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bluegarners · 3 years

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Oooh for the bingo card can I pick survivors guilt with dick feeling guilty cause he ran away from home just like Jason but he lived while Jason died 😢

ahhh sorry this took awhile to get to!! i hope you enjoy this though~ requested for my Bad Things Happen Bingo ; it is also on ao3

Survivor's Guilt

The days bleed into one another to the point where it’s almost offensive, how indistinct and indiscriminate each sunrise and subsequent sunset is. A little boy died and the world carries on like nothing happened. Like his life was nothing less than the lawn being mowed or a tree being cut down. Is there an analogy Dick’s forgetting about, comparing dead children to nature? He’s not sure, he’s just tired, and the days continue to bleed into one another.

Monday is actually Thursday and Dick looks in the mirror and traces the bruise on his face. There’s a line in the fading purple blob that’s just the slightest bit darker. Knuckle indents. He saw it coming but he didn’t do anything. It was… just a punch. He applies some ointment and looks away. A little boy died and he’s still taking care of a tiny little injury, hardly an injury, it’s nothing, it’s nothing, because-

It’s four in the evening and Dick just woke up. It’s not a good habit to fall into, to sleep so late, do so little, think about dead little boys and missed funerals, but Dick can’t help it. Sometimes, he loses time within the bleeding days, just sits down for a moment and then an alarm goes off to remind him that it’s morning now and that he should be getting up to do… something. Go somewhere. Take care of things. But what? But what? Dick only just sat down, it doesn’t seem fair for the world to demand he be pulled this way and that when it already took a child, already took someone that never graduated tenth grade.

What do people learn in tenth grade? They’re just children, and Dick can’t remember much from his Gotham Academy days, so he really hopes they aren’t put under too much pressure. They’re all just so young, tenth graders, so young and youthful and there’s really no reason for them to be bogged down with work or stress from education. Life was infinitely more important than some late homework and Dick wonders if the school requires missing assignments from dead children. Wonders what they do with that extra, empty desk or the absent name on the roster. Wonders if they just shove another kid into their place, cross out the name for attendance, and carry on like the rest of the world seems to have.

What’s more, what do the friends of the dead child do? Do they mourn? Mourning seems so sad for the young, it's got no place in their view, and yet Dick remembers mourning, grieving when he was just nine but it was all so wrong. Dick hopes that the friends of the dead child are okay. Dead child. Dead little boy. Dead tenth grader.

He heard the funeral was nice. Heard that the school hosted a vigil. Of course, he wasn’t able to attend. Wasn’t extended the invitation to attend, but it’s not about him. It’s about the dead boy.

Dick has never been comfortable with children. Not in the sense that he finds them strange or annoying or that he can’t stand youth. He’s just not comfortable with the sheer light, with people who possess so much of it that it literally oozes out in all the things they do. Leaks out from their innocent smiles, their troubled and off-handed questions, their zest for adventure, yearning for dreams so much larger than themselves, their endless compassion for others, their infinite amount of crushes, their worry about deadlines and asking someone out on a date, their constant need to keep up with trends of the day; so many light things that Dick hasn’t touched in so long. So many things he feels like he shouldn’t be allowed to touch.

You were lucky.

Was he? Dick doesn’t think he was, but then again, he’s not a dead little boy with a specially made coffin to fit his small, under-developed, never got the chance to reach a growth-spurt, body. Being Batman’’s partner was terrifying. He remembers it being scary, not knowing if he was going to live through the night or if Batman was going to go off on another rampage because Dick screwed up. Not knowing if screwing up as Batman’s partner meant no longer being welcomed as Bruce’s ward.

How many times has it been now? Twice? Three times?

A key is gone from his chain now and its missing weight burns holes in all of Dick’s clothes. It’s a finality that feels just as permanent as the dead little boy’s gravestone.

A size six and a half pair of sandals sit on the edges of Dick’s tiny balcony. He has a no shoe policy in his apartment, hardly cleaner than the streets below, but it was the principle that counted right? No muddy boots, no dirty sneakers, no rain logged socks, none of that. So Dick keeps a pair of size six and a half sandals on his balcony in case a size six and a half wearer decides to waltz in.

Dick wears a size eleven.

He’ll have to get rid of them at some point. There’s no reason for them to stay there, collecting dust or peeling away whenever it rains. They weren’t even that good of a pair, just some knock off brand he found at a convenience store once, so keeping them for their worth isn’t that important. He spent the entirety of seven dollars on them, so really, he’s not strapped for cash and he can’t wear them himself and he’s sure that some homeless kid or anyone really would be happy to have them. He could just donate them, throw them in a box and leave it outside for the trash to pick up. He could. He could.

He can’t.

They aren’t his. They belonged to someone, someone very important, and he can’t just throw them away. You don’t throw away a dead little boy’s shoes just because they can’t wear them anymore. His parents always taught him to respect the dead, respect their belongings, and those sandals aren’t his so he’s got no say in what to do with them. It’s fine if the dead child’s shoes stay out on Dick’s balcony. It’s fine. He doesn’t go out there much anyway. The shoes are so tiny, only a size six and a half, and Dick can hardly get half of his foot in a size so small and they belong to a dead boy anyway so he shouldn’t touch them. Shouldn’t touch the dead child’s shoes.

He’s distancing himself on purpose. It’s a lot easier to say a dead little boy, a dead child, than it is to admit a name belongs to such a ghastly title. There are so many other words, so many other titles infinitely more fitting for a child than dead, and yet it’s the only one that describes him in this moment. Dead. Gone. Passed.

There used to be a box shoved away in the back corners of his closet. A cramped and banged up cardboard box containing every memory he had from being Robin. There used to be a picture of his parents in there, a cracked glass frame and a stained photo all he had left from Haly’s; there was his old costume from the circus, the same one he wore on the night where the sawdust turned black and he learned what sounds a body makes when it hits the ground; there was a small photo album in there too, pictures Alfred took of Dick’s time at the Manor, of his time as Bruce’s ward. Sometimes he’ll flip through its pages and feel that sting in his eyes, feeling the ghostly fingers of longing cradle his head through each memory every pristine photo contained.

And, most importantly, in that old, worn out, and beat up cardboard box, was Robin. Red, green, and yellow. Shorts and a velcro cape. Boots he doesn’t know how he ever fit into. A vest that would be impossible to get around his shoulders now. The crest, the emblem. Robin.

It was supposed to stay in that box. Remain there for the rest of his days, leave behind a child soldier and trade it out for a freelancer looking for a new war to fight. A new landscape to reshape and hone as his own. But then another little boy, taller than when Dick started out, appears in the night and leaps and frolics and laughs by Batman’s side. Stands over Gotham and gloats and jeers and grasps Robin almost perfectly.

And for the first time, Dick understands the horror that plowed into every other superhero out there when he first debuted as Robin. Understands the numbing terror of the thought of a child, someone who probably didn’t know how to do calculus or read Shakespeare or tie their shoes correctly, out there fighting the dirtiest and darkest sides of the world. That someone with a shoe size of six and a half was out there punching rapists, getting up close with drug lords and traffickers, witnessing and investigating crime scenes and analyzing gore and blood spatters.

Just a child. Just a little boy.

It feels wrong. So, so wrong, to give his blessing to someone who’s just barely hit puberty. Who’s still struggling to perfect a Robin cackle or speak without his voice cracking and pitching wildly. It’d make him a hypocrite not to though. He was younger, so much younger, when he started out as Robin, so who is he to stop an almost teenager from being Robin?

Well, actually, Dick is an adult. His frontal lobe is completely developed, he can pay taxes, drink, vote, organize his own affairs, drive, buy cigarettes, make his own decisions. Help others make decisions. Jas- the dead boy was just that. A boy. He had no idea how to do any of those things, much less think about them for the next few years, so how can he just allow a child to decide if they want to traumatize themselves, bleed themselves dry, for a city that doesn’t love them and devote themselves to a man’s mission that hasn’t changed in over a decade?

But even if he hadn’t given his blessing, the boy would have been Robin anyway. Remember? Dick has no say in anything to do with Robin. Anything to do with Gotham. No, all that was taken away the moment he stepped out of line, stepped out of the conformity and obedience Batman demanded. The blessing… it was just a formality for something Dick had never wanted to continue. Robin was supposed to disappear with him, die with him leaving Gotham, and yet…

Robin died anyhow.

There’s a dead little boy that used to be named Robin buried in a cemetery with a beautifully carved gravestone that just wanted the child to rest in peace, sleep well, and dream of a better life. And Dick gave his blessing for him to die as Robin.

The days still bleed into each other, melting and drifting over and mixing until the sunrises and sets in the same minute. Dick keeps losing time and people keep calling him but he just forgets to pick up the phone to answer. He can’t help but stare at his balcony, can’t help but stare at the empty space in the box, can’t help but listen to his own heartbeat and watch the way his chest expands as his lungs do.

He is alive. Alive when he probably shouldn’t be.

Robin was not meant to last. Dick has told himself that over and over again, the clear and simple fact that Robin was not meant to carry on. Born through the same circumstances as Batman, Robin was supposed to be nothing more than a temporary outlet but Dick got addicted and now he can’t stop. Now his thoughts loop around and around and all he can think about is a dead child wearing his Robin uniform and running out in the night with his blessing.

You were lucky.

Bruce was right. He was lucky. Lucky beyond belief that he survived being Robin. Lucky he stuck around long enough to learn what he needed to and then some under Batman’s tutelage, only to be fired and leave a gaping hole behind that was just calling for a replacement. Screaming for someone to fill the void, beckoning the ears of the young and naive to answer its call. Of course a child would answer. Of course someone eager and looking for love and praise and meaning would find their way there.

And perhaps Dick used up all the luck, all the magic, Robin gave. Used it all up and without a care in the world for who would be next to wear the cape, parade the emblem, because now there’s a dead little boy in the ground and his blood stains Dick’s hands.

Maybe if he had died as Robin instead, died in those early days where he was nine and filled with moxy undeserved, it would have served as warning enough to stay away from Batman. Stay away from Robin. Stay away from the beckon of being a child soldier. And, really, it wouldn’t have been all that bad if he had died so young. If he had died after Zucco was found because then he would have been with his parents, would have been reunited with his family again.

Dick isn’t sure he believes in the after life, if there are places like Heaven and Hell, but sometimes he hopes there is because there is a dead little boy in his arms and he is desperate for the hope that he has a good place to go to. To move on to.

But Dick’s not dead, still very much alive and breathing through working lungs with blood pumping through his veins, and now he’s not only outlived his time as Robin, but the next as well. He has outlived a child.

How do you outlive your own legacy?

He can’t call the dead child his brother. They’re not, legally, and Dick didn’t bond with him like brothers should. He tried, tried to after the initial shock and horror, bought size six and a half sandals, helped with homework, lent an ear to vent to, but it wasn’t enough.

Somehow, a dead little brother is so much worse than a child and Dick can’t give him another title to cling to. Can’t assign another name and still…

Jason is dead. Dick missed his funeral, missed it all, and his name is Jason Todd and he was only fifteen when he died and god, Dick wishes he had been a better brother. Wishes so badly he had never given his blessing, never lived through being Robin, because that would mean Jason would have never had to die and he would be in Dick’s place, simply breathing and alive and that’s… that’s all he can ask for.

The days continue to bleed into each other and the bruise slowly fades away into his skin.

The sandals remain on the balcony.

#bad things happen bingo #survivor guilt #Dick Grayson #Jason Todd #Jason Todd is Robin #Robin #Nightwing #tw: canon death #i posted this same thing earlier but i thought i lost the ask for it #turns out it was just buried #fanfic #my fic

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n0wornever · 3 years

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Christmas Tree Farm - Julie Molina x Reader

Festive tings with my favorite girl. (was totally inspired by @calamitykaty‘s most recent Christmas piece for this one!

“Julie, you’re going to want to bundle up more than that!” Y/N said as she wrapped her plush white scarf around her neck again.

She looked over at her girlfriend, standing in the doorway with her lightweight jacket laying open over her dark green turtleneck. Julie fidgeted with the coat sleeves as she scrunched her face in confusion. Y/N simply rolled her eyes at the girl, leaning back and opening the wicker picnic basket beneath their shoe rack.

Julie watched carefully as the girl dug through the colorful fabrics. Finally, she pulled out a set of white gloves and a matching hat, holding them up in the air. Her girlfriend hesitated before stepping forward and grabbing them from her hands. As Y/N rose to meet her gaze, she frowned. Julie was still holding the garments in her hand.

“Baby, you’re in the midwest in the middle of December,” She said, scooping up a green scarf from the coat hanger to her right.

She stepped toward the girl, circling the soft material around Julie’s neck a few times before letting her hands rest on her shoulders. Her girlfriend’s cheeks began to blossom, and Y/N couldn’t help but smirk at the quick reaction she received. She let her hands slide down to the scarf again, pulling the curly-haired girl closer to her. She leaned in and pressed her lips to Julie’s with a smile. As they pulled back, she was sure the temperature had risen for her too.

As she stepped back, Julie held up the gloves to her girlfriend’s face, waving them back and forth.

“Babe, do you really think I’ll need all of this?” She whined, lip pouting on command.

Y/N shook her head as she laughed at her persistence. When she checked the weather this morning, she noted the high of 32 and the possibility of snow on the horizon in the evening. It was due almost to the exact minute that they were supposed to arrive at the Christmas Palace. She simply nodded, mimicking her full lips back to her as she placed her own onto her hands.

“Yes, you are going to thank me for it in like an hour,” Y/N checked her watch to make sure they were still on schedule to meet her grandfather.

Her pop’s Christmas tree farm was right outside of the city limits. The place had been in her family’s life for decades and although she’d been there hundreds of times, their visits never bored Y/N. That was because there was a secret after event that he put on just for those closest to him.

If you squinted in between the trees and around the log cabin in the daylight, you’d see rows and rows of string lights. There were also several animated characters in wrapped around wires that sat in different areas of the snow going almost entirely unnoticed. However, every night after he had closed to the general public for the evening, these items would come alive in a light show that he held for friends and family who came to visit.

Y/N remembered the first time he’d let her help flip the switch. She had to have been no older than 6, and had to be hoisted up into his arms to reach the cover plate, pushing it forward. He always told her that he’d never forget what happened next. She had gazed upon the yards and yards of perfectly powdered trees and her eyes widened in excitement. Grandpa always said he kept that smile in the locket he wore around his neck.

Y/N played with the gold chain resting at the nape of her neck for a moment as Julie finished getting ready. Her eyes were fixed on the stairs, tearing at her lower lip as she drifted back to the flashes of green and red lining Forester Road. She sweet smell of pine leaves lining her jacket for afternoons after her visit. The warm cocoa she practically spilled all over herself in the car as her mom drove down that rugged gravel road.

She was only pulled back by a grip on her waist. She turned to the right and found her smiling girl staring straight at her with a toothy grin.

“Are you ready baby?” Julie asked, gripping at the girl’s red peacoat.

Y/N nodded, bringing her lips back down to meet hers. As they pulled away, Julie’s thumb rose to brush against her lips, her wide grin still splashed across her cheeks.

“I left a little red on your lips,” She muttered as she brushed against the skin.

After she’d erased the stain of her lips, Julie pulled back with her hand outstretched. Y/N clasped onto it as she followed her out the door. As they reached her mother’s car, Y/N released her hand from Julie’s, sending it up to Julie’s hat as she pulled it below the girl’s ears. She could hear her girlfriend’s giggles as she tugged it left to right until it pleased her.

Finally satisfied, Y/N ran over to the drivers side. Her hand met a pile of snow pooling at the handle. She dusted the majority off with her hand before she pulled it toward her and crawled inside. She put the key in the ignition, alerting the Christmas station she’d preselected the night before. As she turned to back up, her eyes fell on Julie. The small girl held her hands up against the heater, eyes narrowed at her pink fingertips.

“I told you,” Y/N said with a giggle.

Julie met her eyes with a frown before turning back to her hands. Y/N placed her hand behind the girl’s seat and pulled out of the driveway. As sleigh bells rang softly in the background, Y/N hummed along to the carol. She could feel Julie’s eyes on her, and she knew she should be talking. However Y/N was doing her best to ignore her sweating palms underneath her steering wheel.

She had no idea why she was so nervous for Julie to meet pops. He literally loved everyone he ever met. he was the first person to ask her when he’d meet a significant other after she came out, asking her to bring her out to the farm as soon as she could. However, now that her beautiful girlfriend sat next to her, ready to fulfill that promise, she wasn’t so sure. Her grip on the steering wheel sent a throbbing sensation to her palms, it brought her attention to something.

“So,” Julie said, finally breaking the silence.

Her hand moved to the radio volume dial, turning Oh Holy Night down to an inaudible level. Y/N straightened her neck, letting it fall side to side as she waited for her to continue.

“What should I expect? You’ve barely told me anything about this place.”

Julie was right, she hadn’t said anything about her Pop’s farm because that was the best way for her to experience it. She wanted her to have that authentic first reaction that she and many others have over the years. More importantly, Y/N wanted to capture the way her eyes lit up as she asked her grandpa to let the girl flip the switch.

“Jules, honey, I told you that I can’t spoil it.”

She her her groan, rotating the dial back up and letting the choral voices take over the conversation. She tried not to laugh as her eyes darted toward the girl’s for a second, taking in her snarl as she looked at the snowy trees surrounding them.

Y/N’s eyes fell on the small green sign at the end of the road. It had a small, very worn, picture of Santa on it with the words “Kindling Tree Farm” etched across it in red cursive writing. Y/n flipped on her turn signal at the light, turning onto the gravel road. A smirk rose onto her face again as she watched Julie clutch onto the car handle as she car shifted back and forth.

They finally came to a smoother pasture as they entered the park. She looked out the window and saw her a familiar smile on the front porch of the cabin. Her grandfather waved at her and she returned the greeting, then pulling into a parking space. As she shifted into park and unbuckled her seatbelt, she turned to her girlfriend one more time.

“He’s a little stoic, but I promise he means well.” Y/N warned her.

Julie bit down on her bottom lip. Y/N noted the quickness of her chest as it rose and fell and reached out for her hand. Julie met her eyes again, a soft smile laid on her right cheek.

“He’s going to love you, I. swear.”

Julie nodded at the girl, squeezing onto her hand before letting go. The two girls hopped out of the car, and Julie walked through the light snow over to Y/N’s side. The girl’s hand tingled as she let herself grip her girlfriend’s hand, pulling her toward the wooden porch. Y/N locked eyes with her grandfather, the older man’s hand on his locket, fidgeting with it as he watched them walk toward him.

As they reached the landing, Y/N took a deep breath. She plastered a smile across her face as she let go of Julie’s hand and reached to wrap her arms around the tall man in front of her. His beard hit her in the face, causing her to giggle into the embrace. As they pulled back, Julie intertwined their hands again quickly.

“Pops, this is Julie,” Y/N said, shaking their entangled hands a bit to catch Julie’s attention.

The man was quiet for a moment, studying Julie with narrow eyes. After a breath of quiet, Julie reached forward first with her hand outstretched. Y/N couldn’t help but melt as she listened to the shakiness in her girlfriend’s voice.

“So nice to finally meet you sir,” She said with as much confidence as she could muster.

Y/N’s eyes fell to her grandfather, who inched toward the girl slowly. His stern expression melted into a soft smile as her shook her hand. Y/N finally let out the breath that waited for her as the exchange ended. Her grandfather pointed back toward the door, meeting his granddaughter’s eyes.

“Are you all thirsty? I just made some cocoa.”

The girl nodded, not even checking with her partner to her right. The two followed him into cabin. Warmth hit them from the moment they entered the candlelit home, the smell of milk chocolate hanging in the air of the kitchen. Y/N led Julie to the table in front of them, letting go of her to pull out her chair. Once the two were sitting, Y/N finally met her girlfriend’s eyes.

“Are you okay?” She asked as she took off her gloves, placing them next to her on the corner of the table.

“Yeah,” Julie said with a small smile.

Y/N reached over to clasp both of her hands around Julie’s. The two looked at each other for a moment, only interrupted by the whistle of the kettle on the stove. Their eyes migrated toward the sound, finding her grandfather the the burner, pouring the steaming liquid into horribly themed mugs. Y/N’s smile grew as she watched him put one, two, three marshmallows on top of the drink...like he always did.

The man turned to her with two finished products in his hands. Y/N reached forward and grabbed them both from him, nodding before she turned back to the table. She looked back and forth from the Grinch shaped glass to the Santa shaped glass, debating between the two. She heard Julie chuckle and met her eyes for a moment.

“For that, you get the Grinch cup,” She said, sticking out her tongue at the girl.

Julie rolled her eyes, gripping the mug with both hands. Y/N watched as the girl closed her eyes, taking a whiff of the silky chocolate smell before letting them flutter open. Y/N did the same before letting her lips touch the warm surface, tipping the drink back to her throat. It tasted slightly like peppermint and her eyes fell back behind her.

“Did you sneak the candy canes in here again?” She asked the man as he finished creating his own drink.

He looked over his shoulder at her, pressing one finger to his lips to quiet her questioning. She shook her head before leaning back over the table. She rolled her eyes at Julie.

“He totally did.”

The man finally joined them at the table and the three sipped on their cups quietly. Y/N’s gaze wandered back to Julie’s to find her eyes fixated on her grandfather’s neck. He noticed the curly-haired girl staring as well and cupped the locket in his hand.

“Did Y/N tell you about this?”

Julie shook her head as she brought her cup back to her lips. Y/N watched as her grandfather’s smile widened as he slipped it off his neck. He let the gold-plated item sit on the table, unclasping the lock. As it opened, he pushed it toward Julie.

Y/N watched as her girlfriend reached out, only touching the outside with her fingertips lightly as she brought it closer to her. She leaned over to look at the contents too. In front of both of them sat a photo of a beaming young girl pointing in front of her and an older man smiling as he held her in his arms. Julie looked back up to him as she pointed at it.

“Is this Y/N?”

He nodded, taking a quick sip before responding.

“Yes, it is,” He said, tipping his glass toward Julie. “That was the biggest smile I’ve ever seen from this one. I knew the moment I saw her eyes meet the lights, that I had to have that picture of her in another place outside of my mind. Luckily, her mom thought so too and snapped the photo just in time.”

Julie smiled softly as she brushed the yellowing photo with her fingertip. That smile was replaced by furrowed brows as she looked up and tilted her head as she held the man’s gaze. Y/N watched the interaction in anticipation, eyes darting from one of them to the other.

“Lights?”

Her grandfather’s gaze fell to hers with raised eyebrows. Y/N tried to hid her rosy cheeks as she shrugged at him.

“I wanted it to be a surprise.”

His shoulders shook in a short giggle before he turned to the window. The sun had finally fully set, and the night sky had taken over the park. He turned back to Y/N with a grin, nodding toward the door with his head.

“Want to show her now? I think it’s dark enough.”

Y/N looked over to her girlfriend who sat waiting with parted lips and an eyebrow cocked up at her. She turned back to the man at the head of the table and nodded, setting down her glass.

“Come on baby,” She whispered, taking the girl’s hand as they both stood to their feet.

Julie trailed behind Y/N as her grandfather led them back to the porch. Y/N swung Julie around to the other side of her, placing the girl between her and her grandfather. Her girlfriend gave her a questioning look, but she averted the pressing gaze as she moved right over to her grandfather’s. Y/N nodded toward Julie and he shot her a wink. He cleared his throat before addressing her.

“Julie, there’s a switch behind you. Could you flip it on for me?”

The girl nodded slowly, turning around. Her hand fell against the switch, lifting it up with her ring finger.

Y/N felt a smile already spreading across her face as Julie glanced at the lights from the corner of her eye. As the girl fully turned around, her eyes widened at the scene in front of her. Strings and strings of festive lights hung throughout the rows of trees. A small toy train made its way around the front of the porch, Julie’s eyes following its movements as it sang to the snow around it. Y/N watched as her eyes wandered to the sea of waving elves and smiling Santa figurines that were spread around the freshly fallen snow.

Y/N squeezed lightly onto her hand as she watched Julie’ eyes crinkle with her widening smile. She used her free hand to grab her phone out of her pocket, flipping on the camera. She held the screen up to Julie’s side profile, angling it a bit to get a few of the lights in frame too. She snapped a few photos before the girl caught on and smiled directly at her.

As she slid her device back into her jeans, she looked over at her grandfather. He made his way over to her other side, walking across the porch. Both of their eyes fell to the girl holding Y/N’s hand, who watched the scene in front of her with glossy eyes and rosy cheeks. As Y/N felt a smile pull at her cheeks once again, he leaned in to whisper in her ear.

“Do you have a locket ready?”

Tag list: @marinettepotterandplagg @lukeys-giggle @xplrreylo @kiss-themoongoodbye @bathtimejish @bookfrog247 @dasexydevitt13 @musicconversedance @txrii @bestdressedandstressed @daisiesforlacey @epikskool @themaddies-obx @jukeobsessedgirl @writerinlearning @dani27297 @whatever-happens-imma-stand-tall @sovereignparker @kinda-really-lost

#julie and the phantoms #julie molina imagine #julie x reader #julie jatp #luke patterson x reader #jatp #julie and the phantoms fanfiction #julie molina #juke

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adarlingwrites · 3 years

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Taste

Summary: The blue bard is sickeningly sweet for Astarion's preferences, but he'll never forget her taste.

Author’s Notes: Taste is a collection of retellings of Astarion's scenes with the player character from the Baldur's Gate 3 early access, but with a little more embellishments. Plus, it has glimpses of my tiefling's backstory.

I had horrible, horrible artist's and writer's block and I needed to get this out of my system to get the creative juices flowing again. Please excuse any typos or lack of quality.

Larian give us the bard class pls I am begging of you

I - Blueberry Wine

The time for rest has come.

Bedrolls are strewn on the campgrounds, and most of its inhabitants are already asleep. Nothing can be heard save for the crackle of fire, the chirp of birds in the woods, and soft snoring.

If it wasn’t for their common goal of removing those damned illithid tadpoles from their heads before they undergo ceremorphosis, the members of this party wouldn’t even spend five minutes within each others’ presence. Now, they’re sleeping in one place. It takes some measure of trust for that.

The dreams of the tiefling in their ragtag group aren’t sweet tonight, to say the least.

Brows furrowed as another nightmare wormed into her psyche, the tiefling tosses and turns in her bedroll, a thin film of sweat giving her forehead a slight sheen in the firelight. Eyes shooting open, she choked back a gasp, lest she wake up her companions in the camp. The crackle of the campfire and the smell of burning wood gave her some semblance of comfort, at least, reminding her of distant memories.

A warm hearth, a kind face, the smell of freshly baked blueberry pie; simple comforts from her youth that she missed terribly.

The comfort that accompanied the nostalgia was enough to make her drift back to sleep. Woefully, it didn’t stop the nightmares from coming back, now centered around the tiefling’s early years.

Small, bare feet pitter-pattered on the wet pavement, frantic gasps escaped her dry mouth. Choking back a sob, more people went after her, shouting, hurling words that scraped her heart.

“Stop! Thief!”

“Devil!”

“Slay the demon!”

Lungs burning from exertion, the little tiefling whelp coughs, rasps for air, and slides under a cart. In the dark, she can see a narrow alleyway, which she scurries into. The men run past her hiding spot, cursing and muttering amongst themselves. Relief floods through her as their torchlights grew dim.

Safe, at last.

Her trembling arms had been holding on to precious cargo; a stale loaf of bread, wrapped in linen. It’s not a delectable morsel of steak, or rich bone marrow, but it’s better than the rocks she grinded with her sharp teeth for breakfast.

As she takes it out of the cloth, a stone drops in her stomach and horror twists on her young face. The tiefling isn’t holding a loaf of bread, but a severed head of a drow. A scream threatened to escape her throat and pierce the night air, but the tiefling maiden could only gasp as she felt a presence behind her.

Wine red eyes still heavy with sleep met with alert, ruby ones. She isn’t dreaming any longer.

In the dim firelight, she sees him. Astarion.

Truth be told, she doesn’t quite know what to feel about the posh elf. Astarion’s handsome face and fair curls are easy on the eyes, but it only reminded her of how hellish she looks in comparison due to her infernal ancestry. His sharp, calculating eyes puts her at unease, even when his gaze isn’t directed towards her. He has a way of making people feel beneath him, like vulnerable prey. Serenity is not exempt from that, despite her efforts to be pleasant to him. Not to mention, Astarion’s attitude and mannerisms reminded her of the uppity nobles she had the displeasure of encountering in her colorful past.

In short, he’s a handsome fellow with a revolting attitude, at least to Serenity’s standards. Lust and indignation battles with each other in the tiefling’s psyche.

It doesn’t help at all that the elf is fond of calling her pet names, such as “sweetheart” or “dear”. No one calls her such sweet things with genuine intent, not after she saw the drow’s head on a pike, and to hear them from his condescending mouth stirs something dark in her heart.

It especially inflames her whenever he calls her “darling”.

She wanted to pounce on him. However, she wasn’t sure what she wanted after that.

Tear his pretty face asunder with her nails and watch his handsome features contort in agony, perhaps? Or watch him writhe underneath her in a more… carnal manner as she takes out all of her frustration by mashing her ravenous mouth against his lovely lips?

Maybe both?

“Oh, Serenity. You have no need for that sort of… decadence,” she thinks to herself.

Alas, her body says otherwise.

“Shit,” he says upon meeting eyes with her, distracting the tiefling from her thoughts. Serenity didn’t expect such a vulgar word to come out of his pretty mouth, and she didn’t expect the gleaming fangs inside of it either.

How could she not see it the first few times?

The dead boar they found on the road, the fact that she had never seen him consume any food, and the wolfish way he eyes her neck when he thought she wasn’t looking should’ve given it away.

Astarion is a vampire. Worse, he's a vampire who’s intending to sink his teeth in Serenity’s neck.

Whatever terrible things she secretly wanted to do to him, she had no chance of enacting them in this situation. Hells, if anything, Astarion is the one with the capacity to do terrible things to her. The tiefling will be at his mercy, if she doesn’t act fast. So, why isn’t her body doing anything to move?

Heart racing, she needed to say something, at least.

“Stop,” Serenity warns him, voice low, baring her own sharp teeth. The tiefling had considered smashing her precious lute over his head as a last resort. Before the bard can lash out, he pulls back, alarmed.

