#re writting stuf | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

idratherstayslytherin · 6 years ago

Text

Re-writing the story I once wrote, but not really

Some of you may remember my fic��“The Feelings We Can’t Let Go”.

It began as a head canon, then the lovely person on tumblr wrote the more put together version of it. We decided to write the fic together. It was going well until university and UK fucked me over. During this whole madness my co-writer disappeared from tumblr and I can’t contact her. I have tried it many times. She didn’t reply. I started writing the fic myself determined to finish it, but my life is hell rn and I don’t have the time to write the two last chapters. I do have the outline and hopefully after i start earning money and start actually getting better mentally and studying and money wise, I’ll finish it. For now I went back to the first version of the headcanon I made with my co-writer and noticed A LOT OF GRAMMAR mistakes as well as some things that weren’t making sense. I wanted to re write this kind of first chapter, so I did. I added a lot of new text, fixed all the mistakes that I could see and ta da! There you have it. You have to be happy with just this until I have the time to finish this damn fic. I want it to be enjoyable, but also make sense, maybe even help people with their own problems, I want it to seem real and I want it to be a lovely love story. I’m a romantic shoot me. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy it! Let me know what you think of it <3 I love reading your comments. Also if any artist wants to idk make a fanart of my work now or after I finish this damn fic and have a beta read it , then feel free to do so. Okay, I’m talking way too much, just STFU Ola, no one wants to listen to you rumble :D

//////////////

Harry felt like he should have wanted to go back to Hogwarts. Even worse, he knew he should go back there. But he just couldn’t convince himself, not even with Hermione and Ginny returning. Then again, Ron wasn’t going back either, and he didn’t even feel guilty about it, not even after Hermione talked to him about the importance of learning and getting the best possible results in their NEWTs. He got a bit of yelling too, but Hermione directed most of it at Ron, leaving Harry to deal with an angry and sad Ginny, who wanted him to go back.

But there they were on the first of September at King’s Cross station saying their goodbyes and waving after the Hogwarts Express before apparating back to Grimmauld Place. Ron had no intentions of spending the year at the Burrow, it was too far away from London, and he wanted to help George out at Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes in Diagon Alley. He also admitted that he couldn’t really deal with his parents’ grief, and Harry was more than happy to offer him accommodation, not only because Ron was his best mate, but he really needed the company. Grimmauld Place might have looked a lot less gloomy since they renovated it, spending all June and most of July sorting and chucking out old furniture and artefacts, knocking down some of the walls (this being the only way of getting rid of the horrible yelling portrait of Sirius’ mother), and painting the rest in brighter shades, the house was still way too big for one person.

Soon, having turned Hogwarts down, Harry found himself obliged to decide on what he wanted to do with his life or at least the foreseeable future. Of course everyone expected him to become an auror, it seemed like the most obvious choice, but despite admittedly being interested in the job back in their fifth year, he wasn’t sure anymore if he wanted to go along with it. He might have defeated Voldemort, but was that really what he was destined to do all his life? Hunt down dark wizards?

He decided on meeting with Kingsley to discuss further possibilities. After getting detailed information about all of jobs he recommended to Harry, and spending three days straight going through the descriptions, forms and books he got, he was sure he would either want to become an Unspeakable or a Curse-breaker. He would have been happy to dive back into his books and papers to choose one of the two jobs. However Ron was already complaining about the whole house being littered with the papers; how Harry did nothing except sit on the couch, read and compare and read and compare; so Harry decided to give himself some time to consider his choice, meanwhile enjoying his freedom.

Do you seriously want to be an Unspeakable?" Ron asked, his mouth full. This was the only part of the last few days he was enjoying, the takeaway they had every evening. "You can never shut up about what you are doing. Do you really think you could go without telling anyone anything about your job?"

"Probably not." Harry shrugged, picking up another slice of pizza. "Though I guess I’ll have to, and it will be worth it.

"C’mon, Curse-breaking seems much more interesting. I’d go with that without hesitation."

"Well then why don’t you? And let me become who I want to be?" Harry snapped. He ate the last bit of pizza, and wiped his hands. " Sorry I didn’t mean that, I’m tired. " He apologised as soon as he realised Ron said nothing that should have angered him. He rubbed his eyes.

"Hardly surprising, you barley slept these past few days, mate, seriously. Just forget about this job thing for a while, it isn’t going to do you any good. Besides, it’s not like you have to start work instantly, you have enough money to live happily for the rest of your life."

"I did sleep last night." Harry protested, deciding not to comment on the money part, as what Ron said was true, he did have a vault full of money. His friend didn’t, and even though he offered to help them, they never accepted it. What he also didn’t mention was that even though he did get a bit of sleep, he kept waking up from nightmares, and if it hadn’t been for the coffee he had every two hours, he would have nodded off halfway through the day. The nightmares, and pretty much everything else connected to the war were one of those topics they avoided. It sometimes resulted in uncomfortable silences, Harry agreed that it was better this way.

"I wonder who else from our year is going back to school." Ron said, changing the topic. "I know Neville decided to do the auror training. And Seamus isn’t going back either, he said something about opening some pub in Diagon."

"I think I heard Dean was going back."

"Oh yeah I heard that too. And Padma and Parvati. I don’t know about anyone else though."

"Me neither. I only know that most of the Slytherins aren’t returning, a lot of them got house arrests with their parents and stuff like that."

"Malfoy?"

"House arrest, in France. But I think he will be taking NEWTs."

"He deserves to rot in Azkaban with his father" Ron scowled.

"He isn’t that bad. I mean he did save my life once" Harry said, though he didn’t sound too sure about it. He might not have despised him as much as he did before, but it was still Malfoy.

"Yeah, and then you saved his, so don’t get any funny ideas of owing him or anything" Ron told him, making Harry grin, Ron knew him more than anyone else. He did feel like he owed Malfoy, a bit at least, but he guessed that speaking in his favour at the trials made them equal.

"Alright" Harry laughed. He vanished the empty pizza boxes, and stood up, yawning. "I’m tired, let’s pack it in for the day."

"I second that" Ron stood up as well, and the two friends made their way upstairs to their bedrooms, Ron in one of the guest ones, Harry sleeping in Sirius’s old room.

Days passed, Harry visited Kingsley once again, then spent another day reading before eventually deciding on Curse-breaking, which seemed ideal for him except for one small thing: he needed an Exceeds Expectations in Potions. Which was impossible to say the least with his skill and knowledge. So he went to the Ministry again, and consulted with several people before agreeing to let them find him a tutor.

He ended up spending a week doing whatever he wanted, before he got any news on the matter. He visited Ron and George; he went to Muggle London; he started repainting Sirius’s old motorbike that Arthur fixed for him, leaving the finishing touches for Harry. He also sat around at home, waiting for Ginny’s face to appear in the fireplace, so she could tell him about school, and he could tell her how much he missed her. He also thought about who will be chosen as his tutor. Was it going to be some weird old Potions master like Slughorn or someone distant and cold, but really talented and intelligent like Snape, or maybe just someone of his age, who was better at the subject than him? The Ministry owl arrived on Friday, with the name and address of his tutor. But something was wrong, the address was somewhere in France. And the name was Draco Lucius Malfoy.

"Are you kidding me? Malfoy?" Ron asked horrified, when he read through the letter Harry shoved into his face as soon as he got home that evening. "Don’t tell me there isn’t anyone else in the whole wizarding world who could help you in Potions. Why did they have to choose that git?"

"I have no idea" Harry sighed. "But it’s not just that. Why France? Why can’t it be someone here in London? I don’t speak French, I don’t know anyone there, it just doesn’t make any sense."

"Can’t you ask the Ministry to find you someone else?"

"Already tried. But apparently Malfoy is the best solution, as we know each other, and we would both benefit from it."

"Both benefit from it?! How would you both benefit from it? What would Malfoy benefit from it? You are lucky to actually learn something if you don’t get killed, but how can he benefit from it?"

"Search me" Harry rolled his eyes.

"When are you leaving?"

"I have a Portkey for next Wednesday."

"Wednesday? But that’s less than a week!"

"I know, but I guess I’ll just have to do it, no matter what."

"This sucks, mate."

"I know. If I don’t get an O after this, I swear I’ll be using some Unforgivables on some people."

The next few days passed quickly, way too quickly in Harry’s opinion, and soon he found himself at the Ministry, looking at the corkscrew on the table, his belongings in his pocket, all shrunken.

"Here goes nothing" he muttered, before taking hold of the charmed corkscrew, and letting it transport him in only a few seconds to his destination: a little French town.

From what he saw on his walk to the Malfoys’ place (Kingsley thought it would be safer for him to arrive outside the town for whatever reason), he thought it could have been England, the small cottages were no different from those they had back there. The one Malfoy and Narcissa were living in was just like the others, a simple Muggle house. The Ministry told him that he would be staying there in a spare bedroom made for him with the help of the expansion charm, until he mastered the needed level of potionmaking, practising in Malfoy's lab. Apart from this, all he knew was that Narcissa had a Muggle job helping out at a clothes shop in the town, and Draco also worked a bit from home, neither of them allowed to leave the boundaries the Ministry had set, and neither of them possessing a wand.

Narcissa greeted him when he arrived, looking as pale and tired as ever, and much to Harry’s surprise wearing a simple blouse and jeans, something he never thought he’d see her in. She showed him around the house before retreating to the living room where she was sorting through some papers, telling him that Malfoy was in his room, and that he should make himself comfortable in the his bedroom. Harry thanked her, and did as she suggested, unpacking, and quickly Flooing Ron and Ginny before lying down, hoping for a decent night’s sleep, not only so he would have all the energy he needed for next day to face Malfoy, but because he would have felt extremely embarrassed if he had woken up screaming from his nightmares like he did sometimes. Then again, a simple muffliato charm should do for the latter.

Next day he woke up feeling surprisingly fresh and well-rested, that didn't mean he was ready to study Potions. With Malfoy. In France. When he could have been at home, spending time with his friends, or just enjoying his freedom.

But then he reminded himself he needed this to get the job he wanted, so gritting his teeth, he headed downstairs to where Narcissa said the lab was, where his old nemesis was already waiting for him.

"Malfoy" he greeted him, sitting down at the table looking around. The walls were filled with shelves of books and tiny bottles, each of them full of liquids of different colours, labelled neatly. The work space however, was empty except for two cauldrons and a copy of a simple Potions schoolbook. Harry's eyes shifted towards Malfoy, who looked pretty much the same as he did the last time Harry saw him, apart from his white-blonde hair being longer, the strands escaping his elegant hair. He also seemed much thinner, Harry noticed, he must have lost at least 20 pounds, it made the boy's features much sharper and angled than they were before.

"Potter." he nodded, restraining himself from scowling, sitting down opposite to Harry. "So, I’ve heard the Chosen One may not be as perfect as everyone thought so. Problems with Potions? Seriously?"

"Shut up Malfoy!" Harry snapped. He wasn’t expecting any different, but it still angered him that the other boy was already getting under his skin.

"Whatever, Potter." Malfoy shrugged. "But then don’t expect to get anything better than a D." He smirked.

"Fine." Harry said angrily. "Just shut up about other things and let’s get on with it. I get it, I won’t pass the stupid exam without the help of perfect Draco Malfoy, who is the best Ministry-recommended tutor in the whole Wizarding world, but we’d make better progress if you actually started explaining things" he snarled.

For a moment Harry thought this would be the end, and Malfoy would stalk out, but after glaring at each other, the blonde broke the eye contact and opened the course book without any further ado, and started explaining everything, starting from the very basics. Harry soon found, that even though he would never admit it to anyone else, Malfoy was a good teacher. He cleared up some things Harry previously didn't understand; and apart from the snarky comments, he was almost patient. Well he did snap and start shouting and swearing when Harry messed up a potion even after trying several times, but still. He was way better than what Harry had expected.

Soon they developed a daily routine which consisted of going down to have breakfast on their own, avoiding each other; having a short, theoretical lesson in the morning; having lunch on their own; a longer practical lesson in the afternoon; spending time on their own; then having dinner on their own, except for when Narcissa insisted that they should sit together, which usually resulted in glares and uncomfortable silences.

But Harry was definitely improving at potions, and after all, that was what mattered. As two weeks passed, and October was drawing nearer, Harry found himself tired of arguing with Malfoy, and the other boy must have felt the same way, because all of a sudden the nasty remarks were gone, and they were actually capable of spending time in one room without wanting to kill one another. This definitely was an improvement. Malfoy would actually compliment him if he did something right, and Harry would smile at him. They didn’t try so hard to avoid each other in the time between the lessons, but actually greeted each other, and sometimes even stopped to have short conversations. Nothing too serious or deep, only little things, but this was already much better, Harry realised that Malfoy’s company was actually quite alright sometimes, now that they weren’t constantly arguing.

Weeks passed, and Harry was getting used to living there, and as now he felt more comfortable around the Malfoys, he decided it was time to change some things. He started going for walks around the town and the countryside. He spent a bit more time with Malfoy, they stayed in the lab every so often after the lessons and just talked. One evening Harry even asked Narcissa if he could cook something. They have been eating takeaway pretty much everyday, and Harry didn’t mind it, but after over a month, he had to admit it, it was getting a little repeatable, and he was craving a home-made meal.

Narcissa was surprised, but happy to let Harry work in the kitchen, so after making a quick supply run to the shop around the corner to get all the ingredients he needed for the curry, his favourite dish, he occupied the kitchen.

As he started heating the oil and chopping up the onions, the unmistakable smell of cooking filled his nose, he realised how much he missed it. Cooking was one of those things the Dursleys made him do, but he didn’t really mind it when he was making food for himself or his friends, and after seven years at Hogwarts without cooking, he enjoyed experimenting with all kinds of recipes that he learned from Muggle cook books.

He had started dicing the meat when he grew aware of someone watching him. As he looked up, he saw Malfoy standing in the doorway, watching him.

"You know, it’s not too polite to stare" he said, smirking at the boy. "And do try to be more secretive if you want to look at me." He added, grinning as he saw Malfoy blush, which was definitely something he hadn’t expected to see. Ever. But now that he did, he couldn't stop laughing, making the blonde boy blush even harder, his normally pale face was a deep shade of red. "You should see your face now!" he choked out, holding onto the counter as he tried to calm down, suppressing the laughter that was bubbling in his stomach. Malfoy just stood by the door, glaring at him, his face still flushed. "I’m just messing with you, no need to plan my death" he said with a shy grin as he finally stopped laughing, and went back to chopping the meat, but still keeping one eye on the other boy.

"I wasn’t. I never did. Plan your death, I mean." Malfoy said quietly. Harry looked up and saw that the boy's face was serious. Harry swallowed thickly and nodded, not knowing what to say, so he just kept staring at him, green eyes locked onto the pair of grey ones.

"So, do you want me to show you how to cook?" Harry broke the silence, moving to one side so Malfoy had his space at the counter, offering the boy a little smile. The blonde boy hesitated, running one hand through his hair, and chewing on his bottom lip, which caught Harry’s attention for some reason, he couldn’t explain, he looked away embarrassed, afraid of being caught staring. Malfoy made his way over to the counter. Harry carried on cutting up the meat, giving the other boy smaller tasks, explaining why he did things the way he did, and within half an hour the spicy scent of the simmering curry was filling the room. After tidying up, Harry sat down on one of the chairs, fanning himself with a piece of newspaper that was laying on the dining table, his gaze fluttering to the other boy, who was pouring himself a glass of water, before leaning back onto the counter, flushed, but this time from the heat of the cooking, the top two buttons of his shirt undone, his hair messy and curly from the vapour, making the lines of his face look softer. Harry didn't even know why he thought of that, shaking his head, he stood up, and started setting the table.

"So where did you learn how to cook?" Malfoy asked him, his tone genuinely curious, something Harry still wasn’t completely used to.

"The Dursleys, you know, my foster parents made me cook for them, so I had to, but I actually always enjoyed it a bit." He shrugged.

"They made you cook for them?" Malfoy asked, sounding horrified.

"That wasn’t the worst part. I had to do all the cleaning too, I could never go anywhere. I had to pretend that I didn’t exist whenever they had guests over, and I lived in the broom closet until I was eleven."

"You lived in the broom closet?!" The blonde boy echoed, his voice raised. Harry nodded. "That’s even worse than how we used to treat our house-elves. At least they had proper bedrooms."

