#singing is kind of a good test for a lot of different mouth shapes

[demilypyro]

made a bunch of adjustments to the vtuber's mouth again, how realistic does this look?

[wowbright]

Anderson’s Guide to the Birds of North America, Chapter 5: Eye to Eye

Summary: Fourteen scenes from the lives of Blaine Anderson, grad student and avid birder, and Kurt Hummel, clothing designer and Vogue writer, from before their first meeting during the COVID lockdowns of spring of 2020 through falling in love. Written for the Klaine Valentine’s Challenge 2025.

Chapter 5: Eye to Eye (AO3)

There was something familiar about Blaine’s eyes and manner and bold, expressive eyebrows, but Kurt couldn't figure out why. Maybe he’d seen Blaine around the neighborhood, sans binoculars, before COVID changed everything?

The mask certainly wasn’t helping Kurt place Blaine.

But it added a sense of mystery that Kurt was enjoying.

By the time Kurt finished his cheesecake, Blaine had already pointed out robins and chickadees and a little black-and-white bird he called a downy woodpecker.

“I thought woodpeckers had red pompadours,” Kurt said.

“Those are pileated woodpeckers. But there's lots of different kinds. We have six different woodpecker species in the city.”

Kurt was impressed. He hadn’t realized anything beyond pigeons and starlings and house sparrows lived in New York.

“What else have I not noticed?” Kurt asked.

“Well, there's been four-hundred different bird species counted in New York City, and in this borough— Oh my god! Is that a yellow warbler?”

Blaine raised his binoculars up to his face. “It totally is! Male yellow warbler. See? See?” He pointed frantically to a tree that was just leafing out, his voice growing louder as he excitedly barked out directions, “Six o'clock, seven o'clock, not even two feet in, just beneath that half-broken branch." 

Kurt peered at the tree, trying to process Blaine’s undulating river of words.

“Ten feet above where the central trunk splits into two, left side of the V, it's that tiny blotch of sunshine that won't stop moving …”

Kurt saw it. It was the exact same color as a dandelion, as bright as if it held all the energy of the sun's rays. It couldn't have been much bigger than a dandelion, either. It was too small for Kurt to see its shape clearly, but he could tell from the way it flitted about that it was definitely a bird.

“He’s jumped a foot up,” Blaine said, “moving left—”

“I see it! Oh my god! I see it!”

The rush was akin to the time Kurt ran into Patti LuPone on West 43rd.

Kurt jumped through the window, grabbed his opera glasses from the bookshelf, and hopped back out to the fire escape.

“Oh my god! It’s so cute! Am I seeing pink stripes on its chest? How is it that small? Oh! Oh! It’s singing!” Kurt was bubbling over with excitement. He didn't understand how something this nerdy could be this fun. Clearly, he had been cooped up for too long.

Or maybe this was like when he had moved to New York and a whole new world opened up to him. Now there was an additional world to discover that had been there all along, hiding in the trees.

“I didn't think we had nature here,” Kurt said after the warbler flew away.

“Nature is everywhere,” Blaine said. “I've seen more variety in the neighborhoods since lockdown, but there's always something. I mean, humans are part of nature, too, even when we forget it.”

“Are they, now?” Kurt turned his opera glasses on Blaine.

The tiniest hint of pink crept from the top edge of Blaine’s mask toward his eyes. “Is there a hummingbird in my hair?” he asked in a tone Kurt suspected was flirtatious.

“No. I'm just testing how good I am at observing nature. Are your eyes brown?”

“Ye-es,” Blaine answered, a puff of laughter splitting the syllable in two.

“And are your eyelashes real? They look like they're half an inch long and made of black velvet.”

Blaine laughed. “You need to get your opera glasses fixed.”

Kurt lowered the opera glasses. “And presumably you have a nose and mouth under that mask?”

Blaine's eyes widened. “Oh! I forgot I had it on. When it’s colder, it starts fogging up my binoculars, but today it's been warm enough … I’m babbling.”

“Babble as much as you want. It's nice to have an in-person conversation with someone who isn't my roommate. Besides,” Kurt paused, gathering up his courage, “you have a lovely voice.”

Blaine ducked his head bashfully. His eyes smiled. “You do, too.”

Kurt couldn't take his gaze off Blaine. And Blaine wasn't taking his gaze off Kurt. Even though they were stories apart, Kurt felt like they were standing right next to each other, eye to eye.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so alive.

Blaine was the first to break their gaze. He scanned up and down the empty block. “Very gauche of me to be hiding my face this whole time when I can see yours.” He pulled his mask off and tucked it into his pocket.

Kurt’s heart whooshed. Blaine Anderson was absolutely beautiful. And Kurt had definitely seen him before—though he still didn't know from where. “You look familiar.”

 “You might recognize me from Cream Palace? I've seen you there before. I would have mentioned it, but I didn't think you'd ever noticed me.”

“Oh!” Kurt’s heart sank. Now he remembered. It had been a few weeks before the lockdown, when his old college friend Chandler had dragged him out of his mid-winter slump for a night on the town. Kurt had been hit on by so many guys that night—which had been flattering and an ego boost—but the only one who drew his eye had spent the whole time dancing in the corner with a lanky twink whose face reminded Kurt of a meerkat’s. “I noticed. You were there with your boyfriend.”

“Sebastian?” Blaine chuckled. “No. Definitely not my boyfriend. He was supposed to be my wingman.”

“Supposed to be? He didn't help you find anyone?”

“He did his best. He wouldn't leave me alone about this cute guy I kept eyeing. He kept telling me to go dance with the guy even though he was way out of my league.”

“How could anyone be out of your league, Blaine Anderson?”

Blaine did that bashful chin tuck again. “This particular stranger was very handsome. And there was a whole line of guys already trying to get close to him.”

“So you didn't dance with him?”

“By the time I worked up the courage, the guy had left.”

“That's disappointing,” Kurt said, trying ignore the fluttery feeling in his stomach in case he was reading the conversation wrong. “Did you get a chance to see him again before COVID?”

“No. But funny thing. I ran into him today.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. We did some birding together. I think it was his first time. He didn't have binoculars, so he had to use opera glasses. I'm not sure how much the opera glasses helped, though. He can't tell the difference between eyelashes and velvet when he's looking through them.”

“It was his first time,” Kurt said breathlessly. Is this how Juliette had felt, being wooed from her balcony? “And he'd be open to doing it again.”

[shushiyuii]

Subject T0M au

This is an Au I’ve had stockpiled for a while wkakdnknak. It’s going to multiple parts too, once I get to working on those. If you have any questions you’re welcome to ask!

I hope you guys enjoy it (Also gimme your fucking requests UwU /lh)

Warnings: Experimentation, injury? And Horror elements (It’s mainly fluff i promise :3)

Words: 3K

Document – T0MMY1NN1T

Assigned to: Doctor Wilbur Soot Watson

Description: Subject T0M was once a [REDACTED] by the name of [REDACTED] [REDACTED]. His age is of kin to an elder teen, probably around the age of [REDACTED] to [REDACTED].

The appearance of Subject T0M is like a human, they have blonde hair and pale skin. Their most common height is 6’3 on average but can change depending on the form. Their face, arms and legs are covered in a black substance of unknown origin, it mainly takes on half of their body and appears to be almost liquid.

Their face is completely black, the only thing apparent is their fangs like a wolf when they open their mouth to feed, multiple fangs, the only other feature on Subject T0M’s face is their light blue eyes that glow in the dark.

Subject T0M isn’t very intelligent, they have some semblance of human intelligence, understanding simple language and commands.

They’re quite approachable as well but Subject T0M is to be approached with caution, as they could be quite dangerous. If angered there’s no knowing what Subject T0M is capable of.

Their abilities consist of being able to manipulate the material of their body, being able to change shape and size, their favourite is to mimic those around them. It is not an exact copy; it is apparent that Subject T0M is themselves because the material of their body will still be there even if they changed forms.

They can also create weaponry and different things from their material but again not exact copies, they’re quite harmless usually.

Subject T0M is to be assigned to Rookie Doctor Wilbur Soot. Under the watch of Philza Watson.

 Entry 01 – 02/09/20—

So today was my first-day researching Subject T0M, from what I can say so far is that they’re quite interesting but so far besides the examinations, they haven’t shown much behaviour. Only staring at me from a distance.

Also, I’m not used to this sort of thing like writing documents and reports, not my favourite thing in the world but it’s not the worst thing either. So, Subject T0M already has a lot of his abilities recorded, I’m just here to see if he develops any noteworthy changes and watch over the guy.

Currently, there is no change in behaviour, he just stares down at me at a distance, like I’m the most interesting thing he’s ever seen, perhaps that’s the case?

He seems so lonely in that containment cell, it’s just an empty white box surrounded by glass, perhaps at some point I could request an upgrade to higher-ups for the lil’ fella? That way he can have a more comfortable place. Rather than a highly lit, bland, cold box.

 Entry 02 – 05/09/20—

So Today, Subject T0M did something quite interesting, it’s a drastic difference from the last few days by just staring at me through the windows of the cells.

You see, instead of just watching me from the other side of the office, as usual, it can get quite boring in the office once you finish the days' assignments of reports, schedules, contracts and more and having to watch this guy and do the usual routine gets quite boring so I decided to work on some personal things and bring my guitar, so I could work on my songs, practising the guitar and stuff.

So, I played some things, the next thing I know is that one moment I’m singing, the next in shock as I look over in disbelief. Subject T0M had moved over towards the window, his hands and face on the glass, dead staring me in my eyes, they were filled with curiosity and interest like an infant listening to music for the first time.

A way to describe it would be that Subject T0M seemed so much happier, but when I stopped, he looked almost disappointed, I stared at him in amazement for a moment and I started to play again, and his expression went back to being amazed.

My music seems to interest Subject T0M so perhaps I should do more research and experiments with different kinds of music to see which they prefer?

Not only that but it’s nice to have someone rather than my dad that enjoys my music. They’re almost my second biggest fan. I’m looking forward to seeing more of this kid.

Entry 03 – 06/09/20—

As of now, I have started the experimentation of music with Subject T0M, he seems to prefer rather upbeat, pop music and general music.

I also played him some songs from popular games, one of them being The Able Sister’s from Animal Crossing, he really seemed to enjoy that one.

Besides the experiments, I’ve started to talk to Subject T0M as it does get lonely here, plus he’s the only other guy here in the department. Although he doesn’t talk, he’s a great listener, nodding whenever I state my opinion and even trying to communicate verbally from time to time, even though he doesn’t seem to have the ability to speak.

And I’ve also seemed to have started a habit of calling Tom or Tommy, it suits him! He’s also been showing more personality, he seems more aggressive like a gremlin but not in a bad way, he’s just displaying more emotion it seems.

Entry 04 – 09/09/20—

So, the experiments and communication of Tommy have made significant progress. He’s become feistier and more vocal, he’s not aggressive in a physical sense, just annoyingly loud. He’s like a fucking child.

And today was another experiment with Tom, with the test subject being myself since it seems safe enough, so need to gather others or security over it.

I entered his containment cell, and the moment I did, Tommy showed no difference in behaviour, to begin with, just a somewhat surprised expression on his face. Probably because this was the first time, he had seen me so close.

I carefully approached at first but then a thought came to me. So far I’ve been treating him like a human so maybe treating him the same way now would have the same effects?

I sat down next to him and started talking to him as usual, and he slowly started to move closer to me, cautiously. He seemed almost nervous, but his focus was on me, rather than himself. I found it rather odd, maybe something is wrong?

Again, he tried talking back but of course, it sounded like a fucking crack pipe, so it didn’t quite work. But he was talking and for some reason, it just brought a smile to my face.

I felt like an older brother would be a way to describe it, I made a promise in my head to protect him. We even tried singing together, it was a lot of fun, I look forward to spending more time with him.

Entry 05 – 12/09/20—

The past couple of days have been a lot of fun with Tommy like I’ve gained a friend. You see, growing up I was always a bit lonely, I was social, but I never found myself clicking with anyone because nobody had the same interests as me, so I turned to focus more on my studies, science in fact like my father told me too. And look at me now!

I’m a training researcher in the same facility as my dad, as this place is one of a kind opportunity, so I guess I got pretty lucky. And it seems Tommy agrees maybe, he reminds me of well me, I don’t want him to be lonely like I was, maybe I could arrange a meeting between other monsters?

Entry 06 – 14/09/20—

Tommy and I have been bonding a lot more lately and I’ve also improved a lot myself with finishing work sooner and taking up more assignments.

Speaking of which my father said if I keep this up, I may get more recognition in the facility, maybe even a promotion which I’m happy about. I’ve sent in a request to the higher-ups to allow Tommy communication of other monsters to which I hope they approve.

Besides that, I was talking to Tommy as per usual and he displayed a different emotion, excitement. He seemed eager to show me something and when I asked, “What is it?”. His form changed to be slightly taller and more of his black substance covered his body but after a while, his form changed to be similar to my own, he tried copying me.

Like physically. It was quite surprising if I’m honest, my shocked expression to Tommy made him realise the situation and immediately changed back and tried to reassure me, I felt bad and tried to reassure him it was okay. It’s funny to look back on.

Entry 07 – 15/09/20—

I got approval from the higher-ups, probably getting special treatment since my dad is one of the higher-ups, others aren’t normally so lucky. Dad, or should I say Doctor Philza? He said we could have a meeting between Tommy and his subject, R4NB00 or as he says Ranboo.

 Dad said that his subject Ranboo does need to socialise more since he appears to have symptoms of social anxiety so maybe this will do them both some good since they both seem to be around the same age. Like Tommy, Ranboo only socialises with him and another subject T3chn0, or the blade, blood god. He’s got quite a reputation around here.

Anyways, I’ll say what I know about Subject R4NB00 as of his report, so I know to look over it in case of emergency.

R4NB00 is a tall humanoid standing above 8 ft tall. They have a black and white fur coat, a thin fur coat to be described as silky. Their coat is black on one side and white on the other, their hair is the same but in the opposite way to his fur.

They have heterochromia in their eyes, one being green and the other a bright red. They also have horns of small height; they aren’t sharp and rather small so they wouldn’t hurt anybody with them. They also have a thin tail, with it being fluffy at the end.

Subject R4NB00 isn’t the biggest fan of the regular attire assigned to all subjects, they rather wear a tuxedo embedded with the facility’s logos. They are also timid, avoiding conflict whenever possible. They also can speak but prefer not to due to being shy, they will only communicate with a select few.

Their abilities consist of having the ability to teleport at will and communicate in an unknown language. They also have weaknesses being unable to touch the water and having a state of mind of when they aren’t in control of themselves, they talk in their unknown language in this state and teleport randomly, they are to be awoken as soon as possible unless they are in this state for a test.

Report 16/09/20-- - Meeting of Subject T0M and Subject R4NB00

Today was the meeting of Subject T0M and R4NB00. Both were properly secured successfully and safely in transportation cells with the required security of 5 guards each in each truck and successfully transported to the meeting facility without stress or failure.

Both researchers were safely secured behind the required monitoring window.

The meeting was rather successful between the two creatures. To begin with, when the two saw each other they both maintained distance, for Subject R4NB00 it was because they were anxious about meeting another creature and for Subject T0M, meeting somebody else rather than their researcher.

Subject T0M was the first to contact Subject R4NB00 by trying to communicate verbally with them, it was unsuccessful and resulted in Subject R4NB00 being confused. The two sat in silence for a moment longer until Subject T0M attempted another move of contact by cautiously approaching Subject R4NB00, which resulted in them backing up into a nearby wall and trying to get away from Subject T0M.

Subject T0M then backed off and changed their form to mimic R4NB00, this is theorised to be Subject T0M trying to either comfort or entertain Subject R4NB00, they then changed back into their regular form.

Despite being confused, Subject R4NB00 seemed to notice that Subject T0M meant no harm and then tried to approach subject T0M. Subject T0M did not move.

When Subject R4NB00 approached, there was approximately 1 meter between the two, Subject R4NB00 looked at the two researchers to look for approval to which he got from Doctor Philza via a thumbs up.

Subject T0M curious looked to where R4NB00 was looking and noticed the two researchers and made a noise of happiness towards his researcher, to which Doctor Soot responded with a smile and a thumbs up.

Both Subjects looked back at each other and sat down beside each other. Subject R4NB00 began to communicate with Subject T0M, Subject R4NB00 introduced themselves and made small communication, to which Subject T0M responded positively too, as they couldn’t communicate back. After that, the meeting was concluded.

After their meeting, when asked about the meeting by their researchers. Subject R4NB00 responded positively to seeing Subject T0M again and talked positively about them despite not being able to communicate.

Subject T0M appeared upset a few moments after the meeting, scratching at the windows of his cell, whining. When asked if he wished to see Subject R4NB00 again, he responded positively. Another meeting between the two has been arranged.

Entry 08 – 17/09/20—

Tommy seems to miss his new friend quite a bit but it’ll be a while before the next meeting between them as it has to be approved again and it’ll be a while.

Doing our normal routine keeps him happy for a while but if I leave him for more than 15 minutes he begins to whine again. I wasn’t quite sure what to do as I couldn’t keep him company all day.

On my lunch break I talked to my co-worker Doctor Puffy about the matter, she’s a smart gal and rather motherly, she reminds me of my mom at times. She suggested that I give Tommy a gift, like a plush bear to befriend so he wouldn’t feel so lonely while I was gone.

So, I quickly made my way to a store, it was rather odd to see myself, an adult in a toy aisle but I found a decent plush. It’s a Minecraft spider plushie. I gave Tommy the plushie and introduced him to the plush, when I asked him what he wanted to name the plush he responded with a sound, it honestly sounded like he said shroud, so I suggested it. He responded happily so I guess we now have Shroud the spider.

Now I’ve got the peril of getting medication for my father as he’s somehow gotten sick.

Incident Report  #19283 – 18/09/20-- -

No staff or other creatures were harmed during the containment breach, minor damages to the building, broken walls and broken windows within the cell. All to be fixed within a minimum of 3 hours. Subject T3CHN0 was successfully contained in a holding cell as we interviewed him as to why he breached containment, to which he responded that “Nobody told me where Phil was.”.

Doctor Philza was then contacted to talk to Subject T3CHN0 to explain his current predicament of being sick, to which Subject T3CHN0 huffed in response and refused to cooperate with us further.

Subject T3CHN0 escaped containment in a rampage, the reasoning being as he was not informed of his researchers’ location, as Doctor Philza was sick for the past two days before the incident. Both researcher and creature are rather close with each other, as to why the Subject was upset.

Prior to the incident (recorded by security cameras), Both Subjects of Doctor Philza were speaking to each other about the current location of their researcher, both concluded that neither of them had any idea of where the Doctor was, both subjects ask their temporary carer as to where their researchers’ location was, to which the carer wouldn’t respond so Subject T3CHN0 decided to find his answers.

Subject T3CHN0 broke through his containment cell’s window and then proceeded to break through multiple walls trying to find his researcher.

(The document then goes into detail about what T3CHN0 did during his rampage before he was contained)

During the rampage, Subject T3CHN0 broke through the walls of Doctor Soot’s office and his creature, Subject T0M. As Subject T3CHN0 entered the office, Doctor Soot was frightened at the unexpected visitor as tried to get away from the approaching Subject T3CHN0, Doctor Soot demanded that he get away, to which T3CHN0 huffed in response.

Subject T0M took some time to register that his researcher was in danger, but when he heard he did, he sprang into the action of defending his researcher.

His form changed into one of being described as fearsome, they changed heights to one over 15 ft tall, his hands turned into claws, long sharp fangs became visible, a sharp tail and pair of horns after appeared with this form. (Doctor Soot has been requested to do further research into this form)

Subject T0M roared in warning towards the other, then proceeded to pounce through their containment cells window, shards of glass scattered throughout the room.

They then ran towards their researcher and in a crouched position, picked up his fallen researcher and held him close to his chest, growling furiously at T3CHN0.

The two Subjects stared at each other for a moment until T3CHN0 began to communicate verbally by asking where his researcher was, Doctor Soot was too much in a state of shock to respond.

Subject T0M held his researcher closer and tried to comfort him in a way of purring, even nuzzling his researcher for a response, to which Subject T3CHN0 left due to being impatient.

Subject T0M continued to hold onto his researcher and eventually Doctor Soot snapped out of his state to stare in awe of Subject T0M, When Subject T0M saw their researcher responding he made worried sounds to them, to which Doctor Soot responded with a laugh and said: “I’m fine buddy”.

Subject T3CHN0 was then contained shortly afterwards.

[echo-of-sounds]

hypersensitivities

How Aizawa, Toshinori, and Hizashi would help and support their s/o with hypersensitivities.

While hypersensitivities can be caused by many things (both mental and physical), mine are from ADHD and anxiety. I believe I kept these as general as possible so others can relate even if their issues aren’t caused by the same things as mine.

Aizawa Shouta

Aizawa’s the least picky person out there. Come home with a different smelling shampoo for him or a new comforter made out of your preferred material and he won’t bat an eye. If it works, he’s fine with it.

Rubbing. Digging. Scruffing. Itching. Constricting. You just can’t get away from it. There’s always something touching you. It makes your entire being uncomfortable and agitated. He’ll ask if there’s anything he can do. He knows you sometimes need space to breathe and calm yourself. Those times when you want someone to help, he’s there. If you need your weighted blanket, he can find it. If you need shea butter lotion, he can apply it. If you just need some skin-to-skin contact, he can provide it. Anything to get you to stop scratching and pulling at yourself, he’ll do because he hates seeing you so visibly distraught.

Having a strong sense of taste and an aversion to textiles can lead to a difficult food life. Onions are fine if they’re in this dish, prepared this way. Tomatoes, mushrooms, and bananas? Gooey and slimy. Seafood? Beans? Never. It’s frustrating to just eat. While Aizawa’s no connoisseur or nutritionist, he can (surprisingly) cook pretty well. And he sticks to plain, easy dishes. It’s great when you’re essentially limited to bread, some kinds of pasta, and some fruits and meats. He can help with any simple soups and basic meat dishes. 

If a truck’s horn or that ridiculously high pitch buzzing finally breaks your ears down to the point you’re crying, find Shouta. He’s always willing to cuddle. Even more so when you need comforting. He’s so safe and secure. Hands will stroke circles while lips kiss your temple. If you have to play rain or ocean sounds in your earbuds or from your phone, he’ll lay in bed with you, keeping you locked to him, and press kisses all over.

Whenever you leave the house, he reminds you to bring any glasses that you need: FL-41 for light sensitivity, blue blockers for computer screens, even category 4 sunglasses if your eyes need that amount of protection. He always remembers. You’ll be at the mall, squinting from the horrible fluorescents, and he’ll pull them out of his pocket for you.

His hair is perfect for hiding in when you’re out in public. It’s thick and smells like him. And while he dislikes PDA, he does make exceptions. Whenever you need a break from the lights, just turn into him, rest against his chest, and his hair will fall over your eyes. He’ll hold you close, patiently waiting for you to be ready to continue.

Please, never feel high-maintenance. If anything, having you in his life makes him more attentive to himself. He’ll eat better from any meal plans. He’ll clean his place more often so it’s enjoyable for you. He is especially aware of what cleaning supplies and detergent he uses. He just becomes considerate of how you’re in his life and what he does because he loves you.

Yagi Toshinori

Toshi developed a love for cooking. With his injury, his nutritional needs changed, so he’s learned to cook well to avoid constantly buying expensive foods. Any aversions you have, whether it be texture, smell, or taste, he’ll avoid. Can the slightest change in the sauce throw the whole dish off? His measurements are as precise as can be. Lettuce is fine, but spinach, cabbage, and parsley? It’s basically paper in your mouth. He’ll find recipes that include just lettuce and your preferred vegetables. You’ll come home to another new dish he made to surprise you.

Textile sensitivities are difficult to deal with. And clothes shopping becomes the worst task of them all. You have to test the fabric, the seams, where the tag is, how the shoulders and neck sit, the sleeve tightness, everything. Toshi will keep a list of the exact materials you like for blankets, pillows, towels, carpets, and clothing. And it doesn’t stop there. Is stoneware and glass dinnerware too irritating on your fingers? His next investment his wooden or metal dinnerware. Is cold press and rough drawing paper uncomfortable? He’ll be on the lookout for specific hot press paper.

The only thing he uses that smells is his cologne. It’s simple and never overwhelming. But if you need a different scent, he’s more than willing to go to the store with you so you can pick out something you like. 

Any scents that calm you, candles, incense, and those air freshener crystal beads, will be that scent. Vanilla or lavender. Maybe there’s some obscure scent you can only dig up online? Oh, he’ll find it. It’s incomprehensible how much he loves you. And your comfort is vital. Because if you can’t feel comfortable in your own home, then something’s seriously wrong.

