#also the way the lobster just says GOD on its forehead

[summer-fruits]

this is the best show in the world actually

#one piece #also the way the lobster just says GOD on its forehead #elite #this is a bad photo but i refuse to rewind now

[zmayadw]

And the next one as promised :)

CALL OF THE RAVEN

PART 6

The day i got released form hospital finaly came. I was happy about it, taking a breath of fresh air will be a welcoming change after over three weeks in here. Some bruises wer still visable, and my head hurted from time to time, but other then that the doctor gave me a green light. And having too much free time makes your toughts wonder in wrong direction too much. Thinking about Jake was my daily routine, and i hoped once i get out other things will get me occupied. Jessy wanted me to stay with her, but i managed to persuade her that i'd be better of at the motel. She reluclantly agreed, but I argued that i would still be resting most of the time, and promised her we will see eachother every day, wich made her respect my decision a bit more. She called me that moring, telling Dan will come and drive me to the motel, because she was bussy planing a surprise for me. „Oh, Jessy, pleas dont go overboard, it is my first day out, i wont be up for much.“ I protested, but she quickly reasured me its nothing big. Knowing Jessy, i was sceptical about it, but she sounded so happy that i just agreed to whatever she had in plan. I was about done packing, when Doris came bringing me my dischrage papers. She gave them to me, embracing me in a tight hug „You be good now, hun. And remember what i told you before.“ She said, giving me one more of her winks. „Thank you, Doris.“ I replied, handig her a chocholate bombonier i asked Jessy to get me. „For everything.“ I hugged her once more. „No need to thank me, hun.“  „Ahh, Doris, im jelaous, i didnt get a hug from you when i was leaving the hospital.“ It was Dan, being dramatic again. I laughed, as Doris went for the door „Schmacks dont deserve hugs!“ she grinned at him, and left. „She likes me...she just wont admit it.“ Dan said, grining. „So,you ready to leave this shithole?“ „Definatly!“ i said, taking my discharge papers and putting them in my pack. Dan took it from me, and we left the room, taking the elevator down. Stepping outside was so refreshing, i stopped at the exit for a brief moment, wich made Dan turn „You allrigh there?“ „Im good, just appriciate being outside again.“ I smiled. We continued to the car. Dan opened the door for me, putted my stuff on the back seat, and we drove towards motel. I rolled the window down letting the cool morning air blow to my face and through my hair. The drive wouldnt last that long, and Dan informed me that Jessy booked the room for me already and took the rest of my stuff there, and my car also waiting for me at the motels parking. „Dan, whats Jessy planing for me today?“ i asked. „Oh, no,no, im keeping my mouth shut!“ he replied, but i groaned at him pleading „Please, Dan, at least give me a hint. I just got out of hospital, and to be honest, im not up for big fanfaras, but i dont want to dissapoint Jessy either. And lets be honest, its Jessy wer talking about here, nothing is small or meaningless with her.“ He laughed at that „Your right about that! Alright, ill tell you, but if she realize you knew something..“ „Dont worry, i can act being genuinely surprised with no problem.“ I asured him. „Well, its nothing much, rellay. We're taking you for dinner.“ he said. Ok, thats not so bad, i tought, i do have to eat. „And she invited the gang to Aurora this evening, to celebrate your release from hospital.“ Ugh, i hoped that wouldnt happen so soon, that i would at least have a day or so for me before seeing everyone. „Ah, crap, i guess it was bound to happen sooner or later.“ I said, adding „Later would be better, tho.“ „Dont worry, Maya, ill be there to rescue you, AGAIN.“ He grinned at me, and i grinned back „Good, because i just might need some rescuing, again.“

Dan left me at the motel, and i entered the small checkin office. The woman behind the counter was eldery, and she smiled at me „Good morning, miss, what can i do for you?“. „Morning'“ i replied, smiling back „I had a room booked for me by a friend, i guess you know her, Jessica Hawkins?“. She smiled more now „Ah, ofcourse, miss Cole i presume?“ i nooded in agreement. „Yes, Jessica brought all your belongings already. I would just ask for you to fill this, please.“ She handed me that check in paper you get at every motel. I filled it, and she gave me the key.“You're at room 11, its on your right once you leave the office. And i'm Ms. Walter, fell free to ask if you need anything.“ „Thanks, i will.“ I replied, taking the key.

The room looked cozy enough. It had a big bed, with a little nightstand next to it with a lamp on it. There was a midium size table in front of a big window, wich i immidiatly felt greatefull for, since some natural light is what i prefere for my drawing work, and a closet next to it. Across from the bed was a  TV, and a little refrigeratore under it. The bathroom was small, wich is more then enough. I left my stuff on the bed, when i noticed a note on the nightstand. 'The car key is in the nightstand drawer. Get some rest, and see you later! Xoxo' It was from Jessy, and that made me smile. I took the key and went to the car to get the rest of my stuff. The day was nice and sunny, and i tought i souldnt spend the whole day in the motel. I went back to the room, unpacked, grabed some clean clothes and went for a shower. When i got dressed i sat at te table and turned my laptop on. I checked my mails, and some job offers. Its good when you're a freelancer, you can work from anywhere, and I actually felt some work might keep me occupied and not let my mind wonder to Jake.  The tought of him leaving my hospital room  two weeks ago still pained me, but i cant sit here and despair all the time, so i decided to grab my drawing stuff and head exploring. I hoped Jessy wouldt mind me going to town alone, she did promise me a grand tour of it once im out of the hospital. I took my phone and texted her „Hey hey, setteled at the motel. Going for a walk arround, but dont worry, im still looking forward for my tour arround Duskwood with you! xoxo“. She replied soon „Oh, nice, have fun! Just stay out of woods! xD See you for dinner J „. Great, now i could leave without feeling any guilt. I grabbed my backpack and left the motel.

I decidet to walk towards the marketplace, i had plenty of time since it wasnt even noon yet, and Jessy and Dan wont pick me up before 19. I passed a small bakery on my way there, and bought me some food and a bottle of water. The streets leading towards marketplace wer small and narrow, mostly with older buildings and pretty quiet. After some 30-40 minutes of slow walk,  i emerged to the marketplace, and it was comepletly different. The crowd thickened, and the place hummed with life. In the center was a nice funtain, with benches in circle arround it. Few wer occupied with people: one had an eldery couple, just sitting there on the sun and talking, on the other wer two mothers, drinking coffee while kids wer running arround, giggling and enjoying a nice day. I sat on one of the free benches, and took my drawing pad out. The warmth of the sun felt nice, and i began drawing. I can get quite zoomed out of my surroundings when drawing, so when i finaly noticed someone was standing in front of me, i jumped, and my penciles flew all over the floor. I started to stan up from the bench, at the same time that someone started to bend down to help pick them up,our heads coliding. That sent me sitting back on the banch, as both of us groaned from the impact. „Auch.“ I flinched, looking at the person stnding there. It was Jake. „Sorry, i didnt mean to sneak up on you.“ he said, still rubbing his forehead. „No, no, its fine, i was really focused, i didnt see you there.“ I barely managed to say, my voice shakey, clumsely picking my penciles from the floor.He was the last person i expected to run into. I really wasnt ready for this, the knot in my stomach starting to form, as i finaly collected all the penciles and sat back on the bench. I knew we wer gonna run at each other eventualy, but not so soon. He sat next to me, and i could notice by his body language he was a bit nervouse, too. „You look better.“ he said after a moment of silence, giving me a small smile, wich made my heart skip from joy. „Thanks, i feel much better,too.“ I replied, smiling back. He was looking at me so tenderly, and the heat from the sun made me so hot, i had a feeling my cheeks wer red as a lobster. He run his hand through his hair, and all i could think is how much i wanna do that. His look became more serious now, his eyes becoming darker, but that tenderness was still present. „Maya..“ he started „That day at the hospital.. I didnt..I'm sorry..“ but i interupted him. „No need to appologise, Jake, really.“ And he really didnt have to. I continued, before he could say anything else. „Look, its like this: you had every right to act like you did, and even tho it wasnt easy for me to hear you say those stuff, you wer right, in a way.“ He looked me a bit confused. „You wer probably right, I didnt think quite hard about every possible thing that could go wrong, and God knows i had more luck then im willing to admit. But thats just who i am: i act, i go with the flow, i make mistakes. And i appologise when I realize I was wrong, wich I would do to you if you just stayed for a while more. And i mean appologise for not telling you, or anyone about my plan, not for what i did at the end, hence me saying that you wer right in a way.“ I looked at him, he was still calm, not a trace of that anger i saw at the hospital anywhere on his face. That made me relax a bit. „Maya, just let me...“ he started again, but i interputed him once more „Please, Jake, just let me finish, then you can say whatever you wnat.“ He nodded in agreement. „ I know saying 'sorry' at that time seemed so pointless, but you have to know that i really am sorry, Jake, a thousand times sorry. Yet, i still stand by what i said, i would do it all over again, no matter the qonsequences.“ I paused for a moment, before i continued „I really hope you can forgive me. I got so used at having you in my life, and for it to end here and now...“ He looked at me, but i couldnt bring myself to look back at him. I just stared at my hands, not realizing this whole time i was clasping them so tightly. „I hope you wont shut me out of your life comepletly.“ We sat there in silence for what seemed like eternity. I got my courage and looked at him. He was staring in the distance now. „I felt helpless.“ he said, looking back at me now. „It got me...scared.“ he confessed, and i ached to just hug him. I could see this was being hard for him, saying it. „I've had that happen once before in my life, and it didnt end well.“ His eyes became so sad. „I'm not sure im ready to go through it again.“ That knot at my stomach tightened as he said it, but i took a deep breath „I understand. I'v let you down, i know. But i hope with time, you will be able to trust me again..let me be your friend, at least.“ Friend...that word felt so wrong to me. I didnt want to be just his 'friend', i wanted to be more, so much more. But, i guess at the moment i would be happy with anything. He stared at me for a moment, and before he said it, a smile formed at the corner of his lips „One step at the time.“ „Thats all im asking.“ I said, smiling shyly. He sat there in silence for a brief moment before slowely getting up. „You're good, by the way.“ He said, and i looked at him puzzeled, wich made him smile. He had such a sincere and wonderfull smile. „Your drawing, its good.“ He continued, pointing at my drawing pad. „Oh, that, thanks!“ i replied. „I better be good, i doubt i'll get paid otherwise .“ i grinned. He shook his head at me smiling, walking slowely away from the bench „See you arround, Maya.“ „See you, Jake.“ Watching him walk away this time didnt leave me in pain and agony. I felt hope again. Maybe Doris and Jessy weren't talking nonsence, afterall, I tought, not realising i was grinning like crazy.

After Jake left, i just sat there, letting my heart stop beating insanely. I was really happy for how our unexpected meeting went, i tought there really was some hope for us again. Oh man, Jessy will go crazy when i tell her all about it, she will so rub me her ' i told you so's' in the face! That got me laughing out loud, a few passerbys looking at me like i was crazy. And they wer right, i was crazy! Crazy for Jake. Everything about him drow me crazy: his gorgeous eyes, that ruffeled hair, and that beautifull smile. He shoud definatly smile more, i tought, his whole face smiles when he does it. The churchbell chimmed five , and i cursed under my breath. I better head back to the motel, i need another shower for sure. I quickly grabbed my stuff from the bench, deciding to grab coffee before headiding back. My toughts wer still running wild about Jake as i was walking back towards motel, i colided with a man. I almost dropped my coffe, quickly appologizing. „Be carefull there, miss, you never know who you might bump into.“  He said, a bit grim, like he was makeing a threath. I looked at him a bit astonished „Uhm, i will mister, thanks for your advice. And, sorry again!“ I slowly turned and continued my way. Strange guy i tought, but didnt pay any more toughts about it continuing back to the motel.

#duskwood #duskwood mc #duskwood jake #duskwood fanfic

[katsukis-sad-angel]

FatSquadCanons; During and right after the Chisaki arc

Pairing: Taishiro Toyomitsu x Reader, Eijirou Kirishima x Reader, & Tamaki Amajiki x Reader

Summary: The Fat Gum squad and their girlfriends/wives/fiancees during and right after the Chisaki Arc in My Hero academia

Warnings: Sex talk, slight angst, mentions of intercourse, cock-warming, swearing, cuteness

Author’s Note: That gif below brought back the sun, cured my depression, got rid of my anxiety, cured the coronavirus, and made Jesus rise from the cross and beat the shit out of Pontious Pilate

Enjoy!

Taishiro Toyomitsu

Mostly SFW

Misses you

A LOT

You’re so pretty and happy and you give the best hugs and have the sweetest voice so being deprived of those things for so long…

But he had to focus

They had to save Eri, so he couldn’t have your elegant features staining the cloth of his mind right now

You, on the other hand, try and cope with your worry, lust, and sadness by rolling up in his spare hero hoodies and his big black shirts because they’re warm and they smell just like him

You miss the way he held you in his arms as though you were made of porcelain, the way he kissed your lips like it was the last time, his big, warm, soft stomach you could sink into, the twisty blonde hair you loved combing your fingers through, his big smile, his huge hands, his hugs, his lips, his dick, and his laugh

That chuckle...

It would be the death of you

You just wanted to be back in his arms… or in his lap…

Or under him while he fucked your brains out

Pick one

He hasn’t been home in 2 whole week

So your touch starved as fuck, hungry for dick, lonely, sad, and worried

You’ve been eating dinner alone and the news has been on nonstop

So when he comes home with bandages all over his scraggly, skinny yet buff body, you immediately start bawling your eyes out

You’re so happy he’s safe and alive

He holds out one of his arms to you and you stumble from your chair and collapse into his arms

“Tai! Oh, my god!”

He picks you up and carries you to the couch like the goddess you are and lays down with you, kissing your cheeks, telling you how beautiful you are and how much he missed you until your stormy sobs have calmed to the occasional violent hiccup

“Honey bear, it’s ok. I’m here now. Don’t cry sweetheart…”

I want him to call me ‘honey bear’

The two of you lay there for the rest of the day

You get up occasionally to get your man food and to take a piss, but that’s about it

Refuses to let go of your waist even though his stomach sounds like a possessed garbage disposal

“Don’t worry about me Y/n, I’m fine. Just stay here, ok?”

You rest your head on his chest to listen to the beat of his heart

Nice pecs pillow

Forehead kisses, ear nibbles, ass and thigh grabs, hand kisses, etc

He’s all over you

He thinks you such a beautiful goddamn queen through the bright red tearstains and the evidence of emotional eating that had gathered on your hips

He tells you that, just the part about your cute and squishy hips

You end up falling asleep like that under a pile of blankets

NSFW

The very next day, as soon as you’re up, you start riding him like a horse

“That’s it babygirl, be a nice little cowgirl for me. Just like that~”

“Did you miss my cock while I was gone?” He’ll whisper in your ear, sucking on one of your piercings

“Yes, fuck yes I did Tai!”

Holds your bouncing hips with the one hand that works, kisses you, sucks tiddy, and makes sure you get off at least twice before he does

When he’s done, you collapse on his chest, panting

For a couple of hours, you lay there cock warming him because he asked you to

Then his stomach started up again and you got off and fed him everything in the house while naked because he asked you too

The end

Because you asked me too

Tamaki Amajiki

SFW

…

Poor sweet elf boi

Doesn’t really know how to cope

Spends a lot of time locked in his room

You notice he’s eating less

When he allows you to come into his room, he’s always wearing one of the hoodies you let him have

On those nights, there isn’t a lot of talking, but there is a lot of cuddling

He rests his head either on your chest or your stomach, wraps his muscley arms around your waist and holds you close

Whispers ‘I love you y/n.’ every so often

You’re really worried about him

His pretty black eyes are dull, he slouches more, Mirio can’t cheer him up, you can’t cheer him up, his indigo floof droops a little, dark bags under his eyes, stutters a lot more → talks even less than before, he looks sad, and is jumpy

He’s been really distant too

Staring off into the distance, completely zoned out and lost in his thoughts

24/7

So one day when he comes back from patrol with that spunky redhead and Fatgum, you go to his room and knock

No answer

You knock again

Still no answer

You fumble with the doorknob, but it’s locked

Using your quirk, you manage to get it open

“Tama, why is your-”

“Tamaki?”

Tamaki Amajiki was rolled up in several blankets, making him look like an adorable burrito

He was struggling to escape his warm cocoon, squeaking softly as he attempted to get his arms out

He blushed as soon as you saw him and then tried to hide his face in embarrassment, but you didn’t let him sink too far

You smiled indulgently and helped him unroll

“Tamaki, if you were cold then- Wait… are those my socks?”

“Yes.” He mumbled, hiding his face in your shoulder

You giggled

“Don’t be embarrassed Tama! If you want my clothes, just ask!”

You wrap your arms around him and pull him down so you’re laying comfortably in his bed together

“How are you doing?” You coo, stroking his soft indigo locks

“Awful.” He mumbled, burying his face in your chest

“I’m sorry to hear that…” You reply, tracing the indent on the back of his neck, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Yes. But I’m not allowed.”

“Oh. That’s ok. I don’t mean to be insensitive, but just try not to think about it. I know it’s hard and you’re under a lot of pressure, but tonight, just think about me. Or takoyaki. Or Nejire and Mirio.”

“You smell good.” He whispered bashfully, “New perfume?”

“Mm-hm! You like it?”

“Yup.”

“Good.”

You smiled sweetly, letting his soft voice (I love you Aaron Dismuke) play its melody over and over again in your brain

You were so lucky

You kissed his forehead and whispered, “If you need someone to talk to, I’m right here Tamaki. Ok?”

He nodded sleepily, eyelids drooping from lack of sleep

“I love you bunny.”

“Sweet dreams.” You sigh, relaxing in his safe embrace

NSFW

Don’t get me wrong, Tamaki is one of the sweetest, kindest, most adorable yet hot guys EVER, but he isn’t some fucking pushover

He’s domming your sorry ass in bed, whether you like it or not

He’s got tentacles

TENTACLES

GOOD HENTAI ANIME = TENTACLES

And he fucking knows how to use them to make you scream

He also has a cow hoof you can stretch yourself on

What happens if he eats noodles?

But that’s beside the point

Tentacles

With those, he can tease you, tie you up, make you cum, squirt, serve as a second dick for ur arse, put them in your mouth, etc etc etc

Anything you can imagine

Picture this: Tamaki is fucking your from behind, buried to the hilt in your cunt. Two tentacles trapping your arms against your back, one in your ass, one in your mouth, and one massaging your throbbing clit

You’re overstimulated, moaning, and crying from the pleasure, pain, and overwhelming arousal

“Do you like my tentacles Bunny? Does it feel good?”

“So wet for me… such a pretty Bunny when I fuck you like this.”

“More? Greedy bunnies get punished~”

Loves it when you’re all needy, hot, and bothered underneath him, begging for just a simple touch

It makes him feel really strong and happy

Knows it feels good because you make the most erotic faces

Nuts almost immediately when you do → tongue lolling out, eyes rolled back, mouth open in a silent scream, and cheeks flushed

Aftercare? 

You won’t even remember the accidental scratch you got from the lobster claw

Sore pussy and/or ass?

Hickeys?

Dry throat?

Hungry?

Anything marring the beautiful expanse of skin before him?

Gone

He’ll massage you, give you a bath, food, water, endless kisses, hums to you softly, bandage you up (if need be) and tuck you in

He NEVER wants to lose you to someone else, so he makes ABSOLUTELY sure, you’re 100% feeling loved at the end

He loves you so much

Never forget that

Eijirou Kirishima

Mostly SFW

Baby boy…

He has been very distant since this whole thing started

No more study and cuddle sessions (where you normally end up fucking)

Fewer hugs and kisses

No big girl fun time in bed

Not as many baby shark doot doo doo doo doo smiles

*author drowns in utter despair*

All you have are the clothes you steal from his closet every now and then

(every time you’re in his room) cough

So while boi is being a distant and depressing fuck, you bundle up in all 11 of his Crimson Riot hoodies (some of them are used as pants) and think about him

His garnet irises, his adorable sharp-toothed smile, his killer upper body, his soft red hair, his voice (thank you Justin Cook), his hands, his dick, his manliness, the tiny scar above his eyebrow, and his sharp jawline

Perfection

Kiri, on the other hand, wonders why you’re spending so much time in your room all alone and why fuck cuddle nights stopped

Right when he needed all of the love and support, it stopped

Were you mad at him?

Did he do something to upset or offend you?

Did he say something rude or insensitive without thinking about it?

Did you get tired of him?

Did you want to break up?

Had Bakugou finally stolen your heart from him?

He couldn’t tell

You looked to upset all the time, giving him distant looks, suddenly running to your room with your eyes full of… shit, were those tears?

No, not eyes full of shit

Eyes full of tears

Come on guys

He ran after you, but by the time he got to your hallway, you were already locked in your room

He knocked on the door

“Who… Who is it?” You whimpered in a choked voice

“Uh, Eiji… your boyfriend…” He said softly, running a hand through his softened locks, “Can I come in?”

“I…” You pause, “I guess. Gimme a minute.”

Shuffling sounds

*nose-blowing*

Then the door opened to reveal a slouching you in one of his hoodies

You had a used tissue scrunched in your fist

“Babe, are you ok? You’ve been acting really weird lately and I’m worried!” Said the pure ginger shark

“E-Ever s-since you s-started that work-study, you’ve been r-really d-distant so I thought you might’ve f-found someone else. Either that or you j-just needed t-time alone.” You whimpered, holding back tears for what seemed like the billionth time that day

“Baby girl, no one could ever replace you!”

Sharky pulls you into a hug

“I’m sorry you thought that Y/n. I’ve just been really zoned out because I’m trying to balance school, work-study, and our relationship all at once. I really need those study nights honey, I’m begging you. You explain stuff so simply and your notes are really descriptive. I love you so much and I don’t like it when you’re sad, because then I’m sad and then everyone is sad.”

“Eiji… I’m sorry, don’t blame all this on your self. I’m just being a whiny bitch.”

“Don’t say that!!”

“But I-”

You were cut off by a kiss

Eijirou cupped your flushed cheek tenderly with one hand, and with the other, he held the small of your back so you were flush up against him

“Eijirou…”

That night, you fall asleep on his chest, but Kiri can’t sleep

His phone on your nightstand flashes and he carefully picks it up, turning down the brightness so as not to disturb you

Apparently, it’s time

Carefully, he slips out of bed to join Midoriya, Ochaco, and Tsuyu downstairs

NSFW

When all of that is over and Kirishima is in your arms safe and sound again, he gets down on you before you even pull out your flashcards

Presses you back into the carpet and starts sucking your face

“Eiji? Wha-”

“Sssh.”

