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songmingisthighs · 9 months ago

Text

Let Go

group : ateez

pairing : ex boyfriend!idoll!yunho × reader

genre : angst

wc : 4.3 k

tw : break up, angst, accident , dark theme (do not read if you're susceptible to dark thoughts)

a/n : i got this idea from reading @nonclassyparty's series, the 'subtle variations of heartbreak' particularly the yunho one and I'm not in a mentally good place so ofc i thought about this lmao

buy me coffee ?

Yunho was never one to loom in the past. His motto had always been 'just keep swimming' so he made sure that whatever happened in his life, he would go with it and just face it like a man. That was why people thought Yunho was so perfect, he had no regrets. But they would be wrong. Out of all the things in the world, there was one thing he regretted the most and being back at the place where it all began stirred something in Yunho. Maybe it was a mix of nostalgia and guilt, but whatever it is, the pain was a bit addicting as it allowed him to indulge in the memory of you.

It was around the time he graduated from high school. Everyone was excited to go forward, most of his friends had passed the college entrance exam while some had decided to continue their family business. That was what people expected from his town which was why when Yunho announced that he was going to focus on being an idol and move to the heart of the country, people were thrilled.

One of those people was you.

You had been Yunho's rock ever since you both started dating in the 9th grade, sticking together through thick and thin, you with your studies and Yunho with his training. It was hard but you both made it work and you both became the school's power couple, the couple who will end up together no matter what. In fact, you had been the one encouraging Yunho to pursue training no matter the distance while you helped as best as you could. So you both really had gone through everything including fights because you both were tired, had doubts over the future, and bad exam results from your hakwon and his monthly evaluation. You both wet through all that and still stuck together.

So it made sense that even after you got accepted to a prestigious university in KAIST, you still made plans to be in Yunho's life. Little did you know, he wasn't planning the same.

It was one afternoon and you were scrolling through your course catalogue with your mom while discussing how to move your things to the dorm in two weeks time when there was a knock on the front door, surprising you and your mom. But it wasn't a surprise to see Yunho on the other side with a small smile on his face. You noticed that he had been rather gloomy this past couple of weeks and you thought that it was because he was sad that he was going to be separated from you. Well, in a sense he was.

"Hi Mrs. (y/l/n), can I borrow (y/n) for a while?" Yunho politely asked for permission which had become some sort of redundant request since your mom would actually be the one to encourage you two to spend more time together. Even though you lived on the same street, your mom knew that as youngsters in love, no amount of time is enough time, especially with what's just up ahead. So it didn't really surprise you when your mom practically pushed you out the door and told you to not worry about coming home late, she had even given you and Yunho some money to spend.

So you both found yourselves walking side-by-side with ice cream in your hands. You both got an ice cream cone of your favourite flavours. But not even the sweetness of the treat managed to melt the sourness off of Yunho's face. You had even tried to hold Yunho's hand as you both walked slowly from the convenience store but he was too deep in his thought to even notice. Heck, he was too deep in his thought to utter a single word.

Just as you were about to ask him what was wrong, Yunho abruptly halted his steps and turned to look at you.

"We need to break up," he stated.

For a moment you thought you heard wrong so you tried chuckling it off, "Um, what?" you asked awkwardly, feeling your heartbeat rising. Yunho sighed and stood firm, "We need to break up," he repeated, the same intonation and cadence making him seem so robotic and detached. But even then you recognize the seriousness which caused your eyebrows to furrow, "Wait, what the hell? Why? Where is this coming from?" Without wavering, Yunho looked directly into your eyes determinedly, "We are about to journey our own paths. Let's not hold each other back," and you couldn't help but get more confused, "Hold each other back? What- Where- How-," it was obvious that the logic alludes you because you had planned the perfect strategy to still maintain your relationship with Yunho while he was preparing for his debut and you for your education.

Then an idea hit you.

"Did the company ask you to break up with me?" Now it was Yunho who furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. "Did you tell them before we could make a plan on how to tell them?" you added.

You both were well aware that once Yunho's debut date got nearer you two would have to press pause on the relationship in a way. You both knew that it was unrealistic for an idol to be dating not because he was trying to put his fans first but more because you didn't want his dedication to stray. You knew how a relationship can cause someone to lose sight of their goal and Yunho would be sharing his goal with apparently seven other people, one whom you've grown to like as he was just like the gentle giant of a boyfriend you had. So you both were planning on telling the company together, trusting them to protect Yunho and should it come down to it, you as well.

"No, they don't even know I'm dating anyone. But you made a good point, I don't feel comfortable going through a commitment with my agency with this big of a secret weighing me down."

The words Yunho used hurt you because first, he insinuated that he WANTED the breakup not because you two should and then he was basically saying that you were in the way.

So you scoffed and crossed your arms on your chest, standing up to him, "So I'm a burden now?" Even during your previous fights with Yunho, he'd know when he'd struck a nerve and he would either take it back or explain what he actually meant. But the sigh he let out before answering you gave you the chills and not the good ones. "If you're going to act this way then yes, I think you're a burden now." You didn't know how Yunho was able to say such things to you so easily because you know for a fact that had it been you in his position, no matter the situation, you wouldn't have been able to say something with such gravity towards someone you know you live with what you can only discern as nonchalance.

If Yunho felt bad at the way you reacted to his harsh words, shoulders slumped and eyes glassy, he was doing a particularly great job at hiding it. Even as you sniffled and wiped some stray tears away, the look on Yunho's face didn't change. It wasn't like you were expecting for him to change his mind or take back his words just because you were looking so pathetic, but you didn't expect him to seem so detached either.

"Look, this was bound to happen anyways, (y/n), you know it. We had agreed that we would pause our relationship when-" "PAUSE, Yunho, not BREAK UP!" you cut him off, this time unable to hold your emotion at bay. "Well, why wait? Why do we have to wait to take a pause when I FINALLY debuted? Even then, why should we hang onto each other, hovering in uncertainties for God knows how long? I don't want to live like that, (y/n), not when I'm leaving tonight!"

As if things weren't already so abrupt and surprising for you, you were thrown with the newest revelation. The plan was for you two to leave home on the same day, preventing the other to remain in loneliness in the place you both shared so many memories with. But truly, this was a betrayal on top of more betrayal.

Considering the situation Yunho had put you in, it was hard to not believe that Yunho didn't care at all about you. In the past 10 minutes, he had hurt you more than anyone else ever did in your life and you just want to get away.

So you did.

You took a step back and sighed in defeat, looking at him for what you thought would be the last time ever, "Well then, I wish you the luck you deserve, Yunho. Truly, I hope your decision stays with you longer than you allowed me to." With that, you turned around and walked back home alone, crying the whole way, leaving Yunho in his spot to let the reality of what happened sink in. He never expected you to react well, he was breaking up with you or goodness sake, but he never expected the situation to taste so bitter in his mouth. All he could do was hope that it was truly for the best. Regret be damned.

"So how are the boys, Yunho?" his mom asked, smiling at her eldest as he slurped down his noodles. Yunho took a moment to chew his food properly before answering, "They're great. We've been so busy with work, we don't even have time to argue properly," he joked, making his parents laugh, "How's Gunho? How's the house?" The question made his mom roll her eyes, "You wouldn't have to ask if you come home! We've moved to the new neighbourhood for two years already and you barely spent two weeks in total!" because home is not home when (y/n) is not around, "Sorry mom, my schedule is very unpredictable so I can't really do anything about it." Thankfully, his dad chimed in, nodding along, "He's right honey, you know Yoo Seunghwan's son, the one working at that corporation thing, he's worked so hard that he couldn't even stay back during that school reunion! You remember that, right Yunho?" of course Yunho remembered. It was the first high school reunion and Yunho had to reject the invitation, saying that he was expected to go abroad around that time when in fact, he didn't want to face you. Not since the last time he saw you. And it wasn't even that time he broke up with you in front of the convenience store.

In all honesty, Yunho had been thinking about you nonstop these past couple of months. It had been years since Yunho saw, talked, or even heard about you. He became irrational, actively avoiding people just so he wouldn't know how much you thrived without him while he remembered the night of his debut when he cried himself to sleep and had to be consoled by San, Mingi, and Wooyoung who thought he was emotional over the achievement when in fact he was crying because he had worked so hard for the debut and that he wouldn't have been ab;e to go that far had it not been for your support but now that the moment arrived, he couldn't share it with you. It was then that he realized how badly he fucked up by breaking things off with you so coldly. You meant so much to him but he let stress get the best of him so much so that he took it out on you. He could still remember the way you looked at him and no, it wasn't that time he broke up with you in front of the convenience store.

"Do you guys know what happened to (y/n)?"

Yunho froze when he realized he had accidentally blurted out the question. He had wondered internally, of course but he didn't mean to ask it out loud. He was about to take it back when he saw the way his parents looked at each other weirdly.

"What?" He asked, curious, "Do you guys know something?" he pressed, now curious. While his dad avoided his gaze, his mom was looking at him with pity in her eyes.

"Oh my God, she got married didn't she?" Yunho choked, feeling his heart clench so painfully, thinking that he had lost you to another man. Not that it should have meant anything to Yunho considering he was the one who tossed you aside so easily.

His mom frantically tried to calm him down, disliking the distressed look on her son's face. "No, no, no, no, no, honey, no! It's nothing like that, believe me! It's just..." she trailed off, slapping his dad on the arm to make him look at her. One stern look and he sighed, relenting and nodding, "I guess he should know. It's about time," he said. Yunho stared at his parents with furrowed eyebrows, "Know about what?" he asked, but his mom only smiled sadly, "We'll take you there after this." The way they were acting and speaking made Yunho worry and he started internally blaming himself for not trying to get an update about you sooner. It would have probably been a better idea for him to still keep in touch but again, the pain of remembering that it was his fault that the whole thing even happened in the first place was more than he could bear. He was being so pathetic.

The rest of the lunch was concluded rather quickly after that and soon enough Yunho found himself in the backseat of his parents' car.

Another wave of nostalgia washed over him as he watched over the road, remembering the last time he had passed the same street which was the same day he broke up with you. The very last time he had seen you with his own two eyes, shrouded in the darkness of the night but still very much visible to his eyes.

Yunho decided not to dilly-dally, shoved everything he needed to bring into the trunk of his parent's car, and slammed the door shut. At the same time, he turned around to get back inside the house to call for his parents, he saw you slamming the door of your house and speed-walking to the other side of the road as if trying to get away in a rush. Had it been any other time, Yunho would've rushed to your side and done whatever he had to do to make you smile again. But his convictions solidified his decision and hardened his heart so instead of rushing to you, he simply turned and went on with his plan.

Yunho thought that it would be hard to decide to pretend to not care about you. Well, he was correct on that because his mind was plagued by the distraught look on your face. sure he only saw it for less than 5 seconds, but the impact was greater than he could imagine. It didn't help that the car drove in the exact same path you took and Yunho kept wondering what you might be thinking about. Pathetic.

The constant questions of you in his head halted the moment he saw a familiar figure in a familiar spot. His eyes had been so used to your figure that it just immediately recognized you sitting in the spot you both had claimed. Yunho immediately got reminded of the time you both ducked there to shield yourselves from the scorching summer sun, the time the two of you were joking around too much that you accidentally pushed each other into the deep lake, causing you both to be fished out and scolded by the authorities, and although it was a bad idea, the time you two found shelter during a harsh rain with thunders that terrified you but you told him that you felt safer because he was with you. The memories didn't help Yunho. In fact, it made him feel nauseated, almost vomiting in the car from the mixed feelings. He didn't want to admit it then but the guilt was gnawing at his insides so ruthlessly, he thought it was simply him finally experiencing a break-up and that the feeling was normal.

Almost comically, as the car's headlights illuminated your figure, you turned around and your eyes stared straight into Yunho's. Not that you knew because you were practically blinded. On the other hand, Yunho could see the redness on your face and the tears streaming down your cheeks so clearly that the pain that was already plaguing his heart increased tenfold.

"Yunho, dear, isn't that (y/n)?" His mom asked.

Time moved slowly for him and in that duration, he was able to carve the brokenhearted look on your face in his mind. But even then, Yunho only averted his gaze and softly muttered a reply to his mom, "Yeah, that's her." Sensing that he didn't want to talk about it, his parents kept quiet and drove on, allowing Yunho to his own thoughts.

"What are we doing here?" Yunho asked as he got out of the car, nervously looking around the park where he last saw you. The parking space they took was not far from your spot. Heck, he could see the tree from where he was standing.

"You remember the last time you saw (y/n)?" His mom linked her arm around Yunho's and she slowly started to lead him forward, obviously going towards the spot while his dad walked alongside him on his other side.

The night I ignored her crying at our spot. "Yeah, I broke up with her in front of the convenience store," he lied. His mom shook her head, "No, sweetie. We were driving you to move into your dorm when we passed by her, right in this park, over there by the tree," she pointed, not realizing that Yunho knew damn well what she was talking about. "Oh..." Yunho couldn't help but duck his head in shame, the closer the spot got, the harder it was for him to keep his emotions in check and it was almost impossible when his dad placed a hand on his shoulder. "We don't have to do this if you don't want to. I only suggested it because I think you deserve to know," his dad said.

Anxiety bubbled in Yunho's chest, he didn't like the way his parents were talking as if something had happened to you.

"You guys are freaking me out, what-"

His voice died in his throat the moment they arrived at the spot. What was usually a clear spot with grass under the big tree now had a small spot seemingly dedicated to something, trinkets littered the spot; small ones like beaded bracelets and bigger ones like some very familiar plushies, But on top of them all, the picture of you stood out the most to Yunho.

"What's this?" Yunho asked, voice wavering slightly as his eyes continuously scanned the area. Deep down he already knew what happened, but he didn't want to believe it. He couldn't believe it.

His mom was already tearing up the moment they got there, reliving her memories when she had heard about you. Seeing this, his father stepped up.

"I'm sorry to say this, son. (y/n)... She's gone. She died," he stated with a voice so emotional and so soft, that Yunho almost thought that he was hallucinating.

"Wh- when- How? How long ago was this?" he asked, glassy eyes finally lifted from the trinkets to look at his dad, seeking answers and hope. Though reluctant, his dad decided that he couldn't let another minute go by without letting Yunho know as he had been kept away from the information long enough.

"That day we drove you to your dorm. (y/n) had an accident."

There it was, the loud crack of his world-shattering.

You had been crying yourself since you came back from the convenience store. Heart broken, hopes shattered, it didn't help that your mom had attempted to console you. Her kind words and caring treatment only made you feel worse which was why you felt the need to escape reality, you wanted to wallow to yourself for just a while before you were told that everything was going to be okay because it wasn't. It was absolutely not okay for you and you needed to not be okay first before you could be okay again.

Despite fearing running into Yunho, you pushed past the fear and ran straight out, going to the first place you could think of where you could be safe with your feelings. You had cried so much that you couldn't even cry properly anymore, only silent tears as pain engulfed you whole. It was hard to breathe and it felt like it was hard to go on living. It wasn't just the fact that you were broken up with, it was the fact that it was Yunho who had broken up with you in such a ruthless way. As much as you hated to admit it, you couldn't help but feel like it was as if he had used you. For what, you didn't know, you no longer knew what to think because first, you thought that you and Yunho were solid but apparently that was utter bullshit, then you thought that you and Yunho had a plan but apparently, he had one of his own that he preferred, and lastly, you thought that you and Yunho could go through anything but apparently, the fact that each of you had different paths planned was enough to break everything.

As if life wasn't making such a joke out of you enough, you saw Yunho's car coming your way. The headlights blinded you and you weren't sure what was going on inside. But for some odd reason, the blinding lights were enough to numb you completely from all the senses there is. For a moment, you couldn't see anything and all you could hear was the ringing in your ear but it felt comforting.

Without you realizing it, you had moved too close to the edge of the grass and slipped into the lake. The cold rendered you inanimate and the water engulfed you completely. At first splash, reality hit that you had fallen into the lake but soon the cold water provided some pressure that felt like a hug to you. The darkness and the way the water blocked sounds other than the comforting sloshes of water pulled you into a realm of otherworldly tranquillity and in that moment you made a decision that would alter your life forever.

You decided to let go.

This time, at the same spot you mourned over your heart, Yunho found himself mourning over his love. His love that was lost. His love that HE let loose.

"They found her body in the morning, her parents thought she had gone to one of her friend's houses considering the state she was in when she left, they didn't think to worry until the police found her right here," his dad explained, he too was crying at the memory of finding out what had happened to you.

Yunho's knees buckled and he staggered to find support on the tree that held a lot of the memories you both shared. "W-why didn't I know this? She was g-gone for so long, how- how did I not know?" Yunho was stuttering, his mind working doubles trying to make sense of things. His mom crouched down next to him and grabbed his hand, "You were starting your journey, sweetie, we didn't want you to stray because of this. Also," his mom paused to look up at his dad who could only nod at her slowly, "(y/n)'s parents asked us to not tell you that early. They told us that (y/n) had did her best supporting you throughout everything, wanting nothing more than you to succeed in your own path so they don't want to jeopardize her dedication. They want to make sure her efforts paid off."

It wasn't as if Yunho had hoped to hear something that would make him feel better because he knew nothing in the world would. He had been so horrible to you that last day and he had been so horrible after that by actively not trying to get to know how you were. His pride should not have mattered to him so much so he settled with just not knowing how you were. That was not something he was supposed to do. More and more, he regretted the way he treated you that final day and how he had been so unfair to you. No amount of tears and no matter how loud he cried would make up for what he had done and he believed that your demise was his fault. Had he stopped the car that night to acknowledge you even for just a moment, maybe the situation would have been different. Maybe he wouldn't have lost you.

Lost you.

That was ironic since he was the one who pushed you away. He broke you in your final moments.

And now, Yunho was left unable to properly apologize to you for what he had done. Unable to tell you how much he hated himself for what he did. Unable to tell you how you deserved way better than him. Unable to tell you how he wanted to work, no matter how hard you would make it, just so you would accept his apology.

But now all he could accept was the bitter reality that there was nothing he could do to make things right.

All he could accept was that he had let go first.

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caspercryptid · 3 years ago

Note

Oh, if you’d be willing to write a piece of Jayce and Viktor raising Jinx, I’d love to see it! There’s no pressure though, I just wanted to rant a bit about people letting their personal biases block their understanding of the story. Like I said in my tags, I feel like most people don’t hate Jayce because of anything he did, they’re just jealous that both Viktor and Mel care about him. Jayce isn’t perfect but the fact that I keep seeing people say there was no reason for Jayce to attempt to jump but dramatics tells me they are only reading him on a surface level. Thanks again for your hard work!

Of course! Honestly Jayce went through a fucking Lot of the course of the series and I think he deserves more credit for that. So here is my bit of Jayce positive content.

CW: mentions of injury, an explosion. I think this takes place in an AU where within a year of Jinx being with Silco, there was an accidental explosion. She thinks he's dead. if I ever write more of this... he probably isn't. _____ It’s raining.

That’s not something Jayce minds, particularly, but he feels the need to catalogue everything that led up to the current moment. He was going to the midpoint of the bridge to look at the way the clouds hang over the water, because it’s a really stunning view and also maybe because the lab work has been going so fantastically badly that he needs to be reminded that the rest of the world exists and it had started raining on the way walking to nowhere. Maybe. Probably not that, though.

Viktor had already taken a break– he would probably be back by the time Jayce got back, he had gone to pick up lunch– and being in the lab sitting in a silence that was slowly but surely getting louder was its own flavor of hell.

So that was the complete record of the last thirty minutes. He traced his route in his memory, planned it out, noted the time like he noted the timing of discoveries in his notebook in case they would become historical record– arrogance– Viktor always teased him, but some of the pages had become historical record so who was right, anyway– off track. He notes the time, because something important is happening, because there is a little girl with blue hair curled up against the stone wall of the bridge.

Jayce has enough time to freeze and to think before she looks up at him, and that’s when he realizes none of the timing or the structure matters at all, because she has little cuts on her cheeks, and she’s bleeding, and she curls back into herself like she’s scared of him, so he does the only thing he can think to do, and he kneels to her eye level.

“Hey.” he says, quietly. “Are you okay?”

She sniffles. “–no.” She admits, quietly, and something in Jayce’s chest twists.

“Can I help?” he asks.

She eyes him, suspicious. “Why would you wanna help?”

“–That’s my job.” He says. “I help people. I’m a scientist.”

“Scientists don’t help people.” She contradicts him, but she’s eyeing him, a little more curious than guarded, now, and Jayce will take that as a win.

“We’re supposed to.” he explains. “Discoveries are supposed to be made for the good of everyone. It’s important. Progress for– everyone. But I’m not really worried about everyone right now, i’m just worried about you. Are you hurt?”

She sniffles, and he realizes that it’s not just the rain that’s making the water-lines down her cheeks. Her eyes and her nose are red.

“Yeah.” She admits. “A little. I couldn’t run any further.”

“That’s okay,” Jayce says, “I’ll carry you.”

She hesitates only a second longer, and then she reaches out her arms.

___

Viktor has had just long enough to start worrying about Jayce before he hears the door open. He turns around, a half composed scolding about not leaving notes on his lips, and then he stops, because Jayce is carrying a child.

He cycles through several possible respondes, considers and discards the ones with swear words, and then he looks at the girl’s clothing, realizes it’s zaunite, and puts those right back into circulation, because she’s certainly heard worse, and this is clearly a situation that calls for profanity. Evidently he thinks too long, though, because as he’s opening his mouth Jayce gives him a soft, guilty smile, one the ones where he knows he did wrong and is genuinely sorry for it, and that wouldn’t do, either.

“You both need to dry off or you’re going to catch your deaths.” he says, going over to the corner of the room where they keep the winter blankets and the massive space heater Jayce always uses to try to forget the season when it gets rough. “Sit down on the couch.”

Jayce complies, and the little blue-haired girl peeks her head up over his shoulder to squint at Viktor.

Viktor squints right back, and that seems to be the correct response, because she nods, once, and sets her head down against Jayce’s shoulder.

And the sight of that shouldn’t do such miserable things to Viktor’s poor heart, but frankly it’s hard enough to tolerate jayce being... Jayce. On a regular basis. Without Jayce carrying in children.

“Can you grab the medkid?” Jayce asks, voice a little stressed, and Viktor grimaces.

“How bad is it?”

“I’m fine.” the girl says, sounding a touch sulky, and too-loud. Viktor recognizes the bitterness of someone who doesn’t like to be spoken over. It’s plenty familiar.

“What hurts?” he asks her, as he comes over and pulls the coffee table up to the edge of the touch and sits down on top of it, not caring about the papers he’s doubtless ruining.

“My face, my hands, and my knees.” She says.