The lightbulbs in your place are always free for you to change. If incandescent bulbs are what you need in the living room, buy them and change them out. If green LED lights help with migraines and pain, put them in the lamp near your bed while you rest. Install smart lighting so you can dim and change the lights whenever you need to. Toshi doesn’t care about the expenses. If it helps and protects your eyes, then money means nothing to him.

It doesn’t help that his smile is just so darn bright.

Overstimulation takes over so suddenly. You’re sitting in the living room, reading, when all of a sudden, the TV and microwave throws your hearing off, your bra becomes a boa constrictor and it’s only tightening, the flowers, food, and candles engulfs your entire being. It’s throttling, smothering, and you can’t escape. You’re left to drown. 

The minute you’re scratching, rocking, or crying, he’s prepared. Is your dog fluffy and grounding? Toshi brings her over. Do you need a hot or cold shower? It’s already running. Is fresh air the best for you? He’s walking you to the balcony or roof for a break. He can stay with you or leave you alone.

Yamada Hizashi

Hizashi is a little bit of a picky eater too. Certain vegetables and sauces like tartar, guacamole, and harissa bother him, especially if the sauces are chunky. He prefers smoother dressings/sauces. So he completely understands any food aversions you have and never makes you feel guilty for being picky. He spends extra care when choosing what restaurants to go to and what he picks up for takeout.

He loves jewelry, not just wearing it, but on his partner too: necklaces that highlight your collarbones and rings that emphasize your fingers. He wants to buy you jewelry and hates that you don’t like it. He isn’t mad at you or your preferences but at how uncomfortable you get in your own skin. He wants you to feel great. And those mornings where you change outfits nine times until you finally find something that isn’t suffocating, his heart breaks.

You can bet he’ll come home with five bras and ten shirts he found that he knows you’ll like. The shirts are soft and the exact size and shape you want with no annoying frills, buttons, or ties. The bras are cute and never have tight, prodding wires or scratchy lace. He’s like a bloodhound when he’s at the store. One whiff of a good pair of pants and he’s ransacking the isles for more like it. He wants you feeling cozy, comfortable, and sexy!

A lot of gum goes in his mouth. His breath and taste is always something. But mint is powerful. There are too many kinds- spearmint, peppermint, winter-something, sweet-whatever, polar-anything. They’re overwhelming, upset your stomach, soak into your tongue, and cling to your clothes. You’ll smell it long after he gives you a kiss. To help, Hizashi will buy literally every flavor of gum there is and let you pick the ones you like. Bubblegum? Classic. Berry Blast? He loves fruit! Apple Pie or Confetti Cake Pop? Odd choice but he can dig it!

Noise sensitivities will be a little tough to manage when living with him. And it’s not his quirk that’s the problem. He’s just a noisy guy. He’s bumping things, knocking them over. He hums, pops, and sings all the time. Music or instruments are often playing somewhere in the apartment. Sound canceling headphones would be a good investment because it’s near impossible for him to just stop making noise. It's ingrained in him. Though there will be days when he’s almost completely quiet so he can spend time with you… and press kisses all over your face.

If you need sunglasses, Hizashi is your guy. Styles, tints, frames, colors, he’ll make sure your eyes are protected and you look perfect. In your home, he’ll cover up any reflective or bright surfaces that bother you: throwing a blanket over the refrigerator and getting blackout curtains. And if you need the often dreaded eyedrops, he’ll apply them for you. He’ll reward you with chocolate and kisses.

Since he’s so in tune with his partner’s emotions, he can notice when you’re starting to get overstimulated. Your voice may get sharper. You're itching your arm till it’s red. Your squinting and tilting away from certain sounds. He’ll recommend you take a break. Go lay down with the cat. Read a book under your weighted blanket. Burn some candles while in the bath. He’ll massage lotion into your back after for extra comfort.

[gureishi]

Ohhhh, requests? Requests!!!! ❤️

We all know and love SE and the Choi family (Mc, Saeyoung and Saeran living together in the bunker).... But what about. Other way arround?

Saeran after ending, with saeran and saeyoung making amends, and you finally befriending and getting to know the true person behind 707.

Im happy with whatever ideas you have for this, but if you need more guidance... A scene between saeyoung and Mc, talking? Saeyoung thanking mcfor making saeran happy and feeling like he failed as a brother for not protecting him, and mc being all sweet as she is reassuring him that it's OK and that they are happy now and just fluffy??????

Gosh, I wrote a lot, sorry.

Oh wow. I ADORE this request. Thank you for bringing me this sweet idea. ♡

I love envisioning their lives together post-AE, and it was so much for fun me to imagine this tiny little slice of that. 

after

Saeyoung & Reader (platonic); Saeran X Reader (background), G, words: 2355

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・

Today there’s one of those early-winter snows where the flurries get stuck in your hair but the ground’s not white and beautiful, just cold and damp. The parking lot is nearly empty—apparently no one else wanted to go out today. Personally, you can’t understand why. You love the way the sky’s a bright white and how the biting wind makes the tips of your ears pink.

Saeyoung, who’s been walking a few paces ahead of you, turns around in time to see you stop and catch a snowflake on your tongue. He raises his eyebrows; he’s got his hood up and there’s a light dusting of snow on top of his head, like powdered sugar.

“I was gonna ask if you regretted coming along now that it’s snowing, but I guess I have my answer.” He’s got a complicated look on his face, like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to laugh at you or not.

“I have no regrets!” you sing, and then he does laugh, shaking his head indulgently.

“Come on,” he says. “Your shoes are getting wet.”

“Your shoes are getting wet. Also your head. Who goes to the store in just a hoodie in the winter?” But you run to catch up with him, splashing in the little puddles that have collected in the uneven pavement.

“It was the hoodie or the floor-length pink fur coat, so I went for the hoodie,” he says, and you can’t tell if he’s joking or not. 

The automatic doors slide open for you; he grabs a shopping cart from the assortment parked just inside the door. You walk beside him, feeling a little awkward. Grocery store etiquette, you think, is such a personal thing. Saeran, for instance, likes to go slowly through the store, lingering in each area—looking for inspiration, sometimes checking recipes on his phone. You like to move through the store at random, picking out items that strike your fancy. These methods work surprisingly well together—perhaps because Saeran finds it charming when you come running up to him with a strange new fruit in your arms.

Saeyoung, it seems, has neither a list nor a plan. He pushes the shopping cart lazily with one hand, heading vaguely toward the nearest aisle. You’re tempted to guide him in one direction or another, but you also don’t want to be a nuisance. This is his shopping trip—he was the one who announced he was going to the store; you were the one who’d insisted on tagging along.

“Are you sure?” he’d asked then, hesitating, one hand already on the doorknob. “You don’t need to! I can get whatever you—”

“I want to,” you’d said firmly, jumping off the couch where you’d been lying with your feet in Saeran’s lap, reading a book. It wasn’t that you needed anything in particular from the grocery store or that you didn’t trust Saeyoung to find whatever was needed for the house (though, in retrospect, it wasn’t that you did trust him, either). It was just…

In the few precious days that you’d been living in the bunker with the brothers—in a world that was suddenly so peaceful you couldn’t quite believe it—you’d begun to realize something: in spite of the hours of phone conversations and chats you’d shared with the enigmatic and charming 707, you actually hardly knew Saeyoung at all.

“So, uhhh,” he begins, a bit uncomfortably. You glance at him askance; his cheeks are pink. “What do we need, anyway?”

You laugh—you can’t help it. “What were you going to buy if I didn’t come with you?”

Saeyoung shrugs, looking down. He’s definitely blushing. “I was gonna…wing it.”

Maybe it’s his inexplicable shyness with you and maybe it’s your genuine love of grocery shopping, but your confidence is bolstered. You take the cart from him and he relinquishes it gratefully, falling into step behind you.

“First we’re going to get produce,” you tell him, and he nods eagerly, bouncing on his heels. He honestly looks excited that you’ve taken the lead; you make a mental note about this. At home, Saeyoung is often in charge—of little things, like what movie you’ll all watch together—because he is boisterously enthusiastic about everything and you and Saeran are more subdued. But here, without his twin, outside of his domain, he is suddenly much less confident.

You select a few types of squash; he watches somewhat reverently. “How do you know what to get?” he asks in a quiet voice.

“Practice, I guess,” you say. “I have in mind a couple of recipes we can make this week, and there are some staples it’s always good to have…” You pause, realizing something, your hands full of squash. “Saeyoung, can I ask you something?”

“What? Yeah!” He responds a little too readily and you know he’s trying to mask his awkwardness. It’s endearing.

“You lived alone for a pretty long time,” you say thoughtfully. You survey the selection of cabbage. “Didn’t you…buy food? To eat?”

He laughs, runs a hand through his already-messy red curls. “God Seven doesn’t need food to live!” he sings, and it’s in the tone of the 707 you’d developed a strange friendship with during those days you were at Mint Eye. You know now that Saeyoung was there, even then, under all that false positivity and diversionary teasing.

“You do, though,” you tell him. You hand him a head of cabbage.

Your firm tone seems to quell him. He looks down at the cabbage. 

“I ate snacks, mostly,” he says, a little more quietly. “Sometimes Vanderwood got frustrated and brought me other things to eat.”

You turn away to hide the look in your eyes from him. These poor, poor boys.

“You two!” you explain in mock-frustration, pushing the cart to the next refrigerated shelf. “So you were living on junk food while he was keeping himself alive with caffeine pills. What am I going to do with you?”

Saeyoung bounces behind you, still holding the cabbage.

“Feed us!” he says. You roll your eyes and tear a plastic bag off the role beside the shelves. 

“Put the cabbage in the bag,” you tell him. He does.

You gather a few more fruits and vegetables and Saeyoung asks about all of them; you’re amused when he doesn’t know what a persimmon is.

“So besides chips and stuff, then, what do you like to eat?” you ask him, pushing the cart into the large, open area where meat and fish sit on ice, row after chilly row.

Saeyoung hums thoughtfully, peering at a particularly large fish, complete with eyeballs and everything. “This is creepy,” he says. “Can we get it?”

“We…can,” you say. “But that doesn’t really answer my question.”

He walks a little ahead of you, and he looks at each different type of meat with such curiosity. They’re both like this, you think—so full of wonder over basic, mundane things. Saeran was in awe the first night the three of you settled in on Saeyoung’s huge couch to watch TV together. And now here is Saeyoung—who’s had considerably more freedom than his brother—staring at an assortment of different cuts of meat like he’s in a museum.

“I’m not sure,” he says finally, tilting his head to the side. “I love chips, and, you know, fish-shaped buns…”

“But is there a meal you like? Maybe from, I don’t know, the past…?” You regret the words as soon as they’re out of your mouth.

Saeyoung laughs bitterly. “Not from childhood, if that’s what you mean.”

“Right,” you say. “Yeah. I knew that. I’m sorry.”

He comes back to your side, leans on the cart. “It’s okay,” he tells you. “I don’t mind.”

“Still,” you say. “Sorry.” You steer the cart toward a display of different chicken parts and he pads along beside you—like an obedient dog, you think.

“What’s the difference between…” he bends over, peering at the packages. “Breasts and thighs?”

You giggle. “You tell me.”

You watch as his face turns red, clashing wonderfully with his hair.

“Um, l-let’s get the…thighs, I guess,” he chokes, and you stifle your laughter with your hand.

“Thighs it is.”

He throws the chicken into the cart with his face turned away and you grin. 707 was a tease, but it is easy to fluster Saeyoung. 

You move through the aisle of bottled sauces in companionable silence. You hold up a bottle of bottle of soy sauce and he nods enthusiastically; he does the same for the fish sauce and corn syrup. To test him, you hold up a banana ketchup—which you’ve personally never actually tried—and he gives you the same affirmative head bob.

“Saeyoung, do you know what this is?”

He tilts his head to the side, reads the label.

“Banana ketchup? Yum!”

You sigh. “Fine.” You toss it in the cart; maneuver to the next aisle.

“You didn’t even have soy sauce or salt or anything in your house when we moved in,” you say. “There was literally nothing in the cabinets.”

He strolls along beside you, running a finger along the rows of different kinds of pasta. “It never occurred to me.”

“We were kind of surprised,” you add, tossing a big bag of rice into the cart. “We bought a bunch of stuff, before we…left.” You stumble over the words; gears spin frantically in your brain. The words hang heavily in the air between you. Before we left to find you. Before we found you and then lost you again.

He’s silent for a moment and you know he feels the change in atmosphere, the way time seems to have slowed down.

“Hey,” he says finally. He’s got one arm draped over the side of the cart and his posture is a little stiff. “Did I ever thank you? I mean, properly.”

You bite your lip, keep walking. Your face feels hot. Suddenly, you’re not really looking at what’s on the shelves.

“You did,” you say softly. “But I feel I should be the one thanking you. You’re the reason we’re both alive, you know.”

Saeyoung stops, and you almost crash into him. He spins around, and he’s got a hard, determined look in his face. You’ve seen that look before. 

“No,” he says. “Nuh-uh. You saved us. You protected him. You did what I didn’t…couldn’t—”

Ah. Your heart’s pounding against your ribcage. Of course it’s here, you think—in this narrow aisle, next to hundreds of loaves of bread, that he’s saying this to you.

“Saeyoung, he knows that you would die for him. You tried to.”

He stuffs his hands in his pockets, walks away from you, lingers at the end of the aisle. The change in him is remarkable. There’s no hint of the awestruck boy, bouncing up and down over the wide selection of steaks, in this morose, bitter man.

“I didn’t succeed, did I?” he says. A mother with a small child seated in the front of her shopping cart comes down the aisle and you back up into the shelves to let them pass. You wonder if they can feel how thick the air is.

“No, you didn’t,” you say. “And thank god, because where would we be if you had?” He finally looks at you then, and you’re taken aback by the wild look in his eyes. It scares you; you take a step toward him. “You fought for him,” you tell him. “And he fought for you.”

His fingers drum a frantic pattern on the metal shelf beside him. He’s got the look of a cornered animal, ready to bolt. You’ve seen this expression before—though on a different Choi brother.

“I was supposed to protect him,” he says, so quietly you can hardly hear him. You take one more step. Another. Finally you’re at his side, and he flinches, but he doesn’t run away.

“You did,” you say. “And he’s safe. All of us are safe.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“We’re going to buy this stuff,” you tell him. “We’re gonna pay for it, and get in the car, and go back home, and he’ll be there. Waiting for you.”

Saeyoung shuts his eyes and takes a long, slow breath. You do it with him. He runs a shaky hand through his hair again and you give him a little nudge with your elbow. Eyes still closed, one side of his mouth twitches upward—a half-smile.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “I didn’t mean to…”

“I know.”

“I just feel like I owe you…”

“Me too.”

His eyes open; they’re clearer, bright and gold behind his glasses. 

“You don’t owe me anything,” he says, and it sounds like a question.

“I love him,” you say. “So, I think I do.”

Saeyoung shakes his head; the color’s back in his cheeks now, and he grabs the cart, pushing it out of the aisle. You jog to catch up, grab onto the side just as he’d done earlier. Hold on tight.

“You love him a lot, don’t you?” he says. You can see him in your peripheral vision—his eyes are twinkling.

“More than anything in the world,” you reply.

“Me too,” he says, echoing you, and you grin. You picture the look on Saeran’s face if he could hear this conversation—the way his green eyes would soften, the way he’d get that adorable little dusting of pink over his cheeks. 

Saeyoung turns the cart abruptly, maneuvering into the next aisle with an expertise you didn’t expect—you shriek, barely holding on. He cackles.

“We need this!” he says, and you turn to see him pointing at an alarmingly large box of some sort of purple cookie you’ve never seen before.

We don’t, you almost say, but you hesitate, because what’s the harm? 

“Sure,” you say, and you toss them in the cart.

Saeyoung smiles. “I’m glad you’re here,” he says. You know he’s not talking about the stupid cookies.

You beam right back at him. “I am too.”

★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★

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[degeneratekitten]

Double Trouble

!!!WARNING!!! Read the tags before continuing. If any of the tags upset you then you probably wont like it when it happens in the story.

I think its fair to say that this is long overdue, I hate leaving people on cliffhangers, but i am very prone to do so. So I posted this, even if its a year late.

Not sure if I’ll be back again, maybe I’ll post a few stories I started on then never finished but who knows. Anyways enjoy the whump.

After Bud popped out his somehow less-evil-than-him twin, you couldn't help but to snatch the outraged coral up for a round of testing. You made sure to scrape up samples, eyes sparkling as the little coral put up a confused struggle.

You ignored Bud’s limp form on the towel, he looked to be in an incredibly rough shape, eyelights wavering, scales a little bloody, and little bits from the bones on his back missing. His mouth was still frothing, and he looked to be wallowing in his own waste, but you hardly noticed as you fluttered around the lab completely dazzled by the spontaneous birth of a fully formed coral.

You of course asked all the typical round of questions to the little thing, utterly fascinated by the asexual reproduction you just witnessed. You were sure that you’d just witnessed a breakthrough in what you were sure was the catalyst for the bitty surge. Their mutation!

You spent hours interacting with the coral, staring at the samples he produced while talking with him. You even ended up making a breakthrough with the treatment for the Brassberries who were still plagued by the growths. You ended up finding out exactly the source of the growths. Their makeup, and exactly why they were lingering on the brassberries where they had formed a complete bitty on Bud.

It turned out that the growths were in themselves a mutated strain of a virus that had taken up magical properties. The original virus seemed to be the cause of asexual reproduction in the original bitties. The virus mutated to start causing bittes to mutate as well, then mutated into this strain to exclusively promote more extreme mutation in bitties. It was searching for new traits or combinations of them to form into full Bitties.The Brassberries did not hold any extreme traits, thus the virus simply formed deady growths on them, whereas Bud seemed to have mutated just enough to create a newer unique bitty.

Even after finally tending to the catatonic Bud you ended up throwing yourself into research, only breaking to eat and use the bathroom. What you found out during this time about the virus and the new coral which you started calling Dub, was amazing.

The coral was incredibly energetic for its breed, finding pleasure in darting around in a manner most edgy types would deem too troublesome to attempt. Even if he was actually “less” violent than most corals, he still got angry, cussing you out and throwing stuff. He did almost bite you, which prompted you to test his venom, which also turned out to be far more potent than a regular corals.

He got angry a lot less than a regular coral,and his triggers were fewer than normal, and where Bud would throw tantrums, the coral would try to find the positives in a situation, and even attempt to work with you. Plus, where Bud was narcissistic this Coral was surprisingly self-aware, he would admit when he went too far, and even apologize for that behavior. A shocking trait for a Coral, yet also dangerous as it was easy to let your guard down after an apology.

He was still incredibly destructive, but he was far less malicious about it than most edgy types, plus the things he destroyed were easily replaceable and not valuable at all. The only time he ever really destroyed something valuable was when he was “clumsy” about it, which surprised you as he really tried to make it seem like he “wasn't” clumsy and was destroying things on purpose. He liked singing, and was incredibly open about wanting to cuddle, and would say he loved you frequently without a tsundere act. He was possibly the most bearable Coral on the planet!

Although he had some pretty surprising good points, he was still an Edgy type. He still tried to bite you, cussed excessively, was violent, was incredibly demanding, wasn't very bright, and enjoyed “marking” as much as Bud. You could say he was an ideal protection type bitty, but really if you were to even sell him he would probably be more dangerous than most Edgy types due to how he could almost seem “pleasant” at times.

Dub was still venomous, was more active than a regular edgy, and could easily trick someone into believing that he “wouldn't” bite you. Hell, you’d almost gotten bitten on the neck earlier when you gave him a hug at his insistence. His reasoning being “Bitch you give awful hugs!”

You had a hard time keeping your guard up around him, as he acted like a Blueberry sometimes only to turn around and try and bite you. During one of those instances you also found out something incredible about him.

“Hey ma… Can we talk?” Dub asked, as he chewed on a piece of meat you’d slathered in mustard as a bribe to let you take more ectoplasmic samples. You’d discovered that bribing him was one way to get him to cooperate, a mark firmly in the blueberry corner.

“Yeah Dub, tell me whatever is bothering you.” You replied, not looking away from the sample, you were noticing some strange growth coming from the samples you took from him, almost as if the virus was still actively trying to form him from the samples. They petered out fairly quickly and stopped their activity but it was still interesting.

“Can we go huntin?” He asked, as he viciously tore at the meat, he was wrapped around it like he was trying to strangle it, but the whole time staring at it like it was doing something wrong.

“When we’re done with tests we can go on a hunt with the other protection bitties, I’m sure you’d love it.” You replied, really he had been rather restless and you were sure to take him out on a hunt sooner rather than later. 

Dub ended up glaring at you. “You’re never done with testin tho!” He exclaimed, as he let go of the meat and moved towards you in an aggressive manner.

“I’m BORED! I need some ACTION” He shouted, slapping his mustard covered tail on the table, splattering mustard all over your workspace. Really why you had decided that feeding him in your workspace was beyond you. Nonetheless it irritated you, and you turned to him with a frown. 

“I’ve been giving you plenty of exercise! We play tag with the fluffies after we eat! Why can't you do that for a little bit while I finish up? It won’t be much longer now, you just have to be patient.” You stated, watching as Dub shook his head violently, and continued to argue.

“You’re a lyin bitch! We been testin for so long! I haven't even seen outside yet!” He argued, and you supposed he had a point, but it's really what he did next that pushed your buttons. 

“I WANNA HUNT!” He screamed, before taking the samples you had just taken and throwing them off the table! “TAKE ME HUNTING NOW YA STUPID SLUT!” He cursed, baring his teeth and looking as if he was going to lunge at you.

You didn't give him enough time to lunge though, as soon as he bared his teeth as you, you panicked and punted him off the table as hard as you could. You heard a loud “thwack” as he collided with the wall, and more cursing.

“FUCK YOU BITCH! THAT FUCKIN HUUUUUUUURT!” He sounded close to tears, but was even now attempting to stand up. Eyes wide, you quickly put on your handling gloves and ran over, checking over his mustard covered form for damage. His skull was cracked, but that was about it, and he looked at you with tear filled eyes, and you could swear he was trying to look cute so you wouldn't hurt him more. But really what ended up catching your attention was the fact that without any monster candy, or even healing magic, the cracks in his skull were closing all on their own.

Your breath caught in your throat as you stared in wonder at the closing cracks, they closed up in a manner of seconds.

“Wow.” You ended up breathing out, before poking at the place where the cracks used to be. The coral in response bit your gloved hand, but seeing as you were wearing thick gloves, it really had no effect, even as he tried to bite harder.

Staring at him, (not at all irritated at his attempt to kill you, you swear) your curiosity ended up getting the better of you, and you ended up slamming the little coral into the wall again, cracking his skull once again, then quickly pulling the bitty to yourself and purposely prying open the crack as far as you could get it.

‘WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOIN! STOP! WE CAN TALK BOUT THIS!” The coral screamed as you practically split his skull in two. You got a glimpse of what his eyelights looked like through the crack, before you ‘accidentally’ completely detached the right side of the top of his skull.

Surprisingly the detached bit persisted for a few minutes, and you were utterly shocked with how long it lasted without turning to dust. Furthermore, you were shocked that Dub immediately started to regenerate, instead of dusting himself.

You held Dub like he was a treasure as you stared utterly captivated with his amazing regenerative capabilities. A laugh ended up bubbling up from your chest, and you ended up hugging Dub to your chest as you laughed. Of course the difference in attitudes ended up stalling him, and he ended up drooling all over your lab coat as you praised him, telling him how he was the greatest discovery since electricity.

----

After squealing for a little while, all thoughts of hunting completely left your mind, you instead locked Dub up in an enclosure while he cried about his headaches, and started writing about his capabilities. You were planning on researching exactly what kind of mutation he had, then once you had enough data you would see if you could somehow start breeding him with other bitties to pass on such a valuable trait. 

You could only imagine what kind of bitty you could end up creating if only you were skilled enough in programming. You had millions of bitty design ideas that you could only dream of coming to fruition. Sadly the closest you would ever get to an ideal bitty was if you bred one. Dub himself was only a first step on that path.

You decided that first you needed to see if you could create another Bitty like Dub from Bud. So you ended up dragging Bud downstairs, kicking and screaming, and ended up feeding him a sample of the growths he fell into before. You saw what you were hoping for, and just like before, with enough shocks and emotional strain, you had another fully formed coral.

You were thrilled to discover that the second coral also had the same regenerative capabilities, and wasted no time in beginning your stress tests. In the end you decided that you would use Dub for the more tame testing, but as for the second coral, well you needed to know exactly what could kill this type, so you were strapping in for some brutal testing.

