#swirly lines my beloved | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

raindownforme · 3 years

Text

“I love you” in Comic Sans (pt2!)

Charlie Slimecicle x reader [they/them used](CW: slightly sexist content)

Schlatt shoved y/n through the door way. The first person they looked for was Charlie, who was staring at them with wide eyes.

Of course Charlie was angry; he was angry and worried and quite honestly pissed off! Only moments ago Traves and Cooper had run in to tell him that Schlatt was holding y/n outside the front door. He had wanted so desperately to go out there and whisk them away from whatever Schlatt was planning, but before he could actualise a thought process they had both stumbled through the door. Watching y/n stand there, dressed to marry him, he felt his heart leave his chest and soar high up above him. The hood resting gently on their head and the cape swirling around their feet was pretty of course, but the second they made eye contact with Charlie, y/n smiled so wide that he felt invincible. He stood at the altar, watching as someone handed them the bouquet of flowers. He watched as they smiled, staring at the bright blue cornflowers, then smiling back to him. They mouth thank you and he felt his face burn bright pink.

He heard Schlatt mutter “come on” and shove y/n forward. As Schlatt slowly walked them towards the altar, Charlie felt anger boil from deep inside of himself. He saw Schlatt continue to whisper in their ear, and after what felt like ages (even though it was probably ten seconds) y/n and Schlatt now stood across from him at the altar.

“Thank you Schlatt, that will be all from you.” Ted did his best to excuse the man from the scene, but he didn’t seem to want to let go without a final word.

Schlatt turned to Charlie, poison dripping from each word. “Every bit as real as you think this is, the day this is over is the same day I put a bounty on both of your heads.”

Everyone watched as Schlatt walked towards the back few rows of the church and took the seat next to Connor.

Ted cleared his throat. “Dearly beloved, we have gathered here today....”

Charlie zoned out as Ted continued the speech. He stared at y/n, who kept glancing between either Ted or their conjoined hands. Charlie looked down at their hands, too. Ever so gently, he ran his thumb over the back of their hand, smiling to himself. y/n squeezed his hand and he looked back up to them. They silently mouthed to him, this is real.

Charlie smiled, unsure of how to feel. Off of basic instinct he was elated. The idea that the person he was in love with wanted to marry him set his soul on fire, but knowing that all of this was just political confused him. They must mean real for Schlatt, right? Real for him? Because Charlie was convinced there was no way this would be real like he wanted it to be real.

“Do you have rings?” Ted’s voice cut through Charlie’s thoughts and he came to the quick realization of-

“Oh my god I forgot the rings.” Charlie huffed in frustration. “I am so sorry-“

“Hey it’s okay. We’ll go get some tomorrow. We can pick out ones we like. Together.” y/n smiled at Charlie and then looked back to Ted. “We have no rings.”

Ted nodded, a small smirk on his face. “Any vows then?”

“Oh I’ve got this one covered.” Charlie let go of y/n to reach into his breast pocket and pull out a set of hot pink flash cards. “Here watch this.”

Charlie made a gesture to clear his throat and y/n let out a laugh. “Oh god I might divorce you now.”

Charlie laughed, adjusting his glasses a bit before diving into the speech. “y/n, I’ve only known you for probably a year. Maybe two. But I know that I can say with all of my heart that I will love you through thick and thin, especially through the slime of it all. But I love you and I’m excited to spend my life with you.”

He slipped away the cards to see y/n stifling a laugh. He went to grab their hand and they did their best to swallow the smile. “Alright. My turn. Uhm. Unfortunately, I didn’t have anything special prepared like you but I can tell you that every single day you find some way to make me smile and every single day I seem to find some way to make you smile. And putting together everything I know, that makes me feel like you are who I am supposed to spend the rest of my life with, which is such a relief because I love you so, so much Charlie.”

The couple stared at each other, smiling, until Ted brought them back to the ceremony. He held out a small book and a quill dipped in blue ink. “With no objections, would you both please sign this?”

y/n went to sign the certificate in the book first, ending with a swirly flourish. Charlie signed the line underneath, but his looked closer to chicken scratch.

Ted closed the book and held it with both hands. “I pronounce you two, married!”

Charlie wrapped his arms around y/n’s waist, expecting a hug, but instead they grabbed his face and kissed him. Charlie could feel them smiling against his lips and he felt like fire works. He felt like sparks were running under his skin from everywhere they were touching; the hands on his cheeks, their lips against his, his hands against their back. He picked them up, arms still around their waist and spun them in a circle.

y/n stopped kissing Charlie to laugh and bury their face in the crook of his neck, but they didn’t want to. When they kissed Charlie it felt electrifying. It felt whole, like something that had been missing.

Charlie pulled apart from them, still keeping hands on their waist, still smiling wide enough to make sure his face hurt for the rest of the week. “Hey,” he whispered just loud enough for y/n and Ted to hear. “If we give Ted those flowers we can take the book and book it.”

y/n giggled and nodded. They quickly exchanged the items with Ted. And then, hand in hand, the two ran down the aisles of the church and out into the open air.

———

Three weeks had passed since the wedding. In that time, they’d been able to move all of y/n’s stuff to a new house buried in a forested hill. Their house and home garden were well-hidden, but even if something were to happen, Charlie’s home was a three-minute horse ride away.

It had only taken a week to dig out the hill side and build the house, but even after that Charlie had offered to stay with y/n to make sure they felt safe. So for the past three weeks, Charlie had spent every waking day and night at y/n’s house, save for the very few times he had something to attend to.

Today was one of those days. It was late in the afternoon. The sun was about to set, so y/n waited patiently next to the window until their husband came home. It wasn’t unusual for Charlie to be more late than he had originally said. The boy got distracted quite often, whether it was some antics one of his friends had gotten stuck in or something new someone made. But y/n still couldn’t help the anxious feeling that itched beneath their skin.

They sat in their obsessive thoughts for a while longer before they heard the familiar knock at the door. He always knocked the same way, and he would wait for y/n to knock the same way back, which they happily ran to the door to do, then they turned the deadbolt.

Charlie burst through the door, holding his arms out wide as if he were addressing a large crowd. “Hey!”

“Hey! Why are you breathing so hard?”

“Oh. Right.” Charlie shut the door behind himself and set a box from his back pocket on the table near the door. “Well I was in town and I’m not sure who it was but someone built the coolest thing! It’s this big planet and there’s a ring around it like that one planet-“

“Saturn?”

“-yeah Saturn! Which Is why I ran here to tell you because I had the perfect thing to say.”

Charlie opened the box he had set down earlier and pulled out two smaller black velvet boxes. y/n gasped, trying not to hold their breath. “Charlie, what is this?”

“I told you I’d get you a ring! And now you can be saturn! Or we could be Saturn!” Charlie opened the small box and inside was a simple silver band ring engraved with twisting vines and cornflowers to decorate the outside, but on the inside of the band, the wedding date was engraved in comic sans. y/n laughed at the gift, taking it out of the box and slipping it onto their ring finger. Somehow, it fit perfectly. Charlie started explaining something, but all y/n could focus on was not crying. They were gently snapped back into focus when Charlie placed his hand gently on their face and brushed their cheek with his thumb. “Are you okay? You look like you’re crying.”

“Yeah. No I’m fine.”

“Is it the ring? Because I can return them if you want. You don’t even have to pay me back.”

“Charlie its not the rings-“

“Is it something I can fix? At least tell me that-“

“Charlie I love you.” He released his hold on their face and stared in shock. “I’ve been in love with you forever now. That’s why I didn’t want to marry you. I knew you’d be too good of a guy and you’d make it so much harder to not say anything but I’m really worried now that whenever you leave me to marry someone else it’s going to kill me.” Charlie stared at y/n softly. They glanced to see the ring sitting in the box in his other hand and they groaned. “I just embarrassed myself didn’t I?”

“No, y/n-“

“No it’s okay I know you were being nice but you can leave-“

Charlie, with one hand against their cheek and the other wrapped around their waist, pulled y/n in for a kiss. His glasses pushed against their brow and they gasped before they could appropriately react, but Charlie melted at the feeling of y/n smiling against him and the fire works going off under his skin, and y/n smiled as the electricity raced through them.

Charlie pulled the two of them apart, but still rested his forehead against y/n’s. “When you kissed me, it was like fireworks went off everywhere. I wanted to do it every single day. I want to hold your hand every single day, and come home to you at night, and tell you about the wild shit I find in town, and maybe start a store or something so we don’t go broke, and I want to wake up with you. And I want to do all those things because I have loved you for so long. So when you told me it was real I was ecstatic. And you telling me this now makes me happier than I was then.”

“Charlie?”

“Yes?”

“I want the store with you. And the hand holding. And the coming home at night. And everything else you said.”

“Good. Now can you actually tell me if you like the rings? Because you didn’t before.”

y/n laughed, pulling Charlie into a full hug. “Did it have to be comic sans?”

He mumbled intoto the crook of their neck. “I love you too.”

————

Tags: @rosefreckles06 @short-potato

#charlie slimecicle #charlie slimecicle x reader #slimecicle x reader #slimecicle #jschlatt #ted nivison #dsmp x reader

127 notes · View notes

turtle-steverogers · 3 years

Note

Mikey I have Feelings about Steve Rogers specifically tonight and I want you to hear them

- Steve likes apple just fine but he actually doesn’t like the taste of cinnamon so he doesn’t actually eat a lot of apple things; Bucky experiments with different pastries until he finds one that’s close enough to the regular thing that everyone (including Steve) is happy.

- Sometimes Steve gets overwhelmed by all the sights and sounds and smells and textures and it’s all too much. He goes into his room, sits on the floor (the bed is too soft), puts on a sleeping mask and puts in heavy-duty earplugs. (Can you tell I read “Suspended Silence” again tonight? 😂)

- Sometimes if Steve is mentally overwhelmed (which happens a lot after a lot of PR-type stuff, he’ll take tweezers to his legs; the hairs don’t snap out so much as they pull or drag out. It’s not the sharp pain of other hair, it’s slower and more all-encompassing. He’ll pluck until he feels calm again.

- He’ll only sleep around you (let alone *on* you) if he really truly trusts you; it doesn’t happen for the team for the first year and a half at least.

- Steve likes almost all flowers except marigolds; Sarah died in October, and marigolds are the flowers of October, so there were a lot at her funeral. Same with narcissus for Bucky, at least until he gets back. (Bucky never saw his funeral; all he knows is the flowers are pretty, and finally Steve starts to see them that way again too.)

- Steve had a little bit of a lisp way-back-when that no one told him about because they all knew it was caused by his bad hearing. It was fixed almost immediately after coming out of the vita-ray chamber because he heard people talking and subconsciously mimicked them. However, no one spoke to Steve in Gaelic after Sarah was gone, so his Gaelic sounds just the slightest bit off.

- Sometimes if Steve is minority stressed, he’ll grab his sketchpad and work on warm-ups: straight lines, loops, etc.

- Steve has Sarah’s wedding ring tucked away somewhere; it was in the Smithsonian, but he took it back. When he’s not on a mission, it goes on the same chain as Bucky’s dog tags.

- Nomad!Steve went a little crazy on beard care products… however Bucky definitely appreciated it!

- He has to have someone (usually Bucky or Natasha) proofread his mission reports because his commas are ATROCIOUS. He never could sit still in class long enough to learn when to put a comma, so they just go wherever he thinks they should.

Steve has a four-foot-tall stuffed dog named Frank that Bucky won for him at Coney Island

Hope you like them ❤️ feel free to elaborate on anything that catches your fancy! I love these types of conversations with you where we keep hyping each other up.

Also how are you?? ❤️

YOU HAD FEELINGS AND GAVE M E FEELINGS OKAY LETS BREAK THIS DOWN

-YES to the apples one! The juice is real good and refreshing and helps him feel less nauseous, but apple pie and apple fillings are way too sticky and dense for him, and he feels like he can barely swallow them! And yeah, the cinnamon taste it just so overwhelming-- no. Bucky ends up mushing down the apples a whole bunch and using less cinnamon to make little mini apple strudels that Steve really loves!

-(Thanks for reading again, pal!) Yes! Steve with sensory overload is one of my absolute favorite headcanons. I headcanon that he's always had sensitivities, impairments or not, but the serum just exacerbated everything and he shuts down so quickly. Bucky walks in on him sometimes lying spread eagle on the floor and he like goes over him and asks if he'd rather company or not and usually ends up with Steve in his arms while he squeezes the heck out of him. (Steve likes pressure)

-Yes! He also bites his nails and picks the hell out of his cuticles, which serve the same sort of soothing repetitive purpose

-YEAH AND THE FIRST TIME HE DOES fall asleep around them, he's in the huge squishy armchair in the communal living room, curled up with his legs tucked under him and his face propped all smushed on his fist and they're all struck by how goddamn young he looks ("Nobody fucking wake him" "Wasn't planning on it")

-And once he shifts his view on flowers, he gets a marigold tattooed on his bicep! The stem loops around his arm

-STEVE WITH A LISP YEAH That tracks, I can totally see it! And yeah, I can see his Gaelic being just the slightest bit stunted, but he's still entirely fluent.

-He also doodles swirlies and little comics! Like cartoon mini Avengers

-Sometimes he twists the ring around in his finger, or holds it to his cheek or lips to ground himself if he's stressed or needs centering

-OKAY BUT BUCKY DOING HIS BEARD CARE F O R HIM I'm such a sucker for like,,, intimate grooming. Shavings, haircuts, washing hair/bathing together. So sweet. Bucky rubbing in some beard butter and kissing Steve's forehead. "Looking good, sweetheart"

-You know, it's fucking hilarious you bring up this headcanon and also very creepy because me and @misspluckyplum JUST wrote a scene where this exact thing was happening. Like I'm pretty sure this line was actually written: The grammar he could help with. Steve wouldn't recognize a comma if it hit him in the face. I think he struggles with that sort of thing partly because he couldn't focus when he was at school, and also because he had to miss so much of school, so some of the more basic technical stuff he missed out on. Grammar is hard for him on paper!

-FRANK MY BELOVED on bad days, Bucky finds him dead asleep on top of Frank send tweet

These were wonderful, thanks pal!!! I'm good! Had a bit of a stressful week, but I'm much better now. How are you??

#mutuals!!#steve rogers #bucky barnes #stucky

39 notes · View notes

malindamay · 4 years

Text

Ian POV: Hi uh, I’m Ian and I-I’m going to you a story about time that. I saved Disneyland and how me and Barley become the 26th characters so, uh, I’ll try my best I never tell anyone story’s except my movie story, of course. Uh, *clears throat* so here’s my NOBLE story. *chuckles* Mickey Mouse will you please be the narrator, please?😅

Mickey/ normal POV oh boy! Yes! So *clears* one day In a beautiful place, where all mystical creatures live in peace and harmony mostly, called, New Mushroomtin. The Lightfoot family was starting a new day. Ian, a 16-year-old elf, is shy and sometimes unconfident, but he wanna make his family proud especially his dad and his beloved brother, Barley. “Dear Brother we have a buffet awaits us!” Said Barley with enthusiasm-

Ian POV if you don’t know barley, he’s my older brother, and he’s very joyful and kind-hearted for me and the only thing that fears him the most is A, staying in hospital long time, B, he sees someone who has medical problems or has tubes, ventilator ETC, and C, seeing me hurt

Sorry, Mickey, gotta tell our Disney/fans about my brother if they don’t know who he is.😅

Mickey POV ok, so Ian replies with a chuckle, “*chuckle* its dinner Barley not a fancy buffet lol” Blazey pounces on Ian making Ian almost dropping the food “ *yelps* laughs * Blazey *ack!* okx3!🤣 😅 love you too.” Till Ian saw a letter tape on their door it’s from me(Mickey Mouse)

“ Hey Ian

this is Mickey Mouse and I was wondering if you and your brother can come to Disney world for the DVC Celebration plus you and your brother will be debating on the Disney team I know you’re shy,but you’ll be fine I’m sure my pals love ya, and even there’ll be fans who love your movie! Please accept this invitation.

Love, Mickey Mouse.❤️”

Ian reads it twice and his face turns from 😕 —>🙂😀 “Barley, will you love to go on a majestic quest with me?!😀”

Barley suddenly answer” *laughs* My dear brother, of course!” Ian nods he grabs his staff and he goes pack up their luggage’s! Laurel( their mom) looks at them a little nervous.” Are you sure you boys will be fine?” Ian nods “don’t worry I’ll call ya if something happens wrong,ok?” Laurel says “but-“ Ian cuts her off with a smile “I’m wizard well, 1st stage *chuckles* we”ll be fine, I’ll try to protect barley and he’ll protect me!”

