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barzzal · 4 years ago

Text

between halls and thin walls → part four

summary: friends who fool around almost never works. almost.

↳ pairing: mathew barzal x you

↳ warnings: idiots, that’s all <3

↳ genre: fluff, angst, smut, roommates au, best friend’s best friend, friends with benefits, 18+

↳ length: series; part one, part two, part three, part four (6.7k), part five, part six

↳ masterlist: the barn

↳ track: my favorite part by mac miller, addicted by jorja smith, someone to spend time with by los retros

note: finally got myself to update this fic oml zzz quick psa tho, this will now be a six-part series! hope that’s okay and yenno as always, would love to hear what you think about this (validate me in the tags pls im lonely) happy reading babes! <3

“Yo, grandma. Haven’t you had too much tea to drink?” his voice echoes in the room as soon as he walks into it. You carefully set the cup down on the dining table and looked at him exasperatedly.

“Haven’t you had too much care to give?” you snark back, earning yourself a disappointed look from him.

“Really, y/n? That’s the best you’ve got?” he shakes his head at your appalling retort. What a shame.

You were good at pissing him off to be fair. You just weren’t in the mood to throw teases back and forth especially now that you’re feeling particularly vulnerable.

The week has been far too dreadful for you and you know that you’re willing to grovel your way into the weekend to finally have the time to slack off, not worry about taking a bath, and just go crazy with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.

However, just like always, Mathew seems to never run out of ways to get on your nerves.

He carelessly puts his stuff on the table, causing a fairly loud thud on the surface.

You let out a deep breath, massaging your temple.

“Somebody’s cranky.” he grins. Not necessarily the kind you’d want to see from him.

You try to ignore him for a few minutes but you can’t help noticing how his build easily took over much of the space you’ve already been occupying. You irkingly look up at him, closing the book you were reading. You meet Mat’s eyes who just innocently looked back into yours. Waiting. Possibly plotting on yet another sophisticated way to toy with you.

“You’re a child.” you roll your eyes and return to your reading. He says nothing and instead rests his chin atop his enclasped hands, continuing to bother you with his ridiculously beguiling eyes. He presses his lips together before sighing dramatically.

“What?” you snap, finally shutting your book down as you look at him.

“I wanna go out.” he looks up at you in an effort to make his huge physique smaller than it really was.

“Then go out. You’re a big boy.” you breathe.

“You just said that I’m a child.” he coos, mimicking a five-year-old’s voice.

“Stop that.” you glare at him. Mat props himself back and laughs, “Come on. I’m bored.”

You open your book again just as you reply in a tone that Mat’s getting used to hearing. “Boredom doesn’t give you the right to pester me, Barzal.”

And as an exchange, he speaks in the same tone rather mockingly, “And so is that attitude, Y/L/N.”

“Come on, y/n. Let’s go out.” he now pleads, looking up at you with what seems to be his worst impression of a ‘puppy eye’.

“Fine.” you finally concede and you see Mat’s beaming smile instantly.

“Where’d you want to go?” you ask as you take your reading glasses off.

“Dunno.” He shrugs, obviously teasing.

On the edge of being irritated, you say, “Are you kidding me?”

“Grandma.” he mumbles before saying, “Do you have anything you want to do? And please don’t say book hunt.”

You suppress a smile and maintain your composure. “I’m craving for pancakes right now but I also wanna drink. Go to a bar or something.”

He nods in agreement. Already stitching his game plan.

“We can do both.” he bobs his all too fine brows.

He didn’t have a hard time getting you on board with his spontaneity. You actually haven’t gone out in a while and the thought of a possible night out doesn’t seem to be so bad of an idea.

You’ve been with Mat to parties and while the two of you don’t mingle as much as the other guys did, he does know his way around the club. The dance floor, however, he tries. He really does.

For about an hour Mathew waited patiently in the living room as he scrolled endlessly on instagram liking a few photos and laughing at posts the fans tag him occasionally. His eyes were peeled away from the screen when he heard the door to your room click. His irises trail onto your body even if he didn’t plan to originally.

Mathew, albeit dressed simply in his black turtleneck sweater and a beige overcoat exudes just about the right ‘swag’ (as per how he puts it) to stop you in your stupor. Although what you didn’t know was how you weren’t any different in his eyes. You were dressed quite nicely in a black lace bodysuit with a pair of blackpants accentuated by the black boots you usually wear on a night out. Your coat was slung on your forearm whilst you held your clutch purse in your hand so you could close the door with the other.

“What?” you blink just as you look down to eye yourself. Feeling a tad self-conscious under his gaze.

Mat immediately breaks it off. He clears his throat, pretending to wipe off the non-existent dust on the accent table.

“What?” he mirrors with an arched brow.

You shrug off his demeanor, snatching your keys from the accent table before putting it in your purse.

“Have you called a lyft already?” he nods, absentmindedly scratching his temple.

“You ready? You look— decent.” He says, trying to act casual and distant when he gives you the compliment.

Not noticing the unfamiliar look his eyes had, you return the compliment and say, “And so do you. Good job for not looking like you came straight out of an H&M catalogue.” you wink at him with a grin. A thing which was then reciprocated by a deadpan look on his end.

Before he could even come up with yet another clever way to come at you, you start walking towards the door, looking at him once as you motion the way by curling your finger.

“Haul ass, buddy.”

𖥸

10:15 PM

Mat decided to bring you to the usual place he goes to when he wants to be alone and just enjoy a couple of beers while he chats with River, the bartender he eventually befriends after years spent drinking in solitude.

The bar had a rustic feel filled with wine barrels in the corner of the room. The seats were leather (mind you, it wasn’t the kind that gets easily worn out through time) and everything looked new to you regardless of all the vintage stuff displayed articulately on the brick wall. A turntable was set on the table stacked with vinyl records, most of which were from the 70s to 80s underneath.

It was obvious that it wasn’t the kind people would know about. Aside from it being located at such a secluded street leading to the suburbs, it wasn’t the type of bar kids would want to hang out in. It only had a few customers and most of them wore suits and came with company. No one really gave a hoot when you walked in with Mathew, aka, the face of the New York Islanders. Which is basically the reason why Mat kept coming back to the place. He felt comfortable and at peace. Almost in retrospect to being at home hanging with his father.

“I can’t believe this place exists.” you say, mouthing your thanks to River as he hands you both of your drinks. The man that’s definitely aged like fine wine smiles, nodding his head over to Mat who was doing the same before he headed back to mix another set of drinks.

“Me neither.” he grins, reminiscing about the time he’s found the small pub by accident.

“This place looks expensive though.” you whisper, making Mathew laugh.

“Well, it kinda is.” he sheepishly chuckles. “River’s filthy rich.”

“Is he really?” your mouth falls and you look back over the build of the old man. The way his salt and pepper hair was neatly slicked back makes quite a compelling case for what Mat had just said.

Mat eventually explains who he was. Apparently, he was just another bored fancy man who happened to love making people drop dead and drunk with his over the top mixes. His dark deep set brown eyes are quite of a crowd favourite too. Case in point, the group of ladies seated from across you and Mathew.

“Hey.” you absentmindedly call on Mat who had just sipped on his drink. “I know what we should do.”

“All right.” he puts the glass down, “Lay it on me.”

“Let’s fix you up with one of the girls over there.” you suggest, leaning towards his body so you could get a better view upfront. Mat does not move and instead follows your finger subtly pointing at the other end of the room.

“What’s with the sudden fixation of getting me bagged tonight, huh?” he smirks, shaking his head at the idea of having to go home with some random girl. You give him a side eye as you move away from him.

“Fixation is an overstatement. We’ll be here long enough for us to get sick of each other.” you explicitly told him.

Mat eyes you intently. Searching if there was even the slightest doubt in your eyes.

Long enough to get sick of each other.

He clears his throat instead and looks across the room. “Which one?”

A gleeful cheer erupts from you just before you look over the girls in question. “What’s your type?” you ask him, not sparing a glance.

Mat looks down on you underneath the bar lights accentuating your features. Your eyes had a certain glint in them that Mat still can’t get a grasp on. Something that was just enough to spark something inside him. He didn’t want to overthink it nonetheless. It must have been just the lights.

Once Mat sensed that you were about to look at him he immediately turned his gaze forward, squinting his eyes a little pretending to check out the women you’ve been eyeing for the last minute.

“I don’t really have a type.” he shrugs, casually taking the fragile glass to his mouth.

You dismiss what he said at once, “Do I look like a child to you? Just answer it.”

Mat shakes his head, “I told you. I don’t have one. If we vibe then we vibe. Simple as that.”

You did not believe him but you decide to drop it off. Instead, you look back and return to your new found mission. Across the bar, seated were three girls busy talking to each other.

“Got it.” you tell Mat, nodding your head towards the clueless girl sitting right across from where Mathew was. “The one in the center.” you add. “The one wearing a white bodycon.”

“She’s pretty.” he nods, validating your taste as his potential wingman. “Nice smile.”

Your hand met a firm slap on the table as you went on cheering for him. “Well? Go then!” you give him a nudge, taking it back quickly when you feel a slight hesitation on his part, “Don’t tell me you need me to introduce you?”

He takes the remainder of his glass and shaked off the kick it had in his throat. “You just sit and watch, babe.”

You do as you’re told and lean towards the bar, your elbow carrying all your weight whilst you sip on your half-full martini.

Mathew’s stance and the way he carries himself immediately caused the girls to notice him coming. Of course, you weren’t really surprised. You watch him approach her,– reading along the words leaving his mouth. There was an exchange of proper ‘hello’s’ as Mat introduced himself to the girls. He reaches out his hand and the curly noirette in the center gives him a firm shake.

Mat’s eyes momentarily locked with yours just as you see their hands linger in the air— tangled long enough for him to make a quick segway. He winks your way as he sees you grin from your seat, shaking your head just after you felt the need to take a deep breath. A thing you assumed to be because of the drink. So, while Mat leads the girl to one of the empty booths and sits across from her, you call on River and ask for another drink.

Mathew must have lost track of time by the second drink he shared with Zoe. He learns that she’s from upstate and was just on the island to visit her friends. She’s still working on her major at NYU; coincidentally in the same field as Lianna so that was one of the things they’ve talked about first hand. She wasn’t really into sports so Mat steered clear of his job because he didn’t want to bore her.

“So…” Zoe smiles and tucks her hair behind her ear. “What’s the deal with you and the girl you’re with?”

By the time she asked about you, only then did Mat remember who he was originally with.

“Oh! She’s—” he looks over to where you’re seated only to find you laughing— no giggling with a man that was obviously a few years older than you. He’s wearing a neat black suit and a button down shirt with a couple of its first buttons opened. Zoe sees him frown, evidently losing his train of thought.

She calls him with her sweet voice, “Mat?”

“Yeah?” he absentmindedly answers, not wanting to take his eyes off of your hand that was now gently pushing the man’s arm whilst the two of you continue to burst into laughter.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

What’s so funny?

Finally, Mat hears Zoe’s distant voice that eventually took him back to his seat.

“Oh. Y-Yeah.” he apologetically smiles. “Sorry. What were you saying again?”

She hesitates to ask about you after taking a quick glance your way upon seeing the way Mathew looked at you. Nevertheless, she decides to go for it.

“Aren’t you two together? I don’t want to come off strong here or anything. It’s just that I don’t want to get in between something if there ever is.”

Mat looks at you one more time and as if you’ve felt his eyes all along you turn your way and meet his gaze. You shoot him a quiet smile, eyeing the guy sitting beside you, mouthing what he assumes to be an exaggerated “So hot!” on your end. He reciprocates your smile and gives you an approving nod.

Once you looked away, that’s the only time Mat finally answered the woman waiting patiently for his attention.

“What?” Mat shakes his head wildly, blowing out air off his lips defensively. “No no no. We’re just friends. She’s my roommate actually.” he shrugs you off his mind and instead tries to put his entire focus on her.

The remaining hours were spent with you and Mat getting along with your respective potential hook-ups. Not that it wasn’t the endgame either of you were hoping for at the back of your minds.

He’s got to admit that Zoe was the kind of girl he’d be interested in. Another fact he’s kept a mental tab not to mention to you because he knows you’ll just get cocky.

She was sweet and obviously eloquent. He knows she’s way smarter than he’ll ever be. But out of all those qualities, she was just as passionate at her craft as someone he likes to think he knows well enough. And that alone made a small smile creep on his lips.

Nonetheless, despite all the aforementioned, Mathew found himself a bit more reserved than he usually is whenever he gets to meet and talk to his potential ‘lady friends’ as how you’ve put it countless times. He just wasn’t his exact self. And he was beginning to question it.

There were no fancy hockey plays thrown subtly into the conversation. Neither mentions of golfing nor over the top league events. No butchered french pet names swiftly tucked in his sentences. And no endless questions that would eventually lead to something along the lines of ‘Do you want to get out of here?’

Well, not until Zoe’s friends got up their seats and she told him herself.

“Hey. The girls and I are meeting up with some friends in Brooklyn. D’ya wanna come?”

Mat’s eyes trail down to her hand now gently caressing his. He raises both his brows thinking of a possible ‘out’ because he wasn’t sure if it was a smart thing to leave you alone with a stranger.

He hums, “Sure.”

Zoe shows him a delighted smile before eventually sliding out of the booth to walk towards the bar she and her friends were formally seated.

“I gotta use the restroom first. Please excuse me.” she gives him a nod before going back to chatting with her friends.

You, on the other hand, see Mat leave the table aiming for an archway you presume to be where the loo was.

“Hey,” you call the man whose name you’ve already forgotten. Your pause was long enough for him to acknowledge the chances that you actually did forget who he was. Obviously.

“Chris.” The man in his early 30s answers with a submitting grin.

You shyly laugh, squeezing his forearm as you try to apologize for forgetting.

“Would you mind if I use the restroom?” you politely ask.

“No, not at all.” he replies and immediately stands to help you get on your feet. Gentleman.

Once you are in front of the men’s room, you anxiously wait for your wingman. You hug your purse close to your chest. Not a whole minute after, the door finally opens and you meet Mat’s irises with quite a gleeful look.

A look he wasn’t a fan of for he knew what’s about to come next.

“Are you taking off?” you eagerly ask, almost hopping on your feet.

Mat eyes you from head to toe, looking for signs that would stink from a drunk y/n. When he sees none, that’s when he decides to say that he was.

“Mkay good. I’ll be on my way too. Chris is taking me to New Jersey.” you tell him, briefly looking through the archway to see if there were people listening.

Once you know you’re clear, you lean towards Mat, your lips dangerously close to the sensitive skin of his ear. Mat feels your heated breath sending a familiar tingle up his spine. “I’ll get to ride a yacht tonight.” you bite your lower lip and giddily smile as if you were a cheeky 16 year-old usually depicted in a coming of age movie.

“Who’s Chris?” Mat, in spite of taking rounds observing you all night, finds the need to ask. “And why are you coming with him to NJ?” he further questions.

“Uh– okay, dad.” you step back for a second. You let out a scoff, checking if he was being serious about it. “I thought we’re supposed to go get laid tonight? Weren’t you about to take off with that girl yourself?”

Mat averts your gaze and starts to scratch the corner of his brow. “Well yeah. It’s just that— he looks sketchy.” he pauses, “plus… isn’t he a little too old for you?”

You roll your eyes as you’ve already expected to hear the words from him.

“He’s 31. He’s not that old.” you say rather defensively so you turn the ball back on his court. “And what if he was? Didn’t you ask one of the moms out??”

Mat’s eyes widens and you try to bite back a laugh. He whispers with a biting tone, trying to save himself. “She didn’t look like one! I’m gonna kill Beau I swear to god.”

“Come on Barz. Don’t be such a killjoy. Text me if you need anything, okay? Wrap things up while you’re at it.” you say at once. Mat doesn’t get the chance to talk you out of such a stupid idea because before he even could, you’ve already planted a kiss on his cheek and started walking away.

Mat waited for the sound of the heavy doors of the bar, signaling that you and your friend have gone, before stepping back to where Zoe was. She waves him near the coat closet.

“Hi.” Mat greets her friends before eventually turning his attention on the unsuspecting lass. She meets her with a smile (just like what she’s been doing all night). The same smile, however, drops the second Mat opens his mouth. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

Zoe nods and willfully abides, letting Mat take her gently by the arm.

“What’s up?” she innocently asks.

“Something came up.” he says a little too fast than what he’d originally intended. He was going to let her down either way might as well get it over with and rip up the asshole band-aid.

“Oh.” she says in a tone Mat knew that she completely understood.

“No worries.” she looks at him with a knowing look in her eyes. “I’ll see you around then.”

He gives her a kind smile and nods. “Take care.”

Mathew walks towards the bar, catching River’s teasing grin whilst he cleans up after the bottles left on the center of the counter.

“What?” Mat reacts defensively, taking a seat in front of the lone bartender. River faintly shakes his head to leave just enough curiosity in Mathew’s mind.��

“You’re such a tool, old man.” the kid says aiming for the cold beer River has put away for himself. River did not mind because he’s grown fond of the star player for the past years he’s spent going on late night drinks at his bar. Years that even justifies a proper amount of time for him to know the in’s and out’s of one Mathew Barzal.

“I haven’t said a thing.” he shrugs amidst the already wide grin on his face.

There’s wisdom in his eyes that Mathew has always admired. He wasn’t the guy who’d want to talk about what’s going on inside his head but with how River’s pub seems to be just the right place, he eventually concedes and takes a shot to pick on the old man’s brain.

“Come on, spill it out. I know you’re going to anyway.” Mat gives in, running his thumb on the moist label of the bottle.

River wipes his hands before resting it atop the counter. “Well, it’s just that– I ain’t used to seeing you turn down ladies like that too often. And you’re definitely not one to stick around watching me clean up.”

Mat stays silent for a moment, as if to gather the exact reason as to why he chose to stay. He still has a long way to go before figuring that one out. He wasn’t exactly as sharp as he was on the ice.

“I don’t know, man.” he chuckles tirelessly, “I guess I wasn’t in the mood. That’s all.”

“You?” River shots a brow and dismisses him, shaking his head. When Mat doesn’t answer, he carefully picks on his choice of words and lays it down carefully for him. After all, Mathew should have known that River was old enough to not know what’s going on.

“Though I gotta be honest with you, hijo. Never imagined you’d bring someone here.” he starts.

What must have been a shot in the dark for the old man was just enough to tear Mathew’s eyes away from staring at the water beads on the bottle.

“What?”

“The girl, Barz.” he says, banging on the head of the bottle to knock the cap off. “She a friend?”

“What? Y/N?” Mat quirks his brows trailing off where River was exactly headed, “What about her?— Oh, her? Yeah, no. She’s just a friend.”

“She pretty.” he speaks in a sound accent, not wanting to let Mat know he’s growing to like catching the young lad off guard. Mathew nods casually despite the continuous blabbering. “She’s y/n. But yeah— I guess, she is pretty.”

“Then what are you doing being just friends with a pretty girl?” River inquires, taking a sip of his beer. When he sees him trying to register what he’d just said he then adds, “Why not be with her? Date her?”

“Psh. What? Date y/n? That’s crazy.” Mat shakes his head furiously, “You’re crazy.”

“What’s so crazy about that?” River takes offense, laughing at the child’s naivete.

