britesparc · 4 years ago

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Weekend Top Ten #469

Top Ten Crazy WandaVision Theories

So all the while I was watching The Mandalorian I kept thinking, blimey, they’ve nailed this. There’s an oft-repeated problem with modern serial dramas, which is that they tend to tread water a little bit; despite being shorn of the network requirement of episodes being a certain length, or having a certain number of episodes in a season, there’s this in-built compulsion to make about a dozen 45-minute episodes. This is what scuppered the Marvel Netflix series in particular; there simply wasn’t enough story to cover the seasons, and as a result there was a lot of treading of water. This has also affected the recent Star Trek shows, although Discovery does show signs of pulling out of this “twelve-hour movie” mindset. Mando totally transcends this in a superlative way: each episode is basically an “adventure of the week” type thing (Mando versus spiders, Mando goes to the fish planet, Mando meets a Jedi, etc). But each episode also builds on the arc; he’s always on the same quest, and everything he does week by week furthers this quest. As much as I was looking forward to WandaVision, I kept reminding myself, there’s no way they can do this; no way these two shows – my most-anticipated shows from two of my most-beloved franchises – can hit the bar so successfully, back-to-back.

Well.

I’m not sure if WandaVision is quite the overall triumph The Mandalorian is, but they’re both pretty tremendous achievements in slightly different ways. Wanda manages to tell a rather unsettling story in the MCU whilst also doing a terrific job of parodying sitcom tropes; it works on a meta level as well as a practical one. Also, as far as puzzle-box type programmes go, this one has been doing an excellent job; week by week, you’re further intrigued by what’s going on in Westview; what’s real? Who’s behind it? is Vision still dead? Will Darcy get her own show? It’s a fantastic exercise in drip-feeding information, maintaining a degree of unease and suspense, and offering a compelling mystery. Will they keep it up until the end? I’ve no idea; the reveal at the end of episode seven wasn’t quite a jaw-on-the-floor moment but it was exquisitely done, with a theme song and everything. Even if the most obvious predictions end up being true and the finale becomes a relatively straightforward goodies-versus-baddies barney, I’ve got faith in everyone involved to at least give us something utterly compelling and thoroughly entertaining.

But what if there really is at least one huge surprise left up the show’s vibranium sleeve? Certainly, the reveal of Evan Peters as Pietro Maximoff – being, visually if not in character at least, the Fox/X-Men universe version of Wanda’s brother, rather than the Adam Taylor-Johnson version we knew from Age of Ultron – was a hell of a moment, seemingly bridging the gap between the MCU as we knew it and the previously Fox-controlled properties. Since then, there’s been this bubbling rumour (which I’ve tried not to read too much into by literally not reading too much; this is something I’ve divined from headlines or stray tweets, because I want to keep forging my way through WandaVision without a map) that there is another epic cameo approaching, on the level of Luke Skywalker popping up in the finale of The Mandalorian. That moment was something of a surprise, even though I had it rather spoiled by Twitter; despite muting as many words as possible to do with the show, “Luke Skywalker” still popped up in trending topics. I’ve learned my lesson, and I essentially forgo any social media (and a lot of other sites too) until I’ve seen the most recent episode. Anyway, what if this is true; what if there’s another character or moment that will rock the Marvel world to an even greater extent than The Other Pietro? If we’d be as surprised and delighted by something as much as we were by Luke making short work of those Dark Troopers? With this in mind, and being aware of the encroaching WandaVision finale, here are some predictions. What could happen? Who could we see? Which long-dormant plot thread will get resurrected? Read on to find out! And – spoiler warning – this has been revisited following the most recent episode; we are officially in the endgame now.

And I’m sure all of these are realistic and serious suggestions.

I Am Your Father: We have actually met Wanda’s parents at last; ordinary decent Sarkovian folk, it seems. But from where did her nascent witchy powers appear? What if, in a shocking last-minute twist, we discover her real father, and he’s played by… Ian McKellen! It was Eric all along!

SWORD versus Skrulls: a post-credit sting will reveal that – shock! – Tyler Hayward is, in fact, a SKRULL! Yes, finally, the shape-shifting buggers will get to be the baddies from the comics, as an up-to-no-good splinter faction of the beleaguered race makes its presence felt on the MCU, having successfully infiltrated world governments over the past thirty years. This will set up Samuel L. Jackson’s Secret Invasion series.

The Ultron of it All: there have been more mentions of Ultron in WandaVision than in any MCU property since, well, Age of Ultron. And now we have a custom-built all-white model of Vision, big as life and twice as creepy. What if – what if – shorn of his own psyche (his own soul?) and without an Infinity Stone to keep him upright, there remains in the hardware some remnant of everyone’s favourite sarky, genocidal mechanoid? Ultron returns! Screw you, planet Earth!

The Sorcerer Supreme is Not Happy: we know magic exists in the MCU because of Doctor Strange, so seeing Agatha and her family get their Hocus Pocus on in old Salem wasn’t too much of a surprise. But isn’t the Sorcerer Supreme supposed to keep an eye on magic use in the multiverse? I was half expecting Tilda Swinton to pop up in the flashback and bind Agatha with the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak. But now, with all the chaos magic Wanda is using in Westview, coupled with Agatha’s own spelling bee? Surely this has drawn the attention of somebody? Anybody? I mean, New York isn’t that far from Jersey, especially if you’ve got a sling ring, y’know?

