#then the remaining 6 have some fucks to give so they put that effort into powerpoint.

[aussieaspecforces]

i agree.

back to the spirit of this post, chaos: no me and my procrastination on any and all not compulsory writing projects will stay besties forever, so i am going to pretend this is about me editing my english speech bc i need to do that.

>:3

[wood-white-writer]

“Didn’t mean to make your heart Blue” || [9/…]

— OPLA!Buggy x F!Reader

“And I know no one will save me, I just need someone to kiss.

Give me one good honest kiss and I’ll be alright.”

— Mitski, “Nobody”

Pairing: Buggy the Clown (Live Action) x F!Reader

Parts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

Summary: You were an apprentice of Gol D. Roger’s crew in your youth, long before his eventual demise. Along with the Red-Haired Shanks and Buggy, you were a formidable trio; the embodiment of a new generation of pirates yet to come. But times changed, and so did you and your friends.  In which there is lost affections, mentions of the past, and re-bonding over a bath. Unshared thoughts and feelings of regret return from years of negligence, and whereas some aspects remain buried, others have a chance to resurface from the depths.

Warnings: fem!reader, LA!Verse, slight canon divergence, morally grey reader, mentions of violence and blood, dual-pov (though primarily Buggy's), Buggy being a simp, implications of Buggy being a horny simp

A/N: AND HERE WE ARE! FINALLY, AFTER SO MANY WEEKS, THE NEW CHAPTER IS UP! Seriously, I want to thank you all for your immense patience and support. As I mentioned in a previous post, work has been hectic as hell and I know I wrote that this chapter would hopefully be finished last week, but life took its toll. Hopefully, you'll enjoy this chapter, though I myself have mixed feelings about it.

INCLUDES SOME SELF-MADE SKETCHES AT THE BOTTOM, so you’re warned

The sun warms your face as you breathe in the fresh scent of the sea. You’re lounging on deck, hands folded behind your head and feet hanging over the railings in a rather peculiar position, but you’re perfectly content.

Luffy benched you for the rest of the voyage to Arlong Park, a decision you initially found insulting to no short degree. Well, maybe benched is not the right term to use, but more like “I don’t want you to die, and I think you need to relax this once”.

You had argued that no, you’re fine and the love bites Arlong left you are nothing compared to the marks Mihawk left on Zoro, and he’s still up and about as usual.

But Luffy is firm about his decision, and what the Captain says goes.

So, here you are, enjoying some quiet all while letting your wounds heal, and it seems that nothing can hope to put an end to this ambiance that is—

“HEY! THERE ‘YA ARE!”

…. You spoke too soon. Way too soon.

A shadow falls over your face like a curtain and blocks the view of the sun. A shadow belonging to - you make a lucky guess - a severed head that’s been talking for way longer than a severed head typically should, in your experience.

You open one lazy eye to pinpoint the exact perpetrator and see a bright red dot staring down at you from Usopp’s grip.

Buggy winks at you, making those mildly irritating clink-clink noises.

“I can’t stand it anymore,” Usopp grumbles. “You take him! He’s annoying and keeps telling me my nose is too long!”

“Because it is, you shidiot!”

“It’s average!”

“That’s what your mom said!”

“You keep my mom’s name out of your mouth, you psychotic, fucking—!”

“Be quiet.”

Both the clown and the slingshot simultaneously shut their mouths before things have a chance to escalate on a non-verbal scale, and you take this as a sign that your break is officially over and buried ten feet under.

Stretching your arms out loud enough to pop a few vertebrae, you shift to lean your back against the railing and give both boys an unimpressed look-over, like a disappointed mother having caught both of her children in the act of something. “It’s too early for you to be making a ruckus.”

“It’s 11 am,” Usopp points out.

“Still too early.” Deciding that you’d rather not deal with this with more effort than you’re willing to spend, you return to your previous position. “Leave the head, or don’t. Just let me rest.”

“Fine by me.”

With a thud and an “OW FUCK!”, Usopp unceremoniously drops the clown and forgoes his Buggy-sitting duties to do whatever he wants to do, leaving you to pick up the slack.

A string of curses flow from Buggy’s mouth, which you only vaguely pay attention to. There was something along the lines of “Long-nosed asshat,” and “Right on the nose”, but you abandon all interest in favor of feeling the sun on your cheek.

“So…” you hear him jump a little closer. “Alone at last.”

You don’t answer.

“What? Don’t give me that! I thought we were good!”

You remain selectively mute.

“Hey! Don’t ignore me! I don’t like it!”

“You survived it for twenty years. I’m sure you can stand it for a few more minutes.”

“…. Seriously?”

“Mhmm.”

You don’t know what possesses him, but he keeps quiet for most of the next thirty minutes, and you take the time to continue basking in the sun. 

It’s a luxury you can rarely afford, and you’ll be damned if it gets ruined now or all time, least of all by him. You’re not going to even open the can of worms that is last night’s events, so you lock it in a chest to be dug up for another day. 

Not now. It won't be that long until you reach Arlong Park, and shit will go down. This might be the only chance you get to replenish your strength and gods do you need it now more than ever.

"… Hey?” Buggy starts.

You let him decide whether to perceive your silence as an opening or a locked door.

“I’m bored.”

“Tough.”

“Can’t we do something else?”

“We could fish. Your head might serve as a good bait.” Despite yourself, your lip tugs a little in what is supposed to be a halfway smirk. The image of Buggy dangling above the shark-infested waters from a hook to his bandana would be an entertaining sight to behold.

He swallows audibly. “Was that a joke?”

“Keep bothering me and we’ll find out soon enough.”

“C’mon! Don’t be like that! Seriously, I’m bored! Ain’t much you can do when you’re just a head… except to give one, but that’s beside the point.”

Too much detailing, you think. He wants entertainment of any kind; you want peace and quiet. What to do and how to kill two birds with one stone? You open one eye and let it drift over to Buggy, who in turn is staring intently at you. 

In the sun, you make out every detail of his rugged face. His make-up’s almost wiped completely off the skin, with only remnants of the red lipstick and blue diamonds vaguely in place. His stubbles have grown slightly, given the lack of access to a barber, and if you get close enough, he probably stinks of—

A lightbulb goes off in your head. A devious one, blinking to every corner of your brain. 

Despite what anyone thinks, you’re not above being petty.

With a push, you sit up and glance over at him. “Anything?” 

Buggy raises his eyebrows and nods desperately. “Yeah! Anything! As long as I ain’t got to sit here doing naught-shit, I’m game!”

You turn to him, put each of your hands to the edges of his jaw, and lift him a little closer to you. Whether from the sun or just him alone, he’s warm and soft under your digits.

“Alright,” is all you say.

Buggy beams much like the bulb in your head, and a loud bark of laughter erupts from his mouth. You almost pity him, pity him for being oblivious to what’s to come.

But it needs to be done.

There’s no other way around it and he’s had it coming. He deserves this, you tell yourself. He deserves every inch of ruthlessness you can offer, and you’ll deliver.

————

Buggy blanches, lips wobbling in horror as he slowly glances up at you. Betrayal fills his bright-blue eyes and, for the first time since Orange Town, he sees you as the beast you both know you are. 

He’s afraid.

He’s afraid of you.

He knows you can be vindictive; he knows you can be brutal, but in all the time he’s known you, he’s never perceived you as cruel.

Maybe it’s time for him to reassess that thought.

“No,” he whispers softly. “No, please.”

Your face is blank, and cold, and he doesn’t know if it’s a trick of the light or not, but there’s a shadow across your face that darkens everything but your eyes. Those bright eyes he used to hold in such high regard.

“You want my forgiveness,” you state calmly as you gradually lower him to his demise. “You have to earn it.

“Please, anything but this. I’ll do anything other than this!”

But his pleas earn no mercy from you. He wiggles in your grasp like a fish out of water, and as much as he tries to beg and move and free himself, your hold is iron incarnate.

Buggy lets out an ear-curdling scream the moment he feels the water under his neck.

“NOOOOO!”

————

Honestly, how childish, you think as you begin to soak him in the basin you procured from the kitchens. He hisses like a cat as you pour the water over his head, rinsing his hair. Try as he might, he cannot escape your grasp. 

It’s not even deep enough to reach his chin, and still, he acts like it’s acid he’s been thrown into.

But you’re determined, this has to be done.

“Oh, quit whining” you chastise, getting drops of water your way with all his scuttling. “You need this.”

“You’re gonna drown me!” he accuses.

“It’s soap and water, and it’s not even that deep.”

“You say that now, sure! But the moment you let go, plop! Oh, there goes Buggy the Clown! Taken from this world too early!”

You roll your eyes. “I’m holding you up, you’re not going to drown. Now, stop acting like a child.”

Buggy is restless and continues to thrash around for a good ten seconds more before finally relenting, a look of sour disapproval on his face. It’s so caricatured and animated that it threatens to make a suppressed chuckle leave your throat.

He still looks the same when he’s mad.

Now that he’s finally calm, you lower him so that the edge of his neck finally stands on the bottom of the basin. Then, you soak a rag and raise it towards his face.

Buggy flinches. “Can you …. Eh… leave the face?”

“There’s hardly anything there anymore, and it’ll irritate your skin if you leave it on for too long.”

“I think I can tell you what irritates me or not, like this bird bath for instance, thank you very much.” He scowls and edges further away from the wet rag. “Seriously, just leave it.”

“I’ll reapply the make-up.”

“… What?”

When you first boarded the Merry, you happened to find some leftover make-up hidden away in one of the shelves. It was strange, considering how the boat was freshly built, and imagined that one of the builders had taken some personal liberty in the large space before the project was finished.

For whatever reason, you didn’t throw it out, though you didn’t use it yourself.

If it can get him to accept the fact that he needs a wash, you’re willing to do it.

“I’ll put on your make-up if I can wash off what you currently have,” you clarify. “Deal?”

Buggy goes quiet, and his eyes widen slightly, but not out of horror or dread. It’s more like … when you catch the sight of something unexpected; a delayed reaction that stirs feelings you have yet to decipher. 

Finally, after some internal debates with himself, Buggy nods. “Fuckin’ fine then,” he utters, and despite the crudeness of his words, they’re lenient.

Content, you gently place your free hand to his left to keep him stable and use the other one to carefully drag the rag across his stained cheek. 

Buggy watches you intently through the process, never taking his eyes off you unless you’re wiping off the painted diamonds on his eyes. Your hands, for once, are soft to the touch. They’re soft for him, as though a single misplaced touch might shatter him like glass.

He used to be acquainted with the soft touches long before the cold and brutal ones. Soft fingers that pinched his cheeks as you helped apply the paint over his face. 

Soft touches against his arm when he was feeling particular for some reason, whether it was good or bad.

Your fingers intertwined with his’ as you came to terms with your captain’s death, sitting by the edge of the docks as the rain poured from above. It was cold, he was freezing, and too close to the waters for his comfort, but he wanted nothing more than to sit in the rain with you and share the heat from your fingers.

Even after everything, you’re still capable of reserving those touches for him.

After wiping the makeup completely off him, you raise the cup and fill it with water. “Close your eyes.”

He doesn’t want to, but he does and feels the water rushing down like the rain on those docks.

When he’s finally finished, you fish him up from the basin and put him down atop a soft towel on the table. Like a cat, he instinctively shakes off the residue of water, only to find you already raising a new towel towards him.

He stops moving, and you takes this as your cue to continue. You’re attentive, he notices. You wipe his face first, then his ears, then his hair. You dry it and scratch his scalp at the same time through the fabric, and he instinctively leans against your touch.

This is … nice.

“When did you cut your hair?” You ask out of the blue as you continue to dry him, making sure to leave no spot too humid.

He almost failed to catch onto your words with how at ease he is. “Hmmm?”

“You used to have long hair before,” you elaborate. “Why did you cut it?”

“…. Too much of a hassle to maintain,” he answers after some thought. “It’s hard to find the time to take care of it.”

“… I see.”

The truth is, he cut it right after he left. Not particularly clean either. You know that feeling you get when you feel like you’re losing control, and ridding yourself of any additional weight seems to relieve it? 

Well, that’s what Buggy did.

He cut it with a pair of rusty scissors, severing chunks at a time — some bigger than others — until all he was left with was pieces sticking out to each side like a madman.

It didn’t help though. It didn’t make him feel any lighter from the weight on his chest. From that gnawing feeling.

Still, he maintained the habit and got better with practice. It became more of a practical thing with time; he was a busy man, and he could do well with fewer things to get in his eyes, but it never eased the pain.

But feeling the tips of your fingers lightly graze his hair, however, he feels more relieved than he’s done in the last twenty years.

After a few minutes, you remove the towel and give him a neutral one-over. It’s the first time you’ve seen him as an adult without any of that makeup, and you’re reminded of just how much he’s changed, but also how he’s not.

Even after all this time, it’s still Buggy.

Buggy sees you watching him, and he can’t help but feel slightly self-conscious now that your eyes are on him without his usual armor.

But you don’t comment on it, nor show any surprise in any sense of the word. There are times when he hates your face, not because of anything superficial, but because you make it so damn challenging for him to figure out what goes in that brain of yours. He’s reminded of how you were when you were younger, how lifeless you used to be, and it feels like you’ve regressed to that state.

Another thing to add to the shitlist of things he’s regretful about.

He licks his lips and opens his mouth to say something when the door suddenly bursts open. Buggy jumps whereas you merely look over your shoulder to spot Zoro standing there, his eyes narrowed between you and the clown.

Buggy frowns.

“Zoro,” you speak plainly, as if you failed to notice his annoyance towards the spectacle presented before him. “Is there anything?”

“The hell is this?” His eyes flicker between you and Buggy like it’s the worst show on earth. “What’s going on?”

“He reeked,” you explain. “I have merely been rectifying it for the sake of our noses.”

Buggy wants to argue with the statement that No, he fucking doesn’t, but he suppresses it for the sake of figuring out where this conversation’s headed.

“Since when do we make it a habit of bathing prisoners?” Zoro asks, his hand resting on the handle of his sword.

“Since when have we had prisoners?” You counter.

The swordsman scoffs. “The clown’s needed upstairs in ten.”

“Sure.”

“I’m right here, you know?”

Zoro gives him a nasty look and nothing more before heading back out the door, shutting it with a forceful thud.

“Why do you even stick around with these nobodies?!” Buggy questions. “They can’t navigate for shit, they have no sense of preservation, and they suck at fighting!”

You shift back to raise a knowing eyebrow at him. “They defeated you, didn’t they?”

“That’s—! … I was outnumbered, it wasn’t a fair fight!”

“No fights are fair in the life of piracy,” you point out. 

He bites the inside of his cheek. “All I’m saying is, you’re too powerful to be with these losers. You could join my crew! Think about it! We’d be unstoppable!”

“You mean, join the same people who locked me up and whose asses I subsequently kicked?” 

“Exactly! Don’t worry, they’ll get over it! Once they see how awesome you are, they’ll accept you with open ar—!”

“I decline.”

Buggy pauses, his enthusiasm promptly vanishing and getting replaced with bitter disappointment. “You’re not even going to consider it?”

“Why would I?” You wipe away a descending drop from his right eye. “I have no interest in joining another crew.”

“You say that, and yet here you are with these losers.”

“I was never going to stay permanently.” 

He pauses. “You weren’t?”

“I’m here for Luffy, and once I’ve decided that he can hold his own weight above the waters, I’ll leave.”

“… Where will you go? After, then?”

It takes you a moment to answer, like you don’t know the answer yourself quite yet. Your hand stills for a moment before resuming with the task at hand.

“Who knows?” You shrug. “The sea is my home. I’ve missed it, so I will remain where the waves pull me.”

That won’t do on its own. Stay with me. Buggy wants to ask, and if he had knees, he’d ask on them. Come with me. Be with me. You won’t have to be an official member of his crew; you don’t have to bend to him. You just have to stay. 

Stay with him.

That’s all he’ll ask.

Stay with him until he has the opportunity to figure out a way to make it up to you. 

Stay with him so he can compensate for the twenty years you suffered in each other’s absences.

Just stay.

“Hey.” He’s surprised by his own initiative. “Why’d you even leave your crew and stick your feet on land if you love the sea so much?”

You raise an eyebrow in question.

“I mean, you were Captain of the Cross-Haired Pirates, for crying out loud! You used to be legendary!” He proclaims, almost saddened by your apparent dismissal of your previous title. “You had fame, berries, a reputation that preceded everyone! Everyone feared you! Why’d you ditch all of that? Because of that rubbery prick? Because of Shanks?”

“Is that really what you want to ask me?”

“Yeah!”

You sigh through your nose and put the towel down to recline in your chair. “I didn’t become a Captain because that’s what I wanted. I became a Captain because it provided an outlet.”

“An outlet? For fucking what?”

It takes you a few seconds to finally reach a suitable response. 

“Anger,” you admit calmly, your arms crossing over your chest as the words stir on your tongue. They must taste bitter. “I was angry, and it festered every day, churning into a poisonous substance in my body. Being a captain with a crew, I could take it out on whoever I wanted. Pirate, marine, unruly crew member, it didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered.”

It makes sense now, he thinks, the reputation you’ve garnered over the years. Beware the Beast in the East, people would chant in passing towns and harbors, like you were a ghost story. Her eyes were like swords, and her hands were twice as sharp.

There wasn’t a single place where blood didn’t paint your steps.

He never met you while you were a captain; he didn’t want to, couldn’t find it in himself to pop by even once. Still, he kept your poster hidden in the dark depths of the chest in his quarters, if only for acrimonious reminiscence. He would spend some drunken nights doing nothing but staring at it, and it was like he could feel your rage seep through the ink on the page and scorch his fingers. A reminder of what he did.