Harry just shrugged again, and went to serve the dinner without a word, he didn’t understand why Malfoy was so shocked by how the Dursleys have treated him, or why he cared at all. Dinner passed quietly, apart from Narcissa complimenting Harry on the curry, but otherwise they ate in a silence. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, it was just strange. He noticed Malfoy looking at him few times, but he always looked away when Harry caught him staring. When they finished eating, Harry did the washing up by magic, not wanting to spend the rest of the evening scrubbing pans, something Draco watched almost in awe, telling Harry his wand was taken by the Ministry, and how he missed using magic, how strange doing everything manually was.

They carried on talking, and walked up the stairs together, but when they stopped on the landing, instead of parting ways, Malfoy asked Harry whether he could explain Muggle technology to him, and Harry was happy to do that, so he followed the other boy into his bedroom. He was surprised to see that the room wasn’t much different from the one he was staying in, except for having more books and other bits of things. But the walls were plain white, the bed wasn’t the posh four-poster he was expecting, and wasn’t covered in Slytherin green sheets with silver lining. It was just a simple bedroom.

"What were you expecting, Potter?" Draco smirked, and Harry realised he must have been staring in shock. "This isn’t Malfoy Manor."

"I don’t know. I just thought it would be more like you."

"More like me? And what’s that like?"

"Well definitely not this" Harry said, gesturing around the room.

"Oh and you know me so well that you are positive that I loved Malfoy Manor and now couldn’t stand living somewhere that wasn’t green and grey and silver and black and full of snake-patterns" Draco snorted.

"That’s not what I… oh never mind" Harry rolled his eyes, already feeling irritated with Malfoy, but also himself for thinking that they could actually spend time together properly, without things like this. He was on the verge of walking back to his own bedroom, when he noticed that Malfoy wasn’t glaring at him, he was smirking. Harry sighed, and flopped down onto the bed next to the boy, and started telling him how toasters and TVs and computers worked. He actually enjoyed it more than he thought he would, and he was surprised to see that Malfoy wasn’t being difficult, but genuinely curious and interested, and would listen to Harry’s explanations without interrupting, only showering him with questions afterwards, a fascinated smile spreading over his face, Harry thought that Malfoy was much nicer this way, smiling, friendly, patient and interested in almost a childlike way.

They made this a regular thing, often making breakfast or dinner together, and spending hours before going to sleep talking about Muggle things, and sometimes bringing up other topics as well, and Harry realised he was starting to enjoy Malfoy’s company.

Harry was also improving in Potions, he was now able to make quite a lot of decent ones, and Malfoy was almost proud of him. However then he accidentally burned the cauldron down, causing the blonde boy to give him silent treatment and avoid him after yelling at him about being irresponsible and hopeless.

But after a day of ignoring each other they called truce, and went back to doing things together. This was when Harry realised actually how much time they spent together, and how he talked to Ron or Hermione and Ginny less and less, calling the girls late that evening, feeling guilty. Hermione told him about the lessons, and asked him questions about potions, she was happy with his progress, reminding him again how important it was, and that he needed to carry on. She then left Harry to talk to Ginny privately. They talked about school mostly, and how they missed each other, and how Harry had to go home for Christmas, because Ginny couldn’t go any longer without talking to him properly, face to face, or kissing him, or touching him, and before saying goodbye, Ginny pulled her shirt up, teasing Harry, saying all kinds of dirty words she could think of, leaving the boy with a hard-on. He was too embarrassed to wank, being separated from Malfoy by only one thin wall.

He kept thinking about Ginny, even though he didn’t call her for some time, thinking how things would be when they both got back home. Will they get married straight away? Will they have kids? And if yes, how many? He missed her, a lot, but he had to admit, these thoughts were scaring him slightly. He knew Ron and Hermione were planning on getting married and moving in together when Hermione graduated, but Harry wasn’t sure if he could imagine himself settling down already and becoming a father.

In the end he found himself in the lab, as he did quite often for some time now, deciding it was the best time to practice, trying to make some dreamless sleep for himself, but failing, which meant he could only hope for a decent night’s sleep without nightmares, even though he knew it was unlikely.

He did seem to have less nightmares than before, but now when he did, they were the worst ever, and he would wake up screaming, and couldn’t go back to sleep properly afterwards, and would be stressed and irritable all day. He just really hoped Malfoy never heard him screaming, embarrassed even by the thought of it. One night he felt two unfamiliar firm hands shaking him awake, and a voice, unsure yet steady telling him to breathe, and how it only had been a dream, and finally when Harry was calm enough, handing him a vial of dreamless sleep, he thought he never could have been more thankful, even though he was indeed extremely embarrassed.

Malfoy gave him dreamless sleep and that was all that mattered, because he slept until 1 PM next day, and when he woke up, he feels much better than other mornings, except for the sadness and anger that lingered from the nightmare, but he was used to that. He didn’t even want to get up from bed, he wanted to just stay there and disappear, somehow slip into nonexistence. It was mostly on the days after his nightmares, but sometimes even on just ordinary days, that he thought of what it would have been like to stay dead. He knew some people would have missed him, but with the Horcrux in him destroyed, the world didn’t need him anymore. And it wasn’t bad, it didn’t hurt at all, Sirius had been right, he didn’t feel anything. It didn’t really feel like being dead. It didn’t feel like anything to be honest. But he came back, even though he wasn’t sure he should have.

He decided to go and tell Malfoy that he wasn’t in the mood to study, but he didn’t find the boy in his bedroom or the lab or anywhere else. Or at least anywhere he was expecting to find him, he realised why as he entered the kitchen, there stood Malfoy he was cooking something by the stove, it smelt amazing. The smell of cinnamon mixed with apples and something sweet filled Harry's nose.

"Hi." he said quietly, stopping in the doorway.

"Hey," Malfoy looked up to greet him. "You look like shit" he informed him. Harry snorted. He didn’t need Malfoy to tell him that. He felt like shit. "I’m making you food. Sit."

"What? Harry looked up at him, shocked, unsure if he heard him right. Malfoy was making him breakfast. Malfoy. For him. How did this even happen? And why?

"Can’t you ever do just one thing you’re asked for?" The blonde boy asked, rolling his eyes. "Are you really that much of a rebel?" He asked, as he watched Harry sit down, still dazed, he smiled. His voice was softer than the usual, and Harry couldn't understand why. He continued to stare at the blonde boy in complete shock, until the latter lets out a soft chuckle, and told him to stop staring at him with his mouth open. Harry felt his cheeks grow warm in embarrassment, and he mumbled something Malfoy couldn't quite make sense of. Harry dropped his gaze to the table, and toyed with the spoon. He runhis hand through his hair which was messier than usual, he didn’t even try to comb it as he was planning to go back to bed. He felt Malfoy's eyes on him. Harry turned his head to meet the blonde boy's gaze just as Malfoy turned away.

Malfoy sat down opposite to Harry, handing him his breakfast and a cup of coffee, he himself only drinking tea.

They sat in silence, the blonde watching Harry eat.

"We don’t have to study today" he said, breaking the silence. Harry just nodded, still confused by the boy’s kindness, and carried on eating. As he finished, he watched Malfoy sipping his tea, gazing out of the window. He looked different, Harry thought, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on the difference, the only thing he noticed was that his hair was messier than usual. That couldn’t have made such a big difference, it was more than that. It was something about his whole face, all of his features. But mostly his eyes. His eyes were definitely different, no longer cold and distant, but almost soft. Harry watched his eyes fixed on the garden outside, the shape of the window reflected in the sliver greyness. The practically white eyelashes around his eyes. His pale, porcelain-like skin. The pointiness of his nose. The pinkness of his lips, that for once weren’t frowning. His perfect jawline. The way his shoulder length hair fell onto his shoulders. Harry thought he was beautiful. He felt weird had just thought that, but as he continued to look at the boy, he couldn’t help but admit it. He also couldn't help but notice how his heart was hammering in his chest. He tore his gaze away from the boy and looked back down at the table. What was wrong with him? Why was he finding Malfoy attractive? He swallowed hard, allowing himself another glance at the boy. He noticed the longing in his eyes, the sadness on his face, and he realised, Malfoy must be missing being outdoors. Of course he must miss being outside! He had been in the house arrest for over a year.

Harry couldn't stop thinking how terrible it must be, not being able to go out, and within a minute the idea pops in his mind. He stood up abruptly and told Malfoy he’d be back in a sec. He rushed up to the bedroom and called Kingsley on the Floo, begging him to allow Malfoy leave the house with him, explaining what a great teacher he was, and telling the Minister that he trusted him. He didn’t actually realise all of this before he said it out loud, but it was true. He trusted Malfoy, especially after he gave Harry dreamless sleep and made him breakfast. He deserved something good. Harry was really pleased with himself when Kingsley permitted him to open the doors and go somewhere with Malfoy. He had to make him a promise that he’d look out for the blonde and would be careful, which Harry promised he would. He quickly packed few things and rushed back down to the kitchen.

Malfoy looked up startled as Harry re-entered the kitchen, his expression soon turning to shock, as Harry told him to get up because they were going out.

"What do you mean ��out’?" He asked, looking at Harry in confusion.

"I talked to Kingsley" Harry shrugged, as if it was nothing, already making his way to the door, unlocking it, and casting several counter spells that would let Draco out as well. The blonde boy followed him, still shocked and surprised, but as he stepped outside and inhaled the fresh air and felt the breeze tug at his hair, he just closed his eyes and let a smile spread across his face. Gosh, how he had missed this. Harry stood looking at him, smiling, thinking how gorgeous Malfoy looked with the strands of blonde hair flowing around his face. No. He wasn’t gorgeous, Harry thought, feeling angry with himself, feeling like his thoughts were betraying him.

"There’s a beach a few miles from here" Draco spoke up.

"Are you suggesting we go there?" Harry asked, snapping out of his thoughts.

"thought that was obvious" Draco smirked, and Harry grinned at him as they set off. They walked in silence, until Draco spoke again. "Thanks. For taking me out." He said quietly. Harry looked up at him. "And everything" the boy carried on. "Testifying for my mother. Saving my life in that room."

Harry didn’t say anything for a few moments. The situation was so strange, Malfoy sounded so honest and so vulnerable, and he just didn’t quite know what to say.

"I did what I thought had to be done." He said in the end. "And… I never thought you deserved Azkaban." He added after a pause, avoiding Malfoy’s eyes. "You saved me too, at the Manor."

"I should have done more" the blonde boy whispered. "I was a coward. I still am. I should have helped." The words spilled out of Draco, no louder than the wind whistling in their ears, and if Harry hadn’t seen his lips moving, he wouldn’t have believed that he heard what he heard. He watched the boy’s face, noticing the way his eyes were shining, tears flooding them. "I deserved all they planned for me at the trial. You should have left me there, but I guess you can’t stop yourself from saving people’s lives, even if you hate them." He said, a sad smile on his face, Harry found it heart wrenching. He swallowed thickly, once again lost for words. He wanted to tell him that it wasn’t true, that he didn’t deserve to be punished, that he didn’t hate him. He wanted to squeeze his hand and tell him it was okay. But he didn’t, instead he kept quiet, and carried on walking.

Neither of them said anything on the rest of the way to the beach. It was quite a long walk, they both stopped to catch their breaths as they arrived at the end of the cliff from where the carved steps led down to the beach. Harry had been going out for strolls around the area, but he felt a little exhausted after the walk, and Draco, who had been indoors for ages was clutching his side, but it was definitely worth it.

The view was beautiful, the sun was just starting to set, tainting the sky pink and orange, the warm light reflecting on the surface of the water, the white cliffs and the pale sand on the shore making the picture perfect. It was breezy, but not too much, just enough to ripple the surface of the ocean and to catch in their hair.

They made their way down to the beach, Harry spread out the blankets he brought with him, before sitting down, Malfoy following him, they sat down, watching the sky together.

"I miss Sirius." Harry suddenly blurted out, not even knowing why he said it, regretting it immediately.

"Your godfather?" Malfoy asked, not looking at him, messing around with a stick he found in the sand. Harry nodded, and lied back on the blanket.

"He and Remus were the only people who made me feel like-" He took sharp intake of breath. "-like I still had a piece of my parents with me" he sighed. He didn’t know why he was telling Malfoy this, but he couldn't stop himself. As the blonde boy seemed genuinely curious, Harry carried on talking, telling him about third year, how he met Sirius, and about Peter Pettigrew, and the Marauders Map, and about the Order of the Phoenix, and everything Sirius told him about his parents. Malfoy listened intensely, asking questions every so often, being very careful not to cross the boundaries.

"I’m sorry they aren’t around anymore." Malfoy simply said when Harry stopped talking. He tilted his head to the side, looking at Malfoy’s face, studying his expression, but he couldn't see anything except for honesty and sadness, and something slightly even like an affection. He felt like crying, but he didn't want to cry in front of the other boy. He knew he should feel angry, after all if Malfoy hadn’t let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts, if his father hadn’t been there at the Department of Mysteries, Sirius and Remus could still be have been alive, but that’s too many ‘if’s. Harry thought of asking Malfoy what his intentions actually were, or something, but he chose to keep silent.

"I’m going swimming" he announced after laying around for a while, he stood up, already taking his shirt off.

"Are you crazy? It must be minus twenty down there°C!" Draco exclaimed, sitting up.

"Yeah, sure, minus two hundred." Harry chuckled. "Chill Malfoy ." Harry rolled his eyes, shucking his jeans as well, making his way to the water, ignoring the feeling of the other boy’s eyes on him.

"Come back here you prat, I don't fancy being framed for your death. It’s dark and it’s cold and you will drown. We can come back here tomorrow and then you can do whatever you want." Malfoy called after him, making Harry laugh.

"If you are so worried about me, come with me" he snorted, stepping into the water, leaning down and splashing it over his body, before carrying on walking deeper into the water. He was in knee-deep when Malfoy caught up with him, stopping at the side of the water. Harry went in even deeper, looking back and shooting a grin at Malfoy. "You better take that shirt off if you want to rescue me when I drown."

The blonde boy just stood there shaking his head as Harry carried on, the water was now up to his shoulders. He couldn't help but laugh as he looked at the fully clothed Malfoy standing on the beach, and suddenly an idea crossed his mind. What if he faked drowning? Would Malfoy really rush to rescue him? He grinned in anticipation, before going in a bit deeper, and pretending to drown, yelling for help, and sure enough, the blonde was there beside him within seconds, his hands around Harry’s waist.

"You idiot" Malfoy said angrily, letting go of Harry when the brunette burst out laughing.

"And you said I’m the one with a saving people's lives-problem." Harry choked out, still shaking from laughter, clutching his stomach with his arms.

"You’re such an imbecile! We could have both lost our footing! I thought you were really drowning." he sneered, and splashed Harry with water. The other boy splashed him back immediately, still laughing, and soon enough Draco was laughing too. They were splashing each other madly, trying to get away from one another, making their way to the beach.

"Scared?" Harry asked with a raised eyebrow as they reached the dry land, still breathless from laughing, clutching each other.

"You wish." Draco smirked, and chased Harry back to the blankets, ending up on top of Harry, kneeling between the boy’s legs, holding his hands down above his head. "Feeling defeated, Potter? Did I just defeat the Great Harry Potter?

"As if I’d let you." Harry said, wrapping his legs around Malfoy's waist. He knocked the boy over, straddling him, with a triumphant grin, which died down as soon as their eyes met. Until now, Harry didn’t quite realise how close they were, only a few inches between their faces. He was starting to feel uncomfortable, and dropped his gaze, but if anything, this made things worse, as he found himself staring at Malfoy’s chest, his white shirt sticking to his body, the wetness making it almost see-through, the boy’s lean muscles and his hardened nipples visible to Harry, making him blush. What was wrong with him? It was the third time that day that he found the boy extremely attractive.

"Potter…" Malfoy spoke up, sounding a little embarrassed, as he shifted underneath him. Harry didn't get it for a moment, but then he realises he had an unmistakable hardness in his pants, and it was pressing right into the blonde boy’s thigh.

"Shit, I’m sorry, I just…" he stammered, as he stood up as fast as he could.

"Stop, it’s okay. It’s a normal reaction, I guess, I mean you’ve been away from your girlfriend, and…" Malfoy trailed off, leaving the sentence unfinished, avoiding looking at Harry, who was also avoiding looking anywhere near the other boy. "Let’s go home. Or do you want me to go and you can just stay here, think of your lovely girlfriend, jerk off, and meet me back at the house" Draco said, picking their stuff up, his words making Harry blush even harder.

"I’m… I’ll be alright" Harry managed to say. Malfoy snorts.

"For Merlin’s sake, just stay here, and follow me back when you-" "fuck, just take care of yourself, Potter!" With that said, Malfoy was already turning his back to Harry.

"You are wet. You’ll catch a cold." Harry said desperately, not wanting to make this situation any awkward, which he probably was doing anyway.

