#so it falls to sister or dad who are doing not great either just less worse

[shararan]

On one hand it's nice not to be the only one suffering, but on the other hand it's hard not to feel angry about having to watch your loved ones also suffering needlessly without being able to do anything. But then yet again having grown up with a homebound disabled mom definitely played a huge role in being able to recognize that the fault lies not with me re: disability and discrimination, which has helped with dealing with bureaucracy throughout the years.

[milksteaki]

Your HC on Brick and Bubbles? <3 what is their relationship like? And most especially why do you ship them ?

RAAAAAAAAH!!!! omg, I've been waiting for an ask like a lil puppy!!!! OMG I LOVE THIS QUESTIONNNNNNN! Okay, headcanons on the Puppy Love ship, let's go!!!

this one's a long one

So first, a rundown on my headcanons for Brick and Bubbles:

Bubbles first. I think Bubbles has a much more mature outlook on good and bad than her sisters do. Don't let her ditzy attitude fool you. Bubbles sometimes she is less smart than she actually is just for jokes. "Okay, but why did I think that bush was actually the Professor but in drag". But really, she understands the moral grey that the world actually is. Life isn't just Good vs. Bad, and Bubbles knows that and lets that insight inform all of her superhero fights.

She never stops being sensitive, and instead of going with the "this hardens her later in life route", I went with the "she is actually more frustrated with her inability to harden" route. She wants to be tough and unfeeling often, especially because the emotions she feels continue to be strong and intense and absolutely devastating. Unfortunately, she just can't stop the intensity. Maybe it's because when she feels happy, she feels that joy so intensely, that it's like, why would she want to harden? Like such intense happiness that she looks back at the sadness cringing. As if she can't imagine being that sad. But of course, the sadness always comes back. I never really liked it when people took away her joy as she got older and acted like that was just a normal part of life. Like as an adult myself, sure I'm not as carefree and as hyper as I was when I was a kid, but I would still be considered a bubbly person now even though my life isn't that great. And don't think shitty things just never happened to me either.

Brick, on the other hand, is a hard cynic who hates everything except maybe himself. He is mostly stupid, but he thinks he's the smartest guy in the room. And he hates when people point out when he's wrong (which is why he hates most people, except for his yes-man Butch). I say mostly because the bitch can't spell and he just be spewing bullshit sometimes. But smart in other ways; he is resourceful, keeps up with the news, is somehow in the know for a lot of things, is quick-witted, and is great at improvising whether it's with fighting or in day-to-day life. These skills often save him from ever going to jail.

Also, I HC that Brick essentially emancipates himself AND his brothers from their dads without really asking his bros. His thought was that his dads are just- way too much. And because of his personality, he just hates having to report to an authority above him, like get off my back old man! He essentially raises his brothers, including influencing their humor, music, and values. Part of his relationship with his brothers is an ego thing. He loves being the leader and using his brothers to make himself look better. But another part of it is that he genuinely loves his brothers. And he realizes this way too late (realized when his bros were moving on from needing him). And it fucks him up. And that pushes him to be a better person actually.

OK SO THE RELATIONSHIP:

I FUCKING LOVE THEIR ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP MAN. Like listen, as much as I love to shit on Brick, he is still a suave dude. Like the dude knows how to flirt and he's super quick with it, just great timing with shit. Sometimes it genuinely creates butterflies in Bubbles' stomach, other times she lets it completely go over her head. One, because it's funny, and two, because she kinda wants to be unassuming sometimes:

"So do you just jump around often, or are you just happy to see me"

"Oh I'm just giddy because Fruits Basket is FINALLY rebooting after like a million years, but it's nice seeing you to Brick :)."

"Oh... Fruits Basket."

Bubbles isn't a master of flirting, but people fall in love with her constantly. Like Bubbles so so SO effortlessly gets people to love her and she doesn't need to be perfect like Blossom or a badass like Buttercup. She is just so endearing and fun to be around that she attracts people with ease. Brick is just another guy who likes her basically. So he needs to work to prove to her that he is the one, and not those other nobodies.

And because of his cynical nature, he expects that the longer he knows her, he's going to uncover just the underlying sinister nature behind her bubbly persona, but he never does. Bubbles is through and through a good person who is mostly consistent in her philosophies and is just a genuinely sincere person. And she works hard to be good and she sticks by it. Brick respects the consistency and standing up for her shit. Bubbles is one of the few people who convinces Brick's stubborn mind. And it's not because of her feminine wiles, but rather because Bubbles' consistency to be good and the merit to her nuanced arguments are what gets through to him. Bubbles is also a great person to concede to because she will NEVER make you feel bad for losing an argument to her. She makes him feel heard and understood before she disagrees. So when they fight, they often deescalate it before it escalates much. Really the issue for them is how fucking long it takes for Brick to finally be ready for being in a relationship with Bubbles. But when they do, it is really nice.

I see them as huuuuge tumblr-fandom nerds. They both have had homestuck phases that they try to forget. Brick will interpret characters in veeery particular ways and gets pretty peeved about different interpretations. Bubbles is that super open-minded person who is so kind and carefree that honestly you don't mind that some of their interpretations are absolutely heinous. Bubbles (pre-relationship) would also constantly compare him and her with other characters with culpable romantic tension and that imports thoughts into Brick's head.

Once Bubbles likes someone, she is like suuuuper romantic. Doodling hearts next to Brick's name. Doodling his face everywhere. Capturing a unique beauty in odd profiles of Brick's. And like just imagine Brick sees them. These aren't idealizing him or making him look like a model, but rather capture the flaws and make them beautiful in an artistic and vulnerable way. Maybe at first Brick is like caught back, like smug, like haha ur drawing me so u liiiike me, but then he's like hold on, these are like, really good. See I am also a sucker for Brick enjoying art. The portraits would evoke something in him, he'd feel the intimacy of being drawn in such a loving way. (or maybe I'm just being self indulgent haha).

Brick and Bubbles go out a lot. Brick always takes her to secret spots, and somehow he always knows where the best Italian or the best Chinese food is, and they're always these underground spots. They are also both social butterflies and will often make conversation with strangers. They meet people who are complete characters and it makes for great stories. Entertainment for Brick and new friends for Bubbles! Another thing, Bubbles and Brick are just pretty funny together. Like Bubbles is so fucking silly and Brick is silly but in a very different way. Sometimes Brick is Bubbles' straightman and other times Bubbles is his.

Running on fumes,,, why I ship it:

Because I ship Blossutch and Boomercup,,,jk kinda. Honestly, I blame the Bubble Boy episode. From how Bubbles was able to decieve them so long, only to blow her cover by doing something so hardcore that even Boomer wouldn't do it? That earned Brick's respect for sure. AND THE FACT BUTCH THREW UP??? SCAB BOY???? Yeah, that surely got her brownie points. So from this, I created the headcanon that Brick holds some respect for her and genuinely refuses to underestimate her because shit was fucking metal. And Bubbles is CONSTANTLY underestimated by everybody else (see the fucking Hardcore episode) and she faces this obstacle all the time especially because of my body headcanons (short and a lil chubby). So when a guy like Brick actually sees her as a fucking threat, it feels nice. And they're funny together. Big plus.

[1lostsoul0fishbowl]

Time for some Grant (Freak) and Jeff headcanons!

I’ve been neglecting these sweet boys lately so here’s a few random tidbits I came up with for them…

Full name: Grant Raymond Alexander

Has four little sisters…

Lisa— same age as the Party. Doesn’t run in the same circles as them, because she’s a cheerleader and plays softball, but Grant asked her to kind of watch over El in school so Lisa made a point to befriend her.

Ida— same age as Erica Sinclair and they are sassy besties. Erica is constantly trying to get her to join Hellfire, but Ida doesn’t want to admit to Grant that she thinks something he likes is actually cool.

Annie— a couple years younger than Ida and Erica. She’s a shy little bookworm and often gets kind of lost in the shuffle of her big family.

Beth— same age as Holly Wheeler, they’re also besties. They terrorize Eddie on a regular basis by demanding he play beauty parlor with them and let them “style” his hair.

Grant’s dad owns some stuffy corporate accounting firm and he expects Grant to follow in his footsteps and join the family business. Grant is studying accounting at college, but he hates it and dreams of being a rock star or a pastry chef— or both! He wants to create beautiful things. (Full credit for the pastry chef idea goes to @moonchildreads - we ❤️ Donny!)

His dad also is the director of the church choir. Grant likes being in the choir but after spring break ‘86 he started enjoying church itself a lot less. He’s thinking of quitting but doesn’t want to disappoint his father.

Grant goes to the local community college because he wanted to stay close to home to help take care of his sisters— he didn’t think all the babysitting, cooking, etc should fall to Lisa just because she’s a girl.

Just because he’s chubby doesn’t mean he’s slow. Grant is super strong and agile. He played football during his freshman and sophomore years, but HATED the toxic attitude of the jocks and the constant pressure from the coach. When he didn’t come back to the team junior year, most of them viewed it as a betrayal. But they can’t bully him because he’s bigger and stronger than all of them.

Full name: Jeffrey Dean Collins

Middle kid of three, all brothers…

Julian— two years older. Star athlete who now coaches football at one of the state colleges.

Jonathan— two years younger. Total math and science nerd. Dustin calls him the smartest kid in the school (and is totally jealous of that fact).

Jeff is majoring in education, and his first year in college he did a minor in some music related field (producing or sound or something). He wants to be a music teacher. Initially he was thinking he could use what he learned to help corroded coffin make it big, but heard enough horror stories about trying to get into the music biz that he decided teaching would be just fine with him.

Jeff loves his brothers, but they’re all so different he feels like he has nothing in common with either of them. He also feels like the “underachiever” of the family since his talent isn’t in a school-related thing like sports or science.

However, Jeff does get along GREAT with his mom. Sometimes he feels like she’s the only person in his family he can actually talk to. They have the same wildly eclectic taste in music, both of them love reading, and she understands his moods better than anyone.

When Jeff and Eddie first decided to start Corroded Coffin, his dad and his brothers didn’t get it and were a little mean about it. “Why do you wanna play loud angry white music with that trailer trash boy”, etc etc. But his mom saw in Eddie the same thing she’d always seen in Jeff, that they were outsiders just looking for a place to fit in and a group to belong to, and she defended him. She informed the rest of the family that Jeff could make any kind of music he wanted, with any kind of people he wanted, as long as it made him happy. Eventually the rest of the Collins fam came around, and Jon even asked Jeff to teach him to play guitar.

If you have any headcanons for them you want to share with me, please feel free!!!

[novapark]

The Nova Family - Mainline Gen 7 (Background)

Okay let's talk about Bastian. His generation was a heavy mix of storytelling and gameplay so it's a bit of a mess. Especially because functionally gameplay wise he's sorta immortal? So he pops into later generations from time to time to help them with their problems. He has made a lot of mistakes in his own life so I like to think he does his best to help his kids avoid similar pitfalls.

Anyway, he was born in my game during a freeplay gameplay I did with his dad Maddox after I had finally given up on trying to fix my original save file. Oddly enough this loss of the original save file like ten years ago kinda led to a lot of the weirdness in my later generations since I don't play the family in a single save anymore. I tend to do multiple saves, either for one sim I'm stuck on, or a set of sims from the same generation. So explaining how the story went is a bit more complicated after this point cause there's a lot of mixed storylines and saves that come together weave together to form what I think is the definitive story of each generation. So with that said, let's get on to Bastian's tale.

So obviously his beginnings start with his father Maddox. Something I haven't brought up yet is my family (in sims 3) were witches with alien dna I called "Kasri" or "Kasari" in my older posts. There's a whole backstory to Cole and Ember but the short of it is, Cole was part of a culture that had a bad civil war and he used science to cut himself and his family from the majority of their power. He didn't want his children falling into the traps his ancestors did but a few generations in, my boy Maddox found out when he took over leading the town.

He was not happy about this so he immediately set to trying to undo Cole's work by doing DNA related experiments on himself. Then when that hit a dead end, he began working on his own personal breeding program. Ivy was the first result of that but after Allison died he went fully into it and got a job at a University as an excuse to do more research into occult DNA. There he met Petra, who's suspicious death paved the way for the first serious test of his new theories.

He created a "shadow clone" of her made mostly of the dark matter that gave his people their power (don't ask me how it works, *hand waves*) in order to produce a child with a much higher rate of alien dna (or in my speak voidcells). This pairing resulted in three children, Nova, Bastian, and Delora.

The oldest, Nova seemed to be just what he wanted. A high count and a natural aptitude for spells but unfortunately as she got older she started to display a common genetic instability that ran in his family they had nicknamed "Brielle's" because it first appeared with his older sister. He didn't get along with this sister and quickly gave up interest in Nova once he discovered this trait in her.

(Flashbacks to his sister's non stop teasing probably didn't help their relationship.)

Bastian was less promising to him, especially because he had some serious faults from the start. First, he seemed lazy and uninterested in his education at all which was a great insult to his genius father.

Second he struggled to sleep all night from day one which for someone that liked the privacy of night time studies but worst of all, he was disobedient and rebellious.

Maddox never tolerated people not listening to him or obeying well so he and Bastian had a lot of problems getting along while he was growing up. Even so there was one trait Maddox noticed as Bastian aged that might com in handy to his plans. He was absolutely obsessed with girls.

So when he found his younger sister Delora to be even less governable and irritating, Maddox settled on Bastian as the main topic for his newest research: Could exposure to more void cells increase his son's connection to power? He didn't know but his curiosity eventually got the better of him.

So soon after Bastian's 18th birthday he asked him to join him in the lab to help him with some experiments. This wasn't uncommon so Bastian thought nothing of it but after that day he'd never be the same.

[doodle-do-wop]

Kesler and Juline where cannonly childhood lovers, I think Juline had a temper and a hard time controlling her ability, and that Kesler was her alchemy tutor and wears dorky glasses similar to Milo Thatch. 

