#( this is kinda dark but its genuinely how i envision it. ) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

meili-sheep · 2 years

Note

diluc event / hidden strife spoilers below!!

Alice's letter to diluc left me a crying sobbing mess i can't do this

I'm just gonna drop it here, feel free to not answer or read this ask if you don't want spoilers, the letter is below:

To the heir of the Ragnvindr Clan,

I apologize for sending this letter without notice. You may not remember me, but we've met a few times.

We've met near the square, when I sat at the table adjacent to yours in Good Hunter, and I've seen you in your tavern. You were always busy with a great many things, especially back when you were much chattier than you are now. You spoke cheerfully and often with your brother and friends then. It's probably no surprise that you did not notice me then, but I've always had my eye on you, child.

I recall with crystal clarity how my little Klee once made a complete mess of your vineyard while she was trying to catch Crystalflies there... But you didn't get angry. In fact, you personally escorted Klee back and even gave her a few bottles of fresh grape juice.

Now I think that might jog your memory, yes?

Klee recently told me she "hasn't seen that strange man with the red hair in aaages," so I decided to look into it out of curiosity.

My deepest condolences regarding your father.

In many of the stories I've been told, you are the model knight: proud, driven, a knight of noble character and lineage. But I know that you're gentler than you appear. If you weren't, you wouldn't have treated Klee the way you did.

And since you helped my child out, I hope you won't mind if I treat you as if you were my own.

Therefore, I sincerely hope that you will leave the dark place you are presently in, and that you will not wallow in greif and remorse. Partings are most painful things, but they also encourage us to grow. A bird that has lost the roof over its head will fly further than others of its kind.

Go out and see the world. That's the best course of action I can envision. Only by feeling, observing, and listening, can your heart be healed.

Parents all wish that they can accompany their children forever, and the skies, seas, and stars all bear witness to that oath. Everything that was your father now finds new life with you. That which you will experience in this world may have been things that your father experienced once upon a time. I hope the wind will bring you all manner of wondrous things in your journeys to come.

In any case, keep your chin up, young child.

Let me start by saying that this is the most tender, heartfelt letter in this mondstadt.

The path of wallow and greif,,,diluc was literally spiraling in all that guilt and pain, all alone. He lost his father, his brother told him he's a spy, he's been betrayed by the knights and lost all his friends.

This letter was exactly what he needed, he was in a dark period and then someone showed up, even by a letter, and kinda pulled him out of it with tender words and genuine understand.

This is the guidance one needs during a period of greif, Childe didn't have this guidance when he was all alone in the abyss, Ei didn't have this guidance when she lost all her loved ones. Those two, without support and guidance lost themselves and made decisions hurtful to themselves and others.

Diluc got the guidance that prevented him from ending up like these two.

I can imagine sitting on the floor of his room and crying over the letter because yes, someone held out a hand for him.

I can't so this anymore..

-🦋

Here is the thing that stricks me.

Diluc's mother is never mentioned, so we can assume he'd never had a mother-like person in his life. I love Adelinde, and I know she cares for Diluc, but I feel she would try, but an unintentional professional boundary would keep her from acting too motherly.

And in that letter.

He got something he's never had before. That motherly care. Alice has no reason to be reaching out to him with this much concern and affection. Because there isn't any way, he thinks of helping Klee out more than just doing what he normally does.

I also want to imagine that after she got his letter back. Alice stopped by the manor to help Diluc ready. To make sure he was ready to go out into the world and do it safely. Like she even gives him a tent and teaches him out to do some basic cooking over a campfire. And even goes as far as to talk him out of stone gate before sending him off into the world.

And it just really ended up as the little hope Diluc had to keep himself going.

As for Childe and Ei. I don't think their stories would have really changed much with a letter like Alices. Mostly because Childe's trauma was totally accidental, and in some ways, the abyss fundamentally changed him as a person. I think his family still did their best to love and support him. It was just something beyond most mortals.

And Ei. Unlike Diluc and Childe, Ei was not a child. And she still had Ye. She had her people. And I sort of put her alongside Kaeya where I understand her actions and that she, in a moment of trauma, made a selfish decision that resulted in causing harm to others. And I don't think anyone reaching out to her sooner would have changed anything. She needed to want the change herself.

#sorry #alice is Diluc's mother figure now #i don't make the rules #diluc ragnvindr #diluc #diluc headcanons #alice #alice genshin #alice headcanons #childe #tartaglia #ei #raiden ei

23 notes · View notes

ddarker-dreams · 3 years

Note

FINALLY SOMEONE SAID THE TRUTH.

I admit that i enjoyed act 3 but it feels like really rushed i have so much complain with that.

The build up until act 2 was so good it give us so much premise but the final blow si meh. Sorry that i want to share thing long rant with you

1. Why the final talk is with yae, no offense to her but we need ei to explain not to mention she witness khaenriah downfall so she can give us more information, i feel like they do it for the plot armor so they can just keep dragging this

2. So many things that quite inconsistant, the shogun is show no mercy to anyone that even did a little thing outside what she think its right, how come she can still have a talk with signora, when sara is falling like that, and also there is no clarification about sara right now.

The traveler was so done at first they refuse to help thoma and ayaka at the beginning. But they seem so happy and forget everything how come they are not RAGE ( okay maybe this is to bias and personal) when this nation provide nothing about our siblings information and also why they are not mention anything about their problem in ei stroy quest. Its nonsense! She is right in front of youu, ask about your siblings, ask about khaenriah, ask about ukmown god!!. How come they can just forget like that. Also mihoyo really waste the potential about twin things i thing ei will give us so much help bcs of the sympathy that we both rn lost our twin but noooo.

3. Kokomi seem lost some brain cell, she make a very succesfull grand intro but she become meh in act 3, how come a great strategist like her let the sus sponsorship slip just bcs they are desperate, not to mention her screen time is really small and her role seem so unsignificant and it feels lile she is a plain npc.

4. The awesome world quest that we have done doesnt get any mention at all! Inazuma owe us so much with cleansing sakura, thunder sakura, tatarigami, obarashi quest. It has so much potential that yae or ei or anyone else aknowledge what traveler has been done but nooo.

cracks knuckles... i suppose it's time for my promised dissertation. interestingly enough, you touched on a lot of the main issues i had with chapter III.

i think that if i had to pin the main issue, it's a lack of overall cohesiveness? we were jumping all over the place without the chance to ever flesh things out. inazuma is a smaller cast, but i feel like we didn't get to see any of them shine. since i'm most interested in the genshin characters, i'll break down my problems by going over everyone and their (lack) of impact on the story.

was ayaka not questioned or placed under suspicion for being close to thoma before his escape? i wanted to see her broken up over her duties as they relate to the yashiro commission, paired with having someone she genuinely cares about in danger. it would've been an interesting struggle if she was forced to choose one or the other. instead she just kinda took a back seat.

speaking of thoma, i don't even have anything to say, because he just... was there? for .0001 seconds. said "lol this sucks ig" and that's about it. i know we're going to get a story for him in the future since he's a 5* but i'm not getting my hopes up 😭 then in the raiden shogun's character story, man is peachy keen! be upset with the raiden shogun! have some inner conflict! even if it's just using loaded language because he's under surveillance for going against the raiden shogun, that'd be so cool. saying something like,

"Traveler, what's with that expression? Oh please, there's nothing to worry about. We're under the Statue of the Omnipresent God's protection. Nothing bad has ever happened here." *wink*

i also don't know what to say about gorou. he was... there....... i think. what is he fighting for? what are the stakes for him? what makes him place so much trust into kokomi? i'm out of things to say about him because i don't remember anything he did or said.

kokomi... oh kokomi... i was so hyped. so excited. i thought that maybe we could see a foil to the raiden shogun. that she'd have a moment where she's forced to realize, just like her opponent, sacrifices must be made that will hurt people who will never understand why she made them. or maybe something to show her military prowess. but instead she just accepts a mysterious patron's help (?), sees her people aging like the grateful dead from JJBA, and goes oh well. that sucks. what can ya do. oh bye traveler i guess, good luck with that. ????????????? HUH... similar case to thoma where she's gonna get a character story but like. she won't be the leader of the resistance anymore. that was her whole shtick. they took her shtick away. also she forced me to interact with more NPCs whose names i've already forgotten so i'm tilted about that still.

KUJOU SARA... AN INJUSTICE. A DISGRACE. a slap to my woman loving face. the build up was there. yae miko's comments about sara probably knowing the tenryou commission is involved in shady dealings, but is choosing not to think about it. sara being forced to confront reality and challenge her adopted father with the truth. being able to blaze a new path for herself in the process. when she started running to the raiden shogun i was ultra hyped up. sara, a devotee to the shogun for so long, was about to see her god interacting with the same people who led inazuma to this awful state. how would she react? would she stay ignorant, like yae miko so coyly said, choosing to look away in favor of following her god's footsteps? or would she be forced to recognize the raiden shogun isn't as divine as she once thought, and challenge her belief system?

we open the door to see the raiden shogun. the loading screen ensues. the camera pans to the ominous room, clouded in darkness, hinting at the ominous confrontation that is to come. the music takes a serious timbre. and then...

well fuck that potential character arc i guess. (we still don't know what sara made of any of this since she poofed out of existence from the story at this point)

kazuha also was handed a similar treatment. we've been with him for a while longer now. he is our introduction into inazuma, the one who first gets us emotionally involved by regaling us with the bittersweet tale of friendship that led him to becoming a wanted criminal. a kind soul who loves nature yet was dealt a cruel hand by fate, forced to watch his home nation turn into a hostile place, where his dear friend ultimately perished as a result. we get the scene with his friend's vision lighting back up. he parries a block from the raiden shogun, in the same area where his friend was killed by her. the parallels. the drama. except this time, he wasn't too late. he protected the traveler where he "failed" to protect his friend in the past. did he feel redemption at this? or was it a bittersweet reminder of what could've been?

WELL i guess we'll never know because we didn't get to talk to him again 😭 idk who got a bait and switch worse, him or sara. jesus christ mihoyo.

then we have signora. why is the raiden shogun talking to her? does she know about the gnosis being taken, and if she doesn't, what was her plan to get it from the archon? what does she think about scaramouche? and oh, okay, we're fighting here now. good fight + god tier music. pog pog. okay, now we've beaten her up, and raiden shogun wyd— wait no not signora her lore is still on CUPS not YET raiden shogun and— ah she's dead. okay. non nerds who didn't read artifact lore are going to know nothing about her. signora has such an interesting story, and yet... well. ok.

then we get raiden shogun redemption (?) arc. i was hype for this as well, though at that point, idk why i bothered being hype. i knew they were gonna do a cute power of friendship something or another, and i'm good with that, so long as it's executed well. what i was envisioning was like seven different buffs to correspond with the seven different visions, the dreams of those whose ambitions were stolen serving as the spear to penetrate the raiden shogun's heart of stone. maybe a hydro vision giving us extra healing for a time, with the voice acting over it being like,

"Even if the rest of the world forgets us, let our will carry you through this one final time. Succeed where we couldn't, Traveler."

so on and so forth.

but instead we got— you get the idea at this point. why bother spelling it out anymore.

at that point i was surprised the raiden shogun didn't go "oopsie woopsie!! we made a fucky wucky!!!" because that was the vibe i was getting. i love ei, don't get me wrong, but i wanted to see her challenged with what she had done to inazuma in the past year. maybe meeting NPC #2345259 who lost her sister to the vision decree or something, reminding ei of the love she held for her sister... being forced to come to terms with the extent of what she's done in pursuit of eternity.

anyway. please for the love of god mihoyo hire better writers for the main story. that is all i ask. thank you.

#genshin impact spoilers #answered #Anonymous

154 notes · View notes

husbandohunter · 3 years

Text

Stardew Impact [Genshin+Stardew Valley/xReader]

Part 1/3 Kaeya, Diluc

Synopsis: “A mysterious phenomenon brought you and your s/o to an unfamiliar world: Pelican Town! Without the power of Visions, the two of you begin to learn the life of what it takes to be...a farmer?”

(DOMESTIC FARM LIFE YIP YIP)

Coming soon...

Albedo and Childe

Zhongli and Xiao

(A/N): So the brainrot was real in this one. I planned to add Albedo for a Mondstadt edition but kinda went overboard so I gotta split this one into parts too. Wordcount_almost 2k spspspsp

______________________________________________________

Diluc

• Already has the whole year planned in his head. Literally if Diluc were to play this game, he'd have a booming farm within year ONE. Calm and collected through and through, though the new environment raises alot of questions, as long as you were still with him, Diluc ain't complaining

• The town welcomes you two with open arms. It was all thanks to the attire. Diluc wore his usual dark coat adorned with regal gold while you had a dress made of Liyue's finest silk, one that he bought for you. Needless to stay both of you reeked the aura of rich aristocrats (Mayor Lewis is pleased that greedy bastard)

• Once the farm was permitted to your owndership, Diluc began to think of ways to turn it into a vineyard. He was a businessman afterall. Although the staff back at the Dawn Winery were the ones who tended the field, Diluc still knew a few things about planting due to his childhood days Master Crepus would bring him out to their yard and demonstrated the process of gardening. He still remembers those days clearly, doing the very same this moment with you.

• Occasionally works at the Saloon bar. It was the perfect opportunity. As you took care of the farm side, Diluc continues to look for more ways to increase the income while gathering information from the folks around town. Gus LOVES to have him over, like he's just so efficient and reliable! They soon become good friends saying if Diluc were ever to own a wine stock, he would gladly buy from him.

• This is why Diluc would stay a little later due to just chatting with the people from the bar. One time you walked into the Saloon only to the front desk with Emily alone. Turns out the others were in the other room, too busy playing a game of pool. You decided to leave him be since it was rare to have Diluc so relaxed in leisure activities. Thus in the end, you spent your time chatting with Emily until a whole hour has passed before your lover notices and apologizes for losing track of time.

• Everything felt like a dream because it was his dream. To live a life undisturbed from chaos, his duties and the dangers that lurk in Teyvat, Diluc grew fond of the domesticity. There was nothing he loved more than to spend his hours by your side, day after day, returning home to your freshly handmade meals.

• Spring: Already up and early planting the parnersnips (I'm very soft for gardener Diluc you see). What do you expect from a workaholic? Even during his leisure time you would often find him near some plant as he does consider this hobby quite therapeutic. But when it rains, Diluc would be standing beside you with an arm around your shoulder, smiling contently as you lean into his touch. He gazes through the dripping window and silently admires the current progress you both made on the farm.

• Between the two annual spring festivities, I would say the flower dance. Diluc is a private man and would prefer to take things where no eyes were on sight. But with a little bit of nudging from Gus (your wingman), he gives in and leads you to the center stage. Elegant. Graceful. The way you two moved together became the talk of the event. Though, Diluc was already used to people staring by now, all he needed to do was to ignore them and keep his focus on you.

• Summer: No blankets in bed. Nope, its bloody hot in Pelican Town. He tends to stay indoors or anywhere with shade, in other words, his work hours in the Saloon increased.

• Diluc always has a nice cold drink prepared for you if by any chance you were to pay a visit after a whole day of labour. It's a habit he's made subconciously as if it would be a natural occurance for you to enter the door. His colleagues would ask him who did he make that drink for? Honestly so cute i cri

• Moments like these remind him of Mondstadt, where he quietly wipes the glasses while listening to you talk. Your voice is soothing. Sun rays peek from the side casting onto the umber tables, reflecting a rich golden light as the radio plays a soft song in the background. It's so peaceful, the town was small hence not many people visited the bar, Diluc came to appreciate this warm privacy (plus no Venti and Kaeya which is a huge pog realization).

• Autumn: Harvest time baby. The kegs are full and the sheds are full of kegs. This season was huge stonks and the house ended up getting an upgrade. Diluc is the type of man who wants to make sure that his spouse wouldn't have to work another day of her life. I reckon this is why he's so ambitious because he wants you to have the best and you deserve the best. (Husband material. Slap a ring on him ladies).

When there was no more work left to do, time would be spend peacefully exploring the woods. While you skipped a few steps ahead as the leaves crunched beneath your feets, Diluc follows slowly from behind. He sees your back but his eyes stares somewhere far beyond whats in front of him: His future.

It was such a stark contrast to the one he envisioned before. One filled with uncertaintly, blocked by darkness with no silver lining in sight, endlessly wandering as he drags the claymore against the ground. There was never a day in which the Darknight hero wouldn't think of Mondstadt. Leaving the city in the incompetent hands of Ordo Favonious while Abyss Mages continue to lurk fuels him to find a way to return as soon as possible and yet...

"Higher big sis!" Jas tightens her hold on the ropes as you pushed the swing with all your might. She laughs, like a child, it was full of innocence and joy. Later Vincent came in and nugdes you, asking when his turn will come.

"You wanna go too? Alright alright don't worry," waiting for Jas to come down, you lift the boy up so that he was seated safely on the chair, "3..2..1 go!"

He wonders if he could just be a little selfish for once.

• Winter: Best man to have in this season. Every morning Diluc would find himself restricted in movements due to a pair of arms around his waist and legs entangled with yours. Turns out you've been doing it subconciously because he's just so warm (Diluc keeps it lowkey and pretends to sleep longer cuz of it)

~~xx~~

Kaeya

• Haha looks like the portal is gone, guess we'll be stuck forever :)). No kidding Kaeya would be so down to stay here for the rest of his life and the best part is to spend it with you. He doesn't show a shred of concern regarding Teyvat, not like he's easily shaken by events that are abnormal, but you can see that Kaeya is truly and genuinely happy. (You're stunned).

