#& i said that i didn’t want to take a role away from someone who identifies as a woman but that i’m ok w being considered…

[thomato-j]

…

#so i auditioned for a play today & for the 1st time ever i said i’d be ok with playing any gender #which like… i’ve been on t for over a year now & i’ve been a lot more comfortable in myself & confident w all the changes #& it’s so weird to think about how i never in a million years would’ve said that before now #but it seems from the callback sides that they’re considering me to play a woman #& i said that i didn’t want to take a role away from someone who identifies as a woman but that i’m ok w being considered… #anyway it’s a very strange feeling but if i do get cast i trust the prod team to work w me & do something creative w the cast’s genders #they’re also considering me for a male role but i feel like that pool of candidates might oddly be tougher to work through #also the F role is specifically asian— i’m part japanese & i’ve never been cast with that in mind before… #and anyway i’ve sort of had an unpredictable go of it over the course of my life as to whether i’m white passing or not in any given context #so this aud process is kind of a very different & new experience for me in a lot of ways #anyway if they cast me as the guy or don’t cast me at all this is all moot but #it’s just got me thinking about a lot of things.

[knifedog-machina]

Daemons To Systems, And The Ways They Intertwine

Hey, I’m Max, he/they - I’m the host of our system, the guy who lives in the front and has only ever lived here, the one who identifies our body as my body specifically. A few nights ago, we realized something about our system origins while talking to some other systems, and I’ve honestly never heard of it happening before, so I thought I’d talk about it.

I used to think that I was a singlet before Jude and Gavin walked in. Now I’m pretty sure I wasn’t. See, before I was the host of a system, I was a daemian. I had three daemons, over the course of my time practicing daemonism, interacting with the community. And they were all a little weird.

The first one was Charlie, affectionately longformed as Charlemagne. Xe appeared in January 2018 as a red fox, said that was xir settled form, and never changed from that. That’s an option for daemons - I know other daemons who chose their forms, independent of how well that form represented their daemian, and stayed that way - but it was in contrast to how most people seemed to do it. I never really felt the need to find a form that fit my personality, not when xe was so confident that this was what xe was.

I didn’t try to make xir do anything, I didn’t decide to give xir faux autonomy - xe just did things xirself, with or without my prompting. Xe was playful, optimistic, a cheerful presence always willing to race around and perk me back up. I really needed xir, back then - I was going through a lot of stress in high school, and I needed someone around to remind me of the whimsical little joys in life. Xe fronted sometimes, and I loved when xe did, conjured phantom tail and paws and big fox ears and an unstoppable zest for life.

My next daemon, Martin, appeared in May 2019 after a fever dream. Really. I was sick and tired and miserable, and I didn’t want to do anything, including things that would make me feel better, and a new internal voice appeared in my head. She told me to drink some water and get to sleep. The next morning, she was still there, lounging around as a large black dog, and she stayed.

This became her role, her purpose in our mind, being a shepherd for my needs. She ran our faulty executive functioning, told me to take care of myself when I forgot important things, encouraged me when I failed to meet expectations. She raised her hackles when anyone tried to overstep our boundaries, and advocated for doing what we needed to protect ourselves, regardless of whether it was nice or polite.

Charlie and Martin overlapped in existence for a while. Charlie loved having a big sibling to play with, and Martin was fond of xir. So I had two daemons for a while, and the arrangement was nice. As I transitioned out of high school into college, my circumstances and environment drastically changed. Charlie was sweet, but xe stopped having a function in my life, so over the months, xe popped up less and less, until xe faded away entirely. Xe wasn’t upset to go, and xir memory is a comfort to me - xe served xir purpose, brought me joy, and had a life well lived.

In October 2021, I created a new daemon, compartmentalizing my emotional dysregulation and disordered anxiety into something that was Not Myself, so I could talk to it and understand its needs without being overwhelmed with distress. This became the feral shadow of a dog that we named Cortisol, nicknamed Court - and if Martin was our Freudian superego, who provided guidance for my decisions and stability when I got stressed, Court was our id, feeling all the explosive emotions that I couldn’t externally express and curling up for scritches like a beloved pet when it got what it needed.

We stayed like that for almost a year, getting familiar with the rhythm of life together. Then, in August 2022, my current headmates walked into my brain. My daemons vanished for the duration of their stay.

They only stayed around a few days, that first time - I was moving to a new place and having new people in my brain simultaneously was overloading our mental RAM, so I was forgetting a lot, and I decided that I’d rather live with them some other time. They understood, we said our goodbyes, and they walked out the next morning. (Recounting this to my friend Tanix was hilarious, by the way. “what the fuck (positive)” he said, his own headmates unable to do this. The joys of being a gateway system.) Once the headmates were gone, my daemons returned into my life.

They came back in March 2023, after I settled down into college for a while, and the memory didn’t jam up like it did previously, so we didn’t part ways this time. Martin and Court vanished overnight, again, and looking back on it, I’m noticing some patterns.

Gavin is basically performing the same role that Martin did - he’s the guy reminding us about our responsibilities, talking through the emotions when we feel like garbage, telling me to eat when I forget, or encouraging me to eat when I have enough sensory issues that I can't stomach anything. He consistently fronts when talking to people we don’t especially like, because he feels protective of us and tends to be the most patient with annoyances.

He’s also literally just some guy, just a decent human person who wound up in here because his partner arrived in my brain five minutes before him and understandably got really upset about it, so he followed them in. Somehow. We don't know how it works, but I also don't know exactly where the first two of my daemons came from, so I’m fine leaving it as a mystery.

(He has a lot of complicated feelings about the position he's in, playing a daemon’s role as a completely different person from me, and will probably write his own post about it some time.)

Jude is, unfortunately, kinda in the same role as Court. And since Court held the emotional dysregulation in my brain, Jude also holds the grand majority of the distress and anxiety that we feel on a regular basis. We all really wish it was split more evenly, because Jude tends to not only lose the ability to talk when they panic, they also get stuck in the front, completely unable to talk to me or Gavin.

(It’s not even that they feel the stress that directly affects them, it’s that on top of the stress that we get in our daily life. They regularly had panic attacks over my grades and exams last semester, and they weren’t even the one studying for it at all! It’s fucked up and I don’t love it for us.)

And there are other interesting little coincidences. You know how Court was a sketched-in sort of black dog? Jude only really realized they related to dogs upon arriving in the system with me, and the archetypal form they identify with is, again, a stylized black dog.

It’s really interesting, the ways my brain decided to be plural, because I didn’t think I was a system back then. I had a daemon, then two daemons, and they were daemons because I considered them parts of myself - no matter how autonomous they were, we were bound together in the same identity, as parts of the same person. They were reflections of me, and I loved them like I loved myself, and they loved me with the same ferocity.

With this realization, that my daemons effectively merged into my system, I did have to ask - are my headmates also parts of me, since they’re falling into the same functional compartments in my brain? We don’t think so, or at least, we don’t think it’s that simple. 

They’re completely different people from me, people who arrived here with their own lives and memories and identities. They aren’t autonomous reflections of my psyche like my daemons were. They’re my weird roommates who moved in with me, and my boyfriends, and I guess you could say we’re life partners - because hey, what’s a partner if not someone you share a life with? What’s more intimate than sharing the same body, hearing each other's thoughts and feelings? They aren't parts of me, but we live the same life together, and I think that counts as something just as significant.

#max talks #personal essay #alterhuman #daemonism #plurality #gateway system

[eobarried]

ok let’s talk about miguel o’hara because it needs to be done. i want to clarify that this is not a hate post or anti-miguel in any sense, but it is a critical analysis of his character and role in the spiderverse. if you don’t feel like you can read this right now, i suggest you like it/save it for later and read it when you feel like you can with an open mind

especially for anyone who’s a miguel enjoyer (i consider myself one as well) because if you really love his character, it’s important to understand why his character was created and what a great narrative tool it is! anyway-

miguel o’hara is, allegorically, a bigot. 

now - let’s unpack and clarify that. miguel is allegorically a bigot - his character is used to represent a certain, specific type of bigotry we see in real life. notice how i’m saying “bigot” and not “racist” - because despite the memes, i don’t think miguel’s hatred of miles is rooted in antiblackness. i think it’s rooted in something a little more complicated, which is why i’m using the term bigotry. but this can be a little confusing, so let’s start from the beginning. or, at least, the most important part.

the canon.

i want you to really think about the word used here - canon. hearing that word should break the fourth wall for you, just like hearing “he’s got hammerspace!” should have earlier in the movie - or discussions different characters have surrounding their distinct art styles. it’s meant to break the fourth wall and draw attention to itself. specifically, the use of the word canon here is meant for us to take a step back from the in-universe events (treating the characters as “real” people and looking at events logically) and instead think of the spiderman story and mythos.

spiderman, as a story, has been told over and over again. we, as an audience, are deeply familiar with this story, as we’ve seen it as a live-action blockbuster in no less than three separate franchises. that’s not even mentioning all the cartoon adaptations, and of course the comic runs. adhering to a specific formula surrounding the story makes sense. when someone walks into a spiderman movie, they have certain... expectations. that no matter what version of spiderman this is, that they follow certain story beats and adhere to certain rules as they follow along in their journey. miguel, when explaining this to miles, focuses on said story beats (which i’ll get to in a second), but there’s something that’s way more important than specific plot points that we need to address here.

and that’s theme. 

theme (if you’re not an english literature person), is basically something you take away from the story. it’s usually a moral, idea, or concept that can be applied to the world around you, and helps you learn more about yourself, society, culture, or history. all stories have themes - usually they have multiple. so let’s get into it.

the original spiderman comic was notable in several ways. the thing that made spiderman so popular and successful is that he was the first (notable) teenage superhero that wasn’t a part of a greater team. spiderman wasn’t a sidekick that was written in to appeal to an audience of children. he was a teenager himself - but he was no less competent or strong than the (mostly adult) villains he fought. 

and not only was spiderman a kid - he was the kid. he was a nerd. he was an older white teen, yes - but he represented the type of person who would go out and buy a comic book more than any other hero at the time. before he became spiderman, peter parker was just kind of a geek. at the time (the 60s) this still identified him as an outcast. peter was socially awkward, not good with girls, he didn’t have many friends, and he was bullied consistently. the only thing he was good at was science, basically. we can connect peter’s original portrayal to many legitimately marginalized groups - specifically those that might be autistic and impacted by ableism. to those kids reading that comic, they saw a hero that represented them.

and how does peter represent them? what does spiderman teach these children by reading these comics? the original spiderman is the story of a man who, by chance, was granted the opportunity for greatness - to become an integral part of his community. spiderman uses his skills (both those granted to him by the spider, but also those that he inherently has, such as his skills with science and engineering), in order to prove his worth and merit. it’s lonely, the road he has to walk - he can’t tell his friends and family who he is, lest they become victims like uncle ben - or lest they betray him. he can only rely on himself and his own knowledge in order to protect his community. the themes we draw from spiderman are this: luck can strike at any time, but you need to use your own strength and intelligence to pull yourself up afterwards, no matter how hard things get. no matter how many people you lose.

that’s what miguel believes spiderman is about. this original spiderman story is that of the american dream. of a youth who is ostracized by society (for whatever reason), but is still able to use their own merit to overcome the obstacles placed in front of them and the grief and pain they face on their path to greatness. it’s a hard and lonely path, but miguel values anyone who has the bravery to face it.

so why does he hate miles?

because he didn’t do it alone. because miles doesn’t believe in the traditional american dream.

if you want to read more about that, check out my analysis comparing spider-society and visions academy over here (it’s not as in-depth as i would like it to be, but it gets the job done) but basically: miles believes that every person deserves greatness. he states it very clearly when talking to his dad about how he won the lottery to go to visions: he just got lucky. he feels as if he took an opportunity away from someone else. why is it just given to him, when anyone else at brooklyn middle is just as deserving of an amazing education? when these resources should be put to use to uplift his whole community, not just miles alone?

miles brings that same energy as a spider-person. he’s not just an anomaly because his spider was from a different dimension. he’s an anomaly because he had a mentor. not only a mentor - he had a whole clan of spider-people there for him. while peter b parker and the crew weren’t always very good allies for miles, they still wanted him to succeed. each spider-person was an outcast - not in the same way as miles, but they were eager to describe what miles needed to master in order to keep himself safe as a crime-fighter. although they weren’t always supportive, it wasn’t because they were “gatekeeping” - it’s because they were worried miles might hurt himself. to them, he hadn’t put in the work on his own, and because he hadn’t proven himself as a spider-person in isolation, they thought there was no way he could be successful as a spider-person during a very high-risk mission.

however, miles proves them wrong. it’s true that miles has to pull upon his own inner strength, but he also pulls on wisdom from those that mentored him - his father, his uncle aaron, peter parker, and peter b parker. as well as love and support from his community. miles became spiderman - but not in isolation. he had help, and support, and love - always - that helped him succeed.

because spiderman - in all universes - represents success in america. in the original comics, spiderman is able to overcome his status as an outcast in order to help his city. he now has great power - a potential allegory related to wealth and social or political status. he uses that power in order to protect the community he loves (nyc) as they can’t all protect themselves.

now let’s bring it back. miguel. right.

miguel has already made his mark as a spiderman. although we know he broke canon, it wasn’t related to him becoming spiderman. we can assume that miguel still went through serious struggle and trauma to get to where he’s at. and now, through thematic analysis, we know that becoming spiderman represents success in america.

so, miguel’s dislike of miles, thematically, connects to how older generations may believe that younger generations “have it too easy” or “don’t put in the same effort.” it’s the (mainly capitalistic) ideal that in order to succeed, it has to be in isolation, without outside help. we can infer that miguel is not only upset that miles didn’t do things “canonically” - but that he is afforded success that miguel doesn’t think he deserves. miguel believes that in order to succeed in america, one needs to do it on their own, and suffer in order to succeed. no “hand-outs,” no support, no community outreach. it’s a very rigid capitalistic standard - which is why i called it “bigoted.” miguel is still a marginalized figure - and it’s important that miguel is the one stating the viewpoint, not a white spiderman. because this isn’t a white vs black storyline. miguel’s dislike of miles is specifically a sort of generational, inter-community bigotry.

for someone who hasn’t experienced it - think of it like hazing. you join a new sports team. the senior players say “you carry the equipment out and clean everything after the game.” you ask “why? can’t we all just do it together? aren’t we supposed to be a team?” and they say “no. you’re the new guys. hard work builds character. deal with it.”

alright. so we took a look at canon through a meta-story lens. now let’s pull it back even further.

so, miguel’s ideology. he adheres firmly to canon, a series of events that cannot (or, should not), change. if we apply that to our lives, that sounds a lot like predestination. destiny. fate. let’s call it predestination for now - you’ll see why in a minute.

now, a belief in predestination makes sense. it can bring a lot of people comfort, thinking that horrible events are out of their hands, and often times it can be harmless to believe in predestination in these instances. for example: someone who blames themselves for not being able to say goodbye to a loved one who died suddenly. if this person believes in predestination, it might ease some of their pain and guilt to know that there was nothing they could do - that it was the will of some higher power that their loved one is gone, and that there was nothing they could do to prevent it. some individuals might find comfort in knowing that they are not to blame for the work of the universe.

however, predestination can also be malicious. thinking that things are the will of the universe, or the will of god... that’s been used for some pretty fucked up stuff in the past. in a more moderate (and topical) example - royalty. many kings used the concept of predestination to explain why they deserved the crown. their bloodline was chosen by god himself - that’s why they’re powerful (compare to spider-people and their success. if they are also predestined for their spider-bite, doesn’t that make them akin to monarchs?)

in more nefarious examples, predestination can be used to subjugate and oppress others. predestination was used in ancient indian society in order to justify the caste system - utilizing the hindu concept of karma to justify why certain members of society were mistreated and oppressed. in a more american sense, predestination was often used as a way to justify both slavery and segregation. originally, slavers tried to justify that god wanted black individuals to serve as slaves because it was his will. later, when divine intervention fell out of fashion, they attempted to use eugenics to justify that black individuals were simply born inferior - that it was just science, and that there was nothing they could do about it.

that’s the other reason it’s called canon. the original usage of the word was to refer to the books of the bible that the church recognized as legitimate. it ties back to faith and religion. 

now, religion, faith, and even the belief in fate itself - are not inherently bad. miguel’s belief in predestination doesn’t make him a bad or bigoted person inherently. however, the way he forces other to believe and adhere to it is. it’s very likely that miguel became so attached to the canon in order to justify why his wife and daughter died - in order to remove his own accountability for their passing and instead place the blame on some higher power. this belief snowballed out of control, however - and now influences his jealousy and distaste for miles and his way of life.

because forcing a canon - a story - on miles, is wrong. when miguel tells miles that his father must die, that he has to adhere to canon - that’s a horrible thing to say to a young black boy. to tell him that in order to be successful as a marginalized individual (to be spiderman) that he has to lose the last black male role model he has? it’s heinous! it’s akin to telling miles that in order to succeed, he has to cut ties with part of his culture. which does happen to young marginalized people in america. they are told that in order to be successful, they have to leave their culture, community, and support system behind.

it’s especially sinister when looking at it from the point of view of storytelling. when looking at it from that angle, miguel is basically telling miles that in order for his story - the story of a young black boy - to be profitable, he has to go through even more trauma and loss. it’s similar to what his guidance counselor mentions when discussing how miles should write his college entrance essay - that he should lie, and emphasize that he struggles while growing up, and that his support system was unstable. it’s the traditional story of a struggling black boy - which i discuss more here when talking about earth 42 miles and his inclusion in the spiderverse.

miguel’s bigotry is centrally tried to his idea of what american society expects of marginalized individuals who were able to achieve their dreams despite it all. a story of pain and struggle. one where they were able to - only through their own strength and intelligence, and maybe with a little bit of luck - pull themselves up, and quietly work towards their own success.

miguel’s belief in the american dream and predestination not only influences his treatment of miles, but also his creation of spider-society. now, let me be frank: miguel, in this franchise, is not supposed to represent someone who created systematic oppression. he’s simply one of the people who believed in bigoted ideals and allowed those ideals to influence his decisions. because when miguel created spider-society, it basically became an elitist isolation chamber. spider-society is located in a huge tower on miguela’s earth. the tower is so tall and imposing on the utopian landscape, there’s no way that miguel is able to properly support his own community as spiderman - he’s not worried about what happens to his own community. especially once we learn that a good portion of them live underground, where miguel can’t even see them. even if he wasn’t occupied with anomalies at all times, there’s no way he could even connect with nueva york around him.

the same can be said of all the spider-people in headquarters. they’re not even in their home dimensions. how can they possibly support their communities when they have isolated themselves as far away as they could literally be? it parallels how successful individuals often treat their communities in reality - what do wealthy people usually do at the first sign of their wealth? they build a huge mansion to get away from it all. many times in our capitalist society, wealthy and successful people abandon the communities they should be supporting. 

miguel represents that. he is a successful, powerful person, who decided to focus only on other successful, powerful people like him. marginalized people who achieved the american dream on their own. people who, instead of uplifting others, instead tear down those who don’t fit into their “mold.” who are successful in their own right, but don’t hold the same ideals and values that they do. who aren’t the model example of marginalized success in the eyes of the (white) american “audience.” 

miguel is a product of a great problem within society. while he partakes and perpetuates bigotry, that doesn’t mean that he’s irredeemable. the narrative shows that miguel is a broken man. if we think about to the end credits scene from itsv, where he calls his dimensional travel bracelet a “goober” - he wasn’t always so hateful. he wasn’t always like this. he can un-learn his bigotry and he isn’t completely lost. the way that he discusses his ideas - it’s clear that he knows that there are flaws in them, just as other spider-people consistently point out. he can be changed and improved - just like our real leaders and role models can be changed and improved. miguel is not without saving - but it’s important to remember that he does need to be saved. 