Clothes start flying everywhere except away from you and your horny boyfriend, who has moved onto your neck and jawline, kissing and nipping along your collarbones and mandible

You thread your shaking fingers through his pretty red hair

“So wet for me already?” 

“Mmmh, you smell so good…” Eijirou moaned, sucking your puffy clit, his hands clamped on your hips to prevent you from bucking or squirming

“M-More… please, more! I need more Eiji~”

“Did you miss me, or just my cock?”

“Both- fuuuuck~ Eijirou oh my gOd~”

“You like that sweetie? Huh? Tell me how much you like it~”

…

*coughs*

You can hardly walk the next day

But don’t worry

Kiri will treat you like a queen and carry you around until you fall off or feel better

No studying happened unless you count Eiji learning to make you squirt

Otherwise, no

Neither of you did anything productive

But you did have a fun, sensual evening with the person you loved most

Nighteye Squad hc’s coming soon!

#i fucking love fatgum #fatgum is perfect #change my mind #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #my hero academia headcanons #boku no hero academia headcanons #mha #bnha #mha headcanons #bnha headcanons #dontmesswiththenootnoot #fatgum headcanons #taishiro toyomitsu headcanons #toyomitsu taishiro headcanons #fatgum x reader headcanons #fatgum x reader #taishiro toyomitsu x reader headcanons #taishiro toyomitsu x reader #toyomitsu taishiro x reader headcanons #toyomitsu taishiro x reader #taishiro toyomitsu #my hero academia fanfiction #boku no hero academia fanfiction #tamaki amajiki #amajiki tamaki #sun eater #suneater #tamaki amajiki headcanons #amajiki tamaki headcanons

[maladaptive-ninja-returns]

Dawn (2)

Loki x fem!Reader

ONE/TWO/THREE SHOT

Warnings: mention of past trauma and fluff.

Summary: A truce to end all wars leads to an alliance between Earth and Asgard in the form of Loki marrying a mortal. None of them what this. None except fate.

Word Count: sleep is nice. Water is super nice. music is dope nice. weather is siren-like nice. not being able to meet my dogs? not nice.

MASTERLIST in bio, darlings. Tags are open (check bio)

"Is it really necessary to do this? All of this?"

"It's a custom created by the Allfather, your grace," answers the handmaiden that helps you into the soft gold of a dress that seems to be way too over the top for something as simple as breakfast.

"Your Allfather needs to get laid," you whisper loud enough for her to hear and turn red.

"I beg your pardon, your grace?"

You whine as you watch yourself in the gigantic mirror in the bathroom. "Nothing. Come on, let's go."

She picks up your clothes from last night and the bags that have your belongings from the earth. "Where are you going with those?"

She turns around and bows a little. "To clean them all up, your grace. The Prince said that they might have been sullied with the party they arrived."

"Loki?"

"No, your grace. Prince Thor."

"...okay? Anyway, where do you guys have lunch?"

"In the kitchen, your grace."

"Cool. I'll join you guys there."

"B-but your grace!"

"You don't have to end every sentence with your grace, Sybll. Okay?"

"...y-yes, your-"

"What?"

"...yes."

"Okay. See you later, Sybll."

You shut the door behind you, leaving the poor young handmaiden's heart pumping as she tries to make sense of what has happened.

"See you...your grace," she whispers in the empty room.

.

"Oh, no, thank you, dear," you blurt, bringing your hand up to avoid the servant from serving an entire lobster- at least that's what it looks like- to you, "no...no meat for me, please."

Odin seems to be taken aback a little by that request. And a smile is the only thing you can conjure up.

Where. The fuck. Is everyone else?

The large table feels a tad much for the two of you. Not mention the nausea you are feeling from overthinking about Odin's internal judgements about you.

"Is everything all right, Y/N?" Odin finally asks, the half-eaten berry resting in between his fingers and thumb.

"Yes, sir, I mean, your majesty," you stutter, feeling yourself punching in the gut for screwing the first words coming out of you in front of him.

"Do you not like to eat meat, then?"

No father-in-law, it's just that all meat comes out as vomit when I am nervous.

"I...have a sensitive stomach."

"Huh," is all he bothers to state before going back to his berry.

So all you have on your plate now is leaves and fruits sitting as the subject for an art session. 

"The gardens of the palace are beautiful, s-your majesty," you mention, remembering the flowers in full bloom you saw this morning.

"Ah, yes," he exclaims with a delight, "Frigga used to take great care of them. It is all of her hard work that blooms in those soils. Like it does in my sons."

You nod, taking a piece of watermelon and filling your mouth with it. "Mmhmm."

"You must think of me as some foolish old bastard for my way of doing things, like...like joining two worlds in a peace treaty through marriage, don't you, young lady?"

All you can do is gulp down the melon sitting unchewed in your mouth as you look at him with a blank expression.

"For an inexperienced mind like yours does not understand how crucial it is to stand united in the face of adversity."

You nod with your mouth full. "You're right. I don't. So, if you don't mind me asking, what was Frigga like?"

The lines on Odin's forehead change and he is back in time to some fond memory while he moves his food around his fingers. "Frigga was gentle as the first cool breeze that soothes you at the crack of the dawn, my dear. She was my rock. She kept Asgard running even when I was not there. That too while she had two young notorious sons to take care of." He chuckles silently and looks into some distant void, letting the sun reflect on the moisture at the edge of his eye. "She loved Loki like her own son. When the world saw a monster in him, she saw an innocent soul that needed the love and care of a mother. She taught him all the magic she knew. She had a way with him, with his mind that was always in a different direction than the rest of us. Whether she knew him or not, she did her best to make him a better version of himself."

"Would she have agreed to this truce?"

The words are out sooner than you realise and Odin is out of the trance he was a while back, the eye losing its hues.

"My sons will do what I say, woman. They are the pride of Asgard. The reflection of what expanded my kingdom and its peace stands for. And Frigga would have agreed with me. With whatever decision I took."

The words crawl over your shoulders like ants. Your nails are scraping the edges of the pie crust as silence seems to erode any feelings of respect between the two of you.

"I bet he is your reflection as well, Loki-" you stress on his name with a tilt of his head- "I bet he was your reflection that day too when he was a child and you told him he was no good as a warrior and he'd rather go hide in his mother's skirt."

The clatter of fork and knives stops. So does the breath of every servant present in the vicinity, discreetly looking at their Allfather for any reaction.

"He was your reflection when the boys from the streets teased him for being so weak for a Prince. And when he could not take the insult anymore, he used his magic to teach them proper manners. Hm?"

You pick up the chalice of wine kept for you, squeezing an orange into it before taking a generous sip. "He was also your reflection the day Thor was to be crowned king-" you smacked your lips, keeping the chalice down with a thud- "and the day he let the wormhole swallow him?"

The air is heavy. Heavier than any third person can take.

"You might be sitting in a seat of privilege, woman, but do not forget you are speaking to your king." His tone is soft but the intended weight with which they flow is not.

"Yes. I do realise my place, my king. I am but a mere human tied to a son you deem unworthy of serving any purpose to you. But here's the thing, your highness-" you look Odin in the eye, your face losing every feeling- "I am not Frigga, Gods rest her soul."

The napkin resting on your lap is crumpled in your hand before being left on the plate as you get up, dragging your chair back and turning around to collide with the servant coming with a pitcher of wine.

His apologies are cut short by you, assuring him it's no big deal before turning back to the Allfather. "It was a good talk, your majesty," you state with a full-blown bow.

"Oh and one more thing! Loki does not have some different brains that you cannot figure out. He just thinks seven steps ahead of everyone else. I found out through observation. And the one time we both had to escape being killed. You should try it sometimes too."

And with that declaration, you walk out of the hall, leaving a stunned silence with an audience and a King sitting with heartburn.

.

FUCK!

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST DOOOOO!!!!!

Your steps cannot match your heart rate at this point as you try to make your way back to Loki's room. And the constant flashbacks to the conversation you just had do not help. At all. If only the ground would crack open and swallow you right now.

You really need to keep your issues with controlling fathers in check, woman!

Well, TOO LATE! you yell back at your inner voice.

The corridors are a blur. So are the voices of people asking you if you're okay.

You didn't have to defend him like that.

You try to shove your inner voice away.

What do you even know about him?

You can finally see the door to your sanctuary, and your steps get faster than they already are.

What is Odin going to do to you now?

Opening the door, you throw yourself inside before shutting it back and letting the whimpers of weakened shallow breaths become audible.

"Okay, breathe. Breathe breathe breathe-" you take in a lungful- "yes, breathe."

Five times more and your heart finally finds a rhythm for your brain to function a bit better, bringing your attention to the wetness you feel on your stomach and realise you're still in the soiled dress with a huge blotch of wine stain colouring it in an ugly tone.

Undoing the knots around you, you walk to the bathroom to change into clean clothes and realise only when you are standing naked in there that all your clothes have been taken for a wash.

Perfect.

Your palms are rubbed hard against your face with frustrated groans before you catch a glimpse of the black fabric lying on top of one of Loki’s drawers; the one he wore last night.

Oh, screw it.

The cotton shirt slides over you with ease, flowing till your thighs, though the thin fabric barely covers much. With that taken care of, you walk over to the other drawers and cabinets to find anything else you can wear for the moment.

.

“Where were you two?!”

“Good to see you too, Sif,” Thor comments with a tone of sarcasm as a fuming Sif walks over to the brothers getting down from their horses.

“We went to inspect the new territories under Vanaheim. There was a little disturbance there last night,” Loki mentions as he twists and adjusts his shoulder with a muted grunt. No one notices for there are other pressing matters at hand.

“The Allfather is fuming because of your absence at breakfast today. Especially since-” she pauses to look at Loki and point out at him in general, which reasonably confuses both the brothers- “and on top of that things went downhill from here thanks to that woman.”

Now, this leads to the brothers to furrow their brows at Sif.

“Downhill how?” Thor asks.

“Spare no details,” Loki adds.

.

“This...is...hilarious.” Loki guffaws as he ends the sentence and this time Thor is the one to roll his eyes.

“It is still hard to believe Y/N would do something like this,” the blond states.

“Oh, Thor,” Loki purrs with a jump in his step, making his brother automatically uncomfortable, “it’s not that hard to believe once you realise she has lived the better part of her life with Stark. She has learned the snark from the best.”

“How do you even know what that word means?” Thor gasps in frustration. He opens his mouth to follow it up with a contradiction before pausing to run Loki’s words in his mind, hating the smirk building over his brother’s lips as realisation dawns on him.

“I need to talk to her about this-”

“WOAH! Woah! Easy brother,” Loki exclaims, stopping him with a hand on his chest, pausing the steps just outside the younger one’s room, “are you sure you want to do that?”

“What do you mean? Of course-”

“Thor-” Loki pats his brother’s chest as a gesture of patience- “first, talk to her only if you yourself have never defied your father.”

Thor looks at Loki with judgment-filled eyes, getting his brother’s index finger to wait and listen for more. “Second, talk to her with the thought that she barely has been here for a day and she has to spend the rest of her life here. Away from everything she knows.”

This, somehow, dilutes the smoke rising from the embers inside Thor. Loki isn’t wrong after all. “And third, don’t follow me inside. I am going to take a long shower.”

“Wha-”

“What? Sybll said Y/N told her she’ll join her for lunch in the kitchen. Now off you go,” he shoos his brother away with his hands before shutting his bedroom door behind him.

A chuckle leaves him involuntarily as he recalls Sif’s word by word description of how it all went down in the dining hall.

Good for her , he wonders, taking his armour off, there will be something to keep Odin and Thor occupied.

The arm plate stops short from landing on the table with a thud as a thought stirs in Loki’s mind, slowly invading his heart through the tiniest of veins. Letting the arm plate softly rest on the table, he lets his fingers grab the back of his doublet to remove it.

Why did she defend me in front of Odin?

The summer breeze from outside takes the first chance it gets to rub itself all over the naked chest and back of the God lost in a puzzle which isn’t that hard to solve once he has all the pieces.

Right. Forgot she had a mad father too. What was it that Stark said we were? Two kids with daddy issues.

Shaking his head, his fingers undo the first button on his pants when he hears a soft clunk from somewhere within the room. And the relaxed cat becomes the predator within a flash.

.

Why does he have so many greens and blacks?

The drawers and closets in front of all have nothing but those hues. Wait, is he colourblind?

Grunting and stomping your feet for not finding anything you could borrow from your ‘husband’s’ clothing, you close all that is opened and start to move towards the bedroom to call for Sybll for a change of clothes when faint voices are heard outside followed by a door being shut.

It takes a lot for your heart to jump in your mouth; and right now, that lot is Loki walking in the room with a smile, undoing his armour while looking at some invisible void in the distance.

Fuck!

You could not go out in front of him like this. In his nightshirt that was barely covering your assets.

Hiding behind the archway next to an Oakwood drawer, you take a peek at the God lost in some thought. There is a faint smile on his unexpectedly pink lips. What is he thinking? That thought runs away and hides in a corner as soon as it sees long pale fingers are pulling away the doublet from above his head to reveal a bod sculpted in some mountains of divine beauty not meant for the naked eye.

Your breath gets caught in the moment of revelation. Wasn't he supposed to be...frail? At least that's what you thought when you first saw him. But now that you think about it, anyone and everyone looks frail in front of Thor. But never in your life would you have thought that all that layer of clothing hid a figure like this.

You won a lottery, woman , your inner voice nudges and winks at you before it is pushed into a dark corner. Though I feel bad for him for getting stuck with you , it shouts as it fades into the darkness. The muscles on his back shift when he rolls his shoulders and you feel your insides shudder. Does Asgard realise what they're missing under all that leather? Is what you question till you see marks and bruises that seem old- healed but not so thoroughly. Hmm, everything with him has a reason, doesn't it?

Your daylight musing seems to crack as you realise- with his back to you- he is about to open his pants.

No matter how enticing it seems to the dark corners of your brain, you draw yourself back from the archway, colliding straight into a drawer. You IDIOT!!

Moving on your toes, silent as a cat, your steps go backwards, past the drawers and lux bathtubs towards the balcony while your eyes stay on the archway, waiting for your heart to stop any moment that Loki showed his face through it.

One step back and you are in the balcony, your feet feeling the cold stone under them while your back collides into something equally cold and rigid. And it does not raise all those tiny hairs on your body till you can feel that cold rise and fall rise in your back.

MOTHERF-

The siren voice of the night sings right into your ear.

"Looking for someone?"

#loki #loki odinson #Loki Laufeyson #loki x reader #loki x you #loki x y/n #loki x ofc #loki smut #loki fluff #smut #fluff #marvel smut #marvel fluff #mcu smut #mcu fluff #marvel loki #loki god of mischief #loki series #loki imagine #loki fanfiction #loki fic #loki feels #marvel #marvel fanfic #marvel fanfiction #marvel fic #marvel x reader #mcu fanfiction #Marvel MCU #MCU

[sincerelyreidburke]

won’t you lay me down

Hi, I wrote some CCU hurt/comfort fluff. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but bear with me.

In which: Derek has a bad mental health day. Will has his back.

Also on ao3!

///

Will doesn’t see the text at first.

It’s not really his fault. Monday mornings are busy. After morning practice at 6:30 (Will likes that better than evening practice, and as captain he’s tried to keep the practice schedule relatively consistent), he has a meeting with Hall and Murray for thirty minutes while the rest of the team filters out to their respective morning activities and routines. It’s the last he sees of Derek until the afternoon, every Monday— because after Will’s meeting with the coaches, he’s straight off to his internship in Boston for the rest of the morning, then comes back to campus for his 2:30 CS 381 class.

So when the text comes in, he’s mid-transit from Boston to Samwell, sitting in traffic on 128. As a general rule, he doesn’t check his phone while driving. Also, why the fuck is there so much traffic in the middle of the day on a Monday.

He doesn’t understand Massachusetts drivers.

Anyway. It’s when he gets back to campus that he sees it, sitting in his lockscreen over the wallpaper of him and Derek.

18m ago

Derek: do u mind if i chill in the basement

Derek: can’t focus in my room, c is playing music

Oh. Will unlocks his phone, sitting in his student parking spot. He and Derek use each other’s rooms all the time, even outside of their constant sleeping-over in each other’s. Many a time has he returned from class, internship, or other obligation to find his boyfriend hanging out in the bungalow.

They have their own spaces in the Haus, but they do their fare share of, well. Sharing.

Sry just saw this , he sends back. Was drivung. Of cuorse you can use the basment

He looks at the text thread for a second, then sends a <3 after his message, and tucks his phone away again.

On to the next thing.

Class is sort of tedious today, but what’s worse than it is the actual trek back to the Haus from the compsci building, because it’s frigid outside, a chill that gets to his bones even in his winter jacket and the beanie he stole from Derek. In typical New England February fashion, it’s supposed to snow tonight, or at least that’s what he thinks he heard from someone at his internship this morning. He spent most of his shift working out a kink in his supervisor’s code, and he was lost in the numbers and symbols for hours.

He likes it. It’s satisfying to figure out a program.

When he reaches the Haus, finally , Whiskey and Ford are hanging out in the kitchen. He waves to them on his way by, then wonders if he should bake tonight. Maybe after his homework, he can make cookies. The pie he made this weekend is gone already, because all three of the freshmen were here yesterday, nothing he bakes lasts long in their presence.

Will heads straight downstairs, and the door to his room is closed; the lights inside look like they’re off. He eases it open, reaching for the light switch. Derek must have finished whatever he was doing.

Or— not.

Derek is here, and he can tell because he hears Dwayne Johnson singing. He freezes with his hand on the light-switch before he can turn it on, and steps all the way into the room instead, where he catches sight of him— or at least catches sight of what he knows is him, under several layers of cover.

Derek has burrowed himself into Will’s bed with his laptop, and he’s watching Moana , the light of the screen on his face the only source of any light in the room at all. He’s wearing Will’s Samwell hoodie, the good one with Poindexter and 24 and C on the sleeve, and its hood is pulled over his head, strings drawn to make his face look like a blue-lit mask poking out of it. He looks only half-invested in the movie, because he’s resting his face on his arm, scrunched up to the pillow.

Will’s stomach turns. Bedridden Derek in his stolen sweatshirt and Moana are a combination that can only mean one thing.

He closes the door, gently, behind himself. “Der?”

It appears that this is the first Derek actually notices that someone else has entered the room. Will hears the click of the space bar, and the Rock halts mid-chorus. “Oh,” comes Derek’s voice from his blanket cocoon, and it’s small and drawn, the opposite of his loud bravado. “Hey, babe.”

“Hi.” Will drops his backpack at the door, then goes directly to him, crouching on the steps that get him to the loft bed. “Hey,” he says, across the laptop. “Are you okay?”

Derek pauses. He purses his lips at his computer screen, then sighs and lowers it. “Ch’yeah,” he mumbles. “I’m alright.”

With the laptop closed, Will reaches for his face. He cups his stubbly cheek in one hand, runs his thumb across his cheekbone. Derek looks blank, drained. Will knows this demeanor well by now.

“No, you’re not,” he whispers. Without the light of the laptop, it’s nearly dark inside. The slivers of gray daylight from where Derek pulled the shade on the window are all that remain.

Derek breathes in like he wants to say something, but nothing comes out. He nuzzles his face into Will’s pillow a little more.

“Der,” Will whispers. He kneels on the steps, pauses his thumb by Derek’s ear. “Gray day?”

Derek whimpers a little, like it pains him to admit it, but nods. “Yeah.”

Will keeps gentle. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks. “This morning?”

Derek bites his lip. “Didn’t feel it this morning.”

“Oh.” Will pauses. “When did it hit you?”

He closes his eyes. “When I got back to the Haus.”

Will frowns. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

Derek’s eyes are still closed. He shakes his head. “You couldn’tve known, babe.”

For a moment, the room is quiet. Will pushes Derek’s laptop aside a little. “What can I do?”

Derek takes his time, answering. Will is patient. He knows how to do this. He slides his hand into his curls under the hood; they’re matted, and they’ll be worse if he just lays in bed for the rest of the day. “You want to tie your hair?”

Derek takes a long breath.

“You don’t have to,” Will adds. “But if it’ll help you for later…”

“My scarf’s upstairs,” Derek mumbles, weakly, like upstairs is a continent away.

“It’s okay,” Will tells him. “I can get it, baby.”

Derek’s face contorts a little, like he’s about to cry, but he doesn’t; he just opens his eyes. His eye contact is distant, like he’s staring more into space than back at Will, but he’s trying, and Will knows that. “I love you,” he whispers, and then, “I don’t feel well.”

“I know,” Will hushes. “It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m here.”

“I’m sorry,” Derek groans.

“Never be sorry,” Will says. “Ever.” He kisses his forehead, feather-light, and then tells him, “I love you too. And I’m gonna go get your scarf, okay? I’ll be right back.”

Derek winces again, like something hurts. He nods, though, slowly, and rests his cheek on the pillow again. Will pulls back to go, but God, it’s hard, because he knows how much Derek hates being alone when he feels like this, and he’s already been in here by himself for God knows how long—

Okay, he’ll only be gone a minute. But even so, he feels the need to fill that space. He climbs down to his bookshelf, reaches onto its center shelf between Derek’s poetry books, and grabs hold of his oldest friend.

“Here,” he whispers, bringing Cromwell up so Derek can see. “Do you want a friend?”

Derek eyes the plush lobster, and though he doesn’t look like he has an ounce of energy to smile, his eyes soften. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “Please.”

Will hands him over, and Derek engulfs the little red thing in his sea of blankets, resting him right under his nose. The visual would be cute, if Derek weren’t in such a bad spot. Will caresses his cheek again, then smooths the few curls that are poking out of the hood. “Be right back, baby,” he says. “Do you know where your scarf is?”

Derek pauses, then shakes his head.

“It’s alright,” Will assures him. “I’ll find it.”

This was hard, at first, being so new to this side of him, and not knowing how to help him. But they’ve been together for eight months, and Will knows Derek’s gray days by now, knows the tells for when he’s feeling down, knows a few remedies that help to ease the numbness.