Everything started off tame enough. You took more samples of course, before having the both of them go through an obstacle course. There was plenty of cursing, Dub himself was so incensed with you and your testing that he simply refused to participate unless you kept true to your word and took him hunting. You ended up giving in to that request if only to obtain a set of data that you couldn't obtain in the lab, you ended up taking the other coral as well, and observed the both of them literally tearing themselves apart in their pursuit of the hunt. It seemed that they did not have poisonous venom anymore, instead they had paralytics. Which resulted in them using their exceptional stamina and irritating nature to coax more aggressive prey into chasing them long enough to either literally snap the bitties in half or have the prey collapse immobile but still aware due to the paralytics. After which they would wait for their bodies to regenerate and gorge themselves on their prey, live. You yourself ended up having to finish off their prey as they ate, which resulted in intense screaming on their part, something about ruining their fun. It was startling to say the least.

You gained many insights from this exercise. One being that the new corals were surprisingly well aware of their own abilities, as if they knew even without having to be told what they could do. The second being that they fell very firmly in the “protection” variety. Although at this point you debated on whether or not you should continue using “protection” as their classification, it was originally coined for marketing purposes but as the years went by it was just dangerous to call them anything less than hunters.

Of course after securing and storing the prey the corals had obtained you waste no time in taking them right back to the lab. They were satisfied enough with their work and cooperated fairly well with you afterwards. You knew that wouldn't last very long though, as what you had planned wasn't exactly pleasant.

You started with testing their magic. You didn't know how much these bitties could do, you gave them magical gauges, to measure their resting potential. Much like humans, bitties could increase their magic proficiency through absorbing it through places of power or artifacts but they always started with a baseline for magic at around the same place. These bitties had a slightly higher capacity for magic, but it turned out to be negligible in the long run. They could not use magic.

Next was the strength testing. You ended up testing their bite strength first, using a special tool, then their grip strength, and finally followed by the grip strength of their tails. It all ended up coming out at the average for Corals, much to your disappointment.

The next test involved their speed, it was the final test for the day, and to make sure you got the best results you ended up using what could essentially be called Bitty catnip to coerce the two corals into competing. You dangled a singular piece of mustard flavored magic treats in their faces and told them to race. You ended up setting up a small track for them to cover. You also stipulated that they were “Not to sabotage each other.” You’d made the mistake of not stipulating such a thing before, to say it was messy was an understatement. In the end the two of them tied, and the candy was split in half between the two. They were exhausted from the day's tests, and you needed them in tip top shape for the tests tomorrow. So you ended up patting them on the head, telling them they did good, and leaving them in their respective enclosures for the night.

The very next day though, you ended up setting up a longer course, or rather, you took the second coral to the track that you use for horses, a good circular track that didn't actually have an end with markings for distance.

“Ok little one, today I need you to keep running no matter what.” You smiled at the second coral as he stared at you, frowning. 

“Wadya mean?” He asked, staring at the track with suspicion.

You took out a small collar and fastened it around the bitties neck, it was tight enough to press directly against the bitties neck while loose enough that it could move up and down. It was quite obviously a shock collar, a miniature version meant for bitties, with a little tweak.

The secondary coral batted away at the collar, wrestling with you to try and get it off, before ending up giving up and sending you a glare instead.

“The fucks this stupid thing for?” He glowered, baring his teeth as you set him down at the beginning of the track and pulled out a little remote control.

“It's something new I made after realizing I needed some more physical motivation for you little guys. It's brand new, and honestly I don't know any better specimen to try it on than a little coral who can regenerate from everything.” You smirked at the coral, as he seemed to shrink a little bit at your look.

“Now, like I said before, I need you to run, and if you stop, I’ll have to punish you.” You stated, waving the controller in his face.

“Fuck you!” The little edgy spat before crossing his arms and turning his little back on you.

Shaking your head, you turned the dial on the 8 setting before pressing a little red button underneath.

You looked down at the little coral watching as it seemed to flop over in a little convulsion, his eyelights started to flicker and foam started dripping from his mouth.

“FUUUUU---UuuuuuuUUUUCkkk!” He buzzed out, voice wavering from the shock.

The shock lasted for about 10 seconds, but the little coral looked like it had completely fried him. He looked at you in shock before you smiled down viciously at him, and pointed at the track.

“Whenever you stop running I’ll turn the shock up, this dial goes all the way up to 50, and can even take down a bear on that setting.” You watched the coral look at you in horror as you pointed in the direction he was supposed to run.

“Now get moving, or the next shock I set will be worse.” You stated.

“Fuck you bitch I ain’t doing shit!” He screeched at you, flopping down on the ground and thrashing around like a toddler.

“You can’t fuckin make me!” He screamed, right at you turned the dial up to 9 and pressed the button. You held the button down for about 20 seconds that time, watching the coral freeze up in shock foaming more at the mouth as you let the shock continue.

“AAAAAAAAhhhhh!” He screeched, and as soon as the shock subsided he looked at you with tear filled eyes. “Momma please! Don’t hurt me anymore!” He started begging, and started to slither towards you, with a tear streaked and snotty face.

“Start running then.” You stated simply a little disturbed by the fact that the coral had called you momma instead of mom, or even bitch, a testament to his mixed nature. The blueberry was showing itself off right here.

The coral started to blubber harder, and didn't even notice when you turned the dial up once more to 10. “P-lllll-leaaaaaase! Momma! I Don’t wanna run that track!” He begged as he inched closer to your leg.

You kicked him away, sending him flying towards the track and pressing the button while the little coral was midair. He screeched loudly, voice wavering as he fell, and simply lay there, stiff as a board and foaming from his mouth.

“I said. Start. Running!” You shouted one more time, finger poised over the button as you stared the coral straight in the eyes.

He listened that time, making his way to the track and slithering off at top speed on the track, he was still crying as he ran, and his ugly snotty foamed up face made him look like a cherry rather than a coral. Really if it wasn't for the gold tooth you would swear that he was a cherry.

You started the timer as soon as he crossed the starting line, watching him slither at top speed like a moron. You weren't exactly inclined to inform him that he would tire himself out more by using up all of his energy at the beginning. You were looking to determine just how far he could be pushed before he collapsed. 

He passed you 3 times on the track at top speed, a mark firmly in the “hunting” variety, as you’d resolved to start calling them. You did have to turn the dial up at every pass though, as he’d taken to screaming obscenities at you at the stop, demanding to go home, or have chicken nuggies as a reward for “good behavior.” The speed he was going at was taking its toll, as he was already starting to show signs of fatigue. It was slightly above average for a hunting variety, but endurance wise it wasnt looking good.

By lap 5, he was sweating, by lap 7 he was moving at the pace he should have been moving at from the start. You had to shock him at the halfway mark on lap 7, and once more at the start of 8. The shock ended up at 19, at which point you could smell burning magic as he passed, an observation you wrote down in a separate journal in regards to the collar.

He made it to the lap 12 before he collapsed in front of you, panting, tear stained cheeks, and  a sticky dirt covered tail painting a sorry picture. He weakly looked at you, pleading silently for a break, before you shook your head, and turned up the dial this time to 23. The level had been slowly rising with each lap, since he didn't seem to get the memo that cursing after each lap only brought more pain. Although this time since he was so exhausted he wasn't cursing, just trying to look cute.

Seeing you turn up the dial, he let out a weak sob, before getting a move on at a glacial pace. He was almost crawling this time, as he wobbled back and forth on his run. You knew this was the lap he would collapse, so you took to following him this time, ready to mark down the exact distance he stopped at.

It wasn't common knowledge that bitties tended to dust at extreme exhaustion, no one liked to test them to their limits But it was still an established fact, the question was whether or not this kind would dust as well.

He reached the quarter mark of the track before he stopped again, breathing heavily, face flushed red with magic. A sign that he was on the verge of extreme exhaustion. You simply wrote down your observation, and kept the button in sight of the mutant coral, causing the bitty to widen his eyes and begin slithering again a little faster than before.

You could hear his sounds of distress, a surprising amount of dry sobs wracking his little body as he went along. His face only getting redder as time passed, his magic running rampant. He reached the halfway mark before he collapsed once again, panting so heavily that you “almost” felt empathy for him.

“You can’t stop yet.” You said, pressing the button, and watching as red smoke curled upwards from the collar. You smelt cigarettes, and mustard in the air. The bitty sobbed even louder, babbling incoherently as he attempted to use his arms to crawl further, which you supposed you could allow. 

He managed to crawl the rest of the distance to the starting point, before he smiled in satisfaction and closed his eyes. You wrote down the result, before shocking the bitty awake. This wouldn't stop just because he was tired. He woke, screaming and staring at you with shock and horror.

“Keep going.” You stated, as you watched him sob wordlessly and attempt to crawl further. 

He kept stopping, and each time you turned up the shock, although eventually you ended up having to stop his shocks at 25. Turning the dial up to 26 caused magic to pop on his tail, roasting him alive faster than he already was. The only thing that saved him at that moment was that his regeneration was “still” at full capacity, healing any wounds instantly. You would have kept turning up the dial but since it affected the results of your experiment, you supposed that 25 would be the limit.

He kept crawling, until the edges of his fingers started to dust, and the red flush on his body started to literally burn him. You didn't let him stop. He lapped once more, before his little body literally started to explode. Horrifyingly, not killing him, as even while his body was malfunctioning his healing was not. In fact it seemed to go into overdrive. 

The popping of his body sounded like firecrackers as the magic rampaged, you could see dust piling up on the ground. Eventually the magic caused more dramatic effects.

His arm exploded into dust, only for it to regenerate right where it had been, then explode once more. 

Ecto flesh had involuntarily started to form, a little belly forming before melting off in searing hot magic, only to form again and boil off. 

His tail wasn't any better, as the scales fell off repeatedly, before forming again.

His skull was the same as his arms, but for some reason he kept trying to pop off his own skull with his disintegrating hands. 

He screamed, then stopped, popping his own vocal mechanism and spitting out dust, before coughing as they regenerated only to pop again. He seemed to be in eternal agony, unable to die painlessly as his own body malfunctioned. The only way it seemed he would die is if he ran out of magic.

“Momma! Please! Help me!” He shouted, and you almost did, before stopping yourself. The data was far too valuable, you ‘had’ to know just how long this would last. So instead you sat by him and timed his death. This wasn't exactly the first time you’d seen a bitty die from exhaustion, but it was the first time you’d seen them recover repeatedly from it.

The whole ordeal lasted for about 10 minutes, like a candle burning down to the last bit of its wick, it petered out slowly. The regeneration slowed down, longer intervals came between regenerated limbs, yielding deformed bones that curled in odd places as they popped like firecrackers while reforming. 

His skull became just a small mouth as his eyes melded closed, his screams changing pitch as his vocal mechanism changed with repeated regeneration. His tail stopped regenerating, leaving only the tailbone, while his melted ecto flesh bubbled ominously as it formed restraints around his deformed arms. 

Dust started becoming a part of the regeneration, forming little pockets that burst like pus from his skull, into an ever growing pile of dust. 

Eventually the screaming stopped, and his tail stopped regenerating along with his arms, leaving a strange mass of crooked ribs and the back of a skull as his little red ai flickered before dissolving in a fizzle of red sparks. 

The air reeked of cigarettes, burnt mustard, and burnt flesh, while magic swirled thickly in a red fog on the ground. You stopped your timer, and let out a shaky breath as you stared at the large pile of dust as it caught fire from the fizzle of magic and became ashes in the wind.

To say it was the most gruesome death you’d ever seen was an understatement. You almost thought it wasn't worth repeating as an experiment.

Almost.

[alwaysahiccupandastrid]

A dumb concept but hear me out.

Relating back to my post about how the four “rotten” kids didn’t deserve what happened to them, and what I said about the parents being the ones punished/harmed instead, I had some ideas.

First of all, Augustus nearly falls into the chocolate river but his mother rushes forwards to stop her son falling in, and she falls in instead, nearly drowning. Alternatively, we saw her putting candies into her bag, maybe she tries to get some of the chocolate river into a canteen/flask, who knows? She gets sucked up into the pipe instead, and Augustus watches in horror as the Oompa Loompas sing about how she’s encouraged her son’s gluttony, how he could meet a sticky end like her if he doesn’t change. As his mother is taken to the fudge room, Wonka sends an Oompa Loompa to get her out - but Augustus stays on with the tour. He noticeably doesn’t gorge himself as he did before.

In the inventing room, Wonka shows off the three course gum meal and Violet tries to grab it - however, she hesitates for a moment when he mentions how it’s not “quite right” yet. Her mother, however, snatches the gum from her, telling her “winners don’t hesitate, Violet”, before chewing away. Mrs Beauregarde then begins to swell up like a blueberry and has to be juiced. Violet is terrified that a stick of gum did that to her mother, and she listens as the Oompa Loompas sing about how bad chewing gum is, and about how she could end up the same way if she continues to be as competitive and like her mother. As her mother is rolled to the juicing room, Violet also stays on with the tour; no one sees her take her gum out of her mouth and toss it away.

The group goes to the nut sorting room, where Veruca sees the squirrels and decides she wants one. She goes to get one herself, only for the squirrels to leap at her; her father jumps the gate and races down to help her - suddenly the squirrels turn from Veruca and run to swarm him instead whilst she runs back up the stairs and clambers to get behind the gate once more. Everyone watches as the squirrels pronounce Mr Salt a bad egg and toss him straight down the chute; the Oompa Loompas sing about how her parents spoilt her, about how despite his money, he’s not anything more than garbage and that if she continues to act like a spoilt brat, Veruca will be as rotten as they are - rotten as the garbage. She stays on with the tour whilst Oompa Loompas are sent to retrieve her father from the garbage chute; she’s quieter and listens more as the tour goes on, not demanding a thing.

In the TV room, Mike is about to be teleported into the TV when his dad suddenly panics, runs and pushes him off the platform, taking his place himself as the lights flash a second later. Mike watches as his father nearly dies and comes out of the ordeal six inches tall; he hears the Oompa Loompas sing about how television rots the brain, hence why he tried to do something so stupid, and it humbles him a little bit. His dad is taken to the taffy puller to be stretched out, and Mike apologizes for calling Wonka an idiot as they go to continue.

Now Wonka realizes that the only ones remaining are the five kids and Grandpa Joe - and he grins as he announces that Charlie has won the special prize, that Charlie will receive the entire factory. Clearly, his grandparents and parents raised him to he not-so-rotten. The other kids are astounded but quiet, and congratulate Charlie - though they all seem a little down and different than when the tour started.

He leads the group down to the factory entrance - and there are the four parents. Mrs Gloop, covered in chocolate from head to toe, licking her lips and clearly trying to resist nibbling her fingers. Mrs Beauregarde, bright blue-purple and flexible. Mr Salt, reeking and covered in three weeks worth of garbage. Mr Teavee, eight or nine feet tall and as thin as paper. The kids are horrified by what they see - their parents are reflections of what they could become, what they could have become on the tour.

That’s when Wonka announces his proposition: the four kids have a choice. They can go home with their parents, and hope that their day in the factory has changed them, that their parents have learnt a lesson too, and that they’ll all hopefully be better people because of it - or they can stay at the factory, working under his and Charlie’s supervision and learning how to run a business together. He tells them that they’re good kids at heart, and that he’d be willing to take them on if they’re willing to make the effort, to change for the better.

None of them really know what to say, but they look at their parents - at how rotten they are, at how they could become their parents if they’re not careful - and they realize that no, they don’t want to be like their parents at all. It’s a crazy idea, yes, but as Wonka explains how each of their skills could be used and developed for good purposes, they realize that it’s better than what their parents have been raising them to be.

The parents are outraged but Wonka tells them not to worry - Charlie’s family will be living in the factory, and so the children won’t be alone with just one (kind of kooky creepy) adult male and hundreds of Oompa Loompas, because Charlie’s parents and grandparents will be there to take care of the kids and make sure they’re well looked after. Makes sense that the parents/guardians of the least rotten kid can help shape and form the other four to be better people, right? Besides, he adds, the kids are more than welcome to say no and go home with their parents.

The kids - including Charlie - decide to have a minute where they talk about this - their parents may suck, but this is still weird and a bit strange. Charlie tells them that he personally would not abandon his family, not for all the chocolate in the world - but then, he admits, his parents and grandparents are good and honest people who love and care about him, and that while they’ve never been able to afford lavish gifts or even more than one chocolate bar a year for him on his birthday, he’s always been happy because he loves his family and is content that they love him too. The other four realize that they can’t exactly say the same about their own parents - their parents have been neglectful, for the most part, and never encouraged them to pursue new skills or change their dangerous habits.

Having said that, despite the fact their parents are terrible parents, the children don’t think they can just abandon their parents completely - despite it all, the children do hold some love for their families. With that in mind, they make a deal with their parents and Mr Wonka: yes, they would very much like to live in the factory and work with Charlie, and develop new skills - but they don’t want to abandon their parents completely. They ask that their parents be allowed to live near to the factory and that they can see them as often as they like - they would ask if their families can come live in the factory too, but they don’t think a) their parents would want that, given what they’ve gone through, and b) Wonka would want these rotten adults living in his factory with his workers and potentially causing harm/problems with his candy.

It’s kind of pretty useful that Charlie’s family is about to move into the factory - Wonka, with their permission, decides he’s going to use it to make a building/area for the other four children’s families to live in. Not that the parents are thrilled by the idea at all - the Salt family has a whole nut business AND a massive estate in England, why would they give that up? Augustus’ family is from Germany and they have a meat/butcher business set up there, are they supposed to just drop it and move to this strange place?

Things do eventually work out though, and an agreement/deal is made...

Augustus becomes the taste tester for new candies, and he offers up some of his own ideas, as well as some of his own critiques or comments on each idea that Wonka and Charlie present to him. He decides to he healthier, however, and he learns to control himself instead of eating everything in sight - he enjoys things in moderation. As an added bonus, running around the factory as well as healthier eating means he sheds some weight too. His parents manage to set up a butcher business in the town, though it takes a while for them to get used to the way things are and to earn respect/customers; Augustus still visits them regularly, and they have family dinners at least once a week, sometimes with the other Golden Ticket winners joining them.

Violet uses her competitive nature to help with advertising and marketing Wonka products - her competitive nature makes her want to make sure that Wonka candy is the best and number one most bought candy in the whole world. Sales are constantly booming because of her and her marketing techniques - Wonka candy has truly never been so popular, which really says something. Her mother is still blue and flexible, but Violet visits her and soon Mrs Beauregarde learns to be proud of her daughter and what she’s achieving instead of trying to push her to be a mini version of herself.

Mike is somewhat of an expert when it comes to television, and he’s incredibly smart. He’s in charge of helping in the television room (running experiments on different candies to test the boundaries of teleporting food to television sets, etc), helping in the inventing room, and in making sure all of the machines are running properly in each room of the factory. He knows the technical stuff, the physics of how everything should work, but he also becomes a little more open minded about things because clearly Wonka’s factory defies all laws of physics a lot of the time, so he learns how much of it applies to Wonka’s factory and what doesn’t, which helps him understand the machines/science behind the work they’re doing. Given what happened to Mr Teavee, the family do move to be closer to the factory - after all, it kind of makes it difficult for the kids he teaches Geography to in high school to take him seriously when he’s...well, the way he is now. They move Mike’s video games into a television room of the factory - but he plays far less than he used to, and watches less television than he did before. His parents notice that he’s less angry, though still incredibly intelligent and full of snark - they still don’t understand what he’s talking about most of the time, but he’s more pleasant to be around and talk to; he’s more excited and eager to share information rather than snapping or looking down on people.

Veruca is arguably one of the most important people in the team. Veruca is heiress to the Salt Nut business, and so she organizes a merger between Wonka and her father for the factory to start using nuts from the Salt business in their candies. Mr Salt’s Factory continues to use human workers, and they shell nuts just as they did before, selling them as they are; Wonka’s factory uses squirrels of course, and the nuts are used in candy. Other than this, Veruca starts to learn business skills from both her father and Willy Wonka, and she’s in charge of handling the factory’s finances, such as budgeting, keeping accounts of investments and incomes, and making sure that the factory has the money for Wonka and Charlie to pursue their new ideas. Her father and mother aren’t exactly keen, however, on moving into the town and into that apartment Wonka has built for the families of the other winners - they enjoy their lavish lifestyle too much. Her father comes every weekend or so for a stay, and her mother once a month - surprisingly, it doesn’t bother her that much after a while, because she’s always known deep down that her parents have never been sure on how to love her properly. Her pets are back on the estate, with her parents, which she visits for a rare holiday from time to time - perhaps she even brings one or two with her back to the factory, on the condition that they remain on the top floor where the children’s bedrooms are, and they go nowhere near any food production areas.

Charlie, of course, is Willy Wonka’s heir and becomes his protégé, a chocolatier in the making. He has much to learn but he’s always eager and enthusiastic even if they’re having a slow day with hardly any ideas or breakthroughs. He’s working with Wonka, someone he idolizes/looks up to, and they develop a wonderful working relationship; Charlie looks up to his mentor, and Willy Wonka actually learns stuff from Charlie too. Charlie’s happy because his family are all living in the factory with him, and he knows this is where he’s meant to be. Life is good and he doesn’t take it for granted. 

The kids actually all become friends, and it’s nice because none of them have actually had real friends before; Augustus was bullied for his size, Violet’s competitiveness drove others away and she was “too busy” for friends, Veruca didn’t have real friends but rather people who hung onto her and tried to get close to her due to her money, Mike was always too busy watching TV or playing games to bother with friends, and Charlie was somewhat of an outcast due to the fact his family was poor and he had secondhand/“poor” clothes. Working together leads them all to becoming friends.

The Bucket family - who have always struggled to feed the seven in their family - now has enough food for them all and more. They happily invite the children and Willy Wonka to dinner with them every single night, and it becomes a normal part of the evening; the five children happily chatting and laughing, just being kids, the adults chuckling with them, all of them eating until they can’t anymore. Augustus, Violet, Veruca and Mike see what a real family can be, and soon they feel like they’re part of the Bucket family themselves. The other parents are even invited to dinner with the Buckets on special occasions, and - with the exception of the Salts - everyone usually takes up their offer. Eventually though, the Salt parents do slowly start to come around - for Veruca’s sake more than anything else. They still see themselves as better than the others, and they’re kind of stiff towards the other parents/adults, but they agree to dinners on special occasions since it means they’ll get to see their daughter. 

To be honest, the kids are all really happy with life nowadays; they’re happy because they’re all friends and they’re all a part of something special - they’ve all truly changed for the better. The friendship between these five lucky kids is sure to be one that lasts a lifetime.

Life has never been better or sweeter.

[dream-a-little-bigger-x]

Chapter 1 -- Perfect Harmony | Charlie Gillespie

Summary: Emily Fox is a talented 17-year-old with a passion for all things music. Her dream is to become a successful singer-songwriter one day. But to achieve that dream, she needs to get into one of the most prestigious music schools in her district – it’s all been part of her plan since she was six. Sadly enough, those schools cost a ton of money that her parents don’t want to invest. They don’t even want her to pursue her dream. So, now Emily’s hustling, working at the music store to save up to get into college. That’s until she meets Charlie, an annoying seventeen-year-old boy with the same dream as her. The only difference is, he’s just doing it. He doesn’t need a fancy college to pursue his dream to become famous with his band. He just writes his songs and books small gigs here, there and everywhere. Will meeting Charlie defer her from her dream college, or will he actually help her achieve the dream? 

Pairing: Charlie Gillespie x OC (Emily Fox) 

Warnings: mentions of death, the characters of Charlie, Owen, Jeremy and Madison are based on the characters they play on the show and i do not own their names, only OC are mine. The songs aren’t mine either, they’re all from the show except for one. 

Chapter One

~|Emily Fox| ~

As a seventeen-year-old, you should not be left to your devices. Unless you have no other choice. When you have a dream your parents have called unrealistic without ever listening to what you were actually capable of, you have no other choice but to move out and fend for yourself. Thankfully, I can stay with Uncle Mitch for a while until I’m off to college.  Since leaving my parents’ house at fourteen, my life has consisted of high school, working at the music store, write songs – if I have the time –, help Uncle Mitch around the house, sleep, repeat. It’s been a chore. But I just about manage. 

