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pillage-and-lute · 4 years ago

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An Ever Fixed Mark (part 4)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 (here) Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10,

Read it on Ao3 HERE

A little bit of BAMF! Jaskier, a lot of emotionally constipated/self flagellating Geralt, some miscommunication, and a secret.

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Geralt awoke slowly. The anxiety and excitement of the wedding had taken its toll, and the comfortable bed had enveloped him nicely. There was also the warm, comfortable weight in his arms.

Jaskier.

It was Jaskier in his arms. The young man was curled up, still fast asleep, with his head tucked against Geralt’s chest. Geralt wondered who had gravitated to whom in the night. Had he vvmoved unconsciously hold Jaskier? Perhaps. Jaskier must have cuddled up to him too, though. There was no other way to explain the way Jaskier’s hand was curled, lightly, around Geralt’s medallion. Holding on to Geralt. On his other hand, the wedding ring glittered.

Used to assessing battle situations, this train of thought happened in thirty seconds or less. His processing was significantly sleep slowed, however, because he finally became aware of what had woken him.

There was a pounding on the door. The urgent pounding of someone who desperately wanted to speak with the occupants but didn’t want to make others aware.

Without other options Geralt gently extricated himself from Jaskier, accidentally waking the young man in the process, pulled on the pants from the day before, and crossed to the door.

It was Eskel.

“What?”

“It’s almost ten in the morning,” Eskel said. “Vesemir wants us to leave really soon. Um, check if Jaskier has people he wants to say goodbye to.”

“Our things,” Geralt began.

Eskel waved a dismissive hand. “Vesemir had them packed up last night, but he really wants us to leave and he won’t tell us why.”

Geralt shrugged, reassured his brother, and closed the door.

Jaskier was sitting up in bed, his undershirt, a large, flowy thing, had slipped off one shoulder. Geralt’s stomach lurched, rolled, and finally curled up. Somehow it wasn’t in an unpleasant way, though. The skin was pale gold in the torchlight. It brought thoughts of sinking his teeth into all that glowing skin, gripping as he folded his body over Jaskier’s and...

Geralt dunked his head in the washbasin.

“Is that an okay temperature,” Jaskier said, slipping on his wedding attire from the day before. “I think it was warmed up for us last night but it’s probably pretty cold by now.”

It was doing exactly what Geralt needed it to, so he just grunted.

“I don’t have anyone I need to say goodbye to,” Jaskier said as Geralt wiped water from his eyes. “We can leave whenever.”Geralt nodded and pulled on his wedding doublet. Jaskier, all in white and pearls still looked like some sort of angel. He took Jaskier’s hand, and they left.

It was Jaskier’s guidance, of course, that brought them back to the rooms that had been for the witchers, and Vesemir was outside the door already.

“Was worried you two would linger,” he griped, but it was good-natured.

“Yeah honeymooners, how’s married life feel?,” Lambert smirked. He had packs over his shoulder, so did Eskel, and Vesemir. Eskel offered Geralt his pack and swords. Geralt shouldered them and took a much nicer pack from Lambert, obviously Jaskier’s. Vesemir picked up a lute from where it had been leant against the wall and Jaskier took it gratefully, a hint of a smile touching his round cheeks.

Then the odd little party left.

After all the anxiety and waiting and intrigue and the wedding itself, just walking down to the stables as an little group felt strange. No one stopped them, though.

The witcher’s horses had been cared for, but were otherwise untouched. There was a fifth, a black and white stallion, big but not a battlehorse by any means. Jaskier reached forward and kissed it’s muzzle. The horse responded by huffing in the way horses do and tossing his mane.

They mounted up and were off before the bell in the town center tolled eleven. It just didn’t feel real.

“We’ll ride with you to Egerbak,” Vesemir said, naming a town a day’s ride from Chateau Lettenhove. “From there we’ll go our separate ways, not good for witchers to be all in one group.”

“Why?” Jaskier said, looking puzzled. “Wouldn’t it make fighting monsters easier?”

“Sometimes,” Eskel said, “But if the terrain is rough you can get in one another’s way.”

“Get paid less too, the locals think it’s easy and give up less coin,” Lambert said, a little sourly.

“Most jobs need just one witcher,” Geralt said, unsticking his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “And villagers get edgy if there’s more than that, they fear an attack.” He didn’t mention why. Surely Jaskier knew the reason he was called Butcher. “But there isn’t many of us left, either. We four are all of the wolf school. If there were people who wished us harm, having us all in one place could exterminate our school.”

“That’s horrible,” Jaskier said, blue eyes wide. The color was muted today, Geralt noticed. The sky was overcast and his eyes seemed to reflect the blue-grey light that filtered down.

“Do you think we’re in danger now?” the young man said.

“Depends, do you think your father would send people after you? To kill you I mean.” Vesemir didn’t even raise the question gently.

Jaskier sat, moving steadily astrid his horse, looking straight ahead. After a long moment with just the sound of five sets of hooves he said quietly, “I think maybe we should move a little faster.” He nudged his horse into a canter and fingered his lute strap nervously.

Without further instruction, the witchers formed up. Eskel, keen with magic and with the same good senses of any witcher, rode in front. Lambert, with his predilection for blowing things up from a distance, rode behind. Geralt and Vesemir rode along in the middle, Jaskier between them. He was probably the safest man for a hundred miles.

“You really think he might try something?” Geralt asked quietly. He knew speaking softly wasn’t the same as being tactful, but it was about the best he had.

Jaskier nodded. “It makes sense. If his goal is to start war with the witchers. To say you mistreated me and voided the contract, that’s one thing. But it makes a better story to feed to people if his beloved son is killed the day after the wedding.”

“I just don’t get it,” Geralt said, frustratedly. “Why does he want a war with witchers? I understand he doesn’t want you to be his successor, but he could just disown you, couldn’t he?”

“I was thinking about that,” said Jaskier. “It would look bad if he did, but he could. I think he wants a war with witchers because he wants a war with other countries. Any place that didn’t immediately turn against witchers-- all witchers, not just your school--well, he could declare them an enemy of Lettenhove, which is a big province. That makes it an enemy of Kerack and then Kerack goes to war with anywhere that decides they need someone to fight their monster problem.”

“That’s...” Geralt said.

“Despicable?”

“Well, yes, but I mean, it’s a lot to comprehend,” Geralt said. He felt a little at sea. This wasn’t his job, all this, this politics. He was a witcher. Find monster, swing sword, kill monster, get coin. That was what he did. Alliances and assasination and wars and marriage, they weren’t supposed to factor in.

“Yeah.” Jaskier said.

They rode on, safe inside the wolf school’s formation. After perhaps a quarter of an hour Jaskier slung his lute around and began to pick at it idly. It had a case, but he’d tied that onto his big stallion instead. Apparently he liked having it available.

“Why does he want a war?” Geralt asked after a little longer. “What does your father get out of it?”

Jaskier stopped plucking. “It’s part of the earl thing, in his case the position has a lot to do with finances and the kingdom’s treasury. Wars mean finances are more important, which makes him more important, and he get’s more power.”

“All of this is just a power grab?” Geralt said. “That’s daft.”

“That’s politics,” Jaskier said, a tad tiredly. “He probably thinks he could be made a duke. And yes, daft is a good word for it all.”

After that they just rode, stopping only briefly for lunch and to rest the horses. Jaskier played his lute quietly, most of the journey. At one point he pulled a notebook and charcoal stick from his bag to jot things down and muttered as he played.

Geralt had no idea if the lad’s music was impressive, but he was impressed with how he sat a horse, multitasking as if he was part centaur. He did most emphatically not think about how nice Jaskier’s thighs looked in the clothes he’d changed into at their lunch stop.

The wedding attire was very fine, but Jaskier looked somehow...right in the clothes he wore now. Blue trousers of fine but durable material and a white chemise under a blue doublet. He’d asked if he should wear the basilisk leather, but Geralt had shook his head. It was a fine spring day and basilisk leather kept heat like a fur coat, he didn’t want to cook his husband before they’d been married a whole day.

And wasn’t that a thought that clanked about in Geralt’s head. Husband. Husband husband husband husband husband. They were married and Geralt had a husband. Who was nobility. And Geralt was his husband.

And Geralt kind of wanted to kiss his husband.

That was his problem, however, not Jaskier’s. Whatever the damn ‘implied hidden fidelity clause’ said, Jaskier was free to sleep with whomever he chose. Why would any young man, in the position to choose, pick a scarred witcher, the Butcher of Blaviken? Who could choose Geralt?

Geralt suddenly felt very bitter, for himself and on Jaskier’s behalf. Neither of them had asked for this, and the witchers weren’t even going to get anything from it. Now he had a husband, a semi-disgraced noble, who apparently had musical talents. Bardic? Geralt didn’t know but it seemed...right.

Regardless, he needed a place to drop Jaskier off. Somewhere safe. It couldn’t be claimed he mistreated the man if they weren’t together. That way, Jaskier couldn’t...

Couldn’t what?

Geralt had never before actually contemplated all the ways a normal human could be hurt on the Path. Witchers, sure, he knew about that but humans were delicate. Geralt had been told once that you shouldn’t just eat rabbit because it...it did something and you would get sick. Or maybe starve? Because the meat was wrong somehow. Too lean? Not lean enough?

It didn’t matter because he wasn’t a human. He remembered a dreadful three weeks when coin had been lean eating just rabbit and he’d been fine. Jaskier might not be. Geralt hardly earned enough coin for himself how was he supposed to feed and protect them both.

Not to mention things like sleeping rough and rainstorms and all the little pitfalls of traveling.

It had seemed fine in theory before. Jaskier would have his basilisk leather and would stay at camp but now reality was setting in.

Tired from the road, the whole group spoke little as they set up camp. Geralt pitched the tent that he would share with Jaskier then set up the fire while his brothers put up their own tents and Vesemirs. Vesemir went hunting.

Geralt was almost eighty five years old, and had been hunting for most of those years, but not one of the younger wolves could match Vesemir’s skill.

Dinner was stew, with meat courtesy of Vesemir. Dessert was no talking at all. This wasn’t unusual at all for the wolves, but Jaskier was looking around nervously.

“You’re safe,” Geralt said. “It’s fine.”

“Okay,” Jaskier said. It seemed odd, because he’d been so vibrant and chatty back at Chateau Lettenhove.

“Pass me your dish,” Geralt said. Wordlessly, Jaskier handed him the shallow bowl. Geralt scraped it onto the grass.

“I’m sorry about the whole...assassin thing and, and everything,” Jaskier said after another silent minute.

“Hmm,” Geralt said.

The overast sky finally gave way to the rain that had been threatening all day and with a sigh the witchers each turned in for the night. Jaskier crawled into the tent after Geralt and settled down onto one of the bedrolls.

Geralt went about his nightly routine as if nothing was different, untying his hair and stripping himself his clothes. He felt oddly flattered when Jaskier let out a tiny gasp as he divested himself of his smallclothes. A glance showed him the young man, wide eyed in the dim light, kneeling on his bedroll.

The tent smelled of lust.

Geralt pulled on the well-worn loose trousers he preferred and nudged Jaskier’s pack at him. The boy took the hint and rummaged in it, pulling out similarly loose sleep pants and changing quickly. Geralt looked away for decency’s sake. They may be married but that was no reason to take liberties. Unfortunately, Jaskier was wearing another loose chemise to bed, and Geralt’s thoughts dragged back to the tantalizing view of shoulder from that morning.

“Wrap up tight,” he grunted, annoyed at himself for even thinking of that. “If the temperature drops in the night I don’t want to have to deal with you getting sick.”

The lust smell, which had waned somewhat, was entirely gone, replaced with a scent Geralt had smelled on Jaskier before.

“Okay,” Jaskier said quietly, and tucked himself obediently into his bedroll.

Jaskier smelled sad. Like he had the night before.

Geralt rolled into his own bedroll and cursed himself. Of course the boy was sad. Dragged onto the Path with a husband more monster than man. Boyish hormones made him horny, not any desire for something like Geralt. And he was a boy. Nineteen was legally an adult but it was like...what was the phrase Vesemir had used? De jure is not de facto. Legallity is not truth.

Geralt listened to Jaskier’s breathing and thought about their ages. Eighty years for a witcher was still considered a mere stripling youth when considered in the course of a witcher lifespan. For Jaskier, though, he would live to be eighty only if he was lucky. On a witcher’s Path he almost certainly wouldn’t be.

Jaskier’s breathing hadn’t slowed into the deep, even pattern of sleep. Geralt wondered what was keeping him awake. Then again, if he was sleeping beside a monster, he’s lie awake too.

It seemed as though neither of them would ever sleep, both of them laying, inches between them, on their separate bedrolls. Then, between one blink and the next, Geralt must have slipped into sleep.

He awoke to a damp world. It had rained through the night and the rain was still drizzling against the tent when he opened his eyes. The humidity and the little moisture that seeped through the cloth of the tent had built up and everything felt sticky and muggy.

Although every item of clothing in his pack had been put in dry, almost nothing felt entirely dry as he struggled into proper clothes. Jaskier woke too, blinking his eyes open muzzily and wrinkling his nose at the damp feeling. He also dressed in silence, frowning as he pulled on his clothes.

There was no dry firewood for a fire and Eskel, gifted though he was with magic, couldn’t make a fire last on soaked wood. The group ate cold rations. Jaskier tried to start up a conversation with Eskel about literature.

Geralt smiled inwardly, but let none of it show on his face, lest Jaskier think he was mocking him. Eskel, despite the best efforts of everything the wolf school could do, was so far from being a morning person as to be out the other side. He could stay up all night, but wasn’t conversational until nearly noon.

Jaskier looked disheartened, though. Geralt wasn’t a substitute for literary conversation, so he just packed up Jaskier’s horse for him. For some reason, Jaskier frowned at that, but then nodded at Geralt and they all mounted up.

It was an hour’s ride to Egerbak, where the witchers would part. From there, Geralt thought, mapping the journey in his head, he and Jaskier could turn for Oxenfurt. The journey would be almost a month, and Geralt would have to hunt along the way to earn coin, but Jaskier would be safe there.

While Geralt was musing, Jaskier was trying to strike up a conversation with Vesemir. The old wolf was more of a morning person than Eskel, but not a conversationalist, so Jaskier eventually shrugged a little sadly and pulled out his lute.

He plucked a tune, editing it again and again until he seemed satisfied. It was catchy, an earworm Geralt was sure would never leave his head. Then Jaskier began to hum.

Geralt himself was very nearly tone deaf, and frankly didn’t like music in most cases, but Jaskier’s voice sounded okay. It was only humming, anyway.

Geralt’s ears pricked and he saw the shoulders of Eskel, riding point, tense up too. He knew all the witchers had heard the noise. Hoofbeats were approaching fast. Geralt craned in his saddle to see the rider, but could make out little between the rain, which had graduated from drizzle to downpour.

Vesemir coughed, flexing his hand on the reigns, opening his fist then closing it again. The witchers drew together, closing their formation. To the rider it would likely look as if they merely were drawing towards one another to give him room. It worked to do that, for sure, but it was also a defensive maneuver, trained into them and beaten into their memory. Witchers rarely fought alongside eachother, but when they had to they were prepared. Closing ranks also had the benefit of enclosing Jaskier, like a hand wrapping around a precious stone.

Geralt’s steel sword had been tied at his hip, and his silver along with the saddlebags. It made him look less threatening, more like a knight errant than someone ready to battle at any time. In truth, the change from being slung at his shoulders was practical. In combat he could draw the sword from his hip and be prepared, rather than having to reach up to draw his weapons. It left him less exposed on horseback. He reached down to his hip and, in a smooth and almost impercepitble motion, flicked the tie open on the sheath of his sword, loosening its hold to make the sword easier to draw. He turned the movement into a casual stroke of Roach’s flank.

The rider pulled up alongside. “Sir witcher,” he panted, “I must speak with Master Julian.”

Geralt glanced at Jaskier but the boy looked...different. He was sitting his horse more stiffly and looked more haughty and aristocratic than Geralt had ever seen him. Nothing of his clothing had changed, and he was in poor garb compared to the silken doublets he had worn before, but in a second his posture had turned him into the spitting image of his father.

“Speak, man,” Jaskier said, waving one hand dismissively.

“You left without your dowry.”

“Dowry,” Jaskier said coldly.

Geralt felt cold for a different reason. He’d seen a ring on the hand of the rider, the left hand’s index finger. It was large, with a heavy stone. He was a slim young man in the dress of a footman, but something in his build said otherwise. This was an assasin, Geralt would bet his medallion, and the ring held poison, or something equally nasty.

“I have no need of a dowry,” Jaskier was saying, passing straight through haughty and going for enigmatic without bother to slow down.

“Your father insisted,” said the assassin, sidling his horse closer. Geralt nudged Roach and she deftly stepped in the way.

“My father can take back his coin,” Jaskier said, even as the man offered a bag, slightly open to show gold coins. “I am no maiden, and my marriage shall produce no heirs.”

“But--”

“Don’t speak over your betters,” Jaskier said, every words ringing like steel. “A dowry is to set up a household. Well my household, such as it is,” here Jaskier gestured about him. “Is set up. Traditionally, if the wife dies without producing a male heir to the marriage the dowry is returned. I shall produce no heirs, so I’m returning the dowry preemptively.”

The assasin looked truly stumped. “I must give this to you,” he said, reaching forward, across Roach’s rump to hand the bag to Jaskier. Geralt saw the man’s thumb hover over the poison ring, as if about to flick open the compartment.

“No,” Jaskier said.

“At least dismount so that we can discuss this,” pleaded the rider.

Geralt looked about them. They’d been riding through woodland all day, but it was dense here, just the place one might lie in wait. Then he saw it, the thing he’d been waiting for since they’d left Lettenhove. A glint of light off of metal in the underbrush. Vesemir caught his eye, he’d seen it too.

“Melitele help us!” Jaskier cried. “There’s bandits in the woods!”

Geralt saw anger and annoyance flash onto the face of the assassin. “No bandits in these woods my lord, I’m sure,” he said smoothly.”

Geralt knew the plan in that instant. Jaskier would be found dead on the roadside, the rider would stagger back into Lettenhove, or perhaps onward into Egerbak and tell how the witchers had cruelly murdered Jaskier and made off with the dowry, leaving him for dead. These hiddent troops were presumably to subdue the witchers while Jaskier was murdered.

Finally, Geralt drew his sword.

Damn. If they killed the Earl’s men that would also look bad.

Jaskier, switching from enigmatic to foppishly distressed. “You simply must turn back,” he was saying to the assassin. “It’s quite alright, I have all these big, strong witchers to protect me, and before I left lettenhove I sent a xenovox message to a mage in Temeria, a friend of mine. I have a powerful protection on me.”

“You do,” the assassin said, edging his horse back a step. Protection spells tended to get messy in a guts and gore way for those who crossed them.

“Oh yes, and my darling husband, isn’t that right, dear heart?” Jaskier said, giving Geralt doe eyes. Geralt blinked.

“Uh, yes, Triss Merigold,” Geralt said, thanking his lucky stars, which most of the time had utterly failed to be lucky for him, that he actually knew a mage in Temeria.

“Merigold,” the would-be assassin said. “The name rings a bell, I’ll just,” and he rode off, back towards Lettenhove.

Jaskier spurred his horse. “Let’s get out of this rabbit snare,” he muttered. The witchers rode double-time to clearer ground.

“Well,” Vesemir said, once they were well and truly clear. “Quick thinking, lad, and some of the most pretentious acting I’ve ever seen.”

Jaskier bowed in his saddle, smiling like a moonbeam. “Thank you, although I’m just glad Geralt had a real name to back me up.”

“Should do,” Lambert snorted as they rode past the first few buildings of Egenbak. “She practically sewed his guts back into his body after a Striga--”

“Shut up,” Geralt growled, but it was too late. Even in the rain, Jaskier’s eyes were sparkling.

Greed, Geralt reflected, and indeed, lust, came in many varieties. Jaskier’s father may covet money and power, but the mere mention of a story had Jaskier coveting it just as viciously. What could be so boring, so lacking in a wealthy young man’s life, Geralt wondered, that he was so starved for adventure?

They bid their goodbyes to the other witchers, Jaskier surprising them each with a hug. Vesemir huffed, but Geralt caught the slight upward twitch of his moustache.

“Fair roads,” Jaskier said, waving to them all. Geralt waved too, and then his brother’s and Vesemir rode away.

So did Jaskier and Geralt, but it hadn’t been three minutes when Jaskier asked, “Striga?”

“Mmmhm.”

“What is a striga?” Jaskier pressed.

“Monster.”

Jaskier huffed. “What sort,” he said, with a bit of a whine. “How is one born...made? What does it look like? What does it do? Why have I never heard of one before?”

“Made by magic. Looks ugly. Does messy awful killings. They’re rare.”

“Please, Geralt, tell me the story?”

Geralt didn’t look over at him. Wasn’t going to. If he caught a glimpse of that face and those eyes pleading he’d give in.

“The rode is going to be awfully boring, Geralt, a story would really help,” Jaskier said, still begging.

“Just focus on riding,”Geralt growled. “I don’t want to have to deal with you if you fall off your horse.” Then he urged Roach on ahead.

It was indeed a very long and boring ride. After a while Jaskier pulled out his lute and began to play.

“Toss a coin,” he sang quietly, then he changed the cord and tried it again, a little higher. “Toss a coin to your witcher.”

“Don’t make up songs about me,” Geralt growled.

“Short of you telling me stories I have to make things up,” Jaskier said. “I know nothing about you.”

“So you write me a song?”

“I think you deserve one,” Jaskier said, as if his very believing it made it fact.

Geralt urged his horse on ahead.

“Come on,” Jaskier said, nudging his horse faster too. “My singing can’t be that bad, can it?” he asket.d lightly.

“Yes,” Geralt growled. “It can.”

They rode the rest of the day without speaking. Jaskier plucked sullenly at his lute.

Geralt was angry, and worse, he didn’t really have any right to be angry. He knew he’d messed up. Day two of marriage and he’d fucked up spectacularly. He was bad at this, and he was angry at himself. Somehow, though, he felt angry at Jaskier too. What was Geralt supposed to do? Answer every childish question? Tell stories? Discuss literature like Eskel could? Like probably all of Jaskier’s high class friends at Oxenfurt and Lettenhove could?

He was a witcher. Witcher meant solitary. It meant silence. It did not mean infernal music and being pestered about a story like a nanny.

He was being an asshole and he knew it, but damnit, he’d been an asshole so long he wasn’t about to stop all at once. It was practically baked in at this point. Being angry was better than trying to be kind an failing. Silence was easier than speaking.

Jaskier drooped in his saddle though, and Geralt felt like a cad.

They stopped for lunch at the side of the road, eating soggy rations and not talking to one another. They were both soaked to the skin, despite heavy cloaks, which were too hot in this late spring storm. Jaskier dripped miserably and carefully wiped down his lute, putting it reverentially in its case.. Up until that point the instrument had been mostly safe from rain, cradled against his body under the cloak. He’d clearly come to the same conclusion that Geralt had, however, that if the instrument stayed out any longer, cloak cover or no, it would get truly wet.

“Raining cats and dogs,” Jaskier said, tentatively. It had the same feeling as a man dipping his toe into water to see how cold it was.

“Hmmm.” Geralt said, neutrally.

Apparently seeing this not outright aggression as an invitation, Jaskier, metaphorically, jumped into the pond.

“See, I think that saying is really rather silly,” he said. “Not only because it, obviously, doesn’t rain animals, but really, cats don’t even like water.”

He continued chattering as they remounted and rode on.

“Dogs do like water of course, well, some, but so few like rainstorms, especially thunder. I wonder why we have that saying then.”

His mind seemed to skip back and forth between subjects like a grasshopper.

“I understand why dogs don’t like thunder, of course, and I don’t care for lightning much myself, but the thunder must be so loud with their sensitive hearing.”

He paused for a split second and Geralt wondered if blissful silence would return but then,

“I imagine thunder must be dreadful with your hearing, right?”

“Hmmm,” Geralt said. Shut up, he thought.

“Oh that’s awful,” Jaskier said. “Do you think it will thunder tonight? I hope not. If it does - or perhaps even if it doesn’t - I think we ought to get a room in an inn tonight. Give our clothes a chance to dry.”

Melitele’s tits. Geralt couldn’t believe one man could talk so much. It was almost like nervous chatter but it grated on his already fraying nerves.

“An inn would be perfect don’t you think? And I could play there. I’m a bard you know. Now I know what you’re thinking, ‘you’re a Viscount, Jaskier,’ and that’s true, although I suppose not anymore, technically from the moment I said ‘I do’ that honor was passed to my half-brother but, I’m a bard as well.”

“Shut up.”

“What?” Jaskier said.

Geralt pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling as he did so cold water drip from his hood onto his face. “For the love of all that is good just shut up,” he growled.