He makes a beeline for Derek’s room upstairs as fast as his legs can carry him. The space itself is even evidence that Derek isn’t feeling himself; there are more clothes on the floor than usual, and the bed is unmade, and his desk looks like his notebook exploded. Will sifts through his dresser drawers, between Samwell shirts, pairs of gym shorts, random articles of Will’s own clothing that’ve been stolen, but there’s no sight of the green headscarf he wears sometimes to bed. He moves his search to the desk, and then to the actual bed, and he’s about to give up when he finds it tucked between the down comforter and the sheets.

Success. He heads back downstairs.

“Hey, Dex, is Nursey in your room?”

“Oh—” Will halts in the kitchen doorway. The question came from Ford; she’s still at the counter. “Yeah,” he replies, poking his head around the corner. Tango has now joined the kitchen gathering. “He’s just watching a movie.”

“Oh, cool.” Ford nods. “I just didn’t know if he was in the Haus. I thought I saw him go down there, like, two hours ago.”

“Yeah,” Will says, “he’s with me.”

Tango waves. “Hi, Dex!”

“Hey, Tango.” Will opens the basement stairs door.

Chowder knows this version of Derek as well as Will does, but the rest of the team doesn’t. It’s what’s buried under the chill, what he could never stand to let people know about himself.

Derek’s brain is awful to him sometimes.

Back in his room, he finally takes off his winter jacket and closes the door behind him, then climbs up the steps to his bed again. Derek is still snuggling with Cromwell, but his laptop has moved; he’s pushed it to the pouch adjacent to Will’s headboard where he keeps his phone, occasional book, and other random stuff while he sleeps.

Will unfolds the scarf. It’s silky smooth. “Gave up on Moana ?” he hums.

Derek rolls over and nods. Will kicks his sneakers off, then crawls onto the mattress, which squeaks a little under both their weight. He slides a hand under his back— Derek is very, very warm, but that’s the way he likes to be when he’s like this— and eases him up into a sitting position. “Sit up for me, babe?”

Derek moves with his touch, nice and easy, and when Will has him sitting up, he slots himself against his back, lets Derek lean on him. “You want me to talk?” he asks as he pulls the hood off his head. “Or do you like the quiet?”

Derek hums a little. “Talk. Please.”

“Okay.” Will combs through his curls, then pulls the scarf tight around them. He learned this on YouTube, after his third time hearing post-funk Derek lament that his depression was ruining his hair. “It’s supposed to snow,” he tells him. “Five inches.”

Derek groans. “Fuck that.”

“I know,” Will mumbles. “But if classes get cancelled, I’ll make cookies.”

“Mm.” Derek hums again, as Will pulls the knot at the back of his neck tight. “What kind?”

“Still deciding.” He hooks his arms around his neck, pulls him close, and kisses his cheek. “You can file a request, if you want.”

“Snickerdoodle.”

“Done.”

“Thank you.” Derek pauses. “For tying my hair.”

Will noses into his neck, drops a kiss there, and then moves back up to his face. “Of course, Der.” He turns him a little, cups his face in one hand. Derek still looks gray, and he looks, God, he looks so tired ; he always does when he’s like this, but it pains Will every time.

He wants to take every ounce of hurt away from him.

“What can I do?” he asks.

Derek takes a long breath while he thinks about it. His words, on these days, come slowly. “Um.” He nods to himself, like he’s thinking about it. “Do you have homework?”

Will shakes his head. “I have plenty of time to do it.”

“Okay.” Derek pauses, then, “Lay with me?”

“Yeah.” Will nods. “Ayuh. Of course.”

They wind up curled into the blanket pile, with Derek pressed tight against Will’s chest, a little further down the bed than him so he can tuck his face into his shoulder. Will presses a kiss to the top of his scarf, holds him as close as he can. He knows the pressure helps him, eases his brain a little. Cromwell rests on the pillow, somewhere near the both of them. He’s a little extra moral support.

“Thank you, Will,” Derek says, with an exhale, as he nuzzles into his chest.

“You’re welcome,” Will replies. “Always.”

“Mmf.” Derek wraps himself around him, arms and legs and all. His voice is muffled when he speaks again, but Will knows the words anywhere. “You and me.”

Will nods. “You and me.”

It’s a mantra and a promise. Hell or high water. Good days and gray ones.

“I’ve got you,” he tells him, and he’ll never let go.

#poindextears writes #ficlet #omgcp #omgcheckplease #omgcp fic #nurseydex #dexnursey #william poindexter #derek nurse #cromwell the stuffed lobster

[artificialqueens]

trainwreck (Branjie) chapter 2 - PinkGrapefruit

chapter 2. trainwreck headed for us but we never think of runnin’

[lesbian fake dating AU]

A/N - for linda because you were drunk when i wrote this and honestly it made it so much better. And also thanks to @freykitten for teaching me apostrophes and dealing with my tense hopping, you are way too patient x

*

She’d spent hours on this outfit but even now, sitting in her mom’s Toyota Corolla, she’s unsure if she’s made the right choice. The green of the silk sits nicely on her collarbone, the deep v showing just enough cleavage to still feel sexy whilst being grandparent-appropriate. Her mom’s non-committal noises and pleasant smile told her enough when she’d gotten in but she still feels like it’s all a little too much. She’s fake dating a girl she might have a genuine (but very much ignorable) crush on and she’s about to meet the parents. Too much.

As she gets out of the car, feels the soft Tampa breeze against her exposed legs and lets it muss her hair a little, she starts to realise just what she’s gotten herself into. She’s standing in front of a large, expensive looking condo, beachfront view and all. The garden seems to give way to sand in some places and the rose bushes, god, the rose bushes look exquisite. She nudges the door closed and grabs the small purse she’d balanced on the roof before watching the black car roll back down the driveway. Brooke gulps. Heart beating at a mile a minute, she slowly makes her way up the front path, heels catching on the neat gravel as she tries (and even with her dancers’ grace, kind of fails) to hold her poise. Later, she’ll laugh about it, joke the tall emerald heels were against her - for now, she waits cautiously by the door, trying to find the confidence to knock.

The door opens by itself. Or at least that’s what she thinks as she hyper-fixates on the door knocker, elaborate gold roses securing a snake biting its tail. In reality, a short girl with caramel skin and warm brown eyes opened it and resigned herself to staring at her guest intently. She’s dressed in a red mini dress, thin cotton barely skimming her mid-thigh. Her height is less impacted by Brooke’s heels but more by the lack of her own, looking tiny against the 6’3 ballet dancer standing before her. Vanessa laughs, and it’s warm, dripping like melted butter in Brooke’s ears. “Well, don’t just stand there babe, come in,” the low voice sounds playful and Brooke just smiles, thinks that this could be okay, and walks in.

Any confidence she thought she had falters immediately when met with the expectant faces of 15 Latin-American elders.

Vanessa is grabbing her hand, reeling off names left, right and centre and rubbing slow circles into Brooke’s palm, not that she notices. Instead, she closes her eyes in a silent prayer to whatever god decided this would be funny and tries to plan an escape. She is not fast enough. “-is my girlfriend Brooke,” is all she catches of the shorter girl’s spiel before a warm, sticky kiss is planted on her cheek. She curses herself for not paying attention, always seems to miss the most important part of the story even when it turns out to be her.

“Thank you for doing this, you look great,” comes the low voice again, this time a soft whisper into her ear. She feels her entire being blush as she lets Vanessa affect her.

She kicks off her heels before going to take the seat clearly meant for her. She seems to be next to a relatively calm looking old lady with a kind smile and even kinder eyes. Vanessa will be sitting on her other side, and opposite, she’ll have Alexis. Her newly lifted spirits plummet once more as she realises she’s going to spend the entire dinner seated in front of her fake girlfriend’s mother. It takes a lot of effort not to let her perfectly painted face fall straight onto the table in front of her. Luckily, the Latina girl sits next to her quickly and Brooke fights her instinct to grab her hand under the table, funnily enough, feels like she has to hide the ‘relationship’ even when there’s not really a relationship to hide. Vanessa does not share the sentiments, grabs her rough palm with her own soft fingers and intertwines them loosely on her lap. She thanks the lord she’s ambidextrous.

They’re ten minutes into the dinner Alexis has prepared, the lobster is not a typical Sunday dinner but then again, Vanessa’s family don’t seem particularly focused on being typical. It melts in her mouth and Brooke’s not sure if lobsters are supposed to be this good but this one sure as hell is, and then the questions start. “So,” Alexis puts down her fork and glances between the two of them,” how did you meet?” Brooke’s panic must have been evident to Vanessa who starts softly stroking her thumb up and down Brooke’s hand. “We met at that firefly comp, that one a few months back, three or so? Babe?” comes Vanessa’s response, succinct yet oozing a charisma she must have been honing for years. “Yeah, three,” Brooke shoots back, nerves biting at her throat like when you swallow ice water too fast. The woman on Brookes left starts to chuckle, her laughter bouncing off the deep red walls of the dining room. She sinks her toes into the plush carpet and prays for the end of the meal to come as quickly as possible. Instead of an end though, Brooke gets a small foot hooked around her ankle, cold flesh on warm skin. It grounds her as they fend off questions from every relative Vanessa has (although she’ll later discover that these are only the ones Alexis likes enough to have in her home).

“Why have we not met sooner?”

“What kind of dance do you do again?”

“Are you any good?”

“Remind me when you decided to be a lesbian?”

That one stings Brooke a little. It’s not directed at her but it manages to slide in through the cracks in her armour, find a hole deep in her lungs and bury itself there. Her old scars are not sprouting flowers at this moment, but instead, feel like they’re going to split open and pour out all of her secrets for the world to see. She needs to escape.

She shakily pushes away from the table, mumbling something about a bathroom and, as fast as her legs can take her, runs up the stairs. She doesn’t know where she is, and can barely see two feet in front of her from tears clouding her vision. She’s sure if she checked, her mascara would be rolling down her face like rain but she can’t bear to look at herself right now. She’s ruined the meal, ruined Vanessa’s cover.

Brooke finds a room, one with a plush cushioned chair in the corner and a stack of classic novels balanced precariously on the uneven floor. She decides this is where she will stay, curling into the armchair like it’s one of the ones from home. Picking up the top book, she leafs through it, finding it’s one she’s read before but quickly becoming engrossed in the smell of old books and the Orwell’s words. The tears fall a little slower.

Maybe that’s why she doesn’t hear the hesitant knock on the door or the quiet footsteps across the room. She doesn’t notice a small body perch on the arm of her chair. In fact, Brooke doesn’t even notice the hand on her shoulder until she smells Vanessa’s perfume (sandalwood and pink grapefruit).

“What was that about?” asks Vanessa, quiet and cautious - like she’s afraid Brooke would break if she probed too hard. The taller girl shifts in the armchair, turns her body a little so she’s not quite facing her, but almost. She sighs as she sets the book down. “That question, the one about choosing to be a lesbian,” she closes her eyes a little as her voice falters. “It threw me a little I guess.” The Latina must pick up on the hidden baggage because she doesn’t ask any more questions, simply rubs small circles into Brooke’s left shoulder. “There was a guy, at my old school. Back in Canada. He- he wasn’t the best.” her voice breaks into shakey sobs, breathing ragged and hot onto Vanessa’s hand where she laid her head. It feels heavy, full of fluff and repressed emotions. She doesn’t like how quickly she’s fallen apart but the soothing hums of the other girl seem to be slowly putting her back together.

Once she deems herself a little more stable (or at least a little less likely to spontaneously burst into tears) she raises her head and looks at Vanessa. For the first time, she really looks into the warm chocolate of her eyes and feels overwhelmed by gratitude toward the smaller girl. “I haven’t exactly had the best reactions,” she mutters, low and gravely but still somehow comforting. Brooke smiles weakly, trying to convey all of her emotions into a fragile expression. Instead of continuing the conversation, Vanessa just kisses Brooke on the forehead. It’s like sunshine after a rainstorm, a little glimmer of hope in the shadows. It’s waxy and warm and definitely leaves a mark but Brooke leans into it a little. Both girls are unsure of where they stand with each other, the circumstances are uncharted territory and neither has a map.

“Thank you V,” says Brooke, she really means it. She is grateful to have someone who, even though they barely know her, will follow her and calm her down. “Anytime babe,” replies Vanessa, before leaning in a little. Brooke follows, eyes flicking between warm chocolate and fiery red. She closes the gap. If she was a little more cliché she’d say it felt like fireworks or coming home. She’s not, and instead, it feels like picnics and seaside days out - carousel ponies and hot summers. It is a whirlwind on her lips and she is sure they will tingle for days to come. Vanessa smirks into the kiss like she wanted it to happen all along. She tries to deepen it but the taller girl stands her ground, nibbling on her bottom lip a little before pulling away.

Brooke flushes, something akin to strawberries and summer, before tilting her head a little. “Why do I feel like we’ve done this a little backwards?” she jokes, pushing a strand of hair back behind Vanessa’s ear. She giggles a little, it’s melodic and Brooke might be a little smitten. “I really like you, Vanessa, do you want to go on a date with me?”

She doesn’t get an answer, only a kiss.

#rpdr fanfiction #brooke lynn hytes #vanessa vanjie mateo #branjie #lesbian au #fake dating au #trainwreck #pinkgrapefruit #concrit welcome #submission

[gotatext]

TASK OO1 / OOC SURVEY.

[kermit voice] hallo.... its me 

YOUR ALIAS & NICKNAMES — nora

AGE — 23

TIMEZONE — gmt

PREFERRED PRONOUNS — she/her

MBTI — enfp-infp border cos im an introvert who Masquerades as an extrovert :)

HP HOUSE — i spent 10 yrs of my life thinkin i was gryffindor.... to find out.... huffle....puff...... 

ARE YOU A STUDENT? WHAT DO YOU STUDY? — i fuckin wish! being a student was dope af i got stressed about essays like once a month and apart from that i was just chillin, surrounded by really intelligent people every day n livin it up on the party scene. adult life fucking sucks no one wants to have fun cos we all work fuckin tonnes of hours so we can afford to eat and get paid peanuts xx

ARE YOU ENJOYING IT? — im really afraid of bein one of those jock types who peaked in high school but i deff peaked in uni like 100% i was way more interesting 2 years ago

LINKS TO OTHER ACCOUNTS & SOCIAL MEDIA — im not showin u my instagram bc im a fuckin embarassment but this is pinterest , this is my personal blog, this is my writing / 1x1 blog i never use any more n this is my trash talking twitter where i mostly just cry about timothee chalamet and bash the tories. 

DISCORD USER — kristine’s forehead vein#8664

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE FICTION GENRE? — i dont read fanfiction much but when i do u can be sure it’s slow burn angsty enemies to lovers mutual pining heart attack every time one of them accidentally brushes the other’s hand

TOP FIVE FAVOURITE FILMS — suspiria (2018 luca guadagnino version rogue i kno but i prefer the remake), the lobster, before sunrise, baz luhrmann romeo + juliet, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind,  thoroughbreds (REC!! so underwatched pls watch it. compelling female characters), hunt for the wilderpeople (also so underwatched), swiss army man, call me by your name, atonement, moonrise kingdom, trainspotting, the florida project. i rlly like films ok

A BOOK YOU FEEL “CHANGED” YOU? — the song of achilles by madeline miller n also fen by daisy johnson

A MOVIE YOU THINK ABOUT OFTEN? — booksmart cos its fuckin dope

WHAT IS YOUR SIGN? — libra

ARE YOU INTO ASTROLOGY? —  i like to pretend im super invested in it mostly to anger my friends but tbh.... i just use it as a rough guide for character creation.... its fun but i dnt .... fully invest in what it has to say..... altho i am the most unbalanced n indecisive bitch on earth so i guess they got that right !! i just live to please baybeyy!

WHAT PLATFORMS HAVE YOU ROLEPLAYED ON? — tumblr for about 8 year (omg) n before tht facebook..... i was very embarassingly in a twilight rp..... i wrote jane..... i also rped as a scene kid oc n when i was like 12 i was on some weird forum harry potter roleplay where i basically played a self insert with georgie henley as the fc......

WHAT OTHER HOBBIES DO YOU HAVE? — i used to have so many hobbies but now i jst lie in my bed staring at the ceiling. but before i was workin like a dog i loved reading, writing, acting in theatre productions..... going out on the town getting bevved..... big druggy EDM nights in warehouses tht probably weren’t liscenced for tht many ppl..... gigs... costume-design and making, spoken word poetry, acrylic painting n rollerskating but my sister broke my skates abt two years ago in vengeance and i’ll never forgive her that fuckin bitch

HAVE ANY PETS? IF SO, TALK ABOUT THEM! �� no my landlord is a fascist

IS THERE A TV SHOW YOU RECOMMEND A LOT? — i’ll never stop reccing euphoria!! also i was pleasantly surprised by looking for alaska!! but i also rlly like bob’s burgers, parks and rec, good omens.... black mirror, n sharp objects. lovesick on bbciplayer (n netflix i think) is also rlly fun

ANY SHOWS YOU LIKE SOME MIGHT BE SURPRISED TO HEAR THAT YOU DO? — maybe love island, idk if i talk abt that much bc i am ashamed but i am so obsessed with it. i even got the love island game n got so invested in my fictional relationship w bobby tht i had to delete it

WHAT WAS THE LAST BOOK YOU READ? WOULD YOU RECOMMEND IT? — god god... i haven’t finished a book in ages.... i recently started reading milkman by anna burns, the bees by laline paull and everything under by daisy johnson.... bt the last book i read cover to cover was probs circe. defs read it. feminist and witchy

CURRENTLY READING? — i jst said this but the bees, everything under and less so milkman cos im finding milkman a bit tough

LAST FILM? REC IT? — i watched ladyworld the lord of the flies all-female remake n even maya hawke could not save it.... dnt get me wrong from an art film point of view i loved it but it felt a bit underdeveloped n a level media studies for me..... apart from tht?? the runaways (yorkshire film not released yet at a preview screening) and threads (also a yorkshire film from the 80s about nuclear apocalypse)

THREE MOVIES YOU NEED TO WATCH — portrait of a lady on fire, i work at an independent cinema n we recently had a preview screening and everyone said it was SICK, uhhhh short term 12, n the new eliza scanlen movie babyteeth

WHAT MOVIE DO YOU THINK YOU’VE SEEN THE MOST TIMES? — madagascar because when i was 12 my parents bought me a little television with a dvd player in it for my birthday and madagascar was the only dvd i owned for like..... the first two years of havin the absolute luxury of a tv in my room so i just used to watch it all the time n i now basically know the script inside out

WHAT ALWAYS PUTS YOU IN A GOOD MOOD? — nothing, life is pointless n i hate fun, let me rot in peace

WHO IS YOUR FAVOURITE MUSICIAN / BAND? LIST IF THERE ARE MORE THAN ONE. — ughhh god probably lcd soundsystem. gorillaz, the streets, tame impala, talking heads, soft hair, i also love lizz tho n also angry twangy guitar girl bands like girlpool, courtney barnett, best coast, cherry glazerr,

WILD NIGHT OUT OR QUIET NIGHT IN? — quiet night in my party days are over i cant even be bothered to go to the shops if its past 4.30pm and dark these days

ANY PHOBIAS? — clowns n rats

DO YOU LIKE BUGS? — absolutely not

BIRDS? — yes but not if they fly in my face

ARE YOU A CAT OR DOG PERSON? BOTH? — i love both i want one 

BIGGEST PET PEEVE? — tory middle aged boomers who treat me like actual shit on their shoe because i work in the service industry like thats my choice and their poor economic decisions didnt mean i have to do a shitty job to afford to live bcos of austerity n cuts to arts funding meaning i cant get a job writing unless i self-fund :)))

FAVOURITE THING ABOUT THE RPC? — that everyone ive met through rp is a fuckin LAFF

TOP TEN FAVE FCS TO USE? — god .... diana silvers, timothee chalamet, margaret qualley, kristine froseth, froy gutierrez, zendaya, elle fanning, astrid berges frisbey, hunter schafer, leonardo dicaprio

FIVE YOU LIKE WRITING AGAINST? — herman tomeraas, hunter schafer, saoirse ronan, timothee chalamet, froy gutierrez

FAVOURITE TYPE OF FOOD? — linda mccartney 1/2pounder mozzarella veggie burgers, sweet potato wedges, tomato soup, mozzarella sticks, brownies

WORST FOOD? — green things like broccoli n sprouts gross. baked beans cos as a kid ppl used to do baked bean baths for comic relief / red nosed day a lot n i thought when they were finished in the baked bean bath they just put all the cold beans back in the tin. actually anything small that moves around on your plate. peas. spaghetti. sweetcorn. i dont like small things i cant control.

DO YOU PLAY VIDEOGAMES? IF SO, WHAT ONES AND ON WHAT PLATFORM DO YOU PREFER? — last year my housemate had an xbox n i went through a phase of obsessively playin fable 3 it was amazing. i had like 5 husbands and 3 wives and loads of kids but they all ended up leavin me cos i spent so much time out doing quests neglecting them

ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE WITH THE TAG? — this

LASTLY, HOW DID YOU FIND US? — im one of those bitches who was in this grp all the way back when it was swipe... so quirky and original!! i knew the band before u! anyway im goin now this has been sufficiently embarassing..... i am lame

#huntingtonooc #huntingtontask #huntingtontask001

[the-end-of-art]

Christianity has no magic

My husband lost his job. My sister-in-law was murdered. Here’s what it did to my faith. by Elizabeth Bruenig at the Washington Post

A week before my daughter was born, my husband lost his job. It was unexpected. I came home from work just a little early one day because I thought I had felt a contraction — I didn’t know what it would feel like, having never given birth, and so I thought every pain could be a sign of labor.

When I came inside, I saw my husband’s shoes by the door. It wasn’t time for him to be in yet. I looked up and there he was, sitting in the rocking chair we had bought for me to use when nursing our baby. And he was slouched with his head in his hands, so then I knew.

I don’t remember much else about what happened then, other than that at some point I pulled so hard on the medal I was wearing — a miraculous medal, imprinted with an image of the Virgin Mary — that the clasp broke.

When I gave birth a few days later, the pain was unmistakable.

My husband and I came home from the hospital and looked for jobs for him. Sometimes when a job seemed especially promising I would go to church and light a candle and pray, although I still hadn’t fixed the clasp on my medal and didn’t wear it. It laid on the surface of my dresser and was buried in short order under towels and rags and baby clothes.

***

I had felt, maybe because of all my prayers, that things would soon look up. It made sense that things would get better quickly.