“No no, it’s not what it looks like, I swear!” Astarion hastily blurts, panic evident in his voice. “ I wasn’t going to hurt you! I just needed- well, blood.”

The elf’s admission confirms it; Astarion is a vampire, a creature enslaved to sanguine hunger.

At that moment, an expression that Serenity hasn’t seen on the elf before twists his features: guilt. The vampire knew he’s betraying her trust, and it shows.

“How long since you killed someone? Days? Hours?” Serenity asks, on guard now, but still sitting on her bedroll.

Eyes widening, Astarion’s tone becomes defensive. “I’ve never killed anyone!” he exclaims. Then, his expression turns grim. “Well, not for food. I feed on animals. Boars, deer, kobolds! Whatever I can get.”

The lass feels slightly reassured that she’s not dealing with a blood-sucking serial killer, but the possibility of him lying puts her on edge again.

“But it’s not enough,” the pale elf speaks again. Serenity half expected him to say this, he did try to bite her after all. “Not if I have to fight. I feel so… weak.”

And there it was, the last thing she expected from him: vulnerability. His reluctance to show weakness was written all over his face. Perhaps it wounds his pride? Regardless of the doubt she has for him, it changed Serenity’s perception of the vampire ever so slightly.

“If I just had a bit of blood, I could think clearer. Fight better. Please.”

Now this is a pleasant surprise. Astarion saying please? Is this a dream?

Still, the tiefling wanted to dig deeper at the truth. Brows knitting together in concentration, she knew better than to use the tadpole, but the damn thing established a psionic link with other infected individuals.

Serenity pushes into the vampire’s mind to search for the truth.

“I- what’s this? What’s happening?” Astarion blurts, experiencing slight discomfort from the intrusion.

Pushing deep into the elf’s cracked and quivering memories, Serenity strains as she sifts through centuries worth of them, until she has reached its heart. There, she found herself in Astarion’s shoes; quite literally. She sees dark eyes that commanded her to feed, and instinctively, her body follows suit. Serenity, experiencing this through Astarion’s memory, opens her mouth, biting down, but not into a tender, pulsing neck. Though she wanted to recoil in disgust, there was no other choice; she couldn’t physically resist. The choice had been made for her- no, made for Astarion.

Astarion’s fangs pierce the twisting body of a rat - the only thing his master allows him to eat.

In return, Serenity’s own memories leak through the cracks of her psyche, and Astarion finds himself in the body of a wee girl with horns too big for her head. Ravenously, he inhales the sweet, buttery aroma of a freshly-baked pie resting on a windowsill. Astarion’s hands, now small and of bluish color, reach for the baked good with caution. A warm, ash-colored hand presses on his shoulder, and he sees the smiling face of a tall, drow man. Instead of hurting him for attempting to steal, the dark elf ushers him to a table, and offers him a slice with a compassionate smile. Serenity will never forget her first taste of the buttery pie crust, the sweet blueberries, and a hint of lemon and salt.

Now, Astarion will never forget that taste, either.

The connection between them severed, Serenity takes a moment to collect herself.

“You ate animals because you were forced to. Not because you wanted to,” she mumbles, eyebrows knitted together. Is it sympathy? Or perhaps his experiences reminded her of her own relationship with food?

Whatever it was, the tiefling’s perception of Astarion drastically shifted. On the surface, Astarion is a noble who turns up his nose at folks like her, but in truth, he suffered under the hands of a cruel master.

Being a pompous ass is a defense mechanism for him.

“I- yes,” Astarion says with resignation. “Yes, I ate whatever disgusting vermin my master picked. So, you can see why I’m slow to trust you,” he continues, and Serenity swore the expression he wore on his face tugged a few strings in her heart.

“But I do trust you, and you can trust me,” Astarion tells her.

Serenity thinks it might not be fair for her not to. How can she say that she can’t, after she saw his past for herself, and he didn’t show any hostility towards her for intruding upon his darkest, most haunting memories?

“I do. I believe you,” the bard responds, and she can hear his relief when he mutters “Thank you.”

Perhaps Serenity had judged him too harshly in the past. The drow who took her in cultivated compassion in her heart, and it’s beckoning to her.

“Do you need blood?” Serenity asks him, and there is genuine surprise on his face.

“I was about to ask,” he tells her, expression shifting into something more pleasant. “I only need a taste, I swear.”

“As long as you don’t take a drop more than you need,” Serenity replies, loosening her clothing slightly, her smallclothes peeking through.

“Really?” he asks, and he sounds almost eager.

“I- of course. Not one drop more.”

That damn vampire flashes her a smile that sends lightning rippling through her veins.

Astarion’s yearning eyes flicked to her exposed flesh, barely making out the purple tinge on her bluish skin as blood rushed from her chest to her face. Seeing where his eyes are roaming, Serenity feels her heart racing faster, and she swiftly lies down, back turned away from him. The tiefling bard is not about to let her companion see her flustered state.

Face inches away from her head, Astarion catches a whiff of the tiefling’s scent. He quietly thanked the gods that she didn’t smell of sulfur or rotting meat; instead, the bard smells of ash from freshly burned incense, laced with a warm, spiced scent.

The vampire holds her gently, delicately, until he strikes.

Astarion sinks deep, fangs like shards of ice piercing her neck. Serenity lets out a gasp, and her face contorts into an expression of pain and discomfort. Thankfully, the pain is quick and sharp, and as the vampire continues to feed, it fades gently into throbbing numbness. The bard feels her blood coursing through her body, into Astarion’s mouth, who sucked and slurped it hungrily.

He leans forward, one arm almost draping over the bard’s torso to support his weight, while the other still holds her head. Palm running through her short obsidian hair, he stops as they touch one of her horns, hand enclosing into a fist around it. Gently tugging, the elf tilts her head for better access.

Astarion’s lips are wet from his meal’s blood and sweat, and his own saliva. They glided on the sensitive skin ever so slightly as he pursed them and sucked harder. Serenity found her breath catching in her throat from his actions, pulse quickening as her hand flew to grasp Astarion’s arm, filed fingernails turning white at the end.

In a figurative and literal sense, she’s holding on to dear life.

“Ah, Astarion, that’s enough,” she mewls, hand moving to grasp his hair, fingernails running through his scalp. Not enough to hurt, but enough for the vampire to snap out of it due to the sensation it produced.

The vampire moans, almost carnally, then it is followed by a surprised, questioning grunt. Serenity’s pleas, and the scrape of her fingernails took him from his trance-like state. Immediately, he removes himself from her neck, swallowing thickly.

“Oh. Of course.”

Serenity sits up as he pulls back, light-headed from the blood loss. She turns to the pale elf, her breathing ragged as her fingers gingerly pressed on her bite wound. The tiefling felt a blush creep on her face, neck, and pointy ears as she gazes upon Astarion’s face. In the firelight, she can see that his pupils are blown out in ecstasy, and blood is trickling from the corner of his mouth.

“That- that was amazing,” Astarion purrs, wiping off her blood and bringing his fingers to his mouth, savoring it to the last drop. “My mind is finally clear. I feel strong. I feel…”

He pauses, and Serenity stopped breathing for a moment.

“Happy,” he continued, sighing in contentment as he gave her a gentle, genuine smile.

Serenity had to blink a few times to confirm that she wasn’t seeing things.

She clears her throat, hoping to dissipate the delicious tension between them. “I look forward to seeing you fight,” the bard says to him, drawing her knees to her chest.

“Shouldn’t take long. So many people need killing,” Astarion responds, bowing ever so slightly. “Now if you’ll excuse me, you’re invigorating, but I need something more… filling.”

The pale elf turns around and just like that, he is back to normal, snobbish self.

Serenity slumps back on her bedroll, exhaling slowly as her heart finally slows down. Her body crashes from the surge of adrenaline and the blood loss. Turning her head, she watches as the elf stalks towards the forest; stronger, more confident, and ready to hunt.

“This is a gift, you know,” Astarion tells her, back still turned from her, looking over his shoulder.

“I won’t forget it.”

Serenity won’t forget it either.

It didn’t take long before Astarion found a deer in the forest. As he drank the beast’s blood, he couldn’t help but compare the taste to Serenity’s blood. The animal is more filling indeed, but now? Nothing compares to the taste of the tiefling’s delicious blood.

She is the first humanoid he ever tasted, after all.

And how will he describe her taste?

The darling tiefling is bubbly, gentle, and sweet, much like her demeanor; almost sickeningly so, for his standards. It’s comparable to the Monastery of the Yellow Rose’s blueberry wine: a fragrant dessert wine he had the pleasure of consuming with delicate cheeses and light cakes back when he didn’t have any fangs.

Or perhaps he had associated her with the fruit due to her memories mingling with his.

Either way, when he said that he won’t forget it, he wasn’t just referring to the favor she did for him. Astarion was referring to Serenity’s taste as well.

Meanwhile, in the camp, Serenity draws her lute to her chest, plucking the strings softly in an attempt to lull herself to sleep. It doesn’t ease her into slumber like it usually does. Sighing, she squeezes her thighs together, heat pooling between them as she recalled the vampire’s lips on her pulsing neck. Perhaps it’s not the lute that she should be plucking at.

Reaching into the waistband of her trousers, the bard gives in to her secret desires.

At least there weren’t any more nightmares for the night.

#baldur's gate #baldur's gate 3 #astarion #astarion x mc #oc: serenity | zalia #tiefling #tiefling character #tiefling bard #cw: blood

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purplesurveys · 3 years

Text

1274

Department One: Apparel And Jewelry

What are you wearing today? Just a white duster dress. Very loungewear-y, hahaha. I didn’t feel like wearing shorts today.

What does your favorite shirt look like? At the moment I’m obsessed with my Vante shirt. It’s fanmade but it was made tastefully; the designs aren’t too loud and I love the cute little shoutouts and tributes to his past paintings, so it had been a ridiculously easy decision for me to want to buy it.

What kind of underwear do you prefer wearing? Eh I don’t really have a preference as long as I don’t find them uncomfy.

What are your favorite kind of jeans? I’m definitely still stuck in my mom jeans phase. Idk man, I just love how they match nearly all kinds of tops.

What do the last pair of shoes you wore look like? They were adidas sneakers. Not a big fan of chunky shoes but it’s an Ivy Park and it was on a big discount HAHAHA so I didn’t hesitate to get them.

How many shoes do you own? A little more than 10. I love shoes and wanna collect them someday...just not today, hahaha.

How much jewelry do you own? Not too big on jewelry; most, if not all the ones I wear are just borrowed from my mom since we share the same style anyway.

Do you own any real diamonds or other expensive jewelry? Yeah, the ones I would borrow from my mom are pretty pricey.

Has anyone ever gave you jewelry as a present? Yes, I received rings and necklaces from my ex. One of my aunts also gave me a necklace when I turned 7.

Do you like diamonds or gemstones better? I just stick with diamonds...which is...also a gemstone too, if I’m not mistaken.

Silver or gold? Silver.

Department Two: Electronics

Do you have a DVD player in your car? Not in mine, but we do have one in the family car. I used to watch movies on there often but after one grueling road trip where my motion sickness acted up, I haven’t wanted to use it since.

If you have one, what does your camera/camcorder look like? I just use the camera in my phone but back in the day I used to have a DSLR; that was when I thought I wanted to take up photography, heh. It was a Nikon D3100.

How much did it cost? I’m not sure since my dad gave it to me as a present, but a quick search told me it would’ve cost him around P20,000 which issssss wow more expensive than I thought.

What kind of cellphone do you have? I have an iPhone 8 with an LCD screen that’s deteriorating by the day HAHA. I really need to get a new phone.

How often do you send texts? I text just for work purposes now, so it really depends on how busy my accounts are. Some days would require me to send out more texts than usual.

Do you have your own computer or does your family share? I have my own laptop. My workplace also provided me with what’s supposed to be my work laptop, but they had it sent to me when I was already a couple of months into my job and all my needed files and programs were already in my personal laptop. Since I was too lazy to start everything all over again, I’ve never actually used the work laptop haha.

How many computers are in your house? We have three laptops in total - my siblings and I each have our own. Kind of a necessity these days.

Do you still have a VCR? I don’t think so.

How many DVDs do you own? We probably have around 30-50 but most of them are movies from like the 2000s that we just haven’t thrown out. Personally, I have about five DVDs of old films like Gone with the Wind, Rebel Without A Cause, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, etc, and recently I’ve been buying BTS merch so DVDs are part of that mix too.

Does your car have a GPS? No. I use Waze on my phone instead.

What kind of iPod/MP3 player do you have? Haven’t used an iPod in like a literal decade. I use Spotify for my music.

How many songs are on it? Spotify doesn’t work that way since it’s technically a database of songs.

What size is your TV? Never bothered to ask/check.

How many TVs are in your house? Four. Living room, dining room, master bedroom, my brother’s room.

What video game systems do you have? We have a PS3 and PS4.

What about handhelds? Switch. I believe my sister also still has her DSi stored somewhere.

How many video games do you have? Probably somewhere around 50-60. My dad and brother are content with repeating their games lol.

Department Three: Home

What kind of shampoo do you use? It’s a Dove variant but I’m just blanking out on the specific name/what it does.

Soap or shower gel? Shower gel.

What does your comforter look like? It’s pretty colorful and has geometric shapes and lines.

Does it match your pillows? Yep, they come in a set.

What size is your bed? Twin.

Do you or your parents like to decorate the house with various things or is it plain? My mom puts considerable effort in decorating the house but it’s nothing overboard that it feels tacky. There’s enough decor in enough spaces.

Does the furniture in your house match? Sure. I imagine my mom would be very irritated if she felt something was uncoordinated at home.

What does your couch look like? It’s a gray L-shaped couch. Gabie broke a portion of the couch’s springs when it had only spent its like first two weeks at home but surprisingly my mom has not noticed it yet; probably because she barely sits on that side.

How many does your dining room/kitchen table seat? It has six chairs, though since we’re five one of the chairs is almost always unoccupied.

Do you have any fancy china? No, my mom isn’t the type to collect those.

Do you have outside furniture? Yeah we have a table and chairs up on the rooftop, if they count.

What do your curtains look like? My siblings and I have pull-down blinds. The other rooms have these pulled-back gold curtains that’s accompanied by white sheers.

Department Four: Grocery

What kind of bread do you get? Sliced white bread, always. Sometimes my mom will pick up pan de sal, but she gets those from a certain bakery and no longer the grocery.

What is your favorite kind of cake? CHEEEEEEEEEESECAAAAAAAKE.

Do you get a lot of sweets from the grocery store? Eh, nah. Not a big fan of sweets.

What kind of soda is your favorite? Don’t like soda.

Do you drink juice? What kind? I can take it or leave it. I wouldn’t buy it for myself.

What is your favorite chewing gum? Doesn’t matter to me. The flavors last for only like a minute anyway.

Do you usually get candy from the check-out aisle? Nah. Those are far more accessible so who knows who could’ve touched or tampered with them. Plus, I mentioned I don’t like sweets.

What is your favorite soup? Miso or cream of mushroom.

Have you ever had soup when you were sick? No. I don’t enjoy hot beverages/liquids very much so I doubt I would feel comfort from soup when I’m sick.

What are your favorite canned vegetables? Not sure if it’s a cultural difference thing but canned vegetables kind of sound gross and I don’t think I’ve encountered those (I actually had to look it up lol). My parents always buy fruits and veggies as is.

What do you eat for breakfast? Fried rice is a constant but my mom switches up the set of viands every time. Some of the meals she serves would be hotdogs, eggs (either scrambled, omelette, fried, or sunny-side up), corned beef, dried fish, hashbrowns, luncheon meat, tapa, and Vienna sausages. Poptarts or toaster strudels? Poptarts. I’ve never had toaster strudel and I’m honestly not sure what that is.

What salad dressing do you prefer? Spicy mayo.

Ketchup, mayonnaise, or mustard? MAYONNAISE. I can live without the other two.

What kind of cookie do you like best? I only ever eat chocolate chip.

What kind of snacks do you get at the grocery store? Salted egg chips or Pringles. Not a big fan of snacks either. This survey is making me realize I’m way more into full meals than anything else.

Do you get the meat from the deli? Er, we don’t have delis here. Too fancy a concept lmao. If we have them, they are most likely in those extremely upscale, boujee neighborhoods.

What is your favorite frozen dinner? I mean my dad buys frozen meat, fish, etc, but the frozen dinner sets that I see in American culture, which I’m guessing is what’s being referred to in this question, are not common here.

Do you prefer frozen dinners to actual cooking? I honestly can’t imagine how it’s filling, but then again I’ve never tried it. Personally, food made from scratch is still the best.

What is your favorite kind of pasta? Fettuccine.

Do you eat meat? And if not, do you eat vegetarian meat? Yes, I eat meat. I get vegan options if they’re accessible and affordable, but those choices are hard to come by here.

What is your favorite fruit? Avocado is really the only one I’ll give a pass to. Everything else tastes horrible.

What about vegetable? Broccoli, bell peppers, green beans.

Department Five: Health And Beauty

What kind of makeup do you normally use? None. If I absolutely have to put on makeup, I will begrudgingly put on foundation, maybe some eyeliner, and lip gloss. And they will all most likely be borrowed from my sister.

Do you wear more makeup on special events? Not necessarily.

What is your favorite makeup brand? I wouldn’t be the right person to ask because I would just say none of them.

Do you use any acne products? Mmm no, I just splash water on my face, really. I actually got into a conversation about skincare with my co-workers yesterday and besides the usual shocked experessions I get when people find out I don’t use products, they recommended I at least get moisturizer and sunscreen. Idk, let’s see but historically it’s been hard to convince me to invest in skincare haha.

What kind of perfume do you use? I have one of Beyoncé’s perfumes, Heat Rush. I don’t actually know if that’s still in production but it’s been my staple for like a decade or so now.

Have you ever been on a diet? No. I never really had to be on one.

What products do you use in your hair? Shampoo and conditioner.

How often do you brush your hair? Only when I have to leave the house or have an important virtual work meeting.

What do you take when you have an upset stomach? Nothing. The toilet usually solves that for me lol.

Do you take any prescription medicine? Nope.

Department Six: Movies, Music, And Books

What is your favorite movie of all time? It’s been Two for the Road for a solid nine years and it doesn’t look like anything’s on its way to dethroning it anytime soon.

What genre of movie do like best? Drama. The more realistic it is, the better.

What was the last movie you watched? It’s a Korean film called Be With You. I liked it and I cried waterfalls, but the ending was so rushed it was kind of disappointing.

What was the last movie you purchased? I don’t buy movies. If I wanted to see a film I’ll check if Netflix has it, then if they don’t I just try to scour one of those illegal movie streaming sites that always happen to have thousands of pornographic ads hahaha.

What is your all time favorite band? Paramore. Do you still buy CDs? Only from artists I’m an extremely huge fan of. Right now that would be BTS, so I’m catching up on all the albums they’ve released in the last eight years.

What was the last CD you bought? I got the Butter album set, if that counts. If it doesn’t, the last full-length album I purchased was Dark & Wild.

What was the last song you listened to? I think it was Permission To Dance.

What is your favorite book? I haven’t found it yet.

Do you even like reading? I used to love it a lot more, to the point that back in grade school I was known as always having a book in my hand. I just don’t know where that passion went.

How often do you read? Nearly never. I mean...I do read fanfics, I guess; but I won’t count those.

Department Seven: Sports And Fitness

Do you own a bike/scooter/skateboard/etc.? We do have a bike at home, but that doesn’t mean I know how to ride it. We don’t have the other two.

How old were you when you learned to ride a bike w/o training wheels? I still don’t know how to last on a bike without training wheels heheh.

Have you ever been camping? Nah.

How often do you work out? Nope but at work my boss just started another fitness challenge, so I’ll probably have to get back on working out soon just because I would want to accomplish the challenge.

Are you in good shape? Sure, I think so. I’m not like fit fit because I neveeer exercise haha, but I also don’t make it a point to constantly eat unhealthy foods or have an unhealthy lifestyle to the point that it affects my body.

Do you go to a gym? I do not. I thought of getting a membership at the start of the year but I’m glad I didn’t push through with it because all the gyms are still closed anyway.

Have you ever been fishing? No. Idk if it’s my kind of pastime or not.

Have you ever been on a boat? Yeah. My country has like 7000 islands so I was bound to get on a boat at some point in my life haha.

Can you play golf? Never seemed interesting to me so no. Even on Wii Sports I barely picked golf.

Ever rode on a golf cart? Yeah, in resorts where we had to ride them to be taken to our room.

Would you ever go hunting? That’s an easy no.

What is your favorite sport? Pro wrestling or table tennis.

Ever played on a sports team? No, my school didn’t have a table tennis varsity.

Department Eight: Toys

What was your favorite toy as a child? Cash registers because I liked the buttons. Also Play-Doh sets that had those contraptions that would squirt out the clay in various shapes.

Do you still play with toys? Well, no.

Do you collect any toys? I don’t, but I’m not opposed to start buying Funko Pop figurines of people or characters I’m interested in.

Did you ever have building blocks? Sure, but I was never creative enough for them.

Did you play with dolls? No.

Barbies or Bratz? Which were better? BRATZZZZZZ

What is your favorite board game? Scrabble.

Do you like to do arts and crafts? Hell no.

Do you think that kids now have it better than when you were young? For sure, but isn’t that kind of the goal?

#survey #surveys

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logicalbookthief · 3 years

Text

achilles, achilles come down (won’t you get up off, get up off the roof)

"This is a literal warzone!" the officer raves. "Let the heroes handle this, son."

"You don't have to be a hero to do what's right!" Natsuo yells in the man's face. "Maybe if more ordinary people stepped in when they should, we wouldn't be in this mess!"

Post Chapter 291 (technically AU as of 292). Natsuo can't watch his brother die without trying to save him. Not again.

Link to the fic at ao3.

Natsuo runs. It feels like all he can do.

He runs through the wreckage, the ruble, the destruction. Barely spares it a glance, the world a blur as it rushes by. How he's managed to stay on his feet and not trip or collapse is a miracle. If he had any blood left for his brain, if his blood wasn't pumping through his body so loud it roars in his ears, blocking out everything else, he may have been able to think it over clearly.

The fact is, he's not. Thinking clearly. Or maybe he's seeing clearly for the first time in a forever.

"Touya-nii!" Natsuo stumbles in his haste to get down the stairs. "Don't leave without me!"

He stretches his hand out to his brother, who's already at the door. Touya turns at his whine, eyes sparkling fondly.

"'Course not. You know I won't leave you behind!" He ruffles his hair with a hint of teasing. "Besides, Fuyumi is grabbing our lunches. So I've got no choice, huh?"

Natsuo heaves a sigh. In his hurry, he didn't even tie his shoes. Without any prompting, Touya leans down to knot the laces tight.

"You have soccer practice today, right?" Natsuo nods. "I'll walk you home, once I'm done my training. Wait for me by the bleachers."

There are fresh bandages peeking out of his brother's sleeve. Natsuo pretends not to look. Touya catches it when he quickly averts his eyes and smiles to show it's okay.

"Don't worry, they don't hurt anymore!" Natsuo knows that isn't true. His brother can't hide, when Natsuo has watched him cry, night after night. Lately his brother always seems to be hurting, inside and out. Nobody else seems to have noticed.

His brother is smiling, but it's a lie.

Liar, Natsuo gnashes his teeth against the wind as it buffets his face. Liar, liar, lair.

His mind chants it in the voice of a petulant child: Touya is a liar. For years, and years, and years, Touya - or is it Dabi? - left Natsuo to believe he was dead. He lied to Fuyumi and Mom, too, but he's ashamed to admit he cares that he out of everyone was kept in the dark.

Growing up, they were each other's confidantes. For every white lie Touya told, Natsuo got the ugly truth. Every resentment he held in his heart, Touya accepted without judgement. It was a burden and a privilege, taking up the torch of his brother's memory. Giving him a voice where he no longer had one. He suspects that he's mourned his brother most because nobody else had known the Touya he did.

Why do I exist?

For months after he died, Natsuo used to always keep one ear tilted toward the front door, wishing for his brother to walk through it and apologize for making him wait. He did this for so long Fuyumi become concerned that he wasn't coping. To her relief, the weight of his disappointment wore him down, and finally convinced him that his big brother wasn't coming back.

To have those childish hopes vindicated by the broadcast of a notorious villain feels like the punchline to a cruel cosmic joke.

Surreal as it is, he doesn't falter. Touya must have his reasons for hiding the truth, but Natsuo needs to hear the reason from his brother before he decides if the writhing mass in his stomach is more grief or elation.

The streets this close to the battle are empty. Deserted. Anyone with good sense would have fled hours ago. Obviously, Natsuo isn't exactly being ruled by logic.

He runs. Runs until his lungs burn, begging for him to stop. He's never burned from the inside, not like Touya. Yet he'd lay awake some nights, wondering what he must've felt in those final moments. Afraid, alone, burning so hot and horribly- god, it must've hurt-

The villain in the broadcast has scars everywhere. His chest, his arms, his chin. All they ever managed to find of Touya was that piece of his jaw. Biles rushes up his throat at the mere mention of it still.

It was Fuyumi who explained in a hushed voice why there was no body for them to bury. It wasn't her job to share the grisly details of their brother's demise, but Mom was gone and Dad was useless. So it was Fuyumi who squeezed his hand at a funeral with a hollow casket, telling him, "It's alright to cry " while she openly wept.

Natsuo spent the service watching his father, searching for signs of- well, he isn't sure what he wanted to see. He remembers his father's state of disbelief. The remorse that flit over his features. If he had to put a name to how his father looked in that moment it would probably be helpless. And the fury this ignited in his heart could've melted through the earth's core.

Helpless, as if this was completely out of his control. Helpless, as if Touya hadn't come to Natsuo every fucking night in tears over how he was a failure who didn't have a reason to exist. And he didn't even have the decency to watch his son's sense of self disintegrate. In his absence, that task fell to Natsuo.

Nowadays, Natsuo watches his father pray at a shrine and admit he's to blame, but it's the hollow casket all over again. Because he's never understood why it was his fault. Never realized how he tortured Touya. Molding him for a purpose he could never fulfill and then treating him like a consolation prize. Discarding a child whose only flaw was a body at war with his Quirk, a thing beyond his control.

In his own narrow, selfish way, Natsuo believes his father loves them. His encounter with Ending certainly put that into perspective. And yet if he could toss his less-than-perfect children aside for his own aspirations, without considering the damage that would do, what sort of love was that? Maybe he didn't understand; he had never had a Quirk worthy of his father's adoration.

Natsuo was never the favorite child and that's fine. He saw where it got his brothers.

Why do I exist?

A gloved hand clamps around his arm, startling him so hard he'd scream if he had any breath to spare.

"Hey, what're you doing?" In his single-minded focus, Natsuo hadn't noticed the string of officers blocking his path, including the one glaring at him like he's crazy. Probably they were there to assist any people who were to injured or scared to escape, not deter the only idiot in the city running towards the danger. "All civilians have to evacuate this area immediately!"

"Get away from me!" he snaps, shrugging out of the grip. He has barely managed to get his heartrate under control when he catches sight of Gigantomachia, which knocks the air right back out of him.

He has no idea how his little brother, or anyone, does this on a regular basis. His knees have locked up at the mere glance. The heroes who can still fight make a valiant effort to subdue the beast, and even as Best Jeanist attempts to wind his steel cables around the villain, it seems like a desperate attempt to mitigate the devastation. Surely, though, once more heroes arrive they...

There. Atop the roof of a building, Natsuo spots the villain from the broadcast, a splotch of white hair atop a black silhouette. Flames sprout from his torso, a blazing shroud of blue, and the fear that shoots through Natsuo overtakes any hesitation. He makes to run as the officer catches him by the shoulder.

"This is a literal warzone!" he raves. "Let the heroes handle this, son."

"You don't have to be a hero to do what's right!" Natsuo yells in the man's face. "Maybe if more ordinary people stepped in when they should, we wouldn't be in this mess!"

A roar from Machia sends a shockwave through the ground. That, coupled with the officer's stricken reaction to his words is what allows Natsuo to escape. He sprints toward the building where he last saw Dabi, the officer's cries lost to the hum of adrenaline coursing through his veins.

The distance is nothing compared to a decade of grief, regret and guilt. It urges him up a flight of stairs, and another, and then another after that. By the time he reaches the roof, his lungs may well and truly explode if he taxes them any further.

Up this high, the wind is nearly deafening. Maybe it's the hammer of his heart in his chest. Dabi stares over the ledge, cloaked in flames. At this angle, Natsuo can't see his face, but the way his body's poised to leap, ready to rejoin the fray and leave him behind again... Something in Natsuo breaks. When the cry drags itself out of his throat, it's the raspy plea of a child.

"Touya!"

Dabi freezes, whirls towards his voice and that- Natsuo's breath hitches. That's his brother. His face is older, a patchwork of pain and yet... Without a doubt, it's Touya. Until this moment, Natsuo couldn't scarcely comprehend the truth, even as watched it play out on his phone screen. Now if he reached out a hand, it would definitely touch someone real, solid. Alive.

Had his family stood against him like this and really not recognized him? Shouto was hardly at fault, when he scarcely remembered his oldest brother. And as for his father... He had a knack of not paying attention where it mattered.

"It is you," he says hoarsely, surging forward on legs reduced to jelly. His heart sinks when his brother rebuffs the touch.

"Natsu..." Touya whispers his name in bewilderment. At least the distraction is enough for his flames to recede and Natsuo wants to fucking weep in relief. "What are you-"

Suddenly, the building rocks beneath their feet, a stark reminder of their proximity to the battle. Midair as he prepares to land a blow against Machia, Shouto's gaze strays over to Dabi, only to notice he's no longer alone. His eyes widen in visible terror. "Natsuo, get out of here!" he shouts.

Before he can stress the point, Machia swipes a massive claw at the heroes. Shouto dodges expertly, drawn back to the fight.

"He's right," Touya says flatly. It jolts Natsuo out of his terror-stricken daze. "You should go."

All traces of fear abates as anger seeps through the cracks of his resolve.

"What, you can give Dad and Shouto the news in person?" Natsuo's lips wobble into a line more sneer than a smirk. "While me, Fuyumi and Mom get to hear it over a fucking video."

"I'm not sorry for what I said," he scoffs. "He deserves to be exposed for what he is."