Laurel had a tear in her eyes “ *sniffs* you two always have your father’s spirit. *sobs* 😢” Ian hugs his mom “before you go I have something for you,Ian. *grabs a flowey (lavender with gold,swirly glittered design in the edges) scarf(same style like elsa’s mom’s but different) it’s from your dad’s when he’s about almost your age.”

Ian clenched it suddenly a guset of wind swirls around him ounce as Ian closes his eyes. “Thx mom.”

Barley smiles at Ian till Blazey comes up to Ian and hugs him likes they’re gonna be leave her with their mom alone for few months, Ian says in his sweet tone “sorry girl wish we could take you with mom but, I think Mickey just wants me and Barley,ok? Who’s a good girl,come on who’s a good dragon?” Blazey barks at Ian as a “I am.” Ian gets up grabs their luggages “we’ll miss you mom,Blazey. We’ll be fine I’ll text call or FaceTime you when we want to.” Barley comes and puts his shoulder around ians’s softly “ it’s ok mom.🙂” Lauarel sheds a tear “*sniffs* you’ll always have your dad’s spirit.”

Ian goes and about to close the door “see ya in a few months,mom. *blows a kiss*”

In New Mushroomtin Airport:

Ian was a little nervous and excited to go,but he knew he always have his brother by his side and his spiritual dad beside them. Barley smiles at Ian “ready,Ian?🙂” Ian takes a deep breath and grabs his luggage’s as Barley grabs his, as Ian says” *sighs* yes!🙂”

After few days they had landed and as they saw the beauty of the Disneyland hotel Ian slowly twirls as he admires around “woah, this place is gorgeous!”😀” they’re about to unpack their luggage’s till they heard a knock on their hotel room(room 24) Ian opens the door and saw the big cheese himself,the one that started it all, Mickey Mouse! “Hi pals, hope you’re enjoying your room so far *ha ha* oh boy!” Ian shakes Mickey’s hand, *gasps* it’s a really honor to meet you Mickey can’t wait to make our 1st debut in DCA!😅” Barley comes up “hi, names Barley nice to meet you,bro*laughs* “ barley gives Mickey a bro hug. Mickey asks in his kind voice “is anything that my cast members can do for you, or-“ Ian says “no,but we’re a little hungry.” Mickey says in his cheerful tone” oh boy! I know just the place! I’ll wait till you 2 are done with your unpacking.” Ian nods and says “ I’ll knock after we’re done unpacking

Mickey closes the door as the 2 brotherly elves unpacking their luggage’s Ian took his staff out of his long suitcase. Barley asks “need help dear brother?😀” little help,please!”Ian replie. As Ian saw something in his satual shiny is a locket that has the Lightfoot gain including Blazey in the inside! replies, He puts it around his neck and looks at his reflection in the mirror Ian sheds a tear in his eyes. Barley looks at him and coax him “hey,you ok?” Ian couldn’t control his tears, so he let his tears out Barley gently puts down his stuff and hugs Ian to conforts his beloved brother. “I know you miss mom and Blazey, I miss them too,but hey, we get to make our 1st apperience in DCA,Disneyland! They’ll be tons of human fans will love us,and ETC, it’s ok.” Ian sobs softly as he hugs barley back. “ I love you and *sobs* I’m not letting anyone or anything hurt me or you. *sobs softly*😢😭“

Chapter 2

After they unpacked their luggage’s, Ian wears his shawl/scarf and grabs his staff, and knocks on the door, “ready pals?” Mickey asks. Ian grabs Barley’s hand, “*sighs* yes!🙂”

“ wow this place is majestic!” Ian said

Mickey replying “yes it’s a fun place where all ages to have fun and ETC.

Mickey: Yes, the wind blows a little bit cooler

And we're all happy

And the clouds are moving on with every pixie dusts

Our flowers just became gorgeous

Goofy:And my leaf's a little sadder and wiser

Mickey: That's why I rely on certain certainties

Yes, some things never change

Like the feel of your hand in ours

Some things stay the same

Like how we get along just fine

Like an old stone wall that will never fall

Some things are always true

Some things never change

*to Ian and Barley* Guys, did your dreams come true?

Minnie: The flowers are already blooming

Pluto, it feels like the debut is coming

*talks for pluto* tAre you telling me tonight he’s gonna get down on one knee?

Yep, but I'm really nervous at planning these things out

Like greeting them the 1st time!

*talks for pluto* Maybe you should leave all the exciting stuff to the characters

Yeah, some things never change

Like the joy that I feel for them

Some things stay the same

Like how dogs are easier

But if I commit and I go for it

I'll know what to say and do, right?

*talks for pluto* Some things never change

Pluto, the pressure is all on you

Ian: is this really true , could that be this day of our debut?

Dad, wish you could see us now? I'm not sure I want things to be perfect

These days are precious, can't let the magic fade

I can't stop this moment, but I can still go out and see this day!!

Other Disney characters: The wind blows a little bit cooler

Goofy: : And if you believe in yourself

The elf brothers: It's time to count our blessings beneath an heaven sky

Disney characters: We'll always live in the kingdom of plenty

That stands for the good of the many

Ian: And I promise you the flag of Disneyland will always fly BOOMBASTIA! *staff swishes*

Disney characters:Our flag will always fly

Our flag will always fly

Some things never change

Turn around in the time that's flown

Some things stay the same

Though the future remains unknown

May our good luck rest, may our past be past

Time's moving fast, it's true

Some things never change

Barley: And I'm holding on tight to you

Ian: Holding on tight to you

Mickey:Holding on tight to you

Ian and barley: Holding on tight to you

Chapter 3

A trolly appears and a tourist comes would you both like a tour of the park?”

The elves replied “ yes of course. *laughs at each other*” Ian goes inside the horse trolley Barley sat beside his brother after he grabs few snacks from one of the shops in Main Street USA.

After 2 hours of touring around and. Behind the castle. “Thank you so much for giving us a tour!” Ian shakes the tourist and hugs him and Barley asks, “if you don’t mind can I take a selfie with you Ian and your trolley with your horse?” “Oh absolutely!” Ian poses with his staff and helds his shawl/scarf. “SELFIE!😀” Barley calls out with delight! “Thank you so much!” “Hey no problem, have a magical time on your 1st day!” Calls out the tourist as the 2 elves goes out and have fun. They’d arrive to the AMC in Disney Hollywood studio. “Ready Ian?” Ian takes a deep breath and he holds his staff in his right arm and the other holds his brother’s hand, and said “ Yes, Yes! I’m- we’re so proud of our hard work with our movie. *sigh* I’m ready to meet our fans!”

They enters the entrance and they stop at their meet and greet spot and Ian is ready.

Chapter 4

The crowds was in line and a little girl, a 2 year old dressed as Ian, got her own Ian’s staff. It was her and her family’s turn. She hides behind her mom’s leg. Ian kneels and holds out his hands “hey little girl, it’s ok I won’t use my staff on you to hurt you, it’s ok, awww. *hugs* it’s that your staff?” The mom says “ wanna show Ian your 19 inch Ian plush?”

Ian holds his doll and make it wave at her and covers its eyes “peekaboo.”

“Aww, hey, name’s Barley it’s ok. Wanna take photos? Huh?” The girl turns towards the photographer. Ian holds his doll in his left hand and his right, hugs the girl. “ok say bye.” Says the mom. Ian blows a kiss to the girl and make his doll waves bye to the girl and says in his little high pitch voice “bye, love you * makes his doll blows a kiss and make his doll hugs her* *normal pitch* bye love you, one more hug? aww. *hugs* bye.we Love you.”

Chapter 5

Suddenly blast of wind burst the door open! Malificeint appears, smoke appears from her. “Well well well.” The wind from her power makes Ian’s hair,flannel,scarf/shawl, Barley’s vest flows. “Who are you?” Ian asks as he holds his staff and points it towards the dark souceror . “I’m Malificent. The powerful villain in all the land!” Thunder boomed as she evil laughs. “ there’s something I want. Something that’s magical and more powerful. I need your magic.😈” Ian looks at her puzzled “what?” Barley looks little upset “ why,why do you want his magic?!😨😠 Ian nobley says “wait so-“ Malificient cuts him off “let you something to you all! I want his magic to becomepowerful and become the queen of DISNEYLAND!!” Ian emotion turns from 😠 —>😨 “wait. NO!! *grunts* VOLLTEr ThUNDE-“ Malificent used her power to push Ian! “*yelps in fear* NO you YOU MONSTER!!” “YOU’LL SEE YOU’LL ALL SEE!!!! *evil laughs out loud*😈” a huge gust of wind blows ounce hard across the room. Ian’s flannel opened from the wind! Ian looks at his hand and the staff “NO! *sobs*” Ian grabs his shawl/scarf and flieds through the park the trolley horse stops and yelps out the tourist tried to calm the horse down and saw Ian ran to the hotel room(room 24). Ian shuts the bedroom door and sinks to his knees and cries as he hugs his dad’s staff. “Dad! *sobs* please help me! *sobs*” suddenly the window opens and a swirl of wind created a spirit of his dad his voice echos. “Ian,my son. Why does she wants your magic?” “*sniffs* *breaking voice* I-I don’t know.” His dad puts his hand on his young son’s cheeck.

Ian holds his scarf close to him as he looks up at his spiritual dad. His dad holds his staff and gives it to Ian, but Ian slowly grabs the staff. Suddenly he saw darkness pulls into Disneyland. Ian looks out the window, he gasps in horror his iPhone rings. “I-Ian it’s me B-barley please he-“ Ian got scared his dad told him “listen you can do this you defeated the curse dragon last time.” Ian looks at the staff and looks noble! “ I’m going to give Malificent what she wants!😠” Wilden cries out “What?! No Ian I can’t let you be powerless I can’t let my son be powerless and weak!” Ian clenched his staff and runs off to Malificent!”

Chapter 6

Inside Disneyland castle all the Disney/Pixar characters inside Malificent is waiting for her power gift,Ian! Doors slam open with a blast of Ian’s staff from Ian. “Oh Ian *hugs* I thought you-“ Ian cuts Barley off. “I’m here to give you the gift. My MAGIC!” Barley gasps in horror so does all the other characters! Malificent approaches to Ian and she stabs him in the heart Ian yells in pain.

“IAN!!!😱 NO!!!”Malificent froze Barley in place. Ian lies there shouting out pain! “No *moans* please.” “Your magic will make me more powerful! *evil laugh*

Malificent: I'm not the villain in distress.

I'm not your girlfriend or the frightened sourccer .

I'm not a little bird who needs your help to fly.

Nope..... I'm the bad guy.

All these former villains that you see...

Each of them with shaking knees has knelt before me.

So I'm not your teammate or your partner in crime.

What am I, boys?!

-She's the bad guy..-

Oh, it's magic

To watch a planet

Shrivel up and die...

Oh, it's thrillin'

To be a villain.

I take over their homes and then I watch them suffer...

Mwhaha!

CUZ, I'M THE BAD GUY!!!!😈

Ian tries to stands up but the pain in his heart hurts so bad Malificent dissapears Barley unfroze as she dissapearss.

Chapter 7

Barley brought Ian to their hotel room and laid Ian on the couch, along with the other characters “Runpunzel use your heal power.” Flyn says. Runpunzel sings a special song as she wraps her hair around Ian’s torso.

✨💫flower gleam and glow,

Let your power shine.

Make the clock reverse,

Bring back as mine.

Heal will help the pain.

Change the faith desires.

Say what’s has be loved bring back ounce was mine.

When ounce was mine.💫✨

His heart was healed Ian breaths as Barley holding his hands while he sobs sofyly and saying prayers.

Chapter 8

Elsa and Anna rush yo check on Ian withe the other Disney characters

“Elsa! *moans*” barley coax Ian @shh Ian lie down.” “ I’m so sorry it’s not our fault.”

Ian: Barley, 🎶 you’re the soul who I understand. The love that show me of who I am! through the darkness to the light. You got my back and I believe you. If It weren’t for you. I’ll be the wheels and you’ll be the road.

Barley: Ian,what you’re trying to say? Can you please let me know.

Ian: cause you carried me with you

From the quest of the gem to the battle of the dragon. I was so brave cause of you. Like a moonlight with the stars you’ll guiding me, yeah it’s true. You carried me with you!

Barley: Ian, 🎶from the day that Youall begun. But, I was there to protect you. But when I see you being hurt. I tried to help, you’re a fighter. And when my heart filled with worried. found a way to comfort me. You always found a bright side, and make me feel better.

Both: cause you carried me with you

From the quest of the gem to the battle of the dragon. I was trying to protect you, like a moonlight with the stars, you’ll be guiding me, yeah it’s true, yeah carried me with you.

Ian: oh we’ll be always be together no matter what.

Barley: watching out the days turns into night

Ian: we know to brave the stormy weathers.

Both: well never give so without a fiiiihhhhhhttt!!

Ian: and if it weren’t for you from the battle

I’ll would’ve die without you.

Barley: I’ll see us through thick and thin

For love and lost till the end.

Both: yeah you carried me with you

From the quest of the gem to the battle of the dragon I was just to secard to see

Like a moonlight with the stars you’ll always protect me

Yeah it’s true

You carried me with you

Ian: oh you carried me with you.🎶

Chapter 9

Judy and nick rushes to Ian and barley with other characters in the hotel. “We heard the news! oh sweet cheese and crackers, are you ok,Ian? *holds Ian hands*” “*sighs* he’s fine,except he has no magic left Malificent had his power!” Barley told Judy. “I’m-we’re sorry we-“

“How do we stop this darkness?!” Ian asks. Barley puts their dad’s shawl/scarf around Ian’s shoulders. Barley ordered all the characters, except Ian, to go and try to stop Malificent with him, but Ian won’t let him. “What?! No” “Ian I can’t let you die!” “No I’m coming too! If dad was here, he would go a-and go to be noble to fight and never give up. I may not have dad actually being here, but if I swear to God, he’ll be with us spiritually,I love you!” Barley looks at him little sceard. Ian holds his shawl/scarf and shouts “Come on, stay together! STAY STRONG!!” Barley can’t believe that his brother is gonna sacrifice his love for his family and old/new friends!

Chapter 10

Malificent : 🎶Believe me I know

I've sunk pretty low

But whatever I've done you deserved

I'm the bad guy, that's fine

It's no fault of mine

And some justice at last will be served

Now it's time to step up

Or it's time to back down

And there's only one answer for me

And I'll stand up and fight

Cause I know that I'm right

And I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready

Ready as I'll ever be

Ian: Now it's time to rise up

Or it's time to stand down

And the answer is easy to see

And I swear by the staff

If you're in, get on board

Are you ready?

Judy: I'm ready

Mickey Minnie : We're ready

Crowd: We're ready

Ian: Ready as I'll ever be

Barley : Are you quite sure we can do this?

Ian: Together we will guarantee

Malificent : I'll make them hear me

Crowd: Now it's time to redeem

Or it's time to resolve

Ian : Prove they can trust me

Crowd: And the outcome will hardly come free

Ian: I'll save or land and family

Crowd: Now the line's in the sand

And our moment's at hand

Mérida : And I'm ready

Barley : I'm ready

Ian & Judy: I'm ready

Malificent : Ready as I'll ever be!🎶

Chapter 11

Ian got on a horse(which it almost reminds him Guenivere (their stead)

Barley looks confident but scared for his brother. “Ian, are you sure? I don’t want you to get hurt. “ Ian says “I may not have magic, but I still have little magic inside if me.” Ian fleds through Main Street USA to the Castle. As Ian gets off alone with the horse, the horse neighs meaning: be careful, ” it's ok I’ll be fine.