#Spiderverse #across the spiderverse #across the spider-verse spoilers #into the spider verse #miguel o'hara #meta analysis

[lightsaber-dorphin]

This post sprang from an ao3 comment conversation where I mentioned my “Fulcrum sounds like a clone name essay” and the author said they wanted to hear it. This was supposed to be a short thought-dump…

Ahsoka is the original Fulcrum. The symbol is based off her markings, and she choose the name. While the alias was later used by other rebel spies, Ahsoka created it as her own spy persona, not a title for a rebellion spy.

When I say Fulcrum sounds like a clone name, I am being literal. It sounds like the kind of name a clone would have. Ahsoka’s other alias, Ashla, has a deep meaning but is common enough that people don’t immediately know she’s lying about her name or connect her to the Jedi. By contrast, the only group in the galaxy who would find Fulcrum a normal name is the clones.

A fulcrum is “a thing that plays a central or essential role in an activity, event, or situation.” It reflects how Ahsoka sees herself. (She has a bit of an ego, and that’s okay.) It represents what she wants to be and do as part of the rebellion. “Fulcrum” is a description of Ahsoka by Ahsoka. That is a very clone-style way of choosing a name!

For someone else it could be a coincidence. But Ahsoka, who fought alongside clones for years and was close to many of them, would’ve seen the similarities. What did it mean to her, to pick a name a clone might choose in a way a clone might choose it?

Take a look at Ahsoka’s other alias: Ashla. An ancient name for the light side of the Force. There’s no such thing as a “Jedi name,” but Ashla is arguably the closest thing to one there is. She used this name right after leaving the Order, and again when in hiding after the Jedi were massacred. Both were times when her emotions about the Jedi were very raw.

Ahsoka created Fulcrum right after she returned to her troops, they and every other clone had their free will stripped away, and she had to kill many of them to survive. What does Ahsoka do in that situation? Tell no-one about her past while going by a name connected to the group she’s having heavy emotions about!

Ahsoka’s relationship to the clones was different from her relationship to the Jedi. To the Jedi she was one of them, a Padawan. They betrayed her. She wasn’t one of the clones, to them she was a friend, an ally. To the 501st she was Their Commander. They trusted her to lead them into battle. Ahsoka rejected who she was to the Jedi but not who she was to the clones of the 501st.

Rex said the “I am no Jedi” line first. Ahsoka used that phrase specifically when she said she isn’t a Jedi. It framed her non-Jedi status in a similar way to Rex’s. She subtly aligned herself with Rex identity-wise as she unaligned herself with the Jedi. Ahsoka isn’t a Jedi and the clones aren’t Jedi. They are both non-Jedi Clone Wars veterans. Ahsoka doesn’t identify as a Jedi anymore but she does keep identifying as a comrade to her troops.

Her troops were the first to say that even though she left she is still Their Commander. The 332nd painted Ahsoka’s markings on their helmets— the same markings that she made the Fulcrum symbol. Her troops painted themselves to represent her and she named and illustrated herself to represent them. Like poetry, it rhymes.

Ahsoka couldn’t openly declare that she missed the clones, that she respected them, that she didn’t blame them for the rise of the Empire. Most of the galaxy doesn’t know about the control chips and thinks the clones are loyal servants of the Empire. No other rebels would trust her. So Ahsoka can’t do that. But she can fight the Empire under a clone-style name, and honor them in that way.

Fulcrum sounds like a clone name and that’s on purpose!

#there’s cultural crossover between the clones and the Jedi but that’s another post #ahsoka tano #501st battalion #332nd company #mine #fulcrum sounds like a clone name on purpose #star wars #fulcrum

[tea-with-evan-and-me]

[Y'all I need to get this off my chest pls quoi. Evan eventually learning French... Enjoy!!!]

“Hi… um… bonjour – excuse me? I’m looking for… um…” Evan scanned his call sheet again. It was in French. “Sorry… I can’t read it…”

“Ah, Evan Peet-air?” the lovely French-speaking lady made his name sound like chocolate. He smiled nervously. “Yes, you come with me. I take you there, is quicker.”

“Thanks.” The woman led him to an open field, reachable only on foot for the day since it had rained pretty badly overnight, and the dirt paths had become mud pits. But, with wellies on, they made it.

“Voila. Madame Sharpe is over there, under the tent.”

“Thanks so much, I appreciate it.” Evan followed the path the woman had pointed out to her, and sure enough, huddled around a screen, was Amelia. The first round of shots looked incredible. “Um… hi, Amelia…”

“Evan! You made it! I was starting to get worried!” Amelia stood, moving to the back of the tent with him. “What happened?” He was a good half-hour late, not at all like him.

“I… everything is in French and I can’t read that.” He pulled out the itinerary he’d been given, and the call sheet. “My phone’s not working over here so I couldn’t use Google Translate, and the three people I asked what you said to ask didn’t speak English at all.”

“How did you say it?”

“Parrlay voow Onglay.”

“Close enough…” Amelia smiled up at him, but she took the call sheet and itinerary from him. “But I’ll find out why these are in French. I’ll give you mine for tomorrow, since we don't have the full studio out here. It’s miserable.”

“Belgian weather, though, right?” Evan grinned.

“Sure is!” Amelia sighed. “How are you finding it, anyway?”

“It’s nice. A little different to what I’d expected, but nice. Actually, no-one recognised me in the street earlier – and there’s no paps?!”

“Why do you think I moved here?” Amelia chuckled again. “It’s heaven on Earth and no-one gives a shit about who you are. It’s perfect!”

The scenes they were filming were mainly in the forest, where the ground was thankfully solid and they had cover from the trees if it did start raining. Evan, as was his typecasting, was playing a lover who’d turned out to be a psycho killer (qu’est-ce que c’est, fafafafafa… ) and Amelia was playing the girl who’d gotten away from him, but now was on the run. There was a bit of a magical twist, though, which would take them some time to get done. But by the end of that first day, Evan felt like he’d relaxed fully into the role, even though it was already exhausting.

As the first month wore on, Evan discovered a love for Belgium that he’d never expected to have. Not least because he’d been able to walk down the street and have virtually no-one know who he was, he really felt like he could turn off his brain and just exist. Amelia had taken him around Brussels to show him the sights, but he’d been content to sit in a random bar with a beer and a book and just… be. It had allowed him to relax so fully, he genuinely didn’t want to get back on the plane back to the States, and he still had two months left there.

His friends in the States, however, had identified another possible reason why he didn’t want to go back home: Amelia. It was obvious to the whole world that, if Evan were to have a little more courage, and Amelia were to believe someone could and would want her, that they’d be an unstoppable power couple that would rule the entire cinematic universe. After all of Evan’s failed relationships, and the trauma he’d been through with each (in their own different ways, of course), someone like Amelia would be perfect for him. His friends had tried to tell him that she was perfect because she’d also known trauma. She’d known abuse. She’d known the desire to just fade quietly into the background. She also had her own empire of fame: dance schools across Europe, several in the UK, and a few in the States all generated from her success as a dancer growing up. An Oscar tucked under her belt for a movie she hadn’t thought she was any good in. An actual billion in her bank, but she gave millions away to charities across the world so that she wouldn’t ever end up on the Forbes 30 under 30 list. She couldn’t really go anywhere in the UK or the US because everyone knew her – much like Evan. She understood what he needed. And she didn’t need him for his fame, either.

But Evan couldn’t bring himself to say much more than the basic conversations they’d shared. He’d wanted to open up to Amelia, wanted to tell her everything… but he couldn’t. He couldn’t risk that his heart would be broken again. Besides, Amelia deserved someone far nicer… far better. A decent actor, maybe.

Yet he found himself often sprawled across her sofa as they read out rewritten scenes together, or sitting quietly in the same room as her while she worked, and he worked or read or something. She was happy to sit with him in silence, or scrolling TikTok together, or Instagram, or watching something… he adored her company, and she clearly enjoyed his…

It was Amelia’s lifelong best friend, Charlie, who came to the rescue. Charlie organised a dinner in Brussels with her husband Brendan, Dave (Amelia’s cameraman and content editor) and his husband Tom, and one of their dancing friends, Lotta, and her partner Michel. Charlie invited Evan, and Evan accepted, because he had nothing else to do. What neither he nor Amelia realised was that the evening was actually a moment for Dave, Tom, Lotta, Michel and Brendan to see whether Charlie was insane for thinking Amelia and Evan had something, or not.

And the result was unanimous: they had fucking chemistry.

“So,” Brendan took a seat beside Evan at the dining table. Evan liked Brendan. A chill guy. “Are you going to invite Amelia to that bagel place she’s mentioned three times tonight?”

“What – no? Should I?”

“None of us like bagels, Evan.” Brendan’s eyes betrayed his excitement. “Do it! Ask her out!”

“She won’t want me.”

“How do you know?”

“Because… she deserves someone better.”

“After tonight, I think it’s clear you are better, Evan. Try it. Ask her out.” Brendan touched his shoulder lightly.

Evan was thinking about it. God, how he was thinking about it. Of course he was in love with her. That day, they’d been doing a scene in which Amelia’s character had to lose her shit and hit Evan’s character in the chest repeatedly, in that overdramatic ‘no, no, NO!’ kind of way. But Evan had flinched back when they’d been choreographing the scene out, and Amelia had immediately stopped everything and told him they’d rewrite the scene to have her character react differently.

“Why?” Evan had asked, holding himself.

“Because I’d rather rewrite a scene in a couple of minutes than have you relive whatever you’re currently reliving every time we do a take.” She placed a gentle hand on his arm. “It’s no bother, Ev. I promise. You can trust me.”

He hadn’t needed to tell her about the abuse. Hadn’t needed to explain why he didn’t like being hit, or why he had such a visceral response to women lashing out at him – even when it was scripted. She’d heard the stories. She’d put two and two together, spotted his warning signs, and taken them in her stride and fixed it for him.

Her friends were right. She was perfect.

“Alright,” Evan murmured. He smiled at Brendan tightly. “I’ll do it.”

A little while later, when they’d all gone home save for Evan and Amelia, they went for the metro.

“I’m glad you came out with us today, Evan. I think sometimes being around people who aren’t arseholes is good for you.” Amelia shuddered a little in the cool air. “Do you remember the way back to your hotel?”

“Yeah.” He looked down. A broken person. Amelia pressed her lips together.

“Tell you what,” she smiled. “I’ve got a sofa bed. You can stay with me tonight if you’d like? Then we can maybe figure that shitty couple of scenes tomorrow, over breakfast?” Evan’s face lit up a little. “Oh, and there’s this brunch place close by actually – we’ll head out, grab brunch, and you can practice your Duolingo French.”

And just like that… Evan was completely and utterly on her hook. It’s a dangerous game to play, man, said the little voice in the back of his mind. But he didn’t care. Amelia made him feel safe… and, that night, as he curled up on her sofa bed with a gorgeous view of the stars from the skylight in her rooftop apartment… he realised that he really didn’t want to leave Belgium at all.

End of Part One

oh hi!! 👋🏼 we have another story tweam. lemme read this after i leave the gym 👀

#fics

[viviennevermillion]

Comforting him after a nightmare

notes: reposting bc I’m deleting my archived sideblogs. i no longer write fem!reader

contains: azul ashengrotto x fem!reader

warnings: mentions and descriptions of bullying, trauma

Azul hated the fact that even after all this time, years after he had left that past behind, he still had occasional nightmares about the bullying in his childhood. After all, it’s been so long. He should be over it right? But they still throw him off and make him uncomfortable whenever they happen.

As he said after his overblot, he still remembers everything, the faces of those who had wronged him, the things they said to him, their grins when they made fun of him. It still sent a shiver down his spine whenever he thought of it.

Azul barely ever shows how much his past still affects him but there are days when it’s really bad. So whenever he wakes up from one of his nightmares, not only was he feeling restless and sad, but he knew it would most likely trigger another stressful workday full of toxic thoughts he had to push down constantly. Another day of getting spiteful whenever he encountered someone who didn’t have to go through pain like he did. Another day of that uncomfortable paranoia and anxiety nipping at the back of his mind whenever he heard customers in Mostro Lounge laugh together. Were they making fun of him? What if word got out about his true form?

Azuls nightmare was awful. In the dream he was back in his octopus pot, peaking out onto the merchildren who just wouldn’t leave despite him telling them to go away. He just wanted to “recharge” and calm down in his pot, he was at his limit, how did they not understand that? How could they be this cold?

He heard the words again that were ingrained in his mind: “stupid, clumsy octopus.”

He had the insults memorized so well, hearing any of those three words usually made images of the past pop up in his thoughts.

The worst part was that the nightmare was so vivid. Azul could remember every detail of it once he woke up. Those laughs and grins that sent a shiver down his spine. How his octomer body pressed against the back of his pot and his heart was thumping in his chest in fear that they would come closer and not just stand outside of the pot. He was crying heavily in the dream. They made fun of his tears. Azul had wondered if they were aware of the pain he was feeling. If they understood what they were doing to him. If they wanted to push him until he would break.

He remembered all of the insults. About his weight. About his tentacles. About his crying. About the sole fact that he existed. And sometimes those people had told him that the world would be better off without him. The first thing he had heard on his 11th birthday when he came to school was one of the kids saying they hoped he would be eaten by a sea monster.

Azul had felt so trapped in his past that he kept forgetting that he was now free to make his own choices without the threat of humiliation lurking around every corner.

He had hated the bullies with a passion. He didn’t identify with anything about them. All he had ever wanted was to prove that he was more than the role they had forced him into and to be free from the cage they had trapped him in for a big portion of his childhood.

So when the children in his nightmare morphed into his overblot form, Azul jerked awake in cold sweat, sobbing heavily. Had he become everything he never wanted to be?

He thought back to the contracts he had made and all he had taken from others. From so many people. Sure, some of them were the bullies from his childhood. But others of them he didn’t even know. They could have gone through similar things as he did and yet he chose to exploit their weaknesses and take what they valued from them when he should have used his power and status to protect them. To make sure something like this never happened to anyone else as long as Azul had anything to say about it. “I have failed myself”, he thought.

It was the first time after the overblot the realization really hit him. That he had this big amount of guilt washing over him. Had he become no better than the bullies of his past? “Am I-….am I a horrible person?”, he whispered between his sobs.

Y/n, who was still awake and had been watching Cater Diamonds new video upload “5 easy recipes for a perfect Unbirthday Party (feat. Trey)” on Magicame, immediately stopped everything as soon as Azul had woken up. She put a hand on his shoulder asked him what was wrong.

When Azul had finished telling her about the nightmare, she pulled him into her arms and Azul was sobbing into her shoulder.

It was rare seeing him this vulnerable. It wasn’t like he hadn’t warmed up to her over time and talked about what bothered him, however he usually did it with his poker face on and a good amount of well-acted emotional distance.

“I probably have no right to complain about what happened to me after all I’ve done…that would be hypocritical”, he said and sighed, still sniffing. Y/n gently grabbed his chin and made him look at her. She laid a hand on his cheek and wiped away his tears with her thumb. “Hey….wanting to be better than the people who hurt you despite the wrongs you have done not too long ago doesn’t make you a hypocrite. It makes you someone who can learn from his mistakes and strive to become better”, she said.

Azul wrapped his arms around her neck and rested his head on her shoulder. For a while they remained like this in silence. Y/n gently massaged the knuckles on his hands and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

After a while Azul stopped crying and his breaths became calmer. Y/n was running her fingers through his hair (also I’d like to note here that I headcanon Azuls hair looks extremely messy when he wakes up) and it helped him relax a lot.

They talked about Azuls worries for at least an hour and a half, in fact this was probably the most open Azul has ever been with y/n so far, and he thanked her for being there with him. Secretly he always doubted she was really that willing to put up with him and his issues. But right now he just gave her a weak smile.

“I just want to curl up in an octopus pot”, he sighed then. “Then do that”, y/n insisted, “if it makes you feel better. You have a busy day ahead of you. You need to get some sleep.”

But Azul didn’t want her to see his octopus form just yet. He didn’t feel ready for that. And even though she kept assuring him that he was beautiful no matter what form he took, she understood he needed time to heal and become comfortable with his true form.

So that’s how the two of them ended up cuddled up in Azuls octopus pot in complete darkness. Occasionally she could feel one of his tentacles strive her arm and she wondered what his true form looked like. Out of respect for Azul she didn’t even consider turning on the light of her phone.

She knew tomorrow morning he would go back to putting on his “Let’s make a deal” face and act like he hadn’t been a sobbing mess last night, but that was just how things were for him currently. Growth didn’t happen overnight and Azul had a long way ahead of him before he could truly leave the past behind and become more open around people. Moments like these were very rare with him and y/n knew he would probably have doubts and regrets about opening up like this plaguing him tomorrow. But for now he just needed someone to be there for him. Small steps, y/n thought, he’s going to get there.

For now she just smiled when she noticed Azul had fallen asleep on the pillow he had put in her lap.

#azul ashengrotto x fem!reader

[androgynealienfemme]

"The denial of erotic categories, coupled with the mythology that we could all get into bed together, served to foster profound doubts in many of us about our ability to be sexual at all. Further, when the internal conflicts got too great and, in an attempt to salvage a vestige of self-esteem, we removed ourselves from the arena of “political correctness,” what we managed to rediscover was so truncated, caricatured, and pejorative that claiming it involved yet another struggle for self-worth. I might wish for a butch lover like Beebo Brinker, but butch in the seventies was a cartoon. Mighty Mo from Rubyfruit Jungle is a “diesel dyke” whose approach is to “barrel down… slam on her breaks… and bellow.” By the 1980s, femmes were named “sellouts” who reclaimed heterosexual privilege and used it to oppress butch lesbians.