“I can’t date her. I mean— I won’t date her.” he takes the bottle to his mouth, taking a large gulp before continuing, “We’re in this weird relationship thing. A setup, actually, and it’s— it’s crazier than dating her. I swear, you of all people won’t get it.”

“What makes you think I can’t?” he smirks, “I’ve had my fair share of crazy.” River points out despite the hesitation in Mat’s eyes. “I got all night, kid.” he adds, letting him have the floor to himself.

“You really want in on this?” he second guesses, not wanting to bore the man with his personal life.

River leans against the brass counter just below the lit rack of vintage scotch displayed on the bar. He then gestures him to give a piece of his mind and Mat finally submits to his offer.

“We’ve been in a few… prior engagements,” he starts trying to find the appropriate word. “Well, sort of.”

River hums, not necessarily getting on the same page as him so he decides to be upfront about it.

“We’ve… slept together.” he confesses.

“So you used to date her?” the old man asks.

“No.” he answers, “I told you we’re just friends.”

With furrowed brows, River takes a minute. And once Mat hears an all too familiar “Oh.” he sees him break a chuckle, shaking his head at the thought of what Mat had just told him. “You kids have way too much fun these days.”

Mathew shrugs, “Hey, I warned you. Told you you wouldn’t get it.”

“Okay, make me understand something here. You two sleep together, fool around, do all that shit.” he says, “and you swear you’re not in a relationship?”

“Nope.” Mat answers with pride, popping out the word with a hard ‘p’.

“Huh.” River clicks his tongue, “How long have you two been… engaged?”

He rolls his eyes when River uses his word, “About two months.” he answers shortly.

“Is she seeing anyone since you two started this thing? You know, casual dates, the ones I presume she’s been getting before you got her into this mess?” he asks him in a tone that only fathers would ever dare to use.

Mat thinks for a moment, trying to recall the last time he’s seen a guy pick you up for dinner besides the old man you’ve successfully bagged for the night. He firmly shakes his head no and simply says, “At least not in my recollection.”

River willfully nods, walking Mat right into the trap. “Well have you been seeing anyone lately?” he asks again, this time slipping a hint of assertion. He hears a crystal clear ‘no’ from the forward and that’s when he broke a goading grin.

“And you’re telling me you two aren’t together?” he asks yet again, getting on Mat's nerves as he continues to flood him with biting queries, building up the final point he was about to break on Mathew.

“Rivs, for the hundredth time, no. We are not.” he clarifies.

Mat watches River pour himself a glass of scotch, still wearing a smug grin. “Imma give you a piece of advice, yeah?” he smiles rather teasingly and doesn’t wait for Mat to rebut, “I’m a happily married man so I don’t know a single squat about dating nowadays, but if you’re telling me that you kids aren’t sleeping with anyone else but yourselves? Looks like a damn relationship to me.”

With his brows all quirked in confusion (and denial in the very least), Mathew gathers all his might just so he could refute whatever madness River was trying to inflict on him and screw him up in the head. But before he could even open his mouth, the sound of the heavy doors was all it took to tear up both River’s and Mat’s attention.

“Hi.” you say the moment you were welcomed by unsuspecting men talking by the bar. River acknowledges you by raising his drink, his gaze landing on Mat the moment yours did.

“Hi.” Mathew mirrors you in an attempt to drown his already racing heart. A smile impending to break loose at any moment but he manages to suppress it. Instead of dealing with his adrenaline, he gestures for you to take a seat beside him.

“Where’s the sugar daddy?” he laughs the moment you drag yourself from across the room, mocking every word he said.

“His wife called when I got into his car.” you cringe.

“Oof. Lovely.” Mat makes the distinct expression on his face just before the two of you share a laugh.

“He’s not very smooth with adultery. He needs more practice.” you casually state sarcastically, clicking your tongue.

As you find the narrative funny, you take a sip on Mathew’s beer. “How are you not drunk? You’ve been drinking way too much the entire night.”

“Well. I’ve got some things to think about—” he cuts himself off upon seeing your mouth ajar, “And no, you’re not allowed to ask because none of it concerns you.”

“I wasn’t going to.” you dismiss him, excusing yourself to River which he gladly took as his cue to leave.

When he disappeared into the kitchen, you turned your gaze on your friend wearing another one of your mischievous grins, “Hey, wanna get pancakes?”

“Y/N, it’s almost 3 AM.” Mat sighs, the tiring night starting to creep up to him.

“So?” you question, swatting his hand away when you catch him checking on his watch.

“Come on. Stop drinking that.” you insist and take the bottle from his hand before putting it over to the side.

The two of you said your goodbyes to the lone bartender who was just starting to clean up again. River gives the two of you a nod of acknowledgement before landing a knowing look on Mathew. One that he’s thankful enough not to be discerned by you.

As you walk alongside Mathew, he unconsciously places a hand on the small of your back— feeling it graze on the fabric of your coat as if to guide you towards the door in an almost romantic type of way. Perhaps, a way someone would behave if they were actually in a relationship.

Mat notices your body tense but he doesn’t move an inch. Instead, his hand travels to the curve of your waist just as he leads you through the brass doors.

Once you’re out on the streets, he lets go.

𖥸

After almost half an hour of fighting over which diner is better to eat and get sober at, you and Mat decide to just try the new diner three blocks from your apartment. Being that it was an ungodly hour, the diner was good as closed when you got in. There were a few people inside and besides the student studying alone in the corner booth, the people lounging in the vacant seats were mostly just staff. Too bad they had to work the grave shift.

Mathew, who was rather preoccupied digging in his breakfast platter, gets interrupted when you call his attention.

“So tell me,” you ask as you take a forkful of syrupy pancake into your mouth. Finally satisfying your cravings. You put the food modestly in the insides of your cheeks when you ask him a question, “What are you like on dates?”

Mat disgustingly looks at you. You easily get what such a look meant and you immediately roll your eyes. You let your hand fall in mid-air amidst still holding a fork in it to prove a point. “I’m not trying to ask you out, dumbass. Don’t be so delusional.”

He puts his silverware down and wipes his mouth with a napkin. “Why the sudden interest?”

“Just curious.” you simply say.

He hums, thinking about how he pulls off a first date. He then clears his throat as he takes you down that road. “First, I’m not bringing her to a 24/7 Diner.” you nearly gag. “She deserves a formal one just in case there won’t be a second date.” he explains.

You sit there, nodding your head every now and then as he further goes on the details of how he’s like on a date. “Of course, I’d put my best foot forward all the time. Talk about her stuff more than mine and make sure she has a good time.”

“Have you ever had a bad first date?” you curiously ask. To which he only answers with a stubborn look on his face, the one only Mat Barzal could pull off. “What? me? I don’t do bad first dates.”

“Oh, fuck off.” you flick his forehead as you laugh. The sound of his laughter echoing in your ears, drowning all the existing noise inside the lone diner.

But as the laughter dies down, Mat catches your eyes as soon as it falls on his. And just like that, there it was again, the exact same glint it had back in the bar. This time, illuminated by the pink shaded light lining up the wall accents of the diner.

When he realizes that he’s been staring for too long, he settles on turning the tables on you.

“How about you?” he props in his seat, “What are you like on dates?”

“You know, apart from the fact that you’re obviously into old men.” he snickers and you throw a curly fry on his forehead.

“Excuse me, I don’t.” you say sticking up for yourself.

Mat takes the curly fry that has fallen on his plate and proceeds to eat it. “Sure you do.”

You roll your eyes, finding it hard to suppress the fact that you might actually do. “There’s a reason why women like old men, chico.”

He leans back and answers with a level headed and quite teasing reply, “And why’s that?”

“Because they’re men.” you look at him with a jerky grin as you continue, “And men, especially of River’s kind, definitely knows how to eat his french fry.”

Mat’s mouth falls wide in disbelief, appalled that you’ve actually found a way to pick up a stone and throw it straight to his face just to rub more salt on the fact that you had to teach a 23-year-old grown man how to eat cunt.

“You’re an ass.” he says, rolling his eyes. You let out a laugh and shake your head. You were proud of yourself, sure; but showing just that is far too much for a boy’s already hurting ego. Who would have known humbling this man was such a task.

“I’m playing! You know how to now.” you tell him, “Thanks to me, of course.”

He scoffs and takes a bite off his pancakes, “Cocky.”

“But you still haven’t answered my question.” he reminds you whilst he wipes off his lips with a napkin.

“There’s not much to tell. You know I’m not high maintenance.” you tell him, ignoring the fact that you haven’t been on an actual date for so long you’re almost sure you’ve forgotten how to be in one.

“I know it’s cheesy and corny but I do think it’s still in the littlest things, you know?” you sigh. Trying to remember the last relationship (date even) you had wherein those little things, the ones that are merely the bare minimum, were actually given to you.

“You know, it’s not much, really. Maybe just a good talk without having to watch him watch me talk all night when he’s really thinking about how I’d look naked, you know what I mean?” you laugh it off, “I know, it’s stupid.”

The arrogant man sitting before you was silent for once, profusely wanting to wash the pool of melancholy he sees in your eyes. There must have been a shit ton of guys who overlooked how great of a woman you actually are just because they couldn’t stop thinking with the head in between their legs even just for a second.

Mathew knows. And he hates that he’s been ‘that’ guy at some point. Probably until now considering him thinking with his balls on was the very thing that got the two of you here in the first place.

You take a deep breath, smiling. “Anyway, that’s better than almost getting with a married man. Right?”

“Right.” Mat laughs, his gray eyes bright under all the lights as he plays with his silverware,— devoid of how much he looked like as if he was utterly and undeniably in awe of not just the energy of the woman sitting in front of him alone nor the fact that she was by far the most unbelievable woman he’s known, but most importantly, he’s yet to realize how much in deep he’s beginning to be for the woman she actually were.

Just as she is.

𖥸

You left the diner a good hour before the sunrise and what must have been a quick five minute drive if you had only taken a cab, became a twenty minute foot race between you and Mathew.

You knew that walking was a bad idea but somehow, Mat’s charm and persuasive antics had a better hold than you thought you had on your very capable cognition.

As you drag your feet into the confines of the elevator in your complex, you hear Mathew chuckling behind you with a firm hand securely placed on your waist supporting your balance.

“You know— and not just ‘cause I’m an athlete, can I just say that you’re in a very bad shape?” he says almost a whisper in your ear, his voice low and deep.

You roll your eyes, leaning on the steel cold mirror once he pulls away, “You do it in heels then tell me who’s in a bad shape.”

“Fair point.” he chuckles yet again, shying away. He presses the number for your floor before resting across from you. As Mat watches you catch your breath, he jokes in the hopes of breaking the ice between the two of you.

“So…” he clicks his tongue, playful eyes looking at you, “Wanna tap?”

Disgusted to your very core, you let out a scoff just as you shake your head. “You’re fucking sick.” you laugh upon meeting his dumb grinning face. Seconds into laughter, Mat’s silence kills off the humor. The two of you exchange glances, the smiles on your faces receding into quietude.

Mathew didn’t want to end the night letting you in the apartment not knowing what he’s been feeling the moment you’ve let him drag you out for an impromptu night out. And stupid as it was, the only thing he could think of was to slide his foot across the enclosed space embracing the two of you, nudging on your boot. You on the one hand were rather puzzled as to what caused such language. You send him a mental query by arching a brow. He lets his head fall back on the cold metal surrounding the elevator finally deciding to speak his truth.

“I’m glad we get to hang out now. You know, just like friends do.” he genuinely says.

“Me too.” you say, smiling. “I really had fun tonight. Thank you.”

As you meet his eyes, you see a glimmer of softness in his gaze.

“Good thing I got bored, eh?” he says with a smirk.

“Good thing I came back for you.” you reply.

A quiet smile parts from his lips.

“Yeah. I’m glad you did.”

It was a few seconds when you and Barzy parted from your respective walls to meet the sliding doors as it opened on your designated floor. You were pulling him closer by the tie of his coat whilst his hand was instinctively placed on your hips letting him press his body on you. Your faces were inches from each other’s, evident of not wanting to prolong the totally unplanned foreplay that’s about to go down in a communal lift.

But just like every film you’ve watched your whole life, the inevitable cliché befalls the two of you when the next words that filled the enclosed walls you’re currently caged in came from the man who has yet to miss a morning jog.

“What the hell is going on here?”

#mat barzal #mat barzal imagine #mat barzal fanfiction #mat barzal fic #mat barzal x reader #mat barzal smut #hockey imagine #nhl imagine #hockey fic #nhl fic #hockey smut #letters to barzy #barzzal imagines

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handmadecp · 3 years ago

Text

Crown Green Bowls bag build.

( Try saying that after a few drinks hahahahaha )

Hi Guys, real sorry for the long delay on this one, unfortunately real life hit us hard with the passing of our Mother which as I’m sure a lot of you can understand ..it takes it’s toll. However, we are getting back on track and I’m feeling the need to return to the leather. So, as promised, here is the bowls bag. Let’s get straight in.

Pic 1 : This project came about as a request from a family member to fix a Bowls carry bag, turned out it was beyond repair so as a surprise I re-made one completely using the old pieces as the pattern.

Pic 2 : These are the two end sections and one of the inner ‘dividers’ just cut from new veg tan leather 1.5mm thick.

Pic 3 : using dividers I marked a line around the edge and then marked for the new holes.

Pic 4 : finishing the marking out, the same proceedure applies for marking all the holes on all the new pieces.

Pic 5 : next step was to punch all holes on all pieces using a 1.5mm single punch.

Pic 6 : When all the new pieces were cut out marked and punched, it was time to dye them, I chose a walnut color and gave it 3 coats.

Pic 7 : I cut out a new main body section, transfered all the holes marking with an awl then followed up with the 1.5mm single punch untill i had all the holes made.

Pic 8 : Now all the pieces are ready for the build.

Pic 9 :The main body needs to be thickened up, so, as per the original, I cut a section of card in the shape of the main body and glued it to a nice blue vinyl sheet as shown here, this will eventually become the inner lining. Once dried I trimmed it round the edges glued it to the main body section and continued all holes through these new pieces.

Pic 10 : , I wet the whole thing with a water spray and slowly folded / rolled it and ‘convinced’ it to take the shape I needed, next the end sections were stitched in place using a saddle stitch then I fastened a strap around it to maintain the shape whilst it dried over night. ( I haven’t shown the stitching of these end sections as there are many projects on my blog at ‘Shamencraftprojects showing the procedure, feel free to drop by there and have a look.)

pic 11 : Next day the strap was removed and the case was now dry and holding its shape well.

Pic 12 : view of the inner blue vinyl liner.

Pic 13 : I placed the Bowls in the case and slotted the dividers in between just to give it some time to stretch, for this I lightly sprayed the outside leather with water. ( As the inner vinyl is water proof ). Again..once dried completely the bowls had done their job and they now fitted in easily.

Pic 14 :I positioned the upper straps, marked lightly, ‘scratched / roughed the area they would sit and then glued them in place, here you see me using an awl to carry the holes through

Pic 15 : Here I’m saddle stitching the upper straps to permanently fix them into place.

Pic 16 : The straps fixed in place.

Pic 17 : Folding to see if everything is still lining up,...all ok.

Pic 18 : Now for thelower buckle straps.

Pic19 : Buckles attached ready to close the case and mark their positions, I use the same tecnique to fit these straps as with the uppers.

Pic 20 : Once glued into place Icarry the holes through with an Awl and here I’m Saddle stitching it. I chose Gold colored buckles as I personally think it looks good with the dye color.

Pic 21 : view of the inside during stitching of the lower straps.

Pic 22 : All done, permanently fixed.

Pic 23 : The buckles and straps fit well together and are looking good. N ow for the handle.

Pic 24 : I decided to make a handle from scratch. I folded a piece of leather then..using my own stitch, which is a basic saddle stitch, but after each saddle stitch you take the stitch over the top passing both needles across each other then move to the next and repeat. It holds the leather very well and you end up with a nice looking and very solid stitch, I folded extra end material over on itself to attach the connectors.

Pic 25 : side view.

Pic 26 : You can see here, I have punched stitch holes all around the edges and along the top, these are to hold the vinyl into place but are decorative too. I’ve glued the handle into position with decorative leather pieces to hold the D-rings.

Pic 26a : During the stitching along the top.

Pic 27 : Another angle.

Pic 27a : Here you can see the stitching around the edges and the handle in place. now for the inside.

Pic 28 : You can see here the two ‘dividers’ stitched into the case and with decorative stitching around the edges. these can either lie flat as seen here or can be pulled up and placed between thebowls to protect them.

Pic 29 : this initials tag will be fitted later but this shows where it will go.

Pic 30 : All that remains to be done is to coat the whole thing in Effax leather balm and then buff to a shine,

Pic 31 : and Pic 32 : All done, one new useable and..even if I say so myself, a good looking leather bowls case.

Pic 32 : Well, I finally got to it, sorry about that, I hope you can understand, it’s been a very hard few years, we lost both my parents, two aunties and 2 cousins all close together, but leathercraft is a fantastic hobby for distracting the mind and I am so glad to be back, thanks for waiting. I have a new project starting in the next day or so..I am making a set of saddle bags hopefully to fit on my new motorbike, I will be making a video of the build as I go along and once done and edited I will put it up on youtube under Shamancraft projects so it would be great if you guys could check out my other vids..only a few at the moment but every like and subscribe etc helps me to build on it and each vid gets longer and better as I gain experience. thanks for your support. See you on the next one..watch this space and as always..Stay Crafty.

#leather #leathercraft #leather goods #leather lovers #bowling #hobbies

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return-of-a-space-cowboy · 4 years ago

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The other world pt 5

You were just about to give in till another light swung down from the side and knocked into Squalo's head and threw him off of you, causing more blood to decorate the new clothes you wore.

You struggled to stand up but slowly you managed. You walked over to his body, your face screwed up in disgust as you saw that the impact had completely caved in his head, at this point you couldn't make out his face.

You then paced over to his boyfriends corpse which had several holes through it. With little hesitation you grabbed the ring and pocketed it before going over to the pile of your old clothes and picking up the handle before running out of the building as all the remaining lights blew up. You slammed the door shut and let out a huff. Just glad that you made it out alive.

You were wounded and tired. You really didn't want to have to jump through barbed wire hoops for a third time but if you didn't then you were better off as a dead failure. After all this was no longer just between you and the puppeteer, the souls of your parents and the three women were also at stake. You pulled yourself up the stairs with all the strength you could. Deep laboured breaths escaped your mouth as you felt your body wobble like jelly.

"Oh dear…" Abbaccio gasped as he saw your bloodied form come into view.

"What happened?" He asked as he rushed to your side but you refused to respond.

"(Y/n)?" His tone was that of horror. He could see that this was really getting to you.

"I need… to keep going" you wheezed as you took your last step before falling to the ground, you tried to get back up only to fall again.

"(Y/n) stop, you need to rest" he said.

"No!" You hissed as you clawed into the dirt, trying to drag yourself forward.

"Stop it! You are going to kill yourself!" He yelled.

"But the eyes" you retorted.

"I'll get the last pair" he replied.

"No I need to do this!" You argued.

"Listen to yourself (Y/n), you sound like a spoiled brat! I'm not just going to sit here and let another person I know die!" He yelled.

"But I need to do this… this is my job. If I lose then I'll be trapped here for an eternity with that monster" you explained as you got up on your knees and stood up.