Now, looking at you and comparing you to the poster, he fails to see the resemblance. He doubts he could’ve spotted it had you reunited earlier on. Captain Cross-Hairs was sharp around the edges, with pecks of blood on her cheeks and fresh scars on her face.

He licks his lips in deliberation. “You were pissed… because of what?”

Because of me?

“I don’t know.” He watches your chest expand with your breath, mesmerized simply by watching you commit to living. There used to be a time when you didn’t. “I didn’t care about money or power. I didn’t care for much of anything, except to purge that rage from my body. I fought, and I killed. It helped, for a time; I felt satisfied, but after a while, you grow bored of eating the same meal.”

When he looked at you when you were younger, he imagined he saw the scorching sun. Burning and bright and enlightening. 

You were … everything, but he never imagined that the same fire that used to mesmerize him would burn a thousand ships in his absence. 

But he was a boy back then. He’s older now, more experienced in the ways of life, he knows better.

He knows enough.

"But the boy," you say with a certain gentleness in your voice that does not evade his notice. "He's good."

"He's weak," Buggy scoffs, feeling his belly fill with sour smoke. He recognizes the feeling. It's the feeling he got when he watched Shanks talk to you that night by the fire. The same feeling he got when he watched you stay with Shanks that day. 

"He's defeated every opponent he's come across."

"Didn't beat Arlong, though." Buggy points out with a smidgen of childish pride and smirks. "Got his ass handed to him real good if I remember correctly."

You look back at him in that narrow way you usually reserve for him when he's crossed a line, and he can already tell he fucked up.

"I watched him grow, Buggy.” You say firmly. “I was there for all of it. I watched him learn, I watched him fight, I watched him leave land. He’s not like us — he doesn’t waste time on regret. He’ll become better than we ever were.”

Buggy glowers but doesn’t say anything else, insisting on letting your words simmer in his brain until he can find the will to let them go.

You procure something from the drawers and it’s only when he looks down that he realizes it’s the make-up. With gentle hands, you lift him and place him in your lap, the brush already blue and ready.

“I’m not here to talk about what used to be,” you say. “Now hold still.”

The diamonds across his eyes come first, the brushing makes his face tickle and it’s only by sheer willpower alone that he manages to refrain from staring at you. 

“Takes us back,” he whispers and closes his eyes so that you can finish. “Doesn’t it?”

He hears something akin to a chortle that doesn’t quite reach your throat, but he considers it a small win.

“You looked a mess,” you answer. “A child could’ve done a better job than I did.”

“Wasn’t bad for your first try, though.”

Except that it was. It was pretty bad. Your hands were shaking, and you held your breath like you were afraid of making a mistake. By the time you were finished, he looked like a canvas painted by a child, but he didn’t have the heart to tell you that.

He used to think that it was strange. You were skilled at nearly everything you committed yourself to, without even trying. 

When he thinks back on it, maybe it wasn’t skill; maybe it was just an ingrained fear of failure that drove you to become the best at what you did.

Then again, your worst could never be the worst in his eyes.

You finish his eyes, and when he looks up at you, he sees the same determination and focus in your eyes as he did that day. It’s the same look you have when you’re targeting something, be it an enemy or a point of interest. It’s always the same.

And he can’t look away.

You move onto the crossbones next, and he’s happy he won’t have to close his eyes for this one. He’s not certain you can pull off his iconic look, but he’ll give you the benefit of the doubt for now.

After all, you strive for perfection. He doubts this will be an exception.

Get it? Perfection and except— You know what? Nevermind.

He can feel your attention in every stroke of the brush, feel the white paint glisten on his skin before it dries. Your warmth lingers like burning embers, he feels like getting too close will burn him, yet he wants nothing more than blisters upon his skin.

He looks at you, looks into your focused eyes, and he feels … something tightening, back where his body is. It could be his stomach, his head… other places, but he can’t tell. Arlong’s been busy abusing his body long enough that he can’t differentiate between a kick or a punch anymore.

But this isn’t Arlong.

It’s you.

He can handle a tight body if it’s because of you.

When he was young, and his body began to work in the way of a man, he would sometimes wake up and feel sweaty and … stiff. He knew enough to know what it was, to know what caused it, but he didn’t know how to approach the situation.

He knew the source of his frustrations. He knew how to alleviate them, but he didn’t. He respected you far too much to ever dare cross the threshold. He figured that simply talking to you, simply holding your hand, and being at your side would be enough. He would be content with just that.

But he watched you … develop. It didn’t seem like such a big deal at the time, but he couldn’t help but marvel at the sight. He imagined feeling your flesh under his digits. The softness across your chest and hips. The warm skin. 

He looks at you now, sees the scars peeking from under your shirt, on your face, and he wants to feel the rough edges. 

Buggy gulps and he’s rather happy now that the rest of his body is not attached to him. He’s lost enough dignity as it is.

“And now, the mouth.”

Yes, he wants to touch that t—

You take the lipstick, and in a straight line, smear it across his mouth in a way that snaps him out of his thoughts. He can feel the warmth emitting from your thumb as you finish his face, and it takes him half a mind not to—

“Done.”

Disappointment lingers in the clown’s visage, and even when you present him a mirror and see the identical likeness to his wanted posters, it does not alleviate the feeling. For what it's worth, he's impressed with how far your make-up-applying skills have reached since last time. 

It's perfect.

But it means you’re done, and the nobodies require his flashy expertise to get Miss Ginger back. 

You dump the discolored water out and put the rest of the equipment away, and he feels his head weigh another ten pounds at so. He somewhat hopes it would; maybe it would be heavy enough that you wouldn’t bother carrying him up the deck?

… Oh, who is he kidding? It’s you. You won’t have any trouble in that department even if he were to weigh as much as a boulder. Ten boulders, even.

To his surprise, instead of reaching for him, you lounge back into your seat and nonchalantly cross your arms and ankles. He’s confused. Weren’t you going to go up with him already?

“If Zoro needs you, he can get you himself.”

That’s what you’ll leave it be like. He, freshly washed, dried, and painted. You, just casually sitting like you have no urgency to get back to the world.

“He’ll be pissed at you,” Buggy warns. “And probably threaten to throw you into the sea.”

You shrug, your eyes already closed, giving him no indication whatsoever that you’re particularly concerned with the veryscary swordsman. He grins with all his teeth on show.

Unfortunately, the green-haired asshole turns up not even five minutes later. All but ripping the clown by the roots of his hair and taking him away like a sack of flour. Buggy spews curses and threats, but they all fall on deaf ears.

It’s only when he’s positioned on deck that he’s finally free of his torment, if only for an hour or two. He begrudgingly instructs the long-nosed slingshot where to sail, adding a few creative insults along the way. Hey, it’s not Buggy’s fault they’re too easy to rile up.

“Is that long nose compensating for something?”

To which he earned a slap to the back of his head. From whom, he doesn’t know, but he’ll take his victories in whatever light weight they come in.

After a while, he shifts his head to eject another insult to the slingshot when he sees that you’re standing a few feet away, your arms crossed while leaning against the railing; eyes closed but face focused and attentive.

He cuts his verbal daggers down a notch.

It gets late, the sky darkens, and one after another, the crew members resign to their chambers save for the slingshot, who still insists on going for a while longer. Him, and you, surprisingly enough. 

You stay, for all of it; neither complaining nor muttering a sound. 

You're stoically positioned on the sidelines, hardly moving at all. He would've died if he'd been standing in the same position for more than one hour, but you endured a total of six without a shiver or a strain. Like a soldier in the rain. A monk in a temple of thorns. 

A beast in an empty forest, lonesome in its hunger, yet content with what content remains buried in its stomach for the time being.

Long-nosed slingshot finally calls it a night and withdraws from the steering wheel with his hands outreached for the head. Before his dirty fingers can hope to graze the magnificent head that is Buggy's, you stretch your arm out like a shield between them.

"I'll take him."

Slingshot snorts. "Really? You want to?"

"Do you want to?"

With his hands raised in mock surrender, Slingshot relents. "... Fine, be my guest."

With a nod, you take the head and retire back to your chamber on the ship. Buggy yawns in your arms, tired, but satisfied with the warmth embracing him. Your steps feel like waves with each one you take, nudging him further and further toward the edge of sleep. Only unadulterated stubbornness keeps him awake.

It darkens for a moment. When he rouses back, he feels softness underneath him. A pillow of sorts, not comforting enough to offer him sleep, but enough to keep him relaxed.

He nudges around, like a fish in a small bowl, only to find that he's not on the table, nor in a barrel, nor a bag. The surface beneath him is made of fabric, and swings with his movements. 

He's in a hammock.

More precisely, your hammock.

“Sleep.” He hears your command. 

He finally locates you, seated by the window of your cabin with your palm under your chin, staring out into the darkened ocean.

He turns, voice diluted with drowsiness. “You too…”

“Soon.”

“Now," he almost whines.

The look you give him is not any different from the kind you usually provide, but it lacks the usual undertone of annoyance. He can tell you're tired, even if you're refusing to show it. The shadows under your eyes stand out more prominently, even in the dimmed candlelight. 

With an inaudible sigh, you stand and while he expects you to move towards the hammock, he's disappointed to see you aiming towards the door instead.

"H-Hey, where are you going?"

"The kitchens," you respond. "You can sleep here for the night; I'll take the couch."

"That's not necessary!" He wiggles so that he can look at you from over the edge of the hammock, careful as not to fall from the height. A thought dawns over him, one that makes his cheeks feel warm. "We- We can share! I don't take a lot of space!"

"You still take up too much of it."

"Are you calling me fat?!"

He's almost insulted when you don't answer to contradict his assumption, yet despite the innate urge to defend his honor and spew shit at you, he decides to let it slide.

"C'mon! I promise I'll behave," he tries again. "You'll hardly notice me. Those couches suck balls anyway, so why not?"

He watches you give it some thought for probably a good two minutes. He expects you'll decline his proposition, finding that your own pride weighs more than the need for decent sleep. 

Then, you lower your shoulders in defeat and make your way over to the hammock. "Scoot over."

He obliges rather excitedly, and when he wiggles back a bit too much to make space, he can feel gravity threaten to drop him on the other side of the hammock. Before it gets to that point, you grab him by the side of his face and hold him until you can lift yourself and lay down. 

Only then do you lay him down, on the right side of your abdomen. He's mindful of the wounds that have yet to heal there, so he tries not to invade too much. Still, he can't deny, he's quite comfortable. Very comfortable. 

He's the most comfortable he's been in a long time - twenty years.

He surpasses the urge to push closer to you, share your warmth, and elects to look up at the ceiling instead.

"Hope you don't snore," he jokes, only to have a yawn follow promptly behind.

"I don't snore," you answer, deadpan. "Now go to sleep."

He's not convinced, but he doesn't comment on it. This peace hangs by a thread, and he'll be damned if it's cut short now of all times. He shuts his eyes, and in his dreams, he's presented with the sun on the blue skies above.

He feels warm all over.

----

Taglist: @kurinhimenezu, @carpinchootaku, @ay0nha, @teh-vampire-bunny, @lokiscure, @internationalsuper-spy, @detectivesparrow , @yuriwk , @notyuralycat, @angeli-fucking-cat, @machinema7k , @shuujin, @avatar-lover, @gingernut1314, @autumn-slaves. @marvelouskatie, @floristoflillys, @dizzyenby, @redpool, @deliri-yum22, @aemondsb1tch, @ackroxia, @gayandfairycore, @knightsfavoriteprincess, @asterizee, @aamethyst23, @lizzie1107, @cyberwears, @heylookliisten, @f41k47, @beep-beep1, @crimsonflameproxy, @unpopular-sober-thoughts, @rayleeya, @timeladyrikaofgallifrey, @fanshavegottensotoxic, @fluffybunnyu, @sirenmelody23

(If you want to be tagged for this story, just send me a message or leave a comment :))

(Additionally, some sketches of how I imagine Cross-Hairs to look like while I’m writing.)

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL - Gangsters Win

Organized, in each category, by ones I'm enjoying most at the top. Delayed October reviews included this week! (Still traveling but now in home territory and familiar hotels.)

Nov 2023 Wk 2

Ongoing Series - Thai

My Dear Gangster Oppa (Thurs iQIYI) 2 of 8 - GIVING ME LIFE. How dare they be this… this... Just. How dare!

Twins the series (Fri GaGa) ep 1 of 10 - I have been waiting for another truly sports centered BL since HIStory 2: CTL. This is nowhere near as good, but I don’t care. It’s great pulp and Sprite is a fab central character. I've realized that I love the pulps most when they’re ridiculously soapy (identical twins identity trope for sport’s fuck’s sake) but ERNEST about it (not campy). This one is taking itself seriously and it's so cute that it's trying so hard. Good little pulp. Dee mar.

Dangerous Romance (Fri YT) ep 12fin - was it me or did this show kinda flag on you too?

Poor, struggling Sailom is forced to tutor his bully, Kang, and they fall for each other despite circumstances. I loved it for the first 4 eps, liked it for the middle 4, and then kinda lost interest. I think it's because the focus shifted from Sailom to Kang, and I just find a disenfranchised character more interesting than the poor little rich kid archetype. Ultimately the script waffled and failed these actors - the leads and sides were solid, and support cast on point. 8/10 pretty standard 2023 GMMTV fair

Absolute Zero (Thai Weds iQIYI) ep 6 of 12 - It’s sort of a paradox of emotions not just time. It remains sad and I remain wary. 

My Universe (Sun iQIYI) The Camp Fire ep 11 of 24 - Launched with an argument over rude pronouns and mistaken identity. Highlights the joy of camping. Ugh. I don't think this one is for me despite the pair.

Venus in the Sky (Tues iQIYI) ep 10fin - NO SINGING. I can't believe they brought in rando SIDEs just to sing! WHHHHYYYYY? Sigh.

An indifferent pulp with indifferent acting and poor chemistry (despite high heat) based on the reunion romance trope that was just... so... slow... It wasn’t entirely a waste of time but I can’t in good faith recommend it. unless you have a very high tolerance for Thai pulps and ultra tsundere characters. 5/10 ONLY WATCH IF YOU'VE NOTHING BETTER TO DO

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

Kiseki: Dear to Me (Taiwan Tues Viki & iQIYI) ep 12 of 13 - I don’t mean to be rude because you know I love the main couple in the show, but they are simply being out acted by the sides. They are so damn good. Ai Di and his dumb oversized sweaters and flappy flappy sleeves is EVERYTHING.

Bump Up Business (Korea Gaga) 5-6 of 8 - More language negotiation, so of course I like it. I also like that they openly let Eden admit to a crush on a boy. I like this whole thing way more than I should. Save me from myself?

You Are Mine (Taiwan Fri Viki) eps 9 of 10 - I don’t understand why baby boy is trying to escape so badly. (Except for plot reasons.) Running of the gays! Look at you Taiwan stealing Japan’s favorite trope. This show is fun but it’s a bag of tropes held together with some very thin fraying mesh plot. 

If It’s With You AKA Even If I Fall In Love With You AKA Kimi to nara Koi wo Shite Mite mo’ (Japan Gaga) ep 5fin - The leads are so painfully cute portraying a softly simple story of teen first love. This was a nice little piece with an early yaoi feel that come off as brief, as if it were meant to be a short story that had been extended into a series. Sweet but ultimately rather forgettable. 7/10  

Mr Cinderella 2 (Vietnam Sat YT) ep 6-7 of ? - yeah I forgot to watch again, I may be dnfing this by accident.

It's Airing But...

I Cannot Reach You AKA I Can't Reach You AKA Kimi ni wa Todokanai (Japan Tues Netflix-Japan & ????) - in classic JBL fashion, I Cannot Reach You could not be reached. It looks good though so I mgiht put some effort into finding it grey.

Look at Japan dropping all the tropes in on scene: rooftop, kabedon, hand hold.

SHADOW (Thai Gaga) 1-7 of 14 - this is a horror BL with ghosts & paranormal elements in a boarding school setting. I'm not wild about Thai horror (or horror at all). It features Singto (who did paranormal BL He's Coming to Me) opposite Fluke N (who's done a couple horror's before). Also Fiat. Dan suffers from sleep paralysis, and in his dreams he sees a shadow that suffocates him. It gets worse when he transfers schools. I'm holding off on this one and if told it's good I'll binge watch.

What Did You Eat Yesterday Season 2 AKA Kinou Nani Tabeta? Season 2 (Japan Gaga) ep 1 of 10 - I find this series more fun to binge, so I'm waiting until it completes its run.

One Room Angel (Japan Gaga) - adaptation of Harada’s manga of the same name (which I did not like) about a convenience store clerk who's stabbed, nearly dies, and returns home to find an angel waiting for him. With only 5 eps and a good chance this won’t end happy, I'm gonna wait and let you tell me how it goes.

Can I Buy Your Love From A Vending Machine? AKA Sono Koi, Jihanki de Kaemasu ka? (Japan cinema release in-country only) - This one is a movie from Japan so in customary fashion who tf knows when (or if) it will get international distribution. Salaryman Ayumu Koiwai just can't tear his eyes away from the strong, muscular man as he checks on the stocks of the vending machine in his office. I did some hunting but only found the manga, so I'm marking it cnf and moving on with life. This will be its last appearance on the weekly update.

I Finished It!

Love in Translation (iQIYI) ep 8 - solid ending, man these two are a great pairing.