“Can I see your hands?” Viktor asks, patient, and she untangles from Jayce and offers them. They’re snarled over in burns, and Viktor sees Jayce’s expression twist in his peripheral vision, but he doesn’t flinch.

“Ah, we’re used to burns.” He says, opening the kit, “these don’t look to be as nasty as they could be, you were very lucky.”

“I was trying to be careful.” She mumbles.

“And then what happened?”

“–everything exploded.” She curls up a little. “...I don’t know if he–”

“He?” Jayce echoes. “Your father?”

She shuts up, and Viktor shakes his head a little.

“It doesn’t matter.” he says. “You’re safe here. We’ll get you warm and we’ll get you somewhere to rest and then we can take care of the rest. You don’t have to be afraid anymore. What’s your name?”

She eyes him. “–Jinx.”

“Jinx.” he repeats, and glances up at Jayce. Jayce is looking back at him, his expression saying the same thing Viktor is thinking. We can’t leave her alone.

He glances down, noting the way she’s already curled into Jayce’s chest, and feels something oddly peaceful settling in him. It’s very unlike him to be... confident. That things will work out. Strange.

“We have you.” he says. “Let me finish bandaging your hands, and then we can see about your knees, dry clothes, rest.”

They would figure it out.

#jayvik #jayce talis #viktor arcane #jayce x viktor #jinx arcane #kidfic #kid jinx #casper's haunted fic tag

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everwitch-magiks · 4 years ago

Text

RWRB Fics Roundup

Hey y’all! Once upon a time I had the ambition to post links on here to all the fics and new chapters that I publish on AO3, and I think it’s safe to say that I’ve been an absolute disaster at that over the summer. In my defense I’ve just had so much to write, but that’s not much of a defense seeing as it doesn’t take ages to chuck a link on here. Anyhow. Bottom line is, I’ve severely neglected it, and it’s gotten to a point where I’m just gonna make a post with links to everything I’ve written since June (ish) for you to peruse, so you can see if there’s one that you didn’t catch wind of that catches your eye now. Neat, huh?

So, without further ado, the links! The fics! Let’s go.

Completed works

Love At First Bark General Audiences, AU, tooth-rotting fluff. 3K. “I still don’t know your name, do I?” Henry watches Alex where he’s crouched down in front of David and gently scratching David below his chin. David absolutely loves Alex. Henry can relate. “It’s David,” Henry supplies. “Cool,” Alex says. “And what’s the dog’s name?” Henry blinks at him. “... David?” “What?” Alex exclaims. He looks from David to Henry and then back at David again. “Wow, okay, that is a choice.” Henry wants to sink through the earth and never come back up again.

Shameless Explicit, AU, Henry has a reputation. 14K. Henry has a lot of sex. A lot. He's young and in college and there is no shortage of men to fall in bed with. What better time to explore what he likes and what he fucking loves, as well as to catalogue how to make his many, many partners feel as good as possible? It’s all part of the learning experience. And Henry is a very dedicated student.

Alex has been inescapably aware of Henry ever since that one time they kissed. You don’t just stop being aware of the guy who basically caused your sexuality. So when Henry propositions Alex at a lame frat party, Alex accepts eagerly. Maybe this is exactly what he needs. Maybe, if he can just have Henry once, he’ll have a better chance of finally getting over his embarrassing fixation with Henry. It's worth a try.

When The Time Is Right Part four of my sex club series. Explicit, AU, dom Henry and sub Alex. 16K. “Maybe I could challenge you more,” Henry suggests, his eyes carefully trained on Alex. “And hold you accountable for longer. How does that sound?” “That sounds fucking amazing,” Alex tells him, the words coming out in a rush. “Yes. That. Please.” “Alright, then.” Henry offers him a sly grin. “Alex, love. You just gave me a wonderful idea.” It’s really something, how quickly Alex’s heartbeat picks up. “Oh? Do tell.” Henry’s grin widens. He looks alarmingly pleased with himself. “How would you feel about a staycation?”

When Alex asks Henry for something a little more intense in the bedroom, they end up taking more than just their sex life to the next level.

Out For A Bite Explicit, AU, suspense and supernatural elements. 3K. Henry's eyes fly up, zeroing in on the reflection in the mirror. There, behind him. The man from the bar. He looks different in the fluorescent bathroom lights. Sharper. There’s a look in his eyes that has Henry shivering all over again. It's greedy. Hungry.

He’s staring right at Henry.

Henry's throat feels dry. His heart beats madly. He's heard whispers of this place, and more importantly of its patrons. He thinks he knows what this man is.

ever fallen in love (with someone you shouldn’t have fallen in love with) Explicit, AU, Alex and Henry in DIY Punk & mainstream pop punk, respectively. 34K. Teenage music sensation Kensington have taken the world by storm. With their cool leather jackets and wickedly distorted guitars, they're a pop duo that packs a punch. Or at least they sound like one—their lyrics unfortunately lack any semblance of depth. Alex can't fucking stand Kensington. But thankfully, he doesn’t have to. He’s not likely to cross paths with those British pop losers during his final semester of high school in Texas. And even if he did, he'd never let some stupidly attractive blonde take his focus away from the goal that Alex has worked towards for years: winning the Austin Band Slam with his latino punk trio.

But when Henry comes crashing into Alex's life, with his intriguing piano pieces and piercing blue eyes and slow, purposeful kisses that make Alex burn with want, Alex finds that he might need to reevaluate his stance on both pop losers and distractions. Or maybe not. Maybe he’s better off keeping Henry at arm's length, since it's so painfully evident that Henry will never love him back.

Never Tell Me The Odds Teen and Up Audiences, canon verse, an outside perspective on First Prince as well as a story about a certain Star Wars mural. 2K. "Wait!" Alex yells up to the driver. "Stop! Stop the car!" Up close, it's beautiful. Two stories tall. He can’t imagine how somebody was able to put together something like this so fast.

Ash had never imagined that they'd get the chance to actually meet Alex Claremont-Diaz, and much less get the chance to tell Alex about how that very special Star Wars mural came to be. Although of course, Ash never would have met Alex if it hadn’t been for Farida. Farida and her bold courage, and her warm compassion, and her sometimes infuriating (but always endearing) stubbornness.

yrs. faithfully (with nowhere to go) Explicit, canon verse, a lazy morning in bed leads to something more. 3K. When Alex and Henry wake up together the day before their anniversary, they're genuinely planning on getting out of bed and spending the day as productive members or society. Truly, their intentions are honorable. But a trip down memory lane gets them reminiscing about that night exactly one year ago, when Alex had come running through the rain to deliver some choice words about obtuse fucking assholes.

As Alex and Henry start to relive the memory, they quickly realize that they both remember it intimately. So intimately that they might be able to pull off something of a do-over.

Gadgets and Gizmos A-Plenty A companion piece to dearest Hattie’s soulmate fic. Mature, AU, a look into Henry buying sex toys. Yes. That’s the fic. 2K. There’s a bunch of regulars that Amir knows by name (and, unavoidably, by kinks), but most often Playtime gets one-time visitors. Which makes sense, really. A lot of people don’t seem to want to step into the same adult toy shop twice. So Amir is always a little extra curious when there’s a repeat customer, especially one who is this attractive. And, interestingly, one who’s come back so soon.

The tall, classically handsome man with blond hair and blue eyes left Playtime no less than five hours ago after having purchased a medium-sized, fairly standard vibrator well suited for anal play. And now he’s back. Because apparently, he’s found he needed another vibrator.

If Sex Was A Sport We’d Be Winning Mature, AU, a classic Olympics hookup. 3K. It's remarkable, truly, that Alex didn't even want to be here. He only came all the way to Ariake because June was determined to watch a bunch of prissy ponies strut around to music. Still, perhaps the true Olympic experience lies in the wide variety of disciplines. Or, perhaps, it has something to do with chatting up a pretty blond behind the stables and getting him to show you the inside of an Olympic tack room. As Alex quickly takes to Henry’s sweet smiles and easy confidence, he realizes that just a few stolen moments with this man might turn into his most cherished memory from the Tokyo Olympics.

Alex knows better than to get attached, though. He and Henry live an ocean apart. There’s no way this quick fumble in the stable equivalent of a supply closet could ever lead to anything more. Right?

Talk Dirty To Me Explicit, AU, dom Henry and sub Alex. 9K. Henry studies Nora’s expression for a moment. There’s something about her favourable account of this guy she claims not to want to sleep with again that doesn’t add up. "But you're still not interested in taking him on?"

"He wants more than I'm willing to offer," Nora says frankly. Henry’s always liked this about her—how she doesn’t skirt around the hard facts. It's a part of what makes her so good at dominating. "But you know what? For you, he'd be kind of perfect."

Henry has been active in the local BDSM scene for years and there’s no shortage of men who’d love nothing more than to find themselves at his mercy. But Henry is on a break. He’s not looking for a new partner, but he’s also not expecting to become so intrigued by the man that Nora insists he should meet. Alex is a newcomer on the scene who doesn’t yet know exactly what he wants, much less with who. There’s no way that he could turn out to be exactly who Henry needs. Right?

Date night (please toy with me) Explicit, canon verse, a night out leads to some fun with a toy. 4K. This… this is new. They’ve talked about trying this, about what it’d be like to conceal some of their intimacy in plain sight, about what it would feel like to try and reclaim what is most private to them by flaunting it without anyone even knowing, by daring to take risks again. They’ve agreed that they’d still need to be careful, but they’ve also agreed that it would be interesting. That it would be fun.

And apparently, Henry thinks tonight is the night for it. “Do you trust me, love?”

“Yeah.” Alex swallows. He picks up the box, studying it for a moment. “Do you want… what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to go to the bathroom,” Henry says evenly, “You’ll find everything you need in the box. Then I want you to come back and sit down. Can you do that for me?”

“Yeah. Of course.” Alex taps the box, grinning in Henry’s direction. “I expect we’ll be leaving soon?”

Henry smiles slyly. “If you’re good, yes.”

Ongoing works

Hashtag Soulmates Mature, AU, Henry writes fanfiction. 23K and 7 chapters so far. Alex is perfect and handsome, the golden boy, everybody’s secret crush. So there is absolutely no way that he is the reader who screeches in caps lock every time that Henry posts as much as a drabble. There’s no way. Except Alex just closed his browser fast as fucking lightning, but not before Henry had gotten a good glimpse of the page Alex had open: AO3. ‘Don't Stop Me Now’, Henry’s current wip. The one that Henry literally just updated.

Sweet Jesus. Could it really be?

That... is all! It’s been a productive summer. I’m very excited to continue writing Hashtag Soulmates, and also to start working on a few upcoming First Prince fics that I’m planning on writing. Stay tuned for fics! ♡

#First prince #FirstPrince #red white and royal blue #rwrb #alex claremont-diaz #Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor #evie writes #fanfiction

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pinkja · 4 years ago

Text

Comfort (Dina x Reader x Ellie) Modern AU

In which an uncomfortable family visit leaves Ellie and Dina picking up the pieces.

(Quick note, this was just suppose to be a request but it got personal really quickly and it’s… a lot like it’s a lot. But hey! I’m back writing again!)

Tw for some implied abuse and childhood trauma

—

The smell of pancakes overwhelmed your senses as you shifted awake. You could feel the sunlight on your skin as your arms peeked out from under the covers, stretching above you as you sat up. With a yawn that lasted way too long, and your eyes barely opening, you fought the signs to go back to sleep and slipped out of bed, socks protecting your feet from the cold floor.

Your king sized bed was empty that morning, two of it’s usual patrons starting their day earlier, leaving you with a small feeling of emptiness without them. Scratching your stomach, you walked to the bathroom to brush your teeth, stepping on one of your girlfriend’s pants that you would make sure to scold them for later if you cared enough to figure out who the pants belonged to. After brushing your teeth and washing your face, you were finally able to see clearly and be somewhat present in reality. You didn’t bother changing out of your nightclothes, your day off being a perfect excuse to ignore appearances. As you got closer to the kitchen, the smell of food got stronger, reminding you that you hadn’t eaten a while, stomach growling at the prospects of being filled.

Must be Dina, you thought as you opened the kitchen door, suspicions proving correct as you were met with the back of your girlfriend, ponytail swishing as she hummed a tune while putting freshly cooked pancakes on a plate. She turned around slightly, brown eyes meeting yours and a smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

Overcome with the sudden urge to hold her, you wrapped your arms around her waist and mushed your cheek against hers. Dina let out a little giggle, leaning into you as well.

“Well hello to you too, (y/n).” There was amusement in her voice as she took in your sleepy form. You sagged against her with a huff before smiling.

“Morning, Dina.” You let go of Dina and turned around, coming face to face with your girl Ellie.

A pout formed on her face when your eyes met hers. “Damn! I was trying to scare you.” Auburn hair fell in front of her eyes as she deflated dramatically. You laughed, allowing Ellie to pull you into her as an apology.

“I’m sorry, babe. You gotta be quicker than that.” You said into her neck, kissing her on the cheek. She tickled your sides a bit before leaning on the counter, although she never let you go.

“Ellie and I were about to come and check your pulse.” Dina joked, bringing three plates of pancakes towards the kitchen island before continuing, “What time did you come in last night?” You scratched your cheek, digging through hazy memories.

“I didn’t leave the office until 12 because I was checking Annie’s manuscript for her.” You didn’t miss Dina’s scowl or the way Ellie’s grip got a little bit tighter. Whether it was from the mention of Annie or the fact that you got off so late, you didn’t know. “So I didn’t go to bed till 1:30-ish.”

“Annie’s always asking something from you. I don’t know why you keep indulging her.” Dina said with a roll of her eyes. Ah so it was the former.

“She’s just busy, Dina.” You tried to defend your friend, but no matter what you could or would say, she was no good in their eyes.

“And so are you, babe.” Ellie piped up. “You have your own work to do, and the longer your fixing everybody else’s mistakes and yours, the longer you’re away from us.” Ellie let go of you, grabbing utensils from a drawer and sitting two chairs away from Dina, leaving the middle open for you, like always. “All we’re saying, babe, is that you’re too nice.” You furrowed your eyebrows at the statement.

“Me being ‘too nice’ got you two a girlfriend so I don’t understand what’s the issue.” You quipped. Ellie held her hands up in defense, shrugging you off. You sat in between them, Dina wrapping her arm around your shoulder once you were comfortable.

“Ok, baby. We’re sorry. Just make sure you get enough rest today, hm?” You nodded, your good mood returning once your girls planted a kiss on your cheeks.

Once you all were done eating, Dina spoke again. “Ellie and I are gonna be out pretty late tonight,” she said while you were collecting everyone’s plates, “but Ellie should be back earlier than me. Do you think you can handle dinner tonight.” Dina asked you. You looked down at the plates, frowning a bit as you put them into the sink.

Your change in demeanor wasn’t lost on the pair, who looked at you in worry once your attention wasn’t on them.

Ellie spoke up, “I got it, Dina. I shouldn’t be too long anyways.” Dina nodded, sparing you one last glance before getting up from her seat.

“Wish me luck you two. Jesse’s hounding me about turning in these pictures on time even though I only have half of them ready.” Dina said playfully, kissing Ellie before walking up to you and kissing you on your temple. You gave her a small smile and started to wash the dishes, the jingle of Dina’s keys ringing in your ears as she left. Usually Dina and Ellie would drive to work together, but you told Ellie she could have your car since you weren’t going anywhere.

Once the door to the apartment closed shut, Ellie stood up and walked over to you, grabbing a dry rag from the stove and going to dry the clean, wet dishes. Ellie opened her mouth to speak, but hesistated on her words. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Talk about what?” You spoke low, and Ellie could tell you were becoming uncomfortable.

“When Dina asked you about dinner you kinda… I don’t know… froze up.” You turned off the water, handing coming up to brush the hair out of your face. You didn’t answer her. Ellie continued. “And it’s not the first time it happened. You do the same thing when we ask you about –“ Ellie stopped mid-sentence, watching as you gripped the edges of the sink and your palms turned white.

“It’s nothing, Ellie.” You said curtly, effectively ending the subject. “I’m fine.” You whispered, moving to walk away from her. Ellie grabbed you by your wrist and pulled you back towards her, in the same position as earlier. She started to sway the both of you side to side.

“Look, I’m sorry ok. I just wanted to see if you were alright… We just notice things sometimes and I hope you’ll be able to talk with us about it in the future.” Ellie kissed you on the cheek, letting you go and walking around you. “I’ll be back soon, ok? Get some rest, baby.” Ellie ordered, calling out a quick I love you, as she walked out the door.

Letting out a sigh, you rubbed your right temple and walked out to the living room, deciding to listen to Ellie and relax for a bit. Sitting on the couch, you practically buried yourself into one of the corners and brought your knees to your chest, curling yourself into a ball and grabbing a cover left there from the previous night to put over you. You turned on the TV, hoping to find something to watch and occupy your time. You soon found yourself, however, flipping through all of the channels, realizing that all of the sounds started to blend into one monotonous tone, letting your focus slip away from the screen.

After a third look through the channels and a trip through Netflix’s entire catalogue, you decided to shut off the TV and try reading. There were always series that you always wanted to check out but were too busy with work to start. So you grabbed the first book you laid eyes on in the bookshelf next to the TV, sat down in the same spot as before, and opened the book to the first page. As you went through the pages, you realized that you were looking at the words, but weren’t registering a thing, causing you to reread the pages again and again, but to no avail. Something in the back of your mind told you to stop this. Stop this and find something useful to do. So you did.

You shut the book with a huff and neatly placed it back where you found it, just like you were always taught to do. You looked around, eyes trying to spot something to do to occupy yourself. They landed on a basket of laundry in the hallway, small, but enough to last for thirty minutes or so. You grabbed it and sat on the couch, taking your time in making sure the corners were perfectly aligned, and there wasn’t a wrinkle shown. This process, when not completed properly, activated this deeply instilled instinct to start the entire basket over and over, unfolding the clothes and folding them again and again. Once you were done and your fingers were numb, you put the folded clothes back into the basket and dragged it to your bedroom to put them into the dressers.

Once you were done with laundry, you tried to find something to silence the voice in the back of your mind that was telling you to find something to do. You looked around your bedroom, trying to find any little thing out of place. You picked up the pants that you stepped on earlier, replaced dirty cloths and towels with clean ones, cleaned the tub and the toilet and the bathroom sink, and even made the bed three times over. And as you stared at your newly made bed, you felt the urge to sleep again compelling you. But that little voice in the back of your head told you that sleep wasn’t necessary, that you need to do something useful.

So you continued cleaning. You cleaned dust that wasn’t there. You organized books that looked fine from the outside. You picked up little papers that no one would notice and swept imaginary dirt off the floor. You even wiped the tables and walls and organized your pantries. And no matter how much you cleaned, you told yourself that it wasn’t enough, that you were just–

Wait… why did this feel so familiar?

You scratched the back of your head, trying to figure out why you felt like you’ve done this before. Were you always this… picky?

No, you weren’t. But something must’ve happened to make you feel like you weren’t doing anything right, and that everything had to be perfect. You chewed on your nail and walked back to the kitchen, ignoring the voice screaming at you to get back to work. Eyes darted all over, landing on the clock that read 5:30. Damn, you said to yourself, how long was I cleaning for?

“Ok, (y/n). I know you can find something to do. Anything.” You muttered, catching yourself before you can start biting your nails again. You looked at the fridge and froze. “I could always make dinner…” You tried to tell yourself, but your body wouldn’t move. “Come on, (y/n). Try and be a good girlfriend for once.” You willed your body to move, your need to be considerate after your girlfriends worked hard overpowering the fear of doing something wrong. You opened the fridge, peering inside to see what you could make. You decided to make some beef stew, finding it such a simple task that even you couldn’t possibly mess this up.

Getting out the meat, some carrots, onions, potatoes and peas, you cleaned the meat first, washed the sink thoroughly afterwards, and cleaned the vegetables after that. You spent about five minutes deciding what pans to bring out and use, and after gaining your confidence again and deciding, you sautéed the beef in some oil first, then added some seasoning to the beef, put water and beef broth in a larger pot before putting the beef in the pot.

Ok, you told yourself, the first and hardest part is over. Now all you needed to do was just put the stove on medium and leave it for the next hour or so.

Your nerves were calming down just a bit as you walked back into the living room, fidgeting in place as you sat down on the couch. The serenity didn’t last long, however, as you began to feel like something was nagging at you. Goodness gracious, you had never been this on edge before.

Well… that’s not true, you retracted.

Truth is, the only time you ever got this worked up was when a family member visited you, and it always got worse when your mother graced you with her presence. But that’s absurd! Your mother was across town, too busy with her own things to ever visit you. Hell, you didn’t even know if your mother even remembered where you lived, not like you were complaining. A part of you hoped that she did forget. You chewed on the pad of your thumb absentmindedly, a habit you’d thought you kicked after leaving for college, nervous.

You’re fine, you tried to reason with yourself, you’re ok. She’s not even near you. She’s probably at home, watching the news or chastising someone on the tiniest things and you’re probably just overreact–

There was a knock at the door.

You had never snapped your head up so fast before, eyes wide and thumb starting to bleed. The knocking continued, more frequent this time. You peeked at the door from your place on the couch, fear locking your body in place.

It’s probably just the mail, you told yourself.

“(Y/n)? I know you’re in there!” It was not. Every nerve in your body felt like it had been broken and set on fire, body burning incredibly hot and going numb at the same time.

“No, no, no, no, no! Why is she here?” You whispered, wrapping your arms around yourself in a feeble attempt to hide from the newcomer. The knocking continued despite your efforts.

“(Y/n)!” You jumped at the change in tone, an all too familiar one that caused you to get up from the couch and walk to the door despite everything telling you not to. Your breath hitched at the click of the door as you turned the lock, opening it to reveal your mother standing there, smiling.

You finally found your voice after a few seconds, stuttering out a, “Hi…Hi, mama. What’re you doing he–” You were cut off by the burning gaze of your mother. You stepped to the side without another word, absentmindedly straightening your shirt and fixing your hair.

“Don’t you know it’s rude to leave guests waiting so long? I thought I raised you better than that.” You bowed your head at the scolding, muttering out a small apology.

“H-How’d you find me, mama?” You didn’t mean for it to sound like that, you really didn’t, but you knew it was too late to take it back.

“Your sister told me you had today off so I thought I’d stop by.” Her hair swished as she set her sights on different things in your home, allowing herself to walk into your living room and sit down on the couch. You followed her, hoping that everything was to her liking. Your mother crossed her legs as she sat, and you mirrored her, sitting on the other end of the couch. “When was the last time you vacuumed the floor?” Your mother stared down with a frown as she lifted her foot up to look at imaginary dirt. You didn’t bother giving her an answer, knowing that now that she’s started, she won’t stop finding things to nitpick.

