#the end of their friendship and growing distant was so heartbreaking to watch from both viewpoints | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

socketz · 4 years ago

Text

Johnny Depp x Female!Reader

Indulge Me.

Type : Fluff! (with a wee bit of Angst thrown in there)

Warnings : Internal conflict, swearing, kissing (pretty detailed, though nothing overly sexual), a little alcohol consumption I suppose, and that’s all. It’s super fluffy!

Word Count : 6.3k (kinda short, I know :/ my bad)

Request : Not Requested.

Summary : Johnny x Female!Reader, where they have been close friends for a super long time, and the reader (you!) has slowly developed feelings for him. A confession, a walk, and a sweet, slow, kiss, in the rain.

Authors Note : I don’t know why I got the urge to do this, but I started writing and simply did not stop, so here we are. I thought it turned out quite cute, although it is very cliche :) Also, Johnny is not famous in this, though it’s set in like ‘91, or ‘90. He’s just a really sexy regular guy, I suppose. That’s all :) Enjoy!

Indulge Me, Johnny Depp x Female!Reader

There was truly something about him - about Johnny - that you simply could not place. The two of you had been friends, strictly friends, for almost too long to remember, and it seemed that with every passing moment either of your spent, swaddled in each other’s company, that relationship merely grew. It manifested, and developed, so incredibly, yet entirely unnoticed, by both Johnny, and yourself. It was incredible, really, that such a friendship could hinder quite so rapidly, and seemingly only for one participant.

You didn’t mean to begin noticing the little things, the details, about him. Like the way he smiled, so incredibly gentle and uplifting - contagious, you could argue - or the way he would change, so naturally, when around you, in comparison to that of everybody else. His laugh would grow louder, freer, and his voice would amplify; no longer riddled with nerves and a sense of timidness. Comfort, you supposed, was a factor he allowed himself to become engulfed by, whenever you were present, and you certainly liked it. You began noticing the way he would touch you, tender, and cautious, or the way he held your hand - merely due to instinct, he would always blame, though your butterflies wished it something else - and the way he wrapped his arm around your shoulders, when you complained for the cool breeze, never once bothered by your close proximity. You noticed the way his eyes could light up, and he would smile something small; ridden with joy, for no particular reason at all. You noticed that his hair was longer, now, and that it fell to a messy central parting, digits consistently brushing it from his gaze - you liked the way he styled his hair, you decided, and it was so soft - so tender. You began to notice the way he treated you, so polite, yet bitterly brutal when his jokes played themselves around. You noticed things that you probably shouldn’t have, and, well, such an inconvenience caused a severe disruption to your whole mechanism.

At first, you thought it to be an illness of some sort. The stomach churns - the best kind, as you later discovered - and the butterflies, the tingle between your thighs. Am I sick? You began to think, as you checked yourself for a temperature. Alas, there was nothing but a flush of embarrassment to your reddened cheeks, and a heavy sensation within your chest, as you supposed that it would all disburse within a matter of days.

Well, a couple of days came, and went, and things had only gotten worse.

You began to dream of him, and, admittedly, you enjoyed them - of course you did - but it only made your face-to-face discussions an almighty difficult task to partake in. The butterflies ascended into a trail of breathtaking tingles, ignited by the slightest touch, and a sense of fire ruptured within your throat - it was so difficult to say the things you wanted to say, when your infatuation threatened to spill from your tongue at any given moment, and his beautifully chocolate gaze held you so captivated, so numbingly, to your place. He rendered you silent, your mind falling blank, with a simple smile, or a glance. Pathetic! That’s what you’d call it. Utterly pathetic. And, realistically, you knew it would only grow worse, the longer you decided to repress such information from your closest companion - and apparent lover, in your emotions’ eyes - but you simply couldn’t find it in you, not at all, to utter such simple words.

They could do so much damage - undo so many memories! And ruin everything. Maybe you were simply paranoid - maybe you were driven by utmost fear - but romance seemed so terribly painful, and you weren’t entirely sure if you could handle the way it would end. After all, everything good must come to something bad, right? Perhaps it was just the way your childhood played out, between lies and heartbreak, separation and loneliness, and fear and rejection - or maybe you were right. Maybe everything people were taught, all that they would read, about love, and about fictional infatuation, was just that - fiction. Maybe true love didn’t exist, and the books had it all wrong. Though that would not explain the thin sheen of sweat, glistening something noticeable upon your forehead.

You were nervous, to say the least.

The seven o’clock News displayed upon your television, igniting the darkened room in an expanding, blue, illumination, and you nibbled your nails somewhat anxiously, thoughts engulfing the surrounding buzz of the visual journalism - not that you ever paid it any mind, anyway. You always found the News boring - they reported nothing but shit, and you made sure to voice such an opinion, whenever Johnny would force you to watch it. “It’s educational!” He would laugh, gripping onto your hips and forcing you upon his lap. Of course, it was only something playful, and his arms would snake around your waist, chin against your shoulder. It was comfortable, you could never deny, but the News was still ever-boring and droning.

Though, now, it seemed appropriate. You were far too nervous to concentrate on anything in particular, like a gameshow, or something of the sort. Even the soccer seemed far too involving for you.

After all, today was the day you finally relieved yourself of such a weighty secret. You could hardly contain yourself any longer, and you were growing tired of the worried glances Johnny would throw your way, when you flinched from his burning touch, or paused mid-sentence, struggling to find your gasped breath. God, it was all so embarrassing. You hoped sincerely that it wouldn’t render something awkward, or differentiate your friendship, in any which way, but you were certain it was all one sided, and just wouldn’t be the same after. Perhaps he already knew, and was attempting to ignore such a thing, as best he could, and for that, you practically worshiped his ability to handle difficult situations lightheartedly. Or maybe he was as entirely clueless as he seemed to be, and it would be as awkward as you could picture the whole ordeal going.

Either way, you needed to say something, before it accidentally slipped within a regular conversation, and ruined everything. You attempted to reason with yourself, that if things truly did turn bitterly awful, at least tonight there would be pizza and wine, to salvage your mortification, and-

The soft jingle of metal echoed, distant, yet alarming, throughout the quiet and dim apartment. Scuttling, your hands grasped the remote control, muting the television in a rapid and almost panicked manner, breathing laboured and uneven. You weren’t ready - you definitely weren’t ready. You couldn’t do this - tell him how you felt, that is. How the hell would you even go about it? It wasn’t the kind of thing you could just bring up-

“They didn’t have any of that wine you like.” He sighed. You froze, rigid in your seat. “I got somethin’ else,” He trailed, “Doesn’t have a brand, I don’t think.” Two rustling bags settled in place before you, his keys landed with a loud crash upon the glass surface, jacket shrugged upon the ground with a sudden waft of cool breeze. Johnny glanced toward you, as he slumped hastily upon the sofa, booted feet kicked out before him. “What’s up?” He mumbled, his eyes fluttered to a gentle close, eyebrows furrowed gently.

“Nothing.” You said. How great of a lie it surely was, though you refused to blurt your confession aloud just yet.

An eyebrow raised, doubtful for your unconvincing reply, as a gentle grin teetered to the corner of his lips, and, oh, didn’t he look pretty. “C’mon,” He teased, “What’s up with you?” A finger jabbed to your side - an extraordinarily ticklish disposition for yourself - and you squirmed instinctively, a certain warmth engulfing your chest at the familiarity of that supple smirk.

“Really,” You persisted, “It’s nothing.” A breathy chuckle falling from upon your quiet tongue. “Have you tried that wine before?” You could confess your adoration for the poor man amidst the meal, though for now, it could wait.

“Uh-” He frowned, the quiver of a smile to trace his gaze.“No.” He said.

A subtle laugh dripped from your throat, gently shaking your head, as you mumbled a witty response. “Am I surprised, Jonathan?” To which he scoffed, his gorgeously depthful eyes rolling, and shone you a wickedly charming smile.

“Guess not.” He muttered, a beat of comfortable quiet to drift you both by. “You’re watching the News?” He then added, a furrow to draw his eyebrows closer; glance fluttered between yourself and the blare of the silenced television, projecting utter bullshit as it went - ever-the-regular, you could argue.

You simply nodded, “I am.” You said, somewhat a grin to upturn the crevices of your expression. A soft round of laughter fell from the man beside you, and you found your breath stuttered within the depth of your throat. It was an angelic muse, really, and thus you found yourself unable to conjure a furtherly coherent - never mind advanced - response, the simple two words proving enough for his bemused self.

“But you fucking hate the News.” He scoffed. “Why the hell are you watching it?”

A subtle giggle left your throat, and you snatched the lip of the bag before you, eager to indulge within the gorgeously scented - and warm - food. “Shut up, Johnny.” You said, a gentle smile to follow, “What’d you get?”

“I don’t know.” He smirked, “Somethin’ meaty, I think.”

“Of course,” You sighed, unable - quite - to dislodge the grin upon your rosy cheeks. “I mean, why would you know the pizza you ordered, right?”

“Precisely.” He smiled, “I’m thrilled you understand.”

“Always a pleasure.” You simply said, for your mind had distilled something blank, useless, and your words had seemed to fail you. The sofa was old, it was desperate, clinging on to the stitching hardly reliable, but it was comfortable. It was familiar. Johnny, and yourself, had refused to refurbish it - those cushions had been with you both, from the very first night. Roommates, you were. And simply the best kind. But there truly was something so tragic about a romantically tinted friendship, no matter for whom the sufferer seemed to be.

Johnny latched upon the large pizza box, throwing it open, and - unsurprisingly - knocking the wine glasses with a greatly shrill ring, their clink a subtle jump. They wobbled, slowly, though regained their posture, and you found your shoulders slumping to a tender slouch. “Idiot.” You muttered, a certain fondness about your breath, as he merely smirked, and picked up a stringy-cheesed slice, mauling the triangular corner with not but an ounce of grace.

A shimmer of grease coaxed the pout of his peachy lips, cheeks bulged with bread, and with toppings; over-loaded and particularly Johnny. Meats of various kinds - various shades - littered upon the excessive amounts of cheese. “Did you order extra cheese?” You mumbled. The man nodded, a wolfish grin to reciprocate his childish gaze, and you merely breathed a subtle chuckle. Of course, you thought; of course he did.

You reached for the wine, popping the cork with a slight groan, and you poured a tester within the clear glaze of the bowled glass. You raised the edge to your mouth, took a sip, and smacked your lips. “Not bad.” You uttered, decidedly enjoying the rich tang of fruity combustion, flat and coiling, upon your tongue. You poured the glass full, hardly a centimeter from the brim, and you took a rather large gulp, quite liking the flavour, as it trickled upon the back of your throat, and you sat back, nestled within the comfortable cushions of the wondrously aged sofa. It was almost moulded to your body; for you always sat on the right, and Johnny, the left.

A comfortable silence embraced you both, and you found yourself almost wishing it could remain undisturbed - you couldn’t find it in you, no matter how hard you probed, to conjure any kind of courage at all. Your knees, they felt weak, and your stomach churned uneasily - entirely disagreeing with the digested mouthful, as you rammed the corner of a pizza slice within your mouth, and you chewed slowly, cheeks beginning to rise in temperature. How the fuck would you even go about it all? ‘Oh, by the way, Johnny, I’m entirely in love with you, and I lose myself every time we touch!’ It sounded ridiculous. There was no possible way you could simply blurt out such a destructive sentence. You weren’t even sure if your feelings were real! They had just bothered you, and you feared that they’d somehow escape the breach of your lips, and flutter around, utterly unnoticed. Goodness, it was terrifying.

“You gonna tell me what’s wrong, or are we gonna sit here in silence?” Johnny said, a light amusement to simmer upon his tone. You gulped, swallowing a particularly dry mouthful, and your muscles seized up.

Surely this was the perfect opportunity, no? “Well…” You trailed. You did not want to ruin everything you’d worked so effortlessly to build with each other. Maybe you were just being silly, and your feelings were hardly potent at all. Maybe it was all dramatic, and you were fine. Maybe it was an exaggeration, and the entire thing was meaningless, and- “I think I’m in love with you.” You blurted. Fuck. Fuck, fucking fuck! Your eyes clamped shut, and you loathed the white noise. You could hope that he hadn’t heard you, though he wasn’t chewing, anymore, and he seemed suddenly rigid beside you. That was certainly a way to go about it, you scolded, wishing - with a burning detestation - that the sofa would swallow you whole.

Say something, you begged, silent, and to yourself, as the quiet continued on. He shifted, and you froze - furtherly, if apparently possible. You daren’t share a glance with his gaze, fixated upon your burning mortification, as another gentle bite snuck between your lips. You chewed, and you chewed, a soft shimmer of sweat beginning to accumulate upon your brow - how foolish you had been, to admit such a thing, in that kind of way. “What was that?” He muttered. Shit! His throat was tight, you could hear the subtle restriction, and tone low, quiet. Don’t make me say it again, you thought, a volumed gulp to follow such a ponderous moment. Please, don’t make me say it again.

“I’m sorry.” You sighed. Goodness, was it always supposed to be quite so difficult? Something began to wedge within the base of your throat, aching substantially, as the rising sensation of freshly salted tears began its ascent. Were you really going to cry? “I didn’t-” The voice caught in your throat, hindered by that ever-growing lump. God, you really hated this. “I didn’t mean to.” You didn’t mean to ruin your friendship, and everything in between, for a stupid confession that held you to the brink of fucking tears.

More shuffling was to be heard, and you noticed his hands swiftly maneuvering the - now closed - pizza box, delicately dropping the white board upon the coffee table, no longer perched between you, and him. His gaze burned upon your expression, and your cheeks flamed scarlet, glare locked unwaveringly upon the television, slightly glazed with something fearful. You truly didn’t want to lose him - to have him laugh in the face of your affection, and turn you away. And although you knew the let down would be gentle - it was Johnny, afterall, and there was hardly a bad bone in his body - you anticipated the worst. “Y/N,” He said.You gulped. A sigh escaped his lips, and he maneuvered the pizza slice from within your subtle grip, sneaking a quick bite as he went, and placed it quietly upon the table. “Y/N.” He tried again. You turned to face him, hesitant in yourself. His expression was gentle, the comforting kind of soft, and the corner of his lips lightly fluttered to the ghost of a smirk. “What are you crying for?” He scoffed, the grin simply growing as he spoke. “Don’t cry, Love.” You had hardly noticed the slip of a few salty confessions, as a soft laugh fell from your lips, hands roughly ragging upon the moist complexion. Pathetic, you thought, you were so fucking pathetic. “Come ‘ere.” He said. Your eyebrows drew together, glance unsure and lightly confused. He was so calm, and seemingly unphased by your confession - you couldn’t quite understand it.

He rolled his eyes, the tilt of amusement to pepper his cheeks, and he grasped your upper arm, dragging you along the short distance of the sofa. You slumped into his side, another giggle trickling from your tear-tangled throat, his arm engulfing you in a tight embrace; one along your shoulder, and the other curled upon your waist. You rested your head on his chest, the steady thrum of his heartbeat subtle and calming, and he shuffled about, gradually withholding a lying position, yourself flatly placed along his front. “I’m sorry.” You repeated, a light sigh to accompany the apology. You meant it, really, you did. It was never truly your intention to adapt to such feelings, to succumb to your attraction - he just made it so fucking difficult, with those beautifully brown orbs, and a smile filled with the brightest kinds of sunshine.

“Please don’t apologise.” He said. A short silence followed, and - perhaps it was simply an imaginational malfunction - you thought the rhythm of his heart rate differentiated, though only for a fleeting moment. “Did you mean it?” He whispered, tone soft; hesitant.

A gentle frown caressed the bow of your expression, and you tilted such to face him, his features crossed handsomely with a sense of slight worry. Of course you had meant it - why on earth would you lie for such a thing? “Yeah.” You said. His gaze flickered between your eyes, a whir of doubt embracing the warm stare, and his tender wrap upon your frame squeezed for a passing moment. The hint of a smile glazed his orbs, a certain light suddenly rupturing within their mocha tone, and the corners of his mouth twitched a feathered smirk.

“Oh, yeah?” He said.

Your eyes rolled, seemingly still slightly dampened by your emotional concern. “Yes, Johnny.” You said.

“Ah, right,” He muttered, grin widening to that of something toothy, and warm. “See, I thought I was going crazy.” He craned his neck to the slightest degree, gaze dropping momentarily to your parted lips, before springing back up, a twinkle of mischief to glaze his eyes. “I thought,” His tongue darted gently, dampening the flush of his lips, and you found yourself staring with a tingle of a blush - God. Your thighs began to ache, camped tightly together, at such a marvellous sight. “There’s no fucking way,” He continued, slowly, as his tone simmered to that of a tender whisper. “That the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known, could fall in love with me.”

Beautiful. Beautiful, he had said. Beautiful! He thought you were beautiful! Your heart stuttered, and a furrow found your eyebrows, consciously aware of the circular trail, lightly peppered upon your waist by his wandering fingers.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” You said, a mere mumble beneath your gaze of adoration and concern. What was wrong with loving him?

A breathy laugh escaped his lips, the simmer of amusement and amorous repentance dancing within his stare. “Well, why me?” He said, “You could choose anyone.” He shrugged, “Kenny, from that corner store. Andrew - you know, Andy, the one that makes the cakes all the time?” You merely nodded, albeit speechless as to his rambling. “And what about Louis? The flower guy?” You raised an eyebrow, “You could take any of ‘em. You got a choice. So why pick me?” Why wouldn’t it be him? Why would it be anybody else? You couldn’t quite understand his doubts, as you adjusted your positioning, and leaned up ever-so-slightly, with great attempt to level your shared beam. Surely he wasn’t feeling insecure, he had no reason to, after all - none that you had given him, that is.

“Don’t start that.” You said, “I wouldn’t want anybody else.”

“Oh, yeah?” He asked, an eyebrow raised, “And why’s that, Love?” He was teasing you, you could ensure, though you felt little resistance to fall within such bait.

“I wouldn’t want anyone else, because,” He glanced feverishly to your mouth, and the words seemed to pause, caught briefly within your throat. His gaze returned to yours, his smirk filtrated with some kind of newfound arrogance, and, my, didn’t it look devilishly handsome on him.

“Because what, Deary?” He said, a sudden dark swirl to his tone. It was rich, nauseatingly good.

“Because I want you.” You said. “And I’ve always wanted you.”

Though your fear found itself wretched, stammering doubts of rejection within your conscience, you supposed there was just no going back from that. And you didn’t truly believe you wanted to.

A glimmer of something heartily mischievous eloped within his gaze, “In what way?” He humoured, a slow smile beginning to trace the very corners of his wondrously entrancing lips. You paused, a moment of silence, and wondered whether you could dare to be as graciously brave as your protruding thoughts were starting to grow.

Your tone fell to something quiet - low. “In any way you’ll let me.” You said. And, oh, it had you aching, the way those delectably beautiful eyes darkened, and a pepper of thickening quiet settled between the two of you.

Johnny’s mouth opened, the breach of something verbal threatening to fall from the gasp, though nothing came out, and he closed it, instead. His breathing stammered, you dared to notice, and you felt almost ill, bereft with the simplicity of your want, your need, for his emotional acceptance. “I see.” He said, somewhat breathless, and entirely succumbed with - what you depicted, perhaps foolishly, to be - love. You felt something rise, flutter, within the depth of your digestion - almost drabbled with such pride, that you could affect him in any which way. A grin engulfed his expression, once more, and elated the darkness, clouding his chestnut orbs in a magnificent kind of way, as one hand crawled up from upon your waist, and clasped the curve of your blushed cheek. His calloused thumb traced a thing of gentle affection, stroking the soft complexion in a timid manner, and that flock of butterflies found themselves satisfied with their numbingly strong fluttering, crawling upon your skin in a matter of nerves and anxiousness. “Well,” He spoke, glancing adoringly between your eyes. From one to the other, as though he couldn’t quite believe you to be smitten within his hold, reciprocating his feelings so endlessly. The warmth of his adorning breath fanned the supple part of your gaped lips, expectant; waiting. “Best go put on your shoes, then, aye?” He whispered.

And with that, he was gone. Hoisting you up, as he stumbled to his feet, and his expression elated a smile. He squeezed twice on your shoulders, humoured by such a frown, and he swooped down to collect his jacket from the floor. “Go on,” He said, “We’re off on a walk.”

“We are?” You echoed, a slight distance woven within your tone.

Johnny smiled, “We are, Love.” He said, and he barreled himself through the arms of his coat.

You paused, be it only a moment, as gentle tufts of hair drifted upon his forehead, and he brushed them back, a toothy grin etched upon his face. He stretched up, an arch to his back, and muttered a; “Go on! It’s raining, you’ll get your feet wet if you don’t.” With a hustle, and a small shove to your shoulders.

Frowning, you found your feet drifting you to the corner of the room - he’d gone mad. It was decided. Though, perhaps, you thought; you were just as crazy as he. For why else would you slip on your shoes, and throw on a jacket, hanging up on the wall hooks? Without another thought of hesitation, you shoved it all on, and you regained your full height, a little breathless - unfortunately so - and met the uneven smirk that was utterly Johnny’s.

He clapped his hands together, a soft connection, and rubbed them slightly, bounding to the door before you both, and swinging open the darkened oak. Neither you, nor he, bothered to dismantle the blaring illuminant that was the television, as he awaited the passing breeze of yourself.

You wandered him by, mind a whir of incoherent thoughts, though one - one in particular - stood out, among the others. He hadn’t said it back.

The weight of his arm, curled around the crease of your shoulders, brought you away from such a thought, and you had hardly noticed the few tender steps you had traced. “You smell nice.” Johnny said, a slight smile to his tone, “Fruity.” You merely grinned something small, and rolled your eyes. Ever the strange one.

“You’re sure you haven’t had any of that wine before?” You jested, “On the way over, perhaps?”

He smiled, something soft, as his free hand fumbled within his depthful pocket, and his gaze found his shoes. “The cheap stuff gives me indigestion.” He smirked, “Didn’t want the heartburn.”

“Ah,” You breathed, “I suppose that does make sense.”

You approached the stairwell, poised to the end of the depressingly dim hallway, and watched as he bounced upon every step, no longer wedged beside you, but rather bounding upon the echoing chorus of the descending metal. His hair, naturally dried from a drizzle of cooling rain, flowed - up, and down - in a majestic kind of motion, as a subtle giggle fell from you, and your legs maneuvered a slight jog, to catch up with his waiting frame.

He stood, slick with a grin, at the door, his arm a barricade upon its weight, as you muttered a curt thanks, and you stumbled into the waft of approaching crisp. The winter chill embraced your figure - a sudden movement, as it trailed from your toes, to your hips, to your finger-tips, and your nose - and you draped your hands within the depthful pockets of your dark coat. You shuddered - Heavens, was it freezing - and you clenched your jaw, spat with a sprinkle of dainted moisture, as the clouds shed their supple solemness.

“It’s beautiful, don’t you think?” Johnny muttered, striding to that of a similar pace, as his hands, too, found the inner comfort of his pockets, and his arm brushed with yours. You warmed at the touch, though not by much, and you simply assumed it was all in your head, dismissive for the sudden heat. “The night.” He continued. “There’s just something about it.”

You turned, gaze fixated upon the gorgeous glow of his sculpted features, contorted with a content smile, orbs fluttered upon the scenery before you both, unmoving, and entirely comfortable. Happy, you dared to notice. And as were you. “I know what you mean.” You mumbled, a saddened grin to quiver upon the corners of your lips, though you simply couldn’t force it’s obtain, as it fell, and your eyes found the floor. He hadn’t said it back.

“It’s like-” He paused, tongue winding upon his lips, and his eyebrows furrowed momentarily. “It’s like the whole world is asleep.” He smiled. “It’s not, but it feels less… Alive.”

You breathed a gentle laugh. “Like it’s only you.” You mumbled, “Without the pressure, and the judgement.” There was a subtle nod, as he brushed the fallen hair from within his vision.

“I know how to be myself, when the moon’s my only company, y’know?” He admitted, nibbling the tender flesh of his lower lip, as his gaze darted, between the street, to the tree, to the housing scattered around. “Like whatever happens, under the stars, it-” He paused, he let out a breathy chuckle, and continued: “It won’t matter in the morning.” You simply nodded, as he opened his mouth, a stuttered mumble falling from his tongue, and your silence remained, for you knew he was not quite finished. “I just- I-” He paused, another shaky exhale, and your eyebrows furrowed. He scratched the lower-crown of his hair, ruffling it, slightly, with a nervous chuckle. “I don’t want-” He frowned, gulping, and continued: “I don’t want tonight to be one of those nights.”

Your furrow seemed to deepen, the words falling before you found yourself able to grapple them. “What do you mean?” You mumbled, a gentle cloud upon the frozen nightlife.

“Look, I think-” He sighed, pausing mid-step, and standing, amidst the weighted rain, as it grew heavier, and you simply grew wetter. You paused, expression contorted with a slight confusion, dribbled with copious droplets that you didn’t bother to brush away. “I think I could dote on the darkness, forever and a day.” He said, and you frowned. You wondered just quite where he was going with such, though failed to interrupt his continuance, as he spoke, soft, among the patterning rainfall, draping upon the concrete with a rhythmic dance. “But it’s not-” He caught himself, one more, as another nervous laugh trickled from his dampened lips. Verbal gold, it surely was. “None of it - it’s not- it’s not as, uh, captivating, as you.”

Your chest fell woozy with a supple ache, furrow one of grave compassion, and he glanced, hesitantly, with a curt removal, to your expression. You smiled, a glaze of sorrow melting from upon those amorous features. Captivating. He thought you were captivating. “And I think you- uhm-” He coughed, a slight smile to catch the corner of his lips. “I think you taught me to love, again.” He mumbled, head-up tilted, as his warm, genuine, gaze, infiltrated your own.

“Oh?” You grinned, truthfully unable to rupture the flutter of great tingles, encasing your shivering complexion - a certain warmth cursing throughout your frozen blood.

