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quicksilversquared · 4 years

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A Christmas Liar

After Ms. Bustier mentioned the annual school charity fundraiser in class, Lila seems determined to raise funds for her own "charity", aka herself. There's no way that Marinette is going to let that fly, but how successful will she be in taking Lila down in time for the holidays?

links in the reblog

It started with a normal morning in Ms. Bustier's homeroom class.

"As you all know, it's fast approaching the holiday season, and our collège always does a fundraiser for a charity before Christmas," Ms. Bustier told the class, smiling widely. The first few cut-out paper snowflakes had appeared in the classroom window that morning, and they all knew that the collection would only grow as December went on. "So remember to remind your parents to check their emails for details soon! Our student representatives have been hard at work brainstorming what to do this year."

Marinette smiled, even as she kept drawing in her sketchbook. Jagged Stone had commissioned an outfit for his Christmas present to Penny from her, and wanted the design ready to be sent to his seamstress as soon as possible so that he could have it ready in plenty of time. He had told her not to rush, of course- "you have so much going on, and I don't want to put you behind in your studies!"- but Marinette wanted to try to get things done early.

After all, akumas could appear and eat up her free time without any notice, and so she was going to take advantage of any extra time when she could.

"Oh, a charity fundraiser?" Lila asked from the back of the room, and Marinette mentally sighed before setting her pencil down. Clearly she wasn't going to get anything done now, if she had to deal with Lila's nonsense, and her nonsense-o-meter was going wild. "That's so wonderful! Do you think that- oh, no, I suppose it would come off a little self-appreciating, never mind..."

"No, go ahead!" Ms. Bustier reassured her quickly. "What is it that you wanted to ask, Lila?"

"Well, I was wondering if maybe I could put forth one of my charities to be considered for the fundraiser's proceeds," Lila told the class, and even without turning around, Marinette could picture the way that Lila would press a hand to her chest delicately, doing her best to look bashful. Adrien's eye roll from in front of her told Marinette that her mental picture probably wasn't very far off. "But I suppose that could come off as, well..."

Ms. Bustier perked up. "Oh, how could I have forgotten that we had someone in our class who had done so much charity work before? I don't think it would come off as self-serving at all! In fact, it could add an extra connection and an element of interest to the whole thing if the school picked one of your charities. Marinette, could-"

"Student council has already settled on a charity for this year's fundraiser," Marinette said at once, not even bothering to look up. She could see exactly where this was heading, and she was going to put a stop to it. Now.

In front of her, she could see Adrien's hastily-hidden grin out of the corner of her eye.

"But this is special, Marinette," Ms. Bustier implored. "Surely they'll understand and want to support a fellow student's charity efforts! This is a pretty unique opportunity!"

"We've had multiple meetings about it, thinned our selections down, did all of the background checks and verification on our final pick, filled out all of the paperwork to submit to Mr. Damocles, and let the charity know so that we could get more information to post around," Marinette informed her, because seriously? Ms. Bustier was going to fall for it, just like that? Also, she was super glad that she had pushed for the council to make the decision early this year, because at this time the previous year, they had been working on finalizing everything still, which would have made a last-minute change like this possible. It wouldn't have been fun, or easy, but it could have been possible. "We can't change it now."

Lila let out a small sigh from the back, and Marinette turned around just in time to see her shoulders slumping. "Oh, that's really a shame, then. For a minute there, I was picturing how much good I- we could do for the children in Africa with a bit of extra funding, but I suppose if they've already picked a charity..."

Ms. Bustier glanced from Marinette to Lila. "Marinette, do you think that we could do two charities instead of one, perhaps? It would just be so nice to be able to support Lila's charity!"

Marinette was honestly going to scream.

"I'm afraid that that would make things too complicated," she said instead, politely as she could and with as little teeth-gritting as possible. "We had a couple fundraiser activities in mind- which we agreed was important, in case an akuma attack keeps people away from an in-person event- plus a couple volunteering opportunities that we wanted to offer. Plus, there would be all of the paperwork and the background checks that would have to be done to add in another charity, and that's not exactly a short process. It's a lot of work."

There was also the fact that Lila didn't have any charities, and any money they earned would- if she managed to sneak her way through their careful screening process- no doubt go straight into her own pockets.

"Oh, I could fill out paperwork so that you guys don't have to!" Lila offered eagerly. "I don't mind, it's for the kids-"

"And the email letting parents know about our fundraiser and our selected charity is already scheduled to go out today," Marinette continued, raising her voice just ever-so-slightly to drown Lila out and making a mental note to talk to Aurore to actually get that email sent over lunch. It had originally been planned for tomorrow, actually, but Marinette wasn't going to give Lila any ins. "So the deadline for any changes has passed." She pasted on her best fake smile, trying not to let any signs of a smirk through as she looked back at Lila. "It's just not possible for this year, I'm afraid. Maybe you can bring it up for consideration earlier next year."

"I suppose that's fair," Ms. Bustier agreed. She smiled over at Lila. "It's my own fault for not bringing it up earlier, it just slipped my mind. Hopefully your charities will still get plenty of support! But right now, we're going to move on to today's lesson. If everyone could please get out your notebooks, we're going to start with a quick video..."

Marinette smiled to herself as she put her sketchbook away and opened up her notebook to a fresh page. This probably wasn't the last that she would hear about Lila's so-called "charities", but at least Ms. Bustier had dropped the subject and she wouldn't be getting pressure from that angle.

Now she just had to be ready for Lila's other attempts to get her hands on charity money.

"I am so glad that you already had stuff all finalized," Adrien said in Marinette's ear as they headed for their next class. Lila was ahead of them, surrounded by several of their classmates. "I got worried for a minute there when Ms. Bustier hopped on the Lila's charity thing."

"I'm just glad that it's a school-wide thing, not just a class-wide fundraiser," Marinette admitted, glancing around to make sure that no one was going to overhear them. She had managed to get out of being blamed for deliberately denying Lila's "charity" a chance to get more money because she wasn't the only person in charge of the fundraiser, and she didn't want anyone in their class mishearing and blowing things out of proportion. Again. "I mean, it's obvious that Lila jumped on that because I'm class representative and she wanted to put me in a bad spot, but she couldn't when I'm just one of the people involved in that process."

Adrien nodded. "Yeah. I was so sure that she was going to drop it after you mentioned the background check and verification thing, though, and then she didn't. Which is...weird, honestly."

"Not really. If we tried going forward and I was the one doing the check, she would probably just say that I was making stuff up about her charity out of jealousy or spite and that was why it failed or something." Marinette had thought the same, honestly, but it became apparent pretty quickly what Lila was up to. Lila wasn't nearly as sly as she thought she was. "I'm surprised that she didn't jump on that and complain that I was just making the background check thing up because I was doubting her. Ignoring, of course, that we want to have statistics in our flyers and posters and emails about how the money is used, and how much work they get done, and their rating by a charity watchdog. That's standard."

"Which is why she wanted to do her own paperwork," Adrien added. He made a face. "I bet that she's still going to try to piggyback off of the fundraiser somehow, or at least rope people into donating some of their own money. I already heard Rose bringing it up, and Alya mentioned something to Nino about posting something on the Ladyblog."

Marinette winced. That wasn't good. She would have to forward the link to their charity watchdog site to Alya later on, maybe under the guise of providing a resource to get all sorts of charity statistics at once to put in her posting. That didn't guarantee that Alya would look at it, of course, but it was worth a try.

(Also, she could use her throwaway account to point out the charity's questionable status, and then- well, hope that other people would see her post and upvote it.)

"She's really going too far now," Adrien said after a moment, pulling Marinette out of her brainstorming of how she could keep Lila from pocketing a bunch of charity money. "I mean, she has been for a while, especially when she tried to get you expelled, but this is just the cherry on top of a heap of awful. I just don't know... I mean, she's sunk her claws in really deep now, I don't know how to fix it. I guess I should have recognized it earlier, but..."

"Well, there's no point in worrying about what we should have done earlier now," Marinette said as they went through the door for their next class, though she couldn't help but feel a bit validated, since she had wanted to stop Lila's lies ages ago. "We can brainstorm later, if you can get away for lunch. I was going to talk to Aurore then anyway."

Adrien looked puzzled for a moment, then caught on with a grin. "Aha, right, since she's on student council too. Is she the one in charge of submitting paperwork?"

"No, that was me. She's in charge of sending out the emails to families." Marinette grinned up at him. "And I bet that we can do a bit of damage control with that."

-0-0-0-0-

Aurore was all too willing to bring her lunch over to the Dupain-Cheng bakery instead of eating in the school cafeteria. After all, she told them as they headed upstairs, her lunch was leftovers and best served warm, and the cafeteria microwave was gross.

Marinette could believe that. Aurore had already floated the idea of setting up either a roll of paper towels near the microwave so that people could cover their dishes to keep the contents from exploding all over, or going the more environmentally-friendly route of having microwave plate covers instead, which could then be washed daily in the industrial dish washers that the cafeteria kitchen had. Clearly it was a Big Deal for her.

"You said you wanted to talk about the email right?" Aurore asked finally, finishing her grumbling about someone who had apparently microwaved fish and ugh, the smell was awful. "I thought it was meant to be going out tomorrow? I have a draft that's almost complete, I was just going to review it tonight to make sure that it was perfect, but do you need something changed?"

"We had a situation come up in our class this morning," Marinette told her, leading the way into their kitchen. Her mom had left out food for her and Adrien, it just had to be warmed up and assembled. "I don't know how much you've heard about the new girl in our class..."

Aurore frowned. "Lila? The one with the questionable stories?"

Adrien laughed. "Okay, so we aren't the only ones with working brains in the school, that's good to know. Yeah, her."

It didn't take long to get Aurore caught up, and predictably, she was furious at the idea of Lila trying to hijack their fundraiser funds.

"This is going to go one of two ways, I know it," she told them, pulling out her laptop and getting it set up next to her on the table. "Either this girl is going to make up a charity- name, mission, and all- or she's going to find a charity that already exists, and then she'll claim credit for it. The first one is easy enough to disprove, because no one will be able to find anything about the charity. We could just put a reminder in the email about checking charities out before donating to them, and then enter that link we've been using. But the second one...well, she could use their rating and reputation to collect money, and then- if I'm reading her character right- keep it all for herself."

They all thought about that.

"Well, if Alya posts anything on the Ladyblog, in theory any donations would have to be electronically, though a website," Marinette pointed out after a minute. "As for in-person donations, I would say that people should use checks instead of cash, but I don't know how many people use checks anymore, and besides, that's not going to stop her from cashing them if she wants."

Adrien made a choked, horrified noise in the back of his throat. "It- it won't? How do you even know that?"

"But it might deter her, since that's a traceable crime," Aurore pointed out, her eyes gleaming. She snapped her fingers. "And as for the Ladyblog- if she's capable of creating a website that looks decent, she might give Alya a link for that. So that's still a problem-"

"-unless we notice that and bring it to the attention of the police!" Adrien exclaimed, sitting up straight. He winced. "I'd hate to get Alya in trouble, but otherwise people will be thinking that they're doing something good and helping people in need when actually, they're just giving Lila spending money. And if she told them that Lila gave her the link, then she'd get off pretty fast."

Marinette nodded. Alya would probably be a thundercloud that they had gone to the police first instead of her, but she couldn't say that they hadn't warned her. She just never listened when it came to Lila.

"So we can put in a line reminding people to check charities before they donate and to make sure that any links they follow for charities go to the actual website," Aurore finished. Her fingers tapped away at her keyboard. "My older brother is a computer whiz, so I can text him and ask about things people should look for to make sure that a site is the real deal. Then I can get that typed up and sent during study hall, so it'll go out today."

Marinette could only grin. Maybe Aurore could be hotheaded at times, but there was no denying that she could really pull through. "That would be great."

Unsurprisingly, Lila sold a sob story to Alya about her charity's website being down at the moment, so she couldn't provide a link right away.

"We're working on it, of course, because this is the best time of the year to get donations and we're going to fall so far behind with every day we miss, but the entire system is down and our tech guy is having trouble," Lila told Alya, looking positively wilted. "It's so upsetting! The longer it's down, the fewer people find out about our work, and the less budget we have to work with next year."

"That's terrible!" Alya exclaimed, frowning, and Marinette exchanged an exasperated look with Adrien. "I just wish there was a way to help..."

"Maybe you could post about our school charity instead, for the time being," Marinette suggested dryly. "Since Lila's charity is on the table for next year anyway."

"But we need budget for this year!" Lila repeated, and- yep, she was gritting her teeth. The glare that she flashed Marinette left no question that she had been trying to set up some sort of fake website and the email the night before had thrown her off. Either she was trying to make a more convincing website or- more likely- she was just hoping to wait until the reminder to be careful had faded from people's minds. Or she had had to abandon the online idea entirely in favor of throwing a pity party for herself in hopes of getting cash donations with the help of their classmates, if that hadn't already been the plan all along. "If we wait for a maybe next year, we could go into debt and collapse!"

Alya was looking worried now. "Marinette, are you sure that the student council can't switch charit-"

"It's all set up. We can't change anything, Alya, we established that yesterday." Marinette spared a glance at Lila, who was clearly working to keep a poker face. "Maybe Max can help you with your website issues, he's quite good at stuff like that. We wouldn't want you missing out on donations, after all."

"Oh, I couldn't," Lila simpered, glancing towards Max as well. "We, uh- well, my tech guy is back in Italy, so they wouldn't be able to work together, and he's quite protective of the system. Plus we were in the middle of upgrades when everything crashed, so that makes everything more complicated."

"We'll figure something out, Lila," Alya promised, patting the other girl's arm. Marinette took that as her cue to leave, but she wasn't going to go far. She needed to be able to overhear, after all. "We don't want those kids in Africa to suffer, after all! We can brainstorm before class."

Adrien caught Marinette's eye as she came back to her seat. "It sounds like she's just going to go another way, but isn't about to give up."

"No, she's got the idea of getting money into her head, and she's not about to give it up." Marinette kept her voice low, so that no one would overhear. "Which means that we need to come at the problem at a different angle. Any suggestions?"

Adrien looked unexpectedly delighted at being consulted, but then he paused, clearly not coming up with any ideas. "Uh."

"My first instinct would be to try to warn Alya and Rose and whoever else is going to get sucked in, but we all know how well that would go over," Marinette said, just to fill in the space. "They would clamp down and refuse to listen."

Adrien nodded. "Yeah. But I like what you did yesterday, where you made it sound like you would have gone along if you could and suggested trying next year. Then everyone thought that you weren't fighting against her-"

"-and was actually willing to listen!" Marinette finished, smiling. It was an approach that Tikki had suggested, and she was glad that it had worked. Well, sort of. It had worked in the moment, but just- apparently- pushed the problem off for later. "Yeah, that was nice."

"Maybe we could do something similar now," Adrien suggested. "And offer to be helpful by providing that link still. Like, it doesn't need the website, right? Just the charity name."

Marinette grinned. "Right. And there's no way that she can get around not telling anyone her charity's name. And if she does...well, either it's made up, or she's going to pick a real charity and we can find the real website."

"And congratulate Lila on her site getting back up so quickly," Adrien added with a small laugh. "It's a pain to deal with her, but I'm actually curious about what she's planning on doing going forward. Like, how long can she play this game? She's going to run out of escapes soon enough."

"Yeah, I don't know..." Marinette trailed off as Alya slid into her seat, and she and Adrien exchanged one last look before he turned back to the front, greeting Nino as his best friend entered the classroom.

"Man, I can't believe what bad luck Lila has, to have her charity's website crash at a time like this," Alya said glumly, sliding into her seat. "Lila is stressed about it, of course, but she has so many other obligations for her other charity work that she can't go out and do a collection, not that it would be easy with her throat still recovering from her laryngitis surgery. She can't be out in the cold for more than ten minutes without it causing a ton of pain, which can't be fun at all."

...Naturally.

"I want to help, but if we don't have a working link to put on the Ladyblog, I just don't know..." Alya trailed off. "I mean, we could do a door-to-door, I guess, but that only ever gets fairly minimal donations. And there's so many people who set up near the Eiffel Tower, we wouldn't have a chance. But- oh!" Alya perked up as another thought hit her. "We could put posters up at school, so more people know about it and maybe help us!"

Yeah, how about no.

"That's actually against school rules," Marinette said idly, flipping through her notebook as she waited for Ms. Bustier to call for a start to class. "All posters posted in the building have to be approved by Student Council normally, so that the walls don't get too cluttered, but there's an amendment to that that say that if the school is doing a charity fundraiser, posters promoting other charities can't go up during that time. I think it's to keep the effort from getting too splintered and distracted."

Alya slumped. "Oh."

That was not actually a lie, though clearly Adrien thought it was, if the slight frown on his face was anything to go by. Marinette had picked through the guidelines to make sure that she knew every rule that she could use to turn Lila's attempts aside, and apparently the Student Council had come up with and voted to implement that particular rule at some point in the past.

"Maybe you could do a surprise collection," Marinette suggested. "As a Christmas gift to Lila." She was improvising, admittedly, but this would be a good way to keep Alya and Rose and whoever else was getting sucked in from asking Lila too much and giving her chances to control the narrative. "If you ask her what the name of her charity is, and then you can use the website that we were using on Student Council to look at charities- it has all sorts of stats that you could use, information about charities and their work. That way, you don't need to bother Lila for all that when she's so busy."

"Oh, good idea!" Alya exclaimed. She grabbed Marinette's arm. "You know, none of the rest of us has ever organized any sort of charity fundraiser before- if we put you in charge of that-"

"I'm already busy, Alya," Marinette pointed out. She wasn't about to go make a fool of herself collecting money for a charity that didn't exist, not when she had a million other things to do. "The fundraiser for the school is already going to take up all of my time. I can send you the link that we used, but that's it."

"Oh, but-"

"She already said no, Alya," Adrien cut in, so Marinette didn't have to. "Marinette was telling me about that entire process yesterday, and it sounds like a lot of work and planning to pull something off at the level the school is planning. Asking her to plan another thing on top of that for you, instead of doing it yourself- that's not fair to her."

"I just thought that it might be a good way to repair the bad blood between the two of them!" Alya objected, frowning. "Since Marinette wasn't very welcoming when Lila first arrived."

Marinette narrowly withheld a snort. Gee, I wonder why?

"But if you're busy, I guess you can wait to try to mend that bridge later," Alya added. She sighed. "We probably won't be able to raise as much money, though, since we don't have your experience."

"Mmm," Marinette managed noncommittally, ignoring the clear attempt at a guilt-trip in favor of checking her email on her phone. Alya really had been spending too much time with Lila if she was starting to act just the same. Hopefully she would cut that out after Lila's lies had been exposed and everyone realized what a manipulator she was.

Marinette's phone lit up with a text, and she didn't hesitate to open it at once.

Adrien: Remember, if you commit homicide, you won't be around to gloat when people discover the lies.

Marinette snorted in amusement.

Marinette: I'm going to gloat for a solid MONTH after she gets found out. I wasn't very welcoming? Try SHE was a bully from the start and I wasn't about to tolerate that.

In front of her, Adrien's head gave a tiny nod as he put his phone away, just in time to start class. Marinette locked her phone and put it away, resigning herself to what was probably going to be a week of poorly-concealed efforts to get her into the extra fundraising before Alya either dropped it or realized that something was up with Lila's "charity".

At least now she had Adrien on her side.

The school fundraiser was going well as they marched steadily closer towards the holidays, their online portal showing just how much money had already been raised by people going through the link that they had both sent out and posted on the school site. There was going to be a bake sale before the break too, with each family asked to donate two dozen cookies for them to sell at their booths near City Hall and (courtesy of Chloe) in the Grand Paris.

Marinette was really happy. People were being generous, and it really was a very deserving charity to receive the funds. On top of that, Adrien had asked for her help in baking his family's two dozen cookies, so they would get to hang out together.

(She was going to ignore the fact that Alya had tried to convince her to make another extra two dozen cookies because Lila "wasn't going to have time" because "all of her charity work"; that attempt had fallen flat when Marinette had just point-blank asked Alya why, exactly, Alya didn't just do that herself. At least with Adrien, he was just a novice baker and was going to be actively participating in the baking, but he just wanted help to be sure that his attempt turned out edible and it was a good excuse to hang out with one of his friends.)