“Maybe if you said something back occasionally it wouldn’t be so one sided,” Jaskier said sniffily.

“Maybe if you had any brains in that empty head of yours you’d have something worth while to talk about.”

“I have brains,” Jaskier said, affronted.

“Clearly not enough to know when to shut up,” Geralt sniped back. “I don’t want to have to deal with your incessant chatter all the way to Oxenfurt.”

Jaskier stopped his horse and dismounted, in the middle of the road, in the pouring rain.

“Get back on your horse, have you lost your mind?” Geralt said, but he reigned Roach in.

“Oxenfurt?” Jaskier said, quietly. His voice held no emotion and Geralt felt suddenly that he had really fucked up this time. He dismounted.

“Yes,” he said. “You have friends there, I thought it would be a nice place to go.” He wasn’t sure why he didn’t tell Jaskier that he intended to leave him there, but he felt that, at this time, that wouldn’t go over well.

Jaskier’s face softened. “You thought it would be nice,” he said. “For me to go back there.”

Geralt shrugged. “One destination is as good as the other on my Path, often I just wander.”

Jaskier smiled softly and remounted. “Okay then,” he said. “To Oxenfurt.” He chuckled. “I’m sorry, I suppose dismounting was dramatic, I guess I thought you were taking me somewhere to get rid of me.”

It was like having ice shoved into Geralt’s spine as he mounted Roach again. “I wouldn’t get rid of you,” he said lowly.

“Oh, not ‘get rid of’, like that stupid assassin. I meant...discard, abandon, leave, wash one’s hands of, cast aside.”

They rode on, Jaskier chattered, but less. Geralt didn’t say a single word.

They didn’t make it to a town with an inn that night so they made camp in a soaked clearing again. Guilt ate Geralt as he was eating cold rations and chased him into their tent. He lie awake feeling heavy with it as he heard Jaskier’s breathing drop off.

Jaskier wouldn’t like being left at Oxenfurt, but it would be for his own good, Geralt thought. He didn’t have to tell him right now, anyway. That was a discussion that could wait until Oxenfurt.

Geralt’s guilt didn’t lift completely, but it eased enough that he slipped into meditation.

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I’m still pretty sick with mono, so this took me ages to manage, but its here at last! So psyched to write the next part too.

Tag List!

@llamasdumpsterfire @stinastar @aziz-the-fangirl @mordoriscalling @bastardofmothman @negativenuggetz @morte-mistrata @ailorian @hayleynzlive @filledepluie @bygodstillam @sociowithatardisachevyandawand @faery-god @honeysuckletook @theflurtifly @saibowtie @werevampiwolf @frywen-babbles @the-kewlest @innocentbi-stander @1stbonesfan @aqueenrisesintheeast @toothhurtyam @marauders-fan-account @ineffable-lasagna @limevodka @rocknrollphanda @seralyra @permanently-exhausted-witcher @aj-itated @watchthewolvesfall @00qtee @the-blondey @birds-of-forgiveness @west-moor @abstractartwithoutpaint @darkonesdagger7437 @onwardsandfourwords @underwaterattribute @whenrainbowsend @goldbvtton @little-piece-of-tamlin @in-love-with-writing002 @flustratedcas @fontegagrilledcheese @so--many-fandoms @kirk-spock-in-the-impala @oniongrass @flowercrown-bard @maya-the-yellow-bee @thecomfortofoldstorries @wellthisstinks @thenameislion-dandelion @flowercrown-bard @obsessedchildsworld @debellatis @zotinha456 @tumbleweedtech @goblin-loves-shiny-things @birdsflyhome @holymotherwolf @the-shenny-of-azkaban @darkangel91939 @enkelikauneus @saphiramalbec @silvermirror1997

#geraskier #the witcher #arranged marriage au #miscommunication #angst #geralt x jaskier #geralt of rivia #Vesemir #jaskier #eskel #lambert

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arvandus · 4 years ago

Note

Hi☺️ congratulations on the 500 followers! Please could I have number 27 with Shouto Todoroki and Fluffy ending?

Hope you have an amazing day!

Okay, so I SO APOLOGIZE for how late this is. Also, I've never written Shouto before and I was ✨nervous.✨ For some reason he's a hard one for me to pin down, but hopefully I'll get better with practice!

Anyway I hope you like this! It's got a little angst, but nothing heavy and definitely gets that fluffy ending. 🥰

Word Count: 2052

Pairing: Shouto Todoroki x GN!Reader

27. “I can’t think straight when I’m around you.”

You had thought that you’d enjoy working with Shouto Todoroki. Everything you’d ever heard about him was that he was calm, intelligent, and kind. And when you’d first started working at his father’s agency, those things were all true. He was always helpful, giving tips, answering questions, and offering to help with the paperwork that had quickly piled up. In fact, your first couple of months were made significantly easier by Shouto’s constant support and helped offset the sternness of his father who still ran the agency.

Everything had been going fine. More than fine, even. Shouto and you had become increasingly friendly, meeting up for your lunch breaks and pairing up for the patrol routes together. But something started to change. It was like a subtle shift in the air, a stillness between the two of you that wasn’t there before. You weren’t sure what started it.

Was it the time your fingers had brushed his when you’d handed him some paperwork? He’d frozen like a deer in headlights...

Or was it that one time during lunch where you offered part of your food and he’d turned it down with averted eyes and flushed cheeks? Maybe you’d offended him...

Or was it that time you’d just captured a particularly difficult villain and flashed him a glowing, excited smile as the public swarmed you for photos? Perhaps he thought you were gloating...

Whatever it was, you desperately wanted to undo it. Shouto began to pull away from you, a little bit at a time. His eye seemed to avoid yours more and his small, familiar smiles vanished. Gradually, he became less and less available. Wanted to meet up for lunch? Oh, he had a stack of paperwork to take care of. Offer to help him with said paperwork? Can’t do that, it’s “classified.” Meet up for drinks afterward? Couldn’t do that either; he had to get his rest for the next day. His answers and explanations were never mean; his still handled you with kindness. But there was a wall there suddenly that you couldn’t see past. He only let you see as much as he wanted you to see.

But the worst part was when he changed his daily patrol routes. Once again, he was kind about it, flushing slightly and avoiding your eyes as he explained that he had to pair up with a less experienced newbie who needed help in the field. It made sense, of course it did. Still, his response had left you unsatisfied. It felt incomplete, a half-truth meant to divert your attention from the real reason, whatever that was. You wanted to prod for more, to silently showcase the skepticism that you felt with a hard look. But you couldn’t bring yourself to. His reason was sound enough, and to accuse him of otherwise might make things worse. So, you bit your tongue and tried to let it go.

Tried, but failed. You missed him. You missed his smiles, your conversations... your days felt a little bit greyer, and a lot lonelier. You’d chalked it up to missing your friend – after all, you were still friends... right?

But one day you saw him on patrol with another hero, a smile on his face as he talked to them. They stood a little too close to him for your liking, the light in their eyes as they looked at him a little too bright. That part wasn’t surprising. It was pretty unanimous in the popularity polls that Shouto was a beautiful man. What did surprise was the sharp sting of jealousy that shot through you.

That was when you realized. You liked him.

The feelings had crept up on quiet feet, through a forest of gentle of smiles and the low rumble of laughter. Through shared lunches and bad jokes (some of which went over his head). In such a short time, he’d helped you grow as a hero and celebrated in your successes from the sidelines. He’d been there for you so much and so perfectly that no longer having him with you left you feeling empty.

You felt like such a fool.

Was that why he’d started to distance himself? Did he see it before you did and immediately make his decision before you were even aware of it? It was like you’d received the rejection before you’d ever even thought of the question. The entire situation felt backwards and upside down, leaving you feeling confused and embarrassed.

You wanted to run away from the entire situation, to transfer to another agency without a single word shared. But your heart wouldn’t let you. Not without answers. You deserved answers. There were still too many questions.

It was late in the evening, with most of they daytime staff gone and the nightshift heroes out on patrol. Shouto had just finished his shift and changed back into his civilian clothes when he came out into the hall from the locker rooms. You were there, leaning quietly against the wall as if you were waiting for someone, your presence taking him by surprise.

“Y/N!” he exclaimed as his eyes locked with yours. His unruly heart skipped at the sight of you.

Your eyes met his, a silent hurt swimming in their depths. That’s when he realized... the person you were waiting for was him.

“Hi...” you mumbled quietly. You broke eye contact and stared at the floor. “Um... could I talk to you for a minute?”

Shouto stared at you for a moment, taking in your averted eyes and hunched shoulders, and his chest tightened. You looked... sad. Upset, even. Your smile that had given him butterflies before was gone now, and your body language screamed of hurt even as you tried to hide it from him with arms crossed over your chest. There was no doubt that he was the cause of it, that he was seeing this part of you because you were in his presence. He knew he’d grown distant from you, a panicked decision that he’d committed himself to because he didn’t know what else to do.

But looking at you now, he hated it and he hated himself. He did this; he made you feel this way. Shouto inwardly cursed his own cowardice. You had every right to be hurt, and you had every right to be mad at him.

He had to make this right.

“Yeah.” He finally replied with a sigh.

Shouto joined you against the wall with his hands shoved into his pockets, his arm a few inches from yours. He joined you in staring at the floor, his eyes focusing on a piece of dried gum stuck to the tile.

“Did I do something wrong?” you asked finally, your voice tight.

Shouto’s eyes snapped up to look at you in shock. That wasn’t the question he’d thought you were going to ask. Why would you assume that you’re the one who did something wrong??

“What?” he asked, stunned.

“I just... we used to work together a lot, and talk, and go on lunches... and I thought we were becoming really good friends, you know? But then it just... stopped. You got busy, and then you stopped working with me, and... I can’t help but feel like there’s a reason for it all.” Your eyes finally met his just and he could see the tears being held back by the curve of your lashes. “Did I... do something to make you uncomfortable?”

You words were like a punch to the gut. Make him uncomfortable? If anything, he made himself uncomfortable when he began to realize what the pounding in his heart meant every time he was with you. Every time you smiled, or touched him...

“No.” he replied emphatically. The emotion in his tone took you by surprise and he softened his voice as he returned his eyes to the floor. “No. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Your face scrunched up in confusion. “Then why-”

“I can’t think straight when I’m around you.” He blurted out.

The two of you froze, him staring at the floor as his face turned bright red and you staring at him, watching it happen.

“...what?” you finally whispered, your pulse racing.

Shouto averted his face from your wide eyes in shame. “I... I can’t think straight when I’m around you.” He repeated.

Your mind felt numb as the words tried to sink in. But it was a struggle; Shouto’s words didn’t fit at all what you’d concocted in your head. It was like trying to fit a round block into a square hole.

You cleared your throat. “What do you mean?”

“I mean...” Shouto took a shaky breath before returning his gaze to the floor in front of him, still unable to look at you, “something happened, and I just... whenever I was around you, I couldn’t focus. On anything. Not on my job. Not on my paperwork. Not on my food...”

“Wha... why not?” you asked, your mind still reeling as hurt slowly gave way to the weightless sensation of hope.

Shouto finally looked at you through his soft bangs, his bicolored eyes locking with yours for the first time in weeks. “Because...” he replied. “All I could think about was you.”

It was as if someone had pulled you out of freezing, murky water. You gasped for air, the weight of your worries evaporating off of your skin under the sunshine of his confession.

“Me??” you breathed.

Shouto looked back at the floor again, the shame still in his eyes. “Silly, huh? So unprofessional of me. I figured... I didn’t...” he took a breath and tried again. “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.” A slight grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “And I needed to be able to focus on my job. But...” – he looked back at you – “really... more than anything, I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“I’m not...”

Shouto’s eyes finally met yours, wide with surprise. “What?”

A small smile blossomed on your lips. “I’m not uncomfortable.” You replied softly.

A warmth spread through his veins. “You’re not?”

You shook your head as you bit your lower lip with barely contained happiness. Shouto’s eyes glanced down at the action as his arm gently found its way around your waist of its own volition. Your body felt warm beneath his touch, and it sent goosebumps across his skin in excitement.

“You sure?” he whispered, as he stared into your eyes. His other hand came up to gently brush the old tears from your lashes with his thumb.

You began to lean into him and nodded. “I’m sure. Really sure.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” He whispered with a small smile. His hold guided you closer, closing the small distance left between you.

Your lips finally met, warm and gentle as Shouto pulled you flush against him. You could feel it – that painful knot that you’d been caring in your chest began to unfurl with the gentleness of rose petals. It softened everything – your mind, your heart, your kiss, your touch. It made a bed of warmth to nestle into, a special, secret place that was only big enough for two. Your arms wound their way around Shouto’s neck as a happy hum found its way to the back of your throat.

Your kiss was cut short by the sound a familiar, angry voice.

“GET A FUCKIN’ ROOM, YOU TWO!! DON’T DO THAT SHIT IN THE HALLWAY!!”

You quickly pulled away from Shouto, your body hot with embarrassment to see Bakugou standing there, his face red with anger. Deku was with him of course, his face red as well, but more for embarrassment.

You self-consciously rubbed your lips together bashfully. “Um... sorry.” You mumbled.

“Y/N! Uhh...” Midoriya scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “Congrats?”

You stifled a chuckled. “Thanks, Midoriya.”

Bakugou huffed in disgust and went into the locker rooms, dragging a blushing Midoriya after him. “Don’t stare, ya fuckin’ weirdo...”

After they were gone, you turned and looked back at Shouto with a chuckle. “Well, we’re never gonna hear the end of that, are we?”

He gave a small smile. “Probably not.” His thumb traced along your cheekbone, gentle and cool as he admired you, and you shivered beneath his gaze. “Worth it though...” he smirked.

#Arv's 500 Followers Event #shouto x reader #shouto x y/n #shouto x you #Shouto #Shouto todoroki #fluff #sfw #bnha #mha

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couchpotatoaniki · 4 years ago

Text

One Year ❣︎ Three: The Execution

Chapter Summary: Trying to cool off, you decided to spend the day by yourself. This couldn’t have gone any better for San’s plan.

Pairing: Mafia!San x Fem!Reader Genre: Mafia AU, fluff, angst, eventual smut, lotta crack and stupid shit ngl Chapter warnings: swearing, stalking, kidnapping Word count: 2.5k+ A 365 Days parody

Previous: Chapter Two For the rest of the series, click here

Speech in bold means they’re talking in Korean

Speech in italics is whatever the reader wants their native langue to be that’s not Korean or English

Speech without either means they’re talking in English

Buzzing came from your pocket, initially thinking your phone got a notification until it continuously vibrated. Yunho was calling you.

“Yo, where are you? Mingi told us what happened between you and Dom--and before you say anything, he’ll be having hell to pay, regardless of whether you approve or not.”

Chuckling, you sighed as you looked at your surroundings. “Fine by me. Do what you like to him.” Slowing down in front of a cute-looking coffee shop, you answered his first question...partially. “Just taking a stroll in the town.”

“Wanna be left alone?” You hummed as you entered the establishment, being hit with wafts of bakes goods. “Very well then. But we’re gonna hunt you down if you’re not back by midnight.”

“M’kay, Pops,” mumbling absent-mindedly while overlooking the menu on the screens above the counter.

You couldn’t see the gentle bitter smile on his face, knowing very well that you weren’t as stone-cold as the façade you masked yourself in. Had an idea that you just needed space. “Alright then. Look after yourself.”

“You too.”

Beeping over the line indicated to you that he had hung up. Shoving your phone back into your coat pocket, you let your feet carry you to the till, where a young teenager dressed in a pale blue polo shirt and evergreen apron on top greeted you with a nervous smile.

Must have been new, or had some sort of social anxiety, from the way they avoided your eyes and fidgeted with their hands. “U-Um, hello. Welcome... What would you like?” the taller kid practically whispered, but you caught on to their words.

Sending a soft, warming smile, you answered, “can I have a buttered croissant with a mango and passionfruit iced tea, please? Actually, would you mind adding a chocolate muffin to that too?”

Nodding, they tapped the till, pressing various buttons before saying, “that’ll be 6,500 won, please.”

Pulled out your wallet and paid the employee. As you sat down, waiting on your order, you began to reminisce from when you used to be that age too--then again, it was not hard at all since it wasn’t too long ago.

Seven years ago, you were only 16, enjoying life just before things took a turn you never expected and you were never the same air-headed, happy-go-lucky kid you once were.

All you needed at the time was someone who was kind, who gave you a breath from the onslaught you faced all around you. Mingi was probably the only reason you’re still alive.

Thinking about the old days did more damage to you than you’d like to believe, but almost seemed impossible with the Dominic situation.

Being betrayed again hurt like hell, and although he wasn’t as bad as what you had experienced, he still broke your trust. Trust you tried to rebuild after all you went through the last time.

Thoughts you spent so long trying to get rid of grew back like weeds of the concrete walls you put up five years ago.

And despite what you tried to convince yourself and Mingi, you actually really liked the guy.

“Here you go, miss,” the young employee mumbled as he placed a tray with your order on it. Almost everything was right, except that there was a vanilla and chocolate chip muffin instead of a complete chocolate one.

Oh well, a muffin’s a muffin.

“Thank you,” you grinned, handing the teenager a tip of 10,000 won.

Their eyes widened at your strange generosity before hesitantly taking the money you held out between your index and middle fingers.

Your lips wrapped around the straw as you took a sip of your ice-cold drink. Strong tones of mango, with a hint of passionfruit, slight sweetness from honey and faint tang of fresh lemon.

Iced tea was something you had grown to love over the past five years, first time being too bitter and flavourful for you. Then again, the events prior left a bad taste in your mouth. Seonghwa was the one who helped you, always getting you an iced tea every time he went to a nearby coffee shop.

Learned quite quickly that your tongue was sensitive to heat after being so concerned how you refused piping-hot meals he cooked for you often. Waited until it cooled a lot before digging in.

No doubt the four boys would do anything for you--Mingi the most out of the rest since you wouldn’t be where you are without him--but sometimes you needed to breathe by yourself. Enjoying the little things you like croissants and muffins rather than focussing on your soon-to-be ex boyfriend cheating on you for a reason that eludes you.

That’s how the rest of the day goes.

Aimlessly walking, window-shopping, sight-seeing. Nothing registered in your mind but it was better than something negative.

Your phone was on silent, growing cold in your pocket from the lack of heat being transferred from your hand. Even then, you doubt anyone (except Dominic) would be texting you since you told them you wanted peace.

Before you realised it, the sun crawled above your head and began to set in the horizon, a clash of beautiful blues, oranges, pinks, and purples hovering in the sky. Lampposts along the streets lit up and the sky grew dark, yet that didn’t stop the hustle and bustle.

Irritated by the noises of people, you turned to an alleyway which had significantly less lighting but also significantly less humans.

As you walked, you were deep in thought, not thinking much of your surroundings. Then the hairs on the back of your neck stood up and a chill ran down your spine.

Someone was following you.

You were about to turn around and defend yourself--and you had no worries that you would lose. But then bright LED headlights of a hidden black SUV had highlighted the hair of a rather short person who stood in front of it.

Shocking electric blue stands brushed against his porcelain-smooth skin from light wisps of wind passing by. The same colour hair you realised had been barely peeking in your peripheral since the airport.

Next to a man you had very briefly met on you birthday dinner while searching for the bathroom.

Exactly how long have they been following you?

Though you chided yourself for not noticing it sooner--despite all the excuses of being ‘on a holiday’--you found yourself pondering. You had never met those two funky-haired people before in your life, and you sure as hell made sure any dangerous people couldn’t find you (not without going through one of the other boys first) so who exactly were these people?

Perhaps you were like a bee, drunk on the honey in your tea, or maybe you wanted to get your mind off the situation, needing a thrill at the moment.

You felt the need to destroy something--or at least toy with it for a bit--and these cocky assholes seemed perfect.

Either way, you relaxed your muscles (only a little, as to not raise suspicion of the young man before you).

One foot stepped behind you as you kept your eyes trained on his coco ones, only to rip them away a moment when you turned to ‘run’. As expected, something else tried to stop you. Another black SUV with blinding lights swerved into the other end of the alleyway as you tried to leave.

You’d prided yourself on good acting, and it always seemed to pay off. Right now, to sell the part of a scared girl, you stumbled backwards--planning to fall of the cobblestone path, but only to be saved by something hard.

The mysterious man’s chest, his hands holding your arms as support.

“Sorry about this,” he whispered in your ear, covering your mouth with a chloroformed cloth. You didn’t really put up much of a fight (to your standards, anyway) and succumbed to the strong chemical.

At first you were floating in a sea of black, unable to connect with your senses. Slowly, after moments of nothingness, you could feel the world materialise around you.

Soft fabric was cushioned beneath you, cradling your body with warmth. Light began to seep through your closed eyelids as the gentle, sweet smell of sugared almonds filled your nose with every deep inhale. And finally, a headache that began to pound harder with every pulse.

Grunting, you pried your eyes open, immediately noticing what appeared to be a shower room in front of you. There were two shower heads on each side, with only pillars of soft light embedded into the tiled wall rather than a proper partition. To add to the lack of privacy, the only material separating the shower room and the eyes of the bed was simply a thin pane of sliding glass which hid absolutely nothing.

“What kinda perv decided to design this monstrosity?”

Propping yourself up on your elbows, you looked down on the bed you were lying in, thankfully still in the same cotton dress, phone no longer in its pockets. The mattress was significantly softer than the one at the hotel--yet another indicator that your kidnappers were rich.

On the tables dotted around the space were lilac candles. Most likely the culprit of the amazing scent in the room.

Your eyes then caught the daylight peeking through the curtains, enlightening the room in a soft apricot glow. “Fuck,” you muttered, remembering Yunho’s words in the previous call she had, “they’re gonna kill me for staying out.”

Pushing yourself off the illegally comfortable bed, you inched towards the only door you saw. Fingers wrapped around the cold metal handle and pushed down, finding it much to your surprise that it was actually unlocked. Pulled it open without hesitation, though making sure you peered out to see if there was anyone.

There wasn’t.

“Great security, guys,” you sighed, actually feeling disappointed in the lack of effort you had to put in while walking openly around. After all, it was the reason you let yourself be taken.

Then again, this could all be a trap.

Now that was exciting.

You let yourself become familiar with the surroundings upon one glance, noticing the obvious luxurious colour scheme of gold and cream that had your eyes rolling at the basic rich vibes it gave you.

Then you found your breath catching in your throat as you continued to explore, eyes frozen on a portrait hung up on a wall.

Though the fact that it was a portrait of you had initially shocked you, it wasn’t the defining feature that had your heart palpitating at a dangerous speed. Your hair was short again, a pixie cut, while you were sat on a beach that looked a lot like the one you visited in Santorini.

“Fuckin’ hell.”

In fact, the painting was an exact replica of you from five years ago, down to the clothing of ripped jeans and loose top you wore. You, from one of your darkest and lowest moments.

“Are you lost, babygirl?”

The same voice rang in your ears, repeating the only sentence you heard spill from his lips. When you turned around to confirm who it was, it was indeed the same man you saw.

The damn muscular guy, with pitch-black hair and a lock of platinum blonde brushing just above an eye.

The blood was rushing too fast, fear in your eyes no longer an act. Just who the fuck was this guy?

You took one step back, knees buckling instantly but before your brain could process it, the man had wrapped his arms around you, catching your body before hit the ground.

San could smell the delicate citrusy aroma wafting from your skin and he tried so hard to not bury his head in the crook of your neck, to kiss the area and whisper sweet nothings into your ear.

Taking advantage of your frozen state, he lifted you up and place you on a nearby armchair, one beside a fireplace since he felt you were too cold for comfort.

Only until he had a ice cube pressed against your lips, did you snap out of it. “You should have it. Maybe you had a bad reaction to the chloroform. Sorry about that, by the way.”

Head turning the other way, your guarded eyes stayed locked on him rather than your painting behind his form. “English.”

“Why? You spoke perfectly good Korean at the dinner two days ago,” he said, pressing the ice cube onto your mouth once more.

“Simply because I feel more comfortable with English,” you remarked, swatting away his hand. “And stop putting that on my mouth.”

Sighing, he dropped the cold, melting cube back in the glass of whiskey before putting a bit of distance between the two of you. He could feel himself getting angry, that you won’t trust him, that you won’t listen to him.

But could he blame you?

“I feel like explanations are in order,” you said, narrowing your eyes down on his figure, flickering firelight resting on him to make him seem even more good-looking, shadows casted to make each feature appear sharper. But that wasn’t what you were focused on.

You wanted to deduce this stranger by his body language.

Stood tall, maintaining good eye contact, showed that he was confident. Classic black suits--expensive by the look of the fabric--showed that he as rich. Tattoos littering the skin of his hand showed a bit of a bad-boy nature. And the aura he emitted was that of a leader.

Corner of your lips twitching, you realised who--or what--he might be. The boss of a fairly powerful crime syndicate.

