#the eagles are there at the end because I thought it’d be funny
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hi-there-buddies · 3 months ago
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“The cell saga is bad because the z fighters were idiots the entire time”
that’s the POINT
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THE CELL SAGA IS ABOUT ARROGANCE
EVERYONE IS BEING STUPID BECAUSE THEY THINK THEY KNOW WHATS GONNA HAPPEN
THEY THINK THEYRE AHEAD OF THE CURVE
BUT THEY AREN’T
THIS IS LITERALLY SHOWCASED MULTIPLE TIMES THROUGHOUT THE SAGA
IT STARTS WITH TRUNKS AND BUILDS FROM THERE
GOHAN LITERALLY LETS CELL LIVE BECAUSE OF HIS ARROGANCE
THE ONLY REASON CELL IS DEFEATED IS BECAUSE GOKU, GOHAN, AND VEGETA ALL LET GO OF THEIR ARROGANCE AND PRIDE AND FIGHT TOGETHER
GOKU STEPS IN TO HELP GOHAN, WHICH HE DIDNT DO BEFORE BECAUSE HE THOUGHT GOHAN COULD DO IT HIMSELF
VEGETA HELPS GOHAN AND LANDS THE PENULTIMATE BLOW ON CELL, DESPITE WANTING TO BE THE ONE TO END CELL HIMSELF
GOHAN FINALLY FINISHES HIM LIKE HE REFUSED TO DO BEFORE
THEY ALL LET GO OF THEIR ARROGANCE AND FINISH THE JOB
THATS THE THEMATIC POINT OF THE SAGA
RAHHHHHHH🦅🦅
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mxliv-oftheendless · 6 months ago
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My thoughts jotted down as I read The Silmarillion for the first time:
The Silmarillion has been pretty good so far so I thought it’d be fun to record my personal thoughts as I read! I’ve been mainly reading this book in chunks, so the end of the bullet points is where I’ve stopped for the day. But enjoy my weird thoughts!
To my Taemin photocard that I used as a bookmark when I read the Lord of the Rings books: Alright, Taemin, we’re going in.
This reads very biblically, is it supposed to be??
Ah, so Melkor’s main problem is that he can’t create anything new himself, only corrupt and twist things that are already there.
(Finally understanding random bits of info I’ve learned online) Ohhhh, THAT’S what that is! Cool!
Ok Yavanna DEFINITELY loves hobbits.
Ohhh Nienna DEFINITELY likes Frodo.
So are the Eagles servants of Manwë???
Damn this worldbuilding is ELITE!
(“But Ulmo was alone, and he abode not in Valinor, nor ever came thither unless there were need for a great council…”) Sounds like my dream tbh
(Ilúvatar talking about his plans to create Elves and Men and how much he loves the Earth) Uhhh you may want to look into that a bit more, bud.
Huh. I’ve never thought about the human struggle to find the meaning of life and life’s purpose as being a gift, but it makes sense, since humanity as a whole constantly seeks to learn and grow and expand beyond what we already know.
Maybe that’s also why Melkor hates men, because they’ll always seek to learn more and expand to outside his influence and control, so by nature of their existence he can’t control them.
(Reading about Aulë being willing to smite the Dwarves for Ilúvatar before Ilúvatar stops him) So that’s a reference to the Bible story of Abraham and Isaac, right??
Ohhhh so that’s why the Elves and Dwarves hate each other… I don’t really care for that.
So who would be the one to create therapy??? Would that be Nienna??
“Next came the Noldor, a name of wisdom.” *laughs in very basic knowledge of what’s about to happen next*
Remarriage and your son hating his stepmom and half brothers; yeah I can definitely see this being a problem.
Oh yeah this is DEFINITELY going to be a problem.
I dunno why I always love the bad guys in stories, but I just think Ungoliant is kinda cool.
“But Liv she lives only for herself and her own consumption and she’s a SPIDER” YEAH AND IT’S FUNNY AND SEXY WHAT’S YOUR POINT
*Ungoliant eats the Trees two pages later*
Damn, the cruel irony of Fëanor and Fingolfin reaching a truce and everything looking like it’s going to be okay RIGHT as Melkor and Ungoliant destroy the Trees… I bet Tolkien was giggling evilly to himself while he wrote that chapter.
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jackie-gremlin-ghost · 1 year ago
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I have a lot of thoughts on the impact this show had on me, and believe me, all of it was GOOD.
“The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy”, way back when it was simply “Grim & Evil”, premiered at a very formative part of my childhood. As someone who had already been exposed to works of the “whimsically grim” variety at an early age, such as the Scooby-Doo franchise and the filmography of Tim Burton, this series only fueled little me’s love for horror and all things macabre, and also had a part in forming one of the many facets of my sense of humor.
I have very fond memories of excitedly sitting in front of my living room TV every Friday night to catch the newest episodes on Cartoon Cartoon Fridays. (One episode I still vividly remember watching for the first time to this day was “Devolver” and “Reciper for Disaster”.) And when Grim & Evil split into two separate series, the fitting premiere date of Friday the 13th for Billy & Mandy was not lost on me. (Happy early 20th Anniversary to that premiere, btw!) And I still watch “Jacked-Up Halloween” and “Underfist” every Halloween to this day!
If I had to pick a favorite episode, it would be tough, because I love them all! But if I were forced to choose, it’d be “Who Killed Who?”. Mrs. Doolin was such a fascinating and funny character, played brilliantly by the late, great, irreplaceable Betty White. Another episode that stuck with me, specifically its surprisingly terrifying ending, would be “Something Stupid This Way Comes”, which introduced me to the chilling concept of The Fourth Wall Will Not Save You.
What this all boils down to is this; this series was a good chunk of my personality as a kid, and it helped shape me into the woman I am now. Thank you to Maxwell Atoms, Greg Eagles, Richard Horvitz, Grey DeLisle-Griffin, and all the hardworking writers, animators, storyboard artists, and crew that were the components needed to bring this memorable series about Death, to Life.
— Jackie M.
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Good Morning Tumblroids,
I’m still working out the specifics of my future indie project attempt. Jellystone is over for now, but I’m still pitching shows on the mean streets of Burbank and I’ve got a lot of new software to cram before I’m ready. In the meantime, I think I’m overdue to break the seal and breathe some life back into my mummified YouTube channel.
Maybe I’m just looking for a cheap excuse for a party, but I think I’m going to start off with a “Billy & Mandy Reunion”. As I’m imagining it, it’s part documentary and part Bravo reunion special. But probably with less punching and swearing(?). 
From the unusual pitch to the moment it was voted into existence by the fans, through multiple cancellations and resurrections, all the way to its final meeting with the reaper, Billy & Mandy has had a journey unique in the animation world. My goal is to get the whole gang back together and talk about how the sausage is and was made.
Before I embark with you on this trip through the potholes down Memory Lane, though, I wanted to check in with you all and hear what you had to say. In the reunion, we’ll be talking about Billy & Mandy as a project, specific episodes, all of the parts of the animation process, how things were done in the 2000s vs how they’re done now, and the animation industry in general. I’m looking for your thoughts and questions about any of that stuff. Or (really) anything you want to know about the show.
Whether it’s a statement about a character that's had an impact on your life or a question about the minutiae of storyboarding, I’d love to hear from you. If you want your question to be credited, add your preferred name to your comment. I don’t think I’ll have time to get to them all (and there are bound to be plenty of repeat questions) so please don’t get mad at me if yours doesn’t get chosen or gets attributed to someone else. There’s only a five-to-seven percent chance that I’ve done it maliciously.
I’m going to talk to the actors, of course, but I’m going to try to get as many people back as I can. Storyboard artists, writers, production staff, directors, timers, designers– The Whole Tamale Platter. If you’re interested in a particular facet of TV Animation, this would be a good chance to hear from someone who’s been there.
I like nachos, -Maxwell Atoms
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buytheticket · 2 years ago
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i moved AND had my meta consult 
i had my consult on 6/22 and have been wanting to write about it but i haven’t had a chance to sit and really collect my thoughts since i had to hustle on my move (moved in with my bf, it’s been really wonderful but that’s for another post)
read more for my detailed experience with the consult
my surgeon (dr Purohit) practices out of mount sinai so i had to go down to the city. it was an all day event- the train time i was able to get and the time of the appointment meant that i needed to take off work. my boyfriend and i took the train down to nyc. i had a bit of a sour start because my time anxiety kicked in and i was afraid we’d miss the train but we had plenty of time and my bf was really reassuring and i felt immediatly better as soon as we pulled into the station’s parking lot
 it was a really nice ride i really enjoy taking the train. the route goes right along the hudson river. saw so many bald eagles, herons, and cranes that i lost count! also got super stoned and relaxed on the ride down
i also took the time (the trip was just under 3 hours) to review the questions i had for the surgeon (i need to transcribe them, i wrote down a lot) to make sure i covered everything i could possibly think of
we got into the city around 11 and went straight to a diner since we didnt get a chance to eat before we left. it was pretty good! we had some time to kill before the appointment so we took the subway to greenwich village because i thought it’d be interesting to check out where stonewall is since neither of us had been. i’d never been to that area of manhatten so walking around the area was cool (ended up seeing a lot since we kept getting turned around the whole trip lol) stonewall inn was very unassuming as i had heard but it was also cool just to see it in person once. i was kinda hoping for a more indepth idk monument? i think i should just find a queer history museum. there’s gotta be one lol
we didn’t stay long since i had to take a piss and it was impossible to find a bathroom so we decided to head up to the dr’s office (ended up finding one in a subway station and a guard had to buzz me in and the stall was like something out of a movie lol)
as we got closer to the office and appointment time i started getting more and more anxious and irritable. i also skipped my adderall and my patience level plummets and i’m more susceptible to moodiness if something is stressful or challenging to me so it was kinda a double whammy.
my bf was such a angel though- i was getting stressed out trying to navigate so he took over and guided us and we had a good talk before my appointment about why i was feeling so moody and that helped too.
on the walk over to the office i got incredibly anxious. like the worst i’d been in a long, long time. meeting a new medical professional always gives me anxiety especially when it’s for transition related care. plus like hearing about some negative experiences with some staff and just like the general state of the world i was pretty much a walking wreck
we got lost going into the office and wound up in an apartment building. very funny in retrospect but i was like pissed off and having a melt down! my bf was very kind and helpful and we made it to the office (it was one door over but the office and apartment shared a street number. confusing!) 
i checked in and we sat down and my bf held my hand and helped keep me calm. i had been so worried that they would turn me away and cancel my appointment! a few days before i got a call from the office saying that my insurance was out of network. i had brought this up when i scheduled and sent over what my insurance needed for prior authorization so someone fucked up and for once it wasn’t me lol
they called me back and i hopped up on the table. dr purohit’s fellow came in with a nurse who was taking notes i think. i think he was from eastern europe based on his name and accent and he was learning how to do metas! he asked me some questions and i threw a ton of mine at him lol but he answered them all!
or tried to lol when i said i want to keep at least an ovary he was confused why and my bf helped explain that us trans folk might not always have access to t because of the way of things rn and that was a pretty interesting experience! i hope it was a teaching moment. i think dr’s should really be in step with current events and be advocates, know what their patients have to deal with day to day and truly strive to be an ally  
dr purohit came in after a bit (he was wrapping up another appoint which i didnt mind at all! i feel it means he makes sure everything is covered) and wow! i really like him and he made me feel so at ease and it was incredibly reassuring. i knew right away that he was gonna do everything to get as close to my needs as possible
i gave him a run down of what i wanted (simple release, mons resection, no ul/v-ectomy/scrotoplasty) and we had like a real convo!
then i had to drop my drawers so he could see what he was working with. this was my first time having to show my cock n balls to a medical professional. really wasnt bad at all! very professional touch. but like the fellow was observing and the dr was going over my configuration with him. i have “substantial growth” of my clit
like i have a medically certified hog, 100% usda grade a beef, baby! pretty sure i gave my bf some kind of shit eating expression when i heard the dr say that. like...it was very affirming tbh!
it was very quick and after i pulled my pants up we jumped into an overview of the meta process. he broke down all my possible options and went over everything in detail and explained possible pros and cons and reasonings for each option/his technique. my bf took notes and i will try and transcribe them. i think it’s very useful info for anyone seeking a meta- there are so many different options! you really can pick and choose what you want (so long as your ok with risks. like a ul with no v-ectomy has like a 50% to 70% rate of fistula development. the body is weird!)
we also went over what the procedure would be like and what i should do to prep. he gave me a “poor man’s pump” ( i said it was DIY! very punk rock) - a 50ml syringe that he said to saw the tip off and use the plunger to create the seal (i’ll take a pic [just the pump], easier to show than tell). never thought i’d be pumping my dick but it’s dr’s orders!
he even called the gyno (dr tran) who wll be doing my hysto to ask about her opinion  on me keeping an ovary and she said it def was a good option so i will keep one (the one opposite of the one my bf kept lol) i was also worried about vagina prolapse if i get my cervix removed but she said the risk was very very low (i’ve also been doing pelvic floor exercises to ease my mind lol). she was nice to talk with too and i’m looking forward to meeting her in person
but yea it was really great to meet dr purohit and it was really reassuring to do my consult and i felt so much better after
we wrapped up with him and the patient liaison came in and she gave us a run down of the next steps. i had a letter from my pcp and my therapist recommending me for the procedure. i still need to do thru their psych and social worker and md...she took my letters though and acknowledge that the process was silly and frustrating  (my therapist says the hospital prob does this to get more money from insurance companies lmao the gall of these fuckers)
i’m in touch with their trans clinic and playing phone tag to get the appointments set up. i can do the social worker appoint over the internet but i need to see the md and the psych in person plus a pre-op appointment with the dr. hopefully i can get the psych and md appointments in one day. i’ll also need to stay in the city for at least a week post-op. i have my fingers crossed my insurance coverage will go smooth (my copay would be $75....) so i can budget for a nice room with a kitchenette.
we got outta the office and took a sec to like gather our thoughts! i wasn’t expecting it to be so emotional but i was getting choked up throughout the rest of the evening and ended up taking the following day off work; i was exhausted
(i got my other appointments set up but i had this sitting in my drafts so i’ll end this one here and do another post for all that) 
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thequibblah · 3 years ago
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directors cut for WTRF? 🥺👉👈 not biased at all obviously just objective third party asking for a directors cut hmmm hmmmmm
literally how could u do this every other word in that fic is an easter egg i can't shut up about..... bestie u are about to have regrets
one thing u should know is that 90% of things in this fic have real-world equivalents and its not even like....... hidden equivalents. serie primo = serie a, for instance. this trend is going to continue and i won't apologise <3
fun fact i named the bar the Bar and the drinks after shapes because i was too lazy to come up with something actually clever
this bit
I’m grinning to myself by the time she approaches my table.
was a very intentional fakeout and if you read this and thought "she" would be lily, feel free to sue me for emotional damages
the biggest conundrum of this AU was, how are jily not going to have met in school when magic exists? the solution was, of course, having multiple magic schools. but i couldn't let one of them have hogwarts, that didn't seem fair. i know i did sort of let lily have it..... but i felt more comfortable making hogwarts a university so there was a legit reason why james wasn't there and in gryffindor (if he'd gone he absolutely would have been)
once solved, i did the fun thing of naming them! ottaline gambol's was easy, i just scrolled through the list of ministers for magic and picked a progressive one. peverell hall was a whim, made all the funnier when lily's reaction is:
Much was made at Otty’s — one of the more progressive magical schools, named for one of the more progressive Ministers of Magic — of schools like Peverell Hall and St. George’s. The latter, I know, is chock-full of pureblooded elite. Peverell Hall is supposed to be slightly better, but still.
dang, it's gonna be funny if she ever finds out james is a descendant of the guy it's named after
fun fact, i included this because peter's question was a real thought i had when reading bond and free, your inspiring writing knows no limits:
The first thing you conjure in Walking Wombat is a yellow quill... “Why yellow?” Peter asked. Eddie gave him a strange look. “Why not?”
i realised i'd put jily in the same conundrum they had in tis the fucking season here:
It’s only then that I remember she’s just bought us drinks. I turn back to my triangle. “Oh, shit.” I suppose I can pawn it off on one of the others.
...but of course the resolution is rather different, and i do so enjoy a james with no filter (aka default james)
I briefly lose control of my brain and my tongue. “Is it too soon to say I’m in love with you?”
by the way, no-filter james will be a theme. wild things sure do run fast but not as fast as this boy runs his mouth!
also, another interesting challenge here was making sure james has a reason to be the way he is in AU. i love playing around with james's childhood/background and seeing how that affects his character while (hopefully!) staying true to who he is. i did that in ttfs by having him move around a lot and not meet the marauders until after the flashback timeline, which is why he's less of a git — he doesn't have the level of comfort in a social setting that canon james has with hogwarts, which is basically his playground from day 2 of first year lol
here, james was probably a fkn nightmare all through school, but of course he gets a big ego check when his quidditch career is derailed. i imagine his years in italy as a continuation of that humility lesson.
I will fully admit I used to be a cocky prick. This is what comes of being a kid who grew up with everything. But one useful thing that the whole fiasco four years ago taught me is humility. I’ve learned how to ask nicely for another chance.
and so much of writing him in wtrf is juggling that typical confidence with the insecurity/fear of losing something he's invested so much in (and has seen slip away before). it's really new to me, because typically i give lily uncertain life circumstances, but i suppose it's both of them in this AU.
the car thing was... i swear didn't start out as smutty, it was purely because i wanted a way to establish lily as muggleborn in a world where the connotations of not having magical parents is very different. more to come on that!
also, come to think of it, by this metric...
I’m now in dangerous territory, since that adds another impressive action to her running tally.
...i think james is already in love with her LOL
this bit:
The street is considered indecent and the downstairs hallway would have our landlady come running at once, so if it pleases Your Honour, we would recommend the sitting room sofa.
...was actually because in draft one lily was a lawyer, but then it was funny enough that i didn't want to take it out, but NOW i realise it makes it sound a little like she's addressing james as your honour, which.... hm. but anyway, we move on
Marc Bolan begs us to get it on through the stereo, vocalising my thoughts exactly.
the song here was initially "you shook me" (h/t @keepingupwithpotters) but i chickened out because zeppelin is SO horny dfjkhgkjs
also, it gave me so much joy to read everyone reacting to lily thinking about her ex (the general vibe was "who the fuck is this guy!!! ew!!!!") — rest assured (or, unassured??) that he has a part to play in all this. anyway, this is one of my fave lines:
He’s just a person, and there’s such a relief in sleeping with James and not the myth of a guy.
because as any come together reader knows....
Just James. Just James. It was never just James.
wtrf lily will learn!
literally the whole world knows i'm obsessed with needle drops that have no subtlety at all, but this one...
We just laugh, tangled together in a sweaty heap, as “Heaven Is in the Back Seat of My Cadillac” plays through the car’s speakers. “On the nose, isn’t it?” James says, sitting up.
...was pure luck, because i was looking up the top hits on the uk singles chart for the week(ish) this scene takes place in so that i could find a song that would realistically play on the radio, saw this, and was like omg the stars really do align
i feel like the thing i enjoy most about writing romance is the importance i get to place in noticing/looking/observing (and sometimes, not noticing!). it's just such a powerful but simple writerly tool, and god knows i am obsessed with pithy descriptions anyway, so this bit i am especially happy with:
James is already waiting, leaning against the car with his hands in his pockets. I feel as though I’m seeing him for the first time, the faint light of the flickering streetlamp catching him in profile: the strong slope of his nose, the hard line of his jaw, the curve of his smile. He studies the facade of our building with open curiosity, and I wonder what he’s looking for.
(one can only imagine james's train of thought in this moment. perhaps "ah. here lives the future love of my life"?)
“Thanks,” she tacks on at the end. I tip my head to one side in confusion. “For what?” “For, I don’t know. Being nice.” She laughs awkwardly. “I don’t do this very much.”
it wouldn't be a quibblah original tee em without some discourse to come about the nature of romantic/sexual relationships, would it? one thing i enjoy about this AU ("one thing" i say as if this isn't the billionth thing in a list) is that i get to write a romantic lily who's squaring that romanticism with what she perceives as the culture of the times. (this is a bit of a staple in all my characterisations of lily, but it is not often paired with casual sex, the complication of all complications!)
oh this bit literally wrote itself like i didn't even pause to think just vomited it out:
In the morning — and it must be early still — the sun streams through Lily’s sorry excuses for curtains with aggression that cannot be ignored. I crack open an eye to find myself sprawled out across her bed, quite literally spread-eagled. She’s attached to my side like a barnacle. Or a very pretty barnacle, anyway.
i'm especially proud of james's voice in this story. i don't often write first-person fic and i was worried how it'd turn out, but i think james as a character/narrator typically colours his own 3rd-person narration so strongly that it ended up a smoother transition than i'd feared!
also i just. i can't resist throwing in comic relief and i hope that this whole segment was a gentle enough preparation for the awkwardness that followed LOL
All of a sudden, the balcony door bursts open. I nearly drop the mug. “What the—” Mary pokes her head around the corner, sporting a righteous smile. “Morning, handsome.” Over her shoulder she shouts, “He’s on the balcony!” I blink. There’s a sound from inside the flat, as if something very large has just been dropped. Then a swear. “Oh, shit,” I say, realisation dawning, “you weren’t looking for me, were you? It’s so loud out here—” Mary cups a hand around her mouth and stage-whispers, “Lily was frantic.” She’s quite violently yanked back, and Lily herself appears in the doorway, slightly out of breath. “Should’ve checked the balcony first,” she says, and closes the door before Mary can insert herself into the space again. “Hi,” I say, which is agreed-upon best practice for greeting a woman you’ve just had fantastic sex with and ideally would like to have sex with again.
to this day i don't know what lily dropped. let's hope it wasn't expensive!
Captained the under-17 English squad at the World Cup some years back, Serie Primo’s lead goal-scorer of last year… Only an injury in what should’ve been his first season at Puddlemere mars his record. I wince reading about it and comparing it to a heap of press clippings. James Potter was hurt, and Puddlemere didn’t fancy paying for him not to play, so they shipped him off to Milan.
(you cannot imagine how much pointed interrogation of my brother it took to gather this intel.) i constantly worry that i've got dates or timelines wrong somehow — you might notice i tweaked under-17, which used to be under-19 until i realised that made no sense (even though in terms of its career importance i would much preferred it to have been u-19.... anyway). i also found out that u-17 football squads don't actually have captains but i said fuck it on that count.
but obviously i started writing this AU for the sports possibilities, only to discover i'm going to have to interfere a great deal with the Timeline (you shall see in future instalments).
god i really went through the whole fic. like i reread the whole thing to do this. here u go clare jfbghjfd
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carewyncromwell · 4 years ago
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“Oh, simple thing, where have you gone? I'm getting old and I need something to rely on... So tell me when you're gonna let me in -- I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin. And if you have a minute, why don't we go Talk about it somewhere only we know? This could be the end of everything, So why don't we go somewhere only we know?”
~“Somewhere Only We Know (cover),” by Lily Allen
x~x~x~x
Hi guys! Next up on my Valentine’s Day posts, here’s something for my OG girl Carewyn for the Valentine’s Ball, and um...yeah! I’m doing something a little different and focusing on someone who Carewyn does care about, not romantically, but platonically -- her good friend, Talbott Winger! I haven’t really dedicated much material to these two’s friendship on this blog, so I thought this would be a great opportunity! For Carewyn’s dress, I took some inspiration both from this very 80′s-style dress and from Sarah’s princess dress in Labyrinth -- her necklace is even a replica of one that Jareth the Goblin King wears in the movie! Talbott, of course, is wearing his Valentine’s Ball ensemble. ^.^
It was hardly a surprise to anyone in the seventh year class that the self-titled “Style Wizard,” Andre Egwu, had taken it upon himself to make sure those attending could look their very best for the upcoming Valentine’s Day ball. He’d even managed to make Argus Filch look presentable, a challenge just about no one else would’ve been brave enough to attempt. So Carewyn truly wasn’t surprised that her ex-boyfriend-and-still-good-friend had designed specialized outfits for all of their friends. She was a little surprised, though, when she noticed a tell-tale eagle feather on the floor of the Great Hall where Andre had set up some of his mannequins -- and so, after trying on the silvery-white dress and jewelry Andre had picked out for her, Carewyn excused herself, saying she wanted to try walking around in the heels he’d picked out for her to test out how comfortable they were, and headed out to the Courtyard. Sure enough, who should she find there but a familiar eagle roosting on one of the large statues in the moonlight.
Carewyn shot a furtive glance around to make sure the coast was clear. Then she approached the eagle with a smile.
“Hey.”
The eagle took flight, landing on the ground in front of her. By the time its talons should’ve met the ground, Talbott Winger was already standing in its place. He was dressed in a dusky purple tuxedo jacket over a disheveled collared shirt, rose-patterned vest, and pink tie, some gray jeans, and trainers.
“How’d you know I’d be out here?” asked Talbott.
“Lucky guess.”
The Slytherin Head Girl scanned his outfit, her lips spreading into a ruby red smile.
“So you were getting a fitting,” she said. “I didn’t know you were planning on going to the ball, Talbott.”
Talbott glanced away, rubbing the back of his neck as he smiled wryly. “Heh...yeah, not exactly my scene, is it?”
Despite his attempt at offhandedness, Carewyn could tell he was self-conscious. Her smile faded, leaving a slightly gentler expression on her face.
“...You look quite nice,” she told him kindly.
Talbott cocked his eyebrows amusedly. “Only ‘quite?’“
“Well, your collar and tie are kind of a mess and your shirt’s untucked,” said Carewyn coolly.
“And here I thought it was considered attractive for men to leave their shirts unbuttoned.”
“There’s a fine line between casual and messy.”
“Well then, you can hardly expect me to have seen it clearly enough to not cross it -- I only have eagle eyes some of the time.”
Carewyn brought up a hand to her mouth to hold in her giggles. Talbott’s expression softened a bit too -- Carewyn didn’t laugh very much, if for no other reason than her giggling was distinctly unlike her usual “perfect” image, so it was kind of cool, to be one of the few people who could prompt it out of her. Talbott and Carewyn’s senses of humor had always matched up really well too, which helped.
“Andre went all out with you, of course, as usual,” remarked Talbott with a quick glance at her dress. “But I suppose he always has treated you like his little dress-up doll...”
“Oh, hush!” scoffed Carewyn, but she was smiling. “I’m glad you like it, though...I might switch out the pearls for a pair of earrings Jacob gave me for Christmas. And as much as these shoes are lovely, I’m tempted to switch them out for flats -- heels can pinch your feet something terrible after a while, particularly when you haven’t broken them in properly...something you don’t know anything about,” she added with a nod to his trainers.
Talbott grinned wryly. “Nope.”
