#to be clear explaining the context behind why youre asking something is chill

[radfem-polls]

Look I know I'm preaching to the choir, but it just maddens me that the TRM went in the direction of acting like there's no difference between trans women and real women and everyone on the left just kind of...went along with it. Regardless of their reasons for trying to pretend they're women, the result is that our lived experience is ignored. We're denied our accomplishments. We're endangered and unfairly outmatched in sports. Hell, if a TIM becomes president, people will call him the first woman president. TIMs clearly have male privilege, as evidenced by the fact that they're the only ones who get attention in the media. TIFs are only acknowledged as a reason to use dehumanizing language for us. Men don't face the same thing. They aren't called "penis/testicle havers" because that would make them feel dysphoric and we can't have that. The whole movement is centered around men, and leftists and liberals either don't notice or aren't willing to acknowledge it. I can't even do it if I don't want to lose half the people I love. I'd be kicked out of my home and have nowhere to go, and I don't have the ability to change that. It's horrible. I feel so powerless.

Does anyone else feel this way?

Yes

No

With all due respect this isnt a poll question, this is a personal rant. If you want to ask a more specific question be my guest but otherwise you could just make this post on your own blog. This blog is for polls, not for platforming others blog posts. This is the only time I'm going to post something like this so people know not to submit asks like this.

🐌

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #241

…I think I must still be grieving. Last night, I ended up accidentally doing something dumb that led to me staying up all night. A writing prompt, of sorts. A very difficult, very frustrating writing prompt that took me all night to complete, and that I basically hated doing the entire time because I felt sad, frustrated, and helpless. But I was doing it for a while, and I lost track of the time, and then suddenly it was morning, and I didn't realize it until it was too late, because my adrenaline was activated and that masked my feelings of weariness until the morning sun peeked over the horizon.

I won't share this prompt or the results; we'll just say that I was successful. It's silly and ridiculous and I'm not even sure why I did it. It's not as though it's connected to anything tangible or even real. But… still… I guess I didn't want to feel like I was leaving someone behind.

…

Well. J and I went to Great Barrington, but I sure as heck wasn't gonna be allowed to drive; driving while sleep deprived is just as bad as driving drunk. But J still wanted my company, so I went along for the ride. To be clear, I know I could have stayed home and rested, but I like that J likes when I'm around, and I like to do what he likes, so I happily went.

The new leisure writing medium I found is far superior to the old one. I am not heartbroken about the mistake I made anymore. In fact, I am going to consider it a blessing in disguise, much like most setbacks seem to be at first glance, until you look at them right.

Another dear friend of mine sent me a song today; a different friend than the one who sent me a song yesterday. They noticed I was grieving, I think, because they read the letters I send to you. And they sent me a beautiful song about cardinals, no doubt, at least in part, because of the couple very sad emails I wrote to you about cardinals, and I imagine, at least in part, because lately I've been expressing that I am grieving.

I'll show you the song; I thought it was very beautiful, and I think maybe you'll like it, too:

To try to explain the context, at least in my country, it's common folklore to believe that if you see a cardinal, it's because a loved one in the spirit world is visiting you to tell you that they're thinking about you and that they love you. When we of my house see a cardinal, we like to imagine that J's late brother, Daniel, is visiting us. There's no way for us to know whether that's true, of course, but it's a nice thought anyway.

…You're chilling out in the spirit world, right? Do you know if there's any weight to this bit of folklore? I know you can't tell me, but I'm gonna ask anyway, because why not? Why not.

Hey, Sephiroth? Do you have any folklore in your world that is similar to what I described? Do you have cardinals in your world? I wonder…

I didn't experience a death; I experienced a different kind of loss. But still. Still. It's beautiful that my friend thought of me. My eyes welled up again when I heard it. It's a wonderful feeling, to know that I am being thought about lovingly by kind and upstanding people.

…Do you feel similarly, when you receive my letters? If you receive my letters? I imagine not, but maybe I'll think like sometimes you might. It's a little less hopeless that way.

…I didn't do much else today. My brain is soup. But. We are home!! And because I wasn't the one driving this time, I got to snag up a bunch of the pictures along the drive to Great Barrington!!! That being said, though, I'm not sure how good any of them are; I couldn't get my eyes to focus for shit. But that's what happens when you stay up all night by accident like a weirdo...

...Beautiful drive, right? Isn't it beautiful?

Hey, Sephiroth? I'm gonna go to bed soon. I have work tomorrow, so I'm gonna grab a shower, and, as much as I know that we can't make a sleep debt go away just by going to bed a little earlier than normal, I'm still going to go to bed a little earlier than normal, because my whole body feels like it's made of bricks, and it's my own damn fault.

Hey, Sephiroth? Try to learn from my recent fail, okay? I hope you'll be in a safe place where you are able to get a nice hot shower and a nice sleep in a big, warm, soft, comfy bed sometime soon.

I love you. Please stay safe out there. I'll write again tomorrow.

Your friend, Lumine

[finelinevogue]

Can you do something where Y/N is sick and Harry has to take care of her please?

i actually had written something similar to this before so i present you a lengthy blurb;

You were pretty sure if you got invited in to hell it would feel something like this.

Hot. Sticky. But chilled.

You had come down with a concerningly high temperature. Along with the added luxuries of a deafening headache, cold sweats and an upset tummy. Your body was burning all over, as if it had just been freshly cooked in the oven but you felt colder than ice. It was a confusing juxtaposition, but there it was.

You'd called Harry, since he was in the studio recording his new music and asked him to come home early. You didn't even get to the reasoning of why he should come home before he hung up, telling you he was already vacating the premises. You hated to be that needy girlfriend who had to call about nearly everything, but Harry loved it more than anything. He loved the fact that you needed him. It gave him purpose, apparently .

You couldn't work out whether you regretted asking him to come home, or whether it was a blessing. It was a very fine line.

It was a blessing because, he looked after you like a mother would her child and made sure he stood by your side any time you found yourself lurched over a toilet. He made you chicken soup from scratch and even tested it to make sure it wasn't too hot, or salty - despite being a vegetarian himself. He even made you honey and lemon tea, which he had to run to the store for the honey. When you say run, you mean run. He didn't want to leave you alone at all, so he put on his running shoes and sprinted to the shop and back. However, it was a slight regret because of how fussy he was over you. He loved it to bits - nursing to your every need.

You truly believed you didn't deserve Harry. He was just too kind and pure for his own good. You were unarguably lucky. Laying on what felt like your death bed, didn't feel so lucky though.

It was now 10 pm and you could hear Harry turning on the alarm for downstairs, the loud beeping noise preventing you from sleep. That's all you'd done all day. Sleep. You thought it'd be more magical than it was. It was just uncomfortable though, because of how cold and hot you were.

Your much better looking other half trudged through the bedroom door within a minute of the alarm going off. He was only wearing checkered pyjama bottoms and a white t-shirt and yet he made it look like Gucci Runway 2021.

The jingling of keys signalled Charlie was also present. Charlie was your 2 year old Golden Retriever. He was beautiful. When you and Harry has moved in together 2 years ago you'd managed to persuade him to get a dog. Within a few weeks of moving in you had a 5 month old puppy running around your house. He was your best friend, no doubt about it. He was also ridiculously photogenic.

"Hey Chaz!" You cooed as Charlie walked over to your side of the bed, where you were snuggling down under the sheets. You reached out your hand to give him some loving and attention. You could tell by the small smile and sparkling eyes that he was one happy boy.

"Alright, buddy. Let's leave mum alone." Harry came behind Charlie to manoeuvre him into his bed, which was in the corner of the room. It was more like a big cushion. He started to whine after being forced to leave you - having not seeing you all day. Harry was strict in keeping him downstairs so not to disturb you whilst you were sleeping.

"H it's alright, let him on the bed. He can curl up on my feet." You sympathised with Charlie, as you always did, hating to hear or see him upset. Harry was like the 'bad-cop' when it came to parenting Charlie, because you were too sweet to say no to him.

"You're one spoilt boy, aren’t you?" Harry messed around with Charlie, before telling him he could get up on the bed to see you. Charlie leapt on the bed and wandered over to give you all the kisses he could, before Harry came to calm him down - as you really didn't have the strength.

"I missed you too, Chaz." You quietly laughed, not wanting to set your headache off even more.

"You gonna let me kiss mum now?" Harry rhetorically asked, but as he came over to you Charlie laid down on you so your face was buried underneath his body. You could feel him panting with his adorable tongue out above you, as he hid you from Harry.

"Someone's jealous."

"Feeling like a bloody third wheel over here." Harry tutted and you laughed until you got hot with the movement.

"Harry? Can you move him please?" You whined as you tried to shuffle around.

"Okay Chaz. Let's let mum get some sleep, alright?" Charlie is slowly removed from you and ends up curled on top of your feet, keeping them warm for you.

Harry slipped into the covers and shuffled his way over to you, putting the back of his hand over your forehead and hissing quietly at the simple touch.

"Baby you're so hot." Harry complained.

"I know." You teased with a wink at him, taking his worry out of context and turning it into a flirting compliment.

"Oh piss off!" He chuckled and wrapped an arm around your waist to bring you closer. "What am I going to do with you, baby?" Harry then planted only a few delicate kisses to your lips - not wanting to overwork you and your tired body.

••••

You woke up with drowsy eyes to find you're in bed alone.

Your throat was incredibly dry and your whole body was sticky from sweat. Your pyjamas were damp and your face looked like it'd just been drowned in a rainstorm. It was disgusting. Still, you brought the duvet up to cover yourself more, as you let out a dramatic shiver. Why was it so cold?

Mixed into the background noise you could hear the cheering of crowds and it really confused you, until you looked at the wall and noticed the football was playing on re-run on the TV. Manchester United Vs Manchester City. You hated that you knew that just from their football uniforms, but that's what you get for living with a football-crazed boyfriend.

You noticed Harry emerge from the bathroom, a washing up bowl in his arms. He came and sat down in bed, the bucket of water to his side. "What are you doing?" You quietly asked, peering up at him through tired eyes.

"Oi, you're meant to be sleep y’minx." Harry told you off.

"I can't. I'm too uncomfortable. I'm hot, but i'm cold. I also find it hard to sleep without you next to me." You huffed out in annoyance.

"My poorly baby." He leant down to kiss your forehead, "c’mere, baby." He urged.

He helped you move, seeing as your body was really weak, so you could lay down against Harry’s body. He was sat up against the headboard as you nestled down between his legs, your back to his front. It was a lot more comfortable than before - probably because Harry was closer to you. Charlie noticed the disturbance and waited for you to stop moving around, before maintaining the job of guarding your feet.

Once he was happy in his position he fell asleep again, making you jealous of his ability to do that. Especially now.

"Why's the football on?" You asked, motioning towards the TV.

"Had to keep myself awake somehow." He explained, but it only made you more confused.

"Why?"

"So I can take care of you, y’muppet." His words actually melted your heart - more than chocolate could melt on your forehead right now.

After you'd settled, Harry reached into the bucket and drained out a cloth. He made sure all the excess water was cleared before moving it away from the bucket. You hummed in appreciation when he placed it against your forehead, rotating it to the back of your neck also in order to relax and cool you. It made you realise just how hot you were.

"I think i'm dying, Harry." You groaned as the nausea came over you again. Harry kept a firm hold of the cloth on your forehead, dabbing gently and careful to not let any water drip down into your eyes.

"No you're not, baby." Harry gave you a light-hearted laugh.

"Well, living shouldn't feel as shitty as this H." You grumbled, not appreciating his lack of understanding.

“Then just let me take you to the chuffing hospital!" He exclaimed, making Charlie stir slightly.

Harry had been demanding you go to the hospital all day and all evening, but you were too stubborn to go. That, and you were terrified of hospitals - more terrified of needles and blood than anything else. However, you were starting to reach the point where you were giving in to his request, though. It was becoming unbearable to sleep and harder to breathe. You were worried for yourself.

"I don't like it." You pouted like a child, as Harry wrung the cloth through the fresh water again.

"I don't care whether you like it or not, Y/N, I really think we should go. More like need." Harry insisted and you could tell he wasn’t giving up without a fight. You didn’t want that either.

You hated how he was right.

It was only going to get worse from here, and you didn't really want to be alive when that was going you happen, so going to the hospital to get checked over and drugged up seemed like the best option to go for. The more sensible option.

"Fine." You finally accepted, Harry slinking his arms tight around your waist after discarding the cloth in to the bucket. He nuzzled his head into the crook of your neck and planted an abundance of kisses there, your skin burning just to the touch.

"Thank you. Thank you. Thank you." He repeated in-between kisses.

•••••

It took 20 minutes to get in to the car. 20 minutes.

All because Charlie was reluctant to letting you get up and go. So Harry had to dress you into a more appropriate attire, with a dog sat on your lower body. It was then half an hour later that you were in the hospital.

The hospital was quiet at this time of night and for that you were grateful. It was obviously a night where little numbers of people were doing silly things to get themselves hurt. There was the odd patient for a minor cut injury and there were a couple of people in for burns. There was even a woman in because she accidentally superglued her hand to a bottle of superglue - ironic, but painful.

You sat patiently on Harrys lap, waiting for someone to escort you to a cubicle. You were freezing cold, to the point where your teeth were chattering - your outside body was giving off the opposite temperature. You tried to get as close to Harry's warmth as possible, pushing your body against his.

"You're alright baby." Harry shushed you, as you let out a small tremble.

"If I do die—"

"Which you won't." Harry chuckled.

"I know, but if I did I want you to know that I love you." You told him. Even though he's heard you say it a million times before, it still made his heart flutter as you spoke each word.

"I love you, baby." He kissed the side of your head. "But you're going to be just fine, so no more talking about you dying okay?"

"Why? It's only a natural thing." You pointed out.

"Sure, but I don't want to think of a world without my girl living in it. So zip it before I make you."

You never thought of dying as a world without Harry before now and it wasn't the time to start thinking about it either. It was a horrible thought and you understood why Harry didn't want you speak about it. That world would be so dark and empty and you hated thinking about it.

Harry was called to the front desk to fill in some forms for you, since your hands were too cold and shaky to do it for yourself. He accidentally wrote 'Styles' as your second name, before realising his mistake and scribbling it out.

“Shit.” Harry went red in the face and chuckled over his silly mistake. His hand was shaky and you smiled at how he got so flustered over something so simple. You rested your hand on top of his, bringing his attention to you.

“One day.” You told him and he leaned to give you a kiss on the lips. You couldn’t help but feel like his lips were a future promise to make sure he wouldn’t have to scribble out his second name the next time it was written next to yours.

The doctor saw you shortly afterwards and you thanked your lucky stars that there was no injections or removal of any blood involved, Harry sticking with you the whole time. Turns out you were suffering from a moderate fever, but the doctor said with good rest it should pass. The doctor had given Harry permission to make a big fuss over you - explaining how he was going to love it and you were going to hate it - and to make sure to come back with even the slightest worsen of the fever. You got given a prescription list of various medications that you'd need to take over the next week or so. After collecting the drugs, you were back in the car on the way home.

"Told you you weren't going to die." Harry smiled, happy to have you still by his side, whilst holding your hand over the gear console.

"Unfortunate for you, I guess."

"Will you shut you, y’bloody nuisance. You know I can't do life without you, Y/N." He spoke softly, squeezing your hand tighter to assure you that he's going nowhere.

"Same here." You smile at him and he smirks back at you with his dimple-loving smile.

"You’ll always be it for me, baby." Harry speaks, before you drift back off to sleep.

Happily.

[moonlit-imagines]

Misbehavior (Part 1)

Jason Todd x batkid!reader

warnings:

a/n: tysm anon!!

prompt: anonymous: “Hello Lacey! Hope your doing great! Could I please request a bat family x batsis!reader where the reader is Kind of the middle child (I was thinking older than Damian but younger than Tim) and she’s always forgotten and in the back. Maybe some scenarios can be that no one listens when she talks or they forget to invite her to do stuff. So then one day she acts up in school like maybe punching someone for no good reason because she’s craving attention but instead of Bruce showing up to get her Jason shows up and he sees that she’s actually really sad and starts to question her until she tells him everything and maybe spills some tears and it ends with just Jason comforting her and cheering her up. Just some soft Jason for my soul! Also have a great day and I hope that you feel better and more motivated now after your break! 😘”

part 2

No matter what you did, none of your deeds went unnoticed. Good or bad.

You always heard how Dick was so independent, the one everyone should use as an example.

You always heard how Barbara could do it all, she never failed to impress.

You always heard how Jason was reckless, someone who needed to get his act together.

You always heard how Tim was such a prodigy, he was one of a kind.

You always heard how Steph was so determined, she had such amazing goals.

You always heard that Cass was perfect, they’d never change a thing about her.

You always heard that Duke was so strong, he’d never give up no matter what stood in his way.

You always heard that Damian was dangerous, a kid that needed to be guided.

But what about you? What did they hear about you? Nothing. No one ever spoke of you, they didn’t have the time. It seemed as if you were just unimpressive, there wasn’t one thing that needed to be mentioned. Stuck in the middle of a bunch of bats and birds, no way to stand out in the crowd.

Maybe not in a mask or a cowl, a dress or a suit, behind a computer or among the darkness, but there was one place you couldn’t be ignored...

You sat at your desk, picking at old tape with the tip of your fingernail. The teacher had nothing interesting to say, so what was the point of being here? What made Gotham Academy so special that you just had to attend this place?

The uniform was overkill, the classes went nowhere, the students were too preppy, and you didn’t have a single thing in common with anyone here.

Anger was starting to bubble inside you as you continued your internal self-loathing. Your mind was only focused on the negative, but it was shifting from school back to home.

No one was ever there for you, not even on patrol. You’d called for backup several times on missions and nearly lost it all when you had to go in alone. If it were anyone else, a teammate would have met them in a heartbeat.

Your plans were always overshadowed whenever you tried to set up a mission or even just a day off. You wanted cookies? Too bad, Tim wants brownies. You wanted to watch a movie? Too bad, everyone chose a TV show. It was the little things that irked you the most. Half the time, you never even got the memo.

And what about when you all come back from patrol with all sorts of injuries and Alfred comes to patch you up? Well, not you. He’ll run to check on cuts and scrapes. Meanwhile, you had a broken wrist and a black eye.

You’d finally run out of things to pick at around your desk which resorted in you tapping instead. There was a brief bit of zoning out as you remembered the time that Damian’s plan for evading Killer Croc’s attack was to push you in the way. Or the time that Jason hid his guns in your bed for reasons he didn’t care to explain. Or when Dick drank the last of the milk and didn’t tell you until after you poured your cereal. Or when Tim told you that you weren’t fit for the mission he had been planning. Or when Bruce blatantly ignored the story you told out of pure excitement, giving you nothing but a “sounds like you had fun.”

While you were in a horrible daze, you felt a hand on your shoulder that snapped you out of it faster than the Barry Allen. Without even evaluating the situation, your reflexes caused you to turn and twist your classmates arm backwards as he screamed.

“Hey! Stop, ow, that hurts! Stop! Stop it!” You processed his words too late and knew exactly what was coming next.

“Y/N L/N!” You teacher shouted as you drew your hand back. “Dean’s office. Right now.” Her sharp voice sent a chill down your spine, not even the Joker could do that. You’d be able to explain the situation pretty easily, you just didn’t want to make it worse. But there was one ankle that sent you off the edge. Another student tripped you on your way through the aisles, and that student caught a fist to the face. The audience gasped and shouting from your teacher ensued, but you didn’t listen, you’d take the punishment at this point. So you walked right out and headed for the dean’s office without so much as a hall pass.

“Mx. l/n? What’s this about?” Dean Williams was surprised to say the least, you’d never been sent in for discipline before. Was there a certain way to do this?

“Well, I zoned out and some kid behind me grabbed my shoulder, I accidentally twisted his arm.” You retold your story, the abridged version. “But on my way out I punched a kid in the face because he tripped me. That one’s on me.”

“...Well,” the dean frowned at his obligations, but had to go through with some kind of punishment, “I’m going to have to suspend you for physical contact with a student. I’ll call your father to come pick you up.” You shrugged and slouched back in your chair, giving up on any hope of talking your way out of this. It might as well just happen. You listened to the clicking of the buttons on the dean’s phone as he typed in the Wayne Manor phone number, obviously reaching Alfred almost immediately.

“Wayne Manor.” You eard his faint voice through the speaker.

“Hello, this is Dean Williams from Gotham Academy, may I speak to Mr. Wayne? I have his child in my office.” Your dean explained over the phone, peeking back at your for a split second. You were completely unbothered, it was baffling.

“Is it Damian?” You heard him ask, causing an involuntary eye roll.

“Y/N, actually.” There was a long pause before someone else picked up the phone. “Mr. Wayne, this is Dean Williams at Gotham Academy. I have y/n sitting across from me right now, they seemed to have gotten themself into a physical altercation with two separate students, I have no choice but to suspend them.” You heard a deep sigh over the phone, then the handheld piece was handed to you.

“Bruce?” You asked.

“Really? Fighting at school?” He sounded unimpressed. Nothing new, even when you do something new.

“Something like that. Whoops.” He hung up on you right after that, so you handed the phone back and told your dean, “Guess they’ll get me soon.”

“You call your father by his first name?” Dean Williams had nosily questioned.

“I’m adopted.” He obviously didn’t know you as well as your more troublesome sibling, it was time he just minded his business.

After a good thirty minutes of silent waiting while listening to keyboard clacking and papers flipping by the front desk, the office door opened, and to your surprise, it was one of your brothers.

“I’m here for y/n.” He mumbled, signing the piece of paper and showing his ID.

“Alright, Mr. Harper, I just have to check some paperwork really quick...” The receptionist went into your file and checked for your emergency contacts. “You’re all set. Now, y/n has been suspended for two weeks. I suggest you get to the bottom of their little ‘outburst’ before they’re able to come back to school.” It actually pissed Jason off to hear her say that.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” His sarcasm wasn’t subtle. “Come on, kid.” Your brother gripped your arm and led you out of the office, noticing your bitter expression that he couldn’t even rationalize. Was that normal? “So what happened. Bruce just told me to come get you.”

“Of course he did.” You rolled your eyes on the brink of tears, he didn’t even come to get you himself. Jason opened the car door for you and nudged you inside, slamming it once you were clear.

“You better have a good reason,” he warned as he started the engine, “I was in the middle of a poker game.”

“Oh, yeah, ‘cause I’m such an inconvenience.” You were starting to remind him of himself. That was never a good thing.

“Okay, my bad. I didn’t mean it like that.” Jason began speeding down the block, you’d never once seen him obey a speed limit. You’d think someone with a fake ID and a death certificate would want to avoid any run-ins with the cops, but Gotham was just one of those cities.

“Yeah, right.” You reached for the radio knobs and felt Jason’s hand wrap around your wrist.

“No music until you explain yourself.” You fell back into your seat to pout, muttering some curses under your breath. “I won’t tell Bruce or anyone. I swear.”

“I just zoned out. Reflexes.” You bluntly replied.

“What?” He still didn’t have any context to go off of.

“I twisted someone’s arm backwards. Honest mistake.” Jason knew there was more to this story. “But on my way out of the classroom, I punched this kid who tried to trip me. That was on him.”

“As much as I condone payback, you can’t do that at school.” He sighed. “You’ve never been sent home before. That I know of. So why now?”

“Yeah, you know, maybe that’s the issue? You couldn’t tell me if I’ve ever gotten in trouble before. None of you could. You couldn’t tell me a definitive thing about me. When’s my birthday, Jason?” He was at a loss for words. “That’s what I thought.”

“So this was all for attention?” Jason asked. “There’s a hell of a lot of better ways to go about that.”

“Tried them all, this one barely even worked.” You replied with a crack in your voice. “How come none of you care about me? Why am I always looked over? I’m just like the rest of you. I put on that stupid suit every night and kick ass, I get my job done, I get good grades, I’m resourceful, I’m special—” You’d let that last one slip in your rant to your older brother, it shocked him so bad he stopped the car.

“I know what you mean.” Jason stared straight ahead at the empty road. “I felt the same way when I came back. After everyone was used to me being back, it was like nothing ever happened. Bruce just went back to calling me careless, irresponsible.”

“At least you get noticed, Jason. Your identifiable.” You turned to him with a pained look and he risked his confidence to look you in the eye. Once he did, he couldn’t look away. It hurt him to see someone so familiar to himself have tears running down their face because they felt forgotten. No kid should ever have to feel like that. That was why Bruce took him in. That was how Jason became Robin.

“Fuck this.” Jason hit the gas and turned the car around. “We’re getting ice cream. Do you like ice cream? That’s a serious question.”

“I...I guess.” You were somewhat confused by his sudden literal change in direction.

“Good. You’re my kid for today, all my attention goes to you. I’m sure Bruce won’t notice if you’re gone for a few hours.” Jason’s jaw dropped at his last comment. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No, you’re right and you should say it.”

taglist: @thatwaspossession // @ravenmoore14 // @thisetaernallove // @kinoko-kai //

[falloutjay]

Craig x cheery reader please (a little context: team Craig saved her from a bully, reader secretly thinks Craig doesn't actually care about her and Clyde and her are close but like platonically)

I had such a joy writing this, I just hope it still fits the request, as I am unsure if I hit the prompt.

I hope you enjoy it nevertheless! <3

__________________________________

Craig x Cheery!Reader

“Can’t you just leave me alone?” You said annoyed.

Why wouldn’t Francis just leave you alone you wondered. You never said anything mean, more like the opposite. You were just a really friendly classmate that never said anything mean to anyone. So why out of all people Francis decided to pick you to bully was a mystery to you.

“I bet you’re only so friendly because in reality, no one loves you.” You decided that just ignoring him would probably be the best course of action, but once you kept quiet, it agitated Francis only more.

He slammed you against the lockers to your right and kept you trapped there. You actually felt terrified. Before anything could happen, a monotonous and nasal voice to your left demanded your attention.

“Francis, you’re blocking my locker.”

“Fuck off Craig, I’m busy.” Behind Craig was his gang, consisting of Clyde Donovan, Token Black, Tweek Tweak, and Jimmy Valmer.

You never really interacted with them, as they just stayed in their small group. “You’re blocking my locker.” Craig repeated. “And I said I don’t-“ Francis couldn’t get any further before Craig shoved him.

“Fuck off asshole. Get lost before we hurt you.” Craig's expression was bored as always and he flipped Francis the middle finger, his trademark.

“This ain’t over (L/N)!” Francis cursed under his breath before he took off. Nervously you turned to Craig and his friends with a big smile stretched across your face.

“Oh, thank you, Craig!” He just shrugged and carefully pushed you aside to get to his locker, which you just were pinned against. “You can’t get pushed around like that Y/N.” Clyde said with worry in his voice.

“I-Its fine, really.” You laughed nervously. “No, it’s not. Clyde is right, you shouldn’t be pushed around like that. Why don’t you sit at lunch with us?” Token now chirped in too and your eyes widened at the proposition. “I’d love too!” You beamed.

It had been ages since that day, and you still thought about that day ever so often. Francis left you alone after that day since you always hung around Craig and those guys now. You had become great friends with the guys, and you were really close with Clyde.

You rested with him next to you on his bed in just this moment. “Whatcha thinking about, Happy?” Happy was a special nickname given to you by Clyde.

You two were born mood makers and could make anyone smile, even the stoic Craig Tucker. “Nothing important. Just thinking about when you guys invited me to come sit with you.”

“Ahh, that was a great day.” Clyde mumbled. It was a regular thing for you and Clyde to just hang out in one of your bedrooms, chilling on the bed, and talk about all kinds of stuff.

“So, how’s it going with Bebe?” You asked him. “Great, thanks for that restaurant tip. She loved it there.”

“I went there with my parents, and I thought you could impress her with it.” You two high-fived, without getting up. You really couldn’t wish for a better friend than Clyde.

“So, how’s your love life going?” Aaand now you hated him. “Ahh, don’t ask. It’s shit.” Clyde furrowed his eyebrows; not like you could see. “Is it really that bad?”

“Yeah.”

“But why?”

“Clyde! You can’t just ask people that!” You said in a whiney tone.

“Ah come on Happy, tell me. I’m your best friend. Who are you gonna tell besides me?” He had a point, you thought. You propped yourself up on one elbow and gave him a death glare.

“If you talk, you’re a dead man, Donovan.” Clyde sat up and leaned on the bedframe.

“I won’t say a word.” You took a deep breath and began explaining. “So, you know…I mean I…ehhh…I kinda like someone from our friends’ group.”

“I’m sorry, Happy, but I’m already taken.” Clyde said in a dramatic fashion. You flipped him the bird, something you copied from Craig but you only used it against Clyde, since he never took it personally.

“No. Not you… Its… I like…Craig, even if I don’t think he cares that much about me.” When you said the name, it was barely more than a whisper, but Clyde still heard it. His grin widened and he seemed hyped.

His hands landed on his cheeks with a faint slapping noise.

“Oh my god. My two best friends wanna bang each other.”

“What.”

“What.” Clyde’s happy expression became a shocked one, once he noticed what he just blurted out. “So, Craig likes me?” You asked confused.

“No! I mean…Yes, but I didn’t say it!” He stressed the “I” in particular. You felt shocked. You always thought Craig didn’t like you all that much, because he was always a little cold to you and he barely interacted with you.

“But I thought he didn’t like me.” Clyde gave himself a facepalm, cursing himself out for having spilled the tea. “Well, since I am already fucked… He does like you and shit. He is just…Bad at showing it. Like, he tries to interact so little with you, because he’s afraid you will notice how you make him blush and shit.”

“I-” You pointed with your finger at yourself. “Make him blush?” You questioned. “Yes, Happy, you do. Didn’t know you’re blind.” He said and you two heard the doorbell. The others had arrived.

You had gone with Clyde immediately after school, while the other wanted to join later for the video game night. Clyde got up from the bed and stopped at his room door.

“I swear, if you snitch on me, I'll kill you. I love you, but I won't hesitate bitch.” He pointed a finger pistol at you and pretended to shoot you. You pretended to get shot and rolled off the bed in a slow and dramatic manner.

You two laughed before Clyde sprinted downstairs to let the others in. You remained on the floor, pretending to be a corpse. When the others came into the room, Token was the one to question what you were doing.

“Clyde shot me.” You explained and pretended to be in severe pain. “Cl-Clyde. Don’t shoot o-our only o-o-other fu-funny friend.” Jimmy mocked him and Clyde pretended to laugh.

“Haha, very funny.” He commented dryly. You got up and sat back down on the bed.

“You can put your sleeping bags down here and then you can help me make your pizza in the kitchen.” Clyde instructed and gave you a wink. You quickly caught onto what he was trying to do and mouthed a big fat “NO.” to him, but he just smiled.

“Ah fuck you, Clyde.” You thought. You loved him to death, but right now he was being an annoying bitch, that tried saving his skin by having you confess so Craig wouldn’t figure out that the brown-haired snitched.

You just kept sitting on the bed, while the guys one by one left the room. Craig was the last one to leave but he stopped once he saw that you stayed on the bed.

“Y/N, don’t you wanna come with us?” He questioned, but you shrugged. “I dunno. Kinda busy thinking about stuff.” You smiled warmly. “Thinking about what?” Craig left the door ajar and stepped back into the room to lean on Clyde’s white Ikea dresser, which was opposite of you.

“I think I wanna ask a guy o-out, but I don’t really know how to do that. Any tips?” You asked in your sweetest and innocent voice. You really prayed that Clyde was correct but why shouldn’t he be.

But there still was this tiny fear in the back of your head that you were gonna make a fool of yourself in a few seconds.

“Well…” Craig seemed to think about it for a second. “Personally, I would just appreciate it if someone would just straight up ask me, you know? This whole playing around shit is stupid if you ask me.” You nodded.

“Hey, Craig?”

“Yeah?” He asked and shifted his gaze from the window to your innocent face.

“Would you maybe go out with me?” You asked and felt like you just lost all ground beneath your feet. For a short second, you felt like you were going to faint.