            Finding the lived reality of butch-femme beneath the stereotypes is difficult. The predominance of lesbian-feminist preconceptions, and their remarkable similarity to the heterosexual myths, means everyone “knows” how to tell who’s butch and who’s femme. Who can fix a car? Who does the dishes? Who makes the first move in bed? Who looks more believable in a skirt? Whose hair is shortest? Butch-femme is a simultaneously both a straight image we apply to ourselves as a joke and a visible part of the lives of historical lesbians (Gertrude and Alice) whose fame we used to justify our existence. As such, it is easy to assume that “real” butch-femme always exists elsewhere. From Rusty Millington, in Word is Out, who is clearly butch but denies it by comparing herself to someone else who is really butch, to everyone who told me I couldn’t be a real femme because I was “too tall/too intellectual/too small breasted/too rarely seen in a skirt,” the message is that one might get away with being “into roles” as long as one doesn’t call them that. I am reminded, ironically, of Joana Russ’s litany of the requirements for “real lesbians,” and her conclusion: “There are no real lesbians; real lesbians have horns.” The speed with which women who reclaimed the words lesbian and dyke say they “can’t relate to labels” never fails to amaze me.

            In the past, butch-femme appears to have been an admixture of heterosexual expectations and genuine challenges to the traditional construction of female gender; the shape it takes in the 1990s, one hopes, might break free of the former if lesbian-feminists would stop naming us an imitation. What is most difficult in claiming butch-femme in a “postliberation” era, however, is untangling both the homophobia that defined “real lesbian” as butch and butch-femme’s association, like that Del and Phyl make, with only a heterosexual portrait. Sally Gearhart remembers:

I think the pressure was from society, which made me feel that, if I was not a woman in the sense that the society said a woman should be, then I must be a butch. I don’t think I understood that there could be femme lesbians. I didn’t think I understood that there could be femme lesbians. I didn’t want to do the things ordinary women did, so therefore I must be like a man, and therefore, I think I dressed and acted more butch than I probably was.

Under this equation, femme is not quite a “real lesbian.” Pat Bond recalls: There was a lot of pressure to look butch if you were [butch]. And, of course, you wanted to, ‘cause you wanted to be identified as a dyke. I was never too good at it. I looked really funny trying to look like a man. Men’s pants look funny because I’m very short waisted and big busted. Trying to wear the short haircut with sideburns shaved over the ears, I looked like the missing link.

The standard of lesbian-feminist androgyny are equally intolerant. I’ve heard from more than one younger lesbian reluctance to claim the name “lesbian” because the movement conveys “it means having to give up being a girl” because the movement conveys “it means having to give up being a girl.” For a long time, I thought I couldn’t be femme because I had never been straight. Lesbian-feminism seems determined to portray butch-femme as rigid, even though butch and femme characteristics can be interchangeable, subtle, and allow for more variation than do heterosexual sex roles. Degrees of butchness and femmeness- stone butch, butchy femme, femmy butch, ki-ki- are named points on a spectrum that is shortchanged when portrayed as masculine-feminine extremes. It is difficult to imagine heterosexual patriarchy allowing women to experiment with and choose sexual roles or no role at all. Yet, it is from feminists that I still hear that I can’t wear a skirt, whereas my butch lover Jo never thought knowing how to rebuild an engine made me less femme.

            As an issue, butch-femme is fraught with ambivalence and denial. When Jo Ann Loulan asked lesbian audiences around the United States if they had ever rated themselves or been rated by others on a butch-femme scale, 95% acknowledged they had. Yet the same percentage also affirmed that they “did not consider butch-femme to be an important concept in their lives.” Loulan points that this is a statistical anomaly; rarely does a group insist that a universal experience is universally unimportant. In a separate but related survey, Loulan found that one-third of her respondents identified themselves as either butch or femme, but that fully three-quarters of those who did so claimed not to demonstrate that identity in obvious ways within the lesbian community. If Loulan’s data is valid, a substantial proportion of one-third of the community is “in the closet” about a butch-femme identity."

"Recollecting History, Renaming Lives: Femme Stigma and the feminist seventies and eighties" by Lyndall MacCowan, The Persistent Desire, (edited by Joan Nestle) (1992)

#the persistent desire #Lyndall maccowan #Joan nestle #lesbian #lesbianism #butch and femme #butch lesbian #femme lesbian #butch #femme #lgbt+ #lgbtq+ #lesbian writing #lesbian history #lgbtq+ history #lgbtq+ writing #writing #history #long post

[musicfeedsmysoul12]

 “Why was my wife hit with a Quirk that increased her anxiety and OCD while making her…” Hisashi hesitated. He didn’t want to say that it made her abusive. He hated the idea of Inko being that. 

 But there wasn’t any other word choice other than that one to really explain what she did. The ignoring of Izuku’s injuries. Her hyper focus on Izuku being best friends with Katsuki like her and Mitsuki when the blonde boy hurt their son. Her angry downplaying of his dreams. All were abusive signs.

 “I don’t know.” The doctor said. “But we are working on reversing the effects. Your wife is strong willed sir, to have beaten off the Quirk enough to seek help willingly. More so since it’s been years since she was hit.”

 -0-

 “The Illusive Man,” Liara said as soon as Hisashi entered her room. He paused, Garrus and Tali both mimicking him. 

 “Already knew what I was thinking? He asked rhetorically.

 “Indeed. The Illusive Man had arranged for your wife to be hit. He was working with someone about it. I’m still hacking those files. It’s a remarkable system,” Liara admitted. 

 “Need a hand?” Tali asked. Liara nodded and the Quarian moved to help. Hisashi and Garrus waited quietly until the two had a breakthrough

 “I’m seeing reference to a One for All and an All for One,” Liara mentioned as she scanned her data.

 “Ditto. I’m also seeing something about transference.” Tali said.

 “All for One? The Boogeyman?” Hisashi asked.

 “The what?” Garrus asked.

 “He’s… well not a myth. I thought he was dead though. He apparently was around during the rise of Quirks, able to steal Quirks from people and then either use them or give them away. It was said he played at being a benevolent man but in reality had ideals that he alone should decide who could have a Quirk, and he took his role seriously. Most info on him is black ops.” Hisashi said. “I really thought he was dead. Trails went dead… shit. Fifteen or so years ago.”

 “When Cerberus broke away from the Alliance.” Liara said grimly. “He’s still alive. Wounded badly now though, at the hands of a One for All? Apparently a Quirk that he made for his sickly brother in order to convince him to follow his rule. It didn’t work and it turns out that his brother had a Quirk that interacted with the other. It’s impossible to take One for All by force and it can be passed down by choice.” 

 “I found mentions of a deal. Izuku is Quirkless which… is rare in Japan?” Tali asked Hisashi.

 “It is. Asian people are ninety-nine percent more likely to have Quirks then not.” He said. 

 “The deal was to… break your son. To make him a malleable puppet.” Liara said grimly. Hisashi felt the burn of his throat. Shit. “The idea would be to present him as a useful inheritor of One for All, but then offer him a hand from the underworld. The idea being that a form left Quirkless boy would identify more with the people beaten down by society and would be swayed to their side.”

 “He’d get One for All and pass it to All for One.” Hisashi finished the idea. “They didn’t account for Inko being mentally stronger then they thought or Izuku being more stubborn then me.”

 “No one is more stubborn then you.”

 “Trust me. He is.”

-0-

 “Here,” Commander Shepard passed Toshinori a file. The number one Japanese hero blinked and took it. “It’s about a certain… problem you dealt with.”

 From tone alone Toshinori should have figured it out. As it was, he still didn’t feel prepared to open the papers to find an analysis on All for One. Or the information on him working with Cerberus. Or… any of it really.

 “He was after my son as a way to try and con One for All out of you,” Shepard said simply. “I’m friends with an information broker who adores Izuku. She helped put that together.” 

 “Shit.” Toshinori flicked through the file, his missing stomach aching as he realized something. “He’s alive.”

 “He is.”

 “I’m injured.” 

“Well you have us.” Shepard grinned, a small amount of smoke pouring from his lips. “He touched my baby. I’ll make him bleed.”

#bnha #bnha au #mass effect #i imagine the normandy crew past and new love Izuku #AFO better run #he's got the reaper killer on his ass #Inko is okay guys #she's just going to need a stay in a mental health facility #guess who she meets there #liara is subtly training Izuku to be her apprentice #given I want Hisashi/Garrus/Tali/Inko #Garrus is papa #tali is mama #hisashi is dad #inko is mom #inko already had anxiety and OCD #debating about OFA #caused Quirkless Izuku raised by the normandy is awesome #and would kick ass as a hero #what if Ashley got it? #she would be Quirkless here #cause in game she's the soldier #the basic type #and i like the idea of her being Quirkless #and honestly All Might would go #let me give my Quirk to a soldier who can murder AFO #compared to this child #at the same time.... #I love Izuku getting OFA and All Might being his mentor #choices

[wind-becomes-lightning]

For your birthday bash, perhaps a cute Sayuri meeting Kakashi’s mom Yua ficlet? Just, Sayuri processing that Kakashi’s mother is a Samurai from the land of Iron and how the two of them get on??

Hello dear Taryn! It is your turn! :D I enjoyed exploring this relationship quite a lot. I think Yua would be very supportive of such a burned child <3 Thank you for letting me write that.

This is the Role Reversal AU, based on this story I've written for OC Shipweek

Mention of Kakashi x OC (well duh)

2421 words.

mention of past child abuse.

Pakkun jumped up on the little patio Yua was sitting on and sharpening her knife. She let the little dog walk over and sit right in front of her to deliver the message Yua already knew he was going to deliver. She didn’t know why Kakashi still felt like he needed to announce where he was going and when he was coming back, now that he was very much grown into full adult age, but she never complained.

“Boss is coming back”, the little dog barked as information. Yua moved her arm to pet him behind his ears. She nodded knowingly. “He isn’t coming alone” Pakkun added and that truly was new information.

She put her knife down and looked interested at the animal: “Who?” If Pakkun could shrug his shoulders, he probably would have: “Haven’t smelled her in a while, but now he smells all over like her.”

Yua immediately thought of the soulmate sign on his wrist he had told her about long ago. The name that was written on it of which he had been so insistent that it was not the Sayuri he’d known as a child, but that it could be any Sayuri since naming your kid after a flower wasn’t as uncommon - maybe something he had told himself for his own sanity. Kakashi had been nervous about meeting his old comrades again, the ones he had run away from in his early teens, no matter how often his mother had told him that they probably understood his decision.

So it must be that specific person, Yua thought, especially since Pakkun mentioned not having smelled her for a while. She did not want to think about what it meant that Pakkun could suddenly smell the girl “all over” Kakashi, but she had a pretty good idea what had happened. This was his business though. He was an adult after all.

“Thank you, Pakkun, I’ll wait for them here.”

– –

It took them two more days to arrive and Yua noticed immediately why that was. The girl was wearing a uniform that clearly identified her as a member of the elite assassin squad of fire country and would have gotten her arrested on sight here in the land of iron. Kakashi must have led them through backroads and thick forests which probably delayed their arrival.

The girl he brought was just about his shoulder height and her hair hung black in a braid over her left shoulder. When her eyes crossed Yua's, she looked away instantly as if she’d been stung by the light in it, but Yua didn’t take that personally. She must be very nervous.

“Mom”, Kakashi breathed out when he got within earshot and the relief in his voice to see her never really stopped to make her heart go lighter. The day he had finally come back to find her, when he was so much smaller and so much lonelier, he had also stood right here in front of her door and called her that way, a mixture of happiness and relief to be home. And Yua had replied then as she replied now: “Glad to see you’ve come home.”

Also not unlike the first time he had arrived, Yua now stretched her arm out to Sayuri and pulled on the sleeve of her uniform. “Quick'', she said and waved with her hand, “Time to go inside before someone sees you.” The girl stumbled past her and Kakashi stabilised her with a steady arm, which made Yua smile in a way that she couldn’t explain.

“I’m Uchiha Sayuri,” the girl said with a bow as soon as the door closed behind them. Yua waved with her hand: “No need to bow to me, child.” So she had been right about the soulmate connection. 

Sayuri straightened her spine as Kakashi let out a little laugh: “I told you, you wouldn’t have to be so formal.” She frowned up at him and showed him her tongue. “It’s how I was raised, dumbass”, she said and Yua raised a brow at the insult but Kakashi just kept laughing at it. “Well none of the people that raised you were Samurai…”

“Samurai are even more formal than Uchiha elders,” the girl defended herself and poked  finger in Kakashi’s side. Yua didn’t know the Uchiha as a clan other than what Kakashi had told her when he had explained how he had gotten the sharingan eye, but she had to give it to Sayuri, the samurai were a very formal group of people.

Kakashi moved forward and tipped his finger on Sayuri’s nose: “But not my mom. She doesn't care about conventions. You’ll learn soon enough.” There was red on Sayuri’s cheeks when she looked up into Kakashi’s uncovered eye but then she smiled.

Suddenly Yua was transported back into a different time, over twenty years from now. Kakashi had always looked a little like Sakumo, with Yua’s strong facial features also meddled in between. But Yua had never noticed as much as she did right at this moment when she saw his face lit up the way it was. She had seen that look on Sakumo’s face a long time ago and though that seemed so far in the past, she could feel something tugging at her heart now. Even though you moved on didn’t mean you couldn’t miss the tenderness of love once in a while. 

Yua took a deep breath to get herself together: “I’m Hatake Yua.” She bowed her head just slightly. “I am, as he has undoubtedly already told you, Kakashi’s mother.”

– –

Sayuri turned in the kimono that was a little too large for her, but it tied well around the waist so it still held as good as it possibly could. “She’s scary, you know,” she said, her eyes running over the soft fabric of the clothing. “She looks like she had her sword ready any moment to slice my braid off.”

“She probably could,” Kakashi said, lazily draped over the futon that they had laid on the floor. Without questioning much Yua had put theirs side by side in Kakashi’s squared tatami room. It was obvious that she had known about the soulmate mark from the way she had reacted to Sayuri’s name, but still, it felt unnerving to have such an easily supportive parent- at least to someone like Sayuri.

It was not like he hadn’t prepared her on the way over. His mother was a stern personality, who was not accepting any shit from anybody. That she had defended him until the village they lived in accepted him, even as an outsider. That she had done the same for his father. That she wasn’t very nice to people who hurt her friends or comrades. “But she’d never hurt you,” he had assured her. “I’ve told her about you.”

That exactly made Sayuri nervous. She did not quite know which details Kakashi had told Yua about. She still didn’t know if he was aware of how Rin died and how her hand fell into that. She had wanted to tell him on their way, but had been nervous that he’d push her away again. Soulmates really were a weird little thing, once you were united with yours, parting almost seemed like losing a limp. She couldn’t imagine it.

“I hope I can properly make her like me, '' Sayuri murmured as she climbed under the covers into Kakashi’s arms who pressed a maskless kiss to her forehead. “Of course she will, don’t be so worried about it all.” It was sweet of him to say, but it only eased her worry a little. She just didn’t know how to deal with parents. Nobody had ever taught her.

Sayuri couldn’t sleep even after midnight had passed. She should have been tired by any means, at least after travelling as long as they had. But her heart kept beating in her ears. So while Kakashi was peacefully sleeping she got up and left the tatami room for the door. Now that she was in a kimono, surely she could stay outside a little longer. 

To her surprise Yua was here on the patio, wind curling her hair up as she was looking at the starlight above her. Sayuri considered turning around and just going back to her bed, but Yua saw her immediately. “Can you not sleep?” she asked and Sayuri did a little gasp of surprise.

“I seem to have trouble adjusting to the new environment”, she replied to make it sound a little nicer than “My new partner’s mother makes me anxious”. Yua laughed: “That’s a very sweet way of phrasing it”, as if she had seen right through the excuse. Maybe she had. The woman patted next to her: “Sit, child.” So Sayuri sat.

For a moment they remained quiet then Yua said: “You don’t have to worry about me, I don’t question his choices.” Sayuri felt very found out and just answered with a very mumbled “I’m not-”

“Kakashi has told me about your childhood. He told me, years ago, that your mother died young and your father refused to be a father”, Yui continued and Sayuri laughed and quoted the older woman: “That’s a very nice way of phrasing it.” 

But Yua did not laugh, instead she turned to the side and gave Sayuri a thorough look from top to bottom. Sayuri felt the red on her cheeks as the old, wise eyes scanned her like that, but she let it happen. “Has that changed from when you were eleven?” Yua asked and Sayuri averted her eyes.

It was as hard to tell now as it had been just a few days earlier when she told Kakashi. Sayuri said: “He got… worse, somehow.” She didn’t look at Yua at all.

The older woman took her hands in between hers very quickly. “Child”, she said sternly, eyes lit up and focused on Sayuri’s. “You are absolutely safe here. I will make sure you never have to go there again.”

Sayuri suddenly remembered the day she met Hatake Sakumo for the first time. When he had told her to come see him if her father ever mistreated her again. Maybe there was a reason why those two had ended up married. Also, she thought with a smile, Kakashi had his kindness from both of them clearly. “Thank you, Yua-san”, Sayuri said with a little bow.

“It will cause a little arguing”, Yua now said, letting go of Sayuris hands, “These people are hostile to outsiders. You will have to let go of the Uchiha clan-name.” 

“Ah, that will be easy. I hate it so much anyway,” Sayuri laughed.

Yua continued: “You also can’t use your sharingan anymore. And seal that assassin uniform away for good. The more you look like one of us, the easier it will get.” She clearly knew what she was talking about. Sayuri nodded and realised that this must be the reason why Kakashi was so secretive about his eye.

“Why would you go to so many lengths to support me? This seems like it brings you a lot of trouble…” Sayuri asked the question that had been on her mind for a while already. She had meant to ask Kakashi about it, but he had been so adamant about his mother helping both of them, that she didn’t find the opportunity too.

Wind went through both of their ponytails. Yua put her head to the side: “Because he looks at you the way his father looked at me and I guess this time I should try to preserve that.” She looked at the younger woman beside her. “Last time, I let it slip through my fingers.”