His eyes drifted off toward the sky absently as he settled down on the edge of the fountain. Carewyn lowered herself down next to him, fluffing her skirt out so that it was under her legs properly.
“I’m kind of surprised you’re going,” Carewyn admitted, though her voice remained rather gentle. “I mean, I’m only going because I promised to sing some songs for the event, to help ‘pep’ it up...and I’m much more the sort to go to parties than you are.”
Talbott flushed slightly. “Well, it’s just...something I figured I should do. I mean, this is our last year -- probably the last time we’ll be hosting anything like this...”
He slouched forward, resting his head in his hand as he looked up at the sky rather than at Carewyn.
“And, well...I wasn’t there, for the Celestial Ball,” he muttered, “so it’d...probably be my last chance if I ever wanted to...at least at school...”
Carewyn’s blue eyes softened. Stretching her arms out so she could rest them on either side of her on the ledge, she leaned back slightly and shifted her focus up onto the sky too.
“I’m sure your date will be really happy that you cared so much.”
Talbott looked at her, startled. She didn’t look at him, instead keeping her focus skyward with a smile. After a moment, Talbott cleared his throat loudly and looked away, his cheeks darkened with a blush.
“That...well...”
He looked down, trying to collect himself. Then he raised his head, smiling at her through his blush.
“...Hm...thanks, Carewyn,” he mumbled. “...I’m...actually a little nervous. Penny offered to help me with some dance lessons, but...well, it’s still a bit weird. I’ve never really done anything like this...and before I even asked my date out, I got asked by several other people too...”
He cringed, his expression visibly awkward and self-conscious.
“I don’t even get why -- I mean, it’s not like I make myself very approachable.”
Carewyn gave him a sympathetic smile. “It is really uncomfortable, to be asked out by someone you’re not interested in.”
Talbott snorted in soft laughter.
“Oh yes, of course you’d know the feeling,” he teased, his lips spread in a smirk. “Naturally Hogwarts’s favorite fashionista has had her fair share of admirers -- breaking hearts as well as curses -- ”
“Oh, stop it!” said Carewyn, smacking his arm lightly, which only made Talbott laugh more fully. Despite herself, Carewyn couldn’t completely bite back a giggle of her own.
“Still, you getting asked out, that makes sense,” said Talbott dismissively. “I frankly don’t get why I got so many invitations...”
“I do,” said Carewyn.
Talbott raised an eyebrow at her.
“You’re a good man, Talbott. You’re smart, funny, loyal, talented...not to mention the air of ‘mystery’ you’ve got going on,” she added with a wry smile, and Talbott gave another snort. “But most importantly, you’re true to yourself. You’re not the sort to tell people what they want to hear or be what others want you to be. You’re honest and you don’t feel the need to change yourself...so you never have to wonder if the people who admire you do it for who you are, or just for the superhuman saint they think you are...”
Carewyn offered her friend a small, slightly grim smile, even as her eyes drifted off in the opposite direction.
“...That’s certainly not something I’m always sure about.”
Talbott’s smile slid off his face, his expression becoming a bit more serious.
“Mm...I guess so. Though there are plenty of times I don’t say everything I should...or even know how to say what I mean...”
“You’re more than good enough of a writer to sort those words out eventually,” Carewyn pointed out with an encouraging smile. “And at least when you do find the words, no one ever has to doubt that they’re sincere.”
Talbott smiled slightly. “Thanks.”
He shifted himself over to look at her better, adjusting his hand that had been supporting his head beside his neck.
“Really, though,” he said more seriously, “I don’t reckon there’s as wide of a divide as you think -- between what people think and who you are.”
Carewyn tilted her head in faint confusion.
“You hold yourself to impossible standards, Carewyn,” said Talbott rather brusquely. “You always have. Sure, you’re no saint...but you’re a good person. And good people -- truly good people, who want to make the world a better place and are willing to fight for it, even after life’s dealt them a bad hand...those aren’t easy to come by.”
Carewyn’s eyes softened. “...No, they’re not.”
Her lips spread into a fuller smile as she shifted over to look at him better too.
“We’ll get to really start working at making things better next year, won’t we? Once we get to the Ministry?”
Talbott smiled. “Yeah. Then I can take out the wrongdoers, and you can prosecute.”
Carewyn nodded. “And then we can go out for coffee and do it all over again.”
Talbott inclined his head in agreement, his grin and eyes both gleaming with determination.
“Sounds good.”
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vlads-yuka · 4 years ago
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A few Ikepri suitor theories (hc?)
So just earlier (not really anymore, since this took me a few d a y s) I was talking on discord about who among the suitors would be which type (the mom, yandere, tsundere etc) and since I wrote such a long thing about Rio, I thought I could try to do the same for the others 👉👈
I base my assumptions on translations I found of canon content (as of June 7th) as well as my own understanding of Japanese (I might be wrong about things that I claim canon, so if I do please tell me).
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Leon
So it's pretty obvious that Leon is the Ore-sama type basic black haired first guy. I honestly don't have much to say about him, his animal is the Lion, often labeled as the king of animals (how funny haha) so he's going to be very proud and probably use MC just to do his thing and that's it. It's likely he treats MC unfairly and grants you a few misogynistic comments about how useless you are if not to allow him the throne. Eventually, he'll fall in love and become at first awkward af and then probably really sweet and somewhat protective (he has a goal to achieve and his pride won't allow him to let you be hurt in front of him). He'll have some kind of sexy scene when feelings are returned and single handedly resolve whatever drama happens while swearing to protect you and make you happy once everything is over.
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Yves
Yves is really awkward. He tries to act tough like he doesn't give a damn but that's to hide that he's too clumsy to say things honestly (unless it comes to Licht). Pretending to be a tsundere, maybe his lack of luck will also come with the fact that being a bitch to everyone draws them away from you, and he's probably scared of hurting the people he cares about with his harsh words, but that's his only way to hide his "weak" self. He actually doesn't feel comfortable with a lot of people so he doesn't bother opening up. He's dense as fuck and doesn't realize that Licht DOESN'T CARE. Once you try hard enough and keep on being nice to him even though he'd expect you to hate him by now, he'll be so thrown off guard that you'll get to see his adorable stuttering messy self. He'll probably threaten you to not spill what you know about this part of him. He'll gradually sweeten and allow himself to touch more MC and he probably has the cutest laugh once he fully opens up. He's not really clingy unless he's sleeping with MC (you're not getting out of the hug until he says so) and will act selfishly from time to time because suddenly he wants a hug but doesn't want to do it in front of everyone. Note that his earring will be an important part of his past and since there's only one of it, it's either that the other is somewhere else or it's originally not an earring and was something else belonging to someone dear to him. He might break/lose it at some point in his route (since he's unlucky). After MC help him trying to fix/find it for his sake he'll grow soft and tell her how she makes him happier than ever by being her lover and he doesn't need it anymore if he has you, thanking you to have let him love you (I'm thinking about that one adorable cg in the trailer where you can't see his earring and I can't tell if it's just hidden or not) and he'll find/have it fixed soon after. He'll probably tell you that being by your side makes him feel better because he's so lucky to have you that it's almost like his usual rotten luck is meaningless (or at least that's what he'll think if he's too embarrassed to say it). He probably needs to be praised (not exaggerated or he'll sulk thinking you're making fun of him) and he'll blush into an adorable mess.
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Licht
Licht is that one suitor who thinks he doesn't need anyone (and no one needs or wants him). He's super love deprived and will say mean stuff like he's too cool for you (it's canon he's a kuudere and misanthropist) and sincerely doesn't want to have to do anything with anyone. He's the definition of a lone wolf (funny innit) and will be cold, interested and mean with MC for a good part of the beginning of his route. Now this could go two ways. Either Nokto will reveal you about his/their past (because he's that bitch but he probably cares about him) which will allow you to somewhat find your way inside his shell and let you do something he likes, which would, for once, let him show his pure and cute smile, or something will happen causing him to have to protect you (it may be a real danger, but I'd rather think it would be something not necessarily dangerous but triggering to a trauma) and he'd drop his resting bitch face. I think his case could be similar to Kenshin's. He doesn't dislike people, he just hates that he can't/couldn't protect them. His animal being the wolf, I think Licht would become very protective once in a relationship. Him being the powerful male of you two, he'd act like the leader of a bundle of wolves and protect you as you and him. By that I mean he doesn't protect you especially, he protect what the both of you are, and it's like protecting himself at the same time. I think he'd be really quite but would love nuzzling in private. He's that one prince who's icy to everyone but warm to his lover in private. In the same logic as protecting, he'd make sure that you have everything you need and I can imagine Nokto working a bit behind the scenes too to make sure Licht can open himself in a good environment with MC. I don't think Licht hates Nokto, but I definitely think he'd be mad that Nokto is popular and can keep people around him (and in that way, somewhat protect them) so I can see Nokto understanding that and plotting things so MC can help his brother regain confidence. Licht would be the type to, like wolves, have his lover stick to him all the time, but it wouldn't feel obsessive, it'd feel more natural and protective (he's definitely not a yandere imo). In terms of displays of affection, he wouldn't be too vocal about his feelings (he doesn't know much about it yet, it's not really familiar to him to let himself feel so much) and wouldn't say much in general, he's more of an action person. In public, your hands would probably be GLUED but that's about it. In private he'd definitely hug a lot more than kissing and would be the big spoon most of the time when cuddling.
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Jin
I have a feeling Jin is one of those suitors who thinks MC is too pure for him and he shouldn't stain them with however disgusting he thinks he is. I expect him to be a fun mix between Shingen and Arthur and I'm pretty sure his route will be a RIDE. He's absolutely shameless and probably touchy (it's canon he's a boob man, Clavis said it so you better believe it), but I don't think he will with MC. Since he said in his profile he wants to watch MC chose a suitor rather than get involved in becoming king, I think it's going to start by him spending gradually less time with Clavis as he spies on you. Naturally, he'll fall in love (before MC does) and understand quite fast but might take some time to acknowledge it. Something will probably happen like MC randomly tripping or facing a dangerous situation for him to come out of the shadows to protect both her body and her pureness (the type of guy to fight while telling you to not open your eyes and remove your hands from your ears until he says so). Upon you thanking him, he'll go with a bitter smile because he knows he loves it but doesn't deserve it. MC will probably try to make it up to him and so he will spend more and more time being intoxicated with love while trying to push you away. Will come a moment where something bad happens and he realizes that the only way to protect what he wants to protect is with the throne. He'd probably say some cheesy line like "I didn't intend to become the king but I guess it wouldn't be too bad to have you as my wife" and will end up accepting. He'll be a king putting the well-being of the people before his and he'll keep on saying how proud he is of you. In terms of affection, he wouldn't go overboard in public but he'd definitely say some inappropriate stuff in your ear to make you blush in front of important guests. I think he would definitely keep PDA to a minimum because you're his woman and he doesn't want anyone else to see your pleasured face. But boy once you're together between 4 walls he has no self control and doesn't care a single bit if you want to work a little more before sleeping, because you're not going to be able to anyways with him in your bed. An eagle looks like it'd be free spirited and proud so I think this is where his personality will go.
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Chevalier
The information we have on him definitely makes him one of the hardest characters to guess for me, so I'm quite unsure and I'm sorry (I love him tho). For a start, I think a good comparison would be Nobunaga, since the first impression is pretty much the same. Now Chevalier certainly isn't as shameless as Nobu when it comes to touching women (in fact, I think that in the beginning of the route he'd be treating MC with respect but lots of distance). I'm pretty sure I caught him referring to himself as a monster several times, and he's convinced that his core is filth. However, the fact that he's a monster doesn't mean he can't do anything good. The fact that he's often drenched in blood means he fights a lot and this comforts him in his own thought that he's a monster (my best guess is that he's been called so by people in his childhood because he beat some brat up or something and he just decided to stick with it because it's just more convenient than trying to explain why he did), as well as the fact that he probably doesn't smack just anyone and does so it protect his ideals (in that way, he's quite like Mitsuhide). Again, I think that, like Mitsuhide, he overall doesn't bother supporting his acts with saying why he does them, and just does what he thinks is right. Rio mentioned that Chevalier is a late riser and Sariel added that tigers are nocturnal. During night, I think he secretly does some sort of charity stuff (secretly, because it's just laughable to have a monster do charity and he wants to keep acts of light away from his name, that's associated with filth) and probably also beats up some criminals here and there. I think that this would be uncovered a night where MC can't sleep and follows Chevalier out of the castle (maybe she's curious and wants to understand him more, maybe he dropped something) and finds about it. He's not stupid and MC probably is to some extent as usual so he'll notice and will start to tell her why he does this and why he doesn't want it to be known. Following this event MC will start to think that after all he's not just a monster and will stick with him when he goes doing charity at night because you can "Do whatever, it's not my business". While spending time there with you, you'll slowly creep up on his list of things he wants to protect even if he has to stain his hands. Of course, some kind of drama will lead him to have to do it, probably in front of a large number of people and I can see him leaving his sword aside and kneeling to the enemy to protect MC from danger. There, he'll show his sweet side and his desire to see you happy more than anything. Of course, you, who already loved him, will call him out on his bs and tell him you don't want him to be hurt either and you love his beautiful smile. He'll definitely be confused at first but then will take a new breathe and save you, who became a part of him. He'll obviously still think of himself as a monster, but he knows that doesn't mean you can't love him. He won't stop fighting for his ideals, but now that he has to protect himself to protect you, he'll stop being as reckless and definitely will be thankful that you helped him access the throne to pursue his dreams (even though at first everyone told you that you should stay away from him, but you loved seeing his eyes so full whenever he was doing something good). In terms of relationship, Chevalier will be reasonably protective and will trust you to not betray him because "Only you could love a monster like me, and I won't stop loving you either" or something like that. He'll definitely be quite of a tease in private when he wants things to get heated but most of the time it'll just be fluffy with small forehead kisses, hair combing and warm hugs (he's always the big spoon and he's soo warm).
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Clavis
You heard it, the court's number one problem child is romanceable (and this is so messy wtf I literally can't decypher him at all I feel like I wrote something so wrong for him ugh I'm so sorry). He loves to stir up drama and then sit back to watch and has no shame in doing so. Since MC will, as usual, be kinda dumb and innocent, Clavis will tease her A LOT, and use her to stir up even more shit. No one at the court really likes him (COUGH Sariel COUGH) but some somewhat tolerate him, like Chevalier (but if he goes overboard he'll end him). I mean I say no one important, because he sure has a lot of women swooning over him, but I can see him being all flirty and stuff but then not doing anything because he just doesn't really care, it's for fun (lol). When he mentioned Jin's preference, I think he said that he himself was more of an ass man (he said something like leg or something iirc but bruh we all know what that entails when the other option is boobs). Clavis will propose you to mess up the king election (more like drag you into it), but I'm pretty sure that it's because he knows that something fucked up is happening or bound to happen. It seems he will pull up a Mitsuhide except he drags you into it, probably to have you by his side when shit will go down so he can protect you (since you'll trust him, i guess ?). Everything will go according to plan, except for the fact that he's starting to be fond of you, so instead of just having you into the drama and protect you from afar, he'll start to actively stick with you, which will screw up his plans. I'm honestly not too sure about what will happen but basically he realizes he can't be as carefree as usual when something so big is going on and his love interest is in the middle of it because of him and decides to tell you what is happening so you can untrust yourself to him. I think from this point onwards, you both will somewhat have understood what you feel for each other, but nothing will have been said. Hand holding will be normal, and cuddling too if the situation forces you both to stick together outside and/or hide. He figures he'll just confess properly after everything will be over and he'll get to apologize for getting you into all of this. Once it is actually over, he'll turn into a big romantic (Chevalier but cringe) to start the relationship like it deserves to and then will proceed to tease the shit out of you. Overall he'll be a Mitsuhide or Leonardo type lover in my opinion. Now HEAR ME OUT, have you ever seen a leopard walking ? It's beautiful. He knows it. I can just see him walking while somehow seductively balancing his hips sjshid imagine him crawling on bed djdbjd MY MIND IS GOING DOWN THE GUTTER. He's such a flirty seductive ass but I swear he's loyal he just wants to see your cute pouting face. He's quite blunt when it comes to PDA (that's where the fact that he's an ass man comes in handy if you see me haha I can't help it he has a thot dot) and will not hesitate to straight up make out in public if he thinks it's needed (he's not dumb sjbsix he likes to stir up shit for fun but he wouldn't do something extreme if he knew it would end up bad when there are other ways).
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Nokto
Two words: skirt-chasing liar. The man painted his nails to have them black when he does the fox/kitsune hand symbol, he's totally trying to have people distrust him. It is mentioned that Nokto's behavior is a great contrast to his past heroic acts. Linking this to what I wrote of Licht, I think he might have been praised for whatever he did and he hated it because he didn't reach his goal (like nobunaga who unites Japan but hates the fact that there are victims nonetheless). What would be the most interesting would be if it was like I hypothesized of Licht, that he couldn't protect someone in particular. In that way, there would be a contrast between Licht feeling like he can't protect anything and Nokto who can protect everything but what he really cares about. Following this logic, his womanizer personality could be explained in the way that by chasing skirts left and right he can feel like he doesn't have anyone important and protect himself from the pain of loving someone too much and the pain of losing them. Now, either the two's traumas are totally different, or it might be the same event; if so, my best guess would be their mother's death. However, Nokto being a womanizer leads me to think that it was actually a love interest that he lost. Being a good liar and trickster (kitsune things), I assume he's good at reading people and is probably very observant of his brother. If his brother even confided in him, I'm pretty sure Nokto would hide his disappointment of not having been able to protect a few people for his brother's sake. I think his route (or at least the beginning of it) would be a mix of Mitsuhide and Arthur's, being some bold flirting at first as a warning because he wants to draw pure MC away from him. I think MC would then be drawn by his caring attitude toward Licht (almost like a big brother, even though he's the 7th prince and Licht is the 6th) and would make him notice how kind he is. Nokto would probably find a way to make her uncomfortable with heavy flirting mixed up with denying but if it repeats, he'll probably just say that he wants to protect the last person he dares to care about. MC would probably see pain and sadness in his gaze and choice of words and kind of like Arthur's route, she'd be drawn to this vulnerable caring side of him and understand the flirting is only a part of Nokto. Drama will happen, and Nokto will have a breakdown, because he got attached to MC and is convinced he won't be able to protect her. It's likely he tries to push you away even more to make you mad and break his own heart before he has to see you die before his eyes too. Due to this bring a heavy and very bottled up trauma, he will be looking very distressed and MC will rather try to soothe him. I do think Nokto might be crying at this moment (the other one I have in mind would be Yves) and both will realize their feelings at this very moment. However Nokto still won't think he can protect you, but maybe Licht would think something like "I can't protect anything by myself but I can help my brother protect what he cares for" and help him, which would easy Nokto into the idea of having to fight. It's also possible Clavis and Chevalier join in, but I'm not too sure about that. In terms of relationship, Nokto would be a super touchy fluffy lover, liking to feel your chest move in rythm with your breath against his chest while hugging you tightly reminds him that you're alive and that he could protect you and he always will no matter how many times he has to. Like Licht, he would be very protective, but he won't become too obsessive if you soothe him back enough and prove him that you won't break in his palm (the fact that he becomes king also helps since you can have personal royal guards). He's a bit more into PDA than his brother and won't mind resting his hand on your hip in public, but your cute facial expressions are for his own pleasure only~
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Luke
So Luke is the big brother one (but only for MC) and apparently he's lazy. Like a bear, he's huge but you can bet he would spoon you For his lazy traits, I think it might just be his personality, but I do think his doting comes from his past. A guess would be that he was very fond of his little sister but lost her to another man for arranged marriage. I don't know where or when Ikepri happens but arrange marriage can be planned very early, and this would explain his hate/disinterest for official affairs and his doting (it's like he would try to see his little sister in MC while treating her as such) and the fact that he tries to drag her out of official affairs as well. Like mentioned in his profile, his eyes sometimes look somewhat dark and dull, so I assume this could be when he thinks back about his past. I wouldn't go as far as saying he's a yandere, but he'll definitely try to drag her away from court life (not especially people, not especially violently, he'd just try to not lose her). It's sad, but you will probably get sis-zoned for a nice long time before he realizes that 1. he can't force you to do something you don't want to and 2. he doesn't just love you as a sister. Maybe this realization will make him want to become king with you to not lose you, or maybe he will be needing a little something else to be pushed to do so. In terms of relationship, he'll be doting and have remnants of big brother behavior but he'll finish his light scolding sessions with a big fluffy hug. Jokes on you if you wanted to spoon him. For PDA, I think he'd be pretty much just like hand holding and head pats/hair ruffling.
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Sariel
Sariel is known in the court as the "Devil". I would say his role is a mix of Giles (midcind) and Mitsuhide. As the profile says, his past, identify etc is quite of a mystery so I wouldn't get too much into this. Now Sariel expects MC in his profile to kind of suck up to him and do as he pleases while she finds a new king. Whether Sariel is loyal to the princess (you) and the crown or not will determine whether he's simply a shady suitor or the villain of most of the other routes if not all of them (William things hehe). He'll obviously be EXTREMELY shady and will make it very clear that it's best you stay away from what his job entails. However MC will find a way, consciously or not, to get involved way too much in Sariel's affairs (Mitsuhide things haha, he radiates the energy of other chaotic shady suitors only) and he will have to first of all scold her a ton shit and secondly a find a way to get her out of his business. They will probably struggle together their way out of an important job of his and MC will most likely have a good impact on the overall outcome but he'll mostly scold you for getting on the brink of death thanks to what he'll consider a foolish move. As a relationship, once king, I don't think Sariel would go any further than formal hand holding, arm holding and back of the hand kisses. I have a feeling that in private he wouldn't be the touchiest either (I mean he's busy with his shady stuff) but he would definitely pull you into his lap without asking and I could see him stroking your hair while your head rest on his shoulder until he finishes work before carrying you to bed, whether you're asleep or not.
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Rio
Rio IS the yandere and it's 100% canon I'm not accepting critiques on this (someone saying "Look only at me, you only have to think about me" screams yandere already, not to talk about my obsession consisting of comparing him with Toneri of Yuroma) and I honestly think it's soooo cool that the yandere is a butler I love it. ANYWAYS. Rio lost his memory 3 years ago (he was already your butler back then) which means his memories only consist of serving you. That said, you're literally his world, his only friend and his master. I think Rio would be scared not only to forget about everything again and see (I assume) you sad again and forget all your smiles he saw for 3 years (I definitely think he's one of those suitors that love you right off the batch but give you the liberty to be happy with whoever), but also lose you as easily as he lost him memories. If he lost you to someone else, either he'd be forced to watch you be happy with another man, or be left behind. As a loyal dog, he would totally hate the later. Now being your love interest's butler is extremely convenient as a yandere. If he doesn't want you to get out of your room he just has to give you some sort of somniferous stuff or lock you in saying you're sick and "My Lady does not wish to receive anyone in her quarters". Butlers not only attend to their master's wishes (he does say that granting your selfish wishes is also his job), but also are their first connection to the outer world. If your butler doesn't come with you outside, he'll at least be there to see you off and the first person waiting for your return. Now I don't know what entails the secret behind his memory loss at all so I'll leave it as it is. I don't think Rio will be as brutal as Toma from Amnesia or anything (Sariel is watching too) and will probably try to convince you that you need to stay in for a while and that he'll look out for you (bonus points if something bad actually happens). I'm actually not sure to what extent Rio would go. Would he harm others ? Just keep them away ? I don't know, but a dog sure knows how to bite to protect its owner. The route will probably follow the classic yandere schematic: everything is fine, he gets really obsessive, you try to push him away, he gets hurt, you explain him that you love him too but you can't stay locked in forever, he eventually chills. As a king, I think he'd take some time to stop being there for his Mistress' every needs but he definitely would in private, he just wouldn't want to embarrass you in public. For PDA, he would also not be too touchy, sticking to basic butler extent touchy, but he'd be extremely cuddly in private, trying to hook up as much time as possible from you. He'd give a lot of little pecks and smol kisses everywhere on your face and neck until you stop working so he can pull you on the bed in his arms for a slower making out session.
THAT'S IT
That took me quite a while, phew ! Sorry if there typos and sorry for the huge length inconsistency !
If you have something to add, especially regarding the ones I didn't write as much, please do say so in comments or in my messages and if it adds something to the analysis (and if you're okay with it) I'll add it with credits !
I'm so excited for Ikepri I hope to be able to play soon but for now it's 3am haha
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babbushka · 4 years ago
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Can I please request ''I wanna fuck you until you beg me to stop'' with Pale. Sending love ;)
Anonymous said: “Don’t cover your mouth, I want to hear you” with Pale pretty please ❤️
(1.3k; dirty talk/name calling, lingerie, knife play, orgasm denial, spit as lube, begging/crying)
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It’d been a long day workin’ hard, and Pale’s wound the fuck up. Real wound up, so hot for you that he practically punches the little elevator button, taps his foot all the way up to the penthouse. He’s feelin’ good, wants to celebrate with you, wants a taste of your pussy before anything else.
His big lizard-skin boots carry him to the apartment door, and he yanks it open with little to no ceremony.
You’re waiting for him, lounging on your side in front of the fireplace in dark red lingerie. You’ve got a bra, panties, garter, stockings, and gloves on, and Pale knows he’s in for some trouble; whenever you get all dolled up like this for him, he can’t help but be weak.
You’re running your fingers through the thick fur of the faux bear rug you’re on, lookin’ like somethin’ out of a goddamned magazine, batting your fuckin’ eyelashes at him. He closes the door behind him, steps out of his boots, crosses his arms over his chest.
“You gonna be a good whore for me? Or are you gonna be a brat?” He asks instead of saying hello, because he wants to know what mood you’re in, cock already filling out in his jeans.
“Depends,” You shrug with a great big grin.
“Oh yeah, on what?” He licks across his teeth, already knowing the answer.
“On which gets me fucked harder.” You reply easily, and he huffs out a little laugh – a brat then.
Pale lights up a cigarette, sucks in a deep breath and blows it out, makin’ the air in the apartment go all hazy. You’re lookin’ real fuckin’ dynamite by the fire, all wrapped up. He wants to yank all the clothes off, wants to get you naked the way he likes. He likes when you’re naked, likes seein’ the glow of your pretty fucking skin.
“How am I supposed to get my cock into that sweet pussy of yours with all that shit on?” He asks, flicking his ash onto the floor, stepping stepping stepping closer to you.
You roll onto your back and spread-eagle, and Pale can see very clearly even in the dark of the apartment, that those panties are crotchless.
If he weren’t raging hard before, he is now. He puts his hands on his hips and nods his head in the direction of the bedroom.
“Come here.” He says, but you, being the perfect fucking whore you are, only run your hands all over your body, up and down your stomach.
“No, you come here.” You practically purr, and he snaps.