You tried to change the subject. “I… I appreciate you visiting, mama. Would you like something to drink?” You stood as soon as she said yes, feeling uncomfortable with how quickly her eyes settled on your entire form.

“Hold on now.” Her words stopped you from moving to the kitchen. “It’s almost six and you’re still in your nightclothes. You should know better by now.”

You bowed your head once again, wanting so badly to go back to biting your thumb and cry. “I-I wasn’t expecting anybody, mama. I–”

She didn’t let you finish, saying, “Why don’t you wear that dress I sent you last month. Oh that would look so pretty on you!” You fidgeted with your shirt once again, wiping your sweaty hand on the back of your shorts.

“I can’t fit that mama. It’s too… small…” You whispered the last word and hoped that she wouldn’t hear you, but she did. Your mother let out a scoff, rolling her eyes and dismissing you with a wave of her hand.

“Goodness gracious, (y/n)! I just bought you that dress and you’ve already gained weight? Maybe you need to cut down a bit, yeah? You’ve always had a problem with eating all day.” You just nodded, turning and walking into the kitchen to fix her some water. As soon as the door shut behind you, you placed your head in your hands and let out a shaky breath, heart beating fast and a ringing in your ears. You wanted to curl up and cry like a fucking baby.

Was this a punishment of some sorts? Have you done something wrong lately and this was just a fucked up attempt to get you back for it? What the hell did you do to deserve this, huh?

Dragging your hands down your face, you wiped your eyes and moved to fix your mother a cup of water. Unfortunately, your hands wouldn’t stop shaking as you fixed it, and you had to set the cup on the counter and take a breather. Ok, you told yourself, breathe. You can make it through this. She’ll be here for at most an hour, right? By that time Ellie and Dina would be home and–

But they’re working late today…

Your heart dropped at the fact, foot tapping on the ground as you tried to find a way out of this. If they’re working late you don’t have an excuse to make her leave, meaning she could torment you for hours on end, judging and nitpicking every little thing you do. You considered calling them, but the voice in your mind told you that you were pathetic for not being able to take care of your problems on your own.

It’s just your mother after all.

You didn’t register that your mother was coming until the kitchen door opened, and you straightened yourself before grabbing the cup of water off of the counter.

“What’re you cooking?” Your mother asked, peering into the covered pot on the stove.

“B-Beef stew.” You stuttered as she took the lid off the pot and looked inside.

“You don’t even have any celery in here.” She said as she closed the pot. “And are you sure you put enough seasoning in there? Your stew has no scent to it. No one wants bland stew, (y/n).” She looked around again, trying to find something to pick on.

“Ellie doesn’t like celery, mama…” You mentioned, although you could’ve sworn you didn’t say anything at all, as the woman had no reaction to your statement.

“Make sure you wipe off this counter. You’ve been at home all day and yet your house still looks a mess. Just lazy…” Your mother shook her head as she grabbed the cup from your grip and walked out of the kitchen. You watched as the door slammed behind her, a lump in your throat and your body tingling all over. Your nose made an ugly sound as you sniffed, grabbing a rag off the counter and vigorously wiping it. Your eyes darted to the now boiling stew on the stove, all your fears from earlier resurfacing.

What if you weren’t doing this correctly? What if Ellie and Dina didn’t like the food? Would they chastise you for wasting ingredients on something so horrible? Will they think of you as ungrateful for this? For knowing that they worked long hours every day only for you to treat them like this? If they think your cooking is terrible, who knows what else they think you do wrong. Maybe they don’t like the way you talk or dress or carry yourself or the dates you bring them on. Maybe they don’t like the way that you love them. Did they think that you loved them at all if your love was so horrible?

Did they love you?

That question caused you to shake. You didn’t notice your breathing picking up speed as you dwelled on the question more and more. You could feel the panic set in and you tried to find something to focus on. You tried focusing on the ticking of the clock, your foot tapping against the floor, the steam coming out of the pot. Something, anything to bring you back down to Earth.

“(Y/n)! What’s taking you so long?” Your mother’s voice snapped you out of your panic, although momentarily. In a pathetic display of sadness, your lip started quivering and you let out a whine, not wanting to go back into the living room and let her judge you again. You tried to speak, tried to say something to stall her for a few seconds, but nothing came out. You found yourself wiping your eyes, your feet dragging across the floor into the living room, your body willing itself to move despite your mind’s screams of protests. You peeked your head around the corner, not meeting your mother’s eyes.

“Yes, mama?” God your voice was awful.

“Come sit down.” It was an order, not a suggestion, that much you knew. Your mother wasted no time in speaking again as soon as you set down. “Do you remember that neighbor we had when you were in middle school? Mr. Allen?” You remembered, yes. The man was around your aunt’s age, older than your mother with grey hair and a pot belly. He lived several states away though. Your mother started up again before you could respond. “Well his son, Will, is looking to move up here in the Fall, and I told him you’d be happy to show him around the city when he comes up in a couple of weeks.” Your eyes widened as you stared at her.

“Mama I don’t even know Will like that. I can’t show him around–”

“Nonsense, (y/n)! You two were always hanging out and playing together. I’m sure he’ll love to see you.”

“Mama–”

“And since that dress I bought you doesn’t fit I’ll buy you a new one. And you’ll also have to get your hair done. You look like you haven’t washed it in weeks.” She took a strand of your hair in between her fingertips and pulled. Your head moved even if she didn’t use much force.

“Mama, please. I don’t wanna–”

“Shut up, will you. You’re a grown woman and I think it’s time you settle down already. Will is a nice man and you should be happy he wants to go out with you.”

You pulled away from her, tears pooling up in your eyes. “Mama, I’m already in a relationship and you know that!” She grabbed and pulled on your hair again. Her eyes narrowed at you, and suddenly you were a child again, being stared down by her as she scolded you for something, anything.

“Stop complaining, dammit. This is happening whether you like it or not. And I expect you to be on your best behavior.” Another pull of your hair, less forceful this time, but enough to get the message across. She let you go and stood up, wiping imaginary dirt off of her skirt. “I’ll give him your number later. I expect you to answer him.” And with that your mother was gone, door slamming behind her. You were left on the couch, scalp stinging and a ringing in your ears.

You thought you had escaped this. Escaped from her. Is this really how your life was going to go? You would get a tiny sliver of freedom and happiness and it would be taken away from you every time your mother finds you again? Would you able to even call your life yours?

You didn’t notice you weren’t breathing until you found yourself choking back a sob, hunching over as you tried so hard not to throw up. Soon you were crying, tears falling down your lap as you wrapped your arms around yourself for comfort. You don’t know how long you sat there crying, cradling yourself like a sick baby. You even missed the whistling of the pot of beef stew in the kitchen and the turn of the door knob that came later.

“Babe, why is the door unlocked?” It was Ellie. Her voice was faint and you didn’t even register her presence.

Ellie’s eyebrows furrowed together when she didn’t get a response. She shut the door behind her, locking it afterwards. She was sure she locked the door this morning. Did (y/n) go out earlier and forget? Ellie placed her keys on the hook by the door and kicked her shoes off. “Babe?” She called out again, walking to the living room. She was met with your shaking form, cradling yourself and mouth screwed shut in an attempt to silence your cries. Ellie ran to you and grabbed you by the shoulders, sadness and confusion in her eyes as you recoiled from her touch. Ellie crouched in front of you, not knowing what to do with her hands. “(Y/n), baby, what’s wrong? What happened to you?” Your head snapped up once you registered her voice, tears streaming down your face.

You pulled Ellie down by her shoulders and wrapped your arms around her, practically screaming, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” like a mantra. Ellie didn’t know what you were apologizing for, and she was certain you didn’t know either. Ellie reluctantly wrapped her arms around you, allowing you to plant your face in the crook of her neck. “I tried, I tried to, I tried–” You stammered, grip on Ellie getting tighter and tighter.

“(Y/n), what happened to you?” Ellie pulled you away from her and cradled your face in her hands.

“I tried to–…I tried to do right, I really did but I couldn’t stop her I’m so sorry.” Your words slurred together as Ellie wiped your face with her thumbs.

Ellie couldn’t tell who you were talking about but tried to calm you down as best as she could.

“Baby, take deep breaths, ok. Can you do that for me?” You shook your head no, another sob leaving your mouth. “Please try at least. Please.” You let out a shaky breath, gripping Ellie’s shirt in your hands. “Ok, that’s a start. Now breathe in. Just a little bit, ok?” You followed her instructions as best as you could, throat making a weird sound as you inhaled. Ellie continued to wipe the tears from your eyes, as you repeated the steps until your breathing was in sync. “Ok, that’s good, (y/n). You’re doing so good.” The worry never left Ellie’s eyes. She was about to say something else when the whistling of the pot on the stove grabbed her attention. “I’m gonna be right back, ok.” You didn’t acknowledge her speaking as your eyes glazed over, staring right past her.

Ellie walked briskly to the kitchen and peeked inside, seeing a pot with the lid slightly ajar, steam rushing out of the opening after who-knows-how-long of being unchecked. Ellie grabbed a few rags off the side of the counter and moved the pot to a different stovetop, turning the stove off afterwards. She returned to you and sat next to you on the couch. She called your name a few times, but you didn’t answer her, not until she shook your shoulder and squeezed your arm a bit. Your head snapped up, and Ellie swore she could see fear in your eyes. “Did you forget that you had something on the stove? It’s not like you to forget something like–” Ellie stopped speaking as you burst into tears again, apologizing over and over again, for the food, for the house, for yourself even. Ellie didn’t know why you were apologizing, but she wrapped her arms around you anyways for comfort that you so desperately needed. God, Ellie didn’t know what to say, or really what to do at this moment. She felt useless for that.

“Baby, I’m gonna call Dina, ok?” You only continued to cry, tears staining Ellie’s paint-covered shirt. Ellie reached into her pocket for her phone, finding Dina’s contact and tapped her foot as she waited for Dina to pick up. Dina answered on the third ring, sounding exhausted after a long day.

“Hey, Ellie–” Ellie didn’t give her time to speak.

“It’s (y/n), Dina. She’s freaking out and I need you to come home. Now.” Ellie placed her free hand under your shirt, finding your skin to be burning up as she rubbed your back.

“Freaking out? What happened?” Ellie could hear the shuffling of papers as Dina collected herself.

“I-I don’t know. She can barely get a word out without crying, and she had left the door unlocked and something on the stove and–” Ellie caught herself rambling and took a breath. “Every time I try and ask her about it she breaks down again and I don’t know what to do. Just… come home, please.”

“Give me 15 minutes, ok.” Dina’s voice was muffled a bit as she yelled to Jesse about an emergency. Ellie hung up soon thereafter, dropping her phone on the couch and cradling you in her arms. She started humming a song that you had always liked, hoping it would calm you down a bit. You cries soon turned into whimpers, and she lets you wipe your tears on her shirt. Ellie spoke up after a few more minutes.

“(Y/n)?” You hummed, sniffling and unable to speak. “Let’s go lay down, ok. Dina’s going to be home soon.” You could only nod. Ellie got up and pulled you up with her, leading you to your bedroom. Ellie laid down near the wall, opening her arms for you. You crawled into her arms, burying your face into her neck. Ellie continued to hum that song, her mind coming up with a million scenarios as to what could’ve happened. She wanted to ask you so badly, but she didn’t want to say the wrong thing and cause you to cry again. She wasn’t good with words, that was more of Dina’s specialty. But she hated seeing you cry. She hated seeing you sad at all. Your smile was the best thing to her, to Dina as well. And to see your smile go away because of… because of something, pissed Ellie off.

A few minutes later, Ellie registered the squeaking of the bedroom door as it opened and shut. Looking up, Ellie met Dina’s gaze as she carefully walked over to the bed and sat down beside you. Ellie could see the hesitation on Dina’s face as she raised a hand to touch you. Ellie gave her a little nod when Dina’s eyes met hers again, and felt you flinch when Dina placed her fingers on the nape of your neck, an action that you had usually found comforting.

“It’s just me, honey.” Dina tried to hide the hurt in her voice at your rejection of her touch. Dina placed her free hand on your shoulder and turned you on your back. Dina’s heart shattered at the utter helplessness on your face. You looked so… broken, and Dina prayed that she would be able to fix it. “Baby… baby what’s wrong?” Dina talked slowly and softly, rubbing your temple with her thumb. Goodness, your skin burned. You didn’t speak yet, only letting a few tears out of your eyes. Ellie and Dina quickly wiped them away. “Take your time, sweetheart.” Dina added, taking a hand in yours. Ellie placed her hand over Dina’s. The shared contact was comforting.

“I… I–” You took a deep breath, closing your red eyes. “I’m sorry…” You finally whispered. Dina furrowed her eyebrows, a frown forming on her face.

“What for, hun?” Dina spoke again. You opened your eyes but didn’t look at them, keeping your gaze on the ceiling.

“For me.” They had almost missed it. You had said it so quietly. Ellie was about to protest, Dina could sense it. Dina shot her a look, not wanting her to scare you into another outburst. Ellie pursed her lips, grip on Dina and your hands tightening just a bit. You continued speaking after a bit of silence. “I wish I could do better for you guys.” They could see the tears well up in your eyes again.

“What brought this on, (y/n)?” It was Ellie who spoke this time. There was a tinge of anger in her voice.

“My mother.” You had finally let out, blinking your tears away. “She, she came over and–” You looked at Dina. “She found me, and I don’t know how. I really, really don’t.” You sounded like a child who’s about to break down. “And I–I… she told me that I had to um, I had to go out with this old neighbor of mine and I felt like a child again because she made me question myself and doubt everything I do again and I couldn’t do anything to stop her and–” You were talking quickly through tears and a cracking voice, free hand gripping the sheets below you. “I’m so sorry I can’t be a better girlfriend for you. I’m so awful. I couldn’t even make dinner because I was so caught up in everything! And I know how hard you both work and yet I–” You took a deep breath as your tears blurred your vision. “I can’t even make a simple fucking meal and I couldn’t even say no to my fucking mama.” You said the word with such contempt despite your crying, and you turned and buried your face in Ellie’s chest. Probably to hide yourself from the world. You were crying again, and your girls quickly wrapped their arms around you for comfort. Both of their grips tightened on you, angry at the woman for making you feel so broken, angry at the world for being so cruel to you.

“My sweet, sweet girl.” Dina cooed, rubbing her nose into your cheek. “You aren’t awful, or a bad girlfriend. You’re the best thing that could’ve ever happened to us. Whatever that, that woman,” Dina wanted to call her much, much worse, “said or did to make you feel this way will never, ever be true, and I promise you that I will never let her speak to you or even come near you ever again.”

“Besides, I’ll burn this whole world down before I let some stranger or that bitch touch you again.” Ellie did not give her that same generosity. Ellie removed your face from her chest and gently wiped your tears away. Dina placed her hand on the back of your neck and gently scratched your nape. “Do you believe that?” Ellie asked softly. You nodded, although with some hesitation.

“We’re so sorry that we weren’t here for you when you needed us, baby.” Dina said as she turned you on your back. Her hand danced across your stomach to grab at your waist. “I promise you, baby, we won’t let anyone hurt you again, ever.” Your girl said it with such conviction and her eyes held so much love for you. It overwhelmed you and you could only nod once again.

“Th–Thank you. The both of you… I’m sorry I worried you–”

“You don’t have to apologize, (y/n).” Ellie interrupted, tracing patterns on your jaw.

“I know, but I never told you about her because,” you paused, and they waited patiently, “she’s a part of my life that I tried to forget, and with her everything had to be so perfect, and in the long run it just wasn’t good for me, you know?” You rubbed at your left eye in an attempt to prevent more tears from flowing. Ah, it’s clicking now. Why you were so adamant about making dinner earlier. Why you could be so worried about every chore you did or constantly doubted yourself over the simplest things.

After so long of picking up the pieces of your broken childhood, your mother had tipped you over and shattered every piece of resolve you had.

Your girls swore to put you back together again.

“Baby, we won’t ever put you through something like that again, ok? You don’t have to worry about us nitpicking at every little thing you do because it doesn’t matter.” Ellie told you. She rubbed her thumb in circles right below your ear, helping you unclench your jaw.

“If you’re ever uncomfortable with doing something just tell us. We won’t be mad or upset at you for not wanting to do something, because we love you. Something as simple as not making dinner won’t change that.” Dina kissed you on your forehead, giving you a small smile. “You believe that right, that we love you?”

For a moment your doubts from earlier arose, but seeing no type of contemp from them towards you pushed those thoughts away.

“Yeah, I believe it.” If possible they smiled even wider, peppering kisses all over you until you let out a laugh, giving them a shove until they settled beside you.

You felt secure in their embrace, knowing that they would do everything in their power to protect you, and would kill someone before letting anyone hurt you.

You wouldn’t have it any other way.

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watermelonlipstick · 4 years ago

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Dreams, Chapter 5

If you haven’t read this series before, you might want to start on Chapter 1, or check out the Dreams Masterlist! Here’s the series description:

When Dean dies for good leaving Sam and his girlfriend (the reader) behind, they must figure out how to carry on without him. Alone, reeling, and unsure what to do next, trying to honor Dean’s memory and follow their hearts gets even more complicated when their nightmares become dreams that feel a little too real.

GET. READY. This is a bigger chunk but I really think it’s worth it.

Title: Dreams, Chapter 5

Pairing: (past) Dean Winchester x Reader, (eventual) Sam Winchester x Reader

Word Count: 5343

Summary: Dean’s birthday proves easier than expected in some ways and harder in others.

Warnings: angst, fluff, swearing, alcohol, s l o w b u r n

Sam pulled back from you, opening one eye drowsily. “Are you okay?” he says, voice gritty with sleep.

“Yeah, I…he didn’t die,” you breathed, confused.

He cleared his throat. “What?”

“He always dies. He fell off of Bobby’s roof, but he just broke his ankle, he, he didn’t die.”

Sam rubbed his face with his free arm, trying to wake up more in earnest. It was still dark, so it couldn’t have been later than 7:30. You hadn’t been asleep for more than a few hours but suddenly felt beyond alert. “That’s good, right?”

“I—yeah, it’s good. Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

The reflex was to say no, usher Sam back to sleep. But your reflexes had already been wrong once today. “Can we?”

The way Sam kept the surprise off his face was admirable. It was the first time you’d agreed to talk about the nightmares that plagued you since losing Dean. He propped himself up on his elbows and flicked on the small lamp beside the bed. “What happened?”

You told Sam all about the dream, sparing only the details you couldn’t really remember or only made dream-sense, like the way you knew it was 4th of July weekend without having been told. He listened thoughtfully, the focus obvious in his expression. He waited a long beat when you were done, sure not to step on your moment of vulnerability.

“What do you think it means?” he asked gently.

You thunked back onto your pillow to gaze up at the popcorn ceiling. “I don’t care, to be honest.” The almost-dark made fuzzy static pulse in your vision. “I think I’m going to write about it, actually,” you said, and startled yourself.

“Oh, uh, okay,” Sam said encouragingly. “Do you want me to—” he asked, pointing a thumb over his shoulder.

“No, no. I’ll be back in a little bit, see if you can go back to sleep.”

Sam nodded with more than a little concern and you climbed over him, yanking an old sweatshirt out to throw over your wilted tee and scampering off to the kitchen table.

The house was ice cold and dark aside from the ever-present Christmas lights and you could feel the needles that had begun to drop from the tree under your bare feet, rapidly cooling on the cheap flooring. You picked up the notebook and pens Sam had gotten you and sat down at the kitchen counter to write.

In the days that followed, the constant and varied nightmares of Dean’s deaths returned. When you woke up, more and more often making it to the morning, you kept writing to Dean about them and sometimes your day as a way of processing. You never ‘told him’ about exactly what happened and tried to focus on the sweet things you remembered that made the worst dreams a tease, moving them to your daytime memory and trying to wash away the despair the nightmares left you clawing through.

By the middle of January, you and Sam had fallen mostly back into old patterns. The Christmas lights were still up, a sort of night light against the long Midwestern nights, and you couldn’t help feeling a small sense of despair sweeping up loose pine needles when Sam was in the shower every day. You didn’t want the winter to end, as weird as that sounded with the ice and chill and fingertips that never warmed all the way. It felt like if you moved into spring that you were leaving the time-out that you’d created and would have to figure out a longer-term solution than this rented cabin, all thin drywall and poorly insulated ceilings. Even your jobs didn’t feel permanent, the summer vacationers sure to come back and reclaim their spots in the town as it came back to life with the plants.

The ‘mostly’ was that the boundary you broke with Sam never truly came uncrossed. When you were washing dishes he would come stand behind you, the heat of his lips seeping into the shoulder of your old sweatshirts. You’d intertwine your fingers with his while he drove, realizing only when you went to open the car door and found yourself tangled, or running your hands through his hair while he read next to you on the sofa. You never met Sam’s eyes in these moments—somehow it felt like a secret, private thing that would collapse into dust if gazed upon, some sweet, small creature you were protecting. Neither one of you talked about it in the time since that tequila-soaked night.

As much as you’d needed to be close to him before, you began craving Sam in a way that scared you. You’d always found him beautiful in the way you admire someone you love, but you caught yourself taking notice of the pillars of muscles along his back when he broke down stock boxes and the dark swoop of his eyelashes. The comments about how lucky you were to have him that used to make you nervous your cover was about to be blown started to make you ache a little with fear and something you couldn’t place. You felt a bizarre flick of jealousy when some twenty somethings drinking White Claw dragged their eyes over him at the bar before leaving on their snowmobiles, like he really was yours to claim. It seemed like a manifestation of your fierce attachment and unresolved grief not only for Dean but your old life with the Winchesters, when they sort of were: your teammates and no one else’s. You resolved it had to be and explained it away without inspection, even when these ‘isolated’ moments became less and less isolated.

Before you knew it, you were hurtling toward Dean’s birthday.

“What should we do on Sunday?” you asked early on a Thursday afternoon, trying to keep your voice light and easy while you and Sam got ready for your last day of work for the week.

“I don’t, uh, I don’t know.”

“Did you guys ever do anything when you were little?”

“I mean, not really. Sometimes like a cake or whatever I guess, but Dean was always better at that stuff. By the time we were in our 20s, he only wanted to go meet girls and play up the ‘kiss for the birthday boy’ schtick.” Sam grinned sheepishly as though you didn’t know who Dean had been.

You couldn’t help but smile, remembering the cocksure half-boy you’d met all those years ago. “Okay, well, if you didn’t have anything in mind, I have a couple ideas.”

“Oh, yeah, I had only really come up with a cherry pie and a bottle of whiskey.”