Why she suddenly felt tears in her eyes Sayuri did not know, but she could hear her voice shaking when she spoke again. “I haven’t told him about the things I did in the past.” She could see Rin’s face in front of her mind's eye. “Things he would hate me for. If he knew, he’d push me away.” She took a deep breath to gather herself. “I’ve been trying to run from him, from his name on my wrist, all my life and yet …”

“Ha, that is how soulmates work apparently,” Yua said with a laugh, “You think you are running away from each other when in truth you are just running towards each other.” She took one of Sayuri’s hands again. “Let me tell you child, that nothing you did is ever unforgivable. Kakashi knows this too. When he arrived here, as elated as he was to find me, he was also angry. “Why didn’t you come get me when your soulmate mark disappeared? When Dad died”, he’d say. I wouldn’t have a good answer. Going to Konoha would mean leaving my life here behind forever, maybe I wasn’t ready for that.”

She pressed the hand she was holding. “Maybe it was my way of grieving. I could not forgive Sakumo for going back to Fire with our child and without me, but when my option was laid out to me, to leave my childhood home behind forever, I also didn’t want to do it. And I missed him, and I was angry at him….” She trailed off and Sayuri figured that Yua must be lost in memories. “Anyway,” the older woman continued eventually,” Kakashi forgave me about that. It wasn’t as if he didn’t understand my reasoning. So while I think for a while he still harboured resentment, in time, he got around to just letting it go.” She looked at Sayuri and winked: “I can guarantee whatever you did he will forgive you.”

Sayuri pressed the hand back. She really wanted to believe in those words. “Thank you”, she mumbled. She wondered how this kind of kindness and support would have been hers all her life if her mother had survived, if she had ever had a mother figure in her life. Well, wondering about the past wouldn’t change anything, what mattered was that there was something here for her now. 

Without noticing, she yawned. “Try to go back to sleep, child, you travelled quite some. My son will probably have plans for both of you tomorrow.” Sayuri nodded a little dizzyily. “Be careful, though, sometimes he sleep walks to the kitchen and eats the sweet things he officially doesn’t like until it makes him feel sick.” 

“Oh really?” Sayuri laughed. “Can you tell me more about that?”

Yua waved with her hand: “Tomorrow. Promise.”

#nisi turns 30 #fanfiction things #oc: sayuri #au: role reversal #this is the first story im finishing for my birthday event #it is currently the 13th of july #more than two months before it will be posted lmao #imagine taryn while im writing this you are still in europe and when you read this you are in NA #sfdasdf insane #anyway i hope you enjoy this

[lovelyzealousangel]

Ginger and Cardamom

05 | Jake

Series Masterlist (Tag yourself here)    

Jake nervously shifted in his seat as he sipped his coffee, feeling out of place in the trendy coffee shop. He had never been one for fancy cafes and artisanal coffee blends, but he wasn’t even supposed to be on this date or anywhere else that wasn’t necessary for their survival. 

But Steven must have suggested this place for a reason, maybe this was what the sort of place Astha might enjoy. Astha, it felt strange to call her that. Jake kept telling himself that he had no choice but to take control of the body. It would have not been safe to just leave when the others were unable to take control. Usually, when Jake switched out, he would have done so in a safe place. Where he knew the body would not be in any danger. If he was being honest, it wasn’t a hard decision. If given a chance, maybe in another life, he could see a future with someone like her. 

He had spent so long thinking about her, going over what he would say to her if he ever saw her again. He knew there was no chance that this would lead to anything, at least not for him. Especially when she kept calling him Marc. 

As he looked around the cosy shop, Jake felt like everyone was staring at him, judging him for his plain shirt and jeans. He had never been out like this. 

Whenever he had fronted before, it had always been to get them out of a bad spot. In those times he had never had the luxury of just enjoying things. He had a role to fulfil. The job of protecting the body was one he took very seriously. One mistake on his part could be the last mistake they would ever make.

He felt like he didn't fit in with the crowd of hipsters and creative types who were busy typing away on their laptops and sipping lattes. So he took another sip of his drink to calm his nerves. The taste was unfamiliar to him, and he struggled to identify the flavours. He missed the simple, no-nonsense coffee that he usually drank.

"Marc, is it okay if I ask you something? I got a bit lost when trying to find the gift shop so I asked security for you and they said you didn't work there."

There it was, the first seed of doubt, the first inconsistency that usually results in people slowly drifting away from them. But it felt different this time. Whenever it had happened in the past, it was with Marc or Steven. With people they were interested in, co-workers and any friends they made. 

For the first time, it was Jake who was interested in someone. While the others could introduce themselves by their names depending on who met the person first, Marc meeting Layla and them being Steven around people at the museum. 

The only person who knew that Jake even existed was a bird god who couldn't care less about him. 

All Jake wanted to do was tell her that he had given her the wrong name, that his name was Jake, And he did so because he didn’t people to know about the fights he got into. But he couldn't. He was not there nearly enough to pull that off. Even if he could force a switch, the others knew about her and there was a chance that she could run into them when he wasn't around.

But more importantly than that, the body's legal name was Steven Grant here in the UK, that was how people recognised them. No matter how understanding Astha had been up until this point, it would not be safe to tell her that he was part of what Marc calls a system. 

"Sí…"

But then he quickly corrected himself, as none of the others spoke Spanish. He could not make mistakes like that.

"Oh that guy, he is new on the job. And it is a big museum. We, I mean Donna, my supervisor and I usually don't have a lot of interaction with people who work in other departments. We like to stick to our gift shop."

She simply nodded. It was clear she was still bothered by it but they got to talking about other things. From her job at the GRC, to how she collected cool-looking bottles to later put plants in.  He told her about their fish Gus, and about what he could remember about Egyptology, either from the memories he shares with Steven or from talking to Khonshu.  

He had to be careful with what they talked about, not wanting to mention anything that either the others would not remember or would not feel comfortable sharing on what was essentially a first date. As they chatted, they found themselves becoming more comfortable with each other. They laughed at each other's jokes, and she shared stories from her childhood.

Before Jake knew it, their coffee cups were empty, and it was time to say goodbye. Jake did something that he knew might blow up in his face but he decided to put himself first for once. 

"Would you like to go out again sometime?"

Astha's smile widened, and she nodded eagerly. "I'd love that. I had a great time," she said.

As they left the coffee shop, Jake felt a sense of excitement and anticipation for what the future might hold. He knew it would not be easy but just like Steven said, even if nothing romantic were to come out of it, they could use more friends that were just regular people. 

“Goodnight Marc”, she whispered as she planted a kiss on his cheek. 

 "Goodnight, Astha," Jake said with a grin, feeling a flutter of excitement in his chest. He watched as she turned to walk towards her car, feeling a mix of nervousness and eagerness for their next outing. One he knew he could not be there for. 

#moon boys #moon knight fanfic #marvel fanfic #Moon Knight fanfiction #Marc Spector #Jake Lockley #Marvel fanfiction #Moon Knight fanfic #moon knight x oc #romance #angst #hurt/comfort #fluff #slow burn

[storiesforallfandoms]

comparisons ~ machine gun kelly

word count: 2195

request?: yes!

“Can I get a Colson Baker one where you’re dating after him and Megan where you get a bunch of hate and they both defend you against the hate please”

description: when her boyfriend’s ex is one of the most beautiful actresses of this generation, she finds herself being constantly compared to her and receiving hateful messages

pairing: machine gun kelly x female!reader

warnings: swearing, hate messages, insecurities

masterlist (one, two)

There was some sort of assumption that when you start dating someone, you immediately hate their ex. That could not be further from the truth for me and Colson. In fact, Colson’s ex-girlfriend introduced us shortly after their break up, and had constantly pushed for the two of us to get together.

Megan was basically the backbone in our friendship. She pushed me to pursue my dreams in acting (as well as helped you with that since she was so much more famous than you were when you started), then she pushed me to start auditioning for bigger roles. The moment she introduced me to Colson, I knew exactly what was coming next.

“That’s weird, Meg,” I had told her. “Isn’t there, like, a girl code about dating your best friend’s ex?”

“I’m literally shoving you onto him,” she had responded. “I think you’re fine with the girl code.”

A few months after meeting, I finally caved and asked Colson out on a date. Six months later, I was still thanking Megan for giving me that push.

Shortly after making our relationship public, however, the happiness slowly came to a stop. For me, anyways. Colson, bless his heart, was blissfully ignorant to the comments his fanbase started to send me.

“yikes, he really downgraded huh?”

“how do you go from megan fox to...that?”

“guess mgk couldn’t keep up his streak of hot girlfriends”

Hate comes with fame, I knew that. I had my fair share of hate comments ever since the start. It was easy to ignore them when they were just a handful of hate comments here and there, but this was different. This was a bombardment of hate that was so heavy I could barley go online.

Colson was oblivious for a while, until he found out I had deleted all my social media accounts.

“Did you delete your Instagram babe?” he asked the minute he got home the day I had done it.

“Yeah,” I responded, nonchalantly. “I deleted all my social media.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “I just thought it’d be better for me mentally. They say being so attached to social media is bad for you or whatever.”

“But you weren’t even addicted to social media. You just liked sharing your memories - our memories.”

I shrugged again and turned back to my cooking. I wasn’t about to tell him his fans drove me off the internet. He loved his fans, I couldn’t fuck that up for him, even if what they were saying hurt me so much.

My back was to him as I cooked, so he couldn’t see my reaction when he asked, “Is it because people were comparing you to Megan?”

I froze completely. I could feel his eyes staring into the back of my head, but I just couldn’t convince myself to turn around to face him. I knew that if I did, I’d crack. I had gone too long pretending everything was okay, keeping this secret from Colson, to finally let it slip now. I just had to throw him off of his thought process.

“Where did you get that idea?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light.

He was next to me suddenly, holding his phone up so I could see it. On the screen was a picture of me at a red carpet just below a headline that read “(Y/F/N) deletes social media accounts amid hateful comments from boyfriend Machine Gun Kelly’s fans”.

I sighed in frustration. Of course the tabloid vultures had already written articles about it. I had only done it a few hours earlier, but they always had to be the first ones to write another story about me.

“I didn’t even know I was getting hate,” I said, trying to keep up the lie even though it was pretty obvious I had been found out. “I just decided to delete my accounts, it must be a coincidence.”

“Really? Because this article says you were receiving so much hate that you couldn’t even go into the comments on your pictures or replies on your tweets without seeing a mass amount of hate from my fans.”

I turned off the stove and turned around suddenly, abandoning my cooking completely as I quickly walked out of the kitchen and towards mine and Colson’s room. I felt a lump forming in my throat, and the last thing I wanted was for Colson to see me cry.

I wasn’t shocked to hear his footsteps coming after me. I forgot how much longer his legs were than mine, so it didn’t take long for him to catch up with me and stop me before I could get too far away. He took hold of my arm and turned me around to look at him. The moment my eyes landed on his face, it felt like someone had finally broke the dam holding back my tears.

Colson pulled me in for a hug and held me tightly as I sobbed into his chest. Every ounce of overwhelming feelings I had been bottling up for months was finally starting to come out, and I realized it was long overdue when I eventually began to grow tired from my crying.

I felt Colson pick me up and bring me to his bed. My eyes were starting to grow heavy despite how much I was fighting against them to stay awake. The minute my head hit the pillow, I was out like a light.

I wasn’t sure how long I was asleep, but it was obvious I had needed that rest, because when I woke up again I felt more well rested than I had in a long time.

I opened my eyes to find myself facing the window, which helped me to pinpoint that it was now nighttime as the sky was pitch black. I rolled over, expecting to find Colson asleep next to me only to find that I was alone in his bed. I was confused at first, forgetting the events that happened mere hours earlier.

I could hear a distant voice talking and was able to identify it as Colson’s. I got up from his bed and made my way towards the stairs, hearing it get louder as I stood at the top.

“I wish she would’ve told me,” he was saying. “I don’t know why she would’ve kept this a secret from me.”

“She didn’t want you upset with your fans,” came another voice. This one was distorted like it was coming from a phone. When she spoke again, I realized it was Megan’s voice. “And she’s stubborn. She was probably determined to deal with this by herself.”

“I just hate that she felt that way,” Colson sighed. “I don’t want her believing anything any of those people said to her, but I saw screenshots and fuck...they really did just bombard her with hate.”

“I know, but none of us could’ve predicted this. Your fans were so cool with us dating, I thought they’d love (Y/N) since we’re so similar.”

I sat down on the top of the stairs and peeked down enough that I could see Colson without him seeing me. He was laid out on the couch in just his sweat pants. In his hand he was holding his phone up, the other was slung over the back of his couch. I could see the guilt on his face, which broke my heart to see. I didn’t want Colson feeling guilty for something that was out of his control.

“You think what I posted will do anything?” he asked Megan.

“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. When people want to hate, they just want to hate.”

Hearing that Colson had posted something made me curious. I felt around my pants for my phone, but realized I had probably left it in the room or downstairs somewhere. I was in too deep now to give myself away, but I really wanted to know what he had posted about the situation.

“Thanks for talking to me about this, Megan,” he said.

“Of course, Colson. Anytime.”

They said their goodbyes and hung up. Colson tossed his phone onto the coffee table and put his arm under his head. “Are you gonna come down babe?”

I wanted to ask how he knew I was there, but instead I stood from my spot and made my way down the stairs. When I entered the living room, Colson just looked up at me for a moment, almost expectantly. I smiled down at him and laid on top of him with my head on his chest. The arm that was over the back of the couch wrapped around me and he gently kissed the top of my head.

“How much did you hear?” he asked.

“Just the last bit,” I admitted. “Something about a post you made.”

Colson hummed, his chest vibrating underneath my ear as he did. “I wanted to address the issue, and I knew you wouldn’t let me do it if you were awake.”

“I still don’t like that you did it now,” I said, half joking. “Can I see the post?”

He moved his head to look down at me. “How do I know you’re not going to delete the post?”

“You don’t,” I responded. “You’ll just have to trust me.”

He smiled and reached over to grab his phone from the coffee table. He opened it and pulled up a post he had made on Instagram: it was your usual white background with text post you saw celebrities make from time to time.

It read:

“I love my fans so much. You guys are my EST family, and I’m so proud of this family that we have built over the last few years. However, it came to my attention today that some of you have been less than nice to my girlfriend to a point where she felt the need to delete her social media accounts. I will admit, I was oblivious to this at first as I am not one to go onto other people’s social media to read comments and replies, and (Y/N) kept this to herself instead of telling me about it. But now that I do know, I have to say I am beyond pissed. (Y/N) is the most beautiful girl I have ever met, inside and out. She is not Megan, and honestly - with all respect to Megan - I’m glad that she’s not. I love Megan as a friend, but truly that’s all she is to me. (Y/N) is my soulmate, the love of my life. These comparisons and jabs at her because she isn’t my ex are absolutely disgusting, especially coming from people who claim they love me as much as you guys do. Please learn how to treat the people in my life with love and respect, or else take my face out of your profile pictures and my name out of your usernames/bios as you are not a true fan of mine. From the bottom of my heart, fuck you to anyone that made my girlfriend feel like shit.”

I scrolled down to see the comments and saw that the top one was from Megan, and was already liked by Colson.

“(Y/N) is not my competition, nor is she my enemy. She is my friend and she has been since before Colson and I were ever together. The fact that people feel the need to pit two women against one another just because they both dated the same person is absolutely appalling to me. I’d like to emphasis Colson’s statement - fuck you to whoever hurt my friend.”

I handed Colson his phone back, not wanting to read any more. I could feel a lump in my throat again, but this one was from happiness. I felt so lucky to have two amazing people in my corner during a time that was otherwise very trying for me.

“I’m sorry I never told you,” I said as I rested against his chest again.

“You shouldn’t be sorry, (Y/N). I’m sorry this happened to you.”

“You don’t have any reason to be sorry either. You can’t control your fans.”

“Then neither of us will be sorry.”

I chuckled at this. For a moment we were both silent, the only sound being Colson’s heart beating under my ear. It was a soothing sound, and combined with his fingers tracing over my back, I was almost lulled back to sleep.

“I love you,” he mumbled against my hair.

I lifted my head to look at him. “What?”

“I said I love you.”

I was speechless. It was the first time he had seriously said those words and he had managed to shock me into silence with them.

He looked at me, his face slowly becoming concerned with my silence.

“I love you, too,” I finally managed.

A smile broke out across Colson’s face as he wrapped his arms around me and held me tightly to him. For the rest of the night, he would whisper those three words to me randomly, and I would whisper back my response every time.

#machine gun kelly #machine gun kelly imagine #machine gun kelly x reader #colson baker #colson baker imagine #colson baker x reader #mgk #est #imagine #one shot #request #fanfiction #fanfic #fandom

[robininthelabyrinth]

The Quiet Room

- Chapter 6 - ao3 - (previous tumblr pt 1, pt 2, pt 3, pt 4, pt 5)

The Lan sect’s rules said Learning comes first, and that was because learning was the root of all things.

Humans were changeable and ever-changing, molded by their heritage and their environment; it was through careful education that they learned to comprehend goodness – it was only through constant learning that they could keep themselves walking on the path of righteousness.

Learning from books, learning from others, learning from one’s own mistakes; it didn’t matter.

What was important was that you couldn’t stop learning.

You had to keep moving forward.

Lan Wangji had for some time entertained the thought that his life had stopped when Wei Wuxian’s had. It had felt as though it had: it felt as if his heart had been irrevocably shattered, like a priceless vase that had once contained all his tender feelings – all those feelings that, lacking their container, would now slip through his fingers forever, leaving him as empty as a soulless puppet. He’d thought he was doomed never to love again, never to learn again, all his mind consumed with nothing by memories.

He’d been wrong, of course.

Even with Wei Wuxian gone, he was still learning.

There were his recent meditations on the subject of silence and noise, for one.

There were his wards, for another.

Lan Sizhui was a polite and thoughtful child, inquisitive but a little shy and hesitant, a little fearful to assert himself – a little too quiet, in a way that Lan Wangji was starting to be able to recognize as being not good, a silence and reticence born of concern and anxiety rather than genuine introversion. Luckily, there was also Lan Jingyi, who was and had always been the liveliest and most spirited of children, and yet he, too, was just a little bit too loud in a way that reflected his own method of displaying anxiety, another startling realization that was brand new.

Lan Wangji had always associated quiet with reserve and self-control, noise with carelessness and recklessness, but being in the controlled chaos of Qinghe and really sincerely listening to it, accepting it, came with its own set of revelations. He found that there were people who were naturally loud and those that made themselves be loud, just as there were those who were quiet and those who were forced into quietude. Lan Jingyi worried just as much as the next person, but he displaced those feelings through distraction rather than through the force of his willpower, taking on the role of clown or hero as suited each moment, unafraid to cast himself in the role of aggressor if it would allow Lan Sizhui the chance to play the mediator. The subconscious division of roles allowed Lan Sizhui to feel useful and in control, reducing his anxiety, while Lan Jingyi got to feel taken care of, which reduced his own – it was good, in a way, but after some consideration Lan Wangji carefully took them both in hand and told them that they would need to be more thoughtful about it.