Natsuo swallows. "I know," he says tightly, and the thing is, he does. Beneath the whiplash of shock and sorrow, some vindictive part of Natsuo was glad when Touya exposed the image of their happy little family for the sham it is. He feels like shit for reveling in it at all; this will crush the dream of a normal family Fuyumi fought tooth-and-nail to preserve. Even the guilt doesn't stifle that sliver of satisfaction.

Out of all the siblings, he understands. The weight of his silence is unbearable some days. Knowing that it only protects the perpetrator, not the victims. Worse is the days where the silence doesn't weigh on him at all; those are the days he can't seem to forgive himself.

Tears begin to blur his vision. He blinks fervently against the sting. He hates that he has to do this here, on a roof, amongst this goddamn chaos. "You couldn't have told me the truth before you broadcasted it to the rest of the world!?"

Finally, Touya meets his gaze. His expression is unreadable, except for his eyes. They might shine blue, but there's no mistaking they're his mother's eyes. And no matter how much she hid, you could always see the sadness if you looked her in the eye.

"Didn't think you'd want a stitched-faced criminal showing up at your university," he deadpans.

Whatever retort he had to that shrivels up at the revelation: He knows where I go to school? It lodges like a stone in the pit of his stomach. If that's the case, he must know where Fuyumi goes to school, where Mom's staying. It should be terrifying, a murder stalking him, his mother, his sister.

But it's heartbreaking, is what it is.

Watching Endeavor's career was necessary to his revenge, but that... That was Touya, shadowing his family like a spectator, a ghost, while they went on with their lives.

His jaw tightens against the crushing wave of emotion. "That's no excuse."

"It isn't one," Touya replies, tonelessly. "None of this is."

Natsuo blanches, though he manages to tamp down on the knee-jerk of panic. No, that isn't what this is, is it? The broadcast. Attacking Endeavor. This isn't a confessional and Touya isn't asking for his forgiveness. Unlike back then, Natsuo knows what this is. Knows the signs. He spends every day pouring over coursework that describes this exact scenario.

He won't be helpless this time.

Keep him talking, tether him to the present.

"You were alive for all these years..." He can't quite wrap his mind around the idea. His brother, the frailest of them all, scorched alive by his own fire, and crawling out of the ashes without help from anybody? "Where were you? How did you survive when you-"

"Look like a charred piece of meat?" Touya's grin cuts through the question, all sharp edges and spite. It's a bait and he refuses to rise. When Natsuo doesn't budge, the façade drops, replaced by a placid expression. "Never mind, it doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters!" Natsuo bristles. Both of them hear the underlying sentiment behind the words: You matter to me!

He senses it the moment Touya shuts down. He was good at that, even as kids. He must've learned it from their mom: repress it, bury it, disguise it with a smile. Until it inevitably boils over.

Touya turns his back to him. Somehow that aches worse than anything else. "You shouldn't be here," he repeats, chilling his brother to the bone. He sounds so serene. Matter-of-fact. Like he's burned through everything he had and now is left numb. "The Touya you knew is dead. Dry your tears and move on. It won't be hard. You've done it before, you can do it again."

He lays in bed some nights, wondering if his brother suffered, if as he died he screamed for help. Touya was good at hiding the pain, but oh, god, it must've hurt-

"Cut the crap!" Natsuo snaps. "Stop treating me like the Natsu you remember. I'm not that kid anymore, either."

He grinds his teeth together to keep any of his other bitter thoughts at bay. He hadn't meant to be harsh and besides, that isn't what Touya needs from him right now. However, it seems to jostle something in his brother, who looks at him, truly looks. Finally sees the angry, desperate and dirt-streaked man standing in front of him. A thin smile stretches the staples on his cheeks.

"No," he laughs, manic, and a little fond. "I guess not, huh?"

Natsuo huffs out a near-laugh, too. His mind is reeling yet his heart hangs less heavy than it did before. Briefly, it feels as if they are those kids, the ones who simply found comfort in each other's company. But the triumph is short-lived and he makes a critical error- he forgets. Forgets they're surrounded by heroes who view his brother as an imminent threat.

Steel cables jet out towards Touya from behind. Over his shoulder, Natsuo watches a streak of ice join the attack, likely to staunch any retaliatory flames, and he curses his little brother in the same breath his heart breaks for him. As far as Shouto's concerned, this is Dabi, and all he's trying to do is protect Natsuo, yet it's so fucked up because that isn't the brother he needs to save.

All he knows is that Touya, with the state he's in... Mentally distraught, physically destroyed. He won't surrender but he won't survive this much longer. His skin is still smoldering but he's ready and willing to burn until it's ash and Natsuo will lose his brother again.

He leaps for brother and he can't even pretend it's a noble impulse, or anything less than a moment of fear-guided insanity. He isn't a hero. He isn't kind like his siblings. Strong like his father or enduring like his mother. Not a martyr like Touya. He can't do much beyond the ordinary person, but he's got to do something, or else-

Natsuo surges right into the path of Best Jeanist's attack. Distantly, it sounds like someone screams his name - Shouto? His father? - he can't be sure. All of it's white-noise as he grabs his brother and swings them around, using his larger weight to crash them to the ground. He winces as his chin collides with collar bone, his knees scraping against the concrete with a screech of protest. Touya lands against his back, hard, the air punched out of his chest.

There's a dazed stretch of silence while Touya gawks up at him and Natsuo pants in the wake of his most recent adrenaline rush. It lasts for all of a second before his brother's howling and thrashing against his hold.

"You idiot!" he seethes. "Natsu, what the hell is wrong with you?! What are you doing? Let me go!"

His skin begins to heat. Though it feels like laying his palm over a stovetop set to simmer, Natsuo maintains his grip.

"I won't just stand by and let you destroy yourself," he yells, giving him a shake. Up close, the smell of signed flesh is nauseating. "Not again!"

Whatever Touya planned to spew back is halted by . Natsuo sobs freely, the tears rushing down his cheeks. They land over scars and skin alike and he wonders if Touya can feel the impact or if he's numb there, too. The struggling has ceased, and if ever there was a time to speak, it'll have to be now.

"You came to me crying, asking why you should exist . . . and I didn't have an answer."

There are fresh bandages peeking out of his brother's sleeve. Out of the collar of his shirt, too.

Fresh scars decorate his skin every day. Evidence of the training he continues, despite his father's disinterest. Despite the toll it's taking.

Natsuo pretends not to look. If he's noticed, someone else must have, too. A teacher. An adult. Mother, if she were home. Father, if he cared to look.

He shuts his eyes against the memory, where he can still see it, the angry red of his brother's flesh. "I knew you were hurting yourself with your Quirk. That you didn't care what happened to you, as long as you could prove you were useful!"

Fists tremble where they're clenched around Touya's arms, digging into scar-tissue. "I didn't know who to tell or if I should... Mom was already unstable and Dad was the reason... I didn't know what to do so I didn't nothing. And you... you..."

Wait for me by the bleachers.

Natsuo is left waiting, waiting, waiting. Forgotten. No surprise, since he was always the forgotten one. Fuyumi was the only girl, Touya was the oldest, and Shouto was the favorite but Natsuo- well, it was easy to forget Natsuo. Only Touya never forgot, which makes it all the worse. After he promised!

Sullenly, he walks home. Swears the moment he walks through the door he's going to give his brother a piece of his mind.

He never gets the chance.

"You didn't come home." Touya watches the words leave his mouth like he can't fathom any of them, but that's okay. This is Natsuo's grief to bare. He won't ever understand what it's like to burn, just as Touya won't understand this. "You didn't come home that day and I never got to tell you, I..."

Touya has barely moved since he started talking. Shock seems to have rendered him mute, the only proof of life the shallow rise his chest. He looks too prone, too dead like this. Natsuo would almost prefer the mania. Of course there's a chance he'll slide back into despair, or rage, and the sooner they get him to a stable environment (get him away, away from dad) without all these triggers the better.

Ever wary of breaking the fragile calm, Natsuo lifts his brother up by the shoulders, just enough to wrap his arms around him in a hug. Touya goes rigid, recoiling against any hint of affection. The hands that have burned countless others fall slack, neither reciprocating nor struggling. Gradually, the erratic beat of his heart slows to a steady thrum.

"I don't why you exist, but I'm happy you do." The smell of soot and chemicals flood his senses, and it's gross but at least it's real. Proof that however awful the reunion is, it really is his brother. Natsuo chokes out a watery laugh and hugs him tighter. "I'm so happy to see you."

His shirt is damp where Touya's nose is pressed and he wonders if Touya can cry, considering the scars... Wonders if maybe he wept too much when they were young and doesn't have any tears left to spare. It doesn't matter, since Natsuo has plenty for both of them.

The noises from the battle have dwindled, as Machia's subdued and more heroes arrive. It won't be long before they pry them apart to take Touya into custody. He swallows thickly at the notion of his brother in prison, barred from the care his condition requires, but it's all he can do for now to ensure he's safe. Safe from himself, anyway. If the heroes think they can pull the same shit as they did with that other villain Twice, well-

They'll have to get through Natsuo first.

#bnha #bnha fic #dabi #touya todoroki #natsuo todoroki #bnha 291 #i'm not saying natsuo could've ended this war already with compassion and less bloodshed-#oh wait yes I am #anyway stan natsuo

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tswiftdaily · 4 years

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In the 2010s, she went from country superstar to pop titan and broke records with chart-topping albums and blockbuster tours. Now Swift is using her industry clout to fight for artists’ rights and foster the musical community she wished she had coming up.

One evening in late-October, before she performed at a benefit concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Taylor Swift’s dressing room became -- as it often does -- an impromptu summit of music’s biggest names. Swift was there to take part in the American Cancer Society’s annual We Can Survive concert alongside Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Camila Cabello and others, and a few of the artists on the lineup came by to visit.

Eilish, along with her mother and her brother/collaborator, Finneas O’Connell, popped in to say hello -- the first time she and Swift had met. Later, Swift joined the exclusive club of people who have seen Marshmello without his signature helmet when the EDM star and his manager stopped by.

“Two dudes walked in -- I didn’t know which one was him,” recalls Swift a few weeks later, sitting on a lounge chair in the backyard of a private Beverly Hills residence following a photo shoot. Her momentary confusion turned into a pang of envy. “It’s really smart! Because he’s got a life, and he can get a house that doesn’t have to have a paparazzi-proof entrance.” She stops to adjust her gray sweatshirt dress and lets out a clipped laugh.

Swift, who will celebrate her 30th birthday on Dec. 13, has been impossibly famous for nearly half of her lifetime. She was 16 when she released her self-titled debut album in 2006, and 20 when her second album, Fearless, won the Grammy Award for album of the year in 2010, making her the youngest artist to ever receive the honor. As the decade comes to a close, Swift is one of the most accomplished musical acts of all time: 37.3 million albums sold, according to Nielsen Music; 95 entries on the Billboard Hot 100 (including five No. 1s); 23 Billboard Music Awards; 12 Country Music Association Awards; 10 Grammys; and five world tours.

She also finishes the decade in a totally different realm of the music world from where she started. Swift’s crossover from country to pop -- hinted at on 2012’s Red and fully embraced on 2014’s 1989 -- reflected a mainstream era in which genres were blended with little abandon, where artists with roots in country, folk and trap music could join forces without anyone raising eyebrows. (See: Swift’s top 20 hit “End Game,” from 2017’s reputation, which featured Ed Sheeran and Future.)

Swift’s new album, Lover, released in August, is both a warm break from the darkness of reputation -- which was created during a wave of negative press generated by Swift’s public clash with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian-West -- as well as an amalgam of all her stylistic explorations through the years, from dreamy synth-pop to hushed country. “The skies were opening up in my life,” says Swift of the album, which garnered three Grammy nominations, including song of the year for the title track.

She recorded Lover after the Reputation Stadium Tour broke the record for the highest-grossing U.S. tour late last year. In 2020, Swift will embark on Lover Fest, a run of stadium dates that will feature a hand-picked lineup of artists (as yet unannounced) and allow Swift more time off from the road. “This is a year where I have to be there for my family -- there’s a lot of question marks throughout the next year, so I wanted to make sure that I could go home,” says Swift, likely referencing her mother’s cancer diagnosis, which inspired the Lover heart-wrencher “Soon You’ll Get Better.”

Now, however, Swift finds herself in a different highly publicized dispute. This time it’s with Scott Borchetta, the head of her former label, Big Machine Records, and Scooter Braun, the manager-mogul whose Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine Label Group and its master recordings, which include Swift’s six pre-Lover albums, in June. Upon news of the sale, Swift wrote in a Tumblr post that it was her “worst case scenario,” accusing Braun of “bullying” her throughout her career due to his connections with West. She maintains today that she was never given the opportunity to buy her masters outright. (On Tumblr, she wrote that she was offered the chance to “earn” back the masters to one of her albums for each new album she turned in if she re-signed with Big Machine; Borchetta disputed this characterization, saying she had the opportunity to acquire her masters in exchange for re-signing with the label for a “length of time” -- 10 more years, according to screenshots of legal documents posted on the Big Machine website.)

Swift has said that she intends to rerecord her first six albums next year -- starting next November, when she says she’s contractually able to -- in order to regain control of her recordings. But the back-and-forth appears to be nowhere near over: Last month, Swift alleged that Borchetta and Braun were blocking her from performing her past hits at the American Music Awards or using them in an upcoming Netflix documentary -- claims Big Machine characterized as “false information” in a response that did not get into specifics. (Swift ultimately performed the medley she had planned.) In the weeks following this interview, Braun said he was open to “all possibilities” in finding a “resolution,” and Billboard sources say that includes negotiating a sale. Swift remains interested in buying her masters, though the price could be a sticking point, given her rerecording plans, the control she has over the licensing of her music for film and TV, and the market growth since Braun’s acquisition.

However it plays out, the battle over her masters is the latest in a series of moves that has turned Swift into something of an advocate for artists’ rights -- and made her a cause that everyone from Halsey to Elizabeth Warren has rallied behind. From 2014 to 2017, Swift withheld her catalog from Spotify to protest the streaming company’s compensation rates, saying in a 2014 interview, “There should be an inherent value placed on art. I didn’t see that happening, perception-wise, when I put my music on Spotify.” In 2015, ahead of the launch of Apple Music, Swift wrote an open letter criticizing Apple for its plan to not pay royalties during the three-month free trial it was set to offer listeners; the company announced a new policy within 24 hours. Most recently, when she signed a new global deal with Universal Music Group in 2018, Swift (who is now on Republic Records) said one of the conditions of her contract was that UMG share proceeds from any sale of its Spotify equity with its roster of artists -- and make them nonrecoupable against those artists’ earnings.

During a wide-ranging conversation, Billboard’s Woman of the Decade expresses hope that she can help make the lives of creators a little easier in the years to come -- and a belief that her behind-the-scenes strides will be as integral to her legacy as her biggest singles. “New artists and producers and writers need work, and they need to be likable and get booked in sessions, and they can’t make noise -- but if I can, then I’m going to,” promises Swift. This is where being impossibly famous can be a very good thing. “I know that it seems like I’m very loud about this,” she says, “but it’s because someone has to be.”

While watching some of your performances this year -- like Saturday Night Live and NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert -- I was struck by how focused you seemed, like there were no distractions getting in the way of what you were trying to say.

That’s a really wonderful way of looking at this phase of my life and my music. I’ve spent a lot of time recalibrating my life to make it feel manageable. Because there were some years there where I felt like I didn’t quite know what exactly to give people and what to hold back, what to share and what to protect. I think a lot of people go through that, especially in the last decade. I broke through pre-social media, and then there was this phase where social media felt fun and casual and quirky and safe. And then it got to the point where everyone has to evaluate their relationship with social media. So I decided that the best thing I have to offer people is my music. I’m not really here to influence their fashion or their social lives. That has bled through into the live part of what I do.

Meanwhile, you’ve found a way to interact with your fans in this very pure way -- on your Tumblr page.

Tumblr is the last place on the internet where I feel like I can still make a joke because it feels small, like a neighborhood rather than an entire continent. We can kid around -- they literally drag me. It’s fun. That’s a real comfort zone for me. And just like anything else, I need breaks from it sometimes. But when I do participate in that space, it’s always in a very inside-joke, friend vibe. Sometimes, when I open Twitter, I get so overwhelmed that I just immediately close it. I haven’t had Twitter on my phone in a while because I don’t like to have too much news. Like, I follow politics, and that’s it. But I don’t like to follow who has broken up with who, or who wore an interesting pair of shoes. There’s only so much bandwidth my brain can really have.

It’s sort of an amalgamation of all of it. People who aren’t active fans of your music, who like one song but love to hear who has been canceled on Twitter. I’ve had several upheavals of somehow not being what I should be. And this happens to women in music way more than men. That’s why I get so many phone calls from new artists out of the blue -- like, “Hey, I’m getting my first wave of bad press, I’m freaking out, can I talk to you?” And the answer is always yes! I’m talking about more than 20 people who have randomly reached out to me. I take it as a compliment because it means that they see what has happened over the course of my career, over and over again.

Did you have someone like that to reach out to?

Not really, because my career has existed in lots of different neighborhoods of music. I had so many mentors in country music. Faith Hill was wonderful. She would reach out to me and invite me over and take me on tour, and I knew that I could talk to her. Crossing over to pop is a completely different world. Country music is a real community, and in pop I didn’t see that community as much. Now there is a bit of one between the girls in pop -- we all have each other’s numbers and text each other -- but when I first started out in pop it was very much you versus you versus you. We didn’t have a network, which is weird because we can help each other through these moments when you just feel completely isolated.

Do you feel like those barriers are actively being broken down now?

God, I hope so. I also hope people can call it out, [like] if you see a Grammy prediction article, and it’s just two women’s faces next to each other and feels a bit gratuitous. No one’s going to start out being perfectly educated on the intricacies of gender politics. The key is that people are trying to learn, and that’s great. No one’s going to get it perfect, but, God, please try.

At this point, who is your sounding board, creatively and professionally?

From a creative standpoint, I’ve been writing alone a lot more. I’m good with being alone, with thinking alone. When I come up with a marketing idea for the Lover tour, the album launch, the merch, I’ll go right to my management company that I’ve put together. I think a team is the best way to be managed. Just from my experience, I don’t think that this overarching, one-person-handles-my-career thing was ever going to work for me. Because that person ends up kind of being me who comes up with most of the ideas, and then I have an amazing team that facilitates those ideas.

The behind-the-scenes work is different for every phase of my career that I’m in. Putting together the festival shows that we’re doing for Lover is completely different than putting together the Reputation Stadium Tour. Putting together the reputation launch was so different than putting together the 1989 launch. So we really do attack things case by case, where the creative first informs everything else.

You’ve spoken before about how meaningful the reputation tour’s success was. What did it represent?

That tour was something that I wanted to immortalize in the Netflix special that we did because the album was a story, but it almost was like a story that wasn’t fully realized until you saw it live. It was so cool to hear people leaving the show being like, “I understand it now. I fully get it now.” There are a lot of red herrings and bait-and-switches in the choices that I’ll make with albums, because I want people to go and explore the body of work. You can never express how you feel over the course of an album in a single, so why try?

That seems especially true of your last three albums or so.

“Shake It Off” is nothing like the rest of 1989. It’s almost like I feel so much pressure with a first single that I don’t want the first single to be something that makes you feel like you’ve figured out what I’ve made on the rest of the project. I still truly believe in albums, whatever form you consume them in -- if you want to stream them or buy them or listen to them on vinyl. And I don’t think that makes me a staunch purist. I think that that is a strong feeling throughout the music industry. We’re running really fast toward a singles industry, but you got to believe in something. I still believe that albums are important.

The music industry has become increasingly global during the past decade. Is reaching new markets something you think about?

Yeah, and I’m always trying to learn. I’m learning from everyone. I’m learning when I go see Bruce Springsteen or Madonna do a theater show. And I’m learning from new artists who are coming out right now, just seeing what they’re doing and thinking, “That’s really cool.” You need to keep your influences broad and wide-ranging, and my favorite people who make music have always done that. I got to work with Andrew Lloyd Webber on the Cats movie, and Andrew will walk through the door and be like, “I’ve just seen this amazing thing on TikTok!” And I’m like, “You are it! You are it!” Because you cannot look at what quote-unquote “the kids are doing” and roll your eyes. You have to learn.

Have you explored TikTok at all?

I only see them when they’re posted to Tumblr, but I love them! I think that they’re hilarious and amazing. Andrew says that they’ve made musicals cool again, because there’s a huge musical facet to TikTok. [He’s] like, “Any way we can do that is good.”

How do you see your involvement in the business side of your career progressing in the next decade? You seem like someone who could eventually start a label or be more hands-on with signing artists.

I do think about it every once in a while, but if I was going to do it, I would need to do it with all of my energy. I know how important that is, when you’ve got someone else’s career in your hands, and I know how it feels when someone isn’t generous.

You’ve served as an ambassador of sorts for artists, especially recently -- staring down streaming services over payouts, increasing public awareness about the terms of record deals.

We have a long way to go. I think that we’re working off of an antiquated contractual system. We’re galloping toward a new industry but not thinking about recalibrating financial structures and compensation rates, taking care of producers and writers.

We need to think about how we handle master recordings, because this isn’t it. When I stood up and talked about this, I saw a lot of fans saying, “Wait, the creators of this work do not own their work, ever?” I spent 10 years of my life trying rigorously to purchase my masters outright and was then denied that opportunity, and I just don’t want that to happen to another artist if I can help it. I want to at least raise my hand and say, “This is something that an artist should be able to earn back over the course of their deal -- not as a renegotiation ploy -- and something that artists should maybe have the first right of refusal to buy.” God, I would have paid so much for them! Anything to own my work that was an actual sale option, but it wasn’t given to me.

Thankfully, there’s power in writing your music. Every week, we get a dozen synch requests to use “Shake It Off” in some advertisement or “Blank Space” in some movie trailer, and we say no to every single one of them. And the reason I’m rerecording my music next year is because I do want my music to live on. I do want it to be in movies, I do want it to be in commercials. But I only want that if I own it.

Do you know how long that rerecording process will take?

I don’t know! But it’s going to be fun, because it’ll feel like regaining a freedom and taking back what’s mine. When I created [these songs], I didn’t know what they would grow up to be. Going back in and knowing that it meant something to people is actually a really beautiful way to celebrate what the fans have done for my music.

Ten years ago, on the brink of the 2010s, you were about to turn 20. What advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time?

Oh, God -- I wouldn’t give myself any advice. I would have done everything exactly the same way. Because even the really tough things I’ve gone through taught me things that I never would have learned any other way. I really appreciate my experience, the ups and downs. And maybe that seems ridiculously Zen, but … I’ve got my friends, who like me for the right reasons. I’ve got my family. I’ve got my boyfriend. I’ve got my fans. I’ve got my cats.

#taylor swift #interview #billboard #women in music #woman of the decade

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path-of-my-childhood · 4 years

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Billboard Woman of the Decade Taylor Swift: 'I Do Want My Music to Live On'

By: Jason Lipshutz for Billboard Magazine Date: December 14th issue

One evening in late October, before she performed at a benefit concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Taylor Swift’s dressing room became - as it often does - an impromptu summit of music’s biggest names. Swift was there to take part in the American Cancer Society’s annual We Can Survive concert alongside Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Camila Cabello and others, and a few of the artists on the lineup came by to visit.

Eilish, along with her mother and her brother/collaborator, Finneas O’Connell, popped in to say hello - the first time she and Swift had met. Later, Swift joined the exclusive club of people who have seen Marshmello without his signature helmet when the EDM star and his manager stopped by.

“Two dudes walked in - I didn’t know which one was him,” recalls Swift a few weeks later, sitting on a lounge chair in the backyard of a private Beverly Hills residence following a photo shoot. Her momentary confusion turned into a pang of envy. “It’s really smart! Because he’s got a life, and he can get a house that doesn’t have to have a paparazzi-proof entrance.” She stops to adjust her gray sweatshirt dress and lets out a clipped laugh.

She also finishes the decade in a totally different realm of the music world from where she started. Swift’s crossover from country to pop - hinted at on 2012’s Red and fully embraced on 2014’s 1989 - reflected a mainstream era in which genres were blended with little abandon, where artists with roots in country, folk and trap music could join forces without anyone raising eyebrows. (See: Swift’s top 20 hit “End Game,” from 2017’s reputation, which featured Ed Sheeran and Future.)

Swift’s new album, Lover, released in August, is both a warm break from the darkness of reputation - which was created during a wave of negative press generated by Swift’s public clash with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian-West - as well as an amalgam of all her stylistic explorations through the years, from dreamy synth-pop to hushed country. “The skies were opening up in my life,” says Swift of the album, which garnered three Grammy nominations, including song of the year for the title track.

She recorded Lover after the Reputation Stadium Tour broke the record for the highest-grossing U.S. tour late last year. In 2020, Swift will embark on Lover Fest, a run of stadium dates that will feature a hand-picked lineup of artists (as yet unannounced) and allow Swift more time off from the road. “This is a year where I have to be there for my family - there’s a lot of question marks throughout the next year, so I wanted to make sure that I could go home,” says Swift, likely referencing her mother’s cancer diagnosis, which inspired the Lover heart-wrencher “Soon You’ll Get Better.”

Now, however, Swift finds herself in a different highly publicized dispute. This time it’s with Scott Borchetta, the head of her former label, Big Machine Records, and Scooter Braun, the manager-mogul whose Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine Label Group and its master recordings, which include Swift’s six pre-Lover albums, in June. Upon news of the sale, Swift wrote in a Tumblr post that it was her “worst case scenario,” accusing Braun of “bullying” her throughout her career due to his connections with West. She maintains today that she was never given the opportunity to buy her masters outright. (On Tumblr, she wrote that she was offered the chance to “earn” back the masters to one of her albums for each new album she turned in if she re-signed with Big Machine; Borchetta disputed this characterization, saying she had the opportunity to acquire her masters in exchange for re-signing with the label for a “length of time” - 10 more years, according to screenshots of legal documents posted on the Big Machine website.)

Swift has said that she intends to rerecord her first six albums next year, starting next November, when she says she’s contractually able to - in order to regain control of her recordings. But the back-and-forth appears to be nowhere near over: Last month, Swift alleged that Borchetta and Braun were blocking her from performing her past hits at the American Music Awards or using them in an upcoming Netflix documentary - claims Big Machine characterized as “false information” in a response that did not get into specifics. (Swift ultimately performed the medley she had planned.) In the weeks following this interview, Braun said he was open to “all possibilities” in finding a “resolution,” and Billboard sources say that includes negotiating a sale. Swift remains interested in buying her masters, though the price could be a sticking point, given her rerecording plans, the control she has over the licensing of her music for film and TV, and the market growth since Braun’s acquisition.

However it plays out, the battle over her masters is the latest in a series of moves that has turned Swift into something of an advocate for artists’ rights, and made her a cause that everyone from Halsey to Elizabeth Warren has rallied behind. From 2014 to 2017, Swift withheld her catalog from Spotify to protest the streaming company’s compensation rates, saying in a 2014 interview, “There should be an inherent value placed on art. I didn’t see that happening, perception-wise, when I put my music on Spotify.” In 2015, ahead of the launch of Apple Music, Swift wrote an open letter criticizing Apple for its plan to not pay royalties during the three-month free trial it was set to offer listeners; the company announced a new policy within 24 hours. Most recently, when she signed a new global deal with Universal Music Group in 2018, Swift (who is now on Republic Records) said one of the conditions of her contract was that UMG share proceeds from any sale of its Spotify equity with its roster of artists - and make them non-recoupable against those artists’ earnings.

During a wide-ranging conversation, Billboard’s Woman of the Decade expresses hope that she can help make the lives of creators a little easier in the years to come - and a belief that her behind-the-scenes strides will be as integral to her legacy as her biggest singles. “New artists and producers and writers need work, and they need to be likable and get booked in sessions, and they can’t make noise - but if I can, then I’m going to,” promises Swift. This is where being impossibly famous can be a very good thing. “I know that it seems like I’m very loud about this,” she says, “but it’s because someone has to be.”

While watching some of your performances this year - like SNL and NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert - I was struck by how focused you seemed, like there were no distractions getting in the way of what you were trying to say. That’s a really wonderful way of looking at this phase of my life and my music. I’ve spent a lot of time re-calibrating my life to make it feel manageable. Because there were some years there where I felt like I didn’t quite know what exactly to give people and what to hold back, what to share and what to protect. I think a lot of people go through that, especially in the last decade. I broke through pre-social media, and then there was this phase where social media felt fun and casual and quirky and safe. And then it got to the point where everyone has to evaluate their relationship with social media. So I decided that the best thing I have to offer people is my music. I’m not really here to influence their fashion or their social lives. That has bled through into the live part of what I do.

Meanwhile, you’ve found a way to interact with your fans in this very pure way - on your Tumblr page. Tumblr is the last place on the internet where I feel like I can still make a joke because it feels small, like a neighborhood rather than an entire continent. We can kid around - they literally drag me. It’s fun. That’s a real comfort zone for me. And just like anything else, I need breaks from it sometimes. But when I do participate in that space, it’s always in a very inside-joke, friend vibe. Sometimes, when I open Twitter, I get so overwhelmed that I just immediately close it. I haven’t had Twitter on my phone in a while because I don’t like to have too much news. Like, I follow politics, and that’s it. But I don’t like to follow who has broken up with who, or who wore an interesting pair of shoes. There’s only so much bandwidth my brain can really have.

You’ve spoken in recent interviews about the general expectations you’ve faced, using phrases like “They’ve wanted to see this” and “They hated me for this.” Who is “they”? Is it social media or disparaging think pieces or... It’s sort of an amalgamation of all of it. People who aren’t active fans of your music, who like one song but love to hear who has been canceled on Twitter. I’ve had several upheavals of somehow not being what I should be. And this happens to women in music way more than men. That’s why I get so many phone calls from new artists out of the blue - like, “Hey, I’m getting my first wave of bad press, I’m freaking out, can I talk to you?” And the answer is always yes! I’m talking about more than 20 people who have randomly reached out to me. I take it as a compliment because it means that they see what has happened over the course of my career, over and over again.

Did you have someone like that to reach out to? Not really, because my career has existed in lots of different neighborhoods of music. I had so many mentors in country music. Faith Hill was wonderful. She would reach out to me and invite me over and take me on tour, and I knew that I could talk to her. Crossing over to pop is a completely different world. Country music is a real community, and in pop I didn’t see that community as much. Now there is a bit of one between the girls in pop - we all have each other’s numbers and text each other - but when I first started out in pop it was very much you versus you versus you. We didn’t have a network, which is weird because we can help each other through these moments when you just feel completely isolated.

