#whoops only now realizing I’m reblogging a lot of your stuff

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 301: All My Todorokis

Previously on BnHA: We learned that when a bunch of superpowered villains are suddenly set loose with nobody around to stop them, things get fucked pretty quickly. Old Man Samurai and a bunch of other useless people decided to make “I pretend I do not see it” their new mantra, and resigned. Endeavor had a moment of despair on account of being crushed by the guilt of having ruined the lives of himself, his family, and basically everyone else in the entire world. For various reasons the heretical notion of “person who has done bad things feels sorry for doing them” sent fandom spiraling into a meltdown, so that was fun. The chapter ended with the entire Todoroki clan descending upon Enji’s hospital room to have a dramatic chat about Touya and All That General Fuckery.

Today on BnHA: Horikoshi is all “here’s the story of how Baby Touya slowly went insane trying to win his father’s love.” It’s a tale full of subverted expectations and heartbreaking inevitability, and also like twenty panels of the cutest fucking kids who ever existed on planet earth, who are so fucking cute that I can’t stop thinking about their cuteness even with all of the horrifying family tragedy unfolding around them. It is absolutely ridiculous how cute they are. Touya is out here pushing his tiny body past its limits because he inherited the same obsession as his dad and neither of them can put it aside even though it’s destroying them, and yet all I can think about is Baby Shouto’s (。･o･｡) face. Anyways what a chapter.

so I have to confess that even though I managed to avoid being caught off-guard by the early leaks, the number of people reblogging my Endeavor posts from earlier this week and using the tag “bnha 301” kind of gave me an inkling that this chapter will include more Tododrama lol. that said, I don’t know anything else about it, so we’re still good spoiler-wise

AHHHHH FLAHSBAKC AHHHH. omg I know I typoed the shit out of that, but I’m just going to leave it lol I think it’s fitting

holy shit holy fuck. so this is Rei and Enji’s first meeting, then??

yepppp, oh shit

so wait, I know this is not even the slightest bit important, but are they meeting at Enji’s home or Rei’s? because I always figured that Enji was the one with the super-Japanese aesthetic, but maybe that was Rei’s side of the family all along

(ETA: from what I found during my very brief google search, omiai meetings are often held at fancy hotels or restaurants, so maybe that’s what this is.)

there’s such a period drama feel to this setting. like it’s so outrageously formal fff how can anyone stand this kind of atmosphere though seriously

OH THANK GOD

I mean they’re still stiff af but at least they’re not rigidly sitting in seiza and staring at each other unblinkingly anymore lol. Enji’s actually got his hands in his pockets now. why is this somehow almost cute

oh damn it’s the flowers

Rei seems so subdued and it’s so hard to get any idea of what she’s actually thinking. I want to see her side of this dammit

but anyway, so at least from Enji’s perspective it seems like even though the marriage was arranged and he picked her because of her quirk, he still loved his wife and wanted to do right by her. the fact that he was watching her and noticed that she liked the flowers, and remembered that detail for all these years -- there’s a reason why Horikoshi’s showing us this. we know what’s going to happen later on; we know how much fear and violence and breaking of trust is coming up ahead, and while it may seem like this scene is serving to soften Enji’s character further -- which to be fair it is -- it also helps drive home the full impact of his abuse. that it’s so terrible not only because of the trauma of the abuse itself, but also because of the way it retroactively destroys all of the good things as well. this could have potentially been such a sweet scene, but it’s inescapably tainted by the knowledge of what’s to come, at least for me. and that’s just brutal

anyways, shit. is the whole chapter going to be like this?? feel free to toss in something I can actually make a joke about sometime, Horikoshi

oop, back to the present

omfg lol

“are you all right” “NO I’M NOT ALL RIGHT WHAT THE FUCK.” “oh, right, because of all the stuff that’s happened with me abusing you and you having a mental breakdown and being hospitalized for ten years and then our son coming back to life and killing thirty people, right, right. I almost forgot.” whoops

omfg you guys I’m loving this new and improved steely-eyed Rei. I’m loving her a lot

and what do you mean “part one” fkjds how long is this going to be. TOO MUCH DRAMA FOR ONE CHAPTER TO HANDLE

oh, hello

yeah I’ll say you did. didn’t seem to bother you much at the time, though

HMMMMMMMMMMMM

Dabi Is A Noumu intensifies even further. anyways though would you fucking look at this boy lounging on this moth-eaten couch doing his best DRAW ME LIKE YOUR FRENCH GIRLS impression wtf

Dabi what if you actually had killed him??? what would you feel?? satisfaction?? regret?? anything at all?? tell me your secrets goddammit

who are you talking to buddy

Fuyumi-chan, Natsu-kun (is it common for brothers to address each other as -kun?? can’t recall seeing that in many other anime, but hey), and “dot dot dot,,,,,, SHOUTO” lol thank you so much for this bountiful heaping of Tododrama Horikoshi we are blessed

AH, WHAT DID I SAY THE OTHER DAY

ULTIMATE MELODRAMATIC THEATER CHILD. “I’M JUST GOING TO LIE ON THIS COUCH SHIRTLESS AND ALONE AND MAKE SPEECHES TO MY FAMILY MEMBERS WHO AREN’T THERE AND SAY THINGS LIKE ‘WATCH ME IN THE PITS OF HELL’ WITH A STRAIGHT FACE BECAUSE NO ONE’S THERE TO JUDGE ME.” WELL JOKE’S ON YOU MISTER CHATTERBOX BECAUSE I AM IN FACT JUDGING THE SHIT OUT OF YOU LOL

(ETA: and on a more serious note, it’s interesting to see that “look at me”/”watch me” theme being used again though, because we see that same sentiment uttered repeatedly by the younger Touya in the flashback. well kid, you definitely got your wish at last. don’t know what else to say.)

OKAY HORIKOSHI HAS DECIDED THAT’S ENOUGH FUN, TIME FOR MORE FLASHBACKS

oh my sweet precious lord

just as cute as we left him. giving us a child this cute when we all know full well what’s going to happen to him is just unspeakably cruel though

HOMG

I’m fucking speechless. you broke me, congratulations. what am I even supposed to do with this

I can’t get over this. moving forward my life will be split into two distinct parts, B.P. (Before the Pout) and A.P. (After the Pout)

and meanwhile there’s ALL THIS BACKGROUND ANGST BUILDING UP, AND I CAN’T EVEN FOCUS ON IT. Touya’s arm and cheek are covered in bandages (I’m guessing this is shortly after that “ouch!” panel we got some chapters back), and Enji is deliberately avoiding training with him because he doesn’t want him to hurt himself further. I can’t fucking get over the irony that all this time everyone thought Touya had died because Enji pushed him too far in his training, and it turns out that it’s the opposite -- the tragedy ultimately happened because he didn’t want to push him. but I’m jumping ahead of myself though I guess

by the way,

remember this?? just wanted to remind you that it exists just in case you forgot

so now someone is talking and basically saying that Touya is the exact opposite of what Enji was hoping for when he decided to start playing with quirk genetics

-- okay hold up

...lol no, never mind. for a second I thought “holy shit he looks kind of familiar WHAT IF IT’S UJIKO OMG” before I remembered that Enji would have recognized him during the hospital capture mission if that was the case. so NEVER MIND, PROCEED

IMAGINE THAT, ENJI DOESN’T QUITE SEEM SATISFIED WITH THIS SUGGESTION OF QUITTING NOW

(ETA: how the fuck did this man go around saving 62 towns in a single day what even is All Might.)

[clicks tongue several times] trouble a’brewin’

MEANWHILE BABY TOUYA HAS UNFORTUNATELY INHERITED HIS DAD’S STUBBORN STREAK

KLDIHWOEIJFL:KSDJ

!!!!!!!!!!!

oh my god. oh my god. what is this chapter. WHAT IS IT

so now Touya is all “YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND MY MANLY DESIRE TO BURN MYSELF ALIVE” well you got her there champ

THEY’RE TOO CUTE. OH MY GOD. HIS FURIOUS LITTLE TEARS. HER CHUBBY LIL FACE. HIS STUBBY LIL FISTS. SOMEONE HELP ME

also are they just home alone lol or what. “hey Touya, you’re what, like six now?? do us a favor and look after your baby sister for a couple hours for us would you? make sure not to set yourself on fire or anything.” WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG!!

now it’s nighttime and Enji and Rei are arguing, presumably about his decision not to train Touya anymore

whew. okay. so, a couple of things here

1. first of all I think this conclusively shows that Enji really was trying to do the best he could for Touya. he stopped training him as soon as he realized it was hurting him, but Touya was still determined so he tried to make it work anyway, and even visited doctors to try and figure out if there was anything they could do. then, once they were absolutely sure that it wasn’t going to work, he tried multiple times to explain to Touya why they had to stop. he didn’t just abandon him out of the blue, which is really important to note. “no matter how much I tried telling him...”

so yeah, that debunks another common fandom accusation. so by the time he finally makes this decision, which we all know is going to turn out horribly, it’s basically because he’s already tried everything else he could think of. which, by the way, still doesn’t mean he handled this right. but at the very least he was taking Touya’s feelings into account and he was trying, and he didn’t just abruptly toss his son aside (at least not yet)

2. buuuut, then there’s this panel right below all that

which is the other side of it. if he’d just quit like the doctor person advised him to, that would have been the end of it. Touya would still have been upset, but he would have eventually gotten over it and the family would have moved on and possibly even been happy. but what happens next happens because Enji can’t let go. he still has this maddening urge to surpass All Might, and so he and Rei keep having more children, and then Shouto is born, and Enji finally has a kid he can start projecting all of his hysterical ambitions onto once again, and everything starts spiraling out of control soon after

though p.s. none of that is Shouto’s fault though!! he’s one of the few good things to come out of this whole mess and I’m very happy that he exists. the tragedy is that his dad fucking lost his mind over his quirk and fucked everything up. but that’s on him, not Touya or Shouto

anyways, SLKFJLSHGLKJL

I CAN’T FUCKING TAKE THIS YOU GUYS??? LOOK AT THAT LIL BUTTON OF A NOSE??? I’M LOSING IT HERE???

AND TOUYA JUST SEEMS DEVASTATED OMG

because children aren’t stupid, after all. he understands that his dad is still looking to surpass All Might. and so he feels like a failure, and feels like his dad is trying to replace him because he wasn’t good enough. and even now, isn’t that what the adult Touya is trying to prove?? that he was good enough after all?? “I’ll show you what happens when you give up on me, dad”?? “I’ll show you what I can do”?? fuck my life fuck everything

AND YOU CAN SEE THE TOLL THAT IT’S ALL TAKING ON REI GETTING WORSE AND WORSE AS WELL OH GOD

really nice touch here with the panel outlines becoming all shimmery from the heat of Endeavor’s flames (and/or becoming more unstable as the family gets closer and closer to their breaking point). but man, Horikoshi I can’t handle this, please show us more cute kids or something I can’t

GKELKWFJLDKSHFLKL

WITTLE BABE. BEEB. BUBS. SMOL. lkj; oh ouch a piece of my heart just detached and latched onto him huh look at that

TODOROKI “I’M SO SMALL AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT’S GOING ON AND I DIDN’T ASK TO BE HERE” SHOUTO AHHHHH

crazy how they all just seem to know right off the bat lol. kid doesn’t even have object permanence yet, let alone a quirk. but do they care?? IT’S THE HAIR, RIGHT. WE’RE ALL THINKING IT, I’M JUST GONNA COME OUT AND SAY IT. they knew the minute they looked at him lol

AND MEANWHILE TOUYA IS OFF HAVING UNSUPERVISED TRAINING/CRYING SESSIONS IN THE MOUNTAINS OR WHATEVER, AND, UH OH

are those blue flames yet?? they seem pretty close

(ETA: this is one of the few cases where the manga being in black and white is infuriating lol.)

OH MY GOD AND STILL

so it’s not like he was so disinterested that he didn’t notice what was happening, and he was still trying to stop it and get through to him. trying to reassure him that it wasn’t the end of the world and there were other things he could do with his life, but this one particular thing just wasn’t going to happen

fucking hell. it’s agonizing seeing how close they actually were to fixing it. if he’d only said the right words, or if he’d realized at this point how destructive his obsession could be to his kids, and backed off from putting that same pressure on Shouto. we came so close to possibly having a happy ending

AND ALSO THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING BUT PLEASE LOOK AT HOW TOUYA IS LIKE THREE AND A HALF FEET TALL AND HIS DAD IS LIKE NINE AND A HALF FEET. Touya barely comes past his knees flkjlkg. the Todoroki household must have been so filled with like plastic stepstools to reach the bathroom sink and all the little baby toothbrushes, and baby gates to keep the kiddos out of the important grown-up rooms and stuff. and also days-old half-empty cups of water and stale crackers and hot wheels and my little ponies strewn everywhere

“BUT EVERYONE AT SCHOOL SAYS THEY’RE GONNA BE HEROES” a wild Deku parallel appears?? how bout that

I know this is like a pivotal moment in the Todo Tragedy and all, but fucking look at this lil dumpling

“sup bro, it’s me, the manifestation of your fears of inadequacy and lack of fatherly affections. a GAAA. ba-baAA-baa [gurgling baby sounds]”

OHHHHH IT’S THE SOUND OF MY HEART BREAKING OH NO

HE WANTS TO BE LIKE YOU ENJI. good lord somebody please just get this family some therapy

“DAD YOU IGNITED IT IN ME” flkjslkj nope, nope. not ready for this pain here

baby Shouto, would you like to weigh in on this affair? “DA!! ba-ga-daaa, [pacifier chewing noises]” oh my, you don’t say. so insightful for one so young

OH MY GODDDDDD

IT’S SO DRAMATIC BUT ALL I CAN THINK ABOUT ARE THE SHOUNEN WOOSH LINES SURROUNDING FOUR-MONTH-OLD SHOUTO LOL HE WAS LIKE THIS FROM BIRTH OH MY GOD I AM DYING HELP

SHOUTO YOU’RE RUINING THIS ENTIRE CHAPTER!?!?!

“yo, the fuck kind of family was I fucking born into” oh, son. if you only knew. IF YOU ONLY KNEW!!

(ETA: lmao I got so distracted by the ridiculous cuteness that I glossed over the fact that Baby Touya seems to possibly be aiming at him?? it’s hard to tell because he’s also super out of it from heatstroke and may just be losing control in his attempt to show off his upgrade.)

ANYWAY THAT’S THE END EXCEPT WHAT’S THIS LAST LINE OMG

ffffff. and we’re in for ANOTHER chapter of this next week?? MORE drama?? MORE BABIES?? MORE OF EIGHT-YEAR-OLD TOUYA’S SLOW DESCENT INTO MADNESS. MY HEART CAN’T TAKE IT, BUT ALSO YES PLEASE SIGN ME UP

[thetimelordbatgirl]

Anyway, Lily Orchard stans still stay commenting on my posts and then instantly blocking me before I can view their comments fully, forgetting I can just log out and view the post on my blog. 

But here we see a Lily stan....basically parroting her on my post. But if you wanna pull the what she did the whole video move: she literally included a fucking image of self harm that you lot seem VERRYYY fine with, ignoring that even her trigger warning at the start of the video is weak as fuck- is it a image?? It is discussion?? Is it a small video??? BE SPECIFIC LILY. Or just don’t fucking include it, the image wasn’t needed in the first place, and maybe add discussion of child abuse to your trigger warnings, as that is also in the video.  And ironic she said this:

As in the video, she complained about Bruno having fans and such.....hey Lily, does this mean hating popular things is your personality now??? Oh wait, its ALWAYS been your personality, my bad.  Oh, and of course, making all the Madrigal’s family trauma....about herself....look, I get relating to characters trauma and stuff, given I relate to characters when it comes to my family issues, but like....Lily does this every time now with her videos if she can and....gives questionable advice of dealing with the people who are causing the trauma, eg. the abusers/abusive family. As Lily’s advice is to yell and scream and such, cause it worked for her, when...no, abuse situations can vary and be different. Yelling and hitting back won’t always work and sadly, could result in worser situations. So Lily basically acting like this advice is the only go to is dangerous, when you look at it. 

Again, I think I should specify my interractions with Encanto fandom is reblogs and likes, I have yet to make an actual post of my own. But you blocked me so fast, makes sense you like Lily, prefer to throw me in with the wtf side of the fandom, not knowing I do disagree with people who villainify Alma. Do I like her? No, but do I think shes the villain? No, she’s someone with trauma who unknowingly took it out on her family in the end and it took Mirabel pointing it out for her to realize that, making Lily’s bitching about the house ignoring her pointless as the house clearly is fine with Mirabel but knew someone was needed to solve the families ongoing problems.....something the fandom agrees with, but I’m suggesting she enters the fandom for positive things and not to make things hostile, whoops.  “Fan” why put that in quotations??? I’m probably more of a fan then Lily whose only made things hostile so far. 

And cause your going at someone on my post....more parroting of Lily, cause no, only you lot think every one wants Game of Thrones like shows- a little bit of angst in shows and fandoms doesn’t hurt anyone, you know, just Lily whose probably the biggest hypocrite when it comes to hating angst, or is she going to deny shes written some shit as well??? But if she wants to whine about cartoon fandoms, whine about ACTUAL issues, not people writing fanfics about angst, cause that’s all she seems to do nowadays, cause she’s just incapable of understanding a fandom is a FANDOM, not a LILYdom.  And no one was using that argument. Seriously, you’d find out on my blog I get angry at fiction a-lot, but the problem is HOW Lily goes about it and crap, but given how your parroting her, stan, its pretty clear you don’t wanna acknowledge Lily has flaws and problems, so....

[bopbopstyles]

Residue

RATING: R/smut (cw: emotional and mild physical abuse mentioned) 

WORD COUNT: 8.5k eek

CATEGORIES: friends to lovers, camping!harry (?), sleeping in the same bed

NOTE: this is for the Sex Bucket List Fic Challenge from @berrynarrybanana​ - prompt was in a tent while camping with friends....and then I just kind of created this mess. check out the other fics and the amazing creators!!!!

I ENDED UP WRITING A PT.2! Read Endlessly here.

pls reblog and share with your friends 💕

“When are you going to tell Y/N?”

Harry looked down at his feet. His boots were scuffed from walking through the rocky terrain to the lake earlier when they’d gone swimming. The image of you in her bikini flashed through his mind, and he restrained from groaning--he’d known you for years, swam with you for years, and yet seeing you in that bikini still did things to him, no matter how much he tried to tell himself you didn’t feel the same way about him. “She doesn’t feel the same way.”

Mitch let out a heavy sigh and stood up. “You can be so fucking daft sometimes, you know.”

“Y/N tells me all the time.”

“Well, she’s right,” he replied. “Tell her how you feel, Harry. She feels the same way.”

Harry looked up and met his friend’s eyes. “How do you know?”

“I can see it in how she looks at you. You’re blind if you don’t see it too.”

Harry paused. “How…”

“It’s the same way you look at her.”

or 

Harry and Y/N go camping with their friends and the fact that they’ve been in love with each other comes out

The drive out to the country was peaceful. Harry put on a podcast about music on the way and you listened as they analyzed Beyoncé’s Lemonade, pausing it occasionally to ask Harry questions about the technical parts. With the sunshine and Harry’s commentary once the podcast episode ended, the drive to the campgrounds in West Sussex passed quickly. 

Harry had booked your camp site last weekend, their trip a last-minute decision. You, Mitch, Sarah, and Nick had all been at Harry’s for a cookout and he’d mentioned wanting to get out in nature before the tour started, and Mitch threw out going camping. Nick took some convincing, but eventually he agreed. You and Nick had managed to get the time off from work, although Nick had to head back a day earlier, and it was settled. You had all left the particulars to Harry and when he texted a link to the campground in their group chat, you had fallen in love. Wooded, no power, cooking over an open fire--it reminded you of camping with your family when you were young. 

“Excited?” You asked Harry when you pulled into the parking lot at the front office. You threw the car in park and turned off the ignition, looking over at your best friend. 

He grinned back at you, eyes gleaming. You knew he’d been looking forward to this ever since you had first talked about it--he’d been calling you every day to go over the plans and picking out their meals for the weekend. “Psyched.”

You both climbed out of your car, stretching from the drive, and you inhaled the sweet smell of English oak trees, the sound of birds chirping making you smile as widely as Harry. Nick, Sarah, and Mitch were waiting by their cars, and Nick seemed to be animatedly telling a story about who knows what. 

“Is Nick being annoying?” You asked, throwing your arm around Nick’s shoulders and ruffling his hair. 

“He’s telling the story about the Brits. Again,” Sarah said, reaching out to hug you. “Save us, please.”

“Oi, you’re being mean.” Nick said and Sarah just laughed and shook her head. 

Mitch gave you a quick hug and you smiled at him--they’d all been working a lot lately in preparation for the tour. You had barely seen him, Sarah, and Harry, and you missed their presences more than you had realized. “Let’s go see what Harry got us,” you said.

“Spoiled you lot rotten,” Harry said, sliding a pair of sunglasses onto his nose. 

“I’d hoped so,” you replied, and Harry chuckled softly before leading the group inside the office. 

“Reservation for Y/N,” Harry said to the receptionist and you looked at him in confusion. “Didn’t want anyone finding us,” he explained and you nodded immediately in understanding. After years of friendship, you were used to it, though it always tugged on your heart. You wanted, more than anything, for him to be able to be normal at some point. You knew he craved it too--anonymity. 

The receptionist clicked some buttons on her computer before pulling some folders out of a drawer and turning back to you all. “I’ve got three yurts reserved for you all--is that correct?”

Harry’s eyebrows crinkled in confusion. “I had requested four over the phone.”

The receptionist--Martha, according to her badge, frowned. “Oh, I’m so sorry about that. Unfortunately, though, we’re all booked up this weekend. Is there any way three could be made to work?”

That meant someone was going to have to share. Harry looked at you, and then at Nick. “Nick, you good to bunk, mate?”

Nick groaned and you rolled your eyes at him. “Fine, but if you kick me in your sleep I’ll lock you out.”

“I don’t think they have doors, Nick,” you told him.

He looked at you and grimaced. “Zip him out then.”

“How threatening,” Harry said, before looking back to the receptionist. “That’ll be fine.” She nodded and explained the rest of the check-in and check-out policies and the amenities on the site. It seemed perfect--a pub not too far from the grounds, camp fires you was most definitely going to take advantage of, and actual showers. He truly was spoiling you all. 

You walked back to the car with Harry to drive to their yurts, swinging your keys around your finger in thought. “H,” you said when you sat down in the driver’s seat.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for bunking with Nick. I know you like your own space, so I appreciate it.”

He gave you a wide smile and you couldn’t help it--it warmed every part of you. It was moments like these you struggled to remember that Harry was just your friend. Nothing more. You’d dated people, he’d dated people, and you two were just friends. But then he’d look at you like this and you wanted more. “‘Course, love.” He reached across the console and gave your hand a quick squeeze, and your heart flopped in your chest. 

You were starved for touch--it’d been months since you broke up with your asshole of an ex and you were desperate to be touched, even if it was someone holding your hand. Usually you could count on Harry for some cuddles and tight hugs, but he’d been so busy practicing for tour that you hadn’t seen him much. Just FaceTime and the occasional meet-up at the café by your office on your lunch break and it seemed to be showing. 

You started the engine and prayed to the Gods that they would help you get through this weekend in one piece. 

The yurts were in a quiet part of the campground, secluded and in a thicket of trees. All you could hear was the sound of wind whistling through the leaves and the chirping of birds. After living in London for the past two years and barely leaving, it was a relief to be able to hear nothing but nature. 

Nick let out a whoop when he opened the door to his car. “God, this is gorgeous, isn’t it?” Sarah and Mitch pulled up a second later and you all wandered around the campground, deciding where you would put your chairs (around the campfire, obviously) and what you wanted to eat for dinner. Then, you started to unpack. You claimed the tent closer to the woods, wanting not to be awoken in the middle of the night if cars drove by and to get away from the group if you went to bed early, something that you had a tendency towards when Nick and Harry were together. 

The sound of the yurt being zipped open caused you to look up from where you were checking to see if there were bed bugs. After getting them when you were 13 on a family trip, you always checked. “This going to be okay for you?” Harry stood hunched over, his head poking into your yurt. His shirt was unbuttoned, the beige linen flowing in the soft breeze, and his hair flopped into his face. His green eyes were gleaming, a look he only got on break or on holiday, and it was your favorite look on him. He looked just unperturbed and blissfully happy. 

“Come in, silly,” you said, turning around and flopping down onto the bed. “It’s perfect, H.”

Harry grinned and dropped down next to you. “Comfy, eh?”

“Very.”

“I should plan every holiday at this rate.”

You whacked him with the pillow. The last holiday you had planned and the hotel had ended up being bad and their reservation for their yacht trip fully did not exist when they showed up. It was a disaster and Harry had yet to let you live it down. “Now you’re just fishing for compliments.”

“What? I like planning!”

“And you like being complimented.”

Harry huffed and you just smiled at him. After knowing one another for years, not only did you know everything important about Harry, you also knew how to push his buttons. Calling him out for what you had longed believed to be some kind of praise kink (you’d asked him about if while drunk and he’d looked so confused and embarrassed you dropped it) was the number one way to get him riled up. 

“How’s your tent with Grimmy?”

“He’s already asleep.”

“It’s noon.”

“Apparently he didn’t sleep last night.”

You laughed because it was classic Nick. It happened on almost every holiday you went on together, of which there had been a few. He’d get to wherever you were staying and immediately fall asleep for usually the rest of the day. You all usually just left him where he was and went about your business, but he also usually had his own room. “Were you able to put your stuff down at least?”

Harry shrugged. “Just dropped my suitcase on the ground and left him. I’ll wake him up eventually.” He turned his head and looked at you, his head so close that if you turned your head up ever so slightly, you could probably kiss him. 

“Fancy a swim?” You asked him, sitting up suddenly and trying to push the thought away. 

“Fuck yes,” he replied. “Let me change into my suit.”

The sun was out in full force when you jumped into the lake, your towels and clothes abandoned on the edge of the water. You were lying on your back, eyes closed, basking in the feeling of sun on your skin. Mitch and Sarah were swimming around--you could hear them chattering about how Sarah wanted a dog and Mitch wasn’t into the idea--but you didn’t know where Harry was. You couldn’t hear him. Maybe he’d swam a little further away?

You pushed the thoughts from your mind and focused on not thinking about anything, which somehow took a significant amount of effort. Work kept trying to drift into your head--had the office finished the pitch that you had left for them on Thursday? It was a big account and you had put your all into it, but you hadn’t finished the final touches on Thursday before you had to leave the office, so you left it for your coworkers to wrap up on your behalf. Hopefully they didn’t half-ass it. 

Suddenly, fingers wrapped around your waist and you were being flipped onto your stomach, water immediately filling your nose and mouth. You snapped up, water flicking from the ends of your hair, and blinked the droplets away so you could see who had done it. 

Harry. 

“You bastard!” You screeched, shoving him. His skin was slick from the sunscreen and water, and you tried not to focus on the feeling of his arm muscles under your palms. “I could’ve drowned!”

“You were a competitive swimmer, Y/N,” he reminded you, chuckling. “You weren’t going to drown.”

You sputtered, slicking your hair back, and then gave him a death stare. “Still. You’re an ass.”

“That’s not news,” Sarah piped up from where she and Mitch were treading water and laughing at what had just happened. 

“This is true.” You gave Harry another look before shoving a wave of water in his direction, splashing water into his face. 

Harry gasped, wiping water from his face, his hair, which had grown longer in the past few weeks while he’d been on break, sticking to his forehead. He looked like a little kid, despite how muscular he’d become in the past year or so. You tried to not linger on it, but when he was in front of you without a shirt on, sun-kissed skin just begging to be looked it, it was quite difficult. “This is war.”

He shoved water at you, and suddenly you were splashing one another like children, both of you screeching as water got into your eyes. Your feet collided underwater, arms hitting each other as you twirled around each other in the water, trying to surprise one another. 

It was all fun and games until Harry’s hand reached out and accidentally hit you right in the boob.