"Well then cast a drying charm on me, will you?!" Malfoy looked angry. Why was he like that? He was sneering at Harry, Harry felt like they were back at Hogwarts and Malfoy was about to make one of his snarky comments that always boiled Harry's blood. "You are the one with a wand, you arse!" He rolled his eyes and let out an annoyed huff. "if you are so concerned about my health then do it." he snapped, and Harry obeyed. As soon as he did, the blonde haired boy turned around and left in a rush without saying another word. What was wrong with him? Why did he get so pricky about all of this?!

He left Harry there on the beach. On his own. With a bulge in his pants. Still painfully pressing to his trousers.

He tried to think of Ginny, he really did, but he couldn’t help it, his thoughts drifted back to earlier that day, Malfoy’s hair flowing in the breeze, and Harry remembered how much he wanted to run his hands through it. The closeness of the boy made his body shiver, his angular face, his soft silver eyes, his flat yet arousing chest… oh Merlin, he felt like he could melt away just thinking of him, however weird it is, and however guilty he felt about not thinking of Ginny. What the fresh hell?! Malfoy was a boy! Harry wasn't gay for crying out loud! How the hell was he getting of to the thoughts of Malfoy?

The next few days passed in their usual routine, making breakfast together, Potions theory, having lunch together, brewing, making dinner together, and talking about Muggle things until it’s time for bed. Neither of them mentioned the day at the beach, and Harry was thankful for that, but he couldn’t stop thinking back to that very day, and what it felt like to be that close to Malfoy. He kept thinking back, and would often get distracted from doing whatever he was just by looking at Malfoy, or listening the way he talked about Potions, with such enthusiasm, or the excitement on his face when he showed Harry a book on Muggle things and told him how he finally understood how something worked, and it dawned on him, that he was growing more and more attracted to him.

It wasn’t just his looks that made Harry want to press the other boy to the wall and snog him senseless, though he didn’t even try to deny how his soft platinum hair and silver eyes drove him crazy, but it was his whole personality. The way he was nice to Harry now, always, but still kept teasing him, and Harry would tease back, and sometimes it occurred him that it felt almost like they were flirting or something. Or how patient and serious he could be as a teacher. Or how clever and intelligent he was, almost like Hermione, but in a different way. Or how he enjoyed just small things, like walking out into the garden when the sun was shining, or finding a new book among his mother’s belongings that he could read, or a nice meal they made together. How honest he could be sometimes. How passionate he would get if he was talking about something that was important to him. How similar his sense of humour was to Harry’s. He felt like they could be friends, like actual friends, who would stay in contact and have fun together even when they weren’t locked up in a small cottage in France together to study Potions. But real friends. And maybe even more, because Harry wanted to touch him again, to feel his soft skin, or his silky looking hair. Malfoy was driving Harry crazy, and he couldn’t do anything about it.

After another week or so Draco told him that he was doing well enough to pass his NEWTs easily, and they decided to go down to the beach once again, before Christmas. They spent the whole day there, taking a basket of food, they swam, but only a bit because the water was much colder by now, they talked and laughed and talked even more, about school, about their childhoods, about Quidditch, anything they thought of. Harry couldn't imagine his life without the blonde boy by now. He thought of how hard it will be for him to leave this bastard. How hard will it be to say goodbye to all their memories. Forget about all that they have accomplished and of course, about the whole attraction thing. Harry didn't even know if maybe he allowed himself do what his mind, and other parts of his body, told him to do, then would he discover something about himself. He found his mind drifting off to this idea while he stared at the blonde looking up to the sky.

As the sky grew darker, covered in thousands of sparkling spots, bright and shining like diamonds, scattered all over the sheet of the night, they lay back on their blankets, and Malfoy started to point the constellations out to Harry, saving his favourite one, his own one, the dragon for last. His voice proud as he told the boy next to him which one it was, which Harry found adorable, and returned the boy’s smirk with a grin of his own. Their eyes met for longer than they have ever held each other's gaze. It was like looking at the other's soul through them, finally seeing the real version of the person they never got the chance to get to know better. Harry wanted to kiss Malfoy. He wanted to throw his arms around the boy and press their lips together. He didn't. Whether it was because he was scared of what would happen if he did or he was scared of what he would become if he made this move. Harry turned his face towards the ground. The moment was ruined.

Sometime after staying quiet for a while, they started to talk about more serious things, and Malfoy told Harry how he didn’t want to kill Dumbledore, and how he only realised then that his parents were wrong, and how all he wanted before was to make his father proud. How he did everything afterwards just so Voldemort wouldn’t kill his parents. How terrible it was to let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts, but how he had no other choice if he wanted his parents to live. What it was like to live at Malfoy Manor with the Dark Lord. How he wanted to just apparate somewhere where no one knew him and there were no expectations he had to live up to, no war, no pain, no suffering. How he felt like a coward but still didn’t do anything.

Harry saw the tears shining on Malfoy's cheeks, in the moonlight, as he got to the end of his story, and without thinking, he wrapped his arm around the boy, pulling him close to himself. Malfoy instantly pulled back as if Harry's touch burned him. He mumbled something about not wanting to be pitied and knowing that he was a coward and a bad person but he wanted to change, and Harry didn’t know what to say, so he just sat there beside him.

Later they lay down on their blankets, and fell asleep next to each other under the starry sky.

When Harry woke up, to the first rays of sunshine stroking his skin, he found himself wrapped around Malfoy's arms, their bodies pressed together. He stayed in those arms for a while, enjoying the warmth that came from Draco's, not Malfoy's, body. Oh how much he wanted to stay here forever and just breath this air, go for long walks, talk to Draco, discover himself, get away from all the stress that England and people there caused him. But he couldn't do it. He felt too obligated to be the man everyone expected him to be. He couldn't just disappear and stay here with the blonde. It would be mad. Besides, he had his friends in England, his girlfriend, probably soon to be wife. He wanted to have a family and a job that he enjoyed, the job that would make him feel more human than just the Savour of Wizarding World. He had to go back home, no matter how much his heart was begging him to stay here and try losing himself in the unknown, something that didn't feel quite possible and normal, in something that was as exciting as scary. Just trying to be happy without all the shit that was going to await for him in London. Harry got up from under the blanket and Draco's arms carefully, making sure he wouldn’t wake the other boy up. He conjured a piece of parchment and a quill, with a deep sigh he started writing a letter. He knew he wasn’t the best with words, especially when they were goodbyes, and writing it all down helped, he could say all the things he could never say face to face. He could thank Draco and promise him he’d talk to Kingsley and find a way for him to come back to England. At least that's what Harry wanted. If he couldn't stay here he wanted to hold on to this unexpected friendship in any way he could. He wrote how he’d wait for Draco, and would want to see him, when he did come back to WIzarding World where Harry would be. Harry realised how much he's going to miss Draco, his smile, his snaky comments, the lessons with him, their midnight or morning walks to the beach, their inside jokes, their conversations, Draco's eyes that at some point became everything Harry could think of, just Draco Malfoy in general, still the same git, but trying to become better.

Harry rolled up his blanket and put it back into the basket along with all of the other scattered bits, and put the letter on top. He looked down at the boy below him, and leaned in, pressing a soft kiss onto his cheek, feeling the soft skin underneath his lips and smelling the scent he will never be able to get out of his mind, he didn't realise when a warm tear run down his cheek. He shook himself from the trans he was in. Before he got up to his feet and head back to Malfoy's house and then the town to take his Portkey back to London, he took one last look at Draco sleeping peacefully on the beach, Harry once again couldn't breath. If he never again got the chance to see this idiot, he didn't know if he would ever feel understood and complete as much as he did in Draco's presence. He could only hope for the best.

////////////////

Read Chapter Two HERE

#drarry #drarry fic #drarry head canon #head canon #my fic #first chapter #re writting stuf #wip #fic #ao3 #feelings we can't let go #drarry squad #harry potter #draco malfoy

57 notes · View notes

words-etched-in-her-skin · 2 years ago

Text

Miscellaneous

Incorrect Quotes

Capcom vs the Gays Middle Finger

Astronomy Class

Dani's Pet Spider

Lady Dimiclawscu

The Talk

Social Skills

Deuces

The Stench

The Stench 2

Call From a Drunk Reader

Viagra for the Lady

Megan the Stallion

Who's a Good Girl?

Modern Tech for the Dimitrescus

Thanksgiving Turkey

Gif Reactions

Reader in Tight Pants

Reader with No Gag Reflex

Reader Eating Yogurt with Just Tongue

Reader Masturbating

Reader Masturbating with Large Dildo

Being Called Daddy

Headcanons

HC for the first time the sisters attempt to use a strap on the reader HC for how each of the Dimitrescu family members would react to having their crush (the reader) walk in on them pleasuring themselves? Thanks in advance!

HC's for the resident evil girls feeding from you ;)

What perfumes would Lady D and daughters use? Expensive that's for sure, but which brands? Or maybe handmade? P.S. i adore your blog ❤

Hi, how about some headcanons about facesitting? Especially with Lady D and Daniela. Ps. Thanks for your lovely writtings;)

HC of what the Dimitrescu daughters are like during sex?

How would Alcina react walking in on her daughters riding their maiden's strap? And how would the daughters react on walking in on Alcina absolutely wrecking her pet from behind?

the dimitrescu's reaction to finding their lover(the reader) masturbating ;)

how would the daughters react if reader got their kiss mark tattooed over their heart

How would the Resident Evil Village ladies react to reader coming without permission >:3 and I love your blog!!

hey hey i'm back (sorry I just love your page so much it makes me happy C: ) But it's my b-day tomorrow and I wanted to ask what would all of the RE8 ladies do on reader birthday! Thank you and sorry for the many asks C:<

Headcanons for the Dimitrescu girls with a chubby nonbinary s/o who loves food but gets super flustered over being handfed and/or groped?

HCs for the ladies with a Reader coming home from a shitty day at work.

HCs for period sex

just a lil' fluffy thought i had: imagine growing and plucking some flowers just for a bouquet for the dimitrescu ladies 🥺

The Ladies cock sizes

how do you think the RE ladies (including Sal) would react and make the reader, who is sad because her dog is old and she doesn't know how much longer she is going to live, feel better?

Ladies' reactions to reader confessing their feelings. While they're stargazing.

The Dimitrescu daughters bugging their Mother on Halloween because they want candy and they can 🤣

Ropes anon here with a very serious question! From largest to smallest, how big would you guess the ladies of re8’s boobs are? As in cup sizes maybe?Very serious topic here lol.

How do you headcanon the neathers of the ladies look like?

Wedding HCs

About the Dimitrescu Sisters being rich and their gf (aka reader) being broke af (like me-) it would be funny how the sisters would literally spoil the reader 😂

Headcanons for the Ladies' favorite cuddle positions?

Ladies' favorite type of underwear?

ladies reactions to reader squirting?

Had a dream about my girlfriend giving me all kinds of praises that would make anyone blush and it got me thinking what kind of priases the re ladies would give the reader

Okay but how about reversed? 😯 The ladies reactions to reader praising them for something? 😯

How do you think the lovely ladies of Re8 would react to an s/o who needs to sleep with a certain stuffed animal every night in order to sleep?

Can you do some embarrassing things that happened during sex w the sisters and their girlfriends?

How would the ladies react to reader breaking up with them?

so my ask is, if the ladies have cocks do they get morning wood? and how do they react to having one? If they have a s/o do they help?

Okay, the breakups broke my heart so I need their reaction to reader coming back to them with tears and flowers and telling them someone blackmailed them to break up but they just can't do it

Never thought I'd love to hear my partner asking me if they could come and now I wanna know what the re ladies would do of their s/o asked them if they could cum?

Ladies favorite candies/seasonal treats

So. It's evil Wednesday. Short headcanons for the ladies finding their lover killed by Ethan.

Multiple Characters

The Dimitrescu daughters bugging their Mother on Halloween because they want candy and they can 🤣

Ahem.. I have no ask for this as it was a birthday fic written for a dear friend 👀 Transfem!Sal x Bratty Reader x Donna.. I.. ahem.. hope some of you will like it! ♥️ Gonna put it all under a cut since I know not everyone is into ships like this.

Someone I love dearly isn't feeling very well 🥺 Can they get something with a sick Reader being comforted by Alcina? Or Sal? Or both 👀

Ropes anon! Here after a few days of no sleep and several mental break downs on my floor! It’s my bday on the 28 and I was hoping you could indulge me in an Alcina x reader x Sal poly relationship? If not, then a simple happy birthday is all I’d like.

.... threesome with a bratty enby, Alcina and Sal? 👀👀

Hi! It’s been a long time since I sent in anything to you, things have been wild, but I was wondering if you could write anything about Donna and Daniela sharing a transfem reader?

Just a little Mother's Day drabble for our favorite Lady 💋

Misc.

Sasha ABCs written by demonofpuns

102 notes · View notes

fishybehavior · 3 years ago

Note

Sits menacingly

i havent re-read or edited this writting has been really hard for me recenly so I just wrote

also angst cause yes

- - -

Kai sat at the table in their workshop table, slumped onto the table he refused to look at Nya as she made supper. It's been a little over a month since the defeat of the Overlord, since Zane died, since Nya decided to go back to Ignacia, since the two siblings had a fight that tore them apart.

“What do you mean we’re leaving??” Kai asked as Nya packed her belongings into a bag, she had so many more than when she remembered arriving a little over a year ago.

“I mean we’re going home, pack your things.” She said emptying every drawer and shelf and stuffing them away.

“We are home!”

“No home, to Ignacia. We’re leaving.”

“What!?” Kai screamed as he stepped in front of Nya, her arms full of knick knacks and clothes from the closet. “We can’t leave!”

“We can and we are,” Nya said as she pushed past her little brother to stuff more things into bags.

“But, we’re happy! We have plenty of food, we have family here! Please, we can’t leave, not back to Ignacia!”

“No! It’s too dangerous, he promised we’d be safe. But we aren't, I can’t guarantee we'll be safe here, it's safe in Ignacia.”

“But the overlord was-

“He won’t be the last!” Nya snapped, “Do you really think they’ll be the last villain who wants power?”

Kai stood his ground and fired back, “Then we have to stay and defeat them!”

“No! We aren't responsible for them. The prophecy is done, we’ve done our parts and we can leave.”

“But I don’t want to leave!” Kai screamed back, shaking with frustration.

“You will, it's my job to keep you safe! And I will, in Ignacia!” The two were yelling so loudly they had drawn the attention of the other grieving ninjas, who poked their heads through the door to see what's happening.

“Then I’ll just run away! I’m not letting you take me away! I’ll just run away!” Kai turned to the other ninja, “You can’t let her take me away! I’ll just run back here and live with you guys.”

The ninja were taken a little aback as they were dragged back into the fight, guilt and confusion washed over their faces, until Wu pushed forward from the back. “I do not think you should leave, but Nya is your guardian, and I respect her decision.” The old man said with sadness as he watched the boy's face fall.

“No, I don't want to leave!! I can’t!! Lloyd, you have to understand,” Kai turned to the green ninja, his brother who froze as he was called out. “We can’t leave, you guys are as much a family as Nya is. Please talk some sense into them!”

Lloyd was silent, guilt covered his face as he whispered, “I’m sorry Kai.” He said as he watched tears fall from the boy.

He turned to Nya, “I hate you!” he seethed as he ran from the room.

#ninjago #kai #wu #nya #lloyd #smole kai #arguments #:P #my writing #wip #oneshot #drabble

15 notes · View notes

artificialqueens · 4 years ago

Text

One for the Books (Rosnali) - Athena2

Summary: Denali works in the children's section of a library and falls instantly in love with Rosé after she comes in with her daughter.

A/N: This is just a fluffy little one-shot I finally finished and wanted to share. Thank you so much to Writ for beta-ing and encouraging me to post this! I hope you enjoy, and please leave feedback if you'd like!

It’s a rare day that Denali gets flustered at work. She works in the children’s section of a public library, where only one baby spitting up on the rug during story time is a good day. She’s handled crying kids and arts and crafts messes that look like horror movie sets and become more familiar with disinfecting wipes than she thought possible. Nothing really phases her.

Except the woman at the desk right now.

She has waves of red hair and the kind of smile you see on TV, one that softens her face and rounds her rosy cheeks. She has an adorable kid on her hip, and Denali can’t look from the gentle curves of the woman’s arms as she holds her.

“Um, how can I help you?” Denali manages.

“Hi, can I make a library card?”

“Sure!” Denali tugs on the drawer of cards and applications so hard it nearly flies out of the cabinet. She grabs a bright yellow card and watches the woman fill out the application in the elegant cursive Denali wanted to snap her pencils trying to learn in second grade.