“Please, don’t touch the guitars without a supervisor, ma’am!” I say loudly from across the shop as I catch her hands rising up to pick up one of the acoustic guitars hanging on the wall for display. I rush over to her, dodging clients testing out guitars and pianos I’ve helped before. While the forty-something woman stares at me with an intense glare, I pick up the Gibson guitar for her and hand it over, offering her my fakest smile. “This one’s a nice one!” I tell her as she handles the guitar very clumsily, nearly dropping it. “What do you know about guitars?” she snarls at me. “Well, for starters, I work here, so I’m supposed to have some knowledge about guitars. Secondly, this is a bass guitar. Never just call a bass a guitar.” The woman rolls her eyes and when she casts her gaze on the strings, I roll mine. I’ve had my share of forty-something old women coming in here to buy something for their spoiled little sons, pretending they know more about guitars of any kind, pianos and drums while I have been brought up listening to Uncle Robert talking non-stop about all of his instruments. He taught me how to play each and every one of the instruments and brought me into the world of rock. If he were still here, I wouldn’t be working in a music store, trying to pay for my own apartment or my college tuition. He believed in me from the second he heard me sing and play piano. He still believes in me, I can feel it. Staying with Uncle Mitch – Uncle Robert’s husband, now widower, has been a lot more healing than it would’ve been if I still lived at my parents’. “I know that,” she grumbles, then looks back up at me. “If you know so much about everything, you little know-it-all, why don’t you tell me something more about this one?” I refrain myself from rolling my eyes again, and instead ball up my fists to put all of my anger there. “This is the Les Paul Junior Tribute DC bass. It’s actually a tribute to the historic Gibson EB-0 bass from the late 50's, but with modern features. The short scale length is actually chosen by many for its strong fundamental tone and sits perfectly in a track when recording. The mahogany double cutaway body and maple neck with rosewood fingerboard balances perfectly when playing either sitting or strapped on. It's equipped with a single expanded range LP BassBucker pickup with single volume and tone controls for simplicity. The volume pot has a push-pull feature to coil tap the pickup scooping the mids for further tone shaping possibilities.” I’ve explained this many a times, so it almost sounds as if I’ve learned it by heart. “Oh! And it comes in four different finishes; Worn Ebony, Worn Cherry, Blue Stain and Worn Brown.” The woman looks at me, clearly impressed at my knowledge of the bass in her hands. I’m pretty sure I could’ve told her anything and she would’ve believed me. “I want to speak to the manager,” she then says and pushes the bass guitar back in my hands as if handling a cardboard box. If my reflexes weren’t what they are now, we would’ve had a broken bass and I would be the one that had to pay for it. “What for?” I ask, my anger slipping through into a vicious snarl. “Just because you learn everything by heart, doesn’t mean you’re a good salesperson.” I open my mouth to say something, but I know I can’t win against a Karen. So, instead, I plaster on my best fake smile and say “Of course, give me a second.” I turn on my heel and make my way back to the cash register to get Ash, my manager who’s been nothing but an absolute gem to me. She wasn’t looking for any employees, but still hired me when she saw how desperate I was and how good I was with the instruments. She even lets me write songs after hours. “Karen alert?” Ash asks when she sees my annoyed face, at the brim of exploding. “Yep, at the bass guitars,” I tell her and take her spot to handle a paying costumer. Ash hops over the counter and makes her way to the Karen at the bass guitars. Only for her to leave the store in an angered rush without any bass guitar for her precious son. “That’s 44 dollars and 97 cents, please,” I tell the guy who’d come in for guitar strings, picks and some polish. He looks about my age. Dark hair gelled back, green almond-shaped eyes and rosy cheeks. He hands me the cash with a cute, nervous smile. “Thank you! And here’s the three cents change,” I hold out my hand for him to take the three cents, but he shakes his head. “Keep it,” he winks at me before grabbing his purchases and leaving the store. Leaving me all flustered and blushing. I hate when cute boys come to the shop and have the audacity to do this stuff to me. UGH. “Got rid of our Karen,” Ash tells me, “You can get back out there. I think the little girl over there at the piano could use some of your expertise.” She points to a fourteen-year-old gliding her fingers along the big wing of the white piano in the middle of our store. “Hi,” I say as I approach her, making her jump slightly. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. I’m Emily. Can I help you?” She scans my face for a moment, as if assessing whether or not I’m trustworthy. I guess she decides she does when she opens her mouth and four simple words flow out of it. “Do you play piano?” I’m a bit taken aback by the question. None of the costumers have ever asked me that question. “Yes, I do, actually,” I reply honestly. “I want to learn how to play the piano, but my mother doesn’t allow me. Says it’s too expensive. The piano, that is. And lessons are expensive too, she says.” She stops talking for a moment as if thinking about what to say next. “Will you teach me?” “Oh,” I manage to bring out, “I—we don’t really offer any piano lessons in the store. We just sell them.” Her eyes water and she visibly swallows a lump in her throat. “Okay…” she whimpers, making my heart break just that bit more. “Will you play me a song though? I love hearing people play.” I take a deep breath as I think about how to turn this girl down. But then I remember my parents turning me and my dreams down. “Sure, I can play you a song. Any requests?” I ask as I sit down on the stool in front of us, patting beside me to invite her too. “Surprise me,” she says, shaking her head with a big smile on her face. I carefully touch the keys as I think of a song to sing. Once I’ve figured that out, I begin to play the right melody and then chime in with the lyrics I’d written with Uncle Robert when he was still alive. The song I cherish the most and wouldn’t share with anyone. But this girl reminds me too much of myself, and I think she might take something from the message. “Here's the one thing I want you to know You got someplace to go Life's a test, yes But you go toe to toe You don't give up, no, you grow.” The girl looks up at me with big Bambi eyes, urging me to continue. “And you use your pain Cause it makes you you Though I wish I could hold you through it I know it's not the same You got living to do And I just want you to do it So get up, get out, relight that spark You know the rest by heart” As I begin the chorus, I hear drums backing me up from somewhere inside the store, and when I look around, I find Ash behind a drum set with a smile on her face as she helps me out a little. “Wake up, wake up, if it's all you do Look out, look inside of you It's not what you lost, it's what you'll gain Raising your voice to the rain Wake up your dream and make it true Look out, look inside of you It's not what you lost Relight that spark Time to come out of the dark Wake up, wake up” By now, Ash and I have gained an audience. Most of the costumers in line don’t even mind having to wait to pay until we’re done with this outburst of ours. “Better wake those demons, just look them in the eye No reason not to try Life can be a mess, I won't let it cloud my mind I'll let my fingers fly” The girl next to me still has the same expression on her face. Eyes pooled with admiration and inspiration. Exactly the reason why I make music and why it’s been a dream of mine to make a career out of it. “And I use the pain 'cause it's part of me And I'm ready to power through it Gonna find the strength, find the melody 'Cause you showed me how to do it Get up, get out, relight that spark You know the rest by heart” I go for the chorus again, and then pop in with the bridge. The one I added to uncle’s song. The costumers in the store stare at Ash and me with smiles on their faces whilst swaying along to the song. “So wake that spirit, spirit I wanna hear it, hear it No need to fear it, you're not alone You're gonna find your way home” I close my eyes as I hit that high note, then stop playing for a second whilst starting the chorus for the last time. Even Ash backs me up with some backing vocals after having heard the chorus a couple of times already. “Wake up, wake up, if it's all you do” The both of us pick up the melody again, putting more power behind the rest of the song. “Look out, look inside of you It's not what you lost, it's what you'll gain Raising your voice to the rain Wake up your dream and make it true Look out, look inside of you When you're feeling lost Relight that spark Time to come out of the dark Wake up, wake up” I hit the last couple of notes on the piano before a roar of applause and cheers fills up the entire store. The fourteen-year-old beside me is clapping the loudest of them all. Her eyes still wide and admiring and full of life. “What’s your name?” I ask the girl, causing her to stop clapping. “Kayla,” she replies. “Listen to me, Kayla. Even if your parents don’t agree with your big dreams, please, never give up on your dream! If this is really what you want to do, go for it. You’ll find a way, I promise you.” A tear rolls down her pink cheek as her bottom lip trembles slightly. “Don’t give up, okay?” She nods her head vigorously. “Thank you, Emily!” she wraps her arms around me into a tight hug before hopping off the stool and rushing out the store. As I watch her run out, my eyes land on a guy. Somewhat my age, I think. I can’t really function for a second as his hazel eyes stare at me and with his mouth curled up on one side. When I finally manage to move again, my eyes scan him entirely. His brown hair sticks out from underneath an orange beanie, his nose fine and cheekbones defined. He’s wearing a flannel shirt over a grey muscle tank and ripped black jeans. I give him an awkward smile before heading back to the cash register. “Can you do register for a moment? I need to check something in stock,” Ash asks me, and I simply nod before helping the next costumer. After the fifth costumer, the boy who’d been staring at me before shows up in front of me. “How can I help?” I ask with my best customer service-smile. “By giving your number,” he replies coyly. I was going to give him the cute boy card until those words came out of his mouth. “Sorry, my number ain’t for sale,” I reply and look behind him, “Next!” “Oh, no, sorry! Uhm, I don’t mean it like that, I—” Before he can mutter another word, I interrupt him. “Are you going to purchase something, bro?” He opens his mouth, then closes it again, looking like a goldfish. “Uhm… No… I just—” I interrupt him again. “Next customer, please,” I stare at him intensely, hoping that’d chase him away. He knocks on the counter before moving away, clearly defeated by the rejection. I can’t believe douchebags like him still exists in this generation. People need to learn manners. “Hi, how can I help you?” I ask the next customer, bringing back my best smile. Just got to move on, just as I moved on from dealing with a Karen again today. Best way to do that, is focus on all the other customers. For the rest of my shift, I have not been able to shake the cute-but-rude guy from before. There’s something about him that haunts me still and I can’t seem to figure out what it is. Not even when I’m focusing on cleaning up the store. As I’m dusting the piano, I hear the bell above the door ring. “Sorry, we’re closed!” I yell without looking up from the piano. “Are you going to play again?” The voice sends shivers down my spine as it takes me right back to that one douchey line it uttered just a mere hour before. “Again, we are closed, sorry.” This time it comes out more like a snarl and with a bit of poison. The boy in front of me chuckles and holds his hands up in defeat. “Listen, I’m sorry about before, but—” he steps closer to me, but I hold up my finger to make him stop, and it seems to help as he simply freezes in place. “But the store is closed. Goodbye now.” I go back to dusting off the piano and wait for the bell to ring again, but it doesn’t. Instead, the sound of guitar strums reaches my ears. “You can’t touch any of the guitars without supervision,” I tell him sternly, but when I meet his eyes and they’re looking at me intently as if urging me to do something. “You’re supervising me, aren’t you?” he asks cockily, still stroking the strings, creating a beautiful melody that fills up my head. “What do you want?” I ask bitterly, looking at him again, and hoping it would make him leave faster. “For you to sing.” “Sing what?” He shrugs, leaving me to wonder what he means by that. “I have a lot of work to do, dude. Please, leave,” I sound pathetic, nearly begging him to leave. I’m only a step away from begging on my knees. The sound of the guitar abruptly stops when I go back to cleaning the piano. “Listen, I just wanted to tell you that what you did earlier today was amazing. You know, not a lot of people have the power you have. Did you see what you did to all those people in here? Imagine doing that for thousands of people! Have you ever thought of that?” I turn to look at him, suddenly having the urge to tell him everything. Then I remember what a douchebag he really is. “I don’t have time for this. Please. Leave!” I shout at him before heading towards the cash register to start counting the money. It’s silent for a while until the bell over the door breaks it. I let out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding. This boy did something to me without me even realizing it. Nope. Can’t trust boys. They don’t do anything but break hearts and be douchebags. But this one somehow seemed different. No other boy has ever left such an impression as he did. And I didn’t even have a proper conversation with him. I just hope I don’t have to see him. Like ever again.  

[carewyncromwell]

[Ficlet] Take a Chance on Me

...Hey, I said I might add onto the ficlet I did of how Carewyn joined the Slytherin Quidditch team for a game back in her third year! >>; This is based on Quidditch Season 1 Chapter 6, AKA the major plot turn before MC, Orion, Skye, and their house Quidditch team’s first match. (In this case, Slytherin VS Hufflepuff!)

For those of you who didn’t read the last ficlet and want to just jump into this one -- Carewyn (soon to be “Mama-Bear”) Cromwell is a third year Slytherin, with Orion, Skye, McNully, and Rath all being one year ahead of her. This will also be the only Quidditch match Carewyn plays until the tail end of her sixth year, which you can read about with this Quest of the Quidditch tag I made! Also as a note, since there is some art under the cut -- Orion, in my canon, doesn’t look the way he does in the game until his sixth year or so (namely, with his facial hair), hence why he looks a bit more boyish in how I drew him! (It is amazing how much younger Orion looks without the stubble!!) And yeah, even if Carewyn and Orion eventually become a couple post-Hogwarts, their relationship won’t really be explicitly romantic here, even if the strong platonic chemistry will definitely be there. 😊

Hope you enjoy! 💚

x~x~x~x

The Slytherin VS Hufflepuff Quidditch match was scheduled for the first weekend of November. With less than a week remaining, both houses were getting very excited -- Carewyn could tell her friend Penny Haywood was having trouble knowing whether to be more thrilled for her house team or for Carewyn.

“Well, there are a lot of people who don’t make the team on their first try!” Penny had said to Carewyn when she learned the news. “Gosh, Carewyn -- I know you’ll be flying up against my team, but...watching you play in a real Quidditch match will be even more fun than just watching one with you!”

Charlie and Andre were also thrilled. 

“I knew you could do it, Carey!” said Charlie, beaming from ear to ear. “C’mere!”

He looped an arm around her neck and squeezed her against his side in a hug. 

“Mm, I can’t say I knew, given Orion Amari’s reputation,” said Andre, though his face still broke into a grin, “but I’m glad that however odd he is, at least he can see raw talent when it’s placed in front of him! It’ll be so much more exciting to have you on the Pitch too, Cursebreaker.”

Though inwardly hating the nickname, Carewyn still gave them her best smile. “Thanks...”

~~~

The first couple of Slytherin team practices were largely based on teamwork exercises, so as to “strengthen the bond” between Carewyn and the rest of her teammates. She knew her fellow Chasers Orion and Skye already, of course, but Orion wanted to make sure she was likewise on good terms with their Beaters -- a pair of muscular seventh-years called King and Shacklebolt -- their very tall sixth-year Keeper Crockett, and their pretty seventh-year Seeker, Anika Lucky. 

If Carewyn’s petite height and lack of muscles weren’t noticeable before, it was comically apparent when she stood alongside the rest of the Slytherin team -- even Skye, the smallest of them, still towered a good ten inches over 4′9″ Carewyn. Fortunately, although most of the Slytherin team gave Carewyn a slightly confused side-eye when she first arrived for practice, they all reacted a little differently after Orion challenged the team to break his record of balancing on their brooms (2 hours, 52 minutes and 31.2 seconds, according to McNully), and Carewyn was the only one who kept up with Skye all the way up until the end. 

“And then there were two,” sighed Shacklebolt rather tiredly, when he finally had to give up and sit back down on his broom, massaging his leg. 

Crockett looked at Orion with something of a weak smile. “Come on, Orion...maybe we should call this off. We can’t exactly break the record for balancing on one leg together when most of us are sitting down...”

“Ah, but if one of us breaks the record, then we all break the record,” said Orion with a smile. 

Skye crossed her arms from her position balancing on her broom. “The one who breaks the record will get credit, though, right?”

“A victory for one is a victory for all,” Orion said mellowly, “and for that, we should celebrate on behalf of that one.”

Carewyn opened her eyes. She’d been keeping them closed and singing songs in her head, to try to help her ignore how much her leg was hurting and how much time was passing. When she glanced at Skye, she noticed a line of sweat appearing on her brow. 

“...How close are we to our goal, Orion?” asked Carewyn. 

“Only time will tell,” answered Orion.

Skye frowned sourly. “Right -- that was Carewyn’s question: tell us the time.”

“The moment is near,” said Orion with a twinkle in his eye, “but who’s counting?”

“MCNULLY!” Skye bellowed up at the stands in exasperation. “YOU’D BETTER BLOODY WELL BE COUNTING UP THERE, OR I SWEAR I’LL BEAT BOTH YOU AND ORION BLACK AND BLUE!”

The Beaters both sighed and shook their heads.

“Here he goes again,” muttered Shacklebolt.

“I think he’s gone even deeper into his own head since becoming Captain,” King agreed under her breath, sounding both rather tired and slightly amused. 

Carewyn turned to Orion, her almond-shaped blue eyes becoming a bit more serious. 

“Orion, a Niffler is able to chase gold so well because it can smell when it’s close,” she said in an oddly stern voice. “It’d probably be a lot easier for Skye and me to reach our goal if we also knew how close we were to it.”

The other Slytherins all blinked at the tiny third-year, taken aback by her assertiveness. Orion, however, only grinned. 

“Is not the journey a kind of treasure in itself, however?” he said. “After all...you and Skye have united so well in this endeavor, despite your apparent differences.”

“Yes,” granted Carewyn, her voice staying rather firm, “but if you want both of us -- and therefore all of us -- to break the record, then it stands to reason that both Skye and I should be of the same mind. And Skye and I would both like to know how close we are to bringing our team victory.”

“Right,” said Skye, a bit more impatiently. “So will you go ask McNully how much time is left already?”

Orion’s black eyes sparkled with mischief. “It’s so fascinating, how full of fire you both are, and yet how differently colored your flames are.”

He looked up at the stands. When he caught McNully’s eye, he threw up his fist into the air in silent celebration.

“That’s it?!” said Skye eagerly, sounding immensely relieved. “A new record? Finally!”

She immediately sat down -- Carewyn, however, did not, and she was glad of it, for sure enough, Orion turned back around with a grin and said, 

“McNully’s just informed me that we’re in the final countdown!”

The team all covered their faces with their hands. Skye’s mouth dropped open. 

“What?!” she yelped. “Are you kidding -- I wouldn’t have sat yet!”

“Why did you?” Orion teased good-naturedly. “I thought you wanted to be the last one standing.”

Skye looked like steam was coming out of her ears. Carewyn fixed Orion with a rather reproachful look. 

“Orion, that wasn’t nice!” the much smaller girl scolded him the way she sometimes did Jacob when she was little. “Skye really had her heart set on beating your record.”

Orion’s amusement actually dimmed slightly. After a moment, his expression turned a bit softer upon both Skye and Carewyn. 

“Fortunately she did beat it,” he said, gesturing to Carewyn still balancing on her broom, “through her student.”

Carewyn raised her eyebrow, looking from Orion to up at McNully in the commentary box. “So the record has been broken now?”

“Indeed,” said Orion with a proud smile, exchanging a nod with McNully. “McNully-confirmed. Congratulations, team -- we did it!”

The team all breathed a sigh of relief, except for Skye, who still looked sour. 

“Carewyn did it, this time,” she said begrudgingly. “Congratulations, Carewyn.”

Carewyn lowered herself back down onto her broom, averting her eyes and massaging her burning thigh. “Thanks.”

She was proud that she was able to prove herself, after it’d taken her three whole hours just to figure out how to even balance like that in the first place...even if she didn’t love the fact that Skye was clearly bitter about it. 

“I must admit, though, Carewyn, I’m a bit disappointed,” said Orion. “Not once in all that time did you share any of your meditation songs with us.”

The team, including Skye, once again turned to look at Carewyn, surprised. Carewyn flushed. 

“Well, you said I could do it whenever we meditate together, as in the two of us,” she said rather huffily, closing her eyes and putting up her nose. “I didn’t want to break anyone else’s concentration.”

“A kind thought,” said Orion. “But perhaps next time, we can see if it actually helps our team’s focus. We’ll need all the focus and teamwork possible, in our match against Hufflepuff.”

~~~

The Slytherin team soon found themselves very happy with Orion’s choice. Carewyn not only was a very talented Chaser with excellent speed and aim, but she also seemed to know just how to talk to Orion on his terms and keep him a bit more grounded. And when she did end up singing during their practices, it actually turned out to be kind of a fun way to pass the time too. The players who’d been born in magical families like Skye in particular found it interesting to hear Muggle songs they’d never been exposed to before. 

“If you're all alone, When the pretty birds have flown, Honey, I'm still free -- Take a chance on me! Gonna do my very best, And it ain't no lie -- If you put me to the test, If you let me try...”

Carewyn did notice, however, that their practices were being watched -- and not just by Murphy McNully, either. 

“It’s not abnormal for other teams to want to get a peek at new players before a match, so they can get information they can use while building their team strategies,” McNully told her. “Most opposing players try to be subtle about it, but Ulrich Dylan -- that’s Hufflepuff’s Captain -- is not. Ravenclaw’s whole team isn’t either...especially Erika Rath -- she always makes it a point to get a good look at any new opponents. And well, admittedly, there’s nothing banning them from coming to watch our practices, so I guess they don’t feel the need to hide it.”

Carewyn considered this. “...Maybe they see it as a way to intimidate us too -- you know, being so confident in letting us know that they see us, and that they’re judging us.”

Kind of like how I felt a bit intimidated by Orion, while he was watching me fall off my broom for three hours. 

McNully nodded. “Not a bad theory! Ravenclaw in particular has already won the Quidditch Cup two years in a row, so they definitely have some cause to be confident. Just with their current line-up, I’d say there’s a 38% chance they’ll win the Cup again.”

Considering that was well over 1/4, Carewyn didn’t like those odds. Seeing the frown on her face, McNully smiled. 

“Don’t worry, Carewyn -- we do have one ace up our sleeve, when it comes to strategy. Only Slytherin knows how to do the Thimblerig Shuffle properly, as of yet -- therefore if we use it, I’d say we stand a 87.3% chance of throwing Hufflepuff off their game.”

Carewyn smiled. “That’s great!”

“Glad you agree!” said McNully. He then rubbed the back of his neck a bit awkwardly. “There’s...just one thing: Orion would have to actually use it, in the match. And well, we both know Orion -- the odds of him using it don’t go above 43%...” His face then burst into a smile. “...buuuut I’d say if you put in a good word with him, he might be more willing to listen!”

Carewyn looked confused. “Why me? You’re Orion’s friend too, aren’t you?”

“Of course! But Orion and I are still very different people. We have trouble speaking the same language sometimes. Honestly, I’d say I only understand what he’s trying to say about 72% of the time,” McNully added under his breath. “But you and he already seem to have a good rapport -- I reckon you bringing up the Thimblerig Shuffle to Orion would improve his odds of using it by a good 10%!”