San, on the other hand, couldn’t see what you were thinking as you looked at him. Did you think he was as hot as he did you? Fuck, he hoped so--clearly not understanding how a normal person would react in such a situation.

“Hello? Earth to whoever the hell you are?”

“If you want answers, you certainly won’t be getting them if you act like a brat.”

Scoffing, you tilted you head, eyes boring into him with a cold glaze coving them. Like a lifeless doll. “Then how do you suggest I act then? Hmm? After seeing that you’ve been stalking me for the last five years,” you nodded towards coloured canvas, growing more unsettled every time you looked at it.

“Fair point,” he said, taking a seat on the chair opposite you. “But you should know that I haven’t been doing that. Stalking you, I mean.”

“The fuck do you call that creepy-ass portrait, then?”

“I call it a precious memory.” San shifted his focus from your gaze to the flames lazily dancing on charred wooden embers. Tongue swiped over his lips before chuckling, almost bitterly. “Doubt you’ll believe me, but I’ll tell you anyway.”

Lips pursed, you sat quietly as you listened to his story.

☕︎ Tag list: @little-precious-baby , @sparklychangbin ,

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rhaenyraisadyke · 3 years ago

Text

My New Purpose Transcript: 8/4/21

It's the entire thing! Heres it on a google doc if thats easier!

T: Hello, Big Q! Hello?

Q: Ah! OH, oh, sorry sorry sorry sorry, I was just just making sure that they went- they left hehh

T: Are you alright?

Q: That was ha-heh

T: That was, that was pretty

Q: No no no yeah that was interesting huh

T: Yeah I didn’t expect that- but they seem to be a lot more you know like… agitated then I thought. I didn't think this was gonna be too much of a big deal hehe

Q: Ha ha well yeah it's just what happens when people start you know.. when people start competing against you…

T: Yeah yeah

Q: And Tubbo here’s the thing, the saying I’ve always heard… is people will root for you until you are doing better then them alright?

T: Really?

Q: When you start doing better than them, that's when everyone turns on you and starts getting jealous and all that… you know um so I think this is a situation where maybe I don’t know Wilbur was rooting for us until

T: Until

Q: We started doing better than them?

T: Heh yeah I mean we know, you know we haven’t really made any burgers yet and we’re not quite doing better yet but we should- we gotta work on that

Q: Oh Tubbo, Tubbo you shouldn’t even worry about that, I have so much trust in you to run this place, you know, I- this, this place ah has had the possibility of having many employees and I thought you were the best, and you, you were telling me telling me this whole thing about how you needed to find purpose, how you needed to do something

T: Yeah

Q: And um, you know this, this I think this is a good place to start!

T: I just want to say thank you so much for letting me work here man I feel like I’ve not had much to do ever now since I’ve had this job like its nice to finally have a purpose, something to do, a reason to do stuff

Q: Yeah Tubbo listen, it doesn’t have to end here, a lot of things are happening in the country you know there’s a lot of people in here um

T: Yeah yeah

Q: Things move forward in a really really good way and Tubbo I- I trust you I mean we were comrades in Lmanburg and all of that so this is, this is great this is really good

T: Thank you I appreciate that

Q: But

T: Especially after that little blip we had

Q: Yeah, thats what I was gonna say- but

T: Yeah

Q: I don’t want to ruin, I don’t want to ruin the moment but there is something we have to discuss

T: Yeah yeah maybe we should head over there, yeah okay

Q: I, listen I’m putting a lot of trust in you

T: I appreciate that as well

Q: But we ah

T: This is a really nice- this is really exciting

Q: I do want to talk about that one thing um and we never really discussed it

T: Yeah we kind of yeah we left it, I kind of didn’t want to jeopardize my chances of getting the job you know?

Q: no and at the end of the day its not even about the job Tubbo it's more that our friendship and the history we had together

T: Yeah

Q: I think that's the most important part to me because you know what? Um jobs come and go, you you are meant for so many bigger things, this is where we’re starting Tubbo but you know um

T: Yeah you know, first this, tomorrow the world I guess

Q: Yeah absolutely - waha I’m just, I’m gonna be straight up with you wh-a

T: Why the fuck is there a duck on it? Haha

Q: What what's this tubbo?

T: I’m gonna be honest thats not me- I didn’t I didn’t do that one

Q: So the cookie outpost, we had a discussion, you and me we were fighting

T: Yeah it was getting pretty heated

Q: And so what is this really for tubbo?

T: It was to mainly sell cookies if i'm honest, I - I just I- I wasn’t myself that day

Q: Tubbo… Tubbo….. Tubbo….

T: Yeah?

Q: What was it actually for?

T: I- uh just wanted to keep an eye on you I wanted to see what everyone was up to, it wasn’t a sign of aggression or anything I kind of wanted to see what everyone was up to and me being nosy, I wasn’t acting like myself, I’m sorry

Q: I- I it just felt super uh out of nowhere and build this whole entire thing

T: Yeah this complex

Q: In Front of my country so um, you know what uh, it still feels a little weird, it it feels like a needle poking, I have no problems with you but there is something there that keeps me uneasy

T: Yeah, I 100% understand that

Q: Tubbo, I don’t think , this is a really nice structure, this is a really nice structure.

T: Aw I appreciate that

Q: You have full ownership of this place right?

T: More or less yeah, Started it all out under my name, definitely, I mean I’d like to leave the past in the past you know and just work on building from there

Q: I- I can’t figure out any other way to do that than probably to take- no no you know what Tubbo? You know what?

T: What?

Q: Clean slate clean slate. I don’t think we should take it down because at the end of the day, you, you built it and I think its uh

T: I think it also helps show my initiative on what I can bring to the burger shop as well.

Q: Of course, of course but I have an idea, how about we integrate this land, this structure into Las Nevadas?

T: Wait, you want it to become part of Las Nevadas?

Q: Yeah yeah!

T: That could be cool

Q: Yeah you know what we can- forget about everything in the past forget about everything in the past, we can integrate this beautiful place into las Nevadas its built close its built in proximities,

T: It makes sense it's on the outskirts and maybe-

Q: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah so we can integrate it into the las Nevadas outskirts and we can do you like that idea? Are you down with that? We can just make it part of las Nevadas

T: Well yeah yeah I mean

Q: It’s your structure, your property

T: Yeah i'm a little apprehensive but I mean as long as I get ownership, it's just that you own the land

Q: Yeah yeah yeah! I own the land, its like rent but you’re not going to be paying rent obviously

T: Yeah yeah yeah

Q: I just can't make sure this can be part of Las Nevadas and so there’s no confusion and stuff. Is this cool with you?

T: Yeah its cool with me just like keep it as it is, keep the pond keep the farms

Q: Yeah it's your ownership but yeah it does have to be a part of Las Nevadas land and everything. How about we make it official?

T: You want to make it official?

Q: Yeah yeah yeah I have a book and quill

T: Oh, okay I wasn’t expecting you to move this quickly already. Could we sign it up to the top of the needle so we can have a look at it while we do it, you recon?

Q: That is a wonderful idea, let's go there right now.

T: Yeah I mean it makes sense, its where we first had our first discussion about this, it only makes sense to you know cross the t’s dot the eyes, put the past in the past

Q: Yes yes especially since its part of las Nevadas

T: Yeah It makes sense to sign it in one of the most significantly important buildings in las Nevadas here I'd say

Q: Absolutely Absolutely tubbo, hey I think it's great you’re taking steps to move your life forward um wow- how you know, I haven't really spoke to you properly after everything that happened in Lmanburg

T: Yeah everything with Technoblade… Damm

Q: Yeah we talked about this whole project and you and me but um you know what I want to know a little bit about your insight of what happened in lmanburg and all of that

T: What happened with Lmanburg? Oh yeah I didn't see you after Technoblade left, to be honest I haven't seen much of Technoblade either, I barely have seen anything or anyone, like yeah I kind of have been isolated on my own just hanging out, like I said no kind of purpose, just walking around, drifting kind of you know living in the past mainly and im trying to move that behind me, uh well what happened with- uh after um well you went Awol in lmanburg well its all kind of a blur, all the values just changed away um like we lost our core values and the country fell after that. Which is really, yeah that's more or less it.

Q: Yes, yes sorry I feel like I’m not paying enough attention, im writing the thing im sorry my bad

T: No its fine

Q: We will insert the coordinations later but yeah, just yeah really fast just sign that

T: So “Tubbo cookie outpost proper is now part of las nevadas land and is under its rules and constitution.” Yeah this um

Q: yeah we’ll well insert the coordinates later

T: I- I sign on the second page right?

Q: Yeah yeah yeah go ahead and sign it on yeah the second page there

T: Okay done and I still feel like I own the property there, everything still belongs to me it's just part of las Nevadas which is cool

Q: Right which, right it's just part of las Nevadas, its territory,, its rules constitution and all that, but you inergreating into the country is that first big step and Tubbo,

T: Yeah?

Q: I just want to say thank you for your disposition to just to just you know help out with las Nevadas and everything it- it means a lot you wanting to manage the place and again I felt like it was the right thing for you

T: Aw thank you man.

Q:I mean briefly you told me about how much you miss Lmanburg, how much you miss those times….

T: Yeah it's been, it's been I’m gonna be honest it's been a little bit upsetting as of late especially, I’ve just been missing it as it was a year ago yesterday… it all started and I've been there since the beginning of it and to see where its all come now has been a bit upsetting

Q: I- yeah…

T: but it's really admirable with what you’ve done here,

Q: Thank you tubbo, thank you tubbo

T: It’s got a solid foundation, you're really inspiring I feel very inspired just looking around

Q: Thank you, thank you tubbo. You know, I uh, thank you, that means a lot man

T: It’s alright man

Q: It's been uh, things can, things can get difficult, but I appreciate that Tubbo, but at the end of the day, you know whatever you need from me, whatever you need or require anything at all from me tubbo, just let me know. That restaurant you managing it now, you have a project to go off on

T: Yeah

Q: And there’s a lot of opportunities so if there’s anything you need, anything else you need you can cem talk to me

T: Will do,

Q: And we’ll figure stuff out

T: Will do yeah, I think it's about time for me to get back to work, I wanna scope out - they apparently they said they had a burger shop they said so yeah

Q: Yeah

T: I wanna make sure we are taking strides in the right direction for the competition, i'm gonna make burgers that will be remembered.

Q: Right, would you want me to go with you? Would you want to-

T: I- I think I’ll go alone I think I can see it just actually, is it that little thing behind the pool area, by the penthouse thing?

Q: Yeah yeah I like to call it a market study

T: Yeah yeah

Q: Yeah I usually do that alone, so Tubbo, Tubbo, I’ll. Be up here

T: Yeah when I’m done with my market study we can come up with some groundbreaking material for the burger shop!

Q: Oh yeah absolutely, actually you know what, just meet me at the burger shop, I’ll be there working on it, making some changes doing some redecorating and stuff

T: Alright, sounds amazing! Again, thank you so much for the job!

Q: Of course Tubbo!

T: Thank you!

Q: Oh Tubbo you shouldn’t be thanking me, I should be the one thanking you- you you are a great, you are like a gear in the machine and you are one of †he most important gears in the machine, you know when the machine loses a gear and it- Tubbo you’re a pillar you’re like a pillar to our structure is what I’m saying

T: Aw thank you man I do appreciate it

Q: Alright

T: Catch you later mate

Q: Alright cya

T: Ohh I thought he was gonna be more upset about the cookie outpost, I thought he would be a bit more upset, Alright let's check out the burger shop, I think it's gonna be nice, I think it's gonna be really really nice because the way Wilbur described it it was a really nice place.. oh oh! Ranboos here!

Hello!

R: Oh! Oh uh - hel- hell- hello

T: Hi Uh

R: Uh ho- how are you doing?

T: Um im I’m doing alright

R: W- what were you up to?

T: Well I- I was just talking with Quackity over the burger business and stuff you know

R: Well is everything okay with that?

T: Yeah, Yeah I'm pretty sure it's fantastic!

R: You- you sure?

T: Yeah 100% I think it's going really well. Can I come inside? I kinda want to have a look at your place!

R: Sure- I mean its it's not all done we are still uh me and Wilbur are still working on it and stuff

T: Why do you trust Wilbur so much?

R: Hmm?

T: Why do you trust Wilbur?

R: Well, here here’s the thing, basically I I don’t trust trust Wilbur yet but I do have more trust in him then you do

T: Yeah

R: But I mean 13 years I mean a guy is gotta change throughout all of that right?

T: I mean I suppose so I don’t not think he has changed, I just think he has to have the opportunity to prove it because- trust

R: Yeah thats why, why I am here so when he does something that does redeem himself, then someone can be there that will be able to see it and everything and honestly I rather it be me the person, rather it be me than someone else. So um

T: I guess I guess that makes a lot of sense I guess, I I don’t know I guess I don’t think I feel I can put my life in his hands again if you know what I mean.. heheh..

R: Well this isn’t this isn't putting my life in his hands this is just making a little little burger shop and everything… Are you okay with all of this right?

T: Oh yeah I yeah its fine its fine

R: okay that's that

T: Yeah it's enjoyable, yeah I understand it all it makes a lot of sense

R: You sure you understand? Because like- if if you need me to stop, then i'll stop

T: Yeah yeah, I noticed, is there a reason that you haven't told Wilbur about the tax reasons.. marriage hehe

R: Yeah yeah thats just because from what I’ve heard from Tommy and everything the Wilbur that thirteen years ago at least used stuff against Tommy and everything so you know just incase I mean I still trust Wilbur not super fully just at least a little bit

T: Ahh, I can fully completely understand that honestly

R: I like working with him as well its nice it's just nice to do something

T: Yeah, fair enough, I think the competition will be good yeah I mean i'm very excited I haven't felt this happy in quite awhile, I feel like I finally got something under my belt, something I can you know really sync my teeth into and be apart of, it feels like I am part of a bigger cause now, like-

R: So, so you’re sure now that this is the - you’re all okay with what’s going on?

T: Yeah yeah it's just friendly competition man, it's gonna be awesome, if anything it will just be better for consumers which means its gonna be better for everyone

R: Yeah yeah that makes sense at least

T: I mean are you alright?

R: How did you bury the hatchet with Quackity though? That's what I don’t get…

T: Bury the hatchet, what do you mean by that?

R: I mean, how how did you make peace with him because the last time we spoke with him you were talking about how he had a roll in your… unfortunate uh removal of life

T: Yeah he did, but to be honest, this, it's a lot… Well no I’m not even sure it is as much Quackity’s fault as Wilburs, I don’t like- I was gonna die no matter what that day, it just happened. I mean, I I dont have much quarrel with him, he seems to uh I mean look at what he's built, he seems good

R: yeah

T: I mean I managed to also clean up all the ruckus over the cookie outpost and stuff as well so that's in the past now.

R: Wait, he's all okay with that now?

T: Yeah he promised me a good life,

R: What do you mean? Was your life not good before?

T: No- no no no no it was, he talked a lot about Lmanburg and he

R: That wasn’t really much of a good life for you though was it?

T: Oh no you- you’ve only heard the bad bits of Lmanburg, lmanburg was amazing

R: So he promised you the good bits?

T: Yeah yeah basically yeah which is awesome

R: Thats good thats good

T: Yeah so I- I figured out how to get rid of the tension regarding the cookie outpost, I signed a contract, dotted the t’s and the i’s put the past in the past I’m excited to uh keep moving forward its exciting

R: Okay… a-a awesome. So he's Okay with the cookie shop now?

T: Yeah hes 100% okay, we basically came the agreement,

R: Awesome

T: I wasn’t being myself like before when I was working on the cookie shop, I- I was

R: MHm

T: upset and sad and I - I was like I just wanted to have something to feel part of something bigger again but then I realized that instead of fighting the thing that would of given me that feeling I tried to make my own, I dug my heels in, it wasn’t really the right thing to do I-

R: mhm

T: So we signed a contract, so the cookie shop is owned by me. It just exists in las nevadas now and.. yeah, it follows its laws and regulations.

R: Okay So is, is everything everything, um everythings everythings… w- wait so how exactly sorry did you make Quackity okay with it all?

T: We went up to the needle, we just talked it out, we wrote up a contract, we talked it out, basically agreed to have the cookie shop become part of Las Nevadas. Because I mean-

R: Wait, you gave away the cookie shop??

T: I didn’t give away the cookie shop away, I still own it, its just now part of las nevadas,

R: part of las nevadas which is owned by quackity,

T: Well yeah, but not entirely

R: Y-yeah entirely,

T: no.. that's not how it works at all it it's still owned by me just exists in his territory

R: Which is property of las nevadas which is owned by quackery…….

T: Noooo it's not like that at all

R: Okay…. It seems like you just….

T: No there’s a lot more than that, it's not black and white like I just “gave it to him” I still own it I still have full control over it, it follows his laws which is fine

R: And his rules- ……..

awesome cool um that's great oh which would you look at that the bread is stale, it was nice um it was nice uh talking you to, I’m gonna go throw this bread in the river

T: Okay

R: Alright thanks for stopping on by, ill ill talk to you later alright?

T: uh okay, buh bye

R: bye

T: That was….. that was um uh I wasn’t expecting that to go uh quite like that, I didn’t think it mattered that much. wuhhh… uh that was I was not expecting to- he seemed, oh god that felt a little awkward, I I didn't, I mean it's mine to give away I built the entire place, I built all of it, that's so weird…. Okay I’m gonna come up with some burger recipes I didn't actually manage,

I probably should've done some research that would of been nice- OHFUCK

Q: oh god holy shit

T: Sorry honestly

Q: You fucking scared me

T: I didn’t notice you just then

Q: Tubbo tubbo you were supposed to be here uh work has already started your a little late

T: Oh sorry

Q: you’re a little late tubbo

T: sorry sorry, I’m sorry

Q: Remember we can’t build a kingdom here of fast-food burger- sorry sorry I got like 10 things in my mind right now uh tubbo

T: Yeah

Q: You can’t keep arriving late okay

T: Okay?

Q: We gotta make sure you- this place runs very well, listen I have an idea help me take this thing down

T: Oh, okay…

Q: You’re gonna love this tubbo, when Wilbur sees this because I know hes gonna be fucking spying around hes gonna freak out, hes gonna finally realize what an idiot- Wilbur is for whatever he decides to do

T: Why do you care so much about what Wilburs is doing?

Q: Check this out check this out

T: I’m excited for it

Q: That guy really thinks he can go in and blow up the godam restaurant, who does he think he is? Who does he godam think he is?!

T: I thought you weren’t that bothered?

Q: It’s so fucking annoying that he does this shit its annoying man. Check this out Tubbo, you ready?

T: What's this what’s this? Oh my gosh,

Q: What do you think?

T: That's awesome dude what the hell??

Q: I cant wait to see the look on- what his stupid fucking face is gonna look like- im gonna absolutely, Wilbur’s gonna see this and realize he messed with the wrong fucking person Tubbo and that I am no one you want to mess around with and his little buddy Ranboo is oh- oh sorry I don’t know if you, guys are friends-

T: Yeah yeah we are

Q: but for fucks sake they FUCKED up Tubbo

T: Did they?

Q: They fucked with the wrong person, he is going to regret what they did to me

T: What did they do?

Q: And to my fucking country

T: What did I feel kinda left out?

Q: What what?

T:What happened?

Q: I’m sorry, I'm sorry , ignore me, I'm just rambling, I'm just rambling, you know what we gotta do, besides selling burgers we gotta sell more shit, we gotta do this NFT, did you hear about these NFTs?

T: Yeah yeah, the turburgers NFTs?

Q: The tuburgers NFT system they have a system, we are gonna make a system too

T: Not just one, but TWO

Q: Yeah yeah, I need you to try this out, its Wilburs burger

T: Oh okay,

Q: It’s smelly— Tubbo, do you see this fish tank?

T: Yeah?

Q: It looks normal to you and it looks normal to them, but to them, they left a huge crater in my goddam restaurant and they could think they could fucking get away with that but this fishtanks means much more then that

T: Does it?

Q: IT means much more than that, this fishtanks is not who he thinks he is right? He used to be slick and all this powerful guy in lmanburg, he's not the same guy.

T: Do you think he's changed? Hes- old age I guess?

Q: Changedd? Haha Tubbo you think Wilburs changed? Comeon, Wilbur hasn’t changed one bit and Im excited, I’m excited once he realizes everything we are doing and everything we are up to its not gonna be the fucking same, I am going to destroy him, we’re gonna destroy him

T: woahhh

Q: WE”RE gonna destroy him in

T: friendly competition of course?

Q: yes yes of course

T: We aren’t gonna hurt them right?

Q: No no no no I’m sorry I get. Little startled

T: Financially maybe

Q: I’m sorry I’m sorry I just like completion

T: Competition is good for everyone, friendly, the only people that win here are the consumers and that's what matters. That could be our motto, “the customer is all that matters''

Q: I love it I love it, let's do that, lets do that Tubbo uh I apart from this, sorry I got a little startled I think it is important to recognise we need competition at the end of the day

T: Oh of course we can’t exist without them

Q: This is your place this is your place now its set in stone

T: That is such a cool sign

Q: You’re the manager, what's the next boss?

T: Do you want to hear my three step program? I have a three step program for this

Q: Oh sure sure!

T: Well be in the kitchen woohoo I thought of a couple of ways to make burgers quick and not sacrifice the flavor so from what I can see in their place they don’t have smokers and you still get the quality, we can smell smoked steak burgers

Q: Oh really??

T: We can sell the wagyu burgers if you know what I mean?

Q: Wait actually???

T: I think we are doing wagyu burgers,

Q: I love that I love that, Tubbo, based on what you’ve told me this means a lot to you.

T: Thank you

Q: Resources, items, what farms, what do you need, you say it's an important project, what do you need to make this thrive?

T: We need grain we need a lot of grain, we need a way to make fresh dough, our supplies are a little dire

Q: Just, just close that chest

T: This is like my first actual day

Q: We will get you the best of the best products

T: When will you get the grain farm down?

Q: Is grain different to wheat?

T: nonono its the same just we take the grain from the wheat and grind it to make the dough

Q: Tubbo, come with me… look at this!

T: WOAHHH

Q: I thought you had seen this

T: I must have completely overlooked this!

Q: Yeah!! And we also have a spot for meat. They are grass-fed tubbo. Look at this Tubbo listen, I want to emphasize that this is all you man, this is your project. The sign out there says tub burger so as far as i'm aware you are incharge of the restaurant. I know there’s also food regulations that are put down and stuff

T: Oh yeah yeah

Q: If you need any way around the constitution let me know

T: I noticed the kitchen is a little worse for wear, I noticed the kitchens a little, we are gonna have to get that cleaned up because it's probably a health violation

Q: Yeah yeah we will get that cleaned up for you

T: Yeah its really gunky its genuinely, it's really strange

Q: Ah I had a friend who lived there for a little while

T: In the kitchen……?

Q: Yeah he kinda was like yeah.. he left the place a little slimy, I’ll get it cleaned up

T: How… what?

Q: He he actually uh -

T: When was the last time he showered?

Q: You know what, you know what man? You should meet him one day

T: Does he still live there or does he have a place now?

Q: He-he's around I think, I haven't seen him in a bit but he can…. I haven't seen him in a bit of tubbo…. Besides before

T: You haven't seen him?

Q: He should come back soon

T: Well if you ever need anyone to lead a search if it gets to that point, I can do that

Q: No no no don’t worry

T: It’s not like a big deal- no?

Q: focus on your project instead of worrying about these other issues others may have…

T: Let's get started on naming the burgers shall we? Do you have any signs or. anything?

Q: Well for original or classic tubbo? The tubburger right?

T: Oh defiantly, we should number them so it's easier to order them and on this side we do like… gold, I’ve seen your city

Q: Ohhh so you’re thinking more than fast food

T: No i'm thinking we can account of the masses like the people who want that find dining and the people who want the quick bite

Q: That's genius

T: Do you want to know the second step in my three step program?

Q: Yes, yes tubbo of course

T: We need a drive through on this place, we need drive through wagyu beef

(Goes to break a wall down)

T: Wait- uh people live there

Q: uh I try to act impulsively its-

T: No no it's okay

Q: I really really

T: It makes sense

Q: I think it would be really badass

T: Yeah yeah, do you think we could get like a road going through here for the drive through, do you think that could work?

Q: Oh yeah yeah

T: They got a burger van, they are on the roads, we are in the roads if you know what I mean

Q: 100% tubbo, 100%, Tubbo you’re coming up with all of these great ideas I- I couldn’t of chose a better person to run this place then you tubbo

T: Aw thank you man

Q: I think that's one of your more underrated features

T: I’m gonna be honest I’m just enjoying a place to feel like I’m doing stuff again

Q: I don’t know if anyone has told you this Tubbo but one of your most underrated features is your creativity and drive to do good things, I dont think I’ve ever seen you tubbo and thought on this is a bad person

T: Oh… oh the fish may have just offered itself….