In three long strides he’s crossing the fucking room, big fingers working on getting his jeans off, getting his cock out. You’re already grinning, laughing and squirming away, wriggling out of his hold as he drops onto the rug on top of you, grabbin’ at you and fucking manhandling you into place.
He pulls you down down down by your ankle, yanks your legs open.
“You wanna be difficult we can make this difficult sweetheart, believe me.” Pale threatens with no heat, as you just grin up at him, your hands already looping around his neck, tugging him down close. He grabs your jaw in his hand, grabs it real tight, gives your face a shake to show he ain’t meanin’ no fucking funny business, but still you grin when he says, “I’ll fuck you until you beg me to stop.”
You only reach down for his cock then, your manicured hands stroking him once, twice, three times, before he smacks your hand away.
The head of his cock rubs through the folds of your pussy, and he can’t help but be weak in the fucking knees for how good you look. God, you’re even wearing heels, pretty shiny things with red bottoms that have his cock drippin’, droolin’ into your cunt.
Pale gathers your ankles up in one of his hands, bends your legs backwards and rams into you hard.
“Oh!!” You yelp out a gasp, your hands grasping fistfuls of the rug as he fucks fucks fucks you.
He doesn’t waste any time snapping his hips against yours. Pale’s cigarette dangles between his lips as he smokes, rails you like this long and hard. His balls smack against your pussy and your cunt squelches from how wet you are, how wet he makes you. Pale wonders if you were fingering yourself in those crotchless fucking panties, waiting for him.
He knows you’re gonna get some sorta burn from this, and good he thinks, good. Another excuse to get his hands on you, make you feel good, rub you down with lotion.
He leans back and spits down hard onto your pussy, watches as his cock pushes it up into you. Not that you need it, not really, easy for him. Fuck you’re so good, so nice and warm for him, tight but easy. He’s wrapped up in it that he realizes he ain’t hearin’ your pretty fuckin’ moans no more, and he looks up with a frown.
“Nah nah nah sweetheart,” He smacks your hands away from where you’re sucking on your fingers, hiccupping out moans of pleasure. Pale replaces them with his own, strokes your tongue with the pads of his fingers for a minute as he punches his cock up against your gspot, making you wail. “Don’t cover your mouth I want to hear you.”
“Fuck!” You shout, over and over again, your tits in that pretty bra bouncing bouncing bouncing. He wants to see them, wants to see your nipples, wants to suck on them. He reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and pulls out his switchblade, runs it right under the little satin bow on your bra and slices it clean through. Your tits hang naturally, and Pale nearly bends you in half to lean down and suck on them. “God fuck – c-c-c-can I come?”
“No.” Pale says, and you whine. He presses the dull end of the switchblade against your skin, lets you feel the cool bite of the metal. Your pussy throbs from it, and Pale can feel his balls start to tighten, gold chain swingin’.
“Please!” You gasp writhe and moan, back arching up, hands fisting in his hair, grabbing and pulling.
“I said no you slut,” He growls, digging the dull end in a little deeper into your flesh where it’ll fake an indent. You squirm and complain, not happy about not getting what you want, but Pale’s close, he’s so fucking close. “You’ll come when I tell you to come, got that?”
He watches his cock disappear into the plush lips of your pussy, watches how it stretches for him, takes him and his length. He’s got your legs pushed together, knees bent up so far they’re practically touching your chin, and the tightness is incredible. You’re so fucking good, he can’t ever get enough of this cunt.
“Pale!” You sob, whole body shaking, desperate for it, “Please – pale please, please let me come, please I’ll – I’ll do anything, pleasepleaseplease.” You’re babbling, the words slurring together as your toes curl in Pale’s face, as your eyes roll back into your skull.
He comes hard from that, blows his load into your pussy hard, fucks you through it.
“Alright alright, but only because I’m so fuckin’ sweet.” He drops your legs and they fall around his waist easily.
He spits again and rubs it onto your clit, hard and fast circles as he fucks his come into you, until your fists beat against the rug and your legs kick and your whole body shudders as you cry out his name, again and again, nothing but his name.
He feels pretty fuckin’ good about that, feels pretty fuckin’ good about all of it, sparks of pleasure up his own spine.
He’s floating on cloud nine when he tries to pull out, but your pretty high heel’d feet push against his ass, keeping him there. He raises a sweaty brow for you, sucks down some more nicotine, but you just smile up at him. And if he hadn’t already thought you were a keeper, he woulda done so then, when you grin at him with an eyebrow of your own and go,
“I didn’t say stop.”
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crackimagines · 5 years ago
Note
Hi it’s me again! For the child!Byleth au, how about we take a look at what it’s actually like when he’s teaching his classes and his students’ responses to his methods?
child!Byleth Post Masterlist here!
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Funnily enough, that prompt was supposed to be part 2, but then this whole AU blew up a lot more than I thought it would’ve, and I never got around to actually doing it.
Thanks for the ask,  supersmashfighter, I hope you enjoy!
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Classroom Hijinks HC’S (Part 2)
child!Byleth Professor AU
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General
- When he first entered the classroom, everyone immediately gives him funny looks on account that a child was going to be teaching the class.
- He simply ignores them, and goes behind his desk, which he then realizes a fatal error.
- Byleth was barely taller than the desk, so if you actually looked at him from the front of the class, it’d look like this:
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(Byleth) “...Damn it.”
- Several of the students would laugh, but Byleth kept his cool. He put his papers and began to teach the topic for the day.
- He’s fairly monotone throughout the entire process, mostly because he didn’t know how to use emotions. He seemed distant fairly noncaring about the students.
- As time went on, the students seemed to realize that wasn’t the case.
- Despite his apparent age, he was quite intelligent, and took into account of his students weaknesses and strengths, and capitalized on each.
- As a former mercenary, the thing he always kept in mind was everyone’s morale. He always took the time to make sure his students were happy and caught up, not leaving a single one of them behind in studies.
- He wasn’t afraid to criticize either, when a student messed up and it was on them, he’d give them a good lecture after class, but he wasn’t afraid of praising either. That was only when they truly deserved it, however.
- He was usually calm, but there were days when he lost his cool and acted completely out of character, such as the days when pranks happened, or Flayn came to visit.
- He’d either become a flustered mess, or, surprisingly enough, act like a child.
- Though he always kept his stone-like face, he began to smile more around the students.
Blue Lions
- Honestly? The only one he’d have to truly keep in check are Felix and Sylvain.
- Sylvain would get too flirty with the girls, which led to a piece of chalk being shot at his head from Byleth at about 100mph.
- Felix would try and skip classes that bored him, which led a to a piece of chalk being shot at his head from Byleth at about 100mph.
- Literally everyone else would be perfect model students.
- Though, Mercedes and Annette would sometimes baby him by helping him reach books he couldn’t reach, and other embarrassing activities, which he then resorted to asking Dimitri for help in that regard.
- It broke their hearts
Black Eagles
-  The only model students in here would be Edelgard, Hubert, Petra and sometimes Dorothea. The rest of the class would be VERY mixed.
- Caspar would constantly want to get to the fighting portions of the lessons, while Ferdinand, as a noble, wanted to initiate them JUST to outdo Edelgard. Then fail miserably.
- Linhardt would constantly fall asleep in class, and at some point when Byleth specifically asked him to stay awake more to not fail the certification exams, he did so again.
- Byleth stopped the lesson to grab a bucket of water, and had Dorothea use a spell to make it ABSOLUTELY FREEZING.
- Byleth hopped onto his desk, and slammed the bucket with the water still in it on top of Linhardt, which was one of the only times they saw Byleth get actually angry.
- Bernadetta would sometimes skip classes and was terrified of the tiny professor, which amused him to no end, but that wasn’t healthy for a student teacher relationship.
- So in response, he spent some quiet times with Bernadetta to help be eased by the tiny professor.
- It kinda helped...a little.
Golden Deer
- It’s an absolute nightmare for Byleth.
- Claude was always pulling some joke or prank during class.
- Hilda tried getting out of work and lectures as much as possible.
- Leonie would shout something about becoming better than Byleth, it was usually something about Jeralt, but at this point it was becoming white noise.
- Lorenz would always try to one up Claude no matter the subject, and Byleth had to talk to him about his habits with girls.
- Raphael would, bless his heart, always try to sneak in huge meals into classes. Byleth was okay with snacks, not entire turkeys.
- Lysithea sometimes tried too hard, which ended up getting herself exhausted, so Byleth went into assist her a lot of times, which to be fair was far more preferable than the shenanigans the class partook in.
- The only ‘Normal’ students were Marianne and Ignatz.
- Ignatz was a bit awkward with people, so Byleth tried all he could to help out in that regard. He’d pair him up with his classmates to perform tasks, and they always did well with him.
- That being said, if he said that if Hilda ever didn’t do anything to help, he’d have a piece of chalk with her name written on it.
- Marianne was entirely different beast to handle, always putting herself down before she did anything.
- At first he didn’t know what to do, but he made sure to give her plenty of encouragement, and helped her out whenever needed. As a way to work on her confidence, he had her do small tasks that eventually led up to larger ones. Such as working from the stables and cleaning the class to helping cook for the class, which slowly but surely helped her.
- Overall though, each class would be a mini-nightmare, but he loved all of them dearly.
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rose-demica · 4 years ago
Text
Short Prompt Collection
Fandom: Doctor Who, New Doctor Who,
Series: Something of a Bother,
Pairings: The Doctor (Ten) / The Lady, The Master (Simms)/ The Keeper
Summary: Short collection of prompts that are too small to post alone: Co-written.
"In case of Dalek, use stairs"
"This way Ponds, Ladies!" The Doctor called turning the corner and running towards the elevators. 
"Doctor?" The Lady asked making the mad-man hesitate. He looked back at her questioningly.
"Stairs." Was all she said as the Keeper opened the door. She hussled the Ponds through the door grabbed holds of The Lady and The Doctor and yanked them into the stairwell just as the Daleks rounded the corner.
"Bloody brilliant!"
"Love you too." The Ladies said in unison.
  "Promises to show companion distant planets and galaxies...spends majority of time in London."
"Doctor?" Amy asked while the Tardis floated through the time space continum.
"Yes Amy?"
"I've been talking with the Keeper, and she's pointed out a very interesting point."
"Oh and what's that?" The Doctor returned to his lounging, hands behind his head feet up on the consol.
"You promised me we'd travel to faraway planets and Galaxies."
"Yes."
"But, we spend most of our time in London. Why is that?" The Doctor looked at her startled. He opened his mouth to reply then closed it again, glaring slightly at Amy.
"You're not allowed to talk to the Keeper anymore." He announced before returning to his lounging position.
"I like my men how I like my tea, hot and British."
"Lady, what are you doing?" The Doctor asked as he stepped into the grand dining room.
"Taste testing tea." She replied before taking a sip. She grimaced at the taste and promptly set the teacup on the table before picking up another.
"Why?"
"Because I can, Doctor, why else?" The Lady gave him a devilish smirk before taking another sip.
"Hmm." Her lips pressed together in concentration.
"I think I've come to a decision."
"About the tea?"
"Oui."
"So?"
"It appears that I like my tea exactly the same way I like my men." The Lady stood and sauntered over to him draping her arms around his neck casually.
"Oh?" The Doctor said smirking as he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close.
"Hot and British."
  "If there's one thing I learned from the Doctor, it's to push all the buttons."
"Is this safe?" Rory yelled as red alien letters rapidly flashed across the screen.
"Probably not." The Lady admitted as she scanned the screens trying to read the words that were flashing much too quickly.
"Rory, I need you to do something very important." Rory looked at the Lady surprised by the seriousness in her voice. Her face was virtually stone-like only her pursed lips giving away the gravity of the situation.
"What can I do Lady?" Rory asked trying not to panic.
"Push that button."
"Which one?"
"All of them."
"Lady, that can't be wise!"
"Rory, listen, I'm 900 years old and if I've only learned one thing I learned it from the Doctor. PUSH ALL THE BUTTONS." The Lady slammed her hands down on her side of the control panel hitting as many of the buttons as she could.
"Aye aye ma'am." Rory mimicked and he too began pushing every knob and button within his reach.
The room gave a great shudder and then everything was still.
"Crisis averted, darling!" Rory looked at the Lady in amazement; could Timelords be bipolar?
"Getting to the part of the book where the title actually makes sense."
"No, no it couldn't be." The Doctor muttered while he paced.
"But it has to be!" He exclaimed angirly turning around and pacing back towards his four companions. The Lady was watching him pace, Amy was examining her nails, Rory was leaning against a nearby pole, and The Keeper had her nose buried in the book she had been reading the entire day.
"But something isn't adding up!" The Doctor let out an aggravated yell.
"I get it now!" The Keeper yelled in triumph gaining the attention of the other four.
"They're Vampires who aren't vampires but a totally new subspecies that is actually older than the tale of vampires. The Humans just lobbed them all together because of their appearance." The Doctor regarded the Keeper for a second before pulling her into a bone crushing hug.
"You brilliant Time Lady! Their Saturnynian!" The Doctor released the Keeper who gave him a funny look.
"What?" She asked.
"That's what Signora Calvierri and her son and those girls have become!" The Doctor exclaimed oblivious to the Keeper's confusion. The Keeper turned to the other three with a questioning look.
"Makes sense." The Lady supplied, while Amy and Rory returned the confused Time Lady's blank stare.
"I was talking about my book." The Keeper said looking back to the Doctor like he had finally lost the last of his marbles.
"Your...book?" He asked finally noting the confusion claiming the room.
"From my cotton tail to my Bunny ears to the tips of my blood soaked fangs." The Doctor read as the Keeper held her book up.
"The Tardis recommended it to me."
  "Vampires, at least they don't sparkle."
"What are they?" Amy whispered as the pale girls started to surround the two women.
"Vampires. At least I think." The Lady quipped trying to lighten the quickly darkening mood. One girl hissed at them, baring vicious fangs.
"I thought vampires were.. .well..."
"At least they don't sparkle Amy. For that I am grateful."
  Anagram.
"How long have you know The Doctor, Captain?" The Keeper asked lifting her head from her book.
"A few years, why?"
"And he's topping your most wanted list." It wasn't a question and Jack suddenly wondered where this was going.
"I'm not going to turn him in, if that's what you’re getting at." Jack said trying to defend himself.
"Don't get your feathers in a ruffle, I merely wanted to know why Queen Victoria would anagram the name of her new organisation after the name of the number one most wanted criminal on said organisation's list?" Jack looked at the Keeper before grabbing a piece of paper and a pen.
"I'll be damned." Turning back to the Keeper who had been patiently waiting for her answer he just shrugged. She shrugged back and returned to her book.
Jenny?
“Jenny?” The Doctor pulled the Lady to a stop, and forcing everyone to a stop behind them, the Master and The Keeper very nearly skidding into the backs of Amy and Rory.
“Hey Dad!”
“DAD?” The Lady Shrieks, turning on the doctor.
“It’s not like that!” He said quickly,
“Not like what Dad?” Jenny demanded, and the Doctor’s eyes flicked between the two.
“Doctor, what’s going on?” Amy asked,
“Guys, this is my daughter, Jenny.” The Doctor held the Lady’s hands by her side.
“My Lady, she was created in a war, using a Progenation Machine, the one that takes your DNA and makes a fully fledged human, but because it was my DNA she, must be,”
“A time Lady, well kind of, I don’t regenerate, I heal, and it seems I age. but otherwise, I’m the closest it’s ever gonna get.” Jenny said, and instantly the Lady turned on her.
“The closest it’s ever get?! You’re standing in the presence of two REAL Time Ladies.” The Doctor rested a hand on The Ladies shoulder,
“Oh really?” Jenny challenged,
“Mi’Lady.” The Keeper warned,
“I saw you die.” The Doctor stated,
“They shot you, and you died  in my arms , how are you alive?” He added,
“Apparantly you didn’t wait around long enough, and this was the only way I could think of to get your attention.”
“Nearly blowing up a whole planet!?”
“Doc, you said she was ‘born’ during a war oui?” The Master interrupted,
“Yes, on the planet Messaline.”
“So all she knows is war, she was ‘born’ with that knowledge as to how, and the beliefs that was alright, so she wouldn’t know any better than to blow up a planet to get your attention, in fact, It’d never even think it as wrong, it’s the way she was made.”
“Who are you!?” Jenny demanded,
“Me? I’m the Master, I must be the cool uncle.”
“You’re related,” Jenny pointed to both the Master and the Doctor,
“Nope, childhood friends, we all are.” The Keeper said, before either of the boys could reply.
“Anyway, back to blowing up the planet.” The Doctor turned to Jenny.
“It’s not like it mattered, I mean, have you seen their race?” Jenny motioned to one of the aliens that was standing outside the reinforced glass door.
She had a gargola shaped face, with the long extended mouth that opened to reveal pointed razor sharp teeth. Her eyes were wide and beady, black swirls of darkness seen within, her nose almost looked human, but had long, wide nostrils that resembled a horses in design. She had pointed wolf-like ears that sat on both sides of her face, where on a humanoid would have their ears. 
She had wildebeest horns upon the top of her head, amongst stringy black hair that also was used to cover up her disfigured face. Her torso was very humanoid like, but instead of muscle and fat, there was only skin and bone, like she was wasting away to nothing, she wore a black corset that left her bony, ruin covered arms bare, at the end of those humaniod arms were hands that resembled an eagle’s talons, her fingers were long and slender, with shary pointed nails at the end that looked like they were made to rip and tear things to shreds. 
A tattered skirt covered her thin hips, and went down to where her knees should have been, but instead of knees she had two serpent tails that wrapped together, solidifying the joint so she could stand like a human, at the end of those tails were spikes that were infused with a deadly poison that would kill anyone in a heartbeat. 
From her back were 18 bones that curved forward around her body, there was 9 on each side, and they easily resembled spiders legs, and one could easily imagine that they would trap prey close into the huntresses body.
The Shifter Of Darkness hunts on moonless nights, transforming into a beautiful human woman, or a helpless child, luring the victim closer until they strike. They only have one weakness, they are slow, so if you can get away, run! They can be killed, but only with a carefully aimed shot through the heart.
“That doesn’t mean they deserve to die!” The Doctor snarled,
“Look at them, they’re coping the best they can, that was the way they were made! And you can’t punish people for being themselves.”
“I have a question.” Amy said, and all eyes flicked to her.
“All you lot have titles, right? The whole first name holds immense power thing, but you, you have a name, why?” She continued,
“Well...” The Doctor ran his hand through his hair nervously, deliberately not looking at the Lady.
“One of my previous companions named her.”
“But why Jenny?” Amy demanded
“I called her a generated anomaly. Donna repeated generated till she got Jenny.”
“Oh, so this mysterious companion has a name now!” The Lady snapped,
“Actually, I liked her, where’d she and that Martha chick go?”
“Martha got engaged, to Mickey, remember me telling you bout him, he was Rose’s boyfriend for a while, anyway Martha then joined U.N.I.T became a Doctor, then switched to Torchwood, Donna, she had to loose all her memories, shes with a nice man now.”
“Wasn’t Rose-” The Doctor motioned to her to stop but Jenny missed it,
“The human companion you were in love with? Had to go to a parallel universe, and all of that.”
“Thanks.” The Doctor said sarcastically to Jenny, before facing the Lady,
“Can we please do this later?”
“I’m all for it happening now!” The Master stated, somehow managing to get a large thing of popcorn.
“Master!?” The Keeper asked,
“Oh, Sorry Darling, would you like some popcorn?” He offered it to her,
“I swear there weren’t seats here before.” Rory remarked, as he glanced behind him, and sat down. Amy joining him, while the Master and the Keeper sat in another chair.
“Ready and Action!” The Master laughed, looking at the Doctor, the Lady, and Jenny.
“What, you think we’re gonna fight for your amusement?” Jenny demanded,
“Oh, lets fill you in, The Lady loves the Doctor, the Doctor loves the Lady, both have been friends since childhood, so they don’t want to leave that friendship faze, but they’re right on the verge of a relationship, and they flirt, and The Lady’s new regeneration gets really jealous.”
“Can we go back to the, she almost blew up a planet thing!?” The Doctor asked, turning to Jenny.
“Alright I get it, I was wrong I won’t do it again. Can you take me back to my ship, and I’ll be out of your hair.” Jenny said,
“Yea, Lets get out of here.” The Lady turned on her heels and left the room, and the aliens left her alone.
“Because you saved our planet, we will let you live, today.” Their empress spoke.
“Well, Lets go.” Everyone stood, and the Master stopped to speak to one of them.
“Thanks very much for the popcorn.”
“No trouble.” She replied,
“You can keep it if you wish?” The Master chuckled,
“Oh no I couldn’t my girlfriend would be very unhappy, but thank you so much for the offer.” The Master handed her back the popcorn, and put his arm around her waist and held her tight.
“Those two?” Jenny asked Amy and Rory, who she was walking with.
“Yea, I have no idea how long, but they’ve been like this since we found the master.”
“And the four of them?”
“Childhood friends on Gallifrey from what we can tell, The Doctor ran off with the Tardis, The two girls got sent away in the Lady’s tardis, and The Master ran away with the Keepers tardis, which he hid somewhere, and he can’t remember where.”
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senpai-no-lie · 4 years ago
Text
Black Eagles Route
Finally, with a certain level of dread in my heart, I completed Crimson Flower
Why I chose Black Eagles (specifically Crimson Flower): I had already completed Azure Moon and Verdant Wind, so it was just a matter of picking between Crimson Flower or Silver Snow. I figured it’d be best to just knock out Crimson Flower, since I still needed Hubert, Jertiza, and Edelgard’s supports.  
Who Was My Dancer: Sylvain! I kept my recruits for this route only to characters I needed to complete supports, and then also Sylvain, because his aesthetic sense just seemed to jive with the Black Eagles. As a dancer, he did okay, but I think I much prefer him on a horse. However, his dancing was crucial to killing Dimitri before Dedue turned into a beast, and a few other pivotal moments. I just don’t think Sylvain has the magical firepower I like with my dancers (It should be known I don’t typically use the dancer character at all in other FE games, but I really enjoy the magic-utilty they have in 3H) 
What Paired Endings Did I Get:  
Edelgard & Hubert (I actually feel really bad for Hubert; it wasn’t my intention to do this)
Linhardt & Hapi
Dorothea & Petra
Jeritza & Bernadetta 
Ferdinand & Mercedes
Not as many paired endings as usual because I really only cared about filling out my missing supports
Who Did Byleth Marry: Sylvain. Totally, totally not who I meant to marry; my intention was Yuri, but then I never used Yuri. And I just have a soft spot for Sylvain. I stand behind my decision. 
Which Edelgard Do I prefer?: Purely on aesthetics, post-timeskip Edelgard is p hot, ngl, but I find her to be more intolerable because of how hard they push that weird sort of gap moe waifu bait with her. So I guess pre-timeskip, even if that’s not much better.
General Thoughts: I tried, oh so hard, to go in with an open mind about Edelgard and the other route exclusive characters. Edelgard leaves about 0 impressions in the other routes, as far as being an antagonist goes, but from the opening chapters on my first playthrough, I found her to be manipulative, condescending, and perhaps a bit immature. And yeah, she’s all of those things and more.... But Hubert, Hubert I love and I’m so mad that I can see the appeal of Hubert x Ferdinand now. My only point of contention remains the fact that in canon they remain subservient to her in their paired ending. 
I also went out of my way to kill every single named character throughout the route, and it was both satisfying and heartbreaking. That Dimitri and Dedude death scene, Seteth’s shouts as I struck down Flayn, the dialogue between Sylvain as he fought against his childhood friends.... so good. 
The Black Eagles Characters:
I did almost all the supports possible, sans route exclusives and DLC on my first playthrough, but I’ve yet to hash out my general feelings about the Black Eagles. 
Edelgard: Plain and simple, I do not stan Edelgard. I found a lot of her behavior more reasonable if she was 13 pre-timeskip and 18 post-timeskip, but a 23 year old being so cringey and unaware of the greater political climate (Hubert regularly does things behind her back that she doesn’t even notice or care to notice, while complaining that Hubert makes her work for ambitions rather than letting her eat sweets or stare at the sky all day, ugh) is just unappealing as hell. The whole sequence where I had two opportunities to call her fear of rats “cute” was super off-putting, and the don’t get me started on her drawing Byleth fanart. She’s constantly looking for affirmation from Byleth (despite insisting she doesn’t need praise in lecture), while being manipulative and condescending to everyone else. Her calling Lysithea “good girl” when Lysithea is 20/21, only three years younger, and an entire inch taller than Edelgard post-timeskip is pure cringe. Also the name Black Eagles Strike Force is an awful name and I’m not sorry I told her as much. 
Hubert: I’m torn on whether or not Hubert is my favorite Black Eagle. I really enjoy devoted servant characters, and I find him more endearing because Edelgard doesn’t deserve him. He’s so visually unappealing (though, not as bad as I find Lorenz to be) and weird, but I respect that about him. 
Ferdinand: Sweet, dumb Ferdinand. I love him; his supports are a delight and I am consistently charmed by how sweet he is in his supports. I prefer him in other routes than how he has to behave in Crimson Flower, but what can ya do. Truly, the noblest of nobles
Linhardt: I’ve heard mixed opinions about Linhardt, but I for one like him. He’s a fair-weather sort of guy who only cares about a few things, and I support that. He’s just strange and intelligent and a dry sense of humor I can appreciate.
Caspar: This moron, I love him. Caspar is the one person I’d expect to follow Edelgard unquestioningly because he just doesn’t have enough brain cells to do otherwise. I think he’s funny, even if his tone-deaf screaming in eagerness to kill and conquer Fodlan grew taxing. 
Dorothea: I like Dorothea alright; I think she has a lot of personality in her supports, but she’s not really the sort of character I find especially endearing or relatable. Nothing wrong with that.
Petra: A great girl! I find her manner of speech endearing, and I’m personally grateful that didn’t try to do some sort of accent for her that’s 1:1 for the real world. I was a bit put-off by how gungho she is with siding with Edelgard and dismantling Fodlan, but ya know, what choice does she have a political prisoner shoved into the black hole that surrounds Edelgard?
Bernadetta: People complain that Sylvain doesn’t mature post-timeskip, but Bernedetta still does that awful screeching and being a recluse routine up until the very end. I don’t like her or find her funny, but I do enjoy the sort of moral relativism she employs. Her supports with Yuri made me feel exceptionally sorry for Yuri. 
Jeritza: His voice and cadence irritates me to no end, but he was enjoyable as a unit, at least. I think his “personality” or “two personalities” is troupey to the max, and his supports with Byleth were especially off-putting. I feel like if you’re going to make a murder-happy character like Jeritza, especially one with like a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde thing going on, it needs to be way more campy or bombastic. 