Do you have any Kesline headcannons thoughts anything at all

I’m working on a kesline teen fic and you have posted about them like three times in the last month which is more than most people do, yes there is a slight possibility of any of your head cannons ending up in the fic if they fit

Hi ya!

I have so so many headcanons

Elves show affection with loved ones (best friends, family, lovers, etc) by pressing foreheads together. The longer it lasts, the deeper the affections are.

Friends and family will do it for about the same duration as a normal hug

Lovers and friendships that are beyond love will obviously last longer.

Also I love childhood lover trope and that is canon now, Shannon is wrong. They were childhood lovers. Juline nearly failed her mid-term so badly due to her somewhat newly manifested Froster abilities being affected by her emotions making the beakers freeze over. It was a whole thing.

Kesler and Juline had known each other for years, like years!

Kesler fell first, Juline phased through the entire planet falling for him

Juline has had a fascination with human stuff for ages. Kesler just thinks it's funky but if Juline's blabbering about floppy disks he doesn't care what a 'computer' is, she's talking and he's listening.

Juline has constantly cold hands, Kesler holds them to keep her warm

Kesler likes baking, its like alchemy but you can add as many tart berries as you want, say less

Eda makes awesome pastries, Juline makes...interesting soups

will you survive? Will you need an elixir? Is it moving or is it just the smoke giving you hallucinations?

Jokes aside, Juline likes making soups that dont look appealing but taste amazing

its a prank and a good meal

They like to dance occasionally to some of their favorites (human music included) and will drag the kids into mini dance parties (this does mean Dex can dance, i eat canon for breakfast)

(once again ignoring canon) Kesler has slightly more rounded ears than most elves, Juline's are pretty pointed

they've cried over Gnomeo and Juliette (they're just like them fr)

Juline used to be shorter up until their third year of Foxfire, the girl shot up like a goblin i swear

Like how Dex shot up in Nightfal (i think) Juline was just tall

Random Juline and Kesler Firefox hc under cut, I was too proud of them to let them stay in the drafts shelf

Juline

peak annoying little sister

youngest of three

her and Eda are the only ones who kept in touch

their eldest sibling has always been distant so there was never really a connection between Juline and them

her and Eda shared a room up until their second level of Foxfire, they were just that attached to the hip

neither of her parents are Frosters, her mom is a Conjure like Eda but her dad is a Guster

Eda is older by just two years meaning she manifested first with Juline buzzing to manifest next, hoping to either be like Eda or a Guster, maybe even a Hydrokenic or maybe one of her great great grand somethings will do her a solid and-

she manifested as a Froster

she was not happy about it

kept freezing everything, left little frosty footprints everywhere, brought the room temperature down constantly no matter how wrapped up in cloaks and tunics she was

tying this into your headcanon of Kesler being her Alchemy tutor, Juline nearly flunked her alchemy midterm, scraping by the skin of her teeth

she had been docked major points for frosting some of her tools and even putting out the fire she needed multiple times due to nerves

Now onto Kesler

- as the youngest of his family, Kesler has at least three people telling him what to do at all times

- and none of them could agree

- he and his siblings were born more or less close in age (if you count close as 4-8 years)

- his youngest older sister was in Foxfire along with Kesler which means whenever Kesler had any trouble in class she was right there to both brag, and help (it was her job to be both unhelpful and very helpful, it's sibling law)

- Kesler got his love and knack for Alchemy from his grandfather who wasn't too shabby himself but Kesler was a natural

- he loves his siblings but hanging out with his grandfather doing random alchemy experiments was just their thing

- Kesler was terrible with Elementalism so much so his sister would occasionally take the long route to her classes to check on him in the Healing Room

- you could tell if Kesler Dizznee was within twenty feet of you if you could hear the tell tale sound of glass rattling in a bag

- he was in the same class year as Juline (I ignore canon) so when Juline Dizznee needed a tutor guess who was signed up as the sacrificial lamb

[ash-and-books]

Rating: 3/5

Book Blurb:

The New York Times bestselling author Katherine Center's next laugh out loud, feel good rom-com about writing your own story.

She’s rewriting his love story. But can she rewrite her own?

Emma Wheeler desperately longs to be a screenwriter. She’s spent her life studying, obsessing over, and writing romantic comedies—good ones! That win contests! But she’s also been the sole caretaker for her kind-hearted dad, who needs full-time care. Now, when she gets a chance to re-write a script for famous screenwriter Charlie Yates—The Charlie Yates! Her personal writing god!—it’s a break too big to pass up.

Emma’s younger sister steps in for caretaking duties, and Emma moves to L.A. for six weeks for the writing gig of a lifetime. But what is it they say? Don’t meet your heroes? Charlie Yates doesn’t want to write with anyone—much less “a failed, nobody screenwriter.” Worse, the romantic comedy he’s written is so terrible it might actually bring on the apocalypse. Plus! He doesn’t even care about the script—it’s just a means to get a different one green-lit. Oh, and he thinks love is an emotional Ponzi scheme.

But Emma’s not going down without a fight. She will stand up for herself, and for rom-coms, and for love itself. She will convince him that love stories matter—even if she has to kiss him senseless to do it. But . . . what if that kiss is accidentally amazing? What if real life turns out to be so much . . . more real than fiction? What if the love story they’re writing breaks all Emma’s rules—and comes true?

Review:

A rom com lover who dreams about making it as a screenwriter gets the opportunity of a lifetime, working with her favorite famous screenwriter on his new rom com movie script... except he's not as charming or wonderful as she had hoped, and he refuses to work with a "nobody"... can she really write this rom com? Emma Wheeler loves rom coms, she's longed to make it as a screenwriter and is good enough to have won contests and even be offered an internship... but she's had to give it up in order to look after her father who was injured in an accident that killed her mother too....an accident she feels responsible for. Emma then gets a call from her manager with the job opportunity of a lifetime, to re-write a script for the famous screenwriter Charlie Yates, the same Charlie Yates that Emma has been obsessed with since forever. This is her dream job and she immediately gets on a plane to go... leaving her younger sister to step in for caretaking duties while Emma moves to L.A. for six weeks. Yet when she mets Charlie she is absolutely shocked to discover he is nothing like she imagined, he in fact is an egotistical, rude, and plain mean guy who refuses to work with a "failed, nobody screenwriter" despite the fact that his script is so terrible it could destroy his career, oh and the fact that he doesn't even want to write a rom com, he just wants a passable script to send off... and the fact that he doesn't believe in love. Emma is determined to change his mind about rom coms and love, despite the fact that he belittles her, treats her like dirt, and is so combative about everything, Emma wants to change his mind. Yet the more time she spends with him the more she begins to fall for him... yet can the same be said for him? Or is this all just to get the script he needs to get funding for his next movie project? This started off with potential... however I just couldn't ever get around to actually liking either character or enjoying their romance at all. I'm going to be honest, I just disliked Charlie overall, he really didn't endear me, he didn't come off as a great love interest after everything, and honestly he just got on my nerves. I really wish I did like this but the character's love story just didn't fit well enough for me and if I'm being honest i got a bit annoyed with both characters throughout the story. Both Emma and Charlie are going through a lot of their own issues but Charlie constantly taking it out on Emma and Emma just being his punching bag just didn't feel that great. It's an okay romance but it's definitely not one of my favorite ones from Katherine Center. I've loved Katherine's other books and will absolutely be reading her future works, this one just missed the mark a. bit for me. If you like opposites attract then give this one a go, maybe you'll have a better time with it than I did.

Release Date: June 11,2024

Publication/Blog: Ash and Books (ash-and-books.tumblr.com)

*Thanks Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

[rightpastnowhere]

Right soooo.

3. Drinking Headcanon - Vex & Vax

8. Shopping headcanon - Tary & Vex

12. Friendship headcanon - Vex & Zahra

16. Appearance headcanon - Any de Rolo child of your choice.

IT'S VEX HOURS BABY!!! AND ALSO THE DE ROLO BABIES

hoo boy this is a long one. i’m so sorry. i am insane, and you activated the Vex Loving Hours

headcanon ask meme

3. drinking, vex & vax

okay. tipsy vex and drunk vex are very different. tipsy vex is loud and fun and flirty, alcohol chipping away at that composure she tries to keep locked down. her posture loosens up, and she thinks less about what she says - she snorts and giggles, her words slur together, and she doesn't hesitate to just... be. it frees her up a little. drunk vex, however, is just... sleepy. like, once she's truly hammered, she just gets tired. and a little cuddly. it's at this point that people can catch the slightest hints of a byroden accent, where she forgets the 'g' in 'darling'. i am absolutely stealing this from this fic by @notaficwriter​ which is cute and amazing and lovely and everyone should go read it right now. drunk vax, as we see in canon, is just a silly guy. he's a funny man. he jokes and stumbles around, and loves his friends so much, and is also more likely to have conversations with his sister about love. he gets stuck in physical closets instead of metaphorical ones. he’s a dork and also an enabler of chaos

vex and vax together being drunk... is just a wild ride. in the beginning, they're sort of playing off each other, trying to see whose tolerance is better, encouraging each other to throw darts (and daggers) when they can't walk straight. but before vox machina, it was rare that they ever got drunk together. they knew the dangers of being intoxicated when they were nobodies, flitting from city to city, and if they weren't in the woods they were wrapped up in shady shit. if they got their hands on some good alcohol, they'd take their turns, and usually with trinket on watch, too. they wanted to enjoy some of the little things, but not at the risk of each other. sometimes they'll still fall into the habit with VM, starting to argue over who's the designated driver monitor for the night, before remembering, oh, we don't need to do that anymore. and then they get Plastered

8. shopping, tary & vex

tary and vex both adore shopping. in fact, it's one of their little bestie bonding activities - just heading out to shop, either in whitestone (it's still recovering, but by the time skip some of the cute little stores have definitely begun to reemerge) or in emon. they go clothes shopping and enable the shit out of each other. vex has a slowly growing collection of elaborate hair clips, one that percy eventually makes a whole cabinet for. they also hit up armories and weapon shops like mall shops - "ooo, would you just look at these arrows? oh, gods, they're so gorgeous" "vex'ahlia, you have to see this armor, oh it's so lovely-" "ooooo you have to get it!!" “oh taryon, have you seen this mace? oh it’s so darling” “oh pike would love that” “she would!” and. they’re kind of joking, but kind of not. it is so confusing to all of the shopkeepers, it's great

the thing is, though, that initially, shopping was a huge conflict between them. their original animosity really centered around money - tary flaunted it like it was nothing, expected vex not to know shit about it, and to top it all off, it wasn't even his own hard earned money. he was coasting on dad’s coattails (and, even though we learn later that his dad is a dick, i can imagine that vex was a little bitter that at least this rich fuck’s rich fuck dad actually gave him something). even after tary's false bravado has dropped and vex has taken him in as her latest stray, he still has no concept of how money works, or its value. "it's a banana! how much could it cost, a platinum piece?" kinda vibes. he has no fucking idea how to haggle, either, and it nearly causes vex to go grey early. their earliest shopping trips are doubling up as educational moments. vex is gonna help this man learn money sense if it kills her

(they occasionally bring percy along as well, since he actually loves shopping nearly as much as them, but for the most part this is a ritual that the two of them keep to themselves during the year-long break. and occasionally, post-canon, during reunions they’ll slip away for some nostalgic browsing. just to feel a little more normal)

the rest of the headcanons (zahra and vex, the de rolo babies) are under the cut because i. went insane

12. friendship, zahra & vex

ZAHRA IS ONE OF THE MOST UNDER-APPRECIATED CR CHARACTERS AND I LOVE HER FRIENDSHIP WITH VEX SO MUCH THANK YOU

okay. listen. they give off the vibes of those friends who dated for a while and broke up amicably but still are all close and would absolutely agree to a friendly hook up you know. like that’s what i do with them in a modern au. but in canon they just... they have the vibes, okay. there’s a post somewhere with a gif of vex saying she’s got a crush on zahra, and i haven’t been able to find the actual moment but i hold this so close

ANYWAY! they have the weirdest friendship. half the time, when they get together, they just... sit in a library. or a room. and just read. they don’t talk to each other for hours, and say it’s some of the best company they’ve ever had. the other half of the time, they go out and absolutely fuck up the nearest tavern. they drink people under the table and threaten a healthy amount of creepy fuckers who try and hit on them. they throw darts absolutely plastered (vex) and cast one too many inebriated spells (zahra), and are just generally a fire hazard. and, again, they say it’s some of the best company they’ve ever had. they’re wild adventurers, going hard in their celebrations in part of the job description, but they’re also nerdy little introverts who find solace in the quiet company. they also have a pair of sending stones, and will drop everything to go help when the other calls. they’re ride or die, and have each other’s backs

also, post-canon, they have a lot of meet-ups that double as play dates, because the the zahra/kashaw twins and vesper are about the same age, and i imagine those weren’t the last of the hydris kids. also, of course, zahra absolutely adores gwen - vex named the kid after her, for fuck’s sake, which brought zahra to actual tears when vex told her, because she’d had her self-worth stripped away just like vex had; she never even dreamed someone would think highly enough of her to give her name to someone so precious. so, naturally, zahra is the most called-upon babysitter once gwen is around, at least until vesper is old enough for the responsibility (although zahra still volunteers her help). she also helps gwen a lot with coming into her tiefling heritage, and helps the rest of the de rolos learn infernal, touched by how dedicated they all are to helping gwen feel included and loved