But once you saw that a faint shade of pink appeared on his face, you felt giddy, the butterflies in your stomach were going wild. Craig cleared his throat, before answering with a red face; “Y-Yeah sure. What about tomorrow? If you want, I’ll walk you home and we can hang out alone.”

You nodded; a big grin spread across your face. “That sounds amazing.” Craig offered you his hand and you stared at it for a second.

“Maybe we should go downstairs. You know…Otherwise, Clyde will choose our pizza toppings.”

“And we don’t want that, do we?” You asked you both laughed. You took Craig's hand and admired how warm it was.

“I’m surprised you like me. I always thought you didn’t care about me.” You whispered. Craig laughed, which caught you by surprise. “I'm just not good at these type of things.” He admitted sheepishly and scratched his neck.

“I guess.” You laughed to make the situation less awkward. Craig started leading you downstairs, not letting go of your hand. In the kitchen you found the others, fighting about their pizza toppings. Clyde was the only one to notice how you both had that light shade of pink lingering on your cheeks and that you held hands.

He smiled brightly and then made space for you two to also make your own pizza. The rest of the night went by peacefully, you guys played video games, snacked food, and talked about stupid stuff. The main entertainment was Jimmy, Clyde and you of course, as you were just the life of every get-together.

Craig watched you and Clyde in glee, as you and Clyde were playing Just Dance together like your life depended on it. He was sooo happy to now have you, someone who could break his stoic façade.

[worminstuff]

The Balcony of the Treehouse Pt.6

sleepy bois x reader au

no warnings:)

also merry christmas:)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

“Is that good or bad” Y/n asked Techno, her gaze soft.

“I'm not sure. He was really cool but..” Techno shrugged his shoulders.

It was currently the next day, and Y/n was accompanying Techno in the treehouse. They were currently discussing Techno’s new friend as of yesterday, Bo. Sam's older son.

Apparently Bo was sorta like Techno in some ways. They were both pretty shy at first but then found some common interest, and became rather comfortable pretty fast. Bo even let Techno ramble about Y/n for a bit and also said he would totally wanna meet her too.

“He's just not me.” Y/n grinned cockily and Techno pushed her shoulder.

“Right.” he rolled his eyes. “How was it with the other boys?”

“It was alright. Surprisingly very chill. I guess Tommy and Tubbo had really tired themselves out in the morning beforehand.” she shrugged. She was telling the truth, they slept for quite a while and were only awake for about an hour before everyone else got back.

“What about Will?” Techno wondered how she handled being around him while he was still..angsty.

Y/n shrugged again. She didn't really want to tell him about the kitchen and how they talked for the whole tiny Tommy and Tubbo napped. Or the cigarettes.

She couldn't stop thinking about how she was sitting on the counter and how he seemed so calm and sweet as if nothing happened.

She just had no idea, he was doing it on purpose. Will figures, if he can ignore his protective and jealous feelings, and maybe just try to get a connection with her. He may actually be able to get somewhere. Techno has the higher ground, he spends all his time with her and he has for years. Wilbur's only just started to in the past year and a half or so.

Wilbur doubts Techno actually has genuine feelings for Y/n. He has no way of genuinely knowing. It's just sort of a hunch. Or a hope maybe.

“He actually asked if i wanted to go to that bonfire thing with him..” her voice was almost a mumble. Just after she said she thought it would be fun, Wilbur explained the next evening they were going down to the beach to have a bonfire and hangout and chill. He said they do it often and it's always really fun.

Techno looked at her, slightly surprised. She wanted to hangout with Wilbur? No way.

“And you said..no..right?” his brows furrowed.

“Well..wait why would I say no?” she looked at him. Her brows furrowed also.

“Well obviously..I- he- what?” Techno shook his head.

“What do you mean what? Why would I have said no? It sounds fun.” she crossed her arms.

Techno stared at her for a moment. He slid a bit forward, so he was a bit closer. He leaned his elbows on his knees and rested his head on his hands. Y/n stared back questioningly.

“Odds.” he stated, staring right into her eyes.

“Techno!” Y/n pushed his leg a bit, and looked away, slightly mad. “What the hell?!”

Odds was something they created when they were young, similar to the game odds, it ends with saying a number between certain odds to help decide something.except that's usually for something like a dare. In this case, they used it in sort of flip of a coin situations, but only when one of them thought it was really really important. And the person that calls odds, gets to pick the odds, ex. 1 through 5 or 1 through 10 etc. they did this so they didn't argue about situations sorta like this.

“If you say the same number as me, 1 through 4, you stay. If not, you can go. odds on your side.” he had 0 emotion to his features.

“That's not fair!” she frowned.

“It is though. I called it.” he shrugged, almost smiling. Almost.

Y/n huffed. “Fine.”

Techno counted them down and on the count of three,

“Two.” they spoke at the same time.

“Fuck!” Y/n hit his knee as Techno grinned. Crisis averted. Or so he thought.

Techno grinned as she huffed and crossed her arms with a pout, shooting daggers with her eyes.

“Hey, it's not that bad! Now I can read you that book you got me.” Techno had a happy little grin on his face.

“Oh no, i'm definitely going.” Y/n said. His smile disappeared instantly.

“What? But- but odds?” his shoulders sank. Y/n alone with will in a car, and then alone with him and his friends, at a bonfire. There would be beer and shit everywhere! He just wanted her with him, safe away from Wilbur's scummy friends.

“I told Will I would! I can't go back on that. That's so rude.” she looked at him with puppy eyes.

Techno glared slightly, looked away, then looked back. She knew the eyes work, he acts all tough but he's too soft for it not to work.

“Okay. but i want you back here, when it's over. Not your house, not inside our house. Treehouse.” he pointed to the floor.

“And then normal sleepover?” Y/n smiled a little.

Techno's face softened as he saw her smile. He tried not to match her smile while shaking his head a little.

“Sure.”

^^^^^^^^^^

“Who's going this time?” Phil asked Wilbur.

It was around 5 or 5:30 and everyone was sat around the dining room table having dinner like they always do. Phil was currently discussing the bonfire with Wilbur, because he wanted to make a guesstimate in his head for how long Will would be gone using context clues. Because Will was never really home by the times he says he will.

“The usual group” Wilbur pointed his fork at his plate. “Oh! And Y/n”

Wilbur looked to her with a grin. Phil, for a lack of better words, looked as if one of his kids just had a pregnancy scare.

“Sorry, “ Phil shook his head slightly, “say that again?”

“Or don't.” Techno mumbled, Y/n jabbed him in the side with her elbow.

“I'm going along! I haven't done anything fun lately so Wilbur offered to let me tag along. It'll be fun.”Y/n shrugged.

Wilbur was beaming, Techno was silently livid, and Phil was looking in between the two very nervously.

The reason Techno was so genuinely angry was because Wilbur looked so smug when they sat down at the table. His grin was from ear to ear and he was excited to talk to Y/n about when she wanted to go and if she needed anything from her house, and the entire time Techno sat and felt his anger levels rise. His ears were hot, his shoulders tense and not a smile in sight.

He wanted to smack the smirk of his brother's face to be frank.

Techno knew what was going to happen. She was going to go with him, and have an amazing time. Great, right? Wrong. Clear to Techno, this was some evil master plan. Wilbur was going to give her more friends she would only go see with him. So when she wanted to spend time with these new people she had to also see him. And obviously at first she'll be all she so he gets to confront her and break her out of her shell. Techno knows how social Y/n can be, and she loves meeting new people! He hated to say it, but his brother was a genius.

Techno's fingers were starting to tremble.

What if she did like them? And wanted to see them more? What if they're cooler than him and what if they do drugs? Y/n wouldn't do drugs..would she?

His breath was slowly starting to catch up on him. He excused himself quickly and made his way off to the bathroom.

The crisp sound of the door creaking filled his ears as his back slid against it till he was on the floor.

His mind was running rampant.

How well does he really know Y/n? What could she possibly want with a bonfire when she has him and the treehouse? Is he not enough for her? Should he try to make more friends?

What was wrong with him?

He clutched his leg as he silently shook and took tiny shallow breaths.

Soon enough, just as he was starting to be able to allow more air into his lungs there was a soft knock on the door.

“Techno?..” Phil's voice was soft on the other side of the door.

Techno sniffled as he stood, he brushed himself off, and took a deep breath pushing all emotion from his features. He reached over and flushed the toilet a few feet in front of him, then he ran the sink for a moment before opening the door with one hand wiping on his leg.

“Hm?” he raised his brows.

Phil stared at him, analyzing his face fully. He looked fine, sort of. He looks normal to anyone who isn't his father per say. Phil could see behind his cold eyes he had been crying. No matter how much he pushed his emotions down, he couldn't push away the puffy eye bags or the glossy sheen, though they were actually very subtle.

A simple arm was raised and Techno immediately fell into him, deadweight in his arms. Phil held him tightly, silently. He pressed his cheek onto Techno's head, brushing down the unruly tangles in his hair.

There were no words spoken, they stood silently. Phil knew Techno wasn't going to tell him anything so he did not bear to try.

A little bit of time passed, and they broke apart to make their way back when Phil leaned over,

“Laugh with me like we said something funny. Trust me.”

Techno stared at him for a moment, and then giggled softly. Phil joined him and their laughs were terribly fake which caused more laughter and soon it became real laughter as they were walking into the dining room.

Y/n was staring at a babbling Tommy, while Wilbur was on his phone. Y/n immediately looked to Techno once he was in the room, a worried look on her eyes that disappeared as she saw his face. She was worried for nothing.

Phil patted Techno's back softly as they both picked up their plates to clean them, Tommy following suit with his father and older brother. Will and Y/n stood to do the same.

“Alright dad, think we're gonna head off.” Wilbur said, his grin authentic.

Phil nodded, “Right, don't forget to send me a ping when you get there and on your way home.” he pointed a winger between the pair, both nodded.

Techno stared aimlessly as he watched his girl walk out the door with his brother.

He hoped she was going to have fun.

As soon as both doors to the front seats of Will's car closed, Wilbur looked at her excitedly.

He turned the car on and pulled from the driveway, “Are we excited?”

“You can say that.” her smile was small.

“Don't be nervous, you're gonna love them and they're gonna love you. It's gonna be great.”

Y/n stared at him for a moment, he read her so easily. He looked so giddy. Was it because of her? She didn't want to get cocky but she'd never seen him this excited to see his friends before.

Wilbur's mind was running wild, he was alone with her for once, and then she got to hangout with his people. He even had a small surprise for her that he was even more excited for.

Y/n was progressively getting more and more nervous as they drove silently. She was starting to overthink. As she listened to her thoughts quietly, she failed to notice her leg start to bounce.

Will placed a gentle hand on her knee, “None of that. Nothing to be worried over. I wouldn't have asked you to come if i didn't know for a fact they'd like you.” his eyes broke away from the road momentarily. Y/n nodded. She trusted him.

Soon the smell of saltwater filled the car. Y/n took a quiet deep breath. Letting it fill her lungs. She slowly calmed herself, trying not to think of the hand on her knee, it would only fuel her nervous fire.

Y/n felt strange being here without Techno. It felt wrong. She rarely ever goes anywhere he isn't. He's practically glued to her 85% of the time.

Which was why when she was first meeting Wilbur's “crew”, she felt like a fish out of water.

Even with Wilbur's comforting hand holding hers, she felt stiff and awkward. They were all intimidating, the dudes were tall and confident and the girls were all gorgeous and sweet. Confident too.

She did notice, one of the boys seemed much more approachable. He stood at the back of the group while introductions were going around, she learned his name was Eret and he was one of Wilbur's newer friends but he was really cool.

Wilbur beamed at Y/n as he told her about his friends, his hand was still gentle and it made her smile.

Wilbur was happy she was getting a bit comfortable.

Once they felt everyone had been thoroughly introduced, they all started placing blankets on the sand around the large fire they'd made before Will and her had arrived.

Wilbur set down a blanket he brought and motioned for her to sit with him. When she sat down, he leaned over to speak into her ear, “See, nothing to worry about, yeah?”

He leaned away, showing her a grin. She smiled and shook her head at his silly little grin.

This was really fun.

She loved hearing these kids talk, there was even one girl like her whose parents were also never home. She liked her. The girl even offered that they go drive around some time! When she said that, Y/n of course nodded eagerly.

Wilbur, well he couldn't keep his eyes off her. He loved seeing her like this, it was like she was in her element. Meeting new people and making connections. It's a shame Techno has hogged her from people for so long. He resented him for that. To be fair, it's been like that since they've met. Wilbur saw her all the time, but only in brief interactions up until highschool.

She was so sweet, excited to talk to all of them even though he knew she was nervous, and Wilbur knew his friends loved her already. How could they not?

Wilbur was about to try to get her to talk to him for a little, seeing as how they'd been there for almost 45 minutes already and had barely spoken to him, but he was taped on the shoulder as a signal there was about to be a cigarette break out in the parking lot.

Wilbur stood, and leaned down to Y/n whispering to her where he was going. Just before he was about to go, he placed a soft kiss to her forehead.

Her eyes were wide.

“Look a bit..surprised there?” it was Eret, he sat down on the blanket next to Y/n just after seeing Will was about to go for a butt. He didn't want Y/n to sit all alone.

“I um..no yeah he just..its nothing.” Y/n laughed at her own lack of words, and Eret did too.

“I take it you two aren't official or anything?” his voice was low, and almost gravely but it was still so comforting.

Y/n knew he didn't mean it as if he were trying to make a move on her, he sounded genuinely curious.

“No it's..complicated. Very complicated.” Y/n stared at the fire.

“If I'm not prying, how so? You both seem..really..content together.” he looked from her to the fire.

“I..well his brother is my..best friend and he..”

“He..?” Eret leaned in a little.

“Well i don't know what he is to me really.” she looked at him, her face in question at her own realization.

“Well I know for a fact, he's infatuated with you.”

Y/ns eyes were wide again, “what?”

“Oh he's always going on about you.” Eret had a cheeky grin, almost like Will’s she thought, “He's been talking about you meeting all of us since he asked you yesterday. Not to mention he’s..” Eret stopped himself. He got carried away in his little ramble.

“He's what?” Y/n was confused why he stopped himself.

“No no, I really shouldn't have said anything.” he waved his hand as if he were brushing away his words.

Y/n groaned and threw her head back, “You can't do that!”

Eret laughed, “I'm sorry!”

“Tell me please.” she looked at him with pleading eyes.

Eret stared at her for a moment and sighed. “He's in love with you. But i don't know if you know that or not..so..” she did not. “I think I'm the only one hes told, but he was so...I don't know how to explain it. When he told me he sounded like he was pouring his heart out.” Eret’s eyes were on the fire.

He was in love with her?

Y/ns heart ached. No wonder he was so...hurt. It was her fault too.

As if on cue, (this boy was terribly good with timing) she felt a familiar hand on her shoulder as it slid around her shoulders. Will pulled her to his chest as he sat behind her. He smelled of smoke, but it was comforting. Before she thought about it, or what they were doing, she leaned back into him. The rest of the group took back their seats and conversion rose again.

Y/n an Wilbur sat listening quietly until she heard Will's voice in her ear.

“Chatting it up with Eret while I was gone?” his arm was still across her chest, his hand on her shoulder.

“I was, he's really nice.” she turned to look at him.

“Yeah?” he smiled at her in the dim light of the fire. She smiled back and nodded.

Wilbur stared at her a moment, “How about..we get out of here, and I show you another pretty place?” he was still smiling, but his eyes were nervous for a response.

“Sure. Sounds fun.” she gave him a reassuring smile.

Wilbur was quick to get up. Telling the group they were heading off, a little too excitedly.

Before Wilbur could pull her away, she quickly got all of the girls numbers and was even added to a group chat. She was beaming once they reached the car.

“And she even told me that i could go and hangout when they went to her house! Isn't that so sweet.” she looked at Will towards the end of her sentence to see he was already staring at her, his hand on the wheel in front of him.

His lip was in between his teeth, “Mhm. I knew you'd get along swimmingly with them.”

Y/n giggled.

“So where are we going?” she smiled to herself as Wilbur put his hand on her knee.

“Not saying, but, it's not far at all. We're practically there.” he was exaggerating, but the ride wasn't long at all.

Even though he wasn't, Wilbur felt as if he was driving slow. He felt like time was still, and he was glad. He wanted this to last as long as it could.

Y/n would have never expected what she saw, she was expecting a pretty clif with a view, or something like that.

He brought her to a flower field.

He parked the car on the side of the road towards the middle of the field.

Once they'd both stepped out, Wilbur went to her side.

“Up you go, turn around.” he motioned up at the top of his car. Y/n stared at him for a moment before turning around and letting him hoist her up so she could climb on top of the car. He climbed up after her and sat beside her.

For a little while, Y/n stared at the way the moonlight was casting a blue white onto the field and all the flowers. Wilbur stared at her. They sat this way for a little while but Y/n was the first to break the silence.

“A little birdy..told me something interesting.” she looked at him.

“Hm?” he hummed.

“Is it hard?” Y/n was staring at the moon, her hand was picking at the seam of her jeans.

“Is what hard?” Wilbur stared at her feet as they swung back and forth.

“..being in love with me.” she looked up at him, her eyes starry.

“Maybe. But it doesn't have to be.”

[junicai]

who taught you that?

| order no. | 4/21

| summary | Aria's Korean has improved greatly since stepping off the plane to Korea. But sometimes, the lingo still trips her up - in interesting ways.

| word count | 2.3k

| warnings | Sexual innuendos

| era | circa. January 2017

The cushions had been collected from throughout the dorm; blankets pulled from beds and from the top shelves of wardrobes to amass a large pile in the centre of the living room. The members stood around in varying degrees of formal clothing;

Some still in their clothes that they had worn for the promotion earlier on in the day, and others having stripped and changed into leggings and old shorts and faded t-shirts as soon as they had stepped foot into their home.

Aria had waited for the others to use the bathroom before she had slid in quietly afterwards, knowing that she took the longest in the shower and not wanting to use a large amount of the hot water.

Sure, the spray of water ran a little icy towards the end, but she'd read that it was good for your pores to turn the shower head cold at the end of a haircare routine anyway, so she wasn't complaining.

She'd shuffled her way out of the bathroom and into her room, where she immediately fluffed out the excess water still in her hair, leaving it damp and loose to dry on her shoulders, prior to tugging on a stolen sweatshirt and a pair of cotton shorts that had been retired to sleep status months ago.

The hoodie was warm, and Aria tugged it around her neck to fight the chill of her damp hair, shuffling out into the living room with a blanket fisted in her hand and a pillow tucked underneath her other arm.

"Do you want to just toss that onto the couch, there, and go dry your hair?" Doyoung paced over to Aria, hands taking the bedding from hers already.

"Oh, no, it's okay." Aria shook her head, moving to help him flatten out her blanket onto the carpet. They were building a blanket fort, of a kind.

The movie night had been Taeyong's idea - a bonding experience he said. Donghyuck had jumped at the idea of constructing a fortress of soft and fluffy bedding, and well. No one was going to turn him down.

"You'll catch a chill, go dry your hair." Doyoung reprimanded, gently but firmly tugging the edge of the blanket from her grip.

"My hair dryer is broken," Aria winced.

"Well why didn't you just say that?" He looked up at her briefly, shooing her towards his own room. "Go, you can use mine. I think Jaehyun's in there, maybe he can help."

Aria nodded, mollified, and made her way into Doyoung's room. She passed Taeil in the hallway, who patted her back lightly in greeting. The doorway was cracked open, so she knocked once before tentatively pushing it open.

There, as Doyoung had predicted, was Jaehyun, sitting on his bed and scrolling through something on his phone. He looked up when Aria knocked, and smiled, locking his phone and dropping it into his lap.

"Hey, Akari. What's up?" He asked.

"Uh," Aria wrung her hands in front of her. "Do you know where Doyoung oppa's hairdryer is? He told me I could use it because mine is broken," She trailed off.

"Yeah! Sure, give me a moment." Jaehyun pushed himself off the bed, crouching down in front of the storage unit beside Doyoung's bed and pulling open the bottom drawer. There, beneath several half empty bottles of varying brands of hair conditioner and toning shampoo was the hairdryer, which he pulled out with a flourish.

"There we go. Do you need help or?"

Aria shook her head. "Oh no, it's alright. I'll be out quickly, you can go join them in the living room."

"Yeah, no problem. Don't take too long though, or else I think Donghyuck will pick the movie again, and last time," Jaehyun grimaced. "That didn't end very well."

Aria could remember. Last time, Donghyuck had insisted on watching a new horror film that had recently come out in the cinemas; one that Aria never actually ended up watching in favor of burying her head in Yuta's shoulder, his hands covering her ears as the characters on the screen screamed blue murder.

Hilariously though, Donghyuck hadn't fared much better, despite the movie being his own choice, and the two maknaes ended up sharing a bed for the following three days - unable to sleep alone.

Aria agreed, and as soon as Jaehyun had left the bedroom she plugged in the hairdryer and began running her fingers through her hair to detangle any knots.

She pulled the device away from her head when the air grew too hot for her to handle, and spent a couple seconds trying to figure out how to turn down the heat. After giving up on the endeavor though, Aria just decided to get through it as quickly as possible.

She blew out every strand until it was only slightly damp and no longer dripping with water, and tugged her hair into two plaits on either side of her head.

The hairdryer was pushed back into the bottom drawer of the storage unit, and Aria closed the door into Doyoung's bedroom behind her as she left the room.

Entering back into the kitchen, she realized that Mark, Sicheng and Jaehyun had already claimed their spots on the floor and singular armchair respectively.

Looking over, Taeyong and Doyoung were leaning against the counter with Taeil; Donghyuck emerging from behind the wall to join them.

Aria padded over to the second group, wanting to grab a glass of water prior to settling down for the movie and becoming reluctant to move less she lose her comfortable position.

As she made her way across into the kitchen, she caught the tail end of Donghyuck's whining tirade, his hands clutching onto the back of Doyoung's sweatshirt.

"But hyung, I'm hungry." He pouted, pulling on the material.

"It's late, Hyuck, you'll feel sick if you eat this late."

Donghyuck's pout deepened. "But not if I eat something that isn't sugary."

"No."

"Please."

"No."

"Please!"

Doyoung sighed a long suffering sigh. "Fine."

Donghyuck cheered, squeezing Doyoung in a hug in thanks. "Thank you thank you!"

Doyoung grumbled something about raising him wrong with no manners at all, placated by Taeil's hand rubbing soothing circles on his shoulder.

Taeyong just turned away, hiding his grin into the glass of water he was sipping.

"Hm," Donghyuck pondered, fingers tapping his chin. "What to eat, what to find."

Aria's head popped into the conversation. "Do you want to eat ramen?"

Taeyong choked on his water.

"What!" Donghyuck whipped around, hand landing on his chest.

Aria stumbled back slightly, eyes wide and bewildered. "R-ramen? Ramen noodles? Do you, want to, eat them?" She turned to Taeil. "Am I saying that right?"

"Saying what right?"

"Do you want to eat ramen?" Aria sounded out each syllable carefully, thinking it was an issue with her pronunciation. She was still learning Korean - it has improved greatly, but there were still issues that arose occasionally.

"Don't say it again!"

"What? What am I saying!" Aria spun, looking at the four men who were staring back at her with wide eyes.

Taeyong cleared his throat, having recovered from his coughing fit. "It's just, uh, it's nothing."

Aria's face fell. "I thought my Korean was getting better though.."

Doyoung floundered slightly. "It is! Oh it's a million times better; it's not that, Aria. It's not that at all, it's just that - that - hyung, you explain."

Taeyong fixed Doyoung with an affronted look, "You explain!"

"I'll explain," Taeil held out placating hands. "You're scaring her."

It was true. Aria's head was whipping back and forth between the two, the confused crease between her eyebrows only growing deeper and deeper.

"Aria, the phrase that you used, is, generally used in such a context that would mean you'd like to take the other person home - for the night." Taeil slowly explained.

Aria nodded in tandem. "Like a sleepover?"

Donghyuck smacked his hand to his face, dragging it down. "You asked me if I wanted to sleep with you."

Aria's shriek brought yells from the other boys.

"What!"

"What is it!"

"Who's dead!"

The three boys in the living room received no response other than a red faced Aria bursting in, immediately burrowing herself beneath a mountain of blankets and a cackling Donghyuck following her.

"What's happened?" Mark questioned, wide eyed.

Doyoung entered, trailing a hand down his face with his eyes closed. "Nothing, Mark. Nothing at all."

Mark looked over at the mound of blankets that was currently Aria. "Uh, okay?"

As the conversation faded into background noise, Jaehyun shuffled over to Aria's blanketed form.

"Ari? Are you okay?"

"Fine!" She squeaked.

"Are you sure?"

Aria's head popped out from a gap in the blankets. Her cheeks were still flushed a bright red. "Mhm! Totally fine!"

Jaehyun regarded her suspiciously, looking her up and down. Aria's eyes begged him to drop it, pleading with him not here, not here please, don't bring it up here, and he conceded.

Sitting back onto the couch, he pushed himself into the arm slightly, making room for an extra person to sit beside him without saying a word, and Aria gratefully slid out from her blanket hideout and into his arms.

Jaehyun pulled one of the blankets from the floor up over the both of them as they shuffled about for a moment, finding a comfortable position.

Taeil, who had settled onto a mattress of sorts that had been constructed on the floor with Taeyong and Doyoung resting comfortably on either side, took a look around the room.

"Is everyone ready? Drinks, snacks?" He questioned, knowing the uproar that would occur should someone get up in the middle of the film.

After receiving the general consensus of yeses, he clicked onto the movie, and pressed play.

The opening scene of Train to Busan lit up the television screen, and Aria promptly pulled the blanket back up over her head. She could feel Jaehyun chuckle beside her, and a strong arm encircled her waist to pull her against him tighter.

Aria stayed that way throughout the entirety of the film. Midway through, Yuta's hand found it's way onto her knee, rubbing soothing circles into the skin and Aria's own hand slipped out from underneath the blanket to clasp his hand in her own.

For once, she was glad that Korean wasn't her native language, because it meant that when Yuta began speaking to her in soft, gentle tones, the Japanese drowned out the Korean and made it easier for her to pretend that there wasn't a zombie apocalypse happening on the screen right in front of her.

It felt like an eternity, with Jaehyun's arms tightening around her to warn her of a loud noise before it happened, and Yuta's soft murmurs trying to comfort her.

Eventually, the movie clicked off with a light snick and the living room was plunged into darkness. With the television no longer illuminating the room, the only light source came from the moonlight peeking through the gaps in the blinds; and slowly, the members began to stir.

Sicheng and Yuta stood up, the latter patting Aria's leg once, brushing dust from their legs and bending to snag the pillows they were lying against up to their chests.

Mark slowly rose from the floor, arms raising above his head and he rolled his neck with a crack that reverberated around the room.

Gradually, all the members bar two bid a goodnight and sleepily shuffled their way back to their own beds, bar Donghyuck, who followed Mark into his bed.

The movie might not have been his choice this evening, but that didn't change the fact that he was too prideful for his own good; and that meant watching the film in its entirety, even if it sacrificed two days of restful sleep.

Honestly, she fully expected to find Donghyuck in her own bed tomorrow, or be dragged into his.

Aria, still encircled in Jaehyun's arms, was reluctant to move. Here, she was warm, and comfortable, and her bed was most definitely cold, and she'd have to move around all her bedding to find a comfortable position.

Dithering over her options, she was taken by surprise when Jaehyun tightened his grip on her waist slightly, rolling over to position her more comfortably and safely away from the edge of the couch.

"Jae?" Aria whispered when he didn't let go. "Shouldn't we go to bed? It's pretty late."

"M'no." He mumbled. "I'm tired, let's just sleep here."

"Oh," Aria thought about it for a moment. Was this what her manager meant when she said that Aria would bond with the boys eventually?

"Yeah, yeah okay. Let's sleep here."

Aria ran a hand over Jaehyun's hair once, before snuggling back down into his warm embrace.

[shoutaaizawas]

For your prompt thing, bakugou, werewolf, "don't look"?

thank you for this what a good combo

↳ bakugou katsuki x reader → ❝puppy❞

event: au prompts summary: your boyfriend bakugou refuses to show you his wolf form and your starting to think it’s because he doesn’t trust you. word count: 2,244 tags/warnings: werewolf!au, arguments, light angst, insecurites, hurt/comfort, fluff a/n: posting in the afternoon and putting my taglist who am i?

Bakugou was stubborn, that was a fact. Bakugou was also a werewolf, the alpha of his pack. You had also been dating him for a few months now and he had refused to show you his wolf form, not for lack of you trying to convince him.

Initially, it had been a shock to find out that your boyfriend was a werewolf, I mean who wouldn’t be surprised. You had been friends with Bakugou before you started dating and you had never suspected anything. A few weeks into your relationship he told you. You felt sympathy for Bakugou, you knew he hated lying and even though hiding a secret wasn’t exactly lying you knew he felt bad about it.

In his defense, you had never asked if he was a werewolf. You had told Bakugou over and over that you understood why he couldn’t tell you right away and weren’t upset at all but he had been upset with himself for a while. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t use it to get some cuddles from him.

Bakugou had been open in explaining things about werewolves and their packs. He had even introduced you to his pack members which he pretended to be annoyed by but it was easy to see he cared about them.

There was one thing that he hadn’t shown you and that you were dying to see. His wolf form. At first, you had assumed he would have shown you when the time arose but it quickly became clear that he was avoiding showing you. Eventually, you asked him outright but he refused and would not give you a reason why he would just tell you to stop asking.

You’d be lying if you said that it didn’t hurt your feelings? Did he not trust you? Was it something you only did with someone you knew you were going to stay with? What if Bakugou wasn’t serious about staying with you?

It seemed inevitable that things would end in a fight. It might shock most people but you never really argued with Bakugou, at least not seriously, you usually agreed on most things, and even when petty subjects came up you both were quick to sort them out.

The two of you had been lounging around your apartment after dinner. Bakugou always cooked such amazing meals for you. You had been curled up in his arms watching TV when you brought it up. In retrospect, you should have brought it up another time or in the least, you should have expressed yourself better rather than just jumping to conclusions but hindsight was twenty-twenty.

“I want to see your wolf form.” You said looking up at him from your spot against his chest.

“I told you no.” He said not looking away from the screen.

“Katsuki.” You whined.

“I said no, how many time do I have to tell you before you get it through your thick skull?” He nearly growled.

“Oh, so I’m stupid?” You said sitting up.

“That’s not what I said.” He said as he sat up from his lounging position.

“That doesn’t mean it’s not what you meant.” You said you could already feel the angry tears welling in your eyes. You didn’t want to cry. “I’m starting to think the reason you won’t show me is because you don’t trust me.”

“Of course I trust you, how can you question that?” He said. “I just don’t want to show you, why can’t you just take ‘no’ for an answer?!”

“I’m starting to think the reason you don’t want to show me is because you don’t plan on keeping me around that long.” You said standing up. You had to get out of here, you wanted to be anywhere but here. Your emotions welled up in you and it felt like you couldn’t breathe. “I mean why would you want to, I’ve never been good enough for you.”

Before he could say anything you left, slamming the front door as you did. You ran as fast as you could down the city streets hoping he wouldn’t follow you. You were so stupid why had you brought it up? You knew you were having a bad day, sometimes it was impossible to push away the insecurities that plagued you. It was just so hard to imagine why someone like Bakugou would be with you. He was way out of your league and it was only a matter of time till he realized that, or maybe he already had.

It was dark and cold. The streets were empty. You had left so quickly you hadn’t grabbed a coat or your phone and now you weren’t even sure where you were.

“Well, well, well.” A voice came from the alley you were walking past. It felt like you had no control, freezing in place. “What are the chances that Bakugou’s mate would end up in our part of town.”

Before you even saw the person you could feel a chill down your spine. The figure stepped out of the alley to reveal a tall, intimidating man. Even with just one sentence of context, you were able to realize this was a bad situation. This must have been the rival pack Bakugou had mentioned. Why hadn’t you just stayed home?

