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americasass81 · 3 years

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Make Her Mine - Chapter Three

{Warning: 18+, Dark theme, Smut, Fingering, Drugging, Mild Somnophilia, Non-con, Swearing, Choking, Mention of oral, Violence, Male Masturbation, Real Persons Mentioned}

Seriously do not read if any of this upsets you.

A/N: Okay though this started out as something to keep me occupied while I was without Wi-Fi for a week and never really planned on posting it, here at chapter three I would like to thank everyone who seems to like it and hope they get the same kick out of reading it as I’ve had writing it. Having started out with an original female character, I have decided for those reading to remove the reader's name. As such it’s now dark!Tony Stark x Reader and I figured it was about time I posted this chapter which was written months ago. Hope you all enjoy it.

Word count:- 2,490

Waking the next morning well rested, you started the day by emailing Sabrina the vague outline of your plan to escape Tony as well as how Sebastian might get involved should his infatuation prove stronger than you hoped. Titled Operation Goldfish, you figured it was a handy enough codename to quickly slip into a compromised conversation. Once satisfied, you then ordered breakfast before heading downstairs to rebook your room for five more days. Getting off the elevator and walking towards the reception desk, you took a sharp turn back to the seating area when you saw Tony walking through the front doors.

'Fuck.' you thought, 'what was his problem. Was his ego really so bruised, that he was determined to track you down?' Looking around, you quickly picked up a paper off the table and hid behind it, while you waited to see what happened next. Noting the time it was taking him to be dealt with, you instead seized the opportunity of his distraction to make it back to the elevators unseen, and quickly returned to your room.

Running through the suite, collecting all your belongings, you were just about to text Sabrina regarding the situation when you heard a beep and the sound of the door opening. Heart pounding and cursing that you didn't feel comfortable having Sabrina retrieve your weapons as well, you slowly walked towards the bedroom door to be greeted by the sight of Tony Stark standing in your suite.

"Well Darling, have you any idea all the bother you've caused me. Now I hope you're not planning on going anywhere after I gave clear instructions as to what was expected of you."

"How the fuck did you get in here and why are you doing this? Is your ego really that fragile?" you asked, while quickly trying to assess how you were going to get out of this.

No sooner were the words out of your mouth however, when you found his hand around your throat as your body hit the jam of the door. "You'll find being Tony Stark I can pretty much buy my way in anywhere. Now listen to me very carefully, the money you're using to hide from me was earned in my employ. That means Darling, that I own your pretty little ass."

Trying to hit him with one hand while using the other to pry his off your throat, he released you and you slumped to the floor, gasping for air as tears leaked from your eyes. Glaring at him, your temper flared and you couldn't hold your tongue. "So what, you think you're entitled to do whatever you want with anyone who works for you? That is seriously fucked up and illegal on so many levels."

"Oh no, Y/N, not anyone." he purred, helping you up while forcing you to look at him as his fingers caressed your chin. "Just you. There's something about the way you think you're too good for me, that makes me want to see you kneeling naked before me while choking on my cock."

Disgusted at his words and brimming with fear and anger, your knee came up to connect with his family jewels as you reached your hand around the wall and pulling a floor lamp towards you, brought it down on him. Though all this only stunned him, it gave you enough of an opening to hit him again, before reaching for your getaway bag and running from the room.

Not looking back to see if he was following you, you forgot the lift and started down the stairs as fast as you could. Reaching the street, you made it two blocks before you felt a sharp prick in your neck. Slowly slumping forward, you weren't conscious as iron arms wrapped around your chest and a booming voice told passersby that everything was under control. Taking you to an Avengers controlled facility because of the publicity surrounding your episode, the next phase of his plan was to extricate you from those determined to keep you from him.

*************

Having received the unexpected call from Tony Stark, it didn't take long for Sabrina to show up at the facility with Sebastian and two of his goons in tow. Being greeted by a kindly nurse, they were allowed to see you for a few minutes before being ushered into one of the unused offices where Tony sat waiting.

Closing the door behind him, Sebastian had to hold his wife back as she lunged at Tony. "What did you do to her, you sick fuck? I swear, if anything happens to her the full might of the New York Mob will tear you and your costumed freaks to ribbons."

"Firecracker, calm down. At least let the man explain." Sebastian coaxed, quickly glancing at Tony.

"Fine." she said, sitting in the nearest vacant chair while keeping her eyes fixed on Tony, as Sebastian took the seat next to her.

"Well it's good to see you have some control over your woman, but I wonder Mr. Stan, does she actually speak for you."

"Mr. Stark, please don't interpret my love for my wife as a sign of weakness. While she may not speak for me on Mob business, where Y/N is concerned we act as one."

"Fair enough. I was on my way back from a routine rescue when F.R.I.D.A.Y. alerted me to a pedestrian in distress. I reached her before she could hit the ground and only discovered it was Miss Y/L/N when I saw her face. I then brought her here and immediately called you, of course." he said, turning his gaze on Sabrina.

"And what exactly is wrong with her? The nurse Charlie wasn’t exactly forthcoming with information." Sebastian stated, reaching out to take his wife's hand.

"That I'm afraid is a question I don't yet have the answer to. F.R.I.D.A.Y. is running every conceivable test, but if nothing comes up, we may just have to accept it's something else and simply let it run its course."

"Something else? As in stress related?" Sabrina snapped, glaring daggers at him. "I wonder what could possibly have stressed her out that much?"

"Yes Mrs. Stan, I'll admit it, I didn't handle her rejection of me very well. But I've since gotten over it. Which is why I now intend to make sure she gets the best medical care my resources can provide."

"Mr. Stark," Sebastian interrupted.

"Tony, please." he stated, turning to face the mob boss once again.

"Tony. Given the issues these past couple of days have thrown up between you and Y/N, surely you can understand our concern. I don't think my wife and I are very comfortable with this arrangement."

"I totally understand your reservations, but as a Stark Industries employee she is also covered under the company's medical insurance, which means I can insist on the best possible treatment available anywhere. I will of course be more than happy to keep you updated on her condition. Now perhaps we can leave it there for today? I have your number."

"Sebastian, we can't just leave her here with this arrogant douchebag. This is exactly the opportunity he's been waiting for." Sabrina explained, locking eyes with her husband.

"Sabrina, sweetheart, his concern seems genuine and he should be made pay for her care. She'll be okay." Turning back to Tony, he looked him over once, before he spoke again, "Remember what my wife told you, Stark. In the meantime, I'll expect regular updates." he stressed, rising from the chair and taking his wife's hand to lead her from the room. Left alone with you incapitated down the hall, Tony couldn't hide the satisfaction he felt, knowing he finally had you in his grasp.

Suspecting that your friends didn't believe a word he said, Tony walked down the hall to your room where he couldn't help but gaze on your sleeping form. Though the sedative he'd hit you with should give him until tomorrow to get you moved to his secret location, part of him was disappointed that it had come to this. He had hoped when you left his office you would do as he asked, but it seemed you weren't as meek as you pretended to be. Still, he did love a challenge and he would enjoy breaking you.

Leaving you temporarily to deal with the paper trail and the nurse, he returned quickly and went about removing what medical equipment had been hooked up to lend some reality to the scene. Next, pulling back the sheets, he frowned at the hideous workout gear you still wore but couldn't help himself as his hand made its way up the inside of your thigh. Though he knew he wanted you awake for all he had planned, he told himself he simply wanted to see how effective the drug was at keeping you sedated.

Reaching your waist, he gently eased down your leggings before running his hand along your panty covered folds. Moving his hand up and down a few times, he brought his fingers to his mouth and coated them in his saliva before shoving your panties aside to feel your flesh against his hand. Slowly gliding up and down your folds, he moved up every now and then to circle your clit before he poked your entrance with a finger. Moving it gently in and out, he was surprised by the small amount of moisture this single digit was producing. Deciding to experiment further, he slipped in a second finger and was rewarded with a tightness that wasn't there the first time. Pumping his digits harder and faster into your pussy, he marveled at how well the drug was working, while still allowing your body to slick up his fingers.

Hearing movement out in the hall, he quickly removed his fingers, replaced your clothes and licked your juices off his digits before pulling the sheets back up. Bending down to softly kiss your lips, he pulled back before whispering "soon darling, you'll feel more than my fingers and you'll never be empty ever again." Then when a dead quiet once again fell over the place, he released his armor, eased you out the window and gently flew you to the secluded spot where his car was waiting. Placing you on the seat and securing your belt, he swept the hair back from your face before shedding his armor, getting behind the wheel and driving off to your new home.

*************

Pulling into the secluded, underground hideout, he thanked all the gods above that no one knew of its existence or its connection to him. Housing a garage, living quarters and state of the art lab, he knew it would be the perfect place to hide you until you finally accepted him. Taking you gently from the car and depositing you in your room, he still had things he needed to do before you woke up.

Removing your leggings and panties, he hurried to your bathroom to clean you up after his earlier exploration, before slipping into his room to retrieve a pair of boxers. Left to him, you wouldn't need clothes any time soon, but he figured after the hotel you might not take too kindly to waking up naked. As a compromise, the drug should afford him time to wash your lower garments and return them before you knew anything was amiss.

Heading to his room to shower, his mind wondered how you would react when you regained consciousness. Oh he could easily have tied you to the bed already and after the hotel maybe he should, but where was the fun in that? The contrast between the meek 'Mr. Stark' spouting you in his office and the fiery you that had evaded him and attacked him in the hotel suite excited him more than any woman had in years. He couldn't wait to see which you would open your eyes or what it would take to tip you in either direction.

So consumed was he by you that it took him awhile to realize his hand had strayed to his throbbing erection. Continuing to pump his hand up and down while thinking of your tight, warm and wet walls squeezing him like a vice, his mind wandered back to his fingers buried in your pussy and working himself harder he came with a groan, his cum coating his hand. Looking down at his release, he quickly washed up, exited the shower and changed his clothes before making a bite to eat.

Once fed, he headed back to check on you, to find you just as he left you. Though fairly certain about the timeframe of the sedative, he thought it best not to dally and headed off to his lab to set up a cover that would hopefully keep your mob friends off his back.

His first act was to wire money to associates in Europe to make it look like his private jet had landed with himself, you and the nurse Charlie aboard. Next was the setting up of a false trail that currently had you under the care of the best doctors in Denmark, no way he figured would your meddlesome friends travel there. Then he fished your phone out of your getaway bag, while marveling at the amount of cash you had stashed away. He knew he paid his employees well, but the ingenuity of someone your age to even think of something like this both amazed him and made him wonder why you did it in the first place. But that was a mystery which could wait.

Unlocking your phone, a pathetically simple task he noted, he quickly cloned the whole thing and then, placing it back with your cash and passport, hid the bag in the lab's secret safe. Once done with that, his next task involved combing through every voicemail you had in order to synthesize your speech pattern should he have a need for it at some point. He also contemplated freezing your accounts, but figured that might raise some red flags. When all that was done, he then redirected his business calls, thus making the whole thing look legitimate before instructing his A.I. V.I.R.G.I.L. to shut down most of the building.

Satisfied that his efforts were enough, he returned to your room with your freshly washed clothes and redressed you before settling on the couch to spend some time watching the gentle rise and fall of your chest. Knowing it would be a while before he got to see you this peaceful again, he savored every minute until his eyes started to close and so rising, he kissed your forehead before reluctantly returning to his own room. Laying down, he drifted off to sleep, wondering what the days ahead held in store.

Tagging:- @nsfwsebbie , @hoseokchild , @malloryharris , @ironlady1993 , @floatingdaisy7 , @taintedgenre , sorry if I missed anyone.

#dark!tony stark x reader

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johannas-motivational-insults · 3 years

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Jo’s Top 10 of 2020

I see lots of artists doing that thing where they post a piece from each month of the year... unfortunately my content creation isn’t necessarily consistent and it’s hard to track what month individual fic chapters were posted in, but I figured I’d do something similar and post my Top 10 pieces of content I created in 2020, what they’re about and why I love them. I actually did get a fair amount done this year thanks to the lockdown, but I’ve narrowed it down to these ten that I’d like to reflect on. (To be fair, I’m probably forgetting something huge. Feel free to leave comments if you think I passed over something important lol.)

10. Friendship in the Horde (meta): This is something I’d wanted to write for a while but finally got around to finishing in February. It’s basically a sociology paper lmao, an analysis of the social hierarchies and systems of the Horde. It was also a convenient excuse for me to gush about Catralonnie, an underrated (friend)ship. But honestly this was an important piece for me because I have always identified with the Horde characters way more than any of the rebels (other than Adora, who grew up in the Horde) and part of why is how they are in an unsafe environment and end up forming relationships that are helpful for survival but hinder them psychologically. And I think to understand the Horde characters and really evaluate their motives and choices you need to understand this first.

9. The Sting in My Eyes: On the surface this is just a run of the mill hurt/comfort oneshot, but it was a really important post-canon processing fic for me. I had a lot of feelings about Catra’s relationships with Shadow Weaver and Melog in season 5, particularly about how Catra must have felt really conflicted after Shadow Weaver told her what she wanted to hear all those years but in a way that felt unearned and out of the blue. It was really cathartic for me to write a scene where she struggles with those mixed feelings but has Adora and Melog to help her process them. And I had long associated the song the title is from with Catra and Shadow Weaver’s relationship, and the way she died trying to redeem herself really solidified that connection.

8. Hail Mary, chapter 6: This was supposed to be a short chapter mostly about the backstory between Catra and Scorpia in this au, with some Catradora yearning thrown in. It evolved into a massive, sprawling thing that is very atmospheric in terms of how the setting and vibes are described and how in the moment it feels. Hail Mary is like that sometimes but that type of narration is usually about football games rather than parties, so this chapter was a fun change of pace in many ways. It was really nostaglic for me to write too, the nerves of being a teenager at a party with your crush and how intense everything feels. And the Scorptra stuff really is delicious, it was nice seeing them have that conversation they never got to have in canon and truly make up, and the tiny sliver I added of Catra’s earlier history was heartbreaking in the best way. So this was not what I intended to write, but it turned out way better for it.

7. A Better Son or Daughter (AMV): I’ve done other Adora AMVs, but this one is really my iconic piece. The song is perfect for Adora, so perfect it’s on Noelle’s Adora playlist. The vid itself is a character study about Adora’s mental health struggles and the way she represses them, as well as a tribute to her resiliency and her eventual triumph of getting to a better place in her life. This is a song that gives me a lot of feelings and once I was making it about Adora it gave me even more, so this was a very satisfying piece to complete. I wish Noelle had gotten a chance to see it but oh well, maybe down the line.

6. Hail Mary, chapter 12: This is the chapter that much of the fic had been building to, Catra and Adora in conflict because Catra finally got the chance to be Adora’s hero and Adora shot her down. It’s painfully analogous to canon, both in terms of how (I suspect) Catra felt in Thaymor and Adora’s tendency to victim blame because she’s so pragmatic. There’s definitely some tones of Taking Control in there but Lonnie does a much better job of examining Catra’s psychology and needs than Glimmer did in canon (a writing error imo, Glimmer should have had more insight). Adora just wants to help but sometimes in her quest to do so she disenfranchises others, and this was a much needed look at that aspect of her character. It’s also an excellent illustration of what it’s like to play a peacekeeping role in an abusive household and how stressful it is trying to protect others while also protecting yourself.

5. Unstoppable (AMV): This is not my favorite Catra AMV I’ve ever done, but it might be the cleverest. The soundtrack is a song about mental illness masquerading as a song about being a bad bitch, which is basically Catra in a nutshell. The lyrics are incredibly fitting for her and her arc as it develops over seasons 1-4. The vid itself takes a hard turn in the interpretation of the lyrics, going from talking about how no one can stop Catra to how she can’t stop herself because she’s in such a terrible sunk cost fallacy spiral, and I think I got several death threats over that twist lmao. As someone who primarily deals in angst, there’s hardly a better compliment to be paid.

4. Demons, chapter 31: This one got real dark on me. The concept of this chapter was originally an examination of how comparing abuse can get really dicey but you also have to respect that other people have had different experiences from you and you have to be careful not to equate things or make it sound like you’re talking over someone else. I guess it’s also a bit of a look at how autistic people (like myself) will often explain why they can empathize so others know they understand rather than saying empty platitudes, but that can come off as insensitive or like they’re making things about them. I mean, in this case Adora kinda was making things about her, but she was provoked into it by a parade of comments insinuating she didn’t suffer at all, which was also unfair. Anyway it’s one of the more important Catradora fights in Demons and something I’d written bits of over a year prior, it was that important to the plot, but it also took a turn I was not originally planning. I finished the chapter when I was in a really bad depressive and self-loathing spiral and that bled onto the page, but it worked perfectly for Catra in this scenario... that push and pull of feeling like the world has hurt and victimized you mixed with knowing you’ve done some bad things yourself and feeling like you don’t have a leg to stand on when mourning the ways you’ve been hurt. It’s intense as all fuck but it’s excellent.

3. Hail Mary, chapter 11: Speaking of dark Catra content, this chapter... whew. It was really something else, to read and to write. I have written flashbacks in Demons that are more detailed and even include explicit violence but because those scenes are always in flashback form I never really got the chance to sit in the head of an abuse victim waiting for the other shoe to drop for an entire chapter like I did here. It’s quite different from the rest of Hail Mary stylistically and is both highly sensory and extremely internalized. It took me back to some terrifying moments in my own life so it was difficult but also extremely cathartic to write. It’s important too because it really sets up where Catra was at mentally heading into her big fight with Adora, and that chapter is in Adora POV. This chapter is ranked so high simply because it’s... polished, as @malachi-walker put it. It almost is its own story within the story and really noteworthy as a piece all its own.

2. Demons, chapter 26: This chapter is very similar thematically to Hail Mary 12, just based in the canonverse. It deals with one of the core (but highly neglected by fandom) conflicts between Catra and Adora, where they both need to feel like they can take care of and protect the other but also detest feeling weak or vulnerable themselves. It leads to Adora’s ego making Catra feel disrespected and Catra’s behavior confusing Adora and making her think she’s an ungrateful brat rather than someone who needs so badly to be needed, just like her. There’s definitely some power struggles in this chapter but finally they’re able to get to the heart of it and seeing them talk it out is so satisfying. Getting this chapter published was also important to me on a personal level because, like I said, this aspect of their conflict and relationship is rarely acknowleged for how important it is when really it’s one of the deepest conflicts between them in the series. It’s a scene I started writing pretty much as soon I knew I was extending the fic into something longer because I just needed them to have this conversation, so finishing it was so satisfying.

1. Satisfaction, chapter 3: This chapter took me a really long time to write, both in terms of time to get it published and time I actually spent working on it. It’s the crown jewel of a fic that’s really important to me and I had to get it just right, so I spent more time agonizing over every detail and rewriting things to get them absolutely perfect than I usually do (I’m a perfectionist anyway, but this took it to a whole other level). But in the end it was worth it, because this chapter is damn fine. It’s really hot, as you’d expect from a smut fic, but it’s also an excellent character study of how both Catra and Adora were affected by their abuse and trauma and the issues it raises for them in terms of sex and intimacy. Also, come on, we need more BDSM fics out there that focus on the actual point of it all (the trust involved) and promote communication and do the character work to explain why they might be into it in the first place.

BONUS (from December 31, 2019): One of my favorite pieces of 2020 technically came out in 2019, but I posted it on New Years Eve so most people first saw it in 2020. It’s an absolute banger of an AMV called I’m Not Jesus that’s all about Catra and Adora’s anger towards Shadow Weaver and their refusal to forgive their abuser. Funny enough this came out before Adora’s iconic “I will never forgive you” line, and Shadow Weaver definitely made things more complicated with how she went out, but I think the sentiment still applies.

#2020 recap #happy new year #writing #vidding #fanfic #spop #catradora #demons #hail mary #satisfaction #the sting in my eyes #a better son/daughter #unstoppable #i’m not jesus

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richincolor · 3 years

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*As is usual with our discussions, there may be a few spoilers ahead, so beware.*

We all were incredibly excited to read Angeline Boulley's FIREKEEPER'S DAUGHTER when we first heard about it, so we decided to make it our second group discussion book for the year. Come join us!

As a biracial, unenrolled tribal member and the product of a scandal, eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. Daunis dreams of studying medicine, but when her family is struck by tragedy, she puts her future on hold to care for her fragile mother.

The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, the charming new recruit on her brother Levi’s hockey team. Yet even as Daunis falls for Jamie, certain details don’t add up and she senses the dashing hockey star is hiding something. Everything comes to light when Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, thrusting her into the heart of a criminal investigation.

Reluctantly, Daunis agrees to go undercover, but secretly pursues her own investigation, tracking down the criminals with her knowledge of chemistry and traditional medicine. But the deceptions—and deaths—keep piling up and soon the threat strikes too close to home.

Now, Daunis must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she'll go to protect her community, even if it tears apart the only world she’s ever known.

[Note: While we will not go into any great detail in this discussion, Firekeeper’s Daughter contains murder, suicide, kidnapping, sexual assault, addiction and drug use, racism, colorism, and death of parents/family members.

You can read an excerpt of the book here!]

Audrey: To get us started--let’s talk about this gorgeous cover! The cover art was created by Moses Lunham and designed by Rich Deas. The first thing I noticed when I got my copy of the book was that the two faces at the top had different skin tones. According to this interview, author Angeline Boulley says that “the different shades of the faces symbolizes Daunis claiming her biracial identity,” which is a major part of the book.

Jessica: The cover is so beautiful. It’s next to me on my desk right now and I can’t stop looking at it. Love how the cover ties into the themes of the book.

K. Imani: This cover is absolutely beautiful! I love the design of the faces looking like a butterfly as well as the bird and bear (I think) and the fire. There are so many subtle images in this cover that you can almost find something new each time. And the colors are so stunning. Like you Audrey, I noticed the faces had different skin tones which I found interesting and made me wonder what was going to happen in the book. Knowing the faces symbolize Daunis’s biracial identity now is powerful and really brings home the meaning of the book.

Crystal: I agree that the cover is gorgeous. In addition to the aspects of her physical appearance and physical identity, Daunis’ cultural identity is also displayed within the illustrations with bears representing her clan. In addition there are the birds like the one that guides her and the sun is in the background too which is from the story of the original Fire Keeper’s Daughter. The faces forming a butterfly is also just brilliant for a coming-of-age story. There’s so much to see. Each time I notice more.

Audrey: Daunis, our heroine, is on the older end of the YA protagonist spectrum at 18. She’s dealing with a lot of upheaval in her life, and things only get more complicated in short order. Something I really liked about Daunis was how often she thought about and evaluated what her responsibilities were--to her family, to her friends, to her community, and to herself. These sometimes complementary, sometimes competing, responsibilities strongly influenced her decisions.

Jessica: You mention the complementary and sometimes competing responsibilities -- that’s exactly it. I loved how her thought process was explored throughout the book in such a thorough and complex way. The way Daunis balances and reconciles the interests of her community with what the FBI wants from her and her quest for justice is laid out really clearly. Sometimes, narratives can tend toward simplistic, binary summations of the issues people, especially from marginalized communities, face -- but that’s just not the case, and Daunis really highlights that. To be honest, I was a little nervous at the introduction of law enforcement and the FBI, given the racism and oppression baked into these institutions, but the way Daunis navigates her interactions with them, plus the way other members of the community tell the truth about these institutions, really played out in such a nuanced way. (I really, really hope that the Netflix adaptation keeps these nuances and hard truths in the show, but I suspect that won’t be the case, unfortunately.)

K. Imani: I enjoyed that Daunis was 18 and on the cusp of adulthood. So many YA novels focus on the character’s high school life but a lot does happen and teens do grow and change a lot in that year after high school. Many have left home for college (that was me) or working full time and they are learning how to navigate a life that was not completely so structured. In addition to having to deal with changing friendships as people move away or just become busy. It’s a unique time and I loved that we got to spend time with Daunis as she was going through this change. She was learning how to become an adult in one of the most stressful ways possible, and sometimes I felt she was a little too idealistic, but I’m glad that she kept her truth throughout and was focused on helping her community in addition to helping the FBI. Her perspective helped keep the investigation grounded in what mattered which wouldn’t have happened if she wasn’t involved.

Crystal: Daunis balances a lot of responsibilities and really tries to follow what she’s learned from elders. She considers how her actions may affect all of her relatives within her family, clan, community, and beyond. Boulley embedded a lot of elder wisdom within Daunis’ inner dialogue such as thinking about the seventh generation when making decisions.

Audrey: One of the things that I really appreciated about Firekeeper’s Daughter was the depth of the setting and the characters in it. While Boulley says that Daunis’s tribe is fictionalized in the author note, it’s clear how much care and thought Boulley put into creating Daunis’s community. It’s filled with people who have complex histories (both within and between Native and non-Native groups), with differing opinions and prejudices and goals.

Jessica: This really highlights how important it is to have stories where cultures and communities aren’t portrayed as a monolith. It’s not just the right thing to do, it makes for a better and more accurate story. I read Firekeeper’s Daughter and watched the TV show Rutherford Falls back to back, which really drove home the power of depicting a community with nuance. (Also, sidebar: Highly recommend checking out Rutherford Falls, which does this really well.)