I could honestly write a bunch more, but it’d mostly be me bitching about specific cringe-inducing moments with Edelgard that I’m sure other people who aren’t aggressively stanning her have brought up. If you like Edelgard, good for you, but I’m of the opinion that she’s a snake, and not even a clever or tactful one. Crimson Flower is so painful with how obvious it is with it’s Edelgard-pandering that it took me out of the game multiple times. All their routes have their flaws, but I guess the last (and only) animated sequence for CF was pretty dope, at least.  
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nozomijoestar · 6 years ago
Text
 I had an idea for Violentine eventually getting married and because society as we know it has been dead so long they just get creative about the whole thing
Also time jump from the end of the game and Texas Two is now Big, AJ is a preteen, Clem and the older of the former kids can now pay their taxes if those were still a thing
BGM if you like that when you read, lyrics here
“Been a while huh Tenn? Everything’s so busy these days I haven’t had the time. I’m sorry.”
She sat cross-legged on the partly overgrown ground. A small wreath of fresh flowers hung from the top of a cross. The wood was faded and weather-beaten, but the name carved there could never leave her memory.  From her pocket she pulled a paper, unfolded it, then placed it. Violet sighed, even her smile seemed exhausted. Her eyes threatened to brim over with tears she thought she’d long left behind.
“AJ made that for you. He’s gotten a lot better at drawing you’d probably love it. He’s a little past your age now. Shit I’m, I’m taking too long to get to the point aren’t I?”
The breeze picked up making the trees rustle as though they communicated the will of ghosts. She looked around. The crosses had multiplied through the years, each one a new nick on her heart. She chewed her lip and fiddled with her bun. Now wasn’t the time for death. Her stomach churned butterflies. A genuine smile bled into her voice.
“I wanna ask Clem to marry me. Just saying it out loud feels weird and amazing all at once. I honestly didn’t think she’d want me this long but life kept happening.”
In one motion she laid spread eagle and stared into the pink clouds that signaled dusk. She closed her eyes as another sigh fell from the trees. The sound of people beyond the graveyard drifted in voices, laughter, and song. Though the years since there’d been largely silence were gone she could never shake a need to be prepared. Even if the walls had expanded far past the former Ericson gates, danger never slept. It was something Clementine loved to reinforce. 
The thought of the way her face went stern and her voice deepened made Violet chuckle. She rose to her feet and dusted herself.
“I should get a move on. It was great talking to you again.”
After a final readjustment of the wreath she passed through the yard. A flag decorated with many stitches flapped in the wind reading ‘Texas Two’. Sometimes she looked up at it and still laughed at its ridiculousness. Though since she’d been responsible for it, that was the same as laughing at her old self. Her old self, she pondered, the Violet who hadn’t dared to entertain the thoughts she did now. When had that person changed? She didn’t think she’d ever know.
Inside the old admin building echoed a section of Chopin’s ‘Winter Wind’ in A minor. The anxious dance her nerves were doing calmed. Louis would be finished teaching piano lessons for the day. Her stride became confident. If she was going to make a sappy fool of herself it would be out of public view. Of her old mannerisms she could at least keep that one. 
He sat continuing to play though he knew she’d come by the pattern of her gait. His lack of a tongue elevated a need to pay notice to the finer things in other ways. She leaned against the doorway and folded her arms. They carried on in silence. Violet closed her eyes again, taken by her imagination. The shrieking highs and nervous lows seemed to pull every worry she’d ever had like threads off a loom. 
She saw Clem’s head bashed open like a ripe fruit, or the paling of her bite ridden skin and its missing chunks. Right behind it came the thought of AJ’s neck dyed red as he took Tenn’s place at the bottom of a herd and picked clean. Their home at the bottom of smoldering ashes. Worst of all above the extremes, she would bare her soul for Clem greater than she already had to see her spirit fall. In one moment for some reason or other everything they’d made of love would fracture, and Violet might as well quit the venture entirely. 
As if reading the tone of her thoughts the music stopped. Her eyes reopened to find Louis scribbling on a scavenged notepad. With a grin he turned it to face her. His eyes twinkled with their unquenchable charm.
‘That get your attention?’
She tucked her raw feelings back into their cage. The processed version rolled off her tongue.
“A little too hard Lou. Guess that means you’ve graduated from sucking.”
She finished with a soft laugh seeing him flip her off. The way he wiggled his eyebrows told her he found it funny. He gestured for her to come over and made room on the piano seat. She sat with her hands folded and stared nervously into her lap. Her stomach churned while the words she wanted to find were slow to come. At the touch of his hand on her shoulder she shook her head.
“It’s nothing bad I’m only overthinking again. I just...tonight I’m gonna propose. I want to. What do you think?”
He smiled and stared wide eyed filled with glee. A rush of air she guessed equated to a gasp came as he clapped. It made her blush and seem sheepish curling into herself. The sound of Louis scribbling excitedly refocused her attention.
‘About damn time! I almost thought you’d never bring it up. My advice, take her to a spot important to you guys. Get her thinking about all the deep stuff you’ve done together. If you’re really feeling it serenade her. That’s what I’d do.’
“I want her taking me seriously not laughing her ass off. By now my singing’s gotta be shitty.”
‘Oh come on Vi, live a little. Singing or not the point is you may never do this again. Make it a memory. You two were doing just that all this time anyway.’
Violet sighed and rested her forehead against the piano, defeated. The keys she pressed let out a wail. Another note was put before her.
‘Don’t sulk tell her how you feel. Clem’s gonna love you more than she already does.’
“...How do you know she won’t say no?”
He cocked his head and interrogated her with a bewildered stare. Her stomach sank; her voice had been whiny like a child’s. In the end, she was being silly. It made the confidence she’d mustered drop in shame.
‘We don’t know Vi but if she’s stuck around this long it means something. Clem’s the kind of girl to take off if she really didn’t believe in what she sees.’
She groaned and the keys played an ugly sound. 
“You’re right. I’m being a coward. I fucking hate it. I thought that side of me was done with.”
‘It’s ok to be scared. This is a big deal! You know how you’re guaranteed to fuck it up though? Having a negative attitude. Positive vibes Vi, positive.’
“Yeah yeah. You’ve given me an idea. If you see her tell her to come to the bell tower tonight. That it’s urgent.” She said with a lazy smile.
They bid each other goodbye leaving Louis to start up the piano solo of Kreisler’s ‘Liebesleid’. He’d reached halfway using a laser-focused concentration when another, larger presence filled the door. His deft hands stopped. Clementine smiled and clapped as she walked towards him. Without a moment to waste he ripped out the used pages of his notepad; they were stuffed into his coat pocket. It didn’t go unnoticed when Clem raised an eyebrow but gave no comment. 
She stood balancing her weight on her natural leg and leaning against the piano. Were she anyone else, even Violet, Louis would’ve sooner scolded her for lacking manners. He looked down to find her prosthetic ( a newly improved design of Willy’s built with higher mobility in mind ) still in good condition. 
“Caught ya.” She said giggling.
He looked up at her strong face, thick eyebrows, and overwhelming mane of curly hair. She had a stern beauty that always caught him by surprise for its rarity and strength. Violet sure knew how to pick ‘em. 
‘Wanted to make sure your foot was ok. Doubt Willy would screw it up but still y’know?’
“Thanks. Listen Louis...are you free for a little while? There’s something I wanna talk about. I want your honest opinion.”
A glint in his eyes betrayed his excitement. His gut instinct gave him an inkling of what hovered unsaid. He almost laughed at the coincidence of it all. She slowly sat at his invitation and fiddled the keys. After a meandering pause she cleared her throat; he wore a grin.
“You know Violet and I have been together a while now. Longer actually than I ever thought possible. I’m grateful for it everyday. It’s sadly not something a lot of people can say. That’s why...I don’t know if this is still the right word but, I want her to be my wife.”
She stared at him and twiddled her thumbs. Rarely had he seen her hesitate, much less be meek. The sight made him sit up straighter, listen harder. From the corner of her eye she caught his expectant stare. 
“I guess regardless of what it’d be called these days that’s what I want. She’s too important for me to lose. It’s time she really knows it and how I feel.”
For a moment she gauged his face for the slightest reaction. The intensity radiating as if a conjured aura from her body reminded him of someone constipated; he again fought a laugh. It was as though she resigned herself to a do or die mission. A determination not a far cry from what she summoned up before a supply run. In his opinion, they both were taking this to lengths so ridiculous it bordered on comical. That however would remain a secret.
He nodded with enthusiasm and that seemed to lighten her worry. On his notepad this time he thought hard before writing. 
‘It can mean whatever you want it to Clem. You love her, that’s the most important part. I say go for it. Any plans on how you’ll ask?’
“Well there’s really only one way right? I have to tell her outright, just not sure where to do it.”
‘Y’know she asked to meet with you tonight on the bell tower. There couldn’t be a better spot if you ask me.’
“Did she? That makes this easier.”
She sighed in relief and rested her head on his shoulder.
“I love her Louis. More than she might know.”
‘Tell her not me.’ he said with a smile.
After dinner the night air blew warm embracing the essence of summer. Clementine found Violet pacing in front of the ladder they’d once helped construct. She remembered seeing her like this then too, anxious over everything turning out right. Her suspicion turned on and her eyes narrowed in concern. She had yet to be noticed from a distance. 
In seconds that weighed like minutes she sighed and mumbled to herself. 
“Alright Clementine all you have to do is talk. Sure Clementine, like it’s that simple. You’re stalling now. Get yourself together.”
“You sure don’t mind keeping a girl waiting.”
Violet’s voice seized her attention from the grasping hands of her thoughts. Before she could say another word laughter filled the silence. It made her blush even as she frowned in mock irritation. 
“I didn’t think you’d notice.”
“I wouldn’t have if we weren’t the only ones here. Feelin ok?”
“Yeah just was wondering what’s on your mind to have us meet at this place.”
She smiled feeling a kiss on her cheek. Violet wore the look that always came when an idea longed to burst out before it drove her mad. Clementine slowly trailed her eyes up and down as though they were meeting for the first time anew. The demure air in her posture broke the obscuring fog of Clementine’s own nerves. Her expression softened into a look of curious wonder. 
The streaks of moonlight cast across Violet’s face bent her grin toward the mysterious. She ran her thumb over Clementine’s knuckles and gestured at the ladder. 
“Come with me and you’ll find out.”
Above them the stars filled the horizon into an infinity none would ever measure. The moon aided their brightness and bathed all it touched in an ethereal glow. The ground beneath her feet shined as though she walked on a river of silver; as though she were weightless. A breeze carrying the scent of flowers and wood-smoke, of life below, rustled Violet’s hair. Clementine felt her heart thud louder. 
The bell tower had remained untouched through the years save for a few new cracks and crumbling bricks. Vines entangled a section of broken stone railing, the same as the first night they’d sat together. She dared to imagine the ghosts of their old selves caught in a roller-coaster of teenage emotions; each burning more intensely than the last into love. They stopped and leaned against the railing beside the spot. 
They were gazing at the sky when Violet spoke first; her thoughts tumbled from her like a waterfall. A part of Clementine was relieved. 
“So uh, Clem, I wanna be real honest with you. These past seven years went by so fast some days it feels like my head’s spinning keeping track. All this below us? All these people? If you’d told me before we’d be dealing with this I’d have called you crazy. Hell, if you’d told me there’d be a time where I could have nights not having to worry something would break into the school, I’d never believe it.”
She took a break to breathe and look over the dozens of smaller lights in varying buildings that stretched into the pushed back treeline. Each one signified a condensed hope and dream from those it kept warm. Their numbers lifted Violet’s spirit to continue. Clementine stood mesmerized, her eyes trained to Violet and Violet alone. It was as though each word revealed a deeper truth than the last.
“We wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for you. I know you can say it was a group effort, it’d be true, but you’re our motivation. I don’t think I’d be half the person I am today if I hadn’t met you and AJ. Point is...remember when I said once I couldn’t imagine life without you?”
“...Of course. It took me completely by surprise.”
“I still feel that way. Clem, I want you in my life till it ends someday.”
The breeze stirred into a mild wind as Clementine’s eyes widened softly. She stumbled to speak then went silent when Violet leaned closer. Her entire body pleaded a need for recognition, as if another chance would never come again.
“Marry me.”
Without hesitation Clementine pulled her into an embrace as their lips met. Her hands wandered to cup Violet’s face and not let go. They pressed together and sunk slowly to their knees. When at last they separated neither cared if anyone below had seen. Violet’s eyes shut in bliss feeling a gentle stroke on her chin and kisses peppering her face. There came a whisper on the verge of tears into her ear when Clementine hugged her tighter.
“You beat me to it you ass.”
“Heh, I can still keep you guessing.”
“Troublemaker.” came the reply with a grin.
AJ stood watching Ruby arrange bundles of wildflowers with the same care she gave all things. Though only twelve he’d nearly reached her height. He’d lost some inches shortening his hair to a buzz cut hidden beneath Clementine’s faded baseball cap. It was something he continued to be reminded of when Ruby’s motherly presence loomed so large. 
“Hey there shorty could ya give me a hand? These bouquets can get real messy.”
“Sure, but it’s Alvin Junior.”
“I know I know. Reminding me ain’t gonna help us no faster. I’ll tell Clem if you do good.” 
That made the hint of sourness in his expression bloom into an excited smile. Around them a small team of five busied themselves with the same task. They moved as Ruby directed to arrange each in a circle open only at the northern and southern sides. A myriad of colors blue, white, orange and so on occupied the center of the restored sports field. AJ sweated hoisting another bundle for the ring and nearly dropped it. Wordlessly Ruby caught it before it hit the ground and with that the last of it lay in place. 
They stepped back performing a final check several times until Ruby proved satisfied. On a clear spot amidst the flurry of activity around them (an army of chefs led by Omar; Willy’s team arranged benches) AJ rested. A sheen of sweat covered his face and exhausted eyes. The first clue he’d received for what lay ahead came when Louis slipped him a note and a wink at breakfast one morning. ‘Congrats on the new mom kid!’ he hadn’t understood what it meant; a part of him still felt he didn’t even when Clementine explained that no, weddings weren’t something you ate. 
As he felt the day’s work burn in his muscles he concluded whatever it looked like had to be worth the aches. He spotted Aasim approaching with a squirming bundle in his arms; AJ sprung to his feet. Every lecture he’d ever received on slacking echoed in his mind in unison. Aasim towered over AJ’s stature exuding an almost regal air were it not for the slight gruffness of his beard. In his shadow AJ straightened himself and stifled a laugh when a baby’s hand swatted his chin. His stare spoke of a sense of urgency matched in his baritone voice.
“Have you seen Ruby around AJ? It’ll be her turn to look after Susanna during the ceremony. Seems like that’ll start any minute now.”
“We worked on the flowers together but after that I’m not sure. Maybe she went to check on Clem and Vi-”
“The brides are ready Aasim, just had to go fetch ‘em after their fittins’.”
From behind them Ruby appeared with a blushing Clementine and Violet in tow. She pressed a kiss to Aasim’s cheek before reaching for the baby. 
“Guess everything’s ready. I’d have come sooner but we had to finish cataloging that cache of recovered books in the library.”
“It’s alright I’ve got her, you just focus on those two. Lord knows they’re eager to get started and I don’t blame ‘em.”
Susanna piped up in her mother’s arms and stretched a hand toward Clementine.
“Ba!”
“Hey there Susie you doing ok?” Clementine cooed as she let her nose be patted.
“Guuu-ba!”
“Looks like you’ve got a way with kids that aren’t AJ too.” 
“Well Vi she’s not Auntie Clem for nuthin’. Go on and say bye to Auntie Clem and Violet, Susanna.”
“Baaba.”
They waved in parting as Ruby left for the quickly filling crowd. Dozens well over a hundred sat chatting among themselves; more than a few stole curious glances to center stage. A hundred and so on more joined soon after. Clementine felt Violet graze her arm and gesture at a dazzled AJ. His eyes held awe that grew when Clementine pet his head. 
“Ruby told me you were a real help goofball. I appreciate it.”
“You guys...you both look amazing...”
“Thanks kid. The rest of it’ll blow your mind if you stick around and watch.”
Without needing to be told further AJ nodded and made way for the benches; he looked back only once wearing an encouraging smile. The field was bare save for its key players, and the crowd fell into silence. Aasim signaled to take places then addressed those seated with a wave of his arms. Clementine and Violet stared at one another on opposite ends of the ring; Clementine’s grin made Violet blush and stare at her feet.
“Good afternoon everyone! We’re here today to witness the ceremony of a union; one long in waiting. This couple wishes to affirm their love for one another through a promise of lifelong devotion. You may both enter the ring.”
They obeyed having eyes only for each other; it formed a safety net against the pressure of so many others upon them. Softly Violet mouthed “It’s ok.”
“We’ll begin the professions of love. Clementine you may start.”
She cleared her throat and traced over every inch of Violet, of her flowing hair and single braid that whipped up from the back of her tunic in the breeze. The blue fabric lined with white threaded patterns complimented her pale green eyes. A crown of flowers adorned her head. Every detail was memorized.
“For as long as we’ve known each other you’ve supported me; even if you took time to open up. There’re so many moments, so many close calls where I’d never have made it out if it weren’t for you. Each day makes me feel more alive than the last. Not just because of our friends, or because of all we’ve done, being able to know you’re there is enough. I dedicate this dance to your affection.”
Slowly she took a step forward then pivoted into a practiced twirl. A dance of passion sent her traveling about their arena. Sweat flew from her brow and splattered in places on her belt’s spinning tassels. One misplaced step threatened to topple her but slyly she recovered before worry could disturb Violet. 
With a grin she launched into a new phase. Her arms spun and, where able, her legs kicked. The movements blended so fluidly few could pinpoint the moment aggression gave way to softness. To even fewer it revealed its heart; a reflection of her lover’s metamorphosis. 
There were moves describing sarcastic defenses, cowardly silences, sections mapping the rush from kind words and intimate quiet. As if anew they were pulled into the haze of honest kisses, the whirlwind of lovemaking that went deep into sleepless nights. On occasion they were plunged headfirst before icy fear and protective worry that pricked to the bone. Those moments would be quickly broken by a return to memories of the warmth in living.
Almost instinctively the full result of a week’s practice strengthened its control as she neared the end. Her mind sank into an empty plane, speaking only what little remained unsaid through her rhythm. When it was done the sight of Violet brimming with tears told her everything. Wordlessly she gathered herself then bowed.
Aasim stood in entranced silence. The edges of his solemn eyes had grown misty, defying his self restraint. He gestured and caught Violet’s attention away from her thoughts.
“Feelings have been expressed that require an answer. Violet, you may give your reply.”
“I’ve heard them. Clementine you taught me it’s alright to feel; that holding everything in and running from help is what makes a coward. Choosing who I want to be in life by learning from others is a gift that takes courage. You kept trying even when I wanted to shut you out. I’d never seen anyone so dedicated. Because of you I remembered the people who care about me, away from the ghosts I wanted to chase. I dedicate this dance to your strength.”
This time the was an elegant start defined by tight turns and precise footwork. Each move linked firmly to the last and the next. Clementine’s chest tightened as she watched; her breath caught in her throat. Within the dance she felt herself be peeled back. There was the Clementine she saw herself as, steel willed and cautious, in places fragmented. It morphed to show the rare moments of worry and the storms that wracked her in anxiety. In a few moments that still churned her stomach she felt a lurking shadow of the cruelty that’d tumbled so easily from her whenever she’d been cast astray. 
Her body grew hot, her shoulders heavy before she saw the dance shift and the feeling passed. There was a return to gentleness and the power in mercy. Like glittering bubbles memories flooded her mind fresh as they days they’d been reality. She’d cried and screamed and torn her hair each time someone had been lost; yet she pressed forward hopeful. She’d witnessed distrust seize people’s eyes as they coveted rather than strive for understanding; yet never closed her ears to humanity. She’d cried awake sunken to the floor and teeth grit replaying each life she’d taken, each selfish need she’d served; yet her remorse was proof she retained a soul. 
Tears trickled down her face, and she felt not a care to stop them. The sensations of the present returned only when Violet had finished. In an instant that moved in her vision like slow motion she was embraced. Aasim’s voice grounded her beyond the sensation of Violet’s heart beating in time with her own. 
“We have witnessed them speak to each other’s deepest self. In this they have found unity, and taken hold of that which they seek for themselves in another. It is time for the final step. Let them now dance together and display the bond when two become one. Music for them, if you’d all please.”
Clementine felt Violet shift against her the crowd clapped a beat. 
“You ready?”
“Yes.”
They took up position smiling through their flushed faces. The dance moved slow and contemplative as if longing to savor each moment. All else began to fade replaced by a rhythm that held a peaceful trance. Neither kept track of how long they swayed until Clementine said,
“Why don’t we show them what we’ve got?”
“Ready when you are partner.” Violet replied grinning.
In one motion they separated still holding on by one hand, throwing themselves into a spin that ended in a twirl. Violet laughed finding herself again in Clementine’s arms then out once more. She took her turn twirling Clementine, her eyes sparkling and heard racing. They spun holding each other then separated to link arms each facing the other’s back but continuing to lock eyes. It prefaced another separation as they spun alone only to jump back together. At this they laughed.
Violet’s vision was filled by the bright sky when Clementine dipped her then leaned close. Violet wrapped her arms around her neck and pressed their foreheads together.
“I love you.”
“Love you back.”
“Promise?”
“Hell yeah.”
Their kiss found Clementine with hands roaming her hair but she didn’t care. A ways away the roar of the crowd filled their ears. Beside them Aasim clapped and wiped his face. He turned one last time to project his proud voice.
“I present to you all a married Clementine and Violet! May they have a happy life together.”
“That better not have jinxed anything Aasim.” Violet teased with a snicker.
“Shut it and go have fun with your wife. You guys deserve it.”
“Thanks for all this, really.”
“Keep treating her right Clem.” he replied smiling.
The after party blew quickly into a spectacle. Louis had attracted a cheerful gathering as he played pieces back to back. Clusters of people filled the admin building to the seams; further groups had piled into the school yard. The campus in its entirety lay at the heart of town from which hundreds of simple houses, storage, and shops fanned out. The multitude of guests had been guaranteed with more passing colorful banners AJ had overseen. 
A few carried weathered but functioning instruments, guitars, harmonicas, large and small drums. They formed a small band that led the tune of those dancing in the yard. A sizable banquet had been prepared from their surplus; beside Ruby chatted with Aasim while Susanna sucked on her bottle. From the balcony at the admin building’s face Clementine stood observing. Out of her regal wedding attire she nearly blended into the revelry were it not for her commanding presence. 
Any tension soon melted from her when she felt Violet’s arms around her waist. She smiled and leaned into the nuzzle against her neck. 
“How’s it feel? Thinking of anything?”
“I was wondering how things are closer to the wall and that group we sent out a day ago.”
“You mean Randy.”
“None of us can afford him screwing up. He’s been very...vocal lately. It’s giving me bad thoughts.”
“Hey none of that ok? Today’s our day to celebrate, we can worry about later when it comes.”
Clementine closed her eyes and pressed their foreheads together. 
“Where’s AJ?”
“With the other kids. Us grown ups are too intense for him right now. I don’t blame him, he seemed happy though.”
“I can think of one reason to justify that.” Clementine teased in a husky voice, her hand wandering below Violet’s waist.
“Clem not while everyone’s around.” came the reply followed by a giggle.
“Just teasing. We can go over it all later.”
“In that case you’ve got my interest.”
“Really? How about something like this to start.”
She pulled Violet closer and leaned her back against the railing. She studied the way Violet tilted her head as their lips met; saw the beauty in how her hair framed her face. Slowly she traced her fingers along her jaw, welcoming the feel of Violet grabbing a fistful of her shirt. They broke off at the whistles thrown at them from below. One glare and eye roll from Clementine silenced them. Violet chuckled. Her arms wrapped lazily around Clementine’s neck. 
“I’ll never forget today.”
“I hope not. If you ever do I’ll remind you.”
“Heheh, yeah.”
The music and chatter came to a sudden halt with a banging at the yard’s iron gates. Shocked dancers parted a pathway for a team in neat ranks, their boots marching in step. A man with a thick trimmed beard and thicker hair led them and adjusted the grip of his spear. It had a long curved edge akin to a beast fang and tassels that jiggled in time with the pistol on his belt. The well kept armor he wore, decorated in the motif of a cougar as his rank allowed, enhanced his bulk. His burly arms were defined by gnarled scars that betrayed his continued Old World hobby of rigorous exercise. 
He signaled a stop by raising his fist and was immediately obeyed. His beady eyes stared at Clementine without faltering. She read the challenge within them clearly and stood stiff backed,unwavering. From the crowd she felt multitudes looking to her in surprise that yielded to fear. Beside her Violet’s expression hardened and simmered with open disgust. The man spoke, his voice embed by a natural cunning.
“We’ve returned from our expedition with a generous offering from the community to the west.”
“Welcome back, I trust everything went well along with it.”
“Yes, yes of course. Nice to see we’ve been missed.” he said letting a sarcastic bite slip into his tone as he looked around.
“C’mon Randy we can talk about this anywhere but in front of everyone. There’s no need to put on some kind of show.” Violet added. 
His eyes studied her in frayed patience then flit back to Clementine. He made a gesture and his group dispersed.
“Sure I can be civil and play house with those wearing the big pants. Let’s have a private chat.”
He disappeared into the admin building. Clementine sighed deeply and let herself slacken. Tenderly Violet touched her hand, she took it without hesitation. She stared into the sky gathering herself until at last all her courage was summoned. With a nod she followed Violet’s lead into her office, something more animal than man fast approaching.
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blapisblogs · 5 years ago
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The song ends with Chambers’s student character asking if the kids being taken away by train was a reference to World War II and if that was meant to be a comparison to high school. That’s... partly right? She’s right when she says it’s most likely a reference to World War II: there was a point in time where citizens in Britain, including children, were sent by train to other places where they were less likely to be attacked in an aerial strike, and it’s possibly referencing that. However, from the way Doug Walker writes about this part it makes it sound like this is referencing how Jewish people were taken to concentration camps in World War II, which... I could at least see where one might think that, but I’m not sure if that’s the case. What I find weird about this is that Doug should know about England evacuating people during World War II since he has talked about at least two other movies that take place in England during World War II years before making this “review”: Return to Neverland (a sequel to Disney’s Peter Pan) mentions the possibility of having its protagonists evacuate London, and Beknobs and Broomsticks (one of Doug’s favorite Disney movies) where three of the protagonists have already been evacuated. Funny how he doesn’t make a big deal about these Disney movies bringing up stuff from WWII but gives crap to Roger Waters - someone who was born during that time and was clearly affected by it - for bringing it up in this song, album, and film.