Do you feel like those barriers are actively being broken down now? God, I hope so. I also hope people can call it out, [like] if you see a Grammy prediction article, and it’s just two women’s faces next to each other and feels a bit gratuitous. No one’s going to start out being perfectly educated on the intricacies of gender politics. The key is that people are trying to learn, and that’s great. No one’s going to get it perfect, but, God, please try.

At this point, who is your sounding board, creatively and professionally From a creative standpoint, I’ve been writing alone a lot more. I’m good with being alone, with thinking alone. When I come up with a marketing idea for the Lover tour, the album launch, the merch, I’ll go right to my management company that I’ve put together. I think a team is the best way to be managed. Just from my experience, I don’t think that this overarching, one-person-handles-my-career thing was ever going to work for me. Because that person ends up kind of being me who comes up with most of the ideas, and then I have an amazing team that facilitates those ideas. The behind-the-scenes work is different for every phase of my career that I’m in. Putting together the festival shows that we’re doing for Lover is completely different than putting together the Reputation Stadium Tour. Putting together the reputation launch was so different than putting together the 1989 launch. So we really do attack things case by case, where the creative first informs everything else.

You’ve spoken before about how meaningful the reputation tour’s success was. What did it represent? That tour was something that I wanted to immortalize in the Netflix special that we did because the album was a story, but it almost was like a story that wasn’t fully realized until you saw it live. It was so cool to hear people leaving the show being like, “I understand it now. I fully get it now.” There are a lot of red herrings and bait-and-switches in the choices that I’ll make with albums, because I want people to go and explore the body of work. You can never express how you feel over the course of an album in a single, so why try?

That seems especially true of your last three albums or so. “Shake It Off” is nothing like the rest of 1989. It’s almost like I feel so much pressure with a first single that I don’t want the first single to be something that makes you feel like you’ve figured out what I’ve made on the rest of the project. I still truly believe in albums, whatever form you consume them in - if you want to stream them or buy them or listen to them on vinyl. And I don’t think that makes me a staunch purist. I think that that is a strong feeling throughout the music industry. We’re running really fast toward a singles industry, but you got to believe in something. I still believe that albums are important.

The music industry has become increasingly global during the past decade. Is reaching new markets something you think about? Yeah, and I’m always trying to learn. I’m learning from everyone. I’m learning when I go see Bruce Springsteen or Madonna do a theater show. And I’m learning from new artists who are coming out right now, just seeing what they’re doing and thinking, “That’s really cool.” You need to keep your influences broad and wide-ranging, and my favorite people who make music have always done that. I got to work with Andrew Lloyd Webber on the Cats movie, and Andrew will walk through the door and be like, “I’ve just seen this amazing thing on TikTok!” And I’m like, “You are it! You are it!” Because you cannot look at what quote-unquote “the kids are doing” and roll your eyes. You have to learn.

Have you explored TikTok at all? I only see them when they’re posted to Tumblr, but I love them! I think that they’re hilarious and amazing. Andrew says that they’ve made musicals cool again, because there’s a huge musical facet to TikTok. [He’s] like, “Any way we can do that is good.”

How do you see your involvement in the business side of your career progressing in the next decade? You seem like someone who could eventually start a label or be more hands-on with signing artists. I do think about it every once in a while, but if I was going to do it, I would need to do it with all of my energy. I know how important that is, when you’ve got someone else’s career in your hands, and I know how it feels when someone isn’t generous.

You’ve served as an ambassador of sorts for artists, especially recently - staring down streaming services over payouts, increasing public awareness about the terms of record deals. We have a long way to go. I think that we’re working off of an antiquated contractual system. We’re galloping toward a new industry but not thinking about re-calibrating financial structures and compensation rates, taking care of producers and writers. We need to think about how we handle master recordings, because this isn’t it. When I stood up and talked about this, I saw a lot of fans saying, “Wait, the creators of this work do not own their work, ever?” I spent 10 years of my life trying rigorously to purchase my masters outright and was then denied that opportunity, and I just don’t want that to happen to another artist if I can help it. I want to at least raise my hand and say, “This is something that an artist should be able to earn back over the course of their deal - not as a renegotiation ploy - and something that artists should maybe have the first right of refusal to buy.” God, I would have paid so much for them! Anything to own my work that was an actual sale option, but it wasn’t given to me. Thankfully, there’s power in writing your music. Every week, we get a dozen synch requests to use “Shake It Off” in some advertisement or “Blank Space” in some movie trailer, and we say no to every single one of them. And the reason I’m rerecording my music next year is because I do want my music to live on. I do want it to be in movies, I do want it to be in commercials. But I only want that if I own it.

Do you know how long that rerecording process will take? I don’t know! But it’s going to be fun, because it’ll feel like regaining a freedom and taking back what’s mine. When I created [these songs], I didn’t know what they would grow up to be. Going back in and knowing that it meant something to people is actually a really beautiful way to celebrate what the fans have done for my music.

Ten years ago, on the brink of the 2010s, you were about to turn 20. What advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time? Oh, God - I wouldn’t give myself any advice. I would have done everything exactly the same way. Because even the really tough things I’ve gone through taught me things that I never would have learned any other way. I really appreciate my experience, the ups and downs. And maybe that seems ridiculously Zen, but... I’ve got my friends, who like me for the right reasons. I’ve got my family. I’ve got my boyfriend. I’ve got my fans. I’ve got my cats.

Taylor Swift Discusses 'The Man' & 'It's Nice To Have a Friend' In Cover Story Outtakes

Billboard // by Jason Lipshutz // December 12th 2019

During her cover story interview for Billboard’s Women In Music issue, Taylor Swift discussed several aspects of her mega-selling seventh studio album Lover, including its creation after a personal “recalibrating” period, her stripped-down performances of its songs and her plans to showcase the full-length live with her Lover Fest shows next year. In two moments from the extended conversation that did not make the print story, Billboard’s Woman of the Decade also touched upon two of the album’s highlights, which double as a pair of the more interesting songs in her discography: “The Man” and “It’s Nice To Have A Friend.”

“The Man” imagines how Swift’s experience as a person, artist and figure within the music industry would have been different had she been a man, highlighting how much harder women have to work in order to succeed (“I’m so sick of running as fast as I can / Wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man,” she sings in the chorus). The song has become a fan favorite since the release of Lover, and Swift recently opened a career-spanning medley with the song at the 2019 American Music Awards.

When asked about “The Man,” Swift pointed out specific double standards that exist in everyday life and explained why she wanted to turn that frustration into a pop single. Read Swift’s full thoughts on “The Man” below:

“It was a song that I wrote from my personal experience, but also from a general experience that I’ve heard from women in all parts of our industry. And I think that, the more we can talk about it in a song like that, the better off we’ll be in a place to call it out when it’s happening. So many of these things are ingrained in even women, these perceptions, and it’s really about re-training your own brain to be less critical of women when we are not criticizing men for the same things. So many things that men do, you know, can be phoned-in that cannot be phoned-in for us. We have to really — God, we have to curate and cater everything, but we have to make it look like an accident. Because if we make a mistake, that’s our fault, but if we strategize so that we won’t make a mistake, we’re calculating.

“There is a bit of a damned-if-we-do, damned-if-we-don’t thing happening in music, and that’s why when I can, like, sit and talk and be like ‘Yeah, this sucks for me too,’ that feels good. When I go online and hear the stories of my fans talking about their experience in the working world, or even at school — the more we talk about it, the better off we’ll be. And I wanted to make it catchy for a reason — so that it would get stuck in people’s heads, [so] they would end up with a song about gender inequality stuck in their heads. And for me, that’s a good day.”

Meanwhile, the penultimate song on Lover, “It’s Nice To Have A Friend,” sounds unlike anything in Swift’s catalog thanks to its elliptical structure, lullaby-like tone and incorporation of steel drums and brass. When asked about the song, Swift talked about experimenting with her songwriting, as well as capturing a different angle of the emotional themes at the heart of Lover. Read Swift’s full thoughts on “It’s Nice To Have A Friend” below:

“It was fun to write a song that was just verses, because my whole body and soul wants to make a chorus — every time I sit down to write a song, I’m like, ‘Okay, chorus time, let’s get the chorus done.’ But with that song, it was more of like a poem, and a story and a vibe and a feeling of... I love metaphors that kind of have more than one meaning, and I think I loved the idea that, on an album called Lover, we all want love, we all want to find somebody to see our sights with and hear things with and experience things with.

“But at the end of the day we’ve been searching for that since we were kids! When you had a friend when you were nine years old, and that friend was all you talked about, and you wanted to have sleepovers and you wanted to walk down the street together and sit there drawing pictures together or be silent together, or be talking all night. We’re just looking for that, but endless sparks, as adults.”

Read the full Taylor Swift cover story here, and click here for more info on Billboard’s 2019 Women In Music event, during which Swift will be presented with the first-ever Woman of the Decade award.

[link to this tweet]

Was there ever a part of you that was like, “Oh shit, I like this darker vibe, let’s go even further down that path?” I really Loved Reputation because it felt like a rock opera, or a musical, doing it live. Doing that stadium show was so fun because it was so theatrical and so exciting to perform that, because it’s really cathartic! But I have to follow whatever direction my life is going in emotionally... The skies were opening up in my life. That’s what happened. But in a way that felt like a pink sky, a pink and purple sky, after a storm, and now it looks even more beautiful because it looked so stormy before. And that’s just like, I couldn't stop writing. I’ve never had an album with 18 songs on it before, and a lot of what I do is based on intuition. So, you know, I try not to overthink it. Who knows, there may be another dark album. I plan on doing lots of experimentation over the course of my career. Who knows? But it was a blast, I really loved it.

I mean, look, a Taylor Swift screamo album? I’ll be first in line. I’m so happy to hear that, because I think you might be the only one. Ha! I have a terrible scream. It’s obnoxious.

Why Taylor Swift's Lover Fest Will Be Her Next Big Step

Billboard // by Jason Lipshutz // December 11th 2019 - [Excerpt]

On why she chose to put together Lover fest: “I haven’t really done festivals in years - not since I was a teenager. That’s something that [the fans] don’t expect from me, so that’s why I wanted to do it. I want to challenge myself with new things and at the same time keep giving my fans something to connect to.”

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nomanwalksalone · 4 years

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THE LEAST OF ALL CASUALTIES

by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

I’m thinking, for some reason, of the late Adnan Khashoggi and of a host of dead playboys and nabobs, shrouded in the finest custom shirts money, so much money, could buy. Adnan Khashoggi, who so clearly wanted to be the Basil Zaharoff of the late twentieth century, an international man of mystery dealing arms and other items from the shadows, a figure of luxury legend, a man with whom I have nothing in common, save that life occasionally humbles us…

Yes, Khashoggi, who nicknamed his Korean bodyguard “Mr. Kill,” who reportedly kept $100,000 cash handy in an attaché case on board his private jet to sweeten any deal or grease any palm, who ordered the largest yacht in the world (Queen wrote a song about it! It was the villain’s yacht in a Bond film!), came undone. Iran Contra, Imelda Marcos, BCCI, a host of 1980s names of tarnished glitz like the hidden grime in a Helmsley hotel… He had to sell the yacht; Donald Trump briefly owned it before Trump’s own financial problems forced him to sell it yet again, to a Saudi prince.

Adnan Khashoggi, yes, that Khashoggi, uncle of the intrepid journalist Jamal Khashoggi, assassinated in sordid circumstances a year after Adnan died in wealth but not splendor. Assassinated and unavenged.

I am even less Adnan’s spiritual heir than that serious, dedicated nephew. It’s a strange contrast between the thoughtful engagement of one and the freewheeling, flamboyant capitalism of the other, a flamboyance of fairy tales, fairy tales because at their best they make us momentarily forget their foundations of exploitation and graft.

Like robber baron James Goldsmith (who inspired Terence Stamp’s character in Wall Street), Khashoggi was a famous customer of the bespoke services at Lanvin, the oldest couturier in Paris and for a long time the best shirtmaker there. Stories filter out, unattributed in magazines or relayed by friends in the know, stories that made him the last of the nabobs. He ordered a thousand custom shirts at a time! The workrooms (until a few years ago on-site on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, some of the most expensive real-estate in the world!) were busy for months! Because he only wore his Lanvin custom shirts once! What a way to save on laundry bills!

What happened to them? Did he hand them down to his sons, or to Jamal? Like the King of Morocco with his Smalto custom suits, once worn did he pass them on to his staff?

Those days of excess are gone. They were long gone when I pushed the door at Lanvin, curious to try what knowledgeable friends had called the best shirtmaker. The shirtmaker and his staff must have known that, as clients go, I could not be at a farther remove from that man and those days, a gloomy wallflower anxious to make sure that my centimes counted, that what I received would last, gratefully accepting their suggestion to provide extra cloth to remake the collar and cuffs of the one shirt I initially ordered, for whenever those would wear out. For I was interested just in a single shirt from that maker, not thousands to strew in the wake of conspicuous consumption. No matter. They treated me as politely and patiently as they would their most extravagant client, and produced a shirt that fitted closely, marvelously, with handmade buttonholes that a much more famous shirtmaker exclaimed were worthy of a museum. In other words, a gem as precious as the daydreams I had burnished.

I was to be only a sporadic client, sometimes ordering only after an absence of years, surprised at how well they remembered my tastes, at how well my patternmaker carried out the refinements I wanted, indeed at how, over years, we nurtured a polite friendship over shared snark and tastes in old movies and Art Deco.

Art Deco. Lanvin’s Paris men’s shop is an entire building, opened in 1926 dedicated only to custom tailoring and shirtmaking. Prior to that it had been the headquarters of Lanvin Décor, designed with the unmistakable flourishes of Armand-Albert Rateau. A gorgeous luxury. For decades, Lanvin Tailleur et Chemisier retained Rateau’s stylized gilt découpé designs and furniture, before renovation banished those motifs only to tie patterns and other accessories. It wasn’t until the 1970s that Lanvin offered any men’s ready-to-wear. While it had embraced worldwide licenses for garments bearing the Lanvin name by the 1980s (my father has a poly-cotton Lanvin dress shirt from that period), its flagship was one of the only places in the world where – decades before Berluti made this boast – a man could be outfitted in bespoke literally from head to toe, Assiduous hands at the Lanvin-owned hatter Gélot (magically transposed from the Place Vendôme to a shop-in-shop on the Lanvin bespoke floor) still crafted and fit the finest headwear, while one of the Corthay brothers themselves created Lanvin custom shoes. As for Lanvin custom tailoring? In 1901, Jeanne Lanvin herself had designed Lanvin very first men’s garment, her friend Edmond Rostand’s elaborately embroidered uniform for his initiation into the Académie Française, the first of over 70 such custom-made uniforms Lanvin would make, along with every sort of conventional tailored garment – including suits and sportcoats for certain French politicians who could not patronize their British tailors while in office.

Those days are gone. In the ’60s Lanvin had advertised its bespoke with elegant cartoons of well-appointed gentlemen’s clubs, yacht marinas, luxury hotel suites and trophy-bedecked hunting lodges, all captioned “For a certain class of men.” Those men are mostly gone. So, too, are their replacements, the rootless international men of mystery like Khashoggi. Even intellectual poseurs (yes, I’ll grant him the “u”) like Bernard-Henri Levy stopped ordering their casually unbuttoned white shirts from Lanvin. Middle-class punters like myself, in love with the ritual of cloth selection, of fitting, of being escorted to the bespoke floor with its own little escalator, the month-long wait pregnant with anticipation for an elaborately-packaged single shirt, are too few. No more sprawling bespoke floor but a small if tasteful salon, with what remained of the ateliers on the same floor, behind a discreet door. The hidden of the hidden: at a time brands all over heavily advertised their custom services (however spurious), not a single vitrine at 15, faubourg Saint-Honoré carried the least hint that one of the finest tailors and shirtmakers in Paris resided there. Resided, for they did not travel – unless a customer flew themout. Even the shop Lanvin opened on Savile Row a few years ago didn’t bring them over, instead offering a sort of customized stock special service on its ready-to-wear designs.

This is the least of all casualties, to lament the end of something that only the most entitled of us could ever use. For even if I’ll never set foot on a yacht, I recognize how privileged I was to indulge in the affectation of a custom shirtmaker, of the fetish of its product. Of the last days of this particular legend. Ninety-five years after its founding, the custom tailor and shirtmaker defected to another life, and Lanvin bespoke is now dead. Ninety-five years! They could not put up with five more years in the shadowy recesses of their employer, a small, ever-shrinking habitat, where I hoped their remaining an afterthought would shelter them from corporate extinction, and round out a century.

The least of all casualties, for what ended is just an idea, the idea of a permanence, a waning best, a classic. For those who want the concrete, various lines of ready-to-wear remain. Lanvin was one of the classic old guard of tailors that the legendary Groupe des Cinq, including Camps, rebelled against in the 1950s. Today, whether rebel or classicist, what is left of bespoke rallies together – tailors from the supposed old guard migrate to those former iconoclast hellions, and vice versa.

The least of all casualties, like an arms dealer dying, finally, in a Harley Street clinic. No reason to weep for him, when we live among the casualties he and his colleagues may have wrought, his financial heirs likely preferring fleece vests, athleisure, performative populism. What the rest of us inherit is casualty, this daydream’s passing worthy of no more than a moment’s thoughtful pause in our current nightmares. At least allow it that.

#reginaldjeromedemans #rjman

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sweetness47 · 4 years

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Pinky Promise

Pairing Bucky x reader

This is a late present for @sherrybaby14 😊 Happy Birthday Sweetie <3 . There are some flashback moments in italics, part of the background story.

Warnings: some underage smut-ish stuff, smut, some fluff, language, child abandonment, child kidnapping, parental rejection dark moments, etc… MATURE 18+ READERS ONLY!!! DO NOT READ IF ANY OF THIS OFFENDS YOU!!!

Summary: You and Bucky grew up as neighbours, you always watched each other’s backs, always defended the other. Both of you were close with Steve as well. But it was Bucky who was particularly close to you.

Five years old, Kindergarten

A shy YN entered the classroom, clinging to the skirt her mother wore. She didn’t want to stay here, there were too many people. And they all looked super scary.

“Mama, I want to go home!” she pleaded.

“You will be fine sweetie, promise. I’ll come back in a couple of hours to get you, ok? You’ll have lots of fun.”

The teacher, Mrs. Bird, came over. “You must be YN. I’m Mrs. Bird. There’s some dolls over here, I can show them to you if you like.”

The teacher held out her hand, and YN looked at her, then looked more closely at the room. Toys filled all the corners, there were dolls, toy cars, building blocks, coloring books. Slowly, more out of curiosity, she took Mrs. Bird’s hand and together they went over to where other girls were playing with dolls and clothes. YN’s mother took that opportunity to sneak away, thankful for the distraction the teacher had provided.

She knelt down, finding a blonde hair baby to play with. She took some dresses and began trying them on her, then another girl came and snatched the doll away.

“My doll.”

“No! I had it first!” YN yelled back.

“Too bad.” The other girl sneered at YN and pushed her.

“I think that girl had the doll first. Give it back to her.”

Both girls turned to a young boy. “Buzz off kid.” The other girl turned to ignore him.

The boy took the doll, and gave it back to YN. The teacher came over, and pulled the other girl aside to talk about her manners.

YN looked at the boy who had now sat down beside her. “Thank you. I’m YN.”

“My name is James.” The boy said, holding his hand out for her to shake.

She did. “This your first day?” she asked.

James nodded. “You?”

“Yeah.”

He turned to her. “Wanna be best friends?”

“Sure.” She replied.

“Here.” He held out his pinky finger. “Let’s pinky promise. We will always be friends, always help each other, always.”

She connected her pinky with his. “I like that promise.”

Her mind wandered, away from the pain, away from the nightmares. The memory, if that’s what it was, was nice, a good distraction. Where was this? When?

The conditioning resumed. Tears fell from her eyes as her mind took her away again.

16 Years Old, High School

“You gotta be kidding Buck. No way. Uh uh. I am not wearing heels that high. Nope. Not happening.”

“C’mon YN, they will look really good with the gown.” He pleaded.

YN turned to Steve. “Are you gonna let him rag on me like that?”

“Leave it Buck. She doesn’t have to wear the shoes. They are a bit high. You don’t want your prom date to end up on crutches do you?” he said to his friend.

“Fine.” Bucky rolled his eyes. “It was only a suggestion.” He placed a chaste kiss on YN’s forehead. “No one’s going to notice the shoes anyways, they will be too busy staring at the dress.”

Steve laughed and nodded. “True enough.”

“You guys are going to make me blush.” YN chimed in as she did a fancy twirl. The gown she’d picked off the rack was perfect size. The blue satin moved gracefully around her, making her shiver when material brushed against her skin. It was a halter top design, the low V accentuating her breasts. Small beads adorned the waistline, giving the illusion of a belt, and completing the delicate piece of clothing. “This is definitely the one.”

“I have to agree.” Bucky came over to stand beside her. Steve joined as well. “You look stunning.”

She blushed furiously, and went back to the change room. Bucky paid for the dress and made arrangements to get it shipped to her house.

Bucky had been right in suggesting everyone’s eyes would be glued to the dress. YN always dressed plain, not wanting to stand out, yet here she was, the most beautifully dressed tonight. How had she let Bucky talk her into this? Her mind screamed at her to run, seek safety of her home, but her heart was right where she wanted to be, with James “Bucky” Barnes.

Her eyes flitted open, the room was blurry. She watched as people walked around, whispering amongst themselves, all kinds of tubes and needles everywhere. Her body was strapped down, helpless…she didn’t know what or where she was, she wasn’t even sure anymore who she was. The conditioning resumed as one of the fuzzy figures injected something into her IV.

16 years old, Graduation

The party lasted well into the night. James took Steve home, then drove YN back to her place. “I love you Buck.”

The words surprised them both. Yeah, they’d been dating for a while, but neither had actually said the words…till now. Bucky leaned over to kiss her, his lips soft, inviting YN to open hers. He moaned as his tongue found hers, dancing together in the heat. “I love you too, YN.”

The kiss deepened, Bucky reaching to hike up her skirt, while YN worked at undoing his belt and pants. Truthfully, they hadn’t planned to go far, but neither wanted to stop. It felt right. YN lifted her hips as Bucky slid off her underwear, then moved his hands to cup her mound. She was soft, wet with desire for this man. He slipped a finger inside, and she gave a soft cry as her body adjusted to the invasion. Then he moved it, slowly, covering her passionate pleas with bruising kisses.

His hand then left, and he moved her to lay on the seat of the car. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.

Always the gentleman, she thought to herself. “Yes.”

Bucky nodded, and in one swift moment, he was in, thrusting past the barrier of her innocence. Tears stung her eyes, but she smiled up at him. His look of concern was heartwarming, so she gave a nod of assurance that indeed she was ok. He moved then, pulling out then pushing back in. YN experienced her first orgasm, the explosion sending unimaginable pleasure through her.

“Bucky! Oh god…”

He moved faster, spurred by her response, and YN found herself wrapping her legs around his waist. He was all muscle and pure sin. And he was hers. He came shortly after, spilling his seed inside her, collapsing on top of her. Both were panting and sweaty, but neither regretted that night.

“Her conditioning is complete. She is ready for testing.”

“Well done Dr. Let’s see what she can do.”

YN looked at the room she now found herself in. She was no longer strapped down, no tubes attached to her arms, and she was fully clothed. The suit was light, breathable, and allowed her to move with ease.

Two soldiers came in, no guns, but stood ready to strike. YN looked almost bored.

Until they moved to attack her.

It was almost too fast to see with the human eye, the way she grabbed the arm of the first soldier, tearing it from his body, then gouging his eyes out. The second soldier wrapped his arms around her, trying to contain and limit her movement, but she took both hands and grabbed his head from behind. She pulled him over her, and punched a hole in his chest, literally, pulling out his heart and smashing it on the ground.

All that took about 20 seconds.

She stayed there, waiting for instructions. The Doctor and the other man came in to the room. The man looked her over. “Hail Hydra!” he saluted her.

“Hail Hydra!” she replied.

Yes. She was ready.

Steve looked at his friend in wide disbelief. “No way. She was too smart to have ever been captured by Hydra.”

Bucky stared right back. “She wasn’t, originally. She was like me. A victim of circumstance. I wouldn’t lie about this Steve. You know me. You know how I felt about her. You honestly think I would make shit like that up?”

“It’s entirely possible that this YN could have fallen victim to the same circumstances as James.” Natasha interjected.

“Maybe, but if that’s the case, who knows what kind of conditioning she’s been through. And would we even be able to get her back?”

Bucky shrugged his shoulders at Steve. “You got me back Rogers. Don’t you think she deserves that chance too?”

Cap sighed. “True enough. But it’s going to be tough getting past the defenses. Hydra’s pretty well fortified.”

Black Scorpion. That’s what they called her now.

Her old name and old life a distant memory, fading farther as the days went by. She no longer heard the name YN. No longer did anyone treat her with anything but respect and indifference. They were probably scared of her. She was the best weapon they’d ever made. Even better than the Winter Soldier had been. She was flawless.

They had used an improved version of the Super Soldier Serum. Superior to any used before. Her skin was impenetrable now, she had no need of bullet proof garments. Knives were useless as well. She was the perfect killing machine.

It was based on nanite technology, tiny microscopic robots that had integrated with her DNA, bonding with her blood, giving her instant healing and armour.

She’d been part of Hydra’s experiments for decades. YN was given the original Super Serum to preserve her life, then they worked on perfecting it, and her.

The Black Scorpion lived true to the name, the perfect Hydra operative. She never missed a target, never botched a mission, never failed…period.

She’d encountered the Avengers a few times, but her mask shrouded them from making any kind of headway as to her identity. When not working, she remained inside the base, she had no need for food or sleep, so she trained, meditated, and trained more.

Those Hydra soldiers who weren’t scared of her tried to get her into their beds, but were unsuccessful. She had no need of such activities, and she certainly wasn’t going to engage in them with those losers.

There were times where, if she did close her eyes, she would have flashes of what seemed to be dreams, images of a child and others like her, playing together. Visions of going to school, eating at diners, plagued her.

But there was one that haunted her most of all.

It was a boy, well the first images were a young boy, but they were friends, then more than friends, then…well that’s where it usually ended. She could never see anything beyond that. And while she no longer had emotion or knew anything other than what was current, the images continued to appear, eventually even happening while she was awake. It never affected her missions, and no one was ever aware this was happening. She never told a soul.

Her outside façade never showed anything but the calm, cool, collected Black Scorpion. Her mind struggled between the conditioning and the flashes of this boy. She had to find out who he was, and why she was dreaming of him. But she didn’t have any security clearance for the computers that occupied the rooms. So she had little to help her in her quest, but was determined none-the-less.

“You’re absolutely sure this is where she’d be?”

“I’m sure.”

Nat stood by Bucky. “I believe you. Let’s get your friend.”

Steve sighed. “Ok. But, stealth? Please?” He looked specifically at Bucky first, who rolled his eyes, then at Natasha.

“Duh.” Nat stuck her tongue out at Cap, who shook his head.

Bucky scoured the area, counting the guards and gathering intel, including the easiest way in. He found it: a service tunnel that lead to a secluded grove of pines. The electrical building was there. It was a perfect place to sneak inside and get to YN.

But their stealth was no match for a certain Hydra operative who happened to be watching the fields, desperately trying to find a way into the computer systems, hoping it had some intel on her past. The flashes and images were becoming more frequent, and it terrified her, she who had no emotion, who’s humanity had been stripped away by decades of brainwashing.

She didn’t alert any of the other soldiers. There was no need for anyone else. She had taken on these people before, and could easily do so again. Donning her mask, she made her way quickly to the service tunnel she saw them heading toward. Her plan…take them out…permanently.

She hid in the shadows of the first corner, listening for the anticipated footsteps.

Bucky was the first down, followed by Nat and then Cap. The tunnel was dimly lit, but manageable. There were no guards down there, it was just the opposite, an eerie quiet filled the long hallways. Bucky’s senses were on high alert, as were the other two. They moved cautiously down the passage, listening for anything.

Almost too late, Bucky caught a very faint intake of breath from around the corner, just before Black Scorpion came charging at them. The three Avengers scattered, avoiding the long sword flying in their direction.

“There will be no escape this time. You will all fall to Hydra!”

“Not in this century, bitch.” This from Widow, who took out her own baton to combat with.

Her laugh sent chills down their spines. “Your imaginary feats of escape and heroism are small, and will ultimately lead to your demise.” She scoffed. “Why would only three of you come here? Do you have a need to die so quick?”

“We’re looking for a friend of ours.”

Scorpion turned to the famed Soldier. “We don’t have any of Shield’s agents in our cells, though you are welcome to become prisoners.”

“She isn’t a Shield agent. She is a friend. From our childhood. Her name is YN. YFN YLN.”

Scorpion stopped, staring at Captain America. Then her eyes floated over to the man beside him. Dark hair, scruffy, but the eyes…blue as the sky on a clear day. It couldn’t be. The boy from her visions was Hydra’s traitor?

Bucky caught the confusion in Scorpion’s eyes. “Please. If you know where she is, tell us. I love her. I always have, always will.”

Scorpion couldn’t speak. She had to retreat, clear her head. She turned to flee, but Bucky’s swift motions caught her attempt, grabbing her arm and swinging her around. The force of the movement caused her mask to fly off, leaving two speechless Avengers.

The object of the mission was standing right in front of them.

Nat snuck around while Scorpion was preoccupied and gave her enough sedative to knock out a tyrannosaurus. Her stinger was made with a metal alloy not of this world, able to penetrate anything, even Cap’s shield. The perfect weapon that was Black Scorpion slid slowly to the ground, her eyes never leaving the Winter Soldier’s.

17 Years Old

Her period never came. It was due two weeks ago. She smiled to herself. Bucky would be thrilled when she told him. They were going to have a baby. She knew she was young, but they would make it work. He already had a good job. They could get a small place somewhere, settle down, get married.

The only other thing she had to do was tell her parents. They were good role models, loving, caring. She couldn’t not say anything. This was going to be their grandchild. They would surely be happy, right?