A sweet little pulp about a Thai boy with a crush on a Chinese influencer who ends up in a business relationship with her ex-bf. This show had truly great chemistry between the leads, cute found family with good rep, and an exciting (if silly) ending that almost, but didn't quite, make up for how incredibly annoying the main character was in the first half. Gotta say the make-out scene in the convenience store is one of the greatest in Thai BL, tho. 6/10 DEF WORTH WATCHING BUT FLAWED

I Feel You Linger in the Air (grey) ep 8 of 12 - so that was A THING. I did a seriously extensive deep dive analysis, historical & linguistic extras, and review here.

I truly loved this time travel romance. IFYLITA is an exquisite BL, from filming techniques to narrative framework (much like Until We Meet Again). Steeped in history and family drama it edges into lakorn (but no as much as To Sir With Love and with way less scenery chewing). This is an elegant and classy BL… from Thailand which normally doesn't even try for classy. The main couple (both as a pair and individuals) were excellent, particularly Bright (Yai) whose eye-work acting style is a personal favorite of mine. Pity about the ending. Oh it wasn’t that sad but it wasn’t good either. This show should easily have earned a 10 from me except that it fumbled the… erm… balls. Argh. Whatever. 9/10

Only Friends (YT) ep 11-12 - What can I say, this wasn't my thing, it was never gonna be, and I didn't like it. Basically Thailand did the L-Word but with branded BL pairs and the only agenda seemed to be slut shaming and making sure those pairs stayed healthy and sponsor ready. Consequently, the pairs were all executing well and to the best of their ability (of course) but all other characters got shafted, both in the good and the worst possible ways. Unrated but if falls somewhere between 5 (hot mess) and 3 (what am I doing with my life?)

Next Week Looks Like This

11/10 Middleman’s Love (Thai Fri Mandee's YT & iQIYI 1 of 8? - TutorYim (brand pair origin = Cutie Pie) with side couple KingUea (Bed Friends) from Domundi trailer here. This used to be a JimmyTommy vehicle before the pair split (also prev title Middle Love). Adapted from a Y-novel. Jade works as a graphic designer and has always been stuck in the middle - average. His heart is hardened after a life spent being overlooked because he is not as charming or good looking as the rest of his family or friends. When his office gets a hot new intern, Mai, Jade assumes Mai couldn’t possibly be intersted in him. Mai, of course, has other ideas. Warning this is a Cheewin comedy so tonally it could be very OFF, but the cast is solid, and I have liked his stuff on occasion.

11/10 Last Twilight (Thai Fri YouTube) - JimmySea are bakc and maybe it's good this time? I dont' know, GMMTV isn't doing great right now. Burdened with heavy debt, Mork, a mechanic, is forced to take a high paying job as a caretaker for Day, a rich heir who suffers from partial blindness after an accident. Day recruits Mork as he realizes the latter does not see him as a disabled person, but rather as co-equals. As they spend time together, the two begin developing feelings for the other. However with Day just having 180 days until he becomes permanently blind, how will the two weather the trials ahead?Upcoming November BL

11/11 Beyond The Star (Weds iQIYI) qp 1 of 8 - Looks like House of Stars meets Boyband. I am not excited.

Upcoming in November

11/16 PLAYBOYY (Thurs ????) ?? eps - trailer here, high heat and it's helmed by Cheewin (shudder) with screenplay by Den (Only Friends) under Copy A Bangkok. It's gonna be a shizz show people. It's predicting Thai style "dark" (War of Y) one of my least favorites. Apparently there is a "plot" but when has Cheewin ever bothered with plot? A university kid who was involved with escorts, sex-trade, porn, online hook-ups, drugs, prostitution, blackmail, revenge, and so forth goes missing. His twin (sigh) and two friends look for him.

11/17 Pit Babe (Fri iQIYI) ep 1 of 14 - high heat teaser here, based on alittlebixth's omegaverse novel #พิษเบ๊บ’ set in the world of car racing (author says show will not be omegaverse). Charlie (fresh face), a young hot nerd, approaches his driver idol (Pavel "my love" 2 Moons 2) to borrow a racing car and win one for the team. Production house is new to BL but behind the Club Friday stuff. Show stars many known actors: Nut (Oxygen), Pop (Ram in La Cuisine), Pon (Phai in Gen Y, we LOVE him), Benz (twins in En of Love: This Is Love Story).

11/19 Bake Me Please (Sun Gaga) ep 1 of 6 - trailer here, stars Ohm (of OhmFluke) opposite Guide (bestie from IFYLITA) and possibly also Poom (well known, but not for BL). This looks like an actually gay version of Antique Bakery (play it again, BL). Still, I'm intrigued, it looks HELLA pretty.

11/22 7 Days Before Valentine (Weds ????) ep 1 of 10 - trailer here, horror-esk. Adapted from y-novel of the same name, directed by Tu (180 Degree) stars Jet (Why You… Y Me?). When you want your old love again, but fate sends you a reaper instead. All he can do for you is kill people. I'll likely give this a pass and wait to binge later. I'm planning to try SHADOW and I can only handle one Thai horror at a time.

11/25 The Sign (Sat ????) ep 1 of 10 - trailer here, horror-esk, but with a suspense and adult characters. Special investigators who loved each other in previous lives reunite with their new bodies, stars Billy Patchanon (BillySeng) & Babe Tanatat (new). Includes other SCOY favorites as a special investigation team. I may give this a try because I like the non-horror bits.

11/26 The Whisperer (Sun ????) 1 of 10 - trailer here. Thai horror BL that ALSO involves cheating (what joy is mine). He has dimples (My Ride) but I don't think even that gives me the will. Maybe a binge for me.

11/26 Cooking Crush (Sun YT) 1 of 12 - OffGun are back, trailer here. Adapted from the novel “Love Course! เสื้อกาวน์รุกเสื้อกุ๊กรับ” by iJune4S this is about Prem who runs a not-so-popular restaurant with 2 friends. About to go on a cooking competition with a huge reward, Prem gets involved with Ten, a stressed-out med student who wants Prem to teach him to cook.

11/30 For Him (Thurs ????) ep 1 of 10 - high heat trailer, I suspect iQIYI will scoop this one up. From the people who brought us Unforgotten Night (please no) based on a y-novel, man nursing a heartbreak has a one-night stand, but the other boy didn't want it to end. It looks terribly trashy so I'm in! Maybe I'll do a trash watch?

VIP Only (Taiwan) - may be delayed/canceled

Wuju Bakery AKA Space Bakery (Korea) - this one may be DOA

A Breeze of Love (Korea) - I know less than nothing about this.

Nov 2023 line up with screen caps here. Not kept updated.

Original 2023 forthcoming BL master post (see comments, some are inaccurate, NOT KEPT UPDATED).

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

Yang's little smile! Argh. (Love in Translation)

This is our mean and grumpy gagster character talking about playing in game support roles. It's fucking adorable. Such a nasty criminal. (My Dear Gangster Oppa)

(Last week)

[star-suh]

Teacher Park SeongHwa x Male Reader

Synopsis: you have to save the semester but let's say you don't like the teacher that much.... welp until now.

cw: dom! seonghwa, sub! male reader, blowjob, unprotected sex (always wear one guys), breeding kink, biting, marking, spit as lube, cum eating and swapping, spanking, mention of hongjoong, dacryphillia(?) filthy, smuty and dirty things.

an: idk what i'm doing here, this is pure cringe lol, i just wanted to write a seonghwa x male reader since there's not much out there. also sorry for grammar mistakes, english is not my first language.

—

Monday, 6:00 PM and here you are, still in university begging your teacher to help you pass his subject. "Mr. y/n i told you before that i'm not helping you, you don't pay attention to my classes always calling them a "filling subject" so i don't understand why are you here begging me to help you in your grades, and… you didn't even do some of your homework".

"im sorry" you replied, "it was a little jokey joke, you know, don't take things too seriously coming from me" you smiled. he sighs "okay, i would help you but it's your last chance" he search in his bag and then slides a paper towards you, "do an essay about this and bring it to me tomorrow with at least 6 pages". y/n smiled and thanked the teacher shaking his head. "such a fucking dumbass teacher" you murmured little did you know seonghwa hears you, watching you with an angry look how your ass jiggle everytime you step outside his office "i said it was your last chance y/n but it seems you never learn, can't wait to see you begging me tomorrow to help you" he says while licking his lips.

……

Tuesday, 3:00 PM, you confidently walk in the hallways of the university with the essay in your hands and thinking what a dumbass of a teacher you have, of course you only slept a little but it doesn't matter whatever it takes to save the semester. finally you're in seonghwa's office, you knock on the door hearing a come in you opened it, walked in and then close it. "here's the essay teacher, thanks for helping me, i owe you one" you said faking a smile. for no one is a secret that you hated your teacher, you always thought his classes wouldn't help you at all in the future and that he has an one-sided beef with you, always telling you how you don't put effort in the homeworks and other assignments he gives you, that's why your low grades. hell, if it wasn't for that you would've already sent him to eat shit.

seonghwa was reading and humming your essay while you were thinking on beating that pretty face. he stands up and walk around the office with the essay on his hand, he slowly locks the door without you noticing it, then he approaches you smacking the desk with the essay making you look at him with a confused face, "you know y/n it seems that you put effort on that, the essay is really good" you smiled at him "thank you so much" you said. "do you think i'm stupid y/n?, or how you said "a fucking dumbass teacher"" he said glaring at you with a death stare

…. "what?" you replied, your voice shaking, it's the first time you see him like that, angry, he looks scary but hot at the same time you're not going to deny that you stopped looking at him now looking at the desk "i don't know what you're saying teacher"....the room is filled with silence until his laugh break it, you were scared for not saying you almost shit your pants, a strange sensation running down your spine "i know what you think of me, puppy" seonghwa said the "puppy" caught you off guard, you remain silent, he puts his hands over your shoulders and start gripping them hard making you left a moan you quickly put both hands on your mouth "what was that, it seems that you like hard, right y/n?" he whispers near your ear licking them, a blush comes across your face, you shake your head telling him no. "you tell me before you owe me one, i want to claim it now" he said in a low tone, you nod, letting yourself melt in his arms "what you want" you said, "i want to punish you" he replied. "i don't like punishments" you replied, "really? but this little friend over here says otherwise" he says signaling your hard cock being restrain by your pants and underwear. "be honest with me y/n, would you like to be punished by me?" he says while kissing the back of your neck, you on the other side with half-lided eyes, his words and kisses making you feel hot and hot every second that passes, "yes, i would like that"...

......

"fuck yes, that filthy mouth of yours does wonders to my dick" seonghwa said, with his hand on your head sliding it up and down his rock hard dick, you feel ashamed and closed your eyes, "uh-uh keep looking at me, you look hotter like that", minutes passed and seonghwa started getting bored and impatient so head lock your head with your thighs and push his dick deep down your throat, making you open your eyes in surprise, tears started to fall, "ah fuck i should've use your mouth since day 1, i always knew you were a whore y/n and i know that your little friend hongjoong has fucked you in every corner of this university" he smiles at you, wiping your tears with his fingers and then licking them, "you're being such a good boy now y/n, what happened with that bratty persona of yours, where is him?" he then unlocked your head leaving you gasping for air "wow, look at my dick dripping with your saliva, looks so hot" he then unzipped your pants discarding them along with your underwear. "be a good boy and sit on my desk, legs wide open" you complied, he stares at your hole clenching on air, feeling ashamed you try to close your legs until seonghwa stopped you "uh-uh of you disobey me one more time i won't let you cum, ok" you nodded, hiding part of your face with your hand…..

you bite the back of your hand trying to hide your moans caused by seonghwa eating you out, "what a nice ass y/n it tastes good" he says licking a stripe from your balls to your hole, twisting his tongue inside you "i think you are ready" he says watching your gaping hole. he slowly enters you, sliding his dick inch by inch making you moan in your hands not liking this he spanks your ass "let me hear your pretty voice slut" watching as how you don't do nothing he spanks you again "don't be a brat y/n i told what's going to happen if you don't behave" he then rams all his dick in your hole a guttural moan leaving your mouth "that's right whore let me hear that slutty voice" he continues to rail your hole while leaving hickeys in your back and neck, the air getting mixed with sweat and the smell of sex, your body smeared with seonghwa's sweat and yours. seonghwa feeling you clenching hard on his knows that your orgasm is nearing "you want to cum y/n?" you nodded "tell me how much you want to cum, beg me like when you wanted me to help you in your grades". "please teacher, let me cum i've been a good boy… i-if you let me cum now… i-i would owe you another one" you said winking and smiling at him, he smiles and then stops fucking you making you whine, "be careful with what you say y/n, next time i won't hold back" "i don't care if you don't hold back next time but i want to cum now", seonghwa smiles, he kisses your forehead "god you are driving me crazy y/n, i wouldn't mind helping with your grades everytime you want from now on", "i would love that" you replied, "f-fuck me dumb seonghwa, don't hold back.. make the whole university knows who's your bitch" something inside seonghwa snapped, he positioned you in a doggy style and started railing you like an animal, uncountable moans leaving your smiling mouth with the tongue rolled out, drool leaking, eyes roll back "i'm going to cum so deep inside you that next time hongjoong fucks you the tip of his cock would be smeared with it" he whispers and bites your shoulder making you wince in pain and pleasure. you started saying non-senses making seonghwa laugh "what a dumb whore, you like being fuck silly, huh?" you try to reply but you can't, "what would hongjoong say if he sees his bitch being fucked by other man?" you shake your head "n-no he ca–n't know". "hmm what was that, why not?" seonghwa says "i remember telling him to come to my office in around 5 minutes, imagine he opening that door and seeing you a panting mess being wrecked by my cock" you look at the door and feel anxious but slightly aroused and seonghwa can feel it, "you're clamping so hard on my dick, perhaps do you like the idea of others watching you how you take cocks up your ass?" he licks your ear and nibble on it "we can make it happen if you want, what if he joins us? you can have two dicks up your ass isn't that exciting y/n?", "shut the fuck up and keep fucking me" you shout and he complies starting thrusting at a fast pace while spanking your ass leaving it in a bright red color, some minutes later seonghwa started feeling he is near, "cum with me y/n" he says and started pumping your dick at a fast pace, you feel your orgasm near "i'm gonna cum" you said "me too fuck! bear my babies y/n" he replies, with some last thrusts seonghwa came painting your insides of white while you came on his hand, he then lick his hand "you taste so sweet, want to taste it too" you nodded, he grabs both your cheeks and spit your cum in your mouth kissing you then. he left some kisses on your neck, then cleans you up and dresses you again while you pant over his desk "such a good boy, you did good today y/n, and remember you owe me one more" he winks at you, "i owe you all the ones you want" you reply and kiss him…..

everyone is surprised how you now love the filling subject you hated so much, even your grades are high. the bell rings and everyone is leaving "mr. y/n i need you to stay there's something bad with your homework" seonghwa says, when everyone is gone you both kiss each other feeling inside your mouths with your tongues "go to my office at 3:00 PM, hongjoong is going 5 minutes later", "sure" you replied imagining how hongjoong is going to punish you for whoring you out with everyone's and waiting your hole to be ravaged by both…..

[callmegaith]

your real honest opinion on David's character. GO!

I feel like this implies I've been trolling everyone for the past 6 years about how much I love this silly lil guy. Is there supposed to be a /j at the end of that, anon??

Bestie I would not put this much effort into a troll ever 😭 like do you think I sat there and made a whole comic series for a funny little gag??

In case this is genuine tho:

LONG READ AHEAD

cuz of course. You give me the chance to talk about David and I'll TALK

My real honest opinion on David

Paradise

Silly funny fella. Goofy as hell. I think you can read David's attitude multiple different ways in Paradise. To some he comes off as just an asshole

To others he's just a kid being a kid

I personally read his character as somewhat sarcastic and spiteful towards Jakob. His smile? Sarcastic. His "it's been a while brother"? Sarcastic. "I hope I'm not the one who died tonight" while knowing full well it ain't him? Sarcastic.

I'll talk about this more later when I talk about Mr. Rabbit!David.

David has the characteristics of most youngest siblings; He's annoying, he's childish, maybe a little spoiled and needy for attention too.

Not to jump ahead in this analysis and all but in Birthday, the box he needs has text on it that reads "hungry ghost", "ghost who is unable to be reborn" or preta. They're often spirits of people who died full of greed and jealousy. In Japanese, a preta is also "a spoiled child" or "brat"

Based on that information I thought maybe David was jealous of Jakob cuz he wanted to be the golden boy, ya know?

Tldr;

Paradise!David is just a funny lil guy who most likely harbors negative feelings towards Jakob who overshadowed him despite not even being there.

Mr. Rabbit

Who David is now. An older more mature David. Something clicked in his brain and he realized 'okay actually we're all fucked. Peace out guys I'm looking out for myself.'

Brown Rabbit:

I feel like he represents the last bit of David's naivety, innocence, and child-like spirit. The white rabbit (David from the future) sees that rabbit get killed from the window. He can no longer deny what's happening. The child within him he used to retreat to when things got bad is dead. There's only the white rabbit now

I feel like that's also something represented in David's masks

The older he gets, the more devoid of joy he becomes

He becomes more and more aware of his situation.

As a child, you have the blessing of ignorance. That's why the world feels like a safer more colorful place to you until you grow up and you can no longer protected and shielded from the world.

To me, I think that's where David's trauma comes from. His ageing and how fast he's had to grow up and become a man, despite his attempts to remain a child.

In paradise, it's likely he was still pretty much "fingers in ears going LALALALALA" with his eyes closed tightly.