Carewyn still wasn’t entirely sure, but she gave McNully a reassuring nod. “Well, I’ll try, anyway.”

~~~

Carewyn asked Orion to meet her before practice. She wanted to make absolutely sure that none of the other team’s players would be listening in. When Orion saw her approach, he smiled broadly. 

“Greetings, Breaker of Records,” he said amusedly. 

Carewyn frowned. The nickname reminded her unpleasantly of Andre’s “Cursebreaker” moniker for her. 

“Hi, Orion...thanks for coming early.”

Orion seemed to notice the shift in her expression -- it made his eyes soften slightly, becoming a bit more serious.

“We’re members of the same Quidditch family now, Carewyn,” he said gently. “Therefore my time is our time...and we can always find time to find balance together.”

Carewyn smiled slightly, feeling a bit reassured. “...Well, it’s less about balance and more about...well, about the match against Hufflepuff.”

“I think those two things are very much entwined,” said Orion.

“In a way, yes...but well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve had a lot of company in the stands, while we’re practicing. Like Hufflepuff’s Captain.”

Orion nodded. “I have seen him.”

“Well, McNully thinks he’s been stopping by to get a good look at me, and the rest of the team,” said Carewyn seriously. “That way he can use whatever information he can get about us in his team’s strategy. And...well, I know you don’t think strategical skills will determine our path...but it seems like we should use all of the strengths we have to our advantage, right?”

Orion crossed his legs around his broom so that he could actually take his hands off of it and cross his arms idly over his chest. 

“I agree,” he said quietly, but it seemed clear he was waiting for her to reach her conclusion, rather than being completely onboard. 

“Well,” Carewyn plowed on, “right now, we’re the only Quidditch team who knows how to do the Thimblerig Shuffle -- you know, the move McNully made up?”

Orion nodded slowly. “I remember. Quintessential McNully -- magical in its complexity, and complex in its magic.”

Carewyn gave a nod of her own. “It’s really a very clever move...it would definitely throw Hufflepuff off-balance, which could only help us out. And well, considering McNully’s your friend, I reckon it would mean a lot to him, if you considered using it.”

Orion raised his eyebrows rather coolly. “You clearly have been a very good friend to McNully already, speaking on his behalf. Though I don’t know if I appreciate him using the Slytherin team in a strategy to coax their Captain to his way of thinking.”

Carewyn felt her gaze slipping down to her broom, but she tried to hold her ground. “I really don’t think McNully was trying to pressure you, Orion. I think he just really wants us to win -- you to win. Planning things out is just how his mind works...and he is pretty good at it. I learned a lot about Quidditch from him.”

“You and McNully do both enjoy your plans and strategies,” said Orion. 

His face then spread into a wryer smile. 

“I, however, have a different strategy in mind -- the absence of strategy.” 

Carewyn wanted to be surprised, but she wasn’t. It still didn’t make the lump that settled into her stomach any less heavy. 

“...Then...you have no plan at all, for us to win?” she asked, a bit shakily. 

Orion’s black eyes twinkled. “Indeed. Let me show you.”

Within seconds, he’d easily leapt up onto his broom, so that he was balancing on it. Rather than before, though, he used both feet and actually surfed on the back of it, as if he were on a surfboard soaring through the air. Unlike a surfer on ocean waves, however, Orion was able to go completely upside down and around, balancing perfectly as if he and his broom were one and the same. 

Carewyn found herself unable to tear her eyes away. Orion did, in fact, look pretty damn cool. 

Her eyes were as wide as dinner plates as she followed his zigzagging moves around the Pitch -- and little by little, she found her lips spreading into an awed, open-mouthed smile. 

Her reaction made Orion grin. 

“Inspired Broom Surfing!” he called down to her. “That is its name, and that is what all shall call it.”

“Did you...did you invent this yourself?” asked Carewyn, disbelievingly. 

“It’s the product of inspiration, not invention,” said Orion. “I thought of it, and so I do it.”

He looped in several circles over Carewyn’s head with apparent ease.

“Surfing the skies distracts the competition. They, too, shall wish to surf like this...”

He weaved in a tight “S” shape that reminded Carewyn of a figure skater on ice. 

“...and yet, it also showcases one’s individual talent, and magnifies it! For most Quidditch players, even the best, never take the time to become one with their brooms -- but you can be an exception.”

Carewyn’s eyes and smile were very bright. ‘So you can psyche your opponent out, just with your confidence! And because you’ve got both hands open to hold the Quaffle, it’ll be harder for the opposing team to steal it too!’

“That’s...it’s brilliant, Orion!”

The praise definitely seemed to boost Orion’s ego. He flew completely upside down in a circle before coming to a stop beside Carewyn, grinning broadly. 

“Would you like to learn?” he asked.

Carewyn looked down at Orion’s Cleansweep and then down on her old rundown Shooting Star. 

“I definitely won’t be as good as you,” she said as offhandedly as she could. 

Orion’s black eyes sparkled. “We’ll see about that. Now come -- balance first.”

Carewyn followed his lead, balancing on her broom the way he did. 

“Forget technique,” he instructed, “forget form. Just be one with the broom.”

Carewyn started off slow, trying to weave. There were one or two points she felt like she was going to fall off, but she just managed to sweep her broom around enough to catch herself. Orion meanwhile swept around her in spirals to observe her. 

“Do not broom surf with intent. You should only ever do this when the feeling is right, not when logic dictates.”

Carewyn sped up a bit in her weaving, tilting her broom up so that she hovered a bit higher. She then tried to aim herself toward the hoops -- she charged ahead, and then looped back around in a “j” shape. Orion followed, shimmying around her. 

“Good,” said Orion. “Good -- let go -- ”

Carewyn urged her broom a little faster and Orion took off after her. Soon they were weaving around each other, Orion coming up and over her. Carewyn brought her arms up on either side of her to help her shift balance as if she was on roller skates, and she soon found herself laughing. This was fun!

“How...how am I doing?” she asked as she tried to catch her breath. 

Orion’s smile was broader than Carewyn had ever seen it, so much so that it made his black eyes squint slightly. “You look like you’ve been broom surfing like that your entire life, Carewyn Cromwell.”

They finally came to a halt in the middle of the pitch. Orion nimbly leapt back down onto his broom in a seated position again -- Carewyn took a bit more time to gradually lower herself back down. 

“Hufflepuff will not be able to take their eyes off you,” Orion said confidently. “And it’s while they are distracted that we will be able to rack up points.”

Carewyn adjusted her ponytail as best she could with one hand. 

“It really is brilliant, Orion,” she said kindly, “but...well, isn’t that a strategy in itself, that I’ll distract the Hufflepuffs, while you and Skye score points?”

“To some, perhaps,” said Orion. “But all of it will only be if the time and feelings are right. I don’t believe in planning things out too far ahead. None of us are Seers who can divine the future, so can we truly know whether any plans we make will fit in with how that future will take shape?”

“No,” granted Carewyn, “but that doesn’t mean you can’t make a plan and hope for the best anyhow. Or better yet, make a back-up plan, just in case things don’t go the way you want...”

Orion raised an eyebrow. “You and McNully believe Hufflepuff’s Captain came to watch our practices so as to make a strategy, correct? It stands to reason, then, that he’s channeling the Demiguise as best he can.”

“The Demiguise?” prompted Carewyn. 

“Trying to predict our own strategy in the upcoming match, through watching our interactions and team dynamics,” said Orion simply. “If, however, we go in with no strategy, there’ll be nothing for Hufflepuff to latch onto. That mystery works in our favor.” 

“But it also might make it harder for us to fly as one team,” Carewyn pointed out, trying to mirror Orion’s level tone but not quite succeeding due to her sincere concern. “I can Broom Surf now, Orion, but I can’t do it as well as you. Only you will likely ever be able to do it as well as you do...because no one could be exactly like you. And well...no one else sees the world quite like you do, either. It’s brilliant, really,” she added quickly. “It’s cool that you don’t act how people expect you to, or see the world like everyone else does. But...I don’t know, I guess it’d be a lot easier for the rest of the team to be on the same page as you, if you choose a book that you can read together. If that makes sense.”

Orion considered Carewyn for a moment, his unreadable black eyes trailing over her face.

“It does,” he said at last. 

He looked up at the stands. 

“It appears that our ‘guest’ has arrived,” he changed the subject dryly. 

Carewyn looked up. Sure enough, she saw the very tall, broad-chested Hufflepuff Quidditch Captain, Ulrich Dylan, confidently striding across the stands and plopping himself down. He rested his arms on the edge of the stands as he stared down at them. Carewyn’s eyes narrowed up at him. 

“As has the rest of our team,” added Orion a bit more pleasantly. 

Sure enough, the rest of the Slytherins -- Skye in front -- flew out onto the pitch to join them.

“Hey, Orion,” greeted Crockett brightly. “Hey, Carewyn. Looks like you’ve both got a...‘broom with a view?’ Eh? Get it?”

Carewyn couldn’t help but wince, even though she tried to smile. 

“Will you lay off with the puns?” said Skye, rolling her eyes exasperatedly. “You stretch farther with those than I do trying to reach the Quaffle...”

“But it’s part of what being Keeper is!” Crockett said playfully. “Everybody knows that...and you know I’m a Keeper! All the ladies say so.”

“All the ladies except us,” said Lucky, who’d covered her face with her hand. 

“And we have to be subjected to your jokes,” added King with a roll of her eyes. 

Skye shifted gears as she looked at Carewyn, offering her a determined look. “Ready for practice, Carewyn?”

Carewyn forced herself to look away from the Hufflepuff Captain in the stands, giving Skye a confident nod. “Mm-hmm.”

“The time has come for our time,” said Orion serenely. “Our first exercise will be helping each other through sabotaging each other. Our Beaters and Seeker will play as opposition to our Chasers and Keeper, so that we may practice saving and blocking goals.”

Carewyn looked at Orion with a teasing smirk. “Sounds like a plan.” 

Orion smiled very wryly at her in return. 

~~~

Orion asked the rest of the team to stay after practice for a team meeting. The team waited around so long for the meeting, though, that they soon occupied themselves with idle conversation. Hufflepuff’s Quidditch Captain had left over fifteen minutes ago, and Carewyn was glad to see him gone.

Skye stretched her arms over her head and sighed tiredly. “Ugh...I’m going to give Orion a good smack for this. Asks us to stay after for a team meeting, and then completely forgets to start it...”

“You shouldn’t hit him,” said Carewyn reproachfully, her voice coming out a bit whiny despite her best efforts. 

“Ah, come on, Carewyn, I don’t mean it like that,” said Skye with a shake of her head. She smiled. “So anyway -- what did I miss before? What were you and Orion doing here so early?”

Carewyn took her hair out of its ponytail, looping the red scrunchie around her wrist so she could redo it. “Orion taught me how to do this Quidditch move he created -- it’s called Inspired Broom Surfing...”

Skye grinned. “Ah yeah, that thing! I reckon Orion sees it as a future signature move for him, as a player. Don’t know if I’d go that far, but hey, it’s a fun way to waste time.”

“I don’t think it wastes time,” said Carewyn, frowning slightly as she put down her now much tidier ponytail. “I think it’s rather brilliant, actually. If we’re going to beat Hufflepuff, I reckon us looking confident and fearless to the opposing team would be pretty helpful.”

“The only thing we need to defeat Hufflepuff is Parkin’s Pincer,” Skye said confidently. “They might expect it, but they can’t stop it.”

Carewyn frowned. “But...if they do expect it, then they could still make a strategy to counteract it, right?”

“Not when we do it perfectly,” said Skye. “And you and Orion both know how to do it perfectly -- I’ve made sure of that.”

Carewyn couldn’t help but disagree, but decided not to push the issue. Instead she sighed. 

“Well, I guess in the end, it’s really up to Orion -- he is team Captain. I guess I just wish he’d consider making more of a plan...I mean, I always feel better whenever I’m doing something difficult, when I know I’m prepared and I’ve planned ahead.”

I don’t think I would’ve been able to deal with the Ice Vault at all, if I hadn’t practiced Incendio with Bill first. And it felt good knowing that he and Ben were there to help me too, since they both knew the spell really well. 

Skye’s face became a bit more serious. “Yeah, that’s really not Orion’s style.”

She brought a hand onto the smaller girl’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. 

“Don’t worry your little red head about it, though,” she said with a smile. “Orion may be a weirdo, but he’s been known to make the right call, when it counts. You just focus on being a smashing Chaser, and let us more senior players worry about it. Nobody will be expecting the newest player to make any major decisions during the match anyway -- ”

“That’s it! That’s what we’ll do!”

Everyone gave a start. 

Orion, without anyone noticing, had settled himself overhead on his broom, sitting on it as if it were a swing. As he leapt back down to the ground, however, sweeping his broom out from under him with a flourish, he was grinning as excitedly as a kid at Christmas, his eyes on Skye and Carewyn.

“Orion?” said Carewyn, startled. “When did you -- ?”

“Is the meeting finally starting now?” asked Lucky. 

Orion brought his broom up onto his shoulders behind his head, still grinning broadly. “This is the team meeting. I simply stand back and observe my teammates interacting in an unstructured setting.”

Skye wrinkled her nose in revulsion. “Orion! Most people call that snooping!”

“I prefer the term ‘discovery,’” Orion said smoothly. “And sure enough, it put a spotlight on your idea...”

“My what?”

Orion turned to the rest of the team, his broad smile never shifting. 

“My teammates, we shall do the unexpected, to win our first House match. Hufflepuff, as well as everyone else, expects me to make the big decisions -- but instead, our newest player will.”

His black eyes and white smile were both gleaming with determination as he turned to Carewyn. 

“In this match, Carewyn Cromwell will call the shots.”

Everyone on the team was so taken aback that they all stared at Carewyn, and then Orion, and back. Carewyn herself had lost all of the color in her face.

W...what?

She couldn’t do anything except gawk at Orion in disbelief. She looked around at the rest of the team helplessly -- Skye looked almost more horrified than Carewyn, as well as angry. 

“What?! Orion, are you mad!?”

“Not in the least,” said Orion breezily. “I’m quite content with my decision.”

“Orion -- you can’t be -- ” started Shacklebolt.

But the Quidditch Captain had already turned around, his lips upturned in a rather proud smirk as he rested his arms over the broom on his shoulder.

“Our new leadership will not be discussed outside of the Changing Room,” he said levelly, “lest our opponents catch wind of it. And when next we fly and Ulrich Dylan’s eyes are on us, we will practice as we always have.”

He glanced over his shoulder at Carewyn, his black eyes twinkling. 

“You sang your commitment to us yourself, Carewyn. And now...we’ll take a chance on you.”

By the time Carewyn recollected herself enough to try to argue, Orion was already gone. 

[zelenacat]

When We Were Young- An Obitine Story- Chapter 17

After meeting the new government officials personally and sending them off to do their jobs, much of Satine’s time was spent with the Corruption Committee. It began with mandatory inspections, questionnaires, wage increases, and tighter import laws. At the end of every day, the Duchess found herself exhausted.

“How are you little ones,” she asked her stomach, cradling the now noticeable lump, “we’ve had quite the day haven’t we?”

A knock came at the door and Khaami got up to get it.

“It’s Hera.” 

The door opened and the nurse stepped inside, hauling a large bag with her. Khaami shut the door and locked it.

“I know it may look like a lot, Your Grace,” Hera set her bag down, “but there are many tests we have yet to run.”

“Such as?”

“You may need vitamins,” Hera looked up, a bottle in each hand, “and certainly calcium pills.”

The Duchess relented and lay back against her pillows. Parna pulled down her covers. 

“How have you been feeling lately?” the nurse asked, approaching Satine with a stethoscope.

“Tired mostly,” the Duchess answered, “although I have been trying to get my rest.”

Hera listened and placed her stethoscope on Satine’s stomach, waiting. 

“Everything sounds good,” she smiled, “but I did bring the portable ultrasound just in case.”

As the blurry images of two blob-like shapes became vaguely recognizable as human, the Duchess swallowed hard.

“Satine?” Parna questioned.

“I haven’t called Ben in a while,” she confessed, “and I still haven’t told him.”

Hera looked up, “I take it Ben is the father?”

“Yes,” Khaami answered for Satine, “and he has quite the high-profile job.”

“Dear me,” Hera seemed to want to ask something, but then thought better of it, “I assume it’s best the less I know.”

“Yes,” Satine nodded, “but I will tell you that I love him.”

“I wouldn’t think anything else, Your Grace.”

The Duchess smiled at that, at least there were some who knew her true character.

“Just to be safe,” Hera stood, “I suggest you take vitamins and calcium pills, prenatal pills would be too risky I think.”

“I agree,” Satine nodded, “but I appreciate your help, I want my girls to be healthy.”

“I’m sure they will be.” Hera grinned.

Khaami helped the nurse to the door while Parna changed Satine into her nightdress.

“How is the status of the birth basement?” Satine asked, feeling weird even to call it that.

“Almost ready,” Khaami answered, “we have towels, blankets, numbing shots, diapers, but Oiyo still needs a new battery.”

“Perhaps Hera could be of help.” Satine suggested.

“Yes,” the Duchess nodded, “enlist her on that.”

“I am still worried about the falsified documents,” Parna confessed, “are you sure we’re untraceable?”

“Let’s begin withdrawing some of my personal funds,” Satine instructed, “we’ll pay upfront.”

Khaami stood, “I will go speak with Hera.”

Parna grabbed Satine’s comm.

“I suggest you call your Jedi.”

Satine swallowed, “I hardly know what I’ll say.”

“Conversation will flow naturally,” Parna smiled, “I can tell he cares for you.”

The Duchess nodded, grateful for her lady, then dismissed Parna.

Satine pressed a button, “Ben?”

No response.

“Obi?”

The third time, Satine succeeded.

“Hello, darling,” Obi-Wan’s voice was slightly strained, “it’s been a while.”

Satine was not fooled, “What’s happening, Obi?”

“We’re recovering after a battle.”

“Don't tell me they put you on the front lines again,” Satine frowned, “you just recovered.”

“I made for a good patient.” Obi-Wan replied.

Satine sighed, “You need your rest, Ben.”

“I can’t,” Obi-Wan swallowed, “I can't sleep when I dream of you.”

The Duchess found herself at a loss for words. Obi-Wan turned on his holo-figure and Satine could physically see his worry.

“Love?”

Satine turned her holo-figure on, “You’re such a romantic, Ben.”

Obi-Wan actually laughed at that.

“Do you know when you’ll be coming home?” Satine asked hopefully.

“Not as long as we thought I think,” Obi-Wan smiled, “I should be relieved in about two or three months.”

The Duchess’ face fell.

“Satine?”

“That’s still a long time, Obi.” she whimpered.

“I can only hope that it’ll be sooner,” the Jedi replied, “I think of you all the time.”

“You’re often on my mind as well.” Satine confessed.

“And how are politics now,” Obi-Wan asked, “any corruption arrests?”

“We’ve had a handful in the past two months,” Satine nodded, “though I still worry for my government.”

“If anyone can pull her system through this,” the jedi winked, “it's you, Satine.”

“I appreciate your kind words, Ben.”

A moment of sad silence filtered into the conversation and Satine drew in a breath.

“Obi-Wan?”

“Yes?” The Jedi sounded concerned.

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

“Ah yes, your medical situation?”

The way he said it, Satine wondered if he already knew.

“Ben,” tears welled in Satine’s eyes, “I was afraid, so I kept putting off telling you, but-”

“Satine,” Obi-Wan’s voice grew quiet, “are you-”

“Yes,” the Duchess sobbed, “five whole months.”

It was a long time before Obi-Wan spoke again.

“Ben, Ben, please answer me.”

“I thought you were sick,” the Jedi’s voice quivered, “I thought you were being stubborn.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about, Satine,” Obi-Wan suddenly dropped a mask over himself, Satine could see it through the hologram, “but are your duties overwhelming you?”

“No,” Satine shook her head, “please don’t be mad at me, Ben, I didn’t know what to do and what would happen.”

“You obviously want to keep the baby-”

“Obi-”

“So who will raise it?”

“Them,” Satine corrected, “twin girls.”

Obi-Wan sighed.

“And there’s another thing,” Satine bit her lip, “I’ve been lying to you for nearly eighteen years.”

The Jedi’s brow furrowed, “What?”

“Ben,” the Duchess swallowed, “there are other children.”

Obi-Wan froze, his mouth half-open in shock.

“Four others.”

“You’ve lied to me,” Obi-Wan repeated, “for this long?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

It came out as a whisper, that’s what broke Satine.

“My enemies would’ve claimed I wasn’t Mandalorian and they would've never accepted you as my spouse. And now, I fear they’ll call me a Republic Sympathizer and a hypocrite.”

“You are,” Obi-Wan crossed his arms, “you can’t promote neutrality if you have ties to one side.”

“Padme knows,” Satine argued, “and she’s been ever so helpful.”

Obi-Wan leaned back in shock, “Anakin knows, and Quinlan too.”

“They’ve met the children, they knew immediately.”

The Jedi was mad. Satine could see it.

“I have children, six children,” he asked, “and yet I was the last one to know.”

“Ben-”

Obi-Wan was aghast, “Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to compromise your morals.” Satine frowned.

“Morals? Morals! Satine, these are my children!”

“Being a Jedi means everything to you, Obi,” Satine sighed, “I fell in love with the chivalrous knight in you, you would’ve been a completely different person had you left the Order because of me.”

“So you thought about it,” Obi-Wan was suddenly far away, “you thought about saying the word?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t.”

Satine swallowed, she didn’t know how to respond.

Obi-Wan scoffed, “Do you even love me?”

“Ben-”

“No, Satine,” Obi-Wan’s rage finally boiled over, “you made a decision without me, one that affected both of us, and you made the wrong choice.”

“Obi-Wan-”

“You lied to me,” growled the Jedi, tears in his eyes, “I could’ve been a father.”

“You are a father.”

Obi-Wan went silent.

“Do the children know.”

“Yes, I’ll ask if they’d meet with you.”

“I should’ve known them their whole lives,” Obi-Wan balled his fists, “and now I have to meet them like some stranger.”

“Ben-”

“Don’t call me that!”

Satine grew stiff, “Forgive me, Master Kenobi.”

Obi-Wan shook his head.

“I won’t contact you until I’ve returned, Duchess, and then it will only be to meet my children.”

He hung up. He hung up on her. Satine screamed.

”Your Grace!” 

The door burst open, Jaym and Gorg came in, their eyes widened when they came to rest on her stomach.”

“Get my ladies, Jaym,” the Duchess ordered, “and Gorg, go to the Med Ward and ask for Nurse Hera.”

The guards bowed, shutting the door behind them. As soon as the door slammed, Satine burst into tears. Throwing herself back on her mattress, the Duchess pounded her fists on the bed until her cohort arrived.

“Satine,” Khaami gasped, trying to restrain her, “you’re going to be alright.”

“Please,” Parna grabbed Satine’s thrashing legs, “I’m sure he didn’t mean whatever he said.”

Hera began calmly singing to Satine in Mando’a, gently rubbing her thumb on Satine’s palm.

“He said,” the Duchess gasped, “he said he wanted nothing to do with me.”

Parna sighed, “Satine, I think he’s just mad.”

“I had no choice,” the Duchess yelled, “it had to be a secret!”

“Sh,” Khaami brushed Satine’s hair from her eyes, “all will be well.”

“How do you know that?” Satine accused.

Khaami explained, “He’s always been very devoted to you-”

“And when he met you again,” Parna added, “the spark rekindled.”

“You are the mother of his children, Your Grace,” Hera handed Satine a tissue, “you two are bound for life.”

That brought tears to Satine’s eyes, “Ben doesn’t say things lightly.”

“But what did he say exactly?” Parna asked.

“He said the next time he contacted me,” Satine sniffed, “would be only to meet the children.”

A silence fell.

“Well,” Hera handed Satine another tissue, “you have some time right?”

“When I was eighteen I bore him twins,” Satine confessed, “And at twenty I did so again.”

Hera was aghast.

“How-”

“My ladies and a medical droid,” Satine explained, looking to Khaami, “Khaami was there.”

The lady nodded, “Her Grace was very strong.”

“But,” Hera stuttered, “but the birth certificates?”

“We have the real ones,” Parna answered, “they’re hidden.”

There were many things Hera could’ve said or done at that moment, this, Satine was certain of, but what the nurse said was kind.

“I’m so sorry, Satine.”

With a sigh, the Duchess lay back down.

“Let me just check your heartbeat,” Hera stood, going to her bag, “just in case.”

Everything was physically fine with her, but Satine knew Jaym and Gorg would need answers.

“My guards,” Satine turned to Khaami, “have them come in, Hera will stand guard.”

Gorg and Jaym were shocked, so shocked, in fact, that they’re eyes nearly bulged from their sockets when they did a double take of their Duchess.

“Did,” Gorg stuttered, “is this because-”

Jaym was much less confused, “It was the Jedi, wasn’t it?”

“No one can know,” Satine stated firmly, “I will allow no jokes, no snide comments, and certainly no illusions to my romantic acquaintances. Do you understand?”

The guards looked at each other.

“Do you understand?” Satine repeated.

The guards saluted, “Yes, Your Grace.”

“Now,” Satine straightened, “I want you to grant Master Kenobi’s personal shuttle access to all of Mandalorian space.”

“Kenobi,” Jaym’s eyes went wide, “I told you it was Kenobi!”

“Kriffing Kenobi,” Gorg gasped, “the Jedi poster boy?”

Satine raised an eyebrow, “What did I just say?”

Jaym swallowed, “No jokes, snide comments, or romantic allusions of any kind.”

“Correct.”

Gorg sighed before he bowed, “We shall do as Your Grace has ordered.”

Satine’s gaze softened, “Thank you.”

Hera came in as the guards left and collected her bag.

“Sleep well, Satine,” she instructed, “you need your rest.”

“I will.”

Parna said nothing, but hugged the Duchess instead.

“Thank you.” Satine whispered.

“We’re right down the hall if you need anything.” Khaami reiterated.

Satine nodded, and then she was left with her feelings. After an hour, she realized she couldn’t sleep and grabbed her comm. She sent the same message to Mara, Tristan, Tyra (who now had a comm of her own), and Korkie. They likely wouldn’t see it till the morning, but Satine needed it off her conscious that she wasn’t hiding her children from their father.

The Duchess hardly slept at all that night. Some time around 2:30 her body crashed and her eyes refused to open, but she didn’t feel refreshed in the morning when Khaami gently nudged her.

“We let you sleep a little later,” she began, “but there is an urgent matter the council needs you for.”

Groaning, Satine rolled over. She could hear Parna in her closet pulling out clothes.

“Please, Your Grace,” Khaami continued, “it’s about the war.”

“I hate war.” Satine whined, sitting up.

“That’s a good girl,” Khaami rubbed Satine’s back, “now let’s get you ready, you have a big day ahead.”

The corset was painful, as it generally was, but it made the Duchess sit straighter in her throne. She was facing the ruling council and some of the clan heads that lived nearby. Satine felt that her usual uniform of purple and blue was too plain for such a gathering.

The new Prime Minister was actually an old one, Jaru Djarin had never liked Almec, he’d always rubbed her the wrong way. So after his four years were up, Jaru ran against him. Due to obvious reasons, she won.

“Do forgive us for meeting early, Your Grace,” the Prime Minister began, “but the head of the Trade Federation contacted me and specifically expressed displeasure in our situation. He would like to meet and discuss new terms.”

Satine smiled, “This is a good reason for meeting early.”

That was met with a few chuckles.

“We shall most graciously accept the Trade Master’s visit,” Satine decided, “did he give any dates that he’s available?”

And so it was decided, the Trade Master would be arriving in three days. There was much to do. Waldie and her seamstresses worked late to add stiff linings into many of Satine’s dresses. Though none knew why. Satine oversaw the menu and preparations for public appearances. It was also decided that the Trade Master and his delegation would be housed down the hall from Satine, Parna and Khaami would sleep in Satine’s parlor. The Duchess also made a friendly call to her dearest acquaintance, Senator Amidala of Naboo, who had much to say on the Trade Federation and their past dealings.

“Interesting,” Satine nodded, “thank you for your help, Padme.”

“Of course, oh,” Padme paused, “and congratulations.”