He laughed, a glance of something shy to his shoes, and he nodded. “Yeah.” He mumbled, returning to meet your joyous expression. “And I think I’d like to dote on you, instead.”

“In what way?” You muttered, mocking for his previously sly commentary, a gratuitous - particularly brazen - step closer, to the grinning man, as his hands, slightly coaxed by a pink chill, from the breeze of winter's embrace, draped upon the clothed fabric of your hips.

He drew a step closer, your shoes toe to toe, and he spoke - dangerously low; nauseatingly rich. “In any way you’ll let me.” He smirked. And, well, that seemed quite enough for you.

There was a certain warmth about it - the capture of your supple lips upon the soft flesh of his own, molded wondrously to a hymn the Angels could never know. Eyes fluttered to a gentle close, engulfed with a sprinkle of vanishing warmth; the rain no longer seemed to matter. For you were clothed, slick like a second skin, in the thick moisture of everlasting water - wet, to the very bone - but no longer did you shiver, no longer did you tremble, with the ache of a chilling night. The pressure was timid, and the exploration a motion utterly anew - yet so beautifully divine, so entirely right.

Your fingers - pink, and bitterly numb, in themselves - wove to clutch upon the lapels of his cotton jacket, a clutch of passion, and of longing, to emancipate the wondrous flutter in the depth of your gut. It twisted, it turned, it ached, it shrieked - you felt ill. Ill with the fever of amorous recipricance and a lover so sickly sweet, you felt you’d awake with cavities, in the later morn. You liked that thought, as your head tilted, be it only slight, to the side, and he followed your subtle retreat. Like honey, did he taste; like gold, did he display. And, oh, if this was love - if this, two lovers combined amongst the ache of winter’s cue - you decided that it was, undoubtedly, real. It was real, not a mere description of romanticised fiction. No. No; it was the golden sunlight, woven between your very hands; it was the melody of the birds, so suppley sweet; the dew upon the whispered grass, a lick of crisped morning; the enticing ferociousness of the oceanic waves, an azure of alluring power; the liquid gold, to drip from a Poet’s pen, woven beneath the tongue of their romantic thoughts - Oh, it were all that, and more. So much more.

And, as his feeble smile fluctuated upon his bowed lips, and his fragile hold - something so gentle, upon the flush of your frozen cheek, you hardly noticed the grace of movement, thumb brushed beneath your fluttered eyes - draped across your features, you found yourself discovering all that it ever could be.

His tongue, though warm, and tender, slithered something slow upon the breach of your lower lip, and your cheeks furrowed a blossoming grin. Parting your lips, subtly, you allowed the delicate invasion of a gratifying, sweet, pressure, as the flesh ran along the side of your tongue, and you encased it within a frail suck, withdrawing from such an entanglement for hardly a moment. You inhaled a particularly deep breath, unfinished and wondrously interrupted, as his lips found yours once more, a collision of teeth, and of grinning hearts, and he craned upon your stature, a barricade to crawl along the base of your lower back. The soft slosh of clapped fabric wove amongst the rainfall, and a breathy chuckle harmonized from upon your lips, himself ridden with a gorgeous grin; chest-to-chest, with a kind of warmth you had never before known cursing throughout the very complexion that was your own, as your bodies collided, and his strength held you close.

You inhaled the scent, familiar, though certainly different, and it tingled the depth of your nostrils - like woodland, and a subtle cologne. It seemed raw, so ravenously close, and your lips twitched upward at the thought. Oh, how you loved him. It ached your smitten chest, as he moulded his lips upon your own, and your movement harmonized something bitterly perfect, and it combusted among your soul. It tore the very sense you once held, from within your capacity, and it brushed such necessity beneath the carpet; for what was sense to a girl in love?

Nothing. All that made sense was him - was he - and you yearned to know it all; every crevice, every dent, for the rest of your days. Forever seemed a long time, though life so awfully short. To spend forever, a faux illusion of endless measures, by his side - it spread a warmth, such burning heat, throughout your tender frame, and you ached to know the script of every moment spent together, all until every moment were merely a memory, with nothing left to come.

His feathered affection fell to a tender null, a lingering pause to disperse upon the gape of your swollen mouth, and he draped a peppered peck upon the very corner, withdrawing from such an intertwined proximity. You fluttered your gaze to meet his own - a stare of saturated honey; of every nightfall; of every poetic tale - and he smiled. A smile, so incredibly warm, you found yourself unable to withhold the reciprocance, as a timid blush crawled upon the complexion of your grinning features, and your eyes retained their strengthful embrace.

For the bitter breeze had returned, and your lips were falling cold, but it didn’t matter. None of it mattered - not the howl of brash wind, curling within your locks, and whipping the hood of your coat; the ache of layered rain, as it pattered, continually, upon the distilled world around; the treacherous ache of all things nauseatingly woozy, engulfing your frame in an intensely warm ambiguity - unfamiliar, though entirely welcome. None of it mattered - not as you drowned within the softness of his adoring gaze.

Adoring, you thought; oh, did he adore you? “I love you.” He mumbled, a quiet crackle upon the pattern of rain, though you caught it - oh, did you catch it, clutched within the fragile hold of your softened heart, ached with the pressure of convicting ribs, it cried for freedom, for home; for Johnny. A smile, so genuine, so utterly enticed; joyous, draped upon your lips, and the corners of your glimmering eyes fell to a crease. He loved you. He breathed a gentle chuckle, soggy arms curled upon that of your shoulders, as he drew you close - so unimaginably close - and he clutched your warmth upon his own. “God,” He breathed, his cheek slumped upon the crown of your head, down-tilted, and soaked with the cold of splattered rain. “I love you.”

Arms draped across his middle, clutched upon his lower back - you ached from the cold, though you minded it not - as you smiled, and you breathed the only response you felt acceptable. “I know.” You said.

“And I’ll give you the sun.” He continued, a mere rumble upon the quiet noise. “Indulge me, and I’ll give you the sun, ray, by fucking ray.”

Oh, how you ached for such sonerous truth - for you knew he would never lie to you.

#johnny depp #johnny depp x reader #jd x reader #fanfiction #fanfic #fan fiction #fan fic #young johnny depp #johnny depp fanfiction #aw #they do be cute

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cherryblossomtease · 3 years ago

Text

In The Fairest Season ~ Part 2

18+only

warnings summary masterlist

~JUNE~

The first time you sing for the Baron you haven’t even met him yet. In fact, you have no idea that he is in the audience.

Your solo, the lone aria not sung by Serena, the lead vocalist who will never let anyone forget it, opens the second act and it is your chance to show the world, or at least the city, that you are meant for greater things.

You give the song everything you have. Living it, breathing it, exhaling it out across that stage until the audience is moved to tears. You can’t see them for the lights, but you can feel it.

Follow that, you think as you glide offstage, passing the undeserving diva who strong armed her way to top billing. You don’t like to fight amongst your own kind, but if she suddenly lost her ability to speak you wouldn’t be sad about it.

Curtain call confirms your intuition. You are pulled front and center by your cast-mates and their own applause is drown out by the roar of the crowd.

The people love you.

Accepting your praise with a truly humble heart, you curtsy under a wave of roses. All the while, one man sits watching from a private box.

He is the last to stand. Not because he disagrees with the ovation, but because he’s been rendered immobile since the moment you opened your mouth.

You didn’t know it then and neither of you would be certain right away, but it is clear to any who see the way he looks at the aspiring songbird dipping low as she thanks the audience with tears in her eyes— Baron Helmut Zemo is already falling in love with you.

While finding out as much as he can about you is easy for a man like the Baron, your only knowledge of him is gained the same way as most outside of the elite circles— through rumors and whispers— and those tell the tale of a powerful man who has gained the love and devotion of his fellow soldiers and countrymen while at war with an enemy state. Though some say his tactics were less than honorable…

Either way their war was too distant, both in time and setting to matter to anyone here, but it changed the Sokovian people forever, reshaping the land and claiming so many lives.

Zemo’s wife and child among them.

You’d heard the story in passing and found it heartbreaking but hadn’t felt the need to think of it again until today, thanks in large part to the kindness of Colonel Nicholas Fury and his wife, the Lady Valentina a former Countess through marriage with a taste for danger. It comes as little surprise to those in the know that the Colonel, or his Lady wife would know someone like the Baron, who happens to be a former Colonel himself, though there are many secrets kept about their history and just how such a friendship was made.

Today however, none of it matters as the Colonel and Lady Valentina are holding a lovely benefit for the local children’s home, and while it is a reason to show off their mysterious guest, as the Baron will be staying with the pair for the season, you’d agreed to entertain long before rumors of this Baron began to make the rounds. The Colonel pays prices most girls won’t see after a month of work, and with nothing expected from you but your voice at its best and your personality front and center to charm the upper class, this is the sort of performance you look forward to.

Accompanied by piano in the grand solarium, the performance is by your own standards a very good one; Understated, gentle on the ear, but, as is evidence by the looks on the faces of the Lords and Ladies in attendance, no less impactful.

“Haunting” Is what you’re told by those who greet you afterwards and you wear that word like a badge of honor over your heart as you mingle.

It is between sets while standing at the piano that you feel the lightest touch on your shoulder.

Fingertips, brushing your bare skin with a hesitancy but such longing that your attention is grabbed instantly.

You’ve been touched like this before, but this is different—you turn around feeling curiosity instead of dread.

You aren’t quite sure how long it takes you to speak. Maybe it’s seconds, perhaps some minutes or more before you find your words, the point is, time feels irrelevant.

His gaze is as bold as the sun and you are held there, left to feel the trails of heat along your skin in the wake of it—up your arms, across your shoulders and neck, your lips— you’ve never had a man look at you this way before and not felt the urgent need to run. Instead, you take a step forward.

“Madame. Allow me to introduce his Lordship, Baron Helmut Zemo.” The Colonel announces.

With a slow bow of your head you lower into a small curtsey to show respect for the man above your station. Your eyes lift to meet his as you rise up and watch his mouth curl into a hint of a smile.

“Madame y/n” He exhales when he says your name as though he is relieved to know it and you feel the little hairs on the back of your neck rise as if he’s whispered in your ear. “It is an honor.”

You smile and thank him “The honor is of course mine, my Lord Baron.”

“After today I’ve had the privilege of watching you perform twice now. But I was beginning to fear I might never meet you in the flesh.”

Something about his choice of words makes you feel warm all over. “It seems the stars have aligned and brought us together after all.” You say with a genuine smile.

He gives a hint of a laugh and glances at Fury. “Yes a, Man shaped constellation” He teases making the Colonel grin.

“Forgive me Barron Zemo,” You say a little timid. “I hope I don’t embarrass you or myself by speaking freely, but… your accent? Please, tell me the name of your country. I’ve heard it said before but can quite recall.” You’re unable to hold back your curiosity and the way he forms words has you eager to know more.

“Ah.” He flashes a quick smile. “Well, you see I am only here to visit my friend as you know.” He says glancing at Fury. “A summer abroad. A summer away…” You catch a hint of sadness but he presses on. “I am from Sokovia. A small country but there is none that can compare to its beauty.”

“Sokovia?” You say it slowly “Yes, in passing I’ve heard it said but I am ashamed to say I could not point to it on a map. Though I’m sure it’s as beautiful as the tone you take when speaking of it.” You pause to look him in the eye. “I can hear the love you hold for your homeland in your voice Baron.” You are being polite but the truth is, you are struck by it. He has a sort of rasping tenor that comes out in a hesitant whisper, as though he wants to say more but fears saying too much.

I can take it, you think and find yourself drawing your bottom lip between your teeth as you study his. He has a wonderfully wide mouth and the way his lips move when he speaks is hypnotic.

“I will never hide my love for my country. Not after everything we have been through.” He says.

You smile reading between the lines. “I see that. And while I’m only a singer who has had her travel limited.” You admit. “I hope to perform across the world. Tell me the best Sokovian stage Baron and perhaps I will stand on it one day.” You say, aware of how eager you sound but know that it’s the truth.

The Colonel laughs like all wealthy men do when they hear the dreams of women, but the Baron does not. No, he looks at you as though you’ve just spoken your deepest desires aloud and he feels blessed to have heard them.

“One day, yes. Perhaps you will.” He says and you hope he doesn’t notice how your breath catches in your throat, but the way his eyes fix on yours makes you feel seen.

The three of you fall silent and you’re very aware of Colonel Fury watching the two of you. You see his coy smile from the corner of your eye and its clear that he thinks the Baron will have you down to your stockings by the days end, but nothing is further from the truth.

Baron Zemo doesn’t try to take your dress off, not even when you wander inside and into the library alone with him. Instead he listens to you tell stories about the parts of your life that are easy to share and with what seems to be genuine interest.

You tell him about your mother who was a singer before you, though she never made it to the big stage. You still send money home to her and your sweet father who is too sick to work but still manages to paint when he’s feeling up to it.

“So you are the product of true love.” He says and while there is an edge to his voice, he is not trying to tease. You feel him watching you touch the spines of the many books along the shelves in the dimly lit room.

“Why do you say that?” You ask, your back still to him.

“A singer and an artist who marry do it for no other reason.” He says, confident in his statement. You can hear the smile in his voice and your own grows across your face. Coming from anyone else this would be an insult. Coming from him, it turns your ordinary origins into something romantic.

“Love, with the hope of fame and money.” You correct with a smirk and find him over your shoulder.

He is standing in the light of the large south facing window and you have no choice but to turn and face him. It’s nearly unfair that any man should be so beautiful.

You’d noticed the way the other women in attendance looked at him in his exquisite jacket and vest, looking the very picture of fashionable victorian masculinity; and done without effort it would seem. Just his natural air of confidence. Honestly you’re convinced Zemo could make a workhouse uniform look like the kings cape.

What would those women do now, you wonder. With his brown hair looking almost black in the library shadows, so thick and pretty as it falls in his eyes in lovely contrast to his fair skin.

As the clouds part and a strong band of light breaks through the windows casting a warm glow over the man, you smile imagining the socialites batting their lashes and dipping into quaint curtsies to attract him, but it seems none can manage to take his eyes from you…

They would all say it’s because you’re a stage whore, a woman of ill repute with the gift of song. But they are wrong. They always are.

“Tell me Baron Zemo, how long did you say you’ll be staying” You ask crossing the room to step into the sun with him.

He looks down at you and you notice for the first time the flecks of gold in his eyes. “I must return at the end of August.”

“Oh.” You look away. It’s already June.

His body language changes a bit, like someone has splashed cold water over him and he goes stiff. Quickly as if desperate to do so, he takes hold of your hand which startles you as much as it excites you. You try not to let him see the way he’s made your own body respond but your heart threatens to leap from your chest.

“Would it be forward of me to ask you to join our small party for dinner this coming Saturday?”

Your eyes dart up finding such hope in his. “Not at all. So long as you understand what it is you’re asking?” You hate to turn the mood, it was so nice, but this needs to be said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well dinner with a performer of course. I suppose it could be seen as the Colonel’s kindness… but Baron please don’t tell me you’re so naive to the ways of the country you summer in.”

He gives you a curious frown “I forget where I am often. Your ways here will always be a little strange. You see in Sokovia, to possess a gift such as yours would see you walk among the people who look down on you here. We lift those better than ourselves up in my country.”

You feel light headed at the idea. Imagine being seen as important for what you are born with, and not for what you are born into. “It sounds wonderful.” You say, fully aware of how soft your voice is when you’re standing so close to him.

Him, this man you do not know. You pull your hand free from his.

Taking a step back you give a small curtsy. “I must go back, we have a few more songs to perform, but thank you for the walk, and for the invitation. I look forward to it!”

He smiles politely and offers to escort you, but you know better. No need ruining his reputation or starting rumors about your own.

You go back to the solarium and take up your place next to the piano and proceed to sing the heartbreaking aria that can decimate even the strongest of defenses.

Your eyes scan the room as you sing, finding hapless victims to serenade until finally you land on the Barron standing behind the rows of chairs.

The man is stricken by your words of love and loss and you think perhaps you could have warned him about your song.

When you find him again, it is an accident.

You’d gone off looking for your pianist when you find the Baron standing alone in the garden just off the parlor.

You almost speak but notice the way he stands there without moving. He is looking down at a bush of flowers; large white Lillies.

You brace against the doorframe and lean in to watch him for a moment before you realize… he raises his hand and wipes a tear before slipping it back into his pocket.

Tears over flowers? No. Not flowers, and then you understand. The war you know nothing of, took everything from him.

You feel guilty. Of all the songs you had to sing you chose the one that could break a healthy heart, what had it done to this shattered thing probably held together by nothing more than string and sheer determination.

Your own ached for him and you’d never longed to hold anything or anyone so much in your life, but you did not know him yet and quietly slipped back inside.

Your last interaction with the Baron that afternoon had been no more than a sweet goodbye, but your thoughts are preoccupied with him over the week.

You find your self thinking of the way he’d touched your shoulder while you dress for your performances, and onstage when you shut your eyes you see his looking back at you, golden in the sun.

When Saturday comes around, you ignore the teasing of your best friend Brigitte who watches the way you’re fussing over your hair and pinching your cheeks after dressing in the small apartment you share with her over the theatre. Thankfully no one keeps watch over the costumes and so you wear the pale yellow dress from last years production that you think looks best against your skin.

Brigitte asks if he’s proposed yet just to set you off, but only because she’s never seen you nervous, but then she’s never seen you so excited over a man. Presumably because none has ever managed to hold your attention for so long.

The carriage arrives to pick you up and you try desperately not to be won over by the fact that he’s sent his own.

You know that it is his.

You run your hand along the silk lined walls, inhaling deeply, picking up the faintest scent of his cologne as you sink into the seat. Your smile grows wide with no one there to see as the driver sitting high above steers the horses through the city streets, the light jostle inside keeping you alert as you imagine the Baron standing at the threshold of the estate waiting for you. It begins to feel wonderfully indecent to be surrounded by him so intimately.

And what would it feel like if he really did hold you close? Would it feel this warm and safe? Would you rest in his arms as you do his carriage, rushing past the world feeling untouchable?

Your eyes close for a moment; you are lost in a sea of daydreams until a wheel hits a large hole that jolts you back to reality. Eyes going wide, you quickly blow out the tension built up in your chest through your lips and shake you head trying not to smile. The man has held your hand one time old girl. Calm down!

You are still flushed and breathing hard when you arrive. When you see Baron Zemo waiting for you in the hall of the estate, in his dinner jacket and tie, you feel as though he knows every indecent thought you had on that incredible ride through town. If he does however, the Baron does not humiliate you, only showers you with complements on your appearance tonight.

And though the night is perfection, dinner in the city would not be dinner without a scandal. And so it goes that yours is candlelit and ripe for the pamphlets.

Colonel and Lady treat you as their guest of honor, though it is the Baron who attracts the attention of the others in attendance.

As he escorts you to the dining room, Baron Zemo dares to whisper in your ear. “If I could have entertained you and you alone, I would have made it so. But this is —not allowed —on these foreign shores.” He says and you see the way his dark gaze fixes ahead. You aren’t sure if it is Lord or Lady who earns his contempt but all you can do is hold back your laughter.

“It’s perfectly fine. The rules are there for them, so long as I am in their world I will play along. To be perfectly honest Baron… ” You look up at him in the door way and he lays his hand over yours, resting in the crook of his elbow. “This is exquisite.” You say. He smiles looking a little relieved and you notice that he’s been watching your lips as you speak and you feel yourself blush.

That however is not the moment to cause the scandal. Nor does it come from the Baron expressing his rather progressive views which he offers up like a complement to the soup course. It comes when he asks your opinion and you, shock of all shocks, give it.

The Lady Hawthorn who is also in attendance tries to cut you off, but the Baron hushes her and urges you to go on.

With him backing you, you find yourself feeling quite free to express your desire to see all people treated equally, and end your monologue by announcing that you know such a utopia could never exist so long as the wealthy are pleased and the poor too overworked to notice. This sends the Lady over the edge and Fury into a fit of laughter.

Only Baron Zemo hears the truth and he looks at you through the deep yellow glow of candlelight with pride.

Unfortunately that, is not what they print.

Rising star flies too close to the sun

“What a ridiculous thing to say” You huff carrying an armful of gowns over to the mirror in the little dressing area of your apartment.

“Maybe, but you’ll sing to a packed house tonight” Brigitte grins as she lounges on the settee in the middle of the small but colorfully decorated room. “The audience loves a spectacle.” Her French accent makes everything sound cute but it is nothing short of annoying in the moment.

“It’s hardly a spectacle Brigitte. Just bored, sad, empty headed people with nothing better to do than twist your well thought out words and opinions. My, well thought out words and opinions.” You speak with conviction while trying to ignore the sinking sense of embarrassment as you hold each dress up over your underclothes, one at a time. You are angry of course, those damned pamphlets are nothing more than a way for them to openly indulge in gossip and cruelty about you and your kind. Granted you’re not above reading them from time to time and this isn’t the first experience you’ve had with being a feature (poor Lord Quinn. He did fall in love so easily) but this is the first time that you care.

“You’re quite the radical aren’t you.” Brigitte says sitting up and sipping her tonic.

“Yes, a woman with an opinion, how will the world move on.” You roll your eyes and sling the yellow dress aside.

“Those aren’t costumes.” Brigitte says suspiciously and sits up on her knees, her arms hanging over the back of the sofa.

You look at her in the mirror and sigh. “No. I can’t keep borrowing them and besides, these aren’t for the stage.”

She’s waiting but you hesitate. “Tell me! Who are they for? It’s him right? Your Baron.”

“He isn’t mine.” You scold. “But yes, Baron Zemo has asked me to accompany him to the festival tomorrow night, and…” You pause glancing at yourself in the mirror. “I’ve said yes.”

“Of course you have, silly girl.” Brigitte giggles and gets up, coming over to you. She stands at your back, her long elegant fingers resting on your shoulders. She presses her cheek to yours and you feel the swell of love for your oldest friend rise.

The two of you have been through so much together. From escaping the cruel and often times corporal punishment of St. Augustine’s school for girls, to the deadly grasp of the streets. You’d been fighting along side one another until you both managed to sing your way onto the stage.

While Brigitte is technically better, you’re the one who sings with heart and that small edge is why your likeness will hang from the posts and not hers, but she is your friend in all things and as you gain notoriety, you have every intention of bringing her right along with you.

“I don’t know why I think anything will come of it. He’s a Baron for goodness sake.” You say scrunching your nose up at the lavender dress.

Brigitte is waiting, knowing you’ll answer your own suspicions.

“But, he looks at me and it’s as though these barriers don’t exist. I might as well be the daughter of a Duke when he smiles.”

“In his eyes, perhaps you are.” She says kindly. “Now, put those dresses away, you’ll wear my white one and look nothing less than angelic tomorrow. Tonight, you’ll sing like one and win your place in the Barons heart for good.”

As fate would have it, Baron Zemo was not at the performance last night. It means nothing though, that much is clear. He is as taken with you as you almost allow yourself to be with him. It is a dangerous game you play, one that could see you broken by the end of summer, but it is so hard to stay away…

You stroll causally behind The Colonel and Lady Fury through the park grounds along the pea gravel paths lit by paper lanterns with sparks flying from swirling machines and flames that shoot up from small bonfires.

Brigitte and your friend Eloise are bringing up the rear, but it feels as though there isn’t another soul alive. Just you and him and the beautiful menagerie that surrounds you.

The festival is one you’ve heard of but never attended and you’re almost happy you never have because as far as firsts go this one is magic.

A show of sight and sound engages every sense. There are acrobats, jugglers, stilt walkers and sword swallowers. You smell the food being sold from small carts and hear the music of the far off bandstand. You have a hard time not running around like a child as you point and shriek at the shocking, and squeal with delight at the fun. Each beautiful display of oddities and wonder that seem to never phase the Baron amaze you, though he does take great joy in watching your reaction.

When a fire breather spits yellow flames in your path, you jump back with a scream grabbing Zemo’s arm which makes him laugh.

You’re suddenly aware of how jovial his voice can be and when you look up, he smiles like you’ve never seen before and closes his hand over yours.

You think he might let go, but instead he begins to walk again, happy to keep you close.

You take in the sights on either side of the lawn, until it all begins to feel like a dream. Perhaps it was the champagne you had on arrival…

“Thank you my Lord, I’ll never forget this night.” You say under the cover of a trellis dripping with wisteria just outside of the wonderful chaos.

“It has been quite the show” He says looking back at the distant festivities before settling on you again. He quickly takes off his black topper, his hair falling into his eyes. “Unlike anything I’ve ever seen” He says looking at you with such an intensity that you can not hold the eye contact. You smile and look away spotting a servant with a large tray of champagne stacked like a pyramid of glowing gold.

Baron Zemo sees how you look at it and waves him over, taking two glasses from the top giving one to you, and raising his glass in salute.

“What do we drink to?” You ask.

Zemo thinks while looking into your eyes. Finally he raises the glass a little higher. “To the continuation of our friendship.”

You feel your cheeks flush and your mouth go a little dry. To declare a friendship between you is something you almost wish he wouldn’t say, but, it’s already been done. Still, what future can there truly be, you wonder looking up at this man who, had you been born into a wealthy family would have been yours weeks ago. But then, something about the Baron tells you not to fixate on what could have been, and to always expect the unexpected.

The sound of your glasses clinking is drown out by the boom of fireworks in the distance.

You tip your glass and drink. The champagne is sweet and cold and bubbly. You swallow with a smile only to shut your eyes when he strokes your cheek with the back of his hand, his thumb daring to glide across your bottom lip.

You inhale the moment and open your eyes to find his wanting, but not here. Not yet.

“To our future.” You say, needing him to know that you wish to push forward.

The Baron nods and takes another drink, watching you do the same over his glass. “I must insist on seeing you again, you understand?” He asks as he finishes.

“Yes of course.” You say. “I have one week, and then the show continues.” You tell him feeling sorry for it. It’s not easy to balance a life on and off the stage, in fact you’ve never really had too before, but for him you will try.