“Mom? Dad? Can we talk?” she approached them after dinner.

“Sure honey. What’s wrong?” her mother coaxed, motioning for YN to sit on the sofa beside her.

YN bit her lip and looked down at her lap for a moment. “I’m pregnant.”

There, she’d said it. Now all she had to do was wait for the shouts of joy, the hugs.

But they never came.

Instead, her father stood from his chair. “What?”

Her mother looked horrified. “You’re pregnant? Who…?” she stopped. “It’s that boy, James something. Isn’t it? What did he do? Did he force you? Is that what happened?”

YN shook her head. “No. Nothing like that! James and I love each other. He’s going to marry me, and we’re going to be a family.”

The hard slap echoed through the room, tears stinging the reddening cheek on YN’s face. “You slut! How could you shame us like that? Your parents! We loved you, cared for you, and this is how you repay us? You ungrateful little girl. Go to your room, NOW!”

YN ran up the stairs to her room, slamming the door and flinging herself onto her bed. Never, in her 17 years, had her mom and dad ever hit her. That hurt almost as much as the actual slap. Possibly more. Why wouldn’t they be happy? It wasn’t like James was going to abandon her. They had to know that, right?

She cried herself to sleep. When she finally woke, she was greeted with a splitting headache, and the realization that she wasn’t at her home. In fact, she was pretty sure she wasn’t in the same city. Where was she? How did she get here?

She wandered around, the dark alley producing frightening shadows, hints of danger lurked everywhere. She walked to and fro, up and down the streets of the foreign town, hoping this was just some bad nightmare. But no luck. After hours of aimless searching, the pregnant teen sat on a nearby park bench, shivering, crying uncontrollably, praying for a miracle.

Her eyes flew open, immediately tensing as she glanced around the white room. She was in some kind of hospital room, or infirmary. Same thing. But what, why…Her mind reeled over what she could remember, which wasn’t much at first. Scared and confused, she hopped off the bed, only to be met with one kickback of a dizzy spell. She collapsed, shaking, as her weak limbs struggled to get up off the cold cement. The nanites that were inside her had gone dormant, sleeping while she slept. They would get her back up in a few minutes, but that wasn’t the biggest concern.

Numerous flashes of different scenarios crossed her mind: murder, fighting, killing people…then children playing, laughing…

The boy with the blue eyes.

She was unaware that someone had entered the room. Strong arms lifted her off the floor, gently placing her back into the comfort of the bed. Those same blue eyes met hers, concern etched across his beautiful face.

“You ok?” his voice was just as sinful as the rest of him. She nodded. “What do you remember?”

She shook her head. “I…I’m not really sure. There’s so many chopped up images in my head right now, it might as well be an entire theatre of movies times 50.”

He chuckled. “Do you remember your name?”

“Bla…” she paused, “No, it…it’s YN.” Her eyes widened. “Buck?”

Bucky let out a huge sigh of relief. “Yeah doll, it’s me.”

YN began to frown, which was quickly replaced with tears of remorse. “Oh god…Buck, I’m so sorry. I…”

He gathered her into his strong embrace. “Shhh, don’t apologize. It wasn’t you YN. It was Hydra.”

She held up her hand. “No, Bucky, please let me finish.” He stopped, facing her. “I never wanted to leave you. I wasn’t given a choice.”

He leaned back. “What are you talking about? You wrote me a letter saying you were going to college. You wanted to remain just friends. I stopped hearing from you, eventually, and I joined the army.”

She shook her head. “No, I didn’t go away to college Buck. My parents sent me away.”

His features darkened. “Why?”

“Because I was pregnant. We were going to have a baby.”

His jaw dropped. His voice barely a whisper, “What?”

“They were so mad, telling me I had shamed them. I went to my room and cried myself to sleep. When I woke, I was in a strange town, no other clothes than what I wore, no money, no note, no goodbye. Nothing. They abandoned me.”

The metal hand curled into a fist. “Those bastards. Why didn’t you contact me?”

“I couldn’t. I had no way to do anything like that. I was almost starved to death when this couple came by and saw me alone on the park bench. I hadn’t eaten or drank anything for 2 days at that point. They offered me a place to stay, and I accepted. That was my first encounter with Hydra.”

“It was too good an offer to pass up at the time. I was scared, pregnant and alone…and I was hungry. I didn’t know much about them beyond what they told me. I told them about the baby, and they appeared even more concerned. So they took me in and gave me a new home. They helped me go shopping for clothes for the child, a cradle, everything I would need. They seemed to live a simple life, no phones or anything. They bought whatever I needed or wanted, so I never had any need for an allowance or a job.”

“When the baby started to come, the couple rushed me to a special ‘hospital’ where I could have ‘the best care’ possible. We had a son Buck. But then everything went downhill. I wasn’t even given a chance to hold him. He was taken from the room and I never saw him again. That’s when they started experimenting on me. They gave me the Super Soldier serum to keep me from aging while they worked to perfect it. They did outside trials too, hence Captain America and you, but it was my body they used as their test subject. While I was under, they had subliminal messages playing, conditioning to make me forget who I was. This went on for decades.”

Bucky listened in horror, his stomach threatening to heave his recent meal. He couldn’t believe those assholes had done this to her. To his YN. “God, YN. I never knew.”

“I know. I don’t blame you. I would have contacted you if I knew how, or had the tools to do so.” She bit her lip. “But our son is out there now. They are probably raising him, training him right from birth that Hydra is his life. We have to find him.”

He put a hand on her shoulder. “We will. Promise. But right now, you need to rest.” He kissed her forehead. “I love you.”

She smiled. “Pinky promise?”

“Always.”

#happy birthday sherrybaby14 #bucky x reader

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inspired-by-the-music · 4 years

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For You: 4 O’Clock

Taglist: @jineunwootrash @jamies-kpop-reactions

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Chapter 11: The Name I Loved

Lei’s POV

“You know, Lei,” Lucas grumbled from his place in my closet, “there was a time in our lives when everything you owned was black!”

He stepped out to face me and Grandma. We were sitting on my bed and discussing— of all things— Taemin, who she agreed was the most beautiful person in the world after attending the Atlanta concert. Lucas looked so sad, eyes hooded and lips drawn into a tight frown, that I still couldn’t roll my eyes at his insistence to dress us both as if Mom’s annual Christmas party were a funeral.

Unable to scold Lucas for interrupting just as she was about to ask, winking, if Taemin and I were ‘friends’ off-stage, Grandma took in his appearance. Already dressed in his all-black suit, Lucas stared down at his shiny black shoes as Grandma delicately asked, “Why are you wearing black to a Christmas party anyway, sweetie?”

Given my general lack of support for Ten’s suggested dress code, I didn’t consider myself the best spokesperson. Lucas seemed to glance at me for permission to speak, so I just nodded my head and fixed my gaze on a hanging poster of Donghae.

I couldn’t take it down, and yet I couldn’t live comfortably with it staring at me like that. Donghae’s picture smiled so warmly that you could never guess that he carried the weight of rejection for over a decade. Is it okay for a picture to lie like that? Or was that smile genuine?

All I could wonder was whether Donghae would bring me another strawberry milkshake the next time I was at the studio. All I could wonder was whether those days were behind us— if I had appreciated them enough to be able to let them go without regret— as Lucas replied, “We’re in mourning.”

Lucas’s tone was so hollow, Grandma faced me with deepened concern, patting my knee to offer some comfort.

“Everything will be okay, Grandma.” I believed it because I had to. I believed it because I couldn’t stomach how Grandma was looking at me (like she had in her dining room). “My group members found out about Mom and Donghae, so they’re wearing black to express how sad it is that they’re not together.”

While Grandma blinked, eyebrows gathering together, and Lucas disappeared into my closet again, I repeated something that Kyungsoo said when I confided in him under Christmas lights. “For some people—” I thought of Lucas and Mark— “this is kind of like their first heartbreak, even if it isn’t really theirs. This demonstration may seem a little goofy to us, but—”

Maybe Mom and Donghae represented a fate that sort of awaited all of us as idols. Maybe the others were mourning what we already knew, what we didn’t like to acknowledge: we couldn’t love out loud. Many of our loves were worse than unrequited; they were unexpressed or unexplored because— how can you fall in love when someone’s always watching?

Maybe the others found their reflection in Mom and Donghae. Maybe that’s what empathy is.

I guess Grandma didn’t need me to explain that. Before I could even try, she was running to the door, saying, “I guess I better go change then!” I was a little disappointed; I liked Grandma’s and Yesung’s tradition of wearing ugly Christmas sweaters.

Perhaps feeling victorious at having gathered another person to his cause, Lucas emerged from my closet wearing a broad smile. I couldn’t be relieved to see his joyful expression because my eyes fell on the dress he was carrying.

It wasn’t black. It was red. The dress I wore to Donghae’s party.

“Lucas!” My breath caught in my throat as I sat, uncomfortably uptight, on the edge of my bed. “We have to burn that shit! It has bad juju!”

That was what I had been wearing the last time I saw Donghae— “maybe ever!” the dramatic voice in the back of my mind, which sounded too much like Lucas, screamed. That’s what I had been wearing when Donghae forced his way past Heechul into the house to confront Mom. That’s what I had been wearing when I ran up the stairs, away from their argument. That’s what I had been wearing when Mom yelled the world-reforming truth that she was the idol who never debuted.

I didn’t want to know what terrible fate would befall the Christmas party if I wore that cursed dress.

But Lucas shook his head and argued, “This is what you wore when you found Taemin in your garden!”

Although I must have thought this once, twice, or every night on tour when I fell asleep in his arms, I was winded by the realization that what I considered the worst night of my life doubled as the beginning of a beautiful chapter: the time when Taemin and I were in love.

So I wore that red dress. Not because Lucas thought it would bring Mom and Donghae together the way it brought me and Taemin together. Not because Lucas reasoned with a smirk, “You looked hot in this! And nobody really got to appreciate it because you left Donghae’s party early!” But because I wanted to see if it still fit.

I don’t mean that literally. I hadn’t drastically gained weight during those two months of touring in America or anything. I just felt so different than I had been the last time I wore that dress. Wearing it again seemed like a good way to measure my growth.

When I looked in the mirror, though, I didn’t look all that different. My hair was still short. Lucas had gone with me to get it trimmed before meeting Kyungsoo at the Mall. My eyes were still as wide and childlike as they had been when I debuted. My cheeks— almost permanently full and rosy— still gave me the appearance of someone wandering between childhood and adulthood.

But there was no longer anything forced in my smile, painted with ruby lipstick. My hands were not balled into resigned fists pinned at my sides. I was not at all anxious about having people from work— the members of SuperM— in my home for a party as I had been every year prior. I was different, even if I couldn’t see it.

I wasn’t willing to look back on the past 21 years of my life and decide that I had never known happiness. There was something in me that refused to attribute this warmth in my chest— this total internal transformation— to Taemin. Maybe I was afraid that by doing so, I would give him the power to take that warmth away with him if ever he left my side.

No. I wasn’t afraid of Taemin. I wasn’t afraid of the rising sun. It was impossible to deny that the seeds of self-discovery and self-love had been planted the night of Donghae’s party. They had been planted that night I watched the moon in the garden. I just didn’t know who was more responsible for changing me— Mom by giving me the truth or Taemin by giving me his love.

But I don’t know that it really matters. What matters is that there was no room in my heart to mourn what could have been. Maybe this made me selfish (or maybe it didn’t), but I was too happy with what was to despair on behalf of Mom and Donghae.

I let my guard down— no, I allowed Taemin to break my guard down, and he did it carefully and quickly and painlessly— and maybe that’s why I was so hurt by what happened at the party. Then again, maybe I would have been hurt even with all of my defenses in place. Who knows?

Super Junior was a constant in my life, and they proved it by attending the Christmas party yearly. When I descended the staircase, I smiled at the fact that the first floor of my home was filled mostly by chaotic uncles who would drop everything to try to make me laugh.

In the kitchen, Shindong and Leeteuk were constructing a gingerbread village. Although their only audience was Lucas and Mark— wearing their black suits— Leeteuk narrated every action as if he were starring in an international broadcast.

Yesung, Kyuhyun, and Siwon monopolized the karaoke machine in the living room. They performed for Ten and Taeyong, who sat on opposite ends of a couch. Ten must have been angry because Taeyong wore a glittering red jacket that distracted from SuperM’s public mourning.

As usual, Heechul was late. I’m not sure whether I was supposed to hope Donghae and Eunhyuk would arrive with him, but I held that hope quietly in the corner of my mind.

I hadn’t found Mom, Taemin, Kai, or Baekhyun before Siwon abandoned his duet with Kyuhyun— a comedic rendition of “Baby It’s Cold Outside”— to chase me. Longer than Lucas, Siwon lived to ruin my hair.

“Merry Christmas!” Siwon cheered in my ear before Kyuhyun and Yesung screamed for him to return to the living room.

As soon as Siwon turned away, I ran to hide in the corner of the dining room with Ryeowook (Wookie) and Grandma, who were giggling about who knows what over their fragile cups of tea.

“Here, Lei.” Wookie beamed as he lifted the teapot— adorned with carefully painted red roses— to pour into the smallest cup, which he handed to me. My heart swelled at this familiar scene from my childhood when Wookie delicately clinked his cup against mine, winking as he extended his pinky.

While I smiled into my drink, Wookie asked, “So how are you? Did you have the time of your life in America?”

“Yeah,” Grandma chimed, setting her cup onto its saucer. “Did anything fun happen in America?”

Grandma didn’t have to say anything specific to remind me of her earlier fascination with Taemin. She only wiggled her eyebrows, and I laughed so hard that tea shot out of my nose, leaving my face burning with each breath long after I put the cup down on the table.

Surprised, confused, and amused by my onslaught of giggles and Grandma’s all-knowing chuckles, Wookie’s gaze flickered between us. He smiled politely. “I’ll go get napkins.”

But before Wookie could stand, Grandma shook her head. “No need.”

There was most certainly a need, I wanted to argue as the warm beverage trailed down my chin. I bit my tongue, however, when (after following Grandma’s gaze) I saw that Taemin was filling the doorway bridging the dining room to the kitchen.

I don’t know if I was more embarrassed by the fact that Taemin had apparently watched me snort tea or how goofily he danced over to me as Siwon’s and Kyuhyun’s duet started from the top. My heart fluttered so violently at the first sight of Taemin since returning home that I could barely stand looking at him. Still, I definitely couldn’t stand looking away.

After gratefully accepting a napkin to wipe my face, careful not to smear my makeup, I couldn’t stop staring at Taemin. Admiring him. Trying to commit every detail of him to memory. Like the other members of SuperM, most of Taemin’s attire was black except for his festive red suspenders and matching tie.

“Look!” Taemin giggled and leaned over my chair to drape his tie over the sleeve of my dress. “We match!”

As if we were back in one of our rooms in America, as if Grandma and Wookie weren’t watching us (after sharing a glance and taking long sips of tea)— Taemin pursed his lips and ran his thumb over my earring, a simple silver moon. “This is pretty.”

Blushing at the sensation of his breath against my skin, I mumbled, “I’m glad you think so.”

Was it really okay for him to be so close to me? We were among family— or at least I was— but I felt more embarrassed than I imagined I might have felt in a room full of strangers. All those years, I liked to remind people that I wasn’t a child; yet, I shrank at the thought of Wookie or Grandma or anybody else that I had known since youth seeing me as an adult.

Before Taemin could show me any more affection and darken my blush, Yesung walked in from the living room, arms outstretched and expecting a hug. Perhaps flinching away from Taemin, I ran to greet Yesung, smiling.

“Merry Christmas, Yesung! Have I ever told you that you’re my favorite?”

“Only every day since we met!” Yesung smiled and patted my arm. He had always been receptive to that kind of praise.

When I turned toward the table, not quite ready to return to my seat, Taemin had already settled into it. Maybe he had already introduced himself to Grandma.

Yesung was asking if I remembered how I used to fight with other Super Junior members if they so much as looked at him the wrong way— as if I wouldn’t still throw punches on his behalf— when Grandma reached across the table to run her fingers along the ribbon tied to Taemin’s wrist. The sky blue didn’t quite match his red and black ensemble, so it stood out more than ever.

Ever the charmer, Taemin placed his hand over Grandma’s and gave her a dazzling smile. With their eyes, they shared a conversation that I couldn’t quite understand until Taemin chirped, “It was a gift.”

My heart swelled with affection when Taemin met my eyes. I don’t know what I would have done— maybe I would have exploded from joy— had Yesung not distracted me by saying, “I got you the best present, Lei! Why don’t you go get it from under the tree?”

Wookie encouraged, “Go get my gift too, Lei!”

Wookie could have deceived me with his smile, but I gathered from how Yesung fixed narrowed eyes on Taemin that they caught on to our relationship. Whatever they had to say to him (probably the same speech they gave Lucas years ago when we first met) couldn’t have been said in front of me.

I knew better than to try (and fail) to talk Yesung out of protective mode, so I nodded and obediently walked to the Christmas tree where I found Baekhyun plucking candy canes from the branches.

“Oh!” He smiled brightly, the lights reflecting in his eyes. “Is it time for presents already?”

“Baekhyun!” Taking his suddenly black tresses between my fingers, I cried, “What did you do to your hair?” I shouldn’t have been shocked. We changed our hair all the time.

“You don’t like it?” Baekhyun pouted and plucked a candy cane from his mouth. “Well, I guess I can’t do everything to impress you, Lei. This is a part of my mourning exercises.”

Before I could respond, Baekhyun offered me one of his candy canes. “Here. I’ll give you your real gift when Sehun gets here.”

“Sehun?” My heart dropped. I opened my mouth to complain that I didn’t want Sehun to come or, at least, to ask why he would show up without an invitation, but a knock sounded at the door.

Baekhyun advised, turning back to the tree as he stuffed the peppermint back into his mouth, “You probably wanna get that, hm?”

Beyond words, I was grateful to Baekhyun for warning me of what I would find behind the door: Oh Sehun wearing an all-black suit and carrying two presents. It was probably a little rude to greet him with the question, “What are you doing here?” but I couldn’t keep the words from falling out of my mouth.

Sehun rolled his eyes. “Merry Christmas to you too.”

Our unity against Baekhyun had dissolved. Leaning against the door frame, frowning at the line that formed between Sehun’s eyebrows, I guessed I was disappointed.

“Would you let me in, please? It’s freezing out here!”

Snowflakes were falling all around him. If he weren’t already on my nerves— if he could just smile instead of scowling— the sight would have been worthy of a photograph.

Realizing that I wouldn’t stand aside until he answered my question, Sehun admitted, voice a puff of white air in the winter night, “I’m here to represent Donghae and Eunhyuk, not because I want to spend Christmas arguing with you—”

Oh. So Donghae wasn’t coming after all. So this would be the first Christmas that we wouldn’t drink hot chocolate together or make a snowman family in the front yard or watch Christmas movies until I fell asleep on the couch.

Oh. Tears gathered in my eyes, knowing that this crumbling, heart-stopping knowledge that life was different— and not only in good ways— occurred to Donghae when Mom was absent from his party.

Oh. So that’s why Donghae had been able to justify pushing past Heechul and calling me in the middle of the night to talk to Mom. He was either trying to turn time back to the days we knew were happy or forward to the days when he and Mom could be together. It was impossible. Fruitless. But I didn’t fault him for trying.

Trying to swallow the lump in my throat, wiping my eyes as I stood aside for Sehun to enter with his bad news, I think he tried to apologize. I’m not sure because I was too focused on Baekhyun, who appeared before me, smiling brightly with that candy cane still dangling out of his mouth and muffling his voice.

“Come on, Lei.” He nodded down to the gifts in his hands. “Yesung, Ryeowook, and I want you to open your presents.”

Thinking only that I had to find Mom to tell her gently that Donghae wasn’t coming (if she didn’t already know), I shook my head, but Baekhyun forced the brightly wrapped packages into my arms. He slung an arm around my shoulders and ushered me away from Sehun, into the dining room.

I was only slightly relieved that Sehun didn’t follow.

The smiles Grandma, Taemin, Wookie, and Yesung greeted me with faltered when they noticed the look on my face. I hadn’t found my smile yet, even with Baekhyun playfully nudging me in the ribs.

Rising from his seat with hands balled into fists, Yesung demanded, “What’s wrong?”

I shook my head and forced a smile. “Nothing—” My gaze drifted out the window— “it’s just— snow makes me cry.”

The lie wasn’t especially convincing, but at least Yesung sat down.

I sat only when Taemin stood, poorly masking his concern, to offer the seat he had stolen earlier. Rather than relocating to one of the many empty chairs, Taemin remained behind me, leaning against the back of my chair to watch me open the first gift Baekhyun dropped onto my lap. I kind of grinned, realizing that whatever Yesung and Wookie said hadn’t scared Taemin away.

To me, it seemed awkward that so many people watched as I peeled back the green wrapping on Wookie’s gift, but I guess that people watching me was just business as usual. Mark and Lucas— bonding in their shared grief— walked in from the kitchen, asking, “When was somebody gonna tell us it was time to watch Lei open presents?”

Feeling like I was trapped in a bizarre nightmare, I blinked until my eyes settled on Wookie’s gift: a beautiful blue teacup ornament. My fingers traced along the painted flower petals, cold to the touch. Wookie met my tear-filled expression with a smile that made my heart swell. Everyone— most loudly, Yesung and Baekhyun— cooed when I wiped my eyes and muttered my thanks.

Pointing at the big box wrapped in bright red paper, Yesung instructed, “Open mine next!” Before I had even pulled out each record— one by Tiffany, one by Britney Spears, and one by the Backstreet Boys— Yesung said, “Don’t let me forget to send you the videos I got of each artist signing those and talking about how much they love your music!”

I wasn’t quite shocked because Yesung always got the best gifts, but I was beyond flattered that he had gone to such lengths to make me smile. As I beamed at Yesung, the ache in my chest caused by Donghae’s absence subsiding first with Wookie’s smile and then with Yesung’s enthusiastic thumbs up, Mark mumbled to Lucas, “Does this mean that my gift for Lei’s debut anniversary has finally been outdone?”

Lucas shrugged, grinning. “It’s hard to tell. Lei loves Jaemin—” Taemin breathed heavily behind me, and I shorted at the memory of his tantrum— “but Nick Carter, one of the Backstreet Boys, is like Lei’s ultimate pop icon crush.”

Taemin sat on the arm of my chair to admire my gifts— especially the album signed by Nick Carter— and Baekhyun yelled, “Where the hell is Sehun? I want you—” Looking at me, he chewed through the remainder of his candy cane— “to open our gift now!”

Summoned either by his name, or the dread swelling in my gut, or the rolling of my eyes, Sehun walked in from the kitchen. “Lei—”

Sehun’s smirk faltered as his eyes fell on Taemin, whose shoulder was flush against mine.

For years, I dreamed of wiping the smirk from his face; then, once I learned how to, I tried to use my new power sparingly. That moment when Sehun forced his eyes away from Taemin to look at me, something very much like pain darkening his eyes, I squirmed at the thought that maybe he really did like me.

Maybe it had been a game at the start. Maybe I had just been something fun to chase and tease. But to some degree, his feelings must have been sincere. Otherwise, a faint blush wouldn’t have painted his cheeks. He wouldn’t have had to swallow some lump in his throat before forcing himself to continue, “Don’t thank me too much if you like this.”

Sehun snatched the silver-wrapped box from Baekhyun and forced it into my hands without meeting my eyes. “Baekhyun paid for half of it, so make sure you thank him too.”

Knowing that Baekhyun and Sehun had joined forces had me on edge before this weird tension wedged between me and Sehun. I guess there had always been some tension between us; when I thought about it, I couldn’t clearly remember a moment that we had gotten along. I guess his sudden refusal or inability to look at me was just the fulfillment of years of— of whatever we were doing.

I hated Sehun for ruining Christmas before he stood outside my door to say that Donghae wasn’t coming. I hated Sehun for staring down at the gift like that, lips tight in a frown. Except I guess I didn’t really hate him. Nobody wishes for someone they hate to just smile already.

Taemin, still sitting on the arm of my chair, almost sitting in my lap, draped an arm around my shoulder. With a gentle smile and a nod, he reminded me to open the gift.

It was an intricately woven mistletoe crown. A dreaded memory buried too deep, too terrible to describe— the memory some part of me relived whenever Sehun looked at me and teased me— rose to the surface of my mind and stained my face scarlet.

I glared at Sehun, wondering why the hell he would get me something like that, but he didn’t notice. His widened eyes were fixed on the crown. He didn’t blink. Evidently, Baekhyun had been the brains behind this operation, and Sehun had only funded it.

Again, we were united in annoyance toward Baekhyun. I wasn’t even happy about that because it had never been clearer to me that Sehun and I— whatever we were— were not friends.

When I tore my burning eyes away from Sehun, unsure of what to say, I caught the briefest glimpse of Mom dropping something onto the kitchen counter, gasping, before running up the stairs. It always amazed me how quickly she could move in those heels without tripping over the hem of her pantsuit— this time a deep shade of green.

This time, I was stunned by the realization that nobody had been with her in the kitchen. Everyone was either too busy singing and laughing in the living room or watching me open presents. Mom was alone. Always alone.

Cursing Heechul for being late, I started to rise to my feet only to be immobilized by Taemin’s voice. “Oh,” he hummed into my ear as he lifted the mistletoe from its box. “It’s like a little wreath. Pretty.”

In Taemin’s hands, I thought as he admired the mistletoe, perhaps unaware that I was admiring him, it was pretty.

Skipping over and snatching the mistletoe from Taemin to drop it onto my head unceremoniously, Baekhyun corrected, “It’s a crown!”

I’m not sure what led Sehun to try to kiss me, but I believe that Baekhyun must have instigated it because everything is a joke to them.

One second, I was stealing indiscreet glances into the kitchen, wondering what Mom had dropped onto the counter and why it made her gasp, wondering how I would comfort her if it was related to Donghae (as I suspected) when some invisible force struck my heart and filled my eyes with tears every time I thought of him. The next, I was flinching as Lucas screamed “No!” and Sehun’s puckered lips inched closer to mine, agape in utter shock.

Taemin yanked my chair back so quickly that I thought I was going to tumble face-first onto the hardwood floor. The room erupted into shrieks and giggles— the giggles belonging mostly to Mark and Baekhyun— as Taemin wedged his face between mine and Sehun’s.

I don’t know why Taemin decided to intercept Sehun’s kiss when he could have just kissed me. On the one hand, I was grateful that our first kiss wouldn’t be the punchline to Baekhyun’s stupid mistletoe joke gift. Still, as I walked away, my entire being burned with annoyance— no, numb anger— that Sehun stole my first kiss.

From the kitchen, I heard Sehun’s gagging, Taemin’s goofy gasping laughter, Baekhyun’s maniacal cackling, and Yesung’s roar, “What the hell is going on around here?”

Maybe I could have found the humor in the situation had I not first found what Mom abandoned on the counter, still messy from crumbs, candy, and frosting that built Shindong’s and Leeteuk’s gingerbread village: a photograph of all of us— me, Mom, and Super Junior— shortly after Kyuhyun’s addition to the group.

It must have been Donghae’s birthday. We all wore party hats while he wore an obnoxiously large pin that read: Birthday Boy. The picture must have been taken before Donghae’s annual confession; everyone was smiling, even Mom (who usually preferred a closed mouth half-grin). We all looked so young, especially me, wearing a ruffly blue dress, holding a teacup that matched Wookie’s, standing between Mom and Donghae, and staring at Yesung instead of whoever held the camera.

My heart bled with the realization that we would never live in that moment again. It was in the past. And I don’t know that any of us appreciated it enough when it was our present.

Once, I read that you only appreciate the value of a moment once it is a memory. That’s the kind of sentiment that I want to disagree with. The fear that it may be true inspired me to try to form myself into a person who seizes the day, who lives for right now, but I can’t quite do it. I can’t quite disagree with the truth.

Let me be clear: there was never a day that I didn’t love Donghae. Never a day since he greeted me that first time with his warm smile (until those short-lived days of discomfort) that I hadn’t associated Donghae with fondness and security. Yet, I had never thought clearly or deeply about him— I hadn’t really seen him until I noticed his absence, until I felt him drifting away.

I hate that this is the truth: I never knew how much I loved Donghae until I couldn’t call to tell him.

It didn’t matter if he already knew. It didn’t matter that I would have gotten too shy or scared or embarrassed to tell him everything. It didn’t matter that I would always hold something back. I climbed the stairs, heavy with regret, clutching the picture frame against my chest.

I wasn’t crying, I think, because some part of me expected to find Mom sobbing on her bed, face pressed into a pillow. The light was off, and I didn’t dare illuminate what I didn’t want to see— what I heard well enough. Stiff, silent, and awkward, I sat on the edge of the bed, tracing my fingertips along the elegant pattern on Mom’s silky pink comforter.

Of course, I knew that I couldn’t bring the photograph back to life. I knew that there was no merit in dreaming of turning back the hands of time, but I couldn’t shake the thought that if I could go back, I could lessen these present-tense pains. It didn’t make sense.

How might things have been different had I known at age six or seven that Mom was a former trainee? Would I have looked at Donghae differently if I had known all that time that he wanted Mom to be in love with him? Had I known, would I have made all the decisions and formed all the relationships that led me to Taemin in the garden under the moonlight?

I didn’t know. I don’t know.

There was immense discomfort in realizing that I could never know. There was discomfort in believing, even as my mother moved to sob in my lap, that this was still the best version of the universe because this was where Taemin loved me.

There was something bittersweet in accepting that even if this wasn’t the best timeline, even if this wasn’t the best reality, we couldn’t choose where we were born. I hadn’t chosen for life to be this way. There was nothing I could do to change our circumstances; we would have to learn to be happy because of or despite them.

Mom said, “I understand that he—” I understood ‘he’ to mean Donghae— “doesn’t want to see me anymore. Outside of work, that’s his right.” Sitting upright, Mom revealed a small handwritten note in her palm. “But did he really have to send Sehun over here with that picture I gave him for his birthday and this note?”

Initially, my eyes fixated on the red thread bracelet on her wrist, trailing down closer to her elbow. I had never seen it (or anything like it) before. Swallowing the desire to ask where she had gotten the bracelet, I took the note and squinted to read the scrawled writing in the dark.

It’s cruelty was simple. “Choose.”