No More Avengers: so Benedict Cumberbatch popping up wouldn’t be that much of a surprise (especially as Wanda is in the next Doctor Strange movie) but even if he’s not on Magic Police duty, wouldn’t an enhanced situation of this size draw the attention of one of the Avengers? Except – shock horror! – there are no Avengers! In a revelation that will set up the status quo of Falcon and the Winter Soldier, since the events of Endgame the Avengers literally don’t exist. So who will unite to save the world, not just from Wanda or Agatha, but also from the likes of SWORD? Well, right now, no one; but maybe that’ll change when the real villains appear…

No More Mutants: in the “House of M” storyline, Wanda very famously said “no more mutants” and it was so (more or less). Mutants don’t (seem to) exist in the MCU. But what if, at one point, they did? I don’t think this could have been Wanda’s doing, but what if in the past someone else had used magic to de-power/de-mutify the existing mutant population of Earth, and – basically – made everyone forget about it? And in the climax of WandaVision, well, “no more” is undone and – boom! – X-genes abound. This could even maybe set up some events in The Eternals, who I believe have some history with mutants in the comics (I’m really not very well-versed in Eternals lore)

Soul Stealer: so Wanda’s the Scarlet Witch, and a chaos magician, and super-enhanced courtesy of an Infinity Stone, but still: how did she create not one but three super-powered lifeforms? Where did they come from? Did she steal their souls? Is she leeching her own life-force to maintain them? I think we’ll discover a bit more about her powers and reveal that she’s drawing energy mutliversally, maybe from the Dark Dimension – maybe from Mephisto? I’d actually put money on Mephisto not showing up at all, despite his comic book connections to Agatha and Wanda.

Multiversal Madness: why that Pietro? He’s just a fake, just an automaton – right? But he’s still out and about spooking Monica whilst Agatha’s dealing with Wanda… yeah? And he looks like another Pietro from another universe (even if he doesn’t act like that). So… why? And who? I really, really think there’s some kind of multiversal craziness going on here, some force beyond Wanda (and Agatha!). Maybe it’s to do with Wanda pulling power from across the multiverse, maybe it’s… something else. Maybe we’ll get cameos from Lou Ferringo, Bruce Campbell, Spider-Ham and ROM the Space Knight. Hey, don’t forget: Transformers was a Marvel comic once! And they do have a Chaos-Bringer…

Wanda Did It: one of the prevailing theories/queries about WandaVision has been who’s behind it all. Wanda’s not powerful enough (or villainous enough), so who exactly did create TV Westview? Who brought Vision back, gave Wanda her sons? Well, the latest ep sure seemed to show that it really was Wanda All Along. The explanation being that she’s “the Scarlet Witch”, a presumably hella-powerful sorcerer and also (let’s not forget) imbued with Infinity Stoniness. But is she on her own really that strong, and would she – even in her despair – alter so many minds? What if there’s another Wanda, a Wanda prepared to go all-out, a Wanda who – after losing everything on her Earth is trying to recreate it by pooling her powers will another Wanda? An alternate universe, more damaged, more villainous Wanda – a Wanda who’s already said “no more mutants”, maybe; maybe even the Wanda from the Fox X-Men films (who AFAIK we’ve only seen as a little girl in her brother’s arms). That’s why Pietro looks like that, because she’s trying to rebuild her own life using the powers of this other Wanda. Two Wandas; two Witches. Dukin’ it out. And who can come to save the day, but the X-Men?

We’re All Doomed: giving credit to my brother for pointing me in this direction when he said “if there’s a big bad in WandaVision it either has to be someone very good at magic or very good at science”. Or… both? Think about it. Which character, if they cameoed in an MCU property, could possibly generate as much excitement as Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian? No actor from the MCU; not even Downey. From another Marvel property? We’ve had a Fox actor already and with the rumours about Spider-Man: No Way Home, whether we saw Hugh Jackman or Tobey Maguire, I think that would be exciting but not as exciting. So I think it’s a character, not an actor. A character big and exciting enough to make us all squee. And which character from Marvel has never been seen in the MCU, is not necessarily expected any time soon, is very good at magic and very good at science? One. I’d say only one. Bring it on.

This actually became a lot more sensible than I’d intended! I was gonna go all-out, rolling in Muppet Babies, MODOK, HERBIE, the Phoenix Force, and basically the entire Patton Oswalt speech from Parks and Recreation. And whilst I think virtually none of these will (or should?!) happen, just imagine… man, I can’t believe we have to wait a week!

#top ten #wanda #vision #mcu #wandavision #wandavision spoilers #movies #tv #comics #magic

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theshatteredrose · 4 years ago

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Relic Keepers: Awakening of the Red Lily (Chapter 1) - Original Fiction

Title: Relic Keepers: Awakening of the Red Lily

Summary: A 1000 years after an apocalyptic event called the Bombardment, humanity have learnt how to harness the power of mana. Silverleaf Military Academy is a learning centre for Indigo Children, those who have the ability to use Mana. And they are divided into two classes; the Elites, who’s skills make them superior on the battlefield. And Passives, who’s skills do not belong outside of the Academy. Supposedly. Eishirou is classed as a Passive. He is also a Chronicler. Gathering lost information, finding relics, learning about the far-flung distant past is what he does. And he enjoys it. However, his life changes when he gets called out to his first expedition in the field with his new roommate, Zayne – a powerfully protective Elite!

Genres: Young adult, suspense, action, adventure, treasure hunt, scifi fantasy, romance, slow burn romance, gay romance

Notes: Ok, here it is. M y first attempt at an original novel! A little nervous to be honest, but I’ll try my best to be entertaining! I’ll also try my best to keep the chapters under 3k for easier reading. But, you know, things happen. Now, this will be a very long project and I will attempt to maintain weekly updates. I do hope you'll give this story a chance. And I hope you'll enjoy reading~

Ao3 | Wattpad | Inkitt | FictionPress

Chapter 1:

Eishirou huffed a tired sigh to remove an annoying strand of brown hair from his eyes. His eyes, normally a honey brown, were no doubt darken and possibly even bloodshot from staring at a bright computer screen for a few long hours.

He enjoyed his role as a Researcher and Chronicler. But staring at data for hours on end certainly got boring really quickly.

“Eishirou? You’re still here?”

Looking up from his work screen, Eishirou glanced over at his fellow Chronicler and friend.

Reddish brown hair and vivid emerald green eyes. Misaki. He was a good guy, friendly and considerate. Protective. He did have an intimidating glare of death, though. Guy knew how to scare the shit out of newbies, that was for sure. And some of the veterans, too.

“Yeah, but not for much longer, I hope,” Eishirou replied as he returned back to his work screen. “Someone was reported to have messed around with a few archives. I’m just making sure they didn’t actually mess with the data.”

Eishirou didn’t need to look over at Misaki to know that his usual friendly smile had turned into a deep frown. “Someone hacked the data? Do you know who?”