“A week.” He says it with finality. “Then let us have this week as our own.”

The next few days are a whirlwind of unforgettable moments. You are convinced any other man would be trying to impress you with his knowledge and access to things privy only to someone of his status, but with the Baron it feels as though he simply enjoys sharing his world.

From a private showing of the Kings’ collection of antiquities, to a small garden reading by one of your favorite authors who Baron Zemo happens to know personally, you spend your time together as near equals, exchanging ideas and thoughts as easily as you would with your oldest friends. It surprises you to find it so easy to speak to a man you’re only just starting to know.

Perhaps that is because he never once reminds you of the gap between your status. You are cautious to believe anything a man of such wealth says, but when the Baron speaks he seems to do so truthfully, and when he listens, he does so without judgement.

“How is it my Lord, that you seem to rise above the constraints of society while moving through it so elegantly?” You ask as he escorts you home to the theatre one evening.

You are arm in arm, the lamps are lit and the air has a certain joie de vivre that radiates from the passersby. You smile and nod hello to a couple before looking up at the Baron’s handsome profile. He walks in silence for a while and you know him well enough by now to understand that he is just thinking before speaking, which is something you greatly admire.

“I hope my manner is not offensive.” He says with a deep frown. “I simply wish to be as honest with you as possible. To pretend that I see you as someone unworthy of my attention would be a lie.”

You turn your face to hide your giddy smile but he stops walking, your hand slipping from his coat.

Confused, you spin to face him. “Baron? What is it?”

“Do not hide.” He says in all seriousness. “Your face, it’s so expressive. There is such an openness in the way you show your emotion and I fear someone has told you to keep it hidden?” He asks and you avert your eyes instinctively but quickly look back up at him.

Feeling sure, you confess. “When my parents were too poor to keep me, I was sent to Augustines as I’ve mentioned. It was there I was taught that to show joy is a sin. To cry is a sin, to be angry is a sin. Frustration, even a simple smile, all sins. Everything beautiful about who we are as living creatures must be suppressed” You say, still bitter.

The Baron scoffs shaking his head. “Nothing is a sin when you stop believing that there is someone to sin against. Your smile is a gift mala ptica, a glimpse at your pure heart, just as your tears are an expression of the pain you feel inside. People can be very cruel, and I am sorry you were ever told such lies.” He says and you see that it truly hurts him to picture you as a child, scolded for what comes naturally. “Please, do not feel as though you ever need to hide either from me. If I am the reason you smile, then I consider myself to be a fortunate man.” He pauses, looking at you as people pass by. “Conversely If I ever make you cry, well, the pain of hurting you will be my deserved punishment.” He says and though you stand apart on the dark sidewalk, you feel the warmth of his affection reach out and close its arms around you, holding you close enough that you can hear the drumming of his heart.

The week ends with a picnic, just a small luncheon taken outside with all the delightful indulgence of the spoiled upperclass.

You sit at the edge of a large blanket, covered by a spread of fruit and cheese and bread. There are biscuits and cakes, small sandwiches and of course tea— and what looks to be chopped pheasant being carried out by a young servant all the way from the house. You are thankful for the shade of the ancient tree you sit under with the women; Lady Valentina, her neighbor, who has brought her daughter-in-law, and their two cousins, all of you laughing as the men play a lazy but entertaining game of rugby in their shirts, their jackets thrown down in the grass.

You applaud for the Baron and Lord Wessex the neighbor’s son who has come home for a quick visit with his wife. They make a great team, and though the Baron insists he’s too old for sport—which he is most certainly not— he is fast and strong and shows just a glimpse of the man he must have been during the war.

“He cuts quite the figure.” One of the cousins says to the other with a wicked little grin.

You eye her prim face, almost jealous but the energy would be wasted. You know who he smiles at as he crosses the lawn.

“Yes, but I hear he’s engaged.” Says the other

“Oh? To who? Certainly not to anyone here.” Lady Valentina says sipping from her cup.

You are silent as you watch these women who you know in name only. You don’t know their hearts, but you guess them to be as cold as the pheasant.

“No. A Sokovian Duchess I believe.” The cousin says and you stare at her.

“Then why on earth is he here?” The daughter-in-law asks.

“Must not be a very happy engagement.” The cousin says, her tittering laughter joined by the others.

You smile but set your tea down and look over, watching Baron Zemo toss the large ball across the lawn to his partner. He trots backwards and calls something out, clapping a few times before stopping and resting his hands on his knees. As though he can sense your eyes on him, he looks over from his bent position, that lock of hair fallen out of place.

He told you just a day or so ago to never hide your feelings from him, and so you don’t. Honestly, given what you’ve just heard, you couldn’t if you tried.

You can only imagine how you must look because he stands upright, rakes his hair back with his fingers and stares at you, his own face long, his jaw tight.

He knows something has happened. Immediately the Baron calls for a break in the game.

You look away eyeing the women. “Please, excuse me. I believe my legs are going a little numb.” You shrug, feigning a smile at the ladies and quickly get up, brushing your skirts and walking off.

“Poor circulation from all that time standing onstage.” You hear one of them say.

“And lying on her back” Another whispers loudly to the shocked laughter of the others.

The insult stings, more so than it normally would, and you shut your eyes as you march off towards the house ready to leave.

Of course they think you’re just here playing the whore to the rakish Baron. Why you ever thought they would accept you as their own or that he would be better than the rest is beyond you.

But what truly shames you, is that you believe their gossip, even after spending time with him. And why shouldn’t you? Isn’t this what men do? Lie? Especially to women of your profession.

It’s when you’ve reached the manicured part of the lawn that you realize you’re hardly breathing and that your heart feels like it’s been run through with one of the picnic bread knives. You clutch your chest, angry at the pain as the tears that well in your eyes burn, and you curse yourself for letting him have such an effect on you at all.

“Wait.”

You gasp, startled by his voice vibrating deep in your own chest as he has come up on you by surprise; his body so close to yours you feel his breath along your neck as he takes you by the arms and pulls you into the shaded privacy of the garden trees before you can protest.

He turns you around and the look on his face is a mix of curiosity and worry, to which you find yourself surprisingly angry. “What’s happened? What have they said to you?” He asks.

“What’s wrong Baron? Are you worried that I’ve found out?” You ask and move to wipe your eyes, but you let him see, just as he’s insisted.

“Found out? mala ptica, I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t you?”

He just stares down and you realize you’ve never seen him confused before. “Baron? What do you think they said?”

“Some insult? A way to make you feel inferior as seems to be their casual form of amusement.” He says clearly very angry and possibly ready to march back and defend you.

You feel your anger falter. This is unexpected and you shake your head. Now you’re the one confused. “No. Baron… I—I’m afraid I’ve made something of a fool of myself if you truly have no fear of any secret being found out?” Your voice rises as you question it.

“You are not a fool y/n” He says with a hint of irritation in his voice.

You look down, steadying yourself before looking back up into his eyes. “I never expected anything from you, you know? Your friendship has been nothing short of wonderful, but I fear that in getting to know you, I’ve found it impossible not to let my romantic heart lead the way. But what can we expect from a product of love.” You toss your hands up flashing a sardonic smile.

The Baron steps forward and your eyes close reflexively when he lays his palm to your cheek. “What have you heard? Tell me.”

“That you are engaged.” You answer not wanting to prolong it. “To a Sokovian Duchess no less.”

He smiles, looks off then back down at you and you hope he never stops the gentle, rhythmic stroking of your face. “I was, and it was a mistake. I broke it off before I doomed us both to a loveless marriage.”

“I was under the assumption that people of your wealth marry to acquire more of it.”

“You assume wrong.” He says even closer “It is beneficial, but, should I ever marry again, it will be for nothing less than a love to repair what is left of my heart.”

You’re breathing faster. He is so close. It seems to happen so quickly. One moment you’re ready to leave, angry and hating that you’ve even come, embarrassed that you’ve been swayed by a Lords influence. And the next you’re standing in his shadow gazing up into his eyes…

“May I kiss you?” He asks in a way that would be very hard to refuse.

“You may” You whisper. His fingers inch along to the back of your head, his other hand pulls you in by the waist until his hips are pressed against you and his lips part; the heat of his skin so warm from running touching you before his mouth does.

It is the force and passion of his kiss that surprises you. Not overly aggressive or unwanted, it is unexpected, as though he has been longing to do this as badly as you have and now, he can not let another second pass without tasting more of you.

His tongue on your own is warm and soft as he gently enters your mouth and it is not the demure touch of society but of two people who feel a great many things, not the least of which is an urgency to do more.

The Baron pulls away, your lips leaving his slowly. You look at your hands resting on his chest over his white shirt. His cravat is a little askew letting you see a hint of skin and the shimmer of a very thin necklace that makes your stomach flutter. Your eyes flit up to meet his as he exhales very slowly.

“Thank you mala ptica” He says and kisses your forehead and you think there are many reasons for him to say this, but for now you let it be, though something else has always made you wonder…

“What does that mean?” You ask curious, eyes closed

He leans back to see your face. “What?”

“Mala… mala ti..”

“Mala ptica” He says with an amused smile. “It means—little bird actually.”

You scrunch your nose wondering why this is what he’s taken too calling you and he chuckles a little with a sigh. “Your voice is like the song of a bird, a thing of natural beauty. Forgive me for having been so familiar. It—slipped out.” He says simply.

You grin, you can’t help it and close your hands to fists in his shirt and pull him down kissing him again.

It is hard and fast but he is a most willing partner.

When you let the Baron go, you bite at the corner of your lip feeling such an urge to go down to the cool grass with him here and now, understanding why everyone seems so preoccupied by it, but the truth is no man has had you and you refuse to be the woman they expect you to be. You will not succumb, not even for a Baron, not even for this one. But he will challenge you to no end.

He smooths his hands over your face and sighs. “What now hmm?”

You mimic his movements smoothing the wrinkles you’ve caused in his shirt. “I can not go back. I don’t belong here.” You tell him.

He takes hold of your hand on his chest and holds it there. “No, I don’t believe I do either. Not today.”

“My next run begins in two days, I won’t have time to go on so many adventures with you.” You smile.

Zemo pulls your hand down but does not let go. “Then I will wait until you are free to enjoy the rest of the season with me.”

“Will you?”

“Of course.”

“It’s almost over my Lord, you’re going home at the end of summer.”

“Yes,” He says and tilts his head to find your eyes. You look at him and smile wide. “But perhaps I might persuade you to come with me.”

#baron zemo x you #zemo x reader #zemo x y/n #zemo au #baron zemo fanfiction #victorian au #victorian era #mcu au #baron helmut zemo #helmut zemo x reader #baron zemo #zemo fanfic #zemo x you #zemo in love #Baron Zemo romance because thats what we want

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masjestickingdom · 4 years ago

Text

FRIENDS

Pairing: NCT Jaehyun x reader

Genre: Angst

Summary: This is a recount of Jaehyun’s growing moodiness and distance from you.

Note: This is inspired by the song FRIENDS by Marshmellow and Anne-Marie, hence the title.

_______________________________________________________________________

Let’s face it: not all of your childhood friends stay as your friends. You were too idealistic to acknowledge this fact, but you eventually tired out and gave in. All of your friends were his friends, after all. You had to move on. It was easy for him to move on, so you couldn’t be the only one hanging on to the lingering past, the fading memories. For what reason did you have hope that you could become close again? You were only friends. It wasn’t like he was your only friend...

You knew he was going through a weird phase. He had just passed another round of assessments, dictating whether or not he would go on one step further to debut among the other numerous trainees. It was the nth evaluation and you could tell he was getting tired. As his childhood friend, you thought that you could cheer him on and be that friend he could rely on--you couldn’t be more wrong.

Along with struggling with the assessments, Jaehyun was having a tough time dealing with his break-up with his long-term girlfriend. She was his first love, and even though he would always claim that he wouldn’t date until his twenties, meeting her changed his mind. He was even able to date her secretly after getting casted as a trainee into SM Entertainment. Unfortunately, when his training sessions started to get more intense, their time with each other withered. Afraid that his first love story would end up in ruins, he made an effort to ease the process by seeing her whenever he could--that included missing your everyday hangouts after practice--before ending their relationship on a positive note. Still, it was a lie if he said that he wasn’t heartbroken. Understanding that he needed some space, you were there for him by not physically being with him. Slowly, he recovered from his first relationship, but with that, he slowly distanced himself from you.

One day, you were at his house, conversing with his parents who, despite their busy schedule, managed to leave work early on the day of Chuseok. With your parents out of town, his parents gladly invited you to eat dinner with them; you were like the daughter they never had. When Jaehyun returned home from a busy day, you and his parents were already gobbling up the feast his mother had prepared.

“I wish I had a daughter like you,” his mom sighed as she adored the way your eyes sparkled at the marveling meat in your mouth. “Then we could go shopping, have dates, gossip..."

You laughed at her dreamy expression. “You already do that with Jaehyun.”

As Jaehyun occupied the seat next to you, his dad noted, “With Jaehyun out of the house more often, our gatherings are even rarer.”

Careful not to scratch the bowl, you scrapped the last grains of rice with your metal spoon. Taking notice of this, your attentive friend took your bowl once you set it down on the table and left for the kitchen to scoop more rice for you from the rice cooker.

“Don’t worry. I’ll stop by more often,” you assured Jaehyun’s parents. “It’s my duty as Jaehyun’s good friend to take care of you.”

You heard a rough grunt behind you as Jaehyun returned with your refilled bowl.

“Just take care of your own parents,” Jaehyun said with bitterness dripping from his voice.

Although you were concerned for him, you momentarily brushed off his acerbity for the sake of conversation.

“What? We’re practically twins,” you joked with a goofy expression, swinging your free arm around his shoulders. “We can pass as family, can’t we?”

His parents bursted out into laughter, and once his mom regained her composure, she pushed your favorite side dish towards you.

“많이 먹어라, 우리 딸~” (“Eat a lot, our daughter.”)

Once Jaehyun’s parents cleared their spots on the dinner table, they reminded you and Jaehyun to leave the remaining dishes in the sink.

As they left the dining room, you said, “I’ll wash them.”

“We know,” they sang over their shoulders before retreating to their shared room.

Smiling at their retreating form, you stole the seat Jaehyun’s dad once occupied and stared at Jaehyun with anticipation. Normally after practice, Jaehyun would be the one to talk about his day without having you ask him, but today, instead, he was silent, and all you could do was watch him quietly eat. He clearly wasn’t in the mood to talk, so you kept your mouth shut. When he finally glanced up at you, you took that as your chance to start a conversation no matter how blank and emotionless his expression was.

“How was your day today?” you asked.

It took him a second to answer “not bad”, and it was half-hearted.

You held in the rising sigh that threatened to leave your lips and continued to speak. “I’m glad your teachers let you off early today. Otherwise, you might have been eating alone right now on this holiday.”

The room fell silent once again. Maybe you do want to be alone right now. With that thought crossing your mind, you rose from the seat and piled your share of dishes in your hands.

“I’m going to start on the dishes now, but take your time eating,” you told Jaehyun, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

It was since that soulless night he stopped texting you.

You brushed off the bad feeling in your gut and tried to convince yourself that he was just going through some tough challenge in his life, but he became so distant and cold to you whenever you met him after his classes that you couldn’t believe that that boy was your childhood friend.

Like always, you were waiting on the opposite side of the building Jaehyun was in. As you checked the time on your phone, he walked out of the building, talking to a few of his trainee friends. He seemed lively and well, but the moment he laid eyes on you, all of that vigor instantly washed away. That was the first time you seriously considered that you were the problem of his attitude. Just what on Earth was going on? However, you didn’t try to pry information from him. Instead, you made the effort to rebalance his mood.

You tried to talk him into going to a new candy store that opened up around the corner of your guys’ neighborhood. “We’re not kids anymore” was his simple response and that was all he said on your guys’ way home. Your patience was running thin. You had waited for him for hours, doing homework assignments on the street, just to get to see him, but the treatment he was giving you was beyond rude.

You huffed out a short breath. “Jae, what’s going on? Is something bothering you?” When he didn’t respond, you pushed him, adding, “Something’s bothering you, isn’t there?”

“Nothing!” he snapped.

The tone of his voice was one thing, but the look he gave you was on a whole new level of annoyance. You felt your eyebrows knit together and your pulse accelerate at an alarmingly fast speed at his unannounced, frightening outburst.

“Hey, I-”

“It’s a pain spending time with you, so stop pushing!”

You couldn’t believe your ears. Was your best friend seriously telling you that you were a pain? Well, your so-called friend didn’t seem to care about your incredulous expression because he walked on without you, not looking back, while you stood there in absolute shock. Not once did he slow down his pace to wait for you or hesitate for a split second.

Following that incident, you stopped being the first one to text him. You were done with his attitude. If he wasn’t willing to reach out to you, then so weren’t you.

So were all the years of your guys’ friendship going down the drain because of that one incident?

As heartbreaking as it was to you, yes. Neither of you reached out to the other. You remained clueless to the reasons why he stayed mad at you, or why he got mad at you in the first place. Whenever you two were hanging out with mutual friends, you would ignore each other. Taeyong, a friend who used to frequently hang out with you and Jaehyun, grew worried. When he got the courage to ask either one of you what happened, he backed out when he saw the dangerous gaze Jaehyun gave him at the simple slip of your name and the narrowing eyes you gave him at the mere mention of your former best friend.

The days passed, and you were finally leaving for college in America. Because your parents were off working for their respective companies, everyone escorted you--even Jaehyun. Taking that as a sign of hope, you tried to start a conversation with him, but the moment his name left your timid lips, he turned his back on you and began a conversation with the first person he laid eyes on. That was your last attempt to reach out to him.

Once you boarded the plane and secured your window seat, you switched your phone to airplane mode and turned it off. All of the tv screens on the plane had the instructional safety video playing, but you were off in your little land of thoughts.

You vowed to get over your friend. You promised yourself that you would never contact him ever again. You even dramatically bid a silent farewell to the boy.

The plane jerked forward, causing you to tighten your seatbelt. Naturally, you looked out the window to take in the last view you would have of your home country with your own two eyes. The light pouring of rain trickled down the transparent window, beautifully complementing the orange lights that shone in the dark night. Memories, both good and bad, of your friends and family flashed past your mind. Memories of Jaehyun, especially, clouded your mind. Moments you two would sneak into each other’s houses just to talk because you didn’t have phones, times you would smack Jaehyun on the head for the number of girls he would reject, and finally...

“It’s a pain spending time with you, so stop pushing!”

A single tear resembling the sad raindrops out the window ran down your cheeks. With that, the plane took off, and you looked ahead at the mini tv screen.

Goodbye, Jung Jaehyun.

_______________________________________________________________________

UPDATE: There’s a second part to FRIENDS! Check it out here!

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katsukiscaramel · 5 years ago

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nights like these

Pairing: Midoriya x Reader

Summary: Growing up sometimes means saying goodbye to people who you thought would be in your life forever. But, you’re determined to keep your friendship with Midoriya intact, no matter how distant you two grow.

Song: Nights Like These by Will Jay

Note: I’m at 69 followers and i can’t stop cackling (yes, I’m aware that I have the emotional maturity of a middle schooler). Anyways, thanks again for the love! Hope you enjoy, and remember feedback + comments are always appreciated!

“We’re still going to keep in touch, right?”

Your eyes snapped away from the mesmerizing sunset, focusing on the green-haired boy sitting next to you. The orange and yellow hues of the setting sun gently hit his face, creating a calming aura around him. But the look of slight worry etched onto his face said something entirely different.

For a moment you blankly stared at the boy sitting next to you, trying to figure out where that question had come from.

“Of course we are Izuku,” you said as you gently nudged his arm. You saw the boy slightly relax at your words, feeling relieved by the reassurance. Your eyes sent him a questioning look. “Where did that question even come from?”

The boy ran his fingers through his wild head of green hair, letting out a soft sigh.

“Well, we’re graduating from UA soon,” he began as his eyes glanced over towards you. “And I feel like eventually we’ll get so busy, we’ll hardly see each other.”

He stared at you, waiting for some sort of response. Rather than getting an intelligible answer, all he could hear was your uncontrollable laughter.

“Hey! Quit that out! I’m being serious,” Midoriya mumbled, quickly looking away from your laughing form as his cheeks heated up with embarrassment.

“I’m sorry!” You managed out, calming down your laughter. “I just expecting something more serious--”

“I am being serious!”

You took a moment to looked over toward Midoriya, a small smile forming on your lips.

“Listen here Midoriya,” you began, quickly gaining the boy’s attention. “It doesn’t matter if we’re both extremely busy. Or if we’re a million miles away. Or if you annoy me too much with the weird ramblings you have with yourself. I promise you,” you stuck out a pinky towards him, “I pinky promise you that we’ll always keep in touch, no matter what.”

Midoriya looked at you, the slight frown on his face shifting into a smile.

“That’s so cheesy.”

“Shut up and accept the pinky promise.”

Midoriya lifted up his hand, gently latching his pinky with yours. You gently shook your locked pinkies up and down, a satisfied smile forming on your face. Letting go of his hand, you moved closer towards him, the two of you quietly watching the setting sun, enjoying each other’s company.

It was a promise meant to last a lifetime, only now it was nothing more than a broken reminder that nothing truly lasts forever.

The drift between the two of you was slow, almost falling undetected. You were both so preoccupied with all the things happening in your lives, you just became too busy for each other. And it wasn’t as if you two didn’t care about the other, quite far from it actually, it was just simply a consequence of growing older.

You didn’t even begin to notice the distance between the two of you until weekly movie nights filled with sleepy laughter and fluffy warm blankets became quick apologies on why either one of you couldn’t make it. You didn’t notice until those random yet endearing conversations that dragged on until after midnight became conversations full of empty repetitive words and awkward silences. You didn’t notice until daily conversations shifted into weekly phone calls, gradually turning into monthly texts sent more as a formality than anything else. You didn’t notice until you saw Midoriya’s face for the first time in months, not in person, but on a TV screen on the streets as you were passing by, finding yourself shocked by how much he had changed.

You didn’t notice how far the two of you had strayed from each other until you found yourself watching the sunset alone, the bright yellow and orange hues no longer bringing warmth, your eyes constantly trailing beside you in search of the familiar freckled face you longed to see; a face that never seemed to be around anymore.

And by the time you did notice how far you two had grown apart, it was too late to do anything about it.

Attempts at starting conversations again fell short, never quite having the same energy as they once did. Plans between the two of you always ended up being canceled, work managing to drag one of you away. Even the texts you two had sent each other soon became nothing more than repetitive conversations, the same sequences of “hello, how are you?” over and over and over again.

It took you a year for your determination of rekindling your friendship to fade away. It took you a year to realize that maybe you did end up losing your best friend, and there was nothing you could do about it. It took you exactly one year full of one-sided attempts to come to the heartbreaking conclusion that maybe, just maybe, Midoriya didn’t care enough to try as hard as you did. And so, you gave up on trying. After all, you couldn’t fix something that wanted to stay broken.

There was that bitter acceptance that the distance between you and Midoriya was only going to grow, the two of you never going back to what you once were. But even through the acceptance, it didn’t make your broken heart hurt any less.

With the absence of Midoriya in your life, you had realized there was no reason for you to stay in Japan anymore. Deciding there was nothing holding you back, you accepted a job offer out of the country, wasting no time packing your bags and leaving.

It had been years since you had left. Years since that moment you spent with Midoriya watching the sunset, promising to be by each other’s side forever.

Though you had gone back to Japan many times, never once had you visited Midoriya. As you found yourself back home again for a week-long business trip, fate seemed to have different plans in store for you.

Your feet had barely exited the airport before your phone started ringing. Fumbling with your bags, you reached into your pocket, fishing out your phone. Your eyes barely glanced at the caller ID, the ringtone already giving away who was calling.

“Hey Uraraka, what’s up?” You asked, attempting to hail a cab without dropping all your bags.

“Hey Y/N! You’re in Japan, right?” Uraraka asked, surprising you.

“I only landed like half an hour ago, how’d you find out--”

“Don’t worry about it! Hey listen, some of us from Class A are having a get together at a bar tonight. Can I count on seeing you there?” Her words were fast and excited, almost jumbling into an incomprehensible mess.

“Well, Uh-- I just landed and--”

“Deku will be there.” You couldn’t deny how your heart twitched at the mention of his name. It had been months since you thought of him, years since you’ve seen him, and yet you couldn’t help but still miss him.

“Is that supposed to change my mind?” You asked, finally managing to catch a taxi. Balancing the phone between your ear and shoulder, you opened the trunk of the car and placed your bags inside.

“I know you two haven’t talked in a long time, but you were best friends! Don’t you think it’s about time you two finally talked?” She asked. “Whether you want to admit it or not, you miss him and you know it.”

You let out an irritated groan, fully aware of the point she had made. You opened the taxi door and got inside, silently contemplating your options.

“Okay fine I’ll go.” You mumbled out, wincing at the excited squeal your friend had let out.

“Great! I’ll text you the address, see you there!” Before you could respond, she ended the call. Sighing to yourself, you told the driver the address to your hotel before closing your eyes, hoping to get as much sleep as you could.

And that’s how you found yourself in a crowded bar, seeing familiar faces you haven’t seen in so long, catching up with friends, and laughing at jokes until tears started building up in your eyes. But, even while you were surrounded by so many friends, you couldn’t help but feel like something, or someone, was missing. Every once in a while, your eyes would trail over the crowd, straining to spot the one face you wanted so hopelessly to see. You’d occasionally notice flashes of messy green hair in the crowd, only to disappear as quickly as it appeared.

As the night dragged on, you took a moment to yourself, sitting quietly by the bar counter. You were lost in your thoughts, your eyes absentmindedly trailing over the dwindling crowd. Why you were still so determined to find Midoriya made no sense to you, but you just couldn’t seem to let it go.