Denali usually types the patron’s information in the system on autopilot, not even noticing their names. But she looks at the woman’s—Rosé, her name is Rosé—application like it’s a study sheet for a test, like the curves of the letters and her phone number will reveal her secrets.

No secrets are revealed, though, and Denali passes her the card.

“Thank you.” Rosé smiles.

“The tigers, Mommy!” A little voice says impatiently, and Rosé laughs.

“Right, right. Um, can you tell me where the books about tigers are? Luna loves them.”

Denali finally turns her gaze away from Rosé long enough to take in the little girl in her arms. She’s around three and a mini Rosé, with red hair in two fluffy pigtails and a toothy grin. There’s a stuffed tiger tucked securely under her arm, and Denali smiles.

“What’s your tiger’s name?” she asks.

“Hunter,” Luna says, moving the stuffed animal’s head so Denali can see.

“He looks great,” Denali says. “I can show you where the books are, if that’s okay.”

“Perfect,” Rosé says.

Perfect. It echoes in Denali’s head as she leads Rosé over to the books. Maybe it's a good sign. After all, Rosé could’ve insisted on getting the books herself, but she let Denali show her instead, and—

Yeah, Denali is already head over heels for this woman.

She’s had crushes before, but she usually doesn’t fall this hard or this fast. Especially not someone she’s known for all of a minute. But something about Rosé makes Denali feel like she’s known her all her life.

Denali clears her throat. “Here’s all the books about tigers. There are a bunch of other animal books too, if you want to check those out. I’m Denali, by the way. If you need anything else.”

“Thank you so much,” Rosé says, and Denali forces herself back to the desk because she can’t just stand there forever.

She watches Rosé kneel down on the floor with Luna, pulling out book after book and showing each one to her. There’s a softness in Rosé, in how patient she is, in how carefully she re-ties her daughter’s itty-bitty pink Converse. She’s beautiful as she is, but her genuine smile and kind eyes around her daughter make her even more beautiful, and Denali wants to take it every second. When Rosé takes the stack of books to the chair in the corner, pulls Luna into her lap, and starts reading to her, making funny faces and showing her all the pictures, Denali’s heart damn near explodes.

“Girl, get a grip.”

“Wh—huh?” Denali whirls around to see Symone watching with a smirk on her face.

“You’re basically drooling.”

“I am not!” Denali wipes her mouth self-consciously anyway. She spends the next half hour trying to busy herself in cleaning the desk, but she just shuffles the same five pens around and keeps watching Rosé be adorable with her daughter. When she comes up to the desk to check out her books, Denali leaps to the computer to do them for her. Rosé manages to hold the entire stack in one arm and her daughter in the other, and Denali wonders if Rosé’s arms could hold her. She can’t stop imagining herself nestled within them.

“Mommy, can we get ice cream?” Luna asks, smiling hopefully.

“Okay.”

Denali grins as Luna cheers.

Rosé rolls her eyes fondly. “She’d eat ice cream every day if I let her,” she says to Denali.

“I’d eat ice cream every day if I let me,” Denali says, and Rosé gives another infectious laugh.

“Thank you for your help. We should be back soon.”

“I’ll be here,” Denali says, nonchalant even though she knows she’ll be counting down the days.

—-

Rosé comes back the next Saturday, and the one after that. Denali used to loathe the Saturday shifts she got stuck with, the day filled with either absolute screaming chaos or absolute mind-numbing boredom with no in-between, but she quickly gets used to Rosé coming in and making small talk with her while she checks out her books. Before long, she’s actually looking forward to Saturdays, to the tiny window she gets to see Rosé, making silly faces for her daughter and laughing at all Denali’s jokes.

Denali’s heart leaps in her chest when she sees a glimpse of red hair come through the door, and she gives Rosé a little wave and doesn't care how dorky it is, how desperate she looks. Rosé smiles and waves back to Denali as best she can with arms full of toddler and books. She sets the stack on the desk with a sigh, shifting Luna to her other arm.

“Getting your workout in?” Denali teases.

Rosé snorts. “Definitely. The books are about as heavy as she is, I’ve been reading her three or four a night.”

“You can return these in the box outside, you know,” Denali says as she scans them in. “If you don’t want to carry them all the way in here.”

Rosé bites her lip. “But that’s one less time I’d get to talk to you.”

The book slips through Denali’s hands and hits the counter, her cheeks on fire. Her heart skips a beat, then resumes its rhythm with a deep pounding in her chest. Rosé likes talking to her. Rosé likes talking to her so much she lugs a pile of books in here just to do it, and it's a few seconds before Denali can speak again. “Are you--are you getting any other books today?” she stammers.

Rosé shakes her head. “Nah, I just wanted to stop in quick and drop these off. I’m taking Luna to the zoo today.”

“To see the tigers!” Luna adds happily.

Rosé smiles. “That’s right. We’re gonna see all the tigers.”

Denali smiles too, her heartbeat finally returning to normal. “I hope you have fun. Say hi to the tigers for me, okay?”

“We will. See you next week.”

“See you.”

Denali really, really wishes she was going to the zoo too.

---

Denali is still coasting on the high of Rosé’s latest visit a week later, even if neither of them has done anything to capitalize on her comment about enjoying her talks with Denali. But Denali knows the interest is there, knows the way Rosé’s eyes shine when she looks at her aren’t just her imagination. Denali will keep testing the waters, let herself be a little more flirty, and one of these weeks, she’ll fully make her move.

The thought keeps her going all day, through the disastrous clean-up after someone spills an entire box of crayons--the 96-pack, of course--and through the reorganization of the mess someone made of the fairy tale collection. She’s giving the furniture a once-over when she spots a familiar stuffed tiger on the chair, her mind filling with the image of Rosé reading to her daughter here this morning. Luna must have forgotten the tiger, and Rosé was so busy juggling all their books that she must not have noticed.

She could just hold the tiger until the next time Rosé comes in, which will hopefully be soon. But she thinks of how fiercely Luna clings to the tiger and Denali can’t make her go without it; Denali was a stuffed animal kid herself, each one with a name and backstory and assigned night for sleeping with her. Plus the library is closed on Sundays, so the earliest Rosé could get it would be Monday morning, and Denali winces thinking of how rough two nights without the tiger might be for Luna.

Or she can just call Rosé.

Every patron in the library system has a phone number and address in their profile, and though she can’t remember Rosé’s last name, she’s the only Rosé in the system. Finding her phone number won’t take more than five seconds. It feels personal, almost intimate, somehow, looking Rosé up like this, calling her because Denali recognized her daughter’s stuffed tiger. Really, though, it’s no different from looking up a patron’s number to tell them a book they ordered came in, and Denali does that all day--heck, she gets paid to do that all day. This shouldn't be any different. She dials the number before she can think about it too much, warning the butterflies in her stomach to settle down.

“Hello?”

“Um, Rosé?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Denali. You know, from the library. Anyway, I was cleaning up and I found a certain stuffed tiger hanging out on the chair, and I bet someone’s really missing him.”

“Oh, thank God.” Rosé sighs, and Denali can practically see her body slumping in relief. “We just noticed him missing an hour ago, I’ve been going everywhere we went today looking for it. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“I’ll be here,” Denali promises.

“Thank you, Denali. Really.”

Rosé is so sincere that Denali’s grateful they’re just talking on the phone and Rosé can’t see her blushing. The tiger keeps her company at the desk until Rosé rushes in, her cheeks flushed and hair messy. Luna looks equally stressed, and Denali can tell she’s been crying. She jumps up from the desk and hangs the tiger to Luna, who hugs it to her chest and sniffles.

“Thank you so much,” Rosé says. “Luna, can you say thank you to Miss Denali?”

“Thank you Miss Nali,” Luna says, and Denali’s heart just about melts.

“You’re welcome.”

Luna runs off to play with the blocks, and Rosé leans against the desk with Denali to watch her.

“I’m so sorry I had to bother you with this,” Rosé says, running a hand through her hair. “I should’ve noticed she didn’t have it, I just—“

Denali brushes her off. “Please. I had to kick a teenager off the computer for watching porn this morning. Holding onto a stuffed animal is one of the better things I’ve had to do today.”

Denali is wondering if that was too much information when Rosé bursts into laughter, so infectious that Denali laughs with her.

“Seriously?” Rosé asks.

“Pretty much a typical day in the library,” Denali says.

Rosé snorts and shakes her head. “Anyway, I mean, if there’s something I could do to thank you—“

“I like ice cream,” Denali blurts, cheeks instantly burning. “I mean, uh—“

“Are you suggesting an ice cream date?” Rosé asks, raising her eyebrow.

“I am,” Denali says confidently, because apparently today is the day she’s making her move.

Rosé breaks into a grin. “It’s a date.”

#rpdr fanfiction #s13 #denali foxx #rosé #rosnali #lesbian au #fluff #athena2 #concrit welcome #submission

17 notes · View notes

gigili-jiggly · 6 years ago

Note

can you list your favorite klance fics ://

(i’m not sure how to respond to your ‘ :// ‘ emoji, but i’ll take any excuse to gush about fics lol)

I have so many favorite fics, so I’ll just list some oneshots for now so that this list doesn’t become too long

(I might post a list of more oneshots and ongoing fics if anyone is interested!)

SFW Oneshots:

you’re lucky that’s what i like by @zenstrike

Lance rescues a hamster from certain doom.

or, Lance has Keith wrapped around his little finger and doesn’t even realize it.

This is literally the cutest and softest klance series I’ve read in a long time!! It gives me lots of feelings and feeds my need for lovestruck Keith ladfajdifjdsklf

hey, mom, i met a boy by @mothpoem

“Sweetheart,” says Lance, his hair longer, his shoulders broader, the slope of his nose uneven now where it didn’t used to be, “you don’t know the half of it.”

LISTEN. This fic owns my ass, it’s so good. It has all my favorite tropes (marriage proposals, visions of the future, love realizations, etc.) and every moment between Lance and Keith is so sweet and full of love hnnngh.

i know what you did last summer by seventies

Saving angry, mysterious damsels in distress multiple times weren’t in the job description of being a lifeguard. It would have been slightly bearable if only everyone would stop asking Lance if he remembered what he did last summer. What really happened, anyway? AU

Pining Keith? Oblivious Lance? A little bit of Memory Loss? Heck yeah!!! This fic also made me laugh a lot, so I always reread this when I need a pick-me-up

this, our town of halloween by @tobiologist

“Yeah, well, it’s written all over both of your faces,” Lance hisses. “It’s not a big deal.”

Pidge taps her chin. “Oh, you mean Keith, the local introvert and your ex-rival, creeping out of his cave to go to a huge Halloween celebration with you and your little niece and nephew? Of course that’s not a big deal. Silly me!”

Or: Lance invites Keith to Disneyland on Halloween and glimpses an entirely new side of the boy he has a stupidly massive crush on.

Lately, I’ve been loving tropes where people go on a ‘date’, insist that it’s not a date and then finally realize it’s a date. Also, pining Lance is good shit.

Smell as Sweet by ultimateparadox

Coffee and love, Lance thinks, are the only universal constants.

Established relationship!!! Marriage proposals!!! Becoming a family!!! Everything here is amazing!!!

Bastion by Foxcote

In a healing universe, Keith and Lance await the arrival of their daughter.

I am a sucker for klance as parents, and one scene in particular between Keith and Krolia really captured my heart

In every reality, I reach for you by @enlacinglineswrites

Stories inspired the Klance AU month prompts.

I love drabble series and this one right here has so many interesting and wonderful aus! I read it time and time again like a morning newspaper lol.

Somewhere a Clock is Ticking by @emphasis-all-mine

This is a story about time travel, lost memories, growing up broken, ukulele lessons, peanut butter banana sandwiches, and a stuffed hippo named Patches.

This is also the story of how James Griffin saved the world, but couldn’t stop his parents from falling in love.

Literally the fic that made me warm up to James! I’ve always loved time travel stories and the characterizations in this fic is so fun and enjoyable, I hold it very close to my heart! Also, klance family aldjofiadjfdf

5 + 1 times: lance and the search for keith’s boyfriend by @starwar

Who could it be?!

Lance tried to convince himself it wasn’t jealousy… it was just friendly concern. He had to ensure that whoever Keith was with treated him well, not that Keith needed Lance to look after him, but still, Keith deserved the world and Lance wanted to make sure whoever he was with gave that to him.

Just buddy-buddy concerns.

or alternatively; 5 + 1 times lance doesn’t realise he’s keith’s boyfriend

Oblivious Lance who doesn’t know he’s Keith’s boyfriend? Bet your ass I’m gonna read that!!

chaser of fate by freshia

Where Lance thinks everyone else is really frickin’ weird, the others spend copious amounts of time trying to get him to just remember, and Keith just wants to (re?)live his life.

(Modern Reincarnation AU where the biggest threat to face, is the looming deadlines for essays.)

One of the first klance fics I’ve read and one that I absolutely consider a classic. I love me some reincarnation au’s, and I love how this one is nice and not too angsty!

Save the Date by @thathopelessromantic

They had gotten married in the middle of a war, on an alien spaceship, both boasting major injuries. It was rushed and short and the team was thrust into battle almost immediately after “I do.” But afterwards, after some insistent questioning from Keith, Lance admitted to things he had let himself imagine for their wedding, were they to have had one on Earth.

Cute established and married klance celebrating their anniversary, what more can a girl want?

Speak for the Stars by @speakswords

All Lance has ever wanted is to prove his worth. So, maybe it’s fitting that the Black Lion picked him right when Lotor betrayed them and Shiro’s clone went rogue. Right when the team was at its lowest and closest to failing.

The desire for glory that Lance grew up with—that drove him to join the Garrison and pursue fighter class, that drove him into his one-sided rivalry with Keith, that drove him after Keith in the Sonoran Desert and into Blue’s cockpit and into space and into the war in the first place—it’s a relic of the past for him now. All he wants these days is to keep his friends alive and the Coalition afloat, and he tries his best, despite the pervasive fear that he isn’t the right person for this monumental task. Despite the growing certainty that Black picked the wrong guy.

This fear will be put to the ultimate test when the mess that ensnares the team after the clone disaster turns out to be a labyrinth more winding than any of them were prepared for. Because Lance might just be the only person equipped to lead them through this maze and into the light.

I love those tropes where peeps get stuck in their own dreams and someone has to help them snap out of it. This fic does this wonderfully with Lance and I loved Keith’s dream in here, it was so sweet

in every reality, we meet by ULTIOcean

Small one-shots about our favorite team, taken from a prompt list on tumblr for the October Writting Challenge, in which i’ll write 31 short stories, unrelated to each other, each insipred by the prompt of the day.

i adore this drabble series, each chapter is such a unique take on the prompt!

you’ve got a hand for the taking (i’m about to take it to the moon) by seabear

“I think,” Lance says, squinting, “he’s a vampire.”

one of my comfort fics to be honest. i really really like their interactions here and the confession scene makes me very happy

where & how we’ll land by @ephemelody

The first time Keith meets Lance is also the first time they kiss. It all goes downhill for him from there.

looking for a childhood klance fic that is so so good? this one is a classic!!!

Complete Mature/Explicit Oneshots:

assemble by groovystars

‘there was an idea- katie and hunk know about it- called the voltron initiative. the plan was-is, god, it is- to bring together a group of remarkable people, and see if together they could become something more. to fight the battles we never could. i wasn’t sure though. just knew that katie and hunk could do it, maybe lance if he wasn’t knee-deep in cover work. but now that cap’s used to the century and keith kogane turned up from the dead, and we have a literal god on our hands… now- now i think we can do that. i think we can believe in heroes.’

aka the marvel au that’s probably already been done

As a huge Marvel fan, this is an amazing superhero au!! It has klance and shatt, as well as lotor and allura in a thor and loki dynamic!

i like me better when i’m with you by @reader115

His mother’s advice when the war is over? That he should ask for what he wants.

Keith joins Lance and his family on their farm, and Lance wishes for a never ending visit.

i’ve read so many post-canon fics when vld ended and this one is one of my absolute favorites. It’s because of this fic that i started associating the song with klance, haha! I love the characterizations and the overall sweetness/lovey dovey feeling the fic has and aldoifjaidfd I just love reading this over and over again

there are worse things i could do by @peachgrdn

His chest went tight when he recalled Keith’s face. What did it have to mean? They’d never been lovers; that much was clear.