After Doug briefly talks with the “students” (while he’s I guess huge and has a deep voice because... I don’t know, there’s nothing in the film that’s like that), they then move onto the next parody. If you didn’t feel like rage quitting after that horrid parody of “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)” (and who could blame you if you did), you probably won’t be too happy to hear that the next song to get parodied in this train wreck is “Goodbye Blue Sky”. I should probably point out that, while it does come after “The Happiest Days of Our Lives” and “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)” on the album, in the film it comes before it, yet here he’s acting like it still comes after it, which is wrong. He’s skipping over a lot of stuff that explains Pink’s deteriorating mental state, up to and including his father’s death during World War II and his emotionally abusive mother, which isn’t helpful for anyone unfamiliar with the material and I would argue that it paints an unfair picture of it. I don’t even understand how Doug screwed this up considering that he’s seen the film. The song itself is about the lingering fear that was left in people’s minds after World War II, and in the film it featured some gorgeous and fairly creative animation from Gerald Scarfe (who, as I found out from my girlfriend @animatedc9000, did the concept art and almost all the character designs for Disney’s Hercules years later; turns out the directors who later worked on Moana were fans of his work).
Speaking of the artwork, here’s something I’ve been mostly ignoring since the start: the visual style for this “review”. It feels confused, to put it very generously. Like many other people who’ve talked about this “review” have already pointed out, Doug Walker’s visual effects haven’t improved much over the years, and it’s especially glaring for this “review” not because the original’s visuals are better, but because he wants to make this come off as something bigger and more important than it actually is, which is boneheadedly bold of him to do considering that, even without comparing it to the original animation, the artwork for this particular sequence is total ass. I’m not asking for it to be on par with the original, but I am asking for more effort than what’s being shown here. It feels like Doug Walker isn’t putting much if any thought into how the visuals for this “review” all work together because there’s no consistency between the rest of the effects for this “review” either: there’s shitty 2D “animation” (and even calling what was put on screen here that feels like I’m giving them too much credit), an okay seconds-long animation of a stopmotion monster (which there is no stopmotion in The Wall and the monster doesn’t even remotely look like anything from the film, so what the fuck), stock footage, live action, mediocre at best green-screen, crappy stock CGI, and later in this “review” we’ll see some decent to actually good CGI (made by someone else, of course) and some 2-D-ish animation that looks so close to the film’s that I almost wonder if it was traced over the original’s. It’s a mess. It’d be one thing if this was trying to exaggerate the differences in styles in an anthology film with lots of hands in the pot and thus has differing, clashing styles (like Moonwalker or Heavy Metal, both music-related movies he’s reviewed before), but The Wall is not an anthology film nor is its style confusingly inconsistent like this “review” seems to be implying.
Also, the eagle that in the original was meant to represent the Nazis during the Blitz has the word “EGO” written on it in this “parody”. We get it already, Doug. Later a cloud saying “my problems” zaps another cloud saying “other people’s problems”, which... isn’t the impression I or plenty of others got from the film or album. Like, at all. Not even close. The story’s about one person and the issues he has in his life, sure, but nothing in it gives the impression that Pink is actively or intentionally ignoring other people’s problems or that he’s playing the Oppression Olympics against anyone else. It feels more like Doug is projecting here, but I really don’t want to play armchair psychology with this man, so let’s finally dissect the lyrics for this parody of the song many consider to be their favorite from the album and the film.
[Lyrics (and snark) below the cut]
Ooh Ooh D-D-D-Doesn’t this seem too heavy? Is World War II with monsters too silly?
[The monsters were meant to symbolize the horrors of what happened in World War II. You pointed out earlier how this film isn’t subtle, yet you somehow missed the meaning of this? Or is this supposed to be a joke? Because if it is, then it’s not funny, it just makes you look incompetent.]
Oh Roger Waters, did you ever wonder why this images of slaughter Made it in a film that also sings about how high school bites?
[It’s a movie about all the bad things that led to Pink building the metaphorical mental wall isolating himself and his emotions from the rest of the world, which involves more than just the trauma he endured as a child born during World War II that lost his father to said war (a death you never once mention in this “review” despite it being a big deal for the film, album, and Waters’s life, by the way). He got mentally and emotionally abused by the teachers because, to quote Waters about his own experience (which we can all agree Pink’s life is heavily based on) “The same kids who [were] susceptible to bullying by other kids [were] also susceptible to bullying by the teachers.” These things are connected because they’re all part of what makes Pink try to isolate himself from everyone else. For someone who goes on and on about how unsubtle this film is, you sure seem to miss the obvious.]
Ooh Ooh Is it saying anything that deep? “War’s bad”, thanks, are we supposed to weep? Sure, we’re all bummed out, but you’re losing clout in this movie
[Jesus christ, Doug, you can’t tell someone to “just get over” their trauma and then have everything solved just like that, because, sadly, that’s not how the human brain works, it’s more complicated than that.]
So long, Oscar bait song
[This song was released on the album before the movie, so even if Waters wanted it to be “Oscar bait” (which one can argue is a loaded term in a number of cases, but that’s a discussion for maybe another time) it wouldn’t be eligible to be nominated for an Oscar. I’ve heard one person put forth the idea that Doug was maybe under the impression that the album came out at the same time as the film, but if that’s the case then that just means Doug didn’t do research before writing and recording this, which is embarrassing for a big name internet reviewer in 2019. If he could take the time to binge-watch all three seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender in 2013 in preparation for his review of that awful live-action movie, then there’s literally no reason he couldn’t have taken a few minutes to use a search engine to look up some basic facts on The Wall.]
Smoke a bong and it will feel less wrong So long, weird song
[I’m not one who encourages using drugs, but using a bong doesn’t sound like a bad idea right about now...]
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cutaepatootie · 6 years ago
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Now or Never - 07 | FINAL
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Pairing: Hoseok | Reader Genre: racer hoseok au / angst / smut  Word Count: 17.2k
A/N: oh wow, this was a long ride *pun intended* Anyways, here it is, the final chapter of this serie. It’s sad to finally write down everything I thought about while listening to Now or Never by Halsey more than a year ago. Seeing everything finished makes me feel sad and I don’t know how to feel about this part, if I like it or not... But I hope you do :) Thanks for being here. Lots of love!
→ Aesthetic Post
Pt. 01 | Pt. 02 | Pt. 03 | Pt. 04 | Pt. 05 | Pt. 06 | Pt. 07 final
“Hello?” the male voice says through the other side of the line.
“Hi.”
“Y/N? I thought you had deleted my number?”
“You texted me the other day, remember?” you say, biting your lower lip.
“And you left me on read,” Hoseok sighs. “I thought maybe you needed some space or something.”
“I thought so too,” you whisper.
You lower your head and lean your back on the locker behind you. Hoseok remains silent too.
“Can I see you tonight?” you mumble after a few seconds.
You can hear his doubt even through the phone.
“A… Are you sure you wanna see me? I don’t wanna rush you into anything,” he says.
“I’m sure,” you nod reassuringly.
“Okay, well then… I’m dying to see you too,” he says, and you can imagine him with that radiant smile drawn on his lips.
It only breaks your heart even more.
“I’m at work right now, but my shift ends in fifteen minutes,” you say, looking at the clock that almost marks midnight.
“I’ll be there in ten,” he says, hanging up.
You sigh, putting your phone in your backpack. Bringing your knees to your chest, you hug them tightly. Tonight is your last day at work. To say that you’ll miss it would be a complete lie, but the fact that you won’t work here anymore means more than just stop coming here ever week, or stop getting paid.
Just as he said, in less than ten minutes Hoseok is there, letting you know through text message.
After saying goodbye to your colleagues, you leave the hospital through the staff door. There he is, inside his silver Porsche waiting for you.
Quickly, you walk towards the car looking around you and making sure no one is there watching you, even though you wouldn’t be surprised to find Mark somewhere.
“Hey,” Hoseok says once you get in the car, hesitant. He doesn’t know how to approach you.
You guess you’re the one to blame, since you ignored his texts and called him out of the blue.
“Can we just go for a ride?” is all you say.
He looks at you one more time before igniting the engine and getting out of the parking lot.
You remain silent as you press your forehead to the glass of the passenger window. You watch the streetlights disappear as you pass by, leading to deserted streets and dark alleys. The neon lights adorn the tall buildings of the city and the last buses leave their passengers on their stops. It looks like a completely different world by night.
You don’t know where Hoseok is leading you, you just wanted to escape with him for a few hours, maybe make yourself believe that everything was fine and that you wouldn’t have to betray the only person that has kept loyal to you through these past months.
Finally, the car reaches a more secluded are on the outskirts of the city.
It is a small mountain from where you can see the landscape of the city, all its lights looking like stars in the distance.
Hoseok stops the car and turns off the engine, leaving the radio on as soft music plays on the background. The only lights that enlighten you both are the ones from the panel of the car.
“Are you okay?” he asks after a short silence.
You’ve thought about it all week, about Mark’s words and threats. Your sister was all that mattered to you, or so you thought, because making a decision has been more difficult than you thought it’d be. Sure, you had feelings for Hoseok, but you had never thought that they had reached the point where sacrificing you and Hoseok for your sister would be something you needed to think about more than once.
You’ve thought about telling Hoseok and convincing him to help you, but how would he react when you told him that you were the mysterious new racer of the Black Panthers? His rival. You know he likes you, and that he wants to keep seeing you and is willing to take the risk… But does he feel the same way about you? Does he love you? You don’t know that for sure, you don’t know if he would be willing to risk more than his position in the Blue Eagles for you and your sister, much less after hiding such a secret from him all this time. Plus, if Mark found out he had helped you… Would your sister be safe?
“Hey,” he calls once again when you stay still and don’t say a word. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
You shake your head, your eyes still somewhere far from that car.
“Y/N, baby,” he whispers, two of his fingers grabbing your chin softly and turning your head towards him. “Talk to me.”
You close your eyes and take a deep breath.
Can you trust him?
You open your eyes and stare at his. In the darkness of the car you can see their vivid shine, that same shine that dragged you towards him in the first place.
You open your mouth to speak, to tell him the truth… But somehow, you stop yourself.
Who is the man who is sitting in that car with you? You don’t know him. He is Jung Hoseok and he is a racer of the Blue Eagles. Apart from racing, he deals with drugs and does other jobs for his gang. But, has he ever killed somebody? Has he ever had his heart broken? Does he have a family? Dreams? Plans for the future? Does he like coffee in the mornings or is he a tea person? Does he like rainy days or sunny days? Does he prefer the right side or the left side of the bed?
You only know his name and his preferences in sex, that he likes Tinashe and that he enjoys dancing, but further than that, you don’t know him. Can you put your sister’s life in the hands of a stranger just because you’re in love with him? For God’s sake, you’ve only known him for four months.
As you stare into his eyes, you realise you don’t really know who Hoseok is, all the conversations you have had have been light-weighed and banal, you’ve only slept in the same bed once and all you have are some passionate nights and funny moments to remember.
“I’m just stressed for my final exams,” you end up saying, the lump in your throat getting tighter and making you feel as if you are being strangled.
“Oh shit, they were this week,” he growls. “I completely forgot, sorry for not asking you about them.”
“Don’t worry.”
“Did they go well?”
“I don’t know,” you honestly say. “I was a bit distracted and I didn’t study during the weekend.”
“Oh, c’mon, you’re a nerd,” he jokes, trying to lighten the mood. “I’m sure you had studied everything the month before the exams.”
You smile lightly. How is it that he even makes you smile when you’re feeling like a shit?
“Shut up, I like to take a last review.”
“Sure,” he teases you.
You punch him in the arm playfully and he smiles.
“There’s something else going on in that mind of yours, I can see it.”
Ugh, you hate how he always reads you like an open book.
“You can read minds now?” you joke, trying to change the topic.
“I’ve always been able to, it’s just a secret I wanted to keep,” he says. “But don’t try to distract me, tell me what’s wrong.”
You roll your eyes, but let him grab you from your waist and pull you towards him until you’re sitting on his lap. Slowly, he pushes his seat backwards so you have more space.
You bring a hand to his cheek and caress his soft skin.
“I’ve been wondering… I barely know you,” you whisper softly. “You always read me so well, but when it comes to you… You hide behind that funny-and-cool-guy façade and I can’t see beyond it.”
Hoseok sighs and turns serious. Then, he leans backwards so his back is pressed to the back of his seat.
“What do you wanna know?” he asks after a few seconds.
“I don’t know,” you blurt out. “Everything? A lot of things?”
He smiles softly and lets his hands roam your back, calming you.
“Start with something easy please.”
“Who are you, Hoseok?”
“Oh wow, I asked you to start with something easy,” he jokes before turning serious once again. “What do you mean by that?”
You sigh and get more comfortable on his lap.
“I mean, I barely know you. You have all this faces I’ve seen, but I don’t know which one of them is the real you,” you say as a flash of hurt crosses his features.
“I’ve always shown you the real me.”
“Yeah, but is it the funny and laid-back guy, or the cocky drug seller? Or maybe the mysterious and quiet racer? The calm boy who can sit for hours at a party doing nothing or the energetic boy who loves dancing and gets scared of fair rides?”
He tears his hands from their grip on your back and looks at you sternly.
“I’m all of them.”
You shake your head and bring a hand up to caress one of his cheeks.
“I refuse to think that the same boy who makes love to me all night long and always makes me laugh and comforts me is the same person that deal with drugs and races illegally and do all sorts of other illegal activities.”
“Well, sorry to break it to you, but I’m the same,” he says lifting his hands up in the air.
“I just want to know you better.”
“And you? What about you?” he snaps, changing the topic and directing it to you. “Is the girl that studies at a good university and barely ever attends to frat parties the same that belongs to a gang and hooks up with a criminal?”
“You’re not a criminal.”
“I deal with drugs, race illegally and do all sorts of other illegal activities,” he says, repeating your previous words. “That sounds like a criminal to me.”
You sigh. Because he’s always like this. You take one step forward and he takes two steps back.
“My father abandoned us when I was twelve. I can’t stand my mother and as soon as I reached sixteen I moved from home. Ever since then I’ve been paying my own rent, my studies, I’ve been saving money so when my sister turned sixteen she could come and live with me in another city far from our mother. That’s why I joined the Black Panthers too, because of the money and the freedom they offered me, and when the races finish, I’m planning on moving with my sister – who turned sixteen last week – to another city. One far from here. That’s it, that’s everything you need to know about me,” you say barely breathing in between sentence and sentence.
Besides Lynn, Hoseok is the only person you’ve told about your family and your personal life.
You wait for him to say something, but he just remains there contemplating you with that same blank expression. Not being able to stand the silence, you start talking once again.
“I love history and I would like to be a nice historian, maybe work as an annalist for some cool magazine or newspaper, travel the world and go to every single museum in this planet. I am rather shy and quiet, it takes a long time before I trust someone and even then, I don’t show my true self until I’m a hundred percent sure I can trust them. I am independent and I hate when someone is constantly asking me what I’m doing or how I am. I like silent places and cars. I like racing because it makes me feel the owner of my own life. I hate spicy things and love tea, oh and I always choose the left side of the bed.”
You finish with a deep breath and then look at Hoseok. You can swear you’ve never seen him looking at you with such an intensity. Reality dawns over you when you realise you just told Hoseok everything about you – in a rather summarised way – and suddenly you feel scared.
Why isn’t he saying anything? Did you go too far? He told you he liked you, and that he wanted to keep seeing you, but maybe he just wants sex and you misunderstood him.  
Biting your lower lip and scolding yourself mentally, you start pulling away from Hoseok. Just as he notices you moving, he grabs your hips and forces you to stay in place.
“You’re moving to another city?” he asks.
You scoff and fight against his grip.
“That’s all you have to say after everything I told you?” you spit. “You ask me if I’m moving even after opening myself to you like that?”
With anger running fiercely through your entire body, you grab his wrists and force him to pull away from you.
“Let me go,” you growl.
“Wait, no, Y/N,” he says, fighting against you.
“Let me go Hoseok,” you say through clenched teeth. He’s stronger than you and resists your movements.
“No until you let me speak.”
“You spoke, and said the most stupid thing you could’ve said.”
“So, asking the girl I’m crazy for if she’s going to move is a stupid thing?”
You stop your movements and look at him with wide eyes.
“Are you going to answer my question?” he asks. “Are you going to move to another city?”
Looking at his eyes and nodding is painful, but you do it anyway.
“As soon as the races end?”
“Yeah, my sister will have ended school and I will have graduated. We have nothing else that ties us to this place anymore.”
“Not even the Black Panthers?”
“No.”
“Not even me?” he asks.
You take a moment to think. Of course you would love staying in here and keep seeing Hoseok, but it would lead you nowhere. Your mother would make sure to ruing yours and your sister’s lives, she was an important person in this city and she had contacts. She would make sure you wouldn’t find a job and that you wouldn’t be able to pay for a rent and your sister’s studies, so the both of you would have to return home with the tail between your legs. And you aren’t even sure the thing between you and Hoseok would have a future. Are you willing to sacrifice everything you’ve been fighting for, for a boy you met barely four months ago?
“I just don’t know any other thing that isn’t racing or being part of a gang. My father was part of one, my sister too, and then my cousin. He was the one who introduced me to the Blue Eagles when I was fourteen, and I guess this is all I’ve done ever since then,” he shrugs. “It’s simple as that. This is all I am and all I’ve ever been. I’ve always had a happy life, I love my family and my friends. This is my life and all that I’ve got and I never told you about it because, to be honest, I never thought I would feel the need to.”
He brings you closer to him and you let him do whatever he pleases with you.
“At first it started as something dangerous and thrilling, I didn’t care about you, who you were or your damn gang, but then… I don’t know what this is anymore,” he sighs, running a hand through your hair.
“You aren’t going to leave this even if I ask you to follow me and run away from this shitty city, are you?” you softly ask.
“No,” he sincerely answers.
And that’s all you need to know. He likes you, maybe he even loves you, but he loves his lifestyle even more. You don’t blame him for it. You love him, but you also have things that are more important, like your sister and your future. You don’t want to belong to a gang all your life, you don’t like this lifestyle of running and escaping and hiding.
You stare deeply into his eyes and he stares back deeply into yours.
“What the fuck are we doing then?” you scoff, laughing bitterly.
“Just living the moment,” he answers, grabbing your jaw and connecting his lips with yours.
You follow his lips and tongue, his passionate movements and lewd sounds. It’s all so raw and vivid, but it’s always been like that when it comes to you and Hoseok.
He parts his lips from yours after biting harshly on your lower lip, and he starts tracing kisses down your neck. You move yourself closer to him and grabs the back of his neck, pressing his face ever harder against you.
“We’re gonna get hurt in the end,” you mutter, biting your already sore lower lip to prevent you from moaning.
“Who cares,” he growls, his voice muffled because of your skin. “It was fucking worth it.”
He parts his lips from your skin and looks at you in the eye.
“We’re always talking about getting caught and the others finding out, about us being in danger because of this, but who fucking cares anymore,” he growls again. “I want you and you want me.”
He grips your cheeks tightly, forcing you to stay in place and look at him.
“I fucking want you so much I don’t care about them finding out about us or about us being in danger,” he says with his jaw clenched tight. “When this all ends we’ll remember it and think, ‘fuck, it was so worth it’.”
You gulp down and lean forwards to attach your lips to his once again. He’s right. This was so fucking worth it.
You start grinding on his lap as Hoseok deepens the kiss, grabbing the back of your head and pressing you against him. The radio keeps sounding in the background as the sound of ragged breaths starts filling the car.
You could never have enough of Hoseok. The feeling of his hardening member against your core as you grind on him, the friction between the material of your jeans turning you on even more. His hands grabbing every curve of yours, his slender fingers tracing every millimetre of skin. The way his lips feel against yours. His taste. His smell. His sounds.
Panting from all the kisses, you pull back and grab the hem of his t-shirt. Instead of smirking and teasing you as he usually would, he just lifts his arms and lets you take off his t-shirt. As soon as the piece of fabric is gone and thrown in the back of his car he reattaches his lips to yours fervently.
He pushes you backwards until your back hits the steering-wheel, hitting the claxon and causing a loud noise to fill the place. You don’t even acknowledge it, as you let Hoseok take off your denim jacket.
He wastes no time as he finds the hem of your t-shirt and sneaks his hands inside of them so he can caress the soft skin of your stomach.
You moan, letting your head fall backwards as Hoseok’s lips traces kisses from your lower lip to the junction in between your collarbones. His hands trail up until they find your bra.
He cups both of your breasts with his hands and squeezes them while he keeps ravishing your neck with his kisses. Another moan escapes from your lips when he pulls your bra down and you feel your breasts bouncing a he sets them free.
“Oh God,” you mumble when you feel his hands on your breasts again, caressing them, rounding the nipples in between his index finger and his thumb, squeezing them and seizing them with both his hands.
“You like this, babe?” he asks, his voice muffled as he keeps kissing your collarbones.
“Yeah,” you gasp. “Yeah, I love this.”
“Hmm… I love your tits,” he growls, giving them a particular hard squeeze as if to emphasize his words.
“H… Hoseok,” you moan.
“Fuck.”
With a sharp movement, he takes his hands from under your t-shirt and as soon as you lift your arms, he takes it off. He leaves your bra on, still pulled down a bit so he can see your breasts.
He spanks you when you start grinding on his crotch once again.
“Do you want my cock? Is that why you’re grinding on my lap like a needy slut?”
You nod, biting your lower lip and looking at him through your lashes, your eyes almost closed in the bliss state you’re in.
“Keep grinding on it babe, I want you to come in your pants for me.”
“Ah…” you breathe when he lifts his hips upwards to meet yours. “Keep going, please.”
“You like this?”
“Yeah.”
He grabs your hips and pulls you down on him with strength. You almost see the stars as you feel the damp material of your panties sticking to your core from the collision, his hard cock feeling delicious under your movements.
“Fuck baby, you’re gonna make me cum in my pants too if you keep going at it like this.”
It’s so filthy, you grinding on his cock like that inside his silver Porsche, parked in the middle of nowhere, all lights out except for the panel’s lights, about to cum in your own pants from the movements of Hoseok’s hips underneath yours and his dirty words whispered in your ear.
“I’m about to cum,” you gasp in his ear, holding tight to his neck as he presses your hips against his. “Hoseok, I’m… I’m…”
You don’t have time to finish your sentence, as a wave of pleasure fills your body from head to toe and you clench your teeth to prevent you from screaming. It’s as if all strength was taken away from you and you’re only left with some limp limbs and a fucked out state.
You keep holding onto Hoseok’s neck, feeling as if you could crumble down in any moment from the intensity of your orgasm. You hide your face in the crook of his neck and let him ride out your orgasm, still moving your hips forwards and backwards against his crotch, his cock still painfully hard.
“Fuck, are you okay?” he whispers.
“Yeah,” you laugh, moving your face from the crook of his neck and looking at him. “Yeah.”
“Good,” he simply says, reaching underneath the driver’s seat and pressing a button, pulling the seat backwards until it reaches its limit. “Now kneel in front of me.”
You do as he says, shifting uncomfortable when you feel the wetness of your panties and jeans in the crotch area. Lifting your eyes, you stare and Hoseok and mentally keep that image of him looking just as fucked out as you must look. His hair is sticking out everywhere, his eyes dark with lust, half-closed. Red cheeks, swollen lips, marks of your kisses on his neck, sweat glistening down his bare chest.
“Take my belt and my jeans off.”
You do as he says with sharp movements. His dark boxers have a wet spot just where you can make out the head of his cock.
“You know what to do next,” he smirks, and caresses your cheek before letting you go.
You look into his eyes and an idea pops in your mind. Reaching backwards, you unclasp your bra and let it fall.
“Hey, who said you could take your bra off?” Hoseok quickly reprimands you.
You smirk. “I don’t need a bra for what I’m about to do.”
You run your fingers over his clothed erection before taking his boxers off, Hoseok lifting his hips from his seat so you can slide them down his legs and throw them somewhere in the back of his car along with the rest of your clothes.
“And you’re about to…?” he impatiently says when he sees you making no move towards his cock to take it into your mouth.
You observe it for a moment, standing against his lean stomach.
Grabbing the base of it, you pump a couple of times.
“Babe…” Hoseok warns you.
You smirk internally and move yourself closer to him, both of his legs resting against your sides as your stomach makes contact with the leather material of his seat. You lean closer to him and, with your free hand, grab both of your breasts.
You drag his cock closer to your chest until the soft skin of your breasts is completely surrounding it.
“Fuck, oh fuck,” Hoseok growls as he watches you collect saliva and spit it on the tip of his cock.
You use both of your hands to grab your breasts and keep Hoseok’s cock in between them. You look at him and his fucked out expression and then, you start moving up and down.
“Oh my… I won’t last long like this… Fuck.”
“Well, you better not cum if you want to fuck me afterwards,” you smirk. You usually let him take the lead and you barely speak if not to say thanks or how you’re feeling, but right now, kneeling in front of him, his warm cock in between your breasts as you move them up and down, encourages you to tease him a little bit.
Hoseok glares at you and goes to say something that turns into a growl when you spit on your chest once more, the saliva dripping down your skin and finding the tip of his cock as it appears in between your breasts.
“You’re driving me crazy,” he says, bringing his hands to his hair and pulling from it as he rests his head on the headrest, closing his eyes and trying to focus on not coming so soon. “I can’t stop picturing my cock disappearing in between your pretty tits.”
You smirk and fasten your pace, hearing a loud moan from Hoseok and a wide range of curses.
“Stop, stop,” he says in a rush, coming back down to reality and grabbing your shoulders to stop your movements.
He then grabs your arms and forces you up until your straddling his lap once more. Sticking out his tongue, he places it in between your breasts and lick the skin there clean.
“I can’t cum yet, I need to fuck that pretty cunt of yours.”
You bite your lip and take off your jeans, so only your panties are left.
“They’re fucking soaked,” he growls, helping you take them off.
When the black panties are on his hands, he smirks and suddenly leans forwards to open the small glove box.
“They’ll bring me luck tomorrow, when I’m racing against that fucking racer of yours. They’ll be my lucky charm from now on.”
Your brain completely ignores his words as you watch him keep your ruined panties inside his glove box and closing it afterwards.
“You don’t need any lucky charm,” you scoff. “You’re the Ghost Eagle, the invincible racer.”
“Yeah, but when I beat that son of a bitch’s ass and cross the finish lane I will think about them and how they’re soaked in your juices. Of how hard you came from grinding on me,” he says, placing open-mouthed kisses all over your neck. “Of how good your moans sounded.”
“Ah, yeah?”
“Yeah. And I’ll think about how pretty your face was too.”
“It’s funny hearing this from you, then man with no weakness crumbling down at the thought of some panties in his glove box.”
“One, they’re not just some panties. And two, the man with no weakness does have a weakness.”
“Yeah?” you ask, somehow a small, bright light, switching inside your brain.
“Yeah. You wanna know what it is?”
You nod, biting your lower lip.
“You,” he says, he’s expression turning serious.
Your eyes widen briefly, but you force yourself to hide your commotion and just smirk.
