#do you expect me to just keep track of the passage of time with my brain???? THIS brain??????? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

The Tumblr app for Google Glass was released on May 16, 2013.

#do you expect me to just keep track of the passage of time with my brain???? THIS brain???????

crheativity · 2 months

Note

This is my first time requesting here, so...

Hi! Mind if I send in a request? Hear me out: the track club bois, the basketball club bois and the spelldrive club bois getting a kiss on the cheek from the reader after a successful game/track meet

A KISS FOR THE VICTOR

SUMMARY: After a successful club meet, you give them a kiss on the cheek! How do they react?

WARNINGS: Some of these may be out of character (I’m sorry I still have no clue how to write Jack, Leona and Floyd)

COMMENTS: Hi! Sorry it’s taken me so long to get to this request, there were a lot of boys hehe! I hope you don’t mind but since there are a lot I did shorter headcanons instead of a full thing for each boy. Also, since I have no experience writing kisses yet, I just did their reactions. I hope that’s okay! This is such a cute prompt though, thank you so much for requesting it!!

Also, if you enjoy this, please consider checking out my 200 followers event!

TRACK CLUB

Jack froze, his eyes going wide. He coughed into his fist and looked away, desperately trying to regain his composure. A herculean feat, considering how adorable you looked gazing up at him like that. He smiles at you hesitantly - a small, wavering smile, before his cheeks go pink and he turns away to talk to his teammates. Although it seems he does not care, a keen eye will notice how his ears won’t stop twitching and his tail keeps wagging.

Poor boy stopped responding immediately. He tripped on the sidewalk and almost fell over, he got so flustered. He can’t concentrate on anything now. He’s really sorry, he’s trying his best to listen to what you have to say, but his mind is replaying that kiss over and over… He can’t look you in the eye for the next few days. The moment he gets to crash in his room, he calls his mum. He briefly talked about his match, but mostly talked about you. How does he talk to you again after that?? He might be a little awkward over the next couple of days, but know that you’re constantly on his mind and in his heart.

BASKETBALL CLUB

Oh? You’re gonna give him a kiss? Well tough luck, he expects one every match from now on! So what if he doesn’t win? He wants one anyway! That’s how you can cheer him up after a match from now on! But in the moment, he’s picking you up and spinning you around. His face is very red - whether from the exercise or from you, it’s hard to tell, but the bright red ears are a dead giveaway. He’s not gonna forget what you did, and loves to remind you - in the hopes that you’ll do it again.

Time stops for him and he stares at you, dumbfounded. His face heats up and boy does he wish he had his hood right now. He can’t talk to you or face you for the next hour as he struggles to figure out what to say. He does however feel really smug. Everyone in the match did super well, but he was the only one who got a kiss! From you! Ha! …wait. He was the only one who got a kiss. From you. He’s confused and flustered all over again. Please confess to him before he goes insane.

Ehhh~? Shrimpy’s giving him a kiss? Only one on the cheek? Screw that, he’s gonna give you an actual kiss! And a squeeze to boot. The moment you give him a kiss he registers that kisses are okay in whatever relationship you and he have and boy is he gonna abuse that. What are the two of you? He doesn’t care as long as you don’t, but if he makes you uncomfortable then he wants to know. Like Ace, he’s going to be expecting one for every match now, but if you don’t give him a kiss for some reason that won’t stop him giving you one~!

SPELLDRIVE CLUB

You thought Ace was bad? Leona’s gonna be so much worse. He doesn’t tease you quite as much, but he’s going to be incredibly smug, both after the track meeting and for the next couple of weeks after. Please be prepared for suddenly more Leona in your life, as the moment you press a kiss to his cheek he’s going to take that as a rite of passage to be almost constantly around you. He will encourage you to ditch class with him as much as possible. He just wants to spend more time with you now, and after that kiss, surely that means you want that too, right?

Ruggie nervously laughs it off, his cheeks going bright pink as he fumbles for something to say. He honestly, genuinely wasn’t expecting it - you managed to catch him so off guard that he doesn’t quite know how to act. Ah, but he’s not upset! He’s exactly the opposite of that, if anything. Elated, maybe? Who cares, his crush just kissed him! He is going to be bragging so hard to Leona and anyone who’ll listen afterwards. Maybe he’ll start giving you a couple more snacks - with a kiss as payment of course! Shishishi.

LET’S FREAKING GOOO. wait. Did you just kiss me-? Epel was in such a good mood after his match that his brain didn’t fully register that you just kissed him. He takes a break from celebrating for a moment to double check. When you confirm that yes, in fact, you did kiss him, his cheeks go apple red and he starts celebrating way harder. Calm down? He can’t calm down, this is the best day of his life! He won a match and got a kiss from a cutie to boot! The only thing that makes him calm down a little is Vil threatening to smack him with his shoe.

♥Thank you for reading!! I hope you enjoyed it!!♥

1K notes · View notes

tgcg · 5 months

Text

listen here on youtube

so first of all thanks for 3,000 followers. holy shit. thats 3000 more than i expected so thanks

i really didnt think this blog would get to this point when i made it. and im never gonna get over how kind and encouraging you guys have been for me. unending respect & gratitude guys.

we're closin in on the end of 2023 now and im resolving to keep doing right by you guys and having fun running this blog with yall 🙂 thanks forever

i wanted to do somethin special for it and i thought id share one of my biggest inspirations for interpretin davekat. which is music i think they'd like. when you routinely blast davekat doodles onto mspaint canvases at 2am you need a backing track and these are common choices for me

3 songs for each dude for 3k fwlrs. man thats crazy...

tracklist + lil commentary under readmore

dave zone

1... 21st century pop song -- hymie's basement

this whole album i associate with dave a lot even tho its very depresse mode. i have way too many plays on this song. that beat is so real.

2... vice principal -- why?

that record scratch bit got me bouncing&trouncing manm. ive been listening to this song since i was a lil shitty kid. this voice is my headcanon voice for dave

3... re-do -- modern baseball

get a load of them lyrics son. passage of time, dinosaurs, trouble sleeping, watching movies, fear of death, love of life. recent fave, big fave.

KARKAT ZONE

4... i see failure -- antarctigo vespucci

another new beat 4 me but damn its an anthem. love dudes who shout. self fulfilling prophecies of relationship failure are peak karkat 2 me

5... the minors -- kawai sprite

i have never played friday night funky. i found this album by pure fuckin chance and its great, if you like this song give it a shot. sounds adult swim-y. i associate a lot of songs from this album with kk its a very distinct sound that i just connect with him fsr. the bittersweet sad anger of it

6... exactly where i'm at -- ween

this is a certified karkat classic 4 me. "look at yourself your lips are like 2 flabs of fat, they go front and back and flappity flappity flap". one of my fave things about ween is they have really vivid lyrics and rlly consistently hit this cool spacey, semi-aquatic vibe. i think this is because of drugs that they are awesome, so lets all do more druggs today

#davekat #dave strider #karkat vantas #homestuck #playlist #goddamn... take care everyone

568 notes · View notes

eoieopda · 1 year

Note

JADE! Congrats on 1K!!! As a treat, can we have NFWMB (Hozier) smut with Jimin and either brat or dom!reader? PM sent for age verification <3

me, rubbing my hands together like a mischievous lil raccoon upon receiving this. you get me, anon. tbh i’m not going to track the word count, so this may very well be way longer than a drabble should be 😂 this is going to be in jimin’s pov due to the nature of the lyrics. also it’s in present tense, which i literally never do!

listen here.

cw: SMUT (18+ - minors dni or you’re grounded!) body worshipping, unprotected sex, domme!reader, sub!jimin, thigh riding, oral sex (f receiving), face sitting, orgasm denial, mild degradation, cockwarming, masturbation (f,) jimin is p obsessed with you so you can decide for yourself whether it’s a toxic relationship dynamic or he’s just v deep in sub space & completely in love.

if i was born as a blackthorn tree / i’d wanna be held by you / felled by you / fuel the pyre of your enemies

When Jimin walks into the bedroom, you’re sitting at the small, velvet stool in front of your vanity. One elbow rests daintily on the ivory top. The fingers of that adjoining hand hold dark waves back at your ear. You don’t look up, or otherwise acknowledge his presence, but he can’t blame you.

He wouldn’t take his eyes of you, either.

The diamond earrings he bought for you swing ever-so-slightly with your subtle movements. Catching the light emanating from the mirror’s frame, they send a flurry of sparkling, soft white across the expanse of your neck. It twinkles up to the curve of your jaw, now even sharper with your chin angled just so towards your reflection.

Your eyes eventually flicker over to study him through the glass. He doesn’t need to see it to know it; he feels your gaze burning white hot on his skin. No, he was too preoccupied with your other hand - the one holding that tube of Russian Red, swiping it slowly and expertly over your plush lips.

Do you know? Do you have any idea of the power you hold? Not just over him, but anywhere - any time. One look from you could very well split the Earth into pieces; level the entire city. And if you ever did, he’d lay his body down over the cracks like a bridge to give you safe passage through the rubble.

There’s a small twitch at the corner of your perfect mouth that tells him yes, you absolutely know what effect you have on him. Any doubts he may have had drop dead at his feet when you your eyes trail downward from his face to the erection making itself known behind the grey fabric of his slacks.

“Is it really that easy?” Your laugh is pure ice, but it scorches all the same. He swallows hard - he has no response - and then you coo at him, “Poor baby. It must hurt to want me this badly, huh?”

Yes.

Yes, yes, yes.

It aches.

But nothing he could think of to say would matter much at all. All he wanted was whatever you did, even if that meant he wouldn’t spend a second inside of you.

He’d light himself on fire to keep you warm.

When you unexpectedly stand from your seat, your hair spills over your bare shoulder. The thin strap of your dress - the one you’ll ask him to tighten, he’s sure, when you’re done with him - follows suit off the edge.

You turn to face him and you may as well have turned him to stone. Waiting so patiently for direction, he’ll go wherever you want him to. Your side, outside, straight to hell.

“Then lay down, pretty baby,” you gesture to the nearby bed with a manicured finger. Your nails are sharp, matching the glint in your eye. “Rest that empty head on the pillows.”

He’s too eager.

Has he ever moved so quickly?

When your directive has been carried out to the letter, he blinks up at you. Not expectant, but confused.

Why are you still so far away?

“Aren’t you coming, love?” He asks shyly, truly afraid that you’ll say no. It sounds more like a whine than a question, but for you, he’s never been too proud to beg.

You’re sauntering over to him when you reply and the wickedness of your smirk stings, “I intend to.” Carefully, you hike up the hem of your dress and climb atop the mattress. You settle with one leg on either side of his slightly bent knee. “Jury’s still out on you, though.”

His entire body shudders when your palms press against his abdominal muscles, smoothing up the fabric of his white button-up only to slide back down again. As you paralyze him with your touch, you swirl your hips against his thigh.

Fuck.

You lean in and whisper with red lips hovering close to his ear, “There’s nothing between my cunt and your trousers.” You exhale intoxicating heat against his skin as you grind against him a second time. “I’m wet enough to ruin them, baby. Can you feel it?”

His whole body jolts when you do it again, this time with your teeth nicking his lobe. Your pointed acrylic nails rake down his neck as his head lulls back.

Fuck.

“I said -“ you press yourself down more forcefully onto his thigh. His muscle tenses involuntarily underneath you; the dampened fabric chills his impossibly warm skin. You continue pleasuring yourself as you repeat between heavy breaths, “Can you feel it?”

The stain your arousal is leaving on his thigh matches the spot of pre-cum seeping through the crotch of his slacks. A helpless whimper flees from his mouth as you fuck yourself faster against his taut quadricep. Your knee just barely brushes against his cock, but it’s touch enough to make him stammer, “Y-yes.”

Without thinking, he releases the duvet he’s clinging to and brings his hands to rest on your bare legs. At this, you raise your own hand and grip his flushed cheeks, pushing his lips into a pathetic pout and guiding him to sit upright. “Oh, my beautiful, brainless boy - do you want to touch me?”

Breathless and at a loss for words, all he can give is a frantic nod. To touch you is all he ever wants; to worship like a dog at your altar; to give you his best and all the rest of him, too. You could have his still-beating heart if you gave him a moment to pry it from his chest. You had his soul wrapped around your finger already.

“You want to taste me,” you moan with your whole, heaving chest as your feverish pace slows. It isn’t a question because you already know the answer. You then stop your movements entirely and the sudden stillness is jarring - until your hands push hard against his chest. As his head hits the pillows, you smirk at his startled gasp, “Then don’t waste a drop.”

You grip the bottom of your dress with one hand and shimmy it up to be held at your waist. Simultaneously, you use your other hand to steady yourself.

You ascend over him easily until your knees rest at either side of his head. Even without your core pressed at his mouth - or your thighs squeezing tight against his head - he struggles to catch his breath.

He wasn’t asked for his thoughts, but they spill out anyway. He couldn’t keep them to himself, not when the glistening slick above him made his mouth water. It was a whisper - no, a prayer: “You’re perfect, every part of you. Please, baby, let me taste you.”

When you graciously oblige and begin to lower yourself onto him, he sucks in a breath. He doesn’t care if he suffocates, but he refuses to disappoint you.

His tongue finds your clit easily, and he greets it with little kitten licks while his hands slide up your naked thighs to grip your hips. Gently, he pulls you even closer; any distance - even microscopic - is too much to bear.

He feels you shiver, hears your faint mewl when his lips encircle that swollen bud of nerves. You gasp at the pressure of his suckling mouth; and you grind against the tip of his tongue as it flicks slowly over his target.

Thighs clenching against his head, you jolt when he releases your clit with an obscene, wet pop. And when the flat of his insatiable tongue laps up your arousal, you hiss through gritted teeth, “I knew there had to be a purpose for that fucking mouth. Not completely useless, huh? Are you my little fuck toy, baby?”

His eager reply darts from between his lips, through yours, and penetrates your hole. You gasp at the intrusion and sink further down onto him whether or not you mean to. He doesn’t mind; you could crush him and his last breath would be spent thanking you for it.

Every time the tip of his tongue enters you, it flips a switch. If he keeps going, he knows, your climax will rip through you like a power surge. Crackling, electrifying, and paralyzing.

Your shuddered moans increase in frequency while the pace of your writhing intensifies. He wants you to unravel into his open mouth. His dutiful ministrations, interrupted only by brief gasps for air, tell you as much.

The cry that rings out when you orgasm hits him like a thunder clap. It rumbles through his bones and unsettles every already-dizzy part of him further. He doesn’t let up until you decide that you can’t take his continued assault anymore.

Pulling yourself off him, you press up on your knees only to sit back against his chest. His gaze can’t decide between your sodden cunt as it drips onto his shirt, or your flushed face. In the end, it’s the painted lips that win.

If he had to kill a man just to kiss you, someone wiser would have to talk him out of doing so.

You reach backwards once you catch your breath and then you catch his swollen dick in your hand. You squeeze suddenly, firmly - but not cruelly - and he bucks against your touch.

Shit, shit, shit.

“Do you deserve a reward?” Your tone is innocent but the tilt of your head and your patronizing doe eyes paint a different picture. He doesn’t know how to traverse this minefield without losing a limb, so he says nothing.

You squeeze him tighter and he can’t keep from groaning, thrusting his head back against the pillow, screwing his eyes shut.

You perfect, torturous thing. How did you end up in this bed with him, so far from heaven? Did you fall like Lucifer, you beautiful devil?

His eyes fly open when your presence on his chest disappears. When they re-focus, you’re shifting backwards down the length of his torso, stopping to loom over his pelvis. His cock twitches, so acutely aware of its proximity to you.

You say nothing as you undo his belt. You stay silent when you slide it through the loops of his slacks and cast it aside. When you address his button and zipper, all he hears is his pulse hammering in his ears.

The warmth of your fingertips only graces him briefly - in the moment before you sink down onto his length without hesitation. He moans loudly when you bottom out in an instant, velvet walls gripping tight.

The only move you make is to slip your hand between your spread legs. Your middle finger swirls over your clit, but you’re otherwise still with his cock buried deep in your wet heat.

He’s throbbing inside you despite it all; he aches so badly for friction you won’t share. It’s just you, the pad of your fingertip, and the gaze you have handcuffed to his.

Your eyes struggle to remain open as your nimble finger inches you closer to your next orgasm. All he can do is watch as your lids flutter shut. Withstand the way your cunt squeezes him tighter and tighter.

Feeling you come around him would’ve been enough for him to follow you off that ledge, but mere moments before he could catch up, you quickly slide off of him.

Oh, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts to love you enough to let you slip away like this.

His parted mouth fails to keep his whimpering breaths a secret. Your hand - still wet with your own juices - returns to his face. There you capture his jaw in the space between your thumb and index finger.

When you lean in with puckered lips, he thinks you might finally kiss him. Please, for the love of god, just kiss him. And you do, but not where he craves it.

You slink away, leaving devastation on his face and a bright red stain on his crisp, white collar. With satisfaction twinkling in your eyes, you hum, “There. Ain’t you my baby?”

He is, he is, he is, he is.

283 notes · View notes

axieta · 1 year

Text

Hungry eyes

Chapter 8

Henry Winter x reader

|An eye for an eye|

I never got to know what real love feels like. Not in the empiric, soul-bonding way some of us do. I never fell in love, never threw myself into the emotion with hunger and abandon Shakespeare would want to describe, nor did I find my other half, and my appreciation of physical beauty had never developed into the admiration of a soul, not really. But I got to know what it looks like.

I watched it simmer like a small coal in the slowly dying fire, blazing like the wild fires of Mount Olympus, engulfing but at the same time strangely warming. Heating smiles and cheeks, glimmering in the throwaway glances. Or blooming slowly, spreading its soft, petals, blushing delightfully in the warm array of feelings that fertilised it.

I saw it in the pale hands conjoined, twisted, one inside of the other, when their proprietaries thought no one was looking. I saw it in the soft, quick pecks on lips, on cheeks, on foreheads, and in the rushed adjustment of crooked glasses by a hand too small and too slim to be their owner.

I heard it in the hushed giggles, soft and melodic like the thawing creaks of Parnassus, and the murmurous baritone going lazily through the passages of Argonautica Orphica.

I knew it was love, despite never experiencing it myself. How could I not? One look at those tangled hands, flushed cheeks, relaxed figures… one note of those soft laughs… one glance at the creatures of my interest, children of Helios, dreadful idols with lovely hair and human voices, and there was no denying it. No matter how deep down they pushed it, how well they thought they were covering their tracks. I was the hound thirsty for all that, feral for just the slightest morsel of that warmth, seeking them and constantly on the look-out.

And what I had discovered is that L-O-V-E is not an emotion in itself, rather it is a state one might find themselves in. A complicated arras of emotions, behaviours and interactions woven larger and tighter by those tangled in its threads. It is happiness, elation, impatient expectancy, worry, idyllic calm. And that is the good part of love. After all, all good cannot exist in its purest form alone. To every good notion, there is its bad counterpart. Even in love. Dialectical monism, some may call it. I call it life. So, soon enough, the other emotions – wrath, anger, despair, hurt – they all followed suit. After those, I discovered that love, this crystal pure tapestry I admired so, can get ugly, and that to love truly, and most ardently is to endure this engulfing darkness and stop your loved ones from crossing one too many lines. It is the worry for them that keeps the flame of love alive, that gives it the gas-stained, blue tint. To let the fire completely consume you and be wholly miserable afterwards. My two friends unfortunately taught me that. Their love soured, rotted, bitten and diminished by the things Henry had done to keep it alive. It was not my pain to hold, and yet the hurt that comes with the thought of that sorrowful affair, drabs me with tiresome regularity. It died, that love, the second Henry decided what to do with Bunny. But for some time, for those few blessed weeks I was content to watch and soak in the exuberant light of purest, most delicate kind of love.

In the weeks following our excursion to the beach I witnessed some secretive behaviour from both Henry and her. Suddenly, the two of them were too busy to do anything. Sunday dinners at Charles and Camilla’s? No can do. Studying together at the library? Sorry. Quick visit at Francis’? We’re preoccupied. And always that damned ‘We’. Never singular ‘I’ from those two, always plural and unified.