"Besides how hard could the last trial be?" You said as you dusted yourself off before tearing up sections of your clothes to tie around your wounds.

You looked at your surroundings and noticed that the night was dimmer than usual. You looked to the sky and noticed that the moon was slowly eclipsing, the shadow already covering half the moon

"That's strange… I've never seen a lunar eclipse in this world, have you Abbaccio?" You said as you began to walk toward the long flight of stairs that wound around the house.

"No I've never seen one either, I don't think it's a good sign so we should hurry up before it's fully eclipsed" he replied as he followed you.

As you reached the stairs a shiver ran down your spine. The attic had always been such an ominous and mysterious place for you, both in the real world and this one. Abbaccio took a step onto the first of the stairs which worsened the panic attack you were having.

“Please stay down..” you wheezed.

“I really don’t want to feel these stairs rock more” you continued to explain to Abbaccio

The real owner was a man by the name of Mr Nero. You would often be sent to deliver his mail to him but he would never open the door or respond. However at night you would be woken up by the loud creak of the rusting staircase, by chance you had actually seen him but you wish you hadn't. That image of seeing the albino male glare at you with piercing red eyes through the window shook you to your very core.

You sighed as you took your first step, the rusty metal stairs threatening to collapse underneath you. You took another step and the steps made a loud screech. You took another breath before frantically running up the rest of the steps. Your heart raced with fear and dread. It seemed so childish to be afraid of the attic but you knew what ever lurked beyond those doors was a monster among monsters.

The faint sound of a vinyl stuck on repeat echoed from beyond the door. You swallowed your saliva and brought the sliver of courage you had remaining to open the door. As you entered the room you noticed how dusty the place was, like no one had been in the attic for a decade or so.

You saw the faulty record player in the corner and cautiously approached it. You took the needle off of the vinyl.

The door slammed shut and the scratching of thousands of little claws patterning across the room became president. You turned around frantically in search of the source but couldn't see anything. You turned back to bump straight into a tall male who had been standing behind you. Permanent smile sewn at the side of his lips only became more haunting the more you looked at him.

"Well well, you finally decided to visit us" his deep green dreadlocks swayed as he cackled but still he managed to emphasize us in such a way that made you even more scared then you already were. You could only assume this was the cioccolata you had heard about.

"My my (Y/n)" he spoke with false concern in his words as his green button eyes dangled along the loose black thread. He grabbed your arm and inspected the shark-like bites on your hand before you shook him off and began to pace away from the puppet of a man.

"Your injuries must hurt… why don't you let me take care of you?" he eerily lulled as he took methodically large steps towards you.

"No thank you, it's just a scratch" you declined before tripping over backwards and hitting your head on the edge of a tray carrier, the contents spilling around you.

Syringes, knives and various other pieces of surgical equipment falling around you. All of which were not sterile, covered in blood and rust.

"You know you should really be more careful with yourself… Diavolo wouldn't like you all torn up like an old rag doll, now would he?" he scolds as you turn away from Cioccolata's gaze. On the floor you saw a ball rolling on the floor, maybe that was the last eyes, you looked through your pendant and sure enough it was. You reached out to grab it but another hand snatched it from the shadows. A low growl echoed as the second figure emerged from their shadowy hiding from behind the green haired creep. He walked towards the maniac of a man and he gave his head a pat as he looked at the pendant you wore.

Like a dog he crawled across the floor, rags covered most of his body but what skin you could see was littered in bruises, burns, scars and stitches. Discoloration of his skin was prominent. His button eyes were a glossy lavender. He was more like a Frankensteinish monster than what was meant to seem human.

"Cheater" he snarled as he held the ball between his teeth which caught the attention of the man in white.

"Oh… is that right Secco?" He hummed before reaching out to you with his bony fingers and tugged at the necklace until the leather snapped off, with little care on how much it hurt you.

"You're absolutely correct Secco, she's cheating" he hissed.

"How am I cheating, there was never such a rule against this?" You asked as you finally stood up.

"In Diavolo's world we are all at his mercy my dear" he chuckled as he poked your nose.

"That wasn't an answer" you stated but yet again he ignored you.

"How about you play a game with my rats?" He asked.

"I'd rather not… I hate rats, I find them absolutely terrifying" you replied, squirming underneath his scrutinizing gaze.

You quickly tried to snatch the ball out of Secco's mouth but failed. His skin began to literally crawl, like something was squirming inside of his body. Through his stitches creatures tried so desperately to escape this form. Sharp teeth began to eat through the disgusting disguise that Secco truly was until the fake puppet burst into a swarm of filthy rats.

Like a ripple in the water they scattered in all directions. You let out an ear piercing scream as you felt their wire like fur brush against your skin. You had lost complete sight of the ball until you saw it in Cioccolata's hand.

You quickly tried to snatch the ball out of his hand but you instead caught a strand of string attached to him without realizing, accidentally pulling all the fine stitching that held him together. Bony ringed tails wriggled like tendrils as more rats fell from his body. Loosening the fine stitching even more until the large rodents began to fall to the ground.

You saw one had caught the ball and began to scurry away. You tried to chase it however they all kept their distance, like you and all of them were like the same side of different magnets. Sick of their game you leaped to catch the blasted rat but they all avoided your landing to the wooden floor. Splinters from the wooden planks that barely passed as an actual floor scraped against your skin. The filthy creatures crawled on top of you.

You cringed at the feeling of how their paws clung to your skin, the goosebumps on your skin only made the sensations feel all the worse by ten fold. You thrashed your body around to get them off of you. While some were thrown off others had a tight hold on you.

Managing to get to your feet you stumbled around in a desperate attempt to free yourself from their filthy paws off of you. Some still managed to keep their grip and began to crawl up your face, using their revolting bodies to obscure your view.

You slam into every wall to try to get them off but it seems impossible. You keep trying to knock them off, only to hear your steps on metal and the floor shake under you. It was all a part of the devious rats plan. The sheer force of their colony tackling into you caused you to lose your balance and topple over the rails, only then your sight was restored to watch yourself fall to the ground far below.

You seemed to blackout just before you hit the ground. For only a second or two you experienced true nothingness. Numbness enveloping you, exposing you to the loneliness of nonexistence. However such loneliness felt almost like a luxury in comparison to then to live a life of constant torture, one that you would surely experience if you lost this game.

The light almost seemed blinding as you opened your eyes, your vision was fuzzy and blurred and you couldn’t understand the noises, even when your senses returned you just blankly stared at the starless night sky.

“(Y/n)” a familiar voice said with concern in their tone.

“(Y/n), are you ok?” they asked before you turned your head towards them to see Abbaccio with the ball in front of his paws.

“Thanks… I thought I’d lost it” you muttered, still partially out of reality.

“(Y/n) now’s not the time to be daydreaming, look” he scolded as he looked just a little bit to the right than you could see..

You sat up and turned a bit to see the last sliver of light become hidden behind the silhouette of a button upon the moon. The sky began to peel like the old paint on your house walls revealing only a blank white behind it. The ground began to shake, you jumped to your feet and scooped Abbacchio as well as the final eyes before bee-lining to the back patio and desperately trying to open the door as the world crumbled behind you at an alarming pace.

You finally opened the door and threw yourself in and slammed the door shut.

#yandere #yandere jjba #yandere x reader #yandere diavolo #yandere jojo's bizarre adventure #coraline au #spacy works

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neerasrealm · 4 years ago

Text

Nathan’s Arrival

HIIIIIII did anyone order a jeffverse fanfic?? no?? well too bad, you’re getting it anyway. Also this contains a LOT of other people’s characters. Dally and Grease belong to @t3chnomancer-lich, Nine, Stat and Praline belong to @carnalhaus and Blondie belongs to @consensual-castration (tumblr let me tag people challenge) Anyway, enjoy! Word Count: 2333

The room smelled funny. Musty, iron-y. Like...blood. At least he associated the smell with blood. He moved his head, a quiet groan escaping him. Ugh. where even was he? The surface around him was hard, and the floor felt uncomfortable under him. At the very least, his headache from the night before was gone. His eyes cracked open slightly. He was in a kitchen. It took him a few moments to realise it was the kitchen. The one he’d raided last night. He glanced to his side, realising with horror the fridge was still wide open too. ‘’Fuck-’’

And then the door across from him swung open. His head snapped to the side, staring with wide horrified eyes at the man standing in the doorway. Tall and muscular, Jeff could clearly see his strong arms due to the white wifebeater he was wearing. His black hair was messy and long, tied back in a ponytail. His skin looked burnt, discoloured in places, and his face adorned stitches on either side of his mouth. In an instant, his dark eyes were fixed on the smaller boy sat on the ground before they flicked to the fridge.

‘’Ey, what the fuck?!’’ he stared at the fridge, as if in shock, before storming over. Jeff skittered backwards, away from the man who heavily reminded him of trailer parks he’d found himself sleeping in. He stopped at the fridge, rummaging around before his head snapped to the boy. He was glaring, angry as all hell. ‘’What the hell is your problem?!’’

Jeff flinched. ‘’I-I-’’

‘’You ate my damn jerky?!’’

Was- was he...was this guy angry about Jeff eating his beef jerky rather than breaking into his house? He didn’t have much time to think about it or say anything though, because he was abruptly grabbed and yanked up. He yelped, gripping the angry man’s wrist out of panic. ‘’What the hell?! Who the fuck do you think ya are, huh?!’’

‘’P-please I-’’ Jeff glanced around, desperately looking for a way out. God why did he have to put his knife in his backpack instead of his pocket?! His eyes fell on the doorway and they widened. More people were in the doorway! A teenage girl with bleached bangs and a much shorter boy with a...really weird face. But he wasn’t in any position to judge. ‘’Help!’’

‘’Stat what the fuck, are you doing.’’ the girl grunted. The man, apparently called Stat, snapped his head over to her. He snarled.

‘’Bitch ate my jerky!’’

‘’Yeah and you’re bein’ loud as fuck!’’ the girl snapped back. Her head snapped over to Jeff and her eyes narrowed. She strode over, her thick heels clomping against the kitchen tiles. She grabbed Jeff’s face, squeezing his cheeks and shoving her own face in his. He tried to pull away but her sharp acrylic nails dug into his leathery skin instead. She snarled, looking at him with disgust. ‘’Ew.’’ she eventually said. She looked at Stat. ‘’Put him down. He looks like he has a fuckin’ disease.’’

Stat growled and dropped Jeff. Still panicking, his head snapped to the side and he lunged for the window. The girl behind him yelped and snatched him, making a quiet noise that reminded him of a motor revving. She held him aloft with surprising strength and he squirmed in her arms. She suddenly smacked him before dropping him again. He yelped, holding his sore face in his hand, seething. His head panged and instinct seemed to suddenly kick in, making him swing his fist back and try a punch. The girl grabbed his arm and yanked him, sending him stumbling feebly into the counter.

‘’Nice one Lina!’’

He looked over his shoulder, taking in the room again. There were two other ways out. The back door, and the kitchen door which was wide open. He bolted for the kitchen door, past the weird-faced boy. Freedom and safety seemed to be right in his grasp, but then he smacked face first into a wall. With a feeble yelp he fell back, his gaze travelling up slowly. He froze.

That wasn’t a wall. That was a person. A giant as wide as he was tall. Eyes obscured by jet black hair, showing only a slit-mouthed smile. A terrified yell escaped him and he scampered back, whirling to his feet and bolting for the backdoor.

‘’Jesus christ someone gettim!’’ Stat yelled.

‘’Gettim yourself!’’ The girl, presumably named Praline, yelled back. Stat snarled and ran over, grabbing Jeff’s backpack and yanking him to the table. He yelped and thrashed, panicking like a wild animal. His head pounded, the voices filling it again and making him want to kick, punch, scratch, claw, bite-

‘’What on earth is going on in here?! Stat! Oh dear lord is that a child?!’’ a new voice to add to the people Jeff was trying to identify and differentiate. It was higher pitched, with a southern drawl. Stat huffed, turning his head to the side. Jeff followed his gaze, glancing over at the door where two more people had joined the giant. He didn’t get a good glance at the other as he was distracted by the thinner, blonde man wildly gesturing and pointing at Stat. ‘’What do you think you’re doing?! Let go of him, the poor thing!’’

Stat’s face scrunched up in disgust. ‘’You stay outta this, ya fuckin’ fruit!’’

‘’PFFFT- HAH!’’

‘’Stay out of this Dally!’’ the blonde snapped his head over to the small boy from earlier before turning back to Stat. ‘’Let him go! Right now!’’

‘’Like hell I’m listenin’ ta you! You wanna fight or somethin’?!’’

‘’Stat,’’ another new voice. This one deeper and more relaxed, but still cautious. Jeff looked over at the voice’s owner. He was shorter and his face...half of it was obscured by black hair, and the other half looked horribly burnt. He padded toward Stat. ‘’Let the kid go.’’ he murmured. Stat scrunched his face up. It wasn’t until the man-giant crossed the kitchen and set a gigantic hand on Stat’s shoulder that he let go, shooting Jeff an unhappy look. Finally free from the angry trucker’s grasp, he sat up, looking around in fear. It was then he noticed something. All of them had...scars. Some similar to his own. Burns and a slit mouth. He blinked to make sure he wasn’t imagining it. ‘’You okay there?’’ The half-burnt man’s voice made Jeff turn to him. He crawled back on the table, trying to put distance between himself and him. ‘’Did Stat hurt ya?’’

He paused for a moment. No, no he...hadn’t really been hurt. Stat was rough but- it would bruise at worst. He palmed at his face where he’d been smacked. ‘’...t-the girl hit me.’’ he finally mumbled.

The half-burnt man seemed to study Jeff for a moment before turning to the blonde. ‘’Blondie,’’ he said. ‘’Can ya take him to your room? Away from the others.’’

‘’Of course,’’ Blondie turned to Jeff, smiling kindly. He held out a hand. ‘’Come on dear, let's get you away from these brutes, hm?’’ he shot a glare at Stat, who rolled his eyes. Deciding he’d rather be with the friendly southerner with the girly nickname than the angry truck park resident, Jeff clambered off the table and followed him out of the kitchen. He glanced around the house as they walked. It seemed big- that was the reason he’d even broken in here in the first place. The house was big, and big houses meant rich people, and rich people meant plenty of food. Blondie led him to a bedroom. As he stepped inside he looked around.

The bedroom seemed cozy. A nice rug on the floor, vinyls on a shelf, ornate furniture. It seemed homey. Comfortable. ‘’Here we are,’’ Blondie murmured behind him. ‘’I’m terribly sorry about all the hassle in the kitchen- but you’ll be safer here.’’ he shook his head, muttering to himself. Jeff hesitated, then slowly walked over to a wall and leaned against it. Close enough to the door but still casual enough for it to look like he was relaxing. Sort of. Blondie walked past him and took a seat on the bed. Jeff glanced around. The room looked...harmless. No sign of weapons. Of course, there were objects that could be repurposed into weapons. The plastic flamingo on the bedside table looked particularly threatening.

Blondie looked him over for a few moments. Jeff shifted. He looked a mess and he knew it. Long black hair flying out every which way, scruffy stolen clothes, a black backpack that was torn and stained with mud and blood, not to mention his skin...leathery and white, scarred with a permanent smile. Blondie tilted his head, smiling kindly. ‘’What’s your name dear? If you don’t mind telling me.’’

Jeff stared back for a second. Names. He didn’t give his name away, not in situations like these. Too risky. Police knew his name. He wanted to get out of the house, preferably without killing anyone. Could he even fight his way out? With so many people?

‘’...Nathan.’’

‘’Nathan! Wonderful to meet you dear,’’ Blondie held out a hand to him. ‘’I’m Blondie.’’’ he smiled. Jeff- or rather, Nathan, reached over and shook his hand. He looked at Blondie for a moment. He had scars on his face- he’d been too panicked to really give them more than a glance before, but now he could see that and they were faded to an extent. Two lines running up from either corner of his mouth and another running across the bridge of his nose, along with a couple others. Nathan’s eyes lingered on the scars on Blondie’s cheeks for a few moments too long. Long enough for Blondie to notice. He didn’t seem offended though. Instead he tilted his head. ‘’Would it...be okay for me to ask you a couple of questions, Nathan?’’

He hesitated for a second, then nodded. Blondie smiled. ‘’Good. For a start...how old are you?’’

He shrugged. ‘’...sixteen.’’

‘’Sixteen...’’ Blondie seemed to ponder on his age for a moment. Nathan shifted. He didn’t exactly look it- with his face mutilated and burnt, not to mention he didn’t exactly eat properly, so he hadn’t grown as tall as he probably should’ve. He looked away. ‘’And...where did you come from?’’

He glanced at Blondie. ‘’What do you mean?’’

Blondie furrowed his brows. ‘’What...made you come here?’’

Made him come here? What did that mean-? Nothing had...made him come there but- thinking about it...the past few weeks had been- weird. He kept going in a certain direction. Something in him wanted him to get somewhere. But that feeling, that need to keep moving was...gone. Replaced with a...weird contentment. ‘’I-I dunno…’’ he looked away. ‘’I mean I- I did break in because I wanted food…’’ he licked his dry lips, feeling slightly guilty.

Blondie nodded, smiling kindly once more. It reassured Nathan slightly. ‘’That’s fine. You don’t have a home, do you?’’

He blinked, surprised by how blunt he was. Then nodded. ‘’No- no not really…’’ he shrugged. He looked at Blondie for a long moment. Something about this house felt- weird. Not a bad weird but...thinking about it now, Stat had been burnt, with scars on either side of his mouth. The giant monster that had scared the shit out of him earlier had the same scars he and Blondie did. Was that all a coincidence? That everyone here had the same scars as him? He opened his mouth, about to ask- what exactly he was going to ask he didn’t know but- either way he was interrupted by the door behind him opening.

‘’We okay in here?’’ Nathan actually jumped in surprise. His head whipped around, staring at the half-burnt man from before with wide eyes. He relaxed a bit and gave a small nod, leaning against the wall again. The other man walked past him and sat on the bed beside Blondie. ‘’You got a name?’’

‘’N-Nathan.’’

He nodded. ‘’I’m Grease. Sorry about earlier. It’s nothing personal.’’

‘’Honestly- I don’t know why we still keep Stat around when he’s such a- such a ruffian!’’

Grease rolled his eye. Clearly he had heard this a few times too many. Instead he focused on Nathan. ‘’So, Nathan…’’ he looked him over for a long few moments. ‘’Can I ask ya something?’’

‘’Sure.’’

Grease shifted before he spoke again. ‘’Ya got Jeffery anywhere in your name?’’

Nathan froze. His muscles tensed, his eyes filling with fear. They knew. Or at least- Grease knew. He recognised him- he must have! He gulped. ‘’Li-Listen I-’’ he pursed his lips. ‘’I-I do okay but- listen I don’t wanna hurt anyone I-!’’ a feeble whimper escaped him. ‘’...please don’t call the cops…’��

Blondie frowned, sad at the boy’s panic. Grease shook his head. ‘’We’re not gonna do that.’’ he looked at Nathan. He was...reassuring, in an odd way. Fatherly. ‘’Promise.’’ Nathan gave a small nod, relaxing a bit. ‘’My name’s Jeff Bartosz,’’ he pointed at Blondie. ‘’Jeffery Devereaux.’’