When Lance goes out to buy himself a gift for his own pleasure, it comes with a little emotional baggage. Only just as he thinks he can manage it, Keith throws himself into the mix, and Lance realizes he must come to terms with buried feelings.

honestly, i consider lyssy the queen for fluffy and feely smut lol. I love her humor in this one as well as the many feels it gives me…just aldkjodfa i love this fic a lot okay?

kiss me (like it hurts) by mottainai

Purple light streamed through his kitchen window from the neon sign across the street, getting tangled in Keith’s hair and painted on the planes of his shoulders. He held his breath, afraid to disturb the moment. Keith’s eyes were on his, too soft to be coming from a dangerous man. Lance could see himself becoming caught in the gap in his teeth, pressed into the groves of his calloused hands, inked across his ribs. It should terrify him, the kind of terror of one looking into the belly of the beast.

But it didn’t.

Or: Keith and Lance, told through arguments and resolutions

i’m such a sucker for gangster keith stuff and this fic here has one of my favorite takes on it. perfect for rereading again and again!

lure by chaeriee

Becoming indebted to Keith Kogane was not a part of Lance’s future plans. Falling for him, even less so.

another gangster keith fic and it has almost all of my guilty pleasures in it uwu. i love those /person A needs to pay off a debt and works for person B while unknowingly becoming the most important one to them’ storylines haha!

Alpha Affairs by marizousbooty

Keith and Lance take a romantic vacation to the mountains for a snowy weekend getaway.

vampire lance and werewolf keith….doing it….good stuff

Heaven in hiding by i_write_shakespeare_not_disney

Keith finds something interesting in Lance’s drawer and it leads to one of the most amazing nights of his life.

insecure lance in lingerie and keith helping him become comfortable with it? sexy.

Beast of Burden by melancholymango

“Keith, no, we can’t go again.” Lance pleads fall on deaf ears. Keith is honed in on him now like predator to prey. He’s fighting a losing battle and they both know it. He sees it in the way Keith is raking his eyes over him, sizing him up. “We’ll be so late getting to the bar.”

“Just one more.” Keith insists, herding Lance toward the counter with a stubbornness that is innately wolf. Lance pouts, but he doesn’t have anywhere else to go but backward.

“That’s what you said last time! And the time before that!”

–

The week leading up to a supermoon, as told by the world’s best werewolf boyfriend, Lance McClain. The good, the bad, and the horny.

I read this on Halloween and I’m not even ashamed of how much I enjoyed this. This fic made me very very biased towards werewolf keith lol.

#Anonymous #klance fic #fic rec #wipes forehead #whoo!!!#that took a lot out of me #if you enjoy any of these pls give the writers some love!!!#they're really amazing peeps!!!

224 notes · View notes

formyeyesbutwhatever · 7 years ago

Conversation

153 Things to do instead of self harm:

1. Exercise

2. Putting on fake tattoos

3. Drawing on yourself in red marker (make sure it’s washable!)

4. Scribbling on sheets an sheets of paper

5. Writing (poetry, stories, journal, etc.)

6. Cuddling with a stuffed toy

7. Being with other people

8. Watching a favorite TV show (preferably a comedy)

9. Posting on web boards, and answering others’ posts

10. Thinking about how I DON’T want scars for the summer

11. Painting your nails

12. Going to see a movie

13. Eating something ridiculously sweet (or any favorite food)

14. Doing school work

15. Surf the net

16. Go into chat rooms to talk

17. Call a friend and ask for company

18. Playing a musical instrument

19. Singing

20. Looking up at the sky (night is especially beautiful) .

21. Redo this list.

22. Punching a punching bag (with gloves on)

23. Shoot rubberbands across the room.

24. Cover yourself with band-aids where you want to cut

25. Mix warm water and red food coloring, and put in on your skin (feels and looks like blood)

26. Letting yourself cry (can be very difficult for some)

27. Sleep (only if you are tired)

28. A hot shower, or relaxing bath (no razors in the tub, though)

29. Play with a pet

30. Detangling yarn or necklaces

31. Re-organizing your room

32. Cleaning

33. Having a pillowfight with the wall (yes, neighbors may think you are crazy, but that’s ok)

34. Knitting or sewing

35. Reading a good book

36. Dressing up very glamorous (make sure no one can walk in on you, though)

37. Coloring my hair

38. Listening to music (try yo use calm music)

39. Watching a candle burn (no playing with the flames!)

40. Finding someone else you can help out

41. Meditate

42. Watching a scary (but not bloody, but if bloody movies help, than watch a bloody one) movie.

43. Work on a website

44. Have a vivid fantasy love affair with a celebrity

45. Go somewhere very public

46. Bake

47. Alphabetize your CD’s

48. Chewing leather (especially if you SI by biting)

49. Buy a home Henna tatoo kit (peels off the next day-similar to skin picking)

50. Painting or drawing

51. Ripping paper into itty-bitty pieces

52. Hugs-(this one is very nice…)

53. Writting letters or email

54. Talk to yourself (or if that feels weird, buy a small tape recorder-I then feel like someone is listening)

55. Stroke nice fabrics

56. Hug a pillow

57. Hyperfocus on something like a rock, hand, etc.

58. fingerprint

59. Scream real loud (make sure no one is home!)

60. Dance

61. Make hot chocolate (mmmmm….)

62. pop bubble wrap

63. play with modelling clay or Play-Dough

64. count to one hundred

65. Build a pillow fort

66. pop balloons

67. Hug yourself

69. Reading things in a different language

70. Going for a nice, long drive

71. Complete something you’ve been putting off

72. Drinking absurd amounts of tea

73. Breaking plastic plates

74. Tearing up socks

75. Throwing socks against the wall

76. Archery

77. Rock climbing

78. Take up a new hobby

79. Organize bills and such

80. Cook a meal

81. Go out for ice cream

82. Buy a stuffed animal

83. Look at pretty things-like flowers or artwork

84. Create Something

85. Pray

86. Randomly wave at people

87. Make a list of blessings in your life

88. Read the Bible

89. Go to a friend’s house

90. Take up fencing

91. Watch an old, happy movie

92. Call a Help hotline or your Therapist

93. Talk to someone close to you that knows

94. Throw a temper-tantrum

95. Hit things-other than yourself

96. Ride a bicycle.

97. Polish silver or jewelry.

98. Gardening or watering house plants

99. Memorizing poetry

100. CHOCOLATE!!!!!!!

101. Feed the ducks or birds or squirrels, etc.

102. Draw on the walls

103. Play with facepaint

104. Do very Glamerous make-up

105. Colour with crayons

106. Memorise a novel or play or song

107. Put on boots and STAMP

108. Stretch

109. Find butterflies

110. Watch fish

111. Come up with baby names (even if you’re not pregnant)

112. Make mashed potatoes

113. Make a tape of your favorite songs

114. Name all of your stuffed animals

115. Go shopping

116. Get into PJ’s and just veg.

117. Buy cheap teddy bears and take out anger on them instead of self.

118. Throw everything (except glass) into the centrer

119. Go to a loud concert

120. Play the 15 minute game (say you can’t cut for 15 minutes, and when the time is up, start again)

121. Plan your wedding / prom

122. Hunt for stuff on Ebay (you can find ANYTHING there)

123. Alphabetize your books

124. Hunt for your perfect home in the paper

125. Take up Tai Chi

126. Try to make as many words out of your full name as possible, then do your friends names)

127. count ceiling tiles/lights

129. search ridiculous things on the web

130. color-co-ordinate your wardrobe

131. do a home tan on yourself

132. sort all your photographs

133. color (or scribble) over the pretty women in magazines

134. plan a dinner party

135. play with a slinky

136. but yourself some toys and play

137. start collecting something

138. get a tattoo / piercing

139. play video/computer games

140. do a trash clean at your local park

141. Play on a swingset

142. go out and perform a random act of kindness for someone

143. call up an old friend

144. write yourself an “I love you because” letter

145. put on fake nails

146. try to build something

147. re-arrange your house

148. go to a public place and people watch

149. go through all your old stuff

150. go bargain - hunting

151. smile at least five people (you usually end up smiling genuinely yourself.)

152. go to the zoo and rename all the animals.

153. go for a peaceful walk.

7K notes · View notes

its-kall-the-clown · 4 years ago

Text

Hey y'all!

I'm still making my way through the submitted prompts but probably gonna take a short break since I feel like I'm flooding the monkie kid tag with them and feel really bad about it LOL

For the next few days I'm gonna re-blog some of the writting I have finished cause despite the typos I'm proud of some of them :3

If you want to filter out these just block the tag KALL BOASTS so you don't have to be bothered by it LOL

Thank you for your time! here is a picture of my stuffed frog that I love as a reward.

#kall rambles #just a heads up!#i promise im workong through all of rhem and im excited to work on them #this also gives me time to transfer some of them over to AO3

10 notes · View notes

asherv20-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Transformers are about to get weird

It’s the morning of New York Toy Fair 2018 and this is a feeling I’ve had all week, the brand is about to take a turn and pivot away from the direction its been heading down since the release of the first live-action movie a little over a decade ago. Earlier today at Hasbro’s Investor Preview, they announced that there would be no follow-up to 2016’s Transformers: The Last Knight and after the Bumblebee movie slated for release later this year, the live-action movie series is going to be rebooted. Although, I wonder if some hooks won’t be sprinkled into the Bumblebee movie to make it a spring-board for whatever comes next.

The dealings of the movie-verse aside, there’re other factors at work causing me to feel the brand is setting up for a significant shift. I wanna talk about the collector-focused toy-line Transformers Generations and its two latest refreshes, Titans Return and Power of the Primes. Titans Return re-introduced Headmasters writ large to the brand and quickly brought that play pattern’s most relevant characters along with it. But once the likes of Chromedome, Weirdwolf, Brainstorm and Fortress Maximus were rolled out; it seemed to me the back-half of the line turned its attention to filling in the gaps in our respective collections. We were offered a buffet line-up of characters that had little to do with the head-swapping gimmick of Titans Return, but were long-overdue for new toy treatment, including: Brawn, Seaspray, Kickback, Gnaw the Sharkticon, the Autobot and Decepticon clones, Top Spin and Twin Twist, Twinferno and the Decepticon Targetmasters to name a few.

Outside of characters introduced in 1984/1985, most of these dudes don’t have a lot of cache with the fan base at large. So its kind of surprising that so many of them would indeed get new, and in many cases very excellent toys – unless you look at it through the lens of Hasbro aiming to ‘clear out’ the roster of original G1 characters who’d yet to receive new toys.

Then we get to Power of the Primes, the ‘end’ of the Prime Wars Trilogy that began with Combiner Wars. Through the first two waves, this toy line has proven quite curious. Headmasters/Titan Masters have been side-graded into Prime Masters and though they share the same form factor as Titan Masters, the Prime Masters turn into a ‘spark’ rather than the head of another Transformers character and while they can be plugged into the head socket of any Titans Return compatible toy, they’re intended to socket into the accompanying slot of ‘armor pieces’ included with deluxe and larger figures and imbue that larger character with the ‘power’ of the corresponding Prime. In effect, you’re socketing a headmaster into a chunk of plastic and sticking that onto another Transformers figure.

Speaking of the larger figures, Power of the Primes is shuffling combiners back into the toyline using the technology first seen in Combiner Wars – to the point that some POTP figures feature tooling directly linked back to older Combiner Wars toys. I suppose it could be observed that Power of the Primes is celebrating the toys that came before by retaining the Titan Master play pattern and bringing back combiners.

I’ll take the opportunity here to tangent briefly and talk about the Power of the Primes leader-class toys which bring their own ‘evolution’ gimmick of a smaller figure integrating with an included larger set-piece to evolve into a different iteration of the character: Orion Pax merges with his truck trailer to become a very Masterpiece-inspired Optimus Prime, Hot Rod likewise links up with his camper trailer and upgrades into Rodimus Prime. The forth-coming fan-voted Optimus Primal will also incorporate his Optimal Optimus form in some fashion – this toy hasn’t seen full release yet, so I can’t speak to the specifics on how he’ll work exactly.

Let’s take a look at the characters we’re getting in Power of the Primes: Dreadwind, Darkwing (now Blackwing), Beachcomber, Windcharger, Tailgate, the Duocon Battletrap (made through combining two brand new Legends-sized characters!), the Terrorcons, Predacons, an honest-to-goodness full team of Dinobots! (Not just Grimlock for the first time in ages!) Even some of the female Autobot Resistance Fighters first seen in the G1 cartoon are getting toys at long last. Again, you look at that line-up and it seems to me that Hasbro is aggressively trying to fill out as much of the G1 cast as they feasibly can.

The last two years has given us a metric ton of toys based on characters from 1987/88 of the G1 lineup, often surpassing my wildest expectations: a new Krok, or Grotusque, or Overlord? Even five years ago, there’s no way I could see these guys getting new toys that weren’t convention exclusive repaints or expensive unlicensed toys – never mind in the main toy line and being (almost) readily available. So, what comes next?

Power of the Primes is still in its infancy, what with Wave 2 only just starting to see retail presence …and as I mentioned at the top, it’s the day of New York Toy Fair. We’re all eager to see what’s in store for the rest of the line. A lot of folks are hoping for the return of the Seacons and for the Dinobots to be retooled into either the Dinoforce or the Pretender Monsters. Some are hoping for more 84/85 characters to get revisited as combiner limbs. Personally, I’m hoping for more female characters to accompany Elita-1 and Moonracer, more Throttlebots, or maybe a Leader-class Deathsaurus. But what about beyond Power of the Primes?

The first natural assumption is that Hasbro just continues apace with updating G1 characters. But we’re talking 1989 and beyond which contains A LOT of Pretenders, Micromasters, and Action Masters; in short, a whole lot of characters that, beyond those of us in the fandom with extremely long gazes, most of the buying audience will surely struggle to muster any passion for. Of course, one could argue that you pepper in more releases of legacy characters like Optimus, Bumblebee, Starscream, Megatron, and Soundwave and anything released alongside them will continue to sell; but I have a hard time seeing that happening.

I keep coming back to the way Hasbro has used the phrase “The Prime Wars Trilogy,” Power of the Primes is the ‘final chapter’ of “The Prime Wars Trilogy.” Seems to me, you don’t bandy about branding like that if you’re intention is to continue doing the exact same thing; not after the ‘final chapter’ of your ‘trilogy.’ Which leads me to believe that the Generations toy-line as we’ve known it since 2010 is going to sunset with Power of the Primes. I don’t think it’ll stop entirely, I feel there’s way too much money in the collector-oriented market now for Hasbro to give up on, but Generations, or whatever branding it takes after Power of the Primes will definitely shift focus.

Whether that’s something as simple as turning back the dial and we’re back updating the G1 cast starting with 1984 all over again, or something completely different, I couldn’t say. Personally, there’s been quite a few new characters introduced over the last decade through movies and tv series that I’m super invested in, but they got really bunk toys and deserve another pass. I’m talking movie Blackout, Prime Knockout and Airachnid, Robots in Disguise Steeljaw. Like. Almost. Every. Robots in Disguise Decepticon… I’d love to see a toy-line focused on giving these newer characters better toys.

More than that, there’s an unspoken truth amidst the fandom and that’s that we’re aging up. There are way, way more folks in here with us that were kids during the Unicron Trilogy, or for the start of the live action movies and that’s their onboarding point – not G1. Their nostalgia is every bit as legitimate as the older segments of the community and its beyond time that ‘their G1’ got some love. Some of those early-to-mid 2000s toys are in desperate need of an update, the Armada toy line especially. But even the original 2001 Robots in Disguise could use some love and I’m not talking car brothers, I’m talking updated Spy Changers!

…and of course, let’s not forget the IDW comics. Now, there was a lot of belly-aching in the community the last time the comics got any kind of acknowledgement in the toy line (circa 2012) – unfounded belly-aching, I’ll add. Of all those toys, only like, half-a-dozen were *actually* based on or influenced by comic designs. Everything else was back-doored into the comics. I’m looking at you Armada Starscream, Scoop, Waspinator, and Sky-byte.

Anyway! IDW! Since the Phase 2 re-launch that started with Robots in Disguise and More Than Meets the Eye, we’ve been treated to a smorgasbord of delightful new characters that now, to many, are every bit as significant as any legacy character and every last one of them is aching for a toy. More Than Meets the Eye and Lost Light author James Roberts has utterly stuffed his cupboard with brand new characters that’ve resonated with his audience like Nautica (the Titans Return toy …really doesn’t count), Rung, Velocity, Pharma, and Roller just to name a very few …and of course I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention fandom darlings, the Decepticon Justice Division. Although, the likelihood of a toy being made of a dude who transforms into an electric chair and sold at retail are a little dubious. But the demand is there.