“Harry!” You called out, swatting him. “You just hit me in the boob.”

“Fuck, sorry,” he said. “You okay?”

“Just sore,” you said, swimming a bit farther away from him. “Meanie.”

Harry gave you his puppy dog eyes, lashes blinking at you, plump lips sticking out ever so slightly. You hated when he did this because you always fell for it. Years of friendship and you still couldn’t hold anything against him when he did this because he just looked so goddamn gorgeous. You hated it. “Sorry?”

“Fine,” you said, “but you’re carrying me the whole way back to the campsite.”

You all ended up grilling burgers over the fire, Harry surprising you with some hidden skills over the open fire, and together the four of you drank beers as the fire glowed between them. Nick had never surfaced and Harry didn’t have it in him to wake him, so he let him be. Harry, Sarah, and Mitch had started playing music after dinner and you kept yourself entertained by requesting old One Direction songs, which made Harry stare daggers at you but amused you, Sarah, and Mitch to no end.

It was a chilly summer night and you were cuddled up in a sweatshirt of Harry’s, having forgotten yours at home, and a pair of leggings. You could feel your eyes drooping, your entire concept of time gone without the ability to check your phone. It could’ve been 9pm for all you knew. After a rendition of Landslide, you yawned and stretched your arms above your head, and decided to call it a night. 

“I’m going to turn in,” you said, standing up from the chair you’d been in for the past few hours. “Which way’s the bathrooms?” 

Sarah pointed to the right, and you nodded. You had to brush your teeth and pee before you could go to sleep, and you had no desire to traipse through the woods at night to pee in the brush, so you started off in the direction of the bathrooms, your toiletries bag tucked under your arm.

“Wait!” You turned to see Harry walking after you, his own bag tucked under his arm. “Didn’t want you to walk alone.”

You gave him a sweet smile and waited for him to catch up with you. “You ready for sleep too?”

He shrugged. “Probably be up for a little while longer, if that’s not too disruptive? Mitch and I thought we’d work on a song I’ve been thinking about. Thought I’d go ahead and brush my teeth, though.”

“I like listening to you play as I go to bed,” you said, the words leaving your mouth before you thought about them. 

Harry’s eyebrows knit together and he studied you. “Never told me that before.”

Probably because it’s embarrassing, you thought to yourself. You loved listening to his music before you went to bed, especially the voice memos he’d sent you over the years of bits of songs he was working on before they were fully mastered. They were more raw, less produced, the stripped down Harry that you loved. “You never asked.”

He filed that information away for later and you climbed the steps to the bathrooms, both heading into the same free stall. You’d stopped caring about peeing in front of one another a long time ago. You went first, listening to Harry prattle on about a book he was reading that he thought you’d like as he washed his face. When you finished up, you switched places and you started brushing your teeth, stealing his toothpaste because it tasted nicer. 

“You should just buy some for yourself,” he commented.

“But I can use yours for free.”

He didn’t reply, just let you be, and you brushed your teeth next to one another, Harry knocking his hip against yours to make you smile. 

“Glad you came,” he told you when you exited the bathrooms. 

“Me too. Needed this, I think.”

“Same. Missed you, too.” 

You studied his face, barely visible in the moonlight. His stubble was growing in, but he had a peaceful expression you rarely saw in him. You saw it in moments on tour, sometimes--when you were cuddled up on his sofa watching a film after a show, or after a morning run on a day off. But here, this was the purest form and one you wished you saw more often. You didn’t tell him, though. You’d had that conversation before--how you were worried he was overworking himself, believing that he was able to work so much after years in 1D, working with barely any breaks. You wanted his solo career to be different, but Harry had a tendency to find work even when he wasn’t touring or recording. He loved it so much that it was all he wanted to do. “Missed you too,” you replied simply, and leaned into him when he wrapped an arm around your shoulders. 

Mitch set down his guitar and looked at Harry across the fire from him.

“What?”

“When are you going to tell Y/N?”

Harry looked down at his feet. His boots were scuffed from walking through the rocky terrain to the lake earlier when they’d gone swimming. The image of you in her bikini flashed through his mind, and he restrained from groaning--he’d known you for years, swam with you for years, and yet seeing you in that bikini still did things to him, no matter how much he tried to tell himself you didn’t feel the same way about him. “She doesn’t feel the same way.”

Mitch let out a heavy sigh and stood up. “You can be so fucking daft sometimes, you know.”

“Y/N tells me all the time.”

“Well, she’s right,” he replied. “Tell her how you feel, Harry. She feels the same way.”

Harry looked up and met his friend’s eyes. “How do you know?”

“I can see it in how she looks at you. You’re blind if you don’t see it too.”

Harry paused. “How…”

“It’s the same way you look at her.”

With that, Mitch turned and went to where Sarah waited for him in their yurt, leaving Harry alone with his thoughts. It was quiet, aside from the crinkle of the fire. Harry couldn’t remember when he fell in love with Y/N--there wasn’t some specific moment like they say in the books. It just...happened. The more time he spent with you, the closer you got, the more Harry hated leaving you. And when you dated other guys, it made his stomach turn to be around them. He tried to pretend like it didn’t, he tried to be nice and polite as you were to the girls he tried to date, but he knew he never was. He hated the way you would look at him when he’d make some snide remark, and he could feel the disappointment radiating from your stare. And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to let you go.

He’d tried to bury himself in work, in touring, in women. He’d lived in LA for months to try and get over you, he’d even dated Kendall fucking Jenner to try and get over you. Nothing helped. Camille had been the closest he’d gotten, but there had always been something holding him back. When he’d found out she cheated on him, it was a relief more than heartbreak--he didn’t have to be the one to break up with her this time. And he always went back to you, pretending to be more broken hearted than he was just to get you to spend days on end by his side, eating ice cream and watching films that you thought helped him. In actuality, it was you who helped him. It was being by your side, it was laughing with you, going on walks, even fucking gardening with you at his house in Hampstead. Anything with you healed him. 

And he knew it wasn’t fair, using you like he did. But he couldn’t help himself--it was the time when he could almost pretend you were his. It was when you ignored everything else and focused on only him and that attention is what he craved. You, together, no distractions. It’s what he wanted this weekend to be, but then you suggested inviting friends, and how could he say no to you? How could he tell you he just wanted to be with you for the whole weekend, the rest of the world forgotten?

Mitch’s words, though, were a stab in his heart. He’d always convinced himself that there was no way you could feel the same. You had fallen in love, you’d told him. With Tom. Bloody Tom. You’d met at some networking dinner and he’d asked you out, and from then on it was Tom, Tom, Tom. You had dated for a little over a year and Harry despised every second of it. Tom treated you like dirt--belittling you in front of your friends, in front of Harry, even, controlled your time and your friends. Boxed you in like you were some animal just there to please him, no life to speak of. It had happened while Harry was on tour and then in LA, so he hadn’t been there in person for most of it, and when he had been around you two together--whe he came home for the holidays and saw you, you had played it off. Said it was nothing, just a joke. 

But then her college roommate Jordan had called Harry, worried out of her mind about you. Told him how Tom treated you, all the things he’d done, how he’d manipulated you--hit you one time. Jordan was in New York City and work wouldn’t let her leave, but she knew Harry could go. She told him it was getting bad and he had to get you out. And so he did. He took the next flight out, barely packed a suitcase, and went. He went to your apartment and told you that Jordan had told him what happened, and you two had a massive fight over it, you defending Tom, Harry trying to convince you he had manipulated your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings, and you both ended up in tears before you finally let him take you to his house to stay for a few weeks. And together, you’d pieced his fierce Y/N back together. 

And all that time, he had never thought...He never thought you’d loved him. Not as he did, at least. You’d told him so many times that you loved him, but it was just as a friend. You’d made that clear in the ways you touched him and introduced him to people. He was your Harry, but just your friend. Your best friend, but friend all the same. It broke him, as much as he tried not to let it show. But for you to feel the same way? All this time?

And what did Mitch expect him to do? Bust into your tent and admit his undying love for you, you to admit you felt the same way, and for you to ride off into the night together? This wasn’t some romance novel (which Harrry knew Mitch read, even though he tried to hide them). This was reality, and in reality, it was just Harry, writing songs about you that you’d never understand the true meaning of, and a yurt shared with Grimmy. 

He stood up, his guitar held tightly in his hand, and put out the fire before heading into the yurt. Nick was spread eagle on the bed, still somehow asleep--Harry had never understood his ability to sleep literally all day--and snoring. Loudly. Harry sighed and went over to his suitcase, tugging off his jeans and sweatshirt and folding them neatly into the case. He pulled a henley and pajama pants on, knowing if Nick woke up to a half naked Harry in his bed he’d most definitely not let him hear the end of it, and walked over to the bed. He tried to shove Nick over and make space for himself, but the man was most definitely stronger than Harry had realized. 

Had he been working out lately?

Harry gave his arm another shove, but Nick didn’t even flinch. “Fuck you, Nick,” Harry said. “Do you have to seriously sleep like the dead?”

He looked around the room, trying to see if there was anything he could fashion a makeshift bed with. But there wasn’t even a spare fucking blanket. 

Maybe Sarah and Mitch would have one? Then he pictured walking into the couple’s yurt and immediately decided against that idea. That left you. You’d slept in the same bed before, albeit usually while drunk--maybe you’d let him sleep with you? Just for the night? 

Harry slipped on his flip flops, grabbed his flashlight and made his way over to your yurt. It was quiet except for the sound of your soft breathing and he immediately felt at peace, despite what his mind told him. He unzipped the front of your yurt and stuck his head in. It was dark and he could barely make out your figure, curled up tightly under the covers, hair strewn across the pillow. 

“Y/N?”

After a beat, he saw your body shift and your head stick up from the pillow. “Harry?”

“Can I sleep with you? Nick’s taking up the whole bed and snoring like a train.”

You giggled--and Harry’s heart started racing--and then said, “Of course. C’mere.” You lifted the edge of the blanket and Harry toed off his flip flops before walking over to the bed. “What time is it?”

He laid down next to you carefully, not wanting to brush up against you and make you uncomfortable. “Dunno. Late.”

You reached out for him, fingers brushing against his henley right over his stomach, and Harry’s heart seized. Did you know what you were doing to him right now? “Why are you lying there straight as a rod? I don’t bite, you know.” Probably not, he realized. You had no idea what the mere touch of your skin did to his heart. 

“Don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” he said, his voice quiet in the silence of the yurt. 

“You don’t, silly. Now c’mere.” 

He moved closer to you and you turned onto your side so that your back rested against his chest, and he wound his arm around your stomach loosely, holding you to him. You’d laid like this before, after your birthday earlier in the year when you’d gotten quite drunk and he’d brought you home so you didn’t choke in your own vomit. You’d snuggled into him then, just like you did now, and he tried to think of anything to get his dick to stop from plumping up under his pants. 

“H?”

“Yeah?”

“What was your song about?”

His breath caught in his throat. Had you heard it? It was so obviously about you, so unabashedly telling you how he felt. God, every song was about you. Even when he tried to make them less specific, when he tried to remove the details that would make it about you, you still left a residue. 

“Harry?” Your voice broke his thoughts, so sweet in his ears. He opened his eyes, which had closed while he thought, and looked into your hair. He could smell the remnants of your perfume mixed with the fresh smell of oak from the woods and the essence of smoke from the fire. He wanted to bury himself in your smell, in you. 

He should tell you. He knew he should. It was the perfect time--you were giving him the prompting. But he didn’t have the courage. “Did we wake you up?”

You rolled over and suddenly your face was mere inches from his. He could see your eyes in the dark, bright blue in the night. The ones that were painted in his dreams, echoes of you that never let him go. “Thought I heard something in the woods. Heard you instead.”

How much had you heard, he wondered. Had you heard his conversation with Mitch? You had been asleep when he had come into the yurt, so you had to have fallen back asleep. “What’d you think of it?”

You stared at him, your gaze searing through the protections he tried and struggled to keep up. “It was sad,” you said simply. 

“Hmm?” He mumbled, not really knowing what else to say to that. Of course it was sad, he was in love with his best friend and he didn’t have the balls to tell her. 

“The opening lines,” you whispered. “Put a price on emotion/I'm looking for something to buy/You've got my devotion/But man, I can hate you sometimes,” you sang it, perfectly in tune, hitting every note as he had around the campfire with Mitch. Your voice singing his words broke him in two, for some reason. They were the most honest ones of the whole song, he thought to himself, and the ones he was least likely to change. “Who is it about?”

Her question had changed. When you asked the first time, it was what. Now it was who. He studied you in the dark, searching himself. Could he muster the courage?

“Camille?”

“No,” he said, his words immediate. “No, not Camille.”

There was a rustle of the trees, but your eyes didn’t leave his. “Are you seeing someone new?”

“No.”

“Then who?”

He took a deep breath, and then, he pulled the words from the depths of his heart. “It’s about you.”

It was silent in the yurt. He couldn’t even tell if you were breathing. But your eyes didn’t leave his. He watched as your brain processed his words, pieced them together, matched them up with the song. 

“Test of my patience/There's things that we'll never know/You sunshine, you temptress/My hand's at risk, I fold.” You said the words, no song to them, just words, flowing from your lips as poetry, not lyrics. “You...Me. Things we’ll never know--that’s us?” 

He nodded, resisting the urge to reach out and brush a strand of hair behind your ear that had come loose. 

“You've got my devotion,” you whispered, the opening lines coming back around. “That’s about me?”

“Yes,” he said, the word simple, soft, quiet in the dark. But it took every ounce of his courage. It was worse than when he’d decided to go solo, it was worse than going out on stage alone for the first time, worse than stepping on the X-Factor stage. The hardest words he’d had to say. “Y/N,” he whispered, summoning the last of his courage, “the songs are all about you.”

That made you go quiet for longer. You stared at him, taking inventory of every part of his face. He could feel your eyes and he didn’t even squirm--it felt different than it did when you usually looked at him. It felt like you were seeing him for the first time. Like a veil had been lifted between them. 

And yet, you said nothing.

“Do you want me to go?” He asked, the words breaking him. “I--I can go.”

But you pressed your fingers to his chin, instead. “Don’t go,” you whispered and this time it was him who stared at you. “I--I’m scared.”

“I know.” Your eyes blinked at him, eye level, so close he could see nothing but the rim of the blue, your long eyelashes he’d always admired. “I just...I can’t pretend anymore, love.” The nickname, long used between them, suddenly took on a new meaning in this moment. He could feel the shift in the air, the way the word landed between them. It slipped from his lips without him thinking about it, but he meant it in every which way. 

You ran your forefinger along the edge of his jaw and Harry’s breath caught in his chest. “Me either.”

And then, you pulled his lips down to meet yours and it was like Harry’s world bottomed out. Your lips were soft, just like he’d imagined them, and you tasted like sugar and the watermelons they’d had for a snack after dinner. The hint of toothpaste lingered and it made him smile, remembering how you’d spoken in the bathroom. His fingers wound their way into your hair and you let out a soft moan that set Harry’s skin on fire. 

Your teeth tugged on his bottom lip and Harry rolled you onto you back with a groan, begging for more, for anything you would give him. The kiss was deep, passionate, without end. You barely pulled away to breathe, wanting to never stop touching him. Your fingers crawled up his arms, across his collarbones, fire left in their wake. 

Harry balanced above you on his forearms, head dipping to meet your lips over and over again, his fingers curled into your hair that was spread out on the pillow. Your legs tugged apart, letting him slot himself between them, leaning into you. It was like a dream he didn’t want to wake up from. 

“Y/N,” he said, pulling back from your lips just an inch so he could speak. “I--I don’t want to do anything if you don’t--”

“I want you,” you said, your hands drifting from his shoulders to cup his face between them. He leaned into your touch and you smoothed your fingers across his cheekbones. “I’ve always wanted you. H, you’re everything to me.”

His lips found yours again without a second beat, and you pulled every ounce of his heart from his chest with your lips. The sheets rustled under their bodies as they moved, begging to get more and more of each other. Your hands wound under his shirt, tugging as he leaned back, pulling it off, the chilly night air nipping at his skin. You sat up, Harry balanced precariously on your lap, and pressed kisses to his skin, licking over his swallows. 

Harry let out a moan, not being able to hold it in, but didn’t stop her as you made your way across his skin, claiming it as your own. He couldn’t hear anything but you--it was consuming, the feeling of being this close to you. Your teeth bit into the skin on his collarbones, sucking a bruise he knew would be there tomorrow, and he couldn’t find it in himself to care. He wanted the world to know he was yours, that he loved you with every fiber of his being, unashamedly. 

“I’m yours,” he said, his voice edging on a moan as you licked across his nipples. “Yours, Y/N, I’m yours.”

“And I’m yours,” you replied, and leaned back, tugging off his sweatshirt, which you’d worn to bed. You were bare underneath, and you could feel Harry’s eyes on your skin, learning you. Usually, you felt studied under the gaze of a man, but now, with Harry, you felt admired, adored, loved. His hands kneaded circles into your breasts and you arched into him, moans leaving your mouth in breaths. 

You felt his tongue on your nipples, just as you had done to him, and your fingers gripped into the curls of his hair. “Fuck, H.”

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, pressing kisses to your sternum. “So, utterly beautiful.”

You leaned back onto your hands, chest rising and falling as he made his way down your body, inching farther and farther back on the bed until he was on his stomach, lips hovering above the waistband of your sleep shorts. His eyes met yours in question, and you nodded, words failing you.

“Need to hear your words, love,” he said, kissing your bare skin just centimeters above the bow on her shorts. “Want to make sure that you’re sure.”

“Take them off,” you said, struggling to speak as he licked your skin. “Touch me, H, please.”

And he did. He tugged your shorts down your legs, underwear coming with them, and pressed kisses to the inside of your thighs, nipping love bites into the skin there. “You know, I dreamed of you last week,” he said against your skin. 

“What?” You squealed as he sucked on the sensitive skin at the crease of your thighs. 

“Of you, like this.” Then, he licked a stripe up her clit and you buried your hands in his hair, holding him there. “But in the dream, I couldn’t smell you.” He sucked on your clit, and you struggled not to scream his name. Your friends would hear and the last thing you wanted was to deal with that in the morning. “I couldn’t hear you,” he said, licking you again, and your head flailed to the side. “And I woke up before I could do this.”

And then, he dove his tongue inside of you, and you pressed a hand to your mouth, holding in the moans that begged to fly free. It was heaven, his tongue. Delving into her like it was made for you, curling inside of you and rubbing the front of your walls delicately. 

“Harry,” you said, trying to keep your voice quiet, “more, please.”

He wasted no time pressing his finger to your clit and rubbing you in circles, causing your chest to arch from the pleasure. You could feel a knot building in your belly, begging and begging for more. 

“Please, H,” you let out in a moan, and that’s when you felt his own moan against your skin, the vibration of the stubble on your skin causing you to shake against him. But his free hand anchored your hips to his lips, and he continued his work, licking in and out of you, then up and down your folds, drawing soft moans from your mouth over and over again. 

“Wanna hear you,” he said softly against your skin, “please, love, wanna hear you.”

“Don’t want to wake them,” you replied, struggling to look down at him. But when you did, the sight of his head between your thighs, hair a mess, eyes gleaming up at you in the dark, it ripped a moan from your chest that you couldn’t contain. 

“That’s it,” he said. “Don’t give a fuck about them. S’just us, yeah?” He kneaded circles into her skin with his hands and sucked harshly on her clit, your hips bucking in response, but he didn’t let go. “What d’ya want, love?”

His words were rough, broken from pleasure. You loved the way he sounded, having never had the opportunity to have him this way. “Fingers,” you said. “I’m close.”

“Yeah?” His one hand left her hips and circled your entrance, drawing your wetness around his fingers. “Fuck, love, you’re so wet.”

“H,” you breathed out, “please.”

That’s all he needed. He dipped his forefinger inside of you, your tight walls gripping him like a vice. But to him, you were virtue--you were everything to him, everything good in the world wrapped up in a single person. He curled his finger, brushing against a spot that made you squeak and he smiled before adding a second finger. “Come for me, love,” he said, sucking on your clit. “Wanna taste you.”

And that’s all it took. Your orgasm washed over you like a wave, your hands gripped in his hair, keeping his face there as he licked your clit softly, drawing shock waves from your body over and over again. You struggled to keep your eyes open, wanting to watch him as you came, and he held your eye contact as you did. When he pulled his fingers from you and sucked on them, you just stared at him, wondering if this was real. If he was real. 

“Taste sweet,” he said, crawling up your body, pushing you down onto the bed with the weight of him. You loved it, the feeling of his skin on yours, of his body on yours. “With an edge of sourness.” He pressed his lips to yours, and you licked into his mouth, tasting yourself on his tongue. You hadn’t been this turned on...ever, you realized. “Tastes good,” he said against your lips. 

You smiled, running your fingers through his hair. “Felt good too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You’re good at that, you know.” 

He chuckled at you and pressed a kiss to your cheeks. “Can’t wait to do it again.”

You captured his lips again, arms winding around his chest, pulling him into you, closer and closer until you couldn’t find the space between you. And then, you rolled, taking him with her, leaving him on his back and you flush to his chest. “Some other time,” you said softly, drawing back. “I want you.”

“Fuck,” he let out, gaze travelling up your body as you sat back on his hips, bare center brushing over his pajama pants. “Want you too, baby.”

You smirked at him. “Baby?”

He blushed. “Sorry, it just--”

“Shh.” You pressed a finger to his lips. “I like it.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhmm.” You rolled your hips over his erection and he bucked up into you, not being able to stop himself, drawing groans from both of them. “Wanna hear you, H,” you whispered, tossing his words back at him. “Hmm?”

“Take ‘em off.” He bucked his hips again, and you smiled down at him. Your fingers curled around his pants and his underwear, and crawled back, pulling them off together in one motion, just as he had done to you. 

You held him in your hand, brushing your thumb over his tip, the pre-cum slick against your skin. Your tongue licked a stripe up the underside of him, drawing a moan from his chest as you laved circles around the tip of his length. 

“Y/N,” he breathed, “Not gonna last if you keep doing that,” he said. “Need--”

“I know,” you replied. You pressed another kiss to him and clamored back up his body. “Wouldn’t have happened to bring condoms, would you?”

“Fuck,” he said, “no, wasn’t exactly planning this.”

You pressed a kiss to his chest, trying to calm the panicked look in his eyes. His hands ran up and down your thighs, his touch consuming you. “I’ve got the implant,” you said, “if that’s ok with you.”

“I’ll pull out,” he said, leaning up on his elbows. “Promise.” Then your lips found each other’s and you rocked your hips against him, the slick of you dripping down onto his length. He swallowed your moans and you did the same, the dark of the night wrapping around you, encasing you in a world that was just the two of you. 

You reached down and ran your fingertips along his length, brushing his tip against your slit, the feeling sending tingles down her spine.

“Please,” he begged beneath you, fingers digging into your hips to where there would probably be marks tomorrow, “please, Y/N.”

When you slid down his length, your eyes shut from the sensation of him stretching you. You didn’t stop until he had bottomed out, you hips flush against one another. You could feel his eyes watching as you adjusted to his size, to the burn of him inside of you. It was surreal to have him like this, to have him so close to that you couldn’t find where you ended and he began. To have his lips find yours as you began to rock back and forth on him, open mouths meeting like old friends, begging for more and more and more. It was heaven, you decided, this was heaven on earth, this feeling. Your head snapped back when he bucked up into you, hitting a deep spot that made your arms shake. And then he ran his tongue down your exposed neck, nipping and biting into your skin, whispers of your name like an echo around them. 

You wanted all of him. Every single part of him, you wanted to have his laughter and his smile and his words and his thoughts and his love. You wanted his body in the morning and the night and across the distance. You wanted him to hold you in his arms always, to care always. To you, he was hope, he was a bright spot in a sea of darkness. He was the antithesis of your exes, of Tom, of the men who had used you up and left you in a bed of nails. Harry built you up, stoking your fire with actions that showed you how much he cared, never wavering from your side, always running back when you called. No matter how far he went, the residue of him never left your mind, body, or soul. 

Harry’s arms caged you in and suddenly you were on your back and he was above you and inside of you and everywhere. His fingers danced across you skin as his hips snapped into you, moans drying in your throat because you could barely think from the pleasure zipping through your body. 

“Fuck, Y/N,” he said, words darting through the fog, “I love you.” He was holding you so tightly in his arms that you wondered if he thought you would run. As if you wanted to be anywhere else but here, beneath him, close to him, breathing him in and out. 

“I love you too.” The words left you without hesitation and you pressed your lips back to his as you chased your highs together, his hips never stopping. He pulled one of your legs high on his hip, reaching a new depth inside of you, and you scrabbled at his back with your fingers, leaving marks in your wake. “Right there,” you whispered against his shoulder, biting softly into the skin there. 

He pistoned his hips in and out, hitting the spot over and over again. “Yeah? Right there, baby?” 

You had always joked he had a praise kink, but now that you had him, you knew you were right and good lord did you feed right into it. “So good,” you mumbled, “so good Harry, please don’t stop.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied, tongue darting to the spot under your ear when you turned hyourer head, choking on a moan when he thumbed your clit. “You’re so beautiful, Y/N. Gonna tell you every day. Never going to stop now that I have you. Finally.”

You dug into his ass with your heels, keeping him deep inside of you. Hands grabbed skin, and you basked in the heat that surrounded you, the sweat that stuck their skin together. It was perfect--he was perfect, he felt perfect, it was as if you were made for one another. Somehow, every movement he made was better, he navigated your body like he had the only compass and it was carved into his heart. 

Every part of you ached, ached for him and for release. You could feel it rising inside of you, taught like a string, begging. “Oh my god,” you whined, spasming around him. Your hand gripped the back of his neck and dragged his head back to you, fingers digging into his warm skin. Your lips met as he pumped into you over and over, drawing moans from them both that never stopped. You loved that he made noise in bed, that he told you how good you felt, that he made sure you knew how incredible it was. Every kiss pressed to your clammy skin was a reminder of how much he loved you.

“Fuck.” A guttural moan escaped him when you clamped down on his length, your orgasm threatening to rip through you. “Not going to last, baby.” His forehead rested against yours as he dug into the sheets with his fingers and toes, using every ounce of his energy to bring you both to the brink. Your fingers scratched against his shoulder blades, gripping him close as you arched into him. 

“I’m close,” you said, words ragged, “so close.”

“Come,” he breathed out, “please, Y/N.”

You pressed a kiss to his brow, the salt of his sweat against your lips. “Come inside me,” you whispered to his skin. “Want to feel you.”

His head turned, eyes meeting yours. “Sure?”

You dug your heels into his ass in response, gripping him like a vice to you. A moan ripped through him as he dug deep inside of you, pulling every piece of your love from her chest, just as you did to him. Then, he kissed you again, your name a mantra against your lips, and with that, your orgasm ripped through your body. 

He chased it with every brush of his hips, running after you as you soared and fell. You held him close as you came down, struggling to find your breath. But you didn’t want him to move. You wanted to feel him, to see him, to hear him finish. And when he did, it was the most beautiful sight you’d ever seen. His eyes bore into yours, teeth dug into his bottom lip so deep it probably drew blood, fingers curling tightly into the sheets on either side of your shoulders. Slowly, his hips came to a halt and you could feel his cum inside of you. The air was silent except for your breathing as he rested his body against you, not pulling out. 

You two laid there together, your arms wound around his waist, running your fingers up and down his back, his fingers threading through your hair. It was as if you were waiting for the words, because neither of you had them. What do you say after that? 

Harry moved to pull out of you, but you held him fast. “Please,” you whispered, “just…”

He shushed you, knowing what you meant. You wanted him close. After denying your feelings for so long it was like they were consuming every inch of you, overwhelming your brain and your heart. Having him close helped tether you to the ground and you couldn’t let go. Not yet. 

“Love you,” he said softly into your hair. “Love you so much, Y/N.”

You pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “Love you too.”

“Think they heard?”

You giggled against his skin and you could feel his smile. “Probably. Don’t care that much, though.”

“Me either.”

You were quiet for a second before mustering the courage to ask the question swirling through your brain. “You’re not going to leave in the morning, right?”