Nathan paused. ‘’I-I’m...Jeff Woods. Nathan’s my middle name.’’ he frowned. ‘’Can I- uh- ask something…?’’

‘’Shoot.’’

‘’...where am I?’’ something was up. The same name? Similar scars and burns? ‘’Is this like...a cult or…?’’

Grease shook his head, smiling a bit. ‘’Not a cult, no,’’ he looked at Nathan for a long bit. ‘’...how about I explain that later, huh? You look like you could use some food first.’’

‘’And perhaps tea,’’ Blondie suggested. ‘’If you like it of course.’’

Nathan cracked a small smile and nodded. ‘’That- that’d be really good-’’ he slowly slipped his hands into his pockets. ‘’...thanks.’’

‘’Of course dear,’’ Blondie stood up and crossed the room. He paused at the door, looking at him. ‘’Do you like chai?’’

‘’Never had it.’’

Blondie chuckled. ‘’Well then I’ll introduce you, hm?’’

Nathan gave a small nod. ‘’...yeah. I’d like that.’’

#jeffverse #N-Jeff #jeff the killer #jeffery woods #jeffery nathan woods #Nine jeff #<- too lazy to tag every jeff im using this one for clout #creepypasta #creepypasta fanfic #creepypasta fanfiction #writing #my writing

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margueritehall · 4 years ago

Photo

CAN YOU SEE RIGHT THROUGH ME? - YMCULC

all the king's horses, all the king's men, couldn’t put me together again

( the archer ; taylor swift )

marguerite ( maggie ) brynn hall, the gentle bad-ass

“ show me a hero and i’ll write you a tragedy. ”

― f. scott fitzgerald

– BASIC INFORMATION –

» full name: marguerite brynn hall

» nicknames: maggie, mags, margie

» age: twenty seven ( at time of snap ), thirty two ( at time of blip )

» birthday: january eighth, nineteen-ninety-one, ten fifty-five in the morning

» birthplace: philadelphia, pennsylvania

» zodiac sign: capricorn sun, libra moon, aries ascendent

» current residence: new york, new york

» gender: cis female

» occupation: social worker for the stark relief foundation displaced children division, later avenger trainee

– HEALTH –

» physical health: overall, maggie is in excellent health. she works out most weekday mornings and tends to eat a balanced diet. she doesn’t drink too often or smoke at all. she knows that her health conscious habits stem from her need to control everything that she is able to but that doesn’t stop her from being set in her ways.

» scars: she has several small scars from various bumps and scrapes but there is a sizeable scar on the front of her left shoulder from a car accident while she was a freshman in college. a driver t-boned her small sedan in an intersection when she was on her way home from a final exam. when she woke up in the hospital, with both of her parents at her bedside, she had stitches stretching approximately three inches from her clavicle towards her upper arm.

» broken (any) bones: surprisingly, despite being quite active, maggie hasn’t ever broken a bone. she’s quite graceful from taking dance classes since she could walk until she graduated high school.

– MENTAL HEALTH –

» extrovert or introvert: since getting older, maggie has become comfortable with the knowledge that she is a relatively private person. when she was younger, she enjoyed being in crowds however, she now tends to retract into her shell when surrounded by too many people.

» logical or creative: maggie is incredibly logical; she is very formulaic in her thought patterns. when it comes to problem solving, maggie has all but got it down to a science which can be effective but she’d be incorrect to say it was without fault.

» optimist or pessimist: neither term seems to describe the woman very well; she feels as though she’d call herself a realist. the world has let her down more times than she can count so she makes an effort to always adjust her expectations towards the most-likely event.

» phobias / fears:

» problems: maggie was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder and generalized anxiety disorder when she was sixteen. she goes through occasional bouts of depression but she doesn’t find it to be chronic. though undiagnosed, following the death of her parents, she experiences the effects of post-traumatic stress.

– PERSONALITY –

» goals / dreams: maggie has always wanted to improve the world around her. when she was a little girl, she told her parents that she wanted to be the first doctor to go to space. when she found out that she’d have to be in space for months at a time, she quickly changed her plans. the brain always fascinated her and so she dove headfirst into her newfound passion. following the deaths of her parents, maggie wanted to help others like she wished that she had been and so she, once more, switched gears and went into social work.

» quirks / habits: maggie is a creature of habit. each morning, she wakes up and opens the curtains around the house before pouring herself a cup of cold brew coffee with cinnamon syrup and oat milk. she makes her bed and begins her day. when she gets home from work, she turns on her fairy lights and fans before removing her makeup and changing in to cozy clothes. as for quirks, maggie wouldn’t say she has any but her friends would be quick to point out her concentration face-- whenever she gets deep in to a hard task, her eyebrows screw up tightly and her lips purse. she doesn’t like to look in mirrors when the room is dark, she only gets out of bed on the left side, and she habitually sings in the shower even when she isn’t home alone.

» likes: precipitative weather like rain storms or snow ( especially thunderstorms ), vinyl records, lighting candles and allowing them to light the room, cooking or baking anything from scratch, old books with notes in the margin from an owner long forgotten, astronomy and any associated phenomena ( especially eclipses and meteor showers ), fleetwood mac and other classic rock icons, acts of service from loved ones, dogs with smushed faces, taylor swift, watching films (or rewatching films, whether new or old), freshly brewed tea, watching the sun set and staying awake to see it rise again, wisteria vines twisting around a fence, ‘casablanca’, f. scott fitzgerald novels, anything that is a dusty shade of sage green, tom hanks, vanilla bean ice cream (not french vanilla), using a polaroid camera to capture a moment, iced coffee with cinnamon, the beach during winter when the northern shores get a little bit icy, long drives at night with the windows down, sitting on the roof in a companionable silence with a loved one, the color of deep maroon rust, cozy throw blankets and an unnecessary amount of pillows on the couch and bed

» dislikes: too much physical touch, indifference or apathy in the face of injustice, the deafening sound of crickets and cicadas at night, showing any signs of vulnerability, open-toed shoes, powdery or floral scents, olives, thin pillows, overhead lighting (lamps only, thank you very much), lack of a routine, being unable to read situations and prepare adequately, not feeling in control of any situation, harlequin novels, ladybugs and any other insects, disorganization (physically or emotionally.)

» flaws: she feels the need to always be the strong one that she often doesn’t allow herself the freedom to feel without pushing it down. she has a habit of not letting people in, especially people who are new to her, and even when she does, she is always terrified that she’ll lose them like she’s lost most other people that she loved. she is a control freak and can sometimes be a little boss.

– FAMILY –

» parents: ; phillip hugh hall ( father / pierce brosnan ) ; allison marie hall née clark ( mother / jamie lee curtis )

» maternal grandparents: ; richard ernest clark ( grandfather / tony curtis ) ; virginia ruth clark née franklin ( grandmother / janet leigh )

» paternal grandparents: ; hugh alexander hall ( grandfather / kris kristofferson ) ; marguerite joan hall née green ( grandmother / ellen burstyn )

» sibling(s): n/a

» children: n/a

– APPEARANCE –

» height: five feet, two inches

» weight: one hundred fifteen pounds

» eyes: maggie’s eyes are one of her most striking features. the espresso brown orbs are speckled with golden flecks; they’re a rounded, almost almond shape.

» hair: her hair is chestnut brown and it has a tendency to gleam copper and slightly golden when the light reflects off of it. for the majority of her life, she had a tendency of keeping the gentle waves cropped into a side-parted, blunt bob that rested just above her shoulders. she typically wore her hair straight or blown out. following the snap, she allowed it to grow out beyond its typical length. she keeps it trimmed to just below her shoulder blades with a set of wispy curtain bangs to compliment the natural waves that she now maintains.

» face and complexion: maggie has a light skin tone that tans in the sun. she has no freckles on her face but has quite a few down her chest and arms; none of them are very dark. she has a round face which can almost be cherubic but as she’s gotten older, she has developed a sharp jawline that makes her look more mature despite her stature. her rounded almond eyes are lined with thick, dark lashes. she has a small button nose that pinches minutely at its tip as it turns slightly upwards. her brows are full and straight with only a slight arch. she has full cheeks with small dimples that frame her smile. maggie’s lips are typically tinted a red berry shade; her bottom lip is slightly more voluminous than its top counterpart which is home to a sharp cupid’s bow.

» build: maggie is petite, to say the least. she stands just slightly over five feet tall and weighs just over one hundred pounds. though slim, her figure is a narrow hourglass. despite her size, she’s quite agile and strong. years of channeling all of her emotions in to ballet as a child caused a habit that has yet to die. when she feels the need to get rid of excess emotion, she runs or attends a fitness class to channel that away.

» defining marks: when she was eighteen, maggie and her best friend poppy got matching tattoos. on the inside of her left wrist, there is a small crescent moon to match a sun on poppy’s. following her parents death, she got a second tattoo and on the inside of her upper arm, close to the crook of her elbow, there is one of two ravens perched on a branch. several months after the blip, she got another tattoo. on her right side, on her ribs under her bra-line, there’s a small star housed within four concentric circles.

» dress style: maggie’s fashion sense is on the border between classic and trendy. she doesn’t stray too far away from her comfort zone or wear too many patterns. she tends to stick to jewel tones and neutrals. for her work, her style tends to be business casual-- typically a blouse with a skirt or wide legged trousers and a heel. when she’s at home, an oversized sweater and leggings or pajama shorts are her go-to uniform. if she’s out running errands, she loves a flowy skirt or a pair of mom jeans with one of her dad’s old, classic band tees. her shoes are typically a revolving door of plain keds or converse, ankle boots, or a small heel.

» faceclaim: jenna louise coleman

– ROMANTIC & SEXUAL –

» marital status: she is unmarried.

» sexual preference: although maggie is primarily heterosexual, she’s never been closed off to the idea of dating anyone of the same gender if she found that she was attracted to them.

» ever had sex: she had sex for the first time when she was a freshman in college; it was with her boyfriend at the time, nicholas gray. as she’s gotten older, she has had a variety of companions-- some were romantic partners, several one-night-stands, and two attempted friends-with-benefits arrangements.

» opinion on sex: maggie isn’t ashamed to say that she enjoys sex and the freeing feeling that comes with it.

» opinion on relationships: although she likes the idea of a relationship, maggie’s fear of not being in control makes it difficult to maintain one. before the snap, she had only been in one long-term relationship which she abruptly ended after the death of her parents. she found that it was easier to try and turn off her feelings than to deal with them as everything in her life changed. since graduating with her second degree, maggie has been trying to open herself back up to dating and the possibility of a relationship.

» turn ons: the feeling of someone brushing her hair off of her face, being praised, bravery, kindness, interlacing fingers when holding hands, a genuine smile, sincerity, strong hands, bright eyes, taller men, a strong jawline, delicate kisses that gradually deepen into something more, kisses down the neck, deep conversations and debates, cologne that isn’t overpowering

» turn offs: sleazy behavior, apathy towards important issues, party-scene demeanor, bragging, lying, being late, ill-fitting clothes, lacking ambition or drive for moving forward

» past relationships: ; nicholas gray ( first love / ben barnes )

» current relationship: ; n/a

» future relationship: ; steve rogers ( tbd / chris evans ) ; bucky barnes ( tbd / sebastian stan )

– FRIENDSHIP –

» big group of friends or several close friends: maggie would rather have a smaller quantity of people in her life with better quality relationships than to have a large group of friends that she feels as though she doesn’t know.

» best friend: maggie was a relatively lonely child; she spent a lot of her time reading and imagining her life in other worlds. she had some friends but none that ever ventured further than the occasional hangout. when she was a freshman in highschool, she sat next to poppy stewart on their first day of orientation and the two have been inseparable ever since.

» ever lied to a friend: she’s told white lies when necessary but she’s never lied about something earth-shattering.

» the most horrible thing they did to a friend: when maggie broke up with nicholas, she left him a letter on his pillow before she left his apartment one morning. she avoided his calls afterwards and didn’t speak to him for several weeks until he came to her apartment to try and work things out. later in her life, maggie felt extremely guilty that she wasn’t able to confide in poppy about steve’s plan until after he had already left.

» list of friends - ; poppy stewart ( best friend / annie murphy / @petalsofpoppys ) ; pepper potts ( boss, friend / gwenyth paltrow ) ; tony stark ( boss, family friend / robert downey jr ) ; natasha romanoff ( co-worker, close friend / scarlett johansson ) ; steve rogers ( co-worker, friend, boyfriend / chris evans ) ; bucky barnes ( friend, lover, boyfriend / sebastian stan ) ; sam wilson ( friend / anthony mackie ) ; wanda maximoff ( future friend / elizabeth olsen ) ; monica rambeau ( future friend / teyonah parris )

– MORALITY –

» ever been drunk: the first time that maggie got drunk was her senior year of high school; she was at a house party with poppy and she since vowed to never touch any drink with ‘punch’ in the name, ever again.

» lied to a significant other: following the death of her parents, maggie never disclosed her tumultuous emotions to nicholas and so he was blindsided when she left him on one random morning. with an apologetic note of a goodbye, maggie made sure no trace was left behind when she slipped from the apartment in to the warm summer breeze.

» cheated on significant other: maggie would never cheat on a partner. she would rather end things than break someone’s trust in her.

» gotten into a fight: she’s never gotten in to a physical altercation but following her move in to the avenger’s compound, natasha and steve helped to train her tactically. after she moved back to the city, bucky takes up the position of being her trainer.

» deepest regret: not telling her parents how much she looked up to both of them before they died.

» religion: maggie was not raised to be religious. her parents always emphasized the importance of trying to be morally good whenever you could. she identifies as an atheist.

– MISCELLANEOUS –

» playlist: https://rb.gy/kxqfbu

» instagram:

» gifboard:

» character inspiration: leia organa (star wars trilogy), alex parrish (quantico), emma swan (once upon a time), amy pond (doctor who), buffy summers (buffy the vampire slayer), emily prentiss (criminal minds), lily evans (harry potter)

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casualtrashkid · 4 years ago

Video

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This is our Comic - Con At Home 2020 Masqurade entry. Enjoy!

Comic Con Masquerade Contest: Shelby Spillers and Arron Bowman

Costume Name: Punk Gyarados and Mega Gyarados

Costume Description:

Gyarados:

References and Renderings There were not a lot of male human Gyarados refences.Had to come up with the design on my ownWent for a punk look with some samurai influences due to the characters Japanese origin and character temperament. Went through a couple of versions before I decided on what I really liked.

The Vest Over 50 hours of applique, hand sewn and hand cut. Two front Gyarados had to be resewn twice so they could match perfectly. The faces are embroidered using satin stitching. Pattern was made from scratch via drapingOuter fabric is made of crinkled chiffon, it was chosen to mimic scales and to represent the blue of the GyaradosWent for a punk/biker look for intimidation and cool factor. Patch placement researched for accuracy.1-inch metal spikes screw-on for awesomenessHand sewn lining

The Pants

Pattern created by refencing another pair of pants that I had; However, because I wanted the refence pant to stay intact I had to make the pattern without taking the pant apart. Made from brocade, it chosen to represent scales and Gyarados yellowShiny

The Belt

Pattern from scratch Represents the tail and segments of the Gyarados Made from vinyl that is textured in some way that looks like skin or scales.Hand painted in the backChains and shells added for a more punk vibe with a little ocean flare Glow in the dark

Mega Gyarados: Since my partner was going with a biker gang/punk theme to this character idea, and I’m an evolution of that, I was trying to make a meaner version that leaned a little more post apocaliptic, which leans on trying to make this character look bright and colorful but aged from his enviornment. I am going to break this down piece by piece sInce there is a lot to put in, starting from the ground, up. The shoes were originally white when I bought them, I lightly sanded and painted blue leather paint until that color was achieved and put some brown dry brushing to age it. Working up to the pants, I flat patterned these with ridges sewn in. it also has a front with a lace up crotch and a hidden zipper. The chaps were a lot of work, and while working on them when I was bulding this, they traveled with me to Hawaii, while I was trying to hand-sew on the custom made red bias tape. They have duck canvas on the front and a lovely lining on the other side, which cant be seen in the video. The tank top underneath the jacket started white, and we dyed it to that color. I also put rips and tears to tell a story of different pokemon I picked a fight with. There’s lightning strikes, slash marks, and grass stains from supposedly past battles. The jacket outside is made out of vinyl and was a personal challenge to make a pattern out of for more than the fabric choice. I decided to pattern it through draping. I also only had 1/2 yard of blue fabric so I had to improvise quickly and not mess up to make sure I had enough to fit into the jacket. Also, to weather it, we dragged it 6 miles through dirt, mud, rivers, rocks, and we also strapped it to a car and drove around at night in an abandoned parking lot. While it did get weathered somewhat, a lot of the detailing ended up being paint. Also, with the sleeves, they ended up beins so thick due to the top stitching, that I had to hand sew the sleeve together. It is also lined with the same lining as my chaps. The fins/tail or “the wings” started from a wood rectangle. there, I added heavy duty wire and cotton to basically make a ribbed sail. The tail was a lot of sections of vinyl and foam and cotton lining (yes the same from earlier) to form it into a lobster tail looking thing. The hood is actually sewn onto the tank top. It was a flat pattern I had made with the same fabric of the chaps. The horn was made out of EVA foam, foam clay, and sanded down with a dremel. Finally, my mask was inspired by the kabuki demon masks. I wanted something intimidating that was reminiscint of the character its based off of. That is mostly made out of worbla, and the big teeth are carved pink foam covered in worbla, and the nose and smaller teeth are eva foam covered in worbla. I have real chains attatched and a red strap in the back to keep it up.

Bio: We have both been cosplaying for about 9 years and have been dating for about a year. We both met at a local cosplay meetup and have bonded from there. Now, cosplay and projects like these makes us grow in our relationship and as artists.

#Comicconathome2020 pokemon gyarados megagyarados

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melbee · 4 years ago

Text

Electric Love

CHAPTER 5

David Lee Roth Fanfiction

Oh see, don't ever set me free

I only wanna be by your side

Girl, you really got me now

You got me so I can't sleep at night

- you really got me

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

Saying goodbye to Holly must’ve been one of the most hardest things I had to do in my life. I knew that we would see each other soon, as we promised to meet up whenever we both were available, but I realized that she wouldn’t be here for everything, and somehow I would have to survive by myself.

Well not totally by myself...but you get the point. Tears were shed, hugs, a few knocks on the head and final waves as I stood near the window that overlooked the front parking lot of the apartment, as the red Ford drove away into the sun which had begun its descent.

“You know I have these beautiful bay windows over on the other side, since the sun sets over to the west. It’s much prettier.” I heard Lewis voice out as I turned around to look at him smiling, motioning with his hands toward the other room.

I smiled, “Sure, I would love to see it.” I walked over to the windows and peaked at the sun that was steadily falling with every passing second, and realized Lewis was right. It was beautiful. I imagined those right off the beach in Malibu had the joy of watching it in full every evening, and sighed in contentment.

“It’s nice isn’t it? The light beginning to fade.” Lewis said as I felt his presence as he too made his way over to the windows and leaned in a daze.

“Yes, it reminds me of Arizona, those sunsets weren’t so bad..” I said laughing as I envisioned the many times as kids me and Holly would drive out into the desert during the weekends.

“Yes, but doesn’t it get dreadfully cold when it’s finally dark out?” Lewis asked facing me.

I shrugged as I looked over at him, “Well yes, doesn’t it get cold in California?”