“Nope. Just that someone did.”

“I see,” Misaki murmured. “I will find out then.”

Eishirou wasn’t able to suppress an amused snort when he heard Misaki’s footsteps move away. He felt sorry for them, whoever they were. For a few seconds at least. Messing with the data was a bit no-no.

The information he was inspecting was basic, but needed to be preserved regardless. It was information he had seen all before. He knew it by heart, honestly. So, he would be able to get through it all quickly.

The prestigious Silverleaf Academy, a military university where students possessing mana-infused abilities came to train. It was located in Araluen, a Sanctuary City. Set in the middle of an island, surrounded by a large stone wall. And that was located ten miles from the shore of a vastly inhabitable continent. A continent that was reportedly to have once been as Australia. A place they now referred to as Main Land.

"Be sure to book now for the 1022nd Anniversary of the Bombardment!" the large plasma advertising board on the other side of the information centre robotically sounded, momentarily distracting Eishirou from his work.

Oh, was it that time of the year again?

The Bombardment was the name for an era in time, over a thousand years ago, where several asteroids impacted the earth within minutes of each other. Several large cities were wiped clean from the surface. Millions of lives where taken. Many more to follow in the apocalyptic aftermath. Life as those who knew it back then was irreversibly changed.

Of course, they didn't have the exact time or date when the Bombardment had occurred. Information from that era was largely lost and destroyed. And the information they had uncovered mostly contradicted itself. It was difficult to tell between all the fake propaganda and the truth. Not to mention that ruins seemed to date back further than a thousand years. Ancient. No mentioning of them in any form of text or data.

The common consensus was that the Bombardment happened over a thousand years ago. And had brought modern civilisation to its knees.

It also brought the use and discovery of mana.

The scientific community all agreed on one thing; if humanity had not discovered mana and found a way to harness it, then humanity would have been destroyed, too.

By using mana and infusing it within their inventions, they were able to rebuild society. Restructured cities. Learn how to live off the land. Learning how to harness mana within the human body.

The mana itself was largely a mystery. It was a source of energy. Mostly invisible until it was condensed and concentrated, which would then be presented in a glowing light.

However, the scientific community was divided in regards to where said mana came from. The asteroids? Or were rich mana deposits hidden within the Earth the entire time and it took a cataclysmic impact to reveal them?

There were a lot of…discussions about that topic. And certain scientists would often times get violent and confrontational.

Eishirou didn’t have a preference either way. Far as he knew, both scenarios were likely. And did it really make that much of a difference where Mana came from a thousand years ago? It wasn’t going to affect your average Joe’s way of life.

Those born after the Bombardment were often referred as Indigo Children. They were born with the innate ability to use Mana. And they fell into two categories; Elites and Passives.

Some form of discrimination was still rife amongst the Indigo Children. Elites verses and Passives. Elites are those born with battling abilities. Creating swords or other miscellaneous weapons out of mana. They were the ones who fight against the creatures known simply as ShadowDwellers.

ShadowDwellers were, simply put, abominations. Deformed creatures that also possessed the ability to use Mana. Again, the scientific community was divided with where they came from. Again, the asteroids? Or deep within the Earth itself? Some even believed that they were once humans themselves, mutated by mana in some way.

Silverleaf Academy had several Elite Squadrons that ensured the safety of students and residents alike.

Eishirou was a Passive Indigo Child. He didn’t fight in battles. Though, he could enter the battlefield if necessary. Only as a Medic, however. He possessed no fighting skills whatsoever. What skills he did possess was useful for research and archaeology.

He was a bit of an oddity, if one went by the Academy Hierarchy. He was a Chronicler, someone who dealt with gathering information and ensuring its safety for future generations. So, many Elites would refer to them as Paper-Pushers.

But he was also a Medic. And according to the Hierarchy, he was off-limits. No harm was to come to medics, no matter what. Anyone who dared to harm a medic deserved severe punishment.

So, Eishirou was both a nobody and someone of immunity.

In short, the Academy Hierarchy was stupid.

Chroniclers and Information Gatherers were important, however. The ‘modern’ civilisations from a thousand years ago seemed to have believed that they were the pinnacle of evolution. And they possessed all the information that there was to be known.

And yet, many of the ruins that have been discovered date back potentially millions of years. Civilisations deep underground and within the seas. Places and locations that were believed to have been impossible during ‘modern’ civilisation.

Either they were completely arrogant. Or completely ignorant.

A mixture of both, perhaps.

Scientists of today refuse to make the same mistake. They wish to document everything, no matter how controversial or ‘wrong’ that information appeared to be. Fact over fiction. Truth over lies.

Well, the document seemed perfectly intact. Done! He was a free man.

A buzzing sound from his communicator, however, stopped him dead in his tracks. Typical.

With a drawn-out groan, Eishirou slumped back into his chair and picked up his communicator. He didn’t need to see who was ringing him to know who it was. “Prof, you’re slipping. I didn’t even get my butt out of the chair this time.”

The hologram scene of Professor Chryses chortled. “I’ll try harder next time.”

As long as he didn’t catch him in the shower again. If he did, Eishirou was just going to ignore it. No matter how many times he rang.

“Let me guess; you got an assignment?” Eishirou asked.

The middle-aged man on the other side of the communicator nodded. With his dark sun-burned skin and deep wrinkles around his eyes, he was your typical off-the-grid researcher. The best at the Academy, to be completely frank. And he was Eishirou’s mentor.

“That’s right. And you’re coming with me.”

That surprised Eishirou. The only field research experience he had was helping in the restoration of relics and runestones that Jacob and his fellow researchers had discovered. He hadn’t been away from the city before.

“Really? Where to? Are we heading for Main Land?”

Jacob shook his head. “No. A small but tropically dense island thirty miles from here. It should be a rather short assignment. A damaged stone tablet was discovered.”

Ah, that was why he wanted him to join him. That, and he was old enough to start gaining some field experience. “And you need my expertise?”

“Correct,” Jacob smiled. “See you in an hour. Elite Team 3 will be meeting us at the Hanger 12.”

“Elites?” Eishirou repeated in a surprised tone.