He lifted his head and looked at you. “Never.” Then, he pressed a soft kiss against your lips and tucked his head into the space between your shoulder and your neck, his breath even against your skin. 

And you both laid there, adjusting to what it felt like to finally have the one person you’d always wanted, praying that when the sun rose nothing would change.

talk to me about camping!harry here | masterlist here

[peeterparkr]

perfidy;tom holland|3

chapter 3: the background music

enemies to lovers au/enemies with benefits 

story summary: Tom and you have been sworn enemies since you were young. However, you happened to be best friends with the twins. When one of your friends challenged you to break Tom’s heart, you immediately accepted to get back at him for all the times he’s hurt you. Old feelings might come back, while both of you try to go past your pride and your lies.

chapter summary: you get a chance to get closer to Tom, and you take it.  

pairing: tom holland x y/n

warnings: swearing, alcohol, mentions of sex (? didn’t proof read

word count: 6k (whoops)

here’s a playlist

previous chapter next chapter series masterlist wanna be tagged?

Hi! I’ve been super busy I’m sorry! And I rewrote this like a thousand times but I like where this is going, so please! Tell me what you think, comments and reblogs are very welcome. (Btw it’d be cool if you listened to the songs) 

It’s been a while since you felt your heart halt with excitement. You hadn’t felt your stomach jolt with butterflies since your first date with Timmy. And you kind of missed it, that ever lasting and wonderful joy to experience on a first encounter. The smiles, the tingle and the hand shaking. The little hints of flirting that led to asking someone out. It’s like walking into a movie theatre, with a promise of joy, with the taste of popcorn,  and you find yourself walking in with excitement and getting transported into a whole new other world. 

Love, like any movie, can be good, can be bad. Like a good story, one that’s promising and you can’t stop watching, and you want to see yourself in the emotions, and feel the air and the breeze. 

Love is like movies, some of them you like, some of them you don’t. Movies make us cry, make us feel. Some of them make us laugh, some of them not so much. 

And love, it has its own background music. Like in films, there are songs that just transport you back to that moment, to that scene. With Timmy, it was a calm song, too calm for your own convenience. 

But Tom, not that you loved him, somehow had his own soundtrack. 80’s chaotic rock n’ roll. Rolling Stones vibes. Every time he walked into the room, it felt like one of those scenes in a movie, a bar with little lightning when the guy with blue jeans and white t-shirt walked in, cigarette in the edge of his mouth, walking in vainly, as if he thought everyone had their eyes on him. They probably did, if you were honest that made you hate him even more, but somehow it was interesting. A character that probably had no other personality trait than being an asshole. 

It wasn’t always like that. Not that notorious, at least. Tom had changed from a 60’s chaotic rock n roll. Always rock n roll. You could picture it, if you had to imagine a scene from your childhood with Tom, you’d probably play The Kinks. Picture Book. 

When Tom and you were younger, it was absolutely clear you didn’t get along. Constant hair pulling, insults, and pranks. A parade of hatred, yelling, fighting and very unnecessary arguments over very stupid stuff. And yes, Tom was still wrong, Robin Hood was not the superior Disney movie, just to clear that out. 

Everyone said it: Those two can’t hate each other more. They were right. 

At school, if you ever crossed paths, there’d be trouble. You’d often be at the principal’s office after having a heated argument with Tom or a prank, or…whatever you guys had come up with this time. 

It was quite clear. 

Your mother and Nikki, however, had a very different opinion on your relationship than anyone else, they were aware of your attitude and Tom’s, but they were still convinced they would fix it, and you didn’t blame them, you’d also be pissed if in the future your children didn’t get along with Harry’s or Sam’s, you’d try to force it as well. At a point, they stopped forcing the ‘future romantic relationship’ bullshit dream and settled with trying to get you guys getting along without fighting. They were sure that the fighting was probably because you had only a few things in common, so they pushed your activities together. 

Add in some Johnny B. Goode to remember the following. 

First, it was piano lessons. First class and you had already knocked down the piano while yelling at each other. You weren’t welcomed for a second class. Then it was baseball, and Tom had hit your nose with the ball, it had been an accident ‘allegedly’. It wasn’t. You weren’t welcome for that class either. Painting classes, you had painted Tom’s clothes all green and made his hair pink. The teacher had claimed she’d never seen two kids more unfit for art than you two. 

So, yeah, it didn’t work out. 

Eventually, Nikki and your mother decided to stop trying, or at least they gave up the extra classes. At least not together, Tom started ballet and you found joy in photography classes. You were getting along better since you didn’t have to actually spend time together. 

So they’d just ask how your relationship was going and whenever they wanted to have tea together they’d avoid bringing you two together unless you were cool with each other. It made it very difficult that you were very good friends with the twins. 

But you had had your secrets, even after everything, you still crushed on him from time to time. However, the last time you had had any kind of feelings like those had been when he had taken you to prom. Of course it had awakened something in you, but those feelings had never come back because he had broken your heart. What else could you expect from someone like him? After that, you’d promised yourself you’d never fall again for him. Not that you fell for him, but you promised that his smile would never make your stomach jolt with joy. 

It hadn’t. 

Let’s go 70’s music now, maybe. Come and Get Your Love-Redbone. 

Even on your 18th birthday, the last time you ackwloedged you had made out---kissed- with him hadn’t brought any feelings. Or maybe, they had surfaced but they had been very different feelings. They were mostly confused and disgusted. THere had been one more thing but... You decided to ignore it. But you hadn’t really felt anything for him, less when you realized how big of an asshole he was to you. 

You were sure he had never felt anything for you. He had made it very clear. ‘I’d rather eat a frog than kiss you’. Yet, he had kissed you. 

You had once bothered him about it: “Hey Holland, I know why your face looks like that, you said you’d rather eat a frog than kiss me, so you ended up never swallowing that frog!” 

However you were now facing a predicament. You had a month, a month to make him fall in love with you when he clearly had no interest in you. 

That’s all you could think about as you had arrived at his parents’ place. You had been quiet on the ride back home. You hadn’t even told him how it had gone. But he had let you choose the music. You’d love to change the soundtrack on your relationship with Tom, maybe an 80’s more type of funky music. 

You hadn’t told your friends about it, but you had told them you’d be going to a bar later to celebrate. But you had been quiet. You needed to think of something fast because you knew how your boss liked to work, and this was the opportunity of a lifetime. You’d be away for two months and if you didn’t come back with a script for her you’d be screwed. This was the worst timing, Tom was going to start filming in exactly three days, sure he’d start in London and then go to America, but you had to do something quick and come up with a lame excuse to hang out with him. Change the background music in your scenes with him. 

How does one make your enemy fall in love with you? You thought of the possibility of changing the script and sending in an idea to Alessandra, maybe you could talk about something that was actually happening to you. The story of your breakup with Timmy? That could work, although your breakup had been extremely boring. No one would like to watch something as calm and boring and that probably was playing the worst music in history. 

And if you thought about it, with Tom, it was like one of those sexy chaotic rock n’ roll songs. 

How would you make him fall in love with you? And why did you want him to? That’s all you had been thinking about on the way home. Because there was a part of you that wanted him to feel the way you felt back when you were younger. You wanted him to feel that agony of knowing that you liked someone who would rather go eat a frog than to ever like you back. Someone who constantly found ways to hurt you. Who could ever fall in love with such a beast like him? 

Tom led the way to the door. And you gave it a thought, all of this was now just a scene, something you were writing, but writing it along the way. And you pictured it on the script. How you could start and use some childhood scenes, and then, to this exact moment, with a little bit more of imagination. 

Ext. 1989 London Suburbs-Day. 

Y/N gets out of the car, an 86 blue porsche. Tom is playing with the keys and heading to the door. 

Y/N

Hey, Tom? 

You saw it, you could write it. 

“Hey, Tom?” You asked. And you had to take a look at him, and really stare. So he’d know. You knew him, that was your weapon. You knew what he liked, what he didn’t, you knew the girls he’d dated. You had that in your favor, and you knew that Tom loved being noticed. 

He noticed that you were staring and you saw him slightly concerned. 

“Oh, you’re talking, good,” he said as he cleared his throat and then you finally arrived at his face, arching your eyebrows as your eyes met his.. He’d grown up, but you could still see that kid you once knew. “Are you okay?” He asked. And you saw him, he was weirded out. He noticed you were staring. 

“Thanks for the ride, it meant a lot to me.” For starters, you could try to be nice. 

He gave you an awkward smile. “Sure.” 

You walked to the door now, but he stopped you. 

“How did it go?” He asked. And you only patted him on the shoulder. 

“Good, thanks for worrying,” and you placed a kiss on his cheek. And you thought of the camera, maybe a close up to the lipstick stain you’d left. 

He went red and paused, triumphantly you opened the door and there was his whole family. Of course Nikki  would do this. They knew how big this was and they loved making a big deal about it, especially since Tom had driven you. 

This was awkward, it wasn’t like you didn’t feel comfortable with the Hollands, au contraire, but there was that pinch of guilt holding you back, you knew what you were going to do and you felt like everyone knew about it. Especially since they saw Tom was trying to scratch the remaining lipstick on his cheek.

But you walked in, Nikki was on the phone, and she dedicated a big smile to you. 

“It’s your mum!” she mouthed.  Your parents were currently having a perfect vacation in Paris, and if you were honest with yourself, you’d rather be third wheeling your parents than trying to come up with ways to make your biggest enemy fall in love with you. It sounded so dramatic, an enemy. Calling him that seemed so immature and childish. But there was no other way to call him. He was your mortal enemy. 

Dom was the one to approach you and hugged you hello. 

You didn’t know if they sensed your tension. 

“Hey y/n, what’s with the long face?” Sam asked as he grinned looking at you, walking over. “Who died?” 

“Her hopes and dreams, probably,” Tom said behind you. “And her sex life,” he laughed, earning a glare by Nikki. 

“Tom,” Nikki turned stern. 

“What? Didn’t she just break up?” Tom pushed with a smirk. 

Nikki crossed her arms, “Thomas,” her voice was firm as she watched him leave for the kitchen, but then softened as she looked at you. “Y/N, long time no see! I see Tom drove you,” Nikki grinned. 

“Yeah, he did, didn’t leave me alone” you chuckled. “He was nice, that didn’t last” you chuckled. 

“Your brother is coming, too, by the way,” she informed you. Great. But how did it go?” She grinned. “Do you have a job now?” 

“I….” 

Harry tackled you from behind. “Yes,  idiot! How did it go?” 

You chuckled as you turned around to finally hug him. “Hi!” You wanted to tell Harry everything, everything, you hadn’t seen him in a while, he was too busy with his own things and his new girlfriend, Emma.

“Oh, you don’t know how much I missed you,” he said.  

“Me too,” you grinned. “How are things with Emma? How are you?” 

“Good, great, things are… great, I’ve got some news!” He chuckled. “But, okay, tell me everything about the interview, I’m so sorry I couldn’t-”

“Hey, it’s alright! It went amazing! I… Well, it’s complicated, but I kind of nailed it.” 

“Really?” Tom asked as he was opening up a bag of crisps. “Then why were you quiet all this time?” 

“I didn’t want to talk to you,” you snapped. “Never share good news with your enemy.” 

Tom rolled his eyes and forced a laugh.

You turned back to Harry. “But, hey, what is the news?” 

“Um… let’s just… Have lunch.” 

Before you knew it, you were sitting down listening to Harry and Sam, both of them making you laugh with their stories. Tom sat at the other edge of the table, far from you. This was how it usually went, him far away from you and avoiding any eye contact with you. Everyone understood it, and they didn’t try to push it that far anymore. There were times when you turned to eat, when things were bad, but right now it seemed like it was bothering Tom. You could see he wanted to join the conversation at times but he remained on his phone, or talking to his parents. 

Your brother arrived and he sat near Tom, they were friends, and they could talk to each other. And although your brother was aware of your relationship with Tom, he had grown up with him, too so there couldn’t be any hard feelings against them. Besides, everyone in the family was aware of it. This was between you and Tom only, nothing to drag them in.

You caught Tom’s eyes a few times, and you had, against your will, dedicated him a smile or two. He hadn’t smiled back. 

“Okay, so what’s the big deal, y/n?” James asked. “I mean, I love coming over for lunch here but, how did it go? Are you an official writer?” 

You chuckled as you saw them looking at you. “I well…” 

They frowned. 

“Well, they asked me to write a script, for a new series, pitch in an idea, they’re giving me two months to write it and if they like it, I am officially working for them.” 

“That’s nuts,” Harry frowned.

 “That sounds like the worst job offer,” Paddy pointed out. 

“Pads,” Sam frowned at him. 

“It’s a competition kind of thing, if they like it enough, they’ll produce it,” you explained. “That’s why I’m not as...excited.” 

“But it’s a chance,” Tom pointed out. “I… talked to your friend, he… Charlie, that’s his name?” He asked. “And he told me about that and how they’re only choosing between three people.” 

Your eyes widened. He had talked to Charlie and that made you feel uncomfortable. “Yes, well, it’s a shot, it’s better than having nothing.” 

“But wait, until then you have like… No job?” Sam asked.

You bit your lip. “Yup, but hey it’s… a good shot, I honestly thought Alessandra was going to fire me.” 

“That’s nonsense,” James pitched in. “But okay, I’m still proud of you, little one,” he grinned. 

You knew it wasn’t a big shot, but it was a chance. 

“Yes, it’s still good.” Harry pursed his lips.

Nikki and Dom watched you, and you saw it in their eyes the same pity your parents usually had. 

“But hey!” You tried to change the subject. “Harry’s got news too, right?” 

Harry popped his lips. “Yeah, uh… I got… Well, I actually, ...it got in, the screenplay, they’re producing it,” Harry explained, and he said it with the softest voice as if he was trying not to hurt you. But this was weird, you already knew that part. “But well, we’re starting the production in a week in… Scotland.” 

“That’s amazing!” You grinned. 

And his whole family started to cheer for him, and the tension in the room faded out. 

Except when Tom finally… realized something. “Wait, in a week?” Tom asked. “Then… you’re not...coming to help me out?” 

And the table went quiet. Harry was Tom’s assistant, he knew schedules, clothes, everything. Harry was basically Tom’s boss. 

“Yeah, I wanted to talk about that, too,” Harry bit his lip. “I can’t… I would’ve told you sooner so we could find another assistant but-” 

“No, no, don’t apologize,” Tom cleared his throat. “I’m super excited I just… I need to find an assistant.”

And then you saw it. A chance, as if you had just wished upon a star and it had granted you an opportunity. If this hadn’t been the situation you probably would’ve called him out on being so selfish and arrogant and vain as you usually did, but this was unexpected as if the universe was trying to help you with your plan. 

The family started to give him so options and they were trying to find a balance between finding somehting that could soothe stupid Tom and congratulate Harry

“What if… I’m your assistant?” You said, loud enough for all them to quiet down. 

Tom laughed. “What?” 

“Yeah, think about it,” you shrugged. “I don’t have a job right now, and it’ll be what? Two months filming? It’s a perfect time for me to help you out and write” 

Tom frowned, staring at you. “You can’t be serious?” 

“Why not?” You grinned. 

“Because you can’t stand each other,” this time your brother popped in. “And being his assistant would mean spending this entire two months with him.” 

“And he gets pretty annoying,” Sam said. 

“I’m used to that, I can handle that,” you said. 

“I can’t handle you,” Tom frowned. 

“Now, now, Tom it might be… a good idea,” Nikkie said, and of course she would agree. Of course she wanted you to be around him, with hopes of you getting along. And right now, you wanted more than getting along. 

“Yes, you’re both adults now, you can be decent, right?” Dom intruded.

“I can,” you smiled. 

“No, you can’t,” Tom clenched his jaw. 

“Oh, c’mon, Tom, help her out,” Harry said. “Besides, I’m sure she’ll be great, she'd be amazing at planning.” 

Tom looked away. “I’ll… think about it.” 

Lunch became quiet on Tom’s side of the table, while you kept talking to Harry and Sam. You weren’t quiet, and eventually ended up in the living room, having a laugh and waiting for it to get dark so you could go to the bar where you’d meet your friends. 

You borrowed a hoodie and then you were good to go, Sam, Harry and you were about to walk out when you bumped into Tom who had also stayed, talking to your brother, who had just left. 

Tom looked at the three of you and walked past you. 

“Have fun.” 

Usually, he wouldn’t be invited, but right now you were under very different circumstances. It felt different. And there was still that tinge in your ear telling you to back away, no one should play with fire unless you want to get burned. 

“You can come, too,” you said as you turned around. 

“What?” Tom frowned as he stopped. 

“You’re invited,” you cleared up, as he slightly turned to you. 

“Really?” 

“Sure,” you smiled. “C’mon it’s my way to pay you for the ride.” 

He clenched his jaw, but he quickly accepted it and joined you. 

Before you knew it, you had a beer in your hand and he was sitting right beside you. You didn’t understand how or why, but he had been the one to sit without a warning. You were in your favorite booth at the end of the pub where you had a little bit more privacy. And you watched Tom, and his cap. 

You didn’t stand him, why were you going to risk it all for this? And the idea of being his assistant was giving you a headache. 

But you thought about it, how stupid it was of Alessandra to ask for a script based on real life. It was probably one of her most stupid ideas, and you knew that she probably was doing it because she believed of herself as a teacher that was giving the key of art to the interns. When in reality she was only pushing everyone back. But maybe this would be a challenge for you, you’d never written anything remotely close to a love story, only when younger, maybe, but you didn’t like writing love because it didn’t feel like a challenge to you. Maybe it was now. 

Somehow, Charlie and Danielle had decided that the perfect way to get the evening going was to ask about your childhood. 

There was a live group playing music, and somehow you felt it was a sign. 70’s and 80’s rock n’ roll. It suited the vibe, as the light was dimmed out. 

“Man, I—If I’m honest, I think we probably have everything filmed,” Tom said, as he answered Danielle’s question of your childhood. “Y/N and Harry used to carry that camera everywhere.” 

The beer in your hand was bittersweet, you had stopped counting how many you had had, Tom kept ordering you both beer, something advised by Harry and Sam, who had pointed out you both needed to be a little bit tipsy to stand each other. 

“Really?” Charlie asked. 

“Yes, we should pick that up again, you know?” You nodded, as you let down your beer, you brushed your fingers against Tom’s. “It's good to have memories.” 

Harry grinned. “I mean we didn’t really stop.” 

“No, but you know, we used to literally film everything we’d be filming this!” You pointed out. 

Tom chuckled as he took out his phone. “Hey everyone, it’s Tom and I’m kind of drunk here,” he admitted to the camera. “On my side, you’ll be able to see a troll, one of a kind, viewer discretion is advised,” he pointed at you as you glared at him. 

“Oh, piss off.” 

“See? Oh maybe I’m wrong, are you a witch?” He smirked as he pointed the camera at you. 

“Change a letter there, sweetheart,” Charlie grinned. “It’s not a w it’s a b.” 

Harry snickered. “Oh, don’t give him ideas.”

Tom shook his head. “Nah, she’s more of a witch,” Tom said carefully as he turned to you. “The wicked witch of the east.” 

“It’s the west, dumbass,” you corrected him. 

“No, because the one who died is the one from the east,” he winked at you. “And I’m Glinda.” 

“You know she’s the real villain of the story right?” You frowned. 

“She is not.” 

“No, she’s not but—“you chuckled. “I’m drunk. I dunno.”

But the conversation was flowing and you were hinting some flirting at Tom sometimes, like casually touching his shoulder or batting your eyes a bit more, and he was catching up on it. But your nature would show up and you’d end up mocking each other and rolling your eyes. If anything, you could blame it on the alcohol. 

“You know, you know what you two need?” Charlie said between drunken giggles. Tom was recording again as he made silly faces to the camera but then started to record you.  

“A burger,” you answered, turning back to Charlie. 

“With chips, yes,” Tom agreed and you laughed and slightly leaned against him. You had significantly gotten closer to him through the night and you were sure his hand had landed several times on your waist. His hand was slightly now behind your shoulders, resting against the booth. 

“No, you guys need to bone,” Charlie snaked. You felt your heart falling down and you quickly shifted away from Tom. He retracted his hand to himself. 

Harry burst into laughter. “This dude is mental.” 

“These two?” Sam threw his head back. “oh gosh, if you told them to screw they would actually bring nails and screw,” Sam laughed. 

“Yes, I’d rather have grounds in my coffee than have to spend 5 minutes with him,” you said. 

“And I’d rather eat a frog,” Tom chuckled. 

“Just swallow the one in your mouth,” you giggled,  poking his cheeks then proceeded to make more faces at his camera. 

“I’m serious, all that hatred you’re showing it’s only a facade,” Charlie said. “All of it would be gone if you gave in to that sexual tension you’ve got going on.” 

“Gross,” you stated

“It’s simple psychology,” Charlie explained, “you’re both rude to each other because you can’t have the other.” 

Harry coughed, “That would never happen.” You saw Harry gulp down his beer, 

“Why can’t people just accept we don’t like each other?” You wondered as you watched them. 

“You’re like my soulmate but for hate,” Tom zoned out for a minute. “My soulhate.” 

“Besides it’d be weird,” Harry pointed out. “We grew up together.” 

“That would make it weird?” Tom raised his brow. 

Charlie took a long sip of his vodka. “I’m just saying.” 

“Well, don’t,” you rolled your eyes.

 But the night continued, Charlie and Danielle left eventually leaving you with the Holland’s. The twins left and, you hadn’t accepted their offer to drive you home. Surprisingly Tom hadn’t left either, it seemed like he had picked up on your little flirting game. This was a good start. 

“So, you really do want to be my new assistant?” He asked, as he snatched your drink out of your hand, taking a sip. 

“I actually do,” you sassed as you took it back, sipping it. “I need a job and might as well have something to kind of do with a big star, you know?”

He watched you. “You think we will last without fighting?”

“No.” 

“Then?” 

“Well, you’ve got a better idea? Have anyone else for the job? You start in three days” you pointed out. 

He rolled his eyes. “I know, I know.”

“Besides, I know you, Tom, for better or for worse,” you admitted. 

He clenched his jaw. “I guess. You do realize we’ll have to spend an awful lot of time together? And that you’ll have to travel with me?” He was condescending. 

“It’ll be strictly business, won’t it?”

“Yes but-“

“I’ll be as professional as I can be, Thomas Stanley Holland,” you grinned

“Don’t call me that.”

You giggled. “Little Stanley…” 

Tom frowned. LY/N, see? This. This is what I mean.” 

“Ah, c’mon Stan,” you laughed. “I won’t be showing all your embarrassing pictures and telling your stories to everybody.” 

Tom stood up, ready to leave. “That’s it.” 

You pulled him back down. “Tommy, I’m joking.”

He glared at you. “I don’t trust you.” 

“You think I trust you?” You laughed. “We both can lose a lot here, Tommy, I won’t be risking my career in spite of yours.”

He bit his lip, looking away. 

“Tommy, please.”

“I...fine. But I need you to understand… You’ll be spending time with me.” 

“I’m looking forward to it,” you said, but it came out very poisonous, earning a scoff from Tom. “Why are you scared?” 

“Because I honestly think this is the most time we’ve shared without tearing each other apart,” he shrugged. 

You stared down at the half full bottle that you’d been sharing. You took it into your hands. 

“Ah, it’s the beer, probably,” you grinned

He took it from your hands and sipped it. “Right, alcohol makes us nice to each other.” 

“You call this nice?” You took the beer back. 

“I’m not trying to ruin your life so yes,” he smirked, taking it back. 

“Am I ruining yours?”

“Kind of,” he admitted. 

You smirked as you finally took the beer back and downed it. “Good.”

“Shall I remain drunk all the time, then?” He laughed, his laughter was dragged. 

“Dunno, it’s up to you, you do tend to get a little nicer,” 

He laughed. “Me? You’re the one who hasn’t been able to keep her hands to herself,” he pointed out as your hand had brushed his. 

You clenched your jaw. “And you haven’t pushed me away,” you smirked, as you took his hand and pushed it away.

Tom licked his lips as he stared at you. “Well.” He shrugged, as he placed his arm back behind you, resting it back on the chair. 

“See? Alcohol.” 

He laughed. “I can’t be drunk all the time.”

“I can.” 

“Y/N.” 

“Tom, I’m joking, and I genuinely want to help you,” you said. “Besides, I’ll have time to write this script.” 

He rested his hand on his head, you could smell the alcohol even from that distance. “What will you write about?” 

“Dunno, I’ll see.” 

“You’re good, don’t worry.” 

You rolled your eyes. “You’ve never read me.” 

“I’ve read many of your scripts,” Tom scoffed. “Not only the ones when we were little, I...also the ones you’ve shown to Harry, they’re all good.”

You frowned. “Thanks.” 

“I don’t see why you’re so stressed about this.”

“Because… it’s complicated,” you shrugged. “It’s not...something I usually write.” 

“Hm. Is it a love story what you need to write?” He mocked. 

“I well, kind of, so shut up, you know I hate writing those,” you rolled your eyes.

“Hm, you do, now?”

“Yes, I don’t think I’ve ever written some true authentic love story,” you admitted. And you hadn’t, you really hadn’t. 

“Because you’re the villain of the stories, you said it when we were kids. The villains will never…”

“Never find love, I know. Maybe you’re right. But you’re the villain in my story so…” You wrinkled your nose. 

“We’re doomed.” He bit his lip. 

“Or…” You grinned. 

“Or?” He frowned. 

“Maybe the villains end up falling for each other,” you suggested, shooting your shot. 

He laughed to himself and turned away. A slight blush upon his. “Hm, hinting a crush again, y/n? I think I’ve been clear with you before, you’re not my type.” His voice had turned darker. 

“Oh, please, Tom, I’d never fall for some jerk like you,” you pushed. 

“You did once.” 

“I was 9 and stupid” 

“Oh, right you’re not 9 anymore, but you’re still stupid,” he grinned. 

You shrugged. “But not as stupid as to be one of those many who’d fall for you, you know?” “Ah, the I’m not like other girls cliché,” Tom laughed, rolling his eyes. 

“Yes, but it’s not really a cliché here,” you pointed out. “I mean if we’re honest, I know you enough to know you’re an asshole, and everyone else sees you through the cameras, you know?”

He raised his brows. “I guess… yet...You’ve always been different, y/n, you know? Like, I’m always on the edge with you.” 

You grinned. “Are you now?” 

“Yeah, one minute you’re flirting then the other you’re doing this,” he pointed at your glaring face, as you felt yourself blushing ignoring his gaze. “it’s weird. I never know if you’re flirting or not.”

“I’m not,” you crossed your arms. “Not with you.” 

“Then who were you flirting with all night? Harry? Sam?” Tom pushed. 

“No… Charlie.” 

“Charlie? The gay guy,” Tom laughed. 

You flipped him off. 

He smired. “See? Just two seconds ago you had your hand in my hair.”

“Alcohol.” 

The lights were dimmed. 

“We should… get out of here, I’ll get us an uber.” 

You walked out, tipsy enough to walk and just slightly cold. You knew that asking for his jacket would earn only a laugh from him. He had been just nice enough now, and you knew this could blow up. But you felt dizzy, and to keep yourself steady you grabbed his arm. He didn’t move as he stared at his phone. 

“You’re always like that, you know?” 

“Like what?” 

“You’re like polar opposites in one person,” he commented. 

You pushed him away. “Ah great, am I bipolar now?”

“No, no, that’s not…”He closed his eyes. “Not what I meant.” 

The car arrived and you both hopped into the backseat. 

“That’s not what I meant,” he continued. 

“Then what did you mean?” You crossed your arms. 

“I don’t know.” 

You glanced at him. “And you’re worse, you’ve been playing with me since kids.” 

“What does that---?” He frowned. “I never-” 

“You always gave me hope.”

“I didn’t. Maybe you were too busy dreaming with me and misread everything, I’ve never liked you.

“I’m not implying you liked me,” you snapped. 

“Then?”

“I’m implying you were an asshole.” 

The driver widened his eyes as he looked at you from the mirror, you saw he was trying to suppress a smile.

Tom clenched his jaw. “Ah, that I am, but, please, sweetheart but you and I could never be.” 