And possibly best of all...well, Aurore's tech-savvy older brother had pulled through for them again.

"I was looking at the email that we had on file for Lila, and something about it just didn't seem right," Aurore told them as they sat together in a private study room in back of the library over lunch. "The domain on it, to be exact, because it was '.net' instead of, oh, I don't know, something actually related to the government. And my brother agreed, so we did a little searching."

Marinette was pretty sure that her jaw was on the ground. Next to her, Adrien wasn't doing much better. "You mean she was keeping her mom from finding out about everything school-related? I wondered how she got away with skipping so much school! And she was probably emailing as her mom, too, to confirm whatever stories she was telling."

Aurore grinned. "Exactly. So we did some digging, and found Mrs. Rossi's actual email. It's almost the same, just with a different domain. So I'm trying to think of what to send that wouldn't sound weird, because obviously we need confirmation that this is the right address so we can get Mr. Damocles to change it for the school system, but I don't want to come off as accusing or anything and have her tip Lila off accidentally."

Marinette exchanged a look with Adrien as she thought about it. "Well, we could just send the fundraiser email again with a comment about how we think that maybe her email was mis-entered before and is this one the correct one that we should be using. That's pretty straightforward and it asks for a response, and she might not even think to say anything about it to Lila."

"Ooh, I like that." Aurore typed that in at once, giving it a quick once-over to make sure that there weren't any errors and that the email had been entered correctly before sending it. "So, what else is going on in Ms. Bustier's homeroom? Anything new with the not-a-charity?"

"Alya's been confused about why our watchdog site doesn't list anything about Lila's 'charity'- she decided to go for the make-one-up route, apparently- and she's still been trying to find stuff on it just on Google, but apparently no connection has been made," Marinette told them, trying not to roll her eyes. "I know she and Rose were talking about trying to just go ahead with a collection of sorts anyway, so I forwarded an email talking about the importance of keeping track of how much money they raised, down to the last cent, in a ledger sort of thing." She couldn't hold back the grin. "Which Rose is really into. So even though they're trying to collect money for Lila still, at the end she won't be able to keep any of it because there'll be record of how much money they collected."

"Which, if we get in contact with Mrs. Rossi, we can make sure that that gets paid back in full!" Adrien exclaimed, scooping Marinette up in a hug for a long few seconds. Marinette prayed that she wouldn't turn red and make things weird. "Genius!"

"As long as Rose doesn't give that to Lila," Aurore pointed out. She raised an eyebrow at Marinette's head-shake. "No? You've already taken care of that?"

"She'll give Lila an electronic copy, but not the hard copy. I suggested that she might want to hold onto that to show what she did for future charity work. Which I still think is a good idea, even if Lila's charity is a sham. It doesn't change the fact that she was doing all of the bookkeeping."

Aurore made a face. "I am so glad that Samuel is doing our bookkeeping for the non-online donations, because that stuff is not fun. It's really fiddly, and if anything gets off..."

Marinette nodded. Things had gotten off fairly early on, and she had head Samuel- another member of Student Council- complaining about having to go through everything to figure out where his mistake was. Since then, he did regular, frequent checks so that he wouldn't have to go through absolutely everything again, just the most frequent donations. Admittedly, Rose was working with much smaller amounts of money- most people wanted more information on what they were donating to than just the name and "helping kids in Africa" if they were going to toss more than an euro or two into the collections basket- but it was still good practice.

Aurore's computer let out a ding, and she pulled up the student council email at once. "We already got a response! Mrs. Rossi says that yes, this one is correct, please keep using it and thank you for catching the error and were there any other recent emails that she might have missed. I'm going to forward this to Mr. Damocles with a message to note the change in email address, just a second- and done."

"Nice job," Marinette told her, leaning across the table to bump fists with Aurore. After a second's thought, she fist-bumped Adrien, too, so that he wouldn't feel left out. "That's one more thing off of our plates."

Their fundraiser finished right before holiday break with a silent auction, with all of the items up for purchase having been donated by parents, teachers, extended family members, community business owners, and- in the case of an array of signed CD cases and posters- Jagged Stone, Clara Nightingale, and several of their musician buddies, after Marinette had approached Jagged Stone with the request.

And of course, everyone was invited. Posters had been put up outside of the school and emails had been sent out, reminding everyone about the time and date and their charity, plus attaching a list of the items up for auction to get people's interest.

"My mom so wanted to make it, but work came up," Lila told several of their classmates when she arrived at the auction, looking sad. "And there were several things that she was really interested in, like the-"

"Ooh, barf, I can see what you mean," Aurore said, materializing at Marinette's side and wrinkling her nose at Lila. "That's a pretty obvious ploy to get people to buy things for her, isn't it? Or at least to pitch in some of their own money to help her, so that she won't have to pay them back."

Marinette nodded. It really was disgusting, but at least now Lila was moving off with the group towards one of the items so that they didn't have to hear her. She was steering clear of the signed Jagged Stone things, oddly enough, but maybe that would be a dead giveaway that she didn't actually know him. After all, Jagged Stone would sign anything put in front of him, so her going out of her way to buy a signed item when she was supposedly on great terms with him would be pretty strange.

"Do you think her mom actually can't make it, or Lila just assumed that she wouldn't know about the auction and didn't tell her?" Adrien asked. His arm was tucked through Marinette's, though she was pretty sure that it was just so that he wouldn't lose her in the crowd. "Is the fake email still on the list?"

Aurore nodded. "Yeah, up until this morning. I cleared it off so that there wouldn't be any confusion going forward."

"And I would place bets on Lila assuming that her mom doesn't know anything," Marinette added. "She wouldn't want to risk anyone asking her mom about her charity." She grinned and pointed as she noticed someone new stepping into the school. "And look, over there."

The other two looked. There, standing in the entryway and looking around, was Mrs. Rossi. She really didn't look much like Lila, but it was easy enough to recognize her from her official embassy photo.

(Her official embassy photo, where she wasn't listed as the actual ambassador, but just one of the embassy staff, but that- well, that was an interesting little tidbit that Marinette was going to sit on for a little bit longer.)

"Oh, she's spotted Lila," Aurore said gleefully, craning her neck to follow Mrs. Rossi as she wove through the crowds. "And- whoops, Lila sees her!"

Marinette hastily smothered a laugh. If Lila's expression was anything to go by, she definitely hadn't realized that her mom was getting emails from the school and was going to be coming. She had never seen the other girl look so pale before.

"I'd ask if I should go get some of that amazing-smelling popcorn that they're selling so that we can watch, but honestly, I kind of just want to let things take their course and find out later," Adrien said, glancing down at Marinette. "There's some pretty cool items up for auction that I want to check out."

Marinette considered that. On one hand, she wanted to watch Lila's downfall. On the other... well, she had been keeping an eye on the whole Lila fiasco for a while now, and she was kind of tired of it. It would probably be a bit awkward to watch, too, and there was no guarantee that it would happen right away, and they were too far away to hear anything besides.

...yeah, her decision was pretty well made.

"That sounds like fun," Marinette told him, before glancing over at Aurore. "What about you?"

"I might go point Mr. Damocles in her direction," Aurore commented, glancing around the crowd. "Or maybe that can wait until later, since I don't want to throw everything at Mrs. Rossi at once and disrupt the auction with an akumatization." She sent them a slightly sheepish grin. "But you know I like my gossip, so..."

Marinette had to laugh. That was so very Aurore. "All right. We'll bump into you later, then."

Aurore grinned in return, and then was off. Marinette watched her go for a moment, then let Adrien lead the way off into the crowds surrounding the tables. It was amazing to be able to sit back and relax after the past weeks of planning and making sure that everything, from the online link to the cookie sale to this, was going to go off without a hitch. They were well on track raise more money this year than they had any other year, and that was amazing.

And to think that she had had a hand in setting all of this up...well, Marinette just couldn't be prouder.

It was fun investigating all of the donations with Adrien, even though- as part of Student Council and also part of the team that had photographed and logged all of the donated items- she had seen them all before. Marinette couldn't help but peek at the bids despite herself, grinning when she saw some of the higher ones.

"This is amazing," Adrien commented once they had made the rounds and had gone to browse through the assorted refreshments available for purchase. "There were a lot of nice things donated. And people are definitely bidding plenty of money."

"Yeah, some people will spend more to win the prize than it's worth," Marinette told him. "Like with the voucher for stuff from our bakery- the top bid right now is for more than the value of the voucher. It's interesting, but I think that people see it as buying the item, and then making a donation on top. Or something, I don't know."

"That's really cool," Adrien commented, then pointed. "Oh, look, Nathalie and the Gorilla are here! They said that they might show up and do some shopping. I honestly thought that Nathalie was just saying that to be nice, because she's been sick and hasn't wanted to go out, but I guess she's been feeling better lately."

"Oh, that's good," Marinette said, before a memory made her frown. "Wait, I thought you commented on her being sick, like, three months ago. Is she still having problems?"

Adrien shrugged, but he was frowning, too. "I don't know. She had been having these weak, dizzy spells like Mom used to before she disappeared for a bit before I commented on it at school, I think. Maybe whatever treatment she was getting finally kicked in, I don't know."

Marinette frowned even deeper. Nathalie had been showing the same symptoms as Adrien's mom before she vanished? That was a really weird coincidence. And for both of them- presumably both, at least- to have those same symptoms for an extended period of time?

If Mrs. Agreste and Nathalie had been related, Marinette might have guessed that it was a genetic thing. But since they weren't- again, that was an assumption- then the chances of them both separately having the same condition...

"I cannot believe that I fell for such a manipulative, thieving, disgusting liar!"

Alya materialized at Marinette's side, clearly steaming. Rose, Mylène, and Juleka weren't far behind her. Rose looked like she was close to tears, and the other two just looked lost.

"Pardon?" Adrien asked politely, but Marinette could see the amusement glimmering in his eyes.

"Lila's been leading us all around by the nose, making up stories about her life and about her nonexistent charity- and I've missed a dozen akuma attacks because I was wandering around in the cold, trying to raise money for her! I offered to make a posting on the Ladyblog so that I could put up a link to her site to raise more money! She was probably just planning on pocketing it all!" Alya scowled deeper. "I can't believe we fell for it! And aren't you even surprised?" she demanded when neither Adrien nor Marinette reacted. "At all?"

"Are we meant to be?" Adrien asked dryly. "After Marinette's spent so long calling Lila a liar?"

Alya faltered for a moment, then scowled deeper. "You- you knew, but you didn't warn us?"

"Yes, because pointing out the obvious lies worked so well the first several dozen times I did it," Marinette said, adopting the same dry tone that Adrien had used. "And I gave you the watchdog charity link to use. I rather thought that its complete lack of anything about Lila's charity might tip you off."

Alya faltered. "Oh."

"But we still gave Lila money that was meant for charity," Rose said tearfully. Juleka pulled her to her side, trying to comfort her. "And it was a decent amount, too."

"You have your log, right?" Marinette reminded her. "If you tell Lila's mom how much Lila got for her 'charity', then I bet that she can get that money back to you and you can donate it to another charity."

Rose perked up at once, tears drying up magically. "Oh, that's right! We can still put that money to good use! I'm glad you suggested that we keep track of everything, Marinette."

"Yeah," Juleka agreed. "Lila sucks, but at least we can get the money back."

"We should go talk to Lila's mom before she leaves," Rose decided. She dug in her bag, pulling out the ledger notebook that she had been using for their charity collections. "Aha! Yes, I have the amount we gave Lila yesterday written here. C'mon, let's go make sure that Mrs. Rossi knows!"

"Well, all's well that ends well," Adrien said cheerfully as the other girls headed off. "I bet this isn't how Mrs. Rossi saw her evening going, and Lila definitely wasn't expecting any of this, but at least now the adults can figure everything out and Lila can actually see some consequences. And hopefully next semester, there'll be less drama now that she'll be restrained- or gone, if Mrs. Rossi or Mr. Damocles decides that Lila staying here wouldn't be a good idea."

"Hopefully," Marinette agreed. She grinned over at Adrien. "But that's enough worrying about Lila and her nonsense for tonight. I think we should just sit back and enjoy the evening, don't you?"

Adrien beamed back. "I couldn't agree more."

#Miraculous Ladybug #my writing #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste

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vs-redemption · 4 years

Text

Crime is Common. Logic is Rare. (Ch 17)

Chapter Seventeen: Grateful (HawksxGN!Reader)

Plot summary: You thought your hands were full as a regular quirk geneticist, but then you meet Hawks and things get even more exciting!

Warnings:

⚠️This story contains spoilers from the manga.

⚠️Some events and plot points have been altered from the original manga

Tag List: @ gayforkeigo/ @marshmallow-witch/ @redflannel/ @toyo-shiro

Next Chapter : Chapter Guide

Waiting for anything was never fun, but it’s something you thought you’d be used to by now. As a scientist, having patience was a virtue you’d been forced to adopt into your daily routine. You were always waiting for something. No research endeavor could be accomplished by one person alone. You were always going to have to wait for funds to be granted, proposals to be approved by ethics committees, and data results to be analyzed thoroughly. Over the years, you’d tamed your eagerness and learned not to send emails asking people as politely as possible to hurry up whenever you felt things were taking too long. All that progress seemed to have gone up in smoke though now that you were waiting to hear back from someone you cared about who could very likely be dead.

Your part of the plan had gone fairly smoothly. After finishing up with Dr. Garaki, you’d made your way home to change your clothes and do your hair. You didn’t want to look completely recognizable, just in case, but you doubted anyone would really notice what you were up to. Not many people actually knew where Best Jeanist lived, so circumstances had been on your side in that respect at the very least. Despite not knowing you, the number three hero had been surprisingly accepting of the news that his life had been chosen to be sacrificed so that Hawks could gain the trust of the Villains. You had figured it would be more difficult to convince him, but perhaps he’d already seen signs of corrupt activity within the commission before. It was reassuring to see that he trusted Hawks over the organization that governed the heroes. You might have suspected that he planned to turn you in, but he never once asked for more details than the ones you gave him. He assured you that he could find a way out of Japan without being noticed before telling you to be careful and sending you home.

That had been hours ago, and every possible horrible scenario had played out in your mind over and over as you waited for news. It was well past your usual bed time when your phone finally buzzed with a message from Hawks asking if you were awake and if he could come over. You allowed yourself to relax just a bit. He couldn’t send you anything else since his phone was bugged, but at least you knew he was alive. Of course you told him to come over. It took him a while to get to your apartment from wherever he had been, and it was all you could do not throw yourself into his arms in relief when he finally arrived. You couldn’t act like you’d been worried at all.

“Hey,” Hawks smiles after you let him in. He looked troubled but completely unharmed. “I can’t believe you’re still awake.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” You play along with the small talk. “I got some interesting news about my quirk from the doctor today.”

“Is everything all right?” Hawks frowns, looking even more stressed than he already had. You felt bad for making him worry at all, but at least this gave you an excuse to close the gap and pull him into your arms. He sinks into your embrace and wraps his arms around you without hesitation. You’d both desperately needed the contact.

“Everything is fine,” you explain while rubbing a soothing hand over what you could reach of his back around his wings. “My quirk just works differently than what I originally thought, so now I’m trying to work out how I feel about that. I can tell you more about it later though. How was your day?” He lets out a dry laugh and pulls away to look you in the eyes.

“Oh, you know,” he sighs. “Same old, same old. Patrolling the city, catching bad guys, typical hero stuff.”

You knew very well that he hadn’t been doing any of those things, and it made your heart ache to see the turmoil in his beautiful golden eyes. You reach up to put a hand on his cheek to try and give him any sort of comfort. He closes his eyes and leans into your touch.

“Are you hungry?” you ask even though you were impatient to hear all the details of what he’d really been up to all day. His part of the plan had been much more difficult than yours. He’d been tasked with finding a decoy body, staging a confrontation with Best Jeanist, and selling the act that he’d murdered a fellow pro hero to the League of Villains. None of those things would have been easy, but it was at least better than him actually committing the atrocity he’d been asked to.

“No,” Hawks nuzzles into your hand a moment longer. “I just want to spend some time with you.”

“Cheesy,” You reply teasingly before gently leading his face forward so you could surprise him with a sweet kiss. He doesn’t hesitate to kiss back with a little more gusto than you expected. You didn’t mind, but it made you feel weird that some villain was listening in on everything that happened between you and your hero boyfriend.

“Hey,” you pull away with an apologetic smile. “Why don’t we just chill and watch something on TV for a bit?” Hawks just smiles and nods his head. It would be a good way for you both to write down everything that had happened without having to fake a second conversation at the same time. You go and grab a notebook while Hawks takes off his flight jacket and boots.

“Maybe I should start keeping a change of clothes over here,” Hawks says casually as he plops down on your couch with his wings draped over the back. “If you’re going to make a habit out of letting me stay.” You pick up the blanket off the back of the sofa and toss it at his face to hide the fact that he’d flustered you.

“Or maybe I should start charging you rent,” you raise an eyebrow challengingly. Hawks lets out a chuckle and you felt your embarrassment was worth seeing him acting a little bit normal.

“Come here,” He opens his arms and calls you over softly. You sigh in defeat while sitting next to him and leaning into his side. He covers you both with the blanket you’d thrown at him after retrieving the remote with one of his feathers. You put off the serious discussion just a little longer by arguing over what to watch. Once you came to an agreement, you open the note book and start scribbling down every detail about your interaction with Best Jeanist. Hawks reads over your words twice before writing down his side of the story.

He didn’t go in depth about the decoy body. He just said he’d been able to figure something out. You didn’t want to push the subject, so you just nodded and let him continue. He also wrote about his encounter with Best Jeanist. The man had been ready for Hawks’ visit thanks to you, and had played his role convincingly. Hawks mentioned that he wouldn’t have even known Best Jeanist had been tipped off at all if it weren’t for the packed bags ready by his front door. The number three hero had even prepared a set of his hero costume for Hawks to use to make the decoy body more convincing. They’d pretended to fight, and Hawks had gone to deliver the fake Jeanist to the villains.

Hawks explained that the villains had seemed satisfied with his work and had then taken him to Deika City to fill him in on everything that had happened since the incident there. It was bad. Real bad. Apparently the whole city of Deika had banded together under the ideology of quirk liberation without anyone ever knowing. The League of Villains had been able to take over the city and recruit every last citizen onto their team. They weren’t just a small group of villains anymore. It was an army with over 100,000 members. Something would have to be done to stop them as soon as possible. Hawks would continue to work his angle as a spy, but you would have to do your part too. It was imperative that you figure out what the doctor was planning to do with All For One’s blood. You promised to do your best, causing Hawks to pull you in even closer.

“I’m so grateful for you,” he whispers affectionately. The circumstances right now weren’t the best for building a relationship, but your feelings for Hawks continued to grow stronger. Sure, his actions recently were stepping outside of what was considered heroic, but he was still doing the best he could despite the horrible situation the Hero Commission had put him in. He was smart, strong, and above all else, he was good. You wanted to do anything in your power to get him through this safely and with as much of his sanity intact as possible. You smile while reaching up to run your thumb over his cheek again.

“I’m so grateful for you too.” The response seemed to please Hawks quite a bit. Not long after that, the exhaustion from the day caught up and you both fell asleep with the comfort of knowing you’d survived the day.

#hawks x reader #keigo takami x reader #bnha x reader #mha x reader #keigo takami #hawks #bnha #mha #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #my writing

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panda-noosh · 4 years

Text

lets talk business {Finn Shelby x Reader}

Words: 9.4k

Summary: Polly Gray comes to you looking for a good business deal. It’s only luck that makes her bring Finn Shelby along with her.

Genre: fluff ??????????????

Warning: swearing

Notes: support my writing or ask me about commissions!

---

“Polly fucking Gray.”

The woman smiles. Sharp, all cheekbones. She somehow manages to keep her lips pursed, illuminating the mischievous glint in her eyes that much more.