The sound of a bar stool being pushed out managed to grab your wandering attention, your eyes quickly shifting to look beside you. For a moment you froze, your eyes meeting the green ones you had spent so much time looking for earlier.

“Hey,” Midoriya said, giving an awkward smile. Your breath caught in your throat, your brain suddenly forgetting what words were. You had so many things you wanted to say to him, yet for some reason, you just couldn’t think of anything to say.

Your blank stare only fueled the nervousness building up within him, his smile slightly faltering. He knew it had been a long time since the two of you had talked, but that didn’t mean you never wanted to talk to him again.

Right?

“Hey Midoriya,” you finally managed out, regaining your cool. “It’s been a while. A long while.” Seeing Midoriya wince at your words, you mentally cursed at yourself. Of all the things you could’ve said--

“Yeah, it’s been a while,” Midoriya admitted, his voice trailing off as he wracked his brain for what to say. An uncomfortable silence fell between you two, the both of you unsure of how to continue the conversation.

“So--”

“How--”

The two of you stopped talking, letting out awkward laughs.

“What were you going to ask?” You asked, prompting him to continue talking.

“Just wanted to know how things in America were going,” he said, his hand absentmindedly running through his hair. “I saw your name pop up in a news article about the top rising heroes in North America. Congrats on that by the way.”

You stared at him for a brief second, a smile spreading on your face.

“That’s really ironic coming from the Number One Pro Hero,” you said, nudging his arm. “If anything, I should be congratulating you.”

Midoriya sent you a sheepish smile, shrugging his shoulders at what you said.

“Well, it’s not a big deal or anything--”

“No big deal?” You scoffed, resisting the urge to roll your eyes. “It’s not like you wanted that title since you were like four years old!”

“Okay, okay, I guess you have a point,” Midoriya said, letting out a small grin. Words couldn’t begin to express how much he had missed these conversations, how much he missed your voice, how much he had missed you.

“Damn right I do. I always have a point,” you said, grabbing your glass and taking a sip out of it. You couldn’t help the smile that spread on your face. The heavy air that once suffocated the two of you had practically disappeared, being replaced with something more comforting. And weirdly enough, even though you had been back in Japan for the entire day, you were finally beginning to feel like you were home.

Your eyes glanced around the bar, noticing how you two were the few people left. Midoriya seemed to have noticed too.

“I guess it’s getting late,” he pointed out. He didn’t know why he did, it’s not like he wanted to leave. And the dejected look on your face told him you had felt the same.

“Well,” you began, a small smile spreading on your face. “The night’s not over yet, and we still got years’ worth of catching up to do. So, I say we go to my hotel and catch up,” you suggested, your eyes hesitantly waiting for Midoriya’s reply. There was that small possibility that maybe you had been reading too much into your brief encounter with him, maybe he didn’t want to talk to you as much as you had wanted to do so with him, maybe--

“I would love that,” Midoriya said, making a large grin appear on your face. You practically jumped out of your seat, feeling the excitement coursing through your veins.

“Well then, what are we waiting for? Let’s go!” You announced. Without thinking, you grabbed Midoriya’s hand, trying to get him out of his chair. Smiling at how excited and happy you looked, he got up from his seat. You paused for a moment, your eyes trailing up to meet his green ones.

“When did you get so freakishly tall?” You asked, feeling shocked by how much he towered over you. Where were the good old days when you were the taller one?

“Maybe you’re just freakishly short,” Midoriya said, laughing at how angry you became by his comment. You lightly smacked him, only making him laugh even more.

“Shut it Midoriya!”

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

You opened the door to your hotel room, wasting no time kicking off your painful heels and throwing your jacket onto the nearest surface. You trailed over towards the kitchen, while Midoriya gently closed the door behind him. His eyes swept over the messy room, an amused smile forming on his face.

“You’ve barely had this room for a day and it’s already this much of a mess?” He asked, “I’m glad to see some things never change.”

“Like you’re the one to talk. You’re a grown man, but I bet you fifty dollars that your room is still covered in All Might merch.” You sent a glance towards him, smirking at the small blush that formed on his face.

“No one’s ever too old for All Might merch,” he softly grumbled out. His head perked up at your uncontrollable laughter, the sound itself making him smile. Soon, he saw you approach with a bottle of wine.

“Since when did you start drinking wine?” He asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Would you believe me if I said I only drink the good stuff?” You asked, pouring out two glasses.

“I don’t think seven dollar wine counts as the good stuff.” He couldn’t help but smile at the look you gave him.

“Okay Mr. Professional-Wine-Taster--”

“I believe they’re called sommeliers.” You sent a glare towards the green-haired hero’s way, only making him stifle a laugh.

“Fine, Mr. Sommelier, do you want a glass or not?” You asked, holding out a glass. He sent you a somewhat apologetic smile, taking the glass from your outstretched hand.

The two of you wasted no time talking, beginning to catch up on years’ worth of lost time. The next several hours had blended together, filled with unbelievable stories, dramatic reenactments, and uncontrollable laughter. Somehow, the two of you found yourselves on the floor, laughing so hard that tears started flowing down your face.

“So you’re telling me, you just threw the snowball at Bakugou, and it hit him directly in the face?” You asked, your words barely coming out of your mouth. Midoriya nodded his head, unable to answer.

“Oh my god, I can just see his reaction! ‘Deku I’m going to kill you!’” You said, trying to imitate Bakugou’s gruff voice, only making Midoriya laugh even harder. “How are you not dead yet Izuku?”

“I genuinely don’t know!” He managed out through his laughter. You wiped away the tears falling down your face, your eyes glancing over towards Midoriya.

The rays of light created by the rising sun made its way through the blinds, perfectly framing Midoriya’s smiling face. Instantly, memories of weekly movie nights, midnight conversations, and the peaceful times you two had spent watching the sunset together flashed before your eyes. Instead of making your smile grow wider, those memories only seemed to make it falter.

Midoriya noticed the change in your attitude, quickly sending you a concerned glance. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

You stared at him, debating if you should tell him about the thoughts swirling around in your mind. You ran your fingers through your hair, softly sighing.

“It’s just-- Talking to you like this reminds me of all the moments we spent together as kids.” you began, your eyes looking down at the carpet beneath you. “And the thing is, as we grew apart, those moments ended up becoming distant memories.” Your eyes slowing trailed to meet his, noticing how intently he was looking at you. “And I’m afraid that we’re just going to grow apart again. Tomorrow this will be a memory, and nothing more.”

Midoriya looked at you, his green eyes softening. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out, surprising you.

“Why are you sorry?”

“It’s kind of my fault we grew apart, isn’t it?” He asked, looking down at his hands. “I didn’t try to keep in touch, I didn’t really try to do anything to communicate with you. At some point, I ended up using how busy I was as an excuse, but really, I could’ve-- I should’ve made time for you.” He saw your hands grab his own, his eyes quickly snapping up to meet yours. “And when you moved away, that’s when I finally realized how much I missed you. I tried ignoring you towards the beginning of the night because of how guilty I felt. How selfish of me is that?”

“We aren’t playing the blame game Izuku.” You said, your thumb gently going over the scars on the back of his hand. “And if we were, we’re both equally to blame. After all, I’m the one who gave up on us.”

His eyes stared into your’s, noticing how the sunlight framed your face, covering you in an angelic glow. A memory flashed before his eyes, a soft smile forming on his lips.

“Remember, the week before we graduated from UA, we were watching to sunset, and we made that promise to always keep in touch?” He asked, making you nod your head. You let out a dry laugh.

“Look at how well that went,” you mumbled, making Midoriya laugh.

“Well,” he started, slightly raising his hand. “I can’t promise to have moments like this with you every day, but I can promise to make new memories with you. And I definitely promise to keep in touch, no matter how busy we get or how far away we are from each other,” he said with a small smile, raising his pinky out.

“That’s so cheesy Izuku.” You scoffed out. But, you couldn’t help but let out a smile, latching your pinky with his. He gently shook your hands up and down, before letting go.

Your eyes stared at his sunlit freckled face, noticing the soft smile on his lips, and the way his green eyes looked so bright, almost shining brighter than the rays of light that had managed to brighten up the room. Bright eyes that seemed entirely focused on you. Bright eyes that seemed to be getting closer, as the green-haired boy leaned close.

Midoriya wasn’t exactly sure what compelled him to lean in so close. And you weren’t entirely sure why you were leaning in too, your lips meeting softly in the middle.

It could’ve been due to the alcohol in your systems, knocking away all the logic that might have existed within your minds, replacing it with actions based purely on instinct. Maybe it was the fact that this moment of emotional vulnerability unlocked emotions thought to have been lost due to the test of time. Or perhaps, it was more of a simple concept than any of that.

Perhaps, it was because the two of you had always known you weren’t just friends, always wanting something more, but never attempting to reach for what you wanted; instead just painfully aware of how it always existed within your grasps, so far away yet so close.

As the two of you broke apart from the kiss, you wasted no time wrapping your arms around him, enveloping him into a hug. He wasted no time wrapping his arms around you, holding you close.

As the rising sun began to illuminate your room, you made sure to hold on tight to every memory you had made with Izuku. And most importantly, you made sure to hold him tightly, determined to never let go of him, or nights like these, ever again.

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mitchmarnier · 5 years ago

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it takes a village

pairing: stanley uris/patricia blum uris [stanpat] & eddie kaspbrak/richie tozier [reddie] rating: general word count: 2,097 summary: Stan and Patty go over to visit the Kaspbrak-Tozier family and they carry a very important question with them. ⤹ my fic for @theparadigmshifts for the @it-fandom-exchange

perma taglist: @jwilliambyers, @stebbins, @isaacslaheys, @s-s-georgie, @transrich@eddiefuckinkaspbrak, @edstozler, @emgays, @anellope, @thorn-harvester-ven, @wheezyeds, @vipertooth, @tozierking, @billdenbrough, @starrystoziers, @trashmouthtozierr, @itfandomprompts, @loserslibrary (let me know if you want added!)

“Stop looking like I’m asking you to shove your finger into an electric pencil sharpener.”

Stan startled, looking up from his phone to glance at his wife with a deep, lingering frown. When he noticed her expecting glare, he forced the frown away and gave her a soft smile. “I’m sorry. It’s just a weird thought, doing this. I don’t know how to feel about it.”

Patty came forward and knelt in front of Stan’s spot on the couch. She tilted her head down to catch his gaze. “We’ve talked about this a lot, but Stan, if you’ve changed your mind, I understand. If you don’t want to do this anymore-”

“No.” Stan interrupted her, reaching out to take his wife’s hands in his. “I want to do this, I do. It’s just… the idea of asking Richie this favour sort of makes my skin crawl a little bit. You know what he’s like.”

Patty shook her head, confusion settling deep in her features. “Richie’s your best friend, you two are like brothers. Did you want to ask somebody else?”

Stan huffed out a harsh breath, running the hand that was holding Patty’s through his brown curls and messing up his usual perfect style. “There’s nobody I’d rather ask to do this than Richie. There’s nobody else I ever would ask. It’s just… You know Richie. I’m worried he’s going to be a shit about it.”

Patty smiled, then broke into giggles. “Awe, Stanny. Don’t dwell on it. If anything, Eddie is going to be a bigger concern.”

Stan groaned, but allowed Patty to stand and pull him to his feet. Stanley Uris had been best friends with Richie Tozier since they wore diapers, their parents bathing them together. Growing up, Stan had always joked that Richie’s friendship had been forced upon him, but everybody had always known the truth; that even if Stan had had the option to choose a different best friend he never would have.

The two of them had known Eddie Kaspbrak nearly as long- and Richie had been almost pathetically in love with him the entire time. Stan wouldn’t believe that six year olds could truly fall in love, if he hadn’t grown up with Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak. There had never truly been a turning point in their relationship- no moment where they went from being Richie and Eddie to being RichieAndEddie. It had always been a gradual thing, the relationship growing up as they did. Something rare, Stan knew, but something beautiful. No matter how annoying it had been growing up.

Richie had been the one who had introduced Stan and Patty in the first place, back in their freshman year of college. They’d had a psychology class together, one Patty took for her major and Richie took for an “easy pass”. Richie had talked Patty up to him for months, until Stan had finally relented and allowed Richie to arrange a double date between them. For all the grumbling and complaining Stan had made before hand, he would never be able to thank Richie enough for pushing him to this date. Stan had never believed in love at first sight growing up, probably wouldn’t have believed in love at all if it hadn’t been Richie and Eddie, but that all changed when he met Patricia Blum. Ten years later, and Stanley supposed he owned his life and his happiness as he knew it to Richie Tozier.

And now he was about to ask him for another favour he’d never be able to repay him.

“Hey,” Eddie Kaspbrak opened the door to them. His hair stuck up at awkwardly angles and there was a questionable stain on his shirt. His socks didn’t match, and there were deep dark circles under his eyes. For a moment Stan wondered the sight of his best put together friend looking like a utter mess should have been enough to deter him from what he was about to ask, but the deeply satisfied smile and sparkle in his eye just made Stan’s passion burn deeper.

“Sorry the place is an absolute mess,” Eddie continued as he ushered the husband and wife into his house. Eddie and Richie’s house was much bigger than that of Stan and Patty’s- or any of the other Losers for that matter. Richie’s radio job paid him very generously, and his occasionally guest spots on Saturday Night Live were likely enough to cover six months of their bills. Richie once referred to Eddie’s generous mechanic’s salary as their “play money” and Bill Denbrough didn’t speak to him for two weeks.

“Patty!” The little voice of little Alyssa broke through the living room. Her brown hair was put into two messy ponytails on either side of her head, and there were green paint streaks on her cheeks. The three year old launched herself at Patty and wrapped her arms around her knees. Stan’s heart hammered in his chest.

“Hey there, princess!” Patty said, scooping her up in her arms and pressing a big kiss right over the dried paint on Alyssa’s cheeks. “Did you and Richie get into a paint war?”

Eddie rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. A little over a year ago, Eddie and Richie had adopted a pair of sisters- Alyssa, two at the time, and Katherine, just a couple months old- from an unsafe house. They had been private about the whole ordeal, but had explained to Stan and Patty that the house had been involved in a drug situation, but Stan remembered the marks on Alyssa when she’d come to live with them and he was certain nothing had ever made him more angry.

You wouldn’t know what the girl had been through now, though, looking at her. Stan marvelled at how wonderful parents Richie and Eddie were, and he wondered if he was surprised or not. He remembered Eddie being worried, when he and Richie had first first started discussing starting a family, that he would end up like his mother. Richie’s parents had been ever loving, though a little distant and absent as Richie had grown older. The Losers had all been very supportive and encouraging, and they had been right. Eddie and Richie Kaspbrak were probably the best parents Stan had ever known, more so than even the best of their own parents growing up in Derry.

It was part of what made this decision a little bit easier.

Richie came into the living room now, baby Katie in his arms. She seemed to grow ten times between each visit and Stan held out for her expectantly, cooing at her as Richie placed the girl in his arms.

“Katie’s learned to do the butt scoot.” Richie said, sounding explicitly exhausted even as pride showed through his face. “I’m telling you, Stan the Man, it’s insane how fast they can go without even being able to use their legs. I might make it my main means of transportation from now on.”

“You’d break your back moving around like that, old man.” Eddie laughed. Richie made a wounded noise, and left a wet kiss on his husband’s face. The couple turned to Stan and Patty, with matching looks of expectation.

“You guys had something you need to ask us?” Richie said as they all took their seats around the living room. Stan watched as Eddie pulled some sort of hard, pink toy out from under him and tossed it onto the floor.

“Uh, yes,” Stan said with a clear of his throat. “You guys know that Patty and I have been talking about having kids.”

It was an understatement, of course. Stan and Patty had always known that they wanted to have kids, it was one of their biggest desires in their lives. That had never been a secret, but what they’d always kept much more privately to themselves is when they started to get pregnant. For the last two years, they’d been trying. When it didn’t happen after a serious effort, they’d started with the testing and the treatments- only to find some heartbreaking results.

“We’ve uh…” Stan coughed slightly. He’d known this wasn’t going to be an easy conversation to have, but he hadn’t anticipated how hard it truly was going to be to get the words out. “We’ve been having trouble getting pregnant so we got some tests done at the doctors and it turns out I can’t have kids.”

Stanley said this all as one big run on sentence, and both Eddie and Richie just blinked at him for a moment before the words caught up to them.

“Oh.” Eddie said, his eyes going wide and sad. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, Stan. That’s terrible.”

Stan waved the apology off, knowing that if he let himself dwell on it that he’d get too emotional to carry on with what they’d truly come to say.

“That’s not all.” Patty said, bouncing Alyssa on her knee. “We’ve been looking into options, and the one that speaks out to us the most is probably insemination. I want to carry our baby if it’s possible at all, but the idea of using an unknown sperm donor makes us feel a little uneasy.”

Stan watched a realization settled on Eddie’s face while Richie continued to patiently listen to what their friends were saying. “So, we talked about it,” Stan jumped on to continue Patty’s explanation. “And we thought that it was maybe possible to ask somebody we knew to donate to us, if they were willing. And there was only one person we felt even close enough to be comfortable with.”

It took him a moment. It wasn’t until he realized everybody in the room, including his own husband, were looking at him that the words seemed to settle onto Richie and his mouth dropped open in surprise. “Who- what? Me?”

Patty let out a small laugh. “You were the best man at our wedding, Richie. You’re the only reason we ever even met at all.”

“I doubt that.” Richie chuckled. “You guys are obviously soulmates, you would have met one way or another. I just sped up the process.”

Stan’s heart panged in his chest with an overwhelming affection for his best friend. “We understand that this is a very out of left field question to ask you, and that it’s a lot. Please don’t feel obligated to accept simply because we asked. We can always adopt, or find another option.”

“No…” Richie said slowly, shaking his head. He shifted on the couch and looked at Eddie. “Babe?”

Eddie blinked in surprise and let out a small chuckle. “Why are you asking me? It’s your sperm.”

Richie laughed. “Eds, man, this is a big decision. I’m going to just say fuck yes without seeing how you feel about it. That’s crap, we make every important decision.”

Eddie frowned but Patty spoke up quickly. “He’s right.” She said, “we might not be asking Richie to help raise our child, but it will be biologically his. Genetics may have this thing come out looking exactly like him.”

“God forbid,” Stan said with a teasing smile. Richie and Eddie flipped him off in unison.

“Eddie-” Patty hugged Alyssa closer to herself. “We aren’t just asking for Richie’s consent. If he says yes, there will be somebody out there literally carrying your husband’s DNA inside her. If you’re not one hundred percent comfortable with that, then we won’t do it. This involves you, too.”

“We’re a team.” Richie took Eddie’s hands in his. “I won’t do anything that you aren’t okay with.”

A troubled look came over Eddie’s face, and he looked around the living room. He smiled softly as his eyes fell on Stan and Patty holding their kids. “Surprisingly, I think this world might need a little more Tozier DNA. And if anybody deserves babies it’s you guys. If Richie is okay with doing it, I’m behind you guys completely.”

Stan’s heart soared up into his throat as all eyes turned to Richie. There was a small smirk on his face. “The biological child of Richie Kaspbrak and Patricia Uris, raised by the perfection of Stanley Uris? There’s no way that the world doesn’t deserve to see that. Count me in.”

Patty let out an over excited squeal and jumped up- Alyssa still in her arms- and launched herself onto Richie. Alyssa was letting out little giggles as Stan stood slowly, holding the baby, and tugged a crying Eddie into a tight embrace.

He loved his family, and he couldn’t wait to see it grow.

#it fanfiction #reddie fic #stanpat fic #reddie #stanpat #stedpatchie #my writing

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shangyangjunzhu · 4 years ago

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Thoughts on ep 14

I have a bone to pick with Huace for not releasing episodes in a proper and uniform manner.

Now, this episode is a nice precursor to what awaits the trio; lots and lots of heartbreak.

Li Jianjian has now figure out how to deal with the awkwardness with her brothers; treating them like distant relatives. I can’t say my heart didn’t break when she said that. They aren’t distant relatives; they literally grew up together no matter how many years they’ve spent apart. Also I am not too fond of Tang Can. Unlike Mingyue, she thinks of the relationship between the trio to be rather superficial and motivates Jianjian to grow further apart from them. I find her character to be a waste of space; Mingyue is a lot more fun to watch and she has an actual personality.

Ziqiu finally decides to reveal himself to Haichao and it is a very emotional moment. This scene also reveals a lot of the guilt Ziqiu is battling with regarding taking the money of his biological father and not returning home. He is also immensely touched to see how much his dad has valued any memories of him.

Ling Xiao is busy doing his own thing being an amazing dentist that little girls who are afraid of dentists flock to. He is also hit on by another dentist; come on Jianjian mark your territory asap.

What really gets me in this episode is how Li Jianjian agrees to be her male friend’s girlfriend without even seeing him till date. She has no romantic feelings for him; at most it is friendship. It is quite clear that she is getting in a relationship just for the sake of dating someone; there is no attraction, affection or passion. I think this says a lot about how much she is impacted emotionally by the leaving of her brothers yet she attempts to hide it.

Jianjian sees a few kids playing on the street which reminds her of a childhood incident of her own with her brothers that brings a smile to her face. Okay so she still loves them both and misses them; she isn’t really ready to act as if nothing has changed and that’s something she will vocalize in the very near future.

The family gets together to celebrate Ling Heping’s birthday. Things are still very awkward between the brothers and Jianjian. He Ziqiu accidentally discovers a huge burn on Ling Xiao’s shoulder and yells at him for not telling him about it. Ling Xiao says that there was nothing everybody could do for him except worry which he didn’t want. He also reveals that Ling Heping had a concussion and broke a few bones to which He Ziqiu is infuriated. He asks why nobody told him anything to which Jianjian unintenionally snaps saying that he wouldn’t have come back anyway. Ziqiu is speechless and Ling Xiao is equally quiet. They make attempts to get back to normal. The only person who understands Ziqiu’s pain is Ling Xiao who silently adds his favorite meat to his bowl giving him a knowing look.

The episode ends with multiple revelations

a) the brothers are apalled at the news of Jianjian having a boyfriend

b) Ziqiu sees his biological mother and tries to follow her but in vain; becomes depressed

c) Ling Xiao being pestered by his mom to return home though it’s quite clear he simply doesn’t want to. Chen Ting fucking gets on my nerves; like I know that you’re paralyzed and you’re life is hard but your daughter is nearly he same age as Ling Xiao was when he took care of you. The both of you don’t need his 24/7 presence anymore. Even if you did, you aren’t worthy of it after you iterally traumatized your kid for years and left him.

Favorite moment of the episode: when the neighborhood aunties ask Ling Xiao if he wants to be Haichao’s son-in-law he smilingly agrees to try; I need a man like this like please god

Overall, I am loving how well this drama is doing despite the lack of a proper releasing schedule; if anything I think the character of Tang Can needs to go like asap. The previews look a lot less depressing and a lot more sibling fun so hopefully (fingers crossed) the episodes are less heartbreaking

#go ahead

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why-this-kolaveri-machi · 5 years ago

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what does this have to do with clownfish?

i know this was a mostly sad episode that ended on a rather disquieting note, but i was grinning from ear to ear by the end, you guys. I LOVE THIS SILLY SHOW SO MUCH, and i want to tell you why, so let’s talk about titans 2.04:

SPOILERS ahead

1. i get why we’re getting a flashback episode now--the titans’ ~sordid past~ with deathstroke has gotten a fair bit of build-up, and now that slade has jason, we need the history between him and the og team to contextualise the upcoming confrontation. still, i was really looking forward to having kory reunite with the team, goddamit!

1.5. i like the convivial, almost collegiate vibe that the original titans have about them--the idea of them getting together both desperate to prove that they are more than what their origins and youth might suggest, and to dick around (pun not intended) and just... be, in a way that their individual circumstances wouldn’t allow them. costumes on, in mission-mode, they are trained and hyper-competent, but in their downtime they apparently like adorably warbling off-key at each other and re-enacting 90s/00s cheesy rom-coms. it’s great! i would’ve loved to see these kinds of flashbacks drip-fed to us right from the beginning of the season--putting it all in one episode, from aqualad’s introduction to demise all in forty minutes, not only screws up the pacing, but also robs us of more of garth’s genuinely warm chemistry with the rest of the team.

1.67. besides, the immediate contrast between this and the way dick conducts the titans now would’ve been funny and quite impactful.

2. for all that dick seemed standoffish and genuinely frightened of himself in s1, the slightly less filtered look we get into his mind in this flashback--well before his existential crisis--is somehow even more disquieting?? the way he talks about batman and his relationship with dawn and even his friendship with donna smacks of an alarming emotional disconnect; a space where his sense of self has fallen and been replaced by a role that he has been trained to play. he smiles more in this episode than probably all eleven of s1 combined, but he’s far more reserved, afraid of vulnerability, and completely unwilling to express any emotion that would come in the way of him being who he Needs To Be.

2.45. this episode puts into sharp relief just how far dick has come to make peace with bruce in 2.01. here batman is a glowing symbol against the night sky; a shadowy figure promising justice is vengeance and not the other way around; a hulking figure that he can hate and love without reserve, that orders him to be better no matter how exhausted he is, even while standing between him and incomprehensible evil like a bulwark. at the heart of the titans tower--a skyscraper on the opposite side of the country from gotham--is another batcave, a sign that how no matter how far he goes, dick’s perception of himself and his relationships is still inextricably tied to batman and his ways.

it’s the missing link between the angry, grieving boy we saw in flashbacks last season, and the man rapidly spiralling into crisis at the beginning of season 1. he’s internalised batman’s mission before he can decide for himself what he wants to be, and he’s been like this well into his adult years (unlike the comics). no wonder when the moment he goes Too Far finally comes, when he’s so burrowed into himself that vengeance becomes an end rather than a tool, it’s such a violent upheaval, and one that he hasn’t quite been able to put to rest in over a season.