“ShadowDwellers had been reported in the area,” Jacob explained simply.

Ah, that explained a lot. Though, there seemed to be an increase in ShadowDweller sightings and occurrences lately. He briefly wondered why that was.

“Right, see you in a bit,” Eishirou returned before he ended the call.

Well, no point dawdling now.

Eishirou grabbed his shoulder bag from the floor of his work desk and stood up. The small door which encapsulated him at his desk slid open noiselessly, allowing him to step out onto the stairs.

“You’re heading out again?” a feminine voice practically whined at him.

He turned to look over at another Chronicler. Long purple hair, dark pink eyes, quite fragile in appearance. Lyvia. She worked full-time within the Communication centre. Her frail body prevented her from joining field missions.

“The ol’ slave driver wants me to join him on an assignment,” Eishirou explained. “A short one, he claims. But we all know what that means.”

Lyvia’s pout quickly transformed into a smile and she nodded. “I heard Elites. Which team?”

“Team 3.”

“Oh!” her expression brightened unexpectedly. “I heard they got a new member. Ernesta practically forced him to join.”

That sounded like something Ernesta would do. She was very mild-mannered, peaceful in some ways. But she was terrifying when angry. Oooh, boy, Eishirou never wanted to get on her bad side.

“You might get to meet him,” Lyvia continued before she gave a telling giggle. “He’s supposedly cute.”

Eishirou rolled his eyes. “I’ll be sure to let you know.”

He bid his fellow Chroniclers farewell as he turned and walked up the pathway toward the exit. He walked past the main Observation Deck and out through the automatic sliding doors. He noted that the Observation Deck was empty. Which was usually a good thing. Nothing untoward was occurring throughout the Academy and city. Whenever the Communicator Commander was there, it meant trouble was about to go down.

Eishirou hadn’t had the pleasure of being on duty when Professor Jalen, or Communications Commander, started barking orders. He was a Chronicler, but he dealt more with the field work. Often aiding Professor Chryses. He only ever used his Chronicler privileges when he needed some classified information. Or just information in general.

He had the ability to access any information at any given time. It was easier within the Communication Centre, but anywhere he could get access to the internet, he could get the information he wanted.

The buzzing of his communicator pulled Eishirou from his thoughts once more. When he pulled it out of his pocket, he half expected to see that it was the Jacob again. Instead he was surprised to see it was his dorm superintendent.

“Katsuto, what’s up?” Eishirou asked as the hologram of a man with a stern expression flickered into view.

“Just informing you that you have a new roommate,” Katsuto stated in his usual brisk and stern manner.

He stopped dead in his tracks. Wait, roommate?

“What roommate?” Eishirou immediately asked. “No one said anything about me getting a roommate!”

Katsuto barely even blinked at his response. “You do now. He’s waiting for you. Play nice.”

“W-wait a minute-!” Eishirou spluttered. But it was useless. Katsuto finished the call on his end and Eishirou was left staring at the screen of his communicator.

He sighed loudly as his shoulders slumped forward in defeat. Asshole. Could have at least warned him a few days in advance. He knew he was to get a new roommate one day, after his old roommate had unfortunately taken ill and had to move to a dorm closer to the medical wing.

But that was beside the point. A bit of common courtesy from Katsuto wouldn’t have gone astray! And he didn’t even mention the guy’s name!

Ugh…

He uttered another sigh and kept walking. Well, there was nothing he could do about it now. He had an assignment to skip off to, anyway. He couldn’t play host for very long. Even so, he hoped the guy was easy to get along with.

After a few minutes of walking, he finally reached the door to his room. He took a minute to gather his composure before he used his key card to open the door. And he stepped inside.

His gaze immediately flickered over to the bed located on the left side of the room. And yup, there was someone there.

He appeared to have been going through his luggage. Tall guy, a couple of heads taller than Eishirou was. So…over six feet. With floppy dark blue hair. His eyes appeared purple. His skin was a light tan. Perhaps it was natural, or it meant that he had spent quite a lot of time outside.

No matter.

“Ah, you’re my new roommate,” Eishirou greeted, gaining the new guy’s attention.

The guy turned in his direction and gave him a thankfully friendly looking smile. “That’s me. You must be Eishirou.”

The door slid closed behind him as Eishirou moved into the room. “And that’s me.”

“The name’s Zayne.”

As Eishirou shook the other guy’s hand in greeting, he noted that he had an Elite emblem on his jacket. He had to fight the urge to do a double-take. Wait, an Elite? Why would an Elite be rooming with a Passive? Especially as Passive like him?

Although, he was…kinda cute, he had to admit. He had the body of an Elite; subtle muscles, sleek form, straight back, and oozing with confidence. Hoped he retained that friendliness after learning that Eishirou was a paper-pusher.

“Sorry, can’t stay long to chat,” Zayne suddenly stated with a wry grin. “First day here and I’m already on an assignment.”

“Doesn’t take long, unfortunately,” Eishirou returned with an empathetic tone. Before he, too, grinned. “I have one, too. Where you headed?”

“Hanger 12 for now.”

Wait…

“Ah, what Elite team, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Team 3,” Zayne answered quickly, completely unbothered that Eishirou knew he was an elite without asking.

So, he was the new guy on Elite Team 3? Eishirou wasn’t entirely sure what to feel about that. Some Elite’s don’t like the prospect of acting like bodyguards to Passives.

Well, one way to find out.

“Well…looks like you’re escorting me there,” Eishirou commented, earning himself a confused tilt of the head from Zayne. “I’m a Passive. And you’re going to be acting as a bodyguard for this assignment.”

#original fiction #original novel #original characters #writing #fiction #Relic Keepers #Relic Keepers Awakening of the Red Lily

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retro-scorpio · 4 years ago

Text

Sexual Tension

I don’t know what else to call this little one shot, so you’re unfortunately stuck with this.

I wrote this short story a little while ago, and it’s basically a college AU featuring Julian Devorak from The Arcana with special appearances from Julian’s sister Portia, Nadia Satrinava, Count Lucio, and Asra Alnazar. I may end up adding to this later, but as of right now this is the finished product.