16. appearance headcanon, any de rolo baby

again. i have no self restraint. so i’m gonna do all of them. but i might cut it down to one particular trait because this post is getting out of hand

vesper: i think she’s definitely celestial plane-touched in some way, shape, or form, whether she’s an aasimar or not (and i’ve started to slip to @essayofthoughts​‘s side of this whole matter, with her not being an aasimar but still pelor-blessed), but i don’t think she was born with any visible signs of it. i think she was born with dark hair, almost vex’s color but a touch lighter, and that after some incident as a kid (or just more exposure to magic and pelor-related magic, i’m not sure) it started to grow in white. soon after, her light brown freckles gained a cluster of silver ones scattered about, catching the sun the same way vex’s golden ones do (a headcanon i will die on the hill of)

leona: her hair is an absolute bitch to maintain. not only is it frizzy, but it’s frizzy curls. as someone with frizzy curly hair (that, actually, was not curly for the first bit of my life), it can be an absolute nightmare in any sort of humidity, or if you don’t use the right hair stuff. i think it’s less of an issue than it would be, given whitestone’s location, but any time they travel to byroden - or, hell, even emon - if leo doesn’t keep it fully braided or tied up, the frizz doubles it’s size. wolfe makes so much fun of her when it happens for the first time, calling her “lion-mane leo” in the brattiest way a 12 year old can. (he would have the same problem if his hair wasn’t cut so short)

wolfe: he’s got a round lil face, simply because i think it would be adorable. also, i think he’s got pretty strong freckles - the normal kind, but darker than vesper’s normal freckles because he spends more time outside. i headcanon him as a bow user (fighter class, specifically), but despite the bow not necessarily being a strength weapon and more dexterity (looks at vex’s 7 strength), he’s worked hard to build up some muscle so he can be useful in any sort of fighting. he’s got a protective streak a mile wide - for his siblings, of course, and the rest of his family, but also for anyone who’s disadvantaged or picked on. also, he has the absolute best style out of all of the kids. he’s the best dressed for every occasion. he and vex are a force to be reckoned with

also, for both of the twins: they’re the tallest of the kids, and they’re total dicks about it. they lord it over all of rest like it’s something to brag about, even though they’re the only ones who actually give a fuck. vesper only did for a little bit, once she stopped growing and they kept on getting taller, but got over it relatively quickly. the twins, however, did not. it’s hilarious. actually, the only one who gets huffy about it is percy - they end up just a smidge taller than him, once they’ve reached their final heights (although he’s mostly just emotional that they’ve grown up so much)

vax’ildan/freddie: i keep focusing on their hair BUT... i imagine he’d grow out his hair. not as long as vax’ildan did, and it’s a lot curlier than vax’s was, but the similarity still strikes vex every now and then. it actually hits percy on occaison, too - i imagine little ludwig had curly dark brown hair, and that when it got long he would tie it back until he could be bothered to get it cut, and it looked a little similar to how freddie wears it. i also think, as freddie grows older, it becomes apparent that he inherited vex’s complexion - his skin holds a decent tan through the winter, and is sun-warm light brown in the summer, especially when he starts spending more and more time outside with charlie. eventually, he looks more like vex’s mini than vax’s (or ludwig’s), which helps with the sting of resemblance

gwen: okay so i had a dumb headcanon for her ombre hair but then i looked up ipkesh’s appearance, and he ALSO has ombre hair and red skin, so i assume she just has those features because her planal affiliation comes from the ipkesh pact. BUT i’m gonna use the headcanon anyway, so: please imagine gwen trying to dye the rest of her hair white so she matches with vesper. it’s a disaster and it’s absolutely adorable

ANYWAY ANYWAY i just. please consider gwen with a little gap between her two front teeth when the adult ones grow in. combined with the little tiefling fangs that she has. she is the cutest kid in all of whitestone and everyone knows it. also, her horns kinda confuse me a little bit - they’re small, but they seem to be in their standard adult shape. i can’t imagine the s-shaped ones can grow any longer given their shape, and horns don’t just... increase in size, so those horns would have to be fully grown despite her young age (aside from scaling up as she grows up). but she does have those lil nub horns, so my idea is that eventually those will grow a little more and curve a little more, and then finally she’ll have a third pair of shorter, basically-nub horns that grow in. i just think that would be neat and adorable, and i haven’t seen a lot of multi-horned tieflings

holy shit i wrote so much i am. so sorry

[toonjazzy]

Sueños y Pesadillas

As the title says, dreams and nightmares. With the Legion

For once, all residents in the Origami Castle seemed to be asleep. This was a rare night indeed, usually the Origami King would stay up late folding Origami, or the Missile Maestro would draw or even watch dumb videos all night due to his insomnia, or the Disco Devil refused to sleep for she feared having more nightmares. Now what could be causing this rare occasion? Simple, Olly was actually tired enough to sleep, Jean was feeling sick which made it easier for him to fall asleep, and Devon wasn’t feeling too well either, she wasn’t sick but she was still too exhausted and had no choice but to get some rest. Throughout the night they all had their own dreams. Some good while others bad.

Jean laid in bed by himself, he didn’t want Stacey to sleep in his room tonight as he did not wish to make her sick as well. He held on tightly to his two headed bat pig plush that his beloved girlfriend made him to help him sleep. The poor teen was suffering from both being sick and from a not so great dream. He dreamt of being a kid again and his father calling him a freak, a disappointment, a mistake, and “Auttie Tottie”. Young Dream Jean could do nothing but take it as he was by himself, nobody was around to save him, he was on his own. His dad faded out and everything around him changed. His surroundings were erased and drawn again but to Overlook Mountain. He was 14 again, standing on top of the Tower, fighting off the Paper Version of that Red Plumber. The missiles hit him, he knew he died right there and that he went to some sort of void. But still he can’t recall what happened next. Jean thought he woke up in the morning after being reminded of that traumatizing event. He wasn’t awake, this was still just a dream…or nightmare. The entire castle was empty, he heard a scream and ran to find Olly crying hysterically as he held Stacey’s dead body in his arms. Her mouth was dripping blood and she had even less color than usual. “What happened to her?!” The slightly taller Emo asked. Olly looked up and tried to get it out, “Mario…Mario se rompió su mandíbula…” he said crying again, “He killed her! She’s dead!” Olly screamed in agony as more tears fell down his face. This time Jean actually woke up, he was still sick and didn’t feel any better. In fact, he felt even worse. He was scared to see he was alone again, he got up and snuck over to Stacey’s room. He silently opened the door and looked up to see her sleeping in her loft bed. He smiled in relief, she was okay and still alive. He noticed her lamb plush, Skoby, had fallen off the bed. “How did you get here?” He said very quietly as he dusted Skoby off and gently put it in Stacey’s arms, he swore Skoby smiled at him for a second. Everyone was aware Skoby sometimes had a mind of its own and kept Stacey safe and secure. Jean kissed Stacey on her forehead, “Sleep well, mon amour.” He said, Stacey smiled in her sleep, “Buenas Noches mi amor…” she muttered in her sleep. Jean smiled back, he patted Skoby on the head. “Good night, Skoby.”, he walked by Stacey’s sleeping dog. “Good night Staples.” He said. And so the young boy went back to his room hoping to feel better soon.

Across the hallway is where Tyler and Reese slept. They had barely gone to sleep after watching a movie. Tyler slept peacefully and dreamt of happy things. He dreamt of a world where Genderfluids were accepted by everyone, he dreamt that he had a good life. Everything was perfect in his dream, he was married to the love of his life, they had the children they always wanted, Reese became a famous actress, his sister returned to them, Jean wasn’t tired all the time anymore, his art was well known and he had his own life with Stacey who had her own books published and a line of dolls. He turned to see Lia with her wife, Ivy. Stacey playfully bowed to Lia as she always did ever since Lia married Ivy due to Ivy being a princess. He turned to the other side to look at Devon who sat in the moonlight with her headphones on and seemed so at peace. He walked over to her, holding his baby daughter in his arms. He didn’t even have to get close for Devon to open her eyes and say, “Yes, I want to hold her.”, she took the baby in her arms and rocked her. “Miss me? You miss Tía Devon? Oh look at that beautiful smile! I have a feeling you’ll be a lot like your dad, just like your sister over there.” She said. Upon hearing that, Tyler realized he never saw the faces of the children, not even Jean and Stacey’s daughter. And not in the punched out way either, he just never saw them show their faces, he realized that Marceline was still a child and not an adult like she should. He became self aware that this was all just a dream, a really good one that you don’t want to wake up from. Everybody disappeared, it was silent, it was just him alone. He sat down, “I really hate these too good to be true type of dreams…” he muttered.

His girlfriend on the other hand was not having a good night’s rest. Reese dreamt of being on a massive stage with strings attached as the puppeteer expressed that she’ll never have control, that she’ll never be taken seriously, that she’ll never be a script writer, that she’ll always have to play parts she hates written by people who don’t care about the audience, only the money. As the dream continued, she began to hear the audience boo and throw things at her, calling her all the cruel words they saw her character portraying as. “But it’s not me! I don’t agree with this! Please, I begged them not to make me do this! Please, cut my strings!” She tried to yell but it did no good, no words came out her mouth, only the ones the puppeteer spoke for her and made people believe this is what Reese was saying. She felt herself get so tangled up in her strings that she couldn’t breathe. Her eyes shot open and she was back laying in bed next to her boyfriend. It was dark, she hated that. She held on tightly to her sleeping boyfriend who had such a peaceful face. “Spread the joy to my dreams…” she said as she dozed off again.

Just down the hall, Lia levitated off her bed as she slept. It happened sometimes as she slept, usually meaning she was in a deep sleep. Her dreams were full of Anime and orange skies with pink grass and trees and even the seas. She usually had fun dreams of herself with her friends or dreams about herself just twirling in the cool breeze as the cherry blossoms flew by. This time however, she was not having a really great time. It appeared she was being reminded of when it all went wrong, when she lost herself and felt like she had no meaning anymore. There were two of her, little Lia with her twintails and her dollies stared at her 13 year old self in fear. They were on two rocks floating in a void, a thin piece of rope holding them together. “What are you doing!? I’m apart of you! You need me! I’m everything that makes you who you are today! If you erase me, you will have nothing!” The younger one cried out, begging to be spared. Her 13 year old self had no expression, no remorse as she stared back. “No, you are nothing. Nobody ever cared about you or likes you. I grew up, I don’t need you anymore. You have to be erased, nobody will take me seriously if I still like kid stuff or wear twintails. Goodbye. This is the end for you.” She said as she quickly cut the rope between them and the young Lia’s rock floated away and she faded. “No! No! You can’t block me out! I’m supposed to be with you!” She cried as she fully disappeared. Outside the dream she slept talked, “Why did I do that…Era féliz…”, she had many regrets, letting go of her childhood memories was one of them. She blocked out so much that she could barely remember being a kid now and was often confused when the others would talk about past memories she no longer had.

At the end of the hall was Stacey, her dreams seemed to go back and forth tonight. First it was a good dream, it was her in the future where she was happily married to Jean and they appeared to have a kid as well. She looked over at her dear husband as he read Stacey’s book to their daughter who held the doll Stacey made her. “Stephanie…” Stacey muttered to herself smiling, her whole life she wanted a daughter named Stephanie. It was great, she had her own books and her own doll lines, Jean was still doing art and even made drawings for his wife’s books sometimes. However, the dream was starting to turn bad as Stacey began having negative thoughts. Her books were being banned for idiotic reasons just as she always feared. But she didn’t live in America, so why was she worried? Wait, Americans live in the Origami Kingdom too. They banned her books for talking about being queer, her book about periods and health ed for anyone who needed it was being banned, her books that she wrote as a young child were banned for having an entirely Gay Main Cast. She was so frustrated, these books were made to help people, to take people on adventures, an escape from the harsh reality. And yet it all seemed useless, no matter what, her books would be banned. She wanted to quit. Around this point of the dream is when Jean came into her room. The dream got happier again as her husband showed her that her readers were fighting to have her books placed back on the shelf again. Their 3 year old daughter walked over with one of her books in her hands. “¿Puede leer para mi, mamá? Daddy say you made the story!” She said all smiling. Stacey smiled back, “Of course I will read it. Anything for my number 1 reader.” She said. “Thank you, Mamí!” Said Stephanie.

The final person in the bedroom hall sleeping was not having a pleasant night. Devon always remembered her dreams, whether good or bad she always remembered them. And due to her having nightmares since a baby, it was always a problem for her, being scared to sleep because she didn’t want nightmares. But she was in pain, she needed to rest to make it get better, which meant she had to sleep. As usual, she saw the dreaded silent dark void and heard her mom’s voice say “It’s okay, Devi” before all her bad memories played right in front of her, all the fear she had as a child came back to her, the constant need to be perfect attitude so that people would love her and take her seriously. The memories of her parent’s deaths replayed and her breathing became harder, next were the moments of her own death. She was back there again, the place she died. She couldn’t take it anymore, she screamed to be let out. This time nobody came, she screamed quieter this time so nobody would wake up. She laid down to get more rest, but could not fall asleep again, she was too panicked to get anyone to help her…

[cuntwrap--supreme]

Woken up at 6:30am by my mother screaming like someone's trying to kill her. Absolutely banshee wail. But I barely tune into it because both of my dogs jump into my bed, which means she's pissed and not in danger. Until, of course, I hear her slap my brother so hard that I can hear it over the air conditioner, the white noise machine I use, and a whining dog. My brother comes downstairs and I ask if he's ok. Says he doesn't want to talk. When I come up to get ready for work, I find this on his door:

Funny thing is, the "mother he used to know" was still a monster. She was just a little less unhinged when he was a baby. So she hit him - hard - and told him she hated him. I don't know where he is now. She broke his phone (told me that much) and told him to go catch the bus. Almost 100% guarantee he's not in school, but at Walmart or something instead.

And like... he's not a bad kid. Does he focus on video games over everything else? Sure. But again: His one parent tells him she hates him, so I get the escapism. Does he not clean up after himself? Absolutely, but *again*: His sole parent never taught him to. Is he an ass sometimes? Find me a teenager who isn't. Does he sometimes steal alcohol from the gas station nearby? Yes, and that's somehow only concerning to me in our entire family (both our mom and his dad are/were addicts, and I don't want him falling into that, too; it's a hard life). But he's also very smart and compassionate when given the avenue to be so. Like. I was sick recently, and this fucking goober walked to Walmart (3 miles away) while I was sleeping and came back with soup. For no reason other than I was sick. And he's great with computers. I'm trying to convince him to go to school for some kind of hacker shit because he's great at it. And he can do math, which I cannot. And all she sees is him being a dickbag teenage boy, and not any of the good shit he does, and I'm so sick of it. If I didn't think she'd tell the police I kidnapped them, I'd take both my brother and my sister with me when I move soon. Not enough space, but I'd do it if she wouldn't lie to cops to get her children (which she treats like they're possessions, not people) back.