Chapter 12

In Disneyland caatle area the sky covers with darkness, The wind blows across the land. Ian gasps in horror along with the Disney characters. Ian stood noble to try to control his tears. “Come on, Barley you Judy with me the others splits together.” The characters nods as they splits up. They go inside the castle until army of guards surrounded them Ian reaches out his staff,Barley grabs his sword and Judy grabs a spare sword and they start batting! “Boombastia! Guys I’ll go and and find Malificent!” They agree as the others continue battling withe guards. Ian goes and find Malificent with his staff till *whoosh* smoke appears and she appears in front of him! Ian grabs his staff, “you’ll never NEVER take away my magic😡!” Malificent and Ian starts their battle as she knocks him out the bouncony and top of the castle’s roof the wind was strong. Ian shivers from the wind. Malificent uses her magic. Ian uses his staff “Volltar Thundersir!” Till Malificent shoot her magic and Ian hit hers created a huge gusts of wind till *whoosh* Ian was shot a little thank god he’s still alive. Barley saw the action “Ian? NO!!!!!” And the final act of the magic Malificent and Ian magic hits Barley and knocks him down,dead. Ian cries out “BARLEY,NO,no, please, YOU MONSTER!!! VOLLTAR THUBDERSIR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” *BOOM!!” His staff explodes and kills Malificent, for good Chapter 13 sadly, Ian rushes toward his brother crying, “*voice break* Barley no please don’t leave me. I-I love you *sniffs*” Ian tries his very best to use his staff to try to heal Barley. Ian grabs his staff,still crying, and says”I-insta r-Repairo!(please work please😢😭)” suddenly swirls of wind swirls around Barley from his staff his vest,hair,shirt,Ian’s hair,flannel flows in the wind. Ian’s eyes squinted from the wind and bright swirls. Few moments later with a soft swish, Barley slowly opens his eyes. Ian cried out tears of joy! Then suddenly his staff swishes around Ian the TRANSFORMATION of a WIZARD! The cape,kimono flows in the wind as his staff rose Ian in the air and twirls him majestically . Few moments later Ian opens his eyes still full of tears of joy. “Wow,Ian you look majestic!” Barley amazed “thanks *sniffs* “Chapter 14. At the castle where they do spectacular front of the stage the crowd is waiting for a special ceremony debut. Loud speaker booms over the speaker.”laddies and gentlemen,boys and girls, please welcome,Tennesha and Alex!” The crowd cheered as they appeared to the stage “Welcome everyone we’re so delighted to have this majestic debut coming for this day before we meet our special surprise guests, we wanna bring our Disney / Pixar friends on stage!” The crowd cheered as the Disney/Pixar characters come on stage and greeted the audience. “Hello everybody!” Minnie says, “Hey pals oh boy how everybody’s doing today?!” Mickey asks the crowd shouted yes out loud! “So Mickey we are so excited to see our special characters on their debut,right everyone?!!” Tenneshia says as the crowd screams with excitement! Woody says “can’t wait to meet them *giggles*” “Ok everybody I want everybody to say Onward really loud,ok? Ready? “ the crowd stood up and shouted withe the characters “1 2 3, ONWARD!!!!” Suddenly Ian voice boomed over the speaker BOOMBASTIA!!!” Fireworks and with a flash of a firework with smoke shooting and appeared, Ian and Barley are on stage and the speaker played “Carried me with you in instrumental. “It’s Ian and Barley Lightfoot say hi Guys, come on Ian don’t be shy!” The crowd went wild with excitement till they settle down. @bluezey @itsme-starmunch

9 notes · View notes

bigskydreaming · 4 years

Note

The Spy Who Forgot!

Excerpt from The Spy Who Forgot To Come In From the Cold, aka the one based on that headcanon I made, where Lex Luthor steals Dick’s body after Forever Evil before reviving him, so even Bruce thinks Dick is dead, and the Batfam is unable to go after Lex for revenge due to how ‘beloved by the masses’ he is after taking credit for saving the day from the Crime Syndicate.

Meanwhile, Lex has revived Dick, who has amnesia due to the trauma of dying and being resuscitated, which Lex then utilizes to convince Dick he’s a freelance espionage agent whom Lex often employs, and thus inserts him into Spyral as Agent 37, to be his own spy.

Spyral - and Agent 37 - cross paths with the Batfam as they’re pursuing an AU investigation into the mysterious figure known only as Mother because I couldn’t resist trying to make a better version of Batman and Robin Eternal too while I was at it switching up everything else, but don’t worry, Cass is pre-Reboot Cass and a full fledged member of the Batfam, because her part of the Mother storyline was particularly dumb and I Object and also I Refuse.

Snippet, from Jason’s POV, interacting with swirly-faced Agent 37, and no idea yet its his brother (not that Agent 37 has anymore of a clue why he finds this family so intriguing).

“Oh,” Jason grumbled, complete with homicidal scowl. “Its you again.”

The stranger with the bewildering and everchanging face looked around his perch atop the fire-escape, two stories up.

“Is it really? Phew, for a moment there I was worried it was someone else. Which would probably make me someone else, and that’s just a recipe for disaster. See, I’ve already exceeded my existential crises quota for the week, and that’s really not an area one wants to be excessive, y’know.”

He leaned precariously forward while tacking on that last bit in a pronounced stage whisper. Its echo bounced about the otherwise empty alleyway, flitting from one brick wall to the next as it dropped down to the ground where Jason stood, hand inching towards his most accessible gun.

Look, eccentricity just brought that tendency out in him. It wasn’t his fault. He was murdered by a clown once.

But this asshole was popping up in too many places and situations of interest to dismiss as just a chattering idiot best dealt with via bullets. Plus, he was supposed to be trying to ‘get along’ with his family these days, and do things ‘the right way’ and other boring as fuck reasons to stay his hand and just grit his teeth instead. He had made that commitment after all. And like. It’d be annoying as hell to have wasted all those hours he’d already logged toeing the line.

“Is there a reason you’re here?” Jason ground out, once his trigger finger had made its peace with being trigger-unhappy instead of embracing its preferred mood.

“Oh, noooooooooow you’ve done it,” Topsy-Turvy said, throwing his arms out so wide that Jason tensed and readied to lunge and catch him when he inevitably fell. But instead the man maintained his position with seeming effortless grace, leaning forward once more with an elbow atop one thigh and his chin propped up in his hand. “But if we’re going to unpack all of that, then we gotta ask - why are any of us here, really? Are we all bit players upon some stage, or are we nothing more than synaptic misfires in whatever passes for the universe’s brain?”

“That’s deep,” Jason deadpanned. He mentally revisited his stance on To Kill or Not To Kill. That was the question. Horatio.

“I know,” Mr. Swirly Face said, nodding sagely. “I’m extremely profound. I’m thinking of writing a book, actually.”

32 notes · View notes

leviathanswingman · 4 years

Text

killing me softly, chapter 9: intervening

Diavolo fixed Lucifer with an intense stare. He still hadn't eased up on his death hold, so Lucifer and him were only mere inches apart from each other.

Oh, this was dangerous.

Lucifer was the first to avert his gaze and instead focused on the swirly pattern of the wallpaper to calm his breathing and collect himself again. „How long have you been awake for?“ he asked, dreading the worst. „If that was all it took to wake you up, I've clearly been doing the wrong thing for decades.“

Diavolo scoffed. „So that's how it's going to be.“

He released his grip on Lucifer's body to cradle his face instead, rough hands on surprisingly soft cheeks, forcing him to look into his eyes again.

„For how long do you think you can keep up this charade? You are dying,“ he said. Despite himself, Diavolo had lost all willingness to keep up a playful front. He was dead serious now and his eyebrows were furrowed in confusion. There was a certain expression on his face, it was almost as if he were searching for the last piece of the puzzle that would finally make him understand Lucifer's uncharacteristic defiance. Perhaps he would find it if he studied Lucifer's face long enough.

„I'll live just fine,“ Lucifer grumbled in response, his face as stoic as usual.

“How? Out of nothing but spite? Not even you can do that. Hell, not even I would be able to do that!” Diavolo growled. “It's not worth it if it means losing you. Confess already and move on, I need you. Your brothers need you.”

For a split second an undeniable look of hurt slipped through the cracks of Lucifer's otherwise indestructible poker face. He shook off Diavolo's hands, took hold of the bloodied handkerchief that had still been lying on the bed, and sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. Holding the handkerchief to his mouth once again, he coughed six blue petals into it before letting it disappear in the pocket of his pants.

He threw Diavolo one last, indecipherable look. “Of course, my lord. I'll make sure to eradicate these pesky feelings. Thank you for your hospitality and also, excuse me for the inconvenience I've caused you,” he stated coldly as he slipped on his dress shoes, distinctly avoiding Diavolo's gaze.

At this point Diavolo had sat up on his bed, watching Lucifer in confusion.

Had he said something he shouldn't have said? All he'd wanted to do was help Lucifer get back to his old, unbothered self.

If there was one thing Diavolo couldn't stand for certain then it was seeing his beloved Lucifer in this much pain. It cost him all of his strength to remain in place when his brain yelled at him to go on a one man mission through the whole country to weed out the one person who had managed to do the unthinkable; to find that one person who had managed to steal Lucifer's heart, a feat Diavolo himself had attempted uncountable times, but had failed at over and over again, no matter how hard he tried.

Certain things just couldn't be earned through persistence after all. After all, there was a thin line to be walked between pursuing the object of your admiration and obsessing over them, so Diavolo had resigned himself to a purely professional connection between him and Lucifer. He had resigned himself to courteous nods, secret glances, shoulders brushing in the heat of war.

Lucifer smoothed down his clothes before turning towards the door. With one last look at Diavolo, he pressed down the handle.

“Barbatos wanted to talk to you about business. But you heard him, so there's no need for me to tell you twice.” The door slammed closed.

Seconds passed as Diavolo simply stared at the door.

Something felt off, yet he couldn't tell what had gone wrong. Even as he thought about it intensely and thoroughly, he didn't know what he'd done wrong. Still, Diavolo couldn't shake the feeling that something had gone awfully awry.

Perhaps it was really time for him to go and see Barbatos.

Lucifer walked down the hallway in a hurried pace.

He had been an utter fool. Of course, Diavolo would have overheard his conversation with Barbatos.

Of course, Barbatos had never explicitly stated that Lucifer was in love with Diavolo, yet even a stranger could have been able to gather all of the evidence that had been dropped in that conversation and figured out that Lucifer was undeniably in love with Diavolo.

Though he often had his dense moments, Diavolo certainly wasn't dumb. Actually, the demon prince was incredibly intelligent, scarily so. There was no way he hadn't it all figured out. Perhaps he had known all along.

To say he had been rejected was much easier than the actual truth. Not only had Lucifer been rejected, he had also harshly been told to just move on.

His lungs weighed heavily under that truth, spores and roots choking him considerably more violently than before.

Akin to the way a mortician would tend to a new body, Lucifer made his way to the next bathroom he could find, checking if he could feel any other demons nearby, then locking himself in the next best bathroom stall before leaning down to the toilet, one hand placed on the stall's wall to steady himself; a routine. Roses, white and blue in an unholy union, loyalty and the one thing he could never have, pouring down the pipes.

Lucifer used a wad of toilet paper to clean up the trail of saliva and blood that had dripped down his chin, almost sullying his clothes.

For a few more moments he stared at the rose petals that were almost clogging up the pipes. Lucifer mustered the blue-white mess, his chest void of any kind of emotion.

They were almost taunting him.

A certain sort of numbness crawled through his bones and suddenly, Lucifer smashed the hand that'd been holding him up harshly against the stall. With a loud cracking noise the wall gave in, shaking violently as bits and pieces dropped to the ground, leaving a huge hole behind.

A loud shriek emerged from the neighbouring stall Lucifer had just punched a hole into. As he looked through it, at first he couldn't make out anything that could've caused that ear-piercing sound.

Annoyed, Lucifer stuck his head through the hole and looked around more carefully, peering down.

Below the hole cowered one of his brothers, shielding his head with both of his arms before reluctantly looking up.

“Levi.”

Leviathan stared at his older brother for a moment, his big orange eyes never wavering.

That calculating gaze of his made Lucifer shiver. He felt like his brother could see right through him.

“I- is there anything you wanted from me, Lucifer?” Levi eventually asked, sweat pearling down his temple. He removed his hands from the top of his head and used them to prop himself off the ground instead. Quickly, he tried to dust off his pants but failed miserably in doing so, and then took a few steps back to lean against the wall opposite the hole.

“Why would I seek you out so I could talk to you through bathroom stalls?” Lucifer asked quizzically as he leaned against the wall as well, resting one arm lazily on the frayed edges of the newly formed hole. He could already feel a migraine coming on.

Levi cleared his throat. “Well, in the graphic novel 'My heart keep racing whenever I look at you but we are childhood friends who are cursed to stay five feet apart from each other so I couldn't possibly love you!' the main character and his best friend always meet up in the bathroom during their lunch break so they could discuss their-”

Lucifer interrupted him before he could find himself stuck with one of Levi's infamous rants.

“Leviathan.”

The demon in question quickly stopped talking. Hearing Lucifer use his full name never promised much good. ”Y-yeah?” he asked, but then remembered the exact situation he had gotten himself into. A situation so peculiar that it almost reeked of dramatic potential. For a moment, he mustered his surroundings in confusion. Right, there was a hole in the wall of the bathroom stall.

“There's a hole in the wall,” he mumbled, trying to suppress the unyielding urge to play detective. He raised his head again and looked at his brother. Based on the evidence he had gathered, there was only one conclusion to this mystery. “There's a considerably big hole in the wall, the only suspects in this case are me and Lucifer. There's no way I'm the perpetrator, except if you consider the possibility of an unreliable narrator, which I don't think I am, so there's only one possibility left,” Levi mumbled as he pointed at Lucifer. “You're the only one!”

Lucifer stared at him blankly, unblinkingly. “Get out of here,” he simply stated. He was in no way in the mood to deal with his hikkikomori brother's shenanigans. Truthfully, he was rarely in the mood to deal with Levi's obsessive otaku ramblings.

Levi took a small step towards the hole and stuck his neck around the corner, spying past Lucifer.

“What's that?” he asked, pointing towards the toilet overflowing with petals and rose buds. “Huh?”

His eyes dashed from the toilet to Lucifer and back again, travelling back and forth over and over again. “Huh? Huh huh huh? HUH?!”

All of a sudden, Lucifer slammed his hand flat against the stall and put his head through the hole he had created minutes prior. “You didn't see anything. If you did, I will not hesitate to burn your whole Ruri-chan collection to a crisp,” he threatened, his eyes gleaming dangerously in the sub-par bathroom lighting.

With a loud bang Levi hit the back of the stall as he had taken several steps back in fear. He clenched his shirt and panted heavily. “You wouldn't!” he exclaimed, eyes desperate.

Instead of giving an answer Lucifer simply stared at him, a deranged smile slowly starting to spread over his face. “Oh?”

“You're smiling. Why are you smiling like that, this isn't good. Don't look at me like that, Lucifer! Please spare my Ruri-chan collection, she's the only thing that's worth living for! You wouldn't want to be the reason for your little brother's suicide now, would you-”

Lucifer grabbed the edges of the hole with both of his hands. “Stop it. Come here,” he growled, staring at his brother intensely.

Levi didn't move one bit.

“Come. Here. “

Reluctantly, Levi approached his brother who mustered him with a deadly glare. Before he could say anything, Lucifer sighed. “Don't talk like that, Levi. We've been through this, your presence at RAD is important and needed. Don't talk yourself down like that. You are my sibling and the third oldest of us all, take pride in that.” He reached through the hole and put his hand on his brothers shoulder. All in all, it was a peculiar and somewhat awkward situation. Neither of them knew how to react.

Finally, Lucifer pulled back and massaged his temples. “Now leave. I'm busy with preparations. Tell the others that it would be to their best interest if they managed to stay out of my way for once.”

“Ah, yes, sure, ” Levi mumbled as he left the bathroom stall. After having washed his hands, he made his way towards the music room.

Taken aback, by Lucifer's sudden kindness, he had almost forgotten what he had left his room for to begin with.

“There you are,” Barbatos said as the door opened and Levi entered the music room. All of his brothers except for Lucifer were already there and evidently, he was the last one to join them. He plopped down on the couch next to Satan.

Then, the doors opened once again and Diavolo entered the room.

“Lord Diavolo,” Barbatos started as he caught sight of the demon prince.

“What does this mean, explain yourself.”

Barbatos locked eyes with Asmodeus for a short moment as they both nodded.

“Lord Diavolo, this is an intervention.”

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6 , Chapter 7, Chapter 8,Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13

*nsfw chapter

taglist: @el-does-photography

#my writing #obey me!#shall we date? obey me #obey me! lucifer #obey me! diavolo #dialuci #diavolo x lucifer #fanfiction #otome game #angst #hanahaki disease #hanahaki au #i kind of feel sorry for levi having to deal with grumpy lucifer #alas

38 notes · View notes

ellebabywrites · 5 years

Text

The Hitman - In Exodus

Type : Oneshot (Part of The In Exodus Series) // Angst // Fluff // Smut // Cartel!au

Warnings : angst, death, cussing

Author Note : This took me far too long and had my anxieties far too high. I’m finally happy with how it turned out and hope you all enjoy it too !! Please give me some feedback because I’ve worked so hard on this chapter..