2.65. honestly the matter of fact way he talks about being dawn’s rebound relationship after her breakup is haunting me?? dick grayson--robin, batman’s partner, the First Sidekick, leader of the titans, friend, brother, lover, a valuable asset with trackers in his arm and neck--is so utterly subsumed that his feelings, his self, automatically comes second to the role he’s playing. i wonder if he had found that he’d had a tracker installed in his body without his knowledge at this point, he’d have accepted the cold logic of it (of course batman needs to keep track of him), instead of the visceral reaction he has five years later, when he immediately picks up a knife and cuts it out of his skin.

2.95. (retrospectively it lends so much more meaning to the opening scene of 1.08??? where dick says he needs to go off on his own to get his bearings right instead of staying on to be the Leader after their traumatic time at the asylum and kory and the others are quietly accepting of it?? where’s that ‘that’s growth’ gif when you need it)

3. donna! it’s interesting that her role as a titan was always meant to be a pitstop before she moved on to Greater Things, and her struggle to reconcile that with her growing attachment to the team came across really well. jillian’s never really pressuring her to leave immediately--six months! two weeks! idk, forever! really, it’s your pick!--but donna tells dick she needs to leave that very night, either because she’s hoping that he’ll protest and ask her to stay, or that she’ll fall for garth and lose her wavering conviction to leave if she stayed any longer, or both.

3.5. donna and garth’s relationship followed so many wonderfully cheesy conventions, with all of their attendant adorableness and Problems. the scions of two different royal families of two different races falling in Forbidden Love! garth clumsily flirting with donna even as she keeps turning him down! (not cool, garth!) bonding over reminiscing about quirky childhood memories! consulting a put-upon mutual best friend! the last minute reconciliation and confession of love at the airport! garth dying right after celebrating his birthday! (that cop was just a day away from retirement!) PERFECT

like. i have NO IDEA why people still insist on calling this show ‘dark’ and ‘edgy’. don’t let the weird lighting and occasional blood spatter distract you from the goofy, well-intentioned heart right at its centre, you guys!

(but man, dick and donna’s quiet heartbreak at the prospect of separation was harder to watch. for a moment, dick really let himself feel the burden, sinking onto his haunches, his head in his hand like he was about to cry. just a moment.)

4. the others’ reaction to garth’s death is very telling. donna is devastated; hank and dawn are upset, but in a distant way that suggests that they didn’t really know him very well or for very long; and dick... well dick is hard at work in his batcave, because that is how he knows to react to disaster.

4.5. i know that i spend quite a bit of my reviews harping on and on about dick, but he is more than just the team leader, or the one with the most well-defined arc so far, or the connective tissue between the old and new teams: the titans is HIS, in ways both subtle and insubtle. batman is funding the whole thing; their resources, their tech? all wayne enterprises. by extension, this shindig is dick’s idea, dick’s operation, something he shaped after himself--serene, beautiful, somewhat impersonal on the surface and batman-the-symbol, batman-the-phantom, right at the centre.

4.65. so when the burden of morality-bending vengeance falls squarely on dick’s shoulders, it seems natural. it also seems entirely natural that when dick does follow through on what the team wants from him, the fallout is also put square on him: he’s the one that’s gone completely off the rails, the one that would sacrifice anything for a mission (like hank implies in the previous episode), the one haunted by his own darkness. this, of course, is patently false, as trigon demonstrated earlier this season.

5. the opening scene of slade wilson doing the Thing He Does Best was so fun to watch. i love that this show is always trying to do interesting things with the camera. (tho i wonder, who hired him to take out donna troy in san fran? was that even his original objective? was it dr light? i am Confusion)

5.5. ... even tho the villain-confrontation scenes seemed hampered by low effects budgets and a lack of... kineticism. i can’t figure out how dr light works even after two episodes of seeing him do his thing. he can apparently implant light bombs in people but never seems to use this awesome ability again, when it can actually help him against the titans?

6. the moment i saw joey wilson’s profile through the window of his home, i knew he was going to be my favourite character on this show. i love him and his enthusiasm and his cute shoes and his love for vintage records SO MUCH! i know it’s been hinted that he died, but i can’t bear the prospect for even a second. HE’S ALIVE AND WELL SOMEWHERE HAVING TEA AND LISTENING TO GREAT MUSIC WITH AMY ROHRBACH, I JUST KNOW IT

6.5. dick (and the others) wouldn’t be so horrified with themselves and think about shuttering the titans for good if they hadn’t felt some kind of attachment to jericho. dick especially i think is going to fall into an actual honest friendship with joey and is going to extremely disgusted with himself when it all ends in tragedy anyway.

6.75. we’re probably not going to find out what actually happened to joey for a while, but here’s hoping the Unforgivable won’t happen.

7. on the brightside tho, KORY’S BACK NEXT EP! can’t wait.

#titans #titans spoilers #dick grayson #donna troy #garth #joey wilson #jericho #meta

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https-bkg · 5 years ago

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Bakudeku fics to read during quarantine

I would appreciate if you reblogged/liked this if you used it! Please 🥺

Uncompleted:

The Way You Used To Do by edema_ruh

"We're really sorry," his father says, in a teary-eyed, wobbly way. "But your friend, Izuku, he's... He's gone, son."

Katsuki can do nothing but blink up at them for moments that feel like an eternity, eyes darting between both his parents in obvious confusion, disbelief, and, more than anything, indignation.

"What the fuck are you two talking about? The damn nerd is standing right beside you!

During a battle, Midoriya gets hit by a villain whose quirk detaches his soul from his body. Stuck in a ghost-like state, the boy enters a race against time in order to save himself from permanently dying. Much to his luck - or lack of it -, the only person who can see and talk to him in this state is no one other than Kacchan.

Alternatively: Deku and Kacchan are soulbound.

This fic is my all time favorite bakudeku fic. updates are not too far in between, characterization is PERFECT, bakugou's development, and the LENGTH of this fic is genuinely supreme. I will 100000000% say with my whole heart that this fic is perfect.

Bad At Love by officiallytrash

(abandoned)

Class 1-A is put to the test in one of U.A.'s classes and tests where they face a faux-villain they can't seem to win against. During the two-day fighting, Bakugou noticeably becomes more and more shaken by the faux-villain.

Midoriya wants to help him and to become his good friend once again. Bakugou knows there is more than friendship in his own head but wants to keep Midoriya close, if only to keep him safe. But with jealousy, friendships, and their dreams on the line, they have to get even closer to help the other.

been awhile since I read this since it hasn't updated BUT this fic is amazing with it's characterization. It's realistic and a breath of fresh air.

The Art of Indifference by qye

Bakugou is used to being the center of attention- be it anger, confussion, or fear (mostly fear) everyone always gives him a reaction.

Until all the sudden, Deku doesn't.

What a fucking asshole.

FUNNY!! ANGSTY!! AMAZING. CUTE. IM IN LOVE, AND YOU WILL BE TOO.

The Space Between by Kanae_vR

Holding his expensive camera tightly between his hands, Midoriya Izuku looked up at the once-white letters displayed on the black storefront banner. “The Hard Luck Bar,” he murmured to himself, unsure if he was getting ready to enter or flee.

Amateur photographer Midoriya Izuku is stuck in a rut and desperate for a change of pace. Deep in his city's grimy underbelly, he finds exactly what he's looking for in the form of an underground punk sensation on the verge of their big break, fronted by a foul-mouthed firework of a human being.

Loud, brash and passionate, Izuku may have just found the creative spark he needed, as well as something new to set his soul ablaze.

Craving a rocker!Bakugou fic? Badabing, badaboom. This right here is perfect. In character and beautiful.

the baking prodigy in all-might pajamas by lucyheartfilia

College AU in where angry art major Bakugou Katsuki kind of, sort of falls in love with a cute, green-haired nerd that likes to bake in his all-might pjs at questionable hours of the night.

cutecutecutecutecutecuteCUTE.

Once Again From Better Days by limesicle

Katsuki wakes to find himself reset. It's a time when quirks are just starting, and he only remembers a bit about happened the first time. He remembers enough to know Deku is someone he hurt a lot. He remembers enough to know he had to watch Deku fall. He remembers enough to try to make things better this time.

Achingly beautiful,,, ANGSTY,, in character. Amazing.

Completed

Sink to Swim by cinnabee

“Kacchan, I think we’re supposed to--”

“Supposed to?” Katsuki whirled. “Supposed to? Will you fucking.. Listen to yourself? Shitty Deku, we just woke up in a dungeon and you want to play some villain’s game? Like it’s a goddamn puzzle we can just solve?”

As if there's any other choice.

WARNING: dark. very dark. ANGSTY. shit made me sweat. even tho it's dark the beauty of it cannot be missed

I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You by Seeress

Stress-release sex was another one of their things. Friends with benefits, it was called. No strings attached. Just a bit (or a lot) of fun under the sheets.

By the time Katsuki noticed, it's been almost 3 months since he last heard from Izuku.

Three years into their friends-with-benefits arrangement, Izuku begins to behave oddly. And Katsuki has difficulty dealing with it.

:/ too sad. heartbreaking. so beautiful.

Kacchan by KyuukaKoinu

Izuku always called Bakugou "Kacchan" growing up. But when peer pressure from others and society get in the way, the two boys grow distant and the nickname is buried. While Katsuki is running away from his emotions, Izuku is stuck trying to figure out how to cope with a broken heart. Kai Chisaki steps in to show the boy a new path. Will Katsuki figure out his own feelings in enough time to save him from the mysterious man?

[Izuku-centric / BakuDeku EndGame / Alt Overdeku ending is the very last chapter!]

Aight listen,, I ain't one for fics with a lot of smut.. but this plot was well-written and very interesting. It grabbed me and didn't let go.

Threads of Fate by hallyu1

It started with a dream—a dream about a prince. Izuku, future Chief of a remote tribe, is a dream-seer. And as he grows he will come to realize that his power is both a gift and a curse. When he meets the prince in his visions—The Dragon King, Bakugou—he must decide which path to follow. Change the future, or embrace the fate he had foreseen?

Will always hold this fic close to my heart. It's gorgeous.

2,645 Miles by mynameis152

Izuku wants so badly to get to the other side of the country without his parents realizing he's missing. He just wants to find out who he is.

Katsuki is desperate to make it to Los Angeles without being caught by the police, desperate to fix his mistakes.

Neither know what to expect, but on a roadtrip across the U.S. involving four fugitives, two oblivious runaways, a high risk crime ring, and a police taskforce, the two will discover that there's more in store for them than what they originally thought.

Who knew country bakugou and country kirishima were so powerful??? I did. I knew this bc of this fic. This fic is genuinely awesome. Definition of awesome.

Dream Sweet in Sea Major by showtiime

The day of the Hero Incident ends much more horribly than anyone could've imagined, but only Izuku knows that. He thinks as long as he forces himself to push through it that he can get over it, but of course, that's not how things go. His mom, friends, teachers, and even his childhood friend-turned-rival take note of his odd behavior and try to help, but he refuses to talk about what really happened. How long and how thin will Bakugou's patience go until Izuku finally confides and accepts the help he needs?

(in this fic, Shigaraki takes more from Izuku than he should've, Katsuki comes with the class that day at the mall, and there are still finals to be taken. Plenty can happen in only five to six weeks.)

Look at the WARNINGS! The way this story is written... I've never been in his situation but I felt it. Absolutely beautiful

Spider’s Web by infectedscrew

When a series of seemingly random attacks all over Musutafu leave civilians and heroes alike Quirkless, Inspector Midoriya is put on the case. Little does he know, he’ll be teaming up with the only person who has come out of an attack unscathed and Quirk intact—Katsuki Bakugo.

One of the first bkdk fics I've ever read and I haven't seen many people rec this so—here you go. It's SOOO good. It's like a movie and it's so well written. Absolute genius.

Leftovers by brichibi

When the rest of the class heads down the reality of the situation sets in — they’re both missing class at the best hero academy in the country, their classmates flat out calling their scuffle stupid.

Izuku still doesn’t feel like it was, though, especially when Uraraka asks the million dollar question:

“Did you two make up?”

That. That’s why that fight felt like it was worth it, even if, technically, Izuku can’t answer her. Have they made up? Is this making up?

He actually doesn’t know.

[Or: the house arrest fic where it is, somehow, more awkward to talk through feelings than it is to fight]

AMAZING AND SOSOSO CUTE. So glad I found this fic after thinking of it for so long. It's the perfectest oneshot ever.

#bakudeku #katsudeku #bakudeku fic #katsudeku fic #fic rec #bakudeku fic rec #katsudeku fic rec #bnha fic rec #ao3 #ao3 fanfic #mha #mha fic rec #my hero academia fanfic #quarantine #stay safe out there #bnha

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tohavelost-arch · 5 years ago

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but let’s talk about leah for a moment as i reword a bit of my rant from a few years back,

her boyfriend goes missing for two weeks and most people give up on searching for him. she ignores school and ignores her parents warnings, sneaking out of the house to go look for him in the forest herself. when he comes home a few short weeks later he is more muscular and looks different, almost older, more mature. his skin is burning hot. he never tells her where he was and she finally learns to respect it because she worries that he had to deal with awful things and she shouldn’t press it. he’s a bit distant at first, almost as if he is scared to get too close to her. he drops out of school and is nowhere to be found at random times of the day. soon jared and paul join him, dropped out of school, muscular, looking a bit different. there are rumors that they started a drug gang and leah refuses to believe them and holds back even though she wants to tear out people’s throats when she hears them whispering about sam. but things fall back to somewhat normal and she finally introduces her best friend to the man she was ready to marry when she finished school. and in an instant, sam’s looking at emily like he used to look at her. he avoids her for a few days and then tells her he can’t be with her. not long after, he’s with emily after she is injured in an awful animal attack.

then she loses her father and becomes a shifter herself. it hurts more than it should because she feels 100% responsible for his death, because in the books it is said that she blames herself for his death, the shock of her being the first female shifter triggering his heart attack. to ramp that up, he had to have seen her shift for that to happen. which in my mind, she was probably arguing with him about sam and emily, him saying that she shouldn’t judge them so harshly because he knows the truth. because leah so very much loved her dad, i don’t see another way for her transformation to get triggered. anyway, she phases and watches her father die before her eyes. she can’t reach out for him and can only howl, she sees she has paws and believes its a nightmare. suddnely, sam comes into the house stark naked and yanks her silver furry ass into the forest and phases back to his wolf form to try to communicate with her since none of his words as a human are connecting. he’s compassionate and tries his hardest to calm her down – tries to convince her that it wasn’t her fault. he has to spend over an hour trying to console her in the right ways that won’t piss her off more to get her to phase back. when she finally does phase back, she goes to the hospital to find out that her father is dead. sam’s heart breaks for the girl he still loves, the girl he wished he didn’t have to hurt and stays by her side to console her and she’s too distraught to push him away, even though a large piece of her knows that it’s going to hurt her more when she snaps back to reality.

then she has to deal with him going back to emily after he makes sure that the elders are there to help the clearwaters get home from the hospital. after some sleep, she has the state of mind to sit with the fact that the legends are true and that means that imprinting is true and nobody but emily had any true say in te matter. but even if she had had the strength to push him away or say that she only wanted to be friends with him – his love for leah would always be second to his love for emily and she wouldn’t have been able to deal with that either. she has to hear his thoughts constantly, how in love he is with emily. she probably even catches glimpses of their intimate life together from time to time. she sees emily through his vision as he explains to other shifters what imprinting is really like – hears the explanation jake ends up telling bella. has to sit through dinners at emily’s place and the bonfires and see sam and emily happily exchange kisses in front of her. and he proposes to her within a year, they’re living in a house that she should have been sharing with him. she has to deal with the sometimes silent judgements, about how kind emily is compared to her and how good her cooking is – even though leah can cook well too because it was one of the things she and emily loved doing together.

not to mention, she has to deal with the theories about how a woman shifted. she’s heard whispers that she may have some undiagnosed genetic issue that wasn’t strong enough to be noticable, but giving her enough male influence to shift. then comes the heartbreak when she’s supposed to get her period for the first time since she started phasing and it never comes. was she barren? is that why sam imprinted on emily instead of her, because even though she has some of the most powerful wolf genes within her she simply wouldn’t be able to have his children to spread it on? her infertility a spark for more whispered conversations about everything. she refuses to believe that the love she and sam shared wasn’t real – that emily was simply a better match for him in that regard. despite all of this, the first few months of phasing are filled with the boys drooling over their glimpses of her naked frame and she has to see the fantasies that play out in their minds in her own when they can’t help themselves, because lbr teenage hormones.

during the time of the newborn war, she hasn’t been in the pack that long. all of the above is still relatively fresh and her best strategy is to lash out to make everyone leave her alone – but it ends up in them (understandably so) lashing back. she doesn’t want to get close to anyone because she has lost sam, emily, and her father and doesn’t think she could handle any further heartache. she doesn’t want others to care for her and tries not to care for them herself. surely, something is starting to stir between her mother and charlie around this time as bella becomes closer to edward and less present at home. and it pisses leah off because they should still be grieving over her father. charlie will not replace her dad and he shouldn’t even be looking at her mother that way – and how could she look at him that way? maybe nothing concrete happens until after this time – but she can sense it. so, she basically feels hopeless, that she really has lost everything in her old life at the drop of a hat. likely, she’s starting to wonder if things will ever get better for her, because she has no idea how long she’ll be stuck in the pack defending the tribe. running away isn’t an option because she could never consciously leave seth all alone, even when she knows he has to be getting dragged down by her inability to cope appropriately too, since he’s such a happy kid most of the time despite it all.

so she tries to take on that tick because she does believe she’s strong enough – and it’s really not a loss to anyone if she’s not. she isn’t being reckless to prove herself, she is just doing what she’s supposed to do, without a reason to worry about anything bad happening to her. not to mention her packmates nor the cullens saw the vampire at first and she knew there weren’t seconds to waste when it came to vampires. jake pushes her out of the way and nearly dies – and in an instant she has something else to feel guilty for. in her mind, she knew jake didn’t do it for her, believes in her heart that he was trying to prove to bella that he would do anything for her. prove to bella that she cared about him. maybe he is starting to feel as hopeless as she felt, too. so she tries to play it off and tells the boys she could have taken it and gets yelled at by both paul and sam. that stings, it always does, when sam looks at her fueled with anger. she stands alone as they fix jake because no one, not even billy who was such good friends with harry that she would have a strong connection to, wants to look at her. if she hadn’t been reckless jake wouldn’t have had to step in. it’s her fault and she knows they all think it. his screams as carlisle rebreaks his bones tear her apart.

when she escapes sam’s pack to join jake’s, at the very least the two come to a strong understanding, a friendship, (since i know not everyone was converted to a hardcore blackwater shipper as the movies were coming out) which is something she hasn’t had in a long time. despite her best efforts to keep people away up until this point, she lets him in, empathizes with him so he doesn’t cast her back to sam’s thoughts. he says she’s less annoying that paul, even when seth said she ruins everything when she showed up. it hurts her when she sees him crying on the steps after bella’s heart stops beating because she knows either she dies or she’s worse than dead to him – and she knows how much he cares for bella and that his pain in this moment is unimaginable to her. not comparable to her feelings about sam, because at least sam’s alive and not a vampire. she holds seth back because she knows it’s better to grieve alone for a little while. then he imprints on renesmee and she feels imprinting has taken someone from her yet again because getting that instant strong connection to someone else would always change someone. he could turn into a lovestruck zombie like the others as renesmee quickly grows up. not to mention she watches his pain get zapped away and wonders why she’s left out in the cold, feeling that her only solace can come from leaving everything behind. the incidence of imprinting picked up in their pack and even though she wouldn’t want to be forced into loving someone so absolutely in an incident, it would at least take her pain away. it would be a blessing in disguise unlike everything else that happened to her.

so yeah, leah is bitter, but you can’t sit there and tell me she doesn’t have reason to be.

#leah clearwater #『♫ 』 ʀᴇᴀʟɪᴛʏ ʙɪᴛᴇs... ᴀɴᴅ ᴅᴏᴇsɴ'ᴛ ʟᴇᴛ ɢᴏ (headcanon; leah)#[yo don't tell me i dont love my girl #my one true queen forever and always]

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ramblesofadreamerofthestars · 5 years ago

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Anne With An E S03Ep08 “Great And Sudden Change”

- Ka’kwet! Oh you brilliant starfish child, you saved yourself and got away. Also, this milkman, is this the same one from the beginning of s1?

- Ahhhhh Diana and Anne. This h u r t s

- Fucking hell I knew it.They burned down the school. Bitch what the Fuck. They really going to try and pretend like this was an accident? You Stole the Printing Press.

- Wow props to the actors for this scene, their devastation over this cruelty cuts deep. And Ms. Stacie coming through once again as a brilliant teacher, and someone to look up to.

- Anne your fury is as always righteous and you’re doing amazing sweetie but Rachel probably isn’t the right target. Oh... Rachel. Her character definitely has it’s ups and downs but I’m glad she’s taking an active stance in this.

- Ka’kwet is so capable and intelligent, I Love Her. I hope she makes it home so badly, she deserves to be loved and cherished and I hope I hope I hope that this leads to the rest of the children at the residential school being saved. Knowing what I know of history, I doubt it.

- Once again, I’m really glad Moira chose to include this and made it such a major plot in season 3, because this is a part of history that is glossed over in classrooms and absolutely should Not be

- Ooooh Hazel LaCroix has arrived. This should be interesting, based on how Bash has spoken about his mother in the past. I hope she’s here to reconcile and make up for past mistakes, Bash could really use some good things going for him right now.

- lksjdlfjfldsj Moody and Ruby are so cute they snuck up on me and I adore them

- Anne and Gilbert sitting together by the window... completely relaxed and bodies angled to each other... poetic cinema

- Lol, Ms.Stacie being a mood as always

- Shirbirt is so cute I can’t

- aslkdckej what is this trilling music?? Is she casting a spell???

- oof. sorry Anne

- OOF. DIANA AND JERRY. WOW THIS HURTS! WOW THIS HURTS A LOT. Diana. Diana you don’t have to do this. Literally all you have to say is “no of course I’m not too good for you. This is just... painful.

- AUNT JOSEPHINE? how did she know to come? Disturbance in the force? Also loving this music as Diana walks toward herself in the mirror’s reflection, very reminiscent of montage music set to a character undergoing a significant change in who they present themselves to be.

- Diana. I could write an entire essay on my feelings about Diana. She feels so trapped and for a few brilliant moments it seemed like she was breaking free and learning to take what she wanted in life, but she seems so scared now, and so lost and confused. Of course she’s going to say she’s going to finishing school - it’s what her parents have been molding her into for her entire life, and of course in this moment when she’s so lost on what to do next she’d fall back on the already laid out plan for her. And yet even so, I wish she would write the exams, just like Josephine says. Better to try, and know that it’s an option then shooting yourself in the foot. Oh Diana, my beautiful imperfect daughter, I want you to have all the happiness and freedom you deserve, not to be stifled by ridiculous notions of society

- (I have a lot of feelings about Diana Barry)

- ayyyyy Auntie Jo really went “ya basic” huh. Diana please wake up, listen to your aunt. But wow, this must be heartbreaking for Diana, it must really feel like everyone is leaving her.

- Oof and here we have Hazel’s first big indicator that her son’s life is not the same as her own. I really don’t blame her for falling back on the only thing’s she’s known her entire life, but you can see where that desire and drive to protect her son ends up hurting him.

- ... Anne’s geometry prep seems so easy is this really all you needed to get into uni

- Matthew. “You’re as smart as they make them” he as so much faith in her, both him and Marilla and WOW I love the Cuthberts.

- LET! KA’KWET! MAKE! IT! HOME! SAFE!

- this is the most awkward tea everYES! YES DIANA PLEASE BE GOING TO WRITE THE QUEEN’S EXAM. Josephine’s little knowing smirk is everything I Love This

- Wow. Ya ok wow this is exactly what exam prep is like and I feel this panic in my soul. Y’all are going to do great!

- Ahh! Their shouts of Diana are so good for the soul and look at how alive she looks this is So Good!! She’s so happy and proud of herself, I’m so proud of her

- No seriously, was this literally all it took to get into university....

- ... Y’all this pen going to come back isn’t it

- ahhh this is giving me flashbacks and anxiety No Thanks. Good luck to all of them (except Billy if he’s there, fuck Billy)

- Absolute legend Marilla teaming up with force of nature Rachel, get fucked you angry old boiled socks

- YES! YES LOOK AT THEM GO THEIR SO BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL AND ALIVE AND THEY’RE STILL CHILDREN AND YET NOT QUITE ANYMORE AND LOOK AT HOW HAPPY AND FREE THEY ARE RUNNING OUT OF THE EXAM.

- wow it’s real “Excitement over one stage of life ending but what comes next hours” huh

- yes Diana live your best fucking life! I’m so proud of all of them but her especially I’m so glad she chose this.

- Ah. The Rose household. So glad we’re here.

- In all seriousness though, nothing against Winnie she’s amazing in her own right but she’s not the one for Gilbert and the sooner he realizes this the sooner they can both move on with their lives.

- Wow. Mr. Winnie’s Dad sir, you’re sure being super subtle about this

- Side note, I know their all growing up and it’s different back then with expectations of age, but he’s just... so young. Gilbert is so young and Winnie is already so much more experienced then him.

- Yes! Yes this is what I want! These kids deserve a night to just Have Fun and be as wild and carefree as their hearts desire. Their growing up yes, but they’re not grown up now, and I’m so happy with the pure light and joy emanating from these kids.

- Oh my gods. Oh my Gods. The soft fairy music, the fire light. Anne is a beautiful creature of sparks and magic, ethereal and fae and look at how Gilbert looks at her. He loves her so much oh my gods this is perfection thank you Moira for my life.

- ...I’m so soft

- Holy Fuck my heart. “Just...one thing” he’s so gone on her and she’s falling so deeply for him.