You stood up from the kitchen table and grabbed Sam’s empty plate, leaning into his drying hair for long enough to inhale the minty earthiness of his shampoo. “I mean, that’s a given.”

In Sunday’s late morning you slipped out of the house while Sam was in the shower, leaving a note behind that said you’d be back in a few minutes. You careened down the road to the quaint main street, running through the list in your head. The grocery store was first for the only bottle of scotch they kept in a tiny plastic container and the fixings for bacon cheeseburgers, then the coffee shop had a cherry pie that looked better to you than whatever pseudo-Entemann’s they had in the limited grocery bakery section. The hardware store had everything else you needed and some extras; you praised the cold climate necessity of having multiple places in town to get gloves and thick woolen socks as you threw a couple on the checkout with the rest of the haul. It was awkward to get everything in the trunk, and you were thankful in this moment that you weren’t trying to drive the little sedan you’d had years ago when it was just you, even as annoying as it was to park the Impala sometimes.

Back at the cabin Sam was solemnly cleaning up, his eyes red as he wrung out a mop. You took the pie and whiskey out of the bag and put the other groceries away without removing your coat. In truth you only took off the boots you were wearing as a concession to Sam’s mopping, feeling itchy to get back outside and let the complexity of your emotions explode into fresh air unencumbered.

You tossed a pair of new woolen socks to Sam, who caught them against his chest. “You’re going to want these.”

“What? Where are we going?”

“Somewhere I think Dean would’ve liked. Put on some layers, too.”

Sam obeyed with a crooked eyebrow, coming out of the bedroom a few minutes later looking like a lumberjack catalogue model. You didn’t say anything when you realized the hoodie he was wearing used to be his brother’s.

“Ready?”

“I’m not sure, I don’t know where we’re going,” Sam answered honestly.

You gestured toward the door and he followed you out to the car. Thankfully it had snowed that morning, and tiny billows of powdery snowflakes blew up around each car that you passed on the way.

The hill was massive. It was a little surprising considering the flatness of the majority of the Midwest, and you’d had to remind yourself that there were some small skiing outfits in the upper half of the state when you’d found it, sure that it was a garbage dump that had been covered lazily in grass seed and left to its own devices. Less impressive surrounding slopes reassured you when you’d scoped it out a few days earlier, and the fresh glittering snow made it look even more spectacular now than you’d remembered. You decided not to push it taking the Impala onto the snow, instead parking at the dead-end you thought was closest.

“We’re here?” Sam asked, obviously still confused.

“Yep. Come on,” you said, enjoying the surprise more than you’d thought you would.

Popping the trunk made it obvious when the bright plastic sleds were wedged in alongside the miscellaneous weapons whose permanent home it was. You watched Sam’s face as recognition dawned, closely followed by a smirk you knew was in large part to humor you. Yanking them out in one big pull, you handed Sam the green one and one of the pair of gloves you’d gotten that morning.

“These are huge, where did you even find them?” he chuckled, popping the plastic tie between the gloves and sliding his hands into them.

“You’re huge, it’s not like I can put you on a kid’s one. Besides they must be pretty serious about their sledding up here, these were just from the hardware store.”

Sam shook his head and waited for you to put your gloves on. They were comically big on you, but you knew you’d regret not wearing any and tried your best to grip the sides of the plastic sled through them as you took off toward the hill. After a few steps, Sam took the sled from you without a word, able to hold it easily with both his well-fitting gloves and the many extra inches between his arms and the ground.

The walk up the hill was somewhat of a trudge but the way the crisp air sliced through your lungs was a welcome distraction. Snow dampened the ambient noise so all you could hear was Sam’s rhythmic breathing like a mantra, and with one foot in front of the other, by the time you got to the top you felt like you’d been meditating. The view was amazing from the top, a painting or old illustration with its tiny homes and cottages over meandering fields, the snow washing everything out as if you were watching someone else’s dream.

“Should we race?” Sam asked, the swirled pigment of his irises lit up by the reflection off the snow.

The next thing you heard was Sam’s laugh behind you as you took a few big strides and jumped onto the sled. Careening down the hill, your hair snapped around, tiny whips cracking into your wind-tenderized cheeks as you tried in vain to steer the sled in slices across the straight pass. Sam’s cackle was distant but comforting over your shoulder. You closed your eyes to feel the speed underneath you and the wind across your face; listen to that laugh that you’d heard so little recently, an old favorite song to be put on repeat. On January 24th of all days it felt like you were being baptized in the clear crystal sound of it.

When you came to a stop, Sam was only a half second behind you. You fell over in a fit of giggles listening to him play-whine about cheating and “Totally not fair, after I carry your sled all the way up for you!”

“I’ll beat you again with no head start! Unless you’re chicken,” you taunted, brushing snow off your legs to start back up the hill again. Sam scrambled to his feet, passing you up quickly with his huge strides as you started to run after him. Gasping with laughter and exertion, you and Sam half-wrestled and chased each other to the top, collapsing to your backs like snow angels. After catching your breath, you propped yourself up on your elbows to look over at him.

“Rematch?”

Sam’s smile, all straight pearl teeth and cold-flushed cheeks, was as breathtaking as the icy wind as you tore down the run, this time on your stomach with your head low like a bullet, trying in earnest to win again. The front lip of the sled in your fingertips rumbled against little imperfections in the snow. You glanced to check how much of a lead you had on Sam and had barely turned your head before you realized you were also dipping your shoulder, tilting the sled on its greased-lightning path and therefore you with it. Sam was right on your tail and narrowly missed crushing you when you fell off the sled by bailing out of his, your legs tangling together with misplaced velocity. You tried to hold still so you wouldn’t catch his face with a flailing limb, only moving after a beat when it seemed like the collision was over. Sam’s fall seemed to have been more graceful than yours, as he still had a hand on his sled and only a left arm and hair full of snow that he shook loose like a puppy.

“Are you okay?” he said, getting to his knees to reach out to you.

You could feel the scrape on your cheek before you got up, but Sam’s wince was only minor when he saw it which was reassuring. He snatched off his glove and brushed snow off your face gently, barely grazing the broken skin. The warmth felt so nice and you would’ve curled up in his palm like Thumbelina if you could. “What’s the damage?” you asked, trying to think about the way your breath puffed up in clouds around you rather than the snowflakes caught in Sam’s eyelashes.

He was analytical as he took it in, tilting your head carefully in the light. “Doesn’t look too bad. Does it hurt?”

“Nah. Did you think I’d get soft that fast? I used to get stabbed like once a month.”

Sam chuckled. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Do you want to go home?”

It didn’t feel as odd as it should’ve, knowing exactly what home meant in this context. “And let you think I only won by cheating? Fat chance!”

“You don’t even have a sled anymore!”

You glanced around you and saw your sled sitting smugly an easy 30 yards past the base of the hill. “Gimme a ride?”

It was a little awkward until Sam sat down on the sled with each heel straddled and digging into the snow, allowing you to crawl between his legs without unintentionally sliding down the rest of the slope. He seemed unsure of himself as he wrapped his arms around your torso, and you hooked your hands around each of his legs to do your part to hang onto him. “Ready?” he asked, his breath warm on your neck.

When you nodded, he unstuck his heels and you shot like a racehorse down the hill. Sam’s chest was solid as a rock behind you, cushioned with his layers and fastened with his seatbelt arms. You could feel the muscles in his legs moving against your hands, trying to balance the weight of the two of you on the flimsy material. Despite your fall only moments ago, it was safe in a way you hadn’t felt in a long time. The ride came to a stop only a few steps away from your cast off sled.

You turned into Sam to get to your knees before standing up and slipped on a wet patch on the plastic, the melted snow turning the surface impossibly slick. It made you fall forward into Sam, his seated position not giving him enough stability to stay on balance—the sled shifted back underneath the both of you and brushed your lips across his as you ended up with your scraped cheek against the rough canvas of his jacket.

“I—oh my god I’m sorry,” you stammered, springing back gracelessly.

Sam looked somewhat like a little kid or a doll, sitting wide eyed with his legs still spread out around you. You stayed back on your knees feeling like you should move slowly, that maybe you could back away unscathed yet. Sam reached his hands out and you thought it was okay, he understood you wouldn’t cross yet another line with him, that it was a simple mistake and he was going to move past it or ask for your help up, and then his heavily gloved hand slid into your hair and he was leaning toward you, the breath that had felt so comforting on the back of your neck as you flew down the hill now on your bottom lip. Your needle-sharp inhale drew that air from him, and you started to feel dizzy. He waited for a moment, searching between your eyes for you to pull back, to turn it into a joke, but you couldn’t. Something in the light pressure of his hand was an anchor and you found yourself glancing at Sam’s lips and slowly, agonizingly, Sam closed the distance between you.

His lips were so soft and gentle that it made you feel like you were going to cry and then you were crying, just one hot salty tear that stung the fresh abrasion on your cheek as you moved against him, this foreign and scary part of the person you knew the best on this earth. Somehow kissing Sam was exactly how you would’ve guessed it would be—tender and sweet and reverent. The sound dampening of the snow amplified your other senses: the feeling of the cheap Gore-Tex catching one or two hairs as Sam supported your weight, the small brush of Sam’s breath through his nose, the tight flick of the wind against your coats. It was over as quickly as it started, leaving you and Sam staring at each other bewildered while your hair tangled around you.

You could feel that your eyes were as wide as Sam’s. Completely unable to formulate a thought or feeling, much less something to say, you silently extricated yourself from the sled. Sam did too, staring at it like it was some complicated spell, even turning away from you as you crossed over to your own store-bought chariot. You could read his tension even in his back, the tight stretch of his shoulders as he clutched at the scruff of his neck, and just wanted to make it better.

“Okay, rematch for real this time? I would say I won’t fall again but, no promises.”

Sam looked scared when he turned back to you, his voice gruff when he choked out a halfhearted, “yeah, sure” and followed you up the hill. He was far enough behind you that you couldn’t hear his breathing anymore and it took him a little bit to reach you at the peak. His body seemed like it was cracking around him, aging in moments as he shakily got into his sled beside yours. You wanted so badly to tell him it’s okay, it’s just some dumb mistake, we were just goofing off but you knew it wasn’t true and you didn’t want to lie.

The only thing you could fix your mouth to say was, “Count us down so you can’t say I’m cheating again,” and hope he heard the apology and forgiveness in it.

Sam obeyed dutifully and you kicked off down the hill, trying to use the speed you gathered and the clarity in the way it split open your lungs to try to understand what had just happened. The same trip that had felt like glorious ages before was over in a second and you were up out of your sled before you remembered you were supposed to be measuring whether you or Sam had gotten down faster.

“Tie, we’re going again!” you yelled over your shoulder as you did your best to bound through the deep snow up the side of the hill, not waiting to see if he was following you.

Once again at the top, ragged and out of breath and only a few steps ahead of him, you took a second to collect yourself before putting your sled back in the snow and holding it in place with one foot.

“I’m sor—” Sam started before you cut him off.

“Okay, third time’s the charm!” you said with panicked cheerfulness that you knew instantly was too much, but Sam stopped talking and dejectedly sat on his sled next to you.

You and Sam spent probably an hour more sledding, your legs turning to jello underneath you as you ran up the hill over and over again and your cheeks getting more and more wind chapped, before Sam finally smiled, exasperated at some joke about still beating him up the hill with legs that were half as long. It was all the fuel you needed to keep chipping away at him until the sun started dropping and the chill broke through all your layers.

The two of you plodded through the snow back to the car together. Gloves and sleds in the trunk, you flopped into the passenger seat with that sudden too-hot feeling of getting out of the wind and tore at your coat to desperately strip some layers. Sam threw his own jacket in the back. Without giving him a chance to protest or hook up his phone, you turned on the tape deck and Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here pounded out like rocky silk.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” you murmured. You looked over at Sam, who burst into a kind of frantic laughter that you completely understood. You couldn’t stop yourself from laughing either, because of course this was playing during the tense peace on Dean’s birthday in Dean’s car, and then you and Sam were cry-laughing in the rapidly humidifying air of the Impala while Syd Barrett waxed poetic. By the time the second chunks of Shine On You Crazy Diamond started, you were gasping for air and clutching at your sides.

You drove home after that in relative silence, the fatigue of fresh air and running all afternoon catching up with you. Sam took a shower while you put together burgers, switching spots with you to cook them while you washed up. They were pretty good due in large part to how seriously Wisconsinites take their cheese, bacon, and beef, and you wolfed yours long before your hair had stopped dripping onto the collar of the threadbare sweatshirt you’d changed into.

The first shot of scotch burned like it always did, offsetting the sweet tang of the cherry pie and reminding you of the way Dean used to taste when you kissed him at the end of a long night. You looked out the window at the last purple glow of the sunset as it turned the evening into deep, endless inky blue.

“I’ve gotta—I’m so sorry,” Sam spat out like the words were beating their way out of his mouth.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” you murmured, unable to immediately meet his gaze and looking down at your pie.

“I just—I can’t—I don’t know what the fuck is going on,” he stammered.

You couldn’t help but smile at the absurdity of the whole thing. “Join the club.”

Sam smirked but it was mirthless. “No, I know, but it’s just…I don’t know. I’m sorry.” He stabbed a deflated cherry with pursed lips, and you watched his Adam’s apple bob in his throat. The fork clattered to his plate. “It’s not getting any easier. Every day I wake up and I’m so mad. It’s so fucking unfair that I have to stay here without him because I know that’s what he fucking wanted, and I feel like there’s no point in trying to have anything like good or normal because I’m just running out the clock. And then today’s Dean’s fucking birthday and I kiss his girlfriend—what is wrong with me?”

The outburst hung in the air, a toxic smoke that excluded everything else. You slammed the rest of your glass of scotch, relishing the way it scalded. “So I’m just Dean’s girlfriend?”

“No, that’s not what I—I mean I guess—it’s not like you aren’t—I don’t know, it just seems like you’ll always be his girlfriend.”

“Are you still Jess’s boyfriend?”

It was the absolute most cruel and wrong thing to say and you regretted the words as soon as they left your tongue and crashed into Sam, not even really knowing why you’d thought them. They distorted his face in incredulity and betrayal but you didn’t back down, maintaining eye contact until he snatched the bottle and refilled both glasses. When he spoke again his voice was gravelly and broken.

“I guess I deserved that.”

“Sam, this is fucking weird. It always has been, us being alive without Dean, and if you’re just now getting that then you’re not as smart as I thought you were. I don’t—I don’t really know what’s going on either, but I know that you’re the only thing that’s keeping me from ending up with a bullet in my skull or in a locked ward, so if you’re waiting for me to forgive you for something, for anything you’ve ever said or done, it’s already forgiven. But we’re too tied up together for every tiny redrawing of the boundaries to send us over the edge. Please.”

“Tiny redrawing of boundaries? I kissed you!”

“And I kissed you back, Sam! What do you want to do about it? What’s the absolution here? If you want to leave, I’m not going to stop you. Take the Impala and I’ll find some other car, I’ll borrow the Kaisers’ other one or something. Or maybe you want me to go and I’ll go; I’ll do anything you want me to. I’ll leave right now, you never have to see me again if that’s what you want but I know Dean loved you and loved me and I don’t think he would’ve wanted you to torture yourself all the time so what is it that you want?”

“I want us to be fucking normal and I don’t want to feel like I’m cheating with my brother’s girlfriend! I don’t want to have a cover story and I don’t want to keep running away!”

“Then fucking stop! Stop feeling guilty and talk to me about this stuff!”

Sam laughed, hard and bitter and choked off.

“I’m serious. We can’t keep doing this shit, at least I can’t. We need to start talking—about Dean, about everything. It’s like this lump of decay and we’re just spraying Febreze and not dealing with it.”

Sam’s mouth popped open as he tongued his molars. He bit his lip in frustration before crumpling up his napkin and threw it on top of his half-eaten pie. “Okay. Let’s talk.”

You weren’t expecting that. For all the ways it had seemed like Dean had been the more emotionally closed off, he was always much easier for you to read than Sam, who managed somehow to talk about things without actually communicating how he felt. It was good if you needed to be supported but made it extremely hard to be there for him. Refilling your glasses a bit more conservatively, you offered up an open palm to let Sam go first. His jaw tensed and he swallowed hard.

“No bullshit?” he asked.

“No bullshit. What’s the point of bullshitting anymore? After everything?”

Continue to Dreams, Chapter 6

Thanks again for reading! If you liked it, check out my Masterlist or send me a request!

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vancafreader · 4 years ago

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Fine Art Comics of Canada: Sixties to Seventies - Heart of London, Snore & More by Robert Dayton

Part One: The Heart Of London

There was a time where artists were making vast ripples away from Toronto and other outsized hubs. London, Ontario was such a place, all eyes were on it in the late 60’s and not Toronto. The Heart Of London comic book from 1968 was actually an exhibition catalog, an overview of the art that was happening there at the time. Organised by The National Gallery of Canada, this exhibition traveled from London to Toronto, Kingston, Edmonton, Victoria, Charlottetown and, of course, The National Gallery H.Q. itself in Ottawa.

This catalog/comic book consisted of fumetti, comics done using photos for the images. Fumetti was most prominently used in the 60’s by Harvey Kurtzman in Help and Playboy, prolifically in numerous Mexican comic book melodramas, and in Italian comics featuring the masked master criminal Satanik. Heart Of London’s particular fumetti is further stylized by heavily contrasted processing causing colours so bright that they make everything heightened artifice, buzzing as if emanating from a higher plane of being.

Cover of the Heart Of London catalogue

The Heart of London logo in Pepto-Bismol pink is rendered somewhere between Archie and underground comix titles. Above it, The Comics Code of Authority symbol -a comic book mainstay of the day implying that the work is of safe moral quality- has been altered to “National Gallery of Canada”, the institution that made this comic book and exhibition happen. The cover features what appears to be London public workers, perhaps? These men in yellow hard hats casually stand in front of a store with a Coca-Cola logo also coloured Pepto-Bismol pink, Pop Art style, at the city’s main intersection in what very well may be the heart of London.

The comic opens with a quote placed above a looming Brutalist parking lot, huddling various small businesses below it. This quote contains the phrase “heart of London” but it is rather self-deprecatingly not about London, Ontario but London, England in World War One. Sharing a name with London, England has often made this Ontario city the butt of many a joke, ie. “I live in London… (long pause) Ontario” with its population being just over 200,000 in 1968. Named in 1793 by Lord Simcoe, Upper Canada’s first Lieutenant-Governor known for starting the abolition of slavery, he was also fervently British, his vision for Canada was for it to be like England which he looooved, desperately (but stiffly) wanting this particular London to become Ontario��s capital. Alas, Toronto was chosen instead. Related, always related to everything: the term “cosmic consciousness”, the higher state of consciousness, was coined in London in 1872 by Richard Bucke, a psychiatrist and head of The Asylum For The Insane, after he received a blinding vision, illuminating him. Besides being active in asylum reform, Bucke was heavily involved in the arts -the vision occurred after an evening spent reading Romantic poetry as well as poems by Walt Whitman, who he later befriended. Yes, London, Ontario is an eccentric place.

The artists involved in the Heart Of London show were part of what was known as “London Regionalism”, a loose-knit movement of artists who were adamant about residing in London, away from Toronto or New York. Artist Greg Curnoe helped establish some of the very first artist-run centres there. He was an early member and huge proponent of CARFAC, a Canadian organisation that fights for artists to get paid and paid fairly for their work. CARFAC was founded in London by Heart Of London artists Jack Chambers and Tony Urquhart -along with Kim Ondaatje.

Besides Curnoe, Chambers, and Urquhart, the eleven artists in Heart Of London included John Boyle, Bev Kelly, Murray Favro, Ron Martin, David Rabinowitch, Royden Rabinowitch, Walter Redinger, and Ed Zelenak. They are all profiled in fumetti form talking about their practice through speech balloons and captions, along with quick biographical details. Many of these artists were known for their inventiveness, they were influenced by a variety of subject matter -including comic art- without falsely delineating these influences into false boxes of high or low art. They didn’t just make work in the visual art field either. Along with a Hart Of London work-on-paper, Chambers made an experimental film with the same name in 1970. This film intensely shows brutal shots of an abattoir in Spain interspersed with London scenes; it has been described by Stan Brakhage as “one of the greatest films ever made.” Both Curnoe’s Heart Of London painting from 1967 and Jack Chambers’ 1968 work-on-paper Hart Of London are in the show.

Noted curator and historian Judith Rodger told me that Curnoe’s Heart Of London piece depicts The Forks Of the Thames downtown, “arguably the heart of London” near many of the artists’ studios with Greg’s studio as the main hub or heart of it all. As for the idea of a comic book catalog, it was a mystery until Rodger guided me to Katie Cholette’s PhD thesis Memory and Mythmaking: the role of autobiography in the works of Jack Chambers and Greg Curnoe which states that it was the idea of William Bragg, assistant to the director of The National Gallery’s extension services. Cholette’s paper quotes Bragg from the Sept 29, 1968 New York Times’ Arts Notes column, “…The idea was to make a kind of scrapbook, to talk as a group, not individuals. Their work is kind of echoed by the comics—it’s really their bag […] Everyone likes to read comics once in a while, anyway.” Due to its uniqueness, the catalog garnered a lot of press for the show. Beverley Lambert (Bev Kelly in the show) says, “I think we all thought it was pretty neat and it was funny. It got people’s attention.”

When I talked to artist John Boyle about this comic book catalog, he said right away, “It’s too bad that Greg Curnoe isn’t with us anymore, because he was really interested in comic books. And he always did comic book or comic-like drawings from the time he was a little kid.” In the book Greg Curnoe Life And Work, author Judith Rodger’s description of his 1963 painting Myself Walking North In the Tweed Coat could be ascribed to many of his works. “The flat, vivid colours; schematic outlines; and text all come from his love of the comic book.” As well as the inclusion of the name of the newspaper strip Mary Worth in the piece. Another colourful painting casually inserts Dick Tracy into the frame as a representative of one of his interests. Curnoe’s series of cut-out collages were often shaped into cartoony and anthropomorphic forms.

Curated by Pierre Théberge at The National Gallery, Boyle readily notes, “Both Curnoe and Chambers talked up all the other artists who were around in London, and ended up persuading Théberge to have a group show to get a sense of the whole London art scene.”