K. Imani: One of my favorite aspects of Firekeeper’s Daughter were the elders in Daunis’s tribe and how we got to hear many of their individual stories which showed the complexity of real life. I loved that Daunis listened to her elders, really took in their stories and learned from them. Her interactions with the elders greatly contributed to her growing sense of self and her desire to help her community. And this is where this novel being truly #ownvoices shines because of Boulley’s connection to her community that she took great care in making sure Daunis’s tribe felt real and authentic as well as culturally accurate. It was not full of stereotypes but filled with real people who had real lives and real stories. I was drawn into Daunis’s community and really cared about the people that made Daunis who she is and becomes.

Crystal: Like Jessica says, there is a lot of nuance here. When you have a wide variety of characters who are not simply good or bad, the story has more power and is definitely more believable. The people in our everyday lives are also complex and have a story if only we take the time to listen. This is what Daunis excels at with elders and others around her. She is paying attention and trying to connect with people. There is a lot of love throughout the book of many different types. The love is beautiful and yet also has some ugliness too in the betrayals. It’s not picture perfect and that makes it so much more real.

Audrey: Boulley tackles a lot of difficult topics in Firekeeper’s Daughter, especially ones that can hit hard on a community level. Much of the plot focuses on drug use and addiction, of course, but violence against Native women also has a significant impact on what happens in the book and affects multiple characters, including Daunis.

Crystal: Daunis and the other women are examples of the many, many, women who have been harmed in the past and the present. That’s not the whole story though. As Daunis is learning, there are many ways of being brave. Throughout the story, we see many women being strong and brave though at initial glance their actions may not seem to be either of those things. There is bravery in speaking out, but sometimes bravery requires something else. These women have done what they needed to do to survive or help their loved ones survive.

Audrey: Firekeeper’s Daughter has a complicated ending, and it left me thinking about two things. The first was how proud I was of Daunis and her character growth. There were a couple of times where she came across as very Not Like Other Girls (particularly with the hockey players’ girlfriends), but that changed over the course of the book. The second was grief at how many people and institutions failed Daunis and her community, both within and without. Just as one example, even though Daunis is a confidential informant for the FBI, the FBI doesn’t come out of this story as a Good Guy.

K. Imani: I was torn by the ending too. I so wanted justice for Daunis and Lily and for others who were murdered, but on the other hand life doesn’t always have a happy ending and I recognize that Boulley gave us that horribly realistic ending because the fight for missing and murdered Indigenous women continues and the fight for justice for Indigenous peoples. It was a heartbreaking reminder of a very real issue. On the other hand, I was so proud of Daunis as well. She was able to achieve her goals of helping out the FBI while staying true to herself and her community. She grew so much as a character and really found her place in her world.

Crystal: The ending gave me much to think about too. Daunis grew a lot as she worked through this complicated puzzle in her community. She learned much about herself and some of the assumptions folks have about others. I also really, really wanted justice, but unfortunately, would be unlikely in real life with our current justice system. I also found Jamie’s growth to be interesting. He is truly struggling with his own identity as an adopted child with Cherokee roots, but no Cherokee teachings or culture to turn to. I don’t know if a sequel or companion book is planned, but I would be interested in seeing more of their journeys whether their paths cross again or not.

Jessica: Audrey, thanks so much for leading this discussion! Now I have a question for you all -- what YA books by/about BIPOC are you reading right now?

For AAPI month, I’m rereading Turtle Under Ice by Juleah del Rosario. After that, I’m planning on reading The Ones We're Meant to Find by Joan He, Apple: Skin to the Core by Eric Gansworth, and Witches Steeped in Gold by Ciannon Smart! Yes, my TBR pile is excellent. :P

Audrey: Next up on my list are The Theft of Sunlight by Intisar Khanani, Forest of Stolen Girls by June Hur, and Simone Breaks All the Rules by Debbie Rigaud. I feel like that’s a pretty good mix of genres and authors right there!

K. Imani: Since I’m needing some inspiration for my vampire manuscript, I’m re-reading and new reading some vampire novels. Currently I am reading Fledgling by Octavia Butler then up next is Renee Ahdieh’s series The Beautiful and the sequel The Damned.

Crystal: I just re-read Saints & Misfits and then dove into the sequel Misfit in Love. S.K. Ali is an author that I really enjoy and I am loving it so far. Next up is American Betiya by Anuradha D. Rajurkar along with Love & Other Natural Disasters by Misa Sugiura. I also think my TBR is pretty stellar.

If you've had the chance to read FIREKEEPER'S DAUGHTER, please join in the discussion below! We'd love to hear what you think.

#firekeeper's daughter #weneeddiversebooks #group discussion #contemporary #thriller

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empatheticagent · 3 years

Text

psychic training

Marco was quiet as he observed the training session, Cassie sitting in a chair nearby. She had only been to a few sessions before, which had mostly been physical training.

This one was different. This was practice for a technique Marco had been trying to help Ray with, hoping they could get Ray to a point where he had a level of control that meant that unless Ray wanted it to, his powers would only be triggered by contact with his exposed skin. So far in previous training sessions, it had been mostly meditative, to help Ray focus and relax.

Then they had moved to having Ray practice keeping his focus to see if he could stop the powers triggering as soon as someone bumped him. It took weeks for them to move on, training almost daily by then. Next they worked on the issue of handshakes, working to a point where with Sterling’s suggestion of gloves, Ray was able to avoid accidental triggers.

Being able to do simple things like shake hands, or hug someone without being flooded by someone else’s emotions or an unwanted awareness of where they went afterwards was a huge relief. A sense of normalcy he hadn’t had since supposedly going through the terrigenesis he remembered little of, besides passing out and waking up sometime later.

Nic was slowly working through the usual tests with Ray; a hand on his shoulder, his arm, his back, and asking each time if anything had happened. Each time, Ray shook his head and quietly responded “no”. Soon, he assured Nic he was ready to try without the gloves and slowly removed them.

“Are you sure?” Marco asked. “We haven’t tried it before— ”

“I want to,” Ray quietly insisted.

Marco glanced at Nic who shrugged, his expression reading along the lines of ‘if he insists’.

“Alright then, give it a go,” Marco said, giving Ray an encouraging smile. It wasn’t that he didn’t think Ray couldn’t do it. It was more a concern about whether he was ready or not to handle it. The best way to find out though, was to go ahead and try.

Ray took a deep breath and reached out to hesitantly grab hold of Nic’s bare hands with his own. He took in a sharp breath as he felt the familiar flood of emotions that weren’t his; a hint of nervousness tied in with excitement and optimism. Ray leaned back a bit, curious about what kind of colours would be present around the man. Most prominent were a bright yellow and orange, which made him wonder if those were the colours he would have seen around Clay, if the ability had triggered sooner. There was something else there too, lingering just under the surface. Ray should have let go and tried to switch off at that point, but of course he stubbornly wanted to keep testing.

He closed his eyes, wanting to remove any chance of visual distractions as he focused on Nic’s emotions. It was funny, really, just how little of his ability had actually been tapped into under Bancroft’s guidance. That man had tried so hard to expand Ray’s abilities but had only succeeded in making Ray feel unwell and miserable. Under Bancroft, Ray had done little more than scratched the surface. Now though...

Now that Ray was entirely focused and his eyes were closed, a different kind of visual awaited him. He knew it wasn’t his physical body that had been transported elsewhere, yet Ray found himself standing in a black space. No breeze, no noise. He felt a hint of his own fear at the new experience before his natural curiosity pushed him to explore as it usually did. Looking around, Ray found he was standing in what looked like a shimmering water, though he didn’t seem to be getting wet and the so-called water he quickly recognised. It was the shimmering yellow and orange of Nic’s excitement and optimism that Ray had seen surrounding the man earlier.

This must be some sort of psychic representation, Ray realised. The longer he stared at the shimmering ‘water’, the more Ray became aware of other, darker colours lingering below the bright surface, just as he had suspected there had been back out in the real world. Cautiously, Ray reached a hand out, as if he planned on crouching to touch the water. Before he could do that though it seemed to slowly, somewhat resistantly part on it’s own.

“Ray.”

The voice seemed distorted and far off, like he was hearing it from underwater. Ray was vaguely aware of his physical body tensing in response to the reveal of the darker coloured water. These were emotions he was painfully familiar with. Ones he hated seeing in others because it made him wonder just how dark his own colours would be. A dark red anger was swirling below those happy surface emotions, along with a dark blue-grey of grief. If this was Nic’s, years later when he seemed so happy, how bad then was his own? Ray found himself incredibly glad he couldn’t (or at least never had been able to) see his own. Not liking it, Ray intended to step back and pull out of the place, but found himself stuck.

“Ray?”

His breathing turned short and sharp as he struggled to pull out of the strange emotional centre he had found himself in, but somehow found himself sinking deeper. Nic’s hidden grief and anger didn’t seem to be the only thing beneath the surface. Ray cried out as he seemed to be dragged deeper, Nic’s hurt from his amputated leg threatening to overwhelm him. That awful loophole that unwillingly allowed Ray to feel the physical pain of others.

No, no, no. I need to get out.

“Ray!”

Ray looked up, the bright surface seemed to be getting further and further away. He struggled against the dark emotions and the pain, reaching upwards... Everything seemed to be clouding with shadow, before it all went black.

...

Ray slowly came to, disoriented and feeling like the room was spinning. Yet he felt like he was lying on the cold floor of the training room. He took in a sudden, deep breath and sat up, coughing as if he had been rescued from real water.

“Ray! Oh my God, are you alright?!” Cassie was kneeling beside him and started to reach out before Marco put a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

“Not until we’re sure it’s safe and he’s had a chance to calm,” Marco said gently before turning to Ray. Rather than touching him with bare hands, Marco reached out with one made of shadows and gently pushed Ray prompt him to lie back down.

“Rest,” he said firmly.

Instead of lying back down, Ray carefully shifted to sit leaning against the wall he’d been laid beside. He was still struggling to relax his breathing and couldn’t get out the question he wanted to ask and let out a frustrated huff before trying to use ASL and sign instead. In his panicked state however, Ray found himself struggling to recall the correct sign and tried spelling instead, only to keep messing up and using wrong letters, or mixing them up with the Australian variants. He only succeeded in getting himself more worked up. It didn’t help that he could still feel Nic’s pain in his own leg. He could still feel the emotions lingering, keeping him from calming down. Angry, Ray lashed out and struck the ground beside him with the side of a closed fist, warm tears running down his face.

“Shh, Ray, it’s okay,” Cassie said gently, handing Ray his gloves before gesturing to his hands. “Use Australian signs. That’s what I’m here for.”

Having his gloves back helped Ray feel a little more in control and the simple act of stopping to focus on putting them on helped distract him from the after effects enough that he could start calming down a little. Slowly, he started signing to her.

“What happened?” Cassie said, making sure that was what Ray had intended to sign, she waited for him to nod before saying anything else. “You looked like you were struggling... or, hurting? Marco used his shadows to pull you away after you cried out—”

Hurting, Ray signed. Could feel— Where is N-i-c?

“Oh...” Cassie said slowly, looking hesitant to answer him.

Where is he?

Cassie sighed.

“Resting,” Marco told Ray, shifting aside.

It turned out he and Cassie had intentionally picked where to sit in order to hide Nic from Ray’s view. He looked pretty worn out, pale and barely conscious as he laid there on his side.

“He’ll be alright,” Marco reassured Ray. “I’ve seen you looking worse. Now, what happened on your end?”

Ray tilted his head to one side, carefully thinking about how to word it, without verbalising. In recent times the signing had become more regular than words, rather than a back up. He didn’t bother trying to use the American signs, instead turning to face Cassie and continued to use the Australian version to save himself the stress.

Cassie patiently waited for Ray to explain, signing a few questions of her own to make sure she understood properly before updating Marco. “He said something new happened with his powers and couldn’t break the connection like he usually would when he hit negative emotions...” She explained, trailing off when Ray reached out and tapped her arm to get her attention before signing again.

“Nic’s hurting?”

Marco frowned. “I did tell him to warn me beforehand if he was having an off day. I’ll have to remind him later,” he sighed. “Rest Hartell. I’ll get you both some water and ask medical to have someone drop by, just in case.”

He added the last part knowing both of them were stubborn when it came to medical related issues. Odds were they’d be fine after rest, but Marco preferred to be safe, especially when they were working with psychic powers.

#drowning tw #just in case bc it vaguely parallels it #set some time post kidnapping #so theres hints of whats to come #empatheticagent headcanons #because its power development

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sheliesshattered · 3 years

Text

Time And Relative Dimension

Clara/Twelve post-Flatline AU. Part 5 of the on-going s8 AU series For As Long As We Get, but can be read as a stand-alone. 6300 words, Twelfth Doctor POV. Emotional hurt/comfort, domestic fluff, newlyweds navigating married life. A late entry for Whouffle Week 2020 for the prompt: dancing. Available on AO3 under the same title and username.

—

Time And Relative Dimension

“Right,” Clara sighed as she stood in the open doorway of the TARDIS. “I need to— to look at my lesson plans for the week, and do some laundry in a machine I know won’t try to ‘improve’ my clothes as it washes them.”

The Doctor looked up from the controls he was fiddling with on the console, his mind full of a nascent idea for a modification to the TARDIS that he suspected was probably more trouble than it was worth. “So you said this morning,” he replied, confused. “That’s why we came back to your flat.”

“Right,” she said again, sounding tired. “I’m also going to have a shower, I think. Given... all that.” She gestured vaguely, evidently referring to the hours they’d just spent in Bristol and their encounter with the Boneless.

“Take your time,” he shrugged, most of his attention on the navigation system. Landing in Bristol had been entirely unintentional, and while he’d long since stopped questioning the TARDIS when she decided his presence was needed somewhere other than where he’d aimed for, it might be useful if the console could at least warn him that their destination had changed. Maybe if he rerouted the nav computer...

“Just don’t—” Clara’s voice broke in a way that he associated with five-foot-one and crying, but when he glanced back at her, her expression was carefully blank, her gaze fixed in the middle distance. “Don’t leave,” she went on, steadier. “Stay where I can find you.”

He had thought that much was obvious, but she seemed to be waiting for an answer, so he said, “Yes, boss.”

She nodded once and stepped out into her flat, leaving the TARDIS doors open. It was a habit he didn’t usually engage in, leaving the doors open for anything other than coming and going — the TARDIS was safer with the real-time envelope sealed, and picked up fewer stray cats that way — but as with most things, exceptions could be made for Clara. For whatever reason, she wanted to know where he was, wanted assurances that the TARDIS wouldn’t leave without her, and keeping the doors open seemed like a simple way of achieving that.

For a time the Doctor lost himself in his tinkering, letting his thoughts wander as he began and then abandoned several different improvements to the settings and readouts. He heard the shower start and the water shut off a while later, heard Clara moving quietly around the sitting room just beyond the TARDIS doors, papers rustling and books closing. It was comforting in a way he hadn’t expected, the small connection of sound, knowing that his Clara was just outside, engaged in her own projects while he pursued his.

He had never considered himself someone who enjoyed domestic life. He’d raised a family on Gallifrey, yes, but it was so long ago now that it felt like a dream, half-forgotten upon waking. Since then his relationships had been anything but domestic, and he’d spent so many centuries running from everything boring and ordinary that he had never thought he could want anything else. There was always more of the universe to see, more to experience, people to save and civilisations to discover, and he had never been particularly adept at staying in one place.

In many ways, Clara was a perfect match for him in that, as in so much else. After the Orient Express, they had hidden away in the TARDIS for a few days, but eventually the universe had called to them, and as often as not it was Clara leading the way out into the unknown. She was as insatiable as he was, despite her need for more sleep and frequent meals, and it had only been the realisation that they had been travelling nonstop for nearly a month that had finally convinced them to wrap up their honeymoon trip and find their way back to Earth, back to the normal life she’d left behind when they’d run off to get married.

But even in the midst of their extended honeymoon, one adventure flowing into the next, they had discovered a rhythm to their life together that hadn’t been there before, a pattern to their days and an ease with each other, existing in a dimension that belonged entirely to them. He shouldn’t have been surprised, then, to find that it continued here, unchanged whether set against the wonders of the universe or the mundanity of Clara’s flat. He still didn’t crave domesticity, would still rather skip over the boring days than experience time in a straight line. But with Clara there weren’t any boring days. Just quiet, sweet in-between days where being with her was enough.

Too quiet, the Doctor realised, pausing with his hand half outstretched for the sonic screwdriver. The soft noises from the sitting room had stopped. No more slide of paper against paper or creak of sofa cushions. He held his breath, listening for any sounds from the flat outside, but was greeted with absolute silence.

Concerned, he got up from his workbench and went to the TARDIS doors and looked out. Clara’s school papers were still spread across the coffee table, but there was no sign of Clara herself. He stepped into the sitting room, frowning, and listened more intently. It hardly seemed likely that she would have left the flat without telling him, especially after asking that he not leave, either. Maybe she had just slipped into the bedroom for something? Gone to make herself tea?

Ah, there it was, the distant clink of dishes drifting down the hallway from the kitchen. He followed the sounds, anxious to see his wife again for reasons he couldn’t quite name. There was no logic behind this feeling, this worry that nagged at him for the few short seconds it took to walk down the hall and through the doorway to the kitchen. But he knew better than to dismiss that sort of gut-level instinct.

Clara was there, of course, a mixing bowl and whisk in her hands, her back towards him. The Doctor smiled at the sight of her, but his happy greeting stalled on the tip of his tongue when he caught another quiet noise in the stillness of the flat: a sniffle, wet and broken sounding.

“Clara?” he called to her, that instinctual worry ballooning into something much more fearsome.

She startled at his voice, shoulders tensing, and turned to look at him across the width of the kitchen, her eyes red-rimmed and overlarge. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said, her voice rough.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “What are you doing in here?”

In one motion she swiped at the tearstains on her face and then gestured to the ingredients spread across the worktop, as though the latter would distract him from the former. “I’m making a soufflé,” she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the universe. Like she hadn’t clearly been hiding in the kitchen crying silently and hoping he wouldn’t notice.

Despite everything that had changed over the last weeks, he was still uncertain of what to do with five-foot-one and crying, unsure of how to comfort Clara when confronted with unexplained tears. But her obvious deflection only made it clear to him that the one thing he couldn’t do was leave her to cry alone. There had been points in their relationship when maybe he wouldn’t have called it out, when he might have allowed her to hide behind an excuse like that. But they were far beyond that, now.

“Is there usually this much crying involved in making a soufflé?” he asked, trying to keep his voice gentle despite his growing worry.

She huffed out an annoyed, tear-thick sigh and turned her attention back to aggressively whisking the batter in the mixing bowl. “It’s called stress baking, Doctor,” she said after a moment, not looking at him.

“I can see that. I’m just not sure I understand why.”

Clara sighed again. “Could you just—”

“No,” he said firmly, knowing what she was about to say. “No, I will not leave you alone in here to cry into your soufflé. Rule two: we don’t walk away from each other. So tell me what’s going on.”

He watched her in profile as she looked up at the ceiling, clenching her jaw and blinking back tears, and that instinctual worry snagged in his chest, growing ever larger. Whatever this was it seemed serious, and there wasn’t a chance in hell that he was going to abandon her to deal with it on her own.

“Honestly, Clara,” he pressed when she didn’t reply, “I’m not going anywhere, so you might as well tell me.”

“I was nearly widowed today!” she snapped in response, gaze back her on mixing bowl, her vehemence surprising him. “In Bristol, of all places! When the TARDIS was on the tracks, and that train came and I couldn’t hear you anymore, I thought—” She cut herself off with a sharp shake of her head as tears filled her eyes again, channelling her emotions instead into stirring the soufflé batter with more force than necessary.

Oh. He hadn’t given any thought to how that must have looked from her perspective. It had been a tense moment on his end, completely out of power, stranded with a train bearing down on him. He had only barely managed to put the TARDIS into siege mode with a fraction of a second to spare. And even then, his situation had still been dire, stuck inside the shrinking ship, life support failing, and no way to communicate with Clara. “You thought I’d—”

“It’s rule one!” she interrupted him, whisk scraping harshly against the mixing bowl in the stillness of the kitchen. “Rule one is no dying! Regenerating would be bad enough, but something like that? Could you have even regenerated through it?” she demanded.

He blinked at her mutely, finally beginning to understand the source of her tears. In the rush of defeating their two-dimensional enemy, he hadn’t wanted to consider how narrowly they had avoided disaster, but thinking about it now, he knew she was right. If her gamble with harnessing the power of the Boneless hadn’t paid off, or if she hadn’t been so quick and clever in thinking of it, those might well have been his final moments.

There in the midst of it, he hadn’t been able to face that reality, and had allowed himself only the vaguest of goodbyes to Clara, unsure if she could even hear him. But in retrospect the moment stood out vividly, a tipping point that could have just as easily gone the other way. And he had done that to her, to his Clara, frightened her and nearly abandoned her for good. There was no choice he would have made differently, no clue they had missed that would have allowed them to solve the mystery earlier and avoid the danger entirely, but he still felt the weight of the guilt of having put her through that.

“For as long as we get,” she went on, her tone sharp. “That’s what we agreed on. I just thought it would be longer than four weeks.”

Her words spurred him into action, and without pausing to second-guess himself, the Doctor crossed the kitchen towards her in a few long strides and wrapped his arms around her from behind. “Clara. Clara,” he said, stilling her frantic motion with the whisk, curling his chin over her shoulder and holding her close. “It is longer than four weeks,” he said gently. “We’re still here. Both of us. We’re alright. We get longer than four weeks.”

For a moment it seemed as though she would argue the point, but then she sagged against him, leaving the mixing bowl on the worktop and leaning back against his chest. She took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out slowly. “I know. I know, it’s just— If I’d lost you today, I don’t know what I would have done,” she said, tears still thick in her voice.

With his cheek pressed to hers, the Doctor caught what seemed to be the second half of that sentence, a fragment of a thought ricocheting through Clara’s mind, unspoken: I don’t know what I would have told them.

“Told who what?” he asked without thinking.

She tensed in the circle of his arms, turning her head and pulling away just enough to break skin contact. “Doctor,” she hissed, holding herself rigid.

Startled, he released her and stepped back, only just realising what he’d done. “Sorry,” he said in a low voice, shaking his head even though she still had her back towards him, her arms now braced against the edge of the worktop. “I forget, sometimes,” he said, “that you haven’t had any training in this sort of telepathic contact, that you don’t know how to shield your thoughts from me. I shouldn’t have—” He cut himself off, shaking his head again. “Sorry.”

Clara pushed to standing and swiped at the tears on her face. “You just surprised me is all,” she said levelly, turning to him. “I’m still not used to all, all that. Not used to being quite so transparent to you.”

He watched her for a long moment, wondering if she really didn’t know how much he still struggled to read her at times, even with their newfound telepathy. “I could show you how to guard your mind,” he offered, “how to block me out.”

She glanced up at him and shook her head, looking away again. “That is the last thing I want. It’s an adjustment, is all. And I won’t adjust to it if I just construct new walls to hide behind. No more hiding, no more lying, that’s what we agreed, after all.”

“You’re still entitled to some privacy, Clara.”

“I don’t want privacy from you,” she insisted. “Truly, I don’t. I want to share my life with you — my thoughts, my plans, my hopes and worries, all of it. Not just the good things, but the bad, too. And I am trying, Doctor. It’s like I have to relearn everything now, I spent so long forcing myself to hide how I feel about you.”

“Since I told you I wasn’t your boyfriend,” he said, not quite a question.

“Since long before that,” she said seriously, looking up at him and holding his gaze. “Emma Grayling said something to me, when we were investigating Caliburn House, that made me realise how obvious I was about my feelings for you.”

“You’d known me barely a month at that point,” he said, scowling in confusion.

Clara raised an eyebrow at him. “And exactly how long did it take you?” She smiled a little and shook her head, saving him from having to pinpoint the answer to that question. “If something had happened to you today,” she went on, looking away and crossing her arms over her chest, clearly struggling with the words, “I don’t know what I would have told everyone else in my life. The people I work with, my dad and my gran, everyone I know. How I would have explained my grief to them. As far as they’re concerned, I just broke up with Danny a week ago. They don’t even know who you are, not really, not in the ways that count.”

“You want to tell them,” the Doctor said. “About me. About us.”

She sighed and considered it. “I should probably figure out a way to tell my family some version of the truth,” she said, finding his gaze again. “But everyone else? No, I don’t particularly want to tell them. They’re not entitled to this part of my life, I shouldn’t have to justify myself to them. But today just made it clear that...” She seemed to weigh her words for a moment, then said, “It made the disconnect between the two sides of my life starkly obvious. This morning when we decided to come back to Earth, I had every intention of teaching for a week before joining you in the TARDIS again. Now I don’t know if I could stand it, being away from you for that long, and you out there on your own, getting into who knows what sort of trouble without me.”

He stared at her in disbelief. “I’m not going to leave you here, Clara,” he said. “If you’re staying, I’m staying.”

“But— but you hate staying in one place!” she objected, shocked. “You always have, and it only seems to have gotten worse since you regenerated.”