Brown rabbit is all that remained of his ignorance, and now it's gone, leaving behind only the White Rabbit. The David that knows and acknowledges the cruelty of his life. A ghost of his former self.

Speaking of:

White Rabbit

What are we but the products of our traumas and life experiences.

The white rabbit, David from the future, is on a journey to save his soul and be reborn. Obviously, the goal of all the corrupted souls. There is a soul we know succeeded in that and was, in fact, reborn. And that soul is Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was the collateral damage in a battle she had no hand in. She is probably the most innocent victim in all of this family feud going on, and I think because of that, Jakob allowed her to be reborn.

Something he did not allow David to do. I think it's safe to say Jakob and David do not like each other. Seems like David's plans clash with Jakob's and so he has to be taken out of the picture, and yet, David always seems like he has tricks up his sleeve.

Somehow, David is able to go back in time to save himself. What happens after that? We don't know yet

You could argue that he failed and died in the blue cube memory of Birthday. Or that he is simply still out there rn waiting for his story to be told. Both are true cuz that's the nature of Rusty Lake.

David seems to be on his own grand journey, stuck in his own Paradox, desperate to find a way to he reborn.

The thing that stands out of course is David's corrupted soul, or rather, the many different forms of it:

This is probably due to there being multiple different David(s) from the paradoxes he's lived through.

But what is the White Rabbit David if the brown rabbit is David's reborn Asura? Is the white rabbit not his Asura too?

Hard to say. We never seen a corrupted soul take form like David's white rabbit one before, and even more than that, one that retains autonomy. After all, David had enough control over himself to write and leave Dale a letter, meaning he is fully aware of what he is doing. Yet he is prone to violence the way regular corrupted souls are.

It's likely the white rabbit is an advanced form of a corrupted soul, probably the last stages before rebirth.

That or.... Well.... It's just a mask. After all, in Paradox, David spoke with a regular human voice over the phone, meaning he was not a corrupted soul.

In that case tho, if he was already reborn... Why did he say he needed to escape his current "hungry ghost" state?

Obviously Paradox is the most unreliable game narratively cuz you're just going through Dale's jumbled up memories. It's likely he's just recalling an actual conversation he had with David on the phone at the time (which still makes no sense cuz that would mean at the time David was still a human. Or it means he's recalling some conversation he had with David at some point in his life, not necessarily Birthday. OR... That's just a memory the machine is feeding him and it never really happened. Point is, paradox can't be used as a fact for anything)

Timeline is fuuuucked when it comes to David's story so uuuh

We don't know where he is now, what actually happened to him, or wtf is going on with him.

What we do take from his whoooole story tho:

Conclusion

(you did it, chat. You made it this far into my rambly post!!)

David is a really cool and very interesting character that might not appear to be so on the surface. You only really get how complex his character is when you think of everything that has happened in the games. He has a story that is either left for us to piece together or is still not yet fully explored.

To me, David is a character born of defiance and rebelliousness, as well as the need for survival and self-preservation. He is someone who has challenged his own fate, knowing damn well he's up against higher powers, but still taking the chance to save his soul. He is resilient, and stubborn, and just won't accept his fate and die. He has challenged his position in the food chain, a rabbit who is meant to be at the bottom, proving that he should not be underestimated. To me, that's worth loving and admiring. AND IM CHEERING HIM ON! GO DAVID! GO! IM SO PROUD OF YOU MY SON!!

And that's my real honest opinion on David

Thank you for reading.

[bryverros]

YAP MY LIEGE WHAT ARE THE HAPPENINGS IN THY KINGDOM

im going to be real immature on main so turn a blind eye guys

so. my beloved firefighter show. first, a brief introduction to the massive fandom drama. we have buck, eddie and tommy. buck and eddie are best friends since season 2 episode 1 (we are on season 8), tommy becomes an important(?) character in season 7.

- buck and tommy are canonically in a relationship. i want them broken up asap. its not even personal. i just dont think they work, even all the buckandeddie theories aside. and if they do break up, i will call it a win and clap my hands jollily. their fanbase is honestly making me feel stupid because theyre acting like bucktommy is this soulmates endgame couple and i tried seeing it. but i just dont.

exhibit 1. eddie appears in practically every single bucktommy scene. and when he didnt appear directly, he sure as hell was mentioned. a lot. which??? weird??? considering the fact that bucktommy are supposed to be in a relationship and very in love. like maybe i dont know shit about dating but im pretty sure that its objectively weird to include the best friend in all scenes the couple has. so far, in s8, buck and tommy had one (1) scene. and it had eddie in it.

then there’s the whole weird thing on how buck and tommy got together in the first place and one might argue that buck was trying to get eddie’s attention, not tommy’s. so like yeah eddie sure is haunting their narrative a lot and for seemingly no reason which kind of stops me from feeling attached to the ship. which i tried initially before i started praying on their breakup.

- in the scenes buck and tommy (+eddie. cant forget that he was there) did have. sigh. their dynamics is just weird. first of all, tommy is older than buck. like, he was in the flashbacks of the older coworkers (he was kind of racist and kind of homophobic and misogynistic in those too, but ok ill let that pass, people change blah blah). and he called buck kid before they got together. which. sigh. im generally against age gaps i dont fw that stuff and theyre not letting me forget that they do have an age gap. but fine, ill put the age gap aside. theyre both adults so yk. surely it wont be THAT bad. alas. it is. moving to the next exhibit

exhibit 2. the bachelor party. so buck is really excited to organise this themed party for their his brother in law (a dude tommy was kind of racist towards in the flashback btw). the theme is. 80s. buck and eddie do matching costumes (suggested by eddie. very enthusiastically)! matching each others freak! yay! what does tommy do. he arrives in a henley. and as a person who kind of relates to buck in a way that i get excited about things. tommy’s low effort uninterestingness wouldve kind of been hurtful to me? like the way he casually kind of discarded that excitement buck had about this party was giving “im not interested in your interests babe 🫶” and from personal experience! not nice! and buck already had like a shit ton of self esteem issues and like yeah im projecting but please please break up w tommy you deserve better buck please

- name. so evan buckley has been going by buck. everyone calls him buck except his parents (bad. he doesnt like that) and his sister. sometimes. tommy calls him evan all the fucking time. which feels. condescending. i do not like it in the slightest. break up bucktommy. for me. please.

now! onto the clowning part.

ok look. buck and eddie. theyre so special. their friendship is so special. and if they go canon. that would be absolutely historical. like a queer non established from the beginning romance? that has 6+ years of shared history? they were friends before they were lovers and they could be THE friends to lovers in my eyes. and look if they dont go romantic, i really wont be that sad? their friendship kind of remains regardless so like while i do think it would be bold and take some good writing to have them go down the romantic line. i also do really cherish their friendship. but i am strongly gaslit that they will go romantic. to the point where i fear that im clowning about it.

- the actor playing buck recently said that he wants some slowburn for buck. some will they wont they kind of relationship. that the audience will have to yearn for. like my man your character is in a relationship and that relationship came together in, let me check… 2 episodes? slowburn? bucktommy? i have a VERY hard time believing that. there were a whole bunch of other quotes that could be interpreted as bucktommy breakup (yay 🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶). like you dont see any other member of the cast speaking about their love interest the same way this man does about tommy.

- the episodes 5 and 6 are centred on buck and eddie respectively. episode 5 will have tommy “weirded out by something about buck” (surprise surprise). episode 6 is called confessions. eddie has a lot of potential queer coding (eddie: “i just hate having to date. it feels like i have to perform”; someone else about eddies relationship: “just make sure youre following your heart. not christopher’s [his son]” ahh stuff). and episode 6 is centred on him. it also is coming out on nov 7th, 2 days after the infamous destiel election day. so having eddies coming out in that episode would be the funniest thing ever. and the marketing for these episodes is driving me insane. like. will they. wont they. will they. wont they. i feel like im clowning so hard but i also feel like i cant be wrong about this stuff yk? too many coincidences?

so yeah. episode 5 is coming out today. wish me luck (bucktommy breakup ⁉️)

[8bitsupervillain]

Higurashi When They Cry Hou Ch. 4 Himatsubushi pt. 6

I feel it's pretty safe to declare that chapter 4 of this chapter (subchapter?) is the most action-packed the series been.

Ooishi calls Akasaka to the local precinct due to some spicy evidence they found.

Oh those butter fingers. Always dropping just the most perfect obvious evidence during their kidnapping. Also the fact it just so happened to fall out and get found and get reported despite the people of Hinamizawa currently protesting the government? What are the odds! Akasaka, doubting the legitimacy of this evidence calls the dentists office listed on the card and gets verified proof that yes, this is indeed the information of a recently kidnapped Toshiki Inukai. And so, thus armed with this orgy of evidence Akasaka and Ooishi gear up, and set out to the area the wallet was found.

Where we get to see the kidnapped Toshiki fantasize briefly about escaping his bonds and beating up his kidnappers, and start formulating an escape plan. Utilizing a scar from a previous injury Toshiki makes the kidnappers believe that he might actually be dying and they call good ol' Doc Irie into to give him a once over.

Akasaka, and Ooishi talk briefly about the notion that they might be arriving to a firefight as they proceed along towards Takatsudo. As they try to reach the area the wallet was found they find themselves right at the epicenter of the protests against the Hinamizawa Dam. Where the protestors are using extreme volume levels to harass the construction efforts, to the point that to Akasaka's mind it feels like it's actively splitting his skull apart. Ooishi mentions that the riot cops who are guarding the scene are equipped with earplugs against the noise, but it makes me wonder if the protestors themselves are similarly equipped. I'm sure they are. Eventually though they get past the center of it and are able to eke their way along the road until they come across another impromptu road block, which causes Ooishi to get out of the car to deal with. Which, that's an extremely ballsy move. You're willingly getting out of your car amidst fifty plus people who apparently hate you to have em move along?

I wonder if the protestors brought her along to the protests, or if she just went alone because... fuck it? I can't imagine they brought her along as a mascot, or anything like that because what exactly would that accomplish? A morale victory? I assume she's there because she knew Akasaka was going to be there.

The pair talk some more about how perfectly timed finding this wallet just happens to be. How fortunate that out of the blue some guy was able to just able to find this random wallet in the bushes. Almost like they wanted it found or something. HMMMMMM. Maybe I'm overestimating Rika's godliness. Perhaps what I attribute to a divine will is actually just something as simple as Oryou is doting on the cute daughter of the Furude family and as such it letting slip some important details to the kidnapping.

IS WHAT I WOULD THINK IF THEY DIDN'T BRING UP HER DIVINE NATURE! You have guys like Ooishi mentioning the village's belief that Rika is the reincarnation of Oyashiro, and even put forward the idea, even as a half-hearted breaking the tension joke that she just might be behind it all! I'm on to something here, I can feel it in my bones!

Shortly after this brief foray into talking about the enigma that is Rika Furude the pair cross paths with Irie, which clues Ooishi on to the fact that their wayward kidnapped child has got to be located here in Takatsudo. The pair arrives at the kidnap shack, where one of the kidnappers flees with young Inukai and Ooishi has a tussle with the remaining crook. I regret to inform you that I did not screenshot most of the fight and flight between Ooishi and his kidnapper, and Akasaka and his quarry. It was a pretty decently written fight scene.

During the fight between Ooishi and the kidnapper (incidentally, they really missed an obvious thing for readability by calling them Kidnapper A and B or 1 and 2, but whatever), Ooishi gets put into a sleeper hold and knocked unconsciousness. The scene then changes to Akasaka, who has just been kicked in the crotch and is giving chase with the kidnapper who has Inukai slung over his shoulder like a sack. Akasaka catches up and the kidnapper begins to beat Akasaka with a rock, and eventually pulls a gun on him. Akasaka gets the jump on him and attacks the armed kidnapper, until the other kidnapper finds the pair and shoots Akasaka in the shoulder.

Akasaka, having been shot in the designated good guy area basically starts groveling for his life and for the kidnappers to spare his life. The ploy works and the pair are surprised at this staggering display of cowardice from a police officer.

But it's a ruse! Ooishi shows up and gets the drop on the kidnappers and disarms one of them until the kidnappers run away, their dastardly scheme foiled.

There's a line earlier on in the earlier brouhaha where Akasaka notes that despite Oryou allegedly ordering them to let Toshiki go they're not giving up without a fight. Which put a small idea in my head that this might all be a misdirection and it's actually not the Sonozaki family who's behind the kidnapping. I know in Chapter Two Watanagashi that Ooishi mentions that they were involved in the kidnapping, but I have a very small doubt that they're actually behind the crime itself. I think it might be possible that while it is a group working for the larger family that it's actually a small offshoot group who did it in an effort to gain favor with the larger family. The previous chapter makes it sound like Oryou is trying to use more legal means of fighting the dam project, and not just criminal skullduggery. And that all of this is actually a ruse to make the police think that they're willing to go to these lengths to fight against the dam. Or, and this is just a wild baseless idea based on absolutely nothing. This is a rival yakuza group trying to pin the blame on the Sonozaki family by doing the kidnapping and leaving the bread crumbs directly to the shack Toshiki was held in to give the cops all the evidence they need to raid them.

Oh yeah, Akasaka got shot. I'm sure he's totally dead. Please ignore he's still alive in 1985, and that's our framing device for this chapter. But yeah, he died. RIP.

[sweetsmollthings]

Figured I’d go ahead and repost something I wrote somewhere else. I’m fond of the dynamic of guy who is freaking the fuck out and guy who is maybe a little callous and goes like “don’t worry about it.”

Includes: shrinking to 1'6''; shrinking to 6''; growing to 24'; awkward nudity; mild destruction of a company bathroom; accidentally discovering a new field of magical study; being deposited in a purse

Gina poured out some orange juice for herself only to find the carton empty. She shook it with disgust, as if that would dislodge any hidden remains, then shouted out the kitchen, “Ashley! We’re out of juice!”

“What?” Ashley’s faint voice shouted back from her room. Gina slammed the empty carton into recycling and opened the fridge again.

“Don’t just put empty cartons back in the fridge, you asshole!” It was a futile scolding, but one she was obligated to give. For the principle of the matter.

The fridge was woefully devoid of drinks. Well, except for a small glass bottle labeled “Ashley’s,” which meant it was off limits, but really you could argue that Ashley owed her a drink and therefore, by proxy, this was hers. Grabbing the bottle and tearing off the saran wrap on the top (Ashley must have thrown away the cap without even finishing it), Gina chugged the dark blue liquid and started washing the bottle before recycling it.

As she washed it, the bottle kept threatening to slip out of her hands, forcing her to shift her grip constantly. Gina frowned, carefully swirling the water inside. The bottle hadn’t felt particularly slick or anything and she wasn’t even using soap, but she could still feel the glass sliding against her skin. Staring at it, it almost looked like it was expanding. Which was weird, right? Wasn’t it metal that expanded in hot water? And she wasn’t even using hot water anyways —

Gina’s elbows suddenly hit the sink counter and she dropped the bottle and stepped back. And saw that there was something horribly wrong about everything.

Her sleeves drooped, swinging around as she recoiled; her jeans were piling at her feet; under them, she could feel her socks sag and flop when she stumbled, almost stepping straight out of them. Her surroundings weren’t any more comforting, looking as oversized as her clothes. And getting more oversized as she watched. The sink was approaching chest height, passing it even, and there wasn’t any sign of it slowing.

Gina screamed.

Ashley pounded into the kitchen, skidding to a stop at the entrance and looking much too tall herself, making Gina scream again and skitter backwards, step on her own pants, and fall straight on her butt, her shirt ballooning over her.

Ashley, looking panicked, said, “You drank my potion?!”

“Potion?!” Gina echoed as she pulled her shirt off her head. Her breath caught for a moment as Ashley hastily stepped over her to check the fridge. She tried standing up, juggling her baggy clothes in her hands, though this only served to send her spiraling into further hysteria as she stood just in time to see the sink counter rise past her eyeline. “What’s happening? Oh god, am I dying?! Help me!”

Ashley glanced down at her, chewing her lip. “Okay so don’t freak out,” she said, looking twice as big as she should have been. Gina pressed her back against a cabinet door and tried not to whimper as she caught the handle passing by her head from the corner of her eye. “So. Um. Remember when I said I was going to school for pharmacology? That wasn’t, like, a complete lie or anything, but, well…I mean, like if you really think about it, witchcraft is like a type of pharmacology. Yeah? Yeah.” She paused. “Anyways, I’m going to school for witchcraft.”

“Witches aren’t a thing!” Gina shouted desperately. Her witch roommate, whose (okay, fine, she can’t deny it) shrinking potion she had inadvertently drank, crossed her arms at her from above. Gina self-consciously clutched her shirt to herself. Her collar dipped down her back despite her efforts. “Please, I need help!”

“You need help,” Ashley muttered, running a hand through her hair as she strode back to her room. Gina yelped as the giant leg in front of her whooshed by and landed (relatively) eight feet away. “I don’t have the homework I need to turn in.”

“Homework?!” Gina chased after Ashley as best as she could. Her shirt was now too much of a burden, crumpled around her like a small camping tent, and she tripped over a crease and rolled right out of her collar, fully nude. Despite her current frantic situation, the sheer embarrassment overturned her priorities enough for her to hesitate and consider how to get her shirt to cover her again, before she remembered that she didn’t have the time and sprinted to Ashley’s room instead.

Ashley had already made it inside her room and was clanging about. “Yeah, I didn’t make extras because I didn’t think that someone would drink my homework! Do you know how long these — well, no, you don’t, but they take an hour to brew!”