Truly, she is the worst person, and is only ensuring her kids will either also be shit people, or that not a one of us will act like she exists here in a few years.

[storiesforallfandoms]

talent that runs in the family ~ machine gun kelly

word count: 2128

request?: yes!

“Being rooks sister and substitute him while he recovers and slowly start to fall in love with colson”

description: she steps in to replace her brother when he is seriously injured and ends up gaining feelings for his friend

pairing: machine gun kelly x female!reader

warnings: swearing

masterlist (one, two)

“Thanks so much for doing this (Y/N),” Rook said over the phone. “I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, no problem,” I said. “But does Colson know that I’m...y’know...not a seasoned vet?”

“You’ll do fine.”

I refrained from reminding him that he didn’t actually answer my question.

After Rook’s accident left him out of commission for some time, he came to me to ask if I’d fill in for him. I jumped at the opportunity. Rook had taught me how to drum when I was young and, much like my big brother, it became a passion of mine. How could I turn down working with one of the biggest artists of the year, even if it were just for a short while?

Well, my nerves were definitely telling me I should’ve said no as I walked into soundcheck that day.

“Whatever,” I said. “I’ll call you after the soundcheck.”

“Hey, don’t be nervous. You’re gonna do great.”

I said my goodbyes and hung up. I tried not to focus on how big the venue we were playing in was as I made my way to the otherwise empty stage. I thought I was the first person to arrive until I heard someone calling my name.

“(Y/N), up here!”

I looked up to see the guys sat in a booth in the balcony. Colson was all but leaning over the railing, waving for me to join them. I had no idea how to get up there on my own, but luckily a security guard showed me the way.

The guys were eating pizza and drinking from plastic cups as if they were the ones attending the concert and not performing in it.

“Pre-show ritual,” Colson told me. “Especially when we have someone new joining the band. Sit! Have a slice!”

“Shouldn’t we be practicing?” I asked, but still sat with them. I didn’t want to completely mess up my first day.

“We have hours to practice,” one of the other guys I remembered as Slim said. “And we don’t really need to. We do this every night. A soundcheck is basically just to make sure everything is working tech wise.”

I just nodded, not wanting to point out that I hadn’t been doing this every night. I hoped that I’d have some time to figure out the songs before the shows.

Colson nudged me, bringing my attention to him. “Don’t stress. You’ll do great.”

I smiled at him, wishing I’d believe him.

After our small feast of pizza and beer in plastic glasses, we finally got to our soundcheck. I was so nervous that I kept messing up during the first song. My hands were shaking and I kept hitting the wrong drum by accident. My face was burning with embarrassment as I buried it in my hands and groaned.

Colson walked up to me, a sympathetic smile on his face.

“I’m sorry,” I sighed. “I can get this, I know I can.”

“I know you can, too,” he said. “Just take a breath, relax. We’ll try again when you’re ready. And remember, it’s just drumming. Rook says you’re great at it.”

I smiled at him and nodded. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I pictured myself back in my bedroom from my childhood, playing my drums super loud until my parents had to call out for me to keep it down.

When we started practicing again, it went off without a hitch. We did most of the setlist all the way through and did quick takes on the last few songs before our time was up.

I was proud of myself as the soundcheck came to an end. I was still nervous about performing during the actual show, but I felt confident enough in myself not to make too many noticeable mistakes when we actually had an audience that night.

I was walking to my car when I heard someone calling for me. I turned to see Colson running to catch up with me. Or rather he was taking long strides to catch up with me considering he was so tall.

“I told you you would do great!” he said, putting an arm around my shoulder and giving it a light squeeze. “It’s like drumming runs in your blood or something.”

I chuckled. “That’s what mom and dad always said too, but neither one of them can keep a beat to save their lives and no one else in our immediate family plays either.”

“You and Rook are the start of a long line of drummers then I guess.”

I shrugged in response. We both stood awkwardly for a moment. I wasn’t sure what else to say. His arm was still around my shoulder and I didn’t want to pull away and make it seem like I didn’t enjoy the contact because I definitely was not complaining about it.

I guess Colson also realized that he was still touching me, though, because he pulled his arm away and awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck.

“Do you need a run to the hotel or anything?” he asked. “We have the tour bus.”

I shook my head. “I’m good, thanks. I have my car, and besides I haven’t even checked into the hotel yet so I should probably go do that.”

“Oh, yeah you definitely should. Get some rest before the show, too. It’s a lot more physically demanding when it’s an actual show, even if you’re just sitting at a drum set the entire time. I’ll see you tonight then I guess.” He turned to walk away, but paused and turned back to add, “What were you planning on wearing tonight?”

I looked at him, confused. “Uh...this I guess.”

I was wearing a hoodie and a pair baggy jeans and my most comfortable pair of sneakers.

Colson raised an eyebrow at my outfit before looking back up at me. “I mean, it’s definitely comfy, but I would recommend something a little less...well, just less. It’s going to be hot as fuck on that stage, especially with all the lights on you and shit.”

I nodded, taking note of this as I got into my car and internally panicked a little because I didn’t know if I even had anything to wear.

~~~~~~

A few hours later, after checking into my hotel room and promptly wrecking it by throwing my clothes everywhere, I was heading back down to the lobby to meet up with the guys. We were going to the show together, which would’ve been my first tour bus ride. I couldn’t lie, I was super stoked for it.

I was the last one to the lobby. All the guys were stood around, loudly talking to one another. You’d think they were just a normal group of guys and not a group about to play a sold out show in a massive arena.

Colson spotted me first. I smiled at waved at him. His eyes widened and his jaw basically dropped, which prompted all the guys to turn. Their reactions immediately matched his as they looked me up and down.

“Rook would kill you guys if he could see you right now,” I teased.

“Damn (Y/N),” Colson dared to say first. “You look...you look hot as fuck.”

I had decided on a loose muscle shirt with a bralette underneath since the shirt showed a little more than what I was used to, a pair of ripped skinny jeans, and kept on the comfortable sneakers I had been wearing earlier that day.

I giggled. “Thanks, but again, Rook would kill you for saying that. Also, it’s not anything super attractive.”

“You got a nice body,” Baze pointed out. “Anything showing it off even a little is hot.”

I could feel my face burning as I waved their comments away. “Okay, enough with this. We have a show to get to.”

We boarded the tour bus and started towards the arena. The guys were distracted amongst one another again, completely forgetting about me and my “hot outfit”. Besides Colson, who had come to sit next to me on the couch while the rest of the guys were already drinking whatever was in the mini fridge.

“Do you guys always get drunk before your shows?” I asked.

“Not always. Usually we get high,” Colson responded.

“Now that I can get behind. I’ll probably be less afraid if I’m high.”

Colson held out the joint in his hand to me. I took it and took a quick puff, the smoke immediately burning my throat and lungs as I tried to inhale it. Colson laughed as I started to cough.

“I still say you have nothing to worry about,” he told me. “You’re gonna do great tonight. You can’t even really see or hear the audience with all the lights and the inner ear pieces.”

“That’s even worse cause then I’ll just imagine how big the audience is.”

He put a hand on my leg, something I assume was just instinct for him to do to comfort someone, but the minute he made the contact I felt a jolt of electricity run through me. Colson quickly pulled his hand away and I wondered if he had felt that too.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that without asking,” he said.

“You can if you want,” I assured him. “I wasn’t mad about it or anything.”

Colson looked at me and I realized how blue his eyes were. Rook had always made jokes about how Colson could seduce any woman with just his eyes because they were such baby blues, but I didn’t really believe him until the moment I was looking in them myself. Now I was lost, completely forgetting everyone around me as I felt myself moving closer towards him.

The bus jerked to a stop, causing Colson and I to nearly be thrown from our seats. The guys started off the bus first, running towards the entrance to the arena as I could hear the waiting fans screaming outside.

Colson stood and offered a hand to me. “It’s showtime.”

~~~~~~

After the first song went perfectly, I stopped feeling nervous. Colson was right, I couldn’t see the audience in front of me, but I could faintly hear their screams of excitement over my inner ear piece. It was weird to have it in and not only hear all of us playing, but also the crew talking backstage. It was almost distracting, but it became easy to tune them out.

During one of Colson’s talking points in the show, I reached for my water bottle to take a sip. Colson was hyping the audience up, which made me smile a little.

“Before we continue the show,” he said into his mic, “you guys may have noticed that we do not have our regular drummer tonight.”

I immediately knew what he was about to do and I wanted to hurtle my drumstick at him before he went there.

“As you’ve probably heard, Rook was in a bit of an accident and is off recovering for the time being,” he continued. “So, we decided to get some family to fill in for him for the time being. Everyone, I want to hear y’all make some noise for Rook’s little sister, (Y/N)!”

The crowd cheered loudly. Colson turned to me and waved for me to stand. I glared at him, which I hoped he could see, before standing and awkwardly smiling and waving at the audience.

“All the cool drum shit you guys have been hearing all night has been (Y/N),” Colson said as he started to approach me. “She’s a bad ass fucking drummer, and she’s a pretty fucking cool chick, too.”

I was confused where he was going with this as he came to stand next to me, slinging an arm around my shoulder the way he had earlier that day after soundcheck.

“Which is why, (Y/N), I gotta ask: will you go on a date with me sometime?”

Slight embarrassment was swelling somewhere inside of me at being asked out in such a public way, but that embarrassment was overshadowed by the fuzzy feeling of excitement inside of me. I looked up at Colson, my eyes wide and a smile on my lips.

 He lowered the mic so he could privately add, “I’m being serious. I wanna take you out on a real date. Just the two of us.”

My words were stuck in my throat, but I was able to nod in response. The smile on Colson’s face stretched so wide that I could’ve been convinced he was the one lighting the show.

“Okay,” he said, then lifted the mic to say to his audience, “Let’s get back to the show guys!”

[pinknatural]

After a long while, Jack straightens back up, wiping away his tears.

“Sorry about your shirt,” he says again. Dean waves his hand in dismissal. What’s some snot and tears? 

“It’s fine,” he says again. “I mean it, kid.”

Jack looks like he might begin to cry all over again, but he sniffs and makes a valiant effort not to. They’re in a motel room--Dean couldn’t bear the Bunker, and Sam and Eileen’s honeymoon phase. He’s happy for them, of course he is, but seeing them so in love is kind of painful, and Dean could tell Sam was trying not to be overt about it to spare Dean’s feelings, and Dean just felt that, well--he might as well remove himself from the situation, at least for a little bit. 

(Plus, now he has some peace and quiet--the motel room is littered with books and research, scrolls and files and other pieces of lore--all on the afterlife, of course. All on how to get there.)

“Okay,” Jack says. “Okay.” He raises a glowing hand to his own forehead, but he pauses when his fingers are about an inch away. He swallows. 

“Come on, kid, what are you waiting for?” Dean asks. 

“I could bring her back,” Jack whispers. “I should bring her back.” 

He lowers his hand, turns a stricken gaze to Dean. 

“Who?” Dean asks. He thinks, Kelly. He thinks, Maggie. He thinks, absurdly, Charlie. 

“Emma,” Jack says. 

Dean feels as if he’s been hit over the head. 

“What?” he says. Has he turned into a fish and been left out on the docks? Where did all the air go?

“You’ve been thinking about her,” Jack says, like a confession. “Praying.” He has, if only because he’s been wallowing in what he can’t have, the husband, the daughter. He has, if only because he’s been wondering if the way to the Empty could be through Purgatory. Would he have time to sweep the place first? Would he be able to find her, unlike the last two times he was there?

“Yeah,” Dean tries to say, but no sound comes out. He tries again. “Yeah. You could really…?”

“I can do anything,” Jack says, with a sad, bitter smile, and Dean reaches for him. Jack falls into the embrace, wrapping his arms around Dean’s back, clinging to his shirt. Dean runs a hand up his back, cups the back of his neck. 

“You don’t have to,” Dean says. It’s one of the hardest things he’s ever said. “God, kid, I’d like nothing more, but you don’t have to. You gotta do what’s best for you, you hear me?”

“I know,” Jack says. He sniffles. Dean thinks he might be crying again. “And I love Claire so much but I just want my sister. Dad, I want to bring her back.”

Dean squeezes his son. He closes his eyes. 

“Then bring her back,” he whispers, and one of Jack’s hands leaves Dean’s back. Golden light shines, starting behind Dean and filling up the room, making it brighter and brighter and Jack gets smaller and smaller and Dean just holds on, tighter and tighter. 

The light fades. 

A little boy has his face buried in Dean’s gut, arms wrapped tight around Dean. They don’t even go all the way around, anymore. Dean runs a hand through Jack’s hair, stunned even though Jack told him this was what he wanted, even though they’d talked and talked about it before Jack decided to go through with it. 

“What?” a tiny voice says, and Dean turns around. 

Emma is standing there, only she’s not--she’s not exactly the Emma Dean remembers. Instead of being sixteen, she’s something like eight years old, eyes wide and hair tangled with leaves. She’s splattered with blood, and wearing the same clothes she’d died in--the same clothes Dean buried her in. They’re too big for her, and she looks like she’s on the verge of tears. 

“What happened?” she asks, looking around the motel room wildly. “Where am I?”

“Emma,” Dean says, untangling himself from the three year old on the bed and kneeling, reaching out gently. He stays near the bed, afraid of spooking her. “You were rescued from Purgatory. You’re safe.” He turns to Jack. “Why is she little?”