In late June, while my husband was out shopping for a suit for interviews, he received a phone call from his father in Texas. My husband’s sister, he said, had been murdered. She was 29 years old.

When my husband came home, I was in bed with the baby. Both she and I were glazed with sweat. Our bed is near a window; outside there are only the staggered roofs of other buildings, plain and tan, some of them sometimes crested by birds. I had fallen asleep watching crows rising up in the shimmering heat.

When he woke me up all I could hear through my daze was that she had passed away.

It was only later that he used the word murdered. A man had attacked Heather in the trailer she shared with two other women — a mother and her adult daughter who had previously lived out of their car. Heather was engaged and looking forward to her impending marriage. She had sporadically studied accounting after high school but spent most of her time working as a waitress at Cracker Barrel and Red Lobster. She had always been poor; she had never known anything other than being poor.

Red Lobster helped pay for her funeral. Dimly I thought of God’s love for the poor. Where could it have gone? Where was God now?

My husband flew to Texas, and I slept with our daughter, only a few weeks old. She woke up often then, hungry, and I would nurse her. In between I drifted in and out of a fitful twilight sleep, still aching from birth and worry. I wanted to see my husband, but I had run out of encouraging things to say. We were both exhausted. I would try to pray, only for my mind to wander into broken thoughts. I had a strange dream.

In my dream, I wandered down the aisle of some kind of noisy, crowded theater. At the front, where a stage should have been, were confessionals. I went inside one to repent and there was no priest there, only a screen with the face of a priest. I said to him: “Father, I’ve lost my faith.”

***

I should tell you the story of my medal.

In 2014, my grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent surgery, and my mother visited her in the hospital often. It was a long recovery.

One evening my mother came home from the hospital and showed me something.

“I spotted this in the parking lot,” she said. There was a dull, nickel-colored oval in her hand. On one side I could make out the image of the Blessed Virgin, but the other side was coated with chewed gum and dirt.

I am a convert. My mother, a Methodist, wasn’t sure what this pendant could be. Neither was I.

I cleaned it up with dish soap and tweezers. It had been scraped on the asphalt, but I could read the words: O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

The next time I was out, I took the medal with me in a plastic bag. I brought it to a jewelry shop and had it put on a simple black cord with a lobster clasp, and from then on I wore it very often, thinking as much of whoever had lost it in the hospital parking lot as of my mother who picked it up out of the filth for me as of the Blessed Virgin herself.

***

The police were able to tell us that they had caught Heather’s killer driving her car, which he had stolen. She had been stabbed in the neck. There was very little more they were willing to say.

A couple of job opportunities seemed very likely. I would pray and ask all my friends to pray. I trust that they did.

But nothing came through.

***

For a while during the long, hot summer I entertained the superstitious idea that things would not look up for my family until I had the clasp of my medal repaired. I did not think I was being punished for breaking it, but I thought I had damaged some trust by doing that, and that I couldn’t fix it until I did some penance by way of cost and trouble.

But things got in the way. There is so much to carry when you go out with a baby. I would always think of taking it with me when I thought we might pass by a jewelry shop, but some other thing — a bottle, a rattle, a just-in-case bundle of socks — would always occupy my hands instead.

Summer stretched on. Our baby grew; she did not wake up so much in the night anymore, and she could smile and laugh. I prayed for the soul of my sister-in-law, and for my husband’s family and my husband, who occupied himself with our baby so as not to dwell too much on everything that was lost. I didn’t rush to light candles for possible jobs anymore. It didn’t seem to be any use, and I thought I had made my hope on that front clear enough. God would listen or He wouldn’t.

I had days of greater and lesser certainty. Mostly I thought God was listening. That was the fact that made me feel so restless: Why are You listening so quietly? I know You’re there. A whisper of doubt sometimes passed through my thoughts: You’re only thinking like this because it’s likely another job will come along. If it were something less likely, you wouldn’t feel so sure.

***

In August I visited my gynecologist’s office for a postpartum checkup. Everything looked to be in order. She asked me if I had felt sad since the baby had been born, or hopeless or lost. She asked if I had spent many hours crying.

I lied to her. But on the way home, in the still midday street with sun flooding upward from the pavement, I impulsively stopped my taxi short of my apartment building.

I departed from the road into the cavernous darkness of a church.

It wasn’t time for confession, but there was a priest in the sacristy who I asked, when he emerged, if he would hear my confession. He led me by the shoulder to the confessional where I knelt down and rested my forehead on my folded knuckles.

I don’t have any more faith, I told him.

But you’re here, he said. He was patient. It took a long time for me to say anything. Slowly I recounted everything that had happened over the past few months, though I didn’t tell him about my medal — somehow even then I was still too cowardly to tell him about my medal.

He listened. He said, at last, that while faith can be a comfort, it can also torture you. It can tear at you in times like these, he said, with his hand fixed like a claw. Because you know everything could be made better. But it isn’t.

The line between religion and magic, I learned in school, isn’t clear. But many scholars of religion agree that one important division is that while magic is private and crisis-oriented, religion is public and its rituals have no specific, short-term, earthly goals.

Christianity has no magic, and that may be just as well.

***

Eventually a job came along. The way that it happened was very prosaic, the way most jobs are. Nothing about it felt miraculous. I couldn’t discern any sign in it, but I know there must be one. It isn’t always important, I now think, to feel moved. Sometimes faith is an act of will. Maybe it mostly is.

What can I say: That my faith wasn’t injured? It was wounded.

But wounded things heal.

By the fall our baby had grown so much she could no longer fit into her first baby clothes. I decided to put all of them away for the next baby, and so went through our apartment gathering up every sock and onesie marked for a baby up to three months. In doing so I uncovered my medal, still looped on its broken cord.

I was never going to have it fixed, I realized. It wasn’t realistic. Having the clasp of a cord repaired was no longer possible in the scheme of the life I had now.

Nor did I have to. I slipped it from the cord and onto an unbroken silver chain I’d bought someplace a long time ago. It looked different, but wore just the same.

(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/12/24/my-husband-lost-his-job-his-sister-was-murdered-heres-what-it-did-to-my-faith/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.706accc06f9b)

#Elizabeth Bruenig #faith #grief #loss #death #recovery #healing

[theoldlily]

To Love the Sea

Pairing: Modern!Bucky Barnes x Reader.

Warnings: angst, brief descriptions of smut and nudity.

A/N: I’m a little rusty, this really isn’t my best work at all, so please judge it kindly. Also, Thankyou to @sumafamouxx for helping me get my act together, and actually make this account in the first place.

James Buchanan Barnes had once met the sea and it was, without a single doubt, the most precious memory of his entire life.

It was not particularly special, the way they had come to know each other, but it was strangely momentous in its own way. After all, how could he have known that it would have such an impact on his life? It was not even an out of the ordinary day, the hot Spanish sun beat down upon the crowded streets of Valencia, and James had to squint to keep the rays from glaring into his eyes.

It wasn’t an electrifying, heart stopping, moment in time when their eyes briefly met, nor was there any immediate sensual chemistry threatening to explode. No, what struck James so much was how ordinary it was, like the coolness of lovely frothy waves lapping against a sandy shoreline. It was a refreshing breath of air, and he couldn’t help but go and pursue whatever this feeling was.

She was an artist, that much was obvious from the various paintings surrounding her stall, but my god, was she the best one James had ever seen. Not that he was an expert on the subject, but he knew what made a painting truly stand out from just a pretty picture. Or maybe that was just his attraction simply speaking, but he chose not to dwell on it too much.

“Good morning,” he greeted politely, the left corner of his lip curling upwards ever so slightly, a happy twinkle in his cerulean eyes.

“Morning, sir,” she smiled, showing just little sliver of her pearly white teeth. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

James shrugged his shoulders at first, then his right hand softly patted the painting that had caught his eyes the most when he caught sight of her stall. It was an oil painting on canvas, of a rocky seaside with enormous crystalline blue waves clashing against the shoreline, with white seagulls fluttering about in the sky above the ocean. It was not as grand as some of her other pieces, but he took a liking to it anyways, probably because it wasn’t as noticeable as the rest.

“How much for this one?” He inquired, flipping it around for her to see.

She smiled sweetly, albeit a little wistfully, and James suddenly wanted to know everything there was to know about that painting.

“Ah, a little gem among treasure,” she grinned, her fingers gently caressing the paint strokes on the canvas. “I was wondering when someone would take an interest.”

“I think it’s nice,” James said quite plainly, cringing internally when he thought of a thousand other better words to describe it.

She hummed in agreement, placing her left palm across her cheek as she thought, and James took this tiny moment to purely admire her. The strands of her beautiful tousled hair falling out of place, two simple silver rings glinting on her left index finger, her smooth and even skin tone against her radiant eyes.

“Twenty five euros,” she suddenly stated, unknowingly pulling him out of his train of thoughts of admiration for her.

“Are you sure?” He asked hesitantly, almost sure in his head that it must be worth much more than that.

She narrowed her eyes at him, and James decided then and there that he didn’t like that look upon her face at all, and would do whatever it took to take it away.

“I know the worth of my work, sir,” she said tensely, her lips pursed together, annoyance flashing like a warning sign in her eyes.

James shook his head quickly, “Please no, I didn’t mean to offend you, I just meant that it looks like it’s worth at least twice as much.”

She nodded her head in understanding as she realized what he was trying to say, the irritation quickly fading away from her facial expression, and James almost sighed in relief.

“I appreciate your honesty,” she said, an almost teasing tone lacing her words. “But I’m not here to make more money than I deserve.”

“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard somebody say that,” James chuckled, and she laughed pleasantly as she took the wad of cash from him, not forgetting to kindly thank him for his purchase.

James didn’t want to go just quite yet, he really wanted - no, needed - to see this ethereal woman again. There was a little niggling sensation in the back of his head, warning him not to act like a lovestruck fool, but he ignored it in favor for the relishing joy that came with him throwing all caution to the wind.

“Do you mind if I come to collect this later?” He asked earnestly as he possibly could. “I’m sort of running late for work, and I don’t want it to be at the mercy of someone’s spilt coffee.”

That last part was not a lie, James really was running late for work, but that was the last thing that mattered in his mind. She gasped in mock horror, her hands dramatically hovering over her mouth, before she laughed heartily. James heart beat just little faster in his chest, trying to thump it’s way out of his chest to put on a show that was just meant for her.

“Sure thing,” she chirped. “I close at four though, so be back a little bit before then yeah?”

He smiled charmingly, assuring her that he would do just as he was told, giving her a little wave of farewell as he left while reality caught up to him, and he was off running towards his priorities.

-•-

James Buchanan Barnes had once fallen in love with the sea, and it was as liberating as birds falling from the tallest treetops, only to spread their wings towards the sky at the last moment.

James felt like a bird, and she was his wind, lifting him up and taking him to places he had never been to before. After their first meeting at her stall, he had come back at precisely four o’clock to pick up the painting, and insisted on helping her bring her other items back to her apartment.

It was all perfect fairy tales and rainbows after that.

He took her to a quaint little restaurant beside the docks for their first date, famous for its fresh lobster and oysters, and almost did a double take when she admitted that she had never tried oysters. They laughed good naturedly as she ungracefully slurped them down, not that James minded that so much anyways, and she shyly covered the rosy blush spreading on her cheeks and nose as he smiled at her with his eyes full of emotion.

He walked her home afterwards, respectfully keeping his hand on the small of her back, and not once was too forward. James was used to the lustful side of a relationship, he was no stranger to sex and loosing himself in the pleasure, but he didn’t want to go down that path with her. She was different, a strong and mature woman who didn’t deserve the tasteless side of him who loved to please women. She deserved all of him, every fiber of his being, and he was ready to give to that to her whenever it felt just right for the both of them.

They met each other everyday when he finished work, and when she finished closing up her stall, and more often than not, they ended up at one or the others place. Well, James had his own house, but he didn’t mind going to her run down apartment block either. He was not a snob, much to her delight, and relished in being a part of her life just a little bit more. Finding out all the bits and pieces about her, funny habits and quirks - what made her human - was one of his new favorite pastimes.

James realized he was falling in love with her when she was painting.

She was sitting on top of his newspaper covered carpet, her only tools were her various paint colors and a single paintbrush. He couldn’t see what she was doing, her back was against his crème suede sofa, while he sat behind her with his legs comfortably spread.

“What are you working on this time?” He asked softly, his eyes flickering from the TV screen to her.

She lightly smacked his thigh, and he let out a sound of protest, and she giggled, “Not yet.”

“Fine,” he said in a resigned tone, his curiousity growing by the minute.

After a good half an hour, she excitedly clapped her hands together, then hastily checked to see if any paint had splattered on the sofa. James snuck a peak at her canvas, and she glanced up at him as he did so, judging his reaction.

The painting was simple. She had used acrylic paint, and it was just a single picture of a pair of blue eyes - his. From the slight curl of his thick dark eyelashes, to the little wrinkles beside the corners of his eyes when he smiled too hard, and to the deep blue storm held within his irises.

“Do you like it?”

He nodded his head vigorously, gently grabbing both sides her head and planting a sweet kiss on her forehead. She grinned widely, he could feel her pulse quicken as his hands lightly rested against her neck, while an attractive red blush graced her whole face.

If he had to call the blissful time they had together after that, it would be the honeymoon stage. They never left one another’s side, it almost pained him to leave her to go to work in the morning, even though he would see her again only a few hours later. That was what James thought love meant. The constant need to be around each other, to have his heart beat so hard against his ribs it hurt whenever he held her, to have his eyes constantly search through the crowd for her - even when he knew she wouldn’t be there. He thought this was how love was supposed to go, and who was there to tell him otherwise?

-•-

James Buchanan Barnes had once made love to the sea, and it was nothing how he thought it would turn out. It was all cold and violent, beating against him with all the cruelty of the Devil, drowning him beneath churning waters as he tried to swim towards the light.

It was silly really, how it began. James never really understood how it even begun, but it did. One day, she was kissing him and holding him, saying she returned his feelings wholeheartedly, and then, there was nothing at all.

He couldn’t help but think he’d done something wrong, and he tried to correct all the possible options he came up with. Or maybe he hadn’t done something? Perhaps he had to figure it out, and then everything would be alright again. His heart started hurting, and not because it was filled with love anymore. He felt sick and empty, like a porcelain doll in a glass box. His family and coworkers noticed a change in him, but said nothing, because he was a grown man now, and men are supposed to take care of themselves.

Had she been having an affair? James chatistised himself for even thinking so, she was too honest of a person - it defied everything that she believed in - and he knew that all too well. But still, the love in his veins was turning to poison, and he couldn’t help but grow angrier towards her, as she became a shell of the person he once knew.

His family was right, he is a man, and all men have their breaking points.

She was sitting at his dining room table, slowly eating a bowl of leftover paella, probably thinking about all the ways to make herself scarce, when he strode over and gripped her chair from behind. He saw her back freeze up, her fingers tightly grip the fork in her hand, and he felt a little guilty for scaring her - but his heart had steeled, and he no longer cared for her meager feelings anymore.

“Alright,” he started, his voice low and dangerous. “I don’t know what’s happening with you, but I’ve given you time to talk to me, and you still haven’t. I think it’s only fair if you explain why you’re treating me this way.”

She swallowed thickly, obviously nervous, but he didn’t care. He’d had enough of walking on eggshells around her at this point.

“I-I,” she stuttered. “I don’t know.”

James raised his eyebrows incredulously, and exclaimed, “What do you mean you don’t know? You’ve been silent for the past month, and you don’t know why?”

She was quiet for a moment, formulating an explanation in her head. James could see her gears working, and impatiently tapped his fingers against the table as he waited for her to try and speak to him again. It was messed up, but he relished in the feeling of being in control of himself around her, even if it had to happen under these circumstances.

“I’m like this sometimes,” she started, placing her fork neatly against the bowl. “I get into things, and sometimes I think I know what I want, but then I ignore that part of me that says I’m wrong.”

James was beyond confused, not understanding how this was relevant at all, but she continued before he had the chance to interject.

“But then I met you, and I was so convinced that I wanted you. That you were finally the thing that was right for me, that you were made to fit me, but there’s still that part of me that’s telling me I’m wrong. That you’re not what I need, and that I don’t need you to make it easier, and I don’t want to feel that, because I feel I do need you-“

He shut her up with a sloppy wet kiss, fueled with the fire of his rage, and stoked with the smoke of her confusion. A flurry mess of tongues and hands and bodies, and there was nothing right about it when they became lost in each other that night. James gave her everything he had in him, trying to push his love for her back inside, but she would snap out of it and fight harder against him. She was only focused on the fight, the cruel battle for dominance between them, only caring about keeping up the illusion that she was the one in control of it all.

Afterwards, he thought she looked as if she was a painting. Her body was like water dripping from sharp icicles that melted against the burning heat of his skin, almost too painful for him to bear. Her breaths were irregular, the rise and fall of her chest clearly visible beneath the sheets. Her eyes were closed, and James didn’t know if she was awake or dreaming anymore.

He didn’t even know if he was alive, or completely numb on the inside.

-•-

James Buchanan Barnes had once understood what the puzzle of the sea was, and he had hated himself for years afterwards, for playing the part of the naive little boy playing with matches. He was just a another lost sailor in the ocean, trying to follow the trail of stars back towards home, only to be lulled into the dark depths of the ocean by the song of a siren.

He was clearing his house the morning after she left him, trying to rid himself of every trace of her scent and ghostly presence. Goddamn her to hell and back, she was the worst human being James had ever met in his life. He cursed her again and again, vigorously tearing apart the canvas painting of his eyes that he had found unceremoniously dumped in his garbage disposal, before violently throwing it straight on the floor after it almost felt like it was burning holes in his hands.

James was a man in pain who was learning, just as the rest of us are, how to process his loss. He didn’t know how he could forget someone who had changed his whole persona, let alone go back to the person he was before - not that he even remembered who that guy was anymore. If this is what love was, then James certainly didn’t want to feel it anymore, or go through any of it again. He opened the windows, the whispers of her ghost passing right through him and up into the sky, and clenched his fists tightly to his sides. It wasnt until he zeroed in on her painting of the sea hanging on the wall besides his TV, a haunting and horrifying piece of evidence of the crime scene, that it all clicked into place so smoothly in his mind.

James realized she was his sea, the limitless soul that was exactly what he wanted to believe was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. She was limitless, able to travel wherever she wanted to go, but completely incapable of bringing him with her. She was affected by the turning of the clock, of it standing still, and becoming forever trapped in a tank with no way out. She was violent and cruel, her anger was exactly like the waves crashing against the rocks of the painting, but she knew how to be a soothing presence when she wanted to. She needed comfort, she was still only human after all, and to know that she was needed by someone. She wanted to feel important, to be as powerful as a tsunami, to not be afraid to show who she really was - but could not, because then everybody would be afraid.

She was uncontrollable, and he wasn’t the one to attempt to control her. James had left her to be as free as she wanted to be, because that’s what he thought was what she wanted, and that was probably his mistake. Or not, maybe he just wasn’t enough for her. Maybe she wanted the moon instead, not a little sailor who she could douse into nothingness within a second. Perhaps she wanted to fly up and reach for the sky, to touch the stars and the luminous silver moon, who could tell her exactly who she was supposed to be to finally feel happy. He was only a man, who was he compared to the moon of her dreams? He suddenly felt small and insignificant, like a little speck of dust floating about in the universe.

James left the painting where it was, his home bearing it like a battle scar, and resumed the arduous task of picking up the broken pieces of himself - resigning himself to the fact that he was never going to be special enough to be the moon.

- Fin -

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x reader angst #bucky barnes imagine #bucky-barnes-x-reader #my writing

[ace-take-the-prndl]

@emeracco

you asked for it

1. You woke up naked next to the last person you texted, what would you say? 

I’m not suprised

2. What’s going on between you and the last person you kissed?

Nothing because I haven’t kissed anybody  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

3. If your boyfriend or girlfriend was into drugs, would you care?

If it was weed I probably wouldn’t care but any other kind yeah..

4. Is your last name longer than six letters?

Nope

5. Was your last kiss drunk or sober?

Still never kissed anybody

6. Have you ever wanted to have someone but you messed it up?

No?

7. What does your last received text say?

lol

8. How many times have you kissed the last person you kissed?

09. Where was your last kiss at?

nowhere

10. When is the last time you saw your sister?

I saw my oldest sister like 2 days ago, I can’t remember the last time I saw my other sister. She doesn’t hang out with us anymore

11. What do you drink in the morning?

Some nice cool and refreshing H2O. Stay healthy kids.

12. Where did you sleep last night?

My bed?

13. Do you think relationships are hard?

I answered this one already

14. If you could go back and change something in the past 5 months, would you?

Nah that’s too much work. and I wouldn’t fuck with the past

15. You’re locked in a room with the last person you kissed, any problems?

Yeah that I’m alone

16. Would you rather it be sunny or rainy?

Answered this already too

17. Do you know anyone with the same middle name as you?

omfg a lot of people. My middle name is unoriginal for a middle name

18. Are you wearing jeans,sweatpants,or pajama pants?

like pajama shorts

19. Do you think you will be in a relationship 3 years from now?

God I hope so

20. Does anyone like you?

idk if they do they better tell me because I’m clueless af

21. Have you ever kissed someone with a name that starts with an S?

No

22. Is the last person you kissed gay?

Still haven’t kisses anyone

23. Is there a person you CANNOT stand?

there’s a lot of people I CANNOT stand tbh

24. Have you ever considered getting a tattoo?

Yes! I want a bunch tbh

25. In the past week have you cried?

Probably I don’t even pay attention to when I cry. I’m an emotional person okay.

26. What breed was the last dog you saw?

Mixed breed

27. Do you dry off in the shower or out of the shower?

Both?

28. Have you ever kissed a football player?

Nope

29. Do you think you’re old?

Hell no I’m still young

30. Do you like text messaging? 

Yeah its quicker and easier sometimes

31. What type of day are you having?

A chill one

32. Have you ever thought about getting your nose pierced?

I actually just got my nose pierced a few weeks ago! I’ve wanted it for the longest time, both my sisters and mom have theirs done.

33. Do you prefer warm or cold weather?

COLD. I hate the heat so much, I get hot easily and then I get sick. Warm weather, gross.

