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delicatebluebirdruins · 1 year

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the last hours spoilers below the cut

thoughts as i read Chain of Thorns so spoilers duh and it got long so under a read more (also as a safety measure against spoilers and tumblr tags not working) feel free to chat with me about it

In april i will change the tags to something more general (I say April because not all versions of the book are out yet I think Italy doesn’t get their editions until March so)

James honey tell your Dad.

Matthew fight me and get help outside of Cordelia asking you not to drink in Paris

did i mention how much i hate the misunderstanding of chain of iron? yeah still hate it... quick moment

youtube

much better

honest about his love for Grace for the love of god Cordelia

Matthew is not keeping to his promise is he? one way or another he is up to something and I don’t like it

23 lmao Will same Magnus i can’t believe it either and lmao James “I haven’t not since last Thursday“

why is Grace arrested? was she arrested? I very vaguely recall her admitting to the shenagins

i love Kamala by the way I hope she goes back to her true name... what was the letter

Lucie is up and atom

*through gritted teeth* what good reason? to dislike Allistair? *eyes twitch*

Thomas’s note *clutches heart* I want to watch that scene in 10 things i hate about you again but also lmao i think the message would get to who its addressed to

Tatiana can fight me... poor Grace

oh Malcolm

Jessamine mention!!!!. finally adults knowing what do. Aww Will singing to James in rusty welsh

back to Matthew and Cordelia *grits teeth* ohh poor faeirie having to deal with this shit. Cordelia admitting that Matthew and Allistair don’t like each other and I loathe it, I loathe her not defending her brother

MADAME DOROTHEA???? oh the waking up theme is back (Madame channeling Elias). wow fun

Malcom don’t steal food... I feel uncomfy please for the love of god grab the poker and impale me with it... Dad has arrived

No you won’t conquer the pain in Paris Matthew. It wouldn’t be that easy to overcome pain WITHOUT THE ONES CAUSING YOU PAIN

.... the truth will out with the Herondale family reunion (Tessa is there we just don’t see her as she’s yelling at Malcolm) and Magnus being upset at not being asked for help as he is the warlock they usually annoy first lmao i love him

73 yes be proud of Jesse “the last bulwark of Englishman under stress. Tea? he suggested“ lol Malcolm

ah the letter Kamala found was blackmail... towards Charlotte maybe?

80 laughing hysterically

Jem is here.... Allistair! i knew the note would be read

97 Matthew are you sure you’re not a idiot

a good plan i suppose... good old Ezekiel

Alexander Bridge (another song coming on)

youtube

110 FINALLY SOME DEMONS... fuck off both of you (also I thought Matthew got bitten by the demon?)

Aw Kit/ Christopher best boy

yay back to this hell and now James is here (also looked at later at art so accidently spoiled myself to some dark haired guy wearing a crown)

Thomas I love and LMAO Will and Magnus best bros

I knew Matthew was lying... can i bang Cordelias head off a wall? Oh James... Eugenia! I missed you baby

I don’t wanna go back to Cordelia... yes it was as painful as expected

Matthew shut up. James use your fucking words

Magnus I love you... I wish I was Balios right now

Jesse’s “helpful fellow called brother Zachariah“

Cordellia is annoying me

tell it like it is Allistair they are idiots

@ James (image id: GIF of the Genie from Aladdin in front of white board reading tell her the truth)

I love you Allistair and Risa never leave me with these three again (Magnus, Efffie and Eugenia as well)

Oh Christopher I love you, Thomas yay

actual footage of Cordelia getting Allistair into the carriage

image id: dog on a leash being dragged text around it reading “um no/no mean no/ do not want/ heard you say vet/ wow no/ such abuse/ um wtf r u doing/ not wow/ so forceing“ end id

185 Cordelia and Matthew not planning on saying anything yet why

good idea Allistair and plans on how to find out who is being blackmailed. hatred of ducks is a noble cause

BRIGDET I LOVE YOU

Will is being great embarresing James and scolded by Tessa for quoting Charge of the Light Brigade at the table

I like Jesse I think, lemon drops? lemon drops

Albert Pangborn is great... Lucie you’re making me feel cold and Cordelia i know you are going through it but why

With Jesse and Lucie I am kinda hoping for a Pushing Daisies scenario

Oh Kamala why lie to yourself... Poor Grace kinda... 231 happy place Christopher and Alistair talking about books and languages (showing their brain works)

new day

Jesse spill the beans?

yay back with Cordelia *sigh*... poor Jesse.... No Cordelia you do not know what you saw you are a coward who is certain what you saw was the whole truth and nothing but the truth

would love to see the full evil vanity set it has to exist I won’t accept other wise

i do like Hypatia and Jesse is great... Hi Winston and Ari and Aratia is pretty so back to calling her this then

poor Oscar he is such a good boy

James good with words? I am not so sure

I am scared of Tatiana... but also every single time (image id: screenshot from Lion King 2 Simbas Pride song My Lullaby)

Beliel is making zombies apparently

so close yet so far... lmao Effie

308 if you spoke to your wife you’d know... I thought Letty be possessed good job me

312 Christopher deserves the world honestly. Go on Grace do the things

aww Mama Tessa, never shut up Thomas you’re great to be with. aw Mama Sona... the fear of god that Malcolm just experiences is priceless and relatable

laughing at the things like the weapons tree

parents what to do? oh chatting and we came so close. Also Esme i love you

Anna and Ari finally got that dance

FOR FUCKS SAKE this is the bad place... no its not Alistair and Thomas almost kissed but got interupted by Cecily screaming

FUCK OFF TATIANA AND EVERYONE LISTENING TO HER

it would also cast more suspicion to be honest

pick up a rock or something Cordelia, poor baby Alex and I DO NOT TRUST this

poor denzins of the Cornwall Institute

Alistair was not wrong and not to bring up lion king 2 again but not one of us? fits kinda well

FUCK YOU CHARLES!!!! FUCK OFF BRIDGESTOCK

go on Ari, Jem is bae and I love you guys

Charles might be the one being blackmailed and yes he is a pompous git

Lucie saw Edom I think

please not on the staircase think of your back it would hurt i imagine

what did the door knob do to you (reread that section oh it was jammed) still poor door knob

yeah big bath tubs for the win (dream home item big bath tub and swimming pool if i can’t live by the sea/ sea where it is private then i will have to make do)... oh no the adults are leaving

poor Effie can’t wait to see her opinions on everything

also side note last book James was pracitcally begging Cordelia to top him will that make a return?

aww Grace and here is Tatiana of course who i can’t wait to see die... what is going on

come Matthew tell them, James told them about Grace its your turn

Christopher is too good for this world

Matthew fight me (i was actually warming to him and now its two steps back)

lets go help Charlie. Go on Alistair (update i’ve been tabbing as i go and i am running out of pinks)

I love them feeling about conflicted about Grace and her actions... Grace is here and lets go zombies (or guys from black cauldron?)

there is so much kissing and so many characters

and lets go face Tatiana.. oh wow possession is every where apprently

go on Lucie do what needs to be done which is summon RUPERT buddy I missed you

Grace why are you following your “mother”... hi Lilith

CHRISTOPHER NO

I saw this picture in the run up it is really cool (side note i do like the illustrations my favourites being the blackstairs beach kiss in queen of air and darkness though- also if TWP does not start with the Clace wedding that we have two full chapters of I will sue)

Tatiana is dead? yay... but Christopher no

poor lady under the milkcart... poor people being possessed by Beliel

oh wow Beliel is... yeah this is a lot

James is going with Beliel, and Beliel took Matthew as well good grief

Lmao the title for the next chapter is Intermission: Grief

what if the escape route is a lie? what if its a trap?

new day?

490 Winston is a pretty bird, Oscar what is it puppy? oh it was planned thank god

girl talk time and James/ Matthew being in Edom is so funny to me for some reason

thomas watering the fairchild plants, watered my plants and cleared my skin

Carstair siblings rise!

Jessamine you good?

sup Lilith... if beliel dies by Cordelia’s blade this is strange wording

I love Jesse and Graces dynamic actually

yes destroy the wound

Anna what’s up?... good point

finally the truth comes about Matthew part 2/ bye Carbos it was fun I will remember you next time I read TMI

I want Christopher back (564 I ran out of pink)

They did! they got the fire messages working! I am so proud

oh Lucie, hi Filomena and are we going to be told this plan?

ahh Beliel wants to crown himself and all I can think is this image

Image id: Queen Elizabeth the 2 and text from christopher eccleston reading “parasite in chief in her idiot hat“

Go on Charlie *pumps fist*

I love you Eugenia

Statues attack and I am out of green tabs

stay safe everyone... Lucie what do?... aw Anna and Ari

Bridget is god and you can’t change my mind

I did think that wording was strange... bye Lilith see you later

herongraystairs mention... JEM YOU ARE OWED A FAVOR FROM BELIEL I have so many questions like does he still have it in SoBH? will he have it TWP? is this thing something I kinda remember being Ghosts of the Shadow Market? (its been awhile okay)

Aw Alastair I forgot you were blonde for a bit... good for you bud

oh so this is how the things got in the coffin like the gun Christopher made for James :(... I hope the locksmith recovered the bullet from it

Alastair the best big brother

(I didn’t put this in my physical notes so I don’t know where it fits in but i am so glad Matthew told his family)

666 Malcolm is here for a chat and it went well

OSCAR GOT A MEDAL!!!

Eugenia remains the best... croquet lmao yes

image id: screenshot of Pall Mall scene from Bridgerton season 2

I like the ending

bonus story: love you Jem... I cannot imagine why people would be twitchy at seeing the robes of Silent Brothers (and I wonder if they feel the same?)... the ghosts made me tear up

random thoughts

- too many characters having povs just made it not work for me? especially when a few of them know things that others don’t (like the Gracelet and the fallout)

- Matthew grew on me which surprised me with how much he irritated me during Choi heck I downright hated him. And the same goes for Grace and Anna

- I don’t think I will ever like the love triangle

- scared for Charlotte and her pregnancy is going to be fun

- I wished we could have seen the trials for Wessa and Jesse (and other random scenes)

- because of things do i think we could potentially have something in between TLH and TMI? yes yes i do (i say things because its just the vibe I got from finishing it. I’ll get a better idea when i reread)

hello people who made it to the end of this long ass post go treat yourself with something nice

#chain of thorns #chain of thorns spoilers #ellie reads #herondaisy #jordelia #james herondale #cordelia carstairs #lucie herondale #jesse blackthorn #matthew fairchild

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blue-bird-kny · 3 years

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How You Spend Days Off

I stuck to only the three main peeps, but I’m looking forward to writing for more JJK characters. It was actually really nice to write for them, so I hope you enjoy~Amanda

P.S: Be safe out after dark!

Warning: N/A

( 2.1K+ words)

↳{shenanigans you and your S/O get up to on days off}

Yuji:

Days off with Yuji are unpredictable and always either involve something thrilling and very energy consuming or it can be some of the simplest things a person can do- no in between.

Yuji usually is the one who makes plans during your spare time (though he always gets your opinion, of course), he just really values time with you and wants to experience so much together while he can

It was common knowledge that this coming Friday, all the students would have the time off to rest as a reward for all their hard work with the recent influx of curse activity. Yuji wasted no time in planning the perfect day together, from the moment you woke up next to him to when you both fell asleep, he had something ready.

“Ah that was delicious Yuji, thank you” you cheered, arms stretched high above your head in an attempt to work away the sleepiness the food had made you feel. “No problem! Only the best for you, princess” Yuji’s smile reached past his shining eyes, thrilled you enjoyed the assortment of plates and bowls filled with your breakfast favorites he’d surprised you with. “Well then, my prince, to what honor do I owe your company today?” you asked leaning against your balled fist and bent elbow on the table, amusement and adoration laced on all your features. “For one day only, yours truly scored us tickets to…! Drum roll please!” Yuji posed dramatically, eyes cast down while crouched and pointing in a funny manner.

You proceeded to bang your fist against the table, laughing lightly, “We’re going to spend all day at Monster Con!” he pulled out two floppy pieces of paper from his back pocket as you gasped, “Oh I’m not finished yet, princess, we’ll also be wearing matching costumes I hand selected” You stood quickly, clapping at his theatrical performance as he bowed, repeating, “Thank you, thank you”. You made your way to infront of the boy, your arms wrapping around his broad shoulders while he enveloped your waist tightly, pressing you against him. “Not going dressed as your pesky alter ego, huh?” you joked staring up at the taller kid, earning you a slight pout, “No, he’s not invited” he grumbled. “Sorry, that joke was in poor taste” you apologized, shifting to run your thumb along his juted bottom lip to smooth out the lines.

“No worries, I know ya didn’t mean anything by it” your hand stayed cupping his cheek, both star-filled eyes trained on each other as you both wore the cheesiest grins. Just as you stood on your tip-toes to close the space between each other, a warm gust of breath blew against the palm holding Yuji still, “I was wondering why you hadn’t spoiled the moment” you sighed, lowering yourself to lean your forehead against Yuji’s chest instead. A small mouth carved into its host cheek frowned, now free to speak without your hand suffocating it, “I can handle the women’s teasing, however what have I done in my many lifetimes to have to suffer through this painful love-sick puppies act” Sukuna complained. “Many things actually” you responded, muffled by Yuji’s shirt that smelled of a citrusy-warm blend you couldn’t get enough of. “Why do you always kill the mood?” Yuji groaned up towards the ceiling, earning himself a scoff from the demon king. “Oh? You mean like that I wouldn’t let y-” “SHUT UP!” Yuji slammed his hand against his own face to silence the man, his cheeks inflamed.

Now clad in matching costumes, you as frankenstein's wife and Yuji as Frankenstein, from the hair to the clothes to the make-up, you both spent the day without any further hiccups; how Yuji kept Sukuna at bay, you didn’t know, but I didn’t really matter. The stares from passengers on the train to the convention center was obvious to everyone but you two, lost in your own little love-sick world of old-fashion horror movies, delicious food, and pure, unfiltered content.

Megumi:

Megumi is a simple guy who likes simple things; he’s overworked and more exhausted than he even realizes, however he doesn’t acknowledge that...ever. In fact, you could run a mile ‘too quickly’ by his standards and he will have you take a break and drink his bottle of water (though you had your own and he knew that).

On your rare days off together, Megumi would silently stick to you like glue; he wants to do something for you in the creative way Yuji does and definitely wants to spend the time with you, but he can never come up with a complete idea of how to ‘wow’ you.

Except you didn’t need to be wowed, in fact you really were burnt out, so when the day came when you had nothing to do but be together, you planned a whole day of nothing with a side of Netflix and take-out.

You knocked on the door to Megumi’s dorm that was just a few paces away from your own. It was almost noon and you still wore your pj’s from last night, cookie monster shorts and an old shirt of Megumi’s you took last week, having made no attempt to fix your hair. “Umi~!” you whined, banging on the door a little harder, the plastic bag from the convenience store rustling at your side. “Coming” Megumi opened the door in a similar state; pj’s still on and hair sticking in even weirder directions than normal.

“Mornin” you greeted with the faintest grin, “sorry to wake you” “ I was just getting up” he yawned while he tried to rub the sleep from his eyes. “Sure I can tell by the bed head” you teased, earning a playful eye roll from the boy. You waved the bag of goodies in front of his face, “Let me in, I’ll make it worth your while~” he chuckled, “I doubt it” despite his words he stood to the side, letting you past and closing the door behind you.

His dorm was dark and a little stuffy, clearly Megumi hadn’t had time to do the in depth cleaning the little neat-freak was so fond of. The continents of the bag clacked together and scattered around as you tossed it onto the small table in the corner, making your way over to his comfortable futon that smelled of his signature eucalyptus soaps. You flopped about for a moment, stretching, snuggling into the sheets still warm from Megumi, who was watching the small scene from the door, “C’mon Umi’ I wanna get through at least two episodes of SVU before we inevitably fall asleep wrapped in each others arms” you called dreamily with lidded eyes, already tired again as you buried beneath his sheets and pillows.

Megumi could feel his chest ache and stomach flutter at the image of the one who he cared for so much that it physically hurt laying there in his bed with soft, kind eyes just for him- it was almost too much. “Umi, I will eat all the sour snakes if you don’t come over here, your sheets are getting cold” Megumi was cut off by his own thoughts of admiration by your voice. He chuckled at the cute way your face cringed a bit at the sour-sweet taste of the candy before sliding into bed too, your head laying on his chest as he held you close. A small, genuine grin spread across his lips as the sound of Netflix starting rang from the TV, holding you even tighter, ‘this is perfect’

Nobara

Be ready to put on your best dressed because you and your girlfriend are hitting the town! Of course Nobara would find her way into the city whenever she could, foreign to the endless wonders the busy streets had to offer and luckily for her, you happened to be far more native with the many sights to see.

She’d let you sleep in, holding you tender as she traced her nails across your skin to form intricate patterns until you woke. You both would totally be the couple that wears matching outfits, the same colors and patterns tailored to your personal styles- of course this would also lead to thousands of pictures for Nobara’s instagram.

You two would laughed, eat delicious foods, and would spend way more than either of you cared to admit nor did you want to because the price of absurd, unfiltered laughter and the feel of just a good time, was one both of you could pay a thousand times (and a new pair of shoes too)

The sun hung lower in the sky than it did when you started this little adventure before noon, having been sold on the idea by Nobara that she “only needed a few things” this morning. Now, exhausted perched on a steel chair outside some cafe you’d never heard of with your sore feet elevated on the other empty one you waited for your girlfriend who was inside somewhere.

“Jeez even my fingers are cramped” you groaned flexing your numb digits; shopping was a grueling vice because no matter how much you’ve already bought, more cute sweaters, tops, and matching accessories called to you by name and the art of saying ‘no’ wasn’t exactly in Ms.Kugisaki’s vocabulary. “Here ya’ go babe” Nobara emerged from the shop with two cups, handing one to you before sipping gingerly from her own. You brought the plastic straw to your lips, sighing in relief as the contents quelled a thirst you didn’t even know had been building up. “I don’t think we did too much damage” your face fell and eyes bulged, flailing your arms out around at the brightly colored parcels that littered the table and surrounding floor, “Nobara there are at least fifteen bags here”

She laughed, her hand falling on top of your thigh, giving a gentle squeeze, “Still no that bad”. She scooched her chair closer to yours, her thumb rubbing nonsense circles into the denim of your jeans, “What next?” she asked leaning into her seat, her brown irises watching yours fondly, “Food? We haven’t eaten since a lot earlier and I could turn into a wolf any second and eat you” you teased, though food sounded better and better the more you thought about it. “Eat me? You promise, baby?” Nobara’s smirk earned herself a not-so-graceful, but light kick from you.

“An impromptu picnic sounds great” Nobara decided, tapping against you in finality. It became a game: You both had 30 minutes to run around the delicious food district to pick out each other's favorites, as many as you liked (which would be more food than two can eat), then you’d reconvene at the same cafe. Nobara offered to pick up a blanket at the convenience store because she ‘knew you so well she wouldn’t need the whole half hour.’ The game was on and time was ticking as you both rushed in opposite directions with several bags and a hunger to please the other.

You scurred around each vendor, selecting different meat dishes and veggies, cakes and watermelon, and even splurged on some fancy sushi from the place she'd wanted to try. Your arms quivered under the weight of the many shopping bags and take-out boxes, but you were determined to get back first. “Just around the corner- Are you kidding me?!” you yelled. In the exact steel seat she sat in earlier, was Nobara with an array of bags around her, boxes and the blanket stacked neatly on the table with dark sunglasses adorning her face and her legs crossed cockily as she spoke smoothly, “Beat ya”

Both of you grossly overestimated the amount of food you could eat in one sitting as practically unopened boxes lay stacked on top one another on the blankets while watermelon rinds and used plates were thrown into a garbage bag. The sun was low, almost at the horizon, painting the sky in pastel oranges and pinks with hints of purple and blue; the spring chill had blown a little heavier now that the sun was setting and it was getting harder to stop the shivers. Nobara laid against the trunk of a tree with you between her legs, holding you as her manicured fingers idly massaged your scalp quietly- you would have fallen asleep at the small gesture had you not been actively keeping your eyes open. “The boys will be grateful for the food, I’d hate wasting it” she yawned to which you only hummed.

“Hey” you turned your head up slightly, only enough to meet her gaze, “today was really fun” she smiled, slithering across your arm to grab your cheeks gently in her fingers, forcing your lips to pucker, “yeah it was.” Your wobbly smile made Nobara feel things, too many things at once, and a lump began to form in her throat, “I love you” you mumbled, Nobara’s breath caught for only a moment, whispering a thick “me too.”

Masterlist

#jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen x y/n #megumi x reader #nobara x y/n #nobara x reader #yuji x y/n #yuji x reader #megumi x y/n #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen fluff

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bookstantrash · 3 years

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A/N: Hey folks, are we all alive after ACOSF? Because I sure am not.

Sorry for delaying this chapter, my head was just so full of ACOSF that writing had been pushed back a little. But worry not, last chapter’s cliff hanger finally is over!! I think this is one of the biggest chapters I have written (it is 3K), so I hope you enjoy it!!

In which she makes a Friend, Part Ten

Nesta had fallen asleep on the chair near her bed, where Kaelin was currently sleeping soundly. The same scene from a couple of months back, when she had just discovered that Kaelin was actually a girl, made chills run down her spine.

She didn’t like this situation. Didn’t like it at all.

Cassian had barged into the cabin with a bleeding and passed out Kaelin on his arms, making Nesta jump from her position on the couch, where she had been nervously waiting for them. She had ushered Cassian to place Kaelin in her room, trying to keep her voice low and calm as she asked what the hell had happened.

The menacing aura emanating from Cassian took her back to the memory of when she was human. Of when she had allowed him to get way too close to her. Had allowed him to scent and see the fear in her eyes at the reminder of tearing skirts and cries of help.

Had reminded her of how he had gone utterly still, the need to kill and inflict unbearable pain on the one who had hurt her.

She was not seeing Cassian, the laidback male who cooked for her, and hummed in the kitchen, or who gifted her and Kaelin thoughtful things.

No, she was seeing Cassian, General Commander of the Illyrian armies.

The Lord of Bloodshed.

But that did not frighten her. No, as it had been when she was human, she was not frightened of Cassian.

Nesta was frightened for those who would suffer the wrath of the 500 year old Illyrian, who had been compared with the great warrior god Enalius.

Cassian had left Kaelin in Nesta’s care, giving her a tight smile before leaving again.

Nesta had tended to Kaelin’s wound the best that she could, cleaning the dried blood on her face, but not daring to undress the young Illyrian of her bloodied leathers in fear that Cassian came back suddenly.

However, when Nesta was boiling some tea in hopes of easing her nerves and heard someone knocking on the door, she opened it not to find Cassian but Esmée, the healer matron with a basket full of vials and linens, a serious look on her face.

“That headstrong kurumin all but barged into my barrack, demanding that I rush here and see to that bubbly pitanga” Esmée had pursed her lips as she took in Kaelin’s appearance “Although he did not say how bad the poor thing looked”

Nesta had watched Esmée like a hawk as the healer applied some ointment to Kaelin’s cuts and bruises. Her Illyrian blood would heal her faster, but even the warrior race could be exposed to infections. That was a risk they were not going to take, especially after Cassian had told Nesta where he had found Kaelin.

She had tried not to think of the young girl being beaten in a remote area in the woods. Tried not to think of what would have happened had Cassian not arrived.

Had Kaelin’s killing power not been activated.

Too many thoughts run around Nesta’s mind. Too many variables having been added to the already messy situation.

And Nesta had also tried not to think of how Cassian had eyed her before he left. How while he had told her of Kaelin’s breakdown his hazel eyes had been searching her face for a spark of recognition.

Searching her face for a shadow of a secret shared between her and Kaelin, hidden deeply into her mind, behind the fortress of iron that surrounded it.

Cassian suspected something.

And it was only a matter of time before others started to suspect too.

Nesta was sure of it, especially when she had tensed while Esmée opened Kaelin’s leathers to examine her other bruises.

She had only eased when she noticed that Kaelin wore a thin tunic underneath it, also remembering the band she used to bind her chest.

As long as Esmée did not remove Kaelin’s tunic there was no danger of her secret being exposed.

“He broke one rib and another is seriously bruised” Esmée had informed, running her hands over Kaelin’s torso “And he will have some nasty marks on his stomach, probably due to the punches that broke them. He’s to rest for at least a week. If that good for nothing camp Lord says anything about it just tell the General to pay him a visit and politely convince him of sticking his opinions where the sun does not shine.”

Nesta had fought back a smile at the healer’s words, walking her to the door and letting out a sigh of relief when she was gone.

Nesta rose from the chair with a loan groan, her whole body aching from sleeping in an awkward position. She turned her neck from side to side, hoping to ease the tension accumulated as she quietly closed her bedroom door and went to the kitchen. She had not eaten a single thing since Cassian had left to go search for Kaelin, the only thing in her stomach being the tea she had brewed before Esmée had arrived.

Looking at the clock on the wall, she furrowed her brows in confusion. Cassian should already have been up and about, being the early riser that he was. But now that she stopped to think about it, she had not heard him coming back yesterday night.

A cold dread settled in her stomach, and she fought the urge to tug at the thin thread hidden deep within herself, if only to be certain of his whereabouts.

“He’s fine Nesta'' she murmured to herself as she set the kettle on the stove “He can take care of himself. He’s not called the Lord of Bloodshed for nothing”

But that feeling of dread stayed with her, from the time it took for the water to boil to how long it took for Nesta to realize that she had been so far away in her thoughts that her eggs were burning.

“Oh fuck” she cursed out loud quickly turning the oven off and opening the kitchen’s window to disperse the smoke.

She was still cursing when a deep male voice came from behind her.

“Since when did Nesta Archeron know how to swear? Those are not appropriate words for a lady”

Nesta turned around to see Cassian leaning against the doorframe, an amused grin on his face.

“Should not a lady always aim to expand her vocabulary?” she inquired, arching an eyebrow.

That made Cassian laugh, a mischievous glint on his eyes that eased that feeling of dread in Nesta’ stomach.

“I didn’t see you arriving back yesterday” she nonchalantly said, placing the tea on the table and saving the less burnt pieces of eggs for her to eat.

The lack of an answer from Cassian told Nesta enough. He had not returned.

“Am I going to have to tie you to your damn bed?” she threatened “Esmée said you needed to rest”

“I would gladly let you tie me up sweetheart, although I would rather be the one tying you” Cassian’s voice dropped an octave, and Nesta had to fight back a blush.

“I am not joking you pervert” but her voice lacked the amount of spite she wanted it to have.

Cauldron, to picture Cassian touching her while she lay helpless, giving him full control over her…. Nesta was not one to let others take rein in any kind of situation, especially sex. But to have Cassian being the one in control…. making her go mad with his big and calloused hands, that deep voice saying sweet temptations and dirty promises in her ear… it was enough to make her toes curl.

His answering grin was enough to say he had noticed the change in her scent.

“Wound a bit tight these days Nessie?” he walked in her direction, and the need to taste him, to feel him against her skin….

How long had it been since she had last pleasured herself? She had not bedded a male since she had come to Windhaven, and even touching herself was a no go once Kaelin started living with them.

Cauldron, she had to stop thinking about that.

But the closer Cassian got, the stronger his scent was, that mix of eucalyptus and musk almost making Nesta groan in frustration.

“Get your head out of the gutter Cassian” she managed to say, not giving him the satisfaction of moving away from him, little to no distance between their bodies.

That infuriating smirk appeared again, as always making her blood boil, from either desire or anger at him she did not know.

However, upon close inspection, Nesta could notice how dark the shadows beneath his eyes were. How his hair was more messed up then usual and the lack of shaving more noticeable.

“As if I was going to take such an awful looking male to my bed” Nesta snorted.