“She’s human,” Jack says, shrugging. He’s chewing on the end of his sleeve, eyes wide. His clothes, at least, are three-year-old sized. Dean wonders where he’s supposed to get Emma some clothes, but there’s a pink suitcase sitting beside Dean’s duffel. The sight of it is too much, and he looks back at his daughter. 

“Safe?” Emma repeats, looking down at her hands. She flexes her tiny fingers. 

“Eight years have passed,” Dean says, still holding out his hands--he’s not sure if he’s trying to soothe her or reach for her. “You’re safe, you don’t have to kill anyone, I won’t hurt you.”

Emma looks around again. She sees her suitcase and stares at it, then swings her gaze back around. “Who’s that?” She points at Jack. 

“That’s Jack, that’s my son,” Dean says. “Your brother. He brought you back.”

“How?”

“He was powered up--he was God--but now he’s just a kid,” Dean says. “He, um, wanted to bring you back.”

“Dada was prayin’ for you,” Jack says, voice muffled around the sleeve he’s still chewing. Dean reaches out and gently removes it from his mouth. “He wanted you to come back. I wanted to meet you.”

“Oh,” Emma says. She looks down at her pants. “I’m all dirty.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “The bathroom’s over there if you want to--shower. I can help you if you want.”

Emma shakes her head and reaches for her suitcase. She goes into the bathroom, turning around and looking back at Dean and Jack, eyes wide, until she shuts the door behind her. Dean collapses back onto his feet, running his hands over his face, laughing incredulously. 

“I did good?” Jack asks, sliding off the bed and crawling onto Dean’s lap. “I did good?”

“Yeah, buddy,” Dean says, voice cracking. He hears the shower turn on, the water begin to run. He curls up tight over Jack. “You did great.”

--

The first thing Cas is aware of is big blue eyes. The rest of the features on that face sharpen into a nose and mouth, grace smearing around the small face, and although it seems impossible, it can only be--

“Jack?”

“Daddy!” Jack cries, and he throws himself onto Cas. Cas catches him easily, holds his tiny body within his arms. Oh, he’s so small. His golden wings stretch as big as they go, which is not very big, to wrap themselves around Cas, and reflexively he wraps his own around Jack as well, holding him tight, rocking slightly back and forth.

Then he remembers--everything, and that he’s supposed to be dead, and he looks up.

Green eyes. Freckles, slightly crooked nose, beloved mouth, beloved jawline.

“Cas,” Dean croaks, and he falls to his knees. Cas is on the floor, legs crossed and Jack curled up on his lap. Cas doesn’t want to let go but Jack wiggles away, and Cas is afraid to reach out but helpless to do anything else.

Dean crawls toward him, falls against him. He presses his face into Cas’ neck and breathes, in and out, and Cas thinks he might be crying. But Cas is breathing Dean in, and he smells like the Impala (home) and guns (safety) and lemon (Dean) and Cas’ eyes aren’t very dry, either. 

“You dumb son of a bitch,” Dean says, voice tucked safe into the place between Cas’ neck and shoulder. “You goddamned idiot. You stupid fucker. You dumbass, you, you.”

“Dean,” Cas says, and Dean shudders out a shaky breath, breathes heavily against him. Dean is alive in Cas’ arms, and he couldn’t be happier.

He tilts his gaze up, looking for Jack, and he finds instead a little girl with brown-blonde hair. She’s wearing a pink t-shirt and denim shorts and one of Dean’s flannels. She’s practically swimming in it, but her sleeves are rolled up and her eyes are the same apple-green as Dean’s, and Cas holds Dean tighter. 

“Emma?” he asks. She nods and looks away uncomfortably. 

“Emmie, Emmie, my daddy’s back,” Jack says, bouncing over to her and dancing around, wings flapping madly. 

“Yeah,” Emma says. 

Dean clears his throat and finally leans back from Cas. He reaches out an arm and Emma comes over to him, sitting on the floor beside him and tucking herself against his side. Dean wipes away tears with his other hand as Jack barrels back around, throwing himself into Cas’ lap. Cas holds him and looks around. 

They’re in a motel room, two queen beds, identical to the countless ones Sam and Dean have stayed in over the years. But there’s a pink suitcase next to the TV and a blue duffel with sharks on it beside it. On one of the beds there’s a pair of stuffed rabbits, one pink and one yellow. There are various books and scrolls piled on the little table beside the couch and also piled onto the couch itself. Spell ingredients are on the floor, spread out over a placemat. 

“Daddy,” Emma says, and Cas looks at her, tugging on Dean’s overshirt. His heart melts. Dean deserves nothing less, of course, but he knows what toll gaining then losing a daughter has had on Dean. He’s so glad that Dean can have her back, that she can have Dean, too, that she can have another chance. She deserves it, and already Cas looks at her and sees her hair in a careful braid and her Wonder Woman socks and he knows he would die for her. “If me and Jack are siblings and you’re Jack’s dad and that’s Jack’s dad, too, then. Um.”

She looks at Cas nervously. Dean squeezes her shoulders. 

“Me and Cas have to talk about all that,” Dean says. Cas is astounded that it’s not an instant denial. 

“We do?” he asks, and Dean meets his gaze head on.

“Yeah,” he says. “We got a lotta stuff to talk about, you and me. Kids, why don’t you watch some TV and Cas and I’ll go outside.”

Jack scrambles off of Cas’ lap and turns around, presses a wet kiss to Cas’ cheek, then he climbs onto the bed with the stuffed animals. He grabs onto the yellow bunny and Emma crawls beside him, putting the pink bunny on her lap and pointing the remote at the TV. Cas stands and offers his hand to Dean, who takes it, lets Cas pull him up.

Dean goes outside and Cas follows, of course he does. They don’t let go of each other’s hands. 

“Why are we in a motel?” Cas asks. Dean shrugs. 

“Needed some space,” he says. “Then I wasn’t sure how big of a house to get.”

“A house?”

“Yeah,” Dean says. He rubs at the back of his neck with his free hand. “Can’t raise kids in a bunker, come on man.”

“What about Sam?”

“He’s fine,” Dean says. “On a hunt with Eileen.”

“Oh,” Cas says, slightly confused. 

“Yeah, I dunno,” Dean says. “Salt-and-burn in Orlando, I think. So, um, listen, man…”

“Thank you for getting me out of the Empty,” Cas blurts, afraid Dean is about to reject him. He has always known Dean would do so, but he thinks to hear it would be--upsetting.

“Of course,” Dean says. “You’re, um. I couldn’t just leave you there, you’re--”

“Family?” Cas suggests.

“Yeah,” Dean says. He takes a step forward. “Though, you know, I’ve been thinkin’ about what we are to each other.”

“You have?” Cas takes a step back when Dean takes another step forward. 

“Yeah,” Dean breathes. “Living together, raising a kid together, dying for each other. Never wanting to be apart.”

“Oh?” Cas says, and his back hits the wall. Dean stands over him, caging him in with only one hand--the other still wrapped around Cas’ palm, their fingers intertwined. 

“You know what that sounds like?” Dean asks, breath ghosting along Cas’ jaw, and Cas can’t really think. Why is Dean standing so close to him?

“Family?” Cas croaks, brain stuck on the word. Family, they’re family.

“I was thinking it sounded like husbands, Cas,” Dean says, and then Cas doesn’t have to worry about why Dean is standing so close anymore, because Dean kisses him, and Cas’ brain ceases functioning--but it’s okay, because if Dean says they’re husbands, who is Cas to argue?

--

Sam pulls up to the motel after dropping Eileen off at the Bunker. She was tired from driving all night and Sam doesn’t blame her, but he can’t believe he’s missed everything while he went to one measly salt-and-burn.

He parks the car and gets out, crossing the parking lot. He knocks on the door and Claire opens it. She looks the same as always, except she has a purple stuffed bunny peeking out of her jacket pocket. Sam is smart enough not to comment on this. 

She steps aside and lets him in, and Emma squeaks and practically climbs up Dean when she sees him. It’s a work in progress, with her, and Sam feels terrible but he’s not sure what he can do besides give her time, so he looks away and instead turns to Cas, who smiles when he sees him. 

“Sam!” he says, and he stands up from the couch, crosses the room and hugs him. 

“It’s good to see you,” Sam says, clapping Cas on the back.

“Sam!” Jack says, and he barrels towards Sam’s legs with the determination of a battering ram, and Sam intercepts him before he can make contact, picking him up and swinging him over his shoulder. Jack laughs and laughs, and Kaia waves at Sam from her spot curled up on the couch. 

“This motel room is very full,” Sam says, looking around, and Dean grins at him. 

“That’s why we’re shopping, Sammy,” he says, and he points at his laptop. 

“Find anything good?” Sam asks, crossing the room to sit on the couch so he can see the computer. He deposits Jack into Cas’ arms, and Dean comes to sit on his other side. Emma stays on the bed, hiding behind Claire, who’s obviously taking guard-duty pretty seriously since she’s half-glaring at Sam.

Sam looks away and turns his gaze toward the computer. 

“We weren’t finding any good listings so we’re looking for some land, now,” Dean says. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay in the Bunker? We’ve got a lotta room,” Sam says. 

“Nah,” Dean says. He slings his arm around Cas, who’s perched on the arm of the couch. “We need a house.”

“Windows,” Cas says solemnly, tangling his and Dean’s fingers, and Sam notes the movement with a pleased smile. 

“But if we build a house we can add-in wards and stuff, right into the foundations,” Dean says. “We can make sure it’s safe, and good.”

“Will you build it?” Sam asks, even though he knows the answer. 

“Damn straight,” Dean says. The silver band on his ring finger flashes as he shuts the laptop. Jack crawls into Kaia’s lap, and she wraps her arms around him. 

“I think it’s a good idea,” she says. 

“Yeah,” Sam says. He meets his brother’s eyes. “Me too.”

(ao3)

[babylooneytoonz]

the Other Lane.

pairing : Clark Kent x Reader

requested by: @dashingcavill [Hope you like this! 💛]

warnings: Angst with a happy ending, and a lot of fluff in the end.

A/N: Ah, I'm really sorry I couldn't help but put some major angst in here, but I swear the ending is happy and I added the right amount of feels and fluff to make it hurt less. 💛

[The Masterlist]

You often wondered if you were born to your parents only to become a commodity that could be compared to your sister, Lois , at all times. Yes, the two of you were different, she had glamourous blonde hair and sparkling blue irises that made her strike out, while you had sombre [Y/H/C] hair and dull [Y/E/C] eyes that peeked out from the tint of your glasses. If the glasses weren't enough to fit you perfectly into the category that was termed as 'nerds', the fact that you loved to bury yourself into mounds and mounds of books, and literature was sure to fit you into that bill. All that comparison, but that didn't lessen the bond that you shared with Lois though.

However, things slowly started changing, the dynamics messing up when Clark Kent came into your life, as a friend and as a colleague.

Lois worked as a reporter for Daily Planet, and you, well you were mostly working in the background, struggling to make a run with your tiny little column on relationship advises. It wasn't like you were any less intelligent, but maybe you just were okay with how everything was going.

It didn't mean that there weren't times at all when Lois made you secretly jealous. To be fair, it didn't bother you when you heard stories of how Lois got herself into trouble yet again, with none other than the Superman came to her rescue. You could still take that, considering the fact that Superman took his duty towards the civilians as his topmost priority, but when you began noticing obvious changes in your sister's behaviour when she talked to Clark, his alter ego; your colleague at work, you couldn't help but start feeling the little pangs of jealousy.

It all began subtly— starting from lingering glances at the workplace, to hands brushing with each other's, almost innocently, yet the two of them had a sparkle in their eyes when it did. At first, you decided to ignore them at work, trying your best to not run into Clark Kent while you were in your office building. The reason for this was still inexplicably strange for you. You didn't even know the man that well, yet you could do nothing in your control to keep your budding feelings for him under check. It was like, the more you avoided Clark Kent, the more you began aching to get a glimpse of him.

As the days passed, you realized that your crush on Clark was slowly getting more prominent, and you started feeling scared, dreading if there ever came a day that your secret crush on him with finally be out. To top it up a notch, you wondered how Lois will react, knowing well aware that there was something blooming between the two of them, although she had never admitted this to you herself. Also, you kept hoping that whatever this was, between Clark and Lois, it was maybe all in your head and that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't even true, and you hoped it wasn't.

Soon, days grew into weeks and weeks flew by as long months, and you realized that what you felt for Clark wasn't just a silly crush, but you were actually falling in love with the man. It was the littlest things that he did that made your heart melt. You would, sometimes, run into him in the cafeteria, where he would be filling up his mug of coffee. He was a gentleman, he would smile and greet you warmly, your eyes meeting his sparkling bright ones as he would move out of the way and insist that you went ahead first. You would often end up taking elevator rides with him, and he would make sweet small talks with you, talking to you about everything, ranging from the weather to a possible alien invasion.

The plan that you had cooked up to avoid Clark Kent went down the drain from those days onwards. Instead, you almost began running into Clark almost everyday. The gossips about Clark and Lois had, by then, died down and you couldn't help but feel relieved, relieved that maybe you had just been dreaming, and there was nothing between Lois and Clark.

"Hey [Y/N], can I borrow your turtleneck? I can't seem to find mine?"

You looked up from the book that you had been binge reading on, flustered and embarassed, as you immediately tossed the book unceremoniously into your blanket. Of course, you couldn't let your sister in on the fact that you were secretly reading the fifty shades series. She would tease the living hell out of you. And then there was the fact that you felt ashamed of the fact that you could practically imagine Clark Kent in your mind as Christian Grey, and it was making you all heated up and bothered.

Lois raised an eyebrow when she saw you red you had turned, "Are you okay? You look like a massive human sized tomato."

"Gee, Lois, thanks?" You mumbled, still reeling from the way she had suddenly barged into your bedroom, as you pushed your glasses over the bridge of your nose, "couldn't bother to knock?"