( A couple of beats of silence, then quackity goes and eats the dead salmon

Q: One of the most underrated features Tubbo and I don’t think anyone has told you this

T: Yeah?

Q: That your drive to do good things

T: AW

Q: I dont think I’ve ever seen you and thought oh this is a bad person, I think you are inherently good

T: Aw thank you so much mate

Q: Yes tubbo build up the menu

T: I will I will get on it

Q: I’ll make sure everything works well, the wheat farms…

T: Oh what the hell have you seen this book? “YO SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH YOUR DOOR YOU SHOULD PROBABLY CHECK THAT OUT I THINK YOU GOT THEM HALF OFF AND I DON'T MEAN PRICE WISE” Sorry I mean

Q: That- Wilbur, fucker that guy… that guy thinks hes so fucking funny “Yeah big q don’t you think there’s something wrong with your doors you should probablyy check that out I think” shut the fuck up, fuck you fuck you how the hell do I get rid this this I will spit on it and throw it in the fucking garbage can

T: Woahh woahh

Q: What the hell is wrong with that guy

T: Who wrote that, how do you know who wrote that?

Q: WHO DO YOU THINK “WROTE IT”

T: What Wilbur?

Q: Of course it was fucking Wilbur wanna know what he did to this place he fucking came and blew ahhh oh my god

T: Yeah I heard about the explosion, I never got to see it though,

Q: It doesn't matter it doesn't matter, you know what Tubbo, don’t ever even like bring it up in front of him don’t talk about it it never happened

T: Okay so we,- we just are better than that. We just

Q: We’re better than that, bigger and better and everything good

T: We don’t need to resort to staboutouge

Q: 100% 100% I - ahh whatever man, listen tubbo, I’m gonna go back to my office and count how much money I have and then I’m gonna come down here for a quick lunch break and then, I’m gonna tell everyone to start helping with your wheat farm, your grain farm, your bread farm

T: uh huh

Q: And we’re gonna up the production with cow meat

T: And I’m gonna get more recipes down thank you so much, thank you so much im gonna get on and start working on that

Q: This is all you tubbo, this is all you

(Sam logs on, maybe to ellude quackity is going to torture dream in the vault who knows)

T: This is unbelievable , I can’t thank you enough honestly

Q: I can’t thank you enough tubbo, I’ll go back to my office and get some work done, and how much money we have

T: I’ll get to the kitchen. Goodbye mate cya later!

Q: Not gonna lie tubbo, that fish was some bad shit

T: hah ahha, ohhh

Q: my stomach I really have to go I really have to go

T: Oh god i'm so sorry I’ll get the fish water treated, bye mate

Q: Yeah… yeah- bye mate!

T: Yeah okay, time to get off and work. I'm gonna start working on some new recipes, let's be excited, it feels so good to have this new job finally.

#dsmp transcript #transcript #tubbo #quackity #c!tubbo #c!quackity #las nevadas #tubburger #wilburgur #ranboo #c!ranboo

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transsexualhamlet · 4 years ago

Text

predictions for yuumori s2 (as a manga reader)

No matter what happens, this is probably gonna end up aging badly, but i’m hyperfixating and I’ve decided to make it everyone else’s problem so I’m going to predict where they’re gonna go with s2 of moriarty the patriot (keep in mind i’m writing this as of episode 2) and what I think would be the ideal scenario, in the likely situation that this is the last season.

So we can tell a lot about what they’re going to cut/include from the opening and ending, and the first two episodes.

Observations/Conclusions:

-moneypenny and most likely von herder are gone, already evidenced by the first 2 episodes, which is :( but understandable bc there’s only so much space and they’re definitely cutting the arcs where they would be important

-so that means no moran backstory because duh, there’s a point in the backstory and i see value in it, moran slaps when he’s not being an ass lmao, but again, time constraints

-no matter what I can’t see them keeping in the like, child hunting thing 2 electric boogaloo, even tho it did further Fred’s and Louis’ characters, since they’ve previously cut out stuff considering them and. You know. That’s how it be.

-You can see they’re including jack the ripper arc (considering, jack is in the opening) and I have faith that they can downsize the arc without butchering it if they do it right. This is good that they’re keeping it in, considering it’s one of the... main arcs not involving milverton that advances the plot.

-Major thing we can tell is that, yeah, Milverton is nowhere to be seen. It seems like this would fuck things up bad since he’s like, the only kind of “main villain” we get here. But honestly? I agree with that. Fuck Milverton. He has no character or motivation and is like my one and only bone to pick with the manga. He’s just there to suck ass and create plot convenience?? I don’t like him and he never needed to be there if he wasn’t at least going to do something interesting. I support the anime cutting him.

-That DOES fuck over their ability to do the white knight arc, since, well, milverton is the cause of all of that. And this is the one thing I really don’t know what they’re going to do with that to connect jack the ripper directly to the final problem. I can’t predict that, but I do think there are ways it can be done that won’t be Awful.

-So considering that, Mary’s arc is definitely axed, which doesn’t bother me that much since by that point i so impatient for gay people and really didn’t care about watson’s fiance even tho she is a lovely lady. For anime effect, she does not need an arc, though I could see them having her show up a few times so watson doesn’t seem too gay either lmao.

-They’re definitely shooting to end with the final problem, considering without it there’s no big culminating event between moriarty and sherlock, which is obviously the big sell. And well. It’s. Um. The final problem.

The season says it’s slated to be 13 episodes, since s1 didn’t have enough time for 12. I honestly think they can manage it all, if they play their cards right.

Outlook:

This whole potential situation does sound familiar, I’ll point out that I just arrived here after the shit show of the promised neverland’s second season. But I don’t think it will get bad like tpn did. Because in Moriarty, they could afford to cut things because there are many stand alone and disposable arcs, whereas tpn really shouldn’t have, since they pretty much all contributed later to Major Main Character Plot Things. And the important points of the arcs that they’ll probably cut can actually be written into existing ones without looking like plot convenience, in my vision of it.

Honestly, I’m pretty optimistic for moriarty, it works better for this kind of adaption than in a lot of other manga that end up getting these most likely two season adaptions. I’d love to get those arcs for the servant’s and other character’s developments of course, but trying to stick that in when there’s really only time to focus on the main characters would suck up time better spent on really getting deep into the main storyline. Even if there are less characters, in a situation like this a streamlined and nuanced story will look elegant, whereas shoving as much content as possible into a few short episodes makes everyone cringe.

The situation does end up looking like the promised neverland, but it has a chance to be significantly less fucked considering,,, well,,, tpn is an insanely low bar, and they will hopefully not make the promised neverland’s same mistakes of Shove Seventeen Plotlines Into One Episode After Realizing Belatedly They Actually Needed Those Parts.

Obviously I don’t know what will happen, and this will be outdated by sunday lmao, but my projection looks something like this for 13 episodes to conclude the show.

Predictions:

(Episodes 1+2: A Scandal in the British Empire)

Episode 3: I’m very anxious for 3 considering this will probably make or break my opinion on the anime. Ideally, this episode would wrap up the scandal arc and go over the whole James Bond thing, it could be pretty baller and fit well into an episode. But though there’s plenty of Irene in the opening, there’s no sight of Bond, so considering anime as a whole is fucking transphobic, they might try to change it, twist around bond’s words or just, gloss over it altogether. If they cut it, they might have time to squeeze in another arc but I don’t think they honestly need to? With what they seem to be keeping in, they’ll have ample time to get to everything, and it would be shorter anyway considering the smaller amount of servants.

Here, we do definitely need to cover Sherlock’s “receiving the name of the lord of crime and deciding to burn it and find it out himself because he’s extra”, no matter the status of irene/bond’s gender. If they do that right and possibly change a few things so it’s more important, this could play into them moving forward his whole discovery of their secrets.

Episodes 4-7: These will most likely cover jack the ripper arc. There’s a lot to go over here, and I’m confident they can cut it down, because tbh Moriarty is pretty long winded for a manga and cutting things is good to an extent. This covers most of the major expansions on William’s ideas and plans, and definitely has the holes to stuff in more of the points made in the arcs that will be cut out. Though I have my reservations, they could plausibly take most points in white knight and integrate them into here.

Episodes 8-10: These are the ones that are going to take the most work and probably be the most changed. They should finish up the ripper arc in 7, give or take a few episodes, and then here, If Sherlock has a little more figured out from episode 3, he can look deeper. I think it’s honestly a good idea for the one to discover the Incriminating Records to be him, as it again gives them more connection. There needs to be some other reason Moriarty’s secrets are in danger of getting leaked to the paper, but I’m sure they can put something together with scotland yard or something, or even like, Mycroft. I see that. But if that happens, then we can spend an episode or so on the merchant of london, aka little liam commits girlboss, which can be woven into the idea of everything Coming Out.

Episodes 11-13: Final problem. I see this going mostly unchanged, up until 55. Truth is they’ll probably end up cutting something but hmm. I don’t know. They should keep the fred stuff in, since they’ll cut his other development. They should keep the squad asking sherlock for help, since they cut the other parts that highlight the crime squad’s care for him. But I think they could montage most of the William Goes French Revolution On You Hoes, even the part where the kids come in front of one of them, if you see what’s going on right. But everything can proceed as in the manga pretty smoothly, I think, it all makes sense if they put it together in 7-10. You know, you got somehow, the worst case happens, and boom, scandal, final problem enacted. Killing spree. William reveals he’s been emo this whole time but it’s too late now. Everyone scrambling to catch up with his damn plans. Gay boy knocking on 221B with a fucking love letter. Shit gets found out. And then... well, yuh.

Disclaimer I still don’t know everything about this, bc I cannot find a translation of 54, only the raw with no context, and I know there’s content after 55 but I can’t find that either. But I’m sure as hell an english major and can understand where things are probably going. I don’t know what’s involved at that point, and if there’s some plan detailed to save him or something. That’s the main thing I don’t know, and if there is one detailed of course that kind of changes everything, but for now I’m going on the assumption that 54 is “sherlock runs to the bridge and yells at liam to stop being a dramatic whore while london burns around them and the murder squad watches anxiously with mysterious intent, until it is chapter 55″. (IF Y’ALL HAVE THE ENGLISH PLEASE HMU) They better not TOUCH anything in 55 or so help me god.

But as to after 55, things are going to be different. Besties, I’m an optimist, but there’s no way they’ll make a season after this. It does appear that they’ve mostly wrapped up, and they’ve gotten through what Big Revals they plan on doing. The shit hinted from the beginning has happened, and there probably won’t be enough to create another, unless the author plans on fucking shit up again, which I don’t approve of. There are a few things still left unsaid, like, Liam’s real name and everything, but if it’s supposed to be important, things that small can 100 percent be written into this.

And as something that’s intending to finish up a story, depending on what manga canon really is (BESTIE I DO NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS) they might change it. There’s two options, a bittersweet/hopeful and a tragic one, but either one will end up open ended, because of my extensive knowledge of 2 season animes with significantly longer mangas. (done badly: tokyo ghoul and tpn, done well: owari no seraph and mob psycho) Either we have it like well, oh damn, everything was destined to be Sad but well you’re with him now you’re probably dead, but you know there’s something hinted at and you don’t know for sure so that’s the catch. So you get a vague and bittersweet but possibly hopeful ending. OR something that takes,,, whatever ends up happening in the manga or whatever the plan is and turning it into an epilogue infodump.

I can see either going well depending on how they handle the messages of the story. But yeah, as far as to my extent of the understanding of the show, that’s how it’ll probably go, and what my opinion of how it should is.

To What Extent Will The Gay:

You know, this is my ideal scenario within these time limits, but you know they could always go The Wrong Direction if the anime team took a look at some of the later chapters and went “holy shit this is a bit too gay” and try to axe some of the sherliam content, which I wouldn’t put past any corporation.

In the case that they do, I see lot of good shit going. They’re clearly trying to do the final problem, so they obviously can’t cut out 55, which is good :). But though 55 is clearly, uh, really fucking homosexual, the most romantic shit goes down in 53, as far as I can tell? (keeping in mind i still haven’t found 54′s english version, if anyone would like to direct me to a translation, that would be LOVELY.) I unfortunately can see them cutting Liam’s letter almost entirely, and that kind of scares me.

You know, even if i’d hate and slander them for it, cutting out james bond would be something i would understand. But messing with sherliam would fuck them over, not just cause that would be awful, but like, because it’s like... kind of the main point.

So I’m not really too worried about them messing with it, mostly because the content itself is holding them at gunpoint, sherliam holds the whole plot structure in place, especially if you’re shooting for final problem. And even in the manga they never, like, actually say they’re in love with each other even tho historically gay lovers would probably call each other “friends” lmao so it’s not like they have to greenlight gay sex or anything lmao it’s just Very Romantic (No Homo)

And apart from that, yuumori has actually been pretty decent to the gays so far?? Damn shawty, they certainly haven’t toned down the gay yet and it’s clearly their main source of fans, and what they’ve decided to emphasize in both openings and a significant portion of the s2 ending. We’re all here for it, and they’re catering to it, so I can at least give you that.

#moriarty the patriot #yukoku no moriarty #rowan's hyperfixation essays #sherliam #Holy Shitte this is long #watch me find 54 and immediately change my stance on all of this #or something idk #watch this whole thing be irrelevant in half a week #HHHHHHHH #if it doesn't go exactly like this i will lose my mind lmao