• Oho we also have this marvelous landscape just for the two of us? And a cozy little cabin to go along with it as well? This should be fun~

• Of course Kaeya would also know a few things about planting, just the basics since he did grow up with Diluc. When they were kids, Crepus would give each of them their own pots so they can grow their own plants. It eventually became a competitive thing where whoever's plant grows the fastest gets to eat the other person's dessert for a year (no one wins. They end up sabotaging each other which Diluc started first, thinking it'll be funny as a joke).

• You are, and will be going on dates with him. In fact, the amount of dates you two went on increased since then. The townspeople would call you two "lovebirds" since he's practically by your side 24/7.

• I mean he doesn't have the responsibilities as a Cavalry Captain anymore so what else is there to do?

• Would attend all annual events no matter what season.

• Evelyn constantly gushes how much of a wonderful pair you and Kaeya make and often is the one who provides Kaeya a fresh bouqet of flowers for him to use as a gift. George on the otherhand just rolled his eyes mumbling something along the lines of "youngsters these days" and "crazy hormones."

• Befriends Pam. Love for beer plus somewhat cynical attitude? They get along real swell! She starts sending some recipes into the mailbox of course saying if yall ever need a hand, let her know.

• Spring: I can see Kaeya be switching back and forth between caring for the farm or taking quests posted on Pierre's bulletin board. He likes to keep things interesting, learning the ways of the new world while also getting to know the people around town.

• Would NOT return Mayor Lewis' shorts in which he found in Marnie's room. It's such high quality blackmail material. Kaeya is currently plotting what is the best way to use it to his advantage.

• He didn't tell you of course.

• Summer: There are no blankets because he is your blanket. Since your cabin was small so was the bed. That's why he has to hold you so that no one falls off when rolling over. Either he hugs you with your nose close to his neck, or your back against his chest while spooning you or holding hands if sleeping on your sides became too much. Yall need a serious house upgrade.

• For some reason Kaeya becomes more energetic in the summer. He lets you rest in the shade while handling the farm work for the time being. If you guys got a pet it would be a cat. Hes the first one to refill their bowl every morning outside.

Another day passes as summer comes to an end, the town’s Mayor invited you and your lover to see the annual Dance Of the Moonlight Jellies. Kaeya being the opportunist was delighted to come along. Locking the door of your house, you follow him down the path and made your way to the beach.

Everyone from town was already gathered by the docks when the sun had disappeared down the horizon. You stood by his side in a space far from the others, watching the candle boats set off to ride the waves, lighting up a small ray of light for creatures to find.

“Wow,” your tone almost above a whisper, “If only our friends back home could see this too.”

“Perhaps,” he says. Kaeya slips his fingers into yours and you shot him a curious glance, “But let us enjoy this moment shall we? Just the two of us.”

And there they were. A sea of luminescence radiating colours of brilliant blue with hints of green like a city of laterns floating in a world below. Their image reflects in the star of Kaeya's eyes as he wonders, where would they go? Where would the light lead them? They were so free with nothing to worry, so serene just like the sea and unknowningly, he squeezes your hand. It was a sense for confirmation. One to remind him that this moment was indeed a reality he wishes to keep.

Autumn: Finally a house upgrade and a kitchen!! Because it was harvest season, you guys end up making a set of delicious meals with all the recipes the townspeople gave you. Kaeya can cook since he lived by himself back in Mondstadt. Most of the stuff he learned to make were food that can be accompanied by alcohol though...

• Ahah remember Mayor Lewis' lucky shorts? He found a use for them. It was displayed on the stands during the Stardew Valley Fair (Oh my how did this get here? Must be the wind). Ends up buying a Rarecrow for the farm when Lewis bribes him not to tell this to anyone.

Winter: This was mostly an indoor season for the both of you. With the existence of television, nights would be spent until morning while watching movies at the couch. A blanket drapes around your shoulders as extends to his. Oh and don't forget the hot chocolate!

#genshin impact #stardew valley #genshin impact headcanons #diluc x reader #kaeya x reader #diluc #diluc ragnvindr #Kaeya #kaeya alberich #genshin x reader #genshin headcanons #genshin imagines #genshin scenarios #nya-writes #genshin impact scenarios #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact imagines

406 notes · View notes

theepisceswriter · 3 years

Note

Jjk dudes promising just the tip but breaking it like 2 seconds later please!

Bestie I know you wanted multiple JJK characters, and I’ll probably still give it you, but I had something similar to this in my notes with Toji, so I decided to make a little ficlet with him instead surrounding this idea....kinda.

Synopsis: Your toxic baby daddy Toji hits you up after not being heard from for months with that smirk on his face that you just can’t resist.

TW: Dub con might apply here but I did my best to make reader aware that Toji was 99.99% lying abt just the tip and knew abt his intentions from the start, but I guess you can interpret it how you want, fembodied!reader, Toji is a trigger warning on his own, manipulation, implied that you have a child together, pregnancy mention briefly, breeding kink, toxic relationship, 18+, MINORS DNI

Word Count: 1.7k

Your heart dropped to your stomach when you flipped your phone over to see ‘TOJI WOJI 🥺🧸🥰....is FaceTiming you.’ Whatever he was calling for couldn’t have been important or even worth your time listening to at all. It was edging on 12 am in the morning, the ungodly hours of the night where sin ran rampant and thoughts became loud as the world around you silenced, a concoction of emotions that meant nothing good. Especially when the last time you received a phone call from him this late it resulted in a booty call that led to you pregnant with a child that Toji barely came to see. Still, you found your thumb lingering over the green answer button and faintly tapping on it, hoping that it wouldn’t go through, but instead, you were met with the sight of Toji. The raven locks on his hair poking out like always, the same old scar over his lip, and the same basic black tee decorating his body. He looked exactly the same as you had last seen him except the outside lights of the world illuminated his face as he appeared to be in what you assumed was the driver’s seat of his car. You felt your heart clench in your chest, memories of your relationship before he up and dipped on you clouding your mind to the point where you were damn near in tears wondering why it had to end so abruptly; why he left you the way he did. But those tears were soon pushed back by with an anger that had you ready to hang up in his face. You were so conflicted when it came to him, always had been.

“What do you want Toji?”

“You. I miss you, y/n. I’ve been thinking a lot about you and our family.” God, here he went with this bullshit again. Just when you thought the cycle was over he always popped up again, little white lies about missing you and his child so he could find solace in your bed for a week or two before dipping like he always did. Apparently, he wanted to come in and talk things out, just talk and try to redeem your relationship. You knew he was just telling you everything you wanted to hear with an ulterior motive behind his words, but you couldn’t resist that grin on his lips and the compliments of how nice you looked even in your nightclothes.

He was too good at this because the next thing you knew he was sitting on the couch in your living room with his legs manspreading out and trying to inch his way closer to where you sat on the opposite end. Your arms crossed and staring daggers into him while all he did was look at you as fondly as he could, as if he were genuinely envisioning a future with you and the child he left you within this moment.

“What the fuck do you really want Toji?” Your voice had a bite to it that left him smirking at your attitude and digging deeper into his mind to pull out lines he knew you wanted to hear, lines he knew would get him that satisfactory ending of you giving into his sweet talk and bold advances as he scooted a couple of inches closer to you. So close that his hand was able to rest on the part of your left thigh that the shorts you were wearing left exposed, gently kneading the area with his palm.

“You know you look good right?” You scoffed and rolled your eyes ready to push his hand off of you but his other hand blocked you from doing so, bringing both of your arms over your head and adjusting the two of you so that you were now smushed between him and the cushioning of the couch. As mad as you wanted to be at him you just couldn’t. He had indestructible shackles placed over your heart that tugged with each time he forced himself back into your life just like how they were now.

Flashbacks of the night you got pregnant suddenly came flashing before your eyes. The vivid imagery of the way he had your legs folded to the point where your ankles were by your ears as he pounded into you ruthlessly from above, hand around your neck tightening your airways and making tears form in your eyes. Blissed dazed out in a space that was too similar to subspace, too out of it to even respond to the “I’m going to fuck a baby into you and how ever many I want after that. Use you like the slut you are and breed you so good.” That had left his lips at that moment.

Which is exactly what he did and here he was again, the two of you in the very same spot shimmied out of your clothes, and him ready to fuck a baby into you again once more.

“I just want you.” When he says it like that, voice soft and laced with what you hope to be some form of honesty, it’s easy to pretend like this is okay in a relationship—if that’s what you could even call this. That if you squinted your eyes hard enough and looked past Toji’s flaws that all this pain and suffering he put you through in the end would be worth it. Your feelings changing for him with each entrance and exit he made in your life. Always wondering what the two of you could’ve been if he was a better man. You had to be soulmates, there was no other explanation for why you kept coming back to each other. At least not any logical one that you could think of.

All the logical thinking left your mind the moment he pressed his lips to yours, those oh so soft lips that you missed and craved badly on nights when other men’s lips couldn’t contort to yours the way that he did.

This is exactly what he wanted—his gentle caresses and touch to distract you from the real reason why he was here. Which was only to use your body how he wanted before he went on with his life, not thinking about you again until he got horny once more. And it was the touch of his cold hands against your skin, working its way up to grope at your enlarged breast, that brought you back to this realization. Lips moving off of his immediately and backing up against the arm of the couch. Your lips opened in protest, only to be cut off by him speaking up first.

“You don’t understand how much I’ve missed your touch—your body. Do you know how much gorgeous you’ve become with a post-pregnancy body? Just looking at you is driving me crazy.” He continues on with his compliments. Each one hitting you straight into your heart and going up to your head to shush those thoughts that scream at you to not fall for his trap, but instead, you fell right into it. Allowing his to resume his position on top of you.

“We don’t even have to do much. Just the tip, I promise. I just miss the feeling of you around me so much.” It’s the first time this whole night that you were able to recognize one of his lies as just that, a bold-faced lie. You knew how he got when he was in the mood, how dark and clouded his mind got with lust to the point where he was a whole different Toji. But you let him believe that you believed that, a small okay leaving your lips along with a nod as you accepted his lips on yours once more; his tongue slipping past your lips to find yours, gently sucking on it and letting out a light moan at the familiarity of it. He didn’t even have to use his hands to guide his cock to your entrance because he was just that big, breaking away from the kiss to look at where the two of you connected and using his hips to guide his erect tip inside of the warmth of your cunt. For a minute, maybe even less, he kept his “promise” of inserting only his tip, but the feeling of your walls gripping on only the tip of his cock was enough for him to go crazy. Something on the verge of a whimper and a moan leaving his lips. He needed more of you and he was going to have more of you. Disregarding his promise like you predicted, he ruthlessly bucked his hips up against yours, his whole length entering you with ease from the build-up of your arousal that had taken the physical form of wetness.

“Pussy so wet just for me that you swallowed me whole.” He tried to pin it on you and if you weren’t stuffed to the brim with him right now maybe you would’ve rolled your eyes and told him how dumb he sounded, but you went along with it. He didn’t even give you time to adjust to him because even after months without touching each other he knew the pussy that he trained with constant fucking every week would remember his shape and form, adjusting your legs so they were folded up against your stomach and immediately getting to work.

“I might have to put another baby in you if this is what post-pregnancy pussy feels like. You feel so good and right around my cock, baby.”

Each thrust was like heaven on earth, his cock curved in just the right spots to his every sensitive area inside of you that left your toes curling and a faint white creamy line begin to form at the base of his cock. It had been so long since you’ve had a nice good fucking. You couldn’t remember the last time you felt so full, so good to the point where tears formed around the edges of your eyes. No one, not even the toys you had spent $100’s on tucked away in your closet, came close to the affect that he had on your body.

He always knew just what to do and just what to say to have you crumbling underneath him. One of your favorite but also most disliked quality that he possessed.

#I know you’re probably wondering where the child is at and I’m going to assume that it’s at someone else’s house rn #I didn’t feel that was too important to mention in the story lmao #Asks.#Spicy.#jjk x reader #jjk smut #jujustu kaisen smut #jujustu kaisen x reader #toji fushiguro smut #toji fushiguro x reader #toji fushiguro

427 notes · View notes

breadboylovin · 3 years

Text

NEW POST FOR MY 95060 PLAYLIST!!! complete with explanations of every song choice under the cut because i love explaining my own creative decisions for some reason (PLEASE DO NOT FEEL COMPELLED TO READ ALL OF IT IF YOU DONT WANT TO ITS VERY LONG LOL). i may add a few songs here and there later on, or more likely rearrange what i've already put in slightly, but for now i consider it done.

alright now heres a look into my twisted mind

PART 1: TEMPTATION

Franz Ferdinand - Michael: It's a song about seducing someone named Michael. What more can I ask for (serious explanation is that it’s also very homosexually charged like you just have to listen to it… also feels taunting in a way where it’s like ‘oooooh you want me so bad’ and he’s RIGHT Michael DOES want him so bad). Also credit to this post for letting me know this song existed and inspiring me to make this playlist in the first place :-3

Mystery Skulls - Paralyzed: Just another song about how Michael is awestruck by David and feels compelled to follow him for whatever reason (the reason is that he wants him so bad)

TAEMIN - WANT: This is one of three Taemin songs on here because I think if David survived until present day he would fucking LOVE Taemin. Anyways this is a song about knowing you’re hot shit and everyone wants you and I think after seducing Michael through fucking?? Fatal motorcycle races and evil noodle mind tricks??? David deserves to feel that

Glass Animals - Gooey: OHGHGHGHFH THIS SONG… the vibes are impeccable on this one, Dave Bayley’s alluring voice feels like a slight remix of what David is going for and the way it feels like the singer is trying to convince the listener of something (even though it’s purposely vague) just FEELS like David with Michael. The line “I can’t take this place, I can’t take this place/I just need to go where I can get some space” especially fits when imagining how Michael is new to Santa Carla and may want a place to belong that David and the boys are happy to provide

TAEMIN - Impressionable: I see this as the moment that Michael downs the bottle of “wine”, where this song is David’s internal monologue reveling in how easy it was to charm Michael and get him to join. I always thought this sounded like a taunting villain song so it just fits. Also it’s like ridiculously horny which is a plus

PART 2: THE RELATIONSHIP ITSELF

MGMT - Me and Michael: In my head this is directly after Michael drinks the “wine”, and if it were an actual song in the movie, it’d play instead of Cry Little Sister in that scene. I already made art related to this but I really just love the juxtaposition between something that Michael will later see as horrible (becoming a half-vampire) and David seeing it as a perfect slow-dance moment. Also “Me and Michael, it’s not a question now” because the blood drinking has now linked them together… mmmmm. Credit to this post again for making me find this song!!

ALI - DESPERADO: This one is less about David and Michael specifically and more about how the night in the cave went down for everyone there, starting with a soft slowness as they ate and then descending into chaos as Michael downs the wine and they celebrate a new addition to the pack. The bacchanal energy is off the charts

Dorian Electra - Man to Man: This song is just one that I attribute to all of the boys because I think they do a lot of homoerotic sparring. Also the part of the movie where Michael punches David in the face and David just goes >:-3 back at him

Chase Atlantic - Friends: I don't know what it is about this one but it just Hits… The chorus kinda sounds like David and the boys trying to convince Michael to stay with them instead of coming back to human society after drinking the blood, in the same sort of taunting manner that they had when David (presumably?) made Michael hallucinate the bike lights and sounds outside of his house

Taking Back Sunday - You're So Last Summer: THIS SONG IS JUST REALLY GOOD. I don't know what it is about this one either… I guess the “Maybe I should hate you for this/Never really did ever quite get that far” part could represent the first glimpse of Michael’s more conflicted feelings about David. Also the second half of verse 2 not only fucks so hard but could also be indicative of Michael’s repressed gay feelings, lying to himself about how he wanted to be around David because he’s cool or whatever but he actually just has the hots for him and would let him do anything if he asked to

MGMT - Little Dark Age: Mostly here just for vibes. Have y’all seen that one edit set to this song? Yeah

The Neighborhood - Prey: I feel like this song captures the general unease that Michael feels right before he sees the boys kill for the first time, knowing that he’s probably turning into a vampire and something horrible is happening… especially with “Something is wrong, I feel like prey” just generally describing what it must feel like to be a human among vampires (though he’s not fully human anymore at this point)

PART 3: REALIZATION + FIGHTING BACK

TAEMIN - Criminal: YET ANOTHER TAEMIN SONG!!!! It’s all about realizing you're with someone who’s like, an evil manipulative villain and genuinely bad for you but you can’t escape just yet because you’re kinda into it. I don't think David is THAT bad of a guy, but Michael could be like “I need to get out of this situation because this man is a vampire but I feel attracted to him and it’s hard to really get away”. Also the line “My hands holding yours that stabbed me are not clean either” just HITS cus Michael hates David’s vampirism but HE’S a half-vampire now so it’s not like he’s innocent either. This is just a really good 95060 song AND a good song in general, listen to it even if you don't normally like K-pop cus it slaps

Glass Animals - Wyrd: This would be the moment where Michael snaps out of it and just starts running away, but to no avail, because he’s still a half-vampire (“You can’t run so you must hide” meaning that he can’t outrun his new monstrous nature, the best he can do is hide it until it eats him alive). Meanwhile David laments over how this is a stupid decision from his perspective (“So, my friend, our time is done/You and I could’ve had so much”)

Moonface - Minotaur Forgiving Theseus: This is a very veeeeery bitter song from Michael’s perspective about David being a vampire… with the “You’re just a hitman” repetition referencing how David. Y’know. Eats people. And the “I heard you're coming for me now” references both how David first approached him and the impending confrontation

The Neighborhood - The Beach: This song goes from the bitterness of the previous one to a pseudo-acceptance of the end of their brief friendship and what’s inevitably going to happen next. However, I think the bridge of the song illustrates the little bit of Michael that doesn’t want this to happen, that wants this relationship to somehow work out because he cares about David even if he is a vampire (unfortunately he ends up repressing this because he feels a duty to kill David now)

Gorillaz - Rhinestone Eyes: This is mostly in here because of the music video, the buildup to a battle just echoes in my head whenever I hear this song now. In the context of this playlist it makes me imagine David looking up at the Emerson’s house from the hotel (and Michael doing the opposite) knowing that something’s about to happen and it’s going to be horrible

Glass Animals - JDNT: This entire song feels like the climax of the movie. Verse 1 feels like the Emersons and Frogs getting ready to attack the cave (“I’m all armored up”) with “I feel that final poke” being when Marko gets staked, and the chorus right after is a tinge of regret that Michael feels once the plan starts to take shape. Verse 2 is the other boys waking up to see that Marko is dead + them dying themselves (“Where my funny friends gone?”) and the bridge is Michael and David’s fight before Michael finally gores David on the antlers. The outro of “You can’t breathe without me” VERY much feels like David taunting Michael from beyond the grave, knowing how much Michael loved him and how horrible what he’s just done is

PART 4: GRIEF

The Brazen Youth - Burn Slowly/I Love You: Ooooooghghgh the conflicted feelings about their relationship is STRONG in this one… The “Burn Slowly” part being him trying to convince himself that he did the right thing by killing David while the “I Love You” part is him realizing that he really did love David and it fucking hurts

Sufjan Stevens - The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us: MAN. MAN… Everything past “I can’t explain the state that I'm in” is just so… it’s Michael realizing what he had even more and just how much it hurts that he’s lost it. He knows he was in love now and it fucking hurts SO MUCH!!!!!