"Since when do we do these formalities?" She wiggled her eyebrows dramatically, and dashed towards your closet, throwing it open as her fingers began working through the hangers, looking for what she was looking for. She was practically messing up your closet, so you sighed and decided to give her a helping hand. Abruptly, you slid out of the covers, forgetting about the novel that you had hidden underneath and the novel suddenly slipped off the side of the bed and fell to the floor, it's covering full on display.

You facepalmed, burying your face into your hands as Lois walked up to the book and picked it up, smirking obviously as she read out the title out loud just to tease you.

"Looks like my baby sister is finally growing her wings."

"Stop it, Lois. Don't embarass me," you grumbled, looking away. Instead, you dashed up to your closet and pushed her to the side, roughly pulling out your turtleneck as you handed it to her.

"Come on, [Y/N]" she laughed, shaking her head, messing up her perfectly styled blonde waves as she ran a hand through them, "We all have done this. You're not the only one. Nothing to be embarassed about. It's not like you're watching porn."

"It is technically still porn if I'm reading it," you whispered, watching her as she examined the turtleneck and smiled, as though she had pictured just the best trousers to go with it in the back of her mind as she absentmindedly replied back, "Again, sis, we all have done it."

You noticed the way she kept glancing at her phone, with a smile threatening to spill across her features. You raised your eyebrows and smacked your lips together, blinking curiously. She finally looked up and saw that you were staring at her so she grinned, "Guess who has a date tonight?"

"A date?" You asked, absentmindedly.

"Clark asked me out, [Y/N]. He is taking me to this really good Thai place that opened up in the suburbs and I just couldn't decide on what to wear!! This will just go perfectly with my jeans."

It happened so suddenly, but it still did. You felt like someone had just ripped your gut out with bare hands. You suddenly felt empty, was an understatement. You suddenly felt strange and cut off, and everything around you suddenly felt cold and distant and gloomy. You looked up at her, your earlier warmth having dissipated into a cold, dark look and you gave her a smile, biting your lip, "That's great, Lois. Have fun."

Lois noticed the way your face fell, but she couldn't understand or take the hint. She kept watching as you moved away, turning your back towards her and didn't utter another word. She parted her lips, wanting to ask her what had gone wrong suddenly, but decided not to, or rather, keep the discussion for another time. She didn't want Clark to reach before she had even gotten ready. You didn't step out of your bedroom, that night when Lois returned from her date with Clark, and Lois frowned when she saw that the lights to your bedroom were already switched off. You were a late sleeper.

Two months later,

Lois looked up from the article that she had been reading to find you enter the dining room with a breakfast plate in your hand.

"Mornin'," you mumbled, your voice barely audible as you sat down on a chair in front of her, next to your father, Sam Lane. Your father looked up from the newspaper that he was reading, and glanced at Lois who shrugged her shoulders in response and he cleared the throat.

"Honey, don't you think you've been locking yourself up in your room for long now? When was the last time you actually did something that didn't involve either the bed, or your office desk?" The cutting crispness in his voice was enough to slice through your heart, but weirdly, you felt nothing, ecen when you heard Lois gasp and mumble something to her father in protest.

"What do you want me to do, dad?" You asked, sipping your juice, your eyes fixed to your plate.

Ignoring you, Sam turned towards his elder daughter as he narrowed his eyes at her, his loud, booming voice echoing through your house, "Lois, what the hell happened at work? She just quit? And didn't even give a damn valid reason as to what on earth happened?"

"I don't know, dad. She hardly talks to me anymore," Lois replied.

You chuckled dryly to yourself, wondering when you had become so invisible to the world. You were right there with them and yet they regarded you like you weren't even there.

"It was difficult to get you job at the Daily Planet and look at you, throwing it away for whatever the hell the reason was." Your dad barked.

Your fingers clenched into a fist and Lois visibly tensed. Hurriedly, she stood up and announced that she was leaving. You stood up too, but not for work, but rather to go back to the place that you had locked yourself in for the past two months. When you reached the door, you turned around and regarded your father, mumbling, "Why would you care anyway? You never really did before."

You kicked open your room door and slammed it back shut again as you ran straight for your bed. You were trembling like a leaf trying to detach itself from the tree when you buried your face into the pillow and screamed as loudly as you could into it. You were a mess, a walking , talking, living, breathing mess.

You cried, for almost thirty minutes, until you were out of tears. You then sat up and rubbed your eye sockets, finally taking a deep breath. You were letting Clark and Lois affect you so much, you had forgotten what it was like to live normally. How were you supposed to go on like this? If you wouldn't take a command of your own life again, then how would learn to get back up on your feet? When would you learn to accept that you would never get Clark? He wasn't the one for you.

Feelings are so transient, it's like you can feel them slicing through your insides one minute, and then the other minute, you feel unrealistically numb.

With those sorts of destructive thoughts in your mind, you sneaked a bottle of whiskey that night from your father's liquor cabinet at two am at night. You rolled the window pane and snuck out onto the fire escape until you were climbing up towards the roof the building of your apartment, the bottle in tow.

You fixed yourself on the ledge, using your teeth to twist the bottle cap as you took a swig of it, feeling the warm liquid burn your relentless thirst for relief. Sip after sip, you kept staring at the starless sky, mediating your gaze from the sky down to the glittery buildings.

"Will I ever forget you, Clark Kent?" You whispered, into the thin air, laughing bitterly at yourself as you took the last sip from the bottle before it rolled away. The way the lights glimmered in front of you, and one of two cars drove past your building, looking like tiny little blinking lights from the height you were at, you realized one thing. No matter how bad your heart is broken, the world doesn’t stop for your grief.

You were lost in a turbulence of your own thoughts, so entangled into them, you didn't hear the soft thud somewhere behind you, neither the sound of the faintest footsteps that got closer to you, with every passing second. You took a sharp breath, and slowly stepped over the ledge, feeling shudders all over your frame as the winds hit you all over you. You footing, however, slipped, a sharp scream erupting from your lips as you fell backwards against gravity, your heart almost stopping.

Someone suddenly reached out towards you, gripping your wrist, leaving you hanging from the ledge, your body flailing in the air.

He pulled you with a jerk towards you, and your body hit his front, your hair falling all over your face partially covering it. You felt intoxicated, so much, that you had almost died by falling off the building but you didn't feel the scare, the only thing you felt was a sudden surge of adrenaline.

"WHAT THE HELL?!" Superman growled, through gritted teeth, his eyes sparkling as you jerked you by your shoulders.

"Clark? Is -- that you?!" You slurred, holding on to his cape tight to hold you in place. You were in a weird state of mind, you could see that it was him, but you couldn't figure out if it really was him, or if it was your mind that was playing an illusion on you.

"Are you trying to kill yourself?" Clark fumed, still holding on to you by the low of your back. He suddenly jumped off the ledge, with you in tow, away from the edge, so the two of you were in the middle of the roof now.

"K-Kill myself? No, I.. I.." You stammered, struggling for the right words but your brain felt frozen.

"Two months, and you don't show yourself. And when I finally see you, you're trying to jump off a fucking building?!" His eyes just then fell on the empty whiskey bottle. He growled, clenching his fists tight as he let go off you and walked up to the where the bottle lay, his cape flying behind him. He bent, lifting it up as he examined it, noticing how the neck of the bottle had your lipstick imprints on it. "And you're drunk. To top it up a notch."

Your nostrils flared in an anger you hadn't experienced ever before, your secret feelings finally crushing you completely, mixed with the alcohol that was rushing through your blood. You growled, like a cornered animal, that was wounded yet didn't want to back down. You pushed him, once, twice, throwing out all your pent up anger and frustration into his steely body like he felt no hurt. You screamed, you lashed, you scratched and you cried, finally coming undone, like beads of a rosary coming apart and scattering all over the floor.

Clark's heart broke at the sight of you. He had always seen you as a strong, happy woman, always smiling for him whenever he saw you at work. And this woman, that stood in front of his eyes right now, was far from it.

"I am not weak! I wouldn't kill myself! You give yourself too much importance, to think that someone would give their life for you!" You lashed out.

You were tired of hitting him like a punching bag. He grabbed you by your wrists, holding them together in front of you, pressed against his chest. He slowly moved, so he was towering over you, his back shielding you from unwanted, prying eyes as he gazed into your eyes, trying to find the answer to where all of this was coming from.

"You don't know what you're talking about. Come on, Lois is worried about you."

You couldn't stop yourself when your hand jerked itself free from his hold, and your palm struck his cheek. There was a crackling noise, of skin against skin, and tears formed in your eyes when the realisation hit you, all the intoxication washing off of you. You had just slapped Superman, a man that could snap your neck by grabbing your throat. Yet, he just stood there, too shocked to even register that you had slapped him right across his face and what was worse, he couldn't understand the reason you had done that. Anger was surfing through his veins, but worse than the anger that he was feeling, he was feeling like someone had pulled his heart out, ripping it to shreds right in front of his eyes.

"Why?" He let go off your other hand, his own palm coming to rest against his cheek as you gave you a look full of hurt.

"Why did you even save me, Clark? You should have let me fall. Atleast, it would have spared me the pain of listening to her name flow out of your lips again."

"Why do you hate her so much? She is your sister, [Y/N] and she cares for you. She worries that you're killing yourself and she doesn't know the reason why--" Clark was losing his temper, slowly but surely. He didn't understand you and that was eating him up.

"The reason why? WHY??! Oh Clark can you stop? And listen to yourself. I love Lois, but she needs to stop trying to govern my life. I'm allowed to feel sad, I'm allowed to feel a fucking heartbreak--" You didn't realise, but your lips were trembling now, your eyes leaking salty tears. You shivered when you felt Clark hold you by your shoulders but you didn't push his arms away.

"Who broke your heart?" He whispered, his voice cracking.

"You're fucking daft for a man who saves the world--" Hissing bitterly , you pushed yourself away from Clark's grip and turned towards the ledge but this time, you didn't try anything that would risk your life. You simply revelled in the cold feeling of the wind striking your tear stained face as you took a punctured breath, feeling Clark's breath on the side of your neck.

"Who broke your heart?" He asked again, but this time it was much softer, and it made you bite down on your lip to hold yourself from breaking into a hysterical crying.

"You did, Clark. You broke my heart." You finally whispered, staring into the abyss in front of you, your eyes cloudy and your throat parched as you continued, your lips trembling, "I loved you. Always did, but you never looked at me. It was always Lois. And it killed me, watching you love her, knowing that you will never love me the way you love her--" Clark let you speak, he wanted to listen to you, for you to let it all out, all those bitter things that you had locked up inside your mind, that was slowly eating you up and killing you from the inside. "I am tired of everyone, for you, for my father and for the world to see me as the Other Lane, as Lois Lane's little sister. My name is [Y/N]. I like to draw although I am shit at it, I can sing in the showers and I hate partying. That is me. I want a normal relationship too, but it seems that the world is against me. I fell in love with one man, and turns out, he isn't even human, he is a freaking superhero from Krypton?"

Clark let out a gruff sounding snort, as he looked down at you. Reluctantly, he reached for a strand of hair that was sticking to your tear coated cheek, removing it and gently tucking it behind your ear. He felt a shudder run down your spine, with just a gentle touch of his hand and he smiled, biting his lip. How was he supposed to tell you what the truth was?

"You remember how we met at the cafeteria every morning ? And I let you take the coffee?"

You nodded, listening to him, trying to control the crying that had now turned to sniffles, as Clark kept speaking.

"And the countless times I ran into that elevator with you and me stuck inside for just two floors?"

"You must have been thinking how weird I was. How unlike Lois--" You began, but you were cut off by Clark's voice.

"I used to wonder if there was anything I could do to make the elevators stop working, so I'd get to spend more time with you. Wretched elevators, not once did anything go according to what I wanted." He mumbled, but he had a small smile playing on his lips, while you just looked on, staring at him in disbelief, wondering if your mind was playing jokes with you once again.

"I thought I would take Lois' help, to you know, figure out if you felt the same way, but you never said anything to her."

"What about the date? Lois and you went on?" You asked.

"Well, I --" he shrug, looking down at his feet, sheepishly, " Lois thought you would confess how you felt for me if we pretended to--"

You were too numb to react; so you just blinked in retaliation. Your blood ran cold, and you suddenly felt light headed. All this while, while you had secretly been pining for Clark Kent to love you back, was it actually the other way round? Was Clark going through the same thing wondering if you felt the same for him?

"That was cowardly." You hissed, through pursed lips, "Trying to pretend to be in love with my sister."

"I was in love with the other Lane," he bit his lip, his face slightly inclined towards you, so he was looking down at you, and you up at him, "I think you are amazing. You are intelligent, and smart. And you're unique. There are these little things I adore about you. The way you greeted everyone whenever I was around-- ranging from the security guard, to the building keepers at the Daily Planet.. the way you forgot to wipe your lips after drinking coffee, and you had this froth all over your upper lip giving you a faint moustache?" He chuckled because you literally let out a gasp, suddenly embarassed.

"Then there were those days you had a bad day and you locked yourself up in your cabin, working all day. I wondered if I should just knock, but I was scared you will tell me off--" he continued, his blues peeking into yours. Your stomach fluttering, you couldn't help but laugh, as though a weight had been lifted off your chest suddenly and held him steady with your hand on his arm. Finally mustering enough courage, you pushed yourself on your toes, and reached up, letting your palm graze delicately over his cheek, caressing his cheekbone with your thumb, "I would have never told you off, Clark. Though that's not what is bothering me right now."

"What is ?" He asked, innocently, relaxing under the touch of your thumb.

"You said you're in love with the other Lane, Clark."

His lips creased, slowly tugging upwards into a smile that was enough to make you feel giddy. Superman wrapped a sturdy arm around you and felt yourself being lifted off, until he was practically holding you in his arms, "Mhm, yep? You got a problem, Miss Lane? Or do Kryptonians don't fit the bill ?"

"Oh, hush, Clark. You're such a dork. But will you be.. my dork?" You bit your lip, holding on to him as though your life depended on it.