So, if you’re into fanfiction about characters from The Arcana, then enjoy this story.

Julian has the rather stereotypical reputation of being a loner, so much so that it’s impossible to track him down outside of classes. Even then, he’s an elusive presence in the room, always choosing to sit in the back and keep to himself, his notes, and his cup of black coffee. Rumors spread about him as a result of his mysterious nature, but he doesn’t seem to know about them or care. At least, that’s what I’ve been told. I don’t know how true any of it is, because ever since I stepped foot in this university, I’m seeing him just about everywhere I go.

I first got a glimpse of Julian when I bumped into his shoulder as I was trying to find one of my classes. We both apologized, and he directed me to where I needed to go. Later on that same day, I discovered that we were both in the same English class about texts from the Victorian era, and so I opted to sit next to him. He’s always in the campus library the same time I am, hunched over books and scribbling things down in his notebook, and there was even one time where I caught him prancing around outside in the early morning light as if he was part of an imaginary sword fight.

So, I shouldn’t be that surprised to see him at auditions for our school’s fall production of Sweeny Todd, but at the same time it has me wondering just how many more times our paths are going to cross. Perhaps he likes the story as much as I do and wanted to see how our school would adopt it.

“Hello!” a skinny, petite, pale, brunette lady exclaims excitedly at me, startling me and making me flinch slightly. “I haven’t seen your face before. I’m Lizzy.” She extends her hand out to me, and I shake it. Before I can even tell her my name, though, she asks bluntly,

“You don’t know what role you want, do you?”

“Pardon?” Lizzy sheepishly smiles.

“Sorry; I should have warned you in advance that I’m really good at reading people. Being involved in theatre does that to you over time.”

“It’s okay,” I respond. “Especially because you’re right; I’m not even sure if I’ll get a part at all. I just really enjoy the story and thought I’d give this a shot.”

“Have you ever acted before?”

“A couple times, yeah. When I was younger. I’ve always liked the idea of acting, but I’ve not had much time to devote to it.

“Well, here’s your chance to tip your toes back in the water! I think I have the perfect role for you.”

“You do?” I ask. Lizzy enthusiastically nods her head.

“You see that giant group of people over there?” She points out a crowd huddled on the other side of the auditorium, appearing to be watching Julian’s every move and swooning over him.

“They’re all wanting to play the role of Sweeny Todd’s assistant.”

“Let me guess: Julian’s playing Sweeny Todd.”

“Unofficially, yes,” Lizzy answers in a hushed tone. “He certainly has all of the traits of the character. The assistant is the most sought after role because in this iteration, they’re Sweeny Todd’s love interest and eventual partner in crime.”

“I thought Mrs. Lovett fulfilled that role.”

“In the classic, yes. This version is a sequel of sorts that answers the question, ‘what if Sweeny Todd didn’t die and instead managed to escape?’ So, he ends up traveling to and settling down in New York, where he picks up an assistant who helps him around his shop. He leads a normal life for five years until his daughter Johanna finds him and confronts him about what he did in London. The assistant happens to overhear their conversation and talks to Sweeny about it later that evening, and he or she—depends on who ends up getting the role—convinces Sweeny to pick up where he left off because there are a lot of corruption and starvation in New York.” Interesting. So, some artistic license has been taken with the story, which could either go really well or quite terribly.

“So, why do you think I would make a good assistant?”

“Because you’re the only person Julian’s noticed walk in here.” Before I can ask for Lizzy to clarify, a booming voice cuts through the chatter, and I’m forced to rush to the large group of people vying to play the assistant.

“Ladies and gentleman,” the voice rings out. It belongs to a tall, blonde man on the stage. “My name is Lucio, and I’m co-directing this play with the help of my dear friend Lizzy. Now, I’ve been told that there’s a long list of people wanting the role of Sweeny Todd’s assistant, so we’ll get that out of the way first. Will everyone fitting that description please step to the front of the auditorium and line up horizontally so that I can take a good look at each of you?” It becomes clear quickly that Lucio is pulling out the weeds before anyone even says a line, for he goes down the line and says no to the people he deems unfit for the role. A lot of it seems based on physical looks as he utter phrases like ‘too short’, ‘too fat’, and even ‘too ugly’ to a couple of individuals. By the time he gets to me, I’m finding it hard to swallow, but I try my best to not let Lucio know that I’m nervous. Instead, I look straight at him as he glances over every inch of me.

“Spunky,” he murmurs. I’m not wearing anything grand, so I wonder what brought on that comment. “I like it.” He moves on to the next person, and I hesitantly remain where I’m standing. Even though he gave me a compliment, Lucio didn’t explicitly tell me to stay like he did with the others still in line.

“Alright,” he states once he’s assessed everyone, clasping his hands in front of his chest. “So, for those no longer standing up here, you can either talk to Lizzy and audition for a different role or you can leave for the evening. The choice is yours. As for the rest of you, you’ll be ad-libbing your way through a pivotal scene in the play shortly. Julian, if you would hop on stage please.” Looking back at the seats, I see Julian sprawled out, as if he was right at home. He leisurely untangles himself and makes his way on stage.

“Bring out one of the folding chairs from backstage,” Lucio nearly barks at Julian. As Julian fulfills the request, Lucio tells us that we’ll be acting out the scene in which Sweeny Todd admits his crimes to his assistant.

“Julian will deliver the first line, thus setting the scene, but the direction it goes is entirely up to you. When I have seen enough, or if things are stalling, I will call scene. Remember, only one of you will get the role, so make a good impression. Julian!”

“Ready when you are!” Julian calls back. His voice is surprisingly smooth. The few times we’ve talked, he’s sounded a bit groggy, as though he needed more sleep. Combined with his tall stature, bright eyes, and muscular physique, it makes him quite the dream boat. I can see why so many people want to play his love interest.

“Excellent! You there. Pinky.” Lucio points at a girl with hot pink hair. “You’re up first.” Thank goodness. I did not want to go first. Lucio directs us to sit down in the second and third rows as he plants himself closer to the middle of the auditorium.