Lan Sizhui could not, should not, always have to be the peacemaker, always yielding and kind and gentle and quiet: he deserved to be loud, too. He deserved to be assertive, to be heard, to feel entitled to take up space regardless of his utility to those around him. He should never feel like he had to pay in service for the right to exist.

And by the same token, Lan Jingyi shouldn’t feel burdened to always have to be the one to take the first step, always acting as the driving force, the loud and opinionated one. He should have the opportunity, and the obligation, to think through what he was doing or saying, to be thoughtful and careful, to sometimes yield if he wished; he should be granted space of his own to make sure that his actions were what he wished them to be rather than some impulse.

Lan Wangji only wished he’d had the wisdom to tell Wei Wuxian the same thing while he’d been alive.

He’d been so short-sighted when he was younger, at first unable to recognize how he felt about the man and then unable to figure out how to speak with him – he’d been unable to break his own habitual silence, and equally unable to see the depths concealed in Wei Wuxian’s brash arrogance, especially towards the end. Like Lan Jingyi, Wei Wuxian’s reckless courage was genuine, especially in the happy days of their youth; like Lan Jingyi, when things got bad, Wei Wuxian had taken refuge in more of the same, building himself walls made of noise that were designed to keep everyone out.

Wei Wuxian might have been noisy and loud, right to the very end, but in his own way he’d been just as alone as Lan Wangji in his excess of quiet.  

The next generation, Lan Wangji thought fiercely, would do better.

He felt comforted by that thought.

The children were chewing over Lan Wangji’s words as they walked along the outmost ramparts of the Unclean Realm, already inured to the glittering barrier that hung in their sky, full of arrays and inscriptions – they were accompanying Lan Wangji on his daily walk.

The Nie sect’s doctors had a very different regimen for curing illnesses than the Lan sect’s, he’d found. Thirty-three strikes of the discipline whip: in both places he’d gotten stitched back up, but while the Lan sect doctors had allowed him to retreat into seclusion, prescribing medicine and rest and self-reflection, the Nie sect doctors insisted on coupling medicine and meditation with exercise. Intermittent and gradual exercise, meant to increase flexibility and reduce muscle atrophy – it wasn’t really that different from what Lan Wangji had been left to do on his own back at home, but he found that it was easier to struggle against his stubborn body when he had company to encourage him to take that extra step beyond his limits, their voices pushing him when his own willpower was insufficient. Even the silent presence of the two children, walking beside him, helped him find the reason to keep going.

Truly, there was much to consider on the subject of quiet and noise, of loud and soft, of loneliness and isolation and how no amount of either introversion nor extroversion could alone save you from them.

Lan Wangji was still thinking it over when he heard a new noise.

It was also an old noise, painfully familiar from all those days of war – before he even consciously identified what the sound was, his back had straightened, his legs sinking into a prepared pose, his mind already summoning his spiritual energy to the forefront in case he needed to defend himself.

Cultivators, flying on swords at speed.

Lan Wangji looked up and saw them: men and women both, a small group – a forward scouting troop, small enough to be subtle and sneak ahead to see what was happening but large enough to ensure someone would be able to return to the main force and warn them if they did find something.

They were dressed in the colors of Yunmeng Jiang, and it was Jiang Cheng leading them.

Lan Wangji’s back stiffened.

He had not seen Jiang Cheng since the massacre at the Nightless City, although he’d heard the stories of how he had turned against his own shixiong and led the greatest of the forces that besieged the Burial Mounds. He’d decided then that he’d never wanted to see Jiang Cheng ever again – he hadn’t been able to comprehend how Jiang Cheng could do a thing like that to Wei Wuxian, who he’d loved.

He still didn’t understand, but he thought, perhaps, that he ought to be a little less hasty in judging others by his own standards.

He’d done enough of that.

“Hanguang-jun!” Jiang Cheng called, seeing him, and pulled ahead of all the other Jiang sect cultivators, leaving them hanging back warily. Lan Wangji turned to face him, conscious of the two young children still clinging to his hands and now half-hiding behind his robes – conscious, too, of the shimmering but translucent barrier that divided them from Jiang Cheng, the barrier that had been raised to protect the Unclean Realm from Lan Wangji’s own brother and all the mistakes he had made, well-meaning as they were. “Hanguang-jun, good, you can tell me, what is the meaning of…”

Jiang Cheng trailed off, his eyes suddenly wide and almost bulging from the force of how hard he was staring at Lan Wangji.

“Jiang Wanyin,” Lan Wangji said politely in greeting – or, well, politely enough.

“Lan Wangji,” Jiang Cheng said in return, his voice sounding strangled. “What…happened?”

Far too much to explain, so Lan Wangji didn’t, just waited for Jiang Cheng to continue with a more specific question.

“I mean, uh. The beacon went off,” Jiang Cheng said. He was still gawking, looking as though he were about to fall off his sword any second. “The – you know the one, the one that shows when a sect’s barrier defenses have been activated. I thought...”

He’d assumed there was an invasion, Lan Wangji realized, and had rushed over at once to try to help forestall it. It was a reasonable assumption, and a noble response: having once lost everything without being able to rely on the help of others, Jiang Cheng now sought to be the help that he had not had.

It was the sort of thing a righteous person would do, and in line with what Lan Wangji thought he’d known of Jiang Cheng’s character.

And yet…Jiang Cheng had still turned his back on Wei Wuxian.

Time and time again, he’d turned away fro him.

“I came to find out what happened, why they put up the shield,” Jiang Cheng continued. “I brought people with me to help, though I left them back a ways so it wouldn’t be an insult. And now I’m here and – and you’re here – and you’re…just…it’s…Lan Wangji, what happened to your forehead ribbon?”

Lan Wangji arched his eyebrows. “Is that your primary concern?”

Jiang Cheng waved his hands around, almost flailing, and Lan Wangji couldn’t quite help but feel a sudden stab of amusement – and then of sorrow, because the flailing was almost painfully familiar. He had seen Wei Wuxian do much the same when he encountered something unexpected, whether some threat or some new maneuver by the Wen sect or, in one notable instance, the unanticipated appearance of a fish in a place where one would not normally expect fish to be.

“I have taken a leave of absence from the Lan sect,” Lan Wangji finally explained, deciding to be magnanimous and take pity on his former comrade in arms. “The Nie sect has permitted me to remain with them while I determine my next course of action. As for the shield, there is no imminent invasion. The situation is – complicated.”

Jiang Cheng huffed. “You don’t say!”

Still, the explanation seemed to help steady him, somewhat, and Lan Wangji observed that Jiang Cheng did not look his best: tired, with circles under his eyes and an unhealthy skin tone. Too much work, too little rest, and probably nightmares…because of what had happened to Wei Wuxian, perhaps? But if so, why had he done it in the first place?

“I cannot let you in,” Lan Wangji added, even though technically he had one of the only remaining guest tokens that still functioned. Jiang Cheng nodded, seemingly having expected that. “I can escort you to the sect leader’s quarters to have your request for admission approved.”

That the person approving the request would probably be Nie Huaisang, Lan Wangji did not say – not so much out of caution, which would probably be justified, but rather out of a completely inexplicable urge to see Jiang Cheng start flailing once again upon finding out.

Was this how Wei Wuxian felt all the time?

Interesting.

He began to walk again, the children at his sides slowly coming out, and Jiang Cheng did him the courtesy of not mentioning how slow and stiff he was, although Lan Wangji thought he remembered enough of Jiang Cheng’s mannerisms to interpret the twisted grimace on his face as he glanced over time and time again as a look of concern.

After a little while in which Lan Wangji walked and Jiang Cheng floated alongside him on his sword, the Jiang sect cultivators lagging behind by a respectable distance, the children getting over their fear to start looking around again, Jiang Cheng finally cleared his throat.

“There’s a medicinal blend of herbs that can counteract the anti-clotting effects of the discipline whip,” he said. Lan Wangji glanced at him: Jiang Cheng was staring forward, not looking at him at all any more. “It makes it heal faster. I can pass the prescription along to the Nie sect’s pharmacists, if you like.”

Jiang Cheng had also been struck by the discipline whip, Lan Wangji suddenly remembered. It had been a matter of deep embarrassment for him during the war, making him reluctant to remove clothing even when they were rancid with blood and poisonous fumes.

“Thank you,” he said, and for some reason the children took that as their cue that Jiang Cheng was actually all right and burst out in a flood of questions.

Lan Jingyi wanted to know how Jiang Cheng’s clothing had gotten to be such a vivid shade of purple, while Lan Sizhui was more curious about his sword and how shiny it was – the concerns of children, unburdened by the memories or concerns of adults. Their questions made Jiang Cheng smile, and Lan Wangji thought briefly of the orphaned Jin Ling, who had been temporarily given to Jiang Cheng’s custody to pick up some of the traditions of his maternal sect. A fancy way of saying that the Jin sect wanted him out of the way for a few years until he was worth teaching their own ways to, but Lan Wangji suspected Jiang Cheng would have taken any excuse at all to remain close to his kin.

“What, now children aren’t too noisy for you?” Jiang Cheng asked Lan Wangji, and for the first time it occurred to Lan Wangji that the tossed out words, broken off and abrupt, might be meant as a friendly tease.

“I am reevaluating my relationship with silence,” he said, and Jiang Cheng smirked, amused.

“I bet you are,” he said. “Nie Huaisang alone would drive a man to distraction…”

Lan Jingyi laughed and clapped and that, and, inspired, Lan Sizhui followed suit.

And then, suddenly, Jiang Cheng frowned.

“A-Yuan,” he said, and Lan Wangji was suddenly cold from head to toe, the chattering of the children suddenly too loud in his ears: he had forgotten that Jiang Cheng had also visited the Burial Mounds. “That’s – that’s A-Yuan, isn’t it?”

“Jiang Wanyin…” Lan Wangji started, his voice sticking in his throat, then trailed off. He did not know what he could say that would work to convince Jiang Cheng that he was wrong when he was right, but neither could he admit to the truth. Even if Nie Mingjue had been kind enough to allow Lan Wangji to come to the Nie sect to stay, and to bring the two children with him, that had been under the premise that they were Lan sect children. If he ever found out that Lan Sizhui had been born surnamed Wen…

Nie Mingjue would not hurt a child, he was too righteous for that. But he might not be inclined to let that child grow up in his sect, either.

Jiang Cheng’s face was twisted in a strange sort of way, as if he couldn’t decide to be angry or relieved. “I thought he’d died,” he murmured, more to himself. “I thought…what is that?”

Lan Wangji was momentarily confused by the question, focused as he was by the terrifying implications of Jiang Cheng’s discovery, but then he saw that Jiang Cheng’s gaze went further into the distance.

He turned to look, then felt twist of unpleasantness deep in his belly: there was his brother in the sky, flying to the main gate on Shuoyue, and beside him was Jin Guangyao.

Why did you have to bring him? Lan Wangji thought, unhappy, but he already knew the answer to that. His brother trusted Jin Guangyao. Why wouldn’t he bring him?

If only he would trust the rest of them as much as he trusted that liar.

“We can discuss Lan Sizhui later,” Lan Wangji said, careful to emphasize both the surname and the courtesy name he’d given him – painfully obvious now that he thought about it, though at the time it had seemed only appropriate, the only name he could bestow that fit – and quickened his steps. “Now that my brother has arrived, things will become difficult.”

He wondered, a little bitterly, if his brother had even noticed that he was gone, or if he had been so thoroughly forgotten in his enforced ‘seclusion’ that it hadn’t even been thought of as a possibility.

“Lan Wangji!”

Lan Wangji came to a stop at Jiang Cheng’s shout. Suddenly full of anger, he turned his head back – surely Jiang Cheng didn’t hate Wei Wuxian so much that he wouldn’t let the matter of a small child go, even in the midst of a crisis?

Jiang Cheng was pointing into the distance. Strangely enough, it was not in the direction of the main gate, where Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao were even now landing, but somewhere even further beyond.

“Do you see it?” Jiang Cheng demanded, and his eyes were suddenly wild, his breathing disordered; he seemed far more disturbed than he had when he’d recognized A-Yuan. “Lan Wangji, tell me that you see it!”

Utterly lost, Lan Wangji focused his gaze on the far horizon. It was the same scenery as he’d seen there the past few days, the interspersed richness of the low valleys that quickly arced up into the mountains that surrounded the Unclean Realm. There was nothing there that was unusual…

Lan Wangji spotted a very faint glimmer.

Sun, he thought, the reflection of sun – sun off steel.

All of a sudden, he wasn’t on the ramparts of the Unclean Realm but standing beside Jiang Cheng on a rough-hewn fortress barely worthy of the name, watching the horizon grimly as the damned Wen scout’s flare did its work and the amassed forces of Wen Chao’s troops began to move inexorably in their direction. They would come, he had known, and they would kill them all if they could; it would take everything they had to stop them, and to survive long enough just to retreat once again.

For some of them to survive.

“Invasion,” he heard someone say, their voice hoarse, and only a moment later realized it was himself who had spoken. “Invasion…it’s an army!”

“It’s the Jin sect,” Jiang Cheng said, staring blankly as if he couldn’t believe what his eyes were telling him. For once, Lan Wangji understood him completely; he was similarly shocked. “They’re wearing gold, you can see it from here…the Jin sect has sent their armies here? How could they even think to dare? Chifeng-zun will annihilate them!”

Lan Wangji’s throat worked, and for a moment he felt drowned in the quiet once more, his voice not wanting to cooperate with him, his entire being willing or even wanting to return to the solace of seclusion if it would only mean that he wouldn’t have to hear the horrible din of war once more. But he was not a coward, and would do what he must – even speak of things that felt impossible to be spoken.

“That complicated situation I mentioned,” he said, and Jiang Cheng turned to look at him. “My brother has either conspired with or was duped into assisting Lianfang-zun in an attempt on Chifeng-zun’s life through destabilizing his qi and inducing a qi deviation.”

Jiang Cheng’s jaw dropped. “They did what?!”

“Chifeng-zuns remains alive, but is confined to his bed,” Lan Wangji continued, ignoring the interjection. “Nie Huaisang was the one who ordered the shield raised, saying that there might be an attack – I thought he was overreacting, but apparently not.”

“If Jin Guangshan can take over the Unclean Realm while Nie Mingjue is incapacitated, he can say that the incapacitation is worse than it really is,” Jiang Cheng said, abruptly getting it. Lan Wangji had forgotten how much he enjoyed working alongside those from Yunmeng Jiang, Wei Wuxian most of all but also in his absence Jiang Cheng, who was smart and did not require too many words to understand. “Everyone knows Nie Huaisang’s a good-for-nothing – it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for the Jin sect to claim that they came here at the invitation of the Nie sect to ‘rescue’ them, and remained in order to manage the sect on their behalf. Better that than have Chifeng-zun recover and come after you in vengeance!”

Lan Wangji nodded.

“But surely they didn’t think they’d be able to get away with it? Even if they could manage it for a while, as soon as the confusion cleared up, all the other sects would throw a fit…”

“Jin Ling,” Lan Wangji said, and Jiang Cheng blanched, seeming to realize the problem at once. His beloved nephew legally belonged to the Jin sect; if he dared to protest their actions, wouldn’t they be sure to take him away? As for the Lan sect, Lan Xichen would have been implicated through his actions – they could hold his participation over his head, forcing him to pick between supporting them and losing face for the whole sect, which would in turn weaken it. And that was assuming that Jin Guangyao didn’t somehow manage to talk Lan Xichen into thinking it was all for the best regardless…

There were only four Great Sects left, now. If the Lan and Jiang did nothing, who would be left to stand up for the Nie?

“I have to get inside. Nie Huaisang will need my support,” Lan Wangji said, but instead looked down at the children beside him.

“Go,” Lan Sizhui said, releasing his hand and stepping back away from him. “I’ll take Jingyi and hide in the room we’re staying in. You won’t need to worry about us – go, do what you need to!”

Jiang Cheng flinched as if he’d been struck.

Lan Wangji glanced at him. “The Jin sect army,” he said. “However unlikely, there’s still a chance that we are misinterpreting their motives.”

“I’ll go find out what I can,” Jiang Cheng agreed at once. “How many there are, what can be done…I’ll find out and report back.”

Lan Wangji tossed him the guest token he’d been given. “Be cautious,” he said. He still hadn’t forgiven Jiang Cheng for what he’d done in the Burial Mounds, but he was willing to wait until a better time to talk it over with him – now was not the time to try to gain understanding.

Jiang Cheng nodded and left at once, and Lan Wangji saw the children off, then hurried to do the same.

By the time he made it to the main hall, his brother and Jin Guangyao were already there, and Nie Huaisang was confronting them with nothing more than a fan gripped in white-knuckled hands and a glare.

“– dare you talk as if he’s gone mad, as if he can’t be trusted?” Nie Huaisang was shouting. “You should know how seriously we take such words here!”

“It is because of that that we are worried,” Lan Xichen said, and now it was Lan Wangji’s turn to flinch. His brother’s voice sounded just the way it always did, comforting in its familiarity: he sounded calm and patient, thoughtful and wise, sure of himself. He sounded as if he knew better than anyone else what was right and what was wrong. “Huaisang, you don’t know how much your brother has been worried about suffering the way your father did. He knows that qi deviations can be subtle as well as harsh – he understands that his reason might be the first to go –”

“And so you took it upon yourself to decide that for him?” Nie Huaisang sneered. “You keep saying that he understands, that he would understand, all that. But that’s a lie, isn’t it?”

“Huaisang, please,” Jin Guangyao said, his voice just as gentle as always. “You know we only want what’s best for your brother.”

“Do you?” Nie Huaisang said, but he was still looking at Lan Xichen. “You knew he hated the quiet room, er-ge. You knew that he’d never wanted anything to do with it – it’s not like that was anything new! That was something he’d said repeatedly, year after year, month after month, for his entire life. You knew how he felt about it, and you decided to ignore what he wanted in favor of what you wanted. How is that wanting what’s best for him?”

“I was only concerned for his health,” Lan Xichen said, sounding injured by the accusation. “I had nothing but good intentions…”

“Your intentions are immaterial compared to your actions,” Lan Wangji said, and they turned to look at him, both of them surprised – maybe they really hadn’t noticed he’d left the Cloud Recesses.

Well, he thought bitterly: they’d notice now.