“Why am I not surprised that idiot would let his mate end up on the wrong side of town?” His tone was condescending. Hearing someone call you his mate was odd, you had never heard Bakugou refer to you as that. “Or maybe it’s just you that’s stupid? I can’t blame you for wanting to be away from that mutt. He’s really intolerable.”

“Don’t talk about him like that.” You tried to sound intimidating but your voice was shaky.

“Aww how cute, defending his honor.” He mocked. “But still can’t understand the appeal of a weak human.”

The closer he approached the more scared you were. If you run there was no doubt he would chase you down and you knew there was no way you were faster than him. The man grabbed your chin between his fingers.

“Get your hands off my mate.” You heard a loud growl from behind you. The sound of Bakugou’s voice already making you feel safe.

The man in front of you smirked tightening his grip.

“Ah, just the man I was looking for.” He said.

“Don’t look,” Bakugou said, you knew he was talking to you.

You weren’t sure exactly what was going to happen but you listened to your boyfriend, closing your eyes. Everything happened so quickly, it got loud. Growling surrounded you and you felt fur brush past your hand as the man’s grip was released. It felt like forever and only a moment at the same time. You heard a loud yelp and whine.

You couldn’t stop yourself, your eyes opening scared that Bakugou had been hurt. In front of you stood a large blond wolf with familiar red eyes. There was a line of blood across his jaw as well as red-stained fur at his neck. You knew this was Bakugou. You could see the other wolf running off with his tail between his legs.

“Katsuki?” You said you could tell he was tense. Was it possible for a wolf to look ashamed? You knew he hadn’t wanted you to see him like this. You covered your eyes with your hands, a pointless move considering you had already seen him but you hope he understood it as you trying to respect his wishes. You wanted to see his wolf form but not like this.

You didn’t expect to feel a nudge against your hand. Opening your eyes you saw him pressing his face against your hand. The gentle touch brought you to tears, the events of the night catching up to you. You fell to your knees wrapping your arms around his furry neck, careful of the wound there. Your stomach dropped, if you hadn’t been so dramatic he wouldn’t have gotten hurt.

Bakugou made a noise before pointing his nose in a direction. You realized he probably wanted to go home. You spotted his clothes that had been tossed aside. You grabbed them and followed Bakugou home

Thankfully there were not many people out except for a few that gave you odd looks and one woman who told you to put your dog on a leash which earned a growl from Bakugou as you sheepishly apologized.

Once you returned to your apartment Bakugou took his clothes in his mouth and went into the other room before returning in his human form. The gash was still present on his jaw and now you could make out the bite marks on his neck which only served to bring your tears back.

“I’m sorry.” You sobbed, Bakugou moved towards you unable to resist comforting you. His strong arms wrapped around you pulling you to his chest.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said what I said.” He sighed. “I should have realized how I was making you feel.”

“I should have told you differently.” You said. “I should have just respected your choice. It’s my fault your hurt.”

“It’s not your fault,” Bakugou said firmly.

Bakugou’s hand brushed against your hair, pressing you even closer to him. After a moment his hand rested against your cheek, lifting your gaze to his.

“I thought that you would be scared of me when I’m like that and the thought of you looking at me like that terrified me more than anything else could.” He said. The vulnerability that he was showing you was overwhelming, you knew Bakugou could never do this with anyone else. “I love you so much and I hate that I could ever make you feel like your anything other than perfect for me. Because you are perfect. If anyone isn’t worthy, it’s me.”

“Don’t say that.” You said covering his hand on your cheek with your own. Bakugou leaned down pressing a kiss to your lips. “Let me patch you up?”

Bakugou nodded and you lead him to your bathroom, he took a seat on the counter as you grabbed your first aid kit. You stood between his legs, dabbing a disinfectant cloth against his cheek. You let out a sigh of guilt at how deep the wound on his neck looked.

“Don’t worry, I heal fast. It’ll be gone by tomorrow.” He said, placing a hand on your waist.

“I know but I still feel bad.” You said as you continued your work.

After a few silent moments, you recalled something that had been said tonight.

“You called me your mate.” You stated, not making direct eye contact with Bakugou but glancing at his expression from the corner of your eye.

“I did.” He said as if there was nothing to talk about.

“You’ve never called me that before.”

“Not in front of you.” He admitted.

“What does it mean? I mean I know what the word means but what does it mean from you?” You questioned, you could already feel your stomach flipping in nervousness.

“It’s your other half. Someone you intend on being with until you die.” He said, even though he tried to sound nonchalant you could tell he was nervous. Butterflies filled your stomach and you looked at him directly now.

“Until you die?” You questioned. You couldn’t ignore the bright blush on Bakugou’s cheeks as he tried to avoid looking at you.

“Uh, yeah.” He said. “I know it’s a lot that’s why I haven’t said it in front of you. Humans are different. For werewolves it’s hard for us to trust but once we do it’s unbreakable. Once I trusted you I knew you were the only one I’d ever love.”

For what felt like the millionth time tonight you teared up but now it was in happiness. You couldn’t stop yourself from hugging Bakugou tight as you could.

“I love you, and I don’t ever want to be with anyone else.” You said into his chest.

Bakugou pressed his face into your neck breathing deeply, hands gripping into your shirt.

Finally, after you had showered and changed into bed clothes you laid in bed beside Bakugou, gently tracing the lines and edges of his face taking in everything you loved about him. Bakugou’s hands rested on your waist holding you close to him.

“I was scared tonight, I tracked your scent and when I caught scent of that other wolf I thought-” He said.

“Shh, it’s okay.” You shushed him, cupping his cheek looking deeply into his red eyes. “I’m okay, I’m right here. It’s all over.”

“I know. I don’t ever want to do that again.” He said.

“Me either.” You said brushing your thumb against his face.

There was a peaceful silence as you enjoyed each other’s presence, soft breaths in time with each other.

“So will you show me your wolf form again?” You asked. “Not right now but later. As much as I’d love to snuggle with a wolf I think I prefer to cuddle with someone that can hold me back right now.” You teased.

“Yes.” Bakugou sighed rolling his eyes at your attempt at humor.

“Good, you’re a really cute puppy.” You smiled.

“Normally, I wouldn’t allow that but I’ll let that slide tonight.” He said in a low growl.

“Whatever you say, puppy.” You teased.

Bakugou sighed before pressing your head against his chest.

taglist: @sugarmaplewings-fics @lilkiwisfinest @ewwis @kandy1410 @moonlightaangel @winnies-headcannons @bakugousidehoe @paintedr0ses1 @toobsessedsstuff @spellboundxizi @ourladyofseijoh  @x0doodlebug0x @katsushimaa @mooncademia

[vesuvian-american-fics]

better with time. Ch 3

one hundred and seven years.

The year is what now? 850?! (AO3)

Words: 2192

The next morning, you were awoken early by a harsh kick to your cell’s rusted bars, dust dwindling down from the ceiling peppered your face as you were ripped from your dreamless sleep. Snapping your eyes open you sat up stiffly, your back aching from your new stubborn mattress. In front of you stood three imposing figures, Levi, Hange, and a taller man, blonde hair, blue eyes, thick eyebrows that sat atop a strong handsome face that screams, “I’m reliable you can count on me”. You found yourself anxious under his piercing gaze and oddly warm and generous smile.  

Sheepishly you smiled back at him and Hange, your gaze drifting right over the top of Levi’s head. You noticed his eyebrow raise suspiciously at your avoidant scan. He sucked his teeth before pulling out a seat for himself on the other side of the cell. Hange took a seat as well, while the new guy remained standing, further adding to his impressive aura. He oozed confidence and strength, something you hadn’t yet experienced in this magnitude. He had a strength about him not found in Levi or Hange, the strength of true leadership. Something about him just felt like you could follow him to the ends of the Earth if he asked, and you’d never regret such a decision. It was quite nerve wracking considering you knew nothing of him.  

“Hello. My name is Commander Erwin Smith.” His voice deep as you expected. You gave back a simple wave and looked to Hange to speak the words you couldn’t.  

“Ah, as you remember Commander, she has very little memory.” They explained, much to your relief. So, the Commander had a bit of a debriefing, that’s good. Saves you all some time.  

“Yes, well. We’re just about caught up on your situation miss, let me get you up to date. For starters, the year is 850. Does that happen to help you recall how long you were a titan?” He asked, a more serious concerned look to his features now. Thick brows knitted together in concentration and his sky-blue orbs piercing through you so fiercely you feared he could see through your clothes.  

But no, more importantly, did he say the year was 850? If there was one simple thing you remembered from the past it was the year. There was no way of continuously keeping time for so long out in the wilderness but you hadn’t imagined it would have been 107 years! Your eyes blew wide in confusion and fear, lips slightly parted as your mind worked to wrap around the news that you were a titan for over a century.  

The three of them seemed to pick up on your prickling anxiety and simultaneously they leaned in, anticipated anything. Shakily, you pointed towards the notepad and pen in Hange’s lap and they quickly slid it across the floor to you.  

Blinded by tears and dread, you struggled to sloppily write a number. The last year you remember. The year 743. It took Hange no time to decipher your chicken scratch and they mumbled under their breath their hypothesis.  

“Is 743 the year you were born?!” They stammered, and you shook your head wearily in response.  

“The last year you remember?” Erwin asked plainly, and you nodded solemnly. Levi’s steely grey eyes widened just a fraction before regaining his composure and returning to his usual bored look. His trained eyes raked over your face studying your expression, shock, sadness, confusion. You hadn’t a clue how you’re alive right now.  

“107 years.” Levi stated, lacking any form or emotion. It was like he was simply echoing your thoughts for everyone to hear, and it's true. It has been 107 years. You honestly felt a bit sick at the realization but, what did you expect. You knew a lot of time had passed, too much time to be honest. However, the reality was nevertheless horrifying. More than a few lifetimes had passed, anyone you may have ever loved was long gone by now, not that you’d even remember them truly.  

You heaved a shaky, trembling sigh and Erwin gave a sad, knowing smile to you. It was sort of comforting, but you were on edge still.  

“Anything else you remember?” He asked, full of patience. You shook your head after a bit of thinking, nothing important was coming to mind. Just bits and flashes of things that you yourself couldn’t even begin to explain. Seemingly done with the questioning for now, Erwin bid you ado and Hange followed close behind.  

Captain Levi however, stood back for just a bit, much to your chagrin. You wanted nothing more than to be left alone for a moment to process things. If anybody were to stay behind a bit to ogle, you’d hope it were Hange, they could probably give you a laugh or two. Levi said nothing before tossing a book to the floor before your feet, you shot him an annoyed glare before he spoke.  

“Practice your reading brat,” was all he said before he quietly climbed the stairs and locked the door at the top. Grabbing the book and dusting it off you found it had plenty of pictures for context, and at the very least it would give you something to busy yourself with as your tried to distract yourself from your newly acquainted grief.  

It felt a bit like survivor’s guilt, not that you personally remembered any of the other titans you often saw roaming around the island. You silently sighed as you thought of the other titans, you felt bad. They were all humans, you presume, stuck in your same predicament. Fighting and dreaming of freedom.  

The hours passed as you tried to read the words on the pages set before you. You found yourself not making much progress as you continuously had to wipe away your stinging tears from your lashes. Heavy steps descended the stairs as you hastily dried your eyes once more, hoping it won’t be too obvious that you’ve been crying.  

It was Erwin again, shadowed by Levi. Levi’s thin brow rose, he almost looked disgusted at your tears, or maybe he was taking pity. Either one, you didn’t truly want from the likes of him. Erwin, however, did look truly concerned for just a moment before hardening his expression to keep things professional.  

“Well, we won’t be able to learn anything from you until you learn to read and write. Thus, you’ll be staying here for the time being. I’ll visit periodically, but Captain Levi will be who you answer to for now.” He gave you a curt nod before taking his leave. Once again, Levi remained. The silence dragged on and you gave him a silent, yet fully exasperated sigh rolling your eyes in his direction.  

He scoffed before adjusting his cravat, his top lip twitching upward into a scowl of disdain.  

“I was about to pity you and be lenient, but forget it. Stop your crying and read, brat!” He spat, before sitting harshly onto the wooden chair he always claimed, He folded his arms over his chest and crossed his slender legs, one over the other. The two of you held each other’s gaze for a moment before you turned around harshly and began studying.  

With him babysitting you like this; it’s going to be a lot less pleasant. Hopefully it won't take you very long to relearn these skills, the faster you can distance yourself from this guy.  

<3

The hours stretched on in a deafening silence. The tension in the air was palpable and you hated it. Levi’s stern glare seemed to be burning holes in the back of your head, that made it hard to concentrate. How could he demand results whilst simultaneously making it so hard for you? He was difficult to put it nicely, but raging will do nothing to make your life more pleasant. The silence was suddenly interrupted by him, making you jump.  

“The Commander is really sticking his neck out for you. I don’t understand why.” He said, his irritation evident in every word that spilled past his lips. Your shoulders slumped at his words. Were you truly making their lives so hard? This wasn’t something you wanted. He waited a few beats before continuing, and icy chill to his tone.  

“I for one don’t trust you, if you can’t tell. You can warm up to Hange and Erwin all you want, but there's a reason I’m the one that’s in control here.” You shook your head slowly at his words, you’re not dumb. It’s clear as day he doesn’t trust you, and you don’t think the others completely trust you either and you understand their reasoning. At the very least, they try to see things from your perspective. Levi, however, seems like the type to enjoy a stick up the ass.  

“I’m watching you, because I won’t hesitate to kill you if you try anything.” He said, cocking his head to the side to attempt to see your expression. Sweat was beading at your brows, and you muscles tensed on reflex. You lived in fear before, but you still didn’t know how to cope with it. Will you ever be happy again?  

Slowly, you turned around to face Levi, eyes gleaming with fresh tears. Doing your best to ignore his words you decided to return the attention to your book. You wiped away at your eyes before you steeled your nerves to approach the man, pointing to a particularly confusing image on the page before you. He quirked his brow at the page, his eyes narrowing before he gliding up to meet your own. He held your stare for a moment, as if trying to scare you away but he quickly grew tired of the effort.  

“Those are the three walls that protect humanity from you titans.” Your eyes locked again briefly, before he continued his explanation. He was an insufferable human being but very smart, you had to admit. He explained everything thoroughly without missing a thing and you found the walls fascinated.  

“Is that all or do I have to read the entire book to you, brat?” He complained, bringing his tea cup to his lips. You gave him a short and obviously fake smile before rolling your eyes and returning to your bed, once again facing your back towards him as you studied the picture once more. Little did you know, Levi’s lips quirked up into a microscopic smirk behind his tea cup at your attitude. Though, even to himself he couldn’t admit that you were a little funny to watch sometimes.  

Sighing, Levi checked his pocket watch, it was due time for afternoon training. He lazily tossed a clean notepad and quill pen into your cell.  

“Practice your piss poor writing too brat.” He said, cup still held high up to his face before he downed the rest of his tea and you were left alone in the cellar once again.  

Once you were sure he was gone, you stuck out your tongue in childish protest before grabbing the notepad and pen. Scribbling and drawing ought to be more fun than reading this textbook you figured. The rest of your evening was spent in silence, until Hange brought you a late lunch with tea. She kept you company for a while, and it was something that helped to ease your anxiety. She explained in more detail what was planned for you here within the walls, and it's true, Erwin really was sticking his neck out for you, all of them were.  

Keeping you a secret from just about everybody in power until you could speak for yourself in a court of law. Your time with the Scouts would remain a secret even after then to keep from anyone getting in trouble. Seems the Scout’s get in enough trouble already, and housing a titan shifter for a second time would get them in a lot of trouble. Yet, for your own safety, they would put everything off until you could defend yourself properly, for that, you were eternally grateful and you wanted to thank him in person.  

Maybe even thank Levi, because, whether he wanted to or not, he was putting his own credibility on the line for you. As much as you dislike the man, you won't let his efforts go unappreciated. You thanked Hange for the food, conversation, and their protection with a bow, they simply waved you off.  

“It's no matter! There’s equal benefit for you, me, and humanity!” They exclaimed before marching up the stairs and heading off to handle reports. You smiled to yourself at their hospitality and friendliness. Today was a tough day, but a necessary one.  

This was your second chance at life, one you had lost hope at ever having. You weren’t going to waste it on fear, anxiety, and self-doubt. With newly found resolve, you drifted off into an early slumber, unaware of Captain Levi’s light foot falls descending the stair case.  

His dark eyes sliding to your sleeping form, having Hange talk to you was a good idea after all .  

[sayonarasanity]

Reverberation 

Chapter III

Link to chapter I and chapter II

Link to AO3

-

By the time they were in seventh grade, she was obsessed with Shakespeare. 

Levi found it out one day towards the dusk when he was watching the sunset on the rooftop. There was a quiet chill in the air, only visible when a breeze swept past him occasionally and his body trembled instinctively. The sky was pastel pink, clouds were shadowy and reflected the soft colour of a day slowly coming to an end. The sun’s last rays enlightened the horizon and Hanji, gasping and sweaty, threw herself next to him, leaning on his shoulder for support.

“Did you bring it?” She asked, extending her hand towards him. She was acting like they were exchanging drugs, and he was the dramatic one of the two. How was that even fair? Without a word Levi put the chocolate milk and the sandwich, he had brought from home in her hand. 

She looked at him like she was going to cry. Good acting. “Oh, thank God for Levi Ackerman. I was starving.”

“You should stop wasting your money on books.”

“I am not wasting money, Levi. I am investing it.”

“What did you buy this time?”

She made a gesture with her hand to indicate ‘wait a minute’ as she quickly started to eat her sandwich and drank her milk. 

“Slow the fuck down,” he said, feeling a need to warn her when she patted her chest to ease the process of the food going down. Then she drank the milk furiously and squeezed it between her fingers until she sucked the last drop, and the inside of the cartoon packet was as dry as the Sahara Desert. 

After that, she sighed, content and happily rubbed her now full stomach. The sandwich was half-eaten though, she rewrapped it with the cling film and put it aside. Then she opened her bag, buried her hands inside, searching. “I found an old book shop today,” she said with a goofy grin on her face. “And bought these babies with the last money I had.” At that, she took out two books, worn, yellow and smelled ancient. 

Levi squinted his eyes as he took the books from her hand and read the titles. One was Macbeth and the other was Romeo and Juliet. 

“Cliché,” he commented.

“Shakespeare is not cliché, grumpy. He is a classic.”

She was apparently annoyed. It was so easy to work her up through her books. “I thought you had read them already?”

“I did but I read my dad’s copies and he won’t let me keep them on my shelf. So, I bought my own,” she grinned ear to ear. 

“Good for you,” he pushed the books on her hands, unimpressed. 

“I marked my favourite quotes while I was on my way here,” she tossed and replaced herself next to him. Shoulder to shoulder. “And I have a question for you.”

He didn’t have a chance to say no. “Shoot.”

“Are you a Macbeth like sky lover or a Juliet like sky lover?”

His face crumpled in confusion, and he blinked his eyes at her. Hanji was looking at him expectantly. She was actually waiting for an answer. Oh boy. He hadn’t understood shit. “Hanji you know I don’t understand your nerd shit without having you explain it to me.”

“Oh,” she said, extending the h. “Right, sorry. My bad. What I mean is…” She opened Macbeth, and searched the pages until she found the one she was looking for. “For example, in Act I Scene IV, Macbeth says, “Stars, hide your fires! / Let not light see my black and deep desires,” and,” she dropped it to open the other book. “In Act III Scene II, Juliet says “Take him and cut him out in little stars, / And he will make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with the night/”

She turned her gaze again on him afterwards, adjusting her glasses. “So?”

“Hanji, what the hell are you trying to do?”

She rolled her eyes and closed the book. “Levi, I am just saying that obviously these two quotes,” she quoted the air while saying, “although out of context, are more or less about the sky so pick one.”

“But they don’t even make sense!” he objected.  

“They don’t have to. It’s literature. If you take the lines of the context, you can use them however you like.”

“For example?” Levi pressed, still waiting for a reasonable enough explanation.

Hanji, like the nerd that she was, started to explain, “Macbeth is about revenge, ambition and remorse, at least superficially, and Romeo and Juliet is about love, old-grudges and misunderstandings, again superficially. But if you take the lines out of those concepts…” she shrugged. 

“I can use them however I like?” Levi said, trying to come to her point. 

“Exactly.” 

“Like I don’t have any “black and dark desires”, but I can choose Macbeth?”

Hanji nodded. 

“Because he talked about stars?”

She nodded again.

“But what do they have to do with loving the sky?” Levi asked, having been unable to make the connection. 

Hanji paused, her eyes moved upwards to the sky, considering his question. She hummed thoughtfully. “Well, nothing.” Then her gaze turned back at him. “But don’t look for logic, Levi. Just pick one.”

“I said Macbeth already. Leave me alone.”

“Uh, you said that seriously?” She tapped her chin. “Why him though?”

“No specific reason.” Levi looked away to the town, observed the intermittent, weak lights of the houses underneath. “Juliet sounded way too sappy.”

Hanji snorted, and about a minute later she went on, “Literature doesn’t always make sense,” she said. “It’s like eating cotton candy. I mean, do you think it makes sense?”

Levi raised a brow at her. “Yes?”

“But—” Hanji made a stupid hand gesture. “It melts the second it touches your tongue. It doesn’t make sense. But you enjoy eating it because it melts the second it touches your tongue.”

Levi blinked hollowly. “I am not following.”

“Wait,” she said, excitedly. “I’ll show you.”

Then she thrust one of the books into his hands, shuffled the pages and pointed with her finger to the lines she had clearly underlined with a pencil. “Read it aloud.”

Levi was feeling like he had given up on whatever will power he had as he observed the lines. He could feel Hanji’s curious, and expectant gaze burning the side of his face. There was no escape from this. 

He cleared his throat before starting. “Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player 

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

When he finished, he realized the goosebumps that crept upon his skin, the way the words flew out of his mouth as if they were notes from an old, forgotten ballad, and the way they melted on his tongue, slowly but deliciously like pink cotton candy—

“Damn,” he breathed.

“Right?” Hanji exclaimed excitedly. 

“I don’t know what the hell he is talking about,” he said honestly. Just like how he didn’t necessarily like cotton candy because it was too sweet yet, the pleasure while eating it every now and then was undeniable. “But like—”

“It tastes good.”

“Yeah,” he stared at her.

Hanji laughed, cheerfully. Levi felt a slight twitch in his mouth as he watched her. “Do you have more?”

“Of course I do.” She then showed him a snippet from Romeo and Juliet. Levi took the book in his hands and read it aloud.

“My only love sprung from my only hate!

Too early seen unknown and known too late!

Prodigious birth of love it is to me,

That I must love a loathed enemy.”

The chance to make a reference was too good and too obvious to ignore so Levi whistled, looking at the pages. “That’s rough body.”

Hanji burst into laughter.

-

Afterwards, they watched the way the clouds move slowly blocking and revealing the moon, hiding the stars behind, and giving the night an almost otherworldly view. Hanji kept talking, of course, whenever something came to her mind. Levi never quite understood half the things she had told him, but he always paid attention. Because watching her like this was like watching the flowing of a cascade. It was endless and it was loud and for that it was fascinating, and it was addicting. 

And he couldn’t look away. 

“Levi,” she said when the air started to become colder, and he was about to tell her that they should go back now. “I want to be a rocket scientist.”

“Huh?” 

“I want to help people explore the universe,” she went on. She didn’t look at her confused expression, instead, she watched the stars with the slightest of smiles on her face. “I want to build rockets and I want to learn more about everything out there.”

She held up her hand, closed one of her eyes and looked at the sky through the holes between her fingers. “And I want you to be with me.”

Levi thought about cascades again and remembered a class in the school in which they learned how they created a pothole on the ground it fell. It was mere water, he had thought then, but it was strong enough to bore through the hard rocks. And Hanji was only a thirteen-year-old girl with a dream bigger than even the two of them, but she was a cascade, and as he watched her face which carried no doubt or insecurity, he believed at that moment that she could do whatever she ever wanted.

“I don’t think I can be a rocket scientist,” he said. Even the term itself sounded so weird in his ears when he tried to picture it on himself.

“You can be an engineer,” Hanji said, presenting another option. “You are smart enough to be. And then we can work together. Don’t you think it would be nice? Exploring the universe and other worlds behind the walls of the Earth? I mean we can even go to the same university. If you’d like to, of course.”

They were only thirteen. And those dreams seemed too big, too far away, and so out of reach and quite insolent for their age. But Hanji’s eyes were full of hope like she had no doubt about each of them achieving those seemingly distant dreams. And Levi wished he could be as hopeful as her and believe that they could go to the same university, then work together and explore the mysteries of the universe and maybe even more. Yet at the moment no matter how he tried, they still seemed so strange and so unlikely. Future was the furthest point of the ocean, a mirage in a desert, and they were merely kids with nothing but unformed, tender dreams in their hands. 

How daring, he thought. 

But then again, before he met Hanji, he had also thought that the sky was unapproachable, and the stars were just a view he enjoyed watching from time to time. Now, he touched them in an attic, underneath a makeshift sky and with a girl who had stardust in her eyes.

“Okay,” he said.

She smiled so big, she almost outran the sun. “Okay,” she repeated. “We have a dream then.”

-

“Good morning, Mrs Zoe.”

Hanji’s mother was a nice and kind woman with a height slightly over the middle, brown hair tied up neatly, and a pair of gentle brown eyes which were radiating warmth as they looked at him. She was dressed in clean and fresh attire and smelled like daisies. Levi would never understand how a girl, untidy, messy and dirty, like Hanji came out of this civilized woman.

“Good morning, Levi,” she smiled. “Come on in.”

Levi stepped inside and removed his shoes, then his jacket. “Is she—”

“She is in her room,” Mrs Zoe sighed, shaking her head. “She is being overly dramatic about it, boy. Be careful.”

Levi snorted. He had expected nothing less. “Sure.” 

Hanji’s room was upstairs, and Levi prepared himself for a war scene as he knocked and opened the door. He was right of fucking course. Books, clothes, empty water bottles, and old, stuffed toys were covering the ground. Levi wrinkled his face in disgust and put the bag in his hand aside next to the dresser. Then set in to tidy up the room; folded the clothes, piled the books on her library and shelves, threw away the empty bottles and some eaten chocolate packages. Then he opened the curtains and left the window ajar for some fresh air to fill inside the room. 

The figure buried under the blankets in her bed groaned and tossed. Levi watched as the bed creaked under her movements, and a puddle of messy brown hair showed itself on the head of the bed, setting free from the blockade of the blanket. He walked closer, reached down and pulled the blanket off. 

She yelped, eyes wide in shock, and her body stayed frigid on her bed. “What the hell, Levi?”

“Language,” he warned, smiling slyly. She frowned and attempted to take the blanket back, but Levi had already lied it over her again. It only covered her from the belly down this time rather than her whole body like a damn shroud.

Then he sat down on the edge of the bed. “Heard you were sick.”

Just then she sneezed and cleaned her nose with a tissue that was already in her hands. Then she groaned. “I’m dying.”

Levi rolled his eyes. Dramatic indeed. “Do you have a fever?”

“No,” she sniffed. “I am not sick actually. It is an allergy, because of the weather.” She coughed and sneezed again. “And by the everything holy out there, it’s killing me.”

It was early Spring, so it made sense. “I don’t think a spring allergy will kill you, four-eyes.”

“Actually, some allergies are deadly,” she cleaned her nose again. 

“But not this one.”

“Yeah, not this one I guess.” She stared at the ceiling, her eyes were watery, nose red and somewhat wounded, her oval-shaped glasses were slightly inclined, her hair was dishevelled, and her mouth was dry.

“You look like shit,” he said.

“Thanks.”

He got up from where he was sitting and took the bag he had left by the dresser. When he sat back down again, he handed her over two packets of chocolate milk. “Here you go, drama queen.”

She blinked at the items at first, until her vision became clear and when she found out what they were, finally a smile so big bloomed on her face that Levi felt relaxed. “Hero,” she uttered before she snatched the milk off from his hand and immediately opened one of them to drink with utmost appetite. 

They leaned their backs to the head of the bed as Hanji drank empty both of the chocolate milk. After that, she slipped down a little and rested her head on his shoulder.

“Levi,” she said, lazily and sniffed. “Quick wordplay.”

“Go.”

“Virginia Woolf?”

It was a stupid game they had played one day when they got so bored, they had started to dangle head down from Levi’s bed. Basically, they were trying to make fun of artists’ names in general. Trying to get as creative as possible. And failing a lot. “A she-wolf?”

“That’s sexist, Levi.” 

“How is that sexist?”

“I don’t know it sounded sexist,” she sneezed and cleared her nose, groaning miserably. “Okay, Shakespeare?”

He considered for a moment, eyes up to the ceiling. “A man who enjoys shaking pears?” The words almost made him flinch. So much for being creative.

“Levi,” she chuckled first, then started to giggle. “That was disgusting. Oh my God, you’re so bad at this.”

Levi scowled while Hanji’s laughter got out of control. At some point, her coughs joined the symphony but that didn’t stop her from laughing her heart out. She leaned into him more, almost making him fall from the bed. Fortunately, he balanced himself at the last minute with the help of the bedside table.

“Oi!”

“What is she laughing at?” Hanji’s mother asked from the door, smiling at her still laughing daughter, with confused eyes which held the understanding of a mother who was so used to her daughter’s antics. She was holding a tray in her hands and there were two bowls on top of it which Levi guessed to be soups probably. 

“She has lost her mind, finally,” Levi replied, blatantly. 

“No!” Hanji exclaimed, suddenly. Then there was a pair of hands grabbing his collar, then her wide, brown eyes were staring at him. 

“What?”

“Levi, you know what to say to that!” She shook him. “We’ve rehearsed this before!”

It took him merely two seconds to understand what she was talking about. “No.”

“Please,” she pleaded, even had the audacity to pout. “You have to say it!”

He sighed, looked away, then saw her mother still in the threshold, now appearing to be obviously confused. On the other side, there was Hanji, continuing to look at him with those big, pleading eyes. 

“O what a noble mind is here o’erthrown,” he said, with a tone so flat Shakespeare would possibly erase the line from the text if he were to hear it. 

“Oh my God, Levi!” Hanji giggled breathlessly. “Your face!” Then she started to laugh drastically again, she even had to lay down on her side, her body shaking with the intensity of her laughter. Hanji’s mother on the other hand merely sighed and left the tray on top of the bedside table. There was also a pill on it, Levi realized. “Make sure she drinks it okay?” she told Levi.

He nodded in response and she left closing the door behind her. 

Levi had to almost force the spoon down her throat for the soup to reach her stomach. She whined and tried to dodge from him like a four-year-old. Levi didn’t let her though until the bowl was empty. Then he drank his own.

“You’re gonna be a terrible father,” she said, wiping her mouth with her sleeve.

“Use a goddamn tissue, you uncivilized moron.”

“That’s none of your business.” She slipped down to lay on her bed after she drank the pill and pulled the blanket to her face. 

“My job here is done, I guess,” Levi murmured and stood up, putting the bowl on the tray. 

“You’re leaving?” Hanji watched him through the space left from the blanket which was covering half of her face.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “You get some rest.”

“But I’ve been resting the whole day, Levi. I am bored.”

“What do you want me to do?” He raised a brow.

“Stay?” She asked, blinking her eyes innocently. 

When Levi didn’t directly object her, she moved a little to create space for him, then opened the blanket and looked at Levi expectantly, and with a sheepish smile on her lips. 

Why can’t I say no to her? Levi mused and scowled at himself inside as he lay down on the bed. Her smile remained in its place as she pulled the blanket over their heads, and they laid face to face in the dark, the only sound was their even and quiet breaths. This close he could smell her shampoo and the odour which only belonged to her, a mix of ancient books, ink and something soft like vanilla-scented candles. 

“You smell very nice,” she whispered.

Levi was taken aback at the fact that they had been seemingly thinking the same thing. “I smell clean. Nothing you are used to.”

She snickered and sniffed. “So cruel, Levi.”

And he smiled only because she couldn’t see.