- lmao Anne’s drunk out of her fucking mind Gilbert this was a terrible time to do this is2g these two

- He’s so fucking heartbroken baby. Y’all need to learn to communicate Gilbert she wasn’t rejecting you I’m so ahhhhh

- Wow! These two really be on the same braincell energy. Soulmates!

-Bash, I adore you so much his and Gilbert’s relationship is so well done and I love him and the way he teases Gil. Also Bash has been team Shirbert since the beginning and his little dance is everything. Lmao the difference between when he though Gil was going to marry Anne vs when it was Winnie...telling.

- “Now now, no need to be hysterical” FUCK EM UP MARILLA AND RACHEL!!! FUCK EM UP RACHEL!!!

- I have no words for Ka’kwet’s reunion with her mother and her people besides that now I’m crying

- wow, Minnie May serving up truth to both Diana and about the unrealistic expectations placed on siblings when placed in competition with each other

- yes Marilla! look at her go! Also Anne I know you’re dealing with a lot but like... you maybe want to show a bit more enthusiasm?!?!

- thank you. Thank you So Much for Diana and Anne, this is amazing and I’m so glad my two beautiful daughters have come through this stronger and better than ever.

- “ Here's the truth: friendships between women are often the deepest and most profound love stories” - Emily Rapp ~perhaps a point was made

- Wow that’s really how we’re going to end that huh!

Final Thoughts:

F i n a l l y Anne has said it out loud. I can’t wait for the absolute disasters that are sure to prevent these one braincell geniuses from actually talking to each other. No but for real, I’m so excited for the next stage of their relationship, though I’m sure it will be just as agonizing to watch them figure out how to move forward. Ka’kwet is home safe! While I really just want her to stay and be happy with her life, I doubt that is what will happen. Nevertheless, she’s amazingly strong and intelligent and the injustices done to her in the series are sickening, and it’s important to remember that all these things really happened to the indigenous population in Canada, and that reconciliation and amendments are still in the works today. The last residential school in Canada close in 1996. This is not a distant memory of the past, it is a crisis, the ripple effect still being felt in the indigenous communities today. Bash and his mother have such an interesting dynamic, as it’s clear that her life experiences and her love for her son cause her to act in ways that while done with the best intentions, end up hurting him, and it will be interesting to see how awae handles this. And finally, my girls, Anne and Diana. I’m so proud of Diana this episode, for taking yet another step closer to her own freedom, and I’m so proud of the two of them for recognizing their mistakes and refusing to let it come between them. Next episode, I assume will deal with the fallout of Ka’kwet running away from the school, Gil about to propose to Winnie and what Anne plans to do now that she knows what she is feeling, and expansion on Bash and Hazel’s relationship and I can’t wait.

#anne with an e #awae s03ep0 spoilers #shirbert #I love this show So Much can you tell

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mixtapeonwheels · 5 years ago

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How do you destroy love before it truly blossoms

Okay, so, spoiler alert, I don’t THINK I want kids.

And i really hate how when you tell people that, they immediately jump to the “oh, you will eventually, I was the same way when I was younger.”

Man, I’m 28. I definitely haven’t spent much time on Earth in the grand scheme of things, and maybe it’ll change, but I’m not about to get anyone I date hyped up on the fact that I’m ready to start baking a bun in the oven. I’m not. I’m too focused on my own life and the goals i want to accomplish, and I think part of me sees a child as standing in the way of that.

Do I want to be a uncle? Hell yes. That’ll be cool as shit. Take them little tykes on adventures, buy them sweet presents, and be that awesome uncle that always comes back with a cool story or a new souvenir for them. That sounds wicked.

But, the one thing I’ve consistently thought about is - how do you tell a child the love they experience with a girlfriend of a boyfriend, won’t last forever?

It can’t. And maybe it shouldn’t. If I think back to the person I was the first time i was in love, I was immature, and inexperienced, and I don’t think I had any real idea of what I wanted out of life. She was wonderful, but she was very jealous, and we fought often. It’s easy to paint a picture of a perfect relationship because I still have her as a friend. In fact, I still consider her one of the most genuinely good people I’ve ever met. But that relationship was a rollercoaster, and when it ended, it was meant to. We both needed to grow, to be with other people, to live our lives. We needed to experience heartbreak, and go on wild adventures, and experience the world beyond the view we saw through each other. And I’m thankful that though we were distant for some time, we were able to come back and have some semblance of a friendship.

But I’ve also been in other relationships. I’ve had some that were good for a time, and turned to bad. I’ve had others that were the definition of emotionally abusive and manipulative. How did my parents sit there and watch that happen, all the while hoping, and maybe even knowing that it wouldn’t last? How does anyone watch someone struggle, and know that they NEED to struggle to find themselves in the darkness?

I was a kid that always did, always does, think about love. I’ve been in love before, and each one, for a time, was wonderful. Sometimes love can get stale, if not tended to in the right ways by both parties. I think the most important thing I’ve realized is how to keep love fresh, and how to work at it, day by day, like a garden that you need to water and take care of. Sometimes I miss it, and other times I don’t. I miss parts of it, like the feeling that another human being wholly knows you, inside and out. That you can tell them anything, and be anything around them, and they’ll love you regardless of the weirdness and quirkiness that you reveal. Maybe they’ll love you because of that. And there are other times I don’t miss it. I don’t miss the uneasiness that comes with a fight. The feeling that your heart isn’t under your own control anymore - it’s in the palm of another, and whether they choose to tend to it or to crush it is not your decision. Most of all, I don’t miss the feeling when you know it’s going to end. When your entire body gets warm during that silence, the silence that follows the question, “What’s going on?” or, “Are things okay between us?”

I don’t understand how you explain any of that to a kid. In a small way, it’s like when I tutor my students. They come to me sometimes with different life questions, depending on the relationship we’ve built. It’s never the guys, it’s always the girls. But sometimes they ask me about boyfriends, or dating, or life in general. If I’m dating, they ask how we met, when I knew I liked her, weird things like that. Sometimes I tell them, sometimes I don’t. It depends on the situation, the student, the relationship we’ve built. And I trust my own moral compass and my skills of reading individuals to know if they’re asking for the right reasons.

But how do I look at one of those students, and tell them that I’ve heard this story before, the reasons they’re not good together, and that it won’t last. If it doesn’t, it was never meant to. He’s too immature, and soon you’ll realize why women date up in age. The maturity just isn’t there, especially in your early 20s. And if anyone reading this decides they want to challenge me on that, please do. But I’ve had too many experiences, some my own, some of others, to believe that early 20s men and women can handle the relationship that I think they THINK they want. There’s too much life to live. Realistically, I think you’re meant to spend your 20s figuring yourself out. Having experiences, meeting people, and then discovering what elements of everything you’ve been through you want to retain. Maybe you want the travel of the vagabond lifestyle, but not the potential homelessness. Maybe you want the passion that comes along with that relationship, but not the abuse, not the manipulation, not the fights. Maybe you want the stability that comes with owning property, but not the white picket fence, the 2.5 children, or the minivan freshly-washed in the driveway.

How does anyone tell a child that? How did my mom not tell me when i came to her at 10 years old telling her that I was in love with a girl named Christina, that it wouldn’t work? That it couldn’t? I admire the fact that she let me suffer, but never tried to logic it out. Never told me that it was statistically impossible to meet my match at a young age and marry that same person. Maybe she realized there was no way for her to know anyways. Maybe she had the wisdom to see that if this love was meant to last, if it was meant to grow, who was she to say otherwise?

That’s where I get lost. I think I’ve known for a very long time that my parents were just guessing at what they were doing. I think there were two very distinctive moments i noticed growing up around them: I knew when my parents’ dating advice became real, and I knew when they decided they were ‘done parenting’.

The first came for my mom, when she gave me the best advice she’s given me to date. I was 20 years old. I was desperately in love with the girl I was dating, but we were having problems that were insurmountable for our age. We were fighting constantly. I was so torn. I loved her, but we NEEDED to break up. We needed to grow. And she said, “Look, there’s two ways this goes. Either you fix things because you KNOW you’re getting married, or you break up because you don’t.” And in that moment, I knew what my decision had to be. For my dad, it was when I was 22, and I had gotten into a massive fight with my then girlfriend. He told me to be silent for a few days, eventually making her think I was going to break up with her, when i just wanted time to think and process - maybe even make her suffer a bit (cruel, I know). Spoiler alert - it didn’t work.

The second moment came slowly over time. My mom started telling me about the arguments she had with different people. And when I would tell her she was acting a fool and needed to grow up in that particular situation, she listened. My dad on the other hand, started telling me more dating stories, more stories of fights he got into as a young man. They didn’t make me think less of him - if anything, both of these occurrences made me think more of my parents. They believed in our relationship enough and valued me enough as a son to know that I needed to see their real sides. We had finally reached this point where we could transition from a purely parent-child relationship to some sort of parent-friend-companion hybrid. I consider them two of my closest friends because of the amount I share with them, and also because of the amount they share with me.

In closing, if there ever really is a closing to any of my blog posts, I try not to edit these things. These are unedited thoughts, and for anyone that likes to read them, you can see the way my brain jumps around a bit. Depending on where my anxiety is at in my life, it will jump around more, or less. I know at this moment, I have no desire to be a parent. I don’t know if that will change in the future, but I don’t want to be strung up by some potential partner through my own words of uncertainty, so I rarely tell anyone that. I need my life to develop in certain ways before I could ever consider giving it all up, even for a few years, for a small, potato-faced object (fun fact, that was taken from a mom friend of mine). There’s a little honesty for you, I guess.

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dreamboundedstar · 5 years ago

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Debora’s Intro to “The Patakis” Universe

Debora is in the front is situating herself with her locker on her first day of high school as a sophomore. She's groaning at Wolfgang and Edmund being their usual selves and bothering poor Eugene. Before this instance, Debora was only vaguely aware of how these boys were after years of viewing the outside world behind curtained windows. She knew enough that these boys were bad news. So she's now cursing the educational authority that placed her near the most obnoxious, despicable boys of PS118. To add insult to injury, she is forced to here Edmund's insultingly dopey laugh anytime Wolfgang breathes. Debora really wishes she can be home-schooled again, and she hasn't even had her first class yet.

So, a week or two has passed (I don’t really have the timespan set in stone) since Debora has first come to the PS118 high school for the sophomore class. Debora’s grows more tired of the school due to her fellow classmates giving little to no care for her presence, except maybe very few offering to Debora come seat with them at their lunch table. Debora always politely declined however by making excuses that she likes to draw during lunch period and her elbows would just get in the way of everybody else’s space. She never let anybody see her sketchbook when they asked because she was very self-conscious of her work and feared people would think her art is bad, boring, or weird and by extension, her. This, in turn, gave her fellow sophomores the impression that she is just some emo, loner snob that thinks that she’s too good for anybody. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Even with her little excuses, one of the true reasons she declines the offer is her fear of the masses of teens into small tables. Well, maybe the tables were perfectly averaged size for a school, but to a person like Debora that doesn’t like random strangers accidentally rubbing on their shoulders with hers, they were small. Debora wasn’t germaphobic, what she did have was a weird feeling, creepy-crawly feeling anytime anybody that she wasn’t close to gave her any minor, safe, physical contact. Even with distant family members, she would always be extremely awkward giving physical affection. It always felt awkward to her and she didn’t like it. For Debora, it was just one of the “joys” of having ASD. Secondly, the background noises in the lunchroom freaked her out. Everything was so loud and so many voices to focus on that Debora can’t focus on her own thoughts. That's she prefers to be in a table with farthest from people as possible. She can't stand loud, crowded areas, so the idea being closer to the loud clutter of voices is torture to her and she would just want to shrink down into nonexistence. Lastly, her biggest worry is that nobody would even pay much mind to her anyway and the only reason they invited is to just cure some guilty conscience. Debora is not good at her words and is always somehow blocked by somebody else stealing her time to speak. Even in her own family, someone is always cutting her off when she tries to talk because she’s either too slow or not loud enough. So what is the point of even talking if nobody is even going to acknowledge your desire to finally speak?

Debora had to face facts that these people were in groups of their own and no one was going to leave their own group just to seat with one, quiet girl. It will always be to join their group, but they never consider that maybe they should just seat with her instead. No, that would be too much to ask for. Those teens have their place in this school; she was but a bee in a nest of wasps. What made this experience more unbearable was her locker being close to the juniors’ lockers and not just any juniors, the most obnoxious two of the bunch, Wolfgang and Edmund. It drove her crazy to hear these jerks harass freshmen and sophomores. They acted like poorly developed antagonists from a bombed, high school comedy. Unfortunately, Debora wasn’t the one exception to their jerky ways. While Wolfgang never tripped her with his leg… yet, he has however made her drop a tower of school books onto the floor. She thought that it was only to be annoying at first until she overheard one of the juniors; she couldn't tell it was either Wolfgang’s, Edmund’s, or some other male junior voice chortled and rudely commented of how her back end was flat as a pancake. She was embarrassed and confused because she wore a blouse that specifically covered that part, so how could they possibly tell. Beyond book dropping and rude comments, the one time that Wolfgang caused her to physically hurt was when he “accidentally” pushed Debora out of his way and onto her locker. The good news, her reflexes saved her from it being a worse impact. The bad news is that her upper arm fell onto her locker combination and she was very sensitive there due to low muscle tone from being a social shut-in for most of her life. She still has a tiny bruise from that moment. She tries to brush off that one moment because her younger sister always berated for being a baby when it came to receiving pain. She didn’t need that kind of mocking here too. She begins to wonder what even the point of coming here in the first place was. She remembers why she came here after seeing somebody carry a football. She needed closure with Arnold; it had been so long since she had seen the closest person that accepted her for who she is. She wanted to see him again one more time before her overprotective mother transfers her to a private school away from all the bad influences and secular lesson plans. The only reason she was even at this school in the first place because she begged her mother to go there at least until spring break to see Arnold for a while, then she can put her in the private, church school her mom did with her younger sister after the sibling complained about being homeschooled. Both her mother and Debora would much rather have had her homeschooled, but colleges around the area looked down on homeschooling. Debora had no choice but to go to a “real” school for her last three years. Arnold wasn’t even here, so she came to this school for nothing. All she can do now is wait until spring break for this Tartarus of school to be over. At least on the plus side, she can leave this school without care because she never formed a close friendship with anybody at the school. Nobody will miss her and she will miss nobody. She can leave knowing that she never made a difference in anybody's life at this school; to her, it is comforting as much as it is heartbreaking.

At her locker, Debora finally takes her head out of the clouds and notices something different about one of the banes of her existence. It appears Edmund has got himself a new haircut. It seems Edmund is also trying to not so subtly get Wolfgang to acknowledge this change. Even though Debora doesn’t like Edmund, she can admit to herself that the hairdo looks good on him. It definitely is an improvement compared to his bowl-cut hair. In her opinion, his original hairstyle made him look like a blonde chili pepper thanks to his centered cowlicks. Wolfgang finally acknowledges Edmund’s hair change, but of course, he had to be a jerk about it and ask Edmund if he wanted him to compliment about his makeup and the shoes he’s wearing now. Debora’s rolls her eyes at this. She’ll never understand why Edmund seeks this guy’s approval. Edmund doesn’t back down and makes his own snarky remark. This only makes Wolfgang angry and threatens to smack Edmund upside the head. Debora was used to hearing Wolfgang treating Edmund more like a dog than an actual friend. It made her sick. It made her think of terrible childhood memories she wishes she could forget. However, even after Wolfgang’s terrible display of friendship, nothing could prepare for what is about to happen to Edmund. Debora notices a female brunette with a blue bow on top of her head. Debora didn’t know the girl's name, but she knew that the girl usually walks with three other girls to class. One is a Hispanic with a pink bow in her hair, another is a blonde with a barrette in her hair, and the last one is an African American that likes to chew gum. For whatever reason, the brunette was walking alone and Edmund took that opportunity to try to talk to her. Debora doesn’t watch as the conversation happens, but she does hear Edmund for the first time sounding a little shy and vulnerable. Debora checks it off as him just being insecure around pretty girls because he’s usually cheerful and carefree around everybody else for the most part. Debora has seen a lot of shows and reads a lot of stories, so she was very much aware of what Edmund was trying to talk to the brunette about. Apparently, so did the brunette because before he could even ask “the question” she stopped Edmund him mid-sentence. The brunette’s tone sounded angry, but Debora looked in her locker pretending not to notice because it was none of her business. The brunette wants to make to it perfectly clear to Edmund that she is sick of those idiotic juniors making a pass at her, but he takes the cake. It seems that Edmund already attempted to talk to this brunette before got his new haircut. Now that she thinks about it, Debora does remember that Edmund did ask Wolfgang why he thought girls didn’t like him. Wolfgang being Wolfgang, he gave him the suggestion of changing his because he had his mom cut it for far too long instead of pointing out the real issues. For example, his assumption that he’s entitled to have a pretty girl like him just because he’s nice to her. At least, Debora assumes that’s what Edmund thinks likes that because she feels Wolfgang would think like that and Edmund has a tendency to mimic Wolfgang. So for a few seconds, she was on the brunette’s side because all women should be treated right without expecting compensation, not just the pretty ones you want to date. Unfortunately, the brunette girl decides to take all her frustrations out on Edmund and takes it too far. The now apparent, mean girl tells Edmund that no haircut in the world would get her to notice him. He could be lying face-first on the sidewalk and she still wouldn’t notice him. She ends her hate speech to Edmund telling him no matter what change you try to make about yourself you will still be the same dumb, annoying, ugly dog he has always been. The mean brunette leaves but not before the telling Edmund to get lost and calling him and elephant boy. Debora assumes that the girl called him that last name because of his ears, but she knew some of the contexts of who the real elephant man was, so to her that was needlessly cruel for the brunette to add on to her already cruel speech. Even Debora overhears Wolfgang tries to muster some sympathy after that mess Edmund went through. It clearly wasn’t helpful, but Wolfgang still tries to convince Edmund that watching him harass some sophomores would make him feel better. Debora felt really bad after overhearing all of that, so she decided to go to the bathroom to wash the awkward off of her.

The moment she turns her head however, her eyes meet an expression she was all too familiar with and yet it seems so foreign on Edmund. Debora moves her hand quickly to her mouth to cancel out the audio of her gasp as she views the sad look of rejection on Edmund’s face. She immediately looks back at her locker so Edmund wouldn’t notice that she was looking at him. No, this couldn’t be happening! Oh no, she couldn’t believe that she was feeling sympathy for Edmund! This is the same guy that she had to suffer through with that stupid laugh. He enjoyed causing problems just as much as Wolfgang; she has no reason in this forsaken school to feel bad for him! Even so, here she is comparing Edmund’s expression to a wounded puppy. Curse his stupid underbite for making a surprisingly convincing, puppy dog pout! So against her better judgment and all the cons outweighing the pros, she decides to follow her heart and try to cheer Edmund back up. Not in person, however, heavens no! She uses a page from her sketchbook and writes Edmund a letter, complimenting of his change in hairstyle. More than that, the letter is also to let Edmund know that appearance was never the problem. The problem was that he spends so much time in the shadow of somebody else that he lost his sense of individuality and self-worth. Before he could start a serious relationship with somebody he must first learn to love himself. Of course, Debora was aware that was easier said than done. So to start him off she listed some important, good qualities about him. Unfortunately, she didn’t know Edmund personally, so she had to guess his good qualities by finding the positive side of the things she couldn’t stand about Edmund. For example, even if she hated hearing his dopey laugh all the time, she could find that at least it shows that he has a cheerful personality. Secondly, even though she hated seeing him stick around a guy so abusive, at least it shows he is loyal to his friends. Lastly, even though she thought it was idiotic of Edmund to retort with snarky remarks when he should know by now it will only make Wolfgang want to hurt him, she finds that at least it shows that Edmund at least is willing to call people out on their bull, even if it gets him hurt. She ends the letter by saying to never forget he does have value and he shouldn’t listen to people that won’t even take the time to see beyond his outer appearance or persona.

She almost signs the letter with an anagram name she did for fun for the word, anonymous. The name is Sonya Muno, however, she realizes how terrible of an idea that is too late for she already signed it on the paper. To make matters worse, the school bell rings to tell all the students to get in their respective classrooms. In a rush, Debora scribbles on the anagram name as fast as possible, writes down the word, anonymous, shoves the letter into the little lines on top of the locker doors in order to get paper inside Edmund’s locker, and gets to class. Later on in the day, before Debora goes to her next class, she notices Edmund opening his locker and soon finds the letter she wrote. She goes to a corner of a room to hide from his view as he reads the note. Despite still not thinking Edmund is a good person and some small part of her still feeling he may not even deserve her letter of encouragement; She couldn’t help but feel warm, fuzzy, and accomplished when she saw that her stupid, little letter put a smile on that dopey face. It feels so satisfying to hear that she finally did something significant in somebody else’s life. Her being alive finally meant something to someone outside her immediate family, even if the person didn’t know it was her. She was okay with him never knowing, for she would be going to a religious, private school anyway after spring break and she didn’t want to form any close friendships at the school anyway. She was just happy she made someone else happy.

Unfortunately, that happiness died the next day after Debora overhears Edmund talk to Wolfgang with something about a “Sonya”. After she heard that name, she felt like her spirit escaped from her body. She must have not covered that stupid anagram well enough. Now he thinks some girl named Sonya that doesn’t even exist wrote him that note! So with that new knowledge being granted to her, she proceeds to bang her head on her locker door feeling like the biggest moron in the world. She should have never made that letter. She is in so much trouble!

This is just something I did before I went back to my fall semester. I wanted to expand upon my Hey Arnold fan character before time was up. Unfortunately, I don’t have anything for the main show at the moment. I hope to do so someday. I’ve been more focused on her teen version lately because she has more of a role in this spin-off series while she’s a one-off character in the main series. Anyway, I hope you like what I have to offer.

Credit:

Simone, Edmund, Eugene, and Wolfgang - Craig Bartlett

Debora and the art - Mine!

#hey arnold #hey arnold!#heyarnold #Debora #Edmund #Wolfgang #Simone #qilincrusader's art #my art #The Patakis

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aion-rsa · 5 years ago

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The Riddler: DC Redefines Famous Batman Villain

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Does Year of the Villain mean a big change for Batman’s puzzling nemesis?

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Event comics usually come with a passel of one-off tie ins. Sometimes they’re very good. Sometimes they’re a way of giving someone a try out. Sometimes they’re a way of getting somebody work. These are all good things! But very rarely are they ever impactful on a character or the direction of a line. That may change this week, as Mark Russell and Scott Godlewski bring the Riddler into Year of the Villain with one of the most introspective superhero comics in a while, one that potentially foreshadows a big status quo change for one of Batman’s oldest villains.

The premise of the entire Year of the Villain arc has Apex Lex, a powered-up Lex Luthor, gone full evil again after years spent straddling the line of “dick” and “dick but helping the good guys”, running around the DC Universe offering power ups to the bad guys from every rogue’s gallery. In the pages of Justice League, he cranked up folks like Sinestro, while he’s been popping into other books for help like closing Gotham to the outside world and giving free rein to Bane (Batman), or a substantially boosted cold suit for Captain Cold (The Flash). In The Riddler: Year of the Villain, he gives Edward Nygma something completely different: perspective.

The story is framed by the Riddler’s friendship with King Tut. They start the issue kvetching about their persistent failures to top Batman in any meaningful way. They move to complaining that they haven’t been approached by Luthor yet, then head their separate ways. When Riddler gets home, he finds Luthor in his living room, and Luthor is pretty merciless in his criticism. The next morning, Tut calls Riddler to loop him in on his own profound realization: that they persistently fail because they never work with each other, and the true solution to both their problems is to do a half-baked death trap together.

The Luthor conversation is the crux of the issue. Luthor hands the Riddler nothing - no hyper-powered question staff, no bowler hat that will increase his cleverness tenfold, no giant question mark-shaped bomb planted under Wayne Manor. He just talks to him about Nygma’s own rigidity. The inflexibility of his mind, being lashed to his schtick, is what Luthor hints has been holding the Riddler back. And that inflexibility is preventing the Riddler from growing as a person. It’s kept him from accepting any changes since he was a child fixated on revenge against the bullies tormenting him. He ends the story by telling Nygma “Life is the process of saying goodbye to ourselves.” And the Riddler ends the issue by walking out on King Tut’s death trap.

read more: Justice League, Crisis, and the Future of the DC Universe

This is...not what I think anyone expected from a Year of the Villain book. The best you can usually hope for is a thoughtful one-off. Something akin to what Russell already gave us in Year of the Villain: Sinestro - a clever character piece that leaves the character exactly where he started when the issue picked up. Here, we get smart character work, but we also get more character development than the Riddler has had since...what, Paul Dini on Detective Comics back around Infinite Crisis? The Riddler is iconic, but the character owes almost everything to Frank Gorshin’s portrayal of him on the old television show. He hasn’t had more than a handful of deep dives or status quo shifts in an age.

A literal age - I can count four stories since the Bronze Age ended that really matter, that made a big impact on the Riddler as a character, and that’s a stretch a little bit - one of them came out on the cusp between the Bronze Age and the modern age of comics and could be argued into either category. But for almost every one of them, the impact on other characters was greater.

“Dark Night, Dark City” was Peter Milligan and Kieron Dwyer’s 1990 tale in Batman that had a suddenly very bloodthirsty Riddler pulling jobs around Gotham. It’s a really good Riddler story, but overshadowed by the fact that it’s also where Barbatos, the dark Bat-god who dominated Grant Morrison’s Batman mythology and later spawned Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s dark multiverse, first appeared. Snyder and Capullo also featured the Riddler as the main villain of "Zero Year," their big, 13 issue story about Batman’s first run in with Nygma. It is also the first time we really got to look at the way Batman managed his own mental health, and ends with him almost getting shock therapy. And the War of Jokes and Riddles was a long story that wrapped up Tom King’s first year on Batman by giving Kite Man a heartbreaking origin story and having the Joker (of all people) stop Bruce from killing the Riddler.

read more - Batman: Damned is a Trip Through the Darkest Corners of the DC Universe

The unifying force in all of these stories is that they’re not about Edward Nygma. They’re about someone else reacting to Nygma. And, in the case of “Zero Year” and the “War of Jokes and Riddles,” they both happen in the distant-by-comic-book-time past of Batman.