Lewis plastered a sinful grin as he giggled, “Honey, quite the opposite..”

I smiled and laughed, as I stood from my position making my way over to the couch. “Oh?”

Lewis got up as well as he stood walking over and begun looking at nearby fabrics left forgotten on the counter, “Well perhaps in Bel air or some shit, but here? In Hollywood? Baby it gets hot.”

A confused looked etched my face, “What do you mean?”

Lewis rolled his eyes and sighed, “Chica, you’ll figure it out one day..”

I gave him a weird smile as I shrugged. While I had no clue what he meant by hot, I had a sneaking suspicion he wasn’t talking about the weather. It was something else. I felt a chill run down my back at the thought.

“That’s besides the point... I was hoping we could go over some things, projects and sorts. I’ve got quite a few but a recent one I just picked up. I’ve been looking at designs, it’s hard to tell which would look good.” Lewis said as he sighed. I made my way over to him as I fingered the skills and the velvets, and even the.. spandex?

“Spandex?” I said as I grabbed the piece of black and tight fabric, as I heard a giggle come from my left.

“Yes, that was a bit of a client’s request. Rockstars these days...” he said as he looked at it thoughtfully.

“Oh rockstars? I heard you dealt with musicians. Who are you working with now?” I said.

His eyes bugged as his jaw dropped before slapping his face, “LORD! I completely forgot to tell you that over the phone didn’t I? Gosh I’m so stupid!”

I laughed as I shook my head.

He sprung to life suddenly, as he walked out of the room, much to my confusion. I was close to following him until he came back with stacks of what looked like paper cutouts from magazines and posters.

I grazed my hand over the first one. A beautiful tall man, with leggings that hugged every inch of his curves, a plethora of chest hair and a Jean cutout jacket that seemed to sparkle even from the picture. He had fluffy blond hair, and a look that I’m sure would make any girl drop to their knees.

It suddenly dawned on me who this was. “Are you working for..”

“Van Halen? Yes! Isn’t it wonderful. Trust me I was shocked when I got a call they wanted me to make some clothes. I mean.. come on..” Lewis gasped as he started flipping over the different pictures of the guys.

I laughed as we stared at all the different members of the band, Eddie, His Brother and what I assumed was the bass player stood in many pictures. Every time we passed by ones with the blonde haired guy, I couldn’t help but get confused at who that was.

I know I wasn’t exactly the most literate music fan, I couldn’t help my tastes were a bit old fashioned.

“So the blond guy...he’s..” I started to say as Lewis gave me a wild look.

“David Lee Roth? Do you not know who he is?” Lewis gasped standing back in horror.

I looked sheepish as I scratched my arm, “I know a few songs by them.. I haven’t really gotten a chance to listen to them fully.”

“Oh god.. that’s it! Impromptu music sesh’.” Lewis said as he made his way over to a cabinet bringing out an old record player, and opened a cabinet adjacent which was stocked with vinyls of all types. He looked through, as I made my way over to him, before he gasped and grabbed the first album to come out.

“Van Halen 1. No bullshit just straight up rock n roll.” Lewis said as he put the track on as a familiar song came on that I’m sure I heard on the radio at some point.

He beckoned me to sit down on the couch as he grabbed the pile of pictures of Van Halen, nodding his head back and forth to the music. I smiled finally getting to understand the meaning behind the meolodies. Some of the songs were quiet sad, Jamie’s Cryin? It irked me they could play such powerful and rocking music, and the lyrics were much deeper then what they appeared to be.

When Eruption started playing I couldn’t help but gasp, at the sounds that were emitted from the record player. The guitar wailed with power and sophistication. “Wow!” I said to Lewis, who just smiled at my reaction.

“You should here him play it in concert. Holy fuck, Eddie is the cutest little thing with that impish grin, he just plays that shit like he’s washing his car.” He said as he sighed looking at the pictures once more.

“Oh I’m sure..” I said imagining myself at the concert. “Do they play to big crowds?”

Lewis gave me a dumbfounded look before nodding his head vigorously, “Huge! Every single one of them are controlled by those guys, I’m telling you..”

“So what outfits are you making for them?” I asked as Lewis set the pictures down, as he got up.

“All for their shows mostly, specifically for the one coming-“ He paused with dramatic horror as his eyes bugged. “Chica!!! Their show is coming up!”

I gasped realizing he was right, remembering the billboard I had drove past on our way here. I feared the worst at his reaction. Did he not have all the outfits ready?

“Oh don’t worry. I’ve got most of them finished, I’m just finishing the bedazzled sequins on David’s chaps, and Michael’s cowboy pants.” He said as he grabbed my hand pulling me off the couch and into a separate room, that reminded me of a seamstresses room.

“Do you know hand stitching? Or bejewelling by chance?” Lewis asked as he unzipped a hanging bag and grabbed a pair of pants that by my astonishing surprise, were assless.

I smiled and laughed, nodding my head yes. As I rubbed a finger down the material “Yes, I love bejewelling! I always got As in that class in college.”

He grinned grabbing a container of crystals, and some sort of machine that imprinted them into the material. “Well great this bottom half still needs finishing. Also bear in mind that these are swarovski crystals, and I’d love if none of them get lost somewhere.”

My eyes widened as I nodded my head. He quickly showed me how to use the machine, before he made his way over to a pair of cowboy pants, and grabbed slashes of leather. “I’ve got to finish these up. Don’t worry we’ll have it all done quickly. I’ve got my friend Mari from the front desk she used to help me out, but she’s going to be help us on Saturday to load everything up to the venue.”

“Oh I met her at the front desk. She’s very nice!” I said laughing as I begun placing the crystals on the pant carefully.

“Oh she’s wonderful, poor thing won’t go to the venues anymore though...” Lewis said sighing.

“Oh really, why?” I asked. Curious if it had any thing to do with her bold words when she warned me about rockstars earlier.

“Poor thing, her heart got broken.” He said clicking his tongue, as I heard the sound of snips and tears as he worked.

“Oh.. By who?” I said.

He suddenly stopped as he gave me a look, “David.. He.. well I guess you could say they had a falling out. He wasn’t really interested in her, but she was completely in love.. I think he kissed her and well..”

“Dissed her?” I said as I frowned going back to my work.

“Yes, something like that. He played with her emotions a lot and well, she’s never been able to see him again.” Lewis said as he sighed.

“Is that why she was so stand offish about your clientele?” I asked

I looked over to see Lewis nodding, “She wanted to quit helping me out, but I told her she needed to find a way to balance her life again and so this is the only solution. That’s why I needed a new assistant. I can’t just pay someone to walk the outfits to the car and leave.”

I nodded in understanding, but what confused me, is why Mari would be so heartbroken she couldn’t even do her job properly. What exactly did that guy do to her? I hadn’t even met him yet, and he already sounded like an asshole.

“David’s very.. peculiar. He’s very eccentric, and sometimes that makes him a little insensitive at times. However, I think he means well for the most part. It’s understandable, ever since his claim to fame he would be more egotistical.” Lewis said as he continue to cut through the pieces of leather and sowed them onto the jeans.

I nodded my head in understanding, but I still didn’t believe that was a good enough excuse. Was he that clueless enough to not be careful with manipulating someone’s emotions? Something didn’t sit right with me, but I chose to ignore it until I got a better judgment.

“So what are the other guys like?” I asked Lewis, slightly humming to myself as I felt an onslaught of exhaustion hit my face as I realized that the road trip had definitely taken a toll on my body.

“Oh they’re lovely..wild... crazy as ever for sure..but a lot of them have different personalities.” Lewis said as I turned to him.

“Oh yeah?” I smiled.

Lewis laughed, “Yes, well Michael Anthony—he’s the bass player by the way— he’s a lot more calmer then the rest and very sweet, but so funny. He’s got a great smile.”

“Both the Van Halen brothers while they might be similar, they are polar opposites in a lot of ways. Eddie’s a bit more quieter, but is so cute and charming. Al is a bit wild, but he’s funny, and has a good time.” Lewis said.

“So you know them on a personal level?” I asked, realizing how familiar Lewis spoke when referring to Van Halen, and I had a hinting suspicion he was closer to them then what he put on.

Lewis laughed nodding his head, before shrugging. “I got the call almost a year ago that they wanted costumes, and I guess they liked my work so I continued. I’ve been to lots of there shows over the year, and their parties.”

I gasped, wondering how fun hanging out with celebrities would be. “Did you get to travel?”

Lewis smiled and nodded. “The best part was probably getting to go to Japan for a couple days, and a night in Sweden. I’m telling you they must ditch all the ugly people to Norway, because EVERYBODY was so attractive.”

I laughed, trying my best to picture the scene in my head.

We continued on for hours until I was just about finished, and my eyes were starting to fall from exhaustion.

Lewis noticed my tiredness and smacked his arm much to my humor. “Jeez, I’m a totally idiot! I totally got sidetracked! You must be dead tired right now.” He had finished his pants and was now cleaning up. he stood up and walked over to me signaling for me to get up.

I stood up smiling and laughing, “Are you sure I can’t help finish this last bit? I’m almost done.” I said holding my hand to my mouth as a yawn passed my lips.

Lewis frowned making a tsking sound, before grabbing my hand and leading me to my room. He turned on the light, and pointed to an adjacent door. “There is a bathroom in there, and a closet to the left side of the wall. Help yourself with a shower if you want, just don’t be in there too long. The neighbors upstairs run an indoor ‘kiddie’ pool, or some shit..”

I smiled suddenly getting the urge to hug him, so I did. Patting his back thoughtfully, before pulling away. “Thank you Lewis, truly.”

Lewis smiled, before grabbing my cheeks and squeezing them. “That’s what friends are for.”

I smiled, as he walked away before standing at the doorway giving me a happy smile. “I’m so glad you’re here, Rosie.”

I laughed, “I am too.”

“I want you to know that no matter what happens or where you go in life, I have full belief that you will excel in life. I see the passion for designing in you. It’s a wonderful thing.”

I blushed tucking my hand over my ears. Lewis beamed tapping the door softly with his hand, his rings making a solid thumping sound. “Goodnight. We will be up early tomorrow, I’ve got some of Van Halen’s tour designers coming to get the clothes ready for fitting, before the show. Mari will be here on the following Saturday.”

I nodded my head sighing loudly. “Sounds exciting. Goodnight.” With that Lewis closed the door silently, leaving me to breathlessly plop my body onto the bed, a slight creaking noise resonating through the quiet atmosphere.

I held my head in my hands, before looking up in exasperation. “Well I guess I’m fucking doing this thing.”

With that I prepared myself for the day ahead, that I had no doubt would be as eventful as they come.

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

When morning came, I was ill-prepared from what would meet me through the front door.

Sure, I assumed that Lewis had a few designers he worked with and maybe they would bring in a rack of clothes, possibly some bags to help transfer them, but I had no idea the size of what the operation really was going to be.

So when a flank of men and women combined dressed in suits, and skirts came in with clothing racks of various styles of pants, shirts, and even scarfs I knew I had not prepared myself enough.

Lewis smiled brightly as the people came in, as I watched as a smaller figured girl holding a box of fabrics, with pretty brown hair struggle to keep up with the pace. I sprinted over to her, grabbing onto the other side to help her pick it up.

“Here I let me help you.” I said with a huff as I picked it up, much more effortlessly then I anticipated.

“Ooh!” I heard a cry come from the other side as we walked backwards over to a table and set the box down. I walked backwards to see the girl raise her eyebrows questioningly at me.

I smiled as I wipe my slightly sweaty palms on the side of my jeans as I raised an arm for her to shake. I could see hesitance in her eyes before she gave me a small smile and shook it.

“Hi, I’m Rose.” I said laughing as I stood back awkwardly. I couldn’t tell if she liked me or not from the odd look on her face as she stared.

She suddenly gulped as she nodded her head quietly. “I’m Annie.”

I smiled nodding my head. “Nice to meet you Annie. So, I assume you work with all these people?”

She shrugged shoving her hands into her pockets, “Yes well, it’s a way to meet ends. I love fashion.”

I laughed and smiled, but couldn’t help but turn at her odd comment. If she loved it so well, why did she say it as if she would rather be doing something else?

Her eyes glazed over, as I sucked in my cheeks at the awkward silence.

“Oh there you are!” Lewis said as she grabbed my shoulder, and looked over at Annie.

As if she was a brand new person, Annie suddenly smiled so brightly. “Hey Lewis!”

He laughed grabbing her into a hug, as she giggled wrapping her arms around him. I couldn’t help but frown slightly at her sudden bold and excited nature around him. Did she not like me? Why was she so cold and hesitant, but suddenly a new person around Lewis?

They pulled away from the hug as Lewis noticed my odd look, but decided not to comment on it. “Well it seems you guys met.”

I smiled looking over at Annie who had quieted down to only a small smile. The original glint in her eyes slightly coming back as she set her gaze back on me.

I laughed trying to cheer up the awkwardness, “Yes we have. Wow! I didn’t know this was all going to be as formal as it was!” I said trying to change the subject.

Lewis shrugged as he surveyed the busy room. “Believe me it wasn’t always like this, but we’ve all built up ourselves a lot over the past year. We’re closer then ever.”

I smiled, as he motioned for me to follow him into the room we were in last night working on the outfits. “So as you know this is my work room. We do most of the making here, and we also organize the clothing for before and after the fittings.”

I nodded my heads as the people from before stop there chattering as they all looked at me with curious expressions.

Lewis laughed, “Okay guys don’t bite. This is Rosie, my new assistant. She’ll be helping with all our preparations.”

The room immeasurably lifted as they all came walking over, a few girls laughing as they pulled me into a hug. Complimenting my hair and whispering how pretty I was.

One of the guys with a bright smile walked over embracing me tightly. “Lewis, you’ve got yourself a keeper.” He winked.

Lewis rolled his eyes trapping me in a playful arm lock, “Channing, she isn’t up for sale.”

His eyebrows quirked, “Really? So my man finally likes the front hol-“

Lewis turned tomato red, as he slipped his hand over Channing’s mouth. He laughed putting his hands up in mock surrender, as Lewis still recovering from his blush as he shook his head.

I giggled in understanding. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but many men in the fashion world tended to be, a bit blatant in their...preferences? I had a slinking suspicion that Lewis was the same way.

They all backed away, as I saw Annie who had been behind us quietly make her way over to the girls as they all began surveying the work.

“Wow! These chaps look great!” One woman said as she grazed her finger down the side of the seams.

Lewis winked at me, grabbing my hand and brought me over to the table where the clothes lay. “Well I happened to know a girl.��

The woman smiled, and looked at me in surprise. “The cross-stiching at the ends are impeccable! The crystals are placed wonderfully.”

I laughed as I shrugged, “It isn’t too complicated.”

She rolled her eyes playfully, “You’ve got in you girl. Id love to see some full ensembles.”

The other girl with red pigtails that reminded me of Holly giggled, “Yes, those outfits would for sure sell some more tickets to the concert.”

They all giggled in response except for Annie who only smiled, as her eyes glazed over in a thoughtful look.

“David’s going to love them. I just know it.” The woman said as she grabbed a hanger and clips from the rack as they all begun ensembling the outfits into bags and secured them.

“Oh he’s going to just love her, Molls” The One with red hair, said as she winked at me. “Have you met the boys yet?” Her eyes glinting with curiosity.

I simply shook my head, crossing my hand over my chest. “No, I haven’t gotten the chance. However, I’ve heard a few of the stories.”

“Yeah well, trust me they aren’t as available as you think they are.” I heard the quiet voice of Annie ring out as she stepped away from the rack.

Oh. I had wondered what her hesitancy was. Did she see me as some threat? I didn’t have the slightest idea as to why, though. I had no intention of even getting to know them, rather then actually..

Molly sighed sympathetically patting Annie’s back. “Babe, I just don’t think-“

“I don’t really want to talk about my personal life. I’ll bring some of the stuff down to the car.” Annie said with a tight lipped smile as she walked away.

The red head, noticed the tension and smiled, “Rockstars will surely be the end of all of us.”She walked over to me grabbing my shoulders. “I’m Liz by the way.”

I nodded, “Nice to meet you, Liz.” I looked over to the woman who had a small frown over her face. “You too Molly.”

She snapped out of her haze and gave me a wide smile. “Anytime, girl. We’ll be seeing each other soon.”

We heard thundering footsteps come into the room, as I looked over recognizing that it was Lewis, who must’ve slipped out the back while we are all talking. This time his signature smile was gone, as a deep perturbed looked etched his face.

“What’s wrong?” Molly said as she gave Lewis a concerned look.

“I just got off the phone with Noel. They’re all hungover as hell, right now. Apparently they all pissed somebody off at some bar.”

Liz snorted, “okay, that’s their regular Tuesday. What about it?”

Lewis sighed as he shook his head, “No, it was someone important I guess in the industry. Anyways, they’re kind of off the rails a bit still, at least David is. They had to put him in a..” Lewis then seemed to be battling his smile, as he bit a lip.

Molly gave him a humorous glance. “What?”

Lewis began laughing, “They had to put David in a straight jacket.”

I couldn’t help but smile along with the rest of group as we all snorted and giggled, at the idea of a rockstar being put in a straight jacket for being so off the walls.

I hadn’t even met David, and he already seemed like quite a character. What irked me even more is that I felt as if I did know him. I acted as if I was battling whether he was a weird guy, or just a gigantic asshole. I didn’t know what I would do when I met him. However, I knew it wouldn’t be a boring conversation.

I pictured the man in the magazine articles, his hair wild, like a mane of a lion. He had such a lustful look in many of his doctored, professional looks. However, I couldn’t help but admire the ones with him performing. That wild look, the giant smile, something told me deep down that, that was the real David. Under all the glitz and glamour, there was just a man going after one big dream.

I finally looked back at the people to realize only Channing, Liz, and Lewis had stayed in the room. I watched them all converse animatedly as Channing brought out a notebook and was hastily writing things down. They all seemed to be conversing about the outfits, as they all waved their hands widely with deep expressions.

I smiled realizing I had finally found my people. True artists. I walked over to them, as they wrapped up their conversation.

Channing smiled embracing me in a hug, “It was nice meeting you, Rose. I’m already counting the days till our next partnership.” He said as I kissed my hand, with a suave look in his eyes.

“Okay Romeo, back off.” Liz said as she laughed grabbing me in a hug. “We’ll be seeing each other in a couple days.”

“Really?” I said as I looked over at Lewis. He smiled nodding his head.

Lewis gave me a knowing look as he winked. “Chica, we’re seeing Van Halen. And I’ve got backstage passes.”

They all began to laugh as the day seemed to close with that single thought.

I was going to meet Van Halen.

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

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dilliebar · 5 years ago

Text

Flower

Hey guys, so I decided to write a lil fanfic loosely based off of the new Ellie/Dina screencap because it’s adorable and we stan a pair of cute lesbians. I’ve written fanfiction before but not for The Last of Us or on AO3 so bear with me.

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23464600

Ellie’s hand wrapped around the nearly-empty bottle of rubbing alcohol. It wasn’t much, and medical supplies were getting harder and harder to come by on patrol, but Dina was worth it. Even if Ellie had been able to clean her bullet wound with 100% alcohol and sacrifice a limb to a witchdoctor or some shit, she would still insist on checking and cleaning every ten minutes and sticking to Dina’s hip, despite the shorter girl’s protest.