Just off the top of my head, that’s three new directions the future of the Generations toy line could head down once it moves on from updates of G1 characters, which I feel is all but a certainty as we move forward.

I also wanted to take a moment to shine a light on Japan, where it seems the Transformers brand is in a tremendously strange spot at the moment. Takara’s counterpart to Hasbro’s Generations line, Transformers Legends is coming to an end and has recently come to light that for their follow-up, they’re straight importing the Power of the Primes toys with seemingly no changes. This news has been distressing to fans of the Legends line which had become known for heavily modifying Combiner Wars and Titans Return toys for release in Japan – usually to the tune of alternate/additional applications of paint, to changing the visual look of a toy whole cloth, to the addition of completely brand new Targetmaster partners for their releases of Hot Rod, Kup, Blurr (although only included with Doublecross, who’d released after Blurr), Triggerhappy, Misfire, and Slugslinger; even including Targetmasters with their upcoming releases of Windblade, Top Spin, and Twin Twist – seemingly to future proof for any as-of-yet unmade Sureshot, Crosshairs, and Pointblank.

So it has been a bitter pill to swallow for those that were anticipating Dinobots and Optimus/Rodimus with more paint, or the release of Buster and Hydra in place of Dreadwind and Darkwing. Add to that, Takara seems to be doubling down on both Takaratomy Mall exclusives and Masterpiece repaints, and the quiet abandonment of the Transformers Adventure line, I can only wonder if they’re trying to reduce their costs as much as possible while trying to figure out what to do with Transformers in Japan. I have only the barest grasp on the nuances of that market; mostly just a lot of hearsay that Transformers has always struggled in Japan, or the Legends toys simply weren’t selling, or even that the Japanese collector’s market on the whole is shrinking.

Both at home and abroad, I can’t help but feel Transformers is in a weird place and on the cusp of a major shift. After five Michael Bay helmed movies, we’re due for a reboot; which we’ve learned we’re now getting. The current comics feel like they’re all heading towards their own eventual resolution, what with the long-withheld introduction of Unicron to IDW continuity finally taking place later this year; after which, I’m sure there’ll be a reboot of some stripe. Then there’s the Power of the Primes toy-line which as I oft mentioned already is the final chapter in the Prime Wars trilogy. I could wrong, of course, but stands to reason that something different is going to follow on the heels of the Prime Wars period of the Generations toy line.

Through all that though, I’m not preaching doom and gloom. I’m not saying brace for certain disappointment. Just get ready for Transformers to change a little. Wouldn’t be the first time. Heck, we’re not that far removed from a period in the franchise’s life where it was re-inventing itself every 18 months. We’ve just been treated to an exceptionally long period of the films, tv series, comics, and toys all remaining fairly consistent. But all of these facets of the brand need to be shaken up in order to remain viable in the market and it just so happens that shake up might hit each limb of the brand all at once.

I talked earlier about the aging up of the fandom, I’m in my mid-thirties and finally hit a point in my life where I can no longer indiscriminately purchase every single toy I want as soon as it goes up for pre-order and even as a dedicated reader of the comics since the first IDW mini-series, I’m starting to have some difficulty following all the myriad plot threads. Like, I didn’t even catch the part where the introduction of The Visionaries into IDW continuity shut off the Cybertronians from Vector Sigma and now they’re having to import their Energon from Earth? That’s a thing that happened. I didn’t catch it, but it did.

So maybe its time I finally took a break, and if you’ve read all that and you’re finding yourself worried about what’s coming down the pipe for our favorite Robots in Disguise, maybe we take a break together? The Transformers will endure, they’ll be there for us when we come back and there’ll be something awesome that happened for us to get caught up on!

Also. Hey. Its Toy Fair. At the very least, there’s gonna be some cool new toys to look at today!

#transformers #think piece #weird thoughts #wall of text #speculation #titans return #power of the primes #toys #action figure #comics #movies #opinion #no edit #robots in disguise #mtmte #more than meets the eye #lost light #james roberts #toy fair

0 notes

writting-down-my-shitty-tho-blog · 7 years ago

Text

idk why im here

i ve been thinking of making a blog like this for quite some time. today i decided it was about time to actually make one. took me about 10 minutes to make it look nice, because i like my things being pretty. idk why im here though. its more like a psychotherapy session for me. this is so new and weird. i never write. i havent written my thoughs since i was maybe 14? idk why i felt like writting today. my arms are kind of tingly from the way im sitting on my bed with my laptop on my lap. its funny. idk how to write nicely and my english is not even that good, but idc, because this is for me. its for me to experience. this is gonna become a mess really quick, so, get ready. buckle up. i have a few people that i feel genuinely care about me, they are very few, but they re true. they re three to be exact. my mom, brother and boyfriend. they do love me, i know it, i just wish my brother was more open about his feelings. my mom also loves me to bits. my boyfriend is an other reason why im standing on my two feet right now. so i have three people that care about me and i have three people i care about. idk what im saying. im not good with words like i said in the beggining. i feel stuffed. idk why i feel like that though. i feel anxious and weird. when i was younger i used to get super nervous about stupid things. i thought they were huge problems. i didnt know what real problems mean. i ve been through some tough shit. its okay, most people get through shit in life. thats life after all. but i feel like i was never trully happy. maybe when i was a child? i dont remember myself even being trully happy. yes, i ve felt happiness countless times with my boyfriend, because he is one of the only people i ve ever met, that makes me show my emotions, my true feelings. its difficult to keep quiet when im with him. which is weird because most of my life, i ve been quiet. i was an “easy” kid. i never spoke and did whatever i was told to do. you know, i believe that its thanks to my mom that im here today, writting this shit. if she had left back then, i believe i would ve either be dead by now, or nearly dead. my father. he is a story himself. he is the lord of “i cant express nor show my feelings to anyone”. i dont think my dad feels anything to be honest. he was never around, and i think he never really wanted to be around, and not because he is a shitty person, but because he honestly doesnt have any feelings for anyone. no even himself. he doesnt love himself, he doesnt love me, my brother, nor my younger brother. he doesnt love his family, he can feel any emotion. he is problematic, and that has left a scar on me as well. i grew up begging for his attention. i still want his attention, i just stopped fighting for it. he doesnt care, and he never will. so i realized i should stop spending energy and mental health for him. i feel lik trash sometimes. sometimes i feel like im at the top of the world. but now i feel low. low and shitty. idk why. i just do. i dont have many friends either. well, i locked my friends out, so i cant really say that i have friends. i have one good friend, that i rarely spend time with, but i love it when we hungout. my boyfriend is my best friend though. i trust him to death and i can tell him pretty much anything and everything. he listens and understands me. i trully believe he is my other half. he is my one and only. with the years passing, i feel a stronger bond between us, and it makes me fall more in love. but its not just being in love, it is pure and real love. the only think he doesnt understand is when i talk about this stuff. that i feel worthless at times, and that theres no need for me to be here. i feel like a fucking parasite. i havent done anything with my life so far. yes, i ve worked for a few designers, yes, i ve been trying to do my own thing, but i still feel like a failure. what is success? what is living? what is life? and is life worth living? is it even a reality? idk what reality is anymore. its so weird to me. why? as im growing up, i feel these emotions stronger. a few years ago, i didnt even think of killing myself, or feeling worthless, you know. why do i feel like that now? why now? what changed? maybe i ve come to realise that life is... what? so many questions that none can answer. and for the fact, i dont drink, nor i smoke, i dont do drugs (except some md) and i try to be as healthy as possible. but why? i mean, if life is short and one should live it at its fullest, one might as well do anything one wants. idk. i wanna party till i can no more. i wanna but im scared. you know, when i was younger, i was so afraid of dying, i was terrified. i would get into the car with my mom for example, and she would speed up a bit, and my heart would race like crazy, thinking i was about to die. nowadays, im not that afraid. i think that if its my time to die, i will and none can really stop it from happening. do i believe in fate? no, not really. but i believe that everything is programmed to happen. every step of the way is scheduled for us. i had this brief convo with a friends friend the other day, we were talking about suicide, and whats the best way to do it. she said that she thought the best way to do it is by haning yourself. i disagreed. i said the best way to do it is by shooting up heroin to od. idk where to get it, but when in need, you find ways to get it. like i said, i dont do drugs, and im not interested in doing any of these, hell, i dont even smoke! pff, this is getting stupid. this is a brief introduction to my thoughts. idk if a have a mental issue or not (im sertain that i have daddy issues and dermatilomania, but i ll leave that to the professionals to decide) but im not ready to go and see a psychotherapist. i ve been to one before, thanks to my dad. he made me go. we were supposed to go together, in order to “fix” our relationship. but only once he joined me. i went alone a few times and then stopped. i feel empty now. i let all my emotions take over while writting this long ass post. i feel ligheter somehow. it feel theraputic actually. i feel like im gonna continue to write here. its nice. its a different approach to my problematic thinking :)

0 notes

sending-the-message · 7 years ago

Text

Reel to Real by Cymoril_Melnibone

Anyone who was a teenager in the 80s seems to have strong memories about it. It was a youthful age, a time full of flavor and color, when plastic pop fakery distracted us from the darker undercurrents of the adult world’s climate. Teased hair, big earrings, neon clothes and jelly shoes endure in the lighter recesses of my own memories. A ton of other stuff is more background focus for me; Transformers, side ponytails, and orange bubblegum that smelled like soda in the sun, but I guess certain imagery defines an age differently for different people. We’re transported back to slightly different worlds, whenever we remember. For someone else around my age, it might be a packed gaming arcade. Your lips are sticky with Fanta and the menthol burn of the stolen cigarette you just traded with someone, your mental soundtrack an out-of-synch chorus of PacMans burbling wakawaka in the background. Or maybe your memory-self is edgier; making out in your parent’s Pontiac Fiero, his denim jacket tucked into the window for a makeshift privacy curtain, and the heavy, sickly scent of strawberry lipgloss filling the tiny space. Whatever you remember, there’s often a curious innocence when people recall that era, right down to the music and the TV shows. Young people seemed less afraid to do new things, to express themselves in ways they couldn’t in the 60s and 70s, and less jaded than they seem now. But when I scrape away the brightly-lit, plastic surface of my own childish perceptions, there’s something much darker spliced into my memory reel. Whatever else it was, and whatever it was to you, it was a time of wonder and tragedy for me. I suppose that’s why I still linger there in my mind, wishing I could go back and set things right – to change history, and to bring back my friends.

We weren’t exactly losers, but we sure weren’t part of the cool clique either. My mom was a teacher and my dad ran a furniture store with my uncle, selling ‘space-age’ mattresses and couches that tried to eat you if you sat in them too long. Chris and Toni’s dad worked at the local brewery as a foreman, and their mom sold makeup around the neighborhood. Jason was the odd one out, because he only had a mom. His dad died, working as a diver on an oil platform; but the insurance money meant that they’d be comfortable for the rest of their lives, if they were careful. Despite coming from what looked on the surface like pretty normal families, we never quite jelled with the popular kids. I was skinny and geeky, obsessed with Tolkien and everything fantasy. Jason’s love of video games also bordered on the obsessive, and Chris talked motorbikes 24/7, his room wallpapered with magazine pictures of red-and-white Japanese bikes that looked more spaceship than wheeled vehicle. He’d been saving every cent from his allowance since he was in kindergarten, in anticipation of the day he could buy his own. And Toni, who would punch anyone who called her by her full name, was far too much of a tomboy to ever fit in with all the fashion-obsessed girls at school. So we kept to ourselves, our own private little gang, and we were mostly ignored by everyone else. I suppose it was that isolation, but still being part of a group, that allowed us to just do our own thing, free from the worst social consequences of being considered weirdos. That was how we managed to start up our little film club.

When sales of VCRs really started to boom, it had a big effect on one of the mainstay leisure activities in our small town: going to the movies. After the video store opened up, and you could rent out tapes for a fraction of the cost of a movie ticket, there was a sharp downturn in the number of folks who wanted to go out to the picture theater. At first not everyone owned a VCR. But people would crowd around a neighbor’s TV to maximize the number of viewers, stuffing their faces with home-made popcorn and drinking cheap beer. There were two cinemas in our town, and the larger one managed to keep going. But the smaller one slowly fell into disuse, eventually opening only on Friday and Saturday nights – when people were too drunk to care about the price. That meant that during the rest of the week, the theater was empty, and because his mom’s newest boyfriend owned the place, Jason was allowed the keys. The huge metal lockers in the projection room were filled with carefully labelled reels of film, which smelled of something faintly insectoid, like crushed ants. Jason had been taught the basics of how to use the projector, but as the resident smart kid in our group I quickly gained a knack for knowing how everything worked, so it mostly fell on me to sit in the booth and change the reels mid-film. We took turns picking the films. Jason nearly always wanted to watch The Last Starfighter; Chris was all about Knightriders and Savage Dawn. Toni usually went along with whatever her older brother picked, but once in a while she’d ask for Splash or Freaky Friday. As for me? You can probably guess; a steady diet of Labyrinth, The Neverending Story and The Dark Crystal. There was a sort of unspoken pact in our group that we didn’t mock anyone else’s choice of film. But probably because he was a year older than the rest of us, Chris often felt he could break our unwritten rule. Most times he only did it to me, to make fun of me for my ‘girly’ choices. “Matt,” he would growl at me, crumbs of popcorn stuck to his nascent mustache, “Sometimes I swear your dick fell off when the doctor spanked you at birth.” Jason would laugh too loud, and Toni would just stare at me with those huge brown eyes of hers. But as time went on, and his hormones really ramped up, I wasn’t the only one that Chris clashed with. It was because of one of his testosterone-fueled teenage rages that we made the greatest – and worst – discovery of our lives.

How the fight originally started, I don’t remember exactly. I think Chris complained that he didn’t want to sit through the 20th re-run of Return of the Jedi, then Jason got shitty because it was his turn, and the Rules were the Rules. I do remember that as the film started, Chris climbed up on the low stage under the big screen, and started reading out the opening scroll in a pompous, mocking voice, peppering it with foul language. Jason went red, and started pelting him with stolen popcorn, but Chris wouldn’t stop, he just got louder and more obnoxious. When Jason launched himself out of his front-row seat and shoved Chris against the screen, the rage at someone daring to retaliate was writ so large on the older boy’s face it was visible even from my spot in the projection booth. Chris vanished through the screen. I sat for a moment in shock as I realized he must have torn right through the shiny fabric. Jason’s “uncle” was going to kill us. But when Chris didn’t re-appear, and Jason’s yelling didn’t cause him to emerge, I got worried enough to leave the booth and run down the stairs to where the others were. “There’s no hole,” Jason babbled, pointing at the screen. “He just disappeared.” “Stay calm,” I told him, like my dad would say to my mom when she started freaking out about things, “there will be a good explanation for this.” We checked in the small room behind the stage, filled with coils of old rope and broken wooden pallets, but he wasn’t there either. “Ugh, he’s just messing with us,” Toni decided, “he wants us to freak out. Let’s just watch the film and forget about him.” That seemed logical, so we did. I enjoyed not having our pubescent friend ruining things for once. But as the film eventually ended, something strange and wonderful happened. Striped with the text of the end credits, Chris stumbled through the screen, and fell onto the sticky carpet at our feet, laughing hysterically. “Holy shit guys,” he yelled, ecstatic and wild, “I met Luke Skywalker!”

It took Chris a while to tell us the story in its entirety, but the general gist of it was this: when he had been pushed through the screen, he had somehow gone inside the film. “I had different clothes and everything, like I was part of it,” he explained, pacing back and forth in front of the blank screen, more animated than I’d ever seen him, “and the whole gang was there, Chewie and Han and Leia and Luke.” “This isn’t funny,” Toni said, her mouth downturned, bordering on petulant. “I’m telling the truth, man! I was there,” he jabbed a finger at the screen, “In Jabba’s palace, even on the Death Star. Wait, look at this!” He rolled up his sleeve of his jacket, showing a fresh burn, the welt running from his wrist to his elbow, “Vader’s saber grazed me while me and Luke were fighting him.” His grin was enormous as he ran his hand through his thick curly hair, “Holy moly, this was the best night of my entire life.” “Prove it,” Jason said, arms folded, “do it again. Matt, set the film up.” “I have to rewind the reels. That’s gonna take a while,” I told him. “We need to get home,” Toni reminded us, “it’s getting late.” “Tomorrow, then,” said Jason, shouldering his schoolbag. He shook his head at Chris, eyeing the burn on his arm, skeptical and jealous all at once, “but if you’re lying, I swear I’m gonna tell your dad you’re making shit up. He’ll knock the snot outta ya again.” After locking up the projection room, I handed the keys back to Jason. “Do you think he’s for real?” “I dunno man. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.”