"I thought... you'd never ask?" He began, unsure of how to properly weave the complexity of his feelings , churn them into words, something only Clark Kent was good at , and not his alter ego, but found himself halted by the soft press of your index finger against his lips and the sweet whisper of your voice against his ears as he held you close.

“I know, neither did I.” You whispered as he clasped your face in his massive hands and gently touched his lips to yours.

Three years later,

This had probably been the longest that Clark Kent had been away from you, his lover, his best friend, his wife-- four months to be exact. Needless to say, he was excited to be able to see you again, to hold you again.

The familiar silhouette of the cottage on top of the hill came into his view, flowers hanging into tiny earthen pots hanging out on the front porch. The freshly painted white picket fence looked beautiful, and inviting as Lois stood with Martha by the gate, both the ladies sipping tea from their respective cups and saucers. They couldn't contain their smiles when they saw Clark, even though he was covered in what looked like grime and blown up alien intestines?

"I don't even want to know what happened," Lois chuckled, while Martha hugged her son and he kissed the side of her cheek before she scrunched up her nose in disgust at how awful he smelled.

"Well, I guess I'll draw you a bath, you two can talk out here until the baths ready." Both Clark and Lois watched as Martha Kent disappeared into the home and he smiled, when Lois spoke again.

"FYI, she is at the orchard, harvesting the apples for an apple pie," Lois gave him a smug look, fluttering her lashes, "Oh don't pretend you don't want to see her. I can see your eyes darting around, trying to find her. I'll be inside, both of you, just come back in for supper."

He nodded, watching Lois leave and slowly, his fists clenched on either of his sides, he found his way into the tiny orchard that his lovely wife loved to spend most of her time at. He fixed himself by the wooden gate, his eyes admiring you from afar, as you stood on your tiptoes and picked out apples, tossing them into the basket that you held in your arm.

"Need help, Mrs. Kent?"

The basket dropped from your hand as you turned towards the source of the voice, your lips parted in shock. Clark's eyes travelled from you down to your beautiful swollen bump that your loose maternity dress was doing nothing to hide. He chuckled at your response as he walked towards you with longer, faster steps while you simply waddled towards him.

"Jesus, Clark-- I thought you'd miss the birth," you cupped your husband's cheeks in between your swollen fingers as he nuzzled his nose against yours, before kissing you.

"How is my monkey?" He brought his palm to rest against your nine month old baby bump, stroking over the fabric as he whispered against your lips.

"Moving around, not letting me get an ounce of sleep," you smiled, letting your fingers rest over his hand that rested against your stomach, "but I cant really complain now, can I? After all the little nugget's got Kryptonian blood running through their veins."

Clark chuckled, his blue eyes crinkling slightly as he knelt down in front of you, his face in line with the base of your bump as he planted a kiss on the curve of it.

"Come on, Kal Jr, will you stop bothering your mom? She needs all the sleep she can before you push your way into the world and steal our goodnight sleeps for a while," you smiled warmly, as you peered down at him, running your fingers through his hair and he looked up at you, planting another kiss against your bump.

You suddenly frowned and looked at the brown mess on your fingers that stank.

"God, Clark? What the hell? Did you seriously take a dive in a shit pool?"

He chuckled as he pulled himself up again and his hand once again found the base of your stomach to lay his hand protectively upon.

"Alien blood. You should have seen the intestines that covered me. It looked like noddles dipped in black bean sauce and meatballs--" You smacked him hard against the chest to shut him up, but instead he began laughing, his laughter rumbling out of his stomach as you began dragging him inside with his stained cape.

[redrobin-detective]

sleep like the dead

“And now, I, Technus, shall finally have my electronic vengeance on you, ghost child and conquer this puny human world!” Technus shrieked, exiting the portal in a suitably dramatic fashion. The various weapons around the lab shook and trembled from his power and static from his core crackled, raring for a fight with his favorite enemy. Only the Phantom didn’t appear.

“Hmm, maybe I wasn’t loud enough,” Technus mused before starting up again. “Pathetic Phantom! You can only hope your miniscule half human strength will be enough to take on my squiggling mess of the tangled wires of terror!” He threw back his head and cackled loudly, waiting for his nemesis to show and the battle to begin. His laughter petered out after a bit and the lab became silent once more.

“Well, now he’s just being rude,” Technus fumed, floating up through the ceiling. “Don’t ignore my threats, child. I know you’re here, I can feel your cold core.” He stopped once he reached the ghost boy’s human lair, hovering a few feet from the bed where his rival was sprawled out, sound asleep.

“Come ghost boy, it’s time for fisticuffs! I have some new moves and some great catchphrases I’m ready to try out on you!” The technology ghost exclaimed in excitement, miming some punches. Phantom didn’t answer, just kept laying there barely moving save for his soft, shallow breaths. Technus watched as his breath fogged with each exhale, his core’s ghost sense but it still didn’t awaken him. “Child? Have you expired?”

He leaned forward and gently poked the boy’s cheek. It was squishy but firm unlike a ghost’s exterior and he could feel the dense bone underneath. Phantom didn’t so much as twitch. Technus drew back his hand, unsure of what to do. He’d surprised the child while he was in bed before but he always woke up and they fell into the usual routine. But now he’d changed the script and if there was something ghosts didn’t like, it was change. He flew back down to the portal and sped into the Ghost Zone at top speed, searching for someone who would be able to help him understand. 

“Wow, baby pop whooped your butt that fast? Either he’s getting better or you’re getting more pathetic, my bet is the latter,” Ember teased as she strummed to herself from a floating rock near her lair.

“The ghost child won’t wake up and fight,” Technus said in a rush. “I went to the human world but no one answered my challenge. I went to his human lair and he was just lying on his bed thing and he wouldn’t move, even when I touched him.”

“That’s not like him, he’s usually more hopped up and ready to fight than a groupie on coke,” Ember frowned, setting aside her guitar. “Well come on, sparky, lets go check the kid out.” 

They developed something of an entourage making their way back to the human portal. A few of the locals had heard that the infamous half ghost child was behaving differently and well, curiosity didn’t stop when the cat was killed. Skulker chuckled menacingly under his breath, Youngblood bounced around the adults. Johnny and Kitty had been going to the real world anyway and decided to tag along. 

“Were his folks or Jazz home?" Johnny asked, riding his cycle slow enough to keep pace with the group. 

“Who?” Technus questioned, “er no, the annoying children always with him were not around for once.”

“Annoying yes but they don’t live- uh occupy the same lair as the brat,” Johnny explained. As a younger ghost who’d held onto his humanity more than some, he had a better grasp of human culture. “His parents, the crazy ghost hunters in the blue and orange jumpsuits. Or his sister, Jazz. She has red hair and is kind of a know it all. They’re his family, they live with him.”

“Oh those weirdos,” Youngblood said wrinkling his nose. “Always loud and shouting about ripping apart ghosts. They’re not even good hunters.”

“Obviously, they haven’t noticed they got a ghost living with ‘em,” Ember added with an eyeroll.

“It’s a very stressful situation, Danny was worried about what they’d do if they found out,” Kitty frowned before sticking her tongue out at Johnny. “Danny’s a good guy, at least he talked to me about things that mattered.”

“Good target practice, you mean,” Skulker declared as they entered through the portal. Instinctively they all looked up to where the ghost boy’s core was humming but sensed no movement. “Alright, I will admit that is weird. Let’s see what the whelp’s up to.”

It was a bit cramped, the five of them crammed into the small room especially when they were keeping their distance from the room’s only living occupant. He had not moved since Technus had last been in here. At their entrance, his breath fogged again and he shivered for a second before settling back down. 

“Well, he’s alive at least,” Johnny shrugged before leaning in close to examine him. “Kid looks wiped though.” He picked up the boy’s bony wrist which had been dangling off the bed, his fingers brushing the floor and held it up before dropping it. His knuckles rapped against the ground but he didn’t stir.

“Johnny, leave him alone, he’s trying to sleep,” Kitty hissed, yanking her boyfriend back by his ear. 

“Come on, I’m not doing anything bad,” Johnny defended. “But, come on, how often are we gonna get a chance like this?”

“Hmm is human sleep that interesting that the ghost child would ignore all of us?” Technus asked, floating over and laying himself down on the bed. He laid there on the bed next to the boy for a few moments. “I do not believe I’m doing this correctly.”

“Nah you gotta close your eyes and go off to dreamland,” Youngblood said, grabbing a sock off the floor and then some papers from the desk and began stacking them on the half ghost’s head. The boy still didn’t react in the slightest. 

“Is dreamland close? Another pocket dimension like the Zone?” Technus, ever the scientist, asked curiously.

“No, you idiot,” Ember sighed before tentatively reaching out and laying a hand on Phantom’s chest. “Yow, man that’s weird.”

“What?” Skulker asked, having been mostly content to watch until now. Youngblood had now piled several more items on the ghost boy’s head but he slept on, unawares.

“It’s just,” she scrunched up her face as she looked for the words, “I know what ghost cores feel like and I’ve been around enough humans to know the signs of life but he’s got both at once. His core flares and fades opposite his heart beat. It shouldn’t work but it does, somehow.”

“He is a most curious specimen, I rarely see Plasmius in his human skin so it’s hard to compare,” Skulker commented. “Of course Plasmius I can understand. He acts like a ghost, thinks like one. But the child, he’s certainly a ghost but he’s also decidingly... human.”

“That’s why we should be leaving him alone,” Kitty frowned, plucking Youngblood out of the air and moving him away from the sleeping teen. “If Danny isn’t waking up with all of us causing a racket then clearly he’s exhausted. We bother him enough, let him rest and fight him some other time.”

“But I wanted to fight now,” Technus whined, rolling over on the bed and resting one arm over the ghost boy’s body. “The Phantom surely wants to hear my latest monologue on how I’m the supreme ruler of everything electronic and beeping.”

“I know I don’t,” Youngblood shrugged.

“Me neither,” Johnny scoffed.

“Or me,” Ember muttered, putting her hands on her hips.

“Just let him rest,” Kitty said shooing the others back and gently brushing some of the kid’s hair out of his face revealing sallow features and dark marks under his eyes. “It’s hard enough being human much less a ghost on top of that; between fighting us and trying to have a normal life I bet he hardly gets any sleep. The least we can do is give him a break before he breaks.”

“I suppose it’s not sporting to kill a sleeping prey,” Skulker pouted. “And it’ll make his defeat more meaningful if he’s well rested and not uh,” he gestured to the Phantom’s general state of disarray. 

“Better appreciate it,” Ember sulked for a second, kicking away some pajama pants from the floor. “His stupid human life. I’d give anything to sleep again, just for a minute.” 

The ghosts sat in quiet contemplation for a moment, the dead looking enviously and curiously on the silent, sleeping boy, on a world they could only watch but not engage in. The moment was shattered by the front door slamming open.

“DANNO WE’RE HOME AND WE BROUGHT CHINESE!” Resonated through the house. Startled awake, the ghost child leapt out of the bed and hovered about a foot above it for a moment before sinking back down.

“Darn it Dad, I was napping,” Danny grumbled before he opened his eyes and saw several of his ghostly enemies standing awkwardly in his room. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Technus lounging on his bed. “What the-”

“Oh good, you’re awake!” Technus tittered happily, leaning into his personal space. “Ready to hear my spiel?” The temperature in the room dropped rapidly as his core ramped up and spilled over into his eyes which were no doubt glowing a fierce green.

“Get out of my room!” He shouted, reaching over to grab his emergency under the bed thermos but a sock falling from his hair into his face distracted him.

“Hey, just stopping by but we were just on our way out, sleep well, Danny sweetie!” Kitty said dragging the whole group through the floor. His core thrummed in agitation until he felt them cross the portal into the Ghost Zone. He sat there for a moment, shaking and panting from the adrenaline rush before he decided he really didn’t want to know. He flopped back onto the bed and reached over on his nightstand for the bottle Jazz had given him the other day.

“The heck is in this stupid sleep aid?”

[izusun]

Alright more patented Goblin AU ramblings~~~

My mind is HYPERFIXATED on quirkless vigilante Izuku somehow adopting Eri, and balancing that sweet vigilante life (instant ramen, a coffee addiction, and stealing from criminals to pay rent) while trying to raise Eri semi-normally.

Like he's a disaster on his own but add onto the fact that now he's trying to care for Eri?

Dadzawa notices that he's become more tired on patrols (which is saying A LOT) and is now even more on the *must adopt* train.

(yes Izuku has a gun in this one too, I'm a sucker im sorrryy)

Izuku works very hard to try and keep his vigilante persona away from Eri, which often means hiding stab/bullet wounds. Also he spoils her constantly, but they don't get a lot of money anyways, which mostly means him either DIYing stuff or skipping meals to get her another candy apple.

(don't ask where Inko is idk man, she's just gone, you can decide)

Just: Disaster Izuku trying to raise Eri while dealing with his own baggage WHILE Dadtective Tsukauchi and Dadzawa try to bring him in so they can finally adopt him

ALSO ALSO: The pro heroes who are sent to try and catch him all independantly decide to try and adopt him, which leads to a custody battle when they do finally catch Izuku (and Eri making it v clear that she loves her brother/papa and is just as fiercely protective and attached as Izuku is to her even after only a few months/a year makes me feel things)

- Goblin anon

OMG I LOVE THIS GOBLIN!!!! midoriya collecting dads like they’re pokemon cards <3

NO BUT IMAGINE HOW AIZAWA FINDS OUT THAT HIS VIGILANTE SON IS NOT TAKING CARE OF HIMSELF:

midoriya’s running away from busting another villain organization, lethargic and slow. he’s sporting two broken ribs and one nasty gash to the thigh. but aizawa’s on his tail and police cars are blaring their sirens from below, obviously following aizawa in his pursuit.