“What for?” Satine asked.

“Obi-Wan is being traded for Master Fisto in two months,” Padme suddenly became worried, “I thought you knew.”

A heartbeat passed.

“When did he find out?”

“Anakin mentioned it yesterday afternoon,” the Senator gasped, “Satine, did you and Obi-Wan get in a fight?”

“I told him about the children,” Satine confessed, “and naturally he’s not happy.”

Padme sighed, “I’m sorry, Satine.”

“It’s good to know,” the Duchess tried not to sound hurt, “if he chooses he might attend the birth.”

“He might.” agreed Padme.

After a moment of still silence, Satine thanked Padme for her call and hung up. She cried for a little bit, then went to try on her refurbished dresses.

“These are quite snug.” observed one of the seamstresses.

“They should be,” Waldie replied, “that’s how Her Grace likes it.”

“But Lady Waldie,” another seamstress took out a measuring tape, “these dresses shouldn’t be tight.”

Waldie glanced at Satine, “I don’t see how we did something wrong if Her Grace enjoys the dresses.”

“I do,” Satine said earnestly, “that’s why I ask you to touch them up so often.”

“Work on dresses for the Ladies Khaami and Parna,” Waldie instructed, “I will finish the Duchess’ dress.”

Satine nodded, grateful to the seamstress.

“There are rumors, Your Grace,” Waldie whispered, “that you are expecting.”

The Duchess frowned, “I should start leaving trails of fake blood everywhere.”

Waldie snorted, “I suggest you allow the Duke of Sundari to understudy your work with the Trade Master.”

“It will set everyone straight.” Satine agreed.

Parna giggled and the Duchess turned her head.

“I feel like a princess.” the Lady twirled.

Satine’s mind went to her daughters, the nearly grown ones, they should be princesses. A wave of sadness flowed over the Duchess, she wished her children could be where they should be, could claim their birthrights. Unfortunately, if anyone found out about their father…

“Duchess?”

Satine looked up, “Hm?”

“Your advisors are looking for you.”

“Ah, yes,” Satine straightened, “the security for public appearances.”

Gorg and Jaym were Satine’s top protectors, to be with her always. Now that they knew, it was important that she keep them close to her if they had any questions, or if she was kidnapped. Satine tried not to think about the latter.

“Hello?”

“Hi Headmistress Gren,” Satine smiled even though the woman couldn’t see her, “this is the Duchess Satine.”

“It’s good to hear from you, Your Grace,” the headmistress pleasantly intoned, “your nephew has been doing very well in his classes.”

“That’s good to hear,” Satine’s pride decided, “speaking of which, can Korkie be excused for the next three days, I would like him to be here for the Trade Master’s visit.”

“Of course, Your Grace,” the headmistress agreed, “I always enjoy it when a student gets government experience.”

Satine thanked the headmistress for her time and asked if Korkie could be sent home early.

“Of course, Your Grace,” Headmistress Gren appraised, “you should see him within the hour.”

“Thank you.”

The Duchess smiled to herself, Korkie disliked his fittings, this would be fun. The Duke of Sundari groaned when they approached the sewing rooms.

“Lady Mother,” he whispered, quite agitated, “I can’t stand still for that long.”

“It’ll be quick,” Satine assured, “and if you’re good, you can help me taste the deserts.”

Korkie glowed, “Wonderful.”

In the meantime, Satine instructed Parna to fetch a jar of blueberries and a knife from the kitchen while she and Khaami looked for excess hair brushes.

“Why are we doing this again?” Parna asked.

“To quell the maid’s suspicions,” Satine answered, “I’ve heard they’re worried about the lack of bloody material in my trash cans and laundry.”

Parna grinned, “So we’re going to make fake blood.”

“Blueberries were an excellent choice, Your Grace,” Khaami winked, “how clever you are!”

Satine laughed, “I feel like we’re ancient witches mixing a potion.”

Parna snorted. Khaami grabbed a bowl.

“Okay,” the lady began, “put a bunch of blueberries into this bowl and smash them.”

Satine giggled like a little girl as she took her hairbrush and smashed the blueberries. 

“We need to make sure this is thick enough,”Parna added, “how do we do that?”

Khaami grinned, “My mother-in-law once thickened strawberry compote with cornstarch and water, I bet that would work as well.”

Satine nodded, “Get some.”

They finished smashing the blueberries as Khaami returned. 

“Let’s strain the liquid from the berries,” Parna suggested, turning to Satine, “I’ll hold the bowl if you hold your hands out.”

And so they did, it was messy and fun, Satine even got to lick the leftover berry juice from her hands.

“How proper, Satine.” Parna teased.

Then Khaami added cornstarch to the mixture and filled the jar a quarter full of water.

“Now,” Khaami smiled wickedly, “we drop some of our berries into the mixture.”

Once their job was done, the women conferred and decided their potion needed to be redder. 

“We could put some of my blood in.” Satine suggested.

Parna frowned.

“It would have to be somewhere hidden by your dress,” Khaami agreed, “perhaps your leg?”

So a small slit was made in the Duchess’ leg and added to the foul solution.

“Tomorrow morning we’ll put some on your sheets,” Parna decided, “and some on the back of your nightgown.”

Satine giggled, “That will be fun.”

After cleaning up, the Duchess took the Duke of Sundari down to the kitchens, where they would taste desserts. Korkie was smiling so bright Satine was beginning to wonder if he already had eaten some chocolate.

“Lady,” the Duke burst, “Lady Aunt?”

“Yes?” Satine took a bite of her macaroon.

“I think I have a girlfriend.”

Satine began to cough. Korkie laughed.

“Remember when those exchange students from Cerea came?”

“She’s Cerean?” Satine asked.

“Yes, she likes to draw and we traded numbers,” Korkie said excitedly, “and we’ve been talking ever since.”

“That was two months ago!”

Korkie looked down, shy, “She just asked me to be her boyfriend.”

“Korkyrach Kryze!”

The Duke flinched at the Duchess’ giddy tone.

“Tell me her name!”

“Kara Adi.”

“Pretty,” Satine remarked, “surname?”

“Mundi.”

The Duchess paused for a moment, that name rang a bell.

Satine gasped, “I know her mother, Shea, she was the Cerean representative on trade many years ago!”

“Yeah,” Korkie nodded, “her mother’s retired now.”

The Duchess could not be more pleased.

“So,” Korkie took a bite of cake, “what’s new in your life, Auntie?”

[merigreenleaf]

Unexpected Inspiration Series: Concordia’s Art Magic

Blythe could only assume that if Adair was holding a paintbrush, the jar in his other hand must contain paint or ink. Then again, it was Adair. It could just as likely be grape jam. And to think, she'd finally got herself unsticky from Sol's glue fiasco this morning. With some trepidation, she held out her hand. Adair dipped the tip of his brush into the jar, then drew a quick blue swirl on her palm. At least that solved the mystery. It was, in fact, paint. "I wouldn't call a paint smudge much of a glow." "Give me a minute." This time Adair didn't return the brush to the jar and instead held the tip of the bristles just far enough away that they tickled Blythe's skin. She fought back the reflex to close her hand so she wouldn't disturb whatever it was he was trying. When nothing happened for a long while besides Adair gazing intently at her hand, Blythe mouthed to Etri, "What's he doing?" Etri tapped his finger against her wrist, calling her attention back down. She had expected nothing to change and hissed a sharp intake of breath when it had. The swirl was still there, but now there was an aura of purple about an inch away from her skin. When she moved her hand, the strange glow stayed with it. Etri leaned closer for a better look. She pried her eyes away in time to catch Adair looking pleased with himself in an embarrassed sort of way. "So all Weavers' hands look like this?" "Yeah, but not just our hands. Picture that covering your entire body and you get a better idea of how we glow." Blythe made a face and wiped her hand clean on the paint-stained cloth he handed her. "Blech. I'll pass." -Excerpt from an early draft of Colorweaver (Book 1)

Concordia as a whole is filled with artists, craftspeople, inventors, and creative hobbyists. The culture has art at its center and almost everyone joins in, even if it's just a way to pass the time rather than as a vocation. It's a drive passed down from generation to generation and the reason for this is that art magic runs deep in the blood of Concordians. History and myth have blended together into stories telling of how the first Concordians-- several struggling, displaced groups of people who joined together to survive-- asked for help in driving away a threat and to help keep their small population safe. Legends say that the constellations came down from the sky to teach magic to the people. Centuries later, these magics have become the nine types of art magic in Concordia.

(Info about the art magic below!)

Here are the types of magic. These are represented in the moodboard from left to right, top to bottom.

Wordweaving (Glow color: red) These Weavers work their magic into words, both spoken and written. These are the poets, the storytellers, the actors, the writers. They're the ones who can affect emotion or, in the case of my morally ambiguous main character, influence someone's thoughts for a short time. This is probably the most dangerous or easily corrupted of magics, but considering the tests that go into becoming a master artist and the checks in place after someone does, this hasn't been a huge problem. (Dray has just made it a problem by avoiding any real training, which is also not a usual thing-- nothing Dray has done with their magic is correct, if you get down to it, and it means that they are going to have Consequences sooner than later. But I digress.) Another example of how this magic can be used is in the scrolling marquee in front of the theater the characters visit in book 1.

Colorweaving (Color: purple) These are the artists whose tools are ink, paint, pencil, charcoal, etc. They're essentially illusionists with the ability to make what they draw/paint move around on whatever they're using as a canvas. Adair has this magic and while he'll sometimes use this to make animated paintings, his career as a cartographer has him creating interactive maps. As the series progresses, he figures out that if he paints on himself or someone else, he can change their appearance. He may even work out something that Colorweavers have forgotten they once knew how to do: by drawing on the air, it's possible to create a believable 3D illusion.  

Timberweaving (Color: dark green) Woodworkers and carpenters, obviously, but their magic does more than just allow them to make sturdy creations from wood. Not that this is anything to scoff at-- this is why the oldest Artisans' houses haven't fallen over despite being built on stilts and almost every generation adding a new room or even a new floor. This magic can also make wood as buoyant on air as it would be on water and is a frequent way transportation is built. Not all vehicles hover a few inches off the ground, but this does include the "float-wagons" my main characters call home. Those are something of a cross between a motorhome and a house and can be driven (albeit slowly) around.

Terraweaving (Color: orange) These are the Weavers who work with stone and clay, sculpture and pottery. Way back in Concordia's history there was a Terraweaver who used to sculpt trainable dog-sized animals to give companionship and help to those who needed it. Not just by way of a service dog-- one of the things she made for a gardener friend was a pet that doubled as a planter. The more traditional ways of working this magic are the ability to work stone as though it were soft clay and putting their magic into buildings to make them more steady and solid, much like the Timberweavers, or to make them resist fires.

Oreweaving (Color: red-violet) These Weavers frequently have chemical or heat magic and often use this to etch, shape, and manipulate metals. They're the jewelers, the smiths, and are probably the most "inventor" group of the bunch. Sol tends to use his light/heat magic in a similar way to how the arcane metalworkers would (softening and shaping metal in his hands), so there's some overlap here in terms of heat with the glassworkers. The reason for this is Oreweaving was originally a kind of lightning magic. You'll still find it used as a kind of "battery" when an Oreweaver works with a different type of Weaver on a project. This could be to extend the life of the magic in something else, because eventually all magic inside a creation will run out and need to be recharged, or it'll be a backup battery. Concordia relies on wind, water, and solar power, so magic is only ever a backup or a way to store power they already have.

Savorweaving (Color: pale green) The Weavers who work with food and drink. What they cook doesn't burn, produce stays fresh longer, herbs don't lose potency or flavor after they're dried, food keeps longer or can be made to be more filling. They're the reason Concordia has the equivalent of refrigerators. These artists can also influence the taste and strength of flavor, and I bet they can look at a person and guess what their favorite foods might be.

Glassweaving (Color: gold) This magic involves heat and/or light. These artists are the reason why Silveridge has so much stained glass! As well as using this to make super-strong glass, some Glassweavers use this magic directly by putting it inside glass globes to be used as lamps. Portable heating, like something to keep in your pockets to keep your hands warm? Probably also had a Glassweaver involved. Concordia's mail system is via pneumatic tubes that run about twelve feet off the ground, and while a few different kinds of art go into creating these, the tubes themselves are made of magically-influenced glass.

Songweaving (Color: blue) This magic involves sound and voice, although in terms of pitch and changing how you sound, not the verbal influence of the Wordweavers. I have a character in later books with this magic who can make her voice sound like anything, as well as throwing it so that the sound appears to be coming from somewhere else. This is also the reason that Concordians are able to record sound and music, as well as amplify it or play it at another location simultaneously.

Threadweaving (Color: blue-green) These are the fiber artists, the spinners, weavers (small "w"), knitters, tailors, etc. They can put their magic into clothing and fabric to make it warmer or cooler than it would otherwise be. (This suits Concordians well because current fashion calls for lots of layers of embroidered fabrics and they live in a warm climate.) This can also make clothing protective, usually against things like weather, but it is also how the Protectorates are able to stay safe without needing to wear something heavy that would look like protective gear. Remember the floating homes I mentioned earlier? Some of these are propelled via large fans, sort of like a hovercraft, but some are made with sails on the roofs. Whether it's land or sea, these sails can propel the vehicle forward even if there isn't much wind and can quite likely store some of the wind for later, should it be a still day.

Not everyone in Concordia has magic particularly strongly: some are only good at never burning what they cook, some have simply a pleasant singing voice, some are above average at writing poetry. Sometimes these people will make this part of their careers, sometimes it'll only remain a hobby they enjoy. If the magic is particularly strong, though, it requires additional training and those people are considered Artisans. There isn't a lot of difference between an Artisan and a craftsperson when it comes down to what they create; the only real difference is that an Artisan has magic as an extra tool, so their end results are different. Considering no two artists ever create exactly the same thing anyway, this means that there has never been more importance placed on the Artisans versus craftspeople. Each person will only ever have one type of art magic; even if they carry several types in their bloodline, one will be dominant and only this one will be usable. Each of the nine types of art magic has its own color that glows in both the artist and the creations they make. Only those with decently strong magic can see this, but it does mean that a lot of people, clothing, objects, and locations in Concordia have almost a stained glass look to them if it's something you can see. Part of the reason buildings in Silveridge are made with white stone is because of these glows. Silveridge is where a large percentage of the Artisans live, so it became a tradition to build and paint in white, then add colorful embellishments. Otherwise think about how badly paint colors might clash with the glows used to create the things in the city! Even if most people aren't really aware of how magic glows, they've embraced this aesthetic. Concordia, and Silveridge in particular, is all about aesthetics.

These are just some examples of what each kind of magic can do. Concordians are always coming up with new ideas-- sometimes those ideas work great, sometimes they fail spectacularly. Either way, the artists and craftspeople are constantly creating. Their art magic allows for greater technology than their world might have had without it. Concordia freely trades their creations, so most of their world has access, as well. At some point I'll talk more about Galanvoth, the country that considers itself Concordia's competition. 

-------------------------------

This moodboard is for @homesteadchronicles theme of “craftsmanship” because how could I not talk about Concordia and their art magic when most of my series involves this. :D In the future, I'd love to talk more about the Artisans, the history of Concordia’s magic, and just more world building stuff in general.

Tagging my series list! Let me know if you want on or off the list, it’s all good. And as always, please add me to any writing tag lists you have, whether you’re on my list or not. I love reading about writeblr projects. :)

@homesteadchronicles @ageekyreader @lynnafred @the-gay-hufflepuff @oceanwriter @desperatlytryingtowriteabook @muffindragon227 @theguildedtypewriter @toboldlywrite @wchwriter @dreameronthewind @shadow-maker @pen-for-sword @loopyhoopywrites @emptymanuscript @madmoonink @perringwrites @megan-cutler @elliot-orion @thatwriternamedvolk @indecentpause @writer-on-time @ravenpuffwriter @siarven @musicismymoirail @lady-redshield-writes @bluemartlet @reeseweston @worldbuildingwren @hiddswritingrefs @cay--scribbles @focusdumbass @enasroterfaden @missrobinswritings @joshuaorrizonte @zofiehelen @kainablue @kalis-scribbles @inspirited-goddess

[sanstropfremir]

it’s the episode 8 review!!! how many episodes is this show supposed to even be?

the stages from the episode feel like such a grab bag.... i still don’t understand why they didn’t put all the skill stages together, and then did the normal two episodes of the third round. i guess it makes sense that they didn’t want to have six stages in one episode and then three in the other two, but eh. 

feeling kinda average on these as a whole, there’s a lot of good elements going on here but probably because of my own preferences (i don’t listen to ballads or blackpink) none of them really hit all the buttons. hopefully this will be a shorter review because i'm only going to do a quick rundown of the vocal stages; i dont really have that much to say about them because they are (intentionally) not very stage picture focused. i'll do the normal stage breakdowns for the other two though, even though i won’t rank them because we still need to see the other four!

vocal stages

sf9 + tbz + ikon

not much to say here other than wow, that’s RED. glad to see some more specific use of spotlighting and i always love when they light things on fire. i do wish they had fill lit with a brighter amber so we could actually get a bit more detail on their faces, especially because there’s six of them. i appreciated the simple blocking and only using one of the ‘stages,’ this stage didn’t need to be anything complicated and it wasn’t. i don’t love spinning camera shots because they make me a bit ill, and i'll forgive the constant cutting because it's a vocal stage and there isn’t any other real movement that we should be paying attention to. not my favourite of the two, i found it visually a bit too repetitive and complex at the same time. always love a crushed velvet suit though, so bonus points for that.

atz + skz + btob

i was braced for the worst and i dont know what kind of miracle happened but it was listenable! like i said, not a ballad fan but i could listen to eunkwang all day. i love a good plinth for a ballad stage, they’re one of my favourite devices in kpop design and i especially love it with a good groundlevel fog. glad they kept it black and white for the first half of the stage, it was in line with the blooming flower projections, and it made a very clear colour arc. they kept the visuals clean and simple with very little blocking at all, a very smart choice for this stage. not sure why they decided it would be the chanel time stage, which i disapprove of because i don’t like chanel, but i do love eunkwang’s shirt with the cameo buttons and the massive turnback cuffs, very 17th and also 19th century. i know they never do it because they dont read on stage normally but yes absolutely more thin chain pendant chokers on men, thank you! i also liked that there was emphasis on a more traditional lighting scheme, there weren't any crazy concert effects, just some good directional beam spotlights and the rear stacks in the climax. 

third round stages

ikon

costume

the first look for them is definitely my fabourite of theirs so far. there’s enough variation in the jackets that the base layer of tshirt and jeans don’t look too repetitive. and i do love a good statement jacket. my favourite is probably donghyuk’s because i'm a sucker for fringe always.

i don’t like the backup dancers costumes, but given the way i’ve reacted to every other all black outfit for this entire show i don’t think anyone was surprised about that. these ones particularly irk me because they’re very matte; there's pretty much no texture or pattern differentials to define the shape of the limb, which makes them disappear when theyre all grouped together (mostly on the women). i think they probably were intending to make a statement/emphasis on the hands because of the sleeve cutoff point, but there were so many arm movements that were just totally missed because the costumes were just black voids. most egregious parts are here, with the female dancers up center. i can barely tell what the movements are unless i’m paying specific attention to them because there's so many black shapes. maybe it was the point for it to be an indiscernable writhing mass, but it wasn’t my vibe.

don’t love this styling on lisa. i hate peeptoe shoes in general but peeptoe boots are the worst offenders. they make you look like you have duck feet, no matter who you are. especially with a flat cutout like that. a universally unflattering shoe, and i would know, i worked in a shoe store for two years. this whole look is just pg-13 rihanna cfda awards 2014 and really nobody should try to run up against rihanna.

also i have to mention this because it’s actually really bothering me, but lisa’s backup dancers are serving very allgemeine ss looks and i do not like it. generally when we see ‘military’ uniforms in kpop theyre usually modelled off older styles (pre wwii) of western uniforms that usually aren’t in circulation, and they’re usually non-matching and embellished in ways that are deliberately not military. i know logically that it's a budget constraint+they’re backup dancers+current trend thing but the clean lines with only button detailing and the all black and that specific harness shape? it hit my brain the wrong way. i mean, technically those uniforms are designer because hugo boss did them, but the uh..... girlboss move didn’t land for me.

this is my PERSONAL OPINION please for the love of all that is holy do not come yelling at me about this. it’s all under a cut, you chose to read the post.

set

very glad to see some busy kitschy sets! this is a massive build, since there’s essentially three full sets here: the temple, the jungle, and the first tiny room. and all of them are very heavily decorated. 

the starting room is just five walls on casters (wheels), that have been set into place with the cameraman and ikon inside at the start, and then once they exit the walls can be easily struck and rolled off set. simple, smart, and convenient!

i missed it the first couple times around but glitching out the projections in the temple for a split second was a neat little trick.

the silver and polygonal nature of the tiger/panther/cat(?) head is a bit disconnected from the gold and the aesthetic of the rest of the stage for me. the difference between the original room set and the jungle tracks, but the cat head isnt able to make the same leap for me. i'm also not a fan of mixing metals so maybe that’s why.

the tiger/panther/cat(?) head is a fun physical transitional device; i'm a big fan of tunnels and small transitory spaces like that and if they’re well dressed like this one they do so much for establishing place and mood.

i'm very sure i’ve seen this style of polygonal animal head with laser eyes before....i cannot for the life of me remember where or for what. i know wang yibo did a panther stage for sdc3 that had a human formation panther with green laser eyes, i wonder if i'm just crossing wires.

OH nevermind it’s because it looks like the witcher medallion. wires were definitely crossed.

lighting

using purple/teal lighting for the jungle was a smart choice because purple is the direct compliment to the gold and also is much more flattering on humans than green. green is one of the colours that humans can see the most variations in, so when something is green when it's not supposed to be (like human skin), we register that very quickly and associate it with unease and sickness. you know how old fluorescent lights have that greenish tinge that kinda makes you feel ill? it's your cone cells and your brain recognizing that you’re looking at things that are not supposed to be green.

very clean colour arc, i love to see it.

sound

it’s.....fine? i don’t listen to blackpink and have no opinions on their music other than it's not my type. i dont really know what the thematic connection to the visuals is, which is not strictly necessary in a lot of cases, but i don’t particularly care for the conflation of ‘savage’ and a (presumably) precolonial religion that’s assembled from stereotypes of real colonized cultures. you can come at me about how ‘it's not that deep’ all you want but i am here specifically doing an in depth analysis, and i gotta point it out. i'm not here to pass judgement on you if you didn’t realize or don’t care or whatever, i'm just saying that it's important to consume content with a critical eye. what you do with that information is your own personal choice, but you should be aware of it at least. 

staging

they took a big risk eating popcorn right before singing, and we definitely got some residual mouth noises of them trying to clean out their teeth. eating on stage is difficult in general because you have to make sure it's not going to dry out the performers mouths, because they dont have access to water and it takes WAY longer to chew and swallow something than you would expect. there’s a LOT of testing that goes into making stage food and guaranteed it’s not made out of what it looks like or what its supposed to be; i worked on a production of amadeus were we did literal weeks of testing amalgams of different desserts to make sure that salieri could actually eat the ones onstage without totally drying him out, because fun fact about that show, salieri doesnt leave stage like, at all, so there was no way to get him water. poor bloke.

i thought the blocking of this was really smart. the long take from the ‘normal’ room and transition into the jungle was super slick, even if that weird circle the camera did while pointed up at the ceiling was unnecessary and pointless.

bobby’s ‘acting’ was extremely funny and that’s the only way people are allowed to act surprised now. edvard munsch scream style only.

the pacing is a bit off and this time it wasn’t mnet’s editing that fucked it up. as fun as it is to have a feature, clearly she wasn’t allowed within proximity of the rest of them for covid or other yg related reasons, but it made for some extremely long transitions, especially the one out of her verse. it kills the momentum of the stage in that beat, even though they manage to pick it up after.

this is a very simple little narrative arc that’s easy to follow and doesn’t require any extra explaining. which is exactly the kind of arc that groups should be doing at this stage in the game. this is a good formic step up for ikon!

i thought the turning off of the monitor at the end was fun and a good callback to them watching the videos at the beginning of the stage. a nice clean way to make it circular.

skz

costume

FINALLY something different on the skz boys! these were mostly fun eboy looks for them, and i like it on the basis that it's not the same as the last set of costumes.

bang chan out there with his thigh OUT and a (fake) bridge piercing? LOVE to see it. great work.