Sufjan Stevens - The Only Thing: [head in my fucking hands] Michael moping around Santa Carla because it feels empty without David. All the “should I tear my eyes out now?/Should I tear my heart out now?” parts oh my GOOOOOOOOD sufjan stevens i'm going to slap you on the head.

Paramore - Tell Me How: THIS SONG HURTS SO MUCH ITS SO. It’s another one about conflicting feelings so theoretically it should be earlier in the story but I always envision something very morbid when listening to this (and have now written a fic about it so check that out)… Michael going back to the hotel where he put David’s body and musing to no one, asking how he’s supposed to feel now, the “And always coming to your defenses” where Michael keeps defending David and their relationship to his family who all think David was a horrible monster… this song fucking hurts. Also I unintentionally drew a parallel between JDNT’s “You can’t breathe without me” and this song’s “Do I suffocate or let go?” and now that I’ve realized that it hurts even more. Fuck this song

#the lost boys #michael emerson #the lost boys david #95060 #michael x david #david x michael #text #Spotify #i have thought sooooo hard about this playlist fr and theres so many individual lyrics and bits that i want to make art for #if i had all the time in the world i would #but. for now. enjoy :-3

41 notes · View notes

novantinuum · 3 years

Link

Fandom: Steven Universe

Rating: Teen Audiences

Words: 2.2K~

Summary: A series of shorts detailing what might’ve happened in the moments after I Am My Monster, told from six different points of view.

Greg apparently had a LOT on his mind, because this was supposed to be short and instead it’s over 2000 words, ahah. Final chapter!

If you read this and enjoy, I’d greatly appreciate your support through reblogs here, or kudos/comments on AO3. Thank you! <3

Chapter warning: Allusions to past non-canon character suicide.

____

Chapter 6: Greg

Hours pass.

Bismuth makes quick and quiet work of replacing the cracked slider door in Steven’s room while he sleeps, and secures a thick tarp over the open front of the house to keep the coastal breeze somewhat at bay until she can finish her repairs to the windows and siding. She warns that might take a day or two. Garnet, meanwhile, busies herself the rest of the afternoon and evening fielding all of the Diamonds’ frazzled calls, and reassuring them of the boy’s current stability. Pooling their knowledge, Dr. Maheswaran and Peridot make sure to confirm that. Beyond some minor scarring, neither his organic or Gem half seems to exhibit any serious physical health conditions in consequence of what happened today, news which works to ever so slightly lift the air of the household. With no other concrete tasks to complete, Pearl, Amethyst, Lapis, Connie, and Greg all rotate between sweeping debris off the floor, wandering the beach to mentally recuperate, and dutifully sitting at Steven’s side as he rests. It may not sound like a lot, but alas the level of emotional labor demanded by such a situation is immense.

All in all, the sun’s long since dipped below the horizon by the time Greg finally collapses onto the mattress laid out in the back of his van, craving if but a moment of privacy and respite from all the chaos. It’s been... an insufferably long day, to put it lightly. Busy. Tons of cleaning, and intercepting nosy neighbors, and bedside monitoring...

He offered to take the first night shift watching Steven a few minutes ago, but Pearl must’ve noticed the dark circles creeping ever wider under his eyes, because she proceeded to gently overturn his offer and remind him of humanity’s daily sleep requirement. And she’s right, of course. He can’t stay up as long as he used to in his twenties anymore. Plus, he probably deserves some time to himself after everything that’s transpired. There’s plenty of Gems left in the house who can keep watch, after all. Steven will be fine for a few hours. Surely nothing else can happen when he’s asleep, right?

Right??

Exhaustedly slumping against the side wall, Greg offers a glassy, vacant stare at the contacts list of his phone, roughly wiping the damp from his cheeks with his other hand as his thumb hovers over one of the numbers. Does he dare drag someone else into this whole situation? Surely the kinder solution would be to refrain from widening the circle any more, from letting anyone else learn about today’s harrowing events. And yet if he fails to find a proper outlet for the raw emotions all of this has violently hauled to the surface, he fears he just may suffer a mental break himself, repressed memories bursting like a vicious flood through the dam he desperately tried to seal them behind all those years back. Much of this is just... far too familiar.

His phone slips right through his trembling hands as the cruel reality of what he witnessed today finally begins to carve its indelible presence in his mind. A strained sob leaking from between his tightly pursed lips, he buries his head between his knees, clutching at the worn bottom hem of his jean shorts like an infant to a parent’s finger. Small. Vulnerable.

Helpless.

His son... oh stars, his only son, he—

He can’t talk about any of this to the Gems; they wouldn’t wholly grasp the uniquely human nature of his concerns. And he doesn’t feel comfortable discussing these matters with Dr. Maheswaran, especially not after the stern words she dealt to him back at the hospital. He’s burdened her enough already, by this point. No, there’s only one fellow human he feels close enough with to engage in this sort of conversation.

Taking a deep, cleansing breath, he reaches for the phone he dropped on the mattress. Turns it on. Nervously clamps down on his bottom lip as he selects his cousin’s contact and dials.

The passing heartbeats slamming against his ribs are almost nauseating in their needy clamor as he waits, his calloused fingers tapping against the thick rubber of his phone case. Andy’s never been a particularly tech savvy guy, so honestly, it’s well within reason he might not even carry his phone on his person to answer. And that’d be fine, really. In fact, he might even prefer it, since he’s still not confident he’s emotionally prepared to discuss any of this at this precise moment, anyways. But just as he’s beginning to undergo mental preparations for what on Earth he might leave as a voicemail message, his older family member finally picks up.

“Greg?” Andy’s gravelly voice rings through, sounding somewhat tinny through their connection. “Hey, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? How’s the ol’ Universe family unit doin’?”

“Not great, honestly,” he narrowly manages in response, his throat constricting tight. “That’s kinda why I’m calling, if you have the time to listen?”

“Heh. I’m a drifter, you know I ain’t got no schedule. Carry on.”

“Well... geeze, how do I put this. There was, uh... a bit of an incident today. With Steven.”

“An incident?” his cousin questions, marked worry immediately painting his tone. “The kid okay??”

He falls silent for a few seconds upon this question, threading his hyperactive digits through the split ends in his hair on automatic, a stress-induced habit. “Unclear,” he says, a slight quiver making itself intimately known in his words. “I mean, physically, at the moment, yes, but—“

He cuts off once more. It suddenly occurs to him that little of today’s events would make sense to Andy without providing the appropriate context. Or, at least, what little context he’s capable of giving as a father. It’s still terrifying to admit the truth to himself— that he doesn’t possess the full story. That he hasn’t been paying close enough attention. That, in many ways, he willfully blinded himself to all the troubling events transpiring around his son throughout the years, foolishly believing that if he didn’t involve himself... that if he simply stayed out of the Gems’ hair... everything would go to plan, and Steven would finally receive the training he needed. He didn’t expect things would grow so complicated.

He didn’t expect that his teenage son would have to march into battle carrying nothing but his wits and a shield time and time again.

With a weary sigh and a quick apology, to which Andy brushes off, Greg begins to weave a verbal picture of everything that’s transpired across the last few days. First, the hospital call. Rushing home from tour, only to find his son giant and flushed pink, literally filling an entire room with the sheer volume of his trauma. The shattered x-ray in his chart, hinting towards hidden hurts that— before all this— even Steven seemingly hadn’t processed or quantified. Then, the road trip. The unwanted reminders of his childhood. That blasted CD. His expression sobers as he describes the fateful argument they had on the road home, one which lead to his son accidentally breaking the steering wheel and flipping the van. Next... his disappearance. No texts for four whole days, which is so unlike him. He was worried sick. And the next time he saw him, he was eight feet tall, glowing, and painfully manic in behavior, with each new sentence spilling from his mouth revealing an even more heartbreaking picture of the sort of poor mental state he’d spiraled into. It was nothing short of a father’s worst nightmare, propelled into horrifying, vivid reality.

Nothing in this corner of the galaxy could’ve prepared him for the primal surge of terror and anguish he was engulfed within when that nightmare distorted and transformed even further.

His only son... colossal and coated in thick scales and spines, sclera black as night... roughly clawing at this unfamiliar form, smashing his skull against the cliffside, roaring with an inner pain so primal that the sound now haunts the depths of his very soul—

“I- you remember what happened with cousin Jo, back when we were young?” Greg says softly once he’s caught Andy up with the details of situation, his voice frail and unsteady, the tone of a man helplessly marooned amidst his anxieties. “Before she was sent to that mental rehab place? Well, I’m... with the addition of Gem magic, it almost felt like that. I mean, h-he’s fine for now, we have him resting, but... but I’m just so scared he won’t come out of this, like her, a-a-and that one day he’ll—“

A mewling sob bubbles up in his throat, swiftly severing that train of thought. N-no. No, he refuses to even utter that horrible idea out loud! After all, a world without Steven in it isn’t worth envisioning.

Andy’s eventual response— albeit tinged with a justified shade of awkwardness, given the emotionally charged nature of this conversation— is filled with genuine compassion, and for that he’s dearly thankful.

“Aw, hell... Greg, I’m- I’m so sorry. I, uh- I could fly over, if any of ya’ need me? For emotional support, or whatever?”

Upon this kind offer, he inhales deep to steady his breath, and wipes away dewy beads of moisture from the corner of his eyes, desperately hoping that he can mitigate the pitiful wavering of his voice over the phone. He’s gotta fight to reliably keep some form of composure in front of other people, damnit. His kid can’t have his dad breaking down around him too, of course.

“No, you’ve got places to be,” he replies evenly, pressing his thumb and pointer against one of his aching temples. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

“You ain’t asking,” he retorts, the eye-roll evident in his tone. “I’m offering. Listen- family takes care of family, y’hear? And I’m only about a day’s flight away, anyways. It’s really the least I could do.”

He sighs. Absentmindedly tugs at a thick strand of his hair. Offers a long, contemplative stare at the rickety age-worn handle affixed to the inside of the van’s back doors. Truth be told— ignoring his deep-seated guilt at dragging Andy into all this to begin with— he’d love having another family member around to embrace, especially a human one who can more deeply understand the crux of his anxieties about this delicate situation. But in the end, he shouldn’t be prioritizing his own feelings and comfort. He’s not the one in crisis, his son is.

Desperately hoping he’s making the right choice, Greg flexes his fingers, and acquiesces to the offer, on one condition: only if Steven consents to having visitors, once he’s awake.

Andy hums in approval. “Understood. Don’t wanna overload the poor guy with any surprise visits, or whatever.”

“Yeah. The last thing I want to do is push him too hard, too fast.”

He pauses, braving waves of parental grief to spend a moment to reflect on Steven’s emotional progression over the past few months... a stray negative comment here, an unusually forlorn mannerism there... All of them events that, in isolation, wouldn’t point to anything more than your standard ‘teenage angst,’ but when observed in strong, unceasing patterns, begin to reveal deeply harrowing truths about the state of an individual’s self-image. How did he never notice? Why wasn’t he there to catch him in his fall?

“I think he hates himself,” he says quietly, his voice hitching up at the end. “He didn’t say so directly, but- but I can sense it. And I don’t know how to help him, I-I... I don’t know if I can.”

“Nonsense,” his cousin scoffs, “‘course ya’ know what to do! What does any good father worth their salt give their sons?”

Unable to evade the momentary temptation of feeling miserable and sorry for himself, he slumps back against the wall, giving a weak shrug that his current audience would never see.

“I dunno, maybe a stable, safe childhood? Not growing up poor as dirt in a van?”

“No, you numbskull,” Andy immediately cuts back, “you love on ‘em and support ‘em just as much as you always have! Y’ show him that you’re always gonna be there for him, and that he can trust you with anything.”

“But I haven’t always been there for him,” he exclaims petulantly. “That’s the whole problem! That’s one of the reasons he ended up like this.”

“Greg,” he says, his voice softer this time. “Listen to me, ain’t nobody perfect, okay? We’ve all made our mistakes with people. Me? More than most. But what we can’t do is let those mistakes cloud what’s happening right now. Y’know, that’s one of the hard lessons I’ve had to learn over the past two years, that you can’t always make things about you. Because right now, it’s about him. He’s dealin’ with some hard feelings, and he needs all of our help. So, let’s help him. Together. We’ll start with one foot in front of us, and we can take it from there. All right?”

Closing his weary, exhausted eyes and pressing his thumb firm against his still-aching temple, Greg Universe gives a long sigh and finally concedes to the reality that— just as he’s not solely responsible for the decline of his son’s mental state— no man should be an island when it comes to the task of supporting one’s journey towards recovery. As with everything, the extended Universe family unit will face the future together, hand-in-hand. Step-by-step.

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Yeah, I think that’s do-able.”

#su #su future #greg universe #andy demayo #su fanfiction #my writing stuff

35 notes · View notes

crash-cinematic-universe · 4 years

Text

Abed Nadir and his need to count the seconds

pairing: abed nadir/troy barnes (it’s Light but I wrote it with the intent for trobed)

summary: Abed Nadir hates being alone in general, so when his friends disappear and leave him alone in a sea of job-seeking students he struggles to keep his head above water.

request: okay wait ur abed headcanons got me thinking. abed angst. kings gotta have abandonment issues cuz of his parents YES I'm projecting a little bit. u don't have to do this if it makes u too sad tho - @ghost-butch

warnings: abandonment issues, anxiety attacks, s/h (kinda; in the form of clenching ur fists too hard)

notes: writing abed angst makes me sad ): why did i do this to him he deserves better. also im about to punch evil abed in the face ):< just over 2k words with this one so thats Cool also its midnight and i have school tomorrow arent i epic and cool.

taglist: @simonsbluee

_____________

Fifteen minutes and twenty-two seconds. Abed had been lost for fifteen minutes and twenty-two second. Abed’s eyes were trained on the clock hanging on the wall, each tick of the second hand amplified in his head to a piercing shout. Everything was bigger; the lights were blindingly bright and his clothes felt as if they were clawing at his skin. With each passing second Abed became increasingly worried, his breath getting shallower and shallower with each rise of his chest. His eyes returned to the clock on the wall, his stomach jumping at the reading-- sixteen minutes and fourteen seconds.

The study group had promised Abed they’d accompany him to the job fair. They promised they’d be by his side the entire time; Abed didn’t do well alone in large crowds, especially in new environments. He’d gotten distracted by an engineering booth in the corner with a large lego replica of the millennium falcon hanging in the corner. He looked away from his friends for no more than thirteen seconds, but in those thirteen seconds, they disappeared in the sea of students and booths and interns. Thus, leaving Abed completely alone in a mass of strangers in a building that he’d never seen before.

His anxiety had built up with every minute he was lost. It was gradual; he started with the initial panic, followed by frantic searching for familiar faces in the crowd. It wasn’t long after that when his heart rate began to pick up, and within minutes his skin felt as if it was on fire. Abed couldn’t really pinpoint exactly when he’d begun to shuffle backwards out of the large venue the job fair was held in. Before he knew it, he was at the end of a dimly lit hallway, completely alone. He slunk to the floor and pulled his knees to his chest.

They’ll look for me, he thought. They’re probably looking for me now. Abed reached into his pocket for his cellphone before he realized he’d left it with Troy. The emptiness of his pocket felt endless, his hand tingling where the fabric of his shorts met his skin. The familiar whine that Abed let out when he became overwhelmed filled the empty hallway, the tone only making his anxiety worse. He cursed himself for not thinking ahead-- he’d left all of his fidget toys and putty in his messenger bag which he also left with Troy.

It was then that a tiny voice in the back of his head spoke up-- maybe they left, it called. Abed shook his head, but the voice persisted. They left you. They’re gone, and no one is coming for you. A familiar figure materialized in the vast shadows at the other end of the hallway; Evil Abed smirked at him from where he stood.