It had become so excessive that we, as the whole class, saw them only during the lessons with Julian. And even then, they seemed quizzically distant. They kept to themselves, going as far as to cunningly changing places, Forcing Francis out to the back of the class, and only working with each other. Inseparable, the two of them seemed even more unachievable, unapproachable for us than ever before. There was this unexplainable glow about them, as if their hair became lighter, their eyes brighter, minds clearer. As if for hundred generations they had been walking the world, drowsy and dull, idle and at their ease, until they stumbled upon that beach and suddenly, like in Symposium, they came to be one, humans before they became humans. Four arms, four legs, and no faces for us to see, for they always stayed turned towards the other.

One time, when I was walking to the class, I saw them. Two dark blurs against the backdrop of white. Rare, in those weeks, the sight of them. Like a pair of white ravens glimmering amongst trunks of a forest. So, I had to stop, take a look at them. Safe in the cover of arches of loggia I was strolling through, I hid myself amongst the shadows, an undetectable spectator.

The weather was harsh. The biting cold ready to freeze off any uncovered parts of human body. In my case, it was the nose that suffered the most. Red, furiously maroon, only after a couple of minutes on free air. Not even the sharp, white light of the winter sun offered any respite from all that cold. It seemed to be mocking all the people beneath it, it shined, brighter and stronger that in any other day. And the sky was clear, a sharp blue of a polished sapphire, not a cloud staining its Persian tile. In the parabolic curves of the outside corridor’s arches, it might’ve looked like a silky fabric spread flat between the darkened stones. The ground beneath it seemed to be moving, as the sun flexed in the white, waved surface, bejewelling the snow with a trembling spark of diamonds. The beauty of that landscape, the wonderful colours of regal jewels and the absolute, charming waviness of it all should indicate a temperature fitting for such a charming view, closer in its degrees to the feeling it evoked in the chest of an observer. But no. the cold bit with a ferociousness comparable to the ninth circle of hell.

But Henry and she, they did not seem to be bothered at all by all that. Neither the cold nor the ascetic landscape reigning over them could ever scare them away, discourage from doing whatever they were doing. Not when heat came off their bodies in heaps of white vapour, swirling around their bodies, their breaths mingling as one in the still air. The fume coming off her lit cigarette almost indistinguishable amongst the white haze of their delighted whispers.

They were hopping over ice ridges, swift and agile, cutting through the white plain of the field, kicking up the powdery snow. She led the two-man procession, dragging Henry behind her, black, thick scarf hanging from her extended hand. I could not see Henry’s face, but judging by his swooping, resilient walk, every fibre of his body was hell-bent on catching up to her. He shouted, out of breath in his pursuit after her. Oddly enough, I could not hear any trace of contempt or irritation that would usually accompany him. More than anything, the words that came out of his mouth flew in a clear tone of amusement.

‘Oh, you little minx! How stubborn can you be? Come, put it on this instant!’

‘Like hell you’ll force me to do that!’

Volatile as ever, she jumped out of his grasp and right into a frozen cap of snow. White powder flew up and glimmered in the noon sun like thousands of tiny diamonds, though I could swear on my life, that her feet had never touched the ground. It must’ve amused her, because she carried on through the knee-high, white barrier, kicking her feet high, high to her chest, giggling deliriously while doing so. Soon enough, the floating snow settled onto her, clung to her loose hair and the dark wool of her coat, and if anyone cared to look her way in that moment, they would probably think that a small yeti somehow got onto the perimeters of Hampden and the tall, limping fellow chasing after it was some kind of crazed scientist, persistent to drag the creature to his laboratory.

And far from crazed Henry wasn’t. Covered in a thin sheet of snow as well, he tore through the infinite white after her with a mad grin on his lips. His teeth shined dangerously as he screamed after her in Spanish, profanities, even I do not feel comfortable sharing. Finally, he caught up to her, after all it was not as if she really tried her hardest to get away from him, and with a ferocious, triumphal yelp he threw himself at her, tackling her to the plush hills of snow. The tackle was in every bit of it, professional. Not like I would see on the small field stretched before my old high school, no. It carried impact, stile, technique. The way he tensed before the jump, and then loosened when hitting her body with his, not to hurt her too much. Or the way his arm wrapped skilfully around her waist, and then the other, just around her neck, the palm of his hand cautiously protecting her cranium, as if he had done that move a hundred times before. Oh, and the fall! How he landed not on her, but rather chose to lighten the fall with his knees, ending the whole sequence hovering over her. It all screamed effortless beauty. Well, it would, if moments after, she wouldn’t manage to tilt him over, and onto his back. Now she howled in victory, saddling his chest like an experienced jockey. Henry huffed and leaned back into the snow, resigned, as she waved the scarf, still in her hand, before him, its fringes teasing his nose.

‘Never gonna win with me! Never gonna win! Never, ever!’ She laughed in a sing-song voice. Henry only rolled his eyes, like one might roll their eyes at a petulant child, and with no effort he sprung up, sending her once again to the ground. ‘Oh, come on, you brute!’

And then, with a terribly delighted shriek, she disappeared underneath the dark folds of Henry’s coat. He covered her with his whole body, engulfing her shrill form into himself as if to introduce her into his system. Henry made sure that she didn’t lay in snow for too long, wrapping the flaps of his coat around her, cocooning her further. Laughter shook this newfound dual species of man, as her legs kicked the tail of his coat up in a miserably unspectacular show of defiance. Only her hand managed to slip out of that smothering mass of Henry and like the last wave that a man drowning throws into the air, she swung the wool scarf far away from them. It swayed in the air and then plopped on the snow, not even disturbing its white, parabolic surface. But that only made him laugh even harder. Sliding down the twisted spiral of giggles, his arms snaked around her torso and with one hard push he sent them both sliding up, and forward. His nimble hand swiped it right out of the reach of her outstretched fingers. Quick and precise like the hand that deals with cards he wrapped one end around his wrist and then proceeded to swirl it around her neck. She never left the safe confines of the cocoon, nor did a singular snowflake fall on her, that’s how he was careful with her.

‘Listen here to me! I’ve just heard that someone died in the city! A student! Frozen to death during the night! If you’re not careful you might end up just like him!’

One, two, three loops around her neck he spun, until the scarf covered completely and tightly all off her neck and a part of her mouth, so her screams of protest came out inaudible and muffled.

‘No! No! It scratches!’

She tossed and turned as if possessed, and to be honest, they made a brilliant match in that department, because he as well, giggled like a madman.

‘Better to be scratched a bit than to freeze to death, now don’t be stupid and keep it on! Or do you want Khione to bite your ears off?’

She struggled then some more but with no certain conviction.

‘No, no. Stop, ahhh, you scooped in snow with it.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

His nose, mindlessly circling her cheek and temple, drafting small arches over her brow seemed to make her docile, good. Frost kissed their faces and glossed them, over with shimmering, rosy colours.

‘I, personally, like you better alive.’ His boyish, thin lips lingered for a while on her brow. ‘And warm.’ Then on her nose. The motion of that mouth was languid, decelerated, sure of possessing all the time in the world, not even bothered to purse and grace her skin with a full-fledged kiss, just with slow feline nudges. ‘And healthy.’ His arms travelled up to her head. They encased her from above and successfully shielded her face as he, and I was sure of it, dipped down to capture her mouth with his. ‘With ears.’ She giggled slightly into the kiss, as did he, their lips smoothing over each other, gazes bore into the depth of the other.

I stared at them from my agreeable distance. My mind completely numb, soaking in that dreamy imaginary. I studied their bodies, their hands, the subtle play of light and shadows breaking over Henry’s coat. The giggle that his fingers elicited from her when he rubbed her earlobes between index and the thumb was like the purest symphony to me. Carmen of all laughs.

But I was too scared, or maybe too timid to come even an inch closer. That was an intimate, although a public moment, and watching it like that, from deep within the shadows gave me a strange, unnerving feeling. It settled on my nape like dew and dripped from my pits, down my arms in cold streaks of sweat. I backed away, one step after the other, very slowly, not to make any noise. I found out, more than a week before, that stealth was my biggest asset and greatest friend. I managed to escape without a hitch, blended back into my solitary, murky reality, to my arches and cold stone. But as soon as I averted my gaze I instantly longed for their light. For the warmth they shared between each other, and the smiles dedicated only to the other, impossible to see for an outsider. So even though I felt ashamed of snooping on them like that, spying even, for nothing more than my own pleasure, there was this pathological need, burrowed deep inside of me to continue my, as she called it many times before, Tom-peeping, or peep-tomming, I forget. I just needed to… I don’t know… see them, I guess.

From that moment on the thoughts of them plagued me day and night like an infection, inflamed, festering wounds in my soul they kept me up, sweaty, with my brows furrowed as I laid tangled in my bedding. It physically hurt to long for them so, even when they did not long for me at all.

There was no remedy for my strange illness. No antidote, but them.

Them, them, them. That plural, inseparable pronoun rattled about my skull all the time. And I couldn’t help myself. I started following them.

Once I had spent close to forty minutes lurking outside of her lecture halls, hunched over, tucked into myself on one of the benches like a hen perched in her coop, anxious with the anticipation of my foxy executor. Not once in the span of those forty minutes did I question my actions, not once had the thought occurred to me that what I was doing bordered on insane or stalkish. In all truth, I hadn’t thought at all. Without them, without their proximity, their stark image together, I was non-existent, vacuous in my whole demeanour. Suspension overtook me in detail and overview. And only when she emerged from the building, a gemstone in the grey, muddy mass of other, rather dim-looking students, and he, right behind her, a shadow, I let out a breath I had no apparent idea I was holding in. I sunk into the darkness of the eve, as they passed me by and then followed their careful steps with a longing stare. Sunken into the shadows I was invisible to them.

Contrary to that snowy morning, on which I spotted them in the commons, the evening was gloomy and dark, covered with an ashen layer of drizzle. The day before was quite warm, at least in the general perception of winter, and some of the snow happened to melt. In the night the temperatures dropped drastically, and the thaw froze over the cobble-stoned paths of Hampden. The thick, misty shell of ice held on strong throughout the day and when the drizzle came, the already slippery surface turned murderous. I had already seen a few people trip and fall on the section of the pavement. I had heard many shrieks of pain and unflattering nosegays of curses already, but it never occurred to me that one of them could ever succumb to the fate similar to our peers. After all, in my mind, the both of them, at all times glided at least half an inch over the surface of the earth. All that conviction crumbled to the ground with a singular slip of her feet. Suddenly, the air broke with a miserable squint of her soles on the ice. With face frozen in utter surprise and a scream half-dead on her tongue she swung back, her body bending as if boneless. Horror befell me, but before I could do anything, anything at all, Henry stepped in. The unmovable force that he was, he caught her elbow half-swing and yanked her up, into a standing position. He didn’t even look in her direction, as if what he did just then was but a non-emphatic activity, a slip of a mind. A natural, almost tired gesture. She slid towards him with the forced of his pull and stopped just at his side. His hand fell from her elbow to tether into hers.

‘Videte,’ I heard him huffing a small laugh. She just shook her head at that, but I could see the relief slowly blooming on her features. The whole affair, short and in that shortness, terrifyingly dangerous, seemed to have no effect on them whatsoever, as if the act – of her slipping, falling to the ground, and him catching her without a hitch – was a simple regularity in their lives. That made me think, her limpness when she fell stood as a testament of her sure helplessness in that situation, or rather pure sureness that no matter what happened, he was there to catch her. Maybe it was not something practiced between them, but a natural reaction in the closeness they shared. The trust that they build and felt allowed her to fall like that, unpreoccupied and carefree, as well as it forced him to react. I was sure, if he was the one to slip, she would sure as hell try and uphold his towering figure.

‘It’s those new shoes. God damn it, I need to finally break them in.’

Henry did not let go of her hand as they went on, clearly unsure of his footing as well now, he opted on anchoring himself on her, as she did on him, and supporting one another like that they carried on forward with tiny, penguin steps. Their hands joined together pulsed slowly one in the other, swayed to the rhythm of their steps like a little, pale heart.

There is this painting – Nighthawks – if I remember correctly. Edward Hopper was the painter’s name, I think. I don’t remember much from the modern art class I took in high school. Truth be told, I only attended that particular lecture, simply for the fact that, as I had heard from someone, the professor handed out credits as if they were fresh buns. And that was true. All you had to do, was attend the class, and bam! – a credit. I never paid much attention to the classes having no deeper interest in contemporary art as presented, I usually took the extra hour as an opportunity to do my overdue homework, or study for upcoming quizzes. But during one of those dull lectures, the professor showed us that painting. Nighthawks. I remember raising my head then, disoriented and compelled to do so by some foreign, unknown force, and zeroing in on the old, yellow wall, on which he was projecting his presentation. Dark mass of bottle green and copper red stared back at me, illuminated with a strange, fluorescent beam of light coming from the presented diner. The light in that painting was sharp, man-made, but did nothing to swallow the overwhelming darkness swarming in the corners of the canvas. The diner stood out from that obscure scenery like the last stand of hope amongst the waves of anguish. Four people sat inside: two men, a woman in red and a waiter. I think one of the men, the one sat beside the woman was barely stroking her hand. The woman might’ve been smoking or talking to the bent-over waiter. the latter man sat alone, surrounded by empty bottles and glasses. The painting was so utterly gloomy and strangely lonesome, yet I could not bring myself to tear my eyes off it. Beaconed to it, like a seafarer seduced by a siren, I stared and stared completely disconnected from whatever facts and history was the professor gracing the class with. All I could focus on were those four figures. How together, and yet, strangely lonesome they seemed. The maybe’s and perhaps’s that my brain created while looking at them – ‘they might be holding hands’, ‘maybe they know each other, maybe not’, ‘they might leave the diner together, and never speak to each other again’. The series of near misses and suppositions got me so hypnotised, that it was only after a good chunk of the lectured passed by, and I noticed that the oil diner had no way of entry… and I thought how strange it was how we, the viewer, were left alone, in the dark, wholly cut off from the saving grace of the diner, with no way to enter. How we could only observe, never interact. I remember walking out of that class numb and disoriented, a foreign craving forming somewhere deep inside of me, right next to the pancreas. I had forgotten about that lonesome, swallowing feeling, right up to that point. But when I saw the two of them – tall and lithe, surprisingly standing out against the background of the grey mass of our peers, them, the only two figures reached by the warm light of campus lanterns I felt that craving nudging at me anew.

I waited a bit before getting up. I figured it would be best not to bump into them on my way to the dorm. I much preferred the solitary designation of an observer, to a distasteful intruder. But the air was getting colder, and my nose more and more red. Finally, I had no other choice but to get up and go, especially because a few other students started to throw concerned looks my way. I thought I had perfected the art of invisibility, but no. I think there must’ve been something in my face, in my eyes that alerted them so of my existence, a certain wetness. But it felt uncomfortable to be like that, seen, judged, so I scrammed.

On my way down to the dorms I walked past by a particularly pretty blonde. She walked with a furious verve, a warrior’s glint in her eyes. I think it was Camilla, but I couldn’t say for sure. It was dark out, and the girl’s face was so scrunched up with anger, it could’ve been anyone. In the distance swayed two figures, hand still together, despite the fact they reached the more frequently used, iceless path.

I tried dabbling into sketching. Something I had never done before, seeing as I possessed no artistic spark, nor presented any inclinations of a hidden talent in that department. But I found it hard to force words out of myself and onto the paper, as I did many a time before, and I had to find some kind of an outlet, otherwise I felt I would combust. The then ever-present memory of the Nighthawks sparked an idea in me, one I could not forget or ignore. The subject of the dreaded ‘them’ pushed at my guts terribly now with every breath that I took. Where before words flooded my notebooks, now an array of hasty, shaky scratches appeared. Black little blurbs, primitive depictions of trees and little silhouettes pacing underneath them and blank surfaces imitating snow appeared, as did crooked walls of library and miniature books with random titles squeezed into their outlines. And as a centrepiece of every sketch – two people. A woman, sometimes with curly, other times with straight or frizzy hair, and a man, never changing, constantly clad in a dark, long coat. Drawing Henry was quite simple, elementary even. But with her I always struggled. It was improper in my mind to capture her likeness, so no matter how many times I tried, and what I intended to draw, she always appeared as a faceless woman, back turned to the frame of the sketch. I found my drawings cathartic.

Still, I sometimes gave them titles, or scribbled something on the margin, there was no method to it. But I had never sketched alone. Never, ever. Only when I could see them, under no other circumstances. Otherwise, the drawings would come out soulless, boring and ugly.

One day I followed them into the campus library. As they sat in the window niche and pulled out their books and notes, I situated myself strategically almost opposite to them, slightly to the right. Crammed between the bookshelves I stalked them through the gaps left by rented books and with the greatest abandon I scratched with a rough image of them. First, the window, large, arched and a bit yellowed with age. Its shape on my paper was simple, angular, and so was the concrete frame of it. Then the shelves on both sides of it. Dark oak appeared as nervous jagged strokes of black, and the books were just a bunch of vertical rectangles, although their edges appeared so wobbly, I doubt anyone would have the courage of calling them that. The checked floor and a few lamps witch glossy-green domes, the light coming from them accentuated as, again, mostly straight rays, like the ones presented in imagines of sun oh so often seen in kids’ drawings. And then, enter them. Sat on the windowsill, books in their hands, ancient scripts threatening to fall apart and turn into dust at any given moment. Henry sat with his back against the wall of the niche, one leg outstretched on the windowsill, the other hanging freely from it, slightly bent at the knee. His pant leg hitched a bit and I could see the impeccably white sock peaking slightly above his Oxfords. His chin resting idly on her head as he gazed to the side, where he held his book with one hand. Dark ring shimmered on his middle finger. His face, sharp, and stern as always lost its marble hardness, when her silky hair framed it in a gilded halo. Lost in thought, then, even more than in any other situation, he looked strangely alive. That was easy to draw. One straight line here, the other there. The perspective might’ve been a little bit off, but it didn’t bother me much, as I knew I was no skilled artesian. Problems came about when I moved on to her. Lodged between his legs, I could not tell where she began, and he ended. Her dress bunched somewhere around her raised knees and fell over his thighs. His hand resting on her stomach brought to my mind a faint memory of a smell – a delicate, sweet fragrance that spun around my skull, something like home, or even more domestic. And yet there was something so inherently lewd, so breathtaking in her pose that I found my breath coming short and all the blood in my body flowing to my head with a constant, roaring contentment.

Lightheaded I studied the curve of her nose, the dome of her forehead and the attentive glare she tasked the book resting on her knees. She held the pages with her thumbs, while the rest of her palms supported the cover from the back and her head angled slightly downwards to gaze into the contents of the book. Her slender hands so white against the crimson cover. Every fold of her dress was like discovering a new world to me. Subtle greys and blues, the tones hidden in its delicate white seemed like folds, pocket dimensions to the blurry outline of her legs when the sun shined through them. In my picture it appeared much cruder. While drafting those long, doe legs I pressed my pen a bit lighter to the paper, keen on giving them that ghostly pseudo-presence. But nothing could compare to the original. It was then, when my gaze fell onto her face, soft, thoughtful, and cloudy between her pulled brows, that I realised I could never be an artist. Breath escaped me as I tasked the slight curve of her nose, the round edge of her rose cheek, and even though she was not looking my way, even though I was the one who first had cast my gaze, I was struck dumb, like deer in headlights I fell victim of those swirling irises. Like the first time she looked my way, I found myself unable to tear myself from them, skimming quickly from left to right along the text. Seeping, indirect light hypnotised me and I fell deaf to my surroundings. Next few seconds, or minutes, or even a century passed me unnoticed, because what little sunlight peaked into the niche seemed to cross her eye directly, encasing it in pure, liquid silver.