-

There was a marble pool near her school. It was round, bygone and had a small amount of water in it. In the water there were tokens of different sizes, some were new some were old enough to become rusty. Hanji enjoyed walking past and stopped by that pool every now and then. If she were lucky enough, she could find thirsty birds or sometimes protrude eyed green frogs. Today was one of those lucky days. 

“Hello, little bud,” she smiled at the frog, reaching out with her index finger to touch its wet, and sleek skin. The frog croaked and responded to her stare with its big, rounded black eyes. “Would you like to come with me?”

She smirked when she imagined Levi’s disgusted, and horrified face if he were to see it. The frog croaked again, and as if it had understood what was going to happen to it if it agreed to come with her, it turned its speckled back to Hanji and jumped into the pool.

Hanji sighed wearily. “Alright.”

“What’s that weirdo doin’?” A voice belonged to a boy near her age spoke and Hanji froze where she had kneeled. She folded her fist and waited quietly for them to just walk away. 

“Her weirdo shit,” his friend answered. What a sharp mind for his age! “Maybe she hopes if she kisses a frog it will turn into a Prince Charming and fall in love with her.” The three boys came walking behind her, two of them roaring with laughter while one of them made disgusting kissing sounds.

“I don’t think even a frog would fall in love with her,” Jack, the one who had talked first said and their laughter doubled up.

Hanji had recognized them, how could she not, they were unfortunately classmates. They had been messing with her since the first day they had started middle school. She had been ignoring them quite successfully since then. It was going to be almost three years and she was going to graduate anyway. She only needed to bear it for a little while longer.

Hanji slowly rose. She was going to meet Levi and she was already running late. Levi wasn’t a fan of waiting for her and each time she somehow managed to be late to their meetings. It wasn’t her fault that nature held so many things ready to be discovered by her. And Levi always chided her for being tardy, but Hanji knew he was never actually angry at her. Just slightly annoyed, but that was his nature.

She must’ve been incredibly tense because after thinking about him she felt her body relaxing. Even her jaw which was tightly shut eased, and she breathed then shook her head. No need to be so stressed over a bunch of good-for-nothings, Hanji.

She was about to be fully stood up when another body crashed against her and she stumbled forward. Her eyes widened, her world lost focus as she blinked her eyes and tried to understand the reason why she was seeing the things which were merely an inch away from her blurry. It didn’t take her much to understand. Her glasses were absent. 

“Ups, sorry. Didn’t see you there.” The boy who crashed against her said. Was it Jack or one of the others she didn’t know. She was busy looking for her glasses on the ground. Calm down, calm down, she repeated inside. If you panic now, you’ll give them what they want. 

“Watch out, Sammy, you’ll break her glasses.” 

Sammy, so it was Sam. Then the third was probably Daniel. Didn’t matter. She had to find her glasses. Right now. Or else she couldn’t go to the roof; she couldn’t meet Levi. Everything was so damn blurry. Where the hell were her glasses?

“What an ugly pair of things,” Jack said. He walked in front of her and pushed something with the toe of his shoe. That thing shone when it moved, a short moment of reflecting the light of the sun but Hanji had understood what it was. 

Calm down, calm down, Hanji, she remembered herself over and over again. Don’t panic. 

“Move,” she said to the boy finally raising her eyes to meet his stare. There was a smug look on his pale face. His hands in his pockets. 

“She can talk!” He exclaimed, laughing. 

“Move away, Jack,” she repeated. “I don’t have time for this.”

“For what?” He asked lazily. “You should be thankful that we are talking to you. I am sure you haven’t communicated with an opposite-sex all your life.”

That one was easy to let slide. The fact that her best friend was the so-called opposite sex was none of their business anyway. Thus, she stepped forward, ignoring his words. She didn’t want to kneel down to take her glasses. He had to move.

Yet, he didn’t. Instead, he stood where he was, his stare, cocky and priggish never leaving her eyes. As if he was challenging her to do something to him. What can you do? It was saying. You are a slim, feeble girl. You are nothing. 

A weirdo. 

Another step forward.

Loser. Lunatic. 

Hanji put her hand on his shoulder to push him back at the same time Jack took a step towards her. She hadn’t put much pressure to keep him in his place for she was only aiming at pushing him slightly back. So, when he moved, the hand on his shoulder was useless to stop him. Hence something cracked under his foot and Hanji froze.

“Oh, damn,” Jack said, faking a regretful voice looking down at what he had done. “I broke her dear glasses. How reckless of me!” He and the other two laughed together while Hanji stared at the broken piece of glass on the ground unable to move her body.

“But don’t worry. It was so ugly anyway.”

Calm down, calm down, the voice inside of her head proceeded to repeat in her head as if it were afraid of her losing control. Take deep breaths, let it go. You’re going to get rid of them in—

“Yeah, just like its owner.”

It was nothing she wasn’t used to. Ugly, dirty, messy. Are you sure she is a girl? She never even wears skirts. Maybe it is a guy under disguise. It happens in movies. Hahaha, maybe we’ll catch her in the boys’ restroom someday!

She was used to it and she always ignored them. Always let it past. They were just a bunch of teenage boys, silly and ignorant. And despite everything, she had been fully aware of the fact that she was much much smarter than them all. Coming from the same country, going through the same education but not each apple on a tree was fresh. Some were rotten and some were green. And there was already a boy in her life who was the direct opposite of everyone she had ever met. A boy who watched the stars with her, a boy who smelled like leaves, soap and the wind and a boy who memorized lines from an old, English poet not because he was so fond of them but because he knew that she was. 

The boy who was waiting for her now, and she was getting late.

It was that thought that single reality that had finally moved her body. The voice inside of her head silenced, and for once in her life, she let the wheels in her brain stand motionless. Her hand reached forward and grab the collar of the boy and with power mostly coming from her anger she turned and held the boy just above the pool and supported herself by putting her foot on the marble edge of it. Jack who had been caught off guard for he hadn’t been waiting for a launch from Hanji could do nothing but gasp in shock.

“What the hell are you doing, you lunatic?” he yelled and grabbed her hand which was gripping the collar of his t-shirt.

“Let Jack go, you goddamn weirdo!” One of the other boys exclaimed. 

“Don’t come close!” Hanji warned. “Or I’ll let him fall. I am sure it won’t be a soft fall, don’t you think, Jack?”

Jack’s eyes flared up with rage and vague fear. He took sharp breaths, as he tried to balance himself only with his folded legs. “Don’t come close,” he warned his friends without breaking eye contact with Hanji. “You’re going to pay for this.”

Hanji almost snorted at his words. For God’s sake, who was he? A mafia boss in the disguise of a teenage boy? She smirked, whatever. “I’ll be waiting.” 

Then she pushed him slightly backwards, causing him to yelp in panic and held her hand tighter. Her smile widened to the extent of becoming almost wicked. “Having fun?”

“You’re crazy,” he said, between thick, fast breaths.

“Maybe,” Hanji whispered. 

Jack was only a slim, teenage boy with no muscle or fat whatsoever in his system, so he wasn’t that heavy to hold. But even though her anger was feeding her at the moment, her arm had started to shiver, because she didn’t necessarily use her arm muscles for anything that required physical strength and she didn’t want him to realize it. Hence, she pulled Jack upwards, turned him around and threw his body to the ground. He hissed as he landed on the hard, stone ground. Sam and Daniel quickly reached and kneeled on either side of him, helping him get up. 

Her side was blurry, and it was coming back as nausea. She was still angry, her body was trembling with the force of it, her fingertips were numb. But they were three and she was one. If they decided to attack her altogether, she held a very little chance against them. Especially now that her vision was the least clear, she was at a disadvantage. The wisest thing to do was to run away now that their attention was not focused on her. And she readied herself to do so, a foot behind the other, her hands gripping the handles of her bag on her shoulder, she checked the direction she was going to follow, and she prepared to run—

And then, she couldn’t.

A hand grabbed her collar tightly, tight enough to almost choke her. She glanced before her in shock, with her eyes as wide as a pair of big, round rocks and saw Sam.

“You little bitch,” he whispered, drawing her close by the collar. His eyes were black as coal, burning with fever. “You think you can run just like that after what you’ve done?”

Oh, well, she thought woefully. That was bad.

“I have done nothing,” she said, blinking her eyes in ignorance.

Deep breaths, the voice talked again, keep your heart steady. 

He clenched his teeth, his jaw moved in a way that almost made her laugh. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“No,” she said, calmly and smiled nervously. “But maybe you should—”

“Get,” a voice, so dark and smelled like ice, said. A voice so familiar, like the backs of the books on her library. “Your hands-off.”

If she was surprised before, now she was startled. Because it was Levi, in all his Darkling glory, standing right beside them, and with an aura as black as the shadow of death. He was glaring at the boy who was holding her collar. When had he come so close? She had never noticed. And also, why had he come anyway? He was supposed to wait for her—

“Who the hell are you?” Sam asked, frowning. 

“You’re going to find out if you don’t take your fucking hands off of her.”

Surprisingly, Sam did let go of her, but he didn’t seem the least frightened by Levi as he turned to face him. 

“Levi,” she started, but he didn’t separate his gaze from Sam. “Levi, it’s okay. Let’s go.”

“Don’t tell me,” Sam laughed, deridingly. “Are you her boyfriend?”

Hanji winced at the word in shock, but Levi was tranquil like the sky right before a catastrophe. 

“What if I am?” 

Sam whistled and glanced at Hanji from the corner of his eye. “Nothing, I guess.” He snorted. “Just surprised to see this weirdo having a boyfriend—”

It was a bad day for collars in general it seemed, when Levi grabbed Sam’s furiously, pulling his face close and a little down to him.

“Call her weirdo again,” he said in a low voice. “Or lay your hands on her and I will show you then who I really am.”

Hanji was impressed, to say the least. She felt like she was stuck in the middle of a low-budget film adopted from a best-selling but dabster romance-action novel. It was strangely exciting though but also becoming slightly dangerous too. 

“Levi,” she tried again. She didn’t want him to get into any trouble because of her. She caught the arm of his jacket. “Drop it. Let’s go.” 

“Where the hell you think you’re goin',” Jack came near them, his face twisted in a wicked way. “You little slut—”

The term that “everything happened so fast” mostly used in novels, was quite accurate as Hanji herself found it out first-hand when Levi’s fist landed the side of Jack’s face so fast, she only had time for a quick inhale. 

“Son of a bitch,” he snarled, voice full of such hatred it was almost like it belonged to somebody else.

After overcoming the first wave of shock, Jack straightened up, his teeth greeted and eyes aglow with anger, and wasted no time in punching Levi right back on his cheekbone. Levi’s body stumbled to the side; his hair black like the midnight ocean winnowing with the force of the blow. 

Then all hell broke loose.

“Levi!” she yelled and rushed forward. A yellow light, luminous like a streak of lightning flashed before her eyes, and within a moment the blood in her veins consisted more of raw fury than of platelets. However, she couldn’t make it that far for she was held back by a pair of hands on her arms. “Let go!” she screamed, struggling to free herself of those hands.

“You stay here, while Jack takes care of your boyfriend.” Hanji heard Sam’s sly voice behind her, and she grunted in frustration, still floundering to get rid of his iron hold. The word felt too weird and for some reason wrong because Levi wasn’t her boyfriend. He was more than that. He was her best friend. 

Her best friend, being beaten because of his best friend. “Let him go, Jack. You ignorant bastard!” She exclaimed, feeling guilty and incredibly useless.  

The two boys continued striking each other with punches and kicks. Gruff voices, and painful whines which Hanji couldn’t always decipher to whom they belonged filled her ears. She couldn’t even get a clear view of the two as they stumbled away from her, and because of her murky vision, she didn’t even know if the little, red spots on the ground were actually droplets of blood. And it terrified her to even think about whose blood they might be.

“Levi!” She screamed then grunted and kicked Sam’s leg and stepped on his foot while at the same time struggling to get rid of his hold. Sam hissed, and swore but didn’t let her go. Unlike Jack, he was taller and a little muscular in his arms. And she had nausea, also there was a stable pound right on her temple like a vein there decided to take the role of her heart. 

One of the two boys spitted and Hanji saw, albeit quite blurrily, that the colour of the spit was red.

“Oi, oi, oi oi!” 

An older, and rougher voice joined the chaos, and it sounded familiar, too familiar even, but Hanji couldn’t focus enough to think about who it belonged to. She realized Sam going solid behind her though, and someone shouted, “Kenny! Fuck, it’s Kenny the Ripper, Jack!” It was Daniel, Hanji found out when she looked around squinting. Kenny the Ripper?  The hell was that? 

“Shit,” Sam swore and released her arms. “Jack, come on! We need to go!”

Jack must have taken their warnings seriously for within seconds, she heard someone else, probably Jack, saying, “Fuck!” and the sound of three footsteps quickly running away. Levi, on the other hand, she knew because he was the only one left now, let out a hostile, muffled growl and took two quick steps forward, “Where the fuck are you running, you goddamn cowards?”

However, he couldn’t make it further away, for Hanji who dizzily stumbled to where he was, stopped him with her hands on his shoulders. “Let them go,” she said. “That’s enough.”

Levi was close, close so close for her to hear his sharp, quick breaths, and their cold touch on her cheeks, and feel the way his shoulders and chest moving up and down under her hands, his scent; fresh leaves, soap, sweat and blood—

And the bruises on his face.

“Levi!” She gasped, and without thinking, she took his face in between her hands. “Levi, your face…” 

There was blood on his lower lip and his nose, his right cheekbone was already taking the colour of a mix of purple, red, and blue another bruise was forming on his chin. There was also a little cut on his forehead, bleeding ever so slightly, but it was there. And it was there because of her.

Guilt punched her in the gut much harder than an actual, real punch would and it hurt a thousand times more than a simple blow of a fist would cause. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice trembled vaguely, and her eyes burned like ashes were splashed over them. “I am so sorry, Levi. My fault, it was my fault. I started it—”

“How the hell those brats knew about that ancient nickname,” Kenny muttered, coming to stand beside them. When Hanji looked up, she saw him face shadowed, and brows knitted. He seemed to be somewhat, just a little bit, terrifying. “Oi,” he said, coldly, staring down at both of them. “What the fuck is going on here?”

“Nothing,” Levi said, severely and pushed her hands away. He turned his bruised face to the other side, hiding his gaze and the expression that was placed in them from her. 

“Your face says the opposite,” Kenny said, squinting and turned his gaze to Hanji. “Care to explain?”

“I—” she forced out, but she didn’t even know where to start. 

“We can talk at home, Kenny.” Levi walked past them, without sparing a look at either Kenny or Hanji. “Leave her alone.” 

He was mad, and he was right to be. Confirming it only made her feel even more shitty, and she bit her lip as to set a barricade to prevent herself from weeping like a baby just where she stood. She bent her head down when she started to walk behind him, both because of the guilt that weighed down on her and because looking ahead made her even dizzier and increased her headache along with her nausea. 

Kenny sighed but kept quiet as he too joined them. The three walked in silence, Hanji kept on chewing her lower lip as she traced the lines of her shoes and the cracks, holes on the pavement. A hurricane roared; a whirlwind grabbed the submerged emotions and relentless thoughts inside of her and twirled them wildly. The harder she fought the easier she lost against them. Conscience was a prison one had to visit from time to time. And currently, she was stuck within, the key was missing, and the guard was cold-blooded and unsparing.

A hand, steady and warm grabbed her shoulder and pulled her to the side. Hanji looked up in surprise to see she was about to crash against a lamppost had Levi not drawn her aside. 

“Careful,” he said.   

And it was his voice, low, smooth and gentle, and his hand which still held her not too tight but not too light either, or the way he moved his thumb on her shoulder, soothing, caring. It was all of them combined that in the end made her tear up.

She turned her blurry gaze to his face, he was staring ahead, his eyes were shining blue with the last rays of the sun and the blood on his lip and nose was almost dry now. She separated her lips to say thank you or I’m sorry, again, I’m so sorry. 

It was all my fault.

But the words died on her tongue, they never received a voice to come out alive, and he didn’t look back at her eyes. Instead, he squeezed her shoulder slightly as if to say, it’s okay.

She wasn’t necessarily convinced but for now, she chose to believe in him.

-

They were sitting in the living room of Levi’s house. Kenny was placed on a chair across from them, arms folded on his chest. She and Levi sat side by side on the couch. She was playing with her hands anxiously, her lip started to hurt from constantly chewing. Thankfully, her headache and nausea were better now.

They had arrived here about twenty minutes ago. Hanji couldn’t erase the look on Kuchel’s face when she saw Levi, blood and bruises all over his face, from her mind. Her face had turned white as the paint on the ceiling, making the guilt boil hotter and burn severely inside. 

There was no escape now. Kuchel deserved to learn what had happened to her son. So, Hanji told them while she treated the wounds on her son’s face, albeit reluctantly and when she was finished the room was silent for a while. 

Levi hissed as Kuchel cleaned the cleft on his lip. “Don’t tsk at me, boy,” Kuchel scolded him and attached a band-aid just under his lip. “You brought this upon yourself.”

“He didn’t,” Hanji objected. “Please don’t be mad at him, Kuchel. It was all my fault. I—”

“Shut up,” Levi snarled, suddenly.

“What?” Hanji asked, blinking.

“I said shut up!” Levi raised his voice, and when he looked at her at last, she saw the flames of his emotions rising up, up and up in his eyes.

“Levi,” Kuchel interrupted. “Calm down.”

Levi acted like she had never talked. “None of this was your fault!”

“But I started it,” Hanji attempted to say yet, he was too angry to listen.

“You didn’t start anything, Hanji! You protected yourself. You don’t walk around bullying people. You did what you did because they made you to.”

“But—”

“Stop blaming yourself for things you weren’t responsible for!”

He was breathing heavily, eyes wide and bright. Hanji was quite taken aback, lips parted slightly in surprise. She hadn’t expected him to yell at her like that. From his earlier reaction, she had thought that he was angry at her because she was the reason for what had happened to him. But now she saw, with a startling realization, that that wasn’t the reason at all.

“They deserved what happened to them,” he went on, then looked away. “I would do the same for ten times more if necessary.”

Words rolled left and right on her tongue, her voice lingered on her throat, sentences shaped before her eyes but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t let a sound out of her mouth. Levi was like a river, she thought then as she watched the tempest in his eyes, with canals and meanders, sometimes he was as tranquil as the leaves on summer trees and sometimes he was wild enough to overflow over the edges.

“We are going to talk about it later, young man,” Kuchel said, looking straight at Levi. 

“What?” Levi asked, sharply.

“You can’t go around picking up a fight with strangers.”

“But they deserved it,” Levi pressed, jaw tightening stubbornly. 

“I can understand the reason why you think that they did,” Kuchel went on with a softer voice. “But violence is not the answer. You know that.”

Levi turned his face away, his jaw moved as he pressed his lips together, and he folded his arms. “Whatever.”

“You should be thankful to that old lady who saw you getting your ass beaten,” Kenny told him, leaning back on his chair. As it turned out the reason why Kenny had found them was an old lady who had recognized Levi and informed Kenny about the situation. Hanji genuinely wanted to find and kiss her hands for being the nicest person alive.

“I learned from the best,” Levi snapped.

Kenny squinted and looked at Kuchel. “Permission to beat your brat as punishment?”

“Declined,” Kuchel said, rolling her eyes. 

Levi smirked, and Kenny clicked his tongue, clearly irritated. 

“Hanji,” Kuchel turned her attention to her, kneeling in front of Hanji and she pushed a stray hair behind her ear. “I need to talk to your parents about this, honey, okay? They need to know. This is serious.” She held her hand and squeezed lightly. “You don’t have to face this alone, alright?” Kuchel smiled. 

Hanji bit her lower lip again when tears started sinking behind her eyes. She couldn’t find the strength to say anything, so she merely nodded in response. 

“Don’t worry,” Kenny said then, crackling his fingers. “If a verbal warning doesn’t work, I can always teach them a more permanent lesson.”

“Kenny, they are only children. Don’t be ridiculous,” Kuchel rolled her eyes and shook her head. “And it will work. We will make sure of it.” She raised her brows. “Right?”

“Yes,” she managed to whisper at last. “Thank you.”

Oh, no. She was near the edge of crying, only needed one more push and then she would fall and get drown in her own, salty tears. For some reason, she didn’t want to cry in front of Kuchel. There was nothing wrong with crying, she knew that, but still…

Then, a hand, the same one from earlier, grabbed her own and pulled her up. Hanji let him, despite the unexpected movement, and as Levi guided her out of the room, she merely followed without saying a word. 

“I am gonna take her home,” he informed Kuchel and Kenny shortly before they exited the room.  

The air was somewhat chilly outside, and the light of day was long lost but neither Levi nor Hanji were quite aware of it. Levi didn’t let go of her hand as he kept on pulling her, his steps were fast and determined, hand firm and warm around her fingers. She followed for a handful of seconds, trying to match his steps. She couldn’t get a clear view of the road, nor could she make out the lines of his figure from behind quite clearly. It took her several minutes before she pulled at his hand to make him listen, “Levi,” she called. “Levi, I don’t want to go home.”

He didn’t look back, he didn’t slow down, he didn’t even wait for her to reach him. “I know,” he said merely. 

With those two simple words, the final push came at last, and tears let loose without a warning. She sobbed and covered her eyes with the inside of her elbow, tears wetted her thin raincoat. And Levi squeezed her fingers as if to say, it’s okay, and this time she really, truly believed that it was. 

--

“Wait here for a second,” Levi stopped them minutes later. She didn’t know where they were. Now that it was darker, there were artificial, neon lights everywhere and they made her head throb. “Okay?”

She nodded and sniffed. Her face was wet with tears and very embarrassingly snot, however, she had no tissue with her or anything to clean her face with. 

Levi sighed and stepped closer. Hanji wondered why he was still there while he had just told her to wait. Then he lifted his left hand, and she saw that he had pulled his t-shirt over his palm. His right hand held her shoulder and as Hanji blinked her eyes confused, he brought his hand over her face then cleaned each wet spot with his t-shirt. 

She gawked at him in shock. “Levi!”

“Don’t.” He folded the fabric up after he was finished. “I don’t want to hear anything about this. Ever. Understood?”

She was still in awe; the great clean freak Levi Ackerman had just cleaned the snot in her face with his cloth! “You—”

“Understood, Hanji?”

It took much too effort to close her jaw, and say, “Yeah.”

“Good.”

Then he walked away, leaving Hanji astonished and very much impressed. She felt her heart fluttering a little, and her lips curled upwards. “Softie,” she whispered to herself. 

When he got back a few minutes later there was a bag in his hand and inside a couple of chocolate milk and her favourite snacks. “You hadn’t eaten anything,” he explained, and when they settled on their road to the roof, she smiled, looking at his side profile. Softie, indeed. 

-

Hanji drank her milk, and they ate together with the snacks he had brought. It eased her headache and appeased her nausea a little bit. She couldn’t look up at the stars though, what a shame.

“We should go to the same high school,” Levi said after they finished eating and were watching the view ahead.

Hanji beamed at him and shoved his shoulder with her own slightly. “Yeah, it would be great.”

She leaned on his shoulder afterwards and enjoyed the breeze, and his warmth she borrowed through the fabrics of their clothes. When minutes started to chase the hours slowly, the night got colder, and clouds started to gather up above. “We should—” 

“I don’t want to see you getting hurt again,” he said, suddenly. 

Hanji looked at him and saw it again. Levi was a river, high and low, wild and calm, complicated and wide. He flew through rocks, valleys and lands. Just like a river, she thought, he carried his emotions in an endless stream. And once she let herself be carried away with it, there was no way to escape. And it wasn’t like she looked for one in the first place.

“Can I hug you?” she asked, with a voice so low, it was as if she was afraid of hearing the word no.

“Idiot,” he said, and she saw the waters calming down in his eyes, and his voice was tender like the petal of a violet. “You never need to ask.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck tightly, and as he hugged her back, arms tight around her waist she wasn’t quite surprised to realize that her vision was yet again blurry with hot tears. “Thank you,” she whispered. “For being there.”

“I always will be,” he replied without hesitation. And then a heartbeat later he added, “To the last syllable of recorded time.”

A tear escaped her eye, she laughed hoarsely and breathed in. He smelled like leaves, soap and the wind.

He smelled like home. 

[falseroar]

Dog Days Part 17: Meeting in the Park

((After their night out, Y/N learns that the new day has some special meaning for Chase. Eager to help take his mind off things, they decide to try for another walk.

Another one on the long side, and I expect the next one to be the same way. More about that in the end note.

Warning: mentions of blood.

Links to the previous Part 16: Caught on Camera and to the whole series.))

“The Host notes that someone appears to be in higher spirits now,” he said, although that was a bit of an understatement. You found yourself constantly lagging behind or surging forward, often getting almost half a block ahead of the Host’s steady, slow pace before you remembered you didn’t even know where the two of you were going.

Captain Magnum, displaying very fast reflexes that were a little terrifying from someone of his size, managed to catch you by the scruff of your neck with one hand and the tilting table with the other before you could get yourself kicked out of the restaurant. Still, the move earned you a scowl from the chef while Meri laughed about how friendly the Host’s dog was, causing both the Host and the captain to try and correct her for two very different reasons.

Unfortunately, after that, the conversation changed with Captain Magnum introducing Meri to the rest of the crew. Not long after, the Host quietly suggested that it was time for the two of you to go. You weren’t sure if that was because the captain started “joking” about shanghaiing one or both of you, or because the singing that started about two seconds after the door closed behind you could have been classified as torture in the right context.

Which meant you were left with question after question running through your mind, and no way to ask the Host any of them. How did he know Abe? Where was he? What was he doing now, was he okay? What happened after the party? How did he survive?

Then again, you doubted the Host would know the answer to those last two, but being this close to finding Abe again and not being able to just ask, it was enough to make you try to change back right there outside of the restaurant.

Not that you had any more luck this time than any of the other times you tried.

But now you were working through ideas on where to go from here. If you could get the others to help, it would be so easy—one of Marvin’s spells could find Abe in minutes if not seconds, and as much as Jackie mentioned running into hunters, there was a chance he already knew of him. It’s not like Marvin or Jameson would have recognized the name, as you had never included the hunter in any of your letters to them before the mirror.

After the first time you ran into Abe, you had to write a series of letters to tell them you were okay, especially after the news of a murderous werewolf in the city broke, and the papers were full of rumors that there could be more than one roaming the streets. That is, when they weren’t too busy criticizing the city for letting one in to start with. Never mind all the advertisements for wolfsbane elixirs and silver bullets in those same pages.

You suspected sharing that a hunter had discovered what you were would have ended with Marvin breaking into your home in the dead of night and kidnapping you for a while, for your own safety. Something he had actually threatened to do at the time, and while he might have been joking about that, there was no telling what he would have done to Abe in the name of protecting you.

So how to tell them now?

“This is where the Host must part ways,” the Host said, startling you out of your thoughts. You looked around and realized that he had stopped a few feet back, outside the entrance to the city park. “Dawn will be coming soon, and he would like to get some rest. The Host…appreciated the company tonight and hopes that the meal—”

The Host rocked back on his feet, body tensing when he felt the paws on his shoulders and your face next to his until he realized that this was your attempt at a hug. It was just a chance encounter, a random fluke, but you wished desperately to thank him, to tell him what those few overheard words meant to you.

Instead, you let go and dropped back to the ground, leaving the Host to gather his thoughts before he stammered, “It, uh—Think nothing of it. It was just a meal, nothing more.”

He seemed to place a heavy emphasis on the last sentence, as though trying to reassure himself or someone else of what he was saying. After considering for a moment, he added, “Take care, and keep that collar close. There are many eyes in this city.”

Deciding that was apparently the note he wanted to end the conversation on, the Host turned and started to walk in the park before, as an afterthought, waving goodbye. You could just barely see the gesture before he disappeared down the trail, the crunch of fallen leaves trailing behind him.

Not the most reassuring way to say farewell, and you were suddenly very aware of the chill in the air and the eerie quiet of a city not yet fully awake. Then again, if he was right about dawn coming, there would soon be a lot more people to worry about—and several people back home with questions about where you had been all night.

Ears and nerves on high alert once again, you mainly used your nose to find your way back to the right neighborhood, and from there to the right house. Hoping you had beat the doctor home, you took a second run at the fence, this time managing to clear the top even if the rolling landing on the other side wasn’t exactly graceful. In the safety of the backyard, you slipped your collar off and shook yourself, relieved to finally have that small but somehow barely bearable weight off of your neck. It was a little worrying how tempting it was to bury the thing out here, even when you knew it was keeping you safe.

You pulled open the sliding back door and paused, taking in the dark and silent house. Someone had turned off the light left on for you, but otherwise there was no sign of anyone else up yet as you quietly pulled the door shut behind you and dropped your collar more or less where you found it.

That is, until you heard the sound of someone trying very hard to shut a kitchen cabinet without making a sound, and almost succeeding. There was the muffled clunk of a full glass or bottle on the counter, and the soft shift of weight as someone moved and opened another cabinet. All of it would have been easy to miss for someone without your enhanced hearing, which also caught the key in the lock just before the front door opened.

“Ah, Hündchen, good morning,” Henrik said brightly as he stepped inside and flipped on a light switch, only for his smile to turn to a frown when your gaze snapped back to the kitchen and the muffled swear from inside it. A muffled voice that you recognized, even before you followed the doctor into the kitchen, where he turned on the light to reveal Jackie standing beside a row of bottles on the counter. “…It is a bit early for a drink, is it not, Jackie?”

“Shhh, please keep it down,” Jackie whispered, his eyes darting from the two of you to the direction of the still silent bedrooms. “It’s not what it looks like, okay?”

“It looks as zhough you are gathering all of zhe alcohol in zhe house for some reason,” the doctor said, and you nodded. The three bottles on the counter and the one in Jackie’s hand were all still unopened, which made his nervousness all the stranger. “Do you wish to tell why?”

Jackie sighed, shifting the bottle he held from one hand to the other and back again. “Today’s…it’s an important day for Chase, and one he kind of had issues with last year. You weren’t living with us yet so you wouldn’t know, but it was…rough.”

“Zhese are zhe kind of issues where more or less alcohol would help?” Henrik asked, again eyeing the bottles.

“I thought if he couldn’t find them, it wouldn’t be as tempting to give in to it again,” Jackie muttered. “He’s been doing good lately, and I don’t want him to lose that.”

The doctor considered this and nodded. “Zhen I can keep zhe bottles in my room until zhe temptations are not so strong.”

“Really?” Jackie asked, and Henrik shrugged.

“No one goes in my room during zhe day, and I have places I can hide a few bottles. It vill not stop him from buying more, of course. And being zhere for him and keeping his mind occupied, if zhis day is so difficult, would be much better.”

“I know, I know,” Jackie said softly, sounding so tired that the doctor spared a hand on his shoulder before picking up two of the bottles and motioning for both of you to follow. “Come on, Y/N, ve can do your exam in my room zhis morning.”

Once the bottles were safely stowed away in the back of one of the doctor’s cabinets, behind a personal supply of first aid items, Jackie thanked him again and went to start breakfast for the others. Leaving you alone with the doctor in his room which, unlike the other bedrooms, was noticeably lacking in the window department.

“How are you feeling today, Hündchen?” Henrik asked, once he had you sit on a long, padded bench and pulled up a chair to sit in front of you. “Better zhan yesterday?”

You nodded and smiled, causing the doctor to sniff the air.

“Good, you did eat something. I vas worried, vith zhe bowl in zhe kitchen still full.” He chuckled at your guilty expression and said, “No worries, Jackie is always sneaking takeout when he is out late and thinks we do not know.”

There wasn’t an easy way to correct him, any more than there was an easy way to explain where you had been last night or why you were so tired now, although the doctor just clicked his tongue when you yawned while he was checking your eyes. Generally, not the reaction of someone looking into the open mouth of a werewolf inches away from his face.

“You should get some rest, Y/N. Sleep is good for zhe body and mind, and for zhe recovery, no matter what Marvin and Jackie seem to think.”

You nodded, while privately thinking that sleep would be a little hard. Your body was exhausted, but your mind was wired and racing, even when you stretched out on the couch and closed your eyes. Lying there, you could smell breakfast cooking and hear the others emerge from their rooms and join Jackie in the kitchen, their conversation fading in and out as you dozed, until the click of the front door closing woke you up.