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀*⋆.*:*･ﾟ: .⋆☾ ⋆**･ﾟ: *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:*⋆.*:･ﾟ.: ⋆*･ﾟ☾

The smell of freshly baked croissants flood the streets, a sign that the Bakery is about to open and the day beginning. Shutters rise and doors open. The busting workers of Exodus bracing for the day ahead; a day of sales to kids who can barely walk straight with the amount of poison saturating their bloodstream; a day of fighting with the guy from down the road who insists that things were ‘cheaper last week’; a day of overworking for much less of a profit than it’s all worth. Living the dream.

The bakery was different though. Something about it felt like home, and everyone treated it as such. It was the only building for miles that wasn’t painted in graffiti, the only business that was doing well for itself, a little slice of goodness in the middle of all that bad.

That’s what everyone thinks anyway.

Across the street, Jongin is watching through the scope of his rifle. Watching the Baker unlock his doors and flip the closed sign to open. He scoffs. Such a poser.

Saying Jongin enjoyed his job would be pushing it; how much enjoyment can one really get from taking a life without being a psychopath? But he’d be lying if he said that he wasn’t looking forward to taking out this one particular man.

He watches the Baker great the first of his customers with a toothy grin, hugging Mrs Jamison when she comes in for her regular morning pastry. If only Mrs Jamison knew all the dirty things that man had been doing with the hand she shakes so willingly.

The town’s beloved Baker wasn’t nearly as squeeky clean as he liked everyone to believe. After hours, he found himself in SUjU territory, hanging out with drug runners, dancing around the subject of Exodus till the haze of alcohol took control, divulging any and all information that might get him another drink.

Pathetic Jongin thinks, noticing how the Baker danced around his customers with such fictitious glee, as if he hadn’t sold them out a hundred times over.

Again, not to say EXO were any better, but surely there should be some sense of town loyalty right? Jongin thinks so; making this particular betrayal all the more infuriating and his death all the more inevitable.

Jongin lines up the crosshairs of his gun against the Baker’s head, having the courtesy to wait for the shop to empty. One. The corner of his lips pull into a smirk, the buildup of adrenaline flooding his veins working as his own personal high. Two. Is it sick to say he can’t wait to kill this guy? Maybe? He deserves it Jongin thinks, afterall, he did try and ruin their business for a few shots of tequila. Thr…

“Hey Joey!”

So close…

“Well this is a surprise! How’re you today darlin’?”

Usually, you would only visit Joey’s bakery at the end of the week, needing some sort of sugary treat to get through the piles of work you had to do; but today your classes were cut short and you were gagging for something with chocolate.

“Our professor had to leave early and a girl needs her goodies!” You joked, leaning against the counter.

Joey had been a staple in Exodus for your entire life, the man was everybody’s uncle, everybody’s friend, you could talk to him about anything and your weekly visits had become a huge part of your routine.

“Good job I’ve got a whole bunch for you to choose from duck,” Joey laughs at how your eyes quickly scan over the trays of baked goods like you were a starving puppy, “Ooo I know what you should pick, I need someone to try out my new brownie recipe!”

Fuck. Joey moved away from Jongin’s line of fire just enough to grab the box of brownies from behind the counter, the perfect shot ruined by a few brownies.

“Well if you made them Joey then I’m sure they’re absolutely delicious!” you coo, giggling at how easily you can make him blush.

Just as you were about to leave and the Baker to return to the firing line, a rush of people came flooding into the small shop, putting a stop to whatever chance Jongin had at completing his mission right now.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Nini groans in frustration, packing up his equipment quickly as to get away unnoticed, “he was right there, I could have had him!” It was frustrating sure, delaying his plans a few more hours before there would be another chance to take out his target; but there would be another chance and Jongin would get the job done. So while the sweet-toothed girl had momentarily saved old Joey’s life, it wouldn’t last much longer.

---

The clock read 11:57pm as you were hunched over on the living room floor, trying to finish this essay that you’d definitely not been putting off for weeks…

“Need ...sugar ...immediately..” you whine, dramatically throwing yourself across the floor to grab the box of brownies Baker Joe had gifted you earlier in the day. Mmnn, indulging yourself in the chocolatey goodness, you decide now is the perfect time for a break, only 6,000 words left to go anyway…

Completely oblivious to the ramifications those few brownies had had on the day for more than one party, you munched away the last of them, licking the crumbs from your fingertips and moaning at the euphoria a simple treat could bring.

‘Breaking news tonight : Beloved Exodus baker found dead. The 56 year old’s body was discovered an hour ago near his home, cause of death is officially named as a GSW through the neck…’

A chill runs up your spine as the news plays quietly from the television. Baker Joe was dead. Someone had killed him! You’re confused and hurt and angry all at once. Why would anyone want to hurt Joey? He was one of the only decent people in this shit-show of a city and now he was gone. Your eyes wander to the now empty box of goodies, the bakery’s logo printed on the front in swirly gold font and you feel the sudden need to cry, so you do.

---

Who did this guy think he was? An MX falcone wandering the streets of Exodus without a care in the world, stealing from the market stalls as he sauntered his way through the crowds. Minhyuk is his name. When Baekhyun had gotten word of their latest visitor, Jongin was immediately sent to take care of it. Honestly what did they think was going to happen? That they could just hang out in Exodus without consequence? That no one would be the least bit suspicious?

“You like the farmers market huh,” Jongin keeps a trained eye on Minhyuk as he moves from stall to stall. There were far too many people around for a direct hit so all he could do was watch and wait for the perfect opportunity.

“Why the fuck are you here?” He mumbled in annoyance, MX were getting far too comfortable for anyone’s liking; it was like the calm before the storm, except the storm was standing right in front of him chatting about produce with Mr Kim.

Suddenly, Minhyuk takes a sharp left, making his way out of the bustling crowd towards the alleys. He’d been made. Fuck. Following as quickly as he could, fighting his way through the sea of people, Jongin tries to keep up.

“Excuse me, I’m trying to get to…”

Minhyuk is fast, but maybe if you weren’t standing in front of him, blocking the way, Jongin would have been able to get him.

He doesn’t immediately recognise you. Your hair is tied differently and you’re wearing a different coat, but once Jongin places you as the girl from the bakery, he’s immediately on guard. Twice now you’ve gotten in the way of a hit. Could it just be a coincidence? Sure Exodus is small, you’re bound to run into the same people more than once. Baker Joe’s was a town staple and the market is always busy, but what are the chances? Jongin tries to side-step passed you, eyes scanning the crowds for Minhyuk, but you move along with him.

Holding out a map in front of him, you try again to ask for directions but Jongin doesn’t have time. He doesn’t have time to entertain the possibility that seeing you again could be anything but a coincidence, not when he’s about to lose yet another target.

“Move!”

You watch in astonishment as he pushes you out of the way before storming off. What an asshole you think; all you needed were directions, a simple no would have sufficed. Then again you’d come to expect nothing more from the people of Exodus. Sighing, you carry on your way alone, soon forgetting about the rude man you had met on the street.

---

8am lectures were the bain of your existence, but Professor Jeong’s class was always worth it.

Armed with a large cup of coffee and a stack of notes to aid you through, you made your way to an empty space near the front of the lecture hall. Biology never came easy to you, but the drive you had to succeed more than made up for it.

“Sorry I’m late guys,” Professor Jeong rushed into the busy hall, his own cup of coffee balancing on a pile of books clutched between his arms, “I got caught up with Professor Lyn, he’s such a ...fungi!”

The room fills with groans and muffled laughs at the attempt of a joke so early in the morning, but the Professor didn’t seem to mind. “Okay I’m sorry, let’s get into today. Can anyone tell me where we left off last week? Y/N?”

From the back of the room Jongin notices you.

“Oh you have to got to be kidding me..”

Once again, you happen to show up right in the middle of a job. There had to be a reason. There was no way this could be a coincidence anymore. Were you following him? Working with MX? Trying to get intel on EXO? Jongin didn’t know, but at this point he didn’t care. You were a problem.

Jeong was another star poser in Exodus. The esteemed environmental science professor, that drew students from across the country just to take his conservational bio class. The hotshot teacher who was already in the running for tenure. The slimy asshole that used his connections in the science world to help EXO’s competitors recreate their patented drug.

This was supposed to be an easy hit, wait till after class and use the pocket knife hidden in his belt to slit the professor’s throat before next period. But now, Jongin had to put those plans on hold so that he could figure out what to do about you.

---

Following you was far easier than Jongin had anticipated, thinking that he’d be kept on his toes trying to avoid getting caught, but you seemed completely oblivious to the fact that someone had been following you, watching your routines and judging them oh so harshly.

He kept his distance at first, observing from afar as you went about your daily activities. But soon enough, Jongin found himself immersed in the story that was your life. On the sidelines, a spectator, keeping mental notes of your behaviours.

Keeping space between you, Jongin follows you down the familiar street. He knows exactly where you’re going, the same place you’ve gone to for lunch every day that week. After your first class of the day you head straight to Lou’s café to grab something to eat and get some studying done. Like clockwork, the only thing to change was your order. Jongin would never admit that he’d grown to enjoy the establishment himself, but it was one of the least tedious moments of the day.

With the sky starting to darken in the cold weather, you fumble around your bag for your wallet amongst the loose scrunchies and old receipts, Jongin scoff in disbelief.

“How have you not been jumped yet?” He mumbled to himself. Before you’ve even walked through the café doors you have your money in hand, out in the open for anyone to take. Jongin had picked up on the blissful ignorance you had in regards to the danger in Exodus, instead, choosing to carry on carefree. Stupid he thinks.

Standing in line a few spots behind you, he watches as you let person after person cut in front and he just doesn’t get it. You only have an hour before the start of your next class and yet you’re willingly letting yourself be pushed back? People were clearly taking advantage of your kindness, but you were either incredibly stupid or didn’t care. When the older woman in front of you is a few dollars short, you don’t hesitate before lending her the difference, even putting back your own drink just so you could afford to help her. How could someone so generous be apart of something so evil? Then again, most of Exodus were playing that game.

Grabbing a coffee of his own, Jongin sits a table over from where you plant yourself, what had become your regular spots. Finding amusement in the way you struggle to fit both of your study books in the small space.

Now, only a short while before you needed to be back in class, you attempt to get as much work done while shoveling food down your throat as you could. Jongin thought it was hilarious, bar the tuna mayo that is. “Tuna? Really? It’s 11am jesus christ!” Maybe it was easy for him to judge you from a distance, but out of all the things he’d learnt, your love of tuna was the worst.

He watches your face scrunch and eyebrows furrow as you try and absorb the information, recognising the same study book you’ve been working on all week, the one for Professor Jeong’s class that you’d been struggling with. The pages covered almost entirely in highlighter with notes and doodles littering the margins. Cute.

You just seem so harmless. No matter how hard he tries Jongin just can’t seem to figure you out. Perhaps MX were blackmailing you? Maybe they had something that forced you to be their spy? It was the only explanation he could think of, because it just didn’t seem plausible that the girl in front of him, furiously editing her notes for the hundredth time that hour, the one with drops of mayonnaise left over on the corner of her lips, could be willingly working with the notorious MX. But you were involved somehow, of that he was sure.

---

The library is quiet, the sound of rustling papers and hushed whispers being the only source of noise. Luckily, it was busier than usual due to the wave of group projects being assigned, it made it easy for Jongin to blend in.

He watches you curiously from behind one of the bookshelves, trying to understand why you haven’t slapped the asshole beside you yet. He’d been cutting you off and putting you down every chance he could.

“I just think if we..”

“Seriously Y/N don’t strain yourself, I think we’ve got it.”

Asshole.

Even Jongin wanted to punch this guy. Being the only girl in the group, the others found it easy to dismiss everything you offered.

“Why doesn’t she say anything?” Jongin wondered, once again you were letting people walk all over you.

It’s not like you particularly enjoyed being treated that way, in fact you were daydreaming about slamming said assholes’ face into the wall at that very moment, but you couldn’t do that. This project defines your grade for the semester and you couldn’t afford that kind of taint on your record. So you bite your tongue. Act none the wiser and count the seconds before you could go home and be done with them all.

Across the library you spot Minho, the cute senior who’d been working as the student librarian for the last month or so. He’s scanning out returns at the desk, eyes glancing up occasionally, you presume to keep an eye on things . God he’s cute. When he spots you staring and then takes a look at the rather heated debate going on between your group, he decides to save you from the disarray, waving you over.

“My hero,” you tease, almost running to where Minho is.

“It was getting too painful to watch! What’s he ranting about this time?” He teases playfully, knowing all too well the constant tension in your study group.

“Ugh I don’t even know, it’s so much easier just to tune him out,”

Jongin’s teeth clench watching the exchange between you and the librarian. The childish giggling, the ‘accidental’ touches, the lingering stares. Disgusting.

“Who even is this guy?” If he didn’t know any better Jongin would think this was jealousy, but he did know better, so all of these unfamiliar feelings had to be from just how pitiful the sight was. This guy was clearly flirting with you, the blush on his cheeks and sweaty palms said as much, but from everything Jongin had learnt, you weren’t going to reciprocate. Tragic.

“Are you kidding me? Why is she twirling her hair like that!? He’s not even her type! He’s... he…” his mumbled ranting cut off by the sound of you laughing across the room. “Well if that is her type then no wonder she’s corrupt.”

He watches the pair of you for a little longer before the need to throw up eventually overtakes his need to stay, deciding he could catch you up later and spare himself the torture of sitting through whatever this was.

---

The open sign light bounces off wet concrete, illuminating your face with such a subtle glow of pink that Jongin could barely make out the streaks of tears running down your cheeks. He almost missed you sitting crouched over on the pavement, the smell of smoke being what made him stop. Why is she crying? He thought to himself, seeing you curled up in a ball, cigarette dangling from your fingertips haphazardly concerned him. Jongin didn’t have to wonder for too long though, the closer he got to you the clearer he could hear your muffled cries.

“Stupid fucking Geord,” you cuss, taking another long drag to calm your anxieties, “takes all my ideas, monopolises the entire presentation and then my contribution isn’t enough!?”

Jongin had come to know the infamous Geord all too well this last week, the pompous ass that had belittled you in the library, the snotty rich kid with mommy issues that just loved being right. Honestly the fact he hadn’t killed him yet was an accomplishment in itself; but still, seeing you clearly so upset gave Jongin a weird feeling.

You were either getting much better with your performance skills, or he was actually getting mad for you…

With each sniffle, each tear drop, Jongin felt his resolve breaking away and being replaced with a type of anger he’d never felt before. Why did he care that you were crying? Why was it affecting him so much? He didn’t know, but it took all his strength not to go find Geord and make him regret whatever he’d done.

As quickly as you put out the cigarette that was now burning short, you’re reaching for the box to light another. You only really smoked when you were feeling particularly stressed, Jongin hated it. Ironically it was the most disgusting thing he’d ever seen; painting the walls with someone’s brain was nothing compared to the strong stench of nicotine that passed your lips.

For a second Jongin lets his mind entertain the thought of approaching you, but the professional side of him reminds him who you were. This could be a trick...She’s not an idiot. Then he considers calling you out. Drawing his gun and putting an end to MX’s game once and for all, besides, he’d been observing you for a week now and he couldn’t afford for his attention to be diverted any more, he still had the good old Professor to end.

Before he gets the chance to do either however, you stand up. Taking one last drag before stomping out the flame, your hands carelessly wipe at your face in a feeble attempt at clearing the remnants of your breakdown.

“I’ll be fine, let’s just go home,” you whisper, more than familiar with putting yourself back together and wanting nothing more than a hot bath and warm bed.

---

When you first noticed that the new guy on campus was following you, you tried not to think too much of it. In all honesty, you were far too busy trying to keep on top of everything to pay much attention as to why you were being followed. Knowing the people in Exodus, you figured it was just his creepy way of flirting, or at the very worst he was planning on robbing you, not that you had much to take anyway. But as the days went by and the presence of your stalker persisted, you were growing frustrated. It’d been a stressful week and the last thing you needed was some guy watching your every move.