The comic book itself doesn’t give William Bragg’s name at all, nada. The designer is credited: Roger Duhamel, FRSC, Queen’s Printer and Controller of Stationery, a federal government official, as well as the design firm: Eccleston + Glossop International. All of the photos, however, were done by the late Don Vincent, of whom Boyle says, “He was a friend of ours, of all of us. And a really terrific photographer. And he documented the whole London scene as it unfolded taking photographs all the time of everybody in this show and just of London, his whole life was photography.” Vincent’s work also appeared in 20 Cent Magazine, a delightfully scrappy local art magazine started in the mid-60’s with many of the people in the show, including Boyle and Curnoe, contributing writings and drawings. 20 Cent Magazine sold for 25 cents, ha! Vincent also photographed The Nihilist Spasm Band who are regarded as the first noise-rock band; this amazing, mind-blowing, intense and milk-spurtingly funny act was founded by the late Greg Curnoe, with Boyle and Favro (playing unique guitars that he builds himself) as still very active members over fifty years later. They are unique cultural ambassadors bringing such songs as “No Canada” to the world, having performed in Japan and in Vancouver at The Western Front with poet George Bowering guesting on guitar, and have had a documentary made about them by the late noise artist Zev Asher.

In one of Heart Of London’s comic book panels about Boyle an early issue of the four color MAD sneaks its way in. I asked him if he read MAD, “Yeah. Although that is from the designer. I read MAD, although not madly.”

A very young Boyle states in one of his panels, “The day I can truly defile myself in public, I will have accomplished everything, and I will no longer have a need to paint.” Reflecting today he says, “I still think that actually, and I think I may have succeeded. Because I do still have the need to paint. But I don’t have the need to show it anymore, or to get applause or approval from anyone. And I don’t know how that arose in me. But I kind of had a fair amount of attention and approval and acceptance and shows in fancy places and meeting important people and pleasing art administrators. And I kind of reached the conclusion that most of them aren’t worth pleasing and their opinion was not as good or not as important as the opinions of other people that I happen to know. And I thought they made a lot of mistakes and people that they chose to support. And also, their approval was very fickle. They were very fickle about it because as soon as fashions would change, their eyes were directed elsewhere and the people they thought were geniuses today were no longer geniuses tomorrow. I did kind of lose my enthusiasm for the art world, but not for painting. So, I was mistaken.”

The final pages of this catalog feature a few reproductions of pieces from the show itself, including Bev Kelly’s window paintings which, with its window panels, adapt quite easily to the comic book form, comparable to an ornate and mysterious painted comic page. The layout, however, was a bit fast and loose with one of her works being printed sideways. In her fumetti section she says, “These windows aren’t ‘real’ windows, they are still paintings. They don’t have sashes and you can’t see through them. A real window is to look through, these are to look at.” Painted on canvas, the window pieces used lumber to make the frames of the paintings, carved to look like the ribbed mouldings of window frames.

Bev Kelly was the sole woman in the show and when I asked her about this she said, “I’m very happy that they didn’t concentrate on this issue that I was the only woman. I didn’t want to be known as an artist because I was a woman.” Having recently moved to London from Saskatchewan with her husband, they were warmly welcomed by Curnoe and she would go see The Nihilist Spasm Band play every week at The York Hotel. Her first solo show was at The 20/20 Gallery in London.

She spent the first two years of her life in Biggar, Saskatchewan where the signs read, “New York Is Big, But This Is Biggar.” Being in London changed her notions of places like New York being the absolute cultural mecca. Beverley says, “There was a really vibrant cultural community there. You know what a regionalist Greg was. He really believed, as a lot of writers do, that you should write about what you know, or you should do your art about what you know, including where you live and so on. And, of course, when I started on the windows that was right out where I was living. The first ones were of my house and then I walked around and took pictures of various houses that I thought looked interesting. When I got a studio in London above one of the businesses downtown I used some of the windows there as inspiration for my works. And then when I went back to Saskatchewan, I was very into that, looking around at what is there where you live. I even got a grant to travel around small-town Saskatchewan and look at the local -in air quotes- ‘folk art’ or untrained artists, let’s say, just painting odd things on their house or their property or whatever. So, I went and I did interviews, took pictures of them, and I imagine I must have produced some kind of a report on it because I probably had to for my grant. So that led me into being more observant and looking more at where it’s from and what is around you and that you don’t have to go to some huge, big place to find art.”

Bev Kelly was her married name and she returned to using her original name, Beverley Lambert in the 1970’s. Lambert did a series of three large lithographs for International Women’s Year in 1975 on women’s issues dealing with real news stories that happened on the prairies. Many of these prints were donated to many women’s centres across the country. She has also worked in clay doing an entire main street based on the fictional Saskatchewan town in the humour book Sarah Binks by Paul Hiebert. Beverley Lambert currently resides in St. John’s, Newfoundland where she makes art and is active as a conservator.

Flip the comic over and it is the same but in either French or English depending on where you first started reading!

Boyle comments, “Last night, my wife and I were looking at the Heart of London catalog. She was amazed that this was a National Gallery touring show with a lot of artists who became major artists in the country. And it looked like they were trying to spend as little money as possible by making this skinny little comic book-like thing on newsprint and I think there’s a large measure of truth in that. Because, again, I remember when Greg Curnoe had a big one-man exhibition retrospective at The National Gallery and the catalogue that they did for him was kind of a minimal thing. It was like a paperback book with one colour reproduction and a number of inferior black and white reproductions and basically a list of artworks in the show. And in the same year, The National Gallery did a big one-man exhibition of Donald Judd, the American sculptor, and his catalogue was a huge coffee table book that weighed about 15 pounds and was three inches thick and loaded with colour from beginning to end. And that just, I think, represented a specifically Canadian problem.” When I mention this to Hairy Who member Art Green he responds, “Well, of course, because they’re trying to impress their betters in New York, so you get a job at The Whitney or The Museum of Modern Art. Canada has been an incubator for museum directors since forever.”

Hairy Who catalog page by Art Green, courtesy of the artist

This style of catalog for Heart Of London corresponds nicely with The Hairy Who, another such grouping of artists around that time who were part of “The Chicago Imagists.” Their three Chicago art shows starting in the mid-60’s were accompanied by comic books that also doubled as exhibition catalogs. The Hairy Who weren’t very aware of the underground comics scene then just barely getting started, they chose this method out of creative necessity, printing a glossy catalog was cost prohibitive. Green explains, “And the printing was expensive and not very good. And we didn’t want to have a show that was called ‘Six Recent Graduates’ or something unexciting like that. And so, we realised we all liked comics and we all knew how to do colour stripping because we’d taken silk-screening courses, we figured out we could do it. And it was cheap.”

Delineating further, The Hairy Who made playful art inspired by a wide range of neat stuff. The London artists were well aware of The Hairy Who. In fact, The Hairy Who were even going to show in London at The 20/20 Gallery. Boyle notes, “20/20 was kind of a precursor to the art in the so-called artist run centres, most of which aren’t run by artists anymore. But anyway, it was one of the first and it was all sponsored by local people in London. And I don’t think it lasted longer than a couple of years, but it was a terrific gallery while it lasted.” Many of the artists in The Heart Of London show were active in 20/20, which lasted from 1966 to 1971. Greg Curnoe discussed the show with Hairy Who artist Karl Wirsum, who in a letter to Art Green wrote, “Well, if they go ahead and publish a comic book, that would be all right.” Green notes, “He may have thought that the 20/20 Gallery was more well-funded than it probably was. But it was on, we all agreed to do it. We were looking forward to it.” Green himself left Chicago for Canada in 1969. The 1968 Democratic Convention had transpired and as Green puts it, “Everybody was angry at everybody.” He was dissatisfied with his teaching job there as well, so when offered a job at NASCAD, the art school in Halifax, he leaped at it.

Alas, the show didn’t happen. In a letter to Art Green, Curnoe writes, “We had to cancel The Hairy Who show and a lot of us were disappointed.” Boyle notes, “I suspect that it got caught up in the death throes of the gallery. And they would have had to cancel whatever exhibitions they had coming up.”

Green notes that both London and Chicago are far enough away from the more major centres that artists can, “…be free to go their own way because there’s not much at stake partly and nobody’s paying attention. And I remember the first time I had been in London, we were driving on our honeymoon to Halifax where I got the job. And I thought, ‘I’m gonna stop here and get a Canada Dry.’ I’m driving down what’s the main street that runs north south and pulled into a corner store. And I said, ‘Do you have Canada Dry?’ ‘No, but we got America Dry.’ I have never before or since seen a bottle of America Dry. I bought it and it wasn’t as good as Canada Dry. And, and that’s not a dream. I mean, I have never seen it ever again. But that made me say, ‘Wow, this is a weird place.’”

While Green was teaching at NASCAD, Curnoe came for what Green calls, “One of his annual excoriations, if that’s a word, he would rip them up one side down the other in public, for being a Canadian art school with no Canadians teaching, hardly any, and all yanks -and it was true! And so anyway, they would invite him and it was almost like a ritual. He would be in the public, there’d be 400 students there and Greg would just rip the place apart. I had known Greg, I heard about the show and so on, and we got along fine. And afterwards he’d come up to me and say, ‘Well, how did I do?’ ‘Greg, you’re doing great, but you do realise I’m a yank’, but I agreed with him 100%.” Both Curnoe and Green commiserated on how Canadian art was neglected at the school. “If he had been in Chicago, Greg would have been a member of The Hairy Who or maybe started it. But he was more political, he had to be, and Chicago, the politics were so acidic that you wouldn’t have wanted to be to be involved in it, unless you went in full immersion. And we were decidedly unpolitical. Although we all agreed on the politics of it. We were a collective in the sense that we wanted people to collect us.” On this, Art Green is a tad glib, having made art responding to and criticizing Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Both Art and Greg would visit with each other in various Canadian cities: Halifax, Vancouver, Toronto. “Nobody appreciated Greg in Toronto, they went out of their way to un-appreciate him. And luckily, they did put a put up a pretty nice retrospective after he was safely gone.”

Of London, Green notes, “I think that for a period of time. I don’t know how long it was maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours, maybe a few months? Maybe a few years. London, Ontario was most interesting art scene and literary scene in the whole world.”

The propensity for great art still ran in the water there, the stream flowed, there was a continuum and a recognizing of that history. London has some great galleries including Forest City Gallery, founded by Jack Chambers and Greg Curnoe, where The Nihilist Spasm Band plays every Monday night.

In 2013 The London Museum held the group show L.O. Today with artists Jason Mclean, Marc Bell, Jamie Q, Billy Bert Young, Amy Lockhart, Peter Thompson, and James Kirkpatrick. Many of these artists are a part of the Canadian Psychedooolic art comic movement that began in the 1990’s, captured and collected in the book Nog A Dod, edited by former Londoner Marc Bell and released by Conundrum/PictureBox. Much of the work in Nog A Dod occurred in Vancouver with a couple of these London artists relocating there, immersing easily, doing a lot of collaborative drawing and art books with other Vancouver based artists. Yes, ‘Canadian Psychedooolic’ was named after the fact by Bell, but we weren’t thinking of ourselves as a movement or a group at the time. Yet all of these art books had an unfettered comic wildness, funny, and expansively playful. And Nog A Dod got out there, impacting and influencing a lot of artists the world over. Furthering the connective tissue, in 2003, The Western Front in Vancouver put on an art show featuring ‘documents and ephemera’ from musical acts The Nihilist Spasm Band, The All Star Schnauzer Band (a somewhat fake band as mail art project involving Bell, Mclean, and Thompson) and July Fourth Toilet, a Vancouver based group that often involves many Nog A Dod and Nog A Dod related artists, including yours truly occasionally wearing outlandish semi-functional semi-nude costumes specially designed by Jason Mclean. The show was curated by Jonathan Middleton, who is now Executive Director at Art Metropole, a Toronto based artist-run centre dealing primarily in artists’ publications.

Getting back to Greg Curnoe. Released in two parts in 1970, The Great Canadian Sonnet contained numerous images by Curnoe. Described as a “Beaver Little Book”, the format was modeled after the popular Big Little Books, distant cousins to comic books so named for being small, square and thick. Big Little Books were marketed to children and featured popular comic, cartoon, radio and film characters of the day in text-based stories with illustrations on every other page. Some Big Little Books had flip-it cartoons in the top corner so one could make the character move. With its second volume The Great Canadian Sonnet does this as well, stating “See ‘em move – just flip the pages” on the cover and, sure enough, in the corner a spot rolls up a hill-like abstract shape transforming into a medley of human faces.

Written by poet David McFadden, Curnoe riffed off lines in his text creating a great many detailed pen-and-ink drawings for the book with titles that included “Proud Possessor Of Meaningful Pain”, “One that will be Truly Loved by the Prime Minister”, and “The Empty Universe” which featured a drawing of a tin of apple juice and a packet of bird seed -the book’s drawings contained many such absurdist pairings. The Great Canadian Sonnet was published by Coach House Press who were -and still are- known for releasing all manner of experimental works including poetry, prose and beyond. Both volumes together weigh in at over 400 pages, with every other page being a drawing by Curnoe.

Many thanks to Jason Mclean, Marc Bell, and Judith Rodger for their immense help with this piece.

Thanks as well to Art Green for use of his respective artworks.

Part Two: Scraptures, Snore and More coming tomorrow, Friday, August 20!

Robert Dayton

www.robertdayton.com

www.patreon.com/CanadianGlam

#comicsjournalism #canadiancomics #theheartoflondon #hairywho #nihilistspasmband #vancaf #vancouvercomicartfestival #robertdayton

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soybeantree · 4 years ago

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pairing: grimreaper!do kyungsoo x (reader) genre/warning: fluff if you squint word count: 3k+ description: sequel to ‘revenant’. your life with kyungsoo comes with an unnatural amount of challenges. a/n: july installment...in december (don’t ask) of our ‘trying to write a kyungsoo story for every month that he is gone’ series. we know it’s the holiday season. we know this is spoopy. BUT we have finally reached year 2, which means sequals to a lot of our kyungsoo stories...or so i’m told. -em

Your father always said that life as the cemetery’s caretaker comes with more problems than benefits. Weird work schedule, no social life, constantly surrounded by the dead. You find little in your life to contradict him. Your current predicament only lends credence to his belief.

Waking up in a coffin without a body should startle you, but your father had also warned you this might happen. He had even had you spend afternoon’s in a coffin so you would understand where you were if or when it happened. Ghosts will always try to return to the world of the living. He had told you countless times. They have unfinished business; otherwise, they would pass on.

As caretaker, you have a connection to the dead. You can see them and communicate with them which comes in handy when you need them to stop destroying the hedges and defiling the mausoleums, but the connection also opens you to possession. Possessing the living is difficult for ghosts though, even with a connection. However, last night you had broken one of the cardinal rules of being a caretaker. You had gone to bed drunk.

You had come home after a long night of work to an email from the City Council with a list of complaints about your work. The flower beds needed weeding on the west end. Ivy had overgrown several prominent crypts in the east end. The walking paths by the north gate had unsightly cracks. The list went on and on. The City Council likes to forget that you are one person who can only work at night. All the other caretakers they have hired quit within the first week, and the Council wishes to maintain a pristine image of the cemetery for tourists which means that all work done must be done out of sight of them.

Halfway through the list you had popped a beer. You finished the first one before the clock struck eight. By noon, you had finished the remaining beers in your fridge and felt much better. You could laugh about the two malevolent spirits from the night before and the tornados of fury they had unleashed on five plots a piece. You reread through the Council’s demands, adding colorful commentary about what they could do with their list.

A competent caretaker would have stayed awake until they sobered, but a competent caretaker would have also stopped at two. You passed out on your couch which is why you were currently waking up in a coffin.

You sigh again. Your father will be so disappointed when he finds out. He was the previous caretaker and had gone his entire career without ever being possessed. He taught you because it was a necessary lesson of a caretaker, but he had patted your head and told you he believed you would never need the lesson. If you could bang your head against the coffin’s lid, you would.

As lying in the coffin will do nothing to aid your situation, you will yourself to rise through fake silk and mahogany and six feet of dirt into a new night. The cemetery awakens around you, familiar ghosts rising from their graves. They float with ease down paths as they go about their business. You struggle to move yourself down the path to the south gate which is blessedly close to the grave of your body snatcher.

“Can it truly be? A ghost has stolen our dear caretakers body.” The gleeful exclamation breaks your concentration and you stutter to a stop. Of all the ghosts to see you in this state, it had to be her.

You ignore her as you resume your journey. She floats circles around you, continuing to grin but maintaining silence. On her third trip around, you stop and raise your hand, staring at it. You wonder. She stops in front of you and chuckles. Hand extended, you place it on her cheek. It stops, unable to pass through. The place where hand meets cheek feels like the chill mist which rises from a waterfall but solid. Her brow furrows as you pull your hand back. Realization brightens her eyes, but too late. Your hand collides with her face and sends her flying feet from you.

She whines, a high pitched wail which has surely sent a chill rushing up some passerby's spine.

“For what reason, do I deserve such treatment?”

“I have a long list, but I’m certain you know what most of them are.”

Her nose scrunches up and her lips purse, but she keeps her peace. With a huff, she floats off.

You allow yourself a moment of pleasure. Being possessed is unacceptable for a caretaker, but it has a benefit. You have wanted to slap her for years.

After much struggle, you reach your house which rests near the cemetery. You glide through the door and head for the study. In the Caretaker's handbook, there is a section on what to do if possessed. You read it when you were young, but years have stolen much of the information from your memory.

The book sits on the middle shelf in a middle bookcase in the study, eye level with you. The peeling spine with its faded black script taunts you. The dead affecting the dead is an easy task, but the dead affecting the living world takes years of practice and a deal of determination. Your hand swipes through the book over and over again as your frustration mounts. You shriek. A gust of wind rushes through the room rustling the pages on your desk, but the book remains locked in its spot.

Aside from you, no one in the city can see ghosts. There’s a girl down the street who might be able to hear them, but once her ears open, she can never close them. You will leave her to her oblivion. No one should have to deal with the constant pestering of ghosts. You make another swipe at the book with no hope and no alternative.

“Do you require assistance?”

Another benefit to add about being possessed: no blushing. Also no shivering. No indication of embarrassment or attraction.

Spinning like a ballerina in a music box, you face Kyungsoo, your cemetery‘s designated reaper and your first crush. The answer is ‘yes’, but you’d rather him go away and pretend he never saw you in this state. “Do you know how to reverse a possession?”

He blinks, the gesture odd on his solemn face. After a moment, he shakes his head. “I have never had to deal with a possession since becoming a reaper.”

You nod. Of course, you would be his first possession. “In that case, could you grab that book?” You point at the guide. When he does, you direct him to set it on your desk and consult the index for the section on possession. Page 74. He flips the pages and settles it before you.

“It seems simple enough.” You muse. “Find my body. Remove the spirit. Re-enter my body. You can remove a spirit, right?” A glance at Kyungsoo negates your simple comment. “What?”

“I can remove the spirit with my scythe.” The large metal hook shimmers into existence on his back when he starts the word and disappears again when he finishes. “However, it would be a permanent removal. A spirit guilty of possession does warrant such punishment.” His voice is soft, and you can sense the ‘but’ he leaves unspoken.

Kyungsoo, like you, has a soft spot for wayward ghosts. Rather than send every malevolent spirit to hell, he attempts to coax them back to themselves.

“Then I’ll have to convince it to leave. Which shouldn’t be too hard if I can figure out what it’s unfinished business is.” Kyungsoo’s brows furrow. “It’s easier than you think.” You shrug as you glide past him, your movement less stilted now but still difficult.

“As caretaker,” you continue, pausing in front of another bookshelf. “Can you grab the last book on the third shelf?” He does and sets it by the Guide. “It is my responsibility to catalogue each plot and document its resident. Open it at the bookmark. The grave I woke in is fairly recent, probably in the last year. Flip back a few pages. Stop!” Your finger hovers over the page as you scroll down the list of names. “This one.” Lee, May. Buried June fifth. About six months ago then. Beside her name is the superscript III.

Gliding over to yet another shelf, you scan for the corresponding notebook. “Can you…” The request peters out as you glance back at Kyungsoo. His dark eyes shift between the book on the desk, you, and the bookshelves around you, and you can imagine the cogs in his brain turning as he puzzles the pieces together.

“Cataloguing their name, date of death, and resting spot is the responsibility of a caretaker, but why notate about their lives?” He asks.

“My grandmother taught me too.” You pause as grief stirs. Even as a ghost, the emotion rises. She moved on. No lingering regrets kept her tied to this place. Kyungsoo, himself, saw her off.

“She said a proper caretaker knows her charges; otherwise, she can’t do her job properly. Dad didn’t see the purpose in it.” Your gaze shifts to a shelf with one growing volume. In what little free time you have, you have started to go through the burials in his time and record the details of the dead.

“Your grandmother was a great caretaker.” Warmth fills his voice, or perhaps jealousy is fueling your imagination. Kyungsoo has been the cemetery’s reaper since before your grandmother’s time. She was a great caretaker. She loved her work, and, unlike you, had never shirked her responsibility.

“Yes.” You say because the alternative is an awkward silence. “Can you grab this one for me?” Without a glance back, you indicate the notebook with the corresponding III. His arm reaches past you, his body against your back. You wish you could feel his presence.

He sets the notebook on the table and opens it to the date of her death. You read through the entry, ignoring him and focusing on the task at hand. May Lee left behind a husband and a son. The son is twenty-four. The quick sketch of his face at the bottom of the page resurfaces the memories from that day.

Even though the funerals occur during the day when you sleep, you drag yourself from your bed to attend. From a distance, you record the key points of the event, mainly who comes and how the new ghost reacts to their farewell. Mrs. Lee had stood beside her weeping son throughout the entire service. Her face had been a mess as she had reached for him. She had grown more and more distraught each time her arms passed through him instead of wrapping around him.

“Her son. Whatever her reason for possessing my body is, it has to do with her son.” You snap your fingers and miss the satisfying sound of the click. “Can you turn the page? His address should be on the next page?” Kyungsoo does. Closing your eyes, you picture the words and repeat them to yourself.

“Would you like me to bring the book with us?”

“Us?” Your eyes snap open, and you stare at him.

He nods. “I will accompany you. Unless you no longer wish my assistance.”

You could write a check list of your body’s reactions to this moment and are again grateful that your spirit lacks the ability to create any of them. “I mean if you’re not busy.” With a smile, he closes the book and tucks it under his arm before waving you onward.

Kyungsoo matches your snail’s pace. With each block you pass, your irritation rises, and you begin to realize why most ghosts only haunt the cemetery. Even if you had better control, it would still take forever to get anywhere around town and beyond. “Can ghosts learn how to ride in cars?” You ask as another one whizzes down the road.

“Yes, but it takes great concentration to maintain a solid enough form and often results in sightings which lead to Grim Intervention.” You nod in understanding and keep trudging forward.

A chill like the first breath of autumn air settles on your hand, and a glance reveals Kyungsoo’s wrapped around it. His skin has no texture, no solidity, but it holds yours. He pulls you along beside him.