He took a step into the room, then another.

“Your actions are this,” he said, ignoring the way his brother stared at his forehead, unadorned by the ribbon that had been there ever since he’d been a small child, receiving it for the first time from his uncle as a precious gift. “You did not trust or respect your elder brother’s word. You disregarded his decision, treating him like a child who can’t be trusted to make up his own mind – you put your own desires ahead of his, and in doing so, betrayed him. Did you really think he’d thank you for it?”

Did you think I’d thank you one day for authorizing our sect’s attack on the Burial Mounds without ever having to explain yourself? Even our uncle respected me enough to tell me at once what he had done and let me decide how I felt about it, accepting the consequences of his actions!

“Wangji,” Lan Xichen murmured. “You’re still healing, you shouldn’t be wandering around…where is your self-restraint?”

Where is your forehead ribbon, he meant, and Lan Wangji shook his head.

“Wangji, you don’t understand,” Jin Guangyao said, and Lan Wangji stiffened at the unasked-for intimacy of the address. “Whatever da-ge said to you, whatever he did, you cannot allow others to guide you by filling your heart with incomplete echoes of what you have lost. You will never forgive yourself.”

Lan Wangji was so furious that he could not speak. Was Jin Guangyao implying that Nie Mingjue had, what, seduced him? That Lan Wangji held his love for Wei Wuxian so cheap that he would have his head turned by the first person willing to make up to him in such a fashion?

“I should hope you know my da-ge better than that, er-ge,” Nie Huaisang said coldly, still speaking only to Lan Xichen. “Or is this something else where you will believe the words of that lying dog over everyone else and the evidence of your own reason to boot?”

“Huaisang, that is unwontedly cruel, and uncalled for,” Lan Xichen said, tearing his eyes away from Lan Wangji. “Whatever Wangji has decided, I do not blame Mingjue-xiong for it.”

Implying, Lan Wangji supposed, that it was Lan Wangji that was to blame for it.

“Put the blame where it belongs,” he said stiffly, staring at his brother as if looking at a stranger. “Was I to leave Chifeng-zun where I found him, half-dead and dying in our jingshi where you left him at Lianfang-zun’s incitement?”

“You think I don’t recognize that I’ve done wrong?” Lan Xichen demanded. “I will speak to Mingjue-xiong and apologize – I will explain my reasoning and let him decide how I can make it up to him. But please, there is no call for you to be cruel to A-Yao. Do not blame him for my mistakes.”

“What about for his lies?” Lan Wangji asked. He took a breath, sharp and unhappy, and suddenly it was desperately, urgently necessary to know the truth. “Brother, tell me you didn’t know. Tell me you weren’t in on it – that you didn’t try to kill Mingjue-xiong in order to cover up your affair.”

“What, kill, you think I would try to…Wangji! Affair?” Lan Xichen exclaimed, and he seemed genuinely shocked. “No, Wangji, you’ve misunderstood entirely! It’s not like that at all. Mingjue-xiong and A-Yao, they were once lovers –”

“No, we weren’t,” Nie Mingjue said.

They all turned at once. He was standing at the door, all but clinging to the doorframe to keep himself standing; he was swathed in bandages and still stuck with needles. None of them had heard him or seen him approach – he must have heard them shouting and dragged himself over.

He sounded tired. He sounded quiet.

He looked at Lan Xichen.

“I was never Meng Yao’s lover,” he said. “Not now, not before, not ever. And Xichen…you knew that, didn’t you?”

#mdzs #lan wangji #lan sizhui #lan jingyi #jiang cheng #lan xichen #jin guangyao #nie huaisang #nie mingjue #my fic #my fics #the quiet room #you may want to reread previous chapters to get caught up

[ilikekidsshows]

The Marinette and Kagami Sub Arc Breakdown

Okay, it's finally done, the big analysis, where I tackle a topic I've wanted to write for simply because it's a topic I personally find interesting and fun, AKA, The Best Sub Arc in the Entire Series So Far, AKA, How Marinette Proved Without a Shadow of a Doubt that She'd Never Be Like Chloé And We Stan.

One of the most interesting parts of the Marinette and Kagami rivals to friends sub arc is that it's one of the aspects of the show that directly connects to Marinette's past as a victim of bullying and is, in a way, about her overcoming that past. Not many things in the show remind us of the revelation in 'Origins' that Chloé had been bullying Marinette for years before the show's timeline, especially since Chloé became pretty declawed as a school level threat as the series went on to the degree where I think many people watching forgot that she used to hold a lot more power, and Marinette used to be wary of her.

But, the reason why Marinette being a bully victim is important in her arc with Kagami is this: people who have been victimized don't necessarily recognize it when they're victimizing others, and I believe that Marinette shows signs of this mentality in the show, particularly in season three. I'll illustrate how Marinette's ex-bully victim mindset informed the early stages of her relationship with Kagami and how Marinette overcame her internal biases when it comes to Kagami and her behavior towards Kagami.

In 'Origins', when Alya quotes Majestia's by now immortal line, she also says something that is very much what someone who has been victimized would identify with: "That girl over there is evil, while we are the good people." While Alya was very accurate that she and Marinette are good people, she didn't really know much about Marinette at this point, so she was actually pretty much guessing. The reason why this line is important is because it relies on an assumption that a moral binary exists on the bully-victim scale, instead of these roles being dynamic and socially formed. If you’re a victim of a bully, the bully is evil and you are a Good Person.

Some people who've been systematically victimized think on some level that them being victims means that they can never be instigators, that they're automatically morally pure because the person who victimizes them is the evil one. This is a very typical argument in social justice circles, where a person who is victimized for one thing might say bigoted things about another group and claim that they can't be a bigot because they suffer from bigotry. The simplest example I can give is white women refusing to accept that something they've said about black women could be offensive to black women specifically, because "how could a victim of sexism be racist". Now, what happens between Marinette and Kagami in the show is nowhere near this level of victimization switcheroo, but it still has that false binary in that Marinette thinks that her actions have more moral justification than they actually do.

The interesting thing about how Kagami is introduced is that her future role as a love rival was downplayed in ‘Riposte’. Her Akumatization was because of family issues and the idea that she might be attracted to Adrien came from Marinette's jealous grumblings while she was rescuing him from Riposte (I'm mostly referring to the "She doesn't deserve you" line). Outside of that little bit, 'Riposte' comes across as a pretty standard Victim of the Week episode, instead of setting up a romance sub arc. As such, Marinette already viewing Kagami's Riposte form as a romantic rival serves more as foreshadowing rather than it actually forming their relationship.

Then we get to 'Frozer'. Marinette doesn't really know much of anything about Kagami at the start of this episode, as we can see in her mental image of Kagami as a cackling mean girl. Because Marinette doesn't really know Kagami at this point, when Adrien tells her he's thinking of asking Kagami out, her mind gives a placeholder mental image of her, seemingly based off of Chloé, another rich girl with a (supposed) crush on Adrien. This is the episode that establishes Kagami as a romantic rival to both the audience and Marinette, and Marinette’s negative mental image of Kagami establishes the idea of this rivalry being antagonistic. However, because this setup happens in Marinette's headscape, it's actually a one-sided antagonism.

Kagami isn't actually antagonistic towards Marinette in 'Frozer', but there is a certain assertiveness and physical presence to her in the episode that Marinette, as a former bully victim, might find imposing. Kagami gets in her personal space, because she's telling Marinette something she's sure Marinette doesn't want the boys to hear, but to Marinette, the body language could have come across as threatening. The way Marinette stares at Kagami throughout the scene with a deer-in-headlights look can indicate more general startlement or a sense of foreboding. And the episode ends with Kagami kissing Adrien on the cheek, establishing her as a threat in Marinette's eyes. From Marinette's view, Kagami's behavior in 'Frozer' confirmed her fears about Kagami, that she was a rich bully.

This interpretation of Kagami informs a lot of Marinette's actions in 'Animaestro'. Here we see just how much Marinette has started to view Kagami as the new Chloé in her mind. Even when the actual Chloé shows up, Marinette is more ready to side with her than Kagami. And why this happens is because Chloé actually accidentally enforces the idea that, because Marinette is a Good Person, any person who works against her happiness is a bully and a Bad Person. While we could argue that Marinette has no reason to listen to anything Chloé says, we have to remember that Marinette has been lowkey hoping Chloé would become a better person in episodes like 'Antibug' and 'Zombizou'. When they both agree that Kagami has to go, Marinette could have taken it as another sign that Chloé's not all bad, or Marinette could have simply come to the conclusion that Kagami is actually worse than Chloé, and so teaming up with Chloé to take her down is justified.

It's important to note that 'Animaestro' chronologically takes place right after 'Chameleon', another episode where Marinette thinks she's morally justified in practically bullying someone because they're acting in a way she disagrees with. Because Lila was revealed to be able to dish back the same, if not even worse, that Marinette could unleash, Marinette never learned that her behavior at the start of the episode was bullying and therefore bad. Lila "justified" Marinette's actions after the fact because she was actually a bad person all along, so Marinette doesn't need to feel bad about basically harassing her. If Lila had just been someone who fibs for fun, with no malicious intentions, Marinette's behavior would have been completely out of proportion.

This is why the approach Chloé and, by extension, Marinette take against Kagami is so vital. With Chloé hatching a scheme that was so much like one Marinette would put together, the lines between Marinette and Chloé were blurred in this episode. Simply because it was such a convoluted plan might have also been why Marinette didn't seem to realize the implications of what she was trying to accomplish. I mentioned during my liveblog of this episode that Marinette doesn't seem to consider that, since the plan was to publicly humiliate Kagami, the plan working would have meant hurting Kagami really badly. I also pointed out that, because the trap triggered for the wrong target, this fact didn't really register with Marinette completely, since she merely noted that of course Chloé would have a bad plan. The plan was bad because it failed, not because it was morally wrong.

However, even though we didn't see it happen in the episode itself, what happened at the movie premiere did alter Marinette's perception of Kagami. Most likely it was contrasting Kagami to the actual Chloé and realizing that she had been mistakenly attributing Chloé's traits to Kagami. The change in Marinette's perception is clear in her panic spiral when she realizes Kagami is her partner for the game in 'Ikari Gozen': "She's brilliant, strong, cute!" Marinette would never spell out all of Chloé's better features in such a way, which means her stance on Kagami has moved away from seeing her as The New Chloé.

Even though Marinette doesn't see Kagami as a bad person at this point anymore, she does still consider her strictly opposition. She refuses to work with her, preferring instead to sabotage her and her chances with Adrien, just this time without the attempted humiliation. This is mostly because Marinette sees Kagami and thinks she has it all: looks, confidence, influence, a connection with Adrien. Marinette is absolutely convinced that if they won the contest, all attention would be on Kagami and she'd be sidelined in favor of her. It's easy to think that a little bit of sabotage is okay when Kagami seems to have such an unfair advantage.

Unfortunately for Marinette's peace of mind, the point of 'Ikari Gozen' is to dissuade her of the notion that Kagami is fortunate in every way possible. We can see that Marinette thought that sabotaging the game was fine because Kagami had so many advantages because, as soon as she discovers that Kagami is friendless and has no connection to Adrien outside of fencing, she feels very bad for what she was trying to do. Marinette didn't actually want to hurt or upset Kagami. In 'Animaestro', Marinette didn't think about Kagami's feelings at all in relation to how Chloé's scheme might make Kagami feel, but this time she is thinking about them, she simply misjudged them at the start. She thought her purposefully throwing the contest would be a minor setback to Kagami, not what it ended up being: a betrayal by someone she was hoping to befriend.

I noted during my liveblog of this episode that Marinette's relationship with Adrien also started with a misunderstanding where Marinette first saw Adrien in a more negative light before that impression was proven to be false and they became friends. The development in 'Ikari Gozen' mirrors what happens in 'Origins' in that Marinette first has a false impression of Kagami, but is ultimately proven wrong in her assumptions and becomes friends with her. Marinette nominating herself as Kagami's friend even in her phone call with Tomoe suggests that Marinette recognized a similar need for friends in Kagami that she's seen in Adrien.

Marinette has gotten over seeing Kagami as an opponent in 'Desperada', where we see how Marinette reacts to Kagami and Adrien enjoying an inside joke together: she is miserable. Marinette recognizes the similarity between Kagami and Adrien and, rather than making her mad with jealousy, it makes her feel defeated. While Marinette's perception that Kagami was put together and perfect was taken down in 'Ikari Gozen', 'Desperada' shows us that she still thinks she can't measure up against Kagami, although now it's for the reason that she can see the connection between Adrien and Kagami and doesn't think she has what it takes to compete with that.

'Love Hunter' is the episode where this new sense of insecurity comes to a head. When Marinette's hair falls out of its usual style, it signifies her letting down her guard and enjoying both Kagami and Adrien's company, because Adrien and Kagami are both her friends at this point. However, when Marinette is reminded that there are things that Kagami and Adrien experience that she can't relate to ("It's not every day we can escape from everything they expect from us"), she hastily ties her hair back into the usual twintails, her insecurity forcing her to put her walls back up again.

Marinette is in emotional turmoil throughout the episode, allowing Adrien and Kagami to have what could constitute as an ice cream date alone at first, only to interrupt Kagami's attempt to kiss Adrien a few minutes later by whisking Kagami away to help solve the Akuma situation. This is why Marinette wanted André to pick the ice cream blend, because she started to project her relationships with Adrien and Kagami onto the ice cream too much. Marinette values her friends' happiness very high, high enough to stand aside when Kagami refers to their similarity as the reason she and Adrien are made for each other. Marinette does respond to Kagami that choices can be hard, so her standing aside is also about Marinette simply not acting at all, either to allow Kagami to go for Adrien unchallenged or to pursue Adrien herself. The choice between Adrien and Kagami was too much for her. Marinette being indecisive is of course a major character flaw I've discussed on this blog repeatedly, so the idea that it might have played a role here too makes sense from my perspective.

So far the Marinette and Kagami arc has been about Marinette learning not to subject other people to the kind of treatment she gets from Chloé, overcoming the temptation to turn into a bully to protect herself, and also making friends along the way. But there is still more ground that can be covered with this immensely interesting relationship. This is actually why I feel we really need to see Kagami and Marinette interacting after Kagami and Adrien break up. Because Marinette still has unresolved feelings about Kagami and not just Adrien after the season three finale.

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous tales of ladybug and chat noir #marinette dupain cheng #kagami tsurugi #ml meta #long post #popular

[issaxcharlie]

We say we're friends, we play pretend (1/2)

Pairing: Charlie Gillespie x Fem reader

Summary: Charlie and Y/N were best friends and a couple as teens, after their breakup they meet again 4 years later on the bootcamp of JATP and have to work together. Will something else happen or they are just friends?

Charlie must have imagined something like this could happen. Since Kenny discovered her 5 years ago, she has been a really close friend to the director, participating in some way or another in almost all his projects.

In front of him after years, Y/N Y/L, his childhood best friend and ex-girlfriend. The young actor is not going to admit that he saw every single one of her projects or how moved he was by her in each one of them, many times even thinking of maybe sending her a little message saying the incredible job she did.

But he never found the courage.

It’s weird to remember how he spent most of his life next to the woman, now one of the top youth artists with multiple musicals and movies on her hits list. They always had a strong bond, every single day together. Sleepovers, music classes, dancing classes, homework, parties, movie nights, hockey, illness days, pretty much everything. At the age of 15 they began a very sweet and innocent relationship that ended at 18 when Y/N moved to New York to work in her first leading role.

The break up was on good terms but painful, so painful that both preferred to lose contact completely than to have the other from time to time opening the wound again and again.

And there she was. As beautifil as ever, speaking happily with Kenny while Madison and Owen jump up and down, Jeremy smiles and Charlie looks like he wants to throw up.

“Y/N Y/L, my golden star. She is the official composer of the soundtrack, and she will be supporting you throughout the album process as well as helping Paul and me in other creative aspects, I know she is the same age as some of you but she has a lot of experience in this and all the necessary preparation so don't hesitate to get all the knowledge you can out of her."

Everyone introduces themselves until the guitarist is the only one left, luckily for him, he’s in voice rest these two weeks so he literally cannot speak.

They both look nervous but the moment their eyes meet their complicity comes out and both smile slightly.

“He’s Charlie, he is in voice rest but we are fans of yours. We cried yesterday watching your last musical, it was just brilliant." Owen lets out hardly breathing, Y/N turns with a smile to see the Canadian boy who wants to kill his friend and then commit suicide.

“Thank you! This is going to be such an interesting experience.” The singer murmurs as she winks at Charlie.

2 hours later they had both been avoiding each other, Y/N writing in a corner while the band and Kenny discuss costumes with Soyon, in which at least half an hour has been wasted trying to understand what Charlie is trying to say with the few words he writes with an apple pencil on his ipad in his horrible handwritting.

Y/N gets frustrated and goes to where they are, approaching behind Charlie's shoulder to see the iPad. She quickly identifies the two words, one so crossed out that it looks like a doodle, but years copying each other's homework pays off.

"He's trying to say that if Luke isn't going to wear bandanas, at least consider wearing beanies." The young woman says as she leans on the shoulder of who was her first love.

Charlie freezes at their proximity, blushing a little at the feeling of being close after so long. Luckily his castmates don't realize it because all their attention is on her.

“You are just good for everything huh? Even deciphering hieroglyphs." Owen comments, smiling at her and winking exaggeratedly to make her laugh.

Charlie can't help but feel insecure with the situation. It could be a friendly thing but If Owen really tries to flirt with her, he doesn't know how he would react. Is sad enough not having her in his life anymore, having her as his best friend's girlfriend would just be too painful.

Now, he knows he’s exaggerating, and a lot. But he has to do something about it. Better safe than sorry.

He stretches his neck to meet the eyes of his ex-girlfriend, who is now only inches away. She quickly gets flustered, but hides it pretty well. The problem is that he knows every gesture perfectly and sees through her mask.

“Wh- What, Gillespie?” She manages to say, Charlie can’t help a smile seeing the way she still reacts towards him.

When you know a person completely, every facet, every gesture, every peculiarity, speaking without words is as natural as breathing. And they had both forgotten how amazing it feels to have someone in your life who is this compatible and magnetic.

They start a conversation, she answers to who secretly still believes as her person while he continues making gestures and mimics that no one else understands, writing a word from time to time to make the talk flow better.

"I know. Hey, it's not my fault! So you excuse yourself with the ‘can't talk’ thing huh? how convenient. Yeah, Ok, I will. I said I will!" Her words are the only thing that they manage to get out of the conversation that the secret ex-couple is having, since no matter how much attention they pay to him, they have no idea how Y/N manages to decipher it.