After getting the results back from Professor Jeong for your group presentation, you weren’t exactly in a ‘good mood’ and the looming shadow of the man trying to be inconspicuous as he followed you home, was the last straw.

"How much longer are you planning on following me?” You shout over your shoulder, not having the energy to even face him. When you get no response, you reluctantly decide to turn around to stare him down.

His chocolate coloured hair is pushed back exposing his forehead, eyes golden but harbouring so much animosity that they could have turned black, the jacket adorning his shoulders almost blending him into the dark street behind. He was handsome, strikingly so.

“Look dude it’s been a long day, can’t you just lay off the stalking for one night?”

Jongin stiffens at your words. So you did know he was there? And chose now, while you were both alone in a dark street, to confront him? God she’s stupid.

“Sorry Darling, can’t do that,” he insisted, watching how your shoulders slumped and fingers twitched at the side of your coat.

“Of course,” sighing deeply, too tired to argue, you decide to continue on towards your apartment, stalker be damned.

“Aren’t MX getting bored of this game yet?” Jognin calls. He figures if you already knew he was following you, then now would be the perfect time to put an end to it. You were alone after all.

When he sees you freeze at the sound of MX, he takes a tentative step closer, you’re still turned away from him, just a few steps ahead. “I mean, were you really the best they could do? We expected more.” The smirk on his face when you turn to him, wide eyed and lost for words, only grows at your reaction. Gotcha.

“What are you talki..”

“Come on now Darling, we both know what’s going on here.”

“I promise you we do not.” You’ve heard whispers of MX around town, while you didn’t know much, you did know that if this guy thought you were somehow apart of it, then this was a dangerous misunderstanding.

“You have a choice.” Jongin takes another step closer, “You can leave, now, and make sure MX stay out of Exodus for good,” Reaching under his jacket, he grabs the gun that’s been burning through the back of his shirt since you called out to him, “Or I can send them a message myself. Choose.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about!” You tried to keep calm, swallowing the lump forming at the back of your throat. When you spotted the gun being pulled from his coat, it was like a pin dropped and the reality of the situation finally began to sink in.

Exodus is a dangerous place. Exodus is full of dangerous people. You were standing alone with a strange man that you’d just yelled at, that had been following you for god knows how long, a gun pointed at your face and not a soul in sight that would help you.

He doesn’t flinch when you jump back, his smirk doesn’t falter when you start begging for him to listen. In Jongin’s mind, the fact you’d acknowledged his presence at all was enough to prove you were involved.

“Please, please, just listen to me, t-there’s been a mistake, I d-don’t kno…”

“Oh my god shut up!” He yelled over your desperate cries, “It’s over! Done!”

“I don’t know who you think I am, b-but my name is Y/N I grew up a few towns over with my parents, I-I study Conservation Biology at the university because when I was little I saw a film about sea turtles and now I love them.. I...” you read somewhere that telling a killer personal information about yourself would make them less likely to kill you; so, with your hands held up in surrender, you start begging, pleading, letting slip every boring and mediocre fact about yourself in hopes that the handsome stranger will let you live.

Jongin was taken aback to say the least. Never had a target begged for their life quite like this before, but the more you rambled on and the more tears that fell down your cheeks, he couldn’t help it. He believed you.

This is a mistake... Did I mess up here? Fuck! His mind raced to find a way out of this, but his composure was breaking down with each second you plead your case. How could he have gotten things so wrong? Looking at you now; scared and shaking, there was no way you could be with MX. Jongin’s mind quickly looks back on all the time he’d been watching you, at school, at the library, with friends, home alone... Is it possible he let feelings cloud his judgment? No… Jongin didn’t have feelings.

Bang.

In a split second the air was slashed with bullets, plastering the wall behind you with open wounds. Your body drops to the floor, hands covering your ears like a scared child at a fireworks display, your screams piercing through the air.

Jongin doesn’t even think about it before he’s at your side. He fires back some warning shots, just enough to cover the pair of you so he could pull you out of there, but you were frozen in place.

“C’mon we need to get out of here! I can’t get a clear shot!”

Jongin hoisted your trembling body into his arms, waiting for a gap in the bullet wave before rushing out of the street. Weaving between the crumbling buildings, waiting in the shadows for a free moment to sprint out of there to a nearby underpass. It was sheltered and open, meaning Jongin could keep a solid eye on the surroundings while still keeping you safe while he let himself freak out a little.

As soon as he puts you on the ground you melt into the concrete, hugging your knees to your chest and crying into them silently. It’s all too much. How did this happen? Yesterday you were failing Bio and trying to avoid the creeper puppy boy that’d been following you. Now…. you were pretty sure you were going to die tonight.

“Fuck...fuck..fuck, fuck, FUCK!” Jongin paces back and forth, using the barrel of his gun to scratch away the headache slowly spreading across his temples. How could he have messed up this badly? He’s the best… at least... he was the best.

With every footstep he takes you flinch a little, hyper aware of the gun swinging from his hand, fingertip dancing along the trigger. You still don’t know who he is or why you’re there but you’ve seen enough to know to keep quiet. So you stay sitting on the ground, letting the tears melt into the fabric of your jeans, watching the state of panic escalate in the man in front of you while your own turned into something akin to resentment.

After almost half an hour of silently waiting for some sort of direction, you’ve had enough. Eventually Jongin had stopped pacing, choosing to lean up against the wall with head in hands, instead. In your mind, you have nothing to do with this. There is nothing connecting you to whatever chaos was happening here. You had no reason to wait around to get shot.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?!” He shouts, annoyance bubbling beneath his skin.

“Home.”

“You can’t!” Pushing himself off the wall, Jongin reaches for your arm in an attempt to keep you still. You try to shake him off but his grip is too strong.

“I DIDN’T ASK FOR ANY OF THIS!” You’re screaming at him now. Tears no longer from fear, but anger. You feel trapped in whatever this was and it wasn’t fair, you just want to go home.

“Yeah well tough shit Darling, because unfortunately you’re my responsibility now and it’s my job to make sure you don’t get yourself killed!”

“I can take care of myself! I’ve been doing it long enough!” He rolls his eyes at your response, growing tired of trying to be the good guy for once. “Let me go! I’ll be just fine! Like always!”

Finally loosening the grip on your arm, Jongin let’s you storm off. Waiting, only out of spite, for you to be out of ear shot before cussing out loud at himself.

---

Somehow you managed to drag yourself to class. The events of last night still burning fresh at the back of your mind, but you were desperate enough for a distraction that even Professor Jeong’s morning class was worth that extra effort.

Barely able to keep your eyes open with the little sleep you were actually able to get, it takes you a moment to recognise the familiar body that plants themselves in the desk next to yours.

Jongin doesn’t look at you. Maybe it’s pride, maybe it’s nerves, but he keeps his eyes trained on the professor’s desk up front, waiting for his cover to be inevitably blown all for the sake of keeping you safe.

“Good morning class!” The professor’s abrupt entrance pulls your shocked and frustrated gaze from burning holes in the side of Jongin’s neck. His tan skin glowing under the plain white tee he’s wearing, hair falling into his eyes softly, contradicting the hard image he’d worn the night before. Does he have his gun with him? You wonder, letting your eyes wander to the waistband of his jeans, remembering how he’d pulled the weapon from them the night before. Stop! You hope he doesn’t realise you’ve been blankly staring at his crotch, mind racing with questions, you don’t even know his name.

“Today we’re picking up the remaining presentati…” When the admirable Professor meets eyes with Jongin, smirking from his seat beside you knowingly, he loses all train of thought.

It’s a feeling Jongin had missed. When a mark knows they’re done for, that he’s coming for them. When their eyes double in size. When fear pales their skin. When they lose all hope of fucking over EXO and getting away with it.

“T-today..um…” You can see the Professor eyeing your seat partner nervously, stuttering over his words. You’d never seen Jeong like this before, he looked terrified, and after last night it didn’t take a genius to figure out why.

Jongin shifts in his seat, enjoying the effect his presence has on the esteemed scholar. While Jeong tries to regain some semblance of decorum, Jongin wraps one of his arms around your shoulders and squeezes tightly, keeping eye contact with the professor, claiming you.

“What are you doing?” keeping your voice low as to not draw anymore attention to you both, you try to push Jongin’s arm away from you, only for him to put it right back.

“My job. Now be quiet.” He hisses, hiding the harshness of his voice behind a sickly sweet smile.

Professor Jeong spends the entire lecture avoiding your side of the room, refusing to make eye contact, completely ignoring you. You try not to take it personally of course, it’s definitely not because of something you did, that you know for sure; but for once you actually know the answers to some of these questions and want to participate.

“I told you, I can take care of myself!” you grumbled, again trying to physically get Jongin away from you, but he just smirks. Like he was enjoying it. Like this was all just some big game and not the life threatening situation he’d made it out to be the night before.

And you would probably believe that were true, if it wasn’t for his nails digging so sharply into your shoulder.

By the time class finishes you want to run a million miles away. The pressure of Jongin’s arm around your neck you’re sure will leave you aching for days; but as long as he’s far away from you, you can deal with it. You all but sprint out of the lecture hall, forgetting all about your next class and heading straight home; taking a back street you hope he hadn’t seen you use before.

“What the hell is this?” You mumble to yourself, pushing down the fear as far as you can in hopes the empty space will leave room for answers. You’re so caught up in your head, trying to figure out what you did to deserve this, you don’t even realise that Jongin’s been on your tail the whole time, watching you freak out and creep around like the amateur he now knows you are. It’s not until he steps into your building’s elevator with you that you realize he’s there.

“Jesus! Fuck, can’t you leave me alone!” He was exhausting; flattering when you thought it was a puppy crush, less so now you know he wanted to kill you.

“I can’t,” Jongin leans against the side of the elevator, growing tired of the chase.

“Why?! You’re the only one stalking me here!”

“Oh Darling, you have no idea.”

“Then explain! Because I’m tired of this! I have work to do, classes to study for, and I can’t when you’re scaring my teachers and dragging me through shoot outs!!”

Jongin understands why you’re annoyed. He gets it, he messed up and now you’re in danger. But to admit that outloud… to admit that to you… he’d rather not.

He doesn’t give you an answer, finding his reflection in the steel doors far more interesting, chewing the inside of his cheek and fixing his jacket over and over.

When you finally reach your floor, it becomes a race of wills to get to your apartment. Jongin trying to force his way in; you trying to lock him out. You sprint for the door, key in hand; almost managing to slam it shut in his face before Jongin’s hand pushes it back open, forcing himself through the small gap and locking you both inside.

In a second he’s slamming your back against the door with his hand covering your mouth, keeping you in place with the weight of his body, trying to work up the nerve to finally tell you the truth.

“I’m not going to hurt you, but you need to listen to me just for one fucking second… My name is Jongin, okay?” he asks, face dangerously close to your own. You manage a weak nod under his hold, terrified but needing answers.

“I made a mistake. I...I thought you were working with MX,”

Your eyes widen at the second mentioning of the infamous gang, more confused than ever as to why he thought you would ever be involved with them. He didn’t even know you.

“There’s rumours they’re coming for EXO territory..”

He’s with EXO. The realisation floods through your body like a lightning strike, frying your nerves, limbs locked in place while the rest of your body falls limp into his arms. EXO. The kings of this city. The reason shops close early and children aren’t allowed out after 9. The doctors responsible for prescribing the death, the destruction, of a city once so healthy and vibrant. Monsters, as far as you’re concerned.

“They must have seen me tailing you and after last night, I think you’re a target.” Jongin watches as your eyes well up with tears, red and swollen as you choke back the sobs you so obviously want to release. It doesn’t affect him… it doesn’t make him angry… he doesn’t want to wrap you in a hug and take it all back… right?

“So as much as you don’t like it, I’m here. I messed up so I need to fix it, because this isn’t a game and this isn’t a joke. If they think you’re with us they will kill you. Milk carton kids, where are they now, 27 club dead.”

You wish he was a better actor. That he could hide the shame, guilt, pain he feels for putting you in this position better. That the cold exterior he wears so well didn’t have quite as many cracks, because then maybe you could tell yourself that everything was going to be okay. But if Jongin looks scared, then you’re absolutely terrified.

Blinded by the fear, your body reacts before your mind can catch up. Fists pounding into his chest weakly as the sound of your sobs rip into his heart. You’re in hysterics, screaming at him for an answer to questions still lodged at the back of your throat. Jongin doesn’t break down with you, as much as his body tries. Instead he just grabs your wrists, stopping their assault and pinning them into his embrace. His hold the only thing keeping you standing as you finally let the last walls crumble, letting out every tear, every scream, every desperate cry for it all to be some twisted dream.

Jongin doesn’t know how you both ended up on the floor, your head buried between your knees as his hand finds itself brushing through your hair. Somehow you manage to calm yourself down, letting the sobs turn to whimpers and cries to sniffles. Finally numb after the dust settles in your mind, you force yourself to look back up at Jongin. He looks how you feel, just doing a better job at hiding it; you don’t miss the concern that washes over his face and maybe that’s why you decide to let him stay. If he was so determined to fix what he’d done, you weren’t going to stop him. At least not tonight.

“I need to sleep,” you say weakly, standing on shaky legs but brushing off Jongin’s worried hands when he tries to help, “you can stay on the couch.”

---

Tiptoeing across the living room, shoelaces dangling from your teeth while your hands clutch onto your books; you’re desperately trying not to wake a sleeping Jongin. His sprawled out body half falling from the couch, you admit he looks a lot cuter when he’s sleeping.

Before you can stop it, one of your shoes drops from between your teeth, making Jongin jump up at the sound.

“What are you doing?” he mumbled, rubbing the fatigue from his face, stretching back into his familiar hard persona.

“Uhh, going for breakfast?”

“Did you not hear me last night!” It didn’t sound like a question. His voice raising ever so slightly in frustration as he stands to tower over you. Failing miserably at being as intimidating as usual, with his hair a mess and cheeks puffy.

“I heard you,” you say, pushing your feet into the fallen shoes before giving him a chance to stop you, “I’m just not going to hide away like a victim when this is your mess.” He stiffens at your words, ignoring the cut they etch into his heart, instead focusing on your relentless stubbornness in such a risky situation.

“If they catch you out alone they won’t miss another shot!” Jongin clenches his jaw when you roll your eyes at his remark, unsure of what he can do to change your mind.

“Look if you’re so worried, you’re more than welcome to join me,” you offer, determination radiating off of your face in such a way that Jongin finds himself unable to argue.

---

For the next few days Jongin stays by your side, sleeping on your couch, going to breakfasts, your classes, all to make sure you were safe.

He walks the familiar routes around town with you, not from a few paces back this time, but shoulder to shoulder. Sitting beside you in Professor Jeong’s early morning classes, Jongin was having far too much fun watching the colour drain from his face each time he showed up to one of your lectures to kill him just yet.

Everything became a threat to your safety. As far as Jongin was concerned, your life was in danger and MX could strike at any moment…. Even if it had been quiet since the shooting… it was better to be safe. That’s what Jongin told himself everytime he stayed a little longer.

“Hey Y/N!” Minho waved at you from across the library, he was reshelving returns when he spotted you studying at your usual table.

Jongin felt his ears burn red at the sight. Jaw clenching when he sees the boy walk over. Eyes narrow in judgment when you return his warm smile.

“Hey Minho, how are you?” It’d been a few days since you’d last had the chance to talk with Minho, him still as handsome as ever, but your heart not jumping quite so high at the interaction.

“I’m good, are you? I’ve missed seeing you around lately..” Minho let’s his words fade noticing the glare he was getting from the man sat beside you. “Oh I’m sorry, I’m Minho, Y/N’s friend!”

Jongin glances at Minho’s outstretched hand between them, choosing to throw his own over your shoulder rather than shake it.

“I’m Kai, Y/N’s boyfriend.” He smirks at the shocked expression that Minho wears, ignoring your startled one in favour of silently challenging the boy to leave.

“Oh...oh uh… Nice to meet you, I’ll see you guys around..”

Jongin keeps you close till he’s sure Minho has gone, only loosening his grip when he feels you nudge him gently.

“What the fuck was that, Kai?” You’re more amused than angry, but you’d never let him know that, enjoying seeing the varied emotions you can bring out of him now, when he was supposed to be a stone cold killer.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about?” feigning innocence, Jongin tries to go back to reading the book he’d randomly grabbed from the pile in front of you both.

You scoff at his reaction, or lack thereof, staring at him quizzically till he finally gave in.

“That guy is sketchy! I’m here to protect you right? So I’m protecting you. Good?”