“You need to rest Cassian, you cannot keep going like this” she added softly, and maybe the use of his name — something she rarely did — made him see that she was not joking. That she truly was worried about him.

“I am a warrior Ness, we are trained to go days into battle with barely enough sleep” he said, daring to grip her fingers tenderly.

“It does not mean you can punish yourself by not arriving to help Kaelin sooner” she pleaded with her eyes “ It was not your fault. And if you keep thinking like that you will have to blame me too.”

Cassian only squeezed her fingers once before letting go of her hand, a sad smile on his face.

“Eat something more than those burnt eggs or else you will faint. And remember that you have the week off to rest”

Nesta opened her mouth to retort that he should stop being such a headstrong brute and just fucking sleep but Cassian was gone before she could unleash her temper on him.

~•~

Kaelin was awake by the time Nesta had come back to her room.

And the young illyrian was smart enough to keep silent at Nesta’s murder glare.

“You, young lady, are grounded” Nesta declared as she sat on the chair, the picture of grace and calmness despite the blazing fire echoing in her veins.

She directed her powers towards the dying fireplace, silencing the flames with ease now. Nesta felt smug satisfaction at the fact that she was controlling her powers with more facility, although she still had troubles maintaining its constant flow during her training with Cassian.

“I am what” Kaelin croaked out, her throat probably sore after all she had cried and having not spoken for almost a day.

“Grounded. As in you messed up and so I am punishing you in an educational way” Nesta’s voice softened and she clasped Kaelin’s hand “It was very brave of you to shoulder everything alone in fear of putting me, Emerie and even Cassian in danger.”

Kaelin sat a little taller, no wonder feeling pride at Nesta’s words.

“However, it was also very stupid of you, even more given that your killing powers manifested and you thought it better to not tell a single soul about it” Nesta added seriously “And that’s why I think you are going to be one of the most fierce warriors in our history. The best of them tend to be the most reckless and self sacrificing.”

Cassian’s face came to her mind, remembering how he had lay his life for her more than once. How as much as he was intelligent he was also selfless. How he did not hesitate to put his family’s life first and before even his own.

And even though Nesta felt pride and awe at his attitude, she also felt fear for his life.

He walked too close to Death for her liking.

“Next time, do not feel afraid and trust me. Trust Cassian. I am sure he would have helped you, no questions asked” she gave Kaelin’s hand a reassuring squeeze “Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am” Kaelin answered, an embarrassing blush blooming on her cheeks.

When Nesta had made sure Kaelin had eaten all of the food piled on her plate — Nesta had only heated some pre-made food Cassian had already cooked, not wanting to repeat the burnt food event – she announced what the young illyrian grounding would be.

“No flying?!” Kaelin shouted.

“No flying”

“You can’t do that!” she argued, completely exasperated.

“Not only I can but I did exactly that. Esmée said you need one week of rest and that is what you are going to do” Kaelin opened her mouth to protest but Nesta beat her to it “You almost broke two ribs, no way you are going to either be flying or training so soon. If that stupid Devlon says something he will have to deal with me and Cassian about it.”

“But…”

“No buts. After your one week of rest is up and you can go back to training you will walk there. No flying.”

“You want me to walk back and forth?!” Kaelin looked as if Nesta had just told her that goats could fly.

“No flying. For a month”

“A month?!”

“Want me to make it two?” Nesta inquired, fighting back a grin at Kaelin’s hopeless face.

“No” she grumbled back, and Nesta had never seen Kaelin look so much as a thirteen year old as now.

Despite the fact that she was quite cheerful, the young girl usually portrayed a serious expression on training and their conversations, having matured earlier than most because of her need for survival. Nesta wanted Kaelin to be able to enjoy life to its fullest, without the constant fear of having her secret exposed.

She found herself wishing Kaelin could live normally as a girl and still be able to keep on training. But change took time, especially for a kind as old and traditional as the Illyrians and Fae.

“How about you show me your penmanship? You will have plenty of time to practice now” Nesta said, trying to distract her thoughts of the ‘what ifs’ of the future.

~•~

“What in the Cauldron are you doing?” Cassian asked, coming out of the kitchen.

“Preparing to sleep, as normal people usually do” Nesta answered, arranging the blankets on the couch. She could not possibly let Kaelin sleep anywhere but her bed given the kid’ state, although she had in vain tried to argue against Nesta’s decision.

“You are not sleeping on the damn couch” he argued, picking her pillow.

“Well, Kaelin is already passed out on the bed after I gave him the painkillers Esmée left, and no way I’m making him sleep here” she snapped, snatching back her pillow.

“My bed is perfectly available” he retorted “You sleep there and I will sleep here”

He tried to take the pillow from her but Nesta took a step back, snarling in his direction.

“Look at yourself Cassian! You haven’t had a proper night of sleep in weeks!! You sleep on your bed and I will sleep here!”

“Gods, you’re such a stubborn woman!! I may be just a lowly bastard but even I have some decency to not let a female sleep on the couch while I sleep on the bed!!”

“You are not sleeping on the couch” she repeated.

“Well, you are also not sleeping there so I guess the only option is for us to share a bed!” Cassian practically shouted back.

“Then I guess we will be sharing your bed then!” Nesta found herself agreeing, both to hers and Cassian’ surprise.

However, now there was no coming back. Nesta would not give Cassian the satisfaction of seeing her flustered over him.

So she grabbed her pillow and left the living room, walking towards his room and not looking back, hesitating only once she stopped in front of his bedroom’s door.

“You may open it” Cassian quietly said behind her, and Nesta tentatively turned the doorknob.

She had never entered Cassian’s room before. Not that it was that different in size from hers, but she supposed the decoration made all the difference.

Apart from a bed big enough to accomodate wings, what most surprised Nesta was Cassian’s shelf, which not only held weapons such as daggers and knives — she guessed there were even more weapons stashed somewhere in his drawer, armoire or under the bed — but a small private collection of books.

She had seen some books in the living room, and felt a tinge of shame to think those were the only ones Cassian had. Running her hand over the books’ spine, she could see they had been well read, and that Cassian took great care with them.

“Those are military books” he informed softly, his hazel eyes following her every move “You could say I am quite attached to them, that’s why they are here instead of on top of the living room’s fireplace.”

“This is not a military book” Nesta said in the same voice tone, taking one from its place and reading the title.

‘King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table’

“I would not have pegged you for a romance reader” she teased, recalling his own words from when she had first arrived at the House of Wind.

“It is not a romance” he argued “It is a story full of blood and fights and dangerous quests for glory and—”

“And Guinevere is just a fish then?” Nesta inquired, returning the book to its rightful place.

Cassian’s only answer was a low grumble and Nesta could swear he was sulking because she was right.

“Just go to sleep and forget about this” Cassian said, awkwardly gesturing towards his bed.

Spine straight as a sword, Nesta pushed the covers back and fluffled her pillow before trying to get comfortable.

It was too much. Too much Cassian. Too much of that intoxicating scent that made her caged heart threaten to explode and pour out all that she felt for him into the open. She had no idea how she was going to be able to sleep, even more when she heard a rustling sound and saw Cassian drop his clothes in a chair, staying only in his undershorts.

“What do you think you are doing?” she exclaimed, a bit breathless as she eyed his tan and muscled torso, failing to hide how seeing him like that affected her.

“Would you rather have me sleeping naked sweetheart? Because that is my type of sleeping garments” he winked at her, and Nesta wondered if she could suffocate him with her pillow.

“But for the sake of your poor nerves I will put on proper clothes xe r-atá” he added, slipping on some cotton pants that hang so low on his hips that Nesta had to bite her tongue to not comment on the fact that it did nothing to calm her poor nerves.

Cassian turned off the light settling beside her on the bed and keeping a respectful distance from her side.

Nesta tightly closed her eyes and prayed to sleep come soon. Yet she kept tossing and turning around, not finding a comfortable position.

“I thought you wanted me to rest Ness” Cassian’s amused voice interrupted the silence.

“Well, it’s not my fault I cannot find a comfortable position and am feeling cold despite the lit fireplace” she turned in his direction, trying to find his face in the dark “Don’t you ever feel cold?”

“I am quite used to Illyria’s weather, and maybe living for so long in a piss poor tent outside made me immune to it” he said with a hint of sadness “You should have told me sooner that you were cold. Wait a minute.”

Nesta’s eyes slowly got used to the dark and she could faintly see Cassian moving towards his wardrobe and returning with a huge fur blanket.

“Warmer?” he asked, tucking it so tenderly around her that her heart skipped a beat.

“Yes, but….”

“Still not comfortable?”

She felt her cheeks getting hot in embarrassment and thanked the gods Cassian could not see it because of the dark.

“Can I—” Cassian cleared his throat and Nesta felt him move a little in her direction.

“Yes'' she laid utterly still, not daring even to breath as Cassian moved and embraced her, his arm acting as a pillow for her head.

“It’s just body heat” he murmured, his breath hitting her forehead.

“Just body heat” she agreed, eyelids suddenly heavy with sleep.

“Aundê aicô, xe nhia” Cassian whispered, Nesta’s soft breathing letting him know she was fast asleep.

•

Fixed tag list: @sayosdreams @thewayshedreamed @sjm-things @perseusannabeth @arinbelle @caotica-e-quieta @vidalinav @swankii-art-teacher @ireallyshouldsleeprn @duskandstarlight @greerlunna @thegoddessaltenia @dayanna-hatter @verypaleninja @awesomelena555 @courtofjurdan @allilal @sensitiveillyrians @moe8 @illyrianwitchling13 @silvernesta @bri-loves-sunflowers @queenestarcheron @imwritingthesewords @vasudharaghavan @rainbowcheetah512 @darkshadowqueensrule @letstakethedawn @starlightorstarfire @city-of-fae @thalia-2-rose @nestaarcher0n @rowaelinismyotp @julemmaes

{Please let me know if you’d like to added to my Fixed Tag list}

#nessian #nesta x cassian #nesta archeron #cassian #sarah j maas #sjmaas #sjm books #sjm fanfic

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cartoonsaint · 4 years

Text

Try Not to Use the “F-Word,” Okay?

[Ao3]

was reading about @doodledrawsthings ‘coffee shop au’ and thought it was interesting that from the jump Luka uses “peck” as a swear. told myself not to overthink it... so naturally here’s nearly three thousand words about the idea that Luka used to swear a LOT. not sure how in keeping it is w his character, but it certainly is in keeping w MY experiences of unthinkingly swearing around a toddler ahahah.... fuck 8)

Summary: three snapshots of luka that are definitely only about swearing (coffee shop au) Characters: Luka, Vanessa, baby Hattie, Luka’s parents. Rating: T (features swearing, implied unhealthy relationship, post-birth scene, minor bleeding) Length: 2878 words

One evening during dinner, Luka loses his grip on his fork and drops it under the table with a clatter. “Fuck,” he says mildly.

Dad gasps, which is a poor choice since he was mid-sip of water. He sputters and coughs, face turning alarmingly red, while Mom throws her head back and laughs. It’s even louder and longer than usual; even by the time Luka crawls back up from under the table, errant fork clutched in one hand and brow wrinkled in confusion over his weird parents, his mom is still laughing. His dad, though, has managed to get his breath back.

“Luka T. Princeton!” he says hoarsely, looking both absolutely scandalized and absolutely soaked from the water that escaped his mouth and cup. “We do not say that word at the dinner table!”

“What word?” Luka asks, before a metaphorical lightbulb goes off. “Oh, ‘fuck’?”

“Don’t—!” his dad says, then goes “hrng” and looks to his wife for help.

Luka’s mom, now face-down at the dinner table in stark contrast to her usually flawless manners, just smacks the table with a fist and laughs harder. The water in Luka’s cup ripples with it, which in itself is pretty funny, but his dad still looks so uncharacteristically thunderstruck that Luka is unsure whether to join in. Plus he pulled out the full name, so…

Luka bites his lower lip, suddenly worried. Did he do something bad…?

“Where did you even hear that word?” Dad is massaging the bridge of his nose now in the way he only does when dealing with a tough client or a call that he doesn’t want Luka to overhear, and Luka finds he has to bite his lip even harder because it wants to wobble and he’s a big kid, he’s not going to cry.

“M-Mom said it the other day, when she cut her finger,” he admits, fiddling with his fork. Dad turns to her with such a look of betrayal, even as Mom tries to stifle her continuing giggles. “Um… is it bad?”

“Yes,” Dad says, just as Mom catches her breath and says, “Well, sort of.”

Luka’s parents glance at each other in surprised confusion, but Luka barely notices. He said a bad word… Does that mean he’s bad? Despite his best efforts, his vision starts to go blurry with tears as he stares down at the fork in his hands. He doesn’t want to be bad.

“I don’t think it’s that big a deal,” his mom says.

“I do,” replies his dad, sounding baffled. “I just assumed we were on the same page with this.”

Luka sniffs, trying desperately to hold it together, but he said a bad word — but he didn’t know — but does it matter if he didn’t know? He’s still bad, right? Hot tears start to trail down his cheeks and he sniffs again, harder and louder.

“Oh, Lu,” his dad says softly and crosses around the table to kneel by Luka’s seat. Luka wipes at his eyes fruitlessly as his mom reaches across and takes his smaller hand in hers. “I’m sorry, kiddo, I didn’t mean to get upset. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“It’s okay,” his mom tells him, giving his hand a squeeze. “It’s alright, Luka. We’re not angry — it is a, ah, a ‘bad word,’ but you didn’t know. It’s alright, sweetheart.”

Once Luka starts crying, though, it always takes him an embarrassingly long time to stop. He can’t help it. His frustration about unwillingly acting like such a dumb little kid makes his tears come faster and harder; he has to scrub at his face for a while, his dad handing him tissues, and so he doesn’t pick up on the silent conversation happening over his head between his parents.

They are a matched set in so many ways. To Luka they seem to move in perfect tandem, one picking up the tasks of the other with seamless grace. It seems so natural, so unpracticed and easy, and indeed some of it is — but as Luka cries, they communicate in a series of small expressions each has long-studied in the other: We will talk about this when Luka goes to bed. And, Well I thought it was funny. And, Alright maybe it was but I still don’t want him swearing. And, We’ll discuss it. We’ll figure it out together. I love you.

Luka never realizes. He just assumes that perfect couples are never out of sync with each other — and if they are out of sync, then they must not be perfect.

***

“Fuck, Ven, she’s perfect,” Luka breathes.

He couldn't get close enough sitting in one of the chairs, so he had been leaning against his wife's hospital bed when Vanessa passed him their child — their child, their baby, theirs — and his knees went weak. Now he’s kneeling on the tile floor, barely aware of his surroundings because in his arms he holds a truly, beautifully perfect little baby girl.

She has… a nose. He couldn’t say whether it’s more like his or Vanessa’s because this perfect bundle of joy is a scrunched up little pink newborn so mostly she looks like a lot of wrinkles that a sleepy face got on, but fuck, he loves that little nose and everything attached to it. Honestly through the tears he can barely see her right now but she’s perfect, perfect, perfect… even if she is, objectively speaking, not actually that appealing to look at. “Shit, Ven. Ven. Look at her goddamn little face, fuck.”

Vanessa makes a sound and reaches for him, touching his hand. “You don’t like her face?”

“I fucking love her face,” he says hoarsely. “I love her so goddamn much, Ven, I don’t even know how to say it. Fuck. Fuck.”

“Good,” Vanessa says tiredly. Luka doesn’t want to put their daughter down for a second so he does his best to wipe his eyes on the shoulder of his shirt sleeve. He gets to his feet only to sink right onto the bed beside his wife. His perfect, wonderful wife who has given them the tiny creature he never wants to look away from. “You wanted to name her Harriet, didn’t you?”

It’s like there’s a thread pulling his gaze directly to their daughter but he resists it for long enough to look up at the radiant woman he loves. She’s watching him, eyes glittering. “Do you mean…?”

She gives him one of her luminous smiles, even exhausted as she clearly is. “If it’s what you want, my love.”

Luka’s heart leaps as he looks down at their daughter — at Harriet. “Harriet,” he whispers in wonder. “Little Harry.”

Vanessa’s grip on his arm briefly tightens. “No,” she says.

Luka can’t help the wet laugh that comes out of him, though he tries to keep it down for the sake of his exhausted wife. “No,” he agrees. “How about… Hattie? Little Hattie?”

Hattie sleeps on, a teeny tiny person wrapped up safe in Luka’s trembling arms. He’s probably going to get dehydrated from all this crying and his face already hurts from how hard he’s smiling but, fuck, he doesn’t care about that at all when their perfect daughter is right here. “Hm? Hattie? How’s that sound, princess?” And he presses a gentle, wet kiss to Harriet’s brow.

Luka doesn’t notice Vanessa’s stung shock. He doesn’t notice the shadow of fear, anger, and confusion that darkens her face as she looks between her husband and the daughter she’s given him. It will take him a long time to realize his assumptions about their mutual goals as a unit are different.

For now, he loves Vanessa with all his heart — and loves their little Hattie just as much, if not more.

***

“Fuck,” Luka hisses, jerking his hand out of the hot, soapy water to check his fingertip. Blood wells up from its soft pad, mixing and diluting in the dirty dishwater. “Fuck,” he sighs again, and turns the squeaky nozzle of his shitty sink to run clean water over it. What kind of a fucking fool leaves a sharp knife in the sink like that, anyway.

Obviously, he does. This god awful apartment is just his, after all — he’d run here as soon as he could manage to pull together both the separate funds and distance necessary to prevent Vanessa locating it. This place is safe: Vanessa has never been here, and as of today she never will. So it’s safe, that is, from her — not from Luka’s own inability to keep track of where the goddamn sharp objects are.

“Stupid,” he mutters to himself as the water rushing over his cut starts to run clean. “Shithead.”

It’s been a weird day — a weird week — shit, a weird few years, if Luka thinks about it. When Vanessa came into his life, she seemed to him so bright that nothing else was worth looking at. It took until their daughter — his daughter, now — for Luka to start looking into the darkness she brought as well. Then the divorce proceedings, custody battles, the restraining order — for so long it had seemed that the legal system would fail Luka and Harriet, that Vanessa’s long shadow would follow them wherever they went.

Until earlier this week, that is, when Vanessa used magic in the courtroom.

Things had happened quickly from there. The paperwork barring Vanessa in his and Hattie’s life was just signed and made official today; his copies are still set neatly on the junky, second-hand kitchen table until he figures out exactly where to put them. After so long, it’s finally over. He and Hattie are free.

The old pipes complain as he turns the water off. The cut isn’t too bad, but he probably ought to bandage it anyway. He wipes away the spilled water with a ratty towel, turning to —

“Ffffpffpffpfpfpflllffff,” says Hattie from right by Luka’s feet, which is also outside of her playpen.

“Fuck!” Luka yelps, leaping about a foot in the air. Hattie stops blowing air through her lips to smile up at him, totally angelic. Luka presses a hand to his chest, staring at his little girl. “Kiddo! You scared me! How did you—?”

He looks across the small, open floorplan into the den, where he’s set up several different brands and varieties of baby gates to keep Hattie out of the kitchen when he’s occupied with cooking or cleaning. Her many toys are left behind, the gates apparently untouched, but somehow she’s escaped them — again — to hug Luka’s leg and smile up at him.

He smiles back, of course — he couldn’t deny her anything. And even if it is a problem that his little girl can’t be contained anywhere, he feels a swell of pride at her continued and baffling ingenuity — as well as a slight prickling in his eyes because even with all her toys she always just seems to want to be close to him. “No one’s gonna keep you trapped anywhere, huh, sweetheart?” he asks, squatting down to ruffle her light brown waves.

“Fffpllfpllfff,” Hattie replies importantly, graciously accepting the affection.

“Ah, I see. Your jumping abilities are unmatched, are they?” Luka says in return. His daughter started moving early, her curiosity about the world apparently unable to be sated with just looking even when she was just a few months old. She has always wanted to touch, to crawl, to walk — just the other day Luka could swear he caught her trying to climb the couch. His little princess is unstoppable, and his pride in her every step has gotten him teary-eyed more than once (more than once this week, even).

“Fffflpllplflffff,” Hattie tells him, eyes bright. She smiles hugely in between blowing air through her lips. What she lacks in the ability to form words (she’s a little late, and Luka’s not worried, exactly, but he is watching that with hawk-like eyes) she makes up for in expression. She turns her big blue eyes to the hand Luka isn’t using to brush back her wavy locks, curious. “Fffllllllllflflplf?”

“Oh, your dad cut himself,” Luka explains, showing her the slim red line of blood beading up on the pad of his finger. “Pretty stupid, if you ask — oh, sweetie, don’t—!” She’s grabbed his finger in a little fist before he can stop her, smearing blood all over it. He quickly scoops her into his lap, frowning down at her messy hand. “Fuck. Alright, we’ll just—”

“Fffffffuck,” Hattie says clearly.

Luka blinks once. Twice. He looks down at his daughter, who is beaming up at him with clear pride.

“...what,” Luka says.

“Flffflpplf.”

“A-alright, okay, that’s — sorry, princess, your dad thought for a second there you said—”

“Pllllfffflllplflflfff. Fffuck!” Hattie says again. Then she claps her little hands together in delight, further spreading the blood between them.

“Ha,” says Luka, voice unusually high. “Hahaha I? You??? …Alright! Alright! This, ah, this is fine, kiddo, we’ll just—”

“Fuck! Ffplplffuck fuck fuck?”

Luka takes a deep breath. Then he takes another one.

When Harriet was first born, he’d made an effort to cut back on the swearing. He had the ability to turn it off, after all, in the courthouse and with clients, so presumably it should have been easy to transfer that back home, too. But changing the way he’s spoken for years in his own space turned out to be quite difficult; with the stress of the past few months, that effort had been one of the many things to fall by the wayside in favor of more immediate concerns.

So Luka has been swearing a lot lately. And his sweet Hattie has been quietly soaking it all up, patiently biding her time until she could attempt to communicate with her dad in his own language.

“Ffffuck?” Hattie asks, eyes concerned. She presses one dirty hand to Luka’s face, as though attempting to stem the flow of tears. “Fffpllppff?”

“Oh, princess, I’m sorry,” he tells her, rubbing his wet face on his shoulder to clear his eyes. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have — I—” He sniffs, then exhales hard. “Alright. Daddy’s been saying some bad words lately, but he’s gonna stop now, okay?”

“Fuck!”

A part of Luka really, really wants to laugh, actually, because damn is Hattie cute with her big, sparkling eyes, her chubby cheeks uplifted with a smile, the absolute adoration on her face as she looks up at him for approval. The contrast between how sweet she looks in her bird-patterned onesie and the foul language coming out of her mouth is almost —

“Fuck?”

“Nope!” he says brightly. “We’re gonna try something different! Okay, kiddo?” Hattie tilts her head adorably and Luka’s chest squeezes — fuck he loves her. “Hmmm…”

She watches him silently as he thinks. In the dozens of parenting books he’s read there was never anything explicitly about what to do if a toddler started cursing (because no one else has this problem because only he is this bad a dad, holy shit), but he can recall a number of chapters about encouraging them in pronunciation…

He’ll need something that sounds like “fuck,” but definitely isn’t. He laces his fingers together, tilting his head at Hattie. She pats his hands, looking solemnly back. He sticks his tongue out at her; delighted, she does the same. What word to use?

He notices that her orange onesie has penguins on it.

“Alright, kiddo, this is going to be a little silly,” he says, and goes, “fllpppplffffpeck.”

It might be easier to just let this go, to let Hattie say and do whatever she wants, and part of Luka is tempted. But he knows now how important it is to talk in a family, to put in the work to understand one another. This situation might be a minor instance of it, but he wants to make sure he and Hattie never have a problem talking to each other. He’s willing to put in the work, as much as it takes.

It takes an hour or so to convince her that “peck” is superior to “fuck.” The process is complicated by the continued desire to laugh every time she swears, but eventually they manage, and Hattie goes toddling off merrily chanting, “peck peck peck peck.”

Luka painfully hauls himself up (shit, his tailbone hurts) to finally finish doing the dishes in water that has long gone cold. This is a good start, he thinks, but he’ll need to watch his own language as well. Maybe he can encourage Hattie’s positive association with the word with a bird toy or something? He considers this as he reaches into the water to unplug the drain —

And jerks his hand back as the same finger grazes probably the same goddamn knife. “Fff—!”

“Peck!”

He glances over his shoulder. Hattie is painstakingly tugging at the baby gates, trying to get back into the playpen he knows she knows he prefers her to be in. Her eyes are solemn, watching him for what he’ll do.

“...peck,” he agrees weakly. She smiles brilliantly and goes back to her toddler work.

God, he fu— he pecking loves her.

#a hat in time #coffee shop au #snatcher (ahit)#vanessa (ahit)#ahit #saint writes #1.#feel kinda bad not including the birds in this but #i couldn't rly pull off effectively including them DX #2. even in a non-au harriet might be a nice name for luka's mom #3. almost included vanessa requesting ice chips in this bc lol

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shirtlesssammy · 3 years

Text

7x07: The Mentalists

Then:

Dean’s drinking professionally this season

Now:

At a seance, a couple inquire about their Uncle Danny. The woman is interested in knowing if he’s happy and with the family dog.

The man wants to know where some important papers are located. The psychic seems in control at first, but when the lights flicker and the flames in the fireplace grow, she looks surprised. The planchette moves ALL on its own and the air gets frosty. Then the planchette impales itself in the psychic’s neck.

Dean’s all alone and driving a crappy, stolen car after his bust up with his brother and the Leviathan’s making the Impala a wanted vehicle. He learns of deaths in Lily Dale, the most psychic town in America, and hits the road.

At the crime scene, he finds all the tricks the psychic employed, and then heads to Good Graces Cafe.

It’s not his type of place, but he hears his brother’s voice. Sam’s in town too to investigate. Dean jumps right into his everything’s good and let’s work the case spiel, but Sam is not happy.

Dean gives up the facade and tells Sam they might as well work together to get the case over with. A woman walks in and recognizes them. They convince her that they’re not the Winchesters, and then her dining partner comes up and recognizes them as FBI. They both express their shock at the deaths. The man introduces himself as a spoon bender.

The brothers start looking at the victims. Dean notes that they both had the same necklace, possibly a cursed object.

They head to interview Melanie, the granddaughter to one of the victims. They ask about the necklace, and she tells them all her things went to the emporium. They ask to see the necklace.

And then they take it under the FBI pretense. The shop owner says it’s the Orb of Thesulah. Dean wonders what that is. Sam points out that it’s a fake --and a town of fakes. Shocking.

That night, the man from the cafe pulls out his utensils to practice his craft. Suddenly they all stand on end and he gets whisked above them, only to fall to his death.

The brothers check out the crime scene and learn the man had a vision of his own death. Dean then gets a call from Melanie, and they head to her house to talk. She tells them that her grandmother left her a voicemail message of her own coming death. When she mentions that the air got cold, the brothers tell her they’re dealing with a ghost.

She does not believe them.

They tell her their story. She needs a drink (and so does Dean.)

Sam and Dean realize how difficult their situation is --fake and probably real psychics, ghosts, and a whole lot of confusion. They split up to canvas the town.

Camille Thibodeaux, a friend of Melanie's, has a death vision. She calls Melanie, and her friend brings Dean.

Camille tells him about her death vision. Dean cannily surveys the room and spots a security camera. Cut to later, where they watch her get attacked by an actual G-G-G-GHOST on the camera footage. Melanie remembers seeing a picture of the ghost in the museum.

At the museum, the tour guide spins a little backstory towards us. Hooking into the “brothers rift” theme of Season 7, we hear about sibling fights in the psychic gallery PLUS one success story of two brothers who got along famously. “Of course, that was just a stage name. They weren't actually brothers. That was a cover for their, um... alternative lifestyle.” Cut to a closeup of Dean.