Part of you still cannot believe she is sitting in front of you; the woman herself, one of the leading cronies of the Peaky Blinders, one of the most feared people in all of England. She’s certainly got an air to her, one you can’t dismiss as you sit on the other side of the table, hands folded on the wood, heart thumping no matter how calm you may look on the outside.

You’ve trained yourself to deal with people like her - people who think they can come into your office and twist your arm whatever way they want. Men, women, gangster wanna-be’s - you’ve dealt with all of them, and you have no intentions of letting Polly Gray be any exception to the harsh realities of your business.

She leans back in her seat, tapping her fingers against the edge of the desk; she has been in here for two minutes already and has not said a single word.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” you ask.

Polly tilts her head to the side, examining you in the way only a Shelby really can. “I’m here to talk business, Y/N. Don’t waste my time.”

“I’m not the one who’s been sat in silence since I walked in.”

“I shouldn’t have to explain myself.”

You raise a brow. “No? Maybe that’s why you and your little motley crew have been dropping like flies recently - bad communication can have detrimental effects on a business.”

Polly pauses. It’s brief, barely noticeable unless you’re paying extra close attention. “Is that what you think the Peaky Blinders are? A business?”

“No more than I am, love.”

“If I were you, I’d get that out of my head as soon as possible.”

You narrow your eyes. “Are you threatening me already? We haven’t even got to the good stuff yet.”

Polly slaps her hand against the desk. Globes and glasses rattle, only the security of your expensive storage units keeping them from shattering. Polly’s nostrils flare, her eyes glaring into your own - but you do not look away.

You just smile, tapping the little pile of papers to your left. “I’ve got all the details you want right here, Miss Gray. Feel free to start being polite at any time. I’ve got all day for you, love.”

Polly growls, slowly sitting back. “How many guns can you provide us in a fortnight?”

“How many do you need?”

“As many as you can get.”

You hum thoughtfully, despite already knowing the answer. Keeping her on her toes is a goal, a way to make sure she is aware that you are in charge right now, that you will not be taking orders from her just because everyone else is so willing to trail in her wake.

Polly inhales deeply, clearly trying to calm herself down. “I haven’t got all day, Y/N.”

“Let’s put this into perspective,” you reply, resting your elbows on the desk. “My people collect shipments from all over the fucking world, Polly. We get deliveries of twenty to thirty assault weapons every single day - at most, I can get you over four hundred guns in two weeks; it won’t be subtle, and you’ll need to have a hiding place ready for them before the first shipment, but we can do it.”

Polly’s eyes glisten. “Over four hundred?”

“If the money’s right on your end.” Her smile fades. You shrug, tapping your fingertips together. “This is an expensive world we’re living in, Miss Gray, and you are dealing with some very expensive business. You gather the funds, we’ll gather the guns. That’s the only way this is going to work.”

Polly tilts her head to the side, lips still pursed like there is forever something sour playing on her tongue. “I don’t think you understand who you’re making business with right now.”

You smile. “No. I understand just fine - I just don’t give a fuck. You people don’t scare me. I’ve got wages to pay, love. This isn’t a game.”

It takes a minute - perhaps a minute too long, but Polly eventually smiles. It’s small, barely there unless you’re looking for it. With her head still tilted, brown curls resting on her shoulder, she nods and says, “Fair enough. We can get the first payment to you before the end of the night, but we expect them four hundred guns in fourteen days. Or else consequences will be dire.”

“Oh, I know, Miss Gray. I’ve heard all about you and the Shelby boys.”

You’re not lying - it would be impossible to live on this side of town and not know who the Shelby boys are, the things they do to people who don’t follow their plans meticulously. You have no intentions of falling into that category - but that doesn’t mean you’re going to let them walk all over you, either.

----

The docks are cold this time of day, but the police are nowhere to be found.

Early morning starts are not high on the laws agenda, apparently, which is why you find yourself half-awake, bundled in layers upon layers of clothes, standing beside the boats currently delivering the guns you requested - the guns for Polly Gray.

It’s not like you to be there when the deliveries come in - you deal with the issues behind the scenes, often staying locked up in the dark office, sifting through papers and complaints, getting rid of people who have a bit too much to say about the way your business is run.

But Polly Gray is more than just a normal client. She’s Polly fucking Gray, someone you need to please or else face a wrath unlike any other. So, you dragged yourself from your bed at four this morning, and now stand by the boats, watching the crates of weaponry get dragged from their decks.

Fingers graze your elbow. You tilt your head to the side, a silent request for the stranger to talk.

“Someone is here to see you,” an Irish accent says. You turn, first catching sight of Mr Luther Murdock, one of the few men in the world whom you trust with your life.

Standing behind him, however, is someone you most certainly did not expect to see this morning.

Finn Shelby is a tall man - a tall boy? - with the slicked back, half-shaved hair of the Shelby clan. He wears an expensive suit, consisting of only three layers, and you silently wonder how he isn’t shivering right now. But he isn’t, instead standing tall and bold amongst the dust and grime of an early morning business delivery.

You turn fully, folding your arms over your chest. “Finn Shelby. What a surprise. Has your aunt had my name in her mouth again?”

Finn shoves his hands in his pockets. He doesn’t even look at you when he speaks, too busy examining everything going on around him - you realise he doesn’t get out much, not as often as his brothers, anyway. This side of things must be so new to him, so bizarre. You nearly laugh in his face - his brothers go out murdering people every single day, but the idea of someone importing guns into Birmingham is what intrigues him.

“Yes,” you continue when he doesn’t respond to your previous jab. “This is where all the magic happens. See that crate over there?” You point to a wooden box being hauled from a boat onto the platform. “That’s for you and your shit-stain family.”

Finn smiles. “Is it now.”

“The money was given to us quite promptly, I will admit. I thought for sure you would have just threatened us till we did what you wanted.”

“We don’t work like that.”

“No? So where have all the big bad tales come from then?”

Finn’s mouth twists. Still, his eyes do not meet your own, giving you plenty of time to smile to yourself. Finn is certainly one of the easier ones to mess with, if just because he’s lived in his brothers’ shadows for as long as he’s been able to walk. He doesn’t have the same confidence, the same quick-wit that the other Shelbys have.

It’s kind of sad, really.

You stare at him a moment longer, waiting for him to continue the conversation, perhaps offer up an explanation as to why he’s here in the first place. Most of the time, people make their orders and just leave you to get on with it - it’s very rare someone actually comes down to view the process.

Finally, Finn sighs, and for the first time since you acknowledged his presence, his eyes snap to your own. “This is an interesting little set-up you’ve got here.”

“It’s not so much interesting as it is cautious.”

“Is that why you’re here so early?”

You shrug. “Don’t get it twisted, Shelby. You won’t find me down here at this time every day - I just wanted to make sure my people were doing the job right for you and your people, yeah.”

Finn hums. “Nice of you. Considering you’re a twat.”

“Now who gave you that impression?”

Finn tilts his head, examining you for longer than strictly necessary. His gaze makes you uncomfortable, being dragged forth to the point where you have to look away and change the topic; maybe that’s where his skills lie. John, Arthur and Tommy carry the guns for intimidation, but all Finn needs is his expression.

You turn and start walking along the docks, giving Luther a thankful nod that reads go away. Finn follows close behind you, polished heels clicking against the rough wood.

“So, are you going to tell me why you’ve really come here today?”

“I overheard Polly talking about her inquiry.”

You raise a brow, glancing over your shoulder. Finn catches your eye, smiles sheepishly.

“You really made her angry.”

You shrug. “It’s business. It’s what we do. If your aunt can’t take that, then maybe she isn’t as tough she likes to make herself out to be.”

Finn pauses. “What the fuck are you on about?”

“It’s true what they say, Shelby - being tough doesn’t just come from violence. You might be able to shoot a gun and kill people without blinking, but if you can’t handle a little tough criticism, then how strong can you really be?”

Finn doesn’t respond. You think you might have hit a sore point for him.

Barrelling on, you say, “You overheard Dear Pol talking about me. Then what? Your interest was piqued?”

“I wanted to see what made you so special.”

You very nearly freeze on the spot. Instead, you catch yourself, glancing at him yet again. “She said I was special?”

“She said you were a lot of things,” Finn replies. “But we have our own people when we want weaponry - I want to know why she came to you this time. You, of all people. Basically the same age as me-”

“You’re older.”

Finn tilts his head. “I guess I just want to know how you fucked your life up so bad that you’ve ended up on this side of things so early on.”

Your mouth fills with cotton. You swallow thickly, turning back to the path in front - around you, people are bustling back and forth, bowing their heads, giving you tiny little “Hello’s” that are meant to sound pleasant but honestly just reek of fear. You are surrounded by grown men who want nothing more than to impress you, to place themselves in your good books because they know what will happen to them if they somehow find themselves upon the alternative.

You never would have thought such a reaction a bad thing, but now that Finn has spoken, it does seem a bit weird. You’re successful, rolling in money you honestly don’t deserve, but what does it all mean if you have people terrified of you?

Finn picks up his pace, strolling alongside you now. His shoulder clips with yours, and it takes everything in you not to turn around and shove him into the harbour.

“I’ve never met someone like me before,” he says.

“You haven’t yet. We’re nothing alike.”

“No?”

“I don’t fancy being compared to a Shelby.”

“Mm. See, I might be wrong, then. Us Shelby’s can admit when something’s true - clearly you can’t.”

You grit your teeth, balling your hands into fists. “Do you want these guns or not, Finn? Because if you carry on the way you are now, I’ll cancel everything. You can take your fucking money back.”

“You think you have that kind of power?”

You whirl around so abruptly, Finn nearly crashes into you. “You think I don’t? Are you forgetting whose business this is? Are you forgetting who’s in charge?”

Finn steps back. He doesn’t look scared, but he doesn’t look unprovoked, either; slightly widened eyes, a swift swipe of his tongue across his lower lip that proves to you this is not the reaction he was expecting. People from all over the world will drop to their knees to see to every Shelby boys wish and desire - clearly this is what Finn wants from you, as well.

“If you came here just to spew your bullshit superiority complex, I don’t want to fucking hear it. Unlike you, I have work to do, shit to get done.” You turn, calling out to a nearby dock worker. “Oi! Mate, take this little prick back to wherever the fuck he came from.”

The dock worker scrambles forward, bending to your every wish.

Turning back to Finn, you give him a sarcastic smile. Again, he swipes his tongue along his lower lip.

“Have a safe journey home,” you say. “Maybe you can find a dark alley somewhere to go fuck yourself.”

----

“So I fucked that up pretty badly.”

Arthur takes a long drag of his cigarette, cold eyes set in a wrinkled face running the length of Finn Shelby as the two brothers sit across from each other in The Garrison.

Finn doesn’t want to be here. Finn wants to be back in bed, cuddled up under a warm blanket after the early morning he was subject to today. He argues the early morning was entirely against his will, but even he isn’t delusional enough to believe such a thing - the moment he heard you were doing business with his family, he knew he needed to see you.

And it has been a long time since you and Finn Shelby last spoke; taking from the conversation you two had this morning, he can only assume you don’t really remember your last meeting at all. The smiles, the laughter, the getting-to-know-each other. Today, you spoke to him like he was a complete stranger, and Finn doesn’t know if you’re just trying to protect yourself, or if you really do not remember him.

Arthur sighs in that heavy way Arthur always does. He has one hand perched on his knee, the other holding his sixth lit cigarette. “I expected nothing less from you, brother. Absolutely nothing less.”

“I don’t get it,” Finn grumbles. “I don’t even know where I slipped up.”

“Sometimes it’s best to just move on. If the devil’s not interested in you, then that’s how it is.”

Finn scowls; it’s become a habit of his to agree with everything his older brothers say, but this is something he can’t get on board with. You’ve changed, yes, but it’s not really in a bad way - you’ve become stronger, more in-tune with your surroundings. It’s a big difference from the timid business-oriented person you were before, sitting behind a mahogany desk, taking shit from anyone and everyone.

Part of Finn is happy you’ve grown a backbone. Another, more selfish part of him just wants you easy to bend again.

He sighs and takes a sip of his whiskey. “Fuck me, man.”

“Right,” Arthur replies, slapping the table. “How about this, Finny-boy. A whore for the night. I’ll pay for her, don’t you worry, but you clearly need something to get your mind off this Y/N person you’re on about.”

Finn flicks his eyes up. “Stop pretending you don’t know who they are.”

Arthur shrugs, slumping back in the booth. He takes a drag of his cigarette, blows the smoke directly into Finn’s face. “Polly’s been raving on about them for a good week and a half now. Sounds like a right handful.”

“Yeah, well, that’s a bit rich coming from a fucker like you.”

Arthur grins. “I never said it’s a bad thing. I just don’t know if a handful is the type you should be focusing on.”

Finn raises a brow. “And what do you mean by that?”

“Well.” Arthur trails his eyes along Finn’s form, and Finn already knows exactly what his brother is going to say. “You’re not exactly the sturdiest little bastard in Birmingham, are you? Y/N will be trailing you through the streets by the bollocks if this turns into anything.”

Despite himself, Finn’s cheeks heat up. He looks down, scratching a few lines into the table; Arthur is wrong, of course. Finn can hold himself just as well as any of them, and he’s not about to let some sketchy business-owner boss him around. Yes, he has fond memories of you, but at the end of the day, you’re a different person now. You’re Finn’s rival. He has to remember that.

He looks back up. Arthur is already staring at him, amused smile appearing beneath his bushy moustache. “Promise me you won’t tell Tommy anything about Y/N.”

Arthur scoffs. “Tommy already knows about Y/N, you stupid twat. Even without Pol ranting about them every two seconds, Thomas Shelby knows everything.”

“Y/N might be a bit different.”

“Oh, give it a rest, lad. None of this they’re special bullshit - Tommy knows all about them, and listen to me when I tell you this.” Arthur leans in, lowering his voice despite the privacy of the booth they’re seated in. “He’s got them and their little business high on his radar.”

---

Finn isn’t someone you would ever call a friend.

Especially not now.

Once upon a time, perhaps you could classify him as a fascination - but all the Shelby’s were a fascination when you lived in Birmingham - especially Small Heath. Their names were once plastered everywhere until Thomas Shelby started getting a little too big for hit boots. The mans wife died, and he went downhill from there. People stopped respecting them as much; people had less fear; the streets of Birmingham became less of a risk, because people saw that the Shelby clan could be brought down if the need arose.

Finn, however, was one of the only Shelby boys you ever had any direct contact with. Brief, barely memorable, but it happened, and you remember it better than you are willing to admit.

You sit in your office now, the only light coming from the lantern lit on the desk beside you. The door is closed, but you can still hear the bustle outside it, employees yelling at each other, people falling over one another in their attempts to get the heaps upon heaps of work finished in time.

You should be helping them. Usually, you would be out there, making sure your business stays on it’s toes, but seeing Finn today has done something to you that you can’t quite explain - rattled you, maybe. Thrown you off guard. His visit was certainly unexpected, but you’re usually so good at pulling yourself together when you need to.

You tug your knees into your chest, leaning your forehead against them. Through the door, someone cries out, another person telling them to suck it up. You close your eyes, try to catch your breath before you really do sink into the territory of absolutely insane.

You want to drift off to sleep. You want to close your eyes and not resurface until all of this drama has been cleared up, until the Shelby’s are out of your life for good. Only then will you be able to focus solely on the work in front of you.

A knock sounds at the door. You bite your lower lip, resisting the urge to yell at the guest to just fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, it’s too late for this, you don’t have the mental capacity-

“Come in!”

The door creaks open. Heels thump against the carpet. The smell of expensive perfume fills the room. You know exactly who has just entered.

Slowly lifting your head, you are greeted by Polly Gray. She’s wearing an expensive striped suit, and standing behind her is her young son, Mr Michael Gray, dressed in a simple grey suit with his hair slicked back. Compared to the last time you saw him, he’s certainly broadened out.

“I see you got your custody back.”

Polly’s nostrils flare. “It’s like you’re running some kind of zoo out there.” She plucks a cigarette from your desk and sits down, gesturing for her son to do the same. Without invitation, the two Gray’s get comfortable, Polly propping one knee up against the arm rest of her seat, lighting a cigarette at the same time. Michael’s beady little eyes are dancing around in search of alcohol.

You slump against your own seat, sighing. “I’m tired, Polly. Tonight is not the night to talk to me about business.”

“Ah, see, that’s not acceptable,” she replies, pointing her cigarette at you. “When you’re working with me, love, you have to be on call at all times.”

“And when you’re working with me, you need to have a bit of fucking trust.”

Her eyes snap up, narrowing. “Beg your pardon?”

“Don’t play dumb, Pol. It’s really not a good look on you.”

Polly slowly leans forward. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sending Finn to come check on me this morning was unnecessary.” You pluck the cigarette from her fingers, taking a drag of your own. “My people know what they’re doing. Plus, Finn Shelby is hardly a decent fear tactic - I could snap that boy in two if I wanted.”

Michael and Polly fall silent, and for a second, you second-guess your sentence choice - did you just make yourself sound stupid? Either way, the pair share a confused glance before Michael leans his elbows on the mahogany and says, “Finn visited you this morning?”

You freeze. “At around five am, yeah.”

Polly snickers, a noise that would infuriate you if it came from anyone else. From Polly, however, it just captures your attention, and suddenly you’re awake again.

“You didn’t send him?” you question.

“We don’t send Finn to do anything,” Polly says. “And this is exactly why. He gets infatuated. He’s not like his brothers, dear - he isn’t completely heartless.”

You blink, unsure what she means. She’s still smiling, still staring like she’s waiting for you to catch on, too.

You lean back, folding your arms over your chest. “None of your business dealings have to do with Finn. Keep him out of it.”

“We never dragged him into it in the first place,” says Michael. He, too, is grinning, though he has the decency to hide it behind his whiskey glass. “That’s all on Finn, I’m afraid, and who are we to tell him to back off?”

You scowl. “You Shelby’s really enjoy walking on thin ice, don’t you?”

“You said it yourself, love,” says Polly. “Finn has nothing to do with our business dealings, meaning his actions have no connection to what we’ve got going on. If you were to cancel all of this because of him, you’re going against your own quote.”

You hate that she’s right. You hate that she’s got your arm twisted behind your back, hate that she has even the tiniest bit of control over you and your decisions. But she’s paid you already. The first delivery of guns has already been set up, already been stored away for later use - taking everything back now would just be a hassle.

Plus, it would be giving Finn the control he clearly wants, and you can’t have that.

Because why else would he come and see you? Why else would he want an insight into your business process?

When you fail to reply, Polly sighs, an almost dreamy sound clearly meant to infuriate you. You look at her through the tops of your eyes, watching as she snatches the glass of whiskey from her sons hand and takes a sip for herself. Michael doesn’t even flinch, just folds his arms over his chest and continues watching you like a predator watching prey.

“I only came here for an update on my guns,” says Polly. “But I’ve received something much, much more interesting.”

“Your boy is an idiot,” you snap. “If he thinks he’s getting anything out of me-”

“Finn isn’t one to care for family business.” Polly grins, tilting her head to the side; it’s that look she’s famous for, the one that makes anyone feel ten times smaller. “If he came to visit you, it wasn’t for business of any sort. I’d maybe ask him what he wants next time you see him.”

Michael smiles, a dimple popping on his left cheek. “Cute.”

“Go to hell,” you spit.

Polly chuckles, placing a hand on Michaels arm. Together, the two of them rise from their seats and start towards the door; they didn’t even get their update, but they both look smugly content, like they’ve gotten exactly what they came for.

You hug your knees closer to your chest, fully aware that the pose makes you look cowardly, but you don’t care right now. You watch them leave, Polly giving you the smallest wave over her shoulder before her and her son disappear through the door; outside, the halls get quiet. You can hear the back door slam shut before the hustle and bustle of business life starts back up again.

You close your eyes, letting your head fall to your knees again; you’re exhausted, even more confused than you were when you first laid eyes on Finn this morning, and quite frankly, in no fit shape to be dealing with the Shelbys’ bullshit.

---

“Look, there’s nothing we can do. One of the orders went missing, and we can’t find a way to get it back.”

“Great. Fucking fantastic! This is exactly what we wanted today, eh?”