Really, the only story in the last 30 years worth of comics that really changed what we know about the Riddler was Paul Dini turning him into Sherlock Holmes in Detective Comics. In the wake of the wretched “Hush” and the not-great Infinite Crisis, Dini has Nygma go straight and begin selling his services as a consulting detective to Gotham’s wealthy. It takes the Riddler, keeps his main schtick (proving that he’s smarter and more clever than Batman), but points it in a different direction so we can see it work from another angle and take a little bit more out of it. Edward Nygma, Consulting Detective is the one time before this Year of the Villain issue that anybody really tried to twist the Riddler’s core concept around and peer at it from a different angle in modern comics. For perspective, in those same 30 years that it took to get four meaningful Riddler stories, Gotham City has been destroyed or quarantined from the rest of the country in four stories.

read more: The Secrets of DC's New Superman/Batman Team

Gorshin’s portrayal and the Riddler’s iconic look have been enough to keep him top tier in the popular consciousness, though. That a character can largely survive Jim Carrey and the Question Mark Guy who wanted to give us all free government money sullying his rep and look, respectively, is a testament to his fundamental appeal. The beauty of this issue is that even if it were a fluffy one-off with no potential wider impact, it would still be terrific. How many times do you get to open a comic and yell “OH MY GOD IS THAT KING TUT?” It’s not like he’s the Fluoronic Man or something. A King Tut sighting is a rare blessing, friends! Also, Tom King Batman aside, there’s been a subtle creep of a lighter Batman into comics lately that continues here. We’ve got a Batman happy to toss riddles back at Nygma along with his boots. Batman gets noticeably exasperated by King Tut’s incompetence and even almost jokes with the Gotham PD about how long it’ll take him to beat Tut. “Lair” Magazine is something I hope DC one day manages to publish, even if it’s just a joke. Profound character development aside, this issue was just really fun.

The brilliance of this issue is how it directly interacts with one of the fundamental tenets of modern superhero comics: the illusion of change. Stan Lee said the secret to Marvel storytelling (a theory that has come to apply to the superhero industry as a whole) is “the illusion of change.” The idea that comic book superheroes change over time is actually far truer than it seems on first glance, it’s just the under the radar ones, the characters keeping one arm out of limbo, who are capable of doing the most changing.

It’s possible that this issue is setting the Riddler up for a big change. It shows a willingness to strip Edward Nygma back to his bare, raw, core concept, and it’s one that makes him stand out as a Batman rogue. For years now, we’ve been watching Batman matched against the inexplicable chaos of the Joker, or match power and forethought with Bane, or have really bad anxiety attacks and bone Catwoman. What we’ve seen far less often is Batman be the best detective in comics. We get plenty of Batman pounding the shit out of a parade of bad guys. We don’t see him sussing out motive or means as much. All of the good writers have found a way to make that happen here and there over the last few years, but it always takes a backseat to saving hypertime by throwing three pearls at Rip Hunter. The Riddler gives them an excuse to lead with the detective work.

read more: The Batman Who Laughs and the Culmination of 10 Years of DC Stories

Maybe the Riddler has fallen far enough for this to stick. We know from tweets hoping for an ongoing that Russell thinks so. The Riddler: Year of the Villain works because it forces Nygma to think his way out of his rut and choose to do something different. Hopefully we get to see more of that change play out on the page.

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Feature Jim Dandy

Sep 11, 2019

DC Entertainment

Mark Russell

Batman

from Books https://ift.tt/2Lp4Kyc

#aion-rsa #Books

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lifeilluminatd · 5 years ago

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Alder Oculea shares our delusions. They are unknown, a Mothman and a resident. While they might be sanguine sometimes they get enigmatic. They are a sub in bed, and pansexual. They are into wax play and outdoor sex and want a dom partner.

Headcanons

Alder has lived alone on the large estate that once belonged to their sponsor since her death. It’s outside the actual limits of town, a sprawling plantation style home that has been a part of the bayou landscape for several generations, and half reclaimed by the swamp. There is a distant feel of age to the place but warm and inviting; they couldn’t fathom living in town when it’s so peaceful and quiet out at the edge of the swamps.

Preferring warm colors, soft blankets and other such comforting ideas, their home reflects that desire for peace and tranquility. Always with an open door, welcoming to others, more than a few times Alder has allowed wayward rescues to stay with them until sponsors were found. Being a resident by granting of the council they have never had a rescue of their own, many think them not really suited for it with their tendency to daydream and get lost in distractions, but it can also be said that plenty of people have found refuge during their first uneasy days in that comforting place while they adjust to town.

Because they have so much access to old tomes and the like Alder has extensive knowledge in Arcane arts, even if they lack the ability to use that knowledge because of the limitations of their species. The shop they share with Felix Jepsen, an old friend from the years before either of them came to the town, is an all hours bookstore that focuses on magic and also a coffee shop. Much of the time Alder can be found there if not at home, they don’t sleep like most people so they’re usually there at any given time sorting through books and reading. They also are well-versed in translating a great many languages after decades of study in them.

A comfortably passive soul, Alder is very rare to cause trouble. They do wander a great deal but haven’t left the town in nearly ten years. It is home, they have no want to return to the outside world and know it’s likely they wouldn’t be allowed to anyway with how useful their abilities might be as the darkness grows closer.

Very often quiet, they do not fear speaking since it has been a long time since the last time they earned the punishment that came with breaking the rules of their power but it has become such a habit they don’t break it much. They enjoying listening to others so it doesn’t seem a need to speak endlessly when others have things that need to be said.

Overall Alder enjoys life, people, and strives to find the good in it all. They usually manage to, building good memories to replace the ones that are gone now, learning new faces to add to those they call friends; peace is about balance and Alder deeply believes it is only a matter of wanting to reach it. While they wish for the best for everyone they do mourn somewhat for those who carry sorrow, knowing that isn’t always a burden anyone can ease for someone else.

As for Alder’s own pains, they run deep. Loss is at the heart of it, of themselves, of people, of good things. Many speculate there is something deep and dark within them, can sense it, and this is very much the truth to the nature of creature that Alder is by design. But as with all things power is what one makes of it, and it can either lead a person to terrible actions or wisdom.

To look at them though it would be hard to guess there is pain there, Alder is optimistic and charming, gentle-natured; life is something to experience with joy, not to let the past take away the reason for living. They’re a bit comical at times, quirky, and it always seem that they know more than other people around them. But earnestly friendly, they strive to try to make things better for those around them.

History

Alder has forgotten the date of their birth beyond that it was in the latter eighteen hundreds, too many details lost to the wave of time and the demands of their abilities. There are vague recollections of decades that were written about in books but most dates before the past hundred or so have been handed away in trade for visions. Exactly when their existence began is questionable but what is not is that it did so as a human.

Contrary to what much of the world assumes, their race is not one born but rather passed on via mantle one to the next. A sort of Fae-connected creature, a harbinger of the future, Mothman are a nearly extinct creature that has lived in the shadow of Fate since the beginning of all races. Alder only had the misfortune to have stumbled across one during its’ transformation from one life to the next, a sort of stage similar to that of their real moth counterparts. A spirit that abandons a spent soul for the next, passing on the purpose with it.

Alder has lived as such a creature for centuries but using their power has taken their origin from them, taken many things, and while they have wandered both Europe and the then-budding United States, it has always been with the purpose of watching what will unfold in the world and offer warning to those who dwell in its’ path. Unfortunately it was in the States that Alder encountered something unexpected in the form of people who twisted that purpose, made it something dark, and what was one only an effort to safeguard became something terrible to fear. No longer only a messenger but looked at as a harbinger of doom, it was a crushing blow to the otherwise bright-souled being.

Still with a job to do, fearful of it being passed on if not, Alder continued onward as the world around them grew endlessly more cold. But what of it really when life was filled with such amazing things it was impossible to allow the sting to linger. Increasingly though the world pushed and finally, both curious and seeking rest, Alder arrived in the bayou. With that town came acceptance, happiness that slowly washed away the past few years of solitude, friendship that was invaluable. While it was true they caught the attention of many it was one who needed their presence that Alder choose as a sponsor. A broken, damaged soul in need of the calm just as much as they needed coaxing back into trusting others; the two of them became closer than even Alder expected. There was an incredible freedom in giving away their memories in the bond because in way they finally regained them. So many nights were spent sitting with her and listening while she recounted tales of a history they could not recall. It was more than they had ever hoped for, a real sort of peace.

But it didn’t last. They knew she would die, fearful to do so against her wishes they peered into the yet to be and saw her end. It was heartbreaking knowing that there was nothing to do to stop it, knowing it could only turn so much worse with the effort. She forbid them from telling her, required the hardest promise to keep. And when she was murdered, as they knew would come to pass, Alder grieved more deeply than they ever had before.

The pain did not pass with ease, several seasons came and went before they were willing to once again open their eyes to the world around them, a heavy sleep that nearly triggered transformation. But with the uneasy feeling of the darkness outside town growing, pressing inward on the home they do so love, Alder woke and returned to a sort of cautious vigil. To intervene would cost them greatly but the visions come more and more demanding, the darkness promising so much destruction; it may not be long before they have no other choice but to speak out.

Species Info

Alder’s race is a vastly misunderstood one. Seen in recent history as monsters who bring doom with them, the truth is they are simply vessels for the visions that hold such things. Time and again though, in an effort to stop an event before it happens, they have stepped in but the results have always made the disaster worse. Fate does not intend for them to change the course, simply to know of it, doing otherwise always amplified the end result. It is for that reason that the Mothman often recounted in recent tales have only arrived as a warning, a silent presence that has inspired feat in hope that the horror can avoided.

Being a race connected to the Fae, the Mothman are not of the human world, only serve as watchers of it. They spawn from a spirit that has an endless lifespan, living out time in a host body and becoming merged with them entirely until said host is no longer fitting. At that point the host goes through a metamorphosis of sorts, the body falling into deep slumber and gradually turning to dust from which the spirit will emerge in their moth form to travel to the next host and begin the process again. At one time they were a much more wide-spread race but most all of them now have buried themselves in forgotten places and refused to wake from that slumber.

Mothman are drawn to their flame; this is a single aspect that will continue to allow them to exist within their host for as long as the host still seeks that flame. It can be any number of things that inspire strong emotion; some flames are those of anger, other discovery or pain, hope, and most any other emotion than can be tied to the human condition. The spirit lacks these motivations themselves so they need the host to be one who strives for it, giving a reason to their existence. Any Mothman is not solely human nor inhuman but a combination of two beings that exist entirely as one. Alder no more thinks of their inhuman side as different than the rest of them than anyone else might think any aspect of personality is separate from the full sum of who they are. Each Mothman has always been different in that regard, and none openly speak of their flame even among each other; it is a deeply personal idea. And a dangerous one, as they can be manipulated by strong forces that control that aspect. In simple terms that flame is the one idea worth always chasing that acts as the will to live for the creature.

As a whole Mothman, in spite of the term being considered masculine, are nonbinary. Agendered, they exist outside the human concept of it, though having bodies that are human means they do have biological genders. Those bodies function the same as normal humans in most regards, with addition to magic unique to the species.

Magic

Visions:

The foundation of power for Mothman, visions are their purpose. They experience first a feeling, much like a tingling, in regards to an event, and can choose to look into the future of it to see how things will play out. They are only granted visions associated with great loss or terror and these do come at a price. The larger the disaster the higher the toil, the more demanded of them; and every vision requires a trade of memories in order to use the power. This trade means that the oldest memories one has, sometimes the dearest, are taken away from them, buried deep in their mind in a place they cannot reach. It is for this reason that many Mothman have lived centuries with very little recollection of their human life beyond the sense of knowing they were human in that past. Another aspect of the visions is that Mothman are not allowed to stop what is to come to pass. They can be present, they can observe, but they cannot step in to halt a disaster. Doing so holds a two-fold punishment; one being that the event’s tragedy is amplified and the second being a curse of words. The voice of a Mothman who has stepped outside the rules will bring terrible things to any who hear it for an unknown amount of time after; usually the larger the event the more time it takes for this punishment to stop. There is some truth to the possibility that any words spoken in anger or ill intention can actually cause disaster to strike as well.

Illuminating Sight:

All Mothman have the ability to see clearly in darkness, vision just as sharp then as though in daylight, and have a red cast to their eyes in the dark. It isn’t a result of any magic used, their eyes are just highly reflective of light and the red glow is that intensified. It is a very unsettling sight to witness, and one of the traits that has resulted in the race being seen as monsters. There is also a hypnotic quality to it, staring into those eyes can render a person motionless, unable to pull away from the gaze until it is broken by Alder. On the other side of the spectrum they are sensitive to very intense light; during daylight hours they have usually have time to adjust but if presented with something too sudden the result is being blinded for several moments. This sensitivity makes it difficult at night to be in brightly lit areas when their eyes are naturally more sensitive, and as such most of the time Alder’s home is only faintly lit with candles.

Illusions:

A power that varies in strength, and the reason people look at their race as monsters; Mothman have the ability to mask their true bodies with illusions of terrifying creatures. These illusions are carefully controlled, powerful, and even supernatural creatures, unless they are also of Fae origin, cannot see through it. They have to be careful not to be touched, however, as it won’t break the spell but obviously will confuse as there is no the physical form to match the visual.

Fear Casting

As a means of defense, all Mothman have an odd power of mind manipulation. In times of stress their skin develops a faint dust to it that, if touched or breathed in by others, will cause intense hallucinations. These are terrifying, every bit laced with the worst fears of the person suffering them. Like a drug, the length of time which they last depends greatly on how much a person comes into contact with the substance. This dust can be stored, it does not lose power after being separated from Alder’s skin, and in condensed enough concentration can cause permanent madness.

Immortality

So long as their flame does not dampen too much Alder will not age or die with time, only continue onward. It is true that their body is stronger than a human but still can suffer injury just the same as one, though also capable of natural healing over time where as humans would not be able to at the speed nor the level that they can. Grave injury that would likely kill a human though would put them into that slumber that leads to transformation and Alder would die in a way; body being abandoned and the spirit leaving it to find another host.

#SD:task 001 #alder:bio

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peachyjie · 6 years ago

Text

For ‘Love‘, I Will || Cai Xu Kun

—Author Note :

Well, I decided it was best to post this one. So yea, requested by a lovely anon and I hope you enjoy this piece of mine :>

—Warning : tbh, I just felt like this whole scenario is a roller coaster and I kinda suck with the ending

—Wc : 8.4K+

—Pairing : Cai Xu Kun - Reader

—Genre : Bestfriend!au + semi!angst + slight!fluff

—Summary : When the reality of Love dawns upon you, you realized it takes more than mutual feelings for both to last

By any means, you had always hated the word Love.

It is delightful to watch movies based on romance. People would often get themselves engage in such scene, fall down in the usual cliché storyline before bawling their eyes out by the sappy romance.

The books based out of Love aren’t an exception. Despite the storyline would be the same cliché and predictable plot, where the male or female would fall for one another and the story pulls on testing their love by giving them random obstacle, before at the end of the book they end it with a kiss.

But why do people still find themselves buying into them despite it’s the same thing every time?

Was it the feeling of thirst? Or for the imagination of a perfect love story?

You were by no means an exception. As a human being, everyone has the right to thirst on love and you’re one of them. It’s cute seeing how two characters could fall in love so gracefully then have a journey so beautifully in the name of love.

You hated it, you had and always hated the word love, the concept of love, the reality of falling in love.

In your on-going long journey in life, you’ve only fallen in love 2 times. 2 times the sweet memories, 2 times the heartbreak.

Your first love was during Junior High, 7th grade aka the new kid on the block thrown into the sea of people who’ve known one another since Primary. You were new or freshly moved in the neighborhood, trying to adapt to the sudden changes of school.

You would say that being the awkward teen in puberty also hit your social skill in being awkward. But this one boy, known as the troublemaker, always teasing you and the jokester who always tried to make you laugh and less awkward in class, the one and only, Wang Lin Kai.

You didn’t know how or what were you thinking that time, you had a small crush on him. Turns out that crush continued for more than half a year and you guaranteed yourself that you truly do like him. You thought to yourself that it was finally time to experience the scenario so called love like the TV shows or the books.

No, reality had better plans.

During the second semester, Linkai called you out to talk. You were beyond elated and willingly followed him. It wasn’t until he looked down in the dumps, you finally noticed something is wrong.

“I won’t be coming to school tomorrow”, now you didn’t click right away. Because Linkai was always absent every month. Every month, Linkai would take a week off out of school and those were the most dreadful week for you. It wasn’t a surprise when he tells you that he won’t come to school tomorrow, because you knew he will come again next week.

Well, it wasn’t until reality hits you hard.

“I’m moving to the US tomorrow, Y/N”, oh you didn’t remember how you reacted to that. It was either you stood frozen as you stare the living soul out of him, or immediately bawl your eyes in front of him, or better you actually passed out right there on spot.

The only thing you knew was, your first love journey ends there.

The second time you attempted to fall in love happened during your time in College. This time, you’re far confident with the outcome. You were sure the probability of him falling for you is bigger than Linkai’s, especially since he’s been by your side since High School.

The prized star of the dance major in campus, the campus star that everyone loves, the best-friend who had spent a good amount of 4 years by your side but also the male who has his hands around your heart.

You met him during the first day of High School in the bus, that time you’re not awkward like when you were in Junior High, you were far than the word awkward.

You messed up.

It was early morning, the first morning you had to wake up early after your long lazy break. The usual morning routine you had to drag yourself to go through before you could go to school. With a small carton of milk you had in your hand for breakfast, you let the bus scanned your student card. When it beeped, you proceeded to find a vacant seat.

Opening the flap, your lips came in contact with the soft carton to sip on the milky liquid.

You turned your head sideway, mouth still savoring the sweetness in the milk to even notice a figure had already taken the vacant seat beside you.

“Morning, I hope this seat isn’t taken”, oh wow his voice sounded so ethereal.

In all day light and hallelujah, he smiled so charmingly it caused you a big jolt in your system. Without any warning, in the speed of light, you accidentally spit the whole substance on his magnificent facial feature.

You didn’t have time to laugh as you whole body was too busy panicking.

You stare down at the blazer, the color of navy blue with the High School’s logo. Great, he goes to the same school as you and it’s only the first day and you’ve made a fool of yourself. Let’s see until he spit the words about you to the whole school’s existence. The girl who spits milk mist for free, he would probably say.

“I am so sorry!”, you yelped as you frantically dabbed your handkerchief to dry his face off the liquid. He was frozen, very much not moving as he kept his eyes closed, obviously not letting the liquid get into his eyes nor mouth.

But who knows fate always does things with a dash of surprise

Instead of being mad or completely disgusted by you, he laughed, loudly. You were in the state of shock and pure confusion, did the milk mist made him lose his mind? Or is he just pure crazy?

“I like you”, he said suddenly catching you by surprise.

A confession in the morning? Aren’t you living the life. A handsome male beside you suddenly confessing when both of you barely know one another. Bucket list checked.

“Nice to meet you”, he said. His hand slowly extended towards your side, the dashing smile plastered itself on his face. “I’m Cai Xu Kun, Xukun”, you smiled and accepted his hand.

The start of your friendship but also, the start of your journey with him.

*****

You didn’t know how you lasted this long with Xukun.

It all started with the milk mist and without warning both of you suddenly became best friend. You were different from Xukun. He’s always been the popular kid that’s loved by everyone ever since High School whilst you were the awkward sidekick of his who only care about surviving school.

But that never stops him from advancing his ways to you, instead it made both of you got closer to one another.

You smiled thinking about the countless memories both of you had made for one another, there was too many to choose. And telling them all would only resolve you to release a book about you and Xukun.

Other than those memories, Xukun has always had that small space in you.

He wasn’t only the closest thing you have in life or your best-friend, he’s also the person you’re currently in love with.

It wasn’t a surprise to see him hanging around with you in campus or out of campus. He would sometimes sneak into your class in excuse of “I’m too lonely when you’re not beside me”, which resolve to you calling him clingy but secretly you also like having him right beside you.

You would also do the same to him. Staying by his side until late night, waiting for him to finish practice. Despite he nags you to go home and get some sleep, you would just brush it off and say “I’m too lonely when you’re not beside me”, which caused him to stare at you judgingly for teasing him before smiling fondly at you.

Basically, in conclusion everyone in campus already know about you and Xukun. New kid in campus who’s suddenly interested in Xukun or you? Don’t worry, they get the hint both you and him are inseparable or just get told off that Xukun and you are basically dating.

Oh what? A female interested in him but won’t back off? It’s fine, Xukun will be too busy haunt you down for movie nights than spare them a single glance.

As time pass by, you could conclude that your feelings for him is true and sincere.

Him? You’re can’t guess. But there should be a bigger possibility for him to like you back, right?

4 years you’ve spent with him, you’re far confused about his feeling towards you. It’s wasn’t like you assume he has the same mutual feelings as you, its simply because Xukun here loves to give out mixed signals to you.

During Valentines day, he announced to the whole campus he’s your valentine. Took you out to many dates instead of calling it the usual hang out. He would often give you surprise pecks here and there anytime and everywhere, A small gift for working hard he would often quoted when you ask why.

During times you told him you got admirers, showing him the notes that you got from your lockers. He would often react by pouting and sulking for the whole day, until you reassure him that you had no interest in any of them.

“Then who do you like?”, he would ask you. Flustered, you always get flustered and shy when he asked the question.

“Eyyyy, it’s me right”, he would say. He sounded confident, as if he already knew the answer all along. You only brushed him off, getting teased for the whole day by him.

But it’s fine.

You know your relationship with Xukun will never change, because both of you are probably far too committed being stuck with one another to even think of growing distant.

Or so that’s what you thought.

One day, without any sign of a thunderstorm, you saw him striding to your side. The happiest expression stuck on his face as his lips kept tugging into a wide smile, you smiled at him asking him why was he so giddy so early in the morning.

The answer you weren’t expecting, because once again reality comes dawning itself on you.

“I came to you to announce, I have a crush on Cheng Xiao”

Once again, your love story was put on a hold.

You only smiled at him, trying your best to think a way out of the whole situation. “Con-Congratulations Xukun”, you manage to stutter it out. Xukun was far than delightful to hear your blessing, he went on blabbering about his on-going new-found crush, clearly oblivious on whatever is happening inside of you. You simply tried to plaster a smile as he rants on, completely pushing aside whatever sweet feelings you have for him.

Your ears weren’t even working, all the things he was telling you just went pass as your mind was too busy thinking about all the time you had with him. Thinking that both of you would never even have the change or the small change of growing a gap. It happened anyways, at the time you least expected.

“You’re going to help me, right?”, that snapped you back to reality. You stare at him in confusion, blinking rapidly. Xukun chuckled at your small act. “I said, you’re going to help me win her right?”, he repeated slowly.

You didn’t know what you were progressing in your mind, because when your beating heart said no rapidly. You choked out a small, “Yea, sure!”. Causing a bigger smile on his face.

You smile a little. For love, you’ll try for him.

So, you set up a small meeting between him and her. And like expected, things escalated quickly.

*****

Cheng Xiao, the dance goddess in campus. You know her, everyone knows her. Cheng Xiao is that typical humble yet perfect female every girls aspire to be, every boys dream girl. You’ve had your fair share of encounter with her. From being putted in the same class, to grouped into the same team for a group project, until spending a good amount of girls night out with her to be considered good friends.

Comparing to Xukun, she’s probably the second closest person in campus to be your friend.

There wasn’t that much minus point in her. Cheng Xiao is always hard working, she cares a lot on details and sharpness in every movements, she’s humble and caring to others, basically the list goes on. You had seen fair share of confession given to her, during lunches or small letters in lockers.

Like Xukun, she rarely date. Never had you seen her one to one with a male aside of dance practice.

The more you think of it, the more you realized. Xukun would be better off with Cheng Xiao anyways, why did you even bother making up the whole scenario about you and Xukun anyways.

You groaned a little, scratching the paper in front of you with you pen. The dark liquid seeps into the paper, causing the once white clean paper stained with black ink. “Stupid, this is all dumb”, you grumbled silently.

The library, your escape place from reality. You stare silently at the stack of books in front of you, then your eyes wander down to the vacant seat across you. Xukun had asked you to tutor him on history as the next exam is coming closer, like usual you obliged.

Where was he, you may wonder? You stare at the far end table near the window, he was busy talking with Cheng Xiao to neglect his tutor session, neglecting that you even existed.

This is how you hate love. It’s such a strong feeling, it controls your whole mind and system. It’s the expression that made you think otherwise, caused everyone to prioritize the wrong thing and forget about the reality.

Love, the strong feeling that made everyone irrational. And you’re one of them.

You sighed a little, trying your best to force down more materials in your brain. You wanted to leave him alone, quickly going back to your dorm. But you didn’t, instead you waited for him like a complete bimbo. Why?

Because he has more control against your heart and you would do anything to see that smile on him.

Stupid? You could say that again. For him, you try to help him win her. For him, you sacrifice time and effort so he could progressed further. For him, you sacrifice your heart just to see him smile fondly with sincerity for her. The things you do for him, for love.

“Y/N?”, you jerk in surprise, staring at the figure in front of you.

Caught in complete surprise, you stare at the new stranger who was grinning widely at you. A stranger who seems so familiar. Defined jawline, tall posture, sharp eyes and high nose, the same playful grin from 7 years ago.

You smiled in recognition. “Wang Lin Kai?”, he lights up in joy hearing the familiar roll from your tongue.

“Yo, you still remember who I am?”, he said in compete surprise.

You laughed softly and nodded. Like other tales would say, your first love will always have that special place in your heart and your memories.