They spot the Fox sisters’ portrait. One of the sisters (the ghost) was known for her death prophecies and telekinesis. The older sister, the museum guide reports, “didn't have her sister's charisma, but she looked after Kate. Sometimes, one's true gift is taking care of others.” Sometimes I watch these thesis statements on Dean and shriek at such a high pitch that I break every pane of glass in the gas station. Sam heads off to dig up some Fox sister skeletons, but the tour guide grabs Dean. “Do you know an Eleanor or an Ellen?”

“She seems quite concerned about you. She wants to tell you – pardon me – if you don't tell someone how bad it really is, she'll kick your ass from beyond. You have to trust someone again eventually.” ANYWAY. The tour guide fucks off and leaves both Dean AND myself shattered into a million pieces.

Dean storms out moments later and demands that Sam treat him with a modicum of courtesy. Sam entrenches in his anger. When Dean defends his choice to kill Amy, he then also dredges up Sam’s best pal, Hallucifer as reason number one to coddle Sam.

Later at the cemetery, Dean stands watch while Sam digs up a grave. They wonder why the ghost is warning all the psychics before killing them. The ghost zooms up just as they’re about to salt and burn the body. She seems relatively stable for a murderous ghost and pleads with them to listen to her. WHY won’t anybody listen to her? GIRLFRIEND, I feel you.

Sam and Dean torch her and she flames out dramatically. Camille and Melanie celebrate the good news: the ghost is, uh, dead. Re-dead-ified? Back at Camille’s place, they pack a quick bag. The death omens start to spiral around poor Camille. The older Fox sister arrives as a desperate Melanie calls the Winchesters for help. Melanie ineffectually tosses an empty salt container at the spirit before watching her friend get killed before her eyes. UUUUGH.

Later, a grieving Melanie shoos the Winchesters out of her home, telling them that Margaret (the ghost) enjoyed killing her friend. That morning, they dig up Margaret’s grave. “I feel naked doing this in daylight,” Dean observes. Oh, sunshine. From the shadowed forest, something lurks. Unfortunately, nothing lurks in the actual grave. Margaret’s coffin lies empty. Later, Dean notices a flyer for an upcoming psychic festival. All the headliners featured in the poster are now all dead. Dean runs this theory by Melanie, who realizes that she’s the next logical successor to the Lilydale psychic throne.

Sam heads back to the thrift shop to pursue new necromancer leads while Dean tries to ghost proof Melanie. He surrounds her in a great big salt circle. (SALT HULA HOOP, I whisper in Dean’s ear.)

Sam bursts into the suspected necromancer’s house only to find a lamaze class. He and Dean realize that the pawn shop owner is the necromancer, trying to feed them false leads. This is all very useful, but it doesn’t help Melanie. Margaret shows up at the house ready to REDRUM.

Breaking into the pawn shop owner’s house, Sam finds a spooky altar complete with a skull. The necromancer levels a gun at Sam.

The ghost appears, blowing out Melanie’s windows. RUDE! They fight while the necromancer monologues over them, telling Sam that he’s a real psychic. He just doesn’t get top billing because he’s not that pretty or charismatic.

Sam grows weary of the villain-splaining and shoots the necromancer. He then heads into the dude’s bedroom where he finds Margaret’s bones...in his bed. Welp. Good night, everybody!

After Sam torches the bones and saves Melanie, Dean gets the full recap at the psychic diner.

For Dean and Flowers Science:

Sam bows out of the conversation when Melanie arrives. Dean desperately tries to minimize his feats of heroism. She thanks him anyway and they both circle around the mutual-attraction-imcompatible-lifestyles hole. Honestly, I am so firmly entrenched in the Cas endgame but WHY don’t I read more of Dean/Melanie in fics? She’s a cutie! And then we can have Shipper!Melanie too.

Dean leaves the diner to find that Sam’s moved his duffel to Dean’s car. Sam tells Dean that he understands why he killed Amy now. He ALSO tries to get Dean to admit that he’s swirling around the black hole of drinky drinky despair. Dean tells Sam that he killed Amy out of instinct - he didn’t trust her. “Ever since Cas, I’ve had a hard time trusting anybody.” GUH. Dagger to the heart.

They trundle off into the next episode. (GUYS, this was written by THE Acker and Blacker duo! I had no idea!)

Look Into the Crystal Quotes:

See, there’s fake woo woo crap. And there’s real woo woo crap

This is gonna be looking like a needle in a stack of fake needles

If you affirmate me, I’m gonna punch you in the face

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

#spn recap #dean winchester #sam winchester #spn 7x07 #the mentalists #supernatural season 7

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greyswritingagain-ohhell · 4 years

Text

𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔊𝔬𝔩𝔡𝔢𝔫 ℭ𝔬𝔪𝔭𝔞𝔰𝔰

*yeets this at you and runs* PRINXIETY FAIRYTAIL SOULMATE AU-

The compass… What a beautiful creation. Burned into one’s little arms at birth, the red pin always pointing at destiny. Destiny one must travel to, a type of destiny named love.

Roman Sanders X Virgil Sanders

Word count: 2,393

TW: Blood mention, vague mention of sex (i guess?), threats, mentions of an unhappy father-son relationship. Msg if there is more.

★-----☾-----❍-----☽-----★

The compass… What a beautiful creation. Burned into one’s little arms at birth, the red pin always pointing at destiny. Destiny one must travel to, a type of destiny named love. The blissful romance of twirling skirts and melodic laughing from a young story of either woe or contentment. Though destiny is not entirely glitter and kisses, it is and will never be the work of fiction we all wish it be. It is also a raging storm against a raft in violent gunmetal waters, smashed plates and wine glasses once filled stained with tears and tragedy as cries and whimpers fill the lonely grey room that withheld an untold tale of sorrow.

Destiny, as mystifying as it is, can be merciless.

Though… maybe not in this case. Maybe not in the case of the poor little prince in his depressing creamy marble balcony. His glimmering jade eyes were devoid of the usual passion and joy they once shined with. Passion and joy were replaced with longing and unfulfilled urge. Urge to find his soulmate. His soulmate. He has built a reputation for himself for finding his citizen’s one and only, why couldn’t he find his? Why not a quest for the brave prince with a promise of a fairytail ending?

Simple. His father. The man who insisted he stay locked up inside, only seen when needed, only for the fair young maidens to coo and swoon at upon sight. All his services had been classified, hidden away within the palace walls, never to be dug up. But of course, that was only dust on his shoulder that he will eventually brush off. Because the one thing in his mind was them. His rare focus was on what he had considered will be his best achievement. His missing piece. The one he will treat like royalty then proceed to make them royalty.

His soulmate.

Though their meet was delayed many times, today, he was finally going to find them, see their sparkling eyes twinkle in the natural warm sunlight, witness their face contort from confused to… hopefully something positive. Today he will set off to the depths of the unknown and finally, finally, without any form of hesitation or restraint, be free from the chains of the limelight of their watchful gazes on him. Because as much as he loved his kingdom, he didn’t mind the morning breeze flowing through a woodland cottage as his love lied next to him, breathing softly and peacefully like an angel sent from the heavens. He didn’t mind the playful ribbons of the sunset reflecting on the diamond windows, endearing touches slowly becoming a burning sensation that lasts midnight when the stars bless their love.

But alas, father dearest must foil his plans once more when Roman Kingsley heard the familiar thudding of leather boots on the porcelain tiles, not even an attempt to sneak up.

“Father?”

At the unceremonious acknowledgement, his father came closer, crossing his arms as his eyebrows furrowed, “Roman.”

Roman only heaved a heavy sigh, his brown hair teasing his forehead as he ran a hand through them to tame the flying strands. They seemed to shine in the sun, glowing a divine gold over the hues of brown, a halo of a prince. A prince fit for the role of a protagonist, a hero in fiction. Too good to be true, too perfect for such an icy hell called Earth, a forgery for the monsters and myths. A place of fire and ice, uniting to let their twisted gift see the light, the most merciless craft of the gods all creation feared as their result of boredom wrecked havoc over the paradise they so generously provided. And yet there he was, gleaming gold and red, a divinity in the midst of the madness.

Gold in the sand dunes, he'd say.

“What do you need from me, father?” He pondered, raising an eyebrow. There was no denying the slight hurt bubbling in his chest. The weight that rivalled Earth itself was pressing down harshly on his tired shoulders, a warning like defying gravity to never let go. Handling pain had always been his forte, a duel of clashing bronze and gold in the air. But dealing with muffled, inconveniencing pain from someone he had once considered his own father? He'd rather be thrown to the wolves.

“Morgana's at it again. This time worse than usual.”

Contrary to popular belief, he was rather fond of the treacherous shape shifter. Sure, they both had their moments of malice and graceful of fiction-worthy battles, but nonetheless, she was one of good company. Maybe even a friend. Though Roman was positive she'd never admit it. She always struck up a conversation, even the first time they met. Throwing blasts of flames and questions about him and then proceeding to vent to him about the stupidity his father must’ve had to send a 15 year old to “slay” a dragon. His agreement and addition to the topic had unknowingly blossomed a purple and red friendship, flourishing in the snow while dripping vicious, warm blood on the contrasting temperature. If anything, he was thankful his father had sent him on those missions.

But one thing stuck out from his father's sentence.

Worse than usual?

“Will you take care of her?” He deadpanned, placing a large, heavy hand on his shoulder. It was of the most brief displays of what his father called “affection”. Please. Even the stalactites in the dark of the caves nearby loved him better. That is, if constantly falling and almost gifting him a concussion is loving in one's words. Which apparently was to the stalactites. But what did he expect? Kisses on foreheads and ‘we love you's?

“You know I will.”

Its not like he had anything better to do.

Well, there was one mystery at hand. Er, wrist. Because no matter where he turned, the compass pointed the tip of the silver dagger north. It didn’t, not once, change direction. A cliché, yes, but one can only assume his soulmate takes solitude in the brutally icy snowy mountains, freezing for their own life. Or maybe thriving. Who knows, this fair lass or lad may be a hunter, shooting silvery bits of moonlight to puncture any stags nearby. A life they see worth living over their humanity. It was grave, yes. But Understandable. It was ironic, really. Because north was where Morgana set camp that day. Just his lucky day.

The trot of the thoroughbred echoed widely in the evergreen willow forests, tiny little warm white stars shining and illuminating the strip of a path towards his usual Sunday evening. Towards the steep, rocky mountains of Ragana. Could’ve done a better job at naming the damn thing but hey, it's her mountain after all. He had no jurisdiction to interfere with her property.

But the peak of the mountain showed way, standing in all its shimmering glory in the afternoon sun.

“Morgana? My dear, I appreciate the need to see me, but I am on a quest! I must find my soulmate! Can this please wait?-“

“What do you want with my mother?”

He froze, his begging paused. His hands grow stiff as a tree in the air, his hair brushing his forehead teasingly against the cold wind the white snow tinted. The voice had slightly shocked him, foreign and quite… mystifying. He says foreign, through there was a silver lever snapping in his mind, saying it is a familiar melody in his ears. Dark, surely a male's, unwavering, and very, very attractive. How does one tell if another is attractive through their voice?

Another detail caught his attention. His compass, rock solid. Normally a compass' pin will vibrate, jitter, yet still keep its direction clear. The silver end was ice, now burning his arm once more ever since the day of his birth, the tip of the pin now locked on the engraved N. He never recalled any but one knowledge of the compass freezing mid-encounter.

The compass speaks.

Was this young lad his bound? The end of the red string…? His.. Destiny…?

“Hey! Prince guy! I was talking to you-“ the voice died, now silent. The only thing that passed his ears were the slapping of the drooping Willow trees nearby that served him a dreamy backdrop and the blowing winds, gentle and smelling of the oddly comforting breeze of winter.

His body regained its motioning state, his hand dropping to his side, brushing his white blazer. His eyes scanned the scene, remembering the direction the voice came from. It came from under the dark overhang of stone, untouched by the snowflakes. Morgana's humble abode, he'd say. And since when did she have a son? Assuming it’s a man.

“I-She's been wrecking havoc amongst Acelina. We cannot afford any more wreckage, we cannot spend money so carelessly to clean up her messes. She must be stopped.” He said, his head held high. One could take one look at his poised form and think that he was actually confident, brave as he faced the man. But no. His head was screaming. His legs felt like stiff jelly. He was weak for just a dark and mysterious voice. Sue him.

“And? Must you kill her? What proposes that need?”

He squawked in surprise and offend, “I never said she must perish! I simply need to talk-“

“Oh? Then why a sword? Why the need to bring a rash weapon when all you need to do is talk?”

If this was his soulmate, his guards better prim his deathbed soon for this hiding man will be the cause of his delicate demise.

Everything evaporated into the wind, a heavy silence falling and pressing on their slouched shoulders, a force like defying physics. And as every second ticks by in the hourglass, the weight started to gain, pound by pound as they helplessly watch themselves almost get wordlessly sink into a rabbit hole of deep tension.

Almost all else was lost into the marine depths of the Pacific till Roman heard footfalls against the 2inch thick snow. Till the small clouds of breaths from the other brushed softly against his flushed cheeks. Till he felt something cold and sharp press against his chest.

Oh no.

“Listen, prince, I don’t care who you are, what you want, or what your intentions are, all I want you to do is to not—touch—my—mother.”

Though the icy silence was the only solace he could’ve confided in, he had to reply. And he had to do it carefully. One wrong spin, one wrong puff of air, one wrong gesture, and the dagger drives violently through his panicking heart and he will be left to die in the clutches of the dark, mysterious lad without even a glimpse of his face.

“I have no intention or need to hurt your mother. She and I are… acquaintances. And I wish to speak to her.”

The lad lifted his head, his purple velvet hood now falling off as Roman was sure his heart had stopped and screamed at the sight…

His eyes. Those wretched, silver and coffee eyes will be the death of him. Sunlight flooded in them, the numerous similar shades of iron and dirt violently popping against porcelain skin. His hair was a tint of purple, blending in with midnight spikes flopping on his head. His lips were tight and sealed, a menacing scowl stretching his sharp features.

“Acquaintances, huh?-“

“Virgil!” a new voice broke through the sharp silence, stern and feminine. They both recognized it immediately.

“Mom?”

“Morgana!”

The woman was insanely beautiful, he had to say, what with the curled umber hair and the piercing gold eyes against equally pale skin as her son. The threaded hem of her slim burgundy dress was damp against the snow, her black velvet cloak waving against the wind.

“Virgil Anxolia Black, what on earth were you about to do?” she loudly proclaimed, pulling him by the arm and releasing the tight pressure ‘Virgil' so graciously put him under. He released a breath, swallowing lightly. Virgil, however, looked outraged, a cold, hard determination in his eyes. His gloved hand seemed to tighten around the knife the second Roman began to speak.

“Fret not, Morgana, he was simply-“

The knife was raised, another step falling onto the snow as he heard the crunch of it under Virgil's boot, “what’d I say about my mother?!”

Perhaps it was the strong tone of his voice or the alluring gleam of his wide, steely eyes, but Roman had just felt his heart skip a sobbing beat. His beauty was radiant, a rose against the crowded leaves, a lit candle amidst a hurricane, a stray shadow in the room of light. And with a knife pointed and a lethal scream of his heart, Virgil Black was truly an unmistakable Adonis in his jade eyes.

The scene went still, a brush of the wind setting tiny movements for the three. A chill ran down Roman's spine at it. Silence was never an area of expertise of his. Silence turns into tension, tension into impulsiveness, impulsiveness into absentminded decisions that lead to blood being drawn and late night regrets to weep for. He was not a fan.

But alas, before tension turned into a form of impulsiveness, the woman in the cloak stepped forward, gently taking her son's wrist, “your compass…”

Virgil raised an eyebrow, taking his wrist down, therefor lowering the knife and allowing Roman a few seconds of oxygen, “what’s wrong with it…?”

His mother huffed in gleeful disbelief, her golden eyes glimmering, “its still! Your soulmate must be in your presence!”

Contrasting the unusual cheery expression of the shape shifter, Virgil stilled, his hand once again a lethal grip on the bronze dagger, his eyes flat with no emotion, “someone's here.”

This only made Roman's skipping heart seemingly beat faster in lovesick adrenaline as he slowly connected the dots.

Mine doesn’t work either…

And it was clear that Morgana thought the same as she dragged Virgil's wrist forwards closer to him, careful not to impale the flinching prince, and took his own wrist, lining both their compasses up until both North and South are parallel points.

Everything seemed to click in the two men's minds, mismatched eyes meeting jade.

Oh boy, this will be a ride.

★-----☾-----❍-----☽-----★

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artificialqueens · 3 years

Text

When We Went From Friends to This, Part 1: Week 1 (Branjie) - Writworm42

A/N: Fic summary: At the start of their first year of college, roomies Brooke and Vanessa have to quarantine together for two weeks. Fourteen days is a lot of time to bond, but it’s also a lot of time for things to get complicated.

For the lovely Ortega–merry super belated Christmas <3 Thank you Holtz for betaing & suggesting a song for the title, Bean for answering my questions about whether UK stereotypes are true, and Ortega for being patient fdhsjkf

Title from Paper Rings by Taylor Swift

TW for implied weed use

Day 1

“I still can’t believe you gotta go in-person to all these classes, you sure there ain’t a Zoom option?”

Vanessa snorts, and she’s pretty sure that Silky can hear her roll her eyes on the other end of the line. “For dance majors? Bitch, you know that ain’t gonna work.”

But Silky is too stubborn to be fazed by common sense. Instead, her voice gets a little more urgent. “We’re only first year. Start out with something that doesn’t need to be done in-person, then switch majors to dance once this is all over. C’mon, I can’t have my bestie dying Miss ‘Rona here!”

“Christ, you sound like my mom.” Vanessa huffs. “Look, the uni is being very careful, okay? Why else do you think I gotta quarantine for two weeks ahead of the start of term? Plus all clubs have been suspended and meals and showers are booked with time slots for each room. I’m literally seeing no one except the people in my classes and the bitch I’m sleeping next to.”

“But—“

“Listen, I’m at the dorm now, so I gotta go. I’ll call you later, alright?”

“Bye.” Silky’s begrudging send-off brings a flash of guilt to Vanessa’s chest, but only for a moment. Pushing her feelings aside, she hip-checks the door to the dorm building, trying to make her way inside without disrupting the large box she’s holding with one arm or the suitcase she’s trailing behind her with the other.

“Hi, I’m Vanessa Mateo, I think I’m supposed to be room 96?”

The suspiciously stoned-looking guy at the front desk barely looks up from the computer as he slides the keycard across his desk, and at first, Vanessa hovers, waiting for him to launch into a spiel about rules, but a moment passes without him saying anything, so she surges on. The building is a bit of a maze, its cement walls cold and drab despite the colourful posters plastered across it in a desperate attempt to make it more hospitable. By the time she finally reaches her room, she’s almost grateful that she’ll have to stay in it 24/7, given the impression the building and staff have left so far. No matter, though, right now, all she wants is to put down what she’s carrying and collapse onto her bed.

She shifts uncomfortably for a moment, trying to balance her box while also maneuvering her card towards the keypad, but the effort is unsuccessful–when she finally manages to tap the card, she’s met with another obstacle, having to actually open the door without any free arms.

It’s probably not the best impression to kick the door open and promptly drop almost all of your stuff before falling on top of it. Scratch that, it’s definitely not the best impression. Especially when Vanessa looks up at the owner of the voice that’s holding back laughter, asking if she needs help in a soft, calm twang.

Her roommate is tall, blonde, and nothing short of gorgeous. And even as she makes a motion as simple as offering a hand, Vanessa can tell that this girl is the picture of poise and grace.

“What’s your name?” The girl watches with piercing eyes as Vanessa dusts herself off, fighting off a fierce blush as she straightens up and catches her breath.

“Vanessa, but my friends call me Vanjie.” She extends a hand again, and this time, the girl seems rather shy as she takes it, nervously brushing a piece of hair behind her ear.

Huh.

“Nice to meet you, Vanessa. I’m Brooke.”

Day 2

Brooke, as it turns out, is the polar opposite of Vanessa–quiet and reserved, so introverted that Vanessa has to wrestle information out of her. What Vanessa learns about her is interesting - she’s a dance major too, she’s from Toronto, she decided to study here because she wants RAD training as well as to get trained in other styles. She plans to minor in costume design, having an affinity for and attraction to any pattern that involves leather or lace (a kinky detail that Vanessa, much to her shame and embarrassment, files away hungrily). She has two cats back home, Apollo and Henry, that she misses terribly. Everything else Vanessa knows, though, had to be acquired sneakily over their first night together, more observation and speculation than actually asking. Like how Brooke must be a fan of Schitt’s Creek , given that she put out a ‘ fold in the cheese ’ sign on her desk. Or how Lana is probably her favourite artist, because she has a weird habit of not checking if her air pods are actually connected to the school’s shitty bluetooth network and it’s always the first couple notes of Summertime Sadness that play from her laptop before she catches her mistake. Or how her ass is one of the best Vanessa’s ever seen, because Brooke has no shame changing in front of her–

She strikes that part from her mind almost as quickly as she thinks it in the first place. The important thing is, she’s got to spend two weeks with only Brooke to keep her company, and if they stay in this silence, it’s going to get very awkward very soon.

“So… How d’you like Scotland so far?” Vanessa starts, grimacing internally at how stupid the question sounds. But Brooke doesn’t seem to mind; in fact, she smiles kindly as she looks up from her computer, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear again.

“To be honest, I haven’t really seen much of it… Pretty much came right here after I came off the plane.” Her smile turns apologetic as her face flushes pink, clearly self-conscious about the lacklustre answer. That’s okay, though; Vanessa can still work with it.

“Probably a long flight, huh? What’d you do to keep yourself entertained? Or are you a plane sleeper?” Vanessa adds with a teasing grin, and much to her delight, Brooke laughs.

“Nah, I can never sleep on planes. Unless I knock myself out with Gravol or something, at least.” Brooke chuckles, giving a small wink. “I just read a bit, then the airline showed The Notebook, so I watched that.”

“I love that movie!” Vanessa gasps, “I swear I’ve probably seen it, like, three thousand times. It’s just so–”

“Romantic!” Brooke finishes. “The poor guy next to me must have hated me for all the crying I did.”

Her eyes are alight with excitement, and Vanessa can’t help but pick up on it, because finally , the perfect topic, and Brooke likes Vanessa’s favourite movie, and maybe she likes other stuff that Vanessa likes, and they can talk about that together, and–

“So what’s your favourite scene?” Brooke asks eagerly, and Vanessa claps her hands over her face.

“That’s the worst question to ask me, bitch!” Vanessa groans, but grins behind her hands when Brooke laughs, a string of apologies flowing between giggles.

“Sorry, sorry, I should’ve known.” Brooke puts her hands up in mock surrender. “Too many to choose, right?”

“Right.” Vanessa giggles a little too. “Although…” she brings herself up on her elbows as soon as the idea hits her, and for some reason, her heart skips a beat as she formulates the question, a rare flash of nerves hitting her square in the chest.

“Maybe a rewatch would be a good reminder?” Before she can verbalize what she’s thinking, Brooke beats her to the question, blushing again and chewing on her lip.

It’s cute, how shy she is, and Vanessa makes a mental note that she’ll have to help her new roomie break herself of those habits.

“Yeah, lets.” Vanessa smiles warmly, sliding off her bed to grab her laptop from her desk. “Here, we can use my computer.”

She’s only just grabbed the computer and turned around when she falters, realizing with a sinking dread what decision is next.

Either she has to invite Brooke onto her bed, or Brooke has to make room on hers.

It’s just a bed, it’s just a bed, it’s not like you’re inviting her to snog, it’s just sitting down to watch a movie…

So maybe Vanessa’s never had anyone but her friends lounge on her bed before, and her friends certainly don’t make her feel as nervous as Brooke does. Maybe Vanessa’s bed is a little small and Brooke is a little pretty, and the thought of being that close together makes her mouth go dry. And maybe the sudden uncertainty in Brooke’s eyes, too, is imagined, or else doesn’t mean anything that Vanessa thinks it could mean, rejection or reciprocation or suspicion of what Vanessa’s feeling. None of that changes anything right now, because Brooke is smiling again, tapping the space beside her bed to beckon Vanessa over.

“C’mon, let’s watch. If you want, we can even try to find the director’s cut.”

Day 3

Vanessa’s fast-developing fascination with Brooke’s ass isn’t helped by the sight of Brooke stretching on the floor that greets her as she comes back from her shower.

“Oh, hey!” Brooke lifts her leg up into a needle stance, peering between her legs before shifting her weight onto one hand and waving to Vanessa with the other. Her hair is still wet from her turn in the showers, and her current position is causing stray drops of water to trickle onto her arms, making it all too easy for Vanessa to give into temptation and watch as the droplets course over each one of Brooke’s muscles.

Bloody Hell. Vanessa’s got to do a better job of keeping her hormones under control.

“Hey yourself.” She tries to keep her voice casual as she grabs a pair of PJs from her bedside drawer, turning away from Brooke to change.

It’s strange. Vanessa never used to be as shy as she feels now, self-conscious of her nakedness as she drops her robe and begins to re-dress. A few months ago, this would’ve been no problem at all; to be honest, she’s not sure it would be now if she had a different roommate. But with Brooke next to her, watching her or not watching her at all (she can’t decide what’s worse, really), it’s different. She can’t help but wonder what she must look like, what Brooke must see if she’s actually looking. What does it feel like, being in Brooke’s head? What does everything seem, looking through Brooke’s eyes?

But Brooke is comfortable changing around her, and even though there’s no actual rule that says so, Vanessa feels obligated to feel comfortable, too. Partially because if it’s a non-issue, then feeling embarrassed about it might fade. And if that fades, then so will the way she feels every time she lays eyes on Brooke at all.

Right?

Vanessa whips around quickly, the sudden, eerie feeling of being watched making her forget that she doesn’t have a shirt on yet.

“ Christ! ” Brooke hits the floor with a thud, flushing beet red as she scrambles to cover her eyes. “Fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to see–”

“I’ve seen yours, now you get to see mine.” Vanessa rolls her eyes and laughs, hoping that the light tone and faint smirk she forces herself to slap on disguises how secretly mortified she feels. And thankfully, the comment does work; the redness dissipates from Brooke’s face, and she giggles a little, though her gaze stays firmly planted on the ground until Vanessa slides on her t-shirt. Just like that, the awkwardness fades from the air, and things are back to business as usual as Vanessa begins to comb out her hair. Brooke finishes stretching, Vanessa goes to the half-bath to blow her hair dry. Brooke sits at her desk and types intently, Vanessa tries not to peek over Brooke’s shoulder to see who she’s talking to. Brooke stretches out on her bed to look at her phone, and Vanessa does the same to play around on hers.

“Oh, it’s our turn for dinner.” A reminder notification at the top of Vanessa’s screen alerts her to the time, and she shuffles up to slide on shoes and get going, only remembering what she’s wearing at the last minute.

“Gimme a second, we can go out like that together.” Brooke grins, swiping yet another strand of hair behind her ear as she drops her sweatpants and swaps them for a pair of pajama pants.

“Are you sure?” Vanessa frowns, but Brooke just shrugs, a wry smile spreading on her face.

“I’ve seen yours, now you get to see mine.”

Day 4

They do morning stretches together the next day, and Vanessa has to admit that lust gets pushed aside by jealousy the minute they slide into the splits. Vanessa can do them, even if she hates them–it’s not that she can’t. It’s not even that she’s inflexible, she wouldn’t have survived in dance up until now if she were. But Brooke? That girl is on a whole other level. She slides into the splits with no effort at all, falling into position almost instantly and yet extremely gracefully, then does the one thing Vanessa hates, because it’s the one stretch she can’t do. She grabs a high foam block and puts it under her front foot. And then, just when Vanessa thinks she can’t get shown up even worse, Brooke grabs a second block and slides that under, too.

God, Vanessa wishes she could hate Brooke. But Brooke is too sweet, too kind, and too encouraging to even hold her pretzel-like tendencies against her, especially when she turns to Vanessa and taps her foot, offers her tips on how to get herself to that level of flexibility.