I was so completely immersed into her, that I did not even hear the swooping, murmurous steps progressing behind me. A new, sharp, manly smell replaced that sweet fragrance I had been smelling, and I haven’t noticed that either. She turned to henry, intentionally tracing her nose against his neck. A pale smile graced his lips when she whispered something into his ear. He shook his head, as if disappointed, but reluctantly pushed off the precipice of the windowsill and jumped to the floor with her still in his arms. Red with withheld laughter they stumbled forward and then broke apart. She reached into one of his pockets, Henry did not protest, despite his slightly gloomy expression. There must’ve been something saddening in the way she dug up some tabaco from a white-green bag with her nimble fingers and sprinkled it onto a rectangular piece of paper. Or in how quickly had she rolled it – three steps and the ciggy was rolled and done. What saddened me most, was the loose of my subjects, for my drawing had not yet come into completion. I intended on following them outside, and maybe finishing my sketch based on what I saw there, or starting a new one, but then, a slim hand surrounded with that masculine, strong smell caught my shoulder and held me in place with an unexpected force. That newfound, seemingly immovable force made me quiver in my steps, filled my throat with a blood-chilling scream, that died out once the copper main swung over my field of vision. Soft lips pressed onto mine swallowing what was left of my panic. Stunned I froze. That was a kiss. Filled with a smell of a man, grace with soft frills of white cuffs on my cheeks. ‘Francis,’ I mustered. The redhead laughed with his whole chest, unconcerned with the general rules of the library. I cringed towards the bookcase, to check if that fit of laughter attracted the attention of my subjects, but to my relief, the were already gone. The only evidence of their presence – the abandoned bags and books abandoned on the windowsill. relief washed over me, immediately chased with venomous irritation. ‘Francis! What are you… You can’t just go around kissing people!’ Francis, still holding onto me with a desperate grip, lunged into another fit. Through his giggles he managed to cough up a simple ‘You’re not supposed to go around stalking people…’ another giggle and then a final stab ‘And yet you do.’ I shrugged his hand off, infuriated with that accurate observation, as I had nothing to say in my defence. I just stared at him, offensively happy in his fits, with my hand pressed protectively to my lips, as if scared that he might try and kiss me again. And he did, that crazy ginger bastard leaned in again, clutching onto my shoulders and pulled me closer, terrible grin still gracing his pales lips. I wretched myself out of his confines and jumped away as quickly and as far as possible, which gained me another salve of laughter from him.

‘Oh, come one Richard,’ he’d said once he managed to push through the unimaginable barrier of amusement. ‘Richard, darling, come on, don’t walk away! You’re packing already? I thought you had a sketch to finish! They’re going to be back any minute, you don’t want to pass that opportunity!’

I pushed my notebook close to my chest, suddenly very anxious and protective of its contents. I did not bother to wonder how did he know what I was doing, just scared he might pull it out of my grasp and start going through each and every pathetic excuse for a drawing, studying them and finally, arriving at the terrifying conclusion of the scope of my mania. Red-faced, with my gaze pinned onto the creaking floor I pushed right through him, bumping my shoulder into his. Francis, however, did not seem to be bothered by my ostentatious show of disrespect in the least bit. Eagerly he followed my footsteps, meandering through an endless labyrinth of bookshelves and racks. Never had I imagined the library to be so endless and hard to get out of.

‘Why are you following me, Francis?’

Finally, I had reached the point of irritation that was too much to bear for my jittering body. A crease of annoyance scared my forehead as I spat at him over my shoulder.

‘I’m not following you at all, Richard Papen, dearest.’

That made me stop right in my tracks. Francis, as agile and graceful as ever, didn’t even stutter in his steps, lightly passing me by and spinning around so that he could face me, a foxy grin plastered onto his pinkish lips. His arms swayed around his waist as if weightless and completely independent from the rest of his body when he spun.

The sight of my raised brown, as high up as possible, mixed with the grimace of discomfort must’ve amused him to no end, because he gave up the rest of the information without his usual mockings and jests.

‘I was actually looking for them, you know. Henry and that devil-woman. But then I saw you, creeping around the corner, and I could not help myself! You know? Had to scare you a little!’

I scoffed, irritated more than ever.

‘And? You had already found them. Go, get them. And leave me alone.’

‘So you could creep some more one innocent bystanders?’

‘Exactly. Go, now.’

There was something so utterly amused in his foxy face, that even in my state of highest vexation, I could not help but crack a little smile. My voice came out squished and bubbly, not sharp and authoritative, as I meant it.

‘Don’t you at least want to know, why I was looking for them?’

I rolled my eyes at his relaxed stance, the easy flex of is arms, when he bound them behind his back, surely bending his palm backwards in the other hand.

‘Come on. Shoot,’ I mused.

‘I was to ask them for an outing. A small gathering of all of us, you know. In that bar, what’s it called, Cherry, or something like that. The winter break is coming in and I thought it would be fun to just let loose for a bit. You should come as well. Actually, you should definitely come. Be there at nine. Sharp.’

And then, with another swirl and a short giggle, he was off, running, skipping, along the bookcases, his pale, long fingers skimming along those backs of the books. I was once again left alone, just as I wished, and suddenly, the grave trench opened in me at the sight of the Nighthawks so many years ago felt so, so much deeper than ever before.

I went to that bar. Cherry flavour was the name, but I found it, no problem. It was not the murky directions that Francis had given me a few hours before that had led me to be there half an hour late, but my desperate need not to seem… well, desperate. In all truth, I shouldn’t have even bothered, because as is crossed the threshold, the sorry imagine of only Francis and Bunny staring silently at their pints greeted me in full swing of sadness. I walked towards their table, every step ringing in my head loud and clear like a church bell. The air there was muffled, silvery with smoke, just like in her apartment, although the space felt solemnly impassive, even with the music booming from the jukebox, and the chatter of the many patrons. Without her, there was no point in squinting my eyes and flaring my nostrils at the unpleasant smell, fore there was no one in my surrounding who would even notice my ministrations. No one to point them out and poke fun at me for them.

Through the thick veil of it I could see how Bunny nursed, with utmost carefulness and greed, the piss-coloured pint, and the orange-red curve of Francis’ cigarette, as he explained something to the other boy, swinging his arms around with a gusto. They did not notice me however in all that awful racket, and I was lucky enough to her a snippet from their conversation, or rather, Francis’ monologue. His voice soared over the idle chatter of crowd mixed with music and the clang of glass hitting glass, somewhere in the background, as a group of rather young fellows raised a toast to something one of their friends just did.

‘You see, it is not the matter of whether you’re prepared for it, or not my friend, it’s just that the things of this kind of nature always come biting you in the arse. It’s just the way it is. You bet on a wrong horse, now it’s time to choose another. Like that Shelly girl from my French poetry class, you know the one…’

His cigarette soared up to his temple, very carelessly, and some of his short coppery hair sizzled away from the butt.

The floor boards squeaked beneath my feet, and I bit my lip, anxious not to make too much noise. My ears twitched eagerly, to hear the rest of the conversation uninterrupted. While strutting through the bar I tasked it with a more detailed glance now that I was closer to it’s centre than in the first minutes of my entry. My eyes slid over the faces of the patrons, some of which I knew from Hampden, some completely new. There were old and young people alike, all of them swarming around the bar squeezed into the back of the locum, old and kind of dirty looking with a single bar tender flexing and running behind the counter, swaying back and forth, confused as to what he was supposed to put his hands into first. Copper handles and crystal glasses shimmered in the dim light of the bar. The many bottles filled my vision with an array of colours and blur before my eyes into a kaleidoscopic mirage. They turned and swirled in the unsteady grip of the bartender, sweating profusely when the hot air breathed from the many a gorge of the patrons settled on their cool surface. Carlsberg, Heineken, Budweiser, and a few other, oval icons sat perched on the edge of the counter beaconing me to them with their moist and cool glint. I sensed that my mouth was going dry but the sight of the swirling perpetually forming and curving queue successfully deterred me from the bar.

‘I’ve already introduced the two of you, I’m sure of that. She’s the sappy one, she likes Sapho.’ Francis laughed at his own words, gaining no response from his partner.

Bunny stared at him blankly, no thought behind his glossy eyes. His hands wandered up and down the glass filled with, what I could only assume, was beer, his mouth agape, mind clearly someplace else, as if it was not a glass, his hands had been exploring, but completely something else. It was clear, that nothing more was going to come out of that one-sided exchange, as Francis dipped his head down, into his glass and rested his cheeks on the rim, exhaling a pathetic sigh, as if it was not the first time he has been ignored by Bunny like that. I cleared my throat, just to be polite and warn them of my presence and put on a slight smile.

‘I see how it is gentlemen. But correct me of I’m wrong, Bunny already has his dark horse, doesn’t he? Marion is the name?’

The boys jumped as if poked with white-hot rake.

‘Jesus Christ, you scared the crap outta me!’ Were the first words that Bunny has spoken to me, and judging by the offended look Francis threw him, first words of the evening. His voice was raspy, slurred with the kind of drunken tune you hear at dodgy gas stations in the middle of the night, when you should be safe and sound asleep in your bead, but instead you’re desperately trying to convince the acne-riddled clerk that yes, you are indeed twenty-one, and yes, those two six packs of beer are indeed, just for you and no one else.

‘Not Jesus, just Richard,’ I pulled my lips into a thin, awkward line, as Francis’ laugh roared over the vocals of some sorry fellow whining from the jukebox. A few patrons of the bar turned to us, that’s how loud he laughed, but quickly they averted their gaze, maybe because of Bunny, who stared daggers back at them. That night, he seemed more in a mood for brawl than any other, his usual sunny disposition gone completely and replaced with something more spiky, unpleasant. Strangely gloomy and dark, with his back hunched and a grimace plastered on his face he looked almost serious, almost adult, and almost dangerous. Almost. And I recognized that frown on his face. Deformed, softer and lacking, but if expressed by someone else, let’s say a bit taller, more stoic and with a frame of hair and eyes a few tones darker than his, the look would be deadly. And then a realisation came through my mind, the scope of which made my hair stand on end and blood to run cold. Bunny was mimicking Henry.

‘Oh, you see Richard Papen, the thing with our dear Edmund is that he always seems to want whatever he cannot have.’

The blonde’s head snapped back to him, face twisted in a parody of what Henry sometimes threw his way, when he thought that Bunny deserved a reprimand.

‘Will you ever shut up; you ginger cu- ‘

But before he could finish, Francis interrupted his in a very timely fashion. With a holler he jumped out of the booth the boys had been sitting in and waved his arms like a madman. I could hear a sharp exhale coming from my right, where the frustrated blonde sat. I could not be bothered to check, what kind of expression did he make this time, because, as I heard a small, honeydew voice resounding right behind my back, I was completely torn from reality. It was the voice of Charles that came to me first, but something in the back of my mind, something very slimy and cunning told me that right where that melodic, soft voice appeared, another, a bit more nasal and deeper, but still a twin to it would follow. I spined around just to see Charles draft a deep bow.

‘The scum of the earth, I believe?’

And Francis responded with the same curtsy, his fox-like face widened and elongated by a sly smirk.

‘The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?’

Somewhere behind Charles a melodic snort announced the arrival of my soft-lipped goddess. Her hair was like always combed thoroughly and kept from her high, white forehead with a black bow. Her eyes squinted most magnificently in the dim light of the bar, and I could see something like crow’s feet forming right at the line of her cheekbones, something like the thin veins running on the surface of otherwise impeccably milky marble. Her clothes were neat, although a bit too big for her, the shirt she was wearing clearly had seen better days and I thought that it was an item she either snugged from her brother or was gifted it by him. But no matter what she was wearing, she looked heavenly to me. Her cheeks bore a slight tint of pink, as if she was walking for a while in the snow, and automatically, like a chameleon, my own cheeks tried replicating that shade on my skin, only slightly more furious, and burning.

‘You two are so unserious…’ she said it like it was a reprimand, but the crack of her lips betrayed her amusement. Her lashes fluttered gracefully, like the wings of a butterfly, when she rolled her eyes deep into her skull.

‘I’m here to serve, my queen.’

Francis huffed a laugh at her and leaned in to give her a quick peck on the lips.

‘Hi Richard,’ she greeted me, although with slightly less enthusiasm she had with the redhead. Her brother just nodded my way and then squeezed right past me to sit down in the booth with the boys. I followed him and Camilla, too embarrassed to excuse myself, and to enticed by the small lady’s beauty to even speak.

‘By the way…’ Francis lit another cigarette, I didn’t even see when he rolled it, I guess on that, that is chain smoking, he agreed with my Diogenes wholeheartedly. ‘Have you seen the two hell spawns on your way here?’

Charles snorted, clearly entertained by that nickname, Camilla just scrunched her nose and let her head fall a bit forward. Her smile was now strained, as if she was trying to swallow something, a bone stuck in her throat, as she was speaking.

‘Yeah, we saw them. Right outside the bar. They run into a bit of a scuffle, but they should be here any second.’

It was as if with those words Bunny suddenly came back to life.

‘Scuffle? What scuffle?’ Charles waved his hand dismissively.

‘Nothing really, just a bit of a shoe problem.’

The white, almost translucent brows soared high on Bunny’s forehead. The ex-jock opened his mouth, likely to question the poor twins further on the matter that interested him the most, but right then, as if on que, the door opened, and Henry stepped through. His dark hair flopped around his face, partially covering his wet, fogged-up spectacles. Snow fell from it, as well as his shoulders with every crooked, wobbly step he took. His cheeks were red with effort, and his pale slender hands kept and unnatural shade of almost cold mauve. But there would not be anything different or weird in that dishevelled look. In all honesty, sometimes I would encounter him in the campus library, hunched over some old book looking a thousand times worse than that. What made his entry stand out was the girl he was carrying in his arms. Small, in comparison to him, red-faced as well, with her feet, clad only in white socks, dangling right from the crook of his arm – her. She was grinning wildly, sparks coming from her eyes like little flexes of stars, and a pair of dark leathery boots had been dangling from her stretched out hand leaking onto the floor before them generously with residues of snow, marking, where Henry’s next step was going to fall. It seemed as if he was whispering something to her, something soothing, or humorous judging, by the slow movement of his index hinger on her arm. Like he was calming her down or indulging her slightly. I had never though Henry to be a person with an exceptional sense of humour, but in her case, it seemed to be working. Her eyes, big like saucers kept digging into his jaw, the only thig in her field of vision, as he squeezed her hard into his chest, sparkled and glimmered with a feeling I could not read properly. All I knew is that the way she looked at him, in that moment, when he crossed the squeaky floor in his swooping steps, clogged my airways and crushed my chest with a force of thousand suns.

‘What are they doing, what’s happened?’ Bunny’s face turned equally red at the sight of the two of them, locked in an embrace. For the first time this evening he had risen his head fully, right to the point of strain in his neck, and suddenly I saw that his eyes were sunken, circled with dark shadows and rimmed with a wet, red frame. He must’ve fought with Maron over some stupid little thing again, so no wonder that the sight of Henry and her, snarking amiably at each other, aggravated him to no end.

‘Beats me.’ Camilla scoffed, rather impassive that impressive entry. It seemed to me, like the temperature in the bar had dropped drastically, while the two of them exchanged those little remarks. Goosebumps climbed up my spine and my stomach swirled in an uneasy feeling, that forebode that nothing positive could come out of that evening.

But they came up to the table unbothered and giddy, as if there was nothing strange or enigmatic in their arrival, and the knot that has tied itself in the pit of my stomach suddenly loosened by the magic glint of her sharp teeth. Their presence, their proximity hit me like the fanfares in the 94. Symphonia G-dur. Soft steps crept up on me like the slight tugs of strings at the beginning of the piece. Isolated and slow, deep with their lightness, beautiful on their own, even if those were just steps, just the rhythm, just the beginning of a symphony. But then the clarinettist came, high-pitched, joyous in how she dangled her feet in the air, how she tilted her head up to gaze into his eyes. Him – steady and slow, careful with the type of tune he carried, and her – rather sprinkled across his melodic line, but oh so needed to bring the stave out of a standstill. My whole body buzzed in anticipation, not yet sure for what and why but my feet, hidden under the table, tapped unconsciously to the melody of pure steps and the hum of clothing. The composition overtook me. I didn’t even notice the key changing and getting slightly louder. Only when they came closer, when I could smell the warm, domestic scent that filled my heart with longing and pain, when I felt the tail of a dark coat brushing against my knee, I felt the music explode in me, slash me across the face with an abrupt bang! of every instrument suddenly coming into a synchronized crescendo.

‘What on the sweet feet of baby Jesus happened to you? Have you lost the feeling in your legs?’

As soon as they reached the table, the shoes she was holding dropped to the floor with a miserable smack, and, as if to complete their misery, got kicked away, under the table, by the exceptionally vigorous feet clad in black Oxfords. The air absolutely knocked out of my lungs, I stared at them in what I could only assume, was the most wide-eyed, incredulous expression of awe.

She poked her tongue at Francis, as Henry carefully set her on the edge of the couch. His pulled brows, the true, unfabricated grimace, so, so different from which Bunny tried to pull, bared an alarming dose of worry, despite the slight curve of his lips, as if he was trying to mask a heavy, foggy block of anxiousness resting on his shoulders with a bit of humour. He kneeled, not without a struggle to inspect the, what I now could see clearly were, blood spots on her socks. They climbed up her heals and came blossoming down on the side of her feet where the big toe started, giving the socks an artistic, flattering look of a freshly sprouted carnation. While he was hunched over, ducking under the table she tried to lighten the atmosphere with a lough and a cheeky response to Francis.

‘You wish, red. Nothing of the sort, it’s just those damn shoes! I can’t seem to break them in, and now they had chaffed me to the bone it seems.’

Charles ducked under the table with an interested whine but could see nothing beyond Henry’s hands. He covered the object of Charles’ interest as soon as the twin announced his fascination to us with a delighted squeal. The blonde boy hissed in disappointment, but Henry ignored him, his eyes steady on her legs, studying the red rim of blood. His slim fingers run carefully over the fabric, pealed it off, just to throw a glance, at the skin beneath it, and then exhaled a breath through his teeth. What he saw must not have been as bad as he let on in the first place, because his only response was a grim huff of laugh.

‘Don’t be so dramatic. It’s just a minor graze nothing more. If you had listened to me and bought a bigger size, nothing like that would have happened.’

Her eyes skipped around landing on each and every of our faces, seeking refuge in any of us from the stern, disappointed tone of Henry, but no one was brave enough to stand up to the stormy cloud of a human that he had turned into. Finally, after some strained small talk, Henry emerged from beneath the table, his face slightly looser.

Somehow I felt the pair of pale blue eyes staring at me, no at them, from across the table. I looked around to seek the source of the discomfort poking at my neck. I did not have to deal long, for it was obvious, who the proprietary of the biting stare was. Bunny wasn’t discreet, I don’t think he minded if anyone saw how he clean he’d his teeth so hard that a small vein popped out on the side of his jaw, or how he could not tear his eyes, his hateful, red rimmed eyes, from the ethereal mirage that was the two people hanging on the edge of couch right beside me.

‘It should be fine, the blood stopped running. It should be fine now, okay?’ He smoothed her hair with a quick swipe of his hand and then scooted over on the edge of couch. Everyone moved to the side in a synchronised clockwise move, not even thinking about mentioning all the space that had been left vacant on the opposite side of the table. Francis chose to ignore all the swooning over her that henry seemed to be revelling in and came smoothly to recommending what types of beer we should pick for the night.

‘I think that we should start with beer. Me and Bunny are already ahead of you, so, we’re going to skip the first round. But after that I think we should go more into tonics. Oh, and don’t order any sorts of fancy cocktails here!’ He threw accusatory look towards Camilla. ‘They’re awfully pricy and don’t taste half as good as you’d expect them to.’

What seemed like useful information to me, was obviously something redundant and boring to Henry. We all knew, what he was going to order, whiskey, most certainly not whisky, on the rocks, and there was no coaxing him out of that decision, so it hasn’t surprised me much to see him lean over to her and start whispering in her ear. I was the closest one to them, her sitting on my right, and him squeezed into her, the length of her body being our only border, so I did not have to struggle much to hear what he was mumbling into her ear. I focused my eyes on whatever seemed most natural and listened in, thirsty for information like never before. I watched Bunny’s fingers running up and down his pint, smearing the swat of the glass all over his palms. His fingers run taunt, almost mechanic, as if pulled by great pain or fury. In the corner of my eye swayed the real object of my interest.