“It’s not just about me,” he shrugged. “The idea is to build a life together, yes? Well, part of your life is here, so part of my life is here, too. If you want to stay for a week to teach, we’ll stay.”

“You would do that for me?” she asked, voice wavering.

“Clara, the far more dangerous question at this point is what I wouldn’t do for you. Staying in London for a week at a time doesn’t even come close to making the list.”

She gazed up at him, her eyes large, tears beginning to form.

“Don’t, with the eyes,” he told her, trying to head off another round of crying. “How do you do that with the eyes? It’s like they inflate!”

“Shush, shut up,” she said, shaking her head and crossing the kitchen towards him. She rose up on her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck, but rather than the kiss he expected, she pressed her forehead to his.

I love you, he heard her voice say in his mind, the words coming through with such clarity that he was certain she was intentionally projecting them. But behind the words, he could feel the depth of her emotion as well, layered and complex in ways those small syllables could never encapsulate.

Every good day, every bad day, he told her, backing it up with his feelings for her as well.

She took a shaky breath into their shared space. “What do we think this one counts as?” she asked quietly. “Good day or bad day?”

“Well, we saved a lot of people,” the Doctor replied, “and neither of us died, so I think we have to mark it down as a good day. The murder of your soufflé notwithstanding.”

Clara huffed out a small laugh, still tear-tinged but sounding lighter than before. “You’re right, I’m afraid my attempt at gently folding in the meringue didn’t quite go to plan.”

“Yes, well, that’s par for the course when it comes to your soufflés. It’s always something — burned or mangled or just deflated.”

She leaned back to look at him. “Someday I am going to make you a perfect soufflé, and then you are going to have to take back every unkind thing you’ve ever said about my baking.”

“And when that day comes I will,” he said with a grin.

“Can’t you just sonic it or something?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at the abandoned mixing bowl, not moving away from him.

“The sonic doesn’t do soufflés, Clara.”

She shot him a cheeky look. “Well, maybe it ought to do.”

Smiling at her fondly, the Doctor leaned in to kiss her, letting his love for her seep through his skin and into hers. He could feel the open door between their minds, the connection that had sprung into existence when she had accepted his marriage proposal, but kept himself carefully on his side of the line, not wanting to overwhelm her again. Clara, it seemed, had other ideas, her consciousness barrelling through that door to meet his as she curled her fingers into the short hair over his collar and deepened the kiss.

It was still new to him as well, having Clara in his mind after so many years alone. He welcomed her in, wordlessly communicating all the joy he felt at her presence. The weeks since their wedding had been the happiest of his life, not because of the places they’d visited or the people they’d saved, but because of her. Because of Clara, and this little universe that existed only between the two of them, a dimension all its own.

When they broke apart for air, Clara settled back onto her heels, letting her hands slide down to rest over his hearts. “We get longer than four weeks,” she said, repeating his earlier words, “but it has been a wonderful four weeks, hasn’t it?”

“The next four will be wonderful, too. Even if we spend the whole time here in London, doing boring things like murdering soufflés and teaching English literature to pudding brains.” He leaned down to press a light kiss to the end of her nose. “Our life doesn’t have to be all outwitting killer mummies and defeating invasions of two-dimensional beings. We can take the time for quiet days together, too.”

Clara gazed up at him for a moment. “I have an idea,” she said, smoothing her hands up to his shoulders and back down to his hearts. “Something that will put today solidly in the good category.”

He raised his eyebrows at her in question, wondering if she was thinking what he was thinking — if she was also calculating how long it would take them to get to their bedroom on the TARDIS, or if they ought to make use of her flat’s bedroom instead.

“Not that,” she replied, laughing, “but I like where your mind is at, hold that thought for later. No, I was thinking...” She trailed off as she reached into the interior pocket of his coat and found it empty. Frowning slightly, she slid her hands into the exterior ones instead, rummaging through the contents of the bigger-on-the-inside pockets, clearly searching for something.

“Where’s the sonic?” she finally asked, up to her elbows in his coat pockets.

“I left it in the TARDIS,” the Doctor said, looking down at her with amusement.

She huffed out a sigh, withdrawing her arms. “Amendment to the rule about keeping your mobile on you: keep the sonic on you, too,” she said, as she turned and left the kitchen.

He trailed after her, down the hall, into the sitting room, and through the open doors of the TARDIS. “What do you need it for?”

“Easiest way to find the song I want,” she replied obliquely as she located the sonic on his workbench.

“Song?” he asked, blinking at her in confusion.

She gave him a playful look as she brushed past on her way to the TARDIS doors. “Mmhmm.”

“Do you not just have it on your mobile, like a normal person?” he said, following behind her. “Or have you still not figured out how to use iPlayer?”

“Nah,” she said, shaking her head. “Besides, this way is much more fun.”

The Doctor lingered in the open doorway and watched as Clara crossed her sitting room. “What exactly are you up to?” he asked.

She paused next to the wide bookshelf on the far wall, fiddling with the sonic. “Come dance with me,” she said, smiling at him over her shoulder.

“What?”

“I wanted to dance with you on the Orient Express, the day we got married,” she explained, still trying to find the right sonic setting. “There was that band doing covers of old Earth songs, and it was our honeymoon, and I wanted to dance with you. But then there was dinner, and champagne, and our private sleeping quarters...”

“And a killer mummy, and an AI with dubious moral ethics,” he added.

She laughed lightly. “Exactly. And I never did get the chance to dance with you. So—” She pointed the sonic at the radio on her bookshelf, which crackled to life and began to play something that felt like the 1940s, though he couldn’t quite place the song. Resting the sonic on the shelf beside the radio, she turned back to him. “Dance with me,” she said again, holding one hand out to him in invitation.

With his gaze fixed on Clara’s outstretched hand, the Doctor felt the moment draw out long, milliseconds stretching into millennia. So many of their adventures had begun this way, Clara beckoning him forward into the unknown, reaching her hand out to meet his. He could sense their future stretching away ahead of them, the as-yet unnumbered days that their life together would span, strung together by this one simple gesture, timeless in its simplicity but heavy with meaning. How many times had she offered him her hand, in all the days they had spent together? How many more times would she stand exactly like this, in all the days to come?

For one instant he hung there, suspended in the space between two heartbeats, and then he felt himself tilt forward, felt his body answering Clara’s call with the only response he could ever give her. It was the only truth that mattered, his hand in hers and the universe waiting to unfold before them. The birth of a star, or the death of a civilisation, or the quiet music echoing off the walls of Clara’s flat — it didn’t matter, so long as she was by his side.

Hold hands. That's what you're meant to do, he remembered telling Emma Grayling and Professor Palmer, that day at Caliburn House. Keep doing that and don't let go. That's the secret. Had he already been in love with Clara then, he wondered? Did he know that day that he had found the only hand he would ever want to hold again?

Time dilated, contracted, and his feet carried him across the short distance to Clara, the connection between their minds sparking to life as he slid his hand around hers. She smiled up at him and settled her other hand on his shoulder as his found the small of her back through instinct or some long-buried memory.

“I’m not sure I remember how to do this,” he told her, voice low.

“You’ll figure it out,” Clara replied confidently. She looked up at him, holding his gaze. “We will figure it out. The same way we do everything: together.”

He sighed. “You make it sound so easy.”

“It is easy, Doctor. It’s just me and you, no one to impress. All we have to do is sway a bit,” she said, gently urging him into motion, as the radio continued to croon in the background. “And maybe shuffle in a little circle here — mind the coffee table.”

“Yes, boss,” he said, following her lead, careful not to step on her bare toes with his boots.

“See? Easy as that,” Clara said as they fell into a slow rhythm in time with the music. She leaned into him, resting her head on his chest, and he held her closer in response.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“For what?”

“For not leaving me to cry on my own, earlier.”

He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I’m pretty sure that’s part of the deal.”

“I wasn’t certain it would be part of the deal, with you,” she murmured. “But I’m glad it is.”

He hesitated then said in a similar tone, “I’m still not sure I’m any good at this.”

“Dancing?”

“Marriage. You said you feel like you have to relearn everything now — it’s the same for me. You are the furthest thing from transparent to me, Clara, and I haven’t the faintest idea how to handle any of this, really. I can promise I won’t leave you to cry on your own, but for everything else... We may just have to be patient with each other.”

“And figure it out together,” Clara added.

He smiled fondly, knowing the feeling would pass through his skin and into hers, even though she couldn’t see his face. “Exactly.”

They fell quiet for a time, swaying in slow circles in the small space between the bookshelf and the TARDIS. The song started again, but neither commented on it, content to lean into each other and let time pass around them unchecked. Little by little, the lyrics of the song filtered into the Doctor’s consciousness, repeated phrases catching his attention. He felt like he’d heard it before, the words tugging at a memory he couldn’t quite identify.

It’s still the same old story, A fight for love and glory, A case of do or die.

“What is this song?” he finally asked.

“It’s from Casablanca,” Clara said, humming a few bars along with the radio.

“Right,” he said, the memory crystalising in his mind. One of their Wednesdays together, early on, when Clara had insisted he park the TARDIS and stay with her rather than take her out on adventure. They had sat side by side on the Maitland’s sofa and watched the old black and white film, while Artie and Angie were asleep upstairs. “That’s one of the ones you like, isn’t it?”

She nodded against his chest. “It’s been one of my favourites since I was little. My mum introduced me to it. I love that movie, but I always wished—” She stopped, chuckling to herself, and he couldn’t quite make sense of the fragmented thoughts that flitted through her mind before she spoke again. “I always wished that Ilsa had been brave enough to choose Rick instead of Victor, at the end,” she went on, looking up at him. “Brave enough to see through Rick’s lies and choose the life she really wanted. And what do you know? When it came time for me to make my choice, I was brave enough.”

“...To be clear, I’m Rick in this scenario?”

Clara laughed quietly and rested her head against his chest again. “Yes, Doctor.”

He was silent a long moment, thinking on the comparison, on the sort of lies he might have been willing to tell Clara to keep her safe, and the lies he had told her to keep her at arm’s length. How easily he could have lost her, just as Rick lost Isla, if Clara hadn’t been brave enough to insist on the life she really wanted, and demand he do the same. How narrowly they had avoided tragedy to arrive at this moment.

“I’m afraid Casablanca is a bit too ingrained in Earth culture, both in this century and for the next few thousand years, to go back and change the ending now,” he told Clara. “But we could visit the set while they’re filming, if you like. Maybe get you cast as an extra, even.”

“Hmm, tempting,” she replied, pressing closer to him as they continued to sway to the music. “But only if you do it with me. Seems like the sort of thing that would be more fun together.”

He made a face. “Not sure I’m the acting type.”

“Oh, nothing huge, no lines or anything. Just us in the background of a shot inside Rick’s Café Américain. And then, as long as Casablanca survives, there will be a little bit of us on film. A little bit of evidence that we were here.” She looked up at him, something grave in her expression. “That we claimed this time as ours.”

For as long as we get, he heard in her voice, the open acknowledgement that however long they had together, it would always be too short. He wasn’t any more prepared to face it now than he had been earlier in the day, so he sidestepped her implication and said instead, “It might raise some questions, if anyone who knows you were to notice.”

Clara snorted derisively. “That’s assuming I’m even—” She stopped herself mid sentence, holding his gaze. He could feel the second half of that thought bubbling away under her skin, but carefully held himself back, offering her the privacy she had objected to earlier. She seemed to come to some sort of decision, then slowly and deliberately said, “That’s assuming I’m even still around for them to question.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, his eyebrows pulling together in confusion.

“I’ve been thinking about it the last few weeks and I...” She hesitated, chewing on her lower lip. “I don’t want to keep coming back here.”

“Where?”

“Earth. London, my ‘normal’ life. I don’t want to waste the days I have with you on trivial things.”

“Clara, what we did today wasn’t trivial. You saved a lot of people. Might have stopped an invasion of our entire dimension.”

“I know, you’re right. And if the TARDIS thinks there’s trouble in twenty-first century London, or Bristol, or wherever, then I’m fine with stopping by. But I don’t want to have two lives anymore.” She swallowed nervously then said in a rush, “I’m going to resign from Coal Hill at the end of the term, just before Christmas.”

He peered down at her, trying to understand what she was saying without relying on their telepathy to hear her thoughts. “But you love teaching,” he pointed out.

Clara shook her head. “I love literature, and helping people, and I’m good with children. Becoming a teacher was a calculated choice, back when I thought I needed to create a life of my own separate from you. But I don’t need that life now, Doctor. I don’t want it.”

“You don’t have to do this for me, or because you think I can’t stay in one place.”

“I’m not doing it for you, daft old man,” she said, smiling at him fondly. “It’s not that I think I owe you this or that you’re demanding it of me. I’m choosing this because I want to spend this time with you. Because we only get so much time, and I don’t want to waste it on planning lessons or marking papers or trying to explain my life to small-minded people.”

“You’re certain about this?”

“I wasn’t this morning, I thought I’d try a week back before I decided, but even just being here, looking at my lesson plans, after the morning we had... I don’t want to keep doing this. I don’t want to spend my days away from you, or force you to stay in London for a week at a time so I can teach. I want to get in the TARDIS and just go.”

“And cut all ties to your life on Earth?” he asked in disbelief, raising his eyebrows at her.

“When I told you on the moon that my future isn’t here on Earth, I meant it, Doctor. I’ve only grown more certain of that since we got married. I belong out there with you. I want to build our life together in the TARDIS, going wherever the whim takes us — wherever she thinks we’re needed.”

“But... your friends, your dad and your gran?”

“Like I said, I’ll find some version of the truth to tell them. And it’s not like we can’t stop by from time to time, come ‘round for dinner or something.” She looked up at him, a thoughtful line creasing her brow. “Do you do that? Do you come ‘round to people’s houses for dinner?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I do that?”

“I don't know. I thought you might find it boring.”

“Is it boring?”

She laughed. “I can’t imagine anything ever being boring when you’re involved.”

From the direction of the kitchen, there came a distant trilling, half obscured by the music playing through the radio. The Doctor cocked his head to one side, listening for the sound again. “Is that your mobile ringing?” he asked. “What happened to rule seven: keep your mobile on you?”

“Whoever it is can wait,” Clara said firmly. “Everyone I care to talk to at the moment is right here.” Through their telepathic link, he felt her mood shift, plummeting like a missed step at the bottom of a staircase. “Doctor... Do you not want me to live on the TARDIS full time?” she asked before he could wonder at the direction of her thoughts.

“Are you kidding me?” he replied, his reaction too immediate to find kinder words. “You’re the one who always insisted on only travelling on Wednesdays! Of course I want you to live on the TARDIS with me!”

A smile broke across her face, relief and joy that echoed back through the door between their minds.

“Clara, this last month together — our life could be like that always. But only if that’s what you want, too. Evenings like this,” he looked around her little sitting room, her school papers spread across the coffee table, the TARDIS settled snugly into one corner. “This can be part of our life, too. There aren’t any boring days when I’m with you, Clara. If you want to stay and teach, that won’t be boring, either.”

“I know what I want, Doctor. And I know now how to be brave enough to step up and take it. I want that life in the TARDIS with you, and I don’t want to waste any more time here than I have to.”

He watched her for a long moment, trying to gauge her emotions without intruding into her mind. “I just want you to be sure,” he said finally. “I don’t want you to have any regrets. I know what happened today scared you, but we don’t have to rush into this. You can take all the time you need.”

Clara drew in a deep breath and nodded. “There’s a month left until the end of term, and I have a few commitments I made weeks ago that I should keep. But after that?” She paused to consider, her gaze turning inward. “I’m ready to leave this behind, and build a life with you,” she said, looking up at him. “Just the two of us in the TARDIS, for however long we have together.”

Pausing their slow shuffled circles, the Doctor raised her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “For however long.”

#Whouffaldi #Twelve/Clara #Clara Oswald/Twelfth Doctor #Clara and the Doctor #Whouffle Week #Doctor Who #Doctor Who fanfic #Time And Relative Dimension #For As Long As We Get #available on AO3 under the same title and username #please comment and reblog!#my writing #AUs #Clara Oswald #Twelfth Doctor #so very married #in this case literally

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codylabs · 4 years

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Having the Time of My Life Overanalyzing Voltron Science, A Visual Novel

The team’s little mantra in the original show was “ Activate interlock! Dynotherms connected! Infracells up! Mega thrusters are go! Let’s go Voltron Force!” And they said this each and every single time their 5 lions formed together into the combined robot.

In today’s essay I will be deeply examining and wildly speculating about what exactly interlocks, dynatherms, infracells, and mega thrusters are, why it’s entirely crucial that these 4 items be part of the Voltron preflight checklist, and explaining why (or at least inferring that) you should take it all seriously.

Interlock

The Interlock is easy. It’s probably whatever system is used to attach the 5 lions together. So what are they? Magnets? Docking rings like on spacecraft? Just mechanical latches? Hard to say. But something as simple as a mechanical latch isn’t something you’d have to ‘activate’ or actively call out during pre-flight, so I would suspect ‘interlock’ is likely a catch-all term for not only the mechanical attachments, but also the control circuit used to synchronize the computers onboard all 5 lions. It would be a complex integrated system within the black lion, which also explains why they refer to it in the singular instead of plural.

Without the interlock, Voltron would just be the 5 lion with their individual brains tied together like duct-taped dogs. The interlock synchronizes them into a common intelligence, under the direction of the centralized black lion.

I don’t know what the mechanical structure of the interlocks would be. Conventional material science would suggest that a robot as large as Voltron wouldn’t be able to even stand, let alone run and jump and fight, so even if we assume nearly-indestructible exotic alien materials, I think you would still want something more than hooks and pins to connect the various pieces together. It would be best if the actual structural elements could somehow fuse at the molecular level. Welding is the most obvious method for that, but there’s also Vaan-Der-Waals forces, which could bond together flat surfaces that could then be slid apart. And maybe if you had superconducting cables running between the elements and then ran a ton of current through them, then you could use magnetic binding? I’m not sure if that would work, but it sounds futuristic enough to be true. IDK.

Dynatherms

I can’t tell if this is ‘dynatherms’ or ‘dinotherms’, but the first sounds less prehistoric, so I’ll go with that. So it sounds like pieces of the words ‘dynamic’ and ‘thermal’ mashed together, which don’t really mean anything except in the context of thermodynamics, so.... What is this? A reactor? A steam engine?

Of all the various components this one puzzled me longest, but I think I’ve got it.

The dynatherms are the cooling system, meant to radiate away the massive amounts of heat its engines and motors would generate. Most spacecraft, heck most vehicles in general, have a system analogous to this. Here’s the one the ISS uses:

Voltron doesn’t have any weird extendo-wings like this, but it’s conceivable that they could be built directly into the outer layer of its armor. The black lion’s little red wings are likely a part of the system too. If you ask me, the surface area of its armor isn’t nearly enough to dissipate enough heat to keep a thing like this cool, but I think I can ignore that.

So anyway. At first this explanation doesn’t seem to fit, since they say ‘dynatherms connected’, not ‘coolant pumps started’ or ‘refrigerant levels maximum’ or something. You don’t ‘connect’ the heat radiators, they’re always connected. You just pump water through them. Right?

Wrong! Here’s my sufficiently futuristic explanation: Voltron’s cooling system doesn’t use coolant and pumps or any type of conventional refrigeration at all! Instead, the ‘dynatherms’ are a network of thermally superconductive cables connecting all its motors and engines to radiative armor panels on the exterior. Thermal superconductivity is a concept I learned from Star Wars and later found out is a real-ish thing. Basically any vibrations in any part of a thermally-superconductive material can frictionlessly travel to any other part of the material. Since temperature is based on vibrations, this means that if a hot thing touches one part of the material, everything else touching the material can instantly feel that heat, and even dissipate that heat. You can think of it as Marvel vibranium or as warmth communism.

Since there’s no fluid flow, the only way to control this cooling system or increase or decrease its dissipation is to connect and disconnect individual cables. Hence why they would have to connect the dynatherms before forming Voltron; combat in combined robot mode is one of the most taxing conditions of the machine’s operation, so they need all the cooling they can get.

Infracells

Now HERE’S where it starts to get interesting. ‘Infra’ roughly means ‘below’. To take the most common example, take ‘infrared’ light, that is, light existing at frequencies lower red light, which is itself the lowest frequency in the visible spectrum. Infrared is invisible, so the only way to describe its color is ‘somewhere below red’.

So as far as I can tell, ‘infracells’ could mean one of three things. They could be some kind of infrared light sensors, like FLIR imagers used for night vision and targeting on modern military equipment (which I consider unlikely, since that’s not the type of thing you would specifically call out during the preflight, or something intrinsically useful to the Voltron assembly process.) Or it could be an armor layer consisting of some kind of cells literally ‘below’ the rest of the armor (which I also consider unlikely, because why would that be important to the Voltron assembly either? You wouldn’t need to even worry about it until you take damage to the outer armor layer, right?) Or, finally and most interestingly, it could have something to do with lower frequencies or lower speeds in general.

Here’s my theory:

The infracells cause time itself to run differently. You all saw the movie Interstellar, where time aboard the spacecraft passed slower for the crew whenever they were inside powerful gravity wells. If you had high buildups of negative energy within cells inside Voltron, it would produce the opposite effect, causing time to move faster inside the cells than outside. Anything inside would experience the rest of the universe in slower motion, meaning lower acceleration, lower forces, and lower stress.

Therefore, if such ‘infracells’ were installed around Voltron’s skeletal frame and motors, it may explain the machine’s great strength and indestructibility. And it would make sense that this would be the type of thing they would call out during the pre-flight, as even one down infracell could spell disaster once that section of the frame is attempting to support the entire weight of the robot; it would buckle and break. Every infracell needs to be up before forming Voltron.

Mega thrusters

Now, this just sounds silly. They’re likely the engines that Voltron uses to fly, but the show creators put ‘mega’ in front of the name to sound cool. Might as well call them ‘super rockets’ or ‘the ultra drive’, right? But mega is an interesting word, as it’s actually a scientific term in the metric system meaning to multiply by a million. Like a kilometer is a thousand meters and a kilogram is a thousand grams, a megameter is a million meters, and a megagram is a 1000 kilograms. You may have heard of ‘megaton’ when referring to nuclear explosives; a three-megaton bomb is a bomb with the explosive yield equivalent to three million tons of TNT. A lot.

So, uh,

Why would you call a thruster a ‘mega thruster’, then?

Well, I know approximately jack-diddly about the original show, but I know that in the newer show, most large spacecraft in the universe get their energy not from nuclear reactors or solar cells, but rather from Balmeran crystals. The crystals are able to produce apparently infinite energy so long as you don’t damage them or overtax them. I don’t know where the crystals get their infinite energy, but that’s not what I’m here to speculate about, so I’ll just treat that as one of the universe’s rules, like bending in Avatar.

So! How do you set that up to make an engine? Well, infinite power is good! Higher power to the engine means hotter, faster exhaust, and hotter, faster exhaust means higher fuel efficiency and higher thrust. So the question becomes, how do you get the most power in the safest and most efficient way possible?

For the sake of some rules, let’s say that you need to give the crystals a little bit of stimulating energy to make them produce energy. That seems fair, I think. Let’s say they produce 5 times the energy they absorb.

So you give a crystal 1 watt, you get 5. That’s great; that means if we need 50 billion watts to run the thruster, we just need to get a big crystal, and feed it 10 billion watts. However! Where do we get that initial 10 billion watts? Well we could just take a portion of the crystal’s own output and cycle it back around to the input, but that’s a dangerous game to play, since if the percentage you cycle around is even slightly more than 20%, you could create a “positive feedback loop” where more input means more output, which leads to greater input which leads to even greater output, and so on and so on until the crystal breaks or the ship blows up or something generally unfavorable happens. This is approximately the experience of the people at Chernobyl, and is not recommended.

So instead of having crystals feed themselves, you’d instead want them to be fed exclusively by an external source, like a battery or an entirely separate smaller crystal. So the initial crystal would feed larger ones, which would feed larger ones, and so on, each stage in the chain becoming more powerful, but always stable and dependent on some initial external input, so as to never go out of control.

And now, I’m thinking it would be nice from an engineering perspective to have all the crystals together in one shielded location. And from a tactical perspective, it would be nice not to have a bunch of bulky, vulnerable, high-energy cables running around the entire vehicle. So, you would want as many crystal stages as possible in the places where the power is needed most. Namely, the engines.

Therefore, a big part of the engines would be made of armored shells to contain dozens of stacks of crystal beds. They would accept a small amount of power at the top, and multiply it internally to get enormous output at the bottom. Hence, ‘mega’ thruster. It multiplies input by a million.

Boom.

Done.

Headcanon deployed.

So now the next time you’re watching some stupid show and think that something doesn’t make sense, pause to consider that maybe you’re just not using enough imagination, or else I will be with you in spirit to wrong-shame you.

(If you use your imagination and it still doesn’t make sense, then don’t worry. This means that the show is trash and you are right.)

Now go to bed.