Vanessa tries to tell herself that the way Brooke’s eyes seem to linger on her every few minutes is just that generosity, a teacher monitoring her pupil. But even after Brooke helps Vanessa slide a small book under her foot, elevating her leg just enough, the lingering continues, and it’s hard not to let wishful thinking–at least, she thinks that’s what it is–take over. And that feeling only gets stronger as they move to their next stretch, one where they’re toe to toe with their legs spread wide and Brooke is grabbing Vanessa’s hands to pull her hardly an inch away from her chest.

Is it just Vanessa, or is Brooke blushing? And is it just Vanessa, or are Brooke’s hands just a little sweaty under their softness, warm and gentle as if they’re trying to hold Vanessa with as much tenderness as they can? And is it just Vanessa, or has Brooke’s chest gone still, her breathing stopped until Vanessa straightens out again?

“Your turn.” Vanessa offers, pulling Brooke into the position she’d just been in, and from the way Brooke comes to a harsh, sudden, stiff stop, but her muscles don’t shake and her breathing doesn’t change, Vanessa can tell she’s holding back. Almost as if she doesn’t want to get too close.

Vanessa’s imagining it. She has to be imagining it. There’s no other explanation, not a heterosexual one, and Brooke is…

Come to think of it, Vanessa doesn’t know for sure. But she can’t ask, not now; it would be too strange. So instead, she pulls Brooke forward sharply, resisting the urge to giggle when the blonde grunts in surprise at her strength.

“No holding back.” Vanessa shakes her head, smiling far too warmly for Brooke not to know what this is really about. “You can trust me, okay?”

“Okay.” Brooke smiles up at her, and then her muscles relax, and everything feels back to normal.

Day 5

“Truth or dare?”

Brooke turns to look at Vanessa, shifting to sit up as she smiles dubiously. They’re lying on Brooke’s bed together, pressed up against each other in an attempt to both fit in the small space of the double underneath the fuzzy, tickly cushion of Brooke’s top blanket. Vanessa rolls her eyes at Brooke’s skepticism, rolling onto her back to look up at her, grin wide on her face.

“C’mon, you know you want to. We can scroll Reddit later. Truth or dare?”

“Um…” Brooke crinkles her nose as she thinks, and Vanessa has to swallow the thought of how cute the blonde looks like that.

Although admittedly, the fact that she’s starting to hope Brooke keeps thinking isn’t just so she can watch the way Brooke’s brow furrows and muse quietly to herself about how seriously Brooke is taking this choice. Rather, it’s because she knows what she wants Brooke to pick, and the longer Brooke thinks, the more opportunity there is for Vanessa to hope she’ll pick up on the psychic signals she’s trying to send her.

Pick truth, pick truth, pick truth…

“Dare. But I’m not licking anything and I’m not going anywhere naked.”

Damnit.

Vanessa frowns, chewing on her lip as she tries frantically to think of a dare she can ask Brooke to do. It has to be appropriate, obviously, nothing too crazy like she might ask of Silky or her other, closer friends. But it can’t be boring, either—-if there’s one thing Vanessa doesn’t want to be in Brooke’s eyes, it’s boring.

Then, she thinks of the perfect thing. Something that might get at her truth question, that isn’t too high-stakes but definitely still has a bit of an ‘oh shit’ factor—exactly what you want from a dare.

“Dare you to prank call your last ex. On speaker. ” Vanessa smiles triumphantly, sticking out her tongue to tease her roommate. It’s foolproof—depending on the voice, Vanessa will know who Brooke has dated. And if she’s dating someone already, then surely she’ll say that, since admitting it is no problem.

Only, from Brooke’s face, there’s definitely a problem.

“I don’t want to play anymore.” Brooke heaves herself up off the bed, face becoming stony and cold as her eyes cloud over with something that Vanessa can’t quite decipher. Something mixed with anger, sure, but also something…

Crap. Crap, crap, crap. The magnitude of what Vanessa’s just asked of her new friend hits her like a train, and she feels like both the dumbest and worst person in the world at once. She called Brooke out, put her on the spot, and if she is queer? Pretty much just asked her to out herself. Which, unlike someone like Vanessa, who has a pan flag on her desk, not everyone is willing to do.

Brooke isn’t just feeling cornered, she’s feeling afraid.

“Aw, c’mon Brooke, you don’t have to do it if you don’t want—“

“I said I don’t want to play!” Brooke snaps.

There’s a beat, Vanessa’s own heartbeat the only thing she can hear amidst the crushing silence.

“Brooke—“ Vanessa tries again after a moment, her throat going dry as she tries to cut through the sudden tension, but Brooke just turns to her desk, scoops up her things and storms towards the door.

“I’m going for a walk. See you at dinner.”

She slams the door on her way out, and suddenly, getting an answer to Vanessa’s question doesn’t really matter anymore, because there’s no satisfaction in what a reaction that strong might mean. She drops her head in her hands, staying there for a moment before punching the mattress underneath her, rocketing up and grabbing her phone.

“Silk? Yeah, I’m okay, don’t worry, I just… I fucked up.”

Day 6

They don’t talk about it at dinner, nor afterwards. They don’t talk about it the next morning, not during their morning stretches or at breakfast, either. It’s not that they don’t talk; they say good morning, ask each other questions about what time breakfast is, what time Brooke is going to be on a call with her parents. But that’s about as far as it goes; Brooke sticks to business, asking and answering questions in as few words as possible and avoiding Vanessa’s gaze at all costs. It’s torture, the tension eating away at Vanessa’s mind and stinging in her chest. She fucked up, and she fucked up bad , and despite Silky’s advice, she’s not so sure she can fix this.

Still, she supposes it won’t hurt to try.

Brooke is in the shower when Vanessa decides to sneak out, purse over her shoulder and mind ready for a mission. There’s a supermarket open within walking distance of the uni right now, and technically, she’s not supposed to leave campus at all except for emergencies. Which this is, so it should be okay, right? At least, that’s what she’ll say if she gets caught. She’ll have to be fast, and sneaky, and careful not to run into anyone who might ask where she’s going. Come to think of it, she hasn’t been for a walk on the grounds yet, not since arriving–how will it work? Will she have to plan a route? Give it to the front desk? Get a pass or something, to make sure she comes back within the allotted time? This could be dangerous, very dangerous…

“If you’re gonna go to the shop, can you get me a pack of cigs?” The stoner at the front desk doesn’t even bother looking up from whatever he’s doing on the computer as she tries to sneak by, stopping in her tracks at his voice.

Christ, really?

“Sure, whatever.” Vanessa rolls her eyes, a little irritated at how easy this actually is. So much for danger and adventure.

She comes back about an hour later, throws the guy his pack and launches that he owes her eleven over her shoulder, and skips back into her room with a jumbo bag of ketchup Lays in her knapsack.

“Peace offering?” Vanessa grins down at Brooke as the blonde’s mouth drops open first in surprise, then delight as she snatches the snack from Vanessa’s hands.

“Where did you find these?” Brooke squeals with delight as she tears the bag open, breathing in the sharp, slightly-sour smell that makes Vanessa’s nose wrinkle. Still, seeing the look of utter joy on Brooke’s face makes Vanessa so happy that she can’t help but smile, too.

“International aisle.” Vanessa sits on the edge of her bed proudly. “Figured you might like them, seeing as you always say you’re craving them.” She winks, and Brooke rolls her eyes, but giggles despite herself. But the moment passes as soon as it had come, and then they settle into silence again.

Come on, Vanessa. Just face the music. Apologize. She deserves that from you. Vanessa bites her lip, her hands curling into fists as she tries to force her heartbeat even again, because the longer the silence goes on, the more awkward it gets, the more she realizes that it’s now or never for her to make things right.

“Brooke–”

“We don’t have to talk about it.” Brooke says quietly, her voice flat and lifeless and… scared, almost. Vanessa sucks in a breath, her chest sinking as she realizes what’s going on.

“Well… Do you want to?” Vanessa prods, but Brooke doesn’t even look up from the bag of crisps, which suddenly seem to be the most interesting thing in the world despite the dullness in the blonde’s eyes.

“Honestly, I’d rather we didn’t.” When she finally speaks up, her voice is barely above a whisper, and it’s enough to make Vanessa’s heart break.

Not just because she’s lost her chance to apologize–because she knows that tone, knows that look. Knows the hesitancy and caution behind it, the anxiety and the feeling of being trapped and overwhelmed. Knows what kind of revelation that voice and that look are hiding, and how the information Brooke is trying to avoid isn’t actually set in stone yet.

Jesus, she’s fucked up way more than she thought she had.

“Okay.” Vanessa finally nods, sighing deeply. “But if you do… I’m here, okay?”

Brooke hesitates for a moment, but when she does look up, her eyes are full of a gratefulness that’s surprisingly warm. “Okay.”

This time, when silence falls, it’s not awkward, but full of resolution.

“So…” Brooke finally breaks it this time, a slow smile spreading on her face, “They just put up the newest season of The Bachelor online, wanna watch it? We got snacks, after all.” Brooke waves her bag in the air, and Vanessa smiles.

“Shove over, mate. I wanna see what kinda mess the girls are this year.”

#rpdr fanfiction #brooke lynn hytes #vanessa vanjie mateo #branjie #college au #lesbian au #when we went from friends to this #writworm42

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ms-maj · 4 years

Text

For @theheavycrown on her birthday. Sarah, thank you for all the laughter, support and friendship and for being an all around awesome human being. xoxo

It’s not that he doesn’t like mornings, he does, it’s just that Jughead Jones has come to learn that few good things happen before nine a.m. Yet here he sits at seven, a fine layer of silt covering his beloved Honda, his leather jacket, his helmet (next time he’ll make sure the route he takes avoids as many of those dirt roads as humanly possible; he really wishes he’d stuffed his backpack in the saddlebag instead of wearing it on his back.) The goggles he’s pulled down rest under his chin as he slides his helmet off, his hair feeling heavy and hot in the already building humidity. The helmet clanks against the steel frame as it hangs from the handlebars, dust kicking off in a little cloud as it sways.

He sighs, peeling the filthy eyewear off his head and wipes the lens across his dirty jeans before hanging them on the opposite handlebar. This is not his scene. Well, it’s not not his scene, Jughead is pretty well known as the patron saint of all things forgotten and bygone, so the flea market isn’t too out of turn but taking time off his life to pursue nothing but leisure? Not so much. So when he heard tell of the best collection of antique cast iron this side of the Mississippi he knew he’d be remiss if his cross-country culinary trek didn’t at least find him some new pieces to add to his ever-growing collection. The one that personally threatened to take over another corner of his small house, and the one he’s building a culinary empire on. He exhales forcefully, lifting his coffee from the holder, thankful he opted for the tall, solid cupholder as it somehow managed to save his necessary caffeine from the horrors of the open country road.

Finish below or on AO3

Sipping on his "coffee" he watches as the vendors turn into the old yet still operating drive-in, the name Sunset peeling off the ancient sign. This weekend’s fare, Jaws and Jurassic Park, piecemeal spelled out in crumbling letters on the old marquee. Truck after truck, some with trailers and others just loaded to the brim, turn in a steady stream and supposedly have been doing so for the last hour. There’s a strange excitement that simmers just under the surface, it’s as if he knows he’s going to find exactly what he wants today, maybe even if it’s not at all what he’s been looking for.

Jughead likes to think he’s lived. In his—some glorious and others very much not—thirty-four years on this earth he’s eaten, what he thinks, is the finest food on every continent. He’s trained under classic French chefs in Michelin starred restaurants and with street vendors from Thailand to Peru. His own restaurant, a quaint throwback bistro in the heart of upstate New York is the culmination of those years and years and years of hard work. His passions, he’s come to find, cannot be confined, nor defined, simply by the walls of a kitchen. They’re in the pages of his acclaimed cookbooks and the mystery series he’s been stringing together since high school that he was sure would never amount to anything.

But it did, and here he is. The very definition of latchkey, Jughead Jones grew up the poor son of a couple of addicts and con artists. The ones he hasn’t seen since he got his high school diploma. The moment that piece of paper was in his hands, he loaded his rucksack onto his rusted out Kawasaki and never looked back.

He’s lived in trailers and dorms, in cramped studios and lavish flats, and once, in the projection booth of a drive-in theater. Very much like the one he assumes is in the middle of this one. He sighs, leaning back against his bike, forgetting the heat from the muffler until it starts burning beneath the heavy denim of his jeans.

“Shit,” he mumbles as he shifts uncomfortably away, dislodging his near burnt calf but manages to spill the bitter, gas-station coffee he’d been absently cradling down the front of his white t-shirt. The next expletive out of his mouth is not so quiet. “Fuck me!”

The cup drops to the ground as he wipes at the seeping stain barehanded. “I might have a tissue,” he hears. Instantly he stops the futile attempt to clean himself, looking up when the laughter reaches his ears. “Though I can’t imagine it would be much help.”

The corner of his lip pulls up despite this recent bout of bad luck. She’s in a bold, floral print sundress with the kind of soft hem that dances with the breeze as it blows across the nearly empty lot. The sunhat is floppy, almost too big over the cascade of soft waves that hit her shoulders, she smiles, warm and amused before she takes her lower lip between her teeth, eyes darting from his to the growing spot of wet fabric sticking to his chest.

“I would say I’m well prepared,” he gestures back toward his bike with its ample enclosed storage, and his dust-covered backpack draped over the rear seat. “But apparently I wasn’t thinking this morning. This is also my last clean shirt, so, really batting a thousand today.”

Pink tongue peeking between her teeth as she laughs her eyes narrow as her head dips to the side. “Hmm,” she runs that tongue over her lower lip, looking at him with hooded eyes before seemingly catching herself; clearing her throat she starts again. ”I just pulled my car out of storage, I might have something in the trunk if you want me to take a look?” She half turns to follow where she’s absentmindedly pointing, and he sees the very moment her left foot doesn’t seem to get the memo. If he waits another second she’ll be in the dirt and without even consciously thinking about it, his arms wrap around her waist and keep her from toppling.

She lets out a shaky breath, fingers digging into the leather that encases his bicep. “Sorry, I, uh,” her head darts from side to side before she rights herself and extricates herself from his grip. “I wish I could say I wasn’t normally this klutzy but that would be a lie.” She sweeps the dirt and imaginary wrinkles from her dress and adjusts the hat that now sits just askew on her head.

“Glad I could be of assistance,” he drawls, watching as pink colors her cheeks. “So, a shirt? Maybe?”

Nodding, she turns (with a skosh more grace than before) and walks to the end of the makeshift aisle. “Right this way.”

“You’re not trying to lure me behind an abandoned building so that you can murder me, right?” He thinks it sounds playful, flirtatious even, though both things are patently out of his wheelhouse, but he can’t help but wonder why this gorgeous woman even stopped and looked in his direction.

“Oh, no, see this building might be abandoned, but these grounds aren’t going to be for too much longer. And I have a feeling you might be a screamer.”

Choking a little on his own spit, he slows, swallows, and drags his eyes back up to find hers looking back over her shoulder. She winks, then stops between the fins of some powder blue oddity Jughead has never seen the likes of before.

“I don’t usually find myself at a loss for words but you seem to have found my weakness.”

“And what is that exactly?” She questions as he moves next to her, almost too close, he can feel her breath shuddering against his skin as she places an oddly shaped key into the opening on the trunk.

“Klutzy green-eyed blondes,” he can tell he’s caught her off guard when she gasps as the latch lets go on the trunk lock.

“Okay then,” she’s smiling back at him, that lip caught between her teeth again when he realizes he’s already mapping out their future and he doesn’t even know her name.

“Jughead. Jones.” he supplies, voice cracking like he’s all of sixteen again. He wasn’t nervous, not before this simple moment in which he provides his chosen name and she either laughs or…

Her dainty hand hangs between them. “Pleasure to meet you Jughead, I’m Betty Cooper."

His large, calloused hand engulfs hers, happy to find the spark he thought he felt before was very real, and much, much more than a spark.

Their clasped hands hang between them, neither too eager to drop. Betty finally pulls away with another one of those flustered head shakes, before she starts to rummage through the cavernous trunk. It’s fairly empty, save for whatever Betty is looking for, and it's clearly all the way in the back.

“Okay, but really, you can’t tell me that you haven’t thought, you know hypothetically of course, about how many bodies you could actually fit in this trunk,” he’s taken a step back to get the full picture, which is mostly just Betty stretching the entirety of her gorgeous frame into the depths of the unknown to find him a shirt, but his writers’ mind can’t help but wonder.

She stops her scavenging and with a triumphant grunt, she’s righting herself, the strap of a black duffle bag between her fingers. “Aha! And honestly, who hasn’t seen an old car and thought about the sheer amount of fuckery one could get away with simply based on interior cargo space.”

He knows he’s staring, gaping really, but he can’t seem to help himself. Betty shrugs, unphased, and goes to open the bag. She rummages around for a few seconds then pulls out a Johnny Cash t-shirt.

“I know it’s a little wrinkled but it doesn’t seem to smell,” she pulls the aforementioned garment from her face and hands it to him.

“Even if it did it—anything is an improvement over,” he waves his hand over his sticky shirt and worries she can tell his heart straight-up skips a beat when she laughs.

Jughead takes off his leather jacket, passes it wordlessly to Betty who tries to clean it as best she can with a small rag from her car. He slips his arms inside of his soiled shirt and pushes it up around his shoulders, sliding it off as he pulls on the clean one. When he looks back at Betty she looks a little perplexed.

“What?”

“Just wondering what prompted the middle-school locker room style shirt change. If my seeing you topless would’ve been too much for your delicate sensibilities than perhaps I’ve misjudged—”

“That is quite enough out of you,” he points a menacing finger in her direction but is laughed down. His glare breaks quickly and the smile that takes over almost hurts. Has he been that out of practice with even smiling that the muscles in his face don’t know what to do about it? It’s a definite possibility. It just seems to come so naturally around Betty that he doesn’t want to question, and subsequently, jinx it.

“Oh yeah, and what are you gonna do about it?" Eyebrow raised, she leans closer, arm outstretched with his coat.

He reaches to grab it but he misses the jacket altogether and brushes his fingers against hers. "Sounds like you'd love to find out, " it's from who winks this time. Betty's grip falters and the leather falls into his hand. Words form on his tongue but before he can get them out a shrill ring cuts through the ambiance of the morning.

The trunk is slammed close; the moment is gone. “Shit, it’s a client, and a big one so I have to take this. I, um, I’ll see you in there? Hopefully?” He knows the disappointment is etched on his face, but he tamps it down and nods in her direction. Her smile back is enthusiastic, she looks sanguine; before he turns around he hears, what he assumes, is a happy lilt as she greets whoever is on the line.

He stuffs the jacket and his soiled shirt into one of the saddlebags, slides on his trusty (and dusty) grey beanie, grabs a few canvas tote bags, and heads into the flea market. There’s a moment he thinks he hears her voice but when he turns he's met with the endless drone of tires as the lot begins to fill.

It seems silly—feels silly—to be missing someone after such a short time. Not only just since you’ve seen them but also because you’ve only exchanged a handful of words in the entire five minutes that you’ve known one another.

There’s a small line at the gate. As he waits to pay his admission, he runs a hand over the back of his neck and tugs at the edge of his hat, trying to keep this weird, swirly sensation inside instead of letting it bubble out lest he ends up skipping through the lanes.

He lets out a mirthless laugh, the kind he finds usually echo throughout his empty home only this time it's met with the hustle and bustle of the early-bird crowd. There's no time to dwell, no reason to wait; just the time (and patience) to find himself that thirteen-inch Spider skillet, and maybe a new Dutch oven...or two.

Or, he remembers after he's grabbed new forty-fives for the jukebox, old carnival prints for Toni, a snake ashtray for Sweet Pea that he knows Val will hate but it's so ugly he can't help himself, that while he may be able to mail himself whatever he can't carry across the states...he still has to get it there in the first place.

It's why he talks himself out of the awful Rocky poster. It's not for him, of course, but rest assured it would be most appreciated by Archie and Reggie. Jughead can actually picture exactly where in their apartment where they'd hang it. Their housewarming present would have to wait until the next flea market.

He hasn't even made it to the small cluster of more upscale dealers before he's at the snack stand, walking away with a blue icee and cotton candy like the grown man he is. While enjoying his treats he's only half paying attention to the stalls and tables that line each of drive-in’s aisles, surely missing out on some choice vintage toys and housewares that he has no use (or room) for.

Mostly, his mind wanders as he weaves through the ever-growing throng. He’s been looking for a floppy sun hat but, unfortunately, many, many people seem to be concerned about the adverse effects of UV rays. Not that that in and of itself is not unfortunate, it’s just not helping him at the moment. If he couldn’t look down and see the physical evidence of their interaction, he’d believe he hallucinated the whole thing. The universe doesn’t just drop his idyllic dream girl into his path, well, it absolutely would allow him to see her once and then never again. But he doesn’t want that…

He wants to know what it feels like to have her legs wrapped around his waist, on the bike, in their bed. He wants to see her tangled in their bedsheets or sitting at the counter as he feeds her his latest culinary creation. Not that he’s ever been one to live inside the delusions, his upbringing has forced his ‘manifest your own destiny’ lifestyle to never rely on the dreams, just use them as touchstones for achieving said ruminations. But these, the daydreams are so vivid, so real that he almost walks right past the intended object of his affection.

And it’s only the melodious cant of saccharine condescension that brings him back to the moment.

“I realize that I’m here later than we discussed, but that shouldn’t affect the price we agreed upon, right?”

Betty’s arms were crossed over her chest, head cocked to the side, the sunhat effectively obscuring her beautiful face, which by her tone, Jughead assumes is sporting a proper scowl.

“It shouldn’t, no,” the vendor starts. He stands a good foot and a half taller than Betty, broad-chested and fully bearded, he runs a calloused hand over the gray whiskers. “It’s just that this is a highly collectible item—”

“Which you are being more than fairly compensated for! You acquired it for me, I don’t understand why you’re being so obstinate now.”

“C’mon Betty Boop, you know exactly why. You’re looking so pretty today, go on a date with me and I’ll throw in that Griswold trivet I’ve seen you eyeing up,” Jughead sees the man's hands come down on the table as he leans closer to Betty. He watches her body swell with a deep inhalation that releases as her hands hit the table to mimic his pose.

“Not if you were the last man on Earth, Andrew. Just sell me the damn dutch oven and I’ll be on my merry little way.”

The vendor sucks air through his teeth so loudly it whistles. “Doesn’t sound like I’m getting anything out of this…”

Jughead is practically standing over Betty’s shoulder now, the tension and frustration rolling off her like waves. “Andrew, I swear to all the gods in existence, if you don’t take the agreed price and put my dutch oven in this fancy bag here I’m calling your Gran.”

Jughead isn’t sure he’s ever seen anyone deflate so quickly. The man grunts holds out his hand and in it, Betty presses a neat stack of cash. The large, lidded pot makes its way to the table and from his vantage point can tell it’s a Wapak and in pristine condition.

“Nice looking piece of cookware you got there,” he says loudly behind her. She startles straight, turns slowly, and greets him with the brightest smile he thinks he’s ever seen.

“Jughead!” Her arms are around his neck and face pressed against the planes of his chest before he can blink. She seems to realize herself and is out of his arms and standing in front of him within the second it takes to realize how much he misses her warmth.

“What, did you think you could get rid of me that easily? I still have your shirt,” his hands rest on her waist, he hasn’t dropped them, and she hasn’t moved further away so he’s going to assume it’s not unwelcome.

She hums.”Well, it looks much better on you than in did crumpled up in my trunk

“Everything okay here?”

“We’re just peachy, right Andrew?” Betty questions, turning away from him and out of his grasp. She grabs the bag he’s placed on the table and with a most unrefined grunt, hoists it over her shoulder.

“We’re good, Coop. Just try to be on time from now on, it’s not very,” he pauses. Jughead can feel the man’s eyes slide from Betty to him, looking him up and down with a displeased expression. “Professional.”

“Oh, Andrew. Green is not your color. If you weren’t the only person in the tri-state area who could get me this stuff then I would never give you my business, ever again. But since I clearly work for sadists who love forcing me to interact with you, we’re at an impasse,” she shifts the bag on her shoulder and continues. “However, you make any more assumptions about my professionalism or personal life, then they’re going to have to find a new liaison.”

Andrew groans. “Don’t be like that, Betty! You know it all comes from the heart,” he crosses a hand to his and pats, and then he’s reaching under the table. “Here’s that trivet you had your eye on.”

Jughead moves up next to her and takes the trivet before it reaches her hand. “Is this a 1739? I’ve only been able to find pictures of these!”

He holds the metal piece reverently between his hands, long fingers tracing the intricate lace pattern, running over the feet, brushing against the logo that was stamped into the bottom some seventy years ago. “You know Griswold?” Betty’s tone is more than just surprised, there’s a slight breathlessness he can’t quite place as he places the trivet into her hands.

“Oh, uh,” his head shakes a little with the chuckle. “Yeah, cast iron is pretty much why I’m even here. My best friend told me that if I was looking for something special, this would be the place to find it.” Suddenly feeling very shy, he rubs nervously at the back of his neck.

“Interesting,” Betty’s eyes narrow and fix on him, but it doesn’t make him feel as uncomfortable as he thought it would. Maybe it’s because an hour ago he was flirting like a lovesick teenager and he’s merely happy to be the object of her attention. He hears her bag hit the ground with a heavy thud. “If you’re looking for something in particular, this is your guy. I wasn’t being hyperbolic when I said he had the best. And if he doesn’t have it on-site, he’s usually able to procure it in a very short time.”

Andrew smiles at her praise and nods along. “Yeah, man, if you’re a friend of Betty’s you must be in the know. What tickles your fancy?”

Not really sure how to process, or address, any of what the man in front of him has just said, he locks eyes with Betty and lets out a sharp breath. She’s got the kind of smile that they used to write poetry about and he knows he’s done for. He’s smiling himself now and with a quick turn of his head he’s looking at Andrew again. “What do you know about Spiders?”

They’ve managed to walk the rest of the flea market, Betty picking up a few random items along with the (many) client requests. He learns she owns a small but successful antique shop in western Mass but she's rarely there. Mostly, she travels and he wonders what she's running from. She says it's to procure the things people want versus the things she thinks they would want to buy. It's not about the money, although it seems to pay well, she insists it's the history, the adventure, the joy it brings when she tracks down a vase-like what was on Grandma's table or an album that your grandfather taught you to dance to. She talks about antiques like he talks sous vide, the process, the art, how when it all comes together...life is magic.

"I can’t believe he’s going to find me a thirteen Spider! Do you have any idea how rare…oh, well, I suppose you do being an antique dealer and all that,” he bumps his shoulder (the one not carrying her stupidly heavy dutch oven) against hers, her head ducks in response but he can see the rosy hue on her cheeks.

“If you’ve known each other for so long why all the shit for being late? And if I’m what made you late I apologize—”

“No, Jughead! Not even a little,” she grabs his shoulder and pulls him to stop beside her. “Andrew was just being a dick because that’s who he is as a person. Yes, I was late to meet him but that was because I was having a little car trouble this morning.”

“What, the marvel of modern engineering you’re tooling around in is finicky? Who’d have thunk?” He holds out his (second) icee, offering Betty the last sip but she politely declines. He shrugs as best he can and finishes the cold red syrup in a quick gulp. The sun is blazing, scorching them from on high before he knows it. Jughead feels the sweat beading on his brow, threatening to drip down his face in the most unbecoming of ways. He's thankful they're heading back toward their respective vehicles. It's not that he wants this day to end, in fact, he's kind of hoping he can repeat it forever, but he really would like to get out of the sun.

She smacks his arm playfully. “Don’t talk about Edie that way!”