‘Are you cold? Are your feet cold?’ His voice returned to the stoic preoccupation I had heard some time ago, when they were leaving the lecture hall. He swayed forward, as if to embrace her, or better yet, scoop her into his arms and run out of the bar as soon, as he manages to hoist her up, but he stopped himself midway and just stared at her with deep thoughtfulness.

‘No, Henry it’s really all right. Thank you though.’

Henry, despite her clearly cutting the subject short, simply shook his head and continued with his hushed monologue.

‘Your feet are cold. We sit here long enough, and you’re going to catch something.’ And then, before she could react in any sort of way, he kicked his boots off.

‘Henry what are you doing?’

My eyes jumped, just for a second, beneath the table, to be greeted with the sight of his slightly less deft fingers, now rose with the heat of the bar, tying neat little bows with the shoelaces of his own shoes, now on her feet. The dark leathery Oxfords were fat too big for her, and so he had to tie them really hard, so they would not fall onto the floor the second he pulled out his knee from beneath her heal, that now served her as some kind of purchase.

‘They might be too big for you, but at least, your feet won’t freeze off. Oh, don’t look at me like that. Now, straighten that face.’

‘What is it with you and frostbites?’

She scoffed and folded her arms on her chest, but did not oppose further, when He once again ducked beneath the table and slipped his shoes onto her feet. His voice came from down below, a splash of humour resounding in it, filling her cheeks with the brightest shade of pink.

‘It’s not just frostbites. I’m simply worried about you, in general. I should not have let you walk around in those ill-fitting shoes in the first place, I feel responsible.’

I could swear, that at the sound of those words, she melted into the back of the cough and kicked her feet, making the all-too-big shoes flap around her ankles. And in turn, I can swear I saw him cracking a smile at that, when he took back his seat right next to her.

Personally, squished between Camilla and her I felt like I was going to suffocate. Disoriented and scared to the bone I stared into my palms placed neatly on my thighs, not knowing whose warmth to absorb, who’s smell to inhale and who’s heartbeat to sync to. I was dazed, speechless, overstimulated.

‘And how is your leg, Henry? Does it hurt?’ I think he shrugged, but I couldn’t tell, because at that point I tore my eyes from the wet drops sliding down Bunny’s glass and onto Camilla’s side profile. She was chatting with Charles, I could see her mouth move, but all I could think of were those few strands of hair that slipped from beneath her ribbon and curled neatly on her forehead. All I wanted to do was to push them back, tuck them behind her ear.

‘Nothing that I can’t handle, so don’t preoccupy yourself with that, little dove.’

Every move they made, every little shrug, or laugh they huffed soared through me with the untamed power of lightning. I jumped every time one of them breathed. And I must’ve been so consumed by that dual anguish of my position, that I had tuned out the conversation that had barely started, even the little, intimate conversation playing on my right. A nudge of an elbow to my ribs woke me up from my stupor.

‘Richard Papen! Hello! Earth to Richard!’

‘Wha- I… what?’

‘What will you be drinking?’ Her bright eyes stared at me, so, so close, that I could feel her breath fanning my cheeks. With that proximity, an image flashed before my eyes, a sketch that I drew a few days before, the only one in which I did not use her as a live model, rather drafted her from my memory. A quick sketch of her bent over backwards over the table, eyes shut, mouth agape with a silent scream of pleasure frozen on her mouth. Blood rushed to my head with a steady but abrupt pump. Acutely aware of the still purple with cold hand resting on her shoulder I did not find the words right away, so they came out in a disarranged stutter. I blabbered some incoherent phrases, before finding my voice.

‘I’m not drinking tonight… I don’t have any money.’ She let out a pearly laugh.

‘Don’t be ridiculous Richard. It’s on Francis! He dragged us all out here, so he’s buying!’

‘That’s the first time I hear about it.’

She threw him one of her deadliest looks, as if saying – come one, don’t be a twat – and I heard no further protests from him. Encouraged and coaxed by all the people around the table, I finally decided on Guinness, the same as her. Francis got up with a resigned sigh, repeated everyone’s orders and then he disappeared for almost forty minutes. And when he came back, carrying two trays stocked with pints and meandering amongst the drunken crown with no problem, he was greeted with round of applause and whistles of approval. He distributed the beers equally and then sat with the look of absolute agony on his face.

‘Oh, I’m never going back out there, sorry but there is no way I can stand in that queue alone and pushed around by those twats for one more second.’

She giggled when he passed her the designated Guinness.

‘How much was it? I’m not planning on paying you back, just curious.’

Francis shrugged, rather not bothered by her blatant declaration.

‘I wouldn’t know. I’m not really good with money, so long I have it.’ He took a long pause to gulp down some of his old beer, truthful to his previous words, he had not bought himself a new one. ‘Matter of fact, I don’t get money at all.’

Charles cleared his throat, uneasy, as if that topic was one of a constant concern in their circle, Francis continued, nonetheless.

‘I simply cannot understand, what is so special about it. It’s just paper! It’s imaginary! If I wanted to, or if I needed, I could just get myself a machine and print out some more! Better yet, we all could. I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal.’

My eyes darted to the side to meet the same perplexed look in her eyes. Her jaw tilted to the side, but she kept silent, and so did I, taking it for a sign, that if we let Francis talk, soon he’d be out of his brilliant ideas, and we would be free from that topic. Well, Bunny clearly didn’t get the memo.

‘We can’t print more money, idiot, how many times do I have to tell you?’

Francis threw him a wounded look and pressed a fisted palm to his chest. But the sly smile on his lips betrayed that in all truth, he enjoyed that someone, especially Bunny, had indulged him.

‘Why not?’

Bunny’s so far hooded and glossy eyes, now popped out dangerously, coming to resemble in their shape and size a pair of saucers. His lips pulled downwards in an ugly, angry grimace.

‘That would cause and inflation, a hyperinflation, if you’d be really lucky, and soon you, mister Bretton Woods, would be able to buy matches, for the same price you would buy a home a few days earlier.’

‘Yeah, sure, inflation but why though?’

The twins did not bother to pay attention to that ridiculous exchange of words, surely because they had heard it already, in a myriad of variations, many a times before, nor did Henry, but she was surprisingly enticed by how exasperated Bunny got. She stared at him with utmost fascination, a thing, that did not escape him, and in turn seemed to spur him on further.

‘There is a certain amount of gold- ‘

‘Gold? Where from? What?’

‘It is stored in the treasury of every country… Don’t change the subject you ginger minx! We have the gold which value must cover the amount of money we distribute. If we don’t have the gold, and we start printing more money the total value of the gold would have to be divided amongst the amount of the money distributed equally, hence devaluating it.’

‘Okayy…’ Francis’ hand soared up to his lips pushing another roll-up into it, as he stared into the ceiling, as if he was processing Bunny’s words. Mindlessly, he passed another one to her, and she nodded her head in a quiet show of thanks. ‘Why gold?’

Bunny growled, a real-life growl, and smoothed his hand over his face. I noticed, that on my right, she had pushed her hand against her lips and now she was shaking uncontrollably at the performance taking place right before her. I cracked a smile as well.

‘Because it is a r a r e material.’

He’d said, the drunken, slurry undertone more prominent in his voice, now more than ever.

‘Uranium’s r a r e r.’

How beautiful did Francis pronounce that ‘rarer’. Every ‘r’ resounded sharply and rattly over his tongue. But his interlocutor did not seem to be impressed by his logopedic skills.

Bunny jumped suddenly onto his feet, slamming his palm into the table with a deafening bang, that made Camilla squeak in her seat. Bunny, making nothing of it pointed and accusatory finger at Francis.

‘I’ve got half a mind to beat you into a pulp right now.’

Bunny’s face turned bright red, and for the first time ever I could see his brows clearly drafted, like two clear, solid white arches, on his forehead. And for the first time, his fury bore water. I had never seen him so aggravated, so serious and straightforward with his announcements. Sure, he tackled me once or twice to the ground, and his threats were nothing new to us, especially after he had something to drink, but those were just harmless jests, stupid jokes we tied to weight to. However, in that bar, a new sheet of peril mixed with anger had wrapped himself around him, giving him, and his irrational outburst depth and dimension. His feverishly jumpy eyes added to the whole picture a deranged readiness to harm, and that scared me to no end. I looked to my right, past her and at Henry, the only person, concluding from the stories I heard about him, capable of restraining the ex-jock if the push came to shove. I expected Henry to come out as a hero, as always. Instead, I was greeted with the sharp glint of her malicious smile and his indifferent, passive frown.

‘Well, you’ve got half a mind, that would be about right.’

She snarled at him, empty glass tipping dangerously in her hand, ready for any sort of action. A deep chill run up my spine at the sight of the strained muscles of her neck, of the pulsing vein running in parallel to her larynx. What scared me more, was the calmly placed hand of Henry, her supposed protector, hanging on the backrest of the couch, not even bothered to assume a defensive stance. Maybe he knew that Bunny wasn’t half the man he portrayed himself to be. Or in that moment, he already knew that he would never harm her. In the conventional way, at least, Henry seemed so sure that no harm would be done to her, either by her own resourcefulness and skill, or Bunny’s incapability and unwillingness to damage her in any sort of way. Why he had believed that I couldn’t tell. In retrospect, that was the moment we all should have banded together against Bunny. Berate his pathetic attitude, his utterly senseless reasoning, rage against him, his nature, fall into a trans and reap him to shreds, limb by limb, no mercy, and when all would settle down, bash his head in, so it could not mutter another word. Maybe that would stop him from drafting the line that would soon cross out the 94. Symphony out of existence.

My eyes soared back to the emotional bundle of fury and helplessness that was Bunny in that moment. His eyes squinted in an expression of utter betrayal at her words. That was the look that should have uncovered it all to me, help me connect the dots scattered amongst the quiet conversations I listened in on, and finally see the bigger picture. But at that point, I was halfway down my pint, and my brain had already lost most of it’s sharpness.

‘Et tu Brute? You are defending… You are defending that deft son of a bitch? How can you? Does it not bother you how oblivious to the world he is? You out of all people should understand my frustration with him! He wouldn’t know the rational state of current things even if they hit him in the face!’

She shrugged, not seeming to be bothered at all, although she had not let go of the glass yet. The white ash at the end of her ciggy became longer than the factual cigarette.

‘So what? He doesn’t understand money. Big deal.’ Her hand drafted a neat circle in the air with the glass. ‘It’s not like you know everything Bunny. Bah, I don’t think I know everything. Nor does Henry. For gods’ sake, you heard him the other day, interrogating Richard about the moon landing and whatnot.’ Charles giggled at the reminder of our first dinner together, but quickly slotted his hand over his mouth, chastised by the scorning glare of his sister. ‘Matter of fact, you could not conjugate a simple verb two classes ago. Please, don’t frown like that. Audiverim instead of audivissem? I beg you pardon?’

The tips of Bunny’s ears turned a few shades darker, but he no longer looked furious. Under her never-missing, dry delivery of criticism, he shrunk slightly, hung his head down and tucked his chin, as if trying to hide his head between his shoulders.

‘Frankly, it wasn’t your best performance and yet I did not beat you into a pulp. What’s more, I’ve never threatened you, never, especially over something so small and insignificant.’

No one dared to interrupt the steady flow of her words. Not even Camilla had attempted to roll her eyes, simply mesmerised, just like the rest of us, with how unbothered, almost lazy and unwilling she seemed while delivering her soul-crushing, humbling truths to Bunny.

‘It is beneath us, to treat and speak to another person, a friend, like you just did. Now stop frowning and marding, just sit, have a drink, cool down.’

‘Yes, Bun, sit down. We’re not without a flaw, after all. It’s not a big deal.’

Camilla sent a warm smile across the table, not towards Bunny but his assailant. She responded with the same kind of grin, a warm, sunny stretch of mouth that would melt the strongest and coldest man.

‘Remember when Charles said that the French Revolution wasn’t that big a deal and she nearly lost her mind?’

Then she snorted, and my accomplice gasped in exasperated shock. A quick, playful smack on the hand of the blonde, little lady was dealt as she exclaimed ‘Cami! Now’s not the time to bring up past mistakes!’ The girl giggled, although her pearly laugh was overwhelmed by Francis’ snort.

‘Oh god! I remember that! I really though she was going to kill him! Jesus, I really believed that on that day we were going to say grace over the cold corpse of Charles Macnally.’ As the ginger boy wrapped his arms around his midriff, to somehow ease the sudden throws of unadulterated joy that shook his body, Bunny slid quietly into his previous seat, relief, that he was no longer the subject of the discussion painted on his face.

‘Come on guys! It was so long ago! I would never do anything like that now…’

She stirred in her place beside me, pouting like a displease child, which roused Francis even more. Camilla too, wasn’t immune to the giddy atmosphere.

‘Oh honey, I know you never wished any real harm onto Charlie. It’s just so funny to recall you screaming bloody murder at him…’ Camilla did not finish her thought, instead, overtaken by laughter, splayed herself across the table trying to catch the quickly regressing fingers of the other girl. Her arm brushed right past mine, but she didn’t notice that, totally absorbed with the vigorous battle at grabbing and tugging away of hands, she was conducting, and clearly loosing, due to the constant spasm of laughter that shook her body, tossing her unregularly across the wooden surface. Her opponent wasn’t much better, trying to disguise her laugh as furious puffs of hot air and scrunching her whole face up, not to let a single pressing smile pass. That frown she made, with much effort and a raised chin that help her in keeping the giggles deep in her stomach, gave her an uncanny likeness to non-other that Mussolini.

‘I don’t know… it felt real to me, when you chased me around the kitchen, swinging a knife around and screaming’ Charles began his sentence and paused dramatically, tilting his head up and spreading his arms over his head like a preacher in a cathedral, only to be joined by everyone at the table, spare for me and Bunny, in an unison, theatrical chant ‘How about I take away you privileges and basic human rights, let’s see, how unimportant the French Revolution was then!’

The whole table fell into laughter, a shimmering cascade of giggles and snorts, surprisingly, dominated by the baritone hum of Henry. My friend turned beetroot-red and, just like Bunny before her, strained her shoulders up to hopefully hide herself between them. First to break off was the violine-led light motif in the person of Henry.

‘Cut her some slack! It’s not like she almost killed a professor, whose name I shall not evoke, with her car and then proceeded to try and charm him out of suspending her with the, what was it, ah, yes! The hypnotic sway of her luscious hips.’

A unison protest of Charles and Camilla overtook whatever Henry intended on saying next, as they recoiled in mock horror. Camilla shielded herself with the coat of her brother as he latched onto her head, trying to close her ears to that slander.

‘Why must you all recall all of my most painful memories.’ Charles screamed over the roaring crowd of the bar. ‘It’s not like I did anything to you! You’re all monsters, monsters, I say, not people!’

Then Francis, dangerously maroon on his face chimed in, bringing forth another story, one of botched boeuf de Bourgogne and Julian, politely munching on it’s charred remains. Since that moment, it came down like and avalanche. Stories, insults, and ashamed protests along with some foreign profanities thrown in together begun swishing over our heads like heavy ammunition, all in a delightful halo of barked laughter and whistles. In the meanwhile, the poor bartender must’ve called in for help, because the crowd of patrons started to loosen around the bar area, and a new, visibly taunt and tired looking waiter became roaming the floor and picking up the orders from table to table. Strangely enough, he came around our space more than the others and soon enough pints and glasses, the martini, vine, red and white, gin and whiskey even the dreaded cocktail glasses piled over our table. Slowly but steady, once again the floor swooped from beneath my feet and my head turned heavy, sprouting with a thick sheet of wool. I did not realize I had been dangerously tilting to the right, arching my whole body to bend it into an almost horseshoe shape until I felt her arm slipping from underneath mine, and slowly smoothing over the wrinkles of my shirt. My world tilted alongside me and then straightened right after when hot breath fanned my ear, a tint of sun and hop carried with it.

‘You made my hand fall asleep.’

I jumped, because the voice tore through the featherbed of alcohol induced confusion, like hot knife cuts through butter.

‘Sorry,’ I mumbled, making a bubbly laughter erupt from her lips.

‘It’s no problem at all dummy, none at all. But you need to let go off my wrist right now.’ I followed her gaze down to our laps, where I saw my hand wrapped just around her pulse, my fingers so, so unremarkable against her silky-smooth skin. Jumping once again I let go, a huge block of ice mixed with something utterly pathetic dropped into my stomach. A terrible stutter befell me and I struggled through a handful of rushed apologies, but she only swatted her asleep hand at me. ‘Told you already, it’s no problem! I just need to go.’ And then she leaned in and added, in a hushed conspiratorial tone, ‘To the ladies room.’

A dumb smile sprouted on my face as I watched her drunkenly unwrap herself from Henrys half-limp embrace and then clumsily step off the booth couch and onto the packed middle ground of the bar. Stunning, it was, to watch her manoeuvre between a bunch of people so much drunker and less coordinated than her. Her steps, although wobbly and off her usual light rhythm, coveted a lightness of a ballerina, as she ducked and avoided all the swishing hands and swirling bodies.

Henry watched her go as well, his eyes deep and dark like two black holes, hungrily swallowing the small sway of her steps. They slid down, right to the base of the column of her spine, her thighs, calves, and then a tiny, almost satisfied smile cracked his rigid lips, the eyes, mine and his, took in the stupidly cute way she raised her feet a little too high, placed them on the ground a bit too far apart, like a little duck to accommodate the comically big Oxfords. And Henry seemed almost proud of that. I wanted to open my mouth, speak to him, comment somehow on the sparks circling his irises, but my train of thought was interrupted by Bunny’s ostentatious grunt.

The blonde boy looked absolutely horrible, with red spots and blemishes blooming on his cheeks from the excess of alcohol and his eyes, puffy, even more swollen than when we started drinking. He still bore that ridiculous frown, which by that point gave into more damage, got watered down with every gulp of beer he had forced into himself, only to become a reduced cadaver of gloom floating in his murky, blue eyes.

‘Excuse me ladies, imma get me some beer,’ He slurred.

Camilla pouted, extending her arms towards him simultaneously closing and opening her palms, as if to rope him into hugging her and then anchoring him to stay at the table. Something in the way he stood up, I don’t know, maybe a stray button of his shirt that reflected the light in the wrong way, or the horizontal blue-and-white straps on his blazer, now waving hypnotically around his bulky form, made my gut churn and all that I drank and ate during the day came up my throat in waves of nausea. I closed my eyes, tilted my head back and inhaled deeply. Once, twice, three times.

‘Come on Bun, the waiter is going to be here any minute, why go to the bar, all the way there. Sit, come, just sit.’

Another grunt and then a series of clumsily misguided moves echoed my brain. On the camera obscura of my eyelids my imagination showed a pretty hilarious picture of Bunny struggling to get out of the booth over the wasted, folded body of Francis.

‘No can do. I feel like I have the Sahara Desert in my mouth. I ain’t waiting for no waiter.’

However humorous the remark, his voice resounded strangely gloomy and hollow, but I could not care for that much at that point. Too busy counting from hundred to zero, I used all the mindpower I had left not to bend over and puke right onto the table. On my right Henry swayed softly and hummed alongside the tune somehow still getting through him all the way from de jukebox.

I must’ve gotten around to negative seven hundred fifty, when it finally dawned on me that something was wrong. Our area of the table suddenly got quiet, too quiet and I couldn’t shake the unpleasant, fuzzy feeling creeping up my spine. With no small fit of effort, I managed to glue open one of my eyes, then the other.

Hellish landscape of decadence greeted me with a sharp toothy smile. Francis laid passed out face first on the table, Camilla leaned over him with the full weight of her body, swishing a glass of gin in her hand, the liquid swirling in it like a miniature whirlwind, and Charles, always the one to get utterly pissed, perched himself on the couch, and with an absent stare, followed the infinity signs drafted in the air by his sister’s glass. Every now and the he’d add a small ‘swoooosh’, when she took a particularly sharp turn in the trajectory of the drink. I tore myself from that image, my head rolled over to the right, guided by the wooden, polished headrest. Henry was there. Slightly decomposed, but holding up better than the rest of us, nursing a small, steaming cup – tea? No, coffee. Black and sugarless.