"I have no idea what's going on but I'll take it as a miracle, I was just going to suggest ignoring Charlie these 2 weeks." Jeremy jokes, everyone nods their heads.

“I mean, it’s still a good option.” Madison replies.

The 14 days go by quickly, and with the former couple spending time together daily, rehearsing Charlie's guitar solos together, with Y/N translating his horrible scribbles, or sometimes simply being close to each other enjoying the company, absentmindedly placing their hand on the other's leg or their forehead on their shoulder for a few seconds during the breaks.

Basically the whole team has noticed the flirtatious smiles and the looks, but Charlie was the weakest rival of both and the one who could release some information about it, and without being able to speak they basically ran out of an informant, since the young singer didn’t let go a word about her unexpected chemistry with the guitarist except the typical ‘we are just good friends’.

But without a doubt the energies began to multiply on Monday when Charlie arrived with the green light to be able to speak and start singing in rehearsals. Madison couldn't attend the first few hours because she was at school, so Y/N was going to cover her so the boys could practice.

“The first on the list is Finally Free, the place where we are going to record it only gave us two weeks from now so it will have to be one of the priorities. For the first rehearsal just vibe with the song and we’ll discover where to go from there. Oh, and good luck keeping up with my golden star, you’ll need it."

Y/N starts the first verse on the keyboard, and gets up to sing the chorus in the center, trying to ignore Charlie and looking up at Jeremy. She hadn’t heard him sing for a couple of years, but the same butterflies appear in her stomach and she knows that she will melt if she looks into his eyes.

Unfortunately for her, Kenny doesn't have the same plan, and just before the second verse ends he tells her to walk over to Charlie, who immediately smiles and sings the pre-chorus with much more enthusiasm. The energy they radiate floods the place, both getting closer and closer. By the time the bridge arrives, their foreheads are practically against each other, their lips only an inch apart, and with a confidence and comfort while singing to each other that makes all those who suspected that there was something between them now practically sure.

Luckily there are only Jeremy, Kenny, Owen and Paul in the room, who decide to play a game of divide and conquer now that the snitch part of the equation can speak.

“Y/N, can you come with me for a moment? I have a new idea for ‘Wow’ and a fresh pair of eyes is just what I need.” Paul says, sacrificing himself for the greater good.

“Yeah, of course, I’ll be right back.” The singer takes the opportunity to leave this staring game with Charlie and quickly walks away from the guitarist, who winks at her in a flirting way in response.

The moment they walk out the door, everyone turns to see Charlie, who has no idea what they're up to.

“What?”

"After what just happened you just can't keep pretending nothing's happening. Man, that was more intense than the whole Troyella moments during all three movies." Kenny pretends to be offended for a second and then nods.

"I have never seen anything like this in all my years of career."

“Yeah dude it was electric.” Owen replies, smirking.

“She’s my person.” Charlie mumbles.

If he’s being honest with himself, deep down he always knew she was the only one for him. But that realization was freaking scary. What's next if the only person for you has already turned the page? gave up without a fight? what's left?

"What?" The three ask in unison, and Charles begins to sing like a bird.

“We grew up together and then we lost the way. Like in those romantic movies where just everyone knows they belong together except the childhood best friends and then they end up ruining their lives by being in denial.”

“From what I saw getting back on track shouldn't be too difficult, Charlie. I assure you that whatever you feel she feels it too. Her eyes don’t lie." Jeremy tries to reason with him.

“Leave your teen problems behind. You are old enough to decide what you want and find a way to make it work. But you have to stop pretending that nothing is happening first." Owen scolds his friend.

“Do you love her?” Jer asks.

“That answer is always going to be yes, I just could never stop loving her even If I tried. And I did.” He really did. The surprise he got when the second he had her close to him his heart began to beat like crazy and all he wanted was to hug her and fix everything. It was as if when seeing her eyes time hadn’t passed, as if only the day before they’d been goofing around together. That bond is so big that he doesn’t believe it’s possible to break.

“Then do something about it, bro! Go get your girl back!” Jeremy advises while Kenny smiles.

“Yeah man, it’s ‘Now or never’ like her song, and I guess ours too now? Since she wrote it for Sunset Curve? Well, anyway, it’s like our song says.” Owen exclaims excitedly.

“Ohhh, musical inspiration, let me try. ‘Get up, get out, relight that spark’.” Jeremy sings to Charlie.

“Jer, you are a genius. If you think about it wake up is actually a pretty good soundtrack song for this situation. ‘It's not what you lost, It's what you'll gain raising your voice in the rain’.”

They both keep singing the song until they reach the bridge, Charlie tries to look frustrated but a slight smile escapes his face.

They are right, he still hasn't lost this fight.

👻PART 2 RIGHT HERE

#jatp fanfic #jatp imagine #jatp fanfiction #charlie gillespie imagine #charlie gillespie x reader #charlie gillespie one shot #jatp luke #luke patterson fic #luke patterson x reader

[qslovebot]

KISS FOR YOUR LIFE: SPENCER REID

Summary: A BAU case leads the reader to take on an undercover role to flush out a ten-person mafia. Before the work can begin, things go awry and the reader has to improvise and pretend to seduce Spencer to keep her cover and arrest the real unsub.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader

Warnings/includes: talk of murder, mentions of sex, suggested past experiences with misogyny, suggestive jokes, unsub is a radical feminist, swearing, arrests, guns, making out, sort of fluffy end.

Word Count: 4159

A/N: Written like an episode. I removed Rossi so... AU? First actual fanfic on here, tell me what you think?

Today was your first official day at the BAU, switching from two floors down as an underestimated agent to upstairs, with the Big League. Agent Hotchner decided he needed new, young-minded blood. He was notorious for picking the best of the best and after an intimidating interview with him and his brooding questions, he decided he wanted you on his team.

You had been here before, of course. You frequently visited the ever-chatting Penelope Garcia for lunch, sometimes in her office, sometimes heading downstairs for a slice of pizza or a salad. She vented about her issues, while you talked about the constant misogyny that ran through the men on your floor. She was five years older than you and decided that as your 'elder' she would put on the angry soccer mom look and kick their asses. But, lucky for you, two floors upward, the men didn't act like children on the job, so Garcia could keep her regular look.

Here it was, glass entrance, high ceilings. The air smelled like paper and was filled with a fresh sort of low mumbling and the small clicks of the keyboards. A semi-fresh start. Today you would organize your new desk, sort files, meet the others...

"Agent (Y/L/N), we have a case in Boston, we will be briefed on the jet. Get your things ready, we leave in twenty-five minutes," Agent Hotchner said as he walked by. He didn't stop for a single second, those dark dress shoes clomping heavily to the desks of your new fellow agents to inform them as well. So much for your plans.

Not wanting to appear unready, you rushed to set your things down and grab the few things you needed for the case. Hotchner had said always bring three spare outfits rolled to the smallest packing size possible, toiletries (toothpaste, toothbrush, hairbrush, and feminine hygiene products) as well as one extra pair of shoes. Those were already packed into a small bag, so in with those went your notebook, pens, and highlighter. You came prepared, so in no time, you were on the jet for the first time, exhilarated.

A hand was extended to you when you took your seat. It belonged to a man with caramel skin and a dazzling smile, "You must be (Y/L/N). The name is Derek Morgan." Anyone who used 'the name is' seemed like they felt superior in some way. It was used in the media to introduce someone of importance. 'The name is Bond, James Bond', ran through your head as you gratefully shook his hand.

"My name is Emily Prentiss and I... didn't quite catch your first name," a woman with a v-neck sweater also reached to shake your hand. "I think I may have heard it, but I must have forgotten."

"(Y/N)," you replied with a small smile. It felt nice to be greeted with kind eyes, rather than greedy ones. "It's not a very memorable name, don't worry."

Emily looked apologetic, but soon reverted to her previous smile. I was greeted by the blonde woman across the aisle, too far to shake my hand. "My name is Jennifer Jareau, I'm the media liaison, but you can call me JJ, everyone does. It's really great to meet you- for a moment I thought Penelope had made up a friend as a result of too many hours in front of a screen."

You laughed a little, ruffling your hair. She seemed outgoing, but I had already started profiling Derek Morgan and I wanted to stop there. Agent Hotchner sat down with someone I had never noticed on my visits to Penelope. I had noticed everyone else here on this jet at least once before, but... not him. How had you missed him?

He stood at about six-one, maybe six-two? He was thin, much the opposite to Morgan's greatly muscular arms. This man was calm-looking, quiet. His clothes said that maybe he was meticulous and orderly- he looked like the kind of person who didn't own a single pair of sweatpants. His face was chiselled, with a sharp jawline and cheekbones that carved the shadows on his face. His eyes, however, were much softer. Long eyelashes and dark eyes made them bigger, but they were slightly blocked by bronze-toned brown curls that at the end of his combed and gelled hair, wrapped around his jaw, neck, and face.

He was beautiful, if you were entirely frank with yourself.

And he didn't even notice you were there until Hotchner nudged his arm in a way that said 'say hello' the same way one would introduce two toddlers. You were sure you weren't a toddler and nor was this man, but it appeared you both may have been the youngest there.

When he looked your way, you wanted to look away, but couldn't. He seemed surprised to see you there and you were trying to play off the staring by introducing yourself. "Hi, I'm SSA (Y/N) (Y/L/N). I don't think we've met, it's nice to meet you." You extended your hand and he just shook his head no, his lips pressing into a tight line.

He didn't shake hands, you realized. Probably a slight germophobe. You cleared your throat, "I'm sorry if that was an uncomfortable gesture, I didn't know." Humiliating.

The tall man opened his mouth to say something, shut his mouth, opened it again but then turned a little pink and sat down immediately next to Hotchner and stared at his hands that were folded in his lap. You had thought you nailed pretty much every introduction, but this one? Fuck.

You reverted back to your business with a sigh, patting your knees. It felt like you had somehow lost something. JJ whispered to you, silently pointing to the tall man, "Dr. Spencer Reid, human encyclopedia, dictionary, and knows pretty much everything." You nodded a thank you and she nodded back.

Derek Morgan, however, tapped Emily Prentiss on the shoulder and mumbled, "Reid did his 'pretty-girl-freakout'."

Emily gasped, "Oh, he did!

The two seemed to have forgotten you were in front of them and they noticed your confusion in unison, both of them freezing up and chuckling nervously. You smiled an extremely awkward smile and left thinking about Dr. Spencer Reid for later as you got to the case.

This was about a female mafia boss who seemed to take on the personality, style, and characteristics of the taste of rich men and kill them after having sex with them. The woman was reported and seen by one witness to see her and that was the only person outside of this mafia who had seen her face, so they were working with the sketch artist and would have the picture ready and accurate upon our arrival.

Victimology was simple, she was after men who had too much power. She probably identified with being a radical feminist. She was after their money and had sex with them to dethrone them on the way. Possibly bordered on a personality disorder considering she seemed to be entirely all-in to her 'disguises'.

The funniest thing was the way they all looked at you when you announced those lines. Perhaps you would work yourself out of the 'child' stage faster than you thought.

The BAU hit the precinct in much less time than I had expected and on the ground, running. You were immediately given things to do and you were on top of it all, every order. That was until the drawing of the Mafia leader AKA 'The Seductress' was pulled up and the whole BAU gasped at how she looked EXACTLY like you.

"Do I need my cuffs?" Morgan joked. You had covered your mouth in disbelief and the rest of the room was doing double-takes.

You laughed nervously, "I swear... that isn't me, but oh my god..." Morgan was laughing and Emily and JJ whispering and had confused smiles. Spencer Reid stood in the corner, his hand on his cheek, seemingly studying the photo. He looked statue-like, borderline godly.

"Can this be used to our advantage?" Hotch launched back into technical thinking, brow furrowed. You looked at him, mouth open, but immediately shut it out of professionalism. What was going on in his head?

Reid spoke up, "If we position her just right and at the right time in one of the hotspots for that group, we can possibly get her to somehow trick the other members into some sort of turn-in."

Her. Indirect. Did you do something wrong?

"Or a simple appearance could start gossip and a possible flock to where she was spotted. As long as people aren't seeing double or reaching to do so, she can play as The Seductress." Emily said, looking at you. "Are you up to try, (Y/L/N)?"

All eyes on you. Your first day turned to chaos. But this was your job and you would prove your place here. So you agreed and in a whisk of an afternoon, you were transformed into the mirror image of The Seductress while you were talked through the plan through a radio. Turned out, so prove a professional place, you needed to make yourself look ridiculously unprofessional.

Pinned up hair, dark cat eye makeup, a dress similar to hers that happened to be on hand. Long, deep red, with a long slit up the side and your tits were practically falling out of it, but the dress fit and they were secure, so you dealt with it. There was no other space for a gun other than the side of your thigh where The Seductress kept hers knife. Now, you had to get going, meaning you had to face the BAU in the getup.

When you walked out, Derek Morgan hooted and whistled and Emily gave him a look that said 'oh lord' like an annoyed sibling. You smiled a little and essentially just kept walking, figuring if you moved, it would give them less time to stare at your tits.

Turning the corner, you noticed that Dr.Spencer Reid was much redder than he had been earlier on the jet. So maybe he really did think you were pretty. You caught yourself smiling at the thought, but shook your head free of any ideas. Professional! No crushes on Spencer Reid!

You arrived near the scene, dropped off by Hotchner. "You know what to do. Reid will be going with you to the crateyard, he will also be nearby when you head in. If you see The Seductress, do not make the arrest. If you can, lure her."

You nodded. Wow, first time in the field with the BAU and you had the leading role. No pressure, no pressure, just... everyone depending on you. But the pressure came back when you realized you had heard right and Reid was going with you, alone. You had done really well with the job so far today, minus finding the tall doctor extremely attractive. He came to stand beside you and since he was much taller than you were, you were sure he could look right down your dress without even trying. Not like anyone had to try, but he had the upper hand.

You ached to cover yourself, but that was a major risk. The Seductress was confident, she wouldn't cover-up. You got into the tinted car with Reid, him in the driver's seat and you in the passenger's seat. Silence crept up, but he turned the engine over and headed east to where the mafia was to meet up.

"Some first day," you mumbled nervously.

Reid seemed to think you had said something to him and he talked to you directly for what seemed like the first time. "P-pardon?" He had a stutter when talking to you and to be honest it was cute but there was no time to crush!

"Oh, I was just remarking to myself on how this is my first day and I'm already... so... out there." You sighed and pat your knees. The jitters crept up, but so did butterflies. "Nervous, I'm nervous."

He looked over and swallowed hard, so hard it was audible. Was he fighting the same urge to be friendlier or was he just fighting the urge to look at your tits like a twelve-year-old boy would? Either way, you were glad he was with you. He smelled like books, leather, and cologne and it was oddly calming.

You reached the other side of the crateyard in a few more minutes and he handed you your gun, which you shoved into the holster on your thigh. "You're going without a vest so... k-keep focused," Spencer said- and it seemed like he had so many words jumbled on the tip of his tongue, but refused to say them. You thought he was afraid to annoy you, as you knew he liked to give lengthy explanations. "I'll be behind, uh- the crates."

You smiled at him and watched him look away, his curls falling in his face. God, he was so gorgeous. If this went wrong, you were glad you would go with that shy look of his in the front of your mind. He pulled on his vest and you put out a hand and stopped him. "If they see you with the vest at all, in any way, they'll know what's happening."

He nodded, keeping his eyes from yours as he pulled on a plain black jacket over the vest. For a genius, he seemed to have his mind a little fuzzy tonight. In the dark of the night, the only lights were flickering lamps on high-beamed poles. Your heart was beating hard as you waited for the signal to begin to move.

"G-good luck," Spencer's words fumbled out of his mouth and I looked at him for a moment where he looked right back at you. He chewed on his bottom lip, eyelids fluttering as you tried to look anywhere else and there it was- the radio signal. The tension that was there in that brief moment defused. You gave him a small smile before opening the car door and standing tall, in the aura of The Seductress.

Spencer waited until you were out between the crates to leave the car. You heard the door shut gently behind you, but his footsteps were silent. Much quicker than you thought, there was a gruff voice that didn't belong to Spencer. "My lady, may I say what an honour it is to have you join us this evening." You spun to face a man in a dark suit. You didn't have The Seductress's voice, so you nodded in the most gracious way you could.

"Bernard and Lolita are waiting inside the abandoned building for the small exchange as well as the rest of us, but Mamacita... you're being tailed by the FBI." He said, pointing to the crate that hid Dr. Spencer Reid. Fuck, fuck, fuck. "I'll go kill him for you!"

So flat out, he wanted to kill Spencer Reid, a rotting smile on his face as if it was an act of kindness. He knew Spencer was there, he saw... but you weren't busted? God, this man was stupid.

"No," you said, in a quiet, yet strong voice, grabbing the gruff man by the shoulder pad. "He is my kill."

The man grinned an evil grin and you did your best to smile evilly in return. You showed him your gun and he rubbed his palms together. "The gluck and Glock," he chuckled. "Can I watch?"

He thought you were going to fuck and kill Spencer. Your heart skipped a beat and you tried hard not to show it. Oh no... how to work your way out of this... Spencer couldn't help you. Or... could he?

You glared at the man, "No, but I know that his team is on the way. Get Bernard, Lolita, and anyone else in on the next killings from that abandoned building and run straight west. Do not stop. I will catch up to you once I'm finished with the agent here." You improvised the best you could and this stupid man bought it. Little did he know that the team was stationed Westbound.

"Got it," his face was dazed and malevolent. "But I'm not leaving until I know you've got this handled, my lady."

"You question my skill?" You shot back, still acting.

He looked scared for a moment, "No, not at all, I just... You're a lot shorter than I was expecting."

You stared daggers, "And you insult me?"

"Just wanted to know you had it covered... in case something is fishy here..." was he really catching on or was he confused and just running through the precautions?

Fuck, you had been so focused on the cover you forgot you were a profiler. This man was small-minded, probably brought into this ordeal through family ties. Since he was so stupid, he was trusted with less... hence why he was outside the building as the lookout, rather than in on the meeting.

Why he wouldn't leave- he was so incapable of proper interaction he had never had the chance to be with a woman. Watching was the only way he would ever see. He was stupid and he was stubborn. He was not going to leave until he saw the beginning.

The best thing would be to let him stay for proof. "Fine. But when I give you my look, you run and get everyone running straight West." You narrowed your eyebrows at him and he looked like he was going to sweat out of his skin. But... this meant...

You had a few seconds, you rushed over to behind the crate to where Spencer stood, his gun in hand. "W-what are you-" he questioned in a whisper-yell.