“I know, mainly because I despise you.” 

He scooted closer. “And because I’m cool and you’re you.”

“And I’m me?” You saw him getting extremely closer. 

He held your chin. “Look at us, y/n we come from different worlds.” He was leaning in. 

“As long as I remember we grew up in the same one, yet you still managed to become an asshole,” you pushed his face away from yours. 

“I think we’re getting a little bit mean again,” Tom rolled his eyes. 

You remained quiet. 

“I don’t know y/n, maybe they’re all right, I—”

“Who?”

“Everyone maybe we—have to I dunno,” He placed his hand on your leg and you raised your brows. 

“What?” 

He slowly wrapped his arm behind your shoulder and leaned closer. “I feel like we need to loosen up a little y/n.” 

You felt your heart racing, you were angry, you didn’t like this and you didn’t want him to believe that you actually still fancied him, but this was all working, this is exactly where you technically wanted to have him. So, you had to give in.

“And what do you suggest?” Your voice was low. 

“I don’t know, I’m giving in to all your flirting,” He laughed as he scooted closer.

You turned around, and laughed. “My flirting?

It felt like late 60’s, rock n roll

Tom, turned your head back to him. “Please you’ve been doing it since you came out of that interview.” 

“Hm,” you nodded. “I remember being quiet.” 

“And I remember those lips on my cheek,” he gently poked your lips, and maybe it was the alcohol speaking for itself but you wanted to kiss him, and kiss every single spot on his skin. 

You cleared your throat. “Ah, please Tom, I was being nice,” you rolled your eyes. 

But then you felt his lips against your neck, you instinctively closed your eyes. 

“Hm, maybe be nicer?” he kept kissing your neck. 

“Nicer?” 

“You know, lips on mine,” he whispered. 

You rolled your eyes. “You’re drunk, Tom”

“Maybe, but you are, too,” and with that he sealed the deal and closed the gap, combining your lips with yours. And maybe the driver had done it on purpose, or maybe it was faith or your imagination,, trying to get a perfect soundtrack for you, but ‘You Shook Me’ by Led Zeppelin was just the exact song you needed to listen to while kissing your enemy. But how far were you going to let yourself go? 

previous chapter next chapter series masterlist wanna be tagged?

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[wavesmp3]

directors cut: oasis

[doing this entirely for myself, out of pure self indulgence lol] [this will be very messy/poorly organized and there will be spoilers]

okay so where to even begin omg..... we will start with the origins of oasis:

its actually, techinically a spin off of the world from this drabble with dino from svt. which the world in this drabble is what the world from oasis would look like very far in the future. but i changed a lot between writing that drabble and creating oasis. but there should be a scene in the drabble that is very similar to a part in oasis (hint: the first vision they got from saskila was not just a random vision with no meaning.......hehe)

but that drabble (its titled dreamscapes) was inspired by a mix of this post on tumblr about how nuclear waste warning signs sounded very cool and the book that i was reading called the children of blood and bone by tomi adeyemi

and then after i had made that drabble i saw dee’s (@/atbzkingdom’s) post about the time capsule collab, and i had a couple ideas of what i could do for it but i ultimately decided on what would eventually become oasis !! so i guess we really have dee and that collab to thank for this piece lol

now for the timeline of me writing:

so i started outlining this piece in the first couple days of january, and normally outlines take me a while to come up with just because i struggle in coming up with plot, but i knew that my spring semester of classes would be starting soon and that I didn’t have a lot of time so i just sort of grinded an outline out as well several paragraphs of pure worldbuilding. 

and then i started writing

and wow i was Really writing!! at my peak productivity i was easily getting down like 2k a day which for me is insane (for reference, i wrote 1k a day for tsiytt and i struggled my way through that) 

but then life happens classes had begun and my writing for oasis slowly become nothing... 

i really only found the time to work on the piece every other weekend, so i was really nervous that i wouldn’t finish in time (which technically i didn’t cause it was supposed to come out march 1st) but luckily i did

and at some point in february, i had lost so much of my momentum and motivation for this piece that i almost gave up on it. (at this point i was writing the scenes after they find the seat of wisdom destroyed) but again luckily i did not, but i personally can definitely see a decline in the quality of my writing towards the end (i mean maybe its in my head, but its sort of like i can see the loss of love for the wip in my writing at the end of it)

but don’t misunderstand, i still love oasis!! and in all honesty, i’m already considering starting a second draft to it, which is way sooner than i thought i would lol

also when i started writing this piece, i began writing it in the order that it would be read, but then halfway i switched to writing chronologically

anyways, something i learned while writing this piece, is that writing is a marathon. whereas, even with my longer pieces, i always viewed writing as a sprint. so as i start venturing into original works and more lengthy pieces of writing, i think this was a very valuable lesson for me to have learned.

okay now to the good stuff lol: [the first word of the bullet about the next chapter (?) is bolded for some crumbs of an organized commentary]

so this is jumping to the first past bit... but when i first wrote farah i had a very different plan for her character than who she ended up being. i had imagined that she’d be a lot more cold and a tough love sort of person. so that’s who i was writing when she’s first introduced in the flashback, but she very quickly become a much kinder full of love sort of person. but anyways i mention this because whenever i read that first part and the introduction of her character, i’m always a bit taken aback by how like mean here character is to crown then lol

also zoar !!!! its a terrible place, but i love that underground city

i also wrote the first flashback after i had written the scene where crown and chanhee are talking at his place in andhor, so the whole “fearless” connection was done very purposefully here since i knew how it’d be referenced in the next scene. someone mentioned this small connection in their reblog but i cant remember who 

also rashi is my favorite character xD

i personally think how crown and chanhee became friends (the running thing) is so cute 

this first bit of conversation between crown and chanhee when it switches back to the present and chanhee is giving them a tour of andhor is actually quite important to me, in the sense that its the first glimpse of how their actual relationship works and how they act together and just like their dynamic despite the fact that they havent seen each other in so long 

and yeah i think kyu mentioned this and a few others, but i love how awkward it is when chanhee and crown are in his home in andhor, cause one: they havent seen each other in years! but also: anyone else find going to someone’s place for the first time oddly intimate, like wow you’re opening up your home to me and now suddenly idk how to sit or stand or what to do with my arms... maybe just me LMAO

DUDE i struggled so hard with making it so that chanhee knew how impossible this whole mission was going to be without actually revealing that he knows about the mirror. it was so hard for me, hopefully it came out alright though. if anyone is reading this, did the twist(s) come as a shock to you? did you see it coming? or did it feel like it came out of absolutely no where and not in a good way?

yes i did name the desert after the department store kohls .....

i was so excited to explain all the mage types, i had so much fun writing this whole chapter 

fun fact: there was originally another sub group of psyche mages called dream mages who had like powers with dreams and stuff, but it ended up being irrelevant and really underdeveloped so it took it out

if anyone else was raised catholic or is catholic then i’d hope you recognize the names of all the relics.... i stole them from a prayer in the rosary whoops

it took me very long time to figure out exactly how the whole soul for the relic business would work, and idk if im a 100% satisfied with what it is/how it works/how it plays into rashi giving chanhee the locket

the note new gives crown.... the first slice of their friendship blooming, bro i eat that shit up 

this part where crown and rashi are talking after the lesson is actually one of my favorites. (like i said i love rashi, but i just really love her interreacting with crown, i think they have such an interesting dynamic and one that i’ve seen irl a lot between students and teachers, where the student adores the teacher... i’ll get more into this later) but moving on, i like it for a number of reasons. one: it’s the first time we as readers get to see rashi talk outside of her role as lesson master. two: i love crown getting this validation from rashi. it’s not really expanded on a lot, but crown’s magic is definitely a bit of an insecurity for them, in the way that they don’t feel like it belongs to them. but here rashi comes, this person that crown looks up to so much, and telling crown that they’re a bit similar when it comes to having magic. and surprising crown by comforting them. and... idk i just really love this moment for crown.

okay this line: “You call your mom Rashi?” is a lowkey reference to game plan,, if anyone knows what i’m talking about then please come clown me for nearly having the entire movie memorized 

oh, i also find the capital really cool. in my head the capital was always one huge building that contains an entire city but i realized while editing that i never really explained that, so idk if i successfully described the capital as cool as it is to me 

also the five friends part.....CUTE

when chanhee says “i know. i remember.” !!! girl i felt that line with my entire chest. idk why

okay wait this part: “But that knowledge seems to fall flat right now. Because despite everything, curiosity won the war.” i love it so much, its that tiny of sliver of hope that gets me personally

i think this part where crown’s pride is so hurt by no one telling them about chanhee’s healing magic is quite important because its a glimpse of how stubborn and prideful and headstrong of a character they can be 

also this : “ ‘and do you believe everything rashi says’ / without hesitation, you answer, ‘yes, of course’ “ this is another example of how highly crown thinks of rashi while growing up, almost to a fault. to the point where crown thought rashi could do no wrong. which i think is so interesting to think about when contrasted with the fight crown and chanhee have in the jungle where crown is the one discussing how rashi was wrong. i just like how much growth crown has had between all these years. and their opinion / perspective on rashi is one of the largest indicators of that growth. 

I also just really like that paragraph where shadow vs healing is explained... I think chanhee’s magic is so sick

oh also the names thing.... I can’t remember where I got the idea to do that from but im so glad I did. its one of my favorite aspects to this world, and it looks like a lot of other people enjoyed it as well. but apart from the intimacy of it, i love how the use of names affects one’s magic. and that paragraph where they go through all that a mage could do with a name. it gives me chills. just cause.... the possibilities

so many people have mentioned this line.... but I must too, so this part: “magic always comes with a price. this is new’s” ..... crazy

saskila scares me omg

again the first vision they see is not a random scene.... the easter eggs I planted with that mwahaha

yeah that scene where they’re outside the tent discussing who should give their name to saskila..... I love that scene chanhee’s “I don’t have anyone but you” and crown deflecting all that tension with the pinky promise and the saskila calling them lovers.... mwah

this random scene about the hot summer and laying with Farah and new in the gardens is another one of my favorite, it’s just so sweet

but this next scene makes me so sad

like I know what happens and I know that everything turns out okay but I get so scared for crown

yeah just that entire part after Rashi gets to them and when they’re going to the infirmary and before crown passes out... I love that whole part. i think i did an effective job of writing the gravity of that whole moment. cause it makes me a little stunned every time I read it. and I was pretty nervous about not being able to do that scene and that moment justice so I’m glad it turned out like it did

and again this line: magic always comes with a price, and in your case, it comes with several.

okay this part after they jump out of the ship and crown is talking to Chanhee but that other dude is talking too... I hope it’s not too confusing. I really wanted to show through the writing that this was all happening at the same time, but idk it came out well. like in my mind I have such a clear picture of this scene, but I have no clue if I did effective job of showing you guys what I’m seeing through the writing

oh yeah, crowns thing about dual wielding and engulfing the blades in flames.... I find that so cool. they’re so sick for that

yeah also the part where crowns hurt and they give Chanhee their name and they use it.... great moment, but I feel like my writing is a bit lacking here. i just know it could be better.

I think at this point of writing my classes had started, and again the disparity in writing quality is so obvious to me 

but the line where chanhee is describing how it all feels, and it says “chanhee feels golden” was inspired by daylight by taylor swift, theres a line in that song that goes “i used to think love would be burning red, but its golden” and like hello the parallels between that and crown’s fire magic.... something to think about 

so this next part where it’s back to the past and crown is getting in trouble (as crown does) but the part where crown is like asking but not directly asking for rashi’s name.... that part is so crazy to me cause it’s feels so out of place. but it was purposeful. i was trying to show that crown’s growing and that they’re at this weird age where they feel invincible. and also i wanted to put more emphasis on how being royal and the heir to the throne kind of effects the relationships crown has

and the last line of this part when rashi says “never abuse it” it gives me chills whew

the next part ... another part that i had high hopes for in the outlining stages of writing, but when it came to actually writing, this scene totally flopped, i’m gonna try not to dwell on this part too much cause i just know most of my comments will be about how much i don’t like it. but just overall, this scene could have been SO MUCH BETTER !

omg this little interaction: ““Look!” Chanhee deadpans, shooting you a glare. “The match is about to begin.” / “Wish me luck.” /  “I hope you lose.”” i think its so funny and cute

“ Your eyes immediately got to Rashi “ another example of how highly crown regards rashi 

“In Wurltan.” hmmmmmm sus.... *laughs in i love mentioning things that won’t make sense to reader until later*

okay this: “Yes, but not just any mage. I…” your voice trails off, pulling at your fingers and looking anywhere but at him. “I wanted you to know.” i cannot stand these two omg 

okay this part: “Chanhee thinks and overthinks the words spoken between you both. His mind drifts off to last night as well, that moment in the tent where you shared your warmth. He doesn’t even realize he’s staring at you until you give him a funny look. He quickly looks away and wonders if you’re overthinking everything as relentlessly as he is.” this part makes me think about what ina said about how chanhee shows his love by keeping you in his thoughts and YEAH chanhee’s love language in this piece is thinking about you and staring LOL

i hate this next part, not cause i don’t like it or anything it just makes me sad 

but this line: “Like if someone shoved you from behind right now, you wouldn’t push back; you’d let yourself fall straight to the ground.” i actually love that line

also this next entire bit i see SO clearly in mind, i hope i wrote it well enough so that you all saw it clearly too

when chanhee wipes the dirt.... girl i’m wiping my tears 

this line : “We’ll lean on each other.” mini love declaration sighhhhhh

yeah that whole part i love so much 

the seat of wisdom :(((( no!!!!!

so about this line: “He stares at his palms, at all the lies buried under each nail and at all the secrets shoved in every crack. He watches as they all blow up in front of his face.” >> i had like ten different versions of it before i settled on this one lol

okay so the first part of the last past flashback with crown realizing their true feelings... so soft 

news gone, rashis’s dead, :((( it makes me so sad

gosh okay this paragraph..... “I’ve always wondered why the gods blessed me and you the way that they have. They entrusted you with such great power. The only person to be both a healing and shadow mage in centuries. And then,” a tear falls from her eye, “they entrusted you to me.” Chanhee thinks this might be the first time he’s seen Rashi cry. “But now I have reason to believe that this was no accident. I’m beginning to think that the gods have always known it would come to this. And I’m starting,” she falters there, “I’m starting to spite them for it.”  it hurts so bad im sorry 

the first confrontation with harlan took me so long to write, and i’m still not sure if i actually like it, so again i will refrain from commenting lol

but the part where crown screams : “YOU LOST THE MIRROR OF JUSTICE!”  I think i told kyu this but this line makes me laugh because in my head its said the same way bella says: “you nicknamed my daughter after the lochness monster” whenever i see that line i smile lol

honestly this argument scene..... one of my absolute faves,,, everything lina said about it in that reblog just yes!yes!yes!! i can’t even comment about a particular part because all of it i love so much. its another part that leaves me slightly speechless.

but my favorite part of it might be how it ends hehe

these next couple parts were a bit diffucult to write because obviously the air between crown and chanhee is not very light right now so it was just hard to navigate their dynamic at these moments until they apologize but hopefully it turned out alright

i really like this line: “But this moment—with the scent of Harlan’s wine under his nose and the chill of Harlan’s blade against his neck—this moment feels nothing like those. It feels empty.” 

“ Chanhee just stares at you.“ -- staring as a love language exhibit b 

this whole part... chills bro 

“Chanhee exhales because for the first time since this afternoon he looks at your face and sees you.” -- exhibit c ....

okay wait another one of my favorite parts here: the spilled glass metaphor!! again please reference lina’s rb on this because everything said there... could not have said better myself. inspired by this writing advice by ocean vuong and yeah i just think the metaphor speaks for itself, one of my favorite lines (well paragraph) from the entire piece, actually from ALL of my works 

it was so hard to think up all of yumi’s different names, i was struggling

them talking about how farah will be happy to see chanhee...... how do i break it to you crown.....she’s dead...... awkward

red streak q! yesss. also i’m so sorry for killing off farah 

also kyunyu bestiessss

tbh this whole paragraph: “I get this overwhelming burst of honesty. As if what you both speak of is more than just a simple truth, as if it’s a commandant you blindly follow. What’s even odder is that I only feel that burst when you speak of each other.” Q stops walking and turns so that he faces Chanhee directly. “You speak of Crown constantly. And last night, when I met Crown, your title never left from the tip of their tongue. Humans are so simple really. We mention what we love.” Q pauses for a moment, bringing a hand under his chin. “Do you love Crown?” --i wrote it for myself no regrets

oh wait this bit too : “Quietly, Chanhee says, “I know.” / “Have you been watching?” / “I’ve been waiting.” / “For what?” / He meets your eyes. “For you.”” -- sometimes i do things that live rent free in my own mind

okay im so sorry for just quoting myself but this too : “ He sits back slightly. Shocked. Not by his love for you, but rather by how easily love walked into his heart and settled between his lungs “

lol the part where they try fooling q... why are crown and chanhee like this

the running !!!

yeah also every part after that... tears okay

yumi’s magic !!! its so cool to me, i love it so much 

i surprisingly don’t have much to say about the end... i mean i like it, but i just don’t have any comments. the last line tho... good one shawna

okay im done for you sake i hope no one read this lmao 

[onlyhereforangst]

P, M, S on the fanfic game! (LOL pms- yes it was intentional)

P: Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an “architect” or a “gardener”? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?)

I answered this one already with my old ellick fics in mind here, buuuuut I’d say for rivusa i’m definitely leaning towards gardener (re: my comment on your answer about setting up goals for scenes 🤣) because i have the vaguest idea of where Black Mold is going and essentially the story is just unfolding as I go haha whoops. 

M: Got any premises on the back burner that you’d care to share?

answered this one for ellick but i’ll do rivusa now 😉hmmm i’m about to hit a lot of the major things I enjoy writing with this multichapter (jealousy, angst smut, general angst haha) so I think after that it’ll be some either good old-fashioned smut during any of the following: established relationship, still enemies but i’m so mad at you i’ll rip off your clothes, a roommates fic because those are fun with the menial domesticity turned 🥵but yeah! then maybe i’ll reblog a prompt list for rivusa to get some other stuff going (aka angst, it’s really only ever angst and smut). 

S: Any fandom tropes you can’t resist?

damn i’m realizing i answered this one too 😂but also thinking more along the lines of ellick SO for rivusa: obvs enemies to lovers because duh, i’m feeling the jealousy tropes for them too, definitely way more angst smut and hurt/comfort for them, aaaaand honestly i would love some fake dating with the twist they’re still enemies 👀

PMS i’m chuckling because i haven’t had to do that in way too long (thank you babies 🙌🏼) and i’m not looking forward to when it comes back hahaha

talk dirty fanfic asks with me!

[starsmuserainbow]

☺ I guess!

Let’s make it a ‘Sweet Sunday’: Send me a ☺ and I will compliment your blog!

Thank you for sending one! (Also now I'm realizing maybe I should've reblogged the meme on Saturday so that my answer/s actually happen on Sunday, whoops)

So! This meme says I should compliment 'your blog' which I'm honestly not sure if there is much to talk about - I mean, I like the color-mix of white and blue, and the stuff you post is always really wonderful to see, but this all doesn't really feel like compliments - so I'm just assuming that this surely means you as RPer or person or anything too!

I'm very very thankful that we're mutuals! I enjoy our interactions a lot, be it on here or in any combination with our other muses of our sideblogs! I'm very grateful that you gave my sideblog a chance even as it only really has OCs so far! But uh, yes, this shouldn't be me voicing 'thank you', this should be me saying good things.

Okay, yes, well! I adore Tsubasa, I think you have done a really nice job with creating (and continuously working on) your OC there! She's wonderful and I feel like she fits well into the world of magical girls, even though I still haven't found the time to watch any PreCure so I wouldn't be able to compare it to the canon! From what I know or have seen, I think you're a very nice and friendly person and that's really great and I'm very happy that we're mutuals and interacting! I don't know any of them but I feel like you're bringing your characters to life very well and give them more... more, uh, more substance? If that makes sense? Than what they probably have by canon-default. You're also often sending things in to people, or at least I feel like you do that for/to me, which is a thing that I think many many people aren't quite able or brave enough to (like me) so that's a thing very much needed and absolutely wonderful that you are doing it!

I think you're great and I hope that you're having a good time, because you'd deserve to have that!

[perspective-series]

Exposed Perspective (11) (Final)

By: @arc852 and @hiddendreamer67

Warnings: Talk of erasing memories, and jealousy.

THIS IS THE THIRD STORY IN A TRILOGY. READ “A Third Perspective” AND “Switched Perspectives” FOR THIS TO MAKE SENSE!

(Check the reblog for the links to the previous chapters and the TWO prequels!)

This is it, folks! The last chapter!

———————————————————————————————

Roman looked up from his breakfast. “Well now who could that be?” He pondered aloud. Usually, Logan texted before coming over.

 Patton paused, looking in the direction of the door from his spot on the table. “You don’t think it’s a human looking for me, do you?”

“I don’t know…” Roman frowned. “But we should probably hide you, just in case.”

 Patton nodded, looking around the table but saw that it was empty. He looked back up at Roman. “A little help?” He asked sheepishly.

Roman chuckled, putting down his palm for Patton even as another knock sounded at the door.

“What’s taking them so long?” Logan murmured.

 “They probably don’t know it’s us,” Virgil spoke from Logan’s hand. “Maybe try calling him or something?”

 Patton got onto Roman’s hand, waiting to be moved.

“Oh, right.” Logan pulled out his phone. 

Just as Roman was going to put Patton down on the counter, his phone rang. “Hello?” He said, answering it.

“Roman, we’re outside,” Logan explained.

“Oh!” Roman hung up the phone. “It’s just Logan,” Roman explained, walking over to the door.

 Patton let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, well that’s good!” He had been worried there for a second.

Roman opened the door, only to see three familiar faces and two not-so-familiar ones.

“What’s going on?!” Roman asked, quickly trying to shield Patton and looking at his friends frantically. Had they no regard for the borrower rules? 

“It’s okay, Roman.” Logan quickly assured him. “They’re here to help.”

 “Wh-What?” Patton asked, moving more into Roman. He caught eyes with Virgil and Virgil nodded.

 “Don’t worry Pat. Everything is fine.” Virgil reassured and well, if Virgil was saying that about two strange humans than Patton had to believe him. 

“May we come in?” Joan stepped forwards, and with a slow nod, Roman let all of them into his living room. 

“I ask again, what is going on?” Roman looked between their faces.

“These are agents Joan and Talyn,” Logan explained. 

“Hi.” Joan waved.

“They deal with relocating borrowers and have offered us assistance.” Logan continued.

“What kind of assistance?” Roman asked.

“Financial, mostly.” Talyn shrugged. “In this case at least. We also do memory wipes but we’ve been told that’s unnecessary, although we would like to fact check that with Patton.”

 Patton’s eyes widened, confused. “Huh?” Virgil turned back to Patton.

 “They’re asking if it would be better to erase Logan, Roman and Thomas’ memories of us,” Virgil explained and Patton’s eyes widened in a panic. 

 “No! No, please don’t.”

“You’re sure you’re not being held against your will?” Talyn pressed.

“And your agreement isn’t just a manifestation of your attachment to Virgil and his choices?” Joan continued.

 Patton shook his head. “Roman, Logan, and Thomas have become great friends of mine. I don’t want them to forget about me. Or leave them!”

“Works for me.” Talyn nodded with a smile.

“Hold on a moment, you were going to erase our memories?” Roman balked. “How rude!” 

“We do what we need to do to respect borrowers,” Joan explained, taking note of how long Roman had been holding Patton.

“Rule 33,” Thomas commented, noticing as well.

“Hey, you’re learning fast, newbie.” Talyn joked, elbowing Thomas playfully.

 “Huh? Rule?” Patton asked, still confused. Virgil remembered what that rule was and turned to Patton.

 “That’s a rule about not holding a borrower for long periods of time,” Virgil explained.

 “Oh! But wait, what does that rule have to do with anything?” Patton asked, not fully realizing how long Roman had been holding him. Or, like Virgil, probably not caring as well.

“According to the rulebook, our current behavior is considered ‘rude’.” Logan explained, adjusting his glasses.

“What rulebook?” Roman gaufed.

Thomas gestured with the book he was still reading. “This rulebook.” 

“I suggest you put Patton down,” Logan advised, rolling his eyes at the way Talyn was still looking at him. He set Virgil down on the coffee table. “Are you satisfied?”

“Quite.” Talyn gave a nod.

“Oh, this is ridiculous.” Roman groaned, but he put Patton down as well.

 Patton blinked as he was set down along with Virgil and looked up at all the humans. “You didn’t need to put me down,” Patton said, sending a quick glance over at Virgil. Virgil just shrugged.

At Patton’s words Roman perked up, ready to pick him up again, but with a glance from Talyn, he sighed.

“Now, let’s go over the particulars,” Joan said, pulling out their laptop. “What sort of features would you like your new house to possess?”

“Well-” Roman was interrupted before he even began.

“I was talking to the borrowers,” Joan explained. Roman let out an offended princey noise.

 Both borrowers blinked, looking at each other. “You’re asking us?” Patton asked, kind of amazed. 

“Well, of course.” Joan nodded. “You’re the main reason we’re here, after all. I mean, your friends can come too but you’re the ones who need relocation.”

 “We want them there,” Virgil said. Patton nodded in agreement.

 “Yeah and, I mean, we just need a regular house. We don’t really need anything special.” Patton added.

“Other borrowers have suggested things such as a smaller floor plan, heated floors, built-in tunnels….” Talyn listed them off on their fingers. “Or something as simple as a single-story building.”

“Do any of those appeal to you?” Joan asked, typing away on their computer.

 The borrowers shared a glance once again. “One story would be nice,” Virgil said and Patton nodded.

 “Yeah, but it also has to be big enough for all of us!” He motioned towards his three human friends.

“A three-bedroom, 1st-floor house.” Joan murmured, typing it in. “Might be a little hard to find, but I’m sure we can manage.”

“Some of you might need to share a room,” Talyn explained, looking between the other humans gathered around the table. 

“Fine by me.” Roman shrugged. In fact, the idea of a roommate was rather exciting.

“I’ll manage.” Logan nodded as well.

“...hold up.” Thomas closed the book, only now fully entering the conversation. “Since when am I moving too?”

 Patton frowned, blinking in confusion. “Did you not...want to move with us?” Patton asked. Virgil raised an eyebrow at Thomas.

“Well, I mean, I guess I hadn’t really thought about it.” Thomas shrugged. “I still have classes here and my other friends…”

“We get it, you’re popular.” Roman rolled his eyes. 

“Thomas, you are under no legal pressure to relocate,” Talyn assured him.

“Oh good.” Thomas let out a small sigh of relief.

“However do know that if you stay we will have to erase your memory,” Joan admitted.

 Patton’s eyes widened. “No! You can’t!”

 “Yeah, it’s not like he’s going to tell anyone!” Virgil argued, having trust in Thomas.

“I’m sorry, it’s just protocol,” Joan explained, looking apologetic. “If it was just him we wouldn’t have a problem, but he’ll be around a whole crowd of individuals who were recently wiped. We can’t risk reviving their memories.”

Thomas looked down at the borrowers. There was no way he wanted to forget them; not after everything that happened.

“I...guess I’m moving then,” Thomas said, sounding almost like he was in a daze.

 Patton frowned, he didn’t want Thomas to move if he didn’t want to. But he also didn’t want him to forget everything either. And apparently, neither did Thomas. He looked towards the agents. “There isn’t any other option?”

“Nope.” Joan shook their head. “If you find a borrower and we find out about it, there are only two outcomes: rehabilitation and re-memorization.”

“Or you’re us.” Talyn reminded them. “And you get to join the best team this side of the Bermuda triangle.”

“Heyooo!” Joan whooped, raising their hand and meeting Talyn for a resounding high-five.

Thomas looked down at the book in his hands, then back at them. “That’s an option?”

“Oh, ah, that was really more of a joke…” Talyn said sheepishly, rubbing their neck.

“How does one become an agent, then?” Logan asked, looking intrigued.