“They’re gone,” He repeated. “They were waiting for something to draw you away for them so they could slip away,”

“That’s not true.” Abed’s fingers absentmindedly dug into his palm. “They wouldn’t do that-- Troy wouldn’t do that. Jeff and Britta, maybe, but not Troy. Not Annie.” Truthfully, Abed didn’t believe that Jeff or Britta would leave, but he wasn’t thinking clearly in the moment.

“Riddle me this, Abed, who does Troy respect more: you or Jeff? Who does he think is cooler? Who does he idolize more?” Evil Abed’s voice was smug and cruel. It felt as if his words were burrowing through his brain and fogging up his thoughts. “Sure, Troy might tolerate you, but he worships Jeff. If Jeff wanted to leave, then surely Britta and Annie would tag along. It’s inevitable that Troy would join them, isn’t it?” Abed shut his eyes tightly, but that didn’t do much to ward off his evil counterpart.

A film played behind Abed’s eyelids, the poetic irony of his worst fears being portrayed through his favorite thing making his heart ache. There they were: Jeff, Britta, Troy, Annie, all standing in a tight group as Abed wandered off. Their expressions and movements were exaggerated, but Abed didn’t care. He just sat and watched as the scene unfolded.

“God, I can’t believe he roped us into this,” Jeff groaned, his hands gripping his cellphone as if someone were going to take it from him. “What kind of loser can’t go to a damn fair by himself? I could have a hot redhead hanging on my arm at a sports bar and instead I’m babysitting a twenty-five-year-old.”

“C’mon Jeff, we’re here for Abed. God knows if he came here alone he’d probably drive everyone here crazy with his “Inspector Spacetime” BS.” Britta chimed in, a tired tone in her voice. Annie looked antsy as always, while Troy looked unsure. Abed wasn’t sure of what, exactly.

Slowly, Abed wandered a few feet away from the group. Jeff’s face lit up the same way it does when he sees an attractive student in the hallways. A borderline cartoon-ish grin grew on his face as he pulled the group tighter.

“Hey, Abed’s gone. Let’s take this window and get the hell out of here while the cat is distracted by the lazer,” He chuckled. Britta smiled and nodded, quickly grabbing Annie’s hand in an attempt to pull her out. The three of them made their way to the exit, leaving Troy alone. He turned around to glance at Abed before rolling his eyes and running after Jeff. Abed was alone.

The image faded away, and to Abed’s surprise, Evil Abed faded away with it. For a split second, Abed was disappointed. He really, really, really didn’t want to be alone-- even if his only companion was an evil version of himself. A minute passes before Abed realizes he was crying, that revelation followed by the realization that his fingernails dug into his palm so hard he broke the skin. His tears blurred his vision and made his surrounding seem much smaller, much darker, much lonelier. His eyes no longer portrayed a dim hallway. Instead, Abed saw the same tiny locker he was locked in so often as a teenager. He could smell the rusted metal of the locker hinges. He could feel the chipped paint rubbing against his skin. He couldn’t breathe. Abed couldn’t breathe-- the entire world was closing in on him. He was cold and alone and no one was coming for him. His friends left him and they weren’t coming back. Everyone who he cares about leaves him, why would they be any different? He watched the world pass by through the tiny slits in the door before his eyes screwed shut again as he choked on air.

He was in agony. His entire body shook and his heart pounded so hard he felt as if it were going to burst. Abed wanted to go home, he wanted to be back at Greendale with Troy and the rest of his friends but he was trapped. His arms began to cramp up from how hard he had tensed, his knuckles a pale white from how tightly he was clenching his fists. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t speak or sob or scream; he was stuck. Locked away. The outside world faded away as Abed retreated into his mind. He tried to hide away in his head forever until a janitor stumbled upon his frozen shell of a body tomorrow morning. There was an echoing sound, however, that kept drawing him from the abyss of his brain.

Footsteps. He could hear footsteps. Abed couldn’t tell whether or not they were real, but he could guess who’s footsteps they were. They were frantic and uneven-- they had the potential to be rhythmic, but the walker was urgent. Worried. The biggest identifying factor, though, was the quiet sound of plastic aglets on the tile floor; their shoes were untied. Abed smiled weakly as he recalled the fact that Troy almost never had his shoes tied. A glimmer of hope shone through the small slits in the locker door as the footsteps grew closer.

“Abed?” Troy’s voice cut through the silence in the hallway. He turned the corner and froze as his eyes landed on his friend. “Abed? God, there you are! You scared me half to death, and Jeff was already boring me to death with his lame lawyer stories, so now I’m only, like, a fourth away from death!”

Abed didn’t reply. He couldn’t-- he still didn’t know if Troy was real or just another image. He was still locked away, after all. Troy could tell something was wrong; Abed’s eyes had glazed over and he looked like he’d seen a ghost. Troy hurried over, his eyes frantically assessing the situation at hand. He saw the blood on Abed’s palms and his stomach lurched.

“Hey, Abed, are you alright?” Troy asked softly. “Did something happen?” Abed did not reply, instead releasing a small, high-pitched whine. Everything was foggy-- it was all too foggy for Abed to know whether or not he was simply envisioning this angel of a human.

“Alright, uh, I’m going to touch your wrist. Is that alright?” Abed hesitated before nodding ever-so-slightly.

Gently, Troy wrapped his hand around Abed’s wrist. The contact was startling, but not unwelcome. Abed was becoming more and more sure that this Troy was real. The tight locker melted away to reveal the same dark hallway; his anxiety was eased a bit,but he still couldn’t shake the feeling of dread that settled over him. He glanced at the clock once again-- he was alone for thirty-two minutes and forty-seven seconds in total.

“I’m sorry I lost you,” Troy spoke quietly. His voice was comforting and genuine, his face soft and kind. He didn’t match the Troy that Evil Abed created at all. “I know this place is overwhelming, I’m so sorry. We should’ve been more attentive and more careful, this place is like a maze.” Abed soon realized he was too tired to respond verbally, instead opting to hold Troy’s hand. A silent reassurance was exchanged through their intertwined fingers. Abed’s palms stung a bit, but he couldn’t bring himself to do anything about it. He was just so tired. His muscles were sore and his chest ached and his head pounded. He wanted to go home.

“Britta was practically running across the building looking for you, ya know,” Troy said. His hand was still holding Abed’s. “Annie started crying after 10 minutes, and for a second Jeff looked like he was going to cry, too. They were all so worried. I was worried, too. The thought of something bad happening to you was too much to handle.”

“I know you hate being alone, too. I guess you probably thought we ditched you or something. Jeff thought you ditched us, but I knew that wasn’t true. It doesn’t really matter, though, because I’m here now,” That final phrase echoed in Abed’s mind as he sat beside his friend. “I want you to know that I really care about you. I want-- I need you to know that I would never ever ditch you like that. Not in a million billion years, not even for a million dollars,”

They sat there for a few more minutes before Annie turned the corner and shouted, sprinting full speed towards the two men at the end of the hallway. Britta and Jeff followed closely after, a wave of relief washing over their faces. They all gushed about their worries and concerns. Annie was quick to tend to the small indents in Abed’s palm, and Jeff and Britta talked about how freaked they were when they realized Abed disappeared. Jeff mentioned stopping by every directing booth in the entire building to see if Abed had landed there-- he even grabbed a few pamphlets for him to flick through later. Finally, Abed gained the energy to stand up, and he walked down the hallway with his friends beside him and Troy’s fingers still laced with him.

On his way out, Abed glanced at the clock on the wall-- twenty-two minutes and twelve seconds. Abed had been surrounded by his wonderfully chaotic family for the past twenty-two minutes, and he’d never felt more secure.

#abed nadir #abed nadir x troy barnes #community #community tv #trobed #britta perry #jeff winger #annie edison #the greendale seven #abed nadir angst #troybed #s/h mention

53 notes · View notes

shimmershae · 4 years

Text

Sometimes logic is the most, I don’t know, logical thing to apply to a situation.

Because Daryl Dixon has shown every*damn*body who his number one priority is this season.

He’s dropped wholeass conversations and pretended like people in front of him were all but invisible to meet Carol Peletier halfway on a dock when her ship come in and sweep her up in his arms and off her feet in the most exuberant and happily relieved hugs ever and essentially ignored the rest of the people loitering around because his vision narrowed strictly to her.

Right before that, he blew off discussions and scouting trips to investigate whether the latest big bad threatening the communities’ safety had returned in favor of waiting for her ship to come in and he continued to blow the whole situation off to get Carol alone for some quality just Carol and Daryl time.

Knowing the Whisperers were still out there, he still daydreamed of escaping to somewhere new and leaving everybody behind—everybody except Carol because she’s the only person he can envision actually escaping for and with.

The man made her a friendship bracelet and flirted and blushed in her presence like an awkward dork with a crush.

He expressly told Carol he needed her to stay.

He bodily restrained her from taking a second shot at Alpha when the bald baddie taunted her and he looked past any misgivings he might have had to tell her he believed her about the Whisperers nobody else had seen but Carol.

Before that, he came running when Carol screamed his name in that old school and fat chance convincing me he didn’t help carry her injured ass all the way to the same infirmary that he waited outside of like a worried husband.

He’s made her dinner trays with flowers, looking out for her physical well-being when she’s been lost in her ongoing grief and he felt powerless to help with it.

His thoughts, this season, have rarely strayed from her and his eyes have been open and watching out for her because he wants to be her safety net while she’s been struggling so very much with Henry’s loss and her consuming need for vengeance. I mean, granted. Daryl Dixon is no fuss, no muss pretty much 24/7, but have y’all ever seen a man get his ass ready that quick to follow a woman without some kind of promised benefit to him? Yeah. Naw.

He did his version of getting the Dixon flirt on again when they were tossing acorns at a can—because they be cutely competitive af.

Daryl Dixon when teased by Carol Peletier about whether his budding friendship with a sweet and seemingly perfect fellow community member could be more? Deadass told her with utmost seriousness and sincerity that it wasn’t like that—not at all.

And then proceeded to pocket the double capper acorn Carol gave him as a good luck charm right over his heart and later gaze at it longingly in the privacy of his own room.

When they were doing their good cop/bad cop routine with the captured Whisperer, Daryl only really lost his cool when the Whisperer made some lewd and disrespectful comments to Carol.

The man has argued for her to sit the more potentially dangerous missions out and remain in the relative safety of Alexandria.

When she went along anyway? Again she was his primary focus. So much so he stopped her from walking into a literal trap, called her on her bullshit, and comforted her when the tears come in a way that honestly? Daryl Dixon has never really shown the inclination to do. By thumbing her tears away from her cheeks, hugging her tight and nuzzling her hair while telling to tell him. To open up to him with her feelings and her fears. And that they “have a future.”

Carol was so much in his sights on that same mission that he immediately recognized when her attention strayed and sent their group running after her into the unknown.

He followed, of course, and Carol’s name was the only name that ever passed from his lips. She was the first person he sought out in the darkness. The first one he encouraged to follow him to relative safety.

When her claustrophobia reared its ugly head, he was the one informing others so that they might offer their own comfort and he didn’t stand a second for Magna getting all up in Carol’s face.

He asked Carol to follow his light when her claustrophobia had her frozen. Everybody else, including a dear sweet deaf woman and her sister—also losing her hearing, were told to follow his voice. 🤦‍♀️

He let Kelly’s ass somersault at his literal feet and gently tugged Carol to safety.

He followed her back into that dark cave and pleaded to her with tears in his eyes and emotion tightening his voice to come back with him and he was all about getting her to safety when that faulty dynamite slipped.

Daryl Dixon didn’t even look back to make sure any of his other friends and community members had made it out of that cave until he knew Carol Peletier was a safe distance away.

Try convincing me his ensuing emotional breakdown wasn’t just as much, probably more about Carol breaking her recent promise to him to think more clearly and be more cautious. Helpful word of advice? Stop while you’re ahead.

Instead of scouting out an alternative way back into the cave to possibly rescue C0nnie and Magna later? The man tried to singlehandedly take on the source of so much of Carol’s grief—Alpha herself, when he so recently discouraged Carol from such a lone wolf action—and ended up seriously injured as a result.

Back at Hilltop? In spite of the hurt he felt, Daryl told Carol perhaps the truest truth there is when he said “I’m never gonna hate you.”

During this same time frame, he made little reference to the two people lost at the cave. Not because he doesn’t value their lives because he does. But he values the community’s overall safety more and the only times he’s ever been shown to blink in that regard? It’s always been because of Carol Peletier.

After the fall of Hilltop, when he and Negan crossed paths and Negan alluded to Carol as Daryl’s girlfriend? Daryl doesn’t even blink. And whereas before, the safety of the community mattered more? The man chills with someone he deadass hates waiting patiently all night for Carol to come back to him. Let’s not even talk about how many hours he probably paced and waited inside Alexandria’s gates.

So. Who do y’all suppose has been Daryl’s number one priority all damn season? Huh?

I’ll give you three guesses and the other two don’t count. Just for giggles I will demonstrate who it ain’t by giving a basic outline of the kind of focus her bond with Daryl has gotten.

At the beginning of the season, Daryl was on his way down to the docks to wait for Carol’s boat to come in with he crossed paths with a new friend and Dog happily sought out pets because what Doggo of any salt or intellect will turn down pets from a pair of kind hands that have fed it before?? Daryl and this friend shared a cute little two second convo that was interrupted and abandoned with his first sight of Carol waving at him like he was her sweetheart there to welcome her home and this friend basically ceased to exist from that moment until her sister went missing for a short while.

Daryl, already being present after accompanying Siddiq to Hilltop and caring about the overall welfare of the communities and such, helped in the search for Kelly and even told this new friend a funny story about his own (departed) sibling as a means of comfort and gave her hand a reassuring maybe two second long squeeze. Honestly? There were so many echoes of his friendship with Denise when I see these two together. So many. But I digress.

Once Kelly was found and safe, Daryl’s attention reverted back to form and he didn’t linger at Hilltop. They had a weird little interlude where I still can’t figure out whether she was trying to butter him up to keep her own family’s secret or was genuinely welcoming him as a fellow found family member.

Anyhoo, their paths didn’t even cross again until they did a combined search for Alpha’s horde and Lydia and Daryl acknowledged her with a shoulder tap to get her attention—I mean, he was approaching her from behind and she couldn’t hear him so.

What little bit of interaction they had in the cave basically came about because of Carol and I gotta tell you. The man deadass forgot she existed when he was trying to help get Carol out of there.

We’ve already kinda covered what I thought about his reaction to the cave in, but I will say this. Leave y’all with a little food for thought: if Carol was underneath those rocks, can any of y’all logically see the man leaving there for any reason short of Judith and RJ being in immediate danger?

Can you? Because I can’t.

If they had managed to tear him away even briefly, his ass would be right back first chance he got. And suppose he’d run into Alpha in the meantime. I don’t think he would have attacked her until he found a way to get to Carol. Naw. That attack was all about Carol (and maybe Lydia) from the word go. Else Daryl would have been smart and patient and found his way in that damn cave to mount a rescue.

You know why?

Because logic. The story’s shown us the way this season. Logic and history. A whole ten fucking years of history.

Daryl Dixon can’t lose Carol Peletier anymore than she can lose him.

Only in the absence of all logic can anyone ever think differently.

Explains a lot, huh?

And some people are still up in arms over Daryl simply soldiering forward and not having the singular thought of C0nnie, C0nnie, C0nnie in his brain when his communities, his long established found family, and the one person he absolutely cannot lose still need safeguarding.

I mean, he cares but Daryl done told every*damn*body already. Take it from the man himself, the reason why.

“It’s not like that. Not at all.”

I know logic isn’t really this show’s strong suit, but in this case? The story has been leading us to one logical conclusion all season, and I don’t think it’s the one that some people out there are prepared to accept. I mean, yeah. I’d feel some kinda way, but.