“I suppose I should have known that a reaper could affect the dead world as well as the living.”

“If my assistance insults–” He begins to pull away, but you tighten your grip, an odd sensation like trying to grasp the wind.

“It doesn’t. I appreciate it, especially if it means I’ll get to my body faster.” Though you are enjoying the time with him. “We both have important duties waiting for us.” The cemetery comes first.

The son’s house sits at the edge of town. A monstrous structure of red bricks and white columns and far too many balconies. Despite the late hour, several cars still circle the fountain at the driveways center. Lights shine through the windows, and you catch the shadows of figures as they pass in front of them.

Kyungsoo pulls you through the front gate and up the drive to the glittering building. You pass by groups of people as you traverse the mansion’s halls, searching for your face amongst the unfamiliar ones. Deciding that May must be with her son whose presence is also lacking from the assembled guests, Kyungsoo leads you up the stairs, a feat impossible without him. Your ghostly form responds well to front and back and left and right, but up and down prove difficult.

The second floor breathes an air of relief, the crowds unwelcome in this private space. It begs the question though why the son would be alone up here with so many guests below. You pop your heads into the rooms as you pass. They are stale with emptiness. If you were human, you would shiver, but as you are, you sigh and walk past.

Turning a corner, a pair of doors greets you, light lining its bottoms and sides. In front of the doors, your body stands. A hand hovers over the knob.

“He won’t recognize you.” You call, startling the figure. “You’ll just be some random, crazy girl.” May stares back at you, your face paling whether because of you or the reaper is left to the imagination. “We’re not here to harm you. I just want my body back.”

“My son-” Your voice breaks, the sound stiffens your spine. You refuse to cry in front of others.

“I know you miss him. It’s not easy to let someone go, but this is dangerous. If I was here with any other reaper-”

“I promised him.” She cuts you off with another sob, covering your face with your hand. The sight roils your stomach.

The cool breeze of Kyungsoo’s touch settles on your shoulder. They ease as you meet his eyes and acknowledge the unspoken words. You glide back as he walks forward, stopping a few feet from her.

“May, please come with us. You hurt your chances standing outside his room, engaging in a one-sided conversation.” His low voice eases hand from mouth and calms shaking shoulders. She nods and places your hand in his proffered one.

One of the empty rooms offers a safe place for conversation. May begins, “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have taken your body, but I promised my son.” The words quaver on a sob, and you fold your ghostly arms to keep you from doing something regrettable. You need to coax her out and random displays of aggression won’t help.

“He became engaged when I was admitted to the hospital.” She continues once she has calmed again. “He told me I had to get better, so I could come to the wedding. I promised him I would and that I would tie his tie. He’s always been awful at it.” A sniffle and a smile punctuate the statement. “The wedding is tomorrow.” Tears pool again. Sympathy wars with annoyance, so you fix your attention on Kyungsoo. The eerie serenity of a reaper holds his features in place as he awaits the story’s conclusion. You force your features to mirror his. “I want to keep my promise. I had no intention of stealing your body when I came. I only wanted to asked for your help, but-”

“You saw an opportunity and took it.” You shake your head. Any ghost would have. A caretaker courts danger during every moment of their job. A good caretaker prepares for it. Both your father and grandmother drilled this fact into your head, and you had failed them. Despite your annoyance at her for such a disgusting display of emotions in front of Kyungsoo, you understand. Your grandmother made many promises and passed without warning. She would have never attempted a return, but you wish she had.

“No matter your reasons, your actions are a damnable offense.” So much for coaxing her out.

You suppress the accompanying moan, the sound unseemly on the eve of a wedding. Your attempts to gain Kyungsoo’s attention and redirect the conversation fail. His focus remains solely on May. “The longer you remain in this body the more you will draw the notice of other reapers.”

A shudder shakes your body, and again you try for his attention in vain. “For your sake, you must leave. We will find a way for you to keep your promise to your son.” He holds his hand out to her while you gape at the both of them. Why even come along if he was going to go with the brutally honest approach.

May’s hand rises from within your body. The spectral fingers grasp Kyungsoo’s, and he pulls the rest of her out. Your body falls limp to the floor, a creepy shell with lifeless eyes. You blink, and the eyes blink back at you.

Closing your eyes, you mimic the inhale of breath. The Guide had said in order to return you must remember the feel of your body. The way your chest expands with each gulp of air, the weight of skin upon bones, and the steady beat of your heart in your veins. Opening your eyes, you look up at May and Kyungsoo from the floor. As you sit up, you take stock of your body, wiggling fingers and toes and stretching muscles.

“I didn’t expect it to feel so weird.” You muse, pushing yourself off the floor. Your legs wobble beneath you, and Kyungsoo grabs your arm to steady you. His solid hands are cool still, but the thrill of an autumn breeze is missing.

“It will feel normal soon enough.” He promises.

Whether he’s right, only time will tell. In the meantime, you have a promise to keep. “How are we going to help her tie her son's tie? I have no idea how to do it, and I doubt he would want a reaper doing it.” You continue to lean on Kyungsoo as you glance between him and May.

“May will walk you through it, and you will help him to see her.” His confidence is nearly strong enough to make you confident, but not quite.

“She can make me visible to my son?”

Your “no” contrasts with his “yes”, and you stare at each other in a silent battle. Your grandmother and father trained you in all the abilities of a Caretaker. Neither of them had mentioned the ability to make ghosts visible to the living. You communicate this through your glare while Kyungsoo returns it with quiet confidence. “How?” You finally mutter, pulling your arm from him to fold it across your chest.

“Through your will. As a caretaker, you are a bridge between the living and the dead.”

“And as a grim reaper aren’t you the same?”

He shakes his head. “I am a gateway for the dead and am able to affect the world of the living because the dead do.”

“Please.” Your protest dies on your lips as May rushes towards you, her sad smile full of hope. She reaches for your hand, her fingers passing through it but you feel them comb through your palm. You shiver. “Will you try? I can teach you how to do his tie.”

Holding her gaze bolsters the shred of confidence Kyungsoo instilled. “How do I will it?”

“You already are.”

As you watch, color returns to May, her body solidifying before you. The light from the chandelier above still casts no shadow, but the wall behind her is lost to her form. You grasp her hand. The skin is soft and will give under the slightest pressure, but you can feel it.

“Creepy.” You whisper. An odd word for a caretaker, but today has been an odd day.

The rest goes easy, or as easy as telling someone that their dead mother is going to keep her promise through you and then making their dead mother appear before them can be. The fact that her son knows about you from rumors around town does help though. After the initial shock, everything does go easy. The next day May’s son allows you to tie his tie while she stands visible beside you.

Her promise full-filled, May faces Kyungsoo ready to pass into the beyond. But Kyungsoo allows her another mercy. The three of you stand at the back of the wedding hall to watch the union, and when her son glances back after his first kiss with his wife, you will her to appear. She waves, her face beaming with joy. You smile, and when you glance at Kyungsoo, you find a smile on his lips too.

#hmw #kyungsoo collection #d.o.#do kyungsoo #kyungsoo #exo #g: fluff #g: spoop

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hteragram-x · 5 years ago

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Janus as a middle school librarian

This is a bunch of HCs for the Sanders Sides Human AU where Janus is a librarian. (It’s mostly about Janus plus some Roceit, so Roman is there too.) The first part is [RIGHT HERE], but it’s not a complete story with specific plot. Still, it gives a lot of context.

Also, a special thank you to @anxiously-creating because your enthusiasm was very motivating to write something more :D And another thank you to @a-vintage-snake for giving me seal of “the real librarian approval”! I shall keep it with honour.

...

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Janus is unsurprisingly very active and invested when it comes to the events that take place in his school despite having no say in anything that happens outside the library.

But he just occasionally shows up at different meetings and it’s pretty difficult to get rid of him, so in most cases the teachers or other people working with the principal simply let him stay. He likes to know what is going on and contribute to the discussion in the name of the students, even if he’s not technically allowed to.

The only system he will ever respect in his library catalogue. That’s it.

…although he can make an exception. Because there were a few old history books that one may politely call outdated and Janus will not politely call “fucking bullshit”. And in his silent protest he moved them to the “Fantasy” section of the library. No one ever noticed, but he feels proud nonetheless.

Janus once told Roman about this act of nerdish rebellion and he said it was “the lamest thing he’s ever heard”, but it was accompanied by an endeared smile, so Janus counted it as a win.

When it comes to the catalogue he works almost exclusively on the computer, but the old one with little wooden drawers is still around and Janus refuses to get rid of it. It’s mostly a decoration at this point, but he wants to keep it around, because it brings nice memories and looks cool. Also, looking through the slips of paper filled with faded cursive gives him the feeling of being transported to another era… (Look at his clothes and manners and tell me he wouldn’t do that just for the aesthetic. It’s more fancy and classy than looking things up on the computer. And as we all know Classy is his middle name.)

The memories the catalogue brings are from the same school, because he used to attend it (and there are only a few older teachers that may remember the time when Janus was a kid). When he was little, he was best friends with the elderly lady that worked there at the time. She always let him see what was behind the desk and taught him how to look for something in the catalogue.

Said lady was his biggest role model. She always let him talk about the books he had read and recommended something new. She also quickly noticed that he may not be that interested in the books for children, so he could ask for something more serious without the fear of hearing: “But it’s for grownups! It’s boring. Why don’t you read this story about little animals? It has pictures!”

When Janus started working in this school he really tried to be the same person for the students that she was for him, but it took months of hard work, gritting teeth, and muttering curses under his breath, because he felt like he wasn’t even half as good and lacked the patience to become better.

At the beginning his enthusiasm was immediately shattered, because many kids were simply scared to go to the library. However charming Janus may be from adults’ perspective, he looked, to put it mildly, intimidating in the children’s eyes.

At one point Janus was really close to quitting, because no matter how kind he was, he realized that the children were uncomfortable in his presence and there was nothing he could do to change it. He was more polite and nicer than usual, he tried to cover his eye with strands of hair and mask the scar with concealer. He even wore lighter or more colourful clothes for a few weeks with little to no effect. Nothing helped.

...

The moment that accidentally changed his image came at the end of January when a group of kids couldn’t exit the parking lot behind the school, because the gate was blocked by the group of older teenagers from other school.

It didn’t happen for the first time, so the kids knew that they would be showered with snowballs the moments they come closer to the fence. Janus remembered the same thing happening years ago when he himself was a younger student and he also knew that this would not be a pleasant, playful snowball fight.

So instead of leaving the parking lot in his car he approached the kids, who – like he predicted – didn’t really like the idea of being trapped between a gang of mean sixteen-year-olds and one mean-looking librarian. But Janus calmly explained that he will go to the gate with them and he’ll make sure that they can reach the next bus stop without being bothered by the teens.

They barely started walking when he saw one of the older kids raising his arm to aim a snowball. Instead of waiting for the hit Janus quickly made a snowball himself and throw it, hitting the teenager right in the face. He probably should feel bad for doing that to someone nearly half his age, but it was weirdly satisfying.

He glared at the teenagers with such a grimace that they quickly left and the younger kids could go home safely, but – just in case – he stayed with them until they reached the bus stop. They muttered some shy “Thank you” and quiet “That was pretty cool” and talked to him for a while before the bus arrived. They also waved to him from behind the window, when it departed and were surprised to see him wave back.

This small group that saw Janus’ real face started treating him differently and they quickly explained to other kids that he wasn’t actually that scary. Slowly but surely, more and more students gain enough confidence to go the library again and Janus couldn’t be happier about it. He seriously considered quitting knowing that his presence scared some students off.

From that moment his reputation was changing only in a positive way (at least among the students). When the next year started, the new kids didn’t even know about Janus’ difficult beginnings, because everyone always told them that if they don’t feel safe or need any help they should go to the library.

...

The kids that were attending the school when he started working are now students at different universities, and some of them like to occasionally visit him at work. They talk about the shared memories and often laugh at him for his inability to make friends without breaking some commonly respected rules in the process. Like the unwritten rule that adults, especially the ones working at school, shouldn’t hit students’ faces with snowballs.

Some of his first kids (he still thinks about the as “his kids” despite the fact that some of them are close to thirty) met Roman during one of their visits and had to show unprecedented amount of restraint to not embarrass their favourite librarian with squealing and joking about his crush. (Janus’ feeling were fairly obvious at this point.)

He wouldn’t try half as hard to keep a friendly relation with Roman if it wasn’t for this “kids’” supportive harassment and constant texts with question about him making the first move.

When Roman worked on the mural, he quickly noticed, how much time Janus spends simply talking to the students and he initially thought that all these discussions were about literature.

Which is partially true, because Janus loved talking about books and recommending them to kids just like his own favourite librarian did in the past. He also liked to surprise some students by reading the literature for children that they liked and throwing some references to the characters or iconic lines to let them know. Normally he would focus on something more serious, but it was always nice to hear the kids rambling about the series they were obsessed with and actually understand what they meant.

However, as Roman soon discovered, many of the conversations that Janus had with the students had nothing to do with literature. Apparently, half the time they were simply gossiping about teachers, laughing at some obscure inside jokes, or judging Roman’s outfit of the day.

And there was usually a lot to judge, because outside the occasional tiara to keep the hair out of his eyes or the paper crown he always wore some weird old clothes he could ruin with paint without regrets. And let’s just say that he didn’t really care about matching colours and patterns or finding the right size when he went to work.

Which – especially compared to Janus’s rather plain, but elegant attire – looked… intriguing.

---

This AU hurts me, because I’m not very good at drawing children, eldrely people, or clothes... and all I want is to draw little Janus talking to this older lady or Roman in one of his weirdest outfits...

#sanders sides #janus sanders #deceit sanders #roman sanders #ts roman #ts deceit #ts janus #my post #roceit #text #janus sanders as a librarian #my hcs #long post

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blouisparadise · 6 years ago

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There were so many amazing bottom Louis fics posted or completed during the month of July. We really hope you enjoy this list. Happy reading!

1) Bound (To Falling in Love) | Mature | 958 words

Note: The sequel to this fic is #2 on this list.

Harry and Louis innocently cuddle on the couch until things get heated.

2) Nuh Uh, Honey | Mature | 1170 words

Note: This fic is a sequel to this fic, which is #1 on this list.

So this is the ending of Bound (to falling in love) but with more detail. Long story short, Louis and Harry fuck.

3) 100ft Away | Explicit | 2479 words

Harry opens Grindr for a hookup and ends up with more than he bargained for. It all works out in the end.

4) I'm Looking for Closure | Not Rated | 2503 words

Note: This fic is the third part of a series. You can read the previous parts here.

“Say you can read my mind.” Harry said to Louis as he pushed Louis down onto the mattress. Louis squirmed as the covers rubbed against his skin.

“I can’t read your mind.” He said simply to Harry as he reached up to put his hands against Harry’s chest, trailing them down to Harry’s narrow hips.

“My mind is saying that I should just… just fucking go back in time. Go back so I could be your first.” Harry said, leaning down to lick into Louis’ hot mouth.

Or They finally fuck, sorry, I mean, make love.

5) The IT Fic | Mature | 3112 words

A fic where Harry is Pennywise & Louis is Georgie... Louis goes down to the sewers & Harry fucks him with a balloon as a condom.

aka a pwp that i wrote for shits and giggles. & yes, louis is of age

6) Souls | Mature | 3890 words

The first time Harry showed Louis two ghosts.

7) The Unfinished Fic (With an Ending) | Not Rated | 4013 words

Note: There is no smut in this fic, but it contains omega Louis, so we’ve included it in this monthly roundup.

Louis greatly regretted all of his life decisions up to this point. Okay fine, maybe not all of them, but definitely a vast majority. After all, if he’d not told one little white lie about loving cricket just to impress a fit guy at the pub, maybe he wouldn’t be stuck at what was, one hundred percent, the most boring “sporting” event of his entire life.

8) Save You Tonight | Mature | 4841 words

Note: There is no smut in this fic, but it contains omega Louis, so we’ve included it in this monthly roundup.

Louis is a headstrong Omega in charge of his own life. But he's more than grateful when an Alpha comes along when he needs it the most.

9) Whisk Me Off My Feet | Explicit | 5054 words

When Louis locks himself out of his apartment in just a pair of novelty underwear, he hopes his new neighbor can come to his rescue.

10) Can You Feel the Fever | Explicit | 5113 words

Note: This fic is a sequel to this fic.

Tour has Harry exhausted. Luckily exactly what he needs is waiting for him in his Sacramento dressing room.

11) Gotta Catch 'em All | Not Rated | 5186 words

Louis loves Pokémon GO, he gets a little crazy and ends up ramming into a guy. Harry gets mad, calls him a brat and treats him like one. Oh, and they're in central park.

12) I Just Can't Get Enough Of You | Not Rated | 5466 words

Or the one were Harry got inspired from watching Louis on The Late Late Show.

13) Why Don't We Go There? | Explicit | 5654 words

Louis is a perfect model for Abercrombie & Fitch. Harry is a grungy, tattooed model for Hot Topic. When Louis walks in on Harry changing for his photo shoot, things only grow from there... including their dicks.

14) Act Out | Explicit | 6721 words

Harry and Louis try to spice it up a little for their 10th year marriage anniversary. Cliché role play ensues.

15) Life Imitating Art | Explicit | 6881 words

Note: This fic is the fourth part of a series. You can read the previous parts here.

Louis is taken on a very real journey through his fic back catalogue - life has never imitated art so salaciously.

16) You Can Show Me Your Heart | Explicit | 6935 words

Everyone knows about the unsinkable Titanic, which tragically did just that in April of 1912. However, not many people know the story of the Carpathia - the ship that raced to rescue and aid the survivors of the Titanic when the distress call came through. This is the story of the events leading up to the luxury liner crashing into an iceberg on that fateful spring night. More than that, this is the story of how two of Carpathia’s passengers - Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson - met, fell in love and helped over 700 people in the cold Atlantic water.

17) Kisses and Coffee Breaks | Explicit | 9350 words

Midterm season was finally here and all Harry wanted to do was study, however his boyfriend, Louis, seems to have a better idea.

or the one where Harry just wants to study and Louis needs Harry's cock.

18) Swallow The Knife (Outtake) | Explicit | 11186 words

Note: This is an alternative scene to fic #25 on this fic rec.

Alternate sex scene from Swallow The Knife.

19) We've Been Here Before | Mature | 11536 words

Harry goes to Louis in the wake of his sister Felicite's death, and Louis asks Harry to help him clean up a family cabin he is ready to get rid of. Along the way, they attempt to heal many things, even those that they thought were long past.

20) With Words Unspoken | Explicit | 18341 words

The one where Louis is lost, Harry is an excellent tour guide, and age is no barrier to finding the love of your life.

21) The Aurora Zone | Explicit | 19633 words

The one where Harry is busy crossing off his bucket list while Louis is busy falling for the guy he's supposed to hate.

22) Be Mine, Dear | Not Rated | 20104 words

The one where Louis just wants to meet his mate, and all it takes is for him to get a new neighbor.

23) Deflower Me | Explicit | 20154 words

Everyone is 19 and horny, and Louis just really wants to get fucked by Harry.

24) You Are Half Of Me (And I Am All For You) | Explicit | 24731 words

Note: This fic has a mention of BH.

One Direction, an obscure indie rock band, is about to embark on their first cross-country tour, living out of Louis' beloved van named Patricia.

Harry is in love, and Louis is oblivious. Or is he?

Featuring skinny-dipping in Texas waterfalls, getting lost in the desert, stargazing under the New Mexico sky, performing in front of crowds that grow in size each night, and falling in love on the road during the greatest summer of their lives.

25) You Are In My Bed, But Your Heart Isn't | Not Rated | 25595 words

Rock Band AU. Louis is an omega who fucks around, doesn't know the meaning of "feelings" until he starts crawling into Harry's bed at night. Harry gets jealous easily and they all write a lot of songs about each other.

26) Play Me A Memory | Explicit | 26932 words

Louis lives with his nine-year-old son Jake in a peaceful beachside community on the east coast of Australia, working as an entertainment coordinator at the local five-star resort. Harry is a recluse who lives on millionaires row and writes musical scores for blockbuster movies. When the roots of a wayward willow tree create havoc at his home, Harry is forced to stay at the resort while repairs are carried out.

27) Book Worm | Explicit | 37018 words

Note: This fic has mentions of BH.

“Dad said this is his very favourite place to go,” Leon divulged, much to Louis' embarrassment.

“Did he?” Harry's olive eyes flicked to Louis, lips quirking in a way that didn’t match his beige cardigan.

“Yeah and he said you have the best books. May I look?” He asked, smiling winningly.

Leon had inherited Louis' blue eyes and his mother's dark hair, his smile quickly becoming a replica of his father's.

“You may,” Harry permitted and Louis set Leon down.

“Don’t destroy anything,” he instructed. “And if you so much as crease a page then bring it to the till because I’m going to have to pay for it...”

Leon raced straight to the back of the shop and threw himself onto the beanbag seat front first.

“I put the Kama Sutra back on the top shelf, by the way,” Harry told him with a dimpled smile. “You left it by the Hungry Caterpillar.”

28) Waiting for the Tides to Meet | Explicit | 59637 words

Soulmate AU. Everyone is born with heterochromia — one eye is their own eye colour, while the other is the colour of their soulmate's. It's only when they meet their soulmate for the first time that their own eyes match properly. After a hazy night at a frat party, Louis wakes up to blue eyes and the shocking realization that he had met his soulmate, without any sober recollection. Seven years pass where Louis comes to terms with the fact that he'll never know who his soulmate is. Then one fated summer, a beautiful green-eyed photographer arrives at Louis' workplace, with promises of endless laughter and a familiar feeling in Louis' heart.

29) Swallow The Knife | Explicit | 76168 words

“You came,” Louis says, still breathless, clinging to Harry, uncaring that his sweat is getting all over Harry’s presumably clean dad shirt, or that he’s making Harry hold up all of his weight.

“Of course I came,” Harry says. He shifts, one arm curled underneath Louis’ arse, the other spreading wide in the middle of Louis’ back. “If I ignored you every time you pissed me off we would have stopped being friends a long time ago.”

Louis already knows that, of course. It doesn’t do anything to stop the pleased squirm in his belly every time Harry proves it, though. They fight like nobody’s business, both of them too stubborn to pull their punches when they’re arguing, and it used to get them in trouble, but they always make up.

Adrenaline makes Louis loose-lipped, and they both know it. He tightens his arms around Harry’s neck, buries his face in his hair. “I missed you,” he confesses, quiet. “Doesn’t feel the same up there by myself.”

30) There You Are | Explicit | 82237 words

Note: This fic has a mention of BH.