Luther lowers his head, blonde hair falling in his eyes; he’s trying to hide his shame, but you see right through him. There’s horror there, an acceptance of the punishment he and the entire team will be receiving from the Peaky Blinders if this deal does not go to plan.

You run your hands through your hair. “How does an entire order of guns go missing?”

“My best bet is it was stolen,” says Luther. “Going through all them borders, it’s not far-fetched to imagine someone with sticky fingers getting their hands on it.”

“Yeah, well, they’ll think twice when I cut off those fucking sticky fingers.”

“And who are you threatening?”

No.

This is the last thing you need, the absolute last thing you need. You whirl around nonetheless, like Finn is a magnet you are drawn to - and there he stands, tall and lanky and gorgeous but so, so smug and annoying that it nearly makes you want to rip your hair out.

You grit your teeth, stuffing your hands in your pockets. “Who let you through?”

Finn grins, striding forward. He examines the crates on his way towards you, stopping only when he is centimetres away from exactly where you are stood. “No one needs to let me through. You’ve got some loyal people here, Y/N, but you’re forgetting the Peaky Blinders run Birmingham.”

“So the rumours say.”

“You never answered my question, though - who are you threatening?”

He’s going to find out eventually. In a weeks time when he and his family are receiving their order of guns and they are an entire crate short, he’s going to know exactly what happened.

You glance up at him, and you feel something break inside you. You can’t quite pinpoint what it is, but you’ve felt it before, tried fighting it off so many times. It’s linked to those blue eyes, blood-shot with exhaustion and years of seeing things no man should ever have to see. It’s linked to the way he stands, so close you can feel his warmth radiating off them stupidly expensive suits he has the honour of wearing every single day. It’s linked to the tilt of his head, the small smile that seems to only appear when he’s taking the piss out of you.

You look back to the ground, shoving these thoughts aside enough to say, “One of our orders went missing during delivery and we can’t get it back.”

The admission is like a blow to the chest, even though it shouldn’t be - it was a simple mistake, one you had no control over. But it’s a mistake that shouldn’t have been in place, a mistake you’ve never made before, a mistake that is linked to Polly fucking Gray.

Finn pauses for a brief moment. Looking up, you notice his eyes are no longer trained on you, but on a spot just by your head. His lower lip jults out, and if you listen close enough, you can make out the sound of him humming.

“Polly isn’t gonna be too happy about that,” he says finally.

You fold your arms over your chest. “No. I don’t think she will.”

“That’s not very good, is it?”

You glare. “Fuck off, Finn.”

He laughs, throwing his head back. The move surprises you, considering it’s the most emotion you’ve ever seen a Shelby display in a sober state; it’s nice, but you curse the warmth that immediately spreads to your chest. It forces you to take a step back, just for safety.

“Right, what are we gonna do about this, then?” he says, lowering his head to glance at the crates. “I’ve got a few orders I can probably spare - throw a couple onto the pile.”

You blink, not entirely positive you’ve heard him right.

He looks down, raising a brow at your silence. “What?”

“What?”

He chuckles. “Isaiah and I have more guns than we can store. We can toss a few onto your shitty little pile-”

“Watch your mouth.”

“And then you’ll have nothing to worry about. What do you say?”

“There’s a catch.”

“No there isn’t.”

“I’m not stupid, Finn.” You take another step back, very nearly tripping over a worker bustling past. “I know your family. You don’t do things for others unless you want something in return.”

Finn scowls, folding his arms over his chest. “Why does everyone just assume me and my family have the exact same personalities? We’re different people, you know, and I just so happen to be willing to help you without getting anything back.”

This is something you can’t even fully wrap your head around - he’s Finn Shelby. He’s a Peaky Blinder. Him and generosity do not - and will not - go hand in hand.

Finn groans, tilting his head and closing his eyes. “Do you want the offer or not? ‘Cause I can just go back to The Garrison and tell Polly you’re-”

“Let me see what you’ve got.”

His eyes flick open. That smile starts again. “Of course. Follow me.”

And that’s how you end up alone with Finn Shelby, standing in a freezing cold storage locker, surrounded by more crates of guns than your maths skills allow you to count.

Wrapping your arms around your middle, you say, “Holy fuck,” because that honestly seems like the only decent response you can give to a sight like this.

Finn slips his blazer off, drops it casually over your shoulders before he strides forward and starts unclipping the lids of the crates. “Yeah, it’s quite a lot. We got carried away when the Russians were around.”

“Right. Russians.”

He jumps up, balancing one foot on the edge of a crate as he looks inside and rummages through what can only be a great, great number of guns. They scrape against each other, and you can imagine the scratches currently infesting their slick black armour with how badly they’re being handled.

You tug Finn’s blazer tighter around yourself, biting your tongue.

“We’ve got all sorts,” he explains. “Pistols, automatics, semi-automatics, pump actions-”

He tosses a pistol onto the floor.

You yelp. “Finn!”

He glances over his shoulder, a glimmering smile on his face. “I knew that was gonna rile you up.”

You pick up the gun and stuff it in the waistband of your jeans. “You’re such an asshole. Do you know how dangerous it is to go round throwing guns about? What if the safety hadn’t been on?”

“Why wouldn’t the safety be on?” He goes back to rummaging, shaking his head. “Honestly, you think I’m some kind of fucking amateur-”

You groan and stomp forward, grabbing his arm and yanking him down from the crates. He stumbles into your chest, turning to look at you, but you’re already pulling yourself up onto the ledge he was previously stood upon.

“What are you doing?”

“A better fucking job than you, that’s for sure.”

He doesn’t respond, but you hear him chuckle.

The crates are truly what a serial killers dream would be made of - piles upon piles of guns, all sorts of guns, crammed in a single crate. Some of them have the safety gauze on them, whilst some just hang out loosely, a danger to anyone who handles them too roughly - it’s this danger that sends a thrill swirling through your stomach, this danger that prompts you to reach forward and grab one from the box.

Finn tenses. “Careful.”

“A Colt, hm.” You point and aim at the storage room door. “1903 model, yeah?”

“I haven’t looked.”

You nod. “Definitely a 1903 model. Don’t see many of these around nowadays.”

Finn sighs. “Put it down. We’re not here to piss about.”

“I’m not pissing about. I happen to know exactly what I’m doing.”

“I’ve never seen you shoot a gun in your life.”

You scoff. “You haven’t seen me do a lot of things, Finn Shelby.”

Why he is so rattled, you do not know. Usually so calm and laid back, the youngest Shelby now stomps towards you, grabs your wrist-

“Finn! What the fuck?”

You try tugging your hand out of his grip, but his fingers tighten. Your arms are tossed over your head in the quarrel, your own fingers tightening on the trigger, just enough for a bullet to speed into the roof. Concrete crumbles over your head, and you barely have time to yell before Finn’s arms have wrapped round your waist and he’s tugging you to the ground, his broad body thrown on top of your own.

An entire chunk of concrete collapses, landing and smashing on the cold floor, just inches from where you and Finn are currently kneeled.

You pause. Your heart thunders. You can hear nothing but his breath tickling the side of your head, your blood rushing to your ears. The Colt 1903 lays discarded by the crates you have just been thrown from, and Finn’s arm is still on the small of your back when you finally emerge back into reality.

“Finn,” you whisper. There’s dust in your throat, blood on your elbows and knees.

“Yeah?” he whispers back.

“I won’t have to pay for that damage, will I?”

Finn pulls back, hand snaking along your hip as he pushes himself up onto his elbow to take a look at the damage in question. You hear him take a sharp breath, fingers tightening on your hip before he stands up. You follow shortly after, eyes widening as soon as you take a look at what has happened.

“Oh, fuck.”

The cracks in the floor aren’t even the worst bit of it; there’s a chunk taken from the roof, wires and long pieces of wood hanging down. Dust floats through the air, blinding you for seconds at a time until you eventually swat it away. An entire crate of guns has been knocked over, and it’s only by the good grace of God that none of them went off in the collision.

Finn stands to the side, one hand trailing through his hair, the other rubbing absently at his stomach; his lower lip is pulled between his teeth, a clear sign that he has absolutely no idea what to do, that the two of you are more than likely going to be in deep, deep trouble when one of the other Peaky Blinders finds this mess.

“Are you alright?”

You close your eyes. “It’s not really been my day, Finn, so no. I can’t say I am.”

Finn purses his lips. It’s rare for anyone to see a Shelby look awkward, but the way Finn shifts from one foot to the other screams of nothing more than pure, unfiltered ohfuckohfuckohfuck. He runs his hands through his hair, glancing at the damage done to both the roof, the guns and the ground, and it is very clear that he’s already dreading the process of telling his family what has happened.

You know you should do something - anything at all, something to help him out of this dilemma. At the end of the day, you played a part in this mess. You had the gun, had startled Finn enough for him to dive towards you in his fragile attempts to get it off you.

But why was he so worried in the first place?

You hollow out your cheeks, stuffing your hands in your pockets when you say, “I’ll tell Tommy.”

Finn stiffens. “No you won’t.”

“This is my mess to deal with. We wouldn’t even be in here if it wasn’t for me fucking up the order-”

“Tommy will fucking kill you if he thinks you’ve been screwing with his collection.” Finn starts towards the door. “I’ll tell him. You take whatever crate you want and get the fuck out of-”

You spring forward before he can reach the door, grabbing his wrist and twirling him around. His eyes widen slightly, mouth parting as he attempts to get a single protestation in, but you’re quicker. You shove him behind you and dart out the door, hearing nothing but a strangled, “Y/N!” emerge from behind you.

You know where Tommy is; he’s where Tommy always is, hiding away in his office. Despite having not had any communication with the Shelby boy for quite some time, you’ve kept an eye on him and his whereabouts, purely for your own safety. This is why you’re able to make the journey from the docks to his front door in a very short amount of time.

But Finn is also just as quick as you.

He grabs your wrist just seconds before you make to knock upon the massive mahogany door, red paint chipped and crumbling beneath your knuckles. He tugs your arm back, and you stumble directly into his chest.

“You have a fucking death wish,” Finn growls in your ear.

You lean your head against his shoulder, whisper in his ear, “So will you if you don’t let go of me in the next three seconds.”

His fingers loosen just enough for you to pull forward and knock the door. Your heart is thundering; you’re doing this for Finn, and you don’t know why, because he’s never done anything for you, but the thought of him walking into his brothers office and taking the blame for something you played a part in will not let you rest.

The door opens in mere seconds, Francis standing on the other side of it. She raises a brow when she sees you, a sure sign that she’s heard of you before - maybe you’re infamous in the Shelby household, a common name spoken around a candlelit dinner in which Polly Gray has a grand old time talking about how much of a bitch you are.

Nonetheless, you’re not here to find out.

“Morning,” you say, giving the maid a nod. “Can I speak to Thomas please?”

“Y/N, please,” Finn utters as Francis moves out of the way and grants the two of you access to the oversized building - only three people live inside it, but it could honestly be a hotel with how big it is.

You start up the winding staircase, Finn trailing close behind. You don’t answer his muttered plea, too invested in the artwork lining the walls as you climb to the top level - pictures of Grace, drawn in granite yet somehow managing to capture the way her blonde hair used to curl, used to glint and shine with the unnatural light of the Garrison. Pictures of Tommy, sitting with a young boy in his lap and a scowl on his face that somehow manages to look a little more chipper than the scowl he’s usually wearing; perhaps that is him posing, getting ready for a pleasant family picture with his growing son and dead wife.

“She was pretty, wasn’t she?”

The question is out before you can think better of it. You have halted in the middle of the staircase, transfixed on a picture of Grace stood on her own, small smile on her face, hands folded along the top of an empty chair big enough to be a throne.

Finn steps up beside you. “That’s why Tommy liked her so much.”

You risk a glance in his direction. Hands stuffed in his pockets, lip between his teeth, he’s the picture of uncaring. “Did you talk to her much?”

“No.” He looks at you and shrugs. “You know how Tommy is - he doesn’t share stuff like that.”

“He doesn’t share women?”

“He doesn’t share feelings.” Finn gestures to the portrait. “Grace was his whole life for a while. I don’t think he was ready to incorporate us into his whole life.”

You look away, cheeks blazing for a reason you are unsure of - hearing Finn talk like that, perhaps. So open and honest, like he’s talking to someone he can trust. It makes you feel a little guilty, considering you know for a fact Polly will never allow something like. . . that to form between you. She’s already decided she doesn’t like you - there’s no way in hell she’ll have you as part of the family.

Dispelling these thoughts - and the disappointment that comes with them - you slowly start back up the stairs. Once you reach the mahogany doors of Tommy’s office, you risk Finn another glance before knocking, knowing there is no going back after this.

“Come in.”

Finn grabs your arm. “Let me go first.”

“You really think I’m some kind of wimp, don’t you?”

Finn scowls. “Just let me go first and test the air, for fuck sake.”

You bow out of the way, gesturing grandly to the door. “Go ahead then, O’Great Little Bastard.”

Finn kicks you in the ankle before pushing open the door. His broad shoulders cover you, confirmed when Tommy says, “Ah, Finn,” with no mention of you standing behind him.

Finn waltzes into the room, and then Tommy’s eyes land on you.

They’re like ice - you’ve always said that. Piercing and dangerous, holding years worth of stories that look so interesting but too dangerous to hear. He sits with his shoulders drawn back, one hand placed on his forehead and his mouth slightly parted, having clearly not been expecting guests this evening.

Finn shifts, glancing slightly to the side, making sure you’re still there, that Tommy’s gaze hasn’t somehow managed to obliterate you in the past two seconds. You step forward, drawing your own shoulders back when you say, “Mr Shelby.”

Tommy doesn’t respond. He slips his gaze to his youngest brother and tilts his head. “What the fuck have you got yourself involved in now, Finn?”

“Tommy-”

You take another step forward, grabbing Finn’s arm to silence him. “I shot a hole in the roof of one of your storage units.”

There it is. That’s all you needed to say, and yet the words taste like acid when they make an appearance. Thomas - forever the professional at hiding his true emotions - keeps his head tilted, but his eyes are on you now, and that makes it all ten times worse. You held yourself well in front of Polly, but Tommy is a completely different ball-game. He really isn’t all talk. He isn’t one to make a decision and then go back on it - if he’s thinking of your death right now, you will be dying.

Finn lowers his head. “Right, it wasn’t exactly all Y/N’s fault.”

“I’m still waiting for an explanation,” Tommy says calmly.

You look at Finn, and he looks back. There’s a tiny, silent conversation being held that lasts only the space of two seconds before Finn is stepping forward, and you’re yanking his arm trying to get him back, and suddenly the two of you are brawling in the middle of Thomas Shelby’s office.

You’re both trying to explain everything, but the words are mashed and nonsensical because Finn has his elbow in your side and you have one ankle wrapped around his leg. His arm is wrapped around your waist, tightening as he tries to shove you off him.

Tommy slams a stamp against the desk. “Enough!”

You and Finn freeze, your hand bundled in his shirt, his hand wrapped around your middle.

Tommy scowls. “Fuck me, it’s like talking to children.”

You separate quickly, brushing your hands down your clothes. “He was gonna take the blame, ‘cause he’s an idiot.”

“I grabbed your hand!” Finn exclaims. “You wouldn’t have shot the fucking thing if I hadn’t-”

“We wouldn’t have been there in the first place if it weren’t for me!”

Finn rolls his eyes. “Oh, give it a rest, Y/N.”

“Am I wrong?”

“We’re not here to talk about why we were there-”

“Why were you there?”

You close your eyes. You’re a professional, though, and you’ve dealt with issues like this too many times to count. Finn exhales shakily, but you don’t let him take the reigns. You step forward and say, “One of the deliveries for Polly’s order went missing on its way over, so we’re missing an entire crate.”

Tommy pauses. “So you were going into my storage units to - what? Steal?”

“I took them in,” Finn interjects. “Tommy, you know what Polly will do if she finds out her order isn’t exactly what she signed for. She would have killed Y/N and their entire crew in two seconds flat.”

Tommy runs a hand along his face. “And she’s got every bloody right to do that, Finn. You’ve no reason to interject in her business.” Tommy looks up, gestures to you. “Why do you give a shit what happens to them anyway?”

“Have a fucking guess.”

Your breath leaves you in one clean swoop, eyes snapping to take in Finn’s profile; he doesn’t even look tense, simply standing there with his arms swinging and his head tilted. You don’t even know how to properly decipher what he’s just said, but you don’t get a chance to before Tommy is sighing and saying, “Fuck sake, Finn.”

“What?” Finn shoots back. “It was bound to happen eventually.”

“Not with one of our rivals, it wasn’t!”

“Sorry, Tom, but last time I checked, Grace wasn’t just an innocent little barmaid.”

Tommy stands, knocking the desk with his knees. His hands are balled, jaw clenched, and it’s reflex when you step forward and grab Finn’s arm, tugging him back just that little bit. You want to drag him from the room completely, get him out of harms way, pull him into an empty room and question him on what the fuck is going on right now.

“You’ve got some mouth on you, Finn. I just wanna know where you got it from,” Tommy growls.

And Finn leans forward, not unlike a shark wading through dark water. “Where we all got it from - the Peaky Blinders.”

You expect Tommy to snap - with anyone else, he would have snapped a long time ago. The conversation would have long since been over, but now, the older Shelby glares, and you watch as his eyes soften. It’s so unusual, so unlike the Thomas you know; you take it as a warning, tightening your grip on Finn’s arm.

Tommy’s eyes snap to your own. “I’ll talk to Polly about the missing delivery.”

Your eyes widen. “You will?”

“Stay out of her way for a little bit,” he says. “She’ll need time to cool down, but I won’t let her hurt you. Finn won’t let her hurt you.”

“I’m not scared of Polly,” you reply, because you aren’t, and it feels important to let him know that.

Thomas opens his mouth to respond, to maybe call you stupid for not fearing the woman, but Finn turns before he can get the words out, and suddenly it’s as if Tommy isn’t even in the room. Finn’s eyes meet your own, soft and glazed and exhausted from years of mental torment, but for the first time since you met the man, you can see a tiny hint of humanity within them, a tiny hint of human emotion that he certainly never expressed before.

It’s such a good look on him.

A small smile graces his features. He tilts his head to the side, placing a gentle hand over the top of your own, still clutching the sleeve of his blazer. “I’ll walk you back to the docks.”

You would usually say no, but you can’t right now - you have so many questions, so many missing links that you need joined together for this meeting to make sense. In and out in a heartbeat, even though you’d walked in under the assumption that Tommy was going to happily order your death.

So you and Finn walk out of Tommy’s house, Finn saying a quick goodbye to Charlie before the two of you are once again exposed to the dusty, polluted air of Small Heath. Finn tucks his hands in his pockets, and you dip your chin further into your scarf, neither of you saying a word because neither of you know what to say.

Which is weird considering your brain is a tangled mess of questions right now.

It’s Finn who breaks the silence. “That wasn’t how I wanted to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

Finn bites his lip, suppressing a smile. “Don’t act stupid.”

You shrug like his words from before meant nothing, like they hadn’t made your heart erupt. “I thought it was pretty well done, to be honest.”

“Yeah?”

“A little unclear, I won’t lie, but I think I got the jidst of it.”

“Good.”

“Yeah.”

The thing about you and Finn is, both of you are new to this. There is no experience to back up these kinds of feelings, which leaves behind only a vague sense of uncertainty. It’s reaching in the dark. It’s asking for help when neither of you want to give up your pride. It’s wanting to try because this is something new, and the rush from a new experience is what you thrive off.

These are feelings that trigger both your fight and your flight response, and you’re not sure whether you want to flee or stay and see how things turn out.

---

The desk, cluttered.

Your head, sore.

Your fingers, littered with paper cuts.

You slump in your office chair, a single candle lit on the corner of your desk, the only source of light in the room currently with drawn curtains and no lanterns on; you can’t bring yourself to go around turning them on, preferring the dim light for concentration.

The papers in front of you make absolutely no sense, but you can’t just ignore them. It’s your job to make sure everything is in order, whether you understand the details or not.

“Fuck sake,” you whisper to yourself.

The door flings open then, as if your curse summoned someone.