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reeny-chan · 4 years ago

Text

Sneak Peek at “The Last Hero of Eternia” Chapter 5

I’ve still got a bit of work to do on Chapter 5, but I wanted to share a sneak peak with you all. Hope you enjoy!

~~~~~

“Hey, Catra,” Entrapta said. “Mind going to the engine room and helping Hordak? He hasn’t been feeling too well after the attack. I think he could really use some help, but I’m too busy here.”

Catra stared at her for a moment. Help Hordak? She’d been avoiding him for the past several months. Things hadn’t ended well between them, before Horde Prime’s arrival.

“Catra?” Entrapta said.

“Uh, sure,” Catra said. “Yeah.” She glanced one more time at Adora, who had again taken to staring off to space, and then left the cockpit.

The walk through the corridor was quiet. The thrumming of the engine grew more pronounced as she continued aft. The floor, while still smooth, metallic, and cool under her soles, vibrated more significantly as she continued on. Near the engine room she crossed the smaller room, to her right, where she’d stayed the first time she’d been on this ship. After Adora and the others had rescued her from Horde Prime. It was that room where she had started, finally, to heal. It was that room where, for the first time in years, she and Adora had spent the night together, sleeping in the same bed.

Despite all the anger she’d felt, how betrayed she’d felt for so long over Adora abandoning their home, abandoning her - it was the first time in years she had actually felt some contentment.

When she refitted the ship, Entrapta had repurposed the room into equipment and tooling storage, and opened the wall between it and the engine room next door. She’d been a bit disappointed to find that out, even though a much more comfortable, if much cozier, room had been built for her and Adora to share, partitioned from the large dormitory located closer to the fore of the ship.

She continued past the room, and the memories it contained, to the engine room. The door opened, and inside she could see Hordak sitting at a control panel. It was a very unusual sight for her. She had never before seen Hordak sitting when he worked. Only when he had been on his throne. His back was to her.

“Um, hi,” she said. He did not look up. “Uh, Entrapta says you need some help?”

He stopped what he was doing and turned his head slightly to the side. She couldn’t see his eyes.

“The second fusible link in the thrust matrix has failed and needs replaced.”

“O - okay,” she said. “And...um...where-?”

“Other end of the room, on the wall. Three cylinders. One of them isn’t glowing. Twist it to remove it, and get a replacement from the storage room.”

“Yeah, okay, on it.” She headed to the far end of the room, and just as he’d described, there were three cylinders, the diameter and length of each about the same as her torso, with metal caps on the end and a transparent glass-like material in the center. The two on the outside were glowing yellow, but the one in the middle was blinking, as if it were attempting to illuminate but failing.

She reached up, took hold of it with both hands, and attempted to twist it to the right. It wouldn’t budge. She tried a little harder, her hands squeaking against the transparent material, but it didn’t move.

“Other direction,” came Hordak’s voice, a growl that projected over the deep thrumming of the ship’s engine.

Right, she thought, rolling her eyes. You seem waaaay too busy to do this yourself. She took hold of it again and tried twisting it to the left. At first it didn’t move, but then she felt something click. It then turned easily - and almost immediately slipped out of its mounting. She caught it before it could fall, surprise at just how heavy it was. “G-got it,” she said. She set it gently down on the floor, wedging it next to some pipes so it wouldn’t roll away. She walked back toward Hordak. “And, um, where’s-?”

“That way,” Hordak said, pointing at the wall just past where he was seated.

“Yeah.” She walked past him, opened the door to the storage room, and remembered that this was the room she’d been reminiscing about just a few minutes ago. It smelled differently than she remembered - like chemicals, and metal. None of the scent of her or Adora remained, not that it was surprising.

“Fusible link,” she muttered. “Where would Entrapta hide you?”

Of course, nothing was labeled. She assumed Entrapta had some kind of system of organization that made sense to her, much like her castle at Dryl, where to anyone else it was practically indecipherable.

It took her a good twenty minutes before she finally opened the correct cabinet and found two of the cylinders, standing upright, on an upper shelf. Of course. She looked around for something to stand on, found a white, metallic cube, and pushed it in front of the cabinet. She stood on it, reached up and grabbed one of the two cylinders, pulled the cylinder to her chest, and hugged it tightly as she could while she tried to step back down without breaking an ankle or her neck.

Back in the Engineering room she crossed behind a still-sitting and still-ignoring-her Hordak, made her way to the far end of the room, and gingerly set the cylinder in place of the old one. She had to twist and wiggle it several times until she found the proper orientation for it to slide into place. She twisted it to the right, and after a quarter-turn felt it click into place. It immediately lit up yellow, matching the two cylinders to either side almost perfectly.

“That’s done,” Catra said, rubbing her hands together as she returned to Hordak.

He did not look at her when he spoke. “Are you simply going to leave the failed cylinder on the floor like so much garbage?”

“I - guess not?” Catra said. “Uh, where-?”

“Reclamation room,” Hordak said. “Other side of the corridor.”

She grimaced at the creature whom she had once served, and twice betrayed, before heading back to retrieve the dead cylinder. As she carried it out of the room she wondered why Hordak couldn’t be bothered to do this physical work. He had his exo suit, which she knew gave him incredible physical strength. Or was he just intentionally being an ass?

Not that she could blame him for that, of course, but it didn’t mean she had to like it.

The room that was apparently the “Reclamation room” was mostly empty, with just a few containers holding what looked like broken components, stripped bolts, and at least one small pile of tiny food wrappers. She hauled the cylinder to the corner, laid it down, and left the room.

She started heading back to the engine room but stopped. Hordak was already on her nerves. She hadn’t been a fan of him joining them on their “road trip”, and even though that wasn’t what this was, it had so far proven to be every bit as awkward as she’d expected it to be.

She shook her head and sighed. “Be the bigger person,” her therapist had said. “It can be hard, sometimes feeling like the hardest thing you’ve ever done, but it will be worth it in the end.”

Then, of course, she remembered something else. She’d made a goal to herself to make amends with everyone she’d hurt. And while Hordak had done plenty of hurting to her, she had also hurt him. If she was serious about healing, about being a better person, she needed to do it completely.

Sighing, she opened the engine room door and walked up to Hordak.

“I have nothing else for you to do,” Hordak said, still not looking away from the holographic display in front of him. After a hesitation, “Thank you...for replacing the fusible link.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Catra said. She hovered there a moment, took a deep breath, and said, “Listen, Hordak…”

“I am far too busy to ‘chat’,” he said. “Yeah, I get that, but...I just gotta say something, then I’ll leave you alone. I - I’m sorry. For...a lot of things. For betraying you. For...what I did to Entrapta. For lying to you. I was-”

“I don’t need your apologies,” Hordak interrupted. He turned toward her, giving her what she could best describe as a sidelong glance with one of his red, glowing, pupil-less eyes. “Nor have I any desire for them. What’s done is done, and dwelling on it is pointless.”

That statement gave her a little hope...that is, until the next one dashed it.

“You proved to be disloyal, disrespectful, and an opportunist with no regard for your duties or your obligations. You lusted for power - my power, and then Horde Prime’s power, and only by the grace of your…friends’... actions were you protected from the consequences of that.”

His chair turned so he was facing her fully. “I tolerate your presence for Entrapta’s sake. For the sake of She-Ra, who saved my life when she could simply have obliterated me when she obliterated Horde Prime. But do not mistake my tolerance for acceptance. Or forgiveness.” He turned back to his display. “Now leave me be.”

Catra stood there for a moment, trying to process what had just happened. Of course, she’d known this could be a possibility. Her therapist had warned her it could be a possibility. But now, having just lived through it, after having put so much work into getting better, into being better…

She turned on a heel and left the engine room without a word. Her feet slapped a steady beat on the deck as she practically marched toward the front of the ship. When she reached the door to her and Adora’s cabin, though, she stopped. She turned to stare at it. The door was blank, with no markings, just like every other door on the ship. When they’d first talked about taking this ship on their “road trip”, she’d imagined herself scratching caricatures of herself and Adora into it, much like those she’d scratched into their old bunk back when they were cadets in the Horde. A caricature she’d destroyed out of anger when Adora first abandoned the Horde...abandoned Catra…

Part of her had hoped they would find it somewhere in the rubble of the old Horde headquarters when she and Adora had been leading the cleanup there. Unsurprisingly, it was either long gone, or someone else had scooped it up with all the rest of the debris and sent it to be recycled.

Whatever happened to that, she had Adora again. For the moment, though, that just didn’t give her the comfort she wanted it to. She opened the door and stood before the bed inside as the door hissed shut behind her. The room was spartan; only a bed and the trunk they’d hastily packed were there. The blank wall opposite the door could be made transparent so they could see outside the ship, but now it was solid, smooth, dreary gray.

They would have probably taken more time to decorate the room before they went on their actual “road trip”. Decorated with what, she wasn’t sure, but anything would be better than the drab gray, featureless walls that right now echoed what she was feeling inside.

She sat down on the bed, legs curled up to her chest. She buried her face in her knees and, after all the hardships of the past few days, finally let herself break down and cry.

#she ra spop #she ra fanfic #she ra #catra #hordak

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shinneth · 4 years ago

Note

Spill the tea on Stevinel (just because I saw one for conniverse) And yes, I'm not on Anonymous. Because I'm a proud stevinel shipper and no one's going to stop me from loving it, also your blog is cool

And you know what? That’s the right attitude to have! People should be free to express what they ship without shielding themselves with anonymity. I don’t blame the people that do these days - antis are fucking dangerous people - but goddamn, people. It’s fiction.

So I commend you for shipping Stevinel openly and proudly! Hard to believe it’s actually considered a bold and brave move just to be open and honest about harmless preferences these days.

That said, I’m sorry it took so long to get to this. I felt you deserved an epic, given how unexpectedly successful my tirade on why Connverse is a shit ship with an undeserved golden reputation was...

But the truth is, even though I’m very much a Stevinel shipper, it’s definitely not my OTP.

And it’s very tricky for me to figure out how to spill the tea on Stevinel in a way that’s distinct from me doing the same with Stevidot.

Because, well, let’s face it: these two ships, beyond being very similar in nature, have also endured identical hardships from the fandom.

All the death threats Stevinel fans get from the raging antis for daring to ship something so “problematic/immoral/wrong/not Connverse”?

Stevidot fans have been treated that exact same way for years. And still are. For the exact same reasons.

Both Stevinel and Stevidot shippers are valid, but the fandom constantly turns a blind eye to Rebecca Sugar’s husband who also worked on the show outright saying gem x human ships are FAIR GAME.

And also turn a blind eye to the recent interview where Sugar herself stated that the gems are more like AI - a conclusion I and many others deduced ages ago just by how gems are portrayed in the show.

But by god, they’ll hang on Matt Burnett’s word that “grown gems” are a thing even though canon itself explicitly states that GEMS DON’T GROW.

Just like how despite Maya Petersen outright admitting that Aroace!Peridot is just her headcanon, people treat it like the fucking gospel now.

(no offense to anyone who’s committed to that particular headcanon - I just don’t really see it with Peridot in particular and it’s really fucking stupid to claim it’s 100% canon when the source herself explicitly said it wasn’t)

Well, it’s canon that Spinel kissed Steven and he didn’t turn into dust. And Steven was already well on his way down the path of self-destruction at this point in time; he would’ve gone monster whether this happened or not.

Also, how often does a character get the “heart eyes” expression for just a platonic love?

If there was ever a scene where Connie or Steven had heart eyes, no doubt most of the pricks would scream “YES!!!! UNDENIABLE PROOF THAT THEY’RE IN LOVE!!!”

But when it’s Spinel, suddenly it doesn’t count? Really?

How convenient.

There’s also the stupid idiots who saw the conceptual development of Spinel in that movie artbook and saw some vague color keys during a conceptual stage and claimed that Spinel was “family” to Steven - which of course must mean “related” and therefore must make Stevinel an incestuous relationship!

Which is bull. Also shit. It’s already common knowledge that gems don’t work that way. She was the designated playmate for Steven’s mother. Nothing more.

Of course, most gems who come in Steven’s orbit end up being sort of a family to him.

But everyone seems to have this impression that a gem being part of Steven’s family means they become additional surrogate mom figures.

And yeah no, that’s dumb and wrong. Garnet and Pearl are really the only ones I’d consider actual “mom figures”. Amethyst’s more of a big sister. Everyone else can vary depending on perspective, but I’ve never seen any of the other gems as anything close to a motherly figure for Steven. Any time I see shit about Lapis or Peridot being regarded as “gem moms” to Steven, I laugh my ass off. They are so not moms or any kind of authoritative figure for Steven. Bismuth at best is more of the fun-loving aunt.

There are more roles in a family than just a paternal/maternal substitute. In fact, I believe Steven has considered Connie to be part of his family well before they hooked up in canon.

(as a side-note, I love how people who are allegedly SO squicked out by age gap ships totally pardon Connverse - you guys realize Connie was 14 in Future, right? Possibly 15 depending on the time scale? There’s gonna be a point in the relative near future where Steven is 18 and Connie isn’t - why don’t I hear you assholes angst about that “atrocity”, huh?)

I honestly do consider the CG B-Team as part of Steven’s family, but more in a loose sense. But by that same token, I consider Connie as part of the family in a similar manner.

Especially since Spinel was shoved off to live with the Diamonds after the movie - and the Diamonds themselves have a very fucked-up relationship among themselves to the point where I honestly hesitate to put a familial label on it at all - it’s extra stupid to try and paint Stevinel as something with incestuous overtones when it clearly doesn’t.

Spinel does happen to be a perfect representative of how full of shit antis are about age gaps, though.

While Peridot’s age has always been left vague, we know she can’t be 5K or older due to being an Era 2 gem. Due to her utter lack of knowledge of Era 1 events (or being completely sold on the Diamonds’ propaganda) and her general inexperience with her own equipment - as well as her ability to quickly adapt to Earth - I always headcanoned Peridot as being especially young. Like, younger-than-Steven young.

Mostly because Peri’s attitude reeks of Gen Z - also because it’d be nice for a change to have a gem who isn’t thousands of years old like literally every other noteworthy gem in the show. We need a representative of gemkind who hasn’t been around for ages.

Of course, Spinel’s backstory proves that even if they went the boring route and made Peridot thousands of years old just like everybody else, it wouldn’t really mean much of anything. She’d be no less of a valid romantic option for Steven regardless of age.

Spinel is several thousands of years old, and the movie explicitly shows us what exactly that amounts to for a gem.

As I mentioned earlier, Sugar sees the gems more like AI. Spinel remaining in one spot for several millennnia, not moving an inch, not speaking to anyone, not seeing anything other than a gradually-deteriorating garden... yeah, and somehow, despite all that, Spinel’s still very childlike per her design. She had literally no room to mature or accrue life experience: Pink Diamond basically hit the pause button on her entire life.

Even though she’s several thousands of years old, through no fault of her own, Spinel’s mindset remained unchanged. It wasn’t until Steven inadvertently came into her life that she became twisted - understandably so after finally realizing she’d been abandoned by Pink.

But she still didn’t completely lose her true self. Spinel realized on her own that Steven didn’t deserve to suffer just because his mom was a negligent asshole. She also came to understand on her own that unlike Pink, Steven truly cared for her no matter what shit she threw his way.

Steven could give Spinel the care and attention she always deserved; something Pink totally denied her while deceiving her into wasting away with her abandoned playground. He could be the one to give Spinel the love she always deserved but was either denied or manipulated into believing she got.

Honestly, this is more than enough to warrant building something more between these two.

The age gap is irrelevant. The two have chemistry. They aren’t related.

(and honestly, this is fiction - these details are largely irrelevant in fiction anyway. I’m only bringing it up because it doesn’t take much research to find that every label the antis put on Stevinel is complete inaccurate Diamond propaganda bullshit)

Stevinel is FINE. Let people ship it if they want to!

Um... is that good enough?

Honestly, I’m not gonna lie: Stevinel’s pretty goddamned popular; so much that I’m a bit jealous of it. I enjoy the ship a lot, but I’ve been keeping it at arms-length all this time. I’m looking forward to when I can write my own brand of Stevinel interaction when I get to introduce her in my series, but that’s still a while to go.

Also, there’s almost zero Peridot/Spinel material, let alone my Peridot/Steven/Spinel OT3. And Stevidot material is still hard to come by; I’m noticing Stevinel’s still quite a bit easier to find by comparison.

So in a way, I feel many other unpopular ships deserve some tea-spilling sooner than Stevinel because Stevinel at least still has a sizable fanbase. Same can’t really be said for a lot of similar ships here...

A lot of this can apply to other Steven x gem ships, honestly.

But I guess I haven’t been showing Stevinel much proper love due to my devotion to my superior SU-AU. I can only hope I can soon reach a point where I can have GA Spinel react to Steven, since their dynamic will be significantly different.

(and then one day I’ll finally make the Peridot/Steven/Spinel OT3 fic!!)

Until then, I can only hope I did Stevinel some justice here!

#answered asks #ryan-spinel #stevinel #stevidot #steven universe #spinel #su spinel #shipping #spill the tea #peridot #su peridot

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mollymauk-teafleak · 3 years ago

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Heart and Liver

Stephen and Crane are getting ready to uproot their lives and move across the globe to Shangai. Which means Stephen needs to get his mouth around an entirely new language, something he clearly isn't very comfortable with.

But Crane has a way to get him to loosen up.

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I apologise for any mistranslations in this text, I've used online articles and am very aware it won't reflect the dialect used in Shangai in the Victorian Era. Sometimes you just hear the song Sunrise from In The Heights early in your adolescence and your taste for Person A teaching Person B their language fics is solidified.

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Please consider leaving a comment on Ao3 and reblogging! <3

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Stephen Day was a very good teacher.

Crane had seen the evidence himself multiple times. He’d seen him talk Miss Saint through the drills he gave her, the way he would correct her mistakes in ways that built her up rather than made her feel small, that steered her towards improvement rather than smacked her down, the way he would praise her effusively even after she’d just launched a gust of wind that had knocked him back on his arse. He’d seen the way that Saint looked at him after she’d mastered some new technique that was incomprehensible to Crane, after hours and hours of patience and encouragement from Stephen. Even through her street sharpened exterior, she would look at him like he’d hung the moon.

And he’d felt it himself, whenever the vast gulf between the worlds they knew would mean Stephen had to explain some magical phenomenon to him. His hands would twitch and turn as he spoke, like he was physically untangling the words themselves to make them understandable. Even if after he was done Crane could only smile and shake his head and shrug, expecting his lover to give up, Stephen would just launch into a slightly tweaked version of his explanation. He’d liken it to something Crane would grasp, analogise etheric currents to stocks and bonds or, in one memorable instance, translocation spells to this thing Crane would do to Stephen in bed whenever he’d either been very good or very bad. And then suddenly things would click in his mind and what, a few years ago, would have sounded like a fairy tale made sense to him.

He’d even seen him do it with Merrick a few times, the usually gruff manservant had taken one look at what Stephen could do with a pack of cards and began watching his hands very, very attentively whenever they’d all sit down to play of an evening. Even then, Stephen had recognised a different, slightly more hesitant student and adjusted his teaching style accordingly. He’d said nothing, he’d just made his movements slower, clearly telegraphed every twist of his slender wrists, casually dropped the names of the maneuvers he was making into conversation. He’d even deliberately flubbed the shuffles a few times, just so Merrick could see the mechanism more clearly as he righted it. It had worked as well as any of his other methods, Crane felt sorry for the boiler room lads on their boat to Shanghai, likely the first people his friend would approach with his new skills.

Stephen was indeed a brilliant teacher. He was patient, kindly when needed, firm when it was called for and always gave everything he had to helping his student achieve their goal. He cared, as simple as that.

So it was both a surprise and a shame that Stephen was such an appalling student.

Crane shifted on the bed, trying to fidget away his growing impatience, along with the growing cramps in his long legs, “Try again, you’re putting too much emphasis on the second syllable. Hunzhang.”

Stephen huffed, arms folding tighter, “I’m putting emphasis on the second syllable because you told me I was putting too much on the first!”

Crane stamped down an urge to laugh that would definitely get him kicked out of the bedroom. Stephen was just inexplicably adorable when he was irritated, it was like watching a puppy bare its teeth.

“Come on, listen to how I say it. Hunzhang.”

Stephen gave him a truly devastating eye roll but he sat up straighter against the bolsters and tried again, “Hunzhang.”

Crane grinned, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. Not something he’d ever dare do in one of his fine suits but the sun had long since gone down and he was in his shirtsleeves. Stephen was considerably less dressed, wearing nothing but an older shirt of Crane’s he tended to sleep in. Or get fucked in, more often, but that was having to wait for the language lesson.

“Hark at you! You’d fit right in, any trading floor in Shanghai,” Crane beamed appreciatively. He was being generous, Stephen’s pronunciation was dire but that shirt was riding up and he could see enough freckled thigh to earn some praise, “And what does it mean?”

His little witch pulled a face, “Bullshit. Because, for some reason, you think learning how to curse up one side of someone and down the other is going to help me in Shangai.”

“It’s how I learned,” Crane shrugged languidly, “And you’d be surprised how far a few well placed insults can get you.”

Stephen’s mouth tightened at the corners, his tone staying mildly irritated but that slightest pull of muscle betraying his anxiety, “I’m going to stick out enough on my own without accidentally calling someone a stupid egg of all things.”

Crane’s teasing smile softened. Their departure date was now less than a month away and he could tell Stephen’s nerves were growing by the day. As they prepared to pack up their lives and move to the other side of the world, he could see those lines around his tawny eyes deepening. Part of the reason for this language lesson was to get Stephen more comfortable with the idea, give him some sense of control over the situation so he didn’t feel so much like he was being thrown into deep, unfamiliar water.

Part of the reason why Crane wished it was going better.

“You’re not going to stick out,” he said firmly, reaching over and taking one of Stephen’s hands that had started to twitch and fidget nervously on the bed, “We’re going there so we can belong. You’ll see.”

Stephen nodded slowly, his anxious hands stilling as Crane’s slender fingers stroked the hills and valleys of their calluses and knuckles. Any attention to his hands and the younger man instantly melted, becoming pliant and gentle, receptive to even more language lessons.

“Let’s run through a few words that won’t get you punched in the teeth then?”

Stephen blinked warily, “God, how likely is that?”

Crane had to laugh, “Honestly, quite likely someone will swing for you. Impossible that any will actually land seeing as I’ll be knocking them into the dirt.”

That made him grin toothily, “Defending my honour?”

“The amount of time I spend defending you from people you piss off, might as well call it my profession,” Crane raised his eyebrows teasingly, “But you’re not changing the subject that easily, darling. Let’s see…”

Crane’s cool grey eyes wandered the room. They hadn’t started packing yet- that would be a job for the next few weeks- so the evidence of their secret shared life was still scattered all over the place. There were a few ties carefully hung on the back of the door from Crane choosing which one he wanted to wear that morning, draped next to Stephen’s ratty old coat. There were Stephen’s books on the occult stacked neatly alongside Crane’s stories of far flung places and grand adventures that he’d been reading since he was a little boy, for escape back then and for nostalgia now. There was the scuff marks on the carpet where Stephen would pace whenever some case had been bothering him or the twin marks running parallel to those where Crane would pace with ledgers in hand. Behind these walls, their lives could get hopelessly, wonderfully tangled like they were meant to be. And given that neither man was particularly good at keeping things neat, that left plenty of items and plenty of words.

Crane took a moment, considering before giving him an easy one, “Xié.”

Stephen sat up a little straighter, eyes brightening now he actually had an answer, “Shoes.”

Crane nodded, gesturing towards their shoes, standing side by side at the foot of the wardrobe. Crane’s significantly larger and better made, Stephen’s smaller and far more scuffed from running.

“Shūjià,” he chose next, smile turning challenging.

Stephen clearly stumbled at that, brow furrowing for a few minutes before answering hesitantly, “Book?”

“Close!” Crane said encouragingly, “Bookshelf. Book would be Shū but you can hear how the words sound similar.”

His tone didn’t seem to have done it’s job, Stephen’s face crashed, “Right. I only missed half the damn word.” He took his hands back, folding his arms tightly around his narrow chest again.

Crane knew if Stephen felt dejected, if he felt like he had failed even in the slightest respect, it was so hard to get him going again. For someone who could do impossible things, he didn’t have a lot of faith in himself.

“Come on, one more,” he said, quickly veering away from that word, “You’re on one and a half already! Try...um...Chuáng.”

Stephen opened his mouth, closed it again, cast his eyes around helplessly. After a few moments he groaned, shoulders dropping, “Lucien, I don’t know…”

“You do, you’re just tired,” Crane sighed, a little lost on how to sound encouraging but not patronising, that would absolutely bring this to an end if Stephen caught the slightest hint of pity in his voice, “Chuáng, it's right under your nose. Right under all of you, actually.”

His witch frowned at him, frustration clearly kindled and flaring behind his eyes, “What? Lucien, if you have to give me hints I clearly don’t know the word.”

Crane rather felt like somehow who’d realised that was in fact a waterfall his boat was about to topple over. He cleared his throat and learned back, reevaluating. He was starting to worry that maybe Stephen wasn’t such a bad student, maybe he was just a terrible teacher.

So he would go for something they were both good at instead.

“It was the word for bed,” he skipped lightly over it, his confident smile reignighting, “But I have a new game.”

Stephen exhaled, eyes closing in exasperation, “Lucien, I’m burned out on language learning, can’t we just go to sleep? It was hard enough for me to read and write English, let alone a completely different tongue.”

That very obvious, very heavy shift in the air between them, the kind that only happened when someone had let something slip, when some words had bolted and run loose when they really weren’t meant to. And if it wasn’t obvious already, Stephen’s face had turned roughly the same colour as his hair.

Crane proceeded carefully, so carefully, “What do you mean by that, love?”

His lover seemed to fold in on himself, like a nocturnal animal caught out in the daylight, “I...it’s a practitioner thing. They call it word blindness, I think. When I was a child, I...I struggled. Reading, writing, speaking, all of it. They just wouldn’t stay still on the page or stick in my head. Esther had the same thing when she was a girl and you know Saint’s never got the hang of it but she gets along fine. I...I thought I was just an imbecile for years, that's what all my teachers said, until I realised what I actually was. Until I realised I can manipulate metal and make things levitate easier than I can write my own name.”

Crane watched his love’s face carefully, making certain to keep his own free of any trace of pity even when his heart ached a little for the boy Stephen had been, “Just when I think I can't admire you any more, you go and surprise me.”

If Stephen was red in the face before, he was positively vermillion now, though the hope hesitantly creeping into his eyes offset it nicely, “You find it admirable that I was nearly illiterate until I turned twenty?”