Everyone was early, already eagerly waiting by the side door to the old theater when Jason finally sauntered up with the keys. “This time I’m gonna go for the Emperor,” Chris was telling us, his eyes bright with barely contained excitement, “I reckon I can take him out while Luke and Vader are fighting.” “I reckon you’re so full of shit I can smell it on your breath,” Toni muttered. Once everything was set up and the film had started, I ran down to meet the others. We all stood in front of the screen, bathed in the yellow light of the text crawl, barely able to look at each other. “Do we go in now?” asked Jason. “Wait a sec.” As the words faded into infinity, Chris shoved Jason at the screen, then jumped into it himself. They both vanished instantly. Toni and I exchanged a long, terrified look, then she grabbed my hand and we both leaped after them, eyes shut tight and braced for the inevitable impact with the taut fabric. Instead, we found ourselves in another world. It’s hard to describe that first experience, on the other side. It was everything Chris had said – and more. Whatever we did, the story took our actions and wove them into the plot, inexorably guiding us towards some heroic conclusion. We felt different too. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t afraid of everything, and I felt bigger, stronger than I did in the real world. Ironically, I felt more real. Chris was like a young Han Solo, so full of confidence and bravado it was infectious, and we followed his lead. I never wanted it to end, and I knew the others felt the same way. But it did, and far too abruptly we found ourselves ejected from that world, just four ordinary kids again, lying face-down on the stained carpet of the theater. “What happened?” Toni asked, rubbing her hands, filthy with droid grease, on her dungarees. I blinked, staring up at the booth, “I wasn’t there to switch over the reels. We got kicked out early.” Chris swore as he stood and dusted himself off, his hands still shaking from adrenaline, “One of us has to stay in the booth.” “Only me and Matt know how to do it,” Jason groused. “Well, you two clowns will need to take turns then, wontcha?”

I missed the next adventure on the other side of the silver screen, and the one after that, since Jason hurt his hand riding dirt bikes in Timerider, which was Chris’s next pick. By the time it was finally my turn to pick a film, I was fit to burst with excitement, and spent the whole day at school doing nothing but staring at the clock. Today I was going to ride Falcor and save the Childlike Empress. Once inside the theater, Chris rolled his eyes at my choice and asked me if I was in love with Bastian, because I was such a girl. But I knew that once he was riding Artax across the Grassy Plains and hunting purple buffalo, he’d shut the hell up. How could a motorbike compare with that? That night was so magical and wonderful, it left me gasping for air when we re-emerged. I’d been the hero, slaying Gmork and ending the Nothing before it could rip Fantasia apart. “Okay. I guess that was pretty fun,” Chris grudgingly admitted. We fell into a decent rhythm after that, even if Jason shirked his reel-wrangling duties more and more often, leaving me in the projection booth while my supposed friends experienced things most of us can only dream of. Still, I made the very most of my time in those places, exploring the Labyrinth with Sarah, Ludo, and Sir Didymus, or slaying winged terrors with Galen in Dragonslayer. The best night of all was one when Chris and Jason were both grounded. Toni and I went back to Fantasia, just the two of us, and it was so different without the others. Of course, it was cut rudely short, because there was no-one to change the reel. But for half an hour we had our heart’s desire; she was the Chosen One, and I was the Moon Child, and everything felt right as the Nothing was banished, along with all the Somethings we couldn’t express. We never talked about that night again. Because like all good things, our adventures had to come to an end.

Chris turned up that Sunday in a foul mood, one eye suspiciously puffy, and both of them red. Toni wouldn’t say a word, even more mute than usual. “Just play the damn film,” Chris told Jason as we filed into the theater. It was my turn again – I wasn’t accepting any excuses from Jason this time, it had been too long since I’d been in. I’d picked Labyrinth again. There were still plenty of places I hadn’t yet gotten around to exploring in detail. I should have known from the beginning that Chris was going to be an asshole. I should have told him to wait outside, but I guess I thought that fighting Jareth might improve his mood. It didn’t, and the further inside we went, the worse things got. One moment we were walking through the maze, the castle shimmering in the heat-haze of the distance, then the next, Chris and the protagonist, Sarah, were gone. Toni and I searched to no avail, calling out their names, which echoed strangely off the stone walls. “What do you think happened?” she asked. “I’m not sure. But don’t worry, it’ll work out. Everything always works out in the films where the good guys win.” It was at that moment that I heard a muffled scream, not far away. I ran, faster than I could in the real world. Some instinct guided me round several corners, until I all but tripped over Chris, who was lying on top of Sarah. His hands were grinding hers into the flagstones and he forced his mouth over hers while she struggled and kicked underneath him. “GET OFF HER!” I howled, kicking him in the ribs as hard as I could. He rolled to one side, winded, letting go of Sarah’s hands. I turned my back on him, and helped Toni get the shaking Sarah onto her feet. Tears and dirt streaked her pale cheeks, and I reeled with emotions I couldn’t even name. “None of this is real,” Chris coughed, holding his bruised ribs, “none of this matters – she doesn’t matter. She’s not a real person!” “Why? Why do you have to ruin everything?!” I yelled, shoving him into the stone walls, “Why do you shit on everything I like? Why do you have to be such a fucking dickhead?” His sneer was ugly and adult as he spat on the cobbles at my feet. “You’re just jealous. You just wish you were her, dontcha Matt?* He pursed his lips at me obscenely, then turned and ran awkwardly into the depths of the maze, still half-winded and holding his side. There were no more adventures for the rest of that movie. We sat with Sarah, making soothing plans to get her baby brother back, until the film ejected us. Toni and I didn’t look at each other as we each wiped our own eyes, but we briefly touched hands in the dark of the theater before we both headed home. All we saw of Chris was his back, as he pushed through the fire exit and let the door bang closed.

The next day, as we assembled outside the doors, Chris ambushed me from behind. He grabbed me by the collar and threw me into the brick wall of the theater, jerking me once to make my head smack painfully into the pocked surface. “You might be the hero in your faggot fantasy films,” he hissed, “but out here in the real world? I’m bigger and stronger than you, and I can kick your sorry ass any time I want.” He threw a significant look at Toni, and his breath was hot as he whispered two words in my ear before he let me go, shoving me toward the doors, “Now get up to that booth and put on Easy Rider, before I break your fucking nose.” The pain in my head was a sharp, fiery knot. It throbbed as I climbed the stairs up to the projection room, each pulse in time with those words I couldn’t unhear, those two beautiful, secret words made into something so ugly. Jason wasn’t a bad guy, but he would never do anything to gainsay Chris’s authority, so I knew I wouldn’t get any help there. He wanted me stuck on projector duty, so he never had to miss out on anything himself. I had thought that Toni wanted to help, but she had to live with Chris. And clearly he had so much power over her that she had told him the very thing I never dreamed she would share. As I got the canisters down from the shelves, an ugly, terrible idea flared in my head, replacing all the pain and betrayal. The moment the red, white and blue engine tank flashed up on the screen, the others jumped into the film, vanishing into a world of hippies and Harleys. But that world wouldn’t last, because the second reel, all set to go on the second projector, did not contain the second half of Easy Rider. By the time I started the motor on the second projector, my hands were sweating and shaking. In a few seconds, the gang would be hurled out of their drug-filled motorcycle adventure across America, and into far more a terrifying world, one of flayed faces and severed limbs, inspired by the real life serial killer, Ed Gein. I’ve often wondered exactly what happened during that transition. Sometimes, when Jason got his timing wrong on the reel switch, the movie world would flicker and ripple around us, like fluorescent lights dying, then righting themselves. I imagined this abrupt switch would be much more profound, and I half expected the poorly understood magic of this place to kick them out prematurely, with the thread of continuity lost. But nobody emerged as the second reel kicked in, and I sat back, smugly imagining the terrors that awaited them.

When the film ended, only one figure emerged. Toni’s face was streaked with blood, and her clothes were torn, but she was otherwise unharmed. I ran down from the booth as she stumbled off the stage, her legs trembling so much she couldn’t hold herself up properly. As I reached out to steady her, she pushed me away, into the front row of seats. “You killed them!” she sobbed, her tears tracking furrows through the half-dried blood. “You changed the reels, didn’t you? And Leatherface murdered them.” “No,” I said, shaking my head, “they can’t be dead. They can’t be! I just wanted to scare them.” “You fucking idiot! Have you actually watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre before?” “No! This was my first time. You know I don’t like horror.” Toni’s next words were heavy with meaning, layers of counter-betrayal and insult beyond anything I had even thought about. “The stupid girl is the only one who survives.” Slumping heavily into one of the seats, my mind raced as I tried to think of a solution. “We can go back in. Maybe they’re still in there. Maybe we can stop Leatherface.” “Matt. He will kill you if you go in there. Don’t you get it? He wins. The boys all die, and you can’t change who wins, you know that.” Her dark eyes were so bitter, so full of pain, fixed on me. “You can’t change who wins, and you can’t change who you really are.” “Then you need to go back in.” “There is no way I’m going back in there, do you hear me?” her lip was shaking as she spoke, and fresh tears dripped from her trembling chin, “you have no idea what they did to me in there.” I wanted to comfort her, but I couldn’t fix any of this. “What are we going to do?” “I don’t know,” she told me, picking up her backpack, “but I don’t want anything to do with you ever again, Matthew Lawson.”

The boys were declared missing persons, and the whole town was turned upside-down to search for them. I told the cops the whole story, but they wouldn’t believe me. The police psychologist told my parents I’d suffered an acute nervous breakdown, and I was put on strong sedatives for the better part of a year. Chris and Toni’s Dad went on a huge bender, and crashed his car into the river. The rumor was that he used money he’d pilfered from Chris’s bike fund a few weeks before. Maybe that was Chris’s own final act of inadvertent revenge, his deadbeat dad freezing to death in the dark, icy water, too drunk to fight anything anymore. Neither Toni nor I ever went back to the theater, as far as I know, and six years later, two days after my twentieth birthday, it was torn down and turned into a parking lot. We met then, one last time, as we watched the last trailer of brick and rubble being hauled away. She didn’t even turn the engine of her bike off, and she didn’t say anything to me – she didn’t need to. Those huge, expressive brown eyes wordlessly informed me that she still didn’t forgive me, and that as far as she was concerned, I was still a murderer. As she rode away, her dark hair streamed behind her, and all I could think about was how it had whipped my face as I clung to her waist, her cries urging Artax into a full gallop across the Grassy Plains. I never watched The Neverending Story again. Or Labyrinth. These days, I can’t really watch any film for very long, because eventually I’ll glimpse their faces, and I’ll know they’re inside somewhere, reliving their horrible deaths over and over again. Even now, thirty years on from those events, I can still hear Chris’s words echoing in my head, a mantra that will haunt me for the rest of my life: None of this is real, none of this matters But it was real, and it did matter. In one petty act of revenge, I killed my best friends. And they were my friends, despite all their complexities and all their flaws, and all their unique pain concealed beneath the bright veneer of those times. I killed them as surely as if I’d done it with my own hand.

And I’m still trying to find a way to live with that, but I can’t seem to change the reel.

#reddit #nosleep #scary #story

0 notes

archidoview · 8 years ago

Photo

COURSE OF EMPIRE

BY AIDAN DOYLE & SARAH WAN (WANDOY STUDIO)

What could lead a guy to be so devoted to ancient edifices, to a world long gone? What was it about the pull of that far-away time that he couldn’t stop thinking about? It’s 1743, you’re 23 years old and your name is Giovanni Battista Piranesi. By any other standard we’d consider what you’re doing to be completely and utterly mad. It’s obsessed, you’re obsessed Giovanni. We never see you, you’re hunkered in this room all day long.. you’re a grown man and you’re obsessed with the past. What about the present, the world outside, your family?!

That’s what we imagine his brother saying to him, or maybe a friend or parent. You’re nuts dude, you gotta look outside every now and then.. there’s an actual world out there just as exciting, just as challenging as these imaginary marvel’s you undertake. The house is filling up with etchings. They’re everywhere! We cannot walk in a straight line in the hallway upstairs. What are we gonna do with all these plates? They’re beautiful, but we need to find them a home somewhere. And those acids, you really must open a window. It stinks in here Gio!

He had been sitting in his room around the clock for the past two years. The memory of him playing freely like the rest of his friends had long become remote. A young artist devoted not to paints or frescos, oh no; no, the young Piranesi commits himself to the most painstaking form of artistic expression imaginable.. etchings! At first blush not the method that lends itself to volume. And yet, despite the laborious process, he left behind thousands of plates in all sizes. They combine to form the most phantasmagorical collection of snapshots into antiquity the world has ever seen. Most of his days were devoted to taking road trips far outside Venice, measuring ruins for hours in piedes and braccios under the hot sun. Days spent documenting by campfire, piecing together clues from a world one and half thousand years before. Then returning home to the Floating City with a vast catalog of obscure knowledge, only to disappear to his room for days, but for the occasional meal.

We’ll never know what motivated such feverish exploration of the past. But not just the past. To explore, capture and recreate in what is obviously a fictional, idealized new context. Did he merely wish to reawaken people’s imaginations to these powerful artifacts strewn along the countryside? Did he suffer from an excess of compassion for old dead things? What was the object of reaching back through Greco-Roman memory to the origins of Rome, to the classical influences of Greek culture? The stuffed corpus of work offers no simple answers. But it is not just a collection of preservation arguments or nostalgic re-awakenings, it is the harmony of nature and civilization writ large.

He was not alone in his devotion to capriccios (caper, prank, whim, caprice). The tradition had started a hundred years before. Alessandro Salucci’s and Viviano Codazzi’s vedutas were painted depictions set on rediscovering the origins of the city through fantasy. Each time to revivify these sleeping decrepit structures, and plant them like visual memes, back into general consciousness. Whether an etching, oil on canvas or coal scratchings on a cravat, the taproot discovered in each work is the basis of all architectural memory. These recreations are the built world’s visual archetypes. The places from whence all this other stuff comes.

The Tomb of the Metelli (shown top left) is a particular oddball. Simultaneously huge, yet small, this resting place for the remains of the Family of Metelli seems like it wants to up and float away when you’re not looking. Piranesi captured its maintenance with whimsical staffage (small human figures). Ruefully, in an inscription at its base, he describes ‘This noble tomb was stripped not only of most of its magnificent ornaments, but still of any other marble that covered it.’ Once the marble was gone, all that remained was brick, mortar and the skeletal remains of the once-noble family. Today you can find the lumpen mass along the side of the Appian Way (shown bottom left). It is a stunning thirty foot tall remnant with no place to be. Consigned to a permanent non-place between the fault lines of civilizations. This sight may make Piranesi pretty sad, it did us.

Just as the capriccios of these Masters allow erstwhile civilizational moments to be passed on through time, often with fantastical juxtaposition, we want to see the Tomb of Metelli take a new journey. Today, the enduring civilizational artifacts are infrastructural in nature. Machines have remade our landscape. Cars have facilitated this peculiar transformation of the places we live. Unlike the Republic of Venice during the early modern period, utility is now the governing principle of civilization. Course of Empire extends through five meditations. Each a small effort to recast the present. And so, a Tomb carrying the remains of a once-noble family, will travel through a world they would consider fantastical beyond comprehension. Is there a better place to continue Piranesi’s obscure fascinations?

http://blankspaceproject.com/

#fairytales2017

0 notes

artificialqueens · 5 years ago

Text

(treat me nice) never let me go [branjie] 1/15 - pinkgrapefruit

chapter 1. heading to the wishing well, we’ve reached our last resort

A/N - Hey! This has been a long time coming - a really long time - but I’m so excited to finally share it with you. I love this fic and the characters I’ve twisted out of it so much and I hope you will to. A small point, I know that I’ve written Vanessa as a prostitute and had I not started this at the end of april, you bet my ass I would have made Brooke the hoe but we’re here now. Special thanks to Frey and Linda (Qtip) for always being my cheerleaders (and trusty betas) , Writ for reading this chapter through the first time and the clanjie discord for inspiring the idea to begin with. Let me know what you think and Enjoy!

It’s a hot day in Downtown Los Angeles, the smog sitting heavy on the rolling hills around. Brooke sighs and wipes a palm across her forehead, feeling the foundation she’d painstakingly applied melt right off with the sweat of the day. It’s 6.pm., but she feels like she’s lived seven lives all at once, each flowing into the next with unyielding monotony. She’d won a case (or a few, but who’s counting), but instead of celebrating with her coworkers she was told that she had to stay another week, so she shuffled her now unshoed feet down the 30 flights of stairs and out into her borrowed car. She’d never been a ‘let your hair down’ kinda gal, rushing through law at Toronto in 3 years with joint honours in management and corporate law. Having said that, Brooke had unbuttoned her jacket, loosened her tie and removed the bun ring from her long blonde ponytail before one could utter the phrase ‘long day’. It was a long day.