34. Is there a person of the opposite sex who means a lot to you?

eh not really

35. Would you prefer a relationship or a fling?

A relationship. I’ve never been in one and I want something meaning full in my life and not just a fling

36. Are you a simple or complicated person?

I can be both

37. What song are you listening to?

Also answered this already

38. When you say you’re sorry do you mean it?

Of course 39. Is there a girl that knows everything or almost everything about you?

Yeah I’m sure my friends do, I don’t keep things from them even about myself if I did it’s because I forgot to tell them or something 40. What made you start liking the person you like now?

???? 41. When did you last receive a text message?

Today 42. What is wrong with you right now?

You got me buddy 43. How well do you know the last female you texted?

I’d say pretty well 44. Does anyone disgust you?

Yes. 45. Would you date someone right now if they asked?

Depends I guess 46. Are you in a good mood right now?

Yee 47. Who was the last person you talked to in person?

idk my dad?  48. What color shirt are you wearing?

Like a really dark blue 49. Has someone recently told you something you didn’t want to hear?

No I’m an opened person and I’m always ready to listen to someone even if they’re telling me I’m a shit person I’m like thank you and now I’ll go change myself so I’ll be less of a shit person and don’t cause people trouble or pain 50. Anyone you’re giving up on?

None that I care for 51. Do you hate the person you fell hardest for?

No, I’ve never fell hard for someone

52. Have you ever thought about giving up on someone but couldn’t?

Nope. I know when I need to walk away to better my health I won’t let someone hold me back. 53. Do you like rain?

answered already 54. Do you care if your boyfriend/girlfriend drinks?

Nah. Just as long as they’re not an alcoholic I’m cool with it 55. Have you ever liked somebody and never told them?

Yeah. Story of my life tbh. 56. Do you like to cuddle?

YES 57. Are you shy?

eh not it depends on the situation like around adults I can be meh… But grouping outings and stuff I’m pretty out and about 58. Do you get along with girls?

yeah 59. Have you dated the person you texted last?

no 60. What do you carry with you at all times?

Money. Hand sanitizer. Chapstick. Basic shit. 61. If you were paid 1 million dollars to spend the night in a supposed haunted house, would you?

For 1 million dollars yeah, I’d fight a ghost for 1 million dollars 62. Do you think you can last in a relationship for five months?

yeah 63. Think back to October, were you in a relationship?

sadly no 64. The person you like kisses you on the forehead, do you find this cute?

YES 65. Did anything “cute” happen in the last week?

I left my sister’s house and my sister texted me a minute later saying how my nephew asked were I was at and she told him I left and he goes “but i didn’t get to say bye..” I thought it was cute. Usually they hate me lmao

66. How old are the last three people you kissed?

never been kissed

67. Would you rather pay to get your nails done or do them yourself?  

My nails are shit I’d rather pay. I only ever got them done twice in my lifetime so far.    68. Which do you like better- Zebra print or leopard print?

Leopard print     69. Do you have any stickers on your car? 

I don’t have car…    70. Would you rather listen to Luke Bryan or Lil Wayne?  

LUKE BRYAN. I actually really love Luke Bryan don’t hate me   71. Blackberry, Anroid, or iPhone?   

Well my first smart phone was and Anroid so I’m going with that 72. When’s the last time you had pizza from Pizza Hut?

God I can’t even remember I hope it’s soon I could go for some PIzza Hut     73. Do you like diet soda?    

Ehh.. Yeah I don’t drink a lot of pop to begin with though. Like I hate pop. But I LOVE root beer 74. What color are the walls in your room?  

White   75. Are you 16 or older? 

I am 76. Do you watch Pretty Little Liars?    

No but I’ve heard of it 77. Do you have a job?    

No… I need to get one. I gotta worry about school so putting a job on top of that would suck. and I have no way of transportation so..   78. What are your initials?   

JH  79. Did you ever have braces?    

I actually got denied braces a couple days ago which pisses me off because I need braces, my teeth are shit 80. Are you from the south?  

I don’t think? I’m horrible with stuff don’t ask me this. 

81. What does your last status on facebook say?

It’s just a video I reblogged, I don’t post much on facebook     82. Do you still talk to the first person you ever kissed? 

there’s a lot of kissing questions isn’t there?    83. Are you closer to your mom or your dad?

I don’t like to choose though I feel more comfortable joking with my mom on some stuff. It can be a little awkward with my dad because I’m like his little girl and idk.. Sometimes it’s like or this is fine and sometimes I’m like why. It’s nothing ever addressed towards me or anything no, it’s just things you’d like tell a friend and have a laugh about you know? But also my dad does do a lot for me. So I’m close to both of them.

84. Have you ever done cheerleading or gymnastics?    

Hell no 85. What’s the last movie you saw in theaters?   

Kong: Skull Island  86. Do you smoke?    

No I’d literally die. Asthma my guy, I ain’t taking any chances. 87. Would you rather wear heels or flip flops? 

Heels. I can’t walk in heels which I REALLY WISH I COULD. But I hate feet and flip flops is basically just showing you people’s feet and I just want to gag   88. Is your phone touch screen?    

Yep 89. Do you normally wear your hair straight or curly?    

Straight 90. Have you ever snuck out of your house?    

No, I’m a good noodle 91. Would you rather swim in a river, lake, or pool?

 I’ve only ever swam in a pool it’d be fun to swim in a river or lake. But then large body water phobia might kick in

92. Have you ever made out in a car?  

No :/   93. …Had sex in a car?    

….. No 94. Are you single or in a relationship?    

Single 95. What were you doing last night at midnight?

Probably watching videos on youtube     96. When’s the last time you saw fireworks?

July 4th :P     97. Do you like the camera on your phone?    

Fuck no it’s a piece of shit 98. Have you ever had a friend with benefits?  

No.   99. Have you ever passed out from drinking? 

Lmao no    100. Are you friends with people on facebook that you actually hate?

No I ain’t no fake bitch if I hate you why would I add you on facebook 101. Have you ever had a pregnancy scare?    

No 102. Name your favorite Kesha song:    

Probably Cannibal I don’t know why but I listened to that one a lot back in 2010 103. Do you have any tan lines right now?    

No I can’t tan for the life of me. I got 2 shades Larry the Lobster and Casper the Friendly Ghost 104. Would you ever wear cowboy boots with shorts? 

I don’t think I’d ever wear cowboy boots lmao. I’ve worn boots with shorts before they just weren’t cowboy boots 

#and finished #now nobody send in any numbers #i literally just answered them all #told you not to test me what #it took me like what a hour i'm tired now #replies #the ghost talks

[beastsandfantasticthings]

“Little Did I Know”

HELLO I AM BACK!!!

After a long *long* hiatus, I have finally recollected my inspiration and I am back in time to celebrate our favorite *Academy Award Winning* movie with my man Mr. Scamander!

AU: Hogwarts (bcuz I’m trash for a school AU)

Word Count: 1333 (sorry kiddos I had a lot to write)

Warnings: So sweet you might get diabetes (also contains a timeline jump)

Without fuuuuurther ado!

You stuffed your potions paperwork back into your briefcase, brushing your bangs out of your eyes and recollecting your thoughts. There was no clock in the Hufflepuff common room, but you didn’t need one to know it was late. Much later than a third year like yourself should be staying up. Yet here you were. And you know what could make you feel a hell of a lot better now? That fluffy brown hair. Those freckles and that wide goofy grin. You could listen to that boy all day. You could...

No, you willed your thoughts to halt, and clapped your hands down on the desk.

“No…” you swiftly pulled out the next set of paperwork, banishing any thoughts that weren’t related to polyjuice potions and proper cauldron cleaning.

You would often get on Newt for forgetting to clean his cauldron. He, of course, would assure you there was nothing to be worried about.

And it would blow up in his face every time. Quite literally.

You smiled fondly.

“Sporting a grin I see, may I ask why?” you hear that all too familiar voice call.

“Newt” you yelp in surprise, the papers you were holding were suddenly airborne.

“That’s me. May I ask, what are you still doing awake?” his puppy dog eyes squinted in concern. “It’s well past midnight”

“Is it? Why I haven’t even finished studying! This is all your fault anyway, for keeping  me up with those fascinating drawings of yours” You giggled in an attempt to wipe the worry off his face, but somehow your hysteria seemed to frighten him even more.

What? It’s not like you were drun-

“(Y/N) we have a big potions test tomorrow, the time for cramming has come and past.”

“You see Mister Scamander, there will always be a time for cramming” His smile widened, causing your’s too as well. Damn, this boy’s charisma was infectious.

“While I find our debates quite amusing, I’m afraid your well being must come first. Now go to sleep” He began to bend over and pick the discarded potions papers off the floor, most of which were either blank or covered in red marks. He studied one of your papers closely, eyebrows furrowed and nose scrunched. You couldn’t help but stare at how his eyes always maintained its light, even at God-knows-when at night.

“Why have you never asked me for help? (Y/N), we’re in this class together, how did I not know you were struggling?” Your attention was suddenly turned to the crisp paper in his hands, dread filling every crevice in your body.

“Oh my God I’m going to fail…” the realization dawned on you.

“Oh my God oh my God I’m going to stay at Hogwarts ‘till I’m thirty” you gathered your hair in your fists, staring off into nowhere in particular. “Newt I’m going to throw myself off the Astronomy tower.”

He suddenly rushed over to you, sensing your panic, and wrapped his warm hands around your wrists, trying to whisper any words of comfort. But you refused to meet his gaze.

“No, (Y/N), you’re not going to fail. It’s only one exam, you’re going to be fine. We are going to graduate and travel the world together. You, me, and who knows what else?! Maybe we’ll find a Niffler, how cool would that be? (Y/N) Look at me” You smile fondly at your best friend’s words, and turned your head in his direction easily.

“Maybe tomorrow won’t go so brilliantly, but I promise you will get a perfect score on the next exam. We will study for hours, just you and me, how does that sound? All you need is rest. Can you do that for me?” Your eyes wander down to Newt’s hands, still entrapping your wrists in the gentlest of grips.

“You always know what to say, Newt”

“I’ll take that as a yes. Now, I would carry you to your bed but I’m afraid that involves trespassing to places with cooties.” You let out a soft ‘pffft’  and ruffle his curly hair, making his freckled cheeks blush in embarrassment.

“Alright alright, only if you get to sleep too. That reminds me...why were you up Mr. Scamander at such an ungodly hour?” He pauses.

“I was...thinking” he admits, tilting his head to the side like a dog.

“About what?”

“About things. The future, our future, really.” Your sleep deprived mind was suddenly picked with curiosity.

“Our future? Tell me Newt, what lies in our future?” There was that grin again, and he ducked his head to hide his teeth.

“All the places we would visit. I was thinking we could start with Japan. I heard Occamies are native to the land, but I doubt we’d be able to find any.”

“Nonsense” you replied, your mind in a bit of a haze.

“I bet we’ll find a whole family with your luck! I can’t wait.”

“Yes, all of that is waiting for us if you go to sleep and not fail third year potions.” He then leaned down and pressed a kiss against your forehead, making your entire face heat up.

“You’re an asshole” you tease, attempting to swipe at him, but he was already up and out of the way.

“Goodnight (Y/N)” he called once again before disappearing up the staircase, leaving you with nothing but a dreamy feeling and a blush as red as a lobster.

You did end up lugging yourself to your bed half an hour later, instantly falling asleep as your head hit the pillow.

And you dreamed…

And you dreamed about Japan.

And you dreamed about Newt.

-Four Years Later-

“Newt! Come on we’re going to miss the train!” You called to your boyfriend as he scurried down the platform, his ridiculous blue coat and Hufflepuff scarf flapping in the wind.

“I’m coming! I’m coming don’t leave without me!” He finally caught up to you and the luggage, sweat visibly forming under his curly brown bangs.

You couldn’t help the smile widening across your face.

“And he crosses the finish line with two minutes to spare!” you exclaim, lifting his arm in the air in a display of victory.

“Stop that, people are looking” he blushed as he pulled his arm back down, looking around at the many pairs of eyes resting on the two of you.

“Oh that’s probably because of your ridiculous blue coat. I begged you not to buy that, you’re going to stick out of Japan like a sore thumb” you thumb the sleeve of his new woolen garb. He then proceeded to pout and rub his arm self consciously.

“I thought it looked dashing”

You reach for his shoulders and raise yourself onto your toes, planting a small kiss on his cheek.

“Of course you look dashing, I was only teasing. Besides, you’ll match the Occamies”

He scoffed, averting his eyes from you to the newly arrived train, a blush forming around his freckles.

“I doubt we’ll find any.”

“Nonsense, I bet we’ll even find an entire family with your luck!” His eyes suddenly brightened with a sense of recognition.

“Well that sounds familiar. Didn’t you say that to me four years ago when you were cramming like mad for a portions test?” You nod, blushing like an idiot.

Oh, you remember that night.

“Yes, I recall you gave me a kiss that night and gushed about our future.”

“Something like that…” he trailed off, staring off into the distance like he was remembering something. Your placed your hand under his chin, tilting his face down to meet your gaze, and you smiled so wide your eyes crinkled at the sides.

“I remember you said we would go to Japan together. Little did you know ‘together’ meant more that you thought”

“Little did I know…” he repeated, his eyes filled with something you couldn’t describe with anything but love.

“Now come on love, we have a train to catch”

#newt scamander #newt scamander imagine #newt x reader #newt scamander x reader #fantasic beasts and where to find them #fanfic #beastsandfantasticthings #fantastic beasts imagine

[my-mystic-messenger]

Hello! Can I maybe have the rfa + v and saeran planning something romantic with mc but everything going completely wrong? Bonus points if its very fluffy! Thank you! Btw, your hc always make me happy! You're a top writer and I really enjoy the way you write the rfa, but especially saeran! Thanks!

Well sweetcheeks Saeran is my favouriteof all of them hands down so I’m very happy you enjoy me writing himas much as I do. I think he has the most potential and the bestdesign, personally. I also think that Cheritz wasted him (and most ofthe other characters) in order to putsch Seven which is something Ifind extremely tiring. So, until I get a Saeran route that does thatpoor boy justice you can pry that beautiful creature from my cold,dead hands. Also, I’ll write HC’s for him until my hands start tobleed. Saeran (◕▿◕✿)I think I overdid it a little? I hope you still like it?

|| REQUEST ARE (ALWAYS) OPEN!! ||

Zen

♬ he’d planned this date for a long time

♬ the two of you had been so busy lately,Zen had decided to do something special to make up for it

♬ everything was perfectly planned andtaken care off

♬ he’d prepared a beautiful picnic to beeaten at the park

♬ the food he’d prepared was mostly selfmade and delicious

♬ the weather outside was sunny and warm

♬ and the paddle boat rent had openedagain for the season

♬ it was time for the perfect date

♬ you’d been so excited for that date too

♬ seeing how happy and cheerful Zen wasabout it only made it better

♬ he’d found a beautiful, shady spotunder a big willow

♬ you’d spread out your big blanket andthen went on to rent the paddle boat

♬ neither of you was really hungry atthat moment, and the glistering lake just looked so enticing

♬ at first everything was fine, idyllicand romantic even

♬ sitting opposite each other you smiledand laughed together, talked about anything and everything

♬ Zen was paddling, strong arms allowingyou to glide over the water

♬ you had one of those pretty parasolsthat made the entire scene seem as if from a movie

♬ Zen really liked that idea, yourrelationship being the type people made movies about

♬ sadly, those moments often lasted for avery brief time and this was no different

♬ when he got up to get to you and pressa sweet kiss to your lips, Zen lost balance

♬ suddenly the boat was shaking rapidlyand you getting nervous caused the two of you to flail and fall

♬ the water was bitter cold, despite thesun

♬ neither of you was able to turn theboat back around and get in, so you had to swim

♬ you were forced to leave the parasolbehind he’d gotten you, almost drowning for a moment

♬ once finally outside of the water,drenched and shaking, you’d made your way to the willow only to findthat animals had attacked your basket and most of the food was eitherscattered or gone

♬ needless to say that Zen was devastated

♬ his perfect date had fallen apartcompletely, despite all his efforts

♬ as you saw him pout at the remains ofthe food he’d prepared for you two, you felt your heart swell

♬ God, you loved that idiot so much…

♬ you took his hand and pulled himtowards the blanket anyway

♬ the stuff that wasn’t usable you threwaway together, but the entire time you smiled

♬ frankly, as long as you two weretogether, you were happy

♬ you two sat down together, cuddling upagainst one another, mainly for warmth

♬ he used the blanket to wrap around thetwo of you, instead sitting on the soft grass

♬ luckily some of the fruit were saved,as they’d been in harder to open boxes

♬ you took one of those and held it outfor Zen, smiling at the other sweetly

♬ when he realized that you were stillsmiling, trying to make the best out of it even now by feeding himsome fruit, all his sadness instantly melted away

♬ as he opened his mouth and accepted thestrawberry you were offering, Zen knew

♬ he knew that he’d never loved someonelike he loved you and that he never would again

♬ after that you moved from the shadowsof the willow into the sun

♬ you laid down together, hand in hand,letting the warmth dry your body

♬ you threw a frisbee around for a while,played catch and hide and seek

♬ a man selling fish-shapes bread turnedup a couple of hours later and you bought a couple

♬ you ate them as the sun went down, bluewater turning back with the darkness

♬ you watched the stars for hours,sharing sweet kisses from time to time

♬ eventually you went home, made love andfell asleep in each others arms

Yoosung

★ Yoosung is a very attentive person

★ he never misses an opportunity to dosomething nice for you

★ he isn’t as overly sweet and romanticas Zen, not does he have the means to take you on expensive dates asJumin might be able to, but he tries his best…he’s sweet, youknow?

★ he always remembers birthdays and anniversaries, goes allout on Valentines day

★ sometimes he just likes to surprise youtoo, just for the sake of it

★ he thinks of you as his saviour, theone who saved him from himself

★ so, in an attempt to never let youforget how much he appreciates you, he planned a romantic date

★ while you were at work he’d used hisfree day to cook your favourite dinner

★ he put candles on the table, roses andthe nice plates and all

★ he was just putting together the firstplate when suddenly he heard the keys in the lock

★ you were an hour early and Yoosungpanicked a little

★ he wasn’t quite ready yet!

★ not thatyou minded even in the slightest

★ when you entered the kitchen, smellingfood, your breath got caught in your throat at the view

★ not only was the table beautifully setand the food smelled great but Yoosung look utterly adorable with hishair pushed back, cooking in his apron

★ you cooed and Yoosung blushed,nervously scratching the back of his head

★ he helped you out of your coat and hungit up for you while you chuckled with delight

★ he was just so cute when he tried hard

★ he lead you to the table, pulled backthe chair for you, even spread a little napkin on your lap

★ when he put the finished plate beforeyou it looked and smelled divine

★ he’d become an even better cook overthe last couple of years so you knew you were in for a treat

★ you also smiled with glee as yourealized it was your favourite meal

★ he watched you take the first bite,smiling with excitement

★ thats when you grimaced, obviouslystruggling to swallow, and his face fell

★ what had he done wrong?

★ when he tried the food himself he foundthe answer

★ you’d told him a million times to labelthe sugar and salt, just in case, and he’d never listened

★ he accidentally switched them up andnow everything was borderline vomit inducing

★ he didn’t even want to imagine what thecake tasted like…great

★ as you watched him hang his head yourheart swelled with pride

★ you stood up and went to hug him frombehind, pressing a kiss to his cheek

★ sadly, you had to toss everything away,but it was alright

★ you spend the rest of the eveningcooking something nice together, brushing hips and stealing glances

★ as the candles has burned down youdecided to cuddle up on the couch, plates on your knees

★ you ate while watching videos onYouTube, occasionally stealing from each others plate

★ soon the plates were abandoned, the twoof you lying on the couch together

★ you weren’t fully asleep, but neitherreally awake

★ your head resting on his chest,Yoosungs arms wrapped around your figure

★ he brushed through your hair, smilingagainst your forehead contently

★ despite the date not having gone theyway he thought it would, Yoosung learned valuable lessons

★ 1) always label sugar and salt★ 2)the best moments aren’t the ones that are planned

★ when you really love a person you cando the most mundane things and they are still the best

★ “I love you.”

★ “Loveyou too, doofus”

★ and then you fell asleep 

Jaehee

♨ you two hadn’t had a free day in whatfelt like ages

♨ the work load was not half asexhausting as working for Jumin, but you still needed to unwind

♨ especially considering that even your‘free days’ were often spend planning for the café

♨ sometimes re-decorating or somethinglike that

♨ through all of the stress you’d nevergiven up on Jaehee, never once complained

♨ you’d worked hard to make herdream come true and now she wanted to do something for you

♨ namely go on a short trip to the beachto relax and have some fun

♨ when the day finally came, Jaehee wasprepared!

♨ She had three towels – just in case –a beach ball, a second bathing suit and set of clothes, enough foodand cake to feed an entire army, a beach umbrella and liters ofsunscreen

♨ since you only had one day, your tripstarted in the early morning hours

♨ that way you could use the entire dayas well as avoid rush hour

♨ despite being quite exhausted herself,Jaehee insisted on driving

♨ this was all for you, so you should berelaxing from finish to start

♨ you offered multiple times to takeover, but Jaehee refused every time

♨ eventually you fell asleep with yourface pressed to the window

♨ Jaehee found it extremely endearing,saddened that she couldn’t take a picture

♨ when you finally arrived at the beachit was still relatively empty

♨ it gave you the time and space tochoose a nice spot and build up everything

♨ you instantly wanted to go into thewater, cool your overheated body

♨ Jaehee on the other hand decided to liein the shade for a while, telling you she’d follow soon

♨ that’s when you got rid of the dressyou’d been wearing, leaving you standing in nothing but the mostadorable bikini Jaehee had ever seen

♨ she could feel her cheeks heat up,instantly putting on her sunglasses to hide at least some of her overthe top reaction

♨ she watched you run to the water, socheerful and happy, smiling to herself

♨ you played around in the water for awhile, floated and swam while Jaehee watched

♨ she didn’t even notice how heavy hereyes had gotten when she was suddenly asleep

♨ it felt like mere seconds later thatyou were harshly shaking her awake

♨ she’d forgotten to put sunscreen on andwhile you’d been in the water having fun, not paying attention, she’dburned up to match the colour of a lobster

♨ you insisted that you go home rightnow, so you can take care of that horrible burn

♨ on the way back you were the onedriving, hurrying just to get her home soon

♨ during the drive you put some of theice packs on her skin or the now wet towel over her body

♨ once home you told her to lie on herback while you rubbed aloe vera all over her body, wherever she’dgotten burned

♨ after that you disappeared for a whileonly to return with liters and liters of milk

♨ Jaehee was extremely ashamed as youfilled the entire bath with it and told her to get in

♨ she’d wanted to make this a nice day atthe beach and instead she’d ruined it

♨ you didn’t mind at all, however, as yousat behind her and carefully rubbed in the milk into her back

♨ once she’d showered you’d put on Zen’smusicals and marathoned them

♨ you braided each others hair in yourPJ’s and ate some unhealthy food you usually wouldn’t

♨ you even build a pillow fort together

♨ it isn’t quite the night Jaehee hadplanned, but neither of you has ever been that relaxed, so she callsthe entire thing a win after all

♨ “Thanks for today.”