It took a minute to cross a distance that Ashley had covered in seconds. Gina paused to lean against Ashley’s doorway. At least she had the consideration (or the absentmindedness) to leave it open. “But you can’t leave me like this! I’m shrinking! What if it doesn’t stop?!”

Ashley waved a hand dismissively without looking at her. “Don’t be dramatic, you’ve stopped already. It only shrinks you by a factor of four.”

Gina looked around. “Oh.” Still, she easily regained her bluster. “But I have to get to work! You need to make, I dunno, a growth potion?”

“No,” said Ashley, turning around and pointing a wooden spoon down at her. Even if she wasn’t currently able to kick her across a room, the look in her eyes would have been enough to make Gina retreat a few steps. Confronted by both, she retreated six. “I need to remake the shrink potion so I can turn it in to a professor that already hates me.” Seeing Gina’s shivering form, Ashley’s expression softened. “Look. It’s fine. Just call in sick for a — “

“Don’t witches have spells? Just get a wand or something and,” Gina ended her sentence with an incomprehensible gesture.

Her roommate frowned. “You aren’t listening — “

“Ashley!”

At first, when a dark look crossed Ashley’s face, Gina was afraid that she was just going to ignore her. But then Ashley sighed and stomped over to her, which was terrifying, but in a relieving sort of way.

With a hand on her doorknob, Ashley glared down, muttered a phrase that Gina couldn’t decipher, and pointed at her. Immediately, Gina grew back to normal at a dizzying rate, the sudden burst of friction burning her feet a little. After anxiously measuring herself against the doorframe, Gina turned to Ashley to thank her, only for Ashley to slam the door in her face.

“Thanks,” she said anyways, before collecting her clothes from the kitchen and running out the door.

-

It took four hours for Gina to stop thinking about the morning’s events, and that was mostly because of lunch break. Food had a way of refreshing the mind. Thinking about it, she hadn’t managed to eat a proper breakfast before the, uh, accident, but now that she was full, her mood improved significantly. Of course, there was a lot to unpack about everything she had just learned. And she would probably have to talk with Ashley about the whole…witch thing. And hopefully Ashley wouldn’t have to kill her to keep magic a secret or something. But all of that could wait until work was over. She hadn’t made much progress in the coding errors she was supposed to fix today what with all those distracting thoughts and needed to make up for lost time.

Gina cracked her knuckles and got typing. She made it for half an hour before getting distracted again, though this time it was with her typos. For whatever reason, she was starting to fumble. A lot. She could excuse a mistype once in a while, but at this point it seemed every key she pressed she was accidentally pressing another one. Her fingers felt clumsy and swollen against the keys, and was it getting hard to breathe?

Gina pushed herself away from her desk with a sinking feeling. Now that she was looking up from her work, she noticed that her head was inching up over her cubicle’s walls.

“Something the matter?” Simon asked her from the next cubicle. “You need to go somewhere? If it’s an emergency, I can tell Daniel for you.”

He thinks I’m standing up, Gina realized. As she unwedged herself from her chair, she said, “Yeah, thanks,” and half-jogged to the women’s room, slouching the entire way.

Nobody was in there, which was great, though Gina wasn’t happy about how easily she was able to tell, considering she could basically see right into the stalls. Sitting against the door, she managed to slide her phone out of her pocket. She could hear the seams of her shirt straining against her expanding form as she made the call.

“Having problems?” Ashley said casually as soon as she answered.

“Ashley, there’s something — you already know what’s happening, don’t you.”

“You really should’ve listened to me.”

“Okay, yes, excuse me for freaking out and making bad decisions the first time I experience getting shrunk by my roommate!” Gina hissed. Or tried to. It really was more like a wheeze. Her collar was really choking her.

“Hey, don’t pin that on me. You got shrunk by a potion. That you drank on your own.”

“You made the potion! Ow, fuck!”

“What’s wrong?”

“A button just fucking shot itself in my eye. Hang on,” Gina said. Cupping her increasingly smaller phone in one hand, she carefully aimed her pinky and tapped it. “Okay, it’s getting hard to hold this to my ear, so you’re on speakerphone. Look, can you just tell me why this is happening?”

“What? You haven’t figured it out?”

“Why would I be able to figure it out?!” Gina gasped as, almost simultaneously, all her clothes gave up around her, a symphony of rips that represented the destruction of about eighty dollars. At least she could breathe easily again. “I don’t know if you realize this, but magic rules aren’t obvious to me!”

“The potion wore off, dummy.”

“Huh?” Gina cringed as she started feeling the cool floor tiles on her butt.

Ashley sighed. “Potion effects are temporary because we digest them. That’s why I told you it was fine, because you’d grow back anyways. It’s like drinking alcohol. You get sober eventually.”

That did make a lot of sense.

“Okay. Got it. Now I know,” Gina said, slouching lower as her head approached the ceiling. Her legs were still able to fit in the space between the stalls and the sinks, but that was changing very quickly. She hugged her knees to her chest, careful to keep her postage stamp of a phone in the center of her palm. “Can you please come over and help me? I don’t want to outgrow the room!”

“Don’t be dramatic. When you drank the potion, you lost...what, four and a half feet? You’re just getting that back now. So you’re gonna be ten feet six at the most.”

“That’s not too bad,” she said, nervously hitching a leg over the toilets. “But I’m definitely bigger than that. I can’t even fit my hand through the door.”

“Oh.” The phone went silent. “That’s not a good sign.”

“Yeah, no kidding!”

“I don’t know how that could happen, that’s definitely more than double what you lost,” Ashley mumbled to herself, not listening. Gina sighed and let her talk, shifting onto her side. She morosely picked at the tiny scraps of fabric stuck to her body and flicked them off. “How can you be growing that much just from a potion wearing off? All that’s supposed to happen is the effects being reversed, essentially – unless…”

“What?” Gina said sullenly.

“...the effect of the potion was reducing a person’s size by a factor of four...normally, for you, that meant losing the four and a half feet, but then you had me use a spell to make you six feet again before the potion’s effect wore off!” There were vague sounds of clattering, as if Ashley was throwing several things into a bag and running outside. “Of course digesting it isn’t just undoing what it’s done! It’s reversing what it’s done! It’s just that usually means the same thing because nobody’s been stupid enough to undo a potion’s effect with a spell! So of course when a potion that shrinks you by a factor of four wears off, you grow by a factor of four!”

“I’m gonna be twenty-four feet tall?!” Gina shrieked, sitting up, only to hit her head on the ceiling, causing plaster to dust her face. Her foot kicked out reflexively as she suffered a coughing fit and knocked a stall door off its hinges. When she finally managed to clear her throat, her phone was missing from her hand. “Oh god,” she moaned, trying to scan her body for a place that her phone could have bounced off to, hopefully unbroken. She thought she heard some sort of buzzing noise somewhere around the folds of her belly, but then it abruptly stopped. At least it looked like she was done growing. And Ashley sounded like she was coming. Though it was ambiguous whether she was coming to actually help.

-

Half an hour later, there was a knock. “It’s me,” Ashley’s voice called out, and Gina dutifully tried to shift herself and unblock the door. “I mean, I don’t think anybody’s written a paper on this,” she babbled as she squeezed in, gesturing wildly as she crawled over Gina’s arm. “This could – well, I wouldn’t say revolutionize anything, but this opens up like a whole field of study at the very least! I don’t think anybody’s done anything with abusing, like, the temporary-ness of effects with permanent -- “

“Ashley.”

“Yes, yes, okay.” Ashley waved a hand at her in irritation, muttering a different phrase that was similarly indecipherable, and Gina almost cracked her head on the floor when the wall retreated from her back.

Once again, the spell worked faster than the potion, though this wasn’t as fast as growing had been. Probably because she had a lot more ground to cover than back then. She sat up, happy to not have to duck, found her phone when it tumbled between her legs, remembered that she was absolutely naked, and curled up to conceal herself, blushing.

Ashley laughed. “You didn’t seem that bothered when you were bigger than the room.”

“Shut up,” Gina snapped, turning towards her. “That’s – um.”

Ashley smirked down at her, which was natural since she was still sitting down. But Gina was pretty sure that she shouldn’t be smirking that far down at her. Gina jumped to her feet, finding herself only standing as tall as Ashley’s chest and dwindling even more. She was shedding plaster dust during her descent, but most of it was still sticking to her skin and a lot of it was decidedly no longer dust, more like pebbles. There was a stray piece of toilet paper that must have gotten caught on her when she was boxed up in the bathroom that was now curling around her leg, engulfing it.

“Ashley,” she said, mouth dry, “I think you overshot it.”

“Nah, you still got a bit to go.” Looking satisfied with the trajectory of her work, Ashley started collecting the shreds of Gina’s clothes near the door and tossing them in a plastic bag that Gina only now noticed she was carrying. “Otherwise, you can’t fit in my purse.”

“You’re kidnapping me!?”

Ashley laughed and crouched down next to her. “It’s not kidnapping if I’m taking you home. I mean, your other option is to go out with no clothes -- “

“This is better,” Gina said, battling the toilet paper off. She watched the tiles under her grow to the size of cobblestones. “Uh. But, aren’t I getting too small…?”

“Hey, I don’t think I’d be able to hide you if you’re over a foot tall.” Ashley’s hands scooped up Gina from under her shoulders and she yelped, kicking instinctively. Not that her feet could reach anything. Ashley didn’t even seem to notice, seamlessly shifting her grip on Gina to one hand as she turned on a sink with the other. It was disorienting to find herself go from being the size of an arm to being the size of a phone in one second, almost as disorienting as suddenly being thrust under a torrent of water and then rolled up in a hand towel before being dumped into a bag. “Anyways, be quiet. We wouldn’t want anybody to search me because you made a weird noise.”

Well, thought Gina as she swung in Ashley’s purse, at least it looks like she won’t have to kill me to keep magic a secret.

[gayf1hoe]

Part 6

“MoneyGram Haas F1 Driver Y/N L/N to join Red Bull Racing next season replacing Sergio Perez”

I still can't believe this is real. A few weeks ago my career looked dead and all things were pointing at me joining Williams which would have been suicide given the way they are performing this year. But, out of the blue one day during the week off I got a phone call from my manager saying that Christian Horner had asked to speak to me and within the first 5 minutes of us talking he offered me a Red Bull seat for next year. He said that he had been impressed with my efforts at Haas and that I was the ideal candidate which I'm sure it is a massive blow for drivers like Yuki, Liam and Danny but it wasn't my decision and I can't say I'm annoyed that they picked me, but can already tell there might be some jealousy.

The second it was announced my phone began blowing up with messages and calls from everyone. I am a bit nervous about driving with Max, but I won't be intimidated and as George Russell once said “I'm not going to wave him by because he's Max Verstappen in a Red Bull”.

We are here in Monaco after the Miami Grand Prix where I got P8 and Carlos P11 and Imola where I secured P6 and Carlos P9. The team have brought some major upgrades to Monaco including a new front wing design, a new rear wing and a supposedly stronger monocoque.

“Y/N how is the car?”

“Down force is good but this car is just too big for this circuit”

For many years as Formula 1 has developed there has been much questioning as to whether Monaco should still be on the calendar as the cars have gotten bigger and the track has pretty much remained the same size since the 1950s, a safety car or Red flag is always a possibility here at any point.

In the engineering meeting before Quali there is the usual tense atmosphere but I keep getting distracted by Carlos who keeps messaging me. We have sort of made up and he's only texting me things like:

“This is so boring”

“I can't wait for this to end”

We are on speaking terms but we are nowhere near besties, if anything I'm just keeping my head down for the next 14 races and never looking back at my time at Haas and maybe finally I can save money by stopping the therapy meetings I have had to attend for stress.

There are many reasons as to why I'm sad and happy to leave the team and as I'm sat in the car I look around and see all the engineers that I have got to know so well over my F1 career and realise that I am on my last few races with them. Alex of course gives me the usual fist bump and warm smile. When he found out I was leaving he was the one who was most upset and he promised to try and get a job at Red Bull.

But as I become too transfixed on his light blue eyes I am quickly snapped out of my thoughts:

“Green Light, the car is ready to go”

We wait a few minutes before going out and by this time there's so much traffic on the track and during my first flying lap I encounter a sleeping George just sitting on the track in the way which impedes me and means my lap is only good enough for P16.

“Yep, fucking George was just sitting on the track not looking behind him, that should be a penalty”

“Yep copied we are reporting it"

Thankfully on my second run I didn't encounter a sleeping Brit on the track and my second flying lap put me in P4 seeing me through to Q2. In the interval between Q1 and Q2 we make a few setting alterations and the mechanics do a little dance routine to the songs that are playing in the garage to keep me entertained.

I only manage to pass the pit exit line when I hear:

“Red Flag, Red Flag, Verstappen has had a shunt”

As I pass Max I pray that this isn't a sign as to what my future at the team will be like and if it is I would like to scrap my contract now.

Both me and Carlos make it through to Q3 without much pushing of the car, and with Max out of the session everyone feels a lot calmer. By the end of the session I qualify P3 and Carlos P5 which is probably the closest we have been together on the starting grid all season. Normally one of us is towards the front (normally me) and the other is to the back of the grid.

Me and Carlos agree to go for drinks after qualifying and as we have been seen together in public a lot recently it put people's minds at rest that we don't hate each other despite the accurate rumours that have somehow made their way to the media.

The bar is relatively quiet as you have to be a member to get into and after a while of talking Carlos changes the entire tone of the conversation.

“I have something to say”

“Sure, go ahead”

“Me and lando have started speaking again”

He looks at me as if he's expecting me to have some sort of reaction to it.

“That's great, why are you telling me though?”

“Well I didn't want things to be awkward and for you to be confused if you randomly saw us talking ”

“Whatever you do is your business”

“So are you talking to anyone?”

“No,” I reply.

It's probably the biggest lie I have ever told, I don't really want to tell him I'm seeing a Formula E driver. I just don't see how it's any of his business and I know he told me he's speaking to Lando but I really couldn't care less.

After a while of speaking we head back to our hotel rooms and I rest my phone against the wall as I take a seat at the desk and start a FaceTime call.

It doesn't take long for him to pick up.

“Hey Dan”

“Hi love you were awesome today”

I'm sure the last person people would expect me to be dating is Dan Ticktum. He's quite unpopular, many people say he has personality issues and is a bit of a dick but the people I have dated in the past all had one thing in common, they are dicks, it's just my type obviously which would explain why none of my relationships last.

“Thank you I didn't think you would watch”

“Of course I would watch you. I am meant to support you and plus you watch everything to do with Formula E so it's only fair”

We chat for hours talking about the last 2 days as we haven't been able to speak as we have been so busy. When I attended the Chinese E - Prix I wasn't aware that I would meet Dan and we would end up dating, he came to the Italian Grand Prix after we started dating and he said he enjoyed watching me race but he was also pissed off he never made it to F1 but I assured him that he shouldn't discount himself and to keep on pushing.

I eventually clamber into the bed after coming out of the bathroom from my shower and find a random TV show that I don't even get to watch as I fall asleep as soon as it starts.

In the morning I am awoken by my assistant knocking on the door with my outfit for today that I had sent down to be dry cleaned. The early wake up call isn't something I'm majorly overjoyed by and my groan of annoyance makes it obvious. There's an engineering meeting in 1 hour so I have to rush to the track but as the F2 feature race is taking place the paddock is overwhelmed by a tumultuous sea of people.

“So we have the engineering meeting, some fan engagement and interviews and the race” my assistant informs me.

I take my seat in the engineering room next to my engineer and some other team personnel and don the headset which connects us to specialists back in the factory. To make things much more worse Gene is here and as he owns the team me and Carlos have been told to be on our best behaviour.

“Y/N and Carlos do you have any concerns or questions about this weekend?” The racing director voices.

“If me and Carlos end up next to each other and we are trying to attack the car in front will there be a driver swap or is it just race until you overtake” I ask knowing full well I won't be participating in any driver swap.

“Well we of course will make that decision based on who has the better pace and what position we are fighting for”

I collect my cap and head out the back into the fan area where Haas has invited some fans and given them special access, so me and Carlos spend some time talking with them and signing some stuff all whilst the sound of the F2 cars engines dominate the air.

Monaco has always brought out a lot of pageantry with hundreds of celebrities and fans on the track as we start preparing for one of the most esteemed races in motorsports. I have a lovely view of George (who didn't get a penalty for impeding me in quali) and Lewis, the ex-teammates, in front of me in P1 and P2 and Checo who is in P4 next to me.

“Radio Check”

“It's really hot in here”

“Yep, loud and clear Y/N” my engineer replies.

“A quick compound run down everyone has gone hard apart from Ocon, Tsundoa and Verstappen who have gone soft”

“Thank you for that very precise information, it's greatly appreciated ” I reply with a very strong suggestive undertone.

My eyes dart to the 5 Red lights after the formation lap, concentrating on getting the best start I can.

I get off the line well whereas George encounters some wheel-spin that enables me to pass him. And all is going well until turn 3…

“Red Flag, Ocon and Gasly have shunted they have also collected Zhou with them”

“Copied. Are they all OK?”

“Yep all are fine”

In the pit lane we essentially get a free pit stop and Monaco is the track where you can make the tyres last as you aren't pushing flat out at any point really so your tires can last pretty much for the entire race.

“Y/N just to let you know the restart will be the grid order you started in so we are back down to P3”

“Yep regards to the FIA for making things harder for me”

It's just my luck to make up a place in Monaco and be denied that place after a red flag. It's like the FIA are working against me, but It's not like I've tried to be nice to them or make them like me.