206 notes · View notes

beepathan · 4 years

Text

ok ive decided to just dump every thought i have on this post. buffoonery under the cut

ONE! AND HERE COMES THE TWO TO THE THREE BROS IN THE PLACE TO BE ICHIBANTTE DOUBLE B I shit i forgot the rest DOO DO DO DOOOO DO DO DO DO DOOOOO DOD OOOOO DO DOOOOOOOOOOO DOOOO DOOOOOD OOOOOD OOOOOD ODDOODOOOO i doubt thatd register as the pattern i intended it to to any one who read it. goddddd i need to yell and make noise but i CANTTTTTT flowers that bloom in the darkness its a sighting that is rare to come across nobody seems to have noticdd thay the power that has been bestowed is lust riding through the twilight this armory. protects my HEATRRRTT BADBADBABBDBADBABDBABBABBABDBDBBBBDBADBABDBABDBADBBADBABDBADBABDBADBABDABBBDBBADBANDBADBANDNAbDNABd cfnfn OFO GOD I WISH I COULD MAKE DUBSTEP NOISES OUT LOUD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!yeah being a scientist is gonna be cool and all but i really wish i could go into music or visual art or something like. i want to make things creatively i want to create sounds and colors and characters and words i dont want to spend my days in a lab or teaching biology to high schoolers who couldnt care less. i mean ok actually being in a lab would be cool hypothetically depending on what sort of science specifically i would do. ive been biting the insides of my cheeks a lt lately and i cant move my face without feeling the places where my cheeks have become thinner even just in the slightest amount. im worried about the message my sister and i’s comic might accidentally send because theres a lot of moral ambiguity and the “good guys” arent really good at all. there arent really any good guys in our story just people the narrative follows. ill take you baaaaack my valkyrieeeeeee youre coming HOOOOOMe i wont lose. hope. bBABBAAAAAAAAADADAADBABBABABA shit how longs that empty drink been there. since this morning ok. i really cant envision a realistic future for myself where im happy and fulfilled. its not very fun to think about and im worried about the state of the world becasue it doesnt look like its going to get better. like the actions everyday people can take willl never be enough and we just have to hope the people with the power to start fixing things will actually do so. but we all know they wont and thats scary. it really does feel like humanity is rushing headfirst into its self-made doom and its all because of a few people. which fucking sucks i mean like. can someone ping the mods on earth and get the fuckers permabanned or something. establish a unified planet where we help each other instead of trying to destroy each other at the cost of destroying ourselves. id go to therapy but these arent issues i can overcome, its genuinely how it is and theres realistically nothing to be done except try to cope with it while the people causing this dont bat an eye at what theyve done. every single day the people with power CHOOSE not to make things better. and for WHAT? im not religious but i hope to fuck theres an afterlife and theres justice because. god whats even the point otherwise? shit im about to start spiralling. ok ill try to think about something else. really the only way to get things done is to Do them and it seems obvious even to those who dont get things done but like. it truly is an ordeal because Doing things ends up being a more complicated process than youd think. we really are what we do and not what we feel but i think for mentos illness its kinda the opposite. even if you can hide your symptoms its about whats going on inside, and that inside stuff directly contradicts a lot of the efforts you try to make externally somehow. mind over matter, but what if the mind is deliberately trying to sabotage your efforts? then again, it isnt malicious in nature. just as much as you Are your mind, you are also a creature, acting on instinct, even if that instinct is thought through and rationalized so that you do not view it as such. in the end all that separates me from a cell is how much of me there is. how much of the world i can interact with. a cell can only interact with as much as it is a part of, but i interact with so much more than i will ever know or perceieve. countless cells, microbes and shit, ive changed and moved and killed and created more of those than ill ever know, because just as i can not perceive the infinite wonder of the universe, i can not perceieve the life that goes on at a certain level smaller than me. where does the line get drawn, for the life i perceieve? will i ever spell perceieve right? no. i have the power to spell it right, but i choose not to correct myself, because i have deemed that action worthless. is that why the people in power refuse to make things better? do they deem the safety of those controlled by their systems worthless? in the grand scheme of things, i suppose theyd be correct. someday we will all cease to exist, and none of our actions, our thoughts and feelings, the things weve seen and loved and feared and been apathetic to, will matter, because at the end of the day, we are a speck in the infinite expanse of the universe. but what if we werent? what if my actions have meaning, outside this room, outside this country, outside this galaxy? just because i think it is worthless to correct my spelling mistakes on a post no one will ever see does not make it so. the cells in my body dont find it worthless when i breathe, when i eat and drink and live and die. i think my laundry might be done drying soon

#beeps #jesus i went places

1 note · View note

marlahey · 5 years

Text

we stumbled in the dark: part fourteen sneak peek

...hi.

so I know it’s been about 84 years, but the good news is that part 14 of wsitd is still going (slowly but surely) and the last scene of this chapter is still as vivid in my head as it was last year when I first envisioned the fic. it’s coming, I promise. it was my ride or die shawn bff @bluerroses‘ birthday on the 30th and I gifted her an extra scene from wstid, one that isn’t included in the original fic. @mendesftoakley also asked for a jetlag!shawn thing the other week which I’d wanted to write and then got totally distracted – all that’s to say, here’s a deleted scene that ended up being so massive it’ll probably stay, set in the middle of the night post-part 13. to everyone who reached out to me after my minor rage freak out re: shawn and the state of his fandom and wsitd, much love. every time I think my love for this boy’s faded to something reasonable, he comes out with tour videos that make my chest ache cause he moves me so damn much. happy belated, to both grace and my darling one. I love you. new york; now It’s 2:24 am. You’re wide awake. Shawn, of course, is fast asleep. His fingers are still curled into the edges of your t-shirt and the part of you that isn’t annoyed at his peaceful slumber aches a little at the innocence of the gesture. Just a boy. You toy with the idea of just laying here a while longer, but now that you’ve thought about it a trip to the bathroom is in order and it’s not as if you’re going to fall back asleep anytime soon. Stupid jetlag.

So you get up. You reach for Shawn’s Harvard hoodie tossed to the end of the bed (because it’s closer than yours, obviously, not because it smells like him) and pad as softly as you can to the door. From the bathroom you head down the stairs, following a wash of light into the kitchen. Taylor whirls around from the open freezer, holding a pint of ice cream and looking guilty. “Oh god, I woke you up, didn’t I? I’m so sorry.”

“No,” you reply quickly. “I was already up, you’re fine.” Her shoulders relax and Taylor grins a little sheepishly, as though this isn’t her house and she’d be caught doing something illicit.

“Can’t sleep?”

You shake your head. “I don’t get how he’s just...out like a light. So annoying.”The unspoken intimacy is already out before you can even think to take it back, but she just laughs lightly. “His body’s used to it.” Taylor reaches into a drawer for a spoon. “Want some? Mint chocolate chip.”

It’s probably a bad idea, but you shrug and accept the utensil as Taylor gathers another spoon, two shallow bowls and an ice cream scoop. “How was your party?”

Taylor scoops you just enough for a couple bites and you smile gratefully. “It was fine. I mean, good. But I haven’t been out in a while and it’s kinda draining being really social for a long time, you know?” You think of all the times Shawn’s opted to sit in companionable silence with you instead of a last round or a second after party. “Yeah, sure.” “I’ll make you a warm turmeric milk,” Taylor offers. Even the way she twists her wrist to pick up ice cream seems graceful. “Worse case, I have melatonin somewhere.” “You’re not tired?” “Not yet. Takes me a while to wind down. How was your night? You guys have fun?” It’s an innocent question, but a flush crawls up your neck all the same. You shove a spoonful of ice cream in your mouth and “Mhmm!” Taylor’s smille crinkles around her eyes; she doesn’t press you. “Tell me about tour,” she says instead. “What’s been your favourite place? Your favourite show?” It takes a moment of consideration. You tell her about Paris and its glittering lights and birthday sparklers and candles. You tell her about Manchester and Youth. You tell her about Morgan on the barricade in London. You hardly mention Shawn by name and yet he’s there, lingering at the edges of all your sentences and inside your pauses. Taylor makes you a warm golden milk with turmeric and you drink while you talk. When you yawn, surprising somehow like you’d forgotten how, she presses melatonin into your hand. “Get some sleep,” she says. “I’ll see you in the morning.” So up you go. Equally surprising is the strip of light at the bottom of Taylor’s guest bedroom door. Shawn’s slouched against the headboard, the blue light of his phone illuminating his face while the bedside lamp casts a long, warm veil over the rest of the room. “Hey,” you say softly, closing the door behind you. “Did I wake you?” He shakes his head. “Woke up and you were gone.” Something about the edge of sleep still in his voice makes it sound oddly vulnerable. “You okay? Is Taylor back? I thought I could hear you talking.” “Yeah, I am. And she is. I couldn’t sleep and she was getting ice cream.” He’s staring a little as you put down the mug of warm milk on the bedside table. “What?” Shawn blinks. “Nothing.” His eyes linger on the place where his hoodie meets your shorts and you flush. “Sorry,” you blurt, suddenly self-conscious. “It was just closer, I–” “El.” He drags your gaze back up. “I don’t mind. It looks good on you.” Shawn’s smile is tilted in that familiar, teasing way; you roll your eyes, but you let him reach across the bed and pull you closer to him until you sit up facing each other. You let him help you tug the sweater over your head and you let his eyes catch on your stomach, your ribs, the shadowed curve of your breast before your t-shirt falls back down. You turn out the light. Shawn presses his face into the slope of your neck and breathes deeply. “Loonie for your thoughts,” you murmur, carding your fingers through his hair, kneading gently over his neck with your fingertips until he groans. Shawn’s so quiet at first that you think he may have fallen back asleep sitting up. “Can I ask you something?” In the moonlight he’s more pale than ever. You hum in reply. The hand pressing tiny circles against the small of your back goes still. “About Hannah?” You don’t mean to flinch; Shawn’s grip tightens, just a little. You swallow and speak before he can take it back. “What about her?” Shawn straightens to look you in the eye, equal parts calm and unsure. “You get this look on your face when you talk to her, or about her. Even way back in Ottawa.” The realization that Shawn’s apparently been looking at you since the night you met is disarming, to put it mildly. It’s suddenly hard to focus on the conversation. “I know you guys haven’t–” he pauses– “talked in a while, but...” Shawn reaches forward with his free hand and thumbs gently at an unconscious furrow between your eyebrows. “I still see that look.” Something like shame burns in your throat. You look down at the bedspread. Shawn waits patiently as you pick up his swallow hand, tracing the lines of its wings. “I don’t have that big of an ego to think this is all about me,” he continues wryly. “And if you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to. I just...” You’re expecting him to tilt your chin up, to force you to look at him, but Shawn ducks his head a little and doesn’t look hurt when you can barely meet his gaze. “I was just wondering where you go when you look so far away.” You’re genuinely stunned into silence. A response, as much as you want to give him one, refuses to surface. And Shawn seems to be able to see the blank panic in your expression, because he just leans forward to press a kiss to your forehead. “Never mind,” he says gently. “Just forget I asked.” You can feel him about to lean back, to give you space, to seek silent permission before he tugs you back beneath the covers so you can actually try to sleep. No disappoint, no malice, no distrust. You think, I am truly and deeply in love with you. You say, “She gave me a marker.” Shawn doesn’t say anything. He folds his hand around yours. “When my parents died the therapist said that routines were good, so I went back to school but everyone was like, weird, you know? And then one day we were supposed to make Mother’s Day gifts but I didn’t know what to do. My teacher said I could make something for my sister, but I’d left my colours at home.” You haven’t thought about that day in a long time. Shawn’s left hand touches your wrist; you follow the lines of his right palm. Comfort; comforted. “Hannah gave me her marker. And then everyone just stopped looking at me and we all coloured flowers. The next day I helped her learn long division and we’ve been best friends ever since.” You try to smile but you’re fairly certain the curve isn’t quite right. Shawn brushes your hair back as it falls forward. The gesture is so familiar now that it feels strange to remember he hasn’t always been doing it, that his touch hasn’t always been a tender, thrilling reminder: you’re here. this is real. you’re alive. His own smile is a little better formed, encouraging instead of patronizing. “Sometimes she’s awful,” you continue. “She can get petty and jealous.” You don’t mean to say what comes out next. “The week before Ava brought me to Ottawa we’d gone to a party and she made out with my one and only real ex boyfriend.” Shawn’s eyes widen, but still he stays quiet. It’s the only way you’re able to keep talking. “She was drunk, and she says she doesn’t even remember. He says she tried to take his clothes off, but he’s also a piece of shit, so…” You let out a tiny, bitter laugh. “And I forgave her, because what else was I supposed to do? And then Ava sent those tickets and you–“ Shawn’s fingers freeze, just for a breath, behind your ear. You try to smile again and it’s like lifting a weight you can only just barely get off the floor. “You were so wonderful and part of me was still so mad at her.” That earlier shame presses a knot in your throat. “And I knew I had to keep the secret but part of me was awful, too. I wanted to. It was something that was just mine, that I never had to share or have her judge or want for herself.” “I don’t think that’s awful,” he says softly. You shrug. Tears slide past your nose. He thumbs them away but doesn’t otherwise move. “I know she didn’t leak the news about us.” Now that you’ve gotten this far you’re determined to finish. “But I don’t know if I can forgive her for the way she made me feel about it. Or if I can forgive myself for letting her make me feel that way.” Shawn’s edges are a little blurry when you finally lift your chin. “I still love her, isn’t that fucked up? What kind of person does that make me?” He doesn’t speak for a long time. You have no idea how one drags themselves out of the emotional hole you’ve dug. Before you can let Shawn off the hook, or apologize for dumping seven years of emotional baggage onto him, he pulls you forward and folds you into his arms. “Do you want me to say something,” he asks, pressing his chin against the top of your head. “Or do you just want this?” The weight of this confession is so heavy that no longer having to carry it alone pulls you off balance. You slip your hand underneath his collar to pull Saint Christopher out. When you can speak without a sob swallowing your words, you let go of the chain. “You can say something.” Shawn kisses the crown of your hair. “You can feel however you want, whenever you want. You shouldn’t have to hide it. And you don’t have to, not from me. Okay?” You can’t reply. You just sniff into the collar of his t-shirt. His hand smooths up and down your spine. “I don’t think that forgiveness is a bad thing, El. Especially for yourself.” You’re shuddering with the effort of breathing normally instead of hiccuping. Shawn just gathers you closer. He doesn’t shush you, but just murmurs softly in your ear, “It’s okay. I’m here. I got you.” You’re still clinging to him when you fall asleep.

#shawn mendes imagine #shawn mendes fic #shawn mendes blurb #shawn mendes #shawn mendes writing #wsitd #mine: fic #wsitd is back from war sorry

56 notes · View notes

juliethebibliophile · 5 years

Text

Ideas For a Tangled Musical

Since I am a former theatre person™️ and am still very into theatre to some degree, and am definitely very into Tangled, I have a lot of thoughts about a Tangled musical for Broadway and I’ve never shared them here so I thought I would (Yes I’m aware of the cruise ship one and I’ve seen it on Youtube but I’m not the biggest fan so that’s irrelevant to this post)

(Also note. I’m very in over my head with these ideas to the point where I am genuinely DEVASTATED that they will never see the light of day....no pun intended)

So this all started when last summer I wrote an entire ending

Literally

I have the entire ending sequence/closing number composed, arranged, lyricized and blocked including bows

I won’t put all the details here cause that’s more for a specific post

But it involves a sad reprise of “I See the Light” while Eugene is dying

And then another reprise after he’s alive where ensemble members sing the epilogue

And the entire closing number is a combo I See the Light Reprise/The Epilogue/ Tangled Ever After

The bows are to the Epilogue/Kingdom Celebration music

If anyone genuinely wants to hear all the lyrics/details hit me up because I’m a nerd who can’t talk about it enough

Derek Klena and Taylor Louderman as Eugene and Rapunzel because of this clip entirely (AKA my favorite video ever)

I would also accept Laura Osnes or others as Rapunzel but Derek Klena needs to be Eugene and I won’t budge on that

Donna Murphy could definitely still be Gothel

The Kingdom Dance would be a giant intricate dance number that brought the audience to its feet

I SEE THE LIGHT

THE POTENTIAL BRO

I imagine a set-up much like how they’re doing “A Whole New World” on Broadway right now, where the stage is completely dark so it looks like they’re floating (I can’t find a clip of that sorry)

And Eugene and Rapunzel are in the boat on the middle of the stage and the only light on stage is lanterns

Combo real lanterns and tiny lights on stage and lanters projected onto the walls and lanterns in the audience

Kind of like “Once Upon a December” in the Anastasia musical

I also kinda envision “I See the Light” being blocked a bit differently where there’s more dialogue inbetween the two verses. There’s Rapunzel and Eugene’s bit, but also a bit where Frederick and Ariana are on the side talking about waiting for their daughter to come home.

Maybe its not until then that the lanterns are released

I don’t know but I love any version of it

That’s all I have right now but I’ll probably add more soon and if you for some reason also have ideas please feel free to share them with me

#tangled #disney #mine #rapunzel

5 notes · View notes

strawberriestyles · 6 years

Text

Part 1: Kidney

(BANNER MADE BY MY TALENTED SWEETIE PIE @adashofniallandasprinkleoflunacy)

Harry X Reader (AU)

In which you’re persuaded to help a young witch named Harry.

Read previous part here.

Word count: 4k

Author’s note: Originally, everything was kinda supposed to line up and the part that I was going to post on Halloween was actually supposed to be set on Halloween night, but life gets in the way and things don’t work out. :( I’m sort of sad I wasn’t able to get everything done and give it to y’all the way I had envisioned. This is the best I can do, and I hope it’s enough. Please let me know if you enjoy it or if you have any thoughts at all! Happy Halloreading. Xx

The telltale signs of fall have truly begun to reveal themselves. Along every sidewalk, there seems to be chunky knit sweaters and scuffed Chelsea boots, pumpkin-flavored snacks and mulled apple cider. Normally, Harry would roll his eyes at the widespread commonality of it all, but he’s too preoccupied. He’s got his nose buried deep in a page of words that he can’t seem to make out, nothing more than a bunch of gibberish.

If anyone was watching, they might notice that the heavy library door swings open before Harry has even made contact with the handle. They might catch the way his eyes seem to glow as this happens. But no one is watching and no on notices.

The thick heels of Harry’s boots click against the stone floors. He carries himself across the deep lobby, eyes still perusing his sheet of paper, until he reaches the stairs that will lead him to the library’s next level. At the top of them, he swings left, maneuvering between shelves so effortlessly that it’s like he’s in his own home. Books on Latin language are tucked away in a dark corner, one that he’s very familiar with. He spends large portions of his free time here. And he’s never worried about books being checked out, because after all, Latin is a dead language. But Harry is confused when he reaches reflexively for the book he always uses, the one that’s easiest to navigate, and his fingers find nothing but air.

His eyes finally lift away from the paper in his hand. Layers of dust have settled over everything in this section, but in the empty shelf space for his book, there are tracks through the dust from his constant readings. It’s coated the tips of his searching fingers, and he wipes the residue on the side of his jeans, sighing. Frustrated and disoriented, Harry yanks another book from the shelf and retreats from the corner, back into the main walkway. He taps across the room to his usual spot, at a table disconnected from the main reading area, but again he’s surprised.