“Yeah, Chase is fine, he just has a lot on his mind I think,” Jackie said, probably in response to something Jameson asked. “I wouldn’t worry too much.”

Said the guy who was worried enough to hide all of the alcohol.

Why wasn’t Jackie telling the others? Then again, he had also avoided specifics when he talked to you and the doctor earlier, and only said as much as he had to. Whatever was going on with him, Jackie must feel it was personal enough to leave it up to Chase to decide if he wanted to say something.

The conversation continued, but judging by the silences and Marvin responding, Jackie was the only one not talking much. You wondered if he was thinking about how long it took before the front door opened again and Chase stepped inside.

“You good?” Marvin called from inside the kitchen, and you heard Chase stop in the living room and take a breath before he answered.

“Yeah, just realized some of my game footage was corrupted. Sucks, but I’m going to be in my room recording for a while to make up for it, if any of you need me.”

“That’s rough. Let us know when you need a break,” Jackie said. “Jameson’s saying he can bake some cookies later.”

“And we’ll try to keep Jackie from eating them all,” Marvin joked.

Chase’s laugh felt a little forced to your ears, but he retreated to his room and the conversation continued in the kitchen. You soon dozed off again for what just felt like a minute, but when you woke up again the kitchen was silent, the room empty and breakfast cleaned up. A walk down the hall found the others in their rooms, Jameson bent over a stack of papers writing and mouthing words to himself, maybe working on a new act for his show, Marvin crafting some small and slightly worrying dolls for some unknown purpose, and Jackie having fallen asleep on his bed.

Chase’s room, however, was very quiet. Especially since his usual recording sessions seemed to involve a lot of talking and occasionally shouted insults at whatever was going on in his computer screen. You stopped and, after a long enough second to wonder if he was even still in there, heard a sound.

Chase choked back another sob when he heard a noise at his door. Hastily wiping at his eyes and clearing his throat in an effort to sound normal, he said, “Busy, bro!”

The sound came again and he realized it wasn’t a knock but something scratching in the general area of the doorknob. When he stood up and opened the door, it was to find a wolf sitting in the hallway, one paw still raised in an effort to get a hold of the doorknob.

“Y/N?” Chase asked, too aware of how stuffy his own voice sounded. “I, uh, I just…lost a try not to cry challenge, y’know?...Do you know what those are? But I’m fine.”

You tilted your head, and he could read the doubt in your expression.

He sighed and knelt down, lowering his voice in case one of the others might hear. “Thanks for worrying, but I’ll be okay. Today’s just one of those days, you know?”

You stared at him, and he looked back into those silver-clouded eyes and wondered not for the first time what you were thinking. Especially when you turned and walked away, only to come padding back before he could stand and shut the door again.

With your collar and hated leash in your mouth.

“You want to go for a walk?” Chase asked, genuinely surprised when you nodded. “Are you sure? I know yesterday was…”

You nodded again and looked him in the eye without blinking. Chase couldn’t kid himself on why you were suddenly suggesting a walk, even after the last one had gone so badly. And sitting here alone in his room wasn’t doing him any favors.

“Okay, I’m game if you are,” he said, and found himself returning your smile.

He helped you get your collar on and left a note on the kitchen table, but he breathed a little easier when the front door of the house was closed behind both of you without any of the others noticing or asking any questions.

“Just let me know if it gets to be too much, okay?” Chase said as he clipped the leash to your collar. He noticed the shudder that ran down your spine even as you nodded. “We’ll take it slow, and stop any time you need to.”

Together, you walked to the end of the drive and turned to follow the sidewalk. You kept close to him, ears twitching occasionally when you heard him sniffle and take a few shaky breaths.

“I’m okay,” he said, again. “I’m just…not ready to talk about it with the others yet. You understand?”

You nodded, understanding a little too well.

“I don’t want them to think—” He sighed. “Everyone has enough on their minds already.”

You bumped hard against his leg, as if to tell him to stop with that kind of talk. Or, when he looked down at you, it could be because your eyes were shut tight.

“Y/N?” he asked, stopping with you following suit when the leash pulled you back. “Sorry. Are you okay? Is something wrong?”

You shook your head, but your eyes were still shut tight. Mind going back to when you had to stop yesterday, how you put your paws over your ears and eyes, he asked, “Is the sunlight too much?”

You nodded, but shook your head when he asked if it hurt, and again when he asked if you wanted to end the walk now. So the light was just hard on your eyes, then. Sunlight sensitivity wasn’t exactly something the doctor could check for easily, after all.

“Huh…” Chase chewed on his lip for a minute before asking, “How’s the park sound? The shade under the trees might help. It’s not far from here, and it shouldn’t be crowded on a Monday afternoon.”

You considered this before nodding again. It would be farther than you managed to go yesterday, not including your little adventure last night, but the good thing about the park was that there would be plenty of places to stop and sit if you needed a break, and easy enough to keep you away from other people.

It was a slow walk to get there, with you walking with your eyes shut tight and stopping every time a car drove by, Chase’s hand on your back and soft assurances that everything was okay. Not exactly how you hoped for this walk to go, but when you reached the entrance of the park, his voice sounded much less cracked and shaky when he spoke again.

“Haven’t been here in a while. You ever been here before?”

You nodded, glad for once that you couldn’t provide extra context. Last time you were at this park, it was to investigate a murder.

Now though, you walked with Chase along winding trails under trees still holding onto their last few leaves, with the rest lying all around. There were joggers and walkers in the distance, but Chase was good at picking routes that mainly avoided other people, the number of which went down the further the two of you went into the center of the park.

By the time the small lake came into view, Chase was ready to stop and sit on one of the wooden benches randomly placed around park, where you leaned against his legs. Chase breathed out slowly, feeling the tension ease in his shoulders and back. It was so quiet and peaceful, that he nearly missed when your ears went up at the sound of approaching footsteps.

“Easy,” he said, ruffling your fur to remind you that he was still there, only to freeze himself when he recognized the next voice.

“Daddy?”

Chase’s head whipped around so fast that his neck cracked, and he could only stare at the woman who had stopped short in the middle of the nearby path and the two young kids with her.

You tilted your head and had just enough time to brace yourself before a young girl practically tackled you with a hug.

“You got a dog?!” she cried. “It’s so big, I love it!”

“Don’t pet a dog without asking,” the woman warned, pulling her daughter back. “That thing could have bitten you!”

“Uh, your mom’s right,” Chase said weakly. “Y/N isn’t used to other people yet.”

Your silver eyes met his and then you visibly made the effort to relax into the image of a regular dog, with a friendly smile and, after a moment to remember, a wagging tail.

“Y/N?” his daughter repeated, as though that was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard. “That’s a people name, not a dog’s name!”

“It’s the one they came with?” Chase suggested, tensing again as his daughter pet a literal werewolf’s head while his son stared at a distance, eyes wide at the sight of the huge canine. “I didn’t expect to see you guys here today!”

“School’s out for a teacher conference,” the woman answered. “I didn’t expect to see you here, I just thought the kids would enjoy some time at the park.”

Chase tried not to read into that, tried not to think about how she would have changed their plans if she could have known.

“When did you decide to get a dog?” she asked.

“Y/N’s a…rescue that I’m helping to foster,” Chase said slowly. “They’ve been through a lot.”

“They?” she repeated, and Chase thought fast.

“Oh, uh, I wanted to practice with they/them pronouns, and I thought Y/N could help with that.”

“Oh,” she said, and Chase almost imagined that she sounded pleasantly surprised at that.

“Why does their tag have a picture of a cat on it?” asked his daughter, the little girl pulling just hard enough on the collar to make visions of it slipping off speed through Chase’s mind.

“Don’t! Uh, don’t pull on that, sweetie,” Chase said, trying to swallow down the panic in his voice. “The pet store was out of dog tags, so I bought one for a cat…?”

His son finally approached you, and you looked down as he knelt and poked one of your paws before declaring, “Lion.”

You tried not to laugh, you really did, but the boy looked up at you and grinned before repeating it again, “Lion!”

He’d probably get along well with Captain Magnum.

The young girl, meanwhile, picked up a stick and threw it, yelling, “Go fetch, Lion!”

“Y/N doesn’t really—” Chase started, but you took off after it. Luckily, he had the sense to let go of the leash, which dragged behind you as you stopped and stared at the pile of leaves some distance away from the actual stick before picking up another one at random.

“No, that’s not it!” his daughter declared, running to point at the correct one with her brother following after.

Chase exhaled slowly, watching in some disbelief as his kids played with a disguised werewolf before looking up at the woman who he still thought of as his wife, even if she didn’t seem so sure anymore.

“I tried to call you earlier, Staci,” he said quietly.

“I know.”

“I just…I thought I should say something,” he said, eyes going to his hands that were gripping each other tightly.

“’Happy Anniversary, I went out and got a dog’?” she suggested. “’Happy Anniversary, by the way, be sure to tell the kids that I walked out on that—'”

“Don’t,” Chase said. The kids were too far away to hear, but he saw your ears move, saw how you steered them just a little farther away just in case. “You know that I still want to see them. If you would let me—”

“No. You don’t just get to ask that, not after what you did,” Staci answered, her stare burning holes into the back of his head. “You left us, you just quit everything and walked away. I thought we were happy, Chase.”

“We—I was, you know this has nothing to do with you or the kids,” Chase said, struggling to keep his voice in check. To keep the tears from coming back. “I just…needed some space from the rest of the family, to figure some things out. My parents…”

“What, expected a lot from you? Set you up with everything you could ever want or need at the Institute? Took care of me and the kids when you left, because you ‘needed some space’ to ‘figure things out’?” Staci made a sound, and Chase could hear the disgust in her voice as she continued, “They would take you back in a second, if you would just ask. Instead, you’re making a fool of yourself online, without a care in the world.”

“It’s more complicated than that, Staci—”

“How? Tell me how it’s complicated, tell me just once why.”

Chase hesitated. She had tried to understand when he said he couldn’t keep up with his work at the Institute, at first thinking the pressure was too much, then, as time passed, assuming he refused to handle the responsibility. She wanted him to stay, to live up to his potential, and when push came to shove, she chose the Bronsons over him. Maybe it would have been different, if he had told her, or maybe she still would have chosen the security his parents offered, the promise of a good education and future for their son and daughter.

But if she didn’t know, then he couldn’t blame her, he could hold on to the hope that maybe, someday, it would make sense. That she and the kids could forgive him.

“Lion? Where’d you go?”

Chase realized that the kids were standing near a patch of trees, staring into the undergrowth, and there was no sign of a massive dog anywhere.

“Y/N?” he said, standing, and then when there was still no sign of them, “Staci, I’m sorry—”

“Go find your dog, Chase,” she said, sounding so tired.

He stopped by his kids, took a second to hug and hold them both before assuring them that “Lion” was okay, probably just distracted by a squirrel or something, before going in after you.

You had been playing with the kids, trying so hard not to overhear a conversation that was not meant for you, when one of the sticks went further than the others. You splashed through fallen leaves after it, venturing past clinging bushes and trees, only to stop short when you caught the smell of the Host.

And of fresh blood.

By the time Chase caught up to you, it was at the foot of a rock outcropping that created a small sheltered area far from any of the other paths and with a good view of the lake. There, he took in the muddy and torn up ground, the spots of blood and other clear signs of a struggle, and you sitting hunched over a long staff made of driftwood, whining softly.

---

“Y/N,” Chase said, not for the first time. He knelt down beside you and picked up the driftwood staff. “We can’t stay here, okay? We need to go, in case they come back.”

Your silver eyes met his, and for a moment he thought you were about to agree and come with him. That is, before you suddenly grabbed the staff out of his hand and took off running with it in your mouth.

The Host’s trail was easy to follow, too easy thanks to the blood, and before long you found yourself at the nearest entrance to the park, staring in dismay at the road where his scent vanished among the smells of too many cars driven by this area too recently.

Chase caught up to you and sighed. “They took whoever it was in a car. Probably straight to the nearest processing center.”

You looked at him and he had to shake his head and say, “No, it’s too late. Those tracks looked over an hour old, they might already be in holding somewhere by now.”

Assuming the owner of that staff wasn’t dead, but Chase didn’t think that was wise to share right now. Besides, if the hunters that took them wanted them dead, they wouldn’t have bothered with taking them this far and risk causing a scene.

You whined again. It was the only sound you could make that came even close to expressing your frustration, your confusion, your disbelief. Someone had attacked the Host, taken him away in broad daylight, and no one noticed? How could Chase not sound more concerned, why weren’t they calling the police for help?

But you already knew why, and suspected Chase had the same idea. If everyone knew there were monsters living in the city, including those like the Host who could pass as human, then maybe they were more used to the sight of a hunter taking someone away. The idea of a hunter finding and catching a ghoul in the city would have made headlines in your day, but maybe now it was just enough to make people stop and stare, then continue about their day.

“I’m sorry, Y/N,” Chase said, picking up your leash again when the people passing by started to give him looks. “We should head back.”

You didn’t give any sign that you heard him, but you also didn’t resist going with him this time, although your head was lowered, your eyes once again closed against the sunlight, your ears flat as you tried to block out the noise of cars driving by and the voices of people walking by or going in and out of the stores on this side of the park. It probably would have been faster to cut back through the park to where you came in, but Chase had assumed, rightly, that you didn’t want to go back by that place again.

Even just the smells alone were a bit much, between the dusty smell of fallen leaves and the low, heavy scent of car exhaust and gasoline from the road, mingled with the scents of people and flowers placed outside of stores and the overload of information coming out of each open doorway you passed.

So when you passed one and caught the heavy aroma of coffee, you couldn’t resist stopping and taking a deep breath. Start by focusing on one thing, the Host had said, although now you missed the days when you could hunch over a steaming cup of peppermint coffee until it drowned out every other smell, until it was easier to forget that one extra reminder that you weren’t entirely human instead of being reminded every single second.

Chase stopped, realizing that you seemed to need a second, and considered again calling Jackie to come pick you up. Or maybe Marvin, who wouldn’t be tempted to take that literally and who at least kind of knew how to drive. Either option felt like it would lead to being told off for leaving without telling anyone, but the way this walk was going, he was already afraid you would never want to give it a third try.

“Whoa, wait a second. Can you tell me where your dog got that stick?”

A woman wearing a barista apron was standing at the door of the coffee shop, looking from Chase to you, her expression that of someone holding her breath and waiting to decide if she should be very angry or very concerned.

Chase looked down at the piece of driftwood you were still holding onto and back at her, heart already sinking as he said, “We found it in the park, near the lake. Do you, um…?”

“That’s a staff one of my…one of my regulars around here uses to walk with, I’m not sure how far he could go without it. And you say you just found it in the park?”

“...Maybe we could talk inside?” Chase asked.

Not much later, he was seated at a corner booth with Carla, you sitting on the floor but your head still easily high enough to look over the edge of the table at both of them. Otherwise, the coffee shop was empty, a sign on the door encouraging customers to come back in fifteen minutes.

“My—my dog found the staff in an area off the trail. There were signs of a struggle there, and we—I think your friend might have been taken by hunters. Do you know if…was he…?”

Chase paused, unsure of a polite way to ask, but Carla just sighed.

“I don’t think he was entirely human, if that’s what you’re getting at. I never asked, and he never said.” Carla hesitated before adding, “He’s been around for over a month now, and never once taken the bandages off of his eyes. The way they bleed, I suggested once he go to the hospital, but he just said they couldn’t help him there.”

“So he was probably unregistered,” Chase said, although he did pause at that bit about the bandages. What could cause something like that, and go untreated for so long? Maybe a question for the doctor, but for now he said, “The Institute can give anything from a slap on the wrist and a fine to six months in holding for not being registered, depending on what your friend is. The good news is, they’ll probably take a look at his eyes there and do what they can to help.”

“And the bad news?” Carla asked.

“…It might be hard to find out what his situation is, if he doesn’t have any family or close contacts to ask,” Chase said, and judging by the look on Carla’s face you could tell she heard the lie in his voice just as well as you did.

“Meaning it’s easy for him to disappear,” Carla said. “No one to look for him, no one to ask any questions. I’ve heard the stories, we all have, of someone who knew someone who was just not there anymore. People just gone one day, and no one knows what becomes of them? It’s…”

Carla searched for the right word and came up with nothing, but looked down when she heard a whine come from the dog sitting next to them, their head down.

“You know, don’t you baby?” she said, stroking the top of your head.

If she only knew.

“We can try,” Chase said suddenly. “My friends and I, we can at least try and find out something about your friend. I know someone who’s good at finding people, and my friend and I, we’re…we’re familiar with how the Institute works.”

“Because you used to be one of them,” Carla said, and smiled at Chase’s surprise. “I know what the toll of hunting with a conscience looks like. We get all kinds here, trust me. If you and your friends can find something, I’d…I’d really appreciate it.”

Carla insisted on keeping the staff, just in case, and she also insisted on give Chase a cup of fresh hot coffee and a slightly disappointing cup of whipped cream for you, thanking both of you again on your way out even though the news was clearly still sitting hard with her.

“Even if we can find out what’s going on with this Host guy, there’s not much we can do about it,” Chase confessed to you once you were a street or two away from the coffee shop. “I shouldn’t have even said anything.”

You stopped short, pulling back on the leash so hard it threatened to pull your collar off.

“Y/N,” Chase started, before pulling you aside and sitting down on one of the benches along the sidewalk here. Keeping his voice low, eyes watching those going by, he said, “I know what the Institute is like, from back when—from back when I was still calling myself a Bronson.”

“I started out as a hunter, like Carla said. And I was a good one, or thought I was only helping people. I’d give more warnings than the others, let things slide when I could. We worked under the idea that we were protecting people, even the monsters we were bringing in by giving them help so that they could go back out in the city and just live their lives.

“Like…a few years ago, there was an outbreak of vampires. People who didn’t even know they had been turned, until the hunger took over or they showed up in hospitals with huge burns, just because they made the mistake of stepping outside on a sunny day. I found so many of them, people who didn’t know what to do, who were scared, and I took them to the Institute where they did help them learn how to adjust. It got to be so bad that the outbreak led the Institute and the city to help create the registration and blood program that lets Schneep keep his practice, it led to a lot of good for people who otherwise wouldn’t have had that kind of access.

“Doesn’t change the fact that they were—are—horrible.” Chase sighed, silent for a moment before continuing, “I found the vampire who started it all too, the one who was knowingly infecting other people without them even realizing what happened. And I killed him.

“After that, I just…I needed a break from the hunting, and I thought working in the rehabilitation and testing side of the Institute would be better, that I could help without…I’ve gone into Schneep’s clinic before and had someone recognize me, and start crying, begging me not to take them back. That’s what I was to people, as a hunter, when I wasn’t…something else.”

Chase’s breath was shaky, his hand in your fur trembling even as he continued to speak.

“The Institute does take non-humans in, helps them learn how to adjust to living with humans safely, like those vampires. Most of them. Others though, they don’t leave. They’re kept in the name of public safety, or to be studied, taking bits and pieces to find out their properties and how they can be exploited, or to be guinea pigs for new ‘cures.’ Sometimes the experiments focused on normal humans, how to keep someone from turning or…or what exposure to different things can do.”

“Once someone is in the Institute, getting them back out is almost impossible. The Institute helps so many people, enough that most people really do believe that’s all it is. Which is why when it decides to keep someone, it will do everything it can to make sure they don’t leave and ruin that image. The only reason I was able to get Jackie out was because I was already on the inside, and no one was ready to suspect a Bronson. And we still had to leave so many others behind.”

Chase trailed off and you placed a paw on his knee, trying to let him know that you understood, at least as much as you could.

“But you’re not going to let this go, are you?” Chase asked, showing that he understood you too even before you nodded.

He sighed and ruffled your fur, unable to blame you even if he didn’t know about how you had just met the Host, how you maybe owed him a story but definitely owed him for helping you realize Abe was still alive. That, and Carla was right: you knew too well what it was like to disappear, to be taken from your own life and locked away, to let it happen even to someone you barely knew.

“Okay then, ‘Lion,’” he said, his smile bittersweet, “But first let’s go see what the others have to say about us running off. Think you can pull off the puppy dog eyes to get us out of trouble?”

That one, you were less sure about.

((End of Part 17. Thank you for reading! All around, not the best anniversary Chase has had, and yet still not the worst one by a long shot. And as I mentioned up top, I expect the next part to be on the long side, which may come out tomorrow or the day after, depending on how things go. Hopefully that will make up for the break in new additions to the story for a little while. I need to catch up in my writing, and starting next weekend I won’t be near a computer to post story-wise until near New Year’s anyways so it feels better to wait until i can be a little more consistent.

I promise, Part 18 will end on just the right note to make you all yell at me for leaving it there. That’s...the goal, right? Right?

Anyways, here’s the link to Part 18: Peppermint and Silver.

Tagging: @silver-owl413 @skyewardlight @withjust-a-bite @blackaquokat @catgirlwarrior @neverisadork @luna1350 @oh-so-creepy @weirdfoxalley @95fangirl @lilalovesinternet-l @thepoolofthedead @a-bit-dapper @randomartdudette @geekymushroom @cactipresident @hotcocoachia @purple-anxiety-blog @shyinspiredartist @avispate @missksketch @autumnrambles @authorracheljoy @liafoxyfox ))

[spookyold-saintjm]

Confession

[gif: @h0rr0rpancake] 

Mandalorian x female reader

Part of the Pilot series [Masterlist]

Warnings: Cursing, alcohol consumption/intoxication, canon-typical violence, it’s steamy but it’s not smut (yet) so chill.

Word Count: 3,808

Surprise! I was able to finish this one (number SIX?!) sooner than I thought, so here you go!

If you’re seeing my work for the first time: hi! You don't necessarily have to read the other parts of this series for this one to make sense; I write each new installment as something that can be enjoyed as a stand-alone or as part of the whole. Reading the others will give you bits and pieces of context that (hopefully) make each new part more impactful, but there’s no need to do so if you don’t want.

This is my longest work yet so...phew. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it! A lil ol’ reblog would mean the world to me, if you want. x

—

You had never thought it was something you’d see again. At least, not if it were done by your own hands. 

Fragments of a one-man ship crumbled and burned and drifted down and out through infinite space. Your hands trembled like leaves against the Crest’s controls, and a cold sweat trickled down the side of your head as you stared numbly at the destruction you had just created. The life you had taken.

You heard the familiar footsteps of the Mandalorian approaching from behind you, and snapped back into survival mode. This wasn’t just about you.

You shakily turned toward the panel on your left, typing in codes to redirect your flight path to the nearest safe planet you could think of. The ship needed repairs; you needed to land as soon as possible. Mando was behind you just as you swerved the ship to a hard right and away from the sight of the debris. Away from choice you’d had to make to ensure your safety. And theirs. 

You vaguely remembered him going to get the child immediately after you’d fired the fatal shot; somehow, despite the rocking and frantic turning of the ship, that sound had been what had awoken and startled the tiny being that had been resting in his carrier in another part of the ship. He was now tucked into Mando’s arm, ears perked in curiosity.

The amount of time that had passed up to that point was unclear to you; you’d kept a clear mind, focused, each move intentional and calculated as you attempted to get the attacking ship off your tail. It was when you realized that they weren’t going to give up on their pursuit, that they were intent to take you down, that you knew what you had to do. And you’d done it, but not without the dull, numbing feeling of acknowledging death quickly beginning to set in, despite the countless hours of training you’d once been through to teach your mind otherwise.

You had told yourself you weren’t going to do it again. And yet, here you were.

“I’ve changed our course.” You spoke quietly, quickly, before Mando could ask if you were okay. It was a question you didn’t want to answer. “We need to land soon. Damage.”

Mando said nothing, only watched your still-trembling hands attempt to restore the ship to full operation so that you could more quickly reach your new destination.

“S-sorry,” you added, immediately wishing you could take back the words that were already spilling from your lips. “I—I wasn’t—it’s been a long time."

He listened, letting you speak the words that were making your stomach turn the longer you held them inside. He didn’t ask questions, didn’t try to tell you to calm down. Only listened. It was something that you found yourself to silently appreciate as you started to steady yourself, your breaths regulating, your hands still. 

He had seated himself in the co-pilot chair behind you, the child quiet in his lap. “Thank you.” he finally spoke. It was the only thing he could think to say, but it was enough. 

Without turning away from the viewport, you nodded slowly in grateful acknowledgment.

“They were after him, weren’t they?” you asked, your voice low. You already knew the answer, but to assure yourself that what you’d done was worth it…

“I think so. Yes.” Mando replied simply.

“Not Guild. Not now.” You added.

“No. Someone else.”

You had a feeling you both had the same suspicions, that word had spread about the Mandalorian taking down Moff Gideon and escaping with a bounty he’d very intensely sought after. A very valuable one.

Neither one of you said it aloud, but you knew. The running wasn’t over.

—

Hot. Why did this planet have to be so kriffing hot?

You reached to wipe sweat from your forehead as you meticulously worked away on the wiring you pulled from out of a panel near the bottom of the ship. The repairs weren’t necessarily difficult, but time-consuming. And costly. Maybe it was the heat on this planet getting to you, but you’d snapped at Mando at his slightest hesitation of the full repairs. 

“This ship is a ticking bomb. I don’t fix her, I don’t fly her. She’s all yours."

You could have sworn you’d heard his teeth grinding beneath this helmet when he’d handed over the credits for the necessary parts. 

You were still coming down from your mood when the Mandalorian returned to the hangar where you’d been permitted to leave the ship a couple hours later. The child was following, happily toddling along behind him, but nearly thudded straight into his boot when Mando abruptly halted in his tracks.

He saw as you stood from your crouched position by the ship, muttering light curses under your breath as you stepped over to search through the crate of tools provided in the hangar for the repairs you were currently addressing. A stray hair drifted down into your eyes from where you had tied it atop your head, desperate for any means to cool down, and you blew it away as you continued to dig through the crate. Your long-sleeved shirt was tied at your waist, leaving you in your sleeveless undershirt that, thanks to the heat causing everything to stick to your skin, wasn’t leaving much to anyone’s imagination...

Not that…not that he would imagine anything. No, the heat was just getting to him, too. 

Probably.

You finally noticed his presence and looked up, shielding your eyes with a hand to look at him through the light of the setting suns glinting off his armor. 

“Hey, shiny. Step out of the light. I’m going blind here.”

Once he remembered how to walk, Mando was standing by the open hatch of the Crest, telling the child to head inside out of the heat. He obeyed, but not before letting a long stare glide between the two of you. 

You were faced the opposite direction from him, but you didn’t hesitate to whip your head around your shoulder to send him a hard glare of warning before he quickened his pace inside with a small giggle.

“What does he say to you?” Mando asked as he approached you. You shook your head as you pulled the tool you’d been looking for from the crate with a low hum. He knew well enough by now how you communicated with the child, although maybe he didn’t quite understand the process of it. Some things were better to just silently accept. And this seemed to be one of them.

“You know…kid stuff,” you shrugged, though the fluttering in your stomach when Mando reached your side easily betrayed that. You walked over to the panel you’d been working on, and used the tool you’d retrieved to finish connecting and securing the last couple wires before locking and screwing the panel back into place. 

“Well, we’re getting there.” You announced as you came from underneath the ship again. You dusted off your hands onto your thighs, and looked to Mando with a sigh. “Stabilizer still needs some work, and I have to re-align the left thruster. Need to double check the fuel driver. Might as well knock out the cosmetic work too if we’re going to be here for a few days.” You leaned to rub at a deep scratch in the thick metal of the Crest as you spoke. “Any luck on your end?”

“We found lodging. Doesn’t seem like we’ll be bothered.” Mando replied, already giving up on trying to make sense of the information you’d just given him. You knew that the mechanical side of things wasn’t really his area, so you weren’t at all surprised at his lack of questioning. Laughable as it may have been to you.

“Good,” you replied. “I hate being bothered.”

Mando folded his arms over his chest as he watched you type some final information regarding the repairs into the datapad before looking to him with a faint grin.

“Alright, then. If everything’s settled…I need a drink.”

—

With one arm propped against the bar, you knocked back the next shot of glowing orange liquid passed your way.

You weren’t quite sure what it was, but Maker, did it burn in the best way.

You swiped a slightly larger glass of dark brown liquid you’d requested off of the counter and turned to look for your companion for maybe the twentieth time that night. 

You finally saw him, the rough silhouette of the Mandalorian making his way toward you. 

Taking deliberate steps, you wandered over to meet him, the music in the room so gods-damned fantastic that you nearly forgot what you were doing until you nearly bumped into him.

You grinned up at him and shoved the glass in his direction. “Got you something!”

“I’m alright.” He knew you were beyond the point of him trying to explain to you that even if he did want a drink, he couldn’t drink it. For obvious reasons.

“Fine. Suit yourself.” Mando stared blankly at you as you pressed the glass to your lips and tipped back your head, finishing the entire thing in one go. You let out a heavy sigh of contentment as you placed the glass, now empty, down onto the nearest table. 

He had agreed to stay back with the child as you’d gone to have a couple drinks at a nearby to unwind. When an hour and a half had passed and you hadn’t returned, he put the kid down to sleep and came to check in on you, a dull surge of worry rushing through him. It wasn’t entirely impossible that you’d all been followed onto this planet...

But instead he found you perfectly content, clearly more than a “couple” drinks in.

A tall, dark haired human female had wandered over, wrapping her arm low around your waist as they gazed eagerly at Mando.

“Oh! This your boyfriend or something?” The woman winked at him with a wide grin before she turned back to curiously tilt her head at you with her blue-painted, pursed lips. “Didn’t see you as the...boyfriend type, too.” 

She turned back to Mando and reached a hand upward, a thin finger lazily reaching to trace the visor of his helmet. “What’s he look like under—"

Before she got the chance, you had her pressed face-first onto a table, that same hand pinned behind her back.

“Don’t. Touch. The helmet.” You spat down at her, before sending her off back in the direction she’d come from when you’d decided to let her go.

The Mandalorian wasn’t sure he was breathing. 

“Handsy-ass bitch,” you muttered, turning back towards Mando with a shrug. “Sorry.”

He was still internally reeling from everything he’d just had to process in that matter of seconds, but shook himself out of it once he saw you faintly sway on your feet.

“We need to get back.” He said, his tone bordering that of an order. “I left the kid."

Your head snapped back upward toward him. “You left the—what the fuck is wrong with you?!” you gasped, and frantically tapped on the beskar covering his shoulders, urging him to turn around to the door. “We have to go.” 

You both made it roughly five steps when he had to catch you from nearly stumbling to the floor. You walked the remainder of the way with hands clasped onto Mando’s arm to keep you steady. 

You didn’t really need to, though. At least, that’s what you’d muttered under your breath on the walk back to where you were staying for the night. You were just being nice and accepting his help.

Mando let out a long sigh as you followed him inside.

Fortunately for the three of you, there were small rooms available for travelers to stay near the hangar, whether it be for time to make repairs to ships or to find temporary work until one could get off-world again. Mando, with the child tucked in his arm, had to quickly clarify that he would need two beds—in fact, two separate bedrooms—when he’d explained the requirements for a place to stay. Much to the owner’s amusement.

“Eh, don’t worry about it, guy. She’ll get over whatever you did to piss her off. They always do,” he had stated when he’d handed over the access card for the door.

Mando was silently thankful you hadn’t been there to hear the exchange, because even with you nowhere around he felt the distinct urge to throw himself into a sarlacc pit.

Your first instinct once you were inside, despite the haziness in your mind, was to check on the kid. He wore a peaceful contentment on his face as his slept in the carrier. Perhaps he, too, was relieved to be staying the night somewhere other than in an old bucket of a ship. Mando followed behind, a dull relief washing over him when he too saw that the child had been undisturbed during his short absence.

You spun around and glared up at him. “Do not leave him alone again.” You said, keeping your voice low. "For two hours or five minutes, I don’t care.” 

He could have easily argued that maybe you were the reason he’d left him alone to begin with…but he was fairly certain that it wouldn’t be the best idea.