On the restart both Lewis and George have a good start and I can't get ahead of them but I see Carlos coming into my mirror and I have no intention of letting him pass. My engineer must notice as he randomly starts talking in the middle of the turn which is a big no.

“Y/N we want to conserve tyres we are looking at Plan C”

Plan C is running the tires to the end of the race without stopping.

Lap 55 and I'm in second and I have a 12 second gap to Carlos behind and a 0.4 gap to George ahead, Lewis had to retire due to a hydraulic failure. I attempt to overtake George as we approach the Nouvelle Chicane but he defends aggressively and my front right tyre comes off.

“I have a puncture guys”

“Copy, box, box”

Me and George both pit but my stop is quicker as he has to replace his front wing and thankfully there was a massive gap between Carlos and Checo behind and I came out in between the two.

“Y/N we are thinking of boxing Carlos if he pits you will have to give back the space.”

“We didn't discuss that in the meeting”

“We said it would change depending on the situation”

Carlos boxes making me the race leader and having Checo trailing behind me. When Carlos exits the pits he makes numerous attempts to overtake Checo and on much newer tires it's not much of a challenge for him.

“Y/N we have 15 Laps to go. Please return the position”

“Why?” I ask.

“It's would be best for the team if you give back the position”

“You want me to do what's best for the team that screwed me over”

“Y/N I am trying to protect you”

I don't listen and continue to push on. Increasing the gap to 3.1 seconds.

10 Laps to go: “Y/N we need to do it now, if there is a safety car things are going to get really awkward”

8 Laps to go: “The way to do well in this sport is not by yourself it's by playing the team game, please let Carlos by”

4 Laps to go: “Y/N you have proved your point just let him by”

On the last lap I am sick of hearing the constant yapping of my engineer and concede to their demands and let Carlos by at the Nouvelle Chicane, incredibly pissed.

“Yep don't say anything to me or I could be liable to say something I will regret”

As we cross the line the team are hanging over the pit wall cheering both of us on and whilst Carlos drives close to the wall like most drivers do I go to the complete opposite side. Many could argue I'm being petty but willingly letting someone else pass you to win goes against every racer's natural instinct.

“P2, P2 good job”

“Yeah whatever”

I step out the car and head over to the FIA weighing scales and Valtteri comes over to me and says I did the right thing but it doesn't feel like it, because unlike when Valtteri had to follow team orders he was at the top of the standings any way whereas I'm in a mid tier team where every point for me is showing my potential to bigger teams, but I'm off to Red Bull so it doesn't really matter in that sense but my ego is saying otherwise.

In the cool down room I take a seat and watch the race replay making small talk with Checo.

“You were really fast today” Checo comments.

“Thanks you were flying at the restart though” I retort.

After watching the incident between me and George it's clear we are both partly to blame so I hold no bad blood against him.

At the conclusion of the podium ceremony I head over to the reporter who I have been told I must speak to:

Reporter: So good result for the team the first 1-2 in the team's history, how does it feel?

Y/N: It feels pretty good for the team we have somehow gone from being a back marker to being in the fight for a top midfield position.

Reporter: Now the question we are all asking is how has Haas, previously a back marker notorious for having an unreliable car with bad pace, managed to secure such good results this year?

Y/N: It's been a lot of hard work and even this year we have had our struggles, in Imola and Miami we had pace issues and only managed to get a few points which wasn't what we wanted. We have been constantly developing the car and talking with specialist departments. And it has been difficult to improve whilst staying within the FIA cost cap but we have somehow managed to stay on track.

Reporter: Now I'm sure you know what's coming next. The team orders. Do you feel it was unfair to give the position to Carlos?

Y/N: At the end of the day it's racing. I don't see why I should just give up the places just because he's my teammate. The team didn't need to pit Carlos but they wanted to get the fastest lap point as well. In my opinion the team got a little bit greedy for points and that's what caused the conflict. But the team obviously wanted Carlos to get his first win with the team and move him up in the standings.

Reporter: Many people have said your attitude over the race sounds a lot like the way Dan Ticktum in Formula E talks. Now you have seen a lot with him so has he influenced your attitude? And what's your relationship there?

Y/N: Well yes we have spent quite a lot of time with each other but I would say he's explicitly influenced the way I talk or act. In terms of our relationship we are just good friends, we have known each other for 4 weeks and have gone out a lot together and got to know each other very well.

Reporter: Some people would call that dating. Do you disagree?

Y/N: Everyone has their own interpretation.

As usual at the end of the race we have the debrief meeting, some race weekends we do it the next day it just depends on the time the race finishes but as the race has finished in the afternoon we get the joy of sitting through a debrief.

Walking into the room there is a load of data on the screens and Gene is standing at the front with Guenther. After everyone arrives he does a massive speech about how well we have done and made changes from last year and how good it is for Carlos to achieve his maiden win with the team.

“I can't believe they didn't even acknowledge the fact Carlos wouldn't have won if you didn't give the position back” Alex says in a whisper.

At the conclusion of the meeting Guenther asks me to stand behind, I get deja vu from being at school when I would have to stay behind from class more than likely because I fell asleep after being up all night travelling back from a karting race.

“Look I appreciate you eventually following the order but you can't do that again. It's overshadowed Carlos’ first win and with all due you respect you acted like a child”

“I think you forget Guenther I turned down a Sauber offer that would have seen me go to Audi when they join. I turned that down because you practically begged me to stay. I stayed with the team even after a crazy Russian driver drove into me on track and his mad father who was practically threatening to set half the fucking Kremlin officials on me for outperforming his son and you stood by and did nothing because he was the main investor if you had come to me I would have told him to “fuck off” for you. So please don't lecture me about being mature and doing what's best for the team when I have always put this team first despite it giving me nothing in return apart from a very expensive therapist bill, probably being on some Russians's hit list, and a contract termination ”

As I'm packing my bag with my stuff Carlos enters my room holding my folder that I must have left in the garage. Genuther has gone mad at me for losing that thing before as it contains lots of documents about the car, the team and other confidential stuff we don't want other teams getting a hold of.

“Ah thanks you're a lifesaver” I say reaching to grab the folder from his hands, but he retracts his arm.

“Why didn't you tell me that you and Dan Ticktum were dating?” he asks.

I again go to reach for the folder and he moves his arm further back.

“I just didn't see how it's any of your business and before you say that you told me about Lando, I never asked.”

“That's not the reason, it's something different than that.”

“There really no other reason Carlos you are just paranoid”

“There's no reason someone like you would date Dan Ticktum”

“What's that supposed to mean?” I say, raising my voice slightly.

“He's a dickhead who's going to break your heart and you know it, if you want attention you could at least date someone who cares about you at least. Fuck, even Alex would love you more than Dan”

“Carlos just leave”

“Fine but don't say I didn't warn you”

Guenther’s talk and Carlos’ rant has pissed me off so I head back to my hotel and make a few calls to get out of here. We have another week's break before Spain and I intend to just spend it at home. I eventually manage to arrange a flight with the charter company that is sponsoring Haas and make my way to Nice to the private airport.

Before I leave George manages to catch up with me and evidently Carlos has spoken to him by the trajectory of the conversation where he is evidently hinting at something but is too scared to say it outright.

“Are you heading back already?”

“Yeah I just need to spend some time at home”

“Are you OK?” he questions.

“Yes I'm fine” I reply bluntly.

“So you and Dan huh?”

“George, what do you want? All these small talk questions really aren't amusing me?”

“I just want to check you're fine and doing the right thing with Dan?”

“George I am fine and I don't know if I'm doing the right thing with Dan but I'm an adult and I will learn from my mistakes if it isn't right. Now if you don't mind I have to catch a flight”

I was hoping to join a team that would have meant I didn't have to spend so much time in England because the weather is as Bipolar as me. But being with Red Bull means that's not happening.

I feel a sense of relief opening my apartment door that has become kind of stiff to open, elucidating how little time I have to come home.

There is a mountain of junk mail on the floor despite the very clear sign on the door saying no junk mail but apparently the people who work for the post office in the UK can’t read, and my assistant here promised to come by and check my mail but obviously she has been slacking but I don’t really care it's not like anything important comes by post anymore.

It's only early morning so I head straight to bed and the pattering of rain starts hitting the window.

“Great” I sigh, turning over.

I have no idea what I'm going to be doing whilst I'm here but I know I have some legal meetings with Red Bull and Haas regarding contracts which will be a lot of fun. Just kidding, it will be hours of banal meetings listening to tedious talks, from tedious people about tedious things.

I drag myself from my bed and decide to go for a run which is out of character for me but there is nothing more freeing than a run in the rain. I turn my headphones on and started playing a random saved playlist on Spotify. I live really near Silverstone like a 20 minute walk or a 15 minute run at my incredibly slow running pace . As I run past the track I can see some of the grandstands and other features that have been set up for the Grand Prix in a few weeks time.

During my run I happen to spot the same car drive by me 3 or 4 times as I run along one of the main roads but I don't think much of it as it isn't easy to get lost around here so I assume they are just looking for their destination and even when I start heading back home and see the same car I don't think much of it.

As I walk up to my apartment I see my door open and as much as in this situation I'm sure I should turn around and call the police I enter the apartment with the utmost caution. It's empty and nothing has been taken. Not that there's anything to take as all my valuable possessions which are literally my trophies and helmets are stored in a secure unit.

There is a single note on the kitchen side and it says….

[miminmimikyu]

Prodigy episodes 5-6

WHAT THAt coffee with espresso shot from the trailer was for Dal??? janeway what are you doing to that child

I guess Janeway’s way of dealing with *gestures* all this is by giving coffee to her protégé, said coffee being heavily imbued with symbolism. Dal and Janeway are already coming up with the same “plan” independently of each other (finding the protostar and placing it on past!Tars Lamora themselves to fix the timeline)! I’m so proud :’) don’t pick up any more of her habits, Dal.

Something else that I also like is: unlike in other kids shows, where to tell a story where the children go off to save the day all the adults are written as stern, uncaring people who don’t see reason + then in the end you’ll eventually find out that that was all miscommunication, in Prodigy they’re showing that outright! The adults aren’t uncaring and they aren’t angry (anymore) at the kids— they are shocked that they even got into that situation in the first place. It’s viewed by the adults as a failure on their part, of their responsibilities as adults. They talk, among themselves, about how much they admire how the children are holding up in these circumstances and they make an effort to check if they really are okay, even though these are incredibly stressful circumstances for them (for janeway in particular) too. It seems that they also understand that being kept in the dark is what is making the gang restless and they offer them at least some morsels of information. Like how Tysess tells them that the Infinity is going to be destroyed but it’s NOT because of anything they did. He didn’t need to tell them that, but he did. But you can’t expect the gang can intuit all this and instead think they’re being punished or on the verge of being kicked out. That’s a reasonable assumption for any child/teenager to make, but especially for these ones, who have only been around bad, untrustworthy or neglectful adults almost their whole lives. So no one is sharing info but the situation is more nuanced than I've seen before in a children's show.

But please please someone share some information with Janeway 💀

Cerritos mention!!!! Does that mean the EMH will be in an episode of Lower Decks s5? He went on that ship and survived??

They really nailed the doctor’s facial expressions and mannerisms! Great to know he’s still writing self-insert fiction. Hopefully this one isn’t as libellous as Photons Be Free. Makes me wonder what the rest of Voyager’s former crew is up to now.

Also Janeway’s expressions are spot on for that matter: oh man the pain on her face when she blew up the wormhole!!!The fact that she only really lets the mask slip the second she’s on her own is so Janeway too *chef's kiss*

Is this the first ever mention of what tribe Chakotay is from?

Mermaid Murf and Gillian in the tank were so cute!

I love the snippets of personality we’re getting from Voyager-A’s bridge crew these two episodes: Tysess can laugh? Oh boy, he can. Counsellor Noum just clocking off for the day with a good book? I’m glad that he’s warming up to Jankom a little bit. Anyway, Janeway’s new officers all seem so on board with her and her mission, if Janeway had said “never mind, let’s just cloak the ship and use it for a covert mission” I think they all would have gone along in a heartbeat.

Also is this the same Vulcan lieutenant from Mindwalk? So that sudden makeout (handshake) with Janeway (Dal) didn’t put him off working for Janeway/humans forever.

Was Noum the only doctor on the Dauntless? Wait, did they only let Janeway do that mission on the Dauntless as long as there was a proper psychiatrist/psychologist as the chief medical officer?

Omg omg omg next is another episode where the voice actors do impressions of each others’ characters?? I cannot wait!!!!!

Also it’s so funny that Jellico just consistently remains “Captain/Admiral Buzzkill” after all these years. Anyway. Fuck him.

[asfateentertwines]

Anea

Sorry this took so long, coming up on finals and it's been hectic lmao

They are 22 (Rotxo) and 23 (Spider) when they find their first daughter

Kids were a desire they hadn't sorted out yet - biology and the war were too in the way for them to even truly consider options (Rotxo thought about it a lot though, it was one of the ways he got through what was going on, imagining a little blonde na'vi or the kids they could adopt, uncaring of logistics or realism)

They find Anea when she is 6 months old

Bridgehead falls and the war is reaching it's conclusion with this being one of the last major battles. However, the people left behind are hardly peaceful and the repopulation efforts had begun

Most of the people are pregnant or came with older children in the case of repopulating citizens, however, a few had already had their children. As many that can be sent to earth are but, again, there's the question of what to do with the children left behind

Some will, again, stay with the children too young to travel but there's very little humans allowed to stay on Pandora - as such, there's few caretakers

Unfortunately, many of the children don't survive the war. Between attacks, illness, and accidents of a planet not made for them, the surviving group is limited to a small handful

Spider spends as much time as he can helping to foster and situate the children remaining - the copy of his own childhood sends him into a bit of a spiral

The difference this time is that his presence has the Omatikaya and Metkayina more prone to opening their arms to them

Part of him doesn't think he could let any of them go, but slowly they're taken into the families of those around him. Kiri takes one with her mate, some of their friends take others, but Anea somehow stays

He can't keep himself away from her but it scares him. Rotxo is there helping but he keeps them apart - scared of what facing the feelings would mean

He should have known better than to try

Rotxo scoops her up before he has a chance to one day, noting his mates attachment and wanting to confront what was happening

The little girl is tiny. She's 6 months old but barely reaches past his wrist and he feels his heart stop.

She's not scared of him, despite the fact that few Na'vi have interacted with her up to this point. Rather, she whines and nestles down into the warmth of his body. She's asleep before he can even reach Spider

He doesn't ask so much as tell Spider that it's time to bring her home

Rotxo is a very broad man, strong and muscled at this point in his life, but now he's reduced to a gushy mess over a little creature too young to care if she has him wrapped around her tiny finger

Norm is on cloud nine when they finally ask to adopt her

He knew they were going to take her the whole time - he practically raised the dumb fucks and he's tired of the skirting around, get his granddaughter a name and get on with it!

Kiri ultimately names her. They tell her the news and she melts, whispering Anea when she leans down to kiss the infants head

Naming her took some effort given their situation. Figuring out the family name, who would go where, etc was a little bit of a hassle since they wanted to respect Rotxo's family but make sure Spider was included

Ultimately, they use Socorro so she is connected to her humanity but Rotxo is the parents name they claim. She's human, but they give her a na'vi name so she never feels separated like her father did

And so, Anea te Socorro Rotxo'ite is born

Rotxo is 300% whipped for this little girl

He's terrified of hurting her but he's so beyond taken with her that he doesn't know how to function

Spider has to be the responsible parent who reminds him that she needs to be put down and that Rotxo can't stay in the shed 24/7 with them and he needs to go outside

While you might assume the tattooed warrior that will forever tower over this part of his family is the protective one, it's Spider

Spider didn't realize how lucky he was to survive his childhood until the others didn't

He takes protecting Anea to a whole new level and does everything in his power and beyond to protect her

Kiri thinks it's hilarious but is admittedly pretty bad as well with her own son, a slightly younger boy she adopted when they took in Anea

Anea and her cousin are raised in the shed behind Rocorro's marui until they're around 5 and able to wear a mask

When she's able to go outside, she takes after Spider a lot

She's a climber and an explorer, wanting to see and be in everything since she couldn't be before

Rotxo is the worst enabler and teams up with Lo'ak to get her into things she probably should not have access too

Surprisingly though, Tsireya is the one she chases after the most

Anea is a complete water baby and spends as much time as she can floating and playing in the water

Tsireya very proudly believes she is blessed by Ewya to show how she belongs with them, a diver through and through

Personality wise, she's very curious and can be headstrong but is kind of shy with new people since she grew up so sheltered

She's very comfortable with her clan but new people will have her in one of her dads arms or behind them in an instant

She's not a sickly child, but she has a lot of allergies and needs special food a lot

She is also asthmatic which was a very...intense day to figure out

She and Rotxo are close her entire life

As she gets older, she likes to study plants and helps maintain the reef

She takes a lot of interest in the science of pandora and ends up apprenticing under the aging scientists she grew up with

With some help from Ronal, Norm, Tsireya, and Kiri (a terrifying combination that scares the shit out of her Dads and uncles) she ends up working to combine some of Earth's science with the spiritual practices of Pandora

Despite growing up in the tail end of a war, she really isn't much of a fighter

She can defend herself but much prefers to stay concentrated on her studies where she can help it

With help from Spider, she has a much healthier connection between her humanity and her connection to Ewya

Physically, she's latina

Her family was Spanish

They know her mother and father were colonists but her mother is MIA in the documents they found and her Father died of illness shortly after arriving on Pandora

There are records of several siblings that returned to Earth and a brother that didn't survive

Rotxo is the one haunted the most by her family

She doesn't worry much over them, she only wishes she could have seen her siblings or could reach out to them

Spider is, surprisingly, more accepting of the mystery that is her biological family

He knows what it's like to wonder but has learned the hard way that blood only means so much

But Rotxo wonders where they are, if they watch over her, and feels like he lost a chance in never meeting her siblings

It hurts him that they're separated but the conflicts with Earth mean there's nothing that can be done

He never really stops wondering about them

He braids them into her songcord when she's little, smaller beads that dangle from the main cord before her adoption

She braids it into a half crown on her head when she's older

She has long, medium brown hair that reaches her mid back in waves. She braids it a lot but rarely sticks to one hair style for long

She has tan skin, freckles from the sun, and a honeyed complexion

Rotxo likes to joke that she has Spiders eyes

She's a very relaxed older sister and is truthfully very similar to Tsireya

However, she is a bit of a jokester with them like her Uncle Lo'ak or Spider when she gets wound up

She likes to team up with one of her Dads or uncles to play little tricks on her brothers or the clan - using new spices in their food is a favorite

She has ADHD and so Spider has to help her work out her energy a lot

That is, unless Rotxo uses it to make her spar with him

He loves that she's so peaceful but he's seen too much not to make her a strong warrior if it's called for

[owlphaace]

I want to preface this by saying to my friends that this really isn't aimed at anyone, it's just how things always have been. It also isn't intended to make anyone feel guilty or anything, I just need to get some thoughts out of my head. It's a ramble and I'm crying while I'm typing it so don't expect it to make sense. Not that anyone is going to bother reading it after an opening paragraph this long

I really wish I could connect more with people but I know most people just choose to ignore me, and those who don't eventually find some reason not to talk to me anymore. The most important person in my life straight up told me I'm too much to deal with 6 years ago and cut me out of her life, just because i would worry about her if she disappeared for days at time. Ever since then I haven't known how to actually open up to people.