“That you tried,” Crane said simply, warmly, “That you didn’t give up even when you were put through so much. That you’ve gotten through everything life threw at you with sheer determination and spit.”

Stephen didn’t have an answer for that, squirming in that adorable way he did when he was overwhelmed with praise, like it all went straight to his nerve endings, “I mean...it’s making learning Shangaiese a pain.”

“And if you want to take a break, of course we can,” Crane shifted forward, moving into a crouch not unlike a hunting animal about to pounce, close enough that he caught every millimeter as Stephen’s pupils widened, “But I think I have one more idea I’d like to try. If you’re willing?”

Stephen had stopped squirming, pinned under that gaze, swallowing hard, “One more?”

Crane felt that twinge in his chest, the spark of triumph whenever he got this little witch who could throw him across the room with a single thought to bow to his whims.

He deliberately lowered his voice until it was a rumble in his chest, leaning closer until he could graze Stephen’s earlobe with his teeth, “Why don’t you tell me what you’d like to say?”

Stephen’s exhale was shaky, the want rolling off of him, “How...how do you say ‘kiss me’?”

Crane chuckled roughly, “Wěn wǒ. Though I don’t think that’s really what you want, sweet boy. It’s a little...chaste?”

He heard his lover’s coy answering laugh echo through his through, “To start. Wěn wǒ.”

The pronunciation could still use a little work but that was the last thing on Crane’s mind as he answered the request eagerly, moving back and pressing his lips to Stephen’s. He felt his little witch moan and melt into it, arms coming up to wrap around his shoulders and anchor them together. The scrape of stubble against his chin as he deepened their kiss told of the hectic few days Stephen had been having, so much happening at the justiciary that he hadn’t even had time to shave. Crane knew how lucky he was to be getting a whole evening with him and didn’t intend to waste it.

He could feel Stephen’s hands pulling at his shirt, trying to undress him, so he moved away and took hold of those skinny wrists, “You need to ask me.”

Stephen moaned in frustration but Crane rather thought it was his cock talking, the gleam of competition was still shining in those eyes rapidly turning golden, “Fine. My lord, how do I ask you to take off your clothes so you can fuck me silly?”

Crane had to laugh at that, “Well, I’ll shorten it for brevity but...Tuō diào nǐ de yīfú.”

Stephen’s eyes widened for a moment but then his face set determinedly, “Say it again? Slower?”

A mix of relief and pride in his lover made him smile down at him before obeying. He saw that fight in Stephen, the one he’d always admired, the one that had saved their skins on multiple occasions. Granted, it was a little different given that he was clearly aroused and sprawled out on the pillows like a half unwrapped gift.

“Tuō diào nǐ de yīfú.”

Again, the pronunciation was a horror and he wobbled his way through the unfamiliar sounds but he would have been understood at least. Not that he’d be saying it to anyone but Crane, in China or England.

Crane didn’t try to hide his delighted grin as he swept his shirt grandly over his head, followed swiftly by his trousers and everything underneath. He folded it all neatly before returning to the bed, he was never going to understand his lover’s willingness to just toss his clothes all over the place.

The way Stephen’s eyes blew wide at the sight of him was enough for even Crane to plumb new depths of vanity, “God, Lucien…”

“You see me sans modesty most every day, love,” he pointed out, though he wasn’t complaining.

“And I use my magic every day,” Stephen tilted his head slightly so the lamplight caught in his hair and turned it to gold, “It doesn’t mean it’s any less like having a weight taken off my chest.”

Crane didn’t know how he did it, how Stephen somehow found the right strings to pull and send him reeling out of nowhere. How he pulled the ground out from under him without a thought, how he looked right under his skin to the very soul of him and, somehow, found reasons to love it.

How he left him with no answer but to rush forward and kiss him again, forgetting the rules of his own game. Stephen made a noise of happy surprise, moving to match him, hands beginning to wander eagerly, leaving tingling trails across his lover’s skin to mark their passage.

But apparently Crane had sparked some curiosity.

When Stephen took his cock in his clever champagne fingers, he gasped against Crane’s mouth, “And what would I call this?”

His words came out significantly breathier as that fizzing, popping sensation wrapped around him, “There’s a few terms. I’d say jība…”

“Jība,” it was impossible to care about the shaky syllables when he rolled it around his mouth in that unbearably sensual way, when he stroked a calloused thumb across the underside of the thing in question as he said it, “But there’s other ways of saying it?”

“A few more colourful phrases,” Crane admitted, “As in every language I expect but- oh God, Stephen…”

“We can review a few of those later then,” the smile on his face was nothing short of cheeky and he was going to be paying for that very shortly, “And...what exactly are you planning on doing with it, my lord?”

Crane smirked, it’s wickedly sharp edge making it clear that he was very much in control of this lesson and Stephen could just take a step back and remember his place, “Xìngjiāo. Hard and fast and thoroughly until you can’t walk.”

The effect was immediate, his lover turning pliant and wide eyed as Crane put a hand on the small of his back and dragged him closer. The hand snapped away from his cock and instead hovered around his chest with the other like nervous birds waiting for commands.

“Shì de…” he whispered after a moment of thought, eyes sparking with pride in himself though his face stayed carefully obedient.

Well, that went and did it.

Stephen was on his back in an instant, Crane seizing his ankles. Stephen cried out as his knees were shoved to his chest, as the shirt he wore rucked up around his stomach, all of him exposed and ready to be taken. So beautiful, so fragile and given to him so willingly.

“Xīngān…” The word escaped him even without thinking, like it was his heart speaking instead of his head.

Stephen’s lips parted softly, his eyes liquid amber, “What does that mean?”

Lucien’s smile softened slightly, even as he parted his legs further, as he let his hunger flow to the surface.

“Why don’t I show you first?”

After, everything was hot and heavy and heaving, Stephen reclining in Lucien’s arms and waiting for the room to stop spinning around him.

There was so much he wanted to say, as ever, thousands of emotions he wanted to name in the wake of feeling so completely loved but he knew they’d come out muddy and less than what he felt inside him.

Instead he reached up a still trembling hand and traced the line of Lucien’s jaw with a fingertip, “So...what does it mean?”

His lover’s eyes had been closed but now one opened slightly, like a contented cat lying in the sun, “Hm? What’s that, darling?”

“That thing you called me as you took me. Xīngān. What does it mean?”

An uncharacteristic edge of coyness slipped into his voice, one that would only ever come out when it was just the two of them, “Ah. Well. Literally? It means ‘heart and liver’.”

Stephen barked out a raspy laugh, incredulous and delighted, “Excuse me? That was what you chose to call me?”

His laughter was clearly infectious, Lucien shook under him with helpless chuckles, “I know how it sounds but…”

There was a moment, one of those moments where Stephen felt his lover made a choice. They happened often when they were alone together and it would have been so easy to read them as hesitancy. Before, when Stephen had been new to this, when he’d been less sure of himself, that’s exactly what he’d thought it was. He’d taken it to mean Lucien’s heart was already wandering, already thinking of the next man in his bed, fixing a mask in place before every term of endearment.

But he knew better now. He knew that pause, that moment where Lucien chose, was the breath he needed to go against everything he’d been taught. The choice he made in those moments was to open himself up and soften when the world had always forced him to stay out of sight and harden against everything that hurt him.

He moved slightly, letting Stephen turn so they could look into each other’s eyes, “It means ‘heart and liver’ because those are organs you can’t live without. And your Xīngān is the person you can’t live without, the person who you aren’t whole without. And for me, well...that’s you, sweet boy.”

“Lucien…” Stephen murmured, pressing a hand to his chest, “You’ll never have to live without me. Not here, not in Shanghai, nowhere in this world. I’m yours.”

“My heart and liver,” Lucien chuckled softly, cradling Stephen’s face in the softest touch.

“Xīngān,” he breathed, in the moment before their lips came together.

Stephen Day was a terrible student. But he was learning.

#charm of magpies #stephen day #lucien crane #lucien vaudrey #smut and fluff #com #k j charles

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everwitch-magiks · 4 years ago

Text

dance with somebody (ch. 13)

start from ch. 1 | back to ch. 12

They don't win.

It’s not their first loss nor anywhere near their worst, but the team is still predictably subdued as they pile back into the locker room. Whiskey makes for his stall and slumps into it, closing his eyes and allowing himself one minute to just breathe, and think of nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Then he gets back up, and crosses the room.

“Pips. Hey, Pips.”

Pips, preoccupied with slowly and methodically unlacing his skates, barely looks up.

“Hey,” Whiskey repeats, his tone a little gentler. “Good shot.”

Pips shrugs.

“Great angle,” Whiskey continues patiently. “Good call.”

“Would’ve been,” Pips mumbles. “If I hadn’t missed.”

“It was a great angle.” Whiskey’s tone is firm. “Yale’s got a killer defense, you know they do. We all knew this would be a tough one. But we almost had it – we could’ve won – and if we’d won it would’ve been because we played good, solid hockey, we stuck to our strategy and it really worked. I honestly think this is one of the best games we’ve played, this season.”

“Easy for you to say,” Pips points out, his tone still a little quiet. “Nice goal, by the way.”

Whiskey pauses for a moment. Pips is right – it was a nice goal. Maybe even the kind of goal that would’ve still been on Whiskey’s mind, last season, whether or not Samwell had won or lost in the end. This year, Whiskey can’t say he’s been as focused on his own achievements as he once used to be. Or maybe, it’s just become more difficult to separate the idea of his own progress from the progress they make as a team.

“I’d never have scored that goal without the assist from Jader,” Whiskey points out. “Which you set up, as I recall – beautiful pass, there. We should go over that sequence again at practice, see if we can make it into a new play.”

Pips shrugs.

“We still lost, in the end,” he reminds Whiskey, as if Whiskey might somehow have forgotten. Still, he sounds significantly less shattered. “This sucks. I’m so exhausted, I could sleep for a week.”

“How about you shower, first,” Whiskey suggests firmly. “Come on. We still have the kegster.”

Pips makes a face that’s somewhere right in between a frown and a grimace.

“Remember, you’re not allowed at post-keg breakfast unless you actually come to the kegster,” Whiskey makes up, perhaps a little bit too quickly. “And I’m baking, so. You kind of have to come.”

“Not sure if I’ve ever seen that in the bylaws,” Pips chirps back, without any real bite. “You making scones?”

“I fucking hope so, since I literally can’t bake anything else.”

“Ugh. Fine, then.” Pips’s expression changes into something that isn’t not a smile. “Now leave me alone so I can actually shower.”

Whiskey smiles back, relieved.

He straightens up, and looks around. The rest of the team still seems to be in varying stages of grief. Dex is across the room caught up in a quiet conversation with Louis, his expression predictably earnest – he looks up just long enough to catch Whiskey’s eye and jerk his head in Joyo’s general direction, probably because Joyo looks like he’s about to be fucking sick.

Whiskey spares a second to offer Dex a single nod. Then he goes.

Much, much later, Whiskey finally makes it out of the locker room.

Technically speaking, he isn’t late. Because thankfully, he did have the sense to inform Miguel that it might take him a little while before they could meet up, after the game. Still, Miguel probably didn’t expect a little while to equal almost two hours.

Maybe it’s just as well, Whiskey thinks miserably. Maybe he's been pathetically nervous all week about taking a boy to the post-game kegster for absolutely no reason at all.

A little out of breath, Whiskey half-jogs the last few steps down the corridor before finally pushing the door open, stepping into the night. Their agreed-upon meeting place is just around the corner. As Whiskey makes the turn, he fully expects to find it completely empty.

It’s not.

Miguel is sitting cross-legged on the steps to the side entrance of Faber. He’s typing something on his phone, his fingers moving rapidly, which is why he hasn’t seemed to notice Whiskey’s presence just yet. He looks… Really pretty. Almost more so than usually.

Whiskey pauses for a moment.

It feels more than a little bit surreal, now that the moment is finally here. This is actually happening. Miguel has waited for him, all this time, and any minute now Whiskey will go over to him, and say hi, and then he’ll-

Miguel looks up.

Whiskey’s breath catches as their eyes meet.

Immediately, Miguel gets to his feet.

“Hey.”

“Hi.” Whiskey manages a few steps forward. There. He can totally do this. “I’m so sorry I took so long.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” Miguel shifts his feet. He’s smiling a little, in a way that makes him look uncharacteristically shy. “I’m not sure what the protocol is for when you play super well but don’t actually win… Congratulations is probably wrong, but that goal? Was seriously awesome.”

“Thanks.” Whiskey clears his throat. He’s not sure what the protocol is for any of this. “Um. Should we…?”

“Yeah, yes.” Miguel sticks his hands in his pockets. “D’you… It’s this way, right? The hockey frat.”

“The Haus,” Whiskey corrects him automatically. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

Miguel continues to chat about the game as they walk, bringing up details about Whiskey's playing that are specific enough for Whiskey to wonder if Miguel has watched any of the other players much at all. It’s kind of sweet, in a way that Whiskey hasn't been sure if he has any reason to expect, tonight.

Because it's not like Whiskey actually knows whether or not Miguel thinks of this as a date. Whether or not Miguel even wants it to be.

When they get there, the kegster seems to be nearing full swing.

Whiskey gets them each a cup of tub juice, which Miguel has several intrigued questions about, and that conversation carries them inside. Without any real plan, Whiskey leads Miguel into the kitchen. The volume is a little less unbearable there, and Whiskey is nowhere near ready to be faced with a dance floor just yet.

They say hello to Tango and Louis, who both appear almost disappointingly unfaced when Whiskey introduces Miguel. Still, when Dex looks up from his pie dough long enough to spare them a glance, Whiskey isn't entirely comfortable with how Dex’s eyes dart curiously between Whiskey and Miguel, either.

"This is by far the nicest frat house I've ever been to." Miguel sips his tub juice, his gaze moving from the colorful curtains to the potted plants on the windowsill. "You have to tell me your secret. D'you lot have a housekeeper cooped up in the basement, or something?"

"Not a housekeeper, exactly," Whiskey says, grinning slightly. "But he does actually live in the basement."

"Hey!" Dex protests cheerfully. "I'll have you know Bitty called my bungalow a five-star resort."

"Was that before or after you installed the jacuzzi?" Tango asks.

Miguel catches Whiskey's eyes, his eyebrows raised.

"No, really." Whiskey shrugs. "Dex built a bungalow in the basement. With a jacuzzi."

"Right. Suddenly, I'm not as impressed by the houseplants." Miguel smiles. "Who's Bitty?"

"Oh, he was our captain last year," Louis tells him. "Solid dude. And of course the first out NCAA men’s hockey captain. Hey, Dex, does that make you the second?"

"Dunno, there's this dude in Colorado who came out around the same time." Dex shrugs. "And there's out players in lots of places, this year."

"As there should be." Tango raises his can of beer, grinning. "Here's to us, blazing the trail as the gayest NCAA team there is!"

Whiskey shakes his head, smiling a little as he takes a drink with the rest of them. Miguel meets his eyes again over the top of his cup. His expression is somewhat difficult to read – he looks both curious and, for some reason, a little doubtful.

"I never really got why Bitty gave you his dibs," Tango tells Whiskey, before Miguel has the chance to ask anything else. "Obviously, super well deserved. I just didn't think you two were ever that close."

It's just like Tango, to be asking a question even when he technically isn't.

"Dibs?" Miguel repeats with interest.

"His room," Whiskey says quickly. "I got Bitty's room, when he moved out." He turns towards Tango. "I don't know. We had some good conversations, I guess."

"Well, then that must've..." Tango begins, then stops. He grins. "Hey. That's the song, isn't it?"

As if on cue, Ford bursts through the door.

"Legends only!" she hollers, grinning happily towards Tango and Whiskey before noticing Miguel's presence between them. "Oh. Hello, there."

"Ford, this is Miguel, we’re.... He's in my class, and-"

"Yes, great, we can all meet later. Now come on." Ford gestures wildly towards the living room. "We have to dance!"

They pile out of the kitchen, Miguel sticking close to Whiskey. Thankfully, he looks mostly amused, as opposed to completely and utterly panicked. Whiskey wishes he could say the same for himself.

It's not too bad, at first. I wanna dance with somebody has been the song of their trio for a while, now – Whiskey can’t quite pinpoint when exactly that happened, but that doesn’t make it any less true – and so it’s not the first time he’s found himself in the middle of the Haus dance floor making himself look ridiculous next to Ford and Tango. He’s done this before, and it’s not so different with Miguel right there beside him, smiling and moving to the music. If anything, it’s a little better. A little more.

The next song is different.

It’s still up-tempo, thank God, and they all keep dancing, but there’s something about the sound of this song, or maybe the lyrics, that makes Whiskey look over towards Miguel a lot more. Surprisingly, Miguel is looking at him too. Miguel is looking at Whiskey a whole fucking lot. Maybe he’s been, the whole time since they got to the Haus – or maybe, if Whiskey thinks about it, Miguel has kind of been paying close attention to him for a lot longer than that.

Out of the corner of his eye, Whiskey sees Dex pull Nursey into a kiss. Across the room, Joyo is stepping into Jader’s personal space without any hesitation, and then they’re both disappearing out of the Haus, their hands loosely intertwined. There’s nothing holding me back croons the singer on the track, his voice raw and hungry and desperate, and all of a sudden, Whiskey wants to scream.

He needs to get out of there.

“Hey,” he says, getting Miguel’s attention – not that he didn’t have it, already. “D’you want-”

“Yeah.” Miguel doesn’t even wait for Whiskey to finish the sentence. “Sure. Sounds good.”

“Okay.” Whiskey breathes, in and out. “Okay. This way.”

He leads Miguel through the crowd, out into the hallway and up the stairs. Before he can think too much about it, they’re stepping into Whiskey’s bedroom. Unfortunately, the state of it is truly a testament to the fact that Whiskey never imagined tonight playing out quite like this.

“Man, I wish I didn't share a dorm room.” Miguel is looking around himself, a little curiously. He doesn’t seem to mind the unmade bed or the dirty laundry discarded in various places. “I’m hoping to move into the water polo frat, next semester – we don’t have a dibs system, so there’s basically just a list, and…”

Miguel trails off. He’s looking at Whiskey, who’s sitting on the edge of his bed, still struggling to keep his breaths even.

“Hey,” Miguel says gently. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Whiskey manages, before shaking his head. “No. Not really.”

“Okay.” Miguel shifts his feet. “D’you… Should I go?”

“No,” Whiskey says immediately. He looks up at Miguel, his mind suddenly a little clearer. “No, I’m… I’d like it if you stayed. Please.”

Miguel studies his expression for a moment, biting his lower lip, and all of a sudden it seems like he finds what he’s been looking for all this time. He takes a step forward, then another, until he’s slowly walked all the way over to Whiskey. Carefully, and very deliberately, he reaches out to gently trace his fingertips across Whiskey’s cheek.

“I’m not reading this wrong, am I?” he asks, his tone quiet. “Whiskey. Please say something.”

Whiskey takes a steadying breath.

“You’re exactly right,” he admits, his voice coming out rougher than he expected. “Exactly right. Miguel, I’m… I want-”

“Okay,” Miguel breathes out. “Okay. Good.”

Then he leans in.

It’s a wonderful kiss, soft and languid and unhurried, and Whiskey lets his eyes fall shut. He can’t believe that this is actually happening. Can’t believe how he ever got so lucky.

There’s a noise from the stairs, and then someone passes by out in the hallway. Whiskey pulls back, abruptly.

“I’m not out,” he says hurriedly.

Miguel blinks.

“Oh,” he says, clearly startled. “Okay, that’s… Okay.”

“Can I…” Whiskey licks his lips. “Can I close the door?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

Quickly, Whiskey crosses the room and closes the door. Then he turns around. Miguel sits down in the space Whiskey just vacated, his expression a little confused.

The moment has passed.

Whiskey pulls out his desk chair and sinks down into it.

“I’m sorry,” he adds, even though he’s not sure what good it’ll do. Still, it’s the truth. “I’m so sorry that I’m not… That we can’t just-”

“No. Stop.” Miguel’s tone is firm. “You’ve done nothing wrong. Obviously, you’re not required to be out. It’s hardly mandatory.”

“It would make things easier,” Whiskey argues weakly.

“Maybe, yeah.” Miguel shrugs. He smiles a little. “This actually explains so much.”

“I’m so sorry,” Whiskey repeats, then continues before Miguel can protest again. “Are you, uh. Are you out?”

“Yeah. I came out at the end of last semester.” Miguel shrugs again. “I’m the only one on the water polo team, but they’ve all been very cool about it. Maybe not quite as cool as your team, but that’s kind of asking for a lot, isn’t it?”

“Samwell Men’s Hockey is a special place,” Whiskey agrees. It doesn’t make him feel any less guilty. “I’m just… I don’t know, if…”

Whiskey trails off. He’s not even sure what he’s trying to say.

“Okay,” Miguel says calmly. He tilts his head, his expression shifting into something a little less hesitant. “So.”

There’s something in his tone that Whiskey can’t quite place. He’s never been so confused by a single syllable, before.

“So,” Miguel repeats, a little more firmly. “Does this mean kissing’s off the table, or…?”

Whiskey stares at him.

“No,” he says, at least five seconds too late. “No, that’s… You still want to?”

“Uh, yes?” Miguel grins sheepishly. “I mean, only if you do, too. No pressure. We can just chill, or whatever."

“Um.” Whiskey licks his lips. “No, I’m… I’d actually really like that.”

Miguel's grin widens, just a bit.

Then he gets up, and quickly makes his way over.

ch. 14

#check please #omgcheckplease #omgcp #connor whisk #OC: Miguel #whiskey x oc #romance #nurseydex #Pippin the scone #or well he kind of goes by Pips now #but the tag is what it is #hockey #and pie #that's it that's the comic #dance with somebody #fanfiction #evie writes

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charlieknighte · 4 years ago

Text

un jour tu t’en voudras - part 1

Ethan Hitchcock/Maelgwyn

Modern AU - University AU - Fake/Pretend Relationship - Pining - Hurt/Comfort but like significantly more hurt than comfort - french people being terrible

13,060 words

content warnings: terminal illness, drunkenness and smoking, unhealthy family dynamics

For three hundred dollars, Ethan Hitchcock will attend your family's holiday event posing as your shitty art school boyfriend and do everything in his power to wreck the night. Maelgwyn's getting tired of Thanksgiving.

(Featuring art from my dear friend Matt Prairiecryptid!)

For once in his life, Maelgwyn is excited to see Thanksgiving go to shit.

Nausea always creeps up on him as he moves towards a family gathering, but he’s distracting himself with schadenfreudian thoughts of how much of the night’s chaos and strife is going to be his responsibility this time. They’re going to hate the boy he’s bringing on his arm so goddamn much. Ethan has taken it upon himself to sound like even more of an egregious Quebecois douchebag than usual, like he's cramming a handful of extra vowels into every single word. It would bother Maelgwyn too if it wasn’t a result of an evening back home spent excitedly brainstorming ways to make him insufferable. It’s all Ethan can do to make himself as disheveled and douchey as possible. Maelgwyn’s paying a pretty penny for him to antagonize his parents, after all.

The Hitchcocks rarely advertise their services through anything but word of mouth anymore. Exam cheatsheets, less than legal party supplies, forged doctors’ notes, winning Roll Up The Rim cups—everyone around campus knows there’s not much they can’t get for you if you’re paying. Their acting services don’t come all that cheap, either, but once in a blue moon someone needs to make an ex jealous or fake a family emergency. Maelgwyn had come to them with his dilemma half expecting to be turned down, but they’d just nodded knowingly and named their prices as if they’d performed this particular service a dozen times before.

So now Ethan’s here in Louisiana with him, blowing cotton candy-flavored clouds into the evening sky as they walk through pretty polished suburbs on their way to Maelgwyn’s grandfather’s house. He didn’t come cheap, even if they gave him a discount for a year of friendship and for the fact that they know how much shit his parents piled on him. Still, Maelgwyn is relieved he’s here. The thought of affronting his family again is much less dread-inducing with the knowledge that he’ll have backup. Ethan is a good friend to have—he’d endeared himself to Maelgwyn mostly by sleeping through the film classes they’d had together and later begging to study with him, then slyly turning their study sessions into outings with his friends. It was one of the reasons Maelgwyn had finally broken out of the lonely shell he’d hidden in through his first year at university.

He can work with him, he knows that much. He just wishes they’d had more time to prepare a plan for the night. Maelgwyn clears his throat. “So, we’re starting off on too good of a footing already. My parents are way too happy to hear I’m bringing home a boy.”

Ethan tucks away his vape and gives him a sideways look. “Aren’t you bi?”

“Yeah, well… I rode out making them think I was straight as long as I could. It pissed my dads off thinking I wouldn’t even consider experimenting.” Maelgwyn pulls a face. “Samot wanted to throw me a coming out party.”

Ethan snorts. “Too much acceptance is really an unusual complaint to have.”

“I know, I know.” Maelgwyn lets the matter slide. It’s a petty thing to bring up, and really the least of his worries when it comes to his parents. “Anyway, you’re also going to get brownie points with Samot right off the bat for being, y’know… good-looking.”

Ethan raises his eyebrows at him and gestures at himself. His Habs jersey and ripped jeans are wildly inappropriate for a dinner party, and he’d purposefully smudged his eyeliner at Maelgwyn’s request. His earrings are even mismatched. “Am I, though?” he says, skeptical.

“I mean your face. You’re not ugly.”

“Oh.” Ethan puts a fist under his chin and pouts at him. “Well, that’s all I get? I’m not ugly?”

Maelgwyn sighs good-humoredly. “Yeah, yeah, you’re pretty.”

Ethan splits into a grin, having gotten what he wanted out of him, and puts a spring into his step. Maelgwyn shoves his shoulder fondly. “Pretty fuckin’ annoying.”

“ Oh! ” Ethan stumbles and clutches his chest. “Is that any way to speak to your beloved? You wound me, mon cher .”

Maelgwyn laughs despite the strange feeling creeping into his chest. He really wishes they’d had a chance to rehearse. Hearing Ethan refer to him so affectionately is strange. Something occurs to him. “Oh, shit. Um, one more thing. My parents are pretty PDA, so we’ll probably have to…

“Match their expectations so they don’t assume your relationship is crashing and burning?”

“Good way to put it.” Ethan really has done this before. Maelgwyn’s not sure how to feel about that.

Ethan’s hand hovers by his waist. “Can I, then?”

“Sure.” Maelgwyn lets him put his arm around him and tries to adjust to being held as he walks. It’s not that foreign of a feeling. He’s had to endure the Hitchcocks’ drunken snuggling enough to not be fazed by them being touchy-feely when sober. Still, people don’t usually touch him here. He feels like he’s being flirted with by a spineless frat boy at a party.

As they near the house, Maelgwyn finds himself nervously hoping he knows enough about Ethan for their false relationship to appear plausible. He knows that Ethan’s the cheery, personable one in relation to his brother, and that his general knowledge of the world is extremely hit or miss. He knows he’s kind enough to once have comforted Maelgwyn as he heaved his guts out in the bathroom of a frat party, and that he lacks enough common sense to have been found passed out in the bushes himself twenty minutes later. Maelgwyn doesn’t know shit about his life before university, but he figures Ethan will fill in the gaps if he needs to. He’s resourceful like that. Spirits buoyed again, he turns them onto the driveway leading up to the house.

Samol’s mansion is deceptively quaint, vines creeping over its two-story columns and cheerful flowerboxes and porch swings decorating the wrap-around deck. You would imagine it had been purchased for a pittance and passed down through generations. In reality, the house had been built as a wedding gift a few years before Maelgwyn was born, and the charming plant life and Victorian-era aesthetic was a result of careful curation. Maelgwyn still doesn’t know if he’s relieved or resentful over his parents giving it up.

American Thanksgiving has always been Samol's domain, which Maelgwyn is constantly grateful for. He couldn't survive his parents' dinner party posturing again after having to endure it once in October. He doesn’t think Ethan could survive a polite evening in their mansion without snapping either, based on the three-room shithole apartment the Hitchcocks share. It might have inspired him to ask for more money too, which Maelgwyn couldn’t afford without going through the mortification of asking his parents. It’s much better to be here, where their wealth is plausibly deniable. Maelgwyn knocks on the door and braces himself.

There’s a distant hubbub deep within the house as his family politely argues over who’s going to answer. Ethan pops some gum and starts chewing obnoxiously, getting on Maelgwyn’s already frayed nerves—but he supposes that’s the point. Finally, a flash of blond hair approaches through the frosted glass on the door. Samot swings it open, flashing his campaign-trail grin. Maelgwyn’s excitement for his parents to balk at his disheveled, offensively casual boyfriend starts to wane a little as he tries to estimate how much Mayor Samot’s qipao of black silk and golden gilding must’ve cost the taxpayers of Toronto. His hair is in an elegant updo that he must’ve paid an equally opulent amount for.