You had closed the door to the room you’d designated as yours seemingly before he could blink, coming out a while later, freshly showered in a new set of clothes. You still had that vague floating feeling as the effects alcohol continue to pulse steadily through your body, but you were at least coherent enough to walk on your own now. 

The lighting in the room was dim, so as not to disturb the sleeping child, when you walked over to where Mando was tweaking the blaster he always carried with him at the small table in the room. 

You plopped down in the seat across from him, hands rested under your chin, dark circles already formed under your eyes.

“Can I tell you something?” You asked, after watching him in silence for a while.

If it hadn’t been for all the other ways you’d surprised him that evening, the question might have given him pause.  “Go ahead."

You tilted your head. “I want to kiss you, Din Djarin.”

And his entire world froze.

“I know, I can’t.” You waved a hand dismissively toward him, your words still slightly slurring. “It’s the Way, or whatever. I get it. But stars, if I don’t just want to kiss you sometimes.” 

“Stop.” His voice came out far quieter than he’d meant as he began to earnestly wipe away a spot on his blaster that didn’t exist. “You’re drunk.”

You shrugged. “It's when I’m the most honest.”

He practically dropped the blaster onto the table, much louder than he’d meant. Both of you immediately jerked your heads toward the sleeping child, who thankfully hadn’t stirred.

Mando lifted his head, finally looking back at you. It almost felt like some strange stand-off, this long, silent exchange between the two of you. What was he supposed to say to that? His thoughts weren’t lining up right in his head, not only because of your confession, but the fact that you’d used his name when he said it. You hadn’t dared to speak it again since the night you’d left Navarro. Not until now. And then, there was the matter of what exactly you had said...

You were torture. Absolute torture. 

“Um,” You slowly rose from your seat, muttering curses to yourself in your head when you realized he wasn’t going to give you a reply. You pressed your palms flat against the table until the shadows of the room and Mando’s silhouette stopped wavering around you. “I’m gonna go."

You had turned to walk back to your private space for the night when the single light in the room switched off.

You nearly tripped over your feet as you halted, slowly turning back to what you guessed was Mando’s general direction. 

“Hey, wait I can’t see anythi—"

You felt his presence in front of you just as your mind fully processed the thought.

You couldn’t see.

Your breathing suddenly felt heavy, dizziness threatening to overtake you again the longer you were stripped of your sight. The quiet in the room was nearly deafening.

Mando was moving, a familiar sound of shifting beskar finally breaking the silence. Your feet were heavy weights, holding you in place while you heard him set something onto the table behind him.

Another silence passed, and breathing became nearly impossible as the walls closed in around you. “Mando, I—“

“Okay.”

Every nerve in your body threatened to short-circuit at the sound of his voice. His voice.

He’d taken off his helmet. He was standing in front of you and he’d taken off his helmet.

“Is that really what you want?” he asked.

Oh, Maker, if he kept speaking you were going to pass out. 

Little did you know, he wasn’t feeling all that different. It took his every last ounce of pure willpower to keep himself from wavering, from putting back on the helmet and turning around and hoping he could convince you that you’d been dreaming if you asked in the morning.

But you wouldn’t, couldn't forget this if you tried.

He took a step forward, a step closer to you, awaiting an answer. “Well?"

“T—to kiss you?" you nodded once, slowly, despite knowing he couldn’t see you. “I…yes.” You swallowed thickly, an attempt to raise your voice above a whisper. “Do…do you? Want to, I mean.” Stop talking stop talking stop talking...

Another rustling, and you felt his touch, his fingers rested beneath your chin. “Yes.”

You stood unmoving, other than the heavy rise and fall of your chest. His forehead rested against your own, the first contact of his bare skin to yours enough to send you through the roof. You could hear his own uneven breathing now as he leaned in, his pace achingly slow. The tip of his nose brushed against yours, and your reflexively parted your lips in your wound-up anticipation…

And he kissed you.

His lips were feather-light and hesitant against yours, testing your acceptance to what was happening. You leaned into it, fully capturing his mouth with yours. 

He tasted every bit the warrior, like blood and dirt mixed with something sweet and uniquely him, something that you could get drunk on, if you hadn’t been already.

The kiss was long, heavy. What had started out as something so light and timid quickly deepened into something else entirely, the instinctual need for contact that you’d both been deprived of for far too long rapidly taking over. What was once slow and steady soon turned messy, desperate, his teeth grazing against your bottom lip as you opened for him. 

You’d snapped out of your shock and your hands were quick to press into his back to urge him closer to you before they wandered immediately up to his head.

Curls. The tiniest curls of hair sat atop his head and you wrapped one set of fingers in them while your other hand rubbed against the rough stubble on his face and slid along his neck and back up again. You wanted to remember every last inch of his face, how it felt. The sight of it didn’t matter. Not anymore.

At some point, you noticed your back was now pressed against a wall, the realization that he’d moved you there causing you to impulsively tug at his hair. 

Some faint, low noise erupted from him and his fingers curled deeper into your waist in direct response and it set a fire deep within you that threatened to erupt at any moment.

More. You wanted more.

But he…was he trying to pull away from you? 

You chased him, your lips reconnecting once he’d hardly leaned back. He indulged it a moment longer.

He, too, wanted more. Wanted it more than he knew he could possibly want anything.

But still he pulled back again, his hands moving to instead wrap around your arms to blindly pin you against the wall.

“Din—” you slurred, almost a plea. You reached up to move your hair away from your half-open eyes in a way that would have sent him to the floor if he’d been able to see it.

“I know,” he answered, his breath coming out in short bursts as he again rested his forehead against yours. “But not...like this. You’re still…"

He felt you nod against him before he could finish, despite the frustrated hum that crept from your lips. 

“Okay,” you breathed. Your rested your palms against his chest, fingers curling against the armor there in a silent wish.

Mando leaned to press a soft, final kiss to your swollen lips before releasing his hold on you, both of you attempting to catch your breath as the room grew silent.

He was across the room again before you fully had the chance to miss his touch.

“You should sleep.” he stated, his voice again altered by the modulators of his helmet. There was now enough light for you to see rough shapes in the room, and despite how badly you wanted to turn away, you were looking back at him, standing, watching you.

You couldn’t help but sigh. Just like that, it was over. As if it had never happened at all.

“Yeah,” you muttered, the only answer you could pull from your throat as you turned back toward the room you had claimed as your own.You wandered inside, shut the door behind you with the blind press of a button, and immediately collapsed onto the bed. A real bed, but in that moment it felt as hard and unforgiving as if you were lying on the ground outside. 

The knot in your chest and the fire set low in your stomach had yet to cease. Your eyes were wide open, but you were seeing nothing. You laid there, for several minutes or maybe hours, before eventually your exhausted body and the alcohol still drifting through your veins lulled you into a deep sleep.

And in the room beside you, Mando laid on his back, the beskar long stripped away. His hands rested at his sides, his eyes stuck to the low ceiling with no other thought than that of the choice he had just decided upon, the unspoken promise he made to himself, to you, as he, too, waited for sleep to overtake him.

—

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[popculturebuffet]

The Loud House Valentine’s Day Double Feature (Back in Black and Stage Plight) or My My My Once Bitten Twice Shy

What is up my Loudites? And while I am returning to the Loud House I do have some sad news to get out of the way first.. i’m ending regular coverage of the Loud House. I don’t like doing this.. but when I picked up the show, I didn’t really have a set schedule.. and that was a bad thing as I didn’t get nearly everything I wanted done. Now I have one and honestly it’s been great: it allows me to stay focused and if I end up not feeling what I was going to do that day, provided it’s not a comission or specfically needed that day, I can swap things around a bit easier. 

The reason I bring this up is Nick’s way of scheduling means I CAN’T reasonably put the show on the schedule. They often don’t announce airdates until the wee before, which isn’t a bad thing WATCHING, and isn’t unresonable for a children’s network. But for someone who likes to have a concrete schedule at the top of the month, still flexable and able to make changes if they come up but at least some idea of what i’ll be doing and when, that’s a non-starter, as not knowing when a show’s going to be there or not really messes with things. In contrast Disney puts up their entire programming schedule for next month towards the end, so I know if a show’s coming back, and thus that it’ll probably be around for next month’s too. And if it goes away a week earlier than expected then super I have that space for other sttuff. But I just have too much other stuff, paid and on my own time, to keep friday’s open in perpetuity.

I will however still reviewing the show infrequently as I still love it, Season 5 will probably have plenty of episodes I want to talk about, already it has Leni running for mayor which sounds like one of my wonky spinoff ideas and I love it all the more for that, and ther’es tons of episodes I have and haven’t seen to dig into. So like Lori I won’t be in the house on a daily basis but i’m still going to show up a lot. I already have an April Fools special planned, as well as a retrospective ready for some time in the future. And of course if more Sam and Luna episodes show up, you know i’ll be on those as fast as humanly possible so yeah not leaving the show.. just not coveirng it because I like having some control of my schedule, it’s a thing with me. 

Good then we can get to why your ACTUALLY reading this unless you’ve already scrolled past or scrolled up to this. Next Sunday is Valentine’s Day, and so to continue Valnetine’s Shenanigans on this fine blog, i’m doing some romantic style episodes of the loud hosue for you. I did intend for this to be bigger, but frankly i’ve been running behind on reviews and running out of steam lately, so I paired it down to the two I wanted to do most. So for today we’ll be covering two of the show’s couples: One they badly need to bring back and I question why they haven’t, and one that I feel has gotten a lot of flack for things that aren’t it’s fault. Both are really adorable so expect some awkward blushing, bats, blood, and other stuff rhyming with B under the cut!

Back in Black: So we begin our double feature with Lucy

Yeah I have not covered this adorable harbinger of death enough on this blog, and intended to do this one, among other lucycentric episodes back in october.. and the fact I didn’t is a good argument for why I have a schedule now ain’t it? But sometimes your plans not panning out right at the exact time you planned them works out for you. Not getting to do Plan 9 From Mission Hill during Pride Month meant I got to do it on comission later. And not getting to do this one at Halloween means it still works fine just fine for valentine’s day.  

So we begin the episode with Lincoln working on his science project, with Rusty coming over to help. 

Shockingly though not only is he not just taking a nap or hitting on Lincon’s sisters while Lincoln works but actually helping, he’s actually good at it. I’m as suprsied as you. Though this is early in his characterization, so he hasn’t’nt been established as horribly sucking at everything or his friends being done with his bullshit QUITE yet. Give him time.  This is an interesting moment in the character’s history though, as it’s the episode that firmly establishes him as a close friend of Lincolns. While he was already turned from a member of a random violence gang to LIncoln’s buddy in the span of season 1, this episode cements him as one of his closer pals simply by him coming over and the two being fairly familiar with one another. Granted by that same token Girl Jordan should be in the group.. and I have nothing to add to that. Add Girl Jordan to the Lincrew. Just do it. 

Anyways Rusty brought his brother along. And you’d expect me to be terrified as there’s now three of them. But.. nope I like Rocky. He’s a chill kid and his personality goes together well with Lucy’s as while he’s a more typical kid, he’s still very subdued in his emotions like she is. Also he mentions both parents so my divorce theory.. is honestly still valid as this was three seasons ago and I could buy their mother left during that time. 

And yes Lucy’s in love.. and stalking him a bit as she follows him around the house sighing while he wonders who did that.. though it is a nice clue their compatible. When you can sense the presence of someone whose big running gag is showing up out of nowhere to scare the crap out of people that means something. And it’s either that you’d really get that person or your Wolverine. Or one of his kids. Or his clones. Or clones of his clones. What i’m saying is Rusty’s mom banged the wolverine and his family tree is really weird even by marvel standards. 

But I do give her a pass as she’s not trying to be creepy or obsessive, she just doesn’t know how to talk to him as he’s your average kid and she’s a creature of the night. It’s just a kid being shy which is very refreshing both because pre-savnio being fired the show had some very messed up ideas about relationships and gender politics at times, the latter of which actually crops up here, and because having grown up with the cartoons of the 90′s and 2000′s.. I had to put up with things like this. 

Full Disclosure: I DO ship sonamy.. but only after around Sonic Chronicles, where Bioware and then Sega decided to not make “Constantly harasses sonic despite him clearly not being interested and saying so vocally” and “Obessess over him to a point I worry she’s going to break his legs so he’ll never run away from her again”, as well as aging her up from 12. Still find her ungodly annoying at best and terrible at worst before that point, Sonic CD and Sonic Advance excluded. And yes I am that huge of a nerd, damn proud of it too. 

What i’m getting at is that a little girl unable to talk to a guy and only being kinda creepy because that’s what she does is LEAGUES better than “IT’S NOT CREEPY WHEN A WOMAN DOES IT”. Given this episode was written by a woman that probably helped a lot if not entirely but I don’t blame her for that.. more on that later. 

Point is she’s smitten but her first attempt to talk goes back as he rushes to leave after she tries talking to him.. and also appears out of nowhere to spook him. Come on man, your better than that. YOu sensed her before why not now? Up your game. But yeah Lucy’s depressed while Lincoln talks to her about it, about them leaving and once Lucy confesses she’s into rocky asks what he’s into. Lincoln.. has no idea as he’s barely been around Rocky. He’s just an average kid he dosen’t quite understand. Normal is the word he uses and Lucy ponders that.  We next see the three most traditionally feminine sisters, Lori, Leni and Lola, all pissed someone stole their stuff, though Lori does suspect Lola at first because let’s face it, this fits her MO of being an entitled brat and not being above petty theft. But no the culprit is Lucy who genuinely apologizes and understands that their mad but the other girls are fine with it given the context, which Lucy explained, and are happy to make her over.  This is where the problem I was hinting at comes in: ALL the girls are on board with this makeover plan. the problem is.. only the three who came in in the first place make actually sense making Lucy more tradiotnally feminine. Lori loves fashion and is a control freak who has troubles with empathy at times especially at this point in the series, Leni while not INTETIONALLY hurtful is kind of ditzy and thus can miss some cues, and Lola has a yawning starless void where her soul should be. For these three? Yeah this plot actually makes sense they wouldn’t think of Lucy’s feelings and actually help her use who she is to get rocky or tell her it doesn’t matter she’s beautiful as she is.. then presumably bring the wrath of god down on that poor child before things were cleared up.  The issue is more dragging the other sisters into it. It only fits the three above to really give a shit about making Lucy more “normal” and “Girly” and “Other stereotypical bullshit”. Luna is very chill and empathetic and would be the first to say “Wait maybe making her the opposite of herself isn’t a good idea”, Luan is likewise empathetic though I could possibly see it she really doesn’t need to be in this plot, Lynn ENTIRELY doesn’t fit as she prefers sports and getting dirty and what not and is the closest to Lucy out of the sisters and thus would probably be the most defensive about her not changing and that could’ve actually been interesting, Lana would be the same minus the being closest and Lisa is coldly detached a lot of the time and wouldn’t care about any of this on a good day. It feels HORRIBLY offensive and out of character to have them all suddenly be “nah your not girly enough”. These girls don’t give a shit about whose more feminine than who and it’s really bad to pidgeonhole them as that.  However.. I dont’ blame episode writer Gloria Shen entirely for this. She wrote it, she gets some of the discredit.. but she didn’t DIRECT the episode and a LOT can change from page to screen. No  THAT was series creator and known sexual preadator Chris Savino. And i’m not just blaming him because he’s a creepy asshole, but because the seasons he directed, seasons 1, 2 and most of 3, had a bad habit of having episodes where all the girls acted as a group and often to weak ends, like the green house, the one where they all fought, the gender swap episode or  heavy meddle.. which is a headache for another day. Point is it doesn’t surprise me he didn’t fix this or even genuinely cared to differentiate  them and it’d be until next season where the show fully became an ensemble piece. SO yeah I blame him on this not for his horrible history, but simply because it sounds like his writing style and as director, and a producer on the show, he had the power and responsibility to fix things and did nothing. So if it wasn’t directly his fault in the first place , he certainly didn’t fix it, call it out in storyboarding or well anything. So yeah shared blame all around.

So after a makeover montage, Lucy is uh... well I can’t describe the abomination they’ve created. 

I mean.. none of it works, and I think that’s very much the intent, dosen’t make it any less horrifying. Nothing about this is right: makeup REALLY shouldn’t go on a child in any circumstace so the blush on her cheeks is creepy and makes her look like one of those creepy porcelian dolls that i’m 100% sure either are planning to kill us all one day or were made to keep the souls of the damned trapped inside forever. The ear rings just look creepy and again are a bit much for an 8 year old, and the blonde hair just brings it all together. The pink outfit is fine.. I guess but the face is just so unsettling I can’t process the rest of her outfit and i’m not even going to try. 

Point is she looks terrifying, and not in the fun way she usually does, and Rocky dosen’t know what to make of this. Oh and if your wondering why he’s here Lynn just.. took a hockey stick to Lincoln’s project to get the Spokes Boys back over here, and Lisa mocked him for pointing out the obvious holes in their plan despite being 4 and LIncoln having a girlfriend at this point. Granted his relationship with Ronnie Anne at this point is also kinda effed up, but given you all pushed him in this direction, Lisa still has no room to talk and they amicably broke up at some point once the writers decided “Let’s pretend like this never happened and they were just friends, despite her being introduced with a crush on him and us still replaying episodes with said relationship in play, instead of actually dealing with this directly”. You may be easily able to guess what hte retrospective’s about at this point.  So Lori comes in for phase two .. WITH BOBBY!

Just.. I cannot tell you how much I needed my boy to calm me down after the last two scenes of horribly off character writing and ... that thing up there. He dosen’t do much this episode but every episode is better with Bobby and that’s a scientefic fact. So Lori claims they had a double date fall through which Bobby barely follows along with.. and it does kinda feel pressurey to kinda force Rocky’s hand here but her intentions ARE good, and a group date is a good way to relive presssure. It just ends up falling through becaue Lori wants her to act intentionally helpless, which makes no sense both for Lori’s personality given how driven and controlling she is and how Bobby clearly knows both things and likes the first and she worked on the second for him. So yeah the golf date falls through and Lori apologizes for being a bitch about all of this, as they all do, which again. .has me questioning WHY we needed the whole sister group instead of just Lori and co. Or even just Lori. The show REALLY needed to learn character ballance and while it is struggling on occasion, as seen with how lincolncentric this season has been so far, this episode reminds me it used to be MUCH worse. 

But Lucy thanks them because their intetnions were good, i’m going to need a citation on that given it came off as them wanting her to change because they found her weird nad not because they genuinely wanted to help her, and goes off to sulk about being alone. Lincoln dosen’t know what to do till the next day where, again suprisingly, Rusty had the right idea and had them come over to his place. We also find out he’s scared of blood.. which.. I can relate to. Seriously i’ve only insulted the guy once the whole episode

But we find that out because Rocky made his own because he actually found Lucy’s really cool, what a kid. So Lincoln gets the brothers over to his house by damaging the project himself then claming they need to go back and once he sees Lucy’s around has Rocky go into the kitchen to get them some sodas which he agrees to because why not. 

So in a nice little change-up on the running gag Rocky shows up startling Lucy and we get a really fucking cute scene as they hash things out. They have a normal conversation, finally getting past their shared awkwardness, in part because he admits he prefers her as herself.  As it turns out Rocky wasn’t scared.. he just thought she was too cool for him and felt intimidated and like Lucy had no idea what to say. The two then blush and after my heart melts and I freeze it back into shape in a few hours, the two decide to go look at her coffin collection and the next day proudly show off their perfected fake blood.. which destroys the project one more time. WAH WAH WAH. Oh rusty... I knew I could count on you to fuck up at least once. 

Back in Black Final Thoughts: First off Black in Black: Weird Name. I mean it kinda gives the game away, not that fans would thikn horrifying mistake lucy would stick but still, and dosen’t really fit. Call it “Why Do Ghoul’s Fall in Love” or something like that or something related to makeovers. Makeover Mistep. Don’t Make Me Over. Makeover Your Case... okay that last one sounds more like the Legally Blond equilvent of Cobra Kai but the point is it’s just weird.  Outside of the parts I already went in detail about why their dreadful.. this ep is pretty good. That one bit isn’t enough to derail the episode, merley take it’s goodness down a notch, and Lucy is genuinely fun to watch and her heartbreak is hard to watch, and Rocky was an engaging new character with lots of potetial. A large part of why I did this episode. is to ask WHY he hasn’t come back. Rusty’s now a major character, to the point he’s co-headlining an episode next week with Zach... why Zach’s getting an episode, a SECOND one at that I have no earthly idea but the point is the show’s getitng comfortable enought heir giving lincoln’s friends starring episodes without him too, as Liam got one , if alongside Lynn the power couple of 2021 I tells ya. My point is, besides when is Stella getting an episode dammit, that Rocky really should make a come back as he both provides another character for Rusty and the rest of the lincrew to bounce off of, and he and Lucy had genuine chemstiry and now she has her OWN cast there’s an easy story there about her friends reaction to her dating a non goth. There’s a lot of story potetial with this precious boy bring him back.  But overall Pretty in Black is a decent episode, worth checking out if you haven’t seen it and rewatching even if you have.

Stage Plight: So we open with Luann, whose one of my personal faviorites along with Leni, Luna, and Lucy. Granted I haven’t checked out her yearly bouts of going ax crazy on her family yet, but we’ll see in april. But outside of that, which is easy enough to isee iven it’s three episodes out of 214 where she’s like this and she gets her compuance, I find her precious, awkward, and entertaining, from her habit of saying “Get it “ to her love of puns, to the fact she’s essentially a wholesome version of the batman villian the ventriloquist..

Yeah in case you forgot about this gag, she often talks through her dummy Mr. Coconuts.. who functions as her sounding board and helps her figure things out, talks like he’s from the 40′s or 50′s, and in general is a delight. He also once or twice, including this episode acts of his own free will so I don’t know if this is a Child’s Play situation and a dying comedian put his body in her dummy and she’s just rolling with it, if she somehow put a piece of her soul in a dummy or what the hell’s going on here. Compared to the series recently what with it’s mayoral campagins, children murdering guys, and actualy factual spies, this is mildly sane. MIldly. This may also be a serious and untreated case of Disociative Identnity Disorder, but given it’s not framed that way, and Coconuts just seems to be Luann’s way of talking with herself, for now she has’nt gone full vintriloquist. Thoguh givne her april fools day behavior and her profession as a comedian, she probably WILL become the new joker at a some point. 

So the two are talking about Luann’s crush on Benny. Benny was introduced back in L is for Love and is one of the only three love interests there to actually return, and along with Sam the only onen to get multiple episodes about their relationship with their respective loud and a full personality. He was also MASSIVELY hated. For those who joined the fandom more recently, Luann was massively shipped with Maggie, an emo girl who showed up in Luann’s second spotlight episode and one where she didn’t torment her entire family, one I still need to see but have read about. It was pretty cute and nothing was wrong with that or the opposites attract dynamic. But said fans got REALLY and understandibly upset about his introduction and were presumibly none too happy he got to return and got his roll expanded.  And I.. genuinely like the kid. I have nothing against Maggie and in fact poly ship her with both Luann and Benny, as both seem like they’d be open to that and her dour demanor creates a nice contrast between the chipper luann and the somewhat chipper but also chill benny in the middle. I just feel he’s a very likeable character, sweet and awkward and very much on Luann’s wavelength. Like Sam he’s SIMILAR to his love intrest, having Luann’s love of puns, mime and the theater, but is also not quite as giggly about it and as I said has a bit more of a chill to him, in contrast to how sam is slightly more energetic to Luna’s near constant calm off stage. 

I also like him because he’s voiced by Sean Giabrone, an up and coming voice actor who I first met watching the Goldbergs as Adam. His other biggest role so far has been playing Jeff on Clarence, though he’s currently picked up another lead voice roll as Yumulack on Solar Opposites, easily one of the best parts of that show, and has done othe rminor and recurring work, but I feel he’s got the potetial to have a long and fruitful career in voice acting if he wants it. I mean he’s far from the first former ABC star or former Ron Stoppable to make a long and successful voice career of himself. Be the next will fredle man you can do it. 

But yeah I like him and think their cute together and feel demonizing a ship for one that had a low chance of happening isn’t fair, especially when you know, we’re in a fandom where incest runs rampant and is STILL a recurring problem to this day. Pick your fucking battles for god’s sake. As I mentioned you can put maggie in with this relationship or Still ship luaggie regardless. 

So back in the episode Luann and Coconuts notice Benny signing up for the school play and decide to join him. 

Yeah i’ve noticed that a LOT of school set plots are about one of the mains joining a play to either be near or play romantic lead with their crush, or romantic hyjinks happening anyway.  Seriously i’ts a lot. I DID think most of them were around romeo and juliet, and Proud Family, Pepper Anne, and Ned’s Declassified all are probably why, it’s actually way more diverse and i’m happy to give credit to shows and movies for that:  Jimmy Neutron used Macbeth (IN SPACEEEEEE), American Dragon Jake Long used Antony and Cleopatra, as did the comic strip Foxtrot (That one I remembered), Daria used the canterbury tales, Arrested Development used Much Ado about Nothing, and one of my faviorite instances is the film Get Over it. It’s a cheesy as hell early 2000′s high school pg-13 comedy, that I loved as a teen and nos nostalgicaly love but am aware it has issues and some stitled acting as an adult where our hero joins the high school play in order to win his ex girlfriend back from the douchebag she’s seeing now and ends up falling for his best friend’s kid sister instead. They do a mid summer’ night’s dream, which is not only awesome SOMEONE thought to use that one , as the film has given me a special affection for the play.. but it’s a cheesy musical version written by the gloriously over acted director of the play played by martin short. 

My faviorite part of it is the boy band style number about Hermia. Yes really. And I didn’t even get into the fact Siquo is one of the main character’s best friends, Kristin Dunst had to reshoot a scene while making the first rami spider-man , our heroes weird parents who are sex therapists and have no real filter AND offer Coolio a threesome on their advice show, and yes the actual coolio and yes that was an actual person that existed, or best of all the douchey rival who stole our heroes girlfriend, whose not only a former boy band member whose band peformed the song love scud, but also threatens our hero with nunchucks at one point. 

Just see this movie.. i’ll hopefully talk about it some day. 

Point is this kind of plot is stock.. but it’s the good kind you can do a lot of twists and turns with as every example mentioned, even the ones using the crush thing, had some clever twist or turn. And this one is no exception as we’ll see. 

So we meet Ms. Berardo, the schools HAMMY as hell drama teacher who gives herself an entrance and is just wondrously entertaining throughout. She’s played by Grey Delise Griffin, which I could recognize immodestly and man does she bring it. Seriously bring her back. Wonderful character. So our heroine and her leading man audition and in a refreshing change of pace they do not get the lead rolls, instead a modern valley girl and a jock who writes his stuff on his arms do so instead.  But since Bernado’s a bit nuts, she decides to have the Montagues and Capulets practice separately despite tha not making a ton of sense, to drive up tension and what not. I mean isolating an actor to drive up tension is a vallid technique but even having not read Romeo and Juliet since high school, over a decade ago, I can tell you they have several scenes together and this is a logistical nightmare. However our heroine finagles her way over to swapping camps so she can talk to Benny since honestly given the whole thing was a way to get to spend more time with him, she might as well quit otherwise. It also.. isn’t a bad tactic. She wants to know him before asking him out properly, which is fair and a good way to go, and they already know each other and are friendly, and it’s something she likes doing anyway as they were both involved with a play in his first appearance and her liking theater makes sense as she’s a comedian, and while she clearly prefers standup, it’s often a natural evolution to go fromt hat to acting in comedy stuff or making your own show, so it’s not a bad idea to learn that side of the buisness too. 

So Luann FINALLY gets to talk to Benny.. after fast ball specialing mr coconuts in the way of someone trying to sit down

But we get a really cute moment as the two just.. talk like two dorky teenagers; They talk about the real mimes of la, which I want badly to be a show.. even if it’s just to find out what the Mime from Animaniacs is up to now. Where DID that guy go? Did the anvil finally kill him? These are the kinds of things that keep me up at night.. which is probably why I’m finishing this at 4 in the morning. But the two have genuine chemistry with Luann offering him her banana, phrasing, and making a pun he chuckles at. It’s adorable as all hell. 

And Bernardo notices, and since her leads have no sparks she regretfully demotes them.. though their reaction is hilariously realistic as both are just happy to have less lines and walk off. She decides to cast Luann and Benny despite being freshman which would never happen but eh this is a unvierse with a snakebird and spies trying to destroy cherries with a death laser why I do I care two seasons later if two freshman got the leads in the play. Still I love the twist: our hero wasn’t trying to get the lead to creeiply force intamacy or anything.. the two just had natural chemistry and the director noticed that and wants to use it. 

But while this should be great.. it isn’t as Luann keeps dodging actually kissing Benny when they rehearse the kiss. The reason.. is really frigging endearing. Luann simply hasn’t kissed anyone before, this will be her first.. and naturally she’s REALLY nervous about having it in front of a crowd or Benny thinking she’s a bad kisser. And I mean... while I had no personal experience at that age in kissing, most media and personal accounts detail it as awkward as fuck. But that’s the irony: she dosen’t KNOW it’s always awkward and thus is putting a ton of pressure on herself like anyone her age.

So she breaks under the pressure despite the reasurances of her Dummy/Possible Sign that she needs therapy and while she finds a way out the next Day Benny has aburbtly quit because of “chess club”.. which he’s not in. Luann finds him and talks to him about it, worried it’s her fault.. and she’s right, though Benny bowed out because she clearly wasn’t comfortable with him and didn’t want to make her kiss him when she clearly wasn’t comfortable with it. What a man what a man what a mighty good man. Luann TRIES to explain.. and then lets Mr Coconuts do it. Which usually in high school would lead to humilating rejection. instead Benny brings out his own puppet Mrs. Appleblossom. 

Just those eyes.. black and souless.. like a doll’s eyes.. because htey are a doll’s eyes. So yeah Benny also has a puppet he uses to say the things he’s too nervous to say. Which is endearing even if again , KILL IT. KILL IT. I mean i’ts like tha tone guy from victorious if the puppets were actually charming and one of them looked like it was about to play hide the soul. Mrs. Appleblossom explains that Benny is also nervous and with the air cleared and the two realizing theyw ere nervous about the same thing... the inevitible happens

So that fades into the kiss happening on stage, with Luann’s family cheering her, our heroes take a fookin bow and Coconuts and Appleblossom look on.. and talk somehow...and somehow got in the seats on their own. 

Stage Plight Final Thoughts: This episode.. is one of the series best, with great pacing, a low amount of repetition and a relatable conflict, while building up Luann’s love intrest to be a wonderful and engaging guy, and giving us a hell of a guest character and Mrs. Gerardo. This episod eis great, the chemistyr between Gambrone and Pucelli is fantastic. This one is just awesome and worth a look especially if the ship contrversy had hit you hard. It really is good. And there’s always room for benny. Until the next rainbow it’s been a pleasure. 

[cryptidofthekeys]

Not As Heroic As He Seems...

Gonna put a keep readin on this one, its super long but just- -walks back into the community- hey... -heads turn towards me- ...heeeyyy... lmao y’all I’m back on my bullshit, also gonna put some trigger warnings up top here jUST in case!

TWs: Death, Blood, Yandere themes, manipulation, Jackie is p sick in the head for a hero huh? and implied kidnapping but it’s actually a kidnapping, stalker themes, overall CREEPY behavior from the beloved town superhero

You were walking home from work, it had been a long day, customers here and there, some of them were particularly rude, You didn’t exactly like your job all that much, in fact you almost downright hated it, this job isn’t what you wanted to do in the first place but in this day and age money was an absolute necessity to even get to the point you needed in order to do what you had always dreamed of! You sighed and began daydreaming of what you wanted to do, you just had to keep hoping that one day you’d get your wish… For now, you needed to focus on getting home to your apartment.