“Oh, there’s a whole orientation process.” Joan gave a wave of his hand. “Lots of paperwork, that sort of stuff. It’s kind of on a need-to-know basis.”

“What kind of paperwork?” Logan pressed.

“And what if we need to know?” Thomas leaned forwards.

 Virgil looked at Logan. He would be fine if only Thomas was interested in the whole agent thing but...not Logan. He didn’t want Logan to leave him. 

“Wait, you all want to become agents?” Talyn said incredulously.

“Ah, not me.” Roman raised his hand. “You lost me at paperwork.”

“Thomas, I thought you wanted to stay here?” Joan frowned.

“Well, I mean, I did.” Thomas bit his lip. “But really, I just want to help people...and if I’m given the opportunity to do that, I think I wanna take it.”

“What about you, Logan?” Joan turned to him.

“Frankly this whole business has alienated me from biology as a study entirely,” Logan explained. “If I plan to switch life paths so drastically anyways, I may as well put my skills to good use.”

“...maybe.” Joan seemed to consider it. “But that’s a discussion for another time. Let’s focus on relocating you guys, and then we can talk about any big career plans.”

“Satisfactory.” Logan nodded while Thomas gave them a grin and a thumbs-up.

In the end, it took only two weeks before the group was moving into the new house. Joan and Talyn helped instruct them on the best ways to move borrower furniture, making sure that none of it was broken in the move. The house was a quaint little home two towns over, single story with two bedrooms. For the time being Roman and Thomas decided to share, and they were unpacking their belongings accordingly. Patton sat nearby, watching from a safe distance.

“You still thinking about joining Joan and Talyn?” Roman commented, hanging up one of his musical posters. 

“A little,” Thomas admitted, tucking the sheets onto his bed. “It just...it feels right, you know? Have you ever had that feeling?”

“Of course.” Roman shrugged. “It’s how I knew I was destined for theatre.”

“Patton, what do you think?” Thomas asked, turning to the borrower.

 Patton kicked his legs, smiling at Thomas. “If you want to do it, I say go for it! I think it’s so cool that anyone wants to help out borrowers.”

“Thanks, Patton.” Thomas smiled back at him. “I think...I think I will.”

Of course, the next room over, not everyone was so encouraging.

“Virgil, I cannot read your mind.” Logan pointed out, stacking books on his shelf while the borrower sat moping on his new desk. “If you’re irritated with me you need to tell me why.”

 Virgil grumbled before turning to Logan. “I just don’t get why you're even...considering it.”

“Why would I not consider it?” Logan raised an eyebrow. “It’s a generous opportunity and would allow me to use my skills for good.”

 “I mean, yeah, but…” Virgil didn’t know how to say it without sounding stupid and needy. “You...You would have to leave.” The me went left unspoken.

Logan paused in his task. “It seems overall my presence amongst you all has been a detriment.” He said softly. “At least there I wouldn’t cause so much trouble and could make up for my mistakes.”

 Virgil blinked, shooting to his feet. “Logan no! I-I…” Ugh, Logan was gonna make him say it. “I don’t want you to leave,” Virgil said quietly. “We’ve both made mistakes and caused trouble and all that crap but we’re better now! You’re better now.” Virgil looked down. “And if you left I would miss you too much.”

Logan looked over at Virgil, visibly confused now. “You would?”

 “Yes.” Virgil practically cried before taking a deep breath. “Things have changed. Logan, I trust you. And yeah, maybe this is a great opportunity, I get it. But...I don’t know, maybe I’m just being selfish…” Virgil looked away, his insecurities and anxiety getting in the way. 

“I- no Virgil, you’re not being selfish.” Logan came over to sit on the edge of the bed closest to the desk. “Your feelings are perfectly valid. Truth be told I’ve grown fond of you as well; it’s part of why I was considering leaving, I didn’t want to cause you any more pain.”

 Virgil let out a little chuckle. “Well, hate to break it to you but you leaving would cause me quite a bit of pain.” Virgil paused for a moment. “I mean, you’d be leaving me with sunshine and dramatic prince to deal with all by myself, how dare you,” Virgil said.

“Oh, the horror.” Logan’s eyes widened in fake shock. “How dare I even consider such treachery.” He chuckled to himself, once again turning serious. “Virgil, if my presence really means that much to you I promise not to leave.”

 Virgil smiled. “Thanks, L. You staying does mean a lot.” Virgil thought for a moment, another chuckle escaping him.

 “It’s amazing to think I used to want to get away from you and now I don’t want you to leave.” Virgil found the irony funny in this case.

“Indeed.” Logan nodded in agreement, hardly able to remember what he had been thinking when they originally met. He felt like a completely different person now. He gazed around the bedroom. “Though I’m amazed by the change, it’s certainly a welcome one.”

 “More than welcome, I’d say,” Virgil said, a slight smirk on his face. “I mean, Pat and I have got it pretty good here with some great friends and a nice house. And everyone who used to know about us can no longer remember. I say things are...really great.” Virgil’s smile turned soft. 

“It will take some readjusting, but yes.” Logan smiled back. “I think this will do quite nicely.”

***

That night, everyone gathered in the new kitchen, enjoying sweets and beverages as they celebrated Thomas’ choice...as well as Logan’s lack of a choice.

“A toast!” Joan lifted their glass of apple juice. “To our newest recruit, Thomas!”

“To Thomas!” The others repeated, all taking sips of their own drinks.

“Thomas, you are amazing,” Joan said, swinging their arm around Thomas’ shoulders. “You are one of the coolest, smartest, kindest, handsomest men I have ever met.”

“Aww, thanks, Joan,” Thomas said with a laugh.

“I knew you had it in you!” Talyn came over, swinging their arm around Thomas as well. “So glad to have you on our team.”

“Group hug!” Thomas declared, pulling them both into one big hug with all three of them giggling. The three seemed to only grow closer with each moment they spent together, and it was clear to everyone involved that this was indeed where Thomas belonged. 

“Well, he seems happy,” Roman noted to Patton who sat nearby, feeling almost a guilty wave of relief.

 “I know! I’m so proud of him!” Patton exclaimed, looking at Thomas with a wide grin.

“...uh huh.” Roman rolled his eyes, taking another sip from his solo cup.

 Patton turned to look a Roman, eyebrows furrowed. “Roman? Is something wrong?”

Roman almost spit his drink back out in surprise, realizing he hadn’t been exactly ‘subtle’. 

“Oh, ah, it’s nothing!” Roman quickly grinned at him, forcing a smile.

 Patton frowned and suddenly he remembered all the times Roman was acting weird before. He glanced at Thomas and then back and Roman and he blinked in realization. “Roman, are you...have you been jealous of Thomas?”

“Whaaaaaat?” Roman laughed awkwardly, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Me? Jealous? Of Thomas?” At this point a few others had sent him glances as well, his act not fooling anyone.

 Patton frowned. “Why would you be jealous of Thomas?” Patton asked, really confused.

Roman sent a glance at Thomas. “Can we...talk about this in private?” Roman asked, setting his palm down for Patton.

 Patton nodded and climbed into the hand.

Roman left the chattering of the party behind, going to his bedroom. Now that Thomas was moving right back out, it seemed there was an extra bed just for Patton. Roman laid down on this mattress, setting Patton down on an extra pillow. 

“...it’s stupid.” Roman sighed, knowing after all this time it was a bit petty.

 Patton’s eyebrows furrowed. “What?”

“It’s just…” Roman let out another sigh, this one ruffling Patton’s hair. “Okay, remember back when I first ‘rescued’ you guys from Logan, but you still wanted to go with Logan instead of me?”

 Patton winced at that but nodded. “But what does that have to do with Thomas?”

“Well, then that whole weird switching bodies thing happened, and you and I became close.” Roman continued. “And I got really excited because I thought it was going to be just the two of us. But then Thomas started coming around and I was like ‘okay, I can deal, the more the merrier’. Guess it’s you, me and Thomas.” Roman seemed to deflate, sinking his chin into the pillow between his arms. “But...then it started to become just you and Thomas.”

 “Oh Roman…” Patton looked sad. “You felt left out, didn’t you?”

“You kept choosing him over me.” Roman nodded, not meeting Patton’s gaze. “And I tried not to be affected by it, I really did, because I saw how much fun the two of you were having. But I know Thomas has lots of friends and I’ve never really had a best friend before and I thought maybe that was you….but then you kept choosing everybody else over me. And it sucked.”

 Patton came over to Roman and placed a hand on Roman’s hand. “I’m sorry if I made you feel that way,” Patton said softly. “I never meant to choose anyone over anybody. I just wanted to hang out with everyone!”

“I know.” Roman gave him a half-smile, shifting his hand to hold Patton’s own between his fingers. “That’s why I didn’t say anything before. I didn’t want you to feel forced to hang out with me, I already tried to manipulate you to do that enough when we first met.” Roman cringed at the memory. “You deserved to have great friends like Thomas.”

 “I deserve to have a great friend like you too,” Patton spoke. “I want to hang out with you, I really do. I’m not sorry for hanging out with Thomas but I am sorry that I didn’t notice your feelings sooner.”

“It’s alright,” Roman assured him. “And I mean, hey, at least with Thomas off doing his new gig we’ll have plenty of time to hang out, right?”

 Patton nodded. “Yeah! I’ll miss him but it’ll be nice to hang out with just the two of us!” Patton smiled and Roman and came closer to hug his face.

“I’m looking forward to it.” Roman chuckled, bringing his hand up to hug Patton as well. He closed his eyes, enjoying the contact a moment longer.

 A few moments later, Patton pulled away. “Now come on! Let’s head back to the party! We’ve got some celebration to celebrate!” Patton giggled.

“Okay, okay.” Roman agreed, putting his palm down for Patton. 

 Patton climbed on but instead of sitting, he hugged Roman’s thumb. “And Roman?”

“Yes?” Roman lifted Patton higher, standing up to his full height.

 Patton grinned. “You’re my best friend.”

Roman froze, feeling as though this might be some sort of dream. “Really?” Roman gasped, his eyes lighting up.

 Patton nodded. “No doubt about it!”

Suddenly overcome with pride, Roman nearly sprinted back into the kitchen.

“Patton’s my best friend!” He announced excitedly. All heads turned to him.

“...ah, good for you?” Logan tilted his head, confused. 

 Patton giggled. “Roman!” 

 Virgil turned towards them, raising an eyebrow at Roman’s words. But he just shrugged. 

“This calls for another toast!” Joan said, raising their glass.

“To new, and old, friendships.” Thomas agreed, looking between all his friends.

“To friendship!” Talyn seconded, raising their glass high. They looked at the others expectantly.

“Oh, are we all doing one?” Logan asked, glancing around. 

“To new beginnings!” Roman cheered, raising his glass high.

 “To family!” Patton cheered, raising up his tinfoil cup.

“....to second chances,” Logan said, smiling softly at Virgil.

 Virgil smiled back before realizing that it was his turn. “Oh uh...to...good health?” Virgil tried.

“Oh come on, I’m sure you can do better than that.” Roman encouraged him.

 Virgil huffed but racked his brain for something. “Uh...to our home?”

“To our home!” Roman agreed, taking a swig of his drink.

“And to a new perspective!” Joan declared. “And a different perspective, another perspective, a third perspective-!”

“Okay, now you’re just spouting nonsense.” Talyn chuckled.

“And a Thomas perspective!” Thomas cheered, pulling his friends close.

[captainamericasbeard]

I Owe You One

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Word Count: 2.6k

Warnings: Just fluff. Fluff and too much food. 

Summary: Bucky steals your food and your heart in the process. Awwwwe.

A/N: This is my entry for @barnesrogersvstheworld ‘s writing challenge. My prompt was “I owe you one.” “You owe me three. At least” It’s in bold. I had a ton of fun writing it and I hope you love it. Sorry if I make your tummy rumble with all the delicious food references. Please like, comment, and reblog. I like the validation. 

_______________________________________________________________________

Bucky was always taking your food. You’d lost count of the number of times you’d walked into the kitchen and found him hunched over a meal you’d whipped up for yourself. Perfectly prepared BLTs gone in a few bites. Four bowls of spaghetti bolognese in the time it took you to take a shower. A whole pan of chorizo macaroni and cheese. You didn’t even get a bite. There was no limit to what he could eat and he seemed to have very little guilt about the whole thing. You’d walk back into the kitchen and find him hunched over your plate, a fleeting look of guilt in his eyes and he’d mumble around his mouth full of food, “I’ll owe you one.” He was deeply in your debt at this point.

You two were a match made in culinary heaven. You’re an excellent cook and he’s an indecent eater. He devours his food. He absolutely stuffs his face. He moans over your cooking in a way that makes you blush. He practically sings your praises while he eats and he would lick the plate if you’d let him. You don’t really mind. It makes you happy to make him happy and his sweet words makes your stomach somersault.

But lately you’ve taken to eating in strange places in an attempt to hide from him. A bowl of lemon chicken pasta on the floor of the server room. A plate of garlic and chili prawns with homemade crusty bread at the desk of a disused office. You even once considered taking your chicken schnitzel sandwich up into the vents but then you’d have to share with Clint. It wouldn’t have mattered, Bucky could find you anywhere. Just when you thought you’d found the perfect spot he’d whip open the door and shout “Aha!” He’d look pleadingly between your eyes and your plate of food with such longing until you handed over your meal resignedly. You’d never be able to resist that look.

_______________________________________________________________________

One day you were sitting at the table over a simple breakfast of coffee and banana bread slathered with ricotta cheese, honey, and cinnamon. Bucky was on his third slice and you realized this was the only slice you’d be getting. You got up to refill your coffee and Bucky asked “What’s something you love to eat that you can’t make?” You thought for a moment.

“Phở.”

“Phở?”

“Yeah, phở.”

“What the hell is phở?”

“It’s a Vietnamese soup. It’s got noddles and meat and herbs. It’s spicy and sweet and amazing. I’d be out of my depth trying to make it myself. And its so cheap you might as well just go to a restaurant for it.” Your eyes took on a dreamy far away look as you thought about tender pieces of sweet chicken floating in a broth that took two days to make.

“Let’s go. Let’s go get phở,” Bucky says snapping you out of your reverie.

“Yeah? You’d be up for trying it?” You ask.

“Yeah! I think its cool that you can get food from just about anywhere now. I never would have got a chance to try Vietnamese chicken noodle soup back in Brooklyn. Let’s go. Can we go now?” He starts getting up from his chair, his mouth watering at the dish you’ve described.

“Bucky, we're literally eating breakfast right now,” you roll your eyes at him, “can we at least wait until lunch?”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” he sits back down and grabs his fourth slice of banana bread.  

_______________________________________________________________________

Bucky hangs out with you in the kitchen while you spend some time cleaning bowls and loaf trays. You wipe down all the surfaces and cleaned out the fridge from countless containers of Chinese leftovers. “Damnit Clint,” you mutter as you fill up the trashcan. You whip up a batch of chocolate and caramel chip brownies and Bucky doesn’t even wait for them to cool before he devours half the tray and finishes the milk. He has started pacing at this point, ready to go. Finally you can’t handle his anxious energy any longer.

“Ok, ok, I’ll go get my jacket.” Bucky whoops and does a little dance as he rushes off to his room to grab his own jacket. You go to your room and while grabbing your jacket you decide you need to pull a brush through your hair and wash the flour off of your face. The few extra minutes you spend trying to look presentable has Bucky pounding at your door.

“What’s taking so long, Doll!?” The nickname puts a smile on your face.

“Sorry, just trying to look decent,” you say as you step out of your room and pull the door closed behind you. “You always look perfect, Doll. Don’t stress about it.” You dip your head down to hide your blushing under the pretense of zipping up your leather jacket. You look back up at Bucky to find him watching you intently. “Ready?” He asks with a smile playing on his lips.

“Ready,” you smile back.

It’s a perfect autumn day in New York City. The air is crisp and you both bury your hands in your jackets as you stroll down the sidewalk. There’s not much conversation happening but you don’t mind. Bucky’s presence makes you feel calm and collected. You always enjoy being around him and today was no different. Your favorite phở place was only a ten minute walk and you were there before you knew it.

The restaurant is a hole-in-the wall place, just as it should be. It was appropriately named Phở Noodles and as you opened the door you were greeted by the familiar tinkling of a bell and the soft brown eyes of the owner.

“Seat for two?” She asks with her thick accent, holding up two fingers to make herself clear. Her eyes twinkle mischievously. She’s used to you coming in by yourself.

“Yes please,” you respond with a wide smile. She seats you and Bucky next to the window and brings your waters. Bucky takes off his jacket as he sits and you watch him take in the decor, the kitchen in the back, and most importantly the bowls of phở at your neighbor’s table. He looks at you with childlike excitement in his eyes and you have to giggle at him. Your waitress comes over with a sweet smile and waits patiently for your order. You don’t even glance at the menu as you order two chicken phở, two Thai teas, and a share plate of egg rolls. The waitress nods and smiles and takes your menus as she walks back to the kitchen. You fold your hands on the table and turn back to Bucky who had watched the entire transaction with interest.

“So you come here a lot,” he asks, smirking.

“Yeah I guess. Three or four times a month. It’s comforting after a hard mission or a long day to just let someone else cook for dinner for once.”

“I think I owe you an apology,” Bucky says sheepishly and you raise your eyebrow. “I’m sorry I always steal your food.”

“Yeah, you do seem to have singled me out.”

“I can’t help it! You're just an amazing cook! I can always tell when its you in there and my mouth just starts watering and I just have to have some.” He looks at you, eyes pleading forgiveness.

“You know, you could just ask. I’d be happy to double the recipe so there’s enough for both of us. Where do you put it all anyways? You don’t look like you eat as much as you do.”

Bucky turns lightly pink at the implied compliment. “Hyperactive metabolism. Its a side affect of the serum. My metabolism runs about four times faster than yours. Steve’s is even worse. You see how many eggs he goes through.” You both laugh, Steve is famous for his daily dozen egg omelette.

“Gotcha. That makes sense. But why do you have such an indecent relationship with your meals.”

“Real answer or fake answer,” Bucky asks hesitantly.

“Real answer of course.”

“All the time I was with Hydra I never ate any real food. They kept me alive through IVs. I think I’m just making up for all the meals I missed” He was casual about it but you could tell it hurt him to relive any part of his time with Hydra. Meanwhile your heart had dropped out of your chest. You decided then and there you would never withhold food from Bucky Barnes ever again.

“I’m so sorry, Buck. I don’t know what else to say.”

“It’s ok. You don’t have to say anything.” He reaches his hand across the glass top table and gently holds yours. He was the one reliving the horrors of his past and here he was comforting you. Your brain goes fuzzy at the touch but luckily your food arrives before you can make a fool out of yourself.

Two huge, steaming bowls of broth, chicken, and rice noodles are placed in front of you. Next comes the plate with all the traditional toppings- mint and scallions, lime and sprouts, and more. Finally down comes your teas and the egg rolls with their light sauce full of shredded carrots. You teach Bucky how to add the toppings, which sauces were savory and which were spicy. You show him how to hold the chopsticks and the spoon for scooping up the broth. You both dig in and Bucky does not hold back his praises for his dish. He moans at the first bite. He loves each element of the soup and how they come together in perfect harmony. He slurps his broth oblivious to the glances of the other patrons. Before you’re halfway through your own bowl, Bucky is ordering his second.

“So you like it,” you comment between bites. Bucky nods his reply as he prepares and dives into his second bowl. Finally you’re too full to eat another bite so you slide your bowl over to Bucky as he’s finishing his. He doesn’t skip a beat as he pulls your bowl closer and keeps eating. You suppress a giggle and watch him enjoy one of your favourite things. Your heart swells knowing you’ve brought him the joy of a new discovery. Bucky finishes and sighs contentedly, his hands on his stomach and a smile on his face.

“Yeah,” he says seriously, “that’s pretty damn good. Thanks Y/N.”

“Anytime Buck.”

_______________________________________________________________________

You walk back to the tower in contented silence. Once inside you make a quick decision. “Come with me,” you say as you head towards your room. You open the door and move across the room to your closet. You stand on your tiptoes reaching into the top shelf while Bucky watches curiously from the foot of your bed. You pull out a decorative box wrapped in plastic wrap from underneath a pile of sweaters. “Come sit down,” you say as you begin to peel layers of plastic off of the box. “I’ve got dessert.”

“You’ve been holding out on me, Y/L/N,” Bucky says as he sinks to the floor and inspects the contents of the box.

“Yeah sorry. It won’t happen again I promise,” you glance at him from the corner of your eye and he’s looking at you with a dopey smile on his face. “They’re my grandma’s cookies. She makes them every year and sends me a box. I tend to hoard them. They’re chocolate peanut butter pinwheels.” Bucky’s eyes light up as he starts to reach into the box. Quickly he clenches his fist and pulls back.

“Sorry. May I have some?” He asks looking down at you with the sweetest expression on his face.

“Of course, Buck,” you answer softly and you both dig into the box.

“Too bad we’re out of milk,” Bucky comments around a mouth full of cookie.

“And who’s fault is that?” Bucky laughs and goes in for what might be his fourth cookie. Together you polish off the box in one sitting, Bucky eating the lion’s share of the precious treat. After the last crumb has been picked off of the inside of the box you both sigh contentedly.

“Thanks for sharing, Y/N, I know they were pretty special. I owe you one, for sure.”

“For that you owe me three. At least.” You burst out laughing and Bucky joins. You’ve never felt so contented, sitting on the floor of your closet laughing with the man who has managed to capture your heart.

_______________________________________________________________________

It’s a week after the phở and it’s managed to be a particularly terrible day. You decide there’s no way you’re cooking and opt to order out Chinese instead. You settle on your favorite garlic and ginger chicken with rice and a few egg rolls. Hanging up the phone you move to your room for a quick shower and to change into some sweats and an old t-shirt. All you can think about is the newest episode of Brooklyn 99 and your dinner on it’s way to you. You open the door to your room and immediately smell trouble. Your food has arrived. You rush to the kitchen to see Bucky hunkered over a container of Chinese food. YOUR Chinese food. The delivery guy must have come while you were in the shower. You stomped your foot and threw your hands onto your hips. Your eyes were flashing in anger.

“James Buchanan Barnes. What the hell do you think you’re doing!?” Bucky’s head snaps up. His body freezes with chopsticks in one hand and the box in the other. He gulped down his bite and looked so damn guilty you immediately softened your stance, dropping your hands down to your sides.

“Shit, Doll, I’m so sorry. I thought it was Clint’s! Can I owe you one?” He looked truly remorseful and your heart just fell apart.

“No, Bucky, you cannot owe me one. You owe me about a million. And you know what, I’m cashing in now.” You step towards him with your heart pounding out of your chest. You knew he could hear it but you didn’t care. You strode up to him and closed the gap between your bodies. You paused inches away from his face, giving him a chance to say something or push you away. He did nothing but swallow hard as his eyes flew from your bright, blazing eyes to your soft lips and back again. Before you could think about it you bring your lips to his in a tender kiss. He was frozen for a moment, food still in hand, but his lips quickly melt into yours. He throws the food onto the counter you have him pushed up against and wraps his arms around your waist, deepening the kiss. You rest your hands lightly on his chest for a moment before you move them up to tangle your fingers in his hair. He moans into your mouth like he did with that bowl of phở and you couldn’t help but smile. He pulls you closer to him as your passions grow and he tasted like garlic and ginger, savory and sweet all at once. You finally brake away to breath, locking eyes with each other.

“I'm glad one of us finally had the courage to do that,” Bucky whispers, his voice low and husky. “So I’m not in trouble for eating your dinner?” He smiles down at you with a devilish grin.

“You keep kissing me like that and you can steal all the food you want.” Your lips reconnect and you realized you were both hungry in a way food could never satisfy.

[quicksilversquared]

Keeping Up With the Ladyblog

A reporter has to adapt and improvise. It's an important skill to learn, especially when one is a reporter who is still in school and can't skip out to film all of the akuma battles without getting grounded. So Alya gets creative and starts using old security camera footage of akuma attacks. It keeps the Ladyblog active and maybe, just maybe, she'll finally get her scoop of a lifetime.

links in the reblog

Initially, setting up the Ladyblog and getting a devoted userbase had been a bit of an uphill battle. Even though Alya had gotten noticed right away with her footage from the first fight, that didn't guarantee her a permanent position as the best-known blog on Paris's superheroes. Not covering a few fights would mean that someone else could sneak in and steal her spot, so that meant that even if she missed a little school here and there (or had to drag her sisters along during a fight), it was worth it. She had to stay on top of all things Ladybug and right then, that meant getting the best coverage of as many fights as she could physically manage and writing up good, thought-provoking articles for when there was a slow day or two.

(Of course, there were other problems that she had to deal with as well. Alya had to put together a functioning site that was user-friendly, could handle the traffic that she was getting, and offered everything that anyone could possibly want from an official superhero blog, because there was no. way. Alya was going to lose traffic just because some other blog had one option or another that she didn't have or because her blog went down from traffic overload at a critical moment. There were some places that she drew the line- she didn't accept fanfiction of the superheroes, because they were real people and therefore it would be weird, and only appropriate art was allowed- but she had to add all sorts of options so that people who visited the Ladyblog would come back over and over again. It was a lot of work and all had to be done fairly quickly, which meant that her homework sometimes got pushed off until later than it should have.)

Alya didn't consider setting up the blog itself to be that big of a problem, though. Software could usually be battered into submission if she worked on it for long enough, and as long as she didn't try any system updates to the Ladyblog when a lot of people were using it, short outages were usually not a big deal. It was the content that was more of a problem, especially now that her parents (and teachers) were on her back about not skipping school just to film attacks.

She just had to get creative.

Originally, Alya had considered trying to use her fame from being the sole moderator of the Ladyblog to see if she could get a get-out-of-class-free card during the attacks. Her teachers could just check her blog to make sure that she wasn't abusing the pass, she figured, and it wasn't as though most of her classes would be that hard to make up. But it didn't take long before Alya realized that that was just a pipe dream. No teacher would just let her go whenever just so she could keep up a blog when there were professional reporters out there as well that could film the attacks just as well (though Alya would argue with that). Besides, she sometimes had to bike across town to try to get footage, and there were times when it took so long that Ladybug and Chat Noir were already done when she got there. Without any footage, it was a waste of her time.

She had to play it smart. She couldn't just take footage from news channels, but what if there was other footage out there, unseen by most of the public? The Ladyblog already used fan submissions. People took pictures and videos of the superheroes all the time, and most didn't have any interest in starting their own superhero blog but were willing enough to share their superhero content online. Alya always spent a chunk of time every day sorting through the submissions and organizing them by akuma for easy reference.

Still, that wasn't quite enough. Alya had to go above and beyond if she didn't want to be replaceable.

Asking Mr. Kubdel about getting security camera footage from the Louvre partway through the year was a stroke of pure genius on her part. Getting it was a combination of luck, her fame as the Ladyblogger, and the fact that she knew Alix.

"They don't have the best angles in the world," Alya told Nino three days after Mr. Kubdel agreed to her request. She had just gotten the footage from all of the security cameras for the time frames of the last few akuma attacks that had gone through the museum, and digging through the video to find clips of the actual fight was taking a while. Some parts she could just fast-forward through, since the superheroes didn't go into that particular room, but she couldn't go too fast or she could miss the superheroes flashing by. "But I can't really complain. No one has any video of any of these fights yet, so this is incredible."

"It was super-nice of Mr. Kubdel to agree to it," Nino said as he watched the video over her shoulder. "Are you- whoop, there goes Chat Noir."

"Am I what?" Alya asked as she marked down the time Chat Noir entered and when he exited. "Ooh, look, that's a cool akuma!"

"It is a pretty cool design," Nino agreed. "Are you going to ask other places if you can get security camera videos from them, too? Like, there's some places that seem to have a lot of akuma fights go through them. School, the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Paris-"

Alya's eyes lit up at the mention of the last place. "Ooh! D'you think I could wrangle some footage of Chloe as Antibug? I kind of want to see some footage of her getting her ass handed to her by Ladybug and Chat Noir."