“Edie? She’s even got an old ladies' name, Betts,” they finally reach said car and Jughead heaves the bags from his shoulder and drops them in the dirt.

Betty sighs as the lock clicks, trunk springing open. "She's an Edsel. You're not wrong about her being an old lady but trust me when it comes to classic cars Edsels are…"

Jughead scoffs. "I might have a proclivity for two-wheeled machines but I do know a thing or two about the four-wheeled varieties as well. The Ford Edsel, only produced between 1958 and 1960, was an ode to Henry's wife but was too modern and impractical to gain popularity. What?"

Jughead Jones knows a thing or two about food, and how people look when they're truly enjoying something. At this moment he'll tell you he feels like braised short ribs or a perfectly cooked steak or a decadent slice of dacquoise, with the way Betty is looking at him.

She swallows, audibly. "No one knows Edsels. No one knows they exist let alone know actual details about their launch, and subsequent failure."

"Hmm, sounds to me you just haven't been meeting the right people," he hoists her heavy bags off the ground and puts them in the trunk.

Betty's hand reaches for the lid and lingers for a moment before she gently closes it. "You might be onto something, Jones.”

He steps forward, careful not to invade her space too badly but unable to resist the urge to be closer. “Do you maybe want to grab a bite to eat?”

The diner is nice, albeit the interior leaves a little something to be desired. It’s cliche in the way you want a retro establishment to be; walls lined in old adverts, gas and oil cans on shelves, kitschy to a fault. They're tucked in the corner, in a red, squeaky vinyl booth and had to cross a very large expanse of cheap, sticky linoleum. He just hopes the food makes up for the fact he had to peel his feet up with every step. That’s not a sound one wants to hear in the place where they’re going to eat.

He explains as much to Betty, how atmosphere can change and engage perception, how the menu is designed to make you want the items that make them the most money, and not necessarily the ones that they cook well. After their food comes and he samples the fare he raves about the milkshakes but is unimpressed with everything else.

“This is farmland, Betty. I passed not two, but three farms coming back. And at least one of them had Angus! Why are we being served frozen burgers?”

Betty eats a fry and pretends to look thoughtful.“I guess it never crossed my mind, Jug. You certainly have strong feelings about food.”

“Yeah, and that’s about the only thing,” he leans back in the booth and lays his arm across the back. “It might align very closely with what I do for a living.”

“You’re a chef,” Betty says matter-of-factly. “That explains your love of cast iron cookware and,” she vaguely gestures around the room. “How you know so much about the business. Still doesn’t answer how you know about Edsels.”

Jughead chuckles in response. “Misspent youth” When she shoots him a questioning look he sighs. "There may be some less than savory characters in my past. I wasn't one of them per se but I could have been described as gang adjacent."

Nodding, Betty takes a sip of the cold confection in front of her. She starts to speak and pauses like she's rolling something around before she says it. Next, she's looking at him as though a lightbulb has gone off. "Wait, wait, you're not a chef you're the chef! The author," Betty’s eyes narrow ever so slightly before going wide, her mouth gapes a bit before she produces words. "You're Forsythe."

How the fuck? "How the fuck?"

"My client from earlier was looking for a dutch oven for her partner's friend, a chef, whose niche is cast iron cookware. This same friend has also authored a series of cookbooks and a youth mystery."

“And what about any of that makes you say my name is Forsythe?” His voice comes out lower than he expects, a harsh timbre colors his words. "And it was not a youth mystery. It sounds like some Tracy True or Baxter Brothers nonsense when you say it like that."

“You are. Holy shit! And they set this up! Oh, those sneaky, brilliant, beautiful women,” Betty buries her face in her hands and groans.

“Would you please fill me in because I am feeling ten ways of lost and, if I’m being honest, a little creeped out.”

Betty looks up, soft eyes, and smiling. “Oh, Jug. Apparently, our friends have finally gotten sick of our wallowing.”

“What friends? Who has friends?”

She rolls her eyes. “It would seem we do. You see, Cheryl is my cousin and Veronica is my best friend from high school."

"Wait, Cheryl, as in Blossom? And Veronica Lodge?"

Betty nods in affirmation. "They were oil and water through most of our formative years and then after their first year at Sarah Lawrence, well, they came back together. Fast forward two years and enter Toni Topaz, who I'm assuming is the missing link here, yeah?"

"Toni would be one of the three people on this planet I consider family, " he's leaning across the table, elbows making divots in the surface when suddenly he has his own lightbulb moment. "Elizabeth? The itinerant eccentric antiquarian?"

“Wow, is that a Cheryl or Veronica description?" She rubs the bridge of her nose, head shaking as she takes it in. "Doesn't matter, but with a title like that, it's no wonder that you were never around when I was. Oh, and surprise! It would appear your pseudo-sister and her girlfriends are giving you a dutch oven for your next birthday. Congrats.”

Jughead is trying to process, though it feels an awful lot like failing. Until suddenly, it all makes sense. “She's the one who told me I needed to stop here and check out the cast iron. Insisted there was something I needed, something she was certain I would find."

"Well, " Betty looks up at him from under the thick veil of her lashes. "Was she wrong?"

For years he’s traveled from place to place; running from anything and everything. Even when he decided to put down roots it was relatively far from even the best of his friends. No one could just ‘drop by’, it’s not like he’d have been home anyway. He’s buried his loneliness in new recipes; it’s scratched into the margins of his favorite books, in the words poured from his own hand. He looks at the woman sitting across from him, strawberry milkshake in front of her, glowing under the harsh neon lights that contrast so glaringly will all her soft edges.

The realization comes easily. He doesn’t have to think about anything more than ‘do I take this risk’ and he’s never been one to say no to risks before.

He drops his arm, reaching across the table, and before it can rest on the Formica Betty slots her fingers between his. “She has never been more right in her life, but please don’t tell her that."

Betty’s laughter peals through the restaurant. He smiles despite himself. For the first time that he can recall, something good came before nine am. As a matter of fact, when her thumb traces the back of his hand, he’ll even go as far as to say it's something great.

#bughead #bughead fanfiction #there's some fluff #and lots of cheese #and I'm not sorry #it's for Sarah #can't blame me

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ryttu3k · 3 years

Text

Finishing up SoNY, ‘bad’ end and final thoughts!

But first, the early game over.

Wow, she just gets shot. Not even slurped? That’s rude as hell XD;;

And on to the ‘bad’ end!

Beginning is much the same, ofc.

“You’re too in love with weaving a good story and establishing a seductive narrative to let facts get in the way.” Foreshadowing for the ‘good’ end, maybe?

God that Embrace scene gives me literal goosebumps.

Alright! Last time I did Danse Macabre and Retributive Justice, let’s try The Risks of Swiping Right!

lmao god I’d eat this guy too. Back to the ghost club! That legitimately is a really neat scene. ...Ooh yes so that’s where the girl was from.

Panhard just lowkey dying at the mental image of Katherine Weise in a fast food restaurant is so good.

The sweet scene between Julia and Dakota hits a bit different after the ‘good’ end XD;;

Went to the park, reminisced, and helped out the guy. That was sweet ;_; High-humanity Julia, this time!

‘Fairy God Mother?’ is great but ‘Vin Diesel?’ is objectively the funnier response.

“Shining even more brightly than usual, Aisling.” Samira got a cru-ush~

Poor Julie. It’s probably been tough without Sophie around :(

Huh. Interestingly, refusing to lie to Mia results in Julia actually feeling genuine loyalty to the Cammies (for now, at least).

Believing Agathon is still alive = more optimistic = different dialogue! See, this is how you make choices have consequences, game!

Oooh boy time to meet Adelaide XD;;

“She uncrosses her legs in a strangely seductive motion. In her mind’s eye, it probably looked like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, but in reality, it had all the grace of a tracksuit Slav squatting.” *snickering*

Fight me, Adelaide >:(

‘sup Nastya. Went with the slightly less disruptive routine here XD Huh, she’s an aspiring DJ! Julia is deeply confused as to how being a DJ and being head of security works together.

lmao Julia referring to Hope as a girlboss. That phrase has lost all meaning to me...

The conversation between Julia and Father Leonard is still really interesting. Man, you know who I want Julia to talk to? Anatole. Interesting insights into balancing being queer Catholic vampires there for sure.

lmao oh my god I want to fight this street reporter.

‘I can almost feel my brain losing its wrinkles.’ *snort*

Yeaghhhh the Abyss bit is still so creepy...

Oops. Being honest regarding Tamika and Torque’s relationships gets a fail :(

Oh, or not XD That works! Also, uh, apparently the giant albino ghoul alligator is real, according to New York by Night. He’s Calebros’ pet.

“Because I think I have a pretty good nose for people’s auras. And when I take a good look at you... ...somehow, I have a feeling you’re a surprisingly decent person. Whatever way of unlife you choose, I hope you don’t change it. And that you remember my advice.” :)

“I know.” Oof.

“Hi.” “WAAAH!�� lmao sorry Princess XD;; Just trying to imagine Qadir’s face as he tells Julia to find a 1990 glass statue of Scrooge McDuck... dying...

Oh she’s so a Toreador XD Low art options are a fantasy book, an anime DVD, or a video game... those can all be arty, though! And went with the anime DVD called ‘Ririsu no Daibouken’... that translates to ‘Adventures of Lilith’. How on the nose XD “The cover says ‘Lilith’s Carnal Carnival’.” Oh. Yeah, that’d do it XD

“This 90s original video anime presents us with a tale of five big-bosomed samurai warriors travelling through America in search of General Hastavista, The Incubus King. Don’t let all the titillation misguide you: the main draws here are peerless direction, a nearly avant-garde editing rhythm and dialogue that coyly comments on traditional gender roles in anime. Once you see the animation in the final battle, you’ll understand why it never fails to set a sakuga fan’s heart ablaze!”

She’s my new favourite.

“So can I know your name now?”

“Hmmm... Let me think...

No. <3″

I need to stress that the heart appears in the dialogue box. Like. The actual less-than-three heart.

Didn’t investigate the rat this time, so Qadir did and I die. “Glad you’re alright, little guy.” Qadir...

Still not over the drunk blood doll rats.

Kaiser’s still a goddamn creep and this time Julia is not going too far. She still has her humanity, dammit. Final set of traits:

Loyal to the end

Glass half-full

Not into a bad cop schtick

Honesty is the best policy

No more human, still humane

Onwards to the ‘bad’ end! Oops, and Dakota still did the Single White Female thing XD;;

Man I’m still really curious who the ‘good friend’ is!!

Okay! Time for end game!!

So that’s the good friend, huh? “Let me phrase it differently, then. You’re not Ecaterina the Wise, the Agitator of Prague, a Brujah elder causing turbulences all over the world... are you?”

Mention of Christof! Mention of Christof doing shady shit :| Poor Hana.

“An immigrant from Eastern Europe comes to New York City, takes the position she always expected to find herself in, is molded into someone who is no longer herself.”

Julia and Dakota representing Carthage is kind of neat.

I want to say the mention of St Jude is a reference, but I’m not sure what to XD;; Is that from Redemption? Christof could have been the one to tell Hana that.

“Like a two-person human centipede loop or something. An Ouroburos? Or an, uhh, Mobius strip?” No, that’s the other traditionally Sabbat clan XD

That‘s. That’s a hell of a reconciliation XD “Yeah, let’s give it a try. By the way I’m on the run for my unlife, want to go to California and try to find utopia?”

Julia, wear a fucking mask XD

“Hey.”

“Yeah?“

“Do you love me?”

“... Of course I do. For now, at least.”

I still don’t know if I love her. Or even if I can love anyone, for that matter. I’m a fucking monster, after all. I don’t even know if we’ll exist next month. The prospects are not looking good. But although I can’t see myself in the rearview mirror right now...

...I will remember this image of us leaving the city, somewhat melancholic, and somewhat hopeful, forever. And maybe the meaning of this image will be clarified with time. Or maybe I will just force a more positive description on it, and that is what I’ll believe.

No matter what happens... even if oceans of blood lie before us, I will make this a cherished memory.

Whatever possible salvation still remains for me... ...it probably lies in the eyes of another.

Oh dang I have chills.

So the ‘bad’ ending is about the subverted compromise. Julia resigns herself to letting the compromise about the truth of Callihan’s death go ahead. ‘Catherine’ is a walking compromise to hide the Ecaterina’s real deeds. But while Hana is still stuck in her role for now, Julia refuses to accept the compromise she’s made, both the one relating to the investigation and the compromise she made of her own views and morals. It might blow up in her face, yeah. But damn, she’s going to try.

So, final thoughts! For the sake of completion, this is what I said about Coteries:

And of course this is the part where the game all falls apart :-\

Just… god. This is probably the biggest problem with CoNY, and the reason I didn’t bother getting it until it was like… 60% off. The bulk of the game is great - the writing is intriguing, the design is stunning. But the choices themselves are so limited it’s barely worth even getting it at 60% off!

You have three choices of characters, with their own opening chapters and own individual scenes with their touchstones. You have four choices of coterie members, and three sidequests. You can probably get in at least three full story arcs and a sidequest or two, but you’re only ever limited to two of your coterie members showing up at the not-yet-endgame.

So let’s say you decide to play all three protags, which, indeed, is encouraged (there’s an achievement for it). You are going to repeat coterie arcs and side quests, because there simply aren’t enough for three unique playthroughs.

And then you get to the end and literally everything is scripted. You get attacked by the SI. You get rescued by your two coterie members (and then never see them again, despite the game being called Coteries of New York). You meet Torque, you escape the SI, Sophie reveals her plan to Torque, you go to Ellis Island, Adelaide kills Sophie (and despite the fact that you’re given multiple options there, none of them work), Arturo does his spiel, end of game. You don’t even get to choose between ending up blood bound or going “no fuck you” and at least dying with a bit of dignity!

I just. I really want to like it, and there genuinely is a lot there to like! But uuuugh the ending. Like damn at least give the poor protag the option to choose what happens to them!

Anyway. Not sure what’s next. To get all the achievements, you have to finish with all three protags, so that’s three full runs and a lot of repetitiveness (compare to, say, Bloodlines or Night Road. I have eighty-five hours on Night Road and there’s still stuff I haven’t seen!), so I can’t even just… rush it through up to the meeting with the touchstones on the third play. Nope. Gotta finish it :-\

Final rating: 6/10

8/10 characters, 9/10 atmosphere, 8/10 story aside from ending, 3/10 story ending, 2/10 replayability. Final consensus: get it on major sale if you can, otherwise, you might as well just watch an LP. I might do that instead of doing a third run, although I at least want to do a second.

I ended up revising that 6/10 to 5.5/10 after finishing all runs and getting the achievements just out of how goddamn repetitive it was. So, how does Shadows measure up?

Absolutely continued with all the things I enjoyed about CoNY (characters, atmosphere, and writing), and of the bits I hated (cookie cutter protagonists, lack of real choice, repetitiveness, the godawful ending), every single part has been completely improved.

Instead of three fledglings so similar they even have the same internal thoughts, we have Julia, who’s got such a distinct voice that she becomes the most memorable game protag I’ve seen in years, and I’m including non-VtM games in this. This is absolutely her game, and it’s just... absolutely fascinating to read and watch.

Related - actual real choices. There are five key choices that determine the ending, and every single one has actual consequence in-game. You get different dialogue. Different introspection. Different philosophies. And this carries across - if Julia believes Agathon is alive, she’s more optimistic about her relationship with Dakota, too. And of course, both endings are completely distinct and incredibly written - the ‘good’ ending where Julia gives in to her most Lasombra instincts, plays the game, wins it, gets power and respect at the expense of her humanity and avoiding all those wraiths... or the ‘bad’ ending when she listens to her morals, reconciles with Dakota, and leaves for California, uncertain, but hopeful.

Not a lot of repetitiveness. Yes, by design, you’ll probably do two playthroughs. The main plot is much the same, but there are enough options there to get multiple dialogue options and stuff. And for the little sidequests, you can actually get all in with just the two playthroughs, only repeating like... two, I think. Still, I wasn’t feeling actively bored like I was midway through my second run of CoNY!

Loved seeing more in-depth backstory and development for the coterie members. Agathon’s section was particularly fascinating, literally getting into his head.

And just. Atmosphere and music is so, so good.

Final rating: 9/10. Thank you, Draw Distance, you hit it out of the park.

#vampire the masquerade #vtm shadows of new york #ry plays sony

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deathduty · 3 years

Text

Fae Just Wanna Have Fun || Deirdre & Solomon

TIMING: “current” LOCATION: The Outskirts PARTIES: @shroomsbysolomon & @deathduty SUMMARY: Deirdre and Solomon meet. Sundew is horny.

The fae community of White Crest was interesting. Deirdre was familiar with the antics of the insular fae of Ireland, but Ireland did not have banshees that thought they were human, or fae raised to kill other fae, or whatever Sundew the pixie was. “Sundew,” she sighed, “please stop that, you’re going to run into something.” But Sundew, filled with seemingly limitless energy, would not listen. She fluttered around with envious speed, squealing in delight as she zipped around the forest. She darted around trees, leaving Deirdre where she sat for stretches of time before she could come howling back and then out again. “Don’t you want to do something fun?” She implored the pixie, “go to a party? I hear there’s several.” Sundew zipped back only to shake her head and return to her flying. “You’re going to hit something.” And hit something she did. Or rather, someone. For a moment, panic fluttered in Deirdre’s body, no normal human ever came to these parts. But just as quickly as she panicked, a chill shot down her spine and she was soothed by its familiarity. This person was fae, and she had nothing to fear. And, perhaps, some more fun to be had than watching Sundew. “Hello there,” she drawled, dipping into the riches of her Irish accent, “what’s a fae like you doing out here?” If there was a tree near her to lean on, she just might’ve.

Whatever time was not spent at the garden working or napping on a bed of moss was spent walking, always walking, with no real destination. Solomon was fond of his forest, which was to say that he’d found it suitable enough to settle in some five hundred years ago, though he’d only come down from the mountains recently. So this area, this town and all its oddities, were quite new to him. He would never be bored of exploring, and sometimes his patience would pay off with an interesting encounter. Hearing voices in the distance, the Leshy hid his true appearance before approaching, uncertain what might lay ahead. Listening curiously, he heard something about parties, and a word of warning—and then something terribly small was colliding with him, causing him to falter in his forward march and look down, brows raised. His dark gaze flitted from the little pixie to the one who was speaking, a look of mild shock crossing his features before mellowing back out into his typical calm. “Oh… nothing, really,” he said truthfully, glancing upward to the treetops. “Yourself?” His attention slipped back over to the pixie, watching her dart in and out of the underbrush with a soft, amused smile.

Most fae, when met with a new friend of their own kind, had more to say than three measly words. Deirdre thought it was curious, and then rude, and then boring. She cocked her head to the side and eyes the man, waiting for him to say more. A hello maybe. A so happy to meet another fae, how are you hopefully. She got neither. But Deirdre, ever charming, would not be deterred. Sundew was poor company, and she wanted better. “I’m Deirdre!” She offered, hand thrust between them. “Banshee. That’s Sundew; pixie. She’s not on mushrooms or anything, she’s just like that, actually.” As if to prove her point, Sundew zipped over head. Then paused, and zipped right back up to the new stranger.

“Oh, you’re cute,” Sundew whistled, “how’s about you and I have a little fun?” She winked, which was always a terrible sight on a pixie. Deirdre swatted her away.

“Ignore her,” she hissed, “you and I can have some fun instead.” Deirdre paused, “no, not like that. I mean regular fun.”

No one ever said Solomon was particularly interesting. Being alive for so long, there wasn’t much that surprised him at this point, and so his reactions to things had become increasingly subdued over the decades. And frankly, his social skills were extremely lacking in the first place, so it never occurred to him that he might come across as aloof, or disinterested. He was interested. Lifting a brow, Solomon glanced down to the hand that’d been offered, taking it slowly and giving it a firm shake, like he’d seen others do. “Solomon,” he copied her introductory format, his gaze flitting from Deirdre to Sundew. “I’m… uh. Well, me.” He didn’t rightly know what he was, only what he’d been compelled to do ever since he was old enough to think for himself. Giving Deirdre an apologetic shrug, his attention shifted back to Sundew, and a smirk graced his features. He didn’t have time to respond to the remark before the banshee was shooing the pixie away, his head cocked slightly to the side in confusion. That expression only settled further on his face when Deirdre piped up, then corrected herself. “Not like what?” he asked, entirely clueless. “I like fun.”

Why was it that getting to know certain fae around here was like pulling teeth? Deirdre kept her smile, thin and polite, but her mind screamed. Of course he was him, what kind of answer was that? She said she was a banshee, now it was his turn to confess. But, composed and cordial, she spoke as though she wasn’t talking to wet cardboard. “Okay, but what kind of fae are you? Spriggan? Nix? Don’t tell me you don’t know. I can’t deal with another one of those.” One Regan was more than enough. “Not like---” She swallowed. Do not yell at the new friend, do not yell at the new--- “Like sex,” she tried not to look too annoyance at his confusion. “Like hanky-panky. What do you want me to call it? I’m trying to tell you that I don’t want to fuck you.” Deirdre paused. “Not that--Not in an insulting way. You’re very attracti--I mean, it’s just. I’m just trying to--I have a girlfriend, I’m not interested in other--” The banshee reddened. “Look, I mean like a party or something. Good fun! Real fun!” Sundew groaned, trying to right herself. Deirdre swatted her again before she could speak. “You like fun; I like fun! We have so much in common.” Making friends was easier in Ireland.

The names she listed off were unfamiliar to Solomon—wait, no, he’d heard Spriggan before. He’d met a few of those, about fifty years ago, farther south. But they were different to him, so he was pretty sure that wasn’t it. No clue what a nix was, though. “Sorry to say, but I don’t know. Don’t have a name for it, anyway. Never met another one.” Watching the way her features stiffened and her jaw tightened, Solomon could tell she was irritated with him. Of course this is how it usually went, with the exception of a few people. No one seemed to want him around, which he felt was pretty justifiable. He didn’t quite grasp what made most of the folks he encountered tick, nor could he really be bothered to put forth the effort to learn. Raising a brow as she went on, Solomon was surprised to see her getting worked up like she was, and some small part of him found it rather amusing. “I see,” he said slowly, intrigued by how this conversation was unfolding, “It’s just as well, because I don’t want you to fuck me, either.” A small smirk tugged at his lips despite his discomfort surrounding the subject, which came mostly from a lack of understanding. He still wasn’t really sure what fucking was, exactly, but the way people talked about it, it sounded like something he’d be just fine never experiencing. “A party? Never been to a party. What’s that like? Do you know where they have them?” Clearly, the whole socializing scene was painfully alien to him, but his curiosity seemed to have been piqued.

Deirdre’s eye twitched. A scream raged silently in her head. She curled her hand into a fist and smiled a little wider, a little tighter. “You…” she breathed, “...don’t know?” The twitch transferred from her eye to the corner of her mouth. “There’s a name for it. There’s always a name for it.” And she’d just about had it with the fae in this town. How did he not know? How could he not know?

“Yeah the name for it is sexy,” Sundew purred. Deirdre reached out and snatched the pixie out of the air, tight in her grip.

“This is a pixie.” She waved her around, “I’m a banshee. There’s always a name for it! There’s hundreds of types of fae! How have you not met another one like you? How—“ She took a big breath in and tried to calm herself. Do not yell at the new friend. Do not yell at the new friend. “W-what do you mean you’ve never been to a party?” She blinked. “How old are you? How have you never been to a party?” He didn’t know what he was, he hadn’t partied before...it was like Deirdre’s luck was cursed. Of all the fae to run into here, it was the horny pixie and the robotic...whatever he was. “They have parties all over. The fae, like us, almost always have them in the forests. Can’t miss them.” Like at all. Even the most clueless fae eventually stumbled into a fairy ring and danced at some point. “I guess I’m taking you to a party then, any objections?”

Solomon’s eyes narrowed at his new acquaintance the longer she went on, eyes fixing on the pixie as she was gripped tightly in Dierdre’s fist and shaken about. “I’ve spent all my life alone, up in the mountains,” Solomon explained, reaching out to remove Sundew from the banshee’s grip. “You should be kinder to her,” he muttered gently, keeping his own palm open and flat for her to perch on, if she liked. “Old,” was all he responded with in regards to her second question, and addressing the third, Solomon lifted a brow at her. “Fairy rings? Oh, sure, I’ve seen those. Mostly tried to keep my distance, except one time… went bad. Killed a lot of humans. Try to just avoid them, these days.” At her announcement that she’d be taking him to a party, he seemed to brighten. “None from me!” Truth be told, he had felt disconnected from the rest of the fae community, no matter where he traveled… it was mostly because of his own solitary nature, and he’d never been particularly bothered by it, but the idea of meeting a bunch of them all at once had his thirst for adventure sparking to life.

“Oh, she’s fine. I’ve seen her fly right into trees before.” Deirdre waved Solomon’s concerns about the pixie aside. “I mean she’s—“ Deirdre paused, absorbing his words. All his life. On the mountains. “Oh,” she blinked, “you’re one of those fae.” The reclusive kind, always more common than they thought. Fae should have the freedom to live anyway they pleased, but she didn’t understand it much. She thought she might just go insane without another fae nearby, another person like her. The humans could be so droll. “Most fae would call killing a lot of humans a successful day at the fairy ring,” she laughed and waved her hand in the air again, “it’s fine. Who hasn’t gotten high and went on a murder spree? I have. Sundew has. It’s like a rite of passage in itself.” The pixie, though disoriented, nodded. What Deirdre hadn’t been expecting, though she adored the surprise, was Solomon’s enthusiasm at the prospect of a party. She grinned and circled around him, clasping her hand on his back and urging him forward. “Perfect!” She beamed. “A party it is! You and I, Solomon, we’re going to be good friends. I can feel it.”

“What do you mean, one of those fae?” Solomon repeated her words, looking puzzled. Was there something wrong with him? He’d be the last one to know, surely, if the rest of his life was anything to go by. And just like that, one little spot of self doubt was spreading into a broader stain, one that made him wonder if he’d had it wrong all this time. Deirdre’s confidence was throwing him, and he was inclined to believe everything she said. Naïveté was at the root of it all, and having such limited exposure to people who didn’t treat him like something to be feared. “It is? I never felt great about it… never felt great about a lot of the people I killed, but… they had it coming, I suppose.” He hadn’t done so in a while, now—ten years, give or take. It had been a peaceful little second of his lifespan, and he was hoping that it might continue, but that was looking more and more dodgy by the day. Particularly if he kept company such as this… but his conscience was quiet and his delight in getting along with someone effortlessly won out. A grin spread over his features, gaze darting to follow Deirdre as she moved until she was out of sight. He was easily moved by her hand, stepping along with a newfound sense of purpose. Friends! He didn’t have many of those—maybe only one, if he really got down to thinking about it. Another friend would be great! And a fae friend, at that! “How do we find one…?” He was full of questions, but there never seemed to be a hint of hesitation in his tone, to his credit.

“There are some fae that live like the ancient ones; secluded, reclusive, happy on their own.” Deirdre shrugged. The more she thought about living on her own like that, the more appealing it came to be. Yes, she didn’t understand it and yes she thought she might go insane—but that was the part of her that thought duty and mischief were paramount. The pieces of her that wanted an idyllic life, somewhere gentle with the woman she loved, thought it wouldn’t be so bad to leave the world behind. “Humans always have it coming; it’s in their nature. They take what isn’t theirs, claim land they don’t belong in, think they matter to this world more than any rabbit or bird.” She shrugged again, “what’s a little murder, anyway?” She gestured for Solomon to follow her as she started walking. “Sundew knows—pixies always know where parties are.” Sundew, upon hearing her name, aping to life and whistled past them, carving a path for them to follow. “Why’d you come down from the mountains?” She asked him suddenly. “It seems like it’d be nice there...all alone, without a soul to bother you….or did you get lonely?”