“problem child goddamn it just stand down!” aizawa yells, but does not erase their vigilante’s quirk (no one knows midoriya’s quirkless and right now, aizawa can clearly see that midoriya’s hurt so he doesn’t want to risk midoriya’s safety by erasing his quirk.)

midoriya doesn’t respond and it sends more warning blares to aizawa because their vigilante is never quiet.

“kid?” aizawa asks, ramping up his speed to catch up on midoriya but midoriya’s good at parkour and keeps running away, far from aizawa’s reach. aizawa curses, swings his weight using his capture weapon to give himself leverage but-

“OW!” midoriya yelps, hitting himself from a stray metal beam and aizawa watched in horror as their vigilante kid falls.

“KID!” aizawa’s voice was rough, unused to screaming, as he bolts towards edge of the building’s rooftop, peering down to check at midoriya. he hisses in anger because, as usual, midoriya’s gone.

he reports this incident to tsukauchi and they both try to trace midoriya’s steps, but like an actual ghost, there is never a trace. with aizawa’s agreement, they both add more heroes in their case, never failing to impart that the priority is not to capture but to ensure midoriya’s safety.

of course the heroes love midoriya when they realize that this vigilante boy is adorable, kind, respectful, and cheeky in all the good ways.

things finally change when one night, midoriya crashes to the police station, vigilante outfit intact but bloody. tsukauchi and aizawa are there to meet him, both worried because midoriya will never do this. he was as slimy as all vigilantes were, and always backed his wayward heroism with efficient street fight and honed martial arts, plus the incredible heights of his wisdom. so this? midoriya walking willingly to a police station? this means trouble.

“eri’s taken,” midoriya says, voice quiet and tired but so so scared. they don’t even know who eri was or what were her connections with midoriya, but both aizawa and tsukauchi are moving up to assist midoriya in his plans.

turns out eri’s their kid’s sister/daughter...what?

but she was captured by low ranking LoV members (not official LoV, but more like their underlings.) it took great effort from both aizawa and tsukauchi to stop their kid from setting the villains on fire.

so with eri saved and the LoV underlings captured, they all had to acknowledge that midoriya must be taken to custody.

“look kid-” tsukauchi begins, but midoriya cuts him off.

“after what happened today, i think i rather be taken away than have eri be taken by villains again. look, just promise me that eri would have a good education and good family, ok? and a good house. the one with vast gardens because her quirk is a blessing and she loves to make flowers bloom and i swear to god if you guys do any less for eri, i will personally escape any hole you put me into and cut off your-”

“KID! damn you talk so much, you know that?” aizawa asks, huffing loudly but the way his lips crinkle in a suppressed smile shows that he’s not mad but amused, “we’re not taking you away.”

a heartbeat. “what?” midoriya croaks out, hands embracing eri a little tighter. eri, bless her, is quiet as she watches her extra two dads(?) talk to her brother.

tsukauchi sighs but smiles kindly. “kid– midoriya-kun, we’re not locking you up. there are many laws that could send you to juvenile detention centres, but the fact that you’re quirkless kind of protects you from that. what we’re offering though, for both you and your sister, is protection,” he explains.

“and family,” aizawa grunts from beside him.

tsukauchi nods at that. “and family.”

“...excuse me but what?”

aizawa chuckles lowly, shaking his head at midoriya. “midoriya, i’m offering you to be my kids.”

“WHAT?”

“well i mean i had to beat fukukado, but yeah.”

“FUKU- MS. JOKE? WHAT?”

all the while, eri giggles at her brother’s expense.

[mother-shipper]

Stone Triplets

I promised more to come so here’s a little slice of what  @letsstealsomethiefjuice and I have been talking about.

Alex is the oldest of them. ...well, by 15 minutes. He was followed by Jake who came into the world with the same quiet calm he had always possessed. 10 minutes after that came Eliot, making him -just barely- the youngest of the four Stone children. Telling them this information was one of the worst parenting decisions that Isaac Stone and his late wife ever made. This led to no end of bickering between Alex who loved to proudly hold his status as eldest over the other two and Eliot who loathed more than anything being touted as the “baby”. It was the root of so many sibling arguments and often escalated to full fist fights with Jake trying pointedly to stay out of it by burying his nose in a book. 

Their sister Sarah, on the other hand, had no qualms about jumping in and reminding them both that she was in fact the eldest and could send them both back to God same day shipping if they didn’t shut the fuck up so she could watch her shows in peace. It was no great surprise when Sarah became a cage fighter but her decision to retire to raise a family instead of going pro certainly was. 

Despite the fighting, all the Stone siblings were close. If you messed with one of them, you messed with all of them and you had to be pretty ballsy to mess with one Stone in the first place. They were ride or die. ...until they weren’t.

Stone Hardware was Isaac’s lifeblood. He had made all his kids spend their summers working there and would critique and judge their work the entire time. They needed to know what they were doing because he was giving it to Alex, his eldest son, when he was ready to retire. So when Alex disappeared three months before graduation with nothing but a letter saying he was going to make his own path in the world, it hit them all hard. Isaac was angry, calling Alex ungrateful and spoiled and every name in the book. Jake and Eliot were just...bereft. Their brother was gone. He left and hadn’t said a word of it to either of them. They could feel the emptiness where their third should have been and they felt completely and utterly abandoned. 

Eliot knew he could never just disappear. That’s why he told his father he was leaving. He was enlisting. He wanted to make a difference. He wanted to protect people. But Isaac wouldn’t listen to reason. He was adamant Eliot stay. He was the natural next choice for the family business. But Eliot knew what he wanted and could be just as stubborn as Isaac. He had expected some push back. What he hadn’t expected was the “if you leave, don’t bother coming back”. He hadn’t expected the hollow, quiet anger in Jake’s face when he found Eliot still packing.

That was the last time any of the brothers spoke to each other. They were all too angry, too proud, too hurt to be the one to pick up the damn phone. 

Alex was the first to change his name. He found some woman and they flew out to vegas to elope, Alex taking her last name because he knew how pissed off his dad would be if he ever found out. Evelyn hadn’t been part of that plan but never-the-less, he did his best to be part of her life and support her even when the spite marriage fell apart and his work with the DEA took him all around the world at the drop of a hat.

Eliot changed his name when he left the service, once the American dream of serving his country fell away to the darkness of what was really happening in ours and every government and he switched sides. He didn’t want to put his family at risk and so he started using his mother’s maiden name. Spencer. 

Jake, however… Jake gave up everything to stay in Oklahoma and look after his father. He turned down full ride scholarships to places like Harvard, Yale and Berkley, instead getting degrees online. He wrote award winning papers under pseudonyms, never getting the fame or credit for his work in art, mythology, architecture and so much more. He could have been a professor, a consultant, a career scholar but instead he was working on an oil rig and taking care of his old man, watching the family business fall apart, his dad drink himself to death and the ghosts of what his family had been floating through the old house. That is until he got dragged into The Library and all its craziness, dropping him in Portland.

Portland where he followed his partners into a local brew pub that had been getting rave reviews for a spontaneous lunch date. Portland where he looks over to the bar to see an all too familiar if older looking face standing in the service window barking orders into the kitchen. 👀

[agendratum]

ok so

as usual after finishing an arc of mdzs my head is full, many thoughts. so let’s talk about the guanyin temple confrontation.

first thing that i kept paying attention to were actually the changes made in order to turn it into live-action. so in cql they had to make the gray-gray characters, the “there are no good or bad guys, just people and their circumstances” characters (unless you’re jgs, than yeah you’re a bad guy and everyone agrees on that actually) into slightly more black and white characters. by the end of cql we are lured into this fake sense of security, “haha, we know who the bad guy is!” (then a year passes and here you are, now a jgy apologist), by the end of mdzs, you just know that, well, decisions were made, unfortunate decisions, by many different people. 

cql had to make wwx into a bit nicer version of himself. the good protagonist couldn’t lose control and accidentally kill a bunch of people, and then kill another bunch of people fully willingly, cause his sister just died and that was the last connection he had to the idea that something still matters in this world. no, out protagonist should be... like a little bit nicer than that. so they lifted some of that responsibility for atrocities off him, but they couldn’t just evaporate it, could they? they had to put it somewhere. they put it on jgy. after all he’s the big bad in the end of the story, well, the only surviving person from all people that could be considered big bads, he’s the one that “did every terrible deed imaginable”. he could take that responsibility, they had to make his grayness into a slightly darker shade anyway.

i am actually kinda surprised by how different my reaction to jgy was in mdzs. obviously, there is a year difference between me watching cql and me reading this part of mdzs, and over that year i changed my opinion on jgy 5 thousand times and joined the camp “actually meng yao deserves all the best things in the world”, but anyway. when i was watching cql i was like, oh my god, can someone just kill him already, before he does something bad again, before more bullcrap comes out of his mouth, and also stop yelling at this kid about all the “valid” reasons to why you killed his dad. in mdzs my reaction to jgy’s confessions was like, “huh. he has a point”.

now don’t get me wrong there, some shitty things were done, but the thing is, the things he did really made sense from his point of view, from this position and life experience he really had no other way to go. i especially was convinced by his reasoning to why he couldn’t cancel his engagement with qin su. not only he would suffer from this story, because he already went through so much to make this marriage possible, but also qin su’s parents and herself would most likely suffer, their public image would be destroyed, only jgs wouldn’t lose anything. and you could feel the hatred and bitterness he felt towards his father talking about this, and everyone in the temple could agree with that, because he “just forgot he made another child”, he didn’t even notice.

another interesting detail for me was lxc saying, “it’s not that i didn’t know that you did some of these things, it’s that i thought you had a good reason for doing them”. so yeah, a reminder, lxc isn’t blind and he isn’t an idiot. he trusted a person he thought he knew better than anyone else, and he believed in this person. the problem, i think, is that “a good reason” is different for lxc and for jgy. lxc would understand a righteous reason, doing something for the greater good. working for wen ruohan? that was explainable. they all were fighting in a war, fighting for the better, brighter future, and meng yao’s contribution to that future was immeasurable. what if he killed some people there? he had a good reason in lxc’s eyes. but meng yao had other good reasons in his life, some of these reasons lxc never had to deal with in his life. survival, for example, is one of them. meng yao’s early years were very different from lxc’s. not to say that lxc’s life was easy, but it was never truly unstable. meng yao had to learn how to survive in a world where no one wanted him. he lived with one dream, promised to him by his mother, a future where he wouldn’t have to suffer anymore, where he wouldn’t have to smile at people he hated, please every one of their desires so they wouldn’t harm him. and then he entered this life promised to him and he still had to survive, but now in a luxurious man-eats-man world of lanling jin.

meng yao’s life really was this unstoppable ball of snow rolling down the mountain, and every decision he made just made the ball bigger and it would just roll faster. there is even a moment where jgy accuses lxc of being naive. lxc isn’t really naive, of course, it was said in the heat of the moment, but it is a fact that lxc was never kicked down a staircase, never had to crawl back up, and the thing is, at the bottom of the staircase, there are other good reasons to do things.

and in a way lxc understood that jgy in his position really didn’t have any other choices, he just couldn’t find peace in this mindset. he kept repeated through that part, “and yet, and yet, you shouldn’t have done that, you should have...” and he never said what exactly jgy should have done. because lxc doesn’t know. jgy doesn’t know. no one knows. what choices were better? how could he fix all that and still survive? in a way, lxc saying that reminded me of wangxian farewell in the burial mounds. when lwj asks, “you really indent to keep going like this?” and wwx, who wished, who longed for another solution, for some way out, asked him, “what else can i do? what method can i choose to resolve this, not use this technique and still protect people i want to protect?” and lwj didn’t have an answer. lxc didn’t have an answer either.

another amazing thing about guanyin temple confrontation, is that it’s very heavily wwx’s pov. most on the novel is his pov of course, but there were a loot of his thoughts in this arc. and he was rather understanding towards jgy. not in a way “i agree with every reasoning behind every decision you made” but in a way “i understand that you had your reasons, but all of them will become irrelevant really soon, they already are, because the crowd will only remember you as a son of a whore who did every terrible deed imaginable, and all the good deeds will be forgotten” 

now his thoughts on nhs, or who he suspected nhs to be, were way less nice. especially compared to live action, nhs didn’t make such an impression on me as he made through wwx’s thought process in the end of guanyin temple arc. of course, wwx is no sect leader yao, he is not the one to jump to conclusions, he just noticed that if you put some facts together, they actually start making a lot of sense, and formed a full picture. but he didn’t have any proof, so he kept it mostly to himself. yet he still thought for a moment about nhs as someone who didn’t care about collateral damage that much, who was ready to sacrifice lives of juniors, sect leaders, anyone, if it would add to jgy’s kill count and make his fall and destruction even more disastrous. not that those are not the things that happened in live action, but you know, when wwx put it all together like that in one paragraph, i really felt it. like, oof, dude it’s ROUGH. and not even jgy’s death was enough, as nhs basically admitted to stealing meng shi’s body and planning to repay jgy for what he did to nmj’s body. yikes

i mean i still support nhs in everything he does, but yikes

also side note, glad that the dead cats situation finally became clear for me. this whole year i was so confused about who left all these dead cats for juniors to find. i thought maybe xue yang did?? to lure wwx?? so apparently it was also nhs. good to know.

another detail, probably the last one my brain can generate for now, that pained me a great deal was my poor child jin ling. i already cried about some things related to him and this arc, but there was another little one in the very end here, after jgy died. jin ling realised, that there were now three people, wwx, wn and jgy, his little uncle, that were responsible for his parents’ death. people he had every right and reason to hate. all three of them. and yet he couldn’t hate any of them. he couldn’t avenge his parents, that died so long ago he couldn’t remember them, because all three people responsible for what happened, had something, some reasons, some circumstances, that made them really not the bad guys in jin ling’s life. and they all cared about him, protected him. how could he hate them? how could he not? and in this way this poor child repeats, unfortunately, his uncle’s curse. to have someone he wants to hate so much but just simply can’t. it warms my heart at least that jin ling has a much better support system than jc had when he had to live through that experience. so there is hope.