My brow quivered. Choose what? To be with Donghae or not to be? It seemed to me that Mom made her choice. Regardless of some unspoken attraction to Donghae, she had chosen for fifteen years not to pursue that relationship.

Maybe I just didn’t understand what might compel someone to beg for love, but I thought that at this point, Donghae was prolonging everyone’s misery. Maybe he just couldn’t imagine how difficult it was for Mom to reject him. Maybe the line between sorrow and anger, for me, had become too blurred in the recent chaos.

I was overwhelmed by empathy for Donghae and for Mom. While I couldn’t divorce what I felt for one from what I felt for the other, I would have exploded from acknowledging both at the same time. Maybe because she was the one I understood better, maybe because she was the one crying before me, maybe because she had been with me longer, or maybe just because she was my Mom, the protective rage I felt on her behalf in that moment overshadowed every other emotion I had experienced in my entire life.

I would have had to leave even if she hadn’t calmly instructed, “Go back to the party, Lei. Go have fun with your friends.” Maybe it’s selfish that I couldn’t work through my discomfort to be with her, but I couldn’t stand Mom’s tears.

Even with her permission, I couldn’t quite move. I couldn’t quite leave her until she laid back on her pillow and added, “I just need some time alone to collect myself. I’ll be down soon.”

Spurred by her encouragement, I left Mom’s room, but I didn’t return to the party. Clenching that stupid note in my fist, crinkling the lettering beyond recognition, and carrying the picture frame down at my side, I stormed into my bedroom.

With little consideration of the fact that glass breaks, I slammed the picture face down onto the vanity that once housed the ribbon now donned on Taemin’s wrist. It’s only though some miracle that the metal frame didn’t shatter the mirror.

The glass from the picture frame littered the vanity, crystallized around the vase of flowers Taemin gave me for my debut anniversary (where I had also placed his wilting rose from the garden), spilled onto the pale hardwood floor. I couldn’t even care because all I saw was Donghae’s smiling poster. All I knew was that I couldn’t have that anymore, couldn’t look at it anymore, couldn’t let it look at me for another second.

A part of me that wasn’t satisfied with having destroyed only the picture frame wanted to rip the poster straight down the middle. It was only the tiniest fragment of my mind, but it was so loud that I—

I almost couldn’t hear that most of me sobbed at having shattered something so fragile and precious in a fit of rage, no matter how justified. Most of me wanted to run back to the vanity and try in vain to fit the pieces of glass back together, knowing well that it would never work— the frame would never be whole again, and I would only stain the photograph red with my blood. I just wanted to try to fix it because nobody wants to believe that they have broken something beyond repair.

I didn’t race to the vanity, though. Trying (and failing) to steady my trembling hands, I plucked from the sky-blue painted walls each pin supporting Donghae’s poster. Although I let the pins hit the floor, I caught the poster in my arms just as Taemin filled the doorway behind me and asked, “Why are you taking Donghae’s poster down?”

It wasn’t the first time Taemin saw me cry. Objectively, that night wasn’t any worse than the night in the garden. This time, I wasn’t falling apart. Maybe you can’t fall apart once you know who you are.

When Taemin walked into my room and sat on my bed, looking at me with concern that more closely resembled the curiosity he always reserved for me, I couldn’t quite meet his eyes.

Holding the poster out to him because I didn’t know what to do with it anymore, I explained that it was my first Christmas without Donghae, who returned an old photograph of us with that note I left crumbled on my vanity.

I mumbled, covering my eyes with my hands, “It just hurts to look at him. I don’t want to think about these painful things while looking at him. I don’t want—”

Through my shallow sobs, I couldn't explain that I didn't want the actions of Donghae today to define the Donghae of yesterday, of every day past. Maybe I didn’t know the words to describe my fear that these feelings of rage, bewilderment, and the all-encompassing sense of having been abandoned by another father would permanently taint what I hoped beyond all hopes could be salvaged.

After folding the poster and laying it gently against my pillow, Taemin crossed the distance between us, enveloped me in his arms, and promised again and again— until the words almost lost all meaning— “It will be okay. Everything will be okay.”

I wanted to believe Taemin and feel content to stay in his arms, but I had to do something with the rage bubbling in my gut. I couldn’t express that I was tired of waiting for the day when everything would feel okay. Apologizing, I untangled myself from his arms and barreled down the stairs into the party that was as jovial as it had been when Mom first left to mend her own broken heart.

The goal had been to find Lucas. Feeling better always started with Lucas.

The problem was that I found Sehun first, back pressed to the wall separating the dining room from the living room.

My intentions hadn’t been confrontational or argumentative at first. Figuring that Sehun already knew about Donghae’s gifts as the person who brought them, I thought it was convenient that I wouldn’t have to explain much of the story. Besides, if my temper got the best of me, I didn’t mind having Sehun as a witness; I didn’t care what he thought of me.

Maybe I believed that a tantrum wouldn’t hurt him. Maybe, at least in that moment, I didn’t care if I hurt him because— I acknowledged, glare hardening as he looked at me— Sehun helped hurt Mom.

Quietly, hoping not to attract attention, I said, “I need to talk to you.”

Sehun blinked at me. If he saw that I was upset and had any desire to comfort me, he didn’t act like it. Crossing his arms over his chest, he mumbled, “What’s wrong with you? Can’t find your boyfriend?”

My face burned. “I don’t have time for your games.” Aware that people— namely, Baekhyun, from his place on the couch— were watching us, purely wanting to take the conversation somewhere a little more private, I grabbed around Sehun’s black tie and pulled him out the front door.

The comfort provided by his lack of protest was short lived. The moment I closed the door, shutting us out in the cold nighttime snowfall on the front porch, Sehun tsked, “Your boyfriend really isn’t gonna like that, Lei. You’re a little new to love, so I’ll give you a tip: Don’t grab other guys by the tie.”

I rolled my eyes as Sehun straightened his tie, and, although it was none of his business, I argued, “Taemin is not—”

“Ah,” Sehun wagged a mocking ginger, “I never said a name. You did. So there is something going on there. God—” he shouted at the sky so loudly that anyone in the house could have heard— “I thought you would only look at me like that!”

I gasped at Sehun’s allegation that I had ever felt anything toward him that compared to my love for Taemin.

Maybe— maybe if you promise never to tell anyone, I’ll admit that once upon a time, Sehun made my heart flutter in a way that didn’t make me want to slap him across the face. Maybe I’ll admit in a quiet whisper that over years, he had broken my heart little by little until the Christmas party two years ago when he shattered every illusion I ever harbored about him and dating and boys in general under the stupid mistletoe in a corner of my mother’s house.

Sometimes, I almost convinced myself that Sehun never meant to hurt me. That almost helped me look at him. Often, I tried to believe that the Sehun under the mistletoe wasn’t the Sehun before me, but Sehun (present-tense) was raising his eyebrows, provoking me further on a night when I needed nothing other than a friend. Sehun then was the same person who hurt me on Christmas with little effort.

At once crumbling under the weight of the mistletoe crown I had forgotten was on my head, I snatched it off, eyes watering at the sharp pain of it yanking at my hair. Tossing the crown onto the rocking chair in the corner of the porch, I wondered what good I imagined would come from leaving sweet, loving Taemin in my bedroom.

I wondered what good I imagined would come from talking to Sehun, who remarked, “I guess you’ve really grown up then, huh?”

His smirk annoyed me. “I wish you would,” I muttered, unable to look at him for more than a second at a time. “Really, I wish you hadn’t even come.”

It wasn’t fair. I dragged him outside. What did I expect him to say or do to make things better? What right did I have to lose my temper when I should have known he would do little other than tease me? Stupid. I never should have left my room.

Reaching out for my arm, Sehun argued, “You don’t mean that. You love seeing—”

His touch ignited my anger, temporarily numbing my sympathy for him. Wrenching my arm out of his grasp, I tried to burn Sehun with my gaze. “No, I don’t.” He shrank back, furrowed his brow, and I swallowed my remorse to bark, “It’s one thing to tease me. I don’t like it, but I don’t really expect much else from you. One day, I won’t give a shit what you say. And until then— well— I guess I’ve never been able to stay mad even though you make a fool of me again and again. But I will never forgive you for what you’ve done today.”

When I turned away and reached for the frozen doorknob, wincing as its chill bit through my fingertips, Sehun grabbed me again. He spun me around and lowered his face so it was level with mine, so I couldn’t look away as he asked, “What is wrong with you?”

For a second, or maybe less, I thought he was being serious until he continued, “Are you mad because your boyfriend kissed me? I didn’t ask him to or anything, so—”

“Is everything a joke to you?” There were no traces of humor in Sehun’s features, but I asked anyway. “Why the hell would I care if Taemin kisses you?”

Sighing as I swatted his hands away, Sehun shrugged and stuffed his hands into his pants’ pockets. “I don’t know. You shouldn’t be upset. You were a much better—”

“You’re a real jerk, you know that?” Too furious to stomach looking at him, yet too furious to look away, I stared right into Sehun’s eyes, repulsed by his poorly stifled chuckle as I challenged, “It’s not enough that you ruined Mom’s night, so now you’re bringing up how you ruined my Christmas a couple years ago?”

Sehun stuttered, “I— I ruined—” He coughed. “What’s wrong with your mom?” Genuine concern flickered through Sehun’s eyes before he claimed, “I didn’t do anything to—”

“Oh, no, you just delivered the cruelest gift on Donghae’s behalf, right? Because you can’t resist the opportunity to make me miserable—”

“You’re right!” Sehun’s face flushed red. “My entire world revolves around you! I only came here tonight because I wanted to see you! God only knows why when you always treat me like dirt under your shoes.”

Of course I didn’t quite believe him, but Sehun never looked like a liar. He never sounded like a liar. There was some part of me that had existed for years that always wanted to believe him.

Dropping his hold on me, Sehun huffed, “Maybe if I’d known that Taemin would be hanging all over you like a lovesick puppy or some shit—”

I spoke through my teeth. “Stop talking about Taemin.”

Sehun cut his eyes from me and ran a rough hand through his hair. “Whatever. Keep denying that there’s something going on with him—”

“What do you want from me, Sehun?”

Did he want me to tell him about the ribbon and the night and the garden and all the nights on tour? Too bad. I would never trust him with anything so fragile and precious and dear to my heart. It was mine, and he couldn’t have it. I would never let him have it.

Sehun returned the question to me. “What do you want from me, Lei? Do you want me to apologize for kissing you two years ago? Because I won’t. Should I say that I’m sorry for giving your mom gifts from my friend when I didn’t even know what they were?”

I opened my mouth to say that I wasn’t very interested in hearing what he had to say, but Sehun spoke instead. “Without even telling you, I’ve done so much for you. I’ve carried and guarded so many secrets for you, and you just— I don’t expect you to thank me, but would it kill you to just—”

When Sehun stopped abruptly, I followed his gaze to find that Baekhyun had drawn the blinds to watch us through the window from his place on the couch. Our eyes met. Baekhyun looked away first.

“Whatever,” Sehun grumbled.

Before I could think of anything to say, before I could embrace or deny the burning urge to apologize, Heechul brushed by me to walk inside, I assumed, to find and comfort Mom. I would have followed Heechul inside to escape the fight that had gone too far even if Sehun hadn’t started the walk to his car first.

Sehun must have taken the mistletoe crown with him; it wasn’t on the rocking chair when I searched for it in the dark.

Lucas wrapped me in a bone crushing hug as soon as I walked in from the late night chill. He only released me when I promised, “I’m okay. I’m fine. I just really want to talk to Taemin.” Although Lucas could have teased me, he only nodded and nudged me toward the stairs.

Baekhyun, the only person I thought knew about my argument with Sehun, didn’t say anything. He didn’t even glance up at me from the popcorn garland (that I made with Lucas that morning) that he was eating one piece at a time. If I imagined that Baekhyun could be sad, that’s what I imagined he would look like: eyes downcast, lips puckered into a boyish little pout, cheeks flushed. Had I been well enough to talk, I would have asked what was wrong.

At the base of the stairs, where Kai and Wookie excitedly discussed their favorite holiday songs, I discarded my red heels. Before either of them— or any of the others at the still thriving party— could notice me, I dashed up to my room, shoes in hand.

I don’t know how I knew that I would find Taemin there, sweeping the glass shards around the vanity into a small trash bin. Still standing by the door after I closed it with a soft click, after dropping my shoes onto the floor, I eagerly broke the silence. “I’m sorry I left you here to clean my mess.”

Glancing at the cleaned and reorganized vanity, I saw that he left the folded Donghae poster under the photograph on the same corner where the ribbon had once been. I could only hope that their color wouldn’t fade, that they wouldn’t collect dust for long.

Taemin lightly kicked the bin under the vanity and walked to me. In both warm hands, he cupped my cheeks, and it wasn’t until I looked into his eyes— kind and comforting and sparkling although the only light in my room was the moon’s rays flooding in through the window behind him— that I realized I was crying.

Wiping the tears, Taemin promised, “I’ll always be here to help you clean your messes. That’s nothing to apologize for. It’s okay if you run off and take whatever space you need because I’ll always be here when you come back.”

I wrapped my arms around Taemin’s waist and pulled him against me. I hesitated to press my face against his chest because I didn’t want to stain his clothes with my makeup. There was little room to resist, however, when he drew me closer to his heartbeat, gently combing a hand through my hair.

As if it would make everything better, I said, “I love you.” Taemin probably would have said that he loved me had I not continued, “I really don’t want to go back down to the party.” I didn’t care if I was being cowardly.

“Okay,” Taemin agreed, “then we won’t.”

I hadn’t expected him to stay with me when he could have been downstairs laughing with Kai, but I wouldn’t say anything to convince him to go. Maybe I didn’t need Taemin, but I wanted him.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Taemin asked once we were seated side by side on my bed (which was much bigger than any of our tiny hotel beds), atop a light blue quilt I had owned my entire life.

Glancing away from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, playing on the television mounted on the wall, I met Taemin’s careful gaze and shook my head. “Not really. The last time I tried to talk about this, Sehun and I yelled at each other and traumatized Baekhyun.”

“I’m not going to yell at you,” Taemin said quietly, as if to demonstrate his benevolence. Looking around the room, he joked, “And there’s no Baekhyun in sight!”

Smiling vaguely— and then biting on my lips because smiling didn’t seem right— I admitted, “Aside from all of the Donghae drama, I feel bad for taking my frustration out on Sehun, even though he was being annoying.”

“I don’t think Sehun would have a hard time forgiving you if you apologize.” Taemin disconnected my phone from its charger and handed it to me. When I only accepted it quietly, Taemin added, “I’m not saying that I think you have to apologize. It’s just— if you’re sorry—”

Taemin didn’t even have to know the full context of the argument; he encouraged me to apologize to Sehun only because he thought it would lessen my burden. He thought it would make me feel better.

“Later,” I decided and laid my phone face down on the nightstand. I wasn’t quite ready to face my actions just yet. And, as I told Taemin, “I just want to be with you right now.”

With a nod, Taemin swallowed his concern. Smiling like a child, he pointed at the small white-wrapped gift on the nightstand and asked, “What’s that?”

Once I grabbed the gift, I held it out to Taemin, giggling at his wide-eyed expression. “If you don’t like it—” Taemin shook his head, hair flopping as he accepted the present— “then I’ll be more than happy to keep it!”

The enthusiastic shaking of Taemin’s head stopped only as he admired the opened gift. “Does this—” He tucked my hair behind my ear and traced his thumb over my crescent moon earring as he had earlier in the dining room. Taemin beamed down at the giftbox and boasted, “This matches yours!”

I blushed as he retracted his hand to fit his new earring into one of his piercings. “Yeah. They’re two halves of a pair. I didn’t know if you’d like it, but—”

Taemin lightly kissed my cheek, dangerously close to my mouth, and swore, “I love it,” so I didn’t bother to explain the thoughts that led me to choose the moon earrings as his gift. Because f the way Taemin smiled at me, it seemed that he already understood.

He stood and said, “I left your gift downstairs. I’ll be right back!”

Before he even left the room, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep without Taemin’s embrace. Considering his frequent requests to come over throughout the week, I expected that Taemin would agree to stay until sunrise if I asked. Thinking only of making Taemin comfortable, I tiptoed down the hall to Lucas’s room in search of pajamas.

As I passed Mom’s room and found it empty, I sighed in relief, releasing the breath I hadn’t known I was holding. Heechul must have convinced her to return to the party; he was good at that kind of thing. Although I didn’t quite want to join them, I was glad to imagine Mom having fun downstairs.

When I first ran up the stairs back into Taemin’s arms, a critical part of my mind cursed me for running from the party— for running from Sehun as I always had. However, I decided as I imagined the smile that might settle on Taemin’s face when I asked him to stay, making new memories didn’t count as running. Spending time with Taemin counted as embracing the present, letting go of the past, and looking excitedly toward the future.

As I emerged from Lucas’s closet, clutching a black t-shirt and gray sweatpants, I was caught. Face dangerously close to mine, Lucas asked, “What are you doing?”

The party must have been raging for nobody to react to my ear-splitting scream or Lucas’s subsequent side-splitting laughter.

I wheezed, pressing a palm flat over my chest, “You just gave me a heart attack, Lucas! You should really learn to announce yourself.”

“I didn’t realize I had to announce myself in my own room,” Lucas rolled his eyes. His room— as if he hadn’t occupied a guest room. “I came to check on you. When you weren’t in your room, I didn’t expect to find you stealing from my closet!”

“It’s not stealing.” I tried to walk around Lucas, too embarrassed to explain that I was taking his clothes to encourage Taemin to spend the night. “It’s borrowing.”

Lucas laughed. “Right.” He didn’t block the door; he walked into the hall first, and that allowed him to catch a glimpse of Taemin slipping into my room, gift box in hand. “Oh, I see!” Lucas winked and snorted at my blush. “Tell Taemin he can keep those—” he nodded toward the bundle of clothes in my hands— “if he wants to. He’s pretty sentimental, huh? He’ll want some kind of souvenir of the first time you asked him to spend the night.”

My face burned as I kicked Lucas toward the stairs, giggling as he reacted with a dramatic cry as he ran a hand over the injury.

When I returned to my room, I found Taemin sitting on my bed, a small white-wrapped gift sitting in his lap. I sat by his side and gave him the bundle of Lucas’s clothes in exchange for his box.

“What’s this?” Taemin lowered his head before mine to steal my attention away from his gift.

“Pajamas,” I forced myself to answer casually, delicately picking at tape. “You know, in case you want to spend the night. Here. With me.” Funny. Until I started talking, I didn’t think that I was nervous. Now, I couldn’t seem to stand the silence. How embarrassing.

Taemin smiled at my invitation. His smile grew as he noticed my wide-eyed reaction to his gift: a silver crescent moon hanging on a delicate silver chain.

It’s important to note that Taemin and I hadn’t coordinated our gifts. The only explanation for our matching, I guessed, was that we each associated the other with the moon that watched over us on that first night in the garden. The only explanation was that Taemin and I remembered that night with the same heart fluttering joy. We were on the same page at the same time, and that was rare and beautiful.

“Here.” Taemin lifted the necklace out of its box with nimble fingers and motioned for me to turn my back to him. After struggling with the clasp for so long that I started giggling (which was mostly a reaction to Taemin’s high pitched whining), he finally secured the necklace around my neck. He placed a light kiss to the nape of my neck before turning me to face him.

“Thank you,” I said while tracing my fingers along the cold pendant.

“You’re welcome,” Taemin yawned and wrapped an arm around me. It was a cliche move, I guess, but it was cute enough to make me smile. “I’m kinda tired. Are you sure you don’t wanna go back to the party?”

Accepting my nod, Taemin grabbed Lucas’s clothes and started toward the door, I assumed, to change in the bathroom across the hall.

“Wait!” I blurted as if what I wanted to say couldn’t wait another minute. Maybe it couldn’t. Maybe I had waited long enough. For a few seconds, I sat on the edge of my bed, gathering Taemin’s giftbox and the wrinkled wrapping paper. I was thankful that he had only stopped in his tracks; he hadn’t turned to face me. I don’t know that I could have looked him in the eyes as I confessed, “I want us to be together.”

“Huh?” Taemin gasped when I threw my arms around his waist, pulled his body against mine, and rose onto the tips of my toes to kiss the nape of his neck— the same place where he had kissed me just moments earlier.

Taemin turned in my embrace. “I’ll be right back,” he assured, his lips meeting the crown of my head. “I just have to go change, and—”

Taemin cocked his head when I shook mine. “No, I mean—” I was stuttering, too excited to speak properly. I wasn’t quite nervous— or maybe I was; maybe it was anxiety that tied my stomach in knots. “I have to tell you that I love the necklace, and I love you, and I want to be your girlfriend, please.”

There was nothing to be afraid of. Taemin didn’t even search my face for uncertainty— perhaps knowing that he would find none— before giggling and running his hands down the lengths of my arms. “Is that it?”

I nodded, and Taemin played, “It’s nice that you said ‘please.’ That’s very polite of you.” He must have been excited that I was voluntarily taking this bold step toward him. I wouldn’t have faulted him for teasing me. It didn’t hurt me when he teased me. “I want you to be my girlfriend, too, but not as much as I want to be your boyfriend.”

He looked at me with raised eyebrows, so I agreed, “You can be my boyfriend, Taemin.”

Maybe it was a little silly to be so ecstatic about titles when Taemin and I had been together for those few months that felt like forever, but after he left the room, I smiled so widely that my cheeks hurt as I danced into my pajamas. I was still smiling as I leaped onto the bed, eagerly awaiting the moment when Taemin would fill the space beside me— this time as my boyfriend— when my phone rang.

Should I be embarrassed that, even after the symbolic (dramatic) act of removing his poster from the wall, I accepted Donghae’s call? I’m not embarrassed. You have to understand how much he meant to me. You have to try to imagine how many smiles he planted on my face through years of kindness.

I must have loved Donghae beyond comprehension. At the sight of him, small and smiling on my phone’s screen, every recently born resentment I held toward him was released. I don’t know if I could have clung to my anger even if I wanted to.

Maybe it’s impossible to stay angry at somebody you love. Maybe I was looking for every excuse to forgive him for hurting Mom even if he wasn’t sorry.

I smiled a heavy sort of sincere smile as I greeted, “Hello. Merry Christmas,” with a small wave.

“Merry Christmas.” Donghae mirrored my wave. His smile seemed heavier than mine. “Sehun said you were upset.”

Is that why Donghae called? Not because his Christmas was incomplete without me (like mine was incomplete without him) but because Sehun tattled on me? My heart sank and only rose from the cold depths of disappointment when Taemin entered the room with his brilliant grin.

Careful not to make any noise that would alert Donghae to Taemin’s presence— not wanting him to scold me or Mom because a boy was in my bedroom, a place much more intimate than a hotel room— I placed a finger over my lips and motioned for Taemin to sit on the floor. Because Donghae’s eyes were downcast, he didn’t notice.

Taemin obeyed my instruction to be quiet, but he didn’t sit on the floor as I requested. Gently, he eased onto my bed, sitting down at my feet. I stifled a chuckle, reasoning that as long as he didn’t say anything, there was no harm in Taemin’s small rebellion.

“Lei.” Donghae reclaimed my attention. “I called to check on you. Are you okay?”

Meeting his gaze, I answered, “I’m okay now. I just—” I almost choked on my honesty— “I missed you earlier, and—”

Did I dare to confront Donghae about the photograph? I had to; it wasn’t right to take out my aggression on Sehun without being willing to confront the source.

“I saw a picture of all of us taken at one of your birthday parties years ago, back when I was a little kid, and I guess—” As if to remind me that he was there, that it was okay to be honest even when it hurt, Taemin grabbed my hand and empowered me to admit, “I’ve been sad lately because so much has changed.”

Moments passed in silence before Donghae acknowledged, nodding, “Yeah. Change is inevitable, and it can seem scary. You’re at a time in life where you’re starting to step into the world as an adult— and that’s a very good thing. I don’t know exactly how you're feeling, but I know that watching you grow is scary for me.”

Donghae laughed, so I laughed too. Taemin squeezed my hand.

Donghae confessed, “Lately, I’ve worried that maybe I’ve been a burden to you— like when I overreacted to your dance practice with Lucas or when I lost my temper because your mom trusted the boys in your group to share a room with you.”

I shook my head. “I won’t lie— you kind of embarrassed me. I mean, not so much with Lucas because I don’t care what he thinks, but Taemin—” Taemin’s eyes widened at his name— “I care what Taemin thinks.”

Donghae apologized, and I said, “It’s okay. I don’t mind being embarrassed by you when you mean well. I’d rather have you here to overprotect me than have you stand someplace far away where I can’t see you just because you’re not sure what to do.”

I knew that Donghae skipped the party to avoid his tension with Mom, but I considered that maybe he was avoiding tension with me as well. I didn’t want him to avoid me.

“I’m sorry that I haven’t done a better job of teaching you that always, no matter how far apart we may be from time to time, I love you. You’re like my daughter, Lei, and nothing can change that. If you need me or if you just want to talk, I’m always just a phone call away.”

Maybe because I wanted to— maybe because I needed to— I believed Donghae when he said that he loved me. I just wasn’t quite comforted because, as I told him, “My heart is broken for you. Donghae, I’m not trying to pry into your feelings for Mom—”

Midway through a gulp of water, Donghae choked. Water dribbled from his mouth down to the front of his black t-shirt. Did he not know how obvious his infatuation was?

“— but how could you have returned the picture Mom gave you for your birthday? Did it hurt you at all to—”

“The picture?” Donghae dropped his phone onto the counter. I could hear him shuffling through his living room before he showed his panicked face. “I didn’t return the picture, but I can’t find it. I usually keep it on the mantle above my fireplace, but it’s not there!”

It was evident from his alarm that Donghae was telling the truth. My brow furrowed. “What do you mean? Sehun gave Mom your gift, and—”

“I gave your mom a bracelet like this one!” He held his hand up and pointed to a red thread on his wrist. I had seen one like it before— on Mom’s wrist when she was crying in her room.

Again, I tried to explain what I knew. “Sehun said that he was here on behalf of you and Eunhyuk—”

Donghae’s eyes widened. “Lei, I have to go. I have to call Eunhyuk.”

Did that mean that Eunhyuk had stolen the photograph to give to Mom with that scribbled note? To me, that seemed over the top and inappropriate, but maybe Eunhyuk was tired of watching his friend pine. Maybe interfering (and hurting Mom in the process) was Eunhyuk’s way of rushing the fifteen years of rejection saga toward an ending with no regard for whether the ending would be happy.

Is a sad ending better than no ending at all? I didn’t know.

“Don’t look so sad, Lei,” Donghae begged. “I’ll see you at the New Year’s party. And when I do—” He gestured to a bracelet on his wrist opposite from the one housing the red thread— “I’ll give you your gift: the bracelet that matches this.”

I caught the briefest glimpse of the bracelet’s infinity symbol as I nodded. “Okay, Donghae. Goodnight, and please remember—” his brow furrowed in anticipation— “everything will be okay.”

Donghae and I smiled, I think, because we both believed it.

After saying his final Goodnight and Merry Christmas, Donghae ended the call, and Taemin wasted no time in claiming his place by my side at the head of the bed. Lacing his fingers through mine, Taemin asked, “Do you feel a little better now?”

I probably would have nodded my head even if I still felt terrible, but I felt as if the weight of the world— or at least the weight of Donghae’s fifteen years of heartbreak— had been lifted from my shoulders. It was as I had always hoped: even if Mom and Donghae weren’t bonded in a mutual love affair, Donghae still cared for me. Donghae would still have a presence in my life.

Trusting that Donghae would somehow explain that he hadn’t returned the picture to Mom, I cast that issue from my mind. However matters between Mom and Donghae resolved, I wanted (or needed) to have as little involvement as possible to protect my relationships with each of them.

Cupping my cheek— which I guess was Taemin’s new favorite thing to do— Taemin gushed, “I’m really proud of you. Do you know that?” It seemed like a peculiar thing for a boyfriend to tell his girlfriend, but I guessed I didn’t know much about how real couples talked to each other. Anyway, I appreciated Taemin’s pride in me.

Just as I was about to say something too cringe-worthy to repeat, like, “Are you proud enough to kiss me?” Grandma walked into the room, black sweater sparkling.

It was incredible, really, that after his colossal meltdown that night in the hotel when I said that anyone could catch us sleeping together, Taemin hadn’t thought to lock the door. Although Taemin hid his face behind my shoulder, and my entire body burned crimson in utter humiliation, Grandma didn’t scold us. She didn’t seem surprised, and she didn’t acknowledge Taemin’s presence in any way other than flashing a simple smile.

“Lei, I just came to get my phone.” Grandma approached us only to grab her phone from my nightstand. “Goodnight!”

She locked the door on her way out, but our intimate atmosphere was now laced with tense embarrassment. Our innocence was somehow tainted by her unspoken expectation that something was either happening or going to happen. It was one thing for Taeyong to suspect that something was happening and giggle about it over hot wings; it was another for Grandma to suspect that we were up to no good and, worse, to encourage it.

Face still hidden, Taemin squeaked, “So we’re not in trouble?”

I laid back on my pillow and sighed, grateful that if somebody had to walk in (other than Lucas, Kai, or Taeyong), it was Grandma. “No. Grandma’s not the scolding type.”

She wasn’t the tattling type either, so she wouldn’t say anything to Mom. If Grandma ever told anyone that she found Taemin in my room, it would be Wookie; she would probably wait until next year, when there was less risk of us getting in trouble, to tell Wookie over a cup of tea.

“Besides—” I glanced up at Taemin’s red face— “she likes you too much to get mad at you.”

Taemin lit up, and his blush faded almost all at once. “She likes me?” Maybe Taemin didn’t understand that nobody could get through a conversation with him without falling.

“Not as much as I like you, but—”

I didn’t even get to finish teasing. My words encouraged Taemin to lay himself down and fit his warm body to mine.

I’ll never know why we didn’t kiss that night when it would have been so easy. I guess it must have been the same unknown reason that we didn’t kiss any of those nights on tour in the privacy of our room. Despite the burning urge to lean in and feel his lips against mine for the first time, I kind of enjoyed the wait. Without realizing it, I had waited for Taemin my entire life. Now that he was there, listening to me, speaking to me, holding me, loving me, the wait for a kiss was no real burden.