“Oh.” That sounded an awful lot like him. “What… what do you consider ancient? I was alone and happier for it for the better part of a thousand years,” Solomon shrugged, drawing up an eyebrow at her. The longer she spoke, the more he found that he agreed with her, and that little nugget of distaste and distrust of the humans was growing a size larger. “They are a bit like a plague…” he sighed, mostly to himself. Watching curiously as Sundew took off, the leshy could only grin and shake his head. “Hm?” he muttered, falling back to the present at Deirdre’s question. “Oh, it was nice,” he said with a nod, a wistful look coming over him. “Lonely…?” He’d never thought about that, he supposed. The forest never felt lonely when it was so full of wildlife. “I’m not… sure. Perhaps. It had been several hundred years since I last tried to…” His voice trailed, words faltering. What was he doing, after all? What was the point of him trying to understand humans better? “Suppose I might have gotten a bit bored, is all.” It was the best explanation he could come up with without getting into things he didn’t wish to discuss. “What about you? Why do you… stay?”

Deirdre nodded solemnly. There were only a few fae that lived that long, and Deirdre knew what they were called. Solomon, for a reason that was becoming increasingly clear, did not. She wondered if she ought to tell him, or if one revelation at a time was enough. She decided on sparing him. Another time. “Yeah, I’d say a thousand years is pretty ancient. I’ll live for five hundred—more, Fates willing—but I’m only in my thirties now, I can’t fathom a time that long just yet.” A fact that filled her mouth with a bitter taste, but Solomon had something of a calming nature. And with it, she trusted him. Oddly, perhaps foolishly, she trusted him. She nodded as he continued, picturing him up on the mountains, making his slow descent after years of watching in stillness. Must have been nice, to be so detached from the world. “Bored?” As she questioned him, they rounded a tree, coming face to face with a vibrant party of fae of all sizes. Music magically swelled as they stepped into the clearing, greeting pixies, leprechauns, gnomes and nymphs. The fae looked to them with bright smiles, loud hellos, even louder decrees to come join in their dancing. “Well,” Deirdre turned to Solomon, “you won’t be bored anymore, I can almost promise it.” And as for why she stayed, her smile grew fond, sentimental. “I stay for this.”

The fae reached for Solomon, eager to know him. He was fae, and he would be loved.

#wickedswriting #c: solomon #chatzy #fae just wanna have fun #this just in I love solomon #breaking news he's great

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charliejrogers · 3 years

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Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) - Review & Analysis

Here’s a non-controversial statement: 2017’s Wonder Woman is a legitimately great film (if you discount the last act’s boring battle). A fun, yet emotional anti-war tale with a great period aesthetic. What elevated it from greatness was its starkly bleak reveal that Ares does not start man’s wars, but he merely gives humans ideas for how to instigate them. Ultimately, it is Man who holds responsibility for our own destruction, and despite this Wonder Woman still chooses to help us poor creatures. Cool themes, cool hero, cool movie.

Wonder Woman 1984 shares the main character from its 2017 forerunner, as well as its dedication to recreating a particular period aesthetic (here the 1980s), but the brilliant writing from the first film is gone. The main themes are essentially… “be careful what you wish for” and “winners never cheat; cheaters never win.” Not the most grand and interesting follow-up to the prior film’s genuine insight into human nature.

But that’s OK. I’m really not sure why this movie is getting so much flak online. If DC’s recent prior history with filmmaking should have taught us anything, it’s that 2017’s Wonder Woman was a fluke. Remember that this is the same studio that brought us the outstanding climax to Batman vs. Superman where one grown man learns that another grown man’s mother is also named Martha. Oh, and did we all just forget that Justice League is one of the worst movies we have all collectively ever seen?

So let’s not be too hard on WW84 for not meeting the quality of 2017’s Wonder Woman. Few comic book movies can. In the more fair comparison to other movies in the DCEU, it sits below Shazam! and Aquaman, and just a smidge below Birds of Prey, but certainly above Suicide Squad, and then literally leaps and bounds over every other movie they’ve made.

Let’s start with the good. Honestly, despite my gripes about the themes of the movie not being very profound, I found the story to be interesting. The movie centers around Diana Prince (Gal Gadot in her role as an archaeologist for the Smithsonian and not as Wonder Woman) stumbling upon an ancient stone whose inscription invites people who hold the stone to make a wish. No one takes it really seriously at first, so two people make wishes without thinking they could come true. The first person is Diana herself who wishes to bring her boyfriend (whom she only knew for about a week, mind you) from the dead. As a reminder from the first film, her boyfriend Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) had died nearly 70 years prior to the start of this film in a dramatic, sacrificial, world-saving act. Apparently, Diana hasn’t moved on at all from the 1910s and still considers her short-time lover to be her forever lover. She’s not really a human and did not grow up a human, so I think we can forgive her for not moving on… but it is weird to imagine that Diana somehow works at the Smithsonian (without going to college? Or did she?) without developing any friends or interest in life. Wouldn’t she have moved on... like a little bit?

Anyways, she wants her boyfriend back, and that’s wish #1. Wish #2 comes from new character Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig… who I am shocked to find is 47 years old! She looks fantastic and far younger in this film). Were Barbara a man, the way she is treated by her colleagues would put them in the stereotypical role of a future school shooter. Barbara is a brilliant gemologist for the Smithsonian, but goes completely unrecognized for her brilliance. She is shy and unconfident, and subsequently people frequently forget that they have even met her. Add on to that the fact that she has to work in the same office as Wonder Woman, and her loneliness and subjective feelings of unattractiveness increase as male employees drool over Diana while they ignore and mock Barbara. Therefore, we would forgive her for having a chip on her shoulder. Yet, for all this, Wiig avoids playing her as an angry, emo goth. Barbara kinda has this air about her of “Well, this is just how life is, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.” Given the character’s lack of self-confidence and lack of social grace, it at times seemed like Wiig was just reprising her old SNL character, Penelope, the socially awkward one-upper. But that’s not fair to her character. Wiig portrays Barbara with an earnest goodness to her. She’s one of those people who when allowed to talk one-on-one proves to be more eloquent and interesting than you could have imagine. Far from being angrily envious of Diana’s confidence and beauty, she’s more sadly jealous. Naturally, then, she wishes on the stone to be more like Diana… unaware that this wish might have some unintended benefits.

But then, there’s a third key character to the film (and a third wishmaker), the main villain Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal). I cannot tell you if this was a good character or not… and I cannot tell you whether the imperfections of the character are more due to the film’s writing or Pascal’s performance. Lord is another loser, and like Barbara, his “loser” status is the result of being a victim of America’s prejudicial attitudes. But whereas Barbara fell victim to sexism, Lord falls victim to racism. Hispanic in origin, Lord grew up in America with an abusive father at home and racist classmates at school. Beaten down from an early age, all he wants in life is to make a name for himself, to prove he’s not a loser. In a clever twist, Lord (the person who originally ordered the wish stone to come to America before it was confiscated by the FBI and sent to the Smithsonian for analysis) does not simply use the stone to wish for riches and power… he wishes to BECOME the stone. That way, he can get nearly infinite wishes so long as he can con the people around him to wish things for him.

The scenes of Max Lord as a flawed human who just wants to not be a loser show Pascal giving a great performance as a human being at the ends of desperation. The scenes of Max Lord the supervillain are… not good. In a long string of over-the-top, eccentric, hyperconfident supervillains in countless superhero movies, Pascal’s Lord is just not interesting. In fact, he is literally a weak character. He cannot fight for himself as his body is crumbling (a side effect of wishing to become a stone). Furthermore, his initially grounded motivations to finally be respected and successful seem to be just utterly lost by the end of the film when he just wishes for world chaos… only then to turn around and declare undying love for his son. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Failure to understand a character’s motivations casts a shadow over Barbara’s character arc as well. It is explained that the wish stone takes something in return for granting someone their wish. So as payment for bringing Steve Trevor back to life, Diana loses some of her strength. Still… this strains to fully explain why Barbara, after gaining Wonder Woman-like strength, turns into a walking humanoid cheetah (complete with bad CGI like she walked straight out of the cast of 2019’s Cats.) Like I get that she lost some of her humanity and morality in exchange for strength… but Cheetah girl seems like a little much. And though initially it is fun to see Wiig get to play Barbara as a confident and sexy woman who fights back against the patriarchy, the movie (I think) unfairly pushes her into the villain role. In my opinion, she should be treated as a tragic character, something akin to a Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight, as her villainous tendencies are not really her fault. She literally had the part of her that cares about other humans taken away from her when she naively and innocently wished to be like Diana. Instead, the movie has Diana lecture her that she shouldn’t be so evil. She literally can’t, lady! Stop being so hard on her! In any case, it seems like a failed opportunity to generate sympathy for a genuinely likable character who tragically becomes a villain not through her own accord.

That failure to create genuine emotions extends to Diana’s story as well. As soon as Steve is resurrected, you know by the movie’s end he will be dead again. There’s no other way this movie ends. Yet, the fact that Diana is so stubborn in refusing to give up Steve makes it hard to sympathize with her. She is simply being selfish, making her eventual decision to say goodbye to Steve feel more like her finally doing the right (and obvious) thing, and not some heartbreaking decision. Also the fact that seemingly Diana hasn’t even tried to move on in the last seventy years doesn’t help matters for me: it more just feels like a lazy way to write in Chris Pine’s popular character into the second movie. The move certainly weakens the idea of Diana as a strong, independent woman by making her emotionally stunted and crippled for the last 70 years. It would have been a much more satisfying (and daring) choice if Diana had moved on from Steve emotionally and had to deal with the guilt of having brought him back by accident, particularly if he didn’t want to go back to being dead. Instead... Steve knows he has to go back and Diana feels no guilt keeping him around. It’s weak character writing.

These poor choices I contrast with two of my favorite TV shows that demonstrate perfectly how former lovers who miraculously reunite eventually have to say goodbye for good: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Jane the Virgin. For risk of spoilers to those still watching Jane, I’ll stick to the Buffy example. There’s an episode of Buffy (though technically an episode of the spin-off show Angel) where Buffy and her vampire lover Angel are fresh off their recent and tumultuous break-up, but through some dark magic that neither seeks out, they are given the opportunity to live a life where Angel isn’t actually a vampire and their love can be fully expressed. Yet, in the end, Angel opts to give up his life as a human and return to being a vampire. The choice is so moving precisely because (due to circumstances I cannot begin to explain) in choosing to give up his life with Buffy, he saves her life as well. Whereas in this movie, Diana choosing to let Steve go is really just her choosing to undo her choice to essentially cheat death. Angel, however, is actively choosing to give up a life of happiness he never wished for but was just given on a silver platter, and will now live in a world where his lover will never know his selfless act and will go on hating him. It’s heartbreaking in a way Wonder Woman dreams it could be.

And not to get too Buffy-heavy… but that show also deals with the emotional consequences of being ripped out of the afterlife much better than this movie. Steve just kinda unrealistically adapts to being alive again in all of five minutes. If, perhaps, from the start he questioned why he was there and hinted to Diana that something was wrong, the emotional aspect of this story, the doomed nature, the feeling of “this is the last chance we’ll have together” could have made this a stronger movie. I wanted to find myself crying when Diana finally says bye to Steve, and I was no where close to that. Gal Gadot shares at least part of the blame. She’s a pretty wooden actress. It’s something I noticed in 2017’s Wonder Woman, but in that movie she was supposed to be a fish out of water so her stilted presence seemed appropriate. Here, where she’s supposedly become an assimilated American for 70 years… it is just bad acting.

Anyways, another aspect of this film that was lacking were the visuals. The bad CGI of Barbara as Cheetah is just scratching the surface here. The opening flashback to Diana as a girl performing in the Amazonian Olympics just… looks fake. I don’t know. The reliance on CGI over practical effects is clear and distracting. It’s only worse in the subsequent scene where Wonder Woman stops a theft from occurring in a mall. The effects are just bad. Like passable for a film in the 1990s or early 2000s. But for a 2020 blockbuster, it’s noticeably bad. And already the scene where Wonder Woman is running towards the camera with a weird green screen behind her seems to have become a meme given just how weird it looks.

And yet, for all the negatives I’ve listed, this is a decent action flick. There’s even some nice set pieces like the one in the White House. As little as I liked Max Lord as a supervillain, I found figuring out the other half of each of his various Monkey Paw wishes (i.e. the downside of each wish) to be clever. unfortunately, each of the main three characters fails to have a story line that takes full advantage of their emotional potential, or they are just poorly acted. With few exceptions, the film eschews “fun” in favor of “seriousness.” Really the only exception is, as in the first film, the chemistry between Pine and Gadot. Their chemistry makes for some of the movie’s best moments, like when Wonder Woman makes the plane they’re flying in invisible and the pair flies over fireworks on the fourth of July. But that sense of whimsy in their scenes is largely absent from the rest of the film. This is particularly true of the action sequences, especially those at the climax. The seriousness makes them rather boring. Really, I’m comparing these action scenes with the last half hour or so of Birds of Prey which really set the bar for superhero movie fight choreography. So in the end, it’s overall an OK movie. It certainly isn’t as bad as others make it out to be, but I cannot believe I’m saying this… in 2020 if you’re in the mood for a fun superhero movie, you’re better off with the Suicide Squad sequel than the Wonder Woman sequel.

**/ (Two and a half stars out of 4)

#wonder woman #ww84 #wonder woman 1984 #gal gadot #patty jenkins #chris pine #kristen wiig #pedro pascal

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enigmasalad · 4 years

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Weddings Are Great And All But My Mom Wants You Over For Dinner Tonight

It has been a boring day so far. Deceit was currently typing away on his fifth laptop (his personal one cause the other four are for his “business”). Remus had gotten a last-minute contract from a rather entitled older man who wanted one of his nephews or something killed. So here Deceit was, alone, bored and totally enjoying his day off. And even though he had just planned a “vacation” for them, he couldn’t get rid of the sappy loneliness in his chest. He groaned and shut his laptop because he needed a nap.

He went to their bedroom, a relaxed form of exhaustion seeping into his limbs once he entered the room. He turned his head to where Jekyll and Hyde were. The twin-headed snake was taking a nap after a rather indulgent lunch. Deceit smiled softly at the sweet creature before falling back onto the bed with his arms spread out. As he shut his eyes, he let his mind become passive, letting each thought come and go. With each thought he slowly drifted to that state between consciousness and sleep.

He didn’t know how long he was in this state, but he did know that he was now more on the conscious side. A soft, fond smile graced his lips before he even thought about it. “Hello Remus. How was the hunt today?” he asked.

Just as he thought, an uneven pitched giggle revealed that the crazed man was indeed there. Deceit opened his eyes to meet wide green eyes that were filled with a mischievous joy, the kind of joy a child who stole a toy from a person they didn’t like had. “Boo! I thought I could surprise you this time!” Remus laughed.

“Were you about to jump on me or something?” Deceit asked, raising a brow.

“Yep! You looked so peaceful I thought it would be funny to startle you!”

Remus crawled into bed, still in his lightly bloodied clothes and curled up by Deceit’s side. Deceit moved one of his gloved hands to Remus’s hair and gently scratched the man’s head. Remus let out a low, relaxed noise and snuggled closer.

“Turns out the whole family was in on the kill. They gave me a large tip for not getting the floors bloody!”

Remus paused before laughing.

“Heh! Large tip! Heh heh!”

Deceit rolled his eyes but smiled none the less at the crude joke. He gave a kiss to Remus’s head. Remus perked up and went to go kiss Deceit. Deceit moved his free had to Remus’s mouth to block the kiss.

“Did you dispose of the body?” Deceit asked.

Remus huffed and pouted.

“I did!” “Remus.”

Remus sighed and slumped a little.

“I did not eat the body this time.”

Silence.

“Or anything else from the crime scene.”

“Good boy.” Deceit softly praised.

Remus grinned as Deceit removed his hand and kissed him. Remus immediately and eagerly kissed back. And as usual Remus had to make the kiss filthy the second his lips met Deceit’s. They kissed for a while, enjoying each other’s presence. When they split Deceit decided to tell Remus the news.

“I arranged our little vacation.” Remus grinned and wiggled excitedly, moving Dee with him a little.

“Oh fun! Oh, we can use the blood money to get some things for the trip! Like toys! You know I love take two Ds at once!”

“Damn it Remus.”

——-

“Roman get out of the kitchen.” “What? I just wanted to see what you’re doing! It smells good in here!” “Roman get out of the fucking kitchen I swear to go-don’t touch that!”

“Ow!”

Roman huffed and held the hand Virgil whacked with a wooden spoon. Virgil glared at him and pointed the spoon at him. “Fine, fine! I’ll just go to Patton’s side of the kitchen!” Roman pouted and quickly moved over to where Patton was mixing batter.

Patton giggled as Roman hugged him from behind and peppered his neck and cheek in quick kisses. Roman smiled and looked at where Virgil was making fresh pasta dough.

“You could have this too, but you whacked me with a spoon! Also why are you making fresh pasta when we bought the quick pasta?” Roman had to ask.

Virgil looked at Roman with a deadpan look, stopping the pasta dough making process.

“I’m half Italian Roman. You fucking know this.” He said

“Well sorry for asking. Just figured with the time constraint you put on

Patton laughed again, interrupting

“Your mom makes the best pasta so I’m glad we’re having her recipe!” he praised.

Roman grinned as Virgil blushed and ducked his head down. The argumentative tension instantly vanished. Patton had that kind of amazing power.

“Anyways dear heart, what are you making?” Roman asked Patton, swaying them both gently.

“I asked Imaj what we should have for dessert this time and he asked if we could have brownies tonight so Im making brownies!” Patton replied before tasting the batter.

“Oh fuck yeah.” Virgil said while smiling a little.

The Petrovs love pasta and brownies more than life itself.

Patton and Roman chatted, Virgil putting his input every now and then. They talked about how Ginerva and Rosita were at the store, wondering what they were getting there. Patton brought up how excited his boss, Adam, accepted to come as Patton’s father to the wedding. Adam was Patton’s boss, but the southern man from the Lone Star State was the closest thing to an actual father Patton had. Plus, he paid for Patton’s top surgery out of his own pocket without asking for anything back, so the definitely liked him.

Plus he threatened to shoot them if they ever hurt Patton so..

“Is there anything I can help with?” Roman asked, mainly because he was bored

“No.” “Not really but I’ll let you know!”

Roman placed a kiss on Patton’s cheek before rushing to Virgil and kissing his cheek. He ran out of the kitchen with a laugh as he heard Virgil sputter and went into the living room where Logan was sitting on the couch talking to Missy while Imaj sat near the corner with his ukulele and sheet music.

“-used the blood eagle torture method to sacrifice to Odin and also get rid of people who have no honor in their lives.” Missy was rambling, probably about Vikings.

“You are very knowledgeable about Vikings in..many aspects Missy.” Logan attempted to praise.

It was a little awkward on how it came out but it made the irritable girl grin widely with pride. She pushed her Viking helmet up so it wouldn’t slide over her eyes.

“Well duh.” Is all Missy had to say.

“Hello Tiny! Teaching Logan about Vikings again?” Roman greeted.

Just like that, her smile turned back to her usual irritated frowny face.

“Don’t call me tiny! Im going to rule the freakin world one day! Im not small!” She said, which only made Roman laugh fondly.

He remembered when he had given Missy the nickname. She leapt off the couch and headbutted him in the gut so hard he curled up on the ground. Good..weird...good times.

“And how are you right now Imaj? Still practicing?” Roman asked.

Imaj startled upon hearing his name but he looked at Roman with a soft smile.

“Mhm. I think I got it this time.” He answered quietly.

“Good! Will you be playing it for us sometime soon?”

Just like that, the young teen squeaked with embarrassment and pulled the hood of his hoodie over his head.

“Nooooo..” he quietly whined.

“Alright, alright don’t disappear on me. I’ll leave you alone.”

Roman sat down next to Logan and wrapped his arm around Logan’s shoulders, pulling the nerd closer.

“And how are you my pocket protector?” Roman asked. “I am well as I can be.” Logan replied.

Ah, Logan was nervous cause this was his first actual family dinner (and the first family dinner they’ve had since all four of them got together). It’s taken him a while to work up to this moment, but they were so proud of him.

Still didn’t mean Logan wasn’t nervous about it.

“You’ll be fine mi amor. You know mama and Mrs. Ginerva love you.” Roman reassured.

“I know this, they’ve made it very apparent.” Logan said with a faint hint of a smile.

Roman smiled and leaned in to give Logan a kiss. Logan huffed a laugh and met Roman the rest of the way.

“VIRGIL YOUR BOYFRIENDS ARE BEING GROSS.”

The two men were startled by Missy’s loud shouting.

“I can’t help you right now! Cooking food!” Virgil called back.

“BUT ITS GROSS.” “You’re gross!” “NO YOU AND YOUR BOYFRIENDS ARE GROSS.”

Patton came in, apron gone, and hands washed which meant the brownies were probably in the oven.

“What’s this about being gross kiddo?” he asked. “They’re kissing!” Missy huffed.

“Kissing!” Patton faked a gasp.

Missy nodded and crossed her arms grumpily. Roman watched as Patton came over and put his hands on his hips and gave a disappointed look.

“Boys Im shocked at your behavior. How dare you be kissing-“ Patton then grinned widely. “Without me!” With that Roman’s arms were full of his bubby, kind boyfriend and Logan’s lips were being kissed by said boyfriend. Roman laughed as Missy let out a shriek and stomped to the kitchen. Soon Patton was kissing all over his face to, each kiss slightly ticklish and with an audible “mwah!” sound. They could hear Virgil chuckle from the kitchen. Logan was smiling softly, more relaxed with the ones he cares about near. Patton got up and sat next to the other side of Logan and held his hand tightly.

“I’m happy we’re doing this. I’ve had family dinners before but..they lacked warmth.” Patton admitted.

“That’s one thing our family doesn’t lack is warmth.” Roman said with a grin. “Indeed. You and Virgil have…exceptional mothers.” Logan agreed.

Roman grinned and wrapped around Logan’s shoulders.

“I wasn’t just meaning them my iridescent nebula. You both are part of this family too now.”

“Awwww Roman!!!” Patton squealed.

The sound of the front door opening interrupted anything else that could have been said.

“Booooooys! Missy! We’re hoooome!” Roman’s mother, Rosita sing-songed

“Hi Miss Rosita! Hi Miss Ginerva!” Patton called back.

Rosita giggled and came into the living room.

“Dawww I hope you weren’t mentally scarring poor little Imaj over there.” She said.

Oh shit Imaj has just been sitting there quietly. The thing about that kid besides having almost crippling anxiety is he could disappear from people’s view despite being there.

“Don’t worry Rosita. I don’t mind.” Imaj softly said with a smile. “This is why you’re my favorite.” Roman said.

Immediately there was a loud, high pitched angry “WHAT?” from the kitchen.

Rosita grinned and bent down to kiss Patton’s cheeks, the usual greeting she gives loved ones. Patton giggled and held onto her arms as she went “Mwah!” with the two kisses. She then bent down and did the same to Logan. His face went red as Roman’s varsity jacket, but he sat still and allowed her to do so, because he honestly didn’t hate it. He’s never had any form of parental love and he once admitted he liked the affection the mothers gave him.

“I’m so glad you both are here today. Our first dinner as a whole family!” Rosita cheerily said.

Roman grinned at his loves. They looked happy. Things were normal. This family was normal.

“Well hello my dears. Patton, thank you for making dessert.” Virgil’s mother, Ginerva said as she too entered the living room, holding two rather thick books in her hands.

“It’s no problem! I love baking! Plus, a meal isn’t complete without a sweet!” Patton said.

Ginerva smiled. Then she held up the book with a mischievous glint in her eye.

“Would you like to see some baby pictures after dinner?” she asked.

“Oh my gosh YES!” Patton squealed.

“Absolutely.” Logan agreed, his own grin on his face.

Roman gulped.

Maybe this was a horrible idea.

———-

“Going to the sex store~ We’re going to the sex store~” Remus sang, unashamed as they walked through the mall.

People glared at them as Remus walked next to Deceit, arms swinging back and forth happily. Deceit has once thought maybe he should stop Remus. Here’s the thing though.

He didn’t give a fuck.

These poor bastards can deal with Remus happily singing the lewdest things for a small portion of their lives, even if they weren’t going to the sex store.

A mother gasped, offended and covered her child’s ears.

“Shame on you!” she shrilled.

Deceit flipped her off with both of his hands while Remus held his index finger and middle finger in a V formation in front of his mouth, wiggling his tongue in between the fingers with a wicked grin. The mother shrieked in horror.

Deceit laughed as they left her. However, Remus grabbed his wrist and yanked him back to where Remus was.

“I want that.” Remus said, pointing into an arcade.

Inside the arcade was a claw machine with many stuffed animals. On top of the animal pile was a plush green octopus with tiny black eyes.

“I’m not wasting my money on a rigged game,” Deceit said.

“But Deeeeeeee!” Remus whined.

“that’s why I’m not going to.” Deceit continued, holding up a wallet that totally was his.

Remus grinned widely and held Deceit’s hand as they planned to spend every pound of an asshole’s money.

————

Dinner was good, as usual. Virgil was a phenomenal cook and every dish he made was some of the best Roman’s had (he wont tell mama that though). He blushed as they complimented him.

“This is yummy! What is this called again?” Patton asked.

“Bucatini all’Amatriciana. It’s nothing.” Virgil replied, eyes averted and blush on cheeks.

“I have no idea how to pronounce that but I love it! Logan loves it! Roman does too!”

Roman will deny he was shoveling the pasta into his mouth messily ‘til the day he dies. It never happened. No way. Thankfully he wasn’t the only messy eater in the family, for Missy was doing the same thing, but messier.

“You did good. I’m proud of you.” Ginerva praised with a soft smile.

“Whatever.” Virgil said, faint smile on his face at his mother’s praise.

“So how is the wedding coming along?” Rosita asked with a smile. “We found a venue. It has a garden area that looked rather appealing to us so we’re planning the ceremony will be there. The reception will be inside.” Logan found himself effortlessly saying to Rosita.

Roman was so proud of him and judging by Virgil and Patton’s smiles they felt the same.

Imaj smiled, looking a bit excited at all this wedding talk.

“I like gardens. They’re quiet and yet they’re lively.” He said, his approval and delight making the four men internally sigh in relief.

“Fuck gardens.” Missy grumbled as she stuffed pasta in her mouth.

“Marietta Ursa Petrov, you will not swear at this table. Do it again and you’ll be grounded.” Ginerva warned sternly

Missy huffed but nodded, shoving more pasta to get everyone’s eyes off her. Ginerva turned to Virgil with stern eyes as well.

“You too Mister. I know what a mouth you have.” “Yes mom.”

Roman snickered at the scolding.

“Oh! Remy got us measured for our wedding outfits a few weeks ago!” Patton cheerily said, changing the topic.

“Im so jealous of you boys. Friends with a famous fashion designer and won’t even get me a dress.” Rosita teased.

Roman chuckled.

“Mama he’d freak if he got to make you something. He’s our very own Edna Mode.” He said.

“Good to know! He better not hit me with a rolled-up newspaper or have heavy security in his studio.”

Yeah dinner was nice, but afterwards was downright embarrassing. You see, Roman was convinced Miss Ginerva forgot about the baby pictures. He was so wrong.

Logan and Patton sat on both sides of Ginerva as she pointed to pictures. “-on that Halloween I tried to get Virgil to be a cat or a witch or even Wednesday Addams. Whenever I’d propose an idea, he’d pout. He insisted he wanted to be Elton John for that Halloween, specifically Elton in the Im Still Standing video.”

And for sure there was a picture of a small Virgil standing next to Roman, who was dressed as Hercules from Disney’s Hercules in Elton’s iconic outfit. On the other side of Virgil was a kid dressed as a garbage can who looked almost exactly like Roman.

As embarrassed as he was, Roman smiled to see the picture of Remus, back when the three of them were the best of friends. Innocent.