“Me?”
“Yeah, you’re my fucking weakness,” he sighs. His hands start roaming down your naked body, grabbing your hips and lifting them so they’re just hovering above his erection. “You got me crazy.”
He grabs the base of his cock and pumps it a couple of times before sinking your body down on it.
You growl as he doesn’t even warn you and before you can adjust to his size, he starts moving.
“Completely crazy,” he growls again and again, pressing your body to his. “I’d do anything… Ah… I’d do anything for you.”
“If you’d do anything for me, then get out of this shitty city with me.”
He stops for a moment.
“You know I can’t,” he sighs.
“Then it’s not true that you’d do anything for me.”
With a harsh snap of his hips against yours, words disappear completely from your mind and you’re left speechless. You hold onto his neck and hide your face in the crook of his neck as Hoseok starts fucking you wildly.
“Don’t ask that from me,” he pants. “I already told you it’s my life, I can’t just simply disappear.”
You close your eyes, letting the feeling of Hoseok inside you fill your senses completely. You can’t just tell him you’re that son of a bitch whom he is willing to beat their ass. You can’t just ask him to let you win the races. You can’t just ask him to betray his family, the Blue Eagles, for you. He just told you, between them and you he would always choose them. And in a way, you understand him. They’re everything he has, they’re his family, friends and companions.
“Then promise me you will never forget about me,” you whisper.
Hoseok grabs your hair in a ponytail and pulls from it, making you lift your head from the crook of his neck and look at him.
“I promise you baby,” he says, trying to calm his breath.
“Whatever happens, promise me you will still remember me even after this all ends.”
“I could never forget about you.”
He leans forwards, willing to reattach his lips with yours. But you lean backwards a bit, avoiding his lips.
“Whatever happens?” you ask once again.
“Whatever happens.”
You throw yourself at Hoseok and push his shoulders so his back is completely resting on the back of the driver’s seat. You attack his lips with yours in a rush of passionate kisses, swollen lips and wet tongues.
Pulling from the hair at the nape of his neck, you begin moving up and down his length once again. Hoseok lets you move freely, enjoying the feeling of you taking control.
“Touch me, Hobi,” you pant in his ear. “Touch me.”
Hoseok bring his hands to your breasts and starts caressing them. Then, he pushes your back, forcing you to lean closer to him. From that position, with your breasts just aligned with his face, he starts peppering kisses all over them, sucking and licking.
“Ah…” you moan.
You can feel him twitching, and throbbing inside of you with each breath you let out, with each moan and call of his name, and involuntarily you start clenching around him.
“Fuck babe,” he growls, his voice muffled as his lips are still attached to one of your breasts. “Keep doing that.”
He brings one of his hands to your ass and places a hard slap there, his fingers massaging the area afterwards. He spanks it a few times before redirecting his hand towards your core.
You shiver when you feel his finger over your clit, moving at the same pace of your thrusts.
“How could I ever forget this?” he moans.
The feeling of it all is so overwhelming, you’re soon orgasming on top of Hoseok, pulling away and letting his still hard cock fall on top of his left thigh.
Your eyes are completely closed, and your lips parted in bliss, but you hear the lewd sounds of Hoseok licking his fingers clean and then bringing them down to your clit once again to ride out your orgasm.
“Fuck…” you mumble.
“Are you okay, baby?”
You swallow and move away from his fingers once you start feeling overwhelmed by them. Slowly opening your eyes, you find Hoseok looking intently at you.
Nodding, you smile softly.
“Look at the mess you made,” he laughs looking at his thighs and the leather material of his seat. “I’ll have to clean this up before tomorrow’s race.”
You roll your eyes and peck his lips once before kneeling down in between his legs once again.
“Knowing how freaky and kinky you are, you’ll probably leave it there along with my panties.”
Hoseok laughs softly. “I’d love that, but I’d probably be hard half of the race.”
You smirk, grabbing his cock and pumping it slowly. It’s covered in your own juices, so your hand slides up and down easily.
“And you wouldn’t concentrate.”
“Probably not,” he says. “I would be thinking how good I fucked you and how good I would fuck you after the race.”
“Ah, yeah? You would fuck me?” you tease.
He opens his mouth to answer, but you take his length and close your lips around its tip, a gasp escaping from Hoseok’s mouth along with a soft ‘fuck’.
“Yeah,” he pants as you suck him just the way he likes.
Slowly, teasingly, with your tongue tracing the vein that runs across the side of his cock and then stopping at the head of it, paying special attention to the tip of it. Your hand taking care of the part your mouth cannot.
“Move your hand from my cock,” he orders, and you do as he say.
He then grabs your hair into a ponytail with one of his hands and starts moving your head up and down. He repeats the same movement a few times before pushing his cock all the way into your mouth and keeping you there.
“You’re so good to me, how could I ever forget you?”
You close your eyes, ignoring the sting in the back of your throat. The burning sensation mixed with Hoseok’s cries is your own private heaven.
When you feel like you can’t breathe anymore you pat his thigh with your thumb a few times, and he releases the pressure on your head.
You cough a few times once his cock slips from your mouth.
“And what about you?” he asks, starting to pump his length with a fast pace. “Will you forget about me?”
You shake your head no and open your mouth.
“I want to hear you.”
“No, Hobi,” you say.
You know he loves it when you call him Hobi. He tries to act as if he didn’t, but you can see the way his eyes light up each time the nickname leaves your lips.
“That’s it,” he smirks, his eyes focused on how your lips are parted and your tongue stuck out for him. “Now I’m gonna cum in your mouth. Do you want it?”
You nod your head and look at him impatiently. You can see form the corner of your eye his hand starting to move faster and faster, and when some droplets of sweat start falling down his chest you know he’s about to cum.
He’s panting desperately, and just when the first spurs of cum leave the tip of his cock, he averts his eyes to yours and brings one hand to caress your cheeks as you eagerly receive all of him.
He pumps his cock a few more times, milking it completely until he starts coming down from his orgasm.
You close your mouth and swallow it all, opening it afterwards to show it to him.
“That’s it, good girl,” he mumbles, wiping away with his thumb some of his cum that was slipping from the corner of your mouth. “You’re so good to me.”
He grabs you by the waist and places you on his lap. Immediately, he attaches his lips to yours and kisses you passionately.
You don’t think about the next day, or how you’re going to win the race and beat him. You don’t think about the crucial piece of information you just got. You don’t think about the betrayal and the lies. You don’t think about how much you’re going to miss him once this all ends. You just let him kiss your thoughts away in the darkness of his car, in the silence of the night with the city that brought you together and that also tore you apart at your feet.
. . .
Friday comes with the memories of last night in Hoseok’s car. With the memories of his hands all over your body and his kisses all over your skin, his words whispered in your ear and his promises of never forgetting you.
Friday comes with the realisation of everything you’re about to do, of everything you’re about to put an end to.
You say goodbye to all your teachers and classmates. You have passed all your exams, you’re officially done with university.
You clean your apartment and start getting everything you will need into boxes.
You take a shower and dress yourself before going out and picking the bus that will bring you to the industrial area.
As soon as you arrive at the Black Panther’s garage you can sense the thick atmosphere. Everyone is doing their own tasks, minding their own business in silence. You tense immediately. ¿Has Mark told anyone? ¿Do they know? ¿Is Jackson going to punish you and ban you from the two remaining races?
“Y/N!” you hear your voice being called.
You leave your things in your car and then slam the door shut. Fuck. This is it. You’re out and this is all gone. You’ll have to find another way to earn the money and get the fuck out of this city. Or maybe you won’t be able to leave the city at all.
You see Jackson in front of his office, arms crossed over his chest as he stares at you sternly.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Sure,” you nod, trying to hide the fear that’s paralyzing you right now.
Maybe being forced to stay in this city is one of the best endings. If Jackson knows, then you have no idea of what he’s capable of doing to you. Or maybe it’s best if Jackson knows, because then you’ll future will be in his hands and not in Mark’s.
Before he closes the door of his office you catch a glimpse of Mark staring at the both of you. You try to hold his gaze as Jackson finally closes the door.
“Is everything okay?” you ask, trying to act calm.
Jackson sighs before taking a seat on his chair. The office looks more like a recording studio than the office of a garage, but that makes you feel a little bit more relaxed somehow. You have spent entire afternoons with the rest of the gang members laughing and just chilling. It makes you sad to think that there won’t be afternoons like that anymore.
“Yeah…” Jackson sighs after a small pause. “Yeah.”
You look at him cautiously, your hands trembling at your sides. To prevent you from trembling even more and falling limply onto the floor, you take a seat on the leather sofa next to the wall.
Jackson looks at you and smiles softly at you.
He doesn’t know.
You sigh feeling relieved that you still have time left, but you can’t ignore the pang of guilt you also feel.
“Are you sure? You look worried,” you say. “And the rest of the boys too, well, except Lynn because I spoke to her and she could only think about what she would wear tonight.”
“It doesn’t surprise me,” Jackson laughs.
You smile at him and, when he tears his eyes away from yours, you push the subject a bit.
“Well?”
“I’m just nervous,” he says. “Like, really fucking nervous.”
He’s looking straight at his intertwined hands, bouncing his leg up and down constantly. You’ve never seen him like this, without his tough-leader façade.
“Why? Because of the race?”
“Yeah,” he nods. “I didn’t know how to tell you because I didn’t want to pressure you but… I’m nervous as fuck for tonight’s race.”
You blink a couple of times. Pressure… As if Mark’s words weren’t already enough.
“I am, too,” you sigh, opting for being sincere.
“If we don’t win tonight… Then the championship is gone for us. You are our only chance, it’s the closest we’ve been to winning in years.”
“Oh, you’re not pressuring me at all,” you joke.
Jackson laughs softly, but stops when he sees you’re not laughing at all.
“Sorry, I’m sounding like such and egoistic asshole, just worrying about winning the race and all that… But this means more to me than just some victory, a trophy and a bag full of money.”
“It means power,” you nod, understanding.
“No, it’s not that either,” Jackson says shaking his head.
You frown. “What is it, then?”
He hesitates and sighs loudly. “It’s difficult to explain, but I guess it’s time I do.”
You nod encouragingly.
“I need to do this for my sister,” Jackson sighs, as if he just lifted a weight off. “I need to avenge her, I need to make Namjoon pay for what he did to her.”
“Namjoon?” you ask, frowning.
“You know there’s bad blood between me and him,” Jackson explains.
“Yeah.”
“Well, it has not always been like that. We were once close friends… Fuck no, we were brothers.”
He stops for a minute, and you can see it in his eyes, in the way they’re distantly staring at the wall, that he’s remembering those times.
“We grew up together in the same neighbourhood, next door. We drove our mums crazy together, got arrested for the first time together, got into this world together, dream about our futures together, about being the kings of the city… I thought it would always be us against the world, the big RM and Wang,” Jackson stops for a moment again. “Fuck, those were the best years of my life.”
“What happened?” you cautiously ask.
“I gave Namjoon everything I had except one thing, my little sister. When we were kids the three of us always played together and got into trouble together, but I was a kid and thought nothing of their smiles and touches. It was when he turned fifteen when I started noticing the lingering looks and warm smiles… I made him promise me that he would never approach my sister, she was my sister, his best friend’s sister, nothing else. And the bastard looked me in the eye and promised me.”
You can see the hurt in his eyes. Where is his sister now? Is she with Namjoon? Did she choose Namjoon and not her brother?
“Like a fucking fool I believed him. I thought nothing when he started telling me that he couldn’t meet that night, or that he had other things to do. I thought nothing when my sister told me she wouldn’t come home for the night, that she would stay at her friend’s. Behind my back he was fucking her… For nearly five years… But I found out. I was supposed to be at the garage, working my ass off so we could finally open that recording studio we had always dreamt about, but they gave me the day off and returned home early, only to find him in my sister’s bedroom with her in his arms.”
Jackson clenches his jaw and his hands become tight fists.
“I punched him, again and again and I swear to God I would have killed him had it not been for my sister that got in between us. Sometimes I dream about that night and I dream about killing him. I wish I had killed him.”
You flinch when he slams his fist on the wooden table and screams.
“In the end she chose him, and he chose her. She went to live with him to some shitty apartment, with a shitty income in a shitty neighbourhood even worst than the one we grew up in. She deserved better… Fuck Y/N, she was so beautiful, in every way. She was like a fucking star, illuminating wherever she went. Everyone loved her, with her smiles and laughs, and she didn’t even realise. She could have had everything and she… She chose him, a no one that had nothing to offer, with nowhere to honk out.”
What could Hoseok offer to you if you stayed here? Or what could he offer to you if he went away with you? If you choose to trust your heart and not your mind and you choose not to betray him tonight, what could he offer to you? And what could he offer to your sister? To her future? If you stay here you won’t find a job at what you want, your mother will make sure of that, and your sister will have the same fate you had. An eternal search of something you’ll never find. What else does he have besides this life full of danger and violence?
“The last time I saw her was at a race,” Jackson continues, snapping you out of your own thoughts. “Namjoon and I used to be part of a gang, with some others like Jinyoung, Jaebum, Yoongi or Jin. When I found out about my sister and him, the group divided and the boys took sides. That night we were racing as rivals for the first time. I still remember it as if it happened yesterday. I remember getting out of my car and seeing them, she was sitting on the bonnet of Namjoon’s car, him in between her legs with his hands on her cheeks. They were laughing, kissing each other in between jokes. I remember thinking that I had never seen my sister looking so happy. I remember thinking that maybe I should let my pride aside and let them be. I remember Namjoon nudging her side when he saw me looking at them, and her turning around to face me.”
The last time… He hasn’t spoken to her ever since then? Or even seen her?
“They exchanged some words before she decided to hop off the bonnet of the car and hesitantly walk towards me. I remember Namjoon looking at me with a threatening look, as if I would ever hurt my sister… Again. I remember my pride taking the best of me, she was my little sister, my baby, my everything, but seeing her walk towards me like that with Namjoon looking out for her made me realise she was now a grown up woman who didn’t need me anymore, who had someone else to take care of her now. I remember feeling hurt, and angry, and sad, sad above all. So, I turned around and rejected her. I got inside my car and waited for the race to start.”
Your heart clenches at the sadness behind Jackson’s words.
“It was a partner race, they’re forbidden now, but they were huge. In it, your partner had to sit in your lap while you drove, facing you. It was exciting, not gonna lie, even more if you liked the girl, but it was dangerous too. You vision field was reduced, and you couldn’t move as freely as usual so you couldn’t react quickly to any unforeseen thing…” another pause. This time longer than the rest, and you can almost swear he’s on the verge of tears. “It all happened so quickly. My sister got in the car with Namjoon. My partner was a girl I don’t even remember anymore. She sat on my lap and I remember kissing her, telling her that I couldn’t wait for the race to be over so I could… Out of the corner of my eye I could see my sister on Namjoon’s lap, kissing him, reassuring him. Then the race started… And the next thing I remember was seeing Namjoon’s car crashed into a concrete wall and stopping my fucking car, kicking out that girl and running towards the car… Or what was left of it. My sister’s body absorbed the force of the impact, protecting Namjoon from the damage.”
You gulp and clasp a hand over your mouth to prevent you from sobbing. You can feel your eyes burning with tears and you jump put of your seat to place a comforting hand on Jackson’s back.
“Jackson… I’m so sorry… I didn’t know.”
“I know,” Jackson says after a while, straightening up and causing your hand to fall from its place. He rubs his eyes and then looks at you. “No one told you and after all the commotion the accident caused, the prohibition of partner races, I’ve tried to make people forget about it by keeping silent.”
“I’m really sorry, I have a younger sister and if something ever happened to her…” you stop when images of your sister come to your mind.
Maybe this will all hurt, and it will keep hurting in the future, but you must do what’s best for your sister. Now, you’re surer than ever.
Without thinking twice, you hug Jackson and caress his back comfortingly.
You both stay like that, hugging each other and sharing your pain.
“I’m so, so sorry,” you mumble, breaking the hug.
“Now you know why this is more than some races to me, more than a championship and money. I have to live knowing that the son of a bitch who killed my little sister is still out there, living his life to the fullest, going to parties and breathing the air my sister is no longer able to breathe,” Jackson says, clenched teeth as he spits venom and hatred with each word. “At first I thought about killing him, take everything away from him as he did to me. But that would be like a gift to him. I want him to live knowing that he killed her, I want him to remember her every single fucking day of his life. I will take everything away from him, yes, but I’ll be slow and painful.”
“You want to take the place of his gang as the leaders of the races, and therefore, the leaders of this city.”
“Our clients, the ones we sell… Our goods to, are important ones. They have high positions in the elite of this city, they’re powerful and they want their suppliers to be equally as powerful. Winning the races means you’re the king of the streets, the most powerful. If I take that away from him, I’ll take all his clients, all his money, all his power… He will be that poor boy who was a no one again.”
“If I win tonight’s race, I’ll still be able to win the championship. If I lose, J Hope will have too many points for me to catch him.”
“Exactly,” Jackson sighs. “I don’t wanna pressure you into anything, I just want to tell you that this is a team work and we’ll all be supporting you. I believe in you, I know you can do it.”
You look at the ground, your mind racing faster than you’ll car will race tonight.
“You have potential,” Jackson continues. “We all believe in you.”
You already made a decision. Why is it so hard for you to nod and tell Jackson that you’ll do it, that you won’t fail him or the Blue Eagles?
“I’ll do it for our sisters,” you nod decisively.
. . .
Your hands are sweating inside your gloves, and your heart his beating wildly inside your chest. You feel like you’re gonna throw up at any minute.
You got into this because you wanted to feel free, feel as if – for once in your life – you held the reins of your life, of your decisions and the consequences. But now you are where this all started, inside your black Mitsubishi, feeling the weight of all that was going to happen that night over your shoulders, suffocating you.
You look at the girl who is standing in front of the cars, the megaphone in her hands as she shouts something you don’t give a fuck about. You guess it’s the same thing she always says.
You avoid looking at your left, where the silver Porsche is parked, the man you love and you’re about to betray inside.
You wonder if he’s thinking about you, if he’s imagining everything he would do to you after the race, and you close your eyes, because you want to imagine that too.
You want to picture yourself at the party an hour after the race, sitting in your booth with your drink in your hand, pretending you’re bored and that you don’t notice the stares Hoseok’s sending your way, making him impatient and angry. You imagine yourself texting him, smirking as you write each word carefully, teasing him because she’s watching you and he knows you’re texting him. You imagine yourself telling goodbye to Lynn and the rest and sneaking out of the party. You imagine yourself waiting for Hoseok outside as you gaze at the stars. You imagine his hands roaming all over you in the car, on your way to your apartment. You imagine the feeling of his lips as he kisses you and pushes you against the wall of the elevator. You imagine his delicious caresses and how impatient he is while you open the door to your small apartment. You imagine…
You open your eyes and come back to reality.
Imagining is not going to get you out of this. It isn’t going to help you.
But you can’t help it. You keep imagining, thinking about the what ifs. All the after parties you will never sneak out of. Of all the kisses and caresses and impatient spanks as you open the door to your apartment that you will never have.
Your body is on autopilot and you don’t even know the race has started and that you’re driving now, pressing the gas pedal with force.
Hoseok is ahead of you, as usual since his car is lighter and accelerates faster.
Looking through the rear mirror of your car, you can see Jungkook’s and Jinyoung’s cars starting to disappear into the distance, just Hoseok and you at the front of the race. When did the race start? For how long have you been driving on autopilot?
You position your car directly behind Hoseok’s, picking up his speed.
You can see him looking at you through the rear mirror of his own car. You would be smirking by now, but your lips are forming a straight line and a frown has appeared in between your brows.
Slowly, your car starts coming closer and closer to Hoseok’s, but as he sees what you’re doing, he press the brakes softly and the rectangular red light on the back of his car lights on, making you step on the brakes too.
You click your tongue and try to approach him in a different way,
There’s a curve not far from where you’re now, you’ll wait until then,
Yeah, you’re my fucking weakness.
You got me crazy.
You shift gears, reducing so the engine of your car contains its own strength.
We still don’t know J Hope’s weakness.
The man with no weakness does have a weakness.
Yeah?
Yeah. You wanna know what is it?
You.
You start seeing the curve. Hoseok must be happy because he has escaped a bit from you.
You wait, the curve is getting closer. You have to do it now.
Taking advantage of the straight path ahead of you, you let go of the steering wheel and quickly grab the pitch-black helmet with both hands.
They’re trembling as you unclasp the security bar of the helmet. They’re sweating as you pull from the helmet, taking it off and placing it on the passenger seat.
It feels different, driving without your helmet on. You feel naked, exposed.
Quickly, you grab the steering wheel just in time, and just as quickly you step on the gas pedal until the sound of the engine is so loud you can’t stand it anymore.
When you look upwards, your car has caught Hoseok’s and you’re both side by side. While your car was slowing down because you were saving your engine’s power, Hoseok had maintained it and it lost strength.
The curve arrives and you grab tightly the steering wheel. This is it.
You shift gears and let your car relax a bit as you take the curve, the power of the engine still accelerating your car’s speed.
Taking a deep breath, you roll down the tinted window of your car and close your eyes. This is it.
You’re my fucking weakness.
You open your eyes and turn your head a bit, looking at the silver Porsche. Hoseok is focused on taking the curve, his cheeks getting fuller like every time he’s concentrated on something.
He feels a pair of eyes and he looks to the side, to the fucking asshole who is threatening to take the victory away from him.
Instead of seeing some tinted window and some black helmet, he sees…
He sees you.
It’s brief, but you can see it, the astonished look on his face. The fucking confusion in those dark eyes of his.
You turn your face around quickly, focusing your eyes on the road once again. You must return your attention to the race, and that’s why you must look away from Hoseok, not just because you can’t stand seeing the betrayal on his face.
Pressing your foot on the gas pedal you take the curve from the inside, your car easily passing the silver Porsche. You roll the window up once again when the curve ends, and you continue pressing on the gas pedal as if your life depended on it. You don’t want to look to your side, in case you find him still looking at you.
Finally, you give in and out of pure curiosity you look at the rearview.
Nothing.
You then look at the side mirror. In the distance, you see two dots of light. Is it Hoseok? Is he okay?
You shake your head, forcing yourself to continue. This what you wanted, now you can’t back away.
Time flies as you continue pressing on the gas pedal and keeping the steering wheel straight. You unconsciously look to the side mirror every now and then, hoping to see two lights, or some silver reflect. But you don’t, instead all you see is the empty road behind you and the streetlights at both sides.
Your eyes find the finish line after a couple of seconds.
There, a mass of people dressed in black, vibrant blue, red and all sorts of colours are waiting for you.
As you cross the finish line, you let out all the air you didn’t even know you had been holding. You hear screams and cheers coming from the outside of your car, but you stay inside, silent and unmoving.
Your hands still gripping the steering wheel, the engine still on. The lights of the panel of your car remind you of the night before. Of how tight Hoseok was holding you against him.
The screams become more vivid and invade the inside of your car when the driver’s door opens and someone barges in to hug you.
“You did it!” you hear the voice of Jackson against your ear as he hugs you tightly.
“Yeah,” you mumble, a fake laugh escaping your lips.
You try to smile and look happy when he break the hug and looks at you.
“Thank you, Y/N,” he sincerely says.
You nod with your head before unbuckling your belt and turning the engine off, keeping the car keys on the back of your jeans.
Just then, another car crosses the finish line. It’s Jungkook, followed closely by Jinyoung. But no sign of the silver Porsche.
Your eyes keep scanning the finish line as car after car crosses it. Hoseok is still nowhere to be seen.
Meanwhile, your gang mates hug you, kiss you, pick you up and turn you around. Lynn jumps excitedly as she hugs you. She screams your name and Jackson follows her, and soon others are screaming your name too.
You catch a glance of Mark blending in with the rest of the Black Panthers. He’s celebrating, just like the rest, but when his eyes meet yours, he turns serious and just nods.
Your attention turns back to the finish line when you hear the loud roar of a engine.
The silver Porsche appears and the crowd parts to give him space to park. But, instead of parking, it flashes its headlights at the crowd.
The Black Panthers are still celebrating, but you’re too focused on the silver car and its driver to care.
The crowd takes some steps back once again and then, the silver Porsche accelerates and disappears in the distance.
For a minute, the crowd stays silent, but then, your name is shouted once again and they keep celebrating.
They don’t notice how your eyes still linger on the place where the silver car disappeared. They don’t notice the frown on your face or the longing in your eyes. They don’t notice how you’re desperately trying to get rid of their hands touching you to lift you up, or their arms surrounding you in a hug. They don’t notice how your heart is breaking right in front of them. They don’t notice how you bite your lower lip to not scream in agony.
You must face the consequences of your act, and they don’t notice any of that because you hide it all behind a cold façade – your old-time friend.
Hoseok could have been a big ‘now or never’ shouted in the air at the top of your lungs. He could have been a lot of things, but he’s not any of them anymore. And, ever since he can’t be a ‘now’, maybe he will be a ‘never’.
. . .
After the race, you don’t feel in the mood for partying, but you know that if you go to your apartment you won’t be able to do anything but think, and that’s the last thing you need right now.
Instead of acting like a mature persona and facing the consequences of your acts and the choices you made, you choose to drink in hopes of forgetting about everything even if it’s just for tonight.
And drink you do. Glass after glass.
Nobody finds it weird that you’re drinking as if there was no tomorrow, too focused on drinking all the alcohol in the room themselves.
Shot after shot your throat burns and shot after shot your mind stops thinking about him.
The Black Panthers are celebrating. You’re at the top of the chart, ten points ahead of the unbeatable J Hope. Even if you finished the final race in second place, you would win.
Jackson is already drunk, mumbling uncoherent things to a girl that is attached to his neck. Jaebum, Yugyeom, Youngjae and Bambam are dancing on the dancefloor. Mark is nowhere to be seen. And, unsurprisingly to you even in your drunken state, Lynn and Jinyoung are making out on a couch.
Then, there is you, sitting on an armchair by your own, drinking and laughing on your own. You’re starting to see double.
Trying to focus your gaze properly and get rid of the blurry lines, you stare at the booth in which the Blue Eagles are.
The atmosphere in it has nothing to do with the usually cheerful and celebratory one. Namjoon is sitting, his gaze lost inside his glass of liquor – and you wonder if he’s thinking about her, if he ever thinks about her anymore. Taehyung is talking to some girls, but he doesn’t look as playful and in the mood as he usually is. Jungkook and Jimin are talking, a conversation that seems to serious for a party. Yoongi is on his phone as he usually is, and Jin is laughing with some girls, though you can’t see his smiles reaching his eyes.
Your eyes search across the booth again, in search of Hoseok, but he isn’t there.
You wonder where he is. If he’s home, or if he’s on that mountain he brought you to just yesterday. You wonder if he’s thinking about you, if he hates you, if he’s mad at you… He probably does, and he probably is.