‘Hey, Henry?’ My mouth burned as I opened it, chapped, dried up skin tore at that unusual activity and if I were any bit more sober, I would wince at the pain it had brought me to speak. He turned halfway towards me and raised one brow in a silent question. I stayed silent for a second, trying to accumulate all the ideas swirling around my disoriented head, arrange and put them into words, to somehow explain my sudden uneasiness to him. ‘Where do you think they went? They’d been gone for quite a while, don’t you think?’ A slight frown, then a look across the table, and finally a bright spark of understanding sparked across his face. ‘Bunny and…’ However anxious I felt, I think it was nothing, compared to the chill expression of pure horror that slid over his taunt features. Henry lunged himself up before I could even finish my slowly processed concern, and sprung forth, towards the bar, towards the toilets cramped right next to it, as he was, barefoot, limping and thoroughly terrified. I raced right after him, all of a sudden, sober as if not a drop of alcohol had entered my blood stream during that night. His fright climbing and latching onto me like a parasite, sucking all the air from my lungs, urging my blood to flow faster, stronger in order to keep my brain alive. I did not know, I could not comprehend what made him so… stressed, so pressed, but the look on his face, the half of it I saw while struggling to equal oust pastes, forebode nothing pleasant. And that image, of Henry totally panicked, mixed with my previous remark on her…

Getting through the crowd of the drunken, screaming people was no easy fit and I wonder how she had made it look so effortless. And Henry, he as well got through the thicket with no problem, although not thanks for his natural grace, but rather the utter disrespect and disregard of anyone that stepped in his way. He pushed through people, stepped on their feet, swatted away their arms, not even looking back when they screamed after him, and I followed his trail to that warzone, squeezing through the narrow he had cut up for himself. Henry kept himself composed through all of that, not a single scream, not even a word or a twitch. He was cold, a stalker, a wolf bound on the hunt for his prey. The scared frown on his face reforged into something more sharp and determined. And I was hot, fuming, the heatwave of alcohol mixed with anxiety rushed to my head heating me up like a furnace. I felt my pulse quickening, heart straining in a hopeless effort to keep me up. Yet, I put all of my effort into keeping up with him, as he seemed to have had connected the dots I did not have the skill, or correct disposition to connect, and he did not seem to notice me. Not even at all. It looked like, in that moment there was only one thought going through his mind, preoccupying him, mandating him his actions and goals. Only one thought that willed his heart into a steady beat – finding her. Finally, we got out of the worst cluster of now whining and crying out in pain students, when the door to the woman’s bathroom burst open and Bunny emerged from the forbidden depths. He was slightly crouching, as he paced with small, careful, but overall, quite rushed steps onward, pressing a hand to his face. But nothing, not even his big hand of a seasoned quarterback, could cover the red imprint cutting across his face, likely a result of something, or someone, hitting him in the face with full force. His eyes darted across the room, scattered and skittish. When they came to task us with their gaze, Bunny squealed and rushed right past us, drafting a big, round arch, only to push against the exit with the full force of his body and run into the cold night outside. He did not even take his coat with him. He just run away.

I stopped, partially to the shock I just had experienced due to that bizarre occurrence, but mostly because of Henry’s sudden indecision. If it were up to me, I would carry on straight forward, where my legs desired to bring me, until I’d have had reached the unpassable barrier of the door dividing the room and the women’s restroom. But he was not as drunk, or as disoriented as I was, because for a second, he halted, leaned to the direction of the exit, as if eager to chase down the runaway bunny, then swayed back, as if torn apart by some inner dilemma I was not privy to. Thankfully, he had not have to choose, for from the bathroom emerged another person. She was similarly to Bunny red on her face, although when his red seemed to root itself in a valiant assault, hers was a deep shade of effort and distress. Now, the direction was clear to Henry, he rushed towards her, opening his arms as if to gather her into them, but no, to my biggest surprised she jumped to the side and slid right past him, only to mix into the crowd. She threw him a rather strained ‘I’m leaving.’ And then dove into the swarm of bodies. Henry wasted no time and lunged back into the already irritated with him people. Only this time, he seemed to care about them even less, and seeing that they stopped screaming at him, and just opened themselves before him, like the red sea. But he was screaming, beaconing, calling her name, only for it to hit and bounce off her turned back. She was fast, even in those too-big shoes, Henry had trouble keeping up with her, least to say I, who out of us three, was probably the drunkest and the least athletic. After that quick cavalcade through the terrified flock, we arrived at our starting point, the table. In the far looser space, Henry caught up to her and yanked her small body towards him. She was feisty and full of fire, but in an open struggle, not in a play-pretend, she had no chance against him. The sheer force of his arms pulled her forward, as if she was but a rag doll. Her whole body shook, but not with the impact of his body engulfing hers, or shock that came with the sudden contact, but something far more pressing, something she tried to, with all her might, to push down and keep inside of herself. But her lower lip wobbled. A sorrowful display of utter helplessness, that little wobble, paired with the tears evoked the memory of the ‘Nighthawks’ in me. I balled my fists by my sides, now not only overtaken by sadness and the feel of disunity, but also fear. Gut-wrenching, blood-chilling, hair-standing fear. Because, when Henry pulled her in and caged her between his arm, when he brought her to him despite the slight resistance of her trembling arms against his chest, I saw her neck, craning upwards. And the four furious smudges running horizontally on her throat, pinkish imprint of fingers coming together into a palm just about where here larynx should start. That’s going to become a bruise, give it a few hours, I thought. Her jaw unclenched and, as Henry submerged her into himself, I saw her stutter something out. Her voice too small for me to hear over the booming of the bar, but I did not have to, least to say, the murderous tilt of Henry’s head confirmed to me what I already had suspected. He did not move, but I saw his reflection in the window placed right above out booth. The lines around his mouth deep like scars, appeared to deform his face, elongate like sabre teeth when he spoke to me, commanded.

‘Richard, go outside, find Edmund.’

Without thinking or sparing a single more glance I rushed to the exit, spurred on by the sharpness of his tone. All of my, my being, my soul, by body, they screamed in furious agony, in rage and in guilt. I let him go, I heard, I felt that something was off when Bunny stepped away from the booth and yet I let him go, too intoxicated to do anything. But what tore at me the worst was the fact, that when I run out, the last image that flashed before me were her eyes, those usually bright, intelligent orbs, now dusted with silver moist, dimmed, and lifeless.

The night air hit me in the face the second I stepped out of the bar, sudden realisation of how stuffy and hot the interior was coming onto me in a sobering wave. Everything before me, the neon signboards of other dodgy bars, the lanterns, the cars parked in the driveway, blurred before me and I had to cross my eyes to focus. My feet stumbled across the uneven pavement as I searched the perimeter like a starved coyote, teeth bared looking for the slightest hint of blonde hair swishing in the dark. But I saw nothing, no one. The street was quiet and desolate, blinking at me in utter bewilderment with her yellow lanterns. The spins came back to me with a doubled force, I had to support myself against one of the cars. The air was filled with a strange kind of glow, a tension that I could not explain, and when I looked up, I saw a full moon, hanging directly above the curve of the street.

Behind me, the door to the bar opened, swung, and then opened again, only to shut behind the exiting people with a thundering smack. Two pairs of feet crunched on the virgin snow, one pasted light and quick, like the crescendo of flutes, the other, long and deep, similar to the drag of a bow against the string of a violin.

‘Come on, baby, come back inside, I’ll take care of this, please, it’s so cold out, you’ll catch a cold.’

Henry begged as he desperately tried to hold onto her hand. Once again I observed how they mixed together, two dark spots against the backdrop of the luminescent snow, from the side-lines. But she broke off, shook her head, as if unable to muster any words. Her face shined in the natural light of the night, but not as I was used to, not with the internal, sweet, warm, internal glow, but the reflected light of the surroundings. Her face was wet, pulled and cold.

‘Don’t. Just don’t. Stop it Henry, I need to go. I need to go alone.’ Her voice was shaky, packed with emotions I could not untangle and determine. ‘Stop it, don’t touch me right now.’

She pulled her arm from his embrace, pushed at him to stay in place and strode off. His fingers floated in the space she had occupied just seconds before, mindlessly grabbing at the phantom threads of material. The coat she had on, flapped as she strode away, quicker, and quicker, swooshing in the cold air with no particular rhythm like the broken wings of a bird, so desperate to take into the skies. He stopped, obedient to her wishes, but I could see the worry painted in his face.

‘At least change back into my shoes, those will hurt you!’

She waved at him, her back steadily turned towards him, head hung low, but she gave no response.

As she walked away, up the street, her silhouette came against the gargantuan moon and suddenly I had this feeling of solemn loneliness gripping at my heart, convincing me that she was not walking, but floating up, alone far away and straight up the silver strands of moonlight into the unknown Space. Henry stood there, leaning forward as if fighting with his thoughts, his urges, until she was too small and too far away for him to see.

We styed there for a second longer, in silence, until he pulled out a red pack of cigarettes out of his coat and lit one. His eyes bore mindlessly into the ground and the lighter he held illuminated his ghostly, foreign face with an orange glow.

‘Don’t worry Richard. He’s going to show up sooner or later.’ Hoarse screech was all that came out of his mouth, vicious, venomous, sure. ‘And then, we’re going to deal with that swine accordingly.’

His eyes darted to me, and a shiver run down my spine, for I hand never seen such cold and biting rage frozen into a steady, calm face like that. Fear crossed me, when he inhaled the smoke from his cigarette and not a single muscle on his face moved.

‘Oculum pro oculo.’

#bunny corcoran #camilla macaulay #charles macaulay #francis abernathy #henry winter #henry winter x reader #richard papen #the secret history #afab reader

128 notes · View notes

dreamescapeswriting · 2 years

Text

BTS Reaction || Their S/O On The Red Carpet Or Performance [Request]

⤜Copyright: © DreamEscapesWriting - May 2022

⤜MASTERLIST

SEOKJIN:

Jin had no idea what you were going to be doing on the stage for the night, you'd been keeping everything on the low for a reason. It was a stage for many people to do their own songs or covers, you decided you were going to do a cover and had been working secretly for weeks on this idea. You wanted the performance to be a surprise for your boyfriend and his bandmates, not to mention your fans who were already theorising what you were going to be performing. Though none of them had been able to guess it just yet and you were thankful for that.

Your persona as an idol was always seen as "cute" or the "innocent" one of your group and so tonight you were going to rebrand yourself. A solo performance of a song that no one would expect to come from you including your boyfriend.

But once the music started Jin's eyes were glued onto you the entire time. You were standing in the middle of the stage with red chains around your body, letting out large breaths as you looked out at the people in the crowd. Jin's mouth dropped open as the sound began to boom from the speakers, the familiar song he'd heard you playing whenever you were in the shower. "Red Lights" by Stray kids.

"Hyung," Yoongi whines a little as he watched you dancing across the stage. You were dressed in a white gown that moved freely in time with your movements, chains were around you but not tight enough that it would restrict you.

"I know," Jin whispers as his eyes stayed on you, if someone was to look at him right now he would look like a cartoon character whose eyes had turned to hearts.

You did your best not to look for Jin in the front row, you knew one look from him and you wouldn't be able to concentrate so you worked hard. Your voice trembled just a little when you noticed people recording on their phones a lot.

The lights flashed red as you laid down at the end of the stage, your chest hanging off the edge as you locked eyes with your boyfriend. His eyes darkened a little as he licked his lips, you knew you were going to be in for punishment later but it was all worth it to see the look on his face and to rebrand yourself. Before getting up from the floor you winked at Jin and slid down from the stage, heading through a passage under the stage to go and change into your outfit for the rest of the night. Jin on the other hand still hadn't recovered from the performance, his mind going over it all in his head again and again.

YOONGI:

The performance had been months ago and yet Yoongi hadn't stopped going on about it as though it had happened just the night before.

"Yoongi," You laughed softly as you watched him on his phone, showing Jimin the performance that you had done. It was old news for everyone by now but for Yoongi he kept going back and reliving what you had done on stage.

"No, I want to show him," Yoongi told you as you took the phone out of his hands and locked it,

"Jimin saw it, he was with you when you kept gawking at me from the floor." You laughed as you looked at your boyfriend, it was sweet that he was this enthusiastic about your job but you didn't want to annoy anyone with your work.

"Does he know I helped write the song you did? And worked on the track," Yoongi was more excited about the performance than you had been. It was your first song you'd worked together on and the entire reason you had met one another.

"Yes baby, he knows. Because you told him about twenty times," You reminded him as a blush began to appear on his cheeks and spread its way up to his ears.

"It's cute that you like it baby but we shouldn't keep pushing it in people's faces," You reminded him as he rolled his eyes playfully at you. Yoongi had always been the type to hype you up, in the background or in person he was always there and ready to hype you.

"My personal hype man," You whispered pressing a kiss against his ear as he smiled a little at the name,

"I just want you to know how proud I am of you, you did so well that night." He held your hand in his and you smiled, leaning down to kiss his cheek softly.

"I know you are babe, You showed me how proud you were that night." You reminded him bringing back the blush to his face as he hid in your neck and whined a little. He was only ever this whiney around you and you enjoyed being able to be the one to do this to your boyfriend.

"We can go to mine and you can show me again?" You smirked at him, within two seconds Yoongi was on his feet and dragging you up with him.

HOSEOK:

The moment you had stepped out of the car Hoseok never let his hands off you. He was either holding your hand or his arms were around your waist, but he just needed to hold you tightly with him,

"You know, you'll have to let go at some point." You teased as you stood beside him, letting people take photos of you before you walked into the venue.

"But not right now," He told you as he looked down at you, the two of you lost in your own world as you forgot about everyone around you for a moment.

"You're too beautiful for me to let go of, someone might sweep you away," He looked down at you, running his hands up to your cheek and cupping your face gently, you leaned into his touch just staring up into his eyes.

"No one could ever steal me Hoseok. I'm yours," Your voice barely came out as a whisper as he looked down at you his eyes drinking you in.

"Still, I should keep you close just in case." He winks, both of you desperate to kiss one another but you weren't allowed. Public Displays of affection were a big no, no, on the red carpet so you straightened his tie and smirked a little.

"Go inside so I can kiss you and not stop." You begged as he nodded, straightening his back as he began to speed walk the red carpet. Stopping whenever he had to and giving small talk to any interviewer that would suddenly catch you both off guard.

NAMJOON:

From the moment the performance and night was over Namjoon should have known he was going to be a walking meme. Just like Jackson with his reaction to JYP and Hwasa on stage together, the photos were everywhere and there was no escaping them.

"Did you have to use that image?" He questioned as he looked over at you, you smirked at him before nodding. It was a photo of him staring at you from the crowd, mouth open and eyes wide as he took in the performance.

"It's my favourite one, you look cute." You teased as he glared at you, it was now being made into a sticker for the group chat to use whenever they wanted. You just used it whenever you saw the need to and even when you didn't, you just sent it to him and giggled to yourself.

"I look awful, my mouth is just hanging open." He told you as he locked his phone, bringing you down onto his lap as you wrapped your arms around the back of his neck.

"You're cute though, I couldn't look at you when I was dancing. I was so scared I'd start laugh or lose my steps," You admitted as you carefully moved some hair out of his face,

"I couldn't help it. I hadn't expected you to do something like that and I just couldn't take my eyes off you," He looked at you as you smiled down at him, your whole body buzzing with excitement as he leaned closer and kissed you softly.

"I will stop using it if it bothers you that much," You promised as he shook his head, it was okay as long as you were doing it out of love.

"If the boys use it, I might kill them." He lied as you kissed him again.

JIMIN:

Jimin was always trying to show you off and being on the red carpet together was no different. He had his hands locked with yours as he walked up and down the red carpet with you and smirked as you groaned a little.

"Jimin, can we head inside?" You laughed as he spun you around under his arms, looking over at reporters who were yelling your name out.

"We need to make sure you get seen, you look great." He told you as he pulled you close by your waist, your chests pressed together as people screamed loudly around you. Ever since getting out of the car, Jimin had been stopping in front of every camera he could find and dramatically pointing at you for their attention. Your whole body was on fire from the attention you were getting and you could hardly believe Jimin was doing this.

"I'm showing off my beautiful girl," He laughs softly pressing a gentle kiss to your forehead as you shook your head at him, going along with him as he continued to show you off.

TAEHYUNG:

Your performance had just ended and now Taehyung was presenting a speech to people in the crowd but he couldn't concentrate on anything. He knew it was going to be hard for him to give his speech now but he couldn't help it.

"I'm so sorry, my mind is still on my beautiful girl!" He yells loudly as you laughed from the side of the stage, shaking your head at him from backstage. There was no way he was going to sit and make his entire speech about you,

"Can we just take a second to appreciate how wonderful that performance was?! Oh my gosh," He laughs softly into the microphone, his eyes on you the entire time as he complimented everything you had done on stage,

"Speech, I'm supposed to be doing a speech." He chuckles turning back to the crowd who were already laughing at him getting sidetracked by you so much. You on the other hand were burning up from the attention he was giving to you and you headed back to find your seat with most eyes on you.

JUNGKOOK:

Jungkook knew you were going to be doing a performance and he wanted everyone to watch you, as soon as you appeared on stage he smirked to himself. Telling the boys to watch you the whole time, he wanted everyone's attention on you. He knew you had been working night and day on this performance and were overly nervous about it.

"Hyung!" Jungkook whispered at Namjoon who looked down at his watch for not even a second, flushing a bright red Namjoon's eyes went back to the stage as Jungkook smiled happily at it.

Throughout your two songs, Jungkook made sure that none of them looked away from you,

"You're missing it when you scold us." Jimin reminds him as Jungkook shoots him a glare, only now realising he had missed a lot of what you were doing on stage because he was distracted.

When you came over to their table he was pouting the whole time,

"You missed it because you were scolding them, didn't you?" You quizzed, sitting between Taehyung and Jungkook who was continuing to pout and nod his head at you. He was beating himself up about it, he knew there would be videos but it wasn't going to be the same.

"I'll give you a private show at home," You laughed kissing his cheek as he smiled a little more.

Tagline: @lyoongx @mitzwinchester @rjsmochii @taestannie @sw33tnight @sweeneyblue1 @jin-from-the-block @acciocriativity @mwitsmejk @taeechwitaa @justbangtanthingz @stillwithlix @kookiekuu @lolalee24 @hopeworldd-2 @totallynoanalien @yubinism @ethereallino @heyjiminnie @aerastus @tinyoonsblog @cherrybubblesandvodka @kimahnjung98 @halesandy

514 notes · View notes

caesariawritesstuff · 3 days

Text

Frenemy

(Arkham!Riddler x Fem!Reader)

● Ao3 ● X ● Retrospring ● Read on Ao3 ●

There’s a beep in your ear as Oracle’s voice comes over your comm, “I think I finally tracked Nigma’s location. But he’s bouncing it off several cell towers. I’ve got Robin checking out the first, can you get to the second?”

You sighed. Not this again. With a shake of your head, you replied, “Yes. Give me the address.”

She spouted it off to you, but you were just barely registering her voice. Because instead, you felt a deep disappointment growing within you.

You’re not sure how it started, exactly. This strange frenemy-type of thing you had going on with Edward Nigma. Probably a year ago, when you were the first to arrive on the scene of one of his schemes. Back then, you’d been new to vigilantism, new to the role of Batgirl, which Oracle had honorarily given to you. You were still new to your training and not as on guard as you should’ve been – and that’s how you found yourself in the clutches of the Riddler.

He'd mocked you, forcing you to solve his riddles, using as bait until Batman arrived. But to his surprise, you’d managed to solve every single one. You’d watched as his smug smirk twisted into a sneer of humiliation and outrage. He’d thrown one of his usual tantrums, claiming you were cheating or getting outside help. You assured him you weren’t.

And maybe, deep down, you think he believed you.

With another heavy sigh, you grappled across Gotham’s rooftops as quickly as you could. The roar of sirens and alarm bells and nightlife rang throughout, a symphony of criminal chaos. Within minutes, you found yourself out of what appeared to be an abandon apartment building: the shudders were boarded shut, rust covered the metal doors. It looked as though it happened been lived in in quite some time, but you knew better; it was exactly the perfect hideout for the Riddler to hole up in. Inconspicuous and unnoticed. You quietly searched the windows and doors, looking for the perfect way in – but you finally found it: a small, electronic box that appeared to be an old power box. But instead, you flipped it open to reveal a screen. Staring back at you were the bright, green words: When you don't have me, you want me, but when you do have me, you want to give me away. What am I?