“Minho is not sketchy,” you giggle and Jongin can’t help but smile at the sound, “and who is Kai?”

“It’s what my friends call me!”

---

“Hey!” Jongin had appeared out of nowhere, pulling the cigarette from between your lips and stomping it out. With Geord goading you relentlessly for the last hour of class, you were desperate for a smoke. You would argue that those little white sticks of bliss were the only thing keeping you from ripping his throat out.

“It’s disgusting,” he says, leaning down to your height so he could look you in the eye, “why do you do this?”

With a deep sigh, you stuff the near empty packet of unlit cigarettes back into your coat pocket, storming away in frustration, knowing he’d follow you.

“Wait, I’m serious!”

“I like them!” you shout back, thankful the streets were empty so you could argue in peace.

“They’re bad for you you know!” he teases, laughing when you throw your middle finger up behind you.

“My cigarettes are better for me than you are!” Teasing back, you finally turn to face him, a cheeky smile on your face.

---

“We got him.”

While making dinner for the pair of you, Jongin’s phone buzzes on the counter, a string of messages coming in from someone called Minseok. You tried not to be nosey, sitting on the counter beside him while he cooked, but he didn’t even glance at it.

“Wasn’t MX. Some small town nobody trying to prove himself.”

“Jongin”

“Call me when you get this”

“Boss wants you back asap”

The thought of Jongin leaving had never even crossed your mind till then. It hadn’t been that long at all, but it felt like an eternity since he’d first come into your life. Maybe it was selfish to want him to stay.

Jongin had recently started to open up to you more about his work with EXO. He was their protector, he kept them safe. You didn’t see him as this dangerous monster anymore, he was just Jongin, Kai, the one who took care of things. Just like he’d been taking care of you all this time.

You knew deep down that when he left you’d probably never see him again; if what EXO suspects is true and MX really were making their way into Exodus, then there was a storm coming and Jongin would be right in the middle of it. He wouldn’t risk getting you anymore tangled in EXO’s mess.

“Here, try this,” Jongin held a spoon up to your mouth expectantly; pretending he didn’t see Minseok’s messages, pretending you didn’t see them either, holding on to this reality for just a little longer.

---

“We need you back Jongin,”

After ignoring Minseok’s messages a few days ago, Jongin couldn’t ignore another call from the boss.

“Jun I have to pr..”

“No you don’t! We took care of the shooter, the girl will be fine! EXO needs you, I need you!”

He doesn’t want to leave. Jongin doesn’t know what it is that makes him want to stay near you, keep you safe, go to breakfasts at Lou’s - but the thought of leaving it all behind makes his heart twist and turn in unimaginable ways.

His whole life had been about EXO. They’re his friends, his family, and he would never abandon them. But somehow he’s made a new home with you, in his heart at least. You feel like home. Sitting on your living room floor watching Blue Planet feels like home. Falling asleep on your shoulder in the middle of your lectures feels like home. EXO have been his entire identity for so long, but now there’s this other life, another door, and Jongin was finding hard to resist stepping through.

“Be back today. We have work to do.”

After Junmyeon’s orders, the frustration coursed through Jongin’s body with such force he hadn’t even realised he’d thrown the phone till you were beside him, asking what was wrong.

“I...I have to leave.” He couldn’t look you in the eye. He didn’t want to see the betrayal, the disappointment, the pain reflected in them. “It’s my fault you’re in danger and now I have to leave you…”

He doesn’t know that you know.

“I..I’ll be okay Nini.. I can look after myself remember?” Your voice is weak but you do your best to convince him; as much as you want him to stay you know that’s not an option, and you know he knows it too because he can barely look at you right now.

“Y/N… I don’t want to leave..”

It broke your heart but there was no other choice. You had to let him go. The boy you’d tried so hard to avoid just a few weeks ago, you now didn’t want to see go.

“I know..” You cup the side of his face, forcing him to look at you as you spoke, “but they need you Nini...” It was hard to keep how you were really feeling hidden, especially when he looked like he was about to break, “You’re the best Nini, they deserve the best.”

He knew you were right. He needed to be there for EXO, his family. Things in Exodus were about to get a lot messier and the fallout would be astronomical, if he wasn’t there to do his part there’s no telling what could happen, then you really would be in danger.

Leaning into your touch, Jongin grips onto your hips like it was the first time not the last, pulling you flush against his body. Memorizing the shape of your hips, touch of your skin, smell of your shampoo. Locking you inside his heart. Melding the memory of you into his soul so that this wouldn’t be the last time. He would forever be with you and you would always be there for him, long after he’s gone.

Looking at you would be too much, he might not be able to force himself away if he saw your eyes. Saying goodbye felt too final, like the end of something that never really was. Instead Jongin buried your head into his shaking chest, placing a gentle kiss to the top of your head, pretending he can’t feel your tears soaking through his shirt, before turning away and walking out of your life forever.

#in exodus #the hitman #in exodus the hitman #exo #exo au #exo imagine #exo fanfic #exo fic #exo reation #exo scenario #kim jongin #jongin scenarios #jongin reaction #jongin imagine #jongin fic #jongin au #exo kai #exo jongin au #exo kai au

137 notes · View notes

oghoneytryst · 6 years

Text

gift wrapping ... and harry saves xmas

a/n: hey this is a little something that I thought of instead of finishing my actual *only* xmas one shot b/c wow, I'm the worst. super short, hope it brings u back, happy reading!

“Perfect,” Harry whispers, sticking the big swirly red bow on y/n’s final present.

He turns the box to examine every edge and corner that he has finished wrapping. A smile stretches on his face at the cute little Christmas penguins design, the same one that his love had squealed over at the store. He ended up buying about three rolls, only using them for her gifts that he had gone overboard with.

She knew he wouldn’t listen had she told him not to buy her anything, so she had insisted that he only get her one present. It’s Christmas – she doesn’t need anything except his company. From the amused chuckle that he had given her in response, it was clear that he had found her proposition cute, but very much unlikely.

The artificial tree in the living room they had decorated together drowns in the twinkling lights and the most festive, glittery, flashiest ornaments they could find. While Harry prefers a traditional Christmas, he couldn’t resist her eagerness for just a little more flare with the decorations this holiday season.

Underneath the impressive seven-foot tree are stacks and stacks of presents. There are some for his family, some for hers. A good amount for their beloved friends, their beloved friends’ children, and even their beloved friends’ parents. An armful of them, however, are for y/n, all from the same person with a different pseudonym for each.

from: YOUR LOVER

from: H

from: SANTA ;)

from: LITTLE SPOON

His unspoken goal is to get her to giggle or aww for each one. He loves how shy she gets when he gives her a present, him watching cross legged on the floor in front of her, grinning in anticipation. Her reactions are always the best. They feel, ironically, like Christmas morning to him.

Harry smiles proudly at his gift-wrapping accomplishments. As he maneuvers around the presents on the floor, trying to find a good spot for her final gift, his ears become alert to the outburst of laughter coming from the upstairs bedroom. It doesn’t surprise him to know that someone else is in the house. Y/n had almost walked in on him wrapping up her second or third present.

To avoid spoiling the surprise, Harry had sent his girlfriend upstairs, telling her to please wait until he had finished his wrapping. She had whined, of course. “I want to wrap presents too!” While her cute pout had been extremely tempting, he instead promised that once he finished her gifts, he would call her down so that they could finish up the rest. She eventually complied, with a kiss to her nose and a smack on her bum guiding her up the stairs.

With his hand on his hips, Harry’s curiosity grows with her laughter. It delights him to hear his girlfriend so happy, but he wonders what she could possibly be entertaining herself with. Instead of interrupting her joy by calling her downstairs, he sets her present on top of another box to the right of the tree and jogs up the staircase.

He turns to his right, through a wide hallway as he pushes away the fluffy ball of his Santa hat that had fallen in front of his eyes. When he turns into the bedroom, he finds y/n facing away from him, tummy resting on the mattress with her elbows supporting her weight. Her laptop is open in front of her, some strange type of cartoon on the screen.

In the midst of her distracted hysterics, Harry flops down on the bed and blankets over her body as much as he can. She groans dramatically at his weight, but the sound transforms into deep-chested chuckles.

“Hi.” Harry wraps his arms around her front, pressing a kiss upon her cheek. “Finished wrapping your presents.”

“Oh, good,” she replies, half of her attention on him, half on the whatever is on the screen.

“What’re you watching?”

Harry peers over her shoulder, trying to get a good look at her entertainment. Her body rumbles with silent giggles beneath him – she doesn’t answer him, instead anticipates his reaction for when he figures it out himself. It is unfamiliar to him at first, until he notices the animation that harshly tugs him back a few years. His eyes automatically roll in response, along with a slight cringe and twist of his face.

“Oh god...”

“If you need anything at all ... just ... believe.”

“Anyone find that guy a little strange?”

“It’s so good.” Y/n laughs, maximizing the video so that they can both watch The Adventurous Adventures of One Direction. The second part to the third installment, to be more specific.

“Are you serious?” Harry tries to keep a serious tone, but he just can’t when y/n’s practically dying with laughter. “This is what you’re going mad over?”

“Stop!” She almost wheezes, softy patting his hand on her arm. “This is the best Christmas special out there.”

“I’ve actually got a few in mind that are quite Christmas-y and don’t involve me in cartoon form.”

“Shhh, sh, sh,” y/n begs of him. She raises the volume, gripping onto his fingers to keep him from getting away. “Watch this part, it’s really funny. Aw, look at you!”

Not exactly the aw and giggles he had been expecting.

“Tha’s not even me,” Harry argues, pouting at her side a little. When she doesn’t notice, he glares at her and settles on top of her to watch whatever part it is that gets her excited.

“Don’t you see? If you rearrange the letters in train conductor, it spells ... child abductor!”

Harry drops his forehead on his girlfriend’s shoulder, quiet snickers escaping him at the ridiculous comedy. He does find it funny, but the fact that y/n isn’t paying attention to him is what makes him wish she’d turn it off.

“Oh, baby, you’re so cute,” she coos at him, except she’s saying it to the screen, not to her actual boyfriend. “Look! He even has the little mole next to his mouth like you do! Ugh, I just wanna kiss it.”

“Well, funny thing is, I am right here—”

“Wait, where did you get that H from?”

“What the H?”

Another laugh wheezes from y/n, who completely ignores her boyfriend sighing on top of her. She’s being so difficult right now. All Harry wants is to wrap presents with her, sing Christmas songs, maybe make out a little, but instead she’s completely immersed in this cartoon. What’s worse is that she is so damn adorable right now, it is hard not to smile; his heart even explodes with love.

“Alright,” he says, pressing another kiss on her face despite the lack of reaction. “I guess I’ll just wrap the rest of the presents myself.”

“Wait!”

She calls after him, gripping onto his arm once he raises from the bed. He turns to her with a grin on his face, waiting for her to close the laptop so he can scoop her up and take her downstairs.

“...Watch part three with me! You have to see how he draws your little tush.”

Harry’s shoulders slump, his face falling in a glare. Again, she barely notices when she turns her attention back to the screen.

“My tush is not little—”

“Please get off me! We’re going way too fast!”

Y/n turns to Harry with a mock expression, saying Niall’s line along with him. “What are we, dating?” She then raises her eyebrows in a suggestive manner, persuading him with just a single tug on his arm.

Soon enough, Harry is falling back on top of her, their hands clasping at her front. He smiles warmly, thinking to himself unfortunately because yes, they’re dating, and yes, she is like an annoying child sometimes. Regardless, he snuggles his chin into her shoulder, wrapped around her and squeezing tightly just because. He supposes the gifts can wait until later – right now, he is perfect right where he is.

#honeytryst

198 notes · View notes

tinabritton-photography · 5 years

Text

Seeing the Light . . . Portrait Research and practice. Not complete!

Today kicked off a brand new project brief called ‘Seeing the Light’. This brief is designed around capturing 4 portraits, family, friends or strangers, in natural light. In this brief we can use either or a combination of a diffuser, scrim, flags or reflectors in certain situations according to how intense the natural ambient light is.

What are the Qualities of Light?

Natural light is any light generated by the sun. The light of day can be harsh or diffused, depending on the weather, cloud-cover, heat and cold, direction, or even time of year.

Without the benefit of light, there can be no image. The frame would be void, black and lifeless. So one could say that each image has a symbiotic relationship light. There is a push and pull between the areas of shadow and the lighter areas of an image, irregardless of whether the light falling on our subject is natural or lit with studio lighting.

Characteristics of Light

The Golden Hour

***************************************************************************************

Portrait Lenses

(note: I have not included the 35mm here because headshots taken with the 35mm exhibit distortion. That being said, with distance, the lens can be good, however, it is just not a portrait lens and will never truly be as good as the ones listed below.)

I think that lenses should be chosen by, not only where the image is going to be taken, say, i.e. a very small studio, or on walk-about around Glasgow, but also available light

The three prime portrait lenses that really shine for me are -

50mm - The 50mm prime lense has a wide aperture and is a great standard portrait lens. It has a fantastic shallow depth of field, and though it has less distortion that a 35mm, there is still some barrel distortion with headshots, so I would stick to half-body or full-body captures.

What is barrel distortion? See below.

Barrel distortion is an aberration and “happens because the field of view of the lens is much wider than the size of the image sensor and hence it needs to be “squeezed” to fit”. (Mansurov, 2019)

“Some barrel distortion is present in most wide angle lenses and zoom lenses with relatively short focal lengths.” (Mansurov, 2019)

(Mansurov, 2019)

Since we have spoken about barel distortion, we have to include pin cushion distortion. Pin cushion distortion in zoom lenses, in particular, consumer grade or even some pro lenses. More expensive lenses contain compensating elements that reduce pincushion distortion to acceptable levels.

(Mansurov, 2019)

The above are examples of optical distortion.

Below is what happens when you capture up-close images with a wide angle lens. This however, has to do with perspective distortion and not lens distortion. Lenses have no perspective. I will be researching this further in a later blog.

(Mansurov, 2019)

See below - focal length does not impact perspective distortion when you are far enough away from your subject.

(Lightroom, 2019)

However - perspective distortion is caused by the distance between the lens and the subjects face, NOT focal length.

(Lightroom, 2019)

85mm - Most photographers would agree that the 85mm is the best lens for portrait photography. It has a wide aperture, shallow depth of field and less of the distortion that we get with the 35mm and 50mm lenses, however there is still some barrel distortion. It is still a go-to lens though because close-up to our sitter we capture a flattering perspective of our subject’s face. Also, 85mm at 1.4mm - 1.8mm will make the background melt into a creamy background, even with waist-high shots, and full length shots. At full length there is still a wonderful 3D feel to the shots with a decent amount of background if you so choose.

135mm - The 135mm prime lens has a wide aperture and longer focal length which gives gorgeous bokeh. I have a manual 135mm lense and the bokeh is swirly and beautiful and it produces sharp images, however, it is manual focus, so would be better in the studio imo. I do note however that, the 85mm is a better choice for closeness to the subject you are shooting. A conversation can continue and a rapport can be built to put her or him at ease. (Abbott, 2019)

Nikkor DX 18-105mm lens - This has been my go to lens when I am out shooting street photography or street portraits. It spans the ranges I need for portrait photography. For example, see the 4 images below . . .

TinaBritton Photography 2014

TinaBritton Photography 2017

105mm (full frame sensors) - This is my next prime lens. Yes, the 18-105mm I already own expands to 105mm, however, I want the constant large aperture the Sigma lens offers.

What about zoom lenses?

What if you only have a 70-200mm (as with the 18-105mm above) in your bag and cannot afford prime lenses right now? The 70-200mm can work for you in many portrait situations. Now, I like to be close to my models. It’s more personal and while I am shooting, I can have a conversation with he or she. This puts the model at ease. With this lens we can still shoot in that range, however, that being said, capturing a portrait, though I have to stand further away, at say, 200mm at 2.8mm creates a beautiful background and unique perspective. Watch out for distortion. (Hull and >, 2019)

*****************************************************************************************************

How do we control the light?

What is a Scrim?

Scrims is a woven fabric on a frame that reduces the light by about 1/2 stop. “The Full scrims will dim the light intensity across the entire beam spread, while 1/2 and graduated scrims are used to even out the beam spread when lighting a subject or background from an angle.”

(Anon, 2019)

What is a Flag?

A flag (black refector) is used to block or control (shape) the light in your scene. It can be used to fill in shadow (negative fill) and to increase contrast. It can stop flares from reaching your camera, almost in the same way a lens hood does.