#Boom #Voltron #voltron: legendary defender #lion #fan theory #engineering #some cool food for thought #I don't even watch this show what am I doing

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mamusings · 3 years

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Having let the 15 x 18 percolate I started to watch again s23 and ep 1-6 of 15. Basically everything available. I'd gotten tired of feeling toyed with and feeling gaslit when trying to get confirmation from reviews for what I felt I was seeing. Ita very rarely in the dialogue but just in the eye lines and symbolically sometimes in the parallel plots.

Anyway: season 14 is a joy really. The beothere have grown up. I had been dishing the endless desperate loop of I d die for you wearing thin. Sam is basically cooked. A leader in the best sense (using his intelligence and his empathy). Dean accepts it even tho it's a bit new to him not being the boss. (The dialogue on chief)

We get that recognition more explicitly here that I found in my reviews of the early seasons that these are 2 very different men but now they have a degree of comfort and space in that that eluded them. They allow each other to be.

Which brings me to my predictions. Sam may be cooked but Dean isnt. Hes still not worked out who he is and how to have what he wants (cas basically).

So is Dean in love with Cas. Absolutely, i think this has been shown in subtext much more clearly than is Cas in love with Dean (I mean romantically/sexually). With Cas we see loyalty, devotion and affection. For an angel what does love mean? I was never quite sure. Does he want an actual relationship with Dean?

Dean's easier hes clearly incredibly attracted excited fascinated by cas in the initial phase. Then you get the affection, the liking, protectiveness. High point purgatory. Also devotedness.

In later seasons we get heartbroken widower and the co-parents/husbands. Plus their fights start to look more like a bickering couple that anything else.

So I am absolutely convinced that Dean is in love with cas.

But how aware is Dean of how he feels? I think hes so scared if being rejected by cas he can barely admit this to himself. Its telling Michael doesnt know how Dean feels about Cas. Theres lots of gay couples in the background by s23 early e15. I'd say it's an indicator Dean knows hed like to be with cas. Theres been no on screen hook ups for Dean (although there are references). But what we get now is acknowledging that a large part of Dean's flirting is social behaviour rather than sexual intent. It's nice, its charming but he doesnt mean it. (Pamela). So at some level Dean knows he wants to be together with Cas. He knows what he has with Cas. (Telling John he has a family - ok that goes wider than Cas but in my view early spn is Dean trying to grown beyond his father having the white picket fence and the girl always felt like something Dean felt he should want rather than something he really did want. The relationship with lisa is framed with lots of doing the chores and proper manly chores at that)

But I do think Dean knows how he feels. We are back to him having dialogue with Sam (Jess even comes up) with that typical early destiel trope of shots of Dean where I think the implication is that Dean is thinking about the same subject matter in relation to cas.

Sam knows but I think the malak box incident re Dean shows us that Sam knows when not to push Dean. He offers opportunities to open up but he doesnt push his brother. Like I said they get each other better now. It's not like when john dies and sam is pushing and pushing for a conversation. Now as cas and Dean's relationship falls apart we get a lot of pained reaction shots from sam. Just like we sometimes get the oh just kiss already smirk in earlier seasons. Sam doesn't understand why this relationship doesnt progress but he respects both cas and dean and doesnt meddle. I think when dean comes our Sam will be pivotal support.

What's interesting is that e15 as far as I have seen it seems to mirror early spn. Dean is mirroring his father. Obsessed with revenge at all costs. Neglecting love and relationships. The brothers are regressing into their old.relationship patterns under stress of mary dying with Dean taking up his rage filled leadership.role again. But the wierd thing is the endless we dont have a choice. Its tfw they have choice, they are all about choice. In fact Cas is choice embodied. He shouldn't have choice but he does. And over the seasons since the soul consumption he has grown remarkably in handling choices. To the extent that at the end of s14 he no longer refers to Dean's choice making on Jack. That's happened before with Kelly but then it was more ambiguous cos it got Cas dead. Then it was faith, he believes I Jack. With the malak box and Jack its ethics. Cas has grown up. Right through s14 its striking how wise he is, how he draws on experience and knowledge to counsel those around him.

I think there is a sharing of power, of burden, to come. The narrative of we shoulder all this so everyone.else can live the cute life we cant will be transformed. Basically buffy final season.

Cas professing his love for Dean. And by preparing what he wants is something he cant have I think is a totally non ambiguous profession of romantic and sexual love. He has friendship with Dean, he has family. What cas thinks he cant have is more that that. So without the fear of rejection Dean's wall can come down. I'm not sure how aware he is of what he feels because Dean can ne a dumbass, but he definitely feels it. Sam knows and will help once Dean opens up. That will take a while because Dean doesnt open up easily.

And finally a comment on the crying which oddly isnt in many of the fan vids. I think jensen is a great actor when it comes to emotional crying scenes. But we should appreciate that so far we have had weeping - tear tracks slowly with big exposition or dealing with grief wiping at his eyes. Or the meltdown, high octane crying very distressed generally life or death shit with Sam and a lot of emotion. We have never seen Dean crying into his hands like that. Curled up, despairing. I think that's another indicator that Dean absolutely knows how he feels about cas.

One final thing. Cas will be back, we wont have Dean at the end of spn with6the person he loves. Either in this world.or another its gonna happen.

Another thing I suspect is that we see with jack that while cas is the great reliable advice parent he cant bond as quickly emotionally as Dean. Its Dean who, when hes minded has the talent of emotional connection in a way cas and sam dont. The fishing expedition shows us that. Dean has the most trou ped connection to Jack, hes hated him wanted him dead. But hes also the one who gets the sunlit upland of fishing. Same as cas is the one who loves unconditionally when Mary is killed. He hugs jack. So when dean is ready to love cas publicly i think it wont be a huge thing of awkward shuffling feet. It'll be Dean doing what hes good at, loving people, but doing it with cas.

Ok I've only watched til episode 6. Gonna avoid spoilers from noe on and cross my fingers. Cant wait to watch it all.

#spn #supernatural #destiel #deancas

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stayforya · 5 years

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I DON’T KNOW IF WE CAN BE FRIENDS | PT. 1

member: hwang hyunjin

genre: college!au

words: 5.4k

summary: there were no doubts you and hyunjin would be friends for life, nothing would be able to tear you apart. except one of you.

a/n: another au based on a song, this time it’s by hollyn. i’m thinking about a part 2, this story may need one. if you think so too, please tell me <3

link to part 2

“I love you, y/n. everything about you”

you remember those words like an echo in your head

if you’re in silence, they come back

you end up thinking about it over and over again

you remember the kiss hyunjin gave you after saying that

you were lying your head on his shoulder

and his gaze, you swear, could make you fall in love a thousand times

his lips tasted like cherry and love was almost touchable when they reached yours

you and hyunjin met years ago

he was in a big part of your life

all your high school memories had him because your friendship was too strong

it’s like never wanting to be far from each other ‘cause you were never tired of each other

morning, afternoon, even some evenings you spent together

talking about anything

hanging with some friends

crying over the tests you had to do in order to find a university

the days when the sunshine was too strong and weather too hot so he bought you ice cream even if you didn’t ask

the days when the rain was pouring and the weather too cold so he’d put his jacket over your head

he’d hug you when you were at the peak of stress

he knew it calmed you down

it was the ‘once in a lifetime’ kind of thing

you didn’t believe in only one true love during life, but you knew what you had with hyunjin was definitely special

life has its own path, though

you two finally kissed, but none talked about becoming more than friends

you were enjoying each other in a new level, which everyone already suspected but for a long time it was truly only friendship

by the way you two were involving into the relationship, it would end up happening

you kissed and said things you already said to each other before

like ‘I love you’

but it sounded different

it wasn’t just a friendly ‘I love you’

it felt like dating, but you didn’t want to discuss or label the relationship

you wanted to live it

hyunjin never had any problem in giving you hugs, even when your friends kept making some jokes about you two

he never stopped touching you because of what people said

but when you two confessed

and kissed

you kinda felt like he felt more free

he touched your hair, kissed your cheeks, looked at you closer, locked his fingers in yours

whenever he had an opportunity he’d come to you, put his right hand on your neck so naturally

and kiss you

say funny or beautiful things next to your ear

laugh when you tied his hair and played with it while he worked on some math exercises

all memories

it was hard to swallow that truth

one day, exactly one week after you got your acceptance letter

hyunjin got his

but he didn’t look so happy

even though it was his dream university

you didn’t understand

“this is amazing!”, you said, giving him a hug

he hugged you back but his smile wasn’t the same

“it’s your dream uni, right?”

“yeah yeah”, he answered, “do you want to eat ice cream?”

why did he suddenly change the subject

you agreed anyways

you tried to talk about it again, but he didn’t seem like he wanted to keep the conversation

days went by, the last days of high school

everything between you two was normal

specially during the last week

he took you to the cinema

took you to an amusement park

brought you flowers

spent a lot of time with you

and in every event he created to enjoy

you thought he was about to ask to be your boyfriend

but no, you were wrong

and the last date, on Friday

he took you home, kissed your forehead

and said “I love you, y/n. everything about you”

he held the entire galaxy in his eyes

caressing your hair and looking at you

saving that moment in his memory

right there, the sunset behind you two

you kissed like it was the first and last time

the beginning and the end of something, you didn’t know how to explain

but it kinda felt like a farewell

you loved him, too

you always did, and you didn’t plan to stop

during the same night, before going to sleep

you were so immersed in feelings and thoughts

you sent him a message

saying how you felt

how good it was to be with him and how much you wanted to spend a lot of time with him

his presence was enough cause he was enough

after that, you just went to sleep

in the morning, he hadn’t replied yet

day went by, and still, he didn’t reply

on sunday he still didn’t give you any sign

on monday, when the whole class gathered at school to prepare for graduation day

hyunjin wasn’t there

everyone was asking you

and with a broken smile you answered “he couldn’t come today”

after school you finally decided to knock on his door

no one was home, not even his dog

did he suddenly turn into dust and disappear? did he go to space or something like this?

you sat in front of his house, putting your backpack aside

since his house’s wifi connected automatically on your phone, you just stayed there scrolling through your phone

waiting

30min later, a car parked

he and his mom came out of it and you stood up

as soon as he saw you, you could notice the worrying expression on his face

his mom saw you there and came immediately

“oh, hi, y/n! did you spend a lot of time waiting?”

“hi, hm no, I just got here”, you lied and gave her a smile

“do you want to come in?”

“thank you, I have to go home because it’s getting dark”

hyunjin was doing things slowly as if he wanted to avoid talking to you

when he finally closed the car’s door, coming on your direction

your heart started beating faster

you were a mix of mad, relieved and disappointed

how could you start that conversation?

“hey”, hyunjin said and it was almost a whisper

“I don’t understand what’s happening”

“I couldn’t go to school today”

“you didn’t say anything after friday night. what am I supposed to think?”

he looked at the ground, running one hand on the neck

“I’m sorry, y/n”

“hyunjin… did you… regret? if so, just tell me”

“no, I regret nothing, y/n”, in that moment he looked at you and you could see the sincerity in his eyes, “but there are so many things happening”

“so tell me! I’m your friend, remember?”

he took a deep breath

“I’m moving. the university I’m attending isn’t here so my family decided to move.”

why didn’t you think about it before?

of course after high school things change

“when?”

“we went there today to see a new place, by the end of this week I’m probably moving already”

“so that’s why?”

he didn’t understand your question

“that’s why you did it all last friday? was it your way of treating me the best you could to say goodbye afterwards?”, the words came out quickly

“y/n…”

“is that it, hyunjin?”, you were very serious

he took a while to finally say something

and you wish he didn’t

you wish he said something else

because it hurted

“yes. we won’t be able to date in this situation, I’ll be in another place and it wouldn’t be fair to you”

“did you ever ask what I think about it? I mean-”

“it wouldn’t work, y/n. it’s also a new step in our lives. maybe it’s for the best”

“would you tell me if I didn’t come all the way here, waited for you and asked? would you go there to break up with me or would you simply ignore me and move on?”

your voice didn’t show all the madness because you weren’t only mad

you were also sad and disappointed so you just kept talking fast, but not angry

he always looked in your eyes

and the fact that he wasn’t at that moment

seriously…

why was he acting so cold?

you never saw hyunjin like that before, not with you

but you knew his bodytalk well enough to know what he was feeling

he just didn’t want to show

“I’m really sorry, y/n…”, he touched your right arm

for the first time it felt different

you held his arm before he could go

“did that mean something to you?”

you both knew what ‘that’ meant

the kiss

the ‘I love you’

the moments you shared, not only as friends, but as two people who had feelings for each other

“hyunjin?”, his mom’s voice came out of nowhere

he didn’t get in so she wanted to make sure if he was still there

“I have to go”, he said

your hand let go of his arm as if it was toxic

you turned your back at him and kept walking

and walking

your steps were so firm and you felt so mad

but at the moment you got home, after a long walk

your body fell on your bed and the tears came down

silently

you’d never

ever

be friends with him again

what happened crushed it all

your friendship, your relationship

any trace of feelings should be gone

you had a lot of pictures of you two on your phone

good memories

your finger was almost deleting everything, but you’d regret

saving those moments in pictures would make you look back and feel good

in the future, maybe, not now

there was a video

of you filming the sunset and suddenly he comes running

getting closer and filling the screen with his smiley face

your voice saying “noooo” and laughing right away

dang

it hurt

you thought it would be hard to see him the next day at school because you didn’t know how to treat him

talk? ignore?

but turns out he didn’t even go

probably too busy with his ‘moving’ things

who cares

finally the other day he was there

you arrived and he was already sitting on the place you used to sit together

since those were the last days, your class just had to finish some graduation details

so you didn’t need to talk to him

mainly because he didn’t seem to care at all

you could feel his glances

but he was the one who broke up, wasn’t he?

so it wasn’t up to you run back to him

of course it hit you hard

not because of the love relationship

but the long term friendship you guys had

if you ever knew it would be ruined like this…

after graduation, all the news you had from him were by watching his instagram stories and seeing his posts

he was already living well in his new place, making some friends and taking pics of everything like he used to

you didn’t talk again

you didn’t go to say goodbye when he left, but you almost sent a message

and deleted it all before having the courage to send it

you just had to go on with your life

also, uni wouldn’t take so long to start

the next couple months were, firstly, chill and, then, busy

you needed to get ready for this new chapter of your life and you were pretty excited

you found a nice roommate

the university was huge, so different from high school

so many things happening at once

you were still trying to absorb everything

the first weeks were quite hard

you had a lot to catch up on

new subjects, new people, new life

in the end of the day you were always tired, so you just took a shower and went to sleep

just after the first three months you’d say you were 100% adjusted

finally getting to enjoy the weekends a bit lol

“are you going to the festival this weekend?”, one of your friends asked

you made a funny face

“is there a festival happening and no one is talking about it?”

“no, you’re just out of the world”, she laughed

“there’s this band coming, two of the boys are from here”, another friend said, eating one of your fries

“are they famous or something?”

“well, people really like them here but I never saw them live, so…”

“I wonder how they find time to rehearse”

“a friend of mine said they just play for fun, so they don’t rehearse a lot but they’re very good”

“they must be talented, then. are you guys going?”

“of course, some other artists will come too”

“then I’ll think about it”, you said, drinking the last sip of juice

“you know who plays too?”

“tell me”, you faked an interest to make fun of them, cause they were already making fun of you with that question

“lee minho”

your eyebrows raised in real interest

but you tried to pretend you didn’t care

too late, they noticed

“you can’t even hide it!”, they burst into laugh

“I said nothing”

“no need to say, your face showed it all”

“alright, alright”

now you had a motivation

lee minho was a handsome and smart guy from technology department

he was your senior and you met him through some TA classes he gave

everyone knew how fun he was, yet dedicated

knowing he played in a band was unexpected but it did spark more interest

that week was full for you and the only moment you had to breathe was while walking from one class to another

but on friday morning you’d finish everything and enjoy the festival with your friends at night

that’s how it went

you just put a comfortable nice clothing on and went to the field where the concerts would happen

you met your friends there, they saved a place for you

but after a while no one would be sitting anymore

everyone was gathering

when you got up to get something to eat, you met minho on the way

“oh hey”, he smiled at you

“hey”, you sure smiled brighter

he was quite shy but cool at the same time

you didn’t know how, but minho could do both pretty well

“so aren’t you playing today?”, you asked

“ah yeah yeah…”, cutie minho jumped out, “we already set everything up”

“can’t wait”

“oops, careful”, he told someone and put his hand next to your arm as if he was shielding it

you didn’t even understand what happened but by the way the guy said ‘sorry’ he was probably about to bump into you and minho noticed before

“thanks”

“where were you heading to?”

“just to find something to eat”

“can I follow you?”, his eyes. no words to describe. cool minho popped up.

“of course”

you and him were talking about some stupid stuff and laughing together while you waited in a long line to get some hot dog

when you finally got it and was about to go back to your seat, some guys stopped you two

you and minho turned around to greet them

there were two of them

one you already knew, he was also from your uni

the other guy was from another one but minho introduced him too

and when you thought there were only those who played in the band with him

you remembered there was one missing, probably

he came running

tall and handsome

nice clothes on, but a friendly smile

wait

that shirt, you knew it

you knew those sneakers too

that necklace swinging while he ran

your smile was fading

“oh, here he is”, minho said, “this is hyunjin”

never

ever

you imagined

you’d meet

him

again

like this

out of all the possibilities, why like this? how in the world was he there, at your university, friends with minho, playing in a band

you hadn’t seen him since that day

and after a while you just didn’t pay attention to his instagram updates anymore because

one: you didn’t have a lot of time

two: you were getting over

you already did, right?

but seeing him in front of you

the sunset behind him

a pinkish orange sky

the wind blowing on his face

no matter how many days, months, years

he’d still hit right in your feelings when you met him again

and the day was there

he smiled slightly, greeting you

“we know each other”

the other boys were surprised

“we studied together”, you completed

was that awkward? maybe the way you guys looked at each other

it felt like the time stopped, no joke

but you guys made it work out well

“did you come for the concert?”, the other boy asked

“yeah, can’t wait”, you opened a weird smile now that hyunjin was, like, in front of you

even when you weren’t looking at him you could feel his stare

minho made way for you and kept talking until he had to go up and you had to find your seat again

you wished them luck, not directly looking at hyunjin for more than one second

coming back to your seat, you were just wishing so hard that he didn’t notice how nervous you got

“are you okay?”, your friend asked

“for someone who was wandering around with lee minho, you should look happier”

you made fun of her

“of course I’m okay, he introduced me to his bandmates”

“oh shoot, I should have gone with you”, she said in a funny tone

the concert started some minutes later

and that festival feeling

you were really needing that

so many things to do and finally you had time to just have some fun

minho was so amazing playing and singing

your eyes should be stuck only on him

that’s what you wanted

but hyunjin was next to him, you couldn’t help but frame them both and keep staring

it felt like some kind of dream

it couldn’t be real, he couldn’t be there

there was something different about him

still, you could see the same guy you shared so many moments

the song they were playing, the sunset, everything

it made you feel some kind of feeling you couldn’t really explain into words

they sang five songs and after them there were other artists

after they got out of the stage, you saw minho far from where you were

you were trying to communicate

but hyunjin appeared right behind him and started looking at where minho was looking at

which was you

you couldn’t really concentrate on minho with hyunjin there but you focused a lot to talk to him

he said he was going to eat

and asked if you wanted to meet next to the food truck later

you consented, it was just hard because there were so many people around you

he nodded and smiled, but hyunjin…

he did the same

he knew you weren’t talking to him, still he smiled at you after you and minho smiled at each other

stupid guy

since you were having fun with your friends, you and them watched that concert and only went eat when it finished

another artist was starting a concert

but you guys went to the food place to eat something

you found minho and waved at him

“sorry we’re late”

“no problem”

hyunjin wasn’t there anymore

minho was there with just one of them

“the other boys went home already”, he said as if he could read your mind

“uh I love this song”, your friend said

the atmosphere was very romantic to be honest

even the vocalist told the crowd to find a partner and dance

you weren’t close to the stage but the song was loud, you could hear it and feel the romantic thing in the air

“do you want…?”, minho asked in a cool way, slightly pointing to the stage with his head, just to make sure you knew what he was talking about

“yes”

he was asking you to dance

you held his hand and, slowly, let yourself come closer

because that song needed a slow dance

your arms around his neck were the first step

but after a while, your head was already close to his

and he smelled so good

he danced so well

he did everything well, right?

minho was one of a kind

you guys didn’t kiss, but for a moment you almost did

because you two were just so close, enjoying the song

and right when you had the chance

the concert was over

everyone was standing to applaud

that was the last day you saw hyunjin

he posted a pic of the concert on his instagram and you looked at it for a good amount of time

until you just stopped the thoughts on your mind and kept going

there was a lot to do

months went by

what you had with minho wasn’t a relationship

but it wasn’t a friendship also

he was in a very busy moment of his undergraduate life and you understood that

since you were trying to study the most you could while you had the energy for that, on the first years of undergraduate degree

you met each other every week because of the classes you had at the same building

people were already suspicious that you guys had something

and yes, you did

you just didn’t know how to name that ‘something’

you know what

it felt just like what you had with hyunjin

it had been one year since you and hyunjin broke up

you laughed by yourself

‘break up’

“I love you, y/n. everything about you”

what a joke

minho sent you a message at the same time you were thinking about this

he wrote that the class was about to end and he’d like to see you if you had some time

you two set an hour to meet and you were already excited to see him

maybe because the thoughts of hyunjin haunting you

minho always made you feel light and happy

you took a shower and got ready to meet him

by the amount of perfume, your roommate knew you had a date

crossing the campus to meet minho at the café wasn’t even tiring, you just put some music on your earphones and walked there

maybe because you needed some glasses you couldn’t see pretty well the person walking towards you

oh one was a colleague of yours with whom you had classes together once

the other one you never saw

it was the moment of the year new people were arriving, so that’s why there were some fresh faces

then, as if it was a movie scene, one walking towards the other

it was him

his black shirt, his necklace, his bracelets, rings

so different but still the same

again, after such a long time

right when you were forgetting everything

hyunjin

you couldn’t avoid

or turn around and pretend you didn’t see him

he was right in front of you, kinda lost

you felt your feet stopping before your mind could think about why

everyone was passing by, but you two were stuck right there

what should you say?

what should he say?

did you both have anything to say?

“y/n”

your name sounded prettier coming out of his lips

“you, here?”, you heard your voice as if it wasn’t coming from you

“I’m transferring”

“you what?”, again, you said before thinking

“it’s for a year, initially. if it works, who knows…”

“sorry. hm. how are you?”

this conversation was such a mess

“fine”, he smirked, “you?”

“when did you…”

“I just arrived”

you nodded, looking around

“I didn’t know”, you said

of course you didn’t! was he supposed to tell you after not talking to each other for more than one year?

“yeah… not a lot of people know”

“this sounds… unreal”, you smiled at yourself. not a happiness smile, just a ‘can’t believe it’ smile

“my university offered this, some people from here are going to study there too, so”

“nice, yeah, nice”, you didn’t know what to say

he was biting his lips almost unnoticed, because he was a bit nervous

you didn’t know a lot of new things about of him, if anything, you knew his body language very well

“it’s good to see you again”, hyunjin said

“it’s been a long time”

“that day at the festival, sorry I couldn’t talk to you”

you nodded but changed the subject

“you play well”

“thanks”

the conversation was getting weirder

“do you know where minho is? he said he’d show me around”

“minho? do you guys still play?”

“just when we have time to meet”, he smiled running his hand through his hair

and you noticed everything

but, come on, he did too

he looked at every single movement you made

paying attention to you in a way he didn’t in a very long time

as if he didn’t want to miss the moment

he had gentle eyes

you missed that

you missed him, you just tried to forget

you didn’t solve things; you guys didn’t talk after what happened

he broke up and you had nothing to say

just let him go

“I’m about to meet him, though”

“oh”, he wanted to sound surprised but you could see how half of him knew what was going on. who didn’t notice on the festival day?

“do you want to come?”, you asked

“can I?”

you just gave him the look you always did

and kept walking, knowing he was following you

hands inside the pockets and a little smile on his face

minho was there at the café

he didn’t notice until you got through the door

his face went from happy to surprised

because he saw hyunjin

he talked to you first, giving a hug and caressing your hair

it wasn’t cringy, he knew the limits to affection in public

but hyunjin, after noticing the hug, started looking around

until minho greeted him too

“how did you find me?”, he asked

“y/n”, hyunjin answered

“sit with us, please”

you looked at minho trying to make him send hyunjin away

lol he could do that because he had his savageness

but since hyunjin just arrived, he’d be the nice friend

“what would you like to eat?”, minho asked you

since he wasn’t looking at any of you, both answered

“hm, I-”, you started

“anything is okay”, hyunjin said

you looked at him

he looked at you

minho looked at both

and giggled

“it’s on me, choose whatever you want”

you rolled eyes because of hyunjin

during the whole time, he was talking to minho

why didn’t he already leave?

you wanted some time alone

the date would be so nice if he hadn’t stepped in

here and there you said something, but you weren’t even in the mood

they talked about the band

talked about the university

and the only moment you really paid attention was when hyunjin started talking about his reasons to study there

“I felt bad because my family moved there so I could go to university”, he said

“and now, where are them?”, minho asked

“they’re planning to come live nearby now”

“so everything’s good, bro”

“yeah, they’re very good to me”

“oh, I just remembered. you two know each other, right?”

oh no minho

you didn’t have to…

“yes”, hyunjin answered

“we do”, you said

“but how? tell me”, he was interested and you had to be careful with all the words

why not let hyunjin explain

“we studied together for a long time”, he said, “but, because of university, we didn’t keep in touch”

ha ha ha he’s the funniest

you lifted one eyebrow paying attention to his narrative

“yeah, it’s been a long time”

“so maybe you could help him tomorrow, y/n?”