“I didn’t know you study in this campus, Linkai”, you said. He shook his head, eyes in disapproval. “I go by Lil Ghost AKA IMP now”, he said causing you to snort. He looked at you in pure shock, almost offended. “The US really got you hard huh, Linkai?”, you said laughing a little.

“Nah, it’s called passion for music”, he said back. You smile at him, nodding a little. Linkai took the seat across you, despite having Xukun’s bag on it. But Xukun wouldn’t mind, he’s too busy over there anyways.

“I came back to China a week ago, enrolled here yesterday”, he said.

“Why did you come back?”, he stare at you in question causing you to went full flustered. “No—I meant, The US must be more fun and all. Why did you choose to come back here, in boring old China?”, you said trying your best to calm yourself down.

He smiled fondly at you, you will never change from the awkward as you’re still the same like when you’re still in Junior High.

“Just because, I kind of miss being here”, he said coolly. He studied you longer, taking the few changes from the past 7 years. He must admit, he missed teasing you around or making random jokes just to make you laugh. Who knew, 7 years change a lot of things between both of you.

“We should hang out on weekend, you know show me around the campus and then we could grab lunch or something”, he said.

You light up at the invite. You nodded eagerly, accepting his offer.

Out of the corner of your eyes, you saw Xukun coming closer after bidding Cheng Xiao a small goodbye. You noticed his eyes changed when he saw Linkai who’s occupying his seat. You gave him a small smile which he didn’t reply as he was too busy boring his eyes on the other male.

“Xukun, this is Linkai. He’s my friend from Junior High”, you said.

Linkai faked a hurt, staring at you in sad eyes. “I-I thought we had something more, Y/N.”, he said. You laughed a little, giving him a small hit on the arm.

Xukun just stare at the whole situation unfolds in front of him. This is the first time he seen you all touchy and close with another male other than him.

“Give me your phone, I’ll give you my number”, you said to Linkai as your arm reached out for his phone. He willingly gave it to you, causing a wide sincere smile on your face.

As you were typing in your number, Xukun on the other hand was far in confusion. He felt left out, as if you were growing distant from him due to this Linkai kid.

“I manage to get a date with Cheng Xiao”, he suddenly said.

With all will, you tried to keep the smile on your face. Your fingers stopped typing as your heart rate fastened. You stare at Linkai’s phone longer than expected, before you looked at Xukun. Giving him the usual smile you will always give him, you nodded.

“I am happy for you, Xukun”, you said. Xukun smiled and nodded at your approval. You handed the phone back to Linkai who sat silently watching the scene unfolds, then frantically took all of your belonging and shove them in your bag.

“Text me the detail, Kai”, you said to him before you divert your attention to Xukun once again. “I’m heading back first, I’ll see you later”, and like that you ran out of the library.

Running away from him, from your own feelings.

*****

“Get that bunny one!! I don’t want a Huba doll, Linkai!”, you whined when you saw the claw went pass the bunny doll you wanted. He laughed as he tried to aim towards the Huba doll in sight, his tongue was pressed against his lips, the usual habit he has whenever he’s trying to concentrate.

“And, bam!”, he hollered and at the same time, the claw aimed down directly at the Huba.

You groaned as he celebrated with pure glory on the catch. He smiled proudly presenting the doll at you, making you grumbled more.

“It’s cute!”, he said. “See, it looks like you”, he put the doll right beside of your face making you smack him on the face. He laughed louder, still giving you the Huba despite your whining for the bunny doll.

It was finally the day where you went on a hang out with him, so far everything is amazing. Both of you took a small stroll around campus, catching up here and there before heading for a late lunch. When lunch passed by, Linkai decided it was a great idea to go to the arcade near campus.

In which, it resolved to you getting a Huba doll. Or what Linkai would call, his child.

You sat down waiting for Linkai who’s ordering drinks for both of you. Mindlessly scrolling through your social media and replying to any text messages from the last few hours. You raised your vision to look at Linkai who’s already staring at you, you tilted your head in confusion.

He made an ugly face, causing you to erupt in a fit of giggle. You replied his action back, making him shake his head in judgement but you only smiled goofily at him. A ding on your phone caused you to jerk back to stare at the notification.

You froze, eyes glued on your screen as it fades back to nothing but black. You felt your body turned cold, your throat dry.

As Linkai set down the cup of tea, you took it and sip a good amount of drink. Linkai stare at you in bewilderment, mostly caught off guard on how you went from happy and smiles to a disoriented and panicked mess.

When another ding came on your phone, you tried your best not to look at the screen. You restrained. But Linkai, he saw it. It took him mere seconds to finally understand why the smile was stripped away completely off you.

15.56 – KunKun : It’s official! I’m dating Cheng Xiao!

Linkai took you back home earlier than the normal plan. When you were in front of the dorm’s gate, you smiled guiltily at Linkai. “Sorry we had to cut the hang out short, I’m feeling tired suddenly”, you said softly.

It took Linkai a while to react. He pulls out the same usual cheeky smile and knocks you a little on the forehead, completely catching you by surprise. “You idiot, it’s fine”, he said ruffling your hair a little. Then his hand reached down to his pocket, throwing the small bag to your side.

Flustered, you caught it carelessly before it hit the ground. You stare at Linkai in question, he only ushered you and told you to open it. In the small bag was a small rabbit doll keychain, it’s the size of your palm for the convenience to hang it on your bag.

You smiled fondly at it causing Linkai to smile. “That one is far cuter than the arcade one, plus you can bring it everywhere and think of me”, he said suggestively.

You only laughed louder. “Thanks, Linkai”, you said.

Linkai kicks the pavement as he stared down at the small rocks on the ground. “Don’t think about him too much, and don’t get sad just because of him”, he looks up and locks his eyes at yours.

“Okay?”, he asked.

Your palms rubbed itself on the soft material of the rabbit. “Okay”, you said back making him nod in satisfaction.

“Good. Don’t let your feelings bring you down, Y/N”, he gave you a small peck on the forehead and then he was off to his side of dorm. Leaving you to daydream on the sudden affection he just displayed.

*****

4 months, that’s how long you’ve gradually felt the distance widen as each day passed by.

It happened in a blink of an eye, where once you would be by his side 24/7 soon turned into his shadow. He rarely made time to hang out or go on dates with you anymore, no more invites to see him during practice hours, he just cuts you off whenever you’re trying to commit on a topic to talk to.

“I have a date with Cheng Xiao, maybe another time”, he would often say with a smile on his face. Without bidding a goodbye at you, he dashes out of campus without much thought.

There’s never the promised maybe another time, because whenever he tried to do it, it will only resolve to “Oh… I forgot I have practice with Cheng Xiao” or “I promised her for a study together after lesson”.

Xukun, your best-friend had been ripped off completely from your life.

You would often find yourself staring mindlessly at Xukun in each class, during lunch or even self-study session in the library. The sudden emptiness hits you harder than you expected, especially since Xukun here literally sacrificed all of his time with his girl.

Sighing, another lesson is done and you’re off to another day without him bothering you. Because he’s already had plans again with her.

As you were packing up, out of the corner of your eyes you saw Linkai’s head popping in searching the whole room. When his eyes met yours, his hand waved wildly on the air causing you to smile. You motioned him to come in as the professor is already out, he obliged and strode over in big steps.

What you didn’t realize was Xukun who kept glancing when he saw Linkai came in. Linkai who noticed the stare gave him a little nod which Xukun takes and give back. His eyes stayed glued until Linkai stops by your table, clearly start talking to you about whatever new topic he got during his part of the lesson.

Xukun stare at Linkai in displeasure, wasn’t his class’s building like all across from this building?

When he heard another laughter escaped from you, his irritation just rise up. No, he shouldn’t be thinking like this. He has his own life now and you have yours, it’s your right to choose who you want to be with and he is already committed with Cheng Xiao.

He shouldn’t feel like this, he shouldn’t.

“I heard there’s this good ramen place near campus, let’s get lunch there”, Linkai said casually. You perk up at the sudden offer and thought about it. Cafeteria food where you have to fight with other people to get the most decent food or sweet savory broth of ramen noodles with elegance.

Linkai smiled a little when he sees your expression change. He took your packed bags and without warning, his hand clasped on yours and soon he drags you out of the lecture room. “Ramen noodle for the Queen then!”, he hollered as you squealed trying your best not to lose your balance.

Xukun stare quietly at the scene that had unfold in front of him. Silently taking in the whole situation in him.

“Did you see the way he held her hand? It’s so cute”, Cheng Xiao squealed to herself.

He smiled slightly at her and nodded.

When he got out of the lecture room with Cheng Xiao by his side, her arm interlinked with his. Xukun couldn’t help but feel the dissatisfaction in his system.

“Where should we have lunch?”, Cheng Xiao asked in pure glee. Xukun stops his track, mind racking in the question. Then it clicked in him, he knows exactly where their lunch date is going to be held.

“Let’s go to the ramen place down campus lane”

And so, they did.

This isn’t how you expected your 2 hours break to pass by.

You were expecting having the fun conversation with Linkai, basically joking around with the male. Served with good food that will make for you forget about dieting or calories, just pure guilty pleasure. Then maybe after lunch you would go to the library and catch up on some worksheets that hadn’t been done and then you would go home.

What you weren’t expecting was the couple joining in your lunch with Linkai. You stare at Linkai across of you, he smiled apologetically.

Then your eyes wander towards Cheng Xiao who’s sitting beside Linkai, she was too busy flipping the menu in pure happiness like a child who recently got sweets for doing some good deeds. Until out of the corner of your eyes, you see the person you least want to encounter.

The Cai Xu Kun, Xukun is here sitting beside you.

The moment you heard the ding from the door, you would never expect Xukun and Cheng Xiao to come here. Xukun rarely want anything soupy during summer, yet he barges into the place like he owns the place.

Cheng Xiao was probably in pure confusion and surprise when she saw you and Linkai. Willingly, Xukun let her stride over to your place. Linkai who was supposed to sit beside you, only stare at the scene unfolds.

“I never expected to see you both here”, she said. You only laughed awkwardly and waved at her. “Such coincidence”, you tried to say but it sounded more un-willing and a question why are you here?

“We should have lunch together!”, Cheng Xiao said in excitement.

Linkai who was clearly more aware of your situation took the call. “Ah, I don’t think your boyfriend would like your date to be bothered”, Linkai tried to reason out. Cheng Xiao hummed a little, almost agreeing to Linkai.

“No, I’m fine. Let’s eat together”, gosh you hate your fate with Xukun sometimes.

“Great! This will be fun!”, Cheng Xiao was clearly far excited and very much un-aware by the other 3 actors in the drama

Cheng Xiao smiled as she puts her bag across the seat of Linkai. Xukun here only place his bag beside Linkai, causing you and Linkai to look at him in confusion.

“I’m allergic to sunlight”, Xukun said as he pointed out the window seat beside Cheng Xiao.

You swore it took all your will to not laugh. Linkai stare at him, a small smirk finds itself rested on his face.

“What are you? A vampire?”, to say the least, Xukun was caught in surprise by Linkai’s comeback. Linkai simply leans on the seat more, obviously trying to piss the other male off.

You on the other side was not enjoying the whole drama, tried to think another solution before they both bite each other’s head off. You took your bag and slowly stood up.

“I’ll move next to Cheng Xi-“

“No!”, both of them snapped back causing you to jump back in surprise.

Linkai sighed a little, massaging his temple to calm himself from Xukun’s tantrum. “I’ll move”, he said as his arm grabs his bag rested on the seat. Just as Linkai passed by Xukun, he made sure both are close enough without a single gap in sight. “Asshole”, he said softly enough for Xukun to hear.

You leaned your head on your hand that’s rested on the wooden table, clearly finding this whole situation turning into a hassle.

Linkai tapped his finger at the menu, the slight small voice was enough to catch your attention. He smiled when you leaned in closer to take a small peak on what’s new.

“Should we share the tempura set?”, Linkai asked in a soft manner. You hummed still thinking about it, will you be able to finish it. “You’re paying the meal, right?”, you asked him almost hopeful. Linkai laughed at you and nodded.

“Then I want dessert after, let’s share it also”, you claimed to him. “Anything, anything for you”, he said back.

When Cheng Xiao was too busy squealing at how cute your tiny interaction with Linkai was, Xukun was almost at the edge of his sanity.

Sure, he noticed the sudden changes happening between you and him. Both of you would rarely have any time to spare for one another, but also because Xukun himself is already in a commitment he has to commit to.

His dating life had been nothing but bliss with Cheng Xiao. She’s beautiful, nice and hard-working by any means, basically everyone’s ideal lover. But then again, whenever Xukun she’s beside him being all cuddly like the usual couple things do, he couldn’t help but always thought about you.

He didn’t know why, he just can.

He tried to brush it off countless time, trying to hypnotize himself that he’s probably just misses hanging out with you. It’s the usual best-friend missing their other best-friend.

There had been numerous time he would often find himself resting on his bed, thinking about random things. Those were the time he would think too much and dread his life a lot. The one thought he mostly hated was the thought of having you as his instead of Cheng Xiao.

Those were the time he would just smack his head hard and go in the bathroom for a cold shower in 2AM in the morning.

How could a male who’s already committed thought about these scenarios? It was as if Xukun was willing to sin.

He didn’t know what was running in his mind. Xukun once thought about Cheng Xiao a lot, she always has the talent to draw people in. He had the idea of liking her and wanting her to be his officially, he did. Xukun will always remember the electricity jolting in his system whenever they accidentally touch, every single brain cells that never let him rest whenever he scored a date with her, and when he share the first kiss with her despite it was a small peck.

But why does he feel odd now? After 4 months being with Cheng Xiao, Xukun felt out of place and he didn’t know where he truly belongs.

“Should we order this set too?”, he snapped out of his trance to be met with Cheng Xiao’s hopeful gaze. Flustered, he only nodded. He seriously did not just bore his eyes on you.

When the food was served, all of you were far ready to devour. Xukun only lifeless took his chopsticks, feeling his appetite slipping away in each passing second. He nibbles on some a little before managing to finish half then he stopped.

Then his eyes started to wander around again, his mind getting hazy. He eyes bores itself on Linkai and you who was too busy talking to one another. The sincere smiles and laughs you gave him is always plastered on your face, he wondered had you ever done the same to him? Or was he too oblivious to know?

When Linkai shove another shrimp in your bowl, you simply shake your head. “Eat more, you need to grow”, he said sheepishly. You hit his bowl softly with your utensil, annoyed by his teasing.

“They’re so cute”, Cheng Xiao pointed out suddenly causing all three to turn back at her. Xukun was caught off guard, had she already noticed how his eyes was so glued to them?

“Do you guys ever consider on dating one another?”, she asked in pure curiosity.

Flustered, you frantically shook your head and dismissed your question before your eyes locked themselves on Xukun’s. You swallowed down a lump, very much uncomfortable on how the question and his intense gaze made you felt so small.

Without any warning, Xukun silently takes out his and Cheng Xiao’s share of bills and took his bag. The more he stayed, the more he will feel suffocated. Instinctively, his hand grabs onto Cheng Xiao’s and soon pulls both of them out of the place.

Xukun felt the relieve when the sun finally hits his skin, the feeling of fresh air and freedom rise into his system. The headache he has was slowly ceasing away, as if the whole situation was just a passing nightmare.

“Xukun”, he jolts up in surprise when he felt a hand slipped into his. He turned his head slightly to see Cheng Xiao, then slumped back in feeling the disappointment settles in.

He only smiled at her a little before continuing the path back to campus. Mindlessly, both started to walk back in complete silence.

Xukun didn’t know what got into him, what situation possessed his mind. As time pass by, he felt odd being with someone who’s not you. He felt odd seeing other people in his hand, he doesn’t feel in place. The more he thought about it, the more he just wanted to take you back from Linkai.

Was he afraid of losing you?

He stared quietly at Cheng Xiao, this isn’t right for him. The more he sees it, the more he thinks they are not compatible for one another. He noticed the differences between you and her, how would it be far better to have you beside him instead of her.

Compare to Cheng Xiao, your height fitted him better. Your height is just right whenever you stood beside him, he could easily circle his hand around you and pulls you closer to his side. The way your hand fitted in his, it felt right, it felt like home.

He missed the smile you’d often give him during any situation, he misses the time where both of you would stay up late in the night just to see him dance, he misses the time where he would crack crappy joke and you would just laugh at it no matter what, he misses the tutor session that ended up in him procrastinating, he misses the random time he would give you random thank you kisses on the cheeks.

He misses you, badly.

“Xukun”, he widened his eyes when he didn’t feel any presence beside him. The arm he once held was not there. He spun around in panic, the relieve flushed him when he noticed Cheng Xiao is still right behind him.

“I called you so many times already, you kept ignoring me”, she said to him. The smile is prominent on her face, as if the act he just pulled off was a joke to her.

Xukun didn’t know how to react towards the situation, he was far too uncomfortable by the whole scenario to even think a way out. He lets the silence filled both of their gaps, he was in no place to fix this situation anyways.

The more time passes, the more he felt both are already slipping away from one another.

“You’re in love with someone else, aren’t you?”, she asked him softly. Xukun stare at her in panic, afraid by the outcome. But she didn’t throw a tantrum nor try to be dramatic on him, Cheng Xiao kept smiling at him.

“You’re in love with Y/N”, she said. It wasn’t even a question anymore, both probably realized how this relationship will only be an act if they continue on.

Xukun looked at her in sorrow, pure shame and guilt in his eyes. Cheng Xiao nodded at him, understanding what he meant to say. “It’s fine”, she said.

When Xukun did nothing, she walked closer to him, slowly closing the gap both had. Her arm circled around him, feeling the warmth he always emitted. “Go get her”, she said when she pulled out of the hug.

“I’m sorry”, and he was off running.

*****

You smiled gratefully to Linkai when he dropped you off to your next class. It was still early for lesson, but you didn’t mind coming in early. “So… I’ll pick you up later?”, he asked. You shake your head a little, told him to keep the hassle away as you could walk back to your dorm alone.

When you were about to get into class, Linkai simply took a hold of your hand causing you to jerk back in surprise.

You stare at him in confusion when you see his distressed face.

“Have you ever considered of dating me?”, he blurted the question out. The breath hitched itself on you, very much caught off guard by his question. The slight blush crept itself on his face, he was more flustered than you’ll ever be.

“I was so unwilling to move back then, I threw a big tantrum to my parents that time”, he chuckled to himself. “It took me a while to come back and when I did, I made sure finding you was my only goal. I went to your old house, the new owner told me your family moved to the other side of town. It took me a while, until my friend who was in the same class as you told me.”

“You don’t know how my mind flew to cloud nine when you still remembered who I was, Y/N. I missed you”, he whispered.

Linkai looked at you, smiling. His face inches closer towards yours, closing the gap. You felt his hot breath tickling your upper lips as he came closer. When he finally pressed his lips on yours, you were expecting the adrenaline rise in your system, mind exploding with fireworks and butterflies in your stomach.

There was none, it didn’t feel right.

You pushed him away, in shock by what just happened. “I—no, I can’t”, you stuttered out.

“Linkai, I—I’m in love with someone else”, Linkai simply smiled at you, his hand traced itself towards yours. He held one on his, linking his fingers to yours before he pressed a small kiss on one of your knuckles.

“It’s fine”, he said.

“I’m sorry”, you said to him. Then without any warning, Linkai simply knocks your head a little. You were caught of guard when he suddenly laughed and brushed off the topic like nothing.

He sighed a little to himself. “If I never moved, do you think we would ever happen?”, he asked you softly. You pressed your lips against one another, thinking back during the days of Junior High.

“Probably, since I also liked you back then”, you said. He smiled at you, ruffling your hair a little. “I know, I missed my chance then”, he sighed.

“I’ll see you after class then”, he said already ready to make his way to his class.

“Hey, Linkai”, you called him. When he turned his head slightly, enough to lock his eyes around yours, you smiled at him. “Thank you for liking me—”, you said causing him to laugh.

“—and thank you for being my first love”, Linkai stopped. He stared at you, as if thinking it was all a joke you’re trying to pull off. You didn’t laugh, the tone and smile you gave is still as sincere as ever, filled with gratefulness.

He gave you one last smile and nodded at you, giving you a small ok sign.

Then he was off, his shadow swallowed down as he disappeared completely out of sight.

Silently, you took your seat in the lecture room and took out the books that are needed. Without any hassle, you simply flipped each page in hope to get your mind settle in from all the hassle that had happened before.

Having an hour to spare, you decided it was best to take a small breather out of the room. And you did, just as you were standing up, the door swung open once again as it gave you another jolt of surprise.

Your eyes locked themselves towards Xukun’s who was breathlessly heaving for air, his eyes were frantic.

When he noticed that you were in class, he didn’t waste any passing moment and walk in bigger steps to get closer to you. You were frozen, still processing the whole situation on what just happened because you know that after lunch, Xukun doesn’t have anymore classes as it was his free time to practice.

It took him only a moment to get to your place, standing across you still heaving for air.

“Make it stop”, he said.

You furrowed your eyes at him in confusion, not grasping the whole situation. “Make what stop?”, you asked him dumbly.

Xukun smiled at you, clearly finding this whole scenario unbelievably funny.

“This”, he pointed to his heart. You swore, it was either you were high in a food coma or what Linkai did still lingers in your mind to even make you think straight. Because out of nowhere, you simply blurted out “You want me to kill you?”.

Xukun stare at you in agape, clearly wondering how you manage to get this oblivious. When he noticed you were serious, he sighed a little.

“We broke up”, he simply said.

“Uh, what?”, you swore you thought you heard him wrong. You refused to believe him, especially since both of them was too struck in love from the beginning. He must be joking, he can’t be serious.

“I broke up with Cheng Xiao”, he said it again.

When he sees that you’re not reacting as you stared at him like his soul was coming out of his body, he knows he had to continue on.

“I’m not in love with her”, he said. You scoffed a little, feeling the adrenaline in you rising as he speaks.

“I thought I was in love with her when I’m only stuck with the thought of being in love with her. I don’t love her that way”, you stare at him. You were by far already very confused in his outburst, but yet decide it was best to leave him be. “I have no time for this lecture from you, I have class in less than—”

“I know Linkai confessed to you”, you sucked in a breath at his words. He knew?

“I met him when I was coming here, he told me”, he smiled sadly. Xukun didn’t know how numb he felt when Linkai told him about the confession happening, that the male actually kissed you also. Xukun only felt the rage building up inside him, yet he felt the scared seeing you slowly slip away from his life.

He didn’t want that, he needs you.

“Don’t leave me”, he pleaded. You only looked at him in confusion, how did both of you manage to get this broken? It was amazing to sense how 4 months ago Xukun was blindly struck by Cheng Xiao and everything crumbles on, leaving you in your own dark cube. Then here he is, begging his way back and pleading for you to stay.

Hurt, you were hurt by him and you don’t know if you are okay with him coming back.

“Go back, Xukun. You’ll miss practice”, you said trying your best to brush him off. But Xukun was more hard-headed than any male in existence. He wasn’t going to let this off easily.

“I’m in love with you”, he blurted out quickly.

You only shake your head slightly, almost laughing by his words. “You’re not. Stop saying things you don’t mean, Xukun”, this time it was you who pleaded back towards him. “You think you’re in love with me when you’re probably still confused by your own feelings, so please. Stop it and go to practice”, you said almost in a whisper.

Xukun stayed silent for a while. It made you thought that he would just forget about it and just go to his part of the building. He stayed, he never left.

“How am I supposed to forget about it when I myself is already afraid seeing you slipped away from me? Do you know how scared I was when you suddenly got back close with Linkai? My mind is always hazy thinking about what will happen if both of you end up together, I would never concentrate on my works because of it.”, he said.

“I know our feelings is mutual, Y/N. Please, stop pushing it away”, he pleaded.

“You left me first, Xukun.”, you said. “You left me for her and never glance back ever since. You always brushed me off like I never existed, throwing us away and now you’re crawling back as if everything is okay”, you said, your voice cracks a little at the end thinking more about it.

You looked at him, pure sadness and sorrow in your eyes. You smiled at him.

“You’re not in love with me, Xukun. You’re just afraid of losing me to Linkai.”, you said.

“I wanted you to be happy, I tried my best to let you stay that way even if it means sacrificing myself. Because for you, everything seems so worth it.”, you whispered out.

“I thought I didn’t mind losing a bit of you at first. But as days passed and I see you’re slipping away, I can’t help but feel the remorse settling in”, you gave him a small smile. “None of that matter, I always pushed my feelings away anyways. Seeing you smile was enough for me.”

Xukun scoffed a little. “Did you know how those 4 months suddenly become dreadful to me?”, he questioned you back. You simply looked at him, in utter confusion.

“I thought I was happy when I’m not, I thought I was in love with her when I’m just clearly confused by the fact I want to fall in love so badly. My mind was constantly thinking its way back at you, imagining how would it be that amazing to have you instead of her by my side—”

“Did you know how many times I’ve compared her to you? Then thinking I’m sinning in that relationship because of you? How many times I reassure myself that I just missed hanging out with you, when I am clearly in love with you but refuse to believe it?”, he choked each words out.

You felt the lump in your throat, you found the whole situation became more than unbearable to bear. You missed him, truly you do. There are no facts to hide that you’re still hopelessly in love with Cai Xu Kun, but what can you do?

“You didn’t just ruin yourself, Y/N”, he said in a mere whisper.

“When you did, you dragged me down with you”, he smiled at you. The same smile that will always reassure you whenever there is a whole other problem in life. “And when you did, you made me fall in love with you”

“For love to work out, both must be willing to sacrifice enough to know the true hardship of keeping it alive. For love to bloom, both must be in equal pain to know what truly lies ahead. For love to work out, both must be ready to accept one another despite mishaps and the ugly past one left. For love, I will and am willing to do it all”, slowly he takes you hand. Caressing it beneath his, the smile still prominent against his feature.

“I’m truly inevitably in love with you, Y/N”

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