Nino cringed slightly. "...yeah, I wouldn't phrase it like that when you ask Mr. Bourgeois about it if I were you. He might say no just because of it." He considered that for a second, then added, "Actually, come to think of it, a lot of the akuma that pop up at his hotel tend to be after Chloe, right? So maybe he would say no if most of the footage you get is of Chloe being tormented, no matter how funny you find it. And he's not going to have anything from inside of the guest rooms, just the hallways and dining areas and whatnot."

Alya sniffed. "I'd be professional and include as much of the fight as I could find. Any compilations of Chloe being pursued by angry akumas would be completely unofficial and only posted to an anonymous YouTube account. Which I would then share with you guys, of course."

Nino laughed.

"I think I could persuade him to help, though," Alya decided, going back to the Louvre videos. "He's nice enough when Chloe isn't pushing him around. I'd just have to ask when Chloe isn't there. Maybe I could ask Sabrina's father for help to get footage from other places." She squinted at the screen, then stopped the video for a moment. Nino looked over and saw that it had gone all blurry and pixilated.

He frowned. "Uh, what happened to it? Is the file corrupted?"

"I don't know. It's happened a couple times before on other files, once near the start of this fight and twice again near the end of the first fight I looked at. I don't know what causes it." Alya rewound a little so she could get the last good frame of the superheroes and record the time so she could cut it there. "And... I know I kind of gave up on exposing Ladybug and Chat Noir's identities on the Ladyblog, but I kind of thought that I might catch them detransforming on the security cams. I wasn't going to post that part online, of course, but still..."

"Maybe they're just really good at moving out of the area first," Nino suggested. "That's gotta be tough, actually. I never thought about it. But there's so many cameras in buildings like that nowadays that they have to be super-careful so they don't get seen by others or by cameras!"

"They're bound to slip up sometime," Alya grumbled, opening another file and starting to fast-forward through it. "I really hope I don't miss an attack when I'm working on this. Like, it's gonna be great for my blog to have this footage and all, but it's the live stuff that people like the most."

  The first of the spliced-together security camera footage hit the Ladyblog almost a week after Alya got the first batch of raw video. There was an immediate spike of interest, though, as Alya complained to Nino as they waited for Adrien and Marinette to arrive to work on their group project, some people were whining about favoritism getting her the tapes.

"It was just because I asked first," Alya grumbled, scrolling through the comments. "Because I thought of it first. And- oh! I forgot to tell you! Mr. Bourgeois said yes, I just have to figure out the dates and times of old attacks myself and give them to his security people. And I talked to the principal too, and to Sabrina's father. Mr. Damocles said yes, and Sabrina's father said that he would ask his supervisor and also people at Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower about the security cameras at their individual sites." She was grinning now, momentary irritation gone. "It's gonna be a beast going through everything and getting my homework done, but it'll be worth it."

Nino frowned. "Are all of them gonna give you footage from past attacks? Some might discard video once a certain amount of time passes, or they might think that it's too much work to go back that far to get you the files."

Alya shrugged, face dropping slightly. "Yeah, I guess you're right. Still, going through the past stuff I do get plus new stuff is gonna be hard. At least spring break is coming up soon. Ish. Kinda. And then I can really plow through stuff once it's summer."

"You're gonna vanish into your room and never come out again," Nino joked. "You'll get all pale from lack of sun."

"I still gotta go out for livestreaming attacks," Alya reminded him. "And once I don't have homework to do, I don't think it'll take that long to mark and edit stuff. I can get through one per day for sure, maybe more. I can do it while I babysit my sisters, as long as they don't want to go anywhere."

Nino snorted. "Right, and the chances that they won't want to go out to the park or on a walk?" He shook his head at her. "But I can help with the timing stuff, so you can just focus on the splicing things together."

Alya grinned and leaned forward to press a kiss to his lips. "That would be great, Nino! Thank you so much!"

"You'll have to tell me how you want it done sometime before I start, but it really shouldn't be a problem," Nino assured her, grinning as he returned the kiss. "Though maybe we'll have time for you to show me before Adrien and Marinette arrive. Where are they, anyway?"

Alya just shrugged. "Who knows. I texted Marinette ten minutes ago to remind her we would be meeting, but no response yet. She might be in the middle of a project, and if she is, I don't wanna startle her. Last time I called her when she was busy sewing, she got started by her phone ringing and stabbed herself with a pin."

Nino cringed. "Ow. Yeah, I texted Adrien too, but no dice. No idea what he might be doing- oh, wait, here they come. Finally."

"And from the same direction too, hmm? Interesting!" Alya slid her laptop back into her bag and stood up, grinning as she watched Adrien and Marinette approach. "And neither of their houses are in that direction, either."

"We're here to study, not interrogate them," Nino reminded her. "Midterms, remember?"

"Oh, but come on-"

"You can interrogate them after, once we've gotten our studying done," Nino pointed out, grinning. "But I actually want to pass my classes, thank you very much."

  There were times when Alya almost regretted starting to post the security camera footage. It was a lot to handle and process, and it ended up cutting into her article-writing time, which, well, she really liked writing those articles. It was one of the things that set the Ladyblog apart. But the old footage was popular, particularly when there was no good news coverage of the fight, and she could always prioritize which fights to edit together and which could maybe be set aside until she had more time.

It was after Alya was first tapped to become Rena Rouge when she realized how great of an idea it had been to start including the security footage from attacks on the Ladyblog. She couldn't cover her own fights- well, not that she was called for many of the akuma attacks, really- but she could still provide that footage, and it wasn't as though she had only started with that kind of footage after she became a superhero, so it wasn't going to raise any suspicion.

Well. Much suspicion, at least. There might be a few people who wondered why she could never cover Rena Rouge's fights, but there had been few enough of them so far that the pattern wouldn't be apparent. And if it continued- which, well, she hoped that it would- then she could always use her much improved video editing skills to "interview" Rena Rouge in person.

She was sure that Ladybug would let her borrow the Miraculous for a little extra time if she mentioned the need to throw people off of her trail. After all, Ladybug was very big on secrecy.

Most of the time, though, Alya loved her stroke of brilliance. It had been worth the security checks to make sure that she could be trusted with the security footage, and she had managed to shore up her views again. Future employers would see that she was focused and willing to put in the work, and well, she had gotten herself a fabulous reputation at the Louvre after she had spotted a shoplifter on the footage and let them know about it right away. It made her feel like a detective of sorts, discovering things that she wouldn't have otherwise.

And, well, summer was coming. Soon, she could get all caught up, and then Alya was sure that it wouldn't be quite so overwhelming.

  "I figured it out!"

Nino glanced up at Alya as she slid into the empty spot at the table he was sitting at. From the other side of the table, Adrien and Marinette looked over at the reporter as well.

"What did you figure out?" Marinette asked, gaze immediately going to the tablet Alya was holding. She looked interested and inched closer. "Is it something to do with the Ladyblog?"

"It is!" Alya held up her tablet. "So you know how I've been putting together footage of the akuma fights from security cameras?"

Nino nodded. Both Adrien and Marinette looked puzzled. Alya groaned at them.

"Seriously? Have neither of you looked at the Ladyblog in weeks?! It's my big new thing!"

"I've been busy," they both claimed at once, before shooting each other startled looks. Alya narrowed her eyes at them both.

"Too busy to even glance at the Ladyblog once in a while, even now that school is almost out? Really?"

"I've glanced, but not looked into the archives at all," Marinette corrected herself. Then she frowned. "Wait, what do you mean, security camera footage?"

"Huh, I guess I must not have mentioned it to you before, either," Alya said, looking thoughtful. "Hm. Anyway, I've been contacting people at the Louvre and at the Eiffel Tower and Chloe's dad and Sabrina's dad and the principal to ask if I can get the raw security camera footage from the akuma fights that go through there, and they all said yes! So I've been going through that and splicing together stuff from different cameras to try to get as much of the fight covered as possible."

Now Adrien was frowning, too. "Really? They just happen to know which cameras Ladybug and Chat Noir have gone past?"

Now Nino snorted. "Of course not. They just basically give Alya all the footage from the cameras for the duration of the fight and she- well, we, I've been helping- have to go through and find which cameras Ladybug and Chat Noir went past and when."

For some reason, both Adrien and Marinette now looked deeply alarmed.

"Anyway, we've been noticing some weirdness on some of the clips," Alya told them. "It get corrupted for a bit, mostly near the start of the fight before the superheroes show up or after the akuma's been defeated but sometimes in the middle, too. I've been puzzling over it for the longest time, and I think I've finally figured it out!"

"Really?" Nino asked, interested and finally distracted from his strangely pale friends. "How?"

Alya grinned. "It was some comments on the Ladyblog that finally got me to notice the pattern. The corruption is either before Ladybug and Chat Noir show up or right after they vanish- or, in the middle of the fight, if one of them has to go recharge, then it happens then, too."

Nino blinked, then caught on. "So you're saying that somehow their magic is interfering with the cameras and protecting their secret identities?"

Alya pointed at him. "Exactly! I thought when I started all this that I might accidentally catch them transforming or see someone where they weren't meant to be, but their magic just means that they can't be caught on camera. It kind of makes me wonder if they always have that effect on cameras when they aren't transformed, or if it only pops up when they're about to transform or just detransformed."

Nino was so caught up in thinking about it that he completely missed Adrien and Marinette's identical sighs of relief as they both slumped in their seats. "It's gotta be the latter. Otherwise how would you explain people never getting a good picture of you, if it happened all the time?"

"Maybe Juleka is Ladybug, then," Marinette offered, giggling a little. "Remember, she was convinced that she had some sort of photo curse?"

"And now she's figured out how to manipulate the magic so that she can get normal photos again," Alya joked, sounding serious for a moment before she laughed. "Nah, she can't be, she was akumatized and fought Ladybug and Chat Noir. Remember that?"

Nino shuddered. "How could I forget? I was stuck in a skirt and high heels for ages!"

"I rocked the platforms," Adrien bragged. He grinned at Nino's raised eyebrow. "What? Sure, they were hard at first, but with a little practice..."

Nino just shook his head and groaned. "You would, dude. You must have been hidden, though. I couldn't find you after Reflecta left."

"Yeah, the outfit and the makeup would do that, probably," Adrien pointed out with a laugh. "I mostly decided to stay out of the way. And that fight didn't last that long. Ladybug and Chat Noir defeated her within an hour."

"Okay, fair."

"What would you do if you found something that told you who Ladybug or Chat Noir are?" Marinette asked, pulling the conversation back on track. "I mean, you can't see them transforming or detransforming, but if..."

Alya waved a hand. "Oh, I would destroy the footage as fast as possible. Hopefully I wouldn't recognize them-" though she wasn't certain about the probability of that, considering that Nino had been picked as a temporary superhero, too. What were the chances of that happening if Ladybug at least didn't know them to some extent? Unless of course it was a coincidence since she was the well-known Ladyblogger and Nino had already been out in the middle of the fight before Ladybug grabbed him- "and so it wouldn't matter if I saw them for two seconds."

Adrien looked astonished. "Really? I thought that was your dream, to figure out who they are! Not that I don't support the deleting thing," he added quickly. "That's probably safer for them. But what made you decide to change your mind?"

Well, she had become a superhero herself, for one. She had realized that she didn't really want the city to know her identity, because what if the akumas targeted her family and friends? And then Nino was a superhero, too, and what if people knew that and she became a target? She had figured that if she didn't want the city knowing her secret identity, she should probably extend the same courtesy to Ladybug and Chat Noir. And Heroes Day had proved that even superheroes knowing the secret identity of other superheroes wasn't necessarily safe. But instead of saying any of that, Alya just said "Well, I realized that it wouldn't be safe for them. And I figured that we should probably respect our superheroes' wishes since they've done so much for the city."

Adrien grinned. "That's very mature of you, Alya."

Alya just shrugged. Really, there had been so much more to it than she had let on. He was probably giving her too much credit, considering it had taken her being in the superheroes' shoes to realize what she had. "Yeah, well. I'll get a big scoop someday. I just refuse to have it at the superheroes' expense."

  With the start of summer came more free time, and Alya attacked her backlog of footage with gusto. It was slowly shrinking as she and Nino dug into it with occasional help from Adrien or Marinette, deleting the superhero-less footage out and discarding it. It had become a bit of an obsession now that she had plenty of free time, and Alya had finally- finally!- figured out how to have several streams going at once on her screen and how to pause the others and switch to just one when there was footage that she wanted to watch more closely.

It made things go a lot faster, that was for sure. She was getting through a couple akuma attacks per day, and she finally had to start queuing things up so that the Ladyblog wouldn't get overwhelmed. One per day would be good, maybe two if they were short fights. Alya prioritized newer fights, too, knowing that the old ones were interesting but also old news. The newer fights generated more views and more interest, but it wouldn't be long before the next wave of akumas took over public interest.

Still, Alya loved having that old footage. She loved watching Ladybug and Chat Noir facing up against the akuma, and she loved seeing Ladybug's creativity when faced with a strange Lucky Charm. Their teamwork was so strong, and the way that they absorbed the occasional extra teammate and worked in those powers- yeah, it was pretty obvious why they had been chosen to be the city's main superheroes.

She was digging through her folders of akuma fight footage when she spotted a particularly large one. Alya frowned, puzzled- what, had the entire city been involved in the fight?- when she noticed the date. It was from Heroes Day.

"Oh yeah," Alya said eagerly, grinning as she clicked on the folder. This had been one of the battles that she really wanted footage for. All five superheroes at once in the boss battle? Yes please. All of the existing footage of the fight had been filled by possessed people, so it would be great to get literally anything else.

It was going to be difficult to piece together all of the bits of footage that were bound to be all over the city, but hey, it was summer and Alya could probably rope her friends into helping. And hey, if she could get Adrien roped in, he had several computer monitors. He could use all of them at once and have a ridiculous number of feeds going all at once. But Alya was impatient and wanted to get another look at the fight, so she flipped through the camera files until she found a set on the Eiffel Tower. They opened right before a fox-themed supervillain got there- and ugh, Alya immediately found herself annoyed. Another Volpina? Why were there so many people in Paris who seemed to have some sort of design on the Fox Miraculous?

Ugh. She was going to scour the footage to see if she could get a glance at this new Volpina's unakumatized identity. One Fox villain before Rena Rouge had showed up was one thing, but again? Nuh-uh.

Alya watched as once again, chaos descended on Paris. Volpina detransformed- uh, could Hawkmoth recall akumas? Then why had the baby akuma actually happened at all?- and revealed- uh, was that Lila? What was Lila doing in Paris? She had told the class that she was out of the country and wasn't going to be returning yet!

Okay, something was definitely up there. Maybe Marinette was on to something when she said that she didn't trust Lila. Especially when- they had talked to Lila on Heroes' Day, hadn't they? They had video chatted with her as a class. She had said that she was abroad, and it had looked like she was, too.

Strange. Alya was going to have to do some digging there for sure.

On-screen, the red butterflies descended on Paris. Alya winced as she remembered the terror that had reigned. They had been tricked by Volpina's illusions- and wait wait wait. Alya rewound the footage to when Lila detransformed and- oh, she looked disappointed when she was detransformed, as though she knew what she had been doing and had wanted to continue.

Even stranger. Also really, really concerning. Alya was going to put a hold on making any plans with Lila until she figured out what was going on there.

Alya continued watching. Red akumas found their mark, and Hawkmoth emerged, watching over the panic. Red bubbles bloomed into oversized akumas, and then... well, more chaos. There was screaming in the streets as people were turned into akumas and everyone else fled- well, there looked like there was screaming in the streets, at least. The cameras didn't pick up sound, which did take away from the experience, just a bit, but she could imagine what it would have sounded like.

The sheer amount of footage that Alya was getting from just the Eiffel Tower was astounding. She could only imagine how much she was going to get across the city, though the ice appearing now from the re-akumatized Frozer probably took at least a few of the feeds out. If she just played it all one camera at a time, it would be an insanely long video.

She might have to learn how to play several streams at once in a split screen. Hawkmoth would have to be shown at all times, Alya thought, and then she could do flashes of different akumas and also show the superheroes. They would fill the screen when they were doing an intense fight, maybe and-

Oh, Alya had so many ideas for the video already and she had only watched part of four streams so far. The number of akumas and the civilian resistance- which, by the way, amazing- meant that she could really play with angles and video cuts and oh, it was gonna be great.

It was also going to be a whole lot of work. Alya was probably going to spend the entire week picking out clips and then deciding which ones she wanted to use, and then it was going to be another few days of editing.

Hopefully her friends would be willing to help her out. They could blast through mostly-boring feeds in no time and get stuff trimmed down for her to review. Maybe she could even get Max to help her with the split-screen editing stuff, since he understood all of that technical talk.

Smiling widely, Alya turned back to her computer. Most of the footage at the moment was just Hawkmoth standing up on the Eiffel Tower with his two singers- and boy was Alya going to rake him over the coals for that, it was ridiculous- and so she had to wait for Ladybug and Chat Noir to head up like she knew they had. Thankfully the camera on that level wasn't iced over at all, like the ones on the lower levels were. This time, she had a front-row seat (abet at a bad angle) as she saw Lila get akumatized again (and boy was it interesting that Lila didn't look at all alarmed about the butterfly approaching her- she looked eager) and Volpina conjured up a second Hawkmoth while the real one hid.

And boy, was that ever an anxiety-inducing experience, watching Ladybug and Chat Noir approach the decoy while the real Hawkmoth hid down below, ready to surprise them from behind. Somehow Ladybug noticed him creeping up on them- and how, Alya had no idea how, she and Chat Noir seemed a bit distracted by trying to get Hawkmoth to do the right thing by turning over his Miraculous- and then they were fighting. Hawkmoth's cane-sword went down, but he didn't go down with it.

Alya sat up and watched as the three secondary users re-joined the fight just in time. She wondered where they had gone wrong, where they might have messed up and could have done better. The next bit was also the only example they had so far of the mysterious Peacock user's powers, and they needed to know what to expect in case they came into play again.

It wasn't that the Peacock's powers seemed that dangerous, at least not from what they had seen so far. Their team had just been taken off guard, and that gave Hawkmoth enough of a distraction to run off like the coward he was. Alya watched the giant moth vanish after Ladybug hit it, and she wondered if it would have vanished so easily if Ladybug had hit it when Hawkmoth was still there. Had the Peacock backed off as soon as Hawkmoth had retreated?

On one of the streams, the superheroes glanced around, trying to figure out where Hawkmoth had gone. Meanwhile, a Hawkmoth-shaped blob limped- had he been injured? They should have looked for him!- past one of the iced-over cameras, and then slumped down against a wall. Alya leaned forward, eager, as Hawkmoth sat there for a few seconds, likely shaken by the whole run-in.

Was he going to detransform? Had they really caught Hawkmoth on camera, after nearly a year of attacks? The ice on the camera would make it hard to see exactly who it was, but Ladybug's Miraculous Cure was bound to come zipping past any moment now. Was this her big scoop-?

"Ugh, and there's that distortion," Alya complained, flopping back in her chair as the already-fuzzy footage got even worse as a burst of purple lit up the screen. "C'mon, really? Can't his kwami not provide magical protection for him? The dude doesn't deserve it."

Alya sulked at the screen as a rush of red went by, clearing off the ice but doing nothing for the magical distortion. She could make out a bit of a shape on the screen, and colors- red and white- but no details, and static regularly cut across the already blurry picture. The static stayed there for longer than normal, and then the blurry, pixilated shape of civilian Hawkmoth finally got up, heading for the stairs. It was only once he had fully exited the frame that the picture finally snapped back into focus, one last bit of static cutting across the screen before the picture stabilized for good.

"Oh, come on," Alya groaned, flopping back on her bed. "That's so unfair that we were so close, and this freaking arse just- just waltzes out of there? Just walks away down the stairs and off of the tower and- and- ugh!" She slapped her fist down on the bed next to her- and then she froze. "Wait. Wait, wait, wait. He walked off of the Eiffel Tower. There have to be more cameras on the staircase and at the bottom. If he didn't detransform in front of those, would they have gone out, too?"

She didn't know. She had never really tracked other cameras from the area after the fights ended, so she didn't know if they had caught the civilian Ladybug and Chat Noir or not and she wasn't going to go back and look, not now that she knew now how dangerous it could be to have other people knowing a superhero's secret identity.

But now? There was absolutely no downside to finding out Hawkmoth's secret identity. It would be the biggest break of Alya's journalistic career.

Re-energized and laser-focused, Alya clicked back to her files, looking for the other cameras. It took a few tries for her to find the footage from the stair cameras and then she fast-forwarded to close to the end. There was a minute of anxious waiting, where Alya scanned the entire screen in case Hawkmoth had tried climbing down the side of the stairs or something ridiculous like that, and then a pair of feet appeared, headed slowly and almost unsteadily down the stairs. Before the feet could go down any further, though, the footage came to an end.

Alya let out a frustrated snarl and rewound the video a few seconds, pausing it right before it came to an end. Only a pair of perfectly white shoes and the hem of bright red pants came into view.

Those... those pants looked really familiar. Alya frowned as she stared at them. She couldn't quite place them, but maybe Marinette could, if Alya brought the footage over the next time that she went to Marinette's house. But that was stupid, Alya decided after a moment of mulling it over. Maybe they knew someone with pants like that, but there were several million people living in Paris. There was no guarantee that there weren't other people making the same (awful) fashion choices.

"So close," Alya complained aloud, glaring at her screen. If only Mr. Raincomprix had sent footage that was a few seconds longer! Except- oh, that was it! All she had to do was email him and ask for the footage from the lower-level cameras running from maybe a minute before the end of the fight to several minutes after the current end time. That would be sure to get her lots of footage of Hawkmoth, and surely he would be recognizable in some of it.

She had to hope that the footage still existed and it hadn't been written over at all. It would be close- it had been over two months since that battle- but Alya knew that she had gotten older footage from the Eiffel Tower before.

Hopefully that stuff hadn't just been saved for longer because of the akuma attack.

Excited, Alya turned back to her computer. If she was going to file a request for more footage and hoped to get it in a reasonable amount of time, she needed to have all of the information possible- what the camera IDS were, the exact date and times that she wanted were, everything. Just to be sure, Alya checked her other files to see which cameras would be focused on either the place where Hawkmoth detransformed or the stairs that he had gone down, writing the code for every last one down. Once she had that, she folded up the list and stuffed it in her pocket as she raced for the door.

"Alya, remember that you're going to be babysitting the twins in two hours," he mom called out as Alya raced past. "You'll be back by then, right?"

Alya had to bite down the frustrated noise that nearly escaped because even though this was critical, this was huge, it wasn't as though she couldn't wait a little longer to review the footage. And she could review the footage while sitting out at the kitchen counter with her sisters watching a movie in the living room, it would just be harder. "Yeah, I'll be back!"

And hopefully, she would come back with the footage that would change everything.

  Officer Raincomprix was all too willing to bring Alya over to the Eiffel Tower to get more of the footage, all without her having to explain anything. He showed her to the people she needed to talk to and then trotted off to deal with a littering teenager while Alya was ushered inside of the office. The staff were all helpful, and soon Alya was leaving with everything she needed, with no questions asked.

She supposed that it was good that all of the adults were so busy, because she didn't exactly want to explain. Really, Ladybug and Chat Noir should be the first ones to know about Hawkmoth's identity.

Alya jogged back towards her family's apartment, memory stick clutched tightly in her hand. On it, she hoped, would be evidence that would show her Hawkmoth's identity. She was nearly back to her building when she ran smack-dab into a very familiar figure.

"Yo, I was just looking for you!" Nino exclaimed, pulling Alya up. He bent back over to grab the memory stick that she had dropped before the passing pedestrians could kick it away and handed it back to her. "I was trying to text you earlier, but I didn't get any response."

Alya winced. "I'm so sorry! I just got really distracted by my video editing. I opened up the folder for Heroes' Day and I got really distracted."

"Oh, that was a crazy fight. I bet there was a ton of footage. Well, until everything got all icy, at least." Nino glanced down at her as they continued down the sidewalk. "So can I ask why you were out? You look out of breath."

"Not out here," Alya warned immediately. She didn't want a passerby overhearing and trying to grab the memory stick to grab the discovery for themselves. "Come inside with me. I can tell you there, and at any rate I have to be back in-" she checked her phone- "fifteen minutes anyway to babysit my sisters."

Nino followed without question, looking interested.

"So did you find something interesting in the footage?" Nino asked curiously. "You must have. Or was there footage missing, was that why you were out?"

"Not quite," Alya told him, grinning. "I needed more footage, yeah, but it wasn't during the middle of the fight. It was at the end, because I almost had Hawkmoth's civilian self on tape."

"You- what?" Nino asked, freezing for a few seconds before jogging up the stairs alongside her again. "You think you have Hawkmoth on tape? I thought that the magic messed with the cameras!"

Alya grinned. "It does. But where he detransformed- he had to go down the stairs, and there's another camera there. Before, I could see his shoes and the hems of his pants, but now I have an extended clip of the video! It should show him coming down the stairs into sight."

Nino looked impressed. "Oh, that is amazing. But what if it's not someone you know? I mean, there's a lot of people in Paris."

"Well, I'll turn the video over to Ladybug and Chat Noir. They can decide if they want to get the police involved. They might recognize the guy, too." Alya was assuming that she wouldn't recognize Hawkmoth, but she supposed that it was a possibility. "Or we could help by asking Max if he can run some sort of face recognition thing, so that they don't have to go to the police. I'm worried that the police might try to take over themselves and end up getting really hurt by underestimating him."

"Yeah, they might try to do that. Freaking adults, thinking that they know better than the actual experts." Nino shook his head, disgusted. "But do you think Max can do that? I mean, I know he's good at computers, but face recognition- that sounds like he would have to tap into files from, like, ID cards or something."

Alya shrugged. She supposed that was true, but Max was crazy smart and also had Markov. She was sure that if she asked, he would try to see what he could do for her.

"So are you gonna look at the footage now?" Nino asked as they reached her floor. "I thought you said that you have babysitting to do."

"I do, but I wanna at least look at the footage first, if I can." Alya pulled out her keys to open the apartment door. "And I was planning on just putting on a movie and some snacks for my sisters so that they stay out of trouble while I work. They should stay out of trouble that way."

Nino gave her a supremely dubious look. "Your sisters, staying out of trouble?"

"I'd still be in the room! And it's not like I would have headphones in or anything."

"...would you like me to stay there while you do your video stuff?"

"That would be amazing," Alya told Nino, leading him into the apartment. She waved to her mom as they headed down the hallway. "But I still have time to get this done before my mom has to leave!"

Nino glanced at the clock on the wall. "Uh, babe, you only have ten minutes."

"Do you really think I can't get this done in ten minutes?" Alya led the way into her room and wriggled her mouse, waking her laptop up. "You know me better than that. I know exactly where to look in the footage."

"And you really think you'll be able to focus on looking after kids once you've seen Hawkmoth's face?"

...Alya had to admit that that was a very good point.

"I can show you the footage leading up to the end while the computer recognizes my memory stick," Alya told Nino as she plugged the new flash drive in. She rewound the footage. "See, here's Hawkmoth escaping- but he didn't go far!"

"That ice on the cameras is annoying," Nino commented as the footage played. "Is all of it like that?"

"A few cameras were spared, I think," Alya told him. "Including the one on the main level, thank goodness. I mean, there's a few blurry spots from where the ice extended onto the lens a little bit, but it's mostly clear."

"Oh, and now it's worse," Nino added. "He detransformed right in front of the camera, holy cow."

"Yeah, I was really hoping that the distortion would go away since he seemed to be hanging around, but no such luck." Alya watched as on-screen, the ice cleared away and Hawkmoth finally got up, heading for the stairs. "So watch here- there's no one besides him and the superheroes on the Tower, right? Well, them and Lila, but that's beside the point. It got evacuated pretty fast, and anyone who didn't get off got akumatized or hit by Dark Cupid. So he's headed for those stairs."

"So whoever comes down is Hawkmoth, right," Nino agreed. Then he paused. "Wait, you said Lila? But she was abroad!"

"Apparently she lied." Alya stopped the tapes right where Hawkmoth's feet appeared on the stairs. "Okay, so the stuff that I got should start about thirty seconds before the end of these, so there's some overlap."