I must say, Julian is very good at improving. Not only does he know his character, but he’s also giving his partner opportunities to showcase their talents. Whether they take him up on his offer is another story. Some of them want to steal the scene, and others are using it as a means to flirt with Julian. Meanwhile, Lucio’s patience is slowly growing shorter as no one seems to be exactly who he’s looking for. He’s given everyone nicknames, some of them unflattering as time wears on. Fortunately for me, he calls me Spunky.

When I sit down on the chair on stage, I close my eyes and take a deep breath, envisioning the scene I’m about to play in my head. If this is a pivotal part in the play, then it needs to be full of suspense and drama. Just like that, a plan’s in place.

“Ready?” Julian whispers as I open my eyes back up. I nod my head, and he utters the opening lines.

“Elise, what you heard my daughter say is true. I am—well, was—the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I murdered countless people. Judges, doctors, lawyers, even my own wife. I ran away from London because I didn’t want to get caught, but the truth is all of those people either deserved to die or were wishing for death to be bestowed upon them. I was simply doing the world a favor.”

“I don’t believe you,” I reply. There’s a fleeting moment where Julian’s caught off guard, but he quickly recovers.

“Oh, really? And why’s that, dear?”

“How am I supposed to believe that the same man who constantly stubs his toe on furniture and smiles at everyone that he meets is capable of ruthless, calculated, cold-hearted murder? For God’s sake, you can’t even walk into a room without making some sort of mess! You’re always relying on me to keep the shop tidy, and I feel like someone who was into killing people would be able to neaten things up themselves.” Julian sticks his hand in his pocket and pulls out a pencil.

“So, you don’t believe I have it in me to be a murderer.”

“No, I don’t.” The next thing I know, Julian’s leaning over me, his face inches away from mine and his pencil hovering over my nose.

“Let me tell you something, darling; this tool has helped me make my way up the social chain. No matter how rich a man is, there comes a day where he needs a shave, and I’m the best there is.” He moves the pencil down and presses it against my throat while maintaining eye contact.

“There’s a certain amount of pressure that you need to apply in order to get a smooth, clean shave. If you don’t put enough pressure, you end up missing a few spots. Put too much, and well, you end up cutting him. Draw the knife across the neck fast enough, and you have a dead man suffering from major blood loss.” He presses the pencil harder against my throat to emphasize his point, making it slightly difficult for me to breathe.

“Shall I show you what I mean, Elise, or have I made myself clear?”

“I believe you,” I gasp. He immediately releases pressure and takes a couple steps back, smirking at me.

“Good. Now, if that’s all you wanted to discuss, then I suggest you head up to bed for the evening. We have a long day tomorrow.” He starts walking away from me, but Lucio hasn’t yelled for the scene to end, so I assume that I have to keep going.

“Why America?” Julian stops in his tracks and turns to face me.

“Pardon?”

“Why did you flee to America of all places? You could have easily traveled to France or Italy, but instead you chose New York.” Julian sighs.

“Like I said, I didn’t want to get caught. I wanted to start a new life, and word travels quicker from England to other countries in Europe than it does from England to America. The two countries are separated by an ocean, after all.”

“Have you ever thought about doing it again?”

“Doing what again?”

“Using your profession as a means of…extermination.”

“Elise, I was in a really dark place when I executed that plan in London. I’m not the same person I was five years ago, and if I were to do it again, I’d be signing my own death sentence.” I get up from the chair and slowly walk up to Julian, worried that my next actions are going to make Lucio end the scene.

“My father was killed by a drunk police officer who mistook him for another man, and my mom was raped and beaten by the judge overlooking the case.” I gently place my fingers around his chin and stand on the tips of my toes, bringing my face closer to his.

“The rich and powerful are just as evil and corrupt in New York as they are in London, Mr. Todd. They get to do whatever they want with impunity, even if it costs the lives of innocent, hardworking people. Someone has to make them pay for their crimes, or their offspring will continue being monsters among the human race. Is that something you’re willing to live with?” Julian looks like he’s beginning to run a fever at this point with his flushed cheeks and glassy eyes. I plant my feet back on the ground and walk around him, heading towards an imaginary door.

“Good night, Mr. Todd.”

“Scene.” Even though Lucio’s voice is the softest it’s been during this entire process, the auditorium is silent enough for it to carry.

“Well, Spunky, I knew there was a reason I liked you. Congratulations, you have the role. Asra, you’ll be Spunky’s understudy, because you’re the only one that has as much chemistry with Julian. Everyone else who was auditioning for the assistant, you can either stick around and try for another role or leave; it doesn’t matter that much to me.”

I end up staying through until the end of auditions, mainly because I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to leave or not. Turns out, once all the roles were filled to Lucio’s satisfaction, he gave everyone a copy of the rehearsal times, so it’s a good thing that I stuck around after all. Plus, I got to watch Julian perform on stage. I must say, the way he carries himself when he’s acting is quite entertaining, to say the least.

Speaking of Julian, he practically runs up to me as I’m leaving the auditorium.

“Well, hi, Julian,” I greet him, surprised that he sought me out. “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine,” he replies quickly, his words rushing together into a jumbled mess. “I was just wondering if you would maybe like to walk with me? Since we’ll be working closely together, I would like to get to know you a little, but it’s totally fine if you just want to be alone.”

“I wouldn’t mind a little bit of company.” Julian smiles enthusiatically, and it makes my heart race.

“Great!” The two of us walk outside and start meandering around.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten your name,” Julian tells me. “Isn’t that weird? We keep seeing each other around campus, and we even share a class together, but I don’t know what to call you.” Is Julian normally this nervous? He’s certainly a fast talker, and he’s rambling a bit.

“My name’s Carina.” He stops in his tracks and gawks at me.

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah…” What about my name is making Julian awestruck? He doesn’t hate the name, does he?

“Carina was the name of a pet rabbit I had when I was younger. I’ve always liked how sophisticated and beautiful it sounded, and I thought that if I was to have a little girl, she would be called Carina.” He takes a momentary pause and shakes his head before adding,

“Then again, naming a child after a childhood pet isn’t exactly normal.” He continues walking, and I kind of have to jog to catch up to him.

“So, Julian, how long have you been acting? You looked like a professional on stage.” The compliment makes him flush.