Eventually after a while of walking, and of course worrying about it getting darker outside, you had reached your apartment, you let out a sigh of relief once inside… You didn’t like staying out late into the night, it wasn’t the safest and you were worried about what could happen to you out there ...Either way, it didn’t matter now, you were home and that was that. You immediately walked into your bedroom, kicked your shoes off and just flopped down onto the bed, not even bothering to change into your night clothes. You groaned into the pillow, maybe tomorrow would be better, after all… It WAS your day off, you’d have plenty of time to kick back and relax tomorrow, doing whatever you wanted, for now however you closed your eyes and drifted off to sleep.

You suddenly jolted up and awake from your sleep, you looked over at your clock and checked the time, it was 2 AM, you didn’t understand why but you got the feeling that someone had been staring at you, even when in your dream world, you could feel the presence of someone in your room, you could FEEL they’re stare on your sleeping form… Needless to say the thoughts of that alone chilled you to your core. You slowly got up and looked around, there was nobody in your room, you looked towards your window and went over to open up the curtains, there was nobody in the window… You then sighed and closed the curtains back “Must’ve just been my imagination…” You mumbled to yourself before turning around and heading back to bed, you climbed onto it and sighed… Your eyes widened however as you looked towards the ceiling.

You were about to scream before the being floated down and gently clasped a hand over your mouth “Shh just calm down…! It’s just me…!” He half whisper-yelled, meanwhile you were confused, he released his hand from your mouth and floated down onto the ground “J...Jackieboy-Man? What are YOU doing here?” You didn’t understand, you knew who he was, he was the city’s most famous superhero, but you just didn’t know why he was here… Jackie smiled sheepishly “Sorry about… Popping in unannounced and scaring you like that, I thought you wouldn���t notice and I could just slip out... But let me explain what I’m doing here, because that does sound fuckin’ weird out of context” He chuckled a little and cleared his throat before continuing.

“So… I was just looking for a criminal I had seen outside, they were roaming outside your apartment room and I decided to check things out, when I got closer, they had like, disappeared and I was worried they had came into your room so I came to investigate but I didn’t… Wanna disturb you ...Heh, so much for that now, huh?” You blinked, well… That wasn’t so far fetched… He WAS a hero after all and you trusted him enough “It’s fine… I mean, I guess I should thank you for at least checking things out… Maybe that’s why I got the feeling someone was watching me…” Jackie looked concerned by this admission “You… felt like someone was watching you…?”

You nodded and shivered “I h a t e the feeling of someone watching me… I had the mere thought of it” You then paused before looking at Jackie “I’m… I’m worried now that… You’ve told me that…” Jackie nodded “If you’d like, I could… I could stay here with you and keep you company” His tone as he spoke sounded… Off, you couldn’t place the emotion he was feeling in his voice, maybe it was embarrassment, he panicked and continued however next “Oh jesus… That probably sounds super weird, I was just floating near your ceiling and now I’m wanting to stay here, with you, you… Aha, you probably think I’m a creep of a hero huh?” You shook your head at this “No no, it’s fine, really, you were technically just doing your job… You were looking out for me and making sure the criminals don’t like, kill me or whatever, honestly… If it’s no trouble I… I wouldn’t mind you staying with me”

Jackie grinned and beamed at this “I insist then! I don’t mind besides, it’s better to be safe than sorry, don’t want anyone hurting you or anything like that” You smiled and nodded, you figured there was really no point in trying to go back to sleep right now, so… You stayed up and decided to talk with the hero, besides it’s not exactly every day anybody just gets a chance to talk to the guy, he’s always busy! “So… I know you have the whole hero thing going for you but if you don’t mind me asking what do you do in your spare time?” Jackie shrugged “Not much really, I usually just relax until duty calls again and that’s it…” You nodded at this, you didn’t really expect that kind of answer but then again you didn’t really do much when you had spare time either… “Yeah, same… I also relax when I’m not working…” The both of you proceeded to exchange conversation for a couple of hours, you checked the time and it was 4 AM on the clock, you sighed and looked at Jackie “I… I really need to sleep… but I dunno, I’m still really worried…” Jackie nodded, he had a sympathetic look on his face “If… If you want, I can stay here until you fall asleep, and I’ll stay on guard around your house for the remainder of the night, I don’t… Really need to sleep all that much so I’ll be fine!” You smiled “I… Thank you, I appreciate that…” Jackie nodded “No problem, just doing my job ya know!”

You smiled and laid down on the bed, getting as comfy as you could as Jackie sat in one of the chairs in the room, he tried not to stare too much at you as you tried to sleep, after all, he didn’t want to be a creep… Eventually you finally managed to fall asleep, knowing Jackie was there gave you some comfort, at least nobody could hurt you now… Meanwhile Jackie himself was sitting in the chair, now that you were asleep he let his gaze fully fall onto you, he gave it a few more minutes, making sure you were fast asleep before standing up and creeping over slowly to your bed, he tried to stifle his breathing because it was getting a bit too heavy the closer he got to you… He shouldn’t be doing this, he shouldn’t be getting this close to you, after all neither of you knew each other that well so doing this was going to be creepy as all hell!

Jackie slowly lifted his shaking and eager hand, he then proceeded to slowly caress your hair, he bit his lip, and drew his hand back quickly and turned away from you, running his hands down his face, you were so… Beautiful, so amazing… He just wanted to take you away and keep you all for himself but… That wasn’t very heroic thinking of him, Jackie suddenly felt overcome with guilt, he just stroked your hair like some sort of fucking creep! What was wrong with him?! This wasn’t what a hero was supposed to do or feel, he was watching you sleep, he was caressing your hair, this was… Wrong! He sighed softly and returned to his seat, just sitting there, trying to refrain from staring at you any longer… Although he couldn’t resist it that well and his eyes always drifted back over to your sleeping form, you were so… Peaceful when you were sleeping.

Hours had gone by… Eventually you had woken up and stretched out with a yawn, you looked over and noticed Jackie was… Gone…? You saw a note in the seat he had sat in and slowly got up, you walked over and grabbed the note that read ‘Dear (Y/N)... I had to run out, duty calls at any time you know, there were no more signs of that criminal lurking about btw, but I’ll be back later on, I actually have something to ask you when I’m finished patrolling the city, sincerely your local hero: Jackieboy-Man!’ You smiled slightly, at least he had left a note behind instead of just disappearing without any notice… You put the note down and then walked off to the kitchen, getting everything ready to prepare some breakfast! Some pancakes with some bacon and eggs sounded good this morning! That’s what you’d cook up, yeah!

After fixing up your breakfast and then devouring it like a savage animal, you were ready to take on the day… You didn’t really wanna be cooped up in your apartment all day so you decided to get ready and touch up your hair, you grabbed the things you needed and headed out the door, you then got hit with a random realization ...How did Jackie know your name…? ...You never even gave it to him… … Okay, something about that unnerved you but maybe he had just heard of you somewhere? Or… Maybe he saw your name somewhere in your apartment or something, either way… You shrugged the feeling off and continued down the street, you’d head to the local shops and browse around for a while, anything to keep yourself busy after all.

You had started with the first shop and you’d go from there, you didn’t have any plans to buy anything, you just needed to leave the apartment for a while… You proceeded to browse through several of the shops around, however at some points you could’ve sworn you saw someone watching from the shadows, you had even seen a shadow at some point on one of the buildings which had weirded you out… Eventually, it was evening, around 5 PM to be more specific… You were coming out of one of the last shops, you were checking your surroundings now in worry because that feeling of being watched or stalked never left… You even jumped when your friend came up to you “Woah (Y/N)! Take it easy, it’s just me! ...Gosh, you are jumpy aren’t you?” You sighed “I’m sorry… It’s just, last night… Was weird and today has been weird too…” Your friend looked concerned “What happened?”

You sighed again “I just… Jackieboy-Man visited me last night” You had begun, your friend interrupted with pure surprise “THE Jackieboy-Man visited you?! That’s awesome! He’s like a legend around here!” You made a motion to shush them “Keep your voice down…! Yeah but like, he said it was because he saw a random stranger stalking the outside of my apartment… So he wanted to keep an eye on the place… I just, I’ve felt like someone’s been watching me all day today as well… So I’m scared” Your friend nodded “Yeah that does sound pretty scary… ...Tell ya what, I’ll go with you, I’ll walk you back to your apartment if ya want!” You looked at them “Oh no… I don’t wanna trouble yo-” Your friend cut you off and placed their hands on your shoulders “Really, I insist, I’m not gonna let my friend get mugged or killed or some shit, besides I’m not doing much anyways so c’mon, let’s go!” Your friend took you by the hand and escorted you to your apartment, keeping a check on the surroundings as they walked and conversed with you.

Meanwhile, high up in the sky… A certain hero was not happy with what he was seeing… Seeing t h e m holding y o u r hand… It made his heart ache, he was feeling anger and really he just wanted to take his aggression out on that person… He just wants to absolutely destroy th… He paused his thoughts and shook his head, no! This isn’t appropriate thinking for a hero! HE’S. SUPPOSED. TO. S A V E. LIVES… HELP PEOPLE! Not… Not hurt them… These feelings for you were overwhelming him and giving him these horrible villainous thoughts, he hated the villainous thoughts, he hated them so much…! He knew this wasn’t a normal level of love, this was sick… HE was sick… He had to be, he needed to get these thoughts out of his head… Maybe if he asked you… You’d accept him… ...If you didn’t…

Well... He was actually terrified of that more so than his own thoughts… He would be absolutely mortified if you rejected what he was going to ask you… And now his thoughts were spiraling out of control, all of the visions in his head were of you rejecting him, or calling him bad things… He’d just… Need to try and be brave, he’s usually so brave and strong but around you he just absolutely melts… He doesn't know what he’d do without you…

You and your friend were talking about the situation and a few other things, your friend of course tried to lighten the mood and cracked a few jokes here and there, and you’ll admit, some of those jokes DID make you smile a bit… Finally, the both of you reached your apartment, your friend looking at you “Ya sure you don’t want me to stay with you? You seem pretty freaked out by this whole ordeal…” You shook your head “I appreciate it, I really do but I’ll be fine… I promise, thank you for walking me home” Your friend nodded and the both of you exchanged your goodbyes before they headed home, you headed into your apartment and took a deep breath, you were so glad to be home after that off-putting day… Your paranoia and fear was just overwhelming you and honestly you’d be glad to go to bed before you remembered the note Jackie had left you, he said he had something to ask you when he finished patrolling the city, you wondered if he was still doing so… If you were being honest with yourself, it’d be nice to see him again just to take your mind off of this day.

Suddenly… As of right on cue, there was a knock at the door… You walked over and opened it and there he was… You smiled and welcomed Jackie inside, you couldn’t help but notice however… “Is something wrong Jackie…? You look… stressed and… nervous?” Jackie looked at you and sighed “I just… You read my note right?” You nodded and then he clenched his fist, not in anger really, he was just taking a deep breath, trying to get some of his stress out of his system, which this just made you grow more concerned “Would you like to sit down, I can get you something to drink if you want…” Jackie nodded and sat at the table “Just… uh, some water please, that’s all I need…” You walked over and grabbed some water from the fridge, handing him a bottle and then sitting across the table from him “So, what did you wanna tell me exactly?” You questioned, which just seemed to make him more nervous, he took a few rather LONG sips of his water, almost draining it in one sitting right then and there.

You blinked in surprise at this “Christ, Jackie… You’re going to choke on the water at this rate, just… Please, take some deep breaths and try to calm down…” You didn’t know why he was so nervous but if it was in relation to what he was going to ask you, then the question must’ve been really big and nerve wracking to say the least… You watched as he took some deep breaths and then looked you in the eyes “...(Y/N)... I have something to tell you… A-And… Just…” He paused and stood up abruptly, turning away and sighing “I can’t do this… H-Heh… So much for being the big strong hero I guess…” You got up and walked over, gently placing your hand on his shoulder which seemed to make him jump “Jackie… I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me…” You then paused, clearing your throat before continuing on…

“But… if you need more time then I understand, just please don’t over-stress about this… If you can’t tell me right now then just wait until you KNOW you’re ready… Okay?” Jackie looked at you and looked at the hand on his shoulder before sighing and taking your hand in his “...(Y/N)... I… Just… Give me a second…” You nodded and let him take a few deep breaths, you even let him keep his hold on your hand which he seemed to be looking at intently, before he looked back into your eyes “...I… I know… I know this is going to sound sudden… B-But… I… I lo… lo…” He paused, he was beginning to shake and you winced as his grip tightened on your hand, you didn’t want to interrupt but if his grip tightened anymore then your hand would probably break entirely “Jackie, uh, my hand?” The Hero seemed to finally notice and he instantly let go of your hand and watched as you rubbed at it “S-Sorry! I, shit, I didn’t mean to grip so hard, you okay?” You nodded “It’s… It’s fine, nothing’s broken” It was sweet how Jackie went from being so anxious to immediate concern over you, however after he knew you were okay he just walked on past you “I can’t do it, I just… I need to go, I’ll seeya later (Y/N)...!” You called out as he opened the door and took off “Jackie, wait!” It was too late as he was way too far into the sky to hear you.

You sighed and gently closed the door, you wanted to go after him but… You didn’t feel as if it were the best idea ...But then, you got worried, what if it was something really important? What if Jackie needed you, he might be a super-powered hero but even heroes with superpowers had their moments… You wouldn’t exactly use the term weakness but maybe he was struggling with something deep down, you wouldn’t risk this… You ran over, grabbed a flashlight and one of your little pocket knives just in case… You then flung the door open and slammed it shut behind yourself as you ran out, it was definitely darker than you would’ve hoped it to be outside already… There was no moon tonight but that didn’t matter, being out later didn’t matter, the only thing that mattered to you right now was trying to find Jackie even IF it might’ve been impossible… You didn’t care, you just needed to find him and that was it… You hurried down a few of the sidewalks, looking up towards some of the buildings in hopes that maybe he was on a roof of some kind.

After a long while of searching, you were beginning to give up hope… There were no signs of Jackie anywhere! You sighed and pressed onward anyways, continuing up the sidewalk before you heard a noise come from the alleyway, you were confused so you decided to investigate it, you headed deep into the alleyway and at the end you saw Jackie and your friend… Your friend looked scared and yet kind of angry at the same time meanwhile Jackie was just glaring at them, you came up “G-Guys? What’s going on here?” You were confused, the pair turned towards you, your friend being the first to speak up “(Y/N)! Thank g o d you’re here! This fucking bastard is-” Jackie cut them off almost instantly “I overheard them on their phone… (Y/N), they were talking shit about you! They said some fucked up shit they were planning on doing to you when I wasn’t around!” Your friend stared at Jackie in disbelief before turning back towards you and noticing the look of pure shock on your face.

You were in shock for a few moments before beginning to shake and cry, you felt as if you couldn’t even breathe… You felt like you were having an anxiety or panic attack of some kind, you couldn’t even move, your sobs suddenly echoed throughout the alleyway “Y...Yo...You?... Were you the one outside my apartment the other night? ...Are… Are you the one who was fucking stalking me today?! HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN FUCKING PLANNING THIS?!” Your friend was in shock, you… actually believed Jackie over them? Speaking of him, he spoke up again “I’d say a pretty long time, I WAS coming to check up on you just to make sure you were safe with what happened the other night and all, when I saw this person following you… So I decided to step in and investigate this, that’s when I overheard their conversation on the phone” Your “friend” turned to glare at the hero before turning back to you, their expression softening, before they could speak, your sobs only got louder.

“I… I… I can’t believe this… I can’t fucking believe this…!” You shouted, glaring at your friend through tears, who just looked hurt, not as much as you did however “(Y/N)! He’s… He’s lying! I would never want to hurt you! You’re my best friend! I care about you!” Your ‘friend’ tried to reach out towards you to comfort you before suddenly they were thrown to the ground within the blink of an eye and knocked unconscious, your eyes widened in horror and you clasped a hand over your mouth, tears still rolling down your face, you could barely hide your loud sobs, even with a hand covering your mouth… Jackie looked at you, his expression as sympathetic as ever “I’m sorry (Y/N)... I only did that because they would’ve hurt you, I couldn’t take a chance of them doing something bad to you…” He spoke, you still couldn’t help but cry, this whole situation was just all too much for you to handle, you were about to just drop to the ground crying and bawling your eyes out but Jackie was there to immediately catch you as you did so, he let you cry into him for a few moments, giving you reassuring pats on the back.

After a bit, he picked you up and looked into your eyes “It’s gonna be okay (Y/N)... I promise, I’ll take care of you, forever and always… C’mon, let’s get you home…” Jackie scooped you up bridal style and gently lifted off into the sky “Just relax… I’ve got you, and I won’t fly that fast…” You nodded and buried your head into his chest, which Jackie couldn’t help but give a smile at, he loved holding you this close… Even if it were under not so good circumstances… He hated to see you cry, he hated to see you so distraught but his main focus now was getting you back home… That’s all that mattered at the moment, it took him a little bit longer than usual, not wanting to cause you anymore stress and panic, he even gave you reassuring words during the whole way home… Once he got to your apartment, he slowly kicked the door open, sighing in relief when it didn’t break off its hinges, he was so worried he was going to kick it too hard, he walked inside and kicked the door closed, he headed instantly for your bedroom and laid you down on the bed, he blinked in surprise when you refused to let go of him “Please…” You weakly muttered, your voice being so hoarse from crying “Stay with me… Please don’t leave me…”

Jackie had a look of pure adoration, he smiled “I won’t leave you… but at least, let me go get you some water, dear…” You whined but begrudgingly nodded at this, letting go of him and letting him run to get you some water, it was almost like a blur actually, he was out and then back again, a cup of water on the nightstand and then him beside you in the bed, you reached out for the water and took a few sips before setting it down and clinging back to Jackie, who couldn’t help but keep that smile plastered on his face, holding you this close to him was like Heaven… You snuggling into him made his breath hitch for a moment, however you seemed to be too tired to notice “...I’ll always be here for you (Y/N)... You know this… Right?” You gave a slow nod “...I c.. I can… I can’t believe… they would do… do some-” You let out a harsh sounding sob before Jackie shushed you “Shhh… It’s okay now… You’re safe… I won’t ever let anything bad happen to you… I’ll always be here right by your side because… (Y/N)... Look at me…”

You slowly looked at Jackie, noticing the look of… Well, you didn’t exactly know w h a t that look was… Until he gently gripped your chin “...I love you… I love you a lot…” You blinked in surprise before it hit you… THIS was what he was trying to tell you earlier surely… “Is… Is that-” Jackie cut you off “Yes, this is… what I wanted to tell you earlier ...Sorry I bolted on you like that…” You smiled at Jackie “Don’t… Don’t apologize… You were just so nervous, I understand… I… I love you too actually… And not just because you like, saved me, or whatever either…” The biggest smile crept onto Jackie’s face, it almost looked… A little creepy actually… Before tears formed in his eyes “...G-God, fuck, I just… I’m so happy you s-said that… Shit” He wiped the tears from his eyes and chuckled “I didn’t think you’d ever accept me…” You looked at Jackie and nuzzled into him closer “Jackie… You really are a lovely person… You care so much about others, you’re so kind and… Just, genuinely a good person…” Jackie stared at you for a moment, hah… A good person… He just held you as close as he possibly could and gave you a small kiss on the forehead “Let’s get some sleep, dear… It’s been a long night…” You smiled and nodded, the two of you didn’t feel like getting up, so you’d both sleep in your regular clothes…

You muttered out a small ‘I love you’ and gave him a soft smooch before slowly closing your eyes and drifting off to sleep, meanwhile Jackie was stroking and playing with your hair as you softly snored, he had a big adoring smile on his face ...You didn’t have to know the truth… You didn’t have to figure out that he lied about that entire situation with your friend… You didn’t need to know a n y of that… All you needed to know was Jackie was here for you, a l w a y s… And that he would always look after you and the most important thing of all was that he loved you very much, nothing else aside from those things mattered now… Just you and Jackie… Together…

                                                                                       F O R E V E R…

ALTERNATE ENDINGS: I can’t just take credit for these, my good fren Ev gave me these ideas truth be told, Idk if they'd lemme give their main tumblr account but its still proper to thank them for the endings! and if they want their presence w i l l be known :)

1: Jackie’s piss poor at trying to fucking lie his way out of shit even tho up top he was a smooth motherfucker but SHH, alternate ending. Back into the alleyway we go, annnd b o o m.

You were continuing up the sidewalk, in one of the alleyways nearby you heard a strange sound… It almost sounded like people arguing, you were curious so you decided to investigate the sounds, as you got closer to the alleyway, you recognized the voices… One voice happened to be your friend and the other voice was very clearly Jackie’s, you listened closely to what the pair were saying from a distance, the pair’s argument was getting louder and much more aggressive sounding before… “Listen, you need to stay away from (Y/N), or else it’s GOING to end badly for you… I will personally end you myself…” Jackie’s voice was low, and his tone was much darker than usual, he then muttered out “T h e y. A r e. M i n e…” Your friend then blinked in surprise “What kind of hero are you? A hero doesn’t fucking threaten someone like that, you sick fuck!” Your eyes narrowed at this and you revealed yourself to them which made Jackie’s eyes widen and your friend looked more or so relieved by your presence.

Jackie proceeded to stutter out “(Y/N!) W-W-Wh..Wha.. What are you doing here?!” His voice was shrill and in shock, your glare however did not falter as you stared at Jackie “I WAS going to come and look for you… And you know what, I’m glad I found you actually… What the HELL are you doing?!” Jackie looked panicked and his eyes were darting around “Uhhh I well… I… I… Listen, it… It’s not what it looks like I s-swear! Just let me explain… They were uhh following you around and I- I was trying to stop them you see… I just wanted to keep you safe!” You shook your head in disbelief “Fucking bullshit! You just blatantly threatened them and told them you’d basically kill them if they didn’t stay away from me, and di… Did I hear you mutter something about me being yours?!” Your nose wrinkled in disgust as he tried to come up with more lies, becoming more frantic with each second. “Look, just… It’s not THAT big of a deal, (Y/N)!” You countered with “Not a big deal my ass!”

Meanwhile your friend was becoming more uncomfortable and scared by being this close to Jackie, so they decided to slowly inch they’re way towards you in an attempt to get s o m e form of protection… Jackie noticed this and his eyes widened, something in him just snapped all of a sudden as he proceeds to deck them into the ground which made you clasp a hand over your mouth, you stared at Jackie in absolute horror as he proceeded to climb atop your friend and began pummeling them, you panicked almost immediately “J-Jackie! Stop! Please stop!” He wouldn’t stop, your friend was getting bloodier by the second which caused you to dash over and try to get him to stop, you got in his way and almost immediately you were hit, you were hit v e r y hard actually…

You stumbled and fell onto the ground, holding the injured spot, tears began forming in your eyes, Jackie noticed this instantly and he was mortified by his actions… He just hit you… It… It was an accident! He immediately got off of your friend who was either unconscious or dead at this point, you couldn’t even tell… “No… Nononono… (Y/N)! No no, don’t cry! Please don’t cry, I swear it was an accident! I didn’t mean to hit you… J...Just… C’mere… Lemme see” The moment he got closer to you, you instantly began trying to crawl away from Jackie, you unfortunately didn’t get very far, his strong hands had gently gripped around you, despite being so gentle, they were impossible to wriggle out of… He pulled you closer and began checking over the area he hit.

Jackie didn’t seem to really register that you were trying to crawl away from him… No, you couldn’t have been, you were just scared, and you had just gotten injured ...By an ACCIDENT that is… You didn’t hate him nor fear him, no, you had just gotten startled by the injury, that’s it, yeah… Your crying got worse once he pulled you into his lap, Jackie merely shushed you and began playing with your hair “Shh… Shshshshshhh… It’s okay (Y/N)... It’s all gonna be okay… I’m here for you… Just… I need to tell you something… I need to tell you how I feel…” Jackie paused, continuing to play with your hair and give you some gentle reassuring pats “...(Y/N)... I feel a certain way about you… Not a bad way I mean! Just… It’s just… You are so… Gorgeous, you are absolutely lovely in every way… You’re literally perfect… I guess… What I’m trying to say is that…” Another pause as he forced you to look him in the eyes, the look on his face… You couldn’t even begin to describe how absolutely sickening it was to see a lovestruck gaze on his face.

“...I love you… (Y/N)... I know you’re scared right now… But please… Lemme make it up to you… I promise… You’ll be okay… As long as you're here, in my arms…  You will be safe, and I’ll protect you with every passing second…” Another pause before he continued on.

                                                                              “...Forever and Always…”

                    That’s the end of the first alt ending! Second one coming right up!

SECOND ALT ENDING: Houston we have A BIG problem in the alleyway…

You had heard a strange noise echo throughout the alleyway, being curious and somewhat hopeful, you decided to investigate and hoped it’d be Jackie… However you saw a gang of people in the alley, although one of them had something particularly familiar… That item belonged to Jackie! Unfortunately before you could even get out of the alley, the group seemed to notice you and immediately ran over to grab you, you screamed and struggled against their grasp, they brought you towards the dude who you could only presume was their leader… Who grinned rather creepily at you “Well well well… Lookie what we have here, boys…” The Leader came closer to you to get a better look, meanwhile you glared at him “Wh...Why do you have t h a t?” You mentally scolded yourself for stuttering slightly.

The man rose a brow before looking at the item in his hand before he seemed to put two and two together “Ohhh so ya know who this belongs to, eh? Lemme guess, you’ve met the hero haven’t ya?” You slowly gave a nod “I was… Just looking for him, that’s all…” The Leader chuckled and threw the item towards one of his minions who surprisingly caught it “Ya know… You’re a real cutie~ And I do gotta say… Jackie has some good taste! ...For once in his life…” You flushed as the dude flirted with you, you didn’t like his flirting nor anything he was saying really, but it was the natural human reaction… You couldn’t help it… The Leader got closer and brushed a hand against your cheek “Yeah… Real cute… Ya know I was gonna just use ya to bribe Jackie… But how’s about I don’t tell him at all… How about I just have MY fun with ya? C’mon, lil hero boy don’t need to know~”

Your eyes widened in horror as the minions began dragging you further into the alleyway, you were screaming now and struggling as hard as you could against their grip, The Leader chuckled at this “Aww, your fear makes ya even cuter!” Meanwhile elsewhere… Jackie was wandering around, before he stopped dead in his tracks and his eyes widened, his gaze instantly snapped to where the sounds were coming from “That… That’s (Y/N)!” He shouted to himself mostly, not caring really if anyone heard him, he instantly took off in that direction, he swore… Whoever was hurting them was going to have absolute hell to pay… He wouldn’t let this slide so easily, nobody gets to touch you, not a single soul! Back in the alleyway, you were getting tied up and shoved against the wall.

The Leader only laughed at your screams and look of terror, he was advancing towards you before suddenly something caught his eye, at the entrance of the alleyway, there Jackie was… How the fuck did he even know or get here that fast?! The Hero called out “(Y/N)!” As he made his way towards them, The Leader immediately grabbed you and held you against himself “Not another fucking step… Or else I’ll end their life right here and now…” Jackie froze in place and stared at his rival… Yes, those were his rivals, their leader absolutely l o a t h e d Jackie and would do anything to see him suffer really. “Alright… Whatever you want, you got it, just give (Y/N) back please!” His tone was full of desperation it seemed which just made The Leader happy.

“Alright… Here’s how this is gonna work…” The Leader began making his demands known, and after stating a few of them, he gave a predatory smile towards you, he cupped your cheek suddenly “Ya know… I bet a person like you would enjoy my company over Jackie’s, wouldn’t ya? You’d LOVE to be with a guy like me and not that pathetic excuse for a he-” Before he could even continue, he was rushed by Jackie which surprised him actually, he dropped you and let you fall towards the ground and The Leader barely even had a chance to react as The Hero began to pummel him, the other members of the group looked like they were shocked but they quickly tried to step in to pry Jackie off of their leader, which didn’t help them in the slightest, Jackie easily delivered a swift punch to a few of them which sent them flying back into the wall, there was no way they could’ve survived a hit that hard.

Something about this was… Off… You stared at Jackie in absolute shock as he continued to land hits on the dude, in fact, Jackie was taking this too far… He was beginning to get coated in blood the more he hit the man who wasn’t necessarily dead yet, but if Jackie continued on he definitely would be, you could hear the man softly whimpering and actually begging Jackie to stop, but The Hero didn’t listen to his pleas, in fact he just gave him the hardest punch he could which instantly sealed the man’s fate… You flinched at the sound of the punch alone, the sickening crack you had heard following the punch wasn’t any better… But even after the man was dead, Jackie still continued on, you were crying now and you softly spoke up “J-Ja… Jackie… That’s enough…! Stop it, please…! JACKIE THAT’S ENOUGH!” You suddenly bellowed, which seemed to get Jackie’s attention, he suddenly stopped his actions and turned towards you.

You almost gagged upon seeing him properly now, he was covered in blood… His hands, his face, there was blood splattered all over him, you could see something in his stare for a brief moment before his eyes softened and they were wide as he instantly came crawling over towards you, you didn’t know why but you felt terrified… It was Jackie, but there was something about seeing the so called Hero straight up murdering someone and then being covered in blood, you couldn’t help the tears that poured out as he came over to cup your cheek “No no… Just, shh… Relax, it’s fine now… I promise, they won’t e v e r bother you again… Are you hurt? Did they hurt you?” You shook your head, you couldn’t speak, you just felt sick and terrified, you just wanted to go home really…

Jackie slowly scooped your struggling form up and carried you out of the alleyway, he took you to someplace that sounded very quiet, no sounds of the city, no sounds of people around, it was just quiet enough so you could maybe start calming down, but every time you looked at Jackie you couldn’t help but cringe… Jackie looked at you and sighed “...I’m so sorry (Y/N)... I’m sorry you had to see that… I didn’t mean to scare you…” He paused, looking at you, you were still tied up… He’d untie you later, first he had to speak… He began playing with your hair in an attempt to soothe you “When I saw that man flirting with you, when I saw him… T o u c h i n g you… I couldn’t hold anything back…” He began, clearing his throat before continuing “I just… I love you so much (Y/N)… You are amazing, so precious… So sweet... I… I’d do a n y t h i n g for you…”

Jackie continued on before you could even say anything “God… I’d just… If I had it to do all over again… I’d rip them apart… I... I... wouldn’t have ended them so easily…” His tone got darker, and while you had been crying softly, your eyes widened at Jackie’s words, this… This wasn’t right… Something IS wrong… However, Jackie continued on “I’d make sure they all suffered before meeting their ends…” As he spoke, he got more and more graphic with describing what he’d do to them which made you gag in response, some of the things he said were just awful… So bloody, so gory, so fucking v i o l e n t… And then he looked at you “And I’d always save you, I’ll always save you, even if you fucking h a t e me... Even if you hate my guts for what I’ve done” And then a pause before Jackie cupped your cheeks gently into his hands, the look on his face was absolutely horrifying… He was STILL covered in blood and now his face had a look of desperation on it.

“But… Haa…. Haha… You DON’T hate me ...R i g h t? You don’t hate me, do you (Y/N)?” Before you could even answer him, he spoke up again, his grip tightening slightly, not enough to hurt you or anything but just tight enough so you couldn’t pull away “I… I mean… Ahaha… Why WOULD you hate me? I just saved your life…! You should be grateful, wh...why are you still crying? And why are you looking at me with those fearful eyes? C’mon (Y/N)...” He paused to catch his breath before you softly spoke up “I… I… but you… You killed… You killed them, you didn’t even stop… When the guy begged you… I… I don’t… I ca-” He cut you off, you winced at how tight his grip had gotten now, his expression chilled you to your core, it still had desperate undertones underneath but his eyes were narrowed “...You’re just overreacting, that’s all, besides had I let them live they would’ve come after you again or preyed upon others in the city! I H A D to do it… There was no other way, I will NOT let them hurt you… But you know what… You're hurting me right now… (Y/N)... I RISKED my own life to save you, why aren’t you happy? Why aren’t you thanking me…?” His expression was just, well, h u r t now…

You were slowly becoming more and more scared with each passing second, each word uttered from Jackie’s mouth… However you also felt an overwhelming sense of guilt because he was right… He had literally just risked his own life to save you, and you were being s o ungrateful for it… Tears were cascading down your face and you let out a harsh sob “I… I’m sorry… I’m so sorry… Y-You’re right… I… I… Th-Tha...Thank you… Jackie… I’m sorry for being rude…” Jackie had a small smile on his face now, he was slightly rocking back and forth, maybe in a way to soothe you, he held you close and began whispering into your hair “It’s okay… I know you won’t do it again… I know you love me… And I love you too…” He mumbled out, it’s alright… Jackie knew you were just being a LITTLE selfish but it’s okay because he forgives you, it’s so amazing isn’t it? That Jackie would be so kind in forgiving you… What a nice and kind superhero…

                                                                            End of Second Alt Ending!                    Third and Finale Alt Ending: Classic Yandere Mode

It’s gonna be near when the dude was cupping your cheek n flirting with you n such!