A tension rose in the room as Alya got the new files set up to play. She kept glancing at the clock while things loaded, watching as the time for her to move into the living room ticked closer and closer.

She wouldn't be able to stand it if she had to stop at this point. Even if it was only for a short break while she said good-bye to her mom and got the twins set up with their movie and their snacks, she couldn't. She was so, so close.

This had to work.

"Loaded," Alya announced as soon as the program was ready. "And here we go!"

She and Nino leaned forward as they watched the feed from the stairs on the screen. There were thirty seconds of anxious waiting, and then Hawkmoth's shoes appeared on the stairs. They headed down unevenly, revealing the red pants cuffs once again.

"Oh, he's shaken," Nino murmured, a grin evident in his voice. "Super shaken. Serves the asshole right."

Another step, more of the pants were revealed. They watched in anxious silence as the red pants gave way to a very familiar ivory jacket, then a striped necktie, and then Hawkmoth took one more step down the stairs, head hanging down as he made his way down the Eiffel Tower.

And much to Alya's surprise, she recognized the face that went with those atrocious fashion choices, even at this angle. And from Nino's sharp inhale, she knew that he had, too.

"Well," Nino managed after a minute of trying to find his words. "This is bad."

And with that, Alya could only agree.

[dios-pants]

@gamebird

*couGH COUGH* making another post cuz I don’t particularly feel like reblogging that other post *finger guns* also adding a read more because this got a lot longer than I expected whoops

So my dad and I used to be really into watching shows together, and though we don’t watch TV much together anymore, there were a few good shows (we’re trying to make our way through the second season of Luke Cage so we can watch the second season of Iron Fist and then the newest season of Daredevil so THEN we can watch the fourth season of Flash so I can finally finish season six of Arrow but that’s besides the point) and well one day we were trying to figure out what to watch (after a lot of scrolling I found that we had just gotten done with Limitless just an fyi). One of these occasions I told my dad that American Horror Story looked good and he told me no lol (I ended up watching it by myself anyway don’t tell my dad)

Anywho my dad stumbled upon Heroes and he was like “how about this” so I read what it was about and me being me was like “sure”. I can’t for the life of me find out when we first started watching it, but according to the watch history thingy on Netflix, we watched Collision on August 1, 2016. Just to let you know

I don’t know when, but Netflix decided they wanted to get rid of the show, so the little caption thing appeared saying that it was leaving October 1 (yes I looked it up and I’m sad to say that that was the same day Psych left and I never realized that)

So, like I said a while ago, it was a race against the clock to finish it

Offhand comment but I would like to let you know that my dad had watched it before and I had no knowledge of this while we were watching it together and it bothers me. But that’s neither here nor there

We finished it on.... 9/10/16. And it left just over half a month later, so it pretty much disappeared from my mind. So that’s the story of how I started watching it. But then there’s the story of how I got into it

So the following winter/spring (winter ends in like April where I live so I would say the end of winter but that’s just a guess) something happened that I’ll explain in a little bit. First some background stuff:

I have this friend who used to be OBSESSED with DeadRising (I don’t even know how I remember what it’s called). She was especially obsessed with a Very Specific character. That character is Dylan Fuentes. If you don’t know who he is, do yourself a favour and don’t look him up

Well anyway she was like “Dylan is the best fight me” and I said that he wasn’t and that Sylar was the best. Why did I say Sylar? I have no idea. My life probably would’ve ended up completely different if I said someone like Matthew Keller or the Seventh King (the Silver King? What do I even call him) or some other bad guy. But no I said Sylar

So there was this whole thing with this list of “Dylan vs Sylar” where we asked people who was better. I don’t remember how I explained Dylan but I’m pretty sure Sylar got more votes

It’s autumn now which means the next school year. I got myself a school laptop now and I don’t know I think I was looking through emails or something and I found an email talking about the Dylan vs Sylar thing. And I was like “oh my gosh I remember this let’s see if I can find Heroes online”. I found it on Crackle. And I find it hilarious that I can’t remember this part even though it happened more recently than the rest of this but I can’t remember if I decided to watch it by myself or I first started rewatching it with a friend. I have no memory of rewatching it on my own but I remember considering myself obsessed by the time I got him to watch it, so I think that’s your answer

At one point I got into Heroes fanfiction and that was a treat. By this time I was already into the habit of writing, and I was in the middle of a Team Red fic that we won’t talk about. I don’t remember if I first started reading Heroes fics on Ao3 or FFN, but if it was Ao3, then my first ever Heroes fic was either deleted or this and oh my gosh I can’t believe I forgot to mention that the reason I started shipping Petlar was because of a photoshopped picture (you can probably guess what I’m talking about) and I remember downloading it and angrily thinking “I shouldn’t ship it cuz they hate each other and yet”

fun fact the first fic I read was a White Collar fic that I only read because the two people at my birthday sleepover were like “let’s read fanfiction” and I felt left out so I looked up White Collar fanfiction on dA

Okay back to me writing fanfiction. I first started writing Heroes fics as crossovers (my first Heroes fic was a White Collar crossover and it’s so bad and I want to rewrite it), and then it got to non-crossover fics and there you go that’s how a specific fic came about that I’m not sure if I wanna say

Anyway so after that I just slowly got more invested in the show and the characters

Also sorry for the rambling that’s just how I tell stories,,

[tsfanart]

The Last Week--Chapter 3

(And this one is 111 paragraphs lol whoops. Only around 2200 words though, and very fluffy!)

Chapter 1 Chapter 2

--

"So...craft store shopping spree, huh?"

That was the first thing Virgil said when Logan opened the door to his house on Tuesday morning.

Logan grinned. "Yup! Just like we talked about earlier. But, with a twist," he said, eyes twinkling.

"Oh yeah? What kind of a twist?" Virgil asked. The two stepped outside, and made their way across the street to get into Virgil's car.

"Well, I was thinking...what if we bought our materials for each other?"

"Hm...that does sound interesting. But how will we be able to do that without ruining the surprise?" Virgil asked.

Logan just smirked and took a handkerchief out of his pocket. "I think I have an idea."

Finally, Virgil got the message, and a grin spread over his face. "I think it sounds like fun!"

Logan brightened. "You do?"

"Yeah, I do. Definitely. Let's go!"

--

Once inside the craft store, Virgil picked up a shopping basket and walked with Logan far from where anyone else was. The store wasn't very crowded, but they still needed to make sure they had enough space.

"So...do you want to go first?" Logan asked shyly. "To be the one to get your stuff, I mean," he clarified.

"Oh, yeah, sure! Here, let's see how this works." He ushered for Logan to hand him the handkerchief.

Logan gave it to him and turned around, and Virgil tied to handkerchief over his eyes.

"There...does that work?" he asked.

Logan frowned. There was still a lot of space between his eyes and the back of the handkerchief. "Hold on, uh, I think..."

He pulled the handkerchief off and removed his glasses, staring at them with a puzzled look.

Virgil held out the basket. "You can put them in here," he offered. Logan put them in, and Virgil tried it again.

"There we go. Much better," Logan declared.

"Okay, great! Let's just see if you can walk okay. You hear my voice?"

"Yeah, I do," Logan said as he stumbled forward. Virgil laughed at caught him by the shoulders, and the two practiced walking down a couple random aisles until Logan got the hang of it.

"Alright, so the first thing we need is actually right here," Virgil said. "It's on the third shelf from the bottom, so it's not too high."

"Okay...left or right?"

"Oh yeah, my bad! Left. ...Wait, no, my left. Your right." The boys giggled as Logan spun around in circles a couple times, but finally he got his hand on the bottom shelf and felt for the one two shelves above it.

"There you go. Okay, so keep going to the left--both of our left this time--a few steps and...stop."

Logan stopped where he was and grabbed onto what felt like a ______ of yarn, a few inches from where his hand already was. "This?"

"Yeah, that." Logan put the bundle in the basket. "And we need a couple more...can I say colors?"

Logan smiled. "You can say colors."

"Haha, okay, good. We need a couple more colors. They're all on the same shelf. So...just keep touching them until I say stop."

"Alright, that sounds fair." Logan replied.

"There we go. Okay, now...stop. Thanks. And...stop. Great! Just one more. I think I see one I like on the shelf below you, too."

"Oh yeah? Logan said. He bent down to the shelf below and went through the same routine until he was holding the color Virgil wanted, and he tossed the final bundle of probably-yarn into the basket.

"Great!" Virgil said. "Now we just need one more thing."

"One more?" Logan asked with a frown. "That's it?"

"Well, yeah...we agreed on five items or less, right? And besides, technically we just got four of one thing, so I'm still making five purchases," Virgil went on.

"Yeah, that's true," Logan admitted. He felt Virgil's hand on his shoulder.

"Trust me," Virgil said. "You're gonna love it."

Logan smiled and brushed the worry aside, and followed Virgil into the next aisle where he picked up what, as he predicted, felt like knitting needles.

"So, you have everything?" Logan asked as he dumped the sticks into the basket.

"Yup! So I guess we should switch now, right?" Virgil asked cheerfully.

"Oh yeah!" Logan reached up to remove the blindfold, but then he froze. "But wait...are we gonna use the same basket?"

"Oh, right..." Virgil frowned as well. "Well, what if we paid for them individually? I could leave and pay for this stuff, put the bag in my car, and then I'll come back in and we'll do it again," he offered.

"Yeah, that makes sense. Sure!" Logan said. So Virgil went off in the other direction, and Logan took off his blindfold.

And then his stomach dropped.

He couldn't go with Virgil to the cashier because that would ruin his surprise. But that also meant...

"Hey, I'm back!" Virgil said. Logan snapped to attention, and realized Virgil was standing in front of him and waving.

"Oh, right! Um, here, here's the--the blindfold," Logan stammered as he put it around Virgil's head. Virgil smiled knowingly.

"So...walk test?" Logan said after a moment. Virgil nodded, and just like they had done earlier with the roles reversed, Logan led Virgil up and down a few random aisles to get him used to walking blindfolded. Finally, Logan stopped.

"Alright, here's the first item," he said sharply. "Bottom shelf on your right."

Virgil bent down and felt around until he felt something light and airy. "Yeah, there you go," Logan replied. "Get the bag right to the left of it, too." Virgil obeyed and put the two bags of Mysterious Round Things™ in the basket.

"Alright, the next thing is a few aisles down, so let's walk this way," Logan said as he led Virgil over to an aisle a few feet away.

"So this next thing is on the fourth shelf up...do you think you can reach it? It's right above you..."

Virgil stood on his tiptoes and grabbed onto what was probably a pack of pens. "This?"

"Yeah."

Logan ushered Virgil through the next few aisles, getting more and more fidgety and trying not to think about his impending doom. Meanwhile, Virgil was picking up on the signs well enough, but didn't have all that much power to help.

Finally Virgil put the last item in the basket. "There we go! Anything else?"

"Um, no, I don't think so," Logan responded.

"Alright. I'll let you go to the front then," Virgil replied. He held the basket out in front of him, and Logan took it shakily.

"Yeah, sure. I'll...I'll do that."

Virgil stumbled out of the aisle and waited for Logan to walk past...but he didn't. Instead, he tiptoed to the end of the aisle and started putting the last thing back.

Virgil heard him doing this loud and clear. "Logan..." he said gently, "what are you doing?"

"Just...making sure I didn't forget anything," Logan faltered. "But nope, everything's here! I'm gonna get going now." He started approaching Virgil, who moved to the side to let him past.

But Logan still didn't move.

Finally, Virgil sighed. He pulled Logan along until they had walked down a couple aisles, and then he felt for the basket. Logan handed it to him, and he placed it behind his feet.

Now sure that the surprise wouldn't be ruined, Virgil lifted up the blindfold and put his hands on his boyfriend's shoulders. "You've got this," he said gently.

Logan started wringing his hands. "No, I don't. I really don't. This was a terrible idea on my part and I can't believe I didn't think about this. I...you can't go with me this time," he said. And then tears welled up in his eyes as he realized the larger truth to that statement.

"But I'm here now," Virgil insisted calmly. He put his blindfold back on and handed the basket back to Logan. "Look, you just have to be prepared. How much does all this stuff cost?"

Logan examined the stuff. "It costs around $27, but I don't know about tax."

"Oh, wow. Okay, well...$35 should probably be enough. Do you have at least $35 in cash?"

Virgil waited a moment for Logan to dig through his wallet. "I should, yeah."

"Good! Okay, so usually what I do is have the exact money I need in hand before I get there so I don't have to worry about it. Is there a separate section you can put it in, at least?"

Logan nodded, and zipped up the cash in a separate pocket.

"There you go! Does that help?" Virgil asked.

Logan nodded, now shaking a little less. "Yeah, it does," he admitted.

Virgil smiled. "Good. Is there anything else you're worried about, aside from getting cash out?"

Logan thought it over. "Well, I guess I don't want them to think what I'm buying is weird, but I'm not sure you can help me as much with that."

Virgil gave a grimace. "Yeah, probably. But listen, you've got this, okay? I'll find a way to walk you over but then I'm gonna go to the car, alright?"

"Alright," Logan choked out.

With a nod, Virgil reached out to pick up the basket again; then he took off the blindfold, and with his free hand on Logan's shoulder, he propelled his boyfriend towards the oh-so-terrifying cashier while looking off to the side.

The cashier looked up and gave the two a curious look. "Oh, hello. Back again?" he said.

"Yeah, just him," Virgil said, giving Logan a pat. He rested his head on the other's shoulder and turned to face him.

"I'll see you in a few, alright?" he reassured him. Logan finally smiled a little, and with that, Virgil went off towards the front door.

And Logan was left alone again.

Averting his eyes, he put the basket, complete with giant styrofoam ball, wires, paint, beads, and Sharpies, onto the counter. The cashier took each item out one by one and scanned them, just as he was supposed to.

(DON'T REBLOG THIS WITHOUT THE SECOND PART)

[foreverbeingthunderbuddy]

Prove Myself [Part 3]

Pairing: Peter Parker x female!Reader

Warnings: Cuss words (a lot of them sorry)

Summary: Having powers and being able to do things that others can’t do is something you don’t want to deal with on your own. You want to help. You want to be an Avenger. A dream you had for years, finally coming true? Too bad, nothing goes as planned. Being new in NY is hard enough, more so as you develop a crush on one of your new classmates, Peter Parker. The plan? Make the Avengers aware of you and then have them come to you. Easier said than done.

A/N: Whoop whoop here’s Part 3!! Thank you so much to everyone who read the other parts and who liked or reblogged or messaged me!! I appreciate all of it so much <3 (Gif by @saltybatman , thank you for letting me use your gif!!)

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

So. Spider-man has called his people to deal with you. That means trouble. Big trouble.

Looks like things don’t go as planned again.

---

Run or stay. Run or stay? RUN OR STAY?!

What should you do? The Avengers are literally coming for you. You can see them. Flying towards you.

Iron Man in the middle, being accompanied by War Machine, Falcon, Scarlet Witch (kind of hovering?) and Thor (being pulled by his hammer?).

There is no Captain America or Winter Soldier, no Hulk, no Black Widow and no Hawkeye. They either stayed away because they can’t fly and they will join you later or they were busy. That doesn’t really feel like a relief, though. Tony Stark alone would have you running for the hills.

What to do? What to do? Wait for them and talk to them? Maybe try to convince them you’re not evil and actually want to be part of the team? Risk that they don’t buy it, see you as a threat and lock you away in their facility?

You did attack their home. You paralyzed their arc reactor. Stark Industries kind of relies on that tech. Not much you can work with here. That whole mission was a mistake. Stupid stupid stupid.

“I’m sorry” Spider-man says behind you. Oh, so at least he knows he was being sneaky by calling Death in an iron suit and his deadly (awesome) friends to take over. How nice.

Within a second you decide to make a quick getaway. This is definitely not good and knowing your luck, you will most likely end up behind a glass pane in some laboratory.

You turn around and start to run. You get two metres between you and Spider-man before you feel your feet glued together and stuck to the ground. Very ungraceful you fall on your knees. Shit shit shit. As fast as possible you get back up and try to escape from your spider web-ankle-cuffs. Obviously, that doesn’t work.

“Let me go!” You demand, panic filling your voice. You look at Spider-man, your eyes full of fear, trying to reach his empathic side. “Please!”

As an answer he simply crosses his arms and looks at his feet. No help from Spidey. Of course he’s loyal to Stark.

With a wildly beating heart you watch as Stark and his posse land on the roof about three metres away from you. If you thought seeing Iron Man, live and in colour, land before you with the Stark Tower in the background yesterday was impressive, than this is simply off the charts. It looks like a well-practiced choreography, like a group of superstars coolly taking the stage. And Spider-man.

You don’t dare to say anything, you’re too busy with staring at everyone. How absolutely mortifying would it be if you passed out at this exact moment?

“Great to see you again” Stark sarcastically says as if you weren’t glued to the ground and wouldn’t be bolting as soon as you had the chance.

And again. The scarf and the beanie were a great choice! The idea of your own superhero mask becomes more and more appealing to you. You wouldn’t risk losing the beanie or scarf while running around the city and having your identity revealed. If you go out – as originally planned – you will need a better outfit for saving people and doing good stuff.

“Hm-hm” You agree carefully, not sounding very excited. Facing the Avengers makes you shy and very, very nervous and you don’t really trust your voice right now.

Before Stark can say anything else, out of nowhere another person appears next to Thor, making you jump. He is in a silver, metallic looking suit with red parts on his chest and stomach and he wears a strange silver helmet. This must be Ant-Man.

You have only seen one picture of him which was taken by an anonymous person that was there during that big airport fight. They took a lot of blurry pictures, one of them being a shot of Ant-Man who, for some reason, was bigger than the airport building. The pictures are the only proof for the public that the Avengers had something to do with the demolition of the airport terrain. The lucky person who took them sold everything to a magazine; it being the biggest story of the month.

Another anonymous source later told the same magazine the name of the giant. Ant-Man, ironically.

“Hi, sorry, I can’t fly. Sam was so gracious to carpool with me” Ant-Man jokes and puts his hands on his hips while throwing a glance at the other Avengers. The way he stands makes you think he is sulky. Looks like they had an argument about who would have to bring the littlest Avenger to this inquisition. Apparently, the fact that there even was a discussion hurt the ant’s feelings.

If this hadn’t been such a serious situation, you would have laughed at that.

Their leader starts to speak again.

“I know our first encounter was far from pleasant, but I and the team were hoping we could resolve-” Iron Man says and thinks for a second, “this thing.”

Interesting choice of words. Resolve this thing. You suspect you won’t feel too fond of the way they plan to resolve this thing.

“Who are you?” Thor asks, clearly not devoted to the script. Iron Man and War Machine throw glances at him whose nature remain hidden under the metal of their suits.

So, Thor is the spirited one of the group. Good to know. You try to contain your excitement about the fact that these really are the Avengers and you really are finding out internal trivia about your idols that the public doesn’t know.

Who is the temperamental and who is the restrained one? Who starts fights the most and who ends them? Who is the mom-friend and who is the one that gets in trouble the most often? Who is the funny one and who is the work one?

Bruce Banner and Tony Stark are the intelligent ones, you know that already. It’s safe to say Spider-man is the kid of the group, being new and the youngest. Thor obviously is the most vivacious of them. What about the others?

Being wildly caught up in your own thoughts, it takes you a couple of seconds to realize that you are supposed to give an answer, seeing as Thor asked you a question. You clear your throat. Unfortunately, you have no idea what to say. No way in hell will you let the Magnet-Man incident happen again.

“I uh … I … I am” You mutter, thinking hard. Welp. Magnet something. Magnet-Person. Magnet-Girl?

“I am … MG” You finally say, or more accurately ask. Pretty sure self-confidence works differently.

“MG?” Falcon – no, Sam (according to Ant-Man) – inquires incredulously. You hear Ant-Man snort.

“Like the car brand?” Sam asks. Oh, of course. Of course, there’s a car brand with the same name. Wonderful.

A muffled giggle comes from Spider-man. Thor looks very confused while the Scarlet Witch wears a frown on her face.

“No!” You are quick to contradict. “Like Magnet-Girl.”

“Magnet-Girl” Iron Man repeats contemplatively.

You nod. “Yes.”

“Before you guys showed up, she said magnetism was her thing” Spider-man reports, his face towards Stark. He is still trying to distort his voice, making it sound deeper than it naturally is. Thank god, he didn’t mention your Magnet-Man faux pas. That would have been the end of you.

“Okay, Magnet-Girl, so magnetism is your thing? Believe me when I say I noticed” Stark says with a tone that edges on humorous. “You can imagine I wasn’t too thrilled about the fact that you invaded my property and manipulated my arc reactor. I also wasn’t too happy about having my suit paralyzed and then having you run away from me. That was rude, so I expect an explanation. And an apology.”

Nope. Not going to happen. You definitely won’t explain your “masterplan” to the Avengers and bear that humiliation. But you can make an apology. You probably should. Just not make it too easy for him. They are holding you here against your will, after all.

“I won’t apologize to an iron mask” You say pretending not to be scared shitless.

You see Thor smile and Sam raise his eyebrows while Spider-man, Ant-Man and the Scarlet Witch wait for Stark’s reaction. War Machine just stares at you like a guard dog.

Stark hesitates for a second before shifting.

“Okay. Fine. Let’s do this face to face, then.”

He takes a step forward. At the same time his suit opens in the front and retreats to his back, revealing Tony fucking Stark himself. In a black suit. He steps out of his Iron Man armor and casually adjusts the suit shirt on his wrists.

He didn’t have to go that hard, he could have just uncovered his face. But as far as you know him – from watching interviews and public appearances on the internet – the man loves a dramatic entrance.

Immediately, you feel star struck. You hadn’t seen his face yet; he always wore the iron suit when dealing with you. But now that you are face to face with him and see his face up close in person and not just through a screen, you feel overwhelmed. This feels like meeting a celebrity.

You absolutely admire the man and worship the ground he walks on. All confidence you had five seconds ago is gone. Took a train and is now on its way to Bolivia.

You can see the wave of alertness going through the other Avengers that followed Stark’s self-exposure. They still don’t know what you are capable of and wether you have bad intentions or not. As far as they are concerned you do have bad intentions and seeing the head of their group put off his armor slash protective clothing seems to cause a certain tension.

As if you would ever hurt Tony Stark.

“So, kid. I’m waiting” Stark says calmly. He tilts his head and spreads his arms as if he’s saying Hit me with that remorseful apology, darling. He really doesn’t want to make this easy, does he. You take a subtle breath.

“I’m sorry I attacked your Tower, Mr. Stark” You mumble, “I can’t really tell you wh-“

“What? What did you say? Would you speak up, please, I can’t understand your mumbling, kid.”

You are too intimidated by everything to get annoyed by that remark.

“I’m sorry I attacked your Tower. I didn’t have any bad intentions, I can promise you that. I just … I’m a big fan, actually.”

They did not expect that, you can tell. Ant-Man makes a noise that sounds like the verbal equivalent of “?” and looks at his fellow team members for an explanation.

With your last comment Stark drops his arms and raises his eyebrows in a very A little surprised but not bewildered way. So do Sam and the Scarlet Witch. She stares at you so intently, that you have a feeling she’s trying to read your mind. Spider-Man doesn’t show any emotions through the mask, but his spider eyes widened. War Machine throws a glance at Stark before returning to stare at you motionlessly.

Thor is the only one who looks amused by this whole thing. He smirks to himself and twists the Hammer in his hand. You earthlings must seem quite strange to him sometimes.

“Well, Tony, looks like you found yourself another admirer. She seems less of a threat and more like an ally to me, if I’m being honest with you, friend” Thor says in a mocking tone.

The God of Thunder may have just risen up on the list of your top favourite people. Have you ever mentioned how much you love blonde guys with an obsession for hand tools?

The rest of the group doesn’t look that convinced, unfortunately.

“Tony, you don’t actually buy that, do you?” Sam asks with a frown on his face.

“We must not lose our prudence just because she is a kid. This could be part of her plan, Tony” War Machine says; this being the first time he opened his mouth since they landed on this roof.

“Tony, we don’t know her. She may not look like she’s lying but it could be one of her powers. Like Loki. Don’t trust her on this. She attacked our home, don’t forget that” The Scarlet Witch says. Her words create an uncomfortable feeling in your stomach. She obviously dislikes you. Seeing her open disapproval of you doesn’t go well with you.

Also, comparing you to the God of Mischief is quite an insult, if you’re completely honest.

“I promise- I promise I’m not lying. I don’t mean you any harm. I would never try to hurt you or anyone else. I’m on the good side- I’m on your side!” You say, slowly getting desperate.

This conversation is going into the wrong direction. This is exactly what you feared would happen when you decided to escape. Which regrettably got prevented by Spiderboy. Speaking of – the boy apparently decided to contribute to this nerve-racking discussion.

“Why did you paralyze our living room area, then? What kind of fan would do that? In what way does that have to do with admiration for the Avengers in any way?” Spider-man asks, sounding very bewildered. And quite … hostile.

Ouch.

It hurts more coming from him. He is your hero, your crush, the person you look up to and the person you aspire to be. He and Stark – they are your idols. When you planned this, you didn’t expect them to dislike you. You expected them to be impressed by you and to ask you to join their team. You should have never attacked the Stark Tower. You should have just started to be like Spider-man and waited until they became aware of you. It would have taken more time, but then you WOULDN’T BE IN THIS FUCKIN TERRIBLE SITUATION!

Stark throws a puzzled glance at Spidey, seemingly surprised by the youngest Avenger’s little outburst.

“I … I can’t tell you that. But I promise I didn’t do it to harm you. It was something … I really can’t tell you that” You say helplessly.

“I believe her” Ant-Man announces, catching you completely off guard, “Guys, she is a kid. Can’t be older than sixteen or seventeen. She doesn’t look like a threat and she doesn’t sound like a threat. You’re taking this way too seriously, Stark.”

“Am I? So, you think she’s not a threat? You think the person that is able to shut off an arc reactor and mute an entire floor of one of the highest secured buildings in this country is not a threat? You think those actions are motivated by good intentions? How exactly is that the work of an ally? Can you explain that to me, Lang?” Stark inquires.

Double Ouch.

Both Stark and Spider-man dislike you. You sense your heart sink a little at that realization. Years of dreaming – crushed in a single night. You suddenly feel sad. All of this makes you incredibly sad.

“No, I can’t, but I’m just saying. She seems harmless. You heard her. She sounded sincere to me and I-“ Ant-Man aka Lang begins, but gets interrupted by Stark.

“With all due respect, Lang, you haven’t been an Avenger for that long. I’ve been doing this for almost a decade now, so naturally I have some experience with dealing with stuff like this. And I say, we can’t trust her as of right now. What she does and what she says contradicts itself and she can’t give us a good reason why she did it in the first place.”

Oh no. Oh no no no.

Stark takes a look at your still tied feet. “Well done, Spiderboy. It was the right choice to call us; this concerns all of us. You can tell me how she ended up on this roof when we’re back in the basis.”

You ended up on this roof, because Spider-man has woken you up. Why has he done that, you start to wonder. There was no need in putting your attention on him, in the middle of the night. And how Stark put it, it was also not part of their plan. He probably was only supposed to keep watch.

Interesting. You look at Spiderboy, but he avoids your glance and nods at Stark, before staring at the spider web on your feet. You feel Stark’s eyes on you.

“Magnet-Girl, I don’t intend to let you run away from me, again, so I’m gonna keep this short” He says portentously. You fearfully reciprocate his gaze. He looks very serious, not a single emotion can be seen on his face. Oh-oh. A bad suspicion crawls up into your mind.

“Let me introduce you to the Scarlet Witch over here. Or how we call her, Wanda.” He points at the woman next to him who doesn’t break her gaze from you. “Your thing is magnetism. Her thing is neuro-electric interfacing, telekinesis and mental manipulation. Incredibly powerful. And, in this particular situation, very helpful. See, we don’t know what you can do yet, we know you can command some type of magnetic waves, but we don’t know the extent of it. Who guarantees us that you don’t lie to us about your powers? Who guarantees us that you don’t suddenly use some type of magnetic shock wave or that you use your abilities to mess with the blood circulation in our bodies?”