"He's onto me, I need you to go along with this- can I kiss you, Dr.Reid?" You whispered back. His eyes went wide and his cheeks flushed pink. Once again, being professional called for being unprofessional. You really didn't want to kiss him- at least not now, not like this. He wouldn't speak and the mafia man was coming. "Reid, if I don't do this, he won't flush the group West and we'll both be shot and if not shot, targeted by a mafia!"

"Y-yes!" he practically squeaked, his back to the crate he was hiding behind. This really was the only way- this other man would not be talked down, because he was taught to just shoot, rather than listen and understand. "I'm sorry if I-"

You cut him off by reaching up, grabbing the collar of his shirt and kissing him. It took him a moment, but he kissed back. You could feel the heat off of his cheeks. The first day on the job, you had embarrassed yourself, gotten dressed like a Mafia killer, played the part, and now you were kissing Dr.Spencer Reid in a crateyard... and he was surprisingly not a bad kisser. He was a little sloppy the first few seconds but moments later, he figured it out. His one hand went on your jaw, the other on your waist, both of them shaking. You could tell that the shaking wasn't because the man watching you both right now had a gun, it was you.

You were making out with him, hard. Your body was pressed to his tightly against the crate and Spencer was holding you there. Your hands were still gripping his shirt. Messy altogether but your lips met in every perfect way. It was good, but for work. This was when you knew to stop- you had convinced the other man. You pulled away, turned your head and mouthed to the mafia man, 'GO' and he ran.

Now things would be extremely awkward. You pushed yourself away from Spencer whose hands stayed on your waist and face until you were entirely out of his reach. You laughed anxiously and he stood there, hands behind his back. That was... that was wow, but... it was for the case. For the case.

It was time to get moving. Spencer knew it, you knew it. The real Seductress was on her way. You turned your head over your shoulder and he was moving slowly, head down. You fought off a small smile. He was entirely red, gun still held loosely in his hand.

You turned your head and were met by a sharp blow to the face. Both of you had let your guard down. Stupid.

"I don't like impostors," said the female voice that was the source of the blow. Hell, it was her. Spencer clocked his gun into place and you turned, elbowing The Seductress in the chest. She returned with another hard blow that you ducked, spinning around her and kicking the back of her leg. She recovered quickly and shot up, punching you in the stomach. You lost your breath for a second and she took the opportunity to punch you in the jaw and pull a knife.

"Put the knife down!" Spencer called. His voice was stronger facing a woman with a sharp knife than it was when talking to you alone. "I know who you are, you want what's right for women, correct?"

The Seductress narrowed her eyes at him like her next meal, leaving you on the ground. Would Spencer shoot if she threw that knife? Odd she didn't have a gun on her. She must have been relying on the others for more protection. You stood up quietly, watching her slowly advance on Spencer. He had your lipstick smeared over his lips, he looked rough, but he held his gun out in front of him and had the other hand up to reason with her. "Men like you think yourselves above women. You, FBI, you think yourself better than men and women alike because you're the authority. Tell me, how do you like your women, Agent?"

He gulped, eyes flickering to you. You pulled out your gun. "I think... I think I'm a weak man and I'm no better than anyone. I don't deserve women." Spencer said, looking at the evil lady. In person, she looked a lot less like you.

"Lies. It's the instinct of men to feel superior to women. You'll have a lot less instinct when you're dead!" She snarled, lunging at him with her blade out. You pulled the trigger, she fell to the ground. Not dead, but wounded to pass out. Spencer narrowly jumped out of her way, watching her knife clatter to the ground.

You looked up at Spencer, bewildered. You had done it. You saved the case, took down a murderous mafia boss. It was only when Spencer pointed at your face and said, "Y-you're bleeding, (Y/N), are you okay?"- that you noticed your cut lip and the blood pouring from your forehead. But you also noticed he called you by your first name.

He reached a hand forward but retracted it when you winced from the sudden pain. Adrenaline took the pain away temporarily, you supposed. There were still things to be done. Spencer called for backup and a medic and watched as you cuffed the woman. She wasn't going to die, but she did need help.

Once medics arrived, Spencer drove you both back to the Westward situation, where ten arrests had been made. You were in a state of haze, so how Spencer's jacket got around your shoulders was a mystery. When you stepped out of the car, you were greeted by the rest of the agents.

"Are you okay?!" Prentiss was the first to greet you both. She grabbed you by the shoulders and looked at the nearly-dried blood on your skin. "We got worried when you didn't follow soon after, you got her?"

"Yeah," you smiled tiredly.

She grinned back. "Fill us in on the details on the way back, okay? Let's get you two cleaned up."

But Derek Morgan found Spencer, "Hey pretty-boy, is that royal rouge you've got on your lips there?" he teased. Spencer panicked and looked into the mirror of the nearest car, seeing that he did in fact have your lipstick on his mouth. He tried to wipe it off with his wrist, but it still stained. You wiped your own lip with your thumb and Derek caught you. "Okay, Miss Newbie, I see you."

Your eyes widened and Emily raised her eyebrows at you, a teasing smile on her lips. "It was to keep my cover. It's what sent those guys your way, one of them has serious sexual issues." You made sure they knew it- to save yourself and to save Spencer. Derek Morgan spun away with a huge knowing grin, back to Hotchner who was conversing with the Chief of Police. Emily pulled you away to the other medics and you shot Spencer a smile as you went.

He smiled back, still wiping off his mouth.

-tags

@ellyhotchner @softhairedhotch <3

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x y/n #dr spencer reid #derek morgan #emily prentiss #aaron horkey #spencer x reader #bau #mgg #fanfic #fanfiction #cm #reid #baby 🥺

[liaromancewriter]

Perfect Timing

Premise: After an extraordinary year of firsts and new experiences, Max and Sienna prepare for the next phase of their lives.

Book: Open Heart Pairing: Sienna Trinh x Max Valentine (M!OC) Rating/Category: Teen. Fluff. Trope: Pregnancy Words: 2,850

View Maxenna Masterlist

A/N: Conclusion to The Waiting Game and Time Out of Time, the Valentine baby is finally here. Thank you to everyone for loving Max and Sienna’s relationship and their quiet moments as much as I do. Hope you like it!

The sun was high in the sky by the time Sienna Valentine woke up alone in bed. The snowflakes swirling outside the bedroom window, sparkling under the wintery sunshine, made her feel as if she was inside a snow globe.

Glad to not have to be out in that, she massaged her protruding belly, which seemed to have gotten bigger in recent days and increased her discomfort along with it. 

A part of her still couldn’t believe that she was about to become a mother, and that she and Max had been married for exactly one year today.

While they were no longer in their bubble, this quiet time at home had been good for them. For the past ten days or so, he had been working out of his home office while she enjoyed this nesting period, taking care of last-minute things for the nursery. Well, Max had done all the work while she directed, but they made a good team.

He had promised her afternoons and evenings, and he’d delivered on that vow. But she knew he was getting up earlier than usual or sometimes working late into the night so that work didn’t interfere with their me-and-you time. She wouldn’t even have known of the latter if she hadn’t woken up one midnight to find the bed empty.

In her previous relationships, she had often wondered if she would ever be lucky enough to find a love that put her first. These past four years had shown her that she was the luckiest woman in the world.

When her phone signalled a text, she reached for the device, sitting up when she saw who it was from.

She got dressed and made her way to his office, quietly opening the door. When she heard him talking to someone, she started to back out only to have him wave her over. He caught her hand when she came to stand beside him, lifting it to his lips to press a kiss on her knuckles.

“Hello, Sienna. How’s my grandson doing?” said Robert pleasantly from the videoconference screen mounted on the wall across from the desk.

“He’s kicking up a storm today,” she said with a laugh, one hand cradling her belly.

“Max was the same,” nodded Robert, smiling at the memory. “Cassie was content to sleep away the third trimester so much so that we started to get worried. But this one kept his mother awake most nights.”

“I don’t know how you and Olivia managed with twins,” she told him, sharing an amused glance with Max. “It’s hard enough thinking of how we’ll cope with one.”

“All I can say is that it does get easier. Olivia and I will come see the two of you tomorrow before we head off to Newport,” he said before turning his attention back to Max. 

“Max, let me know once you’ve had a chance to think about it and we can talk more when I’m back. But for what it’s worth, I think you’re ready and Charlie does too.”

“Thanks, Dad. We’ll see you and mom tomorrow.”

“What was that about?” asked Sienna when the call ended.

“My boss is retiring next year, and he’s identified me to succeed him as Chief Operating Officer,” he said, easing her onto his lap.

“Max, that’s amazing!” exclaimed Sienna, placing her hands on his shoulders for balance. “I’m so proud of you.”

“I haven’t said yes yet,” he told her, his fingers playing with edges of her hair.

“Why not?” she asked, her brows knitting in confusion.

“For one thing, you and I need to discuss it first as it affects our family,” he said simply. “It’ll mean more responsibility, more hours at certain times, travel as well. That’s not all. Dad told me that he wants to hand over the reins to the CEO office in about five years, so this role is essentially phase one of two.”

“But that has always been the plan,” she said not quite understanding his hesitation. “I’ve known that from the start. This is your destiny, everything you’ve worked so hard for.”

“Let’s talk about it tonight,” he said, checking his wristwatch. “I have five minutes and there’s something else I’d rather be doing right now.”

His warm lips glided over hers in a kiss that made her yearn but was too brief for her liking. So, she grabbed his face to hold him close as her mouth moved slowly across his, teasing his lips with her tongue until he growled and dived in.

The ping of a calendar notification on his laptop had them breaking apart. They shared a rueful look before she got off his lap.

“To be continued,” he chuckled. “I have to get this call started, but if you still want to stay the couch is all yours.”

For the next couple of hours, Sienna browsed various mommy and baby websites on the tablet while also listening to Max as he led one meeting after another. 

This wasn’t the first time she had watched him work but, given their earlier conversation, she found herself even more impressed with how quickly he made decisions, his ability to juggle a lot of balls in the air, and the casual camaraderie he shared with his team.

It reminded her of the times when he had given her advice about how to deal with her intern, Mitch. That one experience had taught her that managing other people wasn’t something she was good at or comfortable with. But he was, and it showed in the way his team respected his authority while also being unafraid to voice their divergent opinions.

He was born to lead, thought Sienna. He knew it and she knew it too.

“You should take the promotion,” she said when he powered down his laptop for the day. “You’re too good at what you do not to.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, joining her on the couch. “It won’t be easy and there will be a lot of changes.”

“I’m positive,” she told him with certainty, giving his hand a squeeze. “I hope you know that bean and I will support you every step of the way.”

“Okay,” he said considering her words. “But I don’t have to give them my answer until the new year, and I do want to think about it. For now, let’s just focus on us and the most incredible anniversary celebration planned.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m just not feeling up to going out,” she said with dismay as he helped her stand. “I should have said something earlier and saved you the bother.”

“Who said we’re going out?” he said with a smirk, draping his arm over her shoulder as they walked out of the home office. “There’s no way I’m sharing you with the world tonight.”

As the anniversary weekend turned into Christmas morning, Sienna and Max stayed in their bubble. This was their second holiday as husband and wife, but their first one alone. Last year, they had gone to Newport with the family and stayed there until after the New Year to give Max more time to rest and recover following his accident.

This year, Sienna’s condition didn’t make it safe for her to fly. While a part of them missed the family celebrations, there was also something wonderful in spending Christmas together, just the two of them, before their lives changed forever in a few weeks.

Between exchanging gifts (they had both gone slightly overboard), cuddling by the fireplace, and enjoying a simple meal (the baby was giving her too much heartburn for anything more), Sienna and Max both agreed that it had been a perfect holiday.

Well, almost perfect, thought Sienna as she got dressed for her ultrasound appointment a couple of days later. Between the return of the dreaded nausea, Braxton Hicks and trouble sleeping, she was tired and cranky. The pain that had settled in her lower back since yesterday wasn’t helping matters.

She was so miserable that she felt like crying. Instead, she took deep breaths and left the bedroom to join Max in the foyer where he helped her into her winter coat and wrapped the thick scarf around her neck. 

The way he hugged her before they left the apartment told her she hadn’t done as good a job at hiding her misery as she had thought.

The short drive to the hospital didn’t take long. Still, by the time they parked the car, took the elevator to the imaging floor and were escorted to an ultrasound room, Sienna felt as worn out as a wet blanket.

An hour later, panic set in when the doctor on call told her she was in early labor, and baby wasn’t waiting around for its due date in three weeks. Things moved quickly after that with Sienna being wheeled to one of the VIP suites in the hospital’s Labor & Delivery ward while Max left to pick up the bag that they had packed for her hospital stay.

To top it off, her OBGYN, Dr. Maggie Nguyen was off on holidays this week. The hospital would try to reach her, but they couldn’t guarantee that Dr. Nguyen would be able to attend to her and her resident would take over instead.

Sienna knew from personal experience that being treated by a resident was perfectly fine. But she had established an excellent relationship with Maggie over the course of her pregnancy and she suddenly felt as if she was being thrown off the deep end without a life preserver.

Once again, nothing in their relationship was going according to plan!

Max knew his father was right in theory but trying not to stress was stressing him out more. As he stepped into Sienna’s hospital room and saw the terror on her face, he finally understood what his dad had been trying to tell him.

Here was one thing he could control and perhaps the only thing that really mattered.

He sat down beside her on the hospital bed and gathered her in his arms, coaxing her head to his chest.

“So, everyone is on their way back including your fellow dolphin,” he said cheerfully. “My dad already spoke to yours and he’ll make sure your family gets here as soon as possible.”

“Max, what if…” she started, her voice hitching with unshed tears.

“Nope, we’re not doing this, Si,” he said, cutting her off.

It was the tone she often heard him use in meetings. Determined, assertive and so incredibly certain that she felt calm slowly spreading inside her body.

“You heard the doctor. We did nothing wrong,” he continued, one hand running through her hair, the other stroking her back. “Babies come when they’re ready and looks like little bean decided today is just as good as any other.”

“If you think about it, this is just too funny and so uniquely us,” he said, grinning as he grasped her chin and gently pivoted her face to meet his.

“We said we wanted a long engagement, four weeks later we were hitched. We were going to wait to have kids and then you jinxed us. Clearly neither we nor our kid know how to follow a plan.”

Sienna heard the laughter in his voice and thought how his words mirrored what had been going through her mind earlier, and then she was laughing too.

“I’ve told you before, there’s no scientific basis for jinxes,” she said, trying to contain her giggles.

“Babe, that argument would be so much stronger if you weren’t about to give birth,” he teased. “At least two years ahead of schedule by my count.”

When the middle-aged nurse opened the door to the suite a few minutes later, she stopped in the entrance at the bizarre sight before her.

In all her years working the maternity ward, she had seen many strange behaviors, from fathers running around like headless chickens to mothers screaming like banshees. But nothing as full of joy pre-labor as the young couple wrapped around each other, peels of laughter ringing across the room as they continued to debate about who jinxed who and when.

Shaking her head at the absurdity of the argument, she slowly backed out of the room to let them have this moment. Checking the expectant mama’s blood pressure could wait just a bit longer. It’s not like they were going anywhere anytime soon.

As the day wore on and Sienna’s labor progressed, laughter was harder to hold on to. But they were no longer afraid either. As much as the baby had appeared to be in a hurry earlier in the day, he decided that a nap in his mom’s womb was just want he needed.

Max told Sienna it was an extremely polite thing for their kid to do as it gave her family, who lived farther away, time to get to DC and the hospital.

The Trinhs joined the Valentines in the waiting room, with Olivia and Elaine seated side by side, equally anxious in their anticipation as they waited to be let inside to see Sienna. The hospital had rules about limiting visitors and they were not happy.

When Max went to give an update, they’d rushed past him to take his place in the room. Cassie had pulled him aside after and he was finally able to drop his mask and take comfort from his sister. By the time he made it back to Sienna’s side, he’d managed to get himself back under control.

As the night progressed, things started to turn hairy. He manfully bit back a yelp when she almost crushed the bones in his hands after a particularly vicious contraction but wasn’t quite as successful the second time.

The night then took a turn for the bizarre when she demanded Cassie’s presence. Little did Max realize that he was about to be tag teamed by two dolphins. 

Sienna’s vocabulary of curse words directed at him and men in general was impressive, but nothing quite like Cassie’s, who was more than happy to supply inventive insults when Si’s brain went blank.

He finally understood why sharks in the ocean were afraid of crossing paths with a pod of dolphins.

Around two o’clock in the morning on December 28, Max and Sienna’s little bean decided that he’d had enough and was kind enough to enter the world without further fuss or muss.

As the team of medical personnel examined the newborn, giving him high scores when his cries echoed across the birthing suite, Max and Sienna stared at each other, grinning like fools.

Panting and breathless as if they were two soldiers that had just come back from war, they had no words, but their eyes conveyed everything they felt for each other. Joy, wonder, love.

He was shaking off the pain in his hand when Sienna tugged his face down to brush her lips against his.

“I love you, Max,” she said softly.

“I love you too, Sienna,” he grinned. “My left hand might never work again, but at least I’m right-handed.”

They were both laughing again when the midwife stepped forward to place the baby against Sienna’s skin, covering both her and the baby with a blanket. They watched their son nuzzle, bigger than a bean for sure but still so small. Both of them mentally counted his fingers and toes, smiling up at each other when they both reached the number ten.

The doctor explained that he would be kept in neonatal ICU for a few days to a week, just until he hit the milestones needed before being discharged. But based on initial examination, despite the early term delivery, their baby already had a healthy set of lungs and was not underweight.

A short while later, Sienna was back in her room resting, while Max took the family to see the baby, currently lying in a pod behind the glass walls of the NICU. He beamed at his sister, nodding in acknowledgement when she smiled back, telling him without words how happy she was for him.

When Ethan stepped up behind her, she hooked one arm around his waist, leaning into him as they watched her nephew through the barrier. Ethan’s kiss against her forehead as he tightened his hold told her that he was as moved as she was. For now, that was enough for both of them.

Later that morning, Sienna and Max were alone when the nurse wheeled in their son for some family time.

“You know, it’s decision time on his name,” said Max as they both watched this tiny human with awe. “Do we still like our top two choices?”

“Aiden or Noah?” mused Sienna, her eyes focused on their son. “Yes, I know which one I want.”

“I do too,” said Max, marveling at how something so small could already be so loved.

“Shall we both say our choice? On the count of three?” he asked, waiting for her nod before counting down. “One, two, three…”

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#sienna trinh #sienna trinh x oc #choices fic writers creations #cfwc fics of the week #open heart choices #sienna trinh x max valentine