♨ “ButI completely ruined the beach trip?”

♨ “I don’t care. As long as we’retogether, I’m happy.”

Jumin

♛ he knows better than anyone how hard itis to work all day long

♛ Jumin also knows the feeling of beingon the verge of breaking down under the workload

♛ so when he notices the first traces ofdark circles and tiredness he instantly has to do something

♛ you’ve been overworking yourself,between planning the party, helping Jaehee in her café, Yoosung’sclinic and even sometimes Jumin himself

♛ he’s expressed concern about thatbefore, but you’d always brushed it off

♛ after all you wanted to help as much asyou could and make everyone happy

♛ it wasn’t like you had a 'normal’ jobanyway, so why not?

♛ while he still didn’t have the heart tostop you, Jumin came up with something else

♛ he wanted to treat you to somethingrelaxing, spoil you for a couple of days

♛ so he booked the two of you a nicewellness weekend at an expensive spa

♛ he’d been forced to keep it a secretfor a while, as the place was rather booked, so the appointment hegot wasn’t immediate

♛ but when he finally told you and gotthe brightest smile and kisses in return, he’d never felt prouder ofhimself

♛ that weekend you’d packed your thingsand made your way to the spa, eager to relax

♛ sadly, that didn’t quite out as therehad been a mix-up and your spot had been given away

♛ Jumin immediately asked for another,but the next one was at least a month away

♛ he wanted to get angry and basicallyget everyone involved fired for this

♛ especially at how disappointed youlooked because of their mistake

♛ but he knew that him getting angry andbossy made you sad, so the two of you took your leave

♛ he felt horrible for having put youthrough this, especially as you were strangely quiet on the drivehome

♛ then a got an idea!

♛ maybe he couldn’t get you into thatparticular wellness spa, but he had the means to make the day just asrelaxing at home

♛ so the second you got up to thepenthouse he called a couple of people before turning his attentionback to you and only you

♛ from that moment on he took controlover your relaxation

♛ he ran you a bath with rose pedals andbubbles and hot water just the way you like it

♛ he gave you a full body massage and forall the things he couldn’t do – such as manicures, pedicures andeven getting your hair done – he got professionals just for you

♛ they made you the dinner you wantedafterwards, which you enjoyed candlelit with classical music softlyplaying in the background

♛ it was a peaceful evening spent talkingand laughing without a worry in the world

♛ Jumin even finished the day off bytugging you into bed himself

♛ he then set beside the bed and like thefirst night you’d slept in that penthouse he read to you

♛ it was your favourite book and even theoriginal copy he’d gotten you

♛ his low voice soothed you even further,entire body relaxing into the mattress as he read

♛ eventually he laid down beside you,pulling you against his chest

♛ you hummed happily, cuddling up to yourhusband

♛ “I’m sorry todays plans wereruined.”

♛ “Are you kidding? You taking care of mefor the whole day was much better than any spa.”

♛ Juminsmiled then, once more reminded just how lucky he was to meet you

♛ he gently tilted your head up, pressinga kiss to your lips

♛ “I love you, darling. If you wanted,I would give you the world.”

♛ “I don’t want the world though,silly. All I’d ever want is right here beside me.”

♛ he held you until you fell asleep,heart swollen with joy

Saeyoung/Seven

☼ Sevens idea of date night is quitedifferent from what other people would consider

☼ he also isn’t really familiar with whatmost would consider 'romantic’

☼ it’s not something that has everbothered you, as you yourself aren’t really hearts and flowers

☼ you like that most of the time yourdates are fun and different

☼ that is until one of his bright ideasgoes wrong again

☼ because you can be sure that generallyyou’re the one who has to clean up the mess afterwards

☼ like that one time he got arrested andyou had to bail him out

☼ who would have thought that he’d takehide and seek so serious!

☼ The idiot broke into someones house forfucks sake!

☼ over time you’d gotten used to eventhat, though and generally it was fun to watch as his mugshots weretaken every time

☼ you laughed a lot

☼ so, when he suggested something calmerthis time you were surprised

☼ he said that he’d noticed howexhausting your dates were for you, so he wanted to do something youwould enjoy as well; a games night in

☼ he’d gotten out cards, chess, multiplevideo – and boardgames

☼ Seven was ready and his excitement wascontagious

☼ he’d ordered take out for the entirenight, stocked up on PhD Pepper and Honey Buddha Chips and both ofyou had changed into your matching cat PJ’s

☼ the evening started nice enough

☼ you were cuddled up on the couch,beating each others asses at some first person shooters

☼ after that you stuffed yourself fullwhile playing cards at the table

☼ he actually let you win a couple ofrounds of chess, smiling to himself as you did your little victorydance only to put on an annoyed face once you looked at him

☼ he just loved how cheerful you were ateven the smallest things

☼ then he suggested playing Twister andyou should have known better

☼ Seven spends all day crouching in frontof his computer, of course he’d suck at Twister

☼ actually, for a while it worked out

☼ since both of you were rathercompetitive, the two of you each gave your best

☼ it was a very intense round, whichprobably caused what happened after

☼ in an attempt to look cool and win thegame Seven had attempted to do that 'cool lean-back thing’ from theMatrix

☼ sadly, he wasn’t quite as sportive aswith a sudden cracking sound, Seven fell to the floor

☼ …and he couldn’t moveanymore…fuck…

☼ the rest of the night was spent waitingin the ER for someone to fix whatever Seven had done

☼ by the time you got home the sun wasabout to rise

☼ so you suggested for the two of you togo up on the roof to watch

☼ as you set there, sharing a HoneyBuddha Chips bag with your feet dangling off the roof, your headresting on his shoulder you suddenly burst into laughter

☼ “What are you laughingabout?”

☼ “You, mainly, and all the bullshit you getyourself into.”

☼ “My, honey, thank you so much foryour compassion.”

☼ “I drove your crying ass to thehospital, you have no right to complain. Anyway,what I was trying to say is…Seven you’re the weirdest dude I knowand I love you for it. You’re unconventional, but I’d rather tell ourgrandchildren the extraordinary things that happen to us, all theadventures I get to have because I chose you instead of the typicalguy taking me to wine and dine. Today was a great date night. Thankyou”, you say, pressing a kiss to his cheek, causing him toblush

☼ “I’m glad we agree. I love youtoo…by the way.”

Saeran

☀ when Saeran heard that there was a fairin town, he got excited

☀ the doctor had warned you that he mightshow certain childish behaviours due to all the trauma and loss of anormal childhood

☀ you didn’t see the problem though, asyou found it extremely endearing

☀ he hadn’t smiled in such a long time soto see him beam…hell, you’d win him one of those life sizes plushbears at the throwing stand and more

☀ it was especially sweet to watch himstruggle and stutter through his attempt of inviting you to a date onthat particular fair

☀ of course you said yes, as youpersonally liked fairs too and would do anything to make him smile

☀ the fair was quite packed, but nothingboth of you couldn’t handle

☀ he actually did win you a plush bear,although not a life sized one

☀ the two of you shared some cotton candyand even went to the ghost house together

☀ Saeran actually didn’t push you awaywhen you clung to him and you were actually thinking he might havesmiled, even?

☀ as the afternoon began to turn intoevening and night Saeran suggest to go on the ferris wheel

☀ you were a little surprised, as itwasn’t really exciting and mostly what couples did together

☀ when you saw him blush you realizedthat he wanted to do that with you and you blushed as well

☀ you walked there side by side, silentand not touching but with rapidly beating hearts

☀ you got in and both enjoyed the viewslowly showing itself to you

☀ until suddenly the wheel came to arapid halt and didn’t continue to move anymore

☀ then the announcement followed that itwas broken and they were working to fix it

☀ well…that was unfortunate

☀ the two of you looked at each other,eyes wide with shock but with nowhere to go

☀ you were at the top of the wheel, sothere was really no option but to sit and wait

☀ for a long time things were veryawkward

☀ both of you looked anywhere but eachother and when you actually did steal a glance and your eyes lockedboth of your faces heated up and you quickly looked away

☀ there was a long silence as well, bothof you staring outside of your respective window

☀ then Saeran sighed, shoulders sagging

☀ “This is not how I’d imaginedour first date to go.”

☀ you understood what he meant, butyou didn’t agree at all

☀ with a gentle smile you reached out,taking his hand into your to get his attention

☀ Saeran instantly looked up, lockingeyes with you, wide and confused

☀ “I reallyloved this date so far. As far as first dates go, this is still oneof my best if not the best one. Plus, we get to enjoy this beautifulview for much longer than any other couple so really, we’re lucky.”

☀ it wasn’t perfect, but it made Saeransmile

☀ you decided to switch from your side tohis so you two were sitting next to one another

☀ there was still a silence and Saeranwas a little stiff for a while, cheeks heated, eyes downcast

☀ untilsuddenly his hand inched closer and he tentatively laced your fingerstogether

☀ both of you were looking in oppositedirections and yet both of you were smiling just the same

☀ you watched the sun set together andwhen it was replaced by starts you finally turned to look at eachother again

☀ his eyes scanned over your face, comingto a halt on your lips

☀ he looked between them and your eyes,asking for permission

☀ you gave a quick nod and finally yourlips met in a sweet, loving kiss

☀ you buried your fingers in his hair ashis hands rested on his hips

☀ both of you were completely lost in thekiss, soon growing more confident and passionate

☀ you didn’t even notice when the wheelstarted to move again

Jihyun/V

📷 with V having gone completely blind,date possibilities were rather limited

📷 of course you could still go to dinner,but almost everything else was harder or near impossible

📷 even watching a movie in the cinema –the most basic date – was not really something you could do

📷 which was a shame, V knew, because youloved watching movies

📷 he used to love watching movies too,before he went blind

📷 that was when he heard about blindcommentary for the first time

📷 you could’t watch a movie in thecinema, but you could watch one at home

📷 you’d done so much for the RFA and him,V thought that the least he could do was switch up your usual dinnerdates for movies for once

📷 so, with a plan in mind he’d made hisway to the nearest VideoWorld

📷 it had been quite a while since he’dlast seen a movie, so V had made his way directly to the register toask for some advice

📷 he wanted a movie that was romantic,popular and would make his girlfriend happy

📷 not that the guy behind the counterlistened

📷 the second he’d seen the crane andrealized the man in front of him was fully blind he’d decided to pulla little prank on him

📷 something neither his girlfriend norhim would forget for a long time

📷 with a smile in his voice he’d told himhe’d be right back, returning with what he told V was 'The Notebook’,the best movie for dates

📷 V had thanked the guy, payed and madehis way home

📷 he’d managed to get the DVD in and evenordered Pizza, drinks and ice cream to go with it

📷 when you finally came home he greetedyou with a kiss, told you that he’d run you a bath and he’d wait foryou to join him

📷 you thanked him, adoring howconsiderate and sweet your boyfriend was

📷 once you’d showered off the day andwere warm and comfortable on the couch he handed you the remote forthe DVD player

📷 you were surprised but he looked sohappy and exited about it so you figured he’d gotten a DVD for thetwo of you to watch

📷 how sweet, he knew how much you lovedmovies

📷 however, when you pressed play itwasn’t The Notebook…not at all

📷 the cover showed two naked womencaressing each other…amongst other things

📷 your eyes almost popped out of yourhead and you froze for a moment

📷 had V really chosen a porno?

📷 Then it clicked…V was blind sosomeone else must have chosen for him

📷 you quickly reached for the remote andtried to turn it off, but it was too late and the moaning and otherobscene sounds started

📷 now it was V’s eyes widening, cheeksheating and swallowing loudly

📷 after a very, very awkward minute youfinally managed to turn the damn thing off, sagging

📷 “T-that wasn’t The Notebook, Itake it?”

📷 bless V for his big heart, trust andinnocence

📷 “No, honey, that wasn’t TheNotebook. I guess someone tried to pull a prank. I’m sorry.”

📷 “I’malright…I’m just sorry it ruined my plan for date night. I knowgoing out with me isn’t easy and our options are limited so I reallywanted to make you happy.”

📷 “V…you make me veryhappy. It’s not about the dates. You show me how much you care everysingle day with every word and gesture. Not to mention that you’retrying to adjust yourself. I appreciate you even trying to dosomething like that for me. Thank you.”

📷 you kissed, smilingagainst each others lips

📷 …and maybe just maybe that specialcopy of The Notebook came in handy later that day after all

#mystic messenger #mysme #mm #cheritz #otome #zen #hyun ryu #yoosung #yoosung kim #jaehee kang #jaehee #jumin #jumin han #707 #seven #luciel choi #saeyoung choi #saeran choi #saeran #unknown #V #jihyun kim #rfa members #RFA #headcanon #request #scenario

[chukichi]

I’ve been crushing on you, baby; victor/yuuri; ao3 link

t rating; 3382 words

-

i.

The ice beneath him is cold and unforgiving as he flubbed another jump. He lands on his side with a wince and a yelp. Yuuri knows it’s going to bruise, yet he can’t bring himself to care as he stares across the rink in awe. Victor is still stretching on his own; his body twisting and bending as he loosens up his muscles. He’d been complaining earlier that he had to start being extra careful now, what with his age and how he wasn’t as flexible as he used to be.

What a liar, Yuuri thinks bitterly as he carries on watching. Yuuri knows he’s being obvious and that he’s staring without shame - but he can’t help it as his eyes trail over the curve of Victor’s ass as he bends down. He watches breathlessly as Victor holds his position for a few seconds before standing up straight again to move into a lunge. His back muscles shift under his tight t-shirt and Yuuri can even see a clear outline of his muscular thighs underneath his leggings.

Everything Victor wears is form fitting and clingy, outlining and extenuating every muscle and define line that makes up his body. Yuuri is hopelessly enraptured and easily distracted by it, and can’t do anything but swallow down the saliva gathering in his mouth and attempt to ignore the dark swirl of arousal in the pit of his stomach.

Yuuri knew, objectively, that Victor was hot. He’d spent the majority of his life growing up with posters of him plastered across every inch of his bedroom walls, along with him as his laptop background and a secret folder full of any fan or press taken photos he could get his hands on. The difference being is that now Victor is right in front of him - living with him, eating with him, and even bathing with him. Seeing Victor through YouTube videos or pixelated live streams is a lot different than seeing Victor through his own eyes as he lives and breathes in the same space. The knowledge of Victor being hot had suddenly become a lot realer, and it had become a problem. A very distracting problem, at that.

It’s driving Yuuri crazy, and even worse is that Victor’s not even doing it on purpose most of the time. Once they’d visited the beach together - having come to an understanding that made Yuuri’s heart soar with hope and happiness - Victor had toned down the overdone clinginess and become a lot more natural. There were still small touches between them though: an arm thrown over his shoulder, a gentle thumb swiping away a stray grain of rice from his cheek, and a warm hug at the end of practice. The worst thing (or maybe the best thing) is now these actions seem to be more genuine and with real feeling behind them. Each one makes Yuuri’s heart flutter and his stomach twist, and he accepts begrudgingly that he’s in deep. Suddenly Yuuri’s centre of gravity has been knocked off axis so that it evolved around Victor; he can’t bear to stay away too long or look away without feeling a pull to reel him back in.

God, the things he’d do just to be able to reach out and touch -

“Yuuri?” Victor’s questioning voice rang out through the rink, “what are you doing?”

Yuuri was up in an instant, cringing at his wet clothes and numb skin while also trying to ignore the hot flush on his cheeks.

“I’m sorry! I won’t do it again!” Yuuri blurts out, his voice echoing around the rink.

Victor raises a perfectly arched eyebrow, “What, fall over? Yuuri, you cannot promise me that.”

Yuuri flinches, the statement is true but it still didn’t mean the words didn’t sting. A moment passed between them that ended when Victor shook his head, a small smile on his face and his hair moving like rippling silk.

“C’mon, let’s start practice! Show me your true Eros, Yuuri!”

--

ii.

It had never occurred to Yuuri that the dark olive green jinbei that Victor had adopted as his loungewear could be so obscene. It was a plain piece of clothing, thin and light enough to stay comfortable in despite the heat and humidity from the onsen. Then again, it was Victor who was wearing it, and Victor seemed to have a personal vendetta against wearing it properly. This led to a poorly tied knot that barely kept the robe securely wrapped around his torso, and caused a large amount of his naked chest to show.

Yuuri curses every entity he could think of, but then thanked them in the same breath because he couldn’t deny that he thoroughly enjoyed the glimpse of Victor’s pink nipples he got. Despite the fact that the jinbei was also probably a few sizes too big, it still managed to cinch in enough at the waist and wrap around Victor’s thighs to hint teasingly at his fit and athletic body.

Yuuri imagines that he probably looks as red as a lobster by now. There was always a small niggling feeling of guilt and shame at the back of his mind when he couldn’t bring to tear his eyes away from Victor, but the need to drink in the sight before him outweighed it all.

They’re sat in the main room; empty sake cups scattered across the low rise table and Yuuri’s legs have pins and needles from sitting in the seiza position for so long. He didn’t trust himself to stretch out like Victor had; instead choosing to keep his hands balled into fists and resting on his thighs in an attempt at resisting the urge to reach out and smooth a hand across the expanse of Victor’s exposed chest. Yuuri wonders idly that if he was allowed, would Victor enjoy it? Would he push up into Yuuri’s touch, silently asking for more as his fingers grazed coyishly against his skin? Would he like it if Yuuri pressed soft, loving kisses down his chest to show his appreciation? Yuuri absentmindedly bit his bottom lip, his brain turning to mush as his thoughts continued to get more and more heated.

“Oh my! Yuuri, did you see-” Victor’s voice cut abruptly through his inner monologuing, making him flinch so hard he almost topples over.

“Yuuri? Are you okay?”

“Yes!” Yuuri replies, pushing his glasses up in a nervous tic. His eyes flit between the tabletop surface and Victor’s concerned facial expression.

Victor tilts his head to the side while still focusing on Yuuri, and it was so endearing he has to choke back a whine at the sight.

“Are you sure? Your face is really red.”

Yuuri cleared his throat and nods hesitantly, “I’m just tired, but I’ll be okay.”

Victor clearly didn’t buy what Yuuri was saying (he had always been a terrible liar) but he just nodded back in acceptance of his words.

Suddenly Victor’s expression brightens, “anyway, look at what’s on TV! Japanese shows are so strange.”

Victor turns his attention back to whatever he was watching and Yuuri sighs in relief that the subject was changed. He let himself have one more lingering glance at Victor’s chest before also turning his attention to what ridiculous show he was meant to be watching.

--

iii.

Yuuri knows he’s not a bad person. He did well in school, passing his exams with slightly above average grades. He tries his best to be polite to people, despite his crushing anxiety and shy nature. He got back up again after his humiliating defeat at last year's GPF, his love and passion for skating overcoming the depressive rut he’d found himself in.

So Yuuri knows he’s not the worst person on the planet, but with the way that he’s being tested by every god out there makes him think twice. Maybe he did something horrendous in a past life to deserve this?

This, to be exact, is Victor clinging to him while they’re both wet, completely naked and sat in the onsen. Yuuri is thankful that this time he can pass off the redness that burns his cheeks and the tips of his ears on the heat of the water. What he can’t blame on anything but himself is his very unfortunate erection. There at least must be one higher being looking out for him during this event, considering that the bath water is dark and murky and comes up high enough that it hides anything that is going on beneath it.

Both of Victor’s arms are wrapped loosely around his shoulders and his chin rests lightly near the crook of his neck. Yuuri is spending more time - for once in his life - trying to think about anything but Victor. He avoids thinking about how nice it feels to have their skin pressed against each other, and how every time Victor speaks directly into Yuuri’s ear, his voice low and intimate, it sends shivers down his spine. He avoids thinking about how much he wants to push back into the embrace, to feel Victor’s broad chest against his back, and maybe even -

Dammit.

Yuuri’s plan backfires spectacularly and now he’s even more worked up and light headed than he was before.

The chin perched on his shoulder suddenly digs in harder, making Yuuri yelp and pull away enough to turn his head to face Victor.

“Yuu-ri, you’re not listening to me!” Victor whines childishly.

“S-sorry,” Yuuri says, his tongue tripping over the single word, “I feel a little dizzy.”

Victor pulls back abruptly, and Yuuri misses the weight against him almost instantly.

“If you feel dizzy, you should’ve gotten out. You know that it’s dangerous to stay in here when you’re feeling faint!” Victor replies, his voice chastising.

Yuuri shifts so he can turn to face Victor properly without straining his neck, and it’s only then that Yuuri realises that he can’t get out; not if he wants to avoid dying of sheer embarrassment. The throbbing between his legs is still ever present and doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon with the sight of a wet Victor right in front of him. His eyes automatically latch on to watch as a single drop of water makes its way down the side of Victor’s neck before pooling in the dip of his collar bones.

A flick to his forehead shocks him out of his thoughts and he jolts back into the current situation. He frowns and brings a hand up to rub spot he was flicked, “what was that for?”

“You were ignoring me again!” Victor is pouting, like a spoilt child and Yuuri is annoyingly charmed by it, “you keep zoning out recently, is everything alright? I’m not pushing you too hard in training am I?” Victor reaches out one of his hands to cup Yuuri’s cheeks, cradling it ever so gently. Yuuri leans into the gesture before he can catch himself and his eyes widen almost comically once he realises what he’s doing. He draws back forcefully, whacking his elbow against the stone rim of the bath as he flails around.

“No, training is fine! Perfect, even. Great! Nothing wrong at all!” Yuuri babbles, eyes darting skittishly between Victor and anywhere but Victor. He forces out a nervous laugh, and he is very thankful that he’s now far away enough from Victor that he’s nothing more than a blur without his glasses. He can’t distract me now, Yuuri thinks victoriously.