(Digital-photo-secrets.com, 2019)

What is a diffuser?

A diffuser (or silk) goes between your light source and your subject and produces a finer light, like a softbox. It reduces glare and is flattering to your subject.

(Ghionis, 2019)

What is a reflector?

A reflector helps light reach your subject and also helps to soften the light meeting your subject. It comes in silver and gold and white. Many come in a kit as the one seen below. Be careful using the silver as it can be harsh if bouncing bright sun. Gold gives your subject a golden hour look, however, in some situations, can give your sitter a strange glow. White gives your subject a soft glow.

(Digital-photo-secrets.com, 2019)

Choose 5 Photographers -

1. Henri Cartier-Bresson -

Henri Cartier-Bresson was born to a successful textile manufacturer and his mother (1908-2004) in France. The master of capturing a candid moment, Bresson was the father of street photography and photojournalism. It was his belief that photography was about capturing the spontaneous or the ‘decisive moment’.

Throughout his career, Bresson took hundreds of natural light portraits of famous people, many of them well known and important artists of his era.

It was in 1947 that Henri and some of his peers started a cooperative photography agency called Magnum Photos, dedicated to the premise that photography had become an influential communicative tool. Bresson’s responsibility in the agency was to travel to India and China, but he also travelled to countries such as Greece, Moscow, Egypt and America. His most beloved assignment was his trip to Moscow. “He was the first photographer allowed to enter the USSR after the death of Stalin in 1953”. (Huxley-Parlour Gallery, 2019)

Photograph of Pablo Picasso by Henri Cartier-Bresson. (Ipoxstudios.com, 2019)

Photograph of Pablo Picasso by Henri Cartier-Bresson (Ipoxstudios.com, 2019)

Photograph of Henri Matisse by Henri Cartier-Bresson. (Ipoxstudios.com, 2019)

2. John Loengard -

John Loengard is an American photography born 1934 in New York. Harvard educated, he learned his craft at the International Centre for Photography in New York. His photographic journey began when he was 11 years of age when he began capturing images of his family.

It was in his senior year at Harvard when Loengard was asked by Life magazine to freelance for them by photographing a freighter run aground on Cape Cod in 1956. This began his work with the Magazine.

In 1972 Life magazine suspended its weekly publication and it was then that became the picture editor of Life Special Reports. At the time, he was also the picture editor of People magazine during is formation and for the beginning 3 months of its publication.

Loengard helped in Life magazine’s rebirth and was its picture editor until 1987. While working for Life and other magazines, the photographer authored 10 books and in 2005, He was named “One of the 100 most influential people in Photography” by American Photo. He was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame in 2018.

Below is an image of Georgia O'Keeffe sitting on the roof of her home in 1967.

Georgia O'Keeffe photographed on the roof of her Ghost Ranch home in New Mexico, 1967. John Loengard—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images. (Time, 2019)

Image of Richard Avedon by John Loengard, 1994. (Photographers, Books and Hours, 2019)

Annie Leibovitz with her Assistant, Robert Bean on the Chrysler Building by John Loengard. (Johnloengard.com, 2019)

Brassai's Eye by John Loengard. (Johnloengard.com, 2019)

3. Alfred Eisenstaedt -

was a German-born American photographer who was well known for taking black and white shots of celebrities and is famous for using the 1.5 Armature. What is the 1.5 Armature?

“1.5 Armature: There are two ways to break down a 1.5 rectangle. The most basic is the 1.5 Armature. It is created by drawing two diagonals from each corner of a negative. Then draw their reciprocals from opposing corners, which intersect the diagonals at 90°. Through the Eyes of the Diagonal and their reciprocals, draw vertical and horizontal lines through their intersections. The 1.5 Armature was a very popular method used by Cartier Bresson early in his career.” (PetaPixel, 2019)

Below we have Marilyn Monroe in a black and white sweater. Her hair has a soft sheen and is worn natural. The background appears to be a barn structure and give the image a mid-tone grey texture.

Marilyn Monroe (Black Sweater Landscape), 1953

Below is an iconic image seen from around the world. A crowd of happy people gathered on the street in celebration, a man tilts his girl back for a long overdue kiss. I have always loved this image and the start black and white contrast.

Alfred Eisenstaedt, VJ Day in Times Square, August 14-1945, Robert Mann Gallery (PetaPixel, 2019)

What can I say? We all know who this man is in the photo below. Albert Einstein sits writing. Love the rich blacks and the striped batter of the chair against the grey of his sweater and white of his hair.

Alfred Eisenstaedt, Albert Einstein, Princeton, New Jersey, 1949, Robert Mann Gallery. (Artsy.net, 2019)

4. Stanislav Puchkovsky (Sean Archer on 500px) is self taught photographer from Yekaterinburg, Russia. He picked up his first camera in 2012 (a Lumix G3) and hasn’t stopped shooting since. And his light source? He uses natural light to capture his classically beautiful images. Amazingly, he shoots all his portraits in his apartment with window light. (Sarkar, Kosa and Sarkar, 2019)(Diamond, 2019)

(Diamond, 2019)

(Sarkar, Kosa and Sarkar, 2019)

(Archer, 2019)

5. Magdalena Berny

Berny is a self-taught photographer born in 1976 and based in Poland. Her natural light child portraits have been recognised and published in “various press dedicated to photographs such as Digital Camera, Click Magazine, Modern Lens Magazine, Magzter, Great Inspire, just to name few.” (Symposion 2019, 2019)

(Dreams Factory Photography, 2019)

(Instagram.com, 2019)

Today we went on a walkabout from class in Glasgow to take images of each other (students). The group I was with only chose a silver/white reflector. The diffuser disappeared with the other students.

Here are but a few of the images I captured on the day . . .

Intensely Adam . . .

We used a refector to get light into the ‘cage-like’ structure. I like framing my subjects. I should have had Adam hide his earphones. I can always take them out in Photoshop. Here we are using a silver reflector. I can only assume that the colour cast on Adam’s face is from the rust covered bars surrounding him.

I’m not perfect. It has been a long time, and the excitement of taking images out with the class was the only reason I can fathom why I would make such a rookie mistake as allowing the top of the stone fence behind Adam to run right through his head. No refector.

I like taking images of my subjects that help tell a story about who they are. Adam is extremely talented and has great instincts in photography. Here we are using no reflector.

This is a woman with her dog. She was walking on the pathway where we were practicing and I asked if we could take her portrait. She was reluctant at first, but said yes. I could tell she was all about her dog. This image is a dog portrait with their human. (Again with the wall. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were through her shoulders.)

The lovely woman put down her dog and allowed me to take her photo. She didn’t take off her sunglasses.

Adam being inquisitive . . .

Adam relaxing on the wall.

Adam rules on the wall . . . a bit over exposed on his face me thinks?

Adam peering into the lens.

My brief, well underway . . .

For my first portrait, I chose my husband. We actually took photos for this portrait the same time and day as I was also working on my #Who project. This worked out well. I love the small Laundry cabin that is situated in the beautiful Finlaystone Country Estate; a large country estate in Renfrewshire near Glasgow, seat of the current Chief of the Clan MacMillan. We have visted here a few times, and I love walking about the trees. The laundry cabin is awesome with its old world objects.

For my second portrait, I chose my friend Andrew. We travelled to Glasgow and visited our favourite place to eat because I knew they had big beautiful windows. The thing about the windows, they are not clean on the outside, so they diffused the light really well. The weather was 13 celsius and it was a cloudy day. Exposure was 1/100 sec at f4.5 using my 50mm lens. I had him sit really close to the window. What I noticed was, there was this white powdery looking dust on the outside of the window and it seemed to make the entire window, even though it was cloudy, glow with light.

For my 3rd portrait, I am going to capture images of strangers, either on Glasgow streets, or perhaps walking in the woods. I have taken my first images of a very talented woman singing on Buchanan Street in Glasgow. I loved her soulful voice. I walked up and stood in front of her until I caught her gaze. I pointed at her, as she was singing, and pointed at my camera then to her. She nodded yes to my silent request. She kept singing while I took a few shots.

I will take further portraits of strangers in the coming week.

For my 4th portrait, I have captured images of my 93-year-old mother-in-law. She is a beautiful woman who lives in Port Glasgow high above the Clyde. There is a gorgeous veiw from her window. I wanted to use that as my backdrop as she has strong ties with her community and has been living in the same house for 65 years. As a matter of fact, my husband was born in the house.

Mum is always talkative, and she never sits still. She is the most inquisitive woman I know to date. Because I knew this setting up for our session, I asked her to stand next to her favourite place, the large picture window in her living room. She continued to ask questions so I took many images in an attempt to get the ones I really wanted.

Mum was getting tired, so I had her sit every once in a while, every second that passed changed the available lighting dramatically.

I decided later to go outside and capture mum in her window, as she can often be seen by the neighbours looking out.

I mixed some more portrait shots of my mum in with the last. OOPS. The last shot was a dramatic silhouette of mum.

Prakel, D. (2007). Lighting. Lausanne, Switzerland: AVA, pp.56-70. (Prakel, 2007)

Lightroom, P. (2019). Choosing the Best Focal Length for Portraits. [online] Pretty Presets for Lightroom. Available at: https://www.lightroompresets.com/blogs/pretty-presets-blog/best-focal-length-portraits [Accessed 4 Oct. 2019]. (Lightroom, 2019)

Mansurov, N. (2019). What is Lens Distortion?. [online] Photographylife.com. Available at: https://photographylife.com/what-is-distortion [Accessed 4 Oct. 2019]. (Mansurov, 2019)

Hull, C. and >, M. (2019). What Is the Best Lens for Portraits? | Photography Equipment. [online] ExpertPhotography. Available at: https://expertphotography.com/best-lens-for-portraits/ [Accessed 30 Sep. 2019]. (Hull and >, 2019)

Abbott, J. (2019). Three prime lenses every portrait photographer needs to consider. [online] digitalcameraworld. Available at: https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/tutorials/the-best-portrait-lens-three-lenses-every-portrait-photographer-needs-to-consider [Accessed 30 Sep. 2019]. (Abbott, 2019)

Cambridgeincolour.com. (2019). Making the Most of Natural Light in Photography. [online] Available at: https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/natural-light-photography.htm [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019]. (Cambridgeincolour.com, 2019)

Neirynck, F. (2019). Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908 – 2004) | Le Couperet. [online] Lecouperet.net. Available at: http://www.lecouperet.net/hcb/en/portraits-by-hcb [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019]. (Neirynck, 2019)

Ipoxstudios.com. (2019). You are being redirected.... [online] Available at: https://ipoxstudios.com/proof-that-henri-cartier-bresson-used-dynamic-symmetry-in-photography-4k-video/ [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Photographers, A., Books, p. and Hours, O. (2019). Age of Silver: Encounters with Great Photographers | powerHouse Books. [online] Powerhousebooks.com. Available at: http://www.powerhousebooks.com/books/age-of-silver-encounters-with-great-photographers/ [Accessed 5 Oct. 2019]. (Photographers, Books and Hours, 2019)

Huxley-Parlour Gallery. (2019). Henri Cartier-Bresson | Photographer's Biography & Art Works | Huxley-Parlour Gallery. [online] Available at: https://huxleyparlour.com/artists/henri-cartier-bresson/ [Accessed 5 Oct. 2019]. (Huxley-Parlour Gallery, 2019)

Johnloengard.com. (2019). John Loengard – Photographs. [online] Available at: https://johnloengard.com/ [Accessed 5 Oct. 2019]. (Johnloengard.com, 2019)

Time. (2019). https://time.com. [online] Available at: https://time.com/3491091/georgia-okeeffe-invincible/ [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Sarkar, G., Kosa, M. and Sarkar, S. (2019). Stanislav Puchkovsky (Sean Archer) - Incredible Portrait Photographer from Russia - 121Clicks.com. [online] 121clicks.com. Available at: https://121clicks.com/showcases/stanislav-puchkovsky-sean-archer-incredible-portrait-photographer-from-russia [Accessed 13 Sep. 2019].

Archer, S. (2019). Sean Archer on Fstoppers. [online] Fstoppers. Available at: https://fstoppers.com/profile/37142 [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Diamond, D. (2019). Stanislav Puchkovsky (aka Sean Archer) is a Master of Natural Light Portraits. [online] Fstoppers. Available at: https://fstoppers.com/bts/stanislav-puchkovsky-aka-sean-archer-master-natural-light-portraits-9584 [Accessed 13 Sep. 2019].

PetaPixel. (2019). The Great Compositions of Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. [online] Available at: https://petapixel.com/2013/04/15/the-great-compositions-of-photographer-alfred-eisenstaedt/ [Accessed 30 Sep. 2019]. (PetaPixel, 2019)

Artsy.net. (2019). Alfred Eisenstaedt: Portraits of the Past | Robert Mann Gallery | Artsy. [online] Available at: https://www.artsy.net/show/robert-mann-gallery-alfred-eisenstaedt-portraits-of-the-past [Accessed 30 Sep. 2019]. (Artsy.net, 2019)

SLR Lounge. (2019). The Flash Modifier You Already Own - SLR Lounge. [online] Available at: https://www.slrlounge.com/workshop/the-flash-modifier-you-already-own/ [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Sekonic.com. (2019). Working with the Sun | Photography How To Articles – What's Your Specialty? Photographer. [online] Available at: https://www.sekonic.com/united-kingdom/whatisyourspecialty/photographer/articles/working-with-the-sun.aspx [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Digital-photo-secrets.com. (2019). What in the heck is that thing for? A photographer's guide to using the black flag :: Digital Photo Secrets. [online] Available at: https://www.digital-photo-secrets.com/tip/6721/guide-using-black-flag/ [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Anon, (2019). [online] Available at: https://www.adorama.com/dodsck.html [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Ghionis, J. (2019). How to Perfect Natural Light with a Collapsible Diffuser feat. Jerry Ghionis. [online] Westcott University. Available at: https://westcottu.com/using-the-omega-reflector-as-a-diffuser [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Instagram.com. (2019). #magdalenabernyphotography hashtag on Instagram • Photos and Videos. [online] Available at: https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/magdalenabernyphotography/?max_id=1254958811895111547 [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Dreams Factory Photography. (2019). MAGDALENA BERNY - STUDIO PORTRAIT. [online] Available at: https://www.dreamsfactory.co.uk/event/magdalena-berny-studio-portrait [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Instagram.com. (2019). PAGE1 (@page1mag) • Instagram photos and videos. [online] Available at: https://www.instagram.com/page1mag/ [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Symposion 2019. (2019). Magdalena Berny | Children Portraits. [online] Available at: https://www.symposion.photo/en/magdalena-berny-en/ [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

#seeing

1 note · View note

nivilliain · 7 years

Text

Smile Like You Mean It (Chapter 4)

Name: Smile Like You Mean It Fandom: Villainous/Villanos AU: Smile!/Valiant Beta Reader: @rachrar Rating: E to Teen Warnings: Brainwashing; Torture; Summary: After Zug goes missing, White Hat and Lumencia try to find him. However, they end up in a strange dimension with darkness under its smiling surface.

Banner artwork edited from a piece I commisioned @theinsanefruitloop-chan to do

[First] [Previous] [Next]

took Lumencia about an hour to realise she didn’t HAVE to listen to White. She was fuming, sitting on the bed and making random rants and angry sounds. However, a room service bot came in and started to clean.

She smacked her forehead, realising her stupidity and stood up. After all, she had ‘thought about what she had said’ so White couldn't really get annoyed at her for leaving.

Lumencia was walking out of the hotel when it hit her. She had no idea where to go or what to do. She knew she wanted to find out what Smug was up to, but she had no idea where he was or where she was really. A map was first priority.

Having followed the signs she got to an information desk and picked a map. When she saw the map she was glad she did prioritise it. Saying this place was huge was an understatement. The island that Hatville sat on in her dimension was huge. This dimension’s island seemed even bigger somehow. And all of it was a theme park.

There at least seemed to be mass transportation such as skyrails from one section of the park to the other.

“Ugh! Why is this place so big!” Lumencia said- turning the map this way and that- in order to try and pinpoint where she was.

“I can help, Sister!”

“Oh no-” Was all Lumencia managed before she was glomped by a loud blur of yellow and black. She squirmed, trying to get out from under Euphoria.

“I can take you annyywheeerree!” Euphoria said, hugging and squeezing Lumencia tightly as if she was a beloved teddy bear. “I know the WHOLE park!”