“help?”

“yes, he needs to find some places and I won’t be able to help him because of my exams”

ok but what about the other guys he knew? I mean, why you?

“me?”, you tried not to sound too bad

“his building is right next to yours”

oh great, amazing, splendid

“ok, I will”, you smiled to minho

since the three of you had finished eating and talking

and your date was successfully ruined by hyunjin’s presence

maybe now you could have time alone with minho

but you were wrong

“I’m sorry, guys, gotta go. I have an extra class now…”

your disappointed expression was noticed by him

he gave you another hug

“see you tomorrow?”

you nodded

hyunjin was pretending to search for something on his phone

“see you, call me anytime!”, minho said to him during the handshake

“thanks, bro, I will”

you watched him run to his appointment

wishing you had some time

it was crazy

cause hyunjin was there by your side too

and when you focused on the fact he was there, your mind became a mess

so you kept walking

and he followed you

you stopped

he stopped too

you turned around

“are you following me?”

“yes, so I can find things easily”

“if you need help, just ask”

“I need help”, he said

“ok, what”

“I have a question”

“I’m waiting”

“what’s going on between you and minho?”

after hearing that, you started walking again

and he was already by your side

“excuse me?”

“I was wondering…”

“we’re friends. very close friends.”

you knew hyunjin, he already knew what was going on, he just wanted to make sure by hearing it from you

“like we were?”

that topic was a bit hard

“no. like I am with him. it’s different”

silence for a while

“I missed you”

you couldn’t help but laugh a little

“you did?”

“I do”

“it was harsh when you ended up things, okay? you were childish”

he was listening carefully

you knew your words were supposed to hurt

“I am sorry. your friendship was… is very important to me, and I didn’t want to lose it”

“we couldn’t help but like each other in another level”

“I know but I was scared. it didn’t happen in a good moment because I’d have to leave anyway”

“before anything, we were friends. you should have told me.”

“I know. and I don’t regret anything we lived together. as friends and… as lovers”

lovers

for the first time, a name to what you guys had

so ‘lovers’ was what you and hyunjin were

for a brief moment

“I also don’t regret anything I told you. how I- I loved you”

“why are you telling me this now?”, you questioned, moved by his words

“better late than never. y/n, you are one of the reasons I am here. you changed my life in so many ways and, yes, I was childish by not knowing how to deal with my feelings”

you already have walked a lot and now you were close to the dorms

you looked at him

“I didn’t have to be one of your reasons”

“it’s not up to you to decide... you are one of them.”

his sweet face staring at you

being sincere with everything he felt

but you didn’t know if it was right to just let go of it all and start again

not as lovers, but as friends

at least friends…

even though you missed him in each and every way

his voice sounded soft and low

“I still love you. you are part of me and I can’t let go so easily. I wanted to tell you this for a long time, I wanted to say sorry and maybe try again.”

he reached out for you

“I don’t want to be a stranger to you like we have been for a very long time, hyunjin…”

“me neither. let the past be past. I want to be a friend again”

friend or lover, you wanted him

he was a part of you hard to let go, too

it could be easier

just say yes and become friends again

but the process isn’t easy like this

to start over would be complicated

it would mean you’d have to restore each other’s confidence

and take the risk of falling in love again

this risk… it was too much

he would always mess with your feelings, as a friend or a lover

and because it was hard

because you weren’t sure

because he suddenly came back and messed it up again

you had to say

“I don’t know if we can be friends”

his hopeful eyes became a bit sad

you tightened your grip on his hand before letting go

and walked back to your dorm

link to part 2

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victorluvsalice · 3 years

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AU Thursday: Fallout of Darkness -- Another Meme

I unfortunately don’t recall where I got this one, though I do remember picking it up in the #fallout 4 tag -- I think a number of people were using it for their Sole Survivors. Which is what I did! With the added twist of “let me do this universe’s Alice as well!” So you get double the information for the same price! :P

Note: This is vaguely set I’d say about halfway through the plot of Fallout 4 -- Victor and Alice have had the run-in with Ug-Qualtoth and gotten Alice sunlight immunity (see this post for more details), and they’ve met at least most of the other companions. Also yes, pets -- Victor does indeed adopt the “wounded dog” encounter in my verse! (And if anyone knows of a mod that lets you send her to a settlement for real. . .) Please remember I haven’t actually played much of the main plot myself, so things may be a little vague/prone to changing once I get further in!

name ➔

V: Victor Fitzwilliam Van Dort – my mother wanted me to have an "aristocratic" middle name, for some reason.

A: Alice Pleasance Liddell – yes, just like the historical Alice. I guess after Lizzie decided I should be "Alice," my parents decided to go whole hog with the reference.

are you single ➔

V: [with a warm look at Alice] No, I'm not.

A: [with a warm look back] Not anymore.

are you happy ➔

V: [still with that warm look at Alice] Very much so.

A: [smiling] A lot happier than I was in the past, that's for sure. Which is kind of sad, given it's post the nuclear apocalypse now. . .

are you angry ➔

V: [thoughtful] I – I was for a while. Not so much anymore – the worst of it has cooled. But – there's some things I think I'll always be angry about.

A: I think my answer's about the same. Given some of the nonsense we've been through, some low-level anger is just to be expected, honestly.

are your parents still married ➔

V: . . .they were when the bombs dropped.

A: Mine were when that bastard Bumby set our house on fire to cover up what he'd done to my sister.

NINE FACTS

birthplace ➔

V: Burtonsville – it's a tiny village in England. I don't actually remember it, though – my parents moved to Boston when I was only about a year and a half old. I grew up here in Boston and the surrounding area.

A: Oxford, England – my father was the Dean of Christ Church at the college when he was alive. I have fond memories, but I haven't been back since the fire.

hair color ➔

V: Black. Mother occasionally insisted it was dark brown, but – black.

A: Black, though weirdly I actually was almost a redhead as a child. It darkened straight through brown to this as I grew up. I've never been sure why it got so dark, though I suspect all that time lying in Rutledge, getting probably-inadequate nutrition and light for a growing girl, didn't help matters.

eye color ➔

V: Dark brown.

A: Green, though Victor likes being poetic with descriptions like "emerald fire" sometimes.

mood ➔

V: . . .er – generally anxious? Trying to be helpful regardless?

A: Sarcastic? To hide that I'm more worried than I let on?

gender ➔

V: Male, he/him.

A: Female, she/her.

summer or winter ➔

V: Summer – I'm not a fan of the cold. Though spring's my actual favorite season – I love seeing everything come back to life.

A: I feel like I should like winter more, because of the longer nights, but now that we've actually fixed the sunlight issue. . .yes, summer. I'm not really a fan of the cold either.

morning or afternoon ➔

V: Afternoon – I've never been that much of a morning person, and mornings tend to be – stressful in the Commonwealth.

A: To be fair, so are the afternoons, but – yes, generally you're not dealing with threats still wiping the sleep from your eyes in said afternoons. And in my case, they're closer to night, which is still the time when I feel most myself, so. . .

EIGHT THINGS ABOUT YOUR LOVE LIFE

are you in love ➔

V: [exchanging a very warm look with Alice] Yes.

A: [giving it right back] Very much so.

do you believe in love at first sight ➔

V: Maybe not true love, but attraction? A sense of connection, kinship? Certainly – that's how I felt when I first met Victoria, and later Emily.

A: I can get behind that – my mother said she felt a pull toward my father when they first met. . .but I don't think love at first sight exists. You need to get to know someone – form a solid bond first.

who ended your last relationship ➔

V: [darkly cheerful] The American and Chinese governments, throwing nuclear missiles at each other! [sighing] No, that’s not quite fair – yes, they drove us into Vault 111, but the ones who actually murdered my wife and girlfriend were Kellogg and the Institute. The former more obviously than the latter, but. . . [voice cracks] Damn it, what was wrong with putting everyone's life support back on. . .

A: [puts a comforting hand on his arm] In my case, I never really had a romantic relationship before – even friendships were kind of fleeting, or long-distance. I've gone along with flirtations in the past to get meals, sure, but none of those ever turned into relationships. The closest I had was – well, Heather getting blood-bonded to me, which I didn't even mean to do. I was just trying to help her, and I didn't realize at the time. . . [bites her lip] I ended that – sent her away before she could get hurt by my enemies, explaining that what would make me happiest would be for her to be with her grandmother and stay in college. I wanted to go back and maybe try to help her some more once I was done with LaCroix's bullshit, but then. . .I hope she had a good life, in the end.

have you ever broken someone’s heart ➔

V: Not knowingly – goodness, what started off my, Victoria, and Emily's threesome relationship was an attempt not to break anyone's heart! It worked out very well, until. . . [shakes his head]

A: [squeezes his arm gently] I probably broke Heather's heart by sending her away – she looked so sad as she walked out the door. But it was for the best – I dread to think what would have happened to her if the Sabbat had realized I had a ghoul! Other than that – depends on if anyone I've drunk from was hoping for more than just a "quickie." I doubt that, though.

are you afraid of commitments ➔

V: I'm afraid of them being forced on me because of people randomly promoting me every time I even get close to an organization. [sighing, reaching up to fiddle with a chain around his neck] But – maybe a little. Seeing – seeing your wife get shot in front of you. . .then your girlfriend's half-rotted corpse beside her. . .it sticks with you.

A: [nods] Being the only survivor of the house fire that killed your family sticks with you too. As does two of the most prominent men in your life being the bastard who killed them and was trying to wipe your mind, and the bastard who killed you and turned you into a bloodsucker. Add in my own rather unromantic nature, and – yes, I did pretty much avoid commitments for a while. [smiles at Victor] I think I'm a little better about it now, though.

have you hugged someone in the last week ➔

V: Oh, yes – Preston and Piper just the other day, in fact!

A: I'm not usually much of one for being touched, so I don't hug much. . . [thinks for a moment, then hugs Victor] But I'll happily make the answer a "yes" in this case.

have you ever had a secret admirer ➔

V: Does the brief period of time where Emily was crushing on me before Victoria noticed and decided to let her and me know it was okay if we wanted to date too count? Otherwise, I really don't think so. I wasn't popular with girls before meeting Victoria.

A: Bumby never made it clear whether he wanted to just turn me into a prostitute or fuck me himself as well, but I wouldn't count him anyway, because he was a horrible waste of flesh. So I have no idea – don't think so. Heather was – very open about her admiration.

have you ever broken your own heart ➔

V: Again, what happened between me, Victoria, and Emily was an attempt to avoid that. . .I can't say I have. It seems like others always break it for me.

A: Sending Heather away did hurt me a bit – not in the same way it hurt her, but it was nice to have someone else around the haven. . . [looks up at Victor] And I did resist romance initially here. Fortunately tall, dark, and handsome here didn't let me break my own heart.

SIX CHOICES

love or lust ➔

V: Love, definitely. [going pink] I mean, lust can be nice, but. . .

A: Love – even alive, I wasn't particularly interested in sex. And as a vampire, any urges that way now go toward sucking on people's necks. Which I guess is sex-adjacent, but still. . . Maybe "love" for serious relationships, "lust" for getting a meal.

lemonade or iced tea ➔

V: Oh, I haven't had either in ages. . .and I recall needing a lot of sugar for both to enjoy them. . .I guess lemonade. I think I had that more often.

A: Literally can't drink either these days, for multiple reasons. . .but I'm going with lemonade because I have fonder memories of that. And – hmmm. I wonder if it’s possible to make a variation with that “plasma fruit” Ted came up with at Wildwood Cemetery. . .

cats or dogs ➔

V: Dogs! I had a dog growing up, Scraps, who was my best friend! And Victoria, Emily, and I were going to get a dog shortly after. . . [pause, shakes head] And now I have Dogmeat and Mutt! They’re a good pair.

A: Cats! My best friends growing up were the family cat, Dinah, and her two kittens, Snowdrop and Kitty. Being a vampire does tend to make animals rather mistrustful of me, sadly, but I had some luck feeding ferals pre-War. And we managed to trap a cat recently who didn’t immediately try to claw me and run away – I’ve named her Kit-Kat.

a few best friends or many regular friends ➔

V: A few best friends – I'm n-not good with lots of people, and I just. . .I'm always so awkward, s-socially. I'd rather have a couple of people I know I can trust.

A: The same – I don't trust easily, after all the bullshit I've been through. Give me a small circle of people I know have my back over a larger group of more casual friends any day.

wild night out or romantic night in ➔

V: Romantic night in. I'm not much for parties. I like staying home with the people I love and just – being together.

A: Sort of like "love or lust" above, this kind of depends. I like a romantic night in for any actual relationships, but I did my fair share of clubbing to find someone to drink from back in the day.

day or night ➔

V: Well, I do like a good sunny day, but. . . [looking at Alice] I've really come to appreciate the nights in the Commonwealth. And not just because of the stars.

A: [smirking at him] Flatterer. . .but yes, night. For the longest time, it was the only time of day I could be out in. . .and even though it's wonderful now to be able to go out during the day and enjoy that, night is still when I feel most myself.

FIVE HAVE YOU EVERS

been caught sneaking out ➔

Victor: No, but that's because I never did. I grew up in the middle of a plague – I didn't have much incentive to sneak out! It took until I was fourteen for cases to drop enough in our part of Boston for my parents to be comfortable sending me to a school with other children, and by then I was so used to staying at home, sneaking out never occurred to me.

Alice: Oh god, yes, the New Plague, that was horrific. . .on my end, yes, I was. I tried to sneak out a couple of times as a small child to have adventures in the garden late at night or in the middle of storms. . .if my parents didn't catch me, though, my older sister did. I think I only actually got outside once, and even then it was only for a couple of minutes before Lizzie caught up with me. Mostly because she was trying to sneak out too, and didn't want her little sister tagging along.

fallen down/up the stairs ➔

Victor: . . .yes. To both. I – I can be pretty clumsy if I'm n-not paying attention to where I'm going.

Alice: [giving him an odd look] I've fallen down stairs – rushing around as a child on imaginary adventures – but never up. I'm – not entirely sure how you manage that.

wanted something/someone so badly it hurt ➔

V: [tugging at the chain around his neck again, which is revealed to have a blue butterfly pendant and a gold wedding ring strung on it] Yes. Something I can't have, I'm sad to say.

A: [playing with her own necklace, which is an old iron key shaped like the symbol for Venus] Same here. I'd like to think your Victoria and Emily and my parents and Lizzie are in the same place, at least.

wanted to disappear ➔

V: Oh, plenty of times. I have an unfortunate knack for saying the wrong thing and then wishing I could melt into the floor. And – well, I suppose every time I've been hiding from enemies and wanted to just turn invisible counts. . .

A: I wanted to disappear in the asylum a couple of times, in the sense of 'just stop existing.' Survivor's guilt does a number on your brain, let me tell you. . .though I can actually disappear these days, thanks to Obfuscate! Though, annoyingly, I genuinely can't do it if someone's looking.

smile or eyes ➔

V: Oh, back to these? [thoughtful] I – honestly, I think eyes. Victoria and Emily's eyes are one of the things I remember best about them. . . [smiles at Alice] And my current paramour has some of the most beautiful eyes in the Commonwealth.

A: You're going to make me blush despite being dead if you keep on like that. Though, what's good for the goose is good for the gander – while I like your eyes, it's your smile that really warms my undead heart.

shorter or taller ➔

V: Um – shorter out of necessity. I haven't met many women who are six-foot-three.

A: Similarly, I'm five-foot-five, so I kind of have to go taller.

intelligence or attraction ➔

V: . . .I assume this means intelligence or looks, and – I can't deny I like a pretty face, but the main reason I got together with the women I did is because I could hold a good conversation with them. Intelligence.

A: My attraction seems to be based on actually getting to know a person, and I don't suffer fools gladly. Intelligence all the way.

hook-up or relationship ➔

V: Oh, relationship. I never had a hook-up. I can't – I can't just do the "one night stand" thing. I need something a little more.

A: Another one where my actual feelings versus how I'd act to get a meal clash – though admittedly, I never had a "proper" hook-up. I'd just get someone in a quiet spot, suck a bit of blood, and let them get on with their lives. But now that things are better, I'm only too happy to commit myself to a real relationship.

FAMILY

do you and your family get along ➔

V: Well, it’s something of a moot point now, but. . . [he waggles a hand, making a face] I have to admit, I never liked my parents much. They weren’t very “hands-on” in raising me, and I often felt like they considered me a burden. Or a bargaining chip for social status. I did my best not to rock the boat just because upsetting my mother never ended well, but. . . [sigh] It wasn’t good.

A: By contrast, I had a perfectly lovely family life – my parents were kind and encouraged my sister and I in our various pursuits, and Lizzie. . .she was the best older sister a girl could have. I felt like I could tell her anything, and even if the age difference made playing together difficult, she did try whenever she had a spare moment. The reason I have such an “enthusiastic” imagination is because Mama, Papa, and Lizzie never tried to stifle it. I was – I felt so loved and happy the first eight years of my life. . .and then Bumby took it all away. [she looks away] I – it’s not fair.

would you say you have a “messed up life” ➔

V: [completely deadpan] I was frozen at the age of 27 in a vault designed to store people long-term for unknown reasons, and was finally thawed 210 years later, to find my wife and girlfriend dead, my son kidnapped, and the world above having been turned into a wasteland of vicious wildlife, super mutants, and raiders. With parts of it still irradiated because people are STILL launching small nuclear missiles at each other. Also the people who kidnapped my son can apparently make synthetic humans and use them as spies. And in the middle of all this, I’ve somehow ended up the leader of a bunch of little farms and such that composes a ragtag peacekeeping force that is still better than the actual assholes in power armor who have moved in. You tell me.

A: I can top that – turned into a vampire at age 20 after moving to Los Angeles to make sure I was far away from a murder I’d committed, then ended up roaming the world after a literally-explosive end to my time there as everyone’s errand boy. Was in Boston when the bombs dropped and got staked when my hidey-hole collapsed in on me, meaning I too got essentially “frozen” for 210 years, until a raider attacking this fellow here yanked the stake out and I responded by sucking him dry. Leaving me in a post-nuclear apocalypse trying to survive in a world where anyone’s blood might be at least slightly radioactive. Also we discovered that vampires are in fact the result of a little bit of some Lovecraftian horror worshiped by the people over at Dunwich Borers leaking into our world and infecting our souls. So that’s fun.

have you ever run away from home ➔

V: No – again, grew up in a plague, never really wanted to leave the house because of it.

A: I threatened to, once or twice, when upset, but I never followed through. Though I guess my moving to California could be construed as a kind of running away after I killed Bumby. . .but I never thought of Houndsditch as home. Same with Los Angeles, after I left there in the wake of that mess with LaCroix.

have you ever gotten kicked out ➔

V: No, though – sometimes I thought my mother was thinking about it. Whenever my social awkwardness reared its ugly head at one of her parties.

A: My parents were never the sort to do that, and Bumby of course wanted me close at Houndsditch. And I left polite vampire society on my own terms after LaCroix.

FRIENDS

do you secretly hate one of your friends ➔

V: . . .I’m not entirely sure how to classify my relationship with Strong. But I know he thinks more highly of me than I do of him. I – I try to be understanding, but it gets very tiring to listen to him go on about how one day Super Mutants will kill everything.

A: I had to be a lot friendlier to a lot people back in Los Angeles than I would have liked. . .but I don’t think any of them were laboring under the delusion we were actual friends. So no – if I don’t like you, I don’t hide it.

who is your best friend ➔

V: Alice, Preston, and Piper, definitely – they’re the ones I’ve traveled the most with, shared the most with, and just – feel the most comfortable around. [smiles] Oh, and Dogmeat of course.

A: Victor’s definitely my best friend – and frankly, I feel pretty close to Piper and Preston myself. They’re good people. [she smirks] Though Hancock and Nick are definitely the best people to snark with.

who knows everything about you ➔

V: Probably most of the people in the Commonwealth, I’ve had to explain about being frozen and what happened to my son a lot. . .more seriously, I’d say the above three. They’re the people I’m closest to, and the ones I’m most comfortable sharing information with.

A: I don’t know about everything, but – yes, Victor. And probably Piper knows the most after him, given she wanted to interview me for her paper.

#memes #fallout of darkness #tell me where to find shelter #(keeping that old tag for ease of use for the moment)#fallout 4 #vtmb #hopefully this isn't too confusing for everyone #Ted is supposed to be the Tremere living at Wildwood Cemetery along with the other 'rejected Bloodlines Protagonists'#and yes he made Plasma Fruit #because if I'm going all in with this crossover I will go ALL IN #I have a nasty feeling living through coronavirus is going to inspire me whenever I have to write about Fallout's various diseases #also its government #also yes Victor's opinion on Strong is my own #dude I'm trying to like you buuut #Piper and Preston are my current fave companions #but please remember I am kinda stuck in early days in the game itself #we'll see how things evolve as I take on other companions!#however Ada will be respected around here among the robots #she deserves better #queued

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captainchrisfics · 5 years

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Positive

About: Quite unexpectedly, Chris Evans finds out he’s going to be a father after a first-person pov narrator confesses she’s pregnant. They haven’t been dating for long, but they’ve known each other forever. The only problem is, the baby might not be his.

Word Count: 4,974

Warning(s): Nothing nsfw, but illusions to sex

Requested By: Anon. As always, I appreciate the inspiration endlessly. Sorry this is so long- I just had a great time writing this and I think it shows. Please feel free to submit any reqs!

“Hey,” Chris said it like a question. His raspy voice broke a long silence so suddenly it startled me. He stood over me with his hand hovering just far enough from the door that his key didn’t connect with the lock, looking just as surprised as I was. I hadn’t realized it was snowing until I saw the white flakes speckling his hair and melting into his dark lashes.

I’d come over without even thinking Chris might not be home. I turned his front door’s knob in disbelief until the realization of how utterly alone I felt struck me so hard it knocked me to the floor. So there I sat under the overhang, back pressed against his door with my knees pulled tight to my chest without a thought as to what I’d do when he came home.

“What’s wrong?” He asked in a soft tone. His blue eyes were so gentle as his brow furrowed and his lips tucked down in a frown, creating harsh creases all over his concerned face. It was enough to cause tears to swell in my eyes. There was no point trying to hide it considering my cheeks were already stained and my eyes were puffy beyond repair. Chris could tell by the slightest tremble in my voice anyway. Still, I buried my face in my knees.

A dull thud drew my attention to some grocery bags that landed next to me. Chris kneeled down to my level and hooked a finger under my chin to lift my gaze to his. “Let’s head in, darling. It’s cold,” he said with a smile so small it didn’t even round out the apples of his cheeks, although they were as pink as his chilly nose. “I just bought some more of that hot chocolate you love.” He tried to entice me, gesturing to the bags at his feet. My eyes darted between the groceries and his stare, giving me the kind of look that warmed me from the inside out, and I realized just how much I felt like a cornered animal he was trying to catch at the same time.

Chris’s hand slowly reached to caress my face, his thumb gliding across my cheek which had been numbed by the cold way before then to wipe some of the tears away. “Dodger’s probably waiting on the couch for you, too. He’s been missing your cuddles. God knows I have,” he admitted, biting his chapped bottom lip. The guilty feeling in my stomach took a nosedive. While I’d been selfishly locking myself away from the world, trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do, I hadn’t even considered Chris sitting home alone. Sending me countless texts asking where I was. Calling me only for it to go unanswered. Knocking on the door I never opened.

“I was trying to give you the space you clearly wanted,” he continued after clearing his throat, stretching to scratch the back of his neck. “Although I was starting to consider breaking into your place, if I’m honest.” Chris laughed dryly at his half-joke, although I knew he was only deflecting. Trying to prioritize me over the angry feelings in his stomach. I couldn’t blame him, if he’d disappeared on me for a few days I’d have the same heartbroken look in my eyes.

Before I could come up with any words to say, anything to explain my absence or how exactly I’d ended up crying at his doorstep, my hand found his chest. My palm pressed lightly as I tried to feel his heartbeat. It was always strong and steadier than anything else in this world, which seemed to be all the reassurance I’d ever need. Through all of his layers, I couldn’t feel it. I felt like we had so much more than a thick coat between us.

I leaned my forehead to his so we were close enough that our noses brushed. “I’m so sorry,” I confessed, feeling part of the weight lift off of my heaving chest. I tried to breathe through sobs that felt like they’d drown me if they got out as I continued, “It was so selfish Chris, but I-“ I paused to breathe again, squeezing my eyes shut. I couldn’t do it like this and if I kept looking into those blue eyes I’d unravel any second. “I need to tell you something, but I had to come to terms with it myself first.”