Ellie closed the medicine cabinet and took a moment to study her own wounds in the mirror. She hadn’t come out nearly as beaten up as Dina did, with barely much more than a scratch on the right side of her face. Part of her almost felt guilty for it. She’d always felt a responsibility to look after her. Maybe if she hadn’t let her and Dina get separated, everything would have been fine. Maybe if she looked a little more carefully when opening that basement door, she wouldn’t have gotten shot.

But all of that was over now, and Ellie was going to do all she could to make it up to her.

She exited the bathroom and made her way down the hall, knocking lightly on the bedroom door of Dina’s home and letting herself in. Ellie had barely managed to lug them both back to Jackson the day before, and since then, Dina hadn’t left the bed. Her face fell a bit as she entered, the sight of Dina still laying under the covers, eyes open, staring into nothingness. The plate of food that sat on her bedside table sat untouched.

Ellie sat herself criss-cross on the left side of the bed facing Dina, though her eyes didn’t look up.

“Can I see?” she asked, placing a hand on the edge of the covers and moving them down.

Dina turned over on her back in response, pulling up her peach-colored shirt up over her belly to reveal her bandaged abdomen. Ellie lifted the dressings to get a closer look, and as she expected, the stitches were doing their job and it looked to be healing as best as it could be. Still, she dabbed some of the alcohol on an old cotton towel and pressed it against the wound, cleaning it to the best of her ability. When she was done she pulled down Dina’s shirt, replaced the covers, and went to move off of the bed, but felt a soft hand grab around her tattooed arm.

Ellie looked back down at the girl, who had shifted her absent stare to look up at her in a pleading manner.

“Please stay.”

She nodded and didn’t hesitate to lay next to Dina, pulling the covers over her own body and rolling onto her side. Their gazes locked, and Ellie couldn’t help but notice the tinge of pain that rested in the pools of those deep brown eyes. She had never seen her best friend this hurt before, both physically and emotionally.

A brush with death will do that to you.

In that single thought Ellie realized just how close she had come to losing Dina. She thought she had known when it was happening. She thought she had known just after. She thought she had known on the ride home. But in reality, she only knew just how much she would lose in this moment. She would miss the smiles, the sound of her voice, the snarky comments, and rare moments like the dance that only came once-in-a-lifetime. Instead all she’d have of her was the blood that stained her hands and traumatic memories of a day that never should’ve come, and if that’s how she felt, she couldn’t even imagine what was going through the other girl’s head.

“Ellie?”

She snapped out of her thoughts and looked back to the now-teary-eyed girl that lay only a few inches from her.

“Yeah?”

Dina took Ellie’s hand and held it between her own. She brushed her thumbs over her rough skin, feeling it as if she’d never feel it again. Her eyes averted the green-eyed-girl’s gaze.

“Promise me you’ll never leave.”

Her voice cracked mid-sentence, which tore Ellie’s heart in two. A tear fell from Dina’s eye and she instinctively reached her free hand up to wipe it away, lightly cupping her face in an attempt to comfort the girl. Their eyes met again.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

A knock on the bedroom door interrupted their intimate moment.

“Hey kiddo, s’me.” Joel’s voice called from the hallway.

Ellie pulled back from their embrace and stood to open the door. She took a moment to straighten her clothes and brush stray locks of hair out of her face.

“Hey.” she greeted, opening the door a couple inches. Joel stood there in a dark green button-up, guitar strung across his back. Ellie had caught up with him briefly at the gate when they rolled in, Dina hanging over her shoulder, but she hadn’t stuck around long enough to tell him the whole story. Word must’ve gotten around.

“Hey, uh, heard what happened,” he cleared his throat and gestured to the girl in bed, “she alright?”

Ellie sighed, unsure of the real answer.

“The wound is healing fine,” she replied, then pointing at the guitar strung across Joel’s back, “you brought your guitar?”

He nodded, swinging the strap over his head, “Thought it might cheer ‘er up a bit.”

Ellie nodded in response, and opened the door further to let him in. Dina loved guitar with a passion. Not playing it, but she always managed to coax Ellie into playing for her any time they were together, or at least whenever a guitar was available. She wasn’t even that good, but the way Dina rested her head on the taller girl’s shoulder as she plucked away at the worn strings always convinced her otherwise.

Joel pulled up an old, dusty chair from the corner of the room up to the side of the bed. Dina sat up, and Ellie lay beside her, placing a loving arm around her shoulder as Joel placed his fingers delicately on the fretted neck of the guitar.

“Whaddya wanna hear, Dee?”

She thought about it for a minute, brushing her soft fingers against Ellie’s calloused hand that rested on her shoulder.

“The one named after that flower?”

Joel smiled, “I think El sure knows that one a lil’ better than I do,” he placed his fingers, “but that’ll do.”

The song was called “Hey There Delilah”, and Ellie and Dina had found it on vinyl in an old bookstore about a year ago. From the moment they sat criss-crossed in her bedroom, listening to the black disc as it spun round and round, Dina fell in love with it, and Ellie had spent weeks memorizing chords and calloussing her fingers just so she could replicate the tune. Ever since, Dina called it “the flower song”, and Ellie wouldn’t normally have cared much for it if it didn’t mean so much to her best friend. Now it was her favorite, too.

Joel began plucking away to the intro, which was pretty simple compared to previous songs they’d found. It was loving, but somber. Sweet, but bitter. It was something that seemed to define their relationship as a whole.

Just as he opened his mouth to sing the first lyrics, he stopped playing, and looked up.

“Ellie, wanna be my lead?”

Ellie smiled in disbelief, “Uh, no I think I’m good,” she laughed. Joel sighed and went to keep on playing.

“Aw, El,” Dina looked up at her, “C’mon, please? I’ve never heard you sing.”

Ellie looked at Joel, expecting his support. Instead, he raised an eyebrow and shrugged.

“The lady’s never heard ya sing, El.”

She hesitated for a moment, checking to make sure that they were being serious and that they were actually going to make her do this. But alas, the eyes in the room remained locked on her, awaiting her answer, and those dark browns refused to let up.

“...Alright, play the fuckin’ song.” she said playfully.

Dina smiled and curled into Ellie’s chest as Joel started the song up again. Normally, it would take her a minute to start. The soap bottles in her shower were enough of an audience for her. But if it would make Dina happy, especially right now, she couldn’t resist.

The words flowing out of her mouth almost seemed to be her own. She had spent so long keeping her feelings a secret that the past few days had felt like a dream, and as of the day before, she wished it was. This song was always a way for her to express what she couldn’t tell the girl leaning against her, but in reality, she knew how Ellie felt all along, and now it was just a reminder.

She thought of the promise she had made not fifteen minutes before. It was right then when she began to wonder whether or not she could keep it. The anger towards those men still boiled in her veins, and at this point, she would do anything in her power to make sure they would never come anywhere near Dina or Jackson ever again. There was only one way to do that, though.

She’d have to kill them.

Before Ellie knew it, the music had stopped, and Joel had swung his guitar over his back once again.

“Think she’s asleep,” He nodded towards Dina, voice slightly above a whisper.

She looked down at the dark-haired girl whose head rested against her chest. Sure enough, her eyes were closed and only a peaceful exhale escaped from her lips.

“I reckon you’re stayin’ here tonight?”

She nodded, pulling the blanket back over Dina and tucking it into her sides. Joel nodded at the response, flicking the lightswitch off as he let himself out.

Ellie studied the calm features of Dina below her and brushed a stray hair out of her face and behind her ear.

How could anyone hurt something so beautiful?

She pondered the question over and over again in her mind. Dina wouldn’t hurt a fly, much less anything else, unless it were already dead like those clicking motherfuckers on the other side of the gate. Her heart was too pure for someone who grew up in this kind of screwed up world. She didn’t deserve it. No one who loved like her did.

Though her mind was racing, she settled into the bed and held Dina as tight as she could without hurting her, making sure that even if death himself came to take her away, he’d have to pry her from her cold, dead arms.

Before she fell asleep, she made one final decision.

I’m gonna find, and I’m gonna kill, every last one of them.

#the last of us #the last of us part 2 #the last of us part two #Dillie #Ellie Williams #tlou ellie #ellie x dina #dina and ellie #ellie and dina #tlou dina #tlou #tlou2 #tlou ii #dina x ellie

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julietandcinderellavocaloid · 5 years ago

Text

Broken Juliet Chapter 3

"There must be something I can do," Rin pleaded, refusing to be sent away so easily. "I can press the cloth or stitch the pattern. Please, Ms. Yuezheng, I'll do anything!"

Ms. Yuezheng released a heavy sigh and spoke gently as she told Rin, "You must understand that it isn't lack of work you can do, but that I can't afford to hire your helping hand."

"Please," Rin repeated, ready to beg some more, but Ms. Yuezheng held up a hand to silence Rin before she could get any further.

"Believe me, yours is the last employment I wish to determinate. Not only are you a hard worker who deserves wages beyond your caste, but you are also a loyal customer who does not expect or ask for employee discounts.

"Nonetheless, I cannot continue to keep hiring you on days I'm short staffed or busier than usual. Lady Vinyl's new tax law has already cut my profits too short for comfort, and on top of that, customers aren't able to purchase as much as before. If I'm to not go out of business, I must let go of all my part-time employees. Please, Rin, it's nothing personal."

Dejected, Rin blew her bangs out of her eyes. She looked around the shop, at all the cloths and sewing kits and ladies coats on display. Anywhere was better than looking Ms. Yuezheng in the eye as she muttered, "I understand. All my other employers terminated me today as well. I had just been hoping you would be the only one to not let me go. . . ."

"I'm sorry, Rin." Ms. Yuezheng placed a hand on Rin's shoulder. "I truly am."

Not having a response, Rin bade Ms. Yuezheng a farewell and walked out of the shop. All four of her part-time jobs had let her go. She didn't know how she was going to tell her dad or how he would respond to the news.

With far more time left in the day than what Rin would desire before going home, she walked into the church and made her way to the alter. Kneeling at the cross, Rin folded her hands and closed her eyes to pray.

Help me, Holy Father. I'm afraid what is happening now is the start of something I'm not prepared to live through. Please, give me the faith to hold on even when the entire world screams at me to let go.

On and on Rin went. Her anxieties overwhelmed her, but praying made it easier to breathe under the weight of the worries of the world. Rin didn't know how long she had prayed until she felt a gentle pressure on her shoulders. With a soft "Amen," Rin turned around and smiled at the newcomer. "Good morning, Brother Fukase."

The pastor, an older gentleman whose hair remained a bold crimson despite his age, offered Rin his hand to help her to her feet. "What are you doing here, Rin? Shouldn't you be helping Mr. Anon in his kitchen?"

"I was, until he let me go this morning," Rin muttered before telling Brother Fukase that she tried to seek work from her other employers only to be told they too could no longer afford to hire her. When she was finished, Rin sighed and added, "Taxes are so high thanks to this new law, customers can't afford to shop, and businesses can't afford to employ. Or at least that's what everyone's been telling me."

Brother Fukase smiled sadly. "I can't say that I didn't see this coming. After the Governess passed that act last year, I knew it would only be a matter of time before the districts began raising taxes to keep up with the Governess's new regulations. Rebuilding the Winter Continent temple won't happen for free."

Snorting, Rin said, "All for a goddess who doesn't exist."

"Now, Rin, you know some people are just as devoted to their faith in the goddess as we are to our faith in God." When Rin didn't respond, Brother Fukase asked, "Would you like to help me write letters for the other Brothers? Your penmanship is so divine, I'm sure most of them would rather read a letter written by your hand than my chicken scratch."

"It's not as if I have anything else to do," Rin answered before following Brother Fukase to his office in the back of the church.

Rin settled herself in the small wooden desk in the corner and got to work. Although typically a fast writer, Rin allowed herself to write as slowly and precisely as possible. The longer she could put off getting home, the better.

From his desk, Brother Fukase prepared his Sunday sermon. As Rin stretched out her hand and rotated her wrist after writing half a dozen letters, she recalled how he was the first to give her that first job and how he was the one to teach her to read, write, and do arithmetic when the village's own school wouldn't accept the likes of Rin as a student. Brother Fukase gave Rin her first chance, and now he gave her the last. If people's incomes really were getting lower, their first response would be to stop tithing to the church. The church already didn't receive much funding, and if a good chunk of the tithing went, so would the church's ability to pay its bills. Rin knew she wasn't going to receive much for her work today, and it was highly unlikely Brother Fukase would be able to give her more paying jobs in the near future. Regardless, Rin was grateful to receive at least some work to keep her busy.

Breaking for lunch, Rin and Brother Fukase sat outside. They split a sandwich and poured a pot of soup into two bowls. It wasn't the biggest lunch, but it was lunch nonetheless.

"That young man your father recently hired is quite the character," Brother Fukase said during the meal.

Although Rin knew whom he meant, she still questioned, "Who? Akita Nero?"

Brother Fukase nodded. "Introduced himself to me before service this past Sunday, then shook my hand again after the conclusion. Both times he had the biggest smile on his face. The young man radiances such positive energy. I can't begin to figure out how such a bright lad manages to work on your father's farm."

"I don't know how he does it either." Rin stirred her spoon in her soup. "Father isn't the kindest man, nor are the other helping hands, but Nero doesn't let it get to him. Every time I come home, he greets me as if he just had the best day of his life, even when he broke his toe the other day and could barely walk."

Something about Rin's tone must have given away something she didn't intend, for Brother Fukase stated, "You don't trust his joy and kindness."

"Nobody is that unconditionally kind, especially to me."

"Am I not unconditionally kind to you?"

"That's different. We have known each other for years. Nero and I met not even two weeks ago."

"Do you think he's playing some sort of game by being so kind to you?"

"Undoubtedly."

"So, are you ignoring his kindness then, or are you playing your own game as well?" When Rin didn't respond, Brother Fukase said, "That boy has taken quite the liking to you, Rin. I saw it the way he stole glances at you during service."

Rin froze with her sandwich halfway to her mouth. She hadn't realized Nero so much as looked in her direction while Brother Fukase preached.

"It's fine if you don't return the feelings or ever intend to," Brother Fukase said, setting his bowl aside and picking up the sandwich on his lap. "However, don't play games with him. The heart is so easy to break and so difficult to heal. Be honest with him, even if being honest means telling the poor soul you don't want anything to do with him. That will hurt less in the long run than stringing him along."

For a moment, Rin studied her sandwich, suddenly at a loss for appetite. Now Merli's suggestion to play along seemed so cruel.

"I understand," she muttered.

The feeling that overcame Rin wasn't fear of how Nero intended to hurt her. Instead she felt an immense wave of shame at holding him at arm's length when his interactions with her had always appeared nothing but genuine. Then a new fear arose at what would happen between them if Rin allowed herself to be friends with the one whose smile rivaled the shining sun itself.

Three coins. It was all Brother Fukase could spare for Rin's writing letters. Frankly, she had been overpaid for such a simple task, but it was still half of what she would normally return home had she worked in Mr. Anon's kitchen.

She didn't put any coins in her shoe.

Just as Rin expected, telling her father of her terminated employments did not go over well. Rin had offered to work on the farm instead so Leon wouldn't have to hire anymore help. The suggestion was eventually accepted, but not before Rin received new bruises to hide under her sleeves.

"What are ya doing here?" Nero asked when Rin entered the barn with nothing more than a hairbrush and a pile of blankets.

"I lost all four of my jobs today," Rin answered, staring at her toes.

Luki barked a laugh in the back of the barn. Rin could hear him muttering something to the others, but she tuned him out. He only had power to hurt Rin if she gave it to him.

Although thinking such didn't stop her skin from crawling.

Rin didn't want to look at Nero, and she especially didn't want to look at her father's other men to see Luki's smug face. Without seeing them, she sensed some of their eyes traveling up and down her form. If any of the men wanted to touch Rin someplace inappropriate, there was nothing stopping them. They knew as well as she did that her father didn't care. It had happened before. Rin didn't want to know how much further it could go now that she resided in the same building as they and the animals.

Swallowing, Rin stammered, "Fa-Father is having me work on the farm with you and the oth-others."

"I see," Nero said slowly, "but that doesn't explain why you're here."

"If I'm to work as a farm hand, I shall sleep as one. Father locked me out of my room and sent me here to make myself up a bed."

"But you're a lady! Ya shouldn't sleep in a barn filled with men."

"I'm a Juliet," Rin replied. "No law recognizes me as a lady. My choices are to either sleep here or sleep outside, and I can't imagine sleeping outside would be any better."

"You can make your bed right here!" Luki called out. The others shouted similar things, but Luki's voice drowned them all out. "You know I'll keep you warm."

Rin's stomach churned, and she suppressed the urge to vomit.

As Rin still stared at the ground, she didn't see Nero reach out to take the blankets from her arms. Her head snapped up to watch him climb the ladder to the second floor of the barn with his free arm while the other held her blankets tucked by his side. Rin looked to the men staring at her, Luki wearing that wolfish grin of his, and immediately followed Nero.

"What are you doing?" Rin climbed the last step and watched Nero pull a blanket off the mattress and set Rin's down in its place.

Instead of answering her, Nero told Rin to make her bed while he went to retrieve something. With a lack of something better to do, Rin made the bed. She didn't dare ask what Nero was doing and whose bed this was she now made.

When Nero returned, he had a hammer and a few nails in hand. He didn't speak as he picked up the blanket from before, moved to stand in front of Rin and the bed she made, and began nailing the blanket to the beam just above his head. Dumbstruck, Rin watched Nero strike the first nail into place before moving to the next.

"What are you doing?" Rin asked again, too surprised to believe what she was seeing.

"A lady needs her privacy, so I'm making her a curtain," Nero answered, not faltering in his hammering.

"Who's mattress is this?"

"Yours."

"Okay, whose was it before it was mine?"

"Mine."

"Where will you sleep?"

"By the foot of the ladder."

"But your blanket—"

"It's getting too warm for a blanket. I'll be fine, Rin."

As Rin watched Nero nail up the blanket, she scarcely found the words to speak. This was such a generous act of kindness, and it being aim towards her made it all the more confounding. There was nothing for Nero to gain by doing this for her. He was making a personal sacrifice without expecting anything in return. After he had finished, wished Rin a good night, and climbed down the ladder, Rin began to cry silent tears.

I really was foolish to ever doubt him. Rin thought after she had changed into her work clothes behind the privacy of her makeshift curtain and walked towards the ladder to see Nero sleeping at the foot of it. Peeking out the window near the top of the barn indicated that sunrise would come soon.

Not wanting to wait for the day to start before she did, Rin climbed down the ladder and carefully stepped over Nero's sleeping form. She knelt next to him and gently shook his shoulder.

"Nero?" she softly called.

"Hmm?" he answered, half asleep. Cracking open an eye, he asked, "Rin? What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, but I would like it very much if you would take a walk with me."

"Sure. Just give me a moment to change."

While Rin waited for Nero, she walked to the pump to wash her hands and face. With wet fingers, Rin cleaned through her shoulder length hair before tying it back with the twine she brought with her. It was as she swiped the bangs from her eyes that Nero joined her.

"How did ya sleep last night?" he asked as he washed his own hands, face, and neck.

"Better than expected," Rin answered. "I, uh . . . I wanted to thank you, for what you did last night. It was awfully kind of you to create some level of privacy for me, even at the cost of your own bed and blanket."