The minions were tying you up and shoved you up against the wall as The Leader advanced towards you, there was a sound near the entrance of the alleyway, The Leader turned and scowled at the presence of Jackie “Well lookie who showed up! If it isn’t the pathetic little hero of the city!” Jackie took notice of you, your face being flushed, why were you… B L U S H I N G?! and he was beginning to see red, as he stepped closer The Leader pulled you up beside him “Not another step! Or I’ll kill them…” This made Jackie stop, something about the emotion on his face was… Off, even the group seemed to notice this but they said nothing as The Leader made his demands known to Jackie which he nodded at “As long as you give (Y/N) back, I don’t care w h a t you do…” The Leader blinked in surprise at Jackie’s tone but smirked nonetheless “Aww cute, ya must really love this one don’tcha?” Just then he cupped your face and smiled at you “C’mon sweetheart, I’m sure you’d prefer my company over his, wouldn’t ya?” You couldn’t help blushing, it was a natural human reaction even though you highly wished it wasn’t.

The Leader tried to continue flirting but suddenly, he was knocked down to the ground by a very angry looking Jackie who continued to pummel him, fists flying left and right, you meanwhile had fallen to the ground and looked on at what was unfolding before you, the minions looked… Terrified, as if they had seen a ghost… As reluctant as they may have been, they still tried to step in to pry Jackie off of their leader, Jackie didn’t take kindly to this as he snarled at them, he hit them and sent them flying back into the buildings, one minion had managed to blindside him and tackled him off of their leader who looked absolutely horrified, he was also bleeding rather heavily due to the hits, as Jackie was distracted by a few of the minions that WERE left standing and alive, the leader looked towards you for a moment but then decided it wasn’t worth it as he began desperately trying to crawl away, it was… Easier said than done with all the injuries he had just sustained.

Jackie noticed this after he finished off all the minions and both you AND the group’s leader were looking horrified at Jackie… He was covered in blood and he just had the look of pure anger on his face as he came closer to the rival who was beginning to beg “Pl-Please…! I… I’ll never bother them again, I-I-I swear! Just please… Let me go…!” Jackie snarled at the man slowly crawling away on the ground, he picked him up by his shirt collar and brought him face to face “Oh I know you won’t… Because I’m going to make sure you never even get a f u c k i n g chance…” The Leader’s eyes widened at the hero’s words, this wasn’t like him… Your eyes were wide and you shook your head “J-Ja...Jackie…! Th...Tha-That’s enough, please… They’ve had enough! They’ve learned their lesson, just please stop this…!” You begged, Jackie however then turned in your direction and glared at you and that’s when you froze in place, you had NEVER seen a glare like that on Jackie before.

Jackie threw the man into the building as hard as he could, you were pretty sure he was dead upon impact there but you weren’t going to try and go check, you yelped as Jackie came over and grabbed you, he practically dragged you out of the alley and then suddenly you were shoved back onto the ground, you were cornered against a wall by Jackie who was glaring harshly at you “How did you end up in that alleyway? How did my rival find you? And more importantly… W H Y were you blushing at h i m of all people?” There was a pause before he suddenly got louder “Why were you letting him flirt with you without yelling at him or anything?!” He shouted at you, you began crying at this, letting out harsh and loud sobs “I...I’m sorry…! I’m sorry!” You began uttering out apologies, not really because you thought you had anything to apologize for but Jackie was scaring the absolute hell out of you right now…

There was a pause from the hero for a few moments before he sat down next to you, he grabbed you gently this time and began pulling you into his lap, you struggled against this, not really wanting to be pulled into his lap, but when Jackie’s grip tightened as a warning, you immediately stopped, Jackie glanced down at you “It’s okay…” He began, his voice was gentler sounding this time instead of the anger you had heard before “As long as you make it up to me… I mean… I DID just save you after all…” You were in disbelief, and suddenly there was a streak of courage in you “I don’t have anything to apologize for! I… I… You’re a fucking sicko! There’s something WRONG with you!” You struggled against the so called hero and kept reiterating that there was something definitely wrong with him, he grunted at this and gripped your arms very tightly, this made you whimper and stop yelling almost instantly.

Jackie’s tone changed from gentle right back into something… You just couldn’t really explain… It was foreign to hear him speak like this “You O W E me now… You ARE going to make it up to me… Because my whole career could be in jeopardy because of y o u…!” There was a pause before he continued on “And because… You. Are. M I N E…”  He paused, taking in your horrified expression before chuckling, this chuckle was much more darker and sinister, something that nobody would ever expect from Jackie “You’re… Mine… God, that feels s o fucking g o o d to say instead of just shoving it down my throat each time… It feels so good to say how much I TRULY love you… And I really do, I love you so much, more than can ever really be put into words…  You’re so cute, so lovely… You… You are m i n e…” He repeated that, you grew pale at this and were beginning to get sick at his words.

“Th...This isn’t what love is… I… I just… I don’t… I don’t feel the same… I’m not in love with you…” You weakly stated, there was a long pause before Jackie laughed, there was a large grin almost ear-to-ear on his face, that grin terrified you more than anything else ever could… Before he spoke, his tone became MUCH darker with his next two words “...You Will…” Your eyes widened at this, Jackie merely held you tighter and those words echoed and rang out in your head for the next few minutes, it was all you could hear, there were no other thoughts coming through, just the words of ‘you will’ inside your head… You couldn’t even show disgust or anything else really as Jackie began petting and caressing you.

...A few weeks had passed on by, the city was quiet today, quieter than usual… People were walking the streets, this much was true, but nothing seemed as loud as it usually did… Suddenly a paper had flew off of one of the posts nearby and landed near someone’s feet, being curious they reached down and gently picked it up, their eyes scanned over the paper as they read aloud.

“MISSING: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PERSON? FIRST AND      LAST NAME: Y/N, L/N | LAST SEEN ON 8/20/2020”

The person continued reading through the rest of the information on the paper before shivering “Damn… Hope they are found soon…” If there was anyone who could find them… It’d be the one and only Jackieboy-Man! Little did the rest of the citizens and the entire world know… Jackie didn’t have to worry about you being missing, no in fact, he got to see you with each passing day that went by… And he’d get to see you for the next weeks, months, and years as well… He’d be seeing you, and you would be seeing him, forever and always...

[todisturbtheuniverse]

FIC: Set All Trappings Aside [5/8]

Rating: T Fandom: Dragon Age: Inquisition Pairing: f!Adaar/Josephine Montilyet Tags: Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining, Class Differences Word Count: 4000 (this chapter) Summary: After months of flirtation, a contract on Josephine’s life brings Adaar’s feelings for her closer to the surface than ever. It highlights, too, all of their differences, all of the reasons a relationship between them would not last. But Adaar is a hopeful woman at heart; if Josephine can set all trappings aside, then so can she. Also on AO3. Notes: While the context for this story is the Of Somewhat Fallen Fortune questline, some of the conversations within it didn’t quite fit for this Inquisitor. The resulting fic is a twist on the canon romance. This Adaar and Josephine have featured in other fics, so you may miss a little context if you haven’t read Promising or Truth-Telling, which both come before this one.

Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Usually, Adaar liked nothing better than being on the road. Clear nights like these were best of all. It was easy to pick out constellations she knew, stars she'd once navigated by on her own, crisp against the velvet map of the heavens. She'd lain on a thin bedroll staring up at that sky more nights than she could count, and when she'd closed her eyes, she'd slept peacefully.

The view afforded her very little peace just now.

Four more days to Val Royeaux. Six more until this party that Adaar was supposed to appear at. She'd made up her mind as she left Josephine's office, though. She hadn't promised anything. Leliana had sent along the tools and information Adaar would need to deal with the House of Repose. Damn the woman, but she had done Adaar that small favor. 

Her people answered to the Inquisitor, not the Ambassador. When they arrived in Val Royeaux, she would do what needed to be done. No more games.

Josephine would be angry, but the damage to their friendship had already been done. What did one more blow matter? 

Best not to think about that. To hope, as was her habit, that Josephine had kissed her back and meant it. That it hadn't just been relief, or gratitude, or the heat of the moment, or… 

Adaar would send her back to Skyhold with Leliana's people when it was all over, but she would not be escorting them. The additional protection Adaar and her companions offered would no longer be required. They could ride far faster than a handful of carts. They would go south, to the Emerald Graves, and Adaar would get back to doing what she did best.

She did not plan to go back to Skyhold for a long, long time.

She shifted a little in the open bed of the cart, easing her legs out of one position and into another. Wouldn't do to get too cramped if someone crept up on them in the dead of night. She needed to be quick. Quicker than she'd ever been. She blinked her bleary eyes and surveyed the lonesome wilderness around their meager campsite again, searching for anything that didn't belong.

Behind her, canvas rustled. She turned her head to note it, squinting through the dim starlight. Paranoia prickled at her, insisting that an assassin had slipped by both her and the four others on watch, but the part of her still capable of logic expected to see one of their own party leaving their tent.

She just didn't expect it to be Josephine.

Adaar looked away, back to watching the road and sparse woods behind. She briefly considered the merits of lying down flat in the cart, concealing herself from view entirely, but that was both too childish and too dangerous. She knew how likely she was to fall asleep, even on these hard boards, if she arranged herself horizontally.

So she listened, with pricked ears, to Josephine's footsteps. She hoped they would circle away, paired with whatever guard had the unfortunate task of protecting people while they pissed, but instead, they drew closer.

Shit.

They hadn't spoken much since leaving Skyhold. She'd avoided Josephine, staying close enough to watch her back but far enough away to ward off conversation. Josephine seemed to have picked up on this, accepted it; she hadn't said anything beyond a simple greeting this morning.

But they'd also been surrounded by others: scouts, guards, Adaar's companions. Perhaps she'd just been waiting for the right moment, when they'd be overheard by the fewest possible ears.

The right moment for what, Adaar had no idea. Another plea for Adaar to understand? An apology for being so cursed stubborn about this? A reprimand for kissing her? An entreaty to do it again?

Josephine paused when she drew alongside the back of the cart, just within Adaar's peripheral vision. "Inquisitor," she said softly.

Adaar watched the woods. "Ambassador."

The cart dipped a little with Josephine's weight. For a moment, they sat in silence, two feet of space between them. Adaar saw Josephine's head tip back, taking in the view of the heavens, but only out of the corner of her eye. She didn't think knowing the way starlight looked on that face would make this any easier.

"I brought you something," Josephine said at last, and Adaar realized she held a small wooden box. She set it down on the cart between them and opened the lid. "If you're not going to sleep, you'll need your strength."

Adaar glanced down at the box. A pile of little round cookies nestled on a linen napkin inside it, some of their edges crumbling.

Well, maybe she could rule out a reprimand, at least. That was...something.

"I don't know that sweets are the best choice for a long watch," she said, but she took one, anyway. "I don't recognize these."

"Polvorones. My favorites. My father's, too. He sends me quite a few of them, for fear that I'll get too homesick, the way he's always done. I usually hide them away for myself, but…" She clasped her hands in her lap. "I thought they might be an adequate peace offering. Or the beginning of one, anyway."

Adaar turned her attention back to the road as she took a bite of the cookie. It crumbled in her mouth, on her hands, sweet with a trace of almonds. She swallowed, took a sip from her water skin to wash the rest of the crumbles down as she considered.

It was abominably hard to tell this woman No, which was why she'd avoided situations where she'd have to do it at all costs.

"Danaya," she said, raising her voice. 

Josephine's head turned toward her, but she didn't interrupt. Quick footsteps approached. 

"Yes, Your Worship?" the guard said.

"Watch the rear. I am being distracted."

"Yes, Your Worship," Danaya agreed, and wisely moved a solid thirty feet down the road to take her post without further comment. Good woman. Didn't make a single face whatsoever.

"I'm listening," Adaar said to Josephine.

She heard Josephine's relieved breath. She unfolded a napkin over her lap, and her elegant fingers dipped into the box to pick out one of the polvorones for herself. "I've been thinking, these last few days. I realized how poorly I've behaved. We had an agreement. If you still want to deal with the House of Repose directly…I am a woman of my word. I won't argue further."

Adaar blinked. The possibility of an apology had occurred to her, and not even as a long shot; Josephine was mindful of other people's feelings. She'd certainly noticed how...off...Adaar was. Adaar was not that adept at concealing it.

But this? She hadn't expected this.

"Okay," she said slowly, testing. "That does make things a little easier, since I planned to do just that when we arrived in Val Royeaux."

Surprise—distress—flitted over Josephine's face, but it quickly smoothed. "That is fair."

"I would have told you," Adaar said, compelled to defend herself, "but frankly, I don't hold up very well to your silver tongue. Best not to risk it."

Josephine chuckled, a little sadly. "No, I understand. I just have one request."

"For my sake, please make it a reasonable one."

"Even when you have every right to be angry with me, you are amusing," she said, but pushed on before Adaar could reply. "I would like to explain why I've been so opposed to your plan, to Leliana's plan. Prove to you that I'm not being mulish, or stupid, or naïve, or..."

"I don't think you're any of those things." Adaar picked up another cookie. She'd finished the first one without noticing. She did tend to eat her nerves. "Well, maybe a little stubborn. Usually that's a good quality. But if you'd like to tell me, go ahead."

Josephine dipped her head. "I used to be a bard, you see."

She paused there as if deliberating, and Adaar tried to imagine it. She was a deft negotiator, but Adaar had a hard time picturing her in such a place at court just now, with the pretty ocean-blue shawl held around her shoulders to ward off the chill, her long dark hair woven into a loose braid over her shoulder. Rumpled by sleep, or maybe a lack of it. She belonged among her books and her missives, her pen and her ink. Hard to imagine her hiding daggers in her clothes instead.

She'd had a letter opener in her sash that night. Adaar pushed the thought of it, its inadequacy, as far away as it would go.

"What, like Leliana?" she asked. "With the singing, and the story-telling, and…"

"The spying," Josephine finished. "Yes. I was young, attending university in Val Royeaux. It sounded so...romantic, so exciting. Trysts, secrets, fascinating people. Very different from my responsibilities to my family."

"Ah," Adaar said. "So even you can get tired of paperwork sometimes."

"Especially at that age." Josephine sighed, as if the memory embarrassed her. "So I put on a mask, told myself that my siblings would get along without me, and practiced the Game in as thrilling a way as I could."

"I suppose I can imagine that. Well," she amended, "parts of it, anyway."

Josephine nodded. "Parts of it, yes. The charming conversation, that I was good at. I had some skill with a harp, though my singing has never been as good as Leliana's."

Adaar made a mental note to find a harp at the first opportunity, then remembered herself and crossed it out again immediately. Her plans after Val Royeaux had not changed. She would maintain the distance between them. It was for the best.

The words would ring true someday, she was sure. 

"And the other parts?" she said. "How did that end?"

Josephine drew her shawl a little more tightly around herself. "Very poorly. You know that I am not a fighter. I had an aversion to violence, even then. But I convinced myself that I needed to play the part, that I could learn, that I would adjust to it. I practiced."

"You got hurt," Adaar guessed when Josephine hesitated.

"If only." She straightened up as if steeling herself. "During a particular intrigue, another bard was sent to kill my patron. We...fought, if you could call it that. It did not feel very much like the epic duels we sang about. I was terrified. I think that he was, too. We were at the top of a steep flight of stairs. He drew a knife, and I pushed him away from me…you can imagine the result."

Adaar could see the shame on her face. The guilt, even after all these years.

Adaar remembered the first person she had killed, too. The way she'd thrown up on her knees in the dirt after. It took a lot of practice to stop doing that part. Demons were easier. Hell, Red Templars were easier. They weren't really people anymore.

"It was self-defense," she said, trying to be gentle. "He would have killed you."

"But it was such a waste!" Adaar had rarely seen Josephine so animated: the words burst out of her, not loud, mindful of the guards, but sharp. Devastated. Her eyes gleamed, and Adaar fought the impulse to touch her, to comfort her. "And when I took off his mask, I knew him. We'd attended parties together. If I'd stopped to reason, if I'd used my voice instead of scuffling like a common thug…"

It was just another blow to an old wound. Adaar weathered it. She knew Josephine didn't mean it like that, would never be that cruel, but Adaar knew the truth about herself, too. Knew, and accepted it.

Cassandra kept saying that she was the person they'd needed, exactly when they'd needed it. Stood to reason that sometimes the world needed a common thug.

"I will always wonder who he would have turned out to be," Josephine said. "That is why."

Adaar returned to the problem at hand. "These aren't boys on their first run, Josephine. They're part of a guild of assassins—"

"I know that. I know." She shook her head, impatient. "It is not their lives that most concern me, though I do think their deaths would be pointless. For what? For an old grudge so easily forgotten that the surviving descendents would sweep it away for a favor of status?" She scoffed. "They're bound by that old agreement, but no one else feels the same."

There was truth enough in that. Adaar had seen some of Josephine's exchanges with the Du Paraquettes. Hard to imagine that a hundred years ago, these families had been at each others' throats. They were just strangers now. 

"What most concerns you, then?" she said.

Josephine looked up at her. Her fingers had pulled one of the cookies apart in her lap; it was a pile of crumbs now. "The lives of our people. Any of them could get hurt, could die, trying to destroy this contract. You could die."

Adaar considered her for a long moment. "You see our impasse, then," she said at last. "You are not willing to send me into mortal danger, and I am not willing to let you stay in the same."

"Yes." There was disappointment, but understanding, in Josephine's eyes. "I do see. And you have honored my request, above and beyond our agreement, so you can do what you see fit with a clear conscience. I won't protest."

Damn her. Even as she released Adaar, she bound her. Adaar wondered if she'd just played the Game for so long that she couldn't stop playing it, that she did it even subconsciously. That she knew, instinctively, that where pleading or begging wouldn't change Adaar's mind, this would.

And Adaar admired Josephine's idealism. Always had. Maybe she was cutthroat when it came to maneuvering alliances, but it was in metaphor only; she did her best to mitigate harm. She advocated for opportunity, for a future, not an ending.

Adaar wanted the world to work that way.

"This is exactly why I haven't talked to you in four days," Adaar muttered. "I knew you would talk me out of it." She took another cookie to console herself and stuffed it whole in her mouth. Maybe the crumbs would choke her, put her out of her misery.

"I mean it," Josephine pressed. "Do what you think—"

"—is best," Adaar finished. "Yeah. Wish I knew for sure what that was." She dusted her hands free of crumbs. "If this minister so much as looks at me funny—which is very likely, given the manners these kinds of people usually have—I'm storming the House of Repose that very hour."

Josephine reached across the space between them to touch her hand. "Thank you."

Adaar only nodded. Hard to do anything else as she looked at those soft fingertips grazing the backs of her knuckles, thinking inevitably of the last time they'd touched.

Josephine withdrew, and Adaar hoped that she would get up and leave; that she had gotten what she wanted, and there would be no need to discuss anything else.

"There is one other matter," Josephine said, her words more hesitant by far now.

Adaar didn't dare look at her face. She listened, waited, for the guillotine to drop.

"You kissed me," Josephine said, and Adaar closed her eyes against it. "After…"

Adaar would never forget it. Never. The relief she'd felt all the way down to her weary bones when she arrived outside Josephine's door to hear voices, to hear her voice, to realize that she was safe, alive—only for that relief to twist, become a terror so stark she'd never felt its like—

"I only…please understand, I don't want to assume that you harbor any tender feelings for me, I just…" Josephine let out a frustrated breath. "Listen to me stutter. I only want to understand what you meant by it."

Adaar opened her mouth before she even knew what she planned to say; she shut it again. Josephine waited, patient, not pushing.

Adaar could lie. Wave it off. Make the same excuses she'd imagined Josephine would make. Things would be awkward, probably. After all this, it was hard to imagine that they'd ever be as close as they had once been.

But Josephine deserved better than that. She'd gone out of her way to apologize, to explain. Now she asked to understand, to be given the same courtesy in return. 

It would still be awkward, but maybe they'd get past it, someday. She could hope. It had carried her this far.

"I care about you," she said. She sounded steady enough. "Very much." She paused, cleared her throat. "Thought it was sort of obvious."

Josephine didn't reply. The silence—a few seconds that felt like years—pressed down on Adaar, threatening to crush her. She had to look, had to see…

Josephine stared at her, eyes wide, lips slightly parted. She looked an awful lot like she had after Adaar had kissed her.

Breathlessly, she said, "I thought...I thought it was possible, but…"

"I know. I didn't send an eyebrow poem." She fell back on bad humor like it was some kind of defense, like it wouldn't just make things worse. "Just a bunch of stupid trinkets. Awfully unclear of me. Look, I'm sorry if I made you uncomf—"

She had not known that Josephine could move so quickly; she'd pushed the box of cookies out of the way, thrown herself against Adaar's side, and pulled Adaar's head down to kiss her before Adaar knew what was happening.

She'd tried not to remember. In those moments before the few hours of sleep she'd scraped for herself, she'd tried not to think about how it had felt. Josephine clinging to her, safe and warm and alive; Josephine pressing close to her, matching Adaar's desperation with her own fervor; Josephine's soft, sweet lips yielding beneath hers.

She was just as demanding as she'd been that night. Adaar had never expected, never imagined that—when she'd dared to imagine, anyway. That Josephine had a fire burning inside her to match Adaar's torch, and when their lips met, they knew one another's heat.

Josephine's hands framed Adaar's face, held her in place. Without Adaar's explicit say-so, her arms had wrapped around Josephine. She drank in the blissful noise of delight that came from Josephine's lips, didn't bother to catch the shawl as it fell and fluttered to the cart. Josephine touched her like she was something beloved, and she melted beneath the worship of those fingers, fell to pieces beneath the care of this deepening kiss, sweet with that lingering taste of the polvorones. Another few seconds of those soft lips moving with hers and she'd be tumbling Josephine down into the bed of the cart, and she doubted very much that Josephine would protest—

One of the guards called to another. Despite the heat, despite Josephine's body against hers, she heard it. It was a proprietary remark; there was no danger. But it felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over Adaar's head.

She tugged away, just enough to break the kiss, letting the cold night air come between them. "Wait."

Josephine made an impatient noise, following. "There are no assassins out—"

"It's not that."

Josephine's eyes searched her face. They looked a little glassy with want, with lust, with starlight.

It was a very good look on her, but it wasn't helping Adaar keep her head straight.

"Then what?" she asked. Her thumb ran over Adaar's cheek, once, twice.

She would not get through this if Josephine kept touching her, but she had to tell herself to let go three times before she actually took her arms from around Josephine. Josephine settled back to the cart, waiting, brow knit with confusion.

"This isn't a good idea," Adaar said.

Josephine leaned a little away, clearly stung. "Why not?"

Adaar glanced down the road, toward the nearest guard. Danaya's back was to them, but she wasn't far enough away, not nearly.

"People talk," she said. "As you've told me yourself. Even a short entanglement—"

"Short entanglement?" Josephine repeated, a thread of anger weaving through the hurt. "I am not interested in a fling, as you well—"

"Let me finish. Please."

Maybe something on Adaar's face convinced her; she took a breath and gestured, as if to say go ahead.

"This whole deal is going to restore your family's status," Adaar said. "Right?"

If Josephine found the change in subject strange, she didn't comment on it. "It will take more work than that, but—yes, this is the necessary beginning."

"How do you think that status would dip if everyone knew you were involved with me? What trade opportunities would you lose? Who would exclude your siblings from parties, your parents from plans?"

Josephine didn't answer right away. She thought about it, giving it a moment, turning it over, before she answered. "No one who has not already excluded us," she said. "No opportunities I have not already lost."

"Are you sure of that?"

"No one can ever be absolutely certain of anything," Josephine said evenly. "But I do not care."

"I know that isn't true. You've worked so hard to make this happen. Not just these last few months—years and years of work. What if just…being with me…would reverse all of that?"

Josephine slid off the cart and turned to face Adaar. Silently, Adaar offered out her shawl, and she took it, but let it hang loose from her hand.

"For my family, yes, I have worked," Josephine said. "So that they might get along without me, one day, if the worst were to happen. But I set all my trappings aside to join the Inquisition, knowing that I might well be cast as a heretic with the rest of you." She lifted one shoulder in a shrug, as if this didn't trouble her at all. "It does not appear that this is our trajectory any longer. I've turned a deaf ear to many slights, but there are fewer of them every week."

"You'll have to turn a deaf ear to many more," Adaar said. She had to make Josephine understand. "Supporting me politically is very different from declaring a romantic relationship with a common thug."

Josephine looked at her, silent, inscrutable, and Adaar almost squirmed under the weight of that gaze. It felt like Josephine saw a great deal. Things Adaar didn't want her to see, things she didn't intend to show her.

"You know that I don't see you that way," Josephine said.

"But other people do," Adaar argued. "Other people will—"

"Other people think many silly things," Josephine cut across her.

"Tell me if this is silly, then. When this is all over, if I'm still standing when the dust clears, I will have a very simple life left to me. A little land, a little house. You have connections, responsibilities, that won't fit in the space I have to offer. Would you give all that up to sink to my level?"

Josephine let out a low breath. "I see."

The way she was looking at Adaar, Adaar very much doubted it. "See what?"

"You are afraid that I am going to hurt you."

Adaar spluttered. "That's not what I—"

"You think that when this is over, you will not be special anymore, and I will not want you anymore." Josephine stepped forward, just enough to wrap the shawl around Adaar's shoulders. "You're wrong."

She patted the fabric into place, as if to protect Adaar from the chill. Every touch of her hand weakened a little more of Adaar's resolve.

"I am not going to change my mind," Josephine said. "When you have gotten over your reservations—"

"My reservations? You're the one who should have—"

"I will be here, Herah," Josephine said, relentless. "And I will still want the same thing. Lest you accuse me of manipulating you with my silver tongue, I will leave you to think."

Adaar had lost all language, all ability to protest. Josephine took one more polvorone from the box, but left the rest with a last pointed look at Adaar.

She was not afraid.

...Was she?

Go to Chapter 6 -->

[aspoonofsugar]

Were there moments when you found a character disarmingly human? When you found a character shockingly harsh? When a character was both of these things? (I hope this isn’t a weird question. I’m just trying to reassess the expectations I bring in as a reader vs. the expectations actually set up by the author).—BSD Chat Anon

Hello again!

I think the concepts of “human” and “harsh” vary according to different people :). When it comes to me I have made two lists with characters I deeply love and I tried to explain why. What is more, I talked about characters in general here and I shared some thoughts here as well.

In short, I think that when you write a character in a story, the best thing you can do to make them human is ironically to schematize them by giving them a flaw and an objective. I personally think that in this way, as your story become more complex, so do the characters. In some cases, the schematic flaw you gave them in the beginning might become more layered and difficult to pintpoint and to describe through words. After choosing a flaw, I think one can work on a more superficial characterization (the way they look, likes, dislikes, hobbies, abilities, etc.). I think it is great when this characterization ties with the flaw they will have to overcome and is coherent with it. Alternatively, it can be used to better shape the plot (for example, if you have a character who will have to fight, you should give them some fighting capabilities; if they must solve puzzle in a sci-fic world they can be given knowledge of technology, etc.). If you must write a story with comical undertones, you can write different characters to embody different kinds of irony or comedy and so on. Finally, you can add motifs to make their journeys more symbolic.

All in all, I also think that everyone likes different characters and may have different ways to write their own characters. That is also why the characters made by an author can be recognizable and be all similar somehow, even if they may appear completely different on the surface.

Finally, to better answer your question, I will talk about four characters I have not mentioned in previous lists.

1) Claire Stanfield (Baccano)

I love Claire. He is very interesting both meta-narratively and as far as his characterization is concerned. All in all, he seems to me as a child who can’t grow because of his incredible talent at everything. As a matter of fact, he acts according to a simplified vision of the world and to child-logic. However, because of his abilities, he never meets real struggles, which could truly let him change this perspective, so he does not mature. An other insteresting aspect is that, all in all, what Claire wants is really simple. He wants to be good at his job, no matter if it is assassination or being a conductor or a circus artist. He wants to help his family and to build a new one with a woman he loves. These are such normal things that it is funny how he is able to twist them in something amazing because of his personality.

2) Chuuya (BSD)

I started loving him because of the episodes in season 3, where his background is revealed. I love his inner struggle concerning Arahabaki and how he hides a very frail sense of self behind a flashy exterior. Fifteen offers us a very good explanation of why he became who he currently is and showed that he is a pretty layered character with different issues tangled in an identity crisis. What is more, I love how different details in his design, like the gloves and the hat, find deep and meaningful explanations in his background. It is the kind of characterization that I love. Finally, I find his relationship with Dazai potentially very interesting because of how conflictual and contradictive it is.

3) Soren and Claudia (The Dragon Prince)

They are my current obsession. I think they are very well written characters and they have the merit to be very well-rounded and easy to use in multiple contexts (for comedy, for plot, for character moments, etc.). I also think they are a good example of how a generic exterior attribute can be linked to something deeper within the character. As a matter of fact, Soren is a crown-guard and his talent lies in combat. Claudia is instead a prodigy in dark magic. It is clear that such talents make so that the siblings have different methods to face problems and can contribute to the plot in different ways. However, their respective abilities are nothing more than a concrete projection of their flaws. Soren’s ability in fighting is symbolic of his need to prove his strength, while Claudia’s talent in Dark magic represents her refusal of loss and of conflict. At the same time, these two internal problems are also connected to the way Soren and Claudia’s parents treated them. Soren’s unhealthy desire to prove himself is born by his father’s lack of love. Claudia’s refusal of conflict is born by her parents’ divorce, which resulted in her mother’s abandonment. As you can see, they clearly end up as pretty layered characters because of how everything in their characterization is coherent.

When it comes to them as singular characters, I would say that I love how the story lets Soren show more of his intelligence without changing the core of his character. The intelligence he shows in season three is mostly emotional and is rooted in his warm personality. In a sense, he makes good use of qualities he had always shown, but that were underused because he was too focused trying to prove his worth through his strength. I especially liked that he showed that his talent as a crown-guard did not lie in his physical strength, but rather in his ability to protect the king. Throughout season 3, he protects Ezran physically, but also emotionally to an extent. For example, he makes sure that Ez, after escaping prison, has his favourite food and that he is given the means to reach the people he would want to meet the most.

As far as Claudia is concerned, her flaw is an extremely interesting one. As a matter of fact the traits, which lead to her spiral are the same which can save her aka her love and loyalty for her loved ones, coupled with her hate for conflict. It is really interesting to see how the narrative twists these attributes and shows how they can be detrimental. This is conveyed pretty beautiful especially because, since the beginning, Claudia’s character is a well made mixture of cute and terrifying. You can spot chilling traits, but they are well camouflaged by her likability and good intentions. Finally she has a spot in my heart because she is a dynamic example of air-headed genius (aka one of my favourite tropes). It is good to see a character like her receive a pretty complex and dynamic arc.

5) Agathe Arkrome (Witch Hat Atelier)

I love her! She is a pretty well made example or rival/deuteragonist character. She has extremely obvious flaws (she wants to be the best to the point where she can willingly and unwillingly hurt others), but she also quickly displays likable traits and starts developing a very interesting relationship with the lead. I think that this relationship has the potential to truly become interesting as the story progresses and I can see it both becoming deeper, but also more conflictual. I would love to write more about her, but I am waiting for her story to delve more into her past, so that her character can be explored more!

Thank you for the ask!