Taemin fell asleep minutes after his head hit the pillow. He must have been telling the truth when he said that he couldn’t sleep in the SuperM house. With Taemin snoring faintly into the still darkness, I drew a deep breath.

In this perfect moment, there was only one thing nagging in my mind, tying my stomach in knots (as usual): the thought of Sehun.

The urge to apologize to him was like an itch I couldn’t quite reach. And even if I could reach it, what reason did I have to believe that scratching it would make it go away? Isn’t that the worst thing to do when you’re trying to heal— disrupt the injury?

Maybe, a part of me argued, the apology was more like applying medicine. Maybe apologizing would make me feel better, even if it didn’t magically make us friends.

They were rather selfish, my reasons for reaching for my phone to text Sehun. I didn’t care much about making him feel better or receiving his forgiveness; I just knew that I wouldn’t get any sleep unless I tried to satisfy my conscience, unless I tried to untangle the knots in my stomach.

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incoherentbabblings · 4 years

Text

Take Back the Cake, Burn the Shoes, and Boil the Rice (6/11)

Within two months there have been two murders of Gotham newlyweds moments after the ceremony. The only connecting factor was both brides wore the same designer’s work. Needing to establish who exactly is behind the crimes, Bruce enlists Tim and Stephanie to have the biggest wedding Gotham high society has seen in decades, putting a target on their heads not just for the killer, but Gotham society too. It goes about as well as you’d expect.

Ao3 Link Here!

There was something unbearably tender about waking up next to Tim, so much so that Stephanie buried herself back under the sheets in a foetal position until he would leave the room. She repeated this process for every night after patrol, when they collapsed into bed together. Tim had taken to resting on her stomach, even under the sheets, apparently deciding her belly was the comfiest cushion in the world. Stephanie, unable to help herself, would stroke his hair as if he were a cat. He would consistently nod off and wake first, she only ever a few moments after him.

This morning, she felt him rest over her, creating a little bridge over her lumpy form.

It was weird how quickly they had settled into a routine. But they hadn’t quite crossed the bridge yet. They were stuck somewhere halfway, Stephanie’s foot caught in the metaphorical wooden planks. Alone, it was real, in public it was fake. And Stephanie didn’t believe it would continue once the façade had collapsed.

She had not allowed anything more than a kiss on the cheek in private. That day had been difficult and traumatic, and she was trying to comfort Tim. That was all, she told herself. She wasn’t going to play his game.

Continuing their public appearances, they had gone on one coffee date at the college campus, which had consisted of her doing actual work, and Tim redrafting a report for his new community project for the tenth time. It was nice, even with Tim playing footsie with her. They’d sat indoors, but still in sight of the main street, and sure enough when she checked twitter there and then, she saw posts of herself sat at the table enjoying a vanilla hot chocolate.

Mrs van Rijk was entering full manic mode, giving hourly updates to the status of everything Tim and Stephanie could ever not give a hoot about.

“How do you feel about birds…?” Mrs van Rijk had asked last night over the phone. Stephanie had the phone held out in front of them. Somehow, she had ended up pressed against Tim’s chest as they – for a lack of a better term – cuddled on the sofa. Stephanie had swallowed, throat dry, as she reluctantly asked a question in return.

“Like… decorative… birds?”

“No, no. Real ones.”

Stephanie felt like punching Tim and his pinched face as he struggled not to laugh.

Madness.

Back in the bed, Tim rested his cheek on her shoulder, the bed sheet providing the only barrier to the casual intimacy.

“Gotta go to work.” Tim managed to twist his fingers around her exposed hair. “Good luck with the designer today.”

“Mmmkay.” She muttered, shifting a little. She poked her eyes above the duvet, to see Tim was fully dressed in a sharp suit. “Bye, handsome.” She teased, voice rough with sleep.

She then moved back under the sheets, as she sensed Tim would have kissed her on the forehead if she had remained where she was. She realised her little compliment was a mistake the moment she said it.

It seemed Tim did not mind, as he rocked her from side to side playfully.

“Yeah, yeah. Bye, beautiful.”

She tried not to blush. Tim didn’t compliment her appearance much. Steph was Steph and she was perfectly fine no matter what. The casualness of his flirting was both uplifting and mortifying. She had failed to lay down boundaries, and Tim, little weasel that he was, had wriggled his way past them in ways she did not know how to handle.

Last night she had dreamt of something that she would confess to nobody, not even her diary.

Flipping bastard and his dumb hair… and good teeth and pretty hands… long fingers…

Nope. She shook herself, banging her head against the mattress. Nope nope nope.

When they were younger, and when they used to actually get the time to neck like proper teenagers, Tim had a (great) habit of biting and sucking on a part of her neck that would make her shiver in all the good ways. She hadn’t thought about it in a long time, but it seemed her subconscious had not forgotten. Nor had it forgotten how worked up he could make her when the right mood struck him. Stephanie rubbed her ankles together.

Into the vault that dream went.

She still felt her cheeks were warm when she arrived at Rebecca’s apartment. She was alone this time, and had one job: get her hands on Rebecca’s phone.

Easy. Considering it never left the woman’s back pocket or ear.

“Tell me about him.” Rebecca asked, pinning the fabric at Stephanie’s waist a little tighter. As dresses went it was still barebones in structure. No sleeves, and the skirt was not attached to the bodice. Well, Stephanie assumed it was the skirt. At the moment, it just looked like a mountain of netting and taffeta on a desk.

“Tim?”

“Mmm! I always like to hear about the couples.” She snorted a little bitterly. “Let’s me live vicariously through them.”

“You want to get married?”

“To the person I love? More than anything... Like I said, I have to live vicariously through my brides.” She backed off, thick rimmed glasses sitting either on her face as she worked closely on details or up on her head as she looked at the rough fit from a distance. “Tell me about Mr Wayne.”

“Uhh, oopf.” Stephanie struggled to gather her thoughts. “I...we met when he was fourteen and I was fifteen. I was having an argument with my dad… and Tim literally crashed into me. His hair was overly spiky, and he looked like a freshly slapped baby.” She laughed, for the first time in a while, at the thought of that night. “And… we didn’t spend a lot of time alone, but then he hunted me down, little stalker that he was. And then I couldn’t leave him alone after that.” Sighing, Stephanie shut her eyes and let Rebecca do her work.

“When did you know… that you loved each other?”

“I...” Difficult question. “I… don’t know if it’s spread everywhere now, but I had a baby, when I was fifteen.” Rebecca flashed her a look, and Stephanie tried to gather herself. “I found out less than a week after Tim and I started dating. And when I told him, I was so flippant. ‘Cause it was obvious right? He wouldn’t stay with me? And why would he? We’d been on only one date at that point. Nobody would expect a fourteen-year-old to stick with something like that… but he did. And he helped me beyond explanation. For so long I didn’t understand why, but I guess in that moment, for me, it was then.”

“And Tim?”

“Oooft. I don’t know for Tim. He had to leave Gotham for a bit… after the quake… he told me constantly how hard it was for him. I didn’t believe him though until he was having an argument with Bruce, and he blurted it out. The L word that is. That was a shock to my system.”

Rebecca was stitching something along Stephanie’s neck, and Stephanie could feel the hot breath brush over her. Occasionally the needle felt uncomfortably close to piercing through her skin.

“But you weren’t together all the time until now?”

“…No.” She struggled on how to word it. “Everything with his dad… and I had to leave… and then you’re not the same person you were five years ago and you’re tiptoeing around everything…” She sighed sadly, speaking nothing but the truth. “But I don’t want anyone else. I don’t feel safer anywhere than with him.”

The needle finally pierced Stephanie’s neck as Rebecca’s fingers stumbled. Stephanie hissed, losing her footing. She managed to catch herself by gripping to Rebecca’s waist, who seemed mortified at her blunder.

“I’m so sorry! Let me see?”

Being a needle prick, there was no blood to ruin the white fabric. Rebecca huffed and Stephanie laughed uncomfortably.

“No worries. I do it enough to myself when I sew.” Slowly, trying to be discrete, Stephanie let go of Rebecca’s waist, fingers drifting over the mobile which was peaking out of the designer’s cardigan pocket.

There. Done. Fancy schmancy tech implanted. The rest was in Bruce’s hands, and Stephanie could relax a little.

“Mm. Sorry. Back on the stand and back on topic…”

The rest of the fitting passed without issue. Stephanie blabbed about Tim, though left some moments out. No-one, not her mother, not Cassandra, not Bruce or Babs, would know about their date after her father had died. That was for them and them alone. She was very protective of those moments, and potential murderers were certainly not allowed to know of them.

It may have made her and Tim’s relationship seem shallower than reality, but Stephanie didn’t care. She truly believed Tim held them close to, and wouldn’t have wanted them shared.

She was requested to return for another fitting the next week, for fine tuning. Then one more after that, and then it was the day of the wedding, whereupon Ms Andrews would bring the dress on the day, make any last second adjustments, and attend the wedding, with a plus one if she wished.

“No…” She had said. “I try to keep my work and private life separate. I’ll go alone. To see you in the dress… that’s good enough for me.”

Stephanie had only nodded, given her thanks, then left. Rebecca’s phone had rung twice during the sessions, the second of which had Rebecca shiver with fright. More and more Stephanie began to pity the woman. As a result, suggested changes that Rebecca made Stephanie acquiesced to with little argument. The lace became less fine, and more bohemian, and the skirt, if possible, became even longer.

Back at college, Jordanna had moved from being her bodyguard to being a gnat.

“Do you read the comments? On you and Tim’s Instagrams?”

“I try not to.” Stephanie uttered, taking a large bite of her lunch.

“Good. Boy, I spend hours going through them. Some real nasty people out there. I’m surprised you haven’t turned off comments actually, considering what people write.” Stephanie shot Jordanna a look. Jordanna continued, ignorant of her discomfort. “Some of the name calling… oh man.”

Glutton for punishment that she was, Stephanie swallowed dryly. “What… what do they call me?”

“Never you mind.” And Stephanie got slapped on the chin, teeth jangling against each other. “And even if you were a whore, I’d still hang out with you.”

It seemed Stephanie’s expression finally sparked some level of compassion in Jordanna, who swiftly realised she’d spoken out of turn. “Most people like you though. Honest.”

“…I’m going to go now.”

“Aw come one Stephanie… it’s just weirdos online.”

“Bye Jordanna.”

She ended up driving her little purple car back to Wayne Tower again, for reasons unknown to herself. She poked her nose out at the security guard, this one a different guy to the one who had immediately let her and Cassandra in the other day, but he soon let her through when he saw her id. Someone met her in the main lobby, getting her through the gates and into the elevator. He seemed nice, whoever he was, but Stephanie didn’t miss how his smile slipped off his face in the very last moment right before the doors shut.

She tried not to shiver at how cold he looked.

These people didn’t know her, Stephanie tried to tell herself. That was all. It was hard to be kind to something you didn’t know or understand.

Tim loved her. Cassandra loved her. Babs loved her. Kara loved her. Bruce…Bruce loved her.

Stephanie tried to convince herself that they were the opinions that counted. And she had managed just fine before they’d even liked her.

That didn’t mean it didn’t still fucking hurt when people put her down.

Tim was waiting for her again when the elevator doors opened, face more than a little curious, but he relaxed when he saw she wasn’t in tears this time.

She hugged him regardless, breathing in his cologne to try and refocus. Tim gave a muffled laugh and nuzzled into her hair. He’d been flying on cloud nine for a couple of days now, having somebody he loved who loved him back in his arms (in his bed). Tim knew he was being a little possessive, but he was just thankful to have Stephanie’s warmth back in his life, with this time round no chance for Bruce to spoil it. He was trying to have something just for himself. He could be selfish? Right? So long as Steph was willing to be selfish too. Although that bit was certainly a work in progress. How to convince a selfless person to be selfish. A question for the philosophers perhaps.

“All good?” He asked, noticing that she wasn’t entirely relaxed.

Abruptly, to avoid talking about why she had actually come, she conjured a reason to visit.

“Can I see Bruce? I had my fitting this morning.”

“Yeah, sure. Just… can I introduce you to some people first?”

“Oh? Yeah, happy to.”

“Just my p.a.”

“You have one of those?”

“Yup.” He nudged her, as they began walking down to the open office. “There was also a board meeting today. They’re all invited to the wedding– which… yeah – so –”

“Makes sense to at least say hi. Sure, sure.”

She clung once more to Tim’s arm, feeling underdressed to meet some of the most important people in Gotham. Black trousers and converse, she at the very least was wearing a floaty top rather than a sweatshirt.

The p.a. was nice, a lady in her fifties who seemed supremely good at her job and didn’t care who knew it. Mrs Blackwell, Stephanie reminded herself.

“We were all surprised by this, that’s all.” She spoke, sitting primly on the edge of her desk. Stephanie noticed that Tim tensed, like he had been on the receiving end of this conversation before. “We honestly thought… well with how things went with Tam and –”

Tim coughed loudly. “That was just… I was only seventeen.”

Mrs Blackwell peered at Tim. “And what a difference three years makes! Glad to see Tim hasn’t totally forsaken the average people of Gotham for high flying friends.”

Something about that phrase seemed to make Tim very, very, uncomfortable. So uncomfortable that Stephanie likely spoke out of turn to give Tim a moment to collect himself.

“He won’t.” She pushed. “And he doesn’t need me to remind him of that fact.”

Tim wouldn’t give up the costume. Not now. Once, she had known of his conflict. How much he resented Bruce for messing with his head. Making him doubt, making him mistrust. Making him forget there was a life outside of the suit. She had played her part in that, as much as she now regretted it, she knew now the only way Tim would ever stop helping the people of Gotham was when his heart stopped. Stephanie had silently promised herself that she would try to ensure it continued beating for a long time.

“Stephanie’s not average.” Tim choked out. It was a weird part of Mrs Blackwell’s statement to take umbrage to, but Stephanie appreciated it all the same.

“Good response.” Mrs Blackwell teased. She looked over her shoulder, down the office. “There’s still four board members hanging around in room twelve-fifteen if you want to catch them. Believe Mr Wayne is still with them. And Mr Fox.”

A cheeky glint made Tim turn – impossibly – paler. Stephanie didn’t quite understand. Lucius had always been nothing but nice as far as she knew. Was this still about Tam? She didn’t really know what had happened there. Tam had gone to look for him when he was off being Mr Brooding with Mr Al Ghul, they had dated for a bit when they had returned to Gotham, gotten engaged… Which Stephanie knew was just because Vicki Vale was the most flustering person on the planet and Tam had panicked trying to cover for Tim… not that it had stopped Stephanie’s stomach from dropping out her butt and becoming intensely jealous when she had no right to be. She had felt the same when she had first returned and Tim was dating Zoanne. She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t stand the thought of Tim being happy with another girl. She had flirted when she shouldn’t have. In her head, it meant that he had moved on, never really mourned her. Maybe she was too possessive over him.

It wasn’t logical, and she had no right at the time to feel what she did, but she wanted Tim with her, hypocrite that she was. It was just another thing she disliked about herself. Tim deserved to be with whomever made him happy. Simple as. Somehow, he’d convinced himself that she was that person again, but he’d soon wake up and remember what she’d done to him, how self-absorbed she could be.

Stephanie didn’t know why Tim and Tam had broken up, but she suspected it had something to do about Lucius’ public death being faked.

Funny how that sort of thing didn’t do well for relationships.

Tim wasn’t fickle…that wasn’t the right word, but he could change his mind very quickly, regardless of the consequences or who was left behind afterwards.

As Tim led Steph to the board room, she couldn’t help whisper, “You still work with Tam right?”

“…Yeah…”

“She still mad at you?” She tried to tease gently, but her tone didn’t quite match her intention.

Tim only glanced at her and grunted, pulling the door open for her to walk through first. Bruce was seemingly fast asleep on one of the chairs, the other four board members, one woman, three men, were chatting quietly amongst themselves whilst the CEO slept. Lucius was the first to notice that the pair had entered.

“Oh!” He exclaimed. Bruce opened one eye, eyebrows twitching when he saw who it was. Lucius made his way forward with a hand for Stephanie to shake. “Miss Brown! You came to visit?”

Stephanie breathed a relieved sigh, and smiled. There were three friendly faces in this room, so that was manageable.

“Yes,” She said, shaking Lucius’ hand in what she hoped was a confident manner. “Finished with college for the day.”

“She had a fitting this morning, for the dress.” Tim gushed, and Stephanie smiled shyly.

That caught the lady’s attention. She had moved to a refreshments table, grabbing them both a drink of water. “Tell me about that.” She encouraged, wrapping an overly friendly arm around Stephanie and pulling her down next to Bruce, who smiled somewhat encouragingly at her. The other two men went to speak to Tim, not really pretending to be interested. One of them bumped past Stephanie as if she was in the way.

“Stephanie, this is Theresa Song.” Bruce explained. “She started here before I was born.”

“I was only sixteen, but back then, you joined a company and worked your way up the old-fashioned way.” She laughed, and Bruce returned to closing his eyes. Stephanie took it as a sign that this woman was safe.

“I wish it was still like that.”

“Oh yes, but that’s what our employee programmes and scholarships are for. I hear you help out at Dr Thompkins clinic.”

Stephanie glugged water. “Leslie? Yes, she looked after me for a while, I do what I can to pay her back. Not that I ever can…really… But yeah, I try to do Friday evenings.”

“That’s good! College, volunteering…”

“Part time job at the library too. Oh, that is a lot.” That plus the night work. “I have…I have had to defer college for a bit… going part time for the moment. At least until this wedding stuff is done.”

Theresa shrugged. “Whatever needs doing right?” She looked back at Bruce, kicking his chair. The seat swung round, and Bruce just hummed in affirmation, eyes still closed.

Theresa made a disgruntled noise, then shouted across the room. “Timothy!”

Tim bumbled over as the two other men left. Stephanie didn’t miss the sideways glances at her. One looked like he was leering. When Tim got close enough, she reached up for his hand. He began to play with her fingers, rubbing her knuckles in a way she used to like.

“Hey, Theresa.”

“Where on Earth did you two meet?”

“Just… ran into each other in town.” Tim perched himself on the glass table.

“You literally crashed into me.” Stephanie chirped, not missing Bruce’s lip twitch.

“You must be so proud, Bruce. All these people finding their way to you despite adverse circumstances. I mean, Stephanie, your parents... And your pregnancy, and I heard about what you went through during the gang war... Terrible stuff you’ve had to overcome. Thank goodness for Bruce, right?”

At that Bruce opened his eyes and stood up. “I think Stephanie would have done just fine without me, to be honest. I didn’t help much.”

“Mm.” And she turned back to Stephanie, noting that Bruce was ending the conversation. “All the best to you both.”

“Thank you.” Stephanie uttered, feeling Tim acting like a block of ice behind her. “Bruce? Can I have a quick word?”

“Of course.”

And then Theresa left. Only Mr Fox remained, having been listening in.

“She seemed... nice.” Stephanie tried to sound positive.

“Oh, she is.” Said Lucius, who then joined the trio at the table. “Until you’re on the other side of her on the voting panel, then she’s a beast.”

Tim snorted, and Bruce poured himself another glass of water.

“The tech for the phone is working, I got the information I needed.”

Stephanie started at Bruce talking so openly about the mission, but she supposed Lucius must have provided said tech in the first place.

“How’d you get on her phone anyway? You said it’s never out of sight?” Tim asked, collapsing into the chair Theresa had been occupying.

Stephanie rubbed her neck. “She stabbed me with a sewing needle. Made me stumble.”

“Intentionally stabbed you?”

“Heh. No. I said something which I think upset her, her fingers slipped.”

“What?”

Tim watched Stephanie’s face grow red from embarrassment.

“You… it… She was asking about our relationship. She asked me about why we loved each other…I said…” She looked at her feet. “I said that I felt safe with you.” She practically vomited the words out, quick, slurred and quiet. However, Bruce heard it all the same, and ignored the blinding smile that Tim gave.

Lucius watched Tim’s face, then tutted quietly to himself. Bruce meanwhile focused on the mission.

“I’m going to find this boyfriend tonight. Investigate his living circumstances, his employment history, all of it. I don’t know how deep she’s tied up with him.”

“So, it is the same guy as the domestic dispute calls from years back?”

Bruce shook his head. “No. That one was arrested last year. Seems some people just attract—”

Stephanie coughed loudly, refusing Bruce the chance to finish that damning sentence. “She’s terrified, and she’s being used to hurt people. Please track this guy down.”

Tim looked at the clock, not liking where the conversation was going. “I’m gonna head off now. You coming?”

Steph nodded, following Tim to the door. “I’ll drive behind you. Bye Bruce, bye Mr Fox.”

“You two live together?” Lucius asked, a little baffled. The pair looked back at the two older men, unsure what Lucius was getting at.

“Uh, yeah. At Tim’s.”

“Oh. So, it’s… pretty serious then.”

Instantly Tim and Stephanie were as red as apples. “Bye Lucius. Have a good weekend. See you later Bruce.” And then Tim hurried Stephanie out and into the main office space.

When they arrived home, Tim peered in his fridge.

“… Hmm. I’ll order takeout. Pizza or Chinese?”

“Chinese.” Steph replied, hanging up her coat. Before Tim could hunt for the menu, Steph stopped him, hands on his waist.

“You were embarrassed today.”

“A little.”

“…About me?”

“What? No. Not you.”

“But you got so angry at the Bishop, when he looked at me funny. And then when Mrs Blackwell said I was less than your usual social circuit. And then Theresa saying I was lucky Bruce found me… and now Lucius being surprised that you actually like me…What is it?”

She was looking at him like his next words better be chosen carefully, or another argument would ensue.

“I guess I’m like you. I don’t want to hear what other people think about us. It’s private. But we have to make it public. And I…am conflicted about it.”

Earlier conversations sprung to mind, and with it came a sudden opportunity. Impulsively, without a moment’s thought, she latched on to it.

“You don’t like being in the public eye. You don’t like our relationship being there for everyone to judge.”

“No.”

“Then – then why are you? You don’t have to be. If you’re feeling pulled in so many directions, then just… just… drop one of your responsibilities.”

Tim blinked, not sure what to make of this sudden manic behaviour. He tried to be a voice of reason. “I can’t drop being Red Robin.”

“And I would never ask that of you. But there are other options for you aside from heir to Wayne Enterprises, right? You can quit. And we could—”

“We could what?”

Now Stephanie had to choose her words carefully. Tim held onto her elbows, looking increasingly upset. “Steph, I help a lot of people during the day, and where I am, being in that position under Bruce… it’s the best place for me to try and make like…structural changes. Busting drug rings and human trafficking, that’s good, but stuff like the Park Row project stop people becoming that desperate in the first place.”

Her burst of impulsiveness settled, and she felt ashamed for even having thought she could push Tim away from helping people.

“I’m sorry. You’re right. I just… I had a moment there, where I was being selfish. I’m not going to ask you to give up anything. I’m not worth that.”

Tim looked as though something she had said had triggered a thought in his mind.

“You can be selfish…” He whispered. And then he tugged at her arms. “Come on. I wanna show you something.”

He pulled her upstairs, into his room, where he asked her to wait a moment. He disappeared into his closet, whereupon Stephanie lowered herself onto the bed, shuffling so she was sat in the middle, cross legged. At the end of the bed was the cursed duck, sitting with its triple chin and beady eyes on full display. It seemed to migrate across the room, ending up in slightly different positions every time Steph saw it. She was partially convinced it was a possessed toy. Watching her, judging her.

Fucking duck.

Tim returned with two boxes, one substantially larger than the other. He set both on the bed, blocking her view of the duck, then clambered on in front of her, resting on his shins. He held out the smaller box.

“I bought this at the same time as the engagement ring.”

Stephanie opened the box, noting that her hands were shaking, and found a ruby bracelet inside. It was polished uncut gems, engraved with birds flying across a landscape.

“Is this…is this better than the ring? I thought when I was buying it that it wasn’t too bad. I tried not to get you anything you would hate, but I guess I overestimated myself. The bracelet is better though, right?”

He sounded so much like an insecure child in that moment, that Stephanie didn’t know how to respond. It was just…too much. Especially for someone like her.

“Tim…” She sighed, reluctant to even touch it. “It’s… why did you buy this?”

“Red birds…isn’t it obvious? Look, I’ll help put it on.” His touch was gentle, as it always was, cool but not entirely confident. “There.” He rotated her wrist in the dim light, smiling nervously. She was just staring blankly at it, giving away nothing.

Finally, she smiled. It looked fake, but trying to avoid an argument, Tim let it slide.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. One more thing.” He dragged the next box over. Steph huffed.

“Oh, Tim, you’ve never needed to buy me stuff. That’s not why I—”

“I didn’t buy this.” He interrupted. He was trembling, so wound up with nerves. This might end badly, but he wanted to prove to her how serious he was about the whole thing. With this, she might understand that he wasn’t leaving her once the mission was over. He was desperate to get a fresh start, prove to Bruce that he was fine, he didn’t need to be monitored, to have Dick stop looking at him like he was a puppy five days away from going mad with rabies. Another Jason Todd in waiting.

Being with Steph made him feel lighter, made him remember who he really was. He wasn’t willing to let that go, not when he knew she was so close accepting she was enough to hold him to her.

“Close your eyes.” He urged.

“Tim.”

“Please. For me.”

Stephanie did as she was told, listening to Tim rustling around. Then, weirdly, she felt him very solidly place something on her head.

Her eyes shot open to the sight of Tim kneeling up, very carefully and precisely placing what felt like a very heavy headband on her head.

“It was my mother’s…” Tim murmured, kneeling down to see what it looked like head on. He began to play with her hair, arranging it just so. Stephanie looked on in a continued shock. “It’s old, in case you were wondering, mom left it to me. Left all her jewellery to me, actually. Guess she didn’t want my dad to give it all to his next wife… Wouldn’t have made a difference in the end but..”

Stephanie reached up and held his wrist, reassuringly. She was here, she had returned to him, even if his parents had not.

Tim took a shaky breath. “I want you to have them.”

“As your fiancée?”

“As whatever you choose to be. These are for you to keep.”

She looked to the side, to where Tim had a mirror taking up a section of the wall. The tiara was golden and round, nearly a circlet, with amethysts around the base and three larger ones providing the focal point. Small pink flowers and leaves encircled the stones, with each flower having a round diamond in the centre. It was not overly sparkly, it was not ostentatious. It was beautiful, and Stephanie felt so out of place wearing it her emotions once again got the better of her, and her chest rattled with wet breaths. Tim looked in love and smiled. It was such a pure delighted smile that she couldn’t help but reach for him, expression mirroring his, albeit much wobblier.

Pulling her onto his lap, she straddled him, legs splayed either side of his hips. As a result, his head was tilted upwards, and he looked more than a little star struck.

“You look like a princess.”

That made her smile falter, and she looked away from him.

“Baby, I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. I told you, if you want to be selfish, do it here. You have me. I told you. Even if the rest of the world gets nosy or rude… tell me it outweighs moments like this?”

He cupped her cheeks, and Stephanie relaxed, letting him carry her weight. Tim smiled, seeing she was thinking over what he was offering.

“We both know we’re not getting married for real in a couple of weeks. But we can just delay it. We don’t have to get married now, ‘cause yeah, we are only twenty, and we don’t ever have to get married, if you don’t want to. But Stephanie, I want to be with you. And you want to be with me. Don’t tell me the past few nights, being next to me, don’t tell me they haven’t been –” Tim broke off, frustrated at his inability to explain himself.

“…Keep going.” Stephanie whispered.

“Listen, all I can say is what I’m feeling and I… I love you. I always have. And I watched you ignore me and Bruce’s put downs, I watched you screw up again and again, and I watched you claw all that respect back. And now I can’t stand the thought of you being with someone else. My head feels clearer ‘cause I know you’ll pull me in the right direction if I misstep. You know me, warts and all, and I’m jealous over you. God, I’m so… And I don’t want people watching. I don’t. They don’t know you like I do, and they don’t deserve to. But I want you with me. And that hasn’t changed. It never has. I don’t know how to make you believe that, so I thought…with my mom’s stuff you’d see... Please. You’re not selfish Steph… I am. I want the day job with all its perks and downfalls, and I want to be Red Robin. And I want you next to me for all of it.”

The pair were silent for a long moment, as Stephanie processed what he said.

“…I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“All of these people, looking at me…Dismissing me.”

“Prove them wrong! It’s what you do!”

He meant it encouragingly, but it seemed to trigger Stephanie’s temper.

“I’m tired, Tim!” She yelled. “I am tired of having to do that. Why can’t the world cut me a break for once? Why should I have to prove I’m not a whore, or an idiot, or that I’m capable, or that I really love you? Why does it matter to anyone else? Why can I not even get through one day without someone trying to make me feel three inches tall? Even if I had you, and I do have you, I know that, I still see how much everyone’s watching me. I’ll slip up and you’ll remember what went wrong last time. It’s what I do. And I’m tired.”

“I can’t give you that motivation, Steph.”

“No.” She sniffed, pulling and picking at her nails. “I tried so hard. And then being with you… it’s like being flung back six years. Everyone doubts me. I’m not strong enough to do it again.”

“You’re blaming me?” Tim asked, looking a little horrified.

“I’m blaming the society you fly in.”

“I need that to do my job.”

“I know. That’s why I can’t… you won’t be able to stay with me. I’ll just dr—”

“You are not a burden.” Tim breathed, chest heaving. “I don’t know how to make you see that.”

“You shouldn’t have to.”

“No but I love you and –”

“Tim…”

“And I don’t like seeing you like this!” He laughed incredulously. “God and I thought I was a mess!”

He shouldn’t have said that, and he knew the moment he did. Any other day, Stephanie’s anger would have spiked, and she would have screamed and maybe even hit him, but now, she just looked like he had completely broken her heart. She took off the tiara, no wanting to indulge the conversation.

“Forget it Tim.”

“No, Steph, you’re not –”

“No, I am. And it’s not fair to you to wait around for me to get my shit together. It ruined us last time it’ll ruin us now. I can’t help you and you can’t help me.” Stephanie rolled off the bed. “Going on patrol.”

“No, wait.” Tim began to panic, and in a moment he would later deeply regret, grabbed Stephanie and threw her struggling form against the wall, pinning her. She began to fall to pieces, shoving and clawing for him to let her go. What little pride she had left in herself didn’t want her distraught emotions to be seen by anyone.

“Leave me alone, Tim!”

“No! You always do this, you can’t lock yourself away when things get inconvenient.”