I cried earlier because one of my remaining friends messaged me to say they've been missing me posting Single Pokemon Runs which is basically the only form of interest anyone has shown in what I like doing in years. I really don't expect anyone to have similar interests as me and i'm used to being ignored so that hit me like a tonne of bricks.

It also hurts a lot that no matter how much effort i put into trying to organise doing stuff people they just don't want to. That's been constant since i was a child. To the point of having mostly stopped even trying. You just have to look at the months I've spent trying to get people to play Blood on the Clocktower with me, a game that would cost people absolutely nothing, and just nobody gives a shit. Or dnd, the amount i spent on that because some friends wanted to play it and then it came to it and suddenly no response apart from one friend who did play a couple of sessions with me before their life became too busy for it (which again is not something i blame them for, it just hurts). Even fucking Among Us, i had friends saying "oh we should all play it together" during lockdown so i immediately bought it and still to this day i've only played it once with my brothers. So yeah i've just given up asking and now only do stuff with people at a rate of about one activity per year

I'm avoiding going to a family friend's wedding today because i used to be close to his daughter (to the point of being one of the only two girlfriends in my life (though i did eventually realise i didn't actaully feel anything but a strong platonic attraction to her but that's just a tangent)) and i can't bring myself to face another person who stopped talking to me entirely because we wouldn't talk unless i initiated the conversation. Every single choice i make just shuts me off from people because i'm just not strong enough to face that pain anymore

There's no point to any of this. I'm just tired and sad.

[ninadove]

I feel like Felix should get a new outfit in season 6 to show him loosening up a little, becoming happier. (I’d imagine Colt prolly influenced how he dressed, too)

But the question remains, what should his new fit be?

Personally I could see some dark academia or on the flip side, academic fashion but with absolutely ridiculous socks. Like, with Shakespeare quotes or random cute things on them. Or, Kagami could give him ridiculous anime socks and despite not knowing what anime it’s from, he wears them happily just because they’re from Kagami.

Wondering your thoughts.

Oh this is a sign that I should really really get working on my redesigns, because @paracosmicfawn (💜) also asked the same the other day!

In the meantime, have a sneak peak of this profile pic I made him for Discord (coloured by my lovely girlfriend):

And some notes!

Colour scheme:

Black, because he’s edgy like that

Purple. Because why the Hell not.

Red accents, because Kagami

Golden accents, because that was the colour of his trail in Pretention and I feel like this says something about him

Style:

Sometimes he will dress like an overly formal British guy going to his office job in the City, with a three-piece suit and a long coat. Sometimes he will wear eyeliner and heeled boots. He likes to choose whatever is less appropriate in the moment, but overall embraces his rebel vibes a lot more.

Leather jackets are IN

So are T-shirts with provocative messages. All the T-shirts, with all the provocative messages. The one pictured above reads “Fuck This Shit”, but he also owns about 20 variants of “Eat The Bourgeoisie” and, of course, one of those Pri-DeMon-Th shirts.

Torn-up jeans, but rarely blue. We don’t play by the stupid rules in this house

However, he still doesn’t like to have his skin exposed (physical touch is complicated for him, he craves it as much as he fears it), so he will often wear these over tights and high-neck shirts (notice how the collar above is similar to his Argos suit’s, because I love it)

He tries to make it look like he’s not putting as much effort into his hair anymore, but don’t be fooled — this slightly messier style took at least half an hour to perfect

Key accessories:

Earrings! Because fuck gender norms! As a Transmasc Felix Truther, I like to imagine his canon design was him overcompensating after years of dressing femininely. Now that he’s fully comfortable with his identity, he’s not afraid to mix it up a little on occasion.

He’s still unsure if he wants to show off his ring proudly, in an act of defiance, or protect it as much as possible. For now he alternates between leather gloves (again, like in his Argos suit) and fingerless mittens.

I might steal the ridiculous socks idea from you Anon, because he so would!

BOOTS. All the boots. Combat boots, especially. We have yet to post the associated lore, but here’s the first draft of the Cat! Felix design I made for one of our AUs:

A dashing young man!

[navree]

Regarding the rhaena ask as somebody who adores fanon rhaena i think people for get how little characterisation ALL the team black kids have in cannon they basically just exist either to die or build out the family tree in f&b and the show doesn't help with this cutting jace and cregan which is like THE ONE THING JACE DOES??, Rhaena and Baela have like 4 lines each it's insane

Yeah I've been singing this song for a while, the younger gen of Team Black got absolutely no characterization. Jace had a bit in episodes 6 & 7 about having some hangups over Harwin being his father, but I think they abandoned that when they realized that Jace having issues about his birth might make him conflicted about his mom and we can't have that, no one is allowed to view Rhaenyra unsympathetically ever and we can't allow subtleties because this fandom is made up of 90% morons who wouldn't catch them and then would get pissy. Luke also got no characterization other than what appears to be budding sociopathy given that he's never shown any remorse or guilt over nearly killing a person in a fight where he was at fault. It's why I burst out laughing when 1x10 opened, because that whole "mummy I am small bean give me kisses while I bat my doe eyes" scene was so transparently a way to get people to care about Luke so that we wouldn't all be left scratching our heads going "oh OK" when Vhagar ate him, since they utterly failed to develop him at all at that point.

Baela and Rhaena I've always said have it most egregiously. I cannot stress this enough, I could not name five individual characteristics for either of those girls. Did they even have any lines after the second time jump? The writers put no effort into them at all. Zip, zilch, zero. And I'm getting pissy anons (honestly I think it's actually one person who's obsessed with me and just jumps on my ass the second I talk about either Baela or Rhaena because they have nothing better to do than stalk my little blog but that's just a theory) about the fact that I'm not invested in the character? That I don't care about her? That her actions are illogical to me as an audience member because they belie an emotion that was never shown because she got no characterization? No, I'm sorry, blame the writers. I am the consumer of the product, I am the audience, it is actually not incumbent on me to create a character out of whole cloth for the writing team. If they want me to care about Rhaena, put some fucking effort into her character. Give her lines, give her a personality, give her a fucking storyling (I mean, other than Nettles, seeing as how Black women are not in fact interchangeable HBO and it's not even just a racist writing decision, it's straight up bad), put in a modicum of work into her. That's the canon fact, there's nothing there, I'm surprised I have to say this outside of the Batman fandom (fanworks Tim Drake my nemesis) but fanon is not canon, and when I'm asked about canon, I'm discussing the canon, save for when I'm specifically asked to theorize and move beyond it.

It is not my fault that I don't care about a character because the writers decided not to give her anything, nor am I a bad person for fucking pointing it out and just being a bit blunt in my language while doing so. It's not that hard for these writers to actually put their backs into it and write a story, especially with the room they have with Rhaena, since she didn't even fucking do anything for the entire Dance anyway except faff around in the Vale.

I also think the absolutely atrocious way Rhaena and Baela were handled can't really be divorced from some internal prejudices the writers have. I mean, it really hasn't escaped my notice that the two younger gen characters who got the most development were Aegon and Aemond, two men. And it absolutely has not escaped my notice that, even though Helaena got significantly less character moments than her brothers, she still got a base characterization that's remained consistent and can lead to further personal plots in coming seasons (like her dragon-dreaming). Helaena, played by a white actress, was allowed this dignity, while Baela and Rhaena, played by two Black actors, were not. Combined with the lack of care given to the Velaryons as a whole, I've mentioned this before but it doesn't paint a great picture of this writer's room and any real attempts to be diverse and inclusive beyond performative casting that they aren't willing to work with in any meaningful way. Not all of it is internalized prejudices, there was clearly just no effort put into characterizing any of the younger TB characters as a whole (or even any of the TB characters other than Rhaenyra and Daemon in a meaningful way), considering Jace had nothing and Luke could have spent his entire time on the show being played by a literal shrub and it still wouldn't have made a difference. There was clearly more effort put into characterizing the Team Green kids, and conversely none to their Team Black counterparts, but it's still bad writing, and I'm gonna call that out when I see it.

[nadzhosny2]

Why being perfect is a load of rubbish

Perfect. The most destructive word in the English language. Everyone wants to achieve it, to have it, to BE it and when that doesn’t happen, disappointment, shame and despair start to take over. Eroding at our self-esteem little by little until we become something we don’t even recognise. I loathe perfection with every fibre of my being. Not hate, LOATHE.

Its mere definition pisses me off, “being completely free of fault or defect, having no mistake or flaw.” I had fallen prey to the disease of wanting to be perfect when I was younger. I wanted to be the perfect daughter, the perfect sister, the perfect friend, the perfect girlfriend, the perfect student. I wanted to have the perfect body, the perfect hair, the perfect personality. I thought if I was perfect in everything, I would be happy and everyone would love me. But it’s a very cruel trick.

We have been made to believe that we can never be truly happy unless everything in our life is perfect; the perfect job, perfect house, perfect spouse, perfect car, perfect clothes, perfect faces. It took me several years and several failed attempts at perfection to realise how ridiculous this was. The idea that something or someone with flaws and faults was unworthy. I have only two words for this: FUCK THAT. {If there are any children reading this, kindly quote this article when your mum asks you where you learnt to swear. Thanks. ;)}

Having faults and flaws means being different, unique. A breath of fresh air in a stifling room where there is no change or imagination. Why be perfect and be stuck in stagnation? Always remaining the same, never moving forward or trying to do or be something else. Never trying to be better than we were before, not for others but for ourselves, to see what else we’re capable of and be good at, just for the sake of it. Never trying new things and new experiences. Being perfect means being frozen and I can’t think of anything worse. This is the reason for my loathing.

Trying to be perfect forces us to take on too much, to be impatient, angry, hostile and competitive. News flash people, human beings were never meant to be perfect! If we were, we wouldn’t be able to make mistakes and if we weren’t able to make mistakes, we wouldn’t be able to change and if we can’t change, we are not living.

Do you even want a “perfect” body or face? Honestly, I don’t think that putting in the effort for abs is worth it for me. I would rather play Assassin’s Creed and binge-watch Supernatural.

A perfect face? Every blemish, freckle and spot on your face is a mark that sets you apart from everyone else, something that is so uniquely you and you want to trade it for a face that is plain? For those with acne struggles, that is completely understandable and you are excused. Women used to draw spots on their faces in the 18th century because it was considered the height of beauty. Marilyn Monroe and Cindy Crawford inspired the same.

Family life: Do you care about one another? Make each other laugh, give support whenever needed? Then you checked off the main points. If not, that’s what you should be trying to fix.

Relationship: Relationships can’t be perfect if they are to last longer than 6 months and if you think yours is, then you are lying to yourself and to your partner. Let’s be honest with each other, darling. If Pique can cheat on FREAKING SHAKIRA, there is no such thing as perfect.

Social life: You might be serious about being a great friend/ person in general, but no one is immune from social ups and downs including loneliness, social burnout, FOMO, friendship drama, etc. The mistakes we make are what help guide us to being those great friends and people.

Character: There may be some times when you have displayed tremendous courage, kindness, absolutely non-selfish service and that’s great. Well done you, continue doing so. On the other hand, there will be times when you will stumble; act selfishly, say or do the wrong thing but that doesn’t make you a terrible human being. Life isn’t all sunshine, rainbows and skittles.

Now, if you’re counting, that’s every part of a person’s life and it doesn’t have to be perfect for it to be happy. The only things in my life that I want to be perfect are my bed and internet connection, screw everything else.

[xoxo-teddybear]

What Have I Done? - Bakugou Katsuki

Bakugou x f!reader

Warnings: Angst, Physical injuries, cursing

Summary: An argument gone out of hand. Y/N just wanted Katsuki to be home more. They’re married and yet she barely sees him throughout the week. When she finally speaks on her hurt feelings, she gets a reaction she definitely wasn’t expecting.

Chapter 1 -> Chapter 2

A/N:.....I cried while writing this.

BAKUGOU’S MASTERLIST

‘He’s gone already. Again. Like always.’

Y/N had awoken to another empty bed. Her husband’s side of the mattress remained cold and empty. This wasn’t anything new. It’s been like this for the past few months. She would wake up alone, eat breakfast alone, spend her day alone, eat dinner alone, and go back to sleep at the end of the day...alone.

It’s not that Katsuki is intentionally ignoring Y/N. He loves her with his everything, he truly does! But villains never rest and neither does he. He’s so preoccupied with hero work that when he does get a day off, his friends drag him away to a bar or game night. Y/N always ran through his head but she had always been so understanding. And besides, she knows how busy the life of a pro is. She used to be one so she gets it. Right?

Wrong. She doesn’t get it. Because even when she was a pro, her and Katsuki always found time for each other. And ever since said man made her quit, claiming he could take care of both of them easily and he would feel better knowing his beloved is safe at home, they’ve seen each other less and less. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Y/N was willing to quit her dream because she found a new dream in Katsuki. She always imagined that being his little housewife would give them more time together but the opposite of that came true. Now she sits in the big empty house with no company for hours on end.

Her sadness builds up every day. She misses her husband. She tries to be an understanding wife but at this point, it’s like he’s not even trying to make an effort to see her. It’s like he’s settled to just coming home to her sleeping form and waking up to her in the exact same state, leaving before he can witness her do anything else. He should understand her though, no? I mean, she had brought it up to him in a very casual way and so he never took it seriously, but she’s mentioned it before. He should have a pretty vivid image of how shes been feeling. Right?

After 6 months of loneliness and being ‘Katsuki-deprived,’ Y/N made her move to speak to her husband about her feelings. She already imagined the outcome. An argument due to Katsuki’s brash behavior and her ‘never back down’ attitude, sad times bringing in the silent treatment for the two of you up until the both of you give in and forgive each other due to the love you have. Finally ending in a compromise. Y/N released a heavy breath as she looked at the time.

1:36 a.m. Just a few more minutes until Katsuki’s home.

—

He was pissed. 3 large scale bank robberies, 10 villain-wannabe fights, an argument with his publicist about his ‘out of line attitude,’ and Deku replacing him on a random ass billboard. The last detail wouldn’t have mattered if it was anybody else but the fact that it was Deku had him riled up. He just wanted to go home to a quiet house with his beautiful wife and admire her gorgeous, slumbering state. However that was not what he was greeted with.

Katsuki grumbled as he unlocked the front door and walked in. He noticed the lights were still on and saw Y/N still awake, seated on the couch. On any other day, he’d be elated to see his wife was still up. They’d talk and cuddle and go to sleep together. If he was lucky, they’d both make love until the sun rose. But tonight, that wouldn’t be happening. He wanted a quiet house with his sleeping wife. Not..whatever was about to happen. He sighed as he dropped his bag at the front door and sloppily placed his keys in the glass bowl near the door.

“What’re you doing up dumbass?” He asked as he walked to the kitchen, not even bothering to take off his shoes. He needed a drink.

“I was waiting for you, Katsuki. I just wanted to talk to you about something,” you said in a soft voice, hoping it would suppress his for sure incoming anger. Katsuki closed the fridge with a kick to the heavy door and chugged down a quarter of his drink.

“I’m not in the mood. Had a shitty day and I wanna sleep. Just go to bed.” He said sternly while trying to finish his beer as fast as he could.

“Don’t you think I would’ve done that hours ago? I wouldn’t have stayed up and waited for you if this wasn’t important. Please Katsuki, I really wanna talk.” Bakugou was beginning to grow annoyed. Why wouldn’t you just drop it already? He squeezed his bottle hard enough for it too crack before he spoke with a louder voice.

“Y/N! You’re not listening! I’m tired. I had a horrible day and I just want to sleep. I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to stay up anymore, and I don’t want to listen to whatever bullshit you’re about to complain and bitch about like you always do!” He screamed. His words made your jaw drop.