“Oh,” Victor says, and despite not being able to even see Victor’s face, he knows the expression he’s pulling with that tone of voice. Wide blue eyes, soft long eyelashes fluttering innocently and his lush pink mouth open slightly in shocked surprise. It’s even more ridiculous than usual, the image his mind conjured up looks straight out of a shoujo manga more than anything else.

Yuuri slumps forward in resignation, hiding his face in his hands. “Why do I even bother?” Yuuri moans dejectedly.

--

iv.

Victor has the prettiest fingers. This is a fact that Yuuri has known since he first became a fan. They’re long and slim, with rounded cuticles and perfectly trimmed nails. Yuuri has long since given up trying to look away from Victor, and now just indulges in the fact that he can. No one except from him can say that Victor Nikiforov, the Living Legend of figure skating, is their personal coach. Just thinking about it makes Yuuri’s heart burst from happiness, and he can barely contain himself on some days. This is the man he’d looked up to for most of his life, the man that he’d religiously watched and wished every night that they could meet as equals on the ice someday.

It was his utmost guilty pleasure to be able to watch Victor without the fake smiles and distant attitude. Victor was so animated, even the smallest of things would set off a loud and explosive reaction. At first it had scared Yuuri, he was still shaken from his life time idol showing up at his home - so with every yell and hand movement made him flinch back in shock. Now, after many months of being together, Yuuri finds the actions to be endearing. It was a side of Victor that he rarely showed on camera; always opting to take the cool and collected route instead. He was always poised like he could have his photo taken at any minute and answers to every question already had a formulated response.

The real Victor was annoying, clingy and whiny and loved to tease him. He pouted when he didn’t get his own way, and sulked every time Yuuri declined to sleep in the same bed as him. He was too loud when it was late at night, yelling or laughing joyously with the other patrons at whatever was showing on TV. He was blunt, sometimes insensitive when it came to coaching and managing Yuuri’s anxiety, and always forgot important things.

Despite all that, Yuuri was still completely enamoured by the man.

The real Victor was also cheerful, thoughtful and charming. He laughed at all of Yuuri’s bad jokes, and always made sure that he’d eaten enough and gotten plenty of sleep. He was attentive and listened to Yuuri’s worries, and never made fun of him or interrupted. He was kind, loving, and knew where Yuuri’s boundaries were.

Every minute he spent with Victor was precious - even during the times where they were silent and watching the sky at night, it never felt like a wasted moment. Yuuri never felt pressured to fill up the silence with innate babble or awkward small talk. Victor was a solid, calming presence beside him and he was completely and utterly in love.

Yuuri was still staring at Victor’s hands, watching as they curled around his water bottle and brought it up to his lips. The pale skin of his fingers contrasted heavily with the black plastic, and Yuuri’s mind shortcutted once he noticed the bob of Victor’s adam’s apple as he swallowed down the water.

I’m so screwed, Yuuri thinks without an ounce of irony. Victor makes even the simple task of drinking water look like a planned photoshoot - his head thrown back, eyes fluttering shut and coupled with a hand on his hip. He looked so posed, so effortlessly gorgeous and it was ticking all of Yuuri’s boxes. His grip on his own water bottled tightened at the display, it almost felt like he was watching something that he shouldn’t be.

Victor pulled the nozzle out of his mouth with a wet pop and panted as he regained his breath. Yuuri’s attention then moved from Victor’s hands to his lips, and it took every ounce of his strength to not lean over and press his lips against Victor’s.

“Something on my face, Yuuri?” Victor’s asks, his voice smug.

As if recoiling away from the words and his own thoughts, Yuuri stumbles back a few steps and stares wide-eyed at Victor’s now smirking face.

Yuuri shook his head furiously, hands waving around as he attempted at a stuttered reply. His face was practically on fire at this point.

“Hmm,” Victor hums and presses two fingers against his lips while looking through his lashes at Yuuri, “is there something you want?”

“No!” Yuuri yells, he was embarrassed beyond belief and the look Victor was giving him wasn’t making it any easier for him.

“No?” Victor juts out his bottom lip childishly, “ahh, that’s a shame!”

This is it, Yuuri thought, this is how I die.

Changing from a pout to a pleased grin, Victor places his empty water bottle on the bench and takes a step towards the gap between the boards that led to the ice rink.

“If Yuuri doesn’t want anything, we should get back to practice.” He threw a wink over his shoulder and glided back onto the ice, “hurry up, you still haven’t nailed all your jumps yet!”

The real Victor is annoying, whiny and clingy and loved to tease him, but Yuuri would follow Victor to the ends of the earth if he asked him to.

Maybe for now he’ll just follow him back onto the ice rink though.

--

+1.

The apartment him and Victor now share in St. Petersburg is dark and quiet, the only light coming from the bright moon outside which filtered through their blinds. It casted an unearthly glow over their bed and made Victor’s hair shine.

Yuuri was almost asleep, his eyelids were heavy and the exhaustion of jet lag and moving boxes all day was finally catching up on him. Despite his aching back and sore fingers, he had never felt happier.

“You know,” Victor’s quiet voice cut through the stillness of the night, “I could always feel you staring back when we were in Hasetsu.”

Yuuri feels whatever tendrils of sleep disappear at the words, and his whole body locks up in shock. He sits up from where his head was resting on Victor’s chest and stares down at him in disbelief.

“Wh- what?! Why didn’t you say anything?!” Yuuri asks, his voice high and breaking in the middle. His mind was moving at a mile a minute, he thought he had been getting away with it without Victor noticing! Oh god, all those times where he’d been obviously pining and wanting things he couldn’t have and -

Victor smiles softly, clearly knowing what Yuuri was thinking about. “You weren’t ready then. I might enjoy teasing you, but completely humiliating you was just going to make you pull away from me.”

The panic and dread Yuuri felt gradually ebbed away, even then Victor was always thinking and worrying about him.

Victor lifts one of his hands to cup Yuuri’s cheek, his thumb brushing teasingly across his bottom lip. His soft smile then turned into a sharp grin, “I can’t say I minded though, it did make me quite hot and bothered knowing that you were always following my every move-”

“Victor!” Yuuri squawks, the remnants of embarrassment came back at full force, but he couldn’t hold back the bark of laughter that escaped him.

Soon, they were both laughing at how ridiculous this all was. Yuuri leant down and presses a lingering kiss on Victor’s mouth, relishing in the fact that he was actually allowed to do that now. He pulls back slowly before settling down again with his head resting on Victor’s chest. He flung one of his arms over Victor’s waist and shuffled closer. He glances up once he’s comfy and sees that Victor is still smiling down at him. Even after all this time, that expression still makes his heart flutter.

“You say that like I’ve taken my eyes off you since.” Yuuri says, their gaze still locked. Yuuri takes great pleasure at the rare blush he can see on Victor’s cheeks.

“Ahh~ you sure know how to sweet talk me, Yuuri,” Victor coos.

Yuuri rolls his eyes and grinned, “go to sleep, Vitya,”

“Hai, hai,” Victor replies in Japanese.

They settle back down, the quiet atmosphere from earlier returning.

Yuuri is happy, engaged to the man he loves, and knows exactly how Victor reacts to each intimate touch he’d ever daydreamed about.

Maybe later he’d even tell Victor about all the little details, too.

#victuri #victuuri #yuri on ice #my fic #this is the product of 9 months of writers block lmfaooo

[camillacarusi]

Click-by-Click commentary

Eft to Newt

La schermata iniziale è, per quanto semplice nella possibilità di scelte (Indica infatti soltanto il titolo del gioco, che rimarrà comunque sempre visibile sulla sinistra assieme al nome dell’autore, ed il tasto start), reso particolarmente simpatico dalla presenza dell’axolotl che interpreteremo nel corso del nostro gameplay.

You wake to the sound of your phone going off. Same as always. Slowly you climb out of bed. Your head is pounding, but you can't remember what you were doing last night. You put your hand to your forehead, surprised at how clammy it is, and head to the bathroom

L’inizio del gioco ci presenta una situazione perfettamente normale (“same as always”), per quanto siano presenti delle dissonanze con la routine che ci lasciano un po’ perplessi, e si accenna ad un possibile hang-over. Se si decide di proseguire cliccando sul telefono, il gioco ci rivela la nostra suoneria (“A Horse with no Name”), che verrà comunque menzionata più avanti. Scegliamo di dirigerci verso il bagno.

>>Bathroom

The bathroom is pitch dark. You blindly grope around looking for the faucet, lights or whatever else you can find to establish your bearings

Segue una descrizione di come ci muoviamo per il bagno scarsamente illuminato, tastando in giro alla ricerca di interruttori della luce.

>>Lights

You find the lightswitch and flip it. Finally you can see the bathroom around you. Your eyes are drawn to the mirror. >>Mirror

Mirror costituisce qui una scelta obbligata, che dà luogo ad una descrizione del nostro nuovo aspetto:

The face you see in front of you is a long, flat oval. Two beady eyes stare back at you, and a tiny mouth opens and closes. There is no nose on this pale pink face, but on either side of the head are a pair of bright red, feathery gills. It is the face of an axolotl salamander, and through the sleep and possible hang-over addled brain of yours, you slowly awaken to the idea that this is your own face. You need a few seconds to process if this is normal or not.

In seguito a quella che è la normalissima descrizione dell’aspetto di un axolotl, il gioco ci pone davanti alla prima scelta davvero importante del gioco, che segnerà uno svolgersi degli eventi completamente differente: In caso decideremo di scegliere “normal”, infatti, non ci mostreremo affatto stupiti di essere un axolotl, ed anzi, continueremo tranquillamente con la nostra vita. In caso contrario, invece, il risultato sarà il seguente:

>>Not The beady eyes in the mirror bulge slightly as you struggle to make sense of what you are seeing. How does a normal human suddenly transform into an albino salamander overnight? You think back to your earliest memory from the previous night in hopes of some clue. Back in the bedroom you can hear your phone switch from "A Horse With No Name" to "HangTough". Someone is trying to call you.

Scandalizzati dal nostro riflesso, possiamo decidere o di ripensare agli svolgimenti della notte precedente (o almeno, quanto siamo in grado di ricordare di essa), o di andare alla ricerca dell’insistente cellulare, che, come ci era stato fatto notare prima, sta suonando da qualche parte in camera nostra.

Decidendo che non sia meglio perdere tempo, ispeziono il cellulare

>>Call you You dash back into the bedroom as fast as you can, tearing through the piles of dirty clothes and junk on the floor. "Everybody's always worrying 'bout who's on toooop..."  They're going to hang up soon, you know it. "Thank god you answered! I was worried you wouldn't be able to hold the phone. I can barely manage myself! Something horrible has happened!" You recognize the voice as being that of your sister. "I woke up and Aaron was gone, in his place on the bed was a sea gull! I freaked and tried to smack it away, but when I raised my hand it was this huge... foot... thing was there and I smashed the bed in two!" She begins crying. "I'm some kind of elephant! I had to dial your number with my nose! Aaron panicked and flew into the window and now I think he's unconsious! This has been happening all over the city!"

Facciamo quindi la conoscenza di nostra sorella, che a quanto pare si è svegliata nel corpo di una specie di elefante; veniamo quindi a sapere che anche Aaron (Probabilmente il suo ragazzo, ora una pulcinella di mare) è diventato un animale, e che lo stesso incidente si è verificato in tutta quanta la città.

Decidiamo quindi di accendere la TV, in quanto scelta obbligata.

You turn on the news and see that she is correct. You turn on the TV to see the usual local anchor person replaced by a very distressed looking walrus. He flops around on his desk with a combination of dehydration and confusion. "Wadies anwd gentwelmen. In awl my yeaws ov wepa- wepoa- wepawowa- dowing news fings... I have neva in my wife seen somefing wike vis." "Awl ova the countwy, weguwar human beings have tuwned into animaws." You turn off the tv and go to the window.

Dopo che un tricheco che doveva un tempo essere un giornalista ci conferma ciò che nostra sorella ci aveva appena detto, ci affrettiamo verso la finestra, e cliccando sulla parola abbiamo accesso ad una descrizione di ciò che sta succedendo nel mondo esterno: Il caos più totale

Outside you see complete bedlam.

Cars have crashed as their drivers suddenly lost opposable thumbs. Exotic hoofed mammals and birds struggle to get out of the way. A terrified looking lion clutches its head in its pawsand rocks back and forth while an anteater desperately tries to pull a lobster from underneath a collapsed lamp-post. Whatever has happened to you seems to have effected the whole world. You can head outside to help the other transformed people if you want, but you also still have your sister on the line...

Qua il gioco presenta alcuni personaggi (Un Leone terrorizzato, ad esempio) con cui sarà possibile interagire in caso decidessimo di uscire ad aiutare le persone sulla strada.

La scelta di uscire o rimanere a telefono con tua sorella sarà, come la precedente riguardo al nostro aspetto, determinante per il finale che vorremo ottenere. Trovando poco probabile che un axolotl sia in grado di offrire aiuto a mammiferi grandi il triplo di lui, scelgo piuttosto di rimanere a telefono con mia sorella. Mentre giocavo mi ha fatto sorridere come il protagonista, pur un poco turbato all’inizio, non abbia poi battuto ciglio alla propria situazione, non mostrandosi in alcuno stato di isteria ma anzi, quasi tranquillo nelle sue nuove spoglie di animale acquatico.

>>Still have your sister on the line "Are you still there?" your sister is still freaked out, "I just checked Yahoo News! This has happened everywhere in the world! Every person they can find has been transformed into an animal! I need to get Aaron to a doctor. Please, stay safe!" She hangs up and you think about what you've just heard. Everyone in the entire world... in an instant humanity is gone. But everyone still seems to have retained their intelligence, despite the transformation. What could have done this... There is a sudden knock at the door. You open it and see a beautiful, definitely human, woman standing in the doorway. She looks down on you in obvious disappointment. "Rats, you too. Oh well, maybe the next apartment. I couldn't have done it to EVERYONE." She is starting to leave. You could try to talk to her and figure out what she knows about this.Or you could head outside to help the other transformed people.

Dopo aver salutato nostra sorella, che ci ha appena comunicato che la situazione è uguale in tutto il mondo, riflettiamo su cosa abbia mai potuto provocare una cosa simile, ma i nostri pensieri vengono interrotti da un bussare alla porta.

Dopo aver aperto, ci troviamo di fronte ad una bellissima donna, che sembra, con le sue parole, suggerire di saperne più di noi sull’origine della trasformazione (o addirittura ad esserne la responsabile diretta.) Abbiamo ancora la possibilità di uscire ad aiutare le persone, ma, incuriosita dal nuovo personaggio sulla scena, preferisco scegliere di parlarle (entrambe le scelte qui costituiscono un’azione, in quanto cambiano lo svolgimento della trama).

>>Talk to her

"Hmm? Oh fine. Yeah, I did this. My name is Circe. Maybe you've heard of me?" I have! Holy crap, I thought you were mythological No, I don't keep up to date on crazy jerks who turn everyone into animal, sorry

Ammettendo facilmente (e con la più totale noncuranza) di essere l’autrice di quella che è una vera e propria fattura, si rivela essere Circe, la strega che trasformò i compagni di Ulisse in maiali.

In realtà entrambe le scelte qua dovrebbero portare più o meno agli stessi risultati, visto e considerato che Circe sembrerà particolarmente loquace e disposta a rispondere alle nostre domande. Non volendo comunque mancare di rispetto ad una sorta di divinità (e temendo alla mia prima run una bad-ending in cui sarei stata trasformata in maiale), preferisco mostrarmi stupita e confessarle che la ritenevo un essere mitologico.

>>I have! Holy crap, I thought you were mythological

"Yes, most people do. I've tried to keep a low profile since the good old days in Greece. However, I was getting impatient with my search so I decided to speed things up with this spell" >>What spell?

La scelta è qui obbligata, e serve soltanto a mandare avanti la narrazione ed a spiegare le motivazioni di Circe. Non avendo provato ogni singola ending nel caso in cui si decida di uscire ad aiutare gli altri animali non posso esserne sicura, ma penso che questa route sia l’unica (fra quelle disponibili qualora non si consideri normale la nostra condizione di axolotl) a rivelare chi abbia trasformato gli esseri umani in animali.

"I've been looking for an appropriate romantic partner for some time. I'm not picky, I just want to meet someone I can spend eternity with who isn't deficient. Sadly, the same thing keeps happening. I meet a man or

woman who seems decent, we go out for awhile, but then they do or say something to reveal just how unworthy they really are.  So I transform them into a beast and move on. What else can I do? I'm a busy witch. This world is full of terrible, petty, small-minded people and I was getting tired of disappointment. That was when I realized my problem was I was searching too slowly. So I cast this enchantment over the world. I specified that anyone I couldn't love would be transformed into a beast. That way the work would be done for me! I'd just travel around until I found the people who hadn't been transformed, and know that I could date any one of them! ...But no one seems to have remained human... Do you have any idea how demoralizing that is? To know that there is no one in the world worthy of you? To be told through infallible, magical means that there is no one you could love? You selfish monsters! Maybe the problem isn't everyone else You're still human

Dopo che la donna si lancia in un lungo monologo sul perché abbia fatto ciò che ha fatto (e fondamentalmente rivelandoci che prova ancora non poco rancore verso Ulisse), assistiamo ad una demitizzazione della figura di Circe, che qui appare principalmente come una ragazza (donna?) frustrata e, come per altro è possibile chiamarla fra le scelte, egoista.

Inoltre la strega appare fin troppo concentrata su se stessa, tanto che dobbiamo quasi interrompere la sua sequela di domande retoriche per poter esprimere la nostra opinione. Decidendo di porre fine alle sue lamentele vittimiste, ma sempre cercando di non inimicarmela, le faccio notare la sua condizione di umanità.

>>You are still human

"So? What does THAT matter?"

Do you love yourself? You can't love others until you love yourself

Procedendo con questa scelta obbligata, spieghiamo a Circe una verità semplice ma importante:

>>Do you love yourself? You can't love others until you love yourself

 "What are you talking about!?" Circe looks down at you very cross. "That is pop psychology bs! So, what, you're saying that my spell transformed everyone on the planet into an animal because I don't 'love myself enough?' I'm AWESOME! I'm an all powerful witch! I... I deserve someone who knows that!" The spell specified only people you COULD love If you're so awesome why is no one else human?

Venendo accusati di essere, in pratica, degli psicologi da quattro soldi (Ed effettivamente la frase che abbiamo appena pronunciato sembra essere stata presa da un qualche libro di auto-aiuto), Circe sostiene poi di amarsi già, e non poco, e che necessita soltanto di qualcuno che sia in grado di capire quanto sia speciale come persona ed apprezzarla.

Non volendola stuzzicare più del dovuto (anche se entrambe le scelte portano a risultati simili), mi concentro sulla semantica: >>The spell specified only people you COULD love

 "I... Wait... you mean the spell only took into account people I could love right now, not people I could love in the future?"

>>Exactly! You cast the spell at a time when you aren't ready for a relationship, so no one remained human!

 "... That is possible. Magic can be tricky with wording like that... If you are correct, then that would mean the enchantment will change. People I could love will transform back to human when I am ready. The spell could still be a success!"

That selfish thinking is the problem! You need to undo the spell and work on yourself! So if I help you learn to love yourself and get ready for a relationship, everyone will turn back to normal?

Circa mi dà ragione sulla semantica e su come questa possa influire negativamente su un incantesimo, ma sembra determinata nel perseverare sulla sua posizione nonostante le nostre proteste. Considerando che da sola non ce la può fare e volendo ritornare umana il prima possibile, le offro il mio aiuto, mantenendo sempre il tono cordiale che ormai caratterizza questa mia partita, cercando di dissuaderla come possibile:

>>So if i help you learn to love yourself and get ready for a relationship, everyone will turn back to normal?

"How can YOU help?" I'm a licensed therapist

 "Are you really?" Yes I am No, but I'm not going to let her know that!

Questa è l’ultima scelta della route, che ci porta infatti all’epilogo. In realtà, entrambe le scelte consentiranno all’umanità di riprendere le proprie fattezze, ma, a seconda se decideremo di mentire alla strega o meno, quella che cambierà sarà la nostra fine: Infatti, qualora non avessimo affatto una laurea in psicologia, Circe non solo lo scoprirebbe, ma rimarremmo anche bloccati in forma di axolotl a leggere pdf sulla psicologia e a chiederci dove abbiamo sbagliato.

Volendo a questo punto ritornare umana, decido di aver dedicato la mia vita alla psicologia. >>Yes I am

You meet with Circe twice a week and begin discussing her past and her feelings about relationships. You help her unpack the anger from her relationship with Odysseus, her doomed tryst with Hermes, her brief affair with the artist Arachne (and how she managed to pin the poor girl's transformation on Athena). Over time, you help Circe find the confidence to care for herself. As you do, more and more people begin to transform back to human. The day soon comes when everyone is returned to their original form. Ironically, now that she feels healthier and capable of loving and being loved, Circe has decided to instead take a break from relationships. With her newfound confidence comes the realization that she doesn't need to force a relationship or define herself by others. Now content to let relationships develop naturally, Circe returns to her witchcraft business in Greece. The general public never learns the truth about what caused the transformations, or who helped save them. Eventually it is explained away as a strange, world-wide halucination. Perhaps brought about by an anarchist cell or a mutated neurovirus. But you know the truth. Congratulations! This is ending numero siete. Play again to find them all!

 Il finale indica come questa sia soltanto una delle possibili ending (davvero tante, anche solo a partire dalla nostra inusuale condizione di axolotl), e forse una delle migliori in quanto riporta tutto alla normalità. Ho trovato il gioco estremamente simpatico e divertente (Le frasi di Circe, che allude per altro alle passate relazioni con Odisseo, Ermes e, sorpresa, con Arachne), e la mia passione per la mitologia mi ha portata ad apprezzare particolarmente questa ending. Pur avendo provato altre routes, principalmente incuriosita da come si sarebbe svolta la storia se avessi confermato il mio essere nata axolotl, questa rimane infatti la mia preferita e quella, a mio avviso, più soddisfacente.

[artificialqueens]

Sk8er Girl CH2 (Trixya)- Squeaky Pink

Trixya!HS AU. Trixie is a nerdy, girly girl with bows and frills. Katya is a skater chick with scuffed knees and a  Flazéda attitude. When they’re assigned as lab partners, can they discover chemistry together?