Your foot is bopping out of beat to the song playing through your earbuds, and a ready pen is caught between your teeth as you skim a few pages of text. You don’t even notice that someone has approached you. You don’t notice the man leaned up against the edge of your table until your music suddenly begins to cut out. You jump when you do notice him.

“Jesus!” Without even removing your earbuds, you can hear your own voice echo off of the stone floors. You clap a hand over your mouth. You’re not supposed to make noises that echo in a library.

Pulling your earbuds out, you take a moment to examine their cords, looking for any damage that might explain their spotty sound. You find nothing. The stranger clears his throat and when you look up he’s staring at you. His eyes are bright, almost glowing in the dim light from a wall sconce.

“Can I help you?” you ask when he still hasn’t spoken.

“Yeah. Are yeh gonna be usin’ tha’ book for much longer?”

You notice his gaze divert to the thick Latin book you’d been studying. Your fingers splay over your page to make sure that you don’t lose your spot.

“Um, yeah. I was gonna be here for a few more hours.”

You can see the man grit his teeth, see him twist to stretch his neck. The wall sconce, your only source of light in this corner, flickers momentarily. It draws your attention.

“You read Latin?” he asks, pulling your gaze back around to him. Maybe you imagine it, but you’re sure you can hear sarcasm, condescension in his voice. “Yes, a bit,” you answer, shifting in your chair. “I’m a language major.”

“Are yeh?” The man seems to consider this, glancing down at his own book. Then he settles his mind and looks back up at you with challenging eyes. “Yeh think yeh could try t’translate this for me?”

He holds out a piece of paper to you. After a brief hesitation—you have an exam coming up later this week—you take the sheet from him. It’s scribbled across with sloppy Latin. You flatten the page out on top of your book.

“What’s this for?” you ask. “A class?”

“No, ‘m not a student.”

You frown, but this is all the information he gives you. He watches you expectantly until you turn your attention to his page of text and begin to piece together words. Then you glance back up at him, unamused.

“Wha’?”

“Is this a joke?”

“No, ‘s not. Wha’ does it say?”

You slip the paper toward him across your table. “It’s nonsense. Something about boiling the kidney of a raccoon.”

The stranger’s face lights up, and you don’t think you’ve ever been so confused and uncomfortable. “Yeh’re pretty good with your Latin, aren’ yeh?”

“I like to think so.”

“I’m Harry.”

You lick your lips and hesitate when he holds out a hand decorated with old-looking rings. But he raises an eyebrow after a moment, so you shake his hand, nearly flinching at how cold the metal of his jewelry is against your skin.

“Y/N,” you introduce.

“Well, Y/N, d’yeh think yeh could do some more translations for me? I have a whole book at home tha’s takin’ me forever t’get through, and yeh would speed the entire process up a lot.”

Your face contorts as you finally set your earbuds down. “Is that supposed to be a pick-up line? Because it’s the strangest one I’ve ever heard.”

“If yeh’d like it t’be a pick-up line, sure.” Harry grins, and it seems genuine and charming. “But if tha’s not enough, I’ll pay yeh for translatin’.” By now he’s set his book down and his hands lay flat on the table. He’s a lot closer. You notice that he doesn’t smell like most men your age, like cologne and sweat. Instead, he smells of earth and spices. It’s a comfortable scent.

“Before I agree to anything,” you begin, leaning back in your chair and crossing your arms, “what is this book? And why are you reading it?”

Harry grins again and his eyes almost sparkle. “‘S a spellbook and ‘m workin’ on an important spell.”

Despite yourself, you crack a smile. “So, you’re either crazy or you don’t wanna tell me,” you observe. “How much are you paying?”

“How much would I need?” Harry asks. He straightens back up and runs his fingers slowly through his hair.

“Well,” you answer, closing up your book. You don’t feel completely unprepared for your exam, and your grades won’t suffer much even if you are. “I guess we can figure that out once I know how much I’m translating.”

***

“You live here?”

Harry glances up at the house as you slam the car door shut. He shrugs. “Yeah. Rent’s cheap.”

“Probably because people were murdered here,” you mutter under your breath. You’d been surprised when Harry had led you to a car from the library and not directly to his place. You’d been slightly cautious as he took the road out of the town and turned into a dirt drive. But now that you’re here, you find yourself feeling apprehensive. It’s not that the little house is scary. It could certainly use a paint job and some trimming of the ivy that has wrapped its way up the corners, but in fact, it’s quite charming. It’s more the seclusion of it from town, and the strange air that seems to hover around it, thick and perfumed. Trees, beginning to bare their branches, form a tight circle around the building. A short gust of wind blows a group of leaves past your feet.

“Y/N,” Harry calls from the front door, which he has unlocked, and where he’s standing in the frame. “Yeh comin’ in?”

Stuffing your hands into the pockets of your jacket, you trek across the lawn to where Harry is holding the door open for you. He lets you pass by him and then follows you inside. It’s dark. The windows that you can see appear to be coated with a layer of grime. Some thick, dark residue that you’re sure would stick to your skin.

Harry leads you deeper into the house until you’re standing at the edge of a living room. You can’t see much, but then Harry approaches the wall beside you and reaches up. His forefinger and thumb press together over the wick of an unlit candle held in a candelabra. When he pulls his hand away, a flame has sparked. He repeats the process twice more with the other candles on the candelabra, and you can feel your body begin to turn icy from your feet, up through your legs.

“How did you do that?” you ask, licking your lips habitually.

“Magic,” Harry answers, turning to smile at you. There’s a twitch of amusement at the corner of his lips that somehow dulls your anxiety. Despite yourself, you let out a short chuckle.

As Harry rounds into a hallway beside the candles, you take the time to observe your surroundings with the fresh light. It’s rather bare furniture-wise. A single couch is placed in the center of the room. A wooden chair has been tucked away into the far corner, carved with ornate designs that you can’t make out from where you stand. Next to the chair are two windows which barely let any sunlight in. But along nearly every wall stand tall shelves stacked with books and knickknacks. Things that sparkle in the flickering candlelight, things that seem to glow all on their own, things that look to be spinning.

You shriek and jump back against a wall as something rubs up against your ankles. When you look down, green eyes are glowing up at you. It’s a cat.

Harry pokes his head out from the hall that he disappeared down. He chuckles at your defensive body language.

“Tha’s Nicks,” he informs you.

“Is he nice?” you ask softly. The cat sits before you, flicking its tail rhythmically as it watches you. A strange humming reverberates from its throat, and you know that’s not a purr.

“She is nice, as long as yeh don’ offend her. And it looks like yeh might’ve already done tha’, so.” Harry walks around Nicks, who keeps her eyes trained on you as he reaches for your hand. You give it to him, carefully avoiding the cat as Harry pulls you toward the hall. Nicks's head twists around as you leave.

"She gets kinda jealous when I give someone else attention," Harry explains. He drops your hand at the doorway to another room and moves across the floor.

Glancing around, you find that you appear to be in a kitchen, though a small one. There's a short row of counters and dark cabinets to your left. A sink is situated in the center of them. In the middle of the room, taking up a majority of the floor space, is a thick wooden table that looks home-built. On top of it lays a handful of herbs and an unlabeled bottle of something that you can smell from where you stand. Choking on the scent, you take a step backward until you hit the wall. Something digs into your back and when you turn around, it's a light switch. But there is another candelabra hanging on the wall to your right. It holds flames which light up the area of the room that sunlight from the windowed door on the far wall doesn't reach. You look to Harry, who is digging through what appears to be a pantry at the other end of the kitchen.

"Do you not have electricity?" you ask. You take a step forward to observe the bottled material on the table.

"I do," Harry answers. He steps back from the pantry, and what he brings with him isn't food. It's a bouquet of purple wildflowers. You frown as he sets the flowers on the corner of the table and returns to the pantry. "I prefer candlelight. Feels more natural, yeh know?"

"What are you doing?" You round the table to stand behind Harry. "I thought I was supposed to translate a book for you."

He must answer you, but you don't hear his words. You've stumbled back away from the pantry door and Harry. The things that you see on the shelves inside are enough to make your blood run cold. There are the high-stacked piles of herbs and flowers, like the ones that Harry's already placed on the table. But then there are tiny skulls that you think must be the heads of helpless animals. On the shelf at face-level, there's a giant jar of something so red and thick that you can't think of anything it could be other than pure blood. And on the top shelf, tucked to the far right there's a smaller jar full of spheres suspended in a clear liquid. Eyeballs.

The breath leaves your lungs as you hit the edge of the table and it impedes your retreat. You gasp as Harry twists around to look at you, another jar of something in his hand. He's frowning, but he still looks calm. You feel anything but.

"Y/N, before yeh start—"

You shriek as Harry takes a wide step toward you, hurrying back to the other end of the room, where the long table can keep you separated. Harry looks slightly annoyed, but not angry. You stand poised on your toes, ready to run.

"I already told yeh what I was—"

"There is a jar of eyeballs in your kitchen pantry, Harry,” you snap as he takes a step toward you again. The candle flames flicker, almost extinguished as though a breeze has whipped through the room, but you don’t feel any movement in the air.

“Yes, there is,” he agrees. “I need ‘em for spells sometimes. But ‘s not like they’re human eyes, Y/N.”

“What does that matter?” you shout. “You’re crazy!”

Harry rolls his eyes and begins walking toward you. In a fit of panic, you knock the mysterious bottle onto the ground and rush around the length of the table until you can reach the door at the other end of the room. You yank it open, tripping over the threshold as you escape into the outdoors.

The wind has picked up, lifting flurries of dry leaves into the air and making the tree branches above you moan. Your thoughts churn quickly until you throw yourself around the corner of the house, pressing yourself up against the exterior wall. Heart thumping wildly in your chest, you hear the kitchen door swing open and then slam back into place. You take a chance and peek around the corner to see Harry strolling out into the woods. You wait until he’s disappeared between the trees and then you take off in the other direction, toward the front of the house and the long, winding, dirt driveway that will lead you back to the main road.

The air has cooled since you’ve been here. The sun has begun to fall with the late afternoon. You’re glad that you didn’t shed your jacket inside as you trek along the path.

You don’t know how long you walk for. It took a good few minutes to drive from the main road to the house, and it will take much longer to return on foot. But then you see a building in the distance, old with peeling white paint and ivy growing up the walls—Harry’s house.

“How did I...”

“Ah, good.”

You jump as Harry pushes himself away from a tree to your left. His hands are tucked into the pockets of his jeans. He keeps his distance this time, hoping not to scare you off.

“That doesn’t make sense. I was walking in the other direction.”

Harry nods, flashing you a sympathetic half-smile. "Not really. Yeh just followed the path."

This does nothing to clear it up for you, but you don't respond.

"Yeh must be gettin' cold. D'yeh wanna come back inside?" Harry asks. He tilts his head and waits patiently for your response, eyes calculating. Then he smiles again. "I'll keep the eyeballs hidden."

You frown at his attempt to joke, but you nod. There's no point in staying outside when it will only continue to get darker and colder, and Harry's the one with a car.

He leads you back to the front door of the house and into the living room. "Why don' yeh sit down?" Harry suggests. He watches you settle onto the couch, though you don't look to be anywhere near comfortable. Your veins, which were humming with adrenaline, have dulled to a sort of acceptance. "Do yeh believe me now?" Harry asks, leaned up against a set of shelves, keeping his distance, and you nod. Maybe it's shock, or curiosity, or something else, but your fear seems to have dissipated.

"Tha's good." Harry grins at you in approval and then stands up straight. He reaches up onto the second shelf behind him and pulls down a thick leather book. Its spine is cracked and worn. There are characters on the front cover, but you can't see them clearly enough before Harry presses the book to his chest. He catches you watching him. "I'll be right back," he says. "Need t'copy some things for yeh t'translate."

“Can’t I just read right from the book?" you ask. "Your handwriting is not that neat.”

“No, yeh can’." Harry ignores your comment about his writing and heads toward the hall into the kitchen. "Yeh’re a mortal," he adds as he turns the corner. "It’ll burn the eyes right outta your skull.”

You don't move for a few moments. Your mind is too focused on the picture Harry's words have conjured up. In your palms, you hold your own eyes, alive and slimy. Your sight is aimed at your face, the features slightly familiar, but where your eyes should actually sit there are just empty craters pooling with blood that drips down your cheeks like tears.

You shiver and try to recover from the disturbing image before you glance around the room, this time paying closer attention to the details. The chair in the corner isn't covered in decorative woodwork, it's carved with Latin letters and even more ancient symbols and runes. On the shelves closest to you, you see books similar to the one you had been reading earlier at the library, only older and perhaps less detailed. And there's a large hunk of glass. A crystal ball, you realize. You're in the home of a witch.

Harry returns to the room carrying a big ceramic mug. You sit back again so it doesn't look like you were snooping, but he's not fooled.

"Very subtle," he commends with a short chuckle. "Drink this."

Your eyes widen as Harry holds the mug out to you. You look up at him, perplexed. "Why the fuck would I do that?" you ask. “What's it gonna do, make me grow a curly pink tail? Shrink me into a beetle?"

"'S tea."

"Oh." You can feel your skin tingle with embarrassment.

"T’calm yeh down," Harry explains. He smiles again when you take the mug from him. You note that he smiles a lot. "Yeh have this crazy agita’ed aura around yeh. ‘S makin’ me uncomfortable."

"I'm making you uncomfortable?" Steam unfurls from the tea up into your face and it smells herbal. "What's in this?"

"Rosemary, chamomile, cinnamon, a couple other things." Harry nods encouragingly. "Try it."

As you take a small sip of your tea, taking care not to burn yourself, Harry slips his mysterious book back into its place on the shelves. Then he clasps his hands together at his front, his rings clinking together as he watches you.

"What?"

"Nothin'. Come into the kitchen."

You stand, hands wrapping around the warmth of your mug of tea, and follow him back into the hall. The chair closest to the kitchen's entrance is pulled out from the table and a sheet of paper lays before it. Harry motions for you to sit and leans up against the counter. Just as you take your seat, he turns to the stove and a pot that sits on a burner. He removes the lid and stirs its contents slowly with a wooden spoon before replacing the lid crookedly. Without a word, he skirts around you to leave the kitchen. You lower your eyes to the Latin scribbles before you.

It's then, when Harry's left you and the palpable weight of his presence is gone, that you notice the scent of spices. You haven't so much as skimmed Harry's paper before your gaze is drawn to the stove. A cooling kettle sits off to one side of the grates, on the other side is the pot that is positioned over a blue flame. Steam rises from the cracked lid and you're sure that this is the where the smell is coming from. You cross the floor before you realize what you're doing. Then a black shape is whipping through the room, between your legs, nearly knocking you off your feet. You stagger to keep your balance and let out a hiccuped gasp.

"Don' seem t'be gettin' on very well with her."

Attempting to catch your breath, you turn to find Harry in the doorway again. He takes a step into the room and reaches out to pet Nicks, who after tripping you has found her way onto the table. She purrs at the touch of his fingers. You watch, unsettled, as she stands and creeps along beneath his hands, arching her back, until she's facing you, her beady eyes calculating.

“Are you cooking something?” you ask in an attempt to switch subjects, reaching for the lid of the pot.

“Yeh don’ wanna look in there," Harry warns. His voice has a sharp edge about it that makes you pause.

“Why not?”

“‘S that raccoon kidney yeh told me about.” Harry chuckles as you draw your hand away from the pot quickly enough to tweak a muscle in your shoulder. "Maybe yeh'd be best not t'keep snoopin' through m'stuff."

"I'm not snooping," you protest, but the reality of your behavior makes you keep your mouth shut when he shoots you a pointed stare.

You get the hint and slowly return to your seat, attempting to divert your attention to translating. It's hard to focus.

“So, where’s your broomstick?” you ask after a few moments.

“Wha’ the fuck do I look like t’you?” Harry lets out a breath of disbelief from beside the stove. He's removed the lid again and is stirring in what look to be flower petals.

"I thought you were a... magician, or something."

Harry rolls his eyes, but his lips twitch. "Can call me wha' yeh want. I prefer 'witch'. Has more of a ring to it. But don' get distracted, now."

You remember why you're here. Taking another gulp of your tea, which has cooled just enough to be comfortable, you get back to Latin. But it's hard when you're so preoccupied, when there's a real-life witch standing in front of you, and you barely have any information about him. Harry can see the questions coming before you even look up.

“Do you, like, transform into a bat or something, then?”

“Tha’s vampires, for fuck’s sake.” Harry lifts his hands frustratedly to his hair, but he laughs.

"Do you know a vampire?" you ask, intrigued.

Harry shakes his head, closing up the pot and shutting away whatever solution is cooking inside of it. "Vampires aren' real. Just a creature made up for mortals' entertainment." He sighs and turns to settle into the chair to your left, giving up. "I take it yeh're not gonna get t'the Latin, then."

"I just have a lot to ask you." You slide the page away from you, across the table, and turn your body toward him. He's settled in, his hands tucked behind his head, his eyes resting shut.

"Fine," Harry says, taking a deep breath to prepare himself for the onslaught of questions he's about to receive. "I'll answer your questions." His lips curve upward after a short pause. "But 'm not payin' yeh for today."