“Not listening?! That’s all I do! All I do is listen to your every command so that you come home happy-“

“Well it looks like you failed today!” He said, cutting you off.

“Quit interrupting! And what was it that you said?! All I do is bitch and complain?! I’m trying to talk to you about something serious here Katsuki!” You pleaded, still hoping he would give in and listen. And he did...just not in the way you’d expect.

“Fine then! If this’ll get you to quit being an annoying ass waste of time, then speak! Talk! What the hell do you want?!” He asked, screaming at you, furious at all the dramatics you’ve brought up in one night.

His words kind of stung. ‘Annoying ass? Waste of time? Is this what he thinks I am?’ You grew silent at his insults and Katsuki seethed even more.

“Oh what? I scream at you and you bitch up? Toughen up Y/N, jeez. Quit acting like a baby! Tell me what you wanted to say!” He yelled.

“.......I just....I just wanted you to spend some time with me. .....Be home more.” You said in a quiet and broken voice. You looked down to the now very interesting floor as you played with your hands.

“Seriously? This shit again? I’m a pro-hero, Y/N! I’m busy! I’m not gonna drop saving lives just because your brat ass wants someone to notice you! Since when were you such an attention whore?” He asked while rolling his neck to relieve his strained muscles. Your eyes widen at the ground due to his words and your head snapped back up to face him.

“A-attention whore? I-...I just want my husband to stop working so much. I don’t know..maybe have a day off or two!” She said with a crinkled nose as you screamed.

“I do have days off, Moron. It’s why I’m not overworked, ever thought about that?!” He screamed back.

“And you spend those days off away from me! I’m not trying to act like the world revolves around me but I would hope my own husband would spend a day with me instead of his friends that he ALWAYS sees because you ALL WORK TOGETHER!” You argued. You made a valid point and even Katsuki knew that, but he was too stubborn to admit defeat. He was still tired but he had enough energy to put you back in your place. His eyes popped as a vein grew on his neck.

“Well- WELL YOU’RE ONCE AGAIN JUST BITCHING AND COMPLAINING LIKE YOU ALWAYS DO! I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY YOU’RE SO UPSET!” He screamed.

“Don’t understand?! You know what? I know you don’t because you never listen to-“

“SHUT THE FUCK UP, I WASNT DONE TALKING! ALL YOU DO IS SIT AROUND THE HOUSE, LAZING AROUND, DOING NOTHING BUT TRY TO ARGUE WITH-“

“LAZING AROUND?!” You shouted in disbelief. “WHO MAKES YOUR MEAL PREP THE NIGHT BEFORE SO YOU CAN ENJOY IT AT WORK AND IN THE MORNING? WHO CLEANS THE ENTIRE HOUSE EVERYDAY WHILE YOU’RE GONE? WHO MAKES SURE YOU HAVE A FULL FRIDGE, CLEAN HOUSE, GOOD FOOD, AND A HAPPY LIFE? ME KATSUKI! ME!”

“Happy life? DO I LOOK HAPPY TO YOU BITCH?! NEWSFLASH, IM NOT! SO CONGRATS Y/N! YOU FAILED ONCE AGAIN! AND WHO GIVES A FUCK IF YOU PLAY MAID WHILE IM AWAY?! IM BUSY SAVING THE FUCKING WORLD! THE LEAST YOU COULD DO IS BE A GOOD WIFE SINCE YOU CANT EVEN BE A FUCKING PRO ANYMORE!” He insulted again.

“because of FUCKING YOU!” You argued once more.

“I DID IT FOR YOU!” He said while throwing his bottle to the wall, causing it to shatter. “I DO EVERYTHING FOR YOUR UNGRATEFUL BITCH ASS! I PAY THE BILLS! I BRING HOME THE CASH! I GIVE YOU THE MONEY TO BUY ALL THE FUCKING FOOD, CLOTHES, AND ANY OTHER STUPID SHIT YOU WANT! AND ON TOP OF THAT, I STUFF YOUR STUPID CUNT TO PLEASURE YOUR UNGRATEFUL ASS. AT THIS POINT, YOU’RE JUST A WALKING HOLE FOR ME TO USE!”

His words hurt. They broke your heart. Did he really feel this way? If so, why was he even with you anymore. You notice a smirk grow on his face at your bewildered state. He looked as if he just won something. However, the smirk dropped into a scowl once he saw your eyes begin to pool with tears.

“Oh great! Cry! Go ahead! Just shed your fucking tears like you always do! I’m going to bed! Come join me when you’re done being an annoying bitch.” He said and stuffed his hands in his pockets as he began to walk away. You didn’t want the conversation to go this way and there was no conclusion. You needed this to be resolved now. You just wanted your husband back. You reached out to stop him from walking but the unforeseen happened.

“Katsuki..don’t walk away from thi-“

“DONT FUCKING TOUCH ME!” He said and smacked your arms away with a burning palm. Without realizing, Katsuki began to spark his quirk and so when he went in to push you away, he burned your forearm.

A loud blast and smoke filled the room and your screams of pain invaded his ears. The sound made a shocked face grow on him as he quickly turned to see the damaged he had caused. His heart sank as he saw you crying while holding your burnt arm with your other hand. You were slightly hunched over in pain as you took notice of the damage that had been caused. That he caused.

“Y/N!” Bakugou softly shouted as he ran to you. He wanted to help but before he could even lay a finger on you, you flinched. The action caused him to hesitate and hold himself back. He ran to the kitchen sink to get a cold rag and he brought it back to you. “Baby! I am so sor-“

You pushed him away and off of you as you quickly walked to your bedroom with a shadow casted over your eyes. Tears still flowed down your cheeks as sniffles could be heard from your cherry red nose. Katsuki couldn’t believe what he just did and ran to follow you.

“Y/N! Please listen! I didn’t mean it! I don’t know how that happened Teddy Bear but I swear I didn’t mean it! I swear I didn’t mean any of the bullshit I said! I’m sor-“

*SLAM* *click!*

Katsuki realized he followed you out the kitchen, through the living room, up the stairs, and to the entrance of the master bedroom you both shared before you slammed the door and locked it right in his face.

“Baby! Please open the door!” He said while knocking in a very rushed manner. He wanted nothing more than to help you and treat the damage he caused to his beloved wife. He had royally fucked up. He began turning and jiggling the locked knob in an attempt to get it open but failed. “Please Y/N! I have to take care of you and that burn. I’m so sorry but please let me in!”

On the other side of the door, you pressed your back against it as you held in your sobs and slid to the bottom. You pulled both lips in to conceal your voice while you held your wrist to examine the burn on your arm. It was so bad. Your skin turned an angry shade of red as it blistered and bled. You were dripping blood all over your carpeted floor and so you ran to the master bathroom in the bed room.

You turned on the sink and placed your forearm under the cold, running water. The water soothed it a bit but it wasn’t enough to cover the pain. You turned off the sink and grabbed a hand rag as you patted down on your wound. You took out the first aid kit and cared for yourself. You had to take the alcohol to clean it and sucked in a breath before you poured the solution over the burn. You screamed as it seemed to have hurt 10x more. After dabbing cotton over it, you wrapped it in bandages and took a breath of relief.

‘What just happened?’ You thought to yourself.

The entire time, Katsuki was still begging for you to open up. He heard your scream and grew frantic. He banged on the door and cried for you, still hoping, praying, that you would let him in. When nothing happened, he resorted back to calling out for you but to no avail.

About an hour went by and it was almost 4 in the morning. You sat on the bed with your arms holding your knees to your chest. You stared at the wrap as the memories of what went down tonight flashed through your brain.

‘Waste of time...brat ass...attention whore...ungrateful...annoying bitch.’

His words struck you right in your heart. Cruel thoughts began to fill your head.

‘He doesn’t love me. He hates me. I’m worthless.’ Your thoughts would’ve continued until a quiet knock snapped you out of you mind.

“....Y/N?...Baby?” It was Katsuki of course, but a softer version of him. A broken one. “..I don’t know if you’re listening or if you’re awake..but I need you to know that I’m so so sorry.” It was easy to hear his muffled and staggered voice that exposed his tears and sobs. “If I could turn back time right now, I would do tonight all over again, I swear. I would’ve came home and listened to you. And we could’ve talked things out. We would’ve came out of this problem being a stronger couple than we were before...because that’s what we always do. We always make it out of the dark together..because we’re a team..and I need you. .....Please...please don’t leave me Y/N. I love you so much. ‘M so sorry that I hurt you..that I burned you..that I’m such a terrible husband. But I promise you I’ll fix everything in the morning...................Teddy Bear?”

He didn’t know it, but you were listening. You heard every word but refrained from speaking. You knew that the second you did, you’d break down and go crawling back to him....but you didn’t want to do that. You wanted to leave. He physically burned you and you wanted to leave. You were going to sleep for a few hours, and when you would awaken, you would pack a bag and leave. And so, you began your plan and tried to get some sleep as tear streaks marked your face. It would all be over soon.

You woke up to the morning sun.

6:50 a.m.

You rose out of bed and rubbed at your puffy eyes. You quietly got ready in the bathroom and applied the slightest bit of makeup to look more presentable. You took out a pair of shoes and tossed them to the center of the room. You were in your closet and pulled out a bag. You stuffed it full of a few clothes for you to wear, you couldn’t stay here. Not after what he did. You fought through the pain as you pulled on your jacket and placed your shoes on. You wiped your tears as you picked up your purse and got ready to leave. You were going to stay in a hotel. Didnt matter where or how expensive. You just needed to get away.

Finally, you walked to the exit of the bedroom. You took a breath before you slowly turned the knob and was greeted with the sight of a sleeping Bakugou. He had slept in the hallway in front of the bedroom, still wearing the same clothes from the night before. His knees were scrunched up with his arms resting there to be used as a pillow. He layed his head atop of his arms and as you looked down into his hands, you saw the rag. The exact rag from the argument. The rag that he attempted to use to help you. Little did you know, Bakugou hadn’t planned on getting rid of it until you let him use it to help you. He wanted nothing more than to fix his mistake and cater to you and your wound.

You shook your head as you felt tears began to fill your eyes but you refused to let them fall. You took a step and sadly awoken the exact man you were trying to avoid. Bakugou had quickly woken up when he heard the slightest noise and was blessed with the beauty that is you. He looked up at you with wide eyes and a small smile.

“Y/N...” was what he whispered before he quickly got up to run to you.

“Y/N!” He ecstatically said with a hint of relief. He was about to wrap him arms around you but you kept a hand at his chest to keep him at bay. “Baby?...”

Bakugou looked at you with hurt and confused eyes when you didn’t welcome his embrace. Even when you were mad at him, you still allowed him to hold you so what gives? He looked at you and your attire. He noticed your jacket and shoes and saw you holding a bag. “W-what are you doing?”

You walked away from him but he snatched your wrist to make you turn to face him. “Y/N! What’s going on?!” He frantically asked with crazed eyes. You snatched your wrist back and ran down the stairs and he copied your actions. He followed you into the living room until he grabbed your wrist once more. You tried to pull away again but found it harder because this time, he gripped it tight.

“W-where are you going baby?”

“Dont call me that.”

“What? Why? Baby, please tell me what’s going on.” He begged as he squeezed your wrist.

“What’s going on? Are you serious? What does it look like? I’m leaving!” Bakugou’s eyes went wide once more and shook his head.

“N-no! No, why!?”

“Why?! Look at my arm!” You screamed.

“I know! I know and I’m so sorry! But..but you don’t have to go! I can fix you up, I’ll take you to recovery girl, I will bring you to the best hospitals around the world to fix that for you! Just please don’t go!” He bargained and offered everything but you weren’t budging.

“It’s not just the burn Bakugou.” You deadpanned with a nonchalant face. His heart felt heavy after hearing your voice refer to him with his family name.

“..I-it’s Katsuki! Your Katsuki! It’s Suki, baby please!” Bakugou stepped closer as he cried once more but you backed away again. His hold on your wrist still strong as his fingers played with the ring on your hand, trying to calm himself down and remind himself that you are still his wife.

You shook your head at his pleading. “Bakugou. You burned me. But not only that, you’ve neglected me for months.”

“I know that! And I’m sorry! I will spend just as much time off of work to make it up to you, I swear I will, I promise!” He once again bargained.

“It’s too late.”

“No it’s not, please, it can’t be!”

“It is Bakugou-“

“KATSUKI! ....please...please don’t call me that. I’m your Katsuki,” he said with a whimpering voice. At this point you felt the tears come through, but you still didn’t allow them to fall.

“Katsuki...I can’t stay here. Too much damage has been done.” You said with a soft voice. Bakugou continued to shake his head ‘no,’ but you already made up your mind. You used your wind quirk in your hand and blew his grip off your wrist. You took the quick opportunity to walk to the door but Bakugou grabbed your bag off your shoulder in a childish panic and attempt to get you to stay.

“Hey!-“

“Please Y-Y/N! Please don’t leave me! I- I know I’ve been a terrible husband! I’m sorry! B-But I promise I’ll do better. I’ll stay at home more, I’ll spend more time with you, Please!”

“Katsu-“

“I’ll buy you whatever you want! I’ll get you all the expensive brands, I’ll find you all the best jewelry, I’ll give you all the money in the world! I’ll give you the whole world! Please stay! I love you so much Y/N!”

“Katsuki, give me back my bag,” you tried to reach for it but Bakugou kept it away from you and pulled you in with one arm and held you in a tight embrace as he cried on your shoulder.

“Please...you can’t do this to me. I need you. I love you! I’ll do better! I’ll be a better husband, I swear..just please don’t go.” He softly spoke with a broken voice and soft hiccups. It was wrong for you to do this, but you sighed and pretended to forgive him as you wrapped your arms around his torso. You hugged him tight and he fell for it as he openly sobbed now. His other arm that held your bag came to wrap around your waist but before it could, you snatched the bag out of his hold and pushed him away. You ran to the door and held a tight grip on the knob as you picked up your car keys. You saw Katsuki attempt to run back to you but you created a strong barrier of wind to protect you. “IM SORRY Y/N! PLEASE DONT!”

You took off your ring and tossed it to him through the barrier. He was quick to catch it and hold it right in fear of losing it. He had to find a way to get it back on your finger. “No..baby...Teddy Bear please!”

“....I’ll send you the divorce papers....Goodbye Katsuki.”

With that, you walked out of the door, still keeping the barrier alive. Once you started the car, you dispersed of the wind and Bakugou opened the door and ran to your car.

“Y/N wait! Please!” He cried out but he was too late. You pulled out of the driveway and drove off quickly down the street. He watched your car go as he began hyperventilating and tugging at his ash blonde locks. He ran back inside the house with your ring in hand as he looked for his phone. He found it on the kitchen island and quickly dialed your number. Of course, it went straight to voicemail but that didn’t stop him from calling about 50x more.

“This-...this has to be some stupid dream. A fucking nightmare...” he said as he tried to hide in denial. “Yeah...a nightmare. This is what it is...I’ll..I’ll wake up soon and she’ll be by my side in the morning...sleeping peacefully...and I’ll take the whole week off and spend it with her. She won’t be mad, we’ll be happy like we always are. S-She won’t leave me.”

Bakugou had an insane smile on his face with eyes of distraught on him. He clumsily made his way back to his bedroom where he flopped onto the large mattress and tried to get some sleep. He would sleep the whole day away if it meant you’d still be by his side when he woke up. The ring you abandoned was held tight in the palm of his hand as he held it close to his chest. His sobs overcame him but did aid in his journey to slumber. Eventually, he knocked out and a smile of bliss adorned his face as he assumed you would still be there in the morning.....oh how wrong he was.

The very next day, he woke up at 5:30 like he always did and quickly looked to your side of the bed. It was cold and empty. He was lonely. The exact same feeling you got everytime you woke up without seeing him for the past 6 months.

6 months. You’ve been married for 4 years and together for 8. Out of those 8 years, Bakugou spent 6 months neglecting you..and now...he lost you.

He stared at the empty space and bawled his eyes out like a baby as he screamed. He got out of bed and walked to the kitchen. Maybe you were cooking breakfast! You weren’t. Kitchen was empty. He ran to the living room! Maybe you were just watching some TV and reading a book, looking all cute and domesticated like you usually did. No, you weren’t there either. Bakugou checked every room in the house and when he couldn’t find you..he snapped.

His heart beated at a rapid pace as he trashed the entire house. Breaking windows, flipping desks, smashing furniture. He used his quirk to create blasts and burn marks into the walls and floors of the house. He did everything to get his frustrations out. The entire time he shouted and cried as rivers of tears flowed down his cheeks.

When he was done, he sat in the middle of the destroyed living room, laying his back against the flipped couch. He sat with his knees scrunched up as he hunched over, staring at the ground. His nose and eyes and basically his entire face grew puffy and red. His hair was a mess and so was he. Silent tears continued to drop, but his throat was too dry and hurt far too much for him to make anymore noise. However, he did fight through the pain to say one final thing:

“What have I done?”

A/N: hi cubsss! So a lot of you may know that my very first post, writing piece, and short story (He’s Lost) was created around angst, a breakup, and the fact that the triggering point was Bakugou physically hurting Y/N. I’ve been thinking about it and I HATE MY WRITING IN THE FIRST POST! It was terrible! Why tf did y’all like it so much?😭 And so, I’ve created a new piece revolving around the same elements, sorta as a way to check my progress. I hope you enjoyed!

ALSO!!! If you guys like this enough, I’m willing to turn it into a small yandere short story if you Cubs are down for that. Let me know and I’ll make it happen! Love you Cubs! See you next time🧸💗