“I’ve been acting since I was about five,” he answers softly, avoiding my gaze. “It started with children’s theater and stuff like that, but when I was ten, I attended my first summer drama camp, and my love for acting has grown ever since. Lucio ran the camp, you know. Has for many years.” I had no idea Lucio and Julian had that much history together.

“Do you like working with Lucio?”

“He’s very passionate about his work, which makes him a very intense person to be around. If things don’t go his way, he’s prone to throwing fits and screaming at people. Despite of that, he does manage to put together spectacular shows and treats everyone to a nice party in the end, so I would say working with Lucio is similar to a roller coaster. It’s both scary and exciting at times.”

“I see.” Julian finds a bench and beckons for me to sit down with him. Once we’re seated, he asks,

“What made you decide to try out for this play? Was it in order to get closer to me?” Before I can answer, he quickly backtracks.

“I don’t mean that in an arrogant way. God knows I’m way too insecure to think that way. It’s just that ever since Lucio accidentally let it slip that I would be the male lead in this play, I’ve heard people whispering about me all over campus, revealing to their friends what they would do to me if they got to play the assistant. To be honest, all of the attention makes me sick. I mean, I enjoy being in the spotlight when it comes to acting, but when I’m not on stage, I…”

“You just want to be left alone, don’t you?” Julian clasps my hand and nods his head.

“Well, Julian, if it makes you feel any better, I auditioned because I really enjoy the story of Sweeny Todd and wanted to see if I had what it took to get a role. That’s it. No nefarious intentions involved.” He visibly relaxes.

“Thank you, Carina,” he sighs contently. “You have no idea how much that means to me.” He brings my hand up to his lips and kisses it softly, making me look away and blush. This play is going to be interesting, to say the least.

I wish there was a way to describe how today’s rehearsals went without being vulgar, but when you’re forced to repeatedly act out a scene where you’re passionately arguing with someone that you feel unresolved sexual tension towards and from, the most mild way to go about it would be to state that it was like two animals in heat. I’m honestly surprised that Julian and I managed to get through rehearsal without tearing each other’s clothes off on stage in front of everyone in the auditorium to see.

You see, this scene involves Elise, the assistant, yelling her grievances at Sweeny Todd, which revolve around money and sex, and Sweeny shouting that those problems wouldn’t exist if she didn’t essentially tell him to become a criminal again. This of course makes Elise more angry at Sweeny, and the scene ends with her storming out of his room and slamming the door behind her. Lucio calls this scene “the beginning of the end”, because after this point in the play, their relationship quickly becomes toxic to the point where they want to kill each other.

Speaking of Lucio, he’s been a key player in creating the tension between Julian and me, because he continuously forces us to approach the edge of no return, but he never allows us to go over it, not even outside rehearsal. Julian’s trying his best to be a gentleman and abide by Lucio’s rules, but I can tell that he’s getting worn out by constantly pushing down anything he may feel towards me and only allowing those emotions to come out when we’re on stage.

I suppose that’s why Asra pulls me aside as soon as Lucio dismisses us for the evening.

“Carina, there’s something you need to know about Julian,” he tells me softly but firmly.

“Go on…” Asra sighs.

“He’s a bit of a pressure cooker. He shoves any feelings he deems undesirable down until he can’t contain them anymore, and then they explode out of him with no way for him to control them until they’re completely out of his system. And it’s not just feelings like anger or sadness; he can get quite horny as well.” Before I can even reply to anything Asra has said, he quickly adds,

“I’ve seen the way you two have interacted during practice, and I don’t want to see you hurt. Sure, he’ll light up your world, but only for as long as he has to act with you. The moment the curtain drops on the final performance, he’ll throw you away like the burnt match you’ve become while spending time with him.” So many questions zoom through my brain, but right as I pick one to ask Asra, Julian walks to us and practically drags me away from him with a fake smile plastered on his face.

“Did something happen between you and Asra?” I ask Julian as we walk outside the auditorium.

“It’s a long story,” Julian mutters scornfully.

“I don’t have anywhere I have to be, so spill.” Julian stops and turns to face me, grabbing my hand as he does so.

“Carina, there are just some things that are best left in the past. Let’s just say that Asra and I aren’t the best of friends.”

“Why?”

“Why do you care so much?” Julian’s voice gets a bit nastier and louder, making me feel defensive.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I nearly shout sarcastically. “It’s not like anyone would get curious if someone told them that a friend of theirs treats people like they were pieces of trash to be disposed of at the first opportunity.” Julian’s eyes briefly widen in shock before decisively narrowing in anger.

“Maybe some people are trash. You try your best to hold on to them because they mean a lot to you, but in the end you have to cut ties before they hurt you.”

“What in the hell are you talking about, Julian?”

“I’m talking about Asra!” We’re both yelling at this point. “He’s always painting himself as the victim, and he never acknowledges any of his wrongdoings!”

“What?!” Julian lets go of my hand to pinch the bridge of his nose in order to calm himself down.

“Look, if you want to know the truth, you’re not going to get it from either Asra or me, because we both were self-centered at the time.”

“Then who does know the truth?”

“Why don’t I have you meet her?”

As it turns out, the girl in question happens to be in an apartment Julian lives in. Initially, I thought she was the short, plump, red-headed individual who greeted us when we stepped inside, but then she quickly dragged Julian away, talking excitedly about finally having a subject for the painting she was working on. Before I know it, a door slams, and I’m left alone.

“Why don’t you make yourself comfortable?” a smooth, female Indian voice tells me, making me jump out of my skin. When I recover from my shock, I find myself face-to-face with a regal-looking woman. She’s just wearing a t-shirt and jeans, but her face looks very queenly. I follow her request and sit down in one of the chairs in the kitchen, which is the first room you’re in when you walk inside the apartment.

“You must be Carina,” the woman states, pouring hot water into two mugs and putting in tea bags. “Julian’s told me a lot about you, so I figured it was only a matter of time before he brought you over. I’m Nadia.” She walks over to the table and sits in the chair next to me, handing me a mug as she does so.

“How do you know Julian?” I nervously ask. There’s something about her that tells me that I’d do well to not piss her off.