“Oh, fuck off!”

“No!”

“Let me go!”

And then she slapped him. And Tim flinched. And they both fell silent. There was guilt on her face, one that seemed to be eating her up inside, but then it clamped shut, and her expression became blank.

“I’m leaving now.”

Feeling he was making another mistake, he let her go downstairs to his little birds nest. He should have followed her. He should have known she was over emotional and panicked, and with Stephanie that was a recipe for disaster. He should have called Cassandra to watch over her, if he couldn’t bring himself to do so. He had his own patrol to go to.

Instead Tim laid down on the floor, utterly taken aback by how the evening had gone, and tried very hard not to cry.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, when his phone began to buzz. The Titans were calling him.

So tired of having no one to talk to about this, he answered the phone.

Stephanie collapsed on the stairs of Tim’s own Batcave, right hand sodden from tugging open the switch which Tim had hidden in his little fish tank. He had shown her how to get in months ago. Just in case, he said.

He’s trusted her with access to his space. Months before any of this nonsense had kicked up again. He’d been letting her back in. And she’d crumbled once more, and kicked him out.

If there was one thing Stephanie was incapable of being, it was cold. Her sarcasm was light and fond, her concentration was witty and playful, her joy was dazzling, her anger was blinding, and her grief was all consuming.

If she was trying to be cruel, it wasn’t working. She was sobbing, every piece of self-loathing pouring out of her like her scars were still open wounds. Her legs gave way, and she folded down into herself. She began to pull at her hair and cover her ears, shaking her head from side to side.

She needed to leave the apartment, and Tim. Just for a bit. Until she could forget what his bed sheets smelled like, until she forgot how stupid being with Tim made her feel.

For God’s sake, she was Batgirl! She wasn’t an insecure sixteen-year-old hunting for approval from anyone who would look her way. She was better than this.

Stephanie pulled herself upright and ran over to where she had – temporarily – stored the Batgirl suit. Still sniffing to herself, she got dressed, and rode off, hunting for someone to beat her own pain onto.

#tim drake #stephanie brown #timsteph #my fic tag #dc

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sciencelings-writes · 4 years

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The Golden Birdcage

A quick fic of my ocs in my fantasy au type of thing - This one features Rose and Adisa mainly but if there is any interest at all, I’ll write in more of my ocs

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Rose dreaded the coming day, more than she dreaded any normal day. Today she cemented her place in the monarchy of the high fae. Before she was just a princess, an heiress, a disappointment. But today she was forced to step up to start taking power over the people she was destined to rule.

She was sure that she wasn’t the only one to dread it, she’d never really been popular among her people. She wasn’t born with a power that was seen as honorable or anything. While her mother could create massive crystalline spherical shields that protect the thousands of miles of their kingdom and her father could harness the power of their sun with powerful blasts of energy that could decimate armies, Rose could only heal. Sure, healing was an important and necessary power, but for a royal sunborn fairy? It was incredibly weak for the royal line, which was known to be the most powerful of the fae. There were rumors of her not being a true heir, being adopted, or a product of infidelity, but they were false, and there was no conceivable reason that she was born the way that she was.

For years she held her head up high and ignored those who looked at her like she was less than anyone else. She could not retaliate or express how she felt about it to anyone, not even her family. But it got so tiring. The only time she could rest was after she was dismissed for the day and could be herself alone in her room without any serving fae. She would take off her corset and release the tightest parts of her elaborate braids. She would let out the pent up emotions that she had been keeping inside all day, usually by writing which would be promptly burned with a candle or she would release her frustrations by sparring with a dummy. She always felt better with a sword in her hands.

But today would be worse than any of the days before. Not only would she not be alone for a single second, but it was one of the biggest days of her life and there was a lot of pressure on her. She had spent weeks preparing herself. Writing and memorizing a speech that she would have to recite in front of thousands of very important people, rehearsing the ceremony a dozen times with her mother pointing out a flaw every time. Sometimes it was something small like a hair out of place or a break in her facial expression, or a wrinkle in her dress, and sometimes it was detrimental like when she forgot a word or she stuttered causing her mother to yell at her. A stutter meant weakness and a mistake in words meant a lack of preparation, both of which were not a good sign in a new leader. Rose had always been sick of the perfection demanded of her.

Since the moment she woke up, she had been attended to with a handful of her servants focused on different parts of her appearance. Three doing her hair, two doing her makeup, and two more working with her clothes. She didn’t love being crowded at the best of times but this was definitely not comfortable for her in the slightest. She could barely breathe, her skin was covered in golden paints and powders, and the heeled shoes she had to wear everywhere was just the tip of the iceberg. She already deeply anticipated the end of the day when it would all be over and she would be free.

What made the day more bearable was that she was friendly with her servants. She wouldn’t call them friends but they respected each other and gossiped about anything that was going on in the palace. They were some of the only people who talked to her like she was a person and not a princess under the protection of the most powerful fae in the lands. They learned not to be afraid to joke around with her and be upfront with her as they were fully aware that she had no plans to punish them for not agreeing with her at every point. She knew that not all of them were on board with her becoming the queen but they still encouraged her and let her be at least slightly open about her feelings about things like food and music. She wouldn’t dare let their conversations stray close to topics she was more passionate about where she might let something more unsavory slip.

They arrived early in the morning when the shields were still dark. They were much more excited about the day than she was. Their excited chatter echoed throughout the pale stone halls enough to wake her several minutes before they even arrived. She relished her few moments alone before she was to be swarmed with familiar faces.

The handful of assorted fae scrambled in, a man adorned in indigo who was in charge of her dress and was the best at tying up her corset all nice and tight with barely enough room to breathe, a few older women in orange and violet respectively who would weave her hair like it was a decadent tapestry to place in the throne room to be showed off to prestigious guests, a young woman and a young man tasked with turning her face from pale and freckly to a work of art.

Rose was embarrassed to say that she didn’t know their names, not because she didn’t care to know but because she was just horrible at that kind of thing and had forgotten. Now after years of service, she was too afraid to ask. She remembered that the older women had grandchildren that worked in the kitchens and at the market and that one of them used to sing as the castle bard but pairing them with names was harder for Rose to remember. She was pretty sure that one of them was named Hesta but she could never remember which one it was.

“Good morning!” One of the elder fae sing-songed, “Today is the day!”

“It sure is isn’t it…” Rose said less than enthusiastically.

“Well now, don’t be nervous!” The serving fae collectively dragged her to get to work. She did her best to follow along and work with them but with all the chaos, she had a bit of trouble. Within seconds there were brushes passing through her orange and white hair and powder already being applied to her face. She rested her hands on the poles on both of her sides in anticipation for when the corset was to start its asphyxiating process.

“I’m not nervous…” She gained a few trivial stares when she said it, “Okay, yeah, I’m a little anxious this isn’t exactly a small thing.” She sighed.

“Of course, but you’ll do fine. You’ve prepared so much, I’d frankly be surprised if you managed to breathe at an imperfect moment.” The older fairy chuckled.

“Yeah, I know…” Rose took a couple of deep breaths, it didn’t help but it made her look more in control. She gripped the posts tightly and planted her feet on the ground as the white corset started to squeeze her organs. “It won’t all be bad, I guess I’m going to have to start to get used to being stared at.” She grunted at a particularly violent pull of the threads.

“You’ll do fine princess. You’re much stronger than they say that you are. Believe me.”

***

After several painstaking hours, Rose emerged for the pre-coordination ball in the ceremonial flowy iridescent white and gold gown. Her pearlescent pale segmented wings emerged from the openings in the white drapery that trailed behind her. She wore her small gold winged crown that would be replaced with a bigger more elaborate one during the ceremony. Her hair was braided tightly in a beautiful if a little painful bun style with ribbons coming from a flowery hairpiece made of pink and gold lilies and full white roses. Her makeup was filled with warm pinks with gold details framing a golden sun painted on her forehead. Her pointed ears were adorned with gold earrings linked with chains and dangling white opals.

She had to admit, the look was impressive. She looked like a celestial sun goddess and it made her feel better from how painful it was to achieve. She fluttered through the air to the dark chamber for the hour of meditation before the first ball. She was only left alone to wait for a few seconds before a voice broke through along with the sudden sounds of muffled crowds from the nearby rooms as the door opened and closed.

“You’re slouching.” Roses mother announced from behind her.

“I don’t think it’s possible to do so your highness. This corset feels like it’s made of steel and melded to my body.” She said bluntly.

“Your posture includes your neck darling.” The red-haired queen of the sun fae walked around her daughter as if she was inspecting her for a single piece of lint.

“If I had my neck any more vertical I wouldn’t be able to see the floor.” She sighed. When her mother looked satisfied she placed herself in front of her.

“You look…” Rose waited for her mother to nitpick something, saying that she looked like a golden pig or a crane in a dress. “Like a queen.” Rose raised her eyebrows in shock. That was probably the most positive thing she had said in weeks.

“Don’t mess up your makeup!” Her mother demanded, back to her old attitude again, nothing good could last for very long apparently.

“I could sit through a hurricane and my makeup wouldn’t even smear.”

“It’s almost time. I have guests to attend to, do not be caught off-guard.” Her mother demanded, “We have practiced this a hundred times, you would have to be an idiot to get something wrong.” Rose tried not to feel hurt from the comment.

“Thanks.” She grumbled.

“Do not miss your cue!”

“How would I miss it, Someone literally yells my name.”

“I’m sure you’d find a way.” And with that, her mother traded places with a guard in golden armor.

Rose closed her eyes to start the hour of meditation. Others in her place have claimed to see visions or deceased members of the royal family or even the sun herself. For the first half-hour, she just saw the back of her eyelids. Pure darkness. She had to let her mind wander or she would fall asleep or worse, get bored. She focused on the warmth of her magic through her veins, it was the warmest at her palms, like she was holding hands with someone. The comforting warmth combated the unnatural darkness around her.

After an eternity of all-encompassing silence, she heard a voice. It was quiet but in the impossibly silent room, it was as clear as day.

“You’re being wasted here.” the voice was deep and female. Blunt, like she was stating a fact. “They can’t help you. This place is killing you.”

Rose wanted to answer out loud but she knew the voice was in her head and she was acutely aware that she wasn’t alone in the room. She didn’t expect the things she would hear in there to be so… real.

“She’s suffocating you. You were meant to be free.”

‘I want to be free.’ Rose tried to manifest the pure yearning through her thoughts to whoever was speaking to her.

“You will be freed. Are you willing to pay the price?”

‘I’m going to be free if I have to do it myself. I’m sick of not having any control over my own life! I don’t care about your price.’ Anger started to bubble in her chest, the normal heat generated from her powers was amplified by the years and years of rage that had built up.

“I like you, princess,” The voice chuckled, “I feel like you’re going to be a great ally.”

Rose heard something beyond the voice, like in the world outside of her mind. She opened her eyes and the dark room was no longer dark in the slightest. Glowing gold and pink clouds swirled around her and she emitted a golden light from her skin and eyes. The guard was huddled in the corner with his eyes wide. He looked afraid. For some reason, this gave Rose a powerful sense of euphoria.

Unfortunately, as soon as she had realized her power around her, it started to regress. The swirling clouds started to slow and her skin started to fade. Not before the door opened though. The chamber’s main door opened to the ballroom, filled with every important fae in the Dawn and Dusk kingdoms. They all saw the thick clouds exit the room as she did and even more bazaar, she was smiling. Not like the polite smile she had practiced all her life but one of true genuine delight. Even her mother was staring.

Rose walked out of the dark room and to the balcony for all to see. The room was quiet. The music had stopped playing. Not out of respect but out of shock. After a long enough moment, someone very familiar spoke. The voice front the dark chamber.

“Now that was quite the entrance, Princess.” A fairy approached from the crowd dressed in black and green wearing a white mask that featured a long beak.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Rose's mother announced as she stood up from her golden throne.

“Don’t interrupt your majesty.” The strange fae spat. “I’m sure you’ll want to hear me out.” The queen managed to control herself and she sat back down. The dark room fairy waved her hand which caused a green intricate witches circle to appear at her feet and dark black clouds to swirl around it. Gasps erupted from the room. This wasn’t a fairy at all. A witch had snuck into one of the most important fae places. The natural enemies of the fairies were the magic folk and one had managed to slip into a major fae event.

The witch’s dark thunder clouds expanded throughout the massive room and her glamour faded. Her green butterfly wings turned into huge black feathered wings. Her curly brown hair cascaded off of her shoulders from their hiding spot and a black cloak waterfalled from her shoulders. A black staff topped in a birdlike skull appeared in her hands. Rose thought that she was so incredibly beautiful in the most unorthodox way.

“Relax relax,” The witch bellowed. “I’ve come bearing a gift for the princess. Better than any gift the fae could hope to offer her.” She disappeared in black smoke and appeared right next to Rose. But she wasn’t afraid in the slightest. Both the king and the queen stood abruptly at this action.

“I have a purpose for you. The lost Fae Princess needs to be found, and who better to find her than her sister! The caged bird will be trapped no longer.” The witch grinned. “Oh, and if you refuse-” she pointed her staff at the king and queen and they were covered in smoke. Once the smoke lifted it looked like nothing had changed but by the look on the monarch’s faces, something certainly had. “Your kingdom will remain unguarded and unprotected by the most powerful among you.” Surely enough, when Rose looked out the glass windows, the crystalline shielding around the palace was gone, without the shields, there was no night and day. Only the eternal light of the sun blazing onto the lands. “I’m sure my kind would be enthused to know of your newfound vulnerability.”

Rose stayed silent. She wasn’t afraid of the witch, she had been taught that the magic folk were wicked and scheming. But though the appearance of this witch was sinister and destructive, she was giving Rose exactly what she wanted under the guise of it being to lift a curse. She wasn’t just giving Rose a way out, but also a purpose, a quest, an adventure, a sister? Rose had only heard rumors of a lost princess but she thought they were just that, rumors. Like she was not her father's daughter despite having his white hair woven through the red she had inherited from her mother.

“You won’t even be alone on your journey. For a price, I will give you an object that summons me whenever you need me. I am nothing if not giving.”

“What kind of price?” Rose raised her eyebrow, speaking for the first time since the witch appeared.

“A small price for my help. All I ask for is a kiss.” The witch smirked, as if she didn’t expect Rose to take up the offer. The crowd had gasped, a kiss from a witch was said to be cursed. It was like signing a contract with the devil. But Rose didn’t need the promise of help from the woman, she would’ve kissed her anyway for freeing her.

“Deal.” The witch looked a little surprised but she laughed as all the onlookers looked horrified. Rose however was not remorseful in the slightest. The sooner she could leave her mother's presence, the better. Rose knew the corrupt nature of the fae more than anyone and she was sure that they wouldn’t even miss her.

“Wonderful. Now, you can’t go on a quest looking like that!” The witch spoke directly to her instead of projecting to fill the whole room. She gently lifted Rose’s chin with a dark claw-like finger and their lips met.

Around her, the decadent white gown started to get covered in smoke and changing dramatically. Rose felt the corset loosen and the skirt tighten and wrap around her legs to form pants. The smoke rose to her hair where the tight braids fell around her shoulders and unwove into freshly curled locks. She felt weight on her back of her small assortment of weapons that were forged by the fire giants for sunborn royalty. A sword with a golden hilt adorned with a triple set of feathered wings, a matching bow and a quiver full of arrows and a golden dagger to finish the set. Her heels were replaced with practical laced up boots that were a hundred times more comfortable. Even her makeup was affected. The layers and layers of powders and paints lifting in an instant leaving only the flaked remains of the sun imagery on her forehead and her golden lips.

Throughout her transformation, her lips were still firmly planted on the witches. She probably lingered for too long as the kiss made her heart flutter and she tried her best to preserve the feeling.

They parted, and the witch held out a dark metal object. A razor sharp knife with the imagery of a white bird skull carved to it’s hilt.

“Point it to the sky and say my name and I will come to you.” The witch assured.

“What is your name?” Rose took the knife and examined it before looking upwards at the witch.

“Adisa. Adisa Crow.”

#This is basically a first draft of a few scenes in my original series that im working on #at least the fantasy one #Rosalia Scarlett Dawn #Adisa Crow #Doctor Plague #my ocs #my writing #original writing #original content #original character #original characters #oc #ocs

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moranice-solvej · 4 years

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Aesthetic Game

@incognitajones, thanks for tagging. I didn’t realize how much I needed to spend some time combing through the pictures and just simply relax. :) In all honesty, I kind of cheated and decided to comb through an old and extensive folder of images I had saved up on my hard drive and try to best express something about me on this moodboard. And then I went down the rabbit hole of sharing why I chose those images under the cut, which isn’t a part of the game, but it’s something I wanted to do anyway. :)

Original rules are as follows:

Look up (your name) + core + aesthetic on Pinterest

Pick 9 images and arrange them into your own name moodboard

Tag others you wanna see!

Tagging @mitdemadlerimherzen cause yeah, sometimes we all need an excuse to look through pretty pictures.

Plaid shirts are my problem. I think I own 6 different ones now cause I tend to buy new ones every two years and don’t get rid of old ones if they’re still presentable. If weather allows and mood strikes, I can go through an entire work week wearing my favorite pair of shorts or jeans and simply change plaid shirts. I have a soft spot for architecture, especially old one, and the best kind of vacation for me is to travel to some old city and stare at wonders created a long, long time ago. Casual leather boots are my love. I own three different pairs that I wear interchangeably in different cool weathers. Heels are not my jam at all. I have a pair of nice summer high-heeled shoes that I for some reason fell in love from first sight with about seven years ago, and I still haven’t wore them once. When it’s warm I almost always wear sneakers, even with summer dresses, cause hey - they’re nice, they’re comfortable, and I don’t end up with blisters on my feet that literally any pair of sandals gifts me with for the last couple of years. I never leave the house without my set of six silver rings, unless it’s for a beach during vacations. I always had a soft spot for rings and silver rings in particular, so when I was fifteen my mom took me to a jewelry shop (like her mom did when she was a teenager too) and I was allowed to select quite a few. They’re all a cheap, simple kind, cause I like silver and not shiny precious stones. I wear four of them on my left hand (two rings are designed to be worn together on a single finger as they’re complimentary to each other) and two on my right. I love them so much and am so attached to them that I’ve never thought putting them aside and buying newer ones. One of my brightest childhood memories is my grandma taking me to the factory where she was once a lead economist at and having a chance to spend a few hours with an old typewriter that apparently was still in use there. (For reference, that was probably 1997 or 1998 in a post-Soviet country.) I still remember the sound it made when typed something, the feeling of the button beneath my fingertips, and that ink stamped to a yellowish paper. Little did I know then at four of five years old that one of my favorite things to do in life would be to write. And, yeah, I still wish I had a typewriter at home for purely aesthetical purposes. I don’t paint my nails for the last year or so as much as I did in the decade before that (and when I do I usually go for a transparent polish, not a colorful one), but I still own a crazy amount of nail polishes in different shades of blue. And I’m a big tea person, so it’s easier to see me either holding or having a mug of tea close to me than see me without it in close proximity. I’ll wear a leather jacket pretty much anywhere if weather allows it. I own two now - one I wore for seven years now which you can totally tell, but I still love the way it looks and you can’t pry it out of my hands, and a newer one that I mostly wear these days. If I’ll ever get married, at this point I’m sure I’m signing the marriage certificate while wearing a leather jacket because that is who I am, all pretty wedding dresses be damned. I grew up in a house full of books, there was a small library located in the first floor of my apartment building where I’ve spent a lot of time in the summer, allowed to run free and read pretty much whatever I wanted cause my grandma was friends with both lady librarians who worked there, and it shows. That photo is pretty much the mood of how my bedroom would look like if I was allowed complete freedom of choosing and furnishing the apartment. My dream relationship goal is to have someone with whom I could just spend a ridiculous amount of time casually walking through a city like that and talk for hours.

#aesthetic game #moodboard #about me

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ca1e70-deactivated · 4 years

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a list of my entirely way too niche headcanons ive actually implemented for everyones imagination:

name options ive used and refuse to retire: david elizabeth strider (sometimes i dont feel like being a douche to others and saying thats not his name), harley davidson strider, and david james strider for the sake of simplicity

im not gonna tell yall the like. oc exes ive given him bc thatll take eighteen years.

i dont rlly have an explanation on the ghost thing besides the fact he just can? ive occasionally pulled from family ghost stories and experiences bc i somehow got landed with family members who lived in a haunted house for a decade and enjoy scaring me with all the stories (including the time my cousin literally died on the kitchen floor from a bronchial spasm and one of the friends that was over asked my aunt later what was up with the old man she saw in the corner of the room that night - my cousin is fine btw shes just a huge bitch and a third grade teacher and i dont like her)

whether or not hes done drugs is based on absolutely nothing besides how im feeling in that moment. either hes the designated driver and sober friend forever or he got fired from his job after doing a line at work during graveyard with some random customers theres no inbetween (this absolutely happened @ waho. if dave works at waho hes a mess of a person and thats on the diner itself.)

ok look i hc dave w/schizophrenia besides when i was 14 i had a hyperfixation with learning about it and then at 16 was prescribed a medication and had side effects so wack my therapist genuinely thought 14 yr old me was onto something and its a weird way to cope with the idea that lady put in my head that i might “develop it in my twenties” which i turn 20 this year and i havent been able to stop obsessing and panicking over the prospect so PLEASE dont come in my inbox calling me ableist im not out here all harley quinn in suicide squad with the voices ok hes medicated, he goes to therapy, the hard fast delusion that lil cal was nearly sentient and informed bro of every single thing dave did no matter how asinine it was is no longer a debilitatingly affecting him ANYWAYS

i actually use the chicken/egg farming family pretty often just because its hilarious to me to give dave like. an actual mom and dad. hes literally an uncle to like three different kids he just never visits because they make fun of his skinny jeans and he hates one of his (incredibly bare-bones ocs all of them) brothers who threatened to bash his head in with a little league bat after dave broke his star wars lego set apart on accident (but not rlly) so their parents were like “why dont you stay with your brother in the big city for a lil while champ” and then they just never picked him back up? and thats on favoritism

the other one is that his name is actually david reed and hes the middle child of a family of three who literally live the standard golden retriever white middle class life only they went to disney land or something equally as dumb one year when dave was like 6 and he wandered off so bro literally just went “huh free game” because frankly he was an idiot who thought maybe i should take this kid home because its real dangerous in parking lots and then it was too late to NOT have it seem like a kidnapping and thats why daves never had a summer job, seen his birth certificate, or gone to school. but vaguely remembers what kindergarten was like and having a pet dog and calling someone mom as a kid.

im not making a bullet point about his sex life headcanons just use your imagination and acknowledge the fact bro essentially worked within the sex industry and i enjoy putting dave through trauma as a catharsis

i stopped doing this one usually but if he did go to school hes been in percussion since fifth grade and played the drums in his high schools jazz band as well as various edgy teenager garage bands he likes to pretend dont have a youtube presence and that hes absolutely never been shirtless in front of plenty of his classmates because he wore a hoodie to a show like an idiot. idk occasionally ill put him in an actual band he doesnt hate but keeps separate from his lil turntechGodhead internet persona (which i will ALSO touch upon in a sec) until they wind up getting looped into a tour with some bigger named band that has a show in *insert beta kid here*’s city and hes gotta come clean solely so he can visit his online friend. sorry derseasterous thats the one time weve ever run into each other and i made him have a crush on one of his bandmates i was in my anti-daverose phase where i made dave a hoe and also didnt want to admit i still loved the ship all these years later

i hate it so much but you know the whole vr loli trap voice shit that was popular a while ago? hes fucking baller at it for some reason. he did it as a joke while talking to bro and they both about shat their pants. if im feeling real ambitious, hes got a separate soundcloud solely dedicated to doing dumbass rap covers or making his own but in the voice under the pseudonym elizabeth “beth” davids that he will never admit is his. well, he will, but hes gonna be really fucking embarrassed about it. irony or not.

talking abt seperate soundclouds and stuff ive always had it where turntechGodhead was his like. essentially internet fucking persona facade shit he used because we all had that phase where we wanted memorable urls and stuff but also didnt want to totally ignore the nagging fear of people finding you in real life, until it turned into real life ppl finding you on the internet. so he also has basically an adjacent set of social media under the same name but its just a boring username i havent decided on so everyone he knows irl doesnt mix up with what hes made for himself as TG and the people he knows as TG dont know what highschool he goes to. (this occasionally comes with the territory of ppl on parp being pissed that daves “lying” or “hiding things” from his friends as if he was doing it out of spite instead of just keeping embarrassing tagged photos and videos from football games or when he ate shit at the skatepark from fucking with his “rap career”)

every once in a while i get on a kick where hes just german. like, i just replace houston texas with hamburg germany and have him apply to a university in whatever state is applicable for whoever im chatting with and it goes from there? sometimes he moved when he was little and went through the whole visa thing, sometimes he didnt go through the visa thing, sometimes hes a dual citizen because of family and shit, its all dependent on what suits the situation best.

one that ive been fucking with for a while but hardly break out (until recently with like 5 roses in the span of one day hell yeah) is that he has a neighbor at the end of the hall who is like a thousand year old witch lady that hes basically adopted as his mother figure in lieu of not having one and shes totally cool with it, especially bc when she kicks the bucket she fully plans on giving dave all her occult stuff so her figure-skating coach and realtor daughter doesnt sell it at a garage sale and lets it all go to waste. she also once brought rose up by name in a conversation without any prompting of her existence which dave didnt realize for days, and then one time cryptically stopped and stared at an empty space in the wall, went “she has potential, you know.” then looked at him sitting on her kitchen counter with a smile “lots of it” and hes thought about that weekly ever since. (it is important to note one of the occult items he leaves her is literally her own personal book of shadows shes been filling out for decades its like a 600 page leatherbound book dave has no idea what its used for but the sheer amount of homemade spells and etc in it is like. gonna murder rose the second this chick gets her hands on it i promise you.)

theres the standard strife shit? im not rlly gonna get into those theyre all basically cookie cutter bullshit. its just standard bro and dave abuse talk. i like to inclulde the whole 24hr live cam up in the apartment that definitely watches dave in every room besides his own and the bathroom, but that quickly delves into the prospect of middle-aged men stalking him online and basically sexually harassing him in his own god damn home by talking about how they can see him just trying to take his shoes off in the living room after getting home and frankly? its not one of my best takes! but once you throw it into the headcanon bin, its there forever.

he actually really does do something with his photography but not enough to warrant anything exciting, but he has his own branding for it and regularly takes pictures of his friends or anything else he thinks is moderately interesting enough to take pictures of, but those are just thrown into shoeboxes under his bed in favor of posting genuine shots because he wants to keep his image intact and blurry photos of jade smiling in the tree they climbed up together while bec paws at the base of it while whining isnt exactly something he wants the whole world to see.

i also pretty often but him into either paleontology OR i put him down as trying to become a mortician because he thinks handing roadkill once he graduated from museum giftshop specimens to doing his own taxidermy on the side has prepared him enough to perform an occasional autopsy and start embalming real human corpses. (sometimes i put my own desires in and make them his bc i have to project at some point and put him through the same EMT course i dropped out of bc it was one semester and he already has pretty decent first aid skills, but he definitely didnt expect it to be as fucking wild at times as it is, but whats he gonna do? get a job back at waffle house? the company hes working for just offered to pay like half his associates in paramedicine tuition and hes already got all his pre-recs done when he started for paleo. at least its a stable job and hes got the ability to be compassionate in the moment)

im running out of things that ive done to the poor kid. OH

hes not a virgin he had a girlfriend all four years of high school (shes also one of his optional and designated exes plz keep up) and their relationship ends in one of two ways: she dies in a car accident a week before their high school graduation, or she stops talking to him entirely a week after their high school graduation until a couple years later she gets into (guess what) a car accident with her current wife/girlfriend and dies which leaves behind their daughter. who just so happens to also be daves daughter. her name is hannah and i love her like my own but no one ever likes her and thats on the conditioning of dirk. does dave end up taking her in? yes. shes awesome and the first time he takes her to the park to like run off some fucking steam she disappears for two minutes and dave is moderately terrified until she comes back holding a dead baby squirrel and thats the moment he realizes huh maybe things really do be genetic.

ok at the bottom of the list im gonna add the couple of times hes been a camboy which usually coincides with the live apartment cam thing and the amount of people in his dms calling him hot or whatever, but typically its more of a started the day he turned 18 and basically dipped around 20 in favor of showing up randomly with no warning to complain about a video game dick in hand because it gives him an outlet that wont annoy his friends bc this is the fifteenth time hes had a lot to say this week about a certain boss battle and also the comments fuel his ego and daddy issues.

the last one wasnt the bottom but literally unless its explicitly proven otherwise every time anyone rps with me there is the underlying fact dave strider was a goalie on his high school lacrosse teams all four years and (shocker another one) definitely had the hots for one of his teammates like major hots like first gay experience hots. like it was painfully obvious that teammate also liked him back hots. like one night at a team sleepover one of the other guys was like can yall just makeout and get it over with were fucking tired and dave really had the balls to be offended and ask what the fuck they were talking about while literally sitting halfway in the mans lap bc for some reason they had to share the same chair.

he is also guilty until proven innocent of being the worlds biggest loner outside of that sports team and even though hes literally a jock he still opts to eat his lunch alone in the hallway or something like that and has a tendency to leave girls on read, but bc hes got an in with the rest of the jocks hes basically drug around to plenty of parties and since hes conventionally attractive enough and popular in the aloof way that he is, hes got plenty of tagged insta posts and twitter directs and snapchat streaks going.

THESE WERE ALL NO GAME AND DONT INVOLVE SHIPS BC I LIKE TO KEEP MY OPTIONS OPEN AND THEYRE LITERALLY ALL BASED OFF RPS IVE DONE I HOPE YALL JUDGE ME ACCORDINGLY

#theres probably so many more i mean #ive been on parp for at least 5-6 years now #ive been on cherubplay probably the same amount of time #and my memory is totally shot to fuck but these are just what i know ive done in the last YEAR #or thought were wild enough to remember #i put it under a read more bc frankly its really fucking long #and i dont want this to represent me entirely #these are also heavily situational based and not like. emotion or reaction based much?#some of them are #i guess i could rename this to like. things ive done on parp #but theyre technically still headcanons a lot of them can coincide with whatever #so theyre not very specific situations #anyways #this took me an hour

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