(copy-paste every thing i’ve said about backup dancers wearing all black)

the backup dancers that were dressed as bystanders/extras were great! they should have kept that with all of them because it would have given a little more shape to the choreography and establishing what function the backup dancers were supposed to have.

set

that is meant to be a giant rice cooker on stage, right? i think so because it's a god’s menu mashup? if that's not a rice cooker i have NO idea what its supposed to be

there’s only two large setpieces here, which was a smart way to go. i LOVE the subway car doubling as the truck, even if the truck itself makes no narrative sense. what a fun way to double the use of a single big piece. you’ll be able to see the way it moves in the full cam but it splits down the centre and there entrance doors at the back with attached stairs that bang chan and the dancers use to climb up.

lighting

not a whole lot happening here. i like the cool white leds in the subway car and the contrast with the more warm tones of the outside, which is good atmospheric establishment, but i can't discern a visible arc. 

not a fan of these projections; they’re in line with what we’ve seen from skz so far, which is: extremely literal. i dont think they’re that distracting, but they’re not to my personal taste. they really should have kept the comic panel theme that they did for changbin’s first verse, because that was inventive and fun to watch! and a great atmospheric indicator! i would love to see a bit more experimental projection use but it's hard when they don’t have a lot of time to build these stages and the lighting team is definitely working remotely.

sound

i love that they made the choice to do some actual talking, it’s a good gimmick and it works for the deadpool/comic book/fourth wall break theme, but australian accents take me the fuck out i am so sorry i cannot listen to either felix or bang chan speak english without laughing uncontrollably. 

i don’t like this arrangement but i'm not surprised about that, given my predilections. i'm also tired of skz shouting STRAY KIDS in every performance they do. i know on music shows it's probably more relevant and yea producers tags are a thing but we’ve been watching this show for nearly two months at this point. we know who you are, you can stop yelling. be more creative with it!

staging

my biggest issue with this stage is that it doesn’t have a payoff. there is an arc here: they’re stealing the truck, but why are they stealing the truck? who are they stealing it from? who are they fighting against? it's kind of important in a stage where the theme is stealing and fighting someone that you tell us who that is. in both of ateez’s previous stages were they were both stealing (rhythm ta) and fighting (wonderland), they made sure to show us who the villain was. there needs to be tension for a big blowup climax to actually pay off. whether it be against a a balloon arm kraken or a fascist government. this stage could have reached that next step if they’d just done a little bit more exposition. 

there were a lot of fun choreo moments here, and this is probably my favourite choreo of theirs so far. i thought the whole first bit in the subway car was excellent and a very fun play on those viral videos that we used to see roll around every so often of dancers doing routines in subway cars.

did it need the guns? not in the slightest. more on this point later. i could talk more about weapons and weight here, but i’ve done that several times already.

like with the tbz game of thrones stages, theyre relying a little too much on the audience's preconceptions of the source material in order to carry the theme. the guns are there because deadpool likes guns, but they don’t actually use the guns for anything? the most we get of the stealing segment is felix and the safe, which admittedly is a great bit with him leaping over and under the ‘laser’ lines (theyre likely led strips). because comic books are by nature procedural and deeply tied to narrative, it's unsatisfying when there’s no tension and no payoff.

HOW did we manage to get two stages that are blackpink covers with remote/tv static gimmick and durags? i know the slot machine of kpop tropes is not very big but surely the probability of hitting triple sevens on this one was pretty low. i’m pretty meh on both of these stages overall. skz was unsatisfying but i loved the choreo in the subway bit so that bumped it up a little ahead of ikon’s in my personal preferences, but i'm reserving my actual rankings for next week. assuming we get the other four stages next week and they dont do something stupid and only show two. which they very well might. i’ve stopped trying to understand why mnet does things the way that they do. 

as always the ask box is open, drop your comments/questions/personal opinions, i love to hear ‘em! but don’t be rude just because some of this is touchier subject material.

[goldeneyedgirl]

JaliceWeek21: Day 8 - Powerswap: Variable Stars 1/3

This is the LAST PROMPT. And such a good one, and I was just... stuck. And it’s only half done, but I thought I’d start posting it now to motivate me. 

This started out as a joke and grew feelings and logic and ugh.  

I hope you enjoy it, and I’ll do a round-up of everything I wrote once it’s finished <3

variable stars.

mary alice brandon. 

What did you think would happen?

The panic is an animal scrambling to get out, pushing against her chest and her throat. She tries not to cry, but she’s shaking and she’s heard the screams that comes out of the room at the end of the hall. 

Her face aches, where the orderly hit her to get her to move faster. She’s ice cold - it might be winter, she’s lost track of time - but other than the ugly brown sweater she’s been given, the one that hangs to her knees because nothing fits her right.

“Please,” she asks in a thin voice. When she was little, she had had a lisp. Her mother had called it ‘darling’, but her father wanted her to speak properly. And when she couldn’t, it was better she stayed quiet. She out-grew it eventually, but sometimes, when she’s tired or frightened, she can hear the ghost of it - another part of her old self that haunts her. 

(She remembers her mama wasting away, lying on the chaise in the sitting room, looking like she was fading away. She’d sing and cuddle the new baby, but Mary Alice got a kiss on the forehead and an apology, “I’m so sorry, my darling. I’m so, so sorry.” She used to think that the apology was for dying and leaving Alice alone without a mother. She knows better now.)

They march her into the room, badly lit and tiny. She is stripped of her sweater and helped roughly onto the bed, with the tight sheet and the rubber rest for her head. The doctor looks at her like a dead thing, and her breathing speeds up. She tries to twist the hem of her clothing in her hands but they are quickly pinned and strapped to the bed, her ankles too (the straps are loose, she’s too small for this bed). 

A hunk of greasy rubber is shoved into her mouth so far she nearly chokes; the taste of it is rancid and nausea swirls as she feels the indentations of other teeth, other mouths. She feels like she’s going to faint, everything is so blurry. But there’s a slap to her face and something is fitted around her head and no one has spoken to her, acknowledged her or explained. 

She’s never been so frightened in her life. She’s shaking and the nurse stares down at her with a bored expression on her face, and there’s three blood drops on the woman’s uniform. 

One, two, three. 

And Mary-Alice Brandon screams. 

—

(She was thirteen years old. A ward of the state. A hopeless case. The perfect little guinea pig for the experimental new treatment. Much more efficient than chasing a screaming child around, to force the Metrazol down her throat.)

(They should have waited until she was older, of course. But the doctor’s ego and arrogance were too much, made him too impatient to wait. It wasn’t so much that the future changed - it did, of course - but that the girl who was little Mary-Alice was altered, irreversibly and forever. And that made all the difference.)

—

Three. Three becomes her number. 

It took three men to drag her from home in the dead of night (one broke her arm. How pleased her father must have been that they were in such a large house where there were no close neighbours to hear her screams.) 

She was thirteen - one-three - when they first push electricity into her poor brain. (Unlucky Mary-Alice.)

She gets three shots, morning and night, bruises blooming like ink in water. (They made her head swim and the world soft. They make her stomach twist and her bones ache. They make her words slow and run together. They steal all of her away.)

She has three different orderlies - the one that twitches and is cold as ice (he doesn’t hit her); the one that calls her names and threatens her (he hits and slaps and pushes her); and the one that comes in to her cell at night (he touches her too much, and is always the one that takes her to the bath.) 

Three times a week, she’s marched to the door at the end of the hall and they hook her into the machine and they look at her like she’s something wrong and foul. (She screams and cries and vomits and wets herself. She breaks an ankle because the loops are too loose and she thrashes. They were never fitted to hold a child down.) 

She starts looking for threes. She’s broken two bones, she needs to break another. She sees two doctors who shake their heads and write down notes, and she wonders when they’ll bring in a third. She counts the bites of her food to keep them down, curdled and sour in her belly. She counts her steps everywhere she goes, counts the slaps and pinches and shoves they give her. 

Three, three, three. 

—

The fizz and pop of the machine steals things. It takes her awhile to realise that. At first, it was just time; hours vanish like smoke. Then it was words - she stammers and mumbles and slurs. Then it was memories, what happened before the room.

Then it’s her family, her mother’s face vanishing and her sister’s laughter fading. 

(Someone said sorry to her a long time ago. It doesn’t soothe the hurt.)

Then it’s her full name. Mary-Alice Brandon. Mary-Alice.

Mary. 

Alice. 

(She doesn’t answer to Alice, only to Mary.) 

Then it’s her vision. It goes blurry and dark around the edges, and even when she wakes up in her cot, it doesn’t go away. When she tells someone, they huff and shrug and dismiss it - it stops the pictures in her brain so it is worth giving up her sight. 

They call her schizophrenic, a word that sounds like static, and a lot of other things. She hasn’t mentioned the visions in a long time; what good are they when she is locked up in cell? When she is convulsing in pain and forgetting everything she ever loved, and shivering in the dark? 

(She learns to live without her sight. She relies on her visions sometimes, but mostly, herself. Fingers tracing walls, feet gingerly testing out uneven floor. They let her stumble, and mutter about her blank, cloudy stare. A doctor does examine her eyes, but there is nothing to be done. Perhaps they can prevent this happening to another patient, but for Mary-Alice Brandon, it’s just unfortunate.)

It steals everything except fear. It feeds the fear well, and she knows she’s going to die in this place, hollowed out so that the fear can fill her up. She can see the graves from the window of the laundry, where other patients have died. She has no illusions; those are the dead from the other wards. People who might have gotten to go home again, people who get to eat in a dining room, and take pills instead of shots, who knit for the soldiers and write letters to their loved ones.  

People from the basement ward go on to their next life via the boiler room. She knows the stench of that intimately. 

(Three people come to the hospital one day - a man, a woman, and a child; the day between her sessions. They are very important because she gets an extra bath and clean clothes, and the orderly brings her in a wheelchair. She cannot see them properly, just shadows and shapes in her gaze. The doctor makes them sit behind her as she answers questions and gives her puzzles to solve. She doesn’t know much, and she can’t get her hands to move properly or stop shaking. The man behind her keeps telling the doctor how ‘good’ it is, and she has a grim feeling her failure pleases him.) 

(She’s going to die here, and end up being swept away with a broom.)

—

Three years. 

It takes three years for them to break her, to curdle the fear in her heart to rage. To let hate swell in her heart. She fights back sometimes, learns to bite and scratch. 

(They break her other arm, and there’s the third broken bone. That’s just fine with her, the heavy plaster cast makes a lovely noise against the face of the orderly who won’t stop touching her.) 

She spits and swears and tells everyone the truth. A husband will die, a wife will run away. A child will drown. Debt, loss, prison, she spits her fortunes out with relish, and there are more shots and more slaps, but she doesn’t care.

(She fights like a feral cat when they take her to the room now, fights away from the pain of the device lighting up her brain. It can do nothing more for her, she knows that, than it already has and now they are just using it to cook her brain a little more, until she is soft and pliable like their other victims. She won’t go down like that, won’t let them make her into those people. She gets a few good hits in, and she’s sure they make the machine hurt her worse.)

The cold orderly is the only one who can manage her these days, and she is grateful when she becomes his problem. No more touching, no more hitting. He talks to her in a low, calm voice - “I cannot stop them or any of this yet, little one. But I can try to stop the worst of it.”

She lets him help. She is quiet and docile when he escorts her places. She takes her medications and does as she’s bid and it works, a little. She cannot escape the room at the end of the hallway, cannot stop all the slaps, but some of her bruises get to heal. 

(When the cold sets in, he brings her clothes warm from the laundry; he smuggles her mugs of weak tea in tin cups, and swaps rancid porridge for an extra bit of stale bread on her tray. He lies to the doctors that she was ill, and unfit for her ice bath. He makes things a little better for her. In her dreams, she thinks about him falling in love with her, taking her away and marrying her. She doesn’t love him, but she sees her freedom in his kindness, and there are far worse ways to live than quietly married to such a man. If she ever had dreams for her life, the machine has eaten them all away and that’s comforting, because she would hate to realise how far she’s fallen.)

The shock therapy still demands its pound of flesh, and her memory gets worse. He writes her name in big black letters on the wall next to her pillow, but she certainly cannot see it to read it. So he carefully chips it into the wall, where her fingers can feel out the letters.

Mary-Alice. Mary-Alice. She is Mary-Alice.

(Sometimes he reads her things from her file. She’s sixteen years old. She’s from Biloxi, Mississippi. She is a ward of the state with no family - her surname is redacted in the earliest papers, and she is referred to as Miss Smith in all the later ones. She became blind when she was fourteen and a half. She is in the hospital for a laundry list of conditions that are, according to her doctors, incurable. 

She has been here since she was twelve.)

The rage finds a good home inside of her. It wraps around the grief and fear, and it is comforting in a new way. It lays roots to remake her into something else, something she might be, could be. Nothing better nor worse.

Just different.

—

It all goes wrong on a Wednesday. She knows it is a Wednesday because it is a treatment day. It is also bath day, and the day the priest comes round to pray at their doors, too cowardly to venture closer to the insane, the stricken as if they are contagious or tainted, somehow. 

(There are few in the basement that are truly terrible. They struggle and fight because of their fear of the pain, of the suffering, not for any other reason. Most of the patients are soft and dull, drugged and crippled into quiet obedience. There is no reason to fear them, truly. They’re all half-dead, anyway.)

It’s also a dreadful day because her orderly is not here, and they’ve been forced to deal with her alone. Her head rings from the hits she took, her shoulder aching. Her throat is sore and her stomach is churning and she is sick of hearing how God will forgive her and welcome her into His house. She has done nothing that requires forgiveness, her orderly assured her of that.

(She cannot remember his name, no matter how many times he tells her. He tells her it is okay. She will remember one day.)

“Shut up!” she finally screams at the priest, who is hidden in the hallway with his Bible and his sermon. “There is no God!” She means to say ‘here’, in this place, where an orderly held her under the water of her bath this morning to punish her, as she thrashed and struggled. Her chest still aches and she wishes she had drowned. She screams it over and over again, hot tears on her cheeks as her brain and mouth stutter and struggle to get the words out as she means them. 

“God is dead (here)!”

“G-God is dead!”

“God dead!”

She can’t get it right, can’t untangle her words and thoughts to make sense and the frustration and weakness makes her cry harder, makes the words harder. 

It’s the wrong thing to say anyhow, because then another orderly comes, and the priest is yelling at her, condemning her and then there are two nurses and a doctor and she gets to go to her standing appointment early because she’s behaving so badly, her arms bent behind her so she has to hunch over. The priest makes the sign of the cross over her and she spits and screams when one of the nurses slaps her.

(God is dead and so is logic. She never understood why they bathed her before they shocked her; she almost always wets herself, bites through her lip, or gets a nose bleed. She is always a reeking mess afterwards, and they act like they haven’t set her up for failure.) 

She’s hurled on the bed, and held down, and the doctor holds her jaw so tight she knows there will be finger prints on her cheeks. 

“We may have to increase your treatments, Mary, if you do not remember your manners,” he says, a cool and arrogant voice washing over her - he is just a wobbly shadow in her corrupted gaze. 

She manages to spit on him, sort of, and he slaps her too, and jams the rubber mouth guard into her mouth, holding it there and forcing her to choke. She writhes and kicks and no one has tied her down yet. 

They manage to restrain her, and she can feel the doctor’s pleasure as he pulls the lever and the pain…

… it is a wild thing, roaring through her like a fire. It burns like a fire too, and sinks into her brain, her bones, her mind and soul. It cripples her and changes her. It rattles around in her and all she can think is that one day she will hurt this doctor, hurt these people just as bad. She will burn the doctor to blistered flesh, to ragged charcoal, to see how fair and fine such treatment is. She has survived so long with this experimental treatment, with having different voltages, different wires and placements and techniques, without any gratitude or assurance. 

Just the never-ending rolling pain and fear. 

(And she opens her arms and her heart to that anger, that righteous fury, the power, and the creeping fear. It nestles deep and close, finally and indelibly rewrites Mary-Alice and what she will become.)

—

Her speech is nearly gone after. She slurs and mumbles and doesn’t get up off of her cot. It’s over for her, the last flicker of herself realises. They move her around like a marionette; she is just a bunch of loose limbs and dead eyes. They stick her with needles and smile at her, satisfied that she’s finally broken and docile. 

(One step closer to the boiler in the basement.)

They watch her body arch in pain at the shock of an ice bath, watch her twitch and shake with another seizure, ones that have made her their home over the last few years. But these are getting worse, and sometimes there are only minutes before the next one wracks through her. 

(They hurt her, make her body ache worse and her mouth taste like blood.)

Her cold orderly has returned, and he is still kind. He keeps her clean and warm, patiently feeds her dainty bites of inedible food. He talks to her and comforts her. When he thinks she is asleep, he tells her how unforgivable the state in which she lives is; that this was cruel and pointless, and she deserves so much better, so much more. He tells her of gardens and oceans, castles and beaches. He brings a flower, a leaf, some slightly greasy sheep’s wool that he guides her hands over so that she can remember good things. 

(She dreams of a boy offering her a flower; it’s white.)

It’s only after she dreams of the man with the red eyes that she tries to talk again. She sees the man with ruby eyes, his mouth smeared scarlet. She hears screaming, desperate screaming and babbling, and then nothing. She sees her own body, her throat torn to meat, laid out in the surgical room in front of frowning doctors. They mutter and murmur and try to translate the mess of her throat, her broken legs, her cracked and torn nails, the three broken vertebrae. 

Her nudity upon her discovery. 

(Of course, it’s easy to say that the girl was insane, escaping and discarding her clothing getting attacked by wild animals - perhaps she fell, broke her legs and her back and that’s when the animals arrived on the hunt. Anyhow, it truly doesn’t matter. The girl is really a woman, and has been a ward of the state so long that only the very oldest workers recall her full name. She is wrapped up and sent to the basement, nothing more than a footnote in the day’s happenings.)

She wakes up panicking, and the nurses do not like her noise, and so they have extra shots for her, a straitjacket and a stern lecture. She gasps and croaks and tries to explain. 

The cold orderly is there, trying to protect her from the rough treatment but disguised as trying to wrangle her. She tries to tell him, tries to explain there’s a hunter in their midst, a hunter coming for her to start with and maybe others but her head and tongue are muddled, so it just comes out as croaks of, “Red man, red man, red man.”

The shots pierce her flesh and she wails like a child because she doesn’t want to die like that. 

Doesn’t want to die. 

(She just wants to live. Just once. Just for a little while.)

—

The orderly is no fool. 

But neither is the hunter. 

The future ripples and changes once more.

—

Down south, amongst the dust and blood of the Wars, a soldier goes rogue, a Major deserts, and the Lady of Monterrey rages. 

Up north, a family packs their things, ready to move on. Again. 

And in the mud and mire of Mississippi, the girl who was supposed to be Alice Cullen stares dead-eyed into the stars as the venom creeps through her, changing her fate once and forever. 

[onyourzeus]

• the answer | psj

ykcyj ➝ arskyh

title: the answer pairing: park sungjin (of day6) & you genre: FLUFF, non-idol!au words: 2.7k

author’s note: requested by this anon for a pregnant s/o headcanon with sungjin. 

truthfully, this prompt is very new to me and at first, i thought i wouldn’t be able to write something. but i think i tried? i hope it is still enjoyable! (i have been binging sungjin compilation vids recently... i am in deep)

any requests? check my pinned post if i’m accepting any at the moment, thanks!

sungjin is the most animated husband to a pregnant partner you’ve ever seen

and you have a handful of your friends who have gone through the “journey”

way before you did, so seeing the way their significant others react 

to the baby bumps and sudden emotional breakdowns during double dates 

it’s quite a show, really. they’re either so stunned, so careful due to their partner being more “fragile” than normal 

and others who look calm and collected, seeming to have read every book on pregnancy and child bearing they can get from the local library 

and of course, their partner admires the dedication and earnest reactions they all have towards this new beginning for the both of them: a life, growing inside their belly. how exciting

(and terrifying. absolutely terrifying)

so when you finally used one (that turned out to be five, just to be sure) pregnancy test you kept hidden in one of the bathroom cabinets

the rush of emotions start falling out: disbelief, pure bubbling joy, adrenaline rush of excitement, and then a few heavy pounds of anxiety

“baby you’re taking too long in the…” you hear sungjin’s concerned voice coming closer to you, and it trails off when the two of you meet eyes for the first time that night

that you realize you’re pregnant

“how many did you take?” is his first question, tone void of anything that you’re suddenly scared he didn’t want this yet 

“five,” you reply quietly, sitting on the edge of the bathtub while holding onto the tests strips

“should you take one more just in case?” he asks again, eyes wide and mouth hanging way too open for your liking

whining to him you say, “we might as well go to my doctor to make sure at this point because i think five is overkill already.”

a pregnant pause

you’re getting just a tiny bit annoyed at sungjin’s non-response at this point. he just looks like a fish out of water, and if you just didn’t find out you’re pregnant and are currently registering your own emotions, you’d have slapped him silly right there

but that’s just how sungjin reacts, especially with how important this all is to the trajectory of your shared life

“come here,” he tells you, arms spread out. face still nonchalant, but you swear you heard a hint of joy in that tone

you give in, though, because it’s sungjin and he’s suddenly getting teary eyed and you don’t want him to wait any longer—

“what do you think?” you whisper against his ear, folding into his embrace as he tightens his grip around your waist. the doubts that filled your mind about him not wanting this for any reason disappeared right when his warmth embraced you

“i think you’re gonna be the best parent ever,” he says but the way he’s squeezing you so hard causes you to audibly squirm

he lets go in a flash, apologizing back and forth 

“sungjin it’s okay!!” you laugh, tears of joy welling up in your eyes because sungjin is already panicking about hurting the baby in some form due to him hugging you too much “i think the baby will be fine for now!!”

“let’s go,” he states, his hands holding onto yours and his eyes determined 

“to where?” you laugh incredulously. sungjin’s switching of emotions in two seconds flat is hilarious to you, but you humor him for a moment

“to the doctor, so we know you’re healthy and the baby is healthy and what else we need to prepare for so that you can—”

it’s 9pm

ok it’s time to shut him up now

kissing his lips softly, you rest your forehead against his and the two of you share the peaceful silence inside your bathroom, in your own house, where your family soon will bloom

“too soon, sungjin,” you remark, smiling as you feel him blush inches away from you

he nods briefly, taking his time to kiss both of your cheeks and you indulge in his genuine love and care

“i’m so happy to do this with you,” he says, “to build our family together” 

“i am too” 

“should we start planning on the nursery room?” and there he is again, back to going on overdrive it makes you the less crazy one

you calm him down and remind him that it was grocery shopping day tomorrow then you can set up the appointment for your gynecologist. it seems to bring sungjin’s excitement down

by the end of the day, all the scrambling emotions you had accumulated once learning about your pregnancy has dwindled down to the most important one you have: gratefulness for sungjin

so that was just the beginning, right 

in the following weeks that you have been confirmed to be pregnant yes, congratulations, a lot of things have changed in the household 

from your newly bought maternity clothes, to less hours spent at work, and the empty room in your house finally being given the opportunity to bring it to life 

it wasn’t only you doing the renovating, actually sungjin doesn’t want you near any tools or paint brushes at all 

he wants the baby safe as well as your physical body 

he is overreacting. you are only a month in

“you tell me the color of the walls, where the crib should be, and the paintings you want hung. i’ll do the work. deal?”

“no take backsies?” it sounds like a plan too good to be true

sungjin chuckles at your suspicion, but nods firmly

“fiiiine” 

there was definitely a change in atmosphere in your relationship, however. it suddenly became a bit more… intuitive? it boggles your mind because sungjin has always been the perfect husband for you since day 1

but each passing day, he’s becoming so much more careful, gentle, and all-knowing with you

for example the one morning that you just felt the urge to throw up everything you ate the day prior among other things

sungjin had already prepared the bathroom with extra paper towels, a glass of water to gargle with

and even brought awaiting breakfast in bed, just a few fruits maybe an oatmeal and brewed tea (just the way you like it)

he doesn’t take too much time in the bathroom when he showers (and sings loudly) before a gyne appt or just when the two of you were supposed to bond that night

this is kind of a given but grocery shopping is more of a competition than cooperation months before

who brings the most bags and gets to the car the fastest (without spilling anything) will not cook food that day 

now, sungjin doesn’t hesitate but almost force you to stand by the entrance of the place, and make you wait there until he finished putting the stuff in the car and drive where you were 

“i need exercise too, sungjin” you’d poke him on the side while on the drive home, and sungjin just half-smiles

those days he’d try and order take out instead because, well, sometimes he just doesn’t want to cook

and you’re prepared for this, at least he lets you continue your hobby of being the master chef in the kitchen

it’s a nice way to bond with the baby and your husband. as sungjin plays music in the living room through a speaker or by singing himself

you enjoy trying new healthy recipes

the baby bump is forming shape now, your clothes definitely give out a hint. it’s been a complicated ride of what to feel about it

excited, thrilled, of course, sungjin takes a moment in the morning to really look at you

and his child that you bear so beautifully, and with so much grace

the sun shines somewhat through the curtains, and sunjin wonders how you sleep so amazingly well 

his eyes never tire of tearing up with incoming thoughts of the next few months, years with you and your little boy or girl. he doesn’t even have an inch of doubt that you’re going to raise them well, and raise them kindly

on the other hand, as sungjin thumbs over your cheek, admiring your presence in front of him...

synchronized breathing

sungjin is afraid if he will not be enough for his child. there’s so many things that can go wrong in the first three years, let alone the moment they’ll come to this world

what if he gets cold feet? what if he cannot financially support the two of you anymore? what if you become disappointed at how he’s presenting himself as a good father? 

it pains sungjin to realize all of these what-ifs. with a few more minutes to spare before he has to go to another day at work, sungjin makes sure to feel the curve of your belly, and transfer over his warmth to you 

he closes his eyes, immersing himself with the beat of his heart, knowing that it’s for you and your family

if you’re lucky, you wake up to the whispers of sungjin about the many different things he loves about you, his forever partner, the future super parent of your child

resisting to open your eyes and see his embarrassed face is almost harder than not drinking coffee nowadays

but you get used to it, just barely seeing how shiny his eyes get, how relaxed his features become and how much love leaves his lips

saying your name, singing to the baby a little good morning jingle, telling you both

“i love you so much, more than you can know in this lifetime” 

and when sungjin is busy at work, half relegating tasks to his employees and the other burying down the anxiety about leaving you at home all day alone

you do your part to ease his worries, sending him cute texts throughout the day 

sometimes he even asks about the belly more than about you

“hows the baby?? can i see?? does it feel different today?? did you feel a kick? do you think it will be twins??”