Part 2: Hellfire

#harry styles #harry styles one shot #harry styles writing #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fan fiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fan fic #harry styles fic #harry styles imagine #witch!harry #blood moon

122 notes · View notes

quarterfromcanon · 5 years

Text

The Courage and the Strength I Need

Heather & Valencia - Femslash February - Day 23 - Phone Call [1,957 words]

Valencia flipped listlessly through the channels while she rested on her stomach. Nothing sparked intrigue. She stretched along the couch, but the far end was cold and empty. Her phone buzzed on the coffee table. She flung out an arm to angle the message into her line of sight.

HARVARD

Are you sure you don’t want to come over? We can finally start The Wire like we’ve been talking about forever but never do.

Valencia smiled and opened the conversation.

I appreciate it, hon. I really do. I just don’t think I’ve got the energy for the kinds of discussions you’ll want to have after every episode. I won’t make great company tonight. Also, you have a habit of staring at the side of my head in the dark. I keep feeling that instead of paying attention to the show.

HARVARD

Well, I wouldn’t do it for the WHOLE series but... I won’t lie. That would be my main activity for like 90% of the run time. I want to relive every scene through you because IT’S THAT GOOD. Plus your face is, like, extra pretty in the TV glow. Can I help it if my friend is a goddess and I, a humble human woman, sometimes find myself reminded of that ethereal beauty?

Valencia laughed. She set the remote control aside so she could type with both hands.

Should I screenshot this and tell Heather you’re swooping in to steal her girl the minute she’s out of town? :P

She left the sofa in favor of the bedroom. Valencia flicked on the closet light and stepped through the doorway.

HARVARD

I doubt she’d be fazed. I once said she has abs like the Venus de Milo.

Oh, so *I’m* the one coming to kick your ass.

HARVARD

I don’t doubt that you could. But was I wrong? ;D

Valencia heaved a forlorn sigh. She grabbed one of Heather’s camo jackets, hugged it to her chest, and inhaled deeply.

No. Damn it, Rebecca! Now I’m missing them, too.

HARVARD

Feel free to take care of business. I’m in the middle of a Potions class in Hogwarts Mystery. I can brew while I wait for you to text back.

Valencia pinched the bridge of her nose, amused in spite of herself.

I am not going to bookend a masturbation session with texts to you.

HARVARD

What if I promise not to track how many minutes elapse?

You and I both know you would.

HARVARD

Rub out the loneliness. Grind away the gloom.

Valencia ducked into the hanging garments to conceal her reaction, even though Rebecca could not see the flush of color spreading over her skin.

I think I’ll pass.

Rebecca sent a gif of Frodo Baggins smirking and saying, “All right then. Keep your secrets.”

HARVARD

All I’m saying is it might cheer you up, at least for a little while. Ever since Heather left for the trip, you’ve been all

She followed with a gif of the transformed Kuzco crying in the rain from The Emperor’s New Groove.

Are you saying I have a llama face?

HARVARD

So testy. See? Someone’s horny and angry. Time for the two finger tango.

Valencia rolled her eyes. She began to type but then noticed the clock and backspaced to write a different reply.

It’s almost 9, so she’s about to call. Thanks for helping me stay distracted until now. <3 Talk to you tomorrow?

HARVARD

Anytime. <3 Get to bed. ;)

Her parting gif was of a television character Valencia didn’t recognize calling, “Have good sex!”

As if on cue, an incoming FaceTime alert appeared. Valencia left the closet, shutting off the light and closing the door behind her as she did so, and then threw herself across the mattress. She hastily brushed back her disheveled hair and answered the call.

“Hey, baby.” Valencia realized she was leaning an abnormally small distance from the screen, just to feel nearer. She adjusted the space by degrees until it was more comfortable. “How are things in Wine Country?”

“I haven’t gotten enough of either. When I did get to be outside drinking, there was always some dusty old white guy droning into my ear and harshing my buzz. This valley make me need a Napa. Ugh, even my humor’s going stale. You and the girls have gotta organize a heist to take me away from here. I’m not gonna make it.” She fluffed her hotel pillow and pouted.

Valencia mirrored the expression. “Don’t tempt me. I might do it. I’m not holding up so well, either. All the furniture feels wrong when I’m the only one on it. The first day has already been so long. Another three will be an eternity.”

She readjusted so her body was angled the usual direction for sleep and then flopped against the covers. Even miles apart, they defaulted to their respective sides and held their phones at the height where their lover’s face would ordinarily be.

“You know, if corporate keeps making me haul my ass all over the state, maybe we should think about a pet,” Heather suggested. “It might be good for you to have a little buddy around.”

Valencia hesitated. It was something she’d imagined since they got together, but dreaming about co-owning an animal and actually co-habitating with one were two very different things. “What kind of pet?”

Heather shrugged. “Nothing too exotic or anything. Dogs are cute but a lot of breeds pack high energy that doesn’t really gel with our vibe. So... a cat?”

Valencia attempted to picture it but her mind kept fixating on their brand new house and its furnishings. She could envision the claw marks and clumps of fur covering everything. “I don’t know...”

“How about this: sometime after I come home, can you and I go to a shelter and take a look around, just to see how it feels? No pressure, no rushed decisions. All super chill. We can talk it over and make the call from there.” Heather offered a hopeful smile. “What do you think?”

“Okay. I’ll try,” Valencia agreed. “Even hours around the smell of cat pee don’t sound so bad if that means you’re back here with me instead of up there.”

“Damn, I should be using this to my advantage. If I’ve got any sporty activities I wanna coax you into, now’s the time to pitch them. Ha! Pitch. I'm exhausted. But while we’re on the subject of athletics, what are your opinions on rock walls?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

Heather laughed and trailed her fingertips over the image of Valencia on her screen. “I hate that I’m not there with you.”

“Join the club. You can be vice president.” Valencia pulled the sheet over her shoulders, but it was a poor stand-in for the comforting embrace she craved.

“Remind me again why I let these identical suited golfers badger me into this?”

“Because you come up with solid ideas and you’ve got a chance to make them heard,” Valencia answered without pause. “Because they need fresh perspective and you have that in spades. Because they’ve realized that you’re a problem-solver and they care what you think. You made an impression. They’re impressed by you. They should be.”

Heather crooked an arm under her head. “I mean, I’m proud of that stuff, I really am, but I don’t want this to be the rest of my life. It’s not a bad gig; it’s just not the job I'd choose for my career.” She began to pick at a loose thread on the sheet but stopped herself. “I don’t know. It’s not like I have an answer for what I should switch to instead. I’m kinda idling in one place.”

“Out of everything you’ve tried so far, what do you most genuinely enjoy doing? And don’t say me.”

“Crossing off the special skills section of my resume in one swipe. Harsh.”

“Seriously, though. What would you say?”

Heather rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. “Is it weird if the truth is sorta everything and nothing? All of it interested me for a while, or else I wouldn’t have done it in the first place. But a lot of jobs don’t change very much, y’know? I get tired of the monotony.”

“‘A copy of a copy of a copy,’” Valencia supplied.

Heather bit her lip. “Don’t reference Fight Club when I can’t reward you for remembering that.”

“I’ll put it on your tab.” Valencia winked.

Heather scrubbed a hand down her face and sighed. “The main thing I’m into is learning. Adapting. Having a reason to stay curious.”

“You miss college.”

“All the time. But I wasn’t making money doing that.”

“What about when you’re sharing what you’ve studied?” Valencia asked. “You’re good at it. That goes without saying. I pick up a lot from living under the same roof. Is that fun for you?”

“Kinda,” Heather admitted. “I like making it useful. Also, I know from experience that it’s nice to have concepts explained by somebody who’s not gonna be a condescending shit-heel about it. Everybody’s gotta learn something for the first time at some point. Academia isn’t innate. It doesn’t prove you’re superior if you got the hang of it first, and it definitely shows you’re worse if you rub someone else’s nose in it. I care that people know they can come to me for help without judgment.”

“Cariño?” Valencia murmured.

“Hmm?”

“I think you might have your answer.”

“Teaching?” Heather’s words were tentative, nearly inaudible. “Like a professor?”

Valencia nodded.

“That requires at least getting my master’s degree to work at a community college. Probably a doctorate if I plan to go somewhere else.” Heather rubbed the back of her neck. “It’ll take years.”

“Honey, the fact you already know that means you must have researched it at some point.” Valencia looked directly into the phone’s camera. “Is this what you want?”

Heather’s eyes were shining in the darkness. “Yeah.” Her finger swept beneath her eyelid. “Yeah, I think it is.”

Valencia beamed and a tear slid along her jawline. “So it’s settled.”

Heather disappeared behind the heel of her hand for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice wavered. “Are you sure? This affects you, too. It’s a long-term commitment.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m long-term committed.” Valencia brought the phone close again, back to where she started. “I love you.”

Heather kissed the camera and rubbed the resultant smudge away with her sleeve. “I love you, too.”

“You want to know something?”

“Always.”

Valencia’s lips subtly turned upward at the corners. “I usually save this for major breakthroughs because it already sounds mushy and fake, and I don’t want it to lose all meaning, but today’s a milestone for you so it totally counts. I’m really proud of you, Heather.”

Heather hid her blush in the pillow. “You memorized what I sent you.”

“I read it like twenty times, so, yes.” Valencia’s grin broadened. “I mean it. You’re going after what matters to you and, in the meantime, you’re making a difference in this in-between space. Home Base isn’t your final stop, but it will be an improved establishment when you leave because you were with it for a while. You changed things for the better which, as far as I’m concerned, isn’t surprising in the least. You’ve been doing that for me since the day we met.”

Heather’s mouth twisted. Her gaze was warm with devotion. “What would I do without you?”

Valencia blew a kiss. Heather pantomimed a catch and pressed the air-touch to her cheekbone.

“You’d still take the world by storm,” Valencia declared, “but I’m thankful I get to be part of it.”

#H+V FF #CEG Writing by Me #Helencia #Heather x Valencia

9 notes · View notes

swampgallows · 6 years

Note

do u think garrosh should’ve gotten the arc saurfang is having rn in bfa? i feel its more fitting for him than saurfang tbh

I’m not fully sure of what Saurfang’s role is in BFA so far except to be a foil to Sylvanas’ treachery, i.e. Good Horde VS Bad Horde, or “two sides of the same coin”. Blizzard tried this before with Thrall and Garrosh, actually—”the light and the dark”—but I don’t think Garrosh’s role as the “good Horde” would fit particularly how Saurfang’s does. I’m assuming you mean if Garrosh had never gone bad, stuck around as warchief, etc. But even then, Garrosh can’t really play the role Saurfang has.

For one, Saurfang is a grizzled veteran. He has seen it all. He has seen—and contributed to—both ill and good in the name of the Horde, both with and without the blood curse. He is old, experienced, and traumatized. On top of this, Saurfang has felt tremendous loss. He was forced to separate from his son Dranosh at the behest of his mate, and the short time of their reunion after the reopening of the Dark Portal was cut even shorter by the Wrathgate. Then, Saurfang is forced to put the thing that walks and talks in his son’s corpse to a second death. If anything, Varok Saurfang is the foil to Grommash Hellscream, who also separated from his infant son, ran the gamut of the blood curse, and left a great warrior as his progeny.

“You have earned your warrior’s death, my son. Yet once again, I am denied it.”

Grom earned his death and his redemption, and though his son craved death and nearly met it on many occasions, he too was repeatedly denied that privilege. For the sake of this argument (and what is also my general belief), I consider the final mak’gora between Thrall and Garrosh to be an execution. (Whether or not Thrall “cheated” is a conversation for another day.) So Garrosh does eventually get to die—probably by his preferred set of hands—but it is not the “warrior’s death” he most likely envisioned.

In the Old Soldier cinematic, we see Saurfang about to fold by removing his armor and walking out into the battlefield. He wants to surrender because he has nothing left to live for and knows that if he hasn’t had his glorious death by now, he may never. Garrosh had nothing to live for from the beginning, and only fought to preserve the Horde he so “loved” because it was the only avenue by which to preserve, and hopefully also love, himself. The Horde was never a found family for Garrosh like it was to Thrall or Vol’jin or even to Sylvanas.

I’m recalling when @fitzefitcher made a great point during Questifer’s meetup at BlizzCon about the now-defunct Battle for Undercity quest/scenario after the Wrathgate. Thrall AND Saurfang came to Sylvanas’ aid during Putress’ mutiny, not just to avenge the death of Dranosh and the rest of the Horde soldiers murdered by the blight, but also to protect the innocent Forsaken and reclaim the Undercity from Varimathras. We got to see glimmers of genuine friendship and camaraderie between the Warchief and the Banshee Queen:

“Dark Lady, join me. You have fought hard and spilled much blood for this right. The Royal Quarter belongs to you!“

“Such will be the fate of all enemies to the Horde, Warchief. Now we must deal with the wretch: Putress.”

“We shall, Sylvanas.”

This event is also where we learn Saurfang is actually the surname for the High Overlord, whose first name is Varok:

Thrall says: It ends like it began...Thrall says: All that we have fought for in this world is lost. The hopes and dreams carried by my father and mother... by Doomhammer... Gone...Thrall says: If only you were here right now, old friend. You would know what to do.High Overlord Saurfang says: I know what he would do.High Overlord Saurfang says: He would say to you what I am about to say to you: Thrall. Lead your people.High Overlord Saurfang says: Let's go home, old friend.Thrall says: It's good to have you back, Varok, old friend. I'm sorry about your boy.

This is an intimacy that Garrosh never had with the Horde, even as its warchief, and he could therefore never love it the way Saurfang does. Saurfang himself fought alongside Sylvanas to restore her kingdom, and yet stands at her side as she burns Teldrassil. “There is no honor in this,” is not just a pointless aphorism, and I think that Garrosh flippantly throwing the word around has desensitized us to that. The Horde is a family, which is something all of the past warchiefs except Garrosh have intimately understood, and Sylvanas is betraying her family—bound by love, not blood—in her actions. Like, imagine if any of your loved ones went and pulled the kinda shit Sylvanas has been doing. You’d immediately disown them, but you’d be crushed too. “Why did you go and rob a bunch of my friends? You fed chocolate to the priest’s dog? You ...burnt down my neighbor’s house? Dude...”

As many know, I avoid all spoilers to the best of my ability and avoid any datamining or speculation from said mining, so as far as I know Saurfang’s role in BFA still seems undetermined. Will he fight alongside the Alliance to liberate the Horde? Maybe. Could I ever see Garrosh doing that? Absolutely not. Maybe way down the line, had he not done any of the things he did, but Garrosh as I knew him is much too wavering in his sense of self and identity and in his personal relationships to make a decision like that. Saurfang has a lot more experience, a lot more perspective, and a lot more stable of a personality. He knows he can cut off a finger to save his hand, and if that means going AWOL on the Horde until he can figure out how to restore it, then that’s what he’s gotta do.

@stormwinds actually suggested that the role of Saurfang in BFA might be a better fit for Thrall, or perhaps even originally intended for Thrall before Metzen’s retirement (though I don’t think it matches up, since Metzen was working on Anduin’s mass rez scene in the BFA cinematic before he retired according to the second Scott Johnson interview). But I personally think Thrall would have a LOT to answer for and wouldn’t really be able to make the easy segue back into the Horde that he might have envisioned. There is already a lot of discussion about Saurfang’s questionable past deeds and even his involvement in the burning of Teldrassil, so while he’s not a saint either I think the “old soldier” perspective may become important later on in the story. As many have suggested, perhaps a “new soldier” cinematic, featuring Anduin, may be in the works, especially with the “Lost Honor” cinematic bridging between them.

tl;dr: nah not really

#metacraft #world of warcraft #yamyell #anon #ask

23 notes · View notes

baekkxong · 7 years

Text

Unfinished Business

Pairing: EXO Yixing (Lay) X Reader

Genre: Smut

Warning: Alcohol use, swearing

Word Count: 4,161

A/N I came up with this whole job interview idea thing bc the other day I went to a job interview myself (it was kinda shit) and on the way home I was thinking about what to write and… bam. This happened

You’d applied for a job at a large, independent company and had been invited for an interview. You’d dressed smartly in a black pencil skirt and a flowy baby blue blouse. You’d attended job interviews before, yet this seemed to be far more intimidating than any other one you’d been to before.

The building was extremely large, stretching upwards above its neighbouring skyscrapers and glaring brightly at you. Although the staff were friendly and showed you where to go, you couldn’t help but notice the pretentious aura of the building. Every single employee’s outfit was perfect, their shoes polished until they were far too glossy and not a strand of hair out of place. Every counter and wall was so clean, you wandered what the employees really did here.

A young woman showed you to the lift you needed to take and told you it was the top floor.

“Mr. Zhang will meet you there,” she said, a glint in her eye and a half smile on her lips. His name was Yixing, although everyone in the building was to address him as ‘Mr. Zhang’, being the founder of the business.

“Thank you,” you replied, stepping into the lift in your heels which were far too high for your liking.

Alone in the lift, you began worrying. Were your black heels far too unprofessional? Many employees wore similar ones, but for an interview was it unsuitable? You spun to look at yourself in the mirror, fixing your hair and glaring at yourself with a sigh. You’ve got this, you thought.

The lift came to a halt, allowing enough time for you to wonder quite how high the building was, while the door slowly drew open. You inhaled a sharp breath, your heart beginning to hammer harder in your chest. Uneasily, you took a step outside and regarded your surroundings. You were in a small corridor which, on your left, was a wall entirely made from glass. You gasped, taking a few steps towards it so you could admire the city stretching far away below you. Glancing at your watch, you realised you had a few minutes until the interview was due to start.

You were too far gone in your trance at studying each detail you could find, while staring down at the city below you, to hear the door click open behind you.