Or: She was a sk8er girl. She said see you later girl. She wasn’t good enough for her (or was she?).

[AN: Pink Shrooms aka Squeaky Pink. We’re writing this together but alternating chapters and POVs. Pinky is Trixie’s POV and Squeaky is Katya’s POV. We wanted to write the ending of this chapter based on the actual experience of a friend. The goal was to emulate life it its honest, messy way.]

PLAYING HOOKY

“You have to stop crashing at our place,” Alaska snaps as she throws open the curtains of the trailer. Katya groans and rubs her eyes. Ugh, she can still taste last night’s booze.

“But I thought you liked it when I warmed your couch? Doesn’t it get lonely without me?” Katya yawns as she grabs some cereal from the drawer. Sharon Needles greets her with the middle finger as she comes out of the bedroom in a leather studded jacket.

“Nah, bitch. ‘Lasky and I like to fuck without you a fart’s distance away, listening to our every creak.”

“I’ll close my ears next time.”

“Girl, you live right next to the skate park. So why are you constantly come crawling over to this dumpster?”

“The scenic view,” Katya says and gestures out the window to the pile of rubber tires. Willam zooms past them. Then the whirlwind of a girl kicks open the door, cracks open a can of beer from the fridge, and raises her eyebrows at the three of them.

“So we gonna skate or you blonde fucks too busy finger-popping each others’ assholes?”

“You’re blonde too,” Alaska points out.

“That’s bottle-blonde,” Willam burps. “AKA the dick sucking brand of blonde. Y’all be the lesbian variety.”

“I’m bisexual, bitch,” Katya says, flicking Willam on the forehead and stealing her drink. It’s too early to be drinking, especially on a Wednesday, but it’s not the worst decision she has made this week.

She sighs in relief as the LA sun warms her back, the wind whips her hair, and wheels happily hum against the concrete. Katya’s still a little sore from her fall a couple of days ago, but it’s nothing an early morning spin can’t soothe.

They practice new tricks. Willam finds a new trick and sneaks off into the bushes with him. Alaska tries to ride on Sharon’s back, but they end up collapsing on top of each other, laughing like idiots. Katya smiles up at the blue sky. In the distance, she sees the yellow school bus chugging by, and her easy smile falls away.

“Aw, shit, gotta get my ass to math class before princi-PAL Ru-PAL suspends me,” Willam says and snaps her fingers. “Again.”

“I’m just gonna stay here,” Katya mumbles as her friends grab their backpacks.

Alaska throws a friendly hand over her shoulder: “Can I assssk you a question?”

“Yeah?”

“How are you going to graduate if you don’t show up? I’m surprised that you, pardon the expression, have the balls to skip so much school with that Barbie doll as your lab partner.”

Katya rubs her fingers over the bandaid. She bites her lip as she remembers how gently Trixie had applied it. Sure, Trixie had come off as a bitch during class, but Katya also saw a softer side to her that afternoon. Fuck, then those stupid tampons and Katya had run away…

They’d made Katya anxious. Her? Anxious? Groundbreaking. She wasn’t ready to come out to Trixie as trans. Although she definitely liked Trixie, they just weren’t that close. Trixie was an out and proud lesbian…so maybe being a part of the LGBT community she’d be more understanding? Katya shook her head; she didn’t want to risk it. It’s none of Trixie’s business, anyway.   

She sighs: Why bother, ‘Lasky? My brain’s full of small mice that run and run, but they’re going nowhere. You think my mouse-run brain’s gonna get me to college? Nah, fuck school knowledge. I should just take the GED exam so I can spend more time practicing my skating for competitions.“

Alaska squeezes her shoulder, but Willam gives the back of Katya’s helmet a firm smack.

“Now listen. Stop being stupid, stupid! Teachers want you to graduate, so they don’t gotta deal with yo ass. So just show up and show tits. Unless you have Michelle Visage, then wear a turtleneck. I’m saying this cause I love you, and I don’t want to see you sellin’ that ass on the side of road for a quarter when you’re worth a million bucks. Go to school. Get a diploma. Maybe get head from a hottie. And get the fuck over yourself.”

Katya laughs even as she shakes her head. God, why are her friends so amazing? Even though she’d rather spend the rest of the day here, perfecting her moves at the park, Katya goes with them to school.

Choices.

——

BACK TO SCHOOL (AGAIN)

First period is gym, and Katya’s secretly glad to trade in her helmet for a badminton racket. Coach Santino gives her a nod and tosses her a birdie. Most students think he’s a creep ever since that rumor that he took Violet Chachki to Red Lobster and ate her out, but he seems ok. Well, at least he doesn’t have a dildo wedged up his ass like Ms. Del Rio.

Katya plays a game with Alaska. Their shots fail to go over the net, but they’re giggling anyways. Gym has always been her favorite period. Besides lunch and study hall.

RIIIIIIIIIIIING.

Katya slumps into the back of English class, and they’re reading -surprise!- Shakespeare. More like Shakesqueer, Katya mouths to Sharon Needles. They fist bump. It’s Romeo and Juliet, and everyone groans except for this one girl with grey hair, Max, who’s a little too excited to do assigned reading. Oh, wait, she’s a theater kid, so of course she diddles herself to The Bard.

“It’s the most romantic play of all time! I can feel every line in my bosom,” Max sighs.

Bosom? Suuuure. Katya zones out and looks up a Sparknotes summary on her phone. Romeo is super in love with this Rosaline girl one day and then Juliet the next day? Wow, true love. Katya’s seen this exact drama played out behind the skate park bushes at least twice a week featuring less death and more herpes.

“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs,” Max reads with a pathetic sigh. Katya wants to stab her eye with her pencil.

Katya is relieved when English class finishes. “If I have to listen to that British girl jerking off to Romeo’s monologues for the rest of this week…I don’t think I’m coming back,” Katya groans as they walk out back to the dumpster. She lights up Sharon’s cigarette and then her own.

“Love is bullshit,” Sharon agrees as Alaska arrives; she offers the younger girl a puff.  

“You have a girlfriend though.”

“Nah, I gotta friend, who likes to fuck. Big difference. Romeo just wanted to stick it in, so he had to get married to do it to please the patriarchy. Worst thing that happened to us gays was when we started getting gay-married.”

“Are you sure?” Katya rolls her eyes. “Are you sure that’s the worst thing that’s happened to us gays in the last hundred years?”

“Ok, maybe not. But love is fake and marriage is an institution.”

Alaska snaps her fingers in agreement and gives Sharon Needles a peck on the cheek. Ugh, for two people who think love is fake, they look like they are going to elope and drive to Las Vegas any day now. They’re that one couple that everyone knows is a thing, but they pretend it’s not as serious as it is. Katya has a That’s-So-Raven moment where she sees their wedding invitations. Gross.

“I mean is capitalism’s corporate dick wedged deep inside our every sacred tradition, including marriage? Yes. Do I still think social equality for the LGBT community is important? Fuck yes.”

Katya and Sharon go back and forth. Katya wishes that school was like this- a real debate. She wishes that it wasn’t always regurgitating the teachers’ opinions for a grade. Then the bell rings and they head inside, but Katya stays to finish. As she deeply inhales the smoke, Katya rubs the Barbie Band-Aid once more. Why hasn’t she taken it off yet?

“Oh, good, look who decided to show up,” Ms. Del Rio deadpans.

“McDonald’s wasn’t hiring,” Katya jokes back as the entire class laughs. Laganja chirps ‘okuuurrr.’ Ms. Del Rio gives Katya a look like drop another test tube and you’ll wish they were hiring.

Katya forgot her lab manual, periodic table, and basically everything at home, so she just slinks down next to Trixie. She hates that her stomach twists up into a knot when the blonde smiles at her. Katya almost forgets how to smile back.

“I scared you off, huh? Sorry…I tend to have that kind effect on people,” Trixie softly whispers as Ms. Del Rio dims the lights.

Katya’s fingers brush against Trixie’s as they reach for their pencils. Katya may not believe in love, but she believes in the way her thighs clench with arousal at the touch. Electric. Trixie’s wearing a strapless dress, which is tight around her breasts, and Katya believes in the way her cock twitches at the sight.

Katya’s glad the lights are low enough to hide her heated face. What? She’s eighteen and horny, and Trixie Mattel is the world’s least likely girl to ever sleep with her. All things considered, Katya would do anything to bury her face between those thick thighs. 

She tries to slow her breathing and concentrate on the video about potassium. Nothing like ions to try and take your mind off of your growing erection. Katya shouldn’t have worn denim shorts this tight, but it’s too late to do anything but squirm in her seat with regret and arousal.

Trixie leans in, breath curling against Katya’s ear: “Did the Band-Aid help?”

“Not without the expert care of my favorite Barbie nurse,” Katya says, trying for flirty, but she kind of stumbles at the end and lands closer to awkward. Curse Trixie and her breasts and bows and brains! If only Katya had that many B’s on her report card, her parents might actually want her to come home. Wow, now she’s horny and anxious? An all time low.

“What made you come back to chemistry?”

My asshole friends.

“You,” Katya promises with a wink.

Trixie snorts and rolls her eyes. She’s so frustratingly superior, and Katya should hate her for that. It kind of turns her on though. Katya likes when Trixie sasses her with a single look, and, wow, thoughts like that aren’t helping with the boner situation. It’s hard -pun intended- to think when Trixie’s around.

“Sorry about the tampons.”

Katya flinches. Ok, erection effectively killed.

“Don’t mention it. No, like, please, don’t mention it.”

“I thought it was weird that you ran, but I talked to my friends and…well, Max has a chronically shallow vagina, and she says that tampons won’t fit. So, I don’t know you or your medical history, and if I somehow triggered you, I’m sorry. Really sorry.”

Thinking about Max’s chronically shallow vagina has made Katya very un-hard. Wow, that’s the first time that Katya has ever been thankful someone un-aroused her. Chemistry class has taken a turn for the weird. Just how Katya likes it.

“It’s ok,” she promises. “I promise not to run away from you again, if you help me figure out how to pass this class. Da?”

“Wait…you know Russian?”

“I don’t just know it– I am Russian. I was brought here when I was six, so I don’t have an accent. Why?”

“Because I want to go to college in Russia!” Trixie whispers. “Please help me, and I’ll reach-around to help you.”

Ok, now that just sounds vaguely like a sex act. Courtney twists around at her lab table and gives them both a knowing look.

“Fuck, yeah!”

Wow, that was not her inside voice. That wasn’t even her outside voice. That’s her in-the-basement jerking off to porn voice, and now everyone in the room is staring.

Ms. Del Rio click-clacks over to them, and Katya wants to cower under the lab table. The woman hands them both a slip for lunch detention. Trixie gasps as she’s given the pink slip, holding it like it’s covered in poisonous chemicals. 

“I see that I have a couple of clowns in my class this year, so let me repeat- all foolishness will earn you a detention slip. If you don’t want to behave, get packing.”

Katya doesn’t give a shit, but Trixie buries her face into her hands and doesn’t speak to her for the rest of the period. The lab is so simple even Katya manages to get it. Trixie’s face is blank, but Katya can see the hurt just under the surface. She wishes that she knew how to approach her or what to say. Once more, she’s reminded of what different worlds they come from.

“Hey, so do you still want to tutor-”

“You smell like cigarettes,” Trixie snaps and rushes out of the classroom, pink slip crumpled up in her hand.

Katya usually is the first to bolt after class, but she goes up to Ms. Del Rio instead: “I did everything! I cursed and came in late and- and please don’t punish Trixie for me being an idiot.”

“You were both talking. You both get detention. Next?”

“No! I wasn’t talking to Trixie I, uh, I was…talking to myself?” Katya stammers and it’s ridiculous even for her. “Please, don’t punish Trixie. She’s trying her best and school is so important to her-”

“Then she’ll go to lunch detention. I don’t believe in special treatment, Ms. Zamo. I’ll see you both in an hour,” Ms. Del Rio says, and her word is law. What is this? Prison?

Katya skips social studies to smoke behind the bleachers with Laganja. She rants about science class, omitting her erection, and questions why school is structured like the penal system. Laganja replies with her usual yes, mawma, preach, god.

Katya comes back, reeking even worse of smoke, and sits a lab table away from Trixie. She bought french fries and milk. Part of a balanced diet. Ms. Del Rio silently grades work at the front of the room, but then she leaves half way through to go to the bathroom.

“Pssstt,” Katya faux-whispers. “Sorry. Hey, are we even on the whole running away from each other thing?”

“Sure. It’s fine,” Trixie mutters, tearing her chicken nuggets in half and opening up her chem notes. That’s the least ‘fine’ fine Katya has ever heard. Fuuuuck, trust her to have a crush on the girl who’s in love with her school work. They’re in chemistry class, but this feels like a lesson in subtraction; Katya should just subtract her being from Trixie’s being. Maybe then Trixie wouldn’t look so miserable.

Katya sighs.

What bullshit did Shakespeare write? Love is smokey sighs? Accurate.

Katya wishes that she had asked Alaska and Sharon what to do. They were the most functional dysfunctional couple that she’d ever met. How did they manage it?

Remedial algebra passes in a blur of numbers. Tick tock. Katya wants to jump over the clock and punch Mr. Davis with a sock. That’s the gibberish that she texts Willam at least.

Suck his cock -W

U say that whenever anyone has a problem. Broken heart? Suck. Broken leg? Suck. Broken moral compass? Suck. -K

If it’s broken, sucking a cock will help. 10/10. User tested and reviewed. -W

How about if u…hurt someone’s feelings? -K

Hurt how? Fucked their mother kinda hurt? -W

Like if you accidentally got them into detention? And they don’t have a dick to potentially suck??? -K

Uhhhhhhhh, lick their clit -W

Metaphorically? -K

OK, MAX. -W

Hmm -W

Try ‘sorry’ -W

Tried that -K

Try it again but this time with your face in between her thighs ;) -W

Katya laughs and sends a gif of a burning hot dog because it feels right in this wiener driven context. She remembers when she came out as trans to her, and Willam was legit like ‘damn, you got the best of both worlds, Hannah Montana.’ Willam never failed to make her laugh.

She arrives at ninth period Intro to Psychology feeling like she’s lost ten years off her life. How has so much drama happened? On a Wednesday for fucks sake.

It’s started to lightly drizzle, and Katya jiggles her foot as she watches the rain streak down the window. Good thing she has a baseball bat, water bottle, and umbrella in her locker. It’s an ‘escape kit’ for a potential zombie apocalypse. Huh, guess Katya’s like Trixie in that way, always preparing for the worst.

“Write down five words that describe you and try to connect those different parts of your identities. Which one is most important to you? In this Unit of Psychology we’ll be exploring ourselves…”

Katya can think of a lot of words that describe her perfectly: skater, chronic under achiever, ADD, bisexual, trans, disappointment—

Disappointment. That’s the word that keeps repeating in her head as she doodles a tattoo design on the side of her paper. Her parents would never approve of a hammer and sickle tattoo, but Katya’s stopped living her life for them. She stopped the day she’d come out as trans ten years ago. Katya had already been wearing skirts around the house since she came to America, but, when she turned eight, Katya gave the middle finger to the world.

Now, she’s eighteen, and her middle finger is still firmly in the air. Her mother, Pat, understands, but her father doesn’t- he never did. He looks at her, silent, like she’s a mistake. Fuck. Katya excuses herself to go pee. She can’t think of words when her brain keeps racing around like a mouse from one thought crumb to the next. Katya stays in the bathroom stall longer than necessary, pressing her head into her hands.

By the time the bell rings, the rain is coming down hard. Katya can only see the yellow blur of buses and the distant green of trees. Alaska and Sharon are making out on top of her locker, and she pushes them off. 

“Ay, this is the thanks we get for letting you stay in our humble abode?” Sharon grumbles.

“Please keep all hands and tongues inside your space while near my locker. This is a 'No Slobber Zone.’ Bitch needs to keep dry.”

“Mhm, that’s not what Willam’s been texting,” Alaska says and raises her eyebrow. “Says you want to make someone wet…with apology tears.”

“Willam’s a Willam.”

“And you’re showing all the signs of being in looove. Sighing? Lying? Laganja told Gia who told Alyssa who told me that you begged Ms. Del Rio not to give Trixie Mattel detention. What’s really going on with you and Barbie, huh?”

“Nothing,” Katya lies and flushes. Wow, it’s a good thing she’s a skater and not a poker player. Her red cheeks are a dead give away.

———

LOST KITTEN

The buses have left by the time Katya rolls outside, red umbrella above her. The pavement is slippery, so Katya forces herself to slow down. She can’t go to the skate park, and, after this morning, she can’t go back to the trailer park. Heart sinking, Katya directs herself home.

Just as she’s turning the corner, Katya sees the saddest sight. Trixie is walking without an umbrella. Her bow is soggy. Her Moschino backpack is practically dragging on the ground.

“Need umbrella? Da?” Katya says with a faux-Russian accent.

Trixie pushes a strand of wet hair from her forehead and smiles: “My knight on a shining skateboard.”

Katya jumps off and tucks her board under her arm. Trixie’s hand brushes hers as she reaches up to hold the umbrella. Katya can’t help it when her cheeks heat up. Her? Blushing? Unheard of.

They walk in silence for a bit, and Katya knows that the events of this morning are still weighing heavily between them. Katya wishes she knew how to break through all of Trixie’s many shields, but she’s…so confusing. Somehow, the more confused Trixie makes her, the less Katya can stay away.

Rain, rain, don’t go away, Katya thinks as Trixie’s hip bumps against hers. You just saved this horrid day.

Katya opens her mouth to say that and then closes it. Everything she wants to say sounds dumb compared to how brilliant Trixie is. Everything might mean nothing when Trixie doesn’t know she’s trans. Why can’t she just say that? Just be the usual middle-finger-to-the-world girl that she is at home and with her friends?

Instead, Katya clears her throat. Pathetic. They pass by the town stores, and she wrinkles her nose at the reek of wet dog. There are too many strays in this town.

“Wait. Did you hear that?”

“What?” Katya stops, but there’s nothing but the rush of cars, splashing through puddles, and the roar of motorcycles. In the distance, she can hear the rumble of thunder. Trixie heads towards the dark alleyway, and Katya follows her.

“Look,” Trixie whispers, breathless.

Katya hears the most pathetic ‘meow’ as she leans down to see a cardboard box. On the outside it says ‘Lucky’s Treats,’ but, inside, there’s the most unlucky looking kitten. It sadly mewls as Trixie carefully reaches down.

“A kitten,” Trixie sighs as she hugs it to her breast. The motherly act makes Katya’s heart twist.

Suddenly, Katya can see the girl who fell to her knees to help her at the skate park. Trixie’s eyes are soft and lips parted when she looks up at Katya. How can one girl hide so much beauty?

“My mom is allergic to cats,” Trixie confesses as she looks up at her with pleading eyes.

“Well, I live in the basement cause my parents are allergic to me, so…yeah, come one, let’s sneak this kitty cat in.”

Trixie’s eyes light up, and she gratefully presses a kiss to Katya’s cheek. It might just be a friendly gesture, but Katya’s toes curl in her wet Converse. God, the sight of Trixie with that little kitten snuggled into her big chest is the best thing she’s seen all day. They debate over names before finally settling on ‘Lucky’ because that’s what it said on the side of the box. Besides, the little scrap of fur is lucky to have found them.

“Shhh,” Katya presses a finger to her lips as she slips in through the back door. They’re tracking water everywhere, so it will be obvious. Still, Katya’s main priority is helping Trixie and Lucky.

They give him milk and watch as he happily laps it up. Trixie’s head is in her hands, face still unguarded, as she happily watches. Trixie tells her a story about how she used to sneak into the animal shelter in the town over on Sundays, spend the whole day there, and tell her mom she was at church. Katya laughs; she thinks that she could listen to Trixie all day.

“Your turn,” Trixie says and nudges her knee. They’re pressed up close on the couch now, with their science homework spread out on the table. Fuck, she likes Trixie so much. She needs to be honest with her so that if Trixie pushes her away, it’ll be sooner rather than later. 

“When I was a little kid, I…came here from Russia. So I never felt like I fit in. Everyone saw some stranger, who didn’t speak how they spoke. Who didn’t look how they thought a- a “boy” should look.”

Trixie’s eyebrows shoot up and she covers her mouth. Then she laughs-

“Wait, you’re joking, right? You mean you were…a tomboy? Right?!”

“No, I…I’m transgender,” Katya says to her hands, afraid to look up at Trixie’s face.

Silence.

Lucky yawns and curls up on the carpet to sleep. The clock angrily ticks as Katya waits for Trixie to say something, anything. Oh god, everything had been going so great and then Katya had to fuck it up.

“That’s great,” Trixie says, face blank. “Great. Uh, I think I have to…my mom wants me to come home…”

“Right,” Katya says, blinking away tears.

Wow, this couldn’t have gone any worse.

“I’ll see you in class-”

“Wait, but- but how about we go over some of the Russian declensions? Or you show me the element symbols again-”

“See you in class,” Trixie repeats, gives her an awkward side hug, and then she’s gone. She leaves Katya shaken and alone. Katya feels like she’s been stripped naked, raw, and then left out in the rain. She curls up on the floor, cradling Lucky to her chest. Katya has already cried once today, and she hates that the tear count is this high.

Disappointment. That’s the word that keeps repeating in her head. Katya gets up, and, even though it’s too early to sleep, hides in bed. Katya buries her face into the pillow and screams. Louder. She can still see Trixie’s eyes, judging her.

Maybe it would have been better if Katya had gotten Laganja or Sasha fucking Belle for a lab partner. Then they could have just failed together. Katya wants to live in a world where she never met Trixie or opened up to her.

The kitten licks her hand, which is hanging over the edge of the bed.

Katya lifts Lucky up and cradles him to her chest.

“There are too many strays in this town,” Katya whispers. “You. Me. They left you in a box. They left me at the airport. I was six. How old are you, Lucky? They also told me I was ‘lucky’ to be taken in by such a nice, middle-class family. Why don’t I feel that way then? God, we’re both so alone, Lucky, so let’s…let’s be alone together? You and me. Just you and me against this world.”

#trixya #katya zamolodchikova #trixie mattel #squeaky #pinky #sk8er girl #cis!Trixie #trans!katya #high school au #lesbian au #angst #rpdr fanfiction #submission #tw transphobia #tw internalized transphobia #tw coming out