“Maelgwyn!” Samot says, delighted as if he had no idea that his own son would be attending the family dinner he’s pressured into year after year. He steps out and wraps him up in a perfumey hug, earrings tinkling. Maelgwyn pats his back to participate without having to hug him back. “Oh, it’s so good to see you,” Samot effuses, stepping back. “Come in, come in. Everyone’s been asking after you, sweetheart.”

Maelgwyn lets himself be shuffled into Samol’s nicely decorated if overly floral foyer. It’s pointless to fight Samot when he’s turned into an overwhelming cloud of energy and charm in his determination to do something. Ethan steps in after them, and Samot looks to him like an apex predator zeroing in on movement. His smile gets a little wider, showing more of his painfully white teeth. “You must be Ethan.”

“Yeah. Hi.” Ethan takes one hand out of his pocket and shakes his hand. Samot’s sharp smile dulls a little as he takes in his outfit. Still, the fact that it stays on his face instead of dropping away entirely means Maelgwyn was right to say Ethan would pass his standards for appearance. He feels a twinge of annoyance.

An unfavorable twinge passes across Ethan’s face too as Samot’s deceptively slender fingers crush his hand. “Samot,” he says, smile back up to its maximum brightness. “Charmed, I’m sure.” Maelgwyn wishes his parents didn’t feel the need to establish authority over every single person they meet, but then again he wishes a lot of things about his parents. Every interaction with them is a fucked-up give and take exchange mired in the complicated politics of their family.

There are heavy steps behind him, and his heart sinks. He turns unwillingly. Samothes is making his way down the hall with a drink in one hand, as tall and stern and regal and terrifying as he was when Maelgwyn last saw him. That was some time ago. The golden embroidery down the chest of his sherwani matches the pattern on Samot’s qipao, and Maelgwyn has to resist rolling his eyes. He steps out to meet him, wanting to get it over with. “Hi, dad,” he says, and doesn’t deign to add anything else.

“Glad you could come,” Samothes says, hesitating for a nearly imperceptible moment before he pats Maelgwyn’s shoulder heavily. His gaze goes past him and visibly grows darker. He leans in and asks under his breath, “What is this?” As if Maelgwyn’s brought home a stray dog he doesn’t approve of.

“This is my boyfriend.” Maelgwyn turns so he doesn’t have to interact with him further and marches over to take Ethan’s arm firmly and interrupt whatever invasive questions Samot was trying to wheedle him into answering. Samot smiles innocently. Samothes comes to put an arm around his husband’s waist, frowning openly at Ethan. Maelgwyn can watch him doing Ethan’s job for him and making a dozen unfavorable assumptions about him already.

Ethan raises his chin at him in greeting and snaps his gum. “What’s good?” he asks. He’s discreetly wringing out his hand from Samot’s handshake.

“This is Ethan, dearest,” Samot says, leaning into his husband and drawing himself up to his full height to rest his head on his shoulder. His eyes are getting narrower and narrower as Ethan’s dreadfully inappropriate outfit and lack of manners already start to outweigh his pretty face.

“Ethan,” Samothes says, and doesn’t make any attempt to welcome him. Ethan puts out his hand, realizes there isn’t a handshake waiting, fumbles and puts it down. Maelgwyn can see him start to take on a tinge of genuine nervousness. He feels like he should’ve warned Ethan in some way, but there’s really not much more he could’ve done after telling him my parents are politicians. Samothes, who relishes in his position as senator of Ontario largely because of his lack of contact with the public, is really the worst one to have to impress.

Then again, Ethan isn’t really here to impress. “Um, Samothes, I guess?” he says like he’s only half-interested, getting even more insufferable about his gum-chewing.

“Mm,” Samothes grunts, still glaring at him. Maelgwyn imagines how terrifying his parents must seem from Ethan’s point of view, tall and beautiful and hostile in that courtly, dismissive manner of theirs. Making them hate him is going to be easier than he thought.

“Let’s not keep everyone waiting, yes?” Samot says, nudging his husband and sweeping them back off to the foyer. He throws Maelgwyn a look that says they’re going to talk about Ethan’s outfit later. Maelgwyn can’t wait.

He kicks off his shoes and shrugs off his coat, throwing it over the rungs of the staircase to the second floor for lack of available racks. “Well, that was hostile,” Ethan remarks, following Maelgwyn’s lead with noticeably less care. “They’re very—”

"Don't joke about how hot my parents are,” Maelgwyn snaps.

Ethan raises his eyebrows at him. "I didn't say anything."

"I know. I’m just saying. I didn’t want to tell you in advance and hear a million dumb jokes from you and Edmund."

"They made a good-looking kid. I didn't really need a warning."

"You can’t deflect from calling my parents hot by flirting with me. That just makes it worse . " Maelgwyn jabs a finger at him accusingly, and Ethan raises his hands.

"I didn't say anything ,” he insists.

Maelgwyn sighs and leads him through the dim foyer and into the bright, bustling living room. The adults are dressed as if they’re attending a formal gala. Adults—Malegwyn hates that he still calls them that unconsciously. They throw a few judgemental glances at Ethan out of their cloud of cocktail dresses and tailored suits. Ethan’s jersey had set him back a few hundred bucks, but no one here would find that an exorbitant sum. “Well,” says Ethan, insolently refusing to be intimidated, “should we make the rounds?”

“Yeah,” Maelgwyn says, though he’s reluctant. He can see his grandfather in his usual rocking chair, swimming in a stark white dress shirt that used to fit him perfectly. He’s laughing at something his sister is saying. Maelgwyn makes a beeline for him, pulling Ethan along by the arm.

Samol catches sight of him and eases himself up, smile so wide and genuine it crinkles the corners of his eyes. He holds out his arms for a hug, and Maelgwyn leans into him much more gladly than Samot. “Hey, grandpa.” He puts his arms around him and feels a moment of protectiveness at just how frail he is.

“It’s been far too long. I hope they’re treating you well up north.” Samol steps back and grins over his shoulder. “And this must be the famous Ethan.”

“Yeah, hi,” says Ethan, putting out a hand. Samol ignores it and pulls him into a hug, too. Surprise quickly flashes across Ethan’s face, and then he hugs him back politely.

“Good to meet you. I have to say,” Samol says, pulling away, “we haven’t heard all that much about you, son. I’m looking forward to getting to know just who you are.” He smiles, easy and kind. Still, there’s an edge to the statement that Maelgwyn doesn’t quite understand.

“Um, you too,” Ethan says. He can’t bring himself to be rude to Samol, as most people can’t, but he looks slightly discomforted by the idea that people have been wondering about him. Maelgwyn doesn’t blame him when it’s these people.

Samol holds out a hand to the rest of his family. “This is my sister Severea. Her partner Galenica. My… brother of sorts, Tristero.” Severea and Galenica glitter as always, and Tristero’s in his signature jet black suit. They give Ethan smiles in varying shades of politeness as he shakes their hands in turn.

"Pleasure," he says, greatly enjoying his aggressive Quebecois shtick. Tristero narrows his eyes. His handshake looks painful.

"Likewise," he says, with his perfect Parisian lilt. Maelgwyn can see the exact moment Ethan stops enjoying himself. Tristero snatches away his hand like Ethan has the plague and turns to speak to Severea in mainland French, abruptly cutting him out of the social circle.

Ethan stands there for a moment, taking furious breaths, and then he turns around to round on Maelgwyn. "You didn't tell me you were French."

"All sorts,” says Maelgwyn. “I said we were all sorts."

Ethan puts his hands over his face and mutters a long string of curse words that contains tabarnak no less than four times. Some of Maelgwyn’s family members look at him strangely, but none of them really grasp what he’s saying. “We’re in Louisiana,” Maelgwyn reminds him. “What did you expect?”

Ethan puts his hands down, but he’s still sulking. “Your family has a hell of a grip,” he mumbles.

“Yeah, it’s from all the political grandstanding.” Maelgwyn puts an arm around his shoulders and turns him away from the adults’ corner of the room and its dozens of empty martini glasses. “You wanna meet my cousins?”

Ethan nods miserably and lets himself be led over to where the Tristé siblings are sprawling across the couches texting. Adelaide is draped across the length of one couch, head propped on her arm, and Angelo is aggressively manspreading at the other end to try to win back some space. They aren’t dressed extravagantly, but they still drip in brand names and good taste and organic locally-sourced handpicked vegan textiles.

Angelo rolls off the couch and hops up to give Maelgwyn that shining grin that he shares with his father and hates so much. “Bro,” he says, pulling him into a hug and slapping his back, “where’ve you been? Tristero’s made me go on a humblebrag parade around the room, like, five times. It’s your turn, Oscars boy.”

“Oh, god, I hope not.” Angelo’s been out of the house much longer than Maelgwyn has, but Maelgwyn knows he resents his father treating him like a child at these gatherings as much as he does. He punches Angelo’s shoulder amicably. “Nice to see you.”

“This your boyfriend?”

“Yeah—yeah. Uh, Ethan.”

Ethan jolts to attention and steps in to slap Angelo’s hand. “Hey,” he says, a shade more friendly than he was with most of the family. He seems relieved not to have to shake another hand. Trusting Angelo to be polite unsupervised, Maelgwyn turns his attention to the other Tristé sibling.

“Hey, Adie,” he says, leaning down to give her a one-armed hug. “You guys look great.”

Adelaide squeezes his shoulders. “And your boyfriend looks terrible. You’re trying to piss off Samot, aren’t you?” Maelgwyn gives her a pleading look, and she raises her hands. “My lips are sealed. Enjoy whichever game you’re playing.”

Maelgwyn breathes a sigh of relief and drops onto the couch across from her. He appreciates that the Tristés consider him to be enough of an ally in the political landscape of their family that they’ll call him out on his shit instead of pretending to fall for it. He and Ethan chat with them during the long lull before Samol announces dinner is served. Maelgwyn mostly sticks to small talk and half-listens to Ethan enthusing about his fencing team with Angelo. It’s completely unsurprising that they get along well. He just wishes he hadn't given Ethan free license to exaggerate his accent. It's already getting grating.

It’s not even halfway into the night, and Maelgwyn’s weary and itchy and uncomfortably warm. He wishes desperately he could be home, not for the first time and not for the last. At some point Ethan leans over and asks if he can put an arm around his waist again. It helps to have some time to parse the feeling of Ethan’s arm around him in a place he usually hesitates to let people touch. It’s not so bad once he gets used to it.

Finally, Samol comes back from checking on his food and announces that dinner is served. The slow shuffle to the dining room starts, and Maelgwyn endures nearly ten more minutes of laughter and milling about and seats being scraped back and forth. Ethan’s arm around him starts being less of a touch he’s tolerating and more of a grounding sensation. Finally, the seating arrangement is established, with Maelgwyn sitting as far from Samothes as he possibly can and ending up by Samol, who’s taken up the other head of the table. His grandfather smiles at him for a moment before they say grace, eyes merry and twinkling between wrinkled lids. Maelgwyn can’t help but smile back.

Samothes settles himself in his seat with gravitas, looking gravely out over candlesticks and seasonal decorations and heaping plates of Louisiana home cooking. "Dear lord," he begins, projecting his booming voice. There’s a flutter as hands are clasped and eyes are closed. "Thank you for this food. Bless the hands that prepared it. Bless it to our use and us to your service—"

Ethan suddenly shoves back his chair with a loud noise, makes sure people are looking as he spits his gum into his hand, and gets up to throw it out in the kitchen. The table sits in stony silence until he returns. Maelgwyn desperately holds in laughter. When Ethan returns, Samothes says in a low, dangerous voice, "Would you like to finish our grace, Ethan?"

He freezes. "Me?"

"The lord seems to have moved your spirit."

There's a nervous chuckle around the table. Ethan's squirms, waiting to see if it's a joke that will blow over. It isn't. He opens his mouth and hesitates. As if someone else is saying it for him, he mumbles distantly, "And help us to give you glory each day through Jesus Christ our lord."

An amen goes around the table, and dinner properly begins. Samothes looks grimly pleased. Ethan rips apart a dinner roll violently. Maelgwyn briefly worries that Samothes has genuinely upset him, but Ethan's anger seems to evaporate a moment too quickly. Or maybe he’s imagined it. It’s never easy to tell what Ethan’s thinking. Too many of his actions are the result of one facade or another.

Either way, Ethan eventually pulls himself up from his childish slouch to serve himself like everyone else. He goes for his dinner fork, hesitates and purposefully picks up his dessert fork instead. Samot goes to say something, seems to think better of it and just purses his lips. Maelgwyn has always noted that Ethan has strangely impeccable table manners when he wants to, and he’s thrilled that he’s deciding to use his knowledge of etiquette for evil. He picks up his own dinner fork, because to do otherwise would be a little too suspicious, and digs into his food enthusiastically. Samol’s jambalaya has often been the only thing getting him through this fucking holiday.

"So, Ethan," Samol begins, smiling warmly, "where do you spend your Thanksgivings when my grandson isn't dragging you out to my neck of the woods?"

Ethan gives him a small, polite smile. Samol is too hospitable for anyone to stay standoffish when speaking to him. "At friends', with my brother." To tell the truth, Maelgwyn is tremendously envious of the friendsgiving he’s constantly missing out on. For Thanksgiving to be a pleasant night and not a drawn-out affair of family drama and faux-politeness would be a dream.

"Not with family?" Samot asks from across the table, masking judgement with concerned curiosity.

Ethan snorts. “Wouldn't know where to find them for it, and wouldn’t care to see them." They have the opposite problem, really. Maelgwyn has too much family, and Ethan has next to none. Ethan has never seemed to give much of a shit about it, which Maelgwyn envies tremendously. He wishes with all his heart and soul that what his family was doing didn’t bother or affect him.

Samot takes a slow sip of wine. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that.” His eyes are intense over his glass as he watches Ethan rub at his eye, purposefully smearing his eyeliner a little further.

Ethan shrugs and shovels more shrimp in his mouth. Samothes gives him a narrow-eyed, skeptical look Maelgwyn’s learned to fear, but Ethan seems completely unfazed by it. “This is great,” he says as an aside to Samol, mouth is full of shrimp. Samol smiles brightly, and Samothes moves on, having recognized that Ethan is outplaying him by winning his father’s favor. The strain between them tightens a few fractions more.

“ Puis-je avoir du sel? ” Tristero says, gesturing to the salt shaker at Ethan’s elbow.

“ Ouais, ” says Ethan, leaning unnecessarily hard into the a to make it absurdly clear that he isn’t saying a proper oui. He reaches out and drops it into Tristero’s hand. Tristero’s eyes widen as if horribly offended, and he straightens his back self-righteously. Maelgwyn braces himself for one of his insufferable speeches on table etiquette.

“ Il ne faut pas passer le sel de la main à la main, ” says Tristero, growing steadily more hostile with each word. “It should be set down on the table in front of your neighbor so they can pick it up for themselves. I just thought I should let you know, seeing as they don’t seem to teach etiquette up in your country.”

“Oh,” Ethan says, reaching the point of hostility much faster. “I see. Well, let me put this in a way you’ll understand, since there seem to be so many cultural stumbling blocks between us. Je m'en fous.”

The table quiets slightly, everyone finally able to understand Ethan’s profanity (except for Samothes, who keeps eating his rice in blissful ignorance). Maelgwyn and the Tristés try to suppress snickers and smiles. Samot goes to snap at Ethan, finds himself in the position of not wanting to discipline a stranger, and instead says in exasperation, “Maelgwyn!”

Maelgwyn tries to stop smiling and look appropriately serious, but is only halfway successful. “Ethan,” he says, touching his arm.

“He started it,” Ethan says sulkily.

“I know, babe.” Maelgwyn finds himself rubbing Ethan’s shoulder and feels foolish both for acting like his father and for using a term of endearment for the first time. He should’ve rehearsed it earlier, as Ethan had. He drops his arm and goes back to his food, hoping he isn’t red in the face. Samot looks disappointed in him for taking Ethan’s side, but he doesn’t instigate the matter further.

“Well, it was always said that passing salt de la main a la main would cause a quarrel,” says Samol good-humoredly. There’s some reluctant chuckling around the table. The matter having been smoothed out enough to ignore, they continue picking at their plates. Still, there’s a considerable strain underpinning the evening. Ethan and Tristero keep trading blows, though neither escalate as far as the spat over the saltshaker. A steady, dull pain grows in Maelgwyn’s chest, and he starts desperately avoiding speaking with his parents. He almost thinks he’s home free when Samothes abruptly clears his throat and asks, "How are your films going, Maelgwyn?"

Maelgwyn swallows. "We don't really put out anything till third year, dad."

It’s not technically true, but he doesn't feel like explaining the intricacies of his projects to his father and watching his eyes glaze over. He waits for a followup question and gets none. Samot touches Samothes's arm, making it clear to Maelgwyn that he told him to ask, and then he speaks up instead. "What about you, Ethan? What do you study?"

“Performing arts,” Ethan says, sounding appropriately contemptuous and uninterested in regular human interaction for someone of his major. Maelgwyn can see Samothes’s face completely drain of hope that he had brought someone normal home. Samot progresses to rubbing his arm comfortingly. It’s awfully early in the evening for him to be doing that, which is a good sign.

“I see,” Samot says, “and do you know what you plan to do with your degree?”

“Perform art,” Ethan says flatly. There’s a chuckle around the table, mostly from the Tristé siblings and Samol. Ethan splits into a shitty grin. “I’m joking. You can’t do shit with an arts degree. It’s join the army or marry rich.”

The table finds this less entertaining. Samot’s hand goes still on his husband’s arm, and Maelgwyn can see him digging in his nails. Ethan sips his drink peacefully like he was just making pleasant conversation and as if Samothes isn’t staring daggers at him less than a day into knowing him. Maelgwyn finds himself wishing he hadn’t been thrown under the bus by association, but he still has to respect the balls Ethan has to have to act so unbothered by his father’s ire.

Samot lets out a fake, tentative laugh, pretending this is a joke to give him an opportunity to backpedal. Maelgwyn realizes he might’ve had too much wine. “But you… do have goals other than that.”

“Well, marry rich. I already said that.”

“That’s not…” Samot sighs. “Maelgwyn’s going to make films. You haven’t considered acting in them?”

“Sure.” Ethan drops his cutlery and pushes back his chair with a harsh scraping noise. “I mean, in case you haven’t noticed, you seem to be doing well enough for yourselves to look down your noses at me. I’m sure you’ll bribe someone to give your son a few dozen mil, right?” Samot’s mouth drops open in indignation. Ethan sits back, gesturing around at the dining room in all its faux-antique charm. He’s smiling one of his most horrible smiles. “Hell, I’m sure some portion of all this is willed to Maelgwyn, and your tête de la famille will keel over soon enough, won’t he?”

If Ethan’s previous outburst had quieted the table, this one completely kills all activity around it, forks clattering still and jaws pausing mid-chew. The silence is murderous. Adelaide chokes on something politely and brings a hand to her mouth. Samot sits back with his wine, staring at Ethan with open, intense malice for the first time in the night.

Samothes holds his knife like he wants to slice Ethan open with it. “What did you say?” he says, voice low and dangerous. It’s redundant. Everyone knows what he said. Ethan blinks at him.

“I said you’re doing well enough for—”

“No, you know what I mean. How dare you?”

Ethan slides back down, looking less confused than pissed off now. Maelgwyn tries to say something, but all that comes out is a squeak. It’s still enough to get Samothes’s attention, and he fixes him with his awful stare instead of Ethan. “How do you manage to be with someone like this? How could you trust him enough to tell him?”

Maelgwyn wants to disappear. He can’t even slink down in his seat, he’s so frozen with fear. The table hovers in its silence, no one daring to breathe. Samothes’s directed malice fades to an aimless fury. “You didn’t tell him,” he says quietly. It’s more of an accusation than a question. Maelgwyn shakes his head wordlessly. He feels like he was just plunged under six feet of water. Samothes sighs and looks to Samot. “Tell your son—”

“ My son?” Samot snaps, sitting forward again and sloshing wine onto the tablecloth in his indignance. Maelgwyn stares down at his plate and pushes around some rice, chewing mechanically without tasting his food.

“Aw, don’t kick up such a fuss,” Samol tries to say, but he’s spoken over immediately.

“I’m sorry, what was I not told?” Ethan says, something hostile about his tone even though Maelgwyn silently begs him to stay soft. He might’ve been pushed too far.

The table becomes abruptly quiet again. Samot and Samothes sit looking at each other, not knowing how to break the news. They’ve never known how to talk about it. It’s like the mere mention of it has plunged them back into grief as fresh as the day the news was first broken to them.

“It’s stage four,” Samol says softly. Ethan blinks at him, opens his mouth to ask a dumb question, and then understands and slowly melts into horror.

Samothes pushes his chair back with a horrible screech and gives Maelgwyn a look before leaving for the kitchen. The blame is shifted to him as always. Maelgwyn didn't do enough, didn’t behave properly enough, wasn't enough. He should’ve better informed Ethan about his family’s history, and yet he should never have brought it up—or brought him home—to begin with. Tristero stands up in a huff and completely leaves the room, slamming the door to the back porch. Angelo and Adelaide jump up to go after him, giving Maelgwyn looks of apology and pity. Severea regards her brother with a deep sadness, and she and her partner rise and follow them out more slowly. The festively decorated table suddenly seems ridiculous and inappropriate in the sober atmosphere. Maelgwyn feels like slinking under it, pressing his head into a corner and hiding for the rest of the night. He can hear Samothes washing dishes aggressively, trying to regain some sense of control over the world. The way he bangs each dish brings Maelgwyn back to the arguments that used to echo through this house in his childhood, and how badly he would flinch at every little noise.

Samot rises from the table, still fixing Ethan with an openly malicious look. He walks around the table slowly, scaring Maelgwyn more with each step. "You've got a little something," he says, and then hauls Ethan up by the scruff of his neck like a kitten and scrubs vigorously at the corner of his eye. He drops him just as quickly, looking furiously satisfied, and storms off to the kitchen after his husband. Ethan sits there, blinking and stunned. When he looks at Maelgwyn questioningly, he can see that Samot had wiped off the eyeliner he's been so insistently smudging towards his temple.

It almost makes Maelgwyn laugh despite everything, and then the hissing whispered argument beginning in the kitchen reaches him and all mirth he could’ve summoned evacuates his body abruptly. He took this too far. He knows that. He sinks down in his chair, every harsh consonant he can hear hitting him in the stomach like a blow. There’s nothing he can do. There never has been.

He, Ethan and Samol are the only ones left at the table. "I'm sorry," Ethan says, soft and genuinely regretful.

"It's alright, son. You didn’t know." Samol gets up and claps him on the shoulder. Maelgwyn watches Ethan re-evaluate how frail he is, how much trouble he has getting himself upright. For a moment Maelgwyn wants to burst into tears and rest his head against his grandfather’s bony shoulder and tell him everything, lay out their whole horrible scheme and try to explain why he thought it was a good idea.

He remembers confessing the fear and unease of his home life to Samol when he’d been a child in the midst of his parents’ impending separation, and the relief of Samol telling him he’d take care of it and letting him sit in his Marlboro-scented car as he walked into the house to chew his fathers out. Maelgwyn aches for the same sort of relief, but he still can’t bring himself to speak. He watches Samol make his way across to the door out to the back porch and rest his hand on the handle. “I’ll smooth things over,” he says in his effortlessly comforting manner, and steps out.

Maelgwyn feels a fraction better, but only that much. Even though there's no one left at the table, he finishes his dinner silently. Ethan sits there for a few more moments, then follows suit. He seems unsure of what to say.

“I didn’t think it would come up,” Maelgwyn says when he can be verbal again. It feels like a woefully inadequate excuse. Ethan looks up at him from his dish. He doesn’t seem angry with him, for which Maelgwyn is awfully grateful.

“I guess it worked in our favor,” he says, but he sounds unsure. He pushes his food around a little and then looks up again, eyes anxious. “I am sorry.”

“Don’t—Don’t worry about it.” Maelgwyn doesn’t want to talk about this anymore. He stabs a piece of shrimp a little too hard. It’s quiet for a few minutes as they finish their food. The argument keeps gaining traction in the kitchen, growing more and more heated. Samol is coughing outside. Something about the harshness of the sound makes something in Maelgwyn snap.

He gets up abruptly and slams open the door to the porch. It’s darker than he expected it to be, none of the porch lights on and the suburbs glittering in the moonlight in the distance. Samol is sitting on the edge of one of the porch swings, a lit cigarette between his fingers as he rests his hand on his knee. The Tristé siblings lounge on another of the benches, looking sullen. Their father leans against the railing at the edge of the deck. They all blink at Maelgwyn’s sudden, violent entrance.

"You're not supposed to smoke anymore,” Maelgwyn snaps at his grandfather.

"Maelgwyn," Tristero says warningly, but Samol waves at him and goes to stub out his cigarette.

"Naw, he's right. C’mon, Tristé, ain’t there been enough unpleasantness tonight?” Tristero glowers at Maelgwyn, but relents. He shoots an even dirtier look over Maelgwyn’s shoulder as the door opens. Ethan steps up beside Maelgwyn and puts a hand on the small of his back. Maelgwyn isn’t sure if it’s supposed to be a comforting touch or just a part of the act, but it makes him feel better to have someone at his back.

Tristero takes a step towards the staircase that leads down to the backyard as if Ethan’s very presence disgusts him. Ethan takes bold steps out to meet him, hand outstretched. "It's was good to meet you.” Tristero regards him with a moment of wary disdain, trying to figure out what he's playing at, before he clasps it.

"Have a good rest of your night," he says, enunciating his accent pointedly. The moment he lets go and steps away, Ethan jams his hand in his pocket like he wants to get rid of the feeling of touching him. Maelgwyn appreciates his dedication to his job, even if the rivalry he’s trying to embroil himself in might be a little bigger than his paygrade.

Tristero descends the stairs and walks off across the lawn into the dark. Galenica and Severea wait for him by a streetlight. Samol stays behind, rocking back and forth on his porch swing quietly. Maelgwyn wonders if he hates the family falling apart because of him as much as he does. “Where’s everyone going?” he asks Samol. All the venom has gone out of his voice, and he sounds small and tired.

“Just to take a breather,” Samol says evenly. Maelgwyn wouldn’t be surprised if he was lying to spare his nerves. His grandfather’s guitar is leaning against one of his rocking chairs, and Samol hobbles across to sit in it and pick up a quiet tune. Even if it doesn’t quite match the situation, it’s soothing. Maelgwyn crawls onto the porch swing he just vacated and sways back and forth miserably.

(Read part 2 here)

#friends at the table #marielda #ethan hitchcock #maelgwyn #maelethan

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ghoultyrant · 4 years ago

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Craftworld Context stuff

I first got into 40k primarily via Dawn of War, the relevancy to this post being that I was initially not even aware Warhammer Fantasy was a thing at all. Furthermore, even when I did become aware of Warhammer Fantasy being a thing and in fact 40k is first and foremost Warhammer In Space, I wasn't terribly interested in digging into it, as the things I found most striking about 40k had no chance of being replicated in a more traditional fantasy context.

More recently, however, Total War: Warhammer caused me to become fairly significantly familiar with Warhammer Fantasy as a setting. (Among other points, the Total War framework made certain aspects of the setting really obvious from right off the bat, like that Warhammer Fantasy is very directly fantasticalizing the real world, including much of the geography paralleling reality and assorted political entities being Real Nation But Wacky Fantasy Version)

This has, in turn, caused me to see what the root cause of an element in 40k that's bothered me basically the whole time: the way Craftworld Eldar tend to be written by secondary and tertiary materials. (ie novels, video games, fanfic, etc; basically anything that isn't a Codex)

See, I've always seen people broadly describe Craftworld Eldar as High Elves In Space, in the same way they describe Orks as Orcs/Greenskins In Space, or Tyranids as Lizardmen In Space. (And Crossed With The Starship Troopers Bugs) Before I had relatively direct exposure to Warhammer Fantasy lore, this seemed reasonably natural and logical, and the handful of times I bothered to look up factoids about the High Elves this seemed to be born out, such as how High Elves and Craftworld Eldar both have much of their fighting force as essentially reservists rather than professional soldiers. This, in turn, made it difficult to pin down exactly why it bothered me that Craftworld Eldar tended to be written as, well, fairly close to High Elves. (Or more precisely as a very specific subset of High Elves, but that's a whole other thing)

With more direct, significant exposure to Warhammer Fantasy, it's become obvious to me that this is... more or less completely missing the point, in a manner that suggests to me that the majority of people writing Craftworld Eldar are either entirely unfamiliar with Warhammer Fantasy or are technically familiar with the relevant bits but completely failed to contextualize the implications of drawing these connections to Craftworld Eldar.