“Miss Y/L/N?”

Your stomach dropped ever so slightly, turning to see a man leaning out the door to his office. He was undeniably handsome. He had stark dark hair, parted somewhat messily in waves and exposing his forehead. He wore a smart black blazer and a white shirt underneath – of which the top button was loosely undone. He seemed different to everyone else – while they were trimmed to perfection, this man seemed to have a less harsh appearance.

You glanced at his eyes almost melting in his gaze; they were so gentle. You cursed at yourself, hoping he was only an escort to take you to the person who’d be interviewing you. There’s no way you’d be able to concentrate if it was him.

He cleared his throat.

“Oh! Yes, that’s me,” you gathered yourself together, tottering closer towards him.

As if he couldn’t become any more attractive, he smiled and it felt like your legs would no longer be able to hold the rest of your body up. It was such a pretty and genuine smile, a dimple adorning his cheek.

“I’m Zhang Yixing, it’s nice to meet you.” He held his hand out politely towards you and you took it eagerly.

“It’s a pleasure, Mr. Zhang.”

He leaned himself against the door, his back pressed against the wood. “Just in here,” he instructed. You smiled and squeezed past him through the door, brushing against his front.

Fuck, you bit your lip, trying to rid yourself the haze you seemed to be caught in.

The office was huge. He led you to a portion of the room that was more relaxed. There were a couple of loveseats opposite one another with a glass coffee table in the middle. There was also a single seat adjacent to the two loveseats, so they were in a ‘U’ formation. “Take a seat.” He gestured to the single chair.

You did as he said, lowering yourself into the seat. He sat in one of the chairs next to you, pressed so closely to the arm of the chair that his knees almost touched yours. Your eyes trailed to your legs which were threateningly nearby to yours.

“Can I get you something to drink?” he proposed. His voice was so soft, like melting butter, you thought. “Coffee, tea, a cold drink, perhaps?” he asked, leaning back in his seat comfortably and crossing his legs.

“Oh, yes please. Tea would be lovely.”

“What kind?”

“Earl grey, please.” Mr. Zhang raised his eyebrows.

“Esther!” he called, clapping his hands together and making you jump. A young woman entered the room from another door you hadn’t even noticed was in the room, flustered and rushing. Her heels slapped across the floor as she found her way to where the two of you were, smiling brightly.

“Yes, sir?”

“May I have one earl grey tea and a coffee?”

“Of course!” She grinned, her hands toying with each other behind her back, before spinning away and exiting out another door. You studied her movements, Yixing probably had her wrapped around his little finger. Her skirt was way too short, and she wore substantial amounts of makeup. The way her eyes had sparkled towards him and how she’d strutted away purposefully flaunting her hips made you wonder if they’d had a fling. Or maybe she was simply head over heels for him; who wouldn’t be?

“So, Y/N-“ the use of your first name startled you ever so slightly, liking the way your name rolled off his tongue - “do you currently have a job?”

You answered simple questions about yourself, trying your best to keep eye contact with him and prevent your eyes from wandering up and down his body. Although, while you spoke, you hardly noticed the way he would steal glances over your frame.

As the interview progressed, it became obvious that you were attracted to him. His unexpected questions would catch you off guard, sometimes more personal than you’d anticipated, causing yourself to become a blushing mess trying to form a decent sentence in front of him. You’d reached the point where you were simply trying to impress him, regardless of the job position.

You took a sip of your tea, keeping your eyes glued to his while he spoke about the role you’d carry out if you were successful. Although, he had already made his mind up. You didn’t quite realise how he reciprocated your attraction. Smiling with affection when you said certain things, leaning forward and resting his hands on his thighs and looking intently in your eyes; he enjoyed your company. He couldn’t help but marvel at the way your eyes would sometimes flicker round the room when you were nervous, twirling a strand of your hair in your hand before refocusing your gaze upon him.

Maybe it was unprofessional, but Yixing had decided he certainly wanted to see you again, and more than once. He was positive he’d offer you the job, smiling along and nodding anyway to what you said. He answered your questions at the end of the interview, trying his best to make it a comfortable environment for you.

“Anything else?” he asked, eyes trailing up your legs as he envisioned ghosting his hands across your skin.

“I think that’s about it,” you smiled.

“Okay, well I’ll get back to you on Thursday with my decision; when would be a good time to call?” he asked, leaning forwards for his phone which lay next to his empty mug of coffee.

“Um, any time is good for me,” you answered.

“That’s great, I’ll put it in my calendar.” He reached forward for his phone and began tapping, while you studied the movement of his fingers.

You couldn’t help but recount the small smiles you two had shared, and the soft gazes you’d thrown back and forth to each other. Your body language to one another from someone else’s point of view was so blatantly obvious that you felt some kind of tension between you, but you yourself didn’t know if Yixing felt the same.

Brushing yourself rid of the thoughts, you followed suit as Yixing stood up, tucking his phone into his back pocket. He led you to the door where he stopped, standing adjacent to it and looking down into your eyes. He was silent for a moment, as if considering something.

Your lips parted in a mix of surprise and confusion, about to say something. Instead, his sudden sweep downwards silenced you as his lips were suddenly pressed against yours in a heated kiss. You squeaked in surprise, your cheeks flushing in embarrassment. Finally, you began moving your lips against his as his tongue gently swiped along your bottom lip. His hands trailed their way up your sides, holding you in place before resting one just below your ear on your neck while the other found its way to your hair, probably messing it up.

Confidently, you placed your hands on his chest, gripping his shirt in between your fingers. You could feel the hardness of his muscles beneath the fabric, only wishing you could tear it off him.

“Mr. Zhang!” a voice called out, startling you both as you quickly pulled back. Yixing cocked his head to the side to see a furious looking Esther, clutching paperwork in her hands and trembling with jealousy. “Someone… Someone would like to speak to you, on the phone,” she lied.

“Esther, shouldn’t you know by now that I don’t take calls when I’m busy?” he questioned, glancing towards you. He didn’t sound harsh, managing to look soft and smile, but you knew it was enough to outrage his assistant. She pressed her lips into a fine line before coughing an apology and exited the office.

Yixing sighed, smoothing his shirt out while you attempted to fix your hair.

“I’m sorry; that was very unprofessional of me,” he stated, taking a strand of your hair in his hand and pushing it behind your ear. “I just couldn’t help myself,” he smiled softly.

“I- It’s fine,” you stuttered, still coming down from what felt like a high.

He opened the office door, leading you out. He kept his grip on the handle, as if he was forcing himself to keep his hands there.

“I’ll hear from you tomorrow, then, Mr. Zhang?” you asked, beaming with hope.

“Of course. Oh, and Y/N?”

“Yes?”

“Call me Yixing.”

You’d told your friend, Chae, all about the events that had taken place in the job interview. While you felt a little guilty and extremely unprincipled, Chae had squealed in delight and wanted to hear more about your ‘office affair’.

“It’s not an office affair, Chae. We’ve met once!” you exclaimed, sitting with your back towards her as you did your makeup in the mirror.

“This sounds awfully like 50 Shades of Grey,” she giggled.

The two of you had decided to go out for the evening, dressing up and letting loose. You’d agreed as you thought it’d be an opportunity to wash away the thoughts of your potential boss. Even if he did feel attracted to you, if he were to offer the job, the two of you were most likely to be expected to return to professional standards.

“Please,” you said, turning in your chair, “Yixing would never treat me like Christian so poorly treats Ana,” you stated proudly.

“Do you think he’d be into that kind of stuff? BDSM?” Chae asked boldly.

“Chae!” you hissed, but didn’t mind continuing the conversation. “I don’t know. He seems very sweet but… there was something about him. Something, sort of controlling.”

Something that you wanted to discover.

The club was buzzing with action, drunk people throwing themselves around wildly with the music. You stuck close to Chae. You’d had pre-drinks before leaving the apartment, making you a little tipsy but still very aware of yourself.

A young male suddenly approached you while Chae was ordering a couple of drinks from the bar. He was definitely attractive, and you smiled at his approach.

“Hey,” he began, “any chance you could set me up with your friend over there?” He nodded in her direction and you frowned in annoyance.

“Sure,” you sighed bitterly, half-joking, as you led him towards her. Chae turned from the bar with two drinks in her hands, blinking at you as you tugged the handsome man behind you. “He wants to dance with you,” you stated blandly.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, eyes widening. “Here, you can have this,” she offered, giving him what you presumed was your drink.

“Hey!” you complained, watching them giggle to each other and make their way through the crowd, leaving you at the bar alone. You sighed, turning around, and sitting on one of the bar stools, ordering your own drink instead. You drunk it alone, staring at the ice cubes bobbing up and down in your glass.

“…was that totally wrong of me?” you heard a voice from around the bar which curved round in a circle.

“Nah, man, you’re like the richest and most important guy in the company, you can do whatever the fuck you want,” another voice came.

You shifted in your seat to try and get a better view of where the voice was coming from, a giant wooden beam and some drink dispensers blocking your way.

“It was a job interview though, what was I thinking?”

At that, you froze. You recognised the soft voice from earlier this morning, your stomach tightening in anticipation.

“Hey, Yixing, you can get literally anyone. If she’s hot and she likes you, go for it. If she’s good at the job, even better,” his friend said. Yixing hummed in response, unsure.

You didn’t know if you should continue listening or just escape, avoiding any possible undesirable situations. You scanned the room, finding the exit and realising they would spot you pretty easily. You could go either way around the bar and be in sight, as the door was pretty much in a long line behind them. Even the toilets were near the entrance door.

You cursed to yourself, unsure of what to do.

Fuck it, you thought. You’d walk past them, and if Yixing didn’t want to see you, he wouldn’t say anything. However, if he did… you’d cross that bridge when you came to it. You left the empty glass on the bar and bravely began making your way round, bracing yourself for what was going to happen.

“Y/N?”

Shit.

You froze, preparing yourself for the worst as you began to turn around ever so slowly. Without a doubt, there was Yixing. Somehow, he looked even better, in a loose shirt and tight jeans. You smiled sweetly, his friend looking you up and down.

“Yixing! Hi!”

“I was just ta- ” he began, but quickly corrected himself - “I was just getting a drink. Can I get you anything?”

Although you’d just had half a pint of who knows what, you found yourself nodding, taking a seat next to him. His friend seemed to have taken the hint that he should leave, making up an excuse and leaving with his drink in his hand.

Yixing called the bartender over, who gave you a funny look, and prepared another drink for you.

“So,” Yixing began, swirling the glass in his hand, “what brings you here on this fine evening? Did your interview go so badly that you’re drowning your sorrows away in alcohol, or was it so good that you decided to go out and celebrate?”

Completely missing the fact that he was joking, you stuttered in response.

“Uhh, I think, it was good...?”

“I’m just kidding,” Yixing laughed, taking a sip of his drink. “But, yes, I think it was good too.” He smiled, that sweet smile that made your stomach go fuzzy and soft.

You continued to chat, light-hearted plays at each other – which may have been considered flirting – until both your glasses were empty.

“Care to dance?” he proposed, taking your hand and lifting you from the uncomfortable bar stool.

Your bodies were pressed closely in the crowd, moving to the beat and smiling at each other. You’d gradually become more confident with him, teasing and joking.

“So why would you come here? To this bar? I really thought you’d have much higher standards,” you had to pretty much shout in his ear, the music and buzz of people around you drowning your voices out. He frowned and spoke closely to your neck, feeling his breath against your skin.

“I may be rich, but I can’t stand half the people around me. I much prefer getting to know regular, down to earth people,” he said.

You weren’t quite sure if he was getting at you or just meaning people in general, but you nodded in response. It was far too difficult to have a proper conversation on the dancefloor, so instead, you moulded your bodies together. Things were getting heated, grinding against one another and exchanging smiles that insinuated what you really wanted to do to each other.

You could have sworn you heard Yixing curse under his breath when you were particularly close to him, and his hands soon snaked their way to your hips.

“Y/N,” he said. You looked up at him expectantly, “can we get out of here?”

You practically dragged him to the nearest taxi, throwing yourselves in the back of a car and ordering the driver take you to your apartment. Neither of you could keep your hands off each other, roaming each other’s skin and kissing in the back seat. You were hungry for each other, the tension between you since the interview becoming thicker and thicker.

Yixing fumbled in his pocket and threw a few bills to the driver, who was stunned to silence when Yixing said he could “keep the change”. You took off your heels, holding them in your hand as you jogged up the stairs with Yixing following closely behind.

The second your door shut, the two of you collided. You were already undoing the buttons of his shirt as you drunkenly found your way to your bedroom door, lips still battling. You were soon on the bed, and in no time, Yixing had whisked off your small dress, leaving you only in your underwear.

His eyes raked your body, smiling as he mumbled “beautiful,” before pulling you closer in for more kisses. You moaned into his mouth, finally undoing the final button of his shirt and pushing it back from his shoulders.

You were right; he had a good body. He caught you staring and grinned hungrily, a low growl in his throat as his fingers found their way to the waistband of your underwear. His hand found its way to your core as you spread your legs for him, straddling him while he leant against the headboard of your bed.

“So wet for me…” he played, making you moan as his digit circled your clit.

“Fuck, Yixing.” His eyes darkened as his name rolled off your tongue in pleasure, pumping a second finger inside you. He was soon moving his arm at a rapid speed, causing you to whine in ecstasy, shutting your eyes. Your legs began trembling, unable to hold yourself up. He noticed this and quickly moved his left arm to your hip, holding you slightly. It didn’t help much, and you were about to force yourself down onto his legs when he drew his hand away.

Your eyes shot open in slight annoyance; you had felt your orgasm begin to build up. Gently, you lowered yourself onto his lap, fiddling with his belt, the familiar clang of metal making your stomach churn in anticipation.

He gently pushed you off him, settling you to the side while he got off the bed and pulled his trousers and briefs down. You eyed him up, thick with arousal. He looked pleased, a smirk toying on his lips. Realising your bra was still on, you unclipped it and threw it to the ground, before crawling over the bed to meet Yixing. You brought a hand up and down his hard shaft, looking straight up through your lashes into his eyes which were painted dark with lust.

He groaned, closing his eyelids and biting his lip. His eyes shot open and he reached for your shoulders, pushing you so you were laying on your back while uttering, “fuck it.” He reached down to his jeans, opening his wallet and ripping open a condom packet before rolling it on his length. You were more than happy to comply as he clambered back on the bed, lying between your legs and becoming intimately close. You blushed, feeling his member press against you. “Ready?” he checked, innocent eyes looking at you before you nodded eagerly.

He pushed inside you, moans simultaneously dropping off your lips and eyes closing as your irises rolled backwards. He swore under his breath, taking all his strength to stay still within you so you could adjust to the side.

“Yixing…” you began. “Move.” It came out as more of a command than you had intended, turning on Yixing even more. With a growl, he pulled backwards before slamming back inside you, making you cry out and throw your head back. He had the hips of a dancer, you thought, fingers digging into his back as he continued to move slowly but harshly.

His lips connected to your collarbone, nibbling and sucking while your body was in a frenzy of pleasure. You were becoming a sobbing mess beneath him as he sped up, sweat glistening between the two of you.

He brought a hand up to affectionately push hair away from your eyes, a smile upon his lips before his eyes shifted and he traced his thumb down your face, hooking it round your lip and pulling it downwards. He smothered your moans with a kiss, lips pressed forcefully against yours. You revelled in the taste of him, your senses raging and burning with passion.

His tip brushed against your sweet stop and you whined into the kiss, attempting to say his name but only managing to release a jumble of moans. He grinned to himself in satisfaction before returning to your neck, licking up it and making small marks that’d burden you tomorrow.

You could feel he was ready to come, dick twitching and thrusts faltering inside you. He continued to suck at your skin, as if trying to concentrate on something else other than letting himself orgasm.

“Yixing,” you panted, “let go.”

Yixing stopped for a split second, before ramming into you faster and faster, making you cry out.

“Ladies first,” he choked, suddenly bringing a hand down to your clit and rubbing it.

Unexpectedly, your orgasm washed over you like a surprise. You gasped out, making inaudible sounds and raking your fingernails down Yixing’s back. He grunted in pleasurable pain, thrusting to ride out your orgasm before spilling into the condom.

“Fuck, you look so pretty,” he sighed. You shuddered beneath him, eyes flickering open and closed as you glowed in the aftermath of him.

Yixing crashed next to you, panting, his chest rising and falling quickly. He put his arms around you and pulled you close to him, nuzzling into the crook of your neck and sighing before allowing the embrace of sleep to carry you both away.

Yixing was getting changed into his clothes while you sat up in your bed, admiring him. You’d briefly spoken since you woke up, neither of you being able to contain the smiles on your faces from last night.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” you asked, glancing at the clock which screamed that it was nearing 10am already.

Yixing grinned.

“I’m the CEO, I can turn up when I feel like it. They’ll believe any excuse I give,” he said. You smiled.

“Hey,” you continued. Yixing was doing the buttons up on his shirt. He looked up at you. “It’s Thursday.”

Yixing grinned. “You start on Monday,” he said, pulling his trousers up and sending you a wink.

“Okay, what are you smiling about? Did that cute guy stay over?” Chae demanded. “He looked rich as hell.”

She’d dropped by at your apartment, only wearing her pyjamas. You sat at your breakfast bar in your dressing gown, resting your head on your hand, thinking of him.

“Yeah,” you sighed, the grin never leaving your lips.

“Y/N, you should be ashamed of yourself!” Chae joked. “What about poor office boy?”

“Chae.” You sat up. “That was office boy.”

426 notes · View notes