You smiled; that’s an easy one. Quickly you punched in the answer: Secret.

As expected, a hidden compartment within brick walls slid forward, revealing a secret passageway inside. You held your breath, keeping your guard up, as you followed the path in. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling and smell of dank mold clung to the air. Scrunching up your nose, you tried not to breathe as you followed the passage for several yards until you finally came to his hideout.

You spotted him sitting before an array of vast monitors and computers, all glowing bright green, enveloping him in their emerald glow. The top of his bowler hat peeked over the back of the chair he was in.

With a sigh, he spun around and faced you. “I should’ve expected you,” he said, annoyance lacing his tone. He leaned forward, resting his weight on his hands, which were rested on the top of his cane.

“Hoping I was someone else?” you asked.

The corner of his mouth quirked upward in a smirk, and you grinned back. It was strange, how this was what had become of your relationship. After all these months, time and time again, you’d somehow found yourself in this position with him. And even though you were on other sides of the law, you couldn’t help but find some enjoyment in your small interactions with him.

And there’d been plenty more than you expected.

He turned away, his focus back on the screens. “Go away, little Bat. You’re going to ruin my plans before they’ve even begun.”

You laughed lightly, wandering into the rest of the hideout. Your gaze focused on the screens, on each camera which was pointed somewhere important in Gotham. On one screen, you noticed Batman procuring himself one of Riddler’s trophies out of little green cage.

Edward snickered. “He got lucky with that one,” he said, but it was more to himself than to you.

“So,” you sighed. “What exactly are you planning this time? A giant robot? Hostages aboard a runaway train? Children dangling above a vat of acid?”

He paused his typing, glancing at you. “Perhaps.”

You snorted. “Come on Edward, don’t be in such a mood. I’m sorry I’ve ruined your plans.”

“Come back later, then. I have more important things to deal with.”

“Like outsmarting Batman? You know he’s going to come here and kick the crap out of you, like usual.” It wasn’t the first time you’d watched as Edward got his shit kicked in and dragged out a broken, beaten mess.

Sure, you were trained in hand-to-hand combat yourself. But Batman had a particular brand of violence that you didn’t follow through with.

Edward was quiet for a longer moment that usual. Perhaps he was ruminating over your words. You put your hands on your hips and waited for his reply. Admittedly, you weren’t ready to walk out. For some strange reason you couldn’t explain it…he fascinated you. Despite his criminal crusade, he was incredibly smart, and you valued that.

And that was how you found yourself in this strange predicament with him – somehow always enjoying each other’s company. At least, you thought he must’ve come to tolerate you, because he wasn’t kicking you out anymore.

Your gaze strayed back to the monitors, studying their placement, before you shifted your attention to the dozens of blueprints and plans laid out in a scattered mess across his desk, several which were stained with a neat ring of coffee. His hand immediately shot out, arms covering what he could.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he tutted with a click of his tongue. “These aren’t for your eyes, little Bat. It looks like you’re cheating to me. I knew your brain was the size of a peanut.” He rolled his eyes.

You barked out a laugh. “Right. Whatever you say.” A small smirk formed at the corner of your mouth, and you turned your attention back to the monitors. In one, Robin was just leaving the location Oracle had mentioned – which appeared to be booby-trapped, which he just narrowly escaped. Batman himself was solving another puzzle – also just missing a trap Riddler had programed to kill him as soon as he snatched up a trophy.

You held your breath as a chill crept down your spine. The sudden realization that you were sitting here with the Riddler, chatting with him as if you were friends – like always, it seemed fun at first. Harmless. Until the reality of the situation set in. That he was trying to kill the people you’d come to know and love.

Edward’s attention on the monitors, the scowl on his face as Batman continued to solve his riddles, didn’t budge. But unlike Batman, you weren’t about to go throwing fists.

“Ten minutes,” you said quietly. “I’m giving you a ten-minute head start.”

He paused, slowly turning to you. “Do you really think that’s wise?”

“Probably not.”

“See? I knew you were an idiot.” He chuckled lowly to himself, turning his attention back to the monitors, his fingers racing across the keyboard.

You walked out of the hideout and grappled onto a nearby rooftop, keeping a close eye. And within minutes, you watched him sneak out the hidden entrance. He smirked and tipped his hat to you, before sneaking away into the shadows. You reached down to your toolbelt and pushed a small tracking device, alerting the GCPD to your location. The minutes counted down like an eternity as you kept your eyes trained on the splash of green amongst the darkness.

And when those ten minutes were up, you followed.

#caesariawrites #the riddler #arkham riddler #edward nigma #arkhamverse riddler #arkhamverse #theriddler #the riddler x y/n #the riddler x you #the riddler x reader #edward nigma x reader #arkham edward nygma #edward nygma x reader

12 notes · View notes

rabbit-reveries · 1 year

Text

— 𝑷eace

Chapter 1

Chapter 2: Daffodil Chain

Pairing: Aemond x Targaryen!Reader

Tags: Childhood Friends to Enemies to Lovers, Fluff, Angst, Hurt and Comfort, Multichapter Fic.

Warnings: Some tension, some angsty topics

Word Count: 2.2k

* Black Dahlias mean betrayal

You close your fist around the letter, wrinkling the paper. "Meet me in the garden maze" for what? So he can sully your youth with the new habits he seems to have picked? Does he plan on humiliating you further? He can do it very well in public without forcing you to sneak away at such late hours, as he has proven. What will he gain from meeting you in the night? What more can he take? Has he truly changed so much?

Or is this proof he hasn't? If he wants to meet you, it means he has something to say to you, something he doesn't want others to hear. It might even be something important. But it can't be good, or he wouldn't have behaved the way he did during supper... Ugh, you can't make sense of this mess. Part of you, immature and naive, begs you to believe in his good heart and meet him. Whatever he has to say, he is still your Aemond somewhere. Part of you is still his, you can’t fight it. You sigh, knowing the battle inside you is already lost. You let go of the crumpled-up paper and toss it over your shoulder.

Defeated and disappointed in yourself, you undo the rest of your dress. You occupy yourself with your nightly routine: put on your nightgown, undo the braids in your hair, and brush away the knots... And rehearse what you mean to say until the color of the sky tells you the hour approaches. With a cloak over your chemise and a dagger attached to your thigh, you sneak away using the secret passage Aemond himself showed you when you were children. You remember how obsessed with maps he was… Funny it comes to use in this way.

The night wind is rougher than you expected, and you hold yourself in your mantle to try and keep yourself warm. The more you stand in the garden, the more you regret your decision to bet on the letter and meet him. What if it was all a jest and Aemond never sent you anything? The 'A' could very well be Aegon playing on your childish affection for his brother and sending you to spend the night in the cold. It is so dark and growing darker by the minute. The hoot of an owl startles you, and you cover your mouth with a hand to stop yourself from screeching.

"Calm down, Y/N, it was just... Just an owl." you tell yourself, one hand over heart to keep track of the beating. Gods, you are very easily frightened.

You are also an absolute idiot. Aemond isn't coming. If he were, he would already be standing in front of you. He had always been punctual to a fault.

A branch snaps, and you immediately reach for the knife attached to your leg. You palm it over the fabric of your nightgown, wildly searching for where the noise came from. In the dark: light, and one pale violet eye. So Aemond came. Now you are startled by the thought you wish that he hadn't. You realize you were angry at being left waiting but relieved not to have to face your former friend. For your mother's daughter, you certainly are very cowardly.

"My Prince, you came." you catch yourself saying, emotions you don't recognize in your voice.

"I debated it for a long time," said Aemond, a lantern in his hand. "but I could not keep you waiting til morning."

"I half thought you would. I was just about to leave."

You stare at Aemond, and he stares right back at you. You are not sure what to do with his gaze. Once, there was so much affection mixed in the purple of his iris, and now it is more like he is amused by knowing something you desperately need to know, and having decided not to tell you anything. The silence stretches between the two of you, uncomfortably so.

"Why did you say those things during supper?" you hear yourself question, surprised by the vulnerability in your voice. You didn't mean to let Aemond see how hurt you are, but maybe it is the late hour because you are too tired to fake strength. "You knew the fight you would start; you knew the discomfort you would stir. You knew it is a sore spot, so why did you decide to touch on it?"

He ponders the words for a moment, or so you think. When he speaks, you realize he still means to insult you. "I'm so sorry, niece. Do you suppose I should have played happy family some more before retiring to my chambers?"

"'Play happy family', or so you say, to me would be being civil to your sister and her children. To the friends of your youth."

"Hm, yes, I do enjoy it when friends tear open my face and blind me in one eye. Perhaps you would like to try taking the one that was left to me?" Disdain drips from his voice like sour milk. You grimace at the taste.

“Pardon me, my lord, but you were about to crack our brother’s skull open like an egg, what would you have Luke do? Stand there and watch?”

“Like you stood and watched when your brother pulled out a dagger?”

The truth stings, just like he hoped it would. In the dark, you can see he’s waiting for an answer. Why did you agree to this? You’re bound to catch a cold, all so you can bicker with a man you once knew, but know nothing of new. You sigh.

“I was paralyzed! I’m not proud of it…” you confess, eyes on the ground. “I wish I had helped you.”

“And yet, you didn’t. Neither did you apologize. What you did do was stay quiet while your mother had me questioned, the taste of blood still on my tongue, and then leave to Dragonstone without ever saying goodbye.”

There is bitterness in his tone and thinly veiled heartache. You never gave much thought to how betrayed he must have felt then. You always thought of yourself as the victim. The truth in the way he speaks forces you to look in the mirror, and you don’t like what you see. He insulted you, but you left him when he need you most.

“It was all so surreal, I was struggling to process everything.” you hear yourself say, but the excuse doesn’t seem enough, even if you believe it to be sincere. Aemond clicks his tongue and looks away from you. “I’m being truthful! I am!”

“I don’t think I have ever heard a worst excuse.”

He turns to leave, and you rush to pull him back by the fabric of his shirt. A man has little reason to wear a cloak, they can leave their rooms in the middle of the night. A woman has to be disguised and prepared to deal with rumors, and, if found alone with a man in a situation such as the present one, accept she is forever ruined.

“I wish had I stayed, Aemond. I wish I had stayed, I really do. I wish we had stayed the closest of friends, I wish I would have married you when I came of age, just like we planned to. I missed you so much. I know you missed me too!” you plead. He turns to you, a look on his face you can’t quite read. You let go of his shirt. “Do you remember that? That we used to play house and say we’d wed each other in the future?” There is a pause, and neither of you says anything “Look, I can’t change the past with wishing. All I can do is stay here now. What if I stayed this time?”

You realize you are standing quite close to each other when he takes a step towards you and suddenly he has fingers lifting your chin. He forces you to stare up at him, something strange brewing in his mind. His other hand holds the lantern low, so the light barely hits the faces of the two of you.

“Don’t you dare say you missed me, that you would have done this and that, that you would have married me, when you didn’t think to send a raven or reply to Helaena’s for six fucking years. You had your chance to stay.” he spits at you, tightly holding your chin “You would not have the guts to stay this time, not even if you wanted.”

He’s angry, and you don’t blame him, but can’t help to be a little scared. You hold his arm as he holds your face, your eerie imagination coming up with scenarios where his fingers travel to your neck and squeeze the life out of you.

“I can’t change the past, but I can prove you wrong about the present. Just test me.”

“Test you?”

He drops his hand and you don’t miss the warmth of his touch, only now able to breathe. You realize it’s now or never - you can either apologize and have a less than pleasant relationship with your uncle for whatever time it takes for it to fully sour or can you prove to him you have what it takes. Do you wish to be by his side? You know so little of the man your friend has become. You’ve never been one to be taken by the unknown. You’ve always played safe.

But where has it gotten you? By not picking sides, you made your choice all the same, and now there are consequences. With confidence you don’t truly feel, you repeat:

“Test me.”

Aemond is taken aback. He never expected you to stand your ground. He takes a step away, mulling over what to do. You can’t possibly be serious. You’re just a girl, probably scared of her own monthly bleeding.

“Alright.” he pauses and puts down the lantern “If you want it so badly.”

You wonder what he means to do as he stands in front of you, doing nothing. He breathes deeply and for a moment you are afraid he is going to tackle you, but that’s mostly because your mind likes to jump straight to absurdities. The prince then takes off his eyepatch in an act that almost seems ceremonial, and brings the lantern close to his face.

You don’t want to, but you gasp. There is an ugly scar across his face, from forehead to chin, and where there is supposed to be a second violet eye, there is a blue sapphire sphere, sparkling under the flickering light. It is hauntingly. You want to look away and focus on anything else, but your eyes keep coming back to stare at the damage your brother’s hand had done. So this is the length of the hurt between him and your family.

“You look as if the mere sight of my face assaults you.” he lets out a bitter laugh “But then again, I shouldn’t be surprised. Most ladies at court have never seen me without an eyepatch and still have me as a disfigured creature.”

He puts down the light again. You realize he means to put back the cover.

Panic rushes through you. You have offended him, again. “It does not! It’s rather pleasing, actually! Your face, that is, eyepatch or no eyepatch. I’ve always thought you to be quite beautiful.” you blurt out. You want to be sincere but your gaze never leaves the gruesome scar “What terrifies me is that this feud got to the point where you were so deeply hurt and no one did anything.”

“Liar.” his words nip at you, but in his face, you see he isn’t as angry, perhaps more like an open wound. “You did nothing as well, might I remind you.”

“I’m not lying! I should have done something. I’ll carry this regret to my grave.”

He glares at you, tongue on the cheek like he’s sharpening a knife. He is not done.

“You know, I expected my father to pick your mother’s side. But you? You were my friend. I trusted you. I went against my mother’s wishes to be by your side, I took the punches so my brother would not pester you… And you left when I needed you most. I was alone after you left, did you ever think about that? Alone with all your wilting flowers and broken promises.”

Is he about to tear up? You can’t tell in the low light. Maybe it’s just the reflection of your own cry. You reach to touch his hand but he pulls away from you.

“We were children, Aemond. I wronged you, I know, but we can make this right! It doesn’t have to be like this!”

“It is like this.”

“But it doesn’t have to be. Please.” you plead.

He studies you with eyes full of black dahlias.

“You want to prove you’ve got the heart to stay. Alright, I’ll test you.”

You wait the pregnant halt.

“Kiss me.” he says. “Kiss the scar, the eye that lacks, and I might be willing to give you another chance.”

Tags: @caspianobsessed @gentle-monster

#hotd #hotd x reader #hotd imagine #hotd x you #hotd fic #house of the dragon #house of the dragon fic #house of the dragon angst #aemond #aemond x you #aemond x reader #aemond x y/n #aemond fic #aemond imagine #aemond angst #bunnie writes

56 notes · View notes

hils79 · 8 months

Text

Hils Watches Oh No! Here Comes Trouble - Ep 2

A few people have told me how excited they are that I'm watching it and telling me how good it is. I remain a little confused about what's going on but maybe things will become clearer in this episode.

I love that they keep making it look like something spooky is happening only for it to be a fake out. Except there also is something spooky happening because the last episode ended with what looked like a zombie

The most zoomer thing. Dude bumps into her and gets blood on her shirt. Gotta take a selfie and upload it with some nihilistic poetry

This is so fascinating. Everyone using social media to track the dude.

Okay obviously I have no idea but I am going to hazard a guess that this sole fan of Pu Yiyong's comic is the kid he bullied in school. They have to be connected somehow, right?

Of course he's going to get a job writing passages for the family of a loved one who passed away. And that will help him deal with his own grief over losing his dad. I don't know what I was expecting from this drama but it definitely wasn't this.

Poingnant scene about processing grief immediately followed by Pu Yiyong fainting as soon as he sees a zombie. Which is understandable I suppose but they are definitely playing it as comedy.

Wait is this going to be a buddy zombie drama?

Apparently zombies have no concept of personal space

This has nothing to do with the drama but I just hit pause to take a bite of my sandwich and 😂

Now they're going to solve his death together. Okay this is fun.

Uh....I kind of ship them?

You can't leave him at the spot where he died like a sad abandoned puppy

Look he's even doing the sad puppy head tilt

Oooooh! Interesting! I was wondering how the cop was going to fit into it. She saved Pu Yiyong's life by giving him CPR at the bus acceident site. But also I think she thinks he killed the zombie dude.

Can you imagine? Hi, yes, I woke up to find this zombie dude in my bedroom

Her: Shit if there's no body we can't prove that he killed this guy Him: Shit if there's no body that just makes me look even more sus

This is so fun

I'm not sure going straight back to the scene after you got released is the best idea

I thought for a second she wasn't going to be able to see zombie dude and just assume Pu Yiyong was lying. I forgot that zombie dude was on all those cameras and bumped into people.

I kind of want to hug him

I love everyone fainting when they see him for the first time. I feel like that's a normal reaction.

Pu Yiyong: Here is a cop, here is the victim who just happens to be the walking dead. No need for me to be involved anymore. Okay, bye.

Ah hah! So he's not a zombie he just possessed the body.

I regret looking that up

Look at them working together to solve crime. I mean his mum did say she didn't mind what he did with his life so long as it wasn't illegal and this is basically the opposite of illegal

Yeah, I am 100% on board with this now that we've got beyond all the setup. This was such a fun episode.

#hils watches #hils watches oh no! here comes trouble #hils watches twdramas #oh no! here comes trouble #twdrama

12 notes · View notes

captain-aralias · 2 years

Text

fanfic writer challenge!

@mostlymaudlin invented this challenge and was kind enough to tag me. it took my brain a few days to wake up enough to respond, but here i am.

instructions:

list & explain the three lines/moments from canon that are most fundamental to how you write your fave character

challenge 3 more fic writers to do the same!

ok - i'll do baz too, so we can compare.

first thing from me is i'm going to cheat, because i can't cover baz in 3 quotes. both he and simon change so much between carry on and WS/AWTWB that although they have a trajectory from one state to the other, and though i love people backreading AWTWB into CO!Baz.... i write them super different.

CO!Baz

1. And I'm hopelessly in love with him.

this comes at the end of a massive monologue - and then leads into another massive monologue. all about how baz is SAD but his love for simon is BEAUTIFUL and all consuming. it's so dramatic that he literally puts it on its own line, and then cuts to a new chapter. but it's also... resigned. nothing to do about it, just pine.

these are the chapters that i tend to listen to most often, as it's a long run of baz stuff, but i also do think it's pretty typical. (and i love him)

2. The World of Mages never had taxes before. Taxes were for Normals. We had Standards instead.

i thought about removing this a few times, it seems harsh - i only get three choices. but going to keep it in. baz has internalised a lot of shit, he uses learned hatred of others to protect himself against simon amongst other things. speaking of self-protection ...

3. 'You slept in my arms,' he says. / 'Fitfully.'

baz has got what he wants, but he's not able to believe it's happening so backslides immediately. it's a funny line, too - like he knows the audience will laugh with him, even if he doesn't mean simon to laugh. it's also (obliquely) the last thing i would say about CO-era!baz, which is that when faced with an opportunity to kiss simon awake or tell him he's interested in him..... he chooses not to do that. baz doesn't act, things happen to him - except on his crazed quest about his mother.

WS/AWTWB!Baz

1. i'll have the cheesecake factory scene, too - it does what rory says, and also tells us what (i believe) simon loves about him.

my favourite line is:

"I would never want to date you," he earnestly replies. "But it's not because you're mule-headed. That's practically my type."

ha ha. but also - it's true! and it's very kind of him to try.

2. 'I love you," I say. (And I know that's not a thing. I know it doesn't matter.)

so brave to come at all and track simon down! so brave to say it! it feels so unexpected to me and changes a lot of my baz characterisation from here on. now, i'm like: woah, baz can be the proactive character.

3. n.b. i spent a while thinking about what this would be. there are things that i think should be baz characterisation that i don't use enough (the playfighting at the ren faire; the fact he considers his culpability after america), and there's like.... the formal politeness. i've got kindness from WS, so we don't need the bit where he takes daphne home.

i think i'm going to go with ...