"It was the least I could do." Nero shook out his face. "I couldn't live with myself if I allowed a lady to be forced to be exposed like that."

"Please, stop calling me a lady." Rin began walking away. "My being the daughter of your employer does not give me any status over you. I am a Juliet and only a Juliet – I am no more than the oxen and cattle you and the others sleep beside."

"Cinderella, Alice, or Juliet, ya are still of the opposite sex," Nero said as he fell into step next to Rin. "I respect ya as a woman, regardless of caste."

"Don't respect me," Rin replied, fingers curling into fists. "You don't know how it feels to be put back in your place, even when it wasn't you who stepped out of line to begin with."

"I won't treat ya as an animal, if that's what ya want."

"It isn't about what I want. It's about what society will and won't accept from me."

"Rin."

Rin kept walking, even as Nero fell behind her. He had to shout her name twice more before she stopped and turned around.

"I can't treat ya as a lady, but I won't treat ya as an animal either," he stated so matter-of-factly Rin knew there was no arguing with him. Although he surprised her by saying, "Please, bear in mind that I'm not high status either. My father gambled away the family fortune then shot himself in the head. My mother, in turn, mourned so deeply she wasted away till there was nothing left. I come from worse than nothing and will always be nothing. In that regard, should I at the very least think of ya as my equal?"

The mere thought was so ludicrous, Rin barked a laugh. "No man wants to consider himself an equal to a Juliet."

"Stop thinking of your caste, Rin!" Nero exclaimed, frustrated. He ran his fingers through his shaggy main. "Ya are a person, not your tattoo. If that blood rose mattered to me even the slightest, I would not have extended a hand of friendship the day we met. Besides, I am not a man to judge a woman's caste when my own status is so low. Maybe in society we aren't equals, but yet in so many ways, we are. Why do you refuse to see that?"

Tears springing up anew, Rin shook her head and confessed, "I can't trust that you won't ultimately hurt me. Not when it's happened too many times for me to care to count."

Nero's demeanor softened.

"I won't hurt ya," he said.

"You can't promise that."

"I can promise that I will never intentionally hurt ya. Rin, I don't ever want to hurt ya. I care about ya."

Rin laughed in spite of her still falling tears. "How can you care about me? You barely know me."

"True," Nero agreed, "but I want to get to know ya. Seeing how we'll be working together now, it seems inevitable. The question is, will we work together as two people who can't be near each other, or will we work together as friends?"

Remembering Brother Fukase's words and the kindness Nero never failed to show her, Rin wiped her eyes, forced a smile onto her face, and said, "I suppose friends would be nice."

#Juliet and Cinderella #Broken Juliet #Kagamine Rin #Rin Kagamine #Akita Nero #Nero Akita #Rin X Nero #Nero X Rin #Rinero #Vocaloid fanfic

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queenslasharchive · 6 years ago

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Pretender To The Throne (Chapter 1: My Fairy King (1967-1976))

Rolling Stone: “In the early 1970s, when [girlfriend Mary] Austin suggested they have a child together, Mercury allegedly responded, ‘I’d rather have a cat.’”

Some of Sky’s earliest memories were of Queen songs.

Most were off-key (read: horrible) renditions sung by his mother, but the words were still the same.

“In the land where horses born with eagle wings And honey bees have lost their stings There’s singing forever, ooh yeah… Lion’s den with fallow deer And rivers made from wine so clear Flow on and on forever…

Dragons fly like sparrows thru’ the air And baby lambs where Samson dares To go on on on on on on…”

My Fairy King was his favorite, right from the moment it came out on shiny vinyl record, when he was just six years old. He had his own copy too, played it so hard and so often that it was scratched and worn to high heaven.

But it wasn’t the same without his mother to hold him close and sing terribly in the wrong key, flubbing up the transitions and cues. She always tried, he had to give her credit. It was her favorite too.

She liked all of the songs about Rhye.

“It reminds of your Daddy, Rhys.” She would whisper to him, as they huddled together on an old futon, in their gross one-room apartment, the black mold on the ceiling grew in funny ways reminiscent of the animal crackers she would often pack away in his lunch-kit. “He was My Fairy King.” She would look away, almost wistful for a moment, before covering his tiny body in kisses that made him squeal indignantly, desperately trying to bat her hands away.

“And you're My Fairy Prince!” She would say. “So I’m going to eat you all up! Sugar and spice and everything nice!"

Making monster noises as she tickled the everliving daylights out of him. He would laugh until he was crying and breathless, watery eyes staring up at her with cheeks flushed pink.

"No, Mama!” He would protest in mock-offense. “I’m a boy! Those are for girls!”

“Ah!” She would pause as if it were some great revelation. “Snips, snails and puppy-dog tails! …Oh no, that doesn’t sound anything like my little Prince Rhye at all!"

She named him Rhye after the make-believe world that his father had created in his youth.

According to her, he used to tell stories about it to anyone who would listen and sketch out the most beautiful scenes in the margins of his notebooks. They grew closer during his last days at Isleworth Polytechnic, right before he transferred to Ealing Art College in London. He was so gifted, so smart. They only shared a few classes together in a handful of months, but it was enough to leave her smitten. He was charismatic, beautiful and almost as otherworldly as the dreams he’d had for himself.

He’d had the most lovely smile, those protruding teeth that she’d always found so adorable, but that he’d always expressly hated.

She loved how Sky had inherited that same smile.

When his adult teeth came in and the sight alone made him cry, she told him he looked positively exquisite in their distinctness. (Sky thought he looked like even more of a sideshow freak).

Of all the things in life, that were either foisted upon him or lovingly given, he actually picked the nickname Sky.

Coined it as a toddler when Rhye was too hard to say, it was a made up name anyway. Only his mother (and then Cole in later years)was allowed to call him that, or any little pet-names derived from it. Rhys. Rhy-Guy. Prince Rhye…

Rhye Halley Bulsara. Named after a pretend land, a comet and a man who didn’t even know he existed.

But that was okay.

It was okay, because he always had his mother. She was his everything. She loved him for his weird eyes (that his classmates always made fun of without fail. Until they realized he knew all his math facts and could easily prove them stupid. Or you know, use his teeny tiny fists to cave their faces in) and the bulky teeth too big for his mouth. She loved him for his sparkly tutus over his stripey tights and brightly colored wellies, (that always found their way into the biggest puddles as they walked down the crowded streets of New York City). She loved him for the little songs he would make-up as he marched all his stuffed bears across the floor and the way he scrunched up his speckled nose when he laughed.

She loved him because he was her son in every ounce, not just his father’s prodigal.

She was also the strongest woman he ever knew.

A single mother at nineteen, working two dead-end jobs just to keep them afloat, no insurance to speak of, no money for anything better, and no family to help her.

Then she woke up one morning to find her nine-month-old baby turned ashen gray, and with a fever that boiled beneath his skin like a blazing hellfire. He went from being able to crawl fervently and tug himself into standing positions on furniture, with a gummy smile, to not being able to raise his own head.

Polio.

The Crippler of Children.

Within mere hours he couldn’t breathe on his own, eyes blown wide and lips a swollen sickening gray-blue, gums a bloodless white. Already wearing the guise of a corpse.

The doctors told his mother that he wouldn’t last the night. They even asked if a baptism and last rites were something she wanted.

Nineteen years old and she realized that there was no word for a parent who loses a child. A widower loses a wife, a widow loses a husband, an orphan loses their parents, but no one was ever meant to outlive their child.

She could’ve collapsed to pieces right then and there.

She could’ve just given up on him, like all the doctors and medical personnel who already had, and simply let him go. To join the ranks of the ghost children who’d died of the same crippling disease within the same beige walls of the fever hospital. Instead, Roberta Rhodes, affectionately called Birdy by all who knew her, demanded the best care for her child.

She held him tight as they shoved a needle through the narrow slats of his spine to collect infected fluid. She sang every song she knew until her throat was raw as they bundled him up in an child-sized iron-lung to breathe for him. It was the late 60s, the heyday of polio was over, but for those few still unvaccinated, it never ended.

Sky, the tiny boy that they told her wouldn’t last the night, lived till morning.

And then he did it again and again and again.

The full-body paralysis set in after ten days of being at death’s door and the coming back was rough. It was months before he regained the use of his lungs independently. Longer still until his arms were back under his control.

He celebrated his first birthday in the hospital, looking eagerly at the fireworks that lit up the night sky, just outside his window. The next three birthdays were very much the same. Only for his third birthday: he got crutches, a hard plastic back-brace, and leg braces from his toes to his hips. Braces that had to be changed as he grew, lest they rip open his skin while he hobbled along.

He drew pictures and finger-painted across his chest plates, a million smiling sunflowers and bright hand prints adorned each and every one. The beginnings of his love for art.

By four, all he needed were the leg braces and the crutches. By six it was just the leg braces and within a few months, not even those anymore. The countless painful surgeries to release the tight bits and replace the dead tissue in his legs worked wonders. Of course they also left scars that puckered and resembled the limbs of a stitched up voodoo doll, but they worked.

He could run and jump and play, just like the rest of the children on the block.

He could bounce around in puddles with his brightly colored wellies and be a prince with a toy crown and a scepter made of cardboard and pipe-cleaners. A style he would never really grow out of… something only furthered by the fact he always got at least one toy crown or tiara for his birthday each year.

”My fairy king can see things… He rules the air and turns the tides That are not there for you and me Ooh yeah, he guides the winds… My fairy king can do right and nothing wrong…“

His eyes changed after the polio.

They had always been heterochromic, two different colors. The right, a sharp cerulean reminiscent of his namesake, the left, a rich chocolate brown like melted down Hershey’s bars. Hard and soft, all at once.

His mother had always found his eyes charming, a little piece of her and a little piece of his father. But after the polio, they changed. His pupils, the round little black discs in the center of his irises, exploded. They went from uniformly tiny circles to starbursts, with ragged edges stretched across both irises. The doctor who examined his eyes said that he’d never seen anything like it before, but that it was likely a birth defect. She just hadn’t noticed it beforehand.

That was a lie, as she had spent countless days and nights after his birth just staring at him. Trying to catalogue each and every feature. Nose? Hers. Skin tone? Hers. Cheek bones? Freddie’s. Hair? A mix of them both, her unruly curls with Freddie’s coloring. Eyelashes? Freddie’s.

Those beloved eyes had never had starbursts within them before.

But it was more than just his appearance.

It was what he could see with those eyes and do with the things he saw, that made all the difference…

The nurse had thick curly black hair like his own, big blue-gray eyes and wore a different outfit than the rest of them on the ward, hers looked older somehow, as if she’d come straight out of a sepia photograph. Wearing a strange bent flyaway cap on her head, one that did little to cover up much of anything at all. She would hum to herself quietly as she straightened up the blankets on his bed. But if he stared too long, the edges of her habit would darken and curl upwards, sparks flying and dying in front of his eyes.

He saw her a few times, but they never spoke.

Her lungs had been scorched into veritable ash by the fire that had sent the fever hospital into ruin during the early 1920s, they’d had to rebuild it from the ground up. So she wouldn’t have been able to speak to him anyway.

It was the first time he saw The Dead walk.

But it wasn’t the last.

His mother would hold him by the hand and tug him along when they walked through the city.

She had to, lest he stop to talk to those nice boys on the corner who’d died in the Revolutionary War, or the young Italian immigrant girl hovering around the flower shop, who’d lost her life in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, not even that little girl huddled in the gutter with her sallow skin and soiled a white dress, who’d succumbed to a turn-of-the-century Yellow Fever epidemic.

His mother never saw the spirits, but the fact that he did was enough for her to believe in them.

Birdy Rhodes, being the exhausted young woman she was, with fine yet incorrigible blonde curls that would slip from her bun after a long waitressing shift and a childhood touch of magic that never quite left her; would never make her son feel like he was a freak for any of the things he could do or any of the things he couldn’t.

She just loved him with everything she had and did her best to be everything he needed her to be. Hell, she would’ve given him the whole world if it had been hers to give. As it stood, the best she could offer was a grand old name and all the blossoming love in her heart.

Sky may not have had the greatest clothes or technology or living arrangements or even a father, but he had love. Even in those early years, he’d had love.

From his mother, the center of his whole universe.

From the young couple who ran a small records store on 7th Avenue.

They always saved copies of the latest Queen records for the small family and either sold them the vinyl at a dirt-cheap price or gave them to him and his mother for free.

Surely they saw the same very distinctive teeth on him as they did on the frontman of the British band, the same cheekbones, the same dark hair, the same fledgling face shape. They knew. They had to have known. But they never said anything about it. Never called the newspapers or prodded with uncomfortable questions. They just loved. And gave some of that burgeoning love to him and his mother.

From the spirits who sought him out for comfort.

Apparently being earthbound was a fate worse than death. It was tantamount to living in a world full of muted grays and emptiness, except for people like him. Lighthouses, one spirit told him, a boy with the glassy eyes and hoarse voice of a diphtheria death, you’re like a shining lighthouse in a storm. You come in color, all warm oranges and yellows turned gold.

So a flashlight, he surmised.

From his Cole.

Coltrane Brennan was an Irish kid turned American expat, named after the great American saxophone player and the only reason Sky learned about his real Gift at all. The seeing dead people thing was only part of it. The easier part.

As it turned out, he could give out just as much love as he got, just in a different way. Cole taught him that.

Cole was the first.

It all started: with a bully stealing Sky’s ratty sketchbook as he sat quietly on the swings, scribbling away.

It ended: with Cole holding said sketchbook aloft, blood streaming from his nose and mouth, as well as a nasty cut on his forehead near his hairline, yet with a smile alight in sweet victory.

The bully lay crumpled in the dirt.

It also ended with Cole joining him, as Sky snatched back his sketchbook and planted one leg-braced orthotic shoe on the chubby blonde’s chest. A tiny six-year-old black-haired devil child who grit his ever-prominent buck teeth and hissed with pure venom: "Don’t you ever fight my battles for me again, Coltrane Brennan. Or I’ll knock your teeth in."

"You’d know all about teeth wouldn’t you?” Cole had wheezed, all two years older and indignant, a flush high in his cheeks.

Then he uttered those few accursed words: “Are you sure you aren't an elephant? You’ve got tusks just like one!…And those weirdo eyes to match!"

By the time a flustered teacher came to drag them both to the principal’s office, Cole was bleeding even more profusely than before and Sky was smiling smugly, two fistfuls of blonde hair in his grasp and one of Cole’s front-teeth embedded in his denim jeans.

They sat outside the office in silence, with only a small hard-backed chair between them. The only interruptions to the stillness were the squeak of Sky’s braces when he swung his legs off the ground or Cole’s pathetic sniffling as he tried to staunch the flow of blood from his face. Sky was scowling, still resolute in his righteous fury and absolution. Until he realized Cole wasn’t just sniffling from the blood…

He was crying.

Instantaneous guilt burnt in Sky’s chest like he’d swallowed a lit match, and poof, all the anger and indignation was gone. A rarity for him.

"Are you crying…?” He asked, softly.

But the moment Cole realized he’d been found out, he instantly straightened up in the stiff uncomfortable seat and turned away, as if pretending it was nothing at all. He snorted and scrubbed at his face with the one hand that wasn’t full of crumpled up bloody tissues. His voice shook when he spoke, wavering and hoarse. Damning evidence of the tears that boys like them just couldn’t admit.

“I'm not crying! Only babies cry! Little crippled babies just like you!"

Sky recoiled, his scowl deepening as the red-eyed older boy carried on running his mouth. "I told them not to steal your drawing stuff, cause there’s just no point really. You're soppy and sad enough as it is, without them messing with you…” Cole only managed to button his lips when there was a familiar fist pressing just under his swollen nose, against his chapped lips.

“I swear to God I’ll knock another one out if you don’t quit it! I’m not a crip and I’m not a baby, and don’t you ever forget it.” Sky spat, his funky eyes turned caustic.

It only abated as he forced himself to apologize. Temper having run away from him once again. It was his most adamant personality trait.

“But I am sorry about earlier... Thanks for getting my sketchbook back, I guess.” He bit his bottom lip and couldn’t look the older boy in the eyes.

“…Do you wanna see what I was drawing?“

Cole paused, then nodded. Curiosity alight in his green eyes.

Sky reached for where the teacher had roughly deposited both their backpacks, probably assuming they would be either sent home or in the office for a while, his ratty sketchbook was sitting on top. Hastily flung across both sacks as if the woman had no idea who it had belonged to. He dug through the heavily lined and crinkled pages to find his most recent creation.

”Oh.“ Cole leaned over to see properly. "That’s… really good actually."

Sky quirked an eyebrow. "Were you expecting something bad?”

“No! I just…” He peered even closer, almost close enough to brush his fingers across, but he didn’t dare. “It’s like a grown-up did it. Did you copy it from someplace?"

The younger boy shook his head. Looking down at the scene he’d drawn, a fairy Queen of spring with lush curls and a smile as she sat upon a mushroom cap, her gossamer wings folded beneath her and a tiara made of tree branches and new leaves twisted in her hair. She was looking up at her King, he was dressed in wintertime clothes, snowflakes adorned his cape and the winds brought life to his frosted wings. He was cold and still, with long dark hair and piercing dark eyes. She looked like the growth of new life, he looked like the one who took it all away. But still, they reached for each other.

"It’s the king and queen of Rhye."

He whispered, knowing very well that Rhye fell to ruin.

Good things didn’t stay.

He felt something warm fall on his hand and noticed a few ruddy droplets of blood. Cole was bleeding still, the older boy quickly turned away, sniffling back into the tissues as if that were somehow going to do the trick. ”Sorry…“ He mumbled, shame and embarrassment coloring in the contours of his voice.

"How bad is it? Let me see."

Sky commanded, sounding petulant as he reached out his hands. He gently caught Cole’s chin in one, then jumped back on recoil, like he’d just been electrocuted.

The moment he’d touched Cole’s sticky skin, desperate to see how bad it was so that he could make him feel better, his hand had felt like he’d stuck it into an open lit flame. It burned like holding the sun. He even flipped over his hand to gawk at his palm, certain that there had to be some kind of acid burn there or something.

There was nothing.

"What the bleeding heck was that?!” Cole squealed, pulling the tissues back from his face. His nose and mouth had aptly stopped bleeding. Even the cut on his forehead had stopped. As if the faucet of the gaping maw had run dry.

“You burned me!"

Cole looked incredulous at the accusation. "No I didn’t! You burned me!"

"Nuh uh!"

"Yeah huh!"

Then Cole’s expression changed, it turned surprised instead of upset, as his tongue poked at the inside of his cheek. "It's gone...” He whispered, wondrously. Looking at Sky with new eyes.

“What’s gone?"

"When you punched me, I bit a whole chunk out of my cheek! It’s why my mouth was bleeding so bad!” He took hold of the right side of his mouth and tried valiantly to flip it inside-out so that Sky could see. The younger boy couldn’t see anything except for spit and pink healthy skin.

“I don't see anything…"

"That’s the point! It’s gone…” He flipped it back over with eyes wide. “Gone.” He stressed again, as if Sky had missed it the first time. “Can mouths heal that fast?” Sky just shrugged, rubbing at his palm where the burn would’ve been, it tingled and itched, fingers twitching to do something else. Though he wasn’t quite sure what.

“How should I know?” He grumbled. “I’m not a doctor, I'm six."