You don’t even have to look up to know who that someone is - Finn Shelby is the only person in the world who would just barge into your office without knocking. He’s the only person in the world who can get away with it.

“Fucking hell, Y/N. You’ll damage your eyes sat in here.”

You don’t look up. “Don’t turn a light on.”

“Oh right. You’re busy.”

You wave a dismissive hand in his direction, using your other hand to shuffle through the pages scattering your desk. So many words, so little time to figure them out. The client will be here tomorrow. They’ll expect everything to be in order, because you promised them everything would be in order, but now you’re sat behind your desk and you don’t even know where to begin-

Fingertips, light as butterfly wings, tickle along your jaw line.

Your eyes snap up, breath leaving you in a single swoop when you see Finn sat on the edge of your desk, a fond smile on his face as he traces his fingers along the curve of your jaw, down your neck until he pauses at the collar of your fluffy dressing gown.

“Stressed?”

You swat his hand away. “None of this shit makes sense. It’s driving me insane.”

Finn sighs, swinging his legs over the desk and pushing himself over to your side. He lands beside you and kneels down, taking a look at the pages you were previously dawdling over.

You glance at him. “Why are you bothering?”

Finn picks up a page, squinting. “Just because I can’t read, doesn’t mean I can’t be useful.”

You snatch the page back. “Yes it does.”

“Take a break.”

You scoff, the idea ludicrous.

Finn raises a brow, tilting his head to intercept your line of sight. “I mean it. If that client tomorrow has a problem, he can come to me about it.”

“This is my business, Finn. I have responsibilities that need to be sorted.”

“You also have a lad who also needs to be sorted.”

You narrow your eyes, glancing at him. “What a pervy thing to say.”

“It’s my way of telling you I miss you without sounding like a knob.”

You snort. “It didn’t work.”

Finn grabs your hand, twirling you around to face him. He stands to his full height, forcing you to tilt your head back to look at him from your place in the desk chair. He smiles, swiping his thumb along your lower lip.

“How about I get Isaiah to have a look through these pages for you tomorrow morning, hm?” he asks.

“Finn…”

“You’re exhausted, Y/N. I’m doing you a favour. Now stop being a twat and let’s get-”

“I feel like you just want me to go home with you.” You look up at him, raising a brow. “Even though Arthur said…”

Finn rolls his eyes, grabbing your hands and tugging. “Fuck what Arthur said. Just come home.”

Home. His place. His room. His bed. His warmth. All of it is home now, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

You sigh and stand up, giving into his complaints. His smile gets wider when you rise from the chair and wrap your arms around his shoulders, revealing just how right he was - you are exhausted.

He hugs you back, swaying a little bit before he presses a kiss to your lips; just a small one, because kissing when he means it is still something a little unknown to Finn Shelby; he used to kiss the girls his brothers hired for him, but he’s openly admitted to you that he never felt like he should, he never felt like them kisses mattered. Now, he kisses you with precision, making sure to draw back every now and then to make sure it’s okay, he’s okay, he’s doing a good job.

You grin, tapping your tongue against his lower lip in that way that drives him insane. “I liked it when you said you were my lad.”

Finn scowls, crinkling his nose up. Freckles scatter his face, constellations against a pale sky. “Don’t think too deep into it.”

“I’m going to.”

Finn picks you up bridal style. You don’t even squeal, simply rest your head against his shoulder, humming into his neck. “Let’s get you to bed, love. You’ve gone delirious.”

“Isaiah better not lose me a fucking client tomorrow.”

Finn chuckles. “We’ll find out in the morning.”

#peaky blinders #peaky blinders fanfic #peaky blinders imagine #peaky blinders fic #peaky blinders fanfiction #peaky blinders x reader #peaky blinders one shot #finn shelby #finn shelby imagine #finn shelby one shot #finn shelby fanfiction #finn shelby fic #finn shelby x reader #finn shelby fanfic #peaky blinders reader insert #finn shelby fluff #peaky blinders writing

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

Text

The multiverse trip trope, with the canon Batfam ending up in a No Capes AU, where their counterparts, being equally hyper-competent but having no secret identities to hide or vigilantism as the primary focus for channeling their energies into....are equally ridiculous to all vigilante versions of the Batfam, but in vastly different ways.

With no need to hide his athletic abilities or to try and distance himself from immediate association with his past acrobatics, Dick focuses his time and efforts on gymnastics after Bruce takes him in. He’s an Olympic gold medalist before he’s twenty, hailed for practically reinventing the nature of high-bar routines thanks to his innovative ways of melding elements of his former acrobatics with his gymnastics regimens.

Because of his many medals and natural charisma, he’s also a highly sought after brand face, asked to endorse or act as a spokesmodel for all kinds of things. He takes a particular savage joy in having his revenge on society as a whole, for the grief they gave him growing up, between the jokes about his circus background and ‘garish’ ensembles he patterns after his old costumes. Each year, he himself quietly seeks out talented designers who because of their backgrounds and the elitism of the high fashion world, are only able to advance so far in that industry.

Acting as a silent investor for them with the funds from his endorsement deals, he charms his way through backroom deals and opens the necessary doors to get his designers into the high profile fashion shows that can make designers’ careers, allowing them the much needed opportunities to showcase their designs and get them out into the world and in front of potential buyers.

But in addition to their own designs, Dick then commissions the designers he patrons, to design for him the most absurd things they can come up with. The kind of high fashion wtf’s that Ugly Betty’s wardrobe department could only dream of making, and then making into a punchline. Design for me an outfit you wouldn’t even inflict on your most hated enemy, Dick says to them.

And each year they do, and Dick models those looks personally. Then he sits back with his siblings and cackles with malevolent glee as the snobby ‘it crowds’ of his generation later turn out in droves to purchase his ‘signature looks.’ Strutting around town in imitation of the poise and charisma he pulls off effortlessly - but those, no amount of money can buy, and given they’re the only reason Dick Grayson alone can get away with wearing this stuff and still look as good as he does when doing so - well, the socialite circles inevitably end up looking utterly ridiculous. The harder they try and sell it with artificial confidence that Page Six and talk show hosts see right through, the more they get shredded to pieces with scathing jokes and headlines that put anything they ever managed to come up with to shame.

Meanwhile, the revenue from their frenzied purchases of these ‘must-have’ looks of the season? More than enough to launch the careers of Dick’s designers, right up to the A-List, where Dick leaves them to do what they want and make the most of it, with his eternal gratitude for humoring him and his rich kid eccentricities. (Not that his designers haven’t all since long figured out the joke and gotten vindication of their own out of it, as the designers and buyers who tried previously to shut them out because of their humble backgrounds, now all rush to try and rip off their more out there and high profile ‘Dick Grayson Looks’ with their own versions, over-saturating that particular market demographic just as people start catching on that these designs were always doomed to fizzle without Dick wearing them himself......leaving Dick’s designers with an open, uncluttered path right to the demographics they actually want to sell to, with the designs nobody’s attempted to imitate yet because they were too busy keeping eyes glued to Dick’s peacock ensembles).

Bruce has long since given up expecting he’ll ever understand his various children without them making an effort to translate first.....so the first time he walks in on Dick, Jason and Duke watching E! with a focus they’ve never displayed for sports, and with the coffee table covered in so many papers and flow charts and graphs, the den looks more like a War Room rather than just three of his boys watching Entertainment Tonight with frightening intensity.

Bruce just waits in the doorway for them to notice him and arches one eyebrow when they do. Oh, there’s a point to all of this, he’s sure. But damned if he can figure out on his own just what the hell it might be.

His eldest just beams at him with his thousand watt smile.

“Love me or hate me, they all want to be me,” Dick sing-songs. Then he shrugs innocently, as though that explains it all.

It doesn’t, Bruce is fairly certain.

“Why?” He asks somewhat plaintively, after his struggle to select one of the many, many questions buzzing in his head glitches on that one syllable and refuses to budge until he at least voices that much.

“We’ve been over this, B. Its part of our Twenty Seven Step Plan to Destroy the Upper Class,” Jason says impatiently, still jotting notes in pen on one of the graphs, eyes still locked on the TV. “God, its like you never listen, I fucking swear.”

“That running joke you two had when you were in high school?” Bruce asks blankly, focusing on his two eldest. Duke is paying absolutely no attention to him any way, leaning over to cross something out on the same graph Jason’s working on, scrawling some kind of correction while Jason nods like that makes total sense in whatever bizarre arithmetic they’re all working off of.

Dick sighs in the fond manner of a parent whose child has just done something particularly endearing. “You gotta admit, its kinda cute he still thinks we’re joking when we talk about class warfare.”

“Eh,” Jason grunts noncommittally. “Benjamin Button he is not.”

“If you boys don’t mind, could you do me a favor and make sure to clarify when you’re making fun of me? I have trouble spotting the insults otherwise,” Bruce says dryly.

“But that’s what makes it fun!” Duke says, beaming with his own version of Dick’s thousand watt grin. Equal in intensity, but where Dick’s tends to burst into being all at once like a supernova, Duke’s tends to sneak up on you, slowly increasing the illumination until you realize you’re blinking spots out of your vision and it hits you that you haven’t been able to see anything but blinding luminescence for awhile now, and you don’t even know for sure how long.

“Well how about just this once, you boys take pity on me and cut your old man a break,” Bruce says, still in tones as parched as Saharan dunes. “Explain what I’m looking at here as though I’m five.”

“Christ, B, you’re not freaking geriatric,” Jason mutters. “You’re only in your forties, its way too soon for you to try and milk the senility angle.”

“We’re documenting record of public reactions to the latest fashion crimes of Gotham’s A-List,” Dick cuts off Jason, taking the aforementioned pity on his father as he provides an explanation that is in no way helpful.

Bruce squints at the screen. “But aren’t those the same outfits you wore during your Fashion Week thing last month?”

“Well yeah, but on me they look good,” Dick shrugs.

“Don’t gloat,” Jason says to his brother. “It’s tacky.”

“Facts are facts,” Dick says without a hint of apology. “Lying in the name of false modesty would be the true dishonesty.”

“Incredible. You even manage to put a pious-sounding spin on being an egotistical shit,” Jason marvels. “How do you do that?”

Dick shrugs again. “It’s a gift.”

Bruce clears his throat. “And what’s all this documentation for, anyway?”

“Dick’s book,” Duke says matter of factly. Bruce would be flattered by his children’s apparent belief he can intuitively leap from one esoteric comment straight to an epiphany like some kind of goddamn gazelle - if he weren’t still so lost.

“Dick has a book? Since when? I thought Jason was the writer in this family,” Bruce frowns. “And I’m quite certain there was a big to-do made when you were all much younger, where it was decided that each of you would focus yourself on distinct pursuits not overlapping with any other siblings’, so as not to kill each other in your inevitable quest to be number one.”

“Well first off, Dad, if you couldn’t handle a little competition between your children, you shouldn’t have adopted competitive children,” Dick lectures absently, still scribbling away at those damn pages.

“Its not like you all came labeled with future character traits,” Bruce says crankily. They ignore him.

“And secondly, upon discovering that the agreement we all signed was the end product of carefully dropped hints aimed at making us believe we all came to the table of our own volition, when in fact, they were merely the machinations of the mastermind known as our meddling father,” Jason intoned, finally looking up at Bruce to raise one eyebrow at him significantly, “the Treaty of Wayne Manor’s South Family Room circa 2012, was thus deemed by all signatories to be fruit of the poisonous tree, and subsequently rendered null and void.”

Bruce’s frown deepens. “How did you figure that out? And why are you suddenly talking like a Bond villain?”

“Well it was mostly more of a theory until just now,” Dick beams at him. Dammit. You’d think he’d know better than to walk right into things like that by now. “But Tim had a hunch pretty much from the start, except then we all ended up branching out towards different interests anyway so it didn’t seem to matter that much, and we figured why not let you keep thinking you got a win there, you know?”

“I have the most thoughtful children.”

“We do try,” Jason hums.

“We try,” Duke snorts. “You add snarky commentary.”

“That was implied.”

Duke rolls his eyes and rolls right past that. “And Jason’s talking like that because he’s got that book tour coming up in a couple weeks, and he’s test driving new Eccentric Author Aesthetics.”

“Gotta give the people what they want,” Jason shrugs. “My fanbase expects the precociously grumpy darling of the New York literary circuit to be baffling and unpredictable, I give them baffling and unpredictable.”

“And here I thought you’d said you hated your fanbase. And rather then giving them anything, last I heard you were claiming to be withholding your sophomore manuscript just to spite them,” Bruce says. His voice is still lost and wandering in the desert, not a hint of precipitation to be found. “In fact, I distinctly recall wanting to take you out to celebrate the rave reviews of your debut novel, the week of its release. Only you were busy having a diatribe about how ridiculous the reviews were and how nobody had any business calling the barely coherent linguistic finger paintings of an emotionally stunted twenty-one year old the ‘next great American novel’ and it called the entire slate of reviews’ credibility into question as any brains capable of producing thoughts that erroneous should be required to display a count of their individual brain cells before anyone even considers viewing any thought produced by them as potentially being credible.”

“And you thought he never listens,” Duke snickers at his older brother. “Sounds like a direct quote to me.”

Jason just shrugs again, not remotely moved. “Yeah but I hate everything, so its not like that really means anything. Also, I’m full of shit. I thought everyone knew that.”

“He’s not subtle,” Dick informs Bruce.

“Subtlety’s for losers,” Jason defends himself. “Like tact.”

Bruce clears his throat again. “Back to the matter of Dick’s book?”

“Oh, right!” Dick chirps. “I have a book. Well, will have. This is research for it.”

“So you are taking up writing after all?”

“Hah!” Jason barks out loudly. “Dick can’t write for shit. He can’t even write a thank you card, forget about a whole fucking novel.”

“Umm, I can write, I merely choose not to,” Dick sniffs pointedly. Then he rolls his eyes in disgust. “And Jesus Christ, chill, Prince Passive Aggressive. I can’t believe you’re still making such a big deal about that. Let it go already.”

He and Jason both shoot quick looks over at Duke about two seconds after Dick’s last sentence. Duke looks up just in time to catch their glances darting away again.

“Hang on, why did you both look at me, like you thought I was about to start singing that stupid song from Frozen?” Duke frowns at them suspiciously. “You guys do know that I’m not Stephanie, right?”

“Yeah but you have been hanging around her an awful lot lately, and she’s contagious,” Jason points out. Duke’s frown deepens for a moment, but then it wings out of sight and he shrugs, perfectly at ease again.

“Yeah, that’s fair.”

“Anyway, its Dick’s tell-all book on Gotham high society,” Jason continues on. “I’ll be the one actually writing it of course. He’s just the pretty face getting slapped on the cover, but I mean, that’s the only reason people are gonna wanna buy it, so I’ll probably just phone it in anyway.”

Bruce focuses on the only part of that reveal he can handle at the moment. “Jay, you’re not remotely capable of ever phoning something in.”

“How dare you accuse me of having a work ethic. Rude and disrespectful. My reputation isn’t built to withstand that kind of slander.”

“And feel free to mock all you want, but my pretty face on that cover is what’s going to earn me my first SCPF,” Dick announces loftily.

Duke looks up. Opens his mouth. Shakes his head. Closes it. Looks back down. Sighs. Looks back up again.

“Not that I don’t know better than to ask, but what the hell is an SCPF?”

“My version of an EGOT that I just made up while Jay was being offended by a compliment to his work ethic. Spokesmodel, cover model, print model, fashion model. The four cornerstones of the modeling world, which I will then have conquered, leaving me free to move on to other endeavors.”

Jason studies his older brother gravely. Then he shakes his head.

“Even as a complete and utter joke, that combination of words disgusts me. You make me physically nauseous sometimes, you know.”

“Another gift of mine, I suppose. I have so many,” Dick muses, leaning back and examining something on the chart he was scribbling on, as if trying to take in another angle for some no doubt ridiculous reason. Why were his children like this.

“Before this migraine finishes settling in and pitches its tent for the night, anyone care to tell me just what exactly this tell-all will be telling?” Bruce sighs. It was never too early to start damage control when this particular combination of his kids were conspiring together.

“Oh, everything,” Dick says breezily. “Who had affairs, who embezzled from their companies, who bribed or blackmailed or bought off this or that. All kinds of juicy sordid stuff, real page turner stuff, you know? You’d think important people would do a better job of keeping high stake secrets all hush hush instead of dropping them all willy nilly at various galas over the years, but c’est la vie.”

“Its almost like there are potential hazards to condescendingly assuming the uneducated circus brat someone adopted as an obvious PR stunt, like, just can’t understand a lick of what people say around him, what with his thick foreign accent obviously conveying he just don’t know English words so good nope, nope, nopers,” Dick concludes merrily, a familiar sparkle in his eye. One that usually heralded social cataclysms to come.

“And so you’ve taken it upon yourself to warn the public of those potential hazards. Good for you, son,” Bruce says sardonically. Despite his best efforts, the corners of his lips keep tugging stubbornly upwards.

“Just trying my best to give back to the community that’s given me so much,” Dick shrugs in the closest approximation to an ‘aw shucks’ vibe that Bruce has ever seen his son manage in as long as he’s known him. Jason reaches over and smacks the back of Dick’s head.

“Hey!” The elder brother snaps back, rubbing the back of his head with wounded dignity. He glares at his smirking brother.

“My bad. I thought you were against false modesty. Just trying to help keep you honest, bro.”

Dick narrows his eyes at him. “Touche,” is all he says.

“Last question before I give up and admit defeat,” Bruce interjects before that escalates. As tends to happen in moments like the previous. With no limit to how long or how far that escalation might last. By his count, his two eldest boys were somehow still engaged in four entirely different extended, longterm feuds they seemed somehow able to treat as separate and distinct from each other, with one of those stretching all the way back a good ten years, and still no end in sight as far as anyone knew.

How did they determine what fights would end in minutes and which warranted stretching out over a course of years? Bruce really couldn’t say. How did they manage to stop and start the same argument off and on for all that time, without letting the last-addressed state of the argument affect how they interacted when their fight was back on ‘pause’? No idea. How did they seem able to treat each different matter they fought about as its own distinct entity that had no bearing on anything outside that particular argument, with no overlap or cross-pollination as far as anyone else had ever been witness to, and why did they even bother doing so in the first place? God, Bruce dearly wishes he knew.

Unfortunately, for all that his entire horde of children often at times seem to exist on a wholly separate and private plane unreachable by the rest of humanity, Bruce’s first two children to fill the halls of Wayne Manor with laughs, screeches and occasional declarations of war and an intent to maim, dismember and murder -

Well. They at times seemed to possess a language and extra senses unique just to them, and baffling to the entire rest of the world and their own siblings as well.

Oh well. At least Bruce could take some small comfort in Duke’s occasional glance of wary confusion, thrown towards one or both of his brothers when they weren’t looking.

“Yo, this is Planet Earth, hailing one eternally out of touch bachelor billionaire way up in the atmosphere,” Jason sharply cuts into Bruce’s distraction with a snap of his fingers. “Are you trying to milk the senility thing again? We’ve been over this. You need at least another decade of mileage before we’ll validate your senior citizen card.”

“Right.” Bruce rolls his eyes at his son, but shakes his head to clear it nevertheless. Ah, yes. “Yes. Indulge me, please. What exactly does what you’re watching have to do with Dick’s....tell-all, and how does whatever all of this is count as research?”

“Oh, we’re just keeping record of public shaming of every snobby rich jackass to buy one of the fashion monstrosities Dick wears at Fashion Week, only to then look utterly ridiculous and absurd when they try and wear it in public and everyone points and laughs,” Duke chimes in.

“I see,” Bruce says, his lips twitching again. “And this of course all ties back into class warfare and...what was it again...oh yes, the Twenty Seven Step Plan To Destroy The Upper Class?”

“That’s right,” Duke nods.

“I even know what the title is going to be already,” Dick smiles with bared teeth. “I’m going with: ‘Weapons of Choice.’“

“Of course, as I keep explaining to him, nobody gets final say on the title of their book, and there’s every chance the publisher will end up changing the title to something they pick,” Jason says with a pointed look at his brother.