She leans her head against the wheel of the four by four with a dull thud. As a Canadian, these were her most comfortable cars, one she’d been birthed in and practically raised in, being ferried from dance to academic decathlon and back to dance. But to say she feels comfortable in it, that would be a stretch. Brooke reaches into her bag with a wince, as it stretches the muscle between her shoulder she always forgets exists, until she spends half a day in court. Pulling out her phone (and then the right phone), she mindlessly swipes through her emails until she finds the relevant booking, before burying it back into the bag and pushing the button that rolls down the window. ‘The Queen,’ she hums to herself as she sets off in the direction of Olympic. It is then she realises she does not have a clue how to get around LA.

She’s pretty sure her head is sweating under the wig, but at the same time, she’s sweating all over, so she can’t really tell anymore. Vanessa forwent her tights hours ago, and is now standing in what she deems a perfectly respectable skirt/bodysuit combination, that Katya playfully described as ‘overdressed nudity’. She can’t say that it’s an incorrect assessment.

They stand on the street corner like they do every Monday night, her, Silky and Katya - all long legs and tight tops - letting the men in cars drive past with their whistles and their handfuls of crumpled dollars that would be stuffed down the cleavage of the bodysuits while the girls give rushed blowjobs in the back of Ferraris. The windows are always blacked out and they always hassle over the condom, but, at the end of the day, it’s good money and she’s got a few regulars now. ‘I work nights,’ she tells her mama over the phone, it is technically a night job - if she’s lying a little bit, her mama doesn’t have to know.

Katya flinches as glass shatters in the bar behind them, her dirty blonde hair whipping around as she storms inside. Silky nudges Vanessa, saying something about protecting her girl’s honour, about Trixie being able to handle her own goddamn bar, but the shorter girl has checked out. Her eyes have glazed over a little, staring at the car that’s just pulled up - Silky of course notices, watches as Vanessa zeroes in on not only the car’s make, but also the blonde inside of it.

“It’s an SV-Coupé,” she mumbles, still staring intently.

Silky barks out a laugh. “No bitch, that’s rent. You should go for her. You look hot tonight,” she encourages loudly, arms waving a little, both in excitement and impatience. She gets a small shake of the head as the girl snaps out of her bewilderment and, as she slowly walks towards the car, Silky calls out, “Don’t take less than a hundred. Call me when you’re through. Take care of yourself!”

Maybe Vanessa swings her hips a little more, she’s planning on taking care of something. As Katya comes back out of the bar, face more than over the day already, she sighs.

“She gon’ get some,” Silky sings, dancing in the street.

The blonde raises an eyebrow, “But in what way?” she ponders as they part ways to tend to other drivers. Silky’s cackling can be heard right down Olympic.

Brooke’s not stupid, she knows what the girls on Olympic do, she knows how they toss their hair and other parts of their bodies in return for money, and while, yes, she respects them, she has no intention of getting near them. And then she realises she is well and truly lost. She pulls in where a black Audi has just pulled out, leans back into her seat a little and lets out a heavy sigh. As she does this, there’s a knock on the bottom of the window, the sound catching her off guard, as her eyes snap open from their half-lidded positions and fall onto a petite girl. Her confidence seems to come into focus, before the appearance does, brashly placing her forearms on the window, leaning in like she knows Brooke. The girl has deep brown eyes, Brooke notes, as she finds herself falling in a little. She sits bolt upright, startled - the bright blonde giggling at her expense. “Hey Sugar.” She smiles coyly. “You lookin’ for a date?”

Brooke bites back a smile, knew this was coming, but so feverishly hoped it wouldn’t. “No,” she replies bluntly, but the smile doesn’t leave the girls face. “I’m not from around here, I just want directions to Beverly Hills.”

Her eyebrows are raised comically as she mock-ponders Brooke’s statement. “Sure, hun, 6 bucks.” She makes the grabby hand, but it doesn’t come off as overzealous.

“Sorry, ma’am, but that’s ridiculous”

“I’ll take 10.”

“You can’t charge me for directions.”

“I can do anything I want, baby, I ain’t lost,” she bats back, she looks almost bored, and it’s starting to get on Brooke’s nerves just a little bit.

“Fine, you win,” she sighs. “Got change for a twenty?”

The girl shakes her head and winks, grabbing the money clean out of Brooke’s fingers and twirling it around a little before shoving it in, what she assumes to be, her boot. She tugs at something on her way up, and once she’s leaning back on the window, waves her hand a little, unravelling a roll of condoms as she smirks earnestly. It takes all of Brooke’s waning self-control not to laugh. “If you want anything after the directions, not only am I better than an amateur, I’m safer!” It could be a brag, but Brooke just rolls her eyes and points to the other door of the car, making the motion of unlocking it, so as to spur the young woman into getting in. She bounces a little in her seat as she closes the door, looking fascinated at the car in its entirety.

“What’s your name?” Brooke asks as she fiddles with the air conditioning, trying to angle it so the cool air blasts directly onto her chest - flushed from the heat (and possibly this girl).

“What do you want it to be?” She gets no response, Brooke merely raising an eyebrow pointedly.

“Vanessa. My name is Vanessa.”

“So, what’s the hotel?”

Brooke hums under her breath for a second, trying desperately to find the hotel’s name in her brain that’s been frazzled from a day in court. “The Queen? Beverly?” she tries. Vanessa nods, starts reeling off directions that the Canadian cannot follow quickly enough. They’re barely five minutes down the road when she demands to swap.

“God, this must drive like a dream,” squeals Vanessa once they’ve changed sides. She strokes the wooden centre console as she talks, letting her fingers feel all the grooves of it - it feels expensive, like she shouldn’t be there. “V8 petrol, paddle shifters, two-speed transfer box!” Brooke has never seen someone get so excited about a car, but even more so, she’s astonished that it’s this tiny woman who is the one getting excited.

“You know about cars then, huh,” Brooke muses as they pull away. “Where did that come from?”

“My pops used to work on ‘em,” she answers cheerily, eyes trained on the road as she easily navigates the traffic. Brooke wipes her eyes blearily, knows she’s still got work to do when she gets back to the hotel, but she’s being driven and, dear god, she could nap right now.

“So, what kind of money do you girls make these days?” questions Brooke as she shuffles in her seat.

Vanessa tilts her head to the side for a second, a bemused smile on her face as she considers her answer. “Can’t take less than ‘undred a night,” she replies after a thought.

“For an hour?” It shocks Brooke a little as the girl nods. “And you’ve got a safety pin holding up your boot? You must be joking?”

Vanessa squints a little. “I don’t joke about money, babe.”

“Neither do l.”

“Hundred dollars an hour. Pretty stiff.”

“Well, no. But it’s got potential.”

“You ready?” she asks as they get closer to the hotel, they’re approaching a corner and Brooke becomes apprehensive immediately. “I’m gonna show you what this car can really do, hang on, okay?”

They ricochet round the corner, Vanessa looking like she’s having the time of her life, while the other woman looks like she’s just been rudely awakened from a nice dream. She could be angry, but that would take too much energy. She settles on amazed.

When they pull up at the hotel, Brooke would be lying if she said she wasn’t a little sad. A valet approaches the car and Vanessa hands him the keys before hopping out, Brooke steps out too, although a little less excitedly. The two gaze up at the hotel, maybe a little resentment passes over Brooke’s face, but no one notices.

“So,” Brooke starts as they stand awkwardly outside the hotel, “are you going to be okay?”

“Me? I’ll get the bus, I’ll be fine.” Vanessa smiles and Brooke believes her willingly.

“I can call you a taxi?”

“I like the bus.”

Brooke nods and moves to leave, she’s almost convinced herself she wants to, but there is something, some invisible force that does not care about the work she has to do, that won’t let her go. She stops and slowly, with great intent, turns back around. She finds Vanessa staring at where her ass would be, and is a little proud.

“I was thinking, did you say a hundred an hour?”

“Yeah?” The girl replies, a little confused.

“You got any prior engagements?”

Vanessa’s smile widens, a happy grin spreading across her face. She shakes her head animatedly.

“Then I’d be very pleased if you would accompany me into the hotel.”

“You got it!” She laughs as she pulls the barely-there skirt down over her ass.

“What’s your name?”

“Brooke Lynn.”

“Brooke Lynn? That’s my favourite name in the whole world!” She exclaims and Brooke can’t help the way her heart flutters when Vanessa says her name like that. Three syllables instead of two, pulling it in her mouth like taffy.

“No,” she responds half mocking with a soft smile. They bump shoulders as they walk into the hotel, and Brooke isn’t sure she stops smiling that night.

The second they enter the hotel, the Canadian becomes acutely aware of what her counterpart is wearing. It’s disgusting and, frankly, ridiculous, but she knows that the people there won’t see Vanessa how she sees her. To them she’s a short, bleached blonde Latina in a skimpy outfit, and even if she is what they think she is, Brooke already detests the way she feels eyes on them. She shrugs off her blazer and hands it to Vanessa with a gentle look. “Why don’t you put this on,” she says and she can hear the softness in her voice, the way it melts when the girl looks upset. It drowns her and it’s kind of bittersweet. “This isn’t the kind of establishment that rents rooms by the hour,” she attempts to justify, but what she really means is ‘This is full of judgy assholes, I’m sorry.’ She doesn’t say it.

“Holy shit,” Vanessa marvels at the entrance hall as they stop at the front desk.

A tall, well-built woman comes to the counter, smiling in recognition at Brooke. She doesn’t even look at her accomplice.

“Good evening, miss Hytes, you have messages.”

“Good evening, Nina. Just letting you know, I’ll be here for another week or so, and could I get some champagne and strawberries, please?” Brooke requests with a pleasant smile and her client voice. She typically dislikes attendants, but she has a soft spot for Nina, she’s never failed her in years of LA visits, always operating with kindness and honesty - something Brooke respects.

She tries to usher Vanessa up to the room with as little fuss as possible, but once the girl catches onto the fact people are less than pleased to see her, she gets a little incendiary.

“You know what’s happened? I’ve got a runner in my pantyhose.”

“Well, colour me happy! There’s a sofa in here for two.”

If Brooke was less embarrassed, she’d laugh.

“The penthouse?!”

Vanessa stands by the door, bouncing on her heels as she waits for Brooke to open it. “I miss keys,” she grumbles as she fumbles with the key card, a little embarrassed, but too tired to really care. The second the door opens, Vanessa rushes in, although she quickly slows down to admire the room. It’s large, spacious, with a living/dining room, and a bedroom visible through a large doorway. It feels ornate. She feels out of place.

“Impressed?” Brooke smiles as she asks, hears her voice carry a little into the room.

“You kidding, I come here all the time,” Vanessa replies in jest. “As a matter of fact, they do rent the room out.”

“Uhuh.” Brooke sets her things down on the floor by the door, takes her hair out of the ponytail it’s been straining in and shakes her head a little. She feels freer without the tension.

Vanessa has already gone out onto the balcony, yelling, “This is so cool!,” at a volume Brooke is pretty sure the neighbours could hear. “I bet you could see the ocean from here,” she cries ecstatically, and Brooke has to smile.

“I wouldn’t know, I don’t go out there.”

The Latina’s face is a picture of confusion as she pops her head back around through the door, staring at Brooke who is sat at the desk, reading the paper. “Why?” she questions, emphasising the ‘Y’ sound until it’s four syllables long.

“I’m scared of heights.”

Vanessa almost screams with laughter, catching the irony pretty quickly. Once she settles down, she returns back inside, throwingherself onto one of the plush couches.

“Well, now that you have me here, what are you going to do with me?” she asks innocently, although its undertones tread into dangerous waters. Brooke turns in her chair, papers on the table and elbows on her knees.

“Want to know something? I don’t have a clue. I haven’t exactly planned this.” Brooke is a planner, likes to know what’s happening and when. She’s been known not to turn up to things if they’re announced on the day of, not to go places if she didn’t know every detail. Every lawyer has a quirk, she supposes, and this might be hers.

“Well, do you plan everything?”

“Always.”

“I’m more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of girl. You know, moment to moment.”

Brooke nods in understanding, can see that, and perhaps wishes she had a little more of it herself.

“You know, you could pay me,” Vanessa points out after a long, but comfortable silence. The two appear to relax around each other, nothing is uncomfortable (although that may just be Vanessa’s brash confidence).

Brooke shuffles a fifty out of her briefcase and hands it to Vanessa. She doesn’t watch where she puts it, but when she looks up the girl is holding out a wad of condoms and dental dams, and the Canadian is only slightly confused.

“Pick one. I got red, I got green, I got yellow. I’m out of purple, but I do have one gold circle coin left.”

She vaguely points to the gold one, non-committal and with a twinge of dread.

“The condom of champions. The one and only. Nothing is gettin’ through this sucker.”

“A buffet of safety,” Brooke teases Vanessa.

“What can I say, I’m a safety girl.” She says it with a wink and Brooke has to laugh, because she’s spent the evening not laughing at so many jokes, and the ice is well and truly broken.

When the girl comes closer to her with the condom though, she recoils a little, asks if they can just talk instead. It’s not that she doesn’t want to have sex with Vanessa (although at this moment in time she isn’t quite sure), she just knows she doesn’t want to have to pay for it.

The smaller girl looks even smaller sunk into the couch. It swallows her almost as much as the blazer she’s still wearing, and it’s rather sweet.

“Business or pleasure then?” she asks, her chin propped up on the back of the couch.

“Business, I think?” responds Brooke, hesitant.

“Hmmm, that would make you… A lawyer!”

Brooke raises an eyebrow, hopes her face hasn’t given much away.

“What makes you think I’m a lawyer?”

“You’ve got that, um… sharp, useless look about you.”

Brooke chuckles, “I bet you’ve known a lot of lawyers.”

“I’ve known a lot of everybody.”

A little while later, the doorbell rings and Vanessa wrestles herself out of the blanket cocoon she’s created to answer it. Somewhere through their talking, Brooke had forgot what the girl was wearing, so when she stands up, she feels a pang of empathy for the room service guy who’s about to come in. She recognises the girl, Courtney, she thinks, and she’s grateful for the efficiency - managing to be in and out within seconds.

It turns out Vanessa has little care for strawberries and champagne.

“Look, I appreciate the little seduction thing you’ve got going on, but I’m on an hourly rate,” she moans as Brooke explains the reasoning behind the strawberries.

“Time really seems to be a problem with you,” responds Brooke, a little sharper than she may have intended. “Just stay here.”

Vanessa clicks her tongue, considering it a little. She doesn’t have anywhere else to be, but still can’t help the niggling feeling that she should leave.

“You couldn’t afford me.”

“Try me.”

It’s a challenge of sorts, neither can tell if they’re imagining the flirtation.

“Three hundred dollars.”

“Done.” Brooke places the money on the table easily, as if the amount means nothing to her (it doesn’t).

“So, what do you want me to do?”

Everything.

“I don’t know.”

Vanessa is in the bathroom when Brooke comes in. She’s just got her floss out of her bag, but she hides it when the taller woman arrives, feels it’s a little childish. Brooke notices she’s got something in her hand and she assumes the worst - she always does.

“What’s in your hand? What are you hiding?” she asks, and her voice is more forceful than usual, lower and heavier, and it scares Vanessa a heck of a lot more than it probably should.

“Nothing,” she defends, but her voice seems weak and feeble in comparison.

“Look, I don’t want drugs in here, get your things and leave, please.” And even though Brooke seems like it pains her to do this, the suggestion makes Vanessa angry.

“I stopped doing drugs when, when - “

She stops and holds out her hand, opening it to allow Brooke to see the dental floss. Where she rose her voice, she feels a dead weight in the air. The silence thick like molasses.

“I had all those strawberry seeds. And you shouldn’t neglect your gums.”

Brooke looks ashamed, maybe a little fearful of Vanessa’s reaction, and she should be, but neither has the heart to argue.

“You know, very few people surprise me,” she says thoughtfully.

Vanessa tilts her head. “Yeah, well, you’re lucky. Most of ‘em shock the hell outta me.”

#rpdr fanfiction #brooke lynn hytes #vanessa vanjie mateo #katya zamolodchikova #silky nutmeg ganache #branjie #fluff #idk tbh I've just made pretty woman branjie #pretty woman #pinkgrapefruit #concrit welcome #submission #treat me nice

53 notes · View notes