Harry’s entire life has fallen apart - in one night, his carefully planned future is suddenly uncertain.

Then he meets Louis.

Check out our other fic rec lists by category here and by title here.

You can find other monthly roundup fic rec lists here.

#bottom louis #top harry #blp fic recs #monthly fic recs #fic recs #blp #larry

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fogsrollingin · 5 years ago

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⌚SPN reclist: time travel ⏳

My fic sweet spots for this trope: angst that ends with warm fuzzy feelings; anything with Sam+Dean realizing the sweet, everyday sacrifices they both made for each other while growing up ✧ My fic recs are updated regularly on DW and quarterly on Tumblr. Link to the possibly updated reclist on DW here ✧ My entire catalogue of fic recs on tumblr here ✧ This post was last updated 1/21/2022 ✧ Let’s get started! 🤗 ❤️ ✧ Category: Gen ✧ And Beats High Mountain Down by The_Bookkeeper (AO3). Rated PG-13, Gen, 11k words. Summary: Sam is concussed and hallucinating; Dean is crippled and drugged to the gills. It is, in short, about the worst possible moment for sudden, unexpected time travel. ao3.org/works/687478 my thoughts: Such a solid story featuring 14yo Sam visiting 33yo Dean & 29yo Sam (haunted-by-hallucifer!Sam) visiting Dean&John in 1997.

River of Blood by Harrigan (AO3). Rated PG-13, Gen, 42k. Summary: A summoning ritual backfires. Instead of drawing the restless spirit of Cpl. Leamon Griffith to them, Sam and Dean find themselves catapulted to the side of the young Union soldier, just hours before he goes MIA – in 1863. Set S3 after BDABR. ao3.org/works/215758 my thoughts: Time travel case fic where I actually learned things. Sounds lame but it’s rare I come across a fanfic that schools me on history (the Civil War)

Unchangeable by HunterPeverell (AO3). Rated PG-13, Gen, 80k. Summary: Something happened to Sam. Something magical. When he woke up the day after Dean became a demon, it was to the year 2008 . . . the day Dean got out of Hell. How will Sam's attempts to fix this time work out? Who sent him? And how can this help Sam with his own demonic brother in their time? ao3.org/series/124797 my thoughts: Canon divergences that still continue along the same general canon plot points and timeline aren't super my thing, but I love demon!dean. The Obeisance of Memory by rockpaperscissor (fanfiction.net/s/4822628) is great and does a similar canon-divergent thing (only with amnesia). This fic’s featured in my demon!bro and alternate seasons 4 & 5 reclists too

✧ Category: Sam/Dean ✧ The Time Traveler’s Brother by AmyPond45 (AO3). Rated R, Sam/Dean, 54k words. Summary: Dean’s life is turned upside down the night his mother dies. But that’s also the night a mysterious grown-up version of Dean’s brother first appears in his life. While Dean grows up, “Old Sam” is often there, especially when Dean’s father isn’t. As Dean learns what the future holds, he begins to question everything his father has taught him about who he is and what he is supposed to become. Can Dean find a way to save his little brother from his own future? ao3.org/works/3416087 my thoughts: Beautifully written. I’m not a huge fan of younger!Dean and older!Sam but this author keeps the affectionate lilbro and bigbro sibling dynamic despite the warping of time. A magical read that breaks your heart but still feels like a satisfying+happy ending. If you like this fic, you’ll probably like Break on Through to the Other Side (ao3.org/works/1457095) which has some similar elements to this one. This fic’s also in my movie fusions reclist.

You Can’t Go Home Again by Amypond45. PG-13, Sam/Dean, 27k. Summary: Sam and Dean discover evidence that they time-traveled to 1983 to help their Dad and their younger selves right after their mother died. Then things get complicated. ao3.org/works/2065908 my thoughts: Okay, it’s an inescapable fact that Amypond45 is the go-to choice for fics where canon!Sam+Dean meet either themselves in a different timeline or themselves from separate dimensions (so apt for season 15; I hope she’s lovin’ it wherever she is out there!). This fic stays with me bc it was writter like an outsider POV looking at adult Sam+Dean... but the outsider POVs were Sam and Dean as kids! Whaaaat. I know. It’s awesome. If you like this fic, you’ll like charmer & gentle by askance (rated G, Gen, 3k words, ao3.org/works/4932184).

Afterimage by paleogymnast. Rated NC-17, Sam/Dean, 27k words. Summary: "If you had it to do over again, and you could change everything, would you?" When all appears lost, Dean Winchester—battered, weary, guilty, and alone—is given the opportunity to travel back in time and live his life over again with the promise that if he makes the one choice he was too afraid to make before, he will be able to change the future, and avoid the loss of everyone he ever loved and everything he fought for. But how? After all, he knows time can’t be changed… But with the help of a mysterious entity, who may or may not be the actual God of Time, Dean discovers time can be rewritten. Armed only with the ghosts of memories from his former life—afterimages of rewritten time—but not really understanding the gift he’s been given, the new Dean, an impossibly young 27-year-old hunter, once again turns to his estranged brother when their father goes missing. But when he takes a chance on forbidden love, will it be the key to saving the universe and averting the apocalypse, or will it only bring about the end even faster? ao3.org/works/4504065 my thoughts: Holy crap this author’s writing hijacked me the last week of October while I was still trying to churn out a lot of written work). I absolutely loved this story, loved how Dean pressured himself to admit his feelings for Sam during Bugs, how the author described/framed Sam & Dean’s relationship, and plot-wise how information on seasons 4 & 5 filtered into seasons 1-2ish Sam/Dean. It filled me with so much hope & happiness to imagine them besting their destinies like this with the help of Kronos. Also I'm such a sucker for soulmate tropes & loved how paleogymnast let Bobby and Missouri be cool about Sam/Dean.

Another Go Round by KassandraScarlett. Teen and Up, Sam/Dean, 21k words. Summary: Someone sends Dean back to 2009, with a mission: change the past, change the present, so the apocalypse never happens. Dean leaves behind a Croatoan-ridden world, only to stumble into the one person he's always loved more than anything else. Or: Zachariah doesn't send Dean to 2014. Instead, Chuck sends the Dean of the future to 2009. ao3.org/works/23284600 my thoughts: The aaaaaaangst in this one was so, so amazing. I loved how kassandra had future Dean, this savage post-apocalyptic warrior, realize he was in the past, pre-apocalypse, he's got Sam, and everything falls away and he gets to love Sam again. And Sam, how desperate he is during this time period in canon for Dean's affection... 😭😭😭 ugh, this was so good, y’all. This fic was in my 2020 Variety Pack reclist & my alt seasons 4 & 5 reclist

✧ Category: Sam/Dean & Sam/Sam ✧ Life To Fix series by WetSammyWinchester (AO3). NC-17, Sam/Sam, Dean/Sam, 28k words. Summary: When hellhounds came for his brother, Sam was overwhelmed by grief and guilt, and willing to do anything to bring Dean back. Then a man who looks just like him shows up from the future with a story of angels and Armageddon.This other Sam is dealing with his own guilt and loss, but he has a plan to stop the apocalypse before it begins and to rescue Dean. Now, the two of them must work together - two Sams to bring back one Dean. ao3.org/series/1283417 my thoughts: This was so delicately written, with themes like love and forgiveness in the midst of near-destitute hopelessness. The way the author portrays both versions of Sam as so lost and despairing yet both still trying so hard to fix & atone for their mistakes. This story broke my heart but warmed it too. The Sam/Sam scene was such a soft and comforting sex scene too by the way, I adored the mood of it so much!

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lavieenprose · 5 years ago

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on being ill

“On Being Ill” isn’t just making a case for illness as a literary subject, but for the brute, bare fact of the body itself. By insisting we acknowledge that we sweat and crave and itch all day (“all day, all night”), Woolf reminds us we have the right to speak about these things—to make them lyric and epic—and that we should seek a language that honors them. The man who suffers a migraine, she writes, is “forced to coin words himself, taking his pain in one hand and a lump of pure sound in the other.” What does it sound like, this strange, unholy language of nerves and excretions? How do we articulate the kind of pain that refuses language? We throw up our hands, or we hurl our charts: one through ten, bad to worse, from the smiley face to its wretched, frowning cousin.

Woolf’s argument may have been more urgent in her time than in ours—we have more records of the “daily drama of the body” now than we did then—but when I first read her battle cry, her call to arms (not just arms but legs and teeth and bones), it felt like encountering a long-lost relative: the banner I’d never known I’d always been fighting under: Bodies matter—we can’t escape them—they’re full of stories—how do we tell them? Her argument might have the urgency of a battle cry but it’s also vulnerable; it’s posing questions; it’s got mess and nerve—it’s leaking some strange fluid from beneath its garments, hard to tell in the twilight, maybe pus or tears or blood. Even her syntax feels bodily—full of curves and joints and twists, shifting and stretching the skin of her sentences.

People have often told me my own writing seems to be all about bodies. A woman from a writing workshop once suggested I call my collection of stories Body Issues. (I didn’t have a collection of stories: If I did, I wouldn’t have called it that.) But I’ve never wanted to write about “the body,” by which I mean I’ve never set out with that explicit intention; I’ve only ever wanted to write about what it feels like to be alive, and it turns out being alive is always about being in a body. We’re never not in bodies: that’s just our fate and our assignment. (In her beautiful memoir The Two Kinds of Decay, Sarah Manguso writes that she despises “the body” whenever it describes anything but a corpse, and I love that, though I use the phrase constantly anyway.) To my mind, the more aggressive choice is writing that isn’t physical; this insistence carries the burden of intentional absence.

All that said, I’ve always felt a certain shame about the ways my writing keeps coming back to bodies, which is why I loved finding Woolf. My shame felt such relief at the prospect of her company. My first novel was all about addiction and eating disorders and sex, and there was food everywhere, some of it gone rotten. I used the word “sweat” too many times (my editor told me); there were too many fluids (my editor told me) and far too many bruises (my editor told me) and even worse, too many of these bruises were “plum-colored”—for this last one (my editor told me), we would both get mocked, if we didn’t get rid of some of these plum-colored bruises right away. A certain shame hung over the whole narrative, like a faint body odor I couldn’t smell because it was mine: There was too much body, and this too-much-body risked banality and melodrama at once. I’ve always wondered if this shame about writing about the body is connected to the shame of quasi-autobiographical writing, that sense of failing to imagine beyond one’s own experience. Is writing about bodily experience somehow the extreme form of this failure, the ultimate solipsism? You haven’t even gotten beyond your own nerve endings; it’s no accident they call it navel gazing.

I often think of an old painting I once saw that shows an injured body pointing at its own open wounds. The most graceful victim, of course, is the one who doesn’t need to point at his holes or ask for sympathy—who doesn’t take up the lump of pure sound, who just keeps quiet. The way I imagine being scolded goes something like this: There’s something selfish about talking about bodies too much if the bodily experience fueling everything is your own.

I often think, also, of a cross-country race I ran in 10th grade: I tripped on a slab of concrete sticking up from the dirt, about a hundred meters after the start, when the pack was still dense; and I was trampled by the horde of 15-year-old girls running behind me. It was pretty minor, as tramplings go. But still, it was a trampling. I got up to run the next three miles of the race but I was shaken up and bleeding. I wasn’t running well at all—nothing close to what I’d need to do to place well for our team.

When I reached my coach, who was calling out our one-mile splits, she said something to the effect of “Why are you running so slow?”—only perhaps not so delicately phrased. I remember the awkward way I tried to point at my own wounds without slowing my (turtle) pace; and I remember how badly I wanted her to see the streaks of dirt-clotted blood; I almost stumbled again in my urgent need to show her the proof of my stumbling.

That memory has become the vessel for a certain kind of shame—the shame of pointing too overtly at what hurts, jamming the laser-pointer of language at some wound and then expecting it to yield wisdom or explanation. My coach didn’t want the epic or lyric account of my damaged body, she just wanted me to keep running, and hopefully pick up the pace.

I’m still haunted by the specter of myself in this moment—a mute form pointing, bleeding. A few years after that race I spent a couple months actually mute: I’d gotten jaw surgery and they’d wired my jaw shut to help it heal. During those months I wrote quite frequently but it was mainly practical, because I couldn’t talk. I requested things by scribbling them in a little notebook: vicodin, please; okay ensure (my mom was always foisting Ensure on me), but are there any cans of dark chocolate left? HATE butter pecan. I asked for sheets draped over the mirrors, so I wouldn’t see my swollen face; I asked for the pair of scissors that I was supposed to keep on-hand in case I vomited and needed to cut the wires between my teeth.

Eventually I started writing poems about those quiet weeks, and the surgery before them, the days in the hospital. The poems were full of IV lines and numbness and feeling returning after numbness like water oozing back into crab holes in damp sand (“crackling lines of hurt,” I wrote). I imagined myself the bard of swelling; I wanted to write toothache lyrics for swelling—to evoke the chronic panic of its deforming sculptural practice: it shapes you into something like you, but not you. I wanted to bring that aching knowledge to my nonexistent reading public.

I turned the poems into a series and then I turned them in to my undergraduate writing workshop. The series was called “Waiting Room,” meaning the waiting room before surgery but also the injury afterward as a waiting room—get it?—the aftermath as the cramped little chamber where you wait to get better; where you have to keep waiting even once it seems like you should already be there.

I wasn’t satisfied with the poems. Pain was hard to describe. I encountered Elaine Scarry’s famous formulation—“pain does not simply resist language but actively destroys it”—which recognized but did not solve the problem. My workshop wasn’t satisfied with the poems either. Everyone wanted to know: What were they about? I thought it was pretty fucking self-evident, but no, it was a different problem: My classmates got that these poems were about pain and injury—maybe in a dental office?—but what were they really about? My workshop was thinking everything must be a metaphor for something else: the cut lines on raw gums, the self-quieting sparkle of anesthesia. But in truth, nothing was a metaphor for anything. It was more or less this happened, and it hurt. There was nothing below the surface.

At the time I took this as a verdict of poverty and lack—which is why I loved finding Woolf, so many years later, who seemed to be saying, the surface of the body isn’t poverty; it isn’t lack. She rose from the dead for the express purpose of silencing that workshop, or at least arguing against the notion that there had to be something besides bodies for these poems to matter. She was saying the surface is poetry; bodies are poetry; or poetry can be made of what these bodies need and crave and bleed and feel.

I felt her summoning an army, everyone I’d ever read whose language does some justice to the way our bodies are, the ways they betray us or bind us together: Walt Whitman’s greed to catalogue the physical forms of his countrymen, William Faulkner’s fixation on muddy drawers and the waft of honeysuckle; Marcel Merleau-Ponty’s insistence on the body as an “eloquent relic of existence.”

Woolf writes: “It is not only a new language that we need, more primitive, more sensual, more obscene, but a new hierarchy of the passions; love must be deposed in favour of a temperature of 104; jealousy give place to the pangs of sciatica.” I can see the way these marching orders have infected my own prose—even this piece, with its twisting, bodily contortions—and the way they’ve helped me claim a dialect I’d been afraid was junk, a ledger of the body’s travails, not the “Waiting Room” poems (which weren’t really that great) but the notebooks I kept when my jaw was wired silent, full of their banal complaints and requests: Vicodin, please. Where are the vomit scissors? These are daily dramas of the body, charged with force and longing; the record Woolf never found, the words that pain and pure sound made.

#Leslie Jamison #virginia woolf #being ill

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scribeofmorpheus · 6 years ago

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As Fate Would Have It (Part 15)

Paring: 1940s!Bucky x Spy!Reader

Catch Up here | Masterlist

Words: 4.1k | Note: Reader’s alias is Elle/Helen

A/N: Listen I know I said I’d take a pause with updating this series like a day ago -and I also know I said the last chapter was the final 1940′s storyline, BUT! I had another bout of insomnia and had this story stuck in my mind!

Warnings: Graphic violence, blood, torture, themes of POW, PTSD

Note: We’re finally using the Y/N abbreviation here kiddos! I haven’t proofread!

Highly recommend you listen to any of these pieces with the chapter: I will find you | Frozen in Time | If You Care (song)

Feel free to ask to be tagged, leave a like, reblog or comment ♥

~Some Time Later~

"Commencing test number eleven of phase two," Dr Zola spoke into the voice recorder placed on the medical table. His small hands flipped the switch of the device you were strapped into and the hum of electric currents rang in your one good ear- the other eardrum was still healing from weeks prior.

"Ahhhhhh!" Your shrill screams overlapped with the buzzing sound of the electric chair. The air was filled with the smell of burned hair and your mouth tasted like foam. Your vision in one eye was blurred with a red haze from the ruptured blood vessel.

Dr Zola flipped the switch off after your screams dissipated into hoarse shrieks, "The subject’s pain threshold seems to have grown exponentially since her last dose." He signalled for the squirmy man dressed in doctor scrubs to go towards you. In silence, he stalked towards you, hand holding a syringe with a six-inch needle and bent your head down so he could administer the contents of the syringe between the ridges of your spinal cord.

"The twelfth dose has now been administered," Dr Zola spoke out in observation. You swore under your breath at him. He simply turned his head to the side like a dog confused by high pitched sounds.

"And now for the second step," he urged his assisting scientist to begin the second part of the experiment. He walked over after having grabbed a scalpel and pressed it into the muscle between your elbow and wrist on the arm with less scaring and sliced down in a perfectly symmetrical line. The blade separated your flesh in a slow and gruelling manner making you hiss behind your clenched jaw. Blood spilt out and dripped onto the floor letting out wet splashing noises every time blood dripped down. The man placed the scalpel back on the medical table before joining Dr Zola's side with a clipboard and pen while the doctor started his stopwatch.

They watched on edge, their eyes skittering from the stopwatch to your still open wound in anticipation of some change they could catalogue. One minute passed and they jotted down something on their clipboard. Two and their faces grew grimmer. Three and Dr Zola looked almost red with anger. Finally after five minutes passed it was clear nothing profound would happen.

You laughed defiantly before you spit out the blood that had accumulated in your cheek. It splattered close to their shoes making them scowl at you in disgust. "Look at that, I'm still a failed experiment!" Your laughs echoed weakly around the room infuriating the two men.

"Do it," Dr Zola said coldly.

His assistant nodded and flipped the same switch from before, this time with the dial cranked a few volts higher. Electricity burned into your flesh from the metal restraints that only got hotter the longer the current passed through them. Your nails were digging into the tattered leather straps that fastened you to the chair, hundreds of half-moon marks accumulating from all the time spent in this particular torture room.

All of a sudden, Dr Zola's eyes lit up as he stared down at your sliced open arm, "Turn it off!"

The buzzing stopped and the current was held at bay, your body trembling as it tried to reset itself. You had a hard time moving your head, but when you finally got it positioned so you could see your arm, your one good eye went wide and then blinked in quick succession as you tried to make sure you weren't hallucinating. Your wound was healing right before your eyes. Sluggishly and very easy to miss if you didn't stare at it for a long time, but it was indeed healing.

"Ha! Ha! We have had our first breakthrough!" Dr Zola cheered with pride as his assistant walked closer to monitor your arm thoroughly.

"It seems you were right Dr Zola. With a controlled amount of your serum present within a subject's bloodstream, rapid cellular regeneration is possible. Perhaps this could finally unlock the secrets to immortality." The assistant said with a naive smile on his face.

Dr Zola paused for a moment, no longer stewing in his glory, "Yes well, hypothesizing is one thing. We still need to find a way to trigger the healing process without requiring an external electric current to excite the molecules within a body."

"One small step Herr Zola!" The assistant said triumphantly.

Dr Zola ignored the younger scientist as he looked down at his watch with a troubled expression, "Log your findings with the rest of the data. Try and replicate the results with a new subject. I am needed elsewhere, Schmidt has asked me to accompany him as he tours the Austrian weapons factory. You will be in charge of the experiments on this level. Return her to her cell."

The young assistant saluted and hailed. Dr Zola mirrored his actions before fixing his collar and walking out of the room.

***

It had felt like months since Dr Zola left for Austria. Despite his absence, the experiments didn't stop.

Your days all blended together to form one long unending day that repeated over and over like clockwork. For a long time, you had held onto the hope that you'd manage to escape this hellish place, but after four failed attempts you had given up on that dream. Your body wasn't in any physical condition to fight as well anymore, the constant tests and drugs flushed in your system at any given time rendered you useless. All you could do was hold onto your last wits to keep your sanity from snapping. Most nights you'd think about your small Brooklyn apartment or the hideous diner outfit you'd wear to work.

You made it a rule to only think about the harmless things. The little things that wouldn't bring you pain or make you feel even more alone in the dark. That was a privilege reserved for the memories of the people you loved and the sweet torment they brought to your dreams. No matter how each dream began it would always, always, transition into an unstoppable nightmare.

You'd occasionally wake up in a cold sweat after dreaming of better circumstances; going dancing with Sally; lounging on vacation with Bucky; playing board games with Steve. Each time they'd all end the same: with them ripped away from you.

A little scatter of sunlight shone down on your face, alerting you to the fact it was day time. You turned to your side to face the wall marked by number tallies. You had stopped trying to keep track of the days after you spent an unknown number of days in a medically induced coma. You'd figured there wasn't any point.

The sound of banging on your door forced you to stand on jelly legs, eyes still foggy as you swayed from your inner ear being off balance.

"Back against the wall!" A guard shouted.

You did as he said, although it took a little effort to keep your knees from caving beneath you.

The door opened and two guards walked in, one bound your hands behind your back while the other kept the door open. When you were marched out of your room, you noticed the entire base was bathed in red light as several other prisoners were ushered out of their rooms -all looking as worse for wear as you did.

"Wha- What's going on?" You croaked out.

The guard behind you grumbled, refusing to answer your question.

"Prisoner transfer," a strange man said from the adjacent line beside you. He was hobbling on one leg while another prisoner helped him stay upright. His bony back was hunched over to the point you could just make out the needle tracks along the base of his spine. It seemed you had something in common.

Your head bobbed from side to side, making sure none of the guards noticed you before you asked: "How do you know?"

He leaned closer so he could whisper a little louder, "I heard the scientists talking next to my cell. Something happened. They're scared. We're being transported to another facility."

You ducked closer with interest, "Where?"

"Russia."

***

The convoy's journey was long and uncomfortable, the flaps from the tarp covering the trucks did little to keep the biting cold at bay. You and several strangers dressed in the same monochromatic garbs huddled together like a bundle of shivering sticks in a futile attempt to stay warm. The guards didn't bother to post people in the back with you. Most of you posed no threat and there would be no chance of surviving this cold without sight of shelter or civilisation for miles.