Dick’s willful obliviousness visibly deflects Jay’s arched gaze long before any point can hit and make an impact. “And as I keep explaining to him, if they try and change the title, I will simply explain to them that they are incorrect and it already has the perfect title and one can not improve upon perfection.”

Jason strangles a gutteral, incoherent growl before it can fully escape from his throat. “I want to throttle you.”

“I know,” Dick says sunnily.

“Well, as long as you’ve thought this through, which you clearly have, I have no doubt you’ll get the results you’re after,” Bruce says. Doubtfully. Though of what, he’s not entirely sure. His sanity, thinking that yes, half a dozen precocious, willful and utterly incomprehensible children, that’s the ticket, exactly what my life needs. Yes, that was probably the matter actually in doubt.

“Ugh, B, you’re not getting it,” Dick complains. He exchanges frustrated glances with his brothers. “He’s not getting it.”

“It’s not rocket science,” Jason says patiently. “Basic rule of street fighting....the most effective takedowns come from aiming at someone’s weakest point. Whenever possible, go for the throat. What’s the equivalent of the throat as far as Gotham’s upper class is considered? Public image.”

“Destroy their public image, destroy them,” Dick finishes cheerfully. “They crack, get egg on their face like the nursery rhyme says, and bam, Humpty Dumpty has a great fall and all the queen’s knights working as a team still can’t put them together again and while they’re distracted the pawns can slip past them and become queens!”

Jason stares at him. “I know what you’re doing and its not going to work.”

“What am I doing?”

“Deliberately mangling the fuck out of a bunch of different well known sayings that you know perfectly well how they really go, while doing that thing where you act like you’re the most airheaded ditz to ever live and have a brain that runs off of helium instead of oxygen like the rest of us. Because you know damn well how obnoxious that is to anyone who knows exactly how intelligent you really are and that you actually have a mind like a steel trap that remembers fucking everything, no matter how inane, which is fucking rude, because that’s wasted on you and also, stop it. I told you. Its not going to work.”

“Oh Jay.” Dick tilts his head to the side and grins wider. “That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Uh huh,” Jason says, unconvinced. “Then what, pray tell, are you doing?”

“That thing where I trick you into believing I’m doing the more obvious seeming thing and then annoy you with my fake airhead routine until you end up flattering me and paying me compliments when pointing out why my airhead routine could never work on you and is thus just annoying,” Dick says brightly.

Jason’s eyebrows inch incrementally together with the slow, ominous scrape of stone grinding across stone. Dick is entirely undeterred, and simply shrugs again with a painfully fake display of innocence.

“Its dinner time and my ego needed feeding. Thanks for that bee tee dubs, it was getting hungry. Nom nom.”

“Yeah,” Jason says casually, after a good ten second pause. He nods decisively. “Okay, I’m going to murder you now.”

He lunges for his brother, but Dick’s resting pose is the equivalent of anyone else impatiently waiting at the starting block of a race. He’s up and on his feet, gracefully dancing out of range of his younger but bigger brother’s wider reach, and has darted halfway towards the other exit to the room by the time Jason finishes scrambling to his feet. Not that any of that delays the younger man from taking off in a dead sprint in pursuit of his laughing sprite of a brother the second he does.

Bruce stares after them for a moment and then shifts his gaze down to Duke, who’s still seated contentedly on the floor, blithely unaffected by Dick and Jason’s mad dash out the room as he continues scribbling down notes.

“I will pay you all the money I have, not to grow up to be like them,” Bruce says in the gravest possible tone he can manage. “You don’t even have to wait til I’m dead.”

Duke sighs and shakes his head. “B, c’mon, man. I’m clearly on Team Class Warfare. I’m insulted you think I can be bought.”

Bruce frowns. “You all are way, way too fond of this trolling thing you do.”

“Mmm. Agree to disagree.”

446 notes · View notes

margridarnauds · 3 years

Note

🍓 tell me about Berenice!

YES real problematic fave hours! [warning for references to alcohol, child death]

Like a ton of my other OCs, she’s immortal. (NOT invulnerable.) As such, she’s been around for...over 2000 years. (Also why the timeline might seem strange because “....Cleopatra....Brennus...English invading....WHAT?”)

Was VERY free-spirited as a young child, her favorite place growing up was the Lighthouse of Alexandria, where she used to watch the ships coming in with Marcus (a ward of her father’s that they found on the streets of Rome after he saved Berenice’s life when they were children), Atria (her future royal physician, Marcus’ sister), and Khensa (her future spymistress), all of them trying to guess where they came from, Berenice usually carting at least one or two books up in order to read in peace.

This stopped when her father disciplined Atria once for something that she did. She swore afterwards that she would never endanger her friends for the sake of her own fun, and she tries to hold religiously to that. It might be her one scruple left, actually.

Met Cleopatra Philopater once as a small child and it made such an impact that she took quite a bit of inspiration from her, including learning Egyptian.

Knows at least ten languages, though not all of them to a strong degree of fluency. (She knows at least Latin, Greek, Egyptian, Aramaic, English, a little bit of Irish [though she has issues with it] and Gaulish.)

Is actually a quarter Persian, on her mother’s side, the rest of her being thoroughly Macedonian. Her grandmother married one of Alexander the Great’s officials, producing Berenice’s mother.

When her father was murdered by a former suitor of hers, her brothers were also killed, leaving her with no support, as well as the full knowledge that her half-siblings wouldn’t hesitate to kill her if they had a chance. She hid her father’s body for well over a week while waiting for her uncle to arrive.

She was the one to kill said former suitor herself, when Marcus held back, unable, despite his various wrongs, to be the one to plunge the sword in. (Though he was already incapacitated - When he tried to aim for Atria, who was next on his list of “People Berenice Loves” list, she stabbed him in the leg. Part of why Marcus and Berenice never let the full details of what happened that night slip is because of their fear of what would happen if the truth was revealed. It was easier for Marcus, as a lower class man and a former ward of the family, to take responsibility and accept exile instead of execution. Berenice begged for him to be allowed to stay, saying that, if he left, her conscience would leave with him, but no luck. And she was true to her word.)

Totally commissioned a “Justice for Clytemnestra” book after re-assuming power after the death of her second husband.

She used to be friends with her greatest rival, Elektra, when they were children, the two noble girls viewed as natural companions for each other. But, when Berenice befriended Marcus and Atria, the other girl looked down her nose on them, refusing to play with street rats, and Berenice told her that, if that was the case, she wasn’t going to play with her either. Elektra never forgave the insult, and, while a ton of things happened in the meanwhile to make them reach a point of no return, the first pebble in the avalanche fell there.

Lives up to the stereotype of Ancient Macedonians and alcohol - She can outdrink even mythical figures RENOWNED for their ability to hold their liquor, and one of the first canonical words out of her mouth is “I was told there would be free wine.” While she was hardly sheltered from it as a child, her usage did intensify in the wake of her father’s + brothers’ deaths, as well as Marcus’ subsequent exile and her second, disastrous marriage. Brennus’ presence, ironically given he’s never been one to hold back from the alcohol, tends to temper her usage.

Whenever Atria publishes a new book on medicine, Berenice always has multiple copies of it made. Part of it is her flexing as Atria’s patron, part of it is that she’s genuinely proud of her friend’s accomplishments and wants the whole world to know that Atria Did A Thing.

Married twice, both of them arranged, and twice widowed. Though she loves Brennus dearly, she has massive reservations around actually marrying him, because of what it would mean for her independence.

When her second husband died, she worked quickly to get rid of all his other consorts and children, in a purge that many shuddered to think about decades down the line.

No cold tolerance - When she had to move from Alexandria to a much colder climate, someplace akin to Alaska in climate, she very nearly died, since her body wasn’t used to the extreme change of temperature. While she’s doing much better these days, she still gets sick quite easily in the winter and needs multiple fur covers on her bed. Brennus, hardened northerner that he is, mocks her RELENTLESSLY for it.

There are a TON of rumors swirling around her, both among her own people and the New Anglians. At this point, she takes a certain tongue in cheek mentality to it. (”Ah, yes, you see, I was just climbing out of my daily bath of virgin’s blood when the courier came to me and said-”)

Somewhat ironically, despite her reputation for ruthlessness, she is one of the most aggressive pursuers of murderers, particularly the ones that we would call “serial killers”. All these years, and she’s never forgotten her father’s death, and how easily it could have been avoided if they’d just gotten rid of that man when he’d been killing people on the street. The technology isn’t there to make her as effective as she’d like, but she tries. She doesn’t care if the victim was a fruit seller or one of her court officials: If you kill someone under her watch, you’re going to die a horrible death.

Keeps a MASSIVE wardrobe of jewelry and clothes. Many of which the New Anglians took when they invaded, but some of which she retains. When she had more personal possessions, she used to hand out her hand-me-downs to Atria and Khensa, so the three of them often look like they have a very similar style. (Atria literally can’t be bothered to go shopping most of the time, spending most of her money on specimens for her medical research/natural philosophy, and Khensa’s work as spymistress tends to mean that her funds are constantly running low.)

Is either the single most beautiful or the second most beautiful person in the entire continuity (depending on whether or not you hold that Bres is prettier.) It’s caused her her share of problems, as a woman in the time she’s living in.

Her family have always felt like they were personally descended from Poseidon, which means that she tends to draw on that a lot for her propaganda, though she herself feels a stronger pull to Aphrodite.

She sometimes doubts her own personality, given how often she finds herself playing a role. She definitely feels like she’s become a monster and, to a certain extent, embraces it as something that was necessary under the circumstances. When Eleanor is a young queen, forced to choose between raising her tyrant brother’s daughter or taking the power for herself, Berenice strongly advised for taking the power, which Eleanor ended up roundly rejecting.

Her personal color scheme is Tyrian purple and gold, though rose gold also pops up a lot when I’m doing aesthetic stuff for her. Common motifs for her tend to be peacocks (as a nod to Hera and, subsequently, Berenice’s persecution of her husband’s children by other consorts) and beetles. In a Daemon AU, I’ve always thought her Daemon would be a golden snake.

#oc shenanigans #berenice #long post #madtumbleson

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problematicwelshman · 4 years

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Michael Sheen on Good Omens, sex scenes, and why Brexit led to his break-up

28 NOVEMBER 2018 • 4:18PM

Michael Sheen may be 49, and sporting a grey beard these days, but mention Martians and the actor reverts to a breathless, giddy teenager.

It all stems back to one evening when Sheen was about 12 years old. “It was a significant moment in my life,” he tells me over coffee in a London hotel. “My cousin Hugh was babysitting, and he put on Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds.

“I remember us lying there, listening in bed in the dark. It absolutely terrified me, but I got obsessed with it. I’m worryingly into it. I know every single note, every word.”

Wayne’s 1978 rock opera has had a similar effect on countless fans, even if it prompts a bemused shrug from non-converts. Without ever topping the charts, it has slowly become one of the best-selling British albums of all time, and this Friday begins a stadium tour featuring a 35-foot fire-breathing Martian and a 3D hologram of Liam Neeson. It’s a geeky novelty, but one of epic proportions.

When Wayne asked Sheen if he would star in a new radio drama-style version for the album’s 40th anniversary, alongside Taron Egerton and Ade Edmondson, the Welsh actor “bit his hand off”. It had always been his dream. For decades, whether doing serious political dramas such as Frost/Nixon or the great roles of classical theatre – Hamlet, Henry V – the one part Sheen really wanted involved Martians saying “ulla-ulla”.

“When I was doing Caligula at the Donmar [in 2003], I was filming The Deal during the day – which was the first time I’d played Tony Blair,” he says. “I’d be so tired, to wake myself up [before the play] I would do whole sections of War of the Worlds.” He can even beatbox the sound effects, he adds proudly. “The other guys in the dressing room would all be really pissed off with me - but I was playing Caligula, so they had to put up with it.”

Enthusing about an outtake on a collectors version of the album where you can hear Richard Burton coughing, Sheen briefly slips into an impression of the late actor. It’s eerily spot-on. Burton played the role he takes in the new version, which feels apt; growing up in Port Talbot, Sheen was aware of following in his footsteps.

“Coming from the same town as him really helped,” he says. “It’s place you wouldn’t necessarily think would be very sympathetic to acting – it’s an old steel town, very working class, quite a macho place – but because of Richard Burton, and then Anthony Hopkins, there’s the sense that it’s possible [to be an actor], and people have a respect for it.

“Ultimately, though, we’re very different actors - Burton was very much a charismatic leading man, and I’m probably more of a character actor. He wasn’t known for his versatility.” Sheen, by contrast, is a chameleon, as he proved with a remarkable run of biopics from 2006-9, playing Tony Blair, David Frost, Brian Clough, Kenneth Williams and the Roman emperor Nero on screen in the space of just four years.

He concedes that he may have made a “partly conscious” decision to avoid biopics since then. “I’ve been offered quite a few I didn’t do. I did feel, for a bit, it was probably good for me to move away from it – certainly from playing Blair at least, because that’s the one I became synonymous with. I’d quite happily play real people again, but it’s hard to find good scripts and it takes a lot of homework. With some parts I’ve been offered, you might only have a few weeks to prepare for it - and you can’t do that with Clough or Kenneth Williams.”

Despite his best intentions, Sheen is playing another Blair in his next film – The Voyage of Doctor Doolittle, where he’s the nemesis of Robert Downey Jr’s animal-loving hero. “I don’t know if they did that as a joke or not,” he says. “He’s Blair Müdfly – there’s an umlaut that he is very specific about. He was at college with Doolittle, and hates him, and becomes the antagonist because of his jealousy of Doolittle. Müdfly is employed to try and stop him from finding... what he wants to find.” As the film isn’t out for 13 months, Sheen is tight-lipped about further plot details – but he hints that Müdfly is “a villain in the tradition of Terry-Thomas villains.”

It’s the latest in a series of quirky, eyebrow-raising roles. After playing a vampire in the Twilight films and a werewolf in the Underworld franchise, Sheen says he would often be asked in interviews why a “serious classical actor” was wasting his time on fantasy films.

“There’s a lot of snobbishness about genre,” he says. “I think some of the greatest writing of the 20th and 21st centuries has happened in science fiction and fantasy.” While promoting the films, he would back up that point by citing his favourite authors – Stephen King, Philip K Dick, Neil Gaiman. “Time went on, and then one day my doorbell rang and there was a big box being delivered. I opened the box up and there was a card from Neil saying ‘From one fan to another’, and all these first editions of his books.”

It was the beginning an enduring friendship, which recently became a professional partnership: Sheen stars in Gaiman’s forthcoming TV series Good Omens, based on a 1990 novel he wrote with the late Terry Pratchett. Set in the days before a biblical apocalypse, its sprawling list of characters includes an angel called Aziraphale (Sheen) and a demon called Crowley (David Tennant) who have known each other since the days of Adam and Eve.

“I wanted to play Aziraphel being sort of in love with Crowley,” says Sheen. “They’re both very bonded and connected anyway, because of the two of them having this relationship through history - but also because angels are beings of love, so it’s inevitable that he would love Crowley. It helped that loving David is very easy to do.”

What kind of love - platonic, romantic, erotic? “Oh, those are human, mortal labels!” Sheen laughs. “But that was what I thought would be interesting to play with. There’s a lot of fan fiction where Aziraphale and Crowley get a bit hot and heavy towards each other, so it’ll be interesting to see how an audience reacts to what we’ve done in bringing that to the screen.”

Steamy fan fiction aside, it’s unlikely Good Omens will match the raunch levels of his last major TV series, Masters of Sex (2013-16), a drama about the pioneering sexologists Masters and Johnson. In the wake of the last year’s #MeToo revelations, HBO has introduced “intimacy co-ordinators” for its shows - but, Sheen tells me, Masters of Sex was ahead of the curve in handling sex scenes with caution.

“It was a lot easier for myself and Lizzy [Caplan, his co-star], as we were comfortable in that set-up, because we had status in it. But for people in the background, or doing just one scene, it’s different,” he says. “It became clear very quickly that there needed to be guidelines for people who didn’t have that kind of status, who would probably not speak up. We started talking about that, and decided there need to be clear rules.”

Sex scenes, he continues, “should absolutely be treated the same way as other things where there’s a danger. If you’re doing stage-fighting, or pyrotechnics, there are rules and everyone just sticks to them. Whether it’s physical danger, or emotional, or psychological, it’s just as important.”

Despite having several film and TV parts on the horizon, Sheen says he is still in semi-retirement from acting. In 2016 he hinted that he might be quit for good to campaign against populism. “In the same way as the Nazis had to be stopped in Germany in the Thirties, this thing that is on the rise has to be stopped," he said at the time. But now things are less cut. “I have two jobs now, essentially,” he says. "Acting takes second place."

While many celebrity activists limit their politics to save-the-dolphins posturing, Sheen has been working with a range of unfashionable grassroots groups aiming to combat inequality, support small communities and fight fake news. As well as supporting Welsh credit unions, and sponsoring a women’s football team in the tiny village of Goytre, he tells me that he's been “commissioning research into alternative funding models for local journalism”.

If he returns to the stage any time soon, he says it’s likely to be in a show about “political historical socio-economic stuff, a one-man show with very low production values”. It’s clear he’s not in it for the glamour.

Sheen was inspired to become more politically active by the Brexit referendum – which also indirectly led him to break up with his partner of four years, the comedian Sarah Silverman. At the time, they were living together in the US. “We both had very similar drives, and yet to act on those drives pulled us in different directions – because she is American and I’m Welsh,” he explains.

“After the Brexit vote, and the election where Trump became president, we both felt in different ways we wanted to get more involved. That led to her doing her show I Love You America [in which Silverman interviewed people from across the political spectrum], and it led to me wanting to address the issues that I thought led some people to vote the way they did about Brexit, in the area I come from and others like it.”

They still speak lovingly of each other, which makes their decision to end a happy relationship for the sake of politics look painfully quixotic. Talking about it, Sheen sounds a little wistful, but he’s utterly certain they made the right choice. “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it did mean coming back here – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.”

#michael sheen #dolittle #the voyage of doctor dolittle #he got so irrationally mad at this article on twitter #but hey bringing it back because people wanted to read it #and it had info about dolittle #but it's locked behind a paywall #so here u go fam

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callsign-bunnie · 5 years

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Dependencies pt 1

Fandom: Thomas Sanders Pairing: Analogical (Anxiety x Logic) Warnings: dark themes. You guys know me by now. Virgil’s anxious thoughts are stated. Allusions to sex. (Lust mention.) Food mention. Notes before going in: those who have been following me know by now that I am uh... not all sunshine and rainbows when it comes to my writing. My stuff can get pretty heavy and often pretty dark. However, any trigger warnings will be tagged. And if you ask me, I will tag specific non-general triggers in any future chapters or works. If you simply don’t want to see a fic in general, I would suggest blacklisting the name, which will be in the tags. Thank you. Summary: Logan is very neat and controlled. Virgil is the opposite. Logan, 30, is the leader of a well known underground crime network, though he specifically has managed to remain anonymous, very few knowing his identity. Virgil, 23, on the other hand, is an artist who hates talking to people and has chronic anxiety. Virgil and Logan are thrown in each other's paths when Virgil gets Logan as his professor in the math class Logan uses as a cover identity. (And guilty pleasure but he’ll never admit that.) Already, Logan is... intrigued.

Sometimes, our darkest secrets aren't the ones we hide the most. For Logan, possibly his lightest secret was the one he hid the most. To quickly raise in the ranks, he had to give an appearance of being cold. Unfeeling. Sociopathic. And while yes, he could be considered a sociopath, he could feel some things. Anger. Love. Lust. Happiness. As much as Logan tried to hide this secret, the feelings were drugs for him, just as addicting as Heroin or Cocaine. And anything that sparked these feelings was considered precious to him. He needed it.