“I do. I guarantee I won’t ever do that. I promise!” You say quickly, eager to wipe away his distrust as fast as possible. He wrinkles his nose for a second before an almost sympathetic look crosses his face.

“I’m sorry, but that’s not enough, coming from you.” He throws glances at his team members, which apparently means something because they all shift and take a step towards you. Your heart starts beating faster as you see the determined expressions on their faces.

And then Stark says the one thing you have feared the most, ever since you fled from the Stark Tower the day before.

“Wanda will use her abilities to paralyze any type of magnetism that you try to send in our direction, so that we can operate freely without your interruptions. For your and our safety we will stun you, so maybe you should take on a sitting position, unless you want to fall and smash your head on the ground. Sorry kid, we are taking you to our base.”

---

Tag list:  @brightcolorsoffendme @sonal-ily @courtneychicken @lionheo04 @just-call-me-trash-can @yourwonderbelle @willowtighe @theeaniilsson @laurie-ofmoonlightandstardust @wowpeterparker @tienna-laufeyson16 @spaceandstars @n-ghtwind @dulcetminds @the-black-panthers @prancingdestiel

[sailor-cresselia]

okay so that article on burnout i reblogged immediately before this post.

i started to write a freaking tag essay and realized that was a terrible idea.

so here, have a post under a cut.

(also, like, there’s probably going to be copious swearing because? i’m actually trying to avoid censoring myself for this one? we’ll see.)

The decision paralysis, the concept of ‘not meeting adult-hood landmarks because they don’t exist anymore’, the idea of ‘being one of the more productive people on the work floor is still not enough, because i can’t get things done at home’...

well fuck, i’m in this fucking picture and i don’t fucking like it.

i mean, i suck. i know i suck, and people just get mad at me when i say that. and i’m damn well aware they’re mad at the sentiment and not at me, but since i’m the one thinking the bullshit, then they’re mad at me for it existing. it’s just that they don’t see it that way.

because my brain is dumb, which means i’m dumb.

anxiety fucking sucks, and i’m not even sure if that’s one of the things i was diagnosed with anymore, because the only ones i remember were ‘depression’ and ‘aspergers’, but. like. i’m not sure the depression one was accurate, and technically speaking aspergers doesn’t exist anymore? because god fucking forbid we want to have something to call it. also, they didn’t actually tell me the autism one until i was entering high school, and i’m pretty sure that i’d been diagnosed mid-middle school. and also i’m not even confident i remember any of that correctly, since everything blurred together pretty much immediately.

the sentiment of “There’s a word for it” is so fucking important, especially when you have trouble putting things in words. when your mouth and brain are running at different speeds, and you can’t say the thoughts before you lose track of which sentence you were on, you need to have a phrase ready. But if you don’t, you get the pauses that frustrate everyone including yourself, and mean that nothing actually gets said.

see: every fucking time i try to talk to anyone.

i got sidetracked again. i was planning to ‘copy’ the tag essay over here. whoops.

The thing about the ‘decision paralysis’ that the article mentioned... well, one of the many things about it, is that you can’t actually explain it to someone who doesn’t go through it themselves. See again: “There’s a word for it.”

I have yet to be able to explain to my parents that “No, i really have trouble with making a fucking decision on how to find the music you want for that playlist. I can’t figure out what search terms to use, because I don’t actually know what you’re talking about for ‘dinner music’, and the explanations you were able to give didn’t. actually. y’know. help.”

That’s not their fault, that’s on me being stupid and dumb.

i can’t make a decision because i freeze up. I freeze up because i know i will inevitably get some part of the decision wrong, and it doesn’t matter how infinitesimal that part is, it’s still wrong. and having been in the ‘advanced track’ or whatever the hell we called it at my school, i got convinced that even slightly wrong is completely wrong. and that’s just not okay.

i don’t even think that sentiment actually came from the teachers? or the lessons? or anything really? but welcome to america, where if you’re in the ‘high performing’ section, you somehow get convinced that anything less than perfect is as good as a failure.

(where you go on a vacation to disney in fourth grade and are still required to write the mandatory journal entry every day, even though you don’t. know. what. to. say.)

(a lot of those ‘daily writing assignments’ we did wound up being my first forays into fanfiction actually. ... i don’t really know what my teachers thought of those particular entries. wish i could find some of those notebooks, it would be good to post for a laugh.)

but i digress. again.

i can’t explain the ‘i’m not able to make a decision’ thing to anyone. because i freeze up when trying to figure out how to explain it, and that leads to the awkward pauses in speech, which leads to a completely different form of freezing up, because i don’t want to annoy people.

Being annoying is basically the same as being wrong and failing, after all.

And. like. i know that getting stupid, mundane things ‘wrong’ isn’t the end of the world. i’m well aware of that, you don’t need to keep reassuring me of that, okay? because that reminder just makes me feel worse, because it means i’m getting upset over stupid fucking things, instead of anything that’s actually bad.

which just leads to another thing that i can’t explain to people, because feeling wrong about stupid things means that I haven’t made enough of a successful effort at being better at being a functional person. That’s what winds up frustrating them, which makes me start tearing up because that’s just what fucking happens, which leads to me just not talking anymore.

because emotions are the enemy and are so often the wrong ones and so much as mentioning them just makes everyone else angry, so. it’s just. best. not to bring it up.

Like, i know that all of this is dumb. so i’m being dumb for thinking that way. But i can’t actually explain that vocally, because then people (my parents) assume (probably) that i’m saying i’m not intelligent. i can’t explain that no, that’s not what i’m saying. i’m saying that the thought itself is dumb, and that the act of thinking said thought is dumb. not that i, myself, am not smart. i know i’m smart. i’m just terrible at being smart.

so i can’t explain that. because there are different definitions for what ‘being dumb’ entails - there’s ‘i’m not intelligent’, which i think is what they conclude i’m saying when i try to explain this stuff, when it’s really, really not. what I’m saying is that the action itself is what’s moronic. but i can’t get that across without tripping over my damned tongue and pausing, and grumbling about dropped words, and frustrating everyone involved in the conversation to the point where i wind up just saying never mind, it’s not important, and changing the subject. or walking away. or letting them change the subject, because fuck knows i’m just going to get that wrong somehow too.

i can’t even fucking put something in the grocery cart when we go shopping, because that’s being super fucking rude and inconveniencing everyone. I’M TWENTY EIGHT AND I CAN’T ALLOW MYSELF THAT.

I live with my parents. that’s another failure, here in the states anyway. because i’m not independent, it’s not even the ‘starting a family’ bullshit, it’s the ‘not able to live on my own because i’m obviously not trying hard enough to not be a fucking dysfunctional coward’ bullshit.

also, for some reason everyone i know in real life, like, people who went to high school or college with me, all think it’s really out of character when they hear me swear? i dunno, because they think i’m too polite or something?

guys. no. it’s that i didn’t talk. ya know, because i’m a fucking coward. or shy. or whichever term you’ll accept for ‘human interaction is fucking terrifying and i’m going to get it wrong somehow whenever i try, so i’m just not going to fucking try that.’

(seriously, people, if i tell you i’m a coward or shy, whichever one i go with, please don’t tell me that that’s not true? because that’s like. the one way we could agree about my rampant social anxiety issues, and i would like people to accept that as an explanation for once, instead of trying to reassure me that it’s not true. because it is. those are the nice, socially acceptable ways of putting the problem.)

(also, like, reassuring me that ‘things are okay, you don’t need to get upset’ actively makes me more upset. It ALWAYS has. That’s not going to change anytime soon. For fucks sake, please stop saying that i ‘don’t need to worry.’ i’m well fucking aware of that, and when i literally ask you to stop saying that, and you say you’re going to make sure to remind me it’s okay, you are literally just making it worse and means i can’t fucking talk to you.)

basically everything is dumb, and i’m dumb and sick of being dumb, which means i’m even dumber and i can’t say a damn thing about it, because it’s rude and inconveniences everyone, and it means i’m. not. trying. hard. enough. to. make. life. work.

... see, if i could, like, print this shit up and hand it to my therapist tuesday? (if that’s even what the meetings are? i don’t fucking know at this point) that might help. or it might get me in hot water. so i’m probably not even going to try.

because the usual reaction from pretty much anyone ever is ‘are the medications not working anymore?’ and that’s. not true? i think? they’re working. i think. but it’s not like i’d know what my actual baseline is without them. because i always feel physically awful if i miss them, but i’m an anxious wreck either way. and since said state of being a wreck is to different degrees from day to day, it’s not like i’ve got a baseline for with the medications, either.

fuck everything, is basically what i’m saying.

... i can’t tell if i got off topic or not anymore. i’m gonna go edit this for spelling and spacing issues now, because while keeping typos in might be more authentic and natural, it also means i feel like an idiot for not being better at typing when i know full well i’m spelling things wrong.

not going after capitalization though. that’d just be a pain in the ass, and caps and italics are a part of tone.

you will have to pry my formatting from my dead, colder hands.

(i run really fucking cold, or at least my extremities do. like, i can put my hand on my face, and i know that it’s way too cold to be normal. i’m pretty sure that’s a bad sign, but it’s literally always been true, so. ??? that’s just how it is.)

(yeah, wow, there were a lot of typing fumbles in here. all of those are gone now. this got stupidly long. why am i allowed to write again?)

[sufferthesea]

Transitional Period

Okay so I feel really lame writing this but I think it's also important. I keep apologizing for not being super active on this blog anymore, and there's a number of reasons I haven't. Most of it has been health related but anyway. I started this blog because I hated my other blog and wanted to do something new with a fandom I'd been in for a long time (10+ years), so after talking with Katie ( @shiranuigenma ), I decided to create this Naruto blog. But it wasn't intended to be just a Naruto blog, but that's how it kind of ended up since that's what I was into when I made it.

The fact that I've kept this a 98% Naruto blog is awesome because my attention span and energy allotted for a fandom is around 3-4 months. After that I usually get bored or burnt out and have to find something else. Making friends and participating in things like Kakashi Week, and just doing art and writing fanfics, has helped me to maintain interest in this blog for a lot longer than I thought I would. So thank you!! You guys are awesome!!!

(Okay real quick I'm not quitting lol. I know it sounds like it. But I'm not.) Basically, I was getting so burnt out on Naruto that I was dreading getting on this blog and I didn't want to watch it anymore. That's why I've been MIA. I literally only follow Naruto blogs at the moment. I don't want this to become a trash blog like my last one that I abandoned, so I'm still going to be kind of selective with what I reblog. Anyway. To combat the staleness and burnt out feeling I had, I got into a few other shows with my friends and that's really all I've been watching (RWBY, RvB, and YouTube if you're curious). It sounds dumb but it's really helped me a lot because I'm not so exhausted and wearing myself out trying to be ~the cool singular fandom blog~ that I'm really not meant to be. (Yo, major kudos to those who can do that.)

So anyway, 2018 has been not super unkind, but very tough for me. You grow from challenges, right? But it's also important to not be challenging yourself 24/7 for 6 months straight with little sleep and locking yourself away in your bedroom. I am not Maito Gai. I cannot do that. So here's a few things about my blog that'll carry us into summer 2018 and hopefully allow me to be more active and not so stressed and sad!!!! Esp since I still don't have a job even tho I'm looking!! And I'm getting tired of ppl telling me “Well just get a job??? Just go get hired???” like !!! what do you think I am doing???

Requests are now closed indefinitely. I'm going to finish up the few I have, but after that I'm closing them. They were super fun but I have so many things backlogged that it hasn't been as fun anymore. I send love and thanks to all those who sent in requests while they were open! It was a fun experiment and I got to really test myself by writing for characters I don't normally write for!

Writing commissions are closed indefinitely.  I’ll complete the one I have, but then that’ll be it for now. These too were also fun and challenged me more than anything else I've done. I got to write some very unique and difficult topics and I'm so thankful for those who trusted me enough with their stories to do this. However, the amount of time and mental energy it took was too much and severely underselling myself made it difficult to justify the time I was spending. (I've read writers should charge around 1 – 3 cents a word. I was charging $0.001 cents a word lmao. Whoops. I actually don't mind but it is hard to make a living like that.)

Art commissions are still OPEN! And btw, I do have a ko-fi. I'm thinking about doing something like, one coffee = one bust of your character of choosing? (which is same price as commissions whoops lol.) Idk yet. I won't be doing any writing for ko-fi, though.

I was going to create a side blog for the other fandoms I'm in but side blogs are tedious and annoying to manage so I'm probably just going to start posting stuff here. If you don't want to see it, you can start blacklisting tags now. I'll be tagging things as #rwby, #rvb, #not naruto (that's my catch-all tag for anything, uhh, not Naruto). Expect a lot of Ozpin, Qrow, Church, and Washington because even tho I was inactive here, it does not mean I stopped hoeing around in other fandoms. Oh, also expect an occasional #game grumps because #dan avidan is way cute.

I'm also going to be posting fanart for other fandoms here too. It's been nice to draw stuff other than Nardo. I'll still be doing Naruto stuff (I have a ton of Naruto projects I'm working on) but silly little doodles will probably be from RWBY.

I'm also in this weird kinda scary period in my life with school and career options. I have a degree in English and it's always been assumed I'd be a teacher but I don't want to be?? I realized recently that I love to draw and I'm getting quite good at it (with the help of my sister who is my own real-life youtube tutorial for SAI), so both my sister and I are going back to college for a Studio Art degree. I'm thinking about getting into animation and I'm scared because it's not a secure or “traditional” job??? I'm scared because I'm not settling on a job I don't want or a field I just assumed I'd go into. I'm not good with big changes or going into things when it's uncertain, so I'm like ….. /anxiety increases/ But I'm hoping it'll be good.

Just as an extra bullet point and a reminder, I still really love Kakashi, Iruka and Obito, and all my other guys!! Don't think I forgot about them!!

Sorry this is 10 million years long but it was important to me to write all that. I'm sorry I haven't been able to reblog your art or fics and comment on them. I'm sorry I haven't gotten back to you guys and responded to messages. I'm sorry I'm not as active. I've just been figuring stuff out and hanging out with friends, and watching other things so I don't grow to despise Naruto lol. So. That's about it. I probably forgot something.

Oh, I have 21 plants growing in my windowsill. 2 are decorative and the other 19 are going to go in my garden in the backyard bc they’re herbs and vegetables. And I'm going to cosplay for the first time next month and I might meet the voice actor for kid Obito. So. There's that.

[callunawrites]

By the grace of the fire and the flames You're the face of the future, the blood in my veins

Heather’s Top 25 38 Songs of 2017!

saturn — sleeping at last // run baby run — the rigs // the brothel (lidolido remix) — susanne sundfør // can’t pretend — tom odell // capsize — frenship // undiscovered first — feist // feeling good (bassnectar remix) — nina simone // kings — tribe society // river — bishop // human — rag’n’bone man // believer — imagine dragons // feel it still — portugal. the man // girl, you’ll be a woman soon — rafferty // wise enough — lamb // say you’ll be there — MØ // holiest — glass animals // the greatest — sia // bogeyman — johnny hollow // to be human — sia // strangers — halsey // cities in dust — everlove // history — monakr // messiah — prides // i shall rise — karen o // in the sea — ingrid michaelson // i put a spell on you — annie lennox //  personal yeezus — chambaland // gold — imagine dragons // which witch — florence & the machine // thunder — imagine dragons // take me to church — hozier // trouble — valerie broussard // pure feeling — florence & the machine // battle royale — apashe // i may fall — casey williams // not today — bts // is this love — the governors //  sweet dreams — mark hadley ft. dresage

short version | long version

So, the thing is, this mix was originally a whopping 262 songs. That’s 17 hours of delving into my headspace. I know this because the mix in full can be found on spotify, for those adventurous enough. By the end of the year, there may even be more!

The original 200+ can also be found in month format, for those that don’t feel like dealing with... all that. I’m actually a little sad that I don’t get to talk about every single one of them, though I’m sure it would have gotten tedious in the end.

i. saturn || sleeping at last I’d give anything to hear You say it one more time, That the universe was made Just to be seen by my eyes.

This was, according to my last.fm data, my second most played song of 2017. Well, third if we count the song that racked up 10,000 plays because I left it looping on my computer for a week. Whoops. These first four songs on this mix are my Mcshep songs. But also, Sleeping At Last is lovely. There’s several other songs by them on the full mix, but this one is by far my favorite. ii. run baby run || the rigs So wait, keep your heart inside  My hands won't keep it safe I'll just feed on dreams & smile as hope slowly dies. 

And here we have my most played song of 2017, which I’ve basically been listening to nonstop ever since I discovered @randommindtime‘s Mcshep fanvid. It is absolutely earthshaking, entirely haunting, and just all around a beautiful song that describes John Sheppard and all of his issues to a T. 

iii. the brothel (lidolido remix) || susanne sundfør We are ruins within ruins On every corner a gladiator is begging for another century

I’m not sure why this is such a Mcshep song in my mind since I first discovered it as part of a really ridiculously awesome X-Files vid, but my guess is it got thrown into a playlist between two Mcshep songs and was forever that in my head. Fun fact, I only recently, when making the spotify version of this playlist, listened to the original version of the song.  iv. can’t pretend || tom odell Oh, feel our bodies grow, And our souls they blend. This song is the only song that has made it onto all three of my year-in-review mixes. I originally found it in 2015 as part of a Bioshock vid and then last year I rediscovered it in the form of @randommindtime‘s other amazing Mcshep vid. And honestly? I haven’t stopped listening to it since. I have no doubt that it’ll be on 2018′s mix as well. v. capsize || frenship Capsize, I'm first in the water Too close to the bottom I'm right back where I started Said I'm fine I found this song through either a Stydia or a Sterek gifset. I’m like... 90% sure that it was Stydia, because it was around the time that season... 6? came out? Whichever one that Stiles is taken in, and thematically it works pretty well for it. But, I’m equally sure I’ve seen a Sterek gifset for the same song. Whatever. It’s pretty and I like it. vi. undiscovered first || feist The height and the breadth, is it wrong to want more?

Gosh. Okay. So, Legion. Mindfuckery of a show that can basically be summed up in words like “acid trip” and “dance numbers?” and “omg aubrey plaza.” It was brilliant and horrifying and really, really cool. But what’s more, it had the best fucking music. The 8tracks version of the mix only has two songs from the show, but the full mix on spotify has six or seven.  vii. feeling good (bassnectar remix) || nina simone It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me And I'm feelin' good

This was the second song that I found through Legion. I mean, I’d heard the song before, but holy fucking shit. Like, I knew that I was attracted to Aubrey Plaza, but there’s every other character she’s ever played, and then there’s this role.

viii. kings || tribe society Lost in the world full of nonbelievers Searching for smoke in a stillwater pond A nothing king, they called a dreamer This is my life and I call it a song This and the next song I actually found because I had queued up feeling good on youtube while driving home from my friend’s house after watching that particular episode of legion, and youtube did that thing where it automatically queued up music afterwards? Only I lucked out that night, because the next six or seven songs were absolutely amazing. This was my favorite of those songs and quickly became my Horizon Zero Dawn theme song. ix. river || bishop Can't change the way we are One kiss away from killing

Another of the songs that I found that night! This one also got a lot of play while playing Horizon Zero Dawn.  x. human || rag’n’bone man 'Cause I'm no prophet or messiah You should go looking somewhere higher This song I’d originally found through the Mass Effect Andromeda trailer but it quickly became a favorite of mine.  xi. believer || imagine dragons By the grace of the fire and the flames You're the face of the future, the blood in my veins Even though this song has been in basically every fanvid since it came out, this was also solidly a Mass Effect Andromeda song for me, since I listened to it a bunch when I was playing the game. It’s one of the songs that I actually don’t mind coming on at work. xii. feel it still || portugal. the man Ooh woo, I'm a rebel just for kicks, now I been feeling it since 1966, now

I actually found this song before it got popular! The first time that it played at work/on the radio I was blown away, but I think the first time I’d heard it was on American Gods? At least I found it when I was watching the show. xiii. girl, you’ll be a woman soon || rafferty Well, I finally found what I've been looking for But if they get a chance they'll end it for sure Okay, so for anyone who is paying attention to this who lives in Columbus, I get my hair done at Virtue Salon, which is basically the best salon in the entire world. Even if you don’t live in Columbus, click on that link. Look at those pictures and tell me that isn’t the most adorable salon in the entire world. They have the best playlists every time I go in, and though I am not super fond of some of the lyrics to this song, I really love the slow croonyness to it. That was a really great day. xiv. wise enough || lamb I had a dream that all of time was running dry And life was like a comet falling from the sky I woke so frightened in the dawning, oh, so clear How precious is the time we have here

I first heard this song on the second season of Sense8 and I was struck by just how damn beautiful it is. It almost didn’t make this final list, but in the end I couldn’t count it out. xv. say you’ll be there || mo Any fool can see they're falling, gotta make you understand I'll give you everything on this I swear Just promise you'll always be there

I don’t actually remember what fanmix I originally found this on, but I remember that I was at the intersection of Clime and Harrisburg-Pike just outside the fire station when I realized that it was a gentle, gorgeous cover of a Spice Girls song and basically fell immediately in love.  xvi. holiest || glass animals Yeah, you're the holiest, holiest thing I know This song I found as part of this mix, which is basically a young holy lovers mix and just. has so much quality music. But this song was the first that really made me start looking at Glass Animals. I’d heard some of their stuff before, but never when I was paying attention, not enough for me to decide if I liked them or not. Up until the last month or so, this was my top played track. xvii. the greatest || sia Don't give up, I won't give up Don't give up, no no no

Yeah, there’s no story here. I just really like Sia. xviii. bogeyman || johnny hollow And now I'm dancing for the doomed and the damned And I'm advancing unassumed with dirty hands

Someone I follow on tumblr had reblogged this song back in the spring-summer months when I was feeling very aggressively reylo, and I just. I really like that fairytale where the innocent girl grows up and eats the monster. It’s a favorite of mine and part of the reason that I like pairings like reylo and darklina. xix. to be human || sia And what's the point of knowin' it If you can't change it?

This song came on at the end of Wonder Woman and I made my friend Alex wait until I’d listened to it before I let him leave the theater. I fell pretty rapidly in love with it. xx. strangers || halsey We're not lovers, we're just strangers With the same damn hunger To be touched, to be loved, to feel anything at all I won’t say that this is my favorite song off of Halsey’s new album, because that goes to Mourning, but it is the song that I listened to most. I’ve been toying with the idea of an original novel since around the time the album came out, and this song came on while I was plotting some of it out in my head. I really hope I end up writing it. xxi. cities in dust || everlove Your former glories and all the stories Dragged and washed with eager hands But oh, your city lies in dust, my friend  I think the first time that I heard this cover it was when I discovered this mix back in 2015. It was a mix for Holland from the Darker Shade of Magic series, but I ended up going back and listening to the mix again while I was reading the third book in the series. While driving to work one day, I realized how utterly perfect it was for Dishonored, and basically compiled my mix, the salt water sting, over the course of that day.

xxii. history || monakr Oh… when they write of us in history  lauded only for our victory  They don't never tell, never fail to tell They don't ever tell Oh…. other side in history 

So, back in the summer I read Hermione Granger's Hogwarts Crammer for Delinquents on the Run, and it was absolutely fantastic. But in my humble opinion, the soundtrack that I discovered was somehow even better. I had to limit myself to only two songs from it on here, but a good half of them are on the spotify version.

xxiii. messiah || prides You don't have to lock the door I don't live there anymore.

This is the second song that I chose from that playlist, mostly because it ended up being the lucky track that had an extra play. 

xxiv. i shall rise || karen o They'll know my name When they've forgotten all about you 

I found this song well before I actually started regularly listening to it, and it ended up getting played around the time that I was mining for Dishonored songs for that mix, and those lyrics just called to me. Also, y’know, it’s a really great song. xxv. in the sea || ingrid michaelson No no don't rescue me I like the salt water sting

Another Dishonored song, this was obviously the song - and line - that gave me the title for the mix itself. I think I’d originally heard it as part of a Jaspis mix. xxvi. i put a spell on you || annie lennox I put a spell on you Because you're mine Okay, but this song in Annie Lennox’s smokey gorgeous voice just made me think of gay woodland witches and it was one of the best discoveries of 2017. xxvii. personal yeezus || chambaland Baby we livin' in the moment I've been a menace for the longest But I ain't finished, I'm devoted And you know it, and you know it 

Okay, so let’s talk about Atomic Blonde. It wasn’t the best movie I’ve seen this year, but it appealed to a very visceral, gay part of me and ever since I saw this trailer I was basically in love. I’m sorry, but if you weren’t at least a little gay before watching Charlize Theron have a torrid love affair with Sofia Boutella while simultaneously kicking ass and taking names... you will be.

xxviii. gold | imagine dragons Statues and empires are all at your hands, Water to wine and the finest of sands. When all that you have's turning stale and it's cold, Oh, you'll no longer feel when your heart's turned to gold. I... don’t remember when I first listened to this. I think it was at work? But I saw some really good fanvids, and honestly? I should probably just admit at this point that I just love everything that Imagine Dragons comes out with.

xxix. which witch | florence & the machine Who's a heretic, child? Can you make it stick, now that I'm on trial

I am like 500% sure that I fell in love with this song because @kaikamahine said something about it, because I first started listening to it around the time that I realized Fantastic Beasts had a fandom.

xxx. thunder | imagine dragons Just a young gun with a quick fuse I was uptight, wanna let loose I was dreaming of bigger things And wanna leave my old life behind

Yeah, I just liked it. Also, there have been some really awesome Thor vids to this since Ragnarok came out.

xxxi. take me to church | hozier Offer me that deathless death Good God, let me give you my life

I wasn’t actually sure that I still listened to this often enough to add it, but last.fm tells me that it’s my fourth most played song. I mean, it’s a great song, and you can be damn sure that if in a twist of fate Hozier releases an album next year, every single one of those songs will be on the 2018 mix, but it has been a bit.

xxxii. trouble | valerie broussard Dangerously having the time of our lives These boys are just poisonous thorns in our sides Starting fires wherever we go Watching em gamble everything they own I’m just going to direct you to this animation and wail about Six of Crows a lot. Weirdly enough, I think I actually prefer the unfinished version of it. Some bits hadn’t been added yet, but I really love the grittiness of it.

xxxiii. pure feeling | florence & the machine Those strangers carry me I'm lost; they're finding me I... don’t actually remember where I found this one. It probably has to do with @kaikamahine. Either way, I have listened to it A LOT.

xxxiv. battle royale | apashe Work on 'em put a little work on 'em Trigger finger in the air I put a little dirt on 'em

This song is stupid awesome to blare while driving home from work a little fast at 2 in the morning. Also, y’know, it’s just great in general. See, Steve Rogers agrees. Also, oh my gosh, there’s a new Black Panther one.

xxxv. i may fall | casey williams There's a place where we'll stand outnumbered Where the wolves and the soulless will rise In the time of our final moments Every dream dies

So, sometime in the last few months I let my roommate talk me into watching RWBY. I’ve been less than interested in the past because I’m an animation snob and I just... couldn’t. But I marathoned the whole series in like a week. There were three songs that stood out to me, but this song is actually the one that made me finally break down and give it a chance.

xxxvi. not today | bts All the underdogs in the world A day may come when we lose But it is not today Today we fight!

SCREECHING NOISES. MORE SCREECHING NOISES. I’m sorry, but it has to have become apparent by now that my musical tastes are influenced almost entirely by fandom, but fanvids in particular. This song is the BEST pump up song that I’ve found in years.

xxxvii. is this love | the governors Did you think this was love Is love a future of your kind Don't you think I would mind If I would wasted all my time I can't love if you lie This song. Made my year. It’s dark and sexy and a little fucked up, and came around when I was in the middle of reading the Grisha Trilogy and struggling with just how hard Darklina was hitting on every single one of my kinks.

xxxviii. sweet dreams | mark hadley ft. dresage I travel the world And the seven seas, Everybody's looking for something. 

This cover came out as part of the Wrinkle In Time trailer and I fell really, stupidly in love. This was actually a last minute addition, because I couldn’t stand it not being on here.