The truck took the bumpy road with no finesse at all. Every pothole caused the truck to bounce and jostle you all about. The creaking noise of the chassis bumping against the frozen shock suspension had become as synonymous to your good ear as the incessant ringing that persisted in the other. On multiple occasions, you would accidentally slam your body against the cold metal of the truck. You'd groan in protest since your organs were already sore from all the poking and prodding that had become your routine. The entire ride was grievous, it was like being strapped to a piece of debris amidst a tsunami, so when a loud noise cracked through the silence, filling your vision with a hot white flash and overturning the truck, your only reaction was to brace your body for the coming impact.

Akin to dominoes toppling one after the other, each truck in the convoy behind you suffered similar fates. One was heaved off the ground and turned on its side by a controlled explosion below the front wheels while another swerved out of control from a series of sharp whistling noises that left circular holes atop the hood of the car.

Chaos ensued as your vision was bombarded by flashes of bright lights and explosive flames roaring to life. The sound of gunfire and screams and cries of agony mixed together to form a deafening cacophony of anxiety and fear. Your heart caught in your dry throat as adrenaline shot up in pin prickling spikes across your tender muscled back.

The younger you would have seized this opportunity to hunt for a weapon and make a break for it, but instead of doing exactly what you had been trained to do, you simply cowered in the overturned truck -your hands covering your ears as your molars ground against each other.

Another explosion went off close to the truck. Shrapnel tore through the tarp and planted itself into your thigh and shoulder and back. The multiple screams of pain coming from everyone else in the truck proved you weren't the only one whose body was now acquainted with foreign metal shards.

It wasn't until you felt warm liquid dampen the edge of your trousers that you were forced out of your stupor. Blinking erratically, you tried to sit up and make sure none of your arteries were punctured. To your relief, you realised the blood wasn't yours. But as soon as that revelation sunk in, your blood turned cold all over again as you looked over to the one-legged man before going into shock.

"Fuck! No..." You scurried with shaky hands to his side, your breathing escalating to pants. "Hey, hey…I need you to focus. Hey-" You slapped his cheeks in quick successions. "What's your name?"

"What?" He asked, discombobulated from everything that was happening.

"Your name?" You asked again while tearing cloth from your shirt to act as a tourniquet around his leg.

"H- Hans..." he said with a weak smile.

"Okay Hans, I need you to apply pressure here," you moved his ridged hand towards the spot where blood slithering oozing out. "That's good Hans. Now I need you to stay awake."

You turned to the other scared prisoners, looking for a face that seemed less afraid than the other.

"I need you to keep him talking," you ordered a young woman. She was shaking, but her eyes were more astute than the rest. Despite her quivering lips and blue-tipped fingers, you knew she would oblige.

"O- Okay," she quivered as she knelt beside Hans and tried to hold a conversation.

Hesitantly, you left the confines of the truck and headed to the driver’s seat where you hoped to find a first aid kit. Prying the door open was difficult on account of your weak arms. The door had jammed from a dent caused by the flip. You lifted your leg and leaned against the car door as you pulled the handle until it came loose. You cursed, threw the handle and kicked in the glass window. One of the shards was large enough for you to catch a glimpse of your reflection by your feet. You had grown accustomed to the reality that being someone's lab rat would leave you with scars that wouldn't heal, but somehow it always shook you to your core when you were reminded of how unfamiliar your hair colour had become. When the shocks first started, you had noticed a few slivers of hair turning silver. Now… now your whole head was the same colour as the snow you were currently standing in. You look almost ghostly. In a way, you felt that was truer than much else.

You kicked the glass away, not wanting to waste any more time lamenting what had become of you, and slinked your arm through the window. Patting down against the corpse of the driver and underside of his seat.

Bang!

Another explosion went off, birthing black smoke around it. You jumped and cut your arm on some jagged glass before taking three short breaths.

"Come on Y/N, you can do this."

You reached back into the car and kept feeling around for something. Your muscles instinctively flinching when a gunshot went off. Finally, after spending far too long in the open, you found something you could use: a lighter and a knife. You grabbed the concealed handgun from the driver's boot for safety.

Walking back you noticed a trail of red spots that undoubtedly belonged to you. You had to compartmentalise. One step at a time. All you could think of was getting Hans to stop bleeding.

"Hans, hey… Look at that, you're still talking," you said.

He half chocked on a faltering laugh, "Once I start talking, you can't- Tsssss! Can't… Ahhh! Get me to stop..."

You began burning the tip of the knife with the lighter, "I'm going to dig the shrapnel out before I cauterise the wound. I need you to talk through the pain."

"Heh, you know… you kind of remind me of my wife. I drove her to grow grey hairs too early too," he said reminiscently.

"Where's your wife now?" You asked as you removed the knife from the flame. He didn't answer.

After some struggling breaths, Hans asked: "You ever married?"

Your eye twitched at his question forcing you to close your eyes for a second. Then you looked up at his searching gaze with a smile that felt too heavy to carry, "Only in my nightmares." You tried to amuse him.

He let out what should have sounded like a laugh but came off as a series of groans and hisses.

Without warning him, you dug the knife into his wound and fished out the piece of shrapnel in one nerve-wracking move. He bit down on a belt the girl beside you had given him as you finished up burning his intrusive cut closed.

Once he stabilised you noticed the gunfire had stopped. The sound of boots crunching in the snow grew louder. You cocked the gun and pointed it with unsteady aim out towards the open snow. The gun seemed to grow heavier as your eyesight kept going in and out of focus. Vertigo set in as the thrumming of your heart resonated in your ears. When the boots stopped in front of you, the gun slipped from our hands. You looked down and noticed you hadn't stopped bleeding, your skin was beginning to pale.

"Shit..." you said groggily.

Your head hit the ground hard, your body half out of the cover of the truck. Above you stood a woman wearing an eyepatch with short blonde hair and a cigarette held between her yellowing teeth.

She knelt beside you, machine gun slung against her chest, and ducked her head to see into the truck better. She gave a sarcastic salute to the group of scared prisoners before saying in fluent Russian: "Welcome to Mother Russia."

She looked down at you again and smiled, "You look like shit, tovarishch..."

A gasp of air left your blueing lips as your eyelids closed shut.

***

The echoes of the events that transpired played like muffled noises coming through weak walls. Eventually, the noises grew more savage- deafening to the point your body jerked at each reverberation of a gunshot or explosion that your mind brought to life in your semi-conscious state. Soon, discombobulated memories began to overlap with each loud bang.

Bang!

"Report."

Bang!

"You make a habit of flirting with waitresses you just met, Mr Tall, Dark and Handsome?"

Bang!

"Only the beautiful ones. Call me Bucky, it's shorter -and that smug mess is Steve,"

Bang!

"You ready, doll?"

Bang…

"You're my safe harbour. I want you to know that."

Bang!

"Sweet dreams."

BANG!

"Gahhh!" You gasped awake, the nape of your neck sticky with sweat. You woke up in a tent, the door flap folded half-open to reveal a dying fire. The horizon breaking with the first glints of a sunrise. Several other tents were pitched up. The smell of coffee, cigarettes and grease was mixed with the cold mountain air. By your bedside was a change of clothes and the same gun you had fished off the dead driver.

***

Yelena had just finished briefing the skeleton mercenary crew about their travel trajectory. They began to pack down their tents after she gave them the last of her money. Her things were already packed so she decided to sit by the dying fire and wait.

Yelena scrunched her nose in disgust. The coffee tasted like piss, but little could be done to correct that. Her yellowing fingertips absentmindedly brushed at her eyepatch. The phantom pain had returned with a vengeance ever since she rescued Y/N from the Hydra convoy. Her stomach grew uneasy as bile crept up to her throat. Regret and anger weighing her down like a stone, drowning her in her own petty sorrows.

Click-

The sound of a guns hammer being pushed back brought a smile to her face.

"I was wondering when you'd wake up, tovarishch..." she took a sip of her piss water and immediately regretted it, but she swallowed it down. “I like the hair."

"Give me. One! Reason..." Y/N struggled to say in a raspy voice.

Yelena flinched at how coarse her former subordinate’s voice had become. Without looking up, Yelena said solemnly, "I can't."

"The fuck kind of excuse is that?" She was seething.

"It isn't."

"Where are the other survivors?"

"We salvaged a vehicle," Yelena looked at her men and shook her head to tell them to stand down. "I sent them off."

"Are you here to take me back?"

"No..."

"I don't believe you!"

"There's nothing to go back to."

The gun in Y/N's hand shook, "Then why come for me?"

"It was always the plan. Once Hydra was through with you, we'd swoop in and bring you home." Yelena lit a cigarette between her bare lips. "And either way, you'd have succeeded in your mission. In place of research, we'd have you."

"You sold me out so I could be a glorified lab rat?"

"You would never have gotten away with it. Faking your death never sticks. Not for long. Your mind has always been limited with thinking of the now. I had to make a tough call that would ensure you lived to see tomorrow." Yelena dusted the snow from her trousers, tossed the remaining coffee on the fire and turned to face Y/N and her loaded gun. "This wasn't a rescue mission. There is no cavalry coming. No one to call."

Y/N hit Yelena square in the jaw with the butt of her gun. Yelena saw the blow coming but chose to let it stick. She chuckled lifelessly after spitting out droplets of blood.

"What of the Red Room?"

"As far as they're concerned, once we lost the war you were declared KIA. It's just me now. I got Intel of the convoy, I took a chance."

"Am I supposed to thank you?" Y/N squinted her eye, the other suffered too much trauma to do more than twitch. "You sold me out! You let them take me… You let them experiment on me for months!" Her voice cracked as a tear ran down her cheek.

"Months?" Yelena asked with confusion. "Tovarishch, what year do you think it is?"

Y/N stumbled backwards, "Wh- What? It's… It's 1942… Maybe '43."

Yelena's eye grew wide, "Tovarishch… it's 1947."

"N- No. No, no, no! No. It can't be..." Y/N's breathing became frantic, the gun rattling in her hand. "I kept count. I- I couldn't have been in that coma longer than a week! I- I- I--!"

Yelena saw the trademarks of a panic attack about to ensue and took a chance and slapped Y/N across the face. The lack of warning caused her to fire off a shot from her gun. Yelena was lucky she had already moved out of her sights, but then another gunshot sounded out and one of her men fell into the snow, red staining the white.

Everyone ducked. One of her men examined the bullet hole.

"Soviet slug, no rifling!" He shouted.

Fear soaked Yelena's bloodstream, "He found us..."

"Who found you?" Y/N asked.

Yelena turned to look Y/N in the eye, "Listen to me tovarishch. We don't have time. Here-" She handed her a folded map stuffed with several papers. "Co-ordinates to a safe house half a day’s walk from here. Papers to get you on a boat. There's a village close by, a man rents sled dogs. He knows you're coming." Yelena signalled for her men to assume defensive positions.

"Why are you doing all this?" Y/N asked.

A sad smile crossed Yelena's face, "You were right to want more. To have that moronic idea of freedom. I- I lost everything. You are all that's left. My one good act."

"This doesn't make up for what you did."

Yelena's smile grew wider, "Nothing can ever make up for the things I've done."

Another sniper shot thundered through the mountains taking another one of her men.

Y/N froze at the sound. When she regained her composure she looked at Yelena with a baffled expression, "What happened?"

Yelena's hand returned to her eyepatch for a brief second, "I flew too close to the sun. Now go!"

Y/N shared a prolonged moment with Yelena in silence. In that sacred space, they had said everything they needed to in order to gain closure without uttering a word. Somehow they both knew once it was over, they would be right back to where they were, scrambling to give each other the catharsis they sought after.

Y/N was the first to break eye contact, lifting her weary body up so she could make a break for the cover of the woods. This was Yelena's last chance to say something.

"Y/N!" Yelena forced her to look behind. "Promise me one thing. Leave it all behind. Everything. The past… it will only bring you pain."

"I can't do that…"Y/N looked at the sun breaking through the dusk. “Pain is all I have left."

And then she was gone.

***

Yelena lay on the cold ground, blood pooling around her as the sound of her last man’s dying breaths was snuffed out by someone’s boot.

Paralysed from the waist down, her eyes were glued to the white clouds dancing about. One, in particular, looked like a rabbit. It reminded her of Y/N's white hair. Another reminder of her failures.

"Ahhh, there it is," she swallowed her own blood with a humorous chuckle as she felt that feeling from before return a thousandfold. "I was almost worried I'd gotten rid of that particular taste of self-loathing."

Out of her peripheral, a masked individual clad in black knelt by her side. His metal arm refracting harsh rays of sunlight in her eye. "Where is the girl?"

Yelena was borderline delusional from all the blood loss and frostbite, "The little rabbit?" She cackled. "Why, down the rabbit hole, of course!"

The man brought his metal arm to her throat, pressure squeezing at her oesophagus making her gasp for air. "No matter. You were the target."

Then he snapped her neck like a twig.

Next Chapter we’re in the 80′s!

Tags: @fangirl-colo @dormousse @smallmarvel @ren-ni @sargentbucket @nikolett3 @wnygirl2012 @jentismyname @evilgeniuslabz-blog @myrabbitholetoneverland @500daysofbecky @reidreader @gruffle1 @thechickvic @notawarriorjustyet

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numbah34 · 6 years ago

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A Happy Holiday season to all! This year, I’m bringing the PIE.

I hope you’ve saved room for a little additional speculation, because this is a little something I’ve been working on for about 10 days now, and I think it’s gonna be delicious.

*ahem.* Food metaphors aside, here we go:

In order to hypothesize about the true endgames, I’m going to pull from some quotes, explore the definition of “endgame,” and reference some potential evidence that season 8 provided for us.

*Before you continue reading, it is important to note that this is a meta about Plance/Pidgance/Flirtyrobot/26-other-ship-names-I’m-not-listing-them-all, or the relationship between Pidge and Lance. If this particular ship is not your cup of tea, please do not feel obligated to read further, but still have a lovely day!*

When we use the term “endgame”, we tend to define it as the ultimate relationship one or more characters ends up in by the end of the series. Ideally, we like our endgames to be confirmed by canon, but, if they are not and there hasn’t been anything shown to directly refute it, we can often be happy in believing that our faves will get together after the final curtain. Headcanon to fill the gaps, etc, etc.

Plance, however, is a different story. In fact, it is my assertion that they are, in fact, each other’s endgame, as they are surrounded by an incredible amount of evidence to support such a statement, both by canon in-show, in-comic, and in-book, and by answers provided by showrunners and cast alike. Let’s break it down:

1. Lance will end up with someone he needs; what he thought he wanted is not what he needed. (Can I take a moment to complain here a little? I feel like everytime someone asked about ships, they asked in regard to Lance. Did no one ever ask about Pidge and if she would have an endgame? I’m just saying. That would have been helpful information.) I won’t spend a lot of time on this quote, as it has been broken down in just about every plance meta you can find from early on. I will add: throughout the series, Lance has been shown to be the paladin who tries to use humor to lighten heavy situations. If he can crack a joke about it, the others might not laugh, but the mood will become a little less dire. Humor tends to breed hope in those times. Pidge appropriately labeled him as a goofball, I believe not because she thought he was ridiculous, but because she honestly appreciated his humor and his desire to have fun. While Pidge would, many times, roll her eyes at Lance’s jokes, Allura never laughed at them. She would generally look cross, or glare at him, whenever he would try; for example, when he tried to get her to laugh by pretending to read what he was going to say off his hand, and... it did not go over well. And he had to switch tactics and offer comforting words instead. This seemed to be a common theme over their interactions. He was never able to fully be himself around her.

2. Lance will be someone’s first choice. ...And I would assume that would mean that the someone in question would actually want to choose to spend time around him. Let’s be clear about something: at no point, even in their dating relationship, was Lance Allura’s first choice. Just from season 8: when he finally asked her out, she was ready to turn him down so she could go watch a comatose, unresponsive Altean who actively tried to kill them (a different spin on the “I can’t, I have to wash my hair...”), until Romelle and Hunk peer pressured her into it, not by recommending Lance’s finer points but by telling her she needed to relax (Hunk seriously what kind of wingman are you); if there was an option between Lance and the Alteans, she would pick the Alteans every time; she reminded Lance so many times that he couldn’t possibly understand what she was going through that I was about to turn it into a drinking game; on Clear Day, she could have taken that time to go have fun and relax with him, but instead she chose to stay on the ship with the dark probably evil entity that she eerily mentioned was trying to talk to her, WHAT were you THINKING, Allura, you could have been having fun with your friends and taking your mind off things that way! There was NO ONE THERE TO HELP YOU!; when the entity was picking people to try to convince her to release it, it only picked Lance for a hot second before moving on to Lotor; every time we saw Lotor/something representing Lotor in the same scene as Allura, she had a much more emotional response than she ever did for Lance; when she took the entity in and introduced the dangerous plan, his voice was the one she did not want to listen to (and we start seeing some cracks in the ship, too, as he becomes irritated not only that she would endanger herself like this, but also because his thoughts and concerns DO NOT MATTER TO HER); every time he would tell her he loved her, she would question him, or remain silent, until the end when it just felt hollow.

Pidge, meanwhile... well, we’ve catalogued in metas from s1-s7 how she would choose to be around him, from Space Mall to the Feud, etc., and season 8 did not actually short us on Pidge continuing to choose Lance. It started in the first episode, when she found out Lance had asked out Allura. At that point, her choices regarding him involved what she thought would make him happy. Sometimes, that meant doing things like giving up a game they could have enjoyed together or spending her time at the Clear Day carnival earning tickets to get something [actually sparkly] to take back to Allura instead of for herself, and sometimes that meant backing off and giving them space. I’ll touch more on that point in a moment (and you’ll see why that is, in fact, a pun), so stay tuned.

3. Allura will not have an endgame. I’m paraphrasing a bit here, but I believe there was a quote from one of the various interviews floating out there about Allura not having a definite endgame. (I could be wrong, and if I am, please let me know!) Well... that’s not wrong. Allura did not have an endgame, because her character did not make it to the end of the show (which, btw, I’m still sad about. She is an amazing character, and I wanted nothing but a happy ending for her. This season did not end up making me a fan of A//urance, but that is not ever how I would have wanted that ship to end, either.).

4. Lance will have an endgame. I’ll say it again. Allura was not Lance’s endgame. While she may have given him marks (I don’t think for a second she made him Altean, more like gave him a glowy little quintessence tattoo), she was not with him at the end of the show.

So. Who was Lance’s endgame, then? I am absolutely certain, without them having outright confirmed it, that Pidge was Lance’s endgame.

While we might have gotten very few Pidge and Lance interactions in season 8, the ones we got and the ones that were missing are telling. I mentioned in point #2 that Pidge backed off and gave Allura and Lance space while they were dating; at first, I found that frustrating, because I love Lance & Pidge interactions. But... I would have found it even more frustrating if they had continued while Lance was dating someone else. (That would have reeked of Pidge trying to steal Lance from Allura, and there is nothing in Pidge’s character arc about her trying to split people up; if anything, her arc of trying to reunite her family has made her more of a unifying character.) For 7 seasons previous, we find several instances of Lance being in Pidge’s personal space, sometimes even resting his arm across her back, and her allowing him into her personal bubble. But, while Lance and Allura are dating, he and Pidge do not touch. They continue to be framed together in some scenes, and Clear Day really underlined how, when they are around each other, they come alive. They bring out the best in each other in ways you don’t see in their interactions with the other characters. But I digress. For our final canonical evidence clues, let’s take a look at the final scenes in the last episode.

For the vast majority of the series, comics included, Lance and Pidge follow each other in the narrative. We see this again, as we move from a scene where Pidge is excitedly leaving to meet her friends, to a scene where Lance is giving a little school group talk to some little Alteans about how neat Princess Allura was (aside: let’s not begrudge him that, please, because she was really great, and you don’t have to have dated her to recognize that. She loved all her found family, Lance was just the one to receive markings). As he is looking up at Allura’s statue, a wormhole opens and the green lion comes through, drawing his attention to the lion and its pilot. The smile spread across his face is the one we have grown to associate with Lance, and he just looks more himself.

In the epilogue photos, we learn that Pidge and her family are on earth, training up the next group of legendary defenders. We also learn that Lance is on earth, living and working on his family’s farm. Some things to pay attention to:

1. They are both doing work that honors Allura’s memory and sacrifice. Allura had said in the Feud that Pidge and her family would be the most likely to be able to continue her father’s legacy, which was a very important thing to Allura’s character. Lance, apart from giving the occasional field trip talk, is growing juniberries, a flower Allura had once thought extinct, and that she associated heavily with Altea and Altean culture. He might not have understood alchemy, or other parts of their culture, but Lance and his family are farmers, and they do understand plants; this is something he can do that honors her memory. I’m going to emphasize that, when you lose someone you love, you do find yourself doing things to honor their memory; it does not, however, mean that you are miserable for the rest of your life.

2. They are both on Earth. Hunk, Keith, and Shiro are all off doing their own thing, Coran is on Altea (or the Atlas? Was the epilogue specific about what he was up to?), but Pidge and Lance are still in close proximity with each other. Further, Lance’s farm is cultivating a flower that only one botanist from the Garrison figured out how to grow and care for, and that botanist happens to be Pidge’s mom. Not to mention Lance still has Kaltenecker... And, in more than one publication, he talks about getting together with Pidge to play video games. All I’m saying is, they have plausible reasons for visiting each other more frequently.

3. Finally, let’s take a look at the last photos, because I noticed something odd:

In the first picture, it looks like everyone had finished crowding in for the picture, and Lance once again has an arm draped on Pidge (they are finally touching again!), and Pidge is leaning closer to him (hello angling, my old friend). Then you get to the second shot, and… Lance is doing something odd with his hand. You could almost think it was a gesture, but it looks to me more like he was in the middle of reaching to put his hand directly on Pidge’s shoulder. It even looks a little less focused, like he was moving when the picture was snapped. I mean, if he’s not… then what the actual heck is he doing?

Also, the color of those glasses Pidge is wearing... I know, I know, color reaching, but still. And, as this post pointed out, if you check out Chuchule’s tail, he is making a little heart shape in both pictures.

To conclude: while they did not explicitly state it, after 8 seasons of evidence of growth, there is a strong implication that Pidge and Lance are each other’s endgame. We might not have gotten to watch it happen, but... my plance are in bloom. How about yours?

#plance #pidgance #flirtyrobot #vlds8 #plancehasachance #plance meta #PIE for the win #this got a lot longer than i was expecting #i hope it didn’t come across as salty #a lot of s8 i enjoyed #the romance was clunky though #and it almost felt like we weren’t supposed to like it #but then that would’ve made the final episode weirder #more i feel like the s8 writers didn’t realize what they had in terms of relationship chemistry #but...they left it open-ended and gave us the gift of further speculations #so thanks guys

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