However, Logan was incredibly intelligent. This was perhaps how he managed to keep himself from gaining a... dependence. And perhaps how he rose so fast in the ranks. He'd learned by now to never do his own dirty work and to stay detached from it, as well. Lest whoever does it is stupid enough to be caught. Many of his higher-ups had not learned this and of course paid the price for it, once the police caught on. Another lesson he'd learned from observing his higher-ups was to never leave a paper trail. Of course, keep track, but always have a fail-safe. Logan had taken to keeping his documents in a barrel that one could simply throw a match in and light it up. He'd also learned not to trust the internet unless using some kind of code. Unfortunately, lackeys were not good at recognizing and remembering codes. So, he just left all of his business to over throw away phones and in business. Maybe requests and commissions could be taken over the internet, but through nothing that could be traceable and he was always sure to keep his interactions vague, going through a lackey who typed differently so even that couldn't be tracked. And possibly the most important thing he'd learned; have an excellent cover. His being a math professor. He was seen as dorky by his students. No one would ever even suspect him of being who he was.

Of course, maintaining of these self-imposed rules required immense discipline. Possibly even an obsession with order and control. Fortunately, Logan had both of those qualities.

Virgil was the opposite. While Virgil was clever, he wasn't very academic. And his darkest secrets were the ones he kept deepest inside himself. Virgil also had a problem with feeling too much. All of his life, he'd been considered too emotional. Too... anything, really. He'd been told this many times. He figured by this point that if he was too much for people, he might as well not bother them. Other people never usually had anything interesting to contribute, anyway. He was also incredibly out of order.

His room was usually a disaster. And he managed to trip over everything. You'd think this would lead him to keep the floor clean, however, he just didn't care enough to bother. He also didn't care to bother cooking, so he'd become accustomed to eating ramen and anything microwaveable. And take out, when he could afford it. He didn't have a job, however, he received money from his parents and an allowance from what was left of his college fund and then later some weird source? On to that, later.

His parents weren't wealthy, however, and his college fund's remains were not grand. So, he sometimes had to go without a meal or two. Whatever, though. It wasn't a big deal to him. He barely thought about it.

Virgil had taken up art to keep from thinking about certain things. It was much easier to ignore issues if he was focusing on lines and color schemes, instead. Art was also a way to release pent up frustration, sadness, even happiness. You'd think happiness couldn't be pent up but when you talk to literally no one, well... it happens. So, he'd found an outlet. A relief. And just as emotions were intoxicating to Logan, art was just as intoxicating to Virgil. Granted, he wasn't making art most of the time, but he was usually thinking about it. Plotting out pieces he wanted to make, deciding where to fit yet another piece on his wall, what color fit what he was feeling, etc. Honestly, the thoughts alone seemed to help at this point, allowing him an outlet where there wasn't usually one

.Virgil stumbled into Logan's sight when he went to his first math class. Stumbled being literal, as Virgil almost tripped and hit his head on the fire extinguisher by the door. Luckily, he was early, always terrified of being late to a class due to having to walk in and everyone watch him walk to his seat. The idea filled him with dread. He hated it. So he made sure to be early to each class. Being early also had the perk of getting to choose his seat. Which he quite enjoyed. He almost always chose a seat in the back, however, math was a difficult subject for him, so he begrudgingly sat in the almost front. Okay, really, he usually sat in the middle of the class. People in the back were usually considered to be angsty, in the front to be go-getters. And nobody thought about those in the middle. It was the perfect place. But in college, with large class sizes, sitting in the middle often meant being unable to focus for Virgil. And since he already struggled with math, he usually decided it would be best for him to sit closer to the front.

He was already dreading this class, however. As he knew he would likely be close to failing it if he didn't ask for help. He'd struggled enough the year before. This year would likely be the same, if not worse. So he was already gearing himself up to have to talk, blegh, to his teacher in order to ask for tutoring options. Much fun was in store for him this year, because then he'd have to talk to whoever was tutoring him. Yay. Oh well, he was taking two art classes this year, so at least he had that. He was already finding himself daydreaming about them. They were independent art classes, which basically meant he got to create whatever he dreamed about creating.

So at least the year wouldn't be so bad, right? And he was... mostly fine in all of his other classes. So no tutoring there. Just math would be difficult.

As expected, he spent most of the class way behind and struggling to comprehend what the professor was saying. The professor was semi-friendly. Was mostly that dry professor who was kind but you could tell they wouldn't take your shit. Virgil tended to like those professors, as they usually left him alone, unable to remember every student. Unfortunately, once Virgil would make his presence known to this professor, he was sure they would remember him and he'd be stuck dealing with them until the end of the year. Yay, again. At least this professor wasn't a fast talker. That would be a struggle if they were. Well, more of a struggle, anyway. He was able to catch some detail, so it definitely helped. He'd taken to writing, in messy inconsistent shorthand, what the professor was saying to try to organize later. He never really got around to later, but hey, he was trying, at least, right?

His anxiety got worse and worse throughout the class, and needless to say, this was not helping his focus. He was dreading having to ask for help. So it was making his anxiety flip out. However, he managed to swallow it, tapping out his racing heartbeat on his stomach in his pocket as he went up to the professor's desk at the end of class. "Professor? Can I talk to you?"

"Of course, Mr..."

"Storm. I'm Virgil Storm. I um... Well, I have a tendency to struggle in Math and I was hoping you could have any tutoring recommendations?" Virgil asked, almost too quiet, but luckily he was heard.

The professor nodded and seemed to glance Virgil up and down. "I do offer tutoring hours of my own. I typically teach until five and I offer to tutor between 5 and 9. However, I will only allow up to an hour, since I'm assuming tutoring will have to be a regular thing?"

Virgil turned red and nodded in answer to the question. "Yes, unfortunately." He was managing to slow his tapping, though. Which was good.

His professor laughed, suddenly, and then stated, "goodness, you don't have to keep standing. Sit and we'll discuss a time to meet up."

Virgil turned red again and pulled up a chair, sitting in it and slouching slightly. "Since this is my last class of the day, I think tutoring at five would be helpful... So I could just hang around here, you know?" And his tapping sped back up, worried the professor would think that was a dumb idea.

"That would work out. I suppose it might help you to remember, as well." He nodded.

Virgil relaxed and nodded again. "That too. I'm sorry, I forgot your name..."

"Oh, of course. It's Logan Fairling. It's fine if you just call me Dr. Fair, however." Dr. Fairling answered, nodding

.Virgil nodded a bit and relaxed more. He knew he tended to overthink, but it really was a relief when he was wrong. "Thank you, Dr. Fairling. When do you think it would be best to start?"

"Hmm..." Dr. Fairling stopped and seemed to think for a moment. "Perhaps today. Since we already started with a lesson, I believe it might be good for us to start sooner rather than later."

Virgil was a bit surprised but he decided Dr. Fairling was right. It would be good to start earlier. However, he was already nervous about it. What if Dr. Fairling decided Virgil was too dumb to be helped? That he was helpless? It got too much to keep tapping out his heartbeat, so he switched to fidgeting with the sleeves instead, making sure to hide it under the table. "Alright. That sounds like a good plan. I'll come back here in an hour."

"Perfect." The professor nodded and then allowed Virgil to leave.

As Virgil left, he rubbed his throat, finding it a bit sore after talking so much when he usually didn't.

As Virgil left, Logan leaned back in his seat, tapping his pen against his chin. "Hmm..." He felt something unfamiliar but not unknown start to bloom. However, he just couldn't identify it. However, he did know that Virgil was already quite... intriguing.

-----

I will tag people if they want me to. I don’t really care how you ask, I’m not particular.

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rivetgoth · 4 years

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OC #4 - Vittoria Marcello

Pinterest board 🥀 Tag on OC blog

AH okay here we go, my next OC, I know I’m going slower than I’d originally hoped but what can you do, slow progress is still progress and I have a lot of stuff going on in the rest of my life as well right now, but here’s another gal of mine. She’s the other protagonist of my novel.

Vittoria is Giovanni’s sister, I talked about him before so I figured it made the most sense to discuss her next. Admittedly I can’t really tell all of her story without spoiling my novel some but it’s fine, I still wanna be vague as possible and in a perfect world my novel will get more traction than just the handful of people reading these, AND hopefully my biggest supporters would wanna read my novel even if they have a basic idea of what happens in it hehe. Anyway, like everyone else so far she’s from my alternative universe in the 2080s.

Basic info is that Vittoria is a heterosexual cis woman in her late twenties. She’s the youngest daughter and youngest child of the Marcello family, and although she has seven older siblings her only full brother is Giovanni, since they share a mother, although he’s seven years her senior. As I mentioned before, the Marcellos are the owners of the Marcello Candy Company, a corporation that pretty much has the monopoly on the pharmaceutical industry due to their drug-infused and heavily addictive candies.

Vittoria was named after her father, Vittorio, which was a last attempt by her mother to hopefully convince Vittorio to accept her as his own. The truth is Vittorio had not wanted another child, having already found Giovanni a disappointment and blaming his wife Camilia’s genetics (because his elder children are so perfect - I’ll discuss them later, some of ‘em are important), and when Camila got very sick during childbirth and, despite the riches of the Marcello Empire she was mysteriously unable to be cured, fowl play was suspected to be involved, but nobody was ever caught or exposed. Camila named Vittoria in hopes that Vittorio would see her as his child and want to raise her with pride, but this didn’t really work, and Vittoria spent a large portion of her childhood almost entirely alone. All of her siblings were significantly older than her, and not only did Giovanni have plenty of his own issues to worry about, but he felt a great deal of resentment towards Vittoria, blaming her for his mother’s death due to the fact that Camila’s death was officially ruled as complications in childbirth. Vittoria had no one around but servants given measly raises to watch over her, and by the time she was as young as four she had made a habit out of trying to sneak off, although she was always caught and returned.

Unlike Giovanni, who was forced into homeschooling, Vittoria was allowed to go to school, although it was a very prestigious private school that bored her to death. She tried again to run away while there, and this time pulled off a multi-day disappearance, but when she was found, her father, frustrated with the negative press that her sneaking off had caused the company, threatened to pull her out of school and keep her homeschooled and under house arrest with her brother if she pulled something like that again. So she sucked it up and got through grade school, although she grew increasingly standoffish and cold to others around her. Her largest solace came from art of all kinds, although especially dark and provocative art, art that gave her an outlet for her frustrations and anger. She loved loud abrasive music and weird looking art that used lots of contrast and lots of dark colors. She ended twelfth grade with no friends to speak of, although she quickly decided to pursue university as her next step in hopes that it would give her what she needed to find a profession of her own and escape her father’s house once and for all.

But Vittoria found herself in a new dilemma, which was that very little actually brought her much joy anymore. Depression had kicked her ass hard through school, and by the time she was in college (which her father paid for, something that frustrated her to no end as she was aware that she was still entirely stuck in his debt and helpless without his assistance) she had very little motivation or interest in anything. She switched majors a few times and eventually settled in on art history, because of her aforementioned love for art, although this decision angered her father, who told her she would be able to do nothing of use and find no success out in the world with a degree in art history. Scared that he was correct, Vittoria ended up giving up halfway through her degree, dropping out to instead jump correctly into business, still using her father’s funds as a startup. She started a fashion line, then a makeup line, then a perfume line, all of which she felt no connection to whatsoever, opting to go with easy, mainstream, and accessible products in hopes of generating sales rather than focus on anything that she cared about. With each of these expeditions, she quickly lost any sort of interest or passion and sold the companies for very little, which quickly led to her creating an image for herself in the public eye that she was unable to finish or stick to anything.

Vittoria grew older and still had little to show for herself and her efforts. She was still trapped in her father’s home with no direction, desperate to prove herself but lacking any sort of support system or internal confidence or drive to get anything done and scared of failure. Her only other sibling still living at home was Giovanni, who she wanted nothing to do with, and seeing his life plateau into a steady stream of nothing, just lounging around and living on his father’s money, terrified her. She finally decided to pull herself together and dip her toes into the music industry, since music had remained one of the few things she loved through everything, although she wasn’t entirely sure what direction she would go in these endeavors, and if she would actually have the courage to explore the darker themes and sounds she liked so much.

After announcing her intents and beginning to contact record companies, Vittoria heard back almost instantly from Anubis, the Rock God of Death, an aging, extremely famous and successful, as well as extremely mysterious, industrial rock musician, who was also the owner of Embalmed Records as well as the Golden Jackal Nightclub. Anubis, in his mid sixties at the time, offered her a partnership with Embalmed Records. Soon after, Vittoria and Giovanni were kicked out of their father’s house, disowned for their incompetence and constant embarrassment of him and his company. Vittoria would accept Anubis’ offer, and learn that he had much more in mind for her than only a simple contract: He wanted her to be his personal protégé. Vittoria accepts this offer and begins to train under his wing, which is where a majority of her story within my novel takes place. Over the course of the novel they also become lovers.

I want to be a little vague here, because I don’t want to wildly spoil every aspect of the novel now, but in the end, Vittoria undergoes some pretty extensive body modification that leaves some large scars on her body and her organs rearranged inside of her, and Anubis dies under tragically under mysterious circumstances, leaving all of Embalmed Records to Vittoria for the taking. She now runs the company as the CEO of Embalmed.

Vittoria ends up in a relationship with one of her employees (who she met before she took over, when she was still training under Anubis), named Cosmo Halloway, who will definitely get a post as well. He’s sort of a musical renaissance man (and the frontman of the industrial metal band Heat Pit) and he adores her. He helps her manage the Golden Jackal.

Vittoria and Giovanni view themselves as polar opposites, and in the way many of their issues manifest, they are. Giovanni overeats and Vittoria starves herself; Giovanni is an insomniac and Vittoria spends most of the time depression-sleeping. Giovanni loves color and elegance, Vittoria loves blackness and harshness. Giovanni’s trauma manifests in a very childish nature and he tries to suppress any negative feelings inward, while Vittoria tries to be mature and lets out any negative emotions on others, constantly lashing out and yelling at others around her. However, they have a lot in common as well, including both loving art and finding solace in it, both struggling deeply with identity issues and insecurities and finding a sense of self, and both having serious long-term trauma related to their family circumstances. She likes to commission artists to draw portraits of her, because she has a great dislike of herself and struggles so much with her own identity, and conceptualizing herself through how she’s depicted through the eyes of artists gives her a more solid sense of self. She hates sweets, mostly due to her family’s involvement in them. She drinks a shitton of black coffee to try to stay awake but still tends to fail and oversleep. She loves dark colors, leather, and silver. She has a horrible temper and is typically very cold and can easily turn aggressive, although this is something she gets marginally better at as she takes over Embalmed and becomes more assertive in her control of the company.

I love Vittoria. I think she’s a really fun character and she’s spent a LONG time in development, I’ve reworked her a huge number of times because she began as a very vague concept (actually, she originally was a guy and her entire character was hugely rewritten to be a woman early on in development lol) that I’ve spent a long time evolving to fit the role of protagonist in my novel. I have a lot more about her (and Giovanni) I’d love to share, but like I said, I don’t wanna give away too much about the novel!!

#daily OC talk

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xxgoblin-dumplingxx · 5 years

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Tempest in a Teacup: Two

Clint watched you remembering how to be alive again with a smile. You were staring at a bowl of Rice Krispies like you’d forgotten what they were for as you curled like a question mark around a cup of coffee.

“Barton, I think you can cancel the DNA test,” Bucky snorted, smacking him on the shoulder as he passed. Clint snorted, “I could never deny her, that’s for sure.”

“Thank god she doesn’t look like you, though.” Steve teased, prompting Clint to flip him off casually.

Clint kisses the side of your head and swaps your bowl of now soggy cereal that he knows you won’t eat for French toast he knows you will eat and you look up at him and smile your thanks sleepily.

For a second, you’re five again. Five and homesick. It was almost this time of year. Right before you started kindergarten. You had a cute little liting voice. Like a little silver bell. He couldn’t cook, not really and you’d eaten nothing but sugary cereal and carrot sticks and animal cookies for a few days. It was Saturday morning and you’d been awake and scared all night. Worried about your mom. ... The french toast had been a lot less pretty but that smile was the same.

You were bigger now. Stronger. Smarter. The most beautiful thing he’d ever seen still. And sometimes, he missed your accent. He hated it after you went to school and your voice got more Americanized. But you were his girl. He chucked you under the chin and handed Nat the other plate. She was taking you shopping. You needed school clothes anyway. And, as long as she’d been around, Nat had always taken you school shopping, for which Clint was grateful. Especially when you hit your teens. He got a bit lost after boys cargo shorts and plain t-shirts weren’t your standard gear. “Nat,” Clint teased, “no more platform boots. Seriously.” Natasha winked at you, “Not unless they’re on sale.”

You pick up a fork and lean into Clint’s side for a second as he stands there sipping coffee. You missed him. Between saving the world and just living far away, there was no such thing as enough hugs. Clint draped an arm over your shoulder casually and Natasha feels her heart ache just a little.

She knew. Probably better than anyone how scared Clint was that he wasn’t the parent he should be. But she wished she could show him this. A picture didn’t do justice to just how happy you looked when he hugged you just a little tighter. Maybe he wasn’t the parent he should be. Teaching you how to do some slightly illegal things, letting an assassin take you shopping, giving you back your fake ID; but, he was exactly the parent you needed. He was unfailingly supportive. He dealt with feelings and self-doubt and little heartbreaks in stride. He knew you. And he loved you with no conditions.

Clint gave the spy a look and Natasha only shrugged. You had a style. You liked what you liked. And frankly, it was cool. Distinctive. It suited you. Natasha knew damn well that as long as you bought age-appropriate clothing and you weren’t running around half-naked or in bondage gear, he really didn’t care what you wore. You went to an Academy for artistic kids. Weird clothes were expected. Nay. Encouraged. And New York. Land of Punks and Aging club kids, was the place to go. Nat look forward to this most of the year. It was fun. You were picky but not like... annoyingly picky. It was just an “I already know what I want and this is... actually close enough” kind of picky. “Got any Art supplies you need, kid?” Natasha asked. You frown, thinking, “Depends. Do you want me to make you some new wall clutter?”

“Did I hear Wall clutter?” Tony asked strolling in for coffee. “Y/N has offered to make Wall Clutter for the cost of Art supplies,” Clint said, tugging a stray lock of hair.

"Oh!" Pepper said, stealing the coffee mug out of Tony's hand and handing him water, "Could you do something neat we can Auction off After everyone signs it? It always brings in a ton of money for the cleanup fund." You take a bite of French toast and nod, thinking, "I could probably pull something together... It depends on how big a piece you want. And what medium. And subject matter."

Clint frowned but didn't say anything. You were a good kid. He knew you'd do hours of work for free. He also knew that it gave you something to do in all the downtime. That he could pester you while you worked as easily as he could while you were bouncing around the tower at warp speed. But, it rubbed him the wrong way. And then he remembered why. You did amazing artwork for them and you had. For years. Big pieces that went for literally millions. And you never got the credit for it. Nothing but your tiny little signature in the corner most people put a potted plant in front of. "I'll let her do it," Clint said, clearing his throat, "As long as she starts getting some form of actual recognition for it... Most people just think those things are put together by a whole ass design studio. They don't realize it's one punk kid with some chalk and some aquanet." Your artistic shit was your superpower.

It was all the attention to detail and the effort.

Pepper gasped, "Have they really never put her name anywhere?" Tony frowned, "That's unacceptable." Your cheeks color slightly, "It's not that big a deal... I mean part of the money they make is because people think it's like Banksy or some shit." You do set work. You paint sets, make costumes, and run tech. You're pretty sure no one but your dad even realizes that someone has to make it all look good. He comes to the show and has tacos and good coke, the kind in glass bottles from Mexico, sent back to the crew while everyone fusses over the actors. And he sends you purple roses for opening night. You love purple.

"It is too a big deal!" Pepper says stomping her foot, "Four years you've been making us stuff to sell off and never once gotten even a mention on the program?" You shrug, "I don't get them for the shows I do sets for either. None of the crew really gets much beyond our names in a massive list." Pepper doesn't hear the explanation, she's already on the phone. She's halfway through shouting at someone. Something about back pay and other things that hurt your head to think about. So you take your plate to the sink and start cleaning up, working around Tony where he's standing directly in your way.