Is he scared? Embarrassed? Overwhelmed? Did he even want that to happen? He's never been with a guy, maybe he didn't like it. Maybe it wasn't what he was expecting. It's messier than being with a girl. (Isn't it?) (I don't know anything about being with girls.) (I don't know anything about being with guys.) (I know a lot about furtively bashing one out while my roommate is off fighting magickal crime, then hoping he doesn't wonder why I'm taking a shower in the middle of the afternoon.)

this is just a really fun passage in lots of ways. it has lots of short clauses, repetition, baz correcting himself. being funny, but it also has two new things. the first is that baz is like 'oh no, simon will have a freak out' and doesn't NOTICE that he himself is having a freak out, right now, a terrible spiral ... massive deflection onto simon. and using humour to deflect from own feelings too! (a personal favourite).

and the other is that.... before AWTWB, i enjoyed the shared headcanon that baz had researched himself into being a gay sex savant. what we find out from this paragraph is that he has literally not researched it at ALL, the same as he hasn't researched vampirism AT ALL. he's useless.... in this one very specific way, because he does know loads of other things. but there are things that he's afraid to look at too closely and it's this stupid fucking blind spot - and apparently sex is one of them. simon has to take the lead from now on, RIP to all future sexgod!baz fics. sexgod!simon only from now on.

tagging 2xthree people, since i did two batches: @artsyunderstudy @annabellelux @bookish-bogwitch @chen-chen-chen-again-chen @carryonvisinata @nightimedreamersworld as well as anyone who sees this post and wants to write about a character. please tag me in your post, i'd love to see it.

#carry on #my content

29 notes · View notes

a3day · 1 year

Text

A3DAY Extended Commentary: KAI "Rover" (2023)

DISCLAIMER - An Album a Day is my exploration into the Korean music scene. This blog, just like my podcast, will cover mainstream, indie and some underground artists within the scene and provide both factual and opinionated commentary. The biggest benefit to sharing my thoughts this way is that it will hopefully expose you to more great music and exploration of your own.

When assuming membership in one of South Korea's most well-recognized idol groups, I'm willing to believe that creating solo work is not only a deeply desired opportunity, but a rites of passage. Clearly, it's allowed Kim Jong-in a.k.a. Kai to break away from the mold (or "colors," as K-pop often refers to the energy, styling, and expectations) of SM Entertainment's EXO with two mini-albums.

With this third outing, "Rover," sounds unexpected. There's some familiar deliveries, but you damn near can't put your finger on which EXO album clued you in that he could do what he's going to do on this project. You can't even fully place it on the same shelf as "Peaches," his second mini-album birthed 16 months before this one. If his debut mini-album was sexy-sexy-dance-dance-smooth, then the second was tongue-in-cheek-sweet-sweet-vibes... and this one is grown-grown-borderline-AOMG/H1GHR Music.

You can't just jump around like that, Kaihonetta... don't do me us like this... it's dangerous. (And yes, that is pronounced Kai-ho-netta.)

SM used far better words than I have to express the variety of this album, stating,

KAI has presented different concepts for each solo album released so far, such as 'Mmmh' with a restrained sexiness and 'Peaches' with a sweet vibe, proving that he is a 'world-class performer' who will never let you down. Expectations are rising for the unique music and performance that he will show through this album.

Let's get into the breakdown of what we're hearing, feeling *clears throat* and sensing on "Rover," track by track.

Rover - Bulgarian pop done Kai's way

You've read that right: this song is a reinterpretation of Bulgarian pop star Dara's song, released on Virginia Records. SM embraces covers and the fact that Kai's production team stayed true to the original music and arrangement is a win.

At bare minimum, the chorus is catchy enough to get a little body movement from its listeners. In my case, I keep mixing parts of it in my head with another track on the album, which we'll get to soon enough.

EDIT: Since writing this on album release day, I've come across several conversations on Twitter about this song and how Kai "copied it." We know there are instances of blatant plagiarism in South Korean pop entertainment but this is not the case here. Permission was sought, granted and publicly acknowledged.

It takes so little to search the Internet for reputable reporting and notations about major and indie label work. This was a perfect opportunity to use those keyboarding skills to find the truth.

While I understand that not everyone is engrossed in music to the point of wanting to know who's who and what's doing what, these arguments against Kai's reinterpretation are ignorant. Checks and cheques have cleared.

Listen to my reaction to this song below

Black Mirror - "Boomerang~~ boomerang~~" A song produced with the sounds of its time for mid-trap music, the track wins because it's not overwhelming the auditory experience. Kai plays with pitch and tone throughout the entire track as he speaks about watching someone with provocative angles and enticing interactions. It's easy enough to ignore the music in favor of his delivery. He sounds comfortable yet arrogant and it works. It works very well, indeed.

Slidin' - This man is talking about adult extra-curricular activities

The mood is set as soon as the song comes on. It's a mellow tempo that encourages the body to loosen up and one's head to bob to the beat. Thus, I thought the title was about sliding into one's DMs. It seemed right and my ass was wrong. Kai said, "Slidin'/Strip it down, take it off/Slidin'/You can leave it all to me/Come wrap me up, closely."

It's easy to get lost in the melodic experience but if you take the time to familiarize yourself with the lyrics in the language of your choosing, then you'll find this song to be a solid statement of adulthood without giving too much away.

Bomba - Reggaeton and redundancy

I must preface this by saying that I'm a member of a reggaeton household. I can't escape it when I hop in the car nor can I run from it when my partner is lounging around the house. It takes very little effort to identify its typical instruments; and it's not that I don't enjoy it, but that I am burned out on it.

Now that my truth has been revealed, this song would not work any other way. "Bomba" is on trend, gives a few words in Spanish to make it feel authentic, and has ear worm capacity that syncs with "Rover" (unintentionally?) well.

Say You Love Me - The hip-hop soul track that fits multiple vocals

Let's look at this first from the artistic styling before my fangirl antics surface. The team behind this track must hide behind the mild description given by SM for the song to avoid pearl-clutching behaviors. The label gives us this:

''Say You Love Me'' is a hip-hop R&B song, which directly expresses the wish to have love confirmed in precise words.

Call it a nice way of saying what one with certain life experiences could pick up on: this song isn't playing around with words but seeking physical confirmation. This isn't uniquely Kai's, per se, not in the way we think of "Confession," for example. This track could have found a home with the deliveries of GOT7's Yugyeom and/or Jay B, Bluewoods, or even Dean if he felt like coming back. Any male artist willing to ride the lyrical cadence could have done it, but it's nice to have Kai challenge himself in this way.

Where's the fangirl antics, you say? I scream, you scream, we're all screaming, "Kai, PLEASE." PLEASE! What the hell do you mean, asking me to wake up and feel the mood and "just feel when I move"?!? HUH?!?! BLANKET THREATS, SIR. You're throwing around blanketed threats!

Sinner - A powerful close to a literal phase in an entertainer's life

We've heard Kai use music before to (allegedly) process feelings of heartbreak and loss as a member of EXO but this felt like it was seeking retribution and forgiveness with his fans. After all, we know that sooner than later, his time to serve his country through military service is coming. Could his pleas for punishment with an immediate re-embrace be thoughts about the inevitable next thing? Regardless if this interpretation is true or not, the song rests on a simplified beat and contemplative piano. The baseline and kick drum could deliver more, as it feels a bit apprehensive soulfully, but it doesn't diminish the message.

MY OFFICIAL RANKING

K-pop fans, on a scale of 1 to 5 where 5′s essential listening and 1′s not worth mentioning, the A3Day ranking for Kai's third album is 4. He's provided three albums that have captured the colors of three periods in his life and this one feels like a man on the cusp of new experiences away from the limelight. I enjoyed it and look forward to what's next to come.

#a3day blog #a3day extended commentary #exo kai #kai rover #music commentary #kpop imagines #kpop moodboard

8 notes · View notes

dysphorie · 1 year

Text

Yoinked from @incredizort !

ao3 wrapped [writers edition] because i can

(Sorry, the questions got all out of order while i was copying and pasting oops) also one of these answers is a fic that was initially posted in an earlier year then updated this year so...

How many words have you written this year?

Honestly its too hard to calculate cos of updated fics and i have dyscalculia and trying to keep track of numbers would kill me. It's like roughly 35k though

How many works did you publish this year?

Four, kinda. Oh god that's awful. Some have several chapters tho

What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)?

"Our animal impulses". Nearly 25k of nearly effortless writing for a brand new fandom that is a fanwork of another fic, and it was pretty well received!

What work of yours has the most hits?

"Honeydripper" with 1109

What work of yours got more feedback than you expected?

Again "honeydripper", which makes sense lol

If you use song lyrics, which artist’s songs did you pull from the most?

Therapy? and the wildhearts

Favorite title you used

Again "honeydripper", because its actually NOT a song title or lyric for once!

Pairing you wrote the most for this year?

Jim root/corey taylor

What work was the quickest to write?

"Our animal impulses". That shit practically just fell out my brain already written

Favorite pairing you wrote for this year?

Probably strade/lawrence because it was new and strange and stretched my legs a bit

How many WIP’s do you have in your docs for next year?

So many that I'm unwilling to count

What’s your longest work of the year?

"Our animal impulses" again at 24,281

What work took you the longest to write?

"Drain you". That shit took TWO FUCKING YEARS

What’s your most common “Additional Tags” tag?

Anal sex. What a shock lol

What WIP are you taking into next year with you?

ALL OF THEM

What’s your shortest work of the year?

"Drain you" at 5001

The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year?

Jim in "drain you". He just insisted on being awkward the whole dang time

Your favorite character to write this year?

Probably lawrence oleander. Was a refreshing change of pace!

What’s one pairing you want to explore next year?

None in particular, just some of the more tertiary members of slipknot probably

Which work has the most comments?

"Honeydripper" with 38

Did you do any collaborative works this year?

Alas no!! Need to remedy that this coming year

How many kudos in total did you get this year?

Uh at least 118, not including whatever i got on the second chapter of "the lost art of keeping a secret"

Did you receive any gifts this year?

Yes, FIVE!! THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH!!

What’s your most common category?

M/m, if that's what this question means

Did you write any gifts this year?

A couple

Favorite work you wrote this year?

"Our animal impulses". Sorry not sorry but that fic is fucking beautiful

Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

"Would you like it," Strade pants, seemingly ignoring the pointed jab and leaning closer to Lawrence's ear, "If I did that to you, hmmm? Took you apart? Plucked all your pretty petals one by one? He. Loves. Me… " He punctuates the three words with three particularly rough thrusts, "He loves me…not, " With that he stops moving entirely, not quite pulling all the way out but enough to make Lawrence whine at the loss of that feeling of fullness, of Strade's potent heat. Strade just grins down at him, curled hair sweat-stuck to his forehead somehow making him look even more menacing than usual. A wild work of art. Fauvism personified. "What would happen then, I wonder?" He says, tilting his head to the side, genuinely asking the question, innocent wide-eyed curiosity completely endearing even when threatening.

Lawrence tries to catch his breath, has no idea what the fuck Strade means, but knowing he wont like it if he's kept waiting for an answer. He opts for the truth. "I - I don't. I don't know what y - you mean?" He says, throat already hoarse and ragged.

That makes Strade chuckle. He runs his knuckles down the side of Lawrence's face with a gentleness that makes him feel sick. "I mean, Lawrence, mein blume, what would happen if your last petal said 'he loves me not'"?

The threat is obvious. The cadence and hitch of Strade's voice betrays how he feels more than his words ever could, and it sounds to Lawrence that Strade wants to open him up to find all his untouched nooks and crannies so he can defile them too. Leave no part of him untouched, unplucked.

But Lawrence is not an ordinary flower. He is no daisy with his face turned towards the sun that is Strade. He is no deceitful fine-petalled rose, waiting to be plucked and ruined by undeserving hands. He is the stench of rafflesia arnoldii. He will devour Strade whole. He is the leafless tendrils of cuscuta gronovii, snaking his way not just around Strade but inside him. Through him. Becoming part of him.

He is, after all, an oleander.

If Strade isn't careful, Lawrence can, and might, kill him.

What do you listen to while writing?

Whatever I'm listening to on tv, usually gilmore girls or 30 rock or community

Biggest surprise while writing this year?

Actually managing to write ANYTHING tbh

#dysphorie writes #my year in fics #slipknot fanfic #motionless in white fanfic #boyfriend to death fanfic

6 notes · View notes

organchordsandlightning · 9 months

Note

for the ask game... 9??

from the fanfic writer ask game

9. What’s your favorite line(s) or scene(s) that you have written?

it's funny, I was trying to think of what constituted 'favorites' and I thought of two different categories.

There's technical aspects I'm fond of: I try to include a lot of humor in my writing, and what I like best in the whole wide blue world is to make something funny while being a little bit sad. (from Catacomb Killer, Disco Elysium: here, Harry is in a half-dream, half-memory with his ex-fiance, Dora, while chasing down a potential child serial killer. A big point of this scene is that Dream!Dora does not want to be forgotten, only because Real Life Harry does not want to forget her. Ultimately, he chooses in this scene to leave his dream ex-fiance and rejoin his new partner, with the understanding that he won't ever forget Dora, not really.)

YOU – “Well, knowing me… I’ll drop by your metaphorical grave and bring flowers, from time to time. I’m not perfect.” DORA INGERLUND – “That’s fine. Sweet of you, even. Do you know what a memory’s favorite flowers are?” LOGIC [Hard: Failure] – You do not. DORA INGERLUND – She grins. “Forget-me-nots.”

(from i'm afraid to come home in the dark, MASH, WIP: post-suicide attempt, Captain Hawkeye Pierce is kept in a psychiatric institution [with all the fantastic, forward thinking care you can expect from the 1950s state hospitals]. Hawkeye Pierce is a surgeon and a terrible patient, with a penchant for cracking wise when he really shouldn't and insisting that he is absolutely fine.

this passage I'm particularly fond of because (a) it highlights Hawkeye's repetition when he gets stressed and the tape player in his mind starts to bunch up ['you know'], (b) Hawkeye gets to use a medical term *and* get a dig at the Army, and (c) in what other scenario do I get to make a medical-foot-tapping-pulse-rate pun?

“Do you gotta count how many times I tap my foot?” Hawkeye asked quizzically. The doc had been quiet for the better part of five minutes. This conversation was going long, as visits went. “Because you know, I gotta keep track of that sort of thing. For pulse, you know. You count for fifteen seconds and multiply by four to get their heart rate. It’s a beautiful marvel of efficiency. I wonder who invented it. Probably the Army.” If there was anything he really hated about this place, it was that it made him feel crazy. What doctor didn’t talk when they were spoken to? This man, with his stuffy hair and glasses, was barely looking up from his paperwork. “Am I looking low, doc? High? A little tappy-cardia on this fine evening? You know,” he said, tilting back in his chair.

secondly, looking back on things, I'm always really fond of scenes that are just particularly vivid in my head. Whether it's something I've planned the whole scene around or just popped up as I was writing, I'm always able to exactly remember how I intend the scene to look/feel.

(from third time's the charm, Malevolent, WIP: Arthur and Parker are in hospital, Arthur is on his very first detective case. For Undisclosed Plot Reasons, Parker has told Arthur to go home, misguidedly thinking that things have gotten too intense for him and he doesn't want to put Arthur in any more danger. Arthur disagrees.)

Parker’s lips twisted again. He reached up to press a few strands of his hair back into place. Almost immediately, they fell forward across his forehead. His eyes studied Arthur, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that Parker could see straight through his body to his stuttering heart. “Something happened to you, Mr. Lester,” Parker said. To his stuttering heart, indeed. Parker gave a turn on his heel, continued his walk down the hallway. His words echoed. “Something bad.”

#ty for sending an ask!#i always love talking about writing but always feel like i'm just jamming my thumb up in my ass whenever I do #not to get too Soft on main but telling stories is probably the thing i'm most passionate about in life so there you go

1 note · View note

morethanonepage · 2 years

Text

@youandthemountains tagged me in a “talk about five favorite fics you've written” meme, so here we go, in descending order for the ~suspense of it all. also i’m tagging @aimmyarrowshigh , @jessicamiriamdrew, @lotus0kid, @whatever-you-can-give-me and anyone else who wants to do this meme, it’s fun, if more time consuming than expected.

also this is just going to be AO3 era stuff -- some of my peter/claude from heroes fic remains very close to my heart but i cannot and will not go and find it to link to ATM. i’m perfectly happy to see it disappear w/ the rest of LJ fandom.

5. Proprioception

this is the most popular fic i’ve ever written (2375 kudos and counting) so i feel like it HAS to be on this list by default, but i’m not really that fond of it. the gimmick was, clint and phil’s relationship through the years and through various people’s eyes (until the end, where it’s through phil and then clint’s eyes). as a writer i’m proud of my attempt to write the POV of characters i never would’ve written otherwise, and people seemed to like how i portrayed them, so that was good to know. i think the best chapter by far is the natasha one -- the others are a little bit hokey w not my fav dialogue (but like, given mcu dialogue in canon....). but even though it’s not my favorite or my best writing i do appreciate that the fandom enjoyed something i actually did something new and (to me) interesting with -- the POV switching and like, dramatic irony of who knows what about whom (esp in pepper’s chapter). plus look i eventually came to really hate tony stark as a character but both* times i’ve written him (see #4 as well) i think i was very fair and i think no one would’ve guessed i kind of found him very annoying in all the avengers movies (i liked him better in his own movies/thought he was better balanced w pepper and rhodey around).

representative passage:

Her nose has stopped bleeding. She removes the handkerchief that's been keeping her from...she's not sure what, really, it's not like her clothes aren't bloodstained and ruined already. She hands it over. Is she supposed to be expressing gratitude? Blue eyes are watching her warily, but she's past worrying about making an effort.

"It looks okay now," he says, and he's a terrible, terrible liar, but at least he didn't say it wasn't broken, and at least he hasn't apologized for it. He fiddles with the ruined white cloth for a while, twisting it between his fingers, and glances, just once, toward the man it belongs to. The man in the suit, whose pacing is probably wearing very neat tracks into the filthy hotel room carpet while he makes clipped, deliberate statements into his cell phone.

He is a much better liar.

*just remembered i’ve actually written him three times but the other was a v short rhodey/tony thing that’s not really worth talking about.

4. The Ice Is Getting Thinner

honestly i’m going to say this is the best clintcoulson fic i ever wrote. there’s a lot of moral ambiguity to it and (not to toot my own horn lmfao) a lot of just plain ambiguity to parts of the plot (i take a twisted amount of pleasure in my refusal to stating things directly sometimes), to the point that a few of the bookmark notes/comments mentioned that they had to read it twice to figure out exactly what was going on.

there are parts i still cringe at -- i was again very complementary to tony stark in his portrayal here but i think the dialogue i wrote for him was. not great. but overall i think it’s a fic that portrays a complicated long term relationship w ups and downs and breakups and makeups and secrets and lies and love and just -- the DRAMA of it all. also i think the structure of the thing -- parts of it are moving backwards and parts of it are moving forwards chronologically -- was to me very clever. like you’re getting the backstory of the thing and how it relates to the current narrative, until they meet up. very the last five years, though i’m not sure if i’d seen that before i wrote it.

and phil is a little darker/more morally grey than i usually wrote him/he was usually written by the fandom, which was also fun for me. it’s also a fic that’s about redemption and forgiveness and like...self forgiveness and making up for bad things you’ve done and also how SHIELD was/is pretty sketch at its core so even the well-meaning people within it are a little more complicated than all that. and there’s some good natasha stuff i think -- and some great like friendship stuff between clint, phil, and natasha that i wish i had explored more when i wrote this ship. i always found the ‘natasha just stands around shaking her head at the stupid boys who can’t get it together’ portrayal that showed up in fic a lot really annoying but i was so afraid of falling into that myself that i didn’t really write her a lot. but that’s a shame bc the potential for her to have a friendship with both phil AND clint was really great, even though we didn’t get much of it in canon.

representative passage:

Phil thought about it. Thought, later, that it might have been the closest he ever got to telling him.