First of all, the Craftworld concept is, itself, Black Arks In Space. That's a Dark Elf-proprietary concept, note, not a High Elf one, and even more glaring is that Eldar Corsairs are a thing, using the same terminology as Black Ark Corsairs and associated with Craftworld Eldar. This is some strong meta-signaling right there that Craftworld Eldar aren't High Elves In Space at all, so I'm genuinely baffled why I've never seen it pointed out.

Second of all, Khaine. Playing Dawn of War and reading up on Eldar lore made him sound like the overall Eldar god of war, and when I saw references to him existing in Warhammer Fantasy as well they tended to also make it sound like he was the overall Elf god of war.

Um, no. Khaine is a god of murder. Like, that's not me going 'war is murder' or something, I mean that it's literally the case that Khaine is all about killing people in general. Killing in combat is an option, the one we see lore on most heavily, but that's because Warhammer Fantasy is a wargame, not because it's a particular focus of Khaine's.

Furthermore, he's one of the 'Cytharai'; in Warhammer Fantasy, Elven gods come in two sets, with the other being the Cadai. The Cadai are the Good Pantheon, worshipped by High Elves. The Cytharai are the Evil Pantheon, known to exist by High Elves but only openly worshipped by Dark Elves. (Also Wood Elves in later editions, but shhh)

Put another way, Khaine is an Elf Satan figure, literally an evil fiery god in charge of the underworld pantheon.

Warhammer 40k doesn't do anything to signal that its Khaine is particularly different from Fantasy's Khaine, either, and indeed explicitly retains major backstory moments of being a terrible person, like murdering a fellow god, blood eternally dripping from one hand as not-even-a-metaphor blood on his hands.

Which means Craftworld Eldar worshipping Khaine, using him as the basis of literally their entire warrior system, is a clear meta-signal that Craftworld Eldar approach war in a deeply concerning way, and is also consistent with the broader undertone of Craftworld Eldar codices that they are a people driven to desperation by their circumstances, which is to say they're doing terrible things because they feel they have no other choice.

This all makes blood sacrifice to summon Avatars of Khaine a pretty concerning thing to be part of Craftworld Eldar toolkit, but it gets even worse if you dig into the details. The 40k backstory for Avatars of Khaine is that back in the day Khaine got beat up so bad him and his sword -Widowmaker- exploded into a bazillion itty-bitty pieces, where a fragment is used as the basis of summoning an Avatar. Back in Warhammer Fantasy, Khaine's sword is an actual physical object within the setting that is credibly believed to be capable of destroying the world if drawn, and there's this whole thing where an Elf by the name of Aenarion wielded it for a bit back in the day so now his entire lineage is cursed for, apparently, eternity. So, uh, Craftworld Eldar periodically summon a literal murder god's avatar using, in part, his cursed sword of the apocalypse.

That's very metal, but it also makes it pretty clear Craftworld Eldar are not a good and gentle people who do their utmost to be moral or the like. They clearly have a distressing amount in common with Warhammer Fantasy's Dark Elves.

This kind of thing also puts a whole different spin on the Exodite Eldar really, really disliking Craftworld Eldar. I'd been given the impression, historically, that this was more like 'take your technology away from our Amish community'. Now I'm pretty sure it's more like 'The only reason we're not killing you Satan-worshippers on sight is because our people are already so few... but if you give me an excuse I'm getting my shotgun regardless.'

Notably, when you dig into the army lists themselves, the Craftworld Eldar-Dark Elf connection continues to exist. For example, Howling Banshees are basically Witch Elves In Space, in terms of female (-presenting, in 40k's case) melee berserkers worshipping Khaine. (Less blood-drinking and whatnot, admittedly) There's not a clearly equivalent unit on High Elf lists.

Third of all, an element of Craftworld Eldar that tends to be downplayed or ignored by secondary materials (Again, including fanfic) is that using Soulstones to run their war machines is considered to be an act of necromancy, basically calling the dead back from their slumber. Broadly speaking it makes sense to me this doesn't tend to get people villainizing Craftworld Eldar -it's viscerally less repellent than conventional necromancy, for starters- but Warhammer Fantasy is quite consistent that necromancy is Very Bad, and every time 40k deliberately invokes the comparison it's once again treated as Very Bad.

This is, of course, another example of Craftworld Eldar driven to terrible actions by how desperate they feel their situation is, which certainly sets a different tone than Dark Elves revelling in suffering for its own sake and all...

... but for one thing 'driven to desperation' is more a part of Dark Elf character than I usually see people acknowledge, with their lands being a miserable hellhole filled with monsters and not a lot of arable land and so on, among other issues.

More importantly, this ties fairly directly into my point about why I've long been frustrated by secondary materials depicting Craftworld Eldar: everything the codices tells us, explicitly and more implicitly via callbacks to Warhammer Fantasy, is that Craftworld Eldar are, as a collective people, driven to a dark edge by deep desperation, with an extra layer of miserable to the whole thing from the fact that they have to stoically control their emotions because if they vent about how much everything sucks this may literally get their soul eaten.

Which is thematically consistent with 40k as a whole! There's a reason 'grimdark' can be traced to 40k; it's supposed to be pretty widely a darker, more terrible place than Warhammer Fantasy.

Nonetheless, secondary materials are strangely prone to writing Craftworld Eldar as more like rich dilettantes, their lives secure and the most stressful thing they have to deal with being a feeling of aimlessness. Which. What?

Even when I’ve seen fanfic that hated Craftworld Eldar, they’ve stuck with Snooty Bored Dilettante Eldar!

It’s not like the bored dilettante angle makes for more interesting societies or characters...

#wh 40k #Craftworld Eldar

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imsarahcate · 4 years ago

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Good things: -I'm doing the thing and making the phone call(s) -I have food in the oven (stoffurs mac n cheese for the win) -I scooped -I got lots of Jack snuggles this morning when I went back to bed -My new wrist brace arrived and the ice pack is in the freezer to set.

Bad things: -Not 100% sold on the new brace. It doesn't have a support bar for the thumb and I don't know if that's going to make it less effective for me -Probably gonna be on hold for a while -Do NOT have the energy to go out and fax in paperwork -I think my recent bouts of nausea are both a good and bad thing. I think that the pain med switch IS helping. I can almost tell when the morning med wears off because I notice a drastic pain increase when it does. But the flip side of that (and the cause of the nausea) is that my baseline pain levels are SIGNIFICANTLY higher than they were.

I know I've talked before that a couple of years ago Dr. D and I both came to the conclusion that not only was my neuropathy not going away, but it was likely going to continue to get worse. It was one of the reasons he was so supportive of me getting a powerchair. But then, in general (unless I really overdid it), my pain stayed at a baseline. When I did push too much, I'd end up just completely wrecked- sick to my stomach, nauseated, sour stomach, dizzy. So I have a standing rx for zofran just in case.

. This past week I've had to take it almost every day, and more than a few times- multiple times during the day/night. Since before the snowstorm, I have noticed my pain has been a lot worse. I kept chalking it up to doing too much but the truth is- I really HAVEN'T been doing "too much."

And I don't really know what to do about it. I don't know that anything CAN be done about it. The fact of the matter is (and Dr. D has had to remind me of this on more than one occasion) pain meds (even at their most effective) will never stop the root cause of my pain. For me, best case scenario is that it stops me from noticing the pain my body is in to a degree so that I can ration my energy and activities and give myself some kind of life AROUND recovery times..But my neuropathy isn't fixable. It's not like... an anti-depressant which can actually HELP your brain with serotonin uptake. It doesn't have a real functional power over what's happening in my body. So the pain meds dull my awareness, but they don't keep my actual body from experiencing the pain and stress of the neuropathy itself.

At some point, (hopefully far far in the future) there will be a point when I have to choose .. pain management over driving. Independence over side-effects from pain meds. These are not choices I'm looking forward to.

To be honest, quarantine during the pandemic has been, in a small sense, practice for this. For the time when I will have to be much stingier with my activities and energy. It's one of the reasons I really really want to get back to getting the house totally in order. The better shape everything is HERE the easier it will be for me to a)just exist here, and b)manage regular chores during recovery periods when I DO choose to overexert.

I started typing this all out on facebook but frankly, I don’t want people there to know how bad it’s really getting already. I mean, some folks KNOW, but i haven’t laid it out quite this... explicitly for my loved ones to just... see and read.

I have really distinct plans to get the house up to speed- and I’ll have a little bit of $ from dad’s estate to do stuff which will help a lot. I need to get threshold ramps in the house, and a ramp from the driveway to the porch. I need to finish sorting, storing, organizing and putting KW’s stuff in the garage so that what’s in the HOUSE is all mine and stuff I need/want/use.

I want to have a ramp put in the garage up the steps to the kitchen/utility room. Once KW HAS eventually gotten all her things- I’d like to turn the garage into my art/crafting space AND move the daybed in there for additional guest sleeping too. It’s big enough I think that I could have a VERY SMALL studio portrait space, a crafting area, and the daybed, etc. When the weather is nice, and with a ramp for access, I could sit out there in my wheelchair and craft or paint or take photos.

Shifting my art/crafting/beading stuff to the garage will free up a LOT of various random spaces in the house too. Which will let me better organize what’s in it. The reno we did a few years ago means the kitchen and big bathroom are essentially accessible for me in my chair NOW (if the kitchen was.. um... clean), and i have a space to add a dishwasher if I end up needing one. One thing I definitely plan to get with estate money is a new washer dryer. I even found an ada compliant set at lowes!

Basically, I haven’t told anyone in my real-life yet, but I’ve been working on a list of things that need to get done in order for me to continue living alone once things really do take a turn. I think CityDad would probably fly out and stay with me for a couple weeks if I asked him to- he’d be able to help me build out and shift the garage into a more useable space once it’s empty, (this project is not going to happen even within a year...even if I had everything for KW totally packed up, I have no idea when she’ll actually sit down to go through stuff and either take it/trash it or donate it.)

But it’s been on my mind a lot as I’ve noticed this pain increase. What do I NEED on my worst days now- so that when those days are my baseline I can make my life as simple as possible and maintain as much independence as possible.

I don’t know. And it’s not like it HAS to be said somewhere, I just... I needed this all out of my brain for a minute. I needed to scream it into the void without upsetting my loved ones about the decline.

For now, I’m just... doing the best I can, day to day. And making sure my zofran refills keep getting approved.

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mllemaenad · 5 years ago

Note

Wizards in Harry Potter aren't liable to be possessed by literal demons from Hell regardless of their good intentions. Furthermore, non-magical people in Harry Potter also have guns, sniper rifles combat planes, tanks, heat seeking missiles, NUCLEAR BOMBS to equalize the fight if a dark wizard starts thinking that he should rule them. The two settings are completely different. Give these advantages to non-magical people in Thedas and I will agree that the Circles aren't necessary.

Hi Anonymous person!

Look. I’m a little perturbed by what you’ve got there, because you seem awfully willing to cause harm to helpless people on the basis of what they might do. But I’ll do this in chunks.

Wizards in Harry Potter aren’t liable to be possessed by literal demons from Hell regardless of their good intentions.

Well. Neither are mages in Dragon Age, largely because ‘hell’ doesn’t exist. I know that sounds flippant, but it’s important. Andrastianism isn’t Christianity, of course, but it does have a Christian aesthetic – more specifically a Catholic one – and the Chantry operates in a world reminiscent of a time when a pope could dominate kings and start holy wars.

That Christian aesthetic is also applied to spirits. Instead of the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ we have Enchanter Brahm’s five demons: rage, hunger, sloth, desire and pride. It’s a useful game mechanic, absolutely; you can’t have infinite monster designs in a game, and it helps the player figure out what kind of weapons to employ in any given fight. However, as the story goes on it becomes increasingly clear that the Chantry’s view of spirits and demons is simplistic at best and outright wrong at worst.

Spirits embody something that has become important to them. There are many, many more kinds than the Chantry’s sins and virtues lists would acknowledge. There’s a spirit of Command hanging out in Crestwood in Inquisition who just really wants someone to obey its orders for a while. Solas will talk to you about a spirit who embodies an ideal people have forgotten.

Demons seem to be largely spirits who have suffered in some way. We usually don’t know why. Solas’s friend is an obvious example – a spirit who was inexpertly summoned and trapped by frightened mages. It’s also noteworthy that Merrill talks about her ‘demon’ being bound and left over from war. While of course we can’t know exactly what happened there, we can fucking guess, right?

These are all just beings – people. And they’re all from the same place. Not hell, heaven, purgatory or anything like that. They’re from The Fade, which is their home, the source of magic, and was apparently much closer to the rest of the world before Solas and the Veil.

I’ve noted repeatedly that spirit possession is an important part of several cultures, and is often a positive thing. Possessed mages serve as companion characters (Wynne, Anders) and kick some serious arse in battle, and Justice just wanders around in Awakening wearing a corpse and it’s fine.

Of course, no one is saying that possession can’t go wrong. I’ve played the games, and of course my characters have killed both ‘demons’ and ‘abominations’. But. When you say something like ‘demons from hell’ you’re imposing a particular religious view on the story – one that allows you to simply declare that these people are evil and that it’s fine to kill them. We know that it is possible to liberate a possessed mage, and to heal a spirit who has been corrupted. We have seen both those things. But why bother if they’re evil, right? Just lock them up and kill them if things get tricky.

That view is wholly wrong for the setting of Dragon Age. But it is … pretty well on par with the view the Chantry actually expresses. So when you say ‘demons from hell’ I actually think that’s an excellent reason why the Circles should be abolished, because it’s imposing ideas on this situation that are wrong, unhelpful and cruel.

Also. I mean. Also. Yes, I have fought possessed mages in Dragon Age. I have also fought possessed templars. Possessed trees. Possessed bones. Possessed rocks.

If you feel we need to lock up everything that can get possessed, you’re going to have to start with all the people and then move on to all the plants and inanimate objects. If all things can be possessed, then all things need to be locked up. And if all things are inside the prison, couldn’t we just … not have one?

Furthermore, non-magical people in Harry Potter also have guns, sniper rifles combat planes, tanks, heat seeking missiles, NUCLEAR BOMBS to equalize the fight if a dark wizard starts thinking that he should rule them.

Um. Sorry Anonymous person but … what? Have you … read those books? Now, granted I haven’t read them in a while but I have read them. And … I have no idea what you’re talking about.

‘Muggles’ in Harry Potter are usually comic relief, and even the ones that aren’t simple buffoons are depicted as largely helpless against magical attacks of any kind. The British government shows up just long enough to express a heartfelt ‘What the actual fuck?’ at the war with Voldemort before promptly vanishing from the plot again.

All of this … stuff about conventional weapons you’ve introduced has come from your imagination. It’s not how the relationship between Muggles and wizards is portrayed in the novels at all.

In fact, conceptually, I would say that the wizards of Harry Potter are much scarier than the mages of Dragon Age. Tevinter had an empire in Dragon Age, and because they value magic the magisters undoubtedly used it in the fight to obtain that empire. But they were taken down by famine and Blight, and finished off by war. In the series’ ‘present day’ Orlais has achieved the exact same thing as Tevinter with significantly less magic (not no magic, of course, since they will drag their imprisoned mages into battle), and there’s no sense that Tevinter can just zap its way back into power. They are constrained by economics, geography and politics just like everyone else. Magic is useful, but only up to a point.

Now … in Harry Potter, there’s a pretty strong sense that wizards could just take over the planet any time they felt like it. In fact, the back story contains one Grindelwald, who actually did want to take over the world and enslave Muggles. This was not a war between Muggles (who are not supposed to have been able to prevent this) and wizards, but rather an internal schism in the wizarding community. Gindelwald was not defeated by NUCLEAR BOMBS (And seriously – what the hell, is your plan to defeat wizards ‘flatten Scotland’? because that’s what would happen if you tried to bomb Hogwarts. You want to take out Diagon Alley? Congratulations, you just blew up London.), but rather in an old style man-to-man duel with another wizard. In a castle. They were ex-lovers. I’m assuming it was on the ramparts, it was raining and everyone was screaming like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith.

I haven’t kept up with it, but I am peripherally aware that J K Rowling has said … increasingly weird things over the years, and I’m not attempting to defend any of that. But there was a general … theme in the novels that … most people probably aren’t fascists, and when the fascists come from within it is the community that must take them down. So Muggles are not given much power or agency at all.

This had nothing to do with heat-seeking missiles. Just … what?

Meanwhile, over in Dragon Age the Chantry talks a lot about mages having advantages in battle, but in practice that’s not what we actually see. For a start, non-mages have plenty of weapons that work just fine against magical enemies - swords, spears, arrows, axes. Nobody in Thedas has NUCLEAR BOMBS, mage or not. It’s not setting appropriate. Anders may have been a mage, but he had to rely on explosive material (likely gunpowder) to actually get a significant bang.

Non-mages may also wield enchanted weapons, meaning that they can literally take magic into battle with them. The mage over there is shooting lightning from her fingers? Your sword shoots fireballs. What the hell are you complaining about?

Nor does simply having a weapon in your hand mean that you know how to use it. I don’t know how to use a gun. Someone could give me one, in a crisis, I suppose. But it would only be luck that allowed me to incapacitate an assailant, and I certainly couldn’t fight several. Most ‘ordinary’ people in Thedas won’t have much in the way of weaponry. But likewise, neither will mages. They have magic, but that isn’t the same thing.

How many dead bodies do you need to prove this? The mage who was apparently murdered by villagers in Crestwood, when she went in to try to help them. The mages cut down by the Qunari swords in The Demands of the Qun. The villagers who were going to fucking lynch Rhys and his friends in Asunder.

It feels like you’ve made up a story about how magic works in both of these series that isn’t true to either of them.

Give these advantages to non-magical people in Thedas and I will agree that the Circles aren’t necessary.

So … to be clear, you’re arguing for:

the abduction of and permanent separation of children from their parents

forced conversion to a religion and the suppression of alternative religious beliefs

deprivation of citizenship and the basic rights that come with that

reducing people to a permanent infantile status as wards of a religious institution

permanent surveillance of affected individuals (phylacteries)

execution without trial where deemed appropriate by religious authorities

… because people might get possessed and can sometimes make fire come out of their hands? Well. Okay then. Good to know.

#dragon age #chantry critical #Anonymous

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sunsetcurve · 5 years ago

Text

we’ll come together (state of the art)

Summary: Before, she'd gotten so caught up in all of it—trying to stop Captain Man from erasing her memories, then trying to get his back—that she hadn't really had time to process this. And now she does. And it's making her head hurt.

Because, well. Henry is Kid Danger.

Fandom: Henry Danger

Relationships: Henry Hart & Piper Hart

Word Count: 1,640

A/N: it took every ounce of willpower i had not to title this “Hart to Hart”.

(actual title is from one of my favorite songs by my favorite band ever, kids in the dark by all time low).

anyway, here it is, the “piper and henry have a talk” fic that i really just needed to get out of my system. this was really fun to write, but keep in mind that my general motto when writing hd fics (and fic in general, really), is “fuck canon i do what i want” so this is really cheesy and somewhat ooc. it’s fine. sort of. i had a good time, and that’s what we’re here for, right?

Dedications: i’m gonna tag some of the wonderful people here, but no pressure to read it at all! @rorythevambire @up-the-tube @ciara-knightly @cactus-con @mychenrymadness @charlottepage @henryhearts @bijerbear @taylorswiftrulestheworld @just-a-j-reallly

if you want to be tagged/untagged in the future just let me know! enjoy :)

* * *

When it's over, the Man Cave is quiet.

This is a strange, sharp contrast to the chaos that Piper had fallen into before, but now Captain Man's—Ray's—memories are back, and he's sleeping off the side effects in his room, and Henry, Charlotte, and Jasper are upstairs in the store and Schwoz is...somewhere. He went off with a vague explanation, and he's sort of a strange man so Piper's not really sure she wants to ask questions.

(Come to think of it, she's pretty sure she's seen him before—the German 'neighbor' who came to Henry's birthday party, the 'plumber' who came to fix their sink—she thinks she's even seen him around at the high school. Which makes a lot more sense now, but is still mildly unsettling.)

Piper tugs the headband out of her hair and fiddles with the bow in her hands. She's probably ruined her hair, and really the outfit isn't complete without the accessory but she can't really bring herself to care. She needs something to do with her hands, and her mind is running in circles that are way too fast to be satisfied by scrolling mindlessly through Instagram right now. There's too much to think about.

Before, she'd gotten so caught up in all of it—trying to stop Captain Man from erasing her memories, then trying to get his back—that she hadn't really had time to process this. And now she does. And it's making her head hurt.

Because, well. Henry is Kid Danger.

And if she really thinks about it, it's not that hard to reconcile the two. They've got the same hair, the same smile, the same stupid sense of humor—the same bravery that Piper pretends she doesn't see. And, if she really thinks about it, there's a part of her that's known for a while. Since he broke his arm, maybe. Or even before then.

But she never wanted to believe it. The difficulty comes when she tries to put Henry in that position in her mind. She's seen Kid Danger fight off villain after villain, take punches and be shot at and thrown into walls and god knows what else that wasn't broadcasted on TV, and she's always known that there was a teenager behind that mask but realizing it's been her brother this whole time is something entirely different. Something that's hard for her to wrap her head around.

She wonders how many times he'd snuck out and come back in the dead of the night without any of them noticing, wonders how many injuries he'd hidden just to pretend things were normal. She wonders why she and her family never even asked about his disappearances. She wonders, briefly, how many times Henry has almost died without them knowing anything about it, and then stops that train of thought before it goes too far.

That's not something she wants to consider.

Piper rubs at her eyes with the heels of her palms.

Then, the elevator dings, and she makes a show of putting her headband back into place and trying to look like she's just re-adjusting her hair and not her entire view of the world. Henry steps out, and there's still glitter in his hair and on his cheeks—the bubblegum-ploy Ray had come up with had been less than successful. He looks at Piper, sitting on the steps near the elevator, and tilts his head curiously as he takes a seat next to her.

"So I'm guessing you were never actually the playground pooper?" she says first, because she's not really sure what else to say.

Henry laughs, sounding a little relieved, like he was expecting something else. "Nope. I swear on my life I have never pooped on a playground. Or broken my arm doing it."

"That's kind of a shame," she hums. "It was really good blackmail material." This gets him to attempt at bumping her in the ribs with his elbow, but she dodges before he can and sticks her tongue out at him. "It was also a pretty shitty excuse, y'know," she adds.

He scoffs incredulously. "Uh, first of all, it was Jasper's idea, and also, you fell for it," he retorts, defensive.

Piper sort of glances at her feet, then, furrowing her brow just a little. "Yeah, but I shouldn't have." She shakes her head. "I should've figured it out a long time ago."

"I was worried you would," he says after a moment, and scoots closer to her. "All the disappearances, right?"

"Yeah, and your terrible lies, like...the 'makeup excuse'? You can't do a decent wing to save your life."

Henry scoffs at that but doesn't argue, and then it's quiet for a beat and Piper tries to figure out how to say what she wants to. She's not good at this part; she's honest and bold and unwavering with her words, always, but this is different. This is trying to voice the mixture of pride and worry and frustration and fear that's been sitting in her chest for the last few hours.

She takes a breath. "And," she starts, without really knowing where she's going, and she sees Henry look up out of the corner of her eye but doesn't meet his gaze, "I should've known that your stupid junk store was just a ploy."

He opens his mouth to respond, but she keeps going; it's hard to stop now that she's started. "And I should've known that your boss was way too intrusive for it to be normal, and I should've known your watch was suspicious. And you never let anyone near your bubblegum, I should've figured out that there was something weird about that a long time ago, and I should've—" her breath catches, and then her voice quivers a little and she hates it, "—and I should've known you'd be the only teenager dumb enough to risk your life every single day—"

"Piper," Henry says, and puts his hand on her shoulder. "Hey, Piper, it's okay—"

"Don't say that!" She stands up, trying not to have a full-blown meltdown, because those are reserved for Jana Tetrazzini and Wi-Fi crashes, but then again, she decides, this outscales both of those things by miles. Her hands are shaking. "What if you had died? What if someone had—and we wouldn't even have known, and don't—" she says when his mouth opens, "don't try and tell me that you were fine; I've seen the news, I've seen you fight villains, I've seen people shoot at you with-with actual guns and you're not like Ray, you're not indestructible—"

"I know that, okay?" And Henry's standing now, too, and his voice is sharp—not angry, really, but frustrated, and maybe just tired. Piper deflates a little.

"I know," he says again. "But, Piper...Ray needs me. Swellview needs me. Someone has to do this, and...it just happened to be me, okay? This is my job now." He pauses, and then his lips quirk upward into a small smile. "I might not have the 'great power', but I still have the—"

"If you finish that sentence, I will hit you," Piper warns, and he shuts his mouth.

She's never seen him look this serious about anything, though. It's strange to her, that she could've missed a part of her brother that's so big, and now that she knows it feels like the mask couldn't change a thing. There's a voice in the back of her mind that wants to tell Henry to put his suit up for good, walk away while he's still living and breathing and okay (because maybe she'll never admit it, but her love for Kid Danger is significantly outweighed by her love for Henry Hart), but the rest of her knows that it wouldn't matter either way. He'd still be the same; brave and reckless and stupid, and her brother.

And she's trying to decide if she hates him for it.

"You're such an idiot," she says finally, and hugs him. She feels his laugh more than she hears it, and his chin comes to rest on top of her head and she's sort of trying not to cry, especially because she thinks her makeup looks good today and Henry's wearing something that isn't a flannel for once and she really doesn't want to ruin it.

"So...are we cool now?" he asks hopefully, after a moment passes, and she shakes her head against his chest.

"Nope. No way. We are so far from cool, Henry."

She doesn't let go, though.

Neither does he, and they just stay like that, and she can't remember the last time they've hugged like this and she would never say it out loud but she missed it. When they finally pull apart, he grins at her and tousles her hair like he used to do when they were kids.

"Come on," he says then, and steps up the low stairs. "I want to show you something." There's a familiar glimmer in his eye, the same look he gets when they sneak out to watch R-rated horror movies or pull pranks on their parents together, and she lifts an eyebrow.

"Show me what?"

He gestures for her to join him. "Just, trust me." His voice is tinged with fondness, and she scoffs as he continues, "It's like, a rite of passage."

Piper hesitates a moment longer before going to stand next to him. Henry glances at the ceiling, and then positions himself on the floor, and then tugs Piper close to him. She tenses, but wraps her arms around him. "Um. What are we doing?"

"You'll see," he says, and then looks up again. He clicks something on his watch, and a glass tube descends around them, and Piper yelps. Henry laughs. "You're gonna love this part. Ready?"

"For what?"

"Just hold on tight," he grins, and then, "Up the tube!"

#henry danger #henry danger fic #writing #my writing #henry hart #piper hart #hd #fanfiction #henry danger fanfiction #sibling bonding #sister twister #post sister twister #//umanawrites

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