(god you hope not)

“sungjin you are at work and i can hear your colleagues laughing at your excitement, quiet down!”

he’s so proud, so so proud of you. getting those texts and short calls from you while he’s away does more assurance than you think

he readied himself by asking his family members about parenting, asking his friends about their opinions, and reading so much online that he’d forget to do his share of the workload in the office

being 100% prepared is his mission, and he thinks you’re not taking it seriously. you say it comes with intuition for you because, well, you’re carrying the baby. but there’s one thing the both of you just cannot explain to each other which confuses sungjin all the more

your cravings

it was fairly normal in the beginning, maybe you wanted cheese on everything one day, and then you just had to add peanut butter on your garlic bread… okay, at least sungjin didn’t have to eat it with you

but the times that you didn’t have the ingredients you were specifically asking for, sungjin was at a loss for words

“sungjin…” you whine on the bed with him, sitting up as best as you can with the bump and pushing his shoulders so he gets up. he was lying down but had his back facing you, as he he had tried multiple times to convince you to go back to bed already

it wasn’t successful

“babe it’s too late to go out,” he’d murmur, hugging the pillow close to him as if to block out your voice. this offends you, a little over the top than normal, so you continue shaking him up

“but i neeeed it. the baby neeeeeeds it. you want the best for baby, right? anything baby wants, baby gets, right?” you say with a pout, although futile as he couldn’t see you

sungjin groans lightly, understanding that cravings aren’t even explainable on your end but there must be something in the house that can, well, emulate what your tastebuds desired— or, sorry, the baby

“we have leftover vanilla ice cream in the fridge, sweetheart, will that be okay for now? we’ll get the other flavor tomorrow morning,” sungjin calms you down, turning over to see your face soaked with fresh tears

this gets him to sit up, cuddle mode on, but you refuse

“baby, i’m sorry—”

“no i’m sorry sungjin, i just wanted to eat because i can’t sleep if i don’t but you’re upset and now i feel so lumpy and gross and—”

“hey hey no,” he scolds you softly, never liking the way he hears you call yourself such a word. his arms embrace your from behind, hands secured on your bump as he peppers you with tender kisses on the side of your face, kissing the tears away

“sungjin i don’t look cute right now,” you pout, somehow knowing what you’re saying is ridiculous to a point and irrational, but also the way you’re thinking isn’t logical right now

“that’s a lie,” sungjin tells you. “don’t ever believe that.” 

you find his hands caressing your bump, and intertwine them together. sungjin lets you breathe in and out for a minute, as he finds it the best way to help you out when emotions start to overwhelm you

no words, no distractions, just the feel of him and his security

“do you really want strawberry cheesecake ice cream right now, babe?” he finally asks as the tension from your body dissipates. you nod and crane your neck to the side just enough to meet his lips with yours

one kiss, two kisses

sungjin looks at you brightly, smiles and nods once

“okay, i’ll get it for you, you just stay here and rest. okay?” 

exhausted from the emotions but still hungry from your cravings, you follow his words. after, he tucks you back in bed, gives your bump a quick peck and goes out the door

“don’t forget the potato chips :c” you text him 5 mins later

“of course love, pickle-dill and strawberry ice cream ready for you soon ;)”

when he came back, he didn’t think to spend the next 20 minutes watching you put the potato chips as a sort of topping for your ice cream

suffice to say, it was a strange night that ended in laughs, you trying to get him to take a bite (which you succeeded), reminiscing on old times, and falling asleep with him fitting right by your side perfectly

it were these moments that you feel more and more in love with sungjin because he doesn’t just care for you

he cares with all of his being, and you make sure he knows how much he’s appreciated with the little things he does, and the big things he shows off to you

the nursery room gets done earlier than expected, and surprisingly enough sungjin let you paint a patch or two of the wall. you spend time off decorating the whole place with pictures of the two of you way back then, pictures of your child’s (favorite) uncles, paintings you have finished that embodied the love you have for your future family, everything that reminded you of home with sungjin

“you think our baby will like it?” sungjin asks you right after hes finished with the last picture frame. it was empty, undecorated, but hung right next to the crib. 

“absolutely, appa made it with love.”

“and sweat”

and he holds you right there, the fresh scent of furniture and a new beginning amidst the air

he holds you and your blossoming family in his careful, gentle hands. and you whisk yourself away in the moment and how perfect it was, how grateful you are to live this through with sungjin

a slight kick reverberates within your bump, and sungjin glances at you immediately

another bump, and the two of you slowly form the widest grins

“i guess you got your answer, sungjin.”

his answer has already been in front of him

[fairydust-stuff]

Enemy Yut Lung & Eiji one shot: Warning  this one is not romantic or soft plantonic friends.

“ I’ve decided i’m going to be Ash Lynx’s enemy,” Yut Lung casually states.

Eiji freezes the implications of this statement slowly seeping into his brain. What the hell was this guys problem? He said he was just like Ash if that was the case why did he want to make his life harder?

At first Eiji had viewed Ash as untouchable, a powerful shonen hero like the ones from his childhood heroically fighting against evil men who wanted to control him but after that night. Eiji had seen the look of devastation on Ash’s face as he put a bullet in Shorter Wong’s brain. Even covered in the blood of his enemies ,Ash had such a shattered look about him.

The nights that followed were full of raw howls and heaving sobs as Eiji soothed Ash Lynx back to sleep. By day his gang members cowered from his wraith since the slightest thing they did seemed to set him off.

He cann’t handle anymore he’s been brutalized for far too long and as much as Eiji wished he was like those magically girl characters who made everything all right. He couldn’t just reach inside and rewire Ash’s brain or fix his heart with gentle fingers. All the love in the world could not repair the damage Golzine had inflicted.

Yut Lung had the means to tear what was left of Ash’s heart straight from his chest and crush it under his heel. Which is why Eiji said what he did next.

“ If your Ash’s enemy then i’ll be yours!” Eiji proclaimed defiantly.

Yut Lung’s usual hateful mocking expression was replaced by pure shock. Then he laughs.

“ Very well if you're my enemy” Yut Lung motions to the gun in Eiji’s hand and raises a delicate eyebrow as if to say get on with it.

Eiji raises the gun and points it at the other boy with one bullet and he can get rid of one more problem for Ash, but something about the other boy’s eyes makes him hesitate. There’s an uncomfortable familiar vibe to them that unnerves him and makes Eiji unable to pull the trigger and end things. Also killing an unarmed person, even one as vile as Yut Lung still isn’t right. It goes against everything he’s been taught.

“ Disgraceful, how can you be my greatest enemy if you cann’t even pull the trigger?” Yut Lung looks at him as if he’s a disappointing liar who cheated him.

Eiji’s plan was too escape and run directly to save Ash. he was just about to get back to that plan. When the younger boy who had looked pissed when he saw Eiji in the elevator shows up and tackles Eiji to the ground.

“ You ok?” he asks Yut Lung softly

“ I’m fine!” Yut Lung brushing the boy's concern away. “ Just get him back to his room” he snapped with irritation…

Eiji threw himself upon Yut Lung Lee who moved swiftly out of the way, he fell and smacked his head on the door.

“ Is this your way of persuading me you’ll be a good enemy or a court jester?” Yut Lung said with some amusement.

“ How did you know?” Eiji asked rubbing his head

“ I’m not the person to fall for the same trick twice” Yut Lung said …

Eiji shoves his dinner into the face of Yut Lungs servant and hurls the plate at him, the other boy dodges.

“ I’ll have another plate brought up for you, if you toss this one you can go to bed hungry” The younger boy warns with a pleasant smile…

“ How the hell did he get a lighter!” Yut Lung exclaimed furiously using expensive cloth to douse the flames to save his precious plants as the guards restrained a smirking Eiji...

“ Fine you can be my enemy, I certainly hate you enough” Yut Lung spat.

“ Great now please free me so i can save Ash” Eiji said.

“ No, though you have managed to irritate me, your technique is sloppy and unrefined. If you're going to be my enemy, you're going to become worthy of that title” Yut Lung makes a motion to his mafia goons who drag and blindfold Eiji when they take it off he sees he’s in an underground room.

“ Lets start with your breathing” Yut Lung states.

“ breathing?” Eiji demands

“ Its loud i can hear you coming, we need to change that” Yut Lung says simply “ But i need to” the mafia heir cuts him off “ I’ll keep an eye on the Ash situation” …

“ What? you have a shooting range on your estate?” Eiji exclaims looking at the fancy targets one of Yut Lung’s guys hands the boy a gun.

“ You should see the interrogation room in the basement” Yut Lung says sardonically and lines up his weapon and takes aim bam bam bam! Three straight shots in a row.

“ I cann’t tell if your fucking with me” Eiji said with a scowl.

“ Here” Yut Lung hands him a gun. Eiji frowns, forgive me Ash but i’m doing this to save you. He takes a few shots.

“ Disappointing” Yut Lung states.

“ What are you talking about i got half of them” Eiji argues.

“ Half isn’t good enough in a shoot out with me and my men” Yut Lung shot back. “ Lets talk about your shooting stance”

“ Ash showed me this!” Eiji argues.

“ What works for one person doesn’t work for everyone” Yut Lung informed him. “ Lets try some different stances and see if we can find one, That works better for you”

Eiji placed his arms and legs where Yut lung told him “ This is weaver stance its a boxer type, it might work better. You have a wider frame, Ash is more slender in build.”

It was surreal Eiji thought being taught by the one person he couldn’t stand who actually had some good advice. He found the second time he actually hit more of his targets. Yut Lung made him practice until almost nightfall...

Eiji found his days of being a captive were now loaded with lessons every day he was led blindfolded to some obscure location of the house. Where Yut Lung would instruct him on one topic or another...

“ Again” Yut Lung commands as Eiji pulls yet another acupuncture needle from his body. He was just glad they were clean; he still had awful memories of suddenly blacking out from whatever horrible substance the mafia heir put in those things.

Though he could do without Yut Lungs constant criticisms which made him want to curl in a corner and cry and took him back to his school days of struggling to balance athletics and still maintain perfect scores on every test. Eiji told himself at least the mafia heir wasn’t focused on Ash. Besides it was the same pressures he grew up with and this time he was determined not to crack…

A month later and Eiji was sitting at the dining room table apparently after no instances for a couple of weeks and Yut Lung had loosened his restrictions. Though he was still being lead to and tied to the table with one hand.

The boy who recaptured him who Eiji learned was called Sing Soo Ling was loading up and gobbling down what appeared to be multiple dishes.

“ You can at least use a napkin. I'm sure the Wong’s didn’t raise you to be a pig” Yut Lung remarks.

Sing responds by opening his mouth and giving the other boy a view of his chewed food. Yut Lung makes a soft sound of disgust as he delicately dabbles at his mouth. He turns to Eiji “ You made some slight improvements” he remarks. Coming from Yut Lung, it's almost a complement.

“ Are you seriously training this guy to be your enemy?” Sing demands incredulously

“ Honestly he wasn’t even my first choice” Yut Lung responds.

“ You ritch types are weird” the fourteen year old said.

“ i don’t go around with something called dragon fang” Yut Lung retorted.

“ Maybe if you did, you’d get taken hostage less!” Sing responded.

“ He got the jump on me. How is that my fault?” Yut Lung exclaims

Eiji watches incredulously as the two of them get into a pointless argument going back and forth there’s no heat to it really, rather a sense of comfort. Its the kind of argument he might have with his younger sister. Its just odd seeing this casual behavior from Yut Lung Lee of all people.

“ So Eiji has this guy dangled you over a snake pit yet?” Sing asks cheerfully

“ Where did you hear something so ridiculous?” Yut Lung complains

“ Servant gossip” Sing replies.

“ They’ve gotten chattier since my brothers illness” Yut Lung scowls.

“ Come on Yue don’t be so uptight” Sing coaxes

“ What’s the point of having a staff if they don’t know how to stay quiet” the mafia heir points out.

“ Their not spilling any secrets, just making up odd stories ” Sing pointed out.

“ If i hear one word of actual Lee businesses pass anyone's lips…” Yut Lung was interrupted by the entrance of a servant girl who whispered something in his ear.

“ What!” Yut Lung hurled one of the dishes at the wall.

“ Getting hysterical again!” Sing teased him.

“ Shut up!” Yut lung got up “ No one can seem to find Ash”...

Eiji sits in his room Yut Lung is too off kilter to continue his training. Sing gives him updates saying that the mafia heir spends a lot of time sending his people out, waiting by the phone and has even headed out a few times himself. It worries him that Yut Lung hasn’t actually given up on Ash. So he does push ups and pull ups every day to keep in shape. Eiji practices the stealth techniques Yut Lung showed him. He steals a pen so he can practice writing the codes on the walls he was taught to decipher and study. He has Sing bring him firearms so he can practice taking them apart and putting them back together.

Then Yut Lung visits him a few days later“ We found Ash” Eiji watches all of the tension from the past few days vanish from him with those three words. This guy was actually concerned for Ash?

“ You really are devoted to becoming my enemy” Yut Lung comments tracing codes on the walls with astonishment.

“ Ash?” Eiji asked

“ He escaped from one of Dino Golzine’s secret government funded organizations ” Yut Lung looks bothered like this is something he hadn’t known about. “ He’s been experimenting on criminals with Banana Fish” …

Its one more day then he’ll finally see Ash and the others again. “ Now before our final lesson there’s someone i want you to meet” Yut Lung leads Eiji into a room down the hall and opens the door. He gasps there’s a grown man with eyes like Shorter’s drooling on himself! He groans at Yut Lung who touches his cheek lightly.

“ Eiji may i introduce Hua Lung my older brother”

“ You used that horrible drug on him!” Eiji backs up.

Its wrong, even worse is the way Yut Lung pulls his living human puppet into an affectionate embrace, his eyes gleaming with hate.

“ Hua Lung was my former enemy” the younger boy pauses. “ Tomorrow i’ll be giving you back to Ash”

Eiji stares stunned at how his arms are still wrapped so tenderly around the one who he had so thoroughly destroyed.

“ Don’t look so surprised” Yut Lung says, misunderstanding the reason for his reaction.

“ I only wanted to deliver Ash to Golzine to force him to be my enemy” Yut Lung looked Eiji in the eyes over the shoulder of his zombie brother. “ Now you are my worst enemy, who will someday destroy me”...

“ Eiji!” Ash embraces him tightly as if he never wants to let him go. Eiji manages to persuade Ash, Yut Lung was just giving him a safe place to stay. The blond would go ballistic if he knew the truth.

Their just about to go then Yut Lung pulls him into a hug Eiji’s body goes entirely stiff he feels the softness of the other boys hands on his skin his voice in his ear like a lovers caress “ Goodbye for now, Eiji”

then the hands are gone his body feels chilled as he remembers exactly who else was embraced with such vindictive tenderness.

“ Eiji .what’s wrong?” Ash asked

“ Yes Big Brother Eiji are you cold?” Yut Lung asks innocently.

Eiji suddenly feels the full weight of the obligation he’s agreed to pressing down on him. How is he supposed to look at those oddly familiar eyes and manage to close them forever? But if he doesn't, well Eiji doesn’t want to think about it.

[tolkienhorror]

In Sauron’s Lab: File #2

Another oneshot about one of Sauron’s favorite torture methods.

Warnings: Abuse, torture, non-con.

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“Choose,” Sauron demands coldly, and Maitimo knows better than to disobey.

He’s tried a couple of times, in the beginning, when he was still in possession of his dignity, his clothes, his anger and spite, his hair. It never ended well.

The first time he said no when Sauron ordered him to play along in one of the dark maia’s sick experiments, the enemy crushed his throat by standing on it

seeing as you don’t know how to speak, you don’t need your vocal cords, do you

until Maitimo choked on his own blood and passed out; his voice still doesn’t sound the same. The second time, a considerable length of a Balrog’s whip was shoved up his unprepared behind

if you can’t figure out how to kneel properly, we’ll have to keep you from sitting down, won’t we

and then yanked back out with such force that a lot of charred, stretched flesh came with it. Sauron needed a week to put all of his intestines back where they belong, and Maitimo has been awake for most of the procedure.

The third time when he said no, he had to watch another Balrog spear the restrained body of an elf that Maitimo had known since birth, on the enormous, glowing length of his inhuman cock, inch by painstaking inch, until the screeching screams of agony had turned to bloody gargles.

what kind of leader are you who won’t even suffer to protect his own people

The beast then proceeded to fuck the dying body for another 20 minutes straight, right before Maitimo’s eyes before light of life finally left that poor soldier.

These days, Maitimo knows better than to disobey Sauron.

So he points, dully - with his chin as that is the only part he can move at least half an inch right now - to the middle one of the three spacious jars waiting on the table next to his usual spot on Sauron’s examination stretcher, though he really couldn’t care less. The plain metal vessels all look the same, and none of them will contain anything good.

The movement has his throat tenses up, and Maitimo tries his best not to gag around the thick tube threaded through his ring gag and shoved deeply in his mouth, just far enough to make sure everything coming through it will make it down to his stomach, not far enough to spare him the taste of whatever his tormentor will choose to fill him up with this time.

Maitimo hasn’t eaten in more than two weeks and he should probably be grateful that he will be at least rid of the clenching knot of emptiness that his stomach has become for a few minutes. But he knows Sauron well enough to know, the price for that little moment of comfort will be far too high.

“A smart choice, pet. You are starting to learn.”

Sauron absently pats his belly, then gives a firmer smack to the slightly bulging skin below, and Maitimo groans when his inner muscles clench around the other, much thicker tube deeply lodged in his rectum.

It doesn’t hurt, not like the variety of spiked phalluses and cocks he’s been raped with since being taken prisoner. But it sits far enough inside of him to ensure that whatever Sauron will choose to empty into that funnel at the end of that second tube, will go deeply into his body and not come out anytime soon.

Maitimo could live with that too, he supposes; after almost a year in the misery that is his life now, he’s no stranger to the humiliation of enemas anymore. And as painful as burns from too hot liquid are, as revolting as it is when one of his abusers chooses to fill his abused ass with all the piss they have in them that day, sometimes until Maitimo can taste it on his tongue ... That kind of traces usually go away and heal quickly.

It’s the sound he’s afraid of tonight. Almost as thick as a finger, stretching his limp cock open to its limits, and Sauron hasn’t bothered to lube up that third hollow tube before thrusting it all the way in until it’s bottomed out in Maitimo’s dehydrated bladder. His urethra throbs and stings, and he knows he’s bleeding but that’s not what worries him. Bleedings stop.

It’s the additional sheer helplessness of knowing he’s about to be filled up from several sides at once, and that there’s nothing he can do to control or stop it, that has him shivering in cold sweat and yank in vain on the straps and shackles that tie him down on the table. That keep his scraggy legs up and spread widely, all of his most sensitive parts on obscene, vulnerable display for his captor’s too hot, dainty hand.

Though Maitimo’s struggling is achieving nothing but more sore muscles and a little quiet rattling, of course, Sauron feigns exhausted disappointment. “Now, now, don’t ruin that good impression with fidgeting, pet. You’ve been doing so nicely the last few weeks. You’re on a good way to become my favorite test subject. But you really ...“

The maia’s lithe, tall shape bends down over Maitimo’s bare crotch, the unnatural white of his skin that shows under the low, pointed cut of his black tunic, flushing with just the hint of pulsating red as he stretches out his long forked tongue. With a purr, he licks over the sturdy shining metal protruding from Maitimo’s tortured orifices.

“... need to learn how to keep still.”

Sauron presses down on Maitimo ‘s lower body again, intentionally and harder this time, while Maitimo thrashes against his bonds once more, wailing into his gag when the metal inside his ass and cock heats up within seconds, blistering highly sensitive tissue, eating away at muscle that won’t be working as it should for days. Weeks maybe, depending on when Sauron decides to sing his body back together this time.

“Oh, pet. What did I just say? Looks like I have chosen a good time to help you work on your discipline.”

Sauron feigns another bored sigh, betrayed by the considerable bulge under his tight pants, when he reaches for the pot that Maitimo has chosen earlier. With the handle fastened to one of the many hooks in the frame of this hated, dreadful table that Maitimo has spent most of his last months on, Sauron angles the vessel right above the first of those three funnels that promise another few hours of greater pain than Maitimo has ever known it in his whole life.

“Now be a good little pet and have your dinner. I wouldn’t want to have to punish you for choking on your own tongue again.”

Maitimo does wince and retch when the first taste of filth and salt and ash hits his tongue, because if the smell hadn’t given it away yet, now he knows exactly what this is. He’s been force-fed by one of the cocks violating him frequently too often not to. But this will go down his throat whether he actively helps it or not, so it won’t make a difference. And he’s really not interested in snorting Balrog piss from his nose, so he obeys, because what else is there to do?

An unpleasant but still a lot more bearable warmth than the one before spreads in his stomach, and for a moment he thinks, he can do this, he will be okay.

Then Sauron places the second of the bowls over the funnel hanging over his reddened, swollen hole, and Maitimo’s guts are being set on fire. He’s not exactly sure what it is or how he even still makes it to scream between swallowing the too quickly, relentlessly dripping liquid.

But somehow, some way, he still can take it, he still can stay awake and lucid, and that’s all that counts. Because when he blacks out, Sauron always gets angry enough to make his ordeal even worse, and Maitimo doesn’t think it actually can be right now.

That is before Sauron opens the lid of the last vessel and the smell of vinegar hits Maitimo’s senses.

His eyes go wide enough to almost pop from their sockets. Somehow, without ever wanting it, he croaks out a plea between the metal confinements stretching his jaw painfully open, and then he almost does choke because he forgets to swallow and he can talk no more.

Not that it matters. Sauron doesn’t even comment on his little moment of verbal weakness. With the hand not busy hanging up the third bowl, he’s languidly, almost disinterestedly rubbing his raging erection through the leather fabric of his clothes while he sets the third and last vessel and tips it into position.

A sensation of liquid lava travels through the already too-hot metal in Maitimo’s cock, hitting his insides like that hot-red poker that Sauron raped him once with in the very beginning, when he dared to say no to riding his cock in front of his fellow prisoners. He screams and screams, spluttering snot and bile and piss through mouth and nose, wheezing and coughing between the desperate, unintelligible pleas for mercy from his throat that he knows he will not be granted. Blood is seeping from the wounds of his restraints on his wrists and ankles, his hips and shoulders. He can hear the bones in his neck crack dangerously from his useless strain against the straps on his jaw and forehead tying his head down, and he knows, he won’t be able to turn his head for weeks to come once this is over.

Which it won’t be before he’s ripped open and poisoned from the inside out by body fluids and acid whatever other shit he’s being fed; he doesn’t need to hear Sauron’s next words to know.

Visibly satisfied with his work, Sauron gives him another absent pat on his stomach that is slowly but certainly bulging with too much liquid pouring into him from three sides.

“Much better. Now let’s see how much we can put into you before you start tearing, shall we? It’s really for your own good, pet. We don’t want a mess like last time when you next provide some well-deserved entertainment for our hard-working soldiers. Learn how to be grateful how well I’m looking out for my favorite subjects, and you can make your life in these halls so much easier.”

He bends over Maitimo’s head to press a humiliating kiss to the top of his sweat-drenched head before walking back to his desk to pick up his usual parchment roles for his notes on their little experiment, the half-hard erection between his legs already forgotten. He seldom wastes time fucking Maitimo himself these days. There’s so much more entertaining techniques for him to use on that broken shell of an elf that was once a High King.

Maitimo is left alone hurting, bleeding, desperate and losing another fragment of his soul to ever-lasting hopelessness.