But when Clint got off the plane, he draped one arm around Phil's shoulders, and the other around Natasha's. He was sunburned, smelled of salt and the sea and things Phil would never have associated with Clint, but it wasn't unpleasant. It was a reminder that everything he'd once known about Clint wasn't everything he'd ever be.

"My two favorite people in the world," Clint mumbled, voice weak from disuse. He kissed Phil's cheek, then ducked to kiss Natasha's, putting him slightly off balance. Phil wrapped an arm around his waist to steady him and Clint beamed, his side warm and jostling against Phil's. "Man, am I glad to be home."

Phil didn't tell him.

He began to understand that he never would.

3. a strong enough foundation

[obviously the title of this fic is inspired by the hamilton song “Dear Theodosia” (the Hamilton Mixtape version is the one i see as THEE shara bey dameron song) but i also pulled from the ~feels that come from ben folds’ “still fighting it”]

okay WELL this is purely a sentimental favorite. the travelogue fic. it’s one of the few gen fics i’ve ever written. and it’s a story that is incredibly personal to me, which requires a bit of backstory to explain:

basically up until she passed way, one of my aunts in Mexico was really devoted to taking me to like, important cultural places in Mexico whenever i went to visit her. so amongst other things, back when i was in middle school (so early 2000s i think?) we took a trip to Chiapas, which is the southernmost state in the Mexican republic that borders on Guatemala; it’s very rainforest/jungle heavy, lots of mayan pyramids just like. plopped down in the middle of a bunch of trees and vines and monkeys etc. it’s also very humid and green and there’s beautiful rivers and we slept in a little wooden hut with no electricity or a/c or anything, just a roof and a floor mosquito netting penning the space in/keeping us from getting malaria or w/e.

it was an amazing experience that really affected me and that i still think about a lot -- sadly, i went there before i had a good digital camera, so while i took a lot of pictures they were all on film and were not as good at capturing just how beautiful everything was. a part of me wants to go back someday, but i haven’t yet, so it still very much exists in my memory alone right now.

anyway! this fic is about Yavin IV and Poe returning to it to basically spend some time with his father and it’s about that family connection, too, but mostly for me it was about -- coming up with Yavin IV headcanons, which was a delight. there’s a lot about the mayan ruins (again, i’ve never been to Guatemala but i was in the jungles of Chiapas, which are very close, and the mayan empire in mexico vs the mayan empire in guatemala are not that different) which comes from my experience in the mayan ruins, and a lot about the town i kind of imagined as existing ties into my experiences in small mexican towns. there’s a lot about the market culture there, which was based on primarily the market in my mom’s hometown. one of the funniest/most personal bits for me was where poe and his dad go to a stand that sells fruit juices:

He makes it to Val’s before his father does and settles onto one of the red plasto stools in front of the counter. Makes idle conversation with New Val, who was a year ahead of him in school and was well known, even then, as the artistic sort. This seems to have born out: her stall is adorned with meticulously realized depictions of Massassi warriors and anthropomorphized trees sharing plasto-bubble drinks with a variety of alien races and such distinguished company as a young Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker in a well-intentioned approximation of Jedi robes.

this is a reference to a lot of food stalls in mexican markets, which often have drawings of all sorts of IP they definitely don’t have the rights to, like a lot of disney characters and so on. it’s also referencing the tradition of serving aguas frescas in plastic bags w a straw poking out, which is just a nice bit of nostalgia for me.

i did feel a little -- something -- about this fic being based so much on my experience as a mexican and thus very little on like, actual guatemala, which i could not really speak to, though i did include some references to actual guatemalan alcoholic drinks at least?

this isn’t a perfect fic -- every time i have to write OCs i feel like i’m floundering a bit, and this fic didn’t really have a plot so when it came time to end it i just --didn’t really know how to wrap it up. but in general it’s such a personal fic to me that i will always have a great deal of love for it.

representative passage:

“You’re so much like your mom.” That’s nothing he hasn’t heard before, but his dad keeps going. “I mean, you look like her, fly like her. When you’re pissed, you do this thing, with your jaw…” he reaches over to tap lightly at Poe’s chin; Poe ducks his head, a little embarrassed that his father’s noticed it. “Pure Shara Bey. And you’re smart, so damn smart, always were, and that’s all her. Sure as hell didn’t get it from me.” Kes father chuckles, shaking his head.

“Dad—"

“Thing is, that makes me forget, sometimes, how much you’re like me, too."

Poe turns to look at him — Kes is watching him, and his expression is worried, but more sad than anything.

“That’s not a bad thing,” he says, too quickly, but he means it.

(oh also lest i forget: the running thing about poe looking so much like his mom is there because a) it’s true, canonically but also b) when i was little but also now, whenever i’d visit mexico i’d hear over and over how much i look like my dad/my dad’s side of the family. so again this was a very self inserty fic in a way i’m usually embarrassed to admit and i guess am still kind of embarrassed to admit, but w/e, i’m doing this meme, might as well talk about it.)

2. Washington Square

WELL what can i SAY about this and its 50352 words? it’s the first NaNoWriMo thing i ever completed, and the only one i’ve ever actually posted. it genuinely did have a plot (which obviously i took from the movie it’s based on, so yknow). it’s an AU premise i love (i’m a sucker for Famous Person/Normie things), it’s explicitly queer in a way that actually affects the plot. i think a lot of fusion AUs like this one can be a bit find and replace character names w the same dialogue and exact same plot, so i took care not to do that. first of all the shifting of the setting -- from England to the US -- shifted the dynamic a lot, and at least partly exploring the issue of Finn’s sexuality and him being outed also felt like a much more modern and to me interesting take. (in fact if/when notting hill gets its eventual reboot/remake, it would make so much more sense for it to be a queer story).

i also feel like i did some subtle character stuff that maybe didn’t always pay off but that i was proud of: both poe and finn are kind of a mess in it, poe bc he’s been through a bunch of failed relationships (partly bc he puts his partners on a pedestal but is also a deeply moral person so if they show a moment of moral greyness he doesn’t react well) and finn bc well he’s bi and black and young and only just starting to make it in ~hollywood~ and he’s got a lot of pressure on him to be perfect on every level. and i thought that was a fitting adaptation of his FO backstory (i mention it in one of the last author’s notes, but the sunglasses he pointedly takes on and off are meant to call back to Finn’s stormtrooper helmet, while also being based on how julia roberts’ character wears sunglasses in the first scene w hugh grant in that movie).

i was also thrilled to be able to write so much of Black Squadron in as poe’s awesome/amazing/fun friends, using them to recreate on of the best parts of notting hill to me, ie, the fact that hugh grant has a wide circle of friends that chime in about his life and relationships etc. i’m not the biggest fan of rey but i also felt like i had to include her (and made her much nicer than her notting hill counterpart, obviously). and this was like, right amidst the small poe/c’ai era, so of course i had to include c’ai in there as the also-ran that would’ve been great for poe if he wasn’t so hung up on finn.

also, again, look: i wrote kyle ron in this and yes he WAS a bad roommate but i didn’t write him as mustache twirling evil/stupid AF, which is more than most reylo authors who write poe into their fics ever give me. so i deserve extra points for that.

there’s really only two points i’m kind of eh about for this fic: first, bc i didn’t think nude photos/video alone would be enough of a career jeopardizing event as it is in notting hill, i added a plot point where it was an m/m encounter, AND an element of dubious consent. this is the kind of thing that i think writers in general should tread lightly on/really be sure is necessary when they’re including it as a plot point. i’m not sure i would include it if i were writing it today, but when i was writing the fic we were in the midst of one of the earliest #MeToo pushes, PLUS i didn’t want to minimize the potential vulnerability Finn would have, as an actor and a black man and someone who came out of the foster system and wouldn’t’ve had that many people in his corner. so i tried to take it seriously and not be flippant about it, BUT i am still uncertain if i did a good enough job dealing w whether or not (or how much) finn saw it all as a traumatic experience.

the second thing i’m pretty uncertain about is the ending. i love the movie but even i find the ending a little unearned -- hugh grant’s character ends up being the one to apologize and basically beg for julie roberts’ to give the relationship another try, and her apology earlier on doesn’t feel like quite enough, to me. and so in my version i tried to...idk, given that the fight they have is a lot more tied to the sexuality issues, and finn is very early in his career and thus way more vulnerable, ultimately, than anna scott in the original, sets up a weird dynamic that a lot of commenters got caught up on: it’s funny though bc the two most upset comments i got about it were on opposite sides. One thought that Poe had been too much of a jerk in their fight and didn’t do a good enough job of apologizing at the end, while the other thought that Finn was too much of a jerk and Poe deserved better. so idk, maybe it did hit the happy medium after all.

(another thought poe saying “i love you” at the end was not built up to enough in the fic itself -- i disagree, imo poe was very obviously falling in love w finn from very early on, but since it was his POV he was trying to keep himself from admitting it until the very end).

representative passage:

Finn reaches out, cradles the back of Poe’s head with his free hand. Leans in, slow but inevitable. His fingers card through the Poe’s hair as they kiss, soft and sweet, almost chaste.

After a moment, Finn pulls back. Rubs his thumb at the side of Poe’s head. “You’ve got a — you’ve got this curl that sticks out the wrong way, here."*

“Yeah,” says Poe, still stunned — at this point he doesn’t know why, it’s not like Finn hasn’t done this before — and swallows. “Yeah, it does that."

Finn leans in and kisses him again. Longer this time, with a hint of tongue. Poe sighs, drops his hand to Finn’s chest, needing something to anchor him as the world starts spinning.

(also, i had originally planned to write a sequel from finn’s POV, which ideally would’ve allowed me to explore his character/backstory/trauma more, but some of the comments to the fic kind of dissuaded me from it and now i’m just -- so far removed from it i think it would be hard).

*this part is really reminiscent of a bit from song of achilles, which i still have not even read -- just saw that passage quoted somewhere -- and anyway that also struck me. i wonder if people noticed it/thought it was deliberate reference -- it was not! but i wish i could’ve said it was.

1. Adrift

OKAY so on some level i think of this as the best fic i’ve ever written. maybe it’s not even that good but it’s just -- genuinely, sometimes, i’m amazed i wrote it. i finished it surprisingly fast, for me, and it came much easier than almost anything ever has (writing is like pulling teeth for me most of the time). but basically it was just, as i said in the tags, a fix-it where what i was fixing was the cancellation of constantine (2014).

It’s what i would’ve wanted the show to end on, in an ideal world where i had like. control of the whole thing. both bc it’s based around the most famous hellblazer/John Constantine arc -- dangerous habits -- but it deals exclusively with the fallout and not the actual events around john’s having and “curing” lung cancer. mostly bc i didn’t want to figure out how to re-write that, tbh -- i feel like i would’ve had to do something to update it but i’m so bad at plot.

anyway it’s also a bit of a mystery story -- starting in media res does set up that question of, why is chas living alone in the middle of nowhere? why is he so mad at john? where has JOHN been? where’s zed? and it all just kind of...unfolds from there.

it’s got the domesticity, it’s got the two of them sort of finding each other again, it’s got the start of a relationship they both know is probably a bad idea but that eventually turns out to be more functional than either of them expected (no matter how much john keeps panicking about it eventually falling apart). i think i hit a good balance of john being snarky but self loathing but an unreliable narrator but also really observant at times.

in general i also feel like the sex scenes are earned and work very well with the actual plot/narrative arc -- like they start off very awks and distant and not mutually satisfying; and then they’re in a honeymoon place of, both finally having regular sex with someone and it being good but also still a little distant; and then finally just much more open and with a real connection (demonstrated through eye contact bc i’m basic and weak). and after that point all of the sex scenes are more vague/fade to black bc the explicit content isn’t the ~point anymore. for me it’s very well balanced.

and i like where they end up. both in terms of their relationship -- it feeling pretty well established and healthy as it could be, for both of them -- and in terms of their place in the world (about to get back into the ~solving spooky shit~ business, and also on better terms with zed to the point that she might also come back and join the ~team).

again not to toot my own horn but to me, this is how the characters eventually ended up, after the show ended, and that’s really just how i chose to see them.

Bonus Runners Up:

A Battle, A War, A Growing Up - STILL the only alex/darwin (xmfc) fic i’ve written, which i HATE MYSELF for, but at least if this is going to be the only one i’ll ever write, i’m proud of it.

inosculation, or, that time Javert panicked and stole a small child - really the summary alone makes this one worthwhile. the title is inspired by the POI fandom meme of “that time harold panicked and stole a small child”

want who you want (boys and boys and girls and girls) - the jake peralta/john constantine fic LITERALLY NO ONE would’ve ever thought to ask for, and that i’m still amazed anyone has actually read

Equuleus - the best thing russell crowe brought to les mis was making javert a horsegirl. i will die on this hill.

the fire and the flood - quality wise, i think this is pretty even with adrift in terms of chastantine fic. it’s only not included in the favorites list because it TOOK SO FUCKING LONG TO WRITE and i really hated it by the end there. at least i did something interesting w the timelines and vignettes.

#writing meme #YESH talk about a long post #i'm not going to cut bc tumblr is doing automatic trimming anyway but #ANYWAY here we are lots to talk about

9 notes · View notes

thepornguy01 · 4 months

Text

The Porn Goat: A Gateway to Unlimited Porn

At any point asked why the expense of all that in life increments with time? I did, and I was unable to track down any solution to the inquiry. I even asked a couple of companions until I come to this end result.

Truly request increments with time and the human populace is developing at a quick rate, and the terrible news is great pornography is becoming more earnestly to find.

Yet, here, I'll show you a passage to limitless pornography in the 21st hundred years.

The Pornography Goat: A Passage to Limitless Pornography

Do you review your secondary school days? Those occasions when your financial matters educator barraged you with constant interest and supply standards and regulations?

Assuming you're like me, you've presumably failed to remember everything about the point or school itself.

Be that as it may, all that your educator loves meandering aimlessly about is currently our present-day reality, and both important items and administrations are scant.

The Pornography Goat is here to take care of that issue, and his pornography website, theporngoat, is currently a limitless passage to new and quality pornography destinations on the web.

However, that is not the primary explanation for his production of ThePornGoat, it isn't just about finding pornography destinations,

ThePornGoat is remarkable on the grounds that its essayists place exactness and dependability over It offers pornography audits that don't experience the ill effects of predisposition of interest.

On the pornography goat, you'll find the library-esque pornography destinations sorted in light of each and every pornography specialty, from identity, nationality, and quality pornography fixations.

Premium Pornography Locales: Pornography Made Only For You

Last week, I visited a free pornography since I needed to discover some great and free pornography.

True to form, they have an enormous assortment, and it took me hours to find something that impacts me.

Yet, that is not an issue since it's free and I needed a speedy tapping experience.

The issue is the point at which I tapped on the video, it diverted me to another betting site, a phony betting site.

Need to know what?

It turned out the diverted connection was a phishing site and programmers had utilized it to hack my email account.

In my bid to get back my record, I lost it only briefly worth of tapping experience and lost more than I would have spent on the off chance that I bought into a paid pornography site.

Assuming you pay for pornography on top premium pornography destinations, you'll keep programmers and vindictive locales from getting to your data.

If not, you might lose significant documents, media, and data, which is more costly than the membership paid pornsite on the web.

Free pornsites offer your information to sponsors and you're paying more cash with the expectation of complimentary pornography than for premium pornography.

Be that as it may, the best exceptional pornography locales acquire from memberships, and they generally endeavor to give you your best possible value.

So my recommendation is pay for pornography and appreciate unquestionably the best top notch pornography locales like Brazzers.

Notwithstanding these elements, the most well known paid pornography destinations have a proposition that permits you to stream and download pornography in the pornography corridor of pornography distinction.

All in all, you will download exemplary pornography that is at this point not accessible on free pornsites, and you'll have the option to find and download pornography recordings shot in the mid 90s.

To finish it off, these 90s recordings won't accompany their unique 90s-shot video quality, yet you can watch them in 4k quality pornography.

However, you'll get a markdown on the vast majority of them and a large portion of these top notch pornography destinations are essential for a pornography organization.

So these pornography networks have various extra locales, a large number of pornography models, and many pornography recordings.

That is the reason when you buy into a top premium pornography site, you don't simply gain admittance to what you pay for, you'll likewise get sufficiently close to extra destinations and BTS content and a photograph display

At the end of the day, you will gain admittance to a particular sort of pornography, a pornography made for your interminable delight.

In the event that you find a top notch VR pornography site, you'll find a few custom pornography scenes made for you, and you choose the best pornography recordings for your utilization.

Since you don't simply feel the activity in these recordings, you experience it.

For More Info:- Porn Guy Sites

0 notes

1d1195 · 5 months

Note

Oh I learned French too in highschool! It was honestly COMPLETELY USELESS BAHAH like now I just remember the names of certain fruits lol and I can understand how difficult it may be to see your students struggling so it’s can kind of difficult to not correlate that with how “good” of a teacher you are. Especially since you just want them to be successful in general and see them flourish! But I’m sure you’re not horrible! The fact that you are actively TRYING and not blaming the student is already more than enough! That in itself is already so helpful and yeah it will be difficult learning no matter the language it’s in but I’m sure you’re a great support system for all your students!!!

And those sound like such good books! And omg I didn’t know you were like into WWII themed stories!?! That’s so cute and honestly I see the vision! I went through a phase where I was obsessed with the 1920s, I know it’s not the same but I get it! And you should totally write something like that one day with Harry! You would obviously SLAY THAT SHIT!!!

I use to be such an avid reader but this year I just stopped and I think I made it halfway on one book that wasn’t assigned this year :( but I loved your book reading summary and I might just have to check it out during my break!

Omg no you aren’t ancient! But I get it being labeled as the “mom” bc I am sadly am one too 😔 I can’t help it lol and yeah I’ll be 21! And it’s so sweet you remembered! And I may be a psych major but I’m so unhinged it’s WILD lol and it’s so cool you live on the east coast, I’ve always been interested in visiting!

I have to thank YOU bc my answers are so long😭 and I love reading what you have to say fic or not fic related!-💜

I was also obsessed with the 1920s! If I could go back to school, I think history would be up there. I'm fascinated by it. I feel like everyone goes through a 1920s phase--like a right of passage.

One my first stories to break 100 notes on here, actually (it's on the garbage section of my blog so I wouldn't recommend reading it) was my "first big break." It was set in the 1920s. But at the time it was like super exciting and important to me. I think I reread it not too long ago and I think it's cute still, but very cringy. You can tell I wrote it when I was without a lot of real world and/or relationship experience and only read Sarah Dessen in my free time. I would love to do it over though. I have a mob/1920s vibe sort of story on my list of things to write in the future. So we'll see! 😊

I used to devour books. Then in high school/college the perfectionist in me just stopped and deemed the time too important to be reading for fun when I had scholarships to apply for and a degree to earn. I've got like 40 unread books on my shelf staring at me daily. But like I mentioned, I got back into the swing of things this year so hopefully I can narrow it further over the coming months. I would get married in a Barnes and Noble probably--it's one of my top 5 favorite stores and I would say my toxic trait is I can't leave without buying a book. I'm sure you'll get back to reading when you have the time. School is important and your brain only has so much time to handle everything.

I love it out East here. tbh, I don't think I could ever live anywhere else. I'm not sure if you saw my playlist thing (I wouldn't expect you to notice it) but I'm on a Noah Kahan kick rn. Several of his songs are about growing up in New England and it's like nostalgic even though I live here. Idk, it's like someone read my mind and put it in a song. It's magical.

That brain cell of ours working overtime being the mom of our friend groups. I remember in college it felt like a second job keeping everyone on track and I agree, I couldn't even help it! They were adults but it didn't feel like they were adults.

Thanks for indulging in my ramblings and I love your long responses (obviously--look at mine 🤦‍♀️). It's really nice to talk with you!

P.S. one of my favorite quotes is from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: "Yes, you're mad, bonkers, off the top of your head...but...I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.” So if you feel unhinged I think it's okay. I think the best people are 💕

#💜

1 note · View note

Last Seen Blogs

fatafat-sewa

Untitled

mamaroo-x

Mother's Intuition

nosypanda

Nosy Panda - The Panda That Travels

loveactuallyisemmathompson

Emma Thompson

9ineapple

DC And Stuff