Lumencia slipped out of Euphoria’s arms, panting a little. Okay, sure she was a nightmare, but Euphoria did live here- and she would know what was going on surely? Maybe Lumencia could get some information out of her.

“Well.. why don't you give me a tour? I’d love to see things that the public doesn't either.” Lumencia said.

Euphoria was brimming with excitement. “Yes! YES!” She pulled Lumencia up. “Let's see everything! EVERYTHING!”

As Lumencia was yanked away by her hand, she once again saw someone out of the corner of her eye watching them.

----

White Hat couldn’t stop eating. Not that Smug seemed to mind. He kept insisting White try every piece of food he saw. It’s almost like Smug knew that Eldritches had a soft spot for candy. White Hat opened his mouth unnaturally wide and stuffed the whole yellow cotton candy flower into his mouth at once.

“Mmhmm!” White Hat said happily as the spun sugar dissolved. “So good. What’s next?”

“There’s still a couple of hundred restaurants and thousands of food stalls,” Smug said, looking at his pom-pilot. “It takes most Smile Citizens years to try them all but you might be able to do it in one day!”

Hearing that made White Hat blush, sinking his head a little. “I’m... I’m sorry... I’m being a pig.”

Smug gave a small chuckle. “You’re on holiday. You should be able to enjoy yourself without embarrassment.” He said, passing White Hat another cotton candy flower.

White Hat sat down on a nearby bench and began chewing this one slower. He took in the sights around him. Everywhere he looked was different but somehow blended into one. He could see how someone would easily get lost. It would probably take weeks, if not months, to try all the rides, even with all the lines being short.

He watched the skyrail go past for a moment before his vision rested on one ride. It caught his interest because this was the first ride he had seen with such a long queue. He stood, trying to get a better look at it. “What’s that ride?”

“That? Oh!” Smug came closer to him, looking where White Hat was indercating. “That's The Smiler. It was the first ride I built and still remains to be the most popular.”

“It’s... it’s massive!” White Hat said, his eyes following the track to try and mentally map it out. “I mean.. Is that all connected?”

“Yes, it is,” Smug said. “It goes inside that building too.”

White frowned to where Smug pointed, and then looked up. The tallest structure for miles was this roller coaster.

The Smiler

“Are we in the centre of the park?” White Hat said, checking the map he had.

Smug nodded. “Yes, this is the centre. This is where it all came from.”

White Hat frowned a little. “Then.. shouldn't this be where your mansion is?”

Smug moved his eyes away from The Smiler to look at White Hat. “It was... once..”

White Hat hesitated for a moment before resting his hand on Smug’s shoulder. He offered a smile. “You can tell me. I will not judge.”

Smug’s eyes filled with gratefulness before looking away. “It’s.. hard to remember...” He mumbled. “In all honesty, I don't really know what happened.”

Smug leaned over the rail of the elevated platform they were on- no one else around to hear him. The sun was beginning to set. A soft, warm breeze passed them as silence filled the moment as if Smug was trying to remember something deeply forgotten.

“If you can’t-”

Smug shook his head. “Something happened. An experiment went wrong. I remember... a flash of light and I woke up.. There.” He pointed roughly to outside of where The Smiler was.

A spark of hope exploded in White Hat’s chest. He grabbed Smug’s hands, turning him to the Eldritch. “Maybe you are my scientist then!”

“I... I-”

White Hat’s head snapped up, hearing a familiar voice. His eyes narrowed when he spotted Lumencia. He let go of Smug’s hands and marched down the stairs, not noticing Smug trying to take his hand again.

White Hat marched over to Lumencia. “What are you doing out? I thought I told you to stay in the hotel!”

Lumencia looked at him, opening her mouth to argue back when Euphoria cut her off. “I didn’t want her being all alone! This is a happy place and my sister should be happy too!”

White Hat’s anger faltered upon hearing that, his shoulders slumping. “I’ve been worried about you... You’ve been acting weird-”

“I could say the same thing about you!” Lumencia then gave him a sympathetic look, reaching up and stroking his cheeks. “I’m sorry okay? I just.. Maybe it's the stress of dimensional travel or something about the music here but I just feel like an elastic band wound up too tight. I wanna just... snap. And that's not fair to you or anyone else.”

White Hat nuzzled her hand as he cupped it. “I’m sorry too..”

Lumencia was about to open her mouth when she felt Euphoria grip the back of her hoodie in fear. She glanced at her, and then up at where she was looking. The dimensional clone was staring at Smug. Lumencia peered up at him and for a split second, she saw anger in his eyes.

Kindness was there in a blink, so convincing that Lumencia doubted for a moment that she saw anything else in his eyes. Smug pushed himself up from leaning over the rail and walked down the steps to them. “Ah, its good to see you again Lumencia. I trust that Euphoria treated you well.”

Lumencia nodded, keeping herself between him and Euphoria. “She was really great.”

“Good.” Smug looked past Lumencia for a split second. Euphoria’s grip got tighter on the back of Lumencia’s hoodie. No one else could see but Lum could feel it.

Smug turned to White Hat. “There’s another restaurant I’d love to take you to. After all, even as an Eldritch, you can’t just eat candy alone.”

White Hat’s stomach rumbled and he chuckled in embarrassment. “It seems my stomach agrees with you.” He looked at the other two. “How about we all eat together?”

The urgent tug on her hoodie stopped Lumencia from agreeing. She shook her head and gave a convincing yawn. “I’m sorry, but I’m so tired! And I already ate.”

“In that case, I’m sure Euphoria can take you back to your hotel,” Smug said. “And me and Ye- I mean, White Hat and I can go eat.”

“I’m sorry, what did you just say?” Lumencia said, eyes narrowing as she looked straight into those swirly goggles.

“White Hat and I can go eat?.” Smug said, “If there are no further questions-” He grabbed White Hat’s hand and guided him away. White Hat seemed a little surprised but just waved to Lumencia before disappearing off into the crowd.

“...Y... Yellow Hat...”

“Huh?” Lumencia looked at Euphoria. “What.. do you mean?”

“Y-yellow Hat was our Hat..” She whispered, only loud enough to Lumencia to barely hear. “T-that’s what he u-used to be-”

A growl behind them made Euphoria jump and step away from Lumencia. L.O.L stood there, mask over his mouth. He was looking at Euphoria with a deadly expression. The crazy woman wrung her hands.

“Easy there L.O.L.” Lumencia gave the yellow bear pets, just like she did when 6.2.4 got angry. “We were just talking girly things.”

The bear didn’t seem 100% convinced but it was hard to argue with such good pets. Lumencia kept rubbing the bear's belly, and looked to Euphoria just in time to see her mouth the words-

‘Help me’

It was then the speakers began to spark into life with something other than the music. “Curfew is in effect. Curfew is in effect.” Instantly humans began to move. L.O.L urged Lumencia and Euphoria forwards towards where the hotels were.

#Villainous #villainous au #Valiant au #smile! au #my writing #smile! fic

76 notes · View notes

caveatauditor · 6 years

Text

My favorite albums, days 1-10

Friends have requested that I share my favorite albums on social media, preferably with vaguely autobiographical blurbs accompanying them, so to avoid polluting the wholesomeness of my Facebook timeline with music geekery, these are they until I change my mind. I excluded albums from this decade because the decade isn’t over, so the ten gems that follow represent an attempt to make history conform to me.

1. Lil Wayne, Da Drought 3

Two discs of Wayne freestyling, bloviating, and holding a conversation over a bunch of sampled and/or stolen and/or obscure music, arranged randomly because in theory the mixtape goes on forever in both directions, a gorgeous tapestry whose details happen to consist of delectable beats and wild free-associative blather. Wayne raps like a child in a candy store, eschewing parsable semantic content in favor of puns and stray impulses and improvised phonetic twaddle and whatever he feels like saying in the moment; likewise, the beats don’t cohere, sonically or in sequence, instead sticking as many hooks as possible wherever possible as often as possible; the overall result comes off like a transmission from the filthiest corner of the id. The ultimate triumph of mid-��00s mixtape culture, Da Drought 3 is fabulous aural wallpaper and hardly an album at all, so of course it’s my favorite album.

2. Joni Mitchell, Hejira

Given how beloved this album is among a surprisingly large number of my friends, I almost went with the equally astonishing Hissing of Summer Lawns, but let’s be real now--Hejira is flawlessly, magnificently beautiful like nothing else I’ve ever heard. The guitar lines lap and peal over breathtakingly wide, sweeping expanses of empty space--space like the open road, like the southwestern desert in the winter, like the urge to travel and stay on the move, like the empty human heart. The lyrics use the familiar musicianly trope of going on tour as a springboard for a set of travelogue meditations on solitude and perpetual motion, a condition imposed partially by circumstance and partially by internal existential need; she’s moving before the ringing opening chords of “Coyote” and she’s moving after “Refuge of the Roads” pensively winds down. The latter song in particular contains several moments that always, always make me cry, especially during the first verse (“We laughed at how our perfection would always be denied”) and the third (“A thunderhead of judgment was gathering in my gaze”). I’ll never use “relate” as a verb, but I’ve often taken refuge in the road. I always take this album with me, though.

3. Jandek, Blue Corpse

I’m cheating here: Jandek is a relatively new discovery for me, and I’m still working through his ridiculously massive catalog, but I’ve listened to him with sufficient fascination enough over the past year and a half that he deserves a spot. Fans say that Blue Corpse is a good starting point because it’s his most accessible album, but accessibility is a relative concept when we’re talking about experimental atonal lo-fi acoustic quasi-blues fuckery, so let’s just call it his most carefully sequenced--side two builds the way a second side should, starting with an extended harmonica solo before leading into his cover of “House of the Rising Sun” and the album’s ten-minute centerpiece, the lonely, furious “Only Lover”. I love this album so much I could easily imagine a better one lurking in some dank, unexplored discographical corner.

4. Janet Jackson, The Velvet Rope

As a sophomore in high school I heard The Velvet Rope and immediately decided this was the sexiest and most sophisticated music I had ever heard. I was right! To this day I hold a special place in my heart for R&B that confounds the traditional banger/ballad distinction--there are no ballads on this album! With its swirly synthesizer and xylophonesque keyboard chords, “Empty” sounds like a conventional slow song until you notice the second layer of hyperactive drums clicking maniacally atop the core rhythm track: nervous energy disrupting and complementing preternatural spiritual calm. “Tonight’s the Night” is a great cover because the act of covering an established hit mirrors the act of initial erotic exploration, of navigating your way through a series of gestures you knew about before trying yourself; the way she sings “Cause I love you girl ain’t nobody gonna stop us now” is defiantly blunt, unshowy, matter-of-fact. Those are the lyrics! She’ll sing them. Breezy, mechanical, exquisite, The Velvet Rope captures the fragility of intimacy.

5. Fall Out Boy, From Under the Cork Tree

I first became aware of Fall Out Boy in middle school, when the girl whose locker neighbored mine put up a bunch of Pete Wentz posters on the inside of her locker door. I envied her brilliance and poise, since she was obviously way smarter and cooler than me, and I’m pleased to say she was right: this daft, idiotic, magnificent album captures a world of teenage crushes, fixations, stupid feelings poorly rationalized, awkward proclamations blurted out and immediately retracted, aftershave clumsily sprayed on to impress a special someone, the scent of cheap perfume, lipstick stains on your pillowcase and friction in your jeans. It’s so flushed and clumsy it automatically enters the realm of hormonal teenpop utopia, with the crunchy guitars mirroring the anguish in eternal adolescent Patrick Stump’s heart. Pete Wentz writes solecistic, self-aggrandizing lyrics because teenagers in love are supposed to utter howlers like “The only thing worse than not knowing is you thinking that I don’t know” and (sigh) “Turn off the lights and turn off the shyness”. It’s an ode to the enduring power of romantic absurdity, in all its most entertaining guises.

6. Duran Duran, Rio

Like From Under the Cork Tree, only glitzier. Occasionally I play a game with select friends of mine where we try to guess whether a random snippet of doggerel is a Fall Out Boy or a Duran Duran lyric. “It’s just like a scene out of Voltaire twisting out of sight”? Obviously Duran, for citing French philosophy is such a New Romantic move. “We’re well-read and poised/we’re the best boys”? Self-defeating self-objectification is Pete Wentz’s favorite rhetorical device. “The sun drips down bedding heavy behind/the front of your dress all shadowy lined/and the droning engine throbs in time with your beating heart”? Too florid; gotta be Duran. “Couldn’t cut me deeper with a knife if you tried/just take a look before you run off and hide”? No clue--blood and betrayal could go either way. “Let’s fade away together one dream at a time”? “Some people call it a one-night stand but we can call it paradise”? Well!

7. PJ Harvey, To Bring You My Love

As a senior in high school I heard To Bring You My Love and immediately decided this was the sexiest and rawest music I had ever heard. I was right! To this day I know no harsher or more beautiful approximation of what it means to yearn for the sublime. The tiny guitar figure in “Working for the Man”, half-concealed beneath the drums and muffled, thumping bass, devastates because it’s creepy and horrible; the maximalist guitar roar in “Long Snake Moan”, almost as loud and thundering as her distorted vocals, devastates because so would getting run over by a tank. On the rest of the album, she hits every mood between those two extremes, including rapture and delight in addition to all the abrasive ones.

8. Fleetwood Mac, Tusk

I almost went with Tango in the Night, given how my generation seems to have discovered and reclaimed it, with “Seven Wonders” popping up in Balearic dance mixes and American Horror Story. Tusk, however, is a giant compendium of whirring gears and rotating spokes and plinky keys and strummed acoustic guitars and tinkly music boxes and billions of other moving parts, and the totality of the sound correlates with a draining, overwhelming emotional extremity. Lindsey Buckingham fills the space with a bunch of tightly crafted miniatures, distilling his imagined ideal of the Fleetwood Mac sound into the searing anger of “What Makes You Think I’m the One” and “I Know I’m Not Wrong” (Lindsey Buckingham in a song title), but Stevie Nicks gets all the big statements: the thundering “Sisters of the Moon”, the incomparable breakup ballad “Storms” (“Never have I been a blue calm sea/I have always been a storrrrrrm” always makes me cry), “Sara”. Meanwhile, Christine McVie’s “Brown Eyes”/“Never Make Me Cry” couplet is the axis on which the album’s sequence turns. Tusk resonates because it conflates the singer-songwriter confessional urge with the band’s collaborative dynamic, creating a communal space for them all to bask in their shared hate for and exhaustion with each other.

9. Crunk Hits

I needed a compilation, and this magnificent one brings to life my favorite radio format: mainstream hip-hop in the mid-‘00s. Crunk and R&B were everywhere back then; to me this album sounds like New York in the hot, lazy summers of ’05 and ’06, when these songs confounded with their unprecedented hedonism and aggression and delight. Definitively singles-oriented, this music saturated a subsequent generation of hip-hop fans, so that album artistes in this decade like Young Thug and Playboi Carti have internalized crunk’s valuable lessons about shamelessly exposing the id. I couldn’t omit an album whose first five songs are Usher’s “Yeah”, Lil Jon & the Eastside Boyz’s “Get Low”, T.I.’s “Rubber Band Man”, Chingy’s “Right Thurr”, and Ciara’s “Goodies”--damn! It’s practically a greatest-hits album for the entire decade.

10. Steely Dan, Gaucho

When I bought this album in seventh grade, I wasn’t aware I was buying the fleetest, shallowest, most efficient howl of anguish ever set to music. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are only ironists insofar as they’re romantics who mask their feelings in inscrutable form. The question with any of their albums, which are basically all flawless, is to what degree they’ll reveal their bleeding hearts, and on Gaucho there’s such a gash in the fabric the blood spurts out everywhere, staining the shag carpet, dripping through the singer’s sleeve onto his fancy leather shoes. The modest functionalism of their slick California studio-rock, the tasty licks and glossy keyboards and sparingly deployed saxophone and sudden sharp bursts of guitar, hardly enters into a dialectic with the desperation and horror of the songwriting--it’s the perfect musical expression for these feelings, as perfection that’s slightly disfigured is so much more devastating than total abrasion (when critics use “Bret Easton Ellis” as shorthand for the demented luxury porn we’ve enjoyed and suffered through this decade, what they really mean is “Steely Dan”). No matter how many glass tables you smash, how many ashtrays you inhale, you’ll never feel as shitty as this record.

#lists #favorites #best albums ever

5 notes · View notes