“We’ve never kept things from each other,” he whispered with a quivering voice. I realized how scary it must’ve been for him then, receiving some half-assed text about needing time to be alone and think only for me to drop off the face of the earth for a few days before showing up at his stoop in tears. How much I hurt him. I must’ve felt as lost to him as I did to myself.

“We’ve never gone through something like this before,” I insisted, matching his intensity.

Chris looked at me with a determined fire in his eyes I might have missed most of all before stealing a kiss I would’ve given him anyway, the kind that whispered love that always carried some forgiveness, everything I desperately needed. I smiled against his lips as I realized that, as absolutely petrified as I was to tell him, he’d at least hear me out. That’s all I could ask.

“Then let’s go figure it out together,” he said, pulling me up off the step and ushering me through the door before his groceries froze any more.

As soon as the door swung open, I was met with a barrage of sticky kisses and excited scratches that nearly knocked me off my feet.

I bent down to Dodger’s level, scratching behind his ears and along his side until he relaxed and melted at my feet so I could rub his belly. “Dodge, that’s no way to treat a lady,” Chris chastised, partly joking. He’d given up on getting his dog to leave me alone or at least calm down when I walked through the door a long time ago, but it bothered him when Dodger didn’t mind his manners.

“I’ll go make some of that cocoa and meet you on the couch,” he said with a heavy sigh, holding the groceries close to his chest. I nodded, not really in the position to protest Chris buying me more time.

I sat crisscrossed on his plush couch as I waited for Chris. Dodger joined me, jumping onto the couch and laying with his head in my lap. He gave me those wide puppy eyes that reminded me way too much of his owner when he wanted something, so I started scratching his favorite spot again while his tail beat back and forth. He’d missed the company and, apparently, so had Chris.

It hadn’t been very long, but empty beer cans dented from Chris’s grip littered the coffee table. He’d left the game on and I suspected he hadn’t shut ESPN off in days. I could see him lounging here, completely absentmindedly gluing his tired eyes to the television, watching the same football replay over and over as he cracked another cold one. He’d said before that he just liked the background noise sometimes, when he didn’t want to think too much. A fine layer of dust was collecting on the t.v. stand, but not around this one photo. The frame was dotted with fingerprints and the dust hadn’t settled, looking like it’d been moved many times.

It one of my favorites of Chris and I. We were maybe six or seven in it, based on how many teeth my grin was missing. I was sitting on a swing while Chris focused on spinning me so the chains would twist together and it looked like he was just about to let me go, sending me flying in a dizzying whirl as the swing unfurled. We’d take turns doing that until we were so dizzy we couldn’t stand, or until my hair got stuck in the braided chains and I broke down in tears. I’d found the picture in one of his mother’s photo albums and framed it for him as a birthday present a few years back.

“That’s my favorite picture. You look so happy in it,” Chris commented offhandedly, walking into the living room with two mugs in hand. He handed one to me as he took a sip before putting his on the coffee table, pushing some cans aside with a sigh. “Sorry, wasn’t expecting company,” he muttered, though we both knew we’d seen each other at worse. Chris squeezed between my back and the couch’s arm, wrapping his legs around my hips so I sat in between his thighs and his feet rested on the other side of my knees.

I laid my head on his chest, looking up at him to see that his eyes were already resting on me. He was never able to hide his feelings from them very well. Now, they looked conflicted. Glassy like a settled sea, but the storm wasn’t too far away. I felt like I was setting sail, vulnerable to his potentially choppy waters.

I pulled a blanket off of the back of the couch and over our legs as if it offered any protection. I wasn’t sure where to start so I just did. “Do you remember when we were 16 and you were beyond wasted-“

“Odds aren’t looking good,” Chris cut me off, a chuckle that didn’t leave his lips reverberating in his chest.

I took a deep breath and tried again. “You showed up to my house so you wouldn’t get in any more trouble with your mom,” I told him, hoping it would jog his memory without having to say it out loud.

“Sounds like every Friday night,” he said with a roll of his eyes.

“You told me you wanted to have a family with me,” I spit, unable to swallow the feeling swelling in my chest anymore.

Chris sucked in a tight breath through gritted teeth. I felt every muscle in him tighten. “You- you know about that?” he asked, running a stressed hand through his hair.

I nodded, turning to press my forehead into the crook of his neck so he couldn’t see the tears welling in my eyes. I squeezed them shut, hoping to will the waterworks away, as I felt left on the ledge.

Chris let out a long exhale before he spoke again.“Well, you should’ve led with that. I’ll never forget it,” he said with a sincerity I didn’t expect.

“Tell me that story,” I pleaded, careful to keep my voice as level as I could.

“You’re really gonna make me relive that embarrassment? You’re the one with a lot of explaining to do anyway,” he insisted stubbornly.

“Chris just... Please.” I reached for his hand that rested on my knee, giving it a tight squeeze. I didn’t know what I hoped to convey, but he seemed to understand anyway.

He was quiet for a moment, leaving me feeling like I was suspended on a tightrope again, walking a fine line between uncertainty and vulnerability, preying Chris would be there to catch me. He chewed his bottom lip as he mulled it over before he caved with a defeated sigh. “Alright, but only because you asked so nicely.”

Chris wrapped his arms around my shoulders, completely enveloping me in him. He was so warm I was tempted to kick off the blanket, but I was too comfortable to move, as I usually was with him. Even with so much weighing on my mind, he still brought me a familiar ease I hadn’t found anywhere other than in his arms. I could feel his heart thumping again, much to my relief, until he cleared his throat and started to speak.

“It was really late at night, or early in the morning, I guess. I just left Ryan Walsh’s party and I felt like I’d been drowned in a keg,” Chris started, but I couldn’t help interrupting him. I’d been playing this memory in my own mind for days now, picking it apart for an answer only to find that I needed to see it through his lens.

“You looked like it too,” I cut in with a dry laugh.

Chris grinned, his cheeks burning with an adolescent boy’s embarrassment. “Yeah, I remember being so sweaty. It was gross and I was so self-conscious about it, being in such close proximity, you know. I climbed the tree to your terrace so your mom wouldn’t know. Looking back, I’m lucky I didn’t fall, but I’d done it so many times that wasn’t even a thought,” Chris rolled his eyes at his former self’s invulnerability complex.

“You were so mad at me,” he indulged in the memory with a small chuckle, probably recalling how angry I looked. He always thought it was funny, how much that feeling didn’t match my face, especially when I looked at him. “Telling me off for being so irresponsible and the whole nine yards, but you let me in anyway. Offered to share your bed even though it was only a twin and we had to squish together. I smelled like I’d just gotten out of practice if we showered in cheap beer, but you smelled like strawberries and vanilla.” He paused, taking a deep breath buried in my hair before pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “You still do.”

I smiled softly as his grip around me tightened. “I wrapped my arms around you, just like this,” he continued. “So you wouldn’t fall off... and because I liked the idea of falling asleep with you in my arms. Never would’ve admitted it though. Hell, I couldn’t get the courage to tell you how I felt until I was what? Thirty-something?” Chris judged his past self with the bitterness hindsight often offered.

“But I wouldn’t let you, right?” I intervened in the story again, trying to keep him on track. “I remember whisper-yelling at you so hard my throat hurt. It always scared me, thinking about what could go wrong you when you hung out with those boys. And I’ll admit I was terribly jealous of those girls, too.”

Chris’s smile widened again, a cocky smirk resting on his lips as he teased me about like liking him even though we both knew he felt the same way even back then. “You’re right, though,” he said, a sudden seriousness returning to his tone. “Then, I don’t know why, but I got all worked up and said you weren’t my mother.”

I remembered the way that comment stung. He’d said it like an insult, like I was the one he was trying to run away from. When we entered high school, it was like everyone noticed Chris for the first time. I was afraid I’d lose him to this new life, to all of these new friends. After all, I hadn’t been invited to Ryan Walsh’s house and Chris hadn’t bothered to take me. When he compared me to his mother, I felt as if I was the killjoy he couldn’t wait to run to someone else’s house to get away from.

“It was dark, just the moonlight through your window. You know, it would’ve been awfully romantic if you didn’t nearly snap your neck to give me this look like you wanted to break mine,” Chris paused to clear his throat, trying to recover from a joke that didn’t exactly land. “Then you turned to face the wall again and pulled away from me, although you couldn’t get very far. It was so quiet I could’ve sworn I heard your heart crack and it sure felt like mine did.”

Neither of us spoke again for a minute, the only noises being the sport’s announcers remarks from the television’s low volume and Dodger whining since I’d stopped scratching his ears, lost in a memory.

Chris’s arms fell to his sides as one hand reached to scratch his beard, a nervous habit I knew meant he was stalling. This was the part that was mortifying for him. “And I don’t know if it was because I was drunk or if I knew I wouldn’t go to bed thinking you were that mad at me, but I could be so honest without having to look at those pretty eyes of yours,” he said with a breathy voice, just barely above a whisper. Although no one else was here, I knew this was only meant for me to know.

“I never really thought about it until then and even in that moment the words were falling out of my mouth as quickly as I realized it myself,” Chris mumbled, trying to choose his words carefully. “Suddenly I was telling you that, someday, I wanted to come home with whatever you needed to satisfy some weird craving after running to the grocery store at one in the morning and I wanted to see you, swollen feet elevated and all, with my baby in your belly, as if that wasn’t the weirdest way I could’ve possibly said it,” he punctuated with a nervous laugh. When I didn’t speak, he kept talking to fill the silence. “But I thought you’d fallen asleep by then and by the time I woke up I was sober enough to know it was humiliating so I dropped it until... until now, I guess.”

I didn’t sleep at all that night, actually. It was when I realized the way I loved Chris wasn’t just friendly or in a brotherly sort of way since that sounded so nice to me, too. Part of me knew I wanted that with him and I think I have ever since. It was the first time that I thought maybe, just maybe, Chris might like me like that, too. But then he pretended like it never happened, he kept treating me like a sister, and I wrote it off as nothing more than another drunk rambling. I tried to forget about it, but he planted something in my head I couldn’t just uproot.

“You still mean that?” I asked tentatively, trying to hide the desperation behind my shaky voice. I couldn’t stand to look at Chris, unable to confront the hurricane I knew I’d see in those temperamental ocean eyes once he put it together.

“Absolutely,” he insisted, before the hesitation I feared to hear crept in. “Don’t get me wrong, you know I want a family too, but are you sure we’re ready to do this now? I mean, I know we’ve known each other our whole lives, but it wasn’t until pretty recently that we uh-”

“I’m pregnant, Chris. Whether we’re ready or not,” I spilled, incapable of listening to everything I’d thought already again. The tears I’d been holding back finally fell as I buried my face against his chest. My hands gravitated toward my stomach, palms pressing into my bloated belly. I knew it’d be a while until I felt anything, but I had to remind myself that I wasn’t alone in this.

“You’re sure?” Chris asked, though it wasn’t in disbelief. It was more uncertain, like he was trying to navigate uncharted waters I felt like I was drowning in.

“Positive,” I insisted with a vigorous nod, “I just- I don’t know if you’re the dad,” I confessed, muffled by his sweater.

The guilt had been eating away at me for days now, ever since my mom suggested I take the test and it came out positive. And the next five after that. It wasn’t odd for me to miss a period, but having an upset stomach for nearly a month straight made me nervous that something was wrong. I just didn’t feel right, but I still couldn’t believe it in the first place. Chris and I had been so careful, except for once. Then I did the math and realized that time wasn’t long after my breakup.

Chris wrapped his arms around my waist, tucking his fingers under my palms to hold my hands. “Of course I am,” he said softly with a simultaneous sturdiness. I stretched to look up at him, furrowed eyebrows and downturned lips carving creases into his face. His eyes though, they were more worried than upset, more resolute than angry.

“No, you don’t understand,” I told him, my frantic mind trying to rephrase it. “It wasn’t very long after I was last with my ex that we…”

I’d shown up to Chris’s house, knocking on his door. He answered in his boxers, scraggly beard and tired eyes. He pinched his nose in between his eyes as he tried to clear the sleep from his throat. “Do you know how early it is?” Chris asked, checking his wrist for the watch he’d taken off before crawling under his covers. When he realized it wasn’t there, he looked at me properly. I was worse for wear, with the tear streaks staining my cheeks, puffy eyes, and disheveled clothes. All I wanted to do was sleep, but I could only manage to toss and turn. I had a certain man, something another had said, stuck in my head. “What’s up?” Chris asked, still groggy but concerned.

“He broke up with me,” I said for the first time out loud, an oppressive weight lifting off of my chest. Chris had been telling me to leave him for nearly as long as we’d been together, which was only a handful of months. He said he didn’t treat me as well as I deserved to be, even though everyone else seemed to think I’d lucked out. Except me.

“W-what? Why?” Chris asked with a slack jaw. “Sorry,” he sighed, scratching his chin as he regained composure. “I just… wasn’t expecting that. Come on in.” He stepped aside to usher me through the door. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and tugged me to the couch. Chris didn’t ask any other questions, never being one to pry, but I answered him anyway.

“I said your name,” I admitted, unable to meet his eye as my cheeks felt like radiators. “We were… you know. Right in the middle of it and I said your name,” I laughed, not even nervous if I came off as unhinged when Chris broke out in a fit of giggles, too. “He got so mad, Chris, so furious,” I said as I tried to catch my breath.

I started crying, at first from laughing so hard. And then the situation really hit me and I started sobbing. “He broke up with me. Told me he was tired of me being in love with someone else… wanting to be with someone else,” I professed, unable to stop myself in spite of the crippling embarrassment. It was terrible, saying all of this to the person it was about, but I didn’t know who else to turn to.

Chris grasped my hands in his, catching my attention. I saw that fire in his watery eyes, catching me completely off guard. “Do you?” he asked with a measured tone. I couldn’t meet his eyes until he lifted my chin so I had to. “Do you want to be with me?” Chris repeated as if it was something he hadn’t considered before, just inches from me now.

“In every sense of the words,” I admitted earnestly. For years, it never seemed to work out for one reason or another. Chris was away filming for months, one of us was in a relationship, neither of us had the nerve. But now, sitting on this couch, the stars in our eyes aligned. Before I knew it, Chris’s lips were on mine, my hands were tugging at what little he had left on, and that fire in his eyes sparked a desperation in my chest and I knew we couldn’t resist each other anymore.

That morning, I woke up in his bed. It was something that happened many times before, but this was the first time our clothes were in a pile on the other side of the floor and we were just as tangled together between his sheets. “I love you,” Chris told me and, even though it wasn’t close to the only time I’ve heard him say those words, they held a new intensity.

“Anyway,” I said, shaking my mind of the memory. “I looked into fetal paternity tests. They’re noninvasive, really nothing more than a blood test, so we can-”

“I understand what you’re saying,” Chris insisted, squeezing my hands. “I’ll say it again so maybe you’ll understand me.” He rested his chin on my shoulder, eyes gazing down at our hands resting over my growing stomach.

“I’ll go with you to every appointment just for a second of hearing the heartbeat and let you squeeze my hand until it breaks during labor. I’ll change diapers in the middle of the night and fight with you over getting their first word to be dada instead of mama and keep their little picture in my wallet. I’ll stay up when they have nightmares and need someone to hold them so they know it’s okay and when we’re waiting for them to come home when they’re out way past curfew. I’ll hold their hand when they learn to walk and take the training wheels off of their bike and teach them to drive,” Chris rattled off every little thing he could think to look forward to. It made my heart swell, imaging dropping them off for their first day of school and attending their graduation and everything in between, hand in hand with Chris the whole time.

Buried in my fears, all I’d been able to find were the worsts of it. Having to raise a child on my own, trying to put food on the table, making sure they had someone to watch them after school, enduring every struggle my own mother did as a single parent. I knew it would be okay if that was the case, after all I think I turned out alright. But having Chris by my side during all of it, just like I had my whole life, was too good for me to even allow myself to think.

“What I’m trying to say,” Chris said with a severe sincerity, “is that I don’t care whether or not I’m their biological father, I’ll still be there for both of you. Even if I’m not, I’ve wanted to have a family with you since we were kids ourselves. Even if he is and he wants to be a part of this kid’s life, too. Even if- God forbid, but even if we figure out we’re better off as friends, that won’t change.”

I stretched to look at Chris, barely fractions of an inch away from him. “I’m so sorry I disappeared on you. It wasn’t fair, I’m just- This is so much to ask of you. I wasn’t ready to risk losing you when our relationship is just starting,” I voiced every worry that’d been tugging at my heart, my voice cracking as the tears rose again. My hands left the grasp of his, bracing myself on his knees.

“Darling,” Chris tried to calm me, reaching for my cheek as he wiped away my tears. “That’s the best part. This is only the beginning. We’ve got so much ahead of us and by that I mean you, me, and this little one.” His strong hand fell to my stomach, reaching above the hem of my shirt and rubbing slow circles around my navel. It gave me goosebumps and this feeling I thought I’d like to have forever.

“I mean, sure, we only started dating recently,” Chris shrugged too nonchalantly for talking about bringing a life into this world, “but it’s not like we’ve only known each other for a month. I’ve been waiting for you, and for this, for my whole life.” Chris pressed a kiss against my cheek. “Listen, I love you so much. This baby, they’re going to be a part of you, a part of us, and I’ve got enough love to go around.”

“Thank you,” I said, even though it didn’t feel like nearly enough. I strained my neck to kiss Chris. “I love you, too,” I said, although I meant much more. I didn’t have the words to express the way my chest felt.

“I think I had my suspicions anyway,” Chris remarked with a cocked eyebrow and a smug smile playing on his lips.

“Yeah?” I asked with a bit of an incredulous laugh. I guess Chris knew me better than anybody else, but I didn’t even know myself. There was no way, but somehow he seemed insistent.

“Yeah, you’ve never tossed up my breakfast before,” Chris stood his ground, referencing last week’s incident. What I now recognized as morning sickness had been toying with my appetite for weeks, but I was always in the mood for his homemade pancakes, even when I suspected it was probably risky. At the time, I claimed food poisoning, but hindsight is 20/20. “Knew it had to be something other than my cooking,” Chris said, sounding awfully pleased with himself.

“Either way, it’s probably your fault,” I joked, to which Chris only shrugged, taking a break from rubbing my belly to pat Dodger in between his ears.

“At least we’ve got a lot of practice with this one,” he said, jutting his chin out to gesture at the dog laying in my lap. Dodger lifted his head and cocked it sideways, as if he was professing his innocence. “Yeah, I’m talking about you, Bubba,” Chris laughed, his chest rumbling like thunder. “Looks like you’re not gonna be an only child for much longer.”

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novantinuum · 5 years

Text

Bi the Way...

Fandom: Steven Universe

Rating: Teen

Words: 2.8K~

Pairings: Steven/Connie

Summary: Connie has a question, and also something to say.

Or: the one where Connie comes out as bisexual :D Set post Steven Universe: The Movie.

You can find the AO3 link in the reblogs! (I have to omit it from the original post these days to ensure this will show up in the tags.) If you enjoyed this, I’d greatly appreciate your support through reblogs here, or kudos on AO3 as well.

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Bi the Way...

Outside the familiar coziness of Steven’s bedroom, the late autumn rain pours steadily, the choppy waters of the Atlantic crashing onto shore with a ferociousness Connie hasn’t seen for a number of months. Historically, Beach City has been blessed to be host to consistently good weather. But even the most consistently stable meteorological systems aren’t immune to the odd unexpected shake-up. It’s a necessity to clear the air with a great thunderous clap, sometimes. It relieves pressure that’s built up long term amongst the clouds. It leaves the atmosphere noticeably cleaner, the dirt below sparkling with that fresh scent that comes about after torrents of cool rain.

On this particular afternoon, she’s found that this is a lesson that holds just as true for people as it does the weather.

It begins with a stray comment, as things often do.

They’re watching TV, the two of them, tangled together on his bed. About once a week they’ll try to have one of these cuddle sessions, just some time alone together to relax and enjoy each other’s company in private. Working alongside a myriad of Gems to aid in the restructuring of an entire society can be excruciatingly stressful at points, and so can rigorous AP classes and the eye-rolling drudgery of high school drama. There’s no placing a hierarchy on these things for them, no matter their outward difficulty or importance, they’re all just... the challenges in life they have to win. And on occasion, they’re the challenges they need a quiet break from. Both of them are no stranger to throwing themselves at a problem and working endlessly towards a solution until they hit rock bottom and crash, but over the years they’ve started to recognize this tendency for the bad habit it is. It’s okay to take 'me' time, Connie’s constantly reminding Steven (and herself) whenever she catches him about to stubbornly sneak away to the galaxy warp with clear stress lines rimming his eyes. And without fail he’ll groan halfheartedly, knowing he’s been caught red-handed, and retire to his room to relax with a book or a board game or a few rounds of Lonely Blade: Resurgence instead.

Today’s workaholic distraction is a marathon of old Under the Knife episodes. It’s been a while since they’ve binged through this show, and when Steven brought it up and she started to feel super nostalgic about it, in a flash their entertainment for the afternoon was selected.

“Gosh, I honestly forgot how good this is,” he says in the middle of an episode, nudging her arm with his elbow. “The satirical nonsense, the passion, the drama? Eh?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty pulpy,” she giggles, nudging him right back. Then, directed at the unhearing characters on screen: “Ughh, Marigold, come on, just go out with him already! We all know you like him!”

“I can’t believe they kept this a slow burn for five entire seasons,” he comments, pursing his lips. “They’re literally perfect for each other!”

Connie throws her arms down against the mattress, palms stretched wide open. “I know, right?? Adrien’s like, a total dreamboat of a man.”

“Yeah, he is pretty cute,” Steven says, an unmistakable blush coloring his face and ears.

Connie pauses upon hearing this, gazing at her boyfriend thoughtfully with a soft smile as he continues to watch this old episode with the same level of investment he exhibited upon its first airing. He props his chin in the cradle of his hands, which of course only further exaggerates the curve of his chubby cheeks. His eyes are blown wide with youthful endeavor, the TV’s glow glinting against his irises in a myriad of continuously shifting colors. He is pretty cute, she thinks, his own adorably smitten words echoing through her mind. And then that blush...

There’s a question she’s had for quite a while but has never asked. Something she’s suspected of him, but had no concrete proof of. The reason? Even if they’re best friends, and now— boyfriend and girlfriend on top of that— the idea of asking him something like this just felt too... what’s the word... invasive. Not that there’s anything wrong with discussing this sort of stuff, no, no, of course not! That’s definitely not what she means. But talking about something as important as this, she just knows it would turn into an in-depth conversation, as most worldly topics tend to do with Steven Universe, and it’s only inevitable this conversation would eventually turn back on her. On why she cared to ask in the first place. And that answer was... well, straightforward, but something she’s not sure she’s ready to broadcast. As if she’s taken command of but a single fragment of Garnet’s future vision, in her restless mind she’s already mapped out what feels like every possible response he could have to her. Most of them are no more than anxiety laced fabrications, things he would never ever dare think of with his upbringing, but believe her when she says she’s been burdened with considering every possible outcome in great, excruciating length.

Now that she knows for sure there’s a strong chance he’s the same way, however... that narrows down these possibilities significantly.

Connie threads her fingers together, gathering the courage.

Come on, you. It’s just Steven. No script, no planning, just... say it!

She opens her mouth to speak before her anxiety laden mind can beg to differ.

“By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask- do you like girls and guys?”

Steven glances away from the television set to meet her curiosity head on. “Oh, you mean like, romantically?”

Running in automatic, she nods in confirmation. Here she goes. The answer to both her spoken question, and the question of which river of possibility this conversation will careen down.

He grins, scratching at the side of his neck. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I guess I do! But I think I could like anyone, really. Guys, gals, none of the above. Doesn’t matter to me. That’s... okay, yes?”

“Silly, of course it’s okay! You don’t need my permission to like who you like. I just asked because I-“ Her heart pounds as she pauses briefly, focusing on the nervous jitters, but not in fear. Not anymore. Instead, that soft fluttering in her heart is nothing less than sheer exhilaration. She parts her lips once more, bravely speaking her inner truth into reality for the first time in her life. “I’m like that too. I... I’m bisexual.”

Her boyfriend’s whole expression lights up so bright she may as well be looking at a newborn star.

“Oh, really? That’s awesome!” he says, throwing an arm around her shoulder to side hug her. (Knowing him, his keen empathetic ability likely led him to sense the internal battle she waltzed through just to state this out loud.)

The forgotten soap opera continues to play in the background as Connie gives a bashful laugh.

“Hehe, glad you think so. You’re actually, um... the first person I’ve ever said that out loud to,” she says, blushing.

Steven looks as if he’s about to say something in response, but then he pauses— fades into a silence that’s deliberate and measured— as he gazes back at her. Drinks in the moment. Wonders how he could be so lucky to hold her trust like this, or how— heck, he could be thinking anything, she has no idea! Unlike him she can only catch small glimpses into how he feels, the truth woven like gossamer threads through his words and actions, but in this one hallowed moment she doesn’t need to guess. The spark of affection dancing within his dark eyes is soft, perhaps softer than he’s ever looked at her before.