He swung his creaky braced legs back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, trying to drown out the world. Cole stopped him with a hand on top of his own. Green eyes met his own strange ones. "Touch me again.” Sky furrowed his brows tight.

“What?"

”Touch me again!“ Cole demanded, jutting out his bottom lip. Sky rolled his eyes and did as requested, pressing his hand against Cole’s chin again. There was nothing. No burn, no toasting warmth or electric shock. Nothing at all. Cole frowned, disappointed as he reached up to touch the gaping slit on his forehead, still as garish as before. What he needed were some stitches, or some wound glue or something. "No!" He whined. "Do it like before!”

“I did." No, he didn’t.

He covered his stupid horse teeth with his hand and closed his eyes. I want Cole to feel better. I’m sorry for hurting him. It was a mistake. I’m sorry. I want to make him feel better. I’m sorry! He slammed his other hand against Cole’s chest. So hard that the older boy gave off a slight oomph. Fire burned between them. Like lightning against a black sky, everything was illuminated for just an instant. He saw spiderwebs of light scorch themselves across the backs of his eyelids, his mouth was full of ash. His nose was full of the stench of burning rubber.

When he finally let go and released his mouthful of air, he half expected smoldering embers to come out instead.

He blinked back into reality to find Cole staring at him slack-jawed, tissues turned limp in his hand. There was dried blood on his face, sure. But no burns. No swollen nose, no bruises, no black-eye and no cut on his forehead. It was almost like they had never been there at all.

”Whoa.“ They whispered at the same time, two pairs of eyes stretched wide as saucers.

He described the whole thing to his mother that night. She sipped her gross watery diner coffee and just listened. He ate pancakes covered in sprinkles and whipped cream. Wearing his plastic toy crown and sunset orange tights under his oversized yellow bumblebee sweater and clunky braces.

When he couldn’t talk anymore, she leaned over and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

"Mama, am I a freak?"

"No, baby."

"Then why can do the things I can do?"

She paused.

"Did you know that there’s a type of plankton, little tiny bits of fish, algae and debris in the ocean, that can glow in the dark? It's bioluminescent. They’re found in the Maldives, on this tiny little island. They call it The Sea of Stars.”

She had the same far-off look in her eyes that she did when she talked about his father. “Daddy seahorses give birth instead of mommies. Baby turtles are born knowing exactly what they have to do and where they have to go. Then they go back to the same spot to start the cycle all over again.

…Sometimes fall leaves change color to orange, sometimes yellow, sometimes red and sometimes not at all.

Your father and I, managed to make a perfect little boy and now he’s sitting right in front of me."

Her hands cupped his chin and there was no scent of sulfur or burning.

"All those things are miracles." She pressed another kiss to his cheek. "There will always be magic in the world, my little Prince. So enjoy it when and where you find it."

Cole was his best-friend from that day onward.

In every one of his scenes drawn in smudgy pencil or old pastels, there was a new face. A young blonde knight, a yellow dragon, and a sword held aloft beside his own.

Three years passed quickly, even faster than those he’d spent in the sanitarium/fever hospital.

Three years of pictures with the camera Cole got for his ninth birthday.

They used up so many rolls of film that it was hilarious. They never had their pictures on time. It would be months upon months before they got around to getting a recent roll developed and by then it wasn’t so recent anymore.

Cole’s mother would give him free piano lessons every Thursday and Friday, desperate for anyone who was even remotely gifted at it. As Cole, despite his namesake’s musical prowess, was as tone-deaf as they came.

Cole’s father loved listening to the music they made together, and even insisted on imparting some special knowledge on the boys himself.

He taught them how to dance.

But not just any kind of dancing, traditional Irish dances that made him feel like his feet were flying.

Suddenly the little boy, who’d spent his childhood in heavy cumbersome leg-braces, could keep up and do even better than someone without his painful history or messed-up scarred legs. He suddenly found beauty in a part of himself that he’d always hated, and it was because of Mr. Brennan.

He promised to take them both to a Ceili in Ireland when they were older. Where they could dance with more than just him or each other.

Luckily, because of Brooklyn’s burgeoning Irish community, they were in a few tiny competitions for step-dance, usually performing together and placing high. It was a running Brennan family joke that Sky was actually more Irish than the lot of them. With his skill in the dances, his ability to pick them up so quickly, that mop-top of jet black curls and porcelain skin envied by most of the dancing girls, he looked more like a boy come fresh from the Cliffs of Moher than a mix of Scandinavian and Persian. Not to mention how quickly he picked up a working knowledge of Irish Gaelic.

But when they weren’t in lessons or at school, they were laying sprawled on their bellies in the library, flipping through old musty books and sometimes reading aloud to one another.

Sky’s favorites were The Scarlet Pimpernel, Little Women, The Grimm Brothers’ Fairytales, Alice in Wonderland and Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairytales and Stories.

Cole’s were Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Edgar Allen Poe’s Complete Works, Carrie and 'Salem’s Lot.

He was pretty sure half of Cole’s horror obsession was rooted in trying to understand Sky and his assorted oddities. Or his Gifts as his mother and Cole liked to call them.

One afternoon, as they were flopped on the floor next to each other, legs kicked up and resting on the shelves. Fingers intertwined where nobody else could see, behind the stacks where they were by themselves. Cole regaled him with yet another half-baked theory.

"What if you’re a witch!"

Sky couldn’t help but laugh out-loud, but because it was a library, he tried to be quiet by just snorting into his free palm.

"No, really!" Cole squawked indignantly, waving his free hand around emphatically. "What if that’s why you can heal and see dead people! Sky, you’re downright spooky! You gotta be!” He looked over eagerly, probably hoping to see a revelation dawning in his best-friend’s eyes, instead what he saw was the younger boy practically dying of his own withheld laughter.

“Rhys…” He whined, plaintively, but the boy in question could only grin impishly.

“Sorry, Cole…” He hiccuped through his muffled laughter. “That sounds groovy and everything, but this isn’t an episode of Bewitched!”

He snickered again and Cole stuck out his tongue to blow him a raspberry.

Sky wasn’t exactly sure when his feelings for Cole became more than just best-friend feelings.

He knew that Cole was a boy and that a lot of people didn’t like it when boys had feelings for other boys. But what he felt for his best-friend didn’t feel like a bad thing. It was good. It felt warm and happy and safe.

They didn’t hold hands until they were by themselves. But he was pretty sure his mother knew, she just didn’t mind it. She would look at them fondly as they played buck-buck and stickball with the neighborhood kids and spent all night talking together afterwards, flopping onto and cramming into their one mattress, like sardines in a can.

She was just happy he was loved.

Cole’s parents likely suspected something as well. But Mrs. Brennan still gave Sky free piano lessons with a genuine silky smile on her face and Mr. Brennan would still eagerly teach them both how to play soccer, as well as dance.

Then they would have weekend tournaments. Mr. Brennan would race over and sweep both of them up into his hairy arms when he wanted to score without little feet getting in the way. Sky so often shrieked with joy and childhood abandon in those days, as he was held over the stocky Irishman’s shoulder for so long that his blood whooshed loudly in his ears.

He was loved.

It didn’t matter by who, or what, it just mattered that it happened. He was loved.

Then predictably… everything all went to shit.

Rhye fell, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

“Ah, then came man to savage in the night To run like thieves and to kill like knives To take away the power from the magic hand To bring about the ruin to the promised land, aah, aah…”

Sudden. Cardiac. Death.

Those were the three words a kind-eyed grandfatherly doctor told him at the hospital. His birthday was in just two days. He was turning nine on January 1st and wanted to see the smoggy sky full of lights once again, to see the ball drop in Time Square. But what did it matter…

Now that his whole world was dead and gone?

He’d been playing with Cole out in the snow that day, New York City was beautiful in the wintertime.

While he was making snow-angels, his mother had collapsed to the thinly carpeted floor of their studio apartment. As his little hands packed together fluffy snowballs with the same kind of pressure she likely felt in her chest, her heart beat erratically. He and Cole caught snow flurries on their tongues and compared the shapes caught in their soft mittened hands, while his mother’s heart stopped. He remembered blinking up at the overcast snowy sky above and grinning a toothy smile. While his mother’s organs stopped getting oxygen and the tissues died.

By the time ash filled his mouth and hellfire blazed beneath his skin, it was too late.

He was up and running towards the apartment without even a word to Cole, who chased after him, calling his name with concern alight in those Emerald Isle eyes. Shadows were flickering in the corners of Sky’s vision, and the present ghosts were all staring at him solemnly, even the spirits he had considered his friends. Their sadness was strangling him and he could barely breathe. Their hands reached for him, sporting vast empty holes where eyes would’ve gone. For the first time, he was genuinely afraid.

Your mother, your mother, your mother, your mother…

Their whispers followed him like a burial shroud. No matter how fast he ran, he couldn’t escape them.

“Prince Rhye? Rhys? Jesus, what’s wrong?!“ Cole yelled, forgetting just how fast Sky was without the braces and crutches. The snow was far too heavy to run through. "What did you see?! Sky!” He screeched.

Sky raced up the steps of his apartment building, nearly slipping over the edge numerous times and giving Cole mini heart-attacks as he did so. He threw open his front door and then…

Everything went horribly, frighteningly, devastatingly… quiet.

“They turn the milk into sour Like the blue in the blood of my veins Why can’t you see it? Fire burning in hell with the cry of screaming pain! Son of heaven set me free and let me go…

Sea turn dry, no salt from sand, Seasons fly no helping hand, Teeth don’t shine like pearls for poor man’s eyes, aah…”

There were fireworks on his birthday. The ball dropped in Time Square.

Just like every year, no matter what happened in his life, there was always a party.

That just happened to be the morning his mother was buried.

The snow held no joy for him anymore. The sky was gray, the ground was white and his heart was somewhere beneath the frozen dirt. The only reason he got through the miserable funeral at all, was the feeling of Cole’s arms around him, Mrs. Brennan humming Für Elise under her breath, and Mr. Brennan scooping him up to carry him out of the graveyard like small child. He buried his face in the Irishman’s stubbly neck and Mr. Brennan just rubbed his back sadly, whispering the story of Tír na nÓg.

Sky had just assumed that he would be with them afterwards.

The Brennans were not rich by any means, they all lived in the poor Irish/Immigrant bit of Brooklyn, but they had more than enough to feed another mouth. They had a place in their hearts for another son. A place in their modest home. A place in their lives.

They’d already taken him in, both mentally and physically, during that first night in the hospital. When it was confirmed that Birdy Rhodes had left this world.

But it was not to be.

Social Services came a-knocking on the very night of his birthday. To inform them all of its lovely archaic practices, which dictated that it didn’t matter how much the Brennans wanted to take care of Sky. Or how much Cole didn’t want to lose his best-friend (and perhaps more).

It simply read that if there was a living parent, the care of the child had to go to their living parent. And if that parent was somehow unfit, then it would take a miracle for him to be placed with them again. A miracle that would take years to come to fruition.

What that meant was, on the day after his birthday and the burial of his mother, Sky would be torn from their lives like a misplaced postage stamp. All packaged up and put on a plane to another country, where he would then be dumped on the father he’d never met. Who didn’t even know he existed. They didn’t see any issues with that at all.

Sky, or Rhye as his social-worker insisted on calling him, who was oft a well-behaved child (Ha!) unless pressed the wrong way, screamed and wailed like a banshee as he was dragged away from the Brennans and everything he knew.

Tiny, puffy-eyed, wearing rumpled hand-me-down pajamas and his current favorite toy crown gifted to him by Cole the night before, paired with an acidic scowl.

He refused to change when prompted and buried his face in his single overfilled rucksack whenever given a command.

His caseworker tried to placate him the whole flight, giving him snacks and little crafts to do. Write down everything you want your father to know about you, sweetheart! Make him a little card! But to no avail. He’d never even left New York City, let alone been on a plane and he couldn’t even bring himself to enjoy the experience. It was horrifying. Not even drawing or the smell of a few Brennan shirts that he’d borrowed could make things any better. He was like a small boat drifting away from his moorings. Something untethered to the earth or to anything at all.

You could’ve healed her if you’d been there. His inner voice chastised him mercilessly. What’s the use of having a Gift like that if you can’t even save the ones you love? If you can’t even save yourself?

He spent the night at the American Embassy in London, sleeping on a few uncomfortable chairs pushed together to make some sort of semblance of a bed.

The officials were trying to get in contact with his father. Something made remarkably difficult by the fact that he was a celebrity and a deathly private celebrity at that. Who had body guards and people trained specifically to avoid the paparazzi and crazy fans at all costs.

He cried himself to sleep that night, jet-lagged and sick with grief. Wishing he was back in New York City, on his shitty shared mattress but still held tight in his mother’s gentle embrace. I love you, my little Prince Rhye. I love you so much.

Not even singing to himself helped. He just cried even harder.

It felt strange not to take solace in the few emotions he understood, like indignation and anger.

“Someone, someone has drained the colour from my wings… Broken my fairy circle ring And shamed the king in all his pride Changed the winds and wronged the tides…

Mother Mercury… Mercury… Look what they’ve done to me! I cannot run, I cannot hide…”

Nothing was right anymore, everything was broken into bits and no matter how hard he tried to put them back together again, it was to no avail.

It was incurably eviscerated.

His life and his heart.

All Sky could do was cry.

#fic #submission #au #freddie: parent #5-10k #series: pretender to the throne #author: brooklynbugleboy #relationship: platonic #theme: parenting #theme: death

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baifapackaging · 3 years ago

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Why every girl should have her own cosmetic bag？

Every girl should have her own cosmetic bag

Why do we need a cosmetic bag?

Whenever I first started learning makeup, I focused all my attention on makeup products. In other words, which foundation liquid makes your face skin look more natural? which eye shadow makes your eyes look more beautiful? and which cream makes your skin look smooth and shiny……. I went on a shopping spree for cosmetics and this is what you see on my desk.

Clutter is the word that comes to many people’s mind when they first see this desktop. Occasionally, I want to throw my makeup away when I lo ok at this table. Many people may say, “Don’t you clean up your desk? “Actually, I did. However, after a while, it looked like this picture again.

It was then that I began to realize how important a makeup bag was to me! Instead of letting my makeup lie around my desk, I need a makeup bag to keep it in. My desk also began to become more tidy and had more room for other items, such as my professional books….

Where can you buy a cosmetic bag?

Transparent Hologram Toiletry Bag for Lady

This is the makeup bag I bought for the first time. Unique and fashion design, transparent colors vary with light Change, cosmetic Bag will glow under the sunlight. The surface made of vinyl is not easy to be scratched and wrinkled, which well maintains the shape of the cosmetic bag. This cosmetic bag is waterproof and easy to clean. Non-toxic and odourless, safe to use.

But don’t forget, makeup bags also need to be updated. So we need to change our makeup bag frequently, which is also a kind of protection for our beloved cosmetics.

Ladies should like the above cosmetic bag, but some may think it is too floral. It is better to have a transparent cosmetic bag. When you use a transparent cosmetic bag, you can clearly and accurately locate your cosmetics, which can save you a lot of time.

Two-Tone Cube PVC Leisure Toiletry Bag

These zippered clear toiletry hand bags are perfect for depositing cosmetics & toiletries, underwear, socks, charger, power bank, mobile phone and other travel essentials. Great for travelling, camping, stadium activities and beach vacation. Reinforced stitching and vinyl materials can keep these pouches durable and long lasting usage in variety of events . The see-through design ensure you can see everything packed inside and also ensure the security staffs check the items quickly. The reinforced handle will make it easy to grab bag out of a suitcase. Heavy-duty and well-constructed zipper make your items safer to store.

Simply use a damp cloth or tap water to clean, then allow to air-dry as needed.

Small and exquisite cosmetic bags

In addition, we also have some small and exquisite cosmetic bags. Like this one .

Sequin Glitter Cosmetic Bag

the surface of our glitter cosmetic bag is made of two-color reversible sequins, and inside is made of soft polyester. Wonderful design: the sequins are reversible, flip the sequin, it will turn into another color. You can flip the sequins into different pattern，glitter surface can be very popular among kids, zipper design for opening and closing, convenient and durable, tight sealing to prevent items from slipping out. Widely application: it is easy to carry to any place. People can use it as a cosmetic bag, phone bag, party evening bag, travel bag, purse and so on. Nice gift: It is a beautiful and eye-catching cosmetic bag that is the perfect gift for young girls and women. It can serve as birthday gift, Halloween gift, graduation gift .

Order them in bulk

Therefore, every woman should have one or more makeup bags for your occasional needs. In addition, our company supports customized products. You can customize a makeup bag according to your own preferences. You can customize the current or future most popular bags according to the current fashion trend and order them in bulk.

If you are interested in our products, you can contact us through [email protected].

#makeup bag #business #promotional products #marketing #bag #advertising #cosmetic bag #gift #birthday #vacation #party

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jocelynships · 6 years ago

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The lovely @selfinserts tagged me to do a thing so y’all are finally gonna get to know some stuff about me

Rules: tag 10 mutuals you’d like to get to know better

Star sign: Gemini

Name: Jocelyn

Height: 4′8

Put your iTunes or Spotify on shuffle. what are the first 4 songs that popped up?

Okay so this is from my 80s playlist since I only listen to this playlist so here:

1. Kiss Me Deadly - Lita Ford

2. Every Rose Has it’s Thorn - Poison

3. Dr. Feelgood - Motley Crue

4. Give It Up - KC and the Sunshine Band

Have you ever had a poem or song written about you? Nah but if someone ever does I’ll die on the spot

When was the last time you played guitar? I never actually played but back when I was in middle school my youth pastor taught me a few chords and let me play them but I have played since. It would be rad to play guitar or an instrument tho

Who is your celebrity crush? I have a huge crush on Paul Stanley and I think the other members of KISS were kinda hot when they were younger sooooooo... pls don’t roast me I got a thing for guys who have long hair and wear makeup

What’s a sound you hate and a sound you love? I can’t stand the sound of people scratching against like vinyl I think it is?? Like what school binders are made out of or some bean bags? And I love the sound of rock music or water moving!

Do you believe in ghosts? I’m pretty sure ghosts are real bc both me and my dad have seen weird things

How about aliens? HELL YEAH! Take me away space dudes

Do you drive? Nope, insurance is too expensive but I want to

What was the last book you read? I’m still reading it it it’s a KISS biography called The Making of KISS or something like that I can’t remember the exact name whoops

Do you like the smell of gasoline? I’m neutral on it

What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had? I can’t remember bc I never got a really bad injury? I guess when I accidentally cut my forearm from like my wrist to my elbow on my bed when I was like 5 or 6? It wasn’t too bad I didn’t need stitches but there was a lot of blood

Do you have any obsession right now? I HAVE LIKE 3. I’m obsessed with 70s and 80s shit (I rlly like KISS in case you couldn’t tell but I swear it’s not a creepy thing I just like their music a lot), Marvel esp. X-Men, and now My Hero Academia

Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong? Depends on who it is. I kinda have a grudge against my mm that I really should drop since it’s not doing me any good

In a relationship? Nah but I don’t want one rn so it’s good

I tag uuuhhhhhh whoever wants to do this

#about me

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droneseco · 4 years ago

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AndaSeat Jungle Series Is a Great Gaming Chair for the Price

AndaSeat Jungle Series Gaming Chair

8.00 / 10

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