“Oh, and this picture didn’t turn out the way we wanted it. Rosita sneezed so the boys started crying.”

“I’ve said I’m sorry at least once a year since then Ginerva! Get over it!” Patton giggled at the picture of Virgil in the middle of Roman and Remus in a purple onesie crying. Roman was in a red striped overalls outfit sitting up and crying just as hard. Remus was in the same outfit but green and he fell back as he cried. It was adorable.

“Mom please stop.” Virgil weakly pleaded, hood pulled over his face.

“Hush. They need to see these.” Ginerva said with a laugh.

They avoided pictures of Virgil’s father, who just up and left one day to go back home to Russia without a word. A slightly angry aura surrounded her, but she pushed on.

“Oh, this is Rosita’s favorite!” Ginerva pointed out.

“Is it the play time one? Oh my goodness I love that one so much! Their chubby cheeks and tiny hands aaah!” Rosita squealed with a grin, getting up from the armchair and hurrying over.

“Mama stoooop.” Roman groaned.

Logan gave Roman a look that suggested yes, this was indeed blackmail material. Roman flipped him off, only to be whapped lightly from his mother.

Damn you Logan.

The photo had a “castle” made from cardboard boxes. Inside the castle was a grumpy, if not bored looking Virgil with a plastic princess tiara on his head and a bright pink princess dress over his black sweater. Roman had a plastic crown and pointed a foam sword at Remus, who had devil horns and fairy wings on. That was the closest they could get to a dragon.

Rosita smiled wide, but it held a small bit of sadness. Roman knows, cause he feels the same way.

“Ugh this one?” Virgil grumbled, looking over.

“You guys are adorable! I love your princess costume!” Patton cooed. “It was Roman’s.”

Roman laughed nervously and rubbed the back of his neck.

“CUUUUUTE!”

Rosita was telling the story about that day, but Roman found he wasn’t listening. He just stared at Remus in the photo, his grin wide and his hands bared like claws. His eyes filled with his usual mischief. He always wanted to be the villain or the monster. He remembered a time when Remus built a city out of blocks and toy cars and proceeded to stomp through it and making monster sounds, making Roman laugh at his brother’s silliness as he altered between making noises or pretending to be the shrill voice citizens of the town either being afraid or just saying the weirdest thing like “Dang it I left my pudding at home and now my pants are on fire!”.

Memories came rushing. The times they tried to do a secret handshake but could never remember the steps. The times they slept over at Virgil’s home with red and green matching pajamas and sleeping bags. The times they’d fight over the last homemade churro and forced to split it and apologize. When Remus would come to him when he had horrible nightmares of terrible actions his mind told him to do and he’d cry while hugging Roman tightly, who would cry cause his twin was sad. The gap-toothed grin Remus would give him as they planned to do some mischief and even sometimes dragging Virgil into it. Their red and green “brothership” bracelets they wore until they broke.

“Im going to the bathroom. Don’t start dessert without me!” Roman suddenly blurted out, leaving the room and rushing quickly up the steps to the upstairs bathroom farthest away from the stairs.

He locked the door and turned the fan on. He let out a shuddered gasp and pressed his back against the wall.

“You’re fine Roman. You’re fine. You’re with your family, your loves are enjoying themselves. Don’t ruin this for them. You’re fine.”

Suddenly a sob escaped his lips. He couldn’t stop it. Oh god he was a horrible person. A fraud.

He was the one that abandoned the other two members of their little musketeer group just for some ill-deserved attention by horrible people.

He was the one who pushed his brother away, insulting him and ignoring him when Remus didn’t understand what he did wrong.

He was the reason Remus was gone, never able to attend his wedding, to see his loves or be part of their growing family and instead out there doing who knows what. Was he even still alive?

His loves had poor choice in men, since they were marrying him.

His mother was a fool to love him because he was a horrible son.

His fault.

His fault!

A knock interrupted his thoughts.

“Hijo I know you’re in there.”

It was his mom.

“I’m fi-“

“Open the door Roman.” She said, usual sass or warmth in her voice gone.

Roman gulped and unlocked the door. He opened it for his mother to come in. She stepped inside and locked the door behind her.

“Roman, my sweet baby.” She cooed comfortingly and cupped his face, which was wet with tears. “Lo siento mama. Lo siento!” he sobbed, burying his face in her shoulder.’

She stroked his hair as he sobbed and shushed him softly. He gripped her white blouse and sobbed, feeling like a child again, guilty for doing something wrong.

“Lo siento. I’m sorry! I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry for turning those pictures into sad memories!” he cried.

It felt like a million eyes were glaring at him, a phantom hand was gripping his throat. Harsh voices whispered his guilt over and over and over until he was dizzy.

“Hijo it’s not your fault.” She whispered.

“But mama it is! I’m the reason he’s gone! I’m the reason family dinners feel so empty! I’m the reason I split our family apart!”

“Roman.”

Rosita’s stern voice made him push back to look at her. Her green eyes stared into his blue ones, filled with tears, but held a strong determination and a love he could never comprehend.

“Roman, it’s not your fault. Yes, you’ve made some mistakes, but it’s not your fault.” She said firmly, wiping his tears away with her thumbs.

She sighed shakily and frowned, which was never a good look on his usually happy mother.

“It’s mine.” “Mama how could y-“ “It’s mine because I didn’t do anything. I didn’t guide you to make better decisions back then, like a mother should.”

Roman’s lip wobbled, god he was an ugly crier.

“It’s my fault that I was so focused on fixing Remus because I was scared for him that I didn’t even think about how he felt or wanted. Yes, your brother’s actions were troubling, deeply so, but I did nothing to help him. I did nothing to understand or support him. And now, its my fault for having you endure so much guilt.”

It was quiet for a bit. Too quiet.

“You may never stop feeling that guilt, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry you carried this with you for so long. But honey, I’m so proud of you!” Rosita said with a wobbly grin.

“What?” Roman shakily asked.

“I’m proud of you for standing up for yourself and making a change. I’m proud of you for making things right with Virgil. I’m proud of you for being such a hard worker, and an amazing dreamer. I’m so proud of you for being a kind and determined man who puts everything into what he does.”

“And honey, I’m proud of you for being a good lover. For being true to yourself even though its scary. I’m proud of you for saving Patton from those god-awful people and supporting Logan during this dinner cause I know he was nervous. I’m proud that you and Virgil and Patton and Logan love each other so much. That despite polyamorous marriage not being legal here, you all said fuck it, cause love conquers everything.”

Roman whimpered before sobbing again. He may never get over the guilt, but with time he can move on. He was so fortunate to have people who he loves with all his heart, and they love him with theirs. He had the best family and the best friends, even if it was hard to see that at times.

He had the best mother.

————

“Why don’t we break it?” “Remus we need to remain as anonymous as we can.” “Boo!” “Do you want this octopus or not?”

It was their last dollar out of like, three hundred. They took a break ‘cause they got hungry, but they came right back. Remus watched, eyes looking between the claw of the machine game and his love’s concentrated and yet frustrated face. He looked like he was about to scream “YOU LOSE! Good DAY SIR!” in a shrill tone. The claw once again picked up the green octopus. Its floppy tentacles hang limp as the claw started to slowly move over to the little dispenser chute. It suddenly slipped through the claw’s metal arms.

“NO!” they both almost screamed.

Ah, but a miracle has happened! One of the octopus’s tentacles was caught on the claw! The claw moved over the chute and dropped the plushie down into it. “YEAH!” Remus cheered, hearing a startled yelp from someone.

—————

Roman came down with his mom, face clean and no longer blotchy. He smiled as he saw his family still sitting downstairs. They turned to him and Patton grinned, looking relieved. Logan and Virgil just stared at him like he had done something stupid.

“Dude I can’t believe you got your hand stuck in the faucet drain. What were you doing?” Virgil asked.

Roman turned to Rosita, who grinned. Oh, his mom made up an excuse to check on him, which was nice, but still that’s embarrassing. He came up with a lie to not seem like too much of an idiot.

“I was washing my hands when one of mama’s earrings she left by the sink went down the drain! I had to rescue it! It was her favorite pair!”

“Well now that you rescued the earring, we were gonna have brownies and watch Frozen 2! Interested?” Patton proposed.

“Definitely!”

Roman felt so much better. He sat down on the couch with Virgil pressed against his side and Logan’s head on his shoulder. Patton came back with brownies for everyone and gave Roman a peck on the lips as he gave Roman his treat. Rosita and Ginerva argued over how Disney Plus worked, only for Logan to instruct them carefully. As Ginerva got the movie set up, Imaj sat down on the floor with his knees drawn up in between Patton and Virgil, happily nibbling on his brownie. Missy walked over and crawled into Roman’s lap, still looking irritated, but there was a shy plush on her face. He decided not to say anything and just ruffled her hair. She smiled a bit at that. Then, she grinned a mischievous grin that reminded him of when Virgil jump scared them as a vampire last Christmas and..someone he used to know.

“I hope Olaf dies.” She said.

Patton and Rosita gasped in horror as Virgil laughed loudly.

———-

“What are you going to name it?” Deceit asked Remus.

Remus looked at the cute octopus in his hands.

“Can Mr. Squishyboo join your tea party Roman?”

“Yeah, but he can’t poison the tea this time! Ms. Fluffybottom got sick last time!” “Fiiine. Then you can’t call him a squid. He’s an octopus!”

Remus smiled softly down at the octopus’s happy little face.

“Squishyboo jr.” he said.

“Oh thank god. I thought you were going to name it hentai.” Deceit sighed.

“Oh! His full name is Squishyboo jr Hentai Lokir!” Remus laughed loudly.

“Do not use my last name for your stuffed animal.” Deceit huffed.

Remus giggled and kissed his love’s forehead. They walked hand in hand out of the arcade, past Pac-man games and children giggling and playing ski-ball. They were near the entrance when a man with a pink Sailor Moon T-shirt stopped them for a moment.

“Oh my stars I love your Invader Zim crop top sir!” he said, Irish accent prominent.

“Thank you! I love your anime titty lady!” Remus greeted back as they left, Deceit snickering and squeezing his hand with affection.

——-

The man just blinked for a moment before noticing his phone was ringing. He smiled and answered it.

“Heeeey babe! How’s your like, family reunion going?” a voice spoke from the other end.

“ ‘ello Remy. Its going fine! Mum, Mama and Dad want you to come next year!”

“Maybe I will go. Like, making wedding stuff is okay, but like, when its for your friends, it sucks. Like, I know im the best bitch in this business, but it has to be so perfect they cry.”

“You are the best Remy. They wouldn’t ask you if you weren’t”

A laugh on the other end.

“This is why I love you Emile, my little piece of Picani pie.”

Emile Picani giggled.

“So, what are you doing now?”

“I’m about to set a high score on the DDR machine. I saw they had some Miku songs and I wanted to try them!”

“Fuck yeah Miku. Hey, face time me so I can see you like, totally shame on everyone’s scores.”

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iatheia · 3 years

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EDA reviews Part 6 - books 47-55

Previous part 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5

47) The Slow Empire - Uh, couldn't really follow this one at all. There are books when the first person narration works, but not here - too many jumps in setting, too little connective tissue, most of it told from the POV of a person who is barely connected to the protagonists? And that's even before they started repeating chunks of text wholesale between various parts - and I couldn't figure out if it was intended, or if it is the ebook was acting out on me. More than half way through the book, I still couldn't entirely tell what the story is supposed to be about, or if the plot has even started yet. Even having finished it, I find myself somewhat aghast. There are a few glimpses of something interesting, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what. 4/10

48) Dark Progeny - Also not really feeling it. It's not a bad story, but I do rather prefer a Doctor Who story to actually feature the Doctor and the companions front and center, whether they are POV characters or not. Here, though, they are barely in it - it's even more egregious than the previous one in actually giving the supposed protagonists stuff to do, and even on rare occasions we do switch back to them, it is all pretty generic. Anji developing telepathic abilities and the Doctor trying to calm her down all the while Fitz is freaking out in the background? Yes, please, more of that. Following around 20 interchangeable OCs that have nothing to do with the trio? No thank you. 6/10.

49) The City of the Dead - If you are invoking magic in a sci-fi universe, you need to be able to handwave it. It doesn't need to be awfully complex, "something something aliens, something something energy" is usually enough, but without it, you can't just throw magic about willy nilly. There are rules.

There are moments when it is a beautiful story, evoking a lot of dream-like wonder, and if it managed to remain a hazy dream, it probably would have been better for it. At the same time there is something very uncomfortably cynical about it, to the degree it left a bad taste in my mouth. There is a narrow line between not shying away from the ugliness of the world and deliberately making something ugly just for the sake of it, and often it felt like it was leaning towards the latter. Dunno, I started out wanting to like it, and feeling rather conflicted about it, but by the end became utterly indifferent. 7/10

50) Grimm Reality - Pure crack. Mind Robber wishes it could be as hilarious and off the wall as this story is. It throws every cliche fairy tale narrative device in the book at the characters and expects them to take it with the straight face, all the while realizing that the rules of the world are completely bonkers. And it manages to sustain this energy throughout, which is a no small feat. It's actually pretty exhausting by the end of it. Fairy tales stories do not belong to a lengthy literary genre, and even taking time deconstructing them, at 95K words becomes it becomes just too much - figuratively, and, on occasion, literally. Still, pretty great, I wish more books had its energy 9/10.

51) The Adventuress of Henrietta Street - *sigh*. My expectations were pretty low to begin with, and I still am somehow disappointed. Credit where credit's due - it is probably most coherent of the books from Miles. And at least it's better than Interference. That's really not saying much, though.

Honestly, if you've read any story about prostitutes, murder, satanic sex rituals bordering on blatant pornography, eastern culture and "mysticism of female sex" used for fetish fuel, written by a dude who clearly gets off on all of this - you've read all of them. There is really nothing revolutionary or compelling about it. On the list of "plots I never want to see in Doctor Who", they are definitely up there. And the Doctor is dying again, because it wouldn't be Miles's book without it. And he's, uh... living in a brothel, trying to marry someone, in order to, uh..... ritualistically tie himself to Earth, for, reasons? Did I read that right? After over 100 years of living on Earth and wanting to do nothing else than seeing the back of it, right. And writing books not quite about sex but definitely about sex. Because that's the thing the Doctor apparently does now. Self insert what self insert. And Fitz and Anji are just... there. On an occasion. All of it exposed on in a dull faux academic style without a shred of characterization, all the while absolutely nothing of note is happening, despite being a singularly longest EDA.

Just, if you hate the characters so much. If you don't understand what makes them tick to this degree. If you don't even care to learn. If you consider any established emotions they should have about the plot you are putting them through beneath you. Why are you writing in a shared universe to begin with? 2/10

(I did have an unintentional moment of hilarity with it, though. There is a character that is referred to as Lord ______, as if his name is censored. TTS would always pronounce it as Lord Underbarunderbarunderbar. Always gave me a chuckle).

52) Mad Dogs and Englishmen - A hilarious story, a very easy read, flowing from scene to scene. There are several occasions of fridge horror treated with levity that I would have rather have avoided. Plus, it is as incestuous as a book about books can get, and yet.... It is just absurd enough to work.

Plus, the whole, “His books are full of black magic, mind control...and perversion - moral and ethical and sexual. He is polluting the atmosphere of our group”, “What’s next? Rewrite War and Peace so it’s about guinea pigs?” - Oh, the shade. It is a good book in its own right, but just for this alone, 10/10

53) Hope - It's a pretty average book. Not outstanding, not horrible. Would have made a decent episode, all things considered, in a bread and butter sort of way. It does have some great ideas - the refuge of humanity, the conflict between Anji and the Doctor finally coming to light - not quite the type of conflict I was hoping for, though. If only it had a bit more nuisance, without neatly delineated black and white, if the antagonist didn't end up being a mustache twirling villain, if the Doctor didn't end up strong-arming everyone in a much more macho manner than he normally goes for (with a rather clunky dialogue). It had potential, even if it didn't end up being realized in full. 8/10

54) Anachrophobia - Very meh. The set up was fairly contrived, it never made me care about any of the characters, including whatever the hell the Doctor and co were doing, not to mention any of the secondary characters. Not terribly engaging, after a point I was mostly flipping through it. There is some big conflict brought up at 95% mark, and it is resolved in just couple of pages via a deus ex machina and a paradox. Overall, I might have said that I would have liked it better if I was in a mood for existential horror, but I took a break in the middle to listen to the Lease of Life - and it actually touches upon several similar themes, but with and outstanding character drama and much more graceful execution, which made this book look even more poor in comparison. 5/10

55) Trading Futures - I will give the author all the points for keeping an eye on the future. Perhaps, in 2002, predicting tablets being used as menus in fancy restaurants wasn’t that big of a reach, but I absolutely had a spit take when TTS has read to me something about “eye-phones”. There are some modestly clever moments throughout the book. Too bad that the rest of it is a complete rubbish. Not terribly original, either - a lot of ideas are copied directly from other books and other franchises. Reasonably entertaining, all things considered, but in a much more slapstick sort of way than was probably intended. 7/10

Overall impressions so far - This batch is, for the most part, fine. Some stories are worst than others, some better. With one exception, nothing horrendous, but nothing to write home about, either. They are, for the most part, serviceable. Individually, they have decent enough plots. But. There is very little character work. They can generally be read in any order, or dropped entirely, and you wouldn’t miss anything. The Doctor is mostly coasting from the excellent streak in the last batch, always in a spot light. I am starting to tire of the whole amnesia arc, though - it was good, but it ran its course, and at this point, with everything functionally back to norm, with barely a stray mention of it here and there, we are starting to be overdue for some semblance of resolution of all that. Henrietta Street is entirely a step in the wrong direction - not only it does nothing worthwhile for the characters, it’s just getting unnecessarily further into the weedworks, adding yet another plot thread that is forced on other writers to carry (they mention it occasionally, but it’s not like there is much to build upon) - rather viciously reminding of the previous mess of an ark “don’t you dare to think that it is over”. And I am so over it. Just, move on.

The companions fare rather worse. They are decent enough, they participate in action, in each book, they are mostly staying in character, with a handful of neat moments here and there (in a blink and you’ll miss it sort of way, though), they aren’t written off as an unnecessary burden to carry, which is an improvement. There is nothing meaty given to them though - they ask the necessary questions, do the things required of them, and generally stay out of the way when they are not needed. I guess Anji has at least some character driven moments, even though most of them are reduced to “I miss my dead boyfriend”. Which is... fine, we’ve all lost people, we all mourn them in our own way, but it has been 14 books since her introduction, and she is leaving in another 10. To have her character reduced to just that bit from her first book, with barely anything else to offer.... Plus, all the while, she rarely felt like she integrated into the team - because she is constantly eying her exit and returning to normality (even though she always decides to stay just a little while longer due to circumstances), it’s like from the very beginning she had one foot out of the door.

But while Anji is a bit of a one trick pony, at least she has that much. Poor Fitz gets absolutely nothing to do. The last meaningful book that addressed his character in any way was all the way back around book #42-43, and even that was just catching up on plot after his prolonged absence. He’s been essentially frozen since early 30s books. He is generally a fun character to have around, and does good supporting work, but can he please get something more impactful any time soon? Heck, by this point I’ll even take the recurrence of “finding a new love interest number 20 who will inevitably die by the end of the book” - it has been overdone, and it is certainly not a very exciting plot, not to mention reductive, but at least it’d be something. Though, I guess only one companion is allowed to carry that staple at the time, and right now Anji is it, two dead lovers is just an overkill.

And it is an absolute shame - especially when considering that on the other side, Big Finish was in the middle of streak of some of the best stories. Over the same time that these novels were published, we had audios such as Project Twilight, Eye of the Scorpion, Colditz, One Doctor, Chimes of Midnight, Seasons of Fear, which were full of character.

#doctor who #eighth doctor #eighth doctor adventures #eda

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olliepig · 4 years

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Waiting in the Wings ch 3

Finally, I made it through writing this! Many, many, many thanks to @willow-salix for her endless patience, phone calls and editing wizardry.

As always, the full thing can be found on AO3 here.

Chapter 3

Once back at Creighton-Ward manor, the group settled easily on the couches in the private living room, Cat in particular enjoying the chance to finally put her feet up and relax after the performance. The boys had both ditched their bow ties and jackets the second they were through the door and Penny herself had changed from her evening dress into something infinitely more suitable for relaxing.

As Parker poured the first drinks for them before retiring for the night, Scott took the time to take in the surroundings properly as he had no recollection of ever being invited into this area of the building. Even though their families were close, visits tended to be for work purposes and any time he had spent there had been in one of the more formal reception rooms. He didn’t know why, but the idea that Penny had a comfortable sofa and tv like everyone else amused him somewhat. She had always seemed to him to be so other-worldly and different that it was comforting to know that she was actually just like everyone else.

After the performance Cat had changed into a woolen sweater and jeans, managing to somehow look casual and effortlessly stylish all at once and meaning that she was the only one not needing a change of outfits when they arrived. She was immediately at home in the manor, curled up on the sofa next to Scott and making his heart rate rise slightly with just her proximity.

What surprised Scott was that Gordon also seemed completely at ease as he settled himself on the couch next to Penny. His younger brother was known for being unfazed by new situations but something about his demeanour made Scott strongly suspect that this wasn’t the first time he had been here. Filing that thought away for future examination, he turned his attention back to the conversation.

“So, now we're away from the theatre, what did you guys actually think of the ballet? Did you enjoy it?” Cat felt compelled to ask, almost too scared to hear the answers, especially the one from the man sitting next to her.

“It was amazing,” Scott found himself gushing before anyone else could speak. “You were incredible, I’ve never seen you dance like that. It was a great night and you’ll like this, Gordon even got us ice creams in the interval.” “Well, to be fair it’s been a few years since you last saw me. And you’re right, you can’t go to the theatre without an interval ice cream. It’s tradition.” Cat smiled at Gordon, mentally adding another thing onto her list of reasons why she liked him.

“That's exactly what I said,” exclaimed Gordon triumphantly, warming even more to the dancer and very much enjoying watching his big brother trying to navigate a crush for the first time in years. “So, you two were at school together?” he continued, keen to find out more both about Cat and about Penny’s early life.

“That’s correct. We both attended White Lodge for 2 years - ” answered Penny before realising that perhaps the question had been directed at her friend and stopping suddenly with a flush of embarrassment.

“Until Penny decided that a life on the stage wasn’t for her and decided to go into international espionage instead,” added Cat with a grin aimed squarely at Penny.

“Um what’s White Lodge? Is that the name of the school?” clarified Gordon, realising that he was going to have to work hard to keep up with the two women who seemed to finish each other's sentences.

“Sorry, yes it’s the Royal Ballet Lower School. You go there from 11 til you’re 15 and then to the Upper School at Covent Garden. Penny could easily have been a dancer -”

“But it wasn’t for me,” she finished seamlessly, with an elegant shrug. “It’s a hard life and I just wasn’t willing to devote myself completely to one thing at that age.”

Now that Gordon knew the extent of the training Penny had been through, he could see that her graceful way of moving and lithe form had come at least partially from that time. Not that he was supposed to know exactly how lithe she was, but that ship had well and truly sailed and he definitely wasn’t going to forget the images that flooded his head any time soon.

“So was it a boarding school?” Gordon asked, dragging his thoughts back to the conversation, very aware that sitting was about to become very uncomfortable for him if he didn’t stop that train of thought quickly.

“Yes dear, so we were there for most of the year. And during the holidays Cat tended to come and visit us here so we were together most of the time in those first few years.”

“I didn’t have the best home life when I was young so Penny let me come here and stay instead of going back to the house for the holidays,” explained Cat. “That actually continued whenever our holidays coincided even after she’d left the school so I’m very much indebted to her and her family.”

“And your family didn’t mind?” asked Gordon.

“I don’t think they really cared to be honest. My dad walked out when I was little and my step-dad didn’t really like me at all. My mum did, in her way, but ultimately she was more interested in her new marriage than me.” Cat looked up and smiled at the expressions of sadness on Penny and Scott’s faces. Her family was something she rarely talked about, preferring to maintain a safe distance from her past and it now barely bothered her to think of it privately. Somehow though, seeing other people's reactions to her story seemed to trigger an emotional response that she really didn’t want to deal with here.

Scott caught her eyes and Cat was suddenly reminded of how sweet and caring he had always been about her history when they were together and how mindful he had always been of it when talking about his own family. Feeling an ache starting in her chest for his comfort now, she quickly looked away trying her best to maintain her dignity.

As the only member of the group to whom this was new information, Gordon was horrified that someone could be treated that way and his feelings were clear for all to see. Although he obviously knew that it happened and he’d come across others who had been through similar upbringings, there was something about the woman sitting opposite him talking so frankly and openly about her parents not caring for her that broke his heart a little.

“That’s ridiculous! Some people just shouldn’t be allowed to have kids!” he exclaimed loudly, not sure if he was more surprised by his outburst or the sudden feeling of Penny’s hand reassuringly on his arm, its presence instantly calming his temper but leaving him flustered in oh so many other ways. Which were made worse by the fact that his brother was sitting directly opposite him with a strange smirk on his face.

“I know what you mean but you don’t need to worry about me,” Cat continued, taking in the scene being played out in front of her but choosing to let it go without comment, beyond happy that her friend had found someone whom she obviously liked so much but also with a slight pang of jealousy that she didn’t have someone like that in her life. “A lot of people say that they wouldn’t be where they are today without their parents and that’s definitely true for me too, just not in the same way as most others. I threw myself into dancing so I could get away from the house as quickly as possible. It worked - there’s no way we could have afforded the ballet school without financial help but they must have liked me at my audition because I got a full scholarship. I moved away at 11 and that just spurred me on to work harder and harder so I didn’t have to go back.”

Cat risked another quick glance at Scott as she finished speaking and was surprised to find him watching her with something akin to pride in his eyes. She held his gaze for a second and gave him a small smile, enjoying the flutter of excitement that shot through her as he smiled back before she tore herself away and back to the conversation. Mentally, she slapped herself as she looked away. She had promised herself that she wasn’t going to get involved with him and reminded herself again of all the reasons why it couldn’t work. And yet she couldn’t deny that there was something there. Something that she’d been missing for a long time.

“It was at least partially Cat’s work ethic that convinced me that I didn’t want to be a dancer,” chimed in Penny, finally taking her hand back from where it had been resting on Gordons arm, leaving him feeling strangely bereft at its absence. “Do you remember we used to put on ballets in the ballroom during the holidays and make poor Parker watch them?”

“Oh god, yes! The poor man probably still hates me for that, although he did always give us flowers after every show,” laughed Cat, as Gordon and Scott both smirked at the thought of the gruff butler being forced to sit and feign enjoyment through a kids ballet show.

“Well,” Penny turned back to the boys, still smiling at the memory of their childhood escapades, “I used to watch her practicing the same steps over and over again while we were here during the holidays and it was just not something I could ever see myself doing for the rest of my life. Cat used to get the highest marks in the class in our exams and everyone used to talk about her natural talent but I knew exactly how much work went into making that natural ability work for her.”

Cat blushed as she looked up and met Gordon’s russet eyes, filled with knowing appreciation of her dedication to honing her skills. She smiled at the former Olympian, realising that out of all of them, he probably best understood the sacrifices needed to make it to the top of a competitive vocation.

She didn’t even need to look at Scott to know that his eyes would be filled with the pride she could feel radiating out of him. Nevertheless, she couldn’t resist a quick glance and he didn’t disappoint, fixing her with a large grin that left her in no doubt of his feelings and flustering her as she tried to deflect the attention.

“You’re too kind but I didn’t have too much of a choice about working hard - I had to be the best to keep my scholarship. Eventually it just became a habit and it's not something I’ve ever lost. What I remember about school is you absolutely obliterating everyone in the academic exams, Penny. Let's be honest, dancing isn’t the most important job in the world and you’re definitely much better doing, well, whatever it is you do now.” Cat turned to an enthralled Gordon and continued. “Penny was head and shoulders above the rest of us academically and to be honest I think it would have been a waste if she’d stayed there and become a dancer.”