Sighing, you fill you cup once again and gulp it down in one go.
If you could just force your mind to stop thinking about certain things, you would be carrying on, knowing you did the right thing… At least for your sister.
It isn’t until fifteen minutes later, that your feet drag you to the bar of the old industrial unit. You touch the sticky counter with your fingers, not caring about the strange looks the people are throwing at you. Some congratulate you – now everyone knows you’re the mysterious new racer of the Black Panthers – some others just look at you, and others send you a look of disgust.
This is were you were drinking your thoughts again – you have a weird habit of doing that – after he beat you in the second race of the season. You still remember his words and his voice.
You look pissed, None-Of-Your-Business.
And you were.
You close your eyes, wishing he would appear from behind you and tease you like he used to do. You would pretend you hated it once again and act all rude and closed-off, when you were really willing to answer him with a smile and shiny eyes.
When you open your eyes, a figure exiting the door of the male’s bathroom catches your attention, the vibrant blue bomber shining like lighthouse for you.
You follow the figure with your eyes until it exists the industrial unit.
You immediately take your hands off of the sticky counter of the bar and run towards the door where the shadow disappeared.
Was it…? No, it couldn’t be.
But you wanted to find it out for yourself.
Outside, you welcomed the fresh air with open arms. It was like the sound of an alarm clock to your drunken system.
You had to blink a couple of times to recognise where you were, before stumbling towards the back of the industrial unit.
Once you arrive, you see the place deserted, and you feel a pang of disappointment in your chest. The sky is clear tonight, and the moon lights the place, bathing with its milky light.
You squint your eyes through the place, and just when you’re about to give up and go back to the party, you find a slumped figure on top of one of the metallic containers.
Back pressed against the back of the industrial unit, legs pressed against his chest, head leant backwards, there he is. Hoseok is contemplating the sky just like you had been contemplating it the night you two ran away from the city, even if it was just for a weekend, even if it was just because you had to escape from the police.
You stay there, paralyzed, thinking about just running away and acting as if you didn´t see him. But that would just be another act of immaturity to add to the thousand you committed tonight. So, instead of chickening out like you want to do, you take a deep breath of air and try to act as if you weren’t drunk.
“Hoseok,” you call.
The boy immediately snaps his eyes at you. It takes him a couple of seconds to recognise you, but once he does, he hops off the metallic container and starts walking towards you.
Or so you think, because once he reaches you, he just continues walking by, not even sparing you a glance.
“Hoseok!” you call once again, running after him and grabbing his arm once you reach him.
He shakes your hand off of him and ignores you.
“Hoseok, please! I just wanna talk to you!”
“So you can keep lying to me? No, thanks,” he says, not even once stopping to look at you.
Maybe it is because you’re drunk, because otherwise you would never cause a scene in front of everyone, but you run towards him until you stop right in front of him.
“Hoseok!”
Quickly, he avoids you and keeps walking towards the entrance of the industrial unit.
You don’t give up and follow him.
“What do I need to do for you to talk to me?”
“Disappear,” he spits.
“No, please, listen to me,” you insist, once again running until your in front of him, your hands on his chest to stop him from further walking. “I need to explain it to you.”
“Back off.”
You flinch at the venom laced in his voice, but still, you don’t give up, not even when he grabs your wrists with his hands and tries to push them away from him.
“Back. Off,” he repeats through clenched teeth.
“No.”
“I said back off!” he shouts, grabbing your wrists harder and pushing you away from him with strength.
“And I said listen to me!” you raise your voice so it tops Hoseok’s, catching the attention of some people who got out of the industrial unit to get some fresh air.
Hoseok stops for a moment and he analyses you, eyeing you up and down.
“Are you drunk?” he whispers, scrunching his nose as if he was disgusted by you.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t matter right now.”
“That doesn’t matter?!” he asks, raising his voice once again. “Of course if fucking matters. I won’t have this conversation with you, much less if you’re drunk.”
“I’m good now,” you say, taking a step back and waving your hands in the air as if showing him you are completely capable of maintaining a conversation. “See?”
“Well, maybe you want to talk, then,” he says, completely ignoring you and your stupid movements. “But I don’t.”
And with that, he turns around once again and starts walking away from you. Once again. He has walked away from you too many times, and they were all your fault. You’re not letting him go this time.
“I am in love with you!” you shout, making Hoseok stop dead in his tracks.
You are gasping for air as if you had just been running a marathon.
When you see Hoseok doesn’t make a move, you stay there, shyly repeating those same six words.
“I am in love with you,” you whisper, so lowly you’re sure he hasn’t heard you.
You observe his back as it tenses and relaxes, his fists as they clench and unclench, and you wait, for him to turn around and tell you he loves you back, or to continue walking as if you never said anything in the first place.
But he turns around and takes some steps towards you.
“You’re just saying that because you’re drunk,” he scowls angrily.
And despite his steady voice and firm words, you can see his eyes searching for some clue in yours. A clue that tells him you’re lying. A clue that tells him you’re telling the truth.
“I am in love with you,” you repeat for the third time, now looking him in the eye.
“You’re saying that just so you can keep playing with me.”
“Does it look like I’m playing with you, Hoseok?” you ask, taking some steps towards him.
“Well, it didn’t look like you were playing with me all these past months either,” he says, lifting his arms in the air. “And look where we are now.”
“I can explain…” you plead.
“Explain what? How funny it was to laugh at me?” he asks, bitterness laced in his words.
“I never laughed at you.”
“Just tell me something… Was it all planned? To get me to sleep with you just so you could learn my strengths and my weakness and use them against me? Was it all planned when you invited me to your apartment that first night? Or the second? Or the third?”
“No,” is the only thing you can whisper.
“What?” he says, asking you to say it more clearly.
“No,” you repeat. “It was never planned.”
“Why can’t you look me in the eye as you say so, then?” he asks, and you lift your gaze, not even realising you had been staring at the ground. “You can save it. The I love you. I already caught you in your sick little game, you don’t need to play pretend anymore. Congratulations, you got what you wanted, you’ll be the best racer in the city.”
“I don’t wanna be the best racer in this fucking city, or in any other city for that matter,” you angrily say. “I invited you to my apartment because I fucking wanted to. The first time and the second one and all the other times. At first, I only saw you as a forbidden attraction and that was what made me want you I’m not gonna lie, but things started to get more and more difficult and I…”
You pause for a moment, trying to find the right words to say.
“Why would I tell you that it was wrong and that we would get caught all those times, then? Why would I tell you to stop if I only wanted to take advantage of you? How would you explain that night when I told you we should stop seeing each other?”
“Another piece of your game.”
You sigh exasperatedly. “There was never a game to begin with!”
“I saw you Y/N,” he says, approaching you dangerously until his chest is nearly touching yours. “I saw you in your car, with your helmet off… Looking at me as if you had been waiting for that moment for years. That stare… Each time I told you about that mysterious new racer of the Black Panthers and how badly I wanted to beat him… You were laughing on the inside, weren’t you? At least I hope you had fun.”
“It was never like that! If you’d just let me explain!” you say, getting frustrated.
“Couldn’t you have explained me last night?!” he says. “While you were in my car, telling me all those things… I even thought that maybe you were right, that I deserve a better life, one better than this. I even thought about leaving everything behind and starting from zero with you.”
“I thought it’d be better if I just disappeared and you never heard of this,” you say, trying to calm yourself and lower your voice to stop you both from catching everyone’s attention. In the end, all everyone around you is seeing is just a Blue Eagle arguing with a Black Panther, and not a simple Black Panther, their new racer and therefore, the Ghost Eagle’s enemy. “That way you would have never thought this way about me.”
“Well, congratulations, you got exactly that.”
You click your tongue, but as you start hearing voices coming from the industrial unit, you know you don’t have much time to explain yourself.
“I wasn’t planning on winning, or even telling you, I would just move out of the city with my sister and it’d be over, you would maybe think about me for a couple of moths but then you’d end up forgetting about me, but Mark came to my apartment last Sunday when you dropped me off and he saw us. He threatened to tell Jackson about it and hurt my sister if I didn’t win tonight’s race and the championship.” you say, rushing your words as the noise and voices start getting louder. You’ve attracted too much attention. “The only easy way of winning you was using your weakness against you, and you told me that weakness was –“
“What’s going on here?” a deep voice says from behind you, startling you.
Hoseok backs away from you as if your presence burnt him, but as he does so, his eyes never leave you. The deep frown between his brows and the way his lips form a thin line, makes your heart beat erratically.
“Please…” you mouth to him. “You have to believe me.”
“I said what’s going on here?” the voice repeats, and when you move away, you see Namjoon approaching followed by the rest of the Blue Eagles.
Their vibrant blue bomber jackets make their way through the crowd who was “discreetly” staring at you.
“N… Nothing,” you stutter, looking to the floor awkwardly.
Hoseok is still speechless, staring at you and a huge battle exploding inside his mind.
“Are you sure? Hoseok?” Namjoon asks once again, this time walking towards Hoseok.
“I can’t believe you fucking did this to me,” another voice chimes in, and this time, the shiver than runs down your spine tells you that Jackson isn’t going to ask what is going on. He already knows.
A pair of hands grabs you from the collar of your t-shirt and pushes you backwards.
You only see a pair of dark, furious eyes.
“How could you?” Jackson spits. “After all I’ve done for you, after all I told you.”
“I… I…” you stutter.
He shakes your body with force, making you stumble backwards. You don’t fall to the ground because the same hands that are pushing you are the ones that keep you in place.
“I’ve let you in my group and accepted you as a sister.”
You don’t know what to say. ‘I’m sorry’? You’re not sure you’re sorry at all.
“I’ve let you into my own fucking life,” Jackson says through gritted teeth, shaking you once again and causing you to fight against him trying to escape from his grip.
“Let go off her,” Hoseok growls, grabbing Jacksons t-shirt from its back and pushing him away from you.
“And you…” Jackson spits, turning around and quickly pushing Hoseok back. “You piece of shit.”
“Stop this! What the fuck is going on here!” Namjoon shouts, separating both Jackson and Hoseok.
“You didn’t tell him?” Jackson laughs devilishly, looking at Hoseok. “You were keeping it a secret, weren’t you? You and your girl.”
Hoseok remains silent, looking defiantly at Jackson.
“What the fuck are you talking about, Wang?”
“Why don’t you tell him Hoseok?”
“Hoseok?” Namjoon asks, staring at the dark-haired boy.
Hoseok glances briefly at you before taking a deep breath.
“Why don’t you tell him you have been both fucking each other behind our backs?” Jackson asks again once he sees Hoseok is not going to say anything.
Namjoon’s eyes widen and he immediately snaps his eyes at Hoseok, then at you.
“What? Hoseok what is Wang saying?”
Hoseok hesitates, the silence surrounds you both.
“Joon, he’s telling the truth,” Hoseok says, maintaining eye contact with Namjoon.
Namjoon sighs loudly and runs a hand across his hair.
“Fuck… Hobi…” Namjoon scoffs. “What have you done?”
“I’m sorry Joon, fuck, I know I betrayed you and broke our rules… But I couldn’t help it, I...” Hoseok says, stopping before looking at you and then averting his eyes away from you once again.
Namjoon is still running his hands across his hair, his face, not knowing what to do.
Jackson scoffs.
“Of course you’re not going to punish him,” he says bitterly. “You did the same.”
Namjoon snaps at that.
“You don’t bring that up now,” he says, pointing Jackson with his finger, threatening him.
“I can bring that up whenever I fucking want,” Jackson says.
He slowly approaches Namjoon until the latter’s finger is pressed against his chest. More people stars stopping to see what’s going on, surprised to see both leaders of the Blue Eagles and the Black Panthers interacting for the first time in years.
“You better stop before I –“ Namjoon starts.
“You also betrayed me and broke all our rules. How are you going to punish him for following in your footsteps?”
Angrily, Namjoon breaks the small space that remains between them both and grabs the front of his leather jacket.
“Stop. Now,” Namjoon grits his teeth.
Everyone around you his holding their breaths, waiting expectantly for what is going to happen next. The only sounds that surround you are the few voices of the people that are outside and that aren’t focused on you and the muffled music coming from the industrial unit.
“Was it all planned? To do the same thing to me again?” Jackson keeps spitting, teasing Namjoon, pushing him closer to his limit. “Did you use her like you used my sister? Did you send him to fuck her just so you could see me suffer again?”
Namjoon growls loudly and slams his fist on Jackson’s nose.
“No!” you shout, launching towards them to try and stop them.
You grab Jackson’s leather jacket in an attempt of pushing him away from Namjoon, but they’re like a storm clashing against the sea, unstoppable, drowning everything and everyone in their way.
They keep shouting things none of you can understand while punches fly, they push each other and keep fighting like two rabid dogs.
Jungkook and Jimin rush to grab Namjoon as you pull from Jackson’s jacket with all your strength, but despite your efforts, he doesn’t move a single inch.
Instead, you stumble backwards and nearly fall onto the ground if it weren’t for the arms of Yugyeom. He looks at you with stern eyes before rushing to help Jinyoung trying to break Jackson away from Namjoon.
“Y/N…” Lynn whispers from behind you.
You look at her and she has tears in her eyes. You can only lower your head and let the guilt fill you.
“I…” she stutters.
You only shake your head and let her hug you.
But your small moment is broken when you hear the screams of Jungkook and Jinyoung.
“Don’t touch me!”
“Get out of my way then!”
“Jinyoung!” Lynn calls him before he can punch Jungkook in the face.
But it’s too late.
And somehow, hell breaks loose and everyone is punching everyone, dragging them to the ground and shouting like crazy.
You can’t help but feel as if you’re the responsible of it all.
“Please, stop!” you say, trying to push Bambam away from Jimin.
When you see all your efforts are in vain, you let go of the boys and look at Mark, who is contemplating everything from afar.
“Are you happy now?” you ask him bitterly. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”
Blind with rage, you approach him, close your hand into a fist and slam it onto his face with all the strength you have. It is so sudden, that Mark doesn’t see it coming and your fist collides against his nose completely.
It hurts more than you expected, but the pain is so satisfying, you punch him again.
Mark lets out a cry of pain and clasps his hand over his bleeding nose. You pant, massaging your sore knuckles and ready to deliver your second punch. But this time, Mark is waiting for you and he throws you onto the ground.
You fight against him, rolling onto the ground, trying to kneel him on his crotch.
But he’s bigger and stronger, and he clasps his hands around your throat, a devilish glint on his eyes as he sees you gasping for air.
You grab his wrists, trying to scratch him, to break his hold over your neck. Gasping, you watch some droplets of blood run down his chin and land onto your t-shirt.
You scream, trying to find strength with it.
“This isn’t what I wanted,” he pants. “This is what you deserve.”
You clench your teeth, your lungs starting to burn and your throat begging you to swallow, to breathe… To do anything. But you can’t.
Somehow, your grip over Mark’s wrists looses and you find yourself looking away from him and looking at your surroundings.
You feel dizzy. All around you are punches, screams, people watching… And yet, all you can do is watch, because you feel as if this is all your fault. When your father ran away from home he caused you great pain, and ever since then, you’ve been doing the same thing to everyone that surrounds you. You know you’ve caused pain to your mother, despite her harsh words towards you and her behaviour, you know he loves you. You know you’ve caused pain to your sister, leaving her on her own with your mother, promising her that it would all be over some day. You’ve caused Hoseok pain, you’ve caused Jackson pain, you’ve caused Lynn pain…
You look up to see Hoseok trying to stop Namjoon from hitting Jackson.
What did you expect after all you did to him? That he would understand and run after you? He told you, this world is everything he has, those boys who are hitting each other are everything he knows. You can’t just appear into his life and tell him to leave all that for you, and much less when you’ve been lying to him all the time.
A part of you understands, that this is how things are supposed to be. That this is how it’s supposed to end. Hoseok belongs to a world that is miles away from yours, despite being in the same city, despite racing together, despite you trying to lie to yourself and convince yourself that you’re a part of this world too. Another part of you is begging you to not understand, to not think, to just feel.
That same part is longing to have Hoseok in between your arms once again, forever. That same part is begging you to stay with him.
But the bigger part, is the part that understands, the part that can’t do to your sister the same thing your father did to you. And that part is now telling you to let go of him, you made him suffer enough, just disappear from your life, he will end up forgetting about you.
Your eyes then land on Jackson and Namjoon, who are still resisting everyone’s attempts at separating them. You remember the story Jackson told you about Namjoon, his little sister and him. As they’re punching each other, screaming at each other after years of pent up tension, you realise they’re just two broken boys still mourning the death of a girl they loved, a girl that will never come back. Regret in their every hit, in their every word, regret of what they did and what they didn’t, a regret that’s eating them up.
This world has no place for that kind of love.
This world has no place for Hoseok and you.
You don’t want to end up as Namjoon and Jackson’s sister. A sad love story that didn’t fit in this world of violence and death, something too beautiful for such a dark place.
You don’t want Hoseok to end up as Jackson and Namjoon. You better have him remembering you with bitterness than crying over something that could have been but wasn’t.
You better have him forgetting about you. That way it will hurt less when you cry over him at night, miles away from him.
But your sister needs you. You can’t let her down like your father did. You have to close this chapter, and start the next. That’s what life’s about.
Closing your eyes and taking a deep breath of air, you gather what little strength is left in you and you sink your nails into Mark’s skin until you can feel his flesh breaking underneath them. Mark gasps in pain and doubts, enough for you to take advantage of it and roll onto the ground until your hovering above him.
Landing one last punch on Mark’s jaw and crying in pain when you feel the bones of your hand hurting from the impact, you stand up.
“Stop them!” Lynn is crying. “They’re gonna kill each other!”
Namjoon is bleeding from his nose, Jackson’s lip is broken and swollen. Jackson’s hands are over Namjoon’s neck, but he’s not fighting back. He’s just staring at Jackson.
“Don’t you dare,” you growl, feeling Mark moving behind you, and you crash your boot against his ribcage, making him turn around and held the sore area.
“Please!” Lynn repeats.
And then, it is as if times stops. Jinyoung stops hitting Jungkook, Yugyeom lets go of Taehyung. Yoongi and Jin stand up from the ground panting, and Bambam, Youngjae and Jaebum do the same. Jimin sits on the floor.
“You killed her!” the voice of Jackson is heard in the silence that has somehow created itself around the scene. “You took her away from me!”
You all watch as Namjoon does nothing. He doesn’t fight back, he just stares into Jackson’s eyes, tears falling freely down his cheeks.
“You took everything away from me!” Jackson keeps saying. “And now you’re taking her too.”
“Stop this,” Lynn says, lowering her voice.
“Jackson,” Jaebum also says, walking closer to the blonde boy and placing a hand on his shoulder. “He isn’t fighting back.”
“I’ll take everything away from you back…” Jackson says through clenched teeth.
You can see Namjoon starting to gasp for air, his eyelids almost dropping.
“He’s gonna kill him,” Lynn insists.
“Jackson, this is enough,” Jaebum repeats. “Don’t make the same mistakes I did.”
He tightens his hold on Jackson’s shoulders and finally, something clicks in him. Standing up abruptly, he lets go of Namjoon and averts his eyes from the boy gasping for air on the ground.
“What are you all staring at?!” Jackson shouts to the curious crowd. “Go back to minding your own fucking business!”
Immediately, the crowd disperses, leaving you all alone with the silence of the night and the erratic breaths of Namjoon and Jackson.
“This doesn’t end here,” Jackson keeps saying, and then, his eyes find you and you feel them piercing into you. “For you either.”
You swallow, but stay sill as you watch him disappear followed by the rest of the Black Panthers. Lynn stares at you sympathetically as Youngjae and Bambam help Mark on his feet. You shake your head, letting her know you’ll be fine.
When you watch the rest of the Black Panthers disappear, you watch a part of yourself disappearing with them, the chapter half-closed by now.
Somehow, your eyes find Hoseok’s.
They’re still as dark and sharp as the first time you saw them. His equally as dark hair is dishevelled from the fight, and there are a few purple bruises blossoming on his right cheek. The moonlight reflects on his smooth skin, his sharp nose and defined jawline. He still looks as beautiful as the first time you saw him, and you don’t think you’ll ever see someone as beautiful as him.
He looks drained, as if he was tired of this.
Jungkook and Jimin are helping Namjoon on his feet too, and you think this is over, you can’t do anything in here.
After Jackson’s threat, you’re not sure you’re safe, and your sister either. The best you can do now is disappear with your sister and try to forget what happened in this city. Deeply, you know you will never be able to forget it, or forget them, or forget him, but you’ll have to try.
Without looking back once, you leave that industrial area behind and all that comes with it.
. . .
You lie on your bed looking at the ceiling.
You will mis the peace and darkness of your small apartment. You will miss a lot of things, fuck.
But you’re not safe anymore, and tomorrow you’ll pick your sister up and go away from this place. You don’t have the money, and you definitely don’t have a place to go, but you’ll have to figure something out. The most important thing right now is yours and your sister’s safety.
You’re trying to think about the trip, about buying the train tickets since your car is still at the Black Panther garage, about renting an apartment, finding a job and a nice school for your sister. You’re trying to think about anything but him. You really don’t want to remember the hurt in his eyes, and much less the adoration and passion that were in them as you laughed or kissed or just stared at each other. You don’t want to remember that first night you met him at a college party at some abandoned building, how he called you None-Of-Your-Business, how he loved teasing you and how you loved teasing him…
But fuck, it is inevitable to think about all you could have been, all the places you could have visited together, all the things you could have shared. It is inevitable to think you’ll never find someone like him, that you’ll never find someone who’ll make you laugh as he did. It’s inevitable to think about all the what ifs and the could have beens.
All your few clothes are already stuffed in a big bag under your bed, all your belongings in a backpack next to the big bag. You’re already gone, despite still being there.
You’re starting to get sleepy when the sound of loud, rapid bangs on your door fill the entire apartment.
You sit up on your bed, startled, and your heart starts running at the speed of sound.
“Fuck,” you mouth.
This is it. Jackson has come for you. You won’t be able to pick your sister up and run away from the city. Maybe if you call her, you can warn her and tell her to go.
Another round of loud bangs fill your apartment and you tense even more.
You rush to the kitchen and grab a knife. You’re not going to stop them with a fucking knife, but it’s all you have.
“Y/N!” a voice calls your name.
A voice too familiar. A voice that doesn’t belong to Jackson.
A sense of déjà vu fills you and you let the knife fall onto the floor. Your mid reels back to a night, some weeks ago. You’re in the bathroom of the industrial unit, the loud sound of music is muffled by the door. Someone’s banging on it while calling your name and you feel…
“Y/N,” the voice repeats, this time a bit softer, as if he didn’t want anyone to hear him. “It’s me, please open the door.”
You don’t even think about it, you rush to the door and open it, finding Hoseok there, a big bag on his hands. He’s dressed in the same clothes he had worn to the race, his hair still dishevelled and he has bags under his eyes, a worried look on his face and desperation in his eyes.
“What are you doing here?” you breathe, frowning, your mind still not processing what’s going on.
“We have no time for that now,” he says, rushing into your apartment and closing the door behind him.
“B… But what’s going on?”
He ignores your question and looks around your apartment. He knows it better than his own, so he just walks towards your wardrobe and opens it. Seeing it already empty, he looks at you.
“Where are your things?” he asks.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on or not?”
He ignores you once again and starts searching all over your apartment.
“I already packed everything. It is under my bed in two bags,” you say.
Hoseok rushes to your bed and gets the two bags from underneath it.
“Are you going to tell me what the fuck is going on?” you say, grabbing his shoulder and forcing him to look at you.
You’re starting to get nervous, if you aren’t already nervous enough.
Hoseok rushes a hand across his hair and looks at you. The sight of his dark eyes takes away all the air in your lungs.
“Jackson is coming for you,” he says. “I heard them when I went to your garage to try and talk to him.”
“I already knew that,” you frown. “It’s obvious he would go after me after all I did.”
“But he’s coming now,” Hoseok rushes. “And once he has you, he’ll go after your sister, and then after me.”
“W… What?” you stutter. “Now?
“Yeah, you have to go now.”
You grab the bags that he hands you with shaking hands. He then starts pushing you towards the door of your apartment.
“How… How am I gonna find a train ticket now for me and my sister? It’s three AM.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he shakes his head. “I have my car outside, it has enough gas to run some kilometres.”
“Your car?” you frown, stopping dead on your tracks and making him stop too.
“Yeah, the keys are in the outside pocket of the black bag. Inside you’ll find ten thousand dollars. I know it’s not much, but it’s all I could find in so little time.”
You fight against his hands that are still pushing you towards the door, turning around to face him.
“The keys, the money… What do you mean with all this?”
Hoseok sighs. “Run away. Pick your sister up and move to a place far from here, you’ll be safe if Jackson can’t find you.”
“And you? What about you?”
He shuts his mouth and looks at you, his eyelids dropping a bit.
“No,” you say. “I won’t leave you here. Jackson will kill you.”
“He’ll kill you and your sister if you do that.”
“But I can’t just let him kill you!”
Hoseok grabs you by the shoulders and shake you a bit.
“You have no time, Y/N, Jackson and the rest of the Black Panthers will be here at any moment. Just grab all those bags and go away.”
“But you, what about you? You –“
“Don’t worry about me right now, okay? I’ll be fine. This is my life, remember? I know how to deal with these things.”
You shake your head. “You can’t do this on your own. No one can.”
“Namjoon is with me, I have the Blue Eagles on my side,” he says, trying to calm you. “It’ll all be fine.”
“No,” you shake your head once again. “No, it won’t be fine. Just… Come with me.”
“And leave Namjoon on his own? After all he did for me, I can’t do that. I can’t abandon my family.”
You feel your eyes burning, tears starting to blur your gaze. So, this is it?
“We already spoke about this,” Hoseok says, his voice barely a whisper as his eyes search yours.
“When we spoke about this, your life was not on the line.”
“When we spoke about this, I didn’t know you were the main racer of the Black Panthers.”
“So you would run away with me if you still didn’t know?”
“That doesn’t matter right now,” Hoseok shakes his head. “All that matters is your safety.”
“Why? Why do you care after all I’ve done to you?”
The apartment becomes silent for a few more seconds, you staring at Hoseok and him staring at you. Again, flashbacks of another night with him fills your mind. This time, it is a night a lot happier than the bathroom one. It is the first night you invited him to your apartment. You remember him laughing at your choice of drink: milk.  
“I guess I would have done the same if I had been you,” he sighs. “I don’t blame you for anything you did, I know it wasn’t easy. You did it for the people you love. I would have done the same.”
“You believe me, then?”
“I believe in what your eyes told me each time I kissed you,” Hoseok nods, as if reassuring him. “Maybe I should have just listened to you when you told me to stop seeing each other, maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation then.”
You shake your head.