“In simple terms, I’m a friend of his who’s mentoring his sister. She was the one that you saw first.” I take a sip of tea.

“What about in complex terms?” Nadia smirks at me.

“You’re clever. Julian could stand to be around someone like you.”

“Thank you,” I reply shyly.

“I’m Julian’s…unofficial therapist, you might say. Then again, I’m kind of everyone’s unofficial therapist, except for Portia. Julian’s sister,” she quickly adds upon seeing the confused look in my eyes. “Anyway, I deal with secrets. Secrets that can either bring people together or make them despise each other.”

“How do you do that?”

“Why, I talk to people. I listen to them, note anything interesting, and pass it along to whoever’s interested in it, for a small fee. Speaking of which, I’m sure there’s something you’d like to ask me. I have a feeling Julian didn’t bring you over here just to meet his sister and her teacher.” I take a deep breath to calm my nerves.

“I don’t know if you would be able to answer this, but something happened earlier this evening that raised some questions for me.” I quickly recount what Asra and Julian had told me after practice, and Nadia nods her head as I talk.

“To be honest, I’m not surprised,” Nadia responds. “Asra’s quite petty, and Julian can be melodramatic sometimes. They’ve both come to me complaining about the other, and I’ve seen their interactions with each other over the years, so I have a lot of information about the nature of their relationship. I just need one thing from you.”

“I understand.” Nadia smiles, making her look that much more like royalty.

“Good. So, tell me: how do you feel about Julian?” I nearly choke on my tea, and I feel my face start to burn up in embarrassment and something else, something more animalistic.

“I see,” Nadia replies to my nonverbal response. “You’re both pulled so taut that you’re about to snap.”

“That obvious, huh?”

“Only because you both blush at the mere mention of the other. How hard has Lucio been pushing you?”

“We’re not allowed to be intimate off stage. We can be friendly, but that’s it.” Nadia sighs.

“Classic Lucio. Gets completely blindsided by Asra and then takes it out on you.”

“What do you mean?” Nadia proceeds to launch into the story of Julian and Asra. Apparently, they started off as rivals because Asra was jealous of Julian becoming Lucio’s favorite without even trying when he had to work tirelessly for two years prior just to get Lucio’s approval. The rivalry was one-sided, though, because Julian was blissfully unaware that Asra felt any ill will towards him.

When Julian was a sophomore in high school and Asra a senior, they ended up being the lead characters of one of Lucio’s original plays. Julian had shot up over the summer and was eight inches taller than Asra, which led to Asra developing feelings for Julian. This, of course, presented some internal conflict for Asra up until Julian had expressed interest back. From there, their relationship burned bright and fast.

Things between them started going downhill quickly when Asra would manipulate Julian into doing sexual things that Julian most likely wouldn’t have done on his own and Julian would either get super clingy or super distant. Nadia had tried to get them to work things out, but as soon as the final show ended, Julian broke up with Asra and ghosted him as much as he possibly could.

“So, why exactly would Asra care about my wellbeing if he really doesn’t care for Julian?” I ask Nadia once she’s done with her tale.

“Well, once Asra and Julian broke things off, Julian developed the habit of getting romantically close to his costar only to drop them once the production was over. Since you’re pretty new to the acting world, Asra wouldn’t want your experience to be soured by anything Julian does. At least, that’s what he’s told me.”

“But?” Nadia smirks knowingly.

“You’re the first person since Asra that’s made Julian…I don’t want to say lovestruck, because that sounds overdramatic, but maybe pleasantly nervous.”

“Really?” She nods her head.

“If you stay over here long enough this evening, Julian’s bound to show you what I’m talking about.”

Julian’s managed to contain himself, all things considered. His sister Portia kept teasing him about me, Nadia awarded her with smirks, smiles, and some extra dessert, and it seemed like every other commercial on TV was based on a cheesy romantic comedy.

But then Nadia leaves for the evening and Portia goes off to bed and Julian starts channel surfing only to stumble upon a show that featured a girl moaning loudly as a guy’s using his dick like a jackhammer to drill an additional hole into her.

That’s when I can tell that some frayed strings in Julian are snapping. His face becomes flushed, his eyes dilate with a mixture of shock, horror, and arousal, and his mouth’s agape at the scene unfolding in front of him. I myself am having a difficult time keeping my composure, but I’m able to remain sane long enough to gently take the remote from Julian’s hand and shut the TV off. In a blink of an eye, my hand replaces the remote as Julian turns his body so that he’s facing me.

“C-Carina,” he stammers. “I…I’ve been trying so hard, and I—” As quickly as he grabbed my hand, I place my index finger on his lips and lean close to him. Somehow, his face becomes even redder.

“Julian, what do you want to do to me?”

“I don’t know if I should—” I cut his sentence abruptly by clamping my hand over his mouth.

“Just nod or shake your head, okay?” Julian nods his head, his gray eyes sparkling in the living room light.

“Do you want to kiss me?” Nod.

“Do you want to make out with me?” Nod.

“Do you want to run your hands all over my body?” Nod.

“Do you want to leave bites all over me?” A more hesitant nod.

“Do you want to do to me what the man on the screen did to that girl?” A very slow, almost ashamed nod, but a nod nevertheless.

“I want you to listen to me, Julian, because I’m only saying this once. When I remove my hand from your mouth, I want you to do me on this couch. You can go as rough or soft as you want, but I don’t want you to stop until you’ve orgasmed. I don’t care what Lucio’s going to say when he sees us at our next rehearsal; his decisions have pulled you so taut that you’re snapping right in front of me as we speak. Do you understand?” After a moment of serious contemplation, a quite shy nod.

“I’m going to count to three, and then I’m leaving you to do whatever you want.” Nod.

“One.” Julian swallows.

“Two.” Something inside me quivers in anticipation.

“Three.” Time gets jumbled for about five seconds, and when it straightens itself back out, Julian and I are at the other end of the couch; he’s moved on top of me and is frantically kissing every part of me that he can touch. I can’t really keep up with him, not that I’m complaining.

#thearcana #juliandevorak #portiadevorak #asraalnazar #nadiastratinava #countlucio #collegeau

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