More than anything, Connie feels seen. Years back, long before sword training and Gem missions, long before that fateful day she discovered the beautiful temple (it looked like it could very well be a Hindu goddess, and that cultural connection alone made this slice of beach instantly familiar) hidden on the other side of the hill and decided to park herself there with a book, she’d grown used to feeling invisible. Before she bravely chose to step into this world of magic, it’s as if she forgot that she even had a choice to stand out, to openly shine as the unique, extraordinary individual she is. Admittedly, she still struggles with that to this day. But whenever she’s with him, with her Steven? It’s as if her universe explodes into a kaleidoscope of dizzying color where everything is so, so beloved and worthwhile. She’s worthwhile.

She can only hope being with her makes him feel the same way.

“I know it’s silly after everything we’ve been though,” she continues in time, still having a few things on her mind she suddenly has an exhilarating need to set free, “but I always kinda worried that people... would belittle me for it, I guess. Especially my parents. That like, there’s some upper limit to the number of unusual things about my life they’ll accept.”

“It’s not that unusual, though,” Steven says with a shrug. “I mean, Ruby and Sapphire are legally married. Sure, the Gems aren’t exactly women, but they do present that way. And then Pearl was in love with Mom, of course. Oh, and Amethyst once told me, and I quote, that ‘like a whip, I swing in every direction.’”

Connie snorts at this, and even he can’t help but laugh.

“Let’s see, what else...” he muses, peering at the ceiling thoughtfully as he continues to list the queer individuals he knows of. “Jenny, Buck, and Sour Cream are all dating each other. Mr. Smiley finally reconnected for real with his old comedy partner, and they’re dating. And my dad may not be seeing anyone but he’s always been openly pansexual.”

“Well, it’s not usual in my family,” she says glumly, nestling her chin into his bed’s comforter as the terrifying possibility of rejection hits her harder than expected. Her glance roams. On the television screen, the episode they were watching had paused automatically, a message asking if they’re still there popping up. Clearly it’s been a while since anyone’s handled the remote. She blinks past tears, shame settling at the pit of her stomach for even daring to cry them when others have gone through so much worse, and you’re lucky, what do you even have to feel lost about, and suddenly she begins to feels shameful just for feeling shame, and what cyclical, bittersweet irony is that, and what’s wrong with her, why can’t she stop obsessing over distant possibilities that likely have zero chances of coming to pass, why can’t she—

Steven breaks through her downward spiral with a gentle hand on her shoulder, rubbing away the physical evidence of her stress. She melts into his touch, forever smitten by this kind of casual intimacy they get to experience together here, alone. It’s innocent, still merely the wandering hands of two teenagers barely beginning to break the boundaries between close friendship and romance, but when words fail she’s discovered that touch can be a language of its own. And right here, right now, she knows he’s talking her down from the mountain of anxiety she’s marooned herself on. He’s leapt effortlessly into the stormy sky and cradled her in his arms, ready to float back to Earth’s surface together.

Outside, the rain continues to slap in rhythmic sheets against the deck. She shivers. Maybe it’s in reaction to the gloomy weather beyond the sliding glass door, maybe it’s despite it. She has no idea.

Steven scoots forward on his belly a bit, and rolls to his side so they can talk face to face without turning their heads. During this, his shirt rides up— ever so slightly— ambient light catching on the lower facets of his gem. The reassurance found in that beautiful, familiar smile of his is dizzying. “Well, at least no matter what happens with your family, you have more than one, huh?“ he says.

“Yeah,” she breathes shakily, eyes glistening with emotion at the metaphorical hand he’s extending with that statement.

Hopefully it’ll never have to come to that, though.

“I do think my parents will be fine with it, if I ever do tell them,” she continues, dabbing the dampness from her eyes. “Especially my mom. She works with queer patients all the time at the hospital, so she’s pretty used to stuff like that. I just... get anxious sometimes.”

“Yeah, I get that. It’s tough dealing with identity stuff.”

She hums, mind immediately harking to the years he spent doubting his own personhood. Seeking any kind of physical connection she can get, she nuzzles her cheek against his forearm, which he’s currently leaning on. They lay there like that in comfortable silence for a good while. Steven, laying on his side, one hand lazily trailing through her wavy hair, and her, curled up close to his heartbeat, hugging his free arm.

“Hey, while we’re on the topic, can I ask you something?” he asks eventually.

She nods. “Anything.”

“How’d you distinguish bi from pan, when you were figuring all this out? I know they’re pretty similar, and my dad tried to explain it a while ago when I asked, but I still don’t exactly get the nuances.”

Connie shifts to sit up, pursing her lips as she considers her words here. She’s done a lot of research into queer identity in her time, checking out books from the school library and looking up stuff online on incognito mode, but there’s probably still a ton of holes in her knowledge. “Hmm, okay... so I’m no sole authority on any of this of course, but to the best of my knowledge bi means you’re attracted to two or more genders, and pan means you’re attracted to people, but like... their gender isn’t really a factor in the way you experience that at all? I‘m pretty sure? There seems to be a lot of overlap. From what I’ve read people just sorta pick whatever feels the best to them.”

“Huh, that makes sense,” Steven says. “So picking labels is kinda like fusion, then! Whenever I fuse, we decide our own name, and it’s sorta... based on a feeling, y’know?”

“Yeah! And like, with Stevonnie... Even though Amethyst kinda inspired the name, they still had to figure out who they were as a person on their own.”

“Exactly! And then, even if two fusions are made of the same gem types, they could still have different names because they’re different people, and that’s what they choose. Anyways, that’s just what this reminded me of,” he says, glancing up at her with a bashful smile. “Honestly... I don’t actually know how I identify.”

The corner of her lips edge upwards. “That’s fine,” she reassures him with a pat, “it took me a while to sort through all this stuff.”

“I really wanna figure it out, have a word for it, but nothing’s clicked yet. For a while I thought I was pansexual like my dad, but that didn’t quite... feel right. Like—“ he too shifts to sit up, folding his feet under his legs as he continues to speak— “I love getting to kiss you, but no offense, I don’t... know if I'll ever want to have- to do anything more than that, y’know?”

She snickers at his inability to simply say the word sex. He’s seventeen now, he knows full well what that is, yet still his faux innocence on the matter remains. It’s one of his charms.

“None taken. Love and attraction is a bizarre, complicated world.”

“You can say that again.”

“Bogus.”

“Whack,” he agrees with a playful grin. Reaching for the remote, he presses play a few times to wake up their streaming site. The episode starts up right where it left off, and they continue to watch together, the air somehow feeling sweeter after her much needed release of emotion.

The satirical medical drama quickly fades into the background, though, as Steven’s hand curls around hers.

“Hey,” he says quietly, blushing. “Even if I don’t know everything about labels yet, I do know one thing for sure.”

She raises a curious brow. “What?”

“I know I love you.”

And before she can open her mouth to respond in kind, he’s kissing her cheek, swooping in like a bandit just like she did for the first time all those months ago, and her heart swells with affection for this boy. He leaves her with one kiss, then two. At the exact moment she turns her head to reciprocate— to sneak a gentle kiss to his cheek right back— he turns as well and she ends up meeting him at the lips. It’s but a quick peck, but she's almost floating. The two of them stifle a laugh as they gaze at each other, their noses almost brushing together.

“Hey, it stopped raining,” he comments then, grinning against her cheek.

She drapes her arms around his shoulders, and hugs him close. Her eyes trail to the glass sliding door. The clouds outside are still thick, but after releasing their load they’re visibly lighter now.

“Yeah,” she breathes, feeling her muscles finally relax as she sinks into her best friend’s embrace. “Yeah, I guess it finally has.”

#su #steven universe #connie maheswaran #connverse #su fanfiction #su fanfic #my writing stuff

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glambitions-a · 4 years

Text

begging you please, baby, show me your world.

prompt : none! i just saw this gif and my heart melted.

cotillion was rapidly approaching and you still hadn’t acquired an exclusive date. which, if you’re being honest, wasn’t that big of a deal but still, it mattered to everyone else. and as a rule, if it mattered to everybody else, it mattered to you. that’s how it always was in auradon, and that’s how it will stay.

when you heard that jane was in charge of decorating for said party, you were ecstatic. jane and you had grown up together. but, to be fair, everyone in auradon had. she was shy and sweet and pretty in a way that other people just weren’t. something had connected between you two and you had stayed close friends even where others had drifted. you found her one day crying, and she had always been a bit emotional but you knew there had to be something more. it turns out she had an anxiety disorder, one that took some hiding because anything that wasn’t perfect in auradon was pushed out from society, excluded. you hadn’t even known until she told you one dark and humid summer night.

then everything worsened because the vks came to auradon, and your sweet childhood friend had only gotten more anxious. she started flinching when people touched her or when somebody raised their voices even slightly she apologized. she couldn’t stand to even breath around the vks, making it difficult because she appeared to have every class with them. luckily, you did too. jane’s mom seemed to think the two of you would be just lovely tour guides, which didn’t make a ton of sense but it was fine.

except it really wasn’t fine because neither of you really knew or liked the vks, the prejudice that your families had taught you were crowding your views with tales of their horrifying parents. when you looked at mal you couldn’t help but think about green glowing eyes and deathly curses, and evie with poison apple residue still left on claw like nails. carlos’ soft expressions seemed to blend with crazed ones his mother would adorn and jay couldn’t help but love shiny things, not unlike his greed filled father.

and yeah, you never suspected her to turn into the conceited mean girl that she did for a whole of one day, but she had always been a follower. it was strange, hearing her voice not used for kindness when you were so used to it being that way. you couldn’t take her seriously when she told you that she didn’t want to hang out with you, thinking she was just busy. what a surprise for you to find she was borderline bullying villain kids.

but that was in the past, she had apologized to everybody and even if you were still a little disappointed in her, you never showed it. now she was going out of her mind planning a prestigious event with little to no help. in your mind, that was the most ridiculous thing of all.

it was almost worse that it was on a boat, because that meant you had to be even more careful with what to pick. you had offered her help multiple times but she wanted to do this, she said it was her way of making up for bad-mouthing the vks.

her stress levels were through the roof now, and it didn’t help that she was also cheerleading and helping ben with his relationship with mal.

and honestly, it is becoming harder and harder to talk to jane because of this. your cheerful best friend is often very preoccupied and filled with many anxious notions. you have tried to get her to just relax and to think about anything other than the now dreaded cotillion. but, the minute you seem to get her to calm down and refocus her attention on a different topic, she starts to chitter off about her endless to-do list and rushes away to find something to do.

and, to make things worse, her anxiety was starting to rub off on you as well. her constant talk of the decorations and color scheme had you nervous for her updates, worried for her. but, in the end you were proud of her. proud of her for coming out of her tightly packed shell to socialize when she wasn’t running around playing party planner.

you knew it was hard for her, she had always been shy and insecure, even against your protests. she told you how difficult it was for her, constantly having to ask people questions when she’d rather just fall back behind someone else and let them do the talking.

unsurprisingly, these days everything was getting to her. it was almost worse than when the vks arrived, it was only slightly better because of the counselling she had indulged in over the past months.

one of her many worries had to do with her own dress for cotillion, but you and many others assured her that evie’s work was nothing less than perfection. you knew she had insecurities about her appearance dug deep inside of her, and truly you wished she could see what you and everybody else saw.

her own mother was putting constant pressure on her and that was a normal occurrence, but her little magic stunt at ben’s coronation only made it worse. your words of comfort only fell flat on jane, causing a pang in your heart.

it takes everything in you not to snap at the older woman, the only reason being of how unfairly she treats jane and that was reason enough to you. she had even gone far enough to force her to take a week of remedial goodness, making her sit with the vks in long drawn out lectures. you had to remind yourself and several others around you that they were not the enemies, their parents were. and in your opinion, you couldn’t punish people because you were scared of them.

but now, she was pacing crazily around her dorm with you sitting on her bed with a book propped up in your lap. you tried not to notice every time she looked at you with her pretty green eyes, rosy cheeks, and when she said your name that butterflies were practically trying to rapture your rib cage.

it’s not like you liked her or anything (lie), but she was so pretty, in a very platonic way. (also a lie) she deserved so much and you could never understand why she puts herself down.

you were smart enough to know that you’re not really supposed to feel that way about friends. but you were also dumb enough not to care. it was easier to pretend like you didn’t like her than actually telling her that you did.

“do you think that my dress will look okay? it’s not that i don’t trust evie to make it look good, because i do! but i just don’t think it will look good on me.” her eyes down cast to her feet as she sits down on the bed next to you.

“you are going to look beautiful, i promise.” you wrap your arms around her in an awkward side hug that makes your heart almost collapse.

she sighed, “thank you, i’m sure you will as well.” her little comment makes you glad she can’t see the stupid grin on your face. “i-i mean, you always will, but-”

“i get what you meant, thank you.” you pulled back and kissed her cheek softly. it was supposed to be casual but you could feel the heat of her cheeks and the beat of her heart through your hands from where they were on her shoulders.

she giggled softly before standing up, taking your hand gently in her own to pull you up with her. every time her skin touched yours your heart lit up, and although you weren’t very obvious with your feelings towards her, you weren’t completely distant either. the two of you had always been clingy touchy with each other, so you hoped it wouldn’t surprise her that much if or when you decided to tell her.

“i have to go ask mal something, thanks for spending time with me.” she says sheepishly before letting go of your hand to leave the room.

“jane.” she makes a sort of ‘hm?’ sound as she turns to face you, almost out of the door way. “you don’t have to thank me for hanging out with you, we’re best friends. i’d hang out with you anytime.”

her face grows into a smile as she nods happily, glowing, almost. “thank- i mean, i really like hanging out with you too.” the two of you sort of stand there smiling like idiots in love for a few seconds before she speaks again, seemingly knocked out of a trance, “i have to go, bye!” you smile softly at her retreating figure, her happiness infecting you like the plague.

the next hour or two consisted of you pining helplessly contemplating taking jane to cotillion, and yeah the two of you were planning to go with a bunch of people, (in a limo, which was pretty exciting all things considered, you had never been in one.) but the more you thought about her it, the more it made you want to pluck up the courage and ask her.

deep in your thoughts, you had eventually left her dorm (you had a key, since you didn’t know how to lock pick like the vks did) in the midst of your carelessness you bumped into evie grimhilde who was walking very quickly in your direction.

“oh i’m so sorry!” seemed to jump out of both of your mouths at the same time as the two of you bent down to pick up the scattered pieces of fabric and note paper with evie’s intricate designs on them, not leaving much time to recover, the some of the papers were still floating down.

once you had gathered everything hastily you thrust out your material filled hands towards her, “here.” you smiled apologetically at her for the mess you had caused, hoping she hadn’t lost anything.

she smiled softly as the two of you stood up, her brushing off her dress and you still looking around you for any remaining materials. “it’s fine, i should’ve been looking where i was going too, it’s not all your fault.” she says teasingly.

you nodded and laughed softly, “yeah, i’m sorry about that. i was just too deep in my head i guess.”

she cocked an eyebrow up, “are you thinking about something?” she smirks and leans forward, “or someone?”

you nearly drop dead right in front of her because of all things, that was not what you thought she would say. instead of stuttering out something you try to regain yourself a little bit, “what if i was thinking about someone?” you cross your arms and shift your weight onto your left leg slightly.

“do i know this someone?” she teases, brushing a piece of blue hair behind a pale ear. to be fair, you and evie had become fast friends after the two of you were both in the library looking for the book ‘ten ways to bake an apple pie’ you for your culinary arts class, and her for meeting snow white. when the two of you are together, you spend a fair bit of time in the kitchens trying recipes, baking really wasn’t your strong suit but you didn’t mind.

you stick your tongue out and scrunch up your nose, “maybe you do, so what?” really, it didn’t matter if she knew or not. it wasn’t like anything was going to happen, jane was way out of your league in your mind.

“does this someone happen to be your childhood best friend that you pine after?” she sounds so cocky about it that even if she had said ‘are you going to the moon?’ it would be hard to tell her you weren’t.

and okay, that makes you blush a little, which only confirms her statement unfortunately. you didn’t think you were that obvious with your feelings, but it seemed you were wrong. “maybe it is, you’ll never know.” you sniff childishly.

she beams and takes you arm so suddenly that you yelp a bit. the blue haired teen continues to drag you down the hallway to her and mal’s dorm before kicking the door closed with the deadly looking heel of her shoes.

“what are you doing?” you gasp as she flits about the room grabbing pieces of light blue fabric, leaving you sitting on one of the frilly canopy beds. you looked over to see the one you were not sitting on was un-made and had and blue and yellow jersey strewn across it along with a pair of purple pair of boots, one shoe on the bed and one shoe off. you guessed that you had ended up choosing evie’s bed even if it was by accident.

“jane’s dress is blue, so i’m going to make your outfit blue too!” she says it so cheerful like it explains everything, which it doesn’t. you had already asked evie to make your outfit, and you hadn’t really told her any details but you wanted to see what she could come up with.

why would she match it to jane’s dress though? yeah the two of you were going together to cotillion but not together with each other, other people were there too.

and then it hit you, she must’ve thought you and jane were going to cotillion together, like together together.

damn.

“evie, i’m not- we’re not.” you take a deep breath as she stops moving. “she doesn’t know.” your heart pangs in your chest, and you really wish she did know, because even if she didn’t like you back at least you didn’t feel like you were hiding anything anymore.

her face dropped from the smile as she came over to sit next to you, fabrics forgotten on the desk next to her sewing machine. “oh, i’m so sorry.” she puts a hand on your arm, “i just thought, you two are so cute together.” she purses her lips.

you smile halfheartedly, “it’s okay, i shouldn’t have said anything. like, we’re going together with a bunch of people as friends. i’ve only just started to think about taking her, but i don’t think she’d want to.”

evie made a face, “i’ll get you two together even if it’s the last thing i do, even if it’s just to prove to you that she likes you. i’m going to do it, you’ll see!”

you watch her as she stands up and grabs her phone off of the nightstand next to her bed, and it appeared she was typing something very quickly, with a focused look on her face. “evie...” you whine petulantly, really hoping she wasn’t texting jane, because that would be embarrassing. you trusted her, but you also wouldn’t put it past her to try something like that. “please tell me you’re not texting jane.”

she laughs and looks back at you, “come on, i’d never do that to you. but, mal’s bringing her over right now.” you make a really strange sounding noise as she pulls you up. “so we should get you ready.”

you stand there open mouthed as evie goes back to her fabric pile, “i can stitch up some old things free of cost, sit tight.”

“thank you, but i don’t understand.”

“we’re going to get jane and you together for cotillion, just you wait.” she holds the pieces of fabric she finds up to your body, measuring you simultaneously.

“it won’t work,” you sigh sadly and look at her. “there’s just no way i’m sorry.”

“oh, shut up. you’re amazing, you look amazing and you’re going to look amazing-er.” she tuts and returns to her work.

you laugh at her fabulous vocabulary as she continues to stitch and measure. you start to settle down as it seems that jane will never get there, your heart dies down in your chest.

you feel faint when you hear a knock at the door and a voice that belongs to a former purple haired fairy, “hey, it’s mal!”

“and jane’s here too!” squeaks a cute little voice. and decidedly, that’s what makes your heart pound in your chest the most. evie seems to notice and gives you a look, which makes you straighten yourself out as she calls out to mal that she would open the door in a minute.

evie gives you a hug in encouragement before opening the door to reveal a bored looking mal and an anxious looking jane. (who’s face melts into a smile upon seeing you)

“hey m, i need to talk to you outside for a minute.” evie looks at you slyly and takes the girl in question outside with her. jane’s face softens a little bit from confusion, but as the door closed, you took her soft, small hand in yours to guide her over to where you were sitting before.

“um, i need to ask you something.” you try to keep the nervousness out of your tone, but it’s obvious by the concerned look on jane’s face that you must’ve failed miserably.

“it’s nothing bad! i’m just worried about what you’ll say, is all.” you gnaw on the inside of your bottom lip anxiously. “uhm, it is kind of important though.”

jane sits up, “well i need to tell you something important too, and i’m worried about what you’ll say, sort of.”

hope blooms in your chest at her words, maybe you did have a chance after all. it goes without saying that you wouldn’t be doing this if not for a blue haired princess probably on the other side of the door listening in.

“okay well do you want to first, or should i?” you leaned closer to her out of habit, silently chastising youself you lean back to where you were before, fiddling unconsciously.

“i’ll go,” she swallows and says in a voice so soft you can barely hear, “i like you.”

you try not to smile too hard because jane looks so nervous and you don’t want to scare her. you have liked her for so long, and have tried to convince yourself that you didn’t almost as long. your heart is so warm in your chest that you feel like you’ve drunken a cup of hot chocolate. “i like you too, for a while now, actually.” the volume of your voice matches hers and the softness of this whole conversation shakes you.

the both of you are softly smiling and you reach across to hold her hand, “i wanted to ask if you wanted to go to cotillion with me, like as a date.” your voice hasn't fallen above a whisper and you realize that evie and mal are most definitely listening in because you could never hear their voices outside the door.

jane beamed and practically jumped to hug you, “yes! i mean, of course, i would really like that.” she giggles as you plant a kiss on her cheek, but this time is means more to the both of you.

you were about to say something else before you heard a “yes bitch!” from beyond the door and evie scolding mal for being too loud. the two of you laughed as you went to open the door, ready to thank evie with everything in you for your date at cotillion.

ʚĭɞ | as you can tell, i flourish in my natural habitat of writing fluffy pining idiots. somebody please dm me links to more jane fanfics if there are some, i need to be fed !! i’m working on a second part to my audrey centric post d3 fic, so stay tuned for that :) an uma x ofc series will also (hopefully) be coming, before or after that i’m not sure yet. i’ve got a few aus lined up too, so i’ll be writing whenever i can! be sure to request any writing you desire, i write for a few different fandoms but i’m currently loving descendants right now. - rory

#jane x reader #jane x reader descendants #jane fairy x reader #jane daughter of fairy godmother #jane descendants #my writing #jane fanfiction #descendants fanfiction #d2 #descendants two #fluff #one shot #gender nuetral reader #ak!reader #tw ; anxiety

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littledreamybeth · 5 years

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Daddy to be

A/N: Even though I read through, it still hope there aren’t any grammar, spelling etc. mistakes. Enjoy! Like, Share, Comment!! ❤ (Pictures are not mine)

I have never expected that two lines would bring me so hard to tears that I wouldn’t be able to breathe. Sitting on the cold tiles of our bathroom, I cannot help but stare at the positive pregnancy test in between my thumb and index finger while every second another hard sob hits me, desperately escaping my mouth. I place my hand in front of my lips to mute and control the cries. The tears blurry my complete vision, I can’t see anything properly. Even if it doesn’t seem like it in the first place; I’m still so relieved and happy.

Long enough have I been waiting to see this result.

‘Thank you… thankyouthankyouthankyou’ is the only way I can describe how I’m feeling right now. When the two lines have slightly appeared at the beginning, I thought I didn’t see right. But then they’ve become more and more prominent, and well, here we are. I’m a future mummy. Hopefully.

I get up to clean my face. Cold water hits my skin, brining me back to my senses. Once I have dried my face, I immediately grab my phone to call my gynecologist. I really hope that this time we’re lucky, and the test doesn’t turn out to be a false alarm.

***

Only a few days later I find out that I’m indeed pregnant. The days until then have dragged on endlessly, so that it almost drove me insane. It has been another challenge to keep my feelings hidden from Harry, who has no idea about anything yet. I didn’t want to tell him until I had a final confirmation. I have been a shaky mess when my gynecologist called me into her office after some test, and only with pleasure has she announced that I am 100 percent and truly pregnant. I couldn’t believe my ears but deep down I have already felt it. Since I’ve seen the positive test, I’ve known that I am going to be a mother.

Now I’m sitting here and thinking about how to tell my family and friends about the entire thing.

Harry is currently at the studio, letting me have enough time to come up with a surprise. And since it’s Friday today- a day in which both of our families and Harry’s former members and friends gather around at our place to have a good time- it gives me the perfect opportunity to do everything at once.

After a while, I have the perfect idea. I go to my study and look for a card, which I find in my cupboard. Angels are drawn on its cover. It really fits to our situation. Then, I’m turning on my laptop in order to google how I can announce a pregnancy. Truth to be told, I’m not as creative as Harry is, which makes me dependent on the internet, but I hope it doesn’t matter. Clicking on Pinterest, I finally find a sentence that I want to use.

It’s just one sentence but very simple, and the message is clear and understandable.

Once I’m finished with a few changes, I shove the card into an envelope and place it into my favorite book at our bookshelf that stands in the living room. I’m sure no one will even spare a glance at it. Then, I maneuver myself into the kitchen in which I spend the next few hours to prepare some snacks for our guests. This time I’m extremely excited because after this day, nothing will be the same anymore. Our lives are going to change.

***

The evening is going very well so far. Children’s laughter fills our entire house. My parents converse with Anne, Harry goes around and distributes drinks on a plate to the 1D boys and their wives, Gemma chats with my brother. And I- I just watch the whole scenery with a smile adorning my face.

I haven’t had the guts to tell them yet, but I know that every passing minute is wasted time. I need to tell them.

“Do you want a drink, love?” Harry, who suddenly stands in front of me, asks. I flinch. I must’ve been very lost in my thoughts.