“No, don’t blame yourself. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t gotten into a world I didn’t belong to. I thought it was just a game.”
“We wouldn’t have met each other then,” he whispers.
You place a hand on his cheek. It is warm and soft, a touch you know you want to remember.
“We would have,” you smile reassuring him, reassuring you. “This is a small city after all. Maybe we would have met at that party at the abandoned building anyways.”
“I would have seen you there, at the bar rejecting that boy,” Hoseok smiles. “I would have approached you without a doubt.”
You smile and he places his hand on top of yours, already caressing his cheek softly. In the silence of your apartment, your world is crumbling. Outside everything goes on. The moonlight still seeps through the small slits of the blinds, the neon lights of the city as bright as ever. Cars pass. People pass. Time passes. And you stay there in your apartment basking in all that could have been but never will be.
You swallow the few tears that are rolling down your cheeks. This is you, in your most naked form. No cool façade, no emotionless expression, not swallowing back tears anymore.
“I love you,” you whisper. “I’ve known it for some time now, but I was too afraid to tell you… In case you ran away before I could.”
Hoseok clenches his jaw, stopping himself from doing something. What? You’ll never know. Maybe he’s stopping himself from saying those three words back, maybe he’s stopping himself from letting your words sink inside him, maybe he’s stopping himself from letting go of everything and running away with you. Maybe…
Instead of saying anything, Hoseok leans in and captures your lips with his, telling you everything he’ll never be able to tell you with words.
He tastes like salty tears and the night breeze. He tastes like sparkles in your stomach and laughs at the top of your lungs. He tastes like rolled down windows and the speed of sound, he tastes like driving at 200 kph on a cool night. He tastes like everything you ever wanted. Freedom.
They say the best things in life come free to us, unexpectedly and fast. You have to pay attention, for those things go as fast as they came, and once you see them, it is now or never. Take them or leave them. Take the risk or spend all your life thinking about the maybes and the what ifs.
That was Hoseok to you. Something that came fast and unexpected, a now or never shouted in the night sky, something that was brief but intense a beautiful.  
That night, as you drive down the streets of the city in a silver Porsche, the sounds of gunshots become distant as you keep pressing the gas pedal. You scream ‘it is now or never’ at the top of your lungs, windows rolled down and the night air seeping harshly inside the car, playing with your hair.
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arcticmaggie · 6 years ago
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Donut Shop (Pt. 2)
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Y/N sees Harry and prays that he sees her as well.
Part 1
Word Count: 3.5k
Warnings: Just like, a BUNCH of tension leading up to a cliffhanger?? Idk I’m cruel and won’t let Y/N get her fairy tale (not yet, at least) 
A/N: Okay listen this was tough to write because there’s a lot of time lapses and idk how to write the transitions for em so like BARE WITH ME. Also I rlly don’t know how to calm down with the italics and the run on sentences but I feel like it adds to the tension and the ongoing stroke Y/N is having. THERE WILL BE ANOTHER ONE, POSSIBLY THE LAST PART BUT IDK DEPENDS ON IF I WANT THE ENDING TO BE AMBIGUOUS OR KEEP IT GOING INTO AN ACTUAL FULL FANFIC AHHH
-
She's shaking. Her hand is legitimately shaking.
It's been 10 hours since Y/N had almost died from shock of meeting Harry and squabbling with him and she is still having a bit of trouble trying to calm down. Of course, this is now because of a different reason.
She's going to see Harry live in concert in 2 hours! She's going to pretend like as if she hadn't just interacted with him for more than 10 seconds that same morning! She's not going to pull it off!
But really, she knows she can't actually say anything because A) how would she explain to Abby that the man up on stage before them had already touched her in ways that Abby would never have dreamed of being touched (sounds intense, but seriously, how often is it that the man of your dreams touches your shoulder?) and B) Harry had clearly been trying to steer away from gaining attention, so it would kinda be a dick move to go ahead and tell everyone about it.
But Y/N knows herself, so she knows it's going to take everything in her not to blabber about having Harry Styles pay for her ham and cheesy.
Maybe Abby won't react that bad? I mean, she's known Y/N since Midnight Memories came out and they gushed over their mutual love for One Direction online (and they met two years later). And Abby has already interacted with Harry on Twitter, with a reply and a follow. So maybe talking to him in real life won't be much of a scandal to her and she'll understand.
So yeah, Y/N decides with a deep breath and a swipe of her contour brush against her face that she'll tell her best friend about it as soon as she arrives at her house. Which would be in an hour and a half, so Y/N had plenty of time to hyperventilate until the time came.
-
She takes about an hour to finish her makeup after the mini pep talk, even though she was already halfway done. But that was because she spent half that time glaring at her hand to stop shaking. Really, you would think she'd be okay by now. She's a 20 year old girl with a job and her own apartment; this is supposed to mean she's really good at handling stressful situations.
But once she sprays her finishing spray on her face and combs her fingers through her hair, she begins to panic. Surely, she would be able to calm down once more in the 30 minutes she had left, but after 10 of them, she receives a text and she absolutely loses it.
Girlie I got out of work early so I’ll be there in 5 !!! ((:
Jesus Christ she's going to vomit.
She feels like she's about to tell her mom about the time she gave their next door neighbor head during their Easter barbecue in the bathroom.
But it's just Abby, it's just her best friend, and she hears a car pull up and shut off and she gasps for breath.
She doesn't feel her feet dragging her towards the front door, she doesn't feel her hand yank her door open as Abby walks up the path with a small jolt in her step with the sudden sound, and she definitely doesn't feel her mouth open as soon as she lays eyes on her.
“Harry Styles thinks I'm a proper knob.”
Abby immediately furrows her eyebrows together but a smile peeks out from her lips as she lazily pushes Y/N to the side so she can walk in and head straight towards the bedroom.
“How are you this delusional, 2 hours before the show? I would have thought you would start talking funny once we reached the building.” She sets her backpack down on the makeup vanity along with her bag of Jimmy Johns (she always gets hungry when she's doing her makeup for some reason) before turning back around to a silent Y/N who had wordlessly followed behind her.  
Which is weird, Abby thinks, because Y/N really never learns how to shut up unless it's something very important holding her back. So she stares at her while Y/N stares back with a very anxious face and she realizes that whether it's true or not, Y/N meant what she said. And that worries Abby, so she huffs out a breath as she plops down on the vanity bench and pulls out her makeup while munching on a fry.
“Okay, you have the time I use doing my makeup and the car ride to the venue to tell me everything, so please think everything through before telling me.”
And Y/N takes it to heart. She recollects her words for a solid 15 minutes as she's spread out on her bed like an eagle and once she's finished she looks up. She sees Abby already done with her food and applying her highlighter, so she takes 5 more minutes to reorganize everything in her head again for a shortened version.
And so she begins. She spends about 10 minutes debriefing her horrible morning beforehand until Abby packs up her stuff and motions for her to follow her to the car to start their drive over to the Forum, where she spends the remaining half hour (which is more time than the actual minutes spent at the donut shop, ironically) gushing over Harry and his eyes and his lips and his hair and his cocky attitude and his touch and his money and everything that she couldn't process properly during that morning.
Abby stays quiet the entire time, only nodding along when Y/N pauses to see if she's understanding. And she even stays quiet as she parks the car in the designated parking lot and lets Y/N finish her rambling about the “absolutely dirty smirk he had on his face when he asked if it was a threat.”
So when Y/N finally stops and takes a well needed deep breath, she tries her hardest to piece together her conclusion of this situation.
“So, you're telling me, that there is a possibility that you will make eye contact with Harry tonight, and he will recognize you, and he will interact with you?”
And Y/N inhales so sharply because holy fuck, there actually is a chance of that. Their seats are so close to the B-stage and he'll walk up there and he will let his fans touch his hand and he will look at them and he might actually see her.
-
This thought brings the next hour into a blur.
She doesn’t remember standing in the merch line for 20 minutes for the yellow kiwi sweatshirt or walking through the metal detectors or scanning her ticket or buying a hotdog and eating it with extra mustard and relish or walking into the venue and sitting down in her seat with Abby right behind her. She doesn’t even pay attention to Kacey Musgraves and her set, which she didn’t do intentionally (she’s listened to entire repertoire specifically so she could jam out to her music before Harry comes out) but sitting here, 5 feet away from the B-stage has kept her out of touch from the entire world.
Doesn’t even hear the screams of everyone around her when Kacey leaves the stage and the lights turn back on for the 20 minute break in between sets.
It takes Abby giving her a really harsh nudge which Y/N cowers from and winces but she had it coming since she didn’t respond the first two times Abby tried to get her attention.
“Jesus Christ, Y/N, you’ve already met him yet you’re acting worse than me! I’ve never even come close to being in such proximity as him yet you’re the one ready to have a stroke!” Y/N pouts at the scolding but it brings her back into her own body. She knows Abby’s right, she’s already had more of relationship with Harry than most people in this building and she’s worrying about something that surely won’t happen. He’ll be caught up in his singing and talking to the rest of the crowd and he doesn’t even know she’ll be in that vicinity so it’s not like he’ll go out of his own way to look for her. He’s not going to notice her and it’s okay. She’s been fine with this mindset for years now, she can put up with it for many more.
And with this, she lets all her anxiety go. Even when the lights turn down and the Rubik’s cube pops up on screen and the monitor slides down to hide Harry’s entrance, she only screams with excitement and joy. Should we just search romantic comedies on Netflix and then see what we’ll find? is heard before the beginning of Only Angel and Y/N goes wild along with the entire venue as the monitor slides right back up and reveals him and he starts singing and it’s the best moment of her life and she completely forgets about everything before and focuses on now.
Well, until Harry wraps up on Meet Me in the Hallway and heads for the B-stage. All of a sudden, he’s climbing up the stairs with the rest of the band behind him and he uses the short seconds he has to accept the flowers fans are offering and thank them, making full eye contact with each and every one. It would be so easy for Y/N to shout his name, to shout out, “Harry it’s me! Ham and cheese girl!” It’d be so weird and he’s probably already forgotten about what happened and who she is because he’s a busy man and he has more important stuff to remember but she’d at least have a chance of catching his eye again.
But she sees his soft smile as he accepts the bouquet of roses the girl in front gives him and he turns around and sets it down, ushering in the rest of the gang as they all prepare to perform Sweet Creature. And he’s so beautiful, she can’t believe she’s able to be here and see him do what he loves doing and she feels the absolute joy he’s radiating. His eyebrows are furrowed as he tries to concentrate on this next song and he looks so determined to give a great show and she loves it, she loves him. So she shuts her mouth and she watches him with kind eyes as the rest of the fans around him quiet down as well.
And so he sings. First Sweet Creature, then If I Could Fly (Y/N begins to tear up), and then the lovely surprise of Girl Crush (that’s when she starts bawling). He’s always facing her direction throughout all three songs, and he looks up at some points into the crowd, surely only seeing a bunch of phones recording him. Abby was guilty of it as well but Y/N keeps hers in her pocket, relishing in the spotlight hitting only half of his and casting shadows on the other. His eyes always graze too quickly over where she’s seated and it irks her and makes her heart ache because yes she’s calmed down from her fantasy but he gets so close to setting eyes on her yet he doesn’t and it sucks.
She’s suddenly become so hurt by the idea of being unnoticed by him even after all these years of teaching herself not to be. She guesses that’s what happens when you get a small taste of something you can’t ever have.
Girl Crush ends, Harry finally leaves the B-stage to go back to the main stage and finish the rest of the show, and Y/N feels a tug on her heartstrings. She feels that her cheeks are wet and she begins to dab her tears away with the back of her hand, turning to Abby who was still recording Harry but with the turn of Y/N, she whips her phone around to record her instead. Y/N lets out a disgusting yet comical sniff through her nose and whimpers out, “I saw Harry’s sad excuse for a moustache with my own eyes and now I’m crying.”
Abby lets out a snort as she stops recording and turns back to Harry as he swings out his guitar and begins to play Anna, letting Y/N compose herself so she can continue jamming out. And of course, she does, for the next three songs, before he leaves the stage for a quick minute or two just to come back out and play the last three songs of the night (she can never understand why every artist has this in their setlist, and she laughs as Harry explains to the crowd that he doesn’t either).
From the Dining Table is beautiful and sad and The Chain is hardcore and exhilarating and then Harry plays Kiwi and Y/N is crying again because it’s the last song of the show and the last show of the tour and it’s heartbreaking.
And he has the audacity to play it again.
And the audacity to run down to B-stage once more.
He’s completely losing it and the crowd along with him but he’s so exhausted from the run and it’s so obvious that Y/N can’t help but laugh as he pants for breath. He turns towards her area as he brings the mic up to his mouth to continue the next few lines. He sees her.
He locks eyes with her and her amused eyes, raised eyebrows, and cackling laugh and he breaks into the biggest grin. He struggles to begin singing as he laughs along with her, joining in on his hilarious physical state and he adds in the line, “And I’m exhausted, I’m exhausted,” before finally turning away and running back to the mainstage.
Y/N had to take a huge swig of her water bottle and close her eyes for a good moment to make sure she didn’t legitimately pass out.
He finally noticed her. For a mere 4 seconds, he looked at her and he smiled at her and they laughed together. She was okay now. It wasn’t a conversation like she hoped it would be but he still acknowledged her presence and even though he didn’t explicitly say “I know you,” the way his face lit up when they made eye contact was enough for her to believe that he recognized her and she meant something to him.
He finishes off the song and fakes the crowd out as he eggs them on for another take and she hates herself. She hates that for a few minutes that morning she actually got angry with the way he teased her and decided that he was an asshole.
Sure, she can see him stick his tongue out and walk around with a shit eating grin as he hears the crowd go wild for a third rendition of Kiwi, but it doesn’t make him an asshole like she presumed. Just a cocky son of a bitch.
One who begins to sing Kiwi once again with the most tired posture a 24 year old man can have. Yet he continues to rock his body to the music and at one point drops down to his goddamn knees and rocks out on the floor. Yeah, Y/N concludes to herself, he’s hot and he’s fully aware of it.  
The concert ends and Abby is crying (well, everyone in the arena is full of tears), both watching CHASM bow for the final time before exiting the stage. And with that, the lights turn back on and it’s time to leave.
Y/N’s ears are ringing and the loud chatter of the audience comes out muffled to her hearing, and it makes her happy. Concerts have always been the best for her, whether it was the Jonas Brothers back in 2008 or Coldplay back in 2016; they’ve always found a place in her heart. And now she can add this to her list, along with the most memorable ham and cheesy run she’s ever had.
-
They arrive back home after about an hour of driving, though it only took them half of one earlier that day to get to the venue. But I mean, it’s LA traffic, even if it’s just a 20 mile distance. Besides, it gives their ears time to pop and gives them time to destress and let out all their emotions. And it gives Abby time to look through all the videos she took to post the best ones online.
One of them is the video of Y/N and her ugly crying and although Y/N absolutely cringes and begs her not to post it on Twitter, she does so anyway, with the caption “Why is Y/N the biggest mood of the night @username #HarryStylesForum” and Y/N’s annoyed but she’s just finished washing her face and changing into her PJ’s so she falls asleep before she could protest anymore.
-
She stays asleep with no disturbances for a good 7 hours. She was even having a lovely dream about Thanksgiving back at her parents’ home in San Diego and the roasted duck she was having was delicious. But she’s cut off from the mash potatoes and gravy when Abby’s phone goes off for the millionth time and continues to go off about 20 times in a row after she wakes up. She lets out a soft groan with her face smushed into her pillow and she swings her arm around to feel for Abby to wake her up so she has to deal with it as well. She stops once she hears her friend groan and shuffle through the bed sheets and Y/N tries to get comfortable again, already drifting back to sleep. And she’s almost there.
But then a very loud gasp is heard and a hand is slapping her shoulder hard and continuously and Y/N is far from going back to sleep.
“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. He replied to my tweet. Oh my god, Y/N, he replied to my tweet.” Okay, yeah, she’s fully awake now.
Y/N sits up in her bed with wide eyes as she peers over Abby’s shoulder to then squint at the bright screen of her phone, watching notifications flood in as accounts follow her, DM her, retweet her, and reply to her. Abby has her original tweet with the video of Y/N open for her to see before she slowly scrolls down a few centimeters to see Harry Styles’ reply, “I’m proud of this moustache, thank you very much.” And now Y/N is having flashbacks.
This is the second time around that he’s called her out in the last 24 hours and she’s felt her stomach drop for the second time as well. Except this time he’s plastered it all over Twitter for everyone to see. Oh, she can just imagine how many death threats she’s going to receive from the worst of fans that are going to take this banter seriously.
With the thought of it, she glances over to her phone that’s perched on her makeup vanity, that was switched to silent as soon as she set her phone down on it earlier that night. She could see the notification light flicker with a green tint (she has a Samsung, not an iPhone, which she is not ashamed of, by the way) above the phone screen, which means that she does, in fact, have Twitter notifications.
She drops her head back in exasperation and lets out another small groan as she wordlessly gets up to retrieve it, planning to block every single account that gives just a hint of negative attitude towards her choice of words. And she begins to do so, opening up the app and scrolling through the 14 DMs she’s already received in the last 5 minutes. Half of them were what she expected and she quickly blocked and reported them for wasting her time. But the other half were amused and were congratulating her on provoking him enough to defend himself, so she took her time to reply back with kind words and a thanks.
This takes her a while, so she climbs back in bed (she knows Abby won’t be able to sleep much after this so she might as well join her) and lays back down with her phone held up above her head (she lives life on the edge). She’s having a cute conversation with a nice girl named Lily when her phone buzzes once, announcing that she just received another DM. So she finishes up her reply and hopes that the next DM will be nice as well as she taps the back button and gazes to the top of the DM list.
Harry Styles. @Harry_Styles:
Ham and cheese girl :D
Holy mother fuck.
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tothewaterhq · 6 years ago
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ACCEPTED // INERTIA ASMEA
district twelve → mentor →   dichen lachman fc
pronouns: she/her positive traits: extremely loyal, compassionate, focused negative traits: cynical, selective, blunt
tw: emotional abuse, child abuse, agoraphobia
describe their arena:
The 46th arena was just like any other forest at first glance. The tributes were surrounded by towering trees and peculiarly tall grasses; boulders covered with moss, hiding behind them deep caves used by smart and lucky tributes as their safe place – of course, only if they’re free of predators – and in the middle was a wide clearing where the Cornucopia was situated. The arena had the tributes thinking that it was the most normal setting with mutts ready to chomp on unlucky tributes within their line of sight.
But the setting turned out to be what people would call a post-apocalyptic world. The earth had recovered from the damage caused by nuclear explosions, resulting to the extinction of humans and animals alike. Or so, they thought. The contaminated air had caused a mutation amongst surviving animals, and so the tributes encountered gigantic spiders, snakes, eagles, gorillas, and others.
bio: 
Inertia was a product of a drunken night and nine months of grumbling about an unwanted child. Therefore, it wasn’t a surprise when a newborn baby was eventually deposited in one of the district’s alleyways one cold night of December.
The woman who gave birth to her hadn’t been subtle, however. Someone saw her put the baby beside the trash littering the ground, but instead of chasing after her and reprimanding her for her inhumane decision, Inertia was wrapped in thin blanket, instead, and was brought to a barely livable home. Tess, the woman who took in the baby, reasoned to her husband that it was the perfect opportunity to finally start a family. However, it wasn’t very easy for Tess’ husband to accept a stranger in his home. That, and it only solidifies the fact that he couldn’t provide his wife a child, so he refused to nurture the child as his own.
With the lack of support from her husband, Tess found herself unable to keep the enthusiasm she once had while she was carrying the newborn baby home. She wasn’t as hardhearted as Inertia’s birth mother, however, so she kept the baby and raised her out of responsibility and guilt, regardless of the circumstance.
As such, Inertia grew up reserved and unfamiliar with the concept of taking other people’s needs into consideration. When there wasn’t food to be fed into their stomachs, Inertia ran outside and scavenged for her own survival – most of the time, she stole what little other people had in their possession, and not once was she ever caught, courtesy of her stealth and light weight. For the few times that someone did see her and threatened to tell on her, she settled matters with her fists, scared whoever it was that dared interrupt her business into submission – into never telling anyone about her. It was through these little encounters that Inertia somehow unexpectedly found her strength in fighting.
That was, until another baby girl came into the picture when Inertia was a month shy of  thirteen, right after the death of Tess’ husband due to old age and lack of nutrition. It was the night of the baby’s arrival that Inertia found out about herself; about the woman who left her to die, only to be saved by the same woman who only spared her enough compassion to keep her alive instead of dying in the streets.
Inertia wasn’t sure how to act around the baby, but there was something in the way those blue eyes peered up at her with such innocence, with the way that toothless smile seemed to make her feel light after another day of barely caring at school, and the way those chubby, little fingers held onto her longer finger that made her care.
And cared, she did.
It was scary at first: having to think of another mouth to feed as she stole a small portion of food from a family of four. Her young mind knew that babies weren’t old enough to consume bread, so she left the responsibility of making sure the baby was fed properly to Tess, at least until the baby was old enough to consume what Inertia could provide for her. To make up to it, she made sure to bring home thicker blankets for the baby, and even learned how to sew new clothes out of old ones – at least, the dead man’s clothes could be put to use.
The baby was later on named Sage, and Inertia swore to protect her sister for as long as she was capable of doing so. It was nerve-wracking, of course; knowing that since turning twelve, it’d be the first time for her to care so much about the possibility of being reaped. She’d been so lucky in the past years, some would say, but Inertia – without Sage in her life – didn’t care whether she was reaped or not. Get reaped – she had nothing to lose. Be spared – guess she’s stuck another year with Tess.
Not now. Not anymore. Now, she had Sage to think of. Now, she had that child, who was barely one, to care for, and even if she knew that Tess would never let her perish, she couldn’t find it in herself to trust the old woman enough. Not when she was there to make sure that Sage would ever lose the innocent smile on her face.
But it’s as if whoever was up in the clouds heard her prayers every night, and interpreted it the other way around. A year later, when Inertia turned fourteen, her name was finally called and, with no one to volunteer in her stead, it was inevitable for her to end up in the games.
The only token she had was a handkerchief with Sage’s name sown on one corner. It was Tess who gave it to her, and for that simple, yet meaningful act, Inertia decided that she was going to save Tess, too.
She was going to win the games – not for her sake, but for Sage.
Inertia was wise enough (or foolish, for others) to try and avoid the bloodbath during the first few minutes of the games. She ran as fast as she could in the middle of the clearing, grabbed her backpack, a machete, and an archer’s bag not far from the Cornucopia’s mouth – no doubt taken for granted, for some stupid reason – and sought refuge deep in the forest. She came upon a boulder covered in moss, sitting carelessly by the foot of the mountain, and found a little passageway right beside it, leading into a cave safe enough to be a sanctuary from the killings happening outside of it.
For the first few days, Inertia was in and out of her little cave, the entrance now curtained by veins and leaves to avoid attention. She killed tributes when necessary and stole when she was outside, and lit a little fire in her cave when it was time for a short rest during the dark hours. The cave was her only refuge, and Inertia eventually came to hate the world outside; hated the openness and options for hiding, the fear of being watched by someone she couldn’t see.
Being able to stay alive for longer than a day probably got to Inertia’s head, which resulted to her being careless one night. She forgot to kick some soil on the fire she’d built before passing out, and when she woke up a few hours, there was a girl sitting right next to her, with her small hands hovering above the embers surrounded by little rocks.
“I’m tired,” the little girl murmured brokenly when Inertia sat up and grabbed her machete, shaking in fear and coldness.
Inertia knew she shouldn’t trust her. Not during these times, no. She couldn’t afford to get killed because she let her walls down, but the little girl’s eyes were the same shade of Sage’s blue ones; her hair was the same dirty blonde and her bleeding gums – her missing teeth – as ironically funny as it was, they all reminded Inertia of Sage, and she found herself dropping her weapon and staring at the young girl in resignation.
“What’s your name?”
“Rica.”
Rica was twelve and she was from the eleventh district, Inertia later learned. Against her better judgments, Inertia took Rica under her wings and helped her during the games. She told her strictly to stay inside the cave during the times she would go out to kill and scavenge for supplies, and at night, they’d share stories about themselves – though Rica did most of the storytelling than Inertia.
It was through this that Inertia found out about Rica’s father hurting her, pouring his bitterness and pain over the death of his only son during the previous games on the undeserving, young girl. Rica had bruises and cuts in places where people should not see and touch, and that night, Inertia wasted her energy and arrows on mutts to let out the anger simmering deep inside her.
Because what if it was Sage? What if she died and Tess, with her old age, couldn’t take care of Sage, anymore? What would happen to Sage?
Who will keep her sister safe?
And… Rica. If she won, she’d have to return to her father. That bastard would get to live a good life that he didn’t deserve, and who’s to say that he’d stop hurting Rica?
Who would take care of Rica?
When the sun was slowly peeking over the horizon, Inertia made her way back into the cave with a small bag full of fruits for breakfast. She sat down with Rica and told her a story about this place called heaven, a place she read about in one of the books in school. She told Rica that not a lot of people believed in heaven because there’s solid proof of such place existing, but that a huge percentage of people from the past insisted that it was real; that it was where good people go to experience everlasting peace.
“So, everything’s good there?”
“Yes,” Inertia smiled tightly. “They said that this thing – the Hunger Games – doesn’t exist there. They said that everyone is smiling and laughing and… and loving each other. There’s only peace. No war, no sadness, no tears. It’s a place where people like you should go.”
“But I’m not good,” Rica replied meekly. “I killed the boy from the sixth district when he tried to steal my apples.”
“You were defending yourself. It’s why you have a toothless smile.”
Rica giggled – and it’s a sound that Inertia stored in her memories.
“So, how do we get there? To heaven?”
Inertia hesitated for only a second when Rica asked her the question. When she told her about the fruit, Rica gave her a thoughtful look and Inertia knew – she knew that Rica knew. Rica was from the eleventh district; she was well-versed about poisonous and non-poisonous fruits. Rica knew, and yet she took the small, round fruit anyway and popped it in her mouth, flashing Inertia that toothless smile one last time before succumbing into a deep, everlasting slumber.
Her death was announced shortly after she took her last breath.
Rica looked peaceful, at least, like she was just sleeping. No pain. No blood. No agony,
Beside her still body, Inertia sat with her arms around her legs. She watched as the fire slowly turned into nothing, waited until it was the perfect time to carry Rica’s body outside of the cave so the hovercraft could claim it.
She hid and watched from afar as the device took Rica, and just like that, something broke inside Inertia.
Grabbing what was left of her supplies, along with a bludgeon she found lying near the mouth of the cave, she cried out loud and hunted every single tribute she could find –male, female, injured or not, young or old.
She killed them.
She killed them all.
For Rica.
For Sage.
PLAYED BY // HAN
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