"Do you think you could do Asgard? Like long ways." he asked thinking. "Panoramic?" you ask. He nods and you think, figuring out logistics. "Medium?" you ask. Tony smiles a little, "What about spray paint?" Clint smiles a little from his spot, watching goings-on and relaying information to Pepper. You're planning things out in your head. Like a goddamn chess grandmaster. He can see pieces being moved around. "Photorealistic or stylized?" you ask. Tony snorts, "Let's say stylized. Wouldn't want Thor to try and walk through it." That makes you smile a little, "I can probably do that... What do you want me to put in on?" That makes Tony stop for a second, "Let's see what people will really buy," he said mischievously, "I'll get you a sheet of drywall to play with... And all the colors of spray paint you could ever need." You nod, "I can do that but I might need some time... and a large patch of grass you don't mind getting paint on. I don't really do Spray paint inside if I can help it."

Tony nodded and raised his coffee cup in mock toast, "You might be the least temperamental Artist we ever commissioned."

That made Natasha snort, "Clearly, you've never heard her backstage during a show. "Fuck Muppet" became my new favorite epithet after the last one." Tony chokes on his coffee and Clint snorts, "That's great," he laughed, "I changed my mind. Just make a giant thing that says Fuck Muppet." Steve pinched the bridge of his nose, "Y/N please don't."

"Now I'm gonna," you say, "And I'm gonna dedicate it to you, Steve." The laughter that follows you out of the room is satisfying. You don't need to turn around to Know that Steve's face is probably snapchat worthy. Or that your dad probably looks way too proud of you for talking back to a literal National Treasure. But, he had it coming honestly. No living creature should be that fucking uptight. It wasn't healthy. You were willing to bet that if you made him swallow a piece of coal he'd shit a diamond. But there wasn't time to Dwell on that. You and Natasha had shopping to do. At least some of it.

When you come back downstairs in jeans, your boots, and a red croptop with "You inspire my inner serial killer" written on it in pretty script, Clint shakes his head, "Another Forray into fashion design?" You shake your head and stick the last bobby pin into your right space bun, "Nah. Parker made me this one." Nat smiles a little. You don't look 17. You look 21 and Clint is about 4 seconds from a heart attack. But, aside from your midriff and a belly button piercing he already knows about, there's no other skin showing. And it's summer. "Cute," Nat says, "But please. Please don't make me have to stab some stupid frat boy today." You grin, "Nah... They're all more trouble than they're worth."

Natasha grabs you by the hand and drags you out of the room before Clint can think too hard about that last comment and he retroactively tries to ground you until you're 83.

Steve watches Natasha flounce out of the room with you and Clint pour coffee like nothing just happened, "Have fun! Don't kill anyone!" Clint shouts after you. You half turn and sign "Love you, dad" to him and he smiles, "Love you too, punk" he answers.

"You really don't have a problem with her dressed like that?" Steve asked. "Like what?" Clint counters mildly, "Like a 17-year-old girl? In this year of your lord in the 21st century when ankles aren't sexy anymore unless you're weird? No. No, I don't" Steve winced, "I just meant," he started. Clint quirked an eyebrow, "She's 17. Not 7. She's my child. Not yours. It's just a shirt. Those are just comfortable jeans. And those boots are probably just comfortable too... If the worst thing she does is dress like that, get piercings I know about, and flirt with muscle-bound idiots until she gets bored with them, all things considered, I'll take it." You're a pretty girl. Really Pretty. And men tended to stare and they had since you were 12. It was gross but Clint didn't see any point in making you dress like a Nun when it was much more satisfying to break noses. Steve stayed quiet and left shortly after that. And honestly, Clint was grateful. It wasn't the first time someone had tried to tell him how to parent you.

But, he didn't think it was that bad. You were older now than he'd been when you were born. You made good grades. You had good friends. You called to talk to him and if you didn't call you texted. Truth be told, half the time he didn't know what to do with you and the rest of the time he just did the opposite of what his parents would have done. It was still better than Reggie did. She'd just sort of left you with her mom and fucked off to go help the CIA destabilize countries. Clint considered that job security. Reggie made the Warlords and Petty Despots and Clint helped put them down. It worked.

Outside, he watched as Tony made good on his promise to set you up. Paint, Drywall, tables, Brushes, attachments. Anything you could ever want were being delivered. Stark seemed intent on making up for his oversight and Clint was happy about it. You deserved credit for the cool shit you did. Maybe it would help drown out all the comments from people that looked down their nose at you. He drifted away to get some target practice in and you and Natasha wander the city, looking for the perfect new pair of platform boots and some little pieces of flair for your school wardrobe.

By the time you return, Clint has been doing more looking at his phone than working. Natasha sent him pictures. Lots of pictures. And he saved them all. His personal favorite was one Natasha had taken of you both. Huge sunglasses and feather boas, pouting for the camera. You looked like you were having a blast. He couldn’t wait to hear about it, even if he didn’t actually want to participate.

Pepper knocked on the doorframe and leaned on it casually, “So,” she said, holding out a check, “Since the work she did for us would have made her some money... Probably a lot of money. Tony and I agreed that it’s bullshit that she didn’t get credit.” Clint took the check and just blinked, “Holy Shit.” was all he could say and Pepper smiled a little. “We figure that doing that work for anything Stark affiliated would have made her about that much in commissions for other rich people with more money than sense.” Clint snorted, “She is really good, isn’t she.” he said with a note of pride.

“Especially for all the crazy things Tony pitches at her,” she said nodding, “I have no idea how she’s going to do Asgard in spray paint but if anyone can.” Clint nodded, “She can,” he agreed. “So why are you giving this to me?” he asked, not following. “Because,” Pepper said smiling, “No 17 year old should have that much money... I figured you’d best hang on to it for now.” Clint nodded, “Thanks, Pepper.” he said.

She squeezed his hand, “I’m sorry we didn’t realize it sooner. It feels like we were taking advantage of her... but. We’re taking care of that oversight now. We planned a full showcase of the work she did for us previously to go along with the Auction of this piece. And I’m going to see if she minds us putting some of the dress designs she’s done for Nat and I on display too.” Clint nods slowly. It sounds like a lot. Maybe even too much. You’re still in school and he desperately wants you to finish, not just rabbit off and start cranking out art until your fingers bleed. So he says as much to Pepper.

The woman thinks for a moment and nods, “We’ll stick to the previous art pieces then. Just those for now... Later I will happily wear anything her little heart designs and send work her way.” That makes Clint feel better. A lot better.

You’re a kid. A gifted, talented kid. And you’re his. It’s his job to protect you until you can protect yourself. But as Pepper walks away and he stares at the staggering sum of money on the check, he knows he’ll probably never stop.

Tags: @lancsnerd @stevieang @golddaggers @blameitonthecauseway @qxeen-of-hearts @process-pending @xmarveled @beautybyfire, @etherealwaifgoddess, @mschellehitt

#clint barton #natasha romanoff #tony stark #steve rogers #Dad!Clint #teen reader #pepper potts

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vs-redemption · 4 years

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Crime is Common. Logic is Rare. (Ch 6)

Chapter Six: Friends (HawksxGN!Reader)

Plot summary: You thought your hands were full as a regular quirk geneticist, but then you meet Hawks and things get even more exciting!

Warnings:

⚠️This story contains spoilers from the manga.

⚠️Some events and plot points have been altered from the original manga

Next Chapter : Chapter Guide

Doing research took time. That was the plain and simple truth. Rules and regulations had to be followed and any attempt to take a shortcut could result in a mistake that cost not only valuable data, but also supplies, money, and time. These were the facts Hawks’ research team complained about mostly on the first couple days of your little business trip, but you soon realized what the true problems were. They were all trying to do too much at the same time. The four armed department manager had multiple people working on multiple projects, plus they were trying to juggle the urgent jobs given to them by Hawks in addition to the long term studies funded mostly by the government, Hero Public Safety Commission, and other private organizations. You explained these issues to the head of the lab and helped brainstorm ways to prioritize jobs and make better use of the team’s personnel.

“This is why I’ve never even considered joining a Hero Agency until now,” you explain to Hawks over lunch near the end of the week. He always insisted on meeting with you each day to hear about the progress being made. It still sat strangely with you that he did this since it would be just as easy for you to write and submit a daily report so that he didn’t need to take unnecessary time out of his already busy schedule. He was fun to talk to though since he never talked business the whole time. “Scientists always go after jobs with heroes knowing they’ll have access to great funding and state of the art research technology. What they never stop to consider is that they’ll also have to work at the Hero’s discretion. That’s not a bad thing as long as you know that’s what you’re getting into and don’t mind working on research outside your area of interest. Anyway, we’ve set up a priority system to keep jobs relevant to you and the agency in the lab while moving long term, low priority projects out to local universities or private research facilities. I told your team to put together a list of places they want to partner up with for you to look over.”

“Hmm,” Hawks leans his head in his hand and grins. “You gave them homework, huh?” You let out a dry laugh.

“Yeah, I guess I did.” You admit.

“Well, it all sounds fine to me,” He leans back and nods his head. “Interesting though, that you’ve changed your mind about working for a hero. I take it you’ve enjoyed your time here?” He raises his eyebrows and tilts his head with a smile. You give him a pointed look and cross your arms.

“You don’t have to use your magic face on me,” You tell him in amusement. “Working at your agency has been interesting. I could certainly see myself fitting in, but you know I’m not the only one who could’ve solved your team’s efficiency problem.”

“Magic face?” He gives a big cheesy grin that makes his eyes squint adorably. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” you laugh and shake your head. “There are plenty of people in the science community around here that could’ve easily figured out a way to boost the speed of your research department. And, if you really need a geneticist on your team, you could’ve found one through the Hero Public Safety Commission. They’re the ones who do all of your recruiting anyway.” Hawks just stares at you for a moment before pointing a gloved finger in your direction.

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to look a gift horse in the mouth?” He asks.

“Well, I’m dealing with a gift bird so I figure the standard rules don’t apply,” you quip, earning a more genuine looking smile from the pro hero sitting across from you.

“I suppose you’re right,” he shrugs. “And if I’m being honest, the fact that you weren’t handpicked by the hero commission is one of the things I like about you. I already have enough of their noses in my business. Plus, I was hoping we could be friends if nothing else.”

“Friend, huh?” You weren’t sure how you felt about that comment. Obviously he was a great hero. He wasn’t the number two for nothing. He had the second highest approval rating in Japan and it was obvious why. He was young, attractive, and had an awesome quirk. He was also very charming. Too charming, actually. How much of it was an act? Who was the real Hawks? You had a feeling he was way more complicated than his laid back, fun-loving attitude suggested.

“Uh oh,” Hawks lets out a chuckle, “am I about to be rejected?”

“No,” you laugh. “I’ll be your friend.”

“Phew,” he sighs dramatically. “I don’t usually have to work that hard to win people over.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” you say flatly while gesturing both hands at him. “Magic face.”

“I still don’t know what that means,” He gives you another cheesy grin. “But it sounds like a compliment.” You roll your eyes and ask the waiter for the check.

“Oh, by the way,” Hawks tells you as you make your way back to his agency. “I won’t be able to have our daily lunch date tomorrow. I have a meeting with Endeavor.”

“Endeavor?” you choose to ignore that he’d called your little get-togethers ‘dates.’ “Like… the number one hero, Endeavor?”

“Oh, you know who HE is…” Hawks says dejectedly. You just laugh. “Yeah, I asked him to come out to talk about some things. I figured we should start working together a bit now that we’re the top two.”

“He doesn’t come across as a team player kind of guy,” You admit.

“Nope,” Hawks agrees. “But I managed to convince him.” You roll your eyes again. That pretty boy stuff even worked on a guy like Endeavor? What a world you lived in.

Hawks started talking about how much he loved sweet canned coffee after that, so you figured the stuff he was going to discuss with the number one hero must be more confidential information. You pushed the meeting from your mind until the next day when one of Hawks’ sidekicks burst into the lab you were in, shouting frantically to put on the news. You were horrified to see live news feed of Hawks and Endeavor fighting a terrifying looking Nomu in the middle of the city.

#bnha x reader #mha x reader #hawks x reader #keigo takami x reader #hawks #keigo takami #bnha #mha #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #my writing

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menswearmusings · 4 years

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Do Yourself a Favor and Get a Decent Tie Rack From Dapper Woodworks—A Free Product Review

I don’t wear a tie everyday, and I don’t have a ton of ties, but the storage solution I had for the roughly 20 ties I do have was annoying and lame. Buying a better tie rack just wasn’t a high priority for me, and thus, my ties hung on a roughly $12 hanging contraption from T.J. Maxx. It made me very, very sad.

My sad T.J.Maxx tie rack.

Enter Dapper Woodworks. The man behind the company, Justin Trewitt, has been at this for two years as a side job to help create some supplemental income for his family while simultaneously engaging his interests in woodworking and menswear. As with many business ideas, his started when he wanted a way to store his pocket squares, so he just made his own. He realized perhaps other men facing the same situation would be interested in such a product, and soon he was selling on Etsy. His product selections now include shoe horns, coat hooks, collar stay organizers, the aforementioned pocket square organizers and of course, tie racks.

Justin asked me whether I would like to have one of his custom-made tie racks in order to give my impressions and give an honest review of it (note my free product policy here. TL;DR I keep my opinions honest and don’t accept free stuff in exchange for positive coverage). I measured my closet, and since he does custom-sized racks in addition to the standard stock sizes, asked for a 20-inch rack, which he told me stores 37 ties—way more than I currently have, so I’ve got room to grow. Since it was a custom size, I got to choose the wood, peg metal and whether it had the optional top shelf. Ultimately, I picked walnut with brass pegs, with the top shelf included, which I figured might help a little bit with dust, but also provide a nice spot to store a couple belts, silk knots, collar stays and whatever else.

He set to work immediately, posting progress images on his Instagram. Within about a week, he’d finished it and was ready to s—oh no! He messaged me to say he’d accidentally made it 18 inches long, not 20. Being super apologetic, he remade the 20 inch one within a few days, and it was on its way to me.

For this type of product, it’s very simple to determine whether it’s great: Is it real hard wood, not composite? Yes. Is it sturdily constructed? Yes. Are the cuts on the wood smooth, without jagged edges? Yes. The joints are fitly joined together, the stain is even, the pegs are secure and perfectly spaced. And he’s also put the next level of fit and finish into the installation aspect. On the back are keyhole slots, just as you’d find on any professionally made wooden shelf. Included in the box is a mounting guide, but instead of a flimsy piece of paper, it’s a full-length piece of wood with holes drilled in it at the exact spacing of the keyholes. Leveling it is a breeze, the three-dimensional wood taking the uncertainty out of whether or not a piece of paper was perfectly flat against the wall.

You could probably find all of those aspects in a mass produced, ugly tie rack from Container Store for less money, just as you can also get a mass produced, cheap tie from The Tie Bar for less money than a Drake’s tie, and it’ll accomplish the utilitarian aspect of the product. But what DW is doing is vastly superior in almost every aspect: it’s much more aesthetically pleasing; you can choose from half a dozen beautiful wood grains and multiple peg styles; you know who is making it and that you’re supporting him provide for his family; and now, even better, he has begun donating a portion of every month’s sales to a nonprofit that provides education, food and medical care for children in need.

In all, it’s an excellent product befitting a fine tie collection, the pedigree of which is sterling.

That said, the price seemed really high to me, especially at first. The standard 18-inch wide tie rack starts at $140 without the shelf, and $190 with.

But, like, a single Drake’s tie is $150. On sale, you can maybe score it for $75.

This $200 tie rack holds 37 ties.

Given how sad and lame most tie storage solutions are, it’s an absolute no-brainer for someone who has a collection of beautiful ties, and who also would like to store their clothing in a way that isn’t sad. That is, if you’re trying to use wide-shouldered hangers, decent garment bags, and shoe trees in your shoes, a tie rack makes perfect sense.

My recommendation

Measure your own space and get a rack that makes sense. The 18-inch will likely fit most spaces and holds enough ties for most guys, I’d guess. I 100% recommend the top shelf. It keeps dust off the ties and is a useful spot to put things like his lapel pins or belts or artwork. I love the walnut finish, and the brass pegs make it feel masculine. Use code MM10 for 10% off.

So there’s my review: the solid hardwood Dapper Woodworks tie rack is an excellent product that gives me immense pleasure, and which exceeded my expectations in how easily Justin makes the mounting aspect. The quality is very high, being profesionally built and using materials I am confident putting my finely made ties on.

I temporarily installed the rack for the photoshoot below, because getting this rack actually inspired me to do a DIY renovation on my real closet, but I didn’t have time to get that finished before the deadline to publish this review.

I asked Justin a few questions about his background, the origin of Dapper Woodworks and what he plans next. You can check it out in full below.

GET 10% OFF YOUR DAPPER WOODWORKS ORDER USING CODE MM10!

(Help support this site! If you buy stuff through my links, your clicks and purchases earn me a commission from many of the retailers I feature, and it helps me sustain this site—as well as my menswear habit ;-) Thanks!)

Menswear Musings: What do you do for your day job?

Justin Trewitt: I’ve been working for my family’s company for the past 5 1/2 years in Plano, Tx. We do financial planning for individuals and we also just started doing business brokerage so helping people buy and sell businesses. I started in customer service, but now I do a lot of behind the scenes preparation for client meetings. Basically lots of staring at a computer screen and Excel spreadsheets.

MM: How long have you been doing DW?

JW: I started Dapper Woodworks in November of 2017 so just over 2 years now. We had just decided for my wife to quit teaching to be a stay at home mom with our first son so I wanted to find a way to create a little extra income for our family.

MM: What got you started making these tie racks?

JW: Well I got into woodworking when my wife and I bought our house a few years ago. We didn’t have a lot of furniture so I just learned how to make some! I have also been into menswear after learning to dress better in college. When I began thinking of side hustles I decided that I wanted to combine my woodworking hobby with my passion for menswear, and that’s how Dapper Woodworks began. My first product was a pocket square rack that I made for myself out of cheap wood because I couldn’t find a good way to store my collection. I figured surely I wasn’t the only one with this problem so I made an Etsy store and put it up for sale. I knew I needed more products so I made a few tie racks out of some scrap wood and hardware. It took over a month before the first order, and then people began requesting custom sizes and woods and it’s just taken off from there!

MM: Have you had a big response?

JW: The response has been way bigger than I could have ever imagined! When I began I was going to be happy with a sale or two every month. We are 2 years in now, and I just counted that we’ve sent over 400 items all over the world which is just crazy to me! I think people really enjoy them because there aren’t any good options to display your ties or accessories in a beautiful way. When you invest a lot of money into your tie or pocket square collection you might as well display it on a rack that has the same level of craftsmanship. I believe people really enjoy the custom aspect because each product is unique and is made their specifications

MM: How big is your personal tie collection and what’re you favorite ties and why?

JW: I’m in the process of redoing my collection, and filling it with higher quality ties that reflect the quality of my products. I had a bunch of cheaper ties for my previous job that I got rid of so I still trying to fill my smallest rack that holds 21 ties. My first nice tie was my Kent Wang grenadine which I absolutely recommend to anyone starting a collection. The cool part about being in the menswear space is meeting other brands, and several tie makers that are running a side business like me. I’ve got a couple of really great grenadine and shantung ties from H.N. White in England. A beautiful brown cashmere tie from Oxford Rowe. Also this incredible 7 fold tie from Shawn Christopher who is the only brand I know that makes his own ties instead of having them manufactured.

MM: What’s the most gratifying thing about this business for you?

JW: Beside being able to provide for my family this business has helped pay for my wife and I to go on 2 mission trips to plant churches in Tanzania. We needed to raise all of our own funds, and had lots of other expenses such as doctors visits, vaccines, and passports and this business helped cover all extra expenses. Also we have just partnered with our friend’s ministry Twelve21, and a portion of each month’s sales will be going toward sponsoring a child that will provide an education, food, and medical care. It’s just been really neat to trust God through this whole process, and see where he has taken us!

MM: Any new products you’re working on that you

JW: Besides the tie racks and pocket square racks, our shoe horns have been very popular this year. I’ve also introduced a few smaller items like our collar stay organizers and cedar blocks. But going into 2020 I’m hoping to add some new tools to the shop and start making some valet trays, and maybe some shoe racks. I’m always trying to think of new items that are menswear and woodworking related, and if you ever have any suggestions just let me know.