“What?” I look down at the plate. “Oh, no. No drinks for me tonight,” I smile.

“Why is that?”

You need and excuse, Y/N. Hurry! “I don’t feel like drinking,” I state. I can badly tell you that I’m pregnant, darling, or it will spoil the surprise.

“Okay…” Harry reacts, eyeing me weirdly. I really hope he doesn’t suspect anything yet. He knows I never turn down a drink, no matter what. I sigh out when he distances himself from me.

I have to do it, I tell myself. Now or never. Well, not ‘never’, I have to do it eventually, but you know what I mean.

My legs lead me to the bookshelf where I grab the envelope out of its hiding spot. No one really notices me, too occupied with something else while I’m minding my own business.

Then I clear my throat, gaining everyone’s attention. My fingers begin to tremble just as myself, and I’m afraid of losing my voice when I start to talk. My gaze wanders at my parents first, who spread a feeling of safety and calmness whenever I look at them, then at Gemma and Anne who accepted me from the moment I’ve met them and who welcomed me into their hearts, and finally my eyes meet the ones of the young man that I love so much. My heart beats against my chest, threatening to burst out. I take a deep breath before I let my voice echo in the entire room.

“Harry, I have something for you,” I say. “Can you please come here?”

My husband looks at me confused just like the others, but he still fulfills my order.

“What’s this about, love?” he asks once he stands next to me. Instead of answering his question, I place the white envelope into his hands.

“What’s in there?”

“Please just read it,” I urge him, “it’s very important.”

“Y/N, is everything alright?” My mother speaks to me. I don’t know why she thinks that something’s wrong, but I ease her mind by assuring her, “Yes, mum. There is nothing to be worried about.”

When I turn back to Harry, he has already torn off the envelope and now holds the card in his hands. He looks at me again, trying to read anything from my expression, however, I’m not giving away anything. I stay neutral as much as possible.

“Is this something like a confession?” he laughs, you could see his nervousness. How he hit the bull’s eye with his suspicion!

“You’ll find out when you read it,” I shrug with my shoulders.

My husband finally opens the card. I can hear the rhythm of my heartbeat. Bum..bum… bumbumbumbum. Heat rushes through my entire body.

I repeat what I have noted down on that card in my head over and over again.

“The butterflies in my stomach will turn into 4 tiny feet.”

Harry observes the written words for a little moment, and his eyes widen as he understands what they mean. He looks like as if something had punched him in the stomach, stealing the air from his lungs. Different emotions are displayed on his face, but only one dominates- shock. I notice his shaky fingers trying to keep the card in his hands. His mouth opens and closes, not being able to find the right words to express his feelings. I cannot blame him though- I even had no proper words for it.

Everyone directs their gaze on Harry, and worry is written on their expressions. They are probably wondering what has caught him so off guard. There aren’t actually many things in the world that makes Harry speechless- this one, however, clearly does.

After exchanging a few glances around the room, Gemma is the first one to cut the silence.

“Harry, what’s wrong with you?” she asks him. She is just as oblivious to the news as her brother had been a few minutes ago. Like I said, I haven’t truly told anyone. Harry, who still disbelievingly eyes the card, finally breaks from his frozen position, and looks directly at me. His eyes speak volumes.

“What’s written on that card?” someone questions from the back. Niall, I believe.

Suddenly, a heavy sob overwhelms my husband, making him instantly fall down on knees. He cries loudly like I have never seen him cry before, with both arms raised up to the ceiling as if he wanted to thank god for this wonderful, life-changing blessing. I can contain my own tears only with difficulty, instantly crouching down to his eye level. The tears in his eyes run down his cheeks like a waterfall. I bring my thumbs up to wipe them away.

Anne, followed by Gemma, has reached us, lifting up the card Harry has let fall down from the ground and reading it with her daughter. It doesn’t take too long for them to connect the dots.

“No way!” my mother-in-law screams. “No way!”

“Shut the fuck up!” Gemma joined in, “Are you kidding me, Y/N?! Pregnant?! And with TWINS?! Holy shit!!”

My mum jumps out of the couch, also with a scream escaping her mouth. “What?! What?! I’m gonna be a grandma?!” Then she collapses against my brother, who still doesn’t seem to be able to register what’s going on. My father shouts, “Really? Really?”

I look at them with a genuine smile on my lips. It’s confirmation enough. Meanwhile, I can hear the others either clapping or sharing our joy, congratulating us, which I reciprocate with gratitude. Gemma slings her arms around her mum, hugging her tightly, and I can see how excited they are to become nana and aunt. My own mum is still overwhelmed, but I know that she feels the same as we do.

“Oh my, I cannot believe this.” Gemma breathes, fanning with her hands to suppress her emotions.

Around that chaos and conversations, I try to lift up Harry back to his wobbly feet. His cries lessen from one second to another, and he looks at me again. Deeply. I take out a handkerchief and gently begin to clean his face.

“Are you serious?” Harry croaks, his eyes full of happy tears, yet I can see a light glint of doubt behind them. “You’re not joking, right? This is true?” I shake my head hard in agreement while I wrap my arms comfortingly around his middle, pressing my front against his. Of course, it is not! Never- I stress, never could I bring myself to joke about a serious issue like pregnancy. Especially not in front of our family and friends. I know how bad Harry has wished to become a father- so bad that whenever we unfortunately had a negative result, he would lock himself in our bedroom and only come out after hours with puffy, red eyes- so why would I traumatize him by pulling such horrible a prank on him?

The burden of not being a father weighed heavily on his shoulders for months, and the failed attempts to have a baby dragged down his mood every passing day. I’ve seen it many times. Especially after the way he would gaze at his friends’ children whenever we babysit them, the way he would interact and hold them in his arms, and play with them. His green orbs are always full of love. It was at those moments that I had the urge to give him a child as soon as possible, just as he craved for, however, not everything works the way you want it, does it? I’ve tried to encourage him, myself included, to be patient and keep trying- that one day we would be lucky enough to become parents. Patience has a limit, I am aware of that, and the long wait would often tear a little bit of it down. But I’ve talked to myself into believing that at the end, the wait is going to be worth it. And it totally has been! We aren’t blessed with only one but two angels who will join our family soon.

“When did you find out?” Harry questions, burying his nose in my hair.

“Only a few days ago.”

“How far along are you?”

“8 weeks.”

“And you’re telling me this now?” he asks, a hint of fake offense underlining his voice.

“I wanted to make sure that the test was correct, so I immediately booked an appointment with my gynecologist. And of course, I had to plan how I wanted to deliver the message.”

Harry laughs, delicately kissing my forehead.

“So, we are really pregnant, aren’t we?”

“We definitely are.”

I grab the ultrasound picture I have hidden out of my jeans pocket.

“Look,” I say, as a point at the little shapes depicted on it. “That’s Baby A and this one is Baby B.”

I watch him as he observes the sonogram with awe. He looked very intensely at our tiny babies, marking them not only into his mind but also into his heart.

“I still cannot believe this is happening,” he admits.

“Right? It seems like a dream to me.”

The others in the room are long forgotten and it feels like as if only Harry and I exist. We are in our own bubble. From the back I can faintly hear someone saying not to disturb us for a little bit and let the newly parents enjoy the announcement. I cannot focus on anything else anyway. I only have eyes for the ultrasound picture and my husband.

“We deserve it,” Harry stresses determined.

“We do,” I agree.

Harry bends downs to me and places a tender kiss on my lips. I can feel all his emotions that he pours into our kiss, making my heart flutter and burn with love. His warm hand gently touches and caresses my belly, drawing circles with his fingertips. When we pull away, he rests his forehead against mine, his minty breath hits my lips again when he whispers, “I’m gonna be a daddy.”

tags ❤ : @hes-writer, @hes-writer2, @sad-little-asshole, @tpwkal

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telekinsesis · 4 years

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"🎭The Masked Autistic Quiz🎭

If you’ve spent your life ‘faking normal, you might not look autistic to the casual observer. So I’ve made a questionnaire that’s tailored to the masking autistic adult.

#ActuallyAutistic #AllAutistics"

1. Have you ever felt as if you were missing the built-in instruction manual that everyone else seemed to possess?

Yes. I had to slowly learn how basic things worked while others seemed to instinctively get it.

Did you spend an inordinate amount of time learning to copy the behavior of other kids so that they wouldn’t realize you were different?

Yes. I always just wanted to fit in and have friends and be liked, but I always felt different than them.

2. Are you able to make eye contact, but would much rather NOT make eye contact? Have you taught yourself to ‘cheat’ by looking between the eyes or at the eyebrow? Does eye contact make it harder to think clearly?

I can't handle eye contact for longer than a couple of seconds. Most of the time I find a way to avoid it, I can only remember doing it in stare contests with my sister or for comedic purposes.

3. When you’re alone do you make random noises or repeat interesting words to yourself? Do you move your hands or feet because staying still feels ‘wrong?’ Bonus points if you do this around other people.

I'm always shaking/bouncing my leg. Sometimes I hold my breath for no reason or find myself making involuntary noises with my throat. Every once in a while I also say random things.

4. Do people refer to you as a ’space cadet’ or a ‘day-dreamer’, even though those terms make no sense to you? Do you appreciate unusual things like constellations in the popcorn ceiling, tricks of light, numbers and textures?

I am always daydreaming or spacing out, I would be more called out for it as a teen than I am now. / I don't find those things unusual but I love noticing them and the little details about it, I do appreciate it.

5. Do your anxiety levels spike when there is a change of plans, or when somebody calls, rings a doorbell or sends an email/text? Do people perceive you as rude and antisocial for being unappreciative of their surprise attacks?

Yes, yes, yes. Unless it's someone I deeply trust (sometimes not even then though), sudden changes of plans or routine upset and stress the hell out of me. Phone calls can give me anxiety and sometimes I need a lot of time to reply to a simple text.

6. Do you have a hard time understanding why people feel the way they do without a personal point of reference? Are you able to relate much more once you’ve tied their experience to something that’s happened to you?

I can't remember or realize if I do, but I do know that I'm better at "empathizing (?)" when I relate to the situation in one way or another. My closest friends are people I share similar experiences/feelings with and we can get each other.

7. Do people jokingly call you ‘OCD’ for your organizational strategies or list making, even though there are perfectly rational reasons for your behavior? Does this ‘obsessive’ behavior also bring you a sense of calm and order when you’re allowed to see it though to completion?

Not really, but my sister who's a psychologist thinks I have "obsessive/compulsive traits" or whatever because of how often I wash my hands. I also enjoy organizing my saved files, even if it takes me hours, and feel much better when they are.

8. Do you have social anxiety, but only because you have a hefty track record of rejection due to missed social cues, difficulty navigating conversations and an inability to understand what other people are thinking?

I have been diagnosed with social and generalized anxiety but I don't know why, it's just my brain. I do remember it starting/getting worse when I got to high school, around the same time my depression kicked in.

9. Do you avoid places because of the overwhelming noise, visual clutter, bright lights or overwhelming smells? Do you avoid busy stores and do your shopping when things aren’t as busy?

I don't go out a lot overall, I like staying home better. I don't know the exact reason why and when I go out it's hardly ever to packed loud places because I'm very introverted, but I also hate when people talk too loudly 90% of the time.

10. Do you have a built-in ‘BS detector’ and despise playing along with things that infantilize you? Have people said you’re ‘not a team player’ for complaining about pointless gift exchanges or parties? Do you need to understand the purpose of a task?

Yes. I don't complain but I don't participate either, again, I'm very anxious and introverted so unless I feel comfortable with those people, I don't like socializing much. I don't remember ever doing tasks without purpose, I don't think they exist in the first place, everything has a purpose.

11. When you get happy and excited, do people say you’re ‘too much’ or tell you to calm down? Are you unusually animated when genuinely excited, yet find it hard to fake this enthusiasm on demand for others?

When I'm in a good mood, I'm in a good mood. When I was younger and participated in things I was passionate about I would get told to tone it down and be less "loud" or "annoying" because the way I expressed my excitement was too extra. I found it easier to blend in and calm myself externally after called out.

12. Do you feel so closely connected to your hobbies that you can blissfully engage in them for hours and have a hard time stopping for anything else? Does losing interest in them make you feel as if you’ve lost a part of yourself?

Yes, definitely, yes.

13. Is driving a stressful and exhausting experience for you? Do you tend to take the same familiar route every time and even go so far as to avoid stressful intersections and fast highways? Do you struggle making quick decisions behind the steering wheel?

I don't drive.

14. Do you feel as if you relate to animals more than other people? As a child, did you secretly suspect that you were from another planet or species than that of your classmates? When meeting someone similar to yourself, do you feel like you’re ‘home’, so to speak?

I relate more to cats than people I know. I still do, even though I rationally know it's impossible, kinda. It's not very often but yes.

15. Do you abhor the idea of making conversation with people who share nothing in common with you? Would you happily go out of your comfort zone to talk with others about a shared hobby or passion?

My classmates gave me anxiety but I would talk for hours with one of my sister's friends because she liked classic movies too.

16. Do people assume you’re angry at them when you’re not? Do you smile or laugh inappropriately, upsetting others? Have people told you that you have a ‘resting bitch face’?

I have been asked multiple times if I was okay or if I was sad when I was nothing of the sort, but maybe I was simply depressed? I remember laughing and then realizing it wasn't a good moment but I don't remember it happening a lot or why I did it.

17. Do you have an unusually monotonous or singsong voice? Do you have a hard time modulating your volume and speak with inappropriate volume for the situation?

I don't know, I don't think so but I constantly do get called out for not speaking clearly or mumbling or talking too low or fast even when I think I'm being clear or think it's possible to understand me regardless.

18. Have you purposely chosen interests that fly under the radar as ‘normal’, yet you still prefer to enjoy peripheral aspects of that interest, such as studying the stats of baseball players or making elaborate backstories for your Barbie dolls?

As a kid I would create novelas around my Barbie dolls, when I made pillow forts with my friends I would create dramatic/tragic stories and wanted to act them out with them. Currently I don't "choose" interests or care about how "normal" they appear, I'm just naturally invested in things.

19. Do you find it inordinately difficult to listen to someone when other people are talking? Do you have a hard time carrying on a conversation in a loud or crowded place?

I don't know but I don't think so, when a person is loud enough I can hear them over other noises, even if it's by a little. Again, I don't usually go to loud or crowded places so I can't remember.

20. Do emotions and sensory overload build up into a thunderstorm of rage that you have no choice but to ride out until it passes? This might be a meltdown. Alternately, does the buildup result in you retreating from the world and ‘zoning out’? This would be a ‘shutdown’.

Yes.

21. While not officially criteria, this is something that many autistics will relate to: Do gender, romantic and sexuality norms seem arbitrary and fake? Even if you don’t identify as LGBTQ+, do you hesitate when referring to yourself as cisgender or heterosexual?

I'm a lesbian that questions her sexuality at times and have no idea what my gender is, I just know I'm not cis.

22. Have you developed coping mechanisms such as lists, schedules, stacks of paper, alarms and reminders to help you function as an adult? Would you still be able to get by without them?

I'm currently not doing anything that requires me functioning like an adult and don't remember what I did when I had to but I would never be able to be an adult.

23. Do you go through periods where you can’t even remember how to make dinner or get ready for work, and even the easiest of tasks seem insurmountable because you can’t fathom completing the steps to completion?

I don't forget how to do things but I can forget to do them or it's almost impossible to bring myself to physically do them.

24. Do you find it easier to do things when they’re a passion or ‘special interest’? Were you good at cooking/gardening/organizing when it was interesting, but find it impossible to start once the passion has abandoned you?

Always. I have abandoned many projects once I lost interest even if I was somewhat good at it at the start.

25. Do you have a hard time recognizing or remembering faces? While not all autistics are ‘face blind’ many of us are.

I don't think there are many faces I need to recognize or remember, and I have a shitty memory anyway so I don't know.

26. Is keeping and maintaining relationships difficult for you, even if you’re loyal to them? Do you suddenly remember a good friend or relative that you literally forgot about for months or years? Is it hard to initiate conversations without a prompt, even with friends?

Yes. If I'm close and trust them, it's not hard to text them first but I don't always know what to exactly say or talk about.

27. Lastly, do you get emotional and feel ‘seen’ when reading the above tweets and other content by autistics? There might be a reason for that.

I do some and most times, but I don't wanna assume things.

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parachutingkitten · 4 years

Text

Good Morning, Mr. Borg: Ch 3

Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2

Sorry it’s been like years and years since I’ve updated! I promise I’ll try to be more consistent from now on. Should be easier now that I’ve drawn up an outline for myself! Also, welcome to Birthday Week everyone! Stay tuned for chapter updates all week long!

Happy Reading!

I didn’t remember waking up. But there I was, staring at the ceiling, my body lying awkwardly against the couch cushions as two familiar voices prattled on in the background. I shifted my weight, trying to sit up. The sofa was the kind that would swallow you as you moved, acting like quicksand as I struggled to get my bearings. Once I had sat up, I began rolling out my right shoulder, looking around the room. I was back in Mr. Borg’s office- He and Cryptor were huddled around his computer while angrily debating something.

“Can’t you tell what it’s doing?”

“I’ve told you! The system can’t see it! Security hasn’t been breached; it says everything is clear!”

It was then that I remembered what had knocked me out in the first place. I lifted my hand, examining my finger. There was still a small puncture wound, but other than that, no trace of anything being wrong.

“What happened?” I asked, interrupting their discussion.

“Ah, sleeping beauty finally awakes from pricking her finger.” Cryptor chuckled, turning to look at me.

“Drew! Are you alright?” Mr. Borg asked, frantically turning around, wheeling himself towards me. “The serum shouldn’t have harmed you. You might feel a bit dizzy though.”

“I’m fine,” I assured him as he reached my side. “But what was that?”

“Just an emergency security measure. Why it activated, we’re still not sure,” He sighed.

“Whatever the reason, it’s now somehow spread to the rest of the tower security.” Cryptor chimed in, still at the computer at the far side of the room.

“What?!” I stood up, surprised to feel my feet touch the floor. My shoes. Where were my shoes?

“We’re stuck in lockdown mode, communication is shot, and the lights have been on and off for the past hour or so,” Cryptor explained.

I found my heels around the corner of the couch, quickly slipping them on as I looked at Mr. Borg. “I didn’t even know we had an elevator security feature like that. Since when has it been installed?”

He smiled. “Oh, it was Pixal’s idea!” Of course it was. “We had it installed just after she left. I guess I just forgot to mention it to you. I never expected to use it.” I stood up, finding my balance again. “I really am sorry dear.”

“It’s alright,” I dismissed it. Thanks a lot, Pixal. Your brilliant security system prevented your replacement from checking security. “We just need to figure out why it happened.” I started walking over towards Cryptor at the main computer. “You’re sure there’s no way to trace whatever’s gotten into the system?”

“Borg was the only one able to access the elevator security specs, none the less able to activate them. Whatever has taken control of the tower is so deep into the system that the tower isn’t even processing any of its changes.” Cryptor scrolled through the security screens, all systems reading normal.

“It’s like it’s invisible,” I marveled. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Mr. Borg sighed, wheeling up to us. “I have.”

“When?” Cryptor asked, both our eyes now glued to him.

Cyrus stared at the screen for a moment, as if looking for other possibilities. “The one thing I know of that behaved like this when it breached the tower’s system… was the Overlord.”

Cryptor and I glanced at each other.

“No… no, this can’t be the Overlord,” I insisted. “There’s no way! We’re done with that! Zane defeated him years ago, even if there was a remnant of him in the system, we would have caught it by now… right?”

“I don’t know,” Cryptor refuted. “If it’s behaving like the Overlord, that means it entered the system the same way the Overlord did. How did the Overlord enter the system again? We built the building on top of his remains!” He stressed. “We haven’t moved the building, we haven’t rebuilt the foundations, we haven’t even expanded! Unless there are some other dead guys we built on top of that we didn’t know about the first time, there aren’t really any other options, are there?”

“Drew has a point though,” Cyrus shook his head. “After that final battle, Pixal and I searched countless times for any trace left of the Overlord. We found nothing.”

“As great of a job I’m sure Pixal did,” Cryptor rolled his eyes. “I don’t see what else it could be. Unless of course you have some secret cemetery under the floorboards you’re not telling me about.”

“No, but we do have a basement,” I reasoned.

“So?” Cryptor pressed.

“So, anything in the basement would technically be at the same level the Overlord was when construction began. If anything were destroyed and left down there, there’s a chance something similar to the Overlord could have happened.”

“Oh no…” Mr. Borg leaned back in his chair.

“What? What’s in the basement?” Cryptor asked.

“...The furnace.”

I could feel my pulse accelerate as a host of possibilities flooded my mind. “The furnace that we’ve used to destroy every piece of malfunctioning tech we’ve ever built?! That’s not to mention a good portion of Overlord era tech as well.” I hung my hands on my head and began pacing the room. “Oh, this is great. This is fantastic! I’m sure none of the failed inventions we’ve burned alive would have any reason to seek revenge on us!”

“So, it could be literally anything?” Cryptor clarified.

“And failed computer code is known for being rational and easy to deal with, right?” I rambled. “You know, at least if it were the Overlord, we would know how to begin to deal with it!”

“Drew, it’s okay.” Mr. Borg tried to calm me. “We’ll figure this out. I’m sure it’s not as bad as we’re making it out to be.”

“Isn’t it?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips. “Because we’re currently trapped, alone, in a hundred story building with one of the best security systems in the world, being controlled by who knows what that has it in for us with no hope of rescue because, may I remind you, there’s a raging freak snow storm going on outside!”

And as if on cue, just then, the lights cut out.

“Great,” Cryptor sighed. “Now we’ve made it mad.”

“Look, if it can cut power to the lights, it can cut power to anything else.” Mr. Borg reasoned. “Let’s use what we have while we still can. I’m going to try some more abstract back door protocols to try and see if we can get back any sort of control. If you two want to look for any notes Pixal left about the security system, digital or otherwise, that would be great.”

“Pixal?” Cryptor asked. “What, she design the security system too?”

“No,” Mr. Borg responded. “But she knew it inside and out. I would trust anything she might have mentioned in the project notes.”

I took a few deep breaths, calming myself down. Yes, this was all crazy, but we didn’t know anything for sure yet, and there was still time to find answers. “Okay, we can do this,” I sighed, making my way over to my desk.

“All hail Pixal, the all-knowing goddess of Borg Tower,” Cryptor mumbled.

I chuckled a bit as he followed me over to my desk. “Stop it.”

“I swear it’s like the hundredth time he’s mentioned her today.”

“He’s coping.” I waved it off, typing in my password. “She was his right hand last time something like this happened. It only makes sense he’d try and lean on her again.”

“I guess,” he shrugged.

“Here, you check the digital security notes, I’ll see if I can find the original paper copies.” I gestured to my computer and opened my desk drawer, pulling a small key out from the back.

“Sounds good.” He sat down, getting his bearings. I walked over to the wall of filing cabinets to my left looking up and down the tiny faded labels for the drawer I was looking for.

“Ticking. Chilled. Sweet. Dispersed. Detached. Floating. Silver. What is this?” Cryptor asked.

“It’s my daily sticky note.” I explained, opening my first suspected drawer.

“What exactly does that mean?” he pried.

“Oh just… words that come to me throughout the day. By the time I leave work I have a sort of mood-of-the-day word cloud.” I pulled out the first file labeled simply ‘plans’. This place really needs a better naming system.

“Huh…” Cryptor thought for a moment before I heard a pen click. “I think you’re missing a few words on here.”

“No, I really don’t think I am.” I turned around to look at him this time, seeing where this was going.

“Oh, it’s okay, I’ll just add them for you here real quick.” He waved it off playfully. “How about handsome stranger.” I found myself suppressing laughs as he continued to write. “I think that one’s extremely accurate, and, you know, important to at least mention. Um… mistakenly drugged. I think that was a pretty big part of your day so far. And then, how about Hijacked. See, it works on two levels because of the whole tower thing, but also... what I’m doing right now,” He smiled coyly.

“Now that you mention it, I do have a few words you could add.” I moved forward, leaning on the side of the desk. “ How about Frustration. Annoyance. Total waste of time. Maybe even Not as clever as he thinks.”

“I don’t know, that last one seems a bit wordy to me.”

“No, I think that one’s the most important one,” I chuckled.

“Oh! Cryptor!” Mr. Borg called from the other side of the room, interrupting us. “Your arm! I’ll finish the redesign on it and maybe we can get it built before anything else goes wrong!”

“You figure out what was wrong with it?” He asked.

“I’m pretty sure it was a problem with the connection rotation, so it shouldn’t take long to fix.” Mr. Borg assured him.

“Let’s do it then,” Cryptor agreed, Mr. Borg quickly returning to his computer to finish the plans.

“He’s really glad you’re here you know,” I told him, my voice a bit hushed. “He was so worried you wouldn’t even come.”

“Well, for what it’s worth,” he smiled. “Even if whatever’s going on in this building ends up killing us… I think I’m still glad I showed up.”

#ninjago #ninjago oc #ninjago cryptor #cyrus borg #gmmb #writing #OC: Drew Peterson #birthday week

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