“Perhaps,” Penny conceded, “but I’m glad I had that experience anyway, ” she continued, deciding the conversation needed moving on and looking between Cat and Scott who had up until then been uncharacteristically quiet. “How did you two meet?”

“Oooh, you’ll like this,” Cat exclaimed, immediately sitting forward as Scott dropped his head into his hands with a barely audible groan, instantly piquing Penny and Gordon’s interest. “I was out at a bar in Richmond with some of my friends from the company when a group of guys came in. One of whom was wearing a pair of rather fetching red PVC thigh high boots,” she finished, fixing Scott with a rather devilish grin, as Gordon exploded with laughter.

“Oh, so you’re ‘kinky boots man’?” clarified Penny, somehow managing to maintain her decorum despite Gordon nearly sliding off the sofa next to her in mirth with tears streaming down his face.

“He certainly is,” Cat answered for Scott, who was still trying unsuccessfully to disappear into the sofa in embarrassment. “We reckoned it was a dare of some kind because, other than the boots, everyone was dressed normally. We sat and debated it for a while and some of the girls were trying to find a way of getting the attention of the rest of his friends but it looked like it would take forever to find out the story and I’m really impatient, so I took myself off up to the bar at the same time as ‘kinky boots guy’ to ask. We got chatting, the groups merged for the night and the rest is history.”

“And what exactly was the reason behind the boots may I ask?”

Scott looked over at Cat and shook his head in exasperation, the effect undone somewhat by the smile that he couldn’t quite keep off his face as the memories of that night came flooding back to him. Doing the best impression of innocence she could manage, Cat smiled sweetly back at him but the glint in her eyes gave her away and he genuinely wasn’t sure if he wanted to strangle or kiss her. Shifting uncomfortably, he turned his focus back to the occupants of the other sofa as he tried to work out exactly how his life had reached this point.

“It was a dare I had with some of the guys in the squadron,” Scott finally supplied, resigned to his fate now that the story was out in the open. “I don’t even know where the boots came from but we found them and decided that whoever lost the next race we did to the mess had to wear them on the next night out. I was the quickest of the lot of them so I agreed but they ganged up on me and kept shoving me out of the way. One of them managed to knock me over a low wall and by the time I was on my feet again they’d all finished. So the boots were mine.”

“That does make more sense I guess,” Gordon spluttered, reaching for his phone. “We had similar things in WASP. I’d give anything to see pictures of that though.”

“Well unlucky for you, there aren’t any. And not a word to the others. Especially Alan. Please?” Scott warned, hating himself for spoiling Gordon’s fun but unwilling to have this conversation repeated to their baby brother by anyone other than himself. He had learned enough about Gordon’s propensity for embellishment to know that he did not want to take the risk with a story that had as many possibilities as this.

“Well, I could be persuaded…” Gordon sat back expectantly, leaving his phone mercifully untouched.

“We can discuss THAT on the way back home tomorrow,” Scott spoke with more finality that he felt, concerned about the price his brother would expect for his silence but knowing that there was nothing he could do to avoid at least some form of bribery. He had hoped to keep his escapade it the boots private, something he had managed well over the years. He hadn’t factored in Cat however, which he was now realising was a rookie error.

“Well, if that's the best you can do, I think I’m going to turn in for the night, ” Gordon announced with an exaggerated yawn, bringing Scott’s attention back to the conversation from where it had been happily gagging his little brother. “It’s been a long day what with the change in time zones and whatnot.”

Scott’s suspicions were immediately raised. He knew for a fact that Gordon had slept on their journey over to England and that he never willingly took an early night if there was something better on offer and nothing to get up for the next morning. He didn’t miss the look that went between Gordon and Penny as he spoke nor the slight blush that appeared on the Lady’s face in response to it. Suddenly, Scott realised that he may have some leverage against Gordon after all and his worry about everyone hearing about the boots lessened considerably.

“You know which room you’re sleeping in tonight?” Penny checked, making Scott raise a quizzical eyebrow at Cat who smiled and rolled her eyes in response.

“Absolutely” Gordon grinned, holding Penny’s gaze as he stood up and stretched theatrically. Dragging his eyes away from the Lady, goodnight wishes were given along with a hug for Cat. Passing behind the sofa as he headed for the door, he trailed his fingers lightly over Penny’s shoulders making her shiver unconsciously at his touch. A cheery wave from the doorway, another lingering look for Penny and he was gone, leaving the others to continue their night.

Settling back down after Gordon’s departure, Scott was glad to realise that he wasn’t especially required in conversation beyond maintaining a polite level of interested mumblings. It had quickly turned to some of the technicalities of the ballet that evening, with Penny giving a more detailed critique than she had earlier before moving on to more general talk about people he didn’t know so he contented himself instead with sipping his drink and watching the interplay between the friends.

Penny’s formal facade had slipped more and more as the night had gone on, especially since she had become engrossed in conversation with her best friend and he found it fascinating to see the real woman peeking through. He’d always known that she must have a more informal persona underneath the layers of etiquette but it still somehow shocked him to see her with her legs curled up beneath her on the sofa, glass of wine in hand, chatting with her best friend.

As the minutes passed however, he was forced to admit to himself that he was increasingly struggling to focus on anything that wasn’t the woman sitting next to him. Every time he started to form any kind of coherent thoughts about anything, he was distracted by the sound of her voice and her laugh.

It had been clear to him from the beginning that he was still very much attracted to her but he just couldn’t for the life of him work out what was going through her head and whether she felt the same in return.

She was still catching his gaze for a split second longer than would be considered normal and there were a couple of times that he caught her glancing at him and smiling in a way that he would ordinarily read as flirting but he just wasn’t completely confident and didn’t want to overstep any boundaries, especially as she was so close to Penny. Generally, he was very confident of his ability to read people but it felt like he had a total block on understanding the one person in the room that he desperately wanted to and it was frustrating him no end.

Sitting opposite her guests, Penny yawned and finished her drink. She had been enjoying watching the interplay between them and was sure that they thought they were being subtle but she could read Cat like an open book and Scott had spent most of the evening gazing at her like a lovesick teen so it wasn’t difficult to imagine what he was thinking.

Swirling beneath her observations however were more determined thoughts that no amount of distraction could suppress. Thoughts that had her glancing over to where she had last seen the young man who had sat next to her until recently, whose fingers had seared trails across her shoulders as he left. Her sense of duty to her guests meant that she stayed until they were ready to leave. Her glass remained empty in preparation for that moment.

Curled up like her namesake on the sofa next to Scott, Cat was taking great delight at watching her friend shift uncomfortably in her seat as they talked, peeking at the door and clearly wanting to follow Gordon but feeling unable to do so until her other guests had retired for the night. To a casual observer, Penny looked to be completely relaxed but Cat had the advantage of years worth of friendship and could tell that an internal struggle was raging between what upbringing told her was the etiquette with guests and her more immediate desire.

Feeling in the mood for a little mischief, she kept the conversation going, extending it at every natural break and enjoying the sight of Penny becoming more and more desperate to make her escape.

She knew full well that Gordon’s departure was the reason but the fact that neither of them had come clean about their relationship meant that it was possible to plead ignorance if ever challenged. She was so entertained watching Penny’s struggle, she almost missed the look Scott gave when Mark, her partner from the ballet that evening, was mentioned.

She wasn’t unaware of how outsiders might view her close friendship with her fellow dancer but it surprised her to see a flash of hurt in his eyes before it was quickly concealed as they returned back to their previous studied calm. Having spent the entire evening hyper aware of the man next to her, she couldn't help but smile at the thought that it might not just be her that was feeling their old attraction again.

Despite her awareness of his every move, as the evening had progressed Cat had become more and more at ease with the man sitting next to her. Being a dancer, she was used to physical contact and, as the temperature dropped with the passing hours, she thought nothing of it when she shifted her position to be ever so slightly closer to him, finding his warmth to be comforting in its familiarity.

As Cat shifted to lean on him, Scott instantly stiffened before forcing his muscles to relax again, despite his brain going at a million miles an hour trying to work out if it meant something. He just had no idea how to act and what was expected of him, caught between not wanting to make a scene in the middle of Penny’s house if he got things wrong and every nerve in his body screaming at him to wrap his arm around her and pull her in against him.

Eventually, after artificially extending the conversation for as long as she dared Cat finally conceded that it was time for her to go to bed too. Scott, who had not been oblivious to what she had been up to agreed readily that bed sounded like a good idea and so the group disbanded for the night, with Penny heading upstairs to her suite while Cat and Scott made their way through the mansion to the guest wing where their bedrooms were situated.

As they walked, Scott took the time to admire the effortless grace of his companion. On the stage she was elegance personified but now, with only the barest smudge of makeup on and her long hair cascading in waves down her back, she looked even more beautiful to him if that was possible. How he longed to run his fingers through that hair again, maybe brushing it gently away from her face before leaning down for a gentle kiss… Pulling himself back to reality for the millionth time that evening, he cleared his throat making Cat look up at him in expectation.

“What’s going on between those two do you think?” Scott wondered, realising that they were out of earshot of anybody who would care. He felt strangely unable to start the conversation he had been desperate to have all night so he had settled on the next best thing available and silently kicked himself for it.

“Scott Tracy, you are a gossip!”

“I am not,” he protested half heartedly.

“Yes you are, and I love it,” Cat countered, catching his eyes and smiling, enjoying once again the flutter in her chest when he smiled back. “But I have no idea what’s happening there I’m afraid. She told me about a ‘Gordon’ who she had taken a liking to a year or so ago and there was something about a moment they had in a temple but she wasn’t very specific. Most likely because she wasn’t telling me exactly who he was.” “I wonder if that was when they got trapped?” Scott mused, more to himself than anyone else, remembering the day they thought they had lost Penny and Gordon on an exploratory study of the Tomb of the Laughing King as it collapsed around them. The memory triggered a flash of anger at that old coot Professor Harold for callously suggesting that they should be sacrificed for the good of archaeology before quickly dousing it with the shame of having to be pulled away by Virgil before he did something he would have almost certainly regretted.

“They got what? She didn’t tell me that part!” Cat exclaimed, completely missing the emotions playing out over Scott’s face thanks to her surprise at his revelation. She had always understood that Penny’s involvement with International Rescue meant that there would be large parts of her life that she wouldn’t be privy to, but somehow it was still shocking to be confronted with evidence of it. “Well, I guess she plays her cards close to her chest, does our Penny. Even with me.”

“I’ve never known Gordon willingly take an early night when there’s nothing on the next day so something has to be up. And did you see the way they were looking at each other?” enquired Scott, giving Cat exactly the sort of look that his brother had been aiming at Penny all evening.

“Oh I completely agree about the looks,” Cat smiled, her heart rate quickening at the sudden tension that had sprung up between them. Something intangible had just shifted and she felt unaccountably nervous, knowing that despite all her promises to herself that she wasn’t going to let anything happen with him, now her mind was filled with desire and not much else. “There’s definitely something going on. I’m sure between the two of us we’ll get to the bottom of it.”

“We sure will. Well, this is me here, ” Scott admitted as they slowed to a halt outside one of the many doors. “Thanks for inviting me tonight. I had a great time.”

“You’re very welcome. I’m just glad you enjoyed it, I was worried you’d be bored.” Cat broke his gaze and looked at the floor at her admission, embarrassed that she still felt that she needed his approval. It had been years since she last thought about him before he waltzed back into her life and now here she was again, desperate for him to notice and appreciate her.

Seeing Cat standing looking so unsure of herself, it was all Scott could do not to scoop her up in his arms. The difference in her from earlier was startling to him - mere hours before, she had been completely at ease alone on the stage in front of 2500 people, but here in the corridor she seemed so fragile that he longed to hold her tight and protect her from the world.

“You really didn’t need to be. And if you ever want another supporter at one of your shows then I’d be honoured to be there,” Scott added sincerely. He had enjoyed his night at the ballet much more than he had expected and the thought of having more experiences like that at the theatre was something he was very happy to explore. Especially if it meant spending more time with Cat.

“I’d be careful what you wish for if I were you,” Cat joked with a wicked smile, feeling like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders now she knew he was serious about his enjoyment of the ballet. “But seriously, thank you. It was really nice knowing you were there tonight.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Scott was at a loss for words. He desperately didn’t want to say goodnight but he couldn’t think of any plausible reason to keep talking either.

“I guess this is goodnight then,” Cat said, smiling ruefully, wishing that there was some way of prolonging the night. If she was honest with herself, what she wanted to do was reach up and kiss Scott, but her fear of being rebuffed was keeping her paralysed.

“I guess so…”

“Goodnight, Scott. I’ve had a really good time tonight. I’m glad we met each other again”

“Me too. Like you wouldn’t believe. Night night, Cat,” he replied softly.

Knowing that she wouldn’t forgive herself if he didn’t take the chance but steeling herself for rejection, Cat could feel her heart pounding in her chest as she reached up to wrap her arms around him. Taking a chance, she brushed his cheek with her lips and Scott felt it like a bolt of lightning. After holding the hug for as long as she dared, she pulled back slightly and felt Scott’s arms stay securely around her waist, just as they had 2 weeks previously.

“Can I ask you something before we head to bed?” he started, more sure of the answer now he could feel her kiss seared onto his cheek but knowing he wouldn’t forgive himself if he proceeded without checking first.

“Of course. Ask away.”

“What’s going on with you and Mark?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Cat laughed. “He’s my best friend besides Penny. I’ve known him since I joined the company and we’ve been pretty much inseparable ever since.”

“Ah, right. I just wasn’t sure when I saw you walking back to the dressing rooms tonight...” Scott tailed off, feeling suddenly stupid for even considering it.

“Well, well, well. Are you jealous, Mr Tracy?” Cat teased, raising an eyebrow as their eyes locked together, the smoulder she found there making her breathing ragged.

“No, I just, um…” The relief Scott felt for knowing that there was nothing stopping him from acting on his feelings was tempered by a sudden indecision as to how to proceed. He was desperate to kiss her but he wanted to take things at her pace. However, a glance down at her slightly parted lips just as she licked them as if in anticipation was enough to burst the dam he had been holding back all night.

Before he knew what he was doing his lips had found hers, crushing them and surprising even himself with the force of his reaction. But what surprised him even more was that Cat hadn’t kneed him in the groin and actually seemed to be kissing him back. Despite that, when he broke the kiss he was still quite prepared to apologise if he had made some massive error in judgement. Instead, he was met by flushed cheeks and a pair of sparkling eyes.

They stilled for a moment, taking in the sudden change in their relationship before Cat reached up for another kiss, barely brushing his lips with her own and making him moan with a delicious mix of pleasure and frustration as she teased him, knowing that he longed for more but unwilling to let him have everything his own way. His lips were perfectly soft, just as she remembered and his kisses generated a burning heat which slowly spread out across her body, leaving her aching to feel his skin against hers.

Gradually she relented to his desire, slowly increasing the pressure and deepening their kisses as she snaked her tongue along the seam of his lips, encouraging them to part. Her lips felt smooth and firm beneath his own as his world ceased to exist beyond the woman in his arms. Memories and sensations from all the other times he had held and kissed her flooded back and he felt his body respond, sending all his blood south and leaving him lightheaded.

Her breathing ragged, Cat pulled back to meet his eyes again, the burning desire in their blue depths ripping through her, stripping away any defences she had built; she could no longer deny that she wanted him and she wanted him right now. A look passed between them that they had shared many times in the past and they simply fell on each other, all caution thrown to the wind.

Scott kissed her again and again, harder and with more urgency which she met with an immediate response. Totally lost in the moment, his knees suddenly went weak and he staggered slightly as her hand slid up to the back of his head, her fingers entwining themselves in his hair and pulling slightly. She was the only one who had ever discovered the way to drive him completely to the edge and it was nearly the end of him right then. Tightening his grip, he was completely lost to her.

Cat smiled to herself at Scott’s reaction, enjoying the sensation of his hand now tangling itself in the long strands of her own hair as he drew her closer to him and pressed his hips against her, letting her feel the unmistakable bulge against her stomach. Desperately, she clawed at his shirt, pulling it out from his waistband and sliding her hands up the smooth skin on his back making him moan again as he kissed her harder while he fumbled for the door handle.

Thinking of nothing but their aching need for each other, they practically fell into the bedroom, not caring who heard the door slamming behind them.

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds 2015 #Scott Tracy #Penelope Creighton Ward #Gordon Tracy #thunderbirds fanfiction

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queen-of-the-trash-planet-tm · 4 years

Text

Daminette December Day 8: Robin Hood Au

——————————————————————————

Damian Al Gul was not a patient man. When he heard news of a theif stealing from nobility, it would be an understatement to say he was angry. The king, Ra Al Gul, and his subordinates lived lavishly while the rest of the kingdom lived in poverty. Being the grandson of the king, it put him directly next in the line of succession. This Robin Hood would be audacious enough to steal from his kin. They would have to be taught a lesson.

“King Ra, let’s not be too hasty,” his advisor, Tim Drake, pleaded. Though it would fall onto deaf ears, “No one knows who Robin Hood is and because of this you would punish the kingdom as a whole?”

“Of course,” the king’s voice was as cold as ice, “they need to be taught a lesson. Think of the people as dogs. If they are not disciplined, then they will never obey.”

Tim looked horrified by that statement. He knew the king was cruel, but cruel enough to not value the lives of those he ruled would inevitably cost him the crown. Damian, who had been listening to this confrontation, may not have shown his love for the kingdom, but it was there. He knew his grandfather would let the entire kingdom burn before admitting defeat. “Damian,” his grandfather called, “They are yours and you are able to do as you see fit.”

‘You’re right, Grandfather, I’ll do as I see fit,’ Damian thought bitterly. He’d do what he’d have to to ensure the future of the kingdom. Damian Al Gul is not a patient man, he can’t just wait for Robin Hood to be apprehended or for Ra to die. He would have to do everything himself. His plan needed to be enacted faster then previously expected, no matter it will be done and Damian will succeed even at the price of his soul.

The thief, who the kingdom took kindly to calling them “Robin Hood,” was the orphaned daughter of bakers. Her name was Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Her parents died due to them falling ill and couldn’t afford the medication needed to save them. That was the final push Marinette needed to fight against the rich. This would be no ordinary heist, this was war. All goods stolen went directly back to the community. This resulted in a following of the Robin Hood persona. However, as all of this happened during the cover of night, no one knew who Robin Hood was. Most assumed a man because a woman wasn’t that clever. Most nobility underestimated the women of the time and what pleasure it brought Marinette to know of their suffering.

Marinette needed to slow down, she was prone to spells of clumsiness. Another selling point as to why no one suspected her to be the smoking gun, how could such a sly thief be a clumsy peasant girl. A certain god of destruction helped with that. Plagg, Kwamii of destruction and bad luck, chose Marinette to be his vessel. With the help from the cat Marinette could disappear into the shadows of the night. How ironic that the kingdom crowned her the prey of her transformed form. Nevertheless she would creep, stalk, and hunt her prey for the good of the nation. It’s a shame that her plan would be intrupted.

It happened on the 8th of December of the year 1519 A.D. Robin Hood fell through on a job. She got sloppy. A child had been involved and threw her off her usual rhythm. On this night Marinette’s sights were set on a Duke that lived near the palace, a high risk target. She didn’t know that the Prince had been watching her activity and predicted her next move. Prince Damian Al Gul was expecting a man and did not anticipate a woman in a cat suit. Her eyes were glowing an electric blue, her suit was loose with many pockets, her hair was long and braided it mimicked a tail, a staff was at her side, and sharp claws were visible. He also hadn’t expected her to destroy the chains he bound her in, “Sayonara, Your Highness!” With that she vanished within the night.

The days following had both Marinette and Damian on high alert. Robin Hood had not been active in seven days and the Prince was trying to convince his grandfather that the culprit was a woman with powers. “There’s no need to punish the whole kingdom, it’s a woman with blue eyes that can destroy anything with a single touch and long hair. The others need not be effected.”

“They help aid and abed a known criminal. They are as bad as them, and are you certain it was a woman? They aren’t smart nor strong enough to achieve such feats, perhaps the night tricked you. There is no such thing as magic,” Ra laughed heartily.

“I know what I saw,” Damian’s voice steeled, “you shouldn’t underestimate an opponent you’ve never encountered. It was definitely a woman, I’m sure of it,” Ra dismissed Damian saying how he was fooled. Damian would kill him before Christmas Eve, he swore it.

Robin Hood took a hiatus for one week before heading back onto the saddle. She hit lower risk nobles. The poor surrounding towns have been receiving copycats and claiming to be Robin Hood. All of which were males, therefore Damian didn’t even bat an eye at these claims. He didn’t understand how she could just vanish from every scene. Not a trace could be found at any of the nobles’ homes. It made him livid.

Marinette had been working odd jobs in an effort to keep food on the table for herself. She never once kept her heist rewards, all of it went back to the people. If she kept it all, she would be no better then the nobels she stole from. Redistribution of wealth would have to come eventually to keep from another French Revolution. The king should be thanking her, without “Robin Hood” the people of the kingdom would have certainly overthrown him by now. All Ra seems to be doing now is sitting on his laurel in the palace. He seems to be on a warpath because of her though.

The people of France are now being punished with lower rations, the king says until “Robin Hood” is turned in, the rations will continue to decrease. Marinette contemplated revealing herself so that the rest would not suffer because of her, but then the people of France said they would defend Robin Hood till their dying breath. “Robin Hood is the only reason my children are still alive,” one citizen shouts, “and you expect me to turn my savior in? Who are we Judas?”

The others seemed to murmur or nod in agreement. Marinette was almost brought to tears. The people of France regarded her as their hero, and as far as they were concerned Robin Hood was their true monarch.

Damian, however, was becoming increasingly more and more frustrated with Ra and Robin Hood. His plan to kill Ra would be complete by sunrise on the 23rd of December, but he was getting nowhere when it came to her. That was until a certain female baker was hired by the palace.

‘She is beautiful,’ Damian thought to himself. He did not know her name, but boy did she take his breath away whenever she walked near him. Her eyes we the most gorgeous blue he’d ever seen, her hair was short and pulled away by two ponytails. She was a goddess in mortal form. Every time she graced him with her presence, he’d drop everything to stop and stare. The baker was none other than Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

She knew the job was risky, but what’s life without a little risk. She had to be careful though, the prince constantly had eyes on her. He never spoke to her, but was always watching her. There’s no way he could recognize her, last time he saw her she was wearing the Miraculous. It’s impossible, so why was he so interested in her?

Marinette was still active as Robin Hood, she never stoped. She wasn’t as frequent, but not once did she stop. This was about something more then her safety, there were real lives on the line and all were counting on her. The palace should probably up their security, how did no one realize that she was in the palace?

Oh, they did. It was just Tim Drake’s idea to keep silent. If Ra wanted to look at them like animals, then Tim would give him animals. They weren’t obedient dogs for his bidding, the people were foxes that were plotting against every move that was made. All but the nobels knew that Robin Hood was part of the palace staff and the staff would do anything to protect one of their own.

The 22nd night of December rolled around and everything was in place for the fall of Ra. Damian had spent weeks of preparation just to ensure the perfect crime. After his mother’s disappearance, Damian’s skill set began to incorporate some less then legal activities. He knew of the types of poison Ra became immune too, he knew of Ra’s intensive knowledge of combat, he knew the interworkings of the castle’s interior. Every piece was in place, noting was left to chance.

The only unknown variable would be the appearance of Robin Hood. Ever since their first encounter, they’ve seemed to slow their pace. They didn’t stop though. It was weird how she was attacking smaller fish other then the big leagues. But she would be a headache for another day, today Damian needed to get rid of his beloved grandfather and he knew just the way to do it. He bumped into someone, “I-I’m sorry Prince Damian! I wasn’t l-looking where I was going!”

Damian recognized the voice as the baker’s, he drew a breath. He was the one who actually bumped into her, “N-No,” he cleared his throat, “No, it was my fault.”

A flush creeped its way up his neck. He didn’t understand it, Damian had experienced attraction to women before. But with her, it was like breathing for the first time. He didn’t know how to explain it, she made his stomach do somersaults and caused his mind to go blank. “Umm,” she spoke again, “well, I think it’s time I take my leave.”

“Wait!” Damian grabbed her wrist and quickly let go after turning off autopilot, “What’s your name?”

“My name?” She questioned.

“Yes, what do they call you, other than a vision of beauty.”

It was Marinette’s turn to be embarrassed now, “O-Oh, my name’s Marinette! Marinette Dupain-Cheng!”

“Marinette,” he said as if it was a spell on his tongue, “what a beautiful name to match the face of the beholder.”

Not knowing how to respond to that Marinette bowed to take her leave. After she left, Damian snapped out of his daze and continued to push his plan into motion.

*Line break*

It was the morning of December 23rd and King Ra was found dead in his bed. He died in his sleep with no signs of foul play. Oh, but foul play was at work. This left a vacancy for the throne. A vacancy that would be filled by Damian Al Gul, Heir to the throne.

After his coronation, Damian started a initiative to improve the kingdom’s poverty situation. Damian knew the Noble families horded their wealths like dragons protecting their treasure, but that would no longer be acceptable. Damian made the kingdom’s economy flurish within 2 years time. And during that time, Robin Hood retired. She said the kingdom no longer needed her.

Marinette continued her work in the palace, she as promoted as assistant to the crown in no time. She spent more and more time with the king and grew an affection for him. But in order to sustain a life, she’d need to find a husband as were the times. Tim Drake seemed like the safest choice, they were best friends. She knew Tim and a man named Conner Kent were infatuated with each other, but not everyone was as accepting as Marinette was.

Her and the king had their daily chat as he was doing his daily duties when Marinette brought up the subject, “Do you think Timothy Drake would make a good husband?”

Damian raised and eyebrow, “Yes, why do you ask?”

“I’m wondering if I should pursue him as a husband or not,” she said plainly.

“W-What?” Damian spat his wine out, “W-Why would you need you pursue him as a husband?”

“I need a husband to sustain myself. I don’t want to marry Tim, but in order to keep my family legacy alive I will need a husband.”

“True, but Tim?” Damian tried to keep his distain to himself as much as he physically could.

“What’s wrong with Tim?” Marinette asked quited angered.

“Oh, nothing... if you enjoy talking to a wet, half-asleep napkin!”

“Hey!” Marinette snapped, “That’s my friend and yours, remember that. My king,” Damian knew me messed up, she only called him king whenever he really made her mad, “do you have a better solution?”

“I-I...” he couldn’t think of anything.

“That’s what I assumed,” Marinette huffed, “Please refrian from talking bad about him like that. What is wrong?”

“Nothing,” ‘Everything that you said’ Damian’s kind took over.

Marinette had left the room, the atmosphere became too much for her. She went to help the other servants in the neighboring rooms. It was then Damian decided he would ask her to marry him.

Damian was never a patient man, remember?

——————————————————————————

A/N: I’m sorry for not posting for day seven. I wasn’t feeling the prompt for it and didn’t want to give y’all something subpar in comparison to the other thing I’m capable of creating for you. Still, thank you for continuing to read, like, comment, and reblog my work! It’s crazy to think so many of you enjoy my work! If you want to be added to the tag list all you have to do is comment or send an ask!

Tag list: @daminette-december2019 @persephonebutkore @gingerdaile @seraphichana @mystery-5-5 @krispydefendorpolice @jardimazul @royalchaoticfangirl @theoryfan205 @goblinwhoships @emeraldpuffguide @spicybelladonna @thesunanditsangel @coltaire

#daminette december #robin hood au #damian wayne #marinette dupain cheng #tim drake #ra al gul #damian al ghul #damian x marinette #damientte #maribat #lady